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)