[Note: I’m hitting crunch time for finishing my semester papers, so I don’t have time to write anything new. And unfortunately, all my papers are too obscure (not to mention unfinished) to post. So, I dug up a short paper I wrote 6 years ago at ACU to reproduce, unedited. I hope y’all will indulge me.] Jars of Clay Of all biblical virtues, humility by its very nature eludes me more completely than any other. I can work on compassion and kindness and sincerity and self-control and even patience, but humility times its exits to the moments when I most succeed in otherwise imitating Christ. As the saying goes, once you realize you’re humble, you aren’t humble anymore. Dealing with that reality forces me to admit that too much of my effort has been aimed at fulfilling duty, following rules and performing works. By such means I can manage to be a pretty good person most of the time and treat others well enough that we can all overlook most of my faults. Meanwhile I fail to do the only thing that can really bring about humility–not working hard or studying my Bible, but falling prostrate before God. Paul’s metaphor of cheap clay jars holding a valuable treasure describes this humility as it applies to his ministry, in sharp contrast to the attitudes of those around him. In 2 Corinthians 4:6 Paul tells of the glorious light God has put in his heart that is the gospel of Christ. But in verse 7 (NIV) he says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Though rabbis already taught a similar message of humility for ministry, this verse contradicted the views of many religious leaders at the time as it does the natural instincts of many of us today. Surely God has given us power so that we will use it, right? Surely a God who came to seek and save what was lost wants us to make his religion appealing to all those lost people so they can be saved? Being raised in the church, I find Paul’s message here fairly easy to accept, and even preach to others. But figuring out where it works into my life and then actually following through present a greater challenge. Consequently, I need to keep the metaphor of the jars of clay in front of me at all times so that it will guide and shape my ministry–as indeed a potter shapes a clay pot–and keep my focus where it belongs, which is on the cross of Christ. The metaphor itself is simple, and trying to find dozens of points of connection between clay jars and Christian ministry would waste both my time and that of the reader. But the impact of that simple image on Christian ministry is incredibly profound, and that is where I will focus discussion. First, the prevailing Christian attitude of the day apparently recognized power and prestige as signs of God’s favor. The people Paul was opposing were pretty impressive to young Christians, leading him to rather sarcastically refer to them as “super-apostles” (2 Cor 11:5). They were superior speakers (11:6) and tried to make themselves look good before men (10:12). Jars of clay, on the other hand, are not impressive or powerful; some have referred to them as the “Tupperware” of ancient Greece–cheap, common, useful and disposable. But Paul says that God’s power is held in these vessels so that the power is indeed from Him and not from man. Savage notes two paradoxes in the metaphor: a valuable treasure is contained in a cheap vessel, and the incredible power of God is shown through a fragile vessel (165). The NIV translates the verse “to show that this…power is from God…” but the Greek text has a subjunctive “be” verb which more literally means “so that this…power might be from God…” (Savage 166) The point is that our weakness and fragility do not merely show the world that the power is from God (though it does do that) but is actually prerequisite for that power to work in us in the first place. “In other words,” Savage writes, “where there is pride and arrogance there cannot, by definition, be divine power.” (167) OK, I’ve covered my academic bases. Now I’ll deal with why the metaphor is important to me in my ministry. First of all, my general inadequacy as a person scares me. Even if my own ability were extraordinary by worldly standards, the idea of trying to win souls from Satan by my own power would be enough to send me running. If I try to show how strong I am, I know he has the ability to knock me flat on my back. The simple fact that I have no supernatural powers at my disposal, and he does, assures me of my imminent defeat if I face him alone. In contrast, seeing myself as a jar of clay to be filled with God’s power and broken if necessary helps conform me to the example of Christ. Following in Jesus’ steps (1 Peter 2:21) has to be my foundational theology, as it was Paul’s: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil 3:10-11) Paul wants to become like Christ in his death so he can become like him in his resurrection. I think this so-called theology of the cross is the most important part of Christian ministry because it sums up who we are. I love what Daniel Von Allmen said in one of the articles I read, that “mission is a way of discipleship; mission is following Christ on his way through suffering to death and only then to resurrection” (265). According to Fred Craddock’s Preaching, the form of a sermon should mirror its content, and that applies to ministry as well. If the content of my ministry, what I want to tell people, is Jesus’ emptying of himself, then I need to likewise empty myself in my ministry so they can learn what I teach by how I live. The clay jars metaphor also has a great practical strength, namely that it works. First, as I noted above, Paul seems to suggest that God only works through weakness. If this is the case, then living as jars of clay is not just preferable but necessary to Christian ministry, at least if God is to be involved in any active kind of way. Second, Allen says that our own weakness, or “the fragility of the clay pots” can witness to the world concerning the power of God (287). Again, how we teach can convert people as effectively as what we teach. This metaphor can cause problems if someone interprets it in an unhealthy way. First, a person’s excessive focus on his own weakness and inability could lead him to the conclusion that he cannot do anything for God. Consequently, he probably won’t do anything for God but instead will walk around in fear of making a mistake and awaiting a voice from heaven to instruct him on exactly what he needs to do. The other major pitfall which I foresee brings me back to where I started, to the difficulty of learning humility. The easiest thing in the world for me to do, once I find myself working by God’s power rather than mine, is to look down on all those around me whom I perceive work by their own strength. At that point, my humility has obviously yielded to spiritual arrogance. I don’t think humility can be taught by or deliberately learned by a human. There isn’t a person alive whom I could not find fault with if I looked, and that always allows me a loophole, it always allows me to write a person off if I don’t like what he says. God reserves the right to humble us when we need it, because like Job we can’t really answer him at all when it come right down to it. This really convicts me as I consider my call to ministry. If God calls me to do his work, I know he will give me the preparation I need, and so I trust that he will teach me humility in light of his holiness. Before sending Paul, God knocked him on his back so that he would serve in holy reverence. But if I decide for myself to go into ministry for him, I don’t know that I can count on that preparation. In the meantime I need to seek God so that I can learn who he is and wait for the day–or decade–when he confronts me and shows me what I’m made of. Bibliography Allen, Ronald J. “Between Text and Sermon: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18.” Interpretation 52 (1998): 286-289. Barnett, Paul. The Message of 2 Corinthians. The Bible Speaks Today. Ed. John R. Stott. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988. 86-87. Craddock, Fred B. Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985. Kistemaker, Simon J. II Corinthians. New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House Co, 1997. 146-147. Savage, Timothy B. Power through weakness: Paul’s understanding of the Christian ministry in 2 Corinthians. Paradise Valley, Arizona: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 164-169. Von Allmen, Daniel. “The Treasure in Clay Pots.” International Review of Mission 77 (1988): 265-271. |
November 2006
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Interpretation and SubversionPosted by Scott Haile under Torah, gnosticism, creation | [5] Comments | |
Not all theological interpretations of texts are sympathetic. When John 1 reapplies and reinterprets the creation story, it does so with clear respect for the original text. Gnostic literature, in contrast, sometimes uses theological traditions in ways that intentionally undermine the original text. A short, fascinating Gnostic text called The Hypostasis of the Archons creatively retells the story of the first six chapters of Genesis so as to undermine most of its theological claims. OVERVIEW OF GNOSTICISM The term Gnosticism is used by modern scholars to describe a cluster of beliefs held by a number of Christians (as well as some non-Christians) beginning probably in the second century A.D. Though their teachings weren’t uniform, the general idea behind Gnosticism is that the created world is not “very good” (as Genesis describes it) but instead a horrible mistake perpetrated by an inferior god who perhaps didn’t know any better. Gnostics often still worshipped Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but the god of Israel was a different god, or rather a demigod, to be blamed for the flawed world we see around us. Clearly this perspective is blasphemous from an orthodox Christian perspective, and many people (understandably) were and are offended by it. The true God, according to a typical Gnostic understanding, still interacts with the creation, but he does so by inviting “spiritual” people to gain a special knowledge (the Greek word is gnosis) by which they are freed from worldly existence. Humans are portrayed as originally spiritual beings from above who have been trapped in carnal bodies, and the goal of salvation is to free us from our worldly (read: defiled) existence so that we can return to the realm of light from which we came. Often, only a select group of humans indeed belongs to that other realm, to which they can escape via knowledge and be saved. HYPOSTASIS OF THE ARCHONS The Hypostasis of the Archons is perhaps better translated, “The [True] Nature of the Rulers.” It takes the word for “rulers” from Ephesians 6:12’s claim that the Christian battle is not against flesh and blood but against “rulers,” which Hypostasis purports to explain the true nature of. Audaciously, it claims that the creator god described in the Hebrew Scriptures is actually a group of rulers (”archons”) whom Scripture erroneously equates with the Father of Jesus Christ. For those scoring along at home, the author just used Paul’s statement in Ephesians to turn Christianity against the god of Israel. The interpretive coup is pulled off through a variety of creative rewrites of the Genesis story. (Although the text uses a variety of names for both the greater and the lesser gods, for the sake of simplicity I’ll refer to them as “God” and “archons,” respectively.) The positive actions attributed in Genesis to the god of Israel are either reattributed to the (higher) Gnostic God, or are reevaluated as wicked or harmful actions. When God looks down upon the earth, the archons see his reflection in the water and try to make a man in his image. They more or less accomplish the task but are unable to breathe a real spirit into the man; the man therefore lies on the ground until God consents to breathe a spirit into him. Later, the archons place the man and woman in the garden and instruct them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In this telling of the story, withholding that knowledge from them is a bad thing, but God overcomes their mistake by leading the snake to trick the woman into eating the fruit; thus what Christians deem the “fall” is the Gnostic God’s will from the start. When the man and woman realize their nakedness, the head archon comes and asks “Adam! Where are you?”, not to see what Adam would say (as in common Christian interpretation) but because “he did not understand what had happened.” For the curse that accompanies the “fall,” the archons then proceed to “[throw] mankind into great distraction and into a life of toil, so that their mankind might be occupied by worldly affairs, and might not have the opportunity of being devoted to the holy spirit.” The story is more complex than I let on here, but it is evident that the author uses a retelling of the Genesis story (1) to distinguish the Father of Jesus Christ from the god of Israel and (2) to characterize the god of Israel as a sort of envious, arrogant, bumbling idiot. This leads us to the creation story, which is explained near the end of the text. “Sophia” here is a name for one of the true gods (as is “the entirety”), and this excerpt (quoted from Robinson’s Nag Hammadi Library) describes how Sophia creates and interacts with the demigod (”Samael”) who corresponds to the creator in the Genesis story:
Not all the points of this text are clear; however, the key point I want to draw attention to is the story’s equivalent to “Let there be light” of Genesis 1. In this Gnostic retelling of creation, the words of the God of Israel at this point do not accomplish the creative task ascribed to them in Genesis. Rather, the would-be creator god Samael is portrayed as a blind demigod groping about in the dark, who asks for light because he is unable to see without it. It is the higher god Sophia, not Samael, who stretches out her finger and creates the light. Samael apparently has some control over the matter that lays before him, but he lacks the knowledge that only Sophia (the Greek word for “wisdom”) can provide. CONSEQUENCES FOR CHRISTIAN THOUGHT AND ACTION As I noted in my post on John 1 (10/28/06), Gnostic texts such as this one mounted a direct challenge to what became known as orthodox Christian beliefs. At stake, for example, are (1) the goodness of the created world, (2) the continuity between the God of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ, and (3) bodily salvation and resurrection. All three of these points have been questioned at times in Christian history, but all three ultimately have “prevailed” in the minds of most believers––with important consequences for Christian living:
In conclusion I’ll note the obvious, that what we believe about God affects our lives, and that there are reasons the Church historically has affirmed some views of God and rejected others. In the wake of the over-sensationalized (though genuinely interesting) Gnostic Gospel of Judas, when many people who are repelled by orthodox Christianity look about for alternative traditions that appeal more to their own sensibilities, it is worth looking carefully at the points that truly were at stake. Granting that the kind of Gnostic thought represented in Hypostasis is more extreme than some other ideas that were also rejected as heresy, nevertheless we should bear in mind that the differences under dispute were important. Furthermore, the decisions made regarding canon, orthodoxy and heterodoxy were not mere power plays by those wishing to maintain their own influence, but were governed by convictions that in many cases were established from the very beginning of Christian thought. |
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The Word Became FleshPosted by Scott Haile under music, Torah, John’s epistles, intertextuality, Rich Mullins | [2] Comments | |
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Before I go on to the other theological texts that use the Genesis 1 creation story, I want to tabernacle, so to speak, among the readers of John 1 for a time. In particular, I want to quote excerpts from a pair of songs by contemporary Christian musicians that take John 1 as their starting point. (I have to say at the outset that most CCM artists are awful, but these two have real substance, in my opinion.) The first is a song by Michael Card, called “The Final Word” (Card, above left, also wrote “El Shaddai”):
The second song, by Rich Mullins, is called “It Don’t Do” (Mullins, above right, also wrote “Awesome God”):
Now, as far as these two artists go, I should note up front that Michael Card is probably the squarest musician I’ve ever heard, and (the late) Rich Mullins could push mushy sentimentality to its very limits. However, both know the Bible, both exhibit thoughtful theology in their lyrics, and both (as far as I can tell) lack the kind of pretension that makes Christian rock music look so silly sometimes. Card approaches John 1 as a theologian, Mullins as a preacher. Card, though he perhaps conflates John with the other gospels, does a pretty straightforward interpretation of the text; his language is fresh enough to help us see the text as we may not have seen it, and yet the point his song makes is essentially the same as the point of John’s gospel. Card often uses his music to teach, and in this case he presents a clear explanation of a theological truth in terms of the scriptural text it comes from. For my tastes, his language is too obvious to be good art, but then his audience is the generation before mine, and his prioritization of clarity above art seems intentional. In any event, I appreciate the clarity with which he communicates one of the messages of John 1 here. Mullins does something more interesting in my opinion, first of all by bringing in 1 John 1, a passage closely related to John 1:
It isn’t entirely clear if 1 John intended for the “word” to refer to Jesus in the same way the Gospel of John did, but it is a reasonable interpretation, and so Mullins pulls them together to make his point. The point, which Mullins of course makes more effectively with his lyrics than I can with my words here, is that God did not remain in heaven and speak words only at a distance. Rather, in Jesus Christ, God’s word became flesh (John 1) so that we could see it up close and handle it (1 John 1). So in a sense, God put his money where his mouth was, not asking anything of humanity that he would not do himself. But Mullins does not stop with that theological claim; instead, he suggests that God’s action in the incarnation puts a claim on us as Christians. Because God’s word became flesh, our own words (of testimony, see 1 John 1) must become flesh too, in our actions. Mullins plays (as John did) off the multiple meanings of “word,” linking it to our common experience of knowing (and being) Christians who speak far too many words with far too few actions. But instead of repeating, say, the cliché that we should practice what we preach, Mullins couches the plea in the terms of a pair of unexpected scriptural texts. This catches our attention with an unexpected challenge coming from a familiar text, and at the same time it enriches our reading of Scripture by suggesting connections we may not have seen before. Scripture and Song as Theology One reason I’m writing on these two songs is that good Christian music (whether CCM or church hymns) often does the same thing that Scripture does: it uses accepted traditions in creative ways to move us and motivate us, and in many cases it builds new theological truths that either were not present, or else were not apparent, in the originals. To put it plainly, Michael Card and Rich Mullins are doing roughly the same thing John did. While Christians typically believe John’s text is inspired in a more profound sense than the works of modern musicians, nevertheless there should be a certain consistency in the way we listen to both kinds of “texts.” In both cases, we not only should learn from what we hear; we also should enjoy it. Scripture is not only revelation but also art. It is my impression that God intends for us, at the same time that we believe in and obey Scripture, to appreciate it as something beautiful he has given us through the creativity of people created in his image. |
