Pathways at Grace Community Church

Sunday, June 23: Eschatology 1: Thinking Apocalyptically

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 04:15:00 +0000

This week, we began the very last section of our year-long exploration of Christian doctrine: eschatology. We looked primarily at Paul's rich eschatological theology.

Almost done!

(I was out of town June 16, so no class.)

Audio

Outline

Sunday, June 9: Ecclesiology 4: The Sacraments

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 04:04:00 +0000

In finishing up ecclesiology, we discussed the church's central rites: the sacraments (ordinances in evangelical parlance, though it's not just semantics; there's a big difference between the two terms).

Audio

Outline

Sunday, June 2, Ecclesiology 3: The Holiness and Catholicity of the Church

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 03:56:00 +0000

Finally getting caught up. Apologies for the delay.

Audio here.

Outline here.

We didn't making it to apostolicity, the final mark of the church. C'est la vie!

Sunday, May 26: Ecclesiology 2.2: The Unity of the Church, Continued

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 26 May 2013 20:43:00 +0000

This Sunday we finished up our discussion of the oneness of the church (i.e., church unity).

Listen here.

Outline is the same as the May 19 entry.

Coming up: the other three marks of the church: holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity; the sacraments; and church tradition. After that ... the end—that is, eschatology, the study of the end.

Sunday, May 19: Ecclesiology 2.1: The Unity of the Church

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 26 May 2013 20:39:00 +0000

In week two of ecclesiology, we started in on the "marks of the church," the four identifiers Christians confess in the Nicene Creed: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. We got halfway through "one." Not a good pace for the number of weeks left before the summer, but church unity is an important but neglected discussion in evangelicalism today, so I was willing to dwell on it for a while.

Listen here.

Outline here.

Sunday, May 12, 2013: Introduction to Ecclesiology (and Pathways update)

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 26 May 2013 20:26:00 +0000

On April 21 we finished up the doctrine of grace with a follow-up discussion on issues surrounding predestination. On April 28, I taught on the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of deification (outline here). We had great discussions both weeks, but my recording device was MIA. We didn't have class on May 5 because of the GCC Men's Retreat.

That gets us up to May 12, when we basically discussed J.I. Packer's essay "A Stunted Ecclesiology? The Theory and Practice of Evangelical Churchliness," as an introduction to ecclesiology, the study of the church. If interested, that essay would get you up to speed on the discussions. (Again, I didn't get it recorded, unfortunately.) See the outline here.

Sunday, April 14: Doctrine of Grace 2: Issues with Predestination

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:39:00 +0000

That's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek title. I do have issues with certain formulations of predestination, but we in class today we focused on a few of the more thorny areas of predestinarian thought, namely, limited atonement and free will.

I thought it was a great discussion. We certainly didn't resolve any of the deep paradoxes, but I felt we were able to approach these topics in a way that pointed out some of the more problematic interpretations while affirming the earnest efforts among some to deal with the truly difficult aspects of (read: mystery) of predestination. What's more, we were able to come to a place where we both affirmed the biblical and theological necessity of predestination and realized that the rational, human logic of predestination breaks into a million brilliant, resplendent pieces on the shoals of God's mysterious and transcendent love in Christ.

Audio

(No handout)

Sunday, April 7: The Doctrine of Grace 1: Predestination

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:22:00 +0000

It's been awhile since I've posted. Back in March, Chad Raith talked on justification.

The following week, I taught on pneumatology, specifically the person of the Spirit in theology proper (the doctrine of God, i.e., the Trinity) and the Spirit's "mission" in the economy of salvation. But I forgot to bring my recording device.

The next week was Easter, so we didn't have class.

The following week, last week, April 7, I did successfully record our class. But I haven't got around to posting it until now.

So here it is. Week number one (of two) on predestination. Happy listening.

Audio

Handout

Guest Speaker: Dr. Charles Raith on Justification

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:33:00 +0000

My friend from grad school Charles Raith II (who goes by Chad), now assistant professor of religion and philosophy at John Brown University, gave an excellent—and I mean excellent—overview of the doctrine of justification this past Sunday. He situated the doctrine within its overall theological context and then drew out the different understandings among various Protestant and Catholic interpreters. Great stuff.

Listen here.

View his slick Prezi slideshow (which he didn't use in class) here.

Sunday, March 10: The Work of Christ, Part 2: The Atonement: Issues and Approaches

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:23:00 +0000

This week we talked about the three dominant models of the atonement: Christus Victor, moral influence, and satisfaction/penal substitution. Then we discussed Anselm's doctrine of satisfaction, how it morphed into penal substitution during and after the Reformation, and some of the contemporary debates surrounding God's wrath and penal substitution. Unfortunately, we had to do a pretty quick fly-by over this last part. A few of us had a sizzling discussion following up on the last ten minutes or so, but that, alas, was not recorded.

Listen here.

Handout here.

Sunday, March 3: The Work of Christ, Part 1: The Atonement: Intro and Biblical Foundations

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 21:17:00 +0000

We began our study of the atonement this week, talking about how to think about the atonement and looking at the biblical material. Discussion got a little bogged down near the end, but hopefully next week we'll tie up some of the loose ends. Listen here. Handouts here, here, and here.

[UPDATE: Class doesn't start until about three minutes in, so unless you want to listen to local chit-chat for a few minutes, skip till about 2:50. I will do better on checking and editing before I post from here on out, Scouts' honor. (NB: I was never a Boy Scout.)]

Sunday, February 25: Person of Christ, Part 2.1: Christological Heresies

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:07:00 +0000

This week, we concluded the study of the person of Christ by (briefly) surveying the various christological heresies that cropped up in the first seven centuries of the church. This hopefully enables us to discern more clearly who the one person of Christ is (and is not) in his fully human and fully divine natures.

Here is the podcast. We continued on the same outline from last week.

Next week, we'll start on the work of Christ, the atonement.

Sunday, February 17: Person of Christ, Part 2: The 5th-c. Christological Controversies

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:17:00 +0000

In this week's class we discussed the christological developments of the fourth and fifth centuries and their culmination at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Guest appearances from Athanasius of Alexandria, Nestorius, and Cyril of Alexandria. There was wonderful interaction and discussion in this class. Pathways is great!

The podcast is available here. Outline here, with a few supplementary materials here.

Sunday, February 10: Person of Christ, Part 1: Introduction to Christology

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 23:45:00 +0000

Pathways now has a podcast! I've begun recording our weekly Sunday school classes, and you should be able to view them here or subscribe on iTunes etc. We'll see how it works, and I'll get the bugs sorted out as they pop up. For now, the first one is available here. Every week, I hope to publish the audio of the week's class, with a title similar to the format on this one. Maybe we can get the outlines posted here too. Stay tuned.

[Update: Here's the outline]

Impassible Desire

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:25:00 +0000

4th-c. church father Gregory of Nyssa

A quotation from Gregory of Nyssa:

Our appetite, purified from all these things [the passions], will orient itself toward one single object of will, desire and love. It will not entirely abolish our natural impulses to these things, but it will reorient them toward participation in immaterial goods. For there will be an incessant love for true Beauty, a laudable desire for the treasures of Wisdom, the beautiful and noble love for glory that is achieved in the communion of God’s kingdom, a sublime passion that will never find satiety and will never be deluded, in its good desire, by the satiety of these objects. (from De mortuis)

In Pathways a few weeks ago, we discussed God's impassibility (that God is not subject to fluctuating or passing states of emotion), especially as it relates to his attributes of simplicity and wrath. One of the typical criticisms of impassibility is that God is a God of passionate love, and describing God as impassible (note the same root as passion, pass- from the Latin, passio) makes him not intensely loving—indeed, love itself—but cold and distant. I hope we dispelled that misconception pretty well in class, but it bears repeating that the doctrine of impassibility actually safeguards our understanding of God as a God of perfect love.

So—hang with me here—last week we began with the doctrine of the Trinity, and as we discussed the Father-Son language in the Gospel of John, somebody brought up that we are also called God's sons (and daughters) in Scripture. This is exactly right, and I had the (atypical) wherewithal to bring up the theological formulation, developed by the church fathers, that what Christ is by nature, we are by grace. This is the doctrine of our adoption. Jesus Christ, in his humanity and divinity, is the perfect image of our adoption into the life of the Trinity, which is characterized by perfect, impassible love. So, looking at Gregory's quote above, we see that God even imparts something of his impassible nature to us in our sanctification, especially in our state of complete eschatological purification. That is, by grace, we are able to love God perfectly.

So paradoxically, our desire for God will be impassible; it will, as Gregory says above, "orient itself toward one single object of will, desire and love." This is not a static, cold comprehension, but an "incessant love for true Beauty." An incessant love. How, if our love is perfected, will we continue to desire God incessantly? The answer lies in God's infinity and our finitude. That is a gulf that can never be breached. There is always more to God than we can contain. As the theologian Kyle Strobel says in a work in Jonathan Edwards: "In heaven the glorified saints are like containers that are always full but whose capacity is always growing."

Jesus Christ, who by nature loves the Father in perfect impassibility, enables, through the cross and resurrection, our participation in that same impassible love. It is the perfection of our nature by grace.

So much of theology, and the Christian life, rests on this balance between affirming the infinite difference between God and his creatures, on the one hand, and affirming our intimate union with him, on the other.

Heavy stuff, but very rich.

Reading Schmemann, Understanding Simeon

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:50:00 +0000

Icon, Righteous Simeon the God-Receiver

Right now I'm reading Alexander Schmemann's book For the Life of the World. Though Schmemann was Eastern Orthodox, and he wrote to and for the Orthodox, the book has turned into something of a classic for Christians of all stripes, especially for those interested in what a "sacramental worldview" means. (One Protestant theologian even recently referred to the book as a "prose-poem.") And it is indeed a wonderful, beautiful book. I recommend it to anybody who's wishing to go deeper in the Christian faith, especially in tandem with Hans Boersma's book Heavenly Participation. Read the former to be inspired by the beauty of the liturgical and sacramental depth of the Christian tradition; read the latter to understand both the theological history of the sacramental worldview and its ramifications for evangelical Christians today. From what I understand, reading Schmemann tends to generate among young, impressionable evangelicals an intense fascination with, and occasionally even conversion to, Orthodoxy. But I think a book like Schmemann's bears its best fruit among us evangelicals if it causes us to think creatively about our own tradition rather than pine after another, even if we can learn a lot from other Christian traditions. Boersma helps us do that, in dialogue with Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy, however.

As I was reading Schmemann, I came across a passage on the place of Simeon (from Luke 2) in the liturgy. Simeon's swan song is part of evening prayer, called Vespers, or sometimes night prayer, called Compline, and is specifically referred to as the Nunc dimittis (Latin for "now let").

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word. For mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people; to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

Schmemann's observations on Simeon—how Simeon's actions become our actions in the liturgy—are beautiful, even poetic. So poetic, in fact, that I thought it would work very well as an actual poem. So, with apologies to the deceased Schmemann, and with some artistic license, I inserted line and stanza breaks, and I changed all the third-person pronouns in reference to Simeon to second-person pronouns; in other words, I changed it from a description of Simeon to an address to Simeon.

You had been waiting all your life,
And then at last the Christ Child was given to you:
You held the Life of the world in your arms.

You stood for the whole world
In its expectation and longing,
And the words you used to express your thanksgiving
Have become our own.

You could recognize the Lord
Because you expected Him;
You took Him into your arms
Because it is natural to take someone you love into your arms;
And then your life of waiting was fulfilled.

You had beheld the One you had longed for.
You had completed your purpose in life, and
You were ready to die.

But death to you was no catastrophe.
It was only a natural expression of the fulfillment of your waiting.
You were not closing your eyes to the light
You had at last seen;

Your death was only the beginning
Of a more inward vision of that light.

The Olympics, the Prosperity Gospel, and the Theology of Martyrdom

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:53:00 +0000

A lot of my friends on Facebook have recently been sharing this picture of recent Gold-medalist Gabby Douglas; the caption reads, "'I give all the glory to God. It's kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall down on me.' Gabby Douglas after winning the Gold, Women's All Around Gymnast.”

Let's parse this out a little bit and think about it theologically. She gives all the glory to God. Nothing wrong there, and a noble sentiment.

Skip over the win-win part for a bit.

Then she says that the glory goes up to him. Again, great.

Then she says that the blessings fall down on her. Again, can't argue. She has clearly been blessed with enormous amounts of God-given talent and dedication, and has achieved a gold medal as a result. Only a completely world-denying spirituality would question whether somebody's gratuitous amounts of gracefulness and ability are something other than a blessing. Chariots of Fire, anyone?

But the troubling part is the seeming economy of exchange between giving God the glory he is due and receiving his blessing in return. Is it really a win-win situation? Do we receive God's blessing for giving him glory? It depends, I suppose, on how we define "win-win" and how we define "blessing."

Before I go on, let me make clear that I am not denying the sincerity of Gabby Douglas's faith or trying to cast aspersion on her performance at the Olympics. All this probably says more about us collectively as evangelical Christians than it does about this single gymnast.

Nevertheless, it is fruitful to ask about the nature of the blessing we receive for giving God glory, or doing his will, or associating with Christ in the first place. Because Douglas's comments seem to come dangerously close to a sort of prosperity gospel. I do A, B, and C for God; and he improves my life (materially) with X, Y, and Z. Maybe Gabby Douglas didn't mean it this way. I don't know. She was in the thrill of the moment, and no doubt a good many things were racing through her mind.

In any case, do these types of comments (or the quasi-spiritual comments and gestures made by countless professional athletes after, say, scoring a touchdown) have anything to do with Christian spirituality? Many an Olympic devotional reflection has had occasion to refer to Paul's famous words in 1 Corinthians 9:25, indirectly referring to the "Isthmian Games" (games similar to the ancient Olympic Games), which were held in Corinth: The athletes discipline themselves "to obtain an incorruptible crown; but we an incorruptible." This is more an illustration than anything else. Paul's comments in 2 Corinthians 11, however, are more apropos, for Paul deploys the list there as the marks of genuine apostleship; this is what marks him out as a disciple of Christ, over against the "super apostles," who identify themselves by their distinction, their quaffed presentation, their credentials, their success:

Far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

Or consider the Letter to the Hebrews, where hardship is considered a mark of God's love rather than his abandonment:

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Note that these two passages do not imply that all evil that happens is somehow God trying to work for your good. God is not the author of evil. Rather, the point is, it's a pretty good bet that God is at work in what you are doing if you experience resistance to it or hardship because of it. God's favor, God's love, is not directly linked to our success.

Furthermore, did the martyrs think like Gabby Douglas? The church built on Paul's counterintuitive spirituality by developing a theology of martyrdom that reinterpreted God's blessing as utterly antithetical to prosperity. Listen to the Apostolic Father Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote to the church at Rome while he was on his way there to be killed for his faith.

I write to the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God, unless you hinder me. I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Allow me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.

A little macabre, perhaps, but it provides a bracing tonic to counter the illness of the prosperity gospel. (And note that the church has always condemned seeking out martyrdom for martyrdom's sake; God is on the side of life, not death.) For the martyrs, who, in the traditional attribution, are the seed of the church, "attaining to God," in Ignatius's remarkable phrase, had everything to do with embracing suffering for Christ and his kingdom. I submit, however, that the equation of God's blessing with winning a gold medal has everything to do not with the kingdom but with the American Dream. And there is very little overlap between the two. In fact, unmitigated success may actually be the sign of God's abandonment, for it is possible that he gives us over to our loves that are not ultimately directed to him (which in the end is hell; Read Lewis's The Great Divorce, or better, read Dante's Divine Comedy).

Again, I don't say all this to downplay Gabby Douglas's remarkable achievement, or to deny that her Christian faith had anything to do with her commitment and her dedication and her success. And neither do I want to imply that she is misusing her talent to participate in the Olympic Games.

What I want to question is, on the one hand, the equation of God's blessing with our giving him the glory (which it is our duty and joy to give, not God's privilege to receive), and on the other hand, our uncritical endorsement of any mention of God in the press by any famous person who espouses Christianity.

So let us congratulate Gabby Douglas and affirm her success in London. But let us at least hesitate in identifying it with God's blessing.

God and Natural Disasters

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:54:00 +0000

Wildfires are encroaching on the beautiful city of Colorado Springs, and any time natural distasters visit human civilization, we naturally turn to prayer and theological reflection. In 2004 when an earthquake in the Indian Ocean caused a giant tsunami to devastate the coast of Indonesia, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, theologian David Bentley Hart wrote an essay titled "Tsunami and Theodicy," which was published in the ecumenical religious magazine First Things. It's a wonderful reflection on God's interaction with a suffering world. Here's a snippet from near the end of the essay, all of which is definitely worth the read.

I do not believe we Christians are obliged—or even allowed—to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

Hart later expanded the essay into a little book, which is one of the best theological reflections on the goodness of God and the reality of evil that I have ever read.

We continue to pray for the safety of the people affected by the wildfires in Colorado.

Welcome to the Pathways Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Reimer) — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 22:30:00 +0000

Welcome to the latest Pathways experiment, the Pathways blog. I want this blog to serve several purposes.

1. I want to share resources with people who may want to delve a little deeper into the material from class, so I'll post links to theological content (mostly online, but maybe a book or two here and there that is especially apropos) that is "Pathways approved"—at least in the broad sense that it will enable you to go deeper and to sharpen your theological critical-thinking skills, and not necessarily in the sense that I (or you) must agree with every sentence to everything I pass along in this category. (For instance, from the class on June 24, on the person of the Holy Spirit, here is Basil of Caesarea's treatise on the Holy Spirit—not light reading, mind you, and it's an old translation, but the fact that this is online is an indication of the riches that are available across the Internet.)

2. Often, there are dust-ups, discussions, digressions in the theological—and especially, the evangelical—world that pertain pretty directly to the issues we discuss in class (like this little tidbit that Darrel Voth just posted to the Facebook group). It's good to keep abreast somewhat of what's going on in the larger evangelical and theological world. And these will hopefully both demonstrate the usefulness of what we're doing in Pathways and set some of where I'm coming from in my teaching within the larger contexts of the theological discussions going on in North American Christianity.

3. Occasionally in my reading, I come across profound and/or edifying and/or otherwise-thought-provoking quotations or passages that fit the general thrust of what Pathways is all about, and I will share them here for your edification as well.

4. I am sure I will not be able to resist, on occasion, my own reflections/rants/pontifications/etc. Hopefully these will be rare.

So any one blog post could fit into two or more of these categories. How each post fits is for you, dear reader, to discern, though I will likely post disclaimers to stuff I find relevant but that I would not want to endorse (or imply that a GCC-endorsed Sunday school class would endorse it!).

Much of this may end up being redundant to the content that appears on the Pathways Facebook group page, but I want people who aren't on Facebook (cough-cough-Brandon Buerge) to be able to participate as well. I will try to synergize the two forums as much as possible so that if you see content in one forum, it's likely to show up at the other.

Last, I hope this blog and the Facebook group stimulate thinking and discussion. So pipe up in the comment box whenever you want to ~~shower me with praise~~ discuss things further.

We'll see if this all works. Here's to learning! Here's to discussion! Here's to furthering our participation in the divine life!