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Interview with Frank Viola, part 1
By Mike Morrell

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This month kicks off a 3-part interview with Frank Viola about his new book release, God’s Ultimate Passion.

In it Frank maps Christian spirituality as seen in light of God’s “eternal purpose,” a Scripturally-rooted concept that gets surprisingly little airplay. The book unfolds three guiding images depicting the eternal purpose between God, humanity and creation: A Lover and a Bride, a House, and a Body/People. In Part One, we pick up with the Bride…

You obviously care a lot about the church’s identity as the Bride of Christ. This imagery is contained in some of the Medieval-to-Renaissance mystical writers, as well as in some streams of the charismatic movement today. How did you first become exposed to and intrigued by this bridal imagery?

A Bride for God’s Son is one element of the grand narrative of Scripture. And it’s one that has been highly neglected in our day. Yet it was a big emphasis for the early church fathers. The early fathers rightly understood the Bride to be a corporate entity. They understood her to be the ekklesia, the church, rather than the individual Christian. Later, during the Medieval period and beyond, the theme of the Bride came to be applied to the individual Christian. This, however, was a departure from the Biblical view. It is still with us today.

When I was 27 years old, I read a book by Watchman Nee called Holy and Without Blemish and it wrecked my life. To borrow a Biblical term, I “saw” the Bride of Christ by “revelation” for the first time. From that point on, I discovered that the bridal motif fills the pages of Scripture.

I was part of an organic house church when I read that book. And what was revealed to me inwardly by the Holy Spirit through Scripture, I saw with my own physical eyes. It became experiential. I discovered how the church, when she is free from human institutions and control, is a beautiful, free, and glorious woman in the eyes of God. I also came to realize that the Bride has an organic expression that is native to her spiritual DNA. And that expression is made visible when she is set free from organized religion.

My understanding of the Bride has also been enriched by romantic stories. I’m not much for reading novels, but I love fiction films, especially romance. They have played a part in my understanding of the Bride. I think God is the author of romance. All romantic stories in human history—the basic themes at least—are the echoes of the sacred romance that God Himself authored. So I draw on several romantic films in my book to help depict the love relationship between Christ and His church.

Obviously there is plenty in Scripture to fund our imaginations in this as well. In your book you draw from Adam and Eve, Rachel and Jacob, Isaac and Rebecca, the lovers in the Song of Songs, Paul’s allusions to the first marriage (Adam and Eve) and the overt bridal imagery throughout the New Testament. The overall effect is quite stunning: For some (certainly some in the post-Promise Keepers manly men’s movements!) this might come as a surprise, that this motif—or more still, archetypical spiritual reality—is so prevalent in the Bible. How does this way of seeing ourselves as “the Bride” affect us?

First, it forces us to discover that our God is a Romantic. Therefore, we cannot know Him fully theologically. We must also know Him romantically. Our Lord is a Lover, first and foremost. “God is Love,” says John. That said, the bridal theme fills the pages of Scripture, running consistently through it from Genesis to Revelation.

In my experience, understanding that we are part of the Bride of Christ causes us to enter into God’s passion, His heartbeat, and His central intention. The net is that we begin to really learn what it means to live “unto Him,” and not unto ourselves. But that living is one of love and freedom. Not duty, obligation, or guilt.

God, as it were, woos us to Himself as a lovesick bridegroom woos His beloved bride to himself. This is a neglected aspect of modern understandings of the gospel. But it is central to God’s revelation in Scripture.

In the fact, the public life of Jesus opens with a prophet introducing the heavenly Bridegroom to His beloved Bride (see John 3:29).

Second, one of the most astounding effects is that we come to know, discover, and experience the incredible passion that Jesus Christ has for us. And we begin to get a handle on what it means to see ourselves through His eyesight, which is very different from our own.

For me, there are few things so entrancing as to grasp how we look in the eyes of God. This not only affects our love for Him, but it also affects how we see and treat our fellow Christians.

I like what Andrew Jones said stuck out to him in his review of God’s Ultimate Passion: “God is concerned with more than just getting the job done.” There is a desire in God that can never be met by through study or service. Many contemporary Christians, however, are concerned with think the spiritual life is all about “getting the job done.” But God is after something for Himself . . . something for His heartbeat and for His purpose. This is where the bridal motif in Scripture helps us tremendously.

In short, the modern gospel message has been emptied of its romantic/passionate element. The first part of my book is a stab at seeking to restore it.

You begin this book with a bold claim: That God has an eternal purpose, and that we can know it. How can you be so sure?

I’m not interested in the philosophical debate over certainty, and if it can be attained. The debate over epistemology has raged for centuries by the most brilliant minds in this world, and it’s never been resolved. So I’ll rest content by answering your question with Paul’s vocabulary using words like “know,” “insight,” and “revelation,” and let our readers decide what they mean.

I’ll simply say that there is an eternal purpose that is founded and formed in Christ. When I write about that purpose, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. Very few people have spoken on it, and there is precious little literature that has been written about it. My hope is that what I’ve done in Ultimate Passion will ignite a renewed interested in the subject. I believe God’s Kingdom desperately needs this viewpoint.

In Ephesians and Colossians, Paul tells us that there was a mystery hid in God for ages. It is the mystery of His “eternal purpose.” And God elected Paul to “make known” that mystery to his readers. Paul also tells us that the whole of Scripture is the unfolding of that purpose, which I elaborate on in the book.

There is a great deal of talk about the Missio Dei today, God’s mission. I think this can be a healthy emphasis. But exactly what is that mission? I suggest it is none other than God’s eternal purpose.

To use Paul’s language, we can “know” and have “insight” into the mystery of God’s eternal purpose “by the spirit of wisdom and revelation.” That’s not a claim of full understanding, for the eternal purpose is too magnificent, glorious, and vast to be fully understood by mere mortals. Yet we can receive an ever-growing “insight” into it.

The mystery of God’s eternal purpose cannot be adequately defined nor systematically explained. For that reason, I’ve chosen to describe it in story-form through types, analogies, parables, and rich and colorful imagery. That’s the main purpose of my book – to introduce the mystery.

In Ephesians 1, Paul says “with spiritual insight, He has made known to us the mystery of His will.” But this isn’t some sort of spectator, armchair knowledge. We’re called to be participants in the mystery. And this isn’t merely some private mystical school; there is an active dimension to it, an outward as well as an inward aspect. Paul goes further and says that the mystery of God’s purpose is to be “made known” to principalities and powers by and through the church. It’s her very task to make it known to both visible and invisible realms.

This makes sense to me, and I would love to sit you and Walter Wink together in a room to talk about the “powers” and how God’s eternal purpose makes “an open shame” of them via the church, Christ’s bride. One statement that I’d like you to expand is when you say that compared to God’s eternal purpose “helping the poor” (among other things) pales in comparison to God’s eternal purpose. You elaborate by writing that you’ve “discovered that the intangibles are where reality lies.” Can you unpack this a bit? You aren’t saying that things like helping the poor aren’t important, are you?

Not at all. In the introduction of the book, I mention many things such as spiritual warfare, evangelism, signs and wonders, etc. along with helping the poor. I make the point that when I began to understand God’s eternal purpose, all of those things in themselves took a backseat. They suddenly became integrated pieces of something much larger.

I unfold all of this later in the book, but to summarize: I believe that all religious duties and obligations, no matter how good or noble, will lack spiritual and eternal value if they are not integrated into God’s supreme passion and purpose. A passion and purpose which is for God Himself.

Paul gives us some insight into this. In one of his letters, he says that a person can give all of his possessions to the poor and even become a martyr, and yet still not please the heart of God (1 Corinthians 13:1ff.). This is just one example of how service, no matter how beneficial to human needs, is not the supreme goal of the Christian life.

To my mind, our modern gospel is entirely centered on human needs. It’s aimed at God blessing and healing a fallen world. To be specific, it’s centered on saving man’s spirit (evangelism) and/or saving his body (healing, helping the poor and oppressed, etc.). In short, it’s “human centered” . . . focused on the needs of humanity, be they spiritual or physical needs.

My book challenges this thinking entirely. It argues that there is something greater than meeting the needs of mortals. There is a purpose in God and for God that was formed in Christ before the Fall ever occurred. The meeting of human needs is a by-product of that – a spontaneous outflow, if you will. It’s not the prime product.

One of the major points in my book is that God did not create humans in need of salvation. Go back to the creation project in Genesis 1 and 2, and you will discover that God’s purpose preceded the Fall. Here’s a question for consideration: What was God going to do with human beings if we had never fallen? That question is rarely asked today.

I suggest that God’s purpose has nothing to do with the Fall of creation. The eternal purpose preceded the Fall and wasn’t determined or altered by it.

To my mind, the beginning point of the Christian faith is to understand the big picture: What is God’s ultimate purpose? What is He really after? What was His original intention in creation and has He ever given it up?

I’ve been involved in movements that majored in evangelism, others that majored in social activism, and others that majored in spiritual gifts. All of those things were made “ends in themselves.” None of them were integrated into God’s ultimate purpose. In fact, “the eternal purpose” was never mentioned. The result was that those activities, though good and noble, failed to meet the beating heart of God.

Let me give an illustration to try to explain this. A general contractor purchases 20 acres of land by which to build a housing complex. After the houses are built, he wishes to have a landscape garden along the streets that run through the housing complex. This is his goal. So he hires someone to plant beautiful trees. He hires another to lay large rocks. He hires another to plant beautiful flowers. And he hires another to plant shrubs and bushes.

The person who plants the trees plants them randomly throughout the complex. The person who lays the rocks does the same. So does the person who plants the flowers and the person who plants the shrubs and bushes.

When the contractor observes what they have done, he’s very disappointed. His goal was a landscape garden. Instead, he sees that the flowers, rocks, trees, shrubs and bushes are all disconnected and scattered about haphazardly.

Is it good to plant trees? Yes. Is the planting of flowers a positive thing? Certainly. But these things “in themselves” were not the contractor’s goal. He wanted a landscape garden.

That describes the Kingdom of God today. Many good deeds, but a great disconnection from God’s ultimate goal.

What do you suppose the reason for this is? What have many Christians missed the greater purpose of God?

Part of the problem is that evangelicals have built their theology on Romans and Galatians (selectively). Many non-evangelicals have built it on the Gospels exclusively (focusing on certain elements of it). And for both groups, Ephesians and Colossians are but footnotes.

But what if we sought to begin, not with the needs of humans, but with the intent and purpose of God? What if we took as our point of departure, not the earth after the Fall, but the eternal activity in God Himself before the constraints of physical time?

In other words, what if we built our theology on Ephesians and Colossians and made Romans, Galatians, etc. footnotes? Why Ephesians and Colossians? Because Ephesians and Colossians give us the clearest look at Paul’s gospel with which Christ commissioned him. These two letters begin, not with the needs of post-Fall humans, but with God’s timeless purpose before creation.

I assert that if we did this, the Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament (let alone the entire Old Testament) would fall into a very different place for us. And the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ and His counterpart, the church, would dominate our understanding of everything physical and spiritual.

The Gospels are not the beginning point of the Christian faith. Neither is the Old Testament. Both give us the middle of the story. Ephesians, Colossians, and parts of the Gospel of John are the introduction and the opening chapters of this story. Those writings give us a glimpse into Christ before time and what His mission is all about. His life as portrayed in the Gospels must be understood against that backdrop.

The gospel that most of us heard is like watching Star Wars Episodes IV, V, and VI first (which is the way they came out in the cinema). But for us to really understand what’s going on, we have to begin at the right place, with Episodes I, II, and III.

Again, human beings did not come into this world in need of salvation. Saving souls, feeding the poor, and alleviating the suffering of humanity was not in God’s consideration in eternity past because the Fall had not yet occurred.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not against any of these things. On the contrary, I’m strongly for them. But God has a purpose … an “eternal” purpose … that humans were to fulfill before sin entered the scene. And He has never let go of it. Everything else is and should be related to it. That’s what my book seeks to unfold.

I like how you put this: “I want you to contemplate this desperate and ’lonely’ God of yours. Truthfully, God is perfectly adequate within Himself. But because God is love, He is not content to be adequate in Himself. For this reason, God the Son wanted someone upon which to pour out the love that coursed within His being—which is the very same love that the Father poured out upon Him. Thus the superabundance of God’s love required a receptacle that was not within the Trinity.” Why do you think that the Christian faith we see on TV, and hear in pulpits across America, seems so far removed from this centrally-motivating love?

Three reasons, I think.

First, Enlightenment thinking has stripped the gospel from its grandeur, mystery, wonder, and beauty. That would include the romantic elements of passionate love that exists within the Triune God. Post-enlightenment Christians have attempted to squeeze the gospel neatly into an Aristotelian system. But that approach has failed miserably, and it has evacuated the message of Christianity from its vibrant and colorful elements.

Second, many evangelicals have lost touch with the grand insights that the early church fathers had on the interchange (the perichoresis, or “dance of God,” as they called it) that went on within the Triune God before time. In their understanding the entire creation—including humanity—poured forth out of an eternal interchange and exchange of love and passion between the Father, Son, and Spirit. I seek to capture this insight using vivid, although admittedly imperfect, metaphorical language.

Third, with the rise of the Frontier evangelists of the 18th century, the whole of Scripture was reduced to one single motivation: the winning of lost souls. That eclipsed everything else. It’s going to take awhile for Christians to adjust their thinking on this point and to realize that God wants something more than simply the salvation of souls. Salvation is the beginning point; it’s not the goal. It’s a “means,” not an end.

The same is true for every other religious activity we may be engaged in, including the exercise of spiritual gifts and social justice. Again, I take nothing away from these things. But they are to be integrated in a living way to something much larger, God’s timeless purpose.

It seems that one of the places you see all of this really mattering is in our identity: “The Lord of creation has an exalted view of you, and it is higher than anything we can imagine…you are His bride, not His slave or His maid.” I love this. And yet it raises a practical question: How do we as the Church learn to hear God and walk in the good works prepared for us beyond a “servant” paradigm?

I address this question in my book; it’s rather involved. The short answer is that we humans are a storied people. We are all living by a story, whether we realize it or not. I assert that we’ve been given a wrong story to live out our lives. It’s a tired old story.

Ivan Illich brilliantly said, “Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into the future so that we can take the next step forward. If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.”

My book attempts to tell an alternative story, a “new story” rooted in the Bible. One part of this story is the story of the sacred romance that every Christian has been swept into.

It is the task of Christian ministry to tell the new story. By telling it and retelling it, God’s people will become detached from the tired old story. But telling the new story is not enough. Christian ministry is also responsible for equipping God’s people on how to enact the new story, repeat it to one another, and live it out together.

Let me share a piece of the new story to make this more concrete. The Bride of Christ possesses the very life of her Husband. Before the creation project, she was inside of Christ, but now He is inside of her as well.

It is one thing to try to be servants by our own human life. It’s quite another to learn to live by the indwelling life of our heavenly Bridegroom. In this way, service becomes something He does, not something we do.

I believe this is a missing note in a great deal of Christian teaching today. There’s a heavy focus on how Jesus “served” and there’s a strong emphasis on “imitating” that service. But that’s half the picture. Jesus Himself said that He could do nothing of Himself. There was another life that He was living by.

So how do we live and serve by Christ’s indwelling life, just as He lived and served by the Father’s indwelling life? That question must be explored. It shifts the issue from “what Jesus did” to “how did Jesus do it?” (I discuss this question in Will the Emerging Church Fully Emerge?)

The beauty of this question is that God did not change the way the Christian life is to be lived after Jesus left the earth. The New Testament repeats the point that we can live and serve the same way that Jesus did. He lived it as a human being indwelt by His Father and anointed by His Spirit. And we, together, live it exactly the same way. To unfold this in a practical way opens up an entirely new world for most Christians.

The WWJD “what would Jesus do” theology is not the gospel. It’s a poor echo of it and one that will land its practitioners into human pride or guilt-based failure.

On that point, let me insert a word about the Kingdom of God. There has been a lot of airplay given to the Kingdom of God today among emerging church folk. And rightly so. I applaud this emphasis very much, as the Kingdom is a central part of God’s eternal purpose. But it’s not the only part.

The Kingdom, as many conceive it, is the work of scattered individuals doing good works in the earth. In this model, the church is viewed as the place where these scattered individuals congregate to get motivated to do those good works.

I believe this is a flawed construct. If we make the Bride, the Body, the House, and the Family the core narrative of Scripture, as I believe they are, then we will understand the Kingdom in a new light.

In his seminal theological work, Theology for the Community of God, Stanley Grenz writes, “Despite the appropriateness of the Kingdom concept, alone it is insufficient to provide the integrative motif for theology . . . community is important as an integrative motif for theology not only because it fits with contemporary thinking, but more importantly because it is the central to the message of the Bible.” I would argue in favor of Grenz’ brilliant observation that God’s ultimate intent is wrapped up with the idea (and practice of) community.

In this light, the Kingdom becomes God’s rule experienced and expressed by a shared-life, counter-cultural community. That community is not an abstract concept. Neither is it a faceless “cyber” community (as much as the internet’s been good to all of us “outside-the-box” friends of Jesus!). It’s a physical, locatable, tangible, visible, visit-able local community of believers in a given place.

The Kingdom is the authority, the dominion, and the rule of God exercised by an entity called the local ekklesia, or gathering. The church, then, is a Kingdom community. She reflects the Kingdom and exercises its spiritual authority in every city where she exists. The church then becomes more than a meeting place. She becomes the very extension of the Triune God operating in the earth - the earthly community bearing the image of the heavenly Community. And this isn’t just her theology. It’s her experience.

I explore the relationship between the Kingdom and the church in the second section of the book, which I believe is the subject of our next interview.

It is indeed. Thanks for talking to us today, Frank, and I’ll see you in a month!

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Mike Morrell is a freelance writer and editor living with his wife, Jasmin in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is part of an intentional house church community and is an avid reader of comic books, church history, and current events. Mike spends altogether too much time maintaining zoecarnate.com, an alt.Christian cornucopia documenting roads to Jesus less traveled.

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