Committed Critic

This is the transcript of a sermon I preached April 27 at Brookline Church of Christ in Brookline, MA. The text (which I read aloud before the sermon) is Acts 17:16-34.

OUR SOCIETY

Paul’s sermon in Athens is unique in Acts because of how far Paul goes to relate to his Greek audience. Paul is famous for saying (in 1 Cor 9:22) that he became all things to all people in order to save some, and today’s reading is the perfect example of that: Paul would ordinarily quote the OT, but here he’s in Athens, so he quotes a Greek writer instead, to try to tap into a tradition they would listen to. Paul needs to find a place for the God of Israel that’s somehow above the Greek pantheon (of Zeus, Hera, and Athena), so he turns to one of their own altars, which is inscribed, “to an unknown god.”

The word there for unknown is “agnostic,” which I think makes it very easy to connect the story with our society. Americans, on the whole, aren’t particularly atheists or polytheists—so most of us have something in us that insists there is a God, but we don’t tend to buy into stories about different Gods with different personalities. Instead, Americans are likely to sort of half-heartedly buy into the idea of an agnostic God that’s basically like the god the Athenians built the altar for.

I think even a lot of folks who attend church are basically agnostic, which is to say they aren’t particularly confident that God is any one way rather than some other way. My sense is, it’s pretty common for American Christians to stay in the tradition they were raised in, even if they stop believing that the Bible’s description of God is particularly more accurate or more true than any other religion. In others words, if you’re an agnostic who isn’t really sure who God is, but you still want to worship God, then whatever religion is comfortable is probably as good as any other. This actually makes a lot of sense: if you’re convinced that no one religion has a particular monopoly on divine revelation, then it’s not as if you could just keep looking until you found the right one. So you either stay where you are, or else you find a church where you feel comfortable, and you go with it.

PAUL IN ATHENS

But, turning back to Paul, we find that he’s not content to leave the agnostic god unknown. So he says to the Athenians: “What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

Paul gave his sermon in front of a group of philosophers in Athens—some of them were probably careful thinkers, and some of them were probably sloppy, but the important thing is that they wanted to think about who God is. So a big part of what I want to deal with today is the relationship between what we think about God, and what the Bible and the Christian tradition proclaim about God. Paul is going to use people’s ideas about God, and he’s going to say they have some truth, but he’s also going to say that human ideas about God aren’t enough if we don’t also have the proclamation—something that God reveals to us. So even though I can’t prove Christianity, I can say with confidence that Paul is claiming here that God can be known, that agnostic faith is insufficient—for us and for God. My goal here is to get at what that means for us.

If we look at Paul’s short sermon, about half of what he says about God is the things we can’t know, which leaves God still looking pretty agnostic: God doesn’t live in earthly temples, God is not like hand-made idols, and the nations are left groping in the dark trying to find him.

Most of the things that Paul does say about God are very general: God made the earth, made humanity, and appointed the times and places of the course of the nations. So we might say that God is (1) the beginning of all things, and (2) the sustainer of all things—which, interestingly, are two points that the philosophers in the crowd, the Stoics and Epicureans, would have fought over. These are also two points that lots of people in our world disagree about: Did God create the world, or did it come about by chance? Does God work in the world, or are our lives left up to chance? A lot of times, this breaks down to the argument between evangelical Christians and secular humanists, although I’d guess that most everyone has some opinion on the subject. This is a debate now, and it was a debate then, and Paul probably found a lot of allies in the crowd he was preaching to — at least as long as he stayed with the usual philosophical debates that the people in Athens were accustomed to.

But then Paul gets more specific and introduces the God of Israel. This is something the people of Athens weren’t so used to, and it came with a big catch: God wasn’t just an idea to be argued about, but Paul said that God was doing something new in their own time, and making a demand on the people who heard the sermon. God was calling everyone to repent, because soon the world would be judged by Christ. And Paul goes on: we have evidence, he says, that Christ is the one who will judge: because God raised him from the dead.

The Greeks tended to believe that the human soul was immortal, but they were happy to leave the body behind after death. So the Jewish idea of bodily resurrection from the dead — of dead corpses actually climbing up out of their graves — was not plausible or appealing. This may be why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the cross is foolishness to the Greeks, and it’s certainly why Acts 17:32 says that some of Paul’s audience in Athens scoffed at his sermon. For most of them, the idea of God raising Christ from the dead was ridiculous — not just because of some skepticism about miracles, but because the resurrection didn’t really make sense to them.

What I’m getting at is that there’s a big difference between talking in generalities about the kind of God that philosophers discuss, and talking specifically about the God who reveals himself. There is a big difference between describing how God tends to act, and describing something specific that God has done. And above all, there’s a big difference between describing the kinds of ethical demands that are consistent with a good God, and proclaiming the call for repentance that God is issuing to the world right now.

I want to start with a fairly general point Paul is making here in Acts 17, and then build on it from some of Paul’s letters and the rest of the New Testament. Paul doesn’t say much about Christ here — and in fact he doesn’t even mention him by name — but Jesus is still there at the climax of the message.

So looking at the sermon, Paul claims that he’s going to tell the Athenians who the unknown God is, and it seems to me that he makes three basic points, what we might call the beginning, the middle, and the end: God created the world, God directs the times and places of the nations, and God has appointed Christ to judge the world on the last day. So God is the beginning of all things, and God is the sustainer of all things, but Christ is the end of all things.

NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTOLOGY

This is where I want break away from Acts for awhile, and consider what it means for Christ to stand at the climax of Paul’s sermon. As a modern person trying to figure out who God is, this is what jumps out at me from the sermon: If Jews from Israel and at least some Greeks from Athens can agree that God created the world, and that God cares for creation, then Christ is the unique and surprising part of the sermon. The outline of the sermon matches Paul’s outline of history: the beginning, the middle, and the end, describe the three parts of God’s work in the world: creation, providence, and judgment. The beginning and the middle of the sermon are points that Paul could expect to find some of the philosophers in the crowd to generally agree with him about, but the mention of Christ at the end is the place where the sermon takes its own turn.

I want to expand a little bit here on who Christ is and what he teaches us, which means I’m going to spread out from our text in Acts, to Paul’s letters and the rest of the NT. One of the most important points of theology, in the NT, is that the God who was unknown to the people of Athens, makes himself known in Jesus Christ.

Some places this is very simple and explicit, like in John, when Jesus says, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” But it goes beyond that. Jesus’ ministry began and ended with the God of Israel, the things God had done for them, and the promises God had made to them.

Part of my goal here is to contrast the God of Israel with the God of the philosophers. But I also have to admit that the Jews who wrote the OT were thinkers too, even if they weren’t exactly philosophers like the Greeks. Depending on how you read it, the OT can look a lot like a book of ideas, written by people who were trying to figure out who God is, a lot like the Greeks were.

Yet at the end of the day, the prophets also have a lot of oracles which simply claim, “Thus says the Lord,” and that kind of revelation is something that goes beyond philosophical arguments. Then we come to the NT, which insists that those oracles and promises are ultimately fulfilled in Christ. That means that if we want to know the unknown God, we have to look at what God has revealed, in both the OT and the NT. The OT tells us how God revealed himself to Israel, and it also tells us the promises God gave to Israel—which are also promises for us. In the NT, we are told how Christ reveals the Father to us more fully, and also how he fulfills the promises God has already given to Israel.

I think the key to NT theology is something that Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20: “In Christ, every one of God’s promises is a ‘yes’” (NRSV). Paul doesn’t explain exactly what that means, but it becomes pretty clear when we start looking at the NT, and how it explains who Jesus was and what he did. As it turns out, you can pick virtually any major motif or figure from the OT, and there will be a passage somewhere in the NT that explains how it finds its fulfillment in Jesus. And just as before, this is true for beginning, middle, and end, past, present, and future. So looking at the OT, Jesus reenacts the major ways that God delivered Israel in the past, he fills every office of leader that the OT describes for the present, and he fulfills God’s promises to deliver Israel in the future.

In fact, you can basically walk through the OT looking for major themes, and each one of them has a matching NT passage that tells how Christ fulfills it:

• God creates the world? Paul tells us in Colossians that it was through Jesus that all things in heaven and on earth were created.
• Adam’s transgression brings death into the world? Paul tells us that Jesus became the New Adam, overcoming death for us.
• Abraham receives God promise to bless the world through his seed? Paul tells us that his seed was Christ, the blessing to the gentiles.
• God the Divine Warrior battles Pharaoh for the children of Israel? Revelation tells us that Christ will become the divine warrior, when he returns to bring vengeance on the wicked.
• For the first passover, the children of Israel sacrifice a lamb to protect their homes from the angel of death? Paul tells us that Christ is our Passover lamb, who has been sacrificed.
• Moses is sent by God to bring Israel out of Egypt and give them the law on Mount Sinai? In Matthew, Christ is the new Moses, who leads his people out of slavery, stands on the side of a mountain, and delivers a new law.
• In the wilderness, Israel endures 40 years of testing? The Gospels tell us that Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days, where he overcame the tests that Satan put before him.
• God sent Manna, the bread of heaven, to feed Israel in the wilderness? In John, Jesus tells us that he is the bread that comes down from heaven to feed God’s people.
• Moses lifts up a bronze serpent in the wilderness to save the people from snakebites? In John, Jesus is the one who is lifted up to give salvation.
• In the tabernacle, the High Priest of Israel makes atonement for the people in the Holy of Holies? Hebrews says that Jesus is our High Priest, who makes atonement with his own blood.
• David served as the anointed king of Israel, whose descendant would be the Messiah who would deliver Israel from its enemies? Jesus is that Messiah, who delivers Israel from their sins.
• Proverbs describes Wisdom as the first creation of God, through which he created the world? John tells us that Christ is the divine word of wisdom, who was already there with God, and through whom the world was created.
• Elijah the great signs prophet uses God’s power to heal and do miracles? Jesus becomes that kind of prophet, also healing and doing miracles.
• Isaiah and the other great preaching prophets proclaim God’s demand for social justice in Israel? Jesus defends the widows, befriends the tax collectors, and preaches the good news to the poor.
• The Suffering servant in Isaiah will take the sins of the people upon himself? 1 Peter tells us how Jesus becomes the suffering servant and submits himself to the crucifixion.
• Jeremiah and Ezekiel describe a new covenant, where God will empower his people through the Holy Spirit? Jesus seals the new covenant with his own blood, and then sends the Spirit as a guide.
• Daniel describes how one like a Son of Man will rise up to rule the nations and bring justice to the earth? Jesus is that Son of Man, who will rule and judge the nations on the last day.
• And finally, the resurrection is described in Daniel, when the righteous people who die will be raised on the last day? Jesus is the Resurrection and the life, the firstfruits from among the dead.

We see a pretty obvious pattern start to show up: like Paul said, the promises of God are “yes” in Christ. These claims are not the arguments of philosophers, even though a lot of thought obviously went in to all these NT passages. These passages are more specific than the generalities that philosophers deal with, and this promise of salvation is more than a person could figure out just by looking at the world.

CONCLUSIONS

So as a theology student, I’m torn: the grad student in me feels most comfortable talking about the philosopher’s God — which I think includes a lot of truth about God, and in fact Paul preaches in Athens that their philosophers have things partly right. The philosopher’s God is very appealing to worship, because he makes sense, and he’s attractive to outsiders when we try to give a defense for the hope we have, like our 1 Peter reading says.

But Paul refuses to stop with the philosopher’s God — it’s too general. For Paul, and throughout the NT, you don’t really know God until you see him as revealed in Jesus Christ. Our groping in the darkness can show us that God created the world, and that he works for the good of humanity, but we must turn to the Old Testament to see how God has actually acted to save his people in the past, and how God has promised to save his people in the future. This kind of salvation is not designed to be inferred by philosophers; instead, it rests on God’s faithfulness to specific promises.

Christ, according to the New Testament, reenacts the saving deeds of God from the past, he takes on the role of the Savior sent from God in the present, and his resurrection gives us assurance of God’s ultimate salvation in the future. As much as we can use philosophy and academic language to describe Jesus—and in fact, that’s my job as a grad student—what’s really important about him is not the ideas about him, but the fact of his life and the reality of what he did, and the hope he offers for what he will do.

Resurrection, for Paul, is not an idea, but an historical event—both when Jesus was raised, and when we will be raised. Repentance is not just an ethical scheme based on theological arguments; instead, it’s a direct warning from God that the world will end at an appointed time, and that we will be judged by Jesus.

So then, the Gospel of Christ is not designed just to be something we find interesting, or something we may wish to hear more about at some point in the future. The people in Athens who say this, that they want to hear more, but not right now, are missing the point if they think that Paul’s ideas are merely something new and interesting that they can think about. At least the ones who scoff show that they’ve understood Paul’s message, and they know they want to reject it. For the rest of us, we might not be convinced at the first hearing, but that shouldn’t lull us into being content in our agnosticism. Hearing the Gospel is meant to push us toward responding.

We can doubt whether the Gospel is true or not — whether or not God really did raise Jesus Christ from the dead — but the NT does everything it can to confute anyone who would claim that the time for repentance simply hasn’t come yet. If there’s one thing we are meant to learn from the New Testament, and all those examples that I listed earlier, it’s that salvation is now, present in Christ. This is why the NT tells us that Jesus is the embodiment of virtually every kind of salvation you can find in the OT and in the Jewish tradition: Salvation belongs to the Lord, and it is revealed in Christ. If you were waiting for salvation — any kind of salvation — there’s nothing else that you’ve been waiting for.

There’s a Rich Mullins song that says, “To say the time is short, just means the time is now.” The Christian claim is that all salvation is present in Jesus Christ, and the implication is that God will no longer overlook ignorance of who God really is. It’s as if God is saying, “If you don’t find salvation in Christ, then you don’t really want what I have to offer anyway.”

So philosophers can spend their time thinking, and create ideas about immortal souls if they want to, but there’s really nothing in our experience that tells us we should expect that. People might see ghosts, or they might have experiences of communicating with the dead — so it’s easy to see why people assume there is something after death, but a lot of us aren’t completely convinced those stories are true, and even if they are, they’re difficult to nail down or understand exactly — they’re not exactly the kind of thing you want to base your hope on. People might have general ideas about spirituality and morality, but those aren’t real reasons for hope. Our experience of the world is ultimately that everyone dies.

The only salvation there is to be had beyond the grave is resurrection in Christ, and we have a real reason to believe it: the tomb was empty, and witnesses saw Jesus show up, talk with them, and eat food. We still might doubt whether those stories is true, or whether something else could have happened to Jesus’ body, but at the end of the day, the Christian Gospel is more than just a philosophical argument — and for me, at least, that makes all the difference. Salvation is not an idea or an inference, but rather a gift that will be given on some real last day, to those who withstand judgment before Christ. This, Paul proclaims, is simply what will happen.

So what we’re faced with is fundamentally different than a set of ideas we need to consider. It’s certainly more than just a theological scheme for us to find interesting, even though the NT is full of fascinating theological ideas. But what we’re faced with is the reality of a judgment, and Paul’s sermon is not just calling us to understand or agree — it’s calling us to act, which means to repent and prepare for a real day that will come, whether we believe it or not.

Most of us here today are already Christians, but I think Paul’s sermon can challenge us to consider whether we’re still worshipping the unknown God they worshipped in Athens, or whether we’re preparing ourselves for a meeting with the living, revealed God of Israel, who we see in Jesus Christ. And as interesting as all this might be, the interesting ideas aren’t really the point. What we’re being called to should probably be the same thing that Paul was calling the Athenians to: not just to understand or believe, but to repent.

Since no one raised any disagreements with last week’s post, I’ll suggest one myself.

I think I beat up on a bit of a straw man. Many of the web sites that discuss the Roman Road do, in fact, acknowledge that a new believer is called to live a new life after conversion, and many of them cite other passages of Scripture that fill in some of the gaps I was bemoaning.

However, I maintain that some problems remain with the Roman Road method in general. So here I’ll try to tease out a few main points and raise a question for everyone to respond to.

(1) I am convinced that for a person becoming a Christian, the new life is not just something that happens after salvation, but rather is salvation (or at least a part of it). Perhaps this is my Church of Christ upbringing talking, but I am persuaded that repentance is an action word –– not just a decision –– and that it must take place before salvation.

(2) I think two key reasons Scripture emphasizes baptism are that (1) it’s a public act so that we have people to hold us accountable, and (2) it reminds us that we can’t just make a little change here and there, but instead we need to be completely transformed by putting to death our old self and being raised to a new life. So it’s not just the act of baptism missing from the Roman Road, but also what it signifies.

(3) I am convinced that the way we use Scripture to prove points will teach our listeners how to read Scripture. Reading one verse at a time is, frankly, the worst way to read Scripture; it means that if we understand the verse correctly, it’s due to little more than dumb luck. (I’d prefer to say it’s the work of the Spirit that determines things, but have you seen how people interpret some verses?) So when we quote a verse at a time for the Roman Road, we suggest to people that that’s the way truth is found in Scripture.

On the other hand, obviously some parts of Scripture are more important than others, and it’s rarely helpful just to tell people to read the whole Bible and figure it out for themselves. The balance we need, then, is to find passages of Scripture (ideally larger than a verse or two) that work, in context, at explaining key points so that people can understand them and simultaneously learn how to read Scripture in an appropriate way.

(4) I think Christians need to consider carefully just how simple God intends for the Gospel to be. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul outlines what things that are of “first importance,” yet we cannot take that passage as sufficient, because it says nothing about how the story of Jesus relates to our lives or something called “salvation.” So we don’t want to be overly simplistic. And yet, clearly not everything is essential to know from the start.

So for this post, I’d like to throw open the discussion, and ask what is essential to teach someone (immediately) who may become a Christian, and what can be put off till later? In other words, if we want to develop a presentation of the Gospel to communicate to a non-believer, what should we make sure not to leave out?

So as not to stifle discussion, I won’t suggest any (further) examples.

Last year in a class I took on Romans, we were asked in our final exam to critique the “Roman Road to Salvation,” a series of verses from Paul’s most famous letter which are often used by evangelicals to walk someone through the process of becoming a Christian, often before they leave the web page that describes the process. I want to offer here a modified version of my answer.

The Roman Road exists in numerous forms (just google it to see what I mean), but it consists essentially of 5 points:

1. Everyone has sinned (Rom 3:23).
2. Sin’s consequence is death (Rom 6:23).
3. While we were sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).
4. Because of Christ’s death, we can be saved (Rom 10:9).
5. We are saved when we confess Jesus and believe in his resurrection (Rom 10:9, 13).

I am a firm believer that taking verses out of context is an exceedingly troubling practice. In addition to the oft-lamented risk that we will simply make these passages mean whatever we want, we also miss out on the richness of the complex argument Paul does make.

However.

I also cannot help but believe that God intended for the Gospel to be understood clearly without a full-blown seminary degree, and to follow the argument of the book of Romans just about requires one. I’m exaggerating a bit, of course, but Paul’s argument is indeed complex and confusing. It could take a lifetime to master.

Perhaps we should look elsewhere in Scripture for something simpler to use with beginners. But in the meantime, I want to point out 5 specific points (from Romans) that we miss if we rely on the Roman Road for our understanding of salvation:

1. God’s election and calling. From the start of the book (1:5f), Paul emphasizes the role of divine calling in Christian identity. In 8:29 he insists that “those God foreknew he also predestined . . . those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” So for Paul it is election and calling (along with faith) that lead to justification, whereas the Roman Road suggests that God’s saving work was limited to sending Christ, leaving the rest up to the decision of the individual.

2. New life with Christ through baptism. The Roman Road leaves out most of chapter 6, where Paul describes how salvation actually takes place. In baptism, the believer is crucified and buried with Christ, then raised with Christ to a new life. We only have the eternal life of 6:23 because of the resurrection we experienced in 6:8-9. Thus the eternal life which the Roman Road promises only makes sense in light of our baptism.

3. Freedom from bondage to Sin and Death. For Paul, we used to be enslaved to personified Sin, which paid us wages of death (6:23). The crucifixion of the old self sets the believer free from this force in a transformation that, for Paul, amounts to salvation. The Roman Road assumes that we owe God a death because of our sin, and thus it lacks any reference to sin and death as Powers which bind us in slavery.

4. Obedience and new behavior. The Roman Road, because its adherents often wish to avoid any suggestion of justification by works (in line with, e.g., 9:32), makes no reference to a new kind of behavior by the believer, just as it made no reference to a new life or freedom from sin. Indeed, many hold that in Paul’s view, new behavior comes after salvation, not as a part of it. However, I would hold that salvation must be a change to something, and for Paul a person’s changed behavior is a part of what she becomes at salvation. Paul’s emphasis on a changed life can be seen, for example, in 6:12, 7:4, and 8:13.

5. The work of the Holy Spirit. Paul insists that only those who have the Spirit of Christ belong to Christ (8:9), and that it is by the (Holy) Spirit that misdeeds are put to death so that we might live (8:13). Furthermore, the resurrection of our bodies will take place because of God’s Spirit within us (8:12). These parts of present and future salvation are dependent on the Holy Spirit, which is not mentioned in the Roman Road.

The glossing over of these crucial points of Christian theology/spirituality leads to an important logical gap in the road. The Roman Road tries, as far as I can tell, to find the quickest logical path from “sinner” to “saved.” However, it ends up taking a different logical route than the one Paul actually takes in Romans. This should bother us.

The Roman Road interprets Christ’s death (by its 3rd point) as a means of substitutionary atonement, assuming that Christ died the death we were supposed to die. The logic goes something like this: when we sin, we deserve death; but Christ died instead, so if we believe in him we don’t have to.

According to Paul, however, Christ died as a sacrifice of atonement (3:25), which is a means of forgiveness, not a transfer of punishment. This is important because Paul is describing God as a just ruler willing to give up something to atone for our sin, not as an angry diety needing vengeance to appease his wrath. Subsitutionary atonement may indeed be suggested in the NT (e.g., 1 Peter 2:24), but I do not think it is Paul’s concern in Romans (or perhaps anywhere, though perhaps I’m overlooking something).

Furthermore, when Paul talks about the “wages of sin,” I think he means something very different than what the Roman Road supposes. Paul argues that in baptism we are crucified and raised with Christ, setting us free from our slavery to (personified) Sin (6:6-7), so that we no longer earn death, but become slaves to God and receive God’s free gift of eternal life. So Sin, in Romans 6:23, is not an action that demands a wage, but a master who pays a wage.

This changes the logic of the entire Road. Our problem is not some punishment that we deserve, but a Power who has control over us. Substitutionary atonement can only remove punishment, but Paul describes us as having a bigger problem. We are slaves to a cruel taskmaster, who pays us only death, and from whom we can only be set free (ironically) by dying (with Christ) and being raised again. This demands that becoming a Christian requires an entirely new life, and that simply believing that Jesus took away our punishment is insufficient.

Essentially, the Roman Road substitutes the idea of salvation and one benefit of salvation for what salvation actually is. In other words, it changes salvation from a powerful transformation via death and resurrection into an unobservable, internal alteration of our ultimate destination, which should be followed by an actual process of transformation but does not include such a change as part of its essence. I think such a suggestion would make Paul either laugh or cry. Well, more likely he’d write an angry letter.

This is a key reason, I believe, that salvation is meant to take place in a community (rather than in reading a web page), because understanding and enacting the process of salvation are necessary parts of undergoing it. Word, as they say, must put on flesh. (I owe that line to Rich Mullins.)

If we take Scripture as a revelation of God, then we must acknowledge that God revealed to us the book of Romans, not 5 scattered verses from Romans which we were meant to piece together as best we could. A simple presentation of the Gospel from Romans, if it is not true to the book’s own logic, is not likely to be God’s intent. So I would argue that it remains for Christians who want a simple, clear presentation of the Gospel to keep looking.