Interview with Frank Viola, pt 2
By Mike Morrell |
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 This month continues 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.
Morell: In this section you begin with a description of “a homeless God” embodied in the “Son of Man who has no place to lay his head.” Painting with really broad brushstrokes for those who haven’t read this section in God’s Ultimate Passion, can you trace God’s search for a place to call home across Scripture?
Viola: The story line is fascinating. In the Genesis project (Genesis 1 and 2), we are introduced to a very special garden and a very special tree. The garden is a joining-together of God’s space and man’s space. It’s the playground of God and humans, if you will. God and human beings are dwelling together. But . . . God is not dwelling in man. Not yet anyway.
The tree of life in the center of the garden contains God’s life, and man is beckoned to eat of it. The message is clear: God wishes to dwell, not only with human beings, but in them. After the Fall, God’s space and man’s space become disjointed and the Lord re-ignites His quest for a habitation within humanity.
This quest can be traced like an unbroken line from Genesis to Revelation. We see it in Jacob’s dream at Bethel, we see it in the tabernacle of Moses, we see it in the temple of Solomon, and we see it (most clearly) in the tabernacle of David. We also get glimpses of it in the Davidic psalms and in the enormous temple that Ezekiel saw in his vision. The theme of God’s quest for a house runs consistently through the Law, the prophets, and the wisdom writings.
When Jesus Christ enters the scene, the dwelling of God takes on human flesh. The house of God becomes incarnational. All of what was written in the Old Testament about God’s house finds its fulfillment in the Nazarene Carpenter.
But the story doesn’t end there. The theme of God’s quest for a house is traced throughout the entire New Testament until its glorious climax in Revelation 21 and 22, where the dwelling of God and the dwelling of humanity become one. That’s a brief snapshot. Part II of God’s Ultimate Passion traces this theme in great detail and ties it all together in a free-flowing narrative.
Morell: How do you feel that this quest has been settled today? How is it still unsettled?
Viola: It’s settled in this way. That God in Christ by the Holy Spirit dwells in every person who receives the Lord Jesus. But it’s unsettled in that God’s dwelling place is corporate, not individual.
To borrow Peter’s language, every Christian is a living stone. But God’s ultimate desire is not to have many living stones on the earth. He wants a house that is “built together” (to use Paul’s language) with those living stones in every locale. In short, the Lord is looking for authentic community among His people where He holds the place of absolute centrality and supremacy.
Today, there is a great emphasis on saving souls in evangelical Christianity. The idea that God’s ultimate purpose is to save as many people from hell as possible has wide currency. But God’s ultimate passion is a house, a corporate dwelling. A scattering of living stones that fills the planet will not meet His intention. It’s the building-together of those stones that God is after.
The other area where it’s not settled is in the area of visitation versus dwelling. Many Christians—particularly of charismatic, Pentecostal, and revivalistic varieties—have the idea that church is a place where God “visits.” I grew up in a movement where every service began with a pastoral prayer that invited God’s presence. The Christians in that movement spoke much about visitations from God.
But the Lord is not interested in being an invited guest. He doesn’t want to visit; He wants to dwell. And that means He wants to own His church. God is looking for more than being the guest of honor. He wants to make the decisions in His own house. I expound on this point quite a bit throughout the book, drawing practical examples.
Morrell: When did you first realize that God’s house was more than a house of worship one attends?
Viola: It happened a number of years after I left the institutional church, when I began to experience what the house of God was all about.
Before I left traditional church, I was fairly adept at “proof-texting” and reading the Bible topically. Living in Christian community, however, gave me an entirely new context by which to interpret Scripture.
The late Gregory Bateson used the following story to illustrate what goes on in the mind of a schizophrenic. A schizophrenic walks up and down the hall of a psychiatric facility. A doctor’s office is positioned down the hall. The door to the office is closed and a sign appears on the door which says, “Please knock.”
The schizophrenic reads the sign, knocks on the door, then walks off down the hall. He then comes back to the door, knocks on it, then walks off again. He does this repeatedly.
Finally, the doctor opens the door and says, “What do you want?” The schizophrenic replies, “Nothing, the sign told me to knock.”
What happened? According to Bateson, the schizophrenic had lost the context that gives language meaning. A person who doesn’t suffer from schizophrenia understands the implicit context to correctly interpret the sign on the door. The sign simply means that if one wishes to enter into the office, they should first knock and wait for a response. The schizophrenic, however, has lost this context. So he misinterprets the sign.
The meaning of any statement depends on the context in which that statement operates. The great majority of the New Testament was written to Christian communities that were experiencing Body life. That was the context in which the vast bulk of New Testament statements were made. The majority of the New Testament was not written to individuals.
Consequently, the many verses that we Christians like to quote don’t belong to us as individuals. They were addressed to Christian communities. They have very little individual application to you or me. They instead find application in Christian community.
Therefore, when one lives in that same context (authentic Christian community), many of the statements in the New Testament take on new meaning. The New Testament becomes a brand new book, and most all of what it says applies like never before. The reason: The context is now understood in a fresh way. This is my testimony regarding the house of God.
Morrell: You mention three Old Testament journeys – fleeing the city of bondage, leaving the city of religion and exiting the desert of waste. Could you explain?
In the Old Testament, Egypt speaks of the principalities and powers, the world system. Babylon speaks of organized religion. And the wilderness speaks of spiritual transition, among other things. (In the book, I explain how I derived this understanding.) All Christians have been delivered from Egypt. That’s what salvation did for us. But Egypt hasn’t left all Christians.
Many of God’s people are living in Babylon (organized religion). Finally, a great number of God’s people are living in the wilderness. They are in transition. They have a high vision of what God wants for His church, and they long to be a part of it. But they can’t seem to find an expression of it anywhere near where they live. So they are isolated and alone.
Most of my mail comes from people who have left organized religion and are now living in the wilderness. Their stories sound identical, so much so that I believe God is at work in our time in a special way. In the book, I discuss one’s options for all three locations.
Morrell: You believe that in God’s New Covenant inaugurated in Jesus, people can now access God anywhere, “in spirit and truth.” By your lights, in what sense is God “at home” in the entire cosmos, “Lord of heaven and earth,” and in what way does God still have specific places that are especially “home”?
Viola: One of the things I trace in the book is the phrase “the God of heaven and earth.” In the Old Testament, whenever God’s people were in the land of Canaan, they called God, “Lord of heaven and earth.” When they weren’t in the land, they called Him “the God of heaven.” There’s a tremendous spiritual principle here.
In short, whenever a group of Christians today are living in spiritual Canaan together – in authentic community under the practical headship of Jesus Christ, then God feels at home. And in a spiritual sense, His kingdom has come to that place.
Morrell: In one place in this section, you speak about Jesus and you write, “Earthly Jerusalem was not the Lord’s home. Whenever Jesus visited that city, He always left it before sundown and lodged in Bethany. Bethany was the closet thing to “home” for Him. He was welcomed, loved, and received there.” Can you expound on this?
Viola: When Jesus Christ was on this earth, He was rejected in all quarters. The town of Bethlehem rejected Him (there was no room to give Him a proper birth), His hometown of Nazareth rejected Him, His own siblings rejected Him, the Jews rejected Him, the Samaritans rejected Him, and the city of Jerusalem rejected Him.
But there was one exception. The only place on earth that received Jesus and made Him feel welcome was a little village called Bethany.
The Gospels present us with four encounters that Jesus had with this little town. The spiritual lessons bound up with those encounters hold tremendous significance for us today, and they lie at the heart of God’s quest for a home. This past May I wrote a little eBook that explores those four encounters in Bethany. It can be freely downloaded at www.ptmin.org/bethany.htm
Morrell: In a way what you seem to be advocating here is the practice of hospitality; not only to strangers and angels, but hospitality to God.
Viola: Absolutely. There is something in God’s heart that desires to live, not only among people, but in them corporately. In the book, I unfold what this means practically.
To my mind, there is a lot of talk today about authentic community. Not a few theologians have written about this subject. It seems to me, however, that one of the chief problems we have is that very few believers today are fleshing out the community life of the church. Especially in the West, Christians don’t understand what a shared-life in Christ looks like. We are so highly independent and individualistic that we use the word “community” rather flippantly.
I believe the Lord is urging His people to explore what community really means both ecclesiologically and practically. And this will require, in many cases, a change of lifestyle.
The good news is that wherever this exploration is happening among God’s people, and the price for community life is taking place, God is at home. And the words of Paul in Ephesians 2:21-22 become more than cold prose: “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”
FRANK VIOLA is one of the most influential figures in the contemporary house church movement. For the last twenty years, he has been gathering with organic house churches in the United States. Frank has written eight revolutionary books on radical church restoration, including Pagan Christianity, God’s Ultimate Passion, and The Untold Story of the New Testament Church. He is a nationally recognized expert on emerging trends for the church, and he is actively engaged in planting New Testament styled churches. Frank also holds conferences on the deeper Christian life which are designed to enrich the spiritual lives of God’s people. His Web site contains many free resources for those desiring to explore a more scriptural way of experiencing Christ and His church: www.frankviola.com
God’s Ultimate Passion can be ordered at www.ultimatepassion.org |
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