We have just returned from a
4-day Blue Cruise along the Southwest Coast of Turkey setting sail from Bodrum.
One could say it was easy and laid back, even that not much happened other than
floating around on the beautiful blue Mediterranean and tramping about in some
pretty cool ruins of an old Roman fortress, in fact a whole long stretch of
fortified coastline. It was physically the most restful excursion I’ve had in a
long, long time.
Spiritually, it was another
thing altogether. With no distractions, I had hours for the inner stuff to
bubble up – issues too personal for a blog, vocational questions, and
heavy-duty spiritual stuff. It was, to tell you the truth, pretty hard –
nothing I’d have chosen to do if I had seen it coming and nothing I’d have
stuck with if I had a way to escape. But it was a very small boat.
The main thing I can say
about it is that I spent four days wrestling with Paul the way Jacob wrestled
with God’s messenger at Bethel and I suspect I shall come away with a limp as
Jacob did. Before setting out on this two-week journey in the footsteps of the
sometimes appealing, sometimes appalling apostle, I read up on him a bit. I had
done that before of course, but this time I went deeper and was amazed to
discover how little I knew. My Paul was pretty much the one discovered or
created by Martin Luther in the 16th Century – all about being saved
(forgiven and accepted by God) based on faith (believing the right stuff) and
not by works. As I prepared for this class, I learned from N. T. Wright that
rival interpretations of Paul have been prevalent in New Testament scholarship
for pretty near a hundred years now – but I had somehow missed it.
The whole thing started with
Albert Schweitzer’s game changer book, The
Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1930) and then was taken further by E. P.
Sanders with Paul and Palestinian Judaism
(1977). What we have in this new perspective is what Schweitzer called Christ-Mysticism. I got that idea from
Wright before flying to Turkey. But I didn’t honestly know what it meant. I did
a good bit more reading, but not on this core point. Then we travelled all over
Turkey visiting the places where Paul preached, wrote, lived, and did some of
his time in prison. At the end of the
tour, one of our classmates gave me one of her books, Paul by the Cambridge scholar, Morna Hooker. That’s what I read on
the boat.
Hooker does her own carful
analysis of the Epistles, but her conclusion is dead on the mark with
Schweitzer if I understand them rightly. Substitutionary atonement is
definitely a misreading. Christ suffered “for us” and “for our sins” alright, but
it isn’t a substitution. It is a joining with us so that we can be with him. He
dies to join us in the wages of sin so that his resurrection can lift us with
him. As St. Irenaeus put it in the 2nd Century (1400 years before
Calvin would give us the substitutionary atonement idea of an algebra equation of
sin and punishment) – Irenaeus said of Jesus: He became as we are that we might become as he is.
It actually turns out that
many of the texts translated as “faith in
Christ” are better translated as the “faith of Christ.” That does not mean that we do not need to have faith in
Christ. We do and there are texts from Paul that say as much; but the point
here is that it is Christ’s faith that saves us. But for us to appropriate that
salvation we have to be – drum roll here for Schweitzer’s key phrase – but it
was Paul’s key phrase first – in Christ.
I do love the sound of that.
And it is extremely appealing to an Enneagram 3 gone spiritual. My first
published theological paper was on “theosis” or “Christification” in the
writings of 19th Century Episcopal theologian, William Porcher
DuBose. I love the idea of spirituality with room for progress. I love the idea
of being like Christ. But at the ripe old age of 65, it doesn’t ring the same.
I have not “become as he is.” I find myself as fallible as ever, in some ways
worse. That doesn’t necessarily mean I am consigned to hell. It is Jesus’
righteousness attributed to me that sets me right with God, but his
righteousness is also supposed to be transforming me. I am supposed to be in Christ.
So how does that work? I know
to a moral certainty that if Paul had been blessed with word processing and
with my wife for an editor this would be a lot clearer. But as it is, I have to
figure out how to find my way into Christ. The key passage is Galatians 2: 20
(this is my paraphrase but I think it may be closer than a lot of the current
translations to Paul’s voice):
I have been
crucified with Christ and yet I live –
No,
it is no longer I that live but rather Christ
who
lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh
I
live by trusting in the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself
for me.
Being “in Christ” starts by
being “crucified with Christ.” In Buddhism, they call it ego-death – the death
of the “I”. In 1869 Charles Spurgeon called this the death of the Old Adam in
us so that the New Adam might live in his place. Paul talked about various
hardships he endured as “shar(ing) in the suffering of Christ. “ But pretty
clearly Paul does not think self-mortification for the sake of spiritual
advancement is the right way. He would have had no use for self-flagellation
and climbing stone steps on your knees. Instead of scrubbing away the “I,” that
just makes it stronger. It puffs up the spiritual pride. St. Augustine was a
great ascetic. He denied himself all
manner of life’s pleasures, only to find his Self-centeredness still perfectly
in tact. He famously said, “I have become a great problem to myself.” He said
that after the mortifications and
so-called self-denials.
I tried to get rid of my ego
to when I was younger. I sat on pillows for long hours meditating. I did
prostrations. I chanted mantras. I found the more advanced I became in
spiritual practice the prouder I was.
Paul has another way – the
way of Jesus “who loved me and gave himself for me.” Do you see it? Christ
loved us and gave himself for us out of that love. We don’t overcome the “I” by
our own efforts. We love – loving Jesus would be the best possible way to go – but
the main thing is to love someone or something enough to lose ourselves in that
loving.
All of Paul’s letters are
instructions in the art of love. 1st
Corinthians Ch. 13 is the classic description but we can see it just as well in
Philippians 2. It’s all over the New Testament, the setting aside of self out
of love for each other. To love like that is to be “in Christ.”
I wonder if some people may
even stumble into Christ without knowing it. I may be wrong about this. But consider this poem by the non-Christian
Turkish writer Nazim Hikmet who spent 13 years in prison and 13 years in exile
for his political beliefs:
It is no crime to be Romeo or Juliet;
it’s not a crime even to die for love.
What counts is whether you can be a Romeo or Juliet –
I mean, it’s all a question of your heart . . . .
You fall head over heels in love with the world,
But it doesn’t know you’re alive.
You don’t want to leave the world,
but it will leave you –
I mean just because you love apples,
do apples have to love you back?
I mean, if Juliet stopped loving Romeo
-- of if she’d never loved him --
would he be any less a Romeo?
It’s no crime to be Romeo or Juliet;
it’s not a crime even to die for love.
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