We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Why Greg Can’t be Accused of Marcionism (Let’s Not Burn Him at the Stake Just Yet)
Kristin Brenemen via Compfight
Richard Beck posted a blog today entitled It’s the Same God: On Marcionism, Creeds, Hermeneutics and War. You’re going to want to take the time to read through it in its entirety. Greg has been accused of Marcionism quite a lot as a result of the working out of his Cruciform Thesis. But while Marcion basically threw out the Old Testament, claiming that it portrayed a different God than Jesus shows us, Greg has insisted that the Old Testament is inspired, as Jesus clearly believed. So how do we resolve the tension between the portrayal of God we find in the Old Testament and the revelation of God we find in Jesus? That’s the hermeneutical conundrum that Greg has been working on for the last several years.
We’ll let you know when we have a publication date for Crucifixion of the Warrior God. It’s gonna be awesome! In the mean time, here’s a snippet from Richard Beck’s blog post.
We can see, now, the shape of the Marcion accusation toward pacifists. When pacifists pit Jesus against YHWH in the Old Testament they are of accused of Marcionism because, as the creeds tell us, “it’s the same God.” The assumption being that you can’t use Jesus to say that God is always, unequivocally against war. Because, clearly, God isn’t against war in the Old Testament. So God can’t always be against war because, again, “it’s the same God.” To suggest otherwise is to flirt with the Marcion heresy.
So that’s the argument. But I’d like to draw attention to the bait and switch going on.
Basically, the thing to note is this. The claim “it’s the same God” is, as we’ve seen, aconfessional rather than a hermeneutical assertion. More precisely, the confession “it’s the same God”–“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”–hands us a hermeneutical conundrum.
The confessional statement “it’s the same God” creates rather than solves the hermeneutical problem.
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Hermeneutics, Marcionism, Pacifism, Richard Beck, War
Related Reading
Benefit of the Doubt Is Here!
Benefit of the Doubt is finally here and you should definitely get yourself a copy! Frank Viola interviewed Greg about the book recently and you can read it over on Frank’s blog Beyond Evangelical. In fact, Frank is so enthusiastic about the book that he added it to his Best 100 Christian Books Ever Written list. Wow. Also,…
When God Abandoned God
On the cross, Jesus’ cried out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” – which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mt. 27:46). These are arguably the most shocking, beautiful, and profoundly revelatory words found in Scripture. The cry reveals that on Calvary, the all-holy Son of God experienced God-forsakenness as he bore the…
Thinking Theologically
In a previous post, I challenged the common notion that the Scripture is the foundation or the center of our faith. Instead, it’s my conviction that the only place to begin is Jesus Christ. Paul says that Jesus Christ is the foundation” (1 Cor 3:11). And Peter proclaimed that Jesus is the “cornerstone” that “the…
Was the Early Church Pacifistic? A Response to Paul Copan (#11)
In Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) I argue that Jesus and Paul instruct Christians to love and bless their enemies and to unconditionally refrain from violence (e.g. Matt 5:39-45; Rom 12:14-21). Moreover, I argue that this was the prevailing attitude of Christians prior to the fourth century when the Church aligned itself with the…
Scripture’s God-Breathed Imperfections
“Inerrancy” of Scripture
As a conservative evangelical who accepted the “inerrancy” of Scripture, I used to be profoundly disturbed whenever I confronted contradictions in Scripture, or read books that made strong cases that certain aspects of the biblical narrative conflict with archeological findings.
What I – a Pacifist – Would say to Obama About the Crisis In Syria
Over the last week many of you have written ReKnew asking me to weigh in on the crisis in Syria. Does being a pacifist mean that I am opposed to America violently intervening to keep Assad from using chemical weapons against his own people? And if so, what would I say if Obama asked for…