Thursday, August 28, 2008

Incarnation or Inlibration?

The following is the unedited version of an article that appeared in the Biblical Recorder, state paper of NC Baptists.

There’s been some conversation lately in the Biblical Recorder about a song children were asked to sing in Vacation Bible School this summer. It seems, someone has suggested, that the song employed a subtle attempt at indoctrinating children into believing that the “Word of God” (Greek, Logos) alluded to in the Prologue of John’s Gospel was the Bible rather than Jesus.

In point of fact, John’s Prologue (and his Gospel) asserts and affirms that Jesus is the Logos of God to which he sings his song (John 1:1-18 is lyrical in Greek, and some scholars believe it was an early Christian hymn). John 1:1-3 says: In beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This one (demonstrative pronoun referring to the Logos) was in beginning with God; all things came to be through it (Logos), and apart from it (Logos) came to be not even one thing that has come to be (my translation). John is deliberately echoing Genesis 1 wherein God creates the world merely by speaking it into existence: “And God said: ‘Let there be light!’ and there was.” In both the Hebrew and Greek worlds the concept of the Logos, the “creative word,” was a rich and highly evocative idea. Ancient peoples, fascinated by the power of the spoken word, speculated on its creation and character. Indeed, most believed that a word, once spoken, took on a life and vitality of its own apart from the speaker who gave it expression. Like an arrow set in flight from a bow, the spoken word took off, distinct from the speaker, and could not be recalled. Remember how in Genesis blind old Isaac speaks the paternal blessing “word” over the wrong son, blessing Jacob rather than Esau? But once spoken, the “blessing word” could neither be retrieved nor abrogated. If that were true of human speech, how much more must it be true when God speaks, the Hebrews speculated. And so the concept of the Word of God became something of an hypostasis, an alternative expression or manifestation, of God Himself. This made the concept of the Logos the perfect metaphor for John’s reflection on the Incarnation in his Gospel, and especially in the Prologue (1:1-18). Jesus, John asserts, was the Word (Logos) God spoke way back there when he called the cosmos out of chaos, the essence, the “exegesis” (John’s word in 1:18) of God.

But that is not the only sense in which John uses the word “word” (logos) in his Gospel. Logos occurs 40 times in John, falling into six categories (or uses). (1) Three times it refers to Jesus as the “Word” (Logos) of God in the sense suggested above, twice in the Prologue and once in John 5:38. In the latter passage, Jesus answers his Jewish critics by saying that the Father had sent him (Jesus) as “his word” (Logos) but they did not hear it, even though they “…search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life, but these are they that bear witness to me” (5:39). Note: Here is a clear usage of “word” (logos) in the same context as “the Scriptures,” and yet it means Jesus, not “Scripture.” (2) Three times it just means “word” in the ordinary sense. (3) Three times it means a “saying” or “statement.” (4) By far, John uses logos to mean a “testimony” or “witness,” as in the sentence: “I give you my word” (23 times). (5) At least four times it means “God’s word” in the sense of his revelation to the prophets or others to whom He has spoken. (6) And three times (10:35; 12:38; 15:25) it does indeed refer to the Scripture as God’s “word” (logos). Of course, “Scripture” here means the Old Testament, not the Bible we have today.

And so, Baptists, who typically hold a rather high view of Scripture, do not err when we speak of the Scriptures as “the Word of God.” Indeed, as demonstrated by the usage analysis above, John himself so employs the term logos in at least three places (10:35; 12:38; 15:25). Moreover, a high view of Scripture demands it. As my late teacher, Dr. George R. Beasley-Murray, used to say: “There’s all the difference in the world between one who says that the Bible merely contains the Word of God, and one who says that the Bible is the Word of God. If it merely contains the Word of God, then we are free to pick and choose what parts of the Bible we believe to be the Word of God. But if the Bible is the Word of God, then we are not free to pick and choose, but must obey it both when we like what it says and when we don’t.”

But we make a grave mistake when in our haste to affirm a high view of Scripture we move from “The Bible is the Word of God” to “The Bible is God.” This John in his Prologue will not do. He reserves that use of Logos for Jesus, not the Bible. He is the Incarnation (in-fleshing) of the Eternal Word (Logos) to which the Word (Scripture) witnesses (“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they that bear witness to me,” John 5:39).

Now, to be sure there are religious traditions that affirm “The Scripture as God,” Islam being foremost. While Christians affirm that God’s definitive self-revelation was in the Incarnation (Jesus as the Incarnate Logos of God), Islam asserts that God’s definitive self-revelation came in the form of the Holy Book, the Koran. Islam’s theology of God’s definitive self-revelation is not, as in Christianity, incarnation, but inlibration , literally, “in Book.” God, it is believed, has manifest Himself in “The Book,” the Koran, “God in Book,” inlibration. Christians do not believe in “inlibration,” no matter how high a view of Scripture we hold. Our theology of God’s final and definitive self-revelation takes the form of “incarnation,” God in flesh, the Logos “exegeted.” One ancient creed put it this way, “very God of very God Who for us and our salvation came down.” Or, if you prefer John’s words about the Word: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The photo above is the star in the crypt beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem believed by many to mark the spot where the incarnation occurred. For more on the place of Jesus' birth, see Chapter 8 on the Church of the Nativity in my Where Jesus Walked: A Spiritual Journey Through the Holy Land.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Clergy Abuse

This blog is not about what you think it’s about. That’s how effective has been the recent demonization and vilification of clergy. It never occurs to most people that the phrase “clergy abuse” looks two ways: both abuse by clergy and abuse of clergy. I’m not going to talk about the former; everybody else already is. I’m going to talk about the latter; nobody is. I’m going to talk about it because hardly a week goes by that I don’t get an email from an anguished Christian telling me that their church has just fired their pastor without cause. That is, the pastor didn’t steal, commit immorality, or otherwise violate his vows or disgrace his calling. Quite the contrary, in most cases (not all) he was a good pastor, faithfully preaching the Gospel, tending the flock, and leading the church as best he could to be the Body of Christ. It was just that he ran afoul of a power player or players who didn’t feel that he was “meeting their needs,” or they didn't like his "leadership style," or some other bogus pretext for getting rid of him. That’s not surprising in the corporate world where shareholders’ expectations determine the CEO’s perceived employee effectiveness and security, but in the church of Jesus Christ, that’s obscene…period.

One of the things I keep saying is that the primary problem for the church of Jesus Christ today is not whether the church is to be “in” the world or “out” of the world as the champions of “cultural relevancy” (read "cultural captivity") allege, but rather that there is far too much “of the world” in the church! When the world does all the talking and the church does all the listening, it could hardly have been otherwise.

Let me be blunt. Yes, there is abuse by clergy, and clergy who have spent their lifetimes preparing for and practicing ministry are the most grieved by it and critical of it. This is not “we defend our own.” But abuse of clergy is growing and is at least as disruptive and destructive of the life and mission of the church as is abuse by clergy.

Why don’t you hear about that? Several reasons really. The secular media loves “dirty laundry,” and clergy abuse is the dirtiest. In our “guilt by association” mentality – and given the media’s pervasive anti-Christian bias – clergy abuse is a convenient way to discredit Christianity as a whole. And so they “pile on” every time someone betrays their vows. But the church itself is not without fault here, especially what I euphemistically call “Church Inc.” The church as denomination, institution, organization, business is, alas, like every other business, driven by the bottom line, and the denomination knows which side its bread is buttered on. Simply put, clergy don’t support the denominational structures, churches do. And so there’s little incentive (actually there’s considerable disincentive) to confront the church with unchristian, inappropriate, and pagan behavior. It’s far easier to demonize the pastor, vindicate the church, help them pick a new one as quickly as possible, and “move on” all the while protecting the uninterrupted flow of revenue from the church to the denomination. Sound harsh? When was the last time you heard a denominational type say to a church: “What you did here was wrong, unbiblical, unchristian, and unworthy of the church of Jesus Christ, and before you pick a new pastor and perpetuate a pathology that will destroy you, you need to repent, reform, and recommit yourselves to being the Body of Christ”?

Make no mistake about it. The Bible, and Christian faith, takes the vocational vows seriously – both for the pastor and for the church, and neither violates them with impunity. Just as for the pastor, there are consequences, both corporate and congregational, for the church that violates its vows and betrays its calling. There is a haunting image in the Book of Revelation that ought to bring every member of every church thinking about abusing clergy up short. John pictures the church universal as a collection of seven golden lampstands in heaven (a menora, actually), each with an angel watching over it, trimming its wick, filling the oil, tending the flame that says the church is alive and well. Walking among the lampstands, inspecting them, watching them, weighing them, is the Son of Man Whose they are and Whom they serve. The Letters to the Seven Churches are actually letters to the churches’ guardian angels, warning them that the congregation on earth for which their lampstand stands must make the needed corrections and remember who they are and Whose they are, else, the Son of Man says, I will come among you and move your lampstand out of its place!

It was not always so. My predecessor at First Baptist Church of Raleigh was the late Dr. John M. Lewis. A pastor-scholar, he led that great congregation with compassion and courage for over a quarter of a century through some of the most tumultuous times we Baptists have known. During the race riots of the 60’s John preached prophetically about the Gospel’s call to love without discrimination. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very popular message in that Southern capital city in those days. Eventually, Baptists being Baptists, the church determined to decide the issue “democratically;” translate that, they voted. John lost. The Gospel lost. But the church didn’t. To their credit that congregation, unlike many today, did not fire John for preaching prophetically; they did not marginalize him; they did not demonize him or vilify him (at least not everybody!). They just continued to listen to the Gospel John preached every week, and like seeds lying fallow for years until the right combination of sun and soil and water brings them to life, the Gospel grew and that congregation remembered who they were and Whose they were and became the Body of Christ John always believed them to be.

And somewhere, a lampstand burns brightly.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Of Wine and Skins

I hardly know a church these days not caught up in conflict (latent or actual) over what has euphemistically been described as “worship wars.” Indeed, some churches have taken to posting their allegiance(s) on their signs (“Contemporary Worship” or “Traditional Worship”) so as to lessen the likelihood of an unsuspecting worshiper getting caught “behind enemy lines.” Some churches attempt a negotiated settlement – the so-called “two service solution.” In my experience, two services (one traditional and one contemporary) only succeed in creating two churches both of which harbor the suspicion that the other is either second-rate or out-and-out heretical. Usually, the basis for the bellicosity is music. That’s right, music, as though Jesus came to be Maestro rather than Messiah.

I don’t much think that the real issue here is music style or preference, that is, if by music style we mean only rhythm and melody, not lyric…medium not message. That’s a ruse and it obfuscates the issue. Two points. (1) Some people don’t like pipe organs, others don’t like drums and guitars. Deal with it. Same thing happened in the 18th century when the piano replaced the harpsichord. The “pluckers” (harpsichord) almost came to blows with the “strikers” (piano) over the appropriateness of the new instrument in certain settings such as the opera. (2) All church music was “contemporary Christian music” at some time.

No, the issue here is the nature of the church and the character of worship. Let’s be clear about that. If church is merely a “Christian club” or a “spiritual supermarket” whose job it is to “make me happy” or “meet my needs,” then do surveys and find out what the “customers” want and give it to them. That’s what Wal-Mart does, and it works! Ask nothing; demand nothing; require nothing. It’s all about customer service. “Low prices…Everyday.”

But if church is what Jesus was calling and creating in His life and ministry, then church will have a different identity and mission. To wit: According to Jesus in the Gospels, the church is a Story-formed (read “Gospel”) community of persons who’ve been grasped by a vision of another world Jesus called the Kingdom of God. This means, chiefly, that though the church is in the world, it is not of the world (see John 17:11-16). The implications for the church’s mission, therefore, are three: (1) In everything the church does (worship, missions, education, caring, evangelism, etc.) the goal is to show persons Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God and to invite them to enter it, to learn its peculiar ways and values, and to grow and mature in Kingdom living (both individually and corporately) until that day when Jesus returns to establish God’s Kingdom finally and fully. (2) This means that “salvation” is not “joining a club,” but rather being enrolled in a Story called Gospel and enculturated in a community called church, and that’s a transformation not a transaction. (3) In fulfilling its mission and agenda, the church must maintain the balance between being “in the world” but not “of it.” To that end, while the church can be, must be, should be flexible when it comes to medium, it can never compromise its message; or to use Jesus’ metaphor, it’s okay to change the “skins” but never the “wine” (Mark 2:22).

Three of the four gospels preserve Jesus as having said something like this: “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22). The context of those words was the controversy Jesus generated over the fact that his new movement within first century Judaism (what would later be called “Christianity”) was deemed by Jewish traditionalists to be a threat to the system, structures, and style of Judaism as it had been known and practiced since the Exile. In responding to the criticism, Jesus makes a helpful distinction between carrier and content, medium and message, or if you prefer contemporary marketing language, delivery system and product. Note, he says that you don’t put new wine into old skins because (and here a knowledge of Bedouin custom and culture is assumed) the wine, when it ferments, gives off gases that cause the skins to expand, and if the skins are old and brittle, they will not be able to withstand the pressure and will crack and break, spilling and spoiling both the wine and the skins. Hence, you put new wine in new skins so that when the wine expands, the new, supple skins will stretch without breaking and will be able to support and sustain the new wine inside.

Of course, any analogy, if pushed farther than the author intends, degenerates into nonsense. But if I understand Jesus correctly he refers here, by means of this analogy, to the “new wine” of his movement (the church) generated by his new vision of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. He implies that the “old wineskins” of contemporary Judaism (temple and synagogue), being old, brittle, inflexible, will not be able to contain without breaking the “new wine” of the church. Note the inference: it is the wine, not the skins, that is important and must be preserved. The skins are the carrier, not the content.

The implications for the contemporary church should not be lost on us. What the church (big “C”) is struggling with right now I would suggest is “wine and skins,” that is, how to protect and preserve the “new wine” of the Gospel in a church system and structure that seems to some to be dry and brittle and antiquated; how to change the carrier without changing the content; how to update the vessel without sacrificing the vision; how to modernize the medium without mitigating the message; how to contemporize the container without gutting the Gospel.

In this contemporary “wine and skins” debate, I have observed three basic perspectives:

(1) Keep the wine; keep the skins. Change nothing; keep everything just the same. The “medium is the message,” these folk say. Change the form and you’ve changed the content; change the “skins” and you’ve changed the “wine.” The problem with this perspective is that it confuses “wine” with “skins,” the vehicle for carrying the truth of the Gospel with the Gospel itself. Further, the history of the church is the history of the adaptation of the Gospel to new contextual realities. Once, Handel’s Messiah was “contemporary Christian music.” Sooner or later, all innovation becomes tradition. What must not be compromised is the message, not the medium.

(2) Change the skins; Change the wine. This is the “customer is always right” perspective. Change the message to fit the medium and the world will beat a path to your door. It is simple marketing, really. Give the customer what he wants, and he will return again and again. Of course, the problem with this perspective is that the customer, rather than Christ, determines the content of the Gospel. What the delivery system delivers may not be “Gospel” at all, but merely a slick, stripped-down “knock off” of the Gospel more palatable to the customer’s taste. Kool-Aid, rather than wine.

(3) Keep the wine; Change the skins. Marry the best of the new, contemporary “delivery systems” with a biblically-derived, theologically-sound, historically-reliable, winsomely-presented Gospel of Jesus Christ. Remember, it’s wine we’re concerned about, not skins.

Obviously, my preference is the latter. In today’s church landscape, I observe that the options seem to be either a trendy, techno-savvy, winsome and attractive church program that is too often shallow, narcissistic, biblically illiterate and never moves its members beyond surface expressions of discipleship (what I call “Happy Church”), or a church committed to biblical/theological integrity and to mature expressions of discipleship but with no imagination, which is boring, dying, and irrelevant. Are these our only choices? I refuse to believe that.

It’s the wine I’m interested in, not the skins. I am willing and eager to learn from anyone and to take the best from everyone if it helps me to communicate better the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But I am equally concerned that it is the Gospel that I communicate, not some parody or perversion of the Gospel.

Which brings me back to where this started. If we’re going to be engaged in “worship wars,” then let’s at least fight over things that matter – message, not medium; content, not form; wine, not skins.

Then again, what do I know? I’m a Baptist; we’re teetotalers.