Human Flourishing: A Theological Introduction

1. Human Flourishing:A Theological Introduction InterVarsity Following Christ ConferenceDecember 28, 2008Telford Work, Westmont College

2. What Is Abundant Life? • Our situation, in the surprising epitaph of “What Up.” • What is abundant life? Is it … • skating and boarding? • (A favorite of conservative churches in Santa Barbara.) • the great outdoors: a challenging Sierra trip with my son, friends, breathtaking scenery, and great food? • family, peace, and prosperity? • (Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture is, tellingly, focused on family.) • a civilization of justice and progress: • Equality, tolerance, safety, health, comfort, prosperity, opportunity, freedom? (These are arranged roughly along our political spectrum.) • Is it ‘the life of the mind’? • an optimal balance, a golden mean, of all this, with eternal life waiting at the end? • Or is abundant life asceticism, the renunciation of these things?

3. Decoding a Metaphor • John 10:10 in context: • Jesus is interpreting the growing opposition of Jewish authorities and teachers that his signs have aroused. • “I am the gate for the sheep. All who came [before me] are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it profusely. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:7-11).

4. Decoding a Metaphor • What does Jesus’ analogy mean? • Not protection from conventional threats; Jesus’ opponents would have understood that. Besides, that protection doesn’t arrive. Indeed, association with Jesus puts believers in harm’s way. • Not the blessings mentioned above. Besides, all seem to be already available (at least for some) in, say, classical Greece. • Not some merely spiritual contest over the afterlife, because of all the temporal impacts of following Jesus in John (such as the blind man's healing that leads to this pronouncement).

5. Decoding a Metaphor • This is one of a crush of images that point straight to Jesus as life: • midwife of the Spirit's birth from above, serpent in the wilderness, spring of living water, bridegroom, bread from heaven, vine(yard), light of life, and (soon after this passage) resurrection. • His rivals are rustlers who want to capture his sheep. • They want abundance — but as something in their grasp and their control, on terms already familiar to them. • Their disordered desires and intentions, which we would typically consider 'good', produce theft, murder, and destruction. • They have already judged him after healing the blind man, and will soon resort to murder. • (Augustine is good at unpacking the character of sin at work here.)

6. Decoding a Metaphor • Jesus is abundance — in which we can participate (come in and go out) and so live. • The contrast is absolute: • life/wrath, • light/darkness, • sight/blindness (recognition/unrecognition), • gate/thief, • salvation/destruction, • shepherd/hired hands.

7. Decoding a Metaphor • So human flourishing is not bene esse, but esse. • Yet it is not life versus death. • Rather, it is ‘being saved’ through the one who lays down his life of his own accord. • “In him was life” (John 1:4). • My definition (really an indication): • human flourishing is the life of Jesus Christ: provided by the Father, given in the Spirit, shared by grace, and received in faith. • Like a baptism, it is a ‘dying life’ that delivers from ‘living death.’

8. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • This passage instantiates the ‘paradigm’ of Christian faith that pervades the scriptures and all truly Christian theology: • Life from the Father, • death in the Son, • resurrection by the Holy Spirit.

9. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • This runs counter to academic habits and even modern Christian ones. • Modernity trains us to move from theory to practice. • Flourishing moves from praxis to reflection: • come (1:39, 21:12), • go (1:43, 4:16, 15:16), • believe (4:36, 7:38), • remain (8:31), and • (to the blind man) “go, wash” (9:7). • Abundant life’s evangelical character, not some other governing presupposition, is its own apologia. • “They know his voice” (John 10:4). • Flourishing comes through revelation, not discovery.

10. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • The gospel paradigm is untamed by interdisciplinary or even disciplinary priority: • Continuing in his word gives knowledge and freedom (8:32). • The word of the gospel arouses belief (trust, or ‘getting it’) and life in Jesus’ name (20:30-31), • or else it arouses rejection and exposes blindness and judgment. • (Hans Frei’s Types of Christian Theology is directly relevant to disciplinary and interdisciplinary work.)

11. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • Yet this baptismal life is abundant – true flourishing – conferring the riches of the Lord and Giver of Life. • Through the gate, the sheep find all pasture and shelter. • Discovery happens when we follow the revelation (not vice versa). • Note the change in the blind man’s humor and wisdom: he engages and teaches! (9:24-33). • University and liberal arts contexts discourage even scholars in theology from evangelical habits. • They can be labeled Pietist, fundamentalist, naive, dogmatic, narrow, ideological, reductive, private, violators of taboos, etc. • “They cast him out” (9:34) … • … to see and worship Jesus (9:38).

12. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • John’s gospel parallels the baptismal death-and-life in Deuteronomy's “blueprint”: • “Behold, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil, in that I command you this day to love YHWH your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, that you may live and multiply, and that YHWH your God may bless you in the land you go in to possess.” (Deuteronomy 30:15-16) • Life-and-good and death-and-evil are conventionally opposed as mutually exclusive alternatives between which Israel chooses. • Yet chapters 28-33 repeatedly foretell both evil and good, death and life for Israel, along its path of salvation.

13. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • So the Torah prescribes abundant life, not as a possibility, or an alternative to faithlessness,but as a promise of restoration through the powerful agencyof God's covenantal, resisted word. • The prophets follow up on the Torah’s blueprint, chronicling and foretelling its fulfillment. • The writings (e.g., wisdom literature, Ps 119) reflect the word’s gift of life (Ps 119:50, 93, 107, 159). • The New Testament’s massive parallels (e.g., Colossians 1:9-2:15) proclaim the surprising arrival of that Mosaic, prophetic future. • Israel is, typologically, the blind man whom Jesus heals.

14. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • So human flourishing is • fostered by Torah, • described and hastened in the prophets, • anticipated in the writings, and • proclaimed, celebrated, embraced, and awaited among the apostles. • (I have purposefully underemphasized the brilliant Genesis 1-3, which Christians tend to abstract from its role in Genesis and Torah and overemphasize.)

15. The Canonical Shape of Human Flourishing • Is human flourishing “important”? • The whole divine economy is Christ-shaped in this way. • This is what imago dei (Gen 1:26-27) means! • The first task of theology (and a task of ‘religious studies’ insofar as it treats the gospel in good faith)is to know, articulate, respect, explain, apply it. • In these ways we are disciples of the Good Shepherd rather than rustlers. • (We can begin by teaching the Bible properly.)

16. What About All That Greek Stuff? • Without the gospel’s baptismal teleology, our strivings for flourishing are disordered and destructive: living deaths. • However, baptismally relocated in Israel’s canonical life,many of the usual considerations of ‘the good life’ reemerge, radically reordered by resurrection: • Instruction and governance for justice. History for memory. • Strength for security. Learning for engagement. • Wisdom for prosperity. Vision for hope. • Worship for holiness. Prayer for love. • (Life in academia merely sets this Johannine conversion in ‘Athens’ or ‘Berlin’ rather than Galilee and Judea.) • The Old Testament reflects the riches of abundant life;the New Testament reflects their releasing.

17. What About All That Greek Stuff? • The reordered polis will be a baptismal community, rather than a (probably confused) state, city, social group, or clan. • Its character will be missional, participating in the apostolic life that comes and goes only through the gate. • Personal, ecclesial, family, and civic formation is ordered toward baptismal conversion and maturation: • For instance, both marriage and singleness become sanctifying practices for church’s benefit and its mission’s fulfillment. • My wife and I (ought to) educate our children to equip them for the Spirit’s fruitfulness, not just ‘success’ or ‘social service.’ • This includes church and catechesis, a full curriculum, and a rich extracurriculum (music, athletics, Scouts, travels …). • Similarly, I teach my students to think, live, and write Christian tradition to convert or mature their earlier and future training.

18. An Apologia for Human Flourishing? • “How can such an outrageous claim [as Christ’s universality or exclusivity] be presented compellingly in our culture?” • In John it is not compelling but propelling … • in two main directions: away from, and (then?) toward Christ. • How do we propel? • Witness: tell our stories, as the blind man does, and the others, and the Fourth Evangelist. • Not in the style of “works of the flesh,” but with the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:16-24) that divinely confirms our witness. • Engage: I love engaging other (mission) fields — disciplines, cultures, and professions — theologically in my teaching and research.

19. Theology and Ministryfor Human Flourishing InterVarsity Following Christ ConferenceDecember 29, 2008Telford Work, Westmont College

20. Facilitating Human Flourishing through Theology and Ministry • We should treat our own and others’ prior formation constructively. • In my experience, it almost always makes these lessons either familiar or recognizable. • (Alienating students from their churches and families is counterproductive, if not blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.) • Yet our prior formation has tended to make the gospel paradigm for human flourishing • seem trite, • displace it, • or norm it with other accounts of ‘the good life’ and human flourishing.

21. Facilitating Human Flourishing through Theology and Ministry • As a result: • Our goals revert to Hellenistic personal or civic priorities, especially in (even Christian) universities (at best, with eternal life added in). • ‘Christianity’ becomes a religion with a proper place in a prosperous society (at best, as its ‘salt and light’). • ‘Justice’ becomes the unstable common sense of that society (at best, critically affirmed by Christian conservatives, liberals, etc.). • ‘Church life’ gains cultural expectations that overwhelm truly ecclesial characteristics, making it untransformative or unattainable (thus George Barna, Revolution). • ‘The gospel’ becomes a slogan whose implications are predictable, constrained, safe, and bland (or, at best, compartmentalized). • Careers become levers of power (at best, used with others in view). • Disciplines and forms of life, as competing metanarratives, leave us bewildered and unsure rather than engaged and informed. • Malformation turns these good things into the rustlers and stolen sheep of John 10.

22. Facilitating Human Flourishing through Theology and Ministry • So we in theology, ministry, and religious studies can aid human flourishing by • receiving the gospel as the faith’s controlling paradigm, • conforming our practice to the radically Christ-centered orientation of this passage, • teaching ‘praxis’ first rather than postponing it or leaving it to others, • expecting opposition even when we are faithful, and readying disciples for it, • learning to respect other accounts, sensibilities, and disciplines as candidates for the gospel’s baptismal transformation … • as riches of the Father for release by the Son and sharing in the Holy Spirit.

23. Facilitating Human Flourishing through Theology and Ministry • We in pertinent fields (e.g., religious studies) can at least present Christian self-understanding … • undistorted, recovered, or corrected … • e.g., Richard Bauckham, Markus Bockmuehl, Marianne Thompson, N.T. Wright. • We in cognate and even hostile fields (e.g., religious studies!) can respect and draw out their aporias or their incompatibilities with the gospel to display the baptismal work of God’s resisted but undefeated word. • In all places we can seek out, discern, and attend to “signs of the Kingdom” through which the good news encounters the world: • e.g., the servants at Cana, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman and her village, the blind man, Lazarus, and the disciples throughout John’s Gospel.

24. Case Studies(for whenever) • Does gay marriage facilitate human flourishing? • And is Rick Warren a ‘hater’ to disagree? • Is a given ecclesial shape (e.g., a Mennonite shared life) • helpful • unhelpful • intelligible • necessary • impossible … in your cultural context? • Is technological (including educational) ‘transhumanism’ consonant with human nature, or a rejection of it? • What distinguishes right from wrong ways to treat the earth?