How does the theme of judgment … or, how does knowledge of God as judge open up the missional theme in the Bible? This is the question of the second half of chp 3 in Chris Wright’s The Mission of God and I thought this section was both intelligent and insightful.

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Is it possible to believe in God without believing in judgment? No theme is less politically incorrect in postmodern relativism and pluralism, no theme is more embarrassing to those who grew up in segments of the church where it was hell, hell, hell, and yet no theme is more obvious in the Bible than that God is the judge, that God is the final judge, and that all humans were stand before the judgment. How then to incorporate the theme into our theology and avoid all the problems of the ab ove?

Three sections are found here: what Pharaoh learned in the Exodus judgment on Egypt, what Israel learned in exile, and what we learn from the nations when they are under God’s judgment.

First, Wright has a brilliant little chart on p. 94 of what Pharaoh learned from the exodus event: essentially, it was to know YHWH as the one God who transcends all. One of the major themes of this chp is the YHWH does things so he can be known, and Pharaoh — by extension — has grounds to know YHWH through the exodus.

Second, the big part of this chp is on what Israel learns from the exile. Had YHWH met his match in the exile? Was the exile the defeat of YHWH? The opposite, argues Wright: God disciplined Israel through the exile.

1. YHWH has no favorites. Even Israel will experience judgment. Amos 3:2 and Deut 10:17.
2. YHWH can use any nation as the instrument of judgment: Isa 10:5-6 and Jer 27:4-6.
3. YHWH’s judgment is righteous and justified: Ezek 18:25.
4. YHWH’s people, even under judgment, remain God’s people for God’s mission: Jer 28:1-14.

Finally, the nations under judgment. Ezek, not known for universality, though does teach clearly that YHWH will be known both by Israel and the nations, and he appeals here to Ezek 38-39.

OK Jesus Creeders, I’m countin’ on ya. Last Saturday, on our way to a student’s wedding, we got rear-ended and our RAV4 got smashed up pretty good. (We didn’t make it to the wedding.) No one was hurt, though we were sitting around a bit Saturday and Sunday waiting for some unwanted stiffness. It never came so we’re fine. Basically, our car has been totaled or very close. Anyway, here’s what we need from our blog friends:

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Car suggestions.

First, Kris will be the primary driver; she drives some highway and some city.

Second, we’re concerned about gas mileage.

Third, we’ve thought about a Prius but besides being butt-ugly it takes about a year to get one. We’ve looked into the Civic hybrid, but it takes about 60 days. That’s do-able but not preferable. We’ve also shifted our eyes onto the Camry hybrid.

We’re open to suggestions. Who’s got some experience with these cars, especially the Cambry hybrid?

Give us some ideas.

My little computer program boots up about 19 separable instances of “heaven” in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. And we begin with a text that is at the center of a few debates today, in particular the nature of the ascension and the Second Coming.

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Acts 1:10-11:They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

1. Jesus leaves earth, after his resurrection and at his ascension, and goes “into heaven.”
2. He will return from heaven to earth someday in the same way he ascended. Whether this refers to the Second Coming or the New Heavens/New Earth or to a combination of both is not important here.

Heaven here is the place where Jesus is between his ascension and his Second Coming. Whether heaven lasts beyond that is not stated.

In 2006 Moore Theological College in Sydney Australia held a conference on the consolations of theology and Brian Rosner edited the papers into a little book worthy of pastoral considerations. The title is The Consolations of Theology. Six studies of human realities — anger, obsession, despair, anxiety, disappointment, and pain. But the approach is to show how one major theologian deals with that problem. So we get Lactantius, Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer and CS Lewis. The authors? Richard Gibson, Andrew Cameron, Mark Thompson, Peter Bolt, Brian Rosner and Robert Banks. Today we look at anger, by Richard Gibson, and modulated through the works of Lactantius.

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Do you struggle with anger? What do you do that helps? Do you deny the reality or appropriateness of anger or are you the kind that rationalizes and justifies even inappropriate anger? How to find a balance here — the balance of Eph 4:26-27, the balance of being angry at the right things and not angry at the wrong things?

One of our problems is turning such themes into nothing but psychology. The value of this book is to explore the theme theologically.

The title of the book has a history and Lactantius has a background in the 3d and 4th Century, but I can’t possibly sketch either in a post. So, let’s dive into some major ideas Gibson brings about anger as he reads Lactantius (see his On the Anger of God).

Anger is real and it is one of the human “furies”: anger, love of gain, and sexual desire. Each of these are normal; each needs to be controlled. That’s the point. The challenge is to restrain not eliminate them, and so he critiques both the Peripatetics and the Stoics who moderated or denied them. He’s an unabashed realist: God gave us anger. It’s legitimate. It can be used for good or for bad.

God, in fact, is angry — and this is mostly stuff that Gibson expounds from Lactantius — God cares and he is repulsed by sin; he is angry with injustice, etc.. God is not impassive and inactive. That is, the one who loves the good must hate (or be angry at) the bad; the one who is not angry at the bad is not in love with the good. Anger, then, is rooted in God’s response to sin and evil and injustice.

So Gibson draws six conclusions:

1. Our capacity for anger is a good gift from God but it is good insofar as it leads to oppose sin and straighten life.
2. In our anger God is committed to conform us to the image of the Son.
3. In community we must be angry at sin.
4. In community the word of Christ protects us from excessive anger.
5. We live in a world ruled by the God who is angry at evil.
6. The cross embodies the anger of God against evil and paradoxically undoes it.

I will begin reading soon some books about God, and I thought I’d give some of you a heads-up on what’s coming. I will be reading these two books for sure:

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Peter Kreeft’s fine book, The God Who Loves You.

James Kugel’s historical critical study, written at a readable level, called The God of Old.

What are some good books about God you’ve read or seen of late?

Two more texts in John, both of which inform us of nearly the same thing:

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12:27 “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

17:1 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.

God the Father is in heaven.
Out of heaven God speaks.
Jesus looks up to heaven when he prays.

One of the most common uses of “heaven” is to refer to “up-ness” and I would think this is metaphorical for the Beyond and The Most High One. There is a spatial-ness about this kind of language. I think it entirely possible that this would refer to a “place” but that word might not be transcendent enough to do the word “heaven” justice. Space, yes, and much more.

But, notice too in John this theme: it is the place out of which God’s Voice comes and out of which God exits in order to descend into the earthly realm.

To claim the Bible is shaped by a missional concern, as Chris Wright does in The Mission of God, is to give oneself a challenge. Namely, to show that the God of the Bible is a missional God. Here’s how Wright does just that.

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How do we frame a theology of mission if we give the Old Testament the first word? And how do we do this — a tough one — when Israel was anything but a missionary people? What do the big events of the Bible teach us about God that unfold into a missional God and a missional Bible? Here’s one: how does the exodus and how does the return from the exile inform us that God is missional?

And here’s the genius of this book: instead of hunting out references that a mission-minded person could build into a case, Wright lets the natural themes of the Bible unfold into a mission theology. The difference gives this book its special appeal.

The big issue behind this is “monotheism,” and Wright gently reminds many that the way this idea is framed determines if one is letting the Bible speak or the Enlightenment. The “monotheism” of the Old Testament is not “mono-Yahwism” (Yahweh is the one God) but a genuine transcendent uniqueness.

Today we look at this theme: knowing God through experiencing God’s grace.

The kinds of grace Wright speaks of are the exodus and the return from exile.

In the exodus, Israel learns:

1. That YHWH wills to be known (Exod 5:22-6:8), and God is incomparable, sovereign, and unique.
2. That YHWH is incomparable (Exod 15:11).
3. That YHWH is king (Exod 15:18). Here he admits to the use of Canaanite images that are taken in a new direction in Exodus. Significantly, the Bible teaches that this God creates a kingship on behalf of the weak and oppressed (Deut 10:14-19).
4. That YHWH is unique (Deut 4:32-39): esp “there is no other.”

In the return, Israel learns:

1. That YHWH is sovereign over history, a special theme in the Bible: in spite of Israel’s size and position in the ancient near east, and this God is God over all the universe. Isa 41:22-23; 46:9-10.
2. That YHWH exercises sovereignty through his word, and here he uses Ps 33:6, 9; 33:10-11.
3. That YHWH acts for the sake of his name: when asked why God does the exodus and why he lets Israel return, the point is that he does so to honor his name and reputation. Here the focus is Exekiel, and just read 36:22-23.
4. That YHWH’s sovereignty extends over all creation: Jer 10:10-12.
5. That YHWH entrusts his uniqueness and his universality to the witness of his people. Here we go to Isa 43:9-12.

So, the God of these two events is the one and only God, sovereign over history, who wants to reign over all the earth, summons Israel to be his people, and calls them to be God’s witnesses to the nations.

Go see Mamma Mia! The Movie. Kris and I loved it. Fun, happy, upbeat, motion-filled turning of the book and the Broadway hit into a Hollywood movie. Meryl Streep is in a world of her own … but maybe I should say it this way: these stars are so comfortable with themselves they can horse around like this and not worry one bit … and Pierce Brosnan, who can’t sing much, sings a little. The scenery is magnificent and reminded Kris and me of what we’ve seen on the Mediterranean.

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If you are 40+ or if you like Abba or if you’ve seen the Broadway performance, I think you’ll just join in with the singing and plot and leave with a big smile on your face. We sure did. (And we’re still singing “Dancing Queen.”)

Yet another interesting text in John, which I have to quote more completely. We are asking what does “heaven” mean and whether or not it is the final place of the blessed.

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30 So they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” 32 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

34 “Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”

35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

41 At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”….

53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”

First, the passage is filled with vertical dualism, whether this is a real place and a real moving or not.
Second, Jesus is from heaven, comes down from heaven to earth.
Third, manna finds its true destiny in Jesus, the bread.
Fourth, eating this bread, etc., is participating in the heavenly bread.
Fifth, this bread gives life, eternal life.