Yoder- Who is your Messiah?

"The invocation of violence to support any cause is also implicitly a messianism. Any national sense of mission claims implicitly to be a saving community. One cannot avoid either messianism or the claim to chosen peoplehood by setting Jesus or his methods aside. One only casts the aura of election around lesser causes." Nevertheless p. 138

Yoder- does he give up on the world?

“To know that the Lamb who was slain was worthy to receive power not only enables his disciples to face martyrdom when they must; it also encourages them to go about their daily crafts and trades, to do their duties as parents and neighbors, without be driven to despair by cosmic doubt. Even before the broken world can be made whole by the Second Coming, the witnesses to the first coming — through the very fact that they proclaim Christ above the powers, the Son above the angels — are enabled to go on proleptically in the redemption of creation. Only this evangelical Christology can found a truly transformationist approach to culture.”

– John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 61.

Yoder- we all want to change the world?

“The falleness of the world is not just the fallenness of individual sinners; the world as structure is gone awry. Those of us who seek to ‘take charge’ of events by challenging the Powers at their own game, trying to manipulate events in terms of their own inherent dynamics, may be selling out morally and practically at the very point where they claim to be taking responsibility. By agreeing to play by their rules we grant their idolatrous claim to be in charge of history in JHWH’s stead. Our refusal to play the game by the agreed rules may be more morally basic than our courageous wrestling with things as they are. Jesus defeated the powers by refusing to meet them on that terrain, at the cost of his life.” (The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, 175)

John Yoder

“The point that apocalyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster justice by the swords are not as strong as they think – true as that is: we still sing, ’O where are Kings and Empires now of old that went and came?’ It is that people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that belief by reducing social process to mechanical and statistical models, nor by winning some of one’s battles for the control of one’s own corner of the fallen world. One comes to it by sharing the life of those who sing about the Resurrection of the slain Lamb.”

– John Howard Yoder, “Armaments and Eschatology.” Studies in Christian Ethics 1:43 (1988): 58.

H/T inhabitatiodei

Where did Paul get his anthropology?

Our Pauline Theology class has been discussing the origins of Paul's anthropology recently. The question is usually framed as "Did Paul start with the problem (universal sin) and then find the solution (Jesus), or start with the solution (JC)and then construct the problem (sin)? I find this way of framing the question annoying, so have had a crack at putting together where I think Paul's anthropology comes from.

However the Jewish of the OT or 2nd Temple Judaism saw themselves, the Gentiles were always viewed as both culpable for their sin and enslaved to it (in idolatry). When Paul meets the risen Jesus on the Damascus road, he is forced to recognise him as the vindicated Messiah of God. If this is the case, then the Jewish authorities and people (including Paul himself) have numbered themselves with the Gentiles by fighting against the true Messiah. Yet this messiah offers Paul (and other Jews) forgiveness. This messiah has defeated the powers that enslave and taken the culpability on himself. If forgiveness is offered to Jews who have numbered themselves with the Gentiles, then it is likewise offered to Gentiles who act like true Jews by having Abrahamic faith.


I think it is from this framework that the connection with the OT is made. Paul pushes back beyond Sinai to Adam to show both Jew and Gentile under sin, he pushes back to Abraham to show Gentile and Jew under covenant, he goes back to the exile to show Jewish failure. Yet I don't think this comes simply from sitting down with the scriptures, but as a reflection on what has happened to the messiah.

So, theres my crazy thought for the day.
Takers, anybody?

more Psalms doggerel: Raise a beer 116

Raise a beer, all the Lord's people
Shout out his name, bellowed cheers
Because of him I'll live much longer
it really could have gone the other way

I was in a bind; those lying bastards
I should have seen it, but you don't expect...
stumbled steps to an ocean graveyard
I walked on water, up to the neck

But I called. He heard. He saved. I lived
love every time the story's told
So if you care to raise your glass once more
"Be at rest, O my soul"

It is ok to steal, you just have to wait for a while.

Peter Adam, principal of Ridley College, delivered what appears to be a rather provocative lecture at Morling College last night.

You can read a report here at the herald.

The basic premise seems to be, if you steal something, as christians you should repent and make recompense.

I wonder if standing committee will pay someone to look into redistributing Anglican property to indigenous Australians; for the sake of the mission of course. Wow, imagine what a witness that would be.

Cruel Equality: guessing competition

WITHOUT GOOGLING guess the author of this statement and which decade it was written in

"Equality is cruel to women because it requires them to duplicate behaviours that they find profoundly alien and disturbing"

Elull on prayer and hope

Elull on Prayer
By Halden

“The person who claims to be full of hope but fails to lead a life of prayer is a liar. Prayer is the sole ‘reason’ for hope, at the same time that it is its means and expression. Prayer is the referral to God’s decision, on which we are counting. Without that referral there can be no hope, because we would have nothing to hope for. Prayer is the assurance of the possibility of God’s intervention, without which there is no hope. Prayers is the means given by God for the dialogue with him, that is to day, it is the very junction of the future with eternity, where we have seen that our hope is located. In its dialogue it embraces the past presented for pardon, the future defined by cooperation between the praying person and God, and eternity, which prayer lays hold of through the sighs uttered by the Holy Spirit.

“Without such prayer we can piece together a few false hopes to give the appearance of hope, but all that, even when arranged theologically, can only be illusory. That is why it is quite right to recall that hope is based on God’s promise constantly fulfilled and renewed. But how can we forget that, throughout the Bible, this promise is linked with the ceaseless outcry of prayer? It is man’s prayer which demands the fulfillment, and it is again his prayer which demands its renewal and its ongoing. Without prayer, the promise and its fulfillment are forces just as indifferent and blind as Moira (fate) and Ananke (necessity).”

~ Jacques Elull, Hope in a Time of Abandonment, 272-3.


Ps. I just realised that people who subscribe to this blog get these posts even when I backdate them. I put them on the blog so I can find them easily later. I stole this one from halden

It's not the dead who praise the Lord: a reflection on Ps 115

Not to us, Lord Jesus,
not to us, but to your name be glory,
your burning love and faithfulness

Why does the West say 'Where is your God?'
He ascended into heaven, he does what he likes!
But their gods are dregs from dead guys lies

their market has a guiding hand, but can not feel
they manufacture arms, but can't embrace
slick bodies rub a friction,
but never spark the flame that conquers death

Those that trust them, they become them:
calloused phallus weapons

But the church of God can take a beating: Christ has died
the bride of the lamb will stand: Christ is risen
the people with his peace will keep forgiving
the dying, risen Christ will come again

Our Lord remembers and he blesses
his treasured, praising people
in his jealous fire he'll raise us
It's not the dead who praise the Lord.