God: Chapter 3 (The Nooma Revolution)

Recently, I’ve really gotten into a Christian video series known as “Nooma.” A pastor in Michigan named Rob Bell is continually producing this series. He is the anti-typical pastor…young and non-suited. Enter on stage left the criticism. As a person who spent five years of his life academically studying theology, I realize Bell’s theology is “off.” I realize he isn’t spouting the typical view of God. I realize his Christology is of the type known as “low-Christology.” That is, he tends to focus on the human side of Jesus. The reality of our Tradition is that Jesus is 100% human and 100% divine. That is the “official view,” but it isn’t what you hear in church. What you get in church is this “lofty, otherworldly” figure. You get the divine. To talk about him as a human is borderline heresy. It’s liberalism. That’s where the church is wrong. We make him out to be a distant divinity. We make him the untouchable, exterior figure that does some good stuff for us and then waits on us to get to heaven. Jesus didn’t just come to “get us to heaven.” He wanted to show us heaven. This life isn’t just a “waiting period.” It doesn’t just believe a fact about Jesus so that we don’t burn for eternity. Christianity is more than a belief…it’s a lifestyle. It’s a worldview. It’s a way of living that says there is more. Relationship with the divine is both possible and necessary. Jesus is our example. A real example. He is what we should be and do NOW. With the help of the Spirit, Jesus carried out the work of the Father. This is, in theological language, called “Spirit Christology.” When I learned what that was in grad school, it revolutionized my way of thinking about Jesus. It made Jesus human. He was a baby that cried like the rest of us. He had his “dirty diapers.” He fell. He dropped things. He cried. He learned. He was truly tempted. He resisted through the power of the Spirit. He knew what others were thinking through the Spirit. He healed by the power of the Spirit. In essence, Jesus was divine, but we know he laid down the power of his divinity to truly be human. Let’s let him be this. Let’s use his relationship with the Spirit to see how we too can be more. When we deny what Paul says (Philippian 2) about the “emptying of himself,” we deny what he did. Jesus did what he did as a human. He did it through the power of the Spirit. So this is what the “high-Chrisologists” and the “low-Chrisologists” don’t get. Jesus was both. High Christology, on it’s own, makes Jesus such a divine being that he wasn’t really like us, and therefore, he couldn’t be a true example for us. Low Christology makes him such a human that he couldn’t really do what only the divine could do—save us. So the missing link is Spirit Christology. With his relationship with the Spirit (which we can have as well), Jesus could truly be a human that saves us.

But what is he “saving” us from? This is what the Nooma series wants to show us. It isn’t just “hell” as we so often make it about. “Hell” is literally an “otherworldly” concept. It doesn’t make sense in our modern world. It just seems like such a mythical view of eternity. I’m not saying it’s untrue; I’m just saying that it isn’t something that motivates the modern person. The atheist doesn’t believe hell exists so he laughs at you when you try to convince him that he needs to convert to avoid hell. Nooma shows us that Christianity isn’t just about the afterlife but the present one as well. This life is what motivates us. I want to be a Christian even if it isn’t true. I want whatever way I live my life to be the best way to live my life regardless of if there is another life to come. People today are so focused on this life that speaking about the unknown next life is literally irrelevant to them. Rob Bell gets this. He thinks, as do I, that Jesus’ life shows us a better way to live in this world. Loving your neighbor doesn’t just yield a reward in the afterlife. It does here. Forgiveness shows her profit here. Fear isn’t the motivator it once was. When people don’t like this focus on the here and now, they don’t just misunderstand Spirit Christology. They don’t understand “The Kingdom of God.” Jesus came to initiate heaven on earth. The miracles he performed were “proleptic.” That is, they were an early glimpse of what is to come. Already do we have the Kingdom in Jesus, but not yet is it fully realized. We still have poverty, death, sickness, war, etc. Jesus came to the poor, raised the dead, healed the sick, and taught us to turn the other cheek. Jesus is the bridge to the divine, not just divinity itself. Our world isn’t perfect, so the kingdom hasn’t been perfected. Yet we’ve been given the blueprint.

Most people that have seen some of the Nooma series say that their favorite video is “08 Dust” (myself included).

This is the story about Jesus’ calling of the disciples. In the video, Bell discusses the Jewish system of education. Students were taught to memorize the Torah (first 5 books of the Old Testament). Those that achieved this and were talented were allowed to continue on to learn the rest of the Old Testament. Those that didn’t make the cut were supposed to learn the family trade. The ones who continued then learned the rest of the Old Testament to only be told whether or not they could continue on learning from their Rabbi. Were they good enough? Were they talented enough to become “like” their Rabbi (which means teacher)? Only the best of the best could do this. So now, consider this in light of the calling of the disciples. The disciples were out fishing. So that means they hadn’t made the cut. They weren’t the best of the best, yet a Rabbi came along and said “follow me.” The Rabbi chose them where they had previously been rejected. They weren’t good enough to serve God, but now a Rabbi tells them they are. Now a Rabbi says you can do what I do. “I can make you good enough.” When Jesus walks on the water, Peter says “Lord, if it be you, call me.” Jesus says for him to come and Peter does. Peter knows that if the Rabbi does it, and the Rabbi says “come,” then he must be able to do it this as well. And Peter does. He does walk on water until he doubts himself, or in reality, he doubts his call. The call came from Jesus/his Rabbi, therefore, he can. Rob Bell says that Peter doubts himself instead of doubting Jesus (because Jesus isn’t sinking). People attack Bell here because they say that faith is in God, not one’s self. What they don’t get it is that faith in one’s self is faith in God. Why? Because we are called. We are not called by man. We aren’t good enough for man (e.g. the Rabbi’s rejected them). We are “good enough” for God. Jesus teaches us that calling = equipping. If we are called or asked to do something, then we can by virtue of who called us. We deny God when we deny his calling on ourselves. “High-Christology” people, always want to stress the greatness of God, so they do this by belittling man’s role in anything in religion. They do this out of a pure heart, but they just don’t get it. We are the hands of God not because he can’t accomplish his goals without us but because he chose this. The triune God chose to die on the cross when he didn’t have to do this to save us. We know from philosophy that whatever God does in action, he can do in word (consider creation…“Let there be…”). So the death on a cross was a choice which carried a visible meaning to us. God chose to create by voice but to save creation by action. He chose the cross and then said “go make disciples of all nations.” So who saves? Clearly Jesus does, but he chose the church to spread the message. He chose humans to do the work. The message is both of the afterlife and the current life. He doesn’t just heal in heaven. He doesn’t just release from addiction in the next life. He doesn’t just love in the next life. He doesn’t just restore in the next life. The Kingdom of God theology teaches us that heaven has invaded earth now.

The Nooma series has a video called “Bullhorn.”

This is about a man who wants to spread the Gospel by yelling at people to “save” them. Is Christianity just about avoiding burning? Is it more than that? That is what the Nooma series is. What is this life about? The essence of Christianity is not hell.

This is my 2nd favorite Nooma video. “Rhythm” It will say in 2 minutes what has taken me this whole time. (By the way, I love this song.)


Nooma

God: Chapter 2 (1+1+1=1)

When I led a session on the Trinity, I asked the class to draw the Trinity. The result of this request was looks of bewilderment and to this day it is brought up. I don’t really understand why. The reality was that the objective was achieved the moment I asked the task of them. #1. It showed the complexity of the issue. #2. It revealed misunderstandings about the Trinity. It’s funny, but it’s hard to draw or talk about the Trinity without conveying a heresy. How do you draw singularity and plurality at the same time?

Why not tri-theism? Why don’t we just bite the bullet and admit we’re tri-theists? Remember the last chapter where I discussed why monotheism is superior to polytheism? There is no such thing as polytheism. If God exists as we think of him, then he must be a single essence.

What does this matter? Why does God being 1 essence and 3 persons matter? Dr. Cross says that the Trinity is a model for the church. He bases his entire systematic theology on this concept. God exists in community. I’m sure you’ve heard of the “body of believers.” What if God himself were a mini “body of believers.” The Father is the sender. The Son is the sent one. The Spirit is the relationship between the two. The Spirit acts as informer and comforter. So to, for humans, does the Spirit act as informer (e.g. Spirit of Truth) and comforter (e.g. Paraclete meaning “called alongside of”). Some have described it like this: The Father is the fullness of the Godhead invisible, the Son is the fullness of the Godhead visible, and the Spirit is the fullness of the Godhead to the believer.

Some in the early church didn’t think there was a “Trinity.” In reality, it’s not like before Jesus’ ascension he said, “Now you guys need to believe that My Father, the Spirit that is coming and I are all in this conglomeration called a ‘Trinity.’” The Trinity matters because the denial of the Trinity is the denial of who Jesus was. Can someone be saved and not believe in the Trinity? Yes. Why do I say that so confidently? I say that because people don’t know what the Trinity is even now, yet they know Jesus as “savior.” Jesus’ mission was to save, not convince us of his ontology (being). Why it matters is because philosophically, a human cannot save us. A human cannot remove our sins. A human cannot do what only a divine being can do. Therefore, for us to be saved, Jesus must be divine. Those who attempt to rob Jesus of his divinity attempt to rob us of our salvation. So, it must be true that Jesus is divine for us to be saved, but it doesn’t require our intellectual understanding of this. It isn’t intellectual assent alone that saves us “for even the demons believe.” Jeremy Taylor shows us that it begins with this but matures itself leaving the residue of works. Mature faith reveals the Trinity. It exists in community. It overflows in a loving relationship. It expands from the individual to the community to the society (as does the Trinity). It makes disciples of all nations. It doesn’t say “the three of us are enough.” It expands because it desires to.

One final note, John Calvin burned a man at the stake for a heresy of the Trinity (Servetus). You might not want to believe that God was the Father, then the Son, and now is the Spirit (Sabellianism). I used to be completely baffled as to why people burned others at the stake. I was especially perplexed for John Calvin to do it as a Protestant who understood how many early Reformers were burned at the stake. It hit me one day why they did this with no problem of morality. Besides the fact that they believed the condemned’s actions were severely dangerous to the community, they believed this person was going to burn in hell forever. If the person is going to do this forever, what is a few more minutes? It served to be a deterrent of that belief system. So the justification was to prevent others from following that “wrong” path. They could see where it would lead not only on earth but in eternity. It was an “object lesson.”

God: Chapter 1 (“The Logos”)

“In the beginning was the Word….” What if I started a book out with “In the beginning was the word”? It wouldn’t be read with the understanding of what it meant. That is, we read that line and start theologizing it. The first readers didn’t have a capital “Word” which symbolized “Jesus.” So did it mean John was saying that in the beginning was a literal word? That seems pretty crazy. Maybe this “word” was “alphabet.” Maybe this “word” was “supercalifragisexpialidocious.” No, probably not. The reality is the original reader knew “word” (logos) to be a symbolic word. It was used in philosophy to convey a sense of intangibility and otherworldliness. So what is this word? What is it trying to represent? Before we get there, we should know first that this English translation falls short of it’s Greek equivalent. In Greek there is no “the” in the line “In the beginning….” So let’s write it in English without the article. “In beginning was the word.” What is John trying to say? Well, we still don’t know what “word” is so all we know is that John is trying to convey that there was no specific beginning. The article “the,” if it were there, would be called a “definitive article.” It would the type of “the” which tries to send the “message of specifics.” Let’s say you and I co-own a dog, and I said “THE dog” jumped over the creek. You would know which dog I’m referring to. So if “the” were there, it would mean John would probably be saying this “word was” when time began. This word “was” when Genesis 1:1 happened. So “the beginning” referred to here is not Creation. In fact, the writer seems to be suggesting there was no time period when this “word” is mentioned. Time seems to be irrelevant in this word…almost existing outside of it. So what kind of thing is being referred to here if it can exist outside of time? I suppose we’re left with only a supernatural being. So this word is already exposed as a supernatural being by the lack of a single tiny word “the.”
You didn’t think this was enough material on the first third of that verse did you? We haven’t even looked at “was.” This word points to a past. Now remember the philosophical use of “logos”? It meant the logos was an “intangible thing” or an “otherworldly thing.” So this logos was. In verse 14, the logos “became flesh.” “Was” is no longer used. “To become” (egeneto) is used. So it doesn’t say this word “was” flesh but this word “became” flesh. The intangible became tangible. The otherworldly invaded this world. The immaterial became material. The timeless entered time.
“…And the word was with God….” Wait wait wait. We just learned this logos was supernatural. So how can there be 2 gods? If this logos isn’t God himself than he must just be a supernatural being like an angel. My other question is what does “with God” mean. Does it mean equality? Does it mean they’re buds who like to hang out? Why did John say in the first part of this sentence that the logos was there in the timeless beginning? How could this supernatural being be there when time didn’t exist? That would mean it wasn’t created. We already know that which isn’t created is God itself (via philosophy). This is getting complicated because we have a timeless being (1st third of John 1:1) that we learn is in some way separate from “God” (2nd third of John 1:1). Nothing is co-equal with God so what is going on here?
Well, let’s look at the Greek. The “with” is not the usual word that is translated as “with” (e.g. meta). The word used (pros) is usually translated as “to” which refers to a direct relationship. Like, “I give this “to you.” That wouldn’t make any sense in English though, so it isn’t written “…and the word was to God….” The reason it is translated as “with,” besides the fact that “to” wouldn’t make sense, is that “with” is what it is trying to convey. This word and God are distinguishable yet inter-related. The two have a relationship of intense closeness, yet by the very fact there is a relationship, the two are not the same. We say in our “Christian thought” that “two become one” in marriage. The two have such close relationship that they are united in various ways yet the very fact that they can be united makes them separate. So apparently we have 2 gods. Well, that is until we read the final third of the verse.
“…and the word was God.” So now we have a separate God but the same God. What is going on? John grew up monotheistic so we know he likely is not trying to suggest there are two gods. Maybe he is trying to say this is God manifest now. That Old Testament God was the past and this is the new experience of God. This is known as Sabellianism or technically that God is one person experienced as The Father first, then the Son/Word, then the Spirit. It also happens to be a heresy which John’s words are actually fighting against. Kai theos en ho logos. “…And God was the word.” This is how it is written in Greek, but it isn’t the order in which it is written in English. This is because we write the subject first. How do we know which is the subject: God or the logos? The article tells us this. The “the” (in the Greek above “ho”) tells us that the logos is the subject of the sentence and since we, unlike the Greeks, usually put the subject first, it must be written “…and the word was God.” We know from “and the word was with God…” that this logos is not the same person as God. So why here is John walking the line with Sabellianism (that the word is God)?
John is trying to avoid another misunderstanding which became very popular in the early church called Arianism (not Nazi Aryanism). This heresy taught that Jesus was a created being. A god-like being created to save humanity and could be worshipped because of his closeness with God and his work. To the Arians, he was of a “similar” “substance” as God. Why the quotes? Ever heard the phrase “it doesn’t make one iota’s difference”? Actually, you may not have, but my dad uses it all the time. In Greek, “similar” and “same” are separated by “one iota.” This one little letter is the difference in whether Jesus is actually God (uncreated being) or similar to God (created being). There is a significant problem with the idea that a created being can be a God. It’s really simple. Polytheistic cultures like the Greeks and Romans had multiple gods who controlled things. Mars was the God of war. So you offered Mars a sacrifice before going to war. I believe Neptune was the God of the sea. There were gods of love, peace, fertility, life, healing, death, harvests, marriage, etc. If there really is a god or gods then this/these god/gods should have certain characteristics. (This is a philosophical way of proving the superiority of monotheism over other theistic beliefs). “God is that which nothing greater can be conceived” (paraphrase of Anselm). God then is ultimate good, ultimate power, ultimate knowledge, and unlimited in by space-time (aka God personifies goodness, is omnipotent, is omniscient, and is omnipresent). If God is all-powerful, then he is the God of war and the god of fertility (because he can cause fertility). This same God controls the seas (e.g. Jesus walks on the water). This same God can heal (since he created us in the first place). The monotheistic God encompasses all the gods of the Romans into a single God who can do everything those gods can do, and more. Which is God: “Mars, God of war” or “God.” Which is God: a god who can do a single task or a god who can do every task? It’s simple philosophy that shows us that monotheism is far superior to polytheism.
So, Jesus could not be created by God because that then makes him a sub-god, which we know from the philosophy above, is no God at all. “…And the word was God” conveys that this logos is God himself. We know from “was with God,” though, that he is not the same person. So we have multiplicity of persons in the Godhead. The exact Greek that was used appears to be very intentional. It’s walking the tightrope of heresies to convey a new theology of God based on the new revelation of his Son. Keep John’s purpose in mind because we have to look at the “Jehovah’s Witness” translation of John 1 now.
Jehovah’s Witness theology translates the final third of John 1:1 as, “the logos was a god.” Why and how? Well, it isn’t because they’re evil and don’t any understanding of the Greek. It’s because they have too little understanding of the Greek. Technically, what was done is okay. What I mean is, if the Greek article comes before a noun, then typically it is definitive (THE, like I talked about earlier). It points to a specific person. If there is not definitive article, then an “a” can be supplied in English to show generality/plurality. So the lack of an article can and often does allow for the adding of “a.” So why is it incorrect to use it here?
If the article were before both nouns (God & Jesus) [would look like this “ho theos en ho logos” or “the God was the word”], then John would be saying that Jesus and God (Old Testament concept of “God”) were the same “person.” Basic Christian theology teaches a trinity of persons yet one substance. There is no single person in the godhead. Jesus is not all of the trinity. Jesus is not all of the Godhead. He is one of the three persons. If John had used an article before both nouns, this also would allow for the interchangeability of subject and direct object. Basically, “the God was the word” and “the word was God” would both be appropriate translations. This helps one see how John had a purpose in not using the second article. It prevents this interchangeability. We know later from v.14 that “the word became flesh.” The Father did not. “God” did not (“God,” here would mean the Old Testament concept of God which I contend means “Father”).
Some have suggested that the lack of the article before “God” conveys “divine essence” more so than personhood. Remember, the trinity (GOD) is both 3 persons and 1 essence. Consider that with this: Greek often uses word order to convey emphasis. The first word in a clause is the most important (“theos en ho logos” “God was the word”). That means “God” or “divine essence” as we just learned, is the emphasis. The logos WAS divine is the meaning. Furthermore, if the Jehovah’s Witnesses are right with “a God,” then how would John construct the sentence to fit the traditional interpretation? In other words, how would he write it if he wanted to write it the way that “the rest of us” interpret it? Here is how: the way he did. He could only write it that they way it was. Two articles = the heresy of Sabellianism. Zero articles = no subject and therefore, it wouldn’t even be a sentence. It would be like me trying to write a sentence without a subject. It had to be written the way it was.
So, in the context, it does not make much sense to translate it “a God” despite being technically possible. For one, we’ve already seen that there can be no such thing as a lesser God. There is either one God or no God but multiple gods is an impossibility. Also, it would require John to drop his monotheistic roots which simply didn’t happen with Jews. They were drilled from the time they could understand words (Deut. 6:4) “The LORD Our God is ONE.” Thirdly, the JW’s translation is the result of “sophomore syndrome.” That is, they have a little bit of knowledge but only enough to use it foolishly (soph- meaning “wisdom” + mor- meaning “fool”). The JW”s don’t name who their translators are and the ones that have come out have been revealed to have no more than two years of Greek education. I, myself, had two years of Greek, and I can tell you that I could only handle the easiest book of the New Testament (I John). For example, after my first year of Greek, we finally got to look at actual passages from the New Testament. I was excited at the prospect because of how much time and effort I had devoted to it. So the teacher told us to translate Luke 1:1-4 and come back the next day. That sounds like no big deal because it’s only four verses but four verses is easily over an hour of work. So, when we came back the next day, the teacher tallied up how many new words (meaning we hadn’t learn these yet in our vocabulary from the first year) were in these four verses. I believe it was around 15 and one of the words was 16 letters long. None of us could actual do the sentences because we didn’t know the words we were supposed to be translating. So if we couldn’t translate four verses, how could they translate the entire New Testament?