a quasi-review; or, how having saints secures jesus' divinity

t4stywh34t
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Strange title, I know. Bear with me.


If you know nothing else of John Chrysostom, know that he was veritably in love with Paul. This isn't a weird or gross thing, though, seeing as John was wholly enveloped (despite being a prominent orthodox Christian preacher/pastor/leader/bishop) in the secular rhetorical world. Paul was able to make (fairly) plain for average Christians the import of the teachings of Christ, being himself highly rhetorical in the process. Paul was the most important Christian to Chrysostom, because even though Paul was the Saint of Saints, he was fully man, fully emulatable.

Margaret Mitchell, despite writing on a very niche subject in Church History, brings this to the fore in her book, "The Heavenly Trumpet." She addresses something very important at the outset: why doesn't Chrysostom speak so passionately about Jesus himself? Why does he focus on the man Paul to encourage his congregation/audience? It isn't because imitating Jesus is a hopeless cause; otherwise, Chrysostom's Trinitarian theology would be bankrupt. Ironically, I almost see it as a move to preserve his high regard for Jesus' divinity above anything else.

Like all theology, shooting for the via media is also preferable. We've seen countless instances of heresy in the Church's past (and present) when someone wants to take part of a balanced issue to far. I don't think John errs on the side of saint-worship in an effort to maximize Jesus' divinity here. I think, instead, he shows us lucidly why surrounding ourselves with the saints is not a bad thing.

Obviously, as Christians, we want to be "little Christs." But the reason we look to saints is because they start out with everything we start out with; they are fully human, fully capable of both going astray and staying the course with God. Despite some who seem to have dipped their hands in the utterly and almost unbelievably miraculous, saints are people we can truly imitate. I can only imitate Christ insofar as he was fully human; I can't truly imitate Christ in his fullness. I can never be begotten from the Father like he does, nor can I experience divinity through the power of the Holy Spirit (that was for Ben...for the rest of us: "I can't allow the Holy Spirit to proceed from me ;-) ). I don't have two natures somehow united yet unconfused in my self. My death will not affect anything. Worshipping me will only get you sent to the wrong place. I want my being to be as close to Christ as possible, but I'm not so concerned about turning into a Messiah.

On the other hand, I can grow in relationship to God. It is possible that I may have to preach to thousands of people one day and train them in the Faith. It is possible that one day I might have to face an untimely death at the hand of those who have a problem with my faith. I can relate more easily to people who don't have the option to call legions of angels from heaven to help me, what can I say? None of this is to say that I'm trying to distance myself from Christ, nor that I want to be more distant from Christ. In fact, I think the opposite; I'm a huge proponent of understanding Christian growth as theosis. The thing is, because of that, and not in spite of that, I find it appealing to look toward people who bridge the gap even further between myself and Christ.

I look toward saints as people who were utterly used by God, despite problems, despite obstinacy, despite physical shortcomings, despite emotional setbacks. I don't believe Christ was used by God to accomplish anything; Christ is God, for crying out loud! True, Christ "bridged the gap"; Christ experienced everything a human could experience in the fullness of his humanity. But at the end of the day, despite being made in the form of a servant, and subjecting himself to such a death as that on the cross, Christ was more than a fabulous guy; and because of this, the gap between he and I is very, very real. Since I want to bridge that gap any way I can, I look to the saints who have done so the best.

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why so many atonement theories are bankrupt

t4stywh34t
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In my 2 Corinthians class, we have been discussing various interpretations of Paul's soteriology/theology of atonement.  One of the books we read, Paul on the Cross by David Brondos, highlights the deficiencies of several "popular" (though I'm not using that word in a derogatory fashion, simply trying to connote something that has held the most weight for the longest time) readings of Paul particularly on Jesus' death and resurrection.  That we should be reading such is ironic, especially since Dr. Reese didn't think about these readings' proximity to Holy Week beforehand.


What really stuck out to me concerning this book is that, despite many areas where Brondos lacks in his historical and exegetical analyses, he is not afraid to ask questions which have, to this point, generally been assumed or worked around.  Questions such as, "Did Jesus have to die, and why?" have really plagued the development of biblical soteriology throughout the centuries, generally with the result of working backwards from logical conclusions to the text rather than the other way around.  Brondos asks what it means for Jesus to die for (ὑπερ) us or for our sins; what about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are actually salvific? Is it proper to ask questions of mechanics concerning the atonement (i.e., how salvation is brought about)? All of these are formed under the general concern for what, specifically in Paul, we have inducted from Scripture and what we have deducted.

A classical penal-substitutionary theory of the atonement holds that Jesus had to die to ransom us, or to pay back a debt we owe though cannot pay back.  Did Jesus really have to die? Is God under any compulsion to act? Judaism says "no"; God acts as he pleases.  Who is this ransom paid to? The devil? Surely not! The Father? Yet what kind of Father would make his son die, and why should he to pay back our "debt"?  What kind of logic is really involved here?

Were blood sacrifices really required in the Old Testament for the remittance of sins?  Didn't the Law make exception for those who couldn't bring lambs? Or even birds?

And what about a participatory understanding of the atonement?  How can we actually (whether ontologically or spiritually) be said to "participate" in his death and resurrection?  Well...ok.  I have to stop here.  I tend to agree with Brondos on much, but here he lost me.

Essentially Brondos now shows that we basically imitate Christ through our lives, and minimally through the sacraments.  What about divine participation?  What about Augustine, Irenaeus, Athanasius, or the Cappadocians? Though Paul may not explicitly evince the possibility of "divine participation" (which, admittedly, is what he is looking at - Paul - despite also bringing Hebrews into the discussion at one point), I don't think what Brondos does is quite fair.  He looks at overarching atonement theologies, pointing out their faults just through looking at Paul, and though Paul is of course a main influence in the development of any NT theology, one also has to factor in other writings of the NT.  What does Peter say about divine participation? How does he connect the seemingly-impossible event of the Word's incarnation with our salvation? Why is it "unbiblical," as Brondos attempts to show, that to a large extent our salvation comes from the Word's assumption of humanity in order to heal us rather than simply Christ's "life plea" to the Father for our salvation?

I think here, we lose part of the wonder of Jesus' death if we look at it only under the lens of the "logical conclusion" of Jesus' life lived for our sake.  Maybe I want to out-Brondos Brondos here...God's love for us went beyond living a holy life to plea for our salvation: the Word became flesh that we might become divine.

Of course, none of this comes to fruition until the Son is raised, and the Holy Spirit is given.  So we wait...

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book review

t4stywh34t
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Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe

I think I've determined that the thing I like most about this book is more the door it opens on discussion than the book itself. Heresies and How to Avoid Them is a collection of sermessays (yes, that's a word...but only because I just created it) originally delivered by a number of Anglican pastors as a sermon series, and later spiffed up into a series of essay. So just in that regard, this is a valuable journey into the realm of uniting history/serious theology with laypeople's thirst for instruction. The authors cover nearly every major early heresy in the Church, starting with the first four main Christological errors dealt with via conciliar action (Adoptionism, Docetism, Nestorianism, and Arianism), then moving on to others of the writers' choosing (such as Marcionism, Pelagianism, and Donatism). The typical chapter will include an attempt at a scriptural connection to these teachings (though in some cases they seem to be completely unrelated), somewhat of a historical survey of the debate, and then the attempt at application.

Now, as a super-brief expose on heresy for laypeople, this book is good. As a manual for how to think theologically orthodox, this book is not so good. It creates unfortunately high hopes just in its subtitle; yet at the end of each chapter, no matter how good the chapter was (there were three or four solid historical treatments, chapters which I was thoroughly impressed with), the take-away was the same: don't be like this. The heretic/heretical group was always a misguided good guy, portrayed as someone/people who really were striving for the truth, but somehow got lost along the way. Though the book certainly correctly notes that not all heretics were burned or utterly dismembered for their teachings, it does overemphasize how heretics have historically been villainized - almost to the point where I found myself thinking, "Well, maybe it doesn't actually matter what I believe, since anyone who thinks differently is just a bully."

To me, this is unfortunate, because I firmly hold that it does matter what we believe, and heresies/heretics are not just lessons in veering off the path. Yes, I believe that character slandering went on, and shouldn't have. However, for some reason we have forgotten that the quest for orthodoxy, despite what those suspicious of the metastructure of the Church would say, was founded primarily on the Church's passion for God - for remaining as close as possible to revelation with faith and the understanding that belief and behavior are two sides of the same coin. I really, honestly do not think the Fathers separated belief from action. So despite the fact that Pelagius might have acted like a pious man - indeed Augustine himself heralded him as such - the real danger in Pelagianism lay in the genetic passing on of its traits and characteristics. Augustine saw that it did not teach the full truth, that we are saved by faith through grace, the evidence of which is displayed in our works, and thus was doomed to created less-than-Christians. So it's not enough, I think, for a sermon to simply lay out a historical debate and then shake its finger at the audience, saying, "Don't be like that!" Obviously we don't want to be heretical, because by the nature of the sermon it has been determined that heresy is bad (though in some circles that is actually the first hurdle to leap); so there must be something else there.

In my conversation with Dr. Pasquarello concerning this book, we did determine that it has one great use - as a tool in homiletics courses. Hearing about a certain heresy in a sermon is a surprisingly good connector to hearing the heresy itself in a sermon. That is, the student could read the chapter on, for instance, theopaschitism, and say, "What would this sound like in a sermon? How can I preach truth and avoid this error?" If these seem like moot questions, either 1) you haven't spent enough time in church, or 2) you haven't spent enough time studying heresy. This isn't a witch-hunt sort of exercise, but a genuine exercise in desiring to preach faithfully the Word of God and the Rule of Faith.

So, to recap: good book, but only if you plan on doing something about it. If you aren't convinced at the end that it does matter what Christians believe, read another book, talk to me, or consider helping fund my doctoral work :-).

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