Book Review: Bekken, The Word is Near You

My review of Per Jarle Bekken, The Word is Near You, has just been published on Review of Biblical Literature.
I draw your attention to this not only because I am narcissistic, but also because the book is fabulous. Read it if you can.

Still Alive

I just wanted to let all my worried fans know that yes, I am still alive.

Today was the last day of my week-long intensive, teaching "The Cross in the New Testament." We did a run through of each of the Gospels, a few soundings in Acts, some deep plunges into Paul, surveys of Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation, looking at how the cross functioned in the various passages. All this was brought into conversation with various atonement theories and implications for discipleship. We wrapped up today with some discussions of the implications of what we saw for how we share the gospel.

From the professor's standpoint, the lecture portion of the course went very well. Now, for the students, the real work begins!

Couple of Quotes from a Couple of Strausses

Yesterday I heard a reference to Machiavelli that sounded frighteningly true, even though it was taken entirely out of context and M. didn't seem to mean it quite this way:

"Machiavelli 'believes' that Rome owed more to Numa, the founder of her religion, than to Romulus, the founder simply who gave her arms; for where there is religion arms can easily be introduced, but where there are arms and no religion, religion can only with difficulty be introduced." -Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli

The idea of religion providing an easy path for the introduction of arms is all-too-often empirically true, even if the tenants of the religion don't support it.

Hence my obsession, recently, with cruciform ethics, which not only issues caution in the case of war, but demands a peaceable, non-violent posture in our actions toward each other.

And, in the vein of turning the other cheek, if ironically tinged with hostility, here's a lovely quote by D. F. Strauss:

This offspring of the legitimate marriage between theological ignorance and religious intolerance, blessed by a sleep-walking philosophy, succeeds in making itself so completely ridiculous that it renders any serious reply unnecessary.

Apply as needed.

Guards as Anti-Disciples in Matthew

Just a couple quick observations on the guards in Matthew's resurrection narrative, both to the effect that the guards in this story become "anti-disciples".

At the death of Jesus, in ch. 27, the temple veil was ripped, earthquakes shook the ground, the rocks had been split, tombs opened, and the bodies of holy people had come out of their graves and entered Jerusalem (27:53). In parallel in ch. 28, we find an earthquake as an angel breaks into this world, the rock is rolled away and Jesus is proclaimed to be alive.

But while the holy ones and Jesus himself move from death to life in the midst of such events, the guards at Jesus tomb take the reverse journey: through fear, they become as dead men (28:4). Moreover, the angel speaks to the women and not only tells them that they needn't be afraid, he emphasizes that they needn't fear (using the unnecessary pronoun)--perhaps with the implication that someone else standing near by is rightly afraid (28:5)?

In a second episode involving the guards, they report what happened to a council of high priests and elders, who pay them to say that the body was stolen. The response of the guards is telling for a Gospel that highlights Jesus as teacher and the disciples as students: the guards, taking the money, did as they were taught (ἐδιδάχθησαν, 28:15).

The guards thus become anti-disciples, teaching what their teachers have taught them, spreading an anti-gospel message that sits in jarring contrast to the subsequent charge that Jesus bestows on his own disciples.

Substitutionary Atonement

Second Maccabees 7 tells the story of the martyrdom of seven brothers. The last, when his turn comes, addresses the wicked Antiochus IV Epiphanes thus:

… the young man said, "What are you waiting for? I will not obey the king's command, but I obey the command of the law that was given to our ancestors through Moses. But you, who have contrived all sorts of evil against the Hebrews, will certainly not escape the hands of God. For we are suffering because of our own sins. And if our living Lord is angry for a little while, to rebuke and discipline us, he will again be reconciled with his own servants. ... I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our ancestors, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by trials and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God, 38and through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty that has justly fallen on our whole nation." (30-32, 37-38)

The next story, immediately after this scene, shows that the martyr's hope that his death be atoning is not misplaced (2 Macc 8:1-5):

Meanwhile Judas, who was also called Maccabeus, and his companions secretly entered the villages and summoned their kindred and enlisted those who had continued in the Jewish faith, and so they gathered about six thousand. They implored the Lord to look upon the people who were oppressed by all; and to have pity on the temple that had been profaned by the godless; to have mercy on the city that was being destroyed and about to be leveled to the ground; to hearken to the blood that cried out to him; to remember also the lawless destruction of the innocent babies and the blasphemies committed against his name; and to show his hatred of evil. As soon as Maccabeus got his army organized, the Gentiles could not withstand him, for the wrath of the Lord had turned to mercy.

In researching atonement in early Judaism and Christianity, passages like these persuade me that N. T. Wright's defense of penal substitution is sound. Despite my uneasiness with the ways it often rests on non-biblical notions of law and justice, penal substitution has a place within the narrative of Israel--though perhaps the great surprise about Jesus is that his faithfulness unto death was not faithfulness to Torah but a faithfulness to his peculiar vocation to be a servant-king rather than seize alternative routes on offer (including routes of violence/militarism and routes of Torah observance) in the first century.

Cruciformity and Abuse--Redux

Just a couple of quick thoughts on the cross and ethics again.

In my Cross in the New Testament course this morning we were talking about Mark's vision of cruciform discipleship--and how our churches get it or don't get it. My students didn't quite put it this way, but the upshot of our discussion was that (a) we don't embrace in practical, difficult ways the call to a self-giving discipleship; except (b) in cases where people are being (physically) abused.

I blogged about this a few weeks ago, drawing attention to Chuch deGroat's helpful thoughts on the issue of cruciformity and abuse.

Talking through it a little more today, I found that the following was helpful. In contrasting the economy of the gospel with the economy of the world, I have suggested that the economy of the world can often be articulated thus: "I will get life for myself, even if it means taking life from you." That's the economy of zero-sum games where my "getting" often entails your "losing."

In contrast, the economy of the gospel says, "I will give up my life so that you might live."

Plug that into situations that we sometimes label "getting taken advantage of", or situations of abuse. Enabling an abuser to continue in abuse is not giving up your life in order that the other person might live, but in order that they might continue in the way of death that they are staking out for themselves. Enabling does not lead to life.

As Chuck points out in his blog post, Christian vocation might lead a woman to stay in a relationship to work toward forgiveness and reconciliation, or it may lead her out toward the same end. But the life-giving sacrifice of the self requires not only that there is a self to be given, but also that there is life to be grasped.

We also must riff off that gospel economy as communities in order to confront such violence. Chuck does well on this point also. If the economy of the gospel is that I give up my life so that you might live, then my calling is not to send you into death but to die so that you might live. The community is called to self-giving love in order to give life to the powerless and the victim.

Like anything else, cruciformity can be held as a weapon in sinister hands, but its misuse should not lead us to abandon its proper life-giving function.

The Supper in Mark and Matthew

Ever notice that when Jesus gives the bread to the disciples in Mark and Matthew he doesn't say anything about it? "This is my body."

No "given for you," no nothin'.

Mike Knows...

I'm swamped this week, teaching a one-week intensive that meets six hours a day all week. Yes, that's right, I'm going to have to work as hard as an elementary school teacher this week! Fate worse than death!

At any rate, so as not to disappoint my loyal fans, here is a quick note, just to let you know that Mike Gorman has exceptionally keen insight when it comes to picking books for his courses.

Thanks, Mike!

(In case I'm being too subtle:I made the cut. Thanks, Mike.)

The Story of Penal Substitution: Some Ramblings

I've just been reading T. Shreiner's defense of the centrality of penal substitution in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views. It caused my mind to dance around something that commenter "A" articulated well: how we deal with biblical texts in particular depends in large part on the story we believe they fit into.

I find myself struggling to see the value of Shreiner's position, not because I think that penal substitution is wrong but because I don't see the Bible telling the story within which his rendering of penal substitution plays a crucial role.

Shreiner says this: "“The moral norms of the law are not externally imposed on God. The norms of the law express God’s character, the beauty and holiness of his person.”

What happens to this view of God when we realize, as I have been articulating here for a few weeks, that Law is not the ordering principle of the cosmos? When we recognize that "law" in Paul (the Law that plays a part in the narrative of the God of Israel which comes to its surprising climax in Jesus' death and resurrection) is not a transhistorical moral law, but the law that God gave Israel as Israel, the law that God articulated on Sinai, that we find written in the books of Moses as the unique trust of the people of Israel?

In other words, for Shreiner's story to work, "law" has to mean something that it does not mean in the books of the Bible to which he primarily looks in support of his doctrine of penal substitution.

That's why I think N. T. Wright's version needs careful consideration--and the more I delve into the question of atonement, the more I think that this is the best way of articulating penal substitution that I have seen. How is it, and why is it, that Jesus is not only our substitute, but the one who bears the punishment that befalls all people due to the reigns of sin and death?

In the narrative as Paul tells it, as Shreiner rightly sees, law plays an important role, but we have to account for the peculiarity of that role as it pertains to Israel and does not pertain to the rest of the world.

Wright, in dealing with Jesus' work as work that brings forgiveness of sins, looks to the narratives of the Deuteronomic history, picked up by Isaiah and others, that sin entails exile, and forgiveness of sins entails restoration. It is this dynamic of "the curse of the law" that he picks up on again and again to explain Jesus' work, and Jesus' own death. The curse of the law is that Israel will be exiled: away from the land, away from the temple, decimated in number--exile is the anti-covenant, the undoing of God's covenant promises.

Isaiah picks up on this, and sees the exile itself as potentially redemptive, and thus 2nd Isaiah begins:

"Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. ²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins." (Isa 40:1f.)

Exile is the penalty for covenant breaking, it pays the debt, and allows Israel to be restored. But the narrative of 2d/3d Isaiah itself, and the narrative of Israel as well, is much more ambiguous than this. The restoration is not full and immediate and glorious. The people return but without owning the land, without renewed hearts. They bore the curse of the law but it did not lead to the promised restoration, from the inside out, envisioned in Deut 28-32, Jer 31, etc.

The law was supposed to be the helper which would usher Israel through its curse and back into heart-renewed obedience after the exile. Moreover, with this restoration of Israel, the nations were to be reordered in their worship of YHWH as well--the world-wide vision of 2d/3d Isaiah is that Israel's restoration would restore YHWH to glory in the sight of all. The would come streaming to Zion as Zion moved through the covenant curses into the covenant blessings of restoration.

But it didn't happen.

In this context, the place of Jesus becoming the curse of the law, bearing the judgment of death, dying for the nation and thereby dying for the world has a place. Jesus is living out the calling of one born under the law, one who, in solidarity with his people is judged and condemned by the law--but in the resurrection the judgment of the law is undone as God blesses and restores the cursed one, ushering in new creation (eschatologized vision of the promise of land to Abraham, and thus an eschatologized vision of restoration from exile), making Jesus Lord and Messiah (hence fulfilling the covenant promise to David), giving him an innumerable multitude of brothers and sisters (hence fulfilling the promise of seed), drawing all people to himself (fulfilling the good news of a people of many nations).

In the plot line of Israel's story and Israel's law there is a place for penal restoration: that place is exile. In the plot line of Jesus' embodiment of Israel's story, he represents humanity by representing Israel in not only obedience unto death but also bearing the penalty of disobedience through the cursed death on the cross.

It's because he bears the penalty of Israel in particular that he can determine the destiny of humanity in general.

How is this "penal" idea still an act of God's "love"? Can these two ideas be fit together without distorting either "penal" or "love" beyond recognition? Stay tuned.