We’ve centered our study of the Apostles’ Creed (and our theology) on the Second Article: Jesus Christ. To know the Father (and the Spirit) we must look to the crucified Lord. But while Jesus central to our understanding of God, the Spirit is primary. In a way, the Spirit always comes first.

As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:3 “…no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” In other words, the Spirit is to be our vision. He is how we see Jesus Christ as Lord. In that way he is always first, always primary.

We also discuss the Spirit as the liveliness of God. Liveliness, I think, is a good umbrella term for the entire work of the Spirit. The Spirit is the freedom of God, the love of God, and the future of God.

As Robert Jenson says, “God’s liveliness [His Spirit]…puts him eternally on the brink of making something where there is nothing.”

And so it is fitting for Scripture to repeatedly associate the Spirit with the future. The Spirit is the power of resurrection: the power by which Christ is raised from the dead. Resurrection is the end goal of all creation. In that way, the Spirit is always the inbreaking of our true future into our present.

Pentecost is the feast of firstfruits. The prophet Joel prophesied that the Spirit would be poured out “in the last days” (future). The Spirit is the downpayment on our inheritnace (future). Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Freedom is the ability to live into the future. The Spirit is hope. And so the Spirit is the promise of the future.

He is the engine under the gospel, which is itself promise. Promises always concern the future. And so it is only by the Spirit that we can live into our promised future (resurrection) ahead of time.

The Spirit is all of these things first in the very life of God (he is God’s freedom and God’s liveliness and God’s love and God’s future) and because he is all of this in the life of God, he is also this for us.

In this way, as Clark Pinnock suggests, the Spirit is “ecstatic.” “Ecstasy” literally means “standing outside oneself.” The Spirit is the ecstasy of God. He is the one that causes God to go out from himself; to be the God he is: the God who is free, and lively, and the God who is radically for us and with us.

And the Spirit’s ecstatic work continually draws us out of ourselves. He draws us out of our old, dusty, static lives and into the future of God.

Some further resources…

* Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love

* Chris Green, Sanctifying Interpretation

* Robert Jenson, Converstations with Poppi: An Eight-Year-Old and Her Theologian Grandfather Trade Questions

* Frank Macchia, Jesus the Spirit Baptizer

John 20:16-17 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

According to the New Testament the ascension is an essential part of the gospel proclamation. This makes it all the more striking how infrequently it comes up in our preaching and thinking. The Apostles’ Creed expects us to say that Jesus was crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven. For a lot of popular theologies of the “atonement” nothing would be lost if we completely left off the ascension (not to mention the resurrection!).

But the ascension of Jesus into heaven (disappearing behind a cloud?) can bring up some embarrassing questions for people who occupy a post-Copernican world and live on this side of the lunar landings.

Where is heaven? Is it locatable on a map? Could you travel there if you had a powerful enough rocket ship that held enough fuel? Could you spot it if you had a powerful enough telescope? 

Where exactly did Jesus go? Is God somewhere out there in a galaxy far, far away?

The short answer is no. Martin Luther described the ascension this way: “Jesus goes away in order to be nearer to us.”

Because of the ascension Jesus isn’t just another body in the room with his disciples. He is the room in which they live and move and have their being. Because of the ascension he now lives in them and they in him (Jn 14:20-23). He “goes away” to his Father in order to be more intimately related to us.

This is why Jesus tells Mary Magdalene, “Don’t cling to me.” Not because he won’t be present to her anymore, but because he will be more present. He will be taken from her sight, but he will live in her by faith.

Jesus has ascended into heaven, but heaven is not a location on a map. It is not located at the far edge of the universe. Heaven is the true situation of every place on earth. It is every situation as God knows it to be and calls it to be. It is the place that Jesus has gone to prepare for us. It is the place where his life is happening, and so can happen in and through you. It is the place where you and I no longer live, but Christ lives in us. And the life we now live, we live by the faith of the Son of God.

More resources:

* If you want to hear more on the topic of God’s judgment and anger, listen to this sermon from Chris Green (I was relying heavily on his argument here):

* Here is an article from Chris Green on the Ascension that was very helpful to me:

* And if you want to swim even further up stream, I highly recommend an essay by Robert Jenson entitled “On the Ascension” in this wonderful collection of his essays: The Triune Story.

In his lectures on the Apostles’ Creed Karl Barth asks the question: How in the world did Pontius Pilate end up in the Creed? “The answer might first of all be: like a dog into a nice room!”

Why is it significant that Pilate is named in the Creed?

What does it mean to say that God suffered? Or that God died? And why is it good news that Jesus’ life came to an end?

A poem by Hans Urs von Balthasar:

When Christ came into

A few related resources:

* Regarding Jesus’ death and resurrection (not resuscitation) I’m drawing primarily on the work of Chris Green and Robert Jenson:

* Chris Green, Being Transfigured

* Robert Jenson, Story and Promise

* Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

* Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

* This is the Russian novel I mentioned in which Pilate is a main character (it’s wild but wonderful, so reader be warned).

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Is the virgin birth an essential part of the Christian faith? What do we mean when we say that Jesus is both fully God and fully human? Jesus is conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit but is also born to Mary. Is Mary the Mother of God?

This week I try to show that if Mary is not the Mother of God, then our salvation is lost. If God did not truly pass through Mary’s womb, then He is not truly Emmanuel; not truly God with us.

Robert Jenson has one of my favorite lines on the issue: “Mary is indeed the Mother of God, but she need not be a goddess to achieve this.”

The question about Mary being the Mother of God is not a question about Mary’s divine status. She is not a goddess. Her Son is her creator. The question about Mary being the Mother of God is a question about the identity of Jesus.

Jesus made Mary his mother out of love for all humanity. By doing this he revealed the incomprehensible humility of our God. God is humble enough to pass through the blood and guts of a womb just as he is humble enough to pass through the blood and guts of a tomb for us and for our salvation.

From birth and through death he is Emmanuel: God with us.

Here are a couple of the diagrams I drew on the board:

Diagram #1: In the fourth century Arius (Arianism) put the question about the identity of the Son of God into sharp focus. Is the Son of the same essence as the Father? Arius said no. Arius argued that while the Son is of a higher nature than all created things (humans, angels, archangels, etc.) he is still a sort of second-level deity below the Father. And so there was a wedge driven between the Father (who is full-fledged God, and so cannot have passed through a womb or died on a cross) and the Son.

Diagram #2: The Council of Nicaea (AD 325) corrected the heresy of Arianism. The council declared that the Son is coequal with the Father. The Son is not a second-level deity, but truly and fully God. But this simply moved the problem back one notch. Whereas before the wedge was driven between the Father and the Son, now the wedge was moved back a notch between the eternal Son and the human Jesus. If the Son is full-fledged God just as the Father is, then he also cannot have passed through a womb or died on a cross. All this suffering must be what the human nature of Jesus accomplishes while the divine nature shines forth in the glory. The issue now is that we’ve separated the human Jesus from the eternal Son, implying there are two persons (or two subjects). Before (Diagram #1) the split was between Father and Son, but now the split is within the Son himself. And I’m not sure we’ve ever fully recovered from this issue. Our tendency is still to think in terms of two subjects: the human Jesus (who has a mother, who sleeps in the bottom of the boat, and who dies) and the eternal Son (who does not have a mother, who calms the stormy sea, and who resurrects).  

But the truth of the gospel must be this: you cannot accurately pick Jesus of Nazareth out of a lineup without simultaneously picking out the eternal Son of God. Jesus is one person with two natures. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, who healed humanly and suffered divinely.

More resources:

* Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed

* Robert Jenson, “Jesus in the Trinity”

Unfortunately, the microphone did not record the class last night.

The audio in this post is from a theology class I taught a few months ago. It covers a few of the same themes we discussed last night; especially Jesus as the starting point for all our theology.

In class we took the second article of the Creed word by word: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.”

Jesus

What is our starting point for all theological reflection? In order to understand every single word the Creed uses we have to start from this name: Jesus of Nazareth. He is the very content of what it means to be God. You can’t shoehorn Jesus into a doctrine of God (or Scripture, or the church, etc.) that you already have up and running. He is where all Christian theological reflection begins and ends.

Karl Barth put it well: “[The second article of the creed] is the touchstone of all theology. ‘Tell me how it stands with your Christology, and I shall tell you who you are.’”

Christ/Messiah

With this word the story of Israel is brought to the forefront: he is the messiah promised to Israel. This brings up questions about the relationship between Israel and the church (i.e. supersessionism/replacement theology).

Robert Jenson: “The church speaks of the Messiah’s ‘return’ because she believes that she has already met the one who will come again, whereas the synagogue simply awaits the Messiah’s coming. But we wait together and for the same thing.”

Chris Green: “Christianity is not the replacement of Israel, but it is the being-placed-into Israel.”

The Only Son of the Father

If you’ve seen the Son you’ve seen the Father. The Son shows us the very heart of the Father.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

We usually hear “God so loved” as meaning how much God loved us. But the Greek word “so” (houtos) means “thus” or “in this way.” This is the way God loves us. “For God loved the world this way, he gave his only Son…” 

The cross is the way God loves us.

Our Lord

“Lords,” as we know them in our world, have subjects. They are masters with slaves. Is this how God is “our Lord”? Is God a master with slaves?

This “Lord” comes among us as one who serves. He comes as a slave (Phil. 2:7). He is Lord precisely as a slave. The name “Jesus of Nazareth” chastens all our preconceived notions of what lords and masters look like.

Some more resources:

* A lecture from Chris Green on the theme of supersessionism: “The Fire and the Cloud: A Biblical Christology”

* A podcast by Chris Green on the Master/Slave theme in Colossians: “Lord, Deliver Us from Mastery”

* Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed

Keep the conversation going by leaving a comment:

This week we begin looking at the content of the Apostles’ Creed starting with “God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” We take each of the key words in turn.

What does the Creed mean when it uses the very vague three-letter word “G-O-D”? What does it mean to call God “Father”? Is there gender in God? Is God more masculine than feminine? What does God’s “almightiness” mean? How does this particular God have power? Why do we need faith to believe that the Father of Jesus is the creator of the world we find ourselves in?

Lots of thorny—but life-giving—things to contemplate.

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Here is the quote from Karl Barth’s lecture on “the Father Almighty” from 1946 in Germany in the ruins of the University of Berlin:

“Perhaps you recall how, when Hitler used to speak about God, he called Him ‘the Almighty.’ But it is not ‘the Almighty’ who is God; we cannot understand from the standpoint of a supreme concept of power, who God is. And the man who calls God ‘the Almighty’ misses God in the most terrible way. For the ‘Almighty’ is bad, as ‘power in itself’ is bad. The ‘Almighty’ means Chaos, Evil, the Devil. We could not better describe and define the Devil [than by these words]…”

I would love if there were any lingering questions or comments about the teaching. We can keep the conversation going in the comment section of this post.

Here are a few of the books I drew on as resources for this teaching:

* Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

* Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed

* Robert Jenson, A Large Catechism

* Chris Green, Surprised by God

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The Apostles’ Creed is the one text of the three within the ancient catechism that is not in Scripture. This brings up all kinds of questions for many modern Christians: What do we do with it? Should we give it the authority that Scripture has? Is it really necessary for the Christian life?

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In this introduction to the Apostles’ Creed we discuss what it is, what its relationship to Scripture is, and its trinitarian structure.

The Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty, 

    creator of heaven and earth; 

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. 

    He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit 

        and born of the Virgin Mary. 

    He suffered under Pontius Pilate, 

        was crucified, died, and was buried. 

    He descended to the dead. 

    On the third day he rose again. 

    He ascended into heaven, 

        and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 

    He will come again to judge the living and the dead. 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, 

    the holy catholic Church, 

    the communion of saints, 

    the forgiveness of sins

    the resurrection of the body, 

    and the life everlasting. Amen.

Here are a couple of the books I relied on this week:

* Robert Jenson, Canon and Creed (This is one of the best books I’ve read on the relationship between the canon of Scripture and creed. It can be challenging at times, but well-worth the effort.)

* Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed

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This week we turn our attention to the second table of the Ten Commandments which are about love of neighbor.

The perennial temptation of the church is to split the two tables of the Ten Commandments apart. This causes us to imagine that we occupy two different realms or spheres: God on the one side and the world on the other. The split filters into every area of life: religion and politics, church and world, private and public, soul and body.

God has something to say about my personal salvation and spirituality (i.e. “going to heaven when I die”) but nothing about my politics.

This diseased imagination—which is the result of making this split—has plagued the church often and it can especially be seen in the churches in our circles today.

The truth, however, is that the two tables cannot be split apart. We are not called to love God and then love our neighbors. When we meet this strange God we find out that the way we love Him is by loving our neighbors (1 Jn. 4:12, 20-21). When we see the face of the God of the first table (Commandments 1-3) we find that he is also the neighbor of the second table (Commandments 4-10). Jesus said that whatever we do to the least of these, we do to him.

God and the world are not two separate realities. The two tables are not two separate spheres of life. Why? Because in Christ God has reconciled the world to himself. God and the world are brought together in his name (Bonhoeffer). To see God we must look at the face of the human Jesus, and to see the truth of the world we must look at the face of God in Jesus. The truth of the two tables comes together in the incarnation.

As Jürgen Moltmann put it: “In Christ, God and our neighbor are a unity, and what God has joined together, let no man tear asunder…”

Peter Leithart’s book on the Ten Commandments can be found here: The Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments, or the Ten Words, are typically divided into two tables (#1-3 and #4-10). The first table is about loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind; the second table is about loving our neighbors as ourselves.

This week we look at the first table which is, as Luther said, about faith. Faith has to do with the future (Heb. 11:1). How do we deal with the onrush of the future? As threat or as opportunity and promise? Everything depends on what our faith is in.

Let me also say a word about a question that came up about prayer to icons/saints. My response in the recording was simply an attempt to help us understand why Roman Catholics “pray” to saints. I think it is always important to understand the reasons why other traditions believe what they believe. That doesn’t mean we necessarily agree, but the Christ-like thing to do is to try to understand others sympathetically rather than judgmentally.

There is only one mediator between God and humans and that is the man Jesus Christ. Robert Jenson says that if speaking to dead saints (or our loved ones who have already passed on) is possible, it would only be through Jesus. The saints are not our way to Jesus, but if communication with the great cloud of witnesses is possible, then Jesus would be our way to them. He is the one mediator.

If you want to read more on the eternity/time question, here is a short post I wrote about it a few years ago: The Timely God.

The books I referenced in the teaching can be found here:

* Robert Jenson, A Large Catechism

* Peter Leithart, The Ten Commandments

The title of this series, “Ancient-Future Discipleship,” is an homage to the work of Robert Webber. Webber argued that the future of the church is ancient. We need to recover our ancient foundation not to reproduce the past, but to resource ourselves for current and future challenges.

The church is an odd institution in that it began in the past, but has its roots in the future. In Ephesians 2:20 Paul says that the church is built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles (who lived and died in the past), but he goes on to say that the church has Jesus Christ as its cornerstone. Jesus is not confined to the past, but has been resurrected. He is the future. So the cornerstone of the church is not in its past, but in its future. The church not only has ancient wisdom (from the past), it also has a resurrected Lord who is leading and guiding it today into its future.

In this series we are seeking to recover our ancient roots (which will challenge many of our modern practices, beliefs, and assumptions), but not to merely recover and restore the past, but to better understand the heart of our living Lord who is calling us into the future.

What we find in the church’s ancient catechisms is a repeated pattern of teaching on three texts: the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. We will be looking at each of these in turn.

In this first teaching I am primarily relying on two pentecostal theologians: Simon Chan and Chris Green.

Here are links to the books mentioned:

* Simon Chan Liturgical Theology

* Chris Green Being Transfigured

If you have any questions or reflections, please utilize the comment section here on this post. I’d love to keep the discussion going.