feed, in all our acts of prayer, praise and service together, we direct our lives to the Father as Jesus did, in a return to the Father that reflects the Father's own acts of giving to us. Jesus becomes in this way our access to the Father in addition to being the medium and mediator of the Father's gifts to us." Through the Spirit we gain Christ and in and through Christ, with whom we are united, we go to the Father. With Christ, for example, we are able to pray to the Father, the very prayer that Jesus prays to his Father as the Son of the Father in human form. Indeed, in such ways carried with Christ to the Father God the Father... embrace[s] us in his beloved only- begotten Son to become a Father to us.' 380 The Holy Spirit bears our acts of love and praise for the Father to him just as the Holy Spirit in the dynamic life of the Trinity bears the love of the Son for the Father, which is the Father's own love for the Son, back to the Father. Christian experience hereby takes on its own trinitarian form: in the Spirit, who is given to us by the Son, we gain the Son, and through the Son, by the same power of the Spirit, we have a relationship with the Father. In this way, the trinitarian relations in the form of fellowship that were evident in Jesus' own life become ours as well; covenant partnership is elevated to a higher plane in our lives as it was in Jesus' own. The doctrine of the Trinity becomes 'the formal statement of the divine setting of human life:' Since we 'have been adopted to share in Jesus Christ's relationship to the Father in Heaven and to the Father's world,' 'the formula of the Christian life is seeking, finding, and doing the Father's will in the Father's world with the companionship of the Son by the guidance and strength of the Spirit." Finally, the way Christ assumes our lives is mirrored in our relations with others as we live a life of service to God's ends. Extending the way Christ took on us sinners for our good, we are to take on the needs- of others in order to serve them, in order to extend to them the gifts that Christ extends to us. 'Everyone should "put on" his neighbor This is the emphasis of Torrance in "The Mind of Christ in Worship.' See Calvin on Christ's priestly work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, chapter 15, section 6, 502. Ibid., Book 3, chapter 1, section 3, 540. *See Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), 50, 178; and Welch, In This Name, 229, 236. Hodgson, Ductrine of the Trinity, 50, 178, and so conduct himself towards him as if he were in the other's place. From Christ the good things have flowed and are flowing to us. He has so "put on" us and acted for us as if he had been what we are. From us they flow on to those who have need of them. As Christians we must identify ourselves, immerse ourselves in the world of change, struggle and conflict as the Word did for us, for the sake of the world's own betterment."+ Just as the incarnation was in history and its effects only evident there, so Christian service is in and of the world and nowhere else. Though we are elevated beyond the world, as Christ was, through the gifts of God, we should use those gifts as Christ did for the world, not holding them simply for ourselves but being the means of their distribution to others. www 85 wwwwwwwwwwwww We do not, however, assume the needs of others in the place of Christ. We do not come to others as Christ, but as people in the very same situation as those we hope to serve: all of us have the same need of the gifts that come through assumption by Christ. Consequently, 'the real beginning of service is when we see ourselves completely linked to the other with no remnant of superiority. We identify with others and want to help them because we know we are in the same situation as they are, because we are in need of Christ's help in the same way as they are. 'Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them' (Heb. 13:3, NRSV).87 586 Of ourselves we are just what they are; only in Christ are we any different and that by a power that remains Christ's and not our own. Making their needs our own we do not, then, purport to purify, heal or elevate them by our good works; the works of Jesus' perfect humanity have that power, but our works, short of the eschaton, remain that of graced ed sinners. Our action in and for the world is incorporated in the triune God's beneficent action for the world in Christ, but God's action must always surpass our own if it is to be the source of our still sinful action's ongoing purification and renewal. In and of themselves, Martin Luther, "The Freedom of a Christian,' trans. W. Lambert, in Three Treatises (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 309. See, for example, Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 224-5, 254-5. 85 See Barth, Ethics, 403-40. Ibid., 425. All biblical quotations in my text are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted. 62 63 More concretely stated, the two aspects of Christian life short of the eschaton assumption by Christ and the working out of that in our lives correspond to faith and works, to justification and sancti- fication, and to worship and discipleship, respectively. By all the *former, through the power of the Holy Spirit we are united with Christ: in the justifying faith that adheres or cleaves to Christ, in hearing the gospel as an irrevocable summons to a transformed life, in being baptized, in being lifted up in the Eucharist to Christ in order to go with him to the Father, in making Christ the center or axis of all we are and do with the Spirit's help. In such ways Christ, in and through his own Spirit, makes us his own. In such extrospective movements of faith, praise, prayer and worship, empowered by the Spirit, the whole of our being is turned towards Christ and through Christ to the Father. Christ becomes the axis or center of our existence and in this way our lives are united with his."+ Through this union with Christ, gifts from the Father flow to us. The Eucharist is the visible manifestation of this. What happens throughout the course of our graced existence is made visible here as we are fed by the Father's food in and through Jesus' own body and blood, made ours by the Spirit. In the Eucharist we see the stuff of life being united with Christ through the power of the Spirit, in order to return to us from the Father in the new life-giving form of Jesus' own body and blood.75 In the Eucharist we offer up the things of the earth for the Father's blessings through Christ, so that they become new for our renewed sustenance; we are empowered to do so in and with Christ who has already taken up the things of the earth by assuming our body in all its fragile connections with the natural world. Eaten by us, made our own indeed in all the ways I mentioned, Jesus then indwells us by his Spirit, as the form of our own lives, in an extension of the way the second Person of the Trinity informed and shaped Jesus' own way of life. As Jesus' own, assumed by him, we are enabled through the gift of the Spirit to work as Jesus did, for the See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 560, 565, 576, on conversion's establishing the new axis around which one revolves. 75 See John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), 160; this is an Irenaean theme, as he notes. Zizioulas' stress, however, on human agency is worrisome; see [19. communication of God's gifts to ourselves and others, in a struggle against sin in ourselves and others, the sins that impede such com- munication. Indwelling us, becoming ours, because we have become Christ's, the Spirit of Christ communicates the gifts of divinity to our humanity, in much the same way the Word communicated them to Jesus' own humanity, through the Spirit of anointing. Our humanity is thereby cleansed and perfected and shares in the distribution of the same goods of God to other people and the world. Feeling the effects of a communication of divinity to humanity like that found in Jesus' own life, we, in short, are sanctified and serve the ends of trinitarian love. Human beings become in this way the administrative center of cosmic-wide service.7 - Although acts of praise and worship, on the one side, are dis- tinguishable from acts of service on the other - the former, the way Christ assumes us; the latter, the way this assumption works itself out in our lives the two are found mixed up together in fact. They are no more separable here than assumption and its effects were in the case of Christ. The acts by which we are assumed by Christ are not meeting their purpose unless they are part of a transformed life. And those works do not simply follow after that assumption, say, by way of faith as faith's temporal successors. Works do not so much issue from faith as a psychological state preceding and impelling them, as much as they issue continually from the overflowing of Christ's virtues to us, as those virtues become ours in faith." Works, moreover, achieve their good- ness, they become what they are, only as they are so empowered in and through assumption by Christ. A life of service to God's ends becomes itself a form of worship and praise; it has its own extro- spective, God-ward character, in recognition of its empowerment by the grace of God in Christ. WWW.WA 78 See Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), +2, discussing the 'administrative anthropocentrism' of Irenaeus. "See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 503-11, where participation in Christ is discussed as the motor of Christian lives; Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification, 27-8, 52, 64, 74, 78; Brian Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 71-6, discussing Calvin; and Erwin Iserloh, ‘Luther's Christ Mysticism,' in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther, ed. Jared Wicks (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 45–58. * See John Webster, Barth's Maral Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 161, discussing Luther. 60 61 R
feed, in all our acts of prayer, praise and service together, we direct our lives to the Father as Jesus did, in a return to the Father that reflects the Father's own acts of giving to us. Jesus becomes in this way our access to the Father in addition to being the medium and mediator of the Father's gifts to us." Through the Spirit we gain Christ and in and through Christ, with whom we are united, we go to the Father. With Christ, for example, we are able to pray to the Father, the very prayer that Jesus prays to his Father as the Son of the Father in human form. Indeed, in such ways carried with Christ to the Father God the Father... embrace[s] us in his beloved only- begotten Son to become a Father to us.' 380 The Holy Spirit bears our acts of love and praise for the Father to him just as the Holy Spirit in the dynamic life of the Trinity bears the love of the Son for the Father, which is the Father's own love for the Son, back to the Father. Christian experience hereby takes on its own trinitarian form: in the Spirit, who is given to us by the Son, we gain the Son, and through the Son, by the same power of the Spirit, we have a relationship with the Father. In this way, the trinitarian relations in the form of fellowship that were evident in Jesus' own life become ours as well; covenant partnership is elevated to a higher plane in our lives as it was in Jesus' own. The doctrine of the Trinity becomes 'the formal statement of the divine setting of human life:' Since we 'have been adopted to share in Jesus Christ's relationship to the Father in Heaven and to the Father's world,' 'the formula of the Christian life is seeking, finding, and doing the Father's will in the Father's world with the companionship of the Son by the guidance and strength of the Spirit." Finally, the way Christ assumes our lives is mirrored in our relations with others as we live a life of service to God's ends. Extending the way Christ took on us sinners for our good, we are to take on the needs- of others in order to serve them, in order to extend to them the gifts that Christ extends to us. 'Everyone should "put on" his neighbor This is the emphasis of Torrance in "The Mind of Christ in Worship.' See Calvin on Christ's priestly work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, chapter 15, section 6, 502. Ibid., Book 3, chapter 1, section 3, 540. *See Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), 50, 178; and Welch, In This Name, 229, 236. Hodgson, Ductrine of the Trinity, 50, 178, and so conduct himself towards him as if he were in the other's place. From Christ the good things have flowed and are flowing to us. He has so "put on" us and acted for us as if he had been what we are. From us they flow on to those who have need of them. As Christians we must identify ourselves, immerse ourselves in the world of change, struggle and conflict as the Word did for us, for the sake of the world's own betterment."+ Just as the incarnation was in history and its effects only evident there, so Christian service is in and of the world and nowhere else. Though we are elevated beyond the world, as Christ was, through the gifts of God, we should use those gifts as Christ did for the world, not holding them simply for ourselves but being the means of their distribution to others. www 85 wwwwwwwwwwwww We do not, however, assume the needs of others in the place of Christ. We do not come to others as Christ, but as people in the very same situation as those we hope to serve: all of us have the same need of the gifts that come through assumption by Christ. Consequently, 'the real beginning of service is when we see ourselves completely linked to the other with no remnant of superiority. We identify with others and want to help them because we know we are in the same situation as they are, because we are in need of Christ's help in the same way as they are. 'Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them' (Heb. 13:3, NRSV).87 586 Of ourselves we are just what they are; only in Christ are we any different and that by a power that remains Christ's and not our own. Making their needs our own we do not, then, purport to purify, heal or elevate them by our good works; the works of Jesus' perfect humanity have that power, but our works, short of the eschaton, remain that of graced ed sinners. Our action in and for the world is incorporated in the triune God's beneficent action for the world in Christ, but God's action must always surpass our own if it is to be the source of our still sinful action's ongoing purification and renewal. In and of themselves, Martin Luther, "The Freedom of a Christian,' trans. W. Lambert, in Three Treatises (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 309. See, for example, Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 224-5, 254-5. 85 See Barth, Ethics, 403-40. Ibid., 425. All biblical quotations in my text are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted. 62 63 More concretely stated, the two aspects of Christian life short of the eschaton assumption by Christ and the working out of that in our lives correspond to faith and works, to justification and sancti- fication, and to worship and discipleship, respectively. By all the *former, through the power of the Holy Spirit we are united with Christ: in the justifying faith that adheres or cleaves to Christ, in hearing the gospel as an irrevocable summons to a transformed life, in being baptized, in being lifted up in the Eucharist to Christ in order to go with him to the Father, in making Christ the center or axis of all we are and do with the Spirit's help. In such ways Christ, in and through his own Spirit, makes us his own. In such extrospective movements of faith, praise, prayer and worship, empowered by the Spirit, the whole of our being is turned towards Christ and through Christ to the Father. Christ becomes the axis or center of our existence and in this way our lives are united with his."+ Through this union with Christ, gifts from the Father flow to us. The Eucharist is the visible manifestation of this. What happens throughout the course of our graced existence is made visible here as we are fed by the Father's food in and through Jesus' own body and blood, made ours by the Spirit. In the Eucharist we see the stuff of life being united with Christ through the power of the Spirit, in order to return to us from the Father in the new life-giving form of Jesus' own body and blood.75 In the Eucharist we offer up the things of the earth for the Father's blessings through Christ, so that they become new for our renewed sustenance; we are empowered to do so in and with Christ who has already taken up the things of the earth by assuming our body in all its fragile connections with the natural world. Eaten by us, made our own indeed in all the ways I mentioned, Jesus then indwells us by his Spirit, as the form of our own lives, in an extension of the way the second Person of the Trinity informed and shaped Jesus' own way of life. As Jesus' own, assumed by him, we are enabled through the gift of the Spirit to work as Jesus did, for the See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 560, 565, 576, on conversion's establishing the new axis around which one revolves. 75 See John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), 160; this is an Irenaean theme, as he notes. Zizioulas' stress, however, on human agency is worrisome; see [19. communication of God's gifts to ourselves and others, in a struggle against sin in ourselves and others, the sins that impede such com- munication. Indwelling us, becoming ours, because we have become Christ's, the Spirit of Christ communicates the gifts of divinity to our humanity, in much the same way the Word communicated them to Jesus' own humanity, through the Spirit of anointing. Our humanity is thereby cleansed and perfected and shares in the distribution of the same goods of God to other people and the world. Feeling the effects of a communication of divinity to humanity like that found in Jesus' own life, we, in short, are sanctified and serve the ends of trinitarian love. Human beings become in this way the administrative center of cosmic-wide service.7 - Although acts of praise and worship, on the one side, are dis- tinguishable from acts of service on the other - the former, the way Christ assumes us; the latter, the way this assumption works itself out in our lives the two are found mixed up together in fact. They are no more separable here than assumption and its effects were in the case of Christ. The acts by which we are assumed by Christ are not meeting their purpose unless they are part of a transformed life. And those works do not simply follow after that assumption, say, by way of faith as faith's temporal successors. Works do not so much issue from faith as a psychological state preceding and impelling them, as much as they issue continually from the overflowing of Christ's virtues to us, as those virtues become ours in faith." Works, moreover, achieve their good- ness, they become what they are, only as they are so empowered in and through assumption by Christ. A life of service to God's ends becomes itself a form of worship and praise; it has its own extro- spective, God-ward character, in recognition of its empowerment by the grace of God in Christ. WWW.WA 78 See Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), +2, discussing the 'administrative anthropocentrism' of Irenaeus. "See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 503-11, where participation in Christ is discussed as the motor of Christian lives; Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification, 27-8, 52, 64, 74, 78; Brian Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 71-6, discussing Calvin; and Erwin Iserloh, ‘Luther's Christ Mysticism,' in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther, ed. Jared Wicks (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 45–58. * See John Webster, Barth's Maral Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 161, discussing Luther. 60 61 R
Social Psychology (10th Edition)
10th Edition
ISBN:9780134641287
Author:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Publisher:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Chapter1: Introducing Social Psychology
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 1RQ1
Related questions
Question
What does her theology imply for competition, sacrifice in individuals and communities.
Kathryn Tanner
![feed, in all our acts of prayer, praise and service together, we
direct our lives to the Father as Jesus did, in a return to the Father
that reflects the Father's own acts of giving to us. Jesus becomes in
this way our access to the Father in addition to being the medium and
mediator of the Father's gifts to us." Through the Spirit we gain
Christ and in and through Christ, with whom we are united, we go to
the Father. With Christ, for example, we are able to pray to the Father,
the very prayer that Jesus prays to his Father as the Son of the Father
in human form. Indeed, in such ways carried with Christ to the
Father God the Father... embrace[s] us in his beloved only-
begotten Son to become a Father to us.'
380 The Holy Spirit bears our
acts of love and praise for the Father to him just as the Holy Spirit in
the dynamic life of the Trinity bears the love of the Son for the Father,
which is the Father's own love for the Son, back to the Father.
Christian experience hereby takes on its own trinitarian form: in the
Spirit, who is given to us by the Son, we gain the Son, and through
the Son, by the same power of the Spirit, we have a relationship with
the Father. In this way, the trinitarian relations in the form of
fellowship that were evident in Jesus' own life become ours as well;
covenant partnership is elevated to a higher plane in our lives as it
was in Jesus' own. The doctrine of the Trinity becomes 'the formal
statement of the divine setting of human life:' Since we 'have been
adopted to share in Jesus Christ's relationship to the Father in
Heaven and to the Father's world,' 'the formula of the Christian life is
seeking, finding, and doing the Father's will in the Father's world with
the companionship of the Son by the guidance and strength of the
Spirit."
Finally, the way Christ assumes our lives is mirrored in our relations
with others as we live a life of service to God's ends. Extending the
way Christ took on us sinners for our good, we are to take on the needs-
of others in order to serve them, in order to extend to them the gifts
that Christ extends to us. 'Everyone should "put on" his neighbor
This is the emphasis of Torrance in "The Mind of Christ in Worship.' See Calvin on
Christ's priestly work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, chapter 15, section 6, 502.
Ibid., Book 3, chapter 1, section 3, 540.
*See Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1944), 50, 178; and Welch, In This Name, 229, 236.
Hodgson, Ductrine of the Trinity, 50, 178,
and so conduct himself towards him as if he were in the other's place.
From Christ the good things have flowed and are flowing to us. He
has so "put on" us and acted for us as if he had been what we are.
From us they flow on to those who have need of them.
As Christians we must identify ourselves, immerse ourselves in the
world of change, struggle and conflict as the Word did for us, for the
sake of the world's own betterment."+ Just as the incarnation was in
history and its effects only evident there, so Christian service is in and
of the world and nowhere else. Though we are elevated beyond the
world, as Christ was, through the gifts of God, we should use those
gifts as Christ did for the world, not holding them simply for ourselves
but being the means of their distribution to others.
www
85
wwwwwwwwwwwww
We do not, however, assume the needs of others in the place of
Christ. We do not come to others as Christ, but as people in the very
same situation as those we hope to serve: all of us have the same need
of the gifts that come through assumption by Christ. Consequently,
'the real beginning of service is when we see ourselves completely
linked to the other with no remnant of superiority. We identify with
others and want to help them because we know we are in the same
situation as they are, because we are in need of Christ's help in the
same way as they are. 'Remember those who are in prison, as though
you were in prison with them' (Heb. 13:3, NRSV).87
586
Of ourselves we are just what they are; only in Christ are we any
different and that by a power that remains Christ's and not our
own. Making their needs our own we do not, then, purport to purify,
heal or elevate them by our good works; the works of Jesus' perfect
humanity have that power, but our works, short of the eschaton, remain
that of graced
ed sinners. Our action in and for the world is incorporated
in the triune God's beneficent action for the world in Christ, but God's
action must always surpass our own if it is to be the source of our still
sinful action's ongoing purification and renewal. In and of themselves,
Martin Luther, "The Freedom of a Christian,' trans. W. Lambert, in Three Treatises
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 309.
See, for example, Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 224-5, 254-5.
85 See Barth, Ethics, 403-40.
Ibid., 425.
All biblical quotations in my text are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless
otherwise noted.
62
63](/v2/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.bartleby.com%2Fqna-images%2Fquestion%2F2e1cb03f-91d2-4991-91c8-37c8965f1bd7%2Fd0c18c04-e63a-4141-9cae-6bfe1b0b3784%2F3l1gwfy_processed.png&w=3840&q=75)
Transcribed Image Text:feed, in all our acts of prayer, praise and service together, we
direct our lives to the Father as Jesus did, in a return to the Father
that reflects the Father's own acts of giving to us. Jesus becomes in
this way our access to the Father in addition to being the medium and
mediator of the Father's gifts to us." Through the Spirit we gain
Christ and in and through Christ, with whom we are united, we go to
the Father. With Christ, for example, we are able to pray to the Father,
the very prayer that Jesus prays to his Father as the Son of the Father
in human form. Indeed, in such ways carried with Christ to the
Father God the Father... embrace[s] us in his beloved only-
begotten Son to become a Father to us.'
380 The Holy Spirit bears our
acts of love and praise for the Father to him just as the Holy Spirit in
the dynamic life of the Trinity bears the love of the Son for the Father,
which is the Father's own love for the Son, back to the Father.
Christian experience hereby takes on its own trinitarian form: in the
Spirit, who is given to us by the Son, we gain the Son, and through
the Son, by the same power of the Spirit, we have a relationship with
the Father. In this way, the trinitarian relations in the form of
fellowship that were evident in Jesus' own life become ours as well;
covenant partnership is elevated to a higher plane in our lives as it
was in Jesus' own. The doctrine of the Trinity becomes 'the formal
statement of the divine setting of human life:' Since we 'have been
adopted to share in Jesus Christ's relationship to the Father in
Heaven and to the Father's world,' 'the formula of the Christian life is
seeking, finding, and doing the Father's will in the Father's world with
the companionship of the Son by the guidance and strength of the
Spirit."
Finally, the way Christ assumes our lives is mirrored in our relations
with others as we live a life of service to God's ends. Extending the
way Christ took on us sinners for our good, we are to take on the needs-
of others in order to serve them, in order to extend to them the gifts
that Christ extends to us. 'Everyone should "put on" his neighbor
This is the emphasis of Torrance in "The Mind of Christ in Worship.' See Calvin on
Christ's priestly work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, chapter 15, section 6, 502.
Ibid., Book 3, chapter 1, section 3, 540.
*See Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1944), 50, 178; and Welch, In This Name, 229, 236.
Hodgson, Ductrine of the Trinity, 50, 178,
and so conduct himself towards him as if he were in the other's place.
From Christ the good things have flowed and are flowing to us. He
has so "put on" us and acted for us as if he had been what we are.
From us they flow on to those who have need of them.
As Christians we must identify ourselves, immerse ourselves in the
world of change, struggle and conflict as the Word did for us, for the
sake of the world's own betterment."+ Just as the incarnation was in
history and its effects only evident there, so Christian service is in and
of the world and nowhere else. Though we are elevated beyond the
world, as Christ was, through the gifts of God, we should use those
gifts as Christ did for the world, not holding them simply for ourselves
but being the means of their distribution to others.
www
85
wwwwwwwwwwwww
We do not, however, assume the needs of others in the place of
Christ. We do not come to others as Christ, but as people in the very
same situation as those we hope to serve: all of us have the same need
of the gifts that come through assumption by Christ. Consequently,
'the real beginning of service is when we see ourselves completely
linked to the other with no remnant of superiority. We identify with
others and want to help them because we know we are in the same
situation as they are, because we are in need of Christ's help in the
same way as they are. 'Remember those who are in prison, as though
you were in prison with them' (Heb. 13:3, NRSV).87
586
Of ourselves we are just what they are; only in Christ are we any
different and that by a power that remains Christ's and not our
own. Making their needs our own we do not, then, purport to purify,
heal or elevate them by our good works; the works of Jesus' perfect
humanity have that power, but our works, short of the eschaton, remain
that of graced
ed sinners. Our action in and for the world is incorporated
in the triune God's beneficent action for the world in Christ, but God's
action must always surpass our own if it is to be the source of our still
sinful action's ongoing purification and renewal. In and of themselves,
Martin Luther, "The Freedom of a Christian,' trans. W. Lambert, in Three Treatises
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 309.
See, for example, Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 224-5, 254-5.
85 See Barth, Ethics, 403-40.
Ibid., 425.
All biblical quotations in my text are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless
otherwise noted.
62
63
Transcribed Image Text:More concretely stated, the two aspects of Christian life short of
the eschaton assumption by Christ and the working out of that in
our lives correspond to faith and works, to justification and sancti-
fication, and to worship and discipleship, respectively. By all the
*former, through the power of the Holy Spirit we are united with Christ:
in the justifying faith that adheres or cleaves to Christ, in hearing the
gospel as an irrevocable summons to a transformed life, in being
baptized, in being lifted up in the Eucharist to Christ in order to go
with him to the Father, in making Christ the center or axis of all we
are and do with the Spirit's help. In such ways Christ, in and through
his own Spirit, makes us his own. In such extrospective movements
of faith, praise, prayer and worship, empowered by the Spirit, the
whole of our being is turned towards Christ and through Christ to
the Father. Christ becomes the axis or center of our existence and in
this way our lives are united with his."+
Through this union with Christ, gifts from the Father flow to us.
The Eucharist is the visible manifestation of this. What happens
throughout the course of our graced existence is made visible here as
we are fed by the Father's food in and through Jesus' own body and
blood, made ours by the Spirit. In the Eucharist we see the stuff of life
being united with Christ through the power of the Spirit, in order to
return to us from the Father in the new life-giving form of Jesus' own
body and blood.75 In the Eucharist we offer up the things of the
earth for the Father's blessings through Christ, so that they become
new for our renewed sustenance; we are empowered to do so in and
with Christ who has already taken up the things of the earth by
assuming our body in all its fragile connections with the natural world.
Eaten by us, made our own indeed in all the ways I mentioned,
Jesus then indwells us by his Spirit, as the form of our own lives, in an
extension of the way the second Person of the Trinity informed and
shaped Jesus' own way of life. As Jesus' own, assumed by him, we are
enabled through the gift of the Spirit to work as Jesus did, for the
See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 560, 565, 576, on conversion's establishing the new
axis around which one revolves.
75 See John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary
Press, 1985), 160; this is an Irenaean theme, as he notes. Zizioulas' stress, however, on human
agency is worrisome; see [19.
communication of God's gifts to ourselves and others, in a struggle
against sin in ourselves and others, the sins that impede such com-
munication. Indwelling us, becoming ours, because we have become
Christ's, the Spirit of Christ communicates the gifts of divinity to our
humanity, in much the same way the Word communicated them to
Jesus' own humanity, through the Spirit of anointing. Our humanity
is thereby cleansed and perfected and shares in the distribution of the
same goods of God to other people and the world. Feeling the effects
of a communication of divinity to humanity like that found in Jesus'
own life, we, in short, are sanctified and serve the ends of trinitarian
love. Human beings become in this way the administrative center of
cosmic-wide service.7
-
Although acts of praise and worship, on the one side, are dis-
tinguishable from acts of service on the other - the former, the
way
Christ assumes us; the latter, the way this assumption works itself out
in our lives the two are found mixed up together in fact. They are no
more separable here than assumption and its effects were in the case
of Christ. The acts by which we are assumed by Christ are not meeting
their purpose unless they are part of a transformed life. And those
works do not simply follow after that assumption, say, by way of faith
as faith's temporal successors. Works do not so much issue from faith
as a psychological state preceding and impelling them, as much as they
issue continually from the overflowing of Christ's virtues to us, as those
virtues become ours in faith." Works, moreover, achieve their good-
ness, they become what they are, only as they are so empowered in
and through assumption by Christ. A life of service to God's ends
becomes itself a form of worship and praise; it has its own extro-
spective, God-ward character, in recognition of its empowerment by
the grace of God in Christ.
WWW.WA
78
See Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), +2,
discussing the 'administrative anthropocentrism' of Irenaeus.
"See Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 503-11, where participation in Christ is discussed as
the motor of Christian lives; Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification, 27-8, 52, 64, 74, 78; Brian
Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 71-6, discussing Calvin;
and Erwin Iserloh, ‘Luther's Christ Mysticism,' in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther, ed.
Jared Wicks (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 45–58.
* See John Webster, Barth's Maral Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B.
Eerdmans, 1998), 161, discussing Luther.
60
61
R
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