Category: Theology

“This is my body, commodified and mass-produced for you”: On Communion and Campbell’s Soup

“This is my body, commodified and mass-produced for you”: On Communion and Campbell’s Soup

When Andy Warhol unveiled his Campbell’s Soup Cans art exhibit in 1962, reactions were closer to befuddlement than praise.

Was this art? Where was the beauty, drama, grandeur, sacredness, or seduction that had previously marked great paintings? And who would pay the exorbitant sticker price of $100 for something that could be purchased at the grocery for ten cents?

Of course, Warhol’s cans now fetch massive sums. One reason was that they offered an ironic critique of modern life. For good and ill, we are now drowning in cheap, mass-produced, pre-packaged, disposable, easily accessible, low quality but quickly replaceable “stuff.” (I originally opted for a different word to end that sentence.)

It’s Campbell’s soup—brought to us by Chinese sweatshops and two-day shipping.

I’ve thought about those Warhol paintings several times of late as I have received Holy Communion.

Out of noble health concerns starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, many churches moved away from traditional Communion methods in favor of individually packaged, disposable, mass-produced, plastic “blister packs” (actual description) like the one seen here.

I agreed with this move and gave thanks for it.

The tiny packages encase a single crumb of bread on one side, and—when you flip them over to remove another “blister” coating—approximately the same amount of liquid as contained within a single teardrop.

In evangelical congregations, I am used to Communion being spoken of as a mere symbol that helps us remember Christ’s sacrifice. “It’s not about the elements,” the pastor may be heard to say. So instead of the Gospel line, “This is my body”—many a minister feels compelled to amend the text to avoid misunderstanding: “This bread represents my body,” etc., etc. “This wine—I mean grape juice…—represents my blood.” I’ve grown accustomed to these things. And truth be told, I am not a believer in something like Catholic transubstantiation.

But I’ve also tired of Communion “blister packs.”

Despite understandable concerns for germs (with which I sympathize), I’ve begun to wonder what the “Oscar Mayer lunchable” approach to the Eucharist says about the modern church—not just on the Lord’s Supper, but on how we value symbols, sacraments, and physicality.

At the risk of overreaction, it sometimes feels as if we have set out to take the most beautiful and sensory-laden sacrament and turn it into something that has the aesthetic value of a roll of bubble wrap.

Even if it doesn’t burst like a juice box in my kid’s backpack, one looks around the sanctuary to see some churchgoers struggling with their teeth and fingernails—like racoons trying to unlock iPhones. By the end of the process, the elements usually find their way into digestive tracts—but something is lost from the meal that Jesus gave us. It has been commodified, sanitized, mass-produced, and individually packaged—like much of modern life.

What, then, is the solution?

My goal is not to add one more curmudgeonly complaint to the endless pile that pastors face. (It has not been easy to lead anything these past few years.) Nor is it to shame one or two churches to switch back to more traditional Communion practices. That too might be a malady of modern ecclesiology: (1) Someone complained. (2) So we stopped.

Instead, what we need is a more holistic way of noticing how unexamined modern values of convenience and commodification have caused us to do strange things in the realm of the sacred.

The French philosopher and theologian, Jacques Ellul, is helpful here. Ellul’s most important work, published back in 1964, is called The Technological Society. He sets forth two key concepts for diagnosing the side-effects that come with mind-blowing technology, inexpensive factory production, frazzled busyness, and consumer competition. He calls them (1) technique and (2) efficiency.

For Ellul, technique is “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity.” Technique aids efficiency; and as we know, being more efficient can save time and money.

To be fair, we can all name aspects of our businesses and bureaucracies that badly need to be streamlined. The trouble, Ellul argues, is that the values of technique and efficiency easily move out of their rightful domains, and they begin to corrupt and commodify the way we relate to people, food, art—and God.

How do you find a mate? Swipe right.
How do I form a nuanced view of Shakespeare’s Othello? ChatGPT.
How do I eat, given that I’m frazzled and rushed? McDonalds.
How do I check “Communion” off my to-do list? Blister packs.

In all these areas, there are costs to maximally efficient solutions.

Moving back to Communion, note how our modern ways of approaching the Eucharist make it difficult to “feel” and “see” what Paul alludes to when he writes to the Corinthians:

“Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.”

1 Corinthians 10:16-17

In the end, I remain grateful for a necessary safety measure in a time of emergency. What’s more, we should probably keep some “blister packs” on hand to love and serve our brothers and sisters who have health concerns.

And as usual, my attempts to be pointed or humorous run the risk of oversimplifying—and overreacting. That too is a byproduct of the marriage of technology and efficiency: What are blog posts if not a maximally efficient form of publishing.

Enjoy your soup. I slaved for minutes over it.

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prophets and scribes

prophets and scribes

Here’s a delightful passage from Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead:

“How do you tell a scribe from a prophet…? The prophets love the people they chastise, a thing this writer does not appear to me to do.”

I wrote a fair bit on the distinction between prophets and demagogues in Perhaps; but I don’t think I included this insightful snippet.

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How (not) to affirm penal substitution

How (not) to affirm penal substitution

“What is modern life if not an endless argument over acronyms? CRT, MAGA, BLM, LGBTQIA—and in some theological circles—PSA (penal substitutionary atonement).”

~The London Lyceum

The good folks over at The London Lyceum asked me to write a response to the 2017 Southern Baptist resolution on penal substitutionary atonement (PSA).

My piece comes as the first installment (here) in what promises to be a fantastic series that the Lyceum is doing on Christ’s saving work. Future posts by other scholars will come out every couple days for the next week or two.

For newcomers, it’s safe to say that fights over PSA have often generated more heat than light in recent decades–with one camp crowing loudly that PSA simply is the gospel (full stop), and another likening the doctrine to pagan notions of “divine child abuse.”

I wrote on the topic at length in The Mosaic of Atonement.

In a nutshell, I do think Scripture teaches that Christ willingly endured a judgment for sin on our behalf–both “in our place” and “instead of us.” So I’m a “Yes!” on a properly nuanced form of penal substitution.

Unfortunately, not all expressions of the doctrine are nuanced, biblical, or charitable.

That brings us to the 2017 SBC resolution.

The goal in posting my response is not to throw stones at the SBC (there are many fine folks within that tribe), but to make some headway in how Christians ought to affirm the biblical claim that Christ bore the judgment for human sin on our behalf, so that we might be redeemed.

You can read my piece over at The London Lyceum (here).

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Forsaken?

Forsaken?

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1; Matt 27:46)

What is the meaning of those haunting words of Christ upon the cross?

That’s the question my student asked this week as we stood outside my office. It’s Holy Week, and he was preparing to speak in his Spanish-speaking congregation on the so-called Cry of Dereliction. But he wanted to be sure he didn’t mess it up.

After all, he knows Christians believe in one God who exists eternally in three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit. And he knows that triune persons enjoy an eternal relationship of holy love. But if that trinitarian reality is true, what can it mean when Jesus screams out “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?”

CRINGING ON GOOD FRIDAY

Those who teach theology sometimes cringe when we sit through Good Friday sermons. (Though, to be fair, I sometimes cringe when listening back to my own sermons). It’s not just that the cross is horrific, but that Jesus’ words there are sometimes interpreted in ways that violate a pretty fundamental Christian teaching—the doctrine of the Trinity.

In extreme examples, we even hear that the Father made the Son the object of his perfect hatred on the cross. “God damn you!” is the vivid description offered by the late R. C. Sproul, of what the Father said to the Son upon the cross.

Is that right?

When someone asks about The Cry of Dereliction, I always answer the same way: “You should read this little book by my friend, Tom McCall.” It’s called Forsaken, and it’s written for a popular audience—not just for scholars (see here).

But there is problem with that sales pitch: Good Friday is this week (tomorrow, actually, as I type these words). And even with Amazon Prime, you probably don’t have time to read Tom’s book before then.

So what are some choices for interpreting The Cry of Dereliction?

OPTIONS FOR INTERPRETTING THE CRY OF DERELICTION

The following options are not exactly Tom’s points but more like my own quick and oversimplified articulations.

  1. Utterly Forsaken
  2. Utterly “Quotation”
  3. Feeling, Not Fact
  4. Forsaken Unto Death

Let’s work through them.

  1. UTTERLY FORSAKEN

The first option claims that there is a radical separation, enmity, abandonment, breach, or even hatred within the life of God upon the cross. A version of this is argued by more progressive theologians like Jürgen Moltmann. But in evangelical churches, it usually shows up in rhetoric about Jesus’ judgment-bearing death.

The Father turned his face away.

The Father rejected the Son.

God cursed Jesus with damnation.

God punished Jesus.

To be clear, I’ve written a whole book (The Mosaic of Atonement) that affirms the idea that Jesus saves (in part) by willing bearing the penalty for human sin. So I am not challenging that broader claim. But to affirm Christ’s penalty-bearing is quite different from saying that Father hated the Son or the Trinity was broken.

The problems with the “utterly forsaken” view are many: (a) Scripture never says it; (b) virtually no one in church history ever said it prior to the modern era; (c) it violates the doctrine of the Trinity.

So don’t go that way.

John Calvin quite correctly writes the following:

“We do not, however, insinuate that God was ever hostile to him or angry with him. How could he be angry with his beloved Son, which whom his soul was well pleased? Or how could he have appeased his Father by his intercession for others if He were hostile to himself?” (Institutes, 2.16.11)

  1. UTTERLY “QUOTATION”

Another option is to say Jesus is merely quoting Psalm 22. After all, his words come directly from David’s passage, and the rest of the psalm describes events that sound an awful lot like crucifixion.

At the end of the psalm, however, the result is not forsakenness but divine presence, vindication, and God’s message going out to all nations. Since that’s true, maybe Jesus was simply quoting a text to show himself as fulfilling it by way of death and resurrection.

Unfortunately, it seems like a stretch to say that he was only quoting something (in the same way I would be if I were reading from the Old Testament passage in front of a congregation). This seems to downplay the human experience of Jesus, the plain sense reading of his words, and the feeling of cursedness that would have assailed any Jew being hung upon a pole (Deut 21:23).

If the first choice breaks the Trinity, the second one diminishes the Son’s humanity.

  1. FEELING, NOT FACT

A third option might be to say that The Cry of Dereliction honestly describes what Jesus felt: He felt as if he had been utterly forsaken by God—but he hadn’t been. In this way, Christ would be like many a suffering Psalmist who claimed that God had abandoned them forever—when in fact God remains close by the afflicted.

I have no doubt that Jesus did feel forsaken; but to claim that he was wrong would surely cause some problems for one’s Christology.

One way to get around this worry might be to say that the Son was simply identifying fully with the feeling of forsakenness experienced by humanity at large. Perhaps that works. But I still think there is a better option.

  1. FORSAKEN UNTO DEATH

This last option is the one McCall chooses. The claim here is that Jesus remains (as Calvin said) the beloved Son, even in his death. But his forsakenness is real in at least one crucial sense: the Son was allowed to suffer and die. The Father could have saved him from this death, but he did not. Thus, Jesus was forsaken unto death.

In this act, Jesus identifies with humanity in all our pain and shame and the effects of fallenness. McCall writes:

“It is we who have—as rebellious sinners—abandoned God. But rather than leave us in our state of abandonment, the Son has become human and has identified himself with us: ‘These are my people. I am here for them. I have come to redeem them from this abandonment and to bring them home'” (44).

CONCLUSION

No, the Trinity wasn’t broken.

And the Father didn’t hate the Son upon the cross. Nor did he torture him with the sadistic smile of a pagan storm-god. That’s not the gospel. That’s a Netflix series about Norse mythology.

Nonetheless, Jesus was really forsaken unto death on our behalf. More than that, he passed through death to resurrection life, so that the final verses of Psalm 22 are as true as the first:

27 All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
28 for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations.

29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.

30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
31 They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!

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God and Cormac McCarthy

God and Cormac McCarthy

“God-haunted” is an apt way to describe the novels of Cormac McCarthy.

I have returned to McCarthy’s writings often over the past few years for a variety of reasons (see here). He is sometimes considered America’s greatest living novelist; his descriptions of a bygone life along borderlands of Texas and Mexico are both arresting and frightening; and his books are always utterly obsessed with God.

A prime example of this haunting comes in a scene from his dark Western, The Crossing.

The following words are spoken of a grief-stricken father whose only son has been crushed to death in the terrible “terremoto” (earthquake) of 1887 in the Mexican town of Bavispe.

“Men do not turn from God so easily you see. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.”

Then we read this:

“It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of him.”

WHAT KIND OF GOD?

This scene from The Crossing demands attention for at least two reasons.

First, McCarthy highlights an important point that is often underemphasized by both Christian apologists and their atheistic foils. The most pressing theological question is not necessarily “Does God exist?” But rather: “What kind of god?” And in fact, this is the question with which Scripture is most interested.

The deity described by McCarthy is often “bloody and barbarous,” to cite a recent commentary on his work. And this may be because McCarthy was taken by elements of Gnosticism. But that is not the focus of my present post.

Second, and most importantly, I am intrigued by what McCarthy has this grieving father do next.

“It was at this time that he began to pray.”

BENEATH THE DOME

In his anguish, the man sets up camp beneath the tottering ruins of a church (below). The dome of this great building has been shattered by the quake and threatens to collapse at any moment. Thus, both priests and parishioners have abandoned the sanctuary, which is rumored to sway visibly in the wind.

La Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora de Caborca

“Beneath that perilous roof he threw down his pallet and made his fire and there he made ready to receive that which had eluded him.”

Over time, a crowd gathers. “They were interested to see what God would do with such a man.” And all the while the grieving father paces, Bible in hand, making his Job-like case against the Almighty—daring God to bring the dome down upon him.

Eventually, a priest is called. The padre tries to reason with this “misguided man” about the nature of God and the work of grace within our lives. The two men argue back and forth, each making points and citing Scripture—but with one important dissimilarity: The priest will not set foot beneath the faltering dome.

In the narrator’s judgment, both men were “heretics to the bone”—perhaps because the priest does not believe the platitudes he speaks. Yet there is this key difference between them: “The priest wagered nothing.”

Only the grieving father remains within the church. He is its anchorite. And he is later buried in its cemetery. At his death, he speaks these words to the same old priest who came to counsel him: “Save yourself.”

“In the end we shall all of us be only what we have made of God. For nothing is real save his grace.”

CONCLUSION

It would be wrong to assume that the above quotations represent McCarthy’s own views. But the fact that he can sketch such scenes shows why he deserves to be read by theologians as well as fiction lovers.

As James K. A. Smith notes, the most interesting questioners of Christianity in recent years are not the so-called new atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. While these figures suck up all the oxygen in the great God debate, the worthiest conversation partners are often artists and storytellers, like Cormac McCarthy.

For pastors, apologists, and theologians, The Crossing reminds us of the need to address the father’s question: “What kind of god?” And indeed, it is a query that can only be rightly engaged with reference to the long history of Israel: a manger, a cross, and the vault of a borrowed tomb that is shaken by a Sunday morning earthquake.

But most importantly, The Crossing admonishes all pastoral comforters to “wager something”–and to sit beneath the dome with those who suffer.

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“Go, little book…!”

“Go, little book…!”

It’s a weird feeling to launch a book.

On the one hand, you’re afraid no one will read it. On the other, you’re afraid they will.

Unlike my prior books, which have focused exclusively on either Bible or theology, this one crosses boundaries. It is academic–but not heavily. It marries fiction with theology and cultural critique. It even lodges a qualified endorsement of a term that functions as a shame word in the academy: “speculation”–or what I call “faith seeking imagination.”

It is starkly critical of many currents within American evangelicalism; yet it also stubbornly refuses to defect from historic Christianity because of sheer embarrassment.

In other words, some will like it; others won’t.

That is as it should be. I hope it finds the audience that needs it. And specifically, I hope it finds those exhausted and disillusioned souls (like the “Eliza” character within the book) whose faith is hanging by a thread.

As I put it in the Introduction:

“The importance of what I define as ‘faith seeking imagination’ increases in a cultural moment when the church is torn by two unsavory extremes: the force of crippling secular doubt and the zealotry of partisan religious dogmatism. Rekindling a gracious theological imagination—rooted in orthodoxy, Scripture, tradition, community, and great works of art—is essential to confront the ‘resounding gong[s]’ (1 Cor 13:1) of our day with something better than pervasive skepticism or abrasive certainty. In this blank space between unchecked doubt and dogmatism, Christians must relearn how to say ‘perhaps’.”

I’ll blog a bit more about the book in weeks to come, but for now I’ll end with the words of Robert Southey,

Go, little Book! From this my solitude
I cast thee on the Waters,–go thy ways:
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The World will find thee after many days.
Be it with thee according to thy worth:
Go, little Book; in faith I send thee forth.

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Or see here for the audio version (*not read by me…).

To learn more, here’s an old blog post that became the basis for Perhaps, several years ago.

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Gen D

Gen D

On religious doubt in younger generations

“Well, I guess I picked the right topic.”

That was one of my thoughts when I first saw this research from Ryan Burge on the rise of religious doubt in younger generations. But it’s hardly the most important one.

My next book (out this Fall) deals partly with that very topic: the crisis of faith experienced especially by young adults within our polarized times. Though I argue that some of the ways both doubt and faith are spoken of in Christian circles can do more harm than good.

Coming back to Burge, respondents were asked whether they believed in God’s existence “with no doubts.” (I could go on here about how this is not a question that the Bible cares much about, but let’s skip to the results.) Older generations remained relatively stable and certain across time. Meanwhile, millennials and Gen Z showed a significant decline.

Now, if you’ve followed this blog very long, you know I dislike sweeping generational generalizations (e.g., Millennials are like this… .”), especially when those claims are used to cast aspersions on a diverse swath of humans across different cultural, economic, geographic, and ethnic backgrounds. (See here for one of my old rants on the subject.)

But Burge isn’t doing that. And the research raises some important questions. Of course, for one segment of the evangelical internet (aka: where fun goes to die), it might be used to justify the kind “hell-in-a-handbasket” fear-mongering that is used to fuel the culture wars and generational superiority: People better wake up, etc., etc., something about participation trophies…

But to be honest, I unfollowed those people a long time ago.

Here are few random queries I had after seeing these statistics:

1. What percentage of supposedly “doubt-free” belief amongst older generations connects to a confusion between saving faith and the profession of mental certainty?

In Perhaps, I write about a misunderstanding regarding what the Bible means by “doubt”—at least as it appears in our modern English translations. In most cases, the Scriptures don’t decry honest questions or uncertainty. Rather, they confront the cultivation of divided loyalties and allegiances in those passages that are seen to speak of “doubt.”

I don’t have time for all the biblical data here, but suffice it to say that some Christians have been led to believe that if we admit to doubts, we are essentially saying that we don’t have “saving/healing/bank-account enriching faith.” Not so. This idolization of absolute certainty probably has more to do with the Enlightenment and folks like Descartes than it does with Jesus and Bible.

What’s more, a conflation between faith and certitude leads to a whole host of problems including gullibility, arrogance, and dishonesty. After all, to say that one has no doubts about a mysterious and unseen God is to risk violating the command that says, “Thou shalt not lie.”

A better option, as A. J. Swoboda rightly notes, is that doubt should be neither vilified or valorized in and of itself.

2. What percentage of youthful doubt is resolved with laugh lines and male pattern baldness?

In other words, do humans (on average) tend to progress from a season of unsettling doubt to more firm convictions?

It seems possible that some of us undergo a period of more intense questioning (say, between our teens and middle age), while gradually moving to more settled opinions around the time we start getting wrinkles, bald spots, and colonoscopies.

I don’t think this “ageing out” interpretation accounts for all (or even most) of Burge’s data. Still, it would be interesting to know more about some of these older respondents in, say, the 1960s or 70s. Last I checked, Woodstock wasn’t an apologetics conference.

3. How much doubt amongst millennials and Gen Z is driven partly by the partisan dogmatism of certain evangelicals?

In Perhaps, my subtitle speaks of “Reclaiming the Space between Doubt and Dogmatism.”

By that latter term, I describe a confluence of characteristics among many of the most visible evangelical spokesmen (I almost changed that to “spokespersons” but that would be inaccurate). Namely,

  • A tone of partisan shrillness
  • A posture of false certainty

From Jerry Falwell Jr., to Mark Driscoll, to whatever small-time COVID-denier pastor that CNN loves to elevate—doubt is often driven as a reaction to an un-Christlike dogmatism. In Perhaps, I speak of this as “fringe revulsion” and “team shaming.”

To be clear, religious fundamentalists haven’t cornered the market on dogmatic shrillness and false certainty. There are dogmatic forms of secular Liberalism that are every bit as strident. For that reason, I suggest that one of the best ways to wrestle through seasons of doubt is NOT by binge reading a stack of New Atheists in the morning alongside some simplistic or rationalistic apologetic literature at night.

Rather, the Spirit often works on our “split brains” (more on that in the book…) by virtue of embodied habits, healthy community, ancient voices, and a willingness to cling to Jesus in spite of our many questions. In that way, folks of all generations can pass through the wilderness doubt rather assuming “deconstruction” is a destination.

You can pre-order my new book here; but just to prove that I’m not merely hocking my own “products”—here is another excellent one by A. J. Swoboda. (I’ve got a podcast interview with him coming soon; so stay tuned!)

Grace and peace.

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You don’t have a “sin nature”

You don’t have a “sin nature”

Admittedly, we theologians can sometimes be annoying.

We often nit-pick over just the right way of phrasing a particular doctrine—and to non-academics especially, the habit evokes images of Hermione Granger pedantically correcting her classmates: “It’s Leviōsa, NOT Leviosar.”

Behind this concern, however, is a belief that language matters, and some words are simply better than others when gesturing toward Christian truth.

Case in point: “sin nature.”

More than once lately, I’ve read a book by a major evangelical publisher that makes reference to the allegedly foundational belief that all humans possess a “sin nature.” This claim is then taken to be so universally accepted—so basic to Christian theology—that it does not merit any evidence, explanation, citation, or supporting argument.

Our “sin nature” is taken to be a “Duh doctrine”—except it’s not.

The problematic phrase is partly the fault of contested translation in the original NIV (corrected in 2011), which rendered “flesh” (sarx) as “sinful nature.” Admittedly, Paul’s use of sarx is not easy to boil down for first-time readers. But the fact remains that neither Scripture nor the vast majority of Christian tradition ever claims that humanity has something called a “sin nature”–even as they remain insistent that our sin problem is indeed catastrophic.

AGAINST GOD AND NATURE

Tom McCall has a helpful critique of this phrase within his book-length treatment of the doctrine of sin, Against God and Nature (here). McCall is clear that all humans, with the exception of Jesus, are sinners. And he offers a robust account of original sin that would make even a strict Calvinist nod gravely in approval. We can’t save ourselves. “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory” (Rom 3:23). Pelagius was wrong.

But McCall also explains why it is problematic to assert that humans have something called a “sin nature.” Parts of the argument are too technical for a brief blog post, but others deserve attention outside of academia–since that’s where the phrase often appears.

Chiefly, to speak of all humans having a “sin nature” implies that sin is a concrete substance rather than a twisting or corruption of something good. To speak of our universal “sin nature” makes sin sound like a constitutional part of our anatomy—like a heart or brain—a physical thing that all humans have by virtue of being members of the fallen human race.

Unfortunately, this causes big problems for Christian theology.

It smacks of Gnostic heresy to imply that some constitutional part of our shared humanity is inherently sinful. That would seem to mean that at least one of the following is true:

  1. God authored sin or our sin nature.
  2. Sin or a sin nature existed eternally.
  3. Satan created this sin nature and placed it within us.

Christianity has long rejected all these options while maintaining that humans are indeed enslaved to sin in ways that require God’s gracious rescue. To disavow the concept “sin nature” is not therefore to reject concepts like original sin or even total depravity. On those points, Christians have long held that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves.

That’s why someone as conservative as the late, great J. I. Packer (the OG of kind-hearted Calvinism) wrote that the “widespread but misleading line of teaching” regarding a “sin nature” should be rejected. Better options include the language of human fallenness, original sin, depravity, or as my Aussie comrade Michael Bird suggests: “‘suckiness’ unto death.”

In saying all this, I am at all not implying that those speaking of our “sin nature” are somehow unwitting Gnostics. Far from it! In fact, they surely think they are uttering the same doctrine of fallenness that Christians have held throughout the centuries. They’re just wrong.

In other words, it’s “leviosa”—even if Hermione’s tone can be a bit annoying.

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WWJV?

WWJV?

WHO WOULD JESUS VACCINATE FIRST?

As the first precious drops of the COVID-19 vaccine roll out across America, a pressing question swirled in prior weeks: Who gets them first?

In my state, as in most others, the majority of those doses will go to extremely vulnerable residents in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. (Though front-line workers will deservedly get some too.)

After all, nursing home residents are amongst those most likely to die from COVID-19. So we might be tempted to think that putting them first is nothing more than a common sense deduction that any civilization would make.

It is not.

And we should take a moment to recognize that fact—and then give thanks.

CRATERS ON THE MOON

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor describes the lingering influence of Christianity on Western culture like craters on the moon.

What he means is that the impact marks of the gospel are still visible, even if the theological beliefs which formed them are no longer so widely held. We are seeing one of those “impact marks” now in the decision to give our first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to people who may have little time left to live, even without it.

After all, one study showed that the average length of stay in a nursing home before death was about five months (here). Other studies differed slightly (here).

But by any tally, it’s not long.

So is our distribution plan “correct” by a purely utilitarian metric?

THE COUNTER-ARGUMENT

I listened recently to the Yale scientist, Nicholas Christakis, as he explained why giving our limited supply of COVID-19 vaccinations to those in nursing homes might NOT be the best approach.

He suggested that it could be better to distribute the vaccine “upstream” amongst citizens who are more likely to spread the virus, and thereby yield an exponential case-load reduction.

I have no epidemiological opinion on which approach is best; and even if I did, you shouldn’t listen to it (because getting your science and medical “takes” from unqualified people on the Internet is like calling a plumber for an appendectomy).

My point is NOT to say who SHOULD get the vaccine first, from a medical standpoint.

My argument is that our culture’s default assumption that “The last should go first” is influenced by theological factors that go beyond utilitarian ethics, economics, or default human behavior across millennia.

And I give thanks for that.

A HISTORIAN WEIGHS IN

Historian Tom Holland argues that one of the most enduring marks of Christianity has been the elevation of individuals who would have previously been seen as “less than” or disposable.

As an atheist himself, Holland does not believe the theological claims of Scripture, yet he admits that Christianity is the biggest reason “why we [in Western culture] assume every human life to be of equal value.”

When studying the ancient Greeks or Romans, he notes:

It was not just the extremes of callousness that unsettled me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or the weak might have the slightest intrinsic value.

Why did I find this disturbing?

Because, in my morals and ethics, I was not a Spartan or a Roman at all. That my belief in God had faded over the course of my teenage years did not mean that I had ceased to be Christian [in those assumptions].

Tom Holland, Dominion, 16-17.

Of course, both Christians and secularists have often been terrible in consistently applying this ethic.

To choose just two examples: On one extreme sits a naked refusal by some to recognize the full humanity of brown-skinned kids in cages at the southern border. And on the other rests a stubborn inability to condemn the killing of unborn babies in the womb. Hypocrisy abounds.

Nonetheless… the assumption (at least in theory) about the intrinsic value of the vulnerable has seeped into the cultural groundwater.

And at the end of that long historical trajectory sits someone like Margaret Keenan—the 91-year-old British woman who was the first person in the UK to receive the COVID-19 vaccination.

CONCLUSION

What was the reaction to the choice of Margaret Keenan, and others like her?

Not a single person I heard said, “Why save her? She’s going to die soon anyway.” Not a single person said, “Give the first doses to the powerful, the top-earners, and the ‘old-but-not-THAT-olds’.”

To be clear, I have no doubt that there will be inequities in vaccine distribution, especially in underdeveloped countries and underserved communities. But the very fact that we have chosen (in theory) to prioritize those who, by worldly standards, can contribute least to our economic and materialistic future shows a small glimmer of grace in a dark year.

That grace comes, as René Girard noted, from a Light that “has revealed so many things for so long a time without revealing itself that we are convinced it comes from within us.”

It’s a ray of sunlight on the craters of the moon.

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Jesus, holy contagion

Jesus, holy contagion

What is Jesus’ R0 factor?

In this time of COVID-19, we’ve all learned some new words; words like spike proteins, viral load, and hydroxychloroquine.

One of these new concepts—the R0 factor—measures contagiousness. How close must one be to an infected person to “catch” what they have? Is the contagion passed primarily by blood, saliva, or has it been aerosolized? Can it live on surfaces?

In the early days of the pandemic, while my asthmatic son was dealing with some breathing trouble—I took the extreme step of constructing a cleaning station in our garage where I would wipe down our groceries (and mail) before they entered the house.

But what does any of this have to do with Jesus?

JESUS AND THE FORCES OF DEATH

One of the best books I’ve read this year was Jesus and the Forces of Death, by Matthew Thiessen. The text focusses on the Gospels’ portrayal of ritual impurity–and it argues, in line with scholars like Jacob Milgrom, that the Jews associated these impurities with forces of death.

Baker Academic, 2020

The Law of Moses taught that certain substances rendered one ritually unclean. These contagions included genital discharges, skin diseases (lepra), and corpses. To be ritually impure was not sinful. But it meant that one was barred from approaching God’s presence (for instance, in the temple) until one had undergone purification.

Ritual impurity comes up repeatedly in the Gospels:
• Jesus touches lepers and they are cleansed.
• Jesus encounters corpses and they rise.
• Jesus faces impure spirits and expels them.

But there is one story for which Thiessen’s work is particularly illuminating: Jesus and the bleeding woman (Matt 9:20–22; Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:42–48).

JESUS AND THE ZAVAH

In Hebrew, the zavah was a female “discharger”—a woman with chronic flow of menstrual blood.

As with other bodily discharges, Jewish Law maintained that no one could touch the zavah (or even her bedding) without being rendered impure (Lev 15:25–27). Even one’s clothing must be purified if it had potentially been contacted by such a woman.

Then in Mark’s Gospel, we read of a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years:

27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:27-3)

THE HOLY CONTAGION

In Thiessen’s words,

“The story implies that Jesus’s body can function like an unthinking force of contagion that inevitably destroys impurity” (7).

Instead of Jesus being made unclean by the woman’s touch, the opposite happens: The source of her impurity is healed, because Jesus embodies a contagious form of holiness and purity.

Incredibly, Jesus never decides to heal the woman. He merely notices that power has gone out of him, and then inquires, “Who touched my clothes?” (v 30)

So I ask again, what is Jesus’ R0 factor?

HOLINESS BEYOND SEGREGATION

We often think of holiness as something that is maintained by separation: “social distancing” if you will. For indeed, to be holy meant to be “set apart” by God for special use.

But Jesus’ holiness challenges the exclusivity of this notion. Christ’s holiness is contagious; it is not merely a fenced off and fragile status. Jesus’ holiness goes on the offensive. It heals the sources of impurity, and yet (apparently) without itself being defiled.

Never is this truer than in Christ’s crucifixion—in which the forces of death come calling for his own body. Yet even in death, Christ’s corpse emits a purifying power.

This point is seen most notably in the strange passage from Matthew that describes how Christ’s final breath brought the corpses of many holy ones to life within their tombs (Matt 27:50-53). (See here for my post on that unusual passage.)

There is some prophetic precedent for this kind of holiness. But not much. Elijah raises a widow’s son after laying his own body atop the boy’s (ritually impure) corpse. And Elisha unwittingly raises another dead man after the man’s corpse is thrown into a grave containing Elisha’s bones. (Happy Halloween!)

Still, Thiessen’s claim is that Jesus’ contagious holiness is unequaled in the Scriptures.

CONTAGIOUS HOLINESS TODAY

As a work of biblical scholarship, Thiessen’s book does not intend to make the turn to contemporary or pastoral application. But I’d like to gesture in that direction: What does Jesus’ contagious holiness mean for us today?

Incidentally, I come from what is often called a “holiness tradition”—and specifically, from a denomination that has roots in the revivalism of John Wesley, in abolitionism, and in women’s suffrage. I’m proud of that.

But in my own holiness tradition there has sometimes been a failure to learn the lesson of Jesus’ R0 factor. We saw holiness as something “set apart” and fragile—but not as something that is powerfully contagious.

In fact, holiness is both.

Elements of the holiness tradition propounded legalistic and extra-biblical rules on everything from wedding rings, to hairstyles, to alcohol—but we did not always grasp that Christ’s holiness is something that was spread by CONTACT with an unclean world, rather than by mere segregation from it.

This point requires discernment.

SET APART FOR SERVICE

There are times in which separation is required.

Moral impurity is not healed by uncritically immersing ourselves in environments where it is glorified. When we cozy up to wicked leaders and excuse their abusive and arrogant behavior in the attempt to gain “influence”—we deceive ourselves. Holiness doesn’t spread like that.

And yet, to be Christ’s body—filled with his Spirit—seems to imply that we might also view holiness in contagious rather than defensive terms.

Christians are, as it were, “set apart” for service.

In the holiness tradition, the group that most clearly embodies this holiness-on-the-offensive posture has been the Salvation Army. But it is a shift in perspective that is important for all Christians.

Impurity isn’t cleansed by pretending it does not exist (Liberal relativism). Nor is it healed by mere separation (fundamentalist escapism). Whether it is ritual or moral impurity, the solution comes by transformative CONTACT with the Holy One of God–or at least the fringes of his garment.

Get Matthew Thiessen’s excellent book here–and stay tuned for an upcoming interview with him on my podcast, Outpost Theology.

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