The self-forgetfulness of love

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's study of the Sermon on the Mount, he discusses the extraordinary quality of the Christian disciple's life and the seeming contradiction that the disciples are to be the light of the world but at the same time should not make their Christian life visible. How do these two ideas go together? In explaining this, Bonhoeffer says something profound about the character of love itself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and confirmands, 1932

"From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No. We are to hide it from ourselves. Our task is simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing. We must be unaware of our own righteousness, and see it only in so far as we look unto Jesus; then it will seem not extraordinary, but quite ordinary and natural. ...
     [Discipleship] means an exclusive adherence to him, and that implies first that the disciple looks only to his Lord and follows him. If he looked only at the extraordinary quality of the Christian life, he would no longer be following Christ. For the disciple this extraordinary quality consists solely in the will of the Lord, and when he seeks to do that will he knows that there is no other alternative, and that what he does is the only natural thing to do....
     The genuine work of love is always a hidden work. Take heed therefore that you know it not, for only so is it the goodness of God. If we want to know our own goodness or love, it has already ceased to be love. We must be unaware even of our love for our enemies. After all, when we love them they are no longer our enemies. This voluntary blindness in the Christian (which is really sight illuminated by Christ) is his certainty, and that fact that his life is hidden from his sight is the ground of his assurance...
    Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word. But if we are to have it, our old man must die with all his virtues and qualities, and this can only be done where the disciple forgets self and clings solely to Christ. When Jesus said: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," he was sounding the death-knell of the old man. Once again, who can live a life which combines [Matthew] chapters 5 and 6? Only those who have died after the old man through Christ and are given a new life by following him and having fellowship with him. Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man. For man recovers his true nature in the righteousness of Christ and in his fellow-man."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship 

(trans. R. H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan, 1963 [German: 1937]), 176-179.

Evangelicals and Universalism?

Is it possible for evangelical Christians to believe that all people will be saved? The question has been hotly debated ever since the publication last year of Rob Bell's book Love Wins. My friend Robin Parry has recently published a challenging article in The Evangelical Quarterly arguing that these two positions, being an evangelical and believing everyone will be saved, are not mutually exclusive, and that universalism is in fact "authentically evangelical." Whether or not he convinces everyone, his theological arguments are well thought out and worth listening to. Here is one short extract:

"Arminian evangelicals have always maintained that God loves all people, wants to save all people, and sent Christ to die for all people to achieve this goal. 'Evangelical' universalists agree. Calvinist evangelicals have always maintained that God will achieve all his purposes in salvation; that all for whom Christ died will be saved. 'Evangelical' universalists agree. But, of course, the Arminian belief-set and the Calvinist belief-set, when combined, entail universalism. Consider:
     1. God, being omnipotent, could cause all people to freely accept Christ.
     2. God, being omniscient, would know how to cause all people to freely accept Christ.
     3. God, being omnibenevolent, would want to cause all people to freely accept Christ.
(Premises 1 and 2 are Calvinist whilst premise 3 is Arminian.) Now 1-3 entail:
     4. God will cause all people to freely accept Christ.
From which it follows that
     5. All people will freely accept Christ.
My point in presenting this argument is not, in this context, to persuade readers to be universalists. Rather, it is simply to illustrate that widely accepted evangelical beliefs can, in certain circumstances, motivate universalism. Both the Arminian and the Calvinist belief-sets above are evangelical-compatible, so are 'evangelical' universalists unevangelical because they believe both? That seems odd. Or must evangelicals believe either (a) that God cannot save all without violating their freedom (Arminianism), or (b) that God does not want to save all (Calvinism)?"

Robin Parry, "Evangelical Universalism: Oxymoron?" Evangelical Quarterly 84 (2012) 16.

Even though Parry's article is appealing, the part of the argument I would like to see better fleshed out is how universalism can be motivated from the New Testament. In the same issue of The Evangelical Quarterly Derek Tidball responds negatively, that Scripture will not allow us to affirm universalism. After a quick survey of Jesus' teaching, Paul's teaching, and the teaching of the General Epistles and Revelation, Tidball concludes:

"Whatever our emotions may say concerning the lost state of the impenitent, it is very hard to find a doctrine of universalism in the New Testament, whether of a general variety or the more specific 're-educative' variety proposed by Parry. There are two distinct forms of universalism which the NT does teach and two only: (i) that the offer of salvation is universal in its scope in the present time and is available to all without distinction of race, gender, wealth or social standing, and (ii) that God will reign 'all in all' when the whole of creation is brought into submission, voluntarily or otherwise, to his rule at some future time....
     Universal homage will one day be paid to the King of kings and Lord of lords. Does that mean all will be saved whether they have gone directly into his presence or come into it via a temporary, if terrifying, detour in hell? The Bible presents no evidence to support the latter. Hell is presented as the final destination of the impenitent rather than a temporary deviation. To believe otherwise is to 'clutch at insubstantial straws'."

Derek Tidball, "Can Evangelicals Be Universalists?" Evangelical Quarterly 84 (2012) 29-30.

"We have this treasure in clay jars to show that the power is from God and not from us"

Charles Williams was one of C. S. Lewis' closest friends after he became a Christian. Williams wrote a little book on forgiveness during the Second World War, and the encouraging insights in this passage on how we perceive our own progress in sanctification are well worth reading. Interestingly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been writing similar things just a few years earlier.

"The virtues, owing to the laborious detail in which they have to be pursued by us...are apt to be subdued to our own niggling style. But in themselves they are not so; they are gay and princely; and so they are seen when they are recognised in others simply because we are in a state of love towards others. We can admire them in their freedom in others when in ourselves they must seem, if not in servitude, at least only just escaped from servitude, sore from the manacles, bleeding from their effort at freedom, lame, purblind, unheavenly. it is our business to admire them heavenly whenever they can be so seen; the opportunity is in such states as marriage and friendship, and we do very well to take it whenever it is found. "This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone." We must not ease from our own labour because the glory is seen free in another; but neither must we cease to admire the glory because the labour is all that we can feel in ourselves."

Charles Williams, "The Technique of Pardon," The Forgiveness of Sins (London: Bles, 1942)

"Taste and see that the Lord is good"

This morning I stumbled across these words by Jerome (c 347-420) against Pelagius on our need for divine aid to do what is good.

St Jerome in his study (1480)

"He is always a giver, always a bestower. It is not enough for me that he has given me grace once; He must give it me always. I seek that I may obtain, and when I have obtained I seek again. I am covetous of God's bounty; and as He is never slack in giving, so I am never weary in receiving. The more I drink, the more I thirst. For I have read the song of the psalmist: O taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). Every good thing that we have is a tasting of the Lord. When I fancy myself to have finished the book of virtue, I shall then only be at the beginning."

St Jerome, Letter 133 (AD 415)

Frank Thielman on the Center of Paul's Theology

This spring I used Frank Thielman's Theology of the New Testament as a textbook when teaching in Ethiopia, and was impressed with his argument that  the center of Paul's theology is best described as God's grace.

"If one theological theme is more basic than others in Paul's letters, ... it is this notion that God is a gracious God and that he has shown his grace preeminently in his arrangement of history to answer the problem of human sinfulness in the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.
     This is "the truth of the gospel" that Paul passionately defended against those who threatened it in Jerusalem and Antioch. When false brothers at the Jerusalem council tried to insist that a right relationship with God was defined not only by faith in Christ but by conformity to the Mosaic law, Paul "did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain intact" (Gal 2:5). When Peter, under pressure from Jewish believers from Jerusalem, tried to force Gentile Christians in Antioch to conform to the Mosaic law, Paul told him that he was out of line with "the truth of the gospel" (Gal 2:14).
     The problem in both instances was that by insisting on conformity to the Mosaic law as a means--however partial--of bringing people into a right relationship with God, both the false brothers and Peter had "set aside the grace of God" and implied that "Christ died for nothing" (Gal 2:21). Here, then, Paul answers for us the question of the "center" of his theology. It is an answer given in the passion of the moment, but as the importance of this concept throughout the Pauline corpus demonstrates, it was an answer that arose from Paul's deepest convictions."

Frank Thielman, Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 479.