J. Todd Billings. Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.
J. Todd Billings teaches Reformed Theology at Western Theological
Seminary. I went to Harvard Divinity School with Todd—-I was in the
M.Div. program, whereas he was in the Th.D. program. We knew each other
from a Christian group we were in. I decided to read his Union with Christ
for a variety of reasons. First of all, I like to read books by people
I know. I read and enjoy plenty of books by people I don’t know, but
there is something special about reading books by those I have actually
met and interacted with. Maybe it’s because I feel that I am getting
more of a glimpse into who they are and what matters to them. Second,
I’ve been interested in John Calvin, and the nuances of Calvin’s thought
feature prominently in Todd’s work. Third, I’ve appreciated things by
Todd that I have read, such as an article that he wrote for Christianity Today about biblical interpretation, and an article that he wrote about the Reformed/Calvinist acronym TULIP. I found these writings to be thoughtful, nuanced, and informative.
Union with Christ is 174 pages, yet it covers a lot of
territory, even though the territory revolves around the central theme
of believers’ union with Christ. I could do the customary book-reviewer
task of summarizing each chapter, but that is not really my style, at
least not in my blog book reviews. (When I write book reviews for
publication, my approach will probably be different.) I have decided to
organize this review according to Scriptures: I will quote a Scripture
(in the KJV), then I will apply this to what Todd writes about in his
book. I will also call Todd “Billings,” since I think that it a more
respectful way to interact with his work.
Romans 8:15: “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage
again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we
cry, Abba, Father.”
The part that I want to highlight here is the adoption. According to
Paul, believers in Christ are adopted sons of God. Billings mentions
what adoption meant within the ancient Roman context: “In this ancient
Roman context, adoption was generally not about babies and childless
couples finding a way to have children. Instead, the adoptees were
usually adults, and adoption was first of all a legal arrangement to
provide an heir who would receive an inheritance and enter into a new
household with all its privileges and responsibilities” (page 18).
How does this relate to believers being adopted sons of God?
Believers in Christ are forgiven of sin (justification), and they enter
into new lives of the Spirit, in which they perform works of
righteousness (sanctification). According to Billings, one cannot
accept the forgiveness part of the equation while dismissing the
practical righteousness and new life of the Spirit part, for that would
be like being adopted, yet refusing to move into the adopting father’s
house or to undertake the responsibilities that come with the adoption.
Moreover, John Calvin stated that justification without sanctification
would divide Christ.
John 15:5: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth
in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me
ye can do nothing.”
According to Billings, believers are joined with Christ, and that is
what motivates and enables them to do good works. But, as a Reformed
Christian, Billings also maintains that God has to be the one who causes
believers to believe. God’s plan from creation was for human beings to
depend upon God and to have union with the divine. This was to be the
case even before sin entered the world: Billings quotes John Calvin’s
statement that Adam and Eve were to eat from the Tree of Life in the
Garden of Eden in order to live because that would teach them dependence
on God. (As Billings notes, however, Calvin believed that what
believers have in Christ goes beyond what Adam and Eve had in the
Garden, for believers become partakers of the divine nature, which
entails personal immortality.) Union with God/Christ is the opposite of
autonomy. If people could simply decide to believe on their own
initiative, Billings argues, that would reflect autonomy rather than
union with God. According to Billings, God must be the one who brings
about the conversion, for humans are totally depraved, which does not
mean that they are bad through and through, but rather that all of their
faculties are corrupted, that they are unable of themselves to seek the
chief good (God), and that they cannot of themselves do works that earn
them salvation. People need union with Christ to bear any spiritual
fruit.
I Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but
then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as
also I am known.”
According to Calvin, God is so above and beyond human beings that it
is impossible for them to truly understand God. Consequently, God
brings himself down to our level. In Scripture, God is depicted
anthropomorphically, not because that is how God truly is, but rather
because that allows us to relate to God. Moreover, God brought himself
down to our level in the incarnation, when God the Son became a human
being. Billings quotes Calvin as saying that “all thinking about God,
apart from Christ, is a bottomless abyss which utterly swallows up all
our senses” (Calvin’s words, quoted on page 72).
Billings wrestles with a question, though. Right now, believers see
through a glass darkly. They need God’s revelation in Christ in order
to have any understanding of God, and yet even their understanding then
is vastly limited. Eventually, however, they will have a full vision of
God, a beatific vision. Does that mean that they will no longer need
Christ to understand and to see God? What does that do to Calvin’s
notion that believers need Christ to be between themselves and God,
otherwise their attempts to understand God will get them swallowed up in
a bottomless abyss that consumes their senses, since God is so great?
Does that go out the window in the eschaton, during the time of the
beatific vision?
Billings argues that believers will need Christ to understand God
even during the time of the beatific vision. Their union with Christ
will be important even when sin is no more. I did not entirely
comprehend how Billings believes that Christ will be relevant
to believers’ beatific vision of God in the eschaton. My impression is
that his argument was that Christ sees God clearly, and, because
believers will be united with Christ, they will be able to see God
clearly, as well. I am open to correction on this, though.
I Corinthians 11:28-29: “But let a man examine himself,
and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that
eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to
himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
This is about the Lord’s supper, in which believers partake of bread
and wine that represent (Catholics say embody) the body and blood of
Christ. Paul is criticizing those who eat and drink these elements
without discerning the Lord’s body. What does this mean? It could mean
that certain believers in Corinth were eating and drinking without
recognizing or fully appreciating that those elements represented the
body and blood of Jesus Christ. Another option is that it means that
believers were partaking the elements of the Lord’s supper without
respecting the church, the body of Christ. Paul in I Corinthians, after
all, lambastes the division, elitism, and lack of love that accompanied
the Corinthian Christians’ celebration of the Lord’s supper, for the
Lord’s supper was supposed to be a time when believers gathered together
in unity and love for Jesus Christ and one another.
Billings talks about social justice, the importance of forming
relationships with the poor, and showing love to everyone, believer and
non-believer. What is interesting to me, however, is the prominence of
the Lord’s supper in his discussion of these issues. For Billings, the
Lord’s supper is supposed to exemplify the bringing together of all
sorts of people in love and unity. Billings talks at length about
Apartheid South Africa. The Reformed Church in South Africa initially
opposed segregating the races at the Lord’s supper, emphasizing that the
Lord’s supper should bring people together at the Lord’s table rather
than separating them. Apartheid was actually being touted as a
progressive idea—-an idea that would allow the different races to
maintain their own cultures and to advance independently—-but the
Reformed Church was resisting applying Apartheid to the Lord’s supper.
Eventually, however, it caved. As it focused on evangelism, it came to
cater to people’s preferences rather than be truly reformational.
Later, however, it would reverse its stance in an anti-Apartheid
direction.
One aspect of Billings’ discussion of social justice that especially
stood out to me was his critique of saying that God champions the
oppressed while marginalizing the oppressors. Billings agrees that God
loves the poor, but he questions whether dividing people into oppressed
and oppressors is really that fruitful, for the categories are not that
iron-clad (since the oppressors may be oppressed themselves, in areas),
such a division goes against unity in Christ, and marginalizing people
does not necessarily redress the problem of oppression and social
injustice, whereas bringing people together can. I sympathize with
Billings on this. I flinch whenever I read that God is the God of the
poor, as if God is not the God of others, too. I still believe,
however, in challenging injustice and oppression.
Philippians 2:5-11: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to
be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him
the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in
earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Billings critiques a popular Christian incarnational model of
ministry. Essentially, this model says that Christians should imitate
the incarnation of Christ whenever they do ministry. In the same way
that God the Son became a human being, Christians in ministry should
become a part of the culture to which they are ministering,
understanding it and imitating it.
Billings is all for trying to understand the cultures of others when
one is ministering to those cultures. He raises a question at one point
as to whether missionaries can fully become a part of those cultures,
however, for he tells the story of Western missionaries in Africa whose
child contracted a life-threatening illness, and they were able to get
the child to the United States to be treated, an option that was not
available to many of the Africans to whom they were ministering. But
Billings is for trying to reach people where they are, to understand
them, and to be with them. He questions, however, whether likening that
to Jesus’ incarnation is appropriate. He believes that there are
differences between the incarnation and Christian ministry, and that
Christians who see their ministry as incarnational may tend to exalt
themselves and their service rather than Jesus Christ. For Billings, a
better model is union with Christ, which entails bearing the good fruit
of service to others, but not at the expense of worship of Christ and
being empowered and motivated by Jesus Christ. Billings at one point
refers to a translation of Philippians 2:5 that he believes coincides
with such a model (“Let the same mind be in you that you have
in Christ Jesus,” an alternate NRSV reading). Whether or not one finds
that translation convincing, one cannot dispute the other passages
Billings cites indicating that Paul saw his union with Christ as an
essential part of his Christian service.
Thoughts: I enjoyed many aspects of Billings’ book. I found that it
was appropriate for me to read it after reading Karen Armstrong’s History of God,
for Armstrong talks about God being great and transcendent, and that
overlapped with Billings’ discussion of God’s transcendence and
accommodation to our limitations. Also, in my opinion, Billings’
discussion of Calvin and the beatific vision marked the point where the
book went from being just a good book to being a great book.
I thought that Billings’ discussions of justification and
sanctification assumed that the Christian life is automatic: that
believers automatically want to serve and love God and neighbor. What
should one do when one says the sinner’s prayer and finds that he or she
struggles to do the right thing, or to avoid doing the wrong
thing—-when the motivation to do good may not be there? I suppose that
the solution here would be to become more united with Christ, for that
is the source of good spiritual fruit. Still, I believe that this
co-exists with Christian free will. We can be united with Christ, yet
we make choices, and even our good choices are far from perfect and may
be tainted with sin. We are not robots programmed by God, but we are
agents, influenced by God. And I wonder something: If we have free will
in the sanctification process, why can’t our free will and autonomy be a
part of our seeking and believing in God at the outset? Why would free
will, in that case, be a sign of autonomy that contradicts the
principle of union with God/Christ? Cannot union with Christ co-exist
with our ability to make choices?
Billings’ discussion of the Lord’s supper was interesting to me. I
must admit that I largely see the Lord’s supper as a part of the church
service where we eat bread and drink grape juice. I respect what it
symbolizes, but I tend to emphasize other parts of the church service (the
sermon, songs, fellowship) over the Lord’s supper. I was surprised,
therefore, to read the Lord’s supper being presented as such a grand,
socially-transforming ritual.
Billings discussion of South Africa was also interesting to me. I
had no idea that Apartheid was actually touted as a progressive idea.
On the incarnation and ministry, this was not a topic that interested
me that much. I can understand why Billings discussed it, since he
believed that he was correcting a common Christian misconception that
detracted from the centrality of Jesus Christ. Personally, I thought
much of what Billings was saying on that issue was obvious, and I did
not really understand the views of those he was critiquing. Of course,
Philippians 2 is not about believers becoming incarnate, I thought, but
it is about believers imitating Christ’s attitude of service.
Billings' critique of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (there is a God we can call on when we are in need, but our main goal should be to be happy and nice, and good people go to heaven after death) was definitely worth the read. I was wondering to what extent that is my religion!
Great book!