A Summary of the Gospel

“The God of Israel, the creator of the world, has acted (astoundingly) to rescue a lost and broken world through the death and resurrection of Jesus; the full scope of that rescue is not yet apparent, but God has created a community of witnesses to this good news, the church. While awaiting the grand conclusion of the story, the church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is called to reenact the loving obedience of Jesus Christ and thus to serve as a sign of God’s redemptive purposes for the world.”

– Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, page 193

Stanley Hauerwas on Naming God

In yesterday's sermon, I quoted Robert Jenson's "definition" of what Christians mean when we use the word "God." This morning, I came across this fine essay by Stanley Hauerwas which he begins with that same quote. It is at the Religion and Ethics page Australian Broadcast Company's web site.

Here it is:

"God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt." This is the hallmark sentence of Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology. It is an elegantly simple but dauntingly deep sentence, which took Jenson a lifetime of theological reflection to write.

To write such a sentence requires that we discipline our presumption that we know what we are saying when we say the word "God." For it turns out that we are most likely to take God's name in vain when we assume we know what we are saying when we say "God."

Indeed, one of the ironies of the recent spate of books defending atheism is the confidence these "new atheists" seem to have in knowing which God it is they are sure does not exist. They have forgotten that one of the crimes of which Romans accused Christians - a crime whose punishment was often death - was that Christians were atheists.

The Romans weren't being unreasonable. All they wanted was for the Christians to acknowledge there were many gods, but Christians were determined atheists. Christians were atheist because they assumed the primary problem was not atheism but idolatry. Idolatry, moreover, has everything to do with thinking that you know God's name.

In The City of God, Augustine even argues that the reason the Roman Empire had fallen on hard times was because the Romans worshiped corrupt gods. He assumed rightly that there is a direct correlation between the worship of God, the character of our lives and politics.

Augustine argues, therefore, Rome fell because the people of Rome lived immoral lives by emulating the immorality of their gods. Needless to say, Augustine's account of idolatry was not well-received by the Romans themselves.

So depending on which god or gods the new atheists think they are denying, they might discover that Christians are not unsympathetic with their atheism.

For example, it should not be surprising that in a culture which inscribes its money with "In God We Trust," atheists might be led to think it is interesting - and perhaps even useful - to deny god exists. It does not seem to occur to atheists, however, that the vague god which some seem to confuse with trust in our money cannot be the same God who raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.

This is but a reminder that the word "god" can be very misleading, particularly for those who worship the One who raised Jesus from the dead and Israel from Egypt. For the word "god" can invite us to confuse the One who raised Jesus from the dead with the general designation "god" used to describe the assumption that something had to start it all.

Those who assume "god" is the designation we use for naming the assumption that something had to start it all also think that such an assumption implies there has to be more to life than birth, sex, and death. Many who believe in such a "more" often agree with the new atheists that there is little evidence that such a "more" exists, but they nonetheless refuse to deny its possibility.

Moreover, they assume that such a "more" has many names, for to think otherwise is to risk intolerance.

But the Scriptures constantly remind us that naming God matters. For instance, God asks Moses to bring his people, the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, out of captivity in Egypt. God - who seems to have been reading Jenson's Systematic Theology - tells Moses that he should tell the Israelites that Moses has been sent to the people of Israel by the God of their ancestors, that is, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But Moses, who knows the Egyptians well, knows that escaping from Egypt is going to be a risky business. Moses knows that those whom he is asked to rescue will want some assurance that Moses is authorized to undertake the dangerous business of escaping from Egypt.

At the very least those that he has been asked to lead will want to know the name of the One that he serves. So Moses asks God for some identification to which God responds, "Tell them, 'I am who I am has sent Moses to them."

"I am who I am" (or as some have translated, "I will be present to whom I will be present") I suspect was not a reply that pleased Moses. But it has been an unending delight for Christian theologians and philosophers to reflect on the metaphysics of God's existence.

Aquinas, for example, thought that God's response rightly suggests that only in God are existence and essence inseparable. Put in more colloquial terms, this means only God can act without loss. For Christians it is, therefore, never a question about God's existence, but rather what it means for all that is not God to exist.

"I am who I am" may be a helpful metaphysical response, but it is not a name. At best, as philosophers like to say, "I am who I am" is a grammatical remark that suggests God is known by what God does. "I am who I am," therefore, is but another way to say you know all you need to know if you know that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

It is as if God is saying to Moses "Tell them not to worry. Just as I have been there for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob so I will be there for you." In effect God is saying, you can trust me but you cannot possess me.

We, like the people of Israel, would like to think we get to name God. By naming God we hope to get the kind of God we need, that is, a god after our own likeness. We can make the "more" that must have started it all after our own image.

But God refuses to let the people of Israel - or us - assume that we can name the One who will raise Israel from Egypt. Only God can name God. That, moreover, is what God does.

"God also said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations." God's name is YHWH, but it is a name that Israel could not say.

That God's name could not be said indicates that God's name is a holy reality sharing in God's holiness. To know God's name is to know God. As Karl Barth observes, "'I am that I am' can scarcely mean anything else than just I am He whose name proper no one can repeat is significant enough; but the revealed name itself by its wording is to recall also and precisely the hiddenness of the revealed God."

The burning bush that is not consumed wonderfully displays Barth's point that the very revelation of God, God's unrelenting desire to have us know him, means we must acknowledge that we cannot know God.

Moses could not help but be drawn to the fiery bush. How could the bush be on fire yet not be consumed? He drew near, but the Lord called to Moses - named Moses - out of the burning bush telling him he was on holy ground. He was to remove his sandals and come no closer. Moses did as he was told hiding his face, fearing to look on God.

For if God is God, how could we hope to stand before God? How could we hope to see God face to face, and live? The burning bush was not consumed, but we cannot imagine that confronted by this God we could see God and live.

Israel knew that there was no greater gift than to be given God's name, but that gift was a frightening reality that threatened to consume her. Israel, who would be tempted by the idolatrous presumption she possessed God's name, rightly never forgot she could not say God's name.

Israel could not possess God because God possess Israel.

For Christians, we believe we have been given God's name. We believe we can say the name of God. Paul in his letter to the Philippians tells us:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality of God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death -
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

The fire that burned but did not consume the bush is Jesus Christ. Just as the fire did not consume the bush, so our God has come to us by becoming one of us.

Yet the humanity of the one he became was not replaced or destroyed. Rather our God is incarnate. Our God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There has never been a time that God has not been Trinity.

The God that came to Moses in the burning bush, the God who called Moses to deliver his people, the God who gave Moses his name, is Trinity. Only this God can be very God and very man.

The God we worship is not a vague "more" that exists to make our lives meaningful. The God we worship is not "the biggest thing around." The God we worship is not "something had to start it all." The God we worship is not a God that insures that we will somehow get out of life alive. The God we worship is not a God whose ways correspond to our presumptions about how God should be God.

That God has come near to us in Christ does not mean that God is less than God. God is God and we are not.

Yet we believe that the God we worship has made his name known. We believe we have been given the happy task of making his name known. We believe we can make his name known because the God we worship is nearer to us than we are to ourselves - a frightening reality that gives us life. We believe that in the Eucharist, in the meal of bread and wine, just as Jesus is fully God and fully man, this bread and this wine will, through the work of the Spirit, become for us the body and blood of Christ.

To come to this meal in which bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ is to stand before the burning bush. But we are not told to come no closer. Rather we are invited to eat this body and drink this blood and by so doing we are consumed by what we consume becoming for the world God's burning bush.

By being consumed by the Divine Life we are made God's witnesses so that the world may know the fire, the name, Jesus Christ.

God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt. There is no God but this God.

Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. His most recent book is Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir (Eerdmans, 2010). In 2001 he was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine.

MLK, Jr., Dorothy Day & Glenn Beck

I'm visiting one of my daughters, Becca, in Atlanta. Today we visited the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. It was an inspiring reminder of King's life and teaching. It was also a disturbing reminder of just how recently the most blatant social injustices of racism were common in many parts of the USA. It was also an uncomfortable reminder that racism and other injustices and inequalities persist.

From the King Center, Becca took me to the Open Door, a Catholic Worker community where she and another medical student volunteer once a week to manage a clinic for the homeless. Of course I was moved deeply with paternal pride at seeing this aspect of my daughter's life. I was also reminded of the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day, whose life and teaching are as inspirational as are King's. And, again, I remembered that the peace and justice to which she bore witness remain counter-cultural and elusive.

I appreciate both of these faithful witnesses to the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are those, most recently and notoriously, Glenn Beck, who want to segregate the call to personal conversion and righteousness from the call to social conversion and justice. But that segregation is a distortion of the gospel that Jesus actually proclaimed. And it is not a segregation that has been recognized by the great teachers and saints of the Church. It is also beyond doubt that without the proclamation of this "social" aspect of the gospel by folk like King, the injustices of Jim Crow would have endured. I wonder what Glenn Beck would have been saying about that if he had been broadcasting his nonsense in the late 1950's and early 60's?

Faithful Christians can and do disagree on particulars of Church and public policy when it comes to bearing witness to, and seeking to achieve, greater justice in the world. But, there is no escaping the necessity of measuring our personal and social lives and policies against the needs of "the least of these." Jesus himself said that our salvation just might depend upon it.

While neither King nor Day are official saints (the latter famously declaring she did not want to be dismissed so easily), they both rank among the great Christian teachers and exemplars of the last century. Thankfully, neither of them misunderstood the gospel the way Glenn Beck misunderstands and misrepresnts it. I am grateful to have been reminded today of their witness.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend. — Dorothy Day