O'Donovan for Mere Mortals 2: The Gospel and Christian Ethics

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. A lot has been going on lately, but I eventually figured that this was no excuse not to keep working. ETS is coming whether I’m busy or not. I had done my preliminary work on the first chapter of Resurrection and Moral Order, and it read like a dissertation—not exactly bloglike. It occurred to me that I was going about this the wrong way. If I’m to understand O’Donovan’s ideas, I need to be able to explain it in a readable way, not like some jargon-laden analysis. So, here are O’Donovan’s big ideas as I see them.

Resurrection and Moral Order is divided into three main sections along with an introductory chapter. This blog post deals with that first chapter.

To understand Resurrection and Moral Order, we need to understand three concepts that underlie O’Donovan’s ethical framework. As I understand it, these three principles are the big assumptions that will drive how O’Donovan will set up his system of Christian ethics (he calls it “Christian moral principles”) by which we can determine ethical action. They help us understand how O’Donovan will defend the thesis of this book, that "[t]he foundations of Christian ethics must be evangelical foundations; or, to put it more simply, Christian ethics must arise from the gospel of Jesus Christ" (11, emphasis added). Here is a quick blurb about these concepts. The first principle deals with the way things are (maybe like ontology, but I can’t say for sure yet). The second principle deals with how we know the first principle (epistemology[?]), and the third principle deals with how we should act in light of the first two principles (ethics proper).

1. The Realist Principle—“[p]urposeful action is determined by what is true about the world into which we act ..." (ix). This principle means that whatever we do, we do it because the world exists in a certain way. For example, the scientific method works because the universe is predictable. If I drop an apple, it will always fall to the ground. I live my life based on the fact that the world operates in a certain, predictable way.
2. The Evangelical Principle--"That truth [i.e., the realist principle] is constituted by what God has done for his world and for humankind in Jesus Christ …” (ix). Not only does the way that creation is ordered determine our action, but the way that God has entered into the world and acted as a man also determines Christian action. Specifically, God did something during the act of the death and resurrection of Christ that has lasting repercussions for the created order. I haven’t quite worked through this one yet, but hope to.
3. The Easter Principle--"[t]he act of God which liberates our action is focused on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which restored and fulfilled the intelligible order of creation” (ix). The Easter principle refers to the resurrection (though we will find out later that the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is included here). For the Christian, the resurrection of Christ frees us to truly live, and the Spirit allows us to enjoy a freedom that humanity had not experienced since the fall.

Here is how these three principles work together:

These three principles work together and build off of each other. According to the Realist Principle, the created order really exists. It was really ordered in a certain way by God. This matters because we live in the created order. Because God ordered creation, this order in some way reflects his character. Acting in accordance with how creation was ordered means that we are acting in accordance with God’s character. If we act contrary to the way that creation was ordered, then we are acting contrary to the character of God. As we’ll see later, this has interesting implications on how we treat creation.

Through the fall, not only was the created order confounded, but our ability to understand it correctly was also confounded, meaning that it became much harder to act in accordance with the way creation was ordered because we no longer understood it properly. Also, creation itself was somehow affected as well (e.g., the ground was cursed after the fall so that it no longer yielded fruit like it once did). The Evangelical Principle sets aright our ability to understand the created order properly—both as is now (fallen) and how it should be (pre-fall and post-redemption). The Evangelical Principle includes what is called the Christ event (that is, the second Person of the Trinity became flesh and entered the world as part of the created order while still being the Creator). Along with this, the Evangelical Principle also includes divine revelation (the Bible).

According to O’Donovan, the Evangelical principle allows us to see the created order as it really is and really should be. This includes the flow of history as well. People understand that there is a past and a future. They may have a sense that events are moving toward something, but have no sense of the big picture or the destination. The revelation through Christ and the rest of Scripture gives us that big picture. It allows us to see the created order as it really is. The Bible’s eschatology gives us unique insight into where the created order is headed in the end.

The Easter Principle gives us freedom to act in light of this knowledge. It is one thing to know the truth. It is another to do it. In part, the Easter Principle allows us to act freely in accordance with the moral principles laid out in the books of Moses. But it is more than that (Galatians tells us that the law was our schoolmaster when we were children—we have moved on through grace to something better). The Easter Principle—specifically the gift of the Holy Spirit—allows us to have a special kind of freedom. When Christ was raised, O’Donovan writes that the Father reversed Adam’s decision to choose death. The resurrection and the subsequent gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost reinstated us to the pre-fall position of Adam as lord (in a stewardship sense) of creation and gives us the power to name things just as Adam named the animals. When he named them, he was making up entirely new categories of thought, since he had no prior framework of naming from which to work. His act of naming the animals was a thoroughly new kind of act. In the same way, we have—through the Spirit—the possibility to name new moral situations (based on the Realist, Evangelical, and Easter Principles working together in a seamless whole) in an equally thoroughly new way. A quick caveat here: this is not unbridled creativity. The law, inadequate though it was, is still a reflection of God’s character and is therefore still binding insofar as it deals with ethical principles (as opposed to strictly ceremonial or theocratic principles). What I believe O’Donovan is saying here is that as we are confronted by new situations that aren’t mentioned specifically in Scripture (e.g., cloning, stem cell research, etc.), we have the ability to make normative ethical decisions and can create new categories of thinking about it (within the confines of the revelation of God and the Holy Spirit). In short, according to O’Donovan, we have “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16).

While O’Donovan certainly goes into much, much more detail, this is the main gist of the first chapter. There is a lot to unpack here. This chapter is like a quick sketch of the blueprint of the rest of the book. Some of these concepts may still be unclear at this point. Hopefully, we’ll be able to sort them out and understand them better throughout the rest of the book.

Oliver O'Donovan for Mere Mortals 1: Why O'Donovan?

Some of you may be wondering why I would choose to write a series of posts about Oliver O'Donovan. Many of you probably have never heard of him. Those of you who have may be questioning my sanity. Oliver O'Donovan is not an easy man to understand--at least the works of his that I've read are not easy to understand. In fact, I'm making my way through Resurrection and Moral Order again, and it's only now starting to click. I'm thinking that this may be a book I read once a year so that I can hope to grasp more of it (I'd like to do the same thing to Thomas Torrance's The Christian Doctrine of God and Colin Gunton's The One, the Three, and the Many).

I was introduced to O'Donovan the first semester of my Ph.D. work, and it opened my mind to a new way of thinking about … well ... everything. I was so impacted by his work that I believed for a while that O'Donovan would figure heavily into my dissertation. Well, that didn't happen, and so I had to put his works on the back burner for a while.

During my coursework, I had never really thought about O'Donovan's work outside of purely theoretical ethics. While I knew that there were some great applications to take away, it had never occurred to me how far-reaching O'Donovan's system of thoght really was. I remember David Nelson mentioning how O'Donovan's work helped shape how he understood the Christian's relation to culture (coincidentally, he also introduced me to The One, the Three, and the Many). Doug Baker mentioned O'Donovan's thought in connection with the Christian and government. While I had reviewed The Ways of Judgment (another O'Donovan book), I did not grasp that it was built upon the framework O'Donovan had set up in Resurrection and Moral Order.

I work in public policy, and one of the big questions I keep thinking about is how the Christian should approach the public square. How should the Christian relate to government in terms of involvement in government or in government related groups like the one I work in. I would eventually like to design a college or masters (or both) course on the subject. Toward that end, I submitted a paper proposal to ETS (the Evangelical Theological Society) to present at their annual meeting. The tentative title is "God, the Christian, and Government: Toward of Theology of Christian Involvement in the Public Square." Praise God, my proposal was accepted, and I'll present that paper later this year. All I have to do now is write it.

So, unlike my dissertation, O'Donovan will play heavily in this (as will Christopher Wright's big books, I think). This series is my hope to really dig into O'Donovan's work and understand it well enough to explain it and apply it to the subject matter of my paper. It is also my hope that this work will introduce some of you to O'Donovan's work or, if you already have read it, to engage in discussion. I in no way have the market cornered on his thought, but it intrigues me. Hopefully, it will intrigue you, too.

New Blog Series Coming

In preparation for a paper that I have to present at a conference later this year, I'm going to start a new series of posts fleshing out some of my thoughts and research for that paper.

This means a blog series. I'm tentatively calling it "Oliver O'Donovan For Mere Mortals," of which I am most certainly one. I don't have any special claim to O'Donovan, nor am I especially bright. I am, however, currently on my third time in Resurrection and Moral Order, and am finally starting to get some of it. If I can explain the book, then it's a good bet that I am finally grasping its concepts. That's the thought, anyway.

The book has been and is being increasingly (especially now that I'm starting to grasp it) foundational to my thoughts about Christian ethics and involvement in the public square. There are two "sequels," if you will to Resurrection: The Desire of the Nations and The Ways of Judgment, which I reviewed for Faith & Mission. Hopefully, I can make it through all three books. I'm excited and scared at the same time.

There will almost certainly be posts on other topics as well, so count on a few interruptions here and there.

The Call of the Normal

Karen (my wife) and I spent a lot of time trying to come up with the right title for this blog. We brainstormed for quite a while before coming up with "The Call of the Normal." While there is a wordplay of sorts with "The Call of the Wild," that was not the primary intention of us choosing that title.

Several years ago, while I was worship pastor at WellSpring Community Church in Clayton, NC, we had a man from India give his testimony. He was beaten severely and often for the sake of the gospel, but never recanted. Once he finished speaking, the pastor got up and said, "Thank you for showing us the normal Christian life." That really struck me. The pastor was, of course, absolutely right. I had never considered it that way before. Missionaries and martyrs were doing nothing more than living the "normal Christian life."

Fast-forward to the last few months. Through our times with God, Karen and I have really been convicted about the need for radical obedience to Christ. At the present time, much of that involves our finances and our possessions. As I was reading through the Petrine, Pastoral, and Johannine epistles, it occurred to me that this radical obedience was required of everyone in the body of Christ. In other words, what we (and others) call "radical obedience," the writers of Scripture called "the normal Christian life" (in not as few words). Karen and I are trying to reclaim the "Christian normalcy" to which all the elect have been called.

With that in mind, I'm going to try to make sure that my theology-driven posts (or series of posts) will have some application--some bearing on the Christian life. I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes of this and how my life (and my family's lives) will be transformed. Perhaps you will be transformed, too.

Hello World

In many ways, I have tried to keep up with the times in terms of technology. While I have fully embraced Facebook and Twitter, I have yet to blog. Frankly, with school, family, and learning a new job, I just didn't have time to blog, and I didn't know what I would write about.

Now, my wife and I are waiting on another child (we're adopting, and terribly excited about it), and would then have four children under three years of age. Now that my life has finally settled down, I felt it was time to start writing. Actually, I feel strongly that I should be writing right now (since my life is about to get hectic again).

So, what kind of stuff will I write about? Well, chances are, it will be a veritable smorgasbord of different material. Most of it will be theological and ethical in nature, since that is my training. There will probably also be some stuff about public policy, since that's where what my job is. I'm sure there will be some stuff about adoption as well. I've got several writing projects coming up, so a good many posts will be in preparation about that. If any of you are conversant with the material, then I welcome comments and constructive criticism. More to come.