Lessons from Pauline Writings
I Corinthians 12:3b-13 (Year A Pentecost) is a discussion of spiritual gifts. I discussed the passage in my study of the Epiphany texts.
One who affirms "Jesus is Lord" will do so by the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit and Lord is the source of the varieties of gifts (χαρισμάτων), varieties of services (or ministries, διακονιῶν), and varieties of activities (or workings, ἐνεργημάτων), with the same God activating all of them in everyone. The Spirit develops the flowering of uniquely individual expressions and experiences. To use an analogy from the arts, the artist is nothing without the gift he or she has. Yet, the gift is nothing without the work of the artist. The gifts, services, and activities have the purpose of mutual edification. His point is that benefitting individually is not enough. The work of the Spirit is not simply for private use. The sign the Spirit is working is that it connects with others and benefits others. The diversity of genuine spiritual gifts works toward unity and harmony. The working of the Spirit will not disintegrate the bonds of faith that hold together the community. The work of the Spirit is that of a community in a specific place. The gifts of the grace granted to this community do have variety, but they all have one thing in common that guarantees their co-operation and the unity of the church. The real point is that they are all gifts of the same Spirit, who divides to every individual severally as the Spirit will.[1]
Paul expresses his concern for unity by using Trinitarian language with this reference to Lord, Spirit, and God. The teaching of the church concerning the Trinity suggests a relational image of God. As persons made into the image of God as Father, Son, and Spirit, we also need relationships with others. We are not complete until we enter that kind of relationship. Such statements by Paul will become the basis for the orthodox teaching regarding the Trinity. One who prays to the Father, believes in the Son, and in whom the Holy Spirit moves, is a person whom the one Lord meets and unites to the Lord. The presupposition and goal of the church in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity is the unity of God.[2]
Paul will then list several gifts that relate to the situation in Corinth. He stresses that each gift is in accord with and activated by the same Spirit just as the Spirit chooses. The first two gifts are important because they serve the church in the practical manner of building up the community. He refers to the utterance of wisdom, such as practical exhortation. He refers to the utterance of knowledge, such as exposition of Christian truth and an intelligent grasp of the principles of the gospels guided by reason and led by the Spirit. The gift of faith here suggests the confidence in God to do great or extraordinary things, such as a faith to move mountains (13:2). He envisions that the Spirit gives to some a particularly strong measure of faith so they might encourage the rest. Those who receive the gift of healing is the power to help those with sickness of mind and body. Others receive the gift of the working of miracles, such as mighty deeds like exorcism. Others receive the gift of prophecy, something like Old Testament prophets who spoke as messengers of God. God inspired them to utter the deep things of God for the conviction of sin, edification, comfort, and sometimes predicting the future. Others receive the gift of the discernment of spirits, an intuitive discernment of whether the spirit of God inspires a person. Others receive the gift of various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues, ecstatic utterance, and its interpretation.
Paul spells out some of the diverse expressions the Spirit can take in the lives of different believers. However, the tasks are always changing with changing situations. Paul does not claim the list fixes the number or types of gifts, but rather, stresses the unity of the gifts amid diversity. In fact, the intent of the diversity is to serve the one body, and therefore unity.[3] Paul is making the multiplicity of expressions of the Spirit a theme of theological reflection in this entire passage. He did so in debate with some people in Corinth who lifted one experience of the Spirit up as authentic. Paul opted for no one form of authentic spirituality. He found justification for the multiple expressions of the Spirit working and the mutual need to embrace the way the Spirit was at work. He stresses that the variety means that the Spirit does not work equally in all. His concern was to see to it that the differences in gifts did not occasion conflicts and schisms. Instead, all should recognize that the same Spirit is at work in all these gifts, imparting the gifts as the Spirit will, and that the proper concern for all with their different gifts should be what contribution they could make to the upbuilding of the community. Thus, the individual gifts of the Spirit supplement each other in the life of the church. The only criterion of authentic spirituality is the relation to confession of Christ (verse 3), and the relation to the one Lord means commitment to the unity of Christians in the fellowship of the church by mutual participation and love in the unity of the body of Christ. These thoughts on the theme of multiplicity and unity point the way for the church in every age.[4]
If we were to discuss the ministry of the community, Paul makes emphatic use of the image of the body and its members. Throughout this passage, he addresses gifts, services, and workings of the one Spirit. Paul affirms that the body is one, and that as such it has many members. The one body lives in the plurality of its members. In addition, the many members are one body. Therefore, the plurality has no right alone, but exist for all. Yet, this image is something real for Paul, for the vision he has before him is the body and members of the Head Jesus Christ. Paul is thinking of the one ministry and witness of the one Son. He thinks of the fellowship that the Father has in the Son with humanity.[5]
Paul carefully addresses the still confusing fact that while there is only one genuine Spirit, it manifested its presence in a variety of ways. This diversity in unity is, in fact, the greatest strength, the unique gift, of the Holy Spirit. Instead of forcing an unvarying unity of experience on believers (as required by so many other first century cults), the Spirit of God allowed for, indeed helped develop, the flowering of uniquely individual expressions and experiences within the faith community. The freedom of individuality occurs within limits. Our vocation or calling is from God in a way that concerns the individual and is for the uniqueness that everyone represents. Such a calling is not strange to the individual. The balance here is between one Spirit and differences in the distribution of the gifts.[6]
As a metaphor of how all this works, a body is one, but also has many members. The members of the body are many but are part of one body. Christ is the same way. His point is that the aim of the Christian is the well-being of the whole body. One meaning of this description is that the existence of the church involves a repetition of the Incarnation of the Word of God in the person of Jesus Christ in that area of the rest of humanity that is distinct from the person of Jesus Christ.[7] The term “body of Christ” stresses Christ is a body. The “being” of the Christian community is this “body.” Christ is one in many. Jesus Christ is by nature body. Such a statement is why Paul will stress the necessity of unity and plurality in the community. The gifts, services, and workings have a bodily nature that recognizes the order and freedom needed within the community. The resurrection of Jesus is what allows Paul to tell the Corinthians they are the body of Christ in verse 27. The body of Christ as seen in the community points like an arrow to the unity of humanity in Christ. The exclusiveness of referring to church as the body of Christ is relative, provisional, and teleological. To use the language and theology of Karl Barth, the community is the body of Christ in the election of Jesus Christ from eternity. It became the body of Christ and individual members of it due to their election in the death of Christ on the cross and proclaimed in his resurrection from the dead. The work of the Holy Spirit is to realize subjectively the election of Jesus Christ and to reveal and bring it to humanity. The Holy Spirit awakens the poor praise on earth.[8] We may also find a kind of representation in a broader sense in any social group in which individual members have special functions that both single them out and enable them to contribute to the unit as a whole and to the other members, this passage being an example. In a working society, the different members do jobs for others, and all the members relate reciprocally to each other. They are “for” each other and must act in solidarity in this sense.[9]
Baptism occurs in the one Spirit and we all drink in the Lord’s Supper of one Spirit. Regardless of our differences in social standing, wealth, gender, or ethnic background, Christians are one in their reception of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Both sacraments remind us that Christian life is about Christ. Here is our unity. The Spirit is the means through which the reconciling work of Father and Son find completion. For Paul, the fellowship of Christians with God and each other rests on their participation in the one Jesus Christ to whom each of them is related by faith, baptism, and the Supper.[10] Here, Paul describes as a work of the Spirit the incorporating of believers into the one body of Christ by baptism and reception of the Supper, by which they also receive sonship.[11] The Holy Spirit binds believers together in the fellowship of the body of Christ and thus constitutes the church, as the Spirit is present as its lasting gift.[12] Baptism incorporates individuals into the body of Christ and thus relates them to the unity of the body. Baptism establishes the identity of individual Christians and integrates them with their separate individual qualities into the fellowship of the church.[13] As such, the church becomes a provisional sign of the eschatological fellowship of a renewed humanity in the future reign of God.[14] The redemptive work of the Spirit is present in individuals and society. Individuals receive the gift of the Spirit in baptism, but the gift is not in isolation. It binds them to fellowship with each other. All this points us toward the goal of the work of the Spirit, renewing individual life and corporate life.[15]
The church has always been a very human, and therefore weak, frail, and imperfect. One of the ways we demonstrate this reality is in our rebellion against affirming our oneness amid our diversity. The gift of Protestantism has been ever new diverse forms of expressing the Christian faith. The sadness I have is that the church could not figure out a way to experience that diversity while also affirming unity. The church is not the presence of the rule of God. One does not need to experience any congregation or denominational family before one realizes that. The church is not New Jerusalem. Pastors are not saviors. Yet, the church is to be a sign or pointer toward the real thing.
Paul offers the metaphor of the human body to help us grasp how the diversity and individuality with which the Spirit works in the community of believers is a benefit to the community. To view the church from this perspective is a humbling act. The most gifted in time, talent, or treasure, still needs other members of the community to grow in their faith, love, and hope. However, this view of the church is also an encouraging one. Every follower of Christ is important to the pattern of life the church is weaving.
We are individuals with unique capacities and gifts. We are part of a community of believers in whom the same Spirit, the same Lord, and the same Father is at work. This mixture of our individuality and community brings tensions. We might find ourselves wondering if the community really needs certain types of individuals. We may view ourselves as in competition with others in terms of influence, power, or prestige. Some persons may seem more important than others are, stronger than others are, more “needed” than others are. Such thoughts are the source of much divisiveness in the church.
What impresses me is how deeply embedded community appears to be in both the human and natural world. Even the atom is a community of particles. Each cell is a community of interacting parts. The human body requires genes and cells, with interacting electrical charges in the brain, to work together for the good of the body. We do not understand the parts fully until we see how it all comes together in the body. Each part has its place in the whole.
The resurrection of Jesus was an issue for the first century church (I Corinthians 15:1-11, Year B, Easter Day, Year C Epiphany 5). Paul refers to the good news (εὐαγγέλιον) that he proclaimed (εὐηγγελισάμην) to them. They received that message, they stand upon it, and they are being saved, but if they hold firmly to the message (λόγῳ) that Paul proclaimed to them. If they do not hold firm, their belief has been in vain. His priority in preaching and teaching was message he had received. Paul also received the message about the Lord’s Supper (11:23). Thus, we learn that Paul received what he has delivered to them concerning the death and resurrection of Jesus. He would have received this teaching in the first years after the crucifixion and the proclamation of the resurrection. To expand upon the modern historical credibility of the material, the earliest account we have of the appearances is in I Corinthians 15, written around 57 AD in Ephesus. According to Galatians 1:18, Paul was in Jerusalem three years after his conversion. Thus, he was there around 33-35 AD, if we put the death of Jesus in 30 AD. The witnesses of the appearances are quite close to the event of the resurrection. Paul appeals to an established tradition, rather than his own memory. The assumption that several members of the primitive Christian community genuinely experienced appearances of the resurrected Lord, and therefore not invented during later legendary development, has good historical foundation.[16]
First, Paul received the message that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. Christ made expiation for our sins. Human beings could not compensate God for the wrong they had done. One puzzlement the theory of expiation presents is that it suggests that God is hard to please. If human beings could do nothing to make amends does that say “something” about God? Without pursuing this thought too far, the doctrine of the atonement says that God is the one making the sacrifice that human beings did not have the capacity to make. The endless round of sacrifices, both animal and grain, did not place human beings in right relationship with God. Paul is clearly presenting the death of Jesus in this way, freeing us from the responsibility of making something right that we could never make right. In this case, one goes back to Isaiah 53:3ff. Jesus died as one rejected by his people. This passage is the only part of the Jewish tradition to which the early Christians could go to interpret his death in an expiatory way. The circumstances of the death of Jesus provided a reason to go back to this prophetic passage because his people in fact despised and rejected Jesus, but the one whom God also in his resurrection.[17]4 As if to emphasize the point, he stresses that he received the teaching that his friends buried him. Eventually, this fact will become an important part of the “proof” that God raised Jesus from the dead. The disciples discovered the emptiness of the tomb. Yet should we consider it significant that Paul does not write directly about the emptiness of the tomb? Paul may have had no interest in such a legend. The Gospel story itself reminds us that historically, the emptiness of the tomb is an ambiguous fact.[18] Yet, the sequence of dead, buried, and raised hints at the emptiness of the tomb. The emphasis upon burial seems to stress that Jesus truly died. Thus, it was not just a literary device.[19] He may have considered the emptiness as self-evident. The “proof” Paul needed was in the appearance of the risen Lord to him, and thus, the emptiness of the tomb was ambiguous. Further, if the tomb is empty, it makes the idea that the appearances are hallucinations less likely. The empty tomb resists any superficial spiritualizing of the Easter message. We can admit that Jesus rose into the kerygma of the church. We can admit that the risen Lord identifies himself with the church so much that it has become the body of Christ. Such notions will push into the background the uniqueness of the event of Christ, transforming it into a generalized spiritual and ethical principle. It connects the earthly corporeality of Jesus with the eschatological reality of a new life. The empty tomb tradition is a separate, independent witness to what happened to Jesus after his death. It becomes an anticipation of the transformation of all creation that Christians anticipate will be the end of creation and thus humanity.
Christianity is the only religion in the world that places at the very heart of its message the death of its founder. Every other religion has a teacher who lived a human life and died, but followers did not consider that death as something to celebrate. Quite the contrary, followers remember the deaths of the Buddha or Muhammad or Confucius or Zoroaster with solemnity. Followers may consider manner of their deaths as noble. Yet, in the last analysis, they do not view the death of the teacher as especially helpful. Their death is a tragic and irrevocable loss. Not so for the death of Jesus. Paul proclaims that Jesus died for our sins. His words become harsher when he emphasizes the burial of Jesus. Because of his death, we are free. The passion narrative taken seriously is a massive cold spot, emptiness, and silence, from God. The silence of God makes what happens next in the proclamation of Paul a surprise.
Second, Paul received the message that God raised him on the third day in accordance with the scripture. Easter was, and is, a gracious surprise. The scientific details — the biology — of resurrection are a mystery. Christians need to admit the difficulty of continuing to believe the surprise of Easter is a promise for humanity and for creation. God has generated this event, so Jesus under his own strength and power did not rise from the dead. Resurrection depended upon the action of God on his behalf. The same is true for all human beings. Note that as Paul continues, the focus of the rest of the chapter will shift to the resurrection. Given the similarity of this statement with the “passion predictions” in Mark, and given the fact that Paul says received this tradition, Paul is relating an early statement of beliefs the church had concerning Jesus. This reference to scripture proved the veracity of the message of the resurrection of Jesus. This passage expresses why Paul is so astounded that the issue of resurrection should have even come up. His message of crucifixion and resurrection was of a single piece and primary elements of his preaching. Crucifixion and resurrection form the heart of the message, so much so that one without the other would not have brought the salvation Paul is proclaiming. Their preaching would be in vain (verse 12) were it not for the resurrection. Many scholars will agree with Bultmann, who thinks that “resurrection” here simultaneously means “exaltation.” The proper background for the language of resurrection is Jewish apocalyptic. The language is metaphor, in the sense of someone rising from sleep. It hints at new life. It will always be debatable since it points to an event beyond our everyday experience. The resurrection affirms the divine Yes over the life of Jesus, and therefore, re-focuses us upon the event nature of the relationship between God and humanity.
Third, Paul received the message that the risen Lord appeared to certain ones who would become witnesses. I will summarize the work of Reginald H. Fuller.[20] The fact that Paul relates about the event of Christ rests upon witness or testimony is significant. It does not rest upon the type of certainty one can have in math and science. In your life, you have relied upon witnesses. Someone testifies to a wonderful experience (movie, play, restaurant, and so on) and you take his or her word for it. You may be happy you did. They increase their credibility for you. You may be sorry you did, decreasing their credibility. When someone testifies to something unbelievable, such as seeing someone alive after he had surely died, it stretches our ability to believe the witness. Suppose today, someone testified to you she had seen a vision. It does not matter what it was a vision of, but you hear them say it. Testimony, in other words, is notoriously subjective to the offering the testimony and to the one hearing it. A follower of Jesus is willing to believe God acted in an incredible way in Jesus and will therefore act in an incredible way for us as well.
This passage has the effect of offering historical veracity to the resurrection of Jesus. Yet, we need to exercise some caution. To call it proof is to go a bit far. We often think of proof as having the certainty of math and science. If we could do that through the resurrection of Jesus, we would have a historical proof for the existence of God. I am not willing to go to that place. However, we need to have the courage to look at what Paul offers here as providing a basis for legitimately looking upon the event of Christ as a genuine event in the relationship between God and humanity. It heightens the event nature of that relationship. It emphasizes the revelatory character of that relationship. God discloses something to us that we could not figure out on our own. In his event, God is the one who promises that death and darkness is not the end. Rather, life and light are our end. As we explore Paul’s list of witnesses to the appearances of Jesus, we need to remember that his account here predates the written gospel accounts of the 80s and 90s by 30 years. Thus, just as the Corinthians could not fill in the details of what Paul says here by recalling the gospel narratives, we should not harmonize his list to their stories. Paul may well have provided more details in his teaching and preaching while in Corinth, but to assume his stories would have matched the evangelists’ (which do not even match one another) is an extreme argument from silence. The early church had independent traditions concerning both the appearances and the empty tomb. Yet, the empty tomb receives its significance from the appearances. The experiences of the risen Lord these persons received became an important part of the veracity of the message of the resurrection of Jesus.[21] When gnostic elements in Corinth push him, Paul is willing to enumerate witnesses as a verify the integrity of the message.[22] The significance of the list of witnesses is that Paul is going to make vast affirmations in verses 12ff for individuals and for the universe based upon the veracity of what he says here. One needs to have the theological courage to determine precisely as possible what the event of resurrection was for Jesus. Apart from that courage, the theologian runs the risk of becoming little more than offering Gnostic speculation and opinion. [23] The appearances might suggest a distribution between Galilee and Jerusalem, but it would be difficult to know how. Even from the standpoint of modern historical study, the fact that Paul knew the witnesses involved, or most of them, himself being the last in the series, lends credibility to this list. Paul brought this list together to give proof for the fact of the resurrection. Thus, 5 he appeared (ὤφθη) to Cephas, then to the twelve. This appearance is the establishment of the church. It confirms the founding significance of the disciples. Luke 24:34 refers to an appearance to Peter and both Matthew and Luke narrate an appearance to the Eleven. It is interesting that there is no narration of this appearance, even though Paul indicates its significance. However, there are some interesting stories in the gospels that, while most of them occur within the life of Jesus, we could read as anticipations of an appearance of the risen Lord to Peter. Peter bows before Jesus and acknowledges his sinfulness in a way that sounds like what we might imagine Peter would do when he saw the risen Lord (Luke 5:1-11). Peter has a key role in the incident of Jesus walking on the water in that he asks to join Jesus in that walk, notices the waves and starts to sink, but asks the Lord to save him, and the risen Lord reaches out to save him and bring him into the boat, but also questioning him as to his doubt (Matthew 14:22-33). Peter is unique among the disciples to affirm that Jesus is the promised Jewish Messiah (Mark 8:27-30), and based upon that confession Matthew expands upon it as Peter proclaims Jesus to be the Son of the living God and has the risen Lord (?) say to him that his confession is derives from a revelation of the Father and will be the foundation upon which the risen Lord will build the church and offer the message of forgiveness (Matthew 16:16-19). Peter is also a significant part of the story of the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8), in which three disciples receive clarity as to who Jesus is in relation to the Law and the Prophets, with the Father declaring Jesus to be the Son. In a story like that of Luke 5, John 21 has a story of the risen Lord appearing to the Eleven on the lake in Galilee, but Peter recognizing and affirming that it is the Lord and later the risen Lord offers Peter a three-fold mission to feed others, thereby forgiving him of his three-fold denial. Thus, Peter receives much attention as the one whose affirmation of faith in the risen Lord becomes central to the early church. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. This appearance would appear to be the first fruits of the founding of the church, quite likely the result of the labors of the disciples in Jerusalem. If so, even if it can be nothing more than a supposition, it may have a connection with the event Luke describes on Pentecost in Acts 2.[24] The intent of the enumeration is to show the integrity of the tradition regarding the resurrection by means of witnesses for the reality of the resurrection of Jesus is particularly strong here. Given the standards of the time, one can hardly call into question the intention Paul has of giving a convincing historical proof,[25] even if we must stop short of viewing them as such. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Although James himself stayed in Jerusalem, he assisted the church in its early missionary outreach into Judea and Samaria. Thus, this appearance would have a connection with that calling and mission. The appearance narrated in Luke of the two on the way to Emmaus might be an example of an appearance to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born (miscarried, aborted), he appeared also to me. The idea is that from the spiritual point of view he was not born at the right time, because he had not been a disciple during the lifetime of the disciples. It could also refer to the idea of unfitness for life, a charge against Paul by his opponents.[26] He would be an unlikely person to choose as an apostle, being an active opponent and persecutor of the church. However, the disciples whom Jesus formed during his life were also unlikely choices. Recognizing this, it would be an interesting study of the unlikely persons and groups of persons with whom God works to be witnesses to the saving works of God. The only criteria is an willingness to listen and respond to the call. One can have little doubt that the appearance to him has a close connection, not only to his personal conversion, but also to his missionary outreach to the gentile world. It suggests that the appearance to Paul is on a par with or like the appearance to that of the disciples. It suggests the disciples accepted the appearance of the risen Lord to Paul as credible and bound them together in a common mission. All of this gives some credibility to the notion that the appearances were more like the prophetic visions we have in the Old Testament. Isaiah had a vision of the Lord in the Temple. We could compare the visionary experiences of Ezekiel and Zechariah as well. If so, the New Testament is making a bold claim that the apostles and their kerygmatic witness represented by the New Testament writings are on a par with the prophetic witness to Israel. They were disclosures or revelations to these individuals and groups of the risen Lord. We do not have to view such a vision as subjective psychological projection. In this case, the sheer number of the visions occurring over several years suggests something more than simple projection.[27] The witnesses to the appearances “saw” an end-time reality. If our time and place is the present time, the old age that is passing away, then the appearances are the new age. How can we expect that we can clearly define it in our terms? The appearances occur over a period of three years, which should lend some validity to their historicity.[28] Paul is insisting that the Jewish apocalyptic hope remains valid for these Gentiles, regardless of heavily influenced they might be by their Greek philosophical tradition. Thus, one might be able to designate the resurrection of Jesus as an historical event. If one can understand the emergence of primitive Christianity only considering the eschatological hope for a resurrection from the dead that occurs in Jesus of Nazareth, then it would be designated a historical event, even if we do not know anything more about it. For some people, violating the laws of nature will be too much to take.[29] Understanding the resurrection of Jesus and the hope contained in it in a way that does not violate the laws of nature is a challenge I want to undertake.
Scholars who want to explore the historical basis for Christian claims will focus on what Paul says here, and rightly so. The appearance stories in Matthew, Luke, and John come 30-40 years later. The narrations of the appearances of Jesus in the gospel story are vehicles for the theological perspective of each writer.
The theological significance of this passage is immense. The letters of Paul formulate basic Christian beliefs along the line of Jewish apocalyptic. An important reason for this is his belief that God raised Jesus from the dead. I do not think most scholars would disagree with this. However, one area that will need some exploration is whether Paul carried out this formulation like his rabbinic heritage, or whether he abandoned it in favor of Hellenism.
What Paul presents in his letters occurs in the context within Judaism.[30] For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits of the general resurrection. This image implies that the full harvest will follow. In the resurrection of Jesus, Paul saw the beginning of the end. The powers of the age to come were already at work in his time and place. It was along these lines that Paul participated in the reconstruction of the eschatology of the early church. Now, the background for this reconstruction was Judaism, in that it had already expended much thought upon the problems involved in the notion of resurrection. Such Jewish speculation influenced early church thinking in this regard. The most important aspect of this speculation was in Hebrew anthropology and psychology. Judaism conceived of the human being as a totality, a union of flesh and soul. A truly living being was always an embodied spirit, God having created both soul and body. They have a mutual interdependence, incapable of genuine life apart from each other. Death was not natural. It was the consequence of sin. The reunion of soul and body in resurrection was involved in any teaching concerning eternity with God. Life in the age to come must be embodied life.
The testimonies concerning the appearances and the empty tomb provide reasonable grounds for Christian confidence that God raised Jesus from the dead.[31] This means the appearances did not develop as a legend over the years. This fact separates it from his approach to the legendary stories related to the birth of Jesus.[32] Bultmann is a somewhat surprising in admitting that the cross and resurrection as salvation occurrences is different from the myth of the mystery religions and from Gnostic thought.[33] The differences consist in the fact that the subject is a historical person, Jesus, and his death on the cross only a few years earlier is at the center of the salvation occurrence. One does not accept the witness based on authority, of course. The nature of the witness will have to hold up to the testing to which we as modern persons put them.
This passage concludes with the personal testimony of Paul to the work of grace in his life. The recipient of grace presupposes that individuals are nothing. This passage brings out the meaning of grace.[34]Paul sees himself as unfit and undeserving. The loving grace of God saved him, lifted him up and set him on a new course, giving a new and quite different meaning to his life. We are where we are and who we are by the grace of God.
Paul is emphasizing that the preaching of the disciples and the early church in Jerusalem are consistent with his preaching. Paul wants to emphasize both the historicity of the resurrection and its centrality in the proclamation of the community. We can say historically that witnesses claim, after the death of Jesus, to have seen him. Based on such visions, they arrived at the theological conclusion that God raised Jesus from the dead. They knew they spoke of an event that happened. They became convinced that the resurrection of Jesus had taken place. Historically, we cannot establish this fact. If the appearances were the sole means by which the certainty that God raised Jesus from the dead came to the disciples, and on which the church came into being, how was it possible for these experiences to have had such an effect? We simply cannot reserve this question for faith and deny the question to the historian.
Yet, I would make the point that Peter, the twelve, the 500, James, and all the apostles, had a decision to make. The narratives in Matthew, Luke, and John contain evidence of this in that on several occasions a disciple or the Eleven could have believed because of a testimony and they did not do so. It verifies the gospel narrative of their little faith. They had come to a point in their lives when they could respond with faith in what they had seen or turn away from what they had seen. Thus, we are at one with the first believers and with Paul himself in our common faith. Granted, our decision relies upon their testimony, but even then, the object of faith remains the risen Lord. When we look upon texts honestly, we can only say that the decision is in part weighing of evidence but has also become for us the risk of laying our lives alongside that of the crucified and risen Lord. The veracity of the witness concerning the resurrection can only be fragmentary and contradictory. The chronology and topography are vague. We do not have independent sources from which to check the evidence. One should not take narratives of the appearances as history in the purest form. In fact, we treat verses 3-8 in a “strangely abstract way” if we regard it as a citation of witnesses for the purpose of historical proof. They describe something beyond the reach of typical historical study in that the event comes from the activity of God.[35] These verses are not an attempt at an historical proof, for the history of the appearances cannot take place within the confines of modern historical study. This passage is not an attempt at an external objective assurance that the history did take place. The reason is that the witnesses are the tradition that underlies the community, which calls for a decision of faith, not for the acceptance of a well-attested historical report. They are those who have made this decision of faith. The appeal is to faith based in the recollection of the faith that constitutes the community.[36]
An attractive apologetic response is to think of the resurrection of Jesus as figurative, metaphorical, and spiritual, (Bultmann, Marcus Bord, etc), given that Paul also says “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” [15:50; cf. vv. 51-57]). Such a one-sided conclusion is problematic. For instance, it seems inconsistent to regard the death and burial of Jesus as bodily events, and then suddenly shift and speak of Christ’s resurrection exclusively in spiritual terms. Is such an abrupt change logical in this passage? In addition, although we might struggle to accept a literal, physical resurrection, would Paul have found it any less dubious given what Luke reports as his willingness to persecute them and condemn them to death (Acts 26:9-11)?
Paul’s understanding of the gospel integrates not only Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, but also Christ’s appearances, especially to him. Consequently, Paul’s profound experience when he received the gospel is not incidental, but critical for the Corinthians. They must remember both the fundamental aspects of the cross — i.e., Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection — and the effects of the gospel.
One approach to the issues raised here is that of keeping the event nature of Christianity before us. The event of Jesus of Nazareth, especially the cross and resurrection, are momentous events in the life of God and in the salvation history of humanity. Christianity will lose what is central to it if that event is forgotten. However, it must not become a strangely abstract event of the past. This event of the past needs to have a corresponding event within us, in which, as Paul will say elsewhere, we die with Christ and rise with him. As the life-giving Spirit of God raised Jesus from the dead, the same life-giving Spirit can empower us as well.
I Corinthians 15:19-26 (Year C Easter Day) f= focus upon the importance of the Easter event in Jesus and therefore for us as well. It reminds us that doubting whether the resurrection of Jesus represents truth is nothing new. The resurrection of the dead belongs to the core of Christian faith. If there is no such thing, the preaching and faith of the early church are invalid. Denial of resurrection means the destruction of Christian hope. Christians would lead a pathetic life if this hope were not true. The Christian hope overcomes the misery and evils of this life. The scope of God's saving work in Christ goes way beyond what we can see now. Hope that only encompasses what Christ means for the present life is pitiable hope. It is small hope. Paul calls the church to greater hope. This message is so incredible to his Corinthians audience that he has to prove its right to receive a hearing. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is a specific instance of a universal human promise and possibility. Yet, the presence of Jesus in resurrection is more radical and unique by virtue of the way he influences the way the world is.[37] Clearly, the emphasis upon this fellowship is important for the continuation of the influence of Christ upon the world. Yet, the basis of such hope relies upon the prior demonstrated power of God to overcome death.[38] Truth is event rather than a pious longing or illusion.
Paul will apply the significance of the resurrection of Jesus to humanity. The idea of rising from the dead to a new and eternal life has its roots in Jewish apocalyptic hope. Note the shift to a joyful and triumphant note. Christ is the first fruit of human resurrection. He asserts without hesitation the resurrection of the just as a transition to eternal life. Thus, resurrection is not a return to bodily life as we experience it. Christ’s resurrection marks the beginning of a great harvest season during which those who have died God will also eventually raise. Christ is the first fruits of a new act of redemption. Since the harvest is a process, God will reveal more, but has shown us what that future will be like in the resurrection of Jesus as its first fruit. This is good news indeed for any age and offers a power of living that lifts the believer beyond and above any pressure of life.[39]Such a faith will have to move against respected alternatives in our time. It could well be the offer of a future illusion of happiness that invites people to ignore their present suffering and impede their willingness to bring change in political structures (Karl Marx). This proclamation may will be nothing more than a wish-fulfillment that invites people to ignore the harsh reality of human life (Sigmund Freud). Christianity may be only for the weak (Nietzsche).[40] Belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the hope it contains for humanity is not a matter of indifference for the Christian or for the Christian community. If one removes the integrity of the apostolic witness and its hope for humanity, one removes the entire picture of the world advanced in Christianity.
Belief in the resurrection of the body is a leap of faith, to be sure. Yet, I would like to invite you to a brief bit of speculation. If we are ensouled bodies, as Karl Barth and many other theologians have come to believe, then the resurrection of the body involves admirable consistency within the biblical witness. Today, we think of the soul as “within” the body. The resurrection of the body may well envision a time when the body will be within the soul. The means by which we know bodies and the world will change. We have an analogy of this in our experience of memory. Our memory of past events keeps alive the painful and joyful events of our past. Memory may well be a feeble anticipation of the future resurrection of the body, in which soul (memory) will now embrace body. In philosophy, one can affirm that the Infinite and Eternal embrace the finite and the temporal. As space-time is “in” God, so our little, insignificant, and individual space-time will be “in” soul. The new heaven and new earth will be the same, yet, not the same. Such speculations can only be that. The Bible itself is poetic about eternal life with God will be like. However, the resurrection of Jesus and the creedal affirmation of the resurrection of the body understandably invite us to such speculation. We are wondering, questioning beings. What happen if the sensuous life rose from its death to new life in the soul? We would then have a powerful image of Christian hope for the redemption of all that God has made.[41]
I do understand the difficulty in believing the apostolic witness concerning the resurrection of Jesus and its implication for us. Death is final. We can go to any cemetery and see how final death is. The finality of death confronts each of us. When death comes, that is it. You log off. Screen fades to black. Game over. Beyond that, our science confronts us with the cold, death-like existence of the universe. It no longer thinks life is everywhere in the universe. Life, if we do find it somewhere, is not in the Milky Way galaxy. So far, the galaxies in our neighborhood of the universe do not appear to have life. While such reflections can be depressing, they also provide a context for the nature of the hope contained in the witness to the resurrection of Jesus and its implication for our lives. Such a discussion can divert attention away from life here and now. Yet, it can also deal with the practical question of whether death has the final word. If death is that final word, do our lives have an ultimate meaning or purpose?
Frankly, if we view ourselves as isolated individuals, meaning and purpose will be impossible to find. Connecting our lives with eternity assures us that we are accountable for the way we live our lives. Our lives are not simply about temporality. Our individual lives have meaning only in the context of the story of our lives, and the influence that story has on the lives we touch. The story that other people tell intersects with our story and influences us. Our individual lives have meaning in such webs of relationships, where we influence each other far more profoundly than we imagine. Even then, our lives will have little meaning, for most of us influence the lives of a small number of persons. Within our immediate families, after a few generations most will not know our names. They will not know what we did with our lives. Our ancestors lived and died, having influences upon our lives in ways most of us will never explicitly know. For me, belief in the resurrection is as simple as this: God loves each of us individually to such extent that God will not allow eternity to forget any of us. God is the one who connects our finite, time-bound lives with eternity. Therefore, we are accountable for how we live our lives. Accountability to the ultimate means the vices and virtues that are part of our lives matter to God. I do not pretend to know all the details of the nature of that life. My only confidence of that kind of love is the life-giving power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. As hard as it may be at times for me, here is the truth to which I cling. I do not pretend to understand the nature of the resurrection of Jesus. I do have the confidence that this connection between Father and Son is a connection Jesus established with humanity. In Jesus Christ, we learn that death will not have the final word. The final word belongs to God, and that word is life.
In verses 21-22, Paul discusses a further consequence of accepting the resurrection. The concern throughout Chapter 15 is that some in Corinth do not believe there is any such thing as a resurrection of the dead. He is addressing a question we have today as well. In some cases, the advances we have made in science, political arrangements, and psychology lead us to ask questions the ancients did not ask. In this matter, ancient and contemporary persons question the heart of Christian proclamation because we live in a world where the dead do not receive new life. It would be even less likely that God would raise from the dead one whom political and religious authorities deemed worthy of crucifixion. Paul argues that there is such a thing as the resurrection of the dead, and for proof, he points to the resurrection of Jesus. Paul is making a simple point. If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we are a sorry lot. However, the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries. Adam, not that he does not refer to Eve, was human and brought death to all other human beings, but Christ, also human, brought life to all other human beings. One corrupted the image of God in which he was made and the other represents the restoration of that image. The resurrection of Jesus and the promised future resurrection of human beings means that we are participating already in resurrection and its redeeming, liberating, and healing work that leads to eternal life. The argument in Romans 5:12-21 has a similar pattern of contrasting the death that enters through Adam but the life that enters through Christ. Adam did not die only for himself, but for us all. Yet, Christ “did not rise for himself alone; for he came, that he might restore everything that had been ruined in Adam” (John Calvin). However, in verse 23, we must wait our turn: Christ is first, then those with him at his Coming. Christ is the first fruits; the best ancient Israelite worshippers would bring to offer as a sacrifice. Christ is the best of all humanity. Only then, as his return, will those who belong to him arise (I Thessalonians 4:13-18). Then, in verses 24-26, the universe will have its reconciliation with God, promising the grand consummation when, after crushing the opposition, Christ hands over his kingdom to God the Father, for, referring to Psalm 110:1, he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and the last enemy to be crushed is death. There is a nice symmetry in this: Death initially came by a man, and resurrection from death came by a man. Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ. He will not let up until the last enemy is down -- and the very last enemy is death! Death shall be no more (Revelation 21:3-4). The resurrection validates the essential goodness of creation, for God has not abandoned the world God has created to decay and death, even as human beings continued to self-destruct by turning from the God who gave and gives life. Through the resurrection of Jesus, God is reversing the curse of sin and death. The resurrection of Jesus was thus a prototype and the beginning of the resurrection to come for all of us in “the end” when Jesus returns, destroying the forces of evil, and God sets his good creation right in the way that it had always been intended. Paul has an enthusiast and inspired conviction that Christ is to bring things, not to a destructive disintegration, but to a completion in which God will achieve God’s goal, namely, life, order, and peace.[42] Christ will nullify all aggregations of opposition to the rule of God and will assign this victory to God the Father. Paul does not seem to experience any tension between his Jewish monotheism heritage and his present affirmation that Jesus is Lord. Instead, the lordship of Christ is the continuation and fullest expression of the creative power of God.[43] In the present, the tension between the rule of Christ and the rule exhibited by the political, economic, and religious authorities of this world are in conflict. We are faced with the decision Adam had to make, turning toward the source of life, or turning away.
These verses describe the final phase of Paul's understanding of God's plan for salvation. Albert Schweitzer outlines his view of Jewish apocalyptic expectations.[44] According to W. D. Davies, his mistake is to try to force passages of Paul too tightly into that framework. The passage before us is an example. Schweitzer said that those who denied the resurrection at Corinth were an “ultra-conservative” party who thought that only those alive at the time of the Messianic age would experience its joys.[45] For Davies, when verse 24 says, “Then comes the end,” refers to the final consummation. In contrast to Schweitzer, however, he thinks that it means a short interval will follow the Parousia the resurrection and the judgment that will usher in the final consummation. For him, Paul simply does not teach a prolonged “messianic age” that precedes the final consummation of all things. The eschatology of Paul is simple in comparison to the structure into which Schweitzer wants to put it. It contains no reference to a Messianic Kingdom such as is contemplated in Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Revelation when there would be a final judgment, a general resurrection of the righteous dead, the transformation of the righteous living and ensuing upon all this the final consummation, the perfected reign of God, when God would be all in all. In contrast to all this, for Paul, the resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits. This image implies that the full harvest will follow. In the resurrection of Jesus, Paul saw the beginning of the end. The powers of the age to come were already at work in his time and place. It was along these lines that Paul participated in the reconstruction of the eschatology of the early church. Now, the background for this reconstruction was Judaism, in that it had already expended much thought upon the problems involved in the notion of resurrection. Such Jewish speculation influenced early church thinking in this regard.[46]
Bultmann thinks this passage has no connection with the goal of creation, in which God will be “all in all.” Rather, it derives from Gnostic cosmology and eschatology.[47] Whether one can tie the terminology to Gnostic teaching, I doubt. Yet, I find it reasonably clear that this phase is charged with traditional apocalyptic expectation of the defeat of human powers (governments, economies, judiciaries), as well as other powers (sin, disease, death). Paul’s reason for the delay in the resurrection appears to be a belief that Christ must first vanquish evil in the world before God will raise the faithful dead. If the last enemy God must conquer were indeed death, this would make perfect sense. Resurrection cannot take place until God has destroyed death. Paul obviously envisioned this battle taking place on earth, at the end of time. Only when Christ defeats this last enemy can Christ’s followers join him in triumph in their new resurrection existence. For Paul, as for many Jews of his time, this expectation represented the ultimate faith in God's sovereignty over creation. While the current age does not entirely reflect God's power, God has not revealed the totality of God's purposes for human history. Jewish teaching maintained belief in a sovereign and single God through a deferred expectation of the complete revelation of God's power in the world. Paul's organizes his understanding of this epic, however, around the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is Christ, Paul argues, citing Psalm 110:1, who will put all enemies under his feet. Christ will deliver the kingdom to God.
The statement that death is the last enemy of all living things is powerful. In the death of Jesus, God has seen the enemy that death is for humanity, and has made it the enemy of God. We no longer face the judgment contained in death, because God has embraced this judgment in the death of Christ.[48] Fear of death pierces deep into life. It causes us to make an unrestricted self-affirmation, regardless of the finite quality of our lives. Yet, it robs us of the power to accept life. Either way, sin and death have a close link. In part, sin makes us fail to accept our end. In part, fear of death pushes us more deeply into sin.[49]
None of this, for most people, is easy to believe as truth. One difficulty for us is that the weirdness of Jewish apocalyptic seems to find partial confirmation in the resurrection of Jesus. Yet, I ask a simple question. What would happen in your life if, out of all the cultures and beliefs of the known and future world history, God chose to unite with humanity in the Jewish flesh of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century? God would be saying Yes to this hope for the final victory of justice, peace, and life. The end is not nothingness or death. The end is the victory of God, and therefore the victory of justice, peace, and life. It would mean a new coming of Jesus Christ, for he came as Jesus of Nazareth, he came to his followers and Paul after his death, he came in the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and he will come in a new way at the end. I still cling to that hope, even with all the doubts and questions.
The point of Easter is that this world, God’s good creation, matters. What we do and how we live, as people created in the image of God within creation, has ultimate significance when we understand ourselves to be part of God’s mission of a “new creation” (II Corinthians 5:17). We care for ourselves, we care for each other and we care for the earth because we know that God has not and will not abandon this creation project but will ultimately make it whole again. As we wait for that great day, we are to spend our lives not giving into death but embracing the goodness of life. The point of the gospel is not that we go to heaven to be with God but that God comes here to be with us: “Your kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
The work of God in the resurrection of Jesus occurs in a fallen world. The resurrection releases a beautiful world from its bondage to sin and death. It dissipates the shadows of nothingness and death that haunt creation.[50] I want my life, I want the life of the church, to be part of dissipating such shadows that lie across all creation. The tension is still present. We cannot know for sure if something is part of the fallen world or part of the beautiful world struggling to emerge. The events of today are not the end of the story, for the destined beauty of the world remains ahead. We can determine today to be among those who bring more goodness, truth, and beauty into the world. We need to be alert to the places where the opposing forces are at work. Cultural forces ridicule the beliefs and values of the church. Economic forces that bind people to envy and greed. Political ideology that blinds people to the truth and goodness of those who hold to opposing ideologies, leading to new forms of heat and violence. This attempt to locate evil in a particular group, whether one identifies it in Left, Right, one percent, and so on, is particularly dangerous today. Evil runs through the heart of each of us. If we get rid of the group we have come to hate, we will still have to face ourselves. We can see this struggle in the shadow that terrorism has brought into the world and into our lives. We need to refuse to allow the authorities of this world to define us as we steadily learn what it means to allow Christ to conform us to his image. We slowly learn what it is like to think and do in a way that discerns the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1-2).
The shadow of sin, nothingness, and death impinges upon our lives. Shakespeare records a befuddled Hamlet pondering his existence in his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy:
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.
(Hamlet, III.1.61-68)
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) regards death as something akin to lying down on the couch for a nap. The closing lines of his poem, Thanatopsis, go like this:
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Yet, the resurrection of Jesus is the reminder of God that while the shadow will cause sorrow, it ought not to lead us to despair as those who have no hope (I Thessalonians 4:13). Death is a powerful and at times and overwhelming word. However, in Christ, we know death does not have the final word. His resurrection defines our destiny. He came and he is to come. He comes to release this world from its bondage to death and push back the shadows of evil, nothingness, and death through a well-founded hope in the coming fullness of the rule of God over the world and therefore over our lives.
II Corinthians 13:11-14 (Year A Trinity Sunday) is a final exhortation and greeting. Paul ends this letter on the note urging the congregation to put their affairs in order, be of one mind, and live in peace with each other. Paul sets before the believers at Corinth a compelling portrait of the Christian life. Even though Paul had adversaries in the congregation, he addressing the congregation as family. The first imperative is to rejoice or be glad (χαίρετε, rather than the NRSV farewell). The second imperative is to decide to put things in order, the natures of these things being the content of the letter. Third, urges them to listen to his appeal. Fourth, her urges them to decide to agree with each other, or have the same mind (Philippians 2:5, 3:15). He urges them to live in peace. The God of love (ἀγάπης), the only occurrence of this phrase, and peace will be with them. The sending of Jesus discloses the divine nature as one of love and peace. He wants them to greet each other with a sign of peace and harmony, the holy kiss (I Corinthians 16:20, Romans 16:16, and I Thessalonians 5:26). There is something about a physical embrace between friends that can be deeply satisfying. We are not alone. Tertullian (second century) relates a conversation with a non-Christian who expressed concern over his wife being kissed by strangers at Christian gatherings. Nonetheless, formalized kissing appears to have been a part of many early Christian ceremonies including the baptism service, ordination service and marriage ceremonies. More than simply a style of greeting, this holy kiss that Paul urges upon the Corinthians demonstrates his hope that they would learn to put aside the social stratification and factional infighting that persisted in their community. Paul’s dream for these people is centered in the hope that they will put love for one another above ostentatious displays of piety (I Corinthians 13), that they will resist being swayed by missionaries who opposed him. Paul urges them to greet one another with respect and affection out of a hope that enacting this gesture will shape within them the love he wants them to have. Thus, all the saints greet them. He then closes uniquely with a reference to Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit. It is a declaration about Christ as the minister of grace, God as the author of love, and the Holy Spirit as the one who brings us into communion with Christ, God, and each other: The grace (χάρις) of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love (ἀγάπη) of God, and the communion (κοινωνία) of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. It reveals the early nature of the triadic formula within the history of the church. This benediction is a brief statement of the history of salvation, as Paul understands it. In and through Christ, the love of God is present and active as a gracious redeeming, reconciling, and renewing gift. As believers accept the rule of the love of Christ, they are turned from self to Christ, and thus to each other, quickened by the life-giving Spirit in a community of faith devoted to the service of God and the people of God.[51]
Romans 5:1-5 (Year C Trinity Sunday, see Year A Third Sunday in Lent, 5:1-11)
Romans 8:12-17 (Year B Trinity Sunday, verses 14-17, Year C Pentecost Sunday) focuses upon making people children of God, focusing here on walking by the flesh or the Spirit. In verses 12-13, the struggle or tension in the Christian life derives from the tension between the weakness of our flesh and the energy of the Spirit. The flesh brings death, and the Spirit will bring life. The freedom acquired through Christ means one is not indebted to the weakness of human nature. Paul is deeply aware of the weakness of human nature, where it succumbs to the process of dying. Paul speaks of his and humanity’s weakness rather than sinfulness.[52]He is writing of the human experience of time, things, and people. To live passionately in within the limits of human experience is to live in the shadow of death. The edifice of human life becomes questionable. However, the Spirit provided new life, as the Lord breathed life into human life and as the risen Christ breathed life into the Christian community. The aspirations of humanity, weakened as they are by human nature, do not have to be the limitations of the believer. The obligation of the believer is to Christ through the presence of the life-giving Spirit, and not to the weakness of human nature. It is not easy to cast off the reflexes and well-rutted patterns that were part of the old way of living under sin and death. The new kingdom life of the Spirit is not easy! Choices become real and have significant meaning.[53] In verses 14-17, he makes the distinction increasingly graphic. The believer is free to participate in the life of the Spirit. The Spirit will lead believers personally without extinguishing their unique personality. The Spirit will lead them to a life that finds fulfillment and completion that involves freedom, faith, and love.[54] Such leadership is like that of a pilot guiding the ship.[55] Thus, the Spirit is not a blind force. Paul has experienced this personal leadership of the Spirit. This leadership leads to the spirit of adoption in the family of God, contrasting sharply with the slavery and fear to which human beings succumb in their weakness. The Spirit is the seal and guarantee of participation in the family of God. One has authentic freedom in this family.[56] The idea of adoption has in the background the notion of the chosen quality of Israel and the Jewish people. Paul reaffirms this chosen status of the people of God but focuses upon the Spirit as the active agent who brings this special place in the heart of God into effect.[57] Adoption into the family of God provides Christians with the strength to overcome the weakness of life in the flesh. The authentic freedom we find in the Spirit is by the one who grants this freedom by not only liberating us from fixation on our own ego and lifting us above our own finitude. The Spirit becomes lastingly ours as the Spirit gives us a share in the sonship of Jesus Christ. “Spirit of adoption” refers to the Spirit as the seal and guarantee as well as a partial realization of the new status. Animated by God’s Spirit, Christians cannot have an attitude of slavery, for the Spirit sets one free. Christians have thereby won out over the anxiety of death and the fear of slavery. Adoption is the special status of Christians before God.[58] A sign of this adoption is that we can refer to God in the same way Jesus did. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” Jesus called him Abba,[59] Father, and we can do so as well. It is the designation that Jesus used, when in agony in Gethsemane, he prayed, “Abba, Father, with you all things are possible; remove this cup from me” (Mk 14:36). The cry “Abba, Father!” is probably that liturgical form that the early Christian community used in its prayers when it gathered. The community prays “Our Father in Heaven” (Mt 6:9b) in the Lord’s Prayer, and thus cries “Abba! Father!” The free life of the children of God is the work of the Spirit sent into their hearts. Crying Abba means they are not slaves, but children, living before and with their Father. If being "in the spirit" makes us adopted children of God, we are also fully brothers and sisters with Christ.[60] The Spirit bears witness with our spirit, referring to the subjective testimony of conscience. one has this personal experience of the Spirit. Such experience has an emotional quality, a form of ecstasy, illumination, inspiration, or intuition. [61] Paul will part company with those who suggest a purely intellectual faith. The Spirit integrates emotion, reason, and will. The Spirit transplants the Christian into a sphere of behavior one characterizes as freedom of the children of God. In that sense, the Spirit becomes a personal center of action residing outside the individual. The Christian lives outside the self as weakened by the flesh and thus lives in the power of the resurrected Jesus and in the Spirit. The Spirit living within believers has its basis in believers having the ground or foundation of their lives outside the weakness of self and flesh and therefore in the Spirit.[62] However, distinguishing between the Spirit and our spirit is not so easy, given our capacity for self-deception. [63] Paul will admit the struggled involved in a human life, but for him, Jesus Christ gives the struggle meaning and purpose, for if we are children of God, then we are also heirs with Christ, sharing in the destiny of Christ defined by the cross and resurrection. The struggle is a sigh that something new is happening. However, the hope contained within this destiny comes at the cost of identifying with the Christ who first suffered and then received glory, honor, and recognition from God.
Not only do those in the "Spirit" live, but also, they will live in a new and exalted state as "children of God." Through the Spirit, the Christian becomes a child of God, destined for glory. We are children of God, contrary to anything we can observe. The Spirit enables one to put to death the deeds of the body and gives new life. The Spirit also sets up for human beings the relationship to God of an adopted child and heir. The notion that human men and women can become part of God's own family is what stands behind the whole idea of Jewish chosenness and Israel's "special place" in God's heart. Paul reaffirms the chosen status of God's people with his words but is careful to make the Spirit the active entity. By virtue of this Spirit, they can be children of God now, and therefore free from the servile fear for which they would have good reason to have. What makes them Christians is that they can stand by Christ and live by this discovery.[64]
Romans 8:22-27 (Year B Pentecost Sunday) begins with Paul saying that “we know” creation has been groaning in labor pains to the present, conceiving of the transformation of creation in terms of a woman giving birth. Creation is in the process of hard labor; the contractions are coming faster and harder. He unites the believer with creation in saying that even having the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly, waiting for adoption as children of God that we have already received and the redemption of our bodily life. This inward groaning is because the fullness of the life of the Spirit does not receive embodiment in our lives, due to general human weakness. Personal and cosmic suffering converge in redemption. Through the immanent work of the Spirit in us and in creation, God is liberating and redeeming creation. The goal of creation is to share in the life of God. The sighing of creation is an expression of the presence of the life-giving Spirit of God in all creatures. The immanent work of the Spirit both gives life to all and suffers with all creation. Paul is not explaining why suffering exists. He is offering the insight that the Spirit suffers with all creation, and therefore with you and I amid our suffering. In this work of the Spirit, all creation participates in the destiny of the children of God, which we see by way of anticipation in the resurrection of Jesus. Creation will share in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity. Each part of creation has divinely given independence. God has granted to human beings the unique responsibility of respecting this independence of all creatures.[65] Such hope reaches beyond the present to something not yet visible. Caught up in the process of delivery, powerless to resist the urge to push, the believer and all created order must remain focused on that which is unseen but certainly and painfully felt. One must envision the end and know that it is surely coming. This is Paul's definition of hope. One believes the certainty of the Unseen One's promised end in the midst and of the muddle of the present chaos. One cannot see the crowning. However, one feels the contraction and knows that new life is on the way! This hope gives vitality to endure the sufferings that lead to glory. Believers live by hope, for the Risen Christ defines the future, but such hope waits silently for the Lord, restraining faith from expecting too much and refreshes faith when it becomes tired. [66]
We have dissatisfaction with the frail and perishable quality of this life. Christians believe they are on the way to a future fulfillment that transcends the weakness and suffering of the present. We vacillate between hope and despair for that reason. The basis of such hope could be the natural processes of life and its anticipation. For Jews and Christians, its basis is in the promise of God.[67] Hope understood in this way involves waiting. Our existence in relation to God is one of waiting. We can wait anxiously. Paul encourages us to wait patiently. Waiting means we have and do not have. We do not have that for which we wait. We do not now have, see, know, or grasp. Any religion or individual who has forgotten what it means to wait replaces God by what human beings have created. They have created an image of God. Too much of religious life involves that type of creation. Theologians and preachers are particularly in danger of thinking they possess God in a doctrine or system. They cease waiting for God. If we enclose God in a book, institution, or experience, then we stop waiting for God. Thus, our present is one of enduring not having God. Rather, we wait for God. Such an existence is not easy. Preaching every Sunday can lead one to think one possesses God. The task is not easy as we both proclaim the good news of God while admitting that we also wait for God. Frankly, much of the resistance to Christian preaching and teaching may have in the background resistance to the idea that anyone can possess God. The prophets and apostles maintained this sense of waiting. They did not wait for the judgment and the fulfillment of all things. They waited for the God who was to bring that end. God is not a thing we can grasp amidst other things we can grasp. Frankly, we have to wait for the person to reveal to us who they are. Yet, regardless of the intimacy of our communion with another human being, we have an element of not having and not knowing, and therefore, we wait. By analogy, then, we wait for the infinitely hidden, free, and incalculable God. Yet, we must wait in the most absolute and radical way, for we never possess God.[68]
We learn that the goal of all creation is to share in the life of God. Why else should it sigh under the burden of corruptibility? We may view this sighing as an expression of the presence of the life-giving Sprit of God in creatures. The creative divine Spirit is vitally at work throughout creation, but also suffers with creatures because of their corruptibility prior to taking creative shape in humanity, in one man. Only in this way can the rest of creation participate in the liberty of the children of God, in the eschatological future of the children of God, which has already come in the resurrection of Jesus. The destiny of creation is to be in fellowship with God, in the sense of sharing in the fellowship of the Son with the Father and through the Spirit. It has not yet found direct fulfillment in the existence of each individual creature. It could not do so because only at the human stage in the sequence of creaturely forms did express distinction come to be seen between God and all creaturely reality. Without their distinction, there can be no creaturely participation in the self-distinction of the Son from the Father. Hence, in Romans all creation is waiting for the manifestation of being a child of God in us, by which the creatures themselves will also be children. Nevertheless, even with the rise of humanity in the sequence of creatures, creation has not attained participation in the fellowship of the Son with the Father. The tension between the emergence of humanity as the last link in the chain of creaturely forms and the fulfillment of humanity’s destiny connects with the fact God intends humans as creatures to be independent beings. This is true of all creatures. Human beings are the climax of their creaturely sequence. The creature needed a prehistory of growing independence in a sequence of creaturely forms. Humans came into existence at the end of this sequence. They had to develop their own independence. As creatures ripened for independence, we are to relate to God as children who receive all things from their Father. We can see here that creation and eschatology belong together because in this way we can see the destiny of the creature will come to fulfillment. For the creature, the future is open and uncertain. Creatures awakened to independence open themselves to the future as the dimension from which alone their existence can achieve content and fulfillment. The experience of the creature is that the origin and the consummation do not coincide. They form a unity only from the standpoint of the divine act of creation. Yes, human beings are to have dominion, but acceptance of our own finitude must also mean giving to all other creatures the respect that is their due within the limits of their finitude.[69]
The life-journey of every human being involves pain. We may wonder why. We may rebel against it. However, the harsh reality is that living things struggle and suffer to maintain life. Often, such pain deepens the experience and appreciation of life. In fact, if we knew the secret history of our enemies, we might in him or her a sorrow, pain, or hurt that would disarm us of our hostility toward them.[70] Life has hurt everyone. Everyone is broken. No one receives an exemption from the pain that comes in living a human life. Paul is not going to offer what philosophy and theology would later call theodicy. He will not explain suffering. Suffering and pain in life is part of the training we experience that will reveal who we are. If the person remains oriented toward God while life pierces the person with the nail of affliction, the nail pierces a hole through creation, through the thickness of the veil that separates the person and God.[71] Could pain deepen our character, help us appreciate life, and even enable us to go deeper with God? We learn in this passage that Paul answers Yes.
The prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi begins with the pain.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
And then the gain:
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Yes, suffering can be part of the pain that trains us to go deeper with God, to know better who we are and whose we are. Suffering can also unite us to each other. Recognition that life has wounded us can lead us to focus obsessively on our pain. This would be a sickness that would lead to an inability to move past the pain and continue with our lives in a healthy way. At the same time, seeing truly our wounds can be the pathway for us to see that everyone we encounter, even the one whom we count as an enemy, has wounds they have experienced. Our woundedness does not justify inflicting further wounds upon others, but they can, if we let them, lead to deeper understanding and sympathy.
In verses 26-27, Paul concludes by making a close connection with what he has just said about hope and waiting with the Spirit helping us in our natural weakness, pointing as evidence that when we do not know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Our inarticulate feeling and intuition become articulate in the Spirit, who is emotionally involved and invested in our yearning toward the divine. Our natural human weakness is an occasion for the Spirit to help us. God understands our weakness and inarticulate longings because of the Spirit working within us. The Father knows what the Spirit is saying on our behalf. The Spirit interprets our stuttering, stammering, groaning, and yearning in a way that becomes praise and love. The Spirit makes the pain of this life easier to bear by placing it in the context of hope. God is not distant from us. God is immanent, with us, and for us, through the Spirit. Even if we are inarticulate, the Father is aware of our needs through the immanent experience we have of the power of the Spirit. When our words are incapable of articulating our greatest needs to God in prayer, the Spirit calls out to God for us.[72]
The connection with what preceded could go two directions. First, just as creation and us ourselves groan, so the Spirit also groans for us. Second, just as the Spirit gives us hope, the Spirit also gives us help in our weakness. Paul tells us that the fact Christians live in and with the groaning of the spirit is proved by the fact that they can hope without wavering, even though they do not see. They can wait with patience. They can do this because the Spirit helps them and strengthens them. The Spirit does this by making prayer a possibility and reality, even when prayer is difficult. As God hears them and understands them, they endure the long night, looking for morning. All this, as the Spirit is the power in which the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts. The Spirit makes them Christians. It is perfectly acceptable to read Paul's declaration as the groaning of the Spirit itself on our behalf. The Spirit is emotionally involved and eternally invested in our yearnings toward the Divine.[73] The Spirit helps us in our prayers even when we are so weak, we do not know what to say. We can be grateful for this, for in our weakness who knows the twisted nature of our prayers. Our requests in prayer stand in need of repentance and forgiveness. If we do not know what we ought to pray, we might ask God for anything. Human egoism, human anxiety, cupidity, desire and passion, human short-sightedness, unreasonableness, and stupidity, might flow into prayer.[74] The Spirit coming to the aid of Christians does not involve only a new ethical standard to which the individual would have to adjust behavior. The Spirit has transplanted the Christian into a sphere of power in which behavior is no longer subject to one’s own decision, but which one experiences as freedom rather than compulsion. The Spirit has transplanted the Christian into the freedom of being a child of God. That the Spirit is the personal center of Christian action residing outside the individual makes it understandable that in Paul, the Spirit is both a person distinguished from the Christian and as a power that they possess internally. Thus, the Spirit claims our service. The Christian exists outside the self to the extent that the Christian lives in faith in the resurrected Jesus and thus “in the Spirit.” The immanence of the Spirit in believers exists through the fact that as believers they have found the ground of their life beyond themselves.[75] The leadership of Spirit is not a blind force of nature but is of a personal sort. After all, this is God’s Spirit. This comes out of an account of religious experience. This verse reveals that God hears and understands the Spirit even when words or utterances of any kind fail the human praying. God goes directly to the heart, which is one with the mind of the Spirit. When our own words are incapable of articulating our greatest needs to God in prayer, then the Spirit calls out to God for us.[76]
If we love God, aware only of the roughness of the divine hand, we have indeed gone deeper in our walk with God. Such personal pain and affliction is a reminder of the sufferings of the present time. While this life may bear a hint of eternity, it always remains debatable and ambiguous.[77] Paul makes clear that salvation in Christ means undoing the work of Adam, restoring humanity to the purpose of God. What God has in view, beginning with the call of Abraham, is the reversal of the fall of Adam and of its consequences. The analysis of the human condition as in Adam that began in 1:18 has its culmination in the restoration of humanity as children of God. Redemption is the completion of creation, and humanity is part of that creation. We see our present suffering in the shadow of the Day of Jesus Christ. The time in which we live and suffer is the present time. The future will reveal the glory or beauty of the end of humanity. In this sense, Christianity is “thoroughgoing eschatology,” as redemption remains a hope. The believer will live by this hope. We must desire nothing higher or better than hope.[78]
Paul becomes a theologian of the Spirit. His Christology and eschatology depend on his doctrine of the Spirit. Paul strongly emphasizes the ecstatic element in the experience of the Spiritual Presence. These experiences he claims for himself. He knows that every successful prayer has an ecstatic character. As he will say here, the divine Spirit prays through the person, even should it be “unspeakable sighs.” The formula, being in Christ, which Paul often uses, involves an ecstatic participation in the Christ who is the Spirit, whereby one lives in the sphere of this Spiritual power. Yet, Paul resists any tendency that would permit ecstasy to disrupt structure. To refer to Romans 12-15 at this point, note that Paul can write of the gifts of the Spirit, which is does extensively in I Corinthians 12-14 in dealing with ecstatic experiences. Yet, in both places, he writes of the structure of the moral imperative of love. His focus on love or morality and knowledge are the forms in which ecstasy and structure unite. The church has a problem in actualizing the ideas of Paul because of specific ecstatic movements. The church must prevent the confusion of ecstasy with chaos, and it must fight for structure. On the other hand, it must avoid the institutional profanation of the Spirit. It must avoid the secular profanation of the mainline Protestant church that occurs when it replaces ecstasy with doctrinal or moral structure. Paul would move against both forms of profaning the Spirit. He thinks of this as criterion as duty and risk for the churches.[79]
The closeness of the Spirit to our weakness puts us in the position of those who hope when we do not see. We can wait patiently during the night longing for morning to come. The Spirit who helps us is the Spirit by whom God has poured into us the love of God in Chapter 5.[80] The Spirit is the personal center of Christian action. As such, those in Christ re-center their lives away from self outside themselves to the power the Spirit gives them. The Spirit becomes a personal center of power as those in Christ walk in and live by the Spirit. Those in Christ have found the ground of their lives beyond themselves.[81] This leadership of the Spirit is of a personal sort. Those in Christ, those who participate in Christ and are in union with Christ, live in the sphere of this spiritual power. Paul is careful to provide moral and institutional guidance in a way that provides some structure, but we must always be aware that he also expected the power of the Spirit to provide leadership in new ways.[82]
Colossians 3:1-4 (Year A Easter) contrasts with the previous negative aspect of baptism and union with Christ in stressing what the believer is separated from to a positive aspect of baptism as union with Christ. Paul makes a stark contrast between the former life of faithlessness and the present life of faith. The former is "earthly" and the latter is from "above." The mystery religions might promise the knowledge of heaven but, to Paul, it was a false experience and hence no genuine experience at all. The pastoral strategy is clear. Paul does not disparage their concern for the heavenly realm. Instead, he attempts to redirect it. He sees an antithesis and confrontation. As will be clear in the next section, to seek what is above is not to be other-worldly, for this “seeking” will influence how one lives.[83] They will have a lifestyle and faith expression that will separate them from the syncretistic milieu of the surrounding culture. It is both intellectual and practical, removal to a new sphere of being. Paul challenges them to focus on the true spirituality in Christ. Having experienced this symbolic death and resurrection, each believer, Paul now insists, has yet another mission to complete — to “seek the things that are above.” He urges them to celebrate now — however incompletely — what is still a future event. The eschatological promise has yet to be fulfilled; the “glory” of all those things we “seek above” is still in the future. No doubt behind the "died, raised" pairing is the traditional baptismal formula of dying and rising with Christ. Baptism participates in the death and resurrection of Christ. Hence, Paul exhorts the Colossians to remember their baptism and put on "the new self" (3:10) which baptism brings. The change must pervade the whole nature of the person. Becoming a Christian is a death-to-life event. The death occurred in baptism. Yet, the end is not the end, but rather, a beginning. Paul promises that what hides in the present God will reveal in the future. The revelation would show the believer to be one with Christ. The end is not death, darkness, or nothingness. The end is beautiful because life with Jesus defines our end. We are to live our lives today from the perspective of that end. If we do, our today is always full. It will never be empty. It will have a direction and a goal. Jesus, to Paul, is more than an example whom the believer chooses to follow; rather, for Paul, baptism is a transformation event changing the person from the inside out. Conversion is not a change in the flesh (circumcision), or a change of mind (philosophy); instead, Christ brings mind and body together, for Christ "is all and in all" (v. 11). To live with Christ means to seek our life above, where it is real. We seek here and now, not in this here and now and not on this earth. Think of the true life of the Christian as this exalted life. Our lives are with Christ, and never apart from Him, never at all independently of Him, never at all in and for itself. Humanity never exists in oneself. The Christian is the very last to cling to existing in oneself. Humanity exists in Jesus Christ and in Christ alone. Humanity also finds God in Christ and in Christ alone. We are concealed in Christ, but our lives remain our own, renewed in the reconciliation accomplished in Christ. This passage stresses the security of the believer in Christ. If our lives hide in Christ, they are not hiding in our sin.[84] Christian hope is not just individual hope in God but hope for the world, for the rule of God, and only in this context hope for one’s own salvation. In 1:13-14, God’s saving plan, the divine mystery now revealed, consists of the fact that “Christ is in you, the hope of glory.” The Messiah of the people of God is also the Savior of the world of nations. Therefore, Christ is not only the hope for this or that individual, but also the riches of the glory of the divine plan of salvation among the peoples. Paul developed the notion of the Already and the Not Yet of salvation. In 2:12, Colossians is bold enough to describe the resurrection of the baptized as a reality that is present already. Yet, the tension with the future of salvation is still present when Colossians 3:3-4 still says that that the new life of believers still has a hidden quality, with Christ in God, to whom God has exalted Christ. The resurrection of the believer occurs at death. The biblical basis involves the promise to the thief on the cross. The existence with Christ inaugurated by faith is the start of resurrected life and therefore outlasts death. In this passage, we find biblical support for this notion. God has already raised the baptized with Christ. Naturally, we must add that this life will appear only with the return of Christ as said in verse 4. The thesis of a resurrection in death, which according to verse 1 occurs even at baptism, does not express the totality of the New Testament witness to the resurrection of the dead.[85]
Ephesians 1:15-23 (Year A Ascension Day) is a prayer that focuses upon the supremacy of Christ. He opens with a prayer of thanks to God. He has heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love toward other believers, giving two significant signs of sainthood. Because of this faith and love, he gives thanks for them in his prayers. He then shists an intercession for the gift of the Holy Spirit who will reveal hope, riches, and power from God, completing what the tradition would name as the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. He identifies the Father as the God of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the Father of glory, praying that the Father would give them a new human spirit of wisdom in the form of guidance in how to live and revelation or special insight into the gospel. Such guidance and inspiration suggest growth, so God will continue to give to them this spirit. The goal of this new spirit is that they would receive comprehension or understanding through enlightenment or illumination throughout their lives, giving a creative function to the human spirit, but especially that they may know the hope to which the Father has called them. They received this calling through the gospel, which directs them to the riches of the glorious inheritance they share along with all believers. This hope is a third sign of sainthood. Such faith, hope, and love mean that saints refuse to put a period where God puts a comma. I grant the element of truth in the saying that some people are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly good. The opposite is also true. Some people are so earthly minded they are of no heavenly good. Time is no judge of eternity. Rather, eternity is the judge and tester of time. Eternity is present within us and around us as a spiritual presence. Eternity is the creative root of time. Eternity embraces time. Thus, we need to learn to live our lives at two levels simultaneously. We live at the level of time that eternity embraces. Sometimes, we are aware of the glory of eternity, even while also aware of our daily temporal routine. Sometimes the clouds settle low, and we are chiefly aware of the world of time. Yet, the hint of the eternal, the divine presence, remains with us, even if at the margins of our consciousness.[86] He then connects the power presently have with the resurrection and enthronement of Christ over all powers. He does through a hymn that praises the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. Such exaltation by the Father explains the role of Christ in the present. The background for the hymn is two psalms. In Psalm 110:1, we find a phrase that receives other multiple references in the New Testament, “The Lord says to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’” We also find references in Hebrews 1:13, Mark 12:36, and I Corinthians 15:24. The other psalm is Psalm 8:6, “he has put all things under his feet.” Using such psalms helps him to describe a picture of the current exaltation of Christ in which one has no question of the victory of Christ. In Ephesians 1:20-21, Paul refers to the resurrection of Christ land the enthronement of Christ over all powers. The same power at work in believers is the power that raised Christ from the dead. He will express these thoughts in a hymn that praises the resurrection and exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God. Such exaltation by God explains the role of Christ in the present. The church needs to know what Christ’s role is in the present, not just what his position will be in the future (e.g., eschatological judge). The background for the hymn is two psalms. In Psalm 110:1, we find a phrase that receives other multiple references in the New Testament, “The Lord says to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’” We also find references in Hebrews 1:13, Mark 12:36, and I Corinthians 15:24. The other psalm is Psalm 8:6, “he has put all things under his feet.” Using such psalms helps him to describe a picture of the current exaltation of Christ in which one has no question of the victory of Christ. Thus, 20 God put this power to work in Christ first, when God raised him for the dead and second, when God seated him at the right hand of God in the heavenly places. He further stresses the finality and completeness of this exaltation by saying that the exalted Christ is 21 far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion. These angelic beings reside in the heavens. The list is not exhaustive. He recognizes them as real powers. This enumeration helps to make clear the extent of Christ's victory and rule. All powers are under the control of God. It would include the demons expelled by Jesus and the princes of the nations in Daniel. Paul has in mind those institutions and structures that administer earthly matters and invisible realms and without which human life is impossible: life/death; nature; law; tradition, customs; political structures, ideologies, prejudices, authority, parenthood. Thus, this is not superstition. Ephesians focuses on a community rather than personal piety. Here, it deals not only with that community but also with the structures within the world. Terrestrial power does not limit the power of Christ. Further, God has also exalted Christ above every name that anyone could name, not only in this age but also in the age to come. Time does not limit the power of Christ. The point is that even the cosmic powers, often discussed in Jewish apocalyptic literature, is under the dominion of the exalted Christ. The enumeration makes clear the extent of the victory and rule of the exalted Christ. Paul has in mind those institutions and structures that administer earthly matters and invisible realms, without which human life is impossible. It refers to life and death, nature, torah, tradition, customs, political structures, ideologies and authorities. Angels, for example, are not so much personal figures as they represent forces, such as the principalities and powers we find here, which, as strong as these forces are, God has set them under the dominion of Christ.[87] He concludes by saying that Christ is the head of all things, but especially the church. All powers are under the control of the Father, who has made Christ the head is a say that sums up, renews, and is the source of the universe, a power that shows itself in the church. The plan of redemption includes creation, but until the consummation that arrives with the age to come, hostile powers will exert their influence. Yet, the church can experience the power of that consummation today. The new age is a present reality. We no longer must live under the influence of the old order. The reference to the church hints at the catholicity of the church in a qualified way as the fullness of the eschatological consummation of the church. It will manifest itself at any given historical moment in the openness of the actual fellowship of the church, of transcending any particularity, to the fullness of Christ that will fully come only in the eschaton. True catholicity will always recognize the provisional nature of this affirmation of the church, rather than seek to identify the true church with any individual church.[88] Since Christ is the head of the church, referring to any pastor or to the Bishop of Rome with the same terminology causes justifiable offense. Byzantium was quite right to reject the claim of the Bishop of Rome based upon this passage.[89] Here is an effect of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. The church is the embodiment of Christ and maybe even an extension of the Incarnation and is therefore an expansion of the fullness of Christ. The church is the manifestation of Christ to the world. The church has a cosmic role. Christ has a role in the present, in making the power of God available today, but in a way that provides movement toward the unifying hope of the future. Nothing is outside the power of Christ.
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[17] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 2, p. 425)
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[20] Reginald Fuller (The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 1971, pp. 34-48)
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[26] (Schneider, TDNT, Volume 2, p. 466-467)
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[28] Reginald H Fuller (The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 1971, p. 48-49)
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[40] -N. T. Wright, "Grave matters," Christianity Today, April 6, 1998.
[41] Lewis, C.S., Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. G. Bles: 1964, 121-22, 158.
[42] Orr and Walther, Anchor Bible.
[43] John D. G. Dunn
[44] Schweitzer (The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, 65-68)
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[50] Timothy Joyce (1868-1947)
[51] Furnish, Anchor Bible
[52] (Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976], 40-52).
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[55] Chrysostom, homily on Romans.
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[59] The Aramaic cry abba as used by Jesus in the moment of his supreme earthly confidence in God, was a cry cherished in prayer by early Christians in memory of Jesus himself. Many NT interpreters regard the Aramaic abba as an instance of ipsissima vox Iesu. Such a mode of address for God, abba, is unattested in the OT. The cry "Abba! Father" -- which newly adopted sons and daughters may now legitimately call out -- itself demonstrates the closeness of a believer's relationship to God. The Aramaic "Abba" was, of course, Jesus' own favorite divine address. Paul's letter reveals that early Christians had quickly taken to using this address as well.
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[61] In spite of the comment by
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[68] Paul Tillich, Chapter 18, “Waiting,” The Shaking of the Foundations
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[70] Henry Wordsworth Longfellow
[71] Weil, Simone. "The love of God and affliction." Waiting for God. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1951.
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[80] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.2 [64.4], 330.
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[83] Andrew Lincoln
[84] Barth, Church Dogmatics
[85] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology,
[86] Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (New York: Harper & Row, 1941) 90-92.
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