Adoption and Resurrection

(So, I'm a bit late, but it's still technically the Easter season!)

What does adoption have to do with Easter?

Well in a very interesting passage tucked away at the very beginning of Romans, Paul connects the resurrection of Jesus to the idea of adoption.  The letter begins with this greeting:

"Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead..."

Paul associates the resurrection of Jesus with his "declaration as Son of God."  What does it mean to be "declared  to be a son" if not to be adopted?  So here we have the resurrection of Jesus associated with his attaining a new state of Sonship--not to say that he wasn't the Son of God eternally (I'm not promoting the ancient heresy of adoptionism), simply that upon his resurrection from the dead Jesus was Son in a  different, glorified, triumphant way.  Or as Richard Gaffin puts it, "the resurrection of Jesus is his adoption (as the second Adam)."

So when we are celebrating Easter, we are celebrating the triumphant declaration of Jesus Christ as the Son of God--once for all and in a superior, transcendent, consummative way, Jesus is claimed as God's triumphant Son, risen from the grave, forever and ever.

Interestingly, Paul returns to this idea later in Romans 8 when he connects the resurrection of the bodies of believers as the consummation of their adoption: "And not only the whole creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." (Rom 8:22)

Our adoption as sons and daughters of God is not complete until we share fully in the adoptive-resurrection of the Son of God, when we too are claimed--body and soul--to be God's own and claim our inheritance beyond the grave.  As sons of God, our future is secure in and shaped by the triumph of the Son of God who was declared to be Son by his resurrection from the dead.  He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

How Does God Change Us?

Right now on my sabbatical I'm working on drawing out some implications of adoption for the Christian life.  Specifically, I'm trying to write about how God changes us through adoption.

In 1936, the philosopher Etienne Gilson had some harsh words to say about Protestant theology:
"For the first time, with the Reformation, there appeared this conception of a grace that saves a man without changing him, of a justice that redeems corrupted nature without restoring it, of a Christ who pardons the sinner for self-inflicted wounds but does not heal them."

Ouch!  Is that true?  It's true that many people understand the doctrine of "justification by grace alone" to mean that since we are saved by faith and not by works, our salvation is wholly unrelated to the life we live.  What I'm trying to work through in my paper is how adoption helps address these misunderstandings.  Here's the working thesis:

"Because adoption is transformative as well as forensic, it provides an overarching soteriological concept in which both forensic justification and transformative sanctification are situated, united, and distinguished...
Once we draw adoption out of the long shadow of justification by acknowledging its inherent transformative aspects, we discover that adoption also helps us develop an account of the Christian life that is thoroughly Reformed, forensic, transformative, and covenantal while avoiding the problems inherent in metaphysical ontological construals of the Christian life.  Having done this we have all the tools necessary to develop not only a thoroughly Reformed account of the application of redemption, but also develop the contours of a covenantal ontology with greater clarity.  Thus, the doctrine of adoption offers a way through and beyond polarizing and polemical debates surrounding justification and transformation.  Adoption helps the Reformation say more clearly and more thoroughly what it had wanted to say all along."

The Words I've Been Looking For

Right now I'm working through a very interesting book by Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God's Family.  It's a unique book in that it stole my idea 10 years before I had it interweaves theological aspects of adoption with stories of the ups and downs of the adoption of orphans.  Of all the books I've read so far, this one most resonates with my own experience in our attempted Russian adoption.

Stevenson-Moessner brings to the forefront the various emotions of adoption: joy, expectation, anxiety, fear, fulfillment and grief.  Yes, grief.  Of course we experienced deep grief when the adoption ban passed, but it was very hard to explain to other people--we had no categories for this kind of loss ourselves, nor could we expect other people to have categories for it either.  How to name or process our grief?  After all, the boy we wanted to adopt was never "really ours," we had only spent a few days with him.  And he hadn't really died, he just wasn't coming to live with us.

Because he was "never ours" it was strange to try to own the loss that we felt.  How can you lose what you've never had?

Because he was still alive, it was strange to try to own the grief we felt.  It felt like he had died, but he was still alive (though was not facing a hopeful future).

The word in the adoption world is "failed adoption."  But we didn't feel like we failed.  We felt like we had done everything we were supposed to do.  It felt like our adoption had been taken from us.  It felt like a death.  It felt inappropriate and presumptuous to compare it to a miscarriage, because we hadn't experienced that kind of awful sadness, but that was the closest we could come to in terms of categorizing the deep dark sadness that enveloped us for much of 2013.

Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner speaks well to the precarious instabilities of adoption, and she employs a term that is helpful in thinking back over our experience.  She speaks of "miscarried adoptions":

"Much has been written about the grieving of birth mothers and adoptees.  One of my goals in this book is to document aspects of the grieving of adoptive parents...A miscarried adoption is the most difficult of all adoption experiences." (pg 53.)

Miscarried adoption.  That phrase helps categorize the sadness we felt, and what so many other prospective parents we came to know felt as well.  It helps name and make real the pain that we experienced.  And also good to be reminded of what we discovered in that experience: "For years I repeated the Apostles' Creed and never thought much about the phrase 'And he descended into hell.'  If you experience a failed adoption, you descend into hell...but remember that Christ descended into hell and is victor even over that." (pg 53-4)

More than Righteous, At Home

One of the great things the doctrine of adoption can do is expand our understanding of what God has done for us.  For Protestants, it is usually justification that is key to our understanding of salvation; that in Christ, God declares the guilty to be righteous.

This is wonderful as far as it goes, but an understanding of adoption helps us understand that God does more than just forgive us or declare us to be righteous. As good as that is, God goes further.

As Galatians 4:4-6 puts it, "When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son--born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons."

The "so that" is key--it shows that God's sending of Jesus, his redeeming us out from under the curse of the law, all that had a larger purpose.  The larger purpose is so that we might be adopted into his family.

So far one of my favorite books I've read on this topic has been Trevor Burke's Adopted into God's Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor.  Here's a great passage from that book:

"To be declared righteous at the bar of God is one thing; it is, however, quite another to be adopted into God's family and able to call him 'Abba, Father'.  Put another way, God does not only justify people and then leave them destitute with nowhere to go--he adopts them into the warmth and security of his household." (pg 25-26)

I wonder how many of us have reflected deeply on the implications of being able to call God "Abba Father," to be welcomed as members into the warmth and security of his household?  How would we live differently if we believed this to be true of us?

"You are my Son, with you I am well pleased..."

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record the baptism of Jesus, that moment when Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, and his messianic task is initiated. There is so much to say about this passage, and so much to wonder about this passage. In Matthew's account, the voice from heaven speaks about Jesus: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." The voice of the Father is addressed to those around witnessing the baptism.

Interestingly, in Mark and Luke's telling, the voice speaks not to the surrounding crowd, but to Jesus himself: "You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased." (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22).

What is going on here? One of the books I read for class (Michael Peppard's The Son of God in the Roman World) suggests that this is a kind of adoption, a kind of mimicking of the adoption-to-power of the Roman emperor (who, interestingly, was also known as "the son of God").  In other words, Mark is making clear to his Roman readers that Jesus--not Caesar--is the true Son of God.

But then, as Michael Peppard asks: "But if the voice is directed privately to Jesus, and Jesus already was the son of God, and already knew that he was, then why did the scene happen at all?" (pg 97).  It's a good question.

Well, I don't have a good answer to that question, but it reminded me of an provocative thought I heard a couple years back.  I was at a conference on children and divorce, and I heard Lisa Lickona suggest that all children need both to be both "begotten and chosen."

Or, to put it another way, all children need to be both born and adopted.  Birthed and chosen.  Given life and given love.  And so maybe part of what we are seeing here is God the Father doing to his only-begotten Son what all human fathers do (or should do) to their begotten children--not only have them, but choose them.  Adopt them.

Well, part of the reason the blog has been slow is that we've been preparing for the birth of our third child, and Liam was born on Wednesday morning.  So here he is:

My son, with him I am well-pleased.

Adoption Doesn't Mean Adoption

When we think of adoption today, we think of orphans.  People often adopt in order to help a child, place them in a home, provide them with love, family, and a future.  It's a wonderful, beautiful thing and I'm so glad that people adopt, and that it's a prominent thing in the church and in society.

That said, one of the things I've been somewhat surprised to learn as I have been studying the Pauline use of adoption is that when the Bible speaks of adoption, it's not talking about what we are talking about.  That's because adoption in Greco-Roman society was a completely different institution than our modern adoption model.  This is important to clarify if we are going to understand the Bible's message rightly--when the Bible talks about adoption it is NOT talking primarily about the welfare of children.

For one thing, in ancient society, most adoptees were adults, not children.  And the reason you were adopted was not because you were in need but because someone else needed you--to carry on the family name, to inherit and oversee the family estate.  As Michael Peppard puts it in his book The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in its Social and Political Context:

"Roman adoption was not for a child to gain a home of love and care but for an adult to gain an inheritance of wealth and status.  Stated another way, it was not enacted to stabilize the life of a child, but to stabilize the future of a father." (pg 60)  For that reason, a person (usually a grown man) would only be adopted after he had proven himself a trustworthy and reliable person.

Why does this matter?  Well, it matters because if we're going to understand the Bible, we need to understand it on its own terms.  Imagine if when we read about Noah's ark, we imagined a big modern-day cruise ship?  Or if everytime we read about a shepherd we imagined a huge New Zealand sheep ranch?  To understand what the Bible is and isn't saying, we need to understand...what the Bible is and isn't saying.

So what does this mean about adoption?  Does it mean that God isn't really our father?  That we aren't supposed to adopt children?  That we shouldn't see glimpses of the gospel in the beauty of an multiethnic adoptive family?  Nope.

Here's just a few implications:

It means that when Jesus came to rescue us, to redeem us for adoption as sons and daughters, we weren't adorable little cherubic children that would tug on anyone's heartstrings. No, we were slaves, Paul says.  We were rebels.  It wasn't that we were so cute and needy and had so much potential.  It was because God is so loving and faithful and powerful to redeem lost sinners.

It also means that our adoption in Christ is due to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth earned the right to his Father's inheritance by his life of perfect obedience and sacrifical death.  Jesus is the only one who earned his place as a Son of God, but by his grace we get to share in that too as we receive his Spirit--what Paul calls "the Spirit of adoption" (Romans 8:15).

So our adoption as sons and daughters of God isn't due to our being just so inherently lovable and needy.  It was and is due to the Faithful Son, Jesus Christ, who has proven himself a worthy heir of all the Father's riches, and who reclaims us from slavery so that we can become sons and daughters.  And through us, adopted sons and daughters, the Father's name, family, and glory are extended throughout the earth.

Huiothesia...(Gesundheit?)

In my last post I mentioned how the idea of adoption shows up very infrequently in the history of theology, far less frequently, than say, ideas like justification and redemption.  You might think, if no one has thought very much of adoption, then is it really such a big deal?

The first thing to say is that it was a big deal to Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament.  The second thing to say, strange as it sounds, is that he only uses the word 5 times.  Stay with me...

The word translated as "adoption" in (most of) our Bibles is a the Greek word "huiothesia," which is a compound of "huios" (son) and "tithemi" (to place or to set).  So the word adoption literally means "to set in the place of a son."  Now I said a moment ago that this word only occurs 5 times in the New Testament, and yet I also said a moment ago that it is still a very big deal.  How?

Well, the amount of times a word is used doesn't necessarily tell you how important it is: the way it is used tells you its significance.  And we find huiothesia being used at very important places in Paul's writings. For example,

When Paul is talking about God's eternal plan to save, way back into the mists of pretemporal eternity, before anything has been made, we find huiothesia: "even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.  In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will." (Ephesians 1:4-5)

When Paul is talking about the covenant God made with the people of Israel, which constitutes the basic foundation of the whole Old Testament, we find huiothesia: "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises."  (Romans 9:4)

When Paul is talking about salvation itself, the sending of Jesus to redeem us, we find huiothesia as the point of it all: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons." (Galatians 4:4-5)

When Paul is talking about the work of the Holy Spirit, he calls him the "Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba, Father!" (Romans 8:15)

When Paul is talking about the resurrection of the body at the end of time, we find huiothesia: "And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." (Romans 8:23)

So though Paul only uses huiothesia five times, he uses it at crucial moments: when discussing, the eternal plan of God, the outworking of that covenant in Israel and in Jesus, the work of the Spirit, and the consummation of redemption.  Those are huge topics, and the fact that Paul say fit to think about all of those concepts under the umbrella term of adoption means we ought to pay attention to the idea.  After all, it only explains creation, covenant, redemption, and consummation, that's all!

Not only that, adoption/huiothesia helps us understand the Trinity, because as Paul as shown, huiothesia is at the very heart of the plan of God the Father (who determined before time began to adopt us as sons (Eph 1), the work of the Son (who redeemed us for adoption, Gal 4) and the work of the Holy Spirit of adoption (Rom 8).  The whole Trinitarian character of God is described in terms of adoption.

And then of course, there are many other New Testament themes that adoption helps illuminate and make sense of: the whole notion of God as Father, the concept of our eternal inheritance, the church as the family of God, and on and on it goes.

No wonder JI Packer has said that you only understand Christianity as well as you understand adoption.