Students/Faculty Pledge for Study & Service

September 2009

Recently advanced Professor of New Testament Language and Literature Henry Baldwin addressed faculty, staff, students and many friends of Tyndale at this year's Annual Convoction.  This special service - begun as a new tradition in the life of Tyndale three years ago - is a time for the whole seminary family to focus and prepare themselves for the academic year just beginning. During the service faculty, staff and students each make a public pledge of commitment to the Lord, to their studies and to one another.  Dr. Baldwin's address, titled "Precariously Balanced Firmly in the Middle," took as its text Romans 12:1-5.  His address follows:

 

Precariously Balanced Firmly in the Middle

 

            It’s all about YOU!  That is, it’s all about US – I think.  John Calvin famously began his Institutes with the observation that whether we begin with man or God we shall very soon find ourselves discussing the other.  That is, as we encounter God in our Theology proper, we shall very soon be forced to consider our Anthropology.  The modern Christian psychologist David Benner describes it this way – there is a psycho-spiritual core at the very center of the human person.  It is there that we long for and encounter God. And thus it follows very naturally that, if the core is misshapen or damaged, thus our perception of God will be skewed. Our knowledge of God shapes and transforms the perception of our person; and it is through our person (as it is transformed) that we begin to perceive God rightly.

            Undoubtedly you came to Tyndale expecting to study, to contemplate upon and to learn more about the living God.  Yet that can only take place rightly as you study, and contemplate and learn more about yourself.  The process is not so much about the transfer of information as it is about the transformation of the person.

            Thus, as we begin a new academic year, as we have come together to dedicate ourselves to a task of great importance and eternal significance, I wish to present for your thinking this evening this message which I have titled: “Precariously Balanced Firmly in the Middle.”  It is indeed all about you, you who are precariously balanced firmly in the middle.

            Dr. Ashley Null, recently presented a series of lectures at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia. Dr. Null is Canon Theologian for the Episcopal Diocese of Western KS  (where in the world, you might say, is that?).  I found his remarks evocative.  He asked the theology students there to consider their anthropology and to reflect on the idea of the human person – or personhood. For most of human history, he said, and for most of the current cultures of the world, personhood has been conceived of in one of three ways:

• Personhood as the problem
• Personhood as my right to achieve
• Personhood as a gift to be received and given back to God

            First, personhood as the problem.  For those familiar with an Asian context, Buddhism – and to a lesser extent, Hinduism – will recognize personhood as the problem. It the person with it’s passions and desires, it’s bodily presence, even the existence of the self as an entity, distinct and identifiable, these are both a philosophical and religious difficulty to be overcome.  The goal is to eradicate the present incarnation of self by righteous actions so that self may be unified with – yes, disappear into - the great oneness.

            If personhood, individuality, is a philosophical problem, then this problem manifests itself in the everyday world. The collective group ought always to take precedence over the individual.  Collective goals and good are seen as the superior value to individual ones.  In the social setting the individual may even become nothing more than a nameless, expendable commodity.  Consider: in the Tai Ping Revolution of the 19^th C. twenty million souls were killed in China.  Yet such slaughter hardly registers on our radar sets. Among the masses of 700 million, what were a mere 20?  I would wager most of you here tonight have not even heard the name before.

            Yet the western world also has also had its vision of “personhood as a problem.” The great wave of Fascism which swept through 20^th C. Europe, suppressed the person as nothing more than a mere automaton, an asset, a resources for use and disposal by the State. How shall we number the millions who died as Fascism and Stalinist Communism ruthlessly ground the individual into conformity?  Personhood itself is the problem.

            At quite the other end of the scale is Personhood as a right.  The West from the time of the Greeks – but especially since the Enlightenment – has generally focused on personhood as a right to be achieved.  If the person, if Man, is the measure of all things, if all things are knowable and open to the investigation, discovery and assessment of the individual, then it follows that there is no higher value than cultivating and nurturing the human spirit.

            “Be all you can be, Baby.”  “It’s all about you – always.”  “Have it your way.” “Tell us what you think.” Society in its highest form is not what can be collectively achieved or believed or treasured.  It consists in ensuring that the rights of the individual are protected and exercised.  Morality ultimately does not consist in a code of conduct or a duty placed upon the person from the outside.  No, under this assessment, morality in its highest form is making sure that the individual is completely unhindered.  He or she must be allowed to actualize the self in any direction or manner that the individual deems good. Personhood is my right to achieve.

            Of course, as believers, neither of those visions on the one hand nor on the other is where Scripture teaches us to be.  Rather, we are precariously balanced firmly in the middle.  This middle ground is what Dr. Null calls Personhood as a gift. Just as our Creator God is revealed to us as three distinct persons in one indivisible essence, so too we are distinct, individual persons. To be a person is a gift from God, and to be like God.  It is not a problem to be eradicated.  This is liberating and powerful. Yet as Paul wrote the Galatians, our liberation is not then license to just go do whatever we like. Our personhood is a gift. What do I mean when I say that? I suppose that there are many ways in which that is true. Tonight let’s just look at two of them.

            First of all, you are God’s gift to the community. How can that be? If first I am a gift to someone else, doesn’t that pretty well eliminate me?  I remember my first theological studies at seminary. It was 1986. I had been in ministry for 10 years, but had never had a day’s formal training. I loved it. It was like drinking pure cream! I hung on the professors’ every word.  One day we were discussing Paul, and I asked Professor Dick Gaffin which was more important to Paul, the individual or the group.  “Yes,” he replied, “that’s the problem of the one and the many, isn’t it?”

            For Paul there couldn’t be the many without the one.  Several of his churches began with a single convert.  And yet God had gifted the one for the sake of the many. In Ephesians 4:25 Paul says we are members one of another. In the letter to the Romans he writes, “so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom 12.5).    Paul begins his lengthy discussion of gifts in 1 Corinthians reminding the church that gifts are not for the one who has them, for “the common good” (1 Cor 12.7).

            Further, it must be seen that you are the gift. Your life experience, your genetic make up, your culture, all that you are – under the hand of a sovereign God – all these things, taken together make up your person. This unique you is God’s gift to the Christian body of which you are a part. Personhood is a gift that God gives to the Body.

            But at the very same time we must remember that you are your gift to God. Your personhood can be considered a trust to be developed and nurtured

·        Spiritually

·        Intellectually

·        Physically

·        Socially

It is, after all,  your personhood – it’s you. And what you make of it – is up to you. You have come to seminary not only to study about God, but to develop yourself. The uniquely you is derived from a once glorious - but now completely fallen - race. Nuggets and gems of the former glory are everywhere within you, mixed with the dross and blight of sin. Therefore Paul writes to Timothy:

 

Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. (2 Timothy 2:20-21) 

 

Paul goes on to say in the same letter that this kind of cleansing isn’t just an accident. It won’t happen by osmosis.  “Rather,” he says, “train yourself for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7). The writer of the book of Hebrews echoes the same thought, “Strive,” he says, “strive ….. for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).  

            The biblical vision of the person not only includes the wiping away of impurity, it also includes the positive development of skills and gifts. In 2 Timothy Paul commands Timothy to “do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15-18).  Even for the great apostle, this meant hard, dedicated, intentional work. Look what Paul writes to the Corinthians:

 

Don't you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize.  So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing.  I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:24-27, NLT) 

 

            There is a sense in which - not only that you may choose to – but that you are obligated – “to be all you can be.” Is that not why you are here?  Isn’t the reason you came to Tyndale was to develop yourself – your mind, spirit, and with our new volleyball courts, yes, -  even your body - to the greatest extent that you can?  Reflect on this.  There will be a day, upon the Master’s return, when you will be able to offer him nothing more -  but nothing less - than the gift of yourself. Will you have squandered what he has given you in a hole in the ground, our will you have developed it fruitfully, faithfully?

            As I contemplated this part of my message, I pondered if I wasn’t being “too western” in saying that. Did not Paul say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20)? Did not our Lord say, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25)? Isn’t it the case, as the old Bible song says, “let there be more of Jesus and a lot less of me”? Isn’t Jesus the perfect example of a utterly selfless man? 

            At first sight it certainly seems so.  In Romans 15:3  Paul reminds us, “for Christ did not please himself.” And perhaps most powerfully of all we recall the kenosis passage of Philippians 2:  (Greek students, from kenos, empty)

 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:5-7)

 

            And yet, there is also evidence in Scripture that Jesus had a clear, personal agenda. He was on a course of development and accomplishment of his own mission, and he would allow nothing to dissuade or lead him astray. Listen to the  clarity of Jesus’ resolve: In Luke 12:49-50 Jesus said, "I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!  I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!”  Or think when that foreign woman was asking him to change his mission, what does Jesus say?  “He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’” 

            Now, how is it possible that Jesus held together these seemingly opposite things – on the one hand a complete denial of self, and on the other, a relentless commitment to achieving his personal agenda?  Perhaps where these apparently competing threads come together is in the concept of the divine will.  Hebrews 10:5 is often held to refer to the “eternal counsel” before the foundation of the world.  The plans of the Father to save the world, are adopted, willingly, totally, by the Son as his own agenda and his own plan.

 

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me;  in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.  Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.' (Hebrews 10:5-10)

 

            What then shall we do about these things? How are we to find our way, being precariously balanced firmly in the middle of these texts? It is far from easy.  Even true believers will disagree among themselves. Let me tell you a sea-story.

            After nine years of hard service in a foreign country, filled with languages often unintelligible to me, labouring day and night in weather fit for no northern European (although it was a place of exotic wonder and exquisite tropical beauty), I was ready to depart Singapore.  A dear Chinese colleague of mine invited me out to lunch and courageously and humbly gave me permission to offer him any final critique I might have.  He was a godly man, a self-denying man, a man doggedly committed to following Christ in the house churches and suffering of Asia.  Always under; always constrained; always limited by the narrow range of possibilities open to him – but faithful to the end. I could think of only one thing lacking.  I said to him, “Dear Brother, you must learn to let go, to empower others to develop as individuals, to become fully what God has created them uniquely to be.”  And after I waited a while I screwed up the courage to ask him – I was neither as courageous nor humble as he – “And what would your parting shot be to me?”  With very little hesitation he replied, “You must learn to be not quite so worried about self-actualization and achievement, accomplishing the goals you think God has given you.”  And there we have almost come full circle to where we began.

            Well, let’s see if I can summarize all this in three simple admonitions:

 

1. Resolve you will give your all, yourself, as a gift to God:

 

Romans 12.1 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

 

2. Plan and labor to perfect that gift as fully as you can with the strength that God supplies:

 

Romans 12:2a  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…”

 

3. Like Christ, daily seek to make God’s will your will:

 

Romans 12.2b “… that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

 

4. Focus your time and efforts in service for the sake of others in the community – and not for own glory:

 

Romans 12.3-5 “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.  For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”

 

May God’s grace be on us all as we seek to live for him this year.