The Rapture

The idea of The Rapture, where Jesus snatches people up into heaven while they are driving their cars, asleep in bed, or walking with a friend, comes mainly from a misunderstanding of 1 Thess 4.16-17:

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.

Here the author Paul is describing the return of Jesus to the new earth (cf. Rom 8:18-27; Rev 21:1; Is 65:17, 66:22). So the idea is not escaping to somewhere else, but actually staying here and inhabiting the remade world. 

This makes sense when one understands that in 1 Thess 4, Paul is conjuring up images of a king returning to his homeland after victory in battle. The king is met by his citizens in the open country and then escorted back into the city. 

There is an image of people "meeting the Lord in the air," but it is followed by the assumption that they will immediately return to the newly remade world.

The word rapture comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word for caught up in 1 Thess 4.17. The idea of such an event was popularized by John Nelson Darby in the mid 1800s and further propagated by books (and movies) like the Left Behind series. 

Belief in The Rapture is amazingly popular in the US, but is not widely accepted in Christianity as a whole. So this Saturday, rest easy. Nothing is going to happen, certainly nothing that looks like The Rapture.

For a Biblical perspective on the Second Coming of Jesus, see N.T. Wright's book, Surprised By Hope

I Don't Believe In God

When I worked as a Medic I worked 12 hr shifts. Some days the time flew, other days the clock seemed to move slower than it did when I was in detention in Jr. High.

Slow days meant lots of time to get to know coworkers. I remember chatting with a new partner one time when the conversation moved to religion. I told him about my education and work in the church and he said, "I don't believe in God."

I asked him which God he didn't believe in and he described his strict religious upbringing, where he felt God was nothing more than an old man in the sky who judged his every deed. 

He also talked about how his parents put on "Sunday Faces" appearing one way to their church friends and living much differently the rest of the week.

I told him I didn't believe in that God either. I told him I believed in a God who revealed himself in Jesus, who looked out for those who couldn't look out for themselves; who spent his time chillin' with "sinners," and saved most of his words of condemnation for religious people. 

I shared my belief in a God who through his every action embodied love and wanted nothing more than for people to experience life to the fullest, embracing what it meant to be fully human. It was a great conversation. 

Maybe the idea is to ask lots of questions. Ask people to clarify when they present ideas that are different than your own. 

Get them to share their story. You may find it very similar to yours. You may even find there are some versions of God you don't believe in, and that is a good thing.

Penal Problems

For the last few days we have been discussing the models used to explain what Jesus did when he "died for sins" (1 Cor 15.3).

First and foremost, we must keep in mind that they are only "models." They seek to direct our attention to the mystery of what happened when God became flesh, died, and then rose again (Rom 11.33ff). 

When speaking about God, we (and the Bible as well) are limited by language. So we use parables, analogies, and metaphors, all in an attempt to paint a picture of what it looks like when the Infinite interacts with the finite.

The last post in the series introduced the Penal Substitution model (PS) and today we will look at it a little closer. As a review, this model essentially says: We deserve punishment for our sin and God punished Jesus instead of us. 

PS is a model we use to point us to the "fact" that our sins are forgiven, but does not explain the intricacies of "how" exactly they are forgiven. When we focus on the "how," all of the models run into problems, but especially PS. 

Take for example the problems that arise when we take passages that speak of Christ's work on our behalf, such as Rom 3.25, 1 Jn 2.2, 4.10, and misinterpret them. Those passages clearly state that Christ is an "atoning sacrifice" (Gk. hilasterion/hilasmos - mercy-seat/sin offering) for us.

But the question is: how did the sacrificial system work? Sacrifices in the Hebrew Scriptures did not "take the place" of the wrong-doer, rather they fulfilled cultic rituals as a part of the Covenant and paved the way for forgiveness. It has always been God's forgiveness, often without sacrifice, that restored people to him (cf. Jonah, Mic 6.6-8). 

But Jesus was a sacrifice and one picture we get of him is as the Passover Lamb (John 19). We might think that this picture suggests that Jesus died "in our place," but that's not the role of the lamb in the Passover story. 

There the lamb's blood was used as a sign to mark those who belonged to God and save them from God's wrath. So in the end we see that saying Jesus was a sacrifice for us does not necessarily mean God punished him "in our place."

With that said, there are places in the NT that do speak about Jesus dying "in our place" (Gk anti cf. Mt 20.28, Mk 10.45). But there are many others where language about Jesus dying "for us" does not mean "in our place." Those verses would be much better translated "for our benefit." We should let each passage speak for itself and not force them to say things they are not saying.

Finally, PS argues that Christ died so we don't have to. But what about the very prominent NT theme of participation in Christ's death (cf. Heb 13.11-16, Rom 6.1-4, Gal 2.20), where we put to death the "old way," the way of sin death, and disorder and are "raised" to new life (2 Cor 5.14ff)? In this way Jesus doesn't prevent our death, he actually brings it about.

There are many other critiques of this model, some valid, others not. In the end, PS captures the power behind a number of "pictures" in the NT about the Cross, but it is limited, and we need the other models in order to most fully grasp the beauty of the Christ event. 

Next post: The Moral Influence Theory

For more on this issue check out Packer's well argued view of PS. It covers pros an cons fairly but is limited by its inaccurate understanding of the Mosaic Law.

Active Theology

Theology: it sounds like a fancy word but it really just means "words about God." I wonder where most Americans learn theology? Where are we presented with the most "words about God?"

I find most people don't actually read the Bible, and even those that do read a verse here, or a chapter there. Which is fine for individual application - it couldn't be bad to meditate on a verse about "giving thanks" or "loving people we don't like" - but such reading does not tell the whole story.

What about church? Surely we encounter theology in Church? Most church services today contain two major blocks of theology: the Music (most often mislabeled as worship), and the Message. 

I know pastors who spend 30+ hours a week preparing a sermon, laboring over every detail of their message. Then they present those ideas, some in incredibly dynamic ways, but none-the-less to a passive audience. 

What is the effect of such a presentation? The latest studies in how we learn best suggest we are active learners - we need to participate to really "get it". 

Where we do participate is during the music. It's rarely the sermon points that get stuck in my head a week later, but the music does. Why is that? For one reason, it's the 7/11 model - same 7 words repeated 11x. 

This may annoy some church-goers, but if the idea is communicating words about God and wanting those words to stay with people, this model works: we participate, we are physically active, not passive, we repeat (sometimes ad nauseum), and weeks after the ideas communicated in the songs stay with us. 

Two questions then. One, if the goal of a sermon is getting people to retain theology, should we adopt a more participatory model of communication? 

Two, if the majority of effective theology is being presented through music, are we spending enough time making sure the theology we communicate is what we endorse?

Substitute

Medal of Honor

Fundamental to the Christian faith is the idea that Jesus died for sins (1 Cor 15.3). But what does that mean? 

Yesterday we looked at the Classic (Ransom) theory, and today we'll tackle the Satisfaction (Substitution) model. This theory started around 1000ce with a monk named Anselm.

Anselm didn't like the Ransom view because it gave the Devil too much power. He had a hard time believing God could owe Satan anything and instead argued that it was we who owed God something: honor. 

Sin had robbed God of honor, but the problem was that humans were incapable of the obedience required to restore that honor, and so only a special being he calls the God-man (Jesus), could save the day. 

In Anselm's day, living rightly stored up honor, almost like a piggy bank. He saw Jesus' perfect life, culminating in his innocent death, as the ultimate piggy bank, able to pay the world's debt to God because of sin. Christ's piggy bank was then substituted on behalf of ours, making God a happy camper again.

But what if the problem wasn't God's lost honor? What if it was God's justice that sin called into question? This idea was developed by people like Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, who felt that Christ's death did not repay God for lost honor, but rather paid the penalty of death that had been the consequence for sin all along (Gen 2.17, Rom 6.23). This view is known as the Penal-Substitution theory.

The Penal-Substitution theory argues that justice required God to punish humanity for sin, but God sent Jesus to bear the penalty. Jesus was even convicted as a criminal and sentenced to death, which made him the perfect substitute for us and satisfied God's wrath.

But even Aquinas and Calvin disagreed. Aquinas believed that Christ's death paid the penalty for all humanity, whereas Calvin felt it was limited only to those whom God had picked to be saved.

Next Post: Penal Problems

Ransom

Fundamental to the Christian faith is the idea that Jesus died for sins (1 Cor 15.3). But what does that mean? 

Christians have been debating the significance of the Christ event for 2000 years and over that period at least three major theories have surfaced: the Classic (Ransom), the Satisfaction (Substitution), and the Moral Influence (Idealistic).

Over the next few posts I want to look at these three views and ask what it might mean for us that the church has been wrestling with this for 2000 years and continues to do so.

First the Classic or Ransom theory. This theory is the earliest of all and uses passages like Mark 10.45, to argue that Christ was given as a ransom for humanity. The texts do not specify to whom the ransom was paid, although most early Christian writers argued it was to Satan.

According to this theory, Adam and Eve sold humanity to the Devil when they sinned and justice required a ransom be paid to the Devil for our release. God then tricked Satan into taking Christ as a ransom, and justice was satisfied. Poor Devil gets hosed though, because Jesus resurrects, leaving him to play all by himself. 

Before you write this this theory off as absurd, you must know that it was the dominant way of understanding Jesus' death for close to 1000 years, and is still held by some traditions today. 

One of the problems with it is the fact that nowhere does the Bible speak about the ransom being paid to Satan (or God for that matter), so any elaboration on those passages is destined to be conjecture.

It is interesting though, that the majority of Christians found it a valuable way to speak about Jesus for more than a millenia. It may not be how you understand things, but such an observation leads me to ask: I wonder which ideas I have about God will one day been seen as disconnected and inaccurate?

Next Post: The Satisfaction or Substitution Theory