Here is a crucial question: Why did the ascension happen? Why was it "better" (John 14-16) for Jesus to leave the disciples with only his indirect presence - via Spirit, Word, and Sacrament?
And why did he picture the Kingdom of God as something which is hidden until the climactic harvest?
Here is a parallel question: Why was Saul of Tarsus struck with blindness as his fundamental experience of the risen Jesus?
And one more related question: Why were the Corinthians so emphatically wrong to act as though they could see clearly in the present (1 Cor 13)?
Perhaps one way to express the Corinthians' problem is "over-manifest spirituality" - an error at home in the pre-parousia age, in which Jesus can only genuinely be known and celebrated as the Crypto-Kurios... the Lord who is hidden from the world's esteem by the disgraceful curse of the cross. Consequently the cruciform hiddenness of the Crypto-Kurios is witnessed to by the cruciform mission of Paul, the original Crypto-Theologian.
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7 comments:
Hi Matthew,
The good news is I have excellent, simple and compelling answers to all those questions. The bad news is that I haven't got time to record them here.
Nice to see you start up a blog. I'll look forward to following it. Don't become one of the statistics of people who start blogs and don't follow through.
Blessings,
Rory
G'day Matt.
indirect presence - via Spirit, Word, and Sacrament?
I'm not sure I like the use of "indirect presence"
I think this distracts us from the Trinitarian Godhead's purpose. The Spirits presence should be more tangible to and within us then what the physical Jesus would be in front of us.
I think the word and sacraments only become alive through the Spirit therefore I don't like how you seem to have placed equal importance to the word and sacraments to the Spirit!
Thanks for this Craig - you're right about the Spirit being in a different league to word & sacrament, of course... and I can see that "indirect presence" is not the most ideal phrase. On the other hand, it is the Spirit who groans with us in our incompleteness, making us long to SEE Jesus face to face, a la 1 Cor 13: Paul corrects the "Spiritual" by reminding them, "now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known."
So I guess what I'm trying to approach with the awkward word "indirect" is the gnawing awareness (granted by the Spirit) that in an important sense we are not yet "with" the Lord.
Great questions. Is this the focus of your research? I began writing a research proposal along these lines a couple of years ago, but then changed my mind regarding my intended focus. Nonetheless, I'm still very interested in such questions.
He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade." (Mark 4.26-32
When you say that blindness was Saul's "fundamental" experience of the risen Jesus, do you mean simply his original experience, or also his most important experience?
Hi Byron... Interesting that you mention Mark 4 - these parables have been really important to me as I've been mulling this stuff over, over the last couple of years. In fact, I think 1 Cor and Mark 4 share some interesting features: In both, Jesus is presented as the inaugurating a hidden kingdom, the glory of which will not be fully revealed until the end. In the meantime, disciples are not to become disheartened: Both 1 Cor and Mark 4 quote Isaiah to emphasise that the "world" is blind to what's really happening in Jesus. I do wonder if both Jesus and Paul are drawing on an OT/Jewish tradition, represented especially in prophetic/apocalyptic texts - in which present unimpressiveness is countered by a focus on God's hidden work, which will become manifest in the future.
In terms of Paul's initial blindness, I do wonder if it might have been "fundamental" in terms of "most important" - although perhaps that's overstating it: What I mean is that it must have been shocking to Paul that it was possible for Jesus to be Lord of all, without anyone noticing! Paul himself had been utterly religious, and had completely stumbled over it - he had to be blinded in order to finally see. Paul goes on in his letters, of course, to utilise the theme of blindness & sight quite significantly.
Yes, I was thinking about Mark 4 again last week since I was leading a Bible study on those parables.
Have you read much Pannenberg? He is quite big on the eschatological vindication of Christ (with resurrection being, of course, the eschatological event par excellence).
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