Choose Which Table to Covenant With

I'm preaching this Sunday morning (5/22/11) out of 1 Corinthians 10:14-22. I read and re-read and re-read the text. I meditate on the text. I study the text. I listen for God's voice, for his leading.

In addition to looking at the Greek text I am using these commentaries for 1 Corinthians. Not all commentaries are equal. I use, for by far the most part, no older commentaries, because our biblical knowledge is deepening, especially socio-cultural and socio-rhetorical studies.

• Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians
• Ben Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians
• Richard Hays, First Corinthians
• N.T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians
• Craig Blomberg, 1 Corinthians

I want to preach, as much as possible, "for everyone" who comes on Sunday mornings. And I want to take the people to a deeper place than they have been before. Hopefully this happens. One reason I think it does is that, week after week of preaching this way, I am consistently taken into deeper and new places, theologically and spiritually, that I have never been before. It always feels very fresh to me. I don't warm up old sermons. Even in my early years of preaching, when computers did not exist and all we had were things called "typewriters," I threw my sermons away after preaching them. I felt God tell me to do that. God wanted me to struggle with the text all over again, and be renewed in the struggle.

Today, in terms of this text, 1 Cor. 10:14-22, I am thinking that...

• I will make a distinction between "participation" (koinonia) and "partaking" (metechein).
• I'll re-explain "covenant" - God as a covenant God, a covenant-making God. This is precisely why, in God's eyes, there's no such thing as "casual sex," and there's no such thing as "casual worship." I want my people to understand this, to know this in new ways this Sunday.
• It then becomes danger and absurd to covenant (participate) in God (the Lord's Table) and in pagan deities.
• Of course pagan "gods" are not real. Paul acknowledges this. But demons are. So I'll say something about demons. FYI: I believe in the demonic realm. My belief in demons is part of the logic of the noetic framework that has captured me. Personally I remain uninterested in any theology that demythologizes the demonic and supernatural. And yes I have studied Bultmann and Tillich, and their Heideggarian and Humean roots.
• I will say more about "participation" in relation to the Lord's Supper. This is a "wow" time for me, having been raised in a Lutheran church that emphasized such participation, rejected it for a symbolic interpretation, and am now back to a more participatory understanding. Why? Textual studies. It's like I'm hearing Paul's words in 1 Corinthians re. the Lord's Table for the first time.
• We'll gather around the Lord's Table at Redeemer on Sunday. we will "partake" of the common loaf of bread (take a part of it), and "participate" in Christ (this is shared, abiding, indwelling covenant-language). I am expecting good, God-things to happen! (And, I fully expect to have survived the false J-Day scare.)

String Theory & M-Theory

I'm reading M.I.T. physicist Walter Lewin's For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge Of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics. The hyper-brilliant Lewin might be the greatest physics teacher of all-time.

Lewin is not big on string theory or "its souped up cousin superstring theory." He writes: "Theoretical physicists, and there are some brilliant ones doing string theory, have yet to come up with a single experiment, a single prediction that could test any of string theory's propositions. Nothing in string theory can be experimentally verified - at least so far. This means that string theory has no predictive power, which is why some physicists, such as Sheldon Glashow at Harvard, question whether it's even physics at all."

Lewin mentions Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe as being "charming and beautiful." And "Edward Witten's M-theory, which unified five different string theories and posits that there are eleven dimensions of space, of which we lower-order beings see only three, is pretty wild stuff and is intriguing to contemplate."

M-theory is Stephen Hawking's answer, but Lewin finds it "way out there." It reminds him of his grandmother, so he goes on to tell a story.

So far Lewin's book is, for me, a great read. I was taken aback when he wrote about how most of his family members were murdered in the Holocaust.

A Pentecostal Epistemology Privileges Aisthesis Before Noesis

Worship at Furious Love

I'm still reading through Calvin College pentecostal philosopher James K.A. Smith's brilliant Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostalism goes berserk-intellectual! Watch this, on pentecostal worship.

"Pentecostal worship operates on the tacit assumption that we are moved by stories. [Of course we are. Hence, movies. Cmp. N.T. Wright's narrative theology. Note pentecostal "testimonies."] As we've already seen, film operates on the same assumption - as does literature. One could see, then, how the affectivity of pentecostal spirituality resonates with the imaginative arts. [See, for example, our church's sanctuary.] Indeed, I would suggest that a pentecostal epistemology [what was once seen  as an oxymoron is no longer...] is always already a kind of aesthetic, an epistemic grammar that privileges aisthesis (experience) before noesis (intellection)... Pentecostalism is marked, even defined, by an openness to "signs and wonders"; as such, it is a spirituality of signs, of the visible and the invisible - it is a religion of manifesting, displaying, and showing. Pentecostal spirituality and worship are very much a visual economy, a spectacular, visible, fantastic world of the sort created by the fantastic world of film. Like the visual world of film, pentecostal worship is semiotic ["semiotics" - the science of 'signs']; but also like film, it is more than visual, affecting other senses and affecting us via narrative, etc."

Droppeth thy jaws in wonder. At our last Elders meeting one of our E-guys, after hearing the testimonies coming out of our Furious Love Event, said: "I feel like we're in Narnia!" I'm so glad I've left my former near-total noesis paradigm and embraced aesthesis. Both noesis and aesthesis; but aesthesis before noesis.

Science Will Never Tell Us What Was Before the Big Bang (Inductively, to Clarify)

German particle physicist Rolf Dieter-Heuer is interviewed in The European. Dieter-Heuer is the director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research and oversees the vast CERN laboratories in Switzerland. Here are two highlights, for me.

• Particle physics asks how did things develop. Religion and philosophy ask why things develop. "The boundary between the two is very interesting. I call it the interface of knowledge." Consider the question: "If there was a Big Bang, why was it there?" Dieter-Heuer says, "For us physicists, time begins with the Big Bang. But the question remains whether anything existed before that moment. And was there something even before the thing that was before the Big Bang? Those are questions where knowledge becomes exhausted and belief starts to become important."
• Dieter-Heuer is asked: "Do you think it is conceivable that we will eventually learn something about before the Big Bang?" His answer is: "I doubt it." 

The Primacy of Worship Before Mission

Worship at "Furious Love"

I'm reading Muslims and Christians at the Table: Promoting Biblical Understanding Among North American Muslims, by Bruce McDowell and Anees Zaka. In their chapter on introducing Jesus to Muslims they emphasize, thankfully, the priority of prayer. Then, they stress the primacy of worship. I love the quote they use from John Piper. Piper writes:

"Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It's the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching... Missions begins and ends in worship."

I think that is beautiful and true. I interpret it to mean that, without Jesus-followers who are in love with God and passionately worshiping him, missions and outreach to others will be non-convincing. What outsider would want to become part of something that the insiders are bored with?

Trinitarian Rap Song Against Modalistic Monarchianism

Here is a rap-defense of Trintarian theism that is against modalistic monarchianism. You have never heard, nor will you ever hear, the words "modalistic monarchianism" in a rap song. (Maybe in a country western song, but even that is unlikely.)

God as a Trinity of Persons (Trinitarian Theism)

A Trinitarian flower (Trillium)
who lives in my neighborhood.

Tomorrow in Redeemer Ministry School I will be teaching on Trinitarian theism; viz., the idea that God is a "trinity" of persons, a 3-personed being. I'm going to use Paul Copan's analysis in “Is the Trinity a Logical Blunder? God as Three and One” (in Contending With Christianity's Critics). Here is the handout I'm giving my students. [A commercial - want to study some deep and life-changing stuff with me for 10 months in 2011-2012? Go to our RMS website for  information.]

“Unfortunately, in our age of vanishing biblical literacy, the average Christian’s understanding of the Trinity is minimal or even heterodox.” (Copan, Trinity, 205)

Antitrinitarian thought includes: Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons (Copan, Trinity, 205)

“Muslims reject the tri-unity of God as heretical and blasphemous; this is shirk – ascribing partners to God.” (Copan, Trinity, 206)

Copan’s position is:

- Three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – fully share in the one true God’s identity.
- From eternity there has existed not one solitary person but a God-in-relation, three divine persons fully loving and enjoying one another.
o NOTE: Greg BOyd says this makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love. That is, that God, in his being, in his essence, IS love.
- Personal relationships did not come into existence when God created finite personal beings (angels and humans).
- Relationship has always existed in this triune divine family.
- “This tri-personal God, though “over all” (transcendent), is also “in all” (immanent) and ‘not far from each one of us’ (Acts 17:27).” (Copan, Trinity, 207)

“In the history of Christianity, the Western church [Catholic and Protestant] has stressed God’s unbreakable oneness of God’s being] whereas the Eastern Orthodox church has emphasized the distinctiveness of the three persons.” (Copan, Trinity, 207)

Dangers:
- Overemphasizing threeness leads to tritheism – a version of polytheism (many gods). This error is found in one version of Mormonism that denies God’s oneness.
- Overemphasizing oneness leads to modalism – that God is just one person who appears in different modes or manifestations (e.g., God appears as Father in the OT, Son in the NT, and Spirit during the NT church age). This denies God’s threeness. The modal example is: Just as the one substance "water" comes in three modes (liquid, solid, and gas) so God has three modes (Father, Son, and Spirit).
- Rejecting equality leads to subordinationism. In this case the three persons do not possess alike the divine nature but are a kind of hierarchy. Acc. to Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Father alone is God. Jesus is “a god” and the first creature God made. And the Holy Spirit is not personal but merely a force. Copan says: “This subordinationist error undermines the equality of the divine persons.” (Copan, Trinity, 208)

The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is:

- Only one God exists (oneness)
- This God exists eternally in three distinct persons – Father, Son, and Spirit (threeness)
- These three persons are fully equal in their essential divine attributes and perfections (equality; thus, no subordination)

Copan calls this “the Divine Family.” He writes: “From eternity, the triune God has existed. Indeed, the self-sufficient Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit have existed from eternity in their free, mutual self-giving and self-receiving love. Relationship or communion is intrinsic to this “household” (or economy) of divine persons who, though distinct from one another, are inseparably united in other-oriented love.” (Copan, Trinity, 209)

This is a “divine inter- (and inner-) connection of mutuality, openness, and reciprocity [that] has no individualistic competition among the family members but only joy, self-giving love, and transparency.” (Copan, Trinity, 209)

God is “supremely relational in His self-giving, other-oriented nature.” (Copan, Trinity, 209)

“Within God is intimate union as well as distinction, an unbreakable communion of persons. The persons of the Godhead can be distinguished but not separated. God is both community and unity.” (Copan, Trinity, 209)

Copan uses the analogy of Siamese twins to explain. With Siamese twins we have two distinct centers of awareness within one unified organism. “Likewise, God is one immaterial soul (substance) with three distinct centers of consciousness, rationality, will, and agency (persons) who are deeply and necessarily interconnected, and they share the same unique divine nature.” (Copan, Trinity, 209)

God, therefore, is a relational being.

Because God exists,
and chooses to create humans in his image,
relationality is central to our identity as humans.

Copan says: “No wonder the Ten Commandments divide into two tables – our relationship to God and our relationship to fellow human beings. Jesus Himself summarizes our twofold duty: “love the Lord your God” and “love your neighbor” (Mark 12:30-31).” (Copan, Trinity, 209.

We were made, first, for communion with God.

How we regard our fellow human beings reflects our spiritual condition – 1 John 4:20.

We recognize what love is by the model of the self-giving God in Christ – 1John 3:16. "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers."

Thinking of Trinitarian theism Jonathan Edwards wrote that “the great things of the gospel are astonishing.” (Copan, Trinity, 210) Personally, I love this idea of God and find it brilliant. And remember "astonishing" does not mean that mystery or partial knowledge equals “contradiction.”

Now, some more Copan-thoughts on the Trinity, saying the same thing again.


***
TOWARD A CLEARER UNDERSTANDING OF THE TRINITY

“What do the Scriptures mean when they tell us that God is both three and one?” (Copan, Trinity, 210) Not that: “three persons are one person.” (Copan, Trinity, 210) Instead, “the Christian believes that there are three necessarily inseparable persons (not “one person”) who share one divine nature and substance.”

These considerations that can help us:

1. Scripture reveals both a oneness and a threeness to God.

2. God is one in essence or nature but three in person.

3. To distinguish between person and nature we must keep in mind two ways to use “is” – identity vs. predication.

a. “Threeness pertains to persons, and oneness pertains to nature or essence.” (Copan, Trinity, 212)

b. “There is only one divine nature, but three persons share in it.” (Copan, Trinity, 212)

4. The members of the Trinity share the same being, not simply the same nature.

5. The Triune persons are deeply interrelated or mutually indwell one another, sharing a necessary, unbreakable relational oneness. (Copan, Trinity, 213)

6. Because the members of the Trinity share the same essence and mutually indwell one another, they also act as one and not in isolation from one another. (Copan, Trinity, 214)

“In the depth of his being, God is relational. God is relating within himself, and He is relational towards us. This God is for us. He has created us to love Him and to cling to Him (Deut. 10:20; 13:4) – like a husband and wife must cling to each other (Gen. 2:24).” (215)

We have a Three-Personed God. “These three divine persons are one in at least five important ways:

1. They share the same being (compare the three-headed being Cerberus).
2. They share in the same divine nature.
3. They mutually indwell each other (perichoresis), being bound together in relationship.
4. They necessarily act in perfect harmony.
5. Only one harmonious will is expressed in their actions.

Copan writes: “As we look at the story of Scripture, we can gather that, first, only one God exists and, second, three persons can legitimately be called “God.” The Holy Trinity is indeed a mystery but not an incoherent one.” (215)

***
The Philosophical and Practical Relevance of the Trinity

God is not “a singular, unitary person who is a rule-setting monarch endowed with sheer power to impose His arbitrary standards on humans.” (216) Instead, Copan asks, “What if people viewed God as Triune, relating, self-giving, and other-centered by nature?” “What if God’s rule includes not coercion or bullying but a desire for friendship with humans?” “What if God reveals and commands so that humans, by His grace, may freely ‘choose life’ (Deut. 30:19) and experience it ‘abundantly’ (John 10:10)?” What if God is not about some unilateral, top-down hierarchical arrangement, but He is a relational God “who wants no one to perish but all to experience the holy warmth of His company (2 Peter 3:9).?”

The Christian idea of a Triune God is that of a relating God “who is the foundation for ethics and personal responsibility, for human dignity and rights, for reason and truth, and for tolerance and cooperation.” (216)

Trinitarian doctrine can give Christians valuable insights in dialogue with other religions.

• Ultimate reality is not abstract and impersonal.
• A Triune God “offers secure basis for the personal virtues – love, humility, kindness, compassion.” (216)
• A Triune God is relational and not impersonal, like Eastern ideas of ultimate reality (Brahman [Hinduism]; “nothingness” [Buddhism]). “The triune God offers a more fruitful context to ground and make sense of loving human relationships and interpersonal virtues, in addition to the existence of a finite universe.” (217)

On Television: Exegeted Again by Thomas Merton

On my personal Top Ten Books Ever Read is Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation. My old paperback copy is ragged from reading and re-reading. In addition to the book's meditative and contemplative depth is the matter of timing. I was ready to read this book; this book was ready to exegete me.

The initial Seeds of Contemplation was written in 1949. New Seeds was a re-working of Seeds, and puiblished in 1972. In 1949 I was but a seed in my mother's womb, waiitng for Merton to plant God-seeds in me which have formed deep neural pathways of life.

This morning I read Merton, on television, from the year 1949. The prophetic voice writes...

"I am certainly no judge of television, since I have never watched it. All I know is that there is a sufficiently general agreement, among men whose judgment I respect, that commercial television is degraded, meretricious and absurd. Certainly it would seem that TV could become a kind of unnatural surrogate for contemplation: a completely inert subjection to vulgar images, a descent to a sub-natural passivity rather than an ascent to a supremely active passivity in understanding and love. It would seem that television should be used with extreme care and discrimination by anyone who might hope to take interior life seriously." (86)


Television erodes the interior life. We enter into the shallows and de-morph into the hollow people. Television works like "Round Up" on seeds.
Want an excellent book of collected, seminal Merton-teachings? Get Seeds.

Annie Dillard's Literary Fireworks

On my Top Ten Best Books I have ever read is Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It's a meditation on the micro-world, brilliantly and beautifully and stunningly written. It set me off a-reading Dillard's other works. The book deeply resonated within my soul, expressing in ways I could not the sense of childlike wonder at God's creation which I have never lost.

I was reminded of her book today while reading literary genius Eugene Peterson's The Pastor. I had at times wondered if Peterson knew of Dillard, since I found his writing approaching (but not reaching) her's. Peterson writes: "I wrote an article of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. I recognized it as a tour de force in spiritual theology. I made the comment in my article that there was hardly a page in the book that didn't have an allusion to the Bible, yet there was not a single quote. Her publisher sent her a copy of the journal that contained my article. She wrote to me, 'I have been treated very generously by my reviewers. But nobody has noticed (at least no one has mentioned it) that the book is saturated in scripture. I wondered if anyone ever would. Thank you for noticing.'"

I've also read...

The Writing Life (if you want to learn some things about writing, read this)

Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (contains the brilliant fictive essay "An Expedition to the Pole")

Holy the Firm (an 80-page meditation on nature and, among other things, suffering)

In my reading career the only writer who can surpass Dillard's literary genius is Flannery O-Connor.

3 Reasons to Reject the May 21 Judgment Day Idea

See Lee Grady's Why I Don't Buy the May 21 Prophecy.