Gratitude

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 27 of 82 · 20 per page

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Justified by Faith Before we get to our main purpose in looking at this passage—to understand what Paul is saying about the death of Jesus—we must look briefly at the result of this display of divine covenant faithfulness. All who believe, Paul declares, are “justified.” The double context we have noted all along (as in “God’s covenant justice”) provides the closely intertwined double meaning of this famous though difficult notion. On the one hand, all who believe are declared to be members of Abraham’s family, just as, for instance, in Galatians 3:29. “Justification” is the covenant declaration, establishing in a single family all who share the messianic pistis. Equally, on the other hand, justification means that this believing family is declared to be in the right. The first of these answers particularly to Romans 2:17–29, which ends with the quizzical note about God redefining his people. The second answers to the larger issue of 2:1–16: the final judgment is coming, and people will be either “condemned” or “justified.” The latter meaning, in fact, is bound to be near the surface of alert readers’ minds because of the blatant and repeated law-court imagery of 3:19–20: every mouth will be stopped, and the whole world held accountable before God; the Torah itself will be unable to rescue anyone and can only point out sin. The point we must grasp is that these two contexts of meaning are not to be played off against one another. They dovetail together. God chose Abraham to reverse the sin of Adam; God gave Israel the task of bringing light to the world. The covenant promise and the covenant purpose were always intended to deal with sin. God would not deal with sin any other way; that is part of the point of 3:1–5. And God would not be faithful to the covenant if he did not deal with sin; the whole narrative of Genesis rebels against the idea. That is why, as he is expounding Genesis 15 in Romans 4, Paul highlights the note of forgiveness (4:6–8). As usual, we must not separate what Paul (following scripture!) has held firmly together. This “justification” takes place in the present time, as Paul says up front (“but now,” 3:21) and then spells out (in v. 26). The verdict of the future, as in 2:1–16 and 8:31–39, has already been announced in the present. This provides the particular dynamic of Paul’s famous justification theology and is the direct result of what has happened in the Messiah.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  In the story the Bible is telling, humans were created for a purpose, and Israel was called for a purpose, and the purpose was not simply “to keep the rules,” “to be with God,” or “to go to heaven,” as you might suppose from innumerable books, sermons, hymns, and prayers. Humans were made to be “image-bearers,” to reflect the praises of creation back to the Creator and to reflect the Creator’s wise and loving stewardship into the world. Israel was called to be the royal priesthood, to worship God and reflect his rescuing wisdom into the world. In the Bible, “sin”—for which there are various words in Hebrew—is the outworking of a prior disease, a prior disobedience: a failure of worship. Humans are made to worship the God who created them in his own image and so to be sustained and renewed in that image-bearing capacity. Like many scholars today, I understand the idea of the “image,” as in Genesis 1:26–28, to mean that humans are designed to function like angled mirrors. We are created in order to reflect the worship of all creation back to the Creator and by that same means to reflect the wise sovereignty of the Creator into the world. Human beings, worshipping their Creator, were thus the intended key to the proper flourishing of the world. “Worship” was and is a matter of gazing with delight, gratitude, and love at the creator God and expressing his praise in wise, articulate speech. Those who do this are formed by this activity to become the generous, humble stewards through whom God’s creative and sustaining love is let loose into the world. That was how things were meant to be. The purpose of the cross is to take us back, from where we presently are, to that intended goal. Because, of course, we have all failed in this vocation. When humans turn from worshipping the one God to worshipping anything else instead, anything within the created order, the problem is not just that they “do wrong things,” distorting their human minds, bodies, hearts, and everything else, though of course that is true as well. In addition—and this is vital for grasping the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion—they give to whatever idol they are worshipping the power and authority that they, the humans, were supposed to be exercising in the first place. Worshipping things other than the one true God and distorting our human behavior in consequence is the very essence of “sin”: the Greek word for “sin” in the New Testament means, as we saw, not just “doing wrong things,” but “missing the target.” The target is a wise, full human life of worship and stewardship.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Jack Levison have given me the benefit of their experience and insight, and even though we still disagree about many things, I hope we can still continue to learn from one another. The Reverend Peter Rodgers, continuing a scholarly friendship of nearly half a century, has been a constant encourager and a discerning critic. Special mention must be made of Dr. Jamie Davies and Max Botner, my research assistants at the start and finish of this project, who have helped in numerous ways, not least in thinking through the complex and interlocking questions I am dealing with. The book formed the basis of the lectures and seminars I gave at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, during a memorable week in May 2016, and I am especially grateful to Mike Cope and his colleagues, who organized that week, and to the university president, Dr. Andy Benton, and his colleagues for their warm welcome and hospitality. A similar set of lectures was given at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in June 2016, and I am very grateful to the principal, the Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd, and his colleagues for their hospitality and encouragement. I must also thank a much larger company from around the world who have supported this work in prayer, in e-mail messages, and sometimes by personal meetings and crucial discussions. Thinking and writing about the cross is difficult at several levels, and those who have upheld me through the process have earned my deep gratitude. My grateful thanks as ever to Mickey Maudlin at HarperOne and to Simon Kingston from SPCK for their wise and careful editorial advice and to their respective colleagues for seeing another of my books through the press. My family, and particularly my dear wife, have as usual sustained me throughout this work. Speaking of family, Leo Valentine Wright was born on May 1, 2016, as his grandfather was arriving in California to give the Pepperdine Lectures. This book is dedicated to him in the hope and prayer that he may come to know for himself the truth and the love of which I have tried to write. N. T. Wright St. Andrews July 2016 ABOUT THE AUTHOR N. T. WRIGHT, one of the world’s leading Bible scholars, is the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews, an Anglican bishop, and bestselling author. Featured on ABC News, The Colbert Report, Dateline , and Fresh Air , Wright is the award-winning author of Simply Good News, Simply Jesus, Surprised by Hope , and Simply Christian , as well as many other books. Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com . ALSO BY N.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Zoë and Doug and Naomi, fidelity and AcknowledgmentsI NEVER WROTE A BOOK before. I thought I couldn’t stand the solitude. To my surprise, I found I could bring my love of collaboration and midnight chats to the writing table. I tend to think in conversation—it’s in speaking that my ideas emerge and take on clarity. Some people helped me talk, and others, write. I owe them so much, far beyond this modest tribute. Since we have been musing about love and sex for two years, let me simply say that every word sends a kiss of gratitude. Sarah Manges, editor extraordinaire, you have been my compass. You have kept me on course when squalls of ideas threatened to knock me way off. Laura Blum, you levitated my prose. Not being a native English-speaker, I miss certain nuances of the language that your poetic flair always captures. Michele Scheinkman, I never know that an idea makes sense until you give it your seal of approval. Gail Winston, my editor at HarperCollins, you believed in me like a mother. You made me pick up my strewn thoughts and kept me jargon-free. Mary Wylie, when you edited the original article from which this book is drawn, “In Search of Erotic Intelligence: Reconciling Sensuality and Domesticity,” did you know how far we would go? You often understood what I wanted to say before I did. Miriam Horn, you were the first person who gave some shape to the original article. Rich Simon, you set this whole thing in motion. A simple question in the spring of 2002, “What have you been thinking about lately?” prompted me to send you some loose ideas which, eleven versions later, ended in the pages of an on-the-cusp magazine, The Psychotherapy Networker. Things could have ended there, with an interesting article. But Tracy Brown, you were rummaging through the newsstands as only an enterprising agent knows how to do. You spotted the cover of the Utne Reader, which had reproduced my article from the Networker article. We instantly bonded, and began this amazing journey. I’m recommending you right and left. Ilana Berger, you introduced me to the world of sex therapy. You’ve been a mentor and a friend. Peter Fraenkel, since before day one you believed in this project. Michael Shernoff, by offering a gay perspective, you kept me from falling into heterosexual clichés. Patti Cohen and David Bornstein, I’m honored that you’ve welcomed me into your circle of writers. Deborah Gieringer, Sandy Petrey, and Katherine Frank, thank you for being such discerning readers and thinkers. Phillis Levin, you are my poetic muse. Shelly Kellner, you bring a wealth of organization to my chaos. Your research support was impeccable. Anya Strzemien, you spent hours listening to me on tape and then transcribing. Can we work together again? Miriam Baker, thank you for the wonderful metaphor of captivity.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  I also thank Bishop Robert Forsyth, from Sydney, Australia, for his help in the initial brainstorming for the lectures and cheerfully absolve him too from any responsibility for the ways in which my ideas have developed. The same is true also of my colleague Dr. David Moffitt, whose own work on the Letter to the Hebrews and on the understandings of sacrifice in the ancient Jewish world and in the New Testament have been extremely stimulating. Though they come from very different angles, Dr. Michael Horton, Dr. William Lane Craig, and Dr. Jack Levison have given me the benefit of their experience and insight, and even though we still disagree about many things, I hope we can still continue to learn from one another. The Reverend Peter Rodgers, continuing a scholarly friendship of nearly half a century, has been a constant encourager and a discerning critic. Special mention must be made of Dr. Jamie Davies and Max Botner, my research assistants at the start and finish of this project, who have helped in numerous ways, not least in thinking through the complex and interlocking questions I am dealing with. The book formed the basis of the lectures and seminars I gave at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, during a memorable week in May 2016, and I am especially grateful to Mike Cope and his colleagues, who organized that week, and to the university president, Dr. Andy Benton, and his colleagues for their warm welcome and hospitality. A similar set of lectures was given at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in June 2016, and I am very grateful to the principal, the Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd, and his colleagues for their hospitality and encouragement. I must also thank a much larger company from around the world who have supported this work in prayer, in e-mail messages, and sometimes by personal meetings and crucial discussions. Thinking and writing about the cross is difficult at several levels, and those who have upheld me through the process have earned my deep gratitude. My grateful thanks as ever to Mickey Maudlin at HarperOne and to Simon Kingston from SPCK for their wise and careful editorial advice and to their respective colleagues for seeing another of my books through the press. My family, and particularly my dear wife, have as usual sustained me throughout this work. Speaking of family, Leo Valentine Wright was born on May 1, 2016, as his grandfather was arriving in California to give the Pepperdine Lectures. This book is dedicated to him in the hope and prayer that he may come to know for himself the truth and the love of which I have tried to write. N. T. Wright St. Andrews July 2016 SCRIPTURE INDEX The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader’s search tools. OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 1–2, 89 1–12, 95 1:26–28, 79 2:2, 197 3, 104, 284 3:8, 107 3:22–24, 95 11, 97

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Rather, as in Revelation 1, 5, and 20, the result of the Messiah’s death is that humans, in this case those who exercise apostolic ministry, are called and equipped for that work. We glanced at this passage before, but it bears repeating here, so central is it to Paul’s understanding of both the cross and the vocation that results from it: The Messiah’s love makes us press on. We have come to the conviction that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all in order that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised on their behalf. . . . It all comes from God. He reconciled us to himself through the Messiah, and he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. This is how it came about: God was reconciling the world to himself in the Messiah, not counting their transgressions against them, and entrusting us with the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors, speaking on behalf of the Messiah, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore people on the Messiah’s behalf to be reconciled to God. The Messiah did not know sin, but God made him to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might embody God’s faithfulness to the covenant. So, as we work together with God, we appeal to you in particular: when you accept God’s grace, don’t let it go to waste! This is what he says: “I listened to you when the time was right; I came to your aid on the day of salvation.” Look! The right time is now! Look! The day of salvation is here! (5:14–6:2) He says it again and again, developing the thought each time. The Messiah died (to reconcile us and the world to God); and God gave us this ministry (the ministry of reconciliation). The whole passage, like most of the letter, is about this ministry, this Messiah-shaped, cruciform, covenant-fulfilling ministry. Many traditions, misled by the normal translation of 5:21b as “that in him we might become ‘the righteousness of God,’” have imagined that in this verse we have a statement of what is called “double imputation”: our sins are “imputed” to Jesus and his righteousness is “imputed” to us. But that is specifically not what Paul says. Indeed, that whole way of approaching things often owes more to the normal “works contract,” at least at a popular level, than to anything deep in the New Testament. It implies that Paul’s theology revolves around the moralistic “righteousness” that consists of “good behavior” in one shape or form—and that the merits of Jesus’s good behavior can be credited to our account despite our bad behavior. That is a slimmed-down and distorted version of what Paul actually says.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  And Jesus’s first followers saw it as something more. They saw it as the vital moment not just in human history, but in the entire story of God and the world. Indeed, they believed it had opened a new and shocking window onto the meaning of the word “God” itself. They believed that with this event the one true God had suddenly and dramatically put into operation his plan for the rescue of the world. They saw it as the day the revolution began. It wasn’t just that they believed Jesus had been raised from the dead. They did believe that, of course, and that too was scandalous nonsense in their day as it is in ours. But they quickly came to see his resurrection not simply as an astonishing new beginning in itself, but as the result of what had happened three days earlier. The resurrection was the first visible sign that the revolution was already under way. More signs would follow. Most Christians today don’t see it like this—and, in consequence, most people outside the church don’t see it like that either. I understand why. Like most Christians today, I started my thinking about Jesus’s death with the assumption, from what I had been taught, that the death of Jesus was all about God saving me from my “sin,” so that I could “go to heaven.” That, of course, can be quite a revolutionary idea for someone who’s never thought of it before. But it’s not quite the revolution the early Christians were talking about. In fact, that way of putting it, taken on its own, significantly distorts what Jesus’s first followers were saying. They were talking about something bigger, something more dangerous, something altogether more explosive. The personal meaning is not left behind. I want to make that clear from the start. But it is contained within the larger story. And it means more, not less, as a result. Let me put this another way. The early Christian writers used some stunning expressions of delight and gratitude when they mentioned Jesus’s death. Think of Paul saying, “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), or “The Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the Bible” (1 Cor. 15:3). Think of John writing perhaps the most famous line in the New Testament, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (3:16, KJV). The focus in all these cases is upon Jesus’s death on the cross, not the resurrection. These must remain central in any authentic description of what the first Christians believed had happened when Jesus died. But by themselves, without paying attention to the larger elements in the picture, they can lead us into a private or even selfish way of seeing things, in which our immediate needs may seem to have been met (our needs for forgiveness in the present and salvation in the future), but without making any difference in the wider world.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Laura Blum, you levitated my prose. Not being a native English-speaker, I miss certain nuances of the language that your poetic flair always captures. Michele Scheinkman, I never know that an idea makes sense until you give it your seal of approval. Gail Winston, my editor at HarperCollins, you believed in me like a mother. You made me pick up my strewn thoughts and kept me jargon-free. Mary Wylie, when you edited the original article from which this book is drawn, “In Search of Erotic Intelligence: Reconciling Sensuality and Domesticity,” did you know how far we would go? You often understood what I wanted to say before I did. Miriam Horn, you were the first person who gave some shape to the original article. Rich Simon, you set this whole thing in motion. A simple question in the spring of 2002, “What have you been thinking about lately?” prompted me to send you some loose ideas which, eleven versions later, ended in the pages of an on-the-cusp magazine, The Psychotherapy Networker. Things could have ended there, with an interesting article. But Tracy Brown, you were rummaging through the newsstands as only an enterprising agent knows how to do. You spotted the cover of the Utne Reader , which had reproduced my article from the Networker article. We instantly bonded, and began this amazing journey. I’m recommending you right and left. Ilana Berger, you introduced me to the world of sex therapy. You’ve been a mentor and a friend. Peter Fraenkel, since before day one you believed in this project. Michael Shernoff, by offering a gay perspective, you kept me from falling into heterosexual clichés. Patti Cohen and David Bornstein, I’m honored that you’ve welcomed me into your circle of writers. Deborah Gieringer, Sandy Petrey, and Katherine Frank, thank you for being such discerning readers and thinkers. Phillis Levin, you are my poetic muse. Shelly Kellner, you bring a wealth of organization to my chaos. Your research support was impeccable. Anya Strzemien, you spent hours listening to me on tape and then transcribing. Can we work together again? Miriam Baker, thank you for the wonderful metaphor of captivity. There’s no way to overstate the contribution of my patients. I’m honored by your trust in me. Thank you for letting me into your souls, and for allowing me to take your stories to enrich the life of others. Friends, too, please join the list. I can’t name everyone who sat at my dinner table parsing out the complexities of desire, but you know who you are, and I can’t thank you enough. Jack Saul, we have been together nearly a quarter of a century. I know you appreciate my choice of topic! I wouldn’t have been able to complete this project without your enduring support and enthusiasm. You stepped in whenever I stepped out.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  That Spirit transplant, though freely offered to God’s friends and enemies alike, never destroys the human freedom also given us by that same God. We are always free to accept it or reject it. Acceptance is what Paul calls “faith” and, of course, that does not simply mean belief in the free offer, an abstract and theoretical acknowledgment that this free offer is available. “Faith” means a grateful submission to the Spirit transplant of God’s own nonviolent distributive justice, which empowers us to will and enables us to work toward a reclamation of this world in collaboration with God. Finally, however, there is still that question of working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We can only conclude that the reason we should fear and tremble about our salvation is not because God will punish us if we fail, but because the world will punish us if we succeed. CHAPTER SEVENLIFE TOGETHER “IN CHRIST”A LTHOUGH CONVERSION is a personal process, Paul did not simply convert individuals. Paul created communities. He converted people to a new life in community, to life together “in Christ.” The phrase is shorthand for a way of life in community radically different from that in the normal societies of this world. We treated “in Christ” briefly in Chapter 5 in the context of Paul’s understanding of Christ crucified and at-one-ment. There we spoke of becoming one with Christ, in Christ, by being crucified with him, dying and rising with him, participating in his death and resurrection. In that sense, “in Christ” is a metaphor for a new personal identity and orientation toward life—the kind of life that results from a “Spirit transplant.” But life “in Christ” for Paul was not primarily about a new personal identity for individuals. Paul’s understanding was very different from a widespread understanding of the role of “religion” and the purpose of “spirituality” in modern Western culture, where they are often thought of as primarily private, individual matters, even though many Christians would say that being Christian also means being part of a church. For Paul, life “in Christ” was always a communal matter. This was so not simply because “it’s important to be part of a church,” but because his purpose, his passion, was to create communities whose life together embodied an alternative to the normalcy of the “wisdom of this world.” “IN CHRIST,” “SPIRIT OF CHRIST,” “BODY OF CHRIST” In this chapter, we focus on the communal meaning of life “in Christ.” Our purpose is to see what Paul’s communities looked like “on the ground.” We begin with Paul’s ways of speaking of the new community. “In Christ,” the title of this chapter, is shorthand for Paul’s vision of Christian community. The phrase, one of his favorites, appears over a hundred times in the letters of the radical Paul, often with a communal meaning. Paul had other favorite phrases for Christian life together. To be “in Christ” was also to be “in the Spirit.” He uses these phrases interchangeably.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  In those cases, it was always the human beings involved who were managing to turn away wrath, danger, malevolence, or sheer bad fortune. In Isaiah—and, we might add, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Jeremiah, and many other places—the rescue has been accomplished by Israel’s God himself. It was his initiative, his accomplishment. It was his love. Redemption and Forgiveness of Sins Is it possible to see all these themes as fitting together into a single whole? Probably not—at least within the limitations of Israel’s scriptures themselves. No one book or writer gathers together all the ideas I have sketched in this short summary. Isaiah and some of the Psalms come as close as any. But my point has been to trace briefly the rich materials through which Jews of the Second Temple period could, and sometimes did, reflect on the puzzles of their continuing exile, on the challenge of their ongoing but unfinished story, and on the question of how and when the promised resolution would appear. From all this, three themes emerge that are of particular relevance for our overall study. First, these ancient writings constantly insist that what God’s people in the Second Temple period needed was, from one point of view, the “end of exile,” and from another point of view, the “forgiveness of sins.” Israel’s sins were responsible for exile, so forgiveness and “return” would be the inside and the outside of the same thing. When, in the New Testament, we meet the gospel summary in which the Messiah “died for our sins in accordance with the Bible,” this is the natural home base of such language. Something has happened through which exile has been undone. The sins that caused exile in the first place have been dealt with once and for all, forever. This is part of the clue to the revolutionary vision of what happened on the cross. Second, this great and long-awaited event would be the ultimate new Exodus, the final great Passover. The victory over Babylon recapitulates the victory over Egypt. Images of Exodus crowd into passage after passage, so that even though in one text we may be dealing with Babylon, in another Syria, or in another ultimately with Rome, memories of the ancient slavery in Egypt are never far away. When we put these themes together—forgiveness of sins and end of exile, on the one hand, and Passover and Exodus, on the other, we find a composite notion of complete redemption transcending anything that Passover had meant before, transcending also anything that could be conveyed by the Day of Atonement on its own.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  See childhood lessons Paris to the Moon (Gopnik) Passionate Marriage (Schnarch) patterns, intimacy and Paz, Octavio Person, Ethel Spector Philip and Jacqueline, marriage and Phillips, Adam play, marriage and Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems (Johnson) power. See domination and submission Proust, Marcel Puritanism, hedonism and cultural ambivalence about sexuality and Maria and Nico and Ratu and teenage sexuality and Quantification of sexuality Raoul and Dominick, intentionality and Ratu, Puritanism and Ray and Joni, fantasy and realists, security and Reibstein, Janet Renee, parenthood and Robbins, Anthony Roiphe, Anne romantics, security and Rose and Charles, security and erotic vitality Rubin, Lillian Ryan and Christine, work ethic and sadomasochism (S-M) Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de Salomé, Jacque Scheinkman, Michele Schnarch, David Second Sex, The (de Beauvoir) security, erotic vitality and Adele and Alan and anchor and wave and Charles and Rose and fidelity and need for romantics and realists and uncertainty and self and others, childhood and balancing of autonomy and James and Stella ruthlessness and selfishness and Semans, Anne separateness, intimacy and Serena and Andrew, intimacy and Sexy Mamas (Winks and Semans) Simon, Carly spontaneity, myth of Stella and James, childhood and Stephanie and Warren, parenthood and Steven, childhood and desire and “story,” sex separated from submission and domination cultural values and Elizabeth and Vito and hate and love and Jed and Coral and Marcus and power and sadomasochism and surrender, love and “talk intimacy” Talmud, story from teenage sexuality, Puritanism and Tiefer, Leonore Transformation of Intimacy, The (Giddens) uncertainty, erotic vitality and values. See cultural values verbal communication, as modern intimacy. See also intimacy, sexuality and cultural changes and Eddie and Noriko and mind-body continuum and Mitch and Laura and “talk” intimacy and Vito and Elizabeth, domination and Warren and Stephanie, parenthood and Weingarten, Kaethe Wilde, Oscar Winks, Cathy work ethic Ben and “mechanics” of sexuality and Ryan and Christine and Wynne, Lyman Zoë and Doug and Naomi, fidelity and Acknowledgments I NEVER WROTE A BOOK before. I thought I couldn’t stand the solitude. To my surprise, I found I could bring my love of collaboration and midnight chats to the writing table. I tend to think in conversation—it’s in speaking that my ideas emerge and take on clarity. Some people helped me talk, and others, write. I owe them so much, far beyond this modest tribute. Since we have been musing about love and sex for two years, let me simply say that every word sends a kiss of gratitude. Sarah Manges, editor extraordinaire, you have been my compass. You have kept me on course when squalls of ideas threatened to knock me way off. Laura Blum, you levitated my prose. Not being a native English-speaker, I miss certain nuances of the language that your poetic flair always captures. Michele Scheinkman, I never know that an idea makes sense until you give it your seal of approval. Gail Winston, my editor at HarperCollins, you believed in me like a mother.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  The revolution of the cross sets us free to be in-between people, caught up in the rhythm of worship and mission. Expressing the missional vocation in this way and basing it like this on the revolutionary victory of the cross help us to avoid some obvious dangers. Without the sense of the victory being already won, we might easily lurch from arrogance (thinking that we had to win that victory ourselves) to fear (thinking that the world was too powerful and that we should escape it or at least hunker down and wait for Jesus to return and sort everything out himself). The initial victory gives us the platform for work that is both confident and humble. However, without the sense that the victory is won through the forgiveness of sins, “mission” could easily detach itself from the calling to be people who themselves have been rescued from the grip of the powers, people who themselves know what it means to live as grateful forgiven sinners. No doubt there are checks and balances here within the church as a whole and within individual lives. We need one another, and we need pastoral care and direction within the church. Sometimes we need, for our own sake and the sake of the work in which we are engaged, to sense afresh just how dark and deep the power of sin really is and to know afresh what it means to be delivered from it. At other times, focusing on sin all the time might actually become neurotic or even self-indulgent, when we should instead be looking outward, working to bring healing and hope to the world. All Christian pilgrimage is a matter of rhythm and balance. This will vary according to different personalities, different churches, and different social and cultural situations. We need one another’s help to attain that rhythm and balance and keep them fresh. But within the Body of Christ as a whole we need to keep our eyes fixed on the larger picture and discern our individual vocations, replete as they will be with healing possibilities for us as well, within that. What matters is that we are constantly brought back in touch with the center of the faith: that Jesus “gave himself for our sins, to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of God our father” (Gal. 1:4). Each element of that is vital; each informs and undergirds the others.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  That, of course, can be quite a revolutionary idea for someone who’s never thought of it before. But it’s not quite the revolution the early Christians were talking about. In fact, that way of putting it, taken on its own, significantly distorts what Jesus’s first followers were saying. They were talking about something bigger, something more dangerous, something altogether more explosive. The personal meaning is not left behind. I want to make that clear from the start. But it is contained within the larger story. And it means more, not less, as a result. Let me put this another way. The early Christian writers used some stunning expressions of delight and gratitude when they mentioned Jesus’s death. Think of Paul saying, “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), or “The Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the Bible” (1 Cor. 15:3). Think of John writing perhaps the most famous line in the New Testament, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (3:16, KJV ). The focus in all these cases is upon Jesus’s death on the cross, not the resurrection. These must remain central in any authentic description of what the first Christians believed had happened when Jesus died. But by themselves, without paying attention to the larger elements in the picture, they can lead us into a private or even selfish way of seeing things, in which our immediate needs may seem to have been met (our needs for forgiveness in the present and salvation in the future), but without making any difference in the wider world. Some, indeed, make a virtue of that irrelevance. This world is not our home, they say. Jesus has rescued us, and he’s taking us somewhere else. But the early Christians were clear: Jesus’s death made all the difference in the world, all the difference to the world. The revolution had begun. In this book I want to show what that means and how a fuller vision of what happened when Jesus died, rooted in the New Testament itself, can enable us to be part of that revolution. According to the book of Revelation, Jesus died in order to make us not rescued nonentities, but restored human beings with a vocation to play a vital part in God’s purposes for the world. Understanding what exactly happened on that horrible Friday afternoon is a big step toward making that vocation a reality. But whether we understand it or not, there is no denying that the sheer fact of Jesus’s crucifixion and the symbol of the cross itself still carry enormous power in our world. We need to think about this for a moment before going any farther. It forces us to ask, again, the key question: Why?

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  There can only be a free offer, which becomes a free gift when it is accepted. As a physical analogy, think about the air we breathe. It is always and equally available for everyone in any normal place or time. We do nothing to obtain it, nothing to merit it, and it is there unconditionally for good people and bad people alike. On the one hand, it is absolutely transcendent, since we depend on it totally. On the other, it is absolutely immanent, since it is everywhere inside and outside us, all around us. Indeed, we hardly notice the air unless something goes wrong with us or with it. Air, however, is a free offer that only becomes a free gift when we accept it and cooperate with it. We are always free either to take in too little air and choke or to take too much and hyperventilate. Furthermore, if we choose asphyxiation or hyperventilation, we should not say that the air is punishing us. It is always a matter of collaboration and participation with what is already there everywhere. Paul’s good news (gospel) is that God’s righteousness—that is, God’s very character as distributive justice—is a grace, a free gift offered to us all absolutely and unconditionally for our justification—that is, for our collaboration with God in the transformation of God’s world. In other words, God’s primary distribution is of God’s own self, own nature, own being, own character, or, as Paul prefers to say, God’s own Spirit. It is from that primary distributive justice, which is God’s gift of self, that the secondary distributive justice, which transforms the world, must come. Faith as total commitment. As any free offer must be activated into a free gift by free acceptance, so must the gift of God’s self, the grace of God’s universal offer of a Spirit transplant, be accepted by faith. To continue our analogy: believing is to grace as breathing is to air. And, as always, watch for misunderstanding. Faith does not mean theoretical assent to a proposition, but vital commitment to a program. Obviously, one could summarize a program in a proposition and believe in that proposition, but faith can never be reduced to factual assent rather than total dedication. Faith (Greek pistis ) is a total life-style commitment. Furthermore, faith as commitment is always an interactive process, a bilateral covenant that presumes faithfulness from both parties with, of course, all appropriate differences and distinctions. As Paul emphasizes in Romans, therefore, God and Christ are faithful to the world and so, in faith response, is the world meant to be faithful to them. God’s righteousness in Christ is faithfully consistent, and Christians should be consistently faithful in response to that gift of grace. Abraham is Paul’s great model for that response of faith as total commitment to God’s gift of self. Abraham was, says Paul, the common ancestor of Gentiles, who live by faith without circumcision, as well as of Jews, who live by faith with circumcision.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  When I awoke, it was striking five but the sun was still warm. I had slept perfectly, for four hours in a deep sleep such as I had not known for a very long time. Kalla had disappeared, but on the table I found some letters addressed to me. Although they had been there for days, I did not open them immediately with my usual impatience. Who could still hold me in this city? Only a printed letter from the Community Treasurer attracted my attention. I had expected it and I knew what it contained. Indeed, it was to tell me I could come and collect my salary as a forced laborer. I dressed and went at once to the cashier, who was just closing shop. The sum was fairly big and very welcome, for my stay in Algiers had emptied my pockets. I divided my money in two sums, put the smaller one in my wallet and the other in my pocket within easy reach of my hand. Night fell suddenly while I was still on my way home. In the Passage, the heat had driven all the tenants out of their flats. In summer, after gulping down their dinner, they usually put chairs out on the sidewalk and chatted until it got cool. In the silence of the night, they formed an island of sound. This reminded me of our well-hidden clubroom in our old blind alley, where we had sat in the cool when it was so hot outside. All this chattering with loud calls and exclamations from sidewalk to sidewalk now seemed unbearably vulgar to me. The blind alley had never really existed; my heart had only been more peaceful before I had come to understand. My father was still upstairs, so I went into the apartment. I pulled out the larger part of my earnings and gave it to him. “I’ve collected my pay,” I explained, “you know, my worker’s pay.” He stammered, embarrassed by his obvious pleasure. “All that! Have you any left for yourself, at least?” “Yes, yes, quite enough.” Then I went to get some food in the kitchen. Never had it been so plentiful. I settled at one of the tables of our temporary restaurant and read as I ate. I heard my father dressing slowly. I was certain he would never say more of this. In fact, after having puttered around and hesitated, he went and joined the others in the street. But it did not last long. Our usual intermediary, my mother, came up. She bustled around in the rooms, moved a few chairs, finally came closer, put her hands on the table, and said confidentially: “Your father blesses you. He is very moved, you know. It’s not so much the money, but the thought behind it that has moved him.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But I felt grateful to Ginou who was always so charming and flirtatious, because she had chosen to dream about me, of all people. I was ready to believe Mina’s story, and there probably existed, between Ginou and myself, points of contact that had never occurred to me but that she had discovered. Moreover, I was ready to develop a crush on any one of these girls, leaving it to circumstances to decide why it should be one rather than another. Of course, I would never have dared to approach Ginou on my own, but she had now opened the way and I was already upset and grateful. All the desperate tenderness that I had repressed in my heart was concentrated on her. Within a couple of days, without my having said another word to her, she already began to assume, in my eyes, all the qualities of a great love. Still, I had to undertake some kind of courtship, though it might be much easier than I feared. After all, she had more or less taken the first step when she had dreamed of me and mentioned me to Mina. These arguments served to give me the necessary courage and made it all the more easy for me. Besides, it was summer, the season that was in every way most appropriate for this kind of situation. Two days later, as I was swimming beside her, I suggested to Ginou that we take a walk together along the beach at five o’clock that afternoon. Her eyes glistened with sea water as she expressed some surprise, perhaps candidly, but in any case already disarming as far as I was concerned. “Why don’t you suggest that the others come along too?” I mumbled: “I thought it would be more fun if we were alone.” “O.K., if you say so,” she concluded.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  It’s sunk in. You’re not going to be around forever.” “Okay,” I said, taking out a notepad, “I agree I’ve learned a great deal from our work, and I’ve put my version of it into these pages. But I want to be certain your voice is heard, Irene. Could you take a crack at summarizing the central points, the parts I mustn’t omit?” Irene demurred: “You know them as well as I do.” “I want your voice. My first choice, as I’ve said on other occasions, is for us to write together, but since you won’t do that, just take a stab at it now. Free-associate—top-of-your-head stuff. Tell me, from your perspective, what was the real center, the core of our work?” “Engagement,” she said at once. “You were always there, leaning forward, getting closer. Just like when I wiped the cappuccino froth from your mustache a minute ago—” “In your face, you mean?” “Right! But in a good way. And not in any fancy metaphysical way. I needed just one thing: for you to stay with me and be willing to expose yourself to the lethal stuff radiating from me. That was your task . “Therapists don’t generally understand this,” she continued. “No one but you could do this. My friends couldn’t stay with me. They themselves were too busy grieving for Jack, or distancing themselves from the ooze, or burying the fear of their own deaths, or demanding—and I do mean demanding—that I feel okay after the first year. “That’s what you really did best,” Irene went on. She spoke quickly, fluently, and stopped only to sip her cappuccino. “You had good staying power. You hung in there close to me. More than just staying close, you kept pushing for more and more, urging me to talk about everything, no matter how macabre. And if I didn’t, you were likely to guess—pretty accurately, I’ll hand it to you—what I was feeling. “And your actions were important—words alone wouldn’t have done it. That’s why one of the best single things you did was to tell me I had to see you an extra session every time I got really enraged with you.” When she paused, I looked up from my notes. “Other useful interventions?” “Coming to Jack’s funeral. Phoning me when you were away on long trips to check on how I was doing. Holding my hand when I needed it. That was precious, especially when Jack was dying. Sometimes I felt like I’d just drift off into oblivion if it weren’t for your hand anchoring me to my life. It’s funny, most of the time I thought of you as a magus—someone who knows ahead of time exactly what’s going to happen. That vision of you began to fade only a few months ago when you started to get smaller. Yet all along I had an opposing, antimagus, feeling—a feeling that you had no script whatsoever, no rules, no planned procedure.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Okay,” I said, taking out a notepad, “I agree I’ve learned a great deal from our work, and I’ve put my version of it into these pages. But I want to be certain your voice is heard, Irene. Could you take a crack at summarizing the central points, the parts I mustn’t omit?” Irene demurred: “You know them as well as I do.” “I want your voice. My first choice, as I’ve said on other occasions, is for us to write together, but since you won’t do that, just take a stab at it now. Free-associate—top-of-your-head stuff. Tell me, from your perspective, what was the real center, the core of our work?” “Engagement,” she said at once. “You were always there, leaning forward, getting closer. Just like when I wiped the cappuccino froth from your mustache a minute ago—” “In your face, you mean?” “Right! But in a good way. And not in any fancy metaphysical way. I needed just one thing: for you to stay with me and be willing to expose yourself to the lethal stuff radiating from me. That was your task. “Therapists don’t generally understand this,” she continued. “No one but you could do this. My friends couldn’t stay with me. They themselves were too busy grieving for Jack, or distancing themselves from the ooze, or burying the fear of their own deaths, or demanding—and I do mean demanding—that I feel okay after the first year. “That’s what you really did best,” Irene went on. She spoke quickly, fluently, and stopped only to sip her cappuccino. “You had good staying power. You hung in there close to me. More than just staying close, you kept pushing for more and more, urging me to talk about everything, no matter how macabre. And if I didn’t, you were likely to guess—pretty accurately, I’ll hand it to you—what I was feeling. “And your actions were important—words alone wouldn’t have done it. That’s why one of the best single things you did was to tell me I had to see you an extra session every time I got really enraged with you.” When she paused, I looked up from my notes. “Other useful interventions?” “Coming to Jack’s funeral. Phoning me when you were away on long trips to check on how I was doing. Holding my hand when I needed it. That was precious, especially when Jack was dying. Sometimes I felt like I’d just drift off into oblivion if it weren’t for your hand anchoring me to my life. It’s funny, most of the time I thought of you as a magus—someone who knows ahead of time exactly what’s going to happen. That vision of you began to fade only a few months ago when you started to get smaller. Yet all along I had an opposing, antimagus, feeling—a feeling that you had no script whatsoever, no rules, no planned procedure. It was as if you were improvising on the spot.”

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  That absolute grace—offered even to God’s enemies—is what Paul could never forget, because he experienced it personally at Damascus. It was precisely when he was, as he told the Philippians, a “persecutor of the church” that God empowered him to live in Christ (3:6). It was precisely when he was, as he told the Galatians, “violently persecuting the church of God and…trying to destroy it” that God’s Spirit transplant took place within him (1:13). It was precisely “while we were God’s enemies,” as he told the Romans, that “we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (5:10). That Spirit transplant, though freely offered to God’s friends and enemies alike, never destroys the human freedom also given us by that same God. We are always free to accept it or reject it. Acceptance is what Paul calls “faith” and, of course, that does not simply mean belief in the free offer, an abstract and theoretical acknowledgment that this free offer is available. “Faith” means a grateful submission to the Spirit transplant of God’s own nonviolent distributive justice, which empowers us to will and enables us to work toward a reclamation of this world in collaboration with God. Finally, however, there is still that question of working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We can only conclude that the reason we should fear and tremble about our salvation is not because God will punish us if we fail, but because the world will punish us if we succeed. CHAPTER SEVEN LIFE TOGETHER “IN CHRIST” ALTHOUGH CONVERSION is a personal process, Paul did not simply convert individuals. Paul created communities. He converted people to a new life in community, to life together “in Christ.” The phrase is shorthand for a way of life in community radically different from that in the normal societies of this world. We treated “in Christ” briefly in Chapter 5 in the context of Paul’s understanding of Christ crucified and at-one-ment. There we spoke of becoming one with Christ, in Christ, by being crucified with him, dying and rising with him, participating in his death and resurrection. In that sense, “in Christ” is a metaphor for a new personal identity and orientation toward life—the kind of life that results from a “Spirit transplant.” But life “in Christ” for Paul was not primarily about a new personal identity for individuals. Paul’s understanding was very different from a widespread understanding of the role of “religion” and the purpose of “spirituality” in modern Western culture, where they are often thought of as primarily private, individual matters, even though many Christians would say that being Christian also means being part of a church. For Paul, life “in Christ” was always a communal matter. This was so not simply because “it’s important to be part of a church,” but because his purpose, his passion, was to create communities whose life together embodied an alternative to the normalcy of the “wisdom of this world.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She seemed pleased by my call and invited me to lunch at her home; the lupus had, she said, made her too sun sensitive to venture out to restaurants in the daytime. I accepted gladly. The day of our lunch I found Paula in her front garden. Wrapped in linen from head to toe and wearing an enormous broad-brimmed beach hat, she was weeding a beautiful patch of tall, fragrant Spanish lavender. “This disease is probably going to kill me, but I’m not going to let it keep me out of my garden,” Paula said, clasping my arm and escorting me inside. She led me to a dark purple velvet sofa and, sitting down next to me, immediately began on a serious note. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you, Irv, but I think of you often. You’re much in my prayers.” “I like your thinking of me, Paula. But as for your prayers, you know my shortcomings there.” “Yes, yes, I realize that in this one area you have yet to open your mind. It reminds me,” she said, smiling, “that my job with you isn’t yet complete. Do you remember the last time we talked about God? It’s years ago, but I remember your telling me that my feeling of the holy was not much different from gas pains in the night!” “Out of context that sounds harsh, even to me. But I didn’t mean to be insulting. I only meant that a feeling is merely a feeling. A subjective state can never substantiate an objective truth. A wish, a fear, a sense of awe, of the tremendum, doesn’t mean that—” “Yes, yes,” Paula interrupted me with a smile, “I know your hard-line materialist litany. I’ve heard it many times, and I’ve always been struck by the amount of passion, of devoutness, of faith you put into it. I remember that in our last conversation you told me you had never had a close friend, never known anyone whose mind you respected, who was a devout believer.” I nodded. “Well, there’s something I should have said to you then: you forgot one friend who is a believer—me! How I wish I could introduce you to the holy! How strange that you phoned now because I’ve been thinking much about you the last two weeks. I’ve just returned from a two-week church retreat in the Sierras, and I so much wish I could have taken you with me. Sit back and let me tell you about it.