Monthly Archives: May 2010

Barth, church, mission

Posted by on May 31, 2010 Comments Off

More apropos comments from Karl Barth on the church and/as mission:

And now, finally, we can put the question and answer it from a very different standpoint.  The direction which was peculiar to the apostles and which we find in Scripture involved for them a particular and highly individual attitude and way of existence which we can only describe as supreme realism.  For them their discipleship, apostolate, authority, power and mission was not an end in itself.  From first to last — at this point we are forced back to our key thought — it was absolutely a matter of their service, their ministry as heralds.  As their distinctive title ‘apostle’ shows us, they were sent out to preach the Gospel in the world, a light which had been kindled to give light to all that are in the house (Matt. 5:15) — nothing more.  The character given to them is not great or significant in itself.  Not even in the highest conceivable sense is it a matter of their own good or ill, of their own honour, or even of the self-reposing structural importance and dignity of the work which they have to accomplish in this character.  Their being and their work both point beyond themselves.  Their field is the world, and they are only sowers who pass over it.  They renounce any self-grounded or self-reposing rightness or importance of their distinctive being and activity.  It is the special direction in which they look, to the One who has made them His and whom they have recognised as theirs, which forces them to make this renunciation.  It cannot be otherwise than that even in this renunciation they should be a normative pattern to the community gathered by their ministry.  As an apostolic Church the Church can never in any respect be an end in itself, but, following the existence of the apostles, it exists only as it exercises the ministry of a herald.  It builds itself up itself and its members in the common hearing of the Word of God which is always new, in common prayer, in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in the practice of its inner fellowship, in theology.  But it cannot forget that it cannot do these things simply for its own sake, but only in the course of its commission — only in an implicit and explicitly outward movement to the world with which Jesus Christ and in His person God accepted solidarity, for which he died, and in which He rose again in indication of the great revelation of the inversion accomplished in Him.  For this reason the Church can never be satisfied with what it can be and do as such.  As His community it points beyond itself.  At bottom it can never consider its own security, let alone its appearance.  As His community it is always free from itself.  In its deepest and most proper tendency it is not churchly, but worldly — the Church with open doors and great windows, behind which it does better not to close itself in upon itself again by putting in pious stained-glass windows.  It is holy in its openness to the street and even the alley, in its turning to the profanity of all human life — the holiness which, according to Rom. 12:5, does not scorn to rejoice with them that do rejoice and to weep with them that weep. Its mission is not additonal to its being.  It is, as it is sent and active in its mission.  It builds up itself for the sake of its mission and in relation to it.  It does it seriously and actively as it is aware of its mission and in the freedom from itself which this gives.  If it is the apostolic Church determined by Scripture and therefore by the direction of the apostles, it cannot fail to exist in this freedom and therefore in a strict realism more especially in relation to itself.  And when it does this it cannot fail to be recognisable and recognised as apostolic and therefore as the true Church.  (CD IV/1, 724-25).

Baptismal identity

Posted by on May 28, 2010 22 comments

Rowan Williams has a great new lecture available online, which, to my mind is remarkably germane to some of our recent discussions about the nature of Christian identity:

. . . the identity of the baptized is not first and foremost a matter of some exclusive relationship to God that keeps us safe, as opposed to the rest of the vulnerable and unlucky world.  It is at one and the same time living both in the neighbourhood of the Father and in the neighbourhood of darkness.  That is why we speak of being baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, not simply baptized as a mark of our affinity or alignment with Jesus in a general way, not baptized as an external sign that we more or less agree with what Jesus says.  Our baptism is a stepping-into Jesus’ place with all that that entails.  And it means that Christian baptismal identity is—again at one and the same time—both a depth of human experience that brings us into at least the potential of intense, transfiguring love, the Trinitarian love in which Jesus himself lives, and a continuing experience of expectation, humility, penitence and hope.  The experience of the baptized is not the experience of endings, but of repeated new beginnings.  We don’t simply acquire a relationship with God the Father which then requires us to do nothing more.  On the contrary, to be baptized is to be constantly re-awakening our expectation, our penitence, our protest, our awareness that the chaos and darkness of the world is not what God wills; our awareness that we are colluding with that state of chaos which God does not will.  So as baptized persons we look constantly into ourselves, rediscovering over and over again the hope that comes out of true repentance.

Family problems & the church

Posted by on May 25, 2010 63 comments

You gotta give it to the great Texan when it comes issues regarding the role of “the family” in the Christian life:

The assumption that the family is an end in itself can only make the family and marriage more personally destructive. When families exist for no reason other than their own existence, they become quasi-churches, which ask sacrifices far too great and for insufficient reasons. The risk of families that demand that we love one another can be taken only when there are sustaining communities with sufficient convictions that can provide means to form and limit the status of the family. If the family does stand as a necessary check on the state, it does so because it first has a place in an institution that more determinatively stands against the state—the church. (After Christendom, 127)

Of course I could argue a few things about the way Hauerwas characterized the nature of the church here, but perhaps we’d do better if we simply took Hauerwas’s altogether appropriate chastening of the family here and extended it a step further:

The assumption that the church is an end in itself can only make the church more personally and communally destructive. When churches exist for no reason other than their own existence, they become quasi-nation-states, which ask sacrifices far too great and for insufficient reasons. The risks of being the church that demand that we love one another can be taken only when there is the miraculous work of the Spirit of Christ which transforms us, revealing the limit of our status as the church. If the church does stand as a necessary check on the state, it does so because it first has a place in an eschatological reality that more determinatively stands against, and has defeated all principalities and powers—the Kingdom of God.

Revolutionary Christianity

Posted by on May 25, 2010 5 comments

David Rensberger, in his helpful article, “Conflict and Community in the Johannine Letters” points out the deeply revolutionary and apocalyptic nature of the Joahnnine message, especially in relation to Christology and the ethics of agape:

The author of the Letters defends incarnational Christology not just because it is “what you heard from the beginning” (1 John 2:24), though that is part of his appeal, but because it rightly expresses the nature of the God who is love.What is at stake, in this author’s view, is not the authority of tradition but the most fundamental theological insight of Johannine Christianity: that God, out of love, entered fully into the human condition, risking and suffering death itself in order to bring life to human beings.

This is not an essentially conservative theological position. It radically challenged the established religious cultures of its time, both Jewish and Greco-Roman, by insisting on the freedom of God to act in a way utterly unanticipated by tradition, a way that upset not only commonplace theological and philosophical assumptions but hierarchical social structures as well. What is happening in 1 and 2 John is not so much a struggle against revolutionaries as a struggle within a revolution. Neither side questions that the way of God is contrary to the way of the world (though the author tries to associate the opponents with the world in 1 John 4:3-6). The battle is over how the revolution is to be conceived: in its original terms as radical divine intervention in the world, or in a new way as radical divine opposition to the world. In a sense, it is a struggle over how to maintain the purity of the radical Johannine way, whether by preserving the pure teaching “heard from the beginning” or by purifying it still further from contamination by the flesh. The Elder is trying to prevent, not the success of a revolution, but the diversion of a revolution onto a path that he fears may cause it to fail.

It never ceases to amaze me how deeply the Johannine corpus delves into the most fundamental issues of Christian faithfulness, never disentangling but always bringing to the fore the inextricable connection between Christological confession of Jesus as the fullness of God, come in the flesh, and the ethic of radical, self-giving love. All of this is predicated on God’s own descent into the world in Jesus, this radical divine intervention that can only, to my mind, be described as apocalyptic.

In Jesus God’s Trinitarian agape has invaded “the world” (i.e. the system of powers and principalities whose dominion over creation is predicated on the power of death) and created a rupture within it, a rupture of self-abandoning love that goes to the cross for others. And in the sending of the Spirit this Christic rupture of love continues to break into history, giving men and women to one another in this same pattern, rhythm of cruciform love, the love that seeks not its own but willingly lays itself down for the other. The church is the sign and sacrament of this rupture within the rule of the fallen powers, this rupture of agape, of self-abandonment into love. It is only by this radical gift of God’s Trinitarian love, the love that breaks through the powers of death, that we are given to one another, to live together within this Christic agape. And thus it is only in a common life of constant prayer and doxology by which we continually offer up our own our bodies (Rom 12:1-3) to God’s agape that we can live and embody the gospel, the gospel of self-abandoning love.

And it is precisely in this self-offering, this abandoning of ourselves in love for one another that we stand, fully in the utter fleshliness of the Jesus’s revolution. There is nothing more concrete, nothing more fleshly, nothing more earthly, than this love, the love of Jesus Christ, and him Crucified. Which for us always must mean “Love one another, just as I have loved you.”

Cruciform love

Posted by on May 24, 2010 5 comments

Yesterday I (re)read most of Michael Gorman‘s excellent book, Cruciformity. Gorman’s paraphrase of Paul’s encomium to love in 1 Corinthians 13 stuck out to me in a new way:

Cruciform love is faith in action. It does not seek its own good but the good of others. Indeed, for the good of others it renounces the use of certain rights. Cruciform love edifies others and never harms them, not even enemies. It never retaliates or uses violence. Cruciform love welcomes diversity. It is not judgmental, but neither is it tolerant of values antithetical to the cross, and at times it can be tough.

Cruciform love is hospitable and generous, especially to the poor and weak — those marginalized or rejected by others. If it has worldly status, it becomes downwardly mobile in order to life others up. It gives of itself and its material possessions. Cruciform love, in a word, continues the story of the cross in new times and places. Cruciform love is imaginative. (p. 267)

It is truly my hope, cry, and prayer that this sort of cruciform love, this truly radical agape will come to more fully define my life and the way I do theology. Thanks to Michael for the powerful words, words that shake me from the many compulsions and self-seeking movements I succumb to.

A Brief Apocalyptic Glossary

Posted by on May 22, 2010 5 comments

Some time ago, Dave Belcher posted a very helpful glossary on theology and apocalyptic. Given that La Perruque, sadly, is no longer active, and that Dave has retired from the blogosphere, he has kindly allowed me to repost it here for easier access. Thanks to Dave for this helpful post!

In the “Introduction” to his Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission, Theopolitical Visions (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009), Nate Kerr notes that the term “apocalyptic has enjoyed not only a wide but diverse re-emergence in the theological disciplines over the past half-century, but in the humanities more broadly as well, especially within the disciplines of sociology, political theory, history, and philosophy” (11).  He then goes on to say, however, that what is lacking in this re-emergence — and what his book specifically seeks to address — is an account of “the difference that Christian apocalyptic makes for how we see and live in history today” (12).  As a sketch of what will follow, Nate then moves on to offer five themes that orient how he uses “apocalyptic” in his own study — let me just list those briefly:

1. Christian apocalyptic stresses the otherness and the priority of God’s action (12).

2.Christian apocalyptic has its ‘centre of gravity’ in the history of Jesus Christ (13).

3. Christian apocalyptic is cosmic and historical in scope (13).

4. Christian apocalyptic is constitutive of the meaning and shape of Christ’s lordship (14).

5. Christian apocalyptic is doxological and missionary (15).

If you haven’t yet read Nate’s book, at least go check out the Introduction, where he gives a brief summary of each theme, but this thematics is really fleshed out in the whole book.  One thing you’ll notice there is that Nate relies on the work of J. Louis Martyn for certain formulations — Martyn appears in footnotes to themes 1 and 5; and, as I have been closely attuned to the work of Martyn lately, I began to reflect on the juxtaposition of Nate’s thematics with Martyn’s understanding of Christian apocalyptic as he frames it in his commentary on Galatians.  Again, just as with Nate’s book, to get the full meat of this you really need to go read all of Martyn’s commentary — and I’m serious, it’s superb in a way you cannot even imagine.  Because Martyn’s work equally lends to an understanding of Christian apocalyptic amidst this (re-)emergence of apocalyptic in the other disciplines of the arts, let me also list the pertinent entries for Martyn’s understanding of apocalyptic from the “glossary” located at the end of his mindblowingly amazing commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians (the kind of mindblowingly amazing that is able to cut straight through the obfuscation with a simplicity, clarity, and depth that are of the most penetrating sort).:

[The first five definitions set up a kind of counter-apocalyptic vision, a false gospel even, to which apocalyptic is cast as not only contrast but the truth of reality -- and as I have repeated here before, apocalyptic is first and foremost about the business of God's disclosure of the truth of reality]

Counter-apocalyptic vision:

forensic apocalyptic eschatology: a specific understanding of what is wrong, and a view of the future: Things have gone wrong because human beings have willfully rejected God, thereby bringing about death and the corruption and perversion of the world.  Given this self-caused plight, God has graciously provided the cursing and blessing Law as the remedy, thus placing before human beings the Two Ways, the way of death and the way of life.  Human beings are individually accountable before the bar of the Judge.  But, by one’s own decision, one can accept God’s Law, repent of one’s sins, receive nomistic forgiveness, and be assured of eternal life.  For at the last judgment, the deserved sentence of death will be reversed for those who choose the path of Law observance, whereas that sentence will be permanently confirmed for those who do not.  This kind of apocalyptic eschatology — focused on the religious doctrine of the Two Ways — is fundamental to the Teachers’ message.

Two Ways: Various strands of Jewish and Jewish-Christian thought in the first century preserved and interpreted the ancient portrait of God’s placing before Israel “the Way of life and the Way of death.”  To obey God’s commandments is to live; to disobey them is to die…Within this frame of reference, the Teachers used the terms “blessing” and “curse” to name the two actions of God they considered to be dependent on the path chosen by the Gentiles to whom they brought their message

nomistic: legal in the sense of being derived from the Law of Sinai

religion: the various communal, cultic means — always involving the distinction of sacred from profane — by which human beings seek to know and to be happily related to the gods or God.  Religion is thus a human enterprise that Paul sharply distinguishes from God’s apocalyptic act in Christ.

the Teachers: the Christian-Jewish evangelists who came into Paul’s Galatian churches after his departure.

Christian apocalyptic vision:

cosmological apocalyptic eschatology: a specific understanding of what is wrong, and a view of the future: Anti-God powers have managed to commence their own rule over the world, leading human beings into idolatry and thus into slavery, producing a wrong situation that was not intended by God and that will not be long tolerated by him.  For in his own time, God will inaugurate a victorious and liberating apocalyptic war against these evil powers, delivering his elect from their grasp and thus making right that which has gone wrong because of the powers’ malignant machinations.  This kind of apocalyptic eschatology is fundamental to Paul’s Galatians letter.

– J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 587-88.

In my mind, juxtaposing Martyn’s definitions with Nate’s thematics (while not collapsing them — there are differences that need to be drawn out) can provide a helpful orientation for a theological vision of apocalyptic thought, a vision which is ultimately God’s vision, as I tried to suggest in my commentaries on Apocalypse, and a vision to which I have attempted to submit my own work and thought lately.  Ultimately, engaging with Martyn’s and Nate’s work has disclosed for me the rather difficult truth that theology can be done only in a mode of doxology, which is never to be separated from mutual service to others in and through the community of faith.  Apocalyptic theology, then, operates in a mode of lived prayer.

The mystery of the poor

Posted by on May 22, 2010 3 comments

The mystery of the poor is prior to the ecclesial mission, and that mission is logically prior to the established church. What Jürgen Moltmann wrote many years ago is still true: “It is not that the Church ‘has’ a mission, but the reverse; Christ’s mission creates itself a Church. The mission should not be understood from the perspective of the Church, but the other way round.” It is not that the Church already existed, and later asked what to do for and with the poor, as if the Church were formally established prior to its relationship with them, or as if its way of carrying out that option were unrelated to the essence of the Church, which remains unchangeable throughout history.

Jon Sobrino, No Salvation Outside the Poor, 21).

The temptation of the church

Posted by on May 21, 2010 5 comments

The greatest structural temptation for the Church arises out of its relational character. On the one hand, the Church is entrusted with the tradition of the kingdom and the requirement to make the kingdom a reality; on the other hand it is not itself the kingdom. This combination of factors puts the Church in a situation of “concupiscence,” that is, of wanting to be, by identity, that which in fact it can only point to and serve, namely, the kingdom of God. In consequence, the possibility of conflict is always present; and when a particular situation clearly shows the difference and distance between Church and kingdom, the conflict breaks out—and cannot but break out—spontaneously. The discovery that the kingdom of God is the ultimate reality has brought an elemental truth to light: the Church, even in its entirety, is not absolute and therefore its structure is open to criticism.

~ Jon Sobrino, The True Church of the Poor, 202.

Conversations on “Just War”

Posted by on May 21, 2010 63 comments

For those who haven’t seen it yet, our own R.O. Flyer has a great review up at The Other Journal of Dan Bell’s recent book, Just War as Christian Discipleship. Here’s a quote to whet the ole appetite:

As Christians, our allegiance is first of all to Christ, not to the just war tradition. If the concern of Christian discipleship is ultimately faithfulness to Jesus of Nazareth, then neither the church community nor its many traditions are free from critique. In times of great moral uncertainty like ours, plumbing the depths of the wisdom of the theological tradition in a fresh manner can often open up fruitful paths of inquiry to help guide us in our contemporary context. Such plumbing, however, if it remains open to the voice of the Spirit, may lead us to call into question and even challenge the wisdom and faithfulness of our inherited moral and theological tradition. Although it is imperative that contemporary Christians listen with a spirit of generosity to our mothers and fathers in the faith, there may be times when, precisely because of our boundedness to Christ and with respect for the faith of our predecessors, we will be led to reject rather than retrieve a particular trajectory of thought taken in the past.

Interestingly Dan Bell has responded extensively in the comments, leading to further response from Ry and myself. Check out the conversation.

Donald Miller, Theology, and Relationship

Posted by on May 21, 2010 13 comments

Derrick, recently returned in a sustained manner to the blogosphere, has stirred up the waters with a post (rightly) critiquing Christian hipster and coffeehouse favorite author, Donald Miller on the issue of theology, relationship, and the knowledge of God. Miller, for his part seems to have responded, both via blog and tweet.

Derrick, of course, is right, at least in my judgment. The problem with contrasting  “theological” pursuit with “relational” encounter with God is that it fails to see how utterly theological realtionality is. There is no such thing as some sort of “bare relation” that does involve theological reflection. Indeed, on this point I’ll go out and surprise all of you by saying that Milbank is absolutely right, everything is theological, whether it is acknowledge or not.

Of course Milbank wasn’t the first to come up with that, but still.

P.S. If you want something deeper and more interesting than Donald Miller critique, though I suggest Derrick’s most recent post on deification and ontology in Maximus the Confessor.

Revelation and mission

Posted by on May 20, 2010 6 comments

Michael Gorman has a good post up on the Book of Revelation and its view of mission. Here’s just part of it:

“Come out” is not a summons to escape, and the spirituality of Revelation is not an escapist spirituality. The withdrawal is not so much a physical exodus as a theopolitical one, an escape from civil religion and the idolatry of power-worship. It is a creative, self-imposed but Spirit-enabled departure from certain values and practices, which may entail, for some, a geographical move as well. (I am thinking here of the New Monasticism and its commitment to moving into places “abandoned by Empire.”) It is the necessary prerequisite to faithful living in the very Babylon from which one has escaped. That is, the church cannot be the church in Babylon until it is the church out of Babylon….

It is important therefore to stress that Revelation does not call for the wholesale rejection of culture and of engagement with the world; it calls for discernment. It is one thing, in other words, to live in an empire or superpower, to live in the shadow of the beast, trying to avoid participating in the evils of idolatry while bearing witness to another empire, the kingdom of God, and thereby working for the good of the world as salt and light. It is quite another to endorse that empire—or any culture—unconditionally, or to sacralize it. Yet that is what many Christians and churches have done; they have baptized their culture and/or country into the name of the triune god of political, economic, and military power, wrongly thinking that this is the power of God.

If this is a taste of what’s to come in Gorman’s forthcoming book Reading Revelation Responsibly (Cascade) we’re in for a solid book.

Posts on the church, apocalyptic, and mission

Posted by on May 19, 2010 4 comments

About of a year ago I posted an index of posts I had written on ecclesiology and apocalyptic. Since then I have gotten my own domain and, as such should have updated the links a long time ago. Anyway, here is an updated list for anyone who cars.

As far as I’m concerned the best effort of mine in this arena has been my series on “the church as apocalyptic event”:

Here are a number of other posts that are broadly centered on this topic from further back, dealing with various and sundry ecclesiological issues from an apocalyptic perspective:

Most Overrated Theological Books?

Posted by on May 16, 2010 90 comments

In a rare, in-person meeting of the minds this weekend in Nashville, Nate Kerr, R.O. Flyer, and myself solved a great many of the world’s theological problems. One, however, we still need your help on. At some point we took it upon ourselves to try to figure out the most overrated theological book of the 20th century. While we couldn’t get near to narrowing it down to one, we came up with some possibles. Here is our top ten (in chronological order):

  1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (1937)
  2. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (1951)
  3. Jürgen Moltman, Theology of Hope (1964)
  4. Karl Rahner, The Trinity (1967)
  5. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1984)
  6. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (1984)
  7. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (1985)
  8. Sallie McFague, Models of God (1987)
  9. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens (1989)
  10. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (1990)

It should be roundly emphasized that we are not saying that these books are not good and important. Indeed some of our absolutely favorite books are on this list. However, the question remains as to whether or not the attention and enthusiasm these books have received has been overblown. Please bear that in mind before unleashing your rage.

Now, over the next week we’ll be narrowing the list down to five, taking into account any comments you all have. Also, feel free to nominate some other books. The one that receives the most nominations will be added to the final vote as a wildcard. Enjoy the harrowing work of narrowing this list down with us.

Recent work on Yoder

Posted by on May 13, 2010 11 comments

For fans of the venerable John Howard Yoder, make sure to check out the recent review of Radical Ecumenicity: Pursuing Unity and Continuity after John Howard Yoder, edited by John Nugent. The first part of the review, which focuses on the essays on Yoder’s ecumenical thought is excellent, and does a great job introducing the reader to the chapters (and, I should mention, does a great job of briefly pointing out the rather massive flaws in Craig Carter’s rather flimsy piece in the volume). The second part of the review will be by Nate Kerr and will focus on the essays by Yoder that are included in the volume. I suggest that folks stay tuned.

On taking sin seriously

Posted by on May 6, 2010 24 comments

In my recent, and utterly long sermon I quoted from Robert Jenson about the nature of the Gospel’s morality, a quote that I find vital and illuminating in many ways:

The gospel’s specific morality is a matter of opened opportunities, of what we may reasonably do because Jesus lives, that otherwise would have been foolish. The normal morality is a matter of imposed constraints, of what we must do, that otherwise we would have liked not to. [. . .] the gospel’s specific morality is a morality of freedom. Insofar as the gospel moves us, we do what we do because we may, not because we ought. And a good act is one which finds the way to love, to the affirmation of the brother’s freedom.

We hear the from the gospel what we may do, when the gospel affirmatively interprets the hopes and fears that move our lives. The gospel makes our hopes possibilities by making them hopes for the love that is indeed coming. When the gospel is spoken to a [person] or a community, it speaks to the particular inhibitions that keep that [person] or community from [. . .] their own humanity. The gospel dismisses those inhibitions. It’s pattern is: “You may . . . because, if Jesus is risen, there is no need to fear . . .” [. . .]

Thus the specific morality of the gospel is not a mater of “laws.” The gospel’s moral discourse does not say “Do this and do that because you ought/must/would be best advised/will be rewarded.” It does not have the “if . . . then . . .” form. It imposes no conditions whatever, on anything at all. It does not say “Do . . . , because otherwise you won’t get into heaven.” It does not say—with a bit more religious sophistication: “Do . . . , because, although of course God will accept you anyway, that is what good Christians do.” It does not even say: “Do . . . , because virtue is its own reward.” The moral discourse of the gospel says only: “You may do . . . , because Jesus lives” (Robert Jenson, Story and Promise, 81, 82).

Obviously this approach to ethics is extremely liberating. The divine word does not impose constraints, make demands, and level requirements. Rather it simply frees. The Gospel forbids nothing, it merely liberates us for lives of true fullness.

Of course to many this will seem woefully inadequate. Is this not simply a cover for moral libertinism? Does not all this fanciful talk of “opened opportunities” merely mask a maneuver that seeks to use “freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence” (Gal 5:13)?

Actually, no not all. In fact this resurrection-centered understanding of the nature of the Gospel’s morality is the only way I can possibly imagine to take sin seriously. This notion insists that all sin is never a matter of some “thing” I can do that I ought not to do. Rather sin is always and everywhere a falling into slavery. The Gospel does not, therefore “forbid” us to sin — what real sense would it make to say that we are “forbidden” to enslave ourselves, mutilate ourselves, denigrate ourselves? — rather the Gospel frees us from sin.

The problem with the traditionally “serious” way of talking about sin and ethics is that it ends up simultaneously not taking sin seriously and making it far too interesting. If we view sin simply as bad, but nearly always seductive and at least fleetingly pleasurable things we ought not to do, we at once make sin interesting and rather unserious. If however we take the logic of the Gospel seriously we must understand sin always and only as slavery, as domination, denigration, and futility. We are not “forbidden” to be enslaved, we are freed from our slavery. We are not “commanded” to no longer dominate and denigrate ourselves and one another, we are freed from that infantile and dreadful compulsion.

This, it seems to me is the only way to really take sin seriously and to recognize how uninteresting it is. Sin is simply the slaveries we subject ourselves and one anther to. It is a world of striving, suffering, and death. God doesn’t come to us with commands not to do such things, God in Christ breaks the power of these forces and frees us from them. The Gospel closes down no true opportunity for anything interesting, rather it always on only opens opportunities and creates new possibilities. It is always and only a liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything else simply doesn’t take sin seriously.

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