Extra Credit Podcast

Summenary Ep. 4

Jenson on the doctrine of the Trinity…

[This] is the root and substance and heart of the so-called doctrine of the Trinity. God has a history with his people and the personages of this history are the Father of Jesus who is the author of the story, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit. It—the doctrine of the Trinity, I mean—is moreover the root and substance of the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Jesus said to start off this way: “Our Father”; and then he gave them the prayer which was a traditional Jewish prayer except for something new at the beginning. We translate “Father,” but the Aramaic word that he would have used was Abba, which is the Aramaic equivalent of “Daddy”or “Papa.” That is to say, Jesus taught his disciples to address God as their daddy and then to bring their concerns to God as his children. Now, calling God “Father” in a general sort of way is a thing that pops up normally. But calling him “Our Father” as a way to begin prayer—now nobody did that; that was the new thing. How do Christians dare do that? I mean what in the world gives me the right every day to start off a prayer “Dear Daddy?” It is the “our” in there that counts. Jesus himself always addressed God this way. And Jesus invited his disciples to piggyback on his own relationship to God. So we pray to Jesus’s Father with him, with the Son, and in the Spirit who is the spiritual energy by which or whom we hope to do that. In this respect the whole doctrine of the Trinity can be explained by simply remarking that Christians pray to the Father, with the Son, in the Spirit, and are convinced that by so doing they are properly caught up in the story that God lives with his people.

NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below:

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

Summenary Ep. 3.

NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below:

Don’t forget to register for TheoCon with Chris Green if you haven’t yet! He will be teaching on Song of Songs and our union with Christ.

You can register to attend in person or to watch the livestream by clicking the buttons below:

Who is Jesus and what does it mean to say that he “is risen”? We discuss the determined identity of Jesus, which determines God’s own identity and the difference between resurrection and resuscitation.

A Jensonian catena on the resurrection:

“The resurrection was not the cancellation of Jesus’ death, a mere resuscitation.”

“The gospel is the story of Jesus told as the story of the last future, as a message of hope. It says: the story of life-out-of-death and love-out-of-hatred which is enacted in the events of this man’s life will be the conclusion of your life also.”

“A dead man is dead exactly in that he already has been all he ever will be. He lies there finished; and if we are further surprised by him, perhaps by what we find in his will, it is only because we were ignorant of what he was all the time…If Smith is dead, there is a closed definition of what it means to be Smith; if Smith is alive, the definition is still being written…Jesus lived and then died. Therefore we have a definition of what it means to be Jesus, we know what he is…If despite death he now lives, then this self-giving is not only an item of the past to be remembered, but a surprise in the future to be expected…To say ‘Jesus was dead and is alive’ is to say something about the last future.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

Summenary Ep. 2.

NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below:

We take up chapter 2 in Robert Jenson’s A Theology In Outline: Can These Bones Live? discussing the story of Israel with her unusual, timely God.

Here are a few quick quotes from Jenson on God and time:

“The gods of the great myths are ‘eternal’ in that they never change, but are timeless like the cyclical patterns [of the seasons]; [YHWH] is ‘eternal’ in that he is actively faithful to his promises, acting in time to make and fulfill them.”

“God’s eternity is not that for him everything is already past, but that in love everything is still open, including the past. His eternity is that he can never be surpassed, never caught up with. He anticipates the future in the sense that however we press forward in time, we always find that God has already been there and is now ahead calling us on.”

“It indeed better suits the gospel’s God to speak of ‘God’s time’ and ‘created time,’ taking ‘time’ as an analogous concept, than to think of God as not having time… God takes time in his time for us.”

“God took time from our time to be His eternity…”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

Summenary Ep. 1.

NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline, you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below:

Making our way through Robert Jenson’s, A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live we begin with the question: “What is theology?”

“Theology,” says Jenson, “is thinking what to say to be saying the gospel.” The gospel can not simply be parroted from one generation to the next. It is a living message, that speaks a fresh, new, liberating word to each new hearer. This is why, he argues, the gospel can never be preached the same way twice:

Precisely to be itself, the gospel is never told the same way twice. The formulas which yesterday opened Jesus’ future will tomorrow bind to the past. “We are justified by faith alone,” said Luther, and liberated four generations. When preachers say these words today, supposing themselves to be following Luther, they bind us to the terrible law of having to save ourselves by the quality of our sincerity, for that is what “faith” has come to mean since the eighteenth century.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

The Will of God Ep. 7.

NOTE: We will be starting a new study next week through a short book by Robert Jenson called A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live? Each week we will take a chapter of the book for our class. I’m encouraging everyone to read along. You can find a PDF of the first chapter below.

Bonhoeffer on becoming guilty for Christ’s sake…

By turning our focus back to the origin of all responsibility, we come to understand what willingness to become guilty means. Jesus’ concern is not the proclamation and realization of new ethical ideals, and thus also not his own goodness (Matt. 19:17), but solely love for real human beings. This is why he is able to enter into the community of human beings’ guilt, willing to be burdened with their guilt. Jesus does not want to be considered the only perfect one at the expense of human beings, nor, as the only guiltless one, to look down on a humanity perishing under its guilt…He does not want to acquit himself of the guilt by which human beings die. A love that would abandon human beings to their guilt would not be a love for real human beings. As one who acts responsibly within the historical existence of human beings, Jesus becomes guilty. It is his love alone, mind you, that leads him to become guilty. Out of his selfless love, out of his sinlessness, Jesus enters into human guilt, taking it upon himself. In him, sinlessness and bearing guilt are inextricably linked. As the sinless one, Jesus takes the guilt of his brothers and sisters upon himself, and in carrying the burden of this guilt he proves himself as the sinless one. Now in this sinless-guilty Jesus Christ all vicarious representative responsible action has its origin. Precisely because and when it is responsible, because and when it is exclusively concerned about the other human being, because and when it springs from the selfless love for the real human brother or sister–it cannot seek to withdraw from the community of human guilt. Because Jesus took the guilt of all human beings upon himself, everyone who acts responsibly becomes guilty. Those who, in acting responsibly, seek to avoid becoming guilty divorce themselves from the ultimate reality of human existence…They place their personal innocence above their responsibility for other human beings and are blind to the fact that precisely in so doing they become even more egregiously guilty. They are also blind to the fact that genuine guiltlessness is demonstrated precisely by entering into community with the guilt of other human beings for their sake. Because of Jesus Christ, the essence of responsible action intrinsically involves…becoming guilty.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

The Will of God Ep. 6.

This week we try to think through the reasons for the anxiety that seems constituent of modern life and seeking to do the will of God.

Here is the passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics that we finished with:

All that we have said thus far implies that we have abandoned the abstract notion, largely dominant in ethical thought, of an isolated individual who has available an absolute criterion by which to choose continually and exclusively between a clearly recognized good and a clearly recognized evil. Such an isolated individual does not exist…The error of such an abstract ethical scheme is this: only the isolated individual is considered ethically relevant; only what is absolute and universal is seen as normative; and only the choice between the clearly recognized good and the clearly recognized evil is acknowledged as an ethical decision…What this amounts to is individuals pulling back from the living responsibility of their historical existence into a private realization of ethical ideals by which they see their own personal goodness guaranteed…this attitude will lead, by way of withdrawing from responsibility for the whole, to a purely private bourgeois existence. However, in practice the ethical isolation of the individual is a fictitious notion. For no one can withdraw completely from human community, indeed, everyone’s life is dependent on it…

This means that a human being necessarily lives in encounter with other human beings and that this encounter entails being charged, in ever so many ways, with responsibility for the other human being. History arises out of accepting this responsibility for other human beings or for entire communities or groups of communities. Individuals do not act merely for themselves alone; each individual incorporates the selves of several people, perhaps even a very large number. The father of a family, for example, can no longer act as if he were merely an individual. In his own self, he incorporates the selves of those family members for whom he is responsible. Everything he does is determined by this sense of responsibility. Any attempt to act and live as if he were alone would not only abdicate his responsibility, but also deny at the same time the reality on which his responsibility is based. For he does not cease to be the father of a family; rather, instead of being a good father, he is now simply a bad one. He is a good father if he takes on and acts according to the responsibility reality places on him…

The moment a person accepts responsibility for other people–and only in so doing does the person live in reality–the genuine ethical situation arises…The subject of the action is no longer the isolated individual, but the one who is responsible for other people. The action’s norm is not a universal principle, but the concrete neighbor, as given to me by God.

Further Resources…

Chris Green on post-individualism, Bonhoeffer, and rebuilding the church:

Rowan Williams, “Truth, faith and politics in a post-truth world: exploring Bonhoeffer today”:

Stanley Hauerwas, “Church Matters”:

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

The Will of God Ep. 5

“Whoever accuses or judges a brother or sister, accuses the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.”

-James 4:11

Bonhoeffer commenting on James 4 writes,

Judging stands in absolute opposition to doing…There are two types of behavior with regard to the law, judging and doing; they are mutually exclusive. Those who judge understand the law as a measure that they employ against others, and see themselves as responsible for seeing that the law is implemented. They thus place themselves above the law. They forget that there is but ‘one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy’ (James 4:12).

For both Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer the two dirty words when it comes to God’s will are “application” and “interpretation” because both have to do with knowing/judging rather than doing God’s will:

God’s commandment leaves human beings no room for application and interpretation, but only for obedience or disobedience.

[God’s commands demand ]acts of obedience to be performed on the spot in a specific way, pure decisions the meaning of which is not open to discussion, because they do not in any sense point to a higher law, but is rather contained in the fact that God has decided in this way and spoken accordingly, so that human decisions can only obey or disobey the divine decision. In these texts there is no such thing as a general rule which can be debated and needs to be filled out in its application.

This is the first temptation of that “pious serpent” in the Garden of Eden: “Did God really say…?” The temptation is to go behind the word of God to interpret it, to examine it for herself. But for us to interpret and apply God’s commandments puts us above the commandment for the moment. It leaves us in charge and gives us the power to do as we think best rather than simply obeying.

The great irony here is that what the serpent tempts Adam and Eve with is something God has already promised: to be like God. The serpent tells them that if they grasp the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they will be like God. The Latin is sicut deus. But God has already made Adam and Eve in his image and likeness. Imago dei.

They fall from receiving the imago dei into being humanity sicut deus—or what Bonhoeffer calls “god-against-God.” To have grasped after the knowledge of good and evil is to become gods-against-God because it is to falsely become one’s own source, origin, and judge. Rather than living from the knowledge of God Adam and Eve now live from their own knowledge of good and evil.

Thus the split between knowing God’s will and doing it.

In his sermon “The Last Farthing” George MacDonald says that the greatest way to obscure Jesus’ teachings is to interpret them rather than do them. The parables and teachings of Jesus only make sense to the person that’s doing them. Elsewhere he writes:

What have you done this day because it was the will of Christ? Have you dismissed, once dismissed, an anxious thought for the morrow? Have you ministered to any needy soul or body, and kept your right hand from knowing what your left hand did? Have you begun to leave all and follow him? Did you set yourself to judge righteous judgment? Are you being wary of covetousness? Have you forgiven your enemy? Are you hungering and thirsting after righteousness? Are you seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness before all other things? Have you given to some one that asked of you?

Tell me something that you have done, are doing, or are trying to do because he told you. If you do nothing that he says, it is no wonder that you cannot trust in him…You do not do his will, and so you cannot understand Him.

…He knows that you can try, and that in your trying and failing He will be able to help you, until at length you shall do the will of God even as he does it himself.

…If we do what He tells us, His light will go up in our hearts. Till then we could not understand him even if he explained it to us.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

The Will of God Ep. 4.

This week we discuss how we can hear the voice of God. Bonhoeffer is convinced that the primary and the orienting way God speaks directly to us is through preaching. He writes:

Proclamation is the specific mandate given to the church. God wants a place at which, until the end of the world, God’s word is again and again spoken, pronounced, delivered, expounded, and spread. The Word that in Jesus Christ came from heaven wants to come again in the form of human speech [in the sermon]…In this word God wills to be personally present. In the church God is determined to speak in person.

Karl Barth, one of Bonhoeffer’s teachers, says that the logic of preaching is the logic of incarnation. Christ is both fully God and fully human in one person. So it is with the sermon. The sermon is both a purely human word but also a purely divine word. Why? Because Christ promises to bear the word of the sermon. Bonhoeffer will say that in the preached word “Christ steps into the congregation.” Elsewhere he says that “Christ is the sermon.”

The human preacher is not cancelled out or obliterated by this divine activity. Think of the burning bush. The humble bramble is on fire with the fire of God but it is not consumed.

Or think of the sacraments. Just as the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine while also becoming the body and blood of Christ, so does the sermon remain a completely human word, but also becomes the word of God by God’s grace.

The speaking of the sermon is only half the work of preaching. There is also the hearing of the sermon. Jesus Christ is responsible for both. This is why the sermon is not a performance, but an act of God in his mercy.

But, as Bonhoeffer says, we have lost the sermon. We do not equip or ready ourselves for what it actually is: the living God coming to speak to you personally through the proclamation.

We as the people of God need to understand that each Sunday the pastor is preaching the word Christ has given to him or her to preach and we need to be listening specifically for what Christ is asking of us.

St. Augustine says it perfectly:

For we have Christ, the teacher within. When anything comes to your ears from my lips that you are not able to take in turn within your heart to the one who is both teaching me what to say and distributing understanding among you as he thinks fit. He knows what he has to give and who he is giving it to and so will present himself to the one who asks and open to the one who knocks.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

The Will of God Ep. 3.

This week we discuss knowing the will of God for our lives. God’s will is not a secret. God has revealed it and wants us to know it and do it. We discuss the difference between abstract, universal moral principles and the concrete commandment of God and we looked at the life of Bonhoeffer as an example.

Here are a couple quotes that cut to the quick of the class:

Bonhoeffer on knowing the will of God:

[Meditating on Ps. 119:19 “Do not hide your commandments from me.”]

There is no doubt: God has given his commandments for us to know and we have no excuse, as if we did not know the will of God. God does not allow us to live in irresolvable conflicts; he does not turn our lives into ethical tragedies; rather, he lets us know his will, demands its fulfillment, and punishes disobedience. Things here are much easier than we like. Our distress is not that we do not know God’s commandments but that we don’t do them—and that as a result of such disobedience, we are gradually unable to recognize them. It is said here not that God hides his commandments but: God is beseeched for the grace not to hide his commandments. It is within God’s freedom and wisdom to deny us the grace of his commandment; then, however, there is for us not resignation but far more the urgent and persistent prayer: “Do not hide your commandments from me.”

Bonhoeffer on the specificity, clarity, and concreteness of God’s commandment:

God’s commandment is God’s speech to human beings. Both in its content and in its form, it is concrete speech to concrete human beings. God’s commandment leaves human beings no room for application and interpretation, but only for obedience or disobedience. God’s commandment cannot be found and known apart from time and place; indeed, it can only be heard by one who is bound to a specific place and time. God’s commandment is either utterly specific, clear, and concrete or it is not God’s commandment.

Just as specifically as God spoke to Abraham and Jacob and Moses, and just as specifically as God spoke in Jesus Christ to the disciples, and to the congregations through the apostles, so God speaks just as specifically to us, or God does not speak at all.

Karl Barth on the definiteness of the divine command:

In [Genesis and Exodus] there is no such thing as a general rule which can be debated and needs to be filled out in its application.

…And, again [in the Gospel of Matthew], it is the case that those who want religious ethical principles will find nothing here, but will have to turn to the other words of Jesus which seem to be more pregnant in this respect. Yet if they do they turn away from the living and acting person of Jesus Himself which is the content of the Gospel. They overlook the fact that we can best learn what the commanding of Jesus means at this point where we are so unequivocally confronted by his sovereignty, where he himself and his will take the place of every universal precept, and where we see him make this very definite use of his sovereignty. This is what happens when Jesus commands.

…In the command of God we are face to face with the person of God, with the action and revelation of this person, with God himself.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

The Will of God Ep. 2.

A catena on the birth of God in each person:

Meister Eckhart:

Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature. St. Augustine says, “What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters.” We shall therefore speak of this birth, of how it may take place in us.

Matthew Fox, riffing on Eckhart:

What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God 1400 years ago and I do not give birth to the Son of God in my own person and time and culture? . . . We are all meant to be mothers of God.

Volker Leppin on the theology of the German mystic Johannes Tauler:

Isaiah 9: “For a child has been born for us, a song given to us.” Tauler explains this verse with a three-fold hermeneutic. The biblical text initially speaks of the intra-Trinitarian birth of the Son through the Father, secondly of the historical birth of Jesus in time [to Mary]…and thirdly of the birth of God in the soul of a faithful person.

Maximus the Confessor:

The mother of the Word is the true and unsullied faith. Just as the Word, who, as God, is by nature the creator of His mother who gave birth to Him according to the flesh, and made her His mother out of love for mankind, and accepted to be born from her as man, so too the Word first creates faith within us, and then becomes the son of that faith, from which He is embodied through the practice of the virtues.

Jordan Daniel Wood, commenting on Maximus:

This is our adoption, how we become God’s children. As it was in the historical Incarnation, the Holy Spirit, who dwells perichoretically (wholly) in the Son, is ‘the one creating’ the Son’s birth in and as us.

Maximus again:

Christ is always born mysteriously and willingly, becoming incarnate in those who are saved. He causes the soul which begets him to be a virgin-mother.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

We can and should speak not about what the good is, can be, or should be for each and every time, but about how Christ may take form among us today and here.

Bonhoeffer again:

The will of God is nothing other than the realization of the Christ-reality among us and in our world. The will of God is therefore not an idea that demands to be realized; it is itself already reality in the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The will of God is…a reality that wills to become real ever anew in what exists and against what exists. The will of God has already been fulfilled by God, in reconciling the world to himself in Christ. To disregard the reality of this fulfillment and to set a fulfillment of one’s own in its place would be the most dangerous relapse into abstract thinking. Since the appearance of Christ, ethics can be concerned with only one thing: to partake in the reality of the fulfilled will of God.

Chris Green:

When the world as you know it starts to crumble…you need to understand that it’s just a birth pang, it’s just a contraction. God is being born…God wants to be born right here, right now—in your life and in mine, in your family and in mine, in this city, in our schools, in our children’s lives, in the lives of our neighbors—God is ready to be born…You need to remember that when everything is going wrong it’s just that Christ is crowning, and have hope.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com