Agency Under our Federal Head

For a number of years I was a property and casualty insurance agent. I sold car insurance and homeowners coverage and liability policies. To do this work I was given what was called "binding authority." If I said your car was covered, it was. It didn't matter if your check cleared or the information was wrong on your application. As an agent of the company, I could act with the authority of the company. What the people who recruited me didn't tell me was that in the agent contract there's a stipulation that if my agency was losing too much money, the company could withdraw my binding authority. I was still an agent, but I couldn't create coverage with my spoken word. I had responsibility without any real power.

This example of agency may help us understand the story of Adam. Atheists and doubters invariably ask, "If God is omniscient (all-knowing), why didn't He create Adam so he couldn't sin?" In other words, why go through the charade of the putting the tree off limits if God knew our first parents would disobey?

Adam was created to an "agent;" that is, one with a special relationship to the Triune God. Genesis 1:28 ff. says, "Let us create man in our image, after our likeness, to have dominion (to share authority) over all living creatures. So God created us male and female." What is the image of God? The most obvious answer is that we were made for relationships. Just as God is a relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ("Let us make ..."), people were made for relationships. No, it's actually deeper than that. We weren't just made for relationships, we are relationships. We originated in a relationship. We develop in relationships. We define happiness and meaning by relationships.

Back to my insurance analogy. The insurance company is a relationship of stakeholders who give authority to their agents. I didn't create the agent relationship even though I was expected to start my own agency in a specific place. So, like the Garden of Eden was planted in a specific place, I was given a territory in which to set up my agency. Now the problem was, this place had a history of excessive insurance losses. None of the other agents in this terriotry were profitable and almost all of them were on probation due to excessive losses. I didn't know that going in. And Adam doesn't know that in this good creation lurks an evil presence.

Let's step back a bit and ask, Why was there a creation anyway? In Revelation 12:7-9 we read:

"War arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him."

This might all be a lot of mythology except that Jesus said in Luke 10:18 that he witnessed this event. Time-space were created as a place to confine the rebellion. That is why Jesus referred to Lucifer as the "prince of this world" (John 14:30). Adam was created to be God's agent to destroy Satan and his rebellion. Don't miss this: Adam was given authority over living creatures, including the creeping things. Satan in the form of a serpent was under Adam's authority. Adam could have defeated the evil arrayed against God. Why didn't he?

Nobody forced me to write bad insurance risks in my agency. I was obeying what I knew was my mandate from the company: "Be fruitful and multiply." But fear and greed and a desire to please made me think I could write bad business and not get burned.

God did not cause Adam to sin. As an agent, Adam had moral freedom to obey or take a short-cut. Adam sided with the rebellion and what he did somehow infects everyone in Adam's line. Adam is our federal head. The word "federal" means representative authority. Adam in Hebrew means "earthling." Adam is every man. He isn't some mythic character in the mists of time. Adam is us. We have all lost our binding authority. We have lost our moral compass. We have all inherited the penalty of Adam's disobedience: we will die.

The original agency contract is still in effect. It's called the covenant of works. The natural law God built into the creation that was originally designed for our blessing now leaves us hopeless, confused, in pain, and afraid (see previous lesson). The creature made of relationships (human) is alienated from self, others, and God. Every covenant contains blessings and curses. The works covenant blessing is that we will be fruitful and multiply. We will work and keep the Garden (our part of the world). People are meant to find meaning in their work and overcome sin's alienation in covenant love between man and wife. But the curse was and is, disobey and you will die.

After Adam's failure to defeat Satan, God begins to lay down His law, but Adam (and I) am powerless to keep it. The natural law that was originally designed to reveal God and provide for our well-being now seems such a muddle. That's because natural law was designed to work for people who are agents, and not rebels.

But buried in Genesis 3:15 is the first glimpse of God's plan to overcome the covenant of works and natural law with a promise, a gift, grace. From Adam's seed will come one who will bruise Satan's head, one whom Satan will try to destroy but who will succeed in destroying Satan and death. This is the beginning of God's promises to immoral humanity and the start of special revelation.

The rest of the Bible story is working out of this promise. The search is on for a right-living agent who will keep the law, be declared righteous, and overcome the curse. The nation of Israel emerges as a candidate. Give us the law and we will keep it, they promised. But, like Adam, Israel fails. Israel says, Give us a King. Let the King be our new federal head. He will keep the law. But the Kings of Israel fail. Finally prophets receive the special revelation that God will send an Israelite in the line of King David to be the federal head, the Chosen One, the Messiah, to reclaim righteousness and destroy the power of death and Satan himself.

So we live in Adam's shadow, knowing the condemnation of God's law. But by grace we live under Christ, our federal head, by whose agency we receive the good news of death's defeat and life eternal.

The Nature of Revelation

In our on-gong study of Christianity 501, we are exploring what it means to be, as our mission statement states, "a Word-centered community and individuals ..." We've explored how the Bible is inspired and how it has been preserved over thousands of years. Next we want to better understand the nature of revelation. Being Word-centered obviously means taking God at His Word. We believe that God is not absent or silent in His creation. He has spoken a word to reveal Himself and His intentions.

There are two basic kinds of revelation. First, there is what may be known of God by everyone, believer and non-believer, without the Bible. This is called general or natural revelation. Every culture in the history of humanity has developed a religion, a belief in the supernatural. There is some innate human desire for transcendence, typically in response to the natural world. The other kind of revelation is called special revelation. This content cannot be deduced from the natural world around us nor from our experience or logic. This doesn't mean it is illogical; special revelation is information about God that only God can tell us.

General Revelation

Being Word-centered means we want to understand special revelation; we want to major in how God sees things. In Romans 1 God actually gives us His truth about natural revelation. So instead of taking a lot of time trying to trace the human history of religion from the ground up, let's look at it top-down, as it were, from God's perspective. What was natural law designed to do spiritually as well as materially.

Romans 1:19-20 says:

What may be known of God is plain to them (humanity) because God has shown it to them (natural revelation). For His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power, and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So people are without excuse.

People throughout time testify to the inherent nature of religion. Humans seem to know intuitively that there is a supernatural realm with gods or a God. They know this by looking at the world around them and, perceiving it's order, it's perpetuity, and it's grandeur, conclude that the One who made the world must be eternal, powerful, and something wholly other ("divine) in contrast to humans who are mortal, death-trapped, and by nature not very giving. By looking at the world, our ancestors perceived that there was a God. But logic and experience does not reveal a loving God, but an angry Deity.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (v.18)

The typical aboriginal response to the gods has been to appease supernatural anger by creating sacrificial victims to stand in place of themselves. Today's unbelievers are at least being honest when they conclude that if there is a God He must be angry as hell. God is angry because people fail to measure up; that's the meaning of the religious word "unrighteousness." People are supposed to be godly. Godliness must presume a standard of behavior since it cannot possibly refer to being God-like in terms of power and eternity. So, natural revelation tells people intuitively that there is a God and a standard of behavior we call morality. Some things are right and some things are wrong in every culture. Intuitively people know it is wrong to kill, wrong to rape, wrong to steal. In order to pacify themselves and deal with the issue of their own moral failure, people do all sorts of things to suppress the truth of natural revelation. People go the other way from God, what the Bible describes as "ungodliness."

The next verse sheds the light of special revelation on what God expected us to do in light of natural law and natural revelation.

For although they knew (that there is a) God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (v.21)

So, being confronted with natural revelation, people were supposed to honor God and be thankful to him. But instead of standing in awe, people "miss the mark;" that's the root meaning for the Bible words translated "sin." Sin isn't just doing bad things; sin is being someplace else than where your Creator meant for you to be. The word futile means running in circles, being unfulfilled. Futile thinking is being so smart you never find any answers or truth, just more and more questions. "The foolish heart is darkened;" this poetic language pictures the utter futility of discerning truth. Foolish in the Bible doesn't mean stupid as much as it means empty. As Proverbs says, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." The next verse clarifies that we're not talking about stupidity.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal humans and birds and animals and creeping things. (v.22-23)

Speculation replaces faith. What can be seen and touched (idols) takes preference over what is unseen and uncontrollable. Imagination and fantasy become the stuff of religion. Verses 24-25 suggest that the motivating reason behind idolatry is our base desires and carnal appetites (sex and violence).

So God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. (v.24-25)

God doesn't rush to the rescue to stop the human slide into perdition, but allows people to have their own way. The Garden of Eden story in Genesis 3 is one account of this process and in Romans 1 we have another perspective of the same reality. The sin of Eden is not that Eve ate the fruit, but before that, she dishonored God's Word, believes the half-truth of the Deceiver, and exchanges the truth of God for a lie. And such behavior is not without consequence, which we also intuitively know, but don't allow ourselves to think about.

Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things (malice, envy, murder, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, boasting, etc) deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (v.32)

Intuitively people know they will face a judgement for how they have lived. The belief that there is a day of accountability for one's life is part of the natural world God made. Of course, atheists deny such notions. But if the special revelation is right, the atheist and agnostic are suppressing the truth, and like anyone who suppresses or represses truth, there is a price to be paid in health, relationships, and happiness.

One of the ways we ( all of us, not just atheists and agnostics) deny the truth of this is to say, "Well, I'm not a bad person." And the only credible response to this is to ask, "Compared to whom?" I wonder if our fascination with capturing the bad guy in police shows, westerns, and science fiction is because we need to see ourselves as innocent of the heinous and morally superior to what we think are society's antagonists.

As British comedian, Stephen Fry, said in an interview this week, "I am the reason the world is so screwed up. If we could all say and mean that, the world wouldn't be screwed up."

So, the bad news is we've all screwed up the world God made. We are under this curse. Everyone fails to measure up. And rather than confess this truth, we blame God or build idols and push the truth still further down making things worse and worse. No one makes it out of here alive.

Special Revelation

The picture is pretty hopeless when our thinking about God relies only on our reason, logic, speculation, and experience. Without special revelation, the existentialists are right: we might as well all kill ourselves. But the existentialists have not accepted the truth of special revelation. Special revelation is not from the world we see around us, or our logic, or experience.

But now a righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the natural law. The Scriptures of the Old Testament bear witness to it, but it is the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe/trust. (Romans 3:21-22)

There is a way to hit the mark. God introduced His big idea in the Old Testament but it gets worked out in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He's the only one who did make it out alive, even after going through death and hell. You could never invent the historical Jesus (although many still try). There's nothing in nature or human nature by which you could ever come to the conclusion that God takes the responsibility himself for keeping the moral law perfectly.

Great for Jesus, but how does it get transmitted to us? Most Bibles mis-translate Romans 3:22. It's not just faith in Christ, but the actual faith of Christ that is communicated to us as our act of justification (that is, being declared not guilty by God). You only receive this gift of faith by hearing the proclamation of the Gospel (the historical truth of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus). You can't do anything to deserve it or earn it. Jesus was the blood sacrifice, the appeasement and satisfaction for God's anger at my failure to measure up to God's standard.

In some ways I guess it's too bad that people can't discover this fact without going through the Scriptures, but then it wouldn't be special revelation. Contrary to what many boneheads would have us believe, all religions are not alike. No other religion teaches this Gospel. This is why Jesus said there is no other way to the Father except through Him. All other religions are based on the truth of natural revelation. Angry God demands obedience and submission while humans go on messing up their own lives and the world itself and then creating myths and fantasies about how God can be placated or safely ignored.

Christianity 501 is about becoming Word-centered, knowing that there is a way out of the continual disappointment that is my religious intention. God has acted in Christ to reveal a loving Father who waits for his children to come home. If you hear the Gospel and you can respond with faith even the size of a sesame seed, you will escape the coming wrath and face the judgement with the only Advocate who can ultimately declare you righteous before God.

C.S. Lewis in His Own Words

The Doctrine of Canonicity

We affirm that the Bible is the Word of God. This means the Scriptures communicate God's commands and promises to us. To say the Bible IS the Word of God means God not only inspired human authors in the original manuscripts (or else we could only say that the Bible was the Word of God) but God has also superintended its preservation into our own time.

Unbelievers and some post-Biblical churches (like the TEC) contend that the Bible was created by the Church and that the process by which some books were included and others excluded was akin to watching sausage being made; that is, something not very appealing. To hear some tell it, there was all kinds of wheeling and dealing among white European males that gave shape to our Bible.

So how do we know we have the right books? Are there books that shouldn't be in the Bible? Are we missing some inspired writings? How do we know a book is inspired? What about the Apocrypha? These are questions we attempt to answer as we study the doctrine of canonicity.

Let's begin this examination by looking at 1 Timothy 6:3-4.

If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.

By the time Paul writes this letter (dated in the early 60's) there is already circulating among the churches a body of teaching that claims to be authoritative but the Apostle says it does not agree with the "sound words" of the teaching of Christ. From the beginning there was a standard by which competing gospels and teachings were to be measured. The word canon means a standard unit of measure. So the doctrine of canonicity is about knowing the standards against which writings were evaluated to determine which were truly the Word of God.

The Old Testament Canon

The notion that the church created Scripture is completely false. The Christian church was born with a complete canon. When the New Testament refers to "the Scriptures," it speaks of the 39 books of the Jewish canon, what we call the Old Testament. When unbelievers and post-Biblical churches talk about the canon, they make it sound like the Bible was written or compiled like a modern anthology but a committee sitting around a table. The Old Testament was written by 30 authors across a 1,000 years. What other piece of literature spans so great a diversity of context and time?

The Old Testament canon was broken down into three divisions: the Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy), the Prophets, and the Writings, sometimes also referred to as the Psalms because Psalms came first in this section. The Writings comprised the Wisdom literature and books of history. Jesus affirmed these divisions in Luke 24:44 and so Christians consider them canonical.

Some Bibles contain a section called the Apocrypha. These were additional books written after Malachi and before the coming of John the Baptist. These books were included in the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. The Roman Bible based on Jerome's Latin translation of the Septuagint included the Apocrypha. However, the Apocrypha does not meet the standards for Old Testament canonical literature. The first century Jewish historian, Josephus, denied that the Apocrypha were canonical because they did not meet the test for canonicity; namely, that all Old Testament books had to be written by or attested by someone recognized by other prophets as a prophet. The Dead Sea scrolls validate Josephus's position since their Old Testament did not include the Apocryphal books. Jesus never mentions the Apocrypha or quotes from it. No New Testament writer quotes from the Apocrypha.

So, we accept the 39 books of the Old Testament as canonical by the universal consent of Jewish prophets and according to the attestation of Jesus.

The New Testament Canon

By the end of the first century it was clear that Christians would follow the example of their Jewish ancestors and create a canon of books certified as the inspired Word of God. This is a critical point to understand. Canonicity wasn't making a book into the Word of God; canonicity was recognizing that a writing was the truly inspired Word.

The list of 27 books that make up our New Testament first appears in a letter written in 327 AD. That doesn't mean it took three centuries for the church to figure out its Scriptures. This is merely the earliest surviving document that mentions all the books in the order in which we now have them. The great majority of the New Testament was well known and accepted as inspired by early in the second century.

The New Testament was written between the mid 40's and 70 AD (some scholars say the period of writing lasted until 95 AD). There were three criteria for a work to be considered inspired and therefore canonical among early Christians.

1. The book had to be written by an apostle or with the sanction of an apostle. Apostles, like the Old Testament prophets before them, had received special authority and unique gifts from Christ to bear witness to the truth. The Gospels of Matthew and John were written by the apostles directly while Mark was given the information for his Gospel from Peter and Luke received his narrative from Paul. All New Testament books were included in the canon because they were proven to be from the pen or memory of an apostle. This included the letter to the Hebrews. Hebrews does not specifically mention the name of it's author, but from earliest times it was associated with Paul. The fact that its grammar and word usage is different than his letters can be explained by the fact that it was probably written by another believer scribing the words of Paul (tradition says Barnabas).
   
   
2. The second test for inclusion in the canon was the proven antiquity of the document. In a previous post we published this link to a table of ancient church leaders who specifically mention a New Testament writing. Comparing the pseudoepigrapha ("false writings") at the bottom of the list with the 27 canonical books at the top, the evidence is quite clear that the so-called gnostic gospels of such current interest to post-Biblical believers are Johnny-come-latelies. The four Gospels, Acts, 13 letters of Paul, 1st Peter, and 1st John were accepted very early. Collections of these documents were circulating by the end of the first century.
   
   
3. The third test for canonicity was the orthodoxy of the writing; in other words, did its content agree with and was it consistent with previous revelation (including the Old Testament). A Gospel that told the story of the child Jesus killing people didn't exactly align with what the apostles knew to be the truth. New age gurus and Dan Brown's Davinci Code notwithstanding, that is why the Gospel of Thomas is not canonical.

Some books that are included in our canonical New Testament were questioned by the early church. Hebrews, as stated above, was anonymous. But over time Paul was verified as the author. James was apparently not widely circulated at first and to some, the books emphasis on " "faith without works" seemed to contradict Paul's teaching that we are "saved by faith apart from works." But the confusion was cleared up and the letter of James was accepted by the early church as inspired. Revelation had difficult symbolism, but its provenance was unmistakable. 2 Peter has become the favorite whipping boy of post-Biblical churches. The style doesn't match 1 Peter. The second letter was not as widely circulated as 1 Peter and so some bishops in the early church didn't know of it. But the style can be explained by its having been written by a secretary for Peter. Again, the chart shows its provenance was well established by the middle of the first century. The Roman church didn't like it based on the first verse in which Peter affirms that there is no difference between him and those to whom he is writing. Is it just a coincidence that the book that contains the most warnings about false teachers in the church should be omitted from the canon of the post-Biblical scholars? Second and third John had were late being recognized, again because they had probably not been circulated widely and some bishops thought they were too short.

Remember this: there was no single authority who approved what was included or excluded in the early New Testament. The canon was established long before the rise of the papacy or other centralized church hierarchy. The 27 books of the New Testament were accepted by many different churches in the East and the West because they clearly met the three tests for canonicity.

In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformers raised many questions about the acceptability of New Testament books. Luther and Calvin wanted to strip away any accretion of superstition and human tradition that was unfaithful to the Gospel. In large part they raised questions about some of the books because the Catholic Bible included the Apocrypha which they did not accept on good historical grounds. But in the end Luther and Calvin accepted the canonicity of the Old and New Testaments.

The 27 books of the New Testament are canonical by the witness of the Holy Spirit operating through many churches over more than 15 centuries as preserving the faith of the original apostles and the true Word of Jesus.

Copies of Copies

None of the original manuscripts survive. It's easy to say the Bible was perfectly inspired in the original manuscripts, but how do we know we have the original text?

The text of no other book is so well attested as the Bible. The works of Greek philosophers, even the relatively modern works of Shakespeare and Milton, have only a handful of surviving copies from which we assume the original text. Compare that to the more than 4,000 copies of Scriptural fragments and complete manuscripts that exist today. Perhaps better than any other ancient book, we know exactly what the original manuscripts said. Of course all these fragments and manuscripts are not identical. But it is amazing the degree to which these thousands and thousands of copies agree. In some cases words are misspelled. Sometimes words are put in different places and on a few occasions a different word might be used to describe an incident. But none of these inconsistencies come close to changing the meaning of a text. There is no other literary work in all of human history that can be reconstructed with such confidence as the Bible.

On-going scholarship continues to shed light on the original text. Recent discoveries have called into question Mark 16:9ff. We know that the ending about drinking poison and handling snakes was not included in the earliest copies of the Gospel now available to us. Same goes for John 7:53-8:11, the story of the woman taken in adultery. Archeologists have unearthed some manuscripts that do not contain this story. Most Bibles today acknowledge the textual variants of these passages. But the overall direction of most archeological discoveries has been to affirm the reliability of the Bible.

Conclusion

The Bible is the Word of God. The Scriptures were not only inspired by those who wrote, but preserved by the Holy Spirit over time to be the unique and reliable communication of God's commands and promises to the world.

The Development of the Canon

An interesting compilation of authorities and their opinions about the canonicity of early Christian writings. Notice that the canonical books are attested early and widely while other writings only show up later and are usually condemned by more authorities than those who accept them.

http://www.ntcanon.org/table.shtml

Stand to Reason: Is the New Testament Text Reliable?

Stand to Reason: Is the New Testament Text Reliable?

John MacArthur Talks About Scripture

Much of my presentation this past week came from remarks by John MacArthur at this link.

Christianity 501: Introduction

As I’ve thought about the mission of our Gathering, I come to some conclusions about the direction of our future studies. Here’s what we know.

God has called us to be a Word-centered people infiltrating our families, our work, and our churches with the Gospel of Christ.

To fulfill this mission requires that we be firmly rooted in understanding the Scriptures, and what’s more, that we be able to use them intelligently and wisely to be salt and light in the present age. I think this means getting beyond the typical superficial pabulum spooned out in most churches. Most Christians never seem to get beyond Christianity 101. Obviously, it’s important to teach new believers the catechism of the faith. Programs like the Alpha Course in the Anglican Church are essential. But at what point do we go further than Alpha to explore Beta, Gamma, and Delta?

This series is called Christianity 501 in response to God’s speaking to us in Hebrews 5:11 – 6:1.

We have much to say about this (the priesthood of Christ in the order of the ancient Melchizedek), but it is hard to explain because you have become bored with hearing. In fact, by this time, you should have become teachers yourselves, but you still need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s Word over and over again. You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives only on milk is a spiritual infant, inexperienced in the teaching about righteousness. Solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to discern good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary lessons about Christ behind and go on to maturity.

Christianity 501 is the attempt to be skilled at such a level so as to fulfill our mission. Master’s level courses begin with 501 in college. As this Scripture says, let’s move beyond the 100-level introductory materials to mature as teachers, as Word-centered people. If we never update our Sunday school impressions of God’s word, there is no way we can fulfill our mission. Without deepening our knowledge and improving our skills we will be more changed by the world than world changers. And by “world” I mean more than just our individual spheres of influence, family, friends, and work. I also mean preparing ourselves for standing firm in an uncertain age, being confident of God’s sovereignty in the midst of the growing satanic rebellion against righteousness and good.

What are the elementary or foundational teachings Hebrews is referring to? They are spelled out in the next verse (Hebrews 6:2).

… Repentance from dead works, faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

Scholars debate exactly what this text is referring to because we’re not sure who is the audience being addressed. If these are Jewish Christians then the text appears to be talking about foundational principles of how we are saved (repentance and faith), how we come into the Church (baptism and confirmation), and eschatology (resurrection and judgment). If, as is suggested in verses 4-6, these are professing but unbelieving Jews, the “elementary lessons” referred to are Jewish teachings that Christ contradicts. But in any case, the truth of these words can be plainly seen in churches today who never get beyond Christian kindergarten. Partly this is due to the evangelistic function of worship in fundamentalist and revivalist traditions. Bless God for churches that focus on the new birth and coming to Christ. Unfortunately, many believers become discouraged in these churches because it’s a steady diet of repentance and baptism and avoiding hell. It’s not that they disagree with any of this, but there is a hunger for getting at the meat of doctrine – knowing what they believe and why they believe it. At some point the question arises, what am I saved for?

Other churches never get beyond the basics because they never laid the proper foundation of life in Christ in the first place. Salvation becomes a subjective experience of a burning bosom. The Gospel gets cut loose from his historic truth to be re-rooted in subjective, narcissistic anecdotes of personal spirituality or social inclusiveness. Such a hot-house plant never can flourish because it is not rooted in the Scriptures. Hence people grow bored as the writer to Hebrews said, bored with hearing doctrine (truth) because:

a) It’s just someone else’s subjective bed-time story;

b) Spiritual experience becomes addictive, requiring greater claims and more bizarre behavior to attain the high of that first revivalist response. To avoid boredom one needs new revelations and fresh signs and wonders.

In both cases, for both liberals and conservatives, the problem is the Post-Modern Captivity of the Church.

(To be continued)

The Babylonian Captivity of the Church in the West

Must read from Os Guinness:

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=12834

Flash Sideways Eternal Life

I know it's dicey to do theology from a TV show, but I've been thinking about the series finale of LOST and its view of the afterlife. The final scene in the final show of the six year series takes place in a church-like place with symbols of all major religions. So, the syncretism is off-putting to begin with, but the idea of afterlife as a "flash sideways" may have some theological merit.

In the earlier seasons of the TV show we were treated to flashbacks. Then things got more weird (if that's possible) when we were having flash forwards. In the final season we had logic-wrenching flash sideways; that is, events happening in something akin to a parallel universe. As it turns out, the flash sideways was the way the show handled the death of characters.

Although some commentators have seen allusions to purgatory in the final scene where everyone is waiting for Jack before going into the light, I think the flash-sideways notion is more radical than that and may have some support in Scripture.

Let's start with the logical understanding that heaven is outside our space and time. We can't get there in these bodies of flesh. That's a pretty orthodox view. Heaven is where God is and God has no beginning or end. So, in heaven it's always now. There is no more time. Logically then we don't go to heaven "after we die. " Heaven isn't waiting for the sequence of events to play out. Outside of time, the reign of Christ has already begun.

The New Testament clearly teaches that "eternal life" is already happening to believers. Jesus said in John 5:24, "I'm telling you the truth - whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has (present tense) eternal life." "You have already passed from death into life," John writes in 1 John 3:14. Paul says our true life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). During his stay in Arabia, Paul said he was caught up to the third heaven. Was he on drugs or did the Apostle actually have a vision another realm? These passages show clearly that what Jesus called eternal life is happening now.

These verses may be more literal than I ever imagined. Could it be that when our spirit was regenerated by the Holy Spirit we opened our eyes on another shore? What I saw in that final episode of LOST was the possibility of the Scriptural truth that we actually exist in this time and also in another timeless dimension to which our mortal being has almost no access. I say "almost no access," because there are moments in this world when believers are allowed to experience our life outside of time and space. One of those times is Holy Communion during during which we look back, look ahead, and exist in the present all at the same time. It is sacramental precisely because of its timelessness in our time.

So we may understand the word "spiritual" is something more than a religious-sounding sentiment, but has real content. The world of the spirit may very well be flash sideways eternal life. The life of the "flesh" is very real. I am not advocating a gnostic denial of corporeality. Suffering really hurts. But the fact is our eternal life cannot exist in this space-time continuum. So what happens when we die? Our physical bodies cease to function and the awareness of our spiritual life is revealed to us. Rather than thinking about going to heaven after we die, we might better think of afterlife as "when heaven is all there is."

What could this perspective mean for eschatology? What about the resurrection, both the Lord's and our own? Scriptures affirm that resurrection is when "death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor 11). Christ's victory in us could be expressed as the end of parallel time in favor of what Paul described as the"pneumatikos body" (spiritual body) that dwells in eternity. For believers, our spiritual existence is already with God.

What about praying to saints or praying to ourselves if we are already existing with God outside of time? The Scriptures clearly teach there is no inter-mediation between the eternal world and our world by anyone other than Christ (1 Timothy 2:5). This is the great fixed chasm Jesus spoke of in his parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:26).

So what might the flash sideways concept tells us about the purpose of life? In LOST this mortal sojourn was explained as the opportunity to gather friends and family. Jesus said our mission as Christians is to share the Gospel, bringing good news to those who are being born from above that their new life is hidden with Christ in God. Jesus' imperative was to preach, teach, and baptize disciples. So sharing the Gospel may not be as much about growing churches as much as it is gathering those whom God is calling to Himself and preparing us together for the wonderful life we know now only through a glass darkly, but then face to face with Christ.

I welcome comments and questions. If this is the way the world and Heaven are integrated, it gives me great peace. It affirms the faithfulness and sovereignty of God and I see so much more clearly the need to set our minds on things that are above, or perhaps, sideways.

Priests and Pastors

As I try to think through the implications of being a Reformed Anglican in an Anglo-Catholic parish, I am learning that the office of priest and that of pastor are two very different things. Now to be sure, some priests manage to be pastoral, and pastors certainly preside over sacraments in a priestly role.

But there is this one major difference, I think. Priests relate to people primarily through things and rituals while pastors relate to people primarily as individuals and utilize the things and rituals in support of people. In my limited experience, I can get closer to pastors than I can to priests. Priests maintain a distance from others, for example in something as basic as how they dress.

Priests preside over sacraments and sacrifices. Priests usually operate in an authoritarian, top-down organizational structure, carrying out the duties assigned to them. Pastors are more likely to function in a democratic structure, focusing on the needs of their constituency. Priests obey bishops. Pastors work with committees.

The authoritarian structure in which the priest lives and works tends to create Bible studies in which the priest is the expert lecturer who expects to be questioned by students (again, I am not speaking categorically of all priests, but in a general context). Bible studies led by Pastors tend to be more participatory and interactive. Priests show and tell; pastors ask and listen.

The pastoral role was emphasized in the New Testament. Never is mentioned the spiritual gift of priest or the office of priest. That may be because there were still priests functioning in the Temple, but I think it is more likely a theological distinction. Since Scripture affirms that Jesus is the great High Priest Who has made the final sacrifice for sin, there was no need of priests in the early Church. Timothy and Titus and Epaphras were pastors.

Priesthood was emphasized in the Dark and Middle Ages as the world functioned under the assumptions of a feudalistic society. But with the Enlightenment and the emergence of Protestant thought, the role of the pastor re-emerged in an age in which individual expression and individual autonomy became the norm.

I think most Anglo-Catholics find comfort in the repetition of rites whereas Reformed Anglicans, while not unmindful of the benefits of the sacraments, have a fear that ritualized repetition can lead to apathy. So, Reformed Anglicans are more likely to emphasize the pastoral aspects of Communion while priests seem to me more likely to emphasize the sacerdotal aspect. The Reformed pastoral aversion to "Mass" and the priestly aversion to spontaneous praise reveal the the mutually exclusive nature of these offices.

I think it is easier for a pastor to be priestly (although not to the satisfaction of a "real" priest) than for a priest to be pastoral. But I'm not sure why I believe that. I think it may be because priests can virtuously celebrate Holy Eucharistic all by themselves, but a pastor who preaches or teaches to an empty church seems a little off.

A Disciple's Reflections on Holy Week

This Holy Week prompts some thoughts which I hope will not be taken as cynicical, but which may prompt a more realistic and less ridiculous approach to the Passion of our Lord.

Have you noticed that everything Jesus' disciples failed to do during Holy Week, we seem perfectly able to do. That Passover night none of the disciples wanted to do the servile chore of washing the feet of the guests in the Upper Room. But our priests gladly take up the towel and basin. They get it right.

After Maunday Thursday communion, our church has an all-night vigil. The rector's invitation was that we not disappoint the Lord as his first bunch had. When Jesus said, "Could you not watch with me for one hour?" we could now say, "Yes, Lord, you can count on us."

On Friday, those first Christians were not to be found within a centurion's spear throw of Golgotha, except maybe John hiding behind Mary's dress. But look how we come with great solemnity, some even to kiss the cross in bare feet (idols often bring such piece of mind).

On the Via Delarosa Jesus carries his cross alone and abandoned, but today's Anglo-Catholics crowd the aisles shuffling through the stations of the cross.

And come Easter morning, remembering those first apostles cowering in fear and disbelief, we will get it right and shout out the good news, "Hallelujah, the Lord is risen!"

So, having come through a holy Lent with Jesus, watched with him, and having adored his suffering sacrifice, how much better we now feel. How good to know we got it right. We didn't desert you, Lord. We aren't like those apostolic losers (No wonder you can't trust their doctrine). If we had been there, Jesus, things would have been a lot different.

I remember a hymn we used to sing when I was a child. The music was inspiring; the theology atrocious. The verse started with a question, "Are ye able, saith the Master, to be crucified with me?" and then would follow the rousing victorious chorus, "Lord, we are able ..."

The evangelical faith is this: we cannot keep God's law. We justly deserve his anger and wrath. We are completely unable to effect a reconciliation with God except first God by grace God resurrects our dead souls to faith in Jesus. The whole purpose of the cross was that Jesus did what needed doing precisely because we couldn't. Jesus never asked us to carry his cross (or to kiss it), but to carry our own. What is our cross? It's not merely some bad habit or difficult circumstance. My cross and yours is the powerlessness and hopelessness of our situation without the intervening grace of God acting once and for all, not needing our annual re-enactment, as if by ritual we might now convince God of our worthiness.

Peter & Paul: Apostolic Odd Couple

The split between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the Episcopal Church today can be traced all the way back to the strained relationship between Peter and Paul in the first century church. This personal friction becomes explicit in Galatians 2 when Paul confronts Peter about an act of hypocrisy. But the strain between these two Apostles can be seen operating just beneath the surface of the New Testament. One represents an institutional Christianity teaching that God works through tradition and human agency; the other represents a direct personal encounter with God that proclaims the death of the Jewish law in favor of the grace of Christ. One understands merited righteousness by good works; the other, imputed righteousness by faith alone.

Peter was one of the original Twelve; with James and John, one of Jesus' inner circle of three. By the Day of Pentecost Peter appears to have been acknowledged among the Apostles as the "first among equals." Peter preaches the great Pentecost sermon of Acts 2. It's likely that Peter or others early on began to interpret (or misinterpret as the case may be) Jesus' affirmation at Caesarea Phillipi ("You are Petros and on this rock I will build my church ..") as legitimizing the primacy of the Big Fisherman. For a generation following Christ's ascension, Peter lived and taught in Jerusalem. He was not a theologian. His was the conservative, relatively simple faith, that Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Old Testament.

Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor of Christians until he met the risen Christ on the Damascus Road(Acts 9,22,26). Not only does his name change to Paul, but his whole life is radically altered. Paul is a theologian, a thinker. Paul writes in Galatians 2:17 that immediately after his conversion he spent three years in Arabia. We don't know what he did there, presumably being taught by the Holy Spirit. Isn't it interesting that he spends exactly the same amount of time studying Jesus as did Peter and the others who walked with the Lord during his earthly ministry? Paul returned from the desert and spent about two weeks with Peter in Jerusalem. Interestingly, Peter keeps him isolated from the churches in Jerusalem. The only other Christian Peter lets Paul meet is the Lord's brother, James. This, I think, is where the problems between Peter and Paul began.

For the rest of Paul's ministry he will be criticized and his calling questioned by Jewish Christians, people who come from Peter's territory to "spy on our freedom" (Galatians 2:4) . Who else would raise questions about Paul's apostleship if not Peter? First, Peter believed he was the one originally chosen to preach to the Gentiles. Beginning in Acts 15:7, we read: And when there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said to them: "Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe." Peter is referring to his encounter with the first Gentile convert, Cornelius, recorded in Acts 10. So, imagine Peter's reaction when Paul showed up covered in the dust of Arabia claiming Christ had called him as an apostle to the Gentiles!

In addition to questioning Paul's apostolic credentials, Peter was likely responsible for generating some misinformation about Paul's conversion. Acts 9 preserves one of those attempts to minimize the call of Paul. There we read that Paul receives his sight and his commission from a Jewish Christian man named Ananias. Paul vehemently denies this version of events. In Galatians 1 Paul says he consulted with no man after his encounter with Christ and immediately went to Arabia. In Galatians 1:1 Paul goes so far as to identify himself as an Apostle, "not from a man or through a man, but through Jesus Christ ..." Acts 26 preserves what is likely Paul's own account of his conversion. It says nothing about Ananias. Paul's gospel is about grace freely offered directly by the living Christ without need of human mediation and he never waivers from that proclamation. In that first decade after the resurrection, Peter seems to hang on to more traditional Jewish ideas -- that righteousness is by adherence to the law (when he's with Jewish Christians anyway) and that God mediates his grace through special people.

Here's another residue of the conflict between Peter and Paul. In his surviving letters, Paul never refers to Simon as Peter (the Rock) but always calls him by his Aramaic name, Cephas. This fact is overlooked in many new translations that turn Cephas into Peter. But the name issue is significant. Paul does not acknowledge Peter as the rock (petra) on which Christ builds his church. In fact, Paul boldly declares, "The only Rock is Christ" (I Corinthians 10:4). I think it fair to surmise that Paul did not accept the myth of the primacy of Peter.

When you read the Book of Acts, the history of Peter and the history of Paul don't overlap except for the story of Paul's conversion in chapter 9 (which is probably linked to Peter). I have often wondered whether the clear separation of their ministries in Acts reflects the condition of their relationship in the early church. Each went their own way until they both met their death in Rome, Paul first and then a few years later, Peter. Thankfully what the Holy Spirit has preserved for us in Scripture is amazingly consistent. I think following the Jerusalem Council in 49 AD Peter and Paul stayed clear of each other, each preaching and teaching as inspired by the Holy Spirit. They do not represent a divided Gospel but a tension that has continued down to this very day between the evangelical who focuses on the gracious work of Christ and the institutionalist whose focus is on tradition and and good works.

Gathering of March 20

We enjoyed a wonderful meal prepared by Janice and Berry with help from Rebecca. Our study commenced with a review of Belcher's chapter 4, "Deep Truth." We discussed the importance of our worldview, or philosophy, and used this as a jumping off point for our continued study in Colossians 1. In verses 15-23 Paul answers the question Jesus put to his disciples around the campfire in Cesarea Phillipi, "Who do people say that I am." Of course, Simon Peter responded with the affirmation, "You are the Christ(Messiah), son of the living God." This affirmation made perfect sense to Jews, but as the Gospel spread into the Gentile world of Greece and Asia Minor, a new answer was needed that fit their worldview. Some had infiltrated the Colossian fellowship with an answer that Jesus was the Spirit-being sent by the Good God to provide the way of escape from this wicked world and our unwholesome bodies. They came to be known as Gnostics. Paul counters their wrong-headed conclusions with the great cosmic significance of Christ in verses 15-23. Who is Jesus? In verses 15-17, Paul affirms Christ is the perfect image of the invisible God, the one through whom and for whom the world was created. In verse 18-19 Paul declares Jesus is head of the new creation, the ekklesia, the called-out ones. Verse 20-23 lay out the specifics of how these truths about Jesus impact our lives.

Our prayer time was precious and full of the Holy Spirit's leading.

We missed several who were traveling for spring break and welcomed some who were new to our Gathering.

Our next Gathering is April 10 at the Hutchens.

How Will We Recgonize Each Other in Heaven?

Approaching Easter, I'm always a bit uncomfortable with those resurrection accounts where people don't at first recognize Christ. It happens three times in the Gospels: Mary who supposes Jesus to be the gardener (John 20:11-16), the two on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24:13-31), and the disciples hauling in a big catch on the beach (John 21:4-13). Why didn't they recognize Jesus right away? Post-Biblical Xianists construct an entire argument against the bodily resurrection of Jesus from these incidents, citing that Jesus is reborn in us -- we are the resurrected Jesus. So, the unorthodox answer is that these "appearances" were disciples recognizing the Savior's imprint on Larry, and Roscoe, and Suzie (notwithstanding the appearance to Thomas in the upper room at which Jesus shows the holes in his wrists and the let's Thomas actually reach into the open gash in his side).

Let's ask three questions: Why didn't the disciples recognize Jesus at first? How did they realize it was Jesus? What does this mean for how we will come to recognize each other in heaven?

Why didn't the disciples recognize Jesus at first?

Obviously they weren't expecting to see a dead man. We see what we expect to see. I encounter this reality every time I have to proof-read something I've written. I'll catch some errors, but there have been times when a third party editor will point me to the very line in some paragraph and I still can't see it. That's because my brain knows what is supposed to be there and, being the master of efficient recognition, that's what my brain processes.

Another reason is that grief blinds us to reality. The loss of a beloved turns the soul upside down. Psychology enumerates the stages of grief. Spirituality feels a black hole, a vacuum, into which everything tumbles and loses definition. Coming to the garden tomb, Mary is lost in grief. Nothing is making a lot of sense at that moment. She's in that daze that only the grieving know. Who else would be walking around in the garden at that time of the morning except the gardener? It's actually a pretty rational answer for someone so deeply grieving.

But something has changed about Jesus. His body is different. The Scriptures tell us that in the resurrection we put on an incorruptible body (I Cor. 15), a spirit body. This does not mean ghostly or evanescent. What came out of Jesus' tomb had a continuity with the previous Adamic life (hence the marks of slaughter), but Jesus' glorified body is something new in all creation. Jesus appears suddenly in locked rooms, but this is no ghostly specter. He proves his link to humanity by eating a piece of fish. Poltergeists don't do perch. The fact that in all three appearances he is mistaken for what we can only think of as an ordinary human at the very least shows that he is not a 900 foot flaming phantasm. He is the second Adam, the first-born from the dead. He's not a freak.

It's possible the disciples may not recognize Jesus because he can assume different countenances. I think it is more likely that Jesus covers his face with his garment as middle-eastern men do to this day. It's important to recognize that Jesus does not reveal himself to the world, but only to those whom he has chosen. There is no attempt to visit Pilate or the Chief Priest and use his resurrected presence as a polemic against their unbelief. Of course it would only make sense that his resurrection appearances would be to those who had known him in the flesh. What can strangers testify to? But the pattern of discipleship is the same then as now -- Jesus chooses and we respond.

So, there are many reasons why the disciples didn't recognize Jesus.

How Did The Disciples Finally Recognize Jesus?

One thing is clear: Jesus opens their eyes to his true identity on his terms. The disciples do not reason their way to knowing him in his resurrection. Jesus is intentionally revealed. It's not by experience that they recognize Jesus (bye, bye three-legged stool). It's not the sound of his voice that tells Mary Magdalene it's the Lord. He asks her several questions before she knows his identity. But when he says her name, she recognizes him instantly. Did Jesus have an affectionate way of saying her name? Or did he simply turn and face her, perhaps removing the cloth from his face on that chilly morning? Or is it as John says earlier in his Gospel, "He calls his sheep by name...and they hear his voice and follow" (John 10:3-4).

Jesus probably talked with the two on the Emmaus Road for hours, but it was not until they went into the house and Jesus blessed and broke the bread that they recognized Jesus, alive and present one moment, vanished a split second later. Luke tells us their eyes were opened (passive verb tense). They don't so much recognize Jesus as they are permitted to "see." The resurrected Christ is not discovered by anyone; he is revealed.

On the beach it was John who first recognized that the man helping them catch fish was Jesus. We're not told how he knew. But by evening all those disciples on the beach knew it was the Lord.

How do the disciples recognize Jesus? Only after the sovereign Lord wants them to know it is truly him.

How Will We Recognize Each Other in Heaven?

So, what do these stories teach us about our own resurrected bodies and how will we know each other in the afterlife of God? How will families recognize children who were aborted or died in infancy? What about people who live to great age, what about their resurrection bodies? Thomas Aquinas thought everyone in heaven would be thirty-three years of age, the age Jesus died. But age is a concept born of time and this world, not of eternity in the next.

I'm intrigued that many of the people with whom I went to high school are re-connecting via Facebook. It's been 45 years since I've seen most of them. Many classmates include pictures of themselves. If I were to meet almost any of these folks on the Emmaus Road I wouldn't have the slightest idea who they were. We have all changed so very much. But in spite of sagging jowls and graying hair (where there still is hair), there is nevertheless something in each face that transcends time. A lot of it is the eyes, I think. We're born with the adult-sized eyes through which we view the passing world for as long as we live. Eyes are the window of the soul. But there is still a sense in which I only recognize these faces because they took the initiative to post a picture of themselves, revealing themselves to me.

I think Jesus' looks changed after he was resurrected from the dead. No one ever drew his picture while he lived, but the prophets said the Messiah would not be attractive to look at. But in his glorified body his skin would have been unflawed by any imperfection caused by disease or privation. His formerly sinewy, emaciated body was strong and perfectly proportioned. His hair, previously matted with blood, shone with new luster or may have completely disappeared. Did Christ appear as someone from the end of the time? We know homo sapiens is still changing, dare I say evolving. People are getting taller. The circumference of heads is getting larger as the brain continues to adapt. Or maybe Christ appeared more like the original Adam before the Fall?

However Jesus appeared, that is how we will look on that day when the dead in Christ shall rise. We will be very real, very three dimensional (at least), with recognizable continuity with our mortal bodily, but freed from the imperfections and anomalies of disease, genetic mutation, and bad living. We will be as God made us to be.

I believe the Scriptures support the idea that we will recognize each other only as we are introduced. Who introduces us? Of course, only Jesus people will enjoy heaven, people Jesus has chosen and called. The Holy Spirit of God will bring us together and reveal us to each other in joyful reunion. In the same way Jesus introduced John to Mary, the Holy Spirit will say, "Mother, behold thy son; son, behold thy Mother."

We will make new friendships such as we could never experience in this life, friendships that are without anxiety, without self-consciousness, without any of the barriers with which we struggled in the flesh. We will work together (yes, we work in heaven) with teams of capable and cooperative individuals such as we have never dreamed possible.

We will worship together forever. We will probably still celebrate the Lord's Supper. We will sing, oh how we will sing. And all songs will praise God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We will praise Him for our work and in praising find new answers and new solutions to problems. As we give more is given to us. We will dance and in dancing find the truth of giving and receiving. We will rejoice and in serendipity know each other even as we are known.

Hallelujah! Maranatha!

Priests and Masses

As an Anglican, I am trying to break myself of the habit of referring to worship as "mass." The Book of Common Prayer, even the heterodox 1979 Episcopal Prayerbook, never uses the term "mass" but Holy Eucharist. And yet Anglo-Catholics insist on calling it "the mass." What's the big deal?

Anglicans do not celebrate a mass because we do not believe that we are re-sacrificing Jesus over and over again. Mass means sacrifice. This is why Episcopal ministers are called priests, because priests preside over sacrifices. The Roman Church and their agents inside the Anglican church today, in contrast to historical Anglicanism, have transformed The Lord's Supper as remembrance into an act of sacrifice. This is most clearly seen when the priest lifts the big communion wafer (called the host) for all to see and venerate (aka worship) and says, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us."

I was reading my 1837 copy of the Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church as it was then called. The Lord's Supper is almost word for word the same as the current Rite I except there was nothing about lifting the host and proclaiming Christ is sacrificed. That's because the church, when it still believed the Scriptures took seriously Hebrews 9:25. Contrasting the practice of the Old Testament priesthood in which the priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year to make atonement for sin, we are told Jesus himself enters heaven to appear before God on our behalf.

Christ did not enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the High Priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.

It is clear that the New Testament Church did not practice the Lord's Supper as a sacrifice. For one thing, there is no mention of priests in the New Testament Church. In all the texts that mention the spiritual gifts and the offices and qualifications of church workers, priest is never mentioned. That is because the Apostles taught that Jesus is our High Priest who has made priests of all believers who are called to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5). It doesn't say spiritual sacrifices of Jesus Christ. Using the principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture, we discover that spiritual sacrifices are "a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart..."(Psalm 51:17). In the New Testament, our spiritual worship is defined as giving our whole lives to God (Romans 12:1). Believers offer up a sacrifice of praise to God for the finalized atoning work of Christ (Hebrews 13:15-16).

Not only does Scripture undo the Mass, but it is clear from Anglican history that there was no understanding of sacrificing Jesus over and over again each Sunday for the forgiveness of our sins. If by the sacrament of the Lord's Supper we could be forgiven of our sins, why does my 1837 Prayerbook (and all others until this most recent Episcopal one) spend half the ink devoted to the Eucharistic service warning the unrepentant not to dare approach the Lord's table lest they eat and drink damnation to themselves? (1 Corinthians 11:27-30).

Jesus intended The Lord's Supper to be a commemoration of his death and coming again, a remembrance. Celebrating the Mass not only ignores the clear teaching of Scripture, it blasphemes against Christ and turns bread and wine into superstitious magic, idols before which we genuflect, depriving Christ of his sovereign and eternal priesthood in favor of man-made traditions. The priests like to claim as authoritative traditions that go back to the first century. It doesn't matter how old the traditions are, but how faithfully they adhere to the Apostles' teaching preserved in the New Testament. If we set a mass upon the altar, we overthrow the cross and make a lie of our Savior's last words; for if His death on the cross was not once and for all then Jesus was wrong when he said, "It is paid in full" (a better translation than "It is finished").

Rite I gets it right when it ascribes to Christ's death upon the cross as "his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world." But as it is now constructed Rite I is clearly illogical, self-contradictory, and unaligned to the witness of Scripture. How can the priest proclaim the re-sacrifice of Jesus and then pray, "And although we are unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, not weighing our merits (a clear refutation of Roman theology), but pardoning our offenses, through Jesus Christ, our Lord."

What a mishmash, what confusion, and what a mess the mass makes.

The Fullness - An Exegetical Study of Colossians 1:24

One of the most problematic passages in the letters of Paul the Apostle is Colossians 1:24. Most Bibles translate as:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I fill up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions on behalf of his body, the church.

From this verse the medieval Roman Church found the justification for its heinous practices of works righteousness and justified the sale of indulgences, teaching that Christ's afflictions on the cross were not sufficient for salvation.

Nothing could be further from Paul's intent. He has just concluded the great hymn to the sufficiency of Christ in Colossians 1:15-20. Verse 19 affirms that"in him (Christ) all the Fullness (in Greek playromai) was pleased to dwell." The Fullness is everything that God is.

It may be difficult to see in English, but the concept of playromai is the organizing concept in Paul's mind for this entire first chapter. The Greek word shows up first in verse 9: Paul's prayer is that the Christians at Colossi be filled (playromai) with the knowledge of God's will. Then notice the superlatives in verses 10-11: all wisdom, all pleasing, every work, full knowledge, all power, all endurance. In verse 19, Christ is the playromai of God's Fullness and there follows the superlative description of his reconciling all things. In verse 24 Paul's sufferings are said to function as filling up (in Greek antanaplayro). In verse 25 the word appears still again; Paul has been called to minister to them the word of God in its Fullness. Finally comes the ultimate insight, the mystery hidden from the ages and from generations but now revealed to the believers. It's the ultimate Fullness -- the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Can you see how Paul's mind works? He grabs this concept of God's Fullness and then examines it from different perspectives, like looking at a beautiful diamond from its many facets. It seems ridiculous, then, to interpret verse 24 as though suddenly Paul's focus should shift to what is lacking in the work of Christ, especially since he's gone to such lengths in the context of this chapter to detail the all-sufficient Fullness of Christ.

Most commentators attempt to deal with the problem by trying to explain the metaphor. This is unnecessarily obtuse and difficult. The easiest explanation is to re-translate the Greek word, hustermata, usually rendered as translated "things lacking." The word comes from a root that means "that which is behind," or "following." The notion was that if you were "behind" on wine, you were running out of wine. But the word can be used of time in which it simply denotes something that is later than, that which comes after something else.

The context surely recommends this translation. The Church is Christ's body. Christ himself has triumphed in his death and resurrection and is in heaven. But the sufferings Christ endure, continue, in Paul's own sufferings. His sufferings "come along behind" the sufferings of Christ. Christ's sufferings aren't deficient. Paul can't add anything to the Fullness of Christ's saving act. But the Apostle's sufferings and those of the saints are not random and meaningless. We are not victims. Our suffering is part of the Fullness and carries on the redeeming acts of God in Jesus. Paul is a suffering servant as was Jesus as is every believer who endures rebuke for the sake of Christ.

So, a better translation in light of a study of the context of the entire passage might be:

I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and share in the Fullness of Christ's afflictions now taking place in my body on behalf of his body, the Church."

I Have a Problem with Lent

Lent has traditionally been about commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for his ministry. This season was used in the early church to prepare new converts for baptism on Easter. So, Lent is supposed to be about learning and preparing for discipleship.
No problem with that.

As Jesus fasted and prayed for 40 days, the idea was that his Church would share that time of self-denial and resisting demonic temptation. But at some point in history various pagan and superstitious practices attached to Lent so that it became, particularly in the Roman Catholic and Orthdox communities, a time for horrible self-abasement and self-flagellation. Aquinas said that any food that was good for you should be avoided during Lent. I've got problems with self-flagellation. You know it must have gotten bad when in the 14th century the Roman Catholic Church outlawed people physically whipping themselves to prove their devotion (although on Good Friday we still see this bizarre behavior in many places around the world).

Then there's the curious practice in some churches of veiling the cross. Now this I have real problems with. In Monsignor Peter Elliott's "Celebrations of the Liturgical Year" published by Ignatius Press in 2002, the author states: "The custom of veiling crosses and images ... has much to commend it in terms of religious psychology, because it helps us to concentrate on the great essentials of Christ's work of Redemption."

Wait -- if I cover up the crucifix (the icon of Redemption) that's supposed to help me concentrate better on redemption? I don't know what kind of psychology that is, but it's not good. Veiling the cross goes back to a practice in the early middle ages when everyone in the church was encouraged to enter the order of penitents by taking the mark of the cross on Ash Wednesday. The priests could then prescribe all kinds of dos and don'ts to whip people into shape, if not literally at least psychologically. In ninth century Germany the practice of veiling began by covering the the whole altar as a way of saying to the church, you're cut off from God until Easter.

What kind of play-acting is this? Actually it's a form of operant conditioning (brain washing). The Church wanted you to know they could open or close heaven to you at will. The message was the church controls your spiritual destiny. I will not be taking ashes this year as I do not see my pilgrimage of faith in terms of some 12th century passion play, pretending I'm not saved and pleading on my knees for reconciliation with Mother Church.

For most normal people, Lent is about giving up something. Although self-discipline is commendable, the dourness of some Lenten worship is a modern invention. In fact, Lent wasn't originally supposed to touch Sundays at all. Count 'em up and you'll see the 40 days excludes Sundays. Sunday was your break from fasting and self-abasement, a time to eat and celebrate and enjoy the fellowship of God's people. After the Enlightenment, fewer and fewer Christians practiced the intense ascetism of a "holy Lent." That's when the priests decided to turn the Lord's Day into a more intense Lenten experience.

So as the priests beat their chests and drone on and on about our wretchedness, I wonder if God doesn't think we've lost our minds. Nothing has changed in God's love toward us from Shrove Tuesday to Ash Wednesday; we don't need to invent liturgical plays about getting serious about sin. Walking with Christ isn't play-acting the liturgical seasons of the church. God already knows the seriousness of our hearts. If you give up something for Lent only to pick it back up again on Easter, how does this benefit you? If we aren't careful, our Lenten discipline may become at best something akin to New Year's resolutions; at worst, a celebration of self-improvement that cares nothing for the Gospel.

The focus of Lent must be on God and his faithfulness, not on us and our sinning. The focus of Lent is always upon the cross of Jesus and the power of the cross for those who repent and believe. Fasting and prayer yes, but not pretending we've lost our salvation and need to plunge to the depths of false humility to beg and appease an angry God. The truth is because of Christ's imputed righteousness, we may sin, but we're not condemned as sinners (Romans 8:1). When God looks on us he sees only the righteousness of Christ. For the believer to grovel in our sins is to deny the Gospel.

Christmas doesn't mean Jesus is back in the cradle and Lent doesn't mean we have become less in God's eyes. But we may discover, as Jesus did in the desert, that God has given us the Scriptures as our best defense against the Devil and his wiles, not the least of which is our beguiled pride that we can impress God with our human will-power to resist a forty day itch.

The Ministry of Epaphras

Contrary to the command and control assumptions of Anglo-Catholics and others who demand a bishop-priest-deacon hierarchy of ministry stands the ministry of Epaphras. He emerges from the pages of history in Paul's letter to the Christians at Colossae (Colossians 1:7).

Paul did not establish the Colossian church. It appears to have been started by Epaphras. This brother appears to also have started two other churches in the Lycus Valley: Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col. 4:13). Epaphras may have been one of those first 3000 converts to Christianity in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. And/or, he may have been one of those who traveled to Ephesus to hear Paul preach as described in Acts 19:10. But he started three house churches in response to his faithfulness to the call of the Holy Spirit. He was a passionate evangelist.

Some Bibles translate Colossians 1:8 that Epaphras worked on our behalf," as though Paul had established him in his work. But the earliest manuscripts attest that the correct reading should be "on your behalf." He was not appointed by Paul or any other apostle. Epaphras taught "the word of truth, the gospel" (v.5). Paul commends him as a faithful "diakonos." This is not likely the office of deacon, but an acknowledgment of Epaphras' ministry.

So the ministry of Epaphros does not derive initially from any organizational hierarchy. He is not appointed by a bishop. Nor does he claim an office that separates himself from the people. Colossians 4:12 affirms that Epaphras is "one of you." His ministry arises from his identification with those God has given into his care. There is nothing here of the pernicious error of dividing the people of God into clergy and laity, as if ministers are separated from the common folk by dress and calling.

The ministry of Epaphras was first to Jesus Christ (Ephesians 4:12). Unlike many today who minister to the laity on behalf of Jesus, the Biblical understanding of pastoral ministry was that the under-shepherd ministered to Christ on behalf of his people. Paul writes that Epaphras struggles in prayer on behalf of Christ's people. The goal of his ministry is clear: that his congregation will stand, mature and fully assured in a complete knowledge of God's will. His role is to empower the Colossian Christians to endure despite problems from within and outside of the fellowship.

Epaphras comes to Paul because he needs help, not to do homage. Some ascetics have worked their way into the fellowship and are introducing practices that cause Epaphras concern. He comes to Paul for training and for additional resources.

But even though his church has problems, I love how Epaphras brags on his church. Paul speaks in glowing terms of the wonderful report he receives from Epaphras. How wonderful it is to belong to a fellowship on which one may boast in the Lord.

The ministry of Epaphras is a grass-roots ministry, springing up in the call and care of the Holy Spirit. It does not come to the wider church seeking legitimacy, but additional resources to assist in the accomplishment of a goal that is always before the eyes of this faithful pastor.

I see Epaphras as my model for ministry in these my later years. I attempted to serve Christ within the framework of someone else's top-down authority having been ordained first in the Presbyterian Church and later in the Southern Baptist church. But neither of those ever really bore long-term fruit. But I am comforted and encouraged by Epahras. He helps me to understand my calling, serving Christ as a fellow-struggler within a body of believers that has come together to learn Kingdom koinonia. At some time in the future, the need may arise for someone from our Gathering to seek out an overseer and align with a larger group to help us in our mission, but for now it is enough to experience the good news of the Gospel bearing fruit and growing in grace in a ministry like that of Epaphras.