The Internet Monk Archives

Jesus as the New Adam

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

• Genesis 1:26-28 (NRSV)

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

• Psalm 8:3-8 (NRSV)

The disciples of John reported all these things to him. So John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” When the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’” Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

• Luke 7:18-23 (NRSV)

As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus…

• Hebrews 2:8-9 (NRSV)

• • •

Yesterday, in our discussion of N.T. Wright’s essay on Adam and Paul’s gospel, the question was asked, “What was the vocation that Adam and Eve failed to live up to, but that Jesus fulfilled?”

I would like to explore that a bit today. One thing I’ve always liked about Wright’s perspective is that it leads, in my view, to a fuller and richer Christology. In particular, it helps me realize how the life and ministry of Jesus is important. In my evangelical life, the focus was almost always on Jesus’ death and resurrection. We didn’t spend much time in the Gospels, and when we did I usually found our understanding of why Jesus traveled around Palestine teaching and healing to be vague and rather insubstantial. This led, I believe, to an impoverished gospel.

Continue reading “Jesus as the New Adam”

Blogging through The Lost World of Adam and Eve (5)

Blogging through “The Lost World of Adam and Eve”
• Excursus by N.T. Wright

We have been blogging through John Walton’s book The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate. Here are the previous posts in the series:

Today, I’d like to focus on an excursus Walton has included in one of the sections about how the New Testament, and Paul in particular, views the Adam and Eve story. Because John Walton specializes in the Old Testament, he asked N.T. Wright to write this excursus. I find it to be a brilliant summary of what has been called a “new perspective” on Paul, which in my view is a fuller perspective that pays closer attention to the First Testament story, the story of Israel, and how Jesus is the fulfillment of that story. The result is a grander understanding of God’s “plan of salvation” and of human participation in that plan in Christ.

Continue reading “Blogging through The Lost World of Adam and Eve (5)”

Open Forum, with a special invitation to newbies

UPDATE: Thank you so much to all the newer commenters who joined us today! You made my day.

• • •

I plan to return to our discussion of John Walton’s book tomorrow and Thursday, God willing, but for today I think we should have an Open Forum. It has been quite a spell since we did, and I’d like to give the community an opportunity to choose some topics.

I would especially like to hear from new Internet Monk readers or those who haven’t commented before. Participating in online discussions can be intimidating, but consider this an invitation. Even if you just say “Hi” and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you find interesting (or troubling, for that matter) about the blog, you are welcome to make a comment. We know that our blog readership is like an iceberg — a small portion who appear above the surface to speak out, and a much larger and hidden “quiet majority” who are usually content to read the posts and perhaps follow some of the discussion. Why not pop your head above water today and let us hear from you?

Open Forums carry simple rules:

Be respectful.
“Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19)
If you disagree, try your best to do so agreeably.
Remember, we’re all on a journey and at different places along the road. Show some grace and forbearance.

It’s all yours today. Enjoy God’s gift of discussion.

Why the Table should be Front and Center

8422796224_9fb2e77a52_z — St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport, Iowa

I have developed a simple position about why I think the Table (or Altar) should be central in the architecture of a Christian church sanctuary.

Remember where I come from. In my youth, this was how most of the traditional Methodist congregations I attended arranged their worship spaces. Two pulpits flanked a central table. Then I had a spiritual renewal in my life as a teenager in a Baptist church. Large, large pulpit in the middle. The communion table also in the center, but below the pulpit (off the “platform”) and used only monthly for communion. Every church in which I served as pastor had a similar arrangement. The pulpit was central not the table.

We were proud of this. It signified that we were people of the Word first. That the reason we came together was to hear God speak through the preached Word. Not being a sacramentally-minded people, communion was an ordinance, along with baptism. It was a symbolic representation of Jesus dying for my sins, giving his body and blood, and we remembered that specifically once each month when we partook.

As for baptism, except for one congregation where baptisms were done in ponds outside the church building, they all had baptismal pools too. The baptismals were centrally located, usually somewhere visible as an opening in the wall up behind the pulpit. As an prominent feature of the sanctuary, they only came into play when we had baptisms, which was hit and miss depending on how many children were growing up to understand and accept Jesus and who was converted through evangelistic ministry. Otherwise curtains hung in the opening, unless, like in one church where I served, the decorating committee saw the space as advantageous for seasonal displays. Then God forbid we would have a baptism because of all the work it would take to dismantle and then reassemble the Christmas village or spring floral arrangement! Baptism services were considered special celebrations, not an ordinary part of Christian worship, since baptism was essentially a new believer’s first public act of confessing the faith. But that was all. After that, there was no more talk about baptism. The curtains were drawn.

So, in most of the churches I attended, this aspect of the architecture and arrangements communicated what was most important and what was secondary and tertiary in our worship practices:

The preaching of the Word
Communion
Baptism

In the few discussions I had with people who actually thought about this over the years, those who considered this the best arrangement usually had a strong conviction about preaching being the reason Christians came together. For a long time, most of them didn’t even talk about “worship” other than to call what we were doing a “worship service.” The service was two parts: (1) the preliminaries, (2) the preaching. In some cases there was part (3) the invitation, or the response to the preaching. Everything in the service either looked forward to or back at the sermon. Depending on the church or service, the sermon was either evangelistic or focused on edification through teaching. Either way, we came together to hear the Word. Therefore, the pulpit was central.

On the other hand, we were always taught that the reason the Catholics and Lutherans and other “high church” folks put the pulpit to the side was because they didn’t value preaching as much and put more emphasis on communion (I don’t think I ever heard the word Eucharist). The people I worshiped with were intentionally non-liturgical for many reasons, and one of those reasons was what they perceived as the subjection of the Word to the liturgy, which led to the Lord’s Table. The Mass was more about the ritual acts surrounding communion than preaching or teaching. And they were expressing something accurate. In his book on the Eucharist, Roman Catholic Fr. Ronald Rolheiser says plainly: “The message is also clear in the architecture: we gather first and foremost around the Eucharist, and the Word takes second place.”

It seems to me that one of the reforms Luther and others championed was to equalize the balance between Word and Table. Neither is more or less important. Worship involves participating in a service of Word and Table. Luther elevated the Word, but certainly didn’t swing to the opposite pole, where revivalists have discounted the Table in favor of the Word.

The baptismal pool in most liturgical churches also communicates something different than the churches I knew. In Catholic churches there is a font when you enter the sanctuary to remind worshipers that we enter the Christian life through baptism and it is our continuing source of life. In some of the Lutheran churches where I’ve worshiped, the font is prominent in front where one can be reminded of baptism as he or she is going forward for communion. The ongoing significance of baptism in the Christian’s life is reinforced by having the font among the people, accessible to the people.

Ideally, then, I would think the arrangement of a sanctuary should communicate a balance of emphasis on Font-Word-Table.

Nevertheless, I have concluded that the Table should be central and prominent in this arrangement. Why?

The way I see it, the Table communicates more than just the importance of the Eucharist (or communion, Lord’s Supper, whatever your terminology). A table is a piece of furniture most of us have in our homes, and it has traditionally represented the place where the family gathers for both ordinary and special occasions. It is where we eat together, talk to one another, and welcome guests. It is the family table. It is where we meet to be a family.

This is why the Table should be front and center in a church sanctuary. Not because the Eucharist is more important than the Word, but because the Table alone is a big enough symbol to include all three of the central practices of worship.

It encompasses the Font, because the very reason we have a place at the Table is because we are part of the family (or potentially so).
It encompasses the Pulpit, because the Table is where the family talks to one another, where elders instruct the younger, where we learn and grow together.
It encompasses the Table itself, of course, because it is the setting where we come to receive the nourishment of Christ’s body and blood.

If the pulpit is front and center, it communicates that the sanctuary is primarily a place to sit quiet and listen — not a bad thing, but certainly not comprehensive enough to describe what Christians are to do when we come together. At worst, it suggests that the church is a lecture hall, a classroom, or a seminar.

Unlike a pulpit or lectern, a table is inviting, and it calls us to consider ourselves God’s family. And that’s why we come together — to be God’s family, to meet around the Table with our risen Lord and with one another.

Sundays with Michael Spencer: May 3, 2015

I’ve lived most of my life submerged in the world of churches, Christians, Biblical language, and the Christian worldview. As I’ve moved into the second half of life, I’ve become aware that I need to separate myself from the Christian culture that has dominated my life, and to look closely for where my own assumptions are deeply embedded with the concepts, presuppositions and categories of the spiritual/intellectual/social/religious environment that surrounds me.

As part of my journey to deconstruct this evangelicalism I’ve lived in, I have consciously attempted to appreciate the thinking and experience of those who do not share my Christian faith. This process has been difficult, because the “house” of my personal experience is completely furnished with the furniture of a Christian society, church language, Biblical presuppositions and the basic beliefs of the Christian community.

One of the incidents that began this journey was a simple observation by a student. “Steve” had been at our Christian school for several years, and had never made any outward steps of faith. He wasn’t very verbal about matters of faith, but it wasn’t hard to tell he had thoughts he chose to keep to himself. One day, in a class discussion about a recent chapel message, Steve spoke his mind. I can’t quote him, but it was something very much like this:

“Why do Christians always say that you can’t be happy unless you are a Christian? It’s insulting to a person who isn’t a Christian to be told that they will never be happy without Christ. I’m not a Christian, and I am happy most of the time. I am happy with my friends and they things I enjoy doing. I don’t want or need Christianity to be happy.”

To quote the hanky-waving lady in the local African-American church….”Well……” So should we argue this point? “Steve, you just don’t know what happiness is. Trust me. You have no idea how happy I am compared to you.”

I recently read an article in the London Times. Seems the Church of England is trying to find ways to tap into the spiritual interests of England’s church-abandoning younger generations. After extensive research, the conclusions were not at all the expected.

There was little interest in God at all. There was little interest in heaven, spiritual matters, or even life after death. What was meaningful to the young people interviewed was life, family, love, work, relationships and the enjoyment of this world. They were comfortably, happily attuned to this world. Spiritual tattoos aside, they had little thought of much beyond what their senses or experiences presented to them.

In other words, Augustine’s famous “God-shaped void” didn’t make its expected appearance in anything near the numbers expected. Those with interest in some aspect of non-Christian, alternative spiritualities were often simply engaging in the enjoyment and exploration of culture, social groups, symbolism, trends and/or their own this-worldly curiosity and preferences.

Several months ago, I told many of my friends that when I turned off the “Christian stream of consciousness” in my head and just listened to the young people I work with, it was quite obvious that most of them had no interest in God at all. I mean no interest in God at all apart from practical, pragmatic results in very “this worldly” matters. Of course, the problem is that I’m simply not taking this into account in much that I do. “Now turn in your Bibles to Obadiah, and let’s pick up where we left off last week in our series on “Major Moments In The Minor Prophets.”

I do hear about God. I get those Bible questions and the questions that go along with a Christian school full of kids made to go to church and forced to adopt the values of their families. Occasionally someone will ask me about an unbelieving relative who has passed away, but I have never seen anyone truly disturbed about their own relationship with God or worried about what God thought of them. Exactly like the young people in the Times article, there is almost no interest in spiritual things. The great majority of interest in “God” or “the Bible” or “religion” comes down to wanting to know how this might make life here and now more interesting, satisfying or pragmatically effective.

I don’t meet people concerned about sin, and my crowd hears about sin all the time. When I have question and answer sessions, I hear church kid questions and a bit of curiousity about this and that. I’ve begun to realize that when a Christian begins talking about a Biblical story or text, the vast majority of the people I know see these texts having absolutely no relevance to their lives at all. These are things Christians talk about. A Christian giving the meaning of a Bible passage is like a student of the red-winged woodpecker explaining its habitat and habits. If he/she weren’t making you think about it, you would never think about it.

We talk about hymns or choruses like God cares a lot about this. People who aren’t part of church culture know that God isn’t caught up with hymns or choruses. We talk about this church or that new teacher, and these things are very important to us. They fill up Christian television, radio and web sites. Our friends outside of the Christian aqaruium look at us swimming around and think we are funny, odd fish. So concerned with what we think is real, but which they consider meaningless or just a story to try and make you act like someone wants you to act.

The people I know are consumers, not seekers. They consume entertainment, movies, personal events, possessions, experiences and relationships. The idea that God has a claim on them is comprehensible, but virtually meaningless. What they want and what they need is in this world, and is not on the other side of a prayer. (I wonder if “Seeker-sensitive Churches” might consider “Consumer Friendly” as a better name.)

Of course, such people look at those of us who are Christians as very different from them. We tell them our story. We explain the Biblical message of salvation. We describe life with Christ. We talk about “knowing God” and “worshipping Jesus,” and they hear us. They may admire us. They may sometimes feel we have said something very valuable. (A recent sermon series on marriage created a lot of interest by our students because it talked about some things they care about.) But if we talk about “your need to accept Christ,” we might as well talk about “your need to wear elk horns and walk in circles.” They give us our meaningful rituals, but they don’t want to be told they need the ritual as well.

…Yes. Today’s young people are bored with God. They are not “seeking” God at all, but are living on the hardened surface of a fallen human experience, seeking to make sense of what is incomprehensible apart from Christ. We cannot “create” interest apart from the work of the Spirit. Our calling to be witnesses is not to approach the world like cattle to be herded, but as persons to be loved in the way God loves this fallen world through Jesus Christ. We live in a generation and time dead to God and alive to entertainment and a consumer mythology that promises and delivers meaning through stimulation and amusement.

Christ has become the servant and savior of such a world. We live in that world, fully human, fallen, redeemed, rescued, living and hoping in the new creation. How do we speak of these things? It’s a question we must keep answering fearlessly.

Saturday Ramblings, May 2, 2015, Memeing Shakespeare Edition

Hello, imonks, and welcome to the weekend. Ready to Ramble?

Happy birthday goes out this week to William Shakespeare. He is 451. Here’s his present: Only 8 percent of the top universities in the United States now require their English majors to take even one class on him. “We have found our Bard suffering ‘the unkindest cut of all,’ ” said the authors of the report, from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

“At most universities, English majors were once required to study Shakespeare closely as an indispensable foundation for the understanding of English language and literature. But today — at the elite institutions we examined, public and private, large and small, east and west — he is required no more….Rather than studying major literary works in depth, students are taught the rationale for and applications of critical approaches that are heavily influenced by theories of race, class, gender, and sexuality.”

Well, something’s rotten in Denmark, if you ask me. The Bard deserves better for his birthday. So, to honor him, we are going to intersperse this Ramblings with Shakespeare quotes, attached to really cute animals. Because few things are sweeter than mixing the profundity and grandeur of the greatest English writer with the whimsy and humor with which God created some animals. Or, as the Bard put it, “Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.”

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings, May 2, 2015, Memeing Shakespeare Edition”

Rachel Held Evans: An excerpt from “Searching for Sunday”

We’ll take a break from John Walton today and pick up the discussion next week. I had hoped to complete the series today, but I would like to discuss a few more of his concepts and need a bit of time to get my thoughts together.

In a couple of weeks, we will blog through another book: Rachel Held Evans’ Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. Rachel has been a strong, sometimes controversial voice for the younger Christian generation that many call the “millennials.” I am obviously well past that age group, but my adult children are not, and many churches are struggling to know how to keep, reach, and pass the faith on to the folks in this season of life. I’m hoping we will attract some new and younger readers through giving attention to Rachel’s story. We need to hear their voice.

Today, I want to give you a taste of Searching for Sunday by quoting a passage from the book’s beginning in which she tries to “translate some of [the] angst” that she and her fellow millennials are feeling about God and faith and church.

But I can tell my own story, which studies suggest is an increasingly common one. I can talk about growing up evangelical, about doubting everything I believed about God, about loving, leaving, and longing for church, about searching for it and finding it in unexpected places. And I can share the stories of my friends and readers, people young and old whose comments, letters, and e-mails read like postcards from their own spiritual journeys, dispatches from America’s post-Christian frontier. I can’t provide the solutions church leaders are looking for, but I can articulate the questions that many in my generation are asking. I can translate some of their angst, some of their hope.

At least that’s what I tried to do when I was recently asked to explain to three thousand evangelical youth workers gathered together for a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, why millennials like me are leaving the church.

I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff — biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice — but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.

I explained that when our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren’t welcome at the table, then we don’t feel welcome either, and that not every young adult gets married or has children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people. And I told them that, contrary to popular belief, we can’t be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans. We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives, so we can smell b.s. from a mile away. The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.

Millennials aren’t looking for a hipper Christianity, I said. We’re looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, we’re looking for Jesus — the same Jesus who can be found in the strange places he’s always been found: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these.

No coffee shops or fog machines required.

• p. xiiif

Non-Order, Order, Disorder

Two paintings called "The Human Condition," Magritte — Two paintings called “The Human Condition,” Magritte

I was thinking we might finish John Walton’s book today, but I had brain cramp trying to put a final post together, so I’ll save that for another day. In the meantime, I’d like to get the community’s input on one of Walton’s propositions that we haven’t discussed yet.

Here we will be dealing with theological concepts rather than questions about “historicity” or the literalness vs. archetypal nature of Adam and Eve. I think Walton’s ideas on what we will discuss today have some genuine possibilities, and may capture some things I myself have been trying to say about how Genesis, particularly the “creation” and “fall” narratives, work.

Here is his view in a nutshell, and then I’ll let Walton himself explain it.

Genesis 1:2 describes the world existing in a non-ordered state.

The subsequent seven days of creation describe God bringing some good order to this world. (Note: each bold word is important — some. good. order. The world was not completely ordered but the order God gave to it was good in that it became a sacred space in which God and humans together could continue the work of ordering the world: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion…” [Gen. 1:28] )

The story of Adam and Eve shows how humans introduced disorder by attempting to gain wisdom apart from God in order to become the center and source of order rather than maintain their relationship with God.

Continue reading “Non-Order, Order, Disorder”

Blogging through The Lost World of Adam and Eve (4)

Blogging through “The Lost World of Adam and Eve”, by John Walton
• Post #4: Propositions 12-14

The next three propositions John Walton presents have to do with the setting of the “garden” in Eden and those who dwelt therein.

Adam is assigned to be a priest in God’s sacred space, with Eve as his helper.
The garden is an Ancient Near Eastern motif for sacred space, and its trees are related to God as the source of life and wisdom.
The serpent would have been viewed as a chaos creature from the non-ordered realm, promoting disorder.

Propositions 12-13: I was first awakened to the fact that the “garden” in Eden was more than just a lovely place providing food for humans by my seminary professor, John Sailhamer, who described for us how the imagery of Genesis 2 described a sacred royal botanical garden which found later expression in Israel’s Tabernacle and Temple. In an earlier post on these chapters here on IM, I wrote:

The word “garden” refers to a “park” or a “botanical garden” of the kind that was common in royal temple or palace complexes in the ancient world. Solomon was renowned for his horticultural interests, and records show that the kings of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia had magnificent garden complexes. The most famous, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, was one of the world’s seven wonders. “Eden” means “abundance.” In this lush, verdant location, God created a royal arboretum, fit for the King, furnished by his own hand.

In the light of chapter one, with its metaphorical depiction of God establishing the world as his temple, John Walton describes this garden as the center of sacred space in the world, the “holy of holies” as it were, in God’s cosmic temple. Unfortunately, here is another instance where I think Walton is correct as far as he goes. However he doesn’t follow up to explain that, for Israel, this would identify “the garden in Eden” with “the Promised Land.” This is one criticism I have of John Walton’s approach to Genesis. I think he does an excellent job pointing out what he calls the “archetypal” significance of many aspects of the story and he draws all the right connections with Ancient Near East mythology, but his focus on issues related to the New Testament and science lead him to ignore the context of the Torah and Hebrew Bible. This is an “Israel” story before it is anything else. More on that at the end of the week.

Continue reading “Blogging through The Lost World of Adam and Eve (4)”

Blogging through The Lost World of Adam and Eve (3)

Blogging through “The Lost World of Adam and Eve”, by John Walton
• Post #3: Propositions 7-11

Here are the next propositions John Walton makes regarding Adam and Eve and the account of Genesis 2-3:

The second creation account can be viewed as a sequel to the creation account in Genesis 1 (not a recapitulation of the sixth day).
“Forming from dust” and “building from rib” are archetypical claims and not claims of material origins.
Forming of humans in ANE literature is archetypical, so it would not be unusual for Israelites to think that way.
The New Testament is more interested in Adam and Eve as archetypes than as biological progrenitors.
Though Adam and Eve are archetypal, they are nonetheless real people who lived in a real past.

With these propositions, John Walton attempts to solidify the main argument of his book:

Genesis (and the rest of the Bible) treats Adam primarily as an archetype, nevertheless he was a real historical person.

Proposition 7: This point has been self-evident to me ever since I came to understand the structure of Genesis. Genesis is organized according to ten statements introduced by a phrase using the the word toledot: “These are the generations of…” Essentially, these statements introduce a new section that builds upon the previous one, telling “what came forth” from the main character of the previous section. Genesis begins with the ordering of the “heavens and the earth.” Genesis 2:4ff tells “what became of” the heavens and the earth. Creationists see Genesis 2 as a recapitulation of the sixth day in Genesis 1, but Walton points out why that cannot be so. One implication of this is that Genesis 1 describes the creation of humankind while Genesis 2 describes another, later election by God of a particular couple of human beings. Adam in chapter 1 does not equal adam in chapter 2, and the particular adam in chapter 2ff was not necessarily the first human being.

Continue reading “Blogging through The Lost World of Adam and Eve (3)”