T.C. Moore's Blog, page 2

Graffiti Stations of the Cross

For Good Friday this year, I took on my most ambitious painting project to date: Graffiti Stations of the Cross.

The Stations of the Cross is a tradition going back hundreds of years that makes it possible for a worshiper to walk in the footsteps of Jesus to the cross without a costly journey to the Holy Land. Through artistic depictions of the Gospel accounts, worshippers can pray and meditate upon each “station” as they follow Jesus to the cross. I love that this tradition makes it possible for those who may lack the resources necessary to physically visit Jerusalem to nevertheless connect with the crucified Christ.

For me, it was important to express the stations through the lens of graffiti, which is another way of delivering this tradition to a non-traditional audience. Graffiti has been known as “the voice of the streets,” and it’s an essential element of hip hop culture—a multiethnic cultural movement birthed in New York. In bringing the pilgrimage to the people through the tradition of the Stations, and through the utilization of a pop art medium like graffiti, my goal was to make our Good Friday meditations upon the cross accessible to all.

My Stations were inspired by the bold graphic symbols created by Lauren Wright Pittman, from A Sanctified Art. She created the twelve symbols in the center of each piece, and they reflect a sensitivity to the emotional journey to the cross, as well as an emphasis on the role of women in the story. Another artist whose stark and beautiful designs inspired me is Scott Erickson. His graphically designed Stations in the Street contain powerful imagery, some of which I incorporated. Huge thanks to these fantastic artists for their inspirational works.

Below is a gallery of the twelve paintings I created. Once you select a thumbnail, a dialogue box with directional arrows will guide you through the rest of the images.

 

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My Top Ten Books of 2021

Continuing my annual tradition, here’s my 2021 book list. These are the top 10 books I read this year with recommendations, reviews, and even a video interview with one of the authors.

1. Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley

Reading While Black was the first book I read in 2021 and it was the best. Dr. McCaulley expertly introduces the uninitiated to the ecclesial Black tradition of biblical interpretation and distinguishes it from other traditions. In so doing, he masterfully demonstrates the prophetic relevance of the scriptures for activism and social justice. This is a must read!

Check out my extended video review!

2. What is God’s Kingdom and What Does Citizenship Look Like? by César García

While What is God’s Kingdom may have been the shortest book I read this year, it’s among the best. From now on it’ll be my go-to book on the subject. Even though it’s concise, it doesn’t fail to be impactful. García brilliantly communicates an Anabaptist ethic that avoids the common pitfalls of White Neo-Anabaptists. Namely, he doesn’t allow the distinction of the church to lead to separatism and political quietism. Instead, he explicates a missional ecclesiology that engages the polis for the common good. This too is a must read!

Check out my review over at Missio Alliance!

3. How to Have an Enemy by Melissa Florer-Bixler

As a Mennonite pastor, Florer-Bixler has no doubt had to contend with all the typical stereotypes about “peacemaking.” In this book, she explodes all the most toxic caricatures. How to Have an Enemy argues that enmity is distinct from difference and while difference can be tolerated, even celebrated, enmity is based on unjust power differentials. To love our enemies, we fight to dismantle the unjust systems that produce enmity. If you’re someone who thinks that dialogue is a silver bullet to cure every problem facing the church, you will hate this book. But if you’ve read the Gospels and fallen in love with the radical prophet who sparks a movement that turns the world upside down, you will love this book. It’s the most thought-provoking book I read all year, and it’s a must read!

4. Subversive Witness by Dominique Gilliard

Dominique has done it again. His sophomore offering is as good or better than his first release. This time he’s tackling another thorny subject. Not the prison industrial complex or penal substitutionary atonement; this time it’s Privilege. Many have no doubt asked Dominique, “So what do I do with my privilege?” This book is the answer. And not only does he answer this question using all his experience as a pastor and expertise as an antiracist trainer, Dominique also expertly mines the scriptures for their wisdom and provides an interpretive lens that illuminates the role privilege plays. This is an excellent resource that I highly recommend!

Check out my review!

5. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

At 496 pages, Caste was definitely the longest book I read this year, but it was well worth it. Isabel Wilkerson, well known for her other bestselling book, The Warmth of Other Suns, offers a new and expertly-researched theory: America has a caste system. I’ll admit, at first, I didn’t get it. I was confused as to what value this theory adds to the pantheon of antiracist work already in circulation. But, by the end, I was sold. Caste provides a necessary lens through which to see the United States’ relationship to race, class, and gender. This is an eye-opening book and I highly recommend it.

6. Struggling with Evangelicalism by Dan Stringer

Since 2016, Evangelicalism has been desperately embattled. Many question whether it’s even redeemable. Dan Stringer doesn’t answer the question of whether any particular person should remain an evangelical. That’s for you to decide. Instead, he brings new insights to bear. One example is not approaching “evangelicalism” as a Brand one can identify with or not (like Pepsi or Apple), but instead as a cultural Space we inhabit. Many who are now disavowing the brand nevertheless continue to occupy the space. So rather than helping people to discern whether to call oneself an evangelical, Dan helps readers understand what evangelicalism is, what its done wrong, but also its strengths. He doesn’t attempt to persuade anyone to “stay”; he simply offers this guide to people who are struggling. It’s a great book that, for some, is very needed!

Check out my video interview with Dan!

7. Welcoming the Stranger by Matthew Sorens and Jenny Yang

Welcoming the Stranger is the most in-depth book I’ve ever read on immigration and I’m so glad I did. While it’s very well researched, it doesn’t get bogged down. Instead, the authors keep the reader’s attention with vivid stories of real people’s lives. It’s also blunt about the partisan political realities. Everyone who reads this book will be better informed. This is an excellent resource that everyone needs on their shelf.

8. Why is There Suffering? by Bethany Sollereder

Why is There Suffering? is the most creative book I read this year. This isn’t your typical “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. No, this book guides readers through theological, philosophical, and ethical choices in order to assist readers at arriving at their own conclusions about the so-called “problem of evil.” This format is nothing short of brilliant! I wish I’d had this book when I was a teenager. I wouldn’t have had to read the dozens of other books I read in this subject. I highly recommend this unique book!

9. Taking America Back for God by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry

Taking America Back for God explodes the media narrative that “evangelicals” or even “white evangelicals” got Donald Trump elected. It’s not that simple, says the data. Instead, what Whitehead and Perry demonstrate is that Christian Nationalism got Donald Trump elected. In fact, the data also shows that the more religious a person is, the less likely they were to support Trump. This book is mind-blowing. I’m so glad I read this book, because it helps me understand people who were a complete mystery to me. I highly recommend this book!

10. Who Will Be a Witness? by Drew Hart

The last book I read this year is one of my favorites, from one of my favorite authors. Drew Hart doesn’t just write a book that delves deeply into the theological and political realities of following Jesus—but he does that too! He’s also written a book that mobilizes the church to be part of what God is already up to in the world. Too often books about what the church can do for justice don’t acknowledge that the Spirit is out ahead of the church, drawing us further and further into God’s Kingdom. Drew’s book not only acknowledges this—he illuminates this truth in accessible and persuasive ways. Readers will love and remember Drew’s vivid analogies. Leaders will love that the book has a free study guide. Churches will love the practical guidance. This is a must-read for churches seeking the shalom of their cities.

How to Check Your Privilege: A Review of Subversive Witness by Dominique Gilliard

Today in the U.S. a highly effective strategy has been implemented to stifle any attempt to teach about systemic racism and its impact on society. A handful of conservative partisan operatives have turned the phrase “Critical Race Theory” (which is the name of an academic legal theory that’s been taught in law schools for decades) into a catch-all category for any subject related to racism that makes recalcitrant White Americans uncomfortable. The ramifications have been wide-spread and destructive. School board meetings have turned into battlefields, with White residents feeling emboldened to denounce concepts they don’t understand and to ‘cancel’ any teacher willing to teach them. Partisan politicians have also seized upon this strategy and wielded it like a bludgeon to pummel anyone speaking out against racial injustice. And the strategy to scapegoat “Critical Race Theory” is an intentionally deceptive strategy, as one of its architects candidly admits:

One of the subjects that’s been lumped into this pro-racism campaign because it makes White Americans nervous is privilege. The subject of privilege has a way of cutting to the heart of discussions about racial injustice by pinpointing the place where systemic racism hits home in our everyday lives. Privilege is often the presenting symptom of racial injustice. It’s the place where hidden norms, unspoken rules, and policy hidden in legalese comes to light. Unjust outcomes betray the injustice that was ‘baked into the cake.’ But privilege isn’t only a bugaboo for racists; privilege is also often a frustrating conundrum even for those who care deeply about redressing social injustices. It raises the important question: What can be done if a person has privilege but doesn’t want to unjustly benefit from it? Even for many anti-racists, the topic of privilege can feel overwhelming, which can lead to fatigue and even apathy.

That’s why Dominique Gilliard’s new book Subversive Witness: Scripture’s Call to Leverage Privilege is such an important and timely resource. Gilliard confronts the reality of privilege head-on with laser focus. He doesn’t mince words in this book and he draws upon the wisdom of Scripture and the best scholarship available. He parses out what privilege is and isn’t, and also what can be done with it.



Having privilege is not a sin, though sin has perverted our systems and structures in ways that engender sinful disparities. Privilege creates and expands anti-gospel inequities that infringe on collective liberation and shalom. It endows a few with educational, socioeconomic, political, vocational, and other advantages while disenfranchising many—simply because of how God intentionally created them. (p.13)

One of the ways Gilliard unpacks the concept of privilege is through a theological reading of Scripture, by supplying biblical commentary on stories and characters with which/whom are already very familiar, but adding the lens of privilege. He retells the story of the Hebrew midwives, Esther, Moses, Paul & Silas, Jesus, and Zacchaeus. But in retelling these stories, we are now given lens through which we can recognize how privilege works and what to do with it.

For example, Gilliard retells the very familiar story of Moses, but homes in on the cultural and ethnic dynamics at play when a Hebrew boy is raised in the Egyptian royal court. He narrates the ways Moses’s story illustrates solidarity and the leveraging of privilege for the sake of faithfulness to God and God’s people. Gilliard highlights a type of privilege we may not immediately recognize in the story: education privilege. Moses’s story of living in Midian for several decades and learning from his father-in-law, Jethro, can be viewed as an example of education privilege. It mirrors the experience of many Americans who have had the opportunity to leave (or escape) unhealthy environments and receive training and knowledge in a much safer and more supportive space. Gilliard challenges readers to consider how one might utilize such privilege. Will a person merely use their education to advance their own career, or will they use that know-how to reinvest back in the communities that need help?

In fact, over and over, Gilliard demonstrates that throughout the Scriptures, God has been calling people to leverage the advantages they’ve been afforded for the sake of others, rather than exploiting those advantages for selfish gain. This is perhaps the core message of Subversive Witness. Being a disciples of Jesus means learning from Jesus and becoming more like him. And Jesus didn’t exploit his privilege, he leveraged it for the sake of others. This is precisely what the apostle Paul writes in the famous ‘Christ hymn’ of Philippians:

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. (NRSV, emphasis mine)

Few passages articulate Jesus’ ethic of sacrificial love as comprehensively as the Christ hymn (vv. 6-11). When we take on the mindset of Christ, we do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit and refrain from exploiting our status and positions for selfish gain. We also, in humility, empty ourselves for the sake of the kingdom and our neighbors. This entails standing in solidarity with our neighbors when we have the option not to, placing the interests of others before our own, and prioritizing the peace and prosperity of our communities above our individual success—knowing that Scripture assures us that when our communities prosper, we do as well. In taking this Christlike posture, we move toward a collectivist pursuit of freedom, flourishing, and shalom. (p.104)

I loved Gilliard’s critique of American ‘rugged individualism’ in this book. This has been an emphasis of my own pastoral teaching ministry for many years now, and it was heartening to read him highlighting it as well. I wish more pastors—particularly White Evangelicals (and even some who consider themselves ‘Progressive’)—understood this.

In addition to racial injustice, the U.S. is also plagued by COVID-19. And if the last 18 months have revealed anything, it’s that there’s no bottom to the individualistic self-centeredness of many millions of Americans. Gilliard’s message of leveraging rather than exploiting privilege is precisely what millions of Americans who have prioritized their own comfort and partisan politics before the health and safety of their entire community by refusing to be vaccinated need to hear. Political freedom in this country is a privilege, and many who claim to be Christians are exploiting their freedom rather than leveraging it in the service of others. That’s not the Jesus Way.

I also think Gilliard demonstrates his own teaching on leveraging privilege in the book itself. He’s had the privilege of learning from some of the most brilliant thinkers and experienced experts in the fields pertinent to this topic. But rather than merely repackaging their insights as his own, he draws readers’ attention toward this diverse array of scholars and practitioners. For example, he tells the story of Jonathan “Pastah J” Brooks, who’s work in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago has helped to transform that community. And Gilliard points us to so many other important voices like Willie James Jennings, Justo González, Brenda Salter McNeil, and Bryan Stevenson. This is another way of leveraging privilege—by sharing not only the insight one has gained, but also the sources from which we draw it.

In Subversive Witness, Dominique Gilliard weaves together wisdom from Scripture on privilege with insights from some of today’s leading thinkers and practitioners. Those who are humble enough to accept this wisdom will move further into living the Jesus Way and will be more equipped to partner with God in bringing shalom to our churches, communities, and world. I highly recommend this book.

On N. T. Wright, the Cross, and Systemic Racism

Some who are attracted to N. T. Wright’s theology and affirm much of it nevertheless also deny the existence of systemic racism—something Wright acknowledges. They aren’t entirely to blame for this contradiction, since Wright has written surprisingly little on the subject. However, Wright has been explicit about his theology of the “principalities and powers” and their defeat on the cross of Jesus. This theme is actually quite central to Wright’s theology. For example, in The Day the Revolution Began he clearly connects the defeat of the powers on the cross with the overthrow of evil that is systemically present in society—systemic evil that includes racism. Therefore, it is accurate to say that N. T. Wright’s theology entails an essential acknowledgement and renunciation of systemic racism, regardless of how disappointing that may be to some of his most ardent, albeit confused, supporters.

Wright’s Theology of the Cross

In The Day the Revolution Began, Wright critiques the popular portrayal of what is often called the “Penal Substitution” theory of the atonement. It may even be fair to say he critiques the core idea of it. Here’s a brief but sufficient sampling:

“You cannot rescue someone from the scars of an abusive upbringing by replaying the same narrative on a cosmic scale and mouthing the words ‘love’ as you do.” (p.44)

“In most popular Christianity, ‘heaven’ (and ‘fellowship with God’ in the present) is the goal, and ‘sin’ (bad behavior, deserving punishment) is the problem. A Platonized goal and a moralizing diagnosis—and together they led, as I have been suggesting, to a paganize ‘solution’ in which an angry divinity is pacified by human sacrifice.” (p.74)

“Doubtless [Paul] was aware of the non-Jewish meanings of someone ‘dying for’ someone else or for some cause, and doubtless he was aware of the dangers of saying what had to be said in such a way as to give credence to the idea of a detached, capricious, or malevolent divinity demanding blood, longing to kill someone, and happening to light upon a convenient innocent victim.” (p.232)

“This is why I have said that the real danger in expounding the meaning of Jesus’s death is to collapse it into a kind of pagan scenario in which an angry God is pacified by taking out his wrath on Jesus.” (p.257)

Instead of the very pagan idea of angry gods being pacified by venting their wrath upon an innocent human victim as a blood sacrifice, Wright’s theology of the cross necessarily entails Jesus’s paradigmatic conflict with the rulers and powers demonstrated throughout the story of the Gospel told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and retold by Paul and the other apostles. He writes,

“We have already heard the cryptic hint in 1 Corinthians 2:8, where the ‘rulers’ wouldn’t have executed Jesus if they had understood who he was and what the result would be. Here [in Colossians 2.13-15] the point is spelled out far more graphically. If we ask Paul what had happened when Jesus died—if we bring to him our question of what had changed by six o’clock on that evening, what was different about the world, what was now true that hadn’t been true twenty-four hours earlier—I think this is one of the primary things he would have said, that the rulers, the powers, had been defeated. When Paul speaks of the ‘rulers and authorities,’ he means both the visible rulers, the Herods, the Caesars, the governors, and the priests, and the ‘invisible’ rulers, the dark powers that stand behind them and operate through them. By the time Jesus’s body was taken down from the cross, Paul believed, these ‘rulers and authorities’ had been stripped, shamed, and defeated.” (p.258-259)

For Wright there are two ‘dimensions’ so to speak of the enemies who opposed Jesus and over whom Jesus triumphed through the Cross and Resurrection. These two dimensions are the “visible” and the “invisible.” The visible enemies are the literal governors, officials, religious leaders, and military figures who oversee the social systems of the world. Examples are plentiful but three figures loom large in the narrative of the Gospel. Herod is a ruler who represents the power of wealth and corrupt economic systems. Meanwhile Caiaphas (the High Priest) represents the corrupt religious system. And, thirdly, Pontius Pilate represents the corrupt military empire of Rome. These three rulers and powers who normally were at odds with each other, conspire together against their shared enemy: Jesus.

Behind these visible rulers and powers, Wright teaches us, lurk dark forces of evil that “operate through them.” Chief among these dark forces is the one called “the satan.” This week’s Gospel reading is from John chapter 12, in which Jesus says this world must have its “ruler” cast out. John is telling a story that culminates in Jesus’s showdown with the satan (ha satan), which means the accuser. We can see this, for example, in how John tells the story of Judas’s betrayal. John says the satan entered Judas:

“The satan, the accuser, has already put it into Judas’s heart to betray Jesus (13.2). Judas will be the accuser’s mouthpiece, embodying and enacting the great accusation, the anti-God, anticreation, antihuman force at large in the world.” (p.412)

To sum up where we are so far: For N. T. Wright, Jesus’s Cross is an essential part of the Gospel story being told in the New Testament. However, Wright bluntly critiques popular notions of the meaning of Jesus’s Cross as “pagan”—particular portrayals that center around the idea of an angry God demanding the blood sacrifice of an innocent human victim. Instead, Wright sees in the New Testament a theology of the Cross that necessarily entails the defeat of the ‘rulers’ and ‘powers.’ These rulers and powers are both the visible governors, officials, and leaders as well as the invisible, dark powers of evil that operate through visible rulers. For Wright these dark forces are “anticreation” and “antihuman.”

The Defeat of the Power of Racism

For N. T. Wright, the evil forces that operate through visible rulers are often expressed in idolatrous ideologies and oppressive systems of power. He writes,

“…when there are forces at work in our world dealing in death and destruction, propagating dangerous ideologies without regard for those in the way, or forces that squash the poor to the ground and allow a tiny number to heap up wealth and power, we know we are dealing with Pharaoh once more. Idols are being worshipped, and they are demanding human sacrifices. But we know that on the cross the ultimate Pharaoh was defeated.” (p.378)

We don’t have to guess at what examples Wright might give of these oppressive forces at work in our world, because that’s the subject of the next chapter, the conclusion of the book. Here he details some historical systems of oppression the cross defeats, which point to present-day ones.

“What might it mean for the church today to live by the same belief? It would mean recognizing, for a start, that the ‘powers,’ though defeated on the cross, are still capable of enslaving millions. When we in the Western world think of forces that enslave millions we tend to think of the ideologies of the twentieth century, not least Communism, which until 1989 had half the world in its grip and still controls millions. Many in southern Africa think back to the terrible days of apartheid and remember with a shudder how racial segregation and the denial of basic freedoms to much of the nonwhite population were given an apparent Christian justification. Similar reflections continue to be appropriate in parts of the United States, where the victories won by the civil rights movement in the 1960s still sometimes appear more precarious than people had thought.

[…]Those of us who remember the 1970s will recall that commentators predicted, as a matter of certainty, a major civil war in South Africa. That this did not happen was largely due to that patient, prayerful struggle. Similar things might be said about the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others in America, speaking with a powerful Christian voice that refused to be drowned out by the Ku Klux Klan, on the one hand , or the militant Black Power activists, on the other. These things have happened in my lifetime, and they are neither to be discounted nor explained away as the inevitable progress of enlightened liberal values in the modern world. As we should know, there is nothing inevitable about such things. What we witnessed was the power of the cross to snatch power from the enslaving idols.” (p.392-393)

Let’s recap once again, just so no one misses it. For N. T. Wright, Jesus’s cross is necessarily about the defeat of the ‘rulers’ and ‘powers’ that have both ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ dimensions. The visible dimension are the governors, the officials, and the leaders who represent social systems. The invisible dimension are the forces of evil that operate through them—forces which Wright describes as “anticreation” and “antihuman.” Oppressive systems that “squash the poor to the ground and allow a tiny number to heap up wealth and power” are demonic and defeated by Jesus’s cross.

When Wright looks for historical examples of how the cross defeats these powers, he finds several that are racist social systems. He points to the apartheid system of racism in South Africa and he points to the White Supremacy system of racism in America. He credits leaders like Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, Jr. as prophetic Christian voices who lived out the belief that the powers are defeated by Jesus’s cross through their protests and movements for social change.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from this evidence is that for N. T. Wright the meaning of Jesus’s cross directly translates into opposition to systemic racism in societies like the United States. For N. T. Wright political organizing against “antihuman” systems is an essential part of our role as Christians.

“As Christians, our role in society is not to wring our hands at the corruption of power or simply to pick a candidate that supports one or another supposedly Christian policy. The Christian role, as part of naming the name of the crucified and risen Jesus on territory presently occupied by idols, is to speak the truth to power and especially to speak up for those with no power at all.

I have seen this again and again, mostly in cases that never make the newspapers but significantly transformed actual communities. I saw it when friends working in the prison system, some of them as chaplains, were able to go to the prison governors and point out ways in which the system was failing to protect many highly vulnerable young people in their care. I saw it when a small group managed to protest successfully on behalf of a man who had fled for his life from another country at a time when the government was keen to boost its statistics for keeping such people out.

[…]A central part of our vocation is, prayerfully and thoughtfully, to remind people with power, both official (government ministers) and unofficial (backstreet bullies), that there is a different way to be human. A true way. The Jesus way. This doesn’t mean ‘electing into office someone who shares our political agenda’; that might or might not be appropriate. It means being prepared, whoever the current officials are, to do what Jesus did with Pontius Pilate: confront them with a different vision of kingdom, truth, and power.” (p.400-401)

This blunt acknowledgement of the existence and evil of systemic racism will no doubt trouble those who are attracted to Wright’s theology but deny the reality of systemic racism. Nevertheless, it is a fact that not only does Wright acknowledge this reality, his theology of systemic racism’s defeat by Jesus’s cross as an instance of demonic power is an essential aspect of this view of the Christian Gospel and the church’s mission in the world.

New YouTube Channel!



Welcome to Theological Graffiti, a channel about life, faith, and the city. I’m T. C. and I’m a Jesus-disciple who has been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel. For the last 20 years, I’ve served the multiethnic Jesus movement across the country from New Orleans to Boston to LA to the Twin Cities. In addition to mentoring court-involved teens, I also pastor a local church, write, and make videos here on YouTube. A crucial part of our journeys of faith is being theologically equipped to live out the Way of Jesus. That’s where this channel comes in. On this channel, I not only share my own reflections, I also point you to some of my favorite theology resources, and interview important theologians and urban ministers I think you’re going to love hearing from. So whether you’re a theology nerd like me, or just theology curious, this channel is here to encourage you, resource you, and challenge you to dig deeper.

21-Book Salute (2020)

Every year I set a reading goal. This year, my goal was two books per month. I fell slightly short with 21. But given that this year was 2020, and therefore awful, I feel good about it—especially considering how good the books were!

In order of when I read them:

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]1. Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God’s Emotions and SufferingEdited by Robert J. Matz and A. Chadwick Thornhill; Contributions by Daniel Costelo, James Dolezal, Thomas Jay Oord, and John Peckham

If you’re at all familiar with my theological proclivities, you’re probably aware that I’ve read and written quite a bit on the subject of divine impassibility. For most, this probably seems like a strange obsession. I get that. But it’s also a critical component of one’s view of God. On it hinges the kind of God one worships. And, personally, I couldn’t worship an impassible god. That’s why the subject matters to me. This book offers four perspectives on divine impassibilty, but that’s a bit misleading. Only one of the four actually believes God is impassible. The other three either affirm God’s passibility outright or in some modified way that still ends up affirming it. Also, the one view which affirms divine impassibility specifically denies that the doctrine is derived from Scripture. For those for whom biblical grounding for one’s theology is important, impassibility is a non-starter.

Check out my Two Part review

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]2. Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and JusticeEdited by Mae Elise Cannon and Andrea Smith

At a time when “Evangelical” has become synonymous with right-wing “Conservative” partisan politics, and a White faction in the Southern Baptist Convention has declared war any teaching that calls out systemic racism, a book like this is vitally important. Those who are called “Evangelicals” in 2020 are not the Neo-Evangelicals of Post-war America who rejected Fundamentalism and embraced science, social activism, and racial integration. (Ask the Veggie Tales guy!) Evangelicals like those who founded Gordon-Conwell’s Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME)—my alma mater—have always embraced a holistic gospel that encompasses liberation and justice. Which is why chapter 10: “Leaning in to Liberating Love” about the birth of CUME was one of my favorite chapters. If you’ve been taught that Evangelicalism is what Al Mohler, Robert Jeffress, and Franklin Graham say it is, you need to read this book!

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]3. Four Views on Hell: Second Edition (2016)General Editor: Preston Sprinkle ; Series Editor: Stanley Gundry; Contributions by Denny Burk, John Stackhouse Jr., Robin Parry, and Jerry Walls

Back at the start of the year, I was teaching a series on “Deconstruction” at the church where I serve as a pastor and wanted to bone up on the hell debate. It’d been so long since I’d gone through my own deconstruction and reconstruction process around “afterlife” beliefs (2000—2003) that I’d forgotten a lot of what informed my thinking. Thankfully, Zondervan had updated their “four views” book on this subject since the version I read back in Bible college and it was very helpful.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]4. Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and JudgmentBy Sharon L. Baker

For that same teaching series, I also read this wonderful book. Unlike the Four Views book, Baker is pastoral in her approach to this subject—and also approaches it from a distinctly Peace Church perspective, which I appreciated. Two of places where Baker shined brightest was on the subjects of “Sheol” and “Gehenna.” I highly recommend this book for those interested in looking more deeply into what the Bible teaches about “hell.”

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]5. Womanist Sass and Talk Back: Social (In)Justice, Intersectionality, and Biblical InterpretationBy Mitzi J. Smith

It was a goal of mine to read more Womanism this year and this book felt like a good place to start. I’d recommend it to others who are dipping their toes in the Womanism pond. Each chapter is a bite-sized essay on an interesting subject. It’s more academic than might be comfortable for the casual theology reader. But for those who are at least somewhat theologically trained, this book will excite. I expect to read much more from Mitzi Smith in the future.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]6. What is the Trinity and Why Does it Matter?By Steve Dancause

I’m a big fan of Herald Press’s “The Jesus Way: Small Books of Radical Faith” series of books. I’ve already reviewed Dr. Dennis Edwards’ contribution: What is the Bible and How Do We Understand It?  I think these very brief books are excellent introductions for lay persons. So I was excited to read the two latest contributions. Neither disappointed. Dancause does an excellent job presenting such a complex and rich subject in a winsome and meaningful way.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]7. Why Do We Suffer and Where is God When We Do?By Valerie G. Rempel

Tackling perhaps the most challenging question of them all—the question of suffering—is tremendously difficult when one has all the room required. But to do so in a format as brief as this series is a truly amazing feat. Rempel does a fantastic job. This is such an important subject—one that is so often mishandled and yet so crucial—I’d go so far as to say this should be required reading in churches.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]8. Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of DiscoveryBy Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah

I’ve been waiting for this book to come out for years. Dr. Rah is a friend, mentor, and was one of my professors at CUME. Also, back when I was pastoring in LA, I met with Mark Charles and he told me about what he was working on: the Doctrine of Discovery. I was enthralled. It would be another three years before I’d have the book in my hands. But it was well worth the wait. This book not only walks readers through the long and horrific history of Settler Colonialism, it also introduces readers to a novel theory about White Fragility and trauma. Here’s an excerpt from my review:

“Unsettling Truths isn’t just a book, it’s a prophecy. It is a blazing spotlight focused directly on the darkness that plagues the United States, and in particular white, North American Christians. It calls us out of the darkness of historical ignorance and into the light of moral courage. It calls us out of the darkness of White Supremacy and into the light of antiracism and ethnic conciliation. It calls us out of the darkness of American Empire and into the light of the global body of Christ. ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant.’ ”

Check out my review

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]9. Resilient Faith: How the Early Christian “Third Way” Changed the WorldBy Gerald L. Sittser

What attracted me to this book was the phrase “Third Way” in the title. I’m very pleased that Sittser didn’t use this phrase to Bothsides partisan politics or to commit the “Middle Ground” logical fallacy. Instead, he details the historical roots of the term and its import for today. Here’s an excerpt from my review:

“Resilient Faith fits well into a sub-genre of books that have proliferated in the U.S. within the last several decades, which are designed to help the church adapt to ‘Post-Christian’ or ‘Post-Christendom’ society. While Sittser certainly isn’t the first non-Anabaptist Christian author to also recognize the unholy marriage of church and state as a significant ‘shift’ in not only the history of the West, but also in the church’s theology and practice, he nevertheless connects those dots in a way that didn’t feel like a ‘How To’ book. I appreciated this a lot since I’ve grown weary of the hundreds of ‘Missional’ books that all seem to sound the same. Yet Sittser isn’t entire non-prescriptive. He does see the early church’s example as a model for how the modern church can continue to faithfully witness to the Kingdom of God.”

Check out my review [image error]

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]10. The God Who Trusts: A Relational Theology of Divine Faith, Hope, and LoveBy Wm. Curtis Holtzen

I met Curtis Holtzen in 2013 at an Open Theism conference I was co-directing in Saint Paul. Later we reconnected in Southern California while I was pastoring out there. He’s a gifted professor with keen cultural insights. That’s why I was so excited to read this book. Here’s an excerpt from my review:

“In The God Who Trusts, Curtis Holtzen demonstrates a vast knowledge of his subject. He traverses the thought of Aquinas and Tillich, process theologians and Reformed. He uses vivid analogies that stick with readers and at times his words catch the homiletical tenor of a preacher. It’s a good read! And with the publishing of The God Who Trusts, Holtzen joins the hallowed ranks of brave and brilliant theologians who have written monographs in the Open and Relational theological movement. His comrades are figures like Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Bill Hasker, Richard Rice, David Basinger, Thomas Jay Oord, and Greg Boyd. But The God Who Trusts strikes a very different tone and emphasis from these other works—filling what I now can see was a significant void.”

Check out my review

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]11. A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global IdentityBy Vince Bantu

Vince Bantu and I go way back to our seminary days in Boston at CUME and we’ve kept in touch over the years since. Vince has become one of the country’s leading scholars of early African Christianities and he’s incredibly good at communicating his research to audiences. While this book is no ‘beach read,’ it was thrilling for this theology nerd, since I’m often perplexed and frustrated by what Soong-Chan Rah calls the “Western White Captivity of the Church.” Here’s an excerpt from my review:

“Along with the detailed history of the Gospel’s early spread to Africa, the rest of the Middle East, and Asia, [A Multitude of All Peoples] also problematizes the notion of ‘orthodoxy’ that has come to dominate, especially in modern American Evangelical circles. What is taken for granted by the vast majority of Western Christians is that there is a clear and decisive history of orthodox theology going back to Nicea and Chalcedon. But like the whitewashed history of Christian missions, this too is a narrative warped by Euro-American ethnocentrism and White Supremacy. The reality is far more complex.”

Check out my review

[image error] (Affiliate links)[image error]12. Might from the Margins: The Gospel’s Power to Turn the Tables on InjusticeBy Dennis Edwards

Dennis Edwards is a beloved mentor and inspiration. While his primary work is in the academy these days, he’s an incredibly gifted pastor as well. The pastoral insights are what makes this book stand out from the rest. Here’s an excerpt from my review:

“Might From the Margins draws our attention to the way power factors into our understanding of the Christian faith. Power is something that White Evangelicals in particular have a difficult time talking about. It’s something that makes them/us uncomfortable. Which is precisely why White Evangelicals need to read this book.”

Check out my review

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]13. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of ResistanceBy Reggie Williams

This year, leading up to the presidential election, I noticed many churches beginning teaching series on how to “dialogue” and heard a lot of Bothsidesing coming from White Evangelical pulpits. That’s why, instead, I chose to teach on the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His fight against Fascism in 1930s Germany was more instructive for how Jesus-disciples should position ourselves relative to the U.S. government pre-election. Reggie Williams’ excellent book on Bonhoeffer’s transformative experience in Harlem was a primary text as I prepared sermons. 

Check out this sermon called “From Volk to Spoke”

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]14. Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism (Counterpoints)General Editor: James Stamoolis ; Series Editor: Stanley Gundry; Contributions by Bradley Nassif, Michael Horton, Vladimir Berzonsky, George Hancock-Stefan, and Edward Rommen

From time to time, I’m impressed by the far less dualistic, more organic theological foundations in Eastern Orthodoxy. And yet, the tradition is not without its own foibles. After being alerted to a sale by an online bookstore on the Counterpoints series, I picked up a few books including this gem. I found it very helpful.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]15. The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral IntegrityEdited by Ron Sider; Contributions by Ron Sider, Mark Galli, Miroslav Volf, Stephen Haynes, and John Fea (among others)

In 2020, many media outlets continually portrayed “Evangelicals” as a Conservative/Republican monolith, which is of course far from true. In reality, there was a vocal and sustained resistance to the toxicity of Trumpism resounding in the corridors of many Evangelical institutions. For example, Mark Galli was famously ousted from his role as Editor of Christianity Today for his pointed criticism of Donald Trump and the immorality and corruption he represents. He and many others contributed to this important book.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]16. God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its AftermathBy N. T. Wright

It’s nothing short of amazing how prolific is N. T. Wright. He somehow managed to write a book about the global pandemic while most of us were still reeling from it. This book is very brief—particularly by Wright’s book-length standards—but power-packed.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]17. Jesus and the DisinheritedBy Howard Thurman

At some point in 2020 I realized that I desperately needed to read Jesus and the Disinherited. This work lays a foundation for so many of the works I’ve been reading and yet remains highly relevant today. Even though it was written over half a century ago, some of the insights could not have been more prescient. I am confident this is a book I will need to read again and again for years to come.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]18. Jesus According to the New TestamentBy James D. G. Dunn

Occasionally I want to sink my teeth into some New Testament studies that remind me of my early Bible college and seminary days. This year, we lost one of the greats. James (known affectionally by his friends as “Jimmy”) Dunn was a giant of New Testament scholarship. And yet his writing style is without pretense and entirely approachable to intermediate to even beginning scholars. This book is no exception.

[image error] (Affiliate link)
[image error]19. Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich BonhoefferBy Charles Marsh

In my studies of Bonhoeffer for the teaching/preaching series I led for our congregation, I wanted to read something that more directly reflected upon Bonhoeffer’s early childhood and background. I learned a ton from this book that I never would have imagined about the way Bonhoeffer was raised. This book was filled with immense details and yet also a feast for the imagination. A must-read for those who want to understand who Bonhoeffer was.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]20. The Battle for Bonhoeffer: Debating Discipleship in the Age of TrumpBy Stephen Haynes

I primarily wanted to read this book because of how the Bonhoeffer biography written by Conservative Trump-supporter Eric Metaxes has so proliferated the market and monopolized the popular perception of Bonhoeffer among Conservative White Evangelicals. This book shows precisely why the portrait painted by Metaxes is self-serving and drastically skewed.

[image error] (Affiliate link)[image error]21. Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the WorldBy N. T. Wright

Yes, I read two books by Wright this year. (That’s not a record! Some years I read several books by Wright). It just so happens that this book was sent to me from HarperCollins before it was officially released (which was thrilling!) and so I couldn’t resist. Despite being world-famous for his encyclopedic knowledge and insight into the person and work of the apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus, this book is actually about the Fourth Gospel (aka “John”). I’m still hoping to give this book the review it deserves, but it will likely have to wait until 2021.

My 2021 Book Stack
(Some I’ve Already Begun to Read)

There were several really good books that I started but wasn’t able to finish reading in 2020. They have already made it into my 2021 stack, and I’m excited to start digging in soon!

Links to Amazon for books in this post are “Affiliate” links. If you purchase a book using any of these links, I will receive a small commission.

Busting 5 Peacemaking Myths

If you know anything about me, you probably know that peace is a big deal for me. You probably know that one of the Christian traditions that’s had an important influence on how I think about following Jesus is the Peace Church tradition of the Anabaptists. You probably also know that I advocate for nonviolence and you probably know my wife Osheta’s first book was even entitled Shalom Sistas. So, for some folks, it comes as somewhat of a shock when I weigh in on matters of social justice in politics. Some folks are surprised and dismayed when I call out racism, misogyny, or economic injustice. They sometimes accuse me of violating my own emphasis on peace. They might see me making comments or statements about public policy and ask “How does peacemaking fit into this?” This question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about what biblical “peace” means—one that I once unfortunately had as well. But, thankfully, through study of the Scriptures, through learning from wise mentors and biblical scholars, and through my own advocacy with and for those who experience injustice, I’ve been disabused of many unbiblical ways of thinking about peace. And now it’s one of my favorite subjects.

So, in this piece, I’m going to be dispelling five common misconceptions about peacemaking while talking about what peacemaking in the Way of Jesus is really all about.

In the NIV, Matthew 5.1-12 reads:

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

It’s possible that some of us are so familiar with these words that we have trouble hearing them anymore. For example, I’ve observed that many of us invest our own understanding of “peacemaking” into Jesus’s use of the term here. There was a time not all that long ago when I had unknowingly invested peacemaking with my own faulty assumptions. I confused Jesus’s way of peace-making with what I’d been taught, which was all about peace-keeping. So the first myth I’m going to bust is the myth that peace-making is the same as peace-keeping.


1. Peace-keeping isn’t Peace-making

For starters, we tend to lightly skip over the connection between peacemaking and persecution right here in the Beatitudes. Jesus was a peacemaker and yet he was also persecuted. Jesus concludes the beatitudes with the fact that the prophets were also persecuted, so his disciples are in good company. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a peacemaker too, and obviously he was persecuted. This is where people get stuck. How can a prophet also be a peacemaker?

The misconception is that prophetic speech, such as speaking up for the oppressed, calling out injustice, isn’t peaceful. Maybe it’s cold comfort that this isn’t just a modern-day misconception. People in Jesus’s day had this misunderstanding too. Here’s what Jesus says to address this misunderstanding in his day:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. (Matthew 10.34-36)

See, Jesus is differentiating his peace from a common misconception of peace: going along to get along. Jesus is saying his peace is also a sharp and poignant truth! And the truth divides. When we’ve committed to Jesus Christ, it may mean some folks won’t be on our side anymore. The truth that Jesus is the Messiah who brings God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven is a divisive truth. It’s good news to those who embrace Jesus as their king; it’s very bad news to those who reject him and his kingdom. It’s good news to those who look around at the world and recognize that it’s broken, unjust, in need of renewal. It’s bad news to those who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo from which they benefit.

Jesus teaches that the truth of his kingdom divides like a sword and that some who end up on the other side might be members of our own families. Nevertheless, Jesus calls for our allegiance. Once a wannabe disciple said he would follow Jesus after burying his father. Jesus’s response was, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” (Mt. 8.22) Jesus was a peacemaker, and yet Jesus’s peace was confrontational and a lot of us don’t like confrontation. We would rather avoid it. Unfortunately conflict-avoidance isn’t peace-making. Here’s how Osheta puts it:

“It’s been a year of embracing my calling as a peacemaker and owning the conviction that peacemaking is more than gentle words and a humble attitude to avoid conflict when prophetic words and righteous indignation burns hot in my chest. If I do all I can to avoid conflict, then I’m simply a peacekeeper, not a peacemaker. Sometimes I forget we’re not called to be peace-keepers—the children of God are made of sterner stuff than to merely keep the peace—no, Jesus challenges us to be peacemakers.
 The difference is subtle, but subversive. Peacekeeping maintains the unjust status quo by preferring the powerful. Peacemaking flips over a few tables and breaks out a whip when the poor are exploited. Peacekeeping does everything to secure a place at the table. Peacemaking says all are welcome to the table, then extends the table with leaves of inclusive love. Fear drives Peacekeeping. Love powers Peacemaking.”

2. Avoiding Conflict isn’t Peacemaking

Do you see how this mistaking of peace-making as peace-keeping is closely related to the myth that peacemaking is avoiding conflict? This might be a particular struggle for those of us who have been culturally conditioned to avoid conflict. Maybe you grew up in a family that “just didn’t talk about those things.” Or maybe you grew up with an abiding fear that if you rocked the boat or stepped out of line in any way, you’d lose everything. You could be shunned, you could become an outcast, you could lose the people who mean the most to you: your family. So, you learned to do everything in your power to avoid conflict.

This is like growing up in a home with an alcoholic or abusive family member and everyone in the family would rather keep silent about it than confront that person. There’s a strong belief that everything will be better if we just don’t upset that person. So, the disease or the abuse gets worse and worse. That’s not peace-making.

Jesus never shied away from confronting the social ills of his day. Jesus accused religious leaders who were considered holy and well-respected of being hypocrites who abused their power to prey upon vulnerable people. Mark 12.38-40 says,

As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”

Or how about the woes Jesus pronounced upon the rich?

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. (Luke 6.24-26)

Yikes! Calm down, Jesus! Someone is going to call you a Socialist! The idea that Jesus was ever “meek and mild” is some kind of weird modern domestication of his prophetic voice. Anyone who simply reads the Gospels can see that Jesus was anything but meek and mild.

3. Neutrality isn’t Peacemaking

Not only do we sometimes mistakenly associate peacemaking with conflict avoidance, we also sometimes mistakenly associate Peacemaking with Neutrality. This mistake was a particularly attractive one for me. Neutrality can carry with it an air of superiority. It’s like that old analogy of people holding different parts of an elephant in the dark and trying to describe it. Each person is wrong because they only perceive one part of the elephant. The person who mistakes peacemaking for neutrality imagines themselves the objective observer who sees the entire elephant, unlike those poor souls stuck in the dark. What’s even more ironic is that this posture of neutrality is often described by its adherents as “humility” when in fact it’s the most arrogant position of all.

But when we follow Jesus, we end up in the places where Jesus ended up, with the people that Jesus end up with. And the more we love like Jesus loved, the more clearly we can see why Jesus identifies with those who society overlooks, the afflicted, the imprisoned, the disenfranchised. We realize that Jesus himself wasn’t neutral. He came to seek and save the last, the lost, and the least. He didn’t come for those who think they are well; he came for those who know they are sick.

Jesus is the Word incarnate, God in the flesh! And yet he came as a poor peasant member of a conquered and occupied people group. He lived his life on the margins of society not the seat of power. He didn’t have to die on a cross as a criminal, but that’s the life of love he chose. Dietrich Bonhoeffer grew up wealthy and privileged. He didn’t have to die in a Nazi concentration camp, but that’s the life of love he chose. The reason Bonhoeffer set aside his power and privilege to identify with the powerless is because he was a follower of Jesus.

Elie Wiesel was a survivor of one of those Nazi concentration camps that Bonhoeffer opposed. And Wiesel went on to become a prolific and awarded author. He once wrote this:

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Peacemaking is messy and requires courage. We’re not called to sit on the sidelines or fade into the background. We’re not called to preserve the status quo or business as usual. We’re called to be peacemakers. Dr. King understood this too and once wrote:

“I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate… who prefers a negative peace (the absence of tension) to a positive peace (the presence of justice).”

4. Having No Boundaries isn’t Peacemaking

But someone will say, “T. C., doesn’t peacemaking entail listening to one another and seeking to understand each other?” Of course! I think hearing one another’s stories is a vital part of peacemaking. When we hear one another’s stories, it can build our empathy for one another. We might find important common ground that helps up move toward one another. I see an example of this in the life of Jesus when he dialogued with the Pharisee named Nicodemus, who came to him at night. Jesus didn’t rebuke him as he regularly did the other Pharisees who publicly tried to trap him. No, he received Nicodemus and spoke with him directly yet graciousness. But there are a couple critically important caveats that need to be inserted here.

Peace-making doesn’t mean having no boundaries. It’s psychologically unhealthy for a person who has experienced significant trauma to continually subject themselves to re-traumatization. Our calling to be peacemakers doesn’t mean we have to constantly relive our trauma by listening to people who hold dehumanizing, toxic, or abusive positions. It’s not peacemaking to be a sponge for toxicity. It’s not peacemaking to be a doormat.

For example, this is particularly true for our sisters and brothers who are part of minority groups. It’s not being a peacemaker for them to be constantly subjected to the views of people who further stigmatize, stereotype, or denigrate their identities.

James Baldwin once wrote:

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

For those who publicly propped up the oppressive power structure of his day, Jesus had only words of judgment. He publicly called them to repent or face the judgment of God. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Jesus wasn’t a peacemaker because he was also a prophet! And don’t make the mistake of thinking that modern-day prophets aren’t also peacemakers, simply because they call the rulers and powers to repentance.

5. Bothsidesing isn’t Peacemaking

Sometimes this false dichotomy between peacemaking and the prophetic call to repentance leads people to the false notion that Peacemaking requires us to ignore facts and create false moral equivalencies. This is also known as Bothsidesing. The reality is that very often two sides of an issue are not equally right or wrong—one side is just wrong. And the compulsion to find “middle ground” can lead people to destroy peace rather than make it. Remember this: “Half way between truth and lie is still a lie.”

Isaac Asimov was a brilliant scientist and prolific writer who taught at Boston University. He once received a letter from an english literature student named John who wanted to school Asimov in science. The letter-writer objected to Asimov’s assertion that modern science had made important advancements into understanding the nature of the universe over previous eras. Asimov writes,

“The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern “knowledge” is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. “If I am the wisest man,” said Socrates, “it is because I alone know that I know nothing.” the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal. My answer to him was, “John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”

The mistake John makes is the same mistake many still make today when it comes to peacemaking. They think that “Both sides” must be equally right or equally wrong, and that the best position is to pretend we aren’t wise enough to know the difference. But as Asimov demonstrates, this is utter foolishness. Truth is not so elusive that we cannot stand on the facts in front of our faces. And, to be honest, those who often make this argument against biblical peacemaking cherry-pick the “truths” that they find obvious and the truths that inexplicably can’t be known by anyone. How convenient that we just can’t know if a policy is racist, but we can for sure know if a policy is economically sound?

Esau McCaulley is an African American Anglican priest and professor at Wheaton. He studied with N. T. Wright in Scotland for his doctorate. He writes about this in his new book Reading While Black:

“What, then, does peacemaking involve and what does it have to do with the church’s political witness? Biblical peacemaking… involves assessing the claims of groups in conflict and making a judgment about who is correct and who is incorrect. Peacemaking, then, cannot be separated from truth telling. The church’s witness does not involve simply denouncing the excesses of both sides and making moral equivalencies. It involves calling injustice by its name. If the church is going to be on the side of peace in the United States, then there has to be an honest accounting of what this country has done and continues to do to Black and Brown people. Moderation or the middle ground is not always the loci of righteousness. Housing discrimination has to be named. Unequal sentences and unfair policing has to be named. Sexism and the abuse and commodification of the Black female body has to end. Otherwise any peace is false and unbiblical. Beyond naming there has to be some vision for the righting of wrongs and the restoration of relationships. The call to be peacemakers is the call for the church to enter the messy world of politics and point toward a better way of being human.”

One of the reasons why we often make these mistakes about Peacemaking is because we have faulty mental models. Here’s one of them. We imagine that the divisions we need to overcome are horizontal on the same plain. Some are over on one side of the plain—let’s call it the Left side—while others are over on the Right side of the plain. In this mental model, the division that exists is on a horizontal spectrum. This imagines that if we can just “meet together in the middle” we’d have peace. But the fundamental problem with this mental model is that we aren’t all on the same plain, whether Left or Right.

This mental model presumes that everyone is on equal footing, having equal status relative to others. But that’s not the biblical model. In the biblical model of peace, some are unjustly disadvantaged and others are unjustly advantaged. They aren’t starting on the same plain; some hold a position in society above and over others. So the way to peace in the biblical model isn’t merely meeting in the middle, it’s the high and mighty being brought low and the downtrodden being uplifted. Shalom isn’t achieved until everyone is brought to the same level, regardless of where they fall on the “Left” or the “Right.”

It’s a little early for Advent readings, but Mary the mother of Jesus has something to say about how Jesus brings peace to the world:

And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” (Luke 1.46-55)

The Shalom of God isn’t just people agreeing to disagree or maintaining a truce. No, the Shalom of God is when God’s dream for humanity is realized: All of humanity reigning together on God behalf as God’s representatives, stewarding the earth’s resources as the gifts they are, caring for all God’s creatures as precious, honoring one another as fellow divine image-bearers, and sharing resources with one another in a society that celebrates our God-giving diversity. Everyone belongs. Everyone has all they need. Everyone lives out of the fullness of God’s life in and through them.

Peacemaking confronts everything short of God’s dream and builds toward the day when God’s Shalom is fully established on earth as it is in heaven.

Watch this sermon on YouTube

From Volk to Spoke: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Transformational Encounter with the Black Christ in Harlem

It goes without saying that the United States is nearing the end of an election season unlike any we’ve seen in modern times. Not only do we have an impeached incumbent president who has worked very hard to sow doubt in the trustworthiness of the democratic election process itself, but we also (for the first time in American history) have an impeached incumbent president who, if he loses, refuses to agree to the peaceful transfer of power—which is of course one of the very bedrocks of American democracy. None of the experts who have been closely watching all of this know for certain how this election will turn out. But many are deeply concerned that we’re headed toward a constitutional crisis that could have very destructive real-world consequences for everyday people. This uncertainty about the future of the American experiment is stressful enough without it being compounded by the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic that has already killed over a million people around the world and over 200,000 people here in the United States. On top of that, there continues to be a racial reckoning taking place—a renewal of the movement for Black freedom in America—since the murders of Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

As a pastor, I’m very curious what Christians in the U.S. are being taught in churches in this crucial time. So I’ve been trying to pay close attention to the sermon topics and teaching series that are being promoted by churches I follow. And I’ve gotta say, I’ve been really discouraged to see a lot of churches teaching that the primary challenge American Christians face today is polarization and partisanship. It’s been really frustrating to see a lot of churches suggesting that the primary problem is that we don’t understand one another well enough or know how to dialogue anymore. These are great examples of why the religiously unaffiliated demographic—the so-called “Nones”—is rapidly growing and why the church in America remains just as segregated as it was 60 years ago when Dr. King said the 11:00 hour on Sundays is the most segregated hour of the week.

The problem is not just polarization or a lack of dialogue. A more fundamental problem is the pervasive injustice that is present in American society at a massive scale. In the midst of a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people, it’s unjust that millions of people in this country don’t have access to basic health insurance—in the wealthiest country that has ever existed. It’s unjust that people of Asian descent have been targeted for violence and discrimination due in large part to the racist rhetoric of the president of the United States. It’s unjust that Black Americans are disproportionately brutalized and killed by police in this country—and the police officers who commit these crimes are rarely if ever charged or convicted. It’s unjust that while we’re focused on election politics, female immigrants and refugees are being abused and operated on against their wills in detention centers funded by tax payer dollars—not to mention the abuse of unaccompanied minors separated from their parents. These are just a few examples of the widespread and heinous injustices that characterize this period in American history. But framing what we’re living through as a lack of dialogue or partisan polarization suggests that there are somehow two sides to these injustices—as if there were some reasonable explanation for them. But there is not. And I would be committing pastoral malpractice to teach you otherwise.

Instead, what I believe God would have us learn now is how the church can resist injustice in society and be a faithful witness of God’s kingdom. The Scriptures, the life of Jesus, the example of the early church, and the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a modern martyr) offer us tremendous wisdom for navigating these perilous times. Let’s start with Acts 9:

1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

In this story Saul is portrayed as having power and privilege compared to Ananias, and his power and privilege isn’t illegally used to imprison and murder people. No, he is authorized to do so by religious and political authority structures. This is a small glimpse of the positional power differentials that exist in every society. There are groups who have been afforded unjust advantage and legally maintain that advantage. They are authorized to wield that power and do. This is going to be very relevant as we begin to discuss Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and what we can learn from it for our present context.

A lot of people don’t realize that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a very powerful and privileged person. It’s not often acknowledged that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was raised in immense wealth and social privilege. A few weeks ago I began reading a biography of Bonhoeffer’s life written by Charles Marsh called Strange Glory. In it he recounts the huge mansions Bonhoeffer’s family owned in cities of Germany like Berlin in addition to their summer homes in the countryside. Bonhoeffer’s father was a renowned psychotherapist who chaired the department of neurology and psychology at a prestigious hospital in Berlin. Just to give you an idea of the kind of wealth and privilege Bonhoeffer was accustomed to as he grew up, listen to this description of his household from the book.

“With the help of a small army of servants—chambermaids, housekeepers, a cook and a gardener, a governess for each of the older children, a nurse for each of the small ones—Paula [Bonhoeffer’s mother] was praised for keeping a well-tuned, comfortable, and stimulating home.” (Marsh, Strange Glory, p.7)

The biographer, Marsh, also relates how when Bonhoeffer was a teen, he proposed to his parents that he’d like to spend the summer in Rome studying independently. They of course sent him and funded the entire excursion with hardly any questions asked. Bonhoeffer was classically trained from a young age as a musician and his family were not particularly devout Christians. It’s said that they didn’t even attend church very often. So it came as somewhat of a shock to his family when he decided to study theology as a career. Bonhoeffer was very smart and excelled in his studies, but his immense wealth and social privilege made his career path a lot easier to pursue. Like the fact that the famous German theologian, Adolf von Harnack, was a family friend who lived nearby when Bonhoeffer was still just a child. By the time Bonhoeffer was merely 21, he’d already completed his doctoral dissertation, and by 24 he’d been appointed the to a professor position at the University of Berlin. By 27, he’d written a second theological dissertation.

Make Germany Great Again

Now, obviously, Bonhoeffer wasn’t someone breathing out murderous threats against others like Saul of Tarsus, but if you understand the German context in which he was rising to theological prominence, then you can see that this theology contained religious authorization for the use of violence and injustice against minorities. You see, when Bonhoeffer was just getting started as a very young theologian, Germany had just been decimated by World War I. Their economy was in ruins and they were nationally humiliated. And it’s this place of vulnerability that Hitler exploited to gain power. Here’s what ethicists Glen Stassen and David Gushee write in their book Kingdom Ethics,

“Germany was suffering from the Great Depression …mass unemployment and civil unrest. […]Hitler had promised to get the economy moving again. He had also enticed Christians to vote for him by promising to make Christianity ‘the basis of our whole morality.’ He assured Christians that they were the ‘most important factor safeguarding our national heritage.’ He blamed Jews and Communists for Germany’s problems. […]Christians were flattered by Hitler’s claim to support Christianity, and they lacked the biblical commitment to standards of justice that would have warned them against his unjust plans.” (Kingdom Ethics, p.125-6)

This is the context in which the young theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, began his career and his initial theological foundations were actually quite compatible with Nazi ideology. Stassen and Gushee go on:

“In 1929, when he had just finished his graduate studies, he had based his concrete ethics on nationalism, like other Lutheran theologians who ended up supporting Hitler. He claimed that God had ordained the nation-state to guide us in politics, war and economics. In our social responsibilities, we should not follow Jesus but the realities of German politics.” (Kingdom Ethics, p.126)

Dr. Reggie Williams is a theologian and Bonhoeffer scholar and is the author of the 2014 book, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus. In it, he starts by detailing the state of theology in Germany when Bonhoeffer was getting started this way,

“The predominate expression of Christianity in postwar Germany was a malaise of Lutheranism, social Darwinism, and nationalism fused with a triumphalist view of history described as God’s orders of creation.” (Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, p.10)

This concept of the “orders of creation” was “the doctrine that certain structures of human life” aren’t random or accidental biologically or socially, but are “deliberately ordained by God as essential and immutable conditions of human existence…” This doctrine was directly used by the German Nationalist Socialists to support the ideology of White Supremacy. They claimed that above all, the supreme order of creation is one’s Race, or Volk, and that God had ordained the German Volk to sit atop the orders of creation. This was the same kind of theology that was used to justify slavery in the Antebellum American South. Williams goes on to write,

“Bonhoeffer’s system [of theology] was no exception to the norm; in his early years, his creative theology was seduced by the predominant expression of Christianity in Germany. The concept of orders [of creation] became theological support for the Nazi language of blood and soil, or racial superiority, and of a pure Volk.” (Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, p.10)

As a young theologian and pastor, Bonhoeffer spent a few years in Spain serving a congregation of German expats and there are examples of this German Volk theology and the orders of creation theology in his sermons from that period.

Now, I’m not telling you all this to make you think Bonhoeffer was a bad person. I’m telling you all this to demonstrate that it’s all too easy for people—even good Christian people—to get swept up in nationalistic fervor when they lack hope. Hitler rose to power by exploiting the vulnerable state of the German collective psyche and promising to Make Germany Great Again.

Here’s how Dr. Williams puts it,

“Hope for Germany’s future included crafting a narrative on which to hang their current experiences to connect their imperialist nostalgia with a vision of a brighter German tomorrow. Longing for Germany’s glorious past framed the story of a recovered, victorious Volker (German race).” (p.12)

Encountering the Black Christ

But all of this began to change in 1930 when Bonhoeffer spent a year abroad in New York to study at Union Theological Seminary in Harlem. This was during the “Harlem Renaissance” when African Americans in Harlem were expressing themselves in powerful new ways. The music and poetry and visual art from this period is stunning in its anticipation of the Civil Rights Movement that wouldn’t happen for several more decades. During the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans celebrated their beauty and their power, their unique contribution to American society, and their unique expression of Christian faith.

By the time Bonhoeffer arrived in Harlem in 1930, he had already begun to grow disillusioned with the scholasticism and dead orthodoxy of his theological tradition in Germany. He was hungry for a vibrant, life-giving expression of Christian faith that would move him to act in new ways. And he was in search of what he called the “cloud of witnesses” and a community “under the Gospel.” This is what Bonhoeffer encountered at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. In the preaching of Pastor Adam Clayton Powell, Bonhoeffer heard a message of hope that didn’t center around Modernity or the triumph of Western civilization, but instead a message of hope that centered around the person and work of Jesus Christ. In the teaching and ministry of Abyssinian, Bonhoeffer encountered Christ in an entirely new and unexpected way. He encountered Christ among the community of those who were regarded as less than by the broader American society and in it he recognized the wisdom and power of God.
Saul of Tarsus would later write these words in which we can’t help but think about his own transformational experience,

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
 the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Brothers and sisters, think of your status and how you were viewed when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose those considered foolish by the world to shame those considered wise; God chose the those considered weak by the world to shame those considered strong. God chose those considered lowly by this world and those considered despised and those considered nobodies to expose those considered somebodies, so that no one may boast before God. It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.’ (1 Corinthians 1.18-31, my translation)

In the American Black Church, Bonhoeffer encountered the Black Christ—the Christ who surprisingly and miraculously reveals the power of God through weakness and the wisdom of God through the foolishness of preaching the Gospel. In the American Black Church, Bonhoeffer encountered the Black Christ who suffers with and for his people.

“Jesus, not modernity, was the reason for hope within black Christian communities like Abyssinian. Jesus was evidence that God knows suffering; if God was with Jesus in his suffering at the hands of injustice, then surely God is with black people who suffer in America. […]In Harlem, African American Christians embraced the story of Jesus, the crucified Christ, whose death they claimed paradoxically gave them life, just as God resurrected Jesus in the life of the earliest Christian community. […]Bonhoeffer found Christ existing as community where historically marginalized and oppressed black people knew Jesus as cosufferer and the gospel spoke authoritatively into all areas of life. Such a Christian experience left its mark on him.” (Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, p.25-26)

One Sunday, after returning from church at Abyssinian, a fellow seminarian and friend noticed a dramatic difference in Bonhoeffer. He was normally very stoic, non-emotive. But this Sunday he returned exited and clearly emotional. He was deeply moved by the spirituals that were sung and the way the whole congregation shared in the preached word through their audience participation. The fellow seminarian recalled, “Perhaps that Sunday afternoon… I witnessed a beginning of his identification with the oppressed which played a role in the decision that led to his death.” (BBJ, p.26)

From Apathy to Empathy

I think it’s generally true that we are most often transformed through encounter. And perhaps the most profound transformation we can undergo through encounter is the transformation from apathy to empathy. It’s incredibly ironic that Bonhoeffer had written brilliant theological dissertations on how Jesus Christ is our vicarious representative who gives his life for us. In fact, Bonhoeffer had a theology of Jesus that highlighted his identification with our humanity. And yet, he couldn’t see how that identification with our suffering completely undermines the “orders of creation” theology which claims that oppressive social structures are ordained by God. He couldn’t see how his theology justified injustice. He was brilliant and blind just like Saul of Tarsus. He writes,

“I [had] plunged into my work in a very unchristian way. […]Then something happened, something that has changed and transformed my life to the present day. […]I had not yet become a Christian.” (Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 204-5)

To understand Bonhoeffer’s transformation through encounter, we need to look back at this morning’s text. It’s crucial for us to recognize that this story of Saul’s transformation isn’t merely the story of his individualistic encounter with Christ, although that happens too. Even more so, Luke’s narrative of Saul’s transformation points us to his need for the community of disciples to touch his eyes in order for him to see. Saul needs the tangible and concrete presence of Jesus among the followers of the Way to welcome him and make him a fellow disciple. His transformation isn’t complete until he encounters Christ in the community of disciples through Ananias’s healing touch.

For Saul, Ananias and all the other followers of the Way were “nobodies.” They weren’t wise by human standards or influential or of noble birth. They weren’t the religious elite like him. They didn’t have the backing of the temple authorities. They were powerless! But that’s precisely why God was with them. God is on the side of the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast, the misfits. That’s why in Matthew 25, Jesus identifies with those who are hungry, thirsty, needing clothes, the sick, and the imprisoned. Jesus says that what when we see them, we see him; and when we serve them, we’re serving him.
 When Jesus revealed himself to Saul on the road to Damascus, he revealed himself as the community of Way-followers “whom [Saul] was persecuting.” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.

Jesus identifies with the community of the persecuted, the downtrodden, the disregarded, and the disinherited. And this revelation came not just through that encounter, but through the healing touch of Ananias the persecuted disciple. And God’s call on Saul’s life was inextricably linked to the suffering that Saul would endure for Jesus’s name.

I hope this isn’t a spoiler for you, but one of the primary reasons we remember Bonhoeffer is because he was martyred. He died for what he believed—that to persecute the Jewish people or anyone was unjust and he stood with those who were being murdered. On April 9th, 1945, the Nazi SS killed Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the Flossenbürg concentration camp two weeks before it was liberated by the U.S. army. But long before he was arrested and executed, he became a catalyst of a resistance movement in Germany called the Confessing Church that opposed Hitler and Nazism. In 1933, he delivered a lecture to a group of pastors who were uneasy about the way the German state was exercising its power, but were too apathetic to speak out. Before he finished his remarks, most had left the room.

“Dietrich mentioned three possibilities of church action towards the state: ‘In the first place it can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibilities. Secondly, it can aid the victims of state action. The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.’ “ (Spoke in the Wheel, p.68)

What transformed Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s practice and theology of Christian faith from Volk to Spoke was his encounter with the Black Church in Harlem. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, something like scales fell from his spiritual eyes when he encountered Christ in the community of the disinherited.

“In Harlem, Bonhoeffer began learning to embrace Christ hidden in suffering as resistance to oppression. His new awareness of racism gave him unique insight into nationalism as the racialized mixture of God and country embodied in idealized Aryan humanity. […]Harlem provided what he needed to see the world differently and to imagine a different way of being a Christian within it.” (Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, p.139)

Sisters and brothers, the reason why I believe Bonhoeffer is so relevant for us right now is because his life shows us what it looks like for a Christian to encounter Christ among the community of the disinherited, be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and then spend the rest of their life resisting injustice even to the point of martyrdom. I believe those aren’t just the demands of discipleship in Nazi Germany; I believe those are the demands of discipleship everywhere and for all times. But particularly as we seek to faithful witnesses of the Kingdom of God here in modern America, it’s important for us to focus on Jesus and not theologies that justify injustice—or even theologies that create false equivalencies.

ReKnewing Hermeneutics, Part 3: A Review of Crucifixion of the Warrior God by Greg Boyd

Crucifixion of the Warrior God (hereafter CWG) is a two-volume, 1,300-page tome written by Greg Boyd. It addresses the dilemma posed by the contradictory portrayals of God’s relationship to violence between the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament’s testimony to Jesus. In the Hebrew Bible, God is portrayed as committing and commanding violence. But in the New Testament, the crucified Messiah who eschewed violence is portrayed as the definitive and final revelation of God’s character and nature. This creates tension within the text itself for those, like Boyd, who are committed to both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament as “God-breathed.” It is that tension that Boyd seeks to resolve by use of a Cruciform Hermeneutic and with his Cruciform Thesis, which form Volumes I and II of CWG.

In part one of this review, I summarized and commented on Volume I: The Cruciform Hermeneutic. In part two, I summarized and commented on Volume II: The Cruciform Thesis.

Originally, part three was meant to be something close to a comprehensive collection of the top objections to CWG and responses. But, after attending the ReKnew: Cross Vision conference last week, I am more than satisfied that Greg has addressed the most pressing concerns that have been raised. ReKnew will be releasing Greg’s responses in chunks in the weeks to come. So, stay tuned for those.

However, from my involvement in a 500-member Facebook group discussing the book, I have gotten a good sense of who are Greg’s primary critics. In this post, I’ll survey the landscape of criticism in a non-comprehensive way, then I will home in on the criticism that has been the most pernicious and divisive.

The Three Camps of Critics

There are three primary camps of CWG critics. Here I’ll elucidate each group and their distinctive angle of attack.

1. From the Right: The Fundamentalist Critique

As usual, Greg’s willingness to rethink traditional theological positions and traditional biblical interpretation has once again garnered him criticism from Traditionalists or Conservatives. No one is really shocked by this. By now, given Greg’s advocacy for Open theism and nonviolence, most Conservatives have already “farewelled” him long ago. But, this time around, a new accusation is being leveled against him: the charge of Marcionism. For those of you not familiar, Marcion was a second-century heretic who is famous for rejecting the God depicted in the Old Testament, claiming that God was instead a “demiurge” (a lesser, created being that is not wholly good or perfect). Some also note that he also rejected much of the New Testament as out of line with his preferred portrait of God, which centered around the Gospel of Luke and Paul’s letters. Today, when Conservatives want to shame and condemn free thinkers who dare to question the violent portraits of God in the Hebrew Bible, they immediately go to their new favorite accusation: Marcionism.

One of the reasons this accusation falls completely flat is that Greg goes out of his way in CWG to argue extensively that Christians are not free to reject any of the canonical Scriptures. He argues that, on the authority of Jesus’s trust in them as God’s word, we who are Jesus’s followers are not allowed to merely dismiss them. Greg even goes to great lengths, employing many creative and new frameworks (e.g. speech-act theory), to claim that all of Scripture, including the Old Testament, is “God-breathed.” Much of his hermeneutic/thesis rests on this, in fact, as he argues that in the Scriptures’ “God-breathed” nature lies its “cross-shaped” dimension.

One would think all this would be enough to repel the accusation of Marcionism, but one would be wrong. That assumes that such an accusation is made by folks who have thoroughly read the book, and from firsthand experience I can testify that this is typically not the case. Instead, the accusation is made reflexively by those who read or heard somewhere that Greg reinterprets the portraits of divine violence and these folks immediately slam down the Marcionite button without thought. Polarization isn’t just something that has heightened in North American, partisan, political area, it is also something that has heightened in the North American, partisan, religious area as well.

The folks in this camp largely hold the solution Greg rejects in CWG, which he called the “Synthesis Solution.” This rejected solution seeks to hold in tension the violent portraits of God in the Hebrew Bible together with the nonviolent life and teachings of Jesus. For these “Flat Bible” folks, both are equally valid and authoritative revelations of God’s character and nature.

One very unfortunate aspect of this critique from the Right is the implications it has for discipleship in the local church. When the Bible’s teaching is flattened in the way that Greg’s Fundamentalist critics have, any story of ethnic cleansing in the Hebrew Bible holds the same weight for Christian discipleship as the Sermon on the Mount, for example. The effect is to completely nullify any weight Jesus’s teaching might have for discipleship if it runs counter to what we find in the history of Israel’s wrestling with God. Instead of taking Jesus seriously, this way of reading Scripture sets “Love your enemies” alongside “Eye for an eye” and allows them to cancel one another out. In this view, Jesus is not the “Word made flesh,” Jesus is simply one word among many.

This is where Greg’s Neo-Anabaptist convictions have sharpened his hermeneutics and made his approach to interpreting Scripture incredibly vital for Christian discipleship. For a Neo-Anabaptist like Greg, the teachings of Jesus are not on the same level as Joshua’s Canaanite massacre. In fact, any modern person employing a “narrative” hermeneutic, will recognize the error of the Flat Bible approach. The canonical Scriptures form one, unified story that culminates and is fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Therefore, to hold any part of the Old Testament on par with the life of Jesus is misunderstand the metanarrative the Bible provides. It is only when we recognize the rightful, privileged place Jesus’s teachings occupy for the equipping and edification of the church, will we even begin to read the Scriptures in a faithful and useful way.

2. From the Left: The Liberal Critique

Greg’s work naturally attracts many Post-Evangelicals because, like him, they are rethinking traditional ideas. However, many Post-Evangelicals have simply drank the Liberal Kool-Aid but may not be educated enough to realize it. Many Post-Evangelicals have absorbed demythologization by osmosis. They haven’t studied Bultmann per se, but they are his disciples nonetheless. Others have simply followed the lead of other, more-educated Post-Evangelicals who have rejected the Fundamentalists doctrine of “Inerrancy” with prejudice. For them, Greg’s cogent, thorough, and nuanced defense of the “God-breathed” nature of Scripture fell on unhearing ears. All they heard was “Inerrancy” and stopped listening.

The folks in this camp largely hold the solution Greg rejects in CWG, which he calls the “Dismissal Solution.” Recently, several very gifted and intelligent scholars and writers have produced books which demonstrate that Christians needn’t be concerned about the portraits of divine violence in the Old Testament because they either didn’t happen (from the historical and/or archeological records), or they are dismissed by Jesus and the apostles. For many of Greg’s Post-Evangelical readers, these books have brought great comfort and ammunition against their former Fundamentalist comrades. These books have provided a very clean and neat washing of their hands of those messy and ugly parts of the Bible that “good” Modern Christians want to pretend aren’t there. These books have also complemented well the teachings Greg and others have pioneered which reject any moral ambiguity in God’s character. For these folks, for God to be truly Good, these aspects of the Bible must be cut out.

As with the Fundamentalist critique, this end of the spectrum also has a problem with discipleship. Teaching people that what they don’t like they can simply discarded may be a very attractive prospect for people formed by consumeristic and wasteful Western culture, but it fails to form disciples in the patient and faithful Way of Jesus. In other words, Western Christians are accustomed to having a faith that caters to them—“McChurch” as some have called it. Typically, Post-Evangelicals lead the charge against such a distortion of true Christianity. But, the reality is that the Left has just as big of problem with self-indulgence. Both ends of the spectrum tailor their faith to their liking in the same way that our cable channel packages are tailored to our viewing preferences and our Facebook news feeds are tailored to our political preferences. In the same way that people have created echo-chambers and thought bubbles in their social lives, these Post-Evangelicals seek to create a biblical bubble and an exegetical echo-chamber. They want the Bible to be a “safe space” with no “triggers.” But it simply isn’t and no amount of Jeffersonian editing will change that.

3. From “Above”: The Purist Critique

The Liberal Critique has also given birth to a third and more pernicious camp that are even more upset by the Cruciform Hermeneutic/Thesis than the Liberals. These are those who are 99.9% on board with Greg’s ideas, but spend 99.9% of their time and energy critiquing the .1% with which they disagree. Theirs is a strain of the Liberal Critique, but a much more virulent one. Instead of simply wanting to excise large portions of the Bible from the Christian faith, they want to also excise large portions of Christian theology as well.

In particular, these “Purists” want to completely expel that nasty part of Christian theology which relentlessly contends that Jesus suffered in his human nature, because Jesus was a united person, not a half-human/half-god hybrid person. They want a god who never suffers at all and instead lives impassible bliss, high above the sorrows and woes of humanity. They couch their critique in Patristic fidelity, but they fail to grasp that early church thinkers wanted to be faithful to the life of Jesus, not to Greek concepts. If there a points at which these two clash—the life of Jesus prevails, not Plato! What the early church thinkers thought it most important to preserve was the unity of Christ’s person: One Person, Two Natures. They did not want a schizophrenic Jesus! But this camp wants a Jesus who is never touched by human infirmities, never counted among humanity in our fallen state: “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” (Eph. 2.12) In short, the Jesus they want can’t help us because he has no clue what we’re going through. As Bonhoeffer famously put it, “Only a suffering God can help.” (Letters and Papers from Prison)

Along with their need for a Jesus cut off from the human experience of alienation, this camp also chaffs at the notion of divine judgment. Greg’s game-changing Cruciform Hermeneutic/Thesis, which contends that God is never violent, doesn’t go far enough to insulate them from bad feelings. They need a God who never judges, period. No judgment whatsoever!

You might be thinking: But the Bible speaks of God’s judgment …a lot. Yeah, they know. They just don’t like how that makes them feel. So, it’s got to go. And if they can’t just cut those passages from the Bible (as in the “Dismissal Solution”), then they will seek a way to simply explain all judgment away. Some even attempt to extend Greg’s work in that effort. Their logic sounds like: “If the Cruciform Hermeneutic/Thesis can be used to reinterpret the portraits of divine violence, why can’t they just reinterpret all judgment away, so we don’t have to worry about it at all?”

The reason why is fairly simple, actually. Unlike the Purist Critique, the Cruciform Hermeneutic/Thesis isn’t an attempt to rid the Bible of everything that offends Liberal sensibilities to create some sort of “safe” Scripture. No, the Cruciform Hermeneutic/Thesis is, instead, an attempt to faithfully interpret the Scriptures in accordance with their climatic revelation—the life of Jesus. The life of Jesus, which itself is climatically summarized in the Cross—is not devoid of divine judgment. No, the life of Jesus is the breaking in of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom that stands in judgment of all other kingdoms. The life of Jesus is the invasion of the holy into a world that has been hijacked by principalities and powers at odds with God. This life, particularly on the Cross, exposes, disarms, makes a spectacle of, and defeats the kingdoms of this world, characterized by their anti-God, anti-creation corruption. God’s Kingdom must judge if it is to redeem. God’s Kingdom must judge if it is to liberate. God’s Kingdom must judge if it is the truth entering a world of lies. God’s Kingdom must judge if it is the rightful Kingdom.

What’s ironic is that Greg has championed nonviolence and unconditional love for decades. He has been such an outspoken proponent of God’s unending agape that he has been judged by Conservatives as a Liberal who rejects all judgment. But, with the publication of CWG, now Greg is judged by the Purists as not being enough of a proponent of God’s love.

That’s the problem with Purists; you can never measure up to their impossible standards. Their idealism ruins the very progress they claim to want, but doesn’t happen fast enough or completely enough. With Purists “the Perfect” is the enemy of “the Good.” And when Purists succeed in vilifying the Good in contrast to “the Perfect,” evil wins. Ask Hilary Clinton.

Defending Redemptive Withdrawal

The number one complaint from the Purist camp is that Greg’s “Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal” is mean. They don’t like it because it seems negative and gives them bad feelings. Instead, they want a God who never judges anyone, never exposes evil, never stands against injustice. Just a big, soft Teddy Bear god who only hugs people.

Problem is: That’s not love. Love doesn’t only embrace the broken or lift up the oppressed. Love also holds a mirror up to the ugliness of the world. Love also forms a contrast to that which is hateful, destructive, indifferent, impassible, and corrupt. Without malice, love judges. Love is a standard up to which evil does not measure. That’s not love’s fault—that’s evil’s fault.

I remember when I was a teenager and had not surrendered my life to Christ. The last people on the planet I wanted to spend time with were goody two shoes Christians! This wasn’t because I’d had horrible experiences of emotional abuse or judgment by Christians. That’s actually not the case at all. The Christians I knew were incredibly loving and compassionate people. But the reason I wanted nothing to do with them is because their very existence reminded me of my alienation from God. Their love reminded me of my rage-filled, self-destructive depression. Their forgiveness reminded me of the people I’ve hurt. And on and on and on. They never had to mistreat me at all for me to want nothing to do with them. Their love judged me. This is the love the Purists want nothing to do with. They only want the part of love that washes away sin, the part that welcomes and accepts.

As someone who cares deeply about those who suffer from injustice and labor under systemic oppression, I don’t want the love that only accepts and never judges. In fact, I’d say a love that never judges but only accepts, isn’t truly love at all. Only a love that stands against evil is true love. Only a love that condemns injustice is true love. Anything less is enablement and co-conspiracy. God and the devil would be in league together. Anything less is unworthy of the God revealed in Jesus.

Love Makes Space

Divine Redemptive Withdrawal is the most loving way God can judge free agents. When God created a world populated by semi-autonomous beings, God withdrew some of God’s say-so over the universe. God withdrew out of love to make space for other beings who are not controlled by God. In order for God, who is all in all, to have not-God, there had to be a withdrawal. Human agents need space to be free. Without space—space to fail, space to sin, space to reject God, space to mistreat creation—there could be no true freedom. Open theists like Boyd aren’t the only ones who believe this. All non-determinists believe this. This is the Libertarian concept of Free Will.

In this act of making space for the other, God’s love is manifestly demonstrated, even when the space results in the human other experiencing the consequences of misusing that freedom. The Purist camp hates parenting analogies, because they have all kinds of impractical theories about parenting borne of modern psychology. But, it remains true, regardless of what parenting guru says otherwise, that human development happens through experiencing the consequences of our actions. If we never experienced the consequences of our actions, we could never learn what actions are harmful or which are beneficial. A good parent makes space for their children to develop to maturity. There is no possibly way for a human being to develop to maturity without that human experiencing the consequences of their actions.

The alternative is a “Helicopter God,” from the term “Helicopter Parent.” The Helicopter Parent is one who hovers over their children shielding them from experiencing the consequences of the child’s negative actions. It comes from a deep desire to protect the child—which is good—but it is a perverse overreaction. Instead of protecting the child, it insulates the child from important feedback that will help the child grow. In time, this can have long-term negative effects. A person who is shielded from the consequences of their actions may never develop the necessary empathy to become a healthy person—a person who understands how and why their actions may hurt others.

The God of the Bible—the God revealed in Jesus—is not a “Helicopter” God.

Similarly, in relationships there is a need for healthy individuation. Even in the closest relationships, like those between marriage partners or those between parents and children, healthy individuation is necessary to prevent codependency. Codependency has been identified as a major source of social and emotional illness. In order for participants in these relationships to individuate, they need space to fail, space to experience the consequences of their actions. One of the most acute and painful examples of this is when one member of such a relationship struggles with addiction. The loving thing for the other person in the relationship to do is not to become an enabler. This can mean that the other person in the relationship may need to make space for the addict to get help that requires separation. To an outside observer, this could appear unloving. But, in reality, it is the most loving thing to do. It is most loving to make space, not to enable the actions that are destroying the beloved.I won’t belabor the point anymore. Hopefully not even the Purist camp would argue for the virtues of codependency.

The God of the Bible—the God revealed in Jesus—is not an enabler.

Conclusion

Greg Boyd’s Crucifixion of the Warrior God is a game-changing approach to reading Scripture. For years to come, everyone who studies the relationship between the portraits of divine violence in the Old Testament and the nonviolent life and teachings of Jesus will in some way have to engage with this work. My hope is that it will receive as wide acceptance as possible, because I haven’t encountered an approach that is more faithful to the climatic self-revelation of God in Christ yet.

 

 

ReKnewing Hermeneutics, Part 2: A Review of Crucifixion of the Warrior God by Greg Boyd

Crucifixion of the Warrior God (hereafter CWG) is a two-volume, 1,300-page tome written by Greg Boyd. It address the dilemma posed by the contradictory portrayals of God’s relationship to violence between the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament’s testimony to Jesus. In the Hebrew Bible, God is portrayed as committing and commanding violence. But in the New Testament, the crucified Messiah who eschewed violence is portrayed as the definitive and final revelation of God’s character and nature. This creates tension within the text itself for those, like Boyd, who are committed to both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament as “God-breathed.” It is that tension that Boyd seeks to resolve by use of a Cruciform Hermeneutic and with his Cruciform Thesis, which form Volumes I and II of CWG.

In part one of this review, I summarized and commented on Volume I: The Cruciform Hermeneutic. In part two, I will summarize and comment on Volume II: The Cruciform Thesis. Then, part three will be my review of the book overall, including especially my thoughts on its most controversial aspects.

Navigating Volume II

To reiterate, with a book of this size, I’ve found it helpful to think of it in terms of its “parts”. There are seven parts total—three parts in Volume I and four parts in Volume II. The four parts of Volume II, which will be covered here, correspond to the four Principles of the Cruciform Thesis. This is important to keep in mind. Read together, the principles of the Cruciform Thesis inform the Cruciform Hermeneutic and vice versa. Taken together, they form a ground-breaking new way of understanding God’s relationship to violence in the Bible.

Part 4 corresponds to the Principle of Cruciform Accommodation
Part 5 corresponds to the Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal
Part 6 corresponds to the Principle of Cosmic Conflict
Part 7 corresponds to the Principle of Semiautonomous Power

And, as with Volume I, there are also several chapters of bonus content. In the case of Volume I, there are four appendices:

Appendix I: The Alleged Anti-Judaic Attitude

Appendix II: Jesus and Violence
Appendix III: Violence in the Pauline Epistles
Appendix IV: Violence in the Book of Revelation
In the case of Volume II, there is a postscript and six more appendices:

Postscript: Unlocking the Secret of the Scroll
Appendix V: The Escalation of Violence in the Promised Land
Appendix VI: Hardening People’s Hearts
Appendix VII: Can Satan’s Kingdom Be Divided Against Itself?
Appendix VIII: The Quail Plague
Appendix IX: The Testing of Abraham
Appendix X: The Issue of Supersessionism

The current three-part review will not include summaries of the ten appendices nor the postscript. But I did find them useful and am very glad Boyd chose to include them.

Shelley Boyd and Abductive Reasoning

When you read as many of Greg Boyd’s books as I have (which is most of them), one of the aspects of his writing that you come to appreciate the most are his meaningful metaphors, adept analogies, and imaginative imagery. Even though CWG is clearly geared more toward serious theology nerds like me—those who can and will devote time to reading a tome of this magnitude—Boyd nevertheless incorporates elements that capture readers’ imaginations so that they are able to appreciate complex concepts in a more straightforward way.

Boyd began Volume I with the analogy of the “Magic Eye.” Like the computer-generated visual puzzle, the Scriptures are multi-dimensional. And just as one must learn how to adjust their vision to see the “3D” aspect of the image, so too a person must learn how to think about the PDVs in the Hebrew Bible to “see” how they reflect the God who is cruciform love. This analogy helps to frame the message of Volume I so that readers can track with Boyd through some rather complex hermeneutical techniques. Volume II is no different. Boyd again begins with an analogy that will stick with readers. And to help the analogy stick, he incorporates his own wife of thirty-seven years, Shelley Boyd. I don’t know how enthused Shelley was about her depiction in this analogy, or even her incorporation into the book at all, but I find it both adorable and memorable.

The analogy goes like this: It’s safe to say Greg and Shelley know each other pretty well. Naturally, Greg thinks he knows how Shelley would be likely to respond to just about any situation, considering they’ve faced quite a few situations together over the course of their life together. But does he really?

One hypothetical day, Greg is out and about and happens to spot his wife on a public street before she spots him. For a brief moment, he’s able to observe her without her knowing that her husband is watching. As he watches her fondly, he notices her passing a homeless veteran in a wheelchair, panhandling. From his vantage point, he can see that this person seems to know Shelley. It seems as though she has addressed him by name. Greg can practically complete the scene in his mind before it happens, he thinks. He knows his wife and he knows she is a loving, compassionate person. So, he confidently anticipates how this scene will unfold—that Shelley will greet this man kindly and perhaps even give him some money. But, much to Greg’s surprise, instead of giving the man some money, or even greeting him kindly, she instead gives him a piece of her mind and a knuckle sandwich!

Now, here’s where the teeth of the analogy sink in. What is Greg to make of what he has just witnessed. It doesn’t make sense to him. On the one hand, he has had decades of experience with a person he knows to be a loving, compassionate, and nonviolent person. But, on the other hand, he has just witnessed that same person verbally and physically abuse a vulnerable person in a fit of rage. He seems to have to choose: Is Shelley still who he has known her to be? Or, based on this new evidence, is Shelley now a completely different person Greg no longer knows?

This is analogous to the place many Christians and Bible-readers find themselves when they have grown to know and love the God revealed in Jesus Christ—the God who stoops to take on our humanity, who stands up for justice, who embraces outcasts, who suffers for those he loves, who refuses to resort to violence, and who even lays down his own life for those who are murdering him. Then, these same Christians and Bible-readers are confronted by the PDVs in the Hebrew Bible and they find themselves asking, “Is this the same God?”

This is where Boyd introduces readers to an important exercise that will color his theological reasoning throughout this volume. Boyd proposes that we use “Abductive” reasoning. Abductive reasoning stands in contrast to the kind of reasoning we are likely more familiar with: “Deductive” reasoning. Here’s how Boyd relates this type of reasoning to the Shelley-and-the-Panhandler analogy:

“In contrast to deductive reasoning, which moves from assumed premises to necessary conclusions, as well as inductive logic, which draws generalized probable conclusions from specific observations, abductive logic postulates a hypothetical scenario that, if true, would render otherwise puzzling data intelligible. In my case, the puzzling data is my wife’s uncharacteristic violent behavior toward this disabled panhandler, and my goal is to render this behavior intelligible by adducting hypothetical scenarios about ‘what else might have been going on.’ ” (631)

The phrase “something else must be going on” will become an important one as readers continue into Volume II. This phrase captures the intention of Boyd’s theological reflections in the four principles. In other words, the four principles of the Cruciform Thesis are Boyd’s attempt to get to the bottom of “what else is going on” when it comes to uncharacteristic behavior of God we see in the Hebrew Bible’s PDVs, which clash with the characteristic nonviolent nature of God revealed in Jesus.

As with the “Magic Eye” analogy from Volume I, I also found the Shelley-and-the-Panhandler analogy helpful when I began to feel bogged down by complex theological concepts in this volume. I think it was very wise for Boyd to give this mental tool to readers up front so that they can use it throughout the rest of the book. It’d also be good for you to keep it in mind as you read the summary of Volume II that follows.

Part 4: The Principle of Cruciform Accommodation

The first principle of the Cruciform Thesis is the “Principle of Cruciform Accommodation.” Boyd covers this principle in two chapters, “The ‘Masks’ of a Humble God: Revelation and the Eternal Outpouring of the Triune God” (chapter 13) and “The Heavenly Missionary: Yahweh’s Accommodation of the Law, Nationalism, and Violence” (chapter 14).

Boyd kindly gives a definition of each of the four principles at the start of each part. In chapter 13, Boyd defines the Principle of Cruciform Accommodation this way:

“In the process of God ‘breathing’ the written witness to his covenantal faithfulness, God sometimes displayed his triune, cruciform agape-love by stooping to accommodate his self-revelation to the fallen and culturally conditioned state of his covenant people.” (644)

The Principle of Cruciform Accommodation is the best principle with which to start the Cruciform Thesis, since it is the principle which most closely relates to the Cruciform Hermeneutic. Boyd is showing that the way God works through the Bible (i.e. the dual nature of God’s “breathing”) corresponds to the very nature of God. In the same way God allows the authors of Scripture to act upon God, by attributing violence to God, God’s nature is actually susceptible to being acted upon. This nature of others-centered “stooping,” as Boyd describes it, is the nature of vulnerable love that Paul uses the word “kenosis” to describe in Philippians chapter 2. Like Moltmann and Gorman, Boyd believes this kenotic love revealed in Jesus is not at odds with the nature of God, but is precisely revelatory of God’s eternal nature.

“The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity states that from all eternity, God exists as three Divine Persons who fully pour themselves out for one another who fully dwell within one another in perfect, other-oriented agape-love. This triune pouring out and mutual indwelling was best expressed in the Cappadocian doctrine of the ‘perichoresis’ of the three divine Persons and, with Balthasar, Moltmann, and others, I contend that this divine perichoresis entails a sort of self-emptying (kenosis) in the very essence of the Trinity. That is, the very identity of each distinct divine Person is found in the unique way each selflessly and completely offers himself up in love to the other two. And this is precisely why the manner in which the Son selflessly and completely offers himself up in love to the Father’s will, and on behalf of humanity, by dying on the cross corresponds to, and thereby reveals, the eternal nature of the triune God (Phil 2:6).” (646)

This principle immediately runs into an obstacle when it encounters the Classical theological tradition since this tradition proposes God exists outside of and apart from any suffering, any change, or any sequence. So, Boyd must spend some space in the book confronting this tradition.

Starting Points are Crucial

In order to assess whether or not a portrait of God in Scripture is an accommodation of God’s nature, we must have some concept of God’s nature from which to start. This starting point is what is in dispute between Boyd’s cruciocentric model and the Classical theological tradition. In the Classical tradition, as exemplified by Thomas Aquinas, God’s nature Must be altogether unlike the world, altogether “necessary, simple, timeless, unchanging, and perfect.” (653) Boyd will spend several pages summarizing Aquinas’s argument for such a belief. None of Aquinas’s arguments are rooted in Scripture, nor especially in the crucified Christ. They are purely rationalistic. In fact, they are so disconnected from the Bible, Aquinas even discounts “revelation” in general, saying “revelation does not tell us what God is,” it can only “join us to him as if to an unknown.” (657) What a strikingly different picture of God than that which is painted by the Bible, and particularly the New Testament!

So, if Classical theism’s answer to the question of who God is amounts to a philosophical shrug, what then should be the criteria? Boyd’s answer is, very unsurprisingly, the crucified Christ!

“The only reason it was concluded that Jesus and Scripture have nothing to say about God’s transcendent nature is because classical theologians felt they needed to define ‘God’ before reflecting on Jesus and Scripture.” (666)

“If we anchored all our thinking in the cross, would it ever occur to us to suspect that God is altogether immutable or ‘above’ experiencing sequence? The Word was made flesh and became our sin and our curse. If we trust this revelation, God apparently can change and God apparently does experience a ‘before’ and ‘after.’ Along the same lines, if our complete trust was in this supreme revelation and not in our own reasoning processes, would we ever suspect that God cannot be impacted by what transpires in the world or that God cannot suffer? If we trust that the one who hung in agony on the cross reveals God’s true nature, would we not rather conclude that God is profoundly impacted by what transpires in the world and is capable of the greatest suffering imaginable?” (667, emphasis Boyd’s)

By starting with the crucified Christ, as Boyd suggests, all of the most challenging metaphysical conundrums posed by Classical theism are rendered irrelevant. Rather than focusing on the metaphysical nature of God, the Biblical witness calls us to focus on the functional and moral nature of God—particular God’s covenantal faithfulness. (674-675) And, more fundamentally, the Classical tradition twists the biblical concept of power from that which is rooted in others-oriented love to one that is concerned with unilateral control and determinism. (679-682)

Why then is God depicted in many other ways, ways that seem to be at odds with the revelation of God in the crucified Messiah? To explain this, Boyd turns to a rhetorical technique employed by the Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther.

God Wearing ‘Masks’

In order to lovingly accommodate God’s people in the literature of the Old Testament, God often takes on an appearance that closely resembles the other gods of the Ancient Near East. Like all the other gods around Israel, YHWH seems to at times condone things like animal sacrifice, polygamy, and even ethnic cleansing. Martin Luther referred to this phenomenon as God “wearing masks.” Only later, in the New Testament, do we learn from Jesus that such masks were a concession due to the hardness of human hearts. In this section, Boyd quotes Goldingay who captures this sentiment succinctly:

“ ‘Since the framework of Deuteronomy’s laws so forcefully portrays Israel’s sinfulness,’ [Goldingay] writes, ‘it is not strange that the laws themselves presuppose acts and events which are less than ideal,’ For example, ‘they do not forbid slavery, monarchy, war, polygamy, or divorce.’ As such, Goldingay notes, all such laws are ‘open to the statement that Jesus makes regarding the last of them (Mark 10:6),’ which is that they ‘reflect God’s accommodation to the ‘hardness’ of human hearts, rather than God’s actual desire for how his people would live in the world.’ We find accommodations such as these running throughout the entire OT.” (715-716)

The Principle of Divine Accommodation means that, just as we see in the cross of Jesus, God is willing to “stoop” to look like someone or something God is not, out of love. In the case of the cross, God was willing to take on the appearance of a condemned criminal, someone deserving of death. In the case of the OT, God was willing to take on the appearance of an ANE tribal deity. Both the cross and these ‘masks’ in the OT reveal a God who loves people more than God’s own image—a humble God who is more self-giving than face-saving.

Part 5: The Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal

Boyd second principle in the Cruciform Thesis has most certainly proved to be the most controversial for those on the left of the cultural spectrum. In this principle, Boyd’s use of the concept of withdrawal has angered those who do not wish to believe that God ever abandons or judges anyone. This was a predictable response, one I’m sure Boyd anticipated.

Boyd uses another metaphor to frame this principle—one that I’ve also used for years. Boyd compares God’s strategy of turning violence and evil against itself, thus defeating it without employing it, to the martial art of Aikido. Aikido is different from other martial arts such as Karate, since Aikido’s goal is “nonresistant combat, turning the force of aggressors back on themselves in order to neutralize their opponent and hopefully to enlighten them regarding the evil in their heart that fueled their aggression.” (768) The Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal, as Boyd defines it is:

“God judges sin, defeats evil, and works for the redemption of creation by withdrawing his protective presence, thereby allowing evil to run its self-destructive course and ultimately to self-destruct.” (768)

How this relates to Jesus’s cross is this:

“God the Father did not act violently toward the Son when the Son bore the judgment of our sin that we deserved. Rather, with a grieving heart, the Father simply withdrew his protective hand, thereby delivering his Son over to wicked humans and fallen powers that were already ‘bent on destruction’ (Isa 51:13). Yet, by abandoning the Son to suffer the destructive consequences of sin that we deserved, the Father wisely turned the violent aggression of these evildoers back on themselves, causing evil to self-implode and thereby liberating creation.” (768)

The core of Boyd’s conviction about this principle stems from his interpretation of the “Cry of Abandonment” (hereafter simple “the Cry”). This is a hotly-contested point of contention among theologians. There are many lined up against Boyd who contend that the Cry did not signify genuine suffering or a truthful statement about the reality of that moment. Instead, many contend that Jesus was merely alluding to Psalm 22 in some teaching or preaching manner. However, I think Boyd sufficiently refutes such interpretations by showing that not only that such an intentional use of a subtle teaching technique would have been highly improbable considering Jesus’s present excruciating (from the word for crucifixion) agony and torturous pain, but also that were that the case, Mark’s effect of the Cry would be completely undermined. In fact, Boyd does not shy away from calling out the Nestorianist tendency of those who make this claim (772)—which was particular encouraging to me, since I too have recognized this tendency in some of my writings.

What, Then, of the Trinity?

Theologically-astute readers may be puzzled by Boyd’s insistence on the genuineness of Jesus’s abandonment on the cross. They may rightly question what effect such an event would have on the Trinity. From reading the complaints of critics, you’d think Boyd doesn’t specifically address this objection, but he does.

“[…]if God’s eternal essence is the perfect loving unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then any suggestion that this perfect unity could be ‘severed,’ even for a moment, would, by definition, entail that God’s eternal triune essence would have ceased to exist, which is to say that God would have ceased to exist! I consider this a metaphysical impossibility on both biblical and philosophical grounds. The existence of God, is a necessary, not a contingent, reality. Along the same lines, any suggestion that the triune essence of God could be conceivably severed presupposes either a rather tritheistic conception of three divine Persons who are only contingently united or a modalistic form of monotheism for which the three divine Persons are only a contingent expression. Either implication is obviously contrary to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.

Contrary to the thinking of some, I do not believe we need to downplay the reality of Jesus’s divine abandonment on the cross to avoid these logically impossible and theological heretical conclusions. For we can simultaneously affirm the ‘unbroken continuity of divine presence and activity between Christ and God,’ as Torrance puts it, while also affirming the authenticity of Christ’s abandonment if we simply remember that this horrific separation was entered into by all three divine Person’s [sic] as an expression of perfect agape-love for humanity. That is, since it was agape-love—the very essence of the triune God—that led the Father and Son to decide to experience this separation, the anguished experience of separation of the Father and the Son during the crucifixion constitutes the quintessential expression of the perfect love that constitutes the essential unity of the Father and the Son. Indeed, the unsurpassable cost of this divine separation expresses the unsurpassable perfection of the love of this divine union.” (776-777)

Or, more concisely, Boyd writes,

“[…]the three divine Person’s [sic] sacrificed their previously uninterrupted experience of perfect loving union in order to express the perfect loving union that defines them as God […] the Holy Spirit ‘unites Father and Son together in their extreme separation’ on the cross. […]Jesus’s despairing cry on the cross expresses rather than negates the real, perfect, eternal love that necessarily binds the three divine Persons.” (778)

Far from dissolving the Trinity, of which Boyd has been accused, Boyd specifically explains that the love demonstrated on the cross, by Jesus giving himself over and the Father giving Jesus over, demonstrates their loving unity, the same loving unity that defines God as Trinity. Another way of simplifying this is that Jesus was abandoned in one sense but not another. In the sense that Jesus was given over to evil persons to be destroyed he was abandoned to the consequences of sin. But in the sense that this giving over by the Father was an expression of the love that is the quintessential characteristic of both the Father and Jesus, Jesus was not abandoned. Nevertheless, Jesus’s experience of abandonment was real and genuine.

On Wrath…

This leads to Boyd discussion of “wrath.” What should be clear by this point is that Boyd does not believe God commits violence. That’s one of the central convictions of CWG. But there is a long tradition in Western Christianity of associating God’s wrath with direct violence, particular in the “Penal Substitution” theory of atonement. In this chapter, Boyd reframes wrath from the idea that God directly employs violence to the biblical motif of God’s “giving over” of persons to the consequences of sin and evil. The apostle Paul specifically makes this connection in Romans chapter one. God’s “wrath,” Paul writes is “revealed” against all ungodliness and suppression of the truth by God’s “giving over” (repeated three times) of persons to the consequences of sin.

Even more specifically, Boyd is saying the Father does not employ violence against the Son on the cross.

“[…]the suffering of the cross is shared, in different but equal ways, by all three divine Persons, and that none of the violence suffered by Jesus throughout his passion was caused by God. […]this expression of divine ‘wrath’ against sin involved no personal animosity on the part of the Father toward Jesus, let alone any act of violence on the part of the Father toward Jesus. It was wicked humans, under the influence of demonic powers, who carried out all the violence described in the passion accounts.” (781)

An important part of Boyd’s atonement theology that sets his view in contrast to Penal Substitution is that Boyd does not believe God needed to be appeased or satisfied in any way. Boyd emphatically states that God’s essence is love and only love and is never anything but love. The cross was not to change God, but to change us.

“The judgment Jesus endured was not a matter of setting God right by allowing him to vent his rage but a matter of God setting the world right by overcoming sin and evil with his self-sacrificial love.” (783)

Boyd thoroughly teaches readers that the withdrawal he is talking about is redemptive, not punitive. God gives over people to the consequences of sin and evil because ultimately this is how God defeats sin and evil—by turning it in on itself. Recall the Aikido metaphor. God redirects the coercive and destructive power of sin and evil back on itself without having to exert coercive or destructive power himself. God’s power is the power of self-giving, uncontrolling love.

One of the biblical areas where Boyd demonstrates this is through church discipline. If you did not understand the Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal, you’d have to conclude that the apostle Paul is prescribing violent punishment upon sinful church members. But, the more one understands the Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal, the more compassionate and merciful Paul’s instructions are revealed to be.

“While it certainly collides with the contemporary western world view, the assumption behind Paul’s instruction—and it arguably is behind Jesus’s instruction on church discipline as well—is that when a person is turned outside the kingdom community, they are, in effect, turned over to Satan, the destroyer, who lords over the entire domain outside the kingdom community (e.g. 2 Cor 4:4; 1 John 5:19; Rev 12:9). This further implies that there is a sort of protection afforded members of the kingdom community that is not available to outsiders. Hence, imitating God’s methods of redemptive withdrawal, Paul instructs this community to discipline this unrepentant man by withdrawing their fellowship from him, thereby turning him over to the destructive ‘god of this age’ (2 Cor 4:4).” (817)

There’s no doubt Boyd is correct when he says Paul’s instructions clash with certain Western sensibilities. Already, in the criticism of CWG, the bulk of the backlash is against this principle, however rooted in the revelation of Scripture it is shown to be. Nevertheless, Boyd is thorough. He spends the next 70+ pages showing that the Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal is a significant biblical motif. Yet, Boyd knows this will likely be his most controversial principle, so after the chapters of “Crime and Punishment” and “Doing and Allowing,” he includes a chapter wholly devoted to objections. Critics would be wise to read that chapter before leveling any accusations.

I think it’s especially important that people do not misrepresent Boyd as saying God is does not always love people or seek their good. That would be a mischaracterization of Boyd’s position. Boyd specifically teaches that God does always love and always seek the good of creatures. I’ll say more about my take on Boyd’s position in Part 3 of this review. For now, I’ll simply cite Boyd saying what critics won’t quote him saying,

“Scripture indicates that God is always working to influence people in various ways, including, most importantly, to search for him and possibly find him, whatever ‘finding him’ looks like in their particular culture and circumstances (Acts 17:27). Yet, so long as God’s influence remains noncoercive, it in no way threatens anyone’s freedom agency.” (908)

In Part 3, I’ll address one of the most common objections I’ve read against this principle. Namely, that it can be wielded like a weapon to judge and condemn others, especially those who are actually victims themselves. Many from the left who are protective of minority and vulnerable populations have leveled this objection. Unfortunately, few if any have actually interacted with Boyd’s written responses to this objection which he anticipated and included in the book itself. I couldn’t tell you why.

Part 6: The Principle of Cosmic Conflict

Not only does Boyd propose that all violence depicted in the Bible is attributable to agents other than God, he also proposes that some of those agents are entities (or forces) that are typically unseen. Now, if you’re at all familiar with Boyd’s body of scholarly work, you’d already know he has written extensively on this topic in the past. In 1997 and 2001, Boyd published the first two installments of his his trilogy introduction of the “Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy,” that is due to be completed some time before Jesus returns with a third book entitled The Myth of a Blueprint. In God at War and Satan and the Problem of Evil, Boyd shows how the authors of Scripture held a “warfare worldview” that included the existence of typically unseen entities (or forces) that nevertheless exert influence over our dimension. The principle, succinctly stated is:

“The agents that carry out violence when God withdraws his protective presence to bring about a divine judgment include perpetually-threatening cosmic forces of destruction.”

This hypothesis is important for a number of reasons, not least of which it begins to fill in the picture of what else is really going on when the OT depicts God as committing or condoning violence. Boyd’s conviction that the biblical worldview is populated by typically unseen entities (or forces) led him to reexamine the texts of terror with a new lens. What he found surprised him. Not only could a case be made that what appears to be the work of YHWH in the text is actually the work of these other entities (or forces), it was everywhere!

Part six is made up of four chapters: “The Battle of the Gods,” “Caught in the Cross Fire,” “When Hell Breaks Loose,” and “The Dragon-Swallowing Dragon.” In what could have been a stand-alone book, Boyd summarizes and focuses massive amounts of biblical research and insight into just under 200 pages, to show that the biblical authors attribute violence to typically unseen entities or forces against which God is in conflict. Much of the violence humans experience is, according to the warfare worldview, the fallout of cosmic conflict between God and evil, not the result of God’s will.

In this section, Boyd isn’t primarily concerned with convincing readers of the existence of “demons,” as conceived of by many Modern, Western Evangelicals. Instead, Boyd is primarily concerned with convincing readers to adopt a hermeneutic that takes into consideration the worldview of Scripture’s authors—namely, one that takes seriously the existence of that which is typically unseen and working to undo creation.

“[…]the fact that we no longer conceive of demonic agents the way ANE people did (viz., by associating them with the earth, netherworld, sea, sea monsters, etc.) does not affect the theological meaning of this narrative. For our purposes, it suffices to simply note that it was a demonic agent, however conceived, and not God that carried out this violent judgment with the world of this biblical narrative.” (1165)

How Boyd’s Principle of Cosmic Warfare, as one part of the Cruciform Thesis, meets with the Cruciform Hermeneutic becomes a bit clearer when Boyd homes in on an important example from the New Testament. When Paul refers to Korah’s rebellion in I Corinthians 10, he replaces God with a destroying angel. What prompted Paul to reinterpret the OT narrative is the all-surpassing revelation of God in Christ. Boyd argues that in this instance, Paul illustrates both the Cruciform Hermeneutic and the Principle of Cosmic Conflict. Paul reasoned that “something else was going on,” and reinterpreted the text based on what he knew to be true about God because of Jesus.

Regardless of whether you approach the demonic the way Boyd does or not, the operative aspect of this principle is that there is something else going on besides God simply causing or condoning violence. The biblical narrative itself testifies to this principle through the warfare worldview of its authors. We moderns would do well not to mistakenly think we are more aware of what’s going on than the ancients. It is likely that our Enlightenment worldview has blinded us to as much as the ancients’ warfare worldview illuminated for them.

Part 7: The Principle of Semiautonomous Power

The fourth and final principle of the Cruciform Thesis is defined by Boyd this way:

“When God confers divine power on select people, he does not meticulously control how they use it.” (1196)

This principle is set out in only one chapter, entitled “Mauling Bears and a Lethal Palladium.” Boyd’s task with this principle is to explain why some stories from the OT seems to indict God in the use of violence by God’s agents or artifacts. Boyd’s basic argument is that God does not micromanage divine power God grants select people. Those agents are are free to use that power in ways at cross purposes with God.

Jesus is an apt example, considering Boyd argues extensively that Jesus is the all-surpassing revelation of God’s character and nature. At one point in the passion narrative, after Peter has presumptuously attempted to defend Jesus against arrest, Jesus makes a curious claim. He remarks that if he wanted he could “call twelve legions of angels.” The number is clearly not the point here. The point is that if Jesus had desired to defend himself against arrest, he certainly wouldn’t need Peter’s puny sword. But, this remark also betrays an important aspect of Jesus’s power. Jesus had the capacity to misuse it.

“Notice that this statement not only presupposes that Jesus believed he had the power to do this; it also presupposes that Jesus believed that, had he done so, the angeles would have obeyed. And yet, as I said, had Jesus used his authority in this way, it would have been contrary to the Father’s will. Indeed, had Jesus done this, the plan for Jesus to be delivered over and crucified would have been aborted. And this demonstrates that the way Jesus’s divine authority was used depended on what Jesus, as a full human, decided to do with it.” (1212)

Jesus is a model and example of a human being entrusted with divine power and authority. He is our model because he proved entirely trustworthy. He is an example because he had the capacity to use that power and authority in a way that was at cross purposes with the Father. Jesus willingly submitted his human-divine will to the Father.

This, however, isn’t the case for all human being entrusted with divine power and authority. Boyd spends the next nearly 50 pages giving examples of the way God has granted power and authority to agents other than Godself and those agents, not God, have used that power and authority to commit violence.

This principle draws upon much of the work Boyd has done in the area of Free Will Theism. Boyd is an ardent advocated for what is known as “Libertarian” free will. In contrast to “Compatibilism,” the Libertarian conception of free will holds that for an agent to be truly free, their choices must be at least partially unconstrained by the control of another agent resulting a choice that could have been otherwise. Boyd often calls this power of to create an outcome that could have been otherwise “say-so.” Here’s how Boyd explains it:

“Every time we deliberate about a choice we need to make, we are acting on the conviction that the Creator has given us the power to resolve possible courses of action into a single course of action. Whatever theoretical beliefs about free will and/or determinism we might espouse, we all act on the assumption that it is up to us to choose between options. And we do so for the simple reason that it is impossible to deliberate without assuming this. Not only this, but regardless of what we believe about free will and/or determinism, we all act on the assumption that we can use the ‘say-so’ God has given us in ways that either alight with or conflict with God’s will. Which is to say, we all act on the assumption that the power that God has given us to affect what comes to pass resides in us in a semiautonomous way.” (1217-1218, emphasis Boyd’s)

Free will, as an example of divine power and authority entrusted to us, can be misused. In the same way, many of the stories in the OT that contain agents committing violence in ways that seem only attributable to God, are actually stories of agents misusing power and authority granted by God.

Conclusion

In 1,300 pages, Greg Boyd has reframed biblical interpretation for a postmodern world so that Christ is magnified and faith is maximized. The frame Boyd provides has four sides. Each of the four principles of the Cruciform Thesis form a side to the frame. In the center of the frame is the biblical narrative, reinterpreted using the lens of the Cruciform Hermeneutic. When this frame and lens are applied, the Cross comes into focus like a 3D hologram rising out of the text.

God looks like Jesus. Jesus is the all-surpassing revelation of who God is. Jesus taught and modeled and revealed God’s cruciform character and nature. God is cruciform. As such, God takes upon Godself our violence and our projection of violence, taking on the appearance of a violent, tribal, warrior deity. Just as Jesus willingly took on the appearance of a shameful criminal insurrectionist, yet the reality was Jesus was innocent, God is innocent. And just as, viewed through the eyes of faith, the cross becomes the quintessential revelation of God’s self-giving love, so too, when viewed through the cruciform lens, do the portraits of divine violence in the OT become crucifixes that reveal the loving heart of the God who stooped to take on our sin and evil.

Boyd’s hermeneutic and thesis have already begun to be challenged. This was expected. Boyd is accustomed to being misunderstood and misrepresented. It’s not fair, but he has learned to cope. Nevertheless, CWG will, from now on, be represent a hermeneutic and thesis with which theologians and biblical scholars will be forced to wrestle. It marks a turning point in modern biblical interpretation that will likely characterize this period for decades to come. Any serious proposal that attempts to contend with the Bible’s portraits of violence will have to contend with Boyd’s proposal in CWG.

Be on the lookout for Part 3, where I will address common objections I’ve read and give my overall thoughts on CWG.