Robert Capon died yesterday.
For those who are unfamiliar with who he was, Capon was an author, theologian, food critic, and Episcopal priest who is often quoted on this blog. Capon was, in the words of my friend David Zahl, “an unwavering advocate for grace in its most radical and Christocentric expression.” For every head-scratching page that Capon wrote, he would write a mind-blowingly insightful one. Some of the best paragraphs I’ve ever read on grace come from Capon. He, no doubt, held some wild ideas. So, as with anyone, you have to chew off the meat and spit out the bones. But it’s worth it.
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As a way to pay small tribute to Capon, I’m posting some of my favorite paragraphs that he wrote taken from some of his many books. They are so good that I included a few of them in One Way Love.
From Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus:
For those who are unfamiliar with who he was, Capon was an author, theologian, food critic, and Episcopal priest who is often quoted on this blog. Capon was, in the words of my friend David Zahl, “an unwavering advocate for grace in its most radical and Christocentric expression.” For every head-scratching page that Capon wrote, he would write a mind-blowingly insightful one. Some of the best paragraphs I’ve ever read on grace come from Capon. He, no doubt, held some wild ideas. So, as with anyone, you have to chew off the meat and spit out the bones. But it’s worth it.
...
As a way to pay small tribute to Capon, I’m posting some of my favorite paragraphs that he wrote taken from some of his many books. They are so good that I included a few of them in One Way Love.
From Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus:
What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion.
Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle to the Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever finally succeed (see the Epistle to the Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade. The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.
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