God gave Christianity a feminine feel

Ephesians 5
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.


In order to follow Christ, believers must become somewhat feminine. We respond to Christ as a wife responds to her husband - in obedient submission. There is no room in the church for alpha male types. Christ fulfils this role. He is our alpha.


And he delights to choose people (male and female) who delight in being beta. Compare Jesus' encounters with Nicodemus (Jn 3) and with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4). Jesus was not pleased with Nicodemus' masculine competitiveness and took him down a peg or ten. He favoured the more feminine response of the Samaritan woman.


God gave Christianity a feminine feel on purpose. Throughout history his choice has consistently been for the underdog - quiet, bookish Jacob over big hairy Esau , harp playing poet David over beefy Goliath, the village of Bethlehem over the city of Jerusalem, a stable over a palace... and now, the oppressed gender over the oppressor gender. It makes sense that Christianity has  a distinctly feminine feel. If one wants to be part of God's kingdom he/she will need to leave macho behind and  learn to submit to Christ as a woman does to her husband.     


Of course to speak of Christianity having a feminine feel is silly. I want to stay in the complementarian camp, but Mr. Piper, you are making it really hard.

sacred vs secular

I read something the other day that divided up things women might do with their time into 'sacred' and 'secular'. Paid work was in the secular zone, but voluntary work in the community, church stuff and raising kids were classed as sacred. I think this a false and fundamentally unhelpful distinction. I don't think we can elevate certain things we do to a higher spiritual category than other things. Reading to our kids, changing nappies, going to bible study, performing a life-saving operation, teaching a year 5 class, sitting in a lunch room, sending emails, being on the tuckshop roster, writing a book, marking exams, operating a check-out... Things we do may be ordinary or impressive but in Christ they are all transformed into something glorious if I do them in faith, serving God.

I like this statement from Mitchelton Presbyterian Church's 'DNA':

8. We believe everywhere is sacred
We’re not dualists. We don’t want to separate reality into ‘the sacred and the secular’ because the Bible says ‘the earth and everything in it belongs to the Lord.” And because Jesus took on real flesh and became very much part of our world, and because God ‘so loved the world,’ we think it’s a mistake to draw too firm a line between ‘church’ and ‘life’, or ‘Sunday’ and ‘the rest of the week’. So when we’re in church we act and talk like ordinary people who follow Jesus, and in every other part of life we do the same. Our worship isn’t reserved for Sunday services… God is worth serving full time, all the time. So for us, everything we do, and everywhere we do it, is sacred – it belongs to God.

on sin

Last night, a conversation opened up about fighting sin and resisting temptation.  Fascinating and useful stuff.  Kutz pushed his 3-man position (read about it here and here), I pushed my desire for the new creation position, and Nathan offered his own sin is inevitable so just get on with it position (which I'm sure he'll blog on soon).


Nathan's very valid criticism of my position is that I've done a Keller and tried to make all sin fit under one heading.  Such a thing can be done - Keller has shown us that if you define and redefine particular sins and colour them in in a certain way, they all look like idolatry.  I've done the same, but squashed and squeezed so that all sinful desires are redefined as desires in some way for the new creation.  It can be helpful, but it's a stretch.

The other criticism of my position was that of whether our desires will actually be fulfilled in the new creation or whether we'll be changed so that our desires will change.  I expect my desires to be filled. I imagine that when I'm with God and his people I'll have these ah-ha moments of 'When I thought I wanted x, I didn't realise that what I actually wanted was this!' (And I'll be thinking about some element of life in the new creation.) But that might be C.S.Lewis and Plato more than it is the bible.


The problem with most of our models is the difficulty in maintaining our utter sinfulness while allowing that the spirit does actually make a difference.  Real progress in godliness is what's expected of us (1 John 1).


There was lots of great clarification along the way.  John had a habit of referring to the bible, which gave us a bit of a jolt.  This is systematics we're doing!  Vibe over text! Andrew pointed out that the bible has lots of ways of describing sin and talking about our fight against it, so no one model is probably going to capture it.

Your thoughts?

Narrative shape in the new creation

What will it look like?

Basic old-creation narrative shape looks like this:
















Tension builds over time. The climax comes about three quarters of the way through, then things are resolved and the story ends pretty fast. Trouble is, with this narrative shape increases in tension are generally created through danger or sin or unfulfilled desire or sadness or something else distinctly old-creationy. In the new-creation we will, of course, hear and tell and re-tell The Great Story - which more or less follows old creation narrative shape (and maybe for old-time's sake we'll read Pride and Prejudice occasionally), but what will new stories be like? Will a whole new mode of writing be required to match the new world that we'll be living in?

Perhaps tension could be created by a how-much-better-can-things-get kind of suspense. But how would resolution be achieved? Perhaps there would be no resolution. Such a narrative shape might look like this:

















But I can't imagine that being so satisfying. Nor this tensionless model:
















What do you think?

Basic old-creation narrative shape matches our humanness. We (men especially) look at that first graph and find it very familiar. It makes sense to us. I wonder how God will manage the new-creation narrative shift without changing our essential humanness.

As you can see, I'm concerned with the real issues here!

Theologians, get thinking on this one.

[I'm pretty sure that God has it sorted and it's just my imagination that's lacking, but... It's interesting.]

for whom did Christ die?

Mike Bird puts the question and posts nice short responses from three different scholars:

Paul Helm holding the Calvinist View
Michael Jensen holding the Amyraldian View
Ben Witherington holding the Arminian View

Which view do you hold?

Jennie B. on forgiveness

A wonderfully thoughtful post on forgiveness here.

Often it happens that a person's sin against us is not an aberration, but an expression of something that is an integral part of who they are. Even once we have forgiven them for that action, we find that all our interactions with them have the echoes of that sin within them. We realize that as long as we know this person, it is likely that they will hurt us in the same way again and again.

I love Jennie's article and feel what she's saying, but how much is forgiveness possible when there's no repentance? In the case of someone who, in their very essence, hurts us - someone who is perhaps clueless about the extent of the damage they have done and continue to do - if this person has not repented (expressed responsibility, sorrow and a desire to change) maybe forgiveness is not something that is possible. I'm wondering if we need to look for other biblical instructions for dealing with such a situation. A few ideas: turning the other cheek, loving enemies, praying for those who persecute you, forbearance, getting rid of bitter and angry thoughts, leaving vengence to God...

Such things are not all that different to forgiveness, but they are things that are achievable from one end. If the other person hasn't repented, a real reconciliation and restoration of the relationship that forgiveness implies can't happen.

What do you think?

I've been reading Calvin

[speaking about Adam] "..The strongest curb to keep all his affections under due restraint would have been the belief that nothing was better than to cultivate righteousness by obeying the commands of God and that the highest possible felicity was to be loved by him." Institutes p213

better sex apologetic = second best

"Even if our happiness is likely to be increased by keeping sex within marriage, this is the wrong question to ask. A Christian apologetic for marriage is settling for second best if it says to people, “Join us and live our way because you’ll probably be happier that way (and have better sex into the bargain).” They may or may not be happier in the shallow sense of having better sex. They may have no sex at all: Jesus didn’t. Instead, what Christians say to people is, “Learn that the glory and honor of God is far more important than your personal satisfaction and the fulfilment of your longings and desires. And learn to center your life on his glory and purposes so that nothing so fills your heart with joy as seeing his purposes fulfilled. Then you will have the deepest personal satisfaction and joy in the world, as you rejoice in the glory of God.” This is the most radical de-centering of human beings imaginable. But we must do this if we are to make sense of sex. Christopher Ash.

From here. (A continuation of this discussion.)

Conference for the Academy and the Church

QTC is hosting the first Annual Conference for the Academy and the Church at the end of this month. The speakers and papers look good. Andrew and I are trying to work out how we can both make it along to some of the sessions. Brisbane readers should check it out.

sex is trivial

An interesting discussion. Funny. Seeing sex as essentially trivial frees us up to use (or not use) it appropriately. It is not some transcendent wonder unlocking the secret soul of me.

"...If the One who, in his life, crucifixion, and resurrection defined and actualized for us the very definition of humanness, what does that say about humanness? Clearly it says that marriage, sexual activity, and bearing children do not have any central place in the definition thereof.

Let us be absolutely clear on this point. If Christ is truly the fullness and definition of authentic humanity, we must say categorically that marriage, sex, and parenthood tell us nothing whatsoever of ultimate significance about humanness. If marriage, sex, and parenthood are somehow the fullness of humanity we are forced to say that Christ, far from being the true human as the Christian tradition proclaims, was in fact, sub-human. To grant sexuality any sort of ultimacy with respect to the definition of humanness is to deny that Jesus is the true human being.

So, if we take a Christological defintion for the meaning of humanness, sexuality by definition tells us absolutely nothing about the ultimate meaning of humanness. It may, through the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit be comandeered and become in many and sundry ways a parable of the kingdom, just as many of the trivial aspects of human life are open to God’s interruption and transfiguration. But, insofar as the meaning of authentic human existence, sexuality tells us nothing. Not if we really believe that Jesus defines for us what it means to be be human. And, further to this point, only when we allow sex to be truly and wonderfully insignificant, to be trivial, will it be able to be received as a gift rather than gulpingly grasped in an idolatrous fit of fetishizing." by Halden at Inhabitatio Dei

Baptism

Had an interesting conversation with friends today about baptism.

My personal view (right now, maybe not tomorrow) is that baptism is about becoming part of the body of believers. Kind of an initiation rite. Baptism is primarily for people (adults or children) who come to faith and join the church. I think that infant baptism (when the parents are believers) is fine, but a little pointless. The kids of believers are already in the church. They are born into it.

What do you think? Am I an heretic?

read better, preach better

Great! A new blog to read! Stimulating ideas from thoughtful people.

Looking forward to following Bruce's ideas on faith. The arguments about how to read pistis Christou have always interested me (is it faith IN Christ or the faith OF Christ?) Anyone else care? (I think you all should.)

Calvin on...

Is it a female thing to want some understanding of the home life of a theologian before dipping too deeply into his work? Maybe. I'm going to be reading some Calvin over the next few months so I started tonight by looking at a few of his personal letters in this book. Here are some gems.



Calvin on a husband's love for his wife... (pre-marriage)
"It is a thing against nature that any one should not love his wife, for God has ordained marriage in order that two may be made one person—a result which, certainly, no other alliance can bring about."

Calvin on choosing a wife... (pre-marriage)
"I am none of those insane lovers who, when once smitten with the fine figure of a woman, embrace also her faults. This only is the beauty which allures me, if she be chaste, obliging, not fastidious, economical, patient, and careful for my health."

Calvin on the death of his infant son...
“The Lord has dealt us a severe blow in taking from us our infant son; but it is our Father who knows what is best for his children…God has given me a little son, and taken him away; but I have myriads of children in the whole Christian world.”

Calvin on the death of his wife...
"Although the death of my wife has been exceedingly painful to me, yet I subdue my grief as well as I can. Friends, also, are earnest in their duty to me. It might be wished, indeed, that they could profit me and themselves more; yet one can scarcely say how much I am supported by their attentions. But you know well enough how tender, or rather soft, my mind is. Had not a powerful self-control, therefore, been vouchsafed to me, I could not have borne up so long. And truly mine is no common source of grief. I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life, of one who, had it been so ordered, would not only have been the willing sharer of my exile and poverty, but even of my death. During her life she was the faithful helper of my ministry.

Calvin on life after the death of his wife...
"My wife, a woman of rare qualities, died a year and a half ago, and I have now willingly chosen to lead a solitary life."