Marc Schelske on Spoutible

2/53

This chapter is called “You shall be cruciform, for I am cruciform — Paul’s trinitarian reconstruction of holiness as Theosis.” In his view, holiness means becoming more loving. What does this look like? (Numbers in parenthesis are page numbers)

12:55 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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3/53

(110) “This countercultural, cruciform (holy) love pays special attention to the weaker members of the community and special honor to apostles who exhibit Christlike power-in-weakness (43-13), and it has a counterintuitive commitment to absorbing injustice rather than inflicting it.”

12:55 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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4/53

(113) “As a Jew, Paul knows that to be holy is to be Godlike, as a Jew in Christ, he knows that to be holy is to be Christlike. The question is then raised, What is the connection between these two necessary understandings of holiness?

12:55 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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5/53

...The answer for Paul, as we saw in chapter one, is that Christ is Godlike, and God is Christlike.”

Reminds me of the writings of both Brian Zahnd and Bradley Jersak.

12:56 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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6/53

On incipient Trinitarianism in Paul: (115) “To be in Christ is to be in God and to be the ongoing recipient of God's Holy Spirit (4:8); this is, in Paul's earliest letter, an indication of his experience of a Trinitarian participatory holiness."

12:56 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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7/53

Summarizing the Galatians “fruit of the spirit” - (117) “The "crucifixion" of the flesh and its desires (5:24) means the birth of new desires and practices that "flesh out" the root meaning of cruciform holiness as self-giving, other-serving love of God and neighbor (5:13-14).”

12:57 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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8/53

Gormans’s central point is that holiness is nothing other than cruciformity.

12:57 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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9/53

(119) “In 1 Cor 11: Paul refers to the actualization of this Christlike holiness as becoming like him (Paul) inasmuch as he is like Christ - by which Paul again means Christ crucified, Christ who did not exercise his rights but gave them up as an act of love for others...

12:57 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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10/53

...And if Christ is God's holiness for us, then becoming like the crucified Christ is sharing in God's holiness and thus becoming like God - theosis.”

12:57 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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11/53

(121) “If the crucified Christ is the glory and image of God, what does that say about God, and what does it say about the process of becoming Godlike? ...

12:57 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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12/53

...God is like Christ crucified. To become like God is to become like that kind of God. . . . That is, God is Christlike, and transformation into Christlikeness is theosis.”

12:58 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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13/53

My paraphrase:

The more other-centered and burden-bearing we become, the more we are becoming like Christ, and since Christ is the revelation of God, the more like God we become.

12:58 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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14/53

The opposite is also true. The more selfish, self-centered, self-protective, and self-elevating we are, the less we are like God.

American Christianity, take note.

12:58 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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15/53

Calling back to Phil. 2, Gorman says that Christ’s holiness lies in precisely how he violates normal expectations of the Divine.

12:58 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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16/53

(122) “The text says that although normal human expectations would be for a god to exercise power and privilege, to seek status and honor, and to perpetually "climb upward” as proofs of divinity, this "form of God" did just the contrary...

12:58 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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17/53

...This divine abnormality constitutes the holiness - the distinctiveness - of the God displayed in Christ incarnate and crucified.”

12:59 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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18/53

(122-123) “To be like Christ is to participate in the Spirit and to embody the activity of God. It is, in other words, to be like God, to be holy, to participate in God's very life...

12:59 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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19/53

And that only makes sense if the story of Christ is the story of God, if the counterintuitive kenosis of the Son reveals the way God really acts and really is . . . a counterintuitive, countercultural, counter-imperial form of deity.”

Yes!!!

12:59 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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20/53

Further: “Paul does clearly imply that what Christ did, though counterintuitive and extravagantly unorthodox, was ultimately not a violation of divinity but an expression of it . . . Otherwise, how could Christ be "equal with God" if he betrayed the character of God?”

01:00 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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21/53

This is a vital bit of theology.

Most of Christianity tacitly behaves as if Jesus is an aberration in the nature of God, some kind of desperate plan C to solve the unintended consequences of humanity ruining God’s perfect creation.

01:00 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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22/53

Gorman (in alignment with many theologians going back to the patristics) is saying no. Jesus reveals who God had always been.

01:00 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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23/53

Quoting N.T. Wright: (123) “The real theological emphasis of the hymn ... is not simply a new view of Jesus. It is a new understanding of God.... incarnation and even crucifixion are to be seen as appropriate vehicles for the dynamic self-revelation of God.”

01:00 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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24/53

This right here is worth the price of admission:

(126) “Paul's notion of holiness challenges privatistic, self-centered, therapeutic, and sectarian notions of holiness. Cruciform holiness is inherently other-centered and communal...

01:00 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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25/53

"...It is public participation in the story of God in Christ by the Spirit.”

01:01 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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26/53

Careful now: (128) “The embedded theology of most Christians still revolves around a non-cruciform model of God's holiness, character, and power, and a crucial corrective is needed...

01:01 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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27/53

"...This brings us inevitably back . . . to politics, to the "normal" god of civil religion that combines patriotism and power…

01:01 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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28/53

…Nationalistic, military power is not the power of the cross, and such misconstrued notions of divine power have nothing to do with the majesty or holiness of the triune God known in the weakness of the cross...

01:02 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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29/53

"... In our time, any "holiness" that fails to see the radical, counter-imperial claims of the gospel is inadequate at best.”

😳

That one’s gonna be in my thesis for sure.

01:02 PM - Jul 18, 2023 (Edited)

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30/53

The next chapter is “While We We’re Enemies: Paul, the Resurrection, and the End of Violence.” This chapter is a surprising, and strong argument for non-violence on Paul’s writing. This topic is not germane to my thesis, but I’ll share a few interesting bits.

01:02 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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31/53

(139) “The resurrection means that the mode of Jesus' salvation has been vindicated by God as the way of true salvation, and the violent modes of ethnic cleansing, imperial domination, and the like are pseudo-soteriologies.”

01:02 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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32/53

In the footnote to this statement “Imperial salvation is almost always attained and maintained by violence or the threat of violence. The critique of violence is therefore always at least implicit in a counter-imperial stance.”

01:02 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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33/53

Recall Paul’s Damascus road conversion and the task he was in when that happened. He intended to do violence to protect the purity of his religion.

01:02 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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34/53

(153) “Paul needed a conversion from violence via a divine vindication of nonviolence - the resurrection - to conclude that nonviolence is the way of God and therefore also of the covenant people.”

01:03 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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35/53

(158-159) “Neither violence nor fear is part of the economy of God revealed in the resurrection of the crucified Messiah that guarantees the salvation and resurrection of believers (Phil 3:20-21)...

01:03 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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36/53

"...… put differently, forsaking violence and embracing nonviolence is an essential part of Paul’s theosis and of Christian theosis more generally.”

01:03 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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37/53

Gorman’s final statement on his argument against violence is worth sharing in full:

01:03 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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38/53

(160) “The church of Jesus Christ must make nonviolence a more central dimension of its life and teaching and a central corollary of its creedal affirmation that God raised the crucified Jesus from the dead...

01:03 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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39/53

"... thereby ending the case for violence as the modus operandi of God and of God's people in the world.. Those who are in Christ today, with Paul, identify with the life-giving and reconciling cross of Christ...

01:04 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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40/53

"...validated by God in the resurrection, not as an expression of a violent personality or a conviction that violence can be sacred and salutary, but in the paradoxical belief that in Christ and his cross God was nonviolently reconciling the world to himself...

01:04 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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41/53

"... and giving to us the ongoing task of nonviolent reconciliation of people to God and to one another. In that Spirit, we may need to be prepared to absorb violence but not to inflict it. Such is a central aspect of the calling of our time to those justified, sanctified, and divinized in Christ.”

01:05 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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42/53

Whew. Amen and amen.

A few more from the final chapter:

01:05 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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43/53

(165) The Cross is Theophanic. That's theo-speak saying that Jesus' crucifixion is not just a historic thing that happened to a guy, nor is it merely a mechanism for God solving sin, but it is primarily a revelation of God's character. The quote:

01:06 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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44/53

- “Since it was God's resurrection of the Son that rendered Christ's cross significant and, indeed, theophanic, Paul looks to what God did in the cross as the norm for life in Christ...

01:06 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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45/53

"... That is, God loved us while we were enemies, responding to our own violence and other sins, not with the infliction of violence but with the absorption of violence on the cross.”

01:07 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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46/53

Gorman’s final word - (172) “The nature of theosis as we have seen it in Paul's letters is thoroughly communal as well as personal (without being private), and it is thoroughly horizontal (ethical) as well as vertical (spiritual)...

01:07 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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47/53

"...For the justified to become, in Christ, the justice of God in the world could not be otherwise. Theosis, in other words, is a theopolitical reality as the church embodies, or actualizes, its justification in the world, bearing the image of the one true, holy, cruciform God...

01:07 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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48/53

"...among an array of other alleged deities and their communities. By the power of the Spirit, the church lives a countercultural life of fidelity and love, generosity and justice, purity and promise-keeping, nonviolence and peacemaking…

01:08 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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49/53

…It is, in other words, a Spirit-infused, living exegesis of the cross; or better, a living exegesis of the Crucified, who is the image of God. The church inhabits this triune, cruciform God, who in turn inhabits the church...

01:08 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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50/53

"...Thus the church's life story embodies and thereby proclaims the narrative identity and gracious saving power of the triune God whom Paul encountered and preached: the source of justification, holiness, and peace - theosis.”

01:08 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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51/53

So so so good. Don’t be afraid of #deconstruction , (or whatever word you use to talk about rethinking your beliefs) friends. It’s an opportunity to name and release broken, hurtful, exclusionary theology that (it turns out) aren’t even the best interpretation of scripture.

01:09 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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52/53

There is a better way to be the church. Have courage! Let’s (rightly) let go of church and theology that’s about building human influence, control, domination, and institutions, upholding patriarchy and all its overt and implicit exploitation...

01:09 PM - Jul 18, 2023

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