“Justification,” “The New Perspective” & Why It Matters (PRT 2)

In Part 1, I ended by asking what justification was all about, according to the new perspective, if it is not actually the moment of salvation.  Perhaps I should start by spilling the beans on why Paul drew his distinction between the first covenant (letter of the law) and the second covenant (faith by grace) which as I said before was not Paul setting Judaism over and against Christianity (1 Cor. 3:5-11).  To put it as succinctly as possible: The Law of Moses could only point to moral uprightness but could never actually produce it and, more importantly, there is a powerful “law of sin”, meaning humans are bound to death, which in turn made all attempts by humans to do good and obey the will of God inadequate and ultimately futile (Romans 7:15; 21-24).[1]  This is why Paul had both good and bad things to say about the law, but knew full well that Jesus met its requirements and was its fulfillment (Rom. 8:3-4).

More to the point of justification, any attempt for the “unclean” Gentile Christians to obey Jewish law was not necessary to be accepted into the inner circle of the Church.  Paul lays this out most clearly in Galatians 2:15-4:11: Here Paul is having to deal with the Galatians who had come to believe (by the influence of the agitators) that they had to become circumcised, follow dietary laws and so forth before they could be part of the Christian community that lived and fellowshipped together.  Paul rails against this declaring a new freedom.  Christ fulfilling the law resulted in the freedom of the Gentiles to now belong to God without being set apart by the law, because all of them were now set a part by the Spirit.  Paul even goes as far to illustrate a similar incident between him and Peter in which Peter allowed himself to be persuaded away from fellowshipping with the Gentiles. He suggests that because of this, Peter had become like an unclean pagan by the very act of excluding the Gentiles (Gal. 2:14).

Therefore, “justification by faith” is not the means by which human relationship is established with God, but rather justification by faith (at the core of Paul’s theology) is that God has justified or included the once “pagan/unclean” Gentiles to now sit at the same table in fellowship with the Jews. Through Christ we all now belong at the same table of fellowship representing a merging of heaven and earth by way of Jew and Gentile.  

  

In some sense, the new perspective is really not that new at this point. I think it is certainly time to take its contribution and begin applying it in fresh new ways. This does not mean that the new perspective does not need to be challenged and critiqued in some areas either, nor do any of its advocates suggest to.  But, it has highlighted the need to continue breaking new ground when it comes to reading Paul, and the other NT authors, historically.  Scripture is not just about where we have been but it is a guide to where we should be going. As we reason its discourse it ultimately sets the standard for how we are to be an alternative way to the patterns of this world and that alone should encourage us to recapture what is really being said.

       

[1] Richard B Hays. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (New York: HarperOne Publishing 1996), 44.

“Justification,” “The New Perspective” & Why It Matters (PRT 1)

Okay so this first part has more to do with the “new perspective” than on “justification” (though I am assuming most know little about either, so I hope it will all be clear by the end) but my interest in this began when I got a chance to use “justification” as paper topic in one of my systematic theology classes. It gave me an excuse and the time to research the so-called “new perspective” and see what it was all about.  After looking at the argument I realized the it was kind of an important contribution to Biblical scholarship that was widely misunderstood, but more importantly it seemed to be right.    

So, I will make this as brief as possible so as not to bore you to death but here is justification in a nutshell.  Aw who am I kidding… prepare to be bored.   The term justification (dikaiosis) comes from something Paul kept referring to in his letters in which he says we are justified by grace and by faith and at other times we are just justified (Rom. 2-5; Gal. 2-3). Based on these passages the doctrine was formed (mainly by Martin Luther) that said justification by faith is God’s powerful, cosmic and universal act by which He has both set free and vindicated the sinners who by faith trust in Christ’s work and they can now stand in right and faithful relation to God.[1]   Yeah, let that sink in for a second… This came about because Luther was trying to counter-act the Catholic notion that they still had to earn salvation through works and in one sense Luther was not wrong.

However, over the last thirty-forty years there has been a challenge to this which has become affectionately known as the “new perspective on Paul” or also known as “covenantal nomism”.  This idea has predominantly been developed through the work of E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, N.T. Wright and many more, who show that the “old perspective” was extremely deficient in its understanding of Paul and Second-Temple Judaism.  It is worth noting that for the academics who held firmly to the Reformers views, this initially did not set well and some even warned people to stay away from such thinking (see John Piper for that faulty argument).

Nevertheless, the first-century Palestinian Jews have suffered at the hands of the early Catholic’s and Martin Luther’s bad anthropology.  It stemmed from figures like Ignatius and Augustine who believed that the Jewish Law was part of some legalistic merit-theology within Judaism. This is to say, that to the extent the Jews could follow the Law they could thereby amass good works and compensate for sin so to become justified before God.  The new perspective revealed that this was never the case, but rather Israel’s salvation always rested on God’s covenant of grace made with Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3) and any good Second-Temple Jew, including Paul, knew that.  Evidence that this was part of Jewish religious thinking comes from a hymn at the end of the Community Rule of Qumran scroll (1QS 11.11-15):

As for me, I stumble, the mercies of God shall be my eternal salvation. If I stagger because of the sin of flesh, my justification shall be by the righteousness of God which endures forever… He will draw me near by his grace, and by his mercy will he bring my justification. He will judge me in the righteousness of his truth and in the greatness of his goodness he will pardon my sins. Through his righteousness he will cleanse me of the uncleanness of man and of the sins of the children of men.[2]       
            

So then, what was the point of the Law?  The Law had a multifunctional role in Israel’s self-understanding: in one facet it is what to set them apart from the rest of the world, in another facet, God made it the central avenue for Israel to be faithful to God through fidelity to God.  And yet in another facet, it would also be the way to re-manifest God’s work through people in the world.  At its core, the Abrahamic/Mosaic covenants still required faith in God’s work of grace if the Jews were to really invest and commit their entire lives to its practice, even in the face of uncertainty (just like in Christianity).  It was precisely because Luther was shaping his doctrine on false Augustinian thinking, as-well-as his own European racial prejudice towards the Jews, that he and others drew wrong and anti-Semitic interpretations on Paul and even Jesus.  This is most plainly exemplified in 2 Corinthians 3:5-11, as it has been used to set Christianity over and against Judaism all because Paul draws a stark distinction between the old and the new covenant:

… Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.  But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

Whatever Paul was meaning here (as this could serve as a perfect text to try reinterpreting Paul for yourself), it was not painting a negative picture of Judaism as if it was God’s failed project and now we need to root out its Jewishness.  This is what Luther tried to do.  However, as Dunn has said, resting in God’s grace and faithfulness was always the axiom of Judaism, so Luther did not actually stumble onto something new by showing that the first church was teaching this.[3]  Paul knew Judaism was not distinct from Jesus (or what was becoming Christianity) but that Judaism had in fact reached new levels of fruition in Christ’s work.   

This then raises the question, if Paul and his Jewish contemporaries knew that salvation was wrapped up in God’s grace and faith, what was justification all about? (To be continued)    

---

[1] A.E. McGrath. Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity 1993), 518.

[2]  Geza Vermes. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Press, 1997), 116.

[3] James D.G. Dunn, ed: J. K. Beilby & P. R. Eddy. Justification: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 2011), 182.

Zoo Theology: A Perspective on Ecology

I was recently walking around the zoo with my wife and kids and I had something of a revelation that I amusingly decided to call zoo theology… hear me out on this.  From time to time in the areas of science, philosophy and theology the question is raised, what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom?  On the side of science they would most often say, not much.  We have opposable thumbs which have allowed us to do some special things like make tools and so forth, but it is no different than the special features that other species uniquely posses.  We are an equal part of the animal kingdom and at the end of the day we are nothing terribly special.

 

On the philosophical and theological side (and yes I am going to intermingle them, though a fair share of philosophy streams do agree with science... humor me) they say there is a lot that separates us.  We have the ability to contemplate our own existence; we can compose music, write literature and create art, none of which was actually necessary for the survival of our species in the evolutionary process. Certainly we are above animals and are something special!

Though this may sound like an argument between the melancholy and egocentric both have valid points to offer.  As science says rightly, we are one-of-many intricate parts of the biological kingdom within one-of-many eco-systems that exists within in a ridiculously vast universe. Yet, we also have the ability to be contemplators of it all and operate in unusually creative avenues.  Perhaps both sides could add to this so to strengthen their positions and even attempt to explain the other a way, but I have a different alternative. 

        

            My “epiphany” that I observed happening in the zoo setting to some degree embraces both points.  I realized what really separates humans from animals was not that we ourselves are not animals, but we are the one species with the ability to care for all other species (including our own) in ways they could never do for each other or us in return; and we regularly do it at the risk of our own safety.  We can be loving towards them even when they cannot for us, we provide medical attention for their well-being, and we can contemplate and comprehend their existence enough to know their role in our world and creatively enable them to continue existing in that way, even in the face of extinction.  We have a profound influence in our world that does only belong to us.  

  

What makes this theological is that is also based on the assumption that humans are the species made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26) but to what extent do we bear His likeness?  Well I think it is safe to say that it is not in our anthropomorphisms (i.e. our physical attributes) it is perhaps in what is said after the image-bearing statement. It was qualified in God’s saying that we would reign (hdr)) radah) over the animal kingdom and eco-systems (Gen. 1:26-28), though this could just as well have been understood as “take responsibility for it.”  This may not wrap up every way we bear God's likeness, but it is something we see God regularly do for us.  It would then seem that those we have deemed tree-hugging environmentalists are doing something right as it is in our ability to creatively care for and influence the animal kingdom and eco-systems (for the better)  that we in some sense naturally fulfill our role as God’s image bearers.  Surely this has much broader implications for human character and action, but I will let you think through that one.  

Misplaced Loyalties

          Lately I have been reading Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination and in it he raises an interesting thought that I want to reflect on.  This could be summed up as “God’s accessibility for all.”  We need to ask ourselves the question, does the Church-community’s action enable others to find the accessible God of the Bible, or have we fully subordinated Him to be a tool for our agendas?  Brueggmann points out that there is a tricky tension between God’s freedom and God’s accessibility in which Christian leadership and subsequent laypersons bear the role and responsibility to “assert the freedom of God that tempers the notion of accessibility.”[1]  

         To use Brueggmann’s example, prior to Israel’s expulsion from their land (and presumably the road to the breaking-point that caused their exile), Israel has two very different social orders.  In Exodus we have Moses and the rest of the Hebrews working with God to create a counterculture within the world.  This community worked for economic equality, rather than individual surplus (Exod. 16:15-18), they abide by a politics that worked for justice and opposed oppression (Lev. 25:35-42) and they maintained a view of, and relationship with, God that embraced God’s freedom to move and dwell among the people (Exod. 33:15-16; 19-20).[2]

            However, by 1 Kings, Solomon had managed to counteract what God had begun (too bad he didn’t make better use of that wisdom).  Solomon, in a short time, amassed much wealth by prizing an “economics of affluence” over equality (1 Kings 4:20-23).  While this may have reduced worries about survival for some, it came at a cost to others who worked toward Israel’s affluence but never received its benefits as Solomon used forced labor to build the nice homes the laborers would never live in and work the wine vineyards they would never drink from (1 Kings 5:13-18; 9:15-22).[3]  Never mind that it only recreated the oppressive-affluence the Hebrews previously suffered under Egyptian rule, but no matter who is behind it oppression and affluence tend to need each other. 

More to the point, Solomon could have never done this without the right theological sanctions which he seemed to adopt (and arguably so) from other pagan social practices. This allowed him to erect his personal shrine to God and create a “static religion”.  In a sense, God is robbed of His freedom and becomes part of the royal landscape. Solomon secluded God’s presence to the temple where He would dwell forever (1 Kings 8:12-13).  I do not say this only because the Mosaic solution is counteracted but where before God was initiating movement, now He is put on call for Solomon’s needs and all access to Him is limited and controlled by the royal court.[4]    

            While it would be all too easy to conclude that Solomon was just a bad person and a corrupted leader, we would do better to ask how the Church has acted the same way. We are guilty of robbing God of His freedom to move and to move us thereby limiting God’s accessibility for others. 

One way I see it is in our notion that we can legislate Christian morality on those who do not hold our convictions.  For example, the hot-button issue of abortion stems from the Christian belief that life is sacred, not because life alone is inherently sacred but rather it is sacred because we believe it is authored by and is an extension of our holy God.  If all we do is put laws against people, in the name of God, who do not know or believe that it not only turns them away from God, but stifles God’s freedom to move us into more creative avenues to bring His accessibility.  If we are to be a counterculture, we need fresh approaches to all situations.  One alternative (specific to abortion) could be for us to become a presence (apart from protesting) at abortion clinics and sacrifice our personal time, resources and finances to help women who would at least be willing to carry their baby to term and if possible longer.  On the other side of it, we could be a source of non-judgmental comfort, compassion and burden-bearing for those who felt like they had no choice and aborted their baby (even though we don’t agree with the decision).  The bigger point is, God moves in all situations, but we are often too busy being offended or worrying about self-interest or only doing what inconveniences us the least to know when God has moved.  But that doesn’t fulfill our role as functionaries for God’s accessibility.     

By all means, I would love input; what are your thoughts?  Are there ways in which you believe we stifle God’s freedom and accessibility?  Do you have creative solutions that reflect more of God and less of us? 

[1] Walter Brueggemann. The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press 2001), 29.

[2] Ibid, 31.

[3] Ibid, 27.

[4] Ibid, 28-29.

The Danger of Penal Substitution

The topic of “penal substitution” is an idea that few Christians would think to challenge yet I see three good reasons to: First, it does not align with the overall picture of God in scripture; second, it unknowingly degrades God to a dependent deity; thirdly, it has now become woven into mainstream comprehension of salvation.

         The doctrine of penal substitution says that our sin is so sordid that God in His infinite holiness could no longer stand to have us in His presence.  Never mind the fact that He managed to tabernacle with the Hebrews and it was more to their detriment to come too close to His holiness than the other way around (Exod. 33:20).  Nonetheless, human sin was to the extent that God (while loving us) was also angry with us and desired blood-payment as retribution.  Thus, the solution was for Jesus to enter into the flesh and blood dynamic as our substitute and become a punching-bag of sorts for His Father’s wrath thereby transactionally embodying the payment for our debt.  This is based on the scriptures that say Christ who knew no sin bore our sin, became sin for us and redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming the curse (Isa. 54:12; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13).  

The problem with this interpretation is twofold in that it, first, runs contrary to everything else said about God and imposes a view that believes this is for the purpose of transforming how God views us rather than making the attempt to transform us.  Secondly, we are told that God forgave us our sins upon our repentant confession thereof (Matt. 6:12; 1 Jn. 1:9).   So was our debt paid for us, or did God forgive us by offering full remission of our debt?  They cannot both be true.  Let’s say you are my close friend who stole money from me and I demand repayment, so somebody else pays it for you, but then I say, “You are now forgiven.”  I would expect you to hit me with a dictionary.  However, if you could not repay the debt and apologized and I realized both your sincerity of regret and helplessness to the situation, I could respond with compassion and release you from having to pay it back so long as we work toward building a new relationship/friendship that respects and cares for each other the right way (i.e. reconciliatory forgiveness).

This should raise the question, then why did Jesus die?  Perhaps we should consider one of the more symbolic actions that occurred just prior to the crucifixion, the last supper.  To draw from N.T. Wright, the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) all say the last supper happened on Passover, which actually falls in line with Talmudic records that attest to Jesus’ crucifixion.  Alternatively, John’s gospel says the last supper happened the day before Passover, but this could be an intentional misaligned date so to make a theological point about Jesus dying on the same day as all the other Pascal lambs.[1]  Nevertheless, each gospel account saw a correlation between the Passover and the crucifixion.  Why is this pertinent?  Because the Passover occurred when the Hebrew slaves were being free from the tyranny of Egyptian bondage.  Jesus is making a statement, not that He is equal to the Passover, but more profoundly that He is the new Passover and His crucifixion, like the Pascal lamb, will initiate the new Exodus from a deeper bondage and this Passover will be remembered and retold through His story.[2]

Therefore, we have misunderstood why Jesus died and took our sins onto Himself because we have fundamentally misunderstood the effect of sin as merely being a nasty stain, but in its reality is a ultimately a permanent bondage to a hopelessness and while living in temporary enslavement to the rulers of darkness for the duration of our lives.  In Four Views of the Atonement, Greg Boyd’s view (known as the Christus Victor model) expounds on this by making the case that sin was the human shortcoming which enslaved us, rather than an incident that changed God’s mind in regards to how He felt about us.  To illustrate this, Boyd shows that the one who took ownership of us in our captivity was Satan and he was the one demanding blood all along.[3]

To briefly explain this statement, we often think the animal sacrifice was God’s idea, but this was a practice endemic throughout the ancient world. The Hebrews were clearly doing it prior to any covenants with God. This rhetoric is evident when God puts an end to their making sacrifices to a demon of the ancient world (Lev. 17:7).  So also, the first time a sacrificial offering occurs in Scripture it was not because God demanded it rather Cain and Abel do it on their own volition (Gen. 4).  Again, this suggests a worldview and practice within a fallen humanity that believed sacrificing life was the submissive and even humble thing to do for their god.  However, instead of demanding it to stop, God has a more permanent solution that allows them to keep the cultural practice for a time, but redirects their use of it in a way that will eventually beat evil at its own game.

 

Thus, back to Boyd’s point, it was through Christ’s death that this divine Son and Father used the Son’s sharing in human flesh and blood to defeat Satan and his cohorts who held the power of death over flesh and blood (Heb. 2:14; 1 Jn. 3:8).  This action ransomed humanity and reconciled the entire world back to God in a way that, much like my forgiveness anecdote, understood  human helplessness and in compassion did not count our sins against us (2 Cor. 5:18-19; Col. 1:20-22).  Accordingly, God made the decision to forgive us (Eph. 1:7), offered healing for our sinful nature (1 Pet. 2:24) and empowered us with His Spirit to live in relation with Him again (Rom. 8:2-16).[4]   Therefore, Jesus was not sent to change the way God feels about us because God was always full of love for us; nor did Jesus change God’s view of us because His view of our worth always exceeded what we could comprehend.  Jesus came to release us from a broken situation, broken feelings toward God and each other and a broken view (Luke 4:18). 

So, to my original point, penal substitution is a dangerous idea because throughout the Bible the story is always revealing (both intentionally and unintentionally) a God that does not resemble any of the other deities.  Yet, penal substitution shows an inferior picture of a God who needs His needs met, specifically a need for revenge on those He supposedly loves.  Thank God this is not true.  The real portrait of Israel’s God changed it all by revealing Himself to be the only God who was so self-sufficient that He could operate in mode of redemption, recreation, reconciliation and most wonderful of all invite His subjects as friends to be active participators in it while being effectually shaped by it.  The only satisfaction God and Jesus were aiming for was that of our freedom. 

                       

[1] N.T. Wright. Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press 1996), 554-555.

[2]Ibid, 558-559.

[3] James Beilby & Paul R. Eddy. Four Views: The Nature of the Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 2006), 23.

[4] Ibid.

Rethinking Divine Judgment & Wrath

For quite some time there have been certain scriptural-interpretations and subsequent doctrines in the Church that have not always added up or set well with me, especially in light of reading scripture for myself.  My initial reaction was that perhaps I was the one misunderstanding it (and undoubtedly there has been and will be times where I miss the mark).  However, the more time I spend researching the many academic currents in biblical and historical scholarship I find that I am far from the only one who thinks we have arrived at a telos in our understanding. 

    

It is no secret that Western theology has been widely shaped by St. Augustine and many of his contemporaries in the 4^th and 5^th century (which by the way cannot be said for all Christian traditions around the globe).  In turn, many of the Reformers based much of their doctrine on the Augustinian conclusions.  The growing consensus, however, is the early church fathers got quite a few things wrong specifically about the Jewish people’s self-identity, relationship to God and even misunderstood what the broader picture revealed about God.  Now obviously there are those today who, for whatever reason, will not budge on these issues (e.g. personal conviction, unconvinced by the evidence, clinging to their certainty or whatever) but I think it is at least worth it to hear each other. 

I am saying all this in hopes of prefacing some future posts to come concerning doctrines of “justification” and “penal substitution”, but more immediately in discussing God’s wrath and judgment.  It seems like I cannot go anywhere without this angry, wrathful God topic coming up and there has been a lot of conflict surrounding it when contrasted with the idea of a loving God.  So, I want to share a summary of a sermon on this topic presented by a well known New Testament scholar and pastor who puts it very succinctly.  I do this in hopes that it will help others who have struggled with this:

Many have had fears about God being angry with us and fears of hell have been pervasive throughout Christian culture. A monstrous picture of God, best described in Edward’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, is not an accurate picture of God’s wrath. The opposite is true as well—those that abandon the idea of God’s wrath, and adopt a picture of a friendly Grandpa who doesn’t have wrath—have an equally inaccurate picture of God’s wrath.

God’s wrath is best described as a judgment boomerang. When someone throws a boomerang, it comes back to them. Last week, we learned that when we act outside of God’s intentions for our lives, we encounter decay and suffering through the natural consequences of our actions. When we sin, it acts like a boomerang that will eventually come back and hit us in the face. If we commit affairs, it will break up marriages. If we hurt others, hurt will come back to us.

God does not personally rage against us when we sin. We see this when we look at Jesus. Jesus never raged against his enemies, and God wasn’t raging against Jesus on the cross. God never lifted a finger against Jesus. Rather, God withdrew his protection and handed Jesus over to those who acted violently against Jesus. Standing in our place as sinners, Jesus experienced the God-forsaken quality of wrath. God withdrew his protection and let evil run its course. In the same way, we experience God’s wrath when evil is allowed to run its course. Instead of stopping the boomerang from coming back, God allows it to smack us in the face, and this is how God’s judgment works.

Sin functions to separate us from God. Every act of sin is us pushing away from God. And the Bible tells us that our sin causes destruction in our lives. God, in his mercy, works to protect us from the consequences of our sin. God’s judgment and wrath is not an external consequence like a judge throwing someone into prison. Rather, God’s judgment and wrath is a natural, intrinsic consequence of our sin. It is the same as a when a liver fails because someone drank every day for 30 years. Sin and evil carry the seeds of their own punishment.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see pictures of a God who promises his wrath and destruction on people that don’t follow his way of life for them. While it looks like God is doing all of this on the surface, we see that other forces are doing the actions of wrath. Other nations take over Israel. This was because there are other forces at work in the lives of humans. Evil, supernatural authorities and powers are at work in this world. When God’s judgment and wrath were given in the Old Testament (Psalm 7:15-16; Habakkuk 2:17; Hosea 8:7) we see that these evil powers are simply allowed to do what they do. God withdrew his protection, and it resulted in evil things happening.

We need to understand that God’s wrath is a very real thing, but it has often been misunderstood. God doesn’t act violently, and he weeps over his people when he is forced to withdraw his protection. It is never his intention that we are hurt. God loves you, and his anger is not directed towards you, but rather towards the effects of our sin that boomerang back to us.[1]

[1] Woodland Hills Church: Greg Boyd. The Boomerang Judgment http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/the-judgement-boomerang (Accessed July 11, 2014).

A Tale of Two Freedoms

           

 Before I begin, let me say this not a frivolous bashing of America and I am very thankful to live in a country where I have freedoms (in speech, religion, education, politics and the many other opportunities we can often take for granted).  I know there are people around the world who may never get to experience this.  Moreover, I think we should be responsible with how we use our freedom because we do have a unique opportunity and platform in our world which is great as far as that goes.

With that said my question then is can Christians say that our American social freedom stands vis-à-vis Christian freedom, as many have portrayed it?  Are not life, liberty and happiness what God envisioned for all people?  I would say to some degree, yes, this is true, but there is an inherent danger when we attempt to marry Church and Empire by Christianizing the features of national and political culture.  Certainly, it seems alright for everyone to work together for a peaceable and just world, but that can only happen when we are talking about the same thing which is exactly what I am suggesting we are not doing.

Governing or Being Governed?

Fittingly, I am writing this on the weekend of July 4^th in which we celebrate America’s independence/freedom, but freedom from what?  This depends on who you ask.  Some will say this was the separation from the tyrannical British government who kept imposing its demands on the colonists of America while others will say a bunch of rich landowners just didn’t want to pay their taxes.  Nevertheless, we can agree that this was the date Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence which was the document that outlined the reasons for the colonial’s disconnect from Europe.   The justification John Adams and Thomas Jefferson appealed to in their draft seemed to point to human rights as a whole.  We see this in their stating that governments in general only have the ability to wield just Powers because the people consent to it and thus the people under a government are entitled to “alter or abolish” any government that deny their “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.[1]  This was meant to give way to a government and society that would prove its efficacy by defending its life and rights by any means necessary, that would live according to its free will and as one sees fit, so long as no one gets hurt, and a place that would do whatever necessary to find personal happiness.[2]  Based on what follows in the D.O.I. (pertaining to what Europe was and wasn’t doing for its people) it would seem that a bit of Epicurean thought was motivating their action as their conception of freedom was based in personal pleasure and further associated with the improvement of their material-goods and personal situations. 

Today, it could be argued that this has helped to create our hedonistic society that emphasizes worth in individualism, pleasure in greed, need for excess, self-centeredness and self-maximization which raises the question: are we really acting and living freely or have we become slaves to our own vices?   It seems when we pick at someone’s vice/idol it lashes out at us revealing both its slave and their master.  So, for us to put such societal-values on a pedestal and then defend and kill for them says something about what or who we are loyal to.  Apart from my own opinion, however, there was and is a central ideology that stands behind what constitutes as “American freedom” which still plays itself out to greater and lesser degrees and moderated by our justice system.

Freedom from a Deeper Bondage

In Stanley Hauerwas’ book, A Peaceable Kingdom, he points to the idea of societal freedom as a type of ethic for both Christian and non-Christian.  Throughout his book the point Hauerwas keeps returning to is that Christian ethics requires a qualifier.  This is to say, Christians often appeal to any truthful ethic from God as being absolute and thereby true for everybody, but the problem arises when we think our definition of the ethic means the same thing as it does for the non-Christian who is also working for a free and equitable social order.  The difference is Christian freedom is intrinsically informed by the story of God’s relationship with Israel, the Messiah’s life death and resurrection, and a basic conviction that both are true.  Subsequently, God’s freedom has destabilized humankind’s understanding of freedom and does not look like what the D.O.I. proposes. While we might say that both were trying to bring freedom from bondage, one attacks the symptom of bondage (Though don’t forget it created bondage for others like the Native Americans, Africans and so forth) while God actually defeated the ultimate source of our bondage, our sin.  

We thus must challenge the belief that Christian social ethics is first and foremost to create a more peaceable and just world.  The church has been called to first be the servant-community that lives faithfully as the church even when its effectiveness is not so apparent and outcomes look grimm.[3]   This means the essence of our freedom is to be faithful to God which may, as Hauerwas points out, sound self-serving, but being a faithful church means a being faithful manifestation of God’s peaceable Kingdom in the world.  Therefore, we do not have a set of ethics we adhere to, but are a community that embodies an ethic.[4]  As we come to relocate ourselves within God’s narrative, the freedom from sin inaugurates many new freedoms: we become rooted in a self-less love that frees us to be peaceable, faithful, patient, kind, gentle, self controlled. We also become free to no longer need to cling and violently defend our idols such as money, power, comforts of life or whatever it is our hope has come to rest in because our hope is no longer self-interpretive. Our hope, freedom and equality are now given its content through our tradition that is faithfully participating in God’s story. 

[1] George B. Tindall & David E. Shi.  America: A Narrative History (New York W.W. Norton & Company 2010), 139-140.

[2] Greg Boyd. The Myth of a Christian Religion: Losing Your Religion for the Beauty of a Revolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 2009), 84-86.

 [3] Stanley Hauerwas. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Indiana University of Notre Dame 1983), 99.

[4] Ibid.