Gracious Christianity

Living the Love We Profess

Jacobsen, Douglas, Sawatsky, Rodney J.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781441206008
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What does our culture think of when the word Christian is mentioned? Unfortunately, stereotypes and misconceptions abound, and those who follow Christ are sometimes considered mean-spirited, narrow-minded, and uncharitable. Douglas Jacobsen and Rodney Sawatsky provide a blueprint for recovering a vibrant faith as they demonstrate how believers can manifest the fruit of the Spirit to a watching world. This book not only serves as an introduction to or review of the basics of the Christian faith but also shows how true, Spirit-led Christianity is a force for peace, justice, and goodness in today's volatile and violent world.

1

God and Creation

The Christian story begins with God as Creator and the world as creation. Our lives are enfolded within a vast and magnificent domain, and gracious Christianity is rooted in a natural sense of gratitude and awe. We are not our own makers. We are dependent on forces beyond ourselves, and we exist interdependently with everyone and everything around us. We are living in someone else’s world. Our natural response, when these thoughts cross our minds, is reverence.

But Christians do not stop there. It is not simply creation that astounds us but the Creator behind the creation. Who is the Creator? What kind of God would do this? Why did God make the universe? Why and for what purposes did God make us?

The God Who Made the World

God did not create the world out of need or necessity. Rather, God made the world out of generous, self-giving love. Everything in the world exists because God loves it, and God’s deepest will for the world is joy in the presence of its loving Creator. People do not often think of God as creating the world for joy and enjoyment, and Christians certainly do not always live in joyful awareness of God, but the Westminster Catechism gets it right when it says that our chief end and purpose is “to glorify God, and fully enjoy him forever.”1 Christians worship a God who desires our deepest well-being and, indeed, our joy.

God created the world beautiful and good. In fact, the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis says that after God created the world, God looked at everything that had been made and said it was not just good but very good.

The God who created the universe—the God who gives life to all the plants and animals and single-celled creatures that live on the earth, the God who loves every human being who walks this planet—is a God who does things very well.

The God who created the world is a God who delights in wonder, beauty, and joy. When God made the world, all those qualities of life were braided into the very fabric of the universe. There is now no getting them out. It is true that sin and evil have deformed God’s creation, making the world we live in far from perfect. But however much we mess things up, truth, beauty, and goodness can never be fully eliminated from this world.

Is it surprising to think of the world as made for joy? Do you set aside time to celebrate life’s goodness? How much do you think evil has deformed the world? How much goodness is left?

Some versions of Eastern Orthodox theology suggest that for God to create the world, God first had to voluntarily shrink back a bit from filling all reality in order to make space for the world to exist. God scrunched back, like people in a crowded elevator, clearing a space for something else to enter.

This way of speaking about God is metaphorical. God is spirit and does not literally take up space like a physical object. Therefore, God cannot literally shrink in order to make room for the world. But the image is winsome, and, like any good metaphor, instructive. In the act of creation, God graciously invited something else to exist—something entirely new, something different and distinct from God’s own self. In an act of stunning humility, God stepped back to allow space for the world to blossom into being.

Although the notion that God somehow shrank to make room for creation is an image that does not come directly from the Bible, it is in keeping with how God later underwent a process of “self-emptying” in order to squeeze into human existence in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (see Phil. 2:6–8). Both acts bespeak God’s extraordinary graciousness in accommodating us. In fact, the essence of graciousness is the accommodation of others, and God modeled that in creation long before God required it of us.

The world did not, however, spring into existence all on its own simply because God opened a space where that could happen. Creation required God’s active involvement. The book of Genesis says that God spoke and only then did the world begin to be. This image of God speaking the world into existence is, like the notion of shrinking, a metaphor. But in a vivid way, it depicts God as the life-giving source of the universe.

The Bible’s description of creation is poetic, couched in the language and thought forms of people living in the ancient Near East. It addresses the deep issues of the world’s meaning and purpose and provides only sketchy information, at best, about the mechanics of how the world came to be. The Bible’s scientific implications have, however, become a hot topic in many churches, communities, and school boards across the country. Some Christians claim that the Bible can be used to judge scientific data about the creation of the world, and, unfortunately, they sometimes make those claims in an angry and ungracious way.

How do you understand the relationship between science and faith? How much or how little science do you think is included in the Genesis story of creation?

Fertile and friendly conversation can take place between science and faith,2 but science is a form of modern scholarship, and Christians are still trying to figure out how the older language of the Bible relates to this relatively new field of human inquiry. Sometimes Christians may need to oppose certain uses or tentative conclusions of science. For example, this was clearly the case during the early 1900s when the so-called science of eugenics asserted, following the laws of evolution, that the weaker members of society should be sterilized or allowed to die so that the human species as a whole could advance more quickly. Such thinking is utterly at odds with a Christian commitment to care for those who most need our help. But Christians welcome knowledge obtained through ethical scientific research, including information about the origins and development of the natural world.

The real importance of the Genesis creation narrative is found not in its scientific details or lack of such details but in the claims it makes regarding the character of the Creator and the underlying nature of the creation. Genesis tells us that God gave life to the world as a free and wonderful gift. Existence is a blessing. God created the world out of love and for the purposes of love. This positive perspective—a loving God who forms a delightful world—is what makes the Christian view distinctive.

The One and Only God

Christianity teaches that the God who created the world is the only God who exists. Like Jews and Muslims, Christians are radical monotheists. Because of that, Christians avoid calling God their own. God does not belong to us; rather, we belong to God. And the God we belong to loves the entire world. The one and only God of the universe transcends our narrow loyalties, and when we seek to follow that God, we are inevitably stretched in the process.

God is different and bigger and better than we are. This led Karl Barth, one of the twentieth-century’s greatest theologians, to refer to God as the “Wholly Other.”3 God is so much bigger and better than we can imagine that all our little boxes of understanding deconstruct when we try to force God into them. Several millenia ago, the writer of Isaiah depicted God as saying, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:8–9).

Because God is Wholly Other, some Christians have adopted a style of talking about God that focuses on how much we do not know rather than on what we know. This is sometimes called apophatic theology or negative theology. The term negative theology may grate on our ears, but negative theology makes an important point: Nothing we can say about God comes close to capturing the awesomeness of God’s being. Moreover, our propensity to talk too much about God can get us into trouble. Human beings, including many Christians, are prone to refashion God in their own image. We want a pliable God who does our will, so we reenvision God in ways that fit our tastes. In the process, God’s glory is often diminished and God’s character distorted. Negative theology critiques these images we fashion for ourselves and suggests that silence about God may often be more appropriate than overly eager speech.

How much do we know about God? How much do we need to know? What are the most important things you would claim to know about God?

Historically, however, most Christians have felt it necessary and worthwhile to try to describe God in a positive manner, even if none of our words can adequately describe God’s full perfection, splendor, and beauty. In this kind of positive theology, the focus is on what we can validly affirm about God. So, for example, Christians have rightly said that God is the Creator. God is our Savior. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and holy. God hears our prayers; indeed, God hears the prayers of all people. And God judges justly.

Positive theology seeks to distinguish between better and more accurate ways of speaking about God and ways of speaking that may, in one way or another, partially misrepresent who God is. For example, to call God “king” misses the fact that God is also our friend and lover. The notion of kingship all by itself is too hierarchical and authoritarian to stand alone, since it does not capture these other more intimate aspects of how God relates to us. On the other hand, to call God simply a friend does not do justice to God’s awesomeness and transcendence. No single word or image will ever suffice, which is why the Bible uses so many images to portray God’s character and attributes.

In evaluating the language of positive theology, many factors come into play, including intelligent biblical interpretation and logical thinking, but there is also a practical test that seems to apply. The New Testament says quite bluntly, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8). If that is true, it seems like a good idea to assess what we say about God in light of this rule of love. Views about God that encourage us to love others are more likely on target than those that cause us to hate others or to hold them in disdain. An accurate view of God will never diminish our love for others.

The Trinity

Christians are monotheists who believe there is one God and one God alone. Yet, historically, Christians have also been trinitarians. The Trinity describes a threeness that exists within God’s oneness, a threeness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bound inseparably together.

God’s threeness is reflected, in some way, in the threefold activity of creation: God made the world, God sustains the world, and God will ultimately fully redeem the world and make it perfect. Christians often associate the original act of creation with God the Father, the ongoing work of sustaining the world with the Holy Spirit, and the process of redeeming the world with the Son.

But that way of speaking about God and God’s activity in the world divides things up too much. In fact, Christians have historically said it is wrong to ascribe one action to the Father and another to the Spirit or the Son. When God acts, all three persons of the Trinity act together. Thus, the Spirit and the Son are involved in creation, and the Father and the Son have a role to play in the work of sustaining the world, and the Father and the Spirit are involved in redemption.

Christians often use the personal language of Father and Son to refer to the first two persons of the Trinity because this language portrays so powerfully the indissoluble, family-like bonds that hold the Trinity together. The point of using the language of Father and Son is not to describe God as male. The Bible includes many descriptions of God that are feminine along with masculine ones. Obviously, Jesus was a male, but God is clearly beyond gender. The language of Father and Son is a metaphorical way of describing the degree of intimacy that exists among all three persons of the Trinity.

How do you picture God? What images of God do you have in mind when you pray? In what ways does God seem male, female, or beyond gender? Do you focus more on God the Father, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit?

Over the centuries, Christians have struggled to understand the Trinity. Everyone has agreed that the full mystery of the Trinity is beyond human comprehension, but in the long conversation of Christian faith, some descriptions have been affirmed while others have been rejected as unhelpful or simply wrong.

Among the rejected options is a position called modalism. Modalists believe the threeness of God is like water, which can exist as ice, liquid, or steam. The external form, or mode, of the water changes, but the molecular substance of the water remains the same. Similarly, God can appear externally to us as Father, Son, or Spirit, but internally God is always the same and never changes. When first suggested, modalism seemed like a reasonable analogy of God’s threeness in oneness, but it was eventually rejected for two important reasons. First, it is an impersonal analogy with the potential to misrepresent the dynamic and personal reality of God. God is not a thing but a person. Second, modalism implies that the trinitarian character of God is really a matter of shape-shifting. If we followed this analogy literally, we would reach the conclusion that God can exist only as one person of the Trinity at any given point in time. Since Christians believe God has always existed as both three and one, the water analogy, along with all similar shape-shifting analogies, was jettisoned.

One explanation of the Trinity that eventually was embraced by the mainstream Christian movement is the famous analogy of love developed by Augustine. Augustine, who was bishop of the city of Hippo in northern Africa (present-day Algeria) during the early 400s, said that the act of loving another person always involves three components: a lover, the person who is loved, and the love that the lover feels for the beloved. For love to be real, he argued, all three elements must be present. Applied to the Trinity, Augustine said, God the Father is like the lover, God the Son is like the beloved, and God the Holy Spirit is like the love that binds the lover and the beloved together.4

Some people think Christians are polytheists who worship three gods rather than one. How would you explain the Trinity to someone who thought that?

Augustine’s analogy of love is not perfect—no metaphor or analogy ever is—but it is helpful because it reflects the personal nature of the Trinity and affirms the simultaneity of God’s threeness and oneness. It is also valued because it makes sense of the New Testament declaration that God is love. This is a somewhat odd statement. The Bible does not say that “God loves,” which is what we might expect, but rather that “God is love.” What could it possibly mean for God to be love and not merely to be loving?

Augustine’s analogy explains how love can be the essence of God’s being. Love always involves reaching out to others. God reaches out to us in love in much the same way we love others. But Augustine says that long before God’s love became extended to others, it already existed in infinite intensity within the Trinity itself. Love is what holds the Trinity together. It is what makes the threeness of God a singularity. The trinitarian God literally is love. Love is not merely one personality trait among others that describes a part of who God is. Love defines the essence of God’s being, a love that God extended to the world in creation.

While love is clearly central to who God is, what other character traits would you include in a description of God? How do these other traits relate to the idea that God is love?

Practical Implications of the Trinity

While people like Augustine made every effort to explain things clearly, the language of the Trinity can still become quite confusing, especially when debated by theologians. Theological debates are often important, but they involve a great deal of technical language that can sound like gibberish. Because of that technical language, the British writer Dorothy Sayers worried that people in the church pews might conclude that “the Father is incomprehensible, the Son incom...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: What Is Gracious Christianity?
• 1: God and Creation
• 2: Human Nature
• 3: Hearing God’s Voice
• 4: The Fullness of Salvation
• 5: The Spirit and Life
• 6: Being Church
• 7: The Bible
• 8: The Future
• Conclusion
• Notes