Last week we talked about how the "map of meaning" of a culture, its "paradigm," can be threatened and undergo a crisis. According to Peterson, most of these threats are encounters with "strangeness," such as strangers or the strange idea.

But Peterson goes on to describe another force that can place a cultural worldview under strain.

Recall from last week how our maps of meaning are primarily behavioral and implicit, expressed as procedural ("how to") knowledge. Over the course of cognitive evolution, as our capacity for abstraction and analysis grew, we began to make the implicit explicit, explaining ourselves to ourselves. Behavioral norms became encoded in myth and later in religion and law.

But the trouble, Peterson argues, is that as our powers of abstraction and critical analysis advanced they began dismantle and dissolve the norms, myths, and religious beliefs we inherited from our ancestors. Here is Peterson describing this:

Rapid development of semantic skill (and its second-order elaboration into empirical methodology) constitutes the third major threat to the continued stability of sociohistorically determined cultural systems...Linguistically mediated criticism of the predicates of behavior undermines faith in the validity of historically established hierarchical patterns of adaptation. The final emergent process of the developmental chain of abstraction can be applied to undermine the stability of its foundation. The modern and verbally sophisticated individual is therefore always in danger of sawing off the branch on which he or she sits.

Critical and empirical analyses, in undermining cultural myths and religions, come to divorce knowledge from action. The "true" becomes separated from the "good." This creates nihilism and what Nietzsche called "paralysis of the will" as we've sawed off the part of culture that historically guided moral and social action in the world. Peterson summarizes:

The capacity to abstract, to code morality in image and word, has facilitated the communication, comprehension and development of behavior and behavioral interaction. However, the capacity to abstract has also undermined the stability of moral tradition...The capacity to abstract, which has facilitated the communication of very complex and only partially understood ideas, is therefore also the capacity to undermine the very structure that lends predictability to action, and which constrains the a priori meaning of things and situations. Our capacity for abstraction is capable of disrupting our "uncon-seious"--that is, imagistic and procedural-social identity, upsetting our emotional stability and undermining our integrity...Such disruption leaves us vulnerable to possession by simplistic ideologies, and susceptible to cynicism, existential despair, and weakness in the face of threat.

This, according to Peterson, is the root cause of our modern crisis of meaning. Our analytical skills have caused us to dismantle and deconstruct the mythology upon which Western values, morality and meaning was encoded. In stepping into a post-Christian world we've sawn off the branch upon which our culture was sitting, and are now experiencing widespread existential distress, emotional instability and social unrest. In Hunting Magic Eels I describe this as "the Ache."

Stepping back, we find examples of what Peterson describes everywhere. For example, I've just finished Christine Emba's new book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. Emba's big point is that our modern sexual landscape is characterized by a huge paradox: moral liberation and widespread dissatisfaction. Since the sexual revolution we've dismantled traditional sexual mores and norms, which seems like a win, but now find ourselves unhappy with a sexual marketplace that, beyond mere consent, has no agreed upon limits, expectations, or responsibilities. Young people entering into this liberated "anything goes" sexual world are finding it increasingly treacherous, confusing, demeaning, harmful, dissatisfying, and enduringly sexist.

A second example of what Peterson describes is the widespread phenomenon of "deconstruction" among Christians. Asking deeper and more critical questions about faith and Scripture is a necessary part of spiritual growth and development. However, many who have begun the process of deconstruction can't seem to stop and end up sawing off the branch they were sitting on. Some of the most high profile Christian authors who rode the wave of deconstruction are no longer Christian in any recognizable sense. And we all know people who deconstructed themselves right out of faith. And while my evidence here is very anecdotal, the deconstructed former Christians of my acquaintance and who show up in my inbox seem lost and unwell. 

In the first post of this series I described how most Christians believe that justification is "bolted" or "superglued" onto judgment. 

The fancy way theologians describe the issue is that justification functions proleptically.

Time for a definition. "Proleptic" means "applied retroactively." In the typical view, justification is understood to be a forensic term, a declaration of "not guilty" before a court of law. Thus, when a Christian is justified by faith in Christ we stand before God's Judgment Seat and are declared, "innocent," "righteous," and "not guilty." This declaration of innocence at Judgment Day is applied proleptically, backwards in time. Because of your declaration of innocence on Judgment Day you stand innocent and justified today. We live today knowing that a future vindication awaits us before the Judgment Seat of God. 

In his book Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul, Chris VanLandingham seeks to challenge this proleptic understanding of justification. According to VanLandingham, justification is about the past, not the future. If so, justification doesn't have anything to do with the future judgment. The two, justification and judgment, become decoupled. 

Of course, that's stated too strongly. Justification most definitely has a lot do with future judgment. Justification is vital, critical, and necessary, but not absolutely determinative, not "bulletproof" to use a word from a prior post. The best way to say it, then, is that justification is a necessary but not sufficient condition of being declared righteous at the judgment. 

In one sense, we sort of already know this. As mentioned in Part 1, readers of the Bible have long been aware that there are texts which warn about the justified falling away from grace. And if you ponder it, that possibility doesn't make a ton of sense if we think of justification working proleptically. I mean, it can work that way, but it's an odd, unnatural, and convoluted way of thinking about the situation. If justification is a future verdict of innocence that you can lose today, what's the point of having that verdict so far in the future? Doesn't it make a whole lot more sense to see this verdict as we normally would, as a forgiveness for past sins with the expectation, upon exiting the courtroom, to live a rehabilitated life going forward? And doesn't that image explain a whole lot of what Paul sounds like? Today you have been justified, forgiven, set free. You're walking out of the courtroom an innocent man or woman. In biblical language, you've been "redeemed," a price has been paid to get you out of jail. And now, in light of this verdict and freedom, a free gift of grace, you are to live a rehabilitated life. Endure. Hold fast. Persevere. Run the race. Fight the good fight. Do not return to your former, wicked ways. Because if you, do you'll find yourself back before the Judge and found guilty. 

Now I ask you, doesn't that sound a whole lot like Paul? Consider some selected texts:

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. (1 Thess 3.12-13) 

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. (1 Thess 4.3-7) 

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. (1 Thess 5.23-24) 

For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Cor 3.11-15) 

So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. (1 Cor 5.4-5) 

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Cor 9.24-27) 

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea...Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness...These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! (1 Cor 10.1,5,11-12) 

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Cor 5.10) 

Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? (2 Cor 13.5)

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal 5.19-21)

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. (Gal 6.7-9)

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. (Rom 6.11-14)

The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. (Rom 8.6-8)

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. (Rom 8.12-13)

I'll confess, the reading of Paul sketched above, when we consider texts like these, feels a whole lot more natural and normal, a ton less contorted than how we typically read Paul. 

If you remove the proleptic reading of justification a whole lot of Paul becomes clear, simple and transparent. Generations upon generations of debate about faith and works, justification and sanctification, the perseverance of the saints--on and on--all vanish with simple, clear, obvious reading: By grace through faith you have been declared innocent to live a rehabilitated life. Devote yourself to this new life--stay clean, sober, holy, and watchful--and the Lord will reward you when he returns. Even more, you are not alone in fighting this good fight and running this long race. We have each other and the Holy Spirit. You will not be tempted beyond what you can handle. And the power of God, if you lean upon him, will give you the strength to stand on the last day. 

Before getting to Paul it would be good to explore the themes of forgiveness and judgment in the gospels.

To start, let's ask this: What was Jesus up to in the gospels? What was his mission? What was his message of "good news"?

To start in on an answer, it might be helpful to draw a contrast between Jesus and John the Baptist.

As we've learned from my series on 1 Enoch, it seems John was a clear product of Second Temple Judaism. Just like 1 Enoch, John arrives on the scene proclaiming the coming of the Chosen One who will come in wrath to bring judgment to earth. Given the imminent arrival of the Day of the Lord, John calls Israel to repentance:

In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”

John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3.1-12)

Again, as seen in texts like 1 Enoch, these are Second Temple themes: A coming judgment where the children of Israel will be judged according to their works, a time of "winnowing" when "every tree that does not produce good fruit will we cut down and thrown into the fire."

Jesus then takes the stage, and things are both similar and different from John. 

As for continuities with John, the first thing to note is that Jesus retains John's vision of a coming judgement. As conservative evangelicals enjoy pointing out, Jesus talked about judgment and hell more than anyone. In Reviving Old Scratch I note that progressive Christians conveniently forget this about Jesus, turning Jesus into a cosmic, mindful, non-dualistic, hippie, Zen guru. And yet, Jesus is the one who said "broad is the way that leads to destruction" and regularly mentioned a hellish place where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Beyond a coming judgment, Jesus also teaches, as with John, that this judgment will be focused upon works. There are numerous examples here. Just take a tour through the Sermon on the Mount. The entire sermon preaches that we will be judged according to works. Consider:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."

"For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell."

"If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven."

"For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

"Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven."

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock...But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand."

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jesus preached that we will be judged by our deeds on Judgment Day. Both Jesus and John agree on this point. 

And yet, this is the same Jesus who forgives the woman caught in the act of adultery, touched lepers, welcomed tax collectors like Zacchaeus, and forgave the thief on the cross. Plus, what about the Parable of the Prodigal Son? Or the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard where those who work an hour get the same pay as those who worked all day? What about Jesus' message of mercy, grace, and forgiveness?

This is why I started us off with the question, "What was Jesus up to in the gospels?" Because I'll be honest with you, most Christians have no clue what Jesus was up to. And you know this because most Christians conveniently ignore the parts of Jesus that don't fit their paradigm. Few Christians speak about the whole Jesus. Why? Because the whole Jesus seems like a big paradox. For example, it's pretty hard to hold the Parable of the Prodigal Son together with "Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Which is it, Jesus? It's hard to tell if we should terrified by Jesus or reassured. 

So again we ask, what was Jesus up to? How do we make sense of these paradoxical texts? Is there a way to think of what Jesus was doing that makes all this material hang together cohesively and coherently? 

Gabriele Boccaccini makes the following argument. To start, Jesus and John were on the same Second Temple eschatological page. Judgment was coming and that judgment would be based upon our righteous deeds. The critical difference between John and Jesus, however, was that Jesus proclaimed an extended season of amnesty for "the lost sheep of Israel." As Jesus said repeatedly describing what he was up to, he came to seek and save the lost sheep of Israel. He didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners. He wasn't sent to the healthy, but to the sick. Given the authority to forgive sins, Jesus welcomed the sinners back into Israel, graciously regathering the scattered flock, saving them all from the imminent Day of the Lord. 

And yet, this offer of grace didn't nullify the fact that God will judge us each according to our works. After Jesus' offer of grace Zacchaeus bears fruit, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” To which Jesus replies, “Today salvation has come to this house." To the woman caught in the act of adultery Jesus says, "Go and sin no more." And then we have the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant: You can receive grace, but if you fail to pay if forward you'll be judged without mercy. Forgiveness isn't a blank check. Forgiveness just gets you back into the flock, where you renew your covenantal obligation to not act like a wolf. Prooftext: Zacchaeus. Jesus' offer of amnesty to sinners wasn't permission to ignore Jesus' commandment to love one another. 

To be clear, I don't think this take on Jesus answers all the questions or accounts for all the textual "data" to be explained. There's too much diversity between the Synoptic audiences of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and the Johannine communities to come up with a Grand Unified Theory of Jesus. There never will be a single theory of Jesus that accounts for every line of gospel text. There will always be anomalous data points.

And yet, Boccaccini's proposal does explain a lot, and its key advantages are, in my opinion, how it 1) explains both the continuity and discontinuity between Jesus and John, and 2) helps us hold together Jesus' message of judgment with his message of mercy, how Jesus' offer of amnesty to sinners didn't void the vision of a judgment based upon works that he shared with John.

Let's also admit that this historical-critical approach to the gospels displays a lot of theological impoverishment. Historical-critical readings generally do. And yet, for the purposes of this series, this reading of Jesus does highlight how forgiveness and a judgment based upon works could hang together. This tension will be important going forward as we try to map links between the mission of Jesus and the gospel proclaimed by St. Paul.

A few months ago I wrote a post entitled "A Theology of Drowning." The suggestion I made in that post is that there's a difference between God's love for us and salvation. I then followed that post with a second, pointing out how in the New Testament salvation is consistently referred to as a future event. My point in those two posts was that God loves us, yes, but salvation is something different.

For many readers, this was a confusing distinction. Among progressive Christians especially, God's love for us just is salvation. So to suggest that salvation was something more or different from God's love sent some heads spinning. Which is good. I write to both edify and confound. You're welcome.

In this series we're going to explore another unsettling contrast, that between justification and judgment.

Before we begin, however, fair warning: you are going to hate this series. If you're theologically fragile and easily triggered, a wounded ex-evangelical or dogmatic progressive, you might want to sit this one out. 

For myself, I'm a sucker for novel and unique takes on how to read the Bible. I like bold and unusual ideas, if only for the purpose of mapping possible hermeneutical moves and exposing my own hermeneutical biases. For example, you've read a biblical text a million times before and feel 100% confident you know exactly what it means. But then you hear a different take on that passage. And suddenly, "Wow, that text might might not mean what I think it means." One of your blindspots and settled opinions gets checked and unsettled. 

This series is going to be a whole lot of that.   

Again, you're not going to like it.

I came across this new reading of Paul by reading Gabriele Boccaccini's book Paul's Three Paths to Salvation. I followed that up by reading Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul by Chris VanLandingham. Both books caught my attention by offering a reading of Paul I'd never heard before. And I've heard a lot of readings of Paul. So being surprised was fun. Plus, the reading is plausible and reminded me of things I suggested in my two "Theology of Drowning" posts.

Let's begin.

As described in my recent series on 1 Enoch, Second Temple Judaism lived in expectation of a coming Judgment Day where everyone would be judged according to their works on earth. As I described in the 1 Enoch series, the early Christians inherited that vision of Judgment Day.

And yet, Christians modified things a bit, creating a unique stream within Second Temple Judaism. Two of the most critical innovations occurred with Paul, his teachings about "justification by faith" and his inclusion of the Gentiles. In this view, the offer of grace, to be accepted by faith, was available now to all, both Jew and Gentile, in anticipation of an imminent Judgment. You can see this proclamation neatly summarized in 1 Thessalonians, the earliest New Testament writing: 

The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. (1 Thess 1.8-10)

This was Paul's message in a nutshell: Accept the Lord's message by faith, turn from idols to the Living God, and Jesus will rescue you from the coming wrath. In short, justification by faith saves you at Judgment Day.

Or does it? 

As you know, much to the chagrin of Calvinists, throughout the New Testament salvation doesn't seem like a done deal. Justification doesn't provide bulletproof protection on Judgment Day. Those once justified can fail to follow through, can fall from grace, can walk away. True, this is conceived as an unlikely occurrence by the New Testament writers, but it is a real, if rare, possibility. Warnings are offered about falling away, calling for endurance and steadfastness. The justified have to hold fast to stand vindicated on Judgment Day.

All of this raises the classic debate about if we are "saved by faith or works." For example, beliefs about the "perseverance of the saints" is an attempt to bolt justification onto judgment. If justified, then saved. You cannot fall away from grace. We see the appeal of this doctrine--trying to superglue justification onto judgment--because if we have to work to retain or hold onto our status as justified then these post-justification "works" appear to annul the gift of grace. Plus, as many Arminians know, it makes the Christian life anxious if we have to worry about falling from grace when we sin. I recall growing up in the Churches of Christ, an Arminian tradition, constantly worrying about dying right after an egregious sin. Would death have caught me out of a state of grace if I hadn't time to repent? Depending upon the day, I felt I was constantly moving in and out of grace as my moral performance toggled back and forth from sin to repentance. It was both anxiety-inducing and exhausting. It also produces the moral OCD of scrupulosity.

So we can see why we'd want to identify justification with judgment. On the one hand, we don't want to make salvation the product of human effort or works. That seems to annul grace. And on the other hand, we want to avoid the anxiety produced by wondering if our moral performance is sufficient to prevent a fall from grace.

And yet, let's confess, these are our problems. Our concerns. Very Lutheran concerns that we've inherited from the great reformer as he struggled with and rejected the Catholic doctrine of merit. But we have to ask, where these Paul's concerns?

Recall, Paul thought judgment was immanent. So this time of "holding fast" wasn't going to be very long. It was a doable proposition. Hang in there, be faithful, the time is short. But as generations have passed, the lag time between justification and judgment has grown. Most of us are "justified by faith" early in life, and we expect to die before the Second Coming. That's a very long time to "hold fast." Our moral witness ebbs and flows across the lifespan. And as it does, it brings to our attention those New Testament warnings about falling away. It also raises questions about how effortful this moral journey is. You have to work very hard at it, day in and day out, decade after decade. Which raises the question: Isn't all this work morphing into a works-based righteousness? Especially when we compare ourselves to believers who are putting in precisely zero work and effort? How, exactly, is justification and sanctification supposed to work? Can those "justified by faith" behave any way they please, for their entire lives, with no consequences? If so, what's the point of putting in any work at all in following Jesus if none of it matters? Is not faith dead without works? And yet, if we do work hard, and think that work matters before God and will be rewarded by God, are we are not expecting to be judged by our acts of righteousness instead of grace?

We enter here the tempest of questions that have swirled around these issues since Martin Luther. But again, these are our issues, not Paul's. Paul never had to deal with the theological, moral, and pastoral implications of a delayed parousia. 

Which brings us back to the exploration of this series. How, exactly, did Paul view the relationship between justification and judgment?

Stated succinctly, Boccaccini and VanLandingham argue that, for Paul, justification refers to the past and that judgment points to the future. Justification, for both Jew and Gentile, means being rescued from the power of sin and transferred into the kingdom of God. And that is more of an event than a status. You've been pulled out of the quicksand and now stand, by the grace of God, on solid ground. Rescued, but not saved yet, not fully or finally, emancipated from our powerlessness and impotence to now serve the Living God. We "have been justified" as we point back to accepting Jesus "by faith." But from that moment on, having been justified and ransomed by the blood of Jesus, empowered and emancipated the the power of the Holy Spirit, future judgment will be according to your deeds and works. In this view, justification is a "fresh start" for sinners, wiping our slate clean. Justification is also, via the Spirit, the empowerment to obey God. Justification, in this sense, through forgiveness (the blood of Jesus) and empowerment (the indwelling Holy Spirit), creates a capacity for righteousness. And having been gifted this capacity, Judgment Day will evaluate how we've put this capacity to use. You will be judged by your deeds, how, in the words of Paul, faith works itself out through love. Which is why, for the justified, love is more important than faith. Prooftext: See 1 Corinthians 13. 

Before grace, you were crippled. Faith heals you, and signs you up for the marathon. Love is running the race, and love is what gets you across the finish line. And there a prize awaits you as the Lord rewards each according to their works. So run, and don't give up. But here's the thing: You have to run. Justifying faith has to produce the fruits of love. For everyone will be judged by those fruits. Believing in Jesus is not enough. Even the demons believe.

In summary, justification by faith and judgment by works. 

Rephrased to make this a little more palatable: justification by belief and judgment by love.

If this strikes you as a contrast you've never considered before, that was my reaction as well. In the posts to follow we'll walk through the Biblical evidence for this position and you can decide what you think. 

And for what it's worth, the Lord judging humanity by the criteria of love isn't the worst idea I've ever heard. So count me intrigued...

I was having a conversation with my son Aidan, a history major, about Marx and his critique of capitalism. I made the point that Marx got a lot of things right. For example, capitalism is an engine of inequality, and democratic nations chronically struggle to address and redress these wealth and income imbalances as they accumulate over time. 

But where Marx was wrong, I shared with Aidan, was his prediction that wealth inequalities would seed and foment revolutionary fervor among the poor and working classes. You just don't see much class-driven rage in capitalist societies. Unions in the US, to take one example, are hard to create and sustain. 

For capitalists, the reason for this lack of collective anger is obvious: capitalism works. Yes, capitalism might produce large wealth and income disparities, but the wealth and income capitalism creates for all far exceeds the economic alternatives. Capitalism might not be perfect, but it's the best option we have. 

Socialists might disagree with that assessment. Regardless, that's not the observation I made to Aidan. The point I shared with Aidan is that I think Marx underestimated capitalism's ability to create narcotizing products. Capitalism swamps us with pain-numbing (or pain-distracting) and pleasure-giving products. Capitalism has a vast capacity to anesthetize the world. Capitalism creates pain, sure, but it also numbs it. Your limb is being amputated and you don't feel a thing.

Phrased differently, capitalism specializes in addiction, in targeting the pleasure, pain, and reward pathways of the brain. Consider all the ways capitalism affects the dopaminergic and pleasure pathways of the brain:

• Sugar, fat, and salt (fast food, snack foods, sugary drinks)
• Video games (smart phone apps, Playstation, Xbox)
• Sporting events (attending, watching, fantasy leagues)
• Gambling (online, casinos, lottery tickets)
• Caffeine
• Nicotine
• Alcohol
• Marijuana
• Illegal drugs (opioids, meth, cocaine) 
• TV and Streaming services
• Movies
• Social media
• Widescreen TVs
• Headphones
• Shopping (online and in-person)

I'm sure you can add to the list. 

Everyone has their fix. My poorer friends might live in squalor, but they have a smartphone, a widescreen TV, an Xbox, Netflix, cigarettes, junk food, sugary drinks, lottery tickets and cheap beer. They are also more likely to be using illegal drugs. Stepping back and looking all that, the point should be clear: That is a whole, whole lot of pleasure.

My richer friends also have their smartphones on which they play games and surf social media. Their widescreen TVs are a part of an entertainment center. They drink bottles of wine, good whisky and craft beer. Beyond Netflix, they also have Hulu, Disney+, AppleTV, Amazon Prime, and Paramount+. They wear AirPods, Bose, or some other brandname headphone. Amazon Prime drops gifts on the porch. They also crave fat, salt and sugar. They also can afford concerts, vacations, live sporting events, and taking the family to Disney.

Again, everyone has their fix. We live in a narcotized world. No matter your socioeconomic status, you can surround yourself with pleasures. A glass of wine or a cigarette. Stock trading or a lottery ticket. A football game or a Netflix binge. Instagram or chocolate. A video game or eBay. 

As I shared with Aidan, it is no wonder people don't agitate for a better world. The fix is in, to shift that metaphor. We've buzzed, soothed, stimulated, and numbed our brains. We're rats in a cage, pushing the bar to get our next reward, fix, and hit.

We now arrive at Chapter 4 of Maps of Meaning entitled "The Appearance of Anomaly: Challenge to the Shared Map." (If you're wanting to keep track, we're about halfway through the book.)

The word "anomaly" in the chapter title comes from Thomas Kuhn's famous theory regarding scientific revolutions. You might not know Thomas Kuhn, but his theory has changed how we think about all sorts of things. If you've ever heard the words "paradigm" or "paradigm shift" you've been introduced to Kuhn.

Kuhn's theory concerned scientific developments, and Peterson will apply it to cultural and moral developments. The basic idea is this. We begin with an overarching paradigm or shared worldview that organizes experience and makes life predictable. But from time to time we encounter an "anomaly," an observation or experience that doesn't fit within the prevailing paradigm. Though a location of confusion and disruption, if the anomaly is occasional and minor we can carry on as normal. But if the anomaly is large or persistent this can create stress upon the prevailing paradigm. If that stress grows dissatisfaction with the paradigm increases. This is the "crisis" phase. The crisis is resolved through a "paradigm shift," which is often experienced as a "revolutionary" moment where the old paradigm is replaced by a new paradigm.

Again, Kuhn's theory was developed to describe scientific progress, but the core of this ideas has proved to be widely applicable. We have shared, settled assumptions. Those assumptions get challenged from time to time. And if that challenge becomes significant, we might need to scrap our old assumptions to find a better way to look at the world. Life is filled with these revolutionary moments, paradigm shifts large and small. From how you see yourself, the world, politics, God, the Bible. We can all look back at moments where a "paradigm shift" occurred in our thinking.  

We also see similar dynamics at work in cognitive, moral, and personality development. The famous theories of Jean Piaget (cognitive development), Lawrence Kohlberg (moral development), and Erik Erikson (personality development) all use Kuhnian themes, where stages of cognitive, moral, or personality development go through crises as we advance on to the next stage where better functioning awaits.

Jordan Peterson also uses Kuhnian ideas, but with a significant modification. And it's this modification that makes Peterson a conservative rather than progressive thinker.  

Recall from this series Peterson's argument. Our shared map of meaning, our cultural worldview, our paradigm, has been built up over evolutionary time. Our culture, through ritual, norms, narrative, myth, symbol, drama, and religious observance, encodes the social, psychic, and moral wisdom of the ages. And as noted in the last post, we each are born into this shared matrix of meaning. Our culture. This is our "paradigm."

As Peterson has argued, this paradigm is mostly operating at the unconscious, implicit level. Over time, however, as cognitive evolution progressed, we slowly began to make the paradigm explicit. We started telling stories to narrate our implicit lifeways, to explain ourselves to ourselves. The most important thing to note if you want to understand Jordan Peterson is that this is an entirely bottom-up process. Most of us, by contrast, assume religion is a top-down process. We look to heaven, God gives us a moral law, and we try to obey that law. Top-down. For Peterson, it's the exact opposite. We begin acting in adaptive ways. Those ways get into a cultural groove, which is passed down generation after generation. Later on, we begin to narrate this groove in stories and myths. Eventually, these myths become religions and are codified in laws and rules. The process is bottom-up. Simply:

Top-Down (Ten Commandments Imagination):

God ---> Law ---> Behavior

Bottom-Up (Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning):

Behavior --->  Myth ---> God ---> Law

So that's how the paradigm comes into existence. 

From here, the paradigm faces "anomalies," challenges that Peterson groups under the heading of strangeness: the Strange, the Stranger, and the Strange Idea. Something disruptive and unpredictable--something strange--challenges the status quo of the society. If the challenge is significant, a cultural crisis ensues. But for Peterson, and this is key, a crisis isn't experienced as a reliable opportunity for cultural progress.  With the anomaly, the Dragon of Chaos appears and the entire culture faces dissolution. This is the Petersonian twist to Kuhn's theory, the notion that cultures can dissolve.

For example, in Kuhn's theory a new finding in particle physics does pose a challenge to reigning quantum theories. There is a crisis here. But that crisis isn't the threat that the new discovery will thrown us all back into the dark ages. Scientific progress has a ratchet. We don't back up, but keep moving forward with each new discovery. A crisis for a scientific theory doesn't threaten to burn the whole house down. All is advance, advance, advance.  

But with Peterson, there is no such thing as a cultural, moral or existential ratchet. Cultures can dissolve. The shared map of meaning can be torn up. We can go back to the dark ages. If not scientifically--Though we could blow ourselves up. Thank you, Mr. Putin.--we can back up morally, socially, politically, existentially, and spiritually. In fact, Peterson thinks that is precisely what has happened to the modern world. We've burned the map and find ourselves lost.

To be sure, Peterson does have a vision of cultural progress and development. In the moment of cultural crisis the "Revolutionary Hero" emerges. As Peterson says, "The revolutionary hero reorders the protective structures of society, when the emergence of an anomaly makes such reordering necessary." More about that to come. But the point to be urged today is that cultural crisis poses significant risk. And it's this risk that make Peterson a conservative thinker. The cultural wisdom of the ages cannot be discarded without the Dragon of Chaos reemerging. There is no ratchet. Things can fall apart.

The vision of Judgment Day that we find in the New Testament isn't found in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament there is a vision of judgment called "the Day of the Lord," but this isn't the vision we typically associate with Judgment Day, a moment at the end of time when all of humanity, living and dead, stand and give an account of their lives before the judgment seat of God. 

To be sure, as with many things eschatological in the New Testament, we don't get a very detailed and wholly consistent vision of Judgment Day across all the NT writings, but we do find things like Matthew 25:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left."

And Revelation 20:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.

Obviously, we see a development from the Old Testament "the Day of the Lord," which is mainly a vision of Israel's vindication within history among the nations, to something much more universal and cosmic, a time where each person will be "judged according to what we have done." 

As has been the theme of this series, this contrast between the Old and New Testaments can seem discontinuous, but if we pay attention to intertestamental writings, like 1 Enoch, we find a more continuous development. Judgment Day is another example of this.

For example, from 1 Enoch 69:

And he sat on the throne of his glory,
and the whole Judgment was given to the Son of Man,
and he will make sinners vanish and perish from the face of the earth.

And from 1 Enoch 100:

And the Most High will be aroused on that day
to execute great judgment on all.
He will set a guard of the holy angels over all the righteous and holy:
and they will be kept as the apple of the eye
until evil and sin come to an end.

All that to note that the notion of Judgment Day isn't a novelty introduced by the New Testament but a development that occurred within Second Temple Judaism, a development that informed the vision of Judgment Day we find in the New Testament.

Where do people go when they die? 

Growing up in my small church I was given a map, a mimeographed map, of the afterlife. The issue the map was solving was the timing of Judgment Day. Specifically, where are the dead as we all await the final judgment? 

There are some faith traditions, though few, who say the dead are actually dead. The dead are "nowhere," or at least in a state of unconscious "sleep." But for traditions who believe that the soul survives bodily death and retains a sense of selfhood, where does that soul go?

Again, the issue concerns Judgment Day. Souls can't go to heaven or hell before the Judgment, so they have to go to some sort of holding area to await the Judgment. This is what my map described. The dead went to a holding place called Hades or Tartarus (not Hell, that's after the judgment) to await the future Judgment. On Judgment Day, the dead would be raised from Hades/Tartarus to be judged alongside the living. 

The map I was given wasn't crazy. Tartarus is described in the New Testament as a place where fallen angels are being held to await Judgment Day:

For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment. (2 Peter 2.4) 

Now I want to remind you, though you know all these things: The Lord first saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe; and He has kept, with eternal chains in darkness for the judgment of the great day, the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling. (Jude 5-6) 

 Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— to those who were disobedient long ago. (1 Peter 3.18-20)

As for the souls of human beings, the New Testament hints at a pre-judgment location called Hades (or Sheol in the Old Testament). Additionally, Hades seems to involve some prior moral sorting in anticipation of Judgment Day as evidenced by Jesus' statement to the repentant thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise," along with the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: 

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’" (Luke 16.22-26)

So this was the map of the afterlife I was given. There was Tartarus and Hades, locations where fallen angels and human souls awaited the final judgment. More, Hades seemed to have locations for the righteous to await judgment--paradise, Abraham's bosom--and a place of torment for the unrighteous to wait. All of this stitched together from various bits from the New Testament.

Was this vision of the afterlife a fanciful creation woven together by modern, biblical fundamentalists? Actually not. The map I was given was, it turns out, a pretty accurate depiction of how the New Testament authors, along with Second Temple era Jews, viewed the afterlife. We know this because of books like 1 Enoch. 

The first book comprising 1 Enoch, "The Book of the Watchers," recounts the journey of Enoch to the places of the dead. As described above, Enoch first visit the place where the fallen angels are being held (Chapters 17-19). After that visit, Enoch then goes to view the places where human souls are residing, awaiting the future judgment (Chapters 20-32). This place for the human souls is a mountain with four hollows or valleys. Three of the valleys are dark, and the archangel Raphael describes their purpose:

"These hollow places are intended that the spirits of the souls of the dead might be gathered into them. For this very purpose they were created, that here the souls of all human beings should be gathered. And look, these are the pits for the place of their confinement. Thus they were made until the day on which they will be judged, and until the time of the day of the end of the great judgment that will be exacted from them." (1 Enoch 22.3-4)

The valley filled with light, however, is reserved for the righteous:

Then I asked about all the hollow places, why they were separated one from the other. And [Raphael] answered me and said, "These three were made that the spirits of the dead might be separated. And this has been separated for the spirits of the righteous, where the bright fountain of water is." (1 Enoch 22.8-9).

Just like we see in Luke 16, the unrighteous souls in the dark valleys experience torment prior to judgment. The righteous in the bright valley, like Lazarus, are spared this pain as they wait 

All that to say: For years I used to make fun of that mimeographed map of Hades, Paradise, and Tartarus, these "holding places" prior to the Judgment. It seemed wholly made up and pieced together, like how people scrap together bits from Revelation to make end times prophecies. But now, after reading 1 Enoch, I see that mimeographed map as a pretty spot on depiction of how Second Temple Jews and the New Testament writers thought about the location of the dead.

As students of the New Testament know, the appellation "the Son of Man" plays a huge role in the gospels, most notably because it is Jesus' preferred self-description.

And as students of Old Testament know, the figure of the "Son of Man" as the title of a future, hoped for leader, is introduced in the book of Daniel:

I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7.13-14)

We don't know much about this enigmatic figure mentioned by Daniel. The next time we hear about the Son of Man, as readers of the Old and New Testaments, is in the gospels. And there it seems that the title "the Son of Man" just explodes off the page. Clearly, some development between the Old and New Testaments, a span of about 400 years, has occurred regarding "the Son of Man," this figure who is to be given "an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away."

1 Enoch, written between the Old and New Testaments, represents some of this development. Let me mention three things we observe about the Son of Man in 1 Enoch that will be familiar to readers of the New Testament.

First, given the apocalyptic worldview of 1 Enoch, the Son of Man is presented in a more militant light than in Daniel 7. The Son of Man comes to conquer and defeat the rebellious angels and "the kings and mighty" enslaving the world, thereby setting the righteous free:

And this son of man whom you have seen--
he will raise the kings and the mighty from their couches,
and the strong from their thrones.
He will loosen the reins of the strong,
and he will crush the teeth of the sinners.
He will overturn the kings from their thrones and their kingdoms,
because they do not exult him or praise him,
or humbly acknowledge whence the kingdom was given to them. (1 Enoch 46.3-5)

He will be a staff for the righteous,
that they may lean on him and not fall;
He will be the light of the nations,
and he will be a hope for those who grieve in their hearts.
All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship before him,
and they will glorify and bless and sing hymns to the name of the Lord of Spirits. (1 Enoch 48.4-5)

These lines from 1 Enoch evoke many New Testament texts, one of them is Mary's Magnificat, 

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

The observation here is that, by the time of the writing of the New Testament, the image of the "Son of Man" began to envision, not just a ruler, but a ruler who first had to come as a cosmic warrior and conqueror. These are the Christus Victor themes we noted in the last post.

A second development we find in 1 Enoch is how the Son of Man, also called the Chosen One, becomes the Cosmic Judge at the final judgment: 

And the Lord of Spirits seated the Chosen One upon the throne of glory;
and he will judge all the works of the holy ones in the heights of heaven,
and in the balance he will weigh their deeds.
And all the kings and the mighty and the exalted and those who rule the land will fall on their faces in his presence;
and they will worship and set their hope on that Son of Man,
and they will supplicate and petition for mercy from him.
And the righteous and the chosen will be saved on that day,
and the faces of the sinners and the unrighteous they will henceforth not see.
And the Lord of Spirits will abide over them,
and with that Son of Man they will eat,
and they will lie down and rise up forever and ever. (1 Enoch 61.8; 62.9,13-14)

The New Testament similarities should be obvious here, from the judgment scene in Revelation 20 to the parable of judgment from Matthew 25: 

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

A third and final thing I'd like to mention involves Christology. 

Specifically, many have made the argument that the early Christians transformed the human Jesus into the divine Christ. A wandering Jewish rabbi became God Incarnate. Described theologically, the low Christology of the Synoptic gospels was slowly transformed into the high Christology of the Gospel of John, the church fathers, and early church counsels. 

And yet, it's not quite that neat and simple. In 1 Enoch, for example, we see the name of the Son of Man preexisting creation, with echos of Wisdom and Logos imagery:

And in that hour that son of man was named in the presence of the Lord of Spirits,
and his name, before the Head of Days.
Even before the sun and the constellations were created,
before the stars of heaven were made,
his name was named before the Lord of Spirits. (1 Enoch 48.2-3)

To be sure, the preexisting name doesn’t equate the Son of Man with God Himself. But all of these influences are preparing the way for a high Christology as a Jewish, not a Christian, development.

The first text that comprises 1 Enoch is called "The Book of the Watchers." 

"The Book of Watchers" takes its inspiration from Genesis 6 where it is told that the "sons of God," the angelic "Watchers," come down to earth to procreate with the "daughters of men." The offspring of these unions created the Nephilim, a race of giants. 

Because of these fallen angels and their giant offspring the world is corrupted and ruined, filled with evil, prompting the cleansing of Noah's flood. As a part of God's judgment, the angelic Watchers are consigned to prison by the archangels to await the final judgment. And yet, the earth is far from purified. The souls of the giants who perished in the flood remain on earth as unclean spirits who afflict humanity until the judgment. Also, later in 1 Enoch, in "The Book of Parables," future judgment is also to fall upon "the kings and the mighty" who participate in and continue the angelic rebellion of the Watchers by perpetrating ruin and injustice upon earth.

Of course, the story told here by 1 Enoch seems profoundly strange to modern readers of the New Testament. And yet, 1 Enoch illustrates important features of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition, a tradition that many New Testament writers drew upon. Specifically, a working assumption throughout the New Testament is that the world is troubled and enslaved by rebellious cosmic powers. The world is fallen and broken because of demonic influences. Salvation, therefore, is the coming of Christ to defeat these powers, bring them into judgment, and set the righteous free. As 1 John 3.8 says, "the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work." Salvation is the future promise of a full, complete and final eschatological victory over these dark powers. The Day of the Lord, what we call Judgment Day, is the coming of this wrath/liberation, a second Noah's flood, only this time with fire. The righteous, in this view, currently live in a ruined world dominated by demonic powers, powers aided by the "kings and the mighty," and await in hope the return of Christ who will come and rescue them. 

Simply put, the righteous stand in Noah's shoes.

Summarized like this, you suddenly see how the New Testament writers shared an apocalyptic worldview with 1 Enoch. 

For example, throughout the New Testament the world is described as a place of demonic bondage. Satan is described as the "god" (2 Cor 4.4), "prince" (Eph 2.2), and "ruler" (Jn 12.21) of this world. All creation "groans under bondage" awaiting the "revealing of the sons of God" (Rom 8.19). Salvation is being delivered "from the domain of darkness" and "transferred to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Col 1.13). The righteous live as "children of light" (1 Thess 5.5) among the "children of the devil" (1 Jn 3.10), awaiting their future emancipation on the day of coming judgment:

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. (1 Thess 1.9-10)

The future reign of God comes to earth after Christ defeats the rebellious angelic powers, along with the "kings and the mighty":

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor 15.24-26)

Beyond these apocalyptic references to cosmic bondage and awaiting an eschatological emancipation, sprinkled throughout the New Testament are also references to the rebellious angels and the unclean spirits of 1 Enoch. As we know, the Synoptic gospels are full of stories where Jesus is exorcising unclean spirits. As it says in Acts 10.38, Jesus "went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil." Michael the archangel casts Satan out of heaven in Revelation 12. The New Testament also describes the rebellious angels being bound in prison:

And if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but rather cast them into Tartarus in bonds of nether darkness, held there for judgment, and did not spare the ancient cosmos, but preserved the eighth person, Noah, a herald of justice, having brought a flood upon the cosmos of the impious... (2 Peter 2:4-5) 

And the angels who did not maintain their own position of rule, but instead deserted their proper habitation, he has kept in everlasting chains under nether gloom for the judgment of the Great Day. (Jude 1:6)

And lastly, in a sexual echo to the Watchers lusting over "the daughters of men" in Genesis 6, women are asked to dress modestly in church "because of the angels" (1 Cor 11.10).

Much of all this, for regular readers, are things I've written about for years. The upshot, or theological take home point if you are wanting one, is that the connections between the New Testament and 1 Enoch highlight the themes of Christus Victor. Most modern Christians think of salvation as being solely about the forgiveness of sins. But what good is being forgiven if you remain under bondage? Christus Victor highlights our need for rescue and emancipation, our being "trapped" in a wicked, enslaving matrix of idolatry and oppression. And if that seems hard to wrap your head around let me point you Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted, my attempt to unpack a Christus Victor theology in an accessible and practical way for modern audiences.

Lastly, I'd also like to point out that scholars of 1 Enoch have pointed out how Jewish apocalypticism functioned as a theodicy and a lament. We, the righteous of God, still find ourselves struggling within a broken, ruined world. We might be forgiven, but we're far from saved. The world is a wreck. We live "between the times." Consequently, in the midst of this ruined world we live as people of hope looking toward a coming emancipation. We are the people who pray Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus.

Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this, that behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. 

Then, as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!"

Just to keep you updated about where we are in Maps of Meaning, last week we finished the very long Chapter 2, all 196 pages. Today a post about the very short Chapter 3 (16 pages) entitled "Apprenticeship and Enculturation: Adoption of a Shared Map."

One way to approach this chapter is by looking at two of Peterson's 12 Rules from his bestselling book. Specifically, Rule 5 and 11:

5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. 

11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

These rules get at the heart of Chapter 3 in Maps of Meaning. Specifically, Peterson takes the ideas of the Great Mother and the Great Father and applies them to society, culture, and religion. Specifically, we don't step into the world ordering the chaos all on our own. We are born into a family, a culture, a nation, a faith, and a social contract. We step into and grow up within pre-existing maps of meaning. And the relationship here between the individual and culture is dynamic and changing. People explore and push boundaries. Cultures change and develop over time.

Peterson's key insights about this person/culture dynamic go back to his observations about the Great Mother and the Great Father archetypes. Specifically, like walking the line between order and chaos, or balancing risk and security, cultures can be overly flexible or rigid. Thus, Peterson's parental/cultural advice. Don't be too permissive or you'll let your children do things that make you dislike them. But at the same time don't be too controlling, let the kids take risks while they skateboard.

Looked at from the perspective of the developing individual, growing up in a society involves learning how to manage one's own life within the structures of that society. "Enculturation" here is akin to "apprenticeship." The goal of this apprenticeship is to produce an autonomous and mature member of society. We find here similar tensions that have to be managed--submission versus rebellion, dependency versus autotomy--as the developing person can lean too far one way or the other. In fact, this tension never goes away as every member of a group negotiates this balancing act within society. Shall I conform or shall I rebel? Too much of either leads to adaptive problems.

Summarizing, there's an old adage from the psychodynamic tradition, "Some people need tightening, and some people need loosening." Some people have a lot of difficulty with self-management. They lack impulse control. They also regularly violate social norms. These are my students who don't come to class, party too much, and get in trouble with the school, their parents or the law. These students need to tighten up if they want to grow into a functional adulthood. I have other students who need to loosen up. They are anxious, uptight, perfectionistic, compulsive, stressed out, and driven. Their academic performance is outstanding, but they are suffering emotionally. They need to learn that perfection isn't a realistic goal in life. Sometimes you just have to say, "That's good enough."

If you reflect upon Christian life you see a lot of these dynamics at work. Christian parents have to negotiate between being too loose or too tight in raising their children. Trouble lurks to either side. How many times have we seen Christian parents so rigidly control their children, in protecting them from the world, only to have the children leave the faith upon gaining independence? How often have we seen Christian schools and churches, through strictness, create the adolescent rebellion they were trying to avoid? We have to been attentive to these reactive dynamics. As we all know, the quickest way to get a child or adolescent to do something is to tell them they can't. Prohibitions create fascinations.

We also see these dynamics at work in our spiritual journeys. For many ex-evangelicals, raised in very strict moral environments, the journey has been one of loosening, moving from a guilt-saturated faith to a more gracious, non-judgmental faith. And yet, we also see stories of tightening, where some ex-evangelicals have felt that their journey became too loose, vague, permissive, and open-ended, and so converted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. 

In my own faith community we're walking this balancing act. A generation ago, the Churches of Christ were too tight. So my generation went on a journey of loosening. But today, as we try to parent our children, we're noticing that things have gotten too loose, and that we may need to lean into a little more structure.

Ever since I'd read David Bentley Hart's translation of the New Testament I had 1 Enoch on my reading list. I finally got around to reading it, and want to gather up a few observations in this series, noting connections between 1 Enoch and the New Testament.

Some background.

1 Enoch is a Jewish apocalyptic text from the Second Temple period, the intertestamental period between the Old and New Testaments. Scholars date the writing of 1 Enoch to be around 300 BCE to around 0 CE. Those dates are important as 1 Enoch represents developments in Jewish thought directly before the writing of the New Testament. In fact, and this is the reason for this series, scholars see many Enochian themes and material in the New Testament texts. That is not to say that 1 Enoch was a direct influence upon the New Testament writers. But it is safe to suggest that Jewish apocalyptic ideas were a part of the shared cultural backdrop upon which the writers of 1 Enoch and the New Testament drew upon. Consequently, 1 Enoch is an important window in how Jewish apocalyptic thought was developing between the Old and New Testaments. What ideas and assumptions were "in the air" when the New Testament was being written? What stories were being told in the synagogues as the apostles preached in them? What would have been strange or familiar in the story the Christians were telling about Jesus? 1 Enoch gives us some insight into these questions. 

As Hart comments in his translation of the New Testament, "During the intertestamental period, before the 'official' canon of Hebrew scripture was generally established for either Jews or Christians, among the most influential holy texts for both communities were visionary books such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees." Hart goes on to note, 

It is difficult to exaggerate how influential the intertestamental "Noachic" literature was for the Jews and then Christians of the first century. On the whole, too many New Testament scholars over the years have neglected to assess properly not only the three centuries of Hellenistic culture in which Jewish culture had been steeping by the time of Christ and the apostolic church but also the profound importance for the early church (quite explicit at numerous places in the New Testament) of the angelology, demonology, cosmology, and the eschatology of texts like 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

Having now read 1 Enoch for myself I can now say two things. First, 1 Enoch is a very strange book. And second, having said that, I can see Hart's point. In reading 1 Enoch there were multiple places where I could see a clear connection with New Testament ideas, themes, and images. In the posts to come I'll share some of those observations. 

The version of 1 Enoch I'm using in this series is the scholarly translation done by George Nickelsburg and James Vanderkin published by Fortress Press.

As we move through Passion Week and toward Easter, I wanted to share a devotional created by David and Tim for the Nomad podcast. 

Reflecting upon Revelation 12, I share some thoughts about hope in a world on fire. And David shares some music. 

Check out "Hope in a World on Fire" at the Nomad podcast. 

Final post in this series.

The last thing I'd like to suggest about why good people need Jesus is that good people need the church.

I know church can be triggering for many people. But it would be good for your heart to find a loving faith community in your town doing good work for the neighborhood and city. 

As I've written about before, modern society has been stripped of its mediating institutions, local groups where people mixed, shared life, and did good community work together. Robert Putnum's seminal book Bowling Alone has documented the decline. In modern life, without local mediating institutions, there exists only atomized individuals, separate and alone, and the huge shadow of the federal government. I've made you a visual contrasting the two kinds of life:

Without local mediating institutions the goodness of good people becomes wholly politicized. This is because, as shown in the picture above on the left, the federal government is the only game in town. And while politics is good and necessary work, politics is soul sucking and life draining if it is the only thing you do. This is mainly due to 1) politics is a zero-sum game, swinging you back and forth between electoral wins and losses, 2) politics is driven by national issues divorced from your local neighborhood, and 3) politics lacks weekly, face to face engagement in expressions of love, care, and service.  

By contrast, as seen above in the picture on the right, goodness flowing through local work and communities, like with a church, provides interpersonal and intimate routes to express your goodness. Your care is being expressed directly, face to face. And this fills the soul.

And churches are better than non-profits here in that churches also exist to care about you. Sometimes you're the one in need. Sick in the hospital or recovering at home. Needing a bill to be paid. Catching a ride. Needing to move. Some child care. People to listen to your problems and share your worries. Because we all need to be loved. Even good people. 

Why do good people need Jesus? Joy comes to mind.

When you look at the modern world, especially young people, two things jump out at you. 

First, post-Christian society is highly moralized. Some have even described our new moral ethic, call it "wokeism," as the "new Puritanism," even a new religion. In a series last year I wrote about Joseph Bottum's argument that the social justice movement is post-Protestant, the social gospel minus the metaphysics. As I pointed out in Part 1, a strong case could be made that the very puritan and highly charged moral atmosphere of social justice activism is evidence that Jesus has won.

Second, our highly charged moral world is also profoundly unwell. Young people are woke, yes, but they are also anxious and depressed. As many have noted, the modern world is experiencing a crisis of meaning which is having a pervasive and adverse impact upon mental health. In Hunting Magic Eels I call this the Ache. 

Are these two trends--a highly-charged, puritanical moralism and a crisis of meaning--linked? 

Yes, they are linked. First, the trends are linked historically. As mentioned above, the modern world preserved the core of the Judeo-Christian ethos--Love Wins--while rejecting its metaphysical, narrative, sacramental, and communal infrastructure. Trouble was, it was this metaphysical, narrative, sacramental and communal infrastructure that provided the deep and rich meaning-making structures. Morals were preserved but meaning was lost. The post-Christian world is characterized by supercharged morality within a vacuum of meaning. 

Beyond history, the trends are also linked psychologically. Stringent moral performance has never made anyone happy, light, free, and joyous. Puritanism, old or new, is a grim affair. It isn't news to anyone that supercharged activist circles are angsty, angry, and anxious. Activists are winning the goodness game, as all Pharisees will, but they are emotionally unwell. Puritanism just isn't healthy or sustainable. 

Does that mean that activists should give up the fight? That we should stop being woke and go back to sleep? Of course not. But what does have to happen is that the puritanical moralism of social justice activism has to be re-embedded into the metaphysical, narrative, sacramental, and communal matrix that birthed and sustained that moral vision. This larger matrix provides resources for rest, grace, mercy, peace, fellowship, joy, wonder, beauty, and meaning. When moral performance, even stringent moral performance, is embedded within this matrix it becomes psychologically and relationally sustainable. Meaning in life is more than strict moral performance.

Good people are good, but they are also lost and hurting. Good people need Jesus because they need more than goodness, they need healing for the Ache.

We've looked at two of the three major archetypes in Jordan Peterson's thought, the Great Mother and the Divine Son. Today we look at the last character, the Great Father.

If the Great Mother represent Chaos and the Unknown, as both threat and opportunity, the Great Father represents Order and the Known. 

As with the Great Mother, the Great Father is a bivalent symbol. Positively, the Great Father represents structure and order. These are vital and adaptive accomplishments, personally and collectively. We need structure for both safety and security. We need norms and habits to regulate our lives.

And yet, if order and structure becomes totalizing the effect can be stifling, stultifying, and repressive. The Great Father can be a benevolent protector or a dominating tyrant. 

As Peterson summarizes, 

Construction of culture is creation of the mythic Great and Terrible Father, tyrant and wise king, as intermediary between the vulnerable individual and the overwhelming natural world...The wise king maintains stability...The Great Father as tyrant destroys what he once was and undermines what he still depends upon...He is the personification of the authoritarian and totalitarian state...The Great Father is protection and necessary aid to growth, but absolute identification with his personality and force ultimately destroys the spirit.

Again, structure and order provide necessary protections, but too much structure becomes oppressive. This basically mirrors what we observed with the Great Mother. Too much novelty and disruption leads to chaos, but we need to venture into the unknown to expand horizons and possibilities. Simplifying and combining the lessons from both archetypes, we're always balancing between Order and Chaos. This Order/Chaos balancing is a big theme in Peterson's thought. We need the right balance between Predictability versus Opportunity or Safety versus Risk to solve the challenges of life. 

Returning to the bivalent nature of the Great Father, we see examples of this in Christianity. We call God our Father, and images of that father can range from the comforting and protective to the judgmental and tyrannical. We also vary in the degree to which we experience God's "rules" as liberating or oppressive. God as Father is a very bivalent symbol in the Christian experience, and not everyone is on the same page. In my experience, in walking alongside ex-evangelicals, a large part of their conservative, evangelical experience was that God, as the Great Father, had become the tyrant. Consequently, movement toward viewing God as kind, wise, protective, caring and benevolent is an important part of their faith development. 

I'm a progressive Christian, so I spend most of my time talking to and counseling other progressive Christians. And among this group when we talk about "being a good person" there is a specific moral vision in mind. Being a good person means being a social justice warrior. 

Now, in many conservative circles calling someone a "social justice warrior," being "woke," is a pejorative term. To care about oppression, well, that's just the worst. But I'm a progressive, so being called a social justice warrior, in my book, is a compliment. Every Christian should be a social justice warrior. Why? Because Jesus was a social justice warrior. As Jesus described his mission in his first sermon in Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

If "setting the oppressed free" is not a part of your personal mission statement you shouldn't be calling yourself a Christian.

So, being a good person is being a social justice warrior. Which brings us to the point of this series: Do social justice warriors need Jesus? 

Yes, of course they do, for all the reasons I've discussed so far and more to come. Today, though, I'd like make a specific point about social justice itself. 

To state the point clearly: Life is morally nuanced and complicated, and the moral worldview of the social justice movement, without Jesus, is too narrow, impoverished, and simplistic to deal with the moral complexity of the world. 

Basically, life is complex, but when all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail.

Justice is just one tool in our moral toolbox. A critical, essential tool. But one tool can't do all the moral work life demands of us. Justice is a hammer, and when you're looking at a nail--say, oppression--the hammer is the tool to pick up. But the moral drama of our lives isn't just about oppression. We're dealing with all sorts of things, from forgiveness to mercy to shame to guilt to joy to truth to peace to reconciliation. And hitting mercy, for example, with a hammer just isn't a good idea. You'll break it.

As an obvious example, ponder how the social justice movement struggles with the issue of forgiveness. Can the canceled be forgiven? Someone gets canceled for something they've done in their past. Time passes. The person goes through a season of confession, repentance, rehabilitation, growth, and making amends. Can they be forgiven?

As you know, the social justice movement struggles here, with the issues of mercy, grace, forgiveness and reconciliation. And the reason for this, I'm pointing out, is that justice is a hammer and while a hammer is an excellent tool for nails it is not so great with other moral tasks. Forgiveness is a different problem than injustice. You need different tools.

And so, why do social justice warriors need Jesus? Lots of reasons, but the reason I'm pointing to today is that social justice warriors need, to change the metaphor, more colors in their moral crayon box. The world is a moral rainbow and all social justice warriors have is a single black crayon. But life is too complex for moral monochrome. 

To return to the tool metaphor, social justice warriors need Jesus because they need more tools in their moral toolbox. The moral work of life is too complicated to tackle with just a hammer. The moral drama of life isn't putting up a swing set in the backyard, easily tackled with the single tool enclosed in the box, it's building an entire house. Moral life is cement work, brick laying, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, roofing, painting, and so on. You need more than a hammer. 

Social justice warriors need Jesus so they can grow up and into a richer, more complex moral universe, a deeper moral vocabulary that matches the complexities of our lives. Only religion provides us with such a deep, rich, various, complex, and multifaceted moral universe and vocabulary.