Sunday, October 21, 2007
Self Promotion, New Covenant, and War
Accusations of self promotion seem to be one of the stimulating factors that lead Paul to write another letter to the community in Corinth. His response is to discuss the new covenant in what we know as II Corinthians, chapter 3. What is the connection? Is Paul blowing a smoke screen, bringing up a deep theological discussion to distract us from the sensitive issue of his self congratulatory comments? Just what is the significance of the new covenant?
That is the question. I have friends who have left Adventism over the new covenant and the perception that we Adventists have totally missed the mark. The perception is that since under the new covenant we are saved by Jesus Christ and His grace, Adventist's continued overemphasis on archaic, legalistic laws like the sabbath constitutes an effort to earn salvation. Unfortunately, there are enough legalists in every religion, Adventism included, that this view finds plenty of evidence for corroboration. However, it seems to me that this evangelical perspective grounded in the Biblical (though limited) substitutionary model of atonement and focused on personal salvation also misses the point of the new covenant.
Some background may be helpful. The old covenant has been described as a marriage document(1)between God and the Israelites consisting of some core commandments written by God on tablets of stone and numerous other laws written down separately. Jack Rogers gives this covenant context in his book, Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality.
He writes, "The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt; they had wandered in the desert, subject to attacks from other tribes, starvation, and infectious diseases. The needed cohesiveness, cleanliness, and order in every aspect of their lives. They wanted to keep pure their manner of worshiping God, who had brought them to this land. They were struggling for their own identity. Failure to form a tight knit community could threaten their long-term survival. They needed a code for living.
In response, they developed a Holiness Code to define their religious, civic, and cultural identity. The Holiness Code’s function was to achieve the “holy purity” they sought. Its underlying theme was that they must be separate, different from the Egyptians from whom they had escaped and unmixed with the Canaanite into whose land they had now come. How were they to achieve holy purity?" 2
This raison d'etre resonates with my own appreciation of the 10 commandments as primarily designed to maintain a community in relationship with God and one another. The old covenant then was an agreement between God and Israel dealing with community and relationships.
Then, moving us into the present, God incarnate lives, teaches, dies, and lives again and this changes everything, or does it? Jesus inaugurates the new covenant and sends the Holy Spirit. The results are seen in the gospels, especially Luke, and become increasingly evident in Acts. The narrowly defined holy community of Jews has the doors blown off and the line of demarcation between those in and those out keeps expanding until nobody is excluded.
The new covenant is not so much a change in substance as it is a change in dimension. The law previously written on tablets of stone for the Jews is now written on human hearts for the world. This good news prompts Peter Storey to write, "When Christ was nailed to the cross, he nailed us to our neighbors, breaking down the divisions between us. All Christians, whether pacifists or proponents of the "just war" theory, are bound to acknowledge that for those who follow Jesus, all wars are civil wars. All wars, everywhere, are a form of fratricide."
Every war whether fought for freedom, over borders, across pews, or from competing ideologies is a sibling rivalry. Those who we like to consider "other" (elderly, muslim, female, homosexual, black, etc.) could better be described as "brother" and "sister," possibly estranged but related non-the-less. This is the good news and the big change in the new covenant.
When there is genuine unity amidst diversity in a community, this is evidence of God's life-changing grace. Paul recognizes that and responds to accusations of self endorsement by pointing to the community in Corinth struggling with sin and fighting over theology yet growing in love and he says, "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (3)
1. Rob Bell, Sex God
2. I found this insightful quote in a discussion on the Spectrum Blog about a new documentary, "For the Bible Tells me So." Thanks Stephen!
3. II Corinthians 3:2-3 (NRSV)
That is the question. I have friends who have left Adventism over the new covenant and the perception that we Adventists have totally missed the mark. The perception is that since under the new covenant we are saved by Jesus Christ and His grace, Adventist's continued overemphasis on archaic, legalistic laws like the sabbath constitutes an effort to earn salvation. Unfortunately, there are enough legalists in every religion, Adventism included, that this view finds plenty of evidence for corroboration. However, it seems to me that this evangelical perspective grounded in the Biblical (though limited) substitutionary model of atonement and focused on personal salvation also misses the point of the new covenant.
Some background may be helpful. The old covenant has been described as a marriage document(1)between God and the Israelites consisting of some core commandments written by God on tablets of stone and numerous other laws written down separately. Jack Rogers gives this covenant context in his book, Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality.
He writes, "The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt; they had wandered in the desert, subject to attacks from other tribes, starvation, and infectious diseases. The needed cohesiveness, cleanliness, and order in every aspect of their lives. They wanted to keep pure their manner of worshiping God, who had brought them to this land. They were struggling for their own identity. Failure to form a tight knit community could threaten their long-term survival. They needed a code for living.
In response, they developed a Holiness Code to define their religious, civic, and cultural identity. The Holiness Code’s function was to achieve the “holy purity” they sought. Its underlying theme was that they must be separate, different from the Egyptians from whom they had escaped and unmixed with the Canaanite into whose land they had now come. How were they to achieve holy purity?" 2
This raison d'etre resonates with my own appreciation of the 10 commandments as primarily designed to maintain a community in relationship with God and one another. The old covenant then was an agreement between God and Israel dealing with community and relationships.
Then, moving us into the present, God incarnate lives, teaches, dies, and lives again and this changes everything, or does it? Jesus inaugurates the new covenant and sends the Holy Spirit. The results are seen in the gospels, especially Luke, and become increasingly evident in Acts. The narrowly defined holy community of Jews has the doors blown off and the line of demarcation between those in and those out keeps expanding until nobody is excluded.
The new covenant is not so much a change in substance as it is a change in dimension. The law previously written on tablets of stone for the Jews is now written on human hearts for the world. This good news prompts Peter Storey to write, "When Christ was nailed to the cross, he nailed us to our neighbors, breaking down the divisions between us. All Christians, whether pacifists or proponents of the "just war" theory, are bound to acknowledge that for those who follow Jesus, all wars are civil wars. All wars, everywhere, are a form of fratricide."
Every war whether fought for freedom, over borders, across pews, or from competing ideologies is a sibling rivalry. Those who we like to consider "other" (elderly, muslim, female, homosexual, black, etc.) could better be described as "brother" and "sister," possibly estranged but related non-the-less. This is the good news and the big change in the new covenant.
When there is genuine unity amidst diversity in a community, this is evidence of God's life-changing grace. Paul recognizes that and responds to accusations of self endorsement by pointing to the community in Corinth struggling with sin and fighting over theology yet growing in love and he says, "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (3)
1. Rob Bell, Sex God
2. I found this insightful quote in a discussion on the Spectrum Blog about a new documentary, "For the Bible Tells me So." Thanks Stephen!
3. II Corinthians 3:2-3 (NRSV)
Labels: Acts, Adventist, community, Corinthians, Epicenter, Jesus, law, religion, unity
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Kohlberg and the Law
The Israelite community was learning to crawl out from under hundreds of years of slavery and oppression. In order to facilitate their progress, God met them where they were at and blessed them with the law. Or, as Paul puts it in Galatians 3:21 and 3:24 "Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring would come to whom the promise had been made.... Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith."
The disciplinarian referred to by Paul was a slave who would follow a child to school and keep him in line with a rod. Paul then is asking, "Now that you have developed to a higher level of moral reasoning and spiritual understanding why would you ever want to go back?" This is similar to asking an adult who grew up with a stick wielding Roman disciplinarian, "Now that you are a responsible adult with a job and a family, why would you ever want to go back to having a disciplinarian follow you to work and keep you in line with a rod?" (Not that there aren't a few adults who might actually need and benefit from this!)
A few years ago my friend Yung Lau introduced me to the concept that much of the law (including and perhaps especially the 10 commandments) functions at the base level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development. As we proceded to read through the Pentateuch with this thought in mind it became apparent that there were statements dealing with every stage of moral development all the way up to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" which correspond to the most advanced level of Kohlberg's stages.
Paul goes on in verses 25-28, "But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Jesus came and declared the Kingdom of God is here with its basis in the universal ethical principle of love. Paul ran with that good news and encouraged everyone else to keep up and run with him in God's new universal community.
The disciplinarian referred to by Paul was a slave who would follow a child to school and keep him in line with a rod. Paul then is asking, "Now that you have developed to a higher level of moral reasoning and spiritual understanding why would you ever want to go back?" This is similar to asking an adult who grew up with a stick wielding Roman disciplinarian, "Now that you are a responsible adult with a job and a family, why would you ever want to go back to having a disciplinarian follow you to work and keep you in line with a rod?" (Not that there aren't a few adults who might actually need and benefit from this!)
A few years ago my friend Yung Lau introduced me to the concept that much of the law (including and perhaps especially the 10 commandments) functions at the base level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development. As we proceded to read through the Pentateuch with this thought in mind it became apparent that there were statements dealing with every stage of moral development all the way up to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" which correspond to the most advanced level of Kohlberg's stages.
Paul goes on in verses 25-28, "But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Jesus came and declared the Kingdom of God is here with its basis in the universal ethical principle of love. Paul ran with that good news and encouraged everyone else to keep up and run with him in God's new universal community.
Labels: Epicenter, Galatians, gospel, Jesus, law, religion
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