N.T. Wright and a Theology of Disease

Flickr/Jordon Cooper

By Beth Snodderly

One way to describe the overarching goal Dr. Winter had in mind for the Roberta Winter Institute (RWI) is, “To prompt the theological world to begin working on a ‘theology of disease.’” Admittedly this came to Dr. Winter’s mind as a crucial need due to his first wife’s fatal bout with cancer. Throughout those and the following years he reflected on the types of inadequate responses to disease that are prevalent in the evangelical world and concluded that this was an obstacle to the spread of the gospel among thinking people in major unreached blocs of the world’s peoples. After his wife’s death he founded the RWI to address these issues. These are some quotes from a compilation of his writings I put together several years ago:

The Roberta Winter Institute will try to upgrade our desire to bring glory to God by ending our apparently Neo-Platonist truce with Satan in the realm of all his ingenious and destructive works. Our global mission agencies, which already have to their credit the discovery of the nature of leprosy, will declare war on other sources of disease in addition to being helpfully kind to sick people and preaching resignation amidst suffering.

We need to rectify our understanding of a God who is not the author of the destructive violence in nature, including disease, and who has long sought our help in bringing His kingdom and His will on earth.          

To “destroy Satan’s works” (1 John 3:8) means to take it as part of our efforts, our mission, to glorify God to restore, with God's help, what Satan has distorted. Thus, you see the rationale for establishing the Roberta Winter Institute.

The primary focus of this new institute is public and mission awareness of the need for a new theological sensitivity for destroying the works of the devil.

Several years ago, I came across N.T. Wright’s work and noticed that in many of his writings he has come close to the perspective Dr. Winter was advocating.

Those who now belonged to Jesus’ people  … were thrust out … to fulfill Israel’s vocation on behalf of the world. (The New Testament and the People of God, p. 458)

[Messiah’s message] … compels the followers of Jesus, energized by the power of his Spirit, to go out into the world and make new creation happen, confident that as that work has already begun in Jesus’ resurrection, and will be completed when heaven and earth are united at last, so the signs of that completion can truly be brought to birth in changed lives and societies in the present time. (Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, pp. 145, 146)

The New Testament points to the ultimate future, to the promise of a world set free from evil altogether, and invites us to hold that in our minds and hearts so that we know where we’re going. We are to implement the achievement of Jesus and so to anticipate God’s eventual world. (Evil and the Justice of God, p. 104)

The Christian imagination … needs to be awakened, enlivened and pointed in the right direction. … Christians need to sense permission, from God and from one another, to exercise their imaginations in thinking ahead into God’s new world and into such fresh forms of worship and service as will model and embody aspects of it. We need to have this imagination energized, fed and nourished, so that it is lively and inventive, not sluggishly going around the small circles of a few ideas learned long ago. (Evil and the Justice of God, p. 126)

It seems to me that the Roberta Winter Institute is trying to do what Wright is calling for, attempting to awaken and enliven the Christian imagination to include this new form of service to bring glory to God. Once we acknowledge disease in the category of “evil” (rather than as “God’s will”) we can see the need to mobilize the body of Christ to seek to eradicate diseases as a means of anticipating “God’s eventual world.”

Ultimately, what Dr. Winter would have loved to see is someone like N.T. Wright publicly acknowledge efforts to eradicate disease as one of the signs of what the new creation will look like, and getting behind a scholarly movement to work toward a theology of disease.

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Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Advisory Board.

Choices: The Challenge of the Evil One

By Beth Snodderly

A Story to Illustrate Ralph Winter’s "12th Frontier of Perspective: The Challenge of the Evil One." 

Flickr/Steve

Once upon a time …
Well, actually, before our time began,
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit called for a very special meeting of the Heavenly Council. “We have decided to make a new kind of creature in our image,” the Trinity said. “And we want some of you angels to be their guardians and watch over them and help influence them to make wise choices. We are appointing Lucifer, the cherub closest to our glory, to be the ruler of the new world where these humans will live.”

A dialog between God and Lucifer might have gone like this:

God: We are taking a big risk in creating humans and putting you in charge of their world. But we think the risk is worth it because of the GREAT potential for GREAT LOVE. We want heaven’s rule to be freely chosen on earth.

Lucifer: I’m honored that you have chosen me above all the other angels, to be the ruler of these new creatures in my world. 

God: Well, you need to realize that they may not always choose to follow your leadership. They may rebel against you, or even try to harm you. We’ve already taken that risk in giving free choice to you angels.

Lucifer: Don’t worry. I won’t let them disobey. I’ll MAKE SURE that they follow my rules.

God: “The meek shall inherit the earth.” My kingdom is not ruled by force.

Lucifer: You made ME the prince and ruler of the earth. Now it is MY kingdom and I’ll do things MY way. I’ll KILL OFF anyone who doesn’t want to do what I say. In fact, I, the cherub closest to your glory, will expect my humans to worship ME.”

God (sadly): “You were the seal of perfection
          Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
          …You were on the holy mountain of God.
          You walked amidst the fiery stones.
          You were blameless in your ways
          From the day you were created—
          Until wickedness was found in you.”

Then there was WAR in heaven.

“Michael and his angels had to fight the dragon.” “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

“How you are fallen from heaven, day star, son of the dawn; you are cast down to the earth.”

As for the earth, after Michael and his angels got done battling with Satan and his angels, the earth was a mess. It was tohu wabohu. You can read in Genesis 1 how God went about refashioning the earth to make a place where humans could live—because he still intended to create those humans.  

But you might think that now God had a problem. How was heaven’s rule going to be freely chosen on earth when the ruler of the earth had already rebelled against heaven’s rule? Now the whole world was lying in the power of the evil one. And God couldn’t just take back the rulership he had given Satan. That would be to go back on his word. That would be to deny God’s own trustworthy character.

But God had a plan.

God always finds a way to overcome evil with good.
God always knows how he will respond to every possible choice that angels or humans could make.

God planned to work through humans who would choose whom they would serve. In a way they would be voting for who their ruler should be—Satan, or God. 

In his wisdom, God knew that humans would not be able to resist the wiles of the devil without supernatural help. And they needed Someone who would show them what God’s will looks like on earth. Someone who is wise and good and loving. And Someone who would be willing to take the risk of being rejected by the very people he was trying to help. Since no one else in heaven was willing to take that risk, God himself had to make the choice to risk being betrayed and killed.

And sure enough, God the Son was the victim of violence. He was the Lamb who was slaughtered. But we are called to have faith in the God who has faith in himself. The Lamb was willing to be slain, from the foundation of the earth. Because he knew that God’s power is greater than death. He knew that death would not be able to hold onto him. And that was God’s peacemaking way of defeating the enemy. 

“And the God of peace — will soon crush Satan under YOUR feet.” Because he has brought us out of darkness into the Kingdom of his beloved Son.

Dearly beloved, If God so loved us, we ought to choose to love — one another.
We can choose to be a display window of what God’s will looks like — on earth.

Beth Snodderly is President of William Carey International University and holds the degree of Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in New Testament from the University of South Africa.

Epic, by John Eldredge - A Review

Editor’s Note: This book review was originally published in the Summer 2006 issue of the International Journal of Frontier Missions.

From the author of Wild At Heart comes this Epic: The Story God is Telling, a small book, which, like Brian McLaren’s [The Secret Message of Jesus], is very logically structured. In addition to the important Prologue and Epilogue it tells the story, the epic, of the entire universe in four “Acts.”

In the 16-page Prologue he insists that we must see the overall story, “the larger story,” if we want to understand the sub-plots.

Act One is where all is good and beautiful.

Act Two is the entrance of evil in the form of fallen angels. (Which, my guess is, at the moment in history when predatory life first appeared in the Cambrian era.)

Something happened before our moment on the stage. Before mankind came the angels. . . . This universe is inhabited by other beings . . . Most people do not live as though the Story has a Villain, and that makes life very confusing . . . I am staggered by the level of naiveté that most people live with regarding evil. (pp. 30, 39)

He now quotes a famous passage from C. S. Lewis,

One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death, disease, and sin . . . Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees . . . this is a universe at war. (p. 40)

Act Three is where, he says, the Biblical story begins in Genesis 1:1, after angelic powers went wrong.

This act begins in “darkness . . . is still under way, and we are caught up in it. A love story, set in the midst of a life-and- death battle.” (p. 72)

Act Four gestures toward the final future in a brilliant, eloquent, imaginative flight of fancy which frowns on all human guesses of the grandeur of the future. He says playfully:

I’ve heard innumerable times that “we shall worship God forever.” That “we shall sing one glorious hymn after another, forever and ever, amen” It sounds like hell to me. (p. 80)

The Epilogue is a significant part of the book. He says,

First, things are not what they seem. . . . the unseen world (the rest of reality) is more weighty and more real and more dangerous than the part of reality we can see.

Second, we are at war. . . . We must take this battle seriously. This is no child’s game. This is war . . . a battle for the human heart.

Third, you have a crucial role to play. . . . We must find our courage and rise up to recover our hearts and fight for the hearts of others. (p. 102)

Here we see talk of war. But, strangely, it does not speak of a war against a Dark Power and his works, but a rescue operation for human hearts. That is certainly a basic part of it, but to liberate the French from the Nazi yoke the dark evil of Hitler had to be eliminated first.

““Most people don’t live as though the Story has a Villain, and that makes life very confusing.” ”

Here is a thought: theoretically if every soul on earth were finally born again we would still face a ravaged creation, riddled with violence (in nature) and disease. And God would continue to be blamed for all this evil—unless Christians were finally identifying it with Satan. However, that is precisely why this “thought” is purely theoretical: we CAN’T win everyone without destroying the works of the Devil in that very process. As long as hundreds of millions of mission-field Christians have eyes running with pus and incipient blindness, as long as such horrors are blamed on God (for the lack of a Satan), WE ARE NOT GOING TO WIN MANY MORE PEOPLE. And, all those hundreds of millions of rural people and uneducated people we have recently won are eventually going to lose their faith just as they have in Europe and much of America. We are not winning very many educated people.

We must, it seems to me, accept it as our true mission to fight these horrors in the name of Christ. That is essential if we are to glorify God in all the earth, and that glorification is the basis on which we invite people to accept God as their Father in Heaven—and recruit them to help fight this war.

Both of these two books [Epic and The Secret Message of Jesus] brilliantly describe the restless pew. One of them actually speaks of war, not so much against evil as a rescue operation of humanity.

Thousands of writers and pastors are puzzling over the essential question of what a believer does as a Christian besides being religious and decent and active in (small) good deeds.

Is there something wrong with the DNA of American Evangelical congregations? Many leaders today are suggesting that we need new church pioneers with ideas so different that the very word “church” may not be ideal.

Both authors here are discontent with “normal” church life in America and in one way or another are groping toward something vitally different.

These two book writers, plus myself, plus a whole host of other restless, relentlessly inquiring Christian leaders today are aware that Evangelicals have never in any country of the world grown as prominent in national affairs, have never more closely approximated the culture of those outside of the church, and have never generated in reaction such a profound phobia of religious people taking over the country (witness the avid attention given to the Da Vinci Code book and movie which so skillfully throws doubt on the validity of the entire Christian tradition).

Here we see an outcry for something more, something different, something more serious. I believe what is lacking is a clearer idea of evil and what to do about it. 

When God Doesn’t Make Sense

Flickr/West Midlands Police

In this essay, Ralph D. Winter poses a chilling scenario: A couple comes home late one night. All their lights are on, the doors stand open, police search the premises.

"Terrible things have happened," he writes. "The drawers are pulled out, cupboards are emptied, dishes smashed, even carpets pulled up. The whole place is an incredible mess. And the police turn angrily to the returning couple. 'We got a 911 call that something was wrong in your house. We have been here a half hour and we are overcome with puzzlement and fury. We have never seen a house so poorly kept.' They turn to the wife, 'What kind of a housekeeper are you anyway?'"

It seems preposterous. But Winter says this is exactly what we do when we attribute to God the works of Satan. "It seems ominously clear that the Adversary has greatly succeeded in not only concealing his own existence but in persuading us to think God is the author of all evil."

Who is Addressing Root Causes of the Biggest Human Problems?

This old tree is laying here due to the coastal erosion occurring all round this area. Gurnard near Cowes, England, United Kingdom

By Brian Lowther

Speaking in organizational terms, the Roberta Winter Institute receives oversight from William Carey International University. This is a very beneficial arrangement to the RWI as our goals fit hand-and-glove with their goals. The University’s mission statement is: preparing men and women to discover and address the roots of human problems around the world. Given that one of the biggest human problems is disease, our key aim could be stated as a specific outworking of WCIU’s: Inspiring faith based initiatives to address the roots of disease. 

This idea of getting to the problem at the roots is profound and essential. It comes quite obviously from horticulture. Some plants, especially some weeds, will never die unless you dig out their roots and utterly destroy them. You can cut them off at the surface time after time, but they just keep coming back. But when the root is exposed and removed from the soil, the weed is gone.

There are also medical connotations. In medicine, it's easy to understand the difference between treating symptoms and curing a medical condition. When you're in pain because you've broken your wrist, you want the pain to go away as quickly as possible. But painkillers won't make your wrist better. True healing is needed before the symptoms disappear for good.

Colloquial examples abound - one I like is the case of being so busy mopping up the floor that you can’t turn off the spigot.

In this entry I’d like to explore which theologically motivated organizations are addressing the roots of the five biggest problems facing mankind today.  By exposing just how little is being done to address the roots of disease, I trust  you’ll see the rationale for the RWI’s existence.

I’ve based my list on Rick Warren’s Five Giants: 

1. Poverty
2. Illiteracy
3. Corrupt Governments
4. Spiritual Darkness
5. Disease

1. Poverty

Here is an ambitious partnership between ten Christian anti-poverty organizations 

2. Illiteracy

• Literacy Evangelism International
• Joni and Friends Christian Literacy Program

3. Corrupt Governments

This is largely a governmental concern (as evidenced by this list of organizations), but here are a few expressly Christian examples:

• Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in West Africa
• Christian Workers Movement from Central India
• Bond Anti-Corruption Group (see Christianity Today article here)
• Inter-faith Anti-Corruption Advisory Committee

4. Spiritual Darkness

Rather than list a few good examples, I’ll simply ask, what church, denomination or mission organization is not focused on addressing the roots of spiritual darkness?

5. Disease

While Christians through the ages are noted for being kind to people who are already sick, helping them get well, defending them against aggressive pathogens, we are not well known for attempting to eradicate those pathogens themselves. The World Health Organization is known for that. The Carter Center is known for that. Increasingly Bill Gates is becoming known for that. But if we in the body of Christ don’t take a very public, top-to-bottom stance against disease at its roots, both in our theology and in our practical efforts, people will continue to assume that God intended and created the diseases that terrorize us, and by association, many other forms of evil that can’t be attributed to sinful human behavior. Is that really the kind of God we represent when we go out to win people to Christ, his son?