A prayer for the Gulf Coast

In meditating upon the damage and suffering left in the wake of Katrina, a number of Scriptures came to mind, followed by a prayer uttered in their light...

"The earth was a formless void
and darkness covered the face of the deep,

while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters."

Genesis 1:2

"...and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded."

Genesis 8:1b

"...and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left."

Exodus 14:21-22

"...and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beast... came up out of the sea.... and there before me was one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven."

Daniel 7:2, 13

"And I saw a beast coming out of the sea...

Lo, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him."

Revelation 13:1; 1:7

And I saw... standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name. They held harps given them by God and sang the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb: "Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages."

Revelation 15:2-3

______________________________

A Prayer for the Gulf Coast

Oh God of creation,

who rules the raging of the sea,

bring now to this wave-tossed world

release from its suffering and slavery,

deliverance from the beast,

baptism into new life,

a new creation,

worship!

through the wind of your Spirit,

and with the clouds of the Son of Man.

Amen

Categories: Katrina

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Lordship of Christ, Spirit of holiness

The Darden Christian Fellowship (DCF) 2005-2006 has now officially begun. I mentioned on Monday that this was the week for graduate picnics, DCF tonight and GCF (Graduate Christian Fellowship) on Saturday evening. It was, I think, a great success. The student leadership did a great job organizing things; I provided the grill; the Study Center provided the food; our faculty advisor did the grilling honors; and we all worked to keep the conversational decibel level high...

Prayers, by the way, are appreciated for DCF and for these and the other students at Darden. Darden is a top-ranked graduate school of business with a challenging case-study approach to teaching and learning. DCF and the Center for Christian Study would like to support these Darden students and the school in every way we can, as we seek to bring all areas of our lives under the Lordship of Christ.

Which brings me to my concluding reflections on Romans 1 and 8, sparked by my larger discussion of Russell Moore's good book, The Kingdom of Christ. As one might expect, the kingdom of Christ and his lordship are linked. If Jesus did indeed become the son of God (human king) in power at his resurrection from the dead if he moved in his own human life from flesh to Spirit (though without sinning)... if he was himself anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism in a way which anticipated the fullness of his resurrection kingship... and IF we too are called to walk in the new life of the Spirit until the time of our own Spirit-engendered resurrections... THEN bringing our lives under the Lordship of Christ is at least at one level to be like him now (as the Spirit enables) so that we may be like him even more in the future (as the Spirit enables).

If none of this makes any sense, well, uh, you'll probably need to reread the last six or seven posts. And I should also say that this isn't the full story: because Jesus is fully divine as well as fully human, his lordship goes beyond simply the human lordship (sonship/kingship) he obtained at his resurrection. He is worthy of divine worship because he is our God. And yet... he is also the human lord of the universe, a position he attained at a particular time and in a particular way and which human lordship he invites us to join him in. This too is part of the gospel, as Romans 1:3 makes pretty clear.

So what does this mean for the present? One of the comments on the last post highlighted the devotional aspect of all this: the call to live now as if the age of the Spirit really had dawned in our lives as we look forward to that great sonrise (Rom 8:18-23!) in the future. I think that is part of Paul's point in Romans right from the beginning. Note that when he refers to the Spirit in Rom 1:4 it is as the "Spirit of holiness."

This is an unusual way of referring to the Holy Spirit and accentuates, in Greek as in English, the "holiness" of the Holy Spirit. Why? To anticipate the line of thought in the early part of Romans 8 where the indwelling temple presence of the Spirit in the people of God ("But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit dwells in you," v.9) demands a certain of life in the present ("So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh," v.12) even as it promises even greater life in the future ("if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you").

In other words, the Spirit of future resurrection power is also the Spirit of present resurrection holiness. The Spirit of future bodily transformation is also the Spirit of present ethical transformation. God is engaged in a comprehensive renovation of his creation, completed already in Christ and continuing in his people--from the inside out. So all this talk about inaugurated eschatology and the "already and the not yet" and the two ages with the intrusion of the Spirit is anything but pie-in-the-sky ivory-tower theology. It's all about how the kingdom of Christ is working itself out in our lives and in the church--with a view toward the future--in the right here and right now.

That's worth thinking about, on both a personal and societal level, day in and day out. Perhaps some of you can help us draw out the implications of this for our lives. Precisely in order to bring them more and more under the lordship of Christ.

<Categories: Romans, Eschatology, Spirit

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New stages--in more ways than one

Well, summer is over as far as the Wilder family is concerned. Despite at least one son's gallant attempt to delay its onset by refusing to think or talk about it ("No, Dad, I don't know my teachers' names; school hasn't started yet!"), the school year began today.

On this one I'm with my youngest daughter..., for whom the beginning of school has been the latest countdown in her life (following the grandest countdown of them all, her birthday in July). I'm glad school is here! It means a return to routine, not least family breakfast and devotion time before we all head off into our days. It's good to have the family all back together again and settled in for the fall.

School begins for me in another way as well this week. The University of Virginia begins classes on Wednesday and that means that Center for Christian Study ministry will soon be in full swing. Indeed, it's really already begun. Our Move-In Day luncheon was on Saturday, so the building was packed with hundreds of first-year students with parents and family. Drew Trotter begins his film lecture series tonight (2001: A Space Odyssey) and both the Graduate and Darden Christian Fellowships have their opening picnics. So we're off and running!

But let me pause long enough to say a few more words about Romans 1 and 8, a bit of an extended aside in my ongoing discussion of Russell Moore's book, The Kingdom of Christ. Moore notes that a consensus is emerging among evangelical scholars with respect to the kingdom of God, a consensus which has huge implications for how we understand both our present and our future.

In short, the kingdom of God has already arrived in Christ and will, at his second coming, fully arrive in the holistic restoration of our bodies and creation that his resurrection already anticipates. In this discussion of Romans 1 and 8 I'm trying to put a little flesh (pardon the pun) on the bare bones framework I've been summarizing from Moore.

By way of reminder, here's a summary of the contrast we've been discussing from Romans 1:3-4:

Son (of God).............................Son of God
From the seed of David..........From the resurrection of the dead
According to the flesh.............According to the Spirit of holiness

I've argued that the sonship ("Son of God") in view here does not refer to Jesus being the second person of the Trinity, the eternally begotten Son of the Father (though he certainly is). In this passage the title "Son of God" seems to refer to Jesus' human kingship (that's what "son of God" meant in the relevant OT passages, especially 2 Samuel 7:14 and Ps 2), the very kind of kingship we'll enjoy with him when he returns (see my earlier discussion on the meaning of "son[s] of God" in Romans 8).

In other words, Jesus was already an heir to a throne by reason of natural birth ("son from the seed of David"); surprisingly, he came into that inheritance by reason of his resurrection, at which point he sat at the right hand of God and received full human rule over the universe. This is not at all to deny that Jesus was and always had been fully divine; it is simply to say that what was new from the time of his resurrection was his distinctively human rulership over all things. And it is that human rulership which we hope, as those united with him, to share!

This brings us then to the flesh/Spirit contrast in Jesus and in us. For Jesus there was a transition from flesh to Spirit, a transition from a normal human existence marked by birth into the line of David to a glorified existence capable of cosmic rulership at the right hand of God. Romans 8 suggests that a similar transition from flesh to Spirit is supposed to take place--indeed, has already begun to take place!--within us (those who have been united with Christ) as well.

It is important, first of all, to note (once again) that the contrast between flesh and Spirit is not a contrast between the human and divine natures or, for that matter, between the material and the non-material. It isn't so much a contrast between two natures or realms as it is a contrast between two different ages or times.

So there's the age of the flesh, as it were, and the age of the Spirit. The new age has already begun in Christ, who has already entered the age of the Spirit. Most of the rest of the world continues living in the age of the flesh, as if nothing had happened. Believers are, by definition, those who have already entered into the age of the Spirit (or had it enter into them) and are leaving the age of the flesh behind.

So how do we know that "flesh" and "Spirit" have to do with ages and times (or even stages) and not with different natures (human and divine, material and non-material)? Mainly from the way in which the Spirit is identified with that fundamental mark of the new age: resurrection! In Romans 1:4 the Spirit-anointing of Jesus as the king/son of God in power takes place at the time of his resurrection from the dead.

Likewise, believers are assured in Romans 8 that "if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you" (v.11). The Spirit thus plays the same role in our lives and bodies as it did in Jesus' human life and body.

The same idea is present a little later in Romans 8 when Paul refers to our participation in the coming restoration of creation, by the agency of the Holy Spirit: "...we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (v.23). Here again the Spirit is identified with our coming resurrection, though admittedly it is already present in us, beginning the inward work of transformation which anticipates and guarantees the future outward completion of that work.

Once the role of the Spirit in the coming restoration is understood--what Gerhaardus Vos called "the eschatological conception of the Spirit"--, then it makes sense to use "Spirit" as a kind of shorthand for this coming age. One's mind is meant to go back to all the prophecies in the Old Testament where the Spirit is the hallmark of the coming age (Joel 3, Ezek 11:19; 36:27, etc.). By way of contrast, then, the "flesh" comes to stand for this present age, marked as it is by weakness and perishability and, indeed, sin.

The question, then, for believers is whether they intend to live according to the age of the Spirit, which has begun--quite literally in the resurrected Christ--or whether they intend to deny their assumed union with him by living in the 'old-fashioned' manner, according to the flesh. It is in this way that "flesh" and "Spirit" begin to have ethical implications in the present.

But I've said enough for today. Next time I'll comment on the ethical implications of the flesh/Spirit contrast. This is, after all, one of the ways in which this whole understanding of the kingdom of God bears on the present.

Then I hope to return, at least for a little bit, to Moore's book...

Categories: Romans, Flesh, Spirit, Eschatology

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The two stages of sonship--in us

I've been arguing (in the past few posts) that Romans 1:3-4 is all about the resurrection transition in Jesus from flesh to Spirit, from a natural human kingship to a glorified and exalted human kingship, from participation in this age to his present experience and enjoyment of the prerogatives of the age to come. Romans 1:3-4 is a contrast between two stages in Jesus' humanity, not a contrast between his human and divine natures.

This is important, I've been trying to say, because... this two-stage pattern in Christ is one which we were intended to share, as Romans 8 makes clear. Unlike Jesus, we are not both human and divine. However, like Jesus, we are human; indeed, he shows us what it means to be truly human in his movement from the fleshly stage to the Spiritual stage at his resurrection from the dead.

It is important, then, not to lose the connection between what happens to Jesus here and what happens to believers later in Romans 8. In brief, both the flesh/Spirit contrast and the two-stage sonship/kingship (remember, "Son of God" in the OT is a kingship title) are there applied to those who belong to Christ! Moreover, the final transition from one stage (flesh) to the next (Spirit) happens at the same point for believers as it did for Jesus: at their resurrection from the dead.

Let's take the sonship connection first, which is perhaps most clear. On the one hand, believers are already "sons of God":

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For... you have received a spirit of sonship (Rom 8:15-15)

Yet our present sonship points beyond itself to, well, being sons of God in power:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God...(Rom 8:19).

So much could be said here, but it will suffice for the moment simply to note that language usually reserved for the Lord Jesus and those waiting for him at his return ("revealing," "eager longing") is here applied--in the plural--to believers ("sons of God"). Together with the OT usage of "son of God" (to refer to a king), this is the strongest argument for not taking "son of God" in Paul as a way of referring to the divine nature. Human kingship is in view, in two stages: an initial stage followed by its full consummation. It happened this way with Jesus. It happens this way with us.

And the point of transition in both cases is resurrection! We've already seen that in Rom 1:3-4. Now note this passage in Rom 8, in which the same pattern is applied to us:

...we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved (Rom 8:23b-24a).

We're already sons of God, but we're waiting for our final adoption as sons, which is here identified with resurrection, "the redemption of our bodies." This is an astounding hope. Indeed, Paul goes so far as to say that it was "in this hope we were saved." According to Paul, our Christian hope is to share in the human kingship which Jesus now enjoys in his resurrected and glorified human body!

Much more could (and will) be said about that literally, glorious hope. But it's worth noting at this point that, like Jesus in his earthly life, we're not simply waiting for sonship/kingship. We may not be sons of God in power yet, but we are already sons of God (kings). We've already been anointed, even if we haven't received our full inheritance. Already we see the kind of "already" and "not yet" that Russell Moore is referring to in his book.

And in the next post I'll discuss how that present Spirit anointing is related to the transition from flesh to Spirit that we, like Jesus, were destined to make.

Categories: Romans, Eschatology, Spirit, Sonship

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The two stages of Jesus' sonship

In yesterday's post I made the perhaps surprising claim that Romans 1:3-4 is not really a contrast between the human and divine natures of Jesus. It is, rather, a reference to the way in which he moved from a "fleshly" stage of human existence to a "Spiritual" stage of human existence. In this way (as I also began to explain) Jesus shows what God always intended for human beings: a move from a merely fleshly stage of existence to a fully Spiritual stage. To understand what happened to Jesus is to gain a glimpse into our own destiny as those believe in Jesus and hope for the same human destiny.

But so far I haven't given you more than a number of bald assertions, without any real support for this position... Let me spell out some of the reasons for this interpretation now. I'll begin with some observations on the sonship of Jesus in this passage.

It is first of all important to understand that the contrast is not between Jesus as the son of David (human king) and Jesus as the son of God (divine king). The contrast is between Jesus as the Son of God according to the flesh (as a descendant of David) and Jesus as the Son of God according to the Spirit (by his resurrection from the dead).

We know this because in the Old Testament the son of David is, by definition, the "son of God." This is perhaps most clear in 2 Samuel 7, where the son of David (Solomon is most immediately in view) the one of whom God says, "I will be his father and he will be my son." Here's the larger passage.

12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, 15 but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.

In this passage (and others like Ps 2) it is the descendants of David who are considered the sons of God.

It is important to say, of course, that calling the descendants of David "sons of God" was not intended to mean that they were divine. It simply meant that God had graciously given David and his descendants the fundamental right of sonship in the ancient world: inheritance. The Davidic kings were sons of God insofar as they were his heirs, inheriting the right to represent his rulership in the land. So when Paul calls Jesus the "son [of God], a descendant of David according the flesh," he's simply invoking the thought of 2 Samuel 7 and claiming that Jesus is the rightful Davidic king--or "son of God."

What then does the second half of the contrast mean, that Jesus "was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit... by his resurrection?" Perhaps surprisingly, this is still a reference to the human kingship of Jesus, now come to its climax in a startling way. One key here is the language of being "declared" to be the Son of God. Most naturally, this word (in the Greek) implies that Jesus was designated or appointed the "Son of God in power" at a particular point in time. Of course, if "Son of God in power" refers to the divinity of Jesus, that would imply that Jesus became divine at some point (perhaps along the lines of the deification of Roman emperors). That view denies the eternal divinity of Jesus and has been rightly condemned by the church.

So, in what sense was Jesus designated the "Son of God in power" at his resurrection? It seems best to continue to understand "son of God" along OT lines (as human kingship) and then give full weight to the fact that he became the son of God "in power" by virtue of his "resurrection from the dead." In other words, the human kingship of Jesus, already his as a birthright, was completed and fulfilled at his resurrection when he was glorified as a human being and raised as a human being to sit at the right hand of God the Father. Again, this is not to deny the divinity of Christ. That's crucial for our understanding of who he is. It is simply to say that in Romans 1:3-4 Paul is talking about Jesus's movement from being the anointed but not yet enthroned human (and Davidic) king during his life to being the exalted, glorified, and enthroned human king upon his resurrection from the dead.

Furthermore, this is precisely the pattern Paul explicates for those who belong to Christ later in his letter to the Romans. We'll talk more about Romans 8 and the way in which it applies this pattern to believers in the next post.

Categories: Romans, Eschatology, Spirit, Sonship

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The flesh/Spirit contrast in Jesus

One of my favorite passages in Scripture came up today in my devotional reading. The first four verses of that chapter are a real window into Paul's way of thinking about what we've now come to call "inaugurated eschatology," that whole notion that God's "eschatological" (end-time) purposes have already begun (been "inaugurated") in Christ in a way that spills over into our lives...

I'll begin with a quote from Sinclair Ferguson (via Russell Moore's book, The Kingdom of Christ, p. 48) that summarizes how Romans 1 should be understood in the light of the "already" and the "not yet" (inaugurated eschatology) that I've been discussing on this blog.

Older interpreters read Romans 1:3-4 within the matrix of classical patristic Christology as a statement of the two natures of Christ. But the contrast in view is not between the two natures but the two states of Christ, and more precisely between the two aeons of his existence: "according to the flesh" and "according to the Spirit"; his humiliation and his exaltation. His resurrection thus constitutes him messianic son of God with power; in it he is adopted as the Man of the new age.

Let me unpack that a bit. Romans 1:3-4 speaks of Paul's apostolic call to preach the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord" (ESV).

Note the contrast there. On the one hand, Jesus was born the "Son who was descended from David according to the flesh." On the other hand, Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit..." One could understand this as a contrast between Jesus' human kingship ("descended from David") and his divine kingship ("Son of God in power"). Being descended from David according the flesh would refer to his humanity and being declared the Son of God according the Spirit would refer to his divinity. Understood thus, the passage would set up a contrast between the two natures of Jesus, his humanity and his divinity.

But many evangelical scholars (like Sinclair Ferguson and Russell Moore, hearkening back to works by Gerhaardus Vos, Herman Ridderbos, Richard Gaffin and many others) now believe that a contrast between the two natures of Christ is not the fundamental contrast in this passage. It is not a contrast between his humanity (Son of David according to the flesh) and his divinity (Son of God according the Spirit), but between an earlier "fleshly" state (his pre-resurrection human existence) and a later "Spiritual" state (his post-resurrection human existence). What's more, it's precisely in his passage from one human state or stage to the next that Jesus shows us what it means to be really human. We too were intended to move from the "fleshly" stage to the "Spiritual" stage.

Such an understanding transforms not only our understanding of Romans 1:3-4. It also transforms our understanding of what it meant and means for Christ to be human, what it means for us to be human, and how God has already--in Christ--begun his intended restoration of all creation. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to tell you why we should understand Rom 1:3-4 as a statement of the fulfillment of Jesus' humanity--and an anticipation of the completion of our humanity as well. I'll do that tomorrow.

Categories: Romans, Eschatology, Spirit

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Perfect storms and kingdom theology

For a brief, shining moment sometime early last Saturday afternoon the entire Wilder family was at home. Valerie and I had returned from running camp and Westminster (respectively), John had come home a day early from Boy Scout camp with a stomach bug or food poisoning, Tom had just arrived from the same camp with a newly-broken foot, and Anna Lena had flown up from spending some time with her godmother in Alabama. The rendezvous didn't last long... Nicolien was off to what became a double shift at the hospital (a night-shift nurse didn't show up) and John (now recovered from his stomach issues) was off to visit his cousin in northern Virginia the next day. Valerie left for another running camp on Monday.

If it sounds to you like we may have, uh, overscheduled our summer, I would be inclined to agree. But with four children a camp here and a visit there for each child has a way of swirling and converging into a perfect storm of activity. We define family vacations (and summers) not so much as a change in velocity as a change in venues. After this week we reel everyone back in, though, ready even for the fall to begin and routine (more or less) to return.

This Wilder way of hardly finishing one thing before moving to the next thing is NOT what scholars mean by "already" and the "not yet," however. For that (and to continue my discussion from previous posts) I'll pass along a few choice quotes from Russell Moore's The Kingdom of Christ. First, Russell summarizes the position taken by Carl Henry in his 1947 book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. That book "grappled head-on with the foremost obstacle to evangelical social and political action--namely, the lack of a consensus on the nature of the Kingdom" (pp. 25-26). I've already outlined the difference between dispensationalists, who tended to emphasize the "not yet" aspect of the Kingdom, and the covenantalists, who tended to emphasize the "already" apect (see immediately previous post).

Carl Henry responded to this impasse by maintaining that "evangelical theology must deal with the biblical data, which seems to indicate a Kingdom that has already been inaugurated and yet awaits a future consummation. 'No study of the kingdom teaching of Jesus is adequate unless it recognizes His implication both that the kingdom is here and that is not here'" (p. 30). Thus, Henry "combined the 'already' kingdom emphasis of the covenant theologians with the 'not yet' kingdom expectancy of the dispensationalists, all within an explicit appeal to the kind of inaugurated eschatological framework already being discussed within New Testament theology by biblical scholars such as Oscar Cullman" (p. 31). "Inaugurated eschatology," by the way, is just a fancy way of referring to the way in which things generally considered to be "not yet" (eschatology=last things) have been begun in the present (inaugurated).

Carl Henry did much of his thinking and writing in conversation with another great evangelical scholar of the mid-twentieth century, George Ladd. Here's how Ladd began to put it all together, according to Moore:

Against the debates between the dispensationalists and covenantalists on whether the reign of Christ was best understood as present within the life of the church or the heart of the believer, or future in the millennial Kingdom from a restored Davidic throne, Ladd posited his proposal: the Kingdom has arrived "already" in the person of Jesus and awaits a "not yet" consummation in the millennial Kingdom and in the eternal state. For Ladd, this understanding represented more than just a mediating approach between dispensationalism and covenantal amillennialism. It represented instead an attempt to forge a full-fledged evangelical theology of the Kingdom.

This "already" and "not yet" (inaugurated eschatological) approach has huge implications for how we understand what Christ has already accomplished, how he will finish what he has begun, and how we are to live our lives in the meantime. But all that will have to wait for future posts.

Categories: Eschatology, Moore

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Already and not yet

After a few days' respite here at Westminster, I'll be on the road again today--heading up to Princeton to pick up my daughter from running camp and then back to Charlottesville by this evening. But I should at least begin to deliver on my promise to continue discussing Russell Moore's interesting book, The Kingdom of Christ...

A few posts ago I mentioned Moore's claim that a kind of consensus on the kingdom of God had emerged within evangelicalism. Rejecting a liberal kingdom theology that only seemed to identify the kingdom with enlightened political or social reform, evangelicals also began (according to Moore) to overcome the deep division within their own ranks. Moore claims that this has been achieved (again, mainly at the scholarly level) by a close attention to the biblical character of the kingdom of God, one which is both eschatological and Christocentric. Moore's second chapter picks up the first of those two emphases: "Toward a Kingdom Eschatology: The Kingdom as Already and Not Yet."

Enough ten dollar theological terms? Let me back up and explain some of what all this means. First of all, eschatology is simply a fancy word for "last things." So, typically, when folks have talked about eschatology in the past, they've been referring to things that happen at the end of your life or of the world--things like going to heaven when you die, the second coming, the resurrection, the final judgment, and so forth. If this is what you mean by "eschatology," then of course it has to do with things that haven't happened yet. Eschatology in that understanding has to do with the "Not Yet" side of things.

Classic dispensationalism had its own strong twist on this "Not Yet" understanding of eschatology ("the last things"). For those of you who haven't heard the term "dispensationalism," you'll probably be familiar with some aspect of its teaching. Though it does teach that history is divided into a number of "dispensations" (hence its name), its main distinctive is its emphasis on national Israel. In sum, God's people throughout the ages has been Israel, to whom he promised an earthly kingdom. Jesus offered this kingdom to Israel when he came as its Messiah, but Israel rejected its proper Messiah and so the (earthly) kingdom was postponed. Instead, the church age began, which is itself a parenthesis in God's plans for Israel. At the end, however, the church will be taken up to heaven (the rapture) and God will resume dealing with earthly Israel. Eschatology, then, has to do with all those things that happen at the END, right before the rapture and then afterwards. The church age (presently going on) NOT YET the end. You may recognize this kind of understanding if you're familiar with, say, the Left Behind series.

On the other side of the divide within evangelicalism is the understanding of eschatology (the last things) found within covenant theology. In strong contrast to dispensationalism, covenant theology has always seen continuity between Israel and the church. The church isn't a parenthesis or pause in God's plans while he waits to resume dealing with earthly Israel. Rather, the church is already the fulfillment of God's plans and purposes for Israel, so that there are distinct ways in which God's end-time, eschatological purposes have already begun. This "covenantalist" way of thinking tended to emphasize the ALREADY dimension of God's fulfillment of his purposes in the church, at least vis-a-vis Israel. Of course, it never denied that more was still to come: the second coming, the final judgment, and so forth. However, many of the things dispensationalism reserved for the future (regarding the fulfillent of God's promises to Israel), covenant theology saw as already fulfilled in the present existence of the church.

This brings us then to new evangelical consensus on the already AND the not yet. As we'll see, that perspective emphasizes both dimensions in a more thoroughly biblical way. But that will have to wait for the next post. I need to get up and get busy. I have a full day of driving ahead of me and an apartment to straighten up in the meantime.

Categories: Moore, Eschatology, Dispensationalism, Covenantalism

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Spaghetti westerns and style

I'll get back to my response to The Kingdom of Christ soon. First, however, I can't resist passing along some comments I heard on the radio yesterday, when I happened upon one of Terry Gross's Fresh Air interviews. This time she was speaking with Sir Christopher Frayling, who has now written Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergeo Leone. Sergio Leone is best known as the creator of the spaghetti western genre, beginning with a film that came out the same year as Billy Wilder's Kiss Me Stupid (see my first post): A Fistful of Dollars (starring Clint Eastwood) in 1964...

Frayling made a fascinating comment in the few minutes I listened to the interview Noting the optimistic, "white-hat" persona of the cowboy in American westerns, he pointed to director Sergio Leone's grittier, more pessimistic, "gray-hat" portrayal of cowboys. Thus, asked by a boy why he's helping them, Clint Eastwood's character in Leone's A Fistful of Dollars does not give a John Wayne, "a man's-gotta-do-whatta man's gotta do" response. "What are you doing this for?" the boy asks. "Five hundred dollars," comes the hero's response. It wasn't about doing the right thing. It was just about the money. Beginning with Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, Frayling suggests, it wasn't what you believed in that mattered; it was your style.

It was that comment--on the conquest of truth by style--that so grabbed my attention. A similar online quote of Frayling puts it this way: "thanks to the Dollars films, Hollywood action heroes stopped 'being role models and became style statements. You don't identify with them because of what they believe in but because of what they look like.'" And the influence of Leone's spaghetti westerns continues: "Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Bronson, Bruce Willis start here... all that begins with Fistful of Dollars," says Frayling. "Up till then, heroes were supposed to stand for something. That's the spaghetti western's biggest legacy, whatever the genre."

This is, of course, simply another example of our culture's confusion between truth and style, reality and perception. Style is all that matters. Perception is reality. Or, perhaps, in terms of the old Christian triad of the good, the true, and the beautiful, goodness and truth take a back seat to a rather truncated version of beauty, now defined as "style."

Christianity offers a very different vision. In the biblical worldview outer appearances can be deceiving, both because evil can pass itself off as good and beautiful and because what is good must inevitably, since the fall, emerge within a world still marred and scarred by brokenness, pain, ignorance, and sin. It is thus imperative to distinguish, as much as possible, between perception and reality. Indeed, one might even define faith as the ability to see past the perceptions of this age to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the age to come, already making their appearance in the community of those of who follow the crucified and risen Lord.

But that last sentence needs to be unpacked in light of the points Russell Moore raises in The Kingdom of Christ. I'll try to get back to that tomorrow.

Categories: Movies

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Even more scattered than usual

Every summer it seems to happen at least once: the Wilder family gets blasted in four or five directions at once. This is that week this summer. I'm writing in a coffee shop right around the corner from Westminster Theological Seminary, having dropped my oldest daughter off at a running camp near here yesterday. My two sons are at Scout camp this week and I just talked to my youngest daughter right before she boarded a plane to spend with her godmother and family in Alabama. Nicolien (my wife) is the only one left in Charlottesville.

The logistical feat (those of you with children will appreciate this) is all the more impressive when one considers... that we scattered in our various directions, not from home base, but from my parents' home in North Carolina, where we were celebrating my father's 65th birthday. As far as that goes, I should say that one of my goals is to reach my father's age with something of the same humor, grace, wisdom, and commitment to Christ which he has achieved--and this as the patriarch of a family that has sometimes mistaken its surname for a personal comparative adjective (see first post above).

I'm staying (one might say 'freeloading') now with Mark and Karyn Traphagen, very close friends of Nicolien's and mine from Charlottesville. Mark gave me the grand tour of Westminster Theological Seminary (outside Philadelphia) today. Since I've been an adjunct faculty member there for, oh, five years now, it seemed fitting that I should finally see the campus. I'll be here until Thursday morning and then it's back to North Carolina via the running camp. Before then I hope to get back to my review of Moore's The Kingdom of Christ, but first a bit on spaghetti westerns. The topics are not completely unrelated. But that's for tomorrow.

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