Review: ‘Prototype’

Prototype is an invitation to, in a sense, go backward.

For author Jonathan Martin, pastor of Renovatus Church in Charlotte, that involved becoming like his younger self, riding a bike and making up stories and enjoying the wonder and mystery of childhood. It’s an experience “when we all have felt the most alive, the most awake to God and to the world, unconstrained by fear, doubt, or loneliness” (12). And when you finally come to realize God’s love for you, Martin writes, it feels less like you’ve found something new and instead have become awake to something that was there the entire time:

“Coming awake to God’s infinite love can seem so foreign and yet feel as if it’s where we’ve always belonged, because God, in His hovering delight, knows every boy on a bike and every girl on a trampoline. That sense of being known and delighted in stalks human beings the world over, even when we do everything in our power to act as if we do not know love” (15).

In this regard, we actually have something in common with Jesus: we both share identities as God’s beloved sons. This same Jesus is “God’s prototype for a whole new way of being human” (18). The rest of the book unpacks what this looks like. Sometimes, it means that recognizing a period of your life in which you’re living in obscurity is actually a blessing, because, like Jesus in the wilderness, the alone places is where God sends all His sons and daughters. It means finding our calling in the wilderness and realizing that you’re unqualified to bring God’s future into the present is precisely a sign that you’ve been chosen to do it. It means engaging in sacraments and holy actions like foot washing because they not only connect us to Christ, who performed them in the past, but also transport us to the future. We take the Eucharist and through the Bread and Wine taste the life that we will someday know in full.

“When I feel the touch of human hands on my hairy toes and calloused soles, it is terrible in all the ways it must be for Christ Himself to touch my most unlovely places with His tenderness. Every time, the tears burn my eyes. And as my self-consciousness and self-confidence begin to crumble, it’s not just my feet that are being washed; it’s the love of God like a warm balm on a bruised and battered soul” (160-161)

I wasn’t always clear on how each subject in the chapter tied into the idea of Jesus as the prototype human, but don’t mistake that to mean that there’s nothing in these chapters that won’t grab and move you. The story of Dianne in the “Community” chapter is beautiful and nearly brought me to tears. There are individual snippets of wisdom scattered throughout the pages here, and even if you’re not always certain why a point is being brought up, you can rest easy in knowing that it’s still a point worth taking.

All around, this is a profound and beautiful book with a message that is simple and powerful at the same time. I knew after the first chapter that this book was going to shake me, and I think if you give it a chance, you’ll realize the same.

Prototype released May 1 and is published by Tyndale House Publishers. I was provided with a complementary copy of this book.

For a Q and A with the author, visit here.

For a free excerpt from Chapter One, visit here.

 

Review: ‘Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not’

I don’t know at one point it happened, but somewhere in the recent history of Christian publishing, more and more people started talking about empires. Some of the more popular authors of our time have taken long-standing titles attributed to Jesus Christ—like “Lord” and “Savior”—and, without denying the spiritual implications of those words, sought to explore how they challenged the rules of the first century as well as our time.

Suddenly, for a lot of us, our gospels became not just about the story of Jesus but also how that story’s main character stood in firm opposition to Caesar. If you’ve read anything recently by people like Shane Claiborne, Rob Bell or Brian McLaren, you’ve seen this argument articulated. You can barely read anything by the admirable N.T. Wright without seeing this argument presented.

So … does it have a point? In IVP Academic’s Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies, editors Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica say yes, but the point isn’t as big as some people make it out to be. They’ve enlisted several authors to examine the various books of the New Testament and the claims of modern theologians to determine to what extent the Scriptures engage in empire criticism, here defined as “an eye and ear for the presence of Rome and the worship of the emperor in the lines and between the lines of New Testament writings” (16).

The question the book tries to answer is this: are modern readers seeing Rome and Caesar all over the pages of the New Testament because the criticism is actually there, or is this something that they import into the text? The authors and contributors mostly answer that Rome is a concern of the New Testament writers, but those concerns have been overemphasized by modern writers to the point that they see Caesar where Caesar is not.

“Let us make this point crystal clear: We believe that the New Testament writers do indeed address the concerns highlighted by empire criticism. But we also strongly suggest that this is not their primary modus operandi. The New Testament writers are cognizant of Roman occupation, aware of Roman customs and laws, but they fundamentally understand Jesus’ inaugurating of the kingdom of God in direct opposition to and in contrast with the kingdom of Satan (see Mt 12:26; Lk 11:18)” (212).

The book starts with David Nystrom examining the role of the Roman emperor in everyday life and how power and prestige was accorded to that office. Contrary to the writings of some popular Christians, Caesars were not demanding that people worship them as gods. Augustus wasn’t deified until after his death, and Caligula was deemed a madman for his claims to deity. Romans could also worship the acts of an emperor and consider that person to be a genius without attributing divinity to them. A chapter written by Judith A. Diehl highlighting the anti-imperial writings of the New Testament follows and serves to launch the discussion for the rest of the book.

The book sometimes varies on just how anti-imperial the New Testament is. Joel Willitts argues that the gospel of Matthew condemned all empires antithetical to the kingdom of God, not just Rome (and notes that it’s hard to take “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” as a statement against empire). The chapter on anti-imperialism in the New Testament, on the other hand, tends to grant that there were a good number of combative references to Rome. Writing of Paul’s theology in Romans, Michael F. Bird says that while the apostle’s declaration of Jesus as Lord struck at the heart of the empire, Romans is primarily a pastoral letter in which imperial concepts are used to promote a particular theology. That theology has sociopolitical implications, of course, but it is theology, not a political agenda, that is the chief concern of Romans.

Dean Pinter notes that Luke seems more concerned with the abuse of power in general than with the particular vices of Rome. Luke’s gospel uses “king” to describe Jesus more than any other gospel writer, even though it never sets a direct confrontation between Jesus and Caesar. Tax collectors and Roman soldiers are seen in favorable light, while the imperial cult doesn’t even earn a hint or allusion. Luke records the (at that point, future) destruction of Jerusalem as a divine act, not a crime committed by Rome. When Pilate ordered Jesus crucified, he had the sign “King of the Jews” put on his cross—and not, notably, “King of the Empire”, suggesting that Pilate did not consider this rabble-rouser to be a legitimate challenge to the emperor.

It’s true that Jesus contrasted the way the world’s rulers exert their authority with the way that he served others, but this distinction between earthly and heavenly power didn’t single out Caesar.

“… for Luke, the emperors can be vassals of the one true God. They can inadvertently bring about the Bethlehem birth of Jesus and, through their procurators, the fulfillment of the will of God in the death of Jesus. Either Luke is naïve about the imperial cult and the pretensions of the emperor, or he can imagine that relationships with Rome can be developed by working around them” (110).

Drew J. Strait examines Luke’s writings in Acts and also draws the line at anti-imperial rhetoric. There are parallels between the ascension of Jesus to heaven and the apotheosis of a Roman emperor, but it’s also important to note two things: first, Jesus did not require a majority vote in the Roman senate to be deemed a god (as the emperor did), and second, Jesus’ ascension was rooted in Jewish religious beliefs (and supported by biblical passages such as Psalm 110 and Daniel 7).

It’s true that attributing titles to Jesus such as “Savior” and “Lord” would have contrasted him to Caesar, but in Luke’s gospel, important figures such as Paul run into more trouble with Jewish synagogues and Greek businessmen than he does with the imperial cult. And when Luke records a mob as complaining that Christians preached Jesus as a rival king to Caesar (in Acts 17:6­–7), Strait rightly notes that the charge comes from a Jewish mob and that Paul is assisted by Roman soldiers. In Acts, Luke sees the nations as under the control of Satan, even as he continues to believe that God can use imperial agents to help the church. The end of Acts, after all, tells us that Paul preached the gospel in Rome without restraint.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t tension between Christian thought in Acts and the Roman government:

“Luke understands the enemies of God more holistically than is often acknowledged. Caesar and his agents are one piece in a much larger puzzle of human rebellion against God. Even so, God transcends the ‘powers that be’ and carries out his divine plan of redemption for the world” (14).

Evaluating John’s anti-imperialism, Christopher W. Skinner argues Rome is present in the fourth gospel but is not the chief concern of the writer himself. John’s concerns are largely Jewish. His Christology in John 1 is situated within a Jewish mindset, and he later sees Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s story and feasts. When Jesus is contrasted with a notable figure, he is distinguished from Moses, not Caesar. Writes Skinner:

“… it seems inadvisable to downplay the significance of Jewish elements in John, while placing pronounced emphasis on the Roman context. As stated earlier, readers should assume that Rome is lurking in the background of the narrative. To give Rome too much attention, though, is to major on a minor issue. … Apart from Jesus’ trial and interaction with Pilate, Rome is present mostly in signs and shadows, not on a neon billboard” (122).

Reviewing whether Paul was anti-imperial in Philippians, Lynn H. Cohick points out that the imperial cult didn’t just honor the emperor but also his family. Augustus’ wife, for instance, was also deified. The line from “Jesus is Lord” to “Caesar is not” is, at least in this letter, not as straight as people might think. Allan R. Bevere likewise sees anti-imperial interpretations of Colossians and Philemon to be looking for things in the text that aren’t there.

The chapter on Revelation was especially interesting, because if there’s any one book in the New Testament that’s taken to be anti-Rome, it’s that one. But Dwight D. Sheets points out some things that I hadn’t considered before. Responding to the widely held belief that the writer John was exiled to Patmos for preaching the gospel, he notes that there’s no evidence that Patmos was a penal colony. He also writes that despite the conflict language found in Revelation—language that is typical of books of that genre, anyway—it’s unclear whether Christians at this time were actually undergoing hardship.

That’s not to say that John didn’t see conflict coming. In Revelation 13:15, the writer appears to sense a coming confrontation between the imperial cult and the Christians who would refuse to participate in it. That said, John’s concerns also center around the apostasy of believers and the destruction of the Jewish temple, which was supposed to be destroyed by a particularly evil ruler. Both events were supposed to precede the return of Christ, but 20 years after the Temple was destroyed, Jesus hadn’t returned. The details of that destruction only partially matched Jesus’ prophecies in the gospels, so John redeveloped his understanding of the “eschatological antagonist” by looking to Rome.

“John was concerned with the emperor cult; he was concerned that believers had accommodated themselves to its way of life; he was concerned with the fact that participation with the emperor cult was more and more becoming a matter of compulsion. But Revelation is not primarily about whether empires are evil or even whether it is wrong for them to impose their authority on other peoples. These developments were primarily important for John because they pointed to the soon coming of Jesus” (209).

I feel comfortable summing up the book as this: the New Testament varies in its criticism of Rome. Sometimes, the challenges are subtle; in other places, they are more explicit. One thing they are not is uniform. In that world, it simply wasn’t possible to insist that Jesus is the king of the world without also wondering how that claim related to Caesar and Rome. But that theological claim does not mean that anti-imperialism was at the forefront of the minds of the people who claimed Jesus as Lord. (To give another example: if I claim that George R.R. Martin is the best writer in the world, that subtly says that Stephen King is not, even if I wasn’t thinking of King when I made the claim.)

If you’re looking for a good foil to the claims in some popular Christian writings that I mentioned above, then Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not is worth your time.

When Not Doing the Dishes is Grounds for the Church to Rebuke Your Wife

Sometimes, online controversies between different groups of Christians are overblown nonsense conducted by people who really need something better to do with their lives.

But then, there are times when a community’s outrage is completely justified–and Douglas Wilson’s recent article in which he says a church should discipline a man’s wife for not doing the dishes is one of those times.

That’s not an exaggeration. Wilson posted his article on an online dating site for Reformed Christians. His message to those future husbands and wives: the church should be brought in if a wife doesn’t listen to her husband’s gentle rebuke.

He does this, without rancour and without an accusative spirit, until she complies or rebels. If she complies, he must move up one step, now requiring that another of her duties be done. If she rebels, he must call the elders of the church and ask them for a pastoral visit. When the government of the home has failed to such an extent, and a godly and consistent attempt by the husband to restore the situation has broken down, then the involvement of the elders is fully appropriate.

And if you’re tempted to write off Wilson as a loon, I should remind you that he is respected at The Gospel Coalition, a well-known and highly respected site that shares theological views with John Piper and Mark Driscoll.

Sometimes, controversies are overblown. But then there are times when something that should be rebuked isn’t–and trying to get churches to discipline wives for not doing household chores is absolutely one of those times.

Review: ‘Jesus is the Christ’

As a Christian, I can admit when someone has a good objection to adhering to the faith I love. But then there are times when people make claims so ridiculous that it’s amazing anyone takes them seriously.

Michael Bird’s newest book, Jesus is the Christ: The Messianic Testimony of the Gospels, is a short but strong work that seeks to defend what is perfectly obvious to anyone except for those who don’t want to see it: Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the Messiah, and the four evangelists who wrote our gospels bear witness to this in their works. Going through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Bird examines how these writers believed that Jesus their teacher was also the rightful king of the world and the person through whom God would re-establish His rule.

The church, Bird argues, had no reason to think of Jesus as Messiah and every reason not to. Judaism hadn’t made room for the concept of a dying savior. Even Jesus’ resurrection, on its own, did not guarantee that he was God’s anointed one. Bird’s contention—which he shares with people like N.T. Wright and is, in my opinion, right to hold—is that the church inherited Jesus’ messiahship from Jesus himself. This thought became so engrained in the early church that the claim that Jesus is the Christ quickly transformed into an actual name: “Jesus Christ”. That the apostle Paul didn’t spend any time in his letters defending Jesus’ claims to be this savior indicates that this simply wasn’t a matter that was still being debated in the church (and when you consider the doctrines that were debated in those early centuries, that’s saying something).

“True, Jesus did not go around flying a banner saying, ‘Look, I’m the Messiah.’ But if you proclaim the kingdom of God, declare that the day of national restoration is dawning, compare yourself to David and Solomon, perform what various people considered to be signs of messianic deliverance, enter Jerusalem on a donkey with people shouting ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, and end up on trial on a messianic charge and mocked in death as a Jewish king, well, you don’t need a PhD in rabbinic literature to see what was going on here” (9-10).

The book’s main chapter each cover a different gospel, and some of the points overlap. Mark’s goal is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah and that Israel’s savior won his war by succumbing to the very thing that many people assumed would prove he wasn’t a savior at all: the cross. Matthew presents Jesus as a new David who saves both Jews and Gentiles. Luke shows how the work of Jesus—and his church—fulfill what Israel’s prophets had been talking about all those years ago. And John goes beyond his synoptic siblings by arguing for a Messiah who came from heaven.

“… John is amplifying his messianic testimony by placing the person of the Messiah within the orbit of the divine identity. One way that John does this is by identifying Jesus as pre-existent. … The pre-existence of the Messiah was not a consistent aspect of messianic hopes, but a deployable one for some. A pre-existent Messiah was not, then a Christian innovation. John’s two cents about the pre-existent Messiah debate was given in his affirmation that Jesus the Word is the king of Israel” (101).

Some of the more memorable parts of the book (to me, anyway) did not directly connect to the debate over messiahship. For instance, Bird argues that we should read Mark 13­–15 as a unified whole that connects the destruction of the Temple to the death of Jesus (47). There are even similarities between the two events that I hadn’t seen before now. Both are accompanied by darkness. The disciples will be handed over to their enemies, just as Jesus was handed over to his. One temple would be torn down and another would be rebuilt. Regarding Jesus’ claim to be the good shepherd in John 10, Bird points out that this was royal imagery used not only to describe God in the Old Testament but also Amenhotep III of Egypt (126).

Bird also argues that when Jesus told a potential follower that foxes and birds of the air have beds while the Son of Man does not, he was indicting the current rulers in Palestine. Foxes, here, represented Herod (whom Jesus called a fox in another place) and the birds of the air represented the Gentiles:

“The Son of Man, then, is the messianic representative of the Jewish nation. The point of the contrast is to say that everyone, even Gentiles like the Romans, even half-Jews like the Herodians, are making themselves at home in Israel, while the people of God are oppressed by the greed of these pagan beasts. If you wish to join in the Messiah’s mission, then you have to join the ranks of the disinherited and dispossessed” (86).

Should you read this book? If you’re looking for a short but solid defense that early Christianity believed and argued for the messiahship of Jesus, then Bird’s work is good for you. And if you’re someone who thinks that Jesus didn’t argue for his own messiahship or that this aspect of his character was diminished as the church grew older, then this book is definitely for you.

In Defense of Christians Not Knowing the Entire Bible

If evangelicals get criticized for anything, it’s for not actually knowing the Bible upon which all their personal and political convictions are based. And in some cases, this is true; churches aren’t doing a good enough job educating people on what’s actually contained in their sacred books.

For a moment, though, I want to defend this crowd, and here’s why:

If I had to make a choice between someone learning either Jesus’ command to love your neighbors or whether Leviticus prohibits mixed fibers, I would go with the command to love every time.

Sure, knowing what’s in Leviticus can be educational–and if you’re in a debate trying to defend the Bible, knowing what’s actually in it will make you not look like such a moron.

That said, not everyone has all the time in the world to learn every obscure law written within the Bible, especially in those parts that are no longer applicable to us. The ideal would be for every Christian to know their Bibles better than anyone else on the planet. But people are also busy. They have jobs to work at and families to tend to and many other responsibilities on top of those.

So with the limited free time that they have, I would rather those Christians learn the commands that are applicable to them as opposed to the abstract concepts that are no longer binding. If they get the time for further study, then I hope they take advantage of it. If they don’t have the time, though, then I hope–and I think many readers will agree–that they’ll use what time they do have to learn what’s most important to God and then go out and do it.

 

Let No One Fear Death (John Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily)

John Chrysostom:

If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have labored long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived therefor. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.

And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first; and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts. And he both accepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praises the offering. Wherefore, enter you all into the joy of your Lord; and receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honor the day. Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.

Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness. let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.

(Link)

Let There Be Darkness (A Meditation on Good Friday)

This was the hour of darkness, Jesus told his disciples only moments before he was arrested by his enemies, who were aided by one of his closest friends.

During his execution, the sun gave out its light and proved the Lord’s point.

It’s as if the world reverted back to the chaotic state in which the Lord God had found it when He first whispered the words, “Let there be light.” There was no life, no abundance, no joy, no amazement at the rising and setting of the sun. That is, until the universe’s most masterful Artist, from whom our own sense of creativity flows, decided He had had enough of a blank canvas. With nothing more than a word and, as Job tells us, the bare hint of His power, He brought forth light.

And in his death, that light was taken away.

Let there be light.

It had been.

Now there was darkness.

Maybe creation was in agony. The King of the world had handed Himself over to usurpers, and in their rebellion, they sought nothing less than to bring Him to an end. Maybe creation was allowed to go dark to physically manifest the true intentions of our hearts. This is what it looks like when humanity forsakes its true purpose and instead tries to sit on a throne for which it was never suited.

Humanity got its way over God.

And when it did, it chose to kill, not give life.

It chose to take, not to give.

It chose injustice over justice, lies over truth, hatred over love.

In that fateful moment, humanity acted honestly.

The hour of darkness, indeed.

Fortunately, its hour came to an end.