Theological Journal – November 3 Craig Keen’s Theological Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer (Part 1)

 

If you’ve heard the term “theological interpretation of scripture” and wonder what it means or looks like, I submit Craig Keen’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (Part 1 below) as a prime specimen. You could read any number of books and articles on it (not necessarily a bad thing) but you’d do better to spend time immersing yourself in Keen’s work here (and in Part 2) until you discern the theological loom on which it is woven. Then you’ll understand theological interpretation.

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“Our Father”—no father at all, no God at all, nothing at all—without “the Son” who with you was humiliated his whole life long and above all on Golgotha in solidarity with other poor, oppressed, outcast sufferers of the world, never shaking off that solidarity, not on Holy Saturday, not on Easter Sunday . . . .

“. . . who art in heaven,” in mystery, outside our reach, sovereign in ways that shock, confuse, and tempt our understanding to offense, i.e., in weakness, in loneliness, in a manger and above all on a cross . . .

“. . . hallowed be thy name,” the name only you can and do utter, a name that will not yield to our lust to manage and control, a name that ruptures our word “God,” a name as wildly free as are you, as wildly free as is the Father of the abased Son . . . .

“. . . ; thy Kingdom come!” Shatter the unjust systems of this world, the ones that exalt the unrighteousness, the rich and powerful, and grind the faces of the poor . . . .”

“. . . thy will be done,” the will that is nothing but wild, boundless love, shockingly immersed with solidarity in the agony of the world’s suffering poor, tempting to offense those with standing in this present evil age . .

". . . on earth," not in Elysium or Valhalla, not in a proper heaven or a proper paradise, but the very earth from which Abel's blood still cries out, the earth into which a planter reaches her hands, from which new life springs, that earth out of which both the first Adam and the second Adam are scraped and into which the Spirit of God breathes . . . .