Part 2 of Participation in / Union with Christ: Papers from the 2017 Symposium on the Theological Reading of Scripture

Continuing from Part 1 of the 2017 Symposium for the Theological Reading of Scripture at North Park Theological Seminary, here I offer comments on, and video links to, Sessions 5-8. 

Ben Blackwell giving the 5th paper of the Symposium

   On Friday night (9/29), the 5th session of the Symposium featured the paper read by Ben Blackwell, Assistant Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University and author of Christosis, entitled: "You Become What You Worship: Theosis and Story of the Bible." In his paper, Blackwell worked through the model of imitation as theosis (theosis = participating in the divine nature and becoming changed by it somehow) as it is practiced in the worship of the church. The very content of worship in the Old Testament and the New highlights the distance between the creaturely and the Creator. The gap is emphasized. Yet, at the same time, the gap is traversed, in part, as believers worship because they become like the object of their worship. Blackwell illustrated this thesis taking one divine trait of God, His holiness, and explained how participating in the divine life/nature of God through worship makes believers holy. He also discussed how idolatry is the sinister dark side of worship. If we worship idols, we embody the system of idolatrous values that the idol represents. 
      To watch the video of Blackwell's paper presentation and subsequent response plus discussion, see the link below: 

The response, by the way, was given by Cynthia Peters Anderson, Senior Pastor at Batavia United Methodist Church and author of the book Reclaiming Participation. She asked a helpful question that drew out the pastoral implications of Blackwell's paper: what symptoms of false or true worship do we need to observe in our worship practices at church so that we become more like Christ and not the idols of our age? 

Brent Strawn giving the 6th paper of the Symposium

   The next morning (9/30), I moderated the 6th session which engaged the paper read by Brent A. Strawn, Professor of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology. The paper was entitled: "Participation with God (and/in Christ?): (Re-)Reading the Life of Moses with Some Help from Gregory of Nyssa." It's hard to catalogue here all the nuggets of insight in this paper. For one thing, in his reading of Moses through the Exodus story, Strawn highlighted the unavailability of God and noticeable lack of divine participation. God is absent for much of Israel's history between the end of Genesis and beginning of Exodus. God's people cannot assume that they can participate in the life of God automatically, as if God is on call 24/7 at our beckoning. But when God does awaken to our cries and prayers, He himself first participates in the sufferings of His people (as He did with Israel's travail in Egypt) and then acts. 
    My favorite line in the paper was: God's people are called to "participate in God's verbs." God has a synergistic relationship with Israel where at times, it is unclear if God is doing the action or God's people are doing the action. God works by, through, and with Moses and all His people. 
    To watch a video of Stawn's paper presentation and subsequent response plus discussion, see the link below: 


The response was given by Nathan Clayton, Hebrew instructor at North Park and adjunct professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Moody Bible Institute. Among other helpful insights, Clayton asked Strawn to map out and describe in greater detail what "synergy" is: that is, how do divine and human agency work in a synergistic relationship with each other. 


     The 7th session featured the paper by Michael Gorman, The Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical Studies and former dean of the Ecumenical Institute at St. Mary's Seminary and University. His paper was entitled: "Cruciform or Resurrectiform? Paul's Paradoxical Practice of Participation in Christ." In this paper, Gorman sets out to answer some of recent criticisms of his work (see what he calls his "accidental trilogy": Cruciformity, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, and Becoming the Gospel) that there is overemphasis on the cruciform character of theosis at the expense of resurrection. Engaging a group who wants to emphasize the "resurrectiformity" or "anastiformity" of participation in Christ, Gorman argues that while participation in Christ does have a resurrection quality, something is lost if the interpreter does not emphasize the cruciform nature of our life and union with God. 

Michael Gorman giving the 7th paper of the Symposium

To watch a video of Gorman's argument for the priority of cruciformity and how our cross-shaped participation in Christ is simultaneously a participation in his resurrection (power), see the following link below:

The response was given by given by a North Park seminary alumnus Markus Nikkamen, who is currently a doctoral student of New Testament at the University of Aberdeen. The response was a robust engagement of Gorman's paper in its exegesis and theological assertions. One objection Nikkamen has is the language that "self-emptying" is part of Christ's nature. Perhaps love, but not self-emptying or kenosis. The response and discussion are both worth hearing.


    The last and 8th session of the Symposium ended with the paper presented by Ashish Varma, Assistant Professor of Theology at Moody Bible Institute. His paper was entitled: "Jews and Gentiles Together? Acts 15 and Racial Reconciliation in Christ." 

Ashish Varma giving the 8th paper of the Symposium

Engaging with the work of Brian Bantum's Redeeming Mulatto and Willie Jennings' The Christian Imagination, Varma posits that the Acts 15 Council is a model of mutual accomodation between Jews and Gentiles, and not the assimilation of Gentiles into Jewish Christianity. As such, the Acts 15 Council provides a model of mutual accomodation of different ethnicities today into the church of God, and this work of accomodation and mutual incorporation as one church is a form of participation in the life of God and the mystery of Christ unveiled. 
     The response paper was given by Hauna Ondrey, Assistant Professor of Church History at North Park Theological Seminary, who challenged the thesis of the paper that Acts 15 is an ideal model of mutual accomodations. In her opinion, Acts 15 represents a non-ideal compromise to the Gentile mission which still favors Jewish Christianity. If so, then it is actually quite dangerous to posit the Acts 15 Council as a model example of incorporation of diverse ethnicities into the church. The model could be used, for example, to favor white superiority where white Christianity is the new Jewish Christianity and all other ethnicities are the Gentiles. 
    To hear more, follow the link below to the video of the paper presentation, response, and subsequent Q&A.

     This concludes the Symposium and all eight sessions. It was a tremendous weekend, and not only did I learn much, but I'm still reflecting on the implications of the papers/responses for the work and ministry of the church. MJL

Participation in / Union with Christ: Papers from the 2017 Symposium on the Theological Reading of Scripture at North Park (Part 1)

Every 4th weekend of the September month (Thurs evening to Sat afternoon), in conjunction with the Nils W. Lund Memorial Lectureship, North Park Theological Seminary holds its annual Symposium on the Theological Reading of Scripture. This year's theme is: Participation in / Union with Christ, a most fitting topic given that the year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. 

Bruce Fields delivering the 1st paper of the Symposium

     On the opening Thurs evening (Sept 28, 2017), Bruce Fields, Professor of Faith and Culture at Trinity International University, gave a plenary paper for the 1st session entitled: "The Christology of Augustine's City of God: Participation in Christ That Compels the Pursuit of Justice in the Human City." Describing Augustine's understanding of two cities as two loves (i.e., a love of self [= contempt for God] that characterizes the earthly polis or city versus the love of God [= contempt of self] that characterizes the heavenly city), Fields provocatively explains how for Augustine justice is interchangeable with love (charitas). Participation in the life of Christ takes place in the church where members internalize love as justice, but participation also takes place out in the world where the church, acting on that internalization, practices love-justice in the earthly realm.

The paper response was given by George Kalantzis, Professor of Theology at Wheaton College and Director of the Wheaton Center of Early Christian Studies, whose main criticism was the use of Augustine in support of Field's (evangelical) reading of Paul's letters when Augustine, in the opinion of Kalantzis, should simply be read for his own sake. 

     The next morning (Sept. 29), the 2nd session featured a paper read by Grant Macaskill, The Kirby Laing Chair of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, and entitled: "Union(s) with Christ: Colossians 1:15-20." Macaskill picked up where he left off in his Lund Lectures and further interpreted Col 1:15-20. 

Grant Macaskill giving the second paper of the Symposium

Here he argued that, building on the foundation that all things connect through the mediator Christ to God (see his Lund Lecture), we can now talk about unions (plural) with Christ. The level of participation is different depending on the type of union. God’s covenantal relationship with Israel is not just salvific. He cares about the way they farm, and the way they built houses, and under Isarel's covenant there are different levels of participation in the life of God. Covenant bears differently also concerning the alien or foreigner who lives in the midst of Israel. They are with Israel but not covenant members, and so a different kind of reciprocity is expected of them as they participate with Israel in the life of God. 
     It should be noted that Macaskill is careful, however, not to talk about unions as if it was a kind of flat universalism (a critique of Douglas Campbell's work in The Deliverance of God). Macaskill is not a universalist and does posit the unique union of believers with Chrsit but also recognizes it as a fullfillment of all previous types of unions established in the history of God with His people. The link to the video of the 2nd session of the Symposium is below: 

The paper response was given by Constantine Campbell, Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, who has also written his own separate monograph on Paul and Union with Christ. 
     It was a lively response and engagement with Macaskill's paper. Con (not be confused with Doug) Campbell engaged Macaskill's reading of Col 1:15-20 from the minute details of whether the genitive's attached to the word "first-born" were partitive (Macaskill's view, which makes the phrase a temporal reading, i.e., "first-born of all creation") or subordinate (Campbell's view, which would then read "first-born over all creation") to addressing larger historical issues as: which covenant (Abraham, Mosaic, David, creational) does Paul refers to at specific points in the biblical text. 

    The following 3rd session featured a paper by Olli-Pekka Vainio, Lecturer of Systematic Theology at the University of Helsinki, entitled: “Why Bother with Participation? An Early Lutheran Perspective." Vainio has written a "few" books and articles (195+), the most important of which for the symposium's theme include: Justification and Participation in Christ and Engaging Luther. Vainio represents the new Finnish school of interpretation on the theology of Martin Luther. Vainio paper's focuses on a second-generation Lutheran reformer named Martin Chemnitz (1522-86) who expanded on Luther's teachings and used the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ as a way of framing the separate divine and human agencies of participation. 

Olli-Pekka Vainio giving the 3rd paper of the Symposium

The response was given by North Park's own Stephen Chester, Professor of New Testament at the seminary, who just published a phenomenal book (deserving of its own blog post review) with Eerdmans entitled: Reading Paul with the Reformers. Chester notes that the most helpful contribution of Vainio was providing a way forward through Christology for the Finnish school who has been accused in the past of collapsing Creator and creaturely categories, divine and human.
     The link to the video of the 3rd session of the Symposium is below: 


    The 4th session that afternoon was from Julie Canlis, Lecturer at Regent College and author of the book Theology of the Ordinary, who read a paper entitled: "The Geography of Participation: In Christ Is Location, Location, Location." 

Julie Canlis giving the 4th paper of the Symposium

Her paper focused on the theology of John Calvin, where she pointed out that location is very important for Calvin who had a particular trinitarian Christology where Christ sits at the right hand of the throne of the Father with the Holy Spirit sent from the throne to the ends of the earth. Calvin uses the metaphor of "upward" or "heavenly-ward" to describe how the Ascension of Christ provides a framework for participation. Our participation is oriented to, and our future is tied to, Christ's resurrrected body. At the same time, Christ has descended to meet humanity in the ordinary. Our human bodies, especially the collective Body of Christ, becomes the locus or place for participation with God. 
    If all of this sounds a little abstract, Julie and her husband, a pastor, have put together an adult curriculum with accompanying video that offers Bible study, commentary, and best spiritual practices for participation in the life of God through the daily details of the ordinary. 
     The paper response was given by Mary Patton Baker, Lecturer at North Park University and Pastor of Community Formation at All Soul's Anglican Church. The link to the video of the 4th session of the Symposium can be found below: 


      Coming soon: Part 2 of the 2017 Symposium on Participation in/Union with Christ with links to video and remarks on Sessions 5-8. MJL