Keeping a thoroughly Trinitarian view of our Salvation

Came across a good post on Exiled Preacher. It's a summary of Professor Donald Macleod's (of the Free Church College Edinburgh) lecture on 'Practical Trinitarianism', where he set out to highlight some of the pastoral implications of the Doctrine of the Trinity. One of his points concern 'The Trinity and Soteriology', and I reproduce the paragraph below:

In traditional systematics, distinct aspects of the work of salvation are often attributed to each person of the Trinity. The Father chooses, the Son redeems by his blood and the Spirit applies the work of salvation. But this neat pattern does not reflect the witness of Scripture. Each aspect of salvation is thoroughly trinitarian. The Father chose us in Christ through sanctification of the Spirit. In the incarnation the Father sent the Son into the world as man by the power of the Holy Spirit. At the cross, the Son offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit. In terms of the application of redemption, God made us alive together with Christ when we were born again by the Holy Spirit. Eschatologically, we shall be raised to life and glory by the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead. Systematics should reflect the trinitarian concerns of Scripture when seeking to construct a truly biblical account of soteriology.

Professor Donald Macleod's reminder is both insightful and timely. I'm thinking of today's criticism against Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) that is often held out - that what happened on the cross was 'cosmic child abuse' as Jesus the inncocent Son was being punished for no wrong of his; that such an act, far from showing God's justice, actually smacks of injustice since an innocent party pays for the wrongdoing of another party etc. What lies at the heart of the failure of these criticisms is that they have not taken into account that it is the One God who is Trinity that has carried out the atonement. God the Father and Jesus the Son are not two separate parties (and the Spirit often goes missing in such an account of the atonement); but that Father, Son and Spirit together form one party in the act of the atonement. In the words of Karl Barth, "God entered into His own wrath." God (in the person of the Father) deals with his own wrath and right response to sin by God (in the person of the Son) offering Himself as an act of atonement on the cross through God (in the person of the Spirit) perfecting that work of obedience and the bond of unity within the Godhead (Heb 9:14). Tis the mystery! Seen in this light, the cross actually provides an insight into the Trinitarian relationships within the Godhead, and such is the basis of the approach taken in Jurgen Moltmann's classic The Crucified God.

(For the full article by Professor Donald Macleod, refer to http://exiledpreacher.blogspot.com/2009/03/donald-macleod-on-practical.html)

In what way can we speak of Scripture as a Metanarrative (or Metadrama)?

I’m keenly aware that in order to ‘harvest the drama metaphor’, we first need to ask the prior question - can we actually speak of the Bible’s story as a metanarrative, or taking it one step further, a metadrama?

In this regard, Richard Bauckham’s essay ‘Reading Scripture as a Coherent Storey’, in The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 38-53, is insightful. Bauckham highlights that opposition to the idea of reading Scripture as a unified narrative stems from two perspectives – such a reading does not do justice to the diversity of biblical texts in terms of its message and its genre; and such a reading seems to smack of the oppressive metanarrative which the postmodern audience are adverse to.

For the first perspective, Bauckham recognises that while the Bible contains material that is non-narrative – which in its widest category would include the prophets and apostolic letters – it is not hard to see that these material constantly refer, sometimes even summarising and retelling parts of the larger narrative. “The biblical narrative of God, his people, and the world structures their theology and is presupposed in the way they address the present and the future.” (p.39). The apocalypses (e.g. Daniel, Revelation) presuppose a unified narrative in envisioning its eschatological conclusion; and books like Song of Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, while seeming to lack connection to the story of Israel, nonetheless is framed around a theological context which ‘recognises God’s general relationship as sovereign Creator to the whole creation and all people’ (p.39).

In addressing the second perspective, Bauckham first highlights the reason for the postmoderns' adversity to metanarratives. Citing French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard, Bauckham shows that postmoderns see metanarratives as any ‘totalising theory that aims to subsume all events, all perspectives, and all forms of knowledge in a comprehensive explanation’ (p.45). Such metanarratives are often seen as the birth child of the enlightenment, with a heavy emphasis on human rationality towards achieving a universal criteria by which to order society and to liberate humanity through technology. The result is necessarily authoritarian and oppressive, since such metanarratives subsume differences by only suppressing them – that’s why postmoderns are so adverse to them (p.46). Bauckham’s counter-position is summarised below:

• What justifies the usage of metanarrative to describe the Bible’s story is that this story is a story about the meaning of the whole of reality. Bauckham states, “Just as surely as it must be disentangled from the modern metanarratives of human rationale mastery of nature and history, so it cannot be reduced to an unpretentious local language game in the pluralism of postmodernity.” (p.48). The biblical story makes a thoroughly universal claim, which combines the ‘universality of the one Creator and Lord of all things with the particularity of this God’s identification of himself as the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ’ (p.48). Seen from another perspective, there is too much at stake to give up the term ‘metanarrative’. As Webster states, “[the metanarrative] is so deeply embedded in the canonical texts of the Christian faith that it is almost impossible to envisage forms of Christian belief and practice, forms of theology, prayer and pastoral nurture from which that theology has been excised.” (Word and Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 273). In this sense, we should not run away from calling the biblical story a 'metanarrative', for to do so would mean us succumbing to popular postmodern thinking and inevitably denying the authority of our God who has revealed Himself to us.
  
• The way forward, rather, is to clarify and redefine what kind of 'metanarrative' the biblical story is, distinguishing it from the kind of modern oppressive ‘metanarrative’ which postmoderns are adverse to. For one, the biblical metanarrative is driven more by the initiative and freedom and purpose of God than by the mastery and actions of men (which characterise the modern metanarratives) “Human agency, of course, is important and is celebrate where appropriate, but its success follows divine initiative and requires divine concurrence.” (Bauckham, 49) Understanding is also found in divine revelation rather than purely an exercise of human rationality. A good way this point is seen is in the problem of good and evil. According to the biblical metanarrative, ‘closure – meaning a finally satisfactory resolution of the problem of God’s goodness in the world – is found in trust and hope, not in some explanation of the world that makes sense of evil, and still less in the claim of human power to eradicate the evil that human reason has understood’ (p.51). For another, the biblical metanarrative itself often confronts other kinds of metanarratives – that of the other existing imperial and militant empires of its day – but yet not falling into the vicious cycle where the oppressed turns into the oppressor (p.51-52).
  

All in all, Bauckham’s conclusion is insightful – we need to continue to see the biblical story as a metanarrative, which tells of God’s action of creating, judging, and saving the world, but yet reclaiming this biblical story in ‘a way that expresses its noncoercive claim to truth without imposing premature eschatological closure’ (p.53). The biblical metanarrative is one that ‘invites trust, not mastery’ (p.49); one that ‘is promissory, not possessive, in character’ (Webster, 275).

Harvesting the Drama Metaphor for Biblical Theology – Review of The Drama of Scripture

Following on from yesterday’s post about ‘harvesting the drama metaphor’, here’s the first book review on Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen’s The Drama of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004).

Biblical Theology (the term has many different usages, but here is used to denote the central or key theological message that comes from considering salvation history as presented in the OT and NT Scriptures) has had its long history, with its own ups and downs among the scholarly community. But for the last 30 years or so, Biblical Theology has received new attention and focus, especially from the likes of scholars like B.S. Childs and Australians William Dumbrell and Graeme Goldsworthy (see C.H.H. Scobie’s article ‘History of Biblical Theology’ in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology). Several proposals have been suggested for the center theological message - ranging from Covenant (Dumbrell) to the Kingdom of God (Goldsworthy, Vaughan Roberts) to the story of Israel (C. Marvin Pate, J. Scott Duvall, J. Daniel Hays et. al.).

Enter The Drama of Scripture. In one sense, this book does not suggest anything radically new – it sees the central theological message to consist in Covenant (OT) and Kingdom (NT). Likening the whole book of Scripture to a grand cathedral, Bartholomew and Goheen (abbreviated henceforth as B&G) sees ‘covenant and kingdom to be the double door of the same main entrance to the scriptural cathedral, evoking the same reality (p.24)’. But what is new is the way B&G casts the whole exercise of biblical theology against the backdrop of the drama metaphor – biblical theology is understanding God’s ‘meta-drama’ of which we have been graciously invited through his grace to be a part of now, i.e. we are actually in this drama NOW. For a fitting participation, two things are needed – to know the story that has gone before us, and to know how this story is going to end.

B&G begin with an introductory chapter where they outline the importance of stories or grand narratives to understanding who we are and hence what we are to do. Following the lead of missiologist Leslie Newbigin and philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, they argue that we can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ if we can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story do I find myself a part of?’. In another words, the grand narratives or stories which seek to explain the way the world actually is affects us, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. In this regard, following the lead of N.T. Wright, they argue that Christianity offers a story which is the true story of the whole world. Adapting the basic structure provided by Wright, they argue that God’s story can be thought of as a story (or drama) with six acts -

Act 1: God Establishes His Kingdom: Creation
Act 2: Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall
Act 3: The King Chooses Israel: Redemption Initiated
Act 4: The Coming of the King: Redemption Accomplished
Act 5: Spreading the News of the King: The Mission of the Church
Act 6: The Return of the King: Redemption Completed

B&G suggest that we live in Act 5, and a large part of the drama in Act 5 is ‘missing’ or is being filled out right now; and it is for the actors (us) to improvise a suitable scene, preparing for the conclusion God has revealed, toward which our play must move (p.26).

In the rest of the chapters, B&G go through key events and their theological motifs from each of these Acts. They provide quite an adequate and good coverage of these events and their theological interpretation within each of these acts, sometimes providing rather interesting reflections. The theme of Kingdom connects these events and theological subthemes somewhat loosely as compared to another Biblical Theology book like Goldsworthy’s According to Plan; and so in this sense this book complements Goldsworthy’s earlier work. It is in Act 5 that B&G pick up again on the drama metaphor – this is where we join in and become part of the drama – by being part of the church. The church is the ‘sphere’ or ‘location’ by which we are drawn by God’s grace to participate in His story, His drama. And the main direction in which the church plays out its role in this drama is in continuing the mission of Israel, Jesus and the Early Church – a mission which belongs to God Himself; a mission which consists in nothing less than His Kingdom extending to the entire New Creation itself. In another words, ‘mission’ here is not just reduced to evangelism or cross-cultural missions, but

“[...] when we grasp that the salvation of the kingdom restores the creation, and all of it, we see that witness to God’s kingdom is as wide as creation. Witness will mean embodying God’s renewing power in politics and citizenship, economics and business, education and scholarship, family and neighbourhood, media and art, leisure and play. It is not just that we carry out evangelism in these areas of life. ]...] It means that the way we live as citizens, consumers, students, husbands, mothers, and friends witness to the restoring power of God.” (p.201)

B&G follow on in a unique way by citing the stories of three individuals whose lives have been affected by this bigger meta-drama of which they have come to be a part of – a businessman; an ecologist; and a student and her friend, who is an agriculturist. In all this, eschatology plays an important role. “As we are pushed forward in our mission by the impetus and forward movement that we saw in Jesus’ own words and works while he lived among us, we are also pulled forward by hopeful expectation of the future kingdom to be revealed when Jesus returns.” (p.206)

I conclude by providing three comments on this book. To begin – and here, it is a positive point - I have to admit very frankly that I am attracted to B&G’s way of casting Biblical Theology against the backdrop of the Drama Metaphor. Not that I have not benefited from Goldsworthy’s earliest books – God alone knows how much I have benefited and grown in my love for Him and His Word through the works of Goldsworthy – but is always very hard to run away from the thought that says ‘I have understood Biblical Theology when I have understood the Kingdom of God and how it is played out in every stage of salvation history... or I have understood Biblical Theology when I have understood the covenants’. In another words (epistemologically), Biblical Theology seems to be a discipline that is very much locked up in the realm of knowledge, and we have to take that deliberate and extra step in applying Biblical Theology in our lives. Another way of recasting the scenario, how many of us when teaching Biblical Theology in our churches end up teaching the main themes in the Bible – Kingdom of God, covenant – with the result of our participants walking out of the seminar feeling they have understood biblical theology because they have understood the concepts, but feeling deep within that missing gap in terms of seeing how this impacts their lives? But here, with the Drama Metaphor, Biblical Theology becomes a lot more ‘alive’, it seems to have grown ‘feet’ – biblical theology now no longer has to do exclusively with knowing; but more of knowing for right living, right participation in God’s drama of which we find ourselves involved in. What was previously disjoined as a two-stage process now becomes joined.

But this is also where the second comment comes in – I feel B&G could have gone a lot further in developing the Drama Metaphor and how this particularly affects the way we understand Biblical Theology. The chapters covering Acts 1-5 (up to the early church) are almost written like a survey of key events or themes and their theological significance (sometimes following the chronology of salvation history e.g. for the OT bits; and others following major topics or headings – e.g. the miracles, parables and journeys of Jesus); but little is drawn out as to how these events affect our living now – or to carry on the drama language – how these events affect our improvisation in God’s drama now. Rather B&G wait till the end before showing us how the whole story affects us in the broad way outlined above. Even in the above broad outline, I think an important area is missing – that of ethics. Of course I can be quite rightly accused of being overly harsh in my comment – afterall, B&G didn’t set out to write a systematic theology or doctrine textbook – but here’s where the point hits home: perhaps a better way forward in considering biblical theology (especially against this drama background) is via a ‘doctrinal’ approach, i.e. as we move along salvation history with its key moments, highlight key doctrines that arise which affect our living (or improvisation) now. In another words, Biblical Theology almost becomes like a bridge discipline to bring out doctrine or systematic theology from our biblical studies. Afterall, if biblical theology is understanding the whole drama for a fitting participation now, then as Vanhoozer suggests in the Drama of Doctrine, doctrine could be the very thing or the very connector which provides direction for that fitting participation. Exciting ideas; but all for another time, another place, another post.

My third comment – and I have to admit here it is a disappointment – is the almost complete silence on the theme of Jesus’ substitutionary death and atonement for our sin. Instead, the Christus Victor view is presented as the almost exclusive theological view of Jesus’ death and the defeat of God’s enemies. This is surprising considering that the doctrine of sin is well explained in the chapter describing Act 2 – sin is presented as the problem. Jesus’ substitutionary atoning death gets a slight mention in the section describing Paul; but other than that, is almost silent in the rest of the chapter, especially the chapter concerning the person and work of Jesus. While I can be accused of importing my ‘theological framework’ into the equation here instead of considering the message of the person and work of Jesus as it actually arises out of the Scriptures, I think it is hard to deny that the suffering servant of Isaiah played a vital role in Jesus’ understanding of his own death and his mission (for a good exploration of this theme, refer to Peter Bolt’s The Cross From a Distance (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004)). Surprisingly, the suffering servant is not even mentioned in the section describing the prophets – a somewhat glaring omission.

Overall, I would recommend this book – not as a first book on Biblical Theology, but nonetheless a very good complement to go along with some other more established Biblical Theology books like Goldsworthy’s According to Plan (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1991), or my personal favourite, Vaughan Robert’s God’s Big Picture (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001).

Harvesting the Drama Metaphor

I’m beginning a new series of blog articles, all exploring how we can harvest the ‘drama metaphor’ for the three disciplines of biblical theology, ethics, and doctrine. The impetus really came from discovering three books which uses the drama metaphor to apply it to the three areas of biblical theology, ethics and doctrine. They are (respectively) Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen’s The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004); Samuel Wells’ Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004); and Kevin Vanhoozer’s The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2005). Basically, the Drama metaphor seeks to see the gospel or salvation history as God's great drama, by which we become involved and participate in through His grace. The plan is to post a review of each of these books in turn, with other related posts interspersed in between. I have no idea how long this will take, but the aim of this exercise is to test the viability of the drama metaphor as a means of connecting these three disciplines together. If it is indeed viable, then the drama metaphor, properly ‘harvested’, could go quite some distance in providing a seamless connection and application of these three disciplines into our lives and the lives of our congregation members. Stay tuned!