Firbush Retreats Firbush retreats are organized and led by Robert T. Walker. Firbush retreats are designed to make the best theology accessible to as many people as possible and especially those not trained in theology and often not familiar with routine technical terms. They combine times of worship and prayer with reflection on a theme related to Torrance theology. For more information see https://tftorrance.org/firbush. ----------- Nov 12, 2015 Firbush Retreat Fall 2015 Thomas A. Noble, "Torrance's The Mediation of Christ, Chapters 1&2" https://tftorrance.org/firbushF2015 The audio recording for this presentation is available on the Firbush Retreat section of the website for the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship. The following AI transcript is too rough to rely upon, but perhaps useful for word searches and time-stamps. It is unretouched; if anyone wishes to listen to it and clean it up we will be happy to post an improved version (contact the webmasters). We invite speakers to send us slides for their talks, which we will post alongside the audios and transcripts. If any speaker wishes to have their talk removed from the website, just let us know and we'll take down both the audio and the transcript. ------------ 00:00-00:18 Well thank you very much for that introduction Jennifer, it's lovely to be back in Furbush 00:18-00:27 and with this fellowship which kind of prompts me to remember that across the Atlantic there 00:27-00:37 also is a fellowship which is known as the T.F. Torrance Theological Fellowship and their 00:37-00:45 annual meeting will be next week in Atlanta and I am looking forward to being there at 00:45-00:51 that and I thought you might be interested in a couple of bits of information stemming 00:51-00:58 from that. They published the online journal, you may have discovered, Participatio. If 00:58-01:04 you haven't got hold of that, get it online. The first one starts off with a whole series 01:04-01:12 of essays about T.F. Torrance and the family and so on and I think it was number seven 01:12-01:18 that was devoted to T.F. Torrance and Eastern Orthodoxy and this, I'm afraid I haven't got 01:18-01:25 this in colour, it's glorious technicolour, Athanasius on the front there. It's been published 01:25-01:29 in print, T.F. Torrance and Eastern Orthodoxy, edited by Matthew Baker, the late Matthew 01:29-01:36 Baker and Todd Schmeidel and so that is due to come out soon. The other little piece of 01:36-01:44 information is that they have booked next year's speaker for their one day conference 01:44-01:50 and Alastair McGrath is coming and you may remember he did the intellectual biography 01:50-01:58 book and Alastair replied and said he would like to address this in 2016 on T.F. Torrance 01:58-02:06 and science theme and he'll do it with no fee in honour of T.F.T. So that's McGrath 02:06-02:13 doing that next year. So that's just a little commercial. Well the handout indicates that 02:13-02:18 we're going to look at the first two chapters of the Mediation of Christ and this was an 02:18-02:22 idea that came up, I can't actually remember who thought of it, but that it might be an 02:22-02:29 idea at our retreat to look specifically at some of T.F.T.'s writings and to go through 02:29-02:35 them and so I volunteered to do the first two chapters of the Mediation of Christ since 02:35-02:44 I have a certain personal link with it. Could I ask how many have read this? Right good, 02:44-02:50 okay, some have, some haven't, that's fine. What I really plan to do is just go through 02:50-02:58 the first two chapters and do a sort of reading and comment as we go along and open it up 02:58-03:02 for discussion perhaps as we go along. If we all had a copy we could call it a seminar 03:02-03:13 text, some have it, I see, others don't. Well the book originated in the Didsbury lectures 03:13-03:23 of 1982. We moved from Edinburgh to Manchester in 1976 so that I could teach at the college 03:23-03:28 and three years later we floated the Didsbury lectures for the first time. They're called 03:28-03:35 the Didsbury lectures because Didsbury College was a famous Methodist college. It moved at 03:35-03:40 the beginning of the Second World War to Bristol but it was famous for the great Greek scholar 03:40-03:47 J.H. Moulton whose reference work is still used, William Burke Pope from Nova Scotia 03:47-03:53 who was the most significant Methodist theologian of the 19th century. So since that college 03:53-03:58 has gone from Didsbury we thought we would bring new attention to the name by calling 03:58-04:06 them the Didsbury lectures. And that first year in 1979 another great Scotsman, F.F. 04:06-04:11 Bruce gave the first series of lectures, just retired as Ryland's professor of biblical 04:11-04:16 criticism at the University of Manchester and one of my colleagues was one of his final 04:16-04:22 PhD students, Kent Brower. So Bruce came in '79, James Atkinson of Sheffield came in 04:22-04:27 1980, he was professor of biblical theology at Sheffield but actually he was an expert 04:27-04:34 on Luther and so his lectures were published as Luther Prophet to the Church Catholic. 04:34-04:42 And then thirdly Howard Marshall Aberdeen came to give the lectures entitled Last Supper 04:42-04:56 and Lord Supper in '81 and then T.F. came in 1982. Now at that point the Nazarene College 04:56-05:02 was still fairly small but the student bodies varied from 30 to 50. It was not yet a degree 05:02-05:06 granting college, some of our students didn't even have university entrance qualifications 05:06-05:16 and yet he came except the invitation with alacrity to come and speak to us. I visited 05:16-05:23 him in Braid Farm Road in 1981 to talk about the topic, what would he talk about and my 05:23-05:28 suggestion was that he would do a series of lectures in Athanasius. Now he'd already published 05:28-05:36 a very long essay, Guresi on Athanasius but at that point there was no one monograph on 05:36-05:41 Athanasius if you could believe it, there have been three or four since. So that was 05:41-05:47 my suggestion. However when he came he had chosen a different one and he had moved from 05:47-05:56 a historical topic to a more directly dogmatic topic and I think actually I was just discussing 05:56-06:02 this with David Torrance. Apart from his early work on Grace and the Apostolic Fathers and 06:02-06:07 Calvin's doctrine of man, this was actually the first monograph in dogmatics that he published 06:07-06:15 and those two were actually more historical. His major work still then had been in methodology, 06:15-06:22 theological science, God and rationality and so on. So this was actually the first published 06:22-06:34 book on a dogmatic topic I think we can say. When I knew that he was coming to speak and 06:34-06:41 I knew that our undergraduate students might struggle to follow what he was going to say, 06:41-06:47 I remembered the unkind phrase that somebody once used that his incomprehensibility was 06:47-07:00 legendary. Well yes he could, I suppose, leave some people behind. So I thought I would give 07:00-07:04 the students an introduction to the thought of T.F. Torrance. So we got all the students 07:04-07:12 together and I gave them this paper on the thought of T.F. Torrance. After he had gone, 07:12-07:19 it was a student from Perth, Paula, who said to me, "Mr Noble, you remember that talk you 07:19-07:25 gave us on the theology of T.F. Torrance?" Well she said, "We did not understand a word 07:25-07:38 but when he came, we understood him perfectly." Well, what I have here is the second edition 07:38-07:44 and there also was a first edition which is exactly the four lectures he gave. One of 07:44-07:50 the interesting things was when I read it, it seemed to be word for word what he had 07:50-07:58 said apparently extemporaneously from the podium which was rather interesting. But I 07:58-08:08 remember being quite struck by the opening because on that very first page of the first 08:08-08:16 chapter, there is a sentence, I counted them, 75 words long with seven clauses in it. And 08:16-08:24 at that point I thought, well maybe I was justified in trying to explain it to them. 08:24-08:38 So let me just go through the thinking of the chapter and we will try and follow his 08:38-08:45 train of thought. Should I read that big sentence? Yes, I think I will. "Thus in the great European 08:45-08:51 tradition of analytical thought," note that phrase, "which derives from classical Greece, 08:51-08:55 a habit of mine became widely entrenched in which the sensible appearances of things were 08:55-09:01 abstracted from the intelligible base in which they were grounded with disastrous consequences 09:01-09:05 as we have discovered in philosophy and science for it meant that knowledge of reality was 09:05-09:11 artificially cut short at appearances and what we can logically deduce from our critical 09:11-09:20 observations of them." Now you got that, didn't you? It's that key phrase, analytical thought. 09:20-09:26 And what he was trying to get across was the idea that one of the major ways in which we 09:26-09:33 think in the Western world was by pulling things apart. So we analyse, we dissect. And 09:33-09:42 of course if you dissect the cat, you kill it. If you pull things apart, you don't actually 09:42-09:48 see how they operate together. And that's really what he was getting at there, the danger 09:48-09:54 of analytical thought and particularly the problem it gives us when we approach the figure 09:54-10:05 of Jesus Christ. Because we pull him out of his context, the matrix of relationships within 10:05-10:13 which alone he can be understood. And so he talked about dichotomous ways of thinking 10:13-10:22 which means that we detach Jesus Christ from God and we detach Jesus Christ from Israel, 10:22-10:27 the context within which he was born and in which he grew. And when we do that analytical 10:27-10:34 kind of work, we find we can no longer really understand who Jesus is because we have broken 10:34-10:43 up the matrix of relationships within which alone he can be understood. Now he goes on 10:43-10:54 to illustrate that from science and of course this is 1982 when he gave the lectures. Theological 10:54-10:59 science had appeared in 1969, so this is just about 13 years later and a lot of his thinking 10:59-11:05 had been on the relationship between theology and science. And so he illustrates this point 11:05-11:12 from the way in which analytical abstractive modes of thought inherited from classical 11:12-11:22 physics and observational science had been bypassed by developments with James Clerk 11:22-11:33 Maxwell and Einstein by which a more dynamic relational and holistic way of thinking had 11:33-11:40 been developed. So as that had developed in science, so he was saying we should try and 11:40-11:48 recover more holistic, dynamic, relational ways of thinking. So you've got to see Jesus 11:48-11:57 Christ in his relationship, his relationship to God and his relationship to Israel. Now 11:57-12:07 at the back of his mind there really I think was the whole development of the quest for 12:07-12:15 the historical Jesus in which the analytical methods of historical, the historical critical 12:15-12:22 method had tried to analyse Jesus and had abstracted him in the first place from the 12:22-12:29 background of Israel but also from the background of God. So that examining Jesus as a figure 12:29-12:36 of history meant examining Jesus as a human being. So that was where you started off from, 12:36-12:40 that was all you assumed. And of course if that's where you start off, that's where you 12:40-12:48 end up. And so he was arguing that really to understand who Jesus is we need to see 12:48-12:55 him within the matrix of relationships. On the one hand we should seek to understand 12:55-13:04 Christ within the actual matrix of interrelations from which he sprang as son of David and son 13:04-13:08 of Mary. This is on page three by the way. From which he sprang as son of David and son 13:08-13:14 of Mary. That is in terms of his intimate bond with Israel in its current relationship 13:14-13:20 with God throughout history. On the other hand, however, we should seek to understand 13:20-13:27 Christ not by way of observational deductions from his appearances but in the light of what 13:27-13:37 he is in himself in his internal relations with God. Now there are the two sides to this. 13:37-13:42 We've got to understand him in relationship to Israel, son of David, son of Mary. We have 13:42-13:51 to understand him in relationship to God. And this is the way in which we have to proceed. 13:51-14:02 Now it was the way in which he placed Jesus in the context of Israel that was a surprise 14:02-14:12 to me. I wasn't expecting he would do that. And it's, well I think the year that we took 14:12-14:18 Christology, if I remember correctly, it was actually JB who lectured on Christology. But 14:18-14:29 we did get the full text of the lectures. But we did get the full text of TF lectures 14:29-14:34 which of course are now produced in Incarnation and Atonement. And just checking that this 14:34-14:40 afternoon there are about six pages on Jesus' relationship to Israel. But it wasn't a big 14:40-14:51 theme that stuck with me. And so I was surprised, I was interested when this new emphasis appeared 14:51-14:58 in the lectures. So, the Oneness of Jesus Christ with God the Father and his Oneness 14:58-15:05 with Israel. On page four he uses an illustration I remember using him in class of the jigsaw. 15:05-15:10 If you're putting together a jigsaw and you don't have a picture, you know you're not 15:10-15:14 cheating, you've just got the pieces and you're putting them together. So you don't know how 15:14-15:20 it fits together. But once you have put it together you can never forget what the picture 15:20-15:29 is. So once you have seen things as a whole you can never go back to the way it was before 15:29-15:35 you saw the holistic connections. And so this is what he is interested in, the holistic 15:35-15:43 connections in which we are to see that. And the fundamental clue is in the first place 15:43-15:52 that he's developing first of all is his relationships with Israel. So, looking back he says we can 15:52-15:57 say, foot of page four, that the apostles and fathers came upon a basic insight in the 15:57-16:03 light of which the whole saving event of Jesus Christ came to be understood out of its intrinsic 16:03-16:10 intelligibility and within the framework of objective meaning which it created for itself 16:10-16:16 in the context of Israel. The fundamental clue with which they operated was the Oneness 16:16-16:23 of Jesus Christ, the Jew from Bethlehem and Nazareth with God the Father on the one hand 16:23-16:29 and with the unique fact and history of Israel among the nations on the other. So there is 16:29-16:37 the context within which he wants to understand. And he begins with the involvement with Israel, 16:37-16:44 grounded in humanity through God's anguished struggle with Israel. Now that's a key phrase, 16:44-16:52 God's anguished struggle with Israel and he develops that in the next few pages. But he 16:52-17:05 says we need appropriate conceptual tools and he uses the illustration of the tool maker 17:05-17:13 for research scientists and he talked about having a conversation with a group of research 17:13-17:19 scientists some of whom were engaged in the work of devising and making very sensitive 17:19-17:23 complex instruments. I was quite astonished when one of them explained the kind of tools 17:23-17:27 he was making for the University Department of Higher Energy Physics for it was quite 17:27-17:32 clear that in order to make those tools he not only had to know as much about high energy 17:32-17:37 physics as the physicists who ordered the tools but had to engage himself in a good 17:37-17:41 deal of original research. I remember him telling the story where he said to this man 17:41-17:47 but that means to make these tools you must know more than the physicists do. And the 17:47-17:55 technician replied yes I know that and you know that but they don't know that. Now is 17:55-18:03 this concept of conceptual tools that becomes a key one in this chapter? What is a conceptual 18:03-18:12 tool? Well what he's going to argue is that through the history of Israel God has provided 18:12-18:25 us with the concepts which we may use to understand who Jesus is. So the whole of the Old Testament 18:25-18:33 is providing us with the conceptual tools with which we may express understand and express 18:33-18:43 the truth of who Jesus is. Now the providing of these conceptual tools he develops at some 18:43-18:54 length the idea that this was a harrowing experience for Israel. So on page 8 that ever deepening 18:54-18:59 spiral movement of God's self-revelation to Israel was far from being an easy or painless 18:59-19:05 process. The Old Testament Scriptures which are the product of it show that Israel was 19:05-19:13 subjected to the most appalling suffering. An ordeal in which Israel was again and again 19:13-19:21 broken upon the wheel of divine providence in order to become pliable and serviceable 19:21-19:28 within the movement of God's intimate self-giving and self-communicating to it as a people set 19:28-19:36 apart for that end. So he talks about this harrowing experience how through this Israel 19:36-19:43 actually became an oddity among the nations. The people entrusted with the oracles of God 19:43-19:53 for, he writes, divine revelation was a fire in the mind and soul and memory of Israel 19:53-20:01 burning away all that was in conflict with God's holiness and mercy and truth. So what 20:01-20:08 was the ingrained habits of human thought and understanding had to be replaced by new 20:08-20:19 ways of thinking and Israel therefore in the course of a long ordeal there took place a 20:19-20:26 unique cultural integration of its thought and religion, its literature and its way of 20:26-20:32 life. The Word of God was at work preparing the metrics for the final mediation of revelation 20:32-20:40 to mankind which finally came in the fullness of time with the incarnation of the Word. 20:40-20:49 So he picks up there this idea of Israel on the wheel of the potter, Jeremiah, and how 20:49-20:57 painful that was because Israel was so recalcitrant and therefore the suffering of Israel down 20:57-21:10 through centuries was part of the necessary preparation for the coming of Jesus. So he 21:10-21:21 develops that by linking that up with anti-Semitism, that it is because Israel became such an oddity 21:21-21:29 because she had both to be an ethnos, a nation like other nations, but at the same time a 21:29-21:39 laos, a people, a laos of God that this was what produced such suffering in the very heart 21:39-21:45 of Israel. So he develops that in the four points that I have on the handout there. First 21:45-21:54 of all the covenant partnership between God and Israel involved a running conflict between 21:54-22:01 divine revelation and what St Paul called the carnal mind. And so he talks on page 10 22:01-22:09 about the innate resistance. There's a kind of love-hate relationship between Israel and 22:09-22:18 God. He talks about that as the root of anti-Semitism, but this is necessary in order that we may, 22:18-22:25 in a lovely phrase, go to school with Israel. So only as we learn from and through Israel 22:25-22:32 do we have the words, the concepts through which we can understand Israel's God and the 22:32-22:41 coming in flesh of the Son of God. So he writes, "We must let the sword of divine truth that 22:41-22:50 was thrust into Israel pierce our own heart also so that its secret contradiction of God 22:50-22:57 may be laid bare. We must go to school with Israel." And that's a painful business. So 22:57-23:04 Israel is recalcitrant because they share the same carnal mind that we all share. They 23:04-23:12 share our fallen condition and so they kind of represent us in being broken again and 23:12-23:17 again on the wheel of the potter in order that they may become the pliable instrument 23:17-23:23 that God has used. Well the second point there, this is on page 12 of the book, the election 23:23-23:40 of Israel by God took the form of a community of reciprocity. So there is a two-way movement 23:40-23:49 involved here. "A spiral course," he writes, "for the word of God came to Israel in such 23:49-23:59 a creative way that it moulded the responses it called forth." Now that's a very interesting 23:59-24:06 thought and it struck me as I was reading this the other day that that thought has been 24:06-24:14 greatly developed recently by, or since this book was published, by the Old Testament scholar 24:14-24:24 Walter Brueggemann. His book Theology of the Old Testament has this idea that the Old Testament 24:24-24:31 is testimony, testimony to God, and he talks about it as testimony in a court of law where 24:31-24:37 divergent testimonies are brought and the court must decide which to recognise as reality 24:37-24:46 or truth. And so the first major part of Brueggemann's book is Israel's core testimony. So that's 24:46-24:53 all about God's faithfulness, God's covenant love. But the second part of his book is called 24:53-25:01 Israel's counter testimony and that is where she wrestles with the suffering. So parts 25:01-25:04 of the Old Testament like the book of Job for example, wrestling with the mystery of 25:04-25:11 suffering and the sense at times of being rejected by God in the exile for example, 25:11-25:19 the pain by the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept and so on. So this is Israel's counter 25:19-25:23 testimony. So she's not only aware of the covenant love of God but that at times she 25:23-25:32 seems to get the wrong end of God's wrath, God's judgment. And then thirdly, according 25:32-25:37 to Brueggemann, there's Israel's unsolicited testimony and then Israel's embodied testimony. 25:37-25:41 Now it seems to me that Brueggemann there, without going into any more detail about him, 25:41-25:48 develops this idea that terms here develops. The word of God came to Israel in such a creative 25:48-25:55 way that it moulded the responses it called forth. So the praise of the psalmists, the 25:55-26:05 lament of the book of Lamentations, the lament of the psalmists at times, is all part of 26:05-26:13 the testimony. It is all incorporated into what to us is the word of God. So the human 26:13-26:20 responses are incorporated to that. So it's a community of reciprocity. God speaks, Israel 26:20-26:28 speaks, God speaks, Israel speaks. There is a conversation, there is a community of reciprocity 26:28-26:35 going on here. And it's all Israel. And he develops the idea that the great prophets 26:35-26:41 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so on in some way represent the whole of Israel in their 26:41-26:49 speaking of the word of God and in their responses to it, the suffering of Jeremiah for example. 26:49-27:10 Similarly, he says, the church today, like Israel, is embodied truth. That we don't just 27:10-27:15 have abstract messages from God. There's a sense in which the people of God today, like 27:15-27:22 the people of God in the Old Testament, have to embody the truth of God in our living so 27:22-27:27 that we receive the word of God, we respond to the word of God. So the election of Israel 27:27-27:36 by God took the form of a community of reciprocity. His third point, and this heading is on page 27:36-27:45 15, God's revelation came to Israel in such a way that it intersected and integrated its 27:45-27:56 spiritual and physical reality. Now here he talks about how in our modern Western culture, 27:56-28:03 in the kind of cosmology and physics that came with Newton and the height of the Enlightenment, 28:03-28:09 we thought of space and time as two separate things and elsewhere he talks about these 28:09-28:18 as containers within which the world happens. However, he alludes to the fact that since 28:18-28:24 Einstein we have realized that space and time are essentially the same thing. They are dimensions 28:24-28:32 of the universe, not the containers within which the universe exists. And that means 28:32-28:42 that we have got to get beyond the idea of the split between the spiritual and the physical. 28:42-28:47 That is basically a way of thinking that goes back to ancient Greece. The spiritual and 28:47-28:52 the physical are two different realms. But you see for Israel in the Old Testament he 28:52-29:01 points out that was not so. Their relationship with God was embodied in their physical life 29:01-29:09 so that for the Old Testament Israelites, they didn't exist with this kind of dualism. 29:09-29:15 The worship of God was deeply rooted in their agricultural practices, their offering of 29:15-29:26 their sacrifices, the physical event of the great festivals, the Passover for example. 29:26-29:33 This is all tied in with the land, that the land was what God gave them. That is very 29:33-29:40 physical. So their economic prosperity, not just their "spiritual life" but their economic 29:40-29:50 prosperity was all tied up with God. And he writes about how this is why after the Jews 29:50-29:58 are put out of the Holy Land after the Bar Koch Bar rebellion, 70 AD, 135 AD, that Judaism 29:58-30:03 became a kind of ethical religion. It lost its grounding in the physical reality of the 30:03-30:11 land of Israel. And he talks just briefly about the fact, he alludes to how this is 30:11-30:17 a basis in which we today have to look at ecological and ethical questions. Now I'm 30:17-30:26 not sure how far ahead he was of the great tide of Christian concern with ecology and 30:26-30:33 creation and the care of God's creation, but he alludes to that in that section number 30:33-30:34 three. 30:34-30:41 Well the fourth section, and this heading is on page 17 if you've got the text, "God's 30:41-30:48 creation of himself through the medium of Israel has provided mankind with permanent 30:48-30:54 structures of thought and speech about him." Now this is getting back to the idea of the 30:54-31:05 conceptual tools. Permanent structures of thought and speech about him. So the Old Testament 31:05-31:12 does not only have a significance for its own day, the Old Testament has a significance 31:12-31:18 for our day. He writes, "That is why the church is built upon the foundation not only of the 31:18-31:28 apostles but of the prophets, and in that order for the Old Testament scriptures are now assumed 31:28-31:36 within the orbit of the New Testament. For they provide the New Testament revelation 31:36-31:44 with the basic structures which it used in the articulation of the Gospel, although the 31:44-31:51 structures it derived from Israel were taken up and transformed in Christ." In other words, 31:51-31:57 there is a level of interpretation of the Old Testament which interprets it purely in 31:57-32:05 the historical context of Old Testament times. What it meant for the Jews of those days. 32:05-32:11 But for us as Christians, reading the Old Testament as Christians, not as Jews but as 32:11-32:18 Christian believers in Christ, and not within the orbit of Judaism that is to say, but as 32:18-32:24 Christian believers in Christ, the New Testament has a whole new level of meaning. It's been 32:24-32:30 brought within the orbit of the New Testament so we now reinterpret it in the light of the 32:30-32:40 Gospel. We see that this is that. That by the way was a very neat little title of a 32:40-32:47 book by F.F. Prus rather. You will recognise the words from Peter's Psalm in the day of 32:47-32:52 Pentecost, "This is that" which was spoken by the prophet Jonah. Well, this, what we 32:52-32:59 are saying now is that. So there is now a new level of interpretation of the Old Testament 32:59-33:06 in the light of the Gospel. So the Old Testament is brought into the orbit of the New. However, 33:06-33:13 there is a sense in which these are permanent structures. Now, let me give some examples. 33:13-33:23 Among these permanent structures, let me refer to the Word and name of God, to Revelation, 33:23-33:37 mercy, truth, holiness, to Messiah, Saviour, to Prophet, Priest and King, Father, Son, 33:37-33:47 Servant, to Covenant, Sacrifice, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Redemption, Atonement and those 33:47-33:53 basic patterns of worship which we find set out in the ancient literature or in the Psalms. 33:53-33:58 Now the point he is making is these are permanent in the sense that we couldn't understand the 33:58-34:05 Gospel without those concepts. But where do those concepts come from? They come from the 34:05-34:15 Old Testament. So God has provided us with the terminology, with the conceptual tools. 34:15-34:21 If we had turned up on Golgotha the day that Jesus was crucified, we would not have seen 34:21-34:35 a priest, an altar, a sacrifice. We would simply have seen a Jew being crucified by 34:35-34:46 the Romans. But it is in the light of the Old Testament terms that we can say, "This 34:46-34:55 was our great high priest offering himself in sacrifice for the sins of the world." But 34:55-35:01 we couldn't say that if we didn't have the concepts of priest and sacrifice and so on. 35:01-35:06 So that is what he means by permanent structures. If the Word of God had become incarnate among 35:06-35:14 us apart from all that, it could not have been grasped. Jesus himself would have remained 35:14-35:22 a bewildering enigma. It was just because Jesus, born from above as he was, was nevertheless 35:22-35:30 produced through the womb of Israel, mediated to us in the matrix of those conceptual and 35:30-35:37 linguistic patterns that he could be recognized as Son of God and Saviour and his crucifixion 35:37-35:45 could be interpreted as an atoning sacrifice for sins. 35:45-35:57 Part of our problem is, however, that too often it's not so much the gentle Jesus but 35:57-36:13 the Gentile Jesus that we produce. And so we extract him from Israel and we reconstruct 36:13-36:21 Jesus in a way that fits our own expectations and hopes. Now of course, behind that, what 36:21-36:29 he's getting at here again, I think, is the first quest for the historical Jesus particularly. 36:29-36:33 That was brought to an end when Albert Schweitzer showed that all these people had done in the 36:33-36:39 late 19th century in writing biographies of Jesus was to produce a Jesus in their own 36:39-36:47 image, the kind of Jesus that suited them. And the Catholic scholar, George Tyrell, you 36:47-36:52 will remember, made the famous observation that they had looked down through the deep 36:52-37:00 well of history and seen reflected at the bottom their own faces. So they had constructed 37:00-37:07 a Jesus in their own likeness, a Gentile kind of Jesus. And that's what happens if we extract 37:07-37:16 Jesus from Israel. So, he says, we need Jewish help. We need Jewish help to understand the 37:16-37:27 Gospel, to understand who Jesus is. And there is a sense in which this is progressive but 37:27-37:41 this is what we need to do. However, it is the incarnate Son who is the revelation of 37:41-37:50 God. And so at the top of page 23, "Thus Jesus Christ, not Israel, constitutes the reality 37:50-37:59 and substance of God's self-revelation. But Jesus Christ in Israel and not apart from 37:59-38:09 Israel is revelation." Right, well there's a quick synopsis of the first chapter. I think 38:09-38:16 I'll pause there for a few moments and see if anybody wants to raise anything or contribute 38:16-38:23 anything. Something might occur to you from some other things that T.F. had written or 38:23-38:30 something might occur to you from thinking biblically or you might have some other questions 38:30-38:40 that arise from that. Yes? 39:00-39:14 One specific event of which is the restoration of the Jewish nation and its role in the plan 39:14-39:32 of conservation of the world of God. The political implications are immense, magic and Islamic 39:32-39:42 perspectives. What do you think that Tom is saying about these things? 39:58-40:03 Right, okay, well we'll come to that question at the end then. If anyone has any quick reflection, 40:03-40:10 if not then we'll go on to the next chapter and just watching our time. Okay, right, let's 40:10-40:19 come to the next chapter, the mediation of reconciliation. Here he wants to emphasize 40:19-40:27 that revelation and reconciliation belong together. In other words, revelation is not 40:27-40:37 just a cerebral or intellectual thing. Knowledge is not just abstractive knowledge of God as 40:37-40:44 we sometimes tend to do when we're talking about revelation. So he talks about a basic 40:44-40:51 principle of knowledge that all genuine knowledge involves what he calls a cognitive union of 40:51-41:04 the mind with its object. And he says this is a basic principle of all knowledge. It's 41:04-41:11 often struck me we tend very often to think about knowledge in a rather rationalistic 41:11-41:20 way, that it's knowledge about. But what he has in mind here is direct knowledge of acquaintance. 41:20-41:27 So he's not talking about knowing theorems or knowing theories or knowing information, 41:27-41:38 he is talking about knowing realities. And so for him, knowing persons is just as cognitive 41:38-41:46 as knowing physical realities. These are all dimensions of knowledge and this applies to 41:46-41:58 knowing God. So if I am going to know any reality, whether that's physical or personal 41:58-42:05 or God, tri-personal, then it is only by, he says, the cognitive union of the mind. 42:05-42:11 In other words, there must be contact. We do not know something by detaching ourselves 42:11-42:18 from it. We only know something by being in contact with it. And so we only know God as 42:18-42:29 we are in relationship to him. And he develops the idea therefore that knowing God requires 42:29-42:35 cognitive union with him in which our whole being is affected by his love and holiness. 42:35-42:39 So that's why revelation, knowledge of God, cannot be separated from reconciliation, being 42:39-42:50 reconciled to God. And that means, he says, it is the pure in heart who see God. So there 42:50-42:57 has to be a change in me before I come to know God. And he talks about ascesis, the 42:57-43:05 discipline, the spiritual discipline in mind and life in the patristic period resulting 43:05-43:16 in ascetic theology. So Israel's partnership with God, and in this chapter he develops 43:16-43:28 the idea that I mentioned before that this meant intensifying conflict. So the first 43:28-43:34 point that I list there, if you have the text, it's in page 27, that the covenant between 43:34-43:40 God and Israel was not a covenant between God and a holy people, but precisely the reverse, 43:40-43:50 a covenant of grace with sinful, rebellious, estranged Israel. And he brings in the message 43:50-44:01 of the book of Hosea, Hosea who would not let his sinful wife go. And this is relationship 44:01-44:12 of God with Israel, that God had bound himself to a sinful people, but he will not divorce 44:12-44:18 Israel, bottom of page 27, for the bonds of God's steadfast love retain their hold upon 44:18-44:26 Israel and lock it into a relationship with God which will finally triumph over all estrangement 44:26-44:34 and bring about reconciliation and peace. 44:34-44:43 So it wasn't that the covenant depended on Israel's fulfilment of contractual conditions. 44:43-44:51 It was, he says, a unilateral covenant which depended on the unconditional grace of God. 44:51-44:58 And despite the sin and rebellion of Israel again and again and again and again, God would 44:58-45:06 not let her go. And gave her a vicarious way of response to the love of God within the 45:06-45:13 covenant, a way of response which he set out in the literature of atoning sacrifice. God 45:13-45:21 had, as it were, lassoed Israel by the cords of his covenant love and drew them increasingly 45:21-45:28 tighter as his partnership with Israel held on its reconciling course through history. 45:28-45:36 So there's the first point. It's a covenant grace with sinful, rebellious, estranged Israel. 45:36-45:44 But secondly, and this is on page 28, that means there is an increasing intensification 45:44-45:54 of the conflict. And here TF develops the idea, "The closer God drew near, the more the human 45:54-46:01 self-will of Israel asserted itself in resistance to his divine vocation. The more fully God 46:01-46:08 gave himself to his people, the more fully he forced it to be what it actually was and 46:08-46:16 what we all are in the self-willed isolation of fallen humanity from God." So the movement 46:16-46:23 of God's reconciling love towards Israel not only revealed Israel's sin, it intensified 46:23-46:32 it. The closer Israel came to God, the more she kicked against it, the more she rebelled. 46:32-46:43 And God was working this out in order to effect reconciliation with man at his very worst. 46:43-46:56 And of course, that means that God makes their very sin in rebellion to him the means by 46:56-47:05 which he binds them forever to himself. Now here's the mystery and the paradox of this. 47:05-47:14 God makes their very sin the means by which he binds them forever to himself. And of course, 47:14-47:22 that is what comes out supremely in Jesus and in the crucifixion. Jesus was not prepared 47:22-47:33 to be a political Messiah. He was resented and so it's really in the crucifixion of Jesus 47:33-47:47 that we see this come to its head that Israel crucifies the one who was its Messiah. Which 47:47-48:00 brings us on to the third point. And he says we may find this very difficult, but Israel 48:00-48:11 was elected to reject the Messiah. He came rather to penetrate into the innermost existence 48:11-48:17 of Israel in such a way as to gather up its religious and historical dialogue with God 48:17-48:23 into himself. To make its partnership and its conflict with God his own, precisely as 48:23-48:29 they moved to their climax with the incarnation and thus in and through Israel to strike at 48:29-48:38 the very root of evil in the enmity of the human heart to God. God forced evil to uncover 48:38-48:51 itself in the crucifixion of the incarnate Son of God. 48:51-49:06 So, he comes to this thought that God used estrangement, Israel's deep seated human estrangement 49:06-49:13 from God as the very means in actualizing the purpose of his love to reconcile the whole 49:13-49:20 world to himself. So it's on page 34 actually he comes to the heart of this thought. It 49:20-49:28 was their sin, their betrayal, their shame, their unworthiness which became in the inexplicable 49:28-49:36 love of God the material God laid hold of and turned into the bond that bound them forever 49:36-49:42 to the crucified Messiah, to the salvation and love of God. Israel was elected to reject 49:42-49:52 the Messiah. This is where he quotes the words of John Donne on the cross. "It bore all other 49:52-50:03 sins but is it fit that it should bear the sin of scarring it?" He concludes there the 50:03-50:09 Lamb of God was bearing and bearing away the sin of the world including the very sin of 50:09-50:15 scorning it. Thus, with the totality of his atoning and reconciling work, Jesus took upon 50:15-50:21 himself and made his own all the disobedience and guilt of Israel and above all the sin 50:21-50:29 of rejecting him and handing him over to be crucified. This of course is quite a staggering 50:29-50:38 thought, one that we naturally want to reject. But had Israel not rejected its Messiah, it 50:38-50:53 would have been no atonement. So somehow within the providence of God this had to be. If the 50:53-51:01 Messiah was actually going to take the sin of the world to himself, the cross would not 51:01-51:07 have happened unless Israel had rejected the Messiah. Well how would you understand that? 51:07-51:15 That's a mystery. He turns, and I'm jumping onto page 35 here, to the ancient liturgy 51:15-51:24 of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. And on that day the high priest took the two goats 51:24-51:33 for sin offering, one to be slaughtered upon the altar, the other taken so that the high 51:33-51:39 priest laid his hands upon it, confessed the iniquities of Israel and sent away into the 51:39-51:47 wilderness. Now these ritual acts, he explains, did not have any power of themselves, but 51:47-51:57 what do they tell us about this? Well, the fact that the ritual of sacrifice on the Day 51:57-52:04 of Atonement, when God promised to renew the covenant which undergirded all Israel's worship, 52:04-52:10 culminated hidden behind the veil in the Holy of Holies, where you remember the high priest 52:10-52:18 went to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, taught Israel that the ultimate ground and 52:18-52:26 rationale of atonement is hidden deep in the mystery of God's own being. But what he calls 52:26-52:33 on to suggest is that the twofold sacrifice of Israel's Day of Atonement reflects for 52:33-52:47 us the significance of atoning reconciliation. In this way, he presents the idea that the 52:47-52:54 Christian church went out from the resurrection side of the cross into history as the Church 52:54-53:03 of the Lamb who had been slain but is forever triumphantly alive. But the Jewish church 53:03-53:10 went out from the dark side of the cross into history as the Church of the Scape got cast 53:10-53:20 out, scattered over the earth under the shadow of the crucified Jesus. Now he presents that 53:20-53:28 as a way of wrestling with the mystery of Israel, that somehow Israel in a sense is 53:28-53:41 still part of God's reconciling, redeeming work, but it is her role to be scattered upon 53:41-53:50 the earth to share in suffering. Now we'll come back to that point in a moment at the 53:50-53:57 end of the chapter, but page 39 almost in the vicarious life and death of the mediator, 53:57-54:03 he goes on to discuss a point that has come up several times in our discussion today. 54:03-54:10 In the middle of page 39, that the incarnation was the coming of God to save us in the heart 54:10-54:17 of our fallen and depraved humanity. That is to say, the incarnation is to be understood 54:17-54:24 as the coming of God to take upon himself our fallen human nature, our actual human 54:24-54:30 existence, laden with sin and guilt, our humanity diseased in mind and soul in its estrangement 54:30-54:36 or alienation from the Creator. And he says this doctrine is found everywhere in the first 54:36-54:45 five centuries of the church, that in order for the whole human to be saved, the whole 54:45-54:51 human had to be assumed by Christ. In other words, the unassumed is the unhealed, the 54:51-54:59 great phrase of Gregory of Nazianzus. It is the alienated mind of man that God had laid 54:59-55:05 hold of in Jesus Christ in order to redeem it and effect it. So it is the incarnational 55:05-55:13 assumption of our fallen human nature which is essential in order that we should not only 55:13-55:23 receive forgiveness for our sins, acts of sin, but that we should receive redemption 55:23-55:32 from our sinfulness. Not only acts of sin, it's not only forgiveness, it's not only justification. 55:32-55:37 It is deliverance from our sinful condition, it is cleansing, it is sanctification that 55:37-55:44 is available through the incarnational assumption of our fallen human nature. And he said, it 55:44-55:50 goes on to talk about one of the problems of Western theology is that we have interpreted 55:50-55:59 the cross purely in terms of external acts of sin, forensic judicial forgiveness for 55:59-56:06 wrong things we have done, but it's deeper than that. The cross must deal, as he says 56:06-56:13 in the introduction to the School of Faith, the cross must deal not only with our sins, 56:13-56:20 but with original sin, with our sinful condition in some way. The cross must deal with that 56:20-56:26 and that is why it is essential to see. From his birth to his death and resurrection on 56:26-56:33 our behalf, he sanctified what he assumed through his own self-consecration as incarnate 56:33-56:40 son to the Father and in sanctifying it, our human nature, brought the divine judgment 56:40-56:45 to bear directly upon our human nature, both in the holy life he lived and the holy death 56:45-56:59 he died. Well that leads him on towards the end of the chapter where he comes back to 56:59-57:06 the idea that Jesus used our very sin as the means to bind us irrevocably to himself in 57:06-57:15 the love of God and he comes back to the whole mystery and problem of the Holocaust. He talks 57:15-57:25 about his visit to Israel in his mother-atorial year, how he visited a kibbutz where only 57:25-57:32 two of those there were believers, the rest of the Jewish people there were all atheists 57:32-57:39 and when I asked why they were unbelievers I was told that they were all people or children 57:39-57:43 of people who had come out of the concentration camps and they had abandoned God because they 57:43-57:50 claimed he had abandoned them in the time of their affliction. When I heard that, I 57:50-57:56 felt that the terrible cry of Jesus on the cross was meant for them, "Eli, Eli, lema 57:56-58:03 samachthani?" "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" That was a cry of utter God-forsakenness, 58:03-58:11 the despairing cry of a man in his dereliction which Jesus had made his own taking it over 58:11-58:19 from the 22nd Psalm. Jesus converted man's atheistical shout of abandonment and desolation 58:19-58:25 into a prayer of commitment and trust and he comments in Jesus, "God himself descended 58:25-58:30 to the very bottom of our human existence where we are alienated and antagonistic into 58:30-58:38 the very hell of our godlessness and despair, laying fast hold of us and taking our cursed 58:38-58:44 condition upon himself in order to embrace us forever in his reconciling love." 58:44-58:52 Well then he talks about his visit to the Holocaust Museum, the Vad Vashem in Jerusalem 58:52-58:57 and how he found it an utterly shattering experience and I'm sure if you've been there 58:57-59:03 you can identify with that. "And when I come out my soul," he says, "was so overwhelmed 59:03-59:08 in terror and trembling and my mind so stunned I could hardly speak." Finally when we stood 59:08-59:13 together outside and talked about it, I ventured to ask my Israeli friends how they related 59:13-59:19 the God in whom they believed so fervently during the Six Days War when they felt that 59:19-59:25 the Lord of Hostos in the midst of Israel was the God of those who perished so mercilessly 59:25-59:31 in the fires of the Holocaust. When they silently shook their heads and asked me how I thought 59:31-59:36 of that relation, I pointed across to the monument erected near the entrance to the 59:36-59:42 Museum and the bronze inscription in Hebrew fixed upon it, "In your blood live," words 59:42-59:46 taken from the 16th chapter of Ezekiel which have been cited throughout the generations 59:46-59:55 at every act of circumcision. "By that monument," I said, "you are interpreting the Holocaust 59:55-01:00:01 in terms of the Covenant cut into the generations of Israel by the hand of God for the blood 01:00:01-01:00:13 shed in the Holocaust is the blood of the Covenant." Well, they asked him how he would 01:00:13-01:00:19 understand all of this and he replied something like this, "Speaking as a Christian I would 01:00:19-01:00:26 say that ultimately the only answer to your terrible predicament is the cross of Jesus 01:00:26-01:00:33 which tells us that God has not held himself aloof from us in our wicked abominable humanity, 01:00:33-01:00:40 inhumanity or from its violence and sin and guilt but has come into the midst of its unappeasable 01:00:40-01:00:48 hurt and agony and shame and taken it all upon himself in order to forgive and redeem 01:00:48-01:00:55 and heal mankind at the very point where we human beings are at our worst. Thus making 01:00:55-01:01:09 our sins the bond by which in atoning sacrifice we are forever tied to God." Now, I always 01:01:09-01:01:18 thought that was quite a remarkable conversation to have with Jewish people outside the Holocaust 01:01:18-01:01:28 Museum and he finally talks about how his Jewish guide took them to the Holy Sepulchre 01:01:28-01:01:36 and asked them why this was the place where Christians were so divided, where priests 01:01:36-01:01:44 of different traditions fought so that a Muslim had to keep the key and it came home to him 01:01:44-01:01:51 what a rebuke that was that the Christian church charged with a message of reconciliation 01:01:51-01:01:58 was failing so miserably to act it out. And he finishes up by saying that really only 01:01:58-01:02:12 when the Church of Christ as we know it and the church, the ecclesia of God that is Israel 01:02:12-01:02:20 are reconciled will God's reconciliation be evident to the world. Well, I don't know what 01:02:20-01:02:27 you think. I think that is a powerful chapter and the language in it is powerful and the 01:02:27-01:02:34 ideas are sometimes not very easy to pin down. They are somehow more prophetical or poetical 01:02:34-01:02:40 at some points. I think that of the way he deals with the interpretation of the day of 01:02:40-01:02:44 the atonement with reference to the Jewish church and the Christian church coming out 01:02:44-01:02:49 in different sizes like that. But there is the chapter so let's open it up for discussion.