Sinai

Rembrandt - Moses Smashing the Tablets of the Law, 1659 (left).





Poussin - The adoration of the golden calf, 1634 (right).

Exclusion and Embrace – V

Volf carefully teases out the challenges of seeking justice in this age, and in so doing establishes the necessary injustice of all human attempts at justice. However, he does not deny the necessity of this 'unjust justice' in a world of violence and evil, but argues that, "There can be no justice without the will to embrace".

"... to agree on justice you need to make space in yourself for the perspective of the other, and in order to make space, you need to want to embrace the other. If you insist that others do not belong to you and you to them, that their perspective should not muddle yours, you will have your justice and they will have theirs; your justices will clash and there will be no justice between you. The knowledge of justice depends on the will to embrace. The relationship between justice and embrace goes deeper, however. Embrace is part and parcel of the very definition of justice. I am not talking about soft mercy tampering harsh justice, but about love shaping the very content of justice."*

Volf goes on to emphasise that practicing this kind of justice is grounded in the salvation activities of God in which evil is named, restrained and judged but within the context of gracious forgiveness and the eschatological reality of perfect justice in which the justice of this age will be transcended by freedom and love.



*Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation. p220. Abingdon Press, Nashville (1996).

John Piper Friday (...on saturday)

"Prayer pursues joy in fellowship with Jesus and in the power to share his life with others. And prayer pursues God's glory by treating him as the inexhaustible resevoir of hope and help. In prayer we admit our poverty and God's prosperity, our bankruptcy and his bounty, our misery and his mercy. Therefore, prayer highly exalts and glorifies God precisely by pursuing everything we long for in him and not in ourselves."

Desiring God. p150. Multnomah Press (1989).

Mute

These provocative words sent in by Jill W.
Psalm 115: 2-7

Why do the nations say,
"Where is their God?"
Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
But their idols are silver and gold,
made by the hands of men.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but they cannot see;
they have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but they cannot smell;
they have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but they cannot walk;
nor can they utter a sound with their throats.

Exclusion and Embrace – IV

Volf expounds the self-sacrifice involved in the new covenant, and so challenges our thinking on the way of seeking reconciliation in relationships.

"The 'blood' in which the new covenant was made is not simply the blood that holds up the threat of breaking the covenant or that portrays common belonging; it is the blood but of self-giving, even self-sacrifice. The one party has broken the covenant, and the other suffers the breach because it will not let the covenant be undone. If such suffering of the innocent party strikes us as unjust, in an important sense it is unjust. Yet the 'injustice' is precisely what it takes to renew the covenant. One of the biggest obstacles to repairing broken covenants is that they invariably entail deep disagreements over what constitutes a breach and who is responsible for it. Partly because of the desire to shirk the responsibilities that acceptance of guilt involves those who break the covenant do not (or will not) recognize that they have broken it. In a world of clashing perspectives and strenuous self-justifications, of crumbling commitments and strong animosities, covenants are kept and renewed because those who, from their perspective, have not broken the covenant are willing to do the hard work of repairing it. Such work is self-sacrificial; something of the individual or communal self dies in performing it. Yet the self by no means perishes, but is renewed in the truly communal self, fashioned in the image of the triune God who will not be without the other."*



*Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation. p155. Abingdon Press, Nashville (1996).

Teenage affluenza is spreading fast.

Well worth a view, just in case you forgot about the rest of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZz6ICzpjI

Don't think too much...?

Check out this 'opinion' article in the herald by Lisa Pryor. Is it just me, or is the gist of her opinion that no-one should (or does) think too much about what they believe, which is why we all have equally valid beliefs. I would note, however, her bitterness about her previous church experience and her pleasure in the publishing success of the militant atheists Dawkins and Hitchings. This is, in my opinion, simply space filler for the Herald. Surely there is more quality writing out there than this?


http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/ah-the-fervour-in-returning-to-my-flock/2007/07/06/1183351452264.html

Grace

Who am I?
What have I done?
Is this just a game?
Then I've got nowhere to run.

The blood cries out.
My bones dried out.
Where is my good?
Judgement pronounced.

Then it's your grace when you come to me.
You pick me out and bring me in.
You lift me up and draw me near.
You talk to me and you walk with me.
You hold my hand I find relief.
I love you... Lord.

The blood cries out.
My bones dried out.
Where is my good?
Judgement pronounced.

Then it's your grace when you come to me.
You pick me out and bring me in.
You lift me up and draw me near.
You talk to me and you walk with me.
You hold my hand I find relief.
I love you... Lord.

Exclusion and Embrace – III

Volf emphasises the centrality of the crucified Christ in his reflections on the way to reconciliation between enemies.

“At the heart of the cross is Christ’s stance of not letting the other remain an enemy and creating space in himself for the offender to come in. Read as the culmination of the larger narrative of God’s dealing with humanity, the cross says that despite its manifest enmity toward God humanity belongs to God; God will not be God without humanity. “While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son,” writes the Apostle Paul (Romans 5:10). The cross is the giving up of God’s self in order to not give up on humanity; it is the consequence of God’s desire to break the power of human enmity without violence and receive human beings into divine communion. The goal of the cross is the dwelling of human beings “in the Spirit”, “in Christ”, and “in God”. Forgiveness is therefore not the culmination of Christ’s relation to the offending other; it is the passage leading to embrace. The arms of the crucified are open – a sign of a space in God’s self and an invitation for the enemy to come in.”*



*Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation. p126. Abingdon Press, Nashville (1996).

John Piper Friday

When commenting on Galations 2:10, Piper concludes;

"The point is: the apostles were agreed on the importance of ministry to the poor because it flows from the center of the gospel—the cross—and because Jesus lived it out. The apostles were eager to bless the poor. It was part of their foundational ministry. I assume therefore it should be a crucial commitment in the church today—in missions and in the ongoing ministry of the church."

Sermon - Gospel to the Nations, Generosity to the Poor. October 23, 2005.

Oil - security - war?

It is reported in the herald that the government is open about the fact that oil supply is a factor in Australia's involvement in Iraq.

What concerns me is the connection drawn between economic security and the role of the defence force. Particularly in the context of a pre-emtive action like that taken by the 'coalition of the willing' in Iraq.

Exclusion and Embrace – II

Volf argues brilliantly, and might I say courageously, for the non-innocence of all parties (perpetrators, victims and the ‘third-party’ observers) involved in conflict and violence*. He therefore establishes the primacy of undeserved grace in the work of reconciliation;

“Where does the ‘no-innocence’ perspective leave us? Gazing paralysed at a world in which “fair is foul and foul is fair”? Listlessly withdrawn from a world in which no improvement is possible, because every action is a shot in the dark? What gain does recognition of solidarity in sin bring? In addition to freeing us “from delusions about the perfectablility of ourselves and our institutions” (Wink, 1992), it pricks the balloons of the self-righteousness of perpetrator and victim alike and protects all from perpetuating evil in the name of presumed goodness. Solidarity in sin underscores that no salvation can be expected from an approach that rests fundamentally on the moral assignment of blame and innocence. The question cannot be how to locate ‘innocence’ either on the intellectual or social map and work our way toward it. Rather, the question is how to live with integrity and bring healing to a world of inescapable noninnocence that often parades as its opposite. The answer: in the name of the one truly innocent victim and what he stood for, the crucified Messiah of God, we should damask as inescapably sinful the world constructed around exclusive moral polarities – here, on our side, ‘the just’, ‘the pure’, ‘the innocent’, ‘the true’, ‘the good’, and there, on the other side, ‘the unjust’, ‘the corrupt’, ‘the guilty’, ‘the liars’, ‘the evil’ – and then seek to transform the world in which justice and injustice, goodness and evil, innocence and guilt, purity and corruption, truth and deception crisscross and intersect, guided by the recognition that the economy of undeserved grace has primacy over the economy of moral deserts. Under the conditions of pervasive noninnocence, the work of reconciliation should proceed under the assumption that, though the behaviour of a person may be judged as deplorable, even demonic, no-one should ever be excluded from the will of embrace, because, at the deepest level, the relationship to others does not rest on their moral performance and therefore cannot be undone by the lack of it.”**



*Volf carefully, however, differentiates what he calls solidarity in sin (the non-innocence of all parties) from equality of sin.
**Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation. pp84-85. Abingdon Press, Nashville (1996).

Desert

Tintoretto - Moses drawing water from the rock, 1577. (left)









Roberti - The Israelites gathering Manna, 1490. (right)

Exclusion and Embrace - I

I recently finished reading ‘Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation’ by Miroslav Volf. It is essentially a study into the social implications of the gospel, in particular how the gospel is to be manifested in the context of violence and conflict.
I found it to be a thoroughly engaging and challenging read. I thought I might share some of Volf’s analysis over the next few weeks.

When commenting on Paul’s solution to the particularity of God’s revelation to the Jewish nation, and God’s universal intent in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Volf develops a schema for understanding Christian cultural identity;

“What are the implications of the Pauline kind of Universalism? Each culture can retain its own cultural specificity; Christians need not “loose their cultural identity as Jew or Gentile and become one new humanity which is neither” (Campbell, 1991). At the same time, no culture can retain its own tribal deities; religion must be de-ethnicized so that ethnicity can be de-sacralized. Paul deprived each culture of ultimacy in order to give them all legitimacy in the wider family of cultures. Through faith one must ‘depart’ from one’s culture because the ultimate allegiance is given to God and God’s Messiah who transcend every culture. And yet precisely because of the ultimate allegiance to God of all cultures and to Christ who offers his ‘body’ as a home for all people, Christian children of Abraham can ‘depart’ from their culture without having to leave it (in contrast to Abraham himself who had to leave his ‘country’ and ‘kindred’). Departure is no longer a spatial category; it can take place within the cultural space one inhabits. And it involves neither a typically modern attempt to build a new heaven out of the worldly hell nor a typically postmodern restless movement that fears to arrive home. Never simply distance, a genuinely Christian departure is always also presence; never simply work and struggle, it is always already rest and joy.”*



*Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation. p49. Abingdon Press, Nashville (1996).

A good word...

com·ple·men·tar·i·ty [kom-pluh-men-tar-i-tee]
–noun
the quality or state of being complementary.
[Origin: 1910–15; complementar(y) + -ity]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)


com·ple·men·tar·i·ty (kŏm'plə-měn-tār'ĭ-tē)
n.
The state or quality of being complementary: "This is where the complementarity of the masculine and the feminine so acutely emerges. They are the necessary poles of a dialectic process" (Therese Namenek).
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.


complementarity
noun
1. a relation between two opposite states or principles that together exhaust the possibilities
2. the interrelation of reciprocity whereby one thing supplements or depends on the other; "the complementarity of the sexes"
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.


complementarity (kŏm'plə-mən-târ'ĭ-tē)
The concept that the underlying properties of entities (especially subatomic particles) may manifest themselves in contradictory forms at different times, depending on the conditions of observation; thus, any physical model of an entity exclusively in terms of one form or the other will be necessarily incomplete. For example, although a unified quantum mechanical understanding of such phenomena as light has been developed, light sometimes exhibits properties of waves and sometimes properties of particles (an example of wave-particle duality). See also uncertainty principle.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company.


com·ple·men·tar·i·ty (kmpl-mn-tr-t)
n.
The correspondence or similarity between nucleotides or strands of nucleotides of DNA and RNA molecules that allows precise pairing.
The affinity that an antigen and an antibody have for each other as a result of the chemical arrangement of their combining sites.
The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.


Main Entry: com·ple·men·tar·i·ty
Pronunciation: "käm-pl&-(")men-'tar-&t-E, -m&n-
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural -ties
: correspondence in reverse of part of one molecule to part of another: as a : the arrangement of chemical groups and electric charges that enables a combining group of an antibody to combine with a specific determinant group of an antigen or hapten b : the correspondence between strands or nucleotides of DNA or sometimes RNA that permits their precise pairing
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.