Category Archives: Ethics

Our Traditions Are Rooted in Creation’s Possibilities—Reflections on Being a Kuyperian-Wesleyan

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The above quote is from a published article by Gideon Strauss (originally from South Africa), who has been appointed to head up the Worldview Studies program at the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS), in Toronto. I did my PhD (and some previous Masters coursework) at ICS, and taught a number of courses in the Worldview Studies program when I was working on my doctorate (Brian Walsh was then Worldview program director).

The Kuyperian Tradition and the Institute for Christian Studies

Like me, Gideon has been shaped by the Kuyperian (a.k.a. Neocalvinist) tradition, which gave birth to the ICS and which continues to shape its vision. We have also had the similar experience of being born and raised in one culture, while presently living and working in another culture.

In the article that the quote was taken from, Gideon reflects on the possibilities of a postcolonial re-appropriation of Neocalvinism in Africa, given that apartheid was propagated by Afrikaners, who were (at least, nominally) Neocalvinists. His analysis is very much indebted to the Neocalvinist philosophical tradition, something that didn’t impact me quite as deeply, given that my interests were more theological and especially concerned with biblical interpretation.

I was, however, impacted by the broad Kuyperian vision, which claims that all of life and human culture, indeed all creation, belongs to God. In a previous post I quoted Abraham Kuyper’s famous statement:

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign Lord of all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

And God’s saving work through Christ is as wide as creation.

These were themes I was beginning to discern in Scripture before my contact with the Kuyperian tradition at ICS; but that tradition gave a helpful focus to these themes.

Of late I have been reflecting on my debt to the various traditions I’ve been part of over the years.

Traditions That Have Shaped Me

First, there is the indelible experience of growing up Jamaican (white in a predominantely black culture), then being thrust into Canadian culture at the age of 22, and how having lived over a third of my life in the United States. For some years now I’ve described my hybrid identity as “Jamericadian.”

But I’ve also been aware that I’ve been formed by many diverse church traditions.

In Jamaica I was a member of the Missionary Church (a Wesleyan/Holiness denomination); in Canada I’ve been Presbyterian (two types), Christian Reformed, and Baptist (two types); and in America I’ve been a member of the American Baptist Church and now the Free Methodist Church (a return to my Wesleyan roots).

As I look at my ecclesial and theological journey, I note that I have returned to the Wesleyan tradition which initially shaped me (however, I wasn’t particularly aware of the depth of that tradition, initially). Along the way, I often connected with the Reformed/ Calvinist/ Presbyterian theological tradition, since this was the tradition that seemed to be aware of worldview issues (which I found important). But just as often, as I moved from city to city (six such moves), I was attracted to the particular local church; my motivation for church involvement was usually guided by the search for a faithful community on my faith journey.

Interestingly, I have found that there is significant overlap between the Kuyperian tradition and the Wesleyan tradition. In particular, Wesley’s interest in creation and the sciences (called “natural philosophy” at the time) and his mature view of the eschatological redemption of all things resonate well with the Kuyperian vision of Christ’s cosmic lordship.

Further Thoughts about the Intersection of the Kuyperian and Weslyan Traditions

For those interested, I’ve been articulating some ideas about the intersection of the Kuyperian and Wesleyan traditions (especially as I have been shaped by them) in response to a blog post by Bob Robinson.

In the post, which first appeared on his blog Regenerate, Bob explained the Kuyperian view of the kingdom of God as God’s claim over the entire created order. In a previous post he had addressed the anabaptist version of the kingdom in the writings of Scot McKnight and John Howard Yoder. And he promised a further post explicitly contrasting the Kuyerian and anabaptist visions of the kingdom.

In the discussion that followed on Bob’s Facebook page (which is copied to my Facebook page), a conversation started (in advance of his promised post) about the differences between the Kuyperian vision of God’s cosmic kingdom and Scot McKnight’s view of the kingdom of God as equivalent to the church.

I joined the discussion at a number of points. Here were some of my comments.

  • A Middleton-McKnight Book on the Kingdom of God

Scot McKnight has asked me to write a book with him (for IVP) on the Kingdom of God, that would include his view (the kingdom as the church) and my own (Kuyperian-Wesleyan) hybrid view (a cosmic kingdom, embodied in the church, both as institution and as scattered people of God). We would also include one or two other positions (so this would be a three or four views book). I’ve agreed to work on this with Scott after my sabbatical (I would be free to work on this sometime after 2017).

  • On Being a Kuyperian-Wesleyan

Someone wondered about my hybrid Kuyperian-Wesleyan identity, since he hadn’t known of the Wesleyan part. This was my reply:

I have found that there is great overlap between Wesley and Kuyper on the cosmic scope of God’s salvation. Perhaps the Wesleyan piece comes out more in the emphasis I place on the church, and the importance of ecclesial witness. There is also a sacramentalism in Wesley, that he got from the Greek Fathers (who influenced him greatly).

In response to a comment about how complex our identities can be, I noted:

Most of us have some sort of hybrid identity. Different contexts might lead me to highlight different aspects of my identity. I have certainly been shaped by the Kuyperian tradition, but I never found myself a perfect fit. I still retained some of my formation in the Wesleyan/ holiness tradition (though I was unaware of the nature of this tradition at the time). The Kuyperian tradition helped me correct some of the problems I perceived in my formation. But as I have become more cognizant with the Wesleyan tradition I have come to see a depth and breadth there that was not always explicit in my formation (and that isn’t always manifest in contemporary expressions of this tradition). But, thankfully, both my seminary and my church are characterized by this depth and breadth. See my post on Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College: https://jrichardmiddleton.wordpress.com/…/northeastern…/

  • How I Came to Discern My Kinship with the Wesleyan Tradition

When asked for further clarification of the Wesleyan piece, I elaborated as follows:

I discovered my kinship with Wesleyans after I began teaching at Roberts Wesleyan College in 2002 and met Wesleyan academics (faculty and students) at the Graduate Students Theological Seminar (held in Indianapolis each fall), sponsored by the Free Methodist Church and the Wesleyan Church. This seminar was started in the 1960s to support students from these two denominations who were working on PhDs in the broad area of theology or religious studies.

Each year doctoral students are invited to present papers arising from their research, with a Wesleyan professor in the same area giving a detailed (critical, yet encouraging) response. The students’ expenses are all covered. A bishop from each denomination also attends, and participates in the discussions, fellowship times, and worship.

Denominational sponsored or affiliated colleges (like Roberts Wesleyan College, Houghton College, Azusa Pacific University, Seattle Pacific University, Greenville College, Spring Arbor College, etc.) all send faculty representatives, who participate with the students in rigorous academic discussions, but also in fellowship and worship.

This annual event sends a strong message that the church values serious academic work. It therefore helps the students who attend remain ecclesially connected, conscious both of the relevance of their work for the church and that they themselves need the church’s support.

  • The Church in Kuyperian and Wesleyan Perspective

I added a final set of comments on what I learned from the Kuyperian and Wesleyan traditions about the significance of the church:

The Kuyperian tradition has been very helpful to me by distinguishing between 1) the church as an institution (denomination, or local body) and 2) the church as the body of Christ or God’s people (who may organize themselves in denominations and gather for worship, teaching, and fellowship; but who are still God’s people when they simply live their lives in the world, as parents, spouses, citizens, politicians, engineers, students, teachers, farmers, workers; and also when they organize themselves into non-ecclesial institutions, such as schools, labor unions, etc.). So the church in the first (narrower) sense is only one manifestation of the church in the second (wider) sense.

Kuyper thus calls on Christians wherever they are and whatever they do (whether individually or collectively) to represent the Lord Christ (and his kingdom) in their lives. It is the mission of the church (in the broader sense as God’s people/ the body of Christ) to conform their lives to the standards and values of the King of all creation.

The Wesleyan tradition isn’t so clear on the above point, though Wesley strongly emphasized the need for the church (and all Christians) to minister to the poor as part of the gospel (which involved both proclamation and deeds of mercy).

But I value the Wesleyan tradition particularly for stressing the crucial role of the gathered (institutional) church for the life of faith; the worship of the gathered church should be spiritually formative, which grounds the life of the people of God for faithful living in the wider world (which is still God’s world).

But I don’t want to give up on the Kuyperian distinction between the two senses of church. In fact, if you read the Pauline epistles with the broader sense of “church” in mind, they have much more far-reaching implications, addressing what Wesleyans have called “social holiness.”

I am grateful to have been profoundly shaped by these differing traditions rooted in God’s creation, which have been unfolded and refolded over time by communities of the faithful, in ways that engender blessing and shalom in God’s world.

Jesus and Social Engagement (in Jamaica)

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This Sunday afternoon (September 13, 2015 at 4:00 pm) my friend Dr. Eric Flett, Professor of Theology and Culture at Eastern University (in Philadelphia), will deliver the fourth annual Zenas Gerig Memorial Lecture at Jamaica Theological Seminary (JTS), in Kingston.

Dr. Zenas Gerig was the founder of JTS (in 1960), and its first Principal (then, its first President). I got to know him when I attended JTS in the seventies, and he taught the first formal Bible courses I took at JTS (on the Pentateuch and the Historical Books). Not only was he a prime mover behind the Caribbean Evangelical Theological Association, but he founded the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in Kingston in 1986. He was an amazing man who had a significant impact on the church and on theological education both in Jamaica and in the rest of the Caribbean.

Dr. Gerig passed away September 14, 2011 and I had the privilege of delivering the first Zenas Gerig Memorial Lecture in September 2012.

Like Zenas Gerig, Eric Flett is an American. But whereas Zenas lived 43 of his years in Jamaica, Eric’s knowledge of and love of the Caribbean comes from his marriage to a Trinidadian and his extensive travel in the region.

Eric accompanied me to Jamaica in January 2010 to participate in the Forum on Caribbean Theology, sponsored by JTS, at which I presented a paper entitled “Islands in the Sun: Overtures to a Caribbean Creation Theology.”

Although Eric’s participation in the Forum was limited to a panel discussion, he later wrote an invited essay that was included in A Kairos Moment for Caribbean Theology, the volume of essays from the 2010 JTS Forum that I edited with Garnett Roper.

Eric’s essay was entitled “Dingolayin’: Theological Notes for a Caribbean Theology.” Trinidadians will know what Dingolay means; but the rest of us might need to look it up.

In this year’s Zenas Gerig Memorial Lecture Eric Flett will address the implications for social engagement that flow from Christian orthodoxy, particularly the doctrine of the Trinity.

Dr. Flett summarizes his topic this way:

“Here is the argument I would like to make: that Christology and creation, salvation and social engagement, are all of one piece . . . , and are sustained harmoniously by a robust doctrine of the Trinity.”

In the context of this Trinitarian doctrine, the lecture will focus on the identity of Jesus, as:

  • The Son of the Father;
  • The Messiah of the Jews;
  • The Image of God; and
  • The sender of the Spirit.

Dr. Flett explains:

“When the doctrine of the Trinity becomes marginalized or misunderstood it threatens the intellectual coherence of the Christian faith and, subsequently, the effectiveness, faithfulness, and endurance of its social witness. There’s no divide here between orthodoxy or orthopraxy . . . .”

I wish I could be in Kingston this weekend to hear Dr. Flett’s lecture in person.

If you are interested, and in the area, I encourage you not to miss this opportunity to be engaged by this significant theologian in serious reflection on “Jesus and Social Engagement,” a vital topic for the Caribbean church and the wider society.

The Problem of Animal Suffering in a Good Creation—Engaging Ronald Osborn’s Death Before the Fall (IVP, 2014), Part 3

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In two previous posts I began to examine Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014).

In the first post I introduced the book and summarized Osborn’s critique of narrow literalism in the way the biblical creation accounts are often read. In the second post I affirmed (and even strengthened) his case for understanding animal predation as part of the good world God made.

In this post I will summarize Osborn’s argument for God’s redemption of animal suffering, and raise some questions about it.

Osborn had early on mentioned “the central riddle of this book” (p. 13), which was the tension between the beauty and terror of animals in the wild.

In chapter 12 Osborn mounted a good case for viewing animal predation (and the suffering this naturally causes) as part of God’s good creation. As I noted in my previous post, I found his argument from the book of Job (supplemented with the perspective of various Psalms) convincing.

However, Osborn is not content with making this point.

In chap. 13 (“Creation & Kenosis”), Osborn explores the other side of his tension, namely that it does not seem satisfactory to simply affirm the goodness of animal mortality and predation, given the very real suffering evident in the animal world. He calls this a “deep scandal” (p. 157) and notes that “There are things under heaven and in earth that we should not be at peace with, and the jaws of Behemoth, I would submit, are one” (p. 157).

Osborn therefore turns to the theological notion of kenosis, in connection with the Patristic doctrine of theosis, to address this problem.

In the end, his claim is that Christ’s self-emptying and death was for the redemption of all suffering, even that which predates human evil.

Kenosis

The theological idea of kenosis is derived from Philippians 2, where Paul describes Christ’s self-humbling (verse 7).

5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied [eknōsen] himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

This is the first half of a poem or hymn that Paul quotes, the second half of which affirms Christ’s exaltation after death, and makes clear his deity (by using language from Isaiah that in its original context referred to YHWH’s uniqueness).

Traditionally, the idea of kenosis is associated with Christ giving up or letting go of his deity (or of his attributes of deity), suggesting that the incarnation involved a subtraction or lessening.

However, this misreads the text, which affirms instead that Christ (who legitimately has all the power of deity) did not use this for his own advantage, but (in humility) became a servant, even to death, to bring us salvation. This is the core of N. T. Wright’s argument in his chapter on Philippians 2 in The Climax of the Covenant.

The point is clear if we ask why Christ can be an example for us (verse 5).

He didn’t model becoming empty of deity (whatever that might mean); that wouldn’t be relevant to us. Rather, Christ modeled the compassionate use of power and privilege. If the one who is equal to the Father used his deity for our sakes, how much more should we use our God-given privileges to serve others in love.

It seems to me that Osborn tends towards using kenosis as an umbrella term to refer to Christ holding in abeyance his divine attributes, which led to his suffering (so he incorporates suffering under kenosis). This is why he can identify kenosis with open theism, which affirms God’s self-limitation in order to generously allow creatures space for genuine freedom. But one can be sympathetic with open theism (as I am) without affirming kenosis in Osborn’s sense.

 Theosis

Osborn pairs his notion of kenosis with theosis, also known as “deification” or “divinization.” Although I find some articulations of this doctrine problematic, since they seem to confuse the categories of creator and creation, I understand the impetus of theosis, both in the church fathers and today among authors like Michael Gorman.

The biblical warrant for using language of theosis is usually 2 Peter 1:4, which affirms that God has promised that we “may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature.” Of course, this doesn’t mean becoming God, but godlike in our character.

But beyond the transformation into godlikeness, the theosis doctrine, especially in Irenaeus (second century church father), is also associated with a goal-oriented vision of salvation. That is, the transformation that redemption effects is not a return to primitive origins, but along with repairing what went wrong, brings humanity to its intended telos or goal, which sin impeded.

So this combination of kenosis and theosis allows Osborn to articulate a vision of God’s compassionate suffering in Christ, which serves to bring the cosmos, with its immense animal suffering, to God’s intended telos of perfection where all suffering is eradicated.

I have to admit that I am attracted to Osborn’s vision.

Indeed, it is similar to my own articulation of the telos of salvation in my book A New Heaven and a New Earth. Like Osborn, I would go beyond Irenaeus in applying this goal-oriented vision of salvation to the cosmos and not just to humanity.

As many biblical scholars are coming to recognize, the Bible envisions a movement from a garden in the context of God’s creation of heaven and earth, to a garden-city in the context of a new heaven and a new earth, where God is fully present.

So, the goodness of the original creation is not the same as the perfection God has in mind for the cosmos.

I also find Osborn’s affirmation of God working non-coercively in and through ordinary processes of nature and history compelling. He notes that God’s sovereignty does not predetermine everything in advance, but gives creatures freedom to develop (p. 161). This, he explains, is the basis both of the evolutionary process and of the animal suffering this process has engendered.

Why Does the Cosmos Need Redeeming?

A problem is evident, however, in chapter 13 when Osborn comes to evaluate the evolutionary process, with its resultant suffering.

Should we think of this suffering as “natural evil,” that is, something that is wrong in some fundamental sense, and so needs redeeming?

Or is the evolutionary process, along with the suffering this has caused over the eons, part of the good (though wild and unpredictable) creation God has made?

In chapter 12, on the book of Job, Osborn had argued for the natural death and suffering of animals in the evolutionary process as part of God’s good world. Yet in chapter 13, he argues that this world of animal death and suffering needs redeeming.

But why would animal mortality and suffering need redeeming? Two answers are possible.

First, they could need redeeming because they are the result, in some way, of human sin. But Osborn has already (rightly) rejected the idea that nature is “fallen” due to human sin. Rather, he views animal suffering as simply part of what a world of living organisms involves, especially an evolving world.

Alternately, nature could need redeeming because it is intrinsically deficient (here the deficiency would be precisely the animal suffering involved in the evolutionary process).

Did God Create a Deficient Cosmos?

I want to affirm the basic intuition I sense in Osborn here, that the world seems out of whack with how it should be. And he clearly has a sense of kinship with, and compassion for, animals that is laudable.

Nevertheless, Osborn comes perilously close to a theme that is gaining momentum among Christian writers who take evolution seriously, namely that the death of Christ atones not just for sin and its consequences (which I affirm), but for God’s inadequate or deficient creation of the cosmos. In a sense, God is atoning for his own sin in creating a deficient world.

I think that the issue comes down not to whether evolution should be accepted (I agree with Osborn that it makes more sense of the evidence than any alternative). Rather, the issue is whether we think of the chaotic wildness of the cosmos (of which evolution can be considered a part) as part a of a good creation or as “natural evil” which needs to be redeemed.

We cannot have it both ways. Either a good creator brought into being a good, though not “perfect,” world. Or God is not a good creator, and so cannot be trusted. And no amount of kenosis can atone for this.

The Need to Distinguish Creation from Fall and Redemption

According to Osborn, “God creates as he redeems and redeems as he creates” (p. 160). But I would want to maintain that God’s generous power evident in creation (which does not require God’s suffering) is distinct from God redemptive action to reverse the fall (which certainly requires God’s suffering).

I fully agree with Osborn that the kenosis of the cross (rightly understood) opens our eyes to see the realities of good and evil; but when he states that “When Christ cries ‘It is finished’ on Easter Friday the creation of the world is at last completed” (p. 165), I must dissent.

Otherwise creation and fall are indistinguishable, and God is not a good creator.

This means that we need to think carefully about the interconnection between God’s telos or goal for creation (which does not depend on the introduction of sin) and the need for redemption (which does). I myself haven’t fully sorted this issue out.

In the end, Osborn’s book is a strange tissue of great insights and contradictory proposals. Should we accept the testimony of Job (and the psalms) that God views animal predation as good? Or do we go with our instincts that this is all “natural evil” requiring redemption?

Perhaps Osborn will take some time to think through these issues and write some more on the topic. It is certainly an agenda for my own theological explorations.