The wrath of God

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Generally speaking, there are two types of sin — discord with God and discord with one’s neighbor. Paul mentions them both, putting discord with God first because it is the greater sin, and calling it “ungodliness.” Then he mentions the second kind of discord, the one with one’s neighbor, calling it “wickedness. 

    ----Gennadius of Constantinople, in Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche, 15.356.

《论做十架神学家》书摘

 唯独十架是我们的神学

十架首先是上帝对人所犯之罪发起的攻击。其次，也是最终，十架是使人脱离罪的救恩。但是，如果我们没有看到十架首先是在攻击罪，那么我们就没有真正认清十架。真是奇怪的攻击——上帝把自己交在我们手中受苦和受死！路德将其称为上帝的“与本性相异的工作”（alien work）。作为攻击手段，十架显明罪的真正巢穴不是在肉体中，而是在我们属灵的渴望中，在我们的“荣耀神学”中。要点在于：在十架上发生的事情，与我们通常的敬虔思维截然相反。保罗知道这一点。他在《哥林多前书》1：18—25说：

因为十字架的道理，在那灭亡的人为愚拙，在我们得救的人却为上帝的大能。就如经上所记： “我要灭绝智慧人的智慧，废弃聪明人的聪明。”智慧人在哪里？文士在哪里？这世上的辩士在哪里？上帝岂不是叫这世上的智慧变成愚拙吗？世人凭自己的智慧，既不认识上帝，上帝就乐意用人所当作愚拙的道理拯救那些信的人，这就是上帝的智慧了。犹太人是要神迹，希腊人是求智慧；我们却是传钉十字架的基督。在犹太人为绊脚石，在外邦人为愚拙，但在那蒙召的，无论是犹太人、希腊人，基督总为上帝的能力，上帝的智慧。因上帝的愚拙总比人智慧，上帝的软弱总比人强壮。

因此，十架神学是一种得罪人的神学。它得罪人的地方在于：与其他神学不同，它攻击的对象是我们通常认为的基督教精粹。我们将看到，十架神学家并不特别担心我们信仰里面那些明显的糟粕，即我们的恶行；他们担心的是由善行而来的自命不凡。因此必须要说的是，十架神学与其他所有神学都非常不同。为了表明这一点，路德对十架神学和荣耀神学做了根本上的区分。因此，十架神学并不把自己当作许多神学类别中的一个选项。实际上，尽管宗教和神学似乎层出不穷，然而从这个视角我们可以很安全地说：归根结底只有两种神学类型，即荣耀神学和十架神学。荣耀神学实际上是所有神学和宗教的总括，而十架神学则把自己分别出来，与其他所有神学相对立。本书的目的之一就是尽量清晰地说明这两种神学之间的不同，从而更加准确地阐明十架神学，并借此使十架的宣讲保持它的愚拙，那种通过摧毁聪明人的智慧来拯救他们的愚拙。

那么如何着手呢？我已经声明，针对十架神学进行写作是极难的。实际上，就十架神学甚至某种十架神学进行写作都是极难的。毫无疑问，这不过是再一次试图对耶稣在十架上的呼喊——“我的上帝，我的上帝！为什么离弃我？”——给出最终的回答。我们无法回答耶稣的问题。我们只能与他同死，并等待上帝在他里面做出回答。如果我们给出某种回答，那么这仅仅是为了书本上的神学，而丢弃真正的十架。我们给出的神学，不过是关于十架的又一种神学，而不是属于十架的神学。基本上，所有关于十架的神学最终都成为荣耀神学。

这里的困难在于：十架是关于上帝的知识，上帝的逻各斯；十架的道是攻击手段。它不是用那些我们可以盗用而仍然基本走在原来道路上的现成神学命题来铸成的。它将人治死，又使人复活。它把旧造钉在十架上，同时期盼新造的复活。“唯独十架是我们的神学”，路德可能这样说过。这句被多次引用的话要在字面上理解。但是我们一定会注意到，这是一个何等奇怪的宣告。十架如何能够是一种神学？十架是一个事件。神学是对事件的反思和解释。神学是关于事件的，难道不是吗？然而，正是这个原因，使得著述某种确定的十架神学成为不可能。所有这种神学，最多只能是为十架的宣扬开辟道路，推动我们真实地宣讲十架的道，保持它那种灭绝智慧人的智慧的愚拙形态。    

这即是说，十架不是静默的或者已死的。十架自身首先是上帝对旧有的罪人以及罪人的神学发动的攻击。十架是上帝在我们身上的作为。但是，这个十架，唯独十架，同时还为对付罪人的老我及其神学开启了一个全新的、闻所未闻的可能性。这意味着十架神学不可避免地非常好辩。它一刻不停地想要发现并暴露罪人将其背信隐藏在敬虔面具之下的种种方法。它的精髓是攻击我们所以为的最好，而非最糟的东西。这是十架神学通常作为荣耀神学的对立面被人谈论的原因。两种神学始终胶着在一场你死我活的争战之中。如果提到十架神学而不指出此争战，那么这种十架神学必定不是这里正在表述的十架神学。牧师—神学家必须知道这一点，并学会如何在这场争战中运用十架的道。

十架神学总是与荣耀神学战火不断，并且牧师—神学家必须知道如何在争战中运用十架的道，此事实表明我们可以勇敢地尝试在本书导言中做好两件事情，然后再进到具体的海德堡辩论。首先，我们要尽力通过讨论两个塑造人的存在和自我理解的“故事”——这两个“故事”在根本上是不同的，或者如当今神学家所青睐的表达方式：不同的“叙事”——来布设这场争战的背景。其次，我们要尽力说明做这些叙事所倡议的神学家的两条道路。我们盼望通过专心讨论这两条做神学家的道路，在一定程度上克服尝试“针对”十架神学进行著述所固有的困难。十架神学无意构造另外一套完善的教义，而是倾力培养不同的运作方式，我们将要看到这一点。这种十架神学的目标是使人成为十架神学家，而不仅仅是针对十架神学进行谈论或写作。

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锁国的代价

那些回避贸易的国家最终都停滞不前或逐渐衰败。1991年苏联解体以后，我向白宫请假，前去参观俄罗斯的圣彼得堡。在信步穿过艾尔米塔什博物馆破败不堪的大厅时，我意识到该国的问题不是无法跟上20世纪80年代美国不断提高的生活水平，而是没能跟上1917年俄国的生活水平。在菲德尔·卡斯特罗于1959年发动革命之前，古巴人均国内生产总值几乎排在拉丁美洲国家之首。在随后几十年的时间里，古巴经济下滑到拉丁美洲国家末尾，卡斯特罗的支持者们或许将这种下滑归咎于美国政府的贸易禁运政策。但这恰恰说明了我的观点：断绝贸易的国家（无论是主动的还是被动的）最多只能是停滞不前。总体来说，自1959年以来，拉丁美洲国家的生活水平翻了一番，但古巴的人均国内生产总值几乎原地踏步。如果你看到一些照片中瘦骨嶙峋的农民艰难地推着1956年的老式雪佛兰Bel Airs汽车，你就会明白谁应当为这种经济停滞负责。现在，美国开始解除贸易禁令，因此我们可以期待一个经济更加繁荣的古巴。

19世纪伊始，当令人恐怖的德川幕府统治者看到英国和葡萄牙商人乘坐着黑烟滚滚的燃煤商船驶进他们的港口时，他们感到惊讶、好奇和恐慌。日本统治者闭关锁国数百年，但他们当即意识到自己国家的经济和军事都受到了阻滞。

我们可以比较一下那些在20世纪八九十年代选择完全不同道路的国家。每一组中的前一个国家选择了面向全球开放的道路，后一个国家选择了故步自封：越南和缅甸、孟加拉国和巴基斯坦、哥斯达黎加和洪都拉斯。一般说来，选择开放的国家在80年代的年均增长速度是3.5%，在90年代的增长速度是5%。而选择闭关锁国的国家在80年代的增长速度只有0.8%，在90年代的增长速度是1.4%。随着时间的推移，当一个国家故步自封、闭关锁国时，其经济发展会变得年迈无力、衰败不堪，更像是一个通风不畅的动物养殖场，或者像一座潮湿阴冷的监狱。

1953年，朝鲜战争结束之后，北方比南方略微富有一些。日本人曾在三八线以北建过工厂，并且在20世纪五六十年代，苏联、中国、波兰，甚至阿尔巴尼亚都曾向朝鲜运送过大量援助物资。尽管得到过这么多社会主义国家的援助，今天的韩国却比朝鲜富裕17倍，韩国人的寿命比朝鲜人长10年，身高也高几英寸。韩国人称其为“汉江奇迹”。韩国现在制造出了超清三星平板电视、超智能化LG冰箱、性能优良的现代和起亚轿车，韩国魅力四射的流行音乐组合风靡全球。相较之下，朝鲜制造出了什么呢？

- 托德·布赫霍尔茨，《繁荣的代价：富有帝国的衰落与复兴》，2017.

The Caging of God

We have turned to a God that we can use rather than to a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill our needs rather than to a God before whore we must surrender our rights to ourselves. He is a God for us, for our satisfaction - not because we have learned to think of him in this way through Christ but because we have learned to think of him this way through the marketplace. In the marketplace, everything is for us, for our pleasure, for our satisfaction, and we have come to assume that it must he so in the church as well. And so we transform the God of mercy into a God who is at our mercy.
 
In a psychologized culture such as ours, there is deep affinity for what is relational but a dis-ease with what is moral. This carries over into the church as an infatuation with the love of God and an embarrassment at his holiness. We who are modern find it infinitely easier to believe that God is like a Rogerian therapist who empathetically solicits our knowledge of ourselves and passes judgment on none of it than to think that he could have had any serious business to conduct with Moses.
 
The fact is, of course, that the New Testament never promises anyone a life of psychological wholeness or offers a guarantee of the consumer's satisfaction with Christ. To the contrary, it offers the prospect of indignities, loss, damage, disease, and pain. The faithful in Scripture were scorned, beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and executed. The gospel offers no promises that contemporary believers will be spared these experiences, that they will be able to settle down to the sanitized comfort of an inner life freed of stresses, pains, and ambiguities; it simply promises that through Christ, God will walk with us in all the dark places of life, that he has the power and the will to invest his promises with reality, and that even the shadows are made to serve his glory and our best interests. A therapeutic culture will he inclined to view such promises as something of a disappointment; those who understand that reality is at heart moral because God is centrally holy will be satisfied that this is all they need to know.
 
Religious consumers want to have a spirituality for the same reason that they want to drive a stylish and expensive auto. Costly obedience is as foreign to them in matters spiritual as self-denial is in matters material. In a culture filled with such people, restoring weight to God is going to involve much more than simply getting some doctrine straight; it's going to entail a complete reconstruction of the modern self-absorbed pastiche personality. The cost of accomplishing this may well be deep, sustained repentance. It is our modernity that must be undone. Only then will the full weight of the revealed truth about God rest once more on the soul. Only then will we recover our saltiness in the world. Only then will God genuinely be known again in his church.
 

 - David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: 

The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, 1994.

 
 

Worshiping is Sentimental and Self-satisfying?

There is a deep hunger for wisdom in our time, but the church offers up little more than sugary nostalgia with a dash of fear. There is a yearning for redemption, healing, and wholeness that is palpable, a shift in human consciousness that is widely recognized—except, it seems, in most churches. 

Strangely, we have come to a moment in human history when the message of the Sermon on the Mount could indeed save us, but it can no longer be heard above the din of dueling doctrines. Consider this: there is not a single word in that sermon about what to believe, only words about what to do. It is a behavioral manifesto, not a propositional one. Yet three centuries later, when the Nicene Creed became the official oath of Christendom, there was not a single word in it about what to do, only words about what to believe! 

Thus the most important question we can ask in the church today concerns the object of faith itself. The earliest metaphors of the gospel speak of discipleship as transformation through an alternative community and the reversal of conventional wisdom. In much of the church today, our metaphors speak of individual salvation and the specific promises that accompany it. The first followers of Jesus trusted him enough to become instruments of radical change. 

Today, worshipers of Christ agree to believe things about him in order to receive benefits promised by the institution, not by Jesus. This difference, between following and worshiping, is not insignificant. Worshiping is an inherently passive activity, since it involves the adoration of that to which the worshiper cannot aspire. It takes the form of praise, which can be both sentimental and self-satisfying, without any call to changed behavior or self-sacrifice. In fact, Christianity as a belief system requires nothing but acquiescence. Christianity as a way of life, as a path to follow, requires a second birth, the conquest of ego, and new eyes with which to see the world. It is no wonder that we have preferred to be saved.
 

- Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: 

How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus.

Royal Kingship of Messiah

The term “Messiah” itself derives from the Hebrew word mashiah, which literally means “rubbed with oil”. This term, in English usually rendered “anointed”, and in Greek christos (hence the name “Christ”), denotes a ritual action used to designate and appoint someone for a special task. The two most important applications are the offices of Priest (e.g. Aaron, Exod. 28:41, etc.) and King (the most famous instances are Samuel’s anointing of Saul, 1 Sam. 10, and of David, 1 Sam. 16), but later also that of Prophet (Isa. 61:1).
 
By far the most powerful and formative influence on the early development of a Messianic expectation was the ideology of Kingship in the united monarchy of Israel and later in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Antecedents of this can be seen in the leadership tradition expressed in the stories of Moses and Joshua, and later those of the Judges. The decisive influence, however, must be sought in the court theology of the dynasty of David.
 
Such a perspective on the monarchy is also found in the Old Testament, particularly in the so-called royal Psalms (especially Psa. 2, 18, 45, 89, and 110). Divine power was seen to guarantee the power of the king and to symbolize and apply the reign of Yahweh over Israel and all the earth, resulting in prosperity and success for his people. In this capacity, the king could even be called the “son of God”, a term which both distinguished him from the rest of Israel and made him the representative of his people (see especially Psa. 2:7; 2 Sam. 7:14; 1 Chr. 17:13, 22:10). Thus he had many divine privileges, but also a significant number of religious and moral obligations: he was the guarantor and enforcer of God’s covenant with Israel. Some kings fulfilled this role well and some badly: the Old Testament assesses them by exclusively moral and spiritual criteria, with little or no regard for their political prowess and achievements.
 
All this might simply have made Israelite royalty a powerful traditional institution with important religious roots, but not necessarily more than that. What planted the seeds of hope for a Messiah firmly in the royal ideology of Israel was the early belief in the permanent rule of the house of David. The key story here is of course Nathan’s prophecy to David in 2 Samuel 7:11–16: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever” (cf. 1 Kgs. 2:3f.; Psa. 18:50 (18:51 in Hebrew); 28:9; 89:4, 29–38).

- Markus Bockmuehl, This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah, 2004. 

When a Sinner Refuses to Listen

Jesus appears to give a four-step procedure that leads to the excommunication of an unrepentant sinner (Matt 18:15–17).
 

Step one: a disciple confronts another disciple who is sinning (obviously, a sin that is known to both of them). If the disciple “listens to him” (a vague response that could mean several things—from a respectful hearing to repentance), he or she has regained that disciple. If the sinner refuses to listen (whatever that means), then proceed to step two: bring in one or two more “witnesses” to rebuke the sinner. If the sinner refuses to listen to them, then move on to step three: take the matter before the church. Finally, if the sinner still refuses to listen to them, go to step four: “Let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector” (v. 17). Following the progression (from individual confrontation to group involvement), it sounds as if Jesus were giving instructions to the church to excommunicate an unrepentant sinner, reading “to you” in this case as a plural pronoun.

 
But for those of us who read Greek, we know that’s not what Jesus was teaching here. The second-person pronoun of step four is singular. Jesus wasn’t giving advice to the church, instructing the assembly to kick out the rebel. Rather, throughout this passage Jesus was giving advice to one individual about another individual. In other words, Jesus didn’t teach the entire church to shun the unrepentant sinner. Rather, he told the concerned disciple to treat the disciple who refused to listen like a “gentile and a tax collector.” But what does that mean?
 
We could answer the question with a question: How did Jesus treat gentiles and tax collectors? Both groups were marginalized as outsiders in Jewish society. Bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth, Jesus treated outsiders like insiders, willing to go to the house of a Roman soldier and heal his slave or to eat with a bunch of tax collectors and “sinners” (8:5–7; 9:10). Despite the Pharisees’ objection, Jesus ate with “sick” sinners because they needed a physician (9:11–12).
 
Indeed, the Pharisees needed to learn a lesson from Hosea. According to the prophet, God wants mercy more than sacrifice (v. 13, quoting Hos 6:6). Therefore, when it comes to notorious sinners who refuse to listen to righteous people, the way of Jesus was to show them mercy. Besides, Jesus’s instruction concerning how to treat sinners who refuse to listen comes immediately after his teaching about recovering lost sheep—those who wander from the fold of God (Matt 18:12–14). In fact, he gave similar instruction to the twelve when he sent them out to recover “the lost sheep of Israel” (10:6). To restore the “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36 NRSV), Jesus sent his disciples to heal the sick—just like the Roman centurion’s slave—and proclaim that the kingdom of heaven “has come near,” going home with those who invite them to their table (10:6–13)—even lost sheep like tax collectors and sinners.
 

- written by Rodney Reeves, from Devotions on the Greek New Testament: 

52 Reflections to Inspire and Instruct