Having finished another reading of The Lord of the Rings, a summer reading tradition of mine, I was working back through the Appendices. I don't always read these. But this time through Tolkien's supplemental material I was interrupted by a phrase uttered by Aragorn to Arwen as they speak before Aragorn's death.

Aragorn shares that he, as the last Númenórean king, was given the gift of a long life (three times that of normal men) and the ability to choose his time of death. Ready, now, to make that choice, Aragorn says that it is time for him to "give back the gift" of life.

That phrase--"give back the gift"--struck me. Specifically, I felt it to be an apt summary for how to live one's entire life. A life well-lived is a life devoted toward giving back the gift.

There are a couple threads I'd like to tie together here.

First, and most centrally, is the conviction that life is a gift. A phrase I've taken from David Kelsey in this regard is "doxological gratitude." Recognizing life as a gift means practicing doxological gratitude, living out of praise and thanksgiving.

Next, giving back the gift requires a non-grasping posture toward life. The seconds are ticking away, but I cannot hold myself in being. For most of us, this triggers an anxious survival instinct, a desire to grasp at life. To freeze time. To cling. To make life a possession that I can hoard and protect. 

This is, of course, completely delusional. As the Star Trek fans like to say, resistance is futile. A more healthy posture is a non-grasping posture toward life. Instead of "grasping" we "let go." We step into the stream of our finitude. We surrender to time. We embrace our mortality. 

But again, this surrender isn't futile or despairing. It is filled with doxological gratitude. We recognize that life is a gift and we joyfully give back that gift.

Finally, I've often described love as the "allocation of our dying." Since we're always moving toward death with each passing moment we decide how to "allocate" our dying. We choose how we will die. We decide how to give our lives away. I think this is what Paul means when he says in 2 Corinthians, "death is at work in us but life in you." I can use my dying to help others flourish. That is the definition of love, and why love is described as sacrificial. A lot of us get triggered by the word "sacrifice," thinking that "sacrificial love" implies some harm to the self. But if we recognize that love is the allocation of our dying we come to see how any investment in others, like taking time to listen to a friend, is a sacrifice, a choice you are making about how to die. Love is sacrificial not because you're falling on your sword or putting your mental health at risk. Love is sacrificial simply because you're choosing to spend some of the few precious seconds of life in loving and caring for others. Love is sacrificial because you are choosing to die--that is, spend your time--in a way that gives life to others. 

So, dying well, which means loving well, is how we give back the gift. 

These, then, are three threads about what it means to "give back the gift" of your life.

First, doxological gratitude. Recognizing the gift as a gift.

Next, not clinging to or hoarding the gift but surrendering it back to the Giver.

And lastly, allocating our "giving back" in a way that gives life to others. To make our surrender a sacrifice of love.

"It shall be well with you"

Psalm 128 is a Wisdom psalm, expressing a vision of human flourishing for those who fear the Lord and "walk in his ways." The vision of flourishing ripples outward from the personal (vv. 1–2), to the familial (vv. 3–4), to the communal (vv. 5–6).

As you know, the Old Testament doesn't have a robust eschatological vision. There is no heaven in the Old Testament. The rewards and blessings of God, rather, concern this life and this world. Psalm 128 is a great example of this. Walk in the ways of God and "it shall be well with you."

As you also likely know, the logic of the obedience/blessing vision of this-worldly flourishing is where the prosperity gospel gets a lot of its traction. We could read Psalm 128 naively or triumphalistically, even judgmentally. But such readings do not go unchallenged in the Old Testament. The Psalms themselves raise the questions, to say nothing of the books of Job and Ecclesiastes.

This is one of the reasons Second Temple Judaism became more eschatological in orientation. You see this start to emerge in the book of Daniel. And by the time the lights come up on the New Testament, we begin to see some new things show up. Heaven, hell, judgment, and the afterlife.

We also see the emergence of Satan. That flourishing is scarce and difficult is increasingly blamed upon the oppressive and malevolent rule of "the god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4).

The point is that Scripture recognizes that the promises of Psalm 128 can be delayed and contested. Those who walk in the ways of the Lord may suffer in this world. As Jesus said, in this world the faithful will mourn. They will hunger and thirst for a righteousness that seems absent and elusive. And yet, these are the ones Jesus calls happy and blessed.

That said, we don't need to set the Wisdom tradition up on the eschatological shelf, perpetually delaying its realization. As I recently argued in my series on well-being and ontology, there is a relationship between flourishing and the ground of our being. Take, for example, the vision of familial flourishing from Psalm 128. Are there not virtues that correlate with healthy marriages and families? True, in this world virtues are no guarantee of happy outcomes. But kindness, fidelity, humility, and love are good soil in which to plant a home. There is an integral relation between our sophiological ground and our flourishing. Yes, the blessing is contested and often delayed. But if you walk in his ways, it shall be well with you.

Having mentioned Black Elk this week, discussing the First Nations Version of the New Testament and Psalms, I was put in mind of my 2022 series "Christ and the Ghost Dance." Selections of that series are reshared here.

You might not know this, but Black Elk, well known for his reflections in Black Elk Speaks, encountered Jesus in the Ghost Dance, converted to Catholicism, and is now being considered as a saint. As Black Elk's grandson put it, Black Elk was a man comfortable praying with both his pipe and his rosary.

It might be surprising to some that Black Elk encountered Christ in the Ghost Dance given its association with the tragedy of Wounded Knee, the 1890 massacre of almost 300 Sioux Indians, many woman and children, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. 

Prior to the tragedy, a variety of tensions had been building on the Sioux reservations in South Dakota. Most significantly, in 1889 Congress approved the statehood of North and South Dakota. This prompted the government to take even more land from the Sioux, almost half of the Great Sioux Reservation. In addition, when the new, smaller reservations were created, a bureaucratic bungling slightly changed the border between the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations. This displaced a group of Wazhazhas Brules from their settlements on Pass Creek. This band of Wazhazhas became the most disaffected among the Sioux in the lead up to Wounded Knee and they were among the very last holdouts. 

Beyond land disputes, the US government had also significantly cut the rations to the reservations. This caused widespread illness and malnutrition in the face of a measles and influenza outbreak in the two years leading up to Wounded Knee. 

Needless to say, the Sioux reservations were under considerable strain. Discontent was widespread, with rumors about uprisings breaking out. Tensions were high.

And into this volatile situation entered a new religious movement, the Ghost Dance. A religious movement that had surprising Christian aspects.

The Ghost Dance emerged among the the Northern Paiute (territories in Nevada and California) with the spiritual leader, rainmaker, and prophet Wovoka (also named Jack Wilson). The prophecies of Wovoka foretold a future restoration of Native American life, a future of peace and prosperity that would be inaugurated by the coming of the Messiah. To usher in this age, the Indians were to live at peace among the whites, to work, and to send their children to school. And they were supposed to dance. 

The Ghost Dance was a traditional circle dance, with some key changes. The dancers held hands and rotated in a clockwise direction. Men, women, and children participated, an egalitarian change from some male-dominated traditional dances. Even some whites were welcomed into the circle. As the circle turned many dancers fell and entered into a trance, which often lasted hours. Upon awakening, dancers shared visions of going to heaven where they encountered their dead loved ones. Given the amount of loss and grief experienced by Native Americans, these encounters with lost loved ones fueled the eastward spread of the Ghost Dance, eventually making its way to the plains reservations. Soon after Wovoka's first prophecies in 1889, the circles began to turn among the Sioux in South Dakota.

Given the tensions and rumors of uprisings, the federal authorities could only look upon the Ghost Dance with suspicion. While different in key respects, the circle of the Ghost Dance was rooted in traditional native practice. This represented a "reversion" in the eyes of the authorities to "non-progressive" and "primitive" native practices, a return to traditional culture and lifeways. This wasn't the direction the federal government wanted the Sioux to go. 

Plus, it was feared that the dance was stirring up revolutionary fervor. To suspicious and nervous reservation agents, hundreds of Sioux dancing and singing in a traditional circle dance was an ominous sign. And so, on November 15 the federal agent of the Pine Ridge reservation sent a fateful telegram, asking for federal troops to invade the Sioux reservations: "Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy...We need protection and we need it now."

The troops came. Tensions rose ever further. Events cascaded out of control. And on December 29 federal troops opened fire on unarmed men, women and children at Wounded Knee.

Thanks to the popularity of the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this is a sad and well known tragedy in American history. And yet, many don't know that the Ghost Dance was, for many Native Americans, a Christian movement. Many participants of the Ghost Dance identified the coming Messiah with Jesus Christ. Black Elk was one of these. As Louis Warren writes in God's Red Son, "Christ was everywhere in Ghost Dance visions as Christian teachings became embedded in or engulfed by the new religion." Many Native Americans even reserved the Ghost Dances for Sunday as a form of Christian worship. Many Ghost Dancers connected Wovoka's prophecies of a coming Messiah, as did Wovoka himself, with Jesus. As Warren observes, "most Ghost Dancers believed that they were seeing the same spirit presence evoked in the New Testament." 

Thus, the Ghost Dance "was effectively a new religion that incorporated a Messiah figure--for some, Christ himself--alongside older spirit powers." Warren summarizes the fusion and the desire to create a uniquely textured faith:

By 1890, missionaries counted nearly 5,000 Lakotas as Christian; thus, they were taken aback that growing church attendance in an "Indian country dotted over with chapels and schools" was followed by a surge in Ghost Dancers. Their only explanation was that many of their Christian converts had not yet understood Christian teachings. But the simultaneous enthusiasm of church attendance and the Ghost Dance was a paradox only if believers had to choose one or the other--Christianity or the old spirits. The Ghost Dance expressed not only the belief that the two religions could be combined but also their longings to do just that...

...[The Ghost Dance] elevated Eagle, Buffalo, and Bear to the same plane as Christ and made him a "friend" to Indians, like one of the guardian spirits of old...The Ghost Dance combined old spirits and a new redeemer...To believers, it was exhilarating...To authorities and most missionaries, it was terrifying.

That terror, we know, led to the massacre at Wounded Knee. But some observers, even some missionaries, were able to look upon the Ghost Dance with a more generous cultural perspective, as an attempt to fit Christianity into Native American culture. True, this process was messy and uneven. Not every Ghost Dancer was Christian. And theologians would be rightly worried if Christ became, for Ghost Dancers, just one among many spirit guides and guardians. If it hadn't been violently suppressed by the US government on the reservations, how the Ghost Dance would have evolved as it interacted with Christianity remains a tantalizing mystery. Regardless, what the Ghost Dance clearly showed was a desire for a uniquely Native American expression of Christianity, something that the Christian missionaries just were not providing. 

In short, a part of the tragedy of Wounded Knee was a failure of missiological imagination. Christianity for far too many reservation missionaries was culturally European in both content and practice. The goal was to get Native Americans to sit in wooden pews in a church building, pray from a pulpit, and sing out of a hymnal. Christian worship wasn't imagined as involving a traditional Native American circle dance. But at Wounded Knee it was.

Having written about the First Nations Version of the Psalms I thought I'd share an example. 

Here is Psalm 91:

All who make their home in the secret place of the One Above Us All will remain under the shadow of the Great Provider.

I will tell Grandfather, "You are the one who watches over me, my strong lodge of protection--my Creator. I have put all hope and trust in you."

He will rescue you from the snares the trappers left behind and from deadly sickness.

He will spread his feathers over you and keep you hidden under his wings. Like a breastplate and bone choker, his faithfulness is a medicine shield that surrounds you and keeps you from harm.

You will not fear the dark terrors stalking the night or the arrow that flies in the light of day.

You will not need to tremble before the disease that walks at night or the deadly sickness that attacks when the sun is high.

A thousand may fall to your left, ten thousand to your right, but no harm will cross your path.

You will only have to look with your eyes to see how the guilty face Creator's justice for what they have done.

For you have called Grandfather "my medicine shield" and have made the One Above Us All your home.

No bad thing will bring harm on you. No storm of trouble will come near your tipi.

For he will tell his spirit-messengers to care for you and keep you safe on the road of lie.

They will carry you safely in their hands to keep you from striking for foot against a rock.

You will walk without fear among mountain lions and poisonous snakes. Even strong young lions and deadly serpents you will trample under your feet.

"Because you have a love fro me that holds on tight," says the Great Spirit, "I will set you free and make you whole. I will lift you high to my place of safety because you know who I truly am.

"When my people call to me by name, I will answer and stand by them in times of trouble. I will deliver them and bring them honor.

"I will give them a good long life an show them that I am the One Who Sets Them Free."

I wrote about the publication of the First Nations Version of the New Testament when it first came out. The First Nations Version, published by IVP Press, is a translation of the New Testament in the cultural idiom of the indigenous and First Nations peoples of North America. 

This year, thee First Nations Versions of Psalms and Proverbs was released. I've been using the FNV Psalms for my morning and evening prayers this month. 

One of the interesting aspects of the FNV Psalms is their translation for the Hebrew name of God (YHWH). This was something that wasn't an issue for the New Testament. In the FNV translation of the New Testament, the Greek word "God" was typically translated as "Great Spirit" or "Creator." But the Hebrew name of God was a new and different challenge for the FNV translation committee. 

As I expect you're aware, most English translations do not translate the Hebrew name of God. Instead, they use LORD in all caps whenever the Name is used. This is similar to Jewish practice, where the Name is replaced with Adonai ("Lord") or HaShem ("the Name"). So, how would the FNV handle this replacement?

The FNV committee felt that the use of "LORD" would have been inappropriate given the egalitarianism of first nations cultures. But the replacement needed to be term of reverence, honor, and respect. The choice the FNV made was to use the designation "Grandfather." 

In justifying the use of "Grandfather" over "LORD" the FNV shares:

For the FNV Psalms and Proverbs, we followed the Jewish tradition of replacing YHWH with another name. We considered a First Nations name that would be meaningful, honoring, intimate, and intertribal. We needed a unique name we had not used in the New Testament since the New Testament Greek does not translate the name for YHWH.

The title Grandfather was proposed...This title carries the relational weight of the name. This name meets the criteria of intertribal and is often used at powwows and other First Nations gatherings. In all Native cultures, grandfathers and grandmothers are highly honored. Grandfather is a name of honor, dignity, intimacy, and loving authority. Over and over again, Black Elk, a respected elder and author from the Lakota, used Grandfather (Tunkashila in Lakota), often combined with Father and Great Spirit, to make it clear who he was referring to...One example from Black Elk is, "O Father and Grandfather Wakan-Tanka, You are the source and end of everything. My Father Wakan-Tanka, You are the One who watches over and sustains all life."

In a recent series of mine I floated an analytic framework to describe different aspects of faith and their interrelationships. 

It was a three-layered structure involving a moral layer that flows out of an existential/narrative/symbolic layer which in turn flows out of an ontological layer. Pictorially:

Moral

↑↓

Existential

↑↓

Ontological

I went on to describe how the layers beneath the moral layer have been slowly jettisoned in the increasingly post-Christian West. The Judeo-Christian moral vision, broadly espoused by liberal humanism, has been divorced from its narrative and symbolic world. This creates an existential loss. Symptoms of this loss involve our current mental health crisis, increased deaths of despair, political polarization, and what has been called our "crisis of meaning." 

In addition, narrative and symbol have been separated from the Real, the ontological layer. This leads to drift of both the moral and existential layers, mostly evidenced in the political capture of the Christian ethic and story. This happens in different ways on both the political right and left. This moral and existential drift away from the Real also manifests in a consumeristic, bespoke, DIY approach to spiritual practice, where people can shop around and select stories and myths that support their lifestyle without any concern about if the myth they've selected for themselves has any correspondence to our ontological.

In my series I described some of the reasons why the ontological layer was rejected. For example, there was the rise of reductive materialism during the New Atheist moment. I also discussed the impact of post-modernism on making ontological claims in a pluralistic and liberal world. But I was recently put in mind of another reason why the ontological claims of Christianity are rejected. Specifically, if the ontological claims are true there are, we can say, implications. Implications we'd rather not face. Here is that case as made by  the theologian Robert Jenson:

Yet I think there is another reason for our skittishness with the gospel's truth claims...So soon as we pose the question, "What indeed if it were true?" about an ordinary proposition of the faith, consequences begin to show themselves that go beyond anything we dare to believe, that upset our whole basket of assured convictions, and we are frightened of that. The most Sunday-school-platitudinous of Christian claims--say, "Jesus loves me"--contains cognitive explosives we fear will indeed blow our minds; it commits us to what have been called revisionary metaphysics, and on a massive scale. That, I think, is the main reason we prefer not to start [with the question "What indeed if it were true?"] and have preferred it especially in the period of modernity. For Western modernity's defining passion has been for the use of knowledge to control, and that is the very point where the knowledge of faith threatens us.

"eating the bread of anxious toil"

The opening verses of Psalm 127 describe the vanity and futility of human effort separated from God:

Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Unless the Lord builds, we labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches, we watch in vain. It is vain to rise early and go to sleep late, eating the bread of anxious toil.

What’s striking in the final line is how those who trust in the Lord, the beloved, are given sleep as a blessing. The picture is one of anxious fretting contrasted with peace and rest. And the critical issue is trust.

What drives us to eat the bread of anxious toil? What is at the root of this vain striving? Why can’t we find rest?

In The Slavery of Death I describe how our lives become ensnared by basic and neurotic anxieties. Basic anxieties concern survival and resource-based concerns. These are the anxieties highlighted in Psalm 127. Building shelter. Watching over a city to prevent attacks. Working hard to provide for your material needs. Trusting in the Lord in the face of these basic anxieties means expressing confidence that the Lord will provide and protect. We are finite creatures and we must live into a glad dependence upon the Lord.

Beyond basic anxieties, there are also neurotic anxieties. These worries are less about survival than with self-esteem. Neurotic anxiety concerns our anxious striving for significance, how our self-esteem becomes entangled in contingent metrics of worth. Think about workaholism. At some point, you’ve worked enough to provide for yourself and your family. The concerns of basic anxiety have been addressed. So why won’t you rest? Well, because the work has shifted into a neurotic register. You’re pushing to achieve some vision of success and significance. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, you’re addicted to your superhero complex.

Neurotic anxiety doesn’t seem to be a primary concern in the opening lines of Psalm 127. But I am struck by the description “beloved.” That the beloved of God sleep well. The reason we become trapped within our neurotic hero games is because we don’t experience ourselves as God’s beloved, unconditionally and fully so. There is still some game of love-worthiness we are trying to win. Neurotically pursuing success and significance, we eat the bread of anxious toil.

Only the beloved can truly rest.

In Colossians 1.13, Paul declares, "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son."

The Greek word translated here as "domain" has a range of meanings, among them "power," "authority," and "dominion." But for this post I want to keep with the spacial meaning. We were once located in the territory of darkness and have been relocated and transferred to a new location, the kingdom of Christ.

In the last two posts I've been describing how Christ deals with curses. The Deuteronomic curses of Sinai concerning covenantal loyalty and infidelity. And the deeper, primordial Adamic curses of sin and death. I've described this work as "saving the story" of Israel. At the end of the last post I said that Christ has made Israel's story a "curse free zone." Free of the curses due to Adam's fall, and free of the curses due to Israel's failure. 

I want to use this notion of a "curse free zone" to describe Biblical references to the wrath of God.

As I mentioned in the first post, one of the concerns with penal substitutionary atonement is its individualistic focus. The wrath of God is directed at me, personally. I am the object of wrath. And it's this personalization--God is wrathful toward me--that creates the potential for psychological harm. Covenantal substitutionary atonement, I've pointed out, shifts away from this personalization. Jesus is substituting himself for Israel. A similar shift happens with the Adamic curses. Jesus substitutes himself for Adam, and as the new and second Adam Jesus is able to restart and recapitulate human history. This recapitulation vision of atonement isn't common nowadays, but it was a favorite one among the church fathers.  

In both instances, Jesus substituting himself for either Adam or Israel, there is a shift away from Jesus substituting himself for me on the cross. Of course, insofar as I am implicated in Adam's sin or locked out of Israel's story due to her failure, Jesus' death on the cross is very much "for me." But only in how I, along with all of humanity, are a part of a much larger, universal story. I'm most definitely a piece of this larger puzzle, but I'm no longer narcissistically playing the starring role in this cosmic drama. 

That said, without Christ I do stand under the curse. And this is where I think the metaphor of space, territory, and domain comes it. The entire world stands accursed due to Adam's sin and Israel's failure. Anyone in this territory--the "domain of darkness"--lives under the curse. Jesus, however, carves out a "curse free zone" within the world. Those who live in this liberated territory are freed from the Adamic and Deuteronomic curses and consequences. 

The point here is that God's wrath isn't really about you. Nor did you, uniquely, bring that ire into existence. The curses existed long before you showed up. You were simply born into the Accursed Land, and you suffer the effects--like suffering death and being locked out of the blessings made to Abraham--of living in that land. But due to the work of Christ, there is a land where the curses have been expelled and expunged. This is the Blessed Land. And here's the good news. You can go there. Right now, you can go. You don't have to live in the Land of Shadow. You can leave. 

You can be transferred from the domain of darkness to live in the kingdom of the Beloved Son. 

But the Deuteronomic curses were not the only curses that needed to be dealt with. 

Jesus substituting himself for Israel, becoming the Suffering Servant, saves Israel's story and rescues her vocation. But the primordial curse remains.

One of the curious things in the theology of Paul is the attention he pays to Adam. After the early chapters of Genesis, Adam doesn't feature much at all in the narrative of the Old Testament. All of Israel's failures are deemed to be due to her own rebellion and idolatry. No prophet points the finger at Adam for being the root cause of Israel's sin. 

For Paul, however, Adam becomes the primary explanation for sin. And not just sin, death as well. This focus on Adam is a theological shift in the Biblical narrative. The highlighted role of Adam in Paul's teaching would have been surprising to his Jewish audience. Romans 5.12-21:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—for sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. But law came in, so that the trespass might increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so grace might also reign through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I have written extensively about this focus on Adam in the theology of Paul. For Paul, Adam explains Israel's covenantal catastrophe, how her story got stuck. Zeal for God's law, Paul's pre-conversion motivation, had led to the crucifixion of Israel's Messiah. According to Paul, the reason zeal could not produce covenantal faithfulness was due to the power of sin and death over human flesh. The sin of Adam had incapacitated our ability to obey and follow God's law. As Paul puts it in Romans 8: "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

In short, there were two sets of curses Jesus had to overcome. There were the Deuteronomic curses and the primordial Adamic curses. To overcome the Deuteronomic curses, Jesus, as Israel's representative, had to perfectly fulfill the law and undergo the punishment, as the Suffering Servant, for Israel unfaithfulness. This Jesus does. But Jesus also had to undo the Adamic curses of sin and death, sin being that power which "reigns over" human flesh making us "unable" to submit to God's law. Christ overcomes this curse through his resurrection and the empowering gift of the Spirit. 

This is way too simplistic, but a sketch of how Jesus deals with all these curses would be:

Resolving the Deuteronomic Curses: Covenantal Fidelity and Infidelity

1. Fulfilling the Law as a perfect covenantal partner

2. Suffering the curse, as the Suffering Servant, for Israel's unfaithfulness

Resolving the Adamic Curses: The Reign of Sin and Death

1. Resurrection overcoming death

2. The gift of the Spirit to overcome sin

Summarizing, to save Israel's story, wholly and comprehensively, deeper work was needed. To rescue Israel's vocation Christ has to resolve the primordial curse that had undermined Israel's calling. And having done this work, Jesus cleansed Israel's life and made it a "curse free zone." In the next post I want to focus on this curse free zone to share some reflections about the wrath of God in gospel proclamation.

Over the years I've written about what I have called covenantal substitutionary atonement as an alternative to penal substitutionary atonement. 

The problems with penal substitutionary atonement have been well documented, often to the point of grotesque caricature. I, myself, in the early years of this blog/newsletter contributed to the pile on. 

There are two problems I want to highlight with penal substitutionary atonement. 

The first problem is that it focuses upon individual sin and guilt. This isn't to deny personal complicity. As 1 John says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." But an overly individualistic focus can putrefy into the conviction that God hates you. Your soteriological predicament becomes God, leading the the odd notion that Jesus is saving you from God. 

A less commented upon problem is related to the first. Specifically, penal substitutionary atonement dismisses Israel and the Old Testament. In the standard telling of penal substitutionary atonement no reference is made to the promises God made to Abraham. Penal substitutionary atonement is ahistorical. By situating salvation within an abstract forensic context the narrative framework of Scripture is stripped way. All you have is a sinner in the dock. You're a sinner/criminal. Those sins/crimes have penal consequences. But Jesus paid/satisfied those consequences. No appeal to the Old Testament is needed. 

And yet, there is a substitutionary logic at work in Scripture, a substitution that allows us, in the words of Paul, to escape "the wrath to come." But if not a penal substitution, what are we to do with this substitutionary imagery? 

This is where I've suggested a view I've called covenantal substitutionary atonement. The soteriological predicament in the Old Testament concerns the Deuteronomic curses. At the Sinai covenant sealed in Deuteronomy 28–30 Israel would suffer curses, culminating in her exile, if she was unfaithful to her vocation to be a light to the nations. These curses do transpire. And at this point, the story becomes stuck. 

Sitting in this narrative quagmire, the prophets of Israel begin to imagine a future restoration. But how to get around the Deuteronomic curses? The prophet Isaiah envisions a mysterious figure, the "suffering servant," who will take the curse of Israel upon himself:

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Jesus, in becoming the Suffering Servant, takes the Deuteronomic curses upon himself and cracks the covenantal impasse. What Israel could not do for herself, Jesus, in becoming the representative of Israel, brings to completion. Jesus fulfills the requirements of the Law and takes the curses of Israel's sin upon himself. Simply put, Jesus saves Israel's story and allows the narrative to carry forward. The vocation of Israel, to bring the nations to the worship of God, is rescued. The promises made to Israel becomes available to the nations. As preached by Paul, Gentiles become grafted into Israel's story through faith and baptism. 

Covenantal substitutionary atonement, therefore, recognizes the substitutionary logic of atonement but shifts it in critical ways. First, we pivot away from individual guilt to see how Jesus is substituting himself for Israel (as the Suffering Servant). Relatedly, the wrath of God is shifted away from a "sinners in the hands of an angry God" vision toward the Deuteronomic curses. The soteriological predicament solved by atonement isn't forensic but covenantal. What is being saved is Israel's vocation. The story is rescued. 

And most importantly, covenantal substitutionary atonement re-embeds the atonement within the Biblical narrative. Israel is placed back at the dramatic center. Where penal substitutionary atonement is ahistorical, covenantal substitutionary atonement bring the story of salvation back into view. 

That Thursday, I said some provocative things about Catholicism and Orthodoxy in relation to the first-century church. To be clear, my point wasn’t to disparage practices like infant baptism or Marian devotion, just to make a historical observation that these were not practices of the first-century Christians. These were later developments. Justifiable and beautiful developments, but developments nonetheless.

That I would point out such things goes to my denominational location. I’m a member of the Churches of Christ. Our movement is primitivist. That is, we’ve always sought the simplest and earliest expressions of first-century Christianity as the optimal template for church life, organization, belief, and practice. Anything, therefore, that shows up later in Christian history, from the 2nd century on, we view with suspicion.

To be sure, the dream of primitivism is quixotic, historically and hermeneutically, but I’m a primitivist at heart. My ecclesial tastes are simple and minimalist. Which is one of the reasons I remain Protestant and likely won’t convert anytime soon to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. I find much within those traditions beautiful, profound, rich, wide, and deep. But I also experience them as ornamental, baroque, and filigreed in doctrine, liturgy, practice, and ecclesiology.

Take, for example, the doctrine of the real presence. So much theology gets piled on top of that question. When and where is Christ “really showing up” in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist? 

My own tradition, the Churches of Christ, has been memorialist, denying the real presence. I find that sad and would love to recover a doctrine of the real presence within our tradition. Crucially, though, I don't judge the memorialist view as heretical or empty of spiritual power. Unlike so many online apologists, I'm not the Eucharist Police. For my part, my concerns about memorialism have to do with its metaphysical vulnerability toward disenchantment. So when I say I wish my tradition embraced the doctrine of the real presence I don't see this as moving from heresy to orthodoxy. I see it, rather, as deepening our mystical participation in the Supper. Good teaching shapes perception, and I'd like our people to see more in the Eucharist rather than less. Especially in the metaphysical vacuum of modernity. For me, this is more about spiritual formation than a concern about heresy. 

But here’s the thing. I don’t think you need a lot of theological and liturgical machinery to affirm the real presence. I think it can be secured on primitivist terms, and in the simplest and plainest way possible.

Jesus said, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

That’s it. That’s my doctrine of the real presence. When two or three gather in the name of Jesus, and in my tradition we gather precisely to celebrate the Supper, Jesus is really present. The universal and holy catholic church is realized in that gathering.

Now, will Orthodox and Catholic readers find this view woefully inadequate, underdetermined, maybe even heretical? I expect they will. But I will confess, for my part, that I sense something idolatrous in the anxiety to secure the real presence through metaphysical and liturgical systems of consecration. The earliest Christians experienced the real presence as quite simple, straightforward, and plain. 

When they gathered Jesus was simply there.

"Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy."

We find ourselves in an in-between place with Psalm 126, looking back and looking ahead.

The song starts with gratitude and remembrance for the Lord restoring the fortunes of Israel:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Our mouths were filled with laughter then,
and our tongues with shouts of joy.

And then, in verse 4, attention shifts to the future with a petition to restore the fortunes of Israel:

Restore our fortunes, Lord,
like watercourses in the Negev.

In short, there is praise for a past deliverance (verses 1–3) and a plea for a future restoration (verses 4–6). Hope for the future flows out of a past provision. Though this present moment is sorrowful, God acted in the past and God will act again. Thus the hopeful expectation: "Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy."

I'm struck by the suite of emotions in Psalm 126: gratitude, joy, sorrow, hope. The sadness is rescued because it is surrounded by what psychologists have called "self-transcendent emotions." As I describe in The Shape of Joy, these emotions are self-transcendent because they are oriented toward a horizon found outside and beyond oneself. 

For example, the hope we see in Psalm 126 has a eucatastrophic shape. Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy. This is the same eucatastrophic shape we see in the Beatitudes: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Hope flows out of an expectation that God will act within our stories, transforming sorrow into gladness.

From a psychological perspective, this is the genius of the Christian message. Because of the resurrection, there is a radical open-endedness to human life and history. A closed and fatalistic system was broken open. That's what you behold when you look into the empty tomb: the eucatastrophic shape of the cosmos. And it's that hope, that eucatastrophic shape, which allows the poet of Psalm 126 to sing, "Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy."

Since joining Substack, to create an email subscription option for my blog, I've been slowly exposed to the Substack ecosystem. While I use Substack to share my blog as a newsletter, I don't participate in many of the things the platform offers. For example, I don't monetize the blog/newsletter. I do, though, post quotes to Notes.

Notes, if you don't know, is the social media feed of Substack. Notes is the closest thing I've experienced to something like Facebook or Twitter, neither of which I've ever subscribed to. 

You witness a lot of tiresome debates on Notes. Some of the debates on Christian Substack happen between Orthodox Christians and Catholic Christians, or the Orthodox and Catholics teaming up against Protestants. These debates regularly concern who represents the "one true church." There is, to put it mildly, a lack of ecumenical charity in many of these conversations.

A lot of the negative and aggressive energy inserted into these debates is from men who have become recent converts to Orthodoxy. You might be aware of this trend and it's impact upon Christian social media. The main take of these Orthodox converts is that every branch of Christianity, from Catholics to evangelicals, is a theological failure. Heretical, even. Only Orthodoxy preserves the one true faith. 

This conceit, however, isn't limited to the very online Orthodox. There are also aggressive Catholics who denigrate Protestantism. And in response to these Orthodox and Catholic attacks, there have arisen aggressive Protestant defenders. 

Here's my hot take. I think many of these loud and aggressive converts are more in love with Christianity than they are with Christ. They love the creeds, the church fathers, the liturgy, the saints, the history, the culture of Christendom, the doctrine, the dogma, the theology, the Tradition. What they don't seem to love very much is Jesus, as evidenced in their becoming belligerent social media trolls. 

Also, I'm not convinced by arguments that Orthodoxy and/or Catholicism preserve a true, pure, faithful and original Christianity. I think the Catholic and Orthodox churches are profound and beautiful. Count me a fan. But the early Christians didn't baptize infants, they didn't pray to Mary, they didn't worship at an altar, they didn't venerate icons, and they didn't pray to dead Christians. To be clear, those practices are defensible. And I'm not saying they are wrong. Just that if you dropped the apostles into the Catholic and Orthodox traditions they would be surprised by some things. I think they'd get their heads around it once it was explained to them, but it would take a minute. And I think some of them would express concerns.

The Orthodox and Catholics also love to portray Protestants as schismatics. But the Orthodox and the Catholics invented that game. They are the OG schismatics. It's called the Great Schism for a reason, and their online vituperativeness conforms to type.  

I'm not here, however, to defend Protestantism. My point is that we've got a ecumenical situation on our hands and a little humility and charity is called for. 

So, where is all this vitriol coming from? To my eye, it's fear, plain and simple. I describe these dynamics in The Authenticity of Faith, how dogmatism is used to cope with existential anxiety. It is comforting to feel safe and right and smart. But when faith is deployed neurotically like this it spills out in out-group denigration. Fearful people are prone to hostility, and Christian social media is a great example. 

This is one reason we're seeing so many young men gravitate away from evangelicalism toward Orthodoxy and Catholicism. As sola scriptura Protestants these young men were raised as epistemic foundationalists. In standing on Scripture they stood on a firm, solid, and unshakeable foundation of Truth. The Bible provided them with every answer to every question. Epistemically, they were bulletproof. They were right and everyone who disagreed with them was wrong. This certainty provided existential comfort and consolation. Dogmatism was a security blanket.

Then they went off to seminary or down some YouTube rabbit hole and discovered that "Scripture alone" was hermeneutical quicksand. Suddenly, the edifice of security began to crumble. Where to turn? Where to find a firm and unassailable foundation? The Tradition! One type of foundationalism (the Bible alone) was exchanged for another (the Tradition). In both cases, the evangelical need for bulletproof certainty remained a constant. There has to be some "correct" place to land in the ecclesial landscape. It's utopianism in theological dress. But the underlying anxiety curdles the quest. Especially if, once the "one true church" is found, the old evangelical hostility and judgmentalism toward out-group members resurfaces. The underlying neurotic dynamic is carried over. Fundamentalism is merely rearranged. In order to feel secure and safe I need to scapegoat outsiders. Their damnation is proof of my salvation, their heresy confirms my orthodoxy. That's why the cocksure certainty of the new converts is so abusive, narcissistic, and hostile. 

People often ask me, "Why aren't you Catholic or Orthodox?" They inquire because I love these traditions and write about them a good deal. Orthodoxy is a huge part of The Slavery of Death. Catholicism in Hunting Magic Eels. And I could totally imagine converting to either faith. But I feel no anxious, neurotic pressure to do so because I find all the traditions beautiful. And deeply, deeply flawed. The Protestant. The Anglican. The Catholic. The Orthodox. And I have zero angst about getting to the bottom about which of these is "the real church." Precisely because such anxiety poisons the entire search. 

Now, of course, I want to be sympathetic to seekers who sincerely desire to honor God in finding the church and tradition they feel is most true, pure, and authentic. More power to such seekers. But if, after you find your new home, you become a toxic asshole, well, let me suggest that your motives for seeking weren't so healthy or sincere. Some dark fear was driving you and is now erupting in oedipal vitriol. If you're attacking other Christians online, especially after a conversion, you are, to put it simply, neurotic and unwell. You're having a love affair with Christianity and have yet to fall in love with Christ.

Okay, so what has this series been about? What am I chasing?

Well, ever since Hunting Magic Eels, and especially with The Shape of Joy, I've been making arguments about the relationship between faith and mental health. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, faith and spirituality have been consistency shown to be positively associated with well-being. As I've succinctly put it, God is good for you.

And yet, whenever I've made this argument I've kicked up some worries.

One worry we've already talked about in this series, the well-being of those who don't believe in either Jesus or God. Happy and flourishing atheists would seem to be a counter example to the claims I've made. 

In response, I've made two arguments in this series. First, I appealed to Maximus the Confessor's view that all virtue comes from God. And by virtue I don't want to restrict the conversation to the moral. By virtue we mean arete, the excellences that point us to eudaimonia, the good life. If God is our ontological ground then living with the grain of the universe would be deemed "excellent" and "virtuous." This is walking in attunement with the Tao, following the sophiological path of Wisdom, and living in integral harmony with the Logos. Basically, any goodness and flourishing we witness, no matter where we find it, is necessarily a participation in God. Joy comes from no other source.

The second argument I've made borrows from Karl Rahner's description of anonymous Christians. Given that God addresses every human person in their inmost reality, everyone has dealings with God. This is true no matter who you are or what you believe. For Rahner, being addressed by God defines what it means to be human. We cannot exist outside this supernatural relation. But this does not imply universalism. We can ignore, repress, or deny God's self-communication in our innermost being. We can shut our ears to the still small voice speaking within our soul. 

Many, though, choose live in relationship with the transcendent call they experience within themselves and permeating the cosmos. Life is sufficed with truth, beauty, and goodness. In the face of our failures and guilt we do not forgive ourselves but experience ourselves as both seen and forgiven. We know our lives to be valuable and meaningful. We express cosmic gratitude for the gift of existence and feel ourselves blessed. We believe love is our highest calling. And where such experiences and convictions have yet to coalesce into propositional belief we are, nevertheless, Christian in our ontological direction and trajectory. 

The second worry I've encountered is one we've yet to talk about in this series, but it's the concern that has motivated me to write these posts. 

Specifically, whenever I've expressed the conviction that "God is good for you" I've routinely encountered a concern that I am reducing God to the therapeutic. Now, what might this mean, that God is therapeutic, and why is it a worry? 

Much of the worry, and I've written about this before, comes from Christian Smith's description of what he calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." According to Smith, moralistic therapeutic deism has come to be the default creed of many Christian youth. A basic tenet of this creed is that God wants us to be happy. This happiness is achieved by feeling good about yourself. God's main role in your life, therefore, is "therapeutic." That is to say, God doesn't make demands of you and God doesn't judge. God wants you to feel good about yourself and to help you solve your problems.

The point I've raised with Smith is his choice of the word "therapeutic" to capture the worldview he is describing. I think Smith should have chosen a word like "affirmation" rather than "therapeutic." Medical therapy is about curing disease. And psychotherapy isn't about affirmation. Psychotherapy involves taking an honest look at your dysfunctional patterns and doing the hard work of getting yourself straightened out. In both cases, medical and psychological, the goal is change, not the acceptance of a diseased status quo.

Still, due to Smith's coining of the phrase "moralistic therapeutic deism," great suspicion exists about how we come to use God for self-affirmation and the pursuit of a shallow happiness. So I've had to clarify what I mean when I say "God is good for you." By "good for you" I don't mean that God traffics in cotton candy and daises, smiling benignly and beneficently upon our every choice and desire. God is good for you, but that goodness flows out of an attunement with our ontological ground. And attunement is different from affirmation. In fact, if you go against the grain of the universe you're going to harm and injure yourself. That's a sophiological inevitability. The ontological ground of being doesn't change in response to our whims. The Tao doesn't change in response to our preferences. Our preferences must conform to the Tao. 

The point here should be obvious. When I say "God is good for you" I'm speaking ontologically rather than therapeutically, as Christian Smith uses that term. Simply put, the ontological is not the affirmational. God is good for us because God is the source of being and our ontological ground.