Category: Theology

Bless at all costs

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Quickly bless Israel or we will be cursed. Thank God the embassy has been moved (sigh of relief) now God can bless. The question of Israel, the chosen people, is a thorny issue and one that is sure to divide. The two polarised positions of the church as a kind of stop-gap and the future being that for Israel with Jesus reigning literally from Jerusalem, and that of Israel as chosen being over has divided Christians for ever. Terminology such as ‘replacement theology’ has been branded against the latter and the former is termed ‘Zionist’.

So up front: I am closer to the latter position than the former and do not consider simple support for the nation of Israel is warranted by Scripture. I do, however, acknowledge that there is a very real issue of Israel being marginalised with certain nations / ideologies committed to see it removed from the earth.

There has always been a critique of Israel within Scripture

The prophets – as they always should – challenged the ‘Israel exceptionalism’ that was prevalent. (This is why the prophetic voice is not going to sound patriotic in any situation!) Their challenge to Israel can be reduced to two main points:

Are you willing to trust God as your PROTECTOR – or the weapons of warfare?
Are you willing to trust God as your PROVIDER – or is it the trade and exploitation of others so that Israel is first?

Always within Israel’s history there was the challenge of ‘who is Israel?’. Only the most liberal were able to accept race as being the defining issue. Ask a Maccabean, a Pharisee, or an Essene and they would quickly shout another criterion – faithfulness to the God who called Israel. They denied that race gave a person ‘salvation’. The New Testament seems to follow along. Consider the very harsh words of Jesus:

“I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”
“Abraham is our father,” they answered.
“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” (John 8:37-47.)

Strong words in the extreme. It is hard not to read the above words as declaring that all Pharisees who opposed Jesus are not Abraham’s children but the children of the devil. No-one could get away with making those statements, but they are recorded as being from the mouth of Jesus.

Paul is maybe a little less polemic (other than when writing autobiographically saying that his pure racial inheritance was ‘dung / crap’) but picks up the typical intra-Jewish debate of who really can lay claim to being of Israel:

Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children (Rom. 9:7).

It was not considered enough to be physically descended from Abraham to be included as part of the ‘Israel of God’. Faithful Israel was less than physical Israel, and Israel suffered many times the judgement of God by foreign imperial captivity because of the unfaithful in the land. This is what drove the pre-Christian Saul / Paul to persecute (Jewish) believers in Jesus as the Messiah. He was totally justified in doing so as one faithful to the covenant. (Later he saw such behaviour as an indication that he was the ‘chief of sinners’.)

Jesus, born of a woman (human), born under the law (Jewish) laid claim to Israel’s calling as ‘son of God’. Out of Egypt he came (Matt. 2:15 / Hosea 11:1). It is little wonder therefore that post crucifixion (the Roman penalty for rebellion, and would in 66-70AD become the very visible penalty for Israel’s rebellion) the apostolic appeal was to all who were descended from Abraham to save themselves from this corrupt generation (Acts 2:40 quoting Deut. 32:5 – ‘They are corrupt and not his children; to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation’) through baptism into Jesus.

It is not sufficient to say Jesus replaced Israel, but an understanding that his death was the death of Israel, for their sake, and his resurrection was the resurrection of Israel on the third day (Hosea 6:2). He dies in Israel’s place, the mother hen willing to sacrifice its life when the fire comes so that the chicks could survive. There were those of Israel who survived – witness the 3000 on the day of Pentecost mirroring, and contrasting, the 3000 who died on the day when the Levites exercised judgement on all those who were unfaithful (Exodus 32:28).

Jesus, ultimately is the one true Israelite, the one true human. The future centres in on his work for Israel, for the world. The future does not centre in on Abraham and his physical descendants, thought without them there is no God incarnate as a faithful Jew.

The complexity of it comes out in Paul’s anguish in Rom. 9-11.

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. (Romans 11:28-32.)

They are loved because of the patriarchs. Race counts for something, yet they (those who have not responded to Jesus) are now enemies and disobedient, but the result is salvation to the Gentiles. Indeed, Paul suggests we are all in the same boat: disobedient whether Gentile of Jew (all have sinned, both Gentile and Jew) with the result that all can now receive the mercy of God ( NB he states NOW, not at some future date).

Bless Israel? Well if that means no criticism of policies that does not seem to line up with Scripture. And to suggest that modern Israel as a secular state means that all those who are Jews within it by race are chosen – there seems a big weight of Scripture opposed to that, and if we were to draw a straight line from OT theocratic Israel to secular Israel today we would have to do with the critical lenses of ‘Provider and Protector’.

Disregard Israel? There still seems to be that ‘loved because of the Patriarchs’ element hanging there.

But there remains the chosen nature of humanity that only Jesus fulfilled. As servant to the nations, as suffering servant on behalf of one and all. Yes he took that on as on behalf of Israel, but that was only ever for the sake of the world. Israel was never chosen to condemn the world, but to enable the world to truly live and move within the Presence of God. Whatever we make of Israel’s current status I think is academic if we as the body of Christ fail to live up to our calling – to bless the world. To live knowing that a new creation is our habitat, one free of fear of the other, and one filled with faith for the future, the future that the one true Israelite, the one true human, the God-incarnate one came to release. That was the calling of Israel and is the calling of the body of Christ. Quite something to live out and something the nations are still calling for.

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But if he is not in control?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I have put up a few posts that have referred to Open Theology that suggested God not being in control. It has provoked a few comments and even an email or two so thought maybe I should explore it a little further in a post. I have always leaned toward what is known as Open Theology where the future is not fixed and that it is not known in an absolute sense by God. Arminianism holds to a future that is known and Calvninism a future that is fixed. The divergence is really over how foreknowledge and predestination interrelate. For Calvinism foreknowledge is because of predestination. God has set something in motion, the outworking is according to his will and divine purpose therefore foreknowledge follows as an absolute. Arminianism reverses those. God knows the future and so what is predestined is according to what he foreknows. If we add to that the possibility of God being outside of time suggesting that he sees the end and the beginning simultaneously. Outside of time gives me immense issues (so Greek and not Hebraic) as it means that everything that has taken place, is taking place and has not yet taken place is now at one given ‘moment’ taking place in God’s experience. Really? The God who thinks, responds, reacts, ‘repents’, waits to see what we will do is not presented as an ‘outside of time’ One. We can resort to those descriptions of God as being anthropomorphic (though I am not convinced by that) or that there are aspects of God we do not understand, and insist that we cannot say ‘man’ (sic) with a loud voice and result with the word ‘God’ – as Barth said. Yet this God is knowable so we cannot simply make him the wholly other to us.

I was first introduced to Open Theology through YWAM and one of their main teachers in their discipleship schools, Gordon Olson, then came the writings of Clark Pinnock, James Sanders, Greg Boyd and others. Perhaps then for me the book Uncontrolling Love by Thomas Jay Oord was one of the best I have read on it. Open Theology challenges the supposed core historic given that God is in control. Comforting as that is at a personal level, it opens up a huge charge against God in the face of natural calamities, human abuse and the tragedy of suffering. God in total control is a comfort to me when I don’t know which way to turn, and probably is of comfort for those displaced from their nation en route to the ‘safety’ of Europe, but for those whose ‘boat’ has just deflated on the Mediterranean and they cannot swim and there is no rescue at hand I am not sure they are comforted that what they are about to experience is the will of God.

At least the Arminian position is easier to sit with, though if God is all powerful and he knew certain events would happen why no intervention? For the Calvinist (and the Muslim) where the will of God is being fulfilled it is genuinely hugely more difficult to explain, other than resorting to the category of ‘mystery’.

Uncontrolling love does not mean:

  • everything is out of control. A parent or guardian who does not control their children in an absolute sense does not mean that without control all children run amok. Values and an inner conscience bring some measure of self-control.
  • that God is without power and can do nothing! However, it does put a far greater emphasis on the effect of prayer.
  • that God does not know us. He knows us better than anyone else ever could. He has been present with us from conception.
  • that he does not have a purpose for our lives. It does not mean that he cannot speeak prophetically to us about events yet to come (and bear in mind that prophecy is conditional).

Uncontrolling love begins with ‘God is love’ and that love is releasing, he travels with us, works for our good with whatever room we gives to him. It means that the tragedies in the world are tragedies to us and to him – there is no ‘mystery at work’ for some higher purpose, though God will work through all things and there can come incredible redemptive results. The redemptive results do not witness to how there was a higher purpose but to the everlasting, unchanging, redemptive love of God. Witness Joseph to see a God at work. Betrayed and sold into slavery, but at the end he more or less states ‘you did not do this, but God did it!’. I suggest that he is responding with a heartfelt emotionally healed statement rather than a theologically nuanced response!

Uncontrolling love means that to use the term ‘omnipotence’ in the sense that God can do anything (but does not seem to!) is meaningless. It is not to suggest that there are limitations to the power of God, but that love determines where that power is shown and that love is uncontrolling.

Uncontrolling love means that God looks for partnership (prayer / availability / faith) to intervene. The heavens ‘belong’ to God but the earth is in the hands of humanity (Ps. 115:16). This is the pattern from the beginning, with humanity as the stewards for God on earth. The situation is further compounded with the partnership between humanity and the fallen powers. To destroy the works of the devil as a human was the task set before the Son of Man. His mission was to see on earth as in heaven and he gave that prayer to the disciples.

To pray let your kingdom come, is to acknowledge that the manifest extent of God’s rule does not include creation. Creation itself sees it this way as it waits for a manifestation of the children of God. Hence prayer is vital. When we pray we do not know all that is involved. There are factors at times beyond ‘God come do this’ that we might not be aware of, yet it is that prayer and desire that releases the hand of God.

Unanswered prayer…!!!!!!! Sometimes it is that we were misguided and not clean in our motives, but there are times when prayer is not answered as we desired. Maybe we did not discern the resistance and remove it… and maybe a whole bunch of reasons that we don’t know why. Praying for healing and the result being premature death is a challenge. Scripture faces those things head on. Premature death is in Scripture and it is not expressed as the ‘will’ of God. One reason is the divisions and jealousies in the body of Christ – and it is not always the guilty ones who die!! Paul rebukes the Corinthians – ‘and some of you have died’ – no need to rebuke them if the guilty have already died. They seem still to be alive hence the rebuke.

For sure there are things we do not see clearly. There are disappointments in prayer, yet I do not see how we simply categorise all of them as the will of God. In and through all of them if we remain faithful he will pull through a higher purpose. He certainly works that way for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

The most positive aspect I find in the Open Theology field is that of partnering with heaven, of opening up a future that is good and healthy. I see nothing in it that minimises God, rather the opposite. A God who is never defeated, never depressed, always loving, always creatively calling, always longing for the partnership we can offer. There is no future that will take him by surprise, all possibilities and every permutation of it he knows. We are the ones who can create space for him, just as many throughout Scripture have before us.

However we work all this out God has us in his hands. ‘Cast all your anxiety on him for he cares for you… Be anxious about nothing, but in everything with thanksgiving make your requests known to him.’ So not controlling does not mean things are out of control and God can do nothing. He is with us and loves to hear us dialogue with him so that he can do those redemptive acts that do not cross the line of control. (The very real acts of judgement I consider have to nuance that limitation and there is an element to which judgement is an inbuilt result of behaviour.) He knows us intimately – from the mother’s womb and has been present throughout and will be.

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Why God Is Not in Control

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Here is a link to an article by Tony Campolo: Why God is not in Control.

He begins with:

All too often when there is news of a tragedy, such as a mass shooting or a child suffering from bone cancer, there will be someone who will say something like, “God is in control. We must accept that what’s happened is part of God’s plan!”

At the funeral of a young man who died in a mountain climbing accident, the pastor said in his homily, “We must see what has happened as God’s will!” At that, the father of the young man stood and shouted, “The hell it was God’s will! When my son died, God was the first one who cried.”

Other excerpts:

The story I get straight from scripture is that there are evil non-rational principalities and powers that are loose in the world, sometimes working through evil people (Ephesians 2:2) and that God is not the author of the confusion and disorder that come from these destructive powers (1 Corinthians 14:33).

All that God created was meant to be good, as it says in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. Today, however, things are not as God willed for them to be…

As hard as it is for us to grasp, we have to accept that we have a God who was willing to give up power and give up control in order to live out love for us. That is what the cross is all about. The salvation story is about a God who humbles Himself and emptied Himself of power (the words “empty” is the translation of the word kenosis in the Greek of the New Testament) in order to express fully His love for us. In Christ, God became weak for our sakes and became, according to the theologian Jürgen Moltmann, the Crucified God. It’s the choice that God made when he came to us in Jesus Christ.

As a professor at Eastern University, I earnestly try to challenge my students to define themselves as agents of God..

On the societal level, they all are called to participate in the political process in wrestling against the “principalities and powers.” According to theologians such as Walter Wink and Hendrikus Berkhof, these powers and principalities include the corporate institutional structures of government and economic systems so that they can do the good that God wills for them to do, rather than the evil for which they are often responsible (Ephesians 6:12).

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Paradigm – love not power

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

The power God who can do anything, and does do what he sovereignly pleases, who is in control of all things. A nice God to believe in when he is on your side, but leaves a lot of questions when his power is not displayed to bail out those who need it. With that kind of God either all things are being done according to his will and then in what sense is that will ‘good, pleasing and acceptable’, or we simply do not understand the higher purpose in what he does (does not do); prayer somehow becomes our part in persuading him to be a bit better than he really is. ‘Save my relative’ because we want that but it seems he is not so sure. The only way through those predicaments is to offer the fallback of ‘mystery’… or?

If love becomes the central paradigm and that love is non-controlling, that freedom is something that God deeply respects, and that this world he has placed into the hands of us, not so capable, humans there is a shift in understanding. Our lives are pulled into co-operation with him, of desiring what he desires (that all are saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, for example). Prayer becomes our responsibility to shift those principalities (and that word can be understood in a variety of ways) so that the angelic can partner with humanity and people discover a measure of freedom where choices can be made. Prayer is twinned with action to make space.

Once we move away from God’s choice being of ‘to salvation’ or ‘to damnation’ and understand choice to be an invitation to partner with him the responsibility for the mess we are in does not lie at God’s door but at ours. Surely that is the story taught concerning the original humans?

We really need to stop moaning about the lack of God’s intervention but find where we need to be positioned so that God can intervene where he so desires to. In the wilderness Jesus overcame the ‘strong one’ with the result of many interventions by God during those years till his death, then at the cross he did the same for us.

If love is the key, then we need to be touched by his love for us and for what and who are beyond us, as we do we will inevitably find ourselves in power conflicts where we have to resist the devil and then coming out the other side will make room both for the love and power of God to manifest.

Allah is simply the word that translates our English word ‘god’. If ‘the sovereign will of Allah’ is a belief held by some, and there are Christians who ave an all-but identical view of the sovereign will of God, can we really find a legitimate way of suggesting that they believe in two different gods? The Jesus-like God is the one who has to fill out the meaning to the word ‘god’, and those who follow Jesus will surely increasingly manifest love that is for the enemy not against them, with the power they carry being primarily the power of love.

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Paradigm – we can fail

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Promised success or called to be effective?

Words do have some measure of intrinsic meaning (etymology) but meanings change over time and in different contexts, so the real meaning of words is to do with what they communicate. In seeking to contrast the words ‘effective’ and ‘successful’ I need to explain the meaning I am seeking to inject into them. There has been a lot of emphasis on being an overcomer, being successful in both the Christian and non-Christian world, with very little critique on how that personal success impacts on others. One of the great challenges, for example, in the world of commerce and business is how to analyse the impact a business is making. Success might be measured in terms of the market share or the so-called bottom line, but how does one measure the resulting shift in the health of society? For this reason I consider that the better term to use is effectiveness. Success is measured by what I have achieved, effectiveness is measured by what I enable others to achieve, how I enable them to both discover who they are and what their contribution to the future is. I am not suggesting it is easy to measure, but what it does mean is I am not driven by a success measurement, but by a desire to see a shift beyond me for the sake of others.

Steve Lowton has recently put out a set of videos on ‘authenticity’. They carry a real weight and I recommend them. In the fifth in the series he explains a little about his journey of seeking to make a difference to the global trade routes, a journey that meant he lost considerable amount of money. Here is that video:

‘Failure’ pushed him into gardening (the original call on Adam and the way in which God first revealed himself). His first contract came from a place called Follifoot!! Given that Steve was instrumental in a walk to Rome (and beyond) the name was indeed a challenge. I have been glad to know Steve over years; he and Kathy have been a huge influence on our lives and values. Success makes us feel better but a desire to be effective makes any assessment over out lives on hold, waiting for the only fully true (and very generous) assessment that will come our way in the future.

I think one of the paradigms we have to shift from is the super-hero mentality. I fear where we have been driven to succeed, to tell the ‘success’ story that we could end up denying the very Gospel that calls us to align with Jesus to effect the wider world and those around us.

I am convinced that the many unknown people who have stumbled through life but motivated to serve, who have that tendency not to think of themselves too much will be the ones rewarded greatly, for no cup of cold water will be forgotten. Perhaps those who are sure they have accomplished so much for Jesus maybe should take a time out to ask if their personal assessment comes close to his.

I am glad we can fail. We can aim high, give it our best shot and come up short. We can re-assess, try again, do it better, or just realise for whatever reason we are not going to make it the way we thought we were. There is something so much bigger than our success at stake, and the time frame is not limited to our three score years and ten. The apostolic, Paul suggests, is marked by great patience. Waiting for something to change that might not shift for a century or two ahead, that is great patience, and into that shift the wonderfully encouraging stories of success play their part, as also do the ‘follifoot’ stories.

And finally – any resemblance to Gayle and I in the accompanying image is purely coincidental.

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Paradigm – the witness challenge

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

We are called to witness not evangelise

Careful!! I am not saying do not evangelise, but I am challenging the core of what we are called to be. I also promised to write a little tersely so do not want to nuance what I write too much. I do write though with a conviction that we are first called to be witnesses, and in particular witnesses to another world, or maybe we could say to the true calling of this world. Summed up in 2 Corinthians 5: 16-19 (emphasis added):

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

Good verses to read while also looking in a mirror… Everything is new, not will become new, and not simply the born again person has become a ‘new creature’ but there is a whole new creation. What a challenge to live bearing witness to the new creation. Talk about a tension that affects all of life. We often say, for example, ‘money is rubbish’ yet we, like our neighbours buy our food, pay our bills through the rubbish that money is. How do we live having to use it, but to live in such a way that we bear witness to a different world?

Evangelism is challenging. When to say something, and how many times have we all kicked ourselves afterwards when we missed an opportunity. Yet evangelism can become an excuse not to live the life of witness, and even worse it can treat people as objects, thus effectively demonising the image of God. Evangelism in the sense of sharing the realities of sin, Jesus death on the cross, forgiveness etc. fits into the context of witnessing, but witnessing cannot be reduced to evangelism. It is a much bigger concept, and a much more demanding one. Come follow me as I follow Christ is much more demanding than ‘do not look at me but let me tell you the facts I have distilled from the Bible’.

The need for witnesses of the new creation is so needed, and if we took it more seriously would affect so much of what is taught and practised.

The body of Christ as royal priesthood

This has been a strong theme for us over the past few years but I do not apologise for the repetition. Losing sight of this is what caused Israel to lose her way, and is probably behind what gave rise to the synagogue life. In Babylonic exile because of sin can both be seen as a punishment and an opportunity. The opportunity being to live in the context of alienship within a strange land, but deeply connected to that strange land to help it move forward.

I grew up with only a pejorative understanding of the word ‘world’. It was not simply fallen but essentially evil and to be avoided. However, reading the Gospels it is evident that Jesus embraced that world. His work in Israel was both to bear the sin of Israel and to get the calling of the redeemed people back on track, restoring ‘witness to the nations’ as royal priesthood.

There are two ways in which a community of people, or a defined society / group can be seen. They can be seen as a community that is shaped by a concept of being there for one another. That clearly is an emphasis in Scripture concerning the church. Some 30 or so times we read in the Pauline letters the phrase ‘one another’ (love, encourage, rebuke, care for etc.). The other way of understanding a defined group is that their core raison d’être is as a movement. A movement is not in existence primarily for one another, but is motivated with a vision for the society beyond the movement, the society of which they are a part. MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ speech is a very clear articulation of a movement’s inner core. The dream is not that the Civil Rights movement will pat each other on the back but that they will catalyse a future day that is in line with the movement’s core convictions. A movement lives and acts to see the wider community transformed, and once the vision is fulfilled the movement no longer has a reason to exist. Community in the sense of being there for one another is present within Scripture but is subsidiary to that of movement. Israel was a community but had a calling that gave their ‘one another’ element a context. They were not to be a ‘I’ll pat you on the back’ kind of people but were to carry the Creator’s image into the whole world. The idea that an embassy in Jerusalem is fulfilling prophecy seems so sadly missing the point of prophecy… embassies of heaven in every locality, not found in a building with a plaque on the wall but living stones thorough whom the presence and values of Christ are shown. Buildings might be present but the real issue is the spiritual building fit for God’s presence.

If we grasp the royal priesthood call of God’s-through-redemption-people we will see that God has commissioned such a people to impact the world of God’s-through-creation-people. God is not coming to condemn the world but to redeem the world, the church and all that is in it is not the sum total of God’s belongings, the Scriptures pronounce that the earth and all its fullness is God’s.

God is at work in the church so that he can be at work in the world. This was the call of Israel all along as a special chosen people, chosen to be uniquely aligned with God so that the world might come into her destiny, so that the nations (Gentiles, not ‘nations’ in the narrow and modern sense of nation-state) might live out their destiny. We have to work out what means, the same as ancient Israel was to work it out. Were the nations to become subsumed under Israel, were they to live out all the same laws, even the ones that instructed them to avoid mixing the materials that their clothes were made from! Likewise we have to work it out, and I don’t think the direction is toward a ‘Christian nation’, but to enabling a nation to fulfil her destiny. Destiny seems always to be defined by something outward, hence a nation reaching her destiny can only be measured by the level to which they serve others, others outside its borders and all others within its borders.

The church in the land then has to serve in such a way as to limit the influence of the dominant principalities that resist the true destiny of a nation manifesting. In that sense the church will never make a good state religion! But is there to enable the nation to serve and facilitate values that are Jesus-values.

We could also write that God is involved in the world and there are areas where the church has to get her skates on and catch up, and in catching up get on board with some Jesus-values also.

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Paradigms – there to here

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

In a few hours I pick up a new set of glasses, Gayle insisting that I get a new pair, saying that it is time to see things differently post our time in Prague. (Maybe given that the current pair lenses are scratched meaning I have to take them off to read small print might also be a factor?) It is certainly good to get one’s sight checked up and get any prescription upgraded from time to time, and just as with physical sight so with spiritual. The lenses that we see things through and what we see as central change over the years. In a few posts that follow I reflect on what I think should be more central in our focus. It does not necessarily mean that is all we see but what else we see will be in the light of what we consider central. I will seek to write tersely and pointedly as I realise my own perceptions have changed when I have become uncomfortable, and often after a defensive reaction.

Heaven and earth not heaven and hell

If we ran a simple experiment of giving the Scriptures to someone to read who had never read them and then did a word association asking what word would they put with ‘heaven and…’ I am convinced they would put the word ‘earth’. There might also be a contrast between heaven and hell in Scripture, but I think we only get there by suggesting many of the narratives, prophetic Scriptures or apocalyptic imagery are referring to heaven and that the ‘fire, wailing and gnashing of teeth’ references are to something akin to Dante’s inferno. Regardless of how we understand life after death, or life post-parousia the primary comparison and contrast in Scripture to heaven is earth. Land issues are not a periphery topic with the very term used some 1200 times. Many references are to the land of Israel but those also can point beyond those boundaries as Paul makes clear that God’s promise to Abraham’s seed was the whole earth.

‘This world is not my home I’m just a passing through’ is an understandable song sung by those caught in the evils of slavery, but the lyrics are not easy to root in the pages of our holy book.

If we make the ‘heaven and earth’ the primary way of seeing and not ‘heaven and hell’ this will have immense ramifications. We can add to this the Scripture that affirms that the heavens belong to God, but the earth he has given to humanity. Here becomes our responsibility, ours to pray that your kingdom come… your will done here as in heaven.

Movement is from heaven to earth

Right from the creation narratives onward all (permanent) movement is from heaven to earth. The creation narratives have three elements – the heavens, the waters and the earth. What is in heaven has to come to earth, with the language suggesting that creation is some sort of cosmic temple. The last element placed in the ancient temples being the image of the deity. The task for this image (humanity), is not only to represent but to act on behalf of the deity, cultivating the land so that what is in heaven is on earth. The waters can be seen as a divide between heaven and earth, that which resists the coming of heaven to earth, that which has to be subdued in order for heaven to manifest. In John’s final visions he sees all things renewed, ‘a new heaven and a new earth…’ but no waters. That unruly, resistant element has gone.

There is some movement from earth to heaven in Scripture but this seems to be a temporary movement. Even with the resurrected Jesus, we are told that the ‘heavens receive him until’, The most astounding part of the eschaton is that God moves his location. It is not the end of ‘heaven’ but it again expresses that God-movement is from heaven to earth.

Death is a reality, and there is a rest that comes with it, but in this expression of earthly life before-death we are making a contribution to the coming of the age when there is no more death. Life after death does seem to be a NT expression, but it is peripheral, with the real hope being resurrection from the dead enabling earthly life to be expressed post-parousia. It seems humanity’s task is to get all things ready now for then, and to prepare those things so that there can be a transformation here.

[‘Caught up to meet him in the air’ and such language is every day Imperial culture language and I do not believe can ever be used to suggest what J.N. Darby and others taught. Such an emphasis has been very damaging to the task of the church, resulting in a damnation of creation, non-humanising salvation, and demeaning all earthly activity.]

What happens here and what happens now is vital. In one sense more important than what happens then – in the sense that what is now prepares for then, Then is dependent on now, hence Jesus did something here as a human in the midst of history in order to transform the final outcome. In the same way as the Father sent Jesus so he sends us, and the final words of Matthew’s Gospel being familiar temple language. The ‘Great Commission’ to go into all the world is with the message of this world’s destiny, that the world is indeed a cosmic temple.

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Ephesus – remarkable Asiarchs

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

The riot is in full swing and Paul is being blamed for the downturn in business. There is a untied protest of ‘No’ to Paul’s influence from the artisans whose profits are being threatened:

A certain silversmith, Demetrius, conducted a brisk trade in the manufacture of shrines to the goddess Artemis, employing a number of artisans in his business. He rounded up his workers and others similarly employed and said, “Men, you well know that we have a good thing going here—and you’ve seen how Paul has barged in and discredited what we’re doing by telling people that there’s no such thing as a god made with hands. A lot of people are going along with him, not only here in Ephesus but all through Asia province. Not only is our little business in danger of falling apart, but the temple of our famous goddess Artemis will certainly end up a pile of rubble as her glorious reputation fades to nothing. And this is no mere local matter—the whole world worships our Artemis!”

Paul, being who he is, takes it on himself to sort it out and says he will go in to the midst of the riot and calm things down. Whether this was a faith, or simply a personality, response we don’t know but his optimism was not shared by his merry band, who strongly insisted he did not risk his life. We read that their response is to strongly oppose him:

the disciples would not let him.

Thus far understandable, then comes the amazing part which Luke precedes his description with the word ‘even’ indicating that what we are about to read is a surprise:

even some officials of the province of Asia, who were friendly to him [Paul], sent him a message urging him not to venture into the theater.

I moved away from quoting the Message which translates the term ‘Asiarchs’ as religious leaders. They did have responsibilities connected to religion, but their involvement in that was because they were in positions of influence over the city (polis, hence political) and region. I note that Luke does not include them as ‘disciples’ but as friends of Paul. These are non-believers whose city is in turmoil because of Paul’s message. Further, his message is undermining of their position, so they do not have vested interest in Paul’s survival, the one who has come to town and upset the well-ordered apple cart. They have potentially a lot to lose if Paul continues with his Gospel / political (‘polis’ re-orientating) message.

These Asiarchs have not got hold of the ‘through Jesus you need to get saved’ part of Paul’s message, or if they have they have not accepted that part, but somehow they have seen or heard enough to realise that Paul’s message contained the hope for the future. However good the city was now, they somehow had grasped that the implications of Paul’s Gospel would so impact society that it would bring about positive outcomes, even if maintaining their own position was put in jeopardy.

This indicates some incredible challenges for us as 21st century believers:

  • The gospel that Paul proclaimed had serious implications for the ordering of society.
  • He articulated that part sufficiently to make an impact on political / social leaders.
  • His message was centred on Jesus, though not all grasped the need for ‘personal salvation’.
  • He was friends with those in society. They were not simply there as fodder for an evangelistic course.
  • I extrapolate (and this is consistent with the call of Israel / the call of the church as royal priesthood for the world) that the church was present in the city to facilitate those finding space who needed it. It was not about the church being the highest mountain, nor about there being mountains of influence, but the church taking the servant role to ensure a re-orientation toward the low parts being raised up… and the mountains brought down.

Ironically a turning point in a city is when there are those who don’t get the message but get the message!! Now we have to work out what the message would be that they need to get. This is why it seems there is such a push toward re-grasping and re-framing the Gospel message, that has been imprisoned within piety and / or law court language (i.e. privatised faith that draws simple in/out lines).

A final footnote… The town clerk stands up and his final words to Demetrius and his rioting friends are:

If there is anything further you want to know, it must be settled in the regular assembly.

Or in the words of the Message (with my emphasis in bold):

If anything else is bothering you, bring it to the regularly scheduled town meeting and let it be settled there.

Or to pull out the Greek text:

Bring it TO THE EKKLESIA.

The regular word used for the city council, the ekklesia of the city. To suggest that NT language is not political (city related) is to miss so much of what is going on.

I suggest Ephesus is a strong paradigm to understand the implications and application of the Gospel. Ecomonics, riots, friends who are not believers but have grasped the political element. Disciples who see the world as God’s world, and the ekklesia in Jesus there for the sake of the future re-orientation of the polis.

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Ephesus – powers and money

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Spiritual powers – what are they? are they territorial? how to address / not address them? And the answers come back across a great spectrum. They are personal, highly organised and hierarchical… to they don’t exist or they are simply the inner nature of exterior structures. I try and hold some kind of composite view concerning the powers and because I see a strong connection of what has / is repeated in history as shaping the spiritual nature of a geography, whether the terminology could be better or not, I subscribe to the reality of the powers expressing themselves territorially. Experience also seems to suggest this, with specific expression of issues being present in one geography that are not present in another. The above might be theoretical, but the issues we face are practical. Theory gets us so far, and our theories might be wrong, and at one level I am less concerned about the theory, and much more concerned about what we do practically to get a shift.

For example there are theories about ‘ley-lines’. When we first moved to Spain we lived in a somewhat challenging apartment. We moved in on Jan. 1, 2009. Jan 2nd, at 8.00am a knock came to the door. It was the agent through whom we had rented the apartment. ‘I cannot leave you here. I have not slept well and I will find you another place.’ We though were convinced that it was the right place, so re-assured him that we were happy. It was not too long before we recognised a straight line of some 8 obvious troublesome symbols or places that crossed right through our apartment. I am happy to call that a ‘ley-line’. The language is not so important, getting a shift is important. Within 6 months the first (to our knowledge) in Spain of a monument honouring Francoist assassins was removed. It was on that line and about 800 metres from our apartment. It was quickly followed by the removal of Francoist symbols from the next monument (500 metres from the apartment). We had some sleepless nights, but for sure it was the right place.

What did we do to get a shift? I am sure that research, prayer and all of that made a difference. Maybe, and always there is a ‘of course’, it would have happened anyway. And a big help was another statue right on the same line, a statue of an upside-down church building, which the sculptor had named as ‘the device to root out evil’. As far as we understand it the sculptor was neither making a positive nor negative statement about faith, but chose the church as the symbol in society as a powerful in your face image of how society has to be upturned to shift history from repeating itself and toward releasing a new future. For us it was incredibly symbolic. Let God embed the church in the ground for the world, let a worldly way of structuring things be turned on its head and then let’s see how much shifts in society.

Anyway back to Ephesus. There are territorial parallels there. Artemis worshipped across Asia Minor (Acts 19:27); the word of the Lord being heard by all in the same territory (Acts 19:10). I suggest that in some way Artemis had been bound across that region thus releasing to the same region the message of the Gospel. (By ‘bind’ I consider that the biblical understanding is along the lines of restriction, not of elimination.) The resistance had been broken and a release came as a result. So what did Paul and his merry band of ‘about 12’ plus others do? One of the genius elements of Scripture is its silence. It is not a book of instruction on what to do, otherwise we would likely do what it says and completely miss what it was saying. Instruction has to come from heaven in accord with Scripture rather than simply from words on a page. In short we don’t know what Paul did! Maybe he found the highest point in Ephesus and addressed the power directly. Maybe he taught for days on how such an approach only leads to casualties and this was entering into forbidden / unwise territory. Point is – we have to work out what we do and when…

Something though shifted. Maybe we have made claims of something shifting when nothing really has changed, but in the case in Ephesus something had shifted. Miracles, hearing, burning of occult literature – all those suggest something had shifted. But for me the biggest evidence was the turmoil over economics. I consider the biggest shift is when there is a shift to the economy. IT IS THE ECONOMY, STUPID, might be a political shorthand phrase to indicate how and why people vote, but it is also a phrase indicating that there has been a shift spiritually.

A ‘prospering’ economy is not a sign of the advance of the kingdom, but an economy where there is a flow of resources to where it needs to go is a sign of righteousness. Ranging from the 8th century prophets who used such phrases as ‘cows of Bashan’ to critique the inequalities that had developed in Israel over the previous 200 years, to the awesome critique in Revelation of the one-directional flow of wealth to the elite, seems to be the constant beat of Scripture.

Acts 19 and Ephesus is a strong paradigm for anywhere, and yet almost totally absent of a ’10 steps to success’ program to be followed. I simply suggest that we seek to follow what the Lord shows us (or our discernment of it) without too much concern that we get it right. That we will find something close to home that is the ‘leverage point’ to shift something much bigger. Interestingly as we seek to move the politics of Spain (and again do not think ‘political party’ when the word politics is used) and gain an entrance to Madrid, it will be important where we locate and the size of the place… As we seek this entry a word we have been given is ‘I see you both and you are climbing up a sewage pipe into Madrid, against the flow of the sewage… sorry messy but has to be done.’ Guess what happens soon after? The sewage pipe in our block of apartments has gone, and we are out of our apartment as we have no water, no toilets, no showers… Coincidence? Maybe, but this so often happens where a sign of what needs to change occurs close to home. That is the leverage point needed. Temporarily not in ‘our’ home (and what does ‘our’ mean?), and the sewage, and smell of it has to be shifted out of the apartment / society. God bless the upside down sculptures.

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Ephesus – disciples

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Finding twelve… will that be enough?

In Ephesus Paul encounters these great, but not yet-complete, believers. They had grasped the story line up to John the Baptist’s proclamation and had submitted to his baptism, but had not realised that what John spoke of as the future was now the past. So Paul’s task was to update them, their response shows they were already on a very serious trajectory, and God responded from heaven with the Holy Spirit. These were either Jews (most likely) or a least Jewish converts, for John’s baptism was a baptism for a new entry to the land, to restore and prepare the people. It was divisive in the sense that so much of Judaism was divisive, as witnessed in the prophetic and sectarian streams within the faith. Not all those born of Abraham (race) qualified to be considered as his descendants (faith).

From that initial meeting he takes them to the synagogue for three months. What is he doing? I am convinced it is due to his understanding of Israel’s call. They are called to be aligned uniquely to God for the nations. Since the Exile and the response of the synagogue based rhythm (that was developed in Babylon) there was an inevitable greater measure of Jews looking inward as survival became more the focus. Paul (then Saul) had himself moved from being focused on the purity of Israel, through his Damascus road encounter to seeing that race did not count before God, that the only identity marker was to be in Christ, and therefore part of the new creation reality of being there for the world. I am sure that the message that he debated in the synagogue was exactly that, and at two levels: the call of Israel and the pathway to the future for Israel as being through Jesus, the one true Israelite (and the only true human). At both levels he did not have success. He persevered for three months then called it a day, taking with him those who were committed to his teaching. He sets up in Tyrannus hall and is publicly teaching there for 2 years.

The proclamation of the Gospel was not a simple, Admit you have sinned, Believe he died for you, Confess your sin… Not that that is invalid, but to reduce the narrative of Scripture, nor the narrative of the world, to that does not do justice to Paul’s gospel. The salvation of the world, the preparation for the new heavens and new earth was a proclamation for the public space, it was certainly a political proclamation. Deeply societal, deeply human and confirmed with dramatic heavenly interventions.

Discipleship is a challenge, deeply stretching not just to the mind, but to lifestyle. Witnessing is not completed once we have told someone they have sinned and here is the escape route; but is something that is continual, which words can explain but can never become the substitute for. I sometimes wonder if we have even started on the pathway. Thank God for the word ‘radical’ but to stick it on as a label probably isn’t the best thing to do.

Paul is not setting up a new political party (as if!) but seeking to train people to see the world through a narrative of the world being God’s world, that all humans are of one family, that Jesus death somehow was the means by which all, whether Jew or Gentile, could be reconciled to God and be incorporated into Messiah. I don’t think he was looking for the perfect activist group who were spotless, but that somehow together with all their issues they would be a visible sign of a different way to live, pointers to, and of, hope for society.

This was very akin to what Jesus, in the Jewish culture, had given as his response to John when he wanted to know if ‘he was the one’. Tell John that there is something happening at two levels, was his response – the inbreaking of God with miracles… and the poor have good news being proclaimed. The endless flow of resources in one direction is coming to an end. Those on the thrones are being dethroned, a new society is being born. Despite the obvious signs that ‘God was with this man’ Jesus said the way ahead was narrow and few would find it. And as sure as his word was that was the fulfilment, with a few finding salvation. The same thing is happening in Ephesus, but now in the Graeco-Roman world, a message of hope for society that was for the total re-ordering of the world with incredible inbreakings of the miraculous.

Those twelve that Paul initially met committed themselves right into that trajectory. God is found in all sub-versions of the good news (including my version) but I am also sure that he is continually lighting up the pathway to provoke us to embrace the (shorthand) Pauline gospel that those initial twelve committed themselves to. (And I am sure there is a strong symbolism here in this event in Ephesus starting with ‘about twelve’. The pattern that Jesus began in Israel had a strong bearing on what is beginning here. The two are deeply connected. Jesus with twelve to restore Israel for the world, and here a mere twelve removed from the Jewish culture and for the world.)

Amidst a secularised society that is open to all kinds of spirituality, one of the greatest challenges is how to be deeply embedded in society with the ‘Jesus’ part of the message intact. The Pauline Gospel is deeply political, but it is not based on a clever political manifesto, it is based on God’s activity in Christ. Holding this all ogether is not easy, but Paul somehow managed that, for Jewish excorcists used the name of Jesus, knowing that this was the name by which Paul was acting.

Following Christ is not a hobby; it is not fulfilled when we copy the synagogue pattern and show up week by week; it is not fulfilled when we gain some successful converts; it is not fulfilled when we get older and can retire. It is a life-long lifestyle trajectory of looking forward with the ‘Maranatha’ cry, realising that for most of us that will be fulfilled beyond our departure, but also knowing that we have an incredible opportunity to contribute to that event.

What unfolds in Ephesus surely was founded on the issue of discipleship. Paul’s single focus on the implication of the death and resurrection of Christ for the world, and a group of those who grasped what he had seen during his days of blindness and subsequent time in the desert, post Damascus. Costly but ever so valuable.

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