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Who is Jesus Christ? (Meditation on Romans 16:25-27)

Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith - to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.

1. St.Paul's doxology and benediction come at the end of his epistle to the Romans, after his personal greetings to the Roman believers commending, among others, Pheobe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae. "(H)elp her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well." (16:1) Doxology and benediction come also after some final instructions that urge their monitoring of "those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned ... people (who) do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery ... deceive the hearts of the simple-minded." (16:17-18) Such a description of those who cause offenses could have been written this morning, instead of in the first century. Serving appetites instead of our Lord Christ has never gone out of style, even and especially among those whose certitude in their rectitude resides in themselves as arbiters of the good - flourishing especially among communities of moral discourse where scripture as norming norm for faith and life has been by those very appetites eroded and rationalized!

2. "the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed" - St. Paul links the "proclamation of Jesus Christ" to the mystery "kept secret for long ages" but "now disclosed." This must be understood at two levels: first, in his cosmic christology. The One in whom "all things in heaven and on earth were created," who is "before all things," in whom "all things cohere" IS the mystery now disclosed.

The other level is that this disclosure, indeed this gospel, is for all people as this Jesus Christ is the One through Whom "God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." (Colossians 1:15-20) The content of the mystery is both the self-disclosure of God, the Word become flesh, and that the gospel is for all people. Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female.

3. "according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith" - The revelation now disclosed is by God's command, the only wise God, the only God who is God. And its purpose is to bring about the "obedience of faith." St. Paul completes the doxology by asserting that the mystery now disclosed is not a matter for idle consideration, or intellectual speculation, but one for the obedience of faith - the obedience that faith brings, including obedience to the content of the faith. St. Paul wrote these things, as he did all these things, to a people only newly formed - indeed, still in the process of formation. They lived alongside numerous (countless?) cults that formed the religious pluralism of the day. Some were still tied to their Jewish backgrounds. Others were tempted to worship this new "eternal God" alongside their former deities (see I Corinthians 8, regarding eating meat offered to idols). Paul makes it clear that this mystery now revealed is the only one of any account. He knew many other competing claims!

4. Paul's position is keenly instructive for our time, a time of resurgent pluralism that insists on equal legitimacy for any and all religions. This from The Charlotte Observer (December 13, 1999) is now common fare. It is from Robert E. Wilkinson, writer and teacher of "Integral Yoga," whose primary "expertise" resides in "the role of applied cosmology in the areas of science, psychology and human development." Herewith Wilkinson, writing against an earlier Observer piece by Gray Abercrombie (Nov. 29, 1999 Viewpoint: Religion & Ethics):

"Gray Abercrombie's column 'If Christianity's true, others aren't' takes religious intolerance to a whole new level when he writes, 'If Christ is God, as he claims to be, ...then all other religions, however many great truths they may contain, can be nothing more than torn pieces from Christ's seamless garment.'

"Excusing for a moment the torturous logic of Abercrombie's statement, we find that he has given us a glimpse into the core of fundamentalist theology - belief in the absolute divinity of Christ. But what, we may ask, makes Abercrombie and his fellow fundamentalists so willing to believe that Christ is God? What is it in the individual which enables him to make such a single-minded commitment to a belief in Christ's divinity as opposed to anyone else's?

"It cannot be mere belief, for no one of sound mind would accept the validity of a read or spoken statement simply because he has read it or heard it. The average individual would try to verify these facts for himself, or at least attempt to do so, before he may justifiably accept such a possibility. Of course there is the authority of scripture and long-standing tradition to support one's position, but are these enough to induce the gripping power of conviction which characterizes the fundamentalist faith? Enlightened teachers throughout history have explained that within each and every one of us lies a spark of the divine. It is related to what is most intimate, most hidden in the human being himself. The closeness of this divine principle is what veils it, renders it hidden and difficult to perceive, but in reality it is nearer than the nearest, ever-manifest, immediate and direct.

"When this inner Self is 'realized,' it is spoken of as salvation or liberation and carries with it the value of being released from jail. One becomes aware of an inner peace, a silence, a joy, a bliss beyond expression, a pure consciousness, an all-pervading Presence and an intellectual illumination, or pouring in of 'knowing' impossible to describe. Unfortunately, given the unconsciousness of our present mental species, the inner Self is seldom realized. It is more often projected out in the collective worship of an external figure, either religious or ideological. It is then an individual, a religion or the government which is given the power of one's salvation. One's beliefs in this external power and consequent depth of conviction are attached to this projection of Self and derive their fervent power from the unconscious. When the individual's sense of personal divinity is projected onto an external figure--whether it be Christ, the Church or the State - there is always the danger of a loss of responsible consciousness in the collective worship of this projection.

"Since the powers that underlie faith and belief derive their energies from the awesome forces of the archetypal world, the historical result has been members of various religious and political groups pitted against one another in holy wars, racial cleansing or fundamentalist terrorism. Each group appropriates to itself the good and the true while protecting its unconscious dark side, or 'shadow,' upon those believed to be less righteous than themselves.

"When you read, for example, the Rev. Jimmy Dykes' recent statement that Jesus is losing preeminence in Asheville - that new agers are seeking their spirituality elsewhere and if they prevail, 'masses of people will be led away from God and to eternal death' (Nov. 28, 'One Town, Two Souls') - you may be sure that the controversy brewing in Asheville between conservative Christians and New Age eclecticism is based upon this phenomenon of 'projection.'

"As we approach the Third Millennium, the demands of truth and the spiritual needs of mankind call for a reassessment of our separative religious beliefs. Our challenge is not to be caught up in the collective worship of divine personalities but to emulate their example and unveil our own hidden divinity.

"If we are to move into a new millennium with any hope of peace and harmony in the world, we must attempt to find a spiritual vision based on what is common to us all - the realization of Self. The work we should be engaged in, both individually and collectively, is to enlighten our beliefs with a deeper knowledge of Self and, more importantly, the lived experience which upholds and extends that knowledge. When Self is known, there is a profound identity with Christ, who is seen, not as the only son of God, but as one of the many spiritual incarnations the Divine has assumed to come in contact with the earth. This realization in no way diminishes the divinity of Jesus, it simply calls us to become a Christ rather than worshiping him."

5. This gnosticism is representative of the present species, an elevation of the self to divine. It is similar to that of Emerson in a previous century. I quote from his 1838 Harvard Divinity School address (from Harold Bloom's citing in his The American Religion, p. 23-24):

"Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his World. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages!

There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, 'This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the fallen rain." (no footnote reference given otherwise by Bloom).

6. The revelation of the mystery long secret, now revealed, is a public revelation. Not the privy possession of the ones singularly enlightened, whether New England transcendentalist or Charlotte quack. What we are up against as confessional Christians in the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church is both "know-nothing fundamentalism" and the new "know-special-something gnostics," the latter riding fat and sassy on the crest of pluralism and diversity. Our task is to declare the mystery now revealed, that Christ is the Christ. We must steer a course between know-nothing intolerance, on the one hand, and, on the other, mindless pluralist acceptance of any and all claims as legitimate in the family of faith. This requires careful study and faithful proclamation. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Views on the Nature of God (notes on Hebrews 12:18-29)

1. The verses constitute a section in which the two covenants - Sinai and Calvary - are contrasted. The former is recalled by the mountain that "may not be touched"; the latter by the true Mount Zion, the "city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." The former was so inviolable that not even a beast could be permitted to brush the mountain, lest it be stoned. The latter features "innumerable angels in festal gather," among "the assembly of the first born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of the righteous (dikaiwn) made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant . . . ."¹

2. The contrasts contain other dimensions: "awe in the sense of fear becomes awe in the sense of holy joy; darkness, and gloom, and a tempest over against the festal gathering of the angelic and human citizens of the heavenly city; a tangible and terrible mountain charged with mysterious and deadly power over against the heavenly Jerusalem, wherein dwell the spirits of the just made perfect under God, the judge of all, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant."²

3. The imagery of the heavenly city is reminiscent of the Revelation of John of Patmos. The references to the "assembly of the firstborn" and the "spirits of the righteous made perfect" evoke Paul.³ No discussion is entered concerning when and how the righteous will have been made perfect, but the word teteleiwmenwn (having been made perfect), suggests an "alien righteousness" - or at least a perfection bestowed rather than crafted.

4. The last two verses offer an admonition and a warning: "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire." Alexander Purdy in the exegesis section of 1B notes the contemporary discomfort with the warning: "The final clause, 'for our God is a consuming fire," will seem to the modern reader a tragic misinterpretation of the gospel message of the love of God. It must be admitted that (the) author does not move in the Johannine (cf. John 4:24; I John 4:13--18) or in the Pauline tradition (cf. Romans 8:37 ff). But to do him justice we must interpret these words in the context. They carry, to be sure, the note of warning, but the dominant idea is assurance. We who have received the kingdom that cannot be shaken may rest in confident peace, for God is a God who destroys all transient and temporal things in order that what is timeless and unchanging may emerge in full glory; and we are those who have received this permanent home of the soul."⁴

5. We have, in the contemporary scheme of things, a bi-polar set of aberrations in the Christian community concerning the nature of God. At the one extreme is the perspective informed by the "mountain that may not be touched," the awesome terror of judgment and fire evoked in its graphic details by the Jehovah's Witnesses and in its soteriological consequences by Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. At the other is a virulently resolute form of neo-Marcionism, itself in the main innocent of knowledge of Marcion but nonetheless willfully determined to dismiss as unworthy any notion of God as judge, as fire, as giver of divine laws. This is, further, a neo-Marcionism that rejects God not only as the Ground of Being but also as the One who says what is good and what is evil.

6. The former is represented in its less cruel framing by preaching whose initial and prime premise is that what the sinner needs most is conviction of his sins in order properly to repent and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. A student of mine, himself now a veteran of twenty years of hearing such preaching, observed that it is long on law and short on gospel, as one might expect. But, more importantly, it tends not to convey the love of God, whether love as gentle shepherd or love as cleansing fire. What it conveys is a calculus of stinking sins, a litany of deeds that represent unredeemed humanity as chiefly captive to appetites - surely an easy target given the tenor of our culture, from its entertainment to its politics.

7. Being captive to appetites is no virtue, as Aristotle already knew, but the casting of the scenario is, my student further observes, almost inevitably Pelagian. Sin is reduced to events of appetites gone awry - fornication, impurity, licentiousness, drunkenness and carousing--rather than fundamental willful rebellion against God, manifest in works of the flesh that include idolatry, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissension, factions, and envy, to complete St. Paul's listing in the 5^th chapter of Galatians. Repentance consists essentially of resolving to control appetites, now with the aid of the risen and ascended Lord. God's anger - actually, more His displeasure - is focused thus more upon appetites than idolatry, or perhaps appetites constituting idolatry, than upon the fundamental human move to disavow Him as Lord, the move original of Eden where human beings determine what is good and what is evil.

In an age replete with indulging one's appetites, preaching the control of appetites is not without its merits. But it tends to be itself seductive, in that one may well be persuaded that a proper relationship with God amounts to appetite control; indeed, that sin can be avoided if one is but properly isolated ("Seven Miles from Any Known Sin" was - and perhaps still is - the advertising logo of a college not two hundred miles from here). Such preaching also tends to reduce God to a Divine Special Prosecutor whose interest is in behavior control. The trouble with such a view is not that it focuses on bogus or sinful acts but that it ignores the depth of human deceit and rebellion, on the one hand, and the cleansing fire of God's love, on the other. Fire as heat and anger it can feel. Fire as love it understands less.

8. At the other pole is a view that cannot understand love as fire. Here the aberration is a kind of neo-Marcionist view that both anger and law, not to speak of fire, are unworthy of God. The Marcion of the second century rejected the Old Testament, law and prophet alike, on the basis that it was revealed by - and featured - a God of anger and wrath, incapable of grace, devoid of the love that is reflected in Paul's understanding, and John's. Supra-Paulinist that he was, Marcion sundered the paradox of law and gospel into polarities, dispensations of different deities.

Neo-Marcionites of this century reject law and judgment, whether at Sinai or Calvary, in favor of a love that validates the individual person, per se. If "God don't make no junk," then my nature - my sensibilities, my appetites - are fundamentally my business and, equally fundamentally, God-blessed. Neo-Marcionites understand God's love as radical acceptance, sure enough, but reserve the right to define for themselves what is of the good and what is evil. If they understand God's love as refining fire, it is to their own ends, as in "fire that cleanses me of self-pity and self-loathing," or "fire that burns away the pain of rejection." But the language of neo-Marcionism is not that of love-as-fire. The prevailing motif is love as acceptance, absent repentance for errors in appetites that are, after all, only a matter of convention and not a matter of divine concern.

9. The author of Hebrews knows no such truncations of God. There is contrast between the old covenant and the new, but not in the sense of the absence of fire. "You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking ... for indeed our God is a consuming fire."

¹The Old Testament references applicable to vss. 18-21 include Exodus 19:12-22 and 20:18-21; and Deuteronomy 4:11-12. The reference in vs. 26 to God's promise, "'Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven,"' is from Haggai 2:6 ("For thus says the LORD of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts.")

² Interpreter 's Bible, vol.11, p. 746.

³ Both Paul and Barnabas were among the candidates put forward by various scholars in the early church as author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Among the others advanced for candidacy were Apollos, Aquila and Priscilla, Silas, Aristion, Philip the deacon, Timothy and Luke.

⁴ IB, 751.

JLY - on Romans 16:25-77, 12.13.99, revised 08.29.01; on Hebrews 12:18-23, 08.18.98...rev. 08.21.01