Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards.

In Chapter 1, Kyle paints a portrait of the goal toward which the Christian Life is drawn: the beatific vision. “Life is a pilgrimage of faith that dissolves into sight,” he writes. “That sight is the beatific vision.” Seeing God transcends merely visual perception. As Kyle points out, “To see God is to become like God” for in seeing God we come to know him in fullness.

Truly seeing God is grasping him as the highest good, truth and beauty. It is having your eyes opened and  taking in the reality of who he is. It is receiving the love of God in full and having God as the object of your own love. As Henry Scougal notes, ‘The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.’ What you love is the true north that orients the compass of your heart. In heaven, God the Father is the true north of every soul, oriented by Christ and set into motion by the Spirit of God

[The beatific vision] happifies because it fulfills the purpose of human persons – to know God and love him. It is the culmination of salvation where God pulls his children to himself and communes with them for eternity (pp. 25, 27).

I’d like to make a comment on some of the pertinent doctrinal dynamics here, but in relation to the condition and conduct of the human person more than an official national position on the content of marriage. Interaction on the inner workings of doctrine and ethics at this nexus is welcome, though without the vitriol injected into so many blog threads that touch on this subject.

For those interested in maintaining a classical Christian sexual ethic, the contemporary discussions and debates are a forceful reminder that the perceived plausibility of such an ethic stands or falls with a willingness to make peace with the doctrines of Adamic headship and original sin. ‘Born-this-way’ Lady Gaga-ism wins the day unless one is able to assimilate the teaching that someone else (i.e., Adam) represented us and made a decision (i.e., rebelled against God in the Garden) whereby the rest of us incur guilt before our Maker, inherit a corrupted nature with all manner of spiritual, psychological, physiological, and moral maladies, and are still left responsible before God to resist certain innate tendencies (sexual or otherwise), repenting of sin, calling upon the name of the Lord to be saved, and seeking by the grace and power of the Spirit to grow in holiness.

The momentum of the born-this-way ethic is also inversely proportional to a laying hold of the Christian hope of new creation. If this life is in fact all there is to human existence, then it becomes more difficult to persuade anyone that in some cases it is unwise to do as one tends to want to do. On the other hand, if this life eventually culminates in giving an account before the holy judge of all the earth and then (for believers, anyway) gives way to the blessed hope of life in the new creation, then one has considerable theological and moral traction in contending that the disciplining of desire according to the will of God is the way forward in this fallen world.

To the extent that in the so-called ‘millennial’ generation modern individualism and idealization of autonomy have only been amplified, are there thoughts on ways in which the teaching of original sin and the ancestral solidarity it presupposes might be driven home once more? How might all of us, whatever our default sins may be, walk the fine line of 1) showing kindness to those with innate tendencies that lead to sinful acts and that were at the same time unsolicited tendencies and 2) maintaining that each person remains responsible before God for their sin?

John Webster is widely recognized as one of the very best theologians in the world. He has a stellar reputation as a scholar, author, and communicator, and is an outstanding servant of both the academy and the church. His major current projects promise to be of immense significance for the shape of English-language theology in the years ahead. John has long had collaborative links with several colleagues in the School, and I am absolutely delighted that he will now be joining us at St Mary’s College, where his research, teaching, and supervision of graduate students will add considerably to our established strengths in several areas. Professor Webster’s appointment further reinforces the reputation of St Andrews as one of the world’s most dynamic centres for theological and biblical scholarship.

Our first discussion centered almost entirely on Yong’s method. He worries that traditional interpretation of Scripture has been oppressive of disabled individuals because it operates from what he calls a “normate” (i.e. non-disabled) perspective.

According to Yong, “normate bias” is the “unexamined prejudices that non-disabled people have toward disability and toward people who have them. These assumptions function normatively so that the inferior status of people with disabilities is inscribed into our consciousness” (11). This normate bias, or “ableist worldview,” influences our interpretation of Scripture and leads to theologies of disability which confirm, support, and extend our assumptions about normalcy, abledness, and capability. Thus, to challenge our normate bias and question our presuppositions about disability, Yong offers an interpretation of Scripture and theological perspective on disability that is specifically “derived from the experience of disability.“

I posed the following question to my students: why is perspective so important to Yong? Wouldn’t someone suppose that the biblical text is the biblical text regardless of your context as an interpreter? “Well”, Yong might say, “Yes, but…” The biblical text may remain the “same” for every reader in one sense – the words run in the same order – , but in another sense the experiential context of the interpreter varies considerably. For Yong, the interpretation of Scripture is determinately influenced by the reader’s perspective and experiences. And the problem with “traditional” interpretations of Scripture, he argues, is that they reflect “normate” biases arising from non-disabled experience rather than the unique experience of the disabled.

Yong’s approach is entirely consistent with many late twentieth-century theologies that take self-consciously contextual approaches. “All theology is partial and particular,” David Ford reminds us, “arising and speaking to historical, social, and political contexts in which the theologians are interested parties” (Modern Theologians, p. 429). This has always been the case. However, in the twentieth-century self-consciously contextual theologies arose which deliberately adopted standpoints that had previously existed only at the margins. Contextual theologies explicitly arise from and speak to a specific social and political context.  Late modern contextual theologies are distinctive because they embrace their particular perspective (context) in order to explore the Christian faith through it and for it (e.g. liberation, black, feminist, etc.).

In this sense Yong’s theology of disability is a kind of liberation theology: it self-consciously reads the Christian faith through the experience of the disabled and does so for the disabled community. As Yong writes,

I am seeking to challenge the normate presupposition that people with disabilities are charity cases who lack the presence of God until able-bodied people bring such to them. My goal, therefore, is to overturn such ableism precisely so that God’s presence and activity can be recognized and received through all people (p. 140)

Here is an example. In chapter five Yong addresses Christ’s return and the resurrection of the body. He asks the question, what does “there will be no more tears” (Rev. 21) mean for the disabled? Part of Yong’s answer includes exegesis of Hebrews 2 and 5. He argues that traditional interpretations of these texts reveal normate expectations and biases and that such readings are not as “amenable to a disability inclusive” understanding of Christ’s incarnated life. Normate readings of these texts merely emphasize Jesus’ fully humanity and his participation in the pain of human experience even to death (p. 126). A disability perspective, however, emphasizes “Jesus’ very real vulnerability and helplessness” (p. 127) and stresses that Jesus “entered into the experience of disability” not because he was physically disabled himself; instead, he is able to identify with the disabled because he entered their situation “through his suffering, persecution, and execution at the hands of others” (126). From Yong’s standpoint, we see such insights only when these texts are read from and for the context of the disabled.

Our biblical texts this week were from Luke (Jesus’ sending of the 72) and the reading was Nouwen’s Adam: God’s Beloved. The book is an extended reflection on a man Nouwen knew from his time at the L’Arche Daybreak Community. As the book jacket describes, “In the eyes of the world [Adam] was a complete nobody. And yet, for Henri Nouwen he became ‘my friend, my teacher, and my guide.’ It was Adam who led Nouwen to a new understanding of his Christian faith and what it means to be Beloved of God.”

The student who led us through the material works in group homes for the mentally disabled, so his engagement with the reading was intensely personal. I found my reading of the text no less personal but for different reasons. The acceptance of God and his unconditional love which Nouwen learned from Adam resonates deeply with my own struggles as a scholar. Vocational expectations and career comparison so quickly threaten to overwhelm my sense of self. As Nouwen says, “While I was preoccupied with the way I was talked about or written about, Adam was quietly telling me that “God’s love is more important than the praise of people.” A timely reminder.

Could Adam pray? Did he know who God is and what the Name of Jesus means? Did he understand the mystery of God among us? For a long time I thought about these questions. For a long time I was curious about how much of what I knew, Adam could know, and how much of what I understood, Adam could understand. But now I see these were for me questions from “below,” questions that reflected more about my anxiety and uncertainty than God’s love. God’s questions, the questions from “above” were, “Can you let Adam lead you in prayer? Can you believe that I am in deep communion with Adam and that his life is a prayer? Can you let Adam be a living prayer at your table? Can you see my face in the face of Adam?”

And while I, a so-called “normal” person, kept wondering how much Adam was life me, he had no ability or need to make any comparisons. He simply lived and by his life invited me to receive his unique gift, wrapped in weakness but given for my transformation. While I tended to worry about what I did and how much I could produce, Adam was announcing to me that “being is more important than doing.” While I was preoccupied with the way I was talked about or written about, Adam was quietly telling me that “God’s love is more important than the praise of people.” While I was concerned about my individual accomplishments, Adam was reminding me that “doing things together is more important than doing things alone.” Adam couldn’t produce anything, had no fame to be proud of, couldn’t brag of any award or trophy. But by his very life, he was the most radical witness to the truth of our lives that I have ever encountered” (Adam: God’s Beloved, p. 55-56).

Here is an excerpt from the closing, slightly revised because I didn’t say it quite as I would have liked this morning (certainly not the first or the last time that will happen!):

There is just one more thing we shouldn’t miss. John records a final few words between Jesus and Thomas. It seems they were meant less for Thomas than for all those who would come after him. These words are for the first readers of John’s Gospel and every audience after. They are for us. Echoing his prayer in John 17:20, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

It brings us back to that question: What is required of those being sent from their encounter with the resurrected Jesus? What is required of you and me? We have not been privileged to encounter the risen Christ in his physical form on Easter morning as they did. But we are sent, so what kind of “seeing” is required of us?

The seeing required of those who are sent is the mode of seeing that the biblical writers describe as “faith.” Faith is not blindness nor is it simple seeing. Rather, faith is the particular way of seeing that corresponds to the way in which God reveals himself. The author of Hebrews says that faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (11:1). While there seems here to be no sight involved in faith, just a few verses later it says that faith is a matter of seeing but seeing that which is promised  “from a distance” (11:13).  Faith is seeing, but it is not the mode of physical seeing the disciples were privileged to have prior to their sending.

This does not mean that faith is insufficient. Its sufficiency, however, depends not ultimately on us but on faith’s object. When it comes to seeing and being sent, the good news of Easter is that we are carried along by one whose faith is stronger than ours could ever be; we are carried along by the risen, ascended Christ who intercedes for us even now. What matters most about faith is not its strength, resilience, or depth, but its object: the living God of the covenant whose will to redeem, restore, and heal will not be routed, defeated, or contained – not even by death. Our faith clings to the ascended Christ who takes our worship, prayers, and our struggles of faith and gives us grace in our need (Heb. 4; Rom. 8:34).

Our faith clings to the one who does not leave us to work things out but gives us his Spirit who prays for us when our faith falters and our words run dry. He is the guarantee that what he began in us he will complete (Phil. 1:6). Jesus is risen; to those who are his, his Spirit is given; to those who are not his, his Spirit is active to convict and to call.

Something other than physical sight is required of us, and that something more is what God has always provided, even when it led him to the cross: he gives us himself. For those who would not see as the disciples did, the risen Christ sustains our faith even now. Jesus Christ is not only the object of our faith, but its source, its sustainer, and its Perfecter. Through the ongoing, unending, will-not-be-stopped work of the risen Christ in our lives, we have what we need as we are sent. And for that, we celebrate Easter morning.

The following sermon was preached on Good Friday at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, in April 2001. The sermon was titled “The Triumph of Divine Resolve,” and its text was Isaiah 53:6, 10.

We end these thoughts on Holy Week where we began: with the central truth that what has taken place in the week that has passed, and what has taken place supremely at the event of the crucifixion is the outworking of the will of God. To the participants and bystanders, no doubt, everything seemed very far from that, just another muddle in a place inflamed with strife. And to the followers of Jesus, the little rag-tag caravan of men and women who found themselves attached to him, it was nothing short of disaster. Yet Isaiah speaks of the putting to death of the Lord’s servant as God’s will – as the outworking of the eternal purpose of God, as no accident but rather the placed where we are to learn to see God’s resolve, undeflected, undefeated, utterly effective. How can this be so? What is this divine resolve which is set before us here, in the affliction and grief of the servant of God?

It is the eternal resolve to be our reconciler. What is enacted in this miserable little drama is God’s plan and purpose to live in fellowship with us – God’s will that he will be our God, and that we will be his people. Fellowship with God is what human beings are for. That is, we flourish as human beings if we live in free and joyful and humble relation to God. To be human is to be in relation to God; and that relation to God is not a sort of added extra, something to supplement our lives: it is the core of being human; it is the way in which we are properly alive. We are alive and truly human as we live in and from that fellowship.

For this fellowship God makes us. But at the core of Scripture’s presentation of this fellowship is the devastating fact that it has broken down: the life-giving bond between God and his human creatures has been smashed to pieces; we have chosen to try and live outside fellowship, and so estranged ourselves from God. Fellowship is replaced by alienation, God’s friendship with God’s wrath. Isaiah puts it thus: “we have turned – every one – to his own way” (53:6). That is, there has been a great turning in human life, not a turning towards God but a contrary turn, a swerve away from God and towards ourselves, a veering away from fellowship and towards a way of living which is of our own making. We chose what Isaiah calls “our own way.” [...]

All this is what we make of ourselves – it is our iniquity, our transgression. And it is our misery: we get what we want – we want life without fellowship with God, and that is what we get, only instead of giving us life and freedom, it turns out to lead to our destruction. We make ourselves; and precisely in making ourselves we destroy ourselves. Now the passion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Lord’s servant, is the way in which God says no to this whole chaos which we have unleashed on ourselves. At the cross of Jesus Christ, God arrests the whole course of our sin; God sets aside finally, once for all, the entire mad project in which we try to be our own masters; God overthrows sin. God does not leave us to our devices; God refuses our refusal of him; above all, God maintains and re-establishes with us that fellowship in which alone we can live and flourish. God alone can do this. We cannot help ourselves. But God can, and does, come to our assistance….God takes flesh, our fallen, sinful, accursed existence as sinners, and takes our lot upon himself. [...]

How does this change the course of human life? In this way: by becoming one of us, by absorbing into himself the full extent of our sin, God destroys sin. God sets aside a whole world, the world we have made for ourselves, and God puts in its place a new world, the world of the new creation. In that world, we are set free from sin, and set free to live in fellowship with God. Good Friday, and its final outworking on Easter Day, is the new creation, the re-creation of the world. It’s the point at which the world and all humankind are made new. We can’t do this; we can’t undo the knot we have tied. But God can: God has power and authority to make new, and in the passion of his Son performs this ultimate act of mercy, bearing our iniquities and so setting us free. And for us, this means that we become righteous. That is, we are put back in relation to God. Fellowship, friendship with God, is restored – not by us, but by God himself. We no longer turn to our own way; God himself turns us back to himself.

Good Friday is thus the triumph of grace, the triumph of reconciliation over enmity, the victory of life. On this day, in the hand of Jesus the Son and servant of God, the will of the Lord prospers.

We may not, however, leave matters there. For these things of which we read and speak and not the business of other people only: they are our business. These matters concern us. The Lord has laid on him not just others sins, but sins of us all, and therefore our sins. What took place there and then is comprehensively true; its claim and its effectiveness are universal; none of us is free to think that we are passed over in this affair. The gospel addresses each of us: “You, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death” (Col. 1:21-22a). If that’s true – if it really is true that in the passion of Christ God has reconciled us to himself – then the most basic act of human life is simply to acknowledge that this is so. We are not at enmity with God; we are not trapped by wickedness; we are not under condemnation; we are reconciled to God.

Part of us, of course, refuses to acknowledge that, because we don’t want to be reconciled to God. We prefer, still, to turn to our own ways. However absurd and lifeless and hurtful it may be for us, we prefer to pretend that we are not reconciled to God. Another part of us dare not acknowledge that we are all people are reconciled to God – we cannot conceive that the gospel can be so good that it will deal with our sins, too. But the unbelief or guilt or fear that hold us back, count for nothing. God has taken from us the power to live apart from him. We will not stop him prospering. The Lord’s Servant will see his offspring. And of all that – that unbelievably gracious promise – Easter Day is the promise and security. Jesus Christ, God’s servant, reigns – at his cross, and on the day of his resurrection, and now as he is preeminent in all things. And that is why we call this Good Friday.

I am co-chairing a conference in October 2013 that will be hosted by the the Kuyers Institute for Christian teaching and Learning (www.pedagogy.net) on Virtues, Vices, and Teaching. The conference will be held at Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI), October 3-5. See below for registration information and details for the call for papers.

The purpose of this conference is to explore the implications of a focus on virtues and vices for the way Christian teaching and learning are approached. Discussions of virtues and vices direct our attention away from rules and consequences and toward the role of character.

The scope of the conference is not restricted to moral education per se; papers are invited on topics that connect virtue/vice in general or specific virtues and vices with learning in any discipline or area of educational activity. Papers should focus on some aspect of pedagogy; both theoretical studies and accounts of practice are welcome. Questions that might be explored include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• What virtues and vices are evident in, or influence, our teaching and students’ learning?

• Can we teach virtues? Do we teach vices?

• How might a focus on virtues and vices help students in their vocation as Christian learners?

• How might a focus on virtues and vices affect our approach to curriculum and pedagogy?

• In what ways might the question of virtues and vices arise within the pedagogy of various disciplines?

Plenary Speakers include:

Jennifer Herdt (Yale), author of Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices

L. Gregory Jones (Duke), author of Forgiving As We’ve Been Forgiven: Community Practices for Making Peace

David Naugle (Dallas Baptist), author of Reordered Love, Reordered Lives:Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness

Paper proposals of 1-2 pages, including 100-word abstracts‚ should be sent via e-mail to seminars@calvin.edu no later than May 15, 2013.  Notification of acceptance will be made by June 3, 2013.  Additional information is available under the Conferences section at www.calvin.edu/scs/.

Writing…is often the source of great pain and anxiety. It is remarkable how hard it is for students to sit down quietly and trust their own creativity. There seems to be a deep-seated resistance to writing. I have experienced this resistance myself over and over again. Even after many years of writing, I experience real fear when I face the empty page. Why am I so afraid? Sometimes I have an imaginary reader in mind who is looking over my shoulder and rejecting very word I write down. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the countless books and articles that have already been written and I cannot imagine that I have anything to say that hasn’t already been said better by someone else. Sometimes it seems that every sentence fails to express what I really want to say and that written words simply cannot hold what goes on in my mind and heart. So there are many fears and not seldom they paralyze me and make me delay or even abandon my writing plans. [...]

Most students of theology think that writing means writing down ideas, insights, or visions. They feel that they first must have something to say before they can put it on paper. For them, writing is little more than recording a pre-existent thought. But with this approach, true writing is impossible. Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do no know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves, “I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write.” Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to “give away” on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches (Seeds of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader, 29-30).

The play is intelligently written and explores religiosity and faith, suffering and mystery, human relationships and longing (and more). The plot revolves around the slow unraveling of Steve, a highly religious Christian seeking to make it big in Florida, and the slow awakening of everyone around Steve. Even though Steve is a caricature of conservative, prosperity-Gospel Christianity, the play itself, in my mind, is not really about Christianity at all.

What does it mean to be human, together? What does belief entail? How are we certain about anything? In the midst of grief, confusion, and mystery, where can “grace” be found? For instance, there is a fascinating scene in which Sam, a scientist who doesn’t believe in God, tells Steve about space probes that gather and send data back to earth. Steve is ultra confident in God’s will for his financial prosperity, but as Steve’s life rapidly spins out of control his confidence wanes. Where is grace found? In the muck and mire of life what can he really know?

SAM: Space is a tremendous distance that you have to get information across in time. That’s the problem with space.

STEVE: Time.

SAM. Yes. How can we know what we need to know…in time – when what we need to know has to come from so far away.

STEVE: How can you?

SAM: You can’t. Ultimately. You can’t.

STEVE: Huh. That’s fascinating.

Steve is unsettled about Sam’s space probes because, for Steve, faith in God entails complete certainty about everything. For Steve, there simply is no mystery, nothing that remains inexplicable. Shortly later in the same scene:

STEVE: You talk about these distances you can never get across, “Oh poor us, space and time, its so far.” When you’re in the Lord, Sam, there is no space and time. Everyone knows everything.

Through a series of events which force Steve to “know” that he can’t “know” as suspected, Steve’s life quickly comes apart. As others awaken to mysterious “grace” in the midst of the tangible relationships around them, Steve refuses to listen or see what is happening at arms reach. What he can’t understand and can’t control he ultimately destroys.

I’m curious, if you saw the play on Broadway, what themes stood out to you? What was the overall sense of the play’s direction as you walked out of the theater? Did your view change after you mulled it over?