The conventional image of the leader is the person ‘out front’, leading the way; someone with the ideas, the capability, the vision, the understanding and the will to achieve something and that actually achieves it, or gets out of the way so that others can and moves on to some other activity where they can make a difference.
It is an image of an isolated and remote figure, detached from others. It is an image that has been formed from fictional portrayals of military leaders or explorers. It is wrong.
In church circles it seems that there has been a recent recognition of a lot of contemporary business discussion about leadership; but the recognition seems to be picking up the early discussions in the business literature, and not the more recent material which puts the leader more and more into the picture in terms of functional contribution, not figure-head, as one who activates and supports people rather than dominates them.
It is the functional contribution of leadership that is of more importance, and functional contributions are always situational and occur in the context of a community of interest. Like a church, for example.
One of the most useful approaches to the idea of leadership, in my view, comes from Ronald Heifetz of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. An article that gives a helpful summary of his view is here.
Heifetz characterises leadership as an activity, that is, it is doing something, rather than being something. Thus it is situational not organisational. It is not (necessarily) a title on an organisation chart, but it is the nature of an individual’s particular actions in a particular circumstance, with conjoined motivations of other individuals:
“Leadership is what individuals do in mobilizing other people, in organizations or communities, to do what I call "adaptive work." Adaptive work can mean clarifying a conflict in values, or bridging the gap between the values that we stand for and the current conditions under which we operate. When you have a problem or a challenge for which there is no technical remedy, a problem for which it won't help to look to an authority for answers - the answers aren't there - that problem calls for adaptive work.”
Adaptive work is required more broadly when there is a disjunct of some sort between desired outcomes and current performance.
In church activities, this can occur at many points, but none of them require the attachment of a title to a person or even a role. That destroys the situational dynamic through which leadership emerges, passes from person to person from time to time, and dissolves when the adaptive work is completed. This may be one reason we are warned against calling ourselves ‘leaders’ (‘teachers’ or ‘masters’) as formal appellations in church community (Matt 23:10), and instead told to regard our role with respect to others as fundamentally service: thus the word ‘minister’. And we all have a ministry of some sort!
There are two basic organisational functions: maintenance and change; those we anoint as ‘leaders’ in our mistaken echoing of worldly proclivities are often maintenance people; true leadership is required where there is change of some sort required. These are not titled people but people who’ve made an observation, seen an opportunity, or seek a benefit where there is currently detriment. The need to be supported by the maintenance people and their change function given a home in the organisation by the maintenance people (church staff, for instance), who will also give the change program a context. In some cases the change will be such that it should be separated from the mother organisation for the sustenance of both the mother organisation and the daughter initiative; a church plant is possibly an example of this.
What is referred to, inaccurately from a biblical basis, as a leadership team or role is better characterised as a maintenance team or role. Terms to refer to such people might be convenor, organiser or co-ordinator. Facilitator would do in a pinch, as would even the older title of secretary. More traditionally, ‘minister’ would be fine, as in the church all we have is ministries, and we all have a ministry. Just title the ministry: small group minister (convenor), children’s minister (the one who organises it would be the children’s ministry coordinator) (In fact, such terms could well be used in all organisations designed for Christian or church purposes, such as missionary organisations, and so on. The use of hubristic corporate titles such as director, chief executive officer and the like are in opposition to the operation of a community of Christian purpose).
The Bible has provided us with the perfect model for organisational life under the auspices of the Holy Spirit: that is of ministry. Note the consistent emphasis in the NT on this as the basic function within the church; and we all have a ministry. The idea of one ‘minister’ or an isolated ‘ministry team’ is not biblical; nor is the idea of a ‘leader’ or ‘leadership team’. If a person is truly leading in Heifetz’s terms, then no title or label to the effect is necessary.
25 March 2009
20 March 2009
Why Genesis ?
In a previous post I attempted to canvas some of the headline lessons that Genesis 1 has for us. Here I’d like to look directly at Genesis 1 and ask what it does. That is, why is Genesis 1 important in the Bible, given the Bible's grand span of the history and destiny of the relations between humanity and God.
The answer to this question is basic to the lessons that we are able to gain from Genesis 1, but I decided to reverse what might be the natural order between the two and deal with the more dominating question second.
Genesis, in identifying our creator, and in that by implication setting our basic relationship, and the scope of who we are, shows us (that is, doesn’t merely tell us, but shows us) our connection to our creator, God as well showing our life-context.
To do its work the creative events must be describable, if they happened, and if they happened, to make any connection between us and God, they must have happened in terms that we can understand and that are consistent with the reference frame for events in our life-experience; otherwise no sense could be made and no communication would occur. Thus our connection to God would be incommunicable and the story of our relationship be reduced to fantasy.
Thus Genesis describes creative events that can be communicated, and indeed are communicated such that it shows us in terms that make sense in our world-experience, how our world has its connection with God’s ‘world’. It shows us that there is a connection and it is one that is ‘denominated’ in terms that are definitionally valid in our life-world.
The linkage is more than a curiosity, thought. It very importantly, makes salvation significant, and indeed workable, and makes the incarnation both astonishing, and credible, from a theological point of view. The incarnation depends on the basis of connection between God and humanity that is given in Genesis 1. The currency remains the same between both creation and incarnation, and salvation becomes a response in its terms of the creation to the creation being marred by the choice of people-made-in-God's-image.
One of the points that comes from this is that the events of Genesis 1 must occur in time that is the time we are in, and is reportable in the terms that we would report it in. The ‘time’ of Genesis 1 refers to time as the universal denominator of actions, events and relationships: if something really happened, it can be given a location in time that is definitive and can be set on a line that it shares with our time: that is, it happened some quantifiable period before our time. If this is not possible, then the event, etc, did not, and could not have happened in time; and its reality has to be questioned at best, set aside (and therefore nullified and rendered void) at worst.
All God’s actions are denominated in time that thus has to make sense to our experience of time, and are communicated in time words and grammar that can be directly understood in terms that we would use them and use them to make communicable sense. Deny this and the whole game goes up for grabs.
That the events of creation are set on the same timeline we are on, they bring with them an ontological continuity with our contingent status; indeed they show our dependency and ground us, not in speculative ideas that avoid the test of history (that is, did they happen or not), but in events within our historical envelope and at least conceptually, within our life-world.
If these events happened outside our timeline; are therefore not reliably communicable in terms of that timeline, then there is a fatal disjunct between us and God and there is neither an ontological with God, nor a viable explanation of our dependency, nor any content in the ark: creation-fall-salvation-new-creation.
In Genesis 1 God shows us who he is and who we are in relation by the actions and events that bring us into being. If this is not true on the timeline we are on, then it is difficult to see how it has any truth value at all.
The way God makes this communication is not to weave a web of intrigue and mystery, but to tell it as it was: to relate the events that occured in the manner in which they occured, denominated by that which is common to our experience and is universal to all possible experience: time as we know it, and not a fantasy time that would unseat the veracity of the communication and detach the events from our horizon of experience and comprehension.
But more significantly (!) the basis and rationale for salvation that would be provided by the ontological unity between our contintency and our God that is welded in Genesis 1 would collapse to a mere speculative possibility and not be a concrete fact of existence. The very point to salvation that is in the creation (that is in existential-physical event relationships) would vanish, and we’d be left with a mere ethical contrivance, a piece of religious decoration at best.
Unfortunately much reference to Creation, when examined, reduces the work of Christ to this as it removes creation for this world and makes it some sort of religious mystery, with the real stuff given in a completely differenlty founded notion of origin in a material world that can make itself and thus is independent of God, and is necessary rather than contingent. This story makes all to be within creation, including notions of God, rather than having God external to and independent of his creation.
Thus, if Genesis 1 is not taken in its own terms, the whole becomes a house of cards and collapses as soon as ‘when’ is denied as a question that can be sensibly asked. And not only ‘when’ of a calendar, but ‘when’ of the sequence of dependency that is built up and demonstrated in Genesis 1 (and then, 2, of course) with God telling what is by showing what he did.
The answer to this question is basic to the lessons that we are able to gain from Genesis 1, but I decided to reverse what might be the natural order between the two and deal with the more dominating question second.
Genesis, in identifying our creator, and in that by implication setting our basic relationship, and the scope of who we are, shows us (that is, doesn’t merely tell us, but shows us) our connection to our creator, God as well showing our life-context.
To do its work the creative events must be describable, if they happened, and if they happened, to make any connection between us and God, they must have happened in terms that we can understand and that are consistent with the reference frame for events in our life-experience; otherwise no sense could be made and no communication would occur. Thus our connection to God would be incommunicable and the story of our relationship be reduced to fantasy.
Thus Genesis describes creative events that can be communicated, and indeed are communicated such that it shows us in terms that make sense in our world-experience, how our world has its connection with God’s ‘world’. It shows us that there is a connection and it is one that is ‘denominated’ in terms that are definitionally valid in our life-world.
The linkage is more than a curiosity, thought. It very importantly, makes salvation significant, and indeed workable, and makes the incarnation both astonishing, and credible, from a theological point of view. The incarnation depends on the basis of connection between God and humanity that is given in Genesis 1. The currency remains the same between both creation and incarnation, and salvation becomes a response in its terms of the creation to the creation being marred by the choice of people-made-in-God's-image.
One of the points that comes from this is that the events of Genesis 1 must occur in time that is the time we are in, and is reportable in the terms that we would report it in. The ‘time’ of Genesis 1 refers to time as the universal denominator of actions, events and relationships: if something really happened, it can be given a location in time that is definitive and can be set on a line that it shares with our time: that is, it happened some quantifiable period before our time. If this is not possible, then the event, etc, did not, and could not have happened in time; and its reality has to be questioned at best, set aside (and therefore nullified and rendered void) at worst.
All God’s actions are denominated in time that thus has to make sense to our experience of time, and are communicated in time words and grammar that can be directly understood in terms that we would use them and use them to make communicable sense. Deny this and the whole game goes up for grabs.
That the events of creation are set on the same timeline we are on, they bring with them an ontological continuity with our contingent status; indeed they show our dependency and ground us, not in speculative ideas that avoid the test of history (that is, did they happen or not), but in events within our historical envelope and at least conceptually, within our life-world.
If these events happened outside our timeline; are therefore not reliably communicable in terms of that timeline, then there is a fatal disjunct between us and God and there is neither an ontological with God, nor a viable explanation of our dependency, nor any content in the ark: creation-fall-salvation-new-creation.
In Genesis 1 God shows us who he is and who we are in relation by the actions and events that bring us into being. If this is not true on the timeline we are on, then it is difficult to see how it has any truth value at all.
The way God makes this communication is not to weave a web of intrigue and mystery, but to tell it as it was: to relate the events that occured in the manner in which they occured, denominated by that which is common to our experience and is universal to all possible experience: time as we know it, and not a fantasy time that would unseat the veracity of the communication and detach the events from our horizon of experience and comprehension.
But more significantly (!) the basis and rationale for salvation that would be provided by the ontological unity between our contintency and our God that is welded in Genesis 1 would collapse to a mere speculative possibility and not be a concrete fact of existence. The very point to salvation that is in the creation (that is in existential-physical event relationships) would vanish, and we’d be left with a mere ethical contrivance, a piece of religious decoration at best.
Unfortunately much reference to Creation, when examined, reduces the work of Christ to this as it removes creation for this world and makes it some sort of religious mystery, with the real stuff given in a completely differenlty founded notion of origin in a material world that can make itself and thus is independent of God, and is necessary rather than contingent. This story makes all to be within creation, including notions of God, rather than having God external to and independent of his creation.
Thus, if Genesis 1 is not taken in its own terms, the whole becomes a house of cards and collapses as soon as ‘when’ is denied as a question that can be sensibly asked. And not only ‘when’ of a calendar, but ‘when’ of the sequence of dependency that is built up and demonstrated in Genesis 1 (and then, 2, of course) with God telling what is by showing what he did.
15 March 2009
A question of leadership
This blog takes me away from the discussion of origins to another area of interest connected with things ecclesiastical.
Recently I read an article in Harvard Business Review by Henry Mintzberg (HBR July-August 1996:61-67 “Musings on Management”). It connects nicely with my comments on Diary of a Church Planter that mentions Mintzberg's remarks on the management failure that is implicated in the current financial melt-down (see right at the end).
I’ve attempted to adapt some of his ‘ten ideas designed to rile everyone who cares about management’ to the current near obsession with 'leadership' in some church circles (in the eighties I remember we were more concerned with 'ministry').
1. Organisations don’t have tops and bottoms.
Too much of church organisation is just that: organisation, rather than the growing of a community of faith: a body of believers mutually serving each other, and those around them.
But if you must have an organisation, then, rather than one that is diagrammed after the model of a triangle (minister, sorry, rector at top, parish council in middle, parish at bottom, etc.), model it as a set of concentric rings: service centre (parish council) in the middle, support systems (the various ministries and ministers, including paid and unpaid) in the next ring, all as individuals in the outer ring, and the surrounding ‘sea’ is the neighbourhood.
3. Lean is mean and doesn’t even improve long term profits
Getting rid of people to improve momentary profit, but hobble long term prospects is one of the dumbest moves a business can make.
For a church, though, it’s a different matter. Churches tend to multiply programs, services, ministries, activities, committees until their members topple from exhaustion. I suggest that the lean-making has to occur in getting rid of activities that take away from the mission of the church; the long term mission, not the flash in the pan connect09 type of mission. How the mission is done will emerge by the ‘service centre’ listening, watching and learning from what the outer rings of the church say, show and do, and what the surrounding neighbourhood provides opportunities for.
4. The trouble with most strategies is chief executives who believe themselves to be strategists.
See ‘3’ above. Good strategy comes from being in close touch with customers (the church has two sets of customers: members, that is the ring that’s in touch with the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood itself) and their needs, sensing and testing opportunities and equipping people to take the opportunities that come their way.
One of Mintzberg’s comments on the ‘grand gesture’ strategists is: “they issue glossy strategic plans that look wonderful and take their organisations nowhere with great fanfare.”
5. Decentralisation centralises, empowerment disempowers, and measurements don’t measure up.
As soon as someone in an organisation thinks they can ‘empower’ workers, or staff or members, they rip any capability away from them, including that they had in the first place; because the act of ‘empowerment’ betrays the notion that the empowerer has the power to give out to others.
Nothing in the Bible would suggest that this is so. The life of the church is organic, social, spiritual, charismatic, and above all loving: seeking the better for the other. The service centre and support systems of a church exist to help its real life work really and get on with sensing what it needs to be and do, because the people, in contact with their community and each other are the source of the life of the church and are both its ‘service delivery’ channel and its ‘market information’ source.
6. Great organisations, once created, don’t need great leaders.
“Hero worship reflects nothing more than our own inadequacies; such worship stops us from thinking for ourselves as adult human beings”.
7. Great organisations have souls; any word with de or re in front of it is likely to destroy those souls.
Replacing technique for thorough understanding is a recipe for disaster, or at least ineffectiveness. It seems that there’s an endless stream of people with church growth or church planting, or church development answers, techniques, approaches and magic potions. We hanker after these genies because we think they might give us the ‘magic’ that worked for them. But what worked for them was, in many cases, their hard work thinking out in community meeting needs and taking opportunities, stopping things that didn’t work and testing new things to find what might work in that setting, for that church, with those members. There are no genies, only people together (living and loving together, being committed to each other to the point of sacrifice, should that be called for) lead by the Spirit.
9. Organisations need continuous care, not interventionist cures.
Styles that fail: the ‘boss’ style: boss (pretends) knows and control everything, has all the ideas, is the final filter and arbiter of action, calls the shots; the ‘professional’ style: the professional has been trained, has been to Moore college and knows everything about everything that is important, including the community that a church has been in and part of for generations, this professional can waft in and ‘do the job’ that no one else had the wit to do.
Styles that work: Mintzberg discusses ‘nursing’ as a style of helping organisations perform strongly: observing, being involved, orchestrating, nurturing. Mintzberg sees this as a more typically feminine approach to action; maybe we miss out by neglecting women in the service and support centres of our churches because we’ve missed the point of church and regard churches as organisations, rather than the body living out the love of Christ.
I’ve made a diagram of church ‘organisation’ that reflects these comments, here.
Along similar lines, a quote from a recent article by Mintzberg, A Crisis of Management not Economics, in the Canadian Globe and Mail.
“In the United States [and the Christian Church, or so it seems-me] particularly, they just make such a huge fuss over leadership, it has become an absolute obsession. Everything is leadership, leadership, leadership.
It is not coincidental that the more fuss that Americans make about leadership, the worse their leadership is whether it is corporate or political or anything else. Their leadership is dreadful in recent years and with all of this fuss on leadership. Leadership is about individuality, leadership is about me. Even if leadership is designed to encourage and to bring along other people and engage other people, it is still the individual driving it. So, show me a leader and I will show you all kinds of followers and that is not the kind of organizations that we want.
That is not the way that we build things up. I think that we need to put more emphasis on what I prefer to call, there is no word for it but I use the word 'community-ship', which is the idea that corporations and other organizations, when they function well, are communities. People care for each other, they worry about each other, they work for each other and they work for the institution and they feel pride in the institution.”
Recently I read an article in Harvard Business Review by Henry Mintzberg (HBR July-August 1996:61-67 “Musings on Management”). It connects nicely with my comments on Diary of a Church Planter that mentions Mintzberg's remarks on the management failure that is implicated in the current financial melt-down (see right at the end).
I’ve attempted to adapt some of his ‘ten ideas designed to rile everyone who cares about management’ to the current near obsession with 'leadership' in some church circles (in the eighties I remember we were more concerned with 'ministry').
1. Organisations don’t have tops and bottoms.
Too much of church organisation is just that: organisation, rather than the growing of a community of faith: a body of believers mutually serving each other, and those around them.
But if you must have an organisation, then, rather than one that is diagrammed after the model of a triangle (minister, sorry, rector at top, parish council in middle, parish at bottom, etc.), model it as a set of concentric rings: service centre (parish council) in the middle, support systems (the various ministries and ministers, including paid and unpaid) in the next ring, all as individuals in the outer ring, and the surrounding ‘sea’ is the neighbourhood.
3. Lean is mean and doesn’t even improve long term profits
Getting rid of people to improve momentary profit, but hobble long term prospects is one of the dumbest moves a business can make.
For a church, though, it’s a different matter. Churches tend to multiply programs, services, ministries, activities, committees until their members topple from exhaustion. I suggest that the lean-making has to occur in getting rid of activities that take away from the mission of the church; the long term mission, not the flash in the pan connect09 type of mission. How the mission is done will emerge by the ‘service centre’ listening, watching and learning from what the outer rings of the church say, show and do, and what the surrounding neighbourhood provides opportunities for.
4. The trouble with most strategies is chief executives who believe themselves to be strategists.
See ‘3’ above. Good strategy comes from being in close touch with customers (the church has two sets of customers: members, that is the ring that’s in touch with the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood itself) and their needs, sensing and testing opportunities and equipping people to take the opportunities that come their way.
One of Mintzberg’s comments on the ‘grand gesture’ strategists is: “they issue glossy strategic plans that look wonderful and take their organisations nowhere with great fanfare.”
5. Decentralisation centralises, empowerment disempowers, and measurements don’t measure up.
As soon as someone in an organisation thinks they can ‘empower’ workers, or staff or members, they rip any capability away from them, including that they had in the first place; because the act of ‘empowerment’ betrays the notion that the empowerer has the power to give out to others.
Nothing in the Bible would suggest that this is so. The life of the church is organic, social, spiritual, charismatic, and above all loving: seeking the better for the other. The service centre and support systems of a church exist to help its real life work really and get on with sensing what it needs to be and do, because the people, in contact with their community and each other are the source of the life of the church and are both its ‘service delivery’ channel and its ‘market information’ source.
6. Great organisations, once created, don’t need great leaders.
“Hero worship reflects nothing more than our own inadequacies; such worship stops us from thinking for ourselves as adult human beings”.
7. Great organisations have souls; any word with de or re in front of it is likely to destroy those souls.
Replacing technique for thorough understanding is a recipe for disaster, or at least ineffectiveness. It seems that there’s an endless stream of people with church growth or church planting, or church development answers, techniques, approaches and magic potions. We hanker after these genies because we think they might give us the ‘magic’ that worked for them. But what worked for them was, in many cases, their hard work thinking out in community meeting needs and taking opportunities, stopping things that didn’t work and testing new things to find what might work in that setting, for that church, with those members. There are no genies, only people together (living and loving together, being committed to each other to the point of sacrifice, should that be called for) lead by the Spirit.
9. Organisations need continuous care, not interventionist cures.
Styles that fail: the ‘boss’ style: boss (pretends) knows and control everything, has all the ideas, is the final filter and arbiter of action, calls the shots; the ‘professional’ style: the professional has been trained, has been to Moore college and knows everything about everything that is important, including the community that a church has been in and part of for generations, this professional can waft in and ‘do the job’ that no one else had the wit to do.
Styles that work: Mintzberg discusses ‘nursing’ as a style of helping organisations perform strongly: observing, being involved, orchestrating, nurturing. Mintzberg sees this as a more typically feminine approach to action; maybe we miss out by neglecting women in the service and support centres of our churches because we’ve missed the point of church and regard churches as organisations, rather than the body living out the love of Christ.
I’ve made a diagram of church ‘organisation’ that reflects these comments, here.
Along similar lines, a quote from a recent article by Mintzberg, A Crisis of Management not Economics, in the Canadian Globe and Mail.
“In the United States [and the Christian Church, or so it seems-me] particularly, they just make such a huge fuss over leadership, it has become an absolute obsession. Everything is leadership, leadership, leadership.
It is not coincidental that the more fuss that Americans make about leadership, the worse their leadership is whether it is corporate or political or anything else. Their leadership is dreadful in recent years and with all of this fuss on leadership. Leadership is about individuality, leadership is about me. Even if leadership is designed to encourage and to bring along other people and engage other people, it is still the individual driving it. So, show me a leader and I will show you all kinds of followers and that is not the kind of organizations that we want.
That is not the way that we build things up. I think that we need to put more emphasis on what I prefer to call, there is no word for it but I use the word 'community-ship', which is the idea that corporations and other organizations, when they function well, are communities. People care for each other, they worry about each other, they work for each other and they work for the institution and they feel pride in the institution.”
13 March 2009
The son returns
I was able to attend a talk on the prodigal son facilitated by Justin Moffatt, the minister at St. Phillips, York Street Sydney
He mentions the talk on his blog.
Unlike most discourses in church settings, I was very pleased that we sat around tables and were invited to contribute to the talk by asking questions or making comments. For a command and control type paid Christian, this would be avoided at all costs, but I would think that for one convinced of the Spirit's leading amongst us, there would be no other way of ministering to each other over a passage from the Bible. So, it was good to be a part of.
As we were considering the passage, it occurred to me that the journey of the prodigal son is at once the journey of Adam, and then of us all.
Firstly, the parallel between Genesis 3 and the Son’s decision to take from his father and turn from relationship with him is striking.
Then the return is paralleled in us as we repent and seek the Father by way of Christ, then enjoy the Father’s good favour to be demonstrated in the eternal life that Christ heralds in his resurrection.
I like the way the structure of the parable reaches back to the very basis for Christ’s salvation on the one hand, but also points forward to his resurrection on the other. In one brief parable a soteriological microcosm!
He mentions the talk on his blog.
Unlike most discourses in church settings, I was very pleased that we sat around tables and were invited to contribute to the talk by asking questions or making comments. For a command and control type paid Christian, this would be avoided at all costs, but I would think that for one convinced of the Spirit's leading amongst us, there would be no other way of ministering to each other over a passage from the Bible. So, it was good to be a part of.
As we were considering the passage, it occurred to me that the journey of the prodigal son is at once the journey of Adam, and then of us all.
Firstly, the parallel between Genesis 3 and the Son’s decision to take from his father and turn from relationship with him is striking.
Then the return is paralleled in us as we repent and seek the Father by way of Christ, then enjoy the Father’s good favour to be demonstrated in the eternal life that Christ heralds in his resurrection.
I like the way the structure of the parable reaches back to the very basis for Christ’s salvation on the one hand, but also points forward to his resurrection on the other. In one brief parable a soteriological microcosm!
5 March 2009
Death's line
In a recent Bible study group, we discussed Christ’s substitutionary death. Naturally, we looked at the history of substitutionary sacrifice in the Bible, including making reference to Leviticus 17:11 ('For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.').
We naturally discussed that the substitutionary sin sacrifices in the OT did the dual job of reminding people of the seriousness of sin and its consequence in death, and pointing toward God’s provision of a ‘way out’ from their sin; in the OT is was the two-fold act of animal sacrifice, and sending the scapegoat into the wilderness.
Then we linked the OT practice to the NT where the lamb becomes Christ, and a man does the work that a lamb did; more than a man, of course, it was the creator himself.
But why was death required at all? What purpose could be served by killing an animal in a rite and the death of Christ on the cross?
We are steered in our thinking about sacrifice and the cross by the legal references used throughout the Bible, which may have an analogical purpose which, not being fully sensed, causes us, I think, to fail to put sin and death into a covenantal context. I would suspect that the Bible is not explicit about this context, because it is so obvious in biblical terms. That is, the covenantal relationship between God and humanity is dominating and so disappears from discussion and then, when its domination is not expressed, disappears from our theology too.
Thus, we see death in forensic terms and the punishment it represents as purely judicial. We sometimes refer to God’s abhorrence of sin, but we rarely take this further.
The further it can be taken, in my view, is back to Genesis 3:3, where the place of death in the creation is given (but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’)
Death does not only serve as punishment, in a quasi judicial sense, but it results from the break of covenant between God and man. Man’s turning from God is a rejection of God; not merely breaking a rule; and man takes the creation with him. God rejected is no longer God in open relationship with man, and man, and with him the creation, it being his domain, is cut off from life, which only comes from God’s sustaining word.
It’s like a car driver rejecting the offer of petrol for her car and then facing the consequences of it not running, because she distrusted the word of the attendant that she would need to visit regularly to top up her fuel tank.
The death of the sacrificial lamb then, results from the death that comes through Adam, in the garden (of course, Paul reminds us of this in 1 Corinthians 15:21), as he steps out of covenant. The death of the sacrificial lamb, resulting from the primal death that Adam brought must point back to that very origination of death. Thus it is an echo of the event of Adam’s choice and a perpetual reminder that there is a great disjunct between our relationship with God now and what it was then (pre Adam’s choice).
This suggests a couple of things to me
Firstly, Christ’s death encapsulates Adam’s death. I say this because the curse came upon Adam (and us) in a global, not immediately absolute fashion. The delay has a gracious aspect to it: that death, paradoxically, is not ‘terminal’; its full effect is deferred: and its deferral takes us straight to Christ. When it has its full effect in Christ, and that is the only instance of its full effect in this life/world: cutting off Christ, then as the sin-bearer for us, from God the Father, which itself is astonishing in every way, it is almost immediately overturned, and death is no more.
In a way, the curse of death is suspended until Christ when it is brought to full effect and then ended: God out-gracing sin with resurrection to new life.
All this stems from the introduction of death by Adam’s rejection of the covenant and therefore all points back to that moment, which must be in continuous history to be theologically contiguous and to have any connection to us; and therefore the great trajectory of salvation has to be anchored in this world at every point: Adam did real things in this world, that undid an aspect of the (real) creation (knowledge of which is only through God's word), which aspect must have obtained before the thing done-- that is, the creation’s very goodness excluded those things consequential upon sin, viz. death, in all its dimensions--for it to be repaired by intervention in the same ‘this world’ in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ, with that pointing to the new creation. The setting for all this is consistently given in the Bible as This World (and the resurrection and the pointer to the new creation is also in This World, which brings a continuity between the two).
An interesting corollary of this relationship between pointing toward Christ and Christ pointing back to Adam’s bringing of death, is that with animal sacrifice participating in the chain of reflection and anticipation, it must also have been precluded from the pre-fall world. If it was not, then the sacrifice means nothing, because it would not be pointing back to Adam’s bringing death, and therefore, forwards to Christ and condemning sin by the application of the ‘penalty’, but it would just be part of the normal function of the ‘very good’; and it is clear in the Bible that the animal sacrifice, the ending of its life, is not part of the normal function, but part of the abnormality of the death to which it points, from which it stems and through which the breach of the fall is contrasted with the creation which is now broken.
The setting for this whole drama, for the eviction of the good, followed by the eviction of death, has to be the world in which sin and death plays out; because that is the only point of contact that sin has with the creation: the setting of our relationship with God (and our dis-relationship post-fall) is the concrete world, in which Christ concretely was incarnated, died and was resurrected; or salvation is discontinuous with our world we cannot be reconciled…ever.
So, in summary, Christ brings to its conclusion the curse bestowed upon Adam adn then overturns it in signal and prospect of the new creation continuing but amplifying the very good creation after the lacunae of the fall.
Adam undid life, but Christ undid death!
Christ died our death and we are restored by his life.
We naturally discussed that the substitutionary sin sacrifices in the OT did the dual job of reminding people of the seriousness of sin and its consequence in death, and pointing toward God’s provision of a ‘way out’ from their sin; in the OT is was the two-fold act of animal sacrifice, and sending the scapegoat into the wilderness.
Then we linked the OT practice to the NT where the lamb becomes Christ, and a man does the work that a lamb did; more than a man, of course, it was the creator himself.
But why was death required at all? What purpose could be served by killing an animal in a rite and the death of Christ on the cross?
We are steered in our thinking about sacrifice and the cross by the legal references used throughout the Bible, which may have an analogical purpose which, not being fully sensed, causes us, I think, to fail to put sin and death into a covenantal context. I would suspect that the Bible is not explicit about this context, because it is so obvious in biblical terms. That is, the covenantal relationship between God and humanity is dominating and so disappears from discussion and then, when its domination is not expressed, disappears from our theology too.
Thus, we see death in forensic terms and the punishment it represents as purely judicial. We sometimes refer to God’s abhorrence of sin, but we rarely take this further.
The further it can be taken, in my view, is back to Genesis 3:3, where the place of death in the creation is given (but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’)
Death does not only serve as punishment, in a quasi judicial sense, but it results from the break of covenant between God and man. Man’s turning from God is a rejection of God; not merely breaking a rule; and man takes the creation with him. God rejected is no longer God in open relationship with man, and man, and with him the creation, it being his domain, is cut off from life, which only comes from God’s sustaining word.
It’s like a car driver rejecting the offer of petrol for her car and then facing the consequences of it not running, because she distrusted the word of the attendant that she would need to visit regularly to top up her fuel tank.
The death of the sacrificial lamb then, results from the death that comes through Adam, in the garden (of course, Paul reminds us of this in 1 Corinthians 15:21), as he steps out of covenant. The death of the sacrificial lamb, resulting from the primal death that Adam brought must point back to that very origination of death. Thus it is an echo of the event of Adam’s choice and a perpetual reminder that there is a great disjunct between our relationship with God now and what it was then (pre Adam’s choice).
This suggests a couple of things to me
Firstly, Christ’s death encapsulates Adam’s death. I say this because the curse came upon Adam (and us) in a global, not immediately absolute fashion. The delay has a gracious aspect to it: that death, paradoxically, is not ‘terminal’; its full effect is deferred: and its deferral takes us straight to Christ. When it has its full effect in Christ, and that is the only instance of its full effect in this life/world: cutting off Christ, then as the sin-bearer for us, from God the Father, which itself is astonishing in every way, it is almost immediately overturned, and death is no more.
In a way, the curse of death is suspended until Christ when it is brought to full effect and then ended: God out-gracing sin with resurrection to new life.
All this stems from the introduction of death by Adam’s rejection of the covenant and therefore all points back to that moment, which must be in continuous history to be theologically contiguous and to have any connection to us; and therefore the great trajectory of salvation has to be anchored in this world at every point: Adam did real things in this world, that undid an aspect of the (real) creation (knowledge of which is only through God's word), which aspect must have obtained before the thing done-- that is, the creation’s very goodness excluded those things consequential upon sin, viz. death, in all its dimensions--for it to be repaired by intervention in the same ‘this world’ in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ, with that pointing to the new creation. The setting for all this is consistently given in the Bible as This World (and the resurrection and the pointer to the new creation is also in This World, which brings a continuity between the two).
An interesting corollary of this relationship between pointing toward Christ and Christ pointing back to Adam’s bringing of death, is that with animal sacrifice participating in the chain of reflection and anticipation, it must also have been precluded from the pre-fall world. If it was not, then the sacrifice means nothing, because it would not be pointing back to Adam’s bringing death, and therefore, forwards to Christ and condemning sin by the application of the ‘penalty’, but it would just be part of the normal function of the ‘very good’; and it is clear in the Bible that the animal sacrifice, the ending of its life, is not part of the normal function, but part of the abnormality of the death to which it points, from which it stems and through which the breach of the fall is contrasted with the creation which is now broken.
The setting for this whole drama, for the eviction of the good, followed by the eviction of death, has to be the world in which sin and death plays out; because that is the only point of contact that sin has with the creation: the setting of our relationship with God (and our dis-relationship post-fall) is the concrete world, in which Christ concretely was incarnated, died and was resurrected; or salvation is discontinuous with our world we cannot be reconciled…ever.
So, in summary, Christ brings to its conclusion the curse bestowed upon Adam adn then overturns it in signal and prospect of the new creation continuing but amplifying the very good creation after the lacunae of the fall.
Adam undid life, but Christ undid death!
Christ died our death and we are restored by his life.
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