The Gospel in Two Chairs

I greatly enjoyed Brian Zahnd's book Unconditional. - the best book I've read this year. This video from  BrianZahnd.com is the first time I have heard him speak.

Very interesting presentation.  Watch the video before considering my further comments.

Brian contrasts what he considers two versions of the gospel story:  the western legal version and a patristic (from the early church fathers) redemptive version. My response is to ask why we have to choose between the two versions? There is nothing fundamentally contradictory or incompatible between the two summaries of the gospel message,.  I believe both are essentially Biblical.  They expand and compliment each other.

The only problem I have with Brian's presentation is the idea that the first version pits Jesus against God.  No way, God forbid! I have never heard the gospel taught that way.  God was in Christ, bearing His own just wrath on our behalf. Both versions properly understood show God as being like the Jesus of the four Gospels.

I refuse to choose between two Biblical presentations. I believe both. What do you think?

More Zahnd Stuff

If you have enjoyed and benefited from the content I've been quoting from Brian Zahnd's book Unconditional: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness, then you should check out his website for the book (unconditionalthebook.com) and his blog (brianzahnd.com).

Oh, you should also buy and read the book!

Ugliness Transformed to Beauty

"Don't miss this miracle! The miracle of the redeemed Roman cross! Ugliness transformed into beauty.  A miracle achieved not by erasing its history but be transforming its identity. The miracle of forgiving grace! And if the forgiveness of Christ can save a symbol from its ugly association with torture and death and transform it into a symbol of grace and beauty, then no sinner is beyond the reach and saving grace of God's love.  The history of the cross is not obliterated through forgiveness - it retains its history of death - but the identity of the cross is transformed by forgiveness."

 - Brian Zahnd, Unconditional, pages 193-194

Reading Scripture Cruciformly

"Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, the Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is." - Hans Urs von Balthasar.
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"...our reading of Scripture must be centered at the cross...So where shall we center our reading of Scripture? Where is the touchstone? What is the definitive lens for interpretation?  Where shall we point in Scripture and say, 'There is God! That is what God is like!' I agree with Hans Urs von Balthasar that it is the cross. It is in the ugly brutality of crucifixion that the beauty of God's love is most clearly revealed.

Of all the possible ways of understanding the nature of God, I insist that none is more complete than when we see Jesus Christ hanging upon the cross with his arms outstretched in a loving embrace of the whole world - an embrace that included his enemies.  To understand God best, we should look to Christ upon the cross forgiving a world that has rejected him.  This is the love that saves us."

   - Brian Zahnd, Unconditional, page 190

Praying the "Smite Them" Psalms

More powerful words about forgiveness and justice from Unconditional? by Brian Zahnd:

"...The choice to forgive is not an exoneration of the criminal; it is a choice to end the cycle of revenge and leave the matter of justice in the hands of God.

This perspective on justice helps us understand what is know as the imprecatory psalms- the cursing psalms.  These are the angry psalms that plead for God to do justice by inflicting his wrath upon the wicked. What we learn from the imprecatory psalms is that rage against injustice belongs before God.  Instead of holding rage against injustice in our heart where it is allowed to fester and corrupt, we place our rage before the throne of God, recognizing that God and God alone is capable of judging the world in righteousness. Anger against deep injustice is unavoidable.  That anger can be brought before God in an appropriate way through the imprecatory psalms..." 

"...The purpose of the 'furious parts of the Psalms,' as C. S. Lewis called them, has to do with placing our anger concerning violent injustice before God and trusting God to bring about justice.  But a word of caution: The imprecatory psalms are how the saints have prayed concerning violent and murderous injustice - from ancient Semitic warlords to Nazis.  But is is not how we are to pray concerning our brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we simply cannot get along. How Dietrich Bonhoeffer might pray concerning Hitler is not how we are to pray concerning irritating church members. The prayer of imprecatory rage is a response to the monstrous, not the petty."

          (from pages 118-119, italics in the original)

 If you have not read this book, I cannot praise it highly enough. Get it! Read it!

Redeeming the Past

More powerful writing from Unconditional? by Brian Zahnd

"For redemption to be complete and honestly give us a hopeful future, it must be able to address and in some way redeem the past. Through the act of forgiveness the past is not forgotten, but by faith in God's redemptive work it comes to be viewed in a new way. The injustice is to be remembered, but it is not allowed to poison the present and dictate the future.  Forgiveness, when done as an expression of faith in God, allows us to have a new and redemptive perspective on the past."  - page 82
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"...What are you waiting for?  Are you waiting to get even? A chance for payback? An opportunity to exact your revenge?  If so, you have no future.

You may get even, you may even achieve payback, you may gain your revenge, but you will stay forever chained to the injustice done to you. You are in danger of forming your identity around your injustice in such a way that it forever shapes your future."  - page 83 (italics in the original)

Hope is Grounded in Forgiveness

"Our happiness lies in hope.  If we can approach the future with hope, we can be happy.  This is because hope is the prevailing attitude that the pain and disappointments of the past do not have to be endlessly repeated. Hope dares to imagine the future as a legitimate alternative to the vicious repetitions of the past.  But the refusal to forgive is a toxic memory that endlessly pulls the painful past into the present.  The toxic memory of the unforgiven past poisons the present and contaminates the future."

Unconditional: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness, by Brian Zahnd, Page 71

Removing the Bullet of Bitterness

In Unconditional, Brian Zahnd retells the story of Pope John Paul II forgiving the man who shot him in St. Peter's Square.  The doctors removed the bullet from the pope's body, but the pope himself removed the bullet of bitterness from his heart by forgiving Ali Agca the attempted assassin.

In his hatred, Ali Agca fired bullets of hate into the body of John Paul II, and though the  bullets almost took the pope's life the hate never touched his soul.  John Paul II responded with whispered words of love and forgiveness - words that lodged in the soul of Ali Agca.  Those words seem to have transformed this troubled man.  They certainly caused multitudes around the world to ponder the possibilities of forgiveness. (page 56)

Then, on page 64 Zahnd applies that story to the rest of us:

"The only way to remove the deadly bullet from our heart is through forgiveness.  This is how you prevent yourself from becoming a victim twice over - first a victim of injustice, then as a victim of systemic bitterness...

...When you are the recipient of hate, there is always the danger that you will allow yourself to be defined and deformed by that hate. The only way of exorcising the demon of hate is through the purgative of forgiveness.  Allowing forgiveness to purge the unforgiveness in our hearts is what enables us to move beyond injustice and not be chained to it for life."

My Current Reading List - April 2011

Kings Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, By Timothy Keller

A study of the life of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, based on Keller's preaching to his New York City congregation of post-modern recovering pagans and evangelicals returning from the wilderness. He unites the themes of the message of the Kingdom of God and the Cross, hence the title.

One of his best - and with Keller that is saying a lot.

Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness, by Brian Zahnd

Deeply moving and challenging treatment of Jesus' command for us to forgive those who wrong us, and his example in doing so himself from the cross. The book would be worth it just for the stories and quotes from Corrrie Ten Boom, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Nelson Mandela, and others who have demonstrated the power of forgiveness and the freedom it can bring.


 

Citizen Soldiers: The Us Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, by Stephen Ambrose.

Ambrose describes what it was like for the American privates, sergeants and lieutenants fighting the Germans in Europe, using lots of quotes from the "citizen soldiers" themselves. Another great book from the biographer of Eisenhower, and one of the greatest historians of World War II.

 

Jonathan Edwards: Americas Evangelical, by Phiulip F. Gura

Interesting and well written biography of the late puritan period revivalist, theologian and philosopher, widely considered one of the greatest minds in American history. Edwards' works are increasingly influential in today's "young, restless and reformed" movement, so he is more relevant than ever.

Are You Just A Christian, Or Are You Christian?

What - you didn't think there was a difference?

"You can become a Christian in a moment. But to become Christian is another matter. In our evangelical churches we are very adept at teaching people how to become a Christian - how to receive the forgiveness available in Christ. We have not been nearly so adept at teaching people how to become Christian - how to become Christlike in a way that helps flood a world hell-bent on vengeance with the grace of forgiveness. But as your read the New Testament, you will find that Christ and his apostles place far more emphasis on becoming Christian than on becoming a Christian.

I fear we have contented ourselves with the self-congratulation of becoming a Christian, when the call of discipleship is to become Christian, to become Christ-like, to become imitators of Christ in a fallen world where true imitation of Christ is radically counter-cultural and deeply counterintuitive."

From Brian Zahand, Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness, page56-57

Costly Forgiveness

"Christian forgiveness is not a cheap denial of the reality of evil or the trite sloganeering of 'forgive and forget.'  That may suffice for minor personal affronts, but it is hollow and even insulting when applied to crimes like murder, rape, and genocide. No, Christian forgiveness is not cheap.  Rather, it is costly because it flows from the cross - the place where injustice and forgiveness meet in violent collision.  Christian forgiveness does not call us to forget.  Christian forgiveness allows us to remember but calls us to end the cycle of revenge."

Brian Zahand, Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness, pages 11-12

I cannot speak highly enough about this book. Last weekend I found it on the shelf of our local Borders Books, started reading while drinking my caramel mocha, and have been totally hooked ever since.

Expect a lot more comments and quotes from this book over the next few days. Get it. Read it. Do it!
 

A Prayer for Enemies

The prayer below was composed during World War II in the Dachau prison camp by Nikolai Velimirovic, a Serbian Orthodox bishop who had been betrayed by friends and arrested for his anti-Nazi activities in Yougoslavia.

"Bless my enemies, O Lord.  Even I bless them and do not curse them. Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.  Friends have bound me to earth; enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.

Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath your tabernacle, where neither friends not enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.  Even I bless and do not curse them...

(Quoted in Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness bu Brian Zahnd, page 42)

Let me repeat: This was written in Dachau concentration camp!  This is only part of the prayer; there are longer quotes in the book referenced above (which I will be talking about more in future posts). This is a man who understood the meaning of the words in Lord's Prayer.- "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."  (Matthew 6:12 ESV)

Can any of us claim to have more of an excuse for not forgiving than this man?