Kingdom dynamics

When we confess these words of the creed [WE BELIEVE IN ONE LORD, JESUS CHRIST], then, we declare that Jesus is our Lord, meaning that we recognize him as Lord of all and that we acknowledge his authority over our own hearts. We owe him the same worship and obedience we owe God. Indeed, by calling him Lord we imply that the worship and obedience we pay to the risen Jesus is the worship and obedience we pay to God.

To pay this obedience and worship to him is to deny to any creature. As Lord, Jesus exercises absolute authority over our lives. We serve no created thing in preference to him. Thus, when pagan prefects demand a choice between Christ and Caesar, Christians understood that this was a choice between the power of God as revealed in the world through the crucified and raised Messiah Jesus and the powers of the world as embodied by the Roman imperium. If they chose Caesar, the power of Rome assured that they would continue their mortal lives and, for the moment escape death. They know also, however, that if they choose Christ as Lord, they might die in their mortal bodies as a result, but they would live forever with Christ in the presence of God.

In light of this traditional understanding, the present day objection to the use of "Lord" (as also to "King" and "Kingdom") are particularly unfortunate and, in my view, wrong headed. Some object to "Lord" and "King" being used for Jesus Christ because not only are lords and kings male, but they represent the unfortunate hierarchical arrangements of patriarchal social structures. Others object because "lordship" and "kingdom" suggest social arrangements in which some are more powerful than others.

Some translations of the New Testament seek to avoid offense by using soft near equivalents, like "sovereign" (who could be either male or female) and "dominion" (which does not demand a king). These ploys, while accomplishing gender neutrality, do not eliminate the power problem - a sovereign still rules and a dominion is still run by someone. Worse, they remove from the New Testament the terms by which Christians have understood themselves and their experience, not vis-a-vis each other, but in relation to God.

And these terms themselves offer an alternative to male domination and unjust social structures. If Jesus is our Lord, then none of us is lord over another. If Jesus is our Lord, we can all be slaves of Christ, and none need be slave to another human. Being slaves of the Lord of the universe means that we are free from any enslaving creature and free to inhabit all of God's own freedom.

Such terms have been used to support male power in human social structures, and it is important vigorously to resist that automatic equation of theological terms with social realities. To do this, we must work to reform social structures and ideas about power to achieve full equality among humans and authority structures that enhance rather than detract from such dignity.

But we can do this precisely by a serious and sustained critique of the human tendency toward idolatry; that is, of applying to our worldly arrangements what should only be applied to God. And we can do this while recognizing and celebrating the truth of our existence in Christ: that it is by confessing him as one Lord that we thus have the freedom to engage and change the structures that do not reveal but obscure his Lordship over us all.

Taken from The Creed by Luke Timothy Johnson pp 117-18











   

Kingdom dynamics

This excerpt from "The Creed" explains Luke Timothy Johnson's stance on the compatibility of the theory of evolution and the biblical understanding of creation as an ongoing process. This is the first time I am reading a biblical scholar whose orthodoxy is well attested in the same book holding the biblical account of creation as the supreme truth concerning the origin of creation and at the same time holding the theory of evolution as a credible scientific explanation of the ongoing process of creation. He has not explained in detail which part of the theory he believes is compatible. I think that is not the purpose of the book. Nonetheless he has a point worth pondering. 

This vision of creation [the Christian confession of God as creator is not a theory about how things came to be, but a perception of how everything is still and is always coming into being] - which is simply the vision supposed by the entire weight of Scripture - is entirely compatible with theories of evolution, including the evolution of species. Such a view of God's creation is perfectly compatible with the evolutionary sense of the world as constantly becoming, constantly in process. The theories of the natural and biological sciences address, and can only address, the interconnecting causes of beings that have been or are now already in existence. They cannot account for the existence itself. But concerning the sequence of becoming, the theories of the natural and biological sciences concerning the expansion of the universe and the evolving of species - the hypothetical character of which all genuine scientists firmly maintain even when they are substantially verified - are full of important insight that Christians neglect or deny at the cost of intellectual integrity.

It should also be clear that the peculiar exercise called "creation science" or "creationism" is a failed enterprise lacking such intellectual integrity. Trying to read the account of origins in the Book of Genesis as a source for scientific knowledge is both bad science and a disastrous misunderstanding of Genesis as a literary and religious text. Whatever else Genesis might be, it is not a scientific tract, not even by ancient standards. Only those desperate to save the "inerrancy" of the biblical text, and lacking any sense of how stories can be true without being accurate, will engage in such a dubious misuse of intelligence.

Genesis speaks the truth about the origin of the world, but not according to the standards of the natural and biological sciences. It speaks truth through literary and religious myth. It tells us plainly that everything existing comes to exist from a God who is not part of the world but who brings it into being by his power of knowing and loving (that is, by his "word"). It tells us that everything that has so been brought into being is good, and that humans particularly represent the creator among all other creatures because they bear God's likeness and image.

In short, the creed's statement that God is the creator of heaven and earth is not based on the natural science of antiquity but on the enduring truth glimpsed in part both by philosophy and religion, and magnificently attested by the prayers of Israel and the good news concerning the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ: God creates heaven and earth new everyday.


Taken from The Creed by Luke Timothy Johnson pp 96 -97





   

Kingdom dynamics

The atheism that truly stands opposite authentic faith is the one described by Psalm 14. "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God,' " and on the basis of that denial, lives a life of corruption and perversity (Ps 14:1-7; see also Ps 53:1-6). This "practical atheism" is based on a decision of the heart rather than a conclusion of the mind, and is expressed by serving oneself and oppressing others. Practical atheists have their "gods" - all humans must center their lives somewhere - but they are gods that are crafted according to their own desires. Practical atheism finds its expression in idolatry.  . . . .

The Book of Wisdom and Romans [14:12-31; Rom 1:24-32] remind us that the awesome power of idolatry is found above all in its ability to shape the structure of society so that they suppress the possibility of perceiving the world in any way other than idolatrously. It is idolatry when much of the world is constructed on the basis of economic and political systems that foster radical individualism, that make competition the supreme value in life, that reward greed, that enslave families to endless work without meaningful rest or spiritual growth, that camouflage such slavery by an endless round of entertainment diverting attention from the deadening boredom of life dedicated exclusively to acquisition of meaningless things, and that, through its control of the media, progressively convinces all the enslaved that this pattern is "natural" and "good" and "free"

Children born and raised within such a totalitarian system of meaning (even if it is called capitalism) can only with great difficulty learn to see the world in terms other than those given by these structures of society with their massive powers of persuasion. . . .

The pretense of idolatry to give life or identity or worth apart from God is always a lie. The pretense that the world is all there is does not lead to greater independence and freedom, but to ever greater degrees of dependence and slavery. And has the earth ever seen humans as dependent and needy and addicted as those now inhabiting contemporary Westernized countries?


Taken from The Creed, by Luke Timothy Johnson pp 70-72