A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • Placher on Girard on Atonement

    When it comes to re-thinking the doctrine of the Atonement, many contemporary Christians are attracted to the work of literary theorist Rene Girard and his account of the “scapegoat mechanism.” In Girard’s telling, what the crucifixion narratives in the gospels do is reveal this mechanism whereby we kill the innocent to create social peace as the basis of much of our religion and culture. This unmasking of the scapegoat mechanism allows us to perceive the innocence of victims and to put an end to scapegoating. Part of what appeals about Girard’s account is that it seems to offer a way of thinking about the cross that avoids the implication that God in any sense required the sacrifice of Jesus.

    However, the late William Placher, in an important article on the Atonement, offered some criticisms of Girard that still seem pretty telling to me:

    Christians will naturally find such a brilliant scholar’s admiration of the gospel flattering, and Girard gets much right from a Christian point of view, from his insistence on the innocence of ritual victims to his call for a new kind of society based on mutual forgiveness. Yet he also breaks radically with most Christian interpretations. He repeatedly insists that nothing in the Gospels or Paul permits us to think of Christ as a sacrifice. The letter to the Hebrews, he believes, began the tragic wrong turn of Christian theology, for it falls back into thinking that it was somehow a good thing that Christ died, that the sacrifice of one victim really can redeem others—-just the kind of thinking whose fraudulence the gospel ought to have exposed once and for all. As a result, Girard thinks, Christians have continued the kind of society in which social cohesion is based on finding scapegoats—most notably and tragically of all singling out Jews as “Christ killers.”

    But does Girard provide us with the kind of forgiveness that we really need? He assumes that once the Gospels have helped us see scapegoating for the fraud that it is we will never again participate in its rituals or believe in its myths. And he does not consider that we might retain some guilt and owe some penance for our evil past actions, even after we have turned away from scapegoating. He seems to assume that once we have understood the problem properly, it practically fixes itself.

    The dominant Christian tradition has been less optimistic. At least since Augustine, Christian theologians have insisted that recognizing sin’s evil does not necessarily end its seductiveness; sometimes it can even increase it. Moreover, even if we do not continue making scapegoats and sacrificing victims, we have all, as Girard himself emphasizes, been complicit in such practices for much of our lives. Culture and religion in all previous forms rest upon them. Is it enough to say, “Oh, now I get it, and I won’t do it any more,” and go our way? Perhaps we can forgive other victimizers, and for the sake of breaking the cycle of violence we should forgive them. But can we simply declare ourselves to be innocent? Whatever its problems, the language of sacrifice which so disturbs Girard does speak to the condition of people who find themselves still falling into sin, and sense the depths of their need of forgiveness. Perhaps it deserves a closer look.

    I think a lot of the truth in traditional theories of atonement–however much we may want to qualify or reinterpret them–is that there is a profound alienation between humanity and God and that simply revealing the fact of sin is insufficient to overcome it. This has always been the most potent criticism of “moral example” theories of atonement, and Girard’s theory as it stands looks like a more sophisticated version of this type of theory. For the other dominant tradition in atonement theory–that of “satisfaction” or “vicarious atonement”–the alienation between humanity and God (and its attendant guilt) is not something that we can repair on our own, even once we see what the problem is. This is why it requires God to step into the breach. But because it is a problem of human alienation from God, it is something that must be healed through human nature. Hence, following St. Anselm’s logic, the need for the God-man.

  • Communicating the gospel after Christendom

    I urge everyone who cares about these things to read these two posts from bls at The Topmost Apple on how the church is dealing (or not) with our current “post-Christendom” situation. She makes two main points: first, the church often acts like it has nothing very interesting to communicate, and, second, what it does communicate is too often encased in impenetrable religious jargon that is meaningless to a lot of people. She thinks that the gospel carries the explosive truth about the human situation, but the churches are afraid, unwilling, or unable to offer that to people:

    I think the Gospels – and Paul – are making some really convincing claims about the facts of the world and the human condition – and that A.A. has (re-?)discovered some of these things almost by accident. I think Luther was really onto something in his parsing of “Law” and “Gospel”; it has taken me a couple of years to come to understand more about this-but it’s real. It’s true-and it’s actually backed up by quite a lot of real-world evidence. This kind of thinking really does change your point of view – and it’s philosophy as much as religion, really. It’s got legs.

    We need to be able to say these things to people who do not know our language already – and we need to offer people who do know the language a way for the faith to remain vital and alive – to continue to offer sustenance and excitement – in and for them, too. We need to make a case. “Mystery” and “mystification” are two completely different things; we really can retain the former and eliminate the latter, I believe. It’s clear to me from years of discussions about these things that many people are interested in religion – but just can’t get with some of its manifestations (mentioned above). And of course, we have the problem of some of the …. erm ….. more extravagant claims of the Christian faith (sometimes called “believing six impossible things before breakfast”). So I do not believe we can count anymore, my friends, on Christianity being “believed in” as it’s been “believed in” in the past. We are going to have to assume that many (most?) people will not be convinced about these “impossible things” much anymore – and we’re going to have to depend far more on Christianity’s fascinating unveiling of counterintuitive ideas and mystical insights.

    In a related vein, Ben Myers at Faith and Theology writes on the limitations of preaching from the lectionary:

    There’s a lot to be said for the use of a lectionary cycle. But the lectionary tends to presuppose, rather than to foster, a broad understanding of the biblical story. Lectionaries were designed for use in societies that were already implicitly Christian – societies in which the rhythms of the liturgical year, and the broad sweep of the biblical narrative, could be more or less taken for granted. In the Revised Common Lectionary (which my own church follows), just look at the theological subtlety with which the OT and NT readings are often connected: a subtlety that is quite lost on anybody without a good working knowledge of scripture and liturgical tradition. And preachers only exacerbate the problem when they take these subtle liturgico-theological connections as the theme of their proclamation, instead of preaching from the texts themselves. (Preachers, please note: the content of your proclamation is not the liturgical calendar, but the Word of God!)

    I think most churches–primarily in the U.S. and European context–have still not come to grips with the fact that a large number of people no longer consider religion particularly important or interesting. Not that they necessarily reject it passionately like the new atheists; they just don’t see why they should be much concerned about it at all. Moreover, they don’t necessarily have the background familiarity with the Bible, the church, and Christian claims that might once have been taken for granted. Those of us who take a special interest in theology and religion, either as professionals or amateurs, tend to become embedded in the language, history, and arcana of the church. As a result, we lose sight of what all this must look like to someone on the outside. If we believe that the gospel offers people something decisive and meaningful for their lives that they can’t get (or maybe more modestly aren’t getting) elsewhere, we have to find ways to communicate it. In a way, this is just a recapitulation of the insight of theologians like Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer: we have cordoned off matters of faith to a special “religious” sphere; but if the gospel is true, its truth is for our “secular,” ordinary, quotidian lives.

  • Structural sin and the ways of death-dealing

    Christianity Today ran a rather silly article trying to undercut the claims of the Occupy Wall Street protesters:

    Occupy Wall Street protest signs seek to ignite a revolution of the 99 percent against the (richest) 1 percent, who are responsible for our troubles. Christians of course are forbidden from supporting this kind of worldview. The dissipation that exists in our country, unfortunately, has not been confined to 1 percent of the population. Christianity teaches us that all of us stand as imperfect, self-absorbed, broken people, each of us a contributor to the problems of the world in our own, creative way.

    Political action has often served in our country as a lazy shortcut around the harder work of evangelization. If we are unconvincing in changing people’s thinking, we attempt to control their behavior through the political process.

    What this misses, of course, is what both Catholic and Protestant theology refer to as “structural” or “social” sin. That is, there are institutional structures–economic, political, etc.–that create and reinforce unjust social arrangements. Simply calling people to individual conversion is insufficient to deal with these larger social forces.

    Clark Williamson has a useful discussion of social sin and what he calls “the ways of death-dealing” in his systematic theology Way of Blessing, Way of Life:

    A premise of all theologies that stand in the tradition of the social gospel, of the contemporary liberation theologies and of recent Roman Catholic social teaching is that existing forms of government, economy, and society “are neither divinely ordained nor naturally given but are historical products of the decisions of men and women in times past as to how their lives should be governed.” What human beings have created, human beings can change.

    […]

    As long as we understand sin in ways that privatize it, hold to a view of salvation that reduces it to an individualistic or otherworldly matter (ultimate or “otherworldly” salvation should undergird and empower Christians in their this-worldly tasks), and regard social transformation as occurring in some miraculous manner, thinking that if only individuals change, the social context will take care of itself, the church will fail to address “the weightier matters of the law” (Mt. 23:23) in our time. (p. 38)

    Williamson goes on to provide concrete examples of these unjust or sinful structures, or death-dealing ways: the unjust exploitation of nature, the unjust distribution of goods and services, sexism, racism, and militarism.

    The point is that these sins are not exclusively the result of individuals making bad choices. They are the outworking of social structures functioning according to the way they’ve been set up. And the only way to remedy them is by changing or reforming those structures, which requires, yes, political action. This isn’t a substitute for individual conversion, but a necessary complement.

  • The God of Israel and the King Jesus gospel

    Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed (the book and the blog) has a new book out called The King Jesus Gospel, which purports to recover the “original good news.” What does this mean? I haven’t read the book, but on his blog, McKnight says that the way we typically think about the gospel–as a scheme for individual salvation–is unfaithful to the witness of the New Testament. He calls this the “soterian” gospel. But the gospel as presented in the earliest preaching of the church is a “story gospel”:

    The soterian gospel and the apostolic gospel are framed differently; the soterian gospel frames everything by elements by elements in the doctrine of salvation. The apostolic gospel frames the gospel as Israel’s Story coming to fulfillment in Jesus as King (Messiah) and Lord who saves. Hence, one frames things as the plan for personal salvation; the other frames things as a Story come to its completion/fulfillment in Jesus who saves.

    The soterian gospel says that Jesus is fundamentally about how individuals “get right with God.” By contrast, the story gospel (which McKnight maintains is the original, apostolic gospel) is a more communal-corporate story about God’s plans for creation and how they’re fulfilled through the story of Israel; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and the calling of the church as a corporate body to witness to God’s kingdom.

    What strikes me here is the similarity between what McKnight is trying to do and R. Kendall Soulen’s reconstruction of the Bible’s “canonical narrative” in The God of Israel and Christian Theology. Like McKnight, Soulen is trying to re-frame the gospel as a story about God’s program of blessing-in-difference for all creation–a story in which individual sin and redemption play a subordinate role. And both shift emphasis from a supposedly “universal” scheme of human sinfulness and the need for redemption to the particular history of God’s covenant with creation and specifically with the people Israel as the means through which God’s purposes are realized. I’d be interested to see if there are further parallels or if McKnight is explicitly influenced by Soulen’s work here.

  • God of Israel and Christian Theology: Wrap up

    Soulen is, in my view, largely persuasive in recasting of the scriptual meta-narrative as one of blessing and consummation, wherein sin and redemption plays a subordinate, though still important, role. Further, I think he’s right to avoid a certain kind of “Christocentric” reading of the Bible. If the churches are serious about overcoming supersessionism, then something like Soulen’s project seems to be necessary. He has demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that supersessionism isn’t simply an appendage that can easily be lopped off the main body of Christian tradition, but is more like a structural flaw in the foundation of the mainstream theological tradition. Of course, I’d already been largely convinced of that by Clark Williamson and Rosemary Radford Ruether. Soulen’s perspective also seems consistent with other recent trends in theology that have tried to emphasize God’s work as consummator of all creation and only secondarily God’s redemptive work. (I’m thinking of eco-theologies and some feminist theology.)

    Supersessionist readings of the Bible are deeply entrenched in the church, though, even among those who consciously reject supersessionism. It will take a good bit of detailed exegetical work, I think, to flesh this alternative narrative out and make it compelling. For instance, it requires a virtual paradigm shift in how churches have historically, and in many cases still do, read Paul on the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. (Although, if I’m not mistaken, some of themes of the “new perspective” on Paul seem like they might provide support to this kind of project.)

    More challengingly, perhaps, I wonder whether Soulen’s proposed reading of the canon is consistent with the church’s christological and trinitarian dogmas, at least as those have been classicly expressed. Does the canonical narrative as Soulen has presented it demand a “high” Christology in the way that the traditional sin-redemption schema seemed to? I gather that this may be addressed in his new book, but I think it presents a potentially thorny issue for any Christian theology that seeks to be “post-supersessionist.” In what sense is Jesus unique and uniquely indispensable to God’s economy of blessing? Can Christians affirm Jesus’ unique role in God’s plan of consummation-salvation without, implicitly at least, courting supersessionism and exclusivism?

    This brings me to another point. I wonder if the theme of mutual blessing-in-difference is portrayed too one-sidedly here? Although Soulen emphasizes that the blessing between Israel and the nations is mutual, his narrative assigns the Gentiles to a distinctly secondary role, religiously speaking. They seem to be little more than second-hand beneficiaries of God’s revelation to and covenant with Israel. But if God really creates for mutual blessing, might gentile religious wisdom not also contribute to the faith of Israel? In fact, historically we know that wisdom from Greek and other cultures was assimilated into biblical religion. This opens the possibility of a greater appreciation of broader religious pluralism. (I’m thinking along the lines proposed by Marjorie Suchocki.) An appreciation of pluralism need not entail a naively “universalist” standpoint but can be rooted in an affirmation of particularity.

    As far as church practice goes, it’s hard to imagine what a church that was open to Jews as Jews would look like in the 21st century. Even granting that most Jews will continue to decline the Christian invitation to join the church, how would church life be affected if we took seriously Soulen’s contention that Jews could (should?) continue to observe the tenets of Judaism as members of the church? There are “messianic” Jews who to do this, but this seems like something that would make most mainline churches deeply uncomfortable. And should churches require continued Torah-observance of prospective Jewish members or simply permit it? What would that look like? How might such a “mixed” congregation be reflected in worship? The concept of a truly mixed Gentile-Jewish congregation raises a host of interesting and potentially difficult issues, I think.

    All that notwithstanding, Soulen has written a fascinating and important book. Hopefully more Christians will start to grapple with these issues.

    Previous posts:

    Redemption for the sake of blessing

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

    The story so far

    Jesus and the gospel of God’s coming reign

    “There is neither Jew nor Greek…”

  • “There is neither Jew nor Greek…”

    Soulen’s interpretation of the gospel within the entire canonical framework allows him to characterize the life of Christian discipleship as cruciform–without negating the OT’s very this-worldly promises of blessing. “Jesus…frees his disciples to live in such a way that the blessing of others knows no bounds” (p. 167). This is consistent with the divine economy of blessing-in-difference, but in a world afflicted by sin, this lifestyle will inevitably invite suffering.

    Following Bonhoeffer, Soulen argues that the Christian doesn’t court suffering for its own sake. Rather, suffering is endured for the sake of the economy of mutual blessing. “The cross does not supersede the economy of mutual blessing; it establishes the outermost point of God’s fidelity to it on behalf of the estranged other” (p. 168). This is a healthy corrective to the sometimes morbid fixation on suffering as somehow meritorious in itself that characterizes some strains of Christian spirituality. God wants to deliver God’s creation from suffering, sickness, hatred, estrangement, and death. Moreover, Soulen says, the cross is not about “the denial or destruction of Israel’s national privilege” but is the means by which “God preserves the economy of mutual blessing through suffering love, to which Jew and Greek alike are called to be conformed” (p. 168).

    Following this, Soulen turns to the nature of the Christian community. The church is “the table fellowship of Jews and Gentiles that prays in Jesus’ name for the coming of the God of Israel’s reign” (p. 169). Soulen goes on to argue that the fellowship of the church “confirms rather than annuls the difference and mutual dependence of Israel and the nations” (p. 168). Rather than seeing itself as a “spiritual” fellowship that transcends “carnal” differences such as that between Jew and Gentile, the church should be “a table fellowship of those who are–and remain–different” (p. 168). He maintains that the distinction between Jew and Gentile is not erased, but realized in a new way, in the church. “What the church rejects is not the difference of Jew and Gentile, male and female, but rather the idea that these differences essentially entail curse, opposition, and antithesis” (p. 170). The church is the “social embodiment of the doctrine of justification”–the reconciliation between peoples. He notes that this view of the church is underwritten by the decision at the so-called Council of Jerusalem recorded in the Book of Acts. It was decided that gentile Christians were not bound to observe Torah, but that Jewish followers of Jesus would continue to observe it. “Hence obedience to Jesus is possible from either of two vantage points” (pp. 170-171).

    Further, the church must be mindful of its status as a provisional fellowship that anticipates God’s reign–it is not that reign itself. This is exhibited in part by the empirical fact that the church is overwhelmingly Gentile and that most Jews have declined the invitation to become part of the church’s fellowship. The church must simultaneously remember that it is a fellowship open to Jews and Gentile but also that gentile Christians do not have a mission to convert non-Christian Jews. This is a fine line to walk, but the church shouldn’t seek simplistic solutions as it lives in between the times.

    Finally, Soulen argues that Christians have no warrant for thinking that Jews will convert en masse to Christianity in some sort of end-times scenario, as is sometimes imagined. Citing Paul’s discussion of Israel’s destiny in Romans, he says that only a “trans-ecclesiological” free action of God will determine the final status of each person. The fate of the Jews is not mediated by the Church, but is rooted in God’s irrevocable promises.

    Summarizing, Soulen writes

    The unity of the Christian canon is not best unlocked by insisting that everything in the Bible points toward Jesus Christ. Such a construal of the canon’s unity systematically disregards Bonhoeffer’s admonition not to speak that last word before the last but one. What results practically is a Christian theology that is triumphalist in its posture toward Jews and latently gnostic in its grasp of God’s purposes for the earth and its history. More helpful for discerning the unity of the canon is the recognition that the Scriptures [OT] and the Apostolic Witness [NT] are both centrally concerned with the God of Israel and the God of Israel’s coming reign of shalom. (p. 175)

    I’ll save my own thoughts and questions for a subsequent post.

    Previous posts:

    Redemption for the sake of blessing

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

    The story so far

    Jesus and the gospel of God’s coming reign

  • Jesus and the gospel of God’s coming reign

    I’ve been sick for the past week or so, which hasn’t left much extra energy for blogging. But I want to get back to (and hopefully wrap up!) my series on R. Kendall Soulen’s The God of Israel and Christian Theology.

    Previously, we’ve seen that Soulen tries to re-cast the biblical narrative as one of blessing-within-difference. In creation and in the covenant with Israel, God’s will for creation is a differentiation of existence which leads to mutual blessing precisely through that difference.

    So how does the gospel about Jesus fit in to all this? Soulen notes that the gospel is meant to be news–good news–but news about what? His answer: it tells us something about God’s coming reign. “News about God’s coming reign is good or bad depending on the outcome of God’s work as the Consummator of creation (p. 157).” The fact of evil suggests that this outcome is not assured–that God’s intentions for creation could be severely hampered, or even undone altogether. Will the outcome be one of blessing or one of curse? Or perhaps blessing for some and curse for others?

    The good news then is God’s “present answer to the eschatological question of whether God’s work as Consummator will prove ultimately victorious on behalf of all creation over the powers that destroy (p. 158).” Faith in the gospel of Jesus is ultimately faith in “the ultimate victory of blessing over curse,” a faith that is manifested in “cruciform discipleship” (p. 158).

    In his life and ministry, Jesus bears witness to a certain understanding of what God’s coming reign will look like. He “trusted God’s reign to consummate the economy of mutual blessing that God had initiated long ago through God’s promises to Abraham and Sarah” (p. 160) but also that this consummation would include the nations. Secondly, he trusted that God’s reign would consummate creation “in a manner that reclaimed, redeemed, and restored the lost” (p. 161). In short, God’s reign will be marked by reconciliation for mutual blessing, not a zero-sum victory of one group over another. Jesus’ displays a trust in the ultimate victory of mutual blessing, even in the face of the forces of “curse, violence, and enmity” (p. 162). Hence his commands to bless and pray for one’s enemies, which give a cruciform shape to the life of discipleship.

    In following this path ultimately to the cross, Jesus “became wholly identified with the lost whose cause he advocated,” but in the resurrection, God “vindicates the economy of mutual blessing over against all the destructive powers of sin, curse, separation, and death” (p. 164). This throws a new light on the cross, which we can now see as his point of “utmost solidarity with the lost” for the sake of “the whole house of Israel and for the whole earthly economy of difference and mutual dependence” (p. 164). The resurrection appearances are marked by reconciliation, feasting, and sending, and the risen Christ becomes a source of “power among the living until the day of the Lord’s return (p. 165).”

    So, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has provided a “victorious guarantee” of God’s “end-time fidelity to the work of consummation.”

    The gospel proclaims Jesus as victorious because through the resurrection God vindicates Jesus’ trust in the triumph of blessing over curse, life over death, communion over isolation. At the same time, the gospel proclaims Jesus as guarantee because while everything about Jesus pertains to God’s eschatological reign, Jesus himself is not that reign in its fullness. (p. 165)

    Jesus, then, is a foretaste, a prolepsis, of God’s coming reign. He is the down payment or promissory note that shows that the end will indeed be one of blessing, not curse. He is the sign that God’s program of universal blessing through the calling of Israel will be a reality:

    If Jesus is the proleptic enactment of God’s eschatological fidelity to the work of consummation, then Jesus is by this very fact the carnal embodiment of God’s end-time fidelity toward Israel and toward Israel’s future as the place of unsurpassable blessing for Israel, for the nations, and for all creation. By its very nature, then, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead anticipates a future event whose character as victorious fidelity can no longer be in doubt. That event is God’s intervention on behalf of all Israel in keeping with God’s promises, such that God’s final act of covenant faithfulness toward Israel redounds not only to the blessing of Israel but also to the blessing of the nations and all of creation. (p. 166)

    In the next post I’ll look at some of the implications Soulen draws from this for the life of discipleship and the shape of the church.

    Previous posts:

    Redemption for the sake of blessing

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

    The story so far

  • The story so far…

    In the eighth and final chapter of The God of Israel and Christian Theology, R. Kendall Soulen provides a helpful summary of the argument thus far, which I’m going to quote at length:

    The gospel is the story of the God of Israel’s victory in Jesus over powers that destroy. Just so, God’s victory in Jesus is the center but not the totality of Christian faith. Faith in the gospel presupposes the God of Israel’s antecedent purpose for creation, a purpose threatened by destructive powers but vindicated by God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

    Christians have almost universally assented to the truth of the previous paragraph. But, as we saw in Part One, they have commonly accounted for its truth by means of a construal of the Bible’s narrative unity that–paradoxically enough–renders God’s identity as the God of Israel and the center of the Hebrew Scriptures almost wholly indecisive for grasping God’s antecedent purpose for human creation. As an alternative to the standard construal, I have sketched in the previous chapters one way in which God’s identity as the God of Israel becomes decisive for grasping God’s antecedent purpose for creation. I have argued that God’s work as the Consummator of creation promises life and the fullness of life to creation and to the human family in and through earthly economies of difference and mutual dependence. In the context of God’s six-days’ blessing, God’s economy is embodied in the distinction and mutual relation of the natural world and the human family, of female and male, of parent and child, of one generation and the next. In the context of God’s crowning Sabbath blessing, God’s economy is irrevocably embodied in the carnal election of the Jewish people and in the consequent distinction between Jew and Gentile, between Israel and the nations. Furthermore, I have argued that God’s work as Consummator is oriented from the outset toward God’s eschatological shalom, where God intends to fulfill the economies of difference and reciprocity…in unsurpassable fashion to the mutual blessing of all in a reign of wholeness, righteousness, and peace. (pp. 156-7)

    In the next post I’ll look at how Soulen thinks the story of Jesus fits into this.

    Previous posts:

    Redemption for the sake of blessing

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

  • Redemption for the sake of blessing

    If the great theme of the Bible is one of blessing, it can’t be denied that sin, or curse, and redemption is an important sub-theme. The God who is Consummator is also Redeemer and Deliverer. So how should this theme fit into the canonical narrative that Soulen is proposing as an alternative to the traditional one?

    Soulen notes that

    the primeval history (Gen 1-11) knows nothing of a single catastrophic fall that introduces a major turning point into the biblical story. On the contrary…the central theme of the primeval history and of Genesis as a whole is the continuity, resilience, and growth of God’s work as the Consummator of creation. Nevertheless, the creation sagas are nothing if not utterly unsentimental about the seriousness of human sin and dreadful weight of the divine curse. The creation sagas trace the human family’s readiness to receive God’s blessing through a series of social pairs: male and female (Gen 2-3), brother and brother (Gen 4), comrade and comrade (Gen 11). In each case, the result is distressingly negative. (p. 142)

    Seen in this light, Soulen understands sin to be the refusal to receive God’s blessing as mediated through the other. This can refer to the divine Other, as in Adam and Eve’s failure to trust God as the source of their fullness, or it can refer to the human other, as in Cain’s refusal to accept blessing through his brother Abel. Instead of receiving God’s blessing “through economies of difference and mutual dependence” (p. 143), we try to secure our own blessing on our own terms. “Sin assaults the link that joins blessing and otherness. Sin seeks blessing apart from its source in the divine Other and apart from life with the human other” (p. 144).

    When humanity rejects the divinely ordained economy of mutual dependence, it invites the divine curse. In the story of the Exodus we learn of Egypt’s rejection of the mutually beneficial relationship it had established with the family of Jacob, turning instead to exploitation. In turn, God’s curse falls upon the Egyptians and God delivers the people that would become Israel. But lest this seem to be just national egoism on Israel’s part, the Scriptures speak just as if not more often of God’s judgment on Israel. “Like the nations, Israel is prone to forget that God’s covenant is the only trustworthy source of benediction for Israel and for creation” (p. 146).

    As we saw with blessing, redemption is ultimately oriented to the advent of God’s eschatological shalom. Both persecution by the nations and Israel’s own sin “threat[en] God’s intentions to bring Israel to final consummation” (p. 147). The Scriptures are ambivalent about whether this means simply judgment of the nations and vindication for Israel, or whether it means a restoration and final fulfillment of the economy of mutual blessing God always intended. This is a question Soulen returns to when considering the meaning of Jesus in the next chapter.

    For the time being, the key point is that redemption or deliverance is for the sake of consummation. In the Pentateuch, the story of deliverance is framed by stories of God’s blessing (in Genesis and Deuteronomy). There are hints in the Exodus story itself that Israel will be blessed in the company of the nations (Moses delivered by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in Pharaoh’s house, Moses’ marriage into a gentile household, and the “mixed crowd” that escapes Egypt with the Hebrews). The institution of the Jubilee is another instance of redemption (forgiveness of debts) for the sake of blessing (a restored relationship with land and community), and the Scriptures’ eschatological hope is not just for deliverance from evil, but for the positive blessings of life and wholeness.

    [L]iberation from the powers that destroy is a matter of utmost urgency precisely because these powers threaten to cut off the human family from the arena in which God’s blessings are bestowed. The antithesis of sin and redemption is misunderstood if it is torn from its context in God’s work as Consummator and from the economies of mutual blessing that God establishes and sustains. (p. 52)

    It should be clear at this point that from this perspective redemption does not mean erasing the distinction between Jew and Gentile, as the church has maintained for most of its history. Rather it means forging a new community in which Jew and Gentile exist in a relationship of mutual blessing without ceasing to be Jew and Gentile.

    Previous posts:

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

  • Blessing and difference

    In the second part of The God of Israel and Christian Theology, R. Kendall Soulen provides the outline of an alternative framework for reading the Bible that, he argues, avoids the supersessionism inherent to the traditional canonical narrative.

    Key to this is a reorientation of the narrative away from the drama of sin and redemption. Quoting Bonhoeffer, Soulen notes that the religion of the Old Testament is not primarily a religion of redemption. Rather, he says, it is a religion of blessing. Specifically, God’s work as Consummator takes precedence over God’s work as Redeemer. The work that God is about is blessing through difference.

    In contrast to God’s work as Redeemer, God’s work as Consummator concerns not God’s power to deliver the creature from sin, evil, and oppression, but rather the ultimate good that God intends for human creation antecedent and subsequent to the calamity of sin. As represented in the Scriptures, God’s work as Consummator revolves around God’s blessing and its power to communicate life, wholeness, well-being, and joy to that which is other than God. (p. 115)

    This ultimate good is life and well-being in its most comprehensive sense, which entails difference and mutual dependence. In the act of creation, God brings into being that which is not God. This provides the occasion for mutual blessing between God and creation as creatures bless God through praise and thanksgiving. Further, the differentiation inherent in creation itself–between male and female, between humanity and nature, between the generations–provides further opportunities for mutual blessing-in-difference. “Economies of difference and mutual dependence” provide the form that blessing takes in God’s world.

    In this view, God’s historical covenantal acts are part and parcel of this mode of mutual blessing-in-difference. “Contrary to a common Christian assumption,” the calling of Abraham is not a response to the problem of sin. “To the contrary, God’s motive seems chiefly to be the sheer fecundity and capaciousness of the divine good pleasure” (p. 120). In establishing the covenant with Abraham and his posterity, God is establishing a new way of blessing the world. Hereafter, humanity is divided into Jew and Gentile, but this is not a division of conflict or opposition, where one benefits at the expense of another. Rather it is to be another differentiation of mutual dependence and blessing. “[T]he Scriptures view the distinction between Israel and the nations as a part of the abiding constitution of reality in God, anticipated from the beginning and present at the end of all things (p. 121).”

    In this scheme, Israel is blessed by being made a people and by receiving the Torah and the land. And Israel in return blesses God by praising God’s name before the nations. But this is not to be a blessing at the expense of the nations, but for their sake as well. “To be a Gentile is to be the other of Israel and as such an indispensable partner in a single economy of blessing that embraces the whole human family” (p. 126). Gentiles have a distinct, but still positive, role to play in God’s economy of blessing. This is symbolized by the story of Joseph in which Egypt and Joseph’s family are mutually blessed and enriched through their relationship, without ceasing to be distinct.

    This economy of mutual blessing is ordered to an eschatological end: the reign of God’s shalom in all creation. The Scriptures (i.e., the Old Testament) make it clear that this eschatological peace includes the well-being of both Israel and the nations (Gentiles). “God’s history with Israel and the nations is ordered from the outset toward a final reign of shalom in which the distinction between Israel and the nations is not abrogated and overcome but affirmed within a single economy of mutual blessing” (p. 132).

    The eschatological blessing has both a “historical” and a “cosmic” dimension: one referring to the climax of history (what we might call a this-worldly utopia) and the other to the establishment of the “new heaven and new earth” wherein God will dwell in glory with God’s people. This is the consummation of God’s work to bless creation precisely through the creation of fruitful difference rather than its abrogation.

    The next chapter puts the drama of sin and redemption into this framework, and the final one focuses on the work of Jesus Christ as the promissory note of God’s consummating work.

    Previous posts:

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history