The Christian year is about to begin. Advent approaches, and many churches are preparing to observe this traditional season leading up to Christmas. Many others are not – either because they don’t know the first thing about Advent, because they think that’s a “Catholic” thing, or because they’re deliberately against something so “planned,” so “liturgical,” so “ritualistic,” or so “repetitive.”

I don’t think the Bible commands us to celebrate the liturgical calendar, nor does it bind our consciences to certain daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly observances apart from the worship service. But I do think it’s a good idea for churches to observe the Christian calendar – or at least more than just Christmas and Easter. Consider this a plea to evangelicals to consider following the example of the Catholics, the Lutherans, and the mainlines (those Greeks have a funny calendar, but we’d be following them as well, at least in spirit).

The ironic thing about the rejection of the Christian calendar on the grounds that it’s too ritualistic, or repetitive, is that churches that reject the Christian calendar follow the American one just fine. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day all find observation in the worship service of most evangelical churches. And then throw in the ones we’re making up – Compassion Sunday, the “we’re against abortion” Sunday, Justice Sunday, Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, New Year’s Day, etc, and you’ve got a calendar that’s filling up just as much with regular celebration of days as the traditional Christian calendar.

Only its focus is more on America than Christ. This year, Memorial Day and Pentecost fell on the same day; guess which one got mentioned and which one got left out.

It’s not a matter of whether or not we follow a calendar; it’s which one we choose to follow. I’d rather go with the one Christians have been following for a lot of centuries. Here are some reasons:

1. The Christian year is an invaluable resource for catechesis. Ah, catechesis. The instruction in the faith. In most churches, this is so unstructured or non-existent, we should not wonder why the Bible is so little-known and our own history so forgotten among evangelicals.  With preaching that comes from that funny feeling that pastor had after he ate the burrito…erm…I mean, how he felt led, and poorly-attending Sunday School classes on 7 steps to Living Your Victorious Christian Best Life Now, we are in desperate need of some kind of remedy.  How do we learn and constantly refresh out hearts with the surety of the promises of God?  How do we learn that the whole Bible is about Christ? How about spending every Advent preaching and teaching on the OT prophecies of Christ?
2. Following the Christian year places us firmly and firstly in the Kingdom of God.  When Memorial Day usurps Pentecost, we’ve made a decision; the American holiday trumps the traditional Christian one.  Objection: “But you’ve just said that we can’t bind consciences to the Christian year.”  True.  But try, just try to not observe Memorial Day or Independence Day in your average evangelical church.  Folks’ll be up in arms; you’ll see just how “bound” everyone’s American conscience is to the American calendar.  (Another fun experiment would be to take that American flag out of the sanctuary…but that’s for another post, maybe).  Forget Pentecost?  Doesn’t matter.  No one knew about it anyway.  Following the Christian year would serve to remind Christians to whose kingdom they belong.  If the rhythm of our year were dominated by Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, we’d have consistent reminders that we belong not firstly to America (or any other nation), but to God’s kingdom, and that time itself is orchestrated around His kingdom.
3. Following the Christian year is practically a big step toward restoring unity.  I’m under no delusion that denominational Christianity will be fixed by the Christian year.  We have many seemingly insurmountable differences, and some of them are important.  But could we at least take a few steps toward getting along?  There’s something really powerful in the idea that all Christians around the entire globe would be following the same – or at least very close to the same – rhythm year round.  Imagine the entire Christian world remembering the sending of the Holy Spirit in unison.  Powerful stuff.  (This is why I’m a big advocate of lectionary preaching, by the way…again, another post for another time).
4. Following the Christian year roots us in Church history.  I can think of few things more necessary in modern day evangelicalism than a historical rootedness.  Me-and-my-Bible Christianity is out. of. con. trol.  Evangelicals hear historically Christian positions and ask, “Who believes that?  Why would anyone believe that?”  Um…because Christians always believed that until your pastor came along, came up with a clever new idea, started another denomination, and abandoned it.  Following a calendar that re-tells the stories of martyrs and saints and has its own history of celebration would provide for us a vital link to our past and a regular reminder that we weren’t the first Christians to pick up a Bible and seek to understand it.
5. The Christian year takes us through the drama of redemption.  Advent: We are in Exile, waiting for Christ.  Christmas: He has come!  Peace on earth!  Epiphany: Christ is revealed; baptism remembered.  Maunday Thursday: King of the World, lowly servant, institution of the Eucharist.  Good Friday: Christ crucified for the sins of the world.  Easter: He is risen!  Ascension: He has gone and will come again.  Pentecost: the Spirit is sent.   You get the idea.  And it’s not as though we “act” or “pretend” as though Christ hasn’t come every Advent.  But we preach and meditate on the unfolding of the redemptive plan of God.  How many times throughout Scripture are we told to “remember”?  The Christian year establishes a framework of remembrance.  It establishes a framework of constant gospel preaching, which I need, and you need.

Of course, the Christian year is mere ritual if we go through the motions without heart.  But that is no argument against it (it’s no argument against weekly communion either…yet another post for another time).  It is better to have the framework of remembrance in place to stir the hearts of the calloused than to have the framework of American holidays.  The prophets did not demand that Israel abandon the cult; they demanded Israel change her heart.  It was not the festivals’ fault that hearts were hard; that’s an absurd conclusion that is too often made in evangelicalism.

To which world do we primarily belong?   I will celebrate New Year’s Eve with my family, like always; but this year, my New Year begins at Advent.

This post: two birds.  one stone.

Bird #1: Promote the Rabbit Room.  This is a great new site with a few of my favorite musicians writing posts.  This is the kind of dialogue on Christian theology and arts that needs to be a regular part of everyone’s life.

Bird #2: Start a discussion on the liturgical year.  Which is related to the “rabbit room” promotion because Russ Ramsey has written a post there called “Living in Ordinary Time,” which has a helpful and short introduction to the liturgical year with particular emphasis on defining “Ordinary Time.”  As you can see by the top portion of the sidebar, I’m a fan of the liturgical year (even if my particular church doesn’t follow it), and, especially as we head into Advent, I want to write some posts advocating for an evangelical move towards the Christian calendar.

“For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life.”

~ Epistle to Diognetus, Chapter 5 (130-200 AD)

I’m adding an article to the Paleo-orthodoxy page: Will the 21st Century Be the Orthodox Century?  (HT to Michael)  It’s a CT article by Bradley Nassif, and it contains a helpful introduction to some of Oden’s ideas in Rebirth of Orthodoxy.  He includes Oden’s evidence that there is a “widespread rekindling of the orthodox spirit”:

(1) Personal transformation stories. The lives of ordinary Christians and leading academics who have been dramatically changed by the testimony of the classic tradition, including Jaroslav Pelikan and Richard Swinburne, who became Eastern Orthodox, and Robert Wilken and Richard John Neuhaus, who joined the Catholic church.

(2) Faithful scriptural interpretation. Patristic methods of exegesis are receiving more attention now than at any time during the previous century. They are fast becoming a core concern of biblical studies, as evidenced by the growing number of ancient translations and commentaries being made widely available by publishing companies such as InterVarsity, Baker, and Eerdmans.

(3) The multicultural nature of orthodoxy. No modern multiculturalism is as deep or fertile as the ecumenical multiculturalism of antiquity. The cross-cultural richness of the early church is becoming increasingly evident today.

(4) Well-established doctrinal boundaries. After decades of uncritical permissiveness in the church, we are now witnessing a renewed energy for drawing boundaries around questions of religious truth. Thousands of the faithful are together relearning how to say no to heresy on behalf of a greater yes for the truth of classical orthodoxy.

(5) Ecumenical roots reclaimed. Confessing and renewing movements in Protestantism are changing local congregations and even entire denominations.

(6) Rise of a new ecumenism. Actually, what we’re seeing is a revival of the ancient ecumenical method of theological decision-making set forth by Vincent Lerins: “We hold to that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” Laypeople can easily grasp this, and they are doing so.

I’m posting in the extended entry the entire remainder of  "Moving Forward, Looking Backward: The Ancient Faith for the 21st Century," mostly because I’m tired of posting it.  There’s lots of other stuff I want to move on to. 

“I Believe in the
Holy Spirit”

 On first
glance, the Creed gives exceedingly little attention to the Holy Spirit. More careful examination, however, will
reveal that the Creed’s statements about the church and the communion of saints
are also statements about the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that causes our unity as
well as our communion as the body of Christ.[1] Apart from the reality of the one Spirit who
unites us all, all attempts to unify the Lord’s church would fail
miserably. Just as one cannot separate
soteriology from Christology, so one cannot separate ecclesiology from
pneumatology.

“I believe in the holy
catholic church”

 Two
adjectives are given by the creed to describe the church: “holy” and
“catholic.” It should be noted that the
Nicene Creed adds two equally important adjectives: “one” and “apostolic.” In a sense, it is difficult to examine the
adjectives separately, since they are built upon each other. There is one
and only one church, and being such, it is catholic
(universal), uniting all followers of Jesus Christ who confess the classic
ecumenical faith established by the teaching of the apostles (apostolic) themselves. For the purposes of simplicity, we will
examine “holy,” and then “one catholic and apostolic” separately.

The holiness of the
church

 The call
for the church to be “holy” should be the greatest deterrent to an uncritical
acceptance of cultural norms within the church. Certainly the balance between the quests for holiness and incarnational
ministry is not an easy one to strike. One need simply look at the opposite poles in the 20^th
century culture wars – fundamentalism and liberalism – to see that. The phrase, “Be in the world but not of the
world” has practically lost all meaning, since there are so many different
suggestions as to how to accomplish such a task. As Johnson writes, “the impulse towards
holiness in the church has tended toward disunity.”[2] The issue of unity will be addressed briefly
in the section below; for now, it must be firmly held that failure in attempts
at both holiness and unity in the past should not prevent us from continuing to
pursue that goal. Johnson suggests two
realms in which the church should be holy: it should be a transformational
context for individuals and a unique corporate entity.[3] 

 The
transformational aspect of the church’s holiness may be what is most appealing
to a postmodern generation, for “no religion will be given the time of day
right now unless it connects with the real world and makes a difference in
people’s lives.”[4] The temptation the church must resist is in
marketing a “new life” rather than modeling and living it. As noted above, the great idolatry of
postmodernism consists in its birth in the midst of a market economy. Many faithful Christian voices of our time
can be heard warning the church of becoming “market-driven.”[5] As the much of the world pushes more towards
a global market economy, it is becoming clear that one of the primary challenges
the church must face is the old warning of Jesus Himself: “You cannot serve God
and money.”[6]

 Singer/songwriter
Derek Webb has written strong words about the church’s willingness to market
its salvation. Singing from the point of
view of the devil himself, in similar fashion to C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, Webb writes:

Just
keep selling truth in candy bars
On billboards and backs of cars
Truth without context, my favorite of all my crimes

Take
out the sign, forget the meal
We’ve got a gym and a farris wheel
I swear it’s just like the country club down the block

‘Cause
everything’s for sale in the 21st century
And the check is in the mail from the 21st century[7]

 Webb argues
through his music that because of Christianity’s adaptation to the market economy,
rather than being known by our love, we are now known “by the T-shirts that we
wear.”[8] Examples could be multiplied, but Webb has
hit the nail square on the head. From
Christian bookstores to sanctuaries, Christianity is being marketed rather than
lived and proclaimed.

 The church
should rather be the context in which believers learn to live out their
baptism, which, as we noted above, connects us to real hope in the midst of a
dark world. We must take up anew Jesus’
suspicion of earthly wealth and cling instead to God’s kingdom and
righteousness. It is then than
postmodern people will see that hope and ask us about it, at which point, as
the apostle Peter writes, we can give a gentle and respectful answer.[9]

 In order to
do this, a return to solid catechesis in the classical Christian faith is
needed. The quest for relevance in
modern churches, leading to a plethora of Christian “self-help” sermons and
Sunday school classes, has unfortunately led to a trivialization of the great mysteries
of Christian doctrine. Dawn argues we must regain the language of the faith.[10] At the same time, we dare not return to a
dry, line by line systematic instruction, not connected at all to life. Cate Siejk has noted well that these kinds of
“strictly didactic and transmissive” ways of Christian education “are shaped
significantly by the assumptions of modern epistemology.”[11] Christian education must be more than
“indoctrination into an ideology.”[12]

 The only
way to invite others to join the transformational community of the church is to
be certain the faith is “embodied within the community.”[13] Siejk believes Christian catechesis must be
able to find the proper balance between a rootedness in the ancient faith and
the desire for the believer to “be authentic in living their Christian faith in
a postmodern world.”[14] In an age of doubt and uncertainty, it would
be detrimental to the faith to shout down questions and concerns about the our
doctrine. Indeed, Seijk suggests that
embracing and loving the questions will bring imagination “to the center of the
educational process.”[15]
In a postmodern context, a “dialogical pedagogy” will go much farther to
produce genuine disciples than a simple transmissive mode of lecture.[16] While preaching should certainly not be
dismissed as irrelevant and must still hold a primary place, catechesis must be
a community project, taking into account each individual, rooting them in the
Christian faith, while allowing each to remain a unique person.

 Concerning
the holiness of the institutional church, however, the issue is far too complex
for the present work. A few brief
comments are in order before pressing on. As noted above, the church’s call to be holy should discipline its
temptation to over-accommodate to the culture. Dawn has noted rightfully that we demonstrate our ignorance of classic
Christian faith if we simply “water down our own uniqueness” in response to
postmodern pluralism.[17] Horton argues that an attempt to “reconcile”
Christianity with modern culture results in the church being left with “nothing
to say that was not being said (almost always sooner) by everybody else.”[18]

Since, as noted above, a
fundamental problem of unity arises at root of the question of the church’s
holiness, we will proceed to the next characteristics proclaimed by the
Christian creed and note just a few fundamental suggestions for paving the way
forward toward holiness and unity.

One catholic and
apostolic church

The vast complexity of the state of
the church, especially since the Protestant Reformation, makes the concept of
“one catholic (i.e., universal) church” look impossible. The division is so pervasive that the quest
for healing seems unattainable. Sadly,
Reformed churches are as guilty as any at being divisive, not merely concerning
Catholics and evangelicals, but within their own ranks as well. Reformed scholar John Frame has documented no
less than twenty-two areas of major debate and controversy in and among
Reformed churches.[19] While the situation has no simple answer, it
is here that paleo-orthodoxy offers its most valuable principles.

Oden and others of the
paleo-orthodox movement need a hearing in the Reformed community. Indeed, some have already noticed this. J.I. Packer, for example, has co-edited a
book with Oden entitled, One Faith: The
Evangelical Consensus.[20] The book’s purpose is to establish and
document the thesis that evangelical theology, from all its various
expressions, is slowly drawing towards a consensus on the major issues. This means that even the “two related but
distinguishable wings of modern evangelical history: the Calvinist, Lutheran,
and Baptist wing” and “the Arminian, Wesleyan, Holiness, Charismatic and
Pentecostal wing” are finding common ground. 

Some in the Reformed community
would find this troubling. But we can
learn much from simply recalling that the early Reformers themselves referred
frequently to the early church fathers. The Reformation principle of sola
scriptura was in no way intended to convey the idea that church history was
to be disregarded. Rather, Calvin,
Luther, Zwingli, and the others believed themselves to be articulating a more
accurate interpretation not only of the Scriptures but of the early church
fathers. To line ourselves up with
paleo-orthodoxy would be to line ourselves up with the Protestant
Reformers. After all, it is the earliest
teaching of the apostles that makes the church “apostolic” to begin with. The question is not whether or not our
theology lines up with Reformation theology, but whether any theology at all
lines up with apostolic teaching.

While it is not a sufficient enough
answer to settle the problem, returning to the faith as defined by its early
theologians seems at least a better starting place than mimicking culture. This present work has included references and
thought from scholars and writers who might not make it onto the approved list
of many Reformed thinkers.  The choice
was deliberate. Oden says of discovering
orthodoxy that our primary job is to listen, and his words will provide a
fitting conclusion to our considerations of the church:

The imperative, in a word, is Listen! Heed those most aware of the enormous flexibility and variability of
orthodoxy, of its ability to transform various cultural traditions, yet who are
able to behold within all this variety the unifying work of the Holy Spirit.[21]

“I believe in the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting”

 Forgiveness
of sins is at the center of the believer’s vertical relationship with God and
horizontal relationship with other human beings. Jesus binds the two together, never to be cut
asunder, in His teaching about prayer.[22]
C.S. Lewis argued that the phrase about the forgiveness of sins was thought
important enough to be included in the creed because the concept can be a quite
difficult one, and easy to forget.[23] The difficulty is that true forgiveness
breaks down our excuses, for to ask for forgiveness in hopes that God or friend
will accept one’s excuse is not to believe one needed forgiveness in the first
place, but that one was justified in his or her actions.[24] 

 The offer
of forgiveness from God through Christ presupposes our guilt, and our
willingness to ask for such forgiveness is an act of humility. We admit we need it. It is the same in our relationships both with
God and with others. Admission of guilt
before God and human beings should never result in a haughty attitude towards
others once the forgiveness has been received; certainly Jesus warned against
such betrayal of God’s forgiveness. Rather, a community whose individuals are willing to be real with one
another about sins and faults, forgiving one another for Christ’s sake, is a
different kind of community than perhaps the world around us is used to. We must stop reciting the cliché, “Christians
aren’t perfect, just forgiven” as an excuse for our faults, and rather begin seeking
forgiveness from people that we have wronged. It is a genuine, humble, and forgiving community that will draw
decentered postmodern people, not an arrogant group intent on pointing fingers,
hoping the sins of others will look bad enough to cover up our own.

 The
resurrection of the body and life everlasting are the consummation of the hope
we are linked to at baptism, when we are united in the resurrection life of
Jesus. As the church passed on through
persecutions, schisms, corruption, victory, defeat, reformations, revivals,
modernity, and now into postmodernity, it does so all the while looking for a
home that will never fade away. While
difficulties and persecutions may abound, and the church may have many more
tribulations through which it must pass, we cling to the class “faith once
delivered,” knowing that life everlasting with Jesus awaits us. 

CONCLUSION: MOVING FORWARD, LOOKING BACKWARD

 In essence,
my argument is that our best path forward in Reformed churches as well as in
the rest of the Christian world, be it Evangelical, Protestant, or Catholic, is
to look to our rich past before making a lunge at future ministry in a
postmodern world. As has been noted,
postmodernism can hardly be defined in the first place. It is almost impossible to even use the
phrase, “postmodern world,” since the world, in fact, is not thoroughly
postmodern, as if that were even possible. The deconstruction of the modern world is a blessing, in that we are
being freed from many of the philosophical threads that led to the belief that
we are in a post-Christian era. In the
context of postmodernism, in light of its dissatisfaction with modernity,
Christianity may very well gain a new voice as people once again open up to the
importance of spirituality. 

 At the same
time, we dare not place our hopes on postmodernism itself. Some hope that the tolerance of postmodernism
will open up the way for the breaking down of sectarianism in the church.[25] Others, as we have seen, think the
postmodernism is a more biblical expression of the way the world actually
is. We must be careful not to submit to
passing idolatries and cling instead to the classic Christian faith. It is not because postmodern tolerance
convinces us that sectarianism is wrong that we should engage in efforts to
unify the church; “but we should hate these things because Scripture requires
us to hate them — one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”[26] 

 Commenting
on postmodernism,

Princeton

philosopher
Diogenes Allen has stated, “A massive intellectual revolution is taking place
that is perhaps as great as that which marked off the modern world from the
Middle Ages.”[27] If he is correct, the church must be alert
and ready to respond. We will not be
ready if we continue to chase every new fad that comes along, including the
ones we create for ourselves. We must
humbly return to the classic ecumenical faith and listen to it. After listening and learning, we must then
listen to each other, and dialogue on the grounds of our shared ancient
faith. Finally, we must stop and listen
to those around us who do not belong to our faith, first of all because we love
them, and second of all because we want to share with them our great story, the
continuing saga of the God of Israel, of His Son Jesus Christ, and of the work
of the Holy Spirit in the world. 

I’ll combine the creedal statements on resurrection, ascension, and coming judgment to finish out the paper’s section on Christ.  We’ll move later this week into the final section of "Moving Forward Looking Backward." 

“On the third day he arose
again from the dead”

These words
from the Creed echo Paul’s summary of the faith in 1 Corinthians 15. It is in this chapter that Paul argues for
the absolute necessity of faith in the resurrection of Christ, for without such
resurrection, there is no hope.[1] If Christ’s resurrection is true, Paul says,
several other things are true: we are given life in Christ; those who belong to
Christ will be raised from the dead; Christ’s reign over his kingdom has been
inaugurated; the enemies of God will be put into subjection under Christ; death
will suffer a final and decisive defeat.

Put quite
simply, without a historical resurrection, there is no Christianity. “The resurrection creates the need to write
the New Testament in the first place.”[2] Had Jesus not been raised, he would have been
yet another failed messiah.[3] Messiahs appeared and were killed all the
time; once the supposed messiah died, it was over. For the followers of Jesus, it did not end on
Good Friday. Indeed, from the first
post-Easter sermon preached to the end of the New Testament, resurrection is
proclaimed without fail, even where it will be scoffed at as a foolish
notion.

But what
hope can the belief in a historical resurrection of Jesus offer to the
postmodern world? The illustration of
Emmaus used previously and taken from Wright’s work is helpful. Discouraged that their messiah had supposedly
failed, the disciples are rebuked by the stranger on the road, who explains to
them how slow they are to understand all messiah had to suffer. Allow Wright to demonstrate an interesting
parallel:

Foolish ones, slow of heart to
understand what God was up to! Was it
not necessary that modernist versions of Christianity should die in order that
truth might be freshly glimpsed, not as a set of doctrines or theories but as a
person and as persons indwelt by that person?[4]

Wright is
trying to tell us that resurrection offers hope and life to every generation,
regardless of the cultural circumstances. It may be quite true that much of Christianity succumbed to modernist
tendencies; that was certainly seen above in the example of Genesis 1 in the
hands of modernist interpreters. Just as
dangerous is the temptation to develop a thoroughly postmodern Christian
theology. The hope of resurrection is
the answer to the dead and decaying philosophies that would obscure the truth
of God. As Dawn writes, “the only
unfettered hope is eschatological.”[5] The shock of the resurrection of Jesus was
that an eschatological event occurred “in the middle of the present age.”[6]

From Christianity’s earliest
existence, it has proclaimed and been centered upon the resurrection.[7] The Christian community is now and always had
been a resurrection community.[8] And this is no detached statement of
systematic theology; it is not as though Christians are simply a group of
religious people who believe one man was raised from the dead 2,000 years
ago. Rather, we believe that we, in some
way, share in that very resurrection by being “in Christ.”[9] At our baptism, we are united to the
eschatological hope of resurrection here in the present age.[10] As such, we carry with us the only hope that
has ever existed or will ever exist for a world that is dead in transgressions
and sins. While God could have chosen to
communicate the resurrection in any way He saw fit, He chose the work of His
Spirit through the church, and to that we will turn after a brief consideration
of ascension and coming judgment.

Ascension and Coming
Judgment

The final
statement about Jesus reads, “He ascended into heaven and sits at the right
hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall come to judge the living and
the dead.” As we have already spent
significant time on the implications for God’s sovereign rule over creation,
only a few brief considerations will be added here. While it is a much-debated point of
eschatology, Scriptures seems quite clear that, at least in some sense, Jesus
Christ is reigning over the earth even now.[11] His place at the right hand of the Father is
significant, for it places before the throne an advocate for all who trust in
Him.[12]

The coming
judgment of Jesus alerts us to a mix of fear and joy. Psalm 71 references the “final destination”
of the wicked as comfort in the midst of the questions of theodicy posed by the
psalmist. Certainly judgment brings with
it fear, and the concept of a final judgment is by no means a comfortable one
to proclaim in an age of tolerance. Nevertheless, final judgment also carries with it the notion of the
righting of all wrongs and elimination of all evil. If there is anything postmodern people are
sensitive to after a century of wars, death, and battles over civil rights, it
is injustice. The coming judgment is
indeed a connecting point for engaging postmodern people with the gospel of
free forgiveness and the message of a just God who not only will judge the
world, but suffered injustice Himself as one of us and on our behalf.

“He descended into
hell”

On this
statement we reach a point of contention among Reformed churches, as well as
among Christians in general.[1] Calvin believed that Jesus descent into hell
was “no small moment in bringing out redemption.”[2] A good majority of Reformed believers have
followed Calvin on this. Yet for being
an ecumenical creed, this particular statement has not generated a thoroughly
ecumenical following. Reformed
theologian Wayne Grudem, for example, tracing the history of the Apostles’
Creed, argues that the disputed phrase only appeared in one version of the
creed prior to 650 A.D., and that Rufinus, the one who included the statement,
intended nothing more than an affirmation that Jesus “descended to the grave,”
and therefore not to the place of eternal damnation at all.[3]

The
argument could go on, and probably will, without universal agreement. Perhaps it is in a situation like this that
our desire for responsible ecumenism is best tested. Is there an overwhelmingly clear Scripture
that declares the specifics of Christ’s time in the grave? Few would believe so. It would be odd, then, for Scriptural silence
to produce dogmatic statements with unbending adherents. It might be best to say that Christ went as
far as He had to go in order to secure our salvation, by defeating “sin and
Satan and the grave,” as the old hymn goes.[4] Since so much mystery remains concerning sheol, or the Greek equivalent hades as found in the Creed, another
suggestion might be to simply use the Greek or Hebrew word. In any case, we dare not divide camps over
it. Christ accomplished all that He
needed to; His soul was not abandoned to sheol.

The defeat
in the hearts of the disciples during the days of Jesus’ being in the grave
looks in many ways similar to the disorientation felt by postmoderns at the end
of modernity. Just as the disciples had
been clinging to the false hope of military and political victory, not
realizing the messianic significance of the death of their Lord, for centuries
many have clung to the false hopes of the metanarratives and the quest for
universal rationality.[5] By the day of the resurrection, two disciples
walked on the Emmaus road, dejected, stating their hope that Jesus was Messiah
in the past tense.[6] The least likely of all hopes, it seemed, was
that a dead, defeated Messiah would rise from sheol. But to use postmodern
terminology, the false hopes of the disciples had to be deconstructed, and
their eyes opened to a much greater and permanent hope in Christ.

In like
manner, many people are downcast. They
have been burned by every attempt to find life’s meanings, and many have even
tried Christianity. As modernity
attempted to render classic ecumenical Christianity as an insignificant
superstition of the past, to many the story of Jesus seems the least likely of
all hopes. As Jesus expounded the story
of redemption to the downtrodden disciples, “their hearts burned within them.”[7] As multitudes remain in dissatisfaction with
themselves and the state of the world, so we are to tell them the same story of
redemption, allowing the story of Christ to burn within their hearts. For this reason, we will turn in the next
post from the darkness of Good Friday to the light of Easter morning.

Sword of Gryffindor is updated with Harry Potter, Perelandra, and Alchemy. 

I’m probably going to start moving a bit quicker with this "Moving Forward, Looking Backward" series, because I’m really itching to get to a series on adiophora. 

Onward we proceed with the doctrine of Christ, focusing on Christ’s suffering as the key to Christianity, postmodernism, and modern metanarratives.

“Suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried”

The
inspired Christ-hymn presses the matter of Jesus’ condescension to earth by
declaring, “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross.”[1] It is here, more than anywhere else, that the
Christian story gives unprecedented challenge to all modern forms of the
metanarrative.

It is the Christian claim that Jesus
paradigmatically embodied the central biblical trajectory of embracing
marginality and pain – ultimately death – on behalf of both the
margins and the center, thus bearing the sins of the world. This radical
embrace was vivid testimony to his trust in the Creator of both center and
margins, a Creator who is able to bring life even out of death. The person of
Jesus, and especially his death on a cross, thus becomes in the New Testament a
symbol of the counterideological intent of the biblical metanarrative and the
paradigm or model of ethical human action, even in the face of massive
injustice.[2]

Contra
those who wanted to overthrow Rome by military might, Jesus challenged the very notion and then submitted to
crucifixion. The words of the Creed,
“crucified under Pontius Pilate,” remind us of Jesus’ exchange with the man
under which he was crucified. “If my
kingdom were of this world,” Jesus tells Pilate, “my servants would have been
fighting.”[3] When Pilate explains to Christ his authority
to hand him over to death, Jesus places all authority in the hands of God.[4]

In this the
character of God is most powerfully revealed to anyone skeptical of the power
plays of modernist metanarratives. God,
who has all authority, demonstrated it in the great weakness of death on a
cross, “for us and for our salvation.” The Christian faith, firmly founded on the death of Jesus Christ for the
sins of the world, rests not on a promise of military victory or political
triumph, but upon the submission of the Son of God incarnate. A threatening
metanarrative Christianity is not.

Sadly,
Reformed and other believers in the past, as well as some today, have
envisioned Christianity as the triumph of Christian moral values, or even the
imposing of Old Testament civil law, onto the governments of the world. It is far past time to embrace once again the
humble character of the Christian faith. All our desperation, including the postmodern confusion of human identity,
is fixed in our rebellion against God the Creator. All our hope is found in the death of Jesus,
the Son of God, “who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and
was buried.”

“Who was conceived of
the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary”

 It is
nothing short of astonishing that the one who is called King of Glory would be
described also as one who “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant.”[1] J.I. Packer has said well that the greatest
mystery of the Christian faith is not the miracles, the death, or the resurrection
of Jesus, but His incarnation:

“The Word became flesh” (Jn. 1:14); God
became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a
helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make
noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other
child. And there was no illusion or
deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality.[2]

 The Nicene
Creed spends a little more ink on this than the Apostles’ Creed, noting that
Jesus became incarnate “for us and for our salvation.” The idea is hard to fathom, that God Himself
would be united eternally to His own creation, and yet this is exactly the
mystery the Christian faith affirms. If
Dan Kimball is right that “emerging generations value…the mystery of the
religious faiths of old,” telling the story of the incarnation will do far more
than lighting candles and creating a dark, spiritual atmosphere.[3] One need not look any farther than the humble
king of the world made man to find tremendous mystery.

 In addition
to all this, there is hardly a more significant model for ministry in a
postmodern context. If Middleton and
Walsh are correct about the decentered, disoriented, and anxious state of
postmodern human consciousness, the unwavering, unfaltering, dogmatic
proclamations that smack of arrogance will do nothing to demonstrate the love
of Christ. Confused and hurting people
do not appreciate lofty answers and high speculations made by people unwilling
to understand and share their pain. As
Christ came to us, humbled himself, and suffered on our behalf, so we go to the
world incarnationally, humbling ourselves and suffering for Christ’s sake.

We’ll now begin examination of the Christological statements of the Apostles’ Creed.

“I Believe in Jesus
Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord”

Christianity is unique among the
religions of the world. And the reason
for the uniqueness lies in the historical figure who stands at its centre –
Jesus Christ.[1]

The
Apostles’ Creed, just like the Nicene Creed and Chalcedon Definition, is a
Christ-centered creed. This is rightly
so, since Jesus is at the center of our faith and the key to our knowledge of
God. Quoting Luther, McGrath reminds us
that “God does not want to be known except through Christ; nor can he be known in
any other way.”[2] He is heralded by Paul as “the image of the
invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”[3] Jesus even proclaimed that to have seen him
was to have seen the Father himself.[4] If we are to glorify God and enjoy Him
forever, it can only be done through Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

This is
perhaps the most difficult, yet necessary claim of Christianity in a
postmodern, pluralistic world. The very
notion of there being one and only one way of knowing God is appalling to
postmodern people. It smacks of
oppressive metanarrative, and it can hardly be denied that it has been used as
such in times past. Marva Dawn notes
that many Christians “are afraid to tell the truth they know and live for fear
they will be seen as oppressive.”[5] She demonstrates, however, the necessity of
retaining this concept in a postmodern context:

However, if our faith teaches that
Truth is not a What but a Who (and a very counterideological, unpowerful One at
that), then to speak of Christ is to introduce people to a great delight, a
gift.[6]

To press the matter a bit further,
the early claim that Jesus was Lord carried with it the implication that Caesar
was not lord.[7] The Christian ethic of love as obedience to
Jesus’ lordship would have been a radical alternative to the “hegemonic,
militaristic, and expansionist Roman understanding of power.”[8] In other words, though Jesus is indeed Lord,
He is everything that an oppressive metanarrative is not.

It is for this reason that the
statements of the Apostles’ Creed about Jesus, which we will examine in posts
to come, are so important, for they do not describe an oppressive tyrant, but a
humble servant. In short, they describe
incarnation.