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Tag: Allan Bevere

  • Irenaeus, Human Perfection, and the Nature of the Universe

    by Allan R. Bevere

     
    IrenaeusHere someone may raise an objection. “Could not God have made humanity perfect from the beginning?” Yet one must know that all things are possible for God, who is always the same and uncreated. But created beings, and all who have their beginning of being in the course of time, are necessarily inferior to the one who created them. Things which have recently come into being cannot be eternal; and, not being eternal, they fall short of perfection for that very reason. And being newly created they are therefore childish and immature, and not yet fully prepared for an adult way of life. And so, just as a mother is able to offer food to an infant, but the infant is not yet able to receive food unsuited to its age. In the same way, God, for his part, could have offered perfection to humanity, but humanity was not capable of receiving it. –Irenaeus (second century AD).
     
    In this passage Bishop Irenaeus suggests that God did not create humanity in a state of perfection because perfection requires a maturing process. Irenaeus states that by necessity human beings have a beginning in time and, therefore, must be “inferior” to the one who created them. Humanity is not simply able to receive such perfection; it is something attained over time as one grows in love and grace. Such a lack of perfection is suggested in the Garden of Eden story where Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fact that they lacked such knowledge prior to their disobedience meant they lacked perfection. As is clear from the narrative, the problem with the first couple was not their humanity, it was their disobedience. There is an immaturity, writes Irenaeus, that goes hand in hand with a lack of perfection. In the same way maturity and perfection are indispensably connected. Since maturity cannot be had instantaneously, neither can perfection. One moves toward it.
    While the going on to perfection theme is very familiar to Wesleyans, it nevertheless challenges us to reflect not only on our own lives and our relationship, our journey with Jesus Christ, but if Irenaeus is correct, it causes us to think about the very nature of the universe itself. John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, suggests in his book, Quarks, Chaos and Christianity that the universe itself has been created to “mature”, which means that creation is not static and complete, but rather that it is continuing even now, that God is still creating, or in theological terms re-creating. This should not surprise Christians who speak so freely about the human relationship with God as a journey, as one of growth. This is simply consistent with the very nature of the universe itself. Evolutionary theory is nothing more than God’s involvement with creation, creating and also allowing its contingencies to go where they may. God’s creation of human beings with a free will is simply consistent with the free process built into the fabric of the universe itself. God must act consistently.
    Thus, God is not a helpless spectator, nor is God the divine puppet master pulling the strings of a helpless and predetermined creation. Jesus went to the cross as one who chose freely to do so and as one who was fulfilling the will of his Father. The cross of Christ is the fullest expression of the nature of God and the nature of his relationship to humanity and the entire creation.
    As the universe expands outward and history moves forward, God journeys with us and the universe, leading and guiding and allowing. Our hope is not in the universe itself, nor in history, but in the eternal and perfect God who moves with us toward perfection.

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  • Forty Days of Lent? What About the Fifty Days of Easter?

    by Allan R. Bevere

    50 days bannerOne thing I have noticed as a Protestant whose tradition observes the forty days Lent: We don’t seem to be very good at observing the fifty days of the Easter season. Yes, we pull out all the stops in worship on Easter Sunday, but then we seem to immediately go back to business as usual. While we have special times and services during Lent, we fail to place such emphasis on the season of resurrection between Easter Sunday and Pentecost.

    And yet, Easter is the most significant holiday of the Christian year. Though we celebrate Christmas as the central holiday as far as emphasis, it is not. Without Christ’s resurrection there is no Christian faith. If Jesus has not been raised, there are no Christmas celebrations to be had. The primary importance of Easter is revealed in the ordering of the Christian year. Unlike Christmas, Easter is a movable feast, which means that it does not fall on the same date every year; and it is the date of Easter each year that determines the entire liturgical calendar. (For how the date of Easter is calculated for Roman Catholics and most Protestants, see here.) Thus, while the church observes Advent and Christmas as the beginning of the liturgical year, it is Easter that is the theological culmination and beginning of the Christian year.

    So the question is why many Protestants who observe Lent, do not observe, in similar fashion (in reference to importance), the full fifty days of the Easter season. Why is the greeting, “He is risen!” reserved only for Easter Sunday and not for the entire Eastertide? Why is resurrection absent from some Protestant preaching the Sunday following Easter Sunday?

    On Ash Wednesday we are invited to observe a holy Lent for forty days. Why are we not similarly invited to observe a joyful Easter for fifty days following the morning the empty tomb is discovered?

    I’m just wondering.

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  • Can a Christian Politician Campaign as a Christian?

    by Allan Bevere

     
    [ene_ptp]By the title of this post I am not asking whether a Christian can campaign for office on some kind of Christian platform. The nature of my inquiry instead is given the rough and tumble and even nasty nature of the world of politics, can a politician who embraces Christian faith run a campaign that looks Christian in character?
    Many years ago, a parishioner of a church I was serving at the time asked me if I ever considered running for political office. I responded in somewhat glib fashion, “I deal with enough politics in the church as it is. Why would I want to intentionally set foot directly into the fray?”
    I have never and would never consider running for political office even locally, not only because I would be terrible at it, and even my supporters would want to throw me out long before serving one term, but as I have said in previous posts, the real political action isn’t taking place in Washington DC, or in local municipalities; the real political action is taking place in the church, God’s kingdom come on earth.
    But since I am a political animal and follow politics closely (which suggests that I probably need to get a life), I have given some thought over the years as to what a campaign for election would really look like if the one running made a conscious effort not to do anything of which Jesus would not approve?
    Let me first set a couple of things in context:
    First, while I very much believe in civility and that as a Christian civility is important, I do not think that the summation of Christian ethics and character is simply to be kind. Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again from the dead, so that I might be nice. Jesus himself became angry at injustice and hypocrisy. St. Paul was none too pleased with the Galatians. So, in this post I am not suggesting that anger and tough words are never acceptable for Christians. Of course, the Bible warns us to measure our words carefully. The problem is not anger per se, or tough words per se; the problem is that often the anger and harsh verbiage come at the wrong time or is expressed in the wrong way.
    Second, neither do I want to suggest that Christians cannot be part of the rough and tumble of political life precisely because it is rough and tumble by nature. Life by its very nature is rough and tumble. It’s not the rough and tumble that concerns me when it comes to political campaigns. What is of direct interest to me in this post is two-fold: the willful distortion and manipulation of facts that seem to go hand in hand with political campaigns, and the unjustified and often unproven attacks on an opponent’s character, both of which are questionable from a Christian perspective.
    First, everyone who follows politics closely knows that political critique of an opponent is almost always selective when it comes to the facts. One politician can accuse another of voting for a tax increase, when the whole truth of the matter is that the legislation voted for was part of a broader package of programs supported by the accuser herself. Or, one can insist that the nemesis being opposed voted for tax cuts for the rich, when the tax cuts also included cuts for the middle class with the latter fact conveniently being left out. This kind of willful distortion happens all the time, and I find it quite difficult to believe that Jesus would approve of such manipulation and distortion of the truth for the sake of political expediency.
    Second, is the inevitable attack on a person’s character during a campaign. It’s not enough to say that an opponent voted for health care reform and here are the reasons it was a bad idea, or that the challenger would have voted against it and here are the reasons that would have been a bad idea. Instead, both sides feel the need to assign nefarious motivations to their reasoning. My opponent supports death panels that will decide whether patients live or die, or my challenger doesn’t care about all the little children who have no health care. If they get sick, his remedy is for them to die quickly.
    Now this is not to say that politicians always do things from impure motives; all of us, at times, can support or oppose something based on questionable and selfish concerns. But such an accusation should have clear and definitive proof before it is made. But that is not what happens in politics. Indeed, what I find is that both sides of the political aisle, and Christians included, are all too willing to trash the character of those whose politics differ from theirs. The political philosophy seems to be, “If you don’t embrace my politics, you are bad!” Brothers and sisters in Christ, these things ought not to be for the followers of Jesus.
    And in connection to all of this is the negative campaigning that everyone says they will not do when the election season starts. But sooner or later almost everyone resorts to it because study after study shows two things: the American voters hate negative campaigning, and the American voters find such campaigning to be convincing. So whether such negative ads start because one politician is down in the polls or whether the politician in the lead has to respond with some negativity of her or his own, it is prevalent nonetheless. And I highly doubt that Jesus would approve of the character assassination of another.
    And related to this—what possible justification could any Christian give for making public embarrassing information about a political opponent’s past? Why would any Christian seek to humiliate someone else in such a way? And to respond, “Well that’s politics,” is not a Christian response. Is there anyone who is not sure what Jesus would do in this situation?
    So, even if I ever had a desire to run for political office, I would never do so because I do not think that I could successfully run a campaign in keeping with the character of Jesus Christ, and just maybe that is the real problem. It is entirely possible for a Christian to run a political campaign that would, in the final analysis, be very Christian in character, but it is quite doubtful that such a campaign would elect anyone.
    The number one concern when it comes to the politics of the nations is not truth or virtue—it is power fueled by money—and the end justifies the means.
    That is why my central political concern is the church and its mission in the world; for only the church is God’s true politic in the world… and when all is said and done the Democrats and Republicans will be left “waiting for the bus” as God’s kingdom passes them by on the way to new creation.
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  • Credible Christians for a Credible Gospel

    by Allan Bevere

     
    Colossians 1:3-10
    In the opening of their letter to the Colossians, Paul and Timothy offer specific prayers for the church there: [ene_ptp] …asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God (1:9-10).
    In ancient Judaism the knowledge of God’s will is known through the Law of Moses (e.g. Rom. 2:17-20; Bar. 3:24-4:4; Sir. 24:23). Such knowledge is to be had through “spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
    According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, wisdom and understanding were two of the three principal intellectual virtues. Unlike what Aristotle called “the moral virtues” which were acquired through education, he believed that the intellectual virtues were given by a combination of nature and nurture, that is, while such virtues could be strengthened through experience and education, it was necessary that a person be given them by “natural endowments” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1143b 8-9; Aristotle will contradict himself on this later in his Ethics).
    Paul and Timothy, however, appear to have a more Jewish understanding in mind.
    Wisdom and understanding are not given by nature, but are received as divine gifts. Thus, the writers can pray and ask God to grant these “virtues” to the Christians at Colossae. Even though such virtues are divinely received, they can also be nurtured as one travels with Christ and his church along the way of discipleship. Paul prays that the Colossians may be “filled with the knowledge of God’s will.” Such filling suggests movement toward a completed or finished state. Spiritual growth is in mind here. So while knowledge revealed through spiritual wisdom and understanding are divinely given, the believer plays an important role in nurturing those gifts.
    Such knowledge “suggests the ability to discern the truth and to make good decisions based on that truth” (Moo, Colossians, p. 94). This knowledge is necessary if the Christians at Colossae are to “bear fruit in every good work.” The imagery of bearing fruit in one’s life is found throughout ancient Jewish literature, particularly in the prophets of the Old Testament (e.g. Isa. 37:31; Jer. 17:8; Ezek. 17:23).
    The authors of Colossians are not interested in divine knowledge for its own sake. Rather, it is to aid the Colossians in their life together as the church. The gospel is credible in and of itself, but it only gains credibility as it is demonstrated by individual saints and the church collectively in the good works that bear witness to God’s kingdom. Christian convictions must be revealed in practice (cf. James 2:18). Being credible and living credibly cannot be separated.

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    Click on the author picture for more information about Allan R. Bevere or on one of the cover images to get more information about his books.

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