Awesome New Pope Cartoon

This made my night.

--Nick

Balthasar on the "Christian Hope" of Universalism

Balthasar is considered one of the most influential Catholic theologians yet to grace our presence. Here are his thoughts. I don't know if I fully agree with his approach, but Balthasar is widely respected, so I take it that his word has merit.

Balthasar:

“Just as God so loved the world that he completely handed over his Son for its sake, so too the one whom God has loved will want to save himself only in conjunction with those who have been created with him, and he will not reject the share of penitential suffering that has been given him for the sake of the whole. He will do so in Christian hope, the hope for the salvation of all men, which is permitted to Christians alone. Thus, the Church is strictly enjoined to pray “for all men” (and as a result of which to see her prayer in this respect as meaningful and effective); and it is “good and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved…, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself over as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:1-6), who, raised up on the Cross “will draw all men to himself” (Jn 12:32), because he has received there a “power over all flesh” (Jn 17:2), in order to be “a Savior of all men” (1 Tim 4:10), “in order to take away the sins of all” (Heb 9:28); “for the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men” (Tit 2:11), which is why the Church “looks to the advantage of all men, in order that they may be saved” (1 Cor 10:33). This is why Paul (Rom 5:15-21) can say that the balance between sin and grace, fear and hope, damnation and redemption, and Adam and Christ has been tilted in favor of grace, and indeed so much that (in relation to redemption) the mountain of sin stands before an inconceivable superabundance of redemption: not only have all been doomed to (the first and the second) death in Adam, while all have been freed from death in Christ, but the sins of all, which assault the innocent one and culminate in God’s murder, have brought an inexhaustible wealth of absolution down upon all. Thus: “God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (Rom 11:32).”

–Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 97-98.

--Nick

Roman Catholic Theology and Biblical Theology?

I'm really excited for this book now, as Levering engages with Tom Wright and Richard Hays. Should be a nice back and forth. I will be very interested to hear a Catholic view of eschatology, as well as their view of the "descent into hell" as I lean that way anyway.

McKnight:

Matthew Levering, a Catholic theologian at Dayton University, examines Christian eschatology in the Catholic tradition but first asks if that theology is biblical (Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate of the Christian, Baylor, 2012). What we also are treated to in this clear and versatile academic book is direct engagement with Tom Wright’s approach to eschatology, especially in his The Resurrection of the Son of God and Surprised by Hope.

In a sentence, the problem can be put this way: Catholic theology is too Platonic to be biblical or Jewish. This is what Levering will put to the test, but first he wants to know if major doctrines are biblical. Is Scripture, to use the words of the Pope, the “soul of theology” or not?

Questions today: Is Catholic eschatology too Platonic? (How so?) And does the pushback against Platonism in Christian eschatology lead too often to an eschatology that is too horizontal and not vertical enough? Or, is the recent trend in scholars like N.T. Wright not Platonic enough?

For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick

Andrew Sullivan, "The Crisis of Christianity, Ctd"

Kyle Cupp questions the celebration of powerlessness in my essay on Jesus and the Church:

We only know of the “pure message” because a network of self-described religious authorities (i.e., those with power) wrote the words, attributed them to Jesus, and incorporated them into a sacred text–a text that has developed and changed, that has been reinterpreted and re-translated, all works of power.

Well: duh. I did not write that Christians live in an unfallen world in which power doesn't exist. Of course we don't. We are constantly exercizing power in different ways, and the Gospels are, of course, a product of the struggle for power between various sets of Jesus' followers. But that was Jefferson's point! His project was to try to extract from the New Testament those words of Jesus that he believed were the least infected by this. And my modest proposal is to return to that spirit in seeking a faith as far removed from power, violence and coercion as humanly possible. In another vein, although he decries the "the politicized nature of Christianity in the West," Trevin Wax, the managing editor of The Gospel Project, believes Jesus was political in his own way:

Despite his protests against a politicized faith, Sullivan is saying we should follow a Man whose primary message concerned a kingdom. You can’t get more political than that. It’s interesting to see how those who advocate a return to the words of Christ often display a frightening ignorance of what Jesus actually said. The primary message of Jesus was not love – at least, not love in our sense of the world. The message of Jesus was Love with a capital “L” – meaning, His message was about Himself. It was about His kingdom, His identity as king, and the cross that became His throne.

But we know that this metaphor of kingdom was a metaphor on earth. When asked directly if he sought worldly power during his interrogation, Jesus answered:

"My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my servants would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But for now my kingdom is not from here."

And that is why the crucifixion remains the great central symbol of the Christian faith. It is a total renunciation of worldly power. Jesus did not want such an outcome, but he accepted it and loved those who murdered him. One of Jesus' key temptations in the desert was earthly power - offered to him by the devil, just as it was offered him by the crowds that sought him out and which he often fled. Jesus refused all such earthly power. They put the sign above his head in mockery - in the same way they gave him a purple robe and a crown of thorns. He had never sought this regal role, but he accepted it as part of his final humiliation.

Wax later argues that Jesus' message is consistent with opposition to abortion and marriage equality. It can be - but even Wax acknowledges that this has to be inferred, and that Jesus' emphasis was on other things. Freedom at Bethsaida, a Christian blogger, remains hopeful:

[Y]es, Mr. Sullivan, “the church” does face a crisis – and pretty much always has. It has always been the case that there are those in this faith who draw attention away from Jesus and toward themselves – whether it is accolades or power. They cover up abuse (as you note) to maintain their power. They talk smoothly to maintain their power. But they have never found a way to hold sway indefinitely. The light of the gospel has always broken through. We’ve had reformations, and splits, and revivals. We’ve seen people turn away from organized churches and form house churches to break free from the “structure” of it all. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will always be filled. Those who crave a true and unmitigated relationship with God will find a way to have it, and will find that they are helped along the way.

I agree. But hope is not the same as optimism. Or apathy in the face of abuses.

C.S. Lewis and "Mere Purgatory"

Anytime Jerry Walls, Scot McKnight and C.S. Lewis factor into a discussion is a good time waiting to happen.

That’s right, C.S. Lewis seemed to have embraced a view Jerry Walls can accurately call “mere purgatory.” (SeePurgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation) For many the logic looks like this: If C.S. Lewis believed it, and if C.S. Lewis is “mere” evangelicalism, then it is justifiable to believe in purgatory. Make no mistake about this logic: many evangelicals have courage to believe things unacceptable to their peers and congregations because they know Lewis believed something similar.

One more time: Do you believe in purgatory? Do you think transformation will be instantaneous or gradual? Is moral (total) transformation required to participate in God’s heaven?

Lewis, of course, was no saint. And neither was he a proper evangelical as we have come to know that term. Not long ago I was with a man who went to University with Lewis, and that man said to me, “We are all surprised that it is C.S. Lewis who has become the darling of evangelicals.” [By the way, those who have read Bonhoeffer's Ethics or his Letters and Papers from Prison often say the same of Bonhoeffer.]

C.S. Lewis, for instance, prayed for the dead (found in hisLetters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer). The standard view is that the dead are sealed — either glorified or damned. Praying for the dead at least implies something can happen to the dead that could change their status, and so his imagined questioner asks if he is bringing in the idea of Purgatory. Here are the words of C.S. Lewis (Walls has this quote; I am copying this from Letters to Malcolm, p. 108):

Well, I suppose I am. Though even in Heaven some perpetual increase of beatitude, reached by a continually more self-surrender, without the possibility of failure but not perhaps without its own ardours and exertions — for delight also has its severities and steep ascents, as loves know — might be supposed. But I won’t press, or guess, that side for the moment. I believe in Purgatory.

Straight from Lewis’ own mouth: he believed in Purgatory. I have no compulsion to say that because Lewis believed it, it is either OK or evangelical. But it is a bit of an instinct for many of us who think Lewis tapped into the core of the Christian faith in his Mere Christianity to give the man a cupped ear, if not at least a nod.

Walls then sketches how Lewis talked about his deceased wife, Joy, in A Grief Observed, and how he connected her to purgatorial sufferings and cleansings. The view was held by Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Dorothy Sayers. Walls makes a case for seeing Lewis’ purgatory flowing naturally from Lewis’ theology. That is, purgatory is not incidental or casual for Lewis.

Lewis, truth be told, was not evangelical in his atonement theory either. We are in a big hole because we are rebels, and to get out we have to lay down our arms — this is what he means by repentance. But we can’t perfectly repent so, in an Anselmian kind of logic, sees Christ as the perfect penitent (I argued this a bit in Jesus Creed in the chapter on John’s baptism). He substitutes for us in that he surrenders perfectly to God. (Walls observes that Lewis wasn’t into a justification worldview.)

Walls quotes from Lewis, the famous one about there being many people in the world who are slowly becoming non-Christians, and some of them are clergymen; there are also many who are slowly becoming Christians, though they don’t know it. In this Lewis is being a virtue ethicist where character is what makes us fit for heaven: that is, we will find ourselves at home in heaven or find ourselves unable to stomach the place. And a higher level of faith, for Lewis, was when the person, well down the road in his or her journey, comes to the disposition that we are unable and that the person trusts Christ to do it all for them. That is, the person becomes Christlike.

And Christ will finish the job. What complicates it is our freedom. We can push Christ away. But the job will not be — cannot be — completed in this life. Which means it is completed postmortem. Lewis does not teach imputation of Christ’s righteousness; but gracious transformation into Christlikeness. Salvation, for Lewis, was participation in the dance of the Trinity.

Purgatory then is natural to Lewis because salvation is about total transformation, and it requires human reception. It will be finished, that’s a given; but when is the issue. For Lewis, since it isn’t finished here, it will be finished there. Ergo, purgatory is an entailment of salvation as transformation.

For Lewis, purgatory is about sanctification/purification (not retribution); it entails the pain of growth into the deeper reality of joy; and Lewis never minimizes human freedom. But it is the work of God: hence, Walls insists this view of purgatory is very much a matter of grace.

OK, time for me to state where I am:

1. Method is of colossal significance here: there is no biblical warrant for purgatory.

2. Walls, in my view, has made a case for a view of purgatory that is compatible with genuine Protestant thinking, though I cannot imagine the monergist or Calvinist would believe in his view of purgatory. But Walls argues the satisfaction models of purgatory are contradictory to Protestant thinking but the sanctification models are not.

3. I believe those who are committed to virtue ethics ought to believe in purgatory.

4. Walls is right in pushing this discussion into human freedom: if perfection is required, and if perfection for the saint is a matter of growth into perfection because it requires freedom, then purgatory is a reasonable (even Protestant) entailment.  Which takes me back to #1 above. How do we frame these sorts of doctrines? What warrants do Scriptures provide?

McKnight/ Jesus Creed, Lewis & Walls

--Nick

Roger Olson, "Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue pt 2"

Howdy howdy. I found this interesting. 

As I wrote in my The Westminster Handbook to Evangelical Theology there are at least six distinct meanings of “evangelical.” They include the journalistic meaning (politically conservative Christian), the European meaning (Protestant) and the post-WW2 meaning of a post-fundamentalist but basically theologically conservative Protestant who also believes authentic Christianity includes a decision for Christ and a personal relationship with Jesus.

Olson and the continued dialogue


--Nick

Roger Olson, "Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue part 1"

I'm still not certain why Catholics are viewed as sub-biblical by other Christians. I'm reading this now, maybe I'll get some answers. This series, either way, should be interesting.

About a year ago I reported here on an Evangelical-Catholic (or Catholic-Evangelical) dialogue event. Last year I only heard the plenary address which was public. This year I was invited to participate in the following day of theological conversation. I truly appreciate that invitation and opportunity once again to engage in theological dialogue with Catholics and Protestants of other traditions. 

This is the most recent of many Catholic-Evangelical dialogues in which I have    participated . . .

Catholic/Evangelical

--Nick