Politics, Sports, Entertainment, and Other False Religions

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In this fourth installment of our series on “Love not the World” (1 John 2:15-17), I want to ask what John means by “loving the world” as opposed to loving the Father. In an earlier post, we saw that the “world” is the order of things prioritized to satisfy our self-centered desire for physical pleasure, possessions, and honor. John urges, “Don’t love this order, this kosmos.” “Don’t order your loves in this way.” As we see clearly, the organizing principle of “the world” is unenlightened love of the self, shaped and moved by our immediately felt physical desires and our psychological need for social acceptance—all informed and directed by the dominant culture in which we live.

In worldly society everyone desires, sells, promotes, seeks, and admires, physical pleasure, possessions, and honor above all other things. This way of thinking dominated the society and culture of John’s day. And it dominates ours also. Indeed, the “world,” as an order determined by the three perverted loves, manifests itself in every actual social and political order, in every human institution.

Politics, my friends, concerns the order of this world, and it arranges things to promote the realization of some vision of the good life within this world. And given the values of most people, politics invariably concerns competing visions of how to secure money, safety, possessions, pleasure, and honor. Do not love politics. Don’t become angry, anxious, or obsessed with it. Do not love the world in any of its manifestations. Do not love your sports team or famous people. Love the Father.

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever (1 John 2:15-17).

John tells us not to “love” the world, either as a way of ordering our lives or as an actual social and political order. He uses the verb form of a Greek word familiar to many church-going people, agape. We should reserve our love for God. God loves us and sent his Son to save us from sin and death. The world does not love us. It cannot save us from sin and death, because the world itself is dominated by sin and death. We love God by returning our praise, thanks, and honor to him for what he has done for us. In loving God, we seek him as our highest good, treating all other goods as means to our ultimate goal of eternal life with God. God is the measure of all things. Nothing else really matters.

We love the world when we treat experiencing physical pleasure as the goal of our lives. Loving the world involves letting our desire for beautiful, convenient, and comfortable things eclipse our desire for God and the things of God. When we seek approval, praise, and honor from other people and do not strive to please God above all others, we have succumbed to the love of the world. Physical pleasure, cars, houses, and lands, and a good reputation are not evil in themselves. They can be means through which we can serve and praise God. The joy we experience in them can turn our hearts to God in thanksgiving. But if we seek them as if they could give us true joy apart from their function of pointing us to God, if we worship them, if we forsake the higher goods for the lower, then these things will turn to dust in our hands. There is only one God. Apart from God, there is only death.

It’s time for some self-examination. Do you love the world? Do I love the world? Let’s ask ourselves some questions:

 

How often do you think of God and pray?

 

When you pray, for what do you ask?

 

How much time do you spend trying to shape other people’s opinion of you? And how much does it bother you when you get less respect or recognition than you think you deserve?

 

How much of your attention is given to planning and experiencing pleasures of all kinds?

 

If you were responding to a survey that asked you rank the top five things you desired most, what would top your list? Second? Third?

 

How much effort do you give to exercising your spirit, in self-examination and confession?

 

What do you think about when you take a walk by yourself?

 

What are the highest priorities of your two best friends?

 

Would you prefer to look good or be good? Does your answer match the effort you put into each?

 

Whom do you most admire?

 

Is the “love of the Father” the organizing and animating force of your life?

In researching for a book I am writing, I’ve come upon some of Plato’s ethical thoughts. In the following quote from his dialogue Theaeteus, Plato sounds a lot like John in 1 John 2:15-17. Considering the high calling we receive from Jesus Christ, we ought at least to aim as high as Plato, who did not know the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, bids us aim:

But it is not possible, Theodorus, that evil should be destroyed—for there must always be something opposed to the good; nor is it possible that it should have its seat in heaven. But it must inevitably haunt human life, and prowl about this earth. That is why a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible; and a man becomes like God when he becomes just and pure, with understanding. But it is not at all an easy matter, my good friend, to persuade men that it is not for the reasons commonly alleged that one should try to escape from wickedness and pursue virtue. It is not in order to avoid a bad reputation and obtain a good one that virtue should be practiced and not vice; that, it seems to me, is only what men call ‘old wives’ talk’. Let us try to put the truth in this way. In God there is no sort of wrong whatsoever; he is supremely just, and the thing most like him is the man who has become as just as it lies in human nature to be…

My friend, there are two patterns set up in reality. One is divine and supremely happy; the other has nothing of God in it, and is the pattern of the deepest unhappiness. This truth the evildoer does not see; blinded by folly and utter lack of understanding, he fails to perceive that the effect of his unjust practices is to make him grow more and more like the one, and less and less like the other. For this he pays the penalty of living the life that corresponds to the pattern he is coming to resemble (Plato, Theaeteus, trans. M. J. Levett, rev. Myles Burnyeat in The Complete Works of Plato, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1997), p. 195).

The Decisive Issue

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Practice has made us perfect at evading the decisive issue in almost every decision we make, in every action we take, and in every word we say. The decisive question we must answer is not “How does this action make me appear to others?” It’s not “Do I feel strongly about what I am saying?” Nor is it “Can I find some justification for this decision?” It’s not even “Will this act accomplish something good or is this word true?”

The most important question for me at every point is this: “How does it stand between me and God?” “What is God’s judgment about me?” It’s not “How does it stand between my brother or sister or my enemy or this or that public figure and God?” It’s not “How does my group or nation or other groups and nations stand in relation to God?” I answer to God for what I am and do. You answer to God for what you are and do. And the moment I begin making judgments about how it stands between you and God, I have already begun evading the decisive issue in my life, which is God’s assessment of me.

Perhaps the most familiar and misused of Jesus’ sayings is found in Matthew 7:1-2:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

This saying is often misinterpreted to mean that since everyone is their own judge and gets to determine what is good and right for them, no one else has the right to make that determination. This interpretation is doubly wrong. First, we are not our own judges. Jesus does not forbid judging others because it violates others’ right judge their own case. God is the judge—everyone’s judge—and that is why Jesus forbids judging each other. To pretend to make a judgment only God’s has the right and knowledge to make and the power to enforce, is to place ourselves in God’s judgment seat. And no one who truly recognizes God as their judge can at the same time substitute their own judgment for God’s judgment.

There is a second problem with the popular misinterpretation of Jesus’ command not to judge. In verse 1, “to judge” means to pronounce a verdict on someone’s person. (This is obvious from what Jesus says in verse 2 about the measure or standard used. His warning assumes that in our judgments we usually hold others to a higher standard than the one to which we wish to be held.) Jesus speaks of a judgment about the ultimate disposition of an individual, a judgment that should take into account every factor that touches the case. That is to say, it is a judgment only God can make. It is not mere recognition that someone broke a law to which they were subject. Jesus does not deny that some actions are wrong for everyone or that we can know what those actions are and recognize when another person does them. You are not “judging” someone when you recognize or even inform them that they are breaking a law. It becomes a forbidden judgment only when you try to speak for God, as if you knew the “sinner” as well as God does or understood completely the extent of God’s mercy or depth of his justice.

How does it stand between me and God? This is the question I should remember when I am tempted to contrast other people’s weaknesses and sins to my strengths and good deeds and excellent motives. When I feel the urge to vent my anger or unleash a sarcastic or insulting word, remembering that God is my judge will give me pause. I don’t get to judge myself. Nor am I allowed to inflict the punishment of anger and insult and violence on others. When someone expresses a “stupid,” “benighted,” or “biased” opinion about religion, politics, or morality, if you must respond at all, respond with the consciousness that God alone knows the human heart, and that God alone determines how others stand before him. Be as merciful to others as you want God to be to you. When I think of Matthew 7:2, my friends, it scares me to death; for I need maximum mercy! Don’t we all?

Book Release: A Course in Christianity

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Dear friends, readers, and supporters:

Today, I received my author copy of  A Course in Christianity for an Unchurched Church. This is the third book I have written in installments on this blog. I hope that by collecting, revising, and making these 51 essays available in print form and on Kindle I can provide some small service to the church. I have pasted the link to the book’s Amazon.com page below. Perhaps you know of someone who could benefit from reading these essays. May the book find its way to those few or many whom it can help on their journey toward God. I have reprinted the Preface to the published book below.

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[You can see the table of contents and the first three chapters by looking at the Kindle version. The Kindle version does not yet show the book cover, but you can still “look inside.”]

Preface

 A Course in Christianity is third in a series of books I’ve written in weekly installments on my blog ifaqtheology (Infrequently Asked Questions in Theology). It contains in revised form 51 essays I wrote between August 2015 and September 2016. My original plan projected writing a “catechism of mere Christianity for a post-denominational church living in a post-Christian culture.”  As the year progressed I realized that the word “catechism” did not accurately describe the product I was producing. A catechism needs to cover all the basics of a church’s teachings in elementary form. I found this task too large to accomplish in one year. The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church contains 800 pages and was written by scores of theologians and bishops. Martin Luther wrote a small and a larger catechism and Zacharius Ursinus, in consultation with the faculty of theology at the University of Heidelberg, wrote the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). But I am no Luther or Ursinus.  I’ve had to content myself with writing on many but not all of the basic teachings of Christianity. Despite its deficiencies as a catechism, I hope that by reading this collection of essays individuals will be motivated to establish a program of self-education in Christianity. I have called it A Course of Christianity For An Unchurched Church because I believe the contemporary church is neglecting its duty of teaching the whole faith to the whole church. And many contemporary Christians are neglecting their education in Christian truth to such an extent that they need to begin at the beginning and traverse the course again. Perhaps the church of today finds itself in a situation similar to the one the author of Hebrews addressed in his day:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! (Hebrews 5:11-12).

I divided the book into five parts. Part One contains four chapters that introduce the problem of the unchurched church and issue an urgent call for renewal of its teaching ministry. I argue that “churching” people involves more than making sure they come to church a few times a month to witness what goes on stage. They need to be formed intellectually, spiritually, and morally to maturity in Christ. Part Two examines such central theological topics as God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Trinity, creation, sin, and salvation. In these chapters I consider what is revealed in the scriptures about God’s nature, identity, character, and activity in the world. Part Three includes studies of the church, worship, faith, baptism, and Christian ethics. These essays explore the appropriate human response to what God has done in creating and taking care of the world and in his saving action for us in Jesus Christ. In Part Four, I examine issues that arise in thinking about the soul, the resurrection of body, heaven, and hell. Part Five contains three chapters of theology in the form of autobiography.

WE HAVE MET THE WORLD, AND IT IS US

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As I announced a few days ago, my theme for this year is “love not the world.” The first thing we need to do is get clear on what John, in 1 John 2:15-17, means by the “world.”

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

The first mistake to correct is the notion that “the world” is a sphere outside and in contrast to us. The world is not a group of really bad sinners: murders, swindlers, thieves, and fornicators. Indeed “the world” does not refer to any particular group of people or institutions. The world is a way of thinking, desiring, feeling, and acting that finds its origin in the heart of every man, woman, and child. And in you and me!

The “world” is sin in its organizing mode. Or, to put it another way, it is the way our lives become ordered when we let sin work out its logic. The Greek word translated world is kosmos, which emphasizes the orderliness of the whole universe or any other sphere to which it is applied. John asks us not to love the order (the kosmos) that is organized by the three perverted loves: lust, lust of the eye (or greed) and pride. These loves find their origin in the sinful and self-centered human heart. Everyone desires pleasure, possessions, and honor. And when these desires become the force that organizes our thoughts, desires, feelings, and deeds, we have become guilty of loving the world. Hence “the world” is a way of loving, ordering, and prioritizing our lives that fails to make God the determinative ordering force. It orders the created world as if it were the best and highest of all things possible. It excludes God from its list of priorities. God, who is highest good and should be the ordering principle of our world, is replaced by our own private lusts.

The alternative John envisions is making the Father the ordering principle of our lives. We organize our thoughts, feelings, desires, and deeds so that they serve the highest and best possible thing, which is God. God is to be desired and honored and worshiped above all things. Everything else in creation must serve this end, that is, to know, please, and honor the Father. Our love of the Father orders and unifies and beautifies our lives. The “order” of the world is really disorder and chaos, because lust, greed, and pride pull us in different directions and cause dissension and war among those dominate by them.

The way of the world and its perverted order is ever ready to assert its re-organizing force in our lives. The moment we lose sight of the glory, goodness, and love of the Father, the perverted kosmos again asserts its control over our lives. Hence John urges us not to love the “world” but to keep our highest love for God alone.

Theme for Year Four: “Love Not the World”

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My theme for year four of ifaqtheology will be “Love Not the World.” Christians always face challenges from without and temptations from within. But the ever-changing form of those challenges makes them even more dangerous. We seem always to be one step behind, fighting the last battle, bursting through open doors, reacting to past abuses, and correcting yesterday’s errors. In this series, I want to help us discern and examine the challenges to Christian faith and practice that we face today and are likely to face in the near future. The theme text for this year is 1 John 2:-15-17

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

This text is raises so many questions we need to address and is overflowing with implications for the way we live in relation to the world. What is the “world”? Does it mean the created world or the human world, that is, human culture? Or, does it mean the usual “way of the world” dominated by the devil, sin, and corruption? What does it mean to “love the world”? Surely, John is not condemning loving the people of the world, because the Gospel of John proclaims, “For God so loved the world that he gave…his Son… (John 3:16). What would it mean to love the “way of the world”? And what are the two lusts and the pride of which he speaks? Do these three misdirected loves cover everything it means to “love the world”?

In what ways and for what reasons do the love of the world and the love of the Father exclude each other? And what does it mean to love the Father in contrast to loving the world? John gives us two reasons not to love the world. (1) Its loves do not originate with the Father, and (2) they “pass away.” What happens to the one who loves only things that die and cease to be?

But what does it mean to love the world today, in our setting? In what ways does the culture we live in conform to the “world” John speaks about? How do the three misdirected loves take shape in our society? And in what forms to they pose the greatest threat to our practice of the Christian faith? How would purifying our loves from the three worldly loves and focusing our love on the Father, change our lives? How would it change the way we work, play, and relate to others? How would it change the way the church organizes and conducts its corporate life? How would it change the way we educate our children, spend our money, and relate to the political order? How would it affect our hopes and values?

I look forward to addressing these questions during the next year.

Why The Doctrine Of The Trinity Cannot Be Used To Support Egalitarianism Or Complementarianism Or Any Other Ethical Teaching

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In the contemporary debate about the relationship between men and women, in church, home, and society, disputants on all sides appeal to the doctrine of the Trinity for support. In this post, I will argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is the wrong ground on which to fight this battle. Any theological argument made on this issue must be based the economy of salvation and not on the inner mystery of God’s being. The doctrine of the Trinity points toward that mystery but it does not make it clear to the eye of reason. Hence it cannot be used for further deductions.

The doctrine of the Trinity asserts that God’s eternal being is one essence in three persons. This assertion is the terminus of a line of reasoning that moves from God’s saving action in the economy of salvation to God’s eternal being. In a post on the Trinity from May 7, 2016, I outlined this process:

The doctrine of the Trinity arose in three stages. First, Jesus and his disciples confessed the one God and the Christian church never revoked this confession. There is only one God. However once Jesus had risen from the dead and was confessed as Savior and Lord and the Spirit had been poured out on the church, it became obvious that the one God acts for our salvation through his Son Jesus Christ and in his Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the revealer of God and the Spirit sanctifies us and unites us to God. The Christian experience of salvation and communion with God involves three who act as one. We are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We pray to the Father through the Son, in the power of the Spirit. Everywhere you turn in the Christian faith, ritual, and practice we find the three united in one. Thomas Torrance calls this stage “the evangelical Trinity” (The Christian Doctrine of God).

Second, Christian experience and faith raise questions that demand explanation. At this stage, the church recognizes that the work of Jesus Christ as Savior, Lord, and Revealer and the work of the Spirit as Revealer, Sanctifier, and Giver of life can be accomplished only by God. God acts in the economy of salvation and revelation as Father, Son, and Spirit. In relating to Jesus and the Spirit, we are relating to the true God. When we are united to Christ we are united to God. When we are touched by the Spirit, we are touched by God. In the economy of salvation and revelation we relate to the Father as God, to Jesus Christ as God, and to the Holy Spirit as God. Torrance calls this stage “the Economic Trinity.”

The third stage moves to the ontological or immanent Trinity. The truth of Christian faith and practice depends on the saving and revealing work of Jesus Christ and the sanctifying and life-giving work of the Spirit (the first stage). And the validity of the work of Christ and the Spirit depends on the divine character of that work (the second stage). The final stage asserts that God is triune not only in the economy of revelation and salvation but in God’s own eternal life. Unless God really is Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal truth, we could not receive the revelation and salvation in Christ and the Spirit as a real revelation of the Christ-character of God, of the love of God, of the real presence of God. There might be a different God hidden behind the masks of Christ and the Spirit. The doctrine of the immanent Trinity simply states that what God reveals himself to be for us in the economy, God is in his own eternal life. It is not speculative. For it does not explain the how and why of the Trinity, only the that.

The three stages stand or fall together. If we think God might not really be Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal truth, we would have cause to doubt that God is really at work or genuinely revealed in Christ and the Spirit; and if we doubt that God is really at work and revealed in Christ and the Spirit, would have cause to doubt our salvation, our union with God and our sanctification.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not a metaphysical theory of God or of the nature of being derived from the idea of God or being. It is a Christian teaching only because and insofar as it is implied in the way God worked in Jesus Christ. It should be confessed because it is implied in the act of faith in Jesus as savior and lord, which is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus. But the doctrine of the ontological Trinity is not comprehensible by reason. It’s not like a logical or mathematical truth in that once you understand its terms, you can see its inner and absolute necessity. Even when you understand its terms and see that it follows logically from a combination of two or more truths of faith, you cannot see its inherent necessity and meaning. Hence this doctrine cannot become the foundation for another line of reasoning that attempts to draw out ethical or ontological truths that were not present in the original faith assertions.

The controversy about whether the doctrine of the Trinity supports an egalitarian or a complementarian or a hierarchical view of the relationship between men and women can never be settled. The disputants always argue in a circle by using their conclusions as interpretive lenses through which to “see” their views in the doctrine. And the reason for this futility is simple: the doctrine of the ontological Trinity points beyond our reach into the incomprehensible mystery of God. I find myself sympathetic to Vladimir Lossky, who in his The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church objects to such thinkers as John Zizioulous (Being as Communion) and Juergen Moltmann (The Trinity and the Kingdom) who want to see in the doctrine of the Trinity an ontology of being or ethical truths that could become bases for further insights into the nature of the church or the ethics of society and interpersonal relationships. Lossky argues that the assertion of the ontological Trinity is designed to drive us to encounter the mystery of God. I advise taking Lossky’s cautious approach rather than the bolder approach of Moltmann.

So, if you want to construct a theological ethics of male/female relations, look to what Jesus taught and suffered, to what he did and what happened to him, and to the apostolic teaching about what his suffering and resurrection means for the way we live at home, society, and church. But don’t try to squeeze something out of the doctrine of the Trinity that you cannot find already present in economy of salvation enacted in Jesus Christ. Such speculations give the impression of being ungrounded and arbitrary. They persuade only those who need no persuasion. And they do an injustice to the doctrine of the Trinity and risk missing the encounter with the divine mystery.

 

 

Is Social Justice Ministry A Substitute Gospel?

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For the past two weeks I have been editing my blog posts of the past 13 months in preparation to publish the third book written in installments on this blog. The title will be A Course in Christianity for an Unchurched Church. As I worked through the chapters I paused at chapter 44 and thought about the state of the churches in the United States and, by extension, in other English-speaking countries. I see so many changes in process and on the horizon. In almost all cases, change is morally and theological ambiguous, that is, it includes some change for better and some for worse. The change this chapter considers is the change in evangelical and theologically conservative churches from emphasis on evangelism and soul saving to social justice works. The criticism of the soul saving model of outreach is that is treats people as disembodied souls rather than as whole persons. Of course, there is some truth to this criticism.

However, in my view, the shift to social justice as the church’s primary outreach to the world also distorts the mission of the church. I see three obvious ways this distortion takes place. (1) The social justice model possesses a strong tendency to play down the need for individual repentance, faith, and conversion. The evil it aims to address is socially systemic injustice rather than personal sin. It views the human problem as rooted in its racist, sexist, colonialist, homophobic, environmentally exploitative, plutocratic, etc., social structures rather than in each person’s idolatry, ignorance, and rebellion against God. Or, it engages in relieving poverty, homelessness, human trafficking, etc. without engaging in evangelism and establishing churches. (2) It tends to blur the line between the kingdom of God and the world. It allows the church to become an adjunct to the world, functioning as a social agency devoted to ameliorating the world’s ills. Christianity, originally understood as the present, supernatural manifestation of the future reign of God, is transformed into an ideology whose value is based on its usefulness in support of social activism. Christians working for social justice are tempted to root their identity more in a cause held in common with nonbelievers than with a cause exclusive to believers. (3) It tends to utopianism, that is, the naive view that we can bring about the kingdom of God on earth by dent of human effort. It seeks to cure human sin by reorganizing social structures or meeting bodily needs.

A Question for Social Justice Ministries

To what degree does the move from evangelism to social justice represent a loss of faith in power and truth of the gospel and abandonment of belief in the necessity of personal faith, repentance, and conversion? How far does it go to subordinate the body of Christ to the body politic of a nation? To what extent does it replace the cause of Christ with the cause of an interest group?

Hence today I want to re-post the edited version of an essay I posted some months ago. It will be published as chapter 44 in A Course in Christianity:

Is “Social Justice” a Christian Concept?

In a time of increasing emphasis on social justice in evangelical churches, colleges, and seminaries, perhaps we ought to reflect on the difference between seeking justice and doing justice. On almost every occasion in which the Old Testament uses the expression “seek justice” it  refers to seeking justice for others, for “the fatherless,” “the widow,” and the “poor” (Isaiah 1:17 and Jeremiah 5:28). Quite often these instructions are given to people in authority or with social status enough to advocate for others. A king, for example, should “seek justice” for all the people (Isaiah 16:5). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). Micah informs us of what the Lord requires: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8). But neither the Old nor New Testament tells us to “seek justice” for ourselves. Advocating for the legitimate rights of others is counted a virtuous act. But seeking it for yourself is at best ambiguous; it is not condemned but neither is it praised.

Oversimplifying matters a bit, I see three different modes of enacting justice in the Bible: (1) seeking justice for the powerless against unjust powers; (2) seeking justice for yourself in matters where you believe you have been treated unfairly; and (3) acting justly in all your own relationships with others. Let’s discuss them one at a time.

 

Seeking Justice for Others

To engage in this mode of justice you must possess some qualities the oppressed do not possess. You cannot be powerless and oppressed yourself. You have to possess power or you cannot help those without it. And you cannot be a member of the oppressed group or you would not be seeking justice for others but for yourself. You cannot seek justice for the poor if you are poor or the vulnerable fatherless if you are vulnerable and fatherless. This distinction between those who have status to seek justice for others and those for whom they seek it makes the activity of seeking justice morally ambiguous. True, all good deeds are morally ambiguous because the moment we recognize the goodness of our actions we become proud of our goodness. And pride is wrong. But seeking justice for others adds another dimension. We must distinguish ourselves from those we aim to help. We have power, wealth, and status, and they don’t. Hence our compassion for the victim can easily transform into relief that we are not victims, not poor, not powerless. A root of disdain springs to life.

Additionally, it is easy to forget the people we are trying to help and get caught up in the noble, heroic cause of justice and the feelings of self-importance it engenders. It is often said these days that giving “charity” to the needy offends against their dignity but seeking justice for them affirms that dignity. But as you can see from the analysis above, seeking justice also distinguishes between those who have power, wealth, and status and those who do not. Seeking justice makes plenty of room for a condescending attitude on the part of the justice seeker. It would be ironic indeed if in seeking justice we grow to despise the very ones for whom we seek it.

One more irony: justice seekers often attempt to awaken and mobilize the oppressed to resent and hate their oppressors. We make seeking justice for oneself a holy task, a moral obligation, and a virtuous act. In so doing, justice seekers remake the oppressed in the image of their oppressors. It is an infallible rule that we become like what we hate.

 

Seeking Justice for Yourself

Seeking justice for yourself is not a noble or virtuous act. It’s normal and spontaneous for sure, but we have no duty to make sure other people treat us fairly. We enjoy a highly developed and finely nuanced power for detecting injustice when it is done to us. But we are notoriously bad at judging our own cause. Who feels that life treats them with perfect fairness? Does anyone feel like they get enough recognition or are paid enough for their work? Who is happy with a B+ when you know you deserve an A? Every 6-year old child says, “No fair” at least 5 times a day. Indeed, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems to discourage or even condemn seeking justice for yourself. It’s too easy to clothe envy and selfishness in the purple cloak of justice. No one is qualified to be their own judge. We need an objective standard and an impartial judge.

 

Doing Justice

Doing justice is at the heart of the issue. Seeming to seek justice for others does not require that you give up your supposed rights and privileges. You can seek justice for others for less than noble reasons and you can remain deeply self-centered while doing it. But doing justice is an altogether different matter. I do justice when I submit all my actions in relation to God and others to the test of the right. Doing justice requires that I renounce all self-judgment and reject all actions that privilege my desires, my supposed rights, over others. We do justice when we do the right thing whether it is in harmony with our interests or not. The foundation for doing justice is loving justice more than you love yourself; and the foundation for loving justice more than yourself is loving your neighbor as you love yourself. How can we claim to seek justice for others when we don’t act justly in all our relationships? And how can we seek true justice for ourselves when we turn a blind eye to the injustice we do to others? Perhaps, if we will concentrate our hearts on doing justice in all our acts, we will be better able to seek justice for others. And if we focus on doing justice we might not be so insistent on seeking justice for ourselves.

Hell, Part two: Is There a Way Out?

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In the previous post I introduced four views of hell. Today I will examine each one critically, pointing to some strengths and weaknesses of each. My view of hell will come into view as I evaluate these alternatives. Again, I ask for the indulgence of those who have spent decades studying all the nuances and alternative answers to the question of final punishment. In a short essay like this one I cannot touch all the bases. And of course I welcome corrections of any misrepresentations of the views I examine or suggestions for improving my own proposal.

Views of Hell Critically Examined

Liberalism

Liberal theology’s contention that the NT authors simply accepted without question the apocalyptic speculations of late Judaism, though questionable, deserves more consideration than conservative theologians usually accord it. Undoubtedly the NT authors use the language of apocalyptic speculation. But the crucial question is how they use it. Did they intend to present these images as revealed divine truths about the eschatological transition events and the nature of divine judgment? Did they present them as metaphorical images embodying truth or as literal descriptions of post-mortem realities? Can their use of them be justified?

Traditionalism

Advocates of the traditional doctrine of hell attempt to take seriously God’s utter rejection of sin and evil and the seriousness of our situation in relation to the holy and just God. Nevertheless, despite this laudable motive I find its biblical grounding less than secure. For example, in interpreting texts that speak of death as the final punishment for sin (e.g., Romans 6:23), traditionalism interprets “death” or “eternal death” to mean eternal suffering without actually dying. Why would anyone say that? Perhaps it is because most traditionalists are committed to the idea that the human soul, once God creates it, cannot die. If the soul cannot die and some people are irrevocably excluded from salvation, the conclusion seems unavoidable: hell is a place of never-ending suffering in punishment for unrepentant sin. But as a matter of fact the Bible does not teach the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. It teaches that God alone has immortality and that human beings can hope for immortality only as a gracious gift of God.

Conditionalism

In my view, conditionalism is far superior to traditionalism in accounting for the biblical data about hell. That is to say, if you are looking for a summary statement of how the Bible pictures the fate of unrepentant sinners, conditionalism is the best candidate available. Conditionalism’s critique of traditionalism is devastating. My problem with conditionalism is its assumption that once we reconstruct the biblical picture of hell and the fate of sinners, the argument is essentially over. It assumes that those biblical statements were made with the intent of giving us specific information about eschatological events. I have serious doubts about this assumption.

First, the language of NT eschatology is indeed, as liberal theology points out, derived from pre-Christian Jewish apocalyptic speculation, and we have no warrant for thinking of this Jewish speculation as authoritative. But unlike liberal theology I do not think we should reject it for this reason alone. We need to ask how it was used by the apostolic writers in view of the resurrection of Christ. Second, the New Testament message is centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The event of the resurrection of Christ is the only eschatological event that has actually happened.

You can see from Paul’s teaching on the resurrection how pre-Christian Jewish speculation about the resurrection was reinterpreted in view of the actual event of Christ’s resurrection. Apart from the event of a real resurrection, the hope of resurrection is mere speculation derived perhaps from belief in God’s goodness or some other theological doctrine. But the event of the real thing forced Paul to modify his preconceived notions of resurrection (See 1 Corinthians 15).

This process of reinterpretation is also at work in way the NT uses pre-Christian Jewish notions of the messiah. Many people expected a messiah but no one expected a messiah like Jesus! The actual event of Jesus’s death and resurrection revolutionized how messianic and other eschatological texts in the Old Testament and intertestamental literature were understood. We get a little window into this process when the resurrected Jesus chastised the two Emmaus-road disciples:

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself (Luke 24:25-27).

These examples of apostolic reinterpretation call for the following principle:

The precise meaning of prophesies, anticipations, and speculations about future events can be definitively understood only after the actual event happens. The event is the meaning.

Let’s apply this principle to the language of hell and other eschatological images. Paul and the other NT writers did not experience the other eschatological transition events about which apocalyptic speculation speaks as they experienced the appearances of the resurrected Jesus. (Okay, they experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.) Hence we do not yet know how the apocalyptic language would need to be transformed in light of the actual events. Nevertheless the apostles’ experience of the actual eschatological event of the resurrection of Christ legitimated their use of other apocalyptic images in a loose sense, that is, with the expectation that it points in the right direction but would need to be modified in view of the actual events when the occur. My skepticism about conditionalism concerns its too close identification of the not-yet-modified apocalyptic language in which the NT eschatology is articulated with events that have not yet occurred.

Evangelical Universalism

Evangelical Universalism also has strengths. And in Parry’s book at least, it does not offer “cheap grace.” Sin is serious, and repentance is necessary. Salvation may require painful purgation for great lengths of time. Universalism is very attractive for someone who, like me, believes deeply in the love and grace of God and who does not think God can fail to achieve his objectives. I am not ashamed to admit that I hope that somehow beyond all expectation everyone finally comes to faith and repentance. But despite many good theological and philosophical arguments for it, I do not think the contention that universalism is the biblical view can be sustained. And the notion of hell as a temporary place of purgation has even less support from the Bible. Evangelical universalism suffers from the same questionable assumption that plagues conditionalism, that is, that the biblical language of eschatology gives us specific information about the eschatological course of events and final states.

Conclusions

What can we learn from this little survey? Obviously sincere believers in Jesus Christ, the risen Lord and Savior, differ in their views of hell. I do not think the Bible teaches the traditional view. I find that picture horrifying and a sharp challenge to John’s assertion that God is love, but I respect the faith of those who think they must believe it because they think the Bible teaches it. But I suspect that many Christians would be happy to discover that the Bible doesn’t really teach it and, consequently, that they are not obligated to believe it or try to defend it to their non-Christian friends.

Conditionalism gives Bible believers solid biblical justification for rejecting the traditional view. No one will spend eternity in horrible agony. Nevertheless, the conditionalist view does hold that God will punish people in hell for some length of time and that, once there, there is no way out but death. This, too, seems horrible, though much less so than the traditional view. Many people would be happy to discover that there are sincere conservative Christian theologians who can articulate good biblical grounds for believing in universal salvation. Even if some people must suffer painful purification for a time, we know that in the end “all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well” (Julian of Norwich).

For me, I am content to take the New Testament language about transitional eschatological events and hell as general affirmations of faith, grounded in the resurrection of Christ, that God will redeem his people and pronounce a “great divorce” (C.S. Lewis) between good and evil. Whether hell contains many or few or none, whether it lasts for a day or a million years or forever, whether it is a symbol or a real place, it represents God’s complete victory over everything that sets itself against him or that detracts from his glory. It epitomizes the complete liberation of his people from even the possibility of sin and suffering. And in that sense the biblical doctrine of hell is part of the gospel.

Hell, Part One: The Controversy

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Where can I begin? Could there be a more controversial topic than hell, that is, the question of final punishment? I hope those of you who have read extensively on this subject will forgive me for oversimplifying the range of options for interpreting the nature of hell. But I don’t have the space in one essay to provide nuance.

Four Views of Hell

The Liberal View

Liberal theology long ago rejected the biblical doctrine of hell as an element alien to Jesus’ message of divine love and God’s universal fatherhood. The NT writers unthinkingly took this doctrine over from the fantastic apocalyptic speculations of contemporary Judaism. According to liberal theology, everyone will be saved. No need for hell.

Hell in Traditionalist Theology

At the other end of the spectrum are “traditionalists”, who hold that the Bible teaches that hell is a place where unrepentant sinners are tormented endlessly. Once in hell no one leaves; you can’t die and you will not be pardoned. Many traditionalists believe that the human soul was created by God immortal so that it cannot die or that it is irrevocably sustained in being by God forever to endure just punishment.

The Conditionalist View of Hell

Those who call themselves “conditionalists,” despite some variation, hold that hell is a place where unrepentant sinners experience death, that is, capital punishment. They cease to exist, body and soul. The term conditionalism refers to the mode in which human beings can be made immortal. Eternal life is not a natural or created quality of the human soul but a gift of divine grace given at the resurrection of the dead to those who place their hope wholly in Jesus Christ. For conditionalists, Romans 6:23 states this teaching unequivocally:

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Conditionalists argue that “death” in this text means literal death, that is, ceasing to exist, and not never-ending existence in agony, as traditionalists would have it. How long one spends in hell—on an infernal death row as it were—is a matter of debate among conditionalists. The point of agreement is that no one remains in hell forever and no one leaves except by dying. For a classic statement of conditionalism, see Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 3rd ed. (1982, 2011). See also Date and Highfield, A Consuming Passion: Essays on Hell and Immortality in Honor of Edward Fudge (2015).

The Evangelical Universalist View of Hell

In a fourth option, evangelical universalism, unlike liberal universalism, argues that the scriptures teach universal salvation. Robin Perry, aka Gregory MacDonald, articulates a particularly cogent case for universalism that includes an interesting doctrine of hell [The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed (2012)]. Parry attempts to account for all biblical data, some of which points in a universalist direction and some of which envisions a number of people serving some time in hell. Everyone will be saved eventually, but some will suffer in hell until they are ready for eternal life. Hell becomes a sort of purgatory, a place of purification for the sake of salvation rather than of punishment for the sake of damnation.

Next Time: Very soon I will post the second essay on hell, “Hell—Is There a Way Out?”

Resurrection of the Body or Survival of the Soul?

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Last week in dealing with eschatology I urged us to keep our focus on the definitive state of salvation rather than getting bogged down in discussions of transitional end time events. Whatever the transitional events turn out to be, the definitive state of salvation is eternal life in the presence of God. However there is one transitional event that the New Testament so connects to the definitive state that I need to deal with it, that is, the resurrection of the body. Though I won’t take the space in this essay to discuss it, my thinking on the resurrection has been definitively shaped by repeated reading and reflection on Paul’s great treatise on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

Everyone dies, and everyone knows it. But death means different things in different religions. For some religions and philosophies, death is merely a transition from this order to another. The higher part of the soul is freed from the body to return to the divine realm from which it came. Life in the cyclical of nature is bondage from which we need liberating and death is the way out. But for Christianity, death is not a transition to another mode of life; it is the end. Death is not the promise of liberation but the threat of annihilation. In the Christian understanding of salvation, the resurrection of the body is the central event of transition from this order to eternal life with God. Pinpointing death instead of the resurrection of the body as the transitional event, as popular religion often does, distorts and disrupts the entire Christian way of understanding the world. Let’s examine two reasons why the resurrection instead of death makes sense as the transition to eternal life.

First, God created this world, matter and nature, body and soul, and pronounced it very good. The body is not a prison, and life in this world is not a place of purgatory to which we were consigned because of our pre-incarnate sins. So, resurrection makes perfect sense as the transition from the present order in which creation is wounded and imperfect—though still good—to the healed and perfected order that God is preparing. Resurrection saves and perfects creation and affirms its created goodness. Or, to say it another way, God’s act of saving creation from death and decay and bringing it to its intended goal is called resurrection.

The promise of resurrection affirms continuity between the creation as it now exists and the new creation God will make. The new creation is not a replacement for the old one but the present creation saved and perfected. As for individual people, resurrection promises continuity between our present identity and our future selves. What good would it do for me to survive death if the part of my soul that survives has no memory of me and if my life in the body makes no ultimate difference? I have no more reason to look forward to this mode of survival than to survival of the atoms in my body after its dissolution! Who would find comfort in that? I can hope that my resurrected self (body and soul) will be expanded and illuminated and intimately united with Christ and filled with God’s Spirit. But unless there is continuity with the “I” that I am now, it makes no sense to call this transition resurrection or salvation.

Second, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central revealing and saving event of the Christian faith. Why would God raise Jesus, body and soul, from the dead if death itself were the transition to eternal life? If Jesus had merely survived death as a spirit, he could have appeared as a ghost to his disciples to declare his innocence and to assure them of the possibility of surviving death. But God raised him from the dead! Jesus’ resurrection declared not only his innocence of the Jewish’s accusation of blasphemy and Roman charge of sedition but it also declared his victory over death. Jesus’ resurrection made God’s intention to save and perfect his creation more than a hypothesis consistent with God’s act of creation. It made it a fact in history. And this fact calls for a revolution in the way we live:

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:55).

It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself…Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:13-18).

Next Time: What shall we make of the doctrine of Hell? Is it part of the gospel or an especially difficult part of the problem of evil? Should we take the language about Hell as literal or metaphorical?