My Thesis Proposal

For those interested in what I am going to be studying for the next year, here is my now approved Thesis proposal

A Theological Exploration of Forgiveness, Judgement and the Wrath of God
Nathan McCorkindale

Introduction/Rationale
We live in a world that likes the idea of peace and love, but is unwilling to seriously look at the issues that cause people to be alienated from each other.  Perhaps one of the greatest causes of alienation in our society today is a lack of forgiveness.  This lack of forgiveness is just as evident within the church as it is in the broader society.  Forgiveness is a necessary action if any community or society is to live together.  For people both in and out of the church, there is a growing assumption that to forgive someone is to let them go, free of consequences, and to forget the wrong that was done.  These ideas are what drive the popular saying, “Forgive and forget.”  However, is this really what forgiveness is?  How can we “forgive and forget” when something truly terrible has happened to us?  And is this what God has actually done with our wrongdoings?  If so, how can God be a God of justice? 
    On the opposite side of this spectrum is the idea that, before I can forgive, you must pay for your wrongdoing.  Popular culture shows us this picture in sitcoms where the wife will not talk to her husband until proper penance has been paid.  In this case, forgiveness has a retributive cost.  The husband is forced to discover the right action or word that will release him from the hold of his wife.  While on television, this is played up for laughs, but when this actually happens in marriages the results are anything but funny.  Rather than forgiveness and reconciliation between the married couple, bitterness and resentment grow.  Sadly, this sort of thinking about forgiveness has seeped its way into our theology of the cross.  In a current popular sermon, a preacher has God saying to sinners,
    "Do you know what your forgiveness cost me? Don’t you know God the Father beat me     to pieces? He obliterated me beyond recognition, He took the cup of wrath that had your     name on it and splashed it onto my perfectly sinless and bleeding face and what it is     worse is that God did this to me with a smile.   It pleased Him to crush me for you, that is     what your forgiveness cost me."

Does God’s forgiveness really mean that God’s wrath must violently be poured out on Christ this way?  If God is all-powerful, why does God not choose to simply forgive?  How do we understand God’s wrath in relation to God’s forgiveness? 
    Growing up as a child in the church, I was often confronted with a dual vision of God.  The first was of Jesus dressed in white holding a lamb.  The other was of the terrifying God of the Old Testament who brought wrath and judgment on sinners.  However, the trouble with these images is that it pits two gods against each other, rather than being sufficiently Trinitarian.  The Biblical story of God’s forgiveness is not one of simply letting sinners off the hook for their wrongdoing.  The Biblical story of forgiveness is a powerful one because our forgiveness was not cheap.  The trouble is that, for many in Christian circles, the cost of forgiveness has become associated with retribution or punitive justice.  This understanding of punitive justice is one that stands in contradiction to the worldview in which the Bible was written.  The Biblical authors wrote of God’s forgiveness, justice, and wrath from a Hebraic judicial model.
    Recently, in one of my seminary classes, there was another student who would often make comments about how we need to take God’s wrath, or anger, or judgment seriously.  I often wondered what he meant by this.  Later in the semester, I began to read Miroslav Volf and his understanding of forgiveness.  I have also read bits and pieces of L. Gregory Jones and Chris Marshall.  All of these men have been influencing my thinking about forgiveness and justice.  I am interested in bringing these men into conversation with what the Scriptures teach us about forgiveness, wrath and justice of God.       
    It is my thesis that embracing a relational Hebraic sense of justice and a biblical understanding of forgiveness will challenge common punitive notions of wrath and justice with the resulting discovery that God’s wrath is restorative and not punitive.

Methodology    The majority of my research will be library research.  I will read widely on issues of forgiveness, atonement, and wrath.  I will also be taking a class on the Theological Understandings of Jesus.

    This paper will start with a definition of what Hebraic relational justice is and how it is different from our current Western judicial lens.  I will then look at both the Old and the New Testaments in places where our understanding of God’s forgiveness, justice and wrath may have been misinterpreted because of the lenses we were using.  Finally, I will try and formulate a better understanding of God’s forgiveness, justice, and wrath.

Expected Conclusions    I expect to find our previous notions of God’s wrath to be challenged by a theological understanding of forgiveness.  We will find that forgiveness does not soften the challenge of God’s wrath, but will help us see that God’s restorative initiative is to bring forgiveness to the world.  I also expect to find that, as we think about God’s forgiveness and wrath, we may find that the restorative justice movement in our society today can help us better understand God’s forgiveness and justice.

The Wrath of God

So I spent a good portion of today in the in the Library doing research for my Thesis.  I read a number of different books and authors on the subject of the wrath of God.  I found some stuff that I found really helpful.  Also some stuff that I thought was totally bizarre.  Did you know that Martin Luther was obsessed with his personal guilt?  There is one account of him spending six hours confessing all his sins from the previous day.  He was so consumed with personal guilt and fear of God that it affected everything he did.  As I have studied the wrath of God I feel that it is very important that this issue be addressed.  There is still too much of Luther's fear and Marcion's belief that God of the Old Testament was different than the God of the New.  All in all it seems that is we are going to speak of God's wrath it cannot be divorced from the person of Jesus.  Right now I am thinking that my Thesis will combine the issue of wrath of God expressed in the person of Jesus, and how to reconcile our call to be nonviolent with the violent images of Jesus the lamb in Revelation... or something like that.  I'll need to figure out exactly how this will work.  I have a few ideas, but it needs to be fleshed out a little better.  So to sum up,  Thesis will combine non-violence, Jesus, wrath, violence....... my head hurts.

Anyway I did do some reading by Heschel from the book Prophets it is incredible!  Here are a few great quotes about God's wrath from him.

“To the prophets, we have noted, God does not reveal himself in an abstract absoluteness, but in a personal and intimate relation to the world.  He does not simply command and expect obedience; He is also moved and affected by what happens in the world, and reacts accordingly.  Events and human actions arouse in Him joy or sorrow, pleasure or wrath.  He is not conceived as judging the world  in detachment” (223/224)

“God’s pathos was not thought of as a sort of fever of the mind, which disregarding the standers of justice, culminates in irrational and irresponsible action.  There is justice in all His ways, the Bible insists again and again.” (225)

“Whatever man does affects not only his own life, but also the life of God insofar as it is directed to man.  The import of man raises him beyond the level of mere creature.  He is a consort, a partner, a factor in the life of God. (226)

“As long as the anger of God is viewed in the light of psychology of passions rather than in the light of the theology of pathos, no adequate understanding will be possible. (282)

“There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: Indifference to evil... All prophecy is one great exclamation; God is not indifferent to evil! ... This is one meaning of the anger of God: the end of indifference!” (284)

It is impossible to understand the meaning of divine anger without pondering the meaning of divine patience or forbearance. Explicitly and implicitly, the prophets stress that God is patient, long-suffering, or slow to anger (ex 34:6, Num 14:18, Jer 15:15, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2, Nah 1:3, Pss 86:15, 103:8 145:8 Neh 9:17).  Patience is one of the ‘thirteen attributes of God,’ yet never in the sense of apathy, of being indifferent.  Contrary to their thinking was the idea of a God who submits to the caprice of man, smiling at the hideousness of evil.  The patience of God means His restraint of justifiable anger. One must not mistake divine forgiveness for indulgence or complacency.  There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a blessing.... The Lord is long-suffering, compassionate, loving and faithful, but He is also demanding, insistent, terrible, and dangerous.” (p 285)

“The call of anger is a call to cancel anger.  it is not an expression of irrational, sudden, and instinctive excitement, but a free and deliberate reaction of God’s justice to what is wrong and evil.  For all its intensity, it may be averted by prayer (Deut 9:19, Ex 32:7-11).  There is no anger for anger’s sake.” (286)

I forgot how much I missed this (and other randoms)

I really had forgotten how much I like to blog. I actually have to hold myself back so I don't post all the time. So I started reading Shane Hipps book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media shapes Faith, the Gospel and Church yesterday, and I finished it less than 24 hours later. All I can say is WOW! This books is incredible. In fact Shane Hipps may just be one of my new favorite authors. He takes the best things of Neil Postman's and Marshal McLuhan's writings, simplifies them, and then applies them directly to the church today. I really think that this book needs to be on everyone's must read list. He really shows the way that "Media forms, regardless of their content, have a profound and subliminal power to shape the way we think" (p. 82). I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

In other news, school is still a ways off. However, I want to get my Thesis proposal written before school starts, so I have also been doing some reading on that. If anyone comes across anything about the wrath of God please pass it on to me. I'm not sure yet exactly what direction I am going, but I am pretty sure that the wrath of God in the scriptures is not quite what I have always pictured it as. More to come as I develop my thoughts on the subject.

I am also back to working out. After almost two months off I went a little too hard yesterday and was almost puking in the gym. So I'll be a little kinder to my body today. I also have a new workout partner which will be cool, we'll be doing some weights and then playing Racquetball after for some cardio. Should be good. I weighed myself and I discovered that I put on a few pounds over Christmas so unfortunately that means eating right again and being faithful to working out. Can anyone tell me, is it better to just work one or two muscle groups a day, or a full body workout every other? I would be really interested in your takes on this.

p.s. I should mention that it is beautiful outside in California today. Our front door has been open letting a nice warm breeze come through. What a great place to live in the winter!