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On June 3, 2020 By In Church, Culture

Overcoming Division in the Spirit of Pentecost

This past Sunday, Western churches celebrated the Feast of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. The Spirit came with a sound “like a mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:2) and alighted upon the disciples in the form of tongues of fire, incorporating them, us, as the body of Christ. He brings us in to participate, through union with Christ, in the Divine life.

The Holy Spirit forms at Pentecost a New Humanity; just as the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters at creation, just as the dove is sent out by Noah over the waters when the world is judged and renewed, so now the Spirit comes over the new creation, the Church. The Spirit descended upon Christ at His Baptism in the form of a dove, and now, in union with the crucified and resurrected Christ, the Church is formed as the New Humanity.

Just what is new about this New Humanity? Much in every way. But for one, what is new is that, through the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus and effected in us by the Spirit, our fleshly divisions are overcome. Humanity since Babel is torn apart by division, marked by the confusion of language and religious confession. The story of humanity post-Babel is a story of ever-deepening division. Peter Leithart says, “Under Babelic conditions, division becomes institutionalized and permanent. After Babel, flesh separates from flesh.” a

Reversing Babel

God sets out at war against the flesh, against the dominion of sin and death. He covenants with Abraham to bless all the families of the earth. The Lord intends to put death to death and bring humanity to peace with God and with one another.

At Pentecost, the Lord reverses our Babelic division. The Spirit rushes in and breaks through the divisions of the flesh. At Babel, the Lord confused the language of the people; now, at Pentecost, “each one was hearing them speak in their own language” as the disciples proclaimed “the mighty works of God.” (Acts 2:6, 11) The story that unfolds in Acts and through the Epistles is the story of the Spirit working out this new unity in the body of Christ. We are all baptized into Christ, and in that baptismal water the Spirit does away with division between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, “for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” brought into the family of Abraham (Gal. 3:26-29). We have been made one body in Christ: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13)

The Church as Model Society

We are seeing these fleshly, Babelic divisions playing out ever-more heatedly in America today. Police brutality and abuse of power, rioting and looting, violence in the streets, deepening partisan divides, fighting over social media, all make clear that our culture is in chaos, living according to the flesh.

The only hope for our divided culture is the peace-giving Spirit of Pentecost. And this peace is found in the body of Christ, the Church. The Church is the New Humanity in Christ, where our fleshly divisions are overcome and all are one in the one Body of the Lord, where we relate to one another in self-giving love. What’s more, the Church is the model-society; we are called to embody in our communal life ideal human society, shaping the world around us. The Church is brought up into the Divine life in union with Christ and by the Spirit, we live out that life among our brethren, and we carry those gifts as we are sent out to disciple the nations.

In His High Priestly Prayer, Jesus prays that the Church will be one “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (Jn. 17:21) Christians have no business feeling frustrated and wringing our hands about current affairs around us. It should be no surprise to us that our society is gripped by division, hatred, and fear, when there is division in the Church. Our call to the world is to repent: repent of brutality, hatred, looting, division, and embrace the peace achieved by Christ and bestowed by the Spirit. But we cannot truly expect that to happen until we repent of our own disunity as the people of God, seek peace with one another, and embody the life of self-giving love of our Triune God.

  1. Delivered from the Elements of the World, p. 86.  (back)

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On February 3, 2018 By In Theology, Worship

Hallowed Storytelling From Table and Bowl, Part II

Guest post by Michael Spalione, a Ph.D. student at Trinity College, Bristol.
In my previous post, I highlighted the sacraments as the point of convergence between evangelicalism and ecumenism arguing that baptism and communion are presented in the New Testament as signs of the gospel that simultaneously enact and remember union with Christ and the unity of Christ’s body. I concluded that post by appealing to evangelical’s passion for the gospel as the reason for participating in ecumenism. (more…)

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On September 19, 2017 By In Theology, Worship

Attaining Unity: A Reply to Mike Allen

By Peter Leithart

Mike Allen of Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, scores some points in his review of The End of Protestantism. He lodges the fair complaint that my rhetoric sometimes outruns my evidence. He argues that more stress on the present reality of the church’s unity deepens the tragedy of division; divisions in the church “straightforwardly oppose reality.”

Of course, I have parries to these criticisms. The complaint about rhetoric misconstrues the genre of the book, which is sermonic rather than academic. Sermons need arguments too, but sermons aim to move, not merely to convince.

Mike is right that I don’t provide complete arguments or probative evidence for many of my assertions, that doesn’t mean there are no arguments or evidence to present. In some cases, I mistakenly wrote as if the reader would be familiar with my other work, where I offer fuller arguments. Mike is also right that my assertion that “nothing has so weakened our witness as our tragic divisions” is unprovable. But there’s plenty that makes it plausible – the New Testament’s forceful emphasis on unity as a part of the church’s witness, the testimony of unbelievers over several centuries, and the cultural effects of the church’s fragmentation documented by writers like Brad Gregory. (I suspect Mike is as skeptical of Gregory as he is of me, but I’ll leave that for another day.)

Some of his other criticisms miss the bull’s eye. Mike thinks he can rebut my discussion of global Christianity by saying that the globalization of the church is likely to make Christianity more “fissiparous” rather than more unified. But I make exactly that point (p. 128), and his criticism misrepresents my argument in any case. The north-south inversion of Christianity isn’t evidence that “unity is just around the corner” (Mike’s mischaracterization, not my words). Along with the softening of Protestant-Catholic and East-West boundaries, it’s evidence that God is busting up the old world of post-Reformation Christianity, an end that offers opportunities for fresh beginnings. Mike doesn’t think these trends have much of anything to do with one another, but, working within the biblical paradigm I outline in chapter 8, I take both trends as signs of what appears to be an epochal internal restructuring of Christianity.

Mike’s point about the present unity of the church is criticism of a different order and requires a different sort of response. Like many, perhaps most, Reformed thinkers, Mike takes the present unity of the church as an invisible or heavenly unity, and characterizes my position as illegitimately empirical. Mine, he charges, is an ecclesiology of sight rather than faith. He acknowledges that I occasionally speak of present unity (p. 28), but thinks that present unity doesn’t play a large enough role in my book.

Let me attempt a slight restatement of my position that I hope takes account of Mike’s criticisms.

For starters, a methodological remark that addresses one of the underlying issues in Mike’s review: He characterizes the “underlying logic” of my book as “sociological” rather than “theological.” I don’t accept the criticism because I don’t acknowledge that disciplinary separation. More positively, I write from the conviction that theology is inherently sociological and that biblically-informed history-writing is a mode, and should be one of the chief modes, of theology. Are Samuel and Kings political science or theology? Is Acts history or ecclesiology? To my way of thinking, The End of Protestantism is a thoroughly theological treatise.

To the question of unity more particularly: An empirical test is integral to the biblical portrayal of unity. Jesus prays the church would be unified enough for the world to recognize it (John 17:21, 23). This cannot be a unity discernible only to faith, since Jesus expects the world to discern it. If our unity doesn’t show the world that the Father sent the Son, it’s not the unity Jesus prayed for.

On the basis of Ephesians 4:4-6, Mike argues that the unity of the “one body” is a present reality but not an empirical reality. The unity must be the unity of the invisible church. “God reveals oneness first as a gift in the present” that “must be maintained.” It “can be stretched and even scandalized” but remains inviolable. In the midst of stretch and scandal, we need to view the church theologically rather than sociologically or empirically.

This is a questionable reading of Ephesians. Nothing in the passage suggests that Paul is speaking of an invisible body (a strange category in any case). Immediately after the “poem” on oneness, Paul writes of gifts distributed by the ascended Lord Jesus to His church (vv. 7-11), gifts including visible apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers who build up what must be the visible “body of Christ” (v. 11). Does it make sense to say that “body” in verse 4 is an invisible company when “body of Christ” in verse 11 is a visible communion? What warrants the insertion of a visible-invisible distinction? It seems more straightforward to conclude that for Paul the unity of the body is as visible as the unity of baptism. (more…)

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On April 28, 2015 By In Theology

This Is My Body Broken For You

Guest post by Michael Hansen

One of my deepest concerns with the way many churches now operate is in their exclusion of the Lord’s Supper from their services of worship. The reason this concerns me is because the Lord’s Supper is a place where the church is forced to look itself in the mirror. When Christ welcomes the congregation to the table of fellowship, we are confronted with the reality that he is far more welcoming and hospitable than we are.

Look around the congregation.

How many people can you count that you would invite to your table? There are great sinners in the congregation. There are people you don’t like. But all of these people are welcomed to the Lord’s table at the Lord’s invitation.

Jesus once told his disciples that he will draw all men to himself when he is lifted up (John 12:32). What happened to Jesus when he was lifted up? He was broken. What happens to the bread when the minister lifts it up before the congregation? It is broken. The Lord’s Supper is much more than an act of remembrance for individual Christians. The Lord’s Supper is a participatory event where all men find themselves drawn to Christ’s broken body.

When Jesus’ body was broken, the walls of separation between Jew and gentile, male and female, slave and free, black and white were broken as well (Gal. 3:28). This happens in the Lord’s Supper.

Look around the congregation.

How many people look just like you? Are they all white (let’s hope not)? Are they all black (let’s hope not)? Are they all republicans or democrats (let’s hope they’re libertarians)? No, there are people from all walks of life, all races, all socioeconomic classes and ideologies, being drawn to the broken body of Christ.

The church is a body of many members. Further, God’s word serves as a two-edged sword cutting to the hearts of his people (Heb. 4:12), who have become living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1). Throughout the service, God’s word has cut His church into pieces just as the Levitical sacrifices were cut into pieces. But the service does not end here. The church must learn that we are only broken by God’s Word because the Word of God was broken for us: “This is my body broken for you.” Moreover, as the body of many members (the church) partakes of the broken body of Christ, we are made whole again by our participation in the one loaf (1 Cor. 10:17).

Perhaps the reason there is so much strife in the church nowadays is because we are not communing with one another as we ought. Our ultimate allegiances need to be formed not by who we would invite to our tables, but by whom Jesus, weekly, invites to his.

(Originally published on Torrey Gazette)

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On January 26, 2015 By In Culture, Interviews, Theology

Church Unity and Mission: An Interview with Samuel T. Logan Jr.

 

 

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Made up of 67 denominations, the World Reformed Fellowship was founded to “encourage understanding and cooperation among evangelical Presbyterian and Reformed denominations and institutions, and to link those institutions having ministry resources with those possessing vision but few resources. The fellowship promotes Reformed thinking, a Reformed world and life view, fosters evangelism and strategies on missions, church planting and theological education, and promotes international communication for the further advancement of the Gospel.” (more…)

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On September 1, 2014 By In Books

Should Reformed People Read N.T. Wright?

It doesn’t happen quite often, but once in a while when I recommend a book or a quote by N.T. Wright on facebook, I will receive a question that goes something like this:

“Do you approve of N.T. Wright? Do you think it’s fruitful to endorse N.T. Wright? Or don’t you know that N.T. denies Justification by faith alone?”

I addressed the first question on facebook and I thought I’d make it available here. My response goes like this:

I think the question ought to be more nuanced. In other words, humans and their ideas, especially new humans recreated by God, ought to be analyzed more carefully and charitably. As a pastor I recommend Wright to my parishioners with the same enthusiasm I would recommend C.S. Lewis, Schmemann, and Martin Luther. I have disagreements with all of them, but charity allows me to communicate with these great thinkers and gain from what they offer, while expressing sometimes strong disagreements on some of their contributions.

Yes, Reformed people, in fact, Christians of all stripes should read Professor Wright. His profound insights, his vision for a renewed humanity in Christ, his invaluable defense of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and his commitment to the historical, Biblical Jesus make him one of the most gifted teachers and scholars of our time and The Jesus Seminar’s worst nightmare.

But what about justification? Shouldn’t we stand for the principal article of the Church? And by standing shouldn’t we reject anyone who denies it?

First, N.T. Wright has written and clarified many of his statements. He stated again and again that he does not deny justification by faith alone. I take him at his word. But hasn’t he been unclear? To those who think so, he will always be. I and many others find Wright’s overall project to be fruitful, despite having disagreements with him at points. I find Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s humorous, but yet serious points on the Wright vs. Piper debate to be very helpful, and from what I hear from reliable sources, Wright agrees and finds Vanhoozer’s attempt to bridge the two paradigms extremely beneficial.

Secondly, the Reformation did not settle every issue. There are contemporary issues that still must be handled within our context. The Reformers did not exhaust the fullness of justification. There is indeed a robustly corporate view of justification that the Reformers–rightly preoccupied with Romish theological abuse–simply did not address explicitly in the 16th century. In this sense, Wright needs to be read and listened to attentively.

Thirdly, when one poses the question of whether we should eliminate such an author from our library because he is wrong on an issue, no matter how important the issue may be, he is betraying the charitable nature of the Christian vision and our personal libraries. Of course, he may choose to avoid Wright, and other authors who also had some questionable theological presuppositions (like C.S. Lewis), but his theological vision will be narrow, and his ability to articulate a vision of the world will stop at the wardrobe (to borrow from Lewis). Those of us who appreciate Wright prefer to open the wardrobe and see Narnia in all its beauty.

Finally, the West’s over-emphasis on the individual is tragic. The individual matters, but Adam himself knew that the individual is not alone. Just as the Trinity is not alone, so too man needs to be a part of something greater. “Community” is not just a buzzword no matter how often hipster Christian groups use it. In its biblical sense, community is the essence of the Christian experience. Paul’s vision was highly ecclesiastical. The individual who divorces from the community loses his ability to be truly human. He breathes and eats as a human, but his breathing and eating desecrates God’s intention to incorporate him into  a multitude. N.T. Wright offers immeasurable contributions on this subject.

Naturally, there is the possibility of over-emphasizing community, but that hardly seems to be the problem in our day. The reality is if you stress the community you get the individual, if you stress the individual you don’t get the community.

Should we read N.T. Wright? Yes. Read him often with the eyes of discernment. But again, discernment is the Christian’s best friend in any human activity.<>siteособенности текста для а

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