More of what's new in pneumatology

In a recent article, "Poured out on all Flesh," Pentecostal scholar Amos Yong suggests that "Christian systematic theology itself can benefit from a pneumatological (as opposed to creational or christological) reframing, a ‘starting with the Spirit’, as it were." This move to "start with the Spirit" is not an idea that originated with him; he notes that it has been suggested in the works of Henry van Dusen (Spirit, Son and Father: Christian Faith in the Light of the Holy Spirit, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), J.V. Taylor (The Go-between God: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Mission, Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1973), Clark Pinnock (Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit, Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1996), and my dissertation advisor, Lyle Dabney (Starting with the Spirit: Task of Theology Today II, ed. Gordon Preece and Stephen Pickard, Adelaide, Australia: Australia Theological Forum, Inc., 2001).

A name that should be added to that list is Stephen Bevans, who in "God Inside Out: Notes Toward a Missionary Theology of the Holy Spirit," writes "I’ve come to see that it is indeed the Spirit that we know first, who precedes Jesus not only in our own lives but in the history of the world and in cultures which have not known him." [Props to Kelly Fryer for pointing me toward this article when I met her at the recent Southeast Michigan Synod Assembly where she was the keynote speaker].

Congratulations, Pastor Phetsamone Vannavong!

Two weeks ago, it was my honor to preach at the ordination and installation of Phetsamone Vannavong, who has been called to serve as pastor (alongside of Pastor Donna Brown--who is pictured to the right of Phetsamone and his wife, Inthaly in the photo) of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I served from 2000-2005.

Phetsamone came to St. Paul's in the fall of 2001 with the desire to reach out with the gospel to the Lao immigrant population in Milwaukee. In 2002, St. Paul's voted to establish a Lao Ministry as part of their neighborhood outreach. Phetsamone was hired as part-time minister to the Lao community in Milwaukee while preparing for ordination in the ELCA through the TEEM (Theological Education for Emerging Ministries) process. It was wonderful to be a part of the beginning of this ministry at St. Paul's which under Phetsamone's leadership is steadily growing. My prayers are with him, Inthaly, Donna, and the Lao- and English-speaking members of St. Paul's as they continue to respond in faith to Jesus' command to "Go and make disciples of all nations!"

What's new in pneumatology

In the recent issue of Trinity's alumni magazine, Te Deum, I was the featured faculty member to offer some theological book recommendations. Two of my recommendations were in the area of pneumatology--an often neglected topic in Lutheran theology and one of my particular scholarly interests. One is the important work by Michael Welker, God as Spirit. The basic outline of Welker's book can be found in his earlier article in Theology Today, "The Holy Spirit." The other is the excellent resource Advents of the Spirit: An Introduction to the Current Study of Pneumatology, ed. by Bradford Hinze and Lyle Dabney. Dabney was my dissertation director at Marquette University. For an introduction to his concept of a "theology of the third article," check out these on-line articles and papers: "Jürgen Moltmann and John Wesley's Third Article Theology," "The Church as a Community of (Un)Common Grace: Toward a Postmodern Ecclesiology," and "The Possibility of God: The Spirit in God’s Creation and in God."

For a helpful review of what is new in pneumatology, check out "Current Trends in Pneumatology" by LeRon Shults, professor of theology at Adger University in Kristiansand, Norway. This is a draft of a paper he gave at the Nordic Conference in Systematic Theology in January 2007. Shults is a prolific Reformed theologian whom I met at the Future of Lutheran Theology Conference in Aarhus, Denmark back in January 2003. I also recommend checking out his blog where you can read what he is working on (and much, much, more!). For a survey of feminist pneumatologies, check out "Feminist Voices on the Spirit of God" by Helen Bergin.

Suggested reading for Holy Week

As we enter into the mystery of Holy Week, it seems appropriate to be thinking about atonement theories (that, and I've been teaching them in my systematic theology class!). Most seminarians are familiar with Gustaf Aulen's typology of atonement theories (the Latin theory (debt or penal satisfaction), the subjective theory (moral example) and the classic theory (ransom or Christus Victor); however, there are many newer theories vying for consideration. I've been interested to learn more about the non-violent atonement theory of Dennis Weaver and S. Mark Heim's interpretation of the Girardian scapegoat theory [and his critique of the classic theories]. Both authors have also published book-length treatments of their theories. Several other recent contributions are reviewed by David Heim in "Rethinking the Death of Jesus: Cross Purposes." One of the reviewed authors, Hans Boersma, offers a reappraisal of the penal substitutional theory. Anselm's debt satisfaction theory also is defended against its feminist critiques by Flora Keshgegian.

I have always thought Abelard's theory is worth revisiting, if for no other reason than it has been unfairly characterized as being "merely subjective." Richard A. Weingert, who while acknowledging a subjective element to Abelard’s understanding of the atonement, defends him against charges that his understanding is Pelagian in that it is merely subjective or exemplarist. He writes, “Abailard’s stress on reconciliation, the New Testament metaphor which best summarizes his consideration of Christ’s work, refutes both the charge of Pelagianism and any interpretation which makes his teaching Pelagian in character. . . It is God who reconciles men to himself, God who has eternally loved man, and acts in Jesus Christ to overcome the alienation that separates man from himself.” Cf. Weingart, The Logic of Divine Love: A Critical Analysis of the Soteriology of Peter Abailard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 203. Thomas Williams makes the same point in his forthcoming entry, "Sin, Redemption and Grace in Abelard" in the new Cambridge Companion to Abelard.

Abelard's critique is that Anselm seems to emphasize God’s justice at the expense of his love and mercy. Abelard wants to see the cross as a revelation of God’s love—a love that changed the very fabric of the universe and thereby changing us. It has always struck me that Ablelard at his best is very Johannine. Let me illustrate what I mean with this sermon I preached last year in Gloria Dei on the Fifth Sunday in Lent (John 12:20-33).

Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our gospel lesson today begins with what appears to be an evangelism opportunity. Some Greeks want to meet Jesus so they seek out one of his disciples, Philip, with their request. What follows seems, well, a bit odd, as these seekers fall into the background (we’re not even sure they get to see Jesus!) and Jesus says what feels at first like a bunch of non-sequiturs.

And yet his words evoke all the major themes we’ve heard already in this season of Lent: discipleship and self-giving (“whoever serves me must follow me,” “those who love their life will lose it”), and the necessity of his death (“unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies”), even to the point of describing his death on the cross as “being lifted up” just as he did in the conversation with Nicodemus that we heard in last week’s gospel lesson.

But Jesus’ words are more than a summary: something new is happening here. This is a turning point in John’s gospel. The key is in Jesus’ statement: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Several times in John’s gospel, Jesus states that his house has not yet come, three times in fact: in chapter 2 (when his mother asks him for help at the wedding of Cana), and then later on in chapters 7 and 8, Jesus gets into trouble with the authorities but avoids arrest in each case because “his hour had not yet come.”

But now, Jesus says, his hour is here. His hour, of course, refers to the hour of his death—for he has just entered the city of Jerusalem, where he will be crucified. Although we don’t observe the event of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem until next Sunday (as we too, acclaim him with palms and shouts of “Hosanna!”), in John’s gospel, this happens right before the verses we read for today.

Jesus has entered the city of Jerusalem in order to die and it is at this point that some Greeks—outsiders to the Jewish faith—approach his disciples, wishing to see him. Now as I said a moment ago, at first it does not seem like he answers their question—that is, until you get to the last verse: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” It is as if Jesus is saying, “So they want to see me? Tell them to look at the cross. Tell them to watch me suffer and die for the world. THAT is where I will be glorified. That is how I will draw all people to myself.”

Jesus describes his death as “drawing people” to himself. The Greek word for “draw” does not mean “draw” in the sense of attracting someone by beauty or power. It is much more forceful than that. It means physically compelling someone to go where they may not want to do (like the doctor’s office). It is used of “hauling” in nets full of fish (John 21:6, 11) and of “dragging” Paul and Silas before the authorities (Acts 16:19).

So how does Jesus’ death “draw” us to him? Being “drawn” to Jesus is probably not how most of us interpret the event of the cross. Most of us grew up learning an interpretation of Jesus’ death that goes something like this: when Jesus died on the cross, he took the punishment for our sins, he paid the penalty, so we would not have to. Salvation is defined in the negative—it means you WON’T get something (what you rightly deserve for your sin!)—sort of a “get out of jail free” card (only it’s hell, not jail, that you are spared!). That is still the most prevalent theory of Jesus’ death, as you probably know—theologians call it the penal substitutionary theory—Jesus stands as our “substitute,” taking our just punishment upon himself.

As you may have guessed by now, I have never liked this particular theory of Jesus’ death and so it seems, neither does the Evangelist John. There is no mention in John’s gospel of Jesus’ death being some sort of payment that buys us sinners freedom from the penalty of sin. Jesus is not presented as a victim whose death is understood as the sacrifice necessary to atone for human guilt.

Jesus speaks of his death in a very different way in John’s gospel. His death draws all people to himself. On the cross, Jesus draws to himself NOT our sins, not the punishment we deserve, but US. We are drawn (hauled, if you will!) to the cross, but for what, you ask? So that we—our whole selves—could die with him.

As St. Paul says in Romans chapter 6, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death. Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

We are buried with him, not as an end in itself, but so that we might experience a new life. Kind of like the seed of grain Jesus talked about. “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” What is buried? Our old selves—including the sin that separates us from God and each other—but so for the purpose of being “put to death,” NOT punished. Salvation is not about being “off the hook” for wrongs we have done; it is about being given a chance to experience a new self and a new life in spite of our sin!

And yet something IS buried—our old self, our old way of doing things. The seed that does not fall into the earth and die stays pretty much the same. An attitude of many people (not to mention congregations!) is that they want things to get better, but nothing to change (thus fulfilling the old saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results”). But lest you think I am proposing that being a Christian is about “self-improvement,” let me share tell you a story.

A London businessman was trying to sell a warehouse property. The building had been vacant for months and was sorely in need of repair. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior. As the businessman showed a prospective buyer the property, he took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage. “Forget about the repairs,” the buyer said, “When I buy this place, I am going to build something completely different. I don’t want the building. I want the site.”

The good news, sisters and brothers, is that because we have been buried with Christ by baptism, we already belong to God. We already have been given a new life. We don’t need to go looking for one. We don’t need to write up a list of things we might do to improve our lives. We have been given the blueprint in Jesus’ own life, death, and resurrection: it’s called forgiveness.

What was put to death on the cross was the old way of keeping track of grudges, the way of retaliation, the way of an eye for an eye. What is offered to us on the cross is a new life that we can experience by being forgiven by God and learning to forgive others as we ourselves have been forgiven. THIS is what we are “drawn into” – and it is much more than “seeing Jesus.” It is receiving new life in him. Amen.

The Suffering God?

In my systematic theology class last week, we had a rousing discussion about theopachism. This topic arose during my presentation of the two natures of Christ and the communicatio idiomatum (communication of attributes.).

The Lutheran Confessions clearly affirm that "the Son of God suffered" because of the communication of attributes; yet at the same time, is reticent to speak of divine suffering. Because of the hypostatic union, "not only the bare human nature (which possesses the characteristics of suffering and dying) suffered for the sins of the entire world, but the Son of God himself suffered (according to the assumed human nature) and, according to our simple Christian creed, truly died--though the divine nature can neither suffer nor die" (The Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article VIII).

Since the mid-twentieth century, however, a whole spate of theologians--Catholic and Protestant--have reconsidered the traditional teaching of the impassibility of God and affirmed theopaschism. In an article entitled, "The Suffering of God: A New Orthodoxy," Ronald Goetz remarked that after the atrocities of World War II, "talk about an impassible, immutable God was for many simply inconceivable. How could God be love and not lay wounded on the battlefields of France? Only a God who suffered with the victims of the war could speak to the disillusionments created by the war."

A counter-perspective was recently offered by Thomas Weinandy in "Does God Suffer?" Weinandy thinks this "new orthodoxy" leads down a dangerous road theologically. He states that while "we may intellectually grapple with the mystery of God in the midst of our suffering," theologians must resist the idea of theopachism and reaffirm God's impassibility. He writes,

In the Church’s most important public task of communicating the gospel, speaking of the God who does not suffer as we suffer may go against the cultural grain, but such is the God of Scripture and normative Christian tradition. As I have tried to show, the truth that God does not suffer is at the heart of the gospel, making it truly good news. This is especially in contrast to the bad news, which has become something like a “new orthodoxy,” that God is in as much trouble as we are.

I admit that my own perspective has been shaped more by perspective of the "new orthodoxy," but I also believe that Weinandy's concern warrants some serious reflection and response. Though written well before Weinandy's piece, Richard Bauckham (a Moltmann disciple) offers these intial thoughts in response to the kind of concerns that Weinandy raises. In "Only the Suffering God Can Help: Divine Passibility in Modern Theology," Bauckham writes:

It seems increasingly obvious that the Greek philosophical inheritance in traditional theology was adopted without the necessary critical effect of the central Christian insight into the divine nature: the love of God revealed in the cross of Christ. For the Greeks, suffering implied deficiency of being, weakness, subjection, instability. But the cross shows us a God who suffers out of the fullness of his being because he is love. He does not suffer against his will, but willingly undertakes to suffer with and for those he loves. His suffering does not deflect him from his purpose, but accomplishes his purpose. His transcendence does not keep him aloof from the world, but as transcendent love appears in the depth of his self-sacrificing involvement in the world. Finally, if Christians know anything about God from the cross, it is that 'the weakness of God is stronger than men' (1 Cor. 1:25). The cross does not make God a helpless victim of evil, but is the secret of his power and his triumph over evil. This is why 'only the suffering God can help.'

A New Vision for Marriage?

The February 2007 issue of The Journal of Lutheran Ethics focuses on human sexuality. Laurie A. Jungling joins other Lutheran theologians and ethicists who are finding resources in the Lutheran tradition (such as Jacqueline Bussie's "Scarred Epistemologies: What a Theology of the Cross has to Say About the Gay Marriage Ban") to support same-sex marriage. In her article, "A 'New' Vision for Marriage as Vocation in the Lutheran Tradition," Jungling argues:

During this time of discernment for the Lutheran church as it attempts to define and understand the various social and sexual relationships from which Christians follow their vocational call, Lutherans need to consider alternatives to form-based definitions of marriage and sexuality. Instead, a better criterion is the call itself – the call to serve life with and for the neighbor – as the fundamental criterion for defining marriage. Definitions and understandings of marriage that use "appropriate to form" as the primary criterion in defining marriage not only exclude certain relationships from being a legitimate support to society for little reason other than physical form and its humanly constructed meanings, but they also construct a social order that is often hierarchical, exclusionary, and oppressive to those who do not fit certain forms.

For awhile now, I have been convinced that the theological debate over same-sex marriage needs to engage more robustly questions of theological anthropology (in particular, what it means to be created imago dei). A couple of years ago, I came across this article in the Christian Century that is helpful in this regard: "An Argument for Gay Marriage" written by Eugene Rogers from an Orthodox perspective in which he takes on the "complementarity" argument against same-sex couples held by Karl Barth and others.

Bishop Elizabeth Eaton

Yesterday I attended the installation of the Rev. Elizbaeth A. Eaton as the Bishop of the Northeastern Ohio Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She was elected to this office on December 2, 2006, the first woman to be elected bishop of the Northeastern Ohio Synod and the first in Region 6 (which includes six synods covering Ohio, the lower peninsula of Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky). Her election brings the total of female bishops in the ELCA to nine (out of sixty-five), two of whom were elected last year. This is a hopeful sign that the "stained glass ceiling" is beginning to crack, but there is much to suggest that women still have a way to go to achieve equity with their male colleagues in ministry.

The installation was poignant for its historical signficance, but in my case, it was also poignant for its personal significance. In the fall of 1980, Liz arrived at my home congregation, All Saints Lutheran Church in Worthington, Ohio, to be our intern (she ended up being called as assistant pastor and stayed another 10 years)! I was a member of her high school youth group that year and she became an important mentor for me, eventually serving as the sponsor at my ordination. Until I met her, I didn't even know that women could be pastors. She has been a model for me and my pastoral ministry in many ways. It was an honor to be at her service and to have been among those asked to participate in the service (I read the second lesson). [Note: The picture of us above is from her 25th Ordination Anniversary Celebration this past June, at Messiah Lutheran in Ashtabula. For pictures from the installation, click here].

I know that the Northeastern Ohio Synod will be led ably by Bishop Eaton, who will bring energy, compassion, wisdom, a love for the whole church, and a clear passion for sharing the good news and speaking out for the poor and marginalized to her new office (not to mention a killer sense of humor). Godspeed to you, Liz, and the people of the Northeastern Ohio Synod, as you begin your new call and ministry!