The Politics of the Table

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

My latest Politics of Scripture post has just been published.

Jesus’ teaching involves, as Hays recognizes, a rehearsal for the manners of the inbreaking kingdom. Rather than currying favor with their rich neighbors and adopting the manners of their regional rulers, the people of God are to cultivate the etiquette of a different kingdom, behaving as prospective members of a different court. Jesus instructs his hearers to act against their apparent social interests, in the sure faith that God’s order will prevail over all others.

The table manners that Jesus called for involve the rejection of the sort of honor culture practiced in many first century Mediterranean societies. Instead of grasping for honor, Jesus’ followers should be characterized by humility and self-effacement. While seating arrangements and dinner invitations were means for social climbers to accrue honor and status in their society, Jesus challenges his disciples to reject the way of honor-seekers and, like their Master, to seek the praise of God over that of man. Abstaining from social jockeying in a society where so much depends upon one’s honor and status is a costly act of faith.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted in Bible, Culture, Ethics, Guest Post, Luke, NT, NT Theology, Sacramental Theology, Theological | 3 Comments

Transfiguration E-book

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

A while back I wrote a series of posts on the subject of the Transfiguration and the Christian reading of Scripture for Reformation21. Tony Reinke has very kindly formed the posts into an e-book, entitled Transfigured Hermeneutics, which the Reformed Resources site is offering as a free download.

Within the e-book, I sketch an approach to the reading of Scripture that takes its starting point in the event of the Transfiguration, arguing that this event has a greater significance in New Testament thought than is commonly appreciated.

Download a copy for yourself and pass it on!

If you are interested in reading any of my other past guest posts, they are all listed here.

UPDATE: You can also download the file here.

Posted in Bible, Guest Post, NT, NT Theology, Scripture, Theological | 7 Comments

Podcast: The Olympics and Sports

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

Mere FidelityOn this week’s Mere Fidelity, Matt, Derek, and I are joined by Michael Austin for a topical discussion of the Olympics and the place that sports have in our culture. We take the following quotation as a starting point for our conversation:

In their beliefs, Coubertin and his followers were liberals in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill. Deeply suspicious of conventional theistic religions, they promoted Olympism as a substitute for traditional faith. “For me,” Coubertin wrote in his Mémoires Olympiques, “sport is a religion with church, dogma, ritual.” In a radio address delivered in Berlin on August 4, 1935, he repeated his frequently expressed desire that the games be inspired by “religious sentiment transformed and enlarged by the internationalism and democracy that distinguish the modern age.” Nearly thirty years later, Coubertin’s most dedicated disciple, Avery Brundage, proclaimed to his colleagues on the International Olympic Committee that Olympism is a twentieth-century religion, “a religion with universal appeal which incorporates all the basic values of other religions, a modern, exciting, virile, dynamic religion” (pp. 2-3).

You can also follow the podcast on iTunes, or using this RSS feed. Listen to past episodes on Soundcloud and on this page on my blog.

*If you would like to support the production of the Mere Fidelity podcast, helping us to cover our monthly costs, please visit our Patreon page*

Posted in Culture, Ethics, In the News, Podcasts, Society, Theological | 2 Comments

Brave New World, 85 Years Later

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

A piece of mine on the subject of Brave New World has just been published over on The Gospel Coalition website.

One striking detail of Huxley’s portrayal is that, while the World State is founded on mass production, the process of automation is suppressed, with humans doing jobs that could easily be given to machines or algorithms (Huxley doesn’t explore the possibility of quasi-intelligent machines). From a contemporary vantage point it may require a significant suspension of disbelief to imagine such an economy might be tamed to serve a larger social end, even a dystopian one. Huxley may have feared a Fordist ideology concocted and imposed by “World Controllers” within a command economy—not an unrealistic fear in the age of rising Communism and Fascism; we now seem to have much more reason to fear our subjection to the autonomous and insatiable logic of a runaway capitalist system beyond human design or control.

The World State is an intensively planned society, one that can be directly presented in propositions and is integrated by a unified human vision. Much of Brave New World consists of expositional dialogue, within which the human ideology undergirding the World State is explicitly articulated. However, the social developments that most powerfully shape our world no longer seem to be planned and definitely don’t present themselves to us directly. Rather, they’re more typically technological and societal dynamics we set in motion, whose long-term destination is unclear and whose incremental effects on us, though vast in the aggregate and in retrospect, are only perceived obliquely in the moment and the particular—when they’re perceived at all. Though we may be unwittingly conditioned, the conditioner is more likely a technology such as the Internet than a human intelligence.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted in Christian Experience, Culture, Ethics, Guest Post, My Reading, Reviews, Sex and Sexuality, Society | 1 Comment

Podcast: On Satire

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

Mere FidelityOn this week’s Mere Fidelity, Matt, Derek, and I are joined by our good friend Karen Swallow Prior for a discussion of the Christian use (and abuse) of satire. Both Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and this analysis of ‘punching up’ in American comedy are mentioned in the course of the podcast, as is the Babylon Bee Christian satire site.

You can also follow the podcast on iTunes, or using this RSS feed. Listen to past episodes on Soundcloud and on this page on my blog.

*If you would like to support the production of the Mere Fidelity podcast, helping us to cover our monthly costs, please visit our Patreon page*

Posted in Controversies, Culture, Ethics, Podcasts, Theological | 2 Comments

Podcast: Examining Populism

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

 

Mere FidelityThis week’s Mere Fidelity is on the subject of the rise of populism in British and American politics. Matt is back and discusses the subject with Andrew and me.

You can also follow the podcast on iTunes, or using this RSS feed. Listen to past episodes on Soundcloud and on this page on my blog.

*If you would like to support the production of the Mere Fidelity podcast, helping us to cover our monthly costs, please visit our Patreon page*

Posted in Culture, Podcasts, Politics, Society | 4 Comments

The Politics of the Mist

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

I have a reflection on Ecclesiastes and politics over on Political Theology Today, largely drawing upon some previously posted material:

‘Vanity of vanities’—or, more literally translated, ‘vapor of vapors.’

There are few more potent and fecund metaphors for human life, activity, and thought than that of vapor, breath, or mist.

Life is like groping through a dense fog, which shrouds and veils reality, preventing us from seeing through to the heart of things. It is an experience of inscrutability: we can read neither the comings nor goings of being.

We can neither grasp nor control it. It slips through our fingers, eluding all of our attempts at mastery. It is fleeting and ephemeral. It leaves no trace or mark of its passing, but passes into nothing. It produces no lasting fruit nor gain, and has no permanent effects.

It is insubstantial, formed of nothing, and providing no bedrock for security against decay or change. Humanity’s attempts to fashion and understand the world for itself will all ultimately founder, as the unforgiving wind of time whisks away our kingdoms of dust.

It is this metaphor that lies at the heart of the book of Ecclesiastes: Ecclesiastes declares the ultimate futility of all of our attempts at building and figuring out the world for ourselves, comparing these to attempts at ‘shepherding the wind’. This is the character of life ‘under the sun’. Life lived beneath the veil of heaven is inescapably vaporous.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted in Bible, Christian Experience, Ecclesiastes, Guest Post, OT, Politics, Prayer, Providence, Society, Theological | Leave a comment

Transfigured Hermeneutics 10—Transfigural Interpretation

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

Introduction
Transfiguration and Exodus
Transfiguration as Theophany
Jesus as God’s Glory Face in John’s Gospel
The High Priest and the New Temple
The Climactic Word
The Bright Morning Star
Moses’ Veil
With Unveiled Faces

This is the final part of a ten part series of posts upon the Transfiguration. Within the series, I have argued for the immense significance of the event of the Transfiguration within redemptive history. I have maintained that the Transfiguration has far-reaching implications for the way that we read and relate to Scripture.

Kevin Vanhoozer writes:

The transfiguration is a mini-summa that recalls God’s presence in the history of Israel and anticipates the consummation of the covenant: the glory of God’s presence in his people and all creation. As such, it provides program notes as it were for understanding the whole narrative sweep of Scripture.[1]

The glory revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration discloses the identity of Christ and thereby the character of his mission. This is the glorious Saviour that came to earth in the incarnation. This is the glorious Son that was declared in the vision associated with his baptism. This is the glorious suffering Servant that went to the death of the cross. This is the glorious Lord that rose from the grave and ascended into the cloud that received him from his disciples’ sight. This is the glorious King that will come again to judge the living and the dead. It is in this glory that we will be caught up to dwell with him forever.

The Transfiguration is an apocalypse (an ‘uncovering’) and parousia (a ‘presence’ or ‘coming’) of the Lord Jesus Christ, anticipating his future return in that same glory, with all of the holy angels, to judge the living and the dead. All of God’s promises concerning the future kingdom are made more sure to us on account of the apostles’ witnessing of Christ’s royal majesty.

Not only does the Transfiguration manifest Christ’s identity in his earthly mission and guarantee the promises of his future appearing, it is also an event that stands as a key to the Scriptures and all of God’s earlier work in history. It is from this point that all of the threads of meaning can be tied together. The Law and the Prophets—Moses and Elijah—all witness to the glory of Christ. All of the Old Testament looks forward to, prefigures, anticipates, and foretells the ‘Exodus’ that Jesus would accomplish and fulfil in Jerusalem. This era of Law and Prophets was passing, but Jesus’ glory endures forever. The Transfiguration declares Christ to be God’s very Word, the One whom we must ‘hear’.

The Transfiguration is the unveiling of the identity of the great Actor in Israel’s history. The Son is the archetypal Prophet, the heavenly High Priest, the Messenger of the Covenant, the Angel of the Lord. It was the Son who visited Abraham at Mamre. It was the Son that Moses saw on Mount Sinai. It was the Son that Isaiah saw in his vision in the temple. All of God’s appearances to his people in the Old Testament were glimpses that culminate in the great unveiling of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. John speaks of ‘glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’ Paul speaks of ‘the glory of the Lord’ and ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.’

The Transfiguration reveals that the glory of Christ is the beating heart of Scripture, its great Referent, its final telos.

In unveiling the glory of the Lord, the Transfiguration establishes a different way of approaching Scripture. The telos of the text of the Old Testament is now disclosed to us as it is uncovered as a mirror of the surpassing glory of Christ. The prophets speak of and anticipate this revelation of glory. The Scriptures are now seen to refer to Christ in a way we never formerly knew: he is the unknown Stranger who has accompanied the people of God to this point on our journey. We now know the point of Scripture, what it ultimately refers to. Vanhoozer proposes a model of ‘transfigural’ interpretation:

This “Spirited” referent (for this is how we should now think of the spiritual sense) is the “glory” of the literal sense: the divinely intended meaning. Typology is less a matter of sensus plenior than of sensus splendidior—the “how much more” glorious referent that the letter signifies when seen in the radiant light of the event of Jesus Christ. As the transfiguration displays the glory of the Son in and through his flesh, so “transfigural” interpretation discovers the glory of the prophetic word in the “body” of its text. De Lubac has it right: “the Old Testament lives on, transfigured, in the New.”[2]

As the veil is removed from the text and our hearts as we turn to our new covenant Lord the whole body of the Old Testament is transfigured, exposing his glory, a glory which was hidden there all along. Beholding this glory, we are similarly changed, conformed to the glorious image of the Son. In such a manner, we are brought into its narrative in a new way ourselves:

We have been transferred into the story of Jesus Christ, emplotted into his narrative, drafted into the drama of redemption. We too, the divine addressees of Scripture, are being transfigured, transcending history not in the sense of leaving it behind but of participating in the mystery—the glorious theodrama—in its midst.[3]

As those who reflect the glory and bear the image of Jesus Christ, the Glory-face of God, the glory the Scriptures declare is a glory that is ours too: ‘We too “figure” in the story.’[4] We are becoming the transfigured humanity that is the text’s telos. As we perceive the glory of the Lord in the mirror of Scripture, the Spirit of the Lord ‘inscribes’ the Word upon our hearts. By the work of the Spirit, we are now epistles of Christ, embodied proclamations of the enduring glory of his new covenant.

[1] Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (eds.), Heaven on Earth? Theological Interpretation in Ecumenical Dialogue (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013) 220.
[2] Ibid. 222
[3] Ibid. 223
[4] Ibid.

Posted in Bible, Christian Experience, Eschatology, Hermeneutics, NT, NT Theology, Revelation, Scripture, Theological | 1 Comment

The Eternal Subordination of the Son Controversy: 4. The Need for Trinitarian Clarity

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

1. The Debate So Far
2. Survey of Some Relevant Material
3. Subordination

The fourth part of my series on the recent controversy on the Trinity and subordination has just been published over on Reformation21.

The manner in which various ESS positions speak of the relations between the persons of the Trinity and of the persons more generally is a further area of concern for critics. Within the ESS position there often seems to lurk at least an incipient social Trinitarianism. Social Trinitarianism conceives of the persons of the Trinity as if they were three distinct subjectivities—three ‘I’s—in communion and speaks of their relations accordingly.This is a significant departure from the Church’s historic doctrine of the Trinity, within which the language of ‘person’ functions rather differently and does not carry the meaning that it does in popular parlance. The ‘persons’ of the Trinity are not three distinct centres of consciousness or agencies–which would suggest something resembling tritheism and undermine the oneness (and the simplicity) of God. The persons, or hypostases, are three instantiations of the one divine nature. However, most of the things that we would associate with personhood—knowledge, will, love, wisdom, mind, etc.—are grounded, not in the three hypostases, but in the one divine nature. In this respect, if we were working in terms of our modern usage of the term ‘person’, in some respects God might be more aptly spoken of as one ‘person’ with three self-relations, rather than as one being in three persons. This language still falls far short, though.

Read the whole piece here.

Posted in Controversies, Doctrine of God, Guest Post, The Triune God, Theological | 11 Comments

Transfigured Hermeneutics 9—With Unveiled Faces

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Alastair Roberts

Introduction
Transfiguration and Exodus
Transfiguration as Theophany
Jesus as God’s Glory Face in John’s Gospel
The High Priest and the New Temple
The Climactic Word
The Bright Morning Star
Moses’ Veil

This is the ninth of a ten part series on the Transfiguration and its significance for Christian theology and the reading of Scripture. In my previous post I began to discuss Paul’s development of themes associated with transfiguration in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4. I argued, following Richard Hays, that Paul presents Moses both as the representative of the old covenant, but also as anticipatory of the new.

As with Moses, those who turn to Christ—in repentance and faith—are transfigured by the sight of his glory, with the effect of renewing them into his image. Kline writes:

Glory is again to the fore when the Scriptures speak of man’s recreation in God’s image. The renewal of the divine image in men is an impartation to them of the likeness of the archetypal glory of Christ… The mode of the impartation of Christ’s glory in image renewal is described according to various figurative models appropriate to Christ’s identity either as Spirit-Lord or as second Adam. Man’s reception of the divine image from Christ, the Glory-Presence, is depicted as a transforming vision of the Glory and as an investiture with the Glory. Moses is the Old Testament model for the former and Aaron for the latter. Beholding the Sinai revelation of the Glory-Face transformed the face of Moses so that he reflectively radiated the divine Glory. So we, beholding the glory of the Spirit-Lord, are transformed into the same image (II Cor. 3:7-18; 4:4-6).[1]

The end—the telos—of the old covenant was the glorious renewal and transfiguration of humanity in the image and likeness of God. Moses manifested this glory, but had to veil it for a people who weren’t ready for it. In Christ we see both transfigured humanity and the Glory-face of God himself—the telos of all previous revelation.

Paul’s discussion in 2 Corinthians 3:1—4:6 helps us better to appreciate the centrality and import of the themes of the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration declares that the glory of God, formerly only briefly glimpsed by Moses and a few prophets, is now openly proclaimed to all in the gospel of God’s Son. The Transfiguration also unveils the true telos of revelation—the transfiguration of humanity—so that we are renewed and glorified in the image and likeness of our Creator. Christ is the archetypal Image of God and Glory-face of God: as we gaze upon him, we are transformed into his likeness.

There is a pivotal move in Paul’s argument in verse 14:

In verse 13 Moses is the prophet and lawgiver who veils his own face; in verse 15, Moses is the sacred text read in the synagogue. The single intervening transitional sentence tells us that the veil over the minds of the readers is “the same veil” (to auto kalymma) that Moses put on his face. How can that be so? Because Moses the metaphor is both man and text, and the narrative of the man’s self-veiling is at the same time a story about the veiling of the text.[2]

A crucial implication of this is that the (veiled) glory of Moses is not just the glory of Moses the man, but also the glory of the Old Testament Scriptures that he stands for. Although Paul’s earlier contrast between inscription and incarnation may have led readers to expect that he was about to associate Scripture with the veil concealing the transfigured humanity, he makes the critical move of associating the Scripture, not with the veil, but with the glorious face of Moses that lay beneath it.

Having carefully developed the multi-layered metaphor of the veiled Moses, Paul’s stage is now set for the dramatic unveiling. Hays remarks:

The rhetorical effect of 2 Cor. 3:16 is exquisite because it enacts an unveiling commensurate with the unveiling of which it speaks. The text performs its trope in the reader no less than in the story. And—the final elegant touch—the trope is performed precisely through a citation of Moses. Moses’ words are taken out of Exod. 34:34, unveiled, and released into a new semantic world where immediately they shine and speak on several metaphorical levels at once. Thus, rather than merely stating a hermeneutical theory about the role of Scripture in the new covenant, 2 Cor. 3:12-18 enacts and exemplifies the transfigured reading that is the result of reading with the aid of the Spirit.[3]

Paul’s argument, which has been steadily building throughout the chapter, now erupts into a magnificent crescendo. The face of Moses—the face of the Torah—is no longer veiled when he turns—when we turn—to the Spirit-Lord, the giver of liberty. For those who turn to Christ in repentance and faith, the Scripture is now seen to be the mirror in which we perceive the glory of the Lord. Through gazing steadfastly at the glory revealed in that mirror, we ourselves are transformed into the likeness of the One revealed there by the Spirit of Christ, from glory to glory.

As our reading of Scripture is transformed in this new covenant manner, we ourselves are transformed by our reading, to bear the same image—of the glory of Christ—that we perceive within its mirror. The telos of the Scripture, the transformation of humanity, is thereby achieved in us as the veil is removed from our hearts, enabling us to perceive the glory of our Lord that fills it. The figural and Christological reading of Scripture that Paul exemplifies here involves a sort of ‘transfiguration’ of the text, as the glory of the Lord is encountered within it. What had formerly been veiled is disclosed and opened up in Christ, revealing his radiance throughout its pages.

This mirror of God’s glory precedes a greater revelation yet to come, when we see Christ face-to-face (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12). The transformation we currently experience is a partial one produced by a mediated encounter; it will be surpassed by the direct vision which it anticipates and promises. Once again, the self-forgetful vision of Christ will be the means of our transformation—‘when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is’ (1 John 3:2). The shadowy and fleeting glimpses and intimations that we have of transfiguration in our encounters with ‘transcendent’ natural or artistic beauty—as cynicism, fear, and distrust wash away from countenances that light up with joy, awe, wonder, hope, and love and the world and its peoples are bathed in a glorious radiance—may give us the faintest of apprehensions of the great transfiguration that awaits humanity and the creation in the age to come.

In my next and concluding post I will reflect upon what it means to read Scripture in the light of the Transfiguration.

[1] Meredith G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 28-29

[2] Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (London: Yale University Press, 1989), 145

[3] Ibid. 147

Posted in 2 Corinthians, Bible, Christian Experience, Hermeneutics, NT, NT Theology, Scripture, Theological | 2 Comments