1 Advent

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. That's not the time we already start with Christmas, but the time where we remember that we are in need of the saviour sent to us, whose return is not yet, but whose first coming we will soon celebrate. It's a time of reflection, perhaps of fasting (if you are so inclined), and a time when we focus not only on what is to come, but what has been done for our need.

In that sense, a sermon (my translation) from Johann Albrecht Bengel, on the First Sunday in Advent:
Matthew 21:1-9
"Christ desires to take us in, if we come to him and wish to stay with him,

 a) as a poor king. The text says: Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them: Go into the village before you, and you will soon find a donkey bound, and a colt with her; loose them and bring them to me. If anyone questions you, say 'the Lord has need of them,' and they will leave them over to you. The Lord of heaven and earth requires a donkey for his kingly entrance! Any other king, when he wants something done, sends out people according to the nature of the things to be done, not just the lowly, but the ministers and advisers of the court, the honorable and noble; but this king has sent as his representatives for his procession two of his disciples, who were lowly fishermen. To these he commands to go into the village, where they will find a donkey tied and a colt by her; these they should loose and bring to him. Oh Lord Jesus Christ! Thanks be to you, that for our sakes you have lowered yourself so deeply: you were Lord over all, and require now the help of others.
He says: loose them, and bring them to me. A donkey is otherwise an unvalued and difficult animal, we say: to the donkey belong the whip and the burden. If we wish to observe what light is cast upon the human, who is not yet justified in Christ, by his own nature in sin, so is he also under the burden of the Law, he feels the painful whip-strokes of his conscience; there are his wounds and stripes. There in the conscience, when it is not free of care and secure, are the Sins too heavy, as a heavy burden, and the Law is a hard yoke which no one can bear; such things are known to everyone who rightly views sins; these are the proper bonds through which we are bound. But what does Christ say? He says: unbind them. He is the one who has saved us, who were forced into the servitude of Din from fear; he has made us free, he has unbound the bonds of Death; He is the one who frees from the servitude of Sin those who repent and turn to hum; the one who has given the servants of his Church the power: what you loose will also be loosed in heaven. He says Himself: The Spirit of Glory is upon me. This is the freedom to which Christ has made us free: That we are free from the debt of Sin, free from from Death, free from damnation, free from the curse of the Law, free from unrighteousness. Those who wish to be free, must be called by this: loose them and bring them to me. This statement: loose them and bring them to me; Christ describes Himself with this same glorious meaning in Matthew 11: Come to me, all you who are heavy laden and weary, it is my desire to refresh you. For my yoke is gentle, and my burden is light. He who lets himself be led to Christ will not be turned away; for as we here see, this is a humble king, who seeks us in His own poverty; He was not ashamed, to hold His procession in such a manner: He will also not be ashamed of us. But the Lord continues, He says: If anyone questions you, say that the Lord has need of them. What a wonderful phrase: The Lord has need of them. Jesus Christus! Should it be so, that You, the Lord of heaven and earth, wish to have a kingly procession into the city and you should have not a single animal of Your own? Have thanks for this lowliness! This lowliness, this humility, this poverty of Christ - what is that more than our raising up, our honor, our riches? Christ leaves the glory of His riches for a time for our sakes, that we might be able to take from His fullness grace upon grace (John 1). He is become poor for our sakes (2 Corinthians 8). Poor people have a glorious assurance from this humility of Christ. For there are those, with not a cent to their name, who don't know where they will be spending the night tonight; those who lack clothing and food, a place to lay their heads - we must think thereon, that Christ also lacked these things; he became so poor that He could say: foxes have their dens and birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Lazarus was carried to Abraham's bosom. The poor widow with two mites was loved more than all the rich. And I have never seen the righteous left in need - when true poverty stands before our doors, we must think that Christ stands before us and says: Do good to this person for My sake, for I, the Lord, have need of it. Christ will one day praise these things from the rooftops: what you have done to the least of these, you have done also to me.

b) as a King rich in joy. We see this from the prophetic reading for today: for it comes to us, that everything occurred, that the Prophet might be fulfilled, he that spoke: say to the daughter of Zion: your King comes to you. In the Prophet Zachariah 9:9 the words say: But you, oh daughter of Zion, be joyful, and you oh daughter of Jerusalem, rejoice; see, your King comes to you, a Righteous One and a Helper, poor and riding on a donkey, and on the colt of a donkey. It says: rejoice, oh daughter of Zion. We have here a King, whose presence is worth rejoicing; to whose good is this King come? In the Text, the daughter of Zion and Jerusalem, these are the City of David. First, this entrance is to the City of David and the people of Israel.
Should we be excluded from this? Far be it! For we are also in the Kingdom of this King. The Jews, who should have accepted Him, did not want Him to reign over them. So are we also only through the Grace of God the servants of this Lord. The citizenship in this Kingdom is only enjoyed by those who submit themselves to the command, the word, and the will of this great King; all others are rebels. These are the beloved subjects, Zion and Jerusalem. To translate Zion: a dry place. Where our King should refresh our hearts as our King, so must we be a dry land: we must realize, that we are from our nature an unfruitful field, that bears nothing more than thorns and thistles. I wish to say, we must realize how we have insulted and dishonored God through our debasement, through our many sins and failures; how we have earned His wrath and that we must, because of this, humiliate ourselves before God and have true repentance before Him. We must have fear before Him! We must be a dry land, that is, to bear a deep longing in our hearts for the Grace of God; to search for our righteousness and life in Christus Jesus - for that is the dry land, that Zion, which this King rejoices over: for it says, I desire to pour out water on the thirsty and rivers on the drought. Here it is said: ...(There is a problem here in the original text, sorry!)... For blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).
What sort of King do we have? A King rich in joy, for it is said be joyful and rejoice. Well is it the people, who can rejoice, for the Kingdom of this King is righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14). Therefore rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, and praise Him, you pious ones. All tongues shall swear and say, that in the Lord I have my righteousness and strength: therefore rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4). For see, your King comes to you! Take heed of our King, our King comes! In the text he has many other names. He is called the Righteous One, a Helper, poor but gentle; these are names to rejoice over. He does not have for Himself alone the perfect righteousness; He the Righteous One, who has suffered for us unrighteous ones, gives to us his righteousness; He is the one who alone has fulfilled all righteousness and the will of God; the Righteous One who through knowledge of Him makes many righteous: through whom Sin is thrown into the depths of the sea and the true righteousness is returned, the one who delivers us from all unrighteousness. See, what a beautiful name this is! Indeed, he who is a Christian shall also be righteous, as Christ is righteous.

c) Our King is named a Helper. He is the one whose help and salvation the Fathers longed for: Ach, that help came from Zion, that would save us from death; He our loyal King takes us unto Him, who has given His live as sacrifice for us. We could not help ourselves, rather we were sunk in the ditch where the water runs, but Christ our King offered us His hand and saved us from the deep waters, pulled us from the mire as the waves wanted to swallow us. He is the comfort of all unbelievers and the salvation of God to the ends of the earth. A light, to enlighten the unbelieving.
Christ has taken through His death the power from the one who had the power of Death. He is called gentle and humble. He came in such a form, that one said: blessed is he, who does not take offense at me. But that is what is happened, to our great advantage. Through this humility and gentleness we learn, that He has true patience with us and with our failures, if we remain true to Him. For the bent reed He will not break. He took sinners unto Himself. He was gentle, and humble. Therefore let us go in full faith away from the guilty conscience and to Him. When our sins make us doubt: the righteousness of Christ is ours; when Death and the fear of Hell make us quake: Christ is our Helper; do our enemies attack us, Christ is our King; is the opponent near to us, ei, so Christ is come to us, and is by us all the days until the end of the world. Do we still have failures, Christ is gentle and poor, He will not cast us out. See, such things we have in our Saviour! He says: My peace I give to you. Thus we should take on this peace, which is proclaimed in the Gospel, that we may say: we have peace with God.
How shall we encounter our King of Grace? The text tells us: the disciples went and did as He commanded, and brought him the donkey and the colt. a) Obedience.  We see the praise given, that they obeyed without arguing and objecting. No! They go; they are as those obedient servants, of whom it is said: I tell him to go, and he goes. They do as Jesus tells them, they bring the donkey and the colt. Here we have a wonderful example of how we should act towards our King: when He speaks to us and His command comes to us, so should it also be with us: do as Jesus has said. It should be as at the wedding at Cana: do whatever He commands of you. The command of Christ should be sufficient for us. If he says in His Word: he who would follow me... so should we say: see, we have left everything and are followed you. If He says: this is my commandment, that you love one another: so is our reply, You sweet love, give us favour. If He says: repent and turn from evil, so shall the answer be: bring me to repentance, oh Lord. Such is possible only through the Grace of God; for who would wish to take the honor from our King and say that he could not purchase a people, that does good works industriously? Thus, when we hear in a sermon or read in the Holy Scriptures something that we must do or leave undone, so must we realize that this is God's earnest will for us; for that is the will of God, our holiness: and this is what we request: Thy will be done. If we have not until now done the will of God, so we can know that we have not been the subjects of Christ: Ach that such a one might turn truly to this King of Grace, for he is a merciful King... (seems to be some text missing here)

d) Humlity, as the people did: they spread their cloaks on the street, others took branches from the trees and spread them on the path. He wishes yet to enter in by us, thus we should make a path for Him: make straight and even a path for our God; such occurs when we tear down the hills of our pride that He might come in to us. All should show their humility before Him. So shall He look upon us with eyes of Grace.

e) with praise; the people, that before and after Him went, cried Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed be He that comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! They call to the King, and praise Him, Hosanna, Salvation to the Son of David, to the one to whom God has given the throne of David and His eternal kingdom: they praise Him publicly, and speak in one voice: blessed is He, who comes. What do we wish to do, to honor our King? We should also lift Him up: it should be also, I wish to raise You up my God! The praise of God is that which we become the equals not only of Israel but also of the angels and the chosen ones of God: this praise is glorious and beautiful; God, your throne remains always and eternally. Here in particular the communicants should be aware, that they obediently bend to the will of their King, humble and praising, whom they are about to meet in the Holy Eucharist and who will enter into them and be within them. Obedient, that they live out his will and command, and grow in obedience. Humble, that they are aware of their own unworthiness; not spreading out their cloaks before Him but rather throwing their very selves down at His feet, and humbly confessing their sins, asking for his Grace in mercy; praising that they can rejoice when they have this true King in repentance and faith: rejoice, daughter of Zion, your King comes to you! Thus praise the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever. We should not praise Him with mouth and tongue alone, but also with the heart: sing and play to the Lord with joy, and all that you do, do it in the name of the Lord, the Lord Jesus, and thank God and the Father through Him. Such praise is not for today alone, due to the entry into Jerusalem, but endlessly, so long as His mercy endures: in particular however now, as we are obligated to proclaim these things in memory of Him.

Praise the Lord in His Holiness. Let all that has breath, praise the Lord.

Amen.



(I have been free in a few places for understanding, and translated "Heiden" as "unbelievers" rather than "heathens" due to connotation. I have tried to match tone for Bengel's time, thus "is come" rather than "has come", and so forth. You can find out a little more about Bengel here.)
(Übersetzung erfolgt aufgrund "Rede, Wort des Vaters" Steinkopf Verlag Stuttgart 1967 S. 13-18)

Barth and the Analogia Entis

(I'm making no apologies for not blogging for a while. Either it works, or it doesn't. Hardly anyone reads this thing anyway.)

I have come to a realization about Barth and the analogia entis. (For the non-theologians, that's the "analogy of being" - We say God "is", and we "are", but we can't talk about both "be"ing in the same way, because God is perfect; so there the being of everything else and the being of God are just analogous, not univocal).

I really only encountered the analogia entis in Aquinas, who I read through Barth's lens, and in Barth's huge opposition to it. And I was always pretty sure that Barth was dead on in his criticism of it: we can't take the fact of our being, and make an analogy to figure out that God exists.

Turns out that the consensus is actually that Barth didn't understand the analogia entis correctly. I don't really know about that, I need to look into it some more. But I did realize something important about the analogia entis in general.

I was at AAR/SBL/EPS/ETS in the last week, talking to some actual Barthian guys, and made the comment "God is the only thing to which the term 'being' can really apply, we just have derivative being; it's not the same thing." No one had a problem with that. Turns out, that's actually the way the analogia entis is supposed to run (I ran into this through Hans Boersma).

Barth deals with the analogia entis in his section about the knowledge of God, and what he opposes, he is right to oppose. It's not a way to come to knowledge of God outside of revelation. It's a terrible base for theology, it ends in a terrible, twisted natural theology that's just idolatrous. He's right about that. (I also am about to reread this section of the KD, I want to take a closer look at what he says)

But that's not the point of the analogia entis. It might run the risk of being used for natural theology, but apparently, the point is to say that we can only understand our being by making an analogy to God's, who is the source of all being. We can't know our being, we can't know ourselves, without first knowing God - otherwise nothing makes sense. "We can't know ourselves without knowing God" - that's Calvin, by the way, in the beginning of the Institutes.

When we run the analogy that way, it's kind of the heart of orthodoxy - of course, like a lot of things, it runs a risk of misuse. We just have to use it correctly. And I think there's a lot of truth here - I don't understand anything about reality, about anything the way it really is, or about any truth, unless I first have a relationship with God who grounds and determines all these things: without the cognitive tools (T.F. Torrance) to deal with reality and God, which I get through revelation, I don't know anything - I just might think I do.

There's a lot more in here to be thought out, more than one blog post can handle - I'm working on it though.