[Apologies for not posting more regularly. It's the end of the term. Other things are keeping me busy around the house. Look for more regular posting to resume on Monday.]
There seems to be a natural tendency to view our humanity itself as a problem. "I'm only human," as the expression goes, is intended to sum up our inherent limitations. I'm teaching a series in the Sunday evening learning community gatherings at our church that attempts to undermine this assessment and draw some implications for how we then assess and engage the world around us.
I heard an example in a sermon a few weeks ago. It was provocatively entitled, "The Ugly Jesus," and under that heading it rightly drew attention to Isa 53 (he had not stately form he had not majesty that we should be drawn to him) and made some compelling applications to modern day "ugly" people in whom Jesus confronts us.
But the problem was that the speaker associated Jesus' "ugliness" with his humanity and his "beauty" with his divinity, telling us that our hope as humans is to realize the seed of divinity that has been planted in us all. Human = bad. Divine = good. Hope = become less like our human selves and more like divine other.
The argument of my short series is that this exactly wrong. Being human is an inherently good thing, though this goodness is deeply marred. Not only was humanity originally good, but God's actions among his people show (throughout the OT and into and through the NT) that God's purposes are for the restoration (super-restoration!) of our humanity, not the obliteration of it.
Getting this right will impact how we view work, recreation, our relationship with the environment, our posture toward the unbelieving world--and just about everything else.
Next time I'll run through my basic premise (God intends to rescue us for our true humanness, not from our true humanness) and suggest some implications.
About Me
- Daniel Kirk
- San Francisco, California
- Connoisseur of dark things: Coen Brothers films, Flannery O'Connor's stories, black coffee, robust red wine, dark chocolate
Fuller Northern California
Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God
Online Articles
- New Perspective on the Reformed Tradition
- Nothing but the Blood
- Review: D. A. Carson (ed.), Justification and Variegated Nomism
- Review: James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul
- Review: Karl Donfried, Who Owns the Bible?
- Review: Klaus Haacker, Theology of Paul's Letter to the Romans
- Review: N. T. Wright, Letter to the Romans
Sh-Sh-Sh-Sibboleth
4 comments:
Good point. I look forward to you fleshing this out more. One interesting connection with this insight is how much Karl Barth's theology flows out of this fundamental misconception...that the problem is that we are human (and limited) before a transcedent God, rather than that we are sinful and rebellious before a holy and good God. Not that Barth would deny the second outright, but his emphasis is always on the first, whatever doctrine he is discussing. Yet in the early chapters of Genesis we get no hint that it was difficult for human beings (without sin) to communicate and have fellowship with God. The problem is moral, not metaphysical. Far too much 20th century theology forgot this.
I'm looking forward to reading more on this topic. Not that I am smart enough to add to the conversation, but I am definitely interested!
Well said. If humanity is something innately negative, then Christ's humanity must inevitably detract from His divinity. If humanity itself is the problem (as opposed to fallen humanity) then Christ could not be fully God and fully human. But if Christ is the "New Adam," why should we think that being an "Adam" is a negative thing?
this sort of misconception about what it means to be human and in the image of God and especially of the restoration of true human-ness taking place thru Christ is behind a world of troubles, not the least of which some which plague theological debate at the moment.
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