The Gift of the Self: A Theology and Liturgy for Living as a Generous Soul

By Matthew Harp

A preliminary cruciform theology using the metaphor of a gift as its thematic principle, this book is intended to articulate a foundation for a Christian theology centered around the concept of God’s Way of self-gift. Using the Cross of Christ as a starting point for a doctrine of God, The Gift of the Self utilizes insights from biblical studies, the sciences, and Open and Relational Theology to construct a Christian framework that is compatible with the life and death of Jesus Christ as fully revelatory of God’s Personhood. This book engages issues of systematic theology, metaphysics, and ethics in hopes to deconstruct and reconstruct a conceptualization of God’s character and power that is most consistent with the Cross, as well as a vision for the vocation of the community of faith. Finally, a seven-day liturgy thematized around generosity and the book’s primary topics is included so that the reader might become more spiritually formed around this fresh contextualization of the ancient Christian faith. As such, the underlying purpose of The Gift of the Self is to construct a plausible Christian worldview for a post-Christian context, rooted totally in the Way of Christ, as an alternative to some of the dominant forms of historic Christianity that do not take seriously the Cross’s critique of unilateral power and communal exclusivity. The author intends that embracing this worldview oriented by self-gift can help transform the Church from a power-seeking organization to a peace-seeking community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664240407

Matthew Harp

Matt lives and works in Akron, Ohio, with his wife, daughter, and cats. He is a barista by day and an aspiring theologian all the time. Having previously completed a graduate degree in theological studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Matt is now continuing graduate studies in Anabaptist theology at Northern Seminary. He enjoys reading, hiking, cooking, and obsessing about music and Nintendo games.

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Copyright © 2021 Matthew Harp.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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Unless marked otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-4038-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-4039-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-4040-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021914475

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/12/2021

Contents

Prologue

Part 1: God With Us

1 God is the Gift

2 A Divine Cosmology

3 The Life of the Age

Part 2: Us With Us

4 Loss and Faithfulness

5 A More Blessed Exchange

6 Better to Receive

7 Epilogue: The Name and the Way

A Liturgy For Living As a Generous Soul

for Jan, Mike, China, Paulie and many more —

you all taught me the full power of the gift

Prologue

A liturgy serves a purpose. To practice a liturgy is to practice an orientation, but the goal of this practice is to grow through the orientation into a new way of being. The eternal performance of a liturgy would demonstrate one’s failure to be transformed by practicing it. And yet, a liturgy ought not come to an end; rather, the old way of being ought to be enveloped, renewed, and reborn in the orientation of the liturgy. Thus, a liturgy grows with the one who is joined to its stream.

The liturgy described in these pages is one that I have tried to live by varying stages and degrees. My introduction to life as an orientation toward the gift was not exactly circumstantial, and certainly not formal; it was organic, wrought through relationships, loss, and repose. The concepts which play out over the course of this book are born from these experiences and reflections, admittedly expressed at an infant stage with much room for growth. My hope is that the reader will take these seeds and plant them in their own soil, and — taking the time to watch and water and nurture them — grow something beautiful and life-giving in their own communities. My belief is that where two or three are gathered for this purpose, God’s Spirit will be poured out to make grow the life and love of Jesus Christ in our midst.

This is why the liturgy that comes at the end of this book, not merely the information that is contained in this book, is necessary. Each chapter that follows will contain many of my own thoughts related to the topic at hand, but culminates through the liturgical act in a few points of contemplation or verbal repetition, designed to be taken up as a rhythm by the reader if they should see fit. The ultimate goal of this practice, of becoming oriented and re-oriented toward certain aspects of God’s nature that will be explored in what follows, is twofold: first, to truly believe, to trust that God is a particular kind of Giver before all else; and then, to see myself, my family, my community, my World as one who can actually become a similar kind of giver on the basis of that trust. Our theology will be nothing more than a droning cymbal if it does not become the engine of our ethics, and at the risk of playing my Barth card too early, the being of God With Us is tied up in the becoming of Us With Us.

The Scriptures referenced, the prayers enumerated, need not be set in stone. These threads, bound up in the great tapestry of the Christian tradition, are centered on God’s giving seen in the Person of Jesus Christ, which I take to be the clearest revelation of the character of God. Still, my hope is that the reader will use them as a springboard to adopt a listening posture, one that is malleable and fluid in relation to God’s Spirit. This is to say that, to properly respond to generosity, we must become flexible receivers. Anything less and the liturgy will devolve into a forensic formula.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Each reader should feel free to use the elements of the liturgy placed at the end of this book to their advantage of being properly formed by its content. I have somewhat strategically included seven topics around the theme of the gift as a format for embracing a weekly prayer and reading cycle, in which some readers may find a helpful day-to-day rhythm. Alternatively, other readers may prefer to work through each topic individually, deepening their understanding with regards to each theme before advancing to the next. There are many more possibilities apart from these suggestions; however, I would further counsel that one’s personal liturgical practice would be greatly enhanced if engaged in the context of several fellow generous souls. I hope that you will take the time to discuss whatever questions arise in your own context, asking how to best realize embodied and embedded applications of these theological reflections with trusted friends so that you may learn from the reflections of one another, as well.

Though it might not be entirely clear to some readers, I have attempted to arrange these topics in such a way that it communicates a systematic Christian worldview, but I have sought to avoid some of the jargon of systematic theology to bring a wider audience into the fold, to those who do not necessarily occupy the academy or the pulpit. Moreover, a great deal of the theology in this book is speculative, but this does not necessarily mean that it is unique. These ideas contain the DNA of many theologians and philosophers, preachers and scientists: in particular, I must mention the work of John Cobb, Jr., Ilia Delio, Elizabeth Johnson and Thomas J. Oord, all of whom cleared ground for me to consider afresh the God-World relationship; Tripp Fuller, whose extra-zesty Homebrewed Christianity podcast introduced me to some of the nuts and bolts of idealism and panpsychism, which (to the extent that I understand them) are hopefully a clear undercurrent in my worldview; Willie James Jennings and David Matzko-McCarthy, whose reflections on mutuality and kinship within the beloved community of Christ’s Body greatly aided to recenter my idea of ethics around generosity; and I would be remiss if I did not mention Gregory Boyd and Brian Zahnd, whose (literal) voices are my anchors to evangelical theology in an age when popular evangelicalism tends to have so little Christianity left in it.

A few friends I am also pleased to mention here are Eric McDonnell, Jr., Bryce Rings, and Jesse Scarcella, whose comments about and discussions concerning the following material were incredibly helpful in making my work more cohesive and approachable. Eric, in particular, took a great deal of his own time to offer invaluable insight at several points during my writing process; any praise that might be given to this book also partially belongs to him. (And also, a huge shout-out to Bryce for designing the cover!) Most influential, however, to this project are those names and the stories behind them which are mentioned in the endorsement. Without the relationships I have shared with some of the poor in my community, my mind may have grasped certain aspects of generosity, but my eyes and heart would have never been opened to be invaded by it.

If God is a Gift, then we are not customers in the Divine economy. God is not selling anything, but inviting us to transform our homes and our hearts from spaces of consumption to connection. In other words, God is calling us to become neighbors. But, who is my neighbor? This is the question that precedes the well-known Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37). I realized relatively recently that, in great rabbinic fashion, Jesus never answers the man’s question; instead, he questions the questioner, "which one of these was a neighbor?" In this response, Jesus asserts that a ‘neighbor’ is not a blunt fact of geographical or ideological proximity, but a choice to be the one who shows mercy to those in need of it. It is by this that we may discern that it is God Who has chosen, out of love and for all time, to be our Neighbor. In this same way, let us take courage and learn from God’s example, becoming those who would go and do likewise.

A Note on Scripture Translation

This book contains many direct quotations or paraphrases of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, as well as a myriad of biblical allusions that may or may not be cited. When quoting these sacred texts, I have endeavored to do my due diligence in representing them with the most up-to-date or accurate translations that are publicly available; my preferred English translation is the New Revised Standard Version, and thus any biblical quotation that does not cite its source in what follows comes from the NRSV. There are, however, a few cases in which I could not resist quoting other paraphrastic translations that I consumed in the nascent years of my faith formation, and these are always indicated in a footnote when used.

Moreover, there are several texts for which I humbly offer my own translation, particularly those that I explore at great length. The reasoning for this is not necessarily that the commercially available translations are inadequate, but because it allows me to illuminate some of the fluidity of the Hebrew and Greek and conform my own terminology accordingly. Wherever I have done this, I have been careful to briefly explain my reasoning for words or phrases rendered in ways that are generally not represented among other English translations. Having said this, I do not believe that the reader will find any of these texts to be significantly altered from those translations with which they are familiar, and I invite the reader to compare my translations with other English translations that are well accepted within the field of biblical studies. Traduttore, traditore (‘translator, traitor’), says the old Italian adage, but I hope the reader will trust that I put forward my translations in good faith, both with respect for the text and with admiration for the communities of faith that have faithfully passed them on to us.

"‘How much a dollar really cost?’

The question is detrimental, paralyzin’ my thoughts."

- Kendrick Lamar

Part One

God With Us

1

God is the Gift

L iturgy, it is my conviction, ought to orient us toward the identity of the God whom we hope to serve. Our English word ‘liturgy’ comes from the Greek word leitourgia , which could literally be understood as ‘work done for the common people,’ or more simply, ‘public service.’ However, in both the ancient Greek world and most contexts within our contemporary world, this word carries a clear religious connotation. The ‘service’ that is performed through a liturgy is ‘public’ because it is a service done not only for ourselves, but for the common good. In the ancient world, the work of the liturgy was usually seen as a public service because it was believed that this work secured the favor and protection of the gods for the community. This protective (or apotropaic , a word one can use in order to impress one’s friends) aspect of liturgy is not necessarily apparent in some modern contexts, as many people today recognize that divine favor is not contingent upon the performance of religious rites and services. However, the public function of liturgy is still at work when a community practices prayer, sings hymns, or recites religious confessions in a shared space or according to a shared calendar. What I tend to find most interesting is that, in all of these contexts, the content of the liturgy will reveal to the keen observer many different features of that community’s concept of the divine.

Despite at least several thousand years of recorded theological reflection in many divergent traditions, there are of course certain aspects of God’s identity which are still decidedly hidden from us. Among our 21st-century scholarly disciplines, it is the job of the physicists (astro-, quantum-, and other varieties in between) to tell us what God might be in relation to the World,¹ and perhaps the philosophers can help explain to us why God is (or is not) related to the World. These are questions worth pursuing, and we do well to listen to the advances in those fields where God’s World is scrutinized to the most minimal and maximal extremes; in fact, many of the insights in this book are the result of contemplation in regards to these disciplines. On the other hand, history cautions us that ‘answers’ in the field of God will probably always be theoretical to a significant degree. There may well be another Galileo, another Faraday, another Hegel, but my hunch is that God will slip just beyond the reach of their telescopes and microscopes and theses for eons to come.

You might be surprised to hear that in my Christian tradition, neither our Hebrew and Greek Scriptures nor academic religious expressions lay much claim to decisive answers to these inquiries. To be sure, there have been theories, but there is no real consensus as to how one should even approach the big questions. Do we begin by exploring God’s world (nature)? interpreting God’s words (scriptures)? or investigating God’s most immediate creatures (ourselves)? Many approaches abound, and to varying levels of success. I want to emphasize that all of these perspectives contribute to the theological study and personal piety of many people; yet, if we are seeking a definitive answer as to what, why, or how God is, the elusiveness of God continues to outrun our methods of investigation.

Thus, if by adopting a liturgy we are attempting to orient ourselves toward God — well, what is it we are aiming at? I would like to propose that the ancient Christian faith offers a possible solution to the problem of identifying what or why God is by asking one to instead consider who God is. Moreover, according to this tradition, the question of who God is has a definitive and even tangible answer: God is the one who is made manifest by the historical Jesus of Nazareth. This is the central, inciting mystery of the Christian tradition, and as such, the faithful profession of historic Christianity is that God’s identity is clearly and plainly seen in the person of Jesus Christ; whether or not we know exactly what this means, or how it came to be, we confess that Jesus intimately shows us who God is.

At the very least, this Christian story of the identity of God offers us a thought experiment: if the infinite Divine Life were to be expressed as a finite person, what would that person be like? How would one describe the characteristics of