The Heart of the Matter

This post is an excerpt from a dialogue with the New Wine, New Wineskins Advisory Council on relational spirituality.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for this enriching conversation. I am including current and future Advisory Council members in my response.

The conversation on the Trinity followed by this conversation on the theology of the affections is vitally important to New Wine, New Wineskins. As you know, New Wine’s theology of cultural engagement model is framed by the sacrificial love of the Triune God revealed in Christ and created in our lives by the Spirit.

I have articulated this in various ways over the years. I would encourage each of you on the AC now and those coming on board in the near future to read my essay, “Free at Last,” in New Wine Tastings. There I build on Martin Luther’s essay “Freedom of a Christian,” which was a foundational treatise for the Protestant Reformation. Further to that essay, Luther told Erasmus in his debate on “the bondage of the will” that Erasmus got to the heart of his writings: the matter of the heart (over against the enabled will), not the indulgences. Luther maintained in response to Erasmus that the will is enslaved to the desires (whether they be ungodly desires or godly desires). In my theology classes, I speak of hostility toward God vs. captivating affection from and for God over against disabled will vs. enabled will (the latter model is found in many Roman Catholic and Protestant circles–I reject the latter model as unbiblical and contrary to the Reformation teaching of Luther).

At New Wine, we speak of a Trinitarian theology of the affections. Affections change behaviors, according to Luther. Behaviors don’t change affections. Luther’s associate, Melanchthon, in his 1521 edition of the Loci Communes, develops this model at great length. Luther references Melanchthon in his debate with Erasmus, saying that Melanchthon’s work should be in the canon, and that Melanchthon’s arguments crush Erasmus’s model (most unfortunately, Melanchthon later modified his view, though Luther never did in my estimation).

According to Luther, whom I believe is true to the Apostle Paul’s teaching in Romans and Galatians, we are not made good by doing good things; we do good things because we are made good. For Luther, we are made good as God’s love is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5–the later Augustine, Luther and Jonathan Edwards all developed their model of salvation and grace in relation to this text). All good moral actions flow not from spiritual habits and virtues that enable godly desires; rather, all godly actions flow from the Spirit of love poured out into our hearts. Sanctification, for Luther, is not a second work. In fact, he never developed a doctrine of sanctification, in my estimation. He feared that it would compromise the focus on the transformation of our hearts that occurs as the Spirit of God is poured out into our hearts thereby creating faith (Galatians 2:20; no doubt, Luther would also call to mind Paul’s challenge to the Galatians: “… Having begun with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?”–Gal. 3:3).

While I find people performing godly actions growing in their love for the Lord, I believe that Scripture teaches that such godly activity flows from a prior love from the triune God of grace poured out in our hearts. As that love is poured out and we respond to that love which is instilled in our hearts by the Spirit, we then perform godly actions. This response to God’s love continues to express itself in godly actions. I am ultimately talking about a deep affection and not a passing feeling of infatuation. Sometimes I may not want to honor God given my struggle with the flesh; but I want to want God as the Spirit of God moves in my life. The affections from the Spirit wage war with the affections of the flesh (Romans 8, Galatians 5).

I have risked speaking more theologically here to get some fundamental issues out on the table. This is consistent with what I was driving at in the discussion of the triune God as love. In addition to the New Wine essay, I also wrote on this for the Westminster Theological Journal (“Mystical Union With Christ: An Alternative to Blood Transfusions and Legal Fictions”), challenging the Roman Catholic notion of infusion of righteousness and the Protestant Scholastic notion of imputation (which I believe is secondary to such participation and follows from mystical marital union with Christ through the affection of love poured out by the Spirit that creates faith in our hearts and the ensuing moral activities). You will find more concrete engagement of this material in my book, The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town. John’s Gospel is steeped in these categories. See John 8, John 14 and John 15 and my discussions of these texts in When Love Comes to Town. I flesh this discussion out culturally in New Wine Tastings.

I hope this moves the conversation forward even further. Thanks so much for your friendship and partnership.

Best wishes,

Paul

I am loved by God, therefore I am.

Some of us at New Wine, New Wineskins were discussing God’s triune being of communal love the other day. In thinking through the implications, I said to one friend (which I also posted on Facebook):

In short, as I see it, God is a holy, loving communion of divine and eternal persons. At the core of God’s being, we find holy, interpersonal love. God is relational to the depths of his being. Love always requires an object. In the divine life, there is mutuality and reciprocity. Such love flows out from the Godhead into the world. While God does not need us, God does not use us either. God longs to have communion with us, for God is communal, and God’s glorious love is expansive and inclusive. The church as a Trinitarian community is first and foremost being-driven, not purpose-driven, as Brad Harper and I say in Exploring Ecclesiology. The church’s purposes and activities must flow out of this sense of relationality. Instead of “I think, therefore, I am” or “I shop at Wal-Mart and Macy’s, therefore I am” or “I have a job, therefore I am,” the model here is “I am loved by God, therefore I am.”

The Table

The following post is a reflection based on my recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area. New Wine, New Wineskins and I were invited to explore the development of relational networks there in the Bay Area with local leaders.

I received the news a few days prior to the New Wine, New Wineskins San Francisco Bay Area trip scheduled for May 17th-19th that my Dad might pass away within a week’s time. When I spoke with my Mom about my Dad’s condition and about my upcoming meetings in the Bay area, she urged me to move forward with the trip. She emphasized that my Dad would not want for me to cancel; she added that my Dad worked and prayed for me for years in terms of God’s calling on my life and saw his own life and ministry flowing through me. My Mom’s encouragement and exhortation moved and mobilized me. Her words from above gave me the strength and focus with which to proceed.

My Dad died a few days earlier than we had expected. He passed away into the presence of the Lord on Wednesday the 18th, when I was in San Francisco. Soon after I received the news, my friends and fellow New Wine, New Wineskins Advisory Council members Gloria Young and Cooky Wall encouraged me to be alone with the Lord and pray and reflect. They went out to buy lunch and bring it back to Gloria’s office for us to eat before our afternoon meetings. As I prayed and reflected in the presence of the Lord, the words “the table” were impressed upon my mind and imagination. There I was kneeling and crying out to God and saying, “The table, …the table, … the table!” What did these words mean?

One of the things that stands out most to me about my Dad is that he always invited people to “the table”—at home, at church, in the neighborhood, and elsewhere. No doubt, his life has shaped my writings on matters pertaining to the Lord’s Table. I believe his life will continue to shape my life so that I will invite others to “the table” and receive their invitations to table fellowship, too. I thank God for my Dad’s life and love. May his life—a legacy of love—continue to flow through me.

I believe my Dad’s legacy of love will be alive and well in New Wine, New Wineskins’ ministry in the San Francisco Bay Area. Why? Because I believe New Wine, New Wineskins is being invited to the table there as a member of the family and as one whose task it is to make sure everyone else in the Bay Area is invited to come and remain at the table of Jesus’ love by faith. As long as we proceed in prayer and in sacrificial love for those around us—whoever they may be—rich and poor, conservative and liberal, large and small, cool and un-cool, Black and White and Hispanic and Asian and Other (no longer treating them as other but as us), we will be drinking from the Vine who is Jesus and bearing biblical witness to my Dad’s living legacy who with all the saints drinks from Christ’s cup and who eats the same broken bread. O Lord, O Broken Bread, O Vine, as I consume you, break me! Break me and flow through me. Flow through New Wine and replenish these wineskins! There is such a need for brokenness on our part, such a need for prayerful repentance and renewal, such a need to eat the Broken Bread and drink from the Vine. Only as we eat this Broken Bread and drink from this Cup will we make relational space for others to feast, too, in the Bay Area and beyond.

A few overlapping comments shouted out to me during the trip and bear witness to the pressing need for being intentional on making relational space for others at the table. I had shared with a Chinese American pastor in San Jose on Tuesday of that week what the African American pastor couple in San Francisco who had invited me to San Francisco on behalf of New Wine, New Wineskins had shared with me: the white Christian establishment in San Francisco has not invited people to dine at “the table” with them. If anything, they are sometimes invited as guests who can only return when invited again. They are not really seen as part of the family. When I shared this painful statement with the Chinese American pastor, he quickly claimed that “We aren’t invited to the table either. So, we have made our own table.” The next day, Wednesday, the day of my Dad’s passing, a young white emerging church leader led us up on a high hill that overlooked the city and outlying region to give us an aerial perspective. As he pointed to various sectors below us, he spoke of how disconnected and isolated the various Christian communities were in the Bay Area. He also noted in one of our recent conversations that it is not only the African American Christian community that feels vulnerable. In San Francisco, all Christian groups feel vulnerable. After all, it is post-Christendom there and the Christian table appears to be getting smaller and smaller and the number of chairs at the table appears to be dwindling. No doubt, the various Christian groups are trying in conscious and unconscious ways to make sure they have a place at the table. Perhaps, as a result, table fellowship ends up looking there (and in many other places, too) more like the game “Musical Chairs.” Only it is not a game.

The African American pastors who invited New Wine, New Wineskins to come to the table in San Francisco had indicated to me that as we grow in our friendship and partnership, we will share with one another our relational networks. At the table where we celebrate the bounty of the Lord Jesus’ love, we will find that we no longer have to fear scarcity. We no longer have to compete or guard our turf or make sure that we are seizing a sliver of the increasingly smaller religious pie in post-Christendom America. We no longer have to worry about not having a place to sit when the music stops. When we’re at the Lord’s Table, we’re no longer playing at Musical Chairs. There’s seating for one and all.

One event in particular served as a microcosm of hope for what can transpire where there is seating for one and all. I am referring to the final meeting which took place on Thursday afternoon, just hours before I returned to Portland. One leader present later wrote, “The group was small but represented an interesting cross section of the city. Various denominations and church personnel showed quite a variety. The discussion needs to broaden to include many more church leaders. Many of the shakers and movers of the city need to be invited to the table.” Another leader present at that meeting and with whom we interacted the previous day wrote about our efforts: “It is clear that the people involved in the conversation are high caliber people who see what is at stake and who are ambitious for the Kingdom of God. I enjoyed hearing people’s stories and feeling their passion. It is great to see people take time out of their busy schedules to prioritize being together in a listening posture to each other. This is the way of Christ! I believe that doors will be opened that would not have been were it not for the proactive servant-leadership demonstrated by the New Wine, New Wineskins team.”

No doubt, as we celebrate at Jesus’ table, we will be mindful of our need to be good stewards of what God has invested in us. We won’t hide our talents in the ground. Instead, we will make sure that we are investing relationally as we pour out our lives with and for one another as Christ’s body and for the world in the Bay area and beyond. The new wine of the kingdom will flow through New Wine, New Wineskins as we sit at the table to which we have been invited in the Bay area and at which we continue to dine and as we continue to pass the cup and break the bread together and as we make sure that everyone else is invited to the table, and there remain as cherished brothers and sisters, cherished ministry partners and friends. As we live into this reality, I will be offering day in and out a toast to my Dad and a drink offering of sacrificial praise to the Lord.

Did Lincoln Die in Vain?

A recent TIME Magazine article, “The Civil War, 150 Years Later,” claims that we’re still fighting the Civil War. The sub-heading of the article includes these lines, “North and South shared the burden of slavery, and after the war, they shared in forgetting about it.” The front cover bears a picture of Lincoln shedding a tear and includes the words: “The endless battle over the war’s true cause would make Lincoln weep.” Did Lincoln die in vain?

Slavery was the fundamental reason why the North and South went to war, but according to the TIME article, you wouldn’t know it based on how history and Hollywood have often portrayed the conflict and its origins. No one likes to admit guilt, unless perhaps it is someone else’s. But Lincoln viewed things differently. He believed the entire country was to blame for the war (a point often lost on us Northerners). Lincoln no doubt knew what the TIME article claims: “Slavery was not incidental to America’s origins; it was central” (p. 48).

This TIME article got me thinking further about the matter. I reviewed three of Lincoln’s most famous speeches: his first inaugural address, the Gettysburg address, and his second inaugural. I came across a “This American Life” documentary on the second inaugural. The following statement from the program puts the matter well: “In his second inaugural address, Lincoln wondered aloud why God saw fit to send the slaughter of the Civil War to the United States. His conclusion: that slavery was a kind of original sin for the United States, for both North and South, and all Americans had to do penance for it.” Assuming that this is correct, if the Lincoln of the second inaugural were here today, I wonder if he would claim that those who died in the Civil War to do penance for the nation’s “original sin” died in vain based on the North’s and South’s ongoing denial of the war’s true cause.

So often, we function with pragmatic and collective amnesia for the sake of pursuing progress. Like Teddy Roosevelt who according to the article became the champion of reconciliation and the prophet of progress, we grew up as a nation post-Civil War receiving “a master tutorial in leaving certain things unsaid in the pursuit of harmony” (TIME, p. 48). But there can never really be progress where there is no ownership and repentance of personal and corporate sins. As 1 John 1:9 declares, “If we confess our sins, he (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” No confession, no forgiveness, no cleansing, no true progress. This is not simply an individual matter. What some of us take to be true personally for our spiritual condition and relationship with God must be taken to be true corporately as a church and as a nation.

Lincoln did not view slavery as the sin of the South for which the North brought judgment during the war. As stated above, Lincoln saw the war and its carnage as the judgment of God on the North and the South. Lincoln’s words taken from the second inaugural come to us from the grave:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” (link).

The American church is often so rootless. While you and I may not have not committed any act to reinforce the evolving structures that slavery and its post-Civil War legacy generated, are we doing something—anything—to overturn those structures the previous generations put in place and nurtured? If not, we are still reinforcing those evil structures, for failing to act righteously is just as bad as acting in an unrighteous manner. Both forms of sin flow from a hardened heart and both forms of sin harden fallen structures. We must understand that history is with us. It lives into the present. Lincoln saw the connection between the nation’s past and its present trial at the time of the Civil War. The connection was and is organic. As such, we are not talking about fatalism. Fatalism involves a sense of helplessness, being bound to impersonal cause and effect forces beyond our control. Corporate guilt passed down from generation to generation is not a problem we are powerless to challenge. We can bring an end to it by owning it and restructuring our individual and corporate existence, beginning with acknowledging the real cause of the War and repenting of our nation’s ongoing disengagement from our racialized story.

By not seeing that North and South alike were to blame for the Civil War (TIME, p. 51) and by not advocating for racial equality and unity in our day, the people who according to Lincoln died to do penance, from his perspective, may have actually died in vain. The same might be true for Lincoln. If only we could talk to him now.

I believe we listen more to General George McClellan today than we do President Lincoln. McClellan had been Lincoln’s chief general at the outset of the war and later Lincoln defeated McClellan on the way to his short-lived second term in office as President of the United States. McClellan viewed the race question as “incidental and subsidiary” to unity (TIME, p. 42). But what kind of unity is it when there is no reconciliation? McClellan “did not perceive…that the Union and slavery had become irreconcilable” (TIME, p. 46). The same held true during the Civil Rights era, but Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his movement sought to show us that separate but supposedly equal is no real equality and cannot sustain a nation—or a church.

Things still have not changed all that much as a country and as the church in this country (See the consumingjesus.org post by Daniel Fan titled “Is Racism Over Now That a Black Man is President of the United States?”. See also the link to The Oregonian “Opinion” piece by Clifford Chappell titled “Is Racism Gone for Good?” along with the ensuing interview at consumingjesus.org with Rev. Chappell). In all too many quarters, we are still separate and nothing more than supposedly equal. As Black Theologian James Cone said in a 2006 interview, in some ways the situation is actually worse in terms of such things as health care, education, employment, and the prison system. In the interview, Cone exhorts white theologians to speak out forthrightly about the unrighteous situation in which we find ourselves, claiming that the white Christian establishment is complicit. As a white theologian, I believe we should listen to Lincoln and Cone, among others, and speak out and live forthrightly. Otherwise, I fear that not only Lincoln’s death but also Jesus’ death may be robbed of its redemptive, catalytic power in our lives (See 1 Corinthians 1:17 where Paul talks about the possibility of emptying Christ’s cross of its power in his ministry if he were to preach the gospel with words of human wisdom). Sins of omission (righteous acts we have failed to do) are just as evil as sins of commission (evils we have committed). Jesus died for both. May we live to please him in every way, making sure we contend against sins of commission and omission.

What does speaking out and living forthrightly look like—especially in the church? For starters, we need to denounce the McClellan version of the church growth principle that claims that the race question is incidental and subsidiary to Christian unity. What kind of unity are we talking about when we claim that we are separate but equal in our ecclesial experience (separate churches for whites and blacks and others)? The McClellan church growth principle is pragmatic, though not practical if we mean missional. Christendom’s collapse in our country is bound up with the Civil War: Christianity came to be viewed as captive to cultural trends—the North and South had the same red, white and black letter Bible but read and preached it differently on matters black and white. Christian America took a further hit during the Civil Rights era, as many Christian conservatives stood in opposition to King’s biblical mandate. The Evangelical church will take another hit shortly if white Evangelicalism doesn’t make far greater space for unity along ethnic lines in its worship centers across the land, for America is becoming increasingly brown, decreasingly white.

However, our concern is not political correctness, opportunism and penance, but biblical justice and repentance. Again, 1 John 1:9 puts it well: “If we confess our sins, he (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (This is not simply an individual, personal matter. The prophets of old identified with their people’s sin and confessed on their behalf; see Daniel 9:1-19). No confession, no forgiveness, no cleansing, no true progress. What kind of unity and progress are we talking about when we are talking about unity and progress based on non-confessed sins of commission and omission? There is no prophetic power and progress in such unity.

Lincoln was seen as a rabble rouser in his day. That’s why he got shot in the head. King was seen as a rabble rouser in his day. That’s why he got shot in the head. Jesus was seen as a rabble rouser in his day. That’s one key reason why he was hung on a cross. Each one died to bring unity and create one people out of the ashes of disparity. While as a Protestant, I do not believe in doing penance, I do believe that we are responsible for our sins of commission and omission. When we don’t own the sins of our past and present disunity whereby we fail to love our brothers and sisters of diverse ethnicity in concrete forms of ecclesial and civic engagement, it is almost as if we are saying with our lives that Lincoln, King, and the Lord Jesus died in vain. Did they?

The John 17:23 Network

The John 17:23 Network, co-led by Dr. Paul Louis Metzger, Pastor William Turner, and Pastor David Stevens, exists to encourage, exhort, and equip the multi-ethnic Body of Christ in the greater Portland area tofulfill Jesus’ prayer that we might all be one.

Monthly gatherings of The John 17:23 Network are open to the public. Join us on Sunday, May 15 from 6:00 – 7:30pm at Central Bible Church (8815 NE Glisan St. in Portland) for a time of teaching and encouragement with a special focus on caring for refugees.