Just a short heads up today, that Daily Diaries will be a little hit or miss over the next week or, as I’ll be traveling for the holidays. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

Today’s Song: “Beginnings are Such Delicates Times” by Hans Zimmer, from the Dune: Part Two Soundtrack

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship:

Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship. An abstract Christology, a doctrinal system, a general religious knowledge on the subject of grace or on the forgiveness of sins, render discipleship superfluous, and in fact they positively exclude any idea of discipleship whatever, and are essentially inimical to the whole conception of following Christ. With an abstract idea it is possible to enter into a relation of formal knowledge, to become enthusiastic about it, and perhaps even to put it in practice; but it can never be followed in personal obedience. Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth which has a place for the Fatherhood of God, but omits Christ as the living Son. And a Christianity of that kind is nothing more or less than the end of discipleship.

Bonhoeffer is writing in the section that this is a small excerpt from about this truism: “Only those obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey.” By this, he is asserting that discipleship – the honest, whole-hearted following of Jesus – can only come about through a simultaneous commitment to accepting the call of Jesus, and living that call out in one’s life everyday. Discipleship can only be found at the intersection of belief and action, of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

I think this passage jumped out at me because it describes my own struggles with this kind of discipleship – I have the “head” stuff down really well, the abstract idea of belief, of right thought. Its the action where I struggle to put it into practice most often. Not from a lack of trying (and Bonhoeffer’s writings about Luther’s infamous Pecca fortier, sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo – “Sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still” – provides some hope here), but the struggle is very real. But, then, that’s discipleship, right? We see Peter and the others struggle again and again; just this morning, my daily Scripture reading took me through Mark 9 and 10, where the disciples three times fail to understand or accept Jesus’ prediction of his coming suffering. Thank goodness for grace – that is the central theme of Bonhoeffer, I’d say.

In Revelation, there is personal transformation. That is salvation. There’s politics and the crumbling of empires built on violence and greed. That is also salvation. There’s the disarming of evil and the cosmic triumph of life over death. And that, too, is salvation. But all this is part of one story about how Jesus saves the world. For John, none of these perspectives are at odds. Personal transformation, social justice, and cosmic healing are implications of a victory already won. The challenge is expanding our imagination wide enough to take it all in.

Jeremy Duncan in Upside Down Apocalypse: Grounding Revelation in the Gospel of Peace

This passage in Duncan’s book on Revelation jumped out at me because, for many progressive Christians, salvation is a difficult concept to conceptualize. A key tenet of this kind of Christianity is that humans are essentially good, if error-prone. Thus, constructing a soteriology – a theory of how and why we might need to be saved – is a fraught exercise. Combine this with the religious trauma of many progressives, brought about by an upbringing in the church that was so often centered on all the ways we are bad and wrong and deserving of hell, and you get a setting where the concept of salvation is unwelcome at best.

So, I like what Duncan does here, to expand the idea of what salvation can mean, pulling it out into three dimensions: personal, social, and universal. “Being saved” isn’t just about your own personal failings; its a communal project of reconciliation and rebirth, brought about through justice, mercy, and the setting right of past wrongs.

Today’s Song: “O Come O Come Emmanuel” by The Civil Wars