Thomas Smail, Good Friday, Holy Saturday

‘If it is hard to understand how the Father-Son relationship is maintained when Jesus is among the god-forsaken, it is even harder to understand how it could be maintained when at the end of his passion he is among the dead. What can it possibly mean to say that the eternal Son of God has died? … The Nicene creed within its second christological answer affirms that he of whom it speaks is “of one Being (homoöusios) with the Father” and also that as part of his work “for us men and our salvation”, “he suffered death and was buried”, but it does not tell us how we are to understand these statements in their relationship to each other.

Hans Urs von Balthasar warns against failing to face up to the stark fact of Holy Saturday, the fact of a dead Christ. We can rush on too quickly to the joys of the third day; we can, with the Greek iconographers, picture a living and active and glorious Christ invading the world of the dead, raising Adam and Eve from their coffins in a pre-resurrection triumph. All that has its place, but it must not be allowed to displace or distract attention from the fact that from Good Friday to Holy Saturday the Son of God lies dead. His identification with us will be incomplete and his saving act insufficient if he does not share with us the ultimate consequence of our subservience to evil, either as its victims or its servants. Hebrews is quite clear that it belongs to the redeeming act of God’s grace that Jesus should experience the death that all of us have to experience and that this is the way he must go in order to reach his glorious destination: “… we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2.9).

Death, whatever function it might be designed to fulfil in the purpose of the Creator, becomes for those who are the sinful victims of evil the dreaded ultimate moment in which the destructiveness that is endemic to the sinful situation finally has its way. When we die all our relationships with God and with people are severed and we are carried from being to non-being: “The wages of sin is death.” Jesus dies, to quote Hebrews again, to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:15).

The illusion of death as the automatic transition from an imperfect to a perfect heavenly state, deceptively propagated at many semi-Christian funerals, is untrue both to scripture and experience. Death can be more biblically and realistically described as the “ultimate enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26) and our reluctance to contemplate the reality of our own death only goes to prove the point.

There must therefore be no mitigation of the awfulness of death either in Jesus’ case or our own. As von Balthasar puts it:

It [death] is a happening which affects the whole person, though not necessarily to the point of obliterating the human subject altogether. It is a situation which signifies in the first place the abandonment of all spontaneous activity and so a passivity, a state in which, perhaps, the vital activity now brought to an end is mysteriously summed up.

Death is the collapse of all relationships into unresponsiveness. Those who are dead can neither speak nor be spoken to, they can neither receive love nor return it, they can neither initiate nor participate in all the activities and concerns in which our relationships are expressed and by which they are nourished. “I have lost my husband”, says the widow, and exactly that is the source of her grief. All that makes up life is lost to the dead and they are lost to it.

And so it is with Jesus, as his body is lowered from the cross and carried to Joseph of Arimathea’s dark garden tomb. No more parables, no more healing, no more praying to his Father; he has offered everything and he has nothing more. It looks as if all the hopes he roused are now reduced to mocking illusions, his promises become retreating echoes fading into nothingness: The Son of God is dead.

As Alan Lewis puts it, we are “compelled to confront the possibility that God’s own Son is dead and buried among the transgressors, and that God himself has failed in his fatherhood and deity” and as a consequence “the world is delivered up to godlessness and negativity”. That is the reality of Holy Saturday and we must give it its own space and its own meaning before we hurry on to Easter Sunday, not least because Holy Saturday is a day that both individuals and the Church have to live through again and again. We shall all have to confront the day of our dying when resurrection may seem a distant hope rather than an imminent reality.

The Son of God is dead; his death is our death. It is an evil undoing of the work of the Creator which looks like the final triumph of all the powers of darkness that have brought him to the cross. He is dead and unresponsive to his friends and he is dead and unresponsive to his Father. This is the ultimate disruptive attack on the unity of Father and Son, this is the permitted intrusion of death into the Trinitarian life of God.

Nevertheless … in his furthest absence from the Father, the dead Son is still in profound unity with the Father. His passivity and unresponsiveness are still the expressions of his obedience that hold him in oneness with the Father in his execution of the Father’s redeeming purpose. That fact alone makes his death different from ours and, even before the resurrection, full of hope for ours. This dead man is indeed bearing the death of the victims and perpetrators of evil, but he is bearing it as the loved and obedient Son of the Father’.

– Thomas A. Smail, Once and For All: A Confession of the Cross (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2005), 137–40.

Peter Leithart Good Friday

Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus and the cross. Was that enough? What is the cross? Is it big enough to fill the universe?

The cross is the work of the Father, who gave His Son in love for the world; the cross is the work of the Son, who did not cling to equality with God but gave Himself to shameful death; the cross is the work of the Spirit, through whom the Son offers Himself to the Father and who is poured out from the pierced side of the glorified Son. The cross displays the height and the depth and the breadth of eternal Triune love.

The cross is the light of the world; on the cross Jesus is the firmament, mediating between heaven and earth; the cross is the first of the fruit-bearing trees, and on the cross Jesus shines as the bright morning star; on the cross Jesus is sweet incense arising to heaven, and He dies on the cross as True Man to bring the Sabbath rest of God.

Adam fell at a tree, and by a tree he was saved. At a tree Eve was seduced, and through a tree the bride was restored to her husband. At a tree, Satan defeated Adam; on a tree Jesus destroyed the works of the devil. At a tree man died, but by Jesus’ death we live. At a tree God cursed, and through a tree that curse gave way to blessing. God exiled Adam from the tree of life; on a tree the Last Adam endured exile so that we might inherit the earth.

The cross is the tree of knowledge, the tree of judgment, the site of the judgment of this world. The cross is the tree of life, whose cuttings planted along the river of the new Jerusalem produce monthly fruit and leaves for the healing of the nations.

The cross is the wooden ark of Noah, the refuge for all the creatures of the earth, the guarantee of a new covenant of peace and the restoration of Adam. The cross is the ark that carries Jesus, the greater Noah, with all His house, through the deluge and baptism of death to the safety of a new creation.

The cross is the olive tree of Israel on which the true Israel died for the sake of Israel. For generations, Israel worshiped idols under every green tree. Israel cut trees, burned wood for fuel, and shaped the rest into an idol to worship. In the last days, idolatrous Israel cut trees, burned wood for fuel, and shaped the rest into a cross. The cross is the climax of the history of Israel, as the leaders of Israel gather to jeer, as their fathers had done, at their long-suffering King.

The cross is the imperial tree, where Jesus is executed as a rebel against empire. It is the tree of Babylon and of Rome and of all principalities and powers that will have no king but Caesar. It is the tree of power that has spawned countless crosses for executing innumerable martyrs. But the cross is also the imperial standard of the Fifth Monarchy, the kingdom of God, which grows to become the chief of all the trees of the forest, a haven for birds of the air and beasts of the field.

The cross is the staff of Moses, which divides the sea and leads Israel dry through it. The cross is the wood thrown into the waters of Marah to turn the bitter waters sweet. The cross is the pole on which Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, as Jesus is lifted up to draw all men to Himself.

The cross is the tree of cursing, for cursed is every man who hangs on a tree. On the tree of cursing hung the chief baker of Egypt; but now bread of life. On the tree of cursing hung the king of Ai and the five kings of the South; but now the king of glory, David’s greater Son. On the tree of cursing hung Haman the enemy who sought to destroy Israel; but now the savior of Israel, One greater than Mordecai. Jesus bears the curse and burden of the covenant to bear the curse away.

The cross is the wooden ark of the new covenant, the throne of the exalted savior, the sealed treasure chest now opened wide to display the gifts of God—Jesus the manna from heaven, Jesus the Eternal Word, Jesus the budding staff. The cross is the ark in exile among Philistines, riding in triumph even in the land of enemies.

Jesus had spoken against the temple, with its panels and pillars made from cedars of Lebanon. He predicted the temple would be chopped and burned, until there was not one stone left on another. The leaders of the temple had made the temple into another wood-and-stone idol, and kept it so, even at the cost of destroying the Lord of the temple. Yet, the cross becomes the new temple, and at Calvary the temple is destroyed to be rebuilt in three days, where Jews and Gentiles unite in worship. The cross is the temple of the prophet Ezekiel, from which living water flows out to renew the wilderness and to turn the salt sea fresh.

The cross is the wood on the altar of the world on which is laid the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. The cross is the wood on which Jesus burns in His love for His Father and for His people, the fuel of His ascent in smoke as a sweet-smelling savor. The cross is the wood on the back of Isaac, climbing Moriah with his father Abraham, who believes that the Lord will provide. The cross is the cedar wood burned with scarlet string and hyssop for the water of purification that cleanses from the defilement of death.

The cross is planted on a mountain, and Golgotha is the new Eden, the new Ararat, the new Moriah; it is greater than Sinai, where Yahweh displays His glory and speaks His final word, a better word than the word of Moses; it is greater than Zion, the mountain of the Great King; it is the climactic mount of transfiguration where the Father glorifies His Son. Calvary is the new Carmel, where the fire of God falls from heaven to consume a living twelve-stone altar to deliver twelve tribes, and turn them into living stones. Planted at the top of the world, the cross is a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending on the Son of man.

The cross tears Jesus and the veil so that through His separation He might break down the dividing wall that separated Yahweh from his people and Jew from Gentile. The cross stretches to embrace the world, reaching to the four corners, the four winds of heaven, the points of the compass, from the sea to the River and from Hamath to the brook of Egypt. It is the cross of reality, the symbol of man, stretching out, as man does, between heaven and earth, distended between past and future, between inside and outside.

The cross is the crux, the crossroads, the twisted knot at the center of reality, to which all previous history leads and from which all subsequent history flows. By it we know all reality is cruciform—the love of God, the shape of creation, the labyrinth of human history. Paul determined to know nothing but Christ crucified, but that was enough. The cross was all he knew on earth; but knowing the cross he, and we, know all we need to know.

Scot McKnight Good Friday ans Atonement

On Good Friday we remember the story of Jesus’ death. We participate in that death through eucharist and in faith. And we celebrate the good news of that death in thinking and pondering the immense love of God for us — to clear our debt, to shoulder our load, and to remove our sins.

Perhaps three prepositions of atonement will be of some use to you today:

He died with us. At the heart of the death of Jesus is that he has completely identified with us. One of the earliest Christian hymns, Philippians 2:6-11, said it like this:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

Notice that his death is part of his utter identification with us even to the death. He enters into our death.

He died instead of us. But death is the punishment of God for sin, and we read about this from Genesis 3 on in the Bible’s Story. The immensity of the good news of the cross is that he shouldered our load and took upon himself our debt, the punishments of our sin, and did so in our place. He took upon himself the justifiable punishment of sin that we have incurred in dying instead of us. Romans 5:16: “The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation.” Romans 6:10: “The death he died, he died to sin once for all” and 6:23: “The wages of sin is death.” And Jesus became that sin instead of us. 2 Cor 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

He died for us. That is, his death (and resurrection) set us free. The benefits of his death with us and instead of us is salvation, but I want to focus today on liberation. At Passover the theme was liberation from Egypt and the hope of liberation from Rome. That liberation is not just a political liberation but a liberation from sin that led to captivity. So, when Jesus says in Mark 10:45 that he came to serve and to give his life a “ransom” for many, he is saying he has entered into enemy territory by dying in our place in order to be the ransom price so that we might be set free from slavery – in its full compass.

Is a prophet amongst us?

Back in February Mike Jensen posted on young earth creationism, theological anthropology, the status of theology as fides rather than scientia, and freedom of speech.

Now Bruce Waltke has been nudged from RTS for expressing (not holding, just expressing publically was the problem) theistic evolution, Tremper Longman III has been booted for questioning a historical Adam, who knows who is next.

Hmm, maybe he knows something we dont.
(well, pretty sure that is the case anyway).

I wonder if the reformed fundamentalism will ever take over moore. It is certainly popular among many of the students. What do you reckon?

Why is Bible translation so important?

From Wycliffe (UK) website:

Because the Scriptures are essential for evangelism, discipleship, and church growth. Jesus told His followers to take the Gospel to all the world, but there are still hundreds of language groups which don't have God's Word in their mother tongue - the language they understand the best. History shows that there has never been a strong indigenous church without the translated written Scriptures used by indigenous leaders.

the Australian website is wycliffe.org.au

Their God is their stomach

After hanging out with Ro's nonna and seeing a great book on italian preserving we've decided that making food is a good hobby. It's fun, relaxing, and at the end you get food! This week was lemons. i made limoncella, an alcoholic beverage, kind of a mix between dishwashing liquid and rocket fuel. We made lemon butter with the rest of the lemons.

Theologs cannot judge good translation.

Literalism as a way of distorting the message was the common solution to fear of distortion at various points in this chapter, common among people from different theological positions. Variations on the following comment, for example, are frequently to be heard as people discuss the translation of the Bible:

"I would rather have a literal translation, even if the meaning is not so clear, than that the translator should give us what he thinks the original writer might have said. Otherwise the book is no longer a trustworthy version of the best text available, but a version interspersed with the translator's concealed emendations and comments."

This statement reveals part of the dilemma of those who would translate in ways which are accessible, but do not know how to judge distortion, or how to control it. They believe that translation can be done without interpretation, which is nonsense, because interpretation is required for understanding the text, and understanding is the first requirement of translation. Every translation, even the most literal, consists of what the translator 'thinks the original writer might have said'. It is impossible to translate otherwise.

A serious discussion of the problem of literalism cannot take place, however, in reference to translating the biblical languages into English alone because the long historical and cultural relationship blurs the problem, and because students of the Bible in English are so used to literalism in biblical translation that they often cannot hear what it sounds like to the uninitiated.

Often literal translation gives a wrong meaning. [...several examples of literal translation being wrong translation...] A literal translation is not a finished translation, but leaves the reader to guess at 'what the original writer might have said'. [...another quite funny example...]

People who try to avoid making a Literal translation, however, do not necessarily know how to do so, often do not know how to judge equivalence, and so may also end up with a misleading translation. Thus either literal translation or a mistaken nonliteral translation may result from lack of a theory of tranlation which deals adequately with the all-important dismensions of accessibility and distortion.

-William A. Smalley, Translation as Mission (1991), 102-104.

some questions for the church

week by week hundreds of millions of people take part in christian worship in congregations. How should they pray? Why? How often? With whom? Where? Who leads it and how are they to train and prepare? Which parts of scripture should be read or chanted? Should a set liturgy be used or not? What is an acceptable range of improvisation on it? What is the role and significance of the eucharist? What part should singing and music play? What about intercession, petition and confession? If there is a sermon or homily, who should give it, what should it be on, and how long should it be? How take into account the local culture, language, concerns? How provide for children, young people, those with disabilities, singles married, well educated, those with little education, old people? What funding is needed and how is it to be gathered? What relation does this worship have to other spheres of life? What are the conditions for full participation? What theology informs it and is it appropriate? Do some people exercise authority and power in damaging ways? What is the appropriate location for discussing and deciding on such matters? What structures are needed to enable worship to be sustained over years and generations? How might rising generations best be taught to worship?

D Ford 'christian wisdom' pp 208

Songs of regret

I've been attracted to songs of regret and confession lately. Think Lou Reed's 'perfect day' or Johnny Cash's cover of the NIN song 'hurt'. This one is up there as one of my favourites.

'thankyou Father for your shoulder it was warm
you know my skies don't break as often as they could.
I've felt so hard lately all I want to do
is what you helped me do today.

I used to mock your stone cold weakness as a child
and think that I could break away from tragedy
and now the irony I ran so far from any one I love
it's come to humble me

and in your presence I cant help but cause you pain
just to hear myself the crazy things I say.
I know it all, and all you've ever shown is grace
and since when did you learn to tolerate?

Thankyou mother for your love which never ceased
beyond all merit no one else could find a peace
when I was ill of health and yet so proud to curse all I could see
you came to comfort me.

Most times I'm still a child and cursing much the same
and how my solitude must reek of your reward
I know my salty face is worth less than her smile
I cant go on like this no more

thankyou father for you shoulder it was warm
I hope your garment's worth less than my salty face
there's been so many suns when I've wanted to say
that I love you what you've done for me.

Now that my drought has broken and we'll brave the storm
perhaps tomorrow we can laugh and cry the same
maybe forever that will never be the way
and thats ok.

E. Wells 2006