Forty years ago

On August 16, 1975 Prime Minister Gough Whitlam gave the following speech when handing over freehold title of the Gurindji lands to Vincent Lingiari. The speech was written by Dr HC 'Nugget' Coombs.
_______________________

On this great day, I, Prime Minister of Australia, speak to you on behalf of all Australians who honour and love this land we live in. For them, I want: first, to congratulate you and those who have shared your struggle on the victory you have won in that fight for justice begun nine years ago when, in protest, you walked off Wave Hill station;

Second, to acknowledge we have still much to do to redress the injustice and oppression that has for so long been the lot of black Australians; third, to promise you that this act of restitution we perform today will not stand alone. Your fight was not for yourselves alone, and we are determined that Aboriginal Australians everywhere will be helped by it; fourth, to promise that, through their government, the people of Australia will help you in your plans to use this land fruitfully for the Gurindji;

Finally, to give back to you formally, in Aboriginal and Australian law, ownership of this land of your fathers.

Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people, and I put into your hands this piece of the earth itself as a sign that we restore them to you and your children forever.

"There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead"

It is refreshing to find a journalist who has done a little bit of homework prior to an interview and is ready to question spin, half-truths, strategic inexactitudes and "misstatements" from political leaders.

Rather than contribute another dissection of this particular interview, instead I thought I'd gather a few thoughts on the Australian carbon price and its place in contemporary Australian politics.

As Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott is so fond of reminding us (especially when facing an interviewer turning the screws on his own truthfulness), Australian PM Julia Gillard did indeed say during the 2010 election campaign, "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead". Yet one of the signature pieces of legislation from this minority government has been the introduction a price on carbon coupled with income tax reform.

A straightforward broken promise? Yes and no.

It is axiomatic that a minority government will need to compromise its electoral platform in order to get the support of other parties or independents required to govern. If a party could gain the support of enough MPs without altering its policies, then the extra MPs would just join the party. It is abundantly clear in this case that the price on carbon was the top item on the Greens agenda (and also on the radar of the independents) and so compromise was necessary. Once the election results were known, that such legislation would be the price of Greens support (needed by either party to govern) was entirely predictable.

As far as I can see, there were really only four other alternatives: (a) for the Greens to have dropped this demand, which was considerably more core for them than a promise made once on the campaign trail (did Gillard make this claim more than once? If so, I am not aware of it), (b) for the Greens to have negotiated an agreement with the Coalition, which would have faced the same sticking point (along with likely even more disagreements on other policies), (c) for the two parties who were against a carbon price (Labor and the Coalition) to have made this the sine qua non of their respective positions and so come to a power-sharing agreement between them in order to prevent the Greens from introducing such an idea, or (d) for no agreements to be reached and a new election called.

As I've said before, too much is usually made of campaign promises. Governments exist to execute wise political authority, not merely to implement the majority will.

While it is a minor point, it's worth noting that the carbon price is not a tax. The current system is based on carbon credits that are sold to the five hundred or so largest polluting companies in a market mechanism that spends the first few years with a fixed price and unlimited credits in order to give business certainty and then shifts to a fixed number of credits (declining each year) and a moving price (with a floor and ceiling imposed). It may well have been better as a direct tax at the point of extraction with proceeds distributed equally to all Australian citizens (tax and dividend), but that is not the system that was chosen. Now it is quite arguable that most Australians do not understand the difference, but that is because there has been such an effective effort by the Opposition to muddy the waters and no effort on the part of the government to explain it. Public ignorance is assumed and reinforced by both sides.

More importantly, the current legislation is way too unambitious, with tiny targets that put Australia towards the back of industrial counties in its level of ambition and which, if adopted by all advanced economies, would most likely see us sail past two, three and four degrees. Furthermore, current legislation does not including our massive coal exports, which are already the largest in the world and are planned to double in the next decade (blowing any domestic reductions out of the water), nor the embodied carbon in imported goods, nor international aviation or shipping. It provides extremely generous free credits to many industries to soften the initial burden. And it includes international offsets, so that we can continue to emit locally while paying someone else to make changes elsewhere that Treasury does not actually expect domestic emissions to decline very much, if at all.

Yet perhaps the greatest failure by the government regarding this legislation has been the failure to make use of its introduction to keep raising climate literacy, explaining the basics of climate science (which are still widely misunderstood), why serious action of carbon emissions are morally justified (getting beyond short-term cost-benefit analyses) and necessary at every level (personal, local, national, international), why Australia must do its bit (which is considerably more than most other nations, not less) and why this battle is worth fighting, even if it looks like we're currently losing.

So be assured that I am no particular fan of the present legislation or government, but repeating Gillard's broken promise - while it may be a satisfying way of expressing anger at a government that has had its fair share of controversies while being surprisingly effective at getting more than an average amount of legislative work done - is doubly misguided.

On broken (political) promises

Much has been made in the media here and in Australia about broken election promises. Nick Clegg promised (indeed, publicly signed a pledge) to not raise tuition fees. Then voted to raise tuition fees. Julia Gillard promised there would be no carbon tax, then announced plans to introduce a system which includes an initially fixed price on carbon.

Are these simply more examples of lying politicians, out to pursue short term political advantage by whatever means? Possibly, but the outrage whipped up by certain sections of the media in each case is, in my opinion, somewhat misguided.

In both cases, we are talking about elections that failed to deliver a clear majority government, thus requiring negotiations between parties to deliver a stable result. There is nothing especially wrong with hung parliaments, minority rule or coalitions. Yet under such conditions, it entirely possible that pre-election promises will have to be broken or modified in order to reach a new agreement.

Consider the UK. We are governed by a coalition between a party who promised more nuclear power and to support the Trident nuclear programme and a second party that promised to end Trident and to build no new nuclear stations. How is it possible for such a coalition to not break promises?

I think there is actually too much emphasis on campaign promises (in the media and by politicians). Representative democratic government is not, despite all the rhetoric, about implementing the will of the majority. It is system whereby elected representatives are entrusted with the authority to make wise judgements on our behalf. A government that makes an unpopular decision is not thereby undemocratic since representative democracy is not about how decisions are made but how representatives are elected.

It is possible that many people do not like this and would prefer a direct democracy. While this has many advantages, especially in polities of a smaller scale, under our present conditions, I'm not sure I trust my fellow citizens enough (or rather the media that all too often guides us by the nose down paths of its own liking - or should I say, of Rupert's liking). In any case, it is not the system we have.

We consent to certain decision-makers, not to certain decisions. How then are we to discern who is to lead us if we are not simply looking for someone who promises to do things we like? All kinds of ways. We examine their history, their qualifications, their character, their party values, their voting record, their ability to demonstrate critical thinking in their public and personal communications, our impression of them from meeting them personally and engaging them in conversation, their ability to persuade, their ability to bring people with them, their vision for the future - and so on. While pre-election promises are clearly part of what we base our electoral judgements upon, they are a relatively small part of the package and must always be taken with a grain of salt in a world where politics is the art of the possible.

Lent: the reward of dissatisfaction

I thought it might be worth correcting a potential misunderstanding of one of my earlier posts on a Lenten reading of the sermon on the mount in Matthew's Gospel. When I spoke of the reward of fasting being the healing of desire, I did not intend to imply that there is no future aspect to this as though those who perform disciplines of piety privately have also already received their reward in full. The beatitudes that form the heart of the sermon are focused primarily on the future; it is those who are dissatisfied with the present who are blessed, because of God's coming future.

So the reward is both now and not yet. Now the "reward" is a certain kind of dissatisfaction, a yearning desire for right things. This means that at present, fasting and the other disciplines mentioned by Christ are not only uncomfortable and costly, but they make us less happy (in one sense). We fast in order that we begin to hunger for the right things, that is, to hunger and thirst for justice, as the beatitudes put it. The not-yet aspect of the reward is the satisfying of those healed desires. Today's desires look forward to tomorrow's feast, a feast that begins at Easter.

Does it have to be this way?

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
   and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
   the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
   the spirit of counsel and might,
   the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
   or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
   and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
   and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
   and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
   their young shall lie down together;
   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
   on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   as the waters cover the sea.

- Isaiah 11.1-9 (NRSV).

The claim that it doesn't have to be this way, that the seeming inevitability of the status quo is an illusion, is one I have made many times over the last few months. Sometimes, it has been a more or less impotent protest appended to the end of some piece of bad news as a flimsy barrier against a rising sense of despair. Some readers (especially my most faithful and critical one) have pointed out that there is a disconnect between the scale of the problems I've highlighted and the glimpses of responses I've put forward (for example here and here). The threats are formidable; the remedies feeble. It may not have to be this way, but it certainly seems like it is highly likely that it will be.

Nonetheless, I repeat my assertion that it doesn't have to be this way. Ultimately, this claim is not grounded in empirical observation of alternative ways of living, though they can help to fire the imagination and break free from the shackles of the all-too-obvious we associate with business as usual. Ultimately, this is a theological claim, a messianic expectation that depends upon the promise of God. Even when we cannot see any way forward and all options seem like dead ends, even then we must treat all apparent political and economic necessities as only apparent. And when there seems to be only one way forward, we should remain sceptical of the reasoning that forces our hand. To believe in God's future is to remain free from such necessities, it is to refuse to grant ultimate relevance to the hand of fate, or the market, or of might.

This is one of the effects of Christian faith upon the vision of our immediate future. By placing our immediate future against the backdrop of a messianic promise for the renewal of all things, it is not that the present sufferings become irrelevant. Indeed, in some ways, they become worse, because we can never make our peace with them as merely "one of those things". Instead, a hope that does not arise from the possibilities already apparent in our situation means that the present predicament can be seen with fresh eyes. This doesn't necessarily mean that an escape route will open up for those with the eyes of faith, but that even a road ending in a cross may be seen as worth walking.

In praise of... short engagements

Prince William and Kate Middleton are to get married on Friday 29th April, within six months of announcing their engagement. For all else that will be written about this particular match, let me say that I'm a fan of short engagements (six months or less). Barring unusual circumstances (e.g. one partner being called off to war), short engagements have two great benefits. The first is relational, the second practical.

Relationally, engagement is an unstable time. Prior to engagement, only loose expectations form the relational bond. Both parties know that they can end the relationship for a variety of good reasons (there are, of course, also plenty of bad reasons, but the point is that good reasons exist). After marriage, lifelong promises bind the couple in a security that allows difficult issues to be faced with confidence that the other has publicly promised to keep holding and loving in whatever circumstances or difficulties arise. But during engagement, there exists the somewhat strange circumstance of a private promise that a public promise will be made. There exists during this period a rapidly closing door out of the relationship and this itself can bring added stress and uncertainty to the relationship. Limiting this stressful period to a definite (and relatively brief) period of time is healthy. Open-ended engagements seem either somewhat pointless or somewhat cruel. Once the decision to get married has been made, then all that is required is some time to prepare for the solemnity of the promises to be undertaken and to arrange the details of a wedding - which brings us to the second benefit of brief engagements.

Practically, the wedding preparation will expand to fill the time available. The longer that is given to this process, the more likely the celebration will grow into an all-consuming beast. Better to acknowledge that, while a day of great seriousness and great joy, a wedding is but another day that the Lord has made, and doesn't require great debts to be shouldered or unrealistic expectations (from whatever source) to be appeased. If present finances are insufficient to pay for the scale of expenses expected, then it is far better to humble one's expectations than delay the date. The point of the day is the making and celebrating of promises. All else is optional.

That said, I doubt the Prince and his family are accustomed to too much humbling of expectations. Yet humility befits even (perhaps especially) a future king.
Image by Scott Callaghan.

Ten years

Ten years ago today, I was at St Mary's, Waverley, making some promises that truly make little sense except that they attempt to echo something of God's passionate commitment to us.

Here I am, ten years older, and still just as reliant upon the promises of God in order to keep my promises - and to renew them each time I fail.
Image by Scott Callaghan.

Are unbaptised Christians like de facto marriages?

Some people live together, sleep together, share finances, raise children together and do many or most of the things that married couples do (argue together, begin to look and sound like each other...), yet have not exchanged explicit public promises of commitment to one another. Their habitual actions mean that while they have never publicly made and received the promises that make a marriage (or those promises remain implicit or private), they are nonetheless acting (and are generally treated) as though they are in fact married. Hence, their relationship is a de facto marriage.

Some people repent of their sins, place their faith in Christ, love God and neighbour, participate in a Christian community and do many or most of the things that Christians do (argue together, begin to look and sound like each other...), yet have not exchanged explicit public promises of commitment with Christ. Their habitual actions mean that while they have never actually made and received the promises that make a Christian (or those promises remain implicit or private), they are nonetheless acting (and are generally treated) as though they are in fact Christian. Hence, are they de facto Christians?

Just a thought.

No divine guarantees

There is no guarantee that the world we live in will 'tolerate' us indefinitely if we prove ourselves unable to live within its constraints. Is this – as some would claim – a failure to trust God, who has promised faithfulness to what he has made? I think that to suggest that God might intervene to protect us from the corporate folly of our practices is as unchristian and unbiblical as to suggest that he protects us from the results of our individual folly or sin. This is not a creation in which there are no real risks; our faith has always held that the inexhaustible love of God cannot compel justice or virtue; we are capable of doing immeasurable damage to ourselves as individuals, and it seems clear that we have the same terrible freedom as a human race. God's faithfulness stands, assuring us that even in the most appalling disaster love will not let us go; but it will not be a safety net that guarantees a happy ending in this world. Any religious language that implies this is making a nonsense of the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament and the urgency of the preaching of Jesus.

- Rowan Williams, "Renewing the Face of the Earth:
Human Responsibility and the Environment"

This claim is central to my project. That we can destroy ourselves. Suicide is possible. Sadly, and all too frequently, as individuals. Perhaps not so easily as a race (though I wouldn't rule it out). But certainly as a society. There is no divine guarantee of civilisational continuity. And so there is no short-circuiting the debate over whether this might not in fact be our present trajectory through an appeal to God's sovereignty.

In praise of... surprises

As mentioned previously, I've been constantly touched and overwhelmed by the support and love Jessica and I have received in all kinds of ways over the last month or so, including some creative and unexpected measures.

Today I received a number of surprises. Not only did the first of the Barth volumes arrive (III/4 and IV/4), but two more books I didn't realise had been purchased for me from my Amazon wish list. Here they are:

After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity by Miroslav Volf (Eerdmans: 1998)
What can we learn about the church from the life and nature of the Trinity? A trinitarian ecclesiology from one of the most interesting and important theologians at work today, in which he interacts at length with Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and Zizoulas. I'm not expecting to agree with everything Volf writes (his take on the Trinity sometimes seems a little too symmetrical and neat), but I've wanted to read this book for a couple of years. I intended to get to it in third year ecclesiology, but other things crowded it out.

The Church between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America edited by George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder (Eerdmans: 1996)
An interesting collection of essays on contemporary church culture, life and mission. My new rector has been thinking about this book and suggested I read it as we reflect on what we do and why at All Souls.

A huge thanks to the two individuals who orchestrated such beautiful surprises. You know who you are (I do too, since your names appeared on the receipts with the books). As a bonus surprise, I'm not sure that I have ever met either of you!

Surprises remind us that the future is open to God's radical intervention. He has bound himself to the future in promises, but the fulfillment is always more than we could ask or imagine (Ephesians 3.20).

Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
   the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
   rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
   the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.

- Isaiah 43.18-21 (emphasis added)

Series so far: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.

Fearless service III

In earlier posts, I started laying out some thoughts for a sermon I would have preached on Luke 1.67-80. Having been liberated from a divinely-imposed silence, Zechariah bursts into song over the divinely-acheived salvation of Israel. Such salvation means not simply deliverance from the hands of enemies, but more fundamentally "light to those who sit in darkness, in the shadow of death".

This is all of us. None of us by worrying are able to add a single hour to our life. None of us can guarantee tomorrow. We are all dying, giving birth astride a grave. Although some might be more aware of being close to death, this is a matter of quantity rather than quality. The universally deadly future casts its grim shadow back upon all the living. Our society either obsesses over death, or refuses to look or think about it. Either way - whether in explicit fixation, or implicitly through resolute denial - we live as though death is the definitive reality in life, colouring all existence.

It is this morbid situation that Zechariah realises God is addressing. How does God execute this salvation from the shadow of death? By raising up a mighty saviour in the royal line of David. Of course, this points forward to the rest of Luke's narrative. By the end of the story, that a saviour has been "raised up" (now with an extra and more direct meaning) makes all the difference to those who pale at the approach of death. Zechariah puts it like this: "By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” The resurrection of Jesus dispells the gloom of death. Death is still there, but its terrors melt away in the breaking dawn.

And what is the intended goal of this salvation? God doesn't simply remove the negative, but replaces it with a positive design. From sitting in darkness, we can now rise and walk "the way of peace". Having been saved from enemies, especially the last enemy death, we are liberated to fearless service.

Service seems risky. So often, we are anxious that if we pour our lives out in service of God and neighbour, we might miss out. Our attempts to bless might be repaid with curses. We might be left forgotten. But the one who remembered his holy covenant with Abraham will not forget you. And the one who has dawned upon us will bring everything to light.

Daylight is come, our saviour is risen, the path of peace lies gleaming before us. Let us follow our master in service without fear.
Series: I; II; III.

Heaven: not the end of the World XIII

Aliens and strangers
Augustine writes movingly of the civitas Dei peregrina, the pilgrim City of God. By this, he refers to that society of people scattered among the nations on earth who love God more than self, who glory in him, rather than seeking their own glory, who confess Christ and yearn for home, finding themselves homeless wanderers in this world. Indeed, the Latin term peregrina, often translated 'pilgrim' might perhaps be better rendered 'resident alien' or 'sojourner'. It is a word closer to the experience of Tom Hanks in The Terminal than the merry pilgrim-cum-tourists of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

To confess Christ is to put yourself on the wrong side of those powers that crucified him, and so to find oneself misunderstood as a rebel. Misunderstood, because just as Christ was a prophet calling the nation back to its true identity, calling humanity back to its Creator, so those who take up their cross and follow him are doing so out of faithfulness to that Creator and thus in solidarity with the groaning creation.

And like the creation, those with the Spirit - the firstfruits of the future presence of God - yearn for the redemption of our bodies, for a transformed world where death is no more, where Christ's gracious kingdom is unopposed, where the riches of God's kindness are poured out with unspeakable joy. We long for the day when the oppressor is no more and the earth is inherited by the meek.

Because of this, we can never feel at home in a world where the rich devour the poor, where unborn strangers are turned back at the borders of life, where Christ is crowned with thorns and anointed with spittle. We are aliens, citizens of the civitas Dei peregrina.

But this is not because our home is elsewhere. It is elsewhen.

And so I wonder whether when Christians are called 'aliens and strangers', this is less like the Jewish exiles in Babylon, who pined for Zion and could not sing for grief, and more like Abraham. Abraham and his immediate descendents are repeatedly called 'aliens' and 'strangers' (Gen 17.8; 21.23, 34; 23.4; 26.3; 28.4; 37.1), though they are already living in the land that God had promised them. Though strangers, the land belongs to them by promise.

For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

- 1 Corinthians 3.21-23

Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI.
Ten points for guessing the country in the above pic.

Heaven: not the end of the world VIII

New heavens and new earth
First mentioned in Isaiah 65 and 66, the phrase "new heaven(s) and new earth" also crops up in 2 Peter 3 (see coming post) and Revelation 21 (see previous post), and seems to suggest that the old heavens and earth are made obsolete and replaced with a new model. This approach, while affirming the importance (at least notionally) of a new earth as well as heaven (i.e. a new universe, since "heaven and earth" is a biblical idiom for "everything"), fails to read these promises christologically. It is only in Jesus that we know anything at all about the future (see here for this important metholodological principle, based on the idea of Jesus' resurrection as the first fruits of what is come).

God the recycler
The one piece of this new heavens and earth that has been (briefly) revealed demonstrates something remarkable about the new model: the old car hasn't been thrown on a scrapheap, it's been recycled. Jesus' resurrection body is the one access we have to the future, and the tomb was empty. That is, God didn't simply throw out Jesus' old body (the beta version?) and give him an upgrade. It was the same body.

But it was not simply the same. Jesus' body was not returned back to how it was. It was radically new; if we listen to the stories of the Easter appearances in the Gospels, he wasn't always recognised. We can call it renewed, but such a tune up and revamp that it makes as much sense to just say 'new'. The resurrected Jesus was totally stunning when revealed in his glory (perhaps there is also a foretaste of this in his transfiguration?). He is still Jesus (witnessed by the scars), but death no longer has dominion over him.

So too with us, and with creation. New bodies, new world: not through the annihilation or replacement of the old, but through resurrection, through liberation from bondage to decay. Paul uses the image of a seed germinating (taken originally from Jesus), capturing both the continuity and discontinuity of the event: the seed becomes the plant - it is the same seed yet no longer merely a seed.

I wonder whether this approach mightn't throw some light on Jesus' words about heaven and earth passing away.* The present order of things - ruled by death and in bondage to decay - will indeed pass away, but only through its being made new by the one who makes all things new.
*Alternatively, the saying could be a hyperbolic expression of how trustworthy his words are: less a promise/warning ("they will pass away") than a hypothetical ("even if they did, my message still holds").
Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI. Five points for the city in the picture. I also discussed the novelty and continuity of the (re)new(ed) creation here.

The end of grace I

The end is a free gift for humanityPrologue: from garden to garden city
The Bible ends with a vision of a city: a glorious picture of human relationships and interdependence, of action and rest, of productive peace between difference, of 'healing for the nations'. A huge city filled with life. This is not a city that relies upon exploiting the surrounding countryside, pushing the land to produce more than it is able to sustain: this city exports life-giving fruit twelve months a year. This is not a city that needs to huddle together for fear of the extremes of nature, nor one threatened by invasion. It is not fractured with internal division, nor oppressed by monotonal uniformity.

Is this the original utopia? No, because this end is 'of grace' - not that grace comes to an end, but that this end is the result of God's free gift. Just as Jesus was 'of Nazareth' and Saul was 'of Tarsus', so this end is 'of grace'. This city is not built with human hands, is not a realised utopian vision of human progress. It comes down from heaven, signifying the divine origin of its establishment and the source of its life.

There is another famous city at the other end of the Bible: Babel. In it human hubris reaches for the heights. Its skyscraping was not for maximising office space, but for forging a link between earth and the heavens from the human side upwards. Ever since, urban development has been an ambivalent achievement: drawing people together, increasing possibilities, maximising human creative and productive potential; yet also dislocating communities, atomising individuals, disintegrating ecosystems. The cities of the world are at once humanity's greatest achievements and our most painful failures.

John's vision of the end is all about grace. It is achieved not by human effort but is a gift from the riches of divine love. It does not come with the achievements of the powerful, nor will it be hindered by the failures of the weak. It is an environment for humans, and for a large and complex human society. For it is the fulfilment of the central thread and hope of the biblical narrative: the divine promise 'I will be with you.' The city is a picture of the final result of God's action: not that we depart to live with him, but that he comes to dwell with us, in our kind of space, though one that he himself has supplied.

This is the start of the end of grace. There is more to come...
Ten points for picking the location from which this pic was taken.
Series: I; II; III; IV.

Theodicy & eschatology VI

This will be the final post in this series (unless I have more thoughts...) on why any attempt to speak of God in the face of evil must be both evangelical - focused on God's action in Christ that is truly good news to those who walk in the valley of the shadow - and eschatological - leaving space for more to come in God's response. We yearn and wait and groan because (i) the cross and resurrection display God's settled opposition to all that opposes life in his good world (and not just display, but are the decisive step in turning the tide) and (ii) because we do not yet see the conclusion of these divine actions. Without (i) we would be without hope; without (ii) we would no longer need to hope: who hopes for what is seen? We groan because we know something of the future of Christ, but it remains future.

BUT in Christ, in the Spirit: the future has begun. Thus the believer is not left merely groaning; we groan with God’s Spirit. The disciples were not left orphaned, with simply the knowledge of God’s decisive victory and the promise of its completion. For once Jesus departed, the Spirit arrived (John 14:16-18). Since Jesus pours out this Spirit, and it was this Spirit who raised him from the dead, this Spirit also connects us to the risen Jesus. In his Spirit, we are ‘in Christ’. That bit of the world that has been raised and created anew, is now the location of our hidden identity (Colossians 3:1-4).

So it is now that we can trust, love and hope in the face of evil, but since God has not yet ultimately solved the problem of evil, we still grieve and groan. In Christ by the Spirit we have the down payment, the pledge, the guarantee of God’s promised future, but we do not yet have that future. Or at least not in its fullness: the Spirit as first fruits (Romans 8:23) is more like a kiss than an engagement ring. Both promise the future, but while a ring is a somewhat arbitrary sign, a kiss is an actual taste of what is coming.

Hope for the resurrection of the dead is in one sense a comfort, but it is also an intensification of the problem. It is because we have hope that the world will be different that we can’t stand to see it as it now is. It is because we know that God will rid the world of evil that we can live in the light of that future: trusting, loving, hoping.

This is an intensely practical and personal problem for each and every human. Rather than seeing it as an apologetics ‘issue’ that needs to be ‘solved’ (or sidestepped) so that people will listen to the gospel, I propose that it is itself the very problem to which the gospel is such good news. The problem of evil is the primary reason I am a Christian. Or rather, I am a Christian due to the fact that in the death and resurrection of Jesus, in which I see the destiny of the world and my own destiny, I can hope that one day there will be a real, existential, moral, social, cosmological, theological more-than-intellectual solution. Come Lord Jesus. Amen.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI.

Resurrection: promise or fulfilment?

N.T. Wright begins a reflection upon the resurrection with this claim:

'Among the first meanings that the resurrection opened up to the surprised disciples was that Israel’s hope had been fulfilled.'

- On the Third Day.

NB Barth's claim below is even stronger that resurrection is the fulfilment of hope.

Compare Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 213-14:

'The revelation of Christ cannot then merely consist in what has already happened in hidden ways being unveiled for us to see, but it must be expected in events which fulfil the promise that is given with the Christ event. This Christ event cannot then itself be understood as fulfilling all promises, so that after this event there remains only the sequel of its being unveiled for all to see. "In Christ all the promises of God are yea and Amen" (II Cor. I.20), i.e. in him they are confirmed and validated, but not yet fulfilled. Therefore the Christian hope expects from the future of Christ not only unveiling, but also final fulfilment.'

Is the resurrection a fulfilment or itself a promise? Or both? In what ways? Why does it matter?

Eight points for naming the city in the image.