Christianity's internal tensions..

OK - bear with me here. This is a historical rather than a theological point.

It seems to me that in the history of Christianity a number of tensions exist that never seem to be decisively resolved (in historical terms). Now, I must emphasise that highlighting these tensions isn't to say I don't have positions on each of these.


1. aestheticism vs iconoclasm

2. hedonism vs asceticism

3. universal vs local church

4. rationality vs experientiality

5. celebration of marriage vs celebration of virginity

6. optimistic vs pessimistic views of sanctification

7. free will vs bondage of the will

The Sin of Impiety

What disturbed the pagans about the Christians?

That in itself is a tricky historical question. But, broadly speaking, the first Christians stood accused of impiety. That word or its opposite is actually used often in the martyr-acts in the interrogation of the suspects, and despite the Christians protesting that in fact they were dutiful citizens in good standing with everybody, they could not go forward and sacrifice to the Emperor in order to maintain the peace. That is to say, their lack of worshipful regard for the spirits that were held to be the guarantors of social order and agricultural fruitfulness caused their neighbours no end of worry. Tertullian famously wrote (in Apologeticum 40): "If the Tiber rises so high it floods the walls, or the Nile so low it doesn't flood the fields, if the earth opens, or the heavens don't, if there is famine, if there is plague, instantly the howl goes up, "The Christians to the lion!" What, all of them? to a single lion?" Ha ha. Christians were labelled atheists because of their impiety.

I have mentioned Jeffrey Stout's definition of piety before:

Piety ... is not to be understood primarily as a felling, expressed in acts of devotion, but rather as a virtue, a morally excellent aspect of character. It consists in just or appropriate response to the sources of one's existence and progress through life. Family, political community, the natural world, and God are all said to be sources on which we depend, sources to be acknowledged appropriately.

We need to forget the use of piety in its strictly religious sense. In Stout's sense, there remains today a properly social piety: that 'just or appropriate response to the sources of one's existence and progress'. These may be entirely material: so, the nostrums of liberal order - free speech, rights, freedom of/from religion, equality and so on, need to be treated with due regard. They can even be sung about. It is interesting that 'good luck' or 'fate' still looms large in contemporary vision of piety, since whatever good fortune we enjoy is a result of the turn of the wheel in our favour. And so, modern culture is replete with sacrifices to fortune - in the form of gambling and divinisation; and also defences erected against the arbitrary turns of the wheel (life insurance anyone?). Also, the almost sacred regard family enjoys, even today, comes unexpectedly to those who continually rail against its demise. Environmentalism (rightly) appeals to piety in this sense.

Is it fair to say that Christians stand once again accused of impiety: for we give scant regard to 'luck', or ought not to. More importantly perhaps, we with other religious people threaten the fragile and hard won peace of our communities by bringing our beliefs to the table. Or, by becoming another special interest lobby group we cut ourselves off from our community and the duties of membership in it. We deny the absoluteness of family ties (or ought to); we shockingly tell young people that they ought not to pursue material goals or pleasure as their priority. By suggesting that all religions are not the same we again stand accused of threatening the social order, of inflaming 'religious hatred' or whatever...

Eliot the conservative, continued...

Critic Donald Davie wrote of Eliot:

...when it came to deciding what Christian sect he should join, it was of the utmost importance to him that he choose what should seem to be not a sect at all but a national norm, its normality shown in that it was backed by the secular and institutional forces of the nation-state.' (Davie, Eliot in His Time, p. 186)

What a strange thing to be said of the author of Murder in the Cathedral! Thomas is depicted as unable to accept this kind of version of Christianity (as I read it, anyhow), because it so badly domesticates Christianity... This version of Christianity's role in society owes more I think to Kant and his idea of 'religion' than it does to authentic Christianity. For his part of course Nietzche couldn't see this normality of Christianity; but then, as some have argued, Nietzche understood Christianity in its true genius better than almost anyone...

Roger Scruton on establishment

As a real live intelligent conservative, Roger Scruton supports the establishment of the church. That is, from a social and political point of view he sees great benefit in church-establishment for the country as a cohesive and visionary institution. The existence of a prominent established religion helps to maintain the social bond, he argues.

This only functions well insofaras the Church 'attends to the consoling myths which have drawn people to it'. As the church falls prey to secular causes - as he puts it, becoming 'a sanctimonious addendum to Gay Power' - then its authority is lost. That is: it must be true to its own mission and identity - alien though it may seem - if it is to maintain its position at the heart of the nations political authority. Society needs the church, he argues, in order to bring order and sense to the great passing moments of birth, marriage and death. Secularisation brings only confusion, 'a thousand irrelevant creeds'. Established religion also serves to protect the nation from the violence of fanaticism, and from the 'Manichean idiocy' so prevalent in California.

Scruton offers a great temptation to the church then, from the point of view of society. Society needs the church to perform a function that society is unable to do on its own. Will the church perform this role? The great danger would be for the church to imagine itself as the chaplain of social cohesion, just as it is a great danger for the church to imagine itself as persistently taking a revolutionary attitude to society and the state.

Mark D Thompson on the future of church...

Some great stuff from me learned colleague:

We never want to return to the strict formality and artificiality which characterised at least some Christian gatherings in the past. Gathering with God’s people must mean taking each other seriously as well as the opportunities for service that arise when we are together. The critical difference between ‘church’ and our own private prayer and Bible reading is that we are together, ‘in the fellowship of his people’. And that fellowship must have a sense of reality about it. Precisely for this reason the work of ministry has ‘building each other up’ as a proper concern. But in our rush to address the imbalances of the past and to work together for the good of the body, it is at least theoretically possible to ignore that this happens as we meet with, or better, are met by God in his word. Church is not just a study group or a training centre. Church is a gathering around the powerful, confronting and encouraging address of the living God. Recapturing this sense of the significance of our gatherings might actually prove to be an important part of getting on with the mission.

'nuff said.

Professionalism vs Amateurism in Church: a Third Way?

In church on Sunday the PA was not turned on as the pastor stood up to welcome us AGAIN. It happens every week: and we kind of laugh it off. After all, church is a voluntary society, and we couldn't possibily criticise; people are not professionals, and are offering their time for no payment, and presumably are doing their best etc. We bumble through. (It's a very English way to be!)

You may be able to tell that I am increasingly frustrated with this. And my immediate response is to say 'we need a more professional (American) attitude!'. But then I caught myself: is this word what we want? Do we want 'professionalism?' The production of our church services would be cleaner and tighter and less distracting...after all.

But I don't think 'professional' is right either, and I think we need to expunge all talk of professionalism from our midst! It sends the wrong message. What we need is: nuture of our gifts, and a determination to give the people of God nothing but the best you can possibily do for the sheer love of them and God. What we need is a taking seriously of the need to nuture and perfect and practice our gifts as a way of honouring them as God-given for the purpose of up-building his church.

Searching for the way to say it...

Two questions of finding the write theological language confront me as I write:

1 - I keep wanting to say 'God' and 'human' as if they are opposites, but it strikes me that this isn't as simple as it looks. So, for example when I write -

Christian martyrdom is an act of God, not of human beings

- isn't this a false dichotomy because of Jesus Christ, who makes possible a kind of divine-human act? Isn't the opposition more between divine and non-divine? Is that the right language?

2 - I keep going to write 'the Church' out of habit - meaning 'the Church visible', as in -

the Church must always remember what the particular task for which they carry divine authority is.

- only as a Protestant I am not sure that this is meaningful language. Can I really talk about the visible church as a unity that can act, think, decide, live in this way? Isn't it more accurate - and more biblical - to speak of 'churches' when talking of the people of God under this aspect, and reserve 'the Church' for the final eschatological gathering?

Canon and on

In recent discussions I have had here in Oxford the issue of the development of the canon has loomed large. Post-liberalism tends to agree with Roman Catholicism that the canon is the creation of the church, or is even a practice of the church. Quotes aren't arguments, but, here are three that caught my eye:

The idea that the Bible should rule the church is not poplar today, when leading scholars in the fields are immersed in their own mythology of cultural relativity, but it is a concept which would have seemed perfectly in order to all the Fathers of the church. Gerald Bray, Creeds, Councils and Chirst, p.52

The apostolic succession of the Church must mean that it is guided by the Canon, that is, by the prophetic and apostolic word as the necessary rule of every word that is valid in the Church. K.Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.1, p.104

…the theological issues related to the historical development of the canon may appear rather perplexing to biblical scholars and theologians who would not want to conclude that the biblical canon is a creation of the church. E. Schnabel, "History, theology and the biblical canon: an introduction to basic issues" in Themelios 20:2, 1995, 16.

Luther on the wheat and the tares

My recent fixation on ecclesiology, authority and Protestantism comes about partly because of the post-liberal and Radical Orthodox turns to ecclesiology. Time for some words from Luther to add to my Calvin posts!

Luther was able to point to the corruption of the papacy as a counter-testimony to its own assertion of its holiness. It was a proud and not a humble curia. It failed to see the church as a repenting church, as the listening as well as the preaching church, as the waiting as well as the declaring church. We must quickly add of course that the church of Clement VII was not the only compromised ecclesia in history. Luther’s sermon on the parable of the wheat and the tares (Mt 13:24-30) is his riposte: the visible church on earth is not the eschatologically purified church; rather there it is taught by even Christ himself that true and false will be side by side in it:

…we are not to think that only true Christians and the pure doctrine of God are to dwell upon the earth; but that there must be also false Christians and heretics in order that the true Christians may be approved.

Ecclesiastical triumphalism ought always to be curtailed by the impurity of the visible church; and by recognition that the eschatological identity of the church is as yet still greatly concealed. Must the church then ignore untruth? Luther preaches strongly against the use of judicial violence against false teachers and heretics. The only right means by which the church may be cleansed is by the power of the Word:

We have to do here with God's Word alone; for in this matter he who errs today may find the truth tomorrow. Who knows when the Word of God may touch his heart? But if he be burned at the stake, or otherwise destroyed, it is thereby assured that he can never find the truth; and thus the Word of God is snatched from him, and he must be lost, who otherwise might have been saved.

It is not a matter of restraint, but of conviction: the possibility of the turning of the heretic under the power of the Word of God is always maintained, in contrast to the rather final method of the Inquisitor.

The scattered gathering

Augustine in The City of God writes:

Scripture tells us that Cain founded a city, whereas Abel, as a pilgrim, did not found one. For the City of the saints is up above, although it produces citizens here below, and in their persons the City is on pilgrimage until the time of its kingdom comes. At the time it will assemble all those citizens as they rise again in their bodies; and they will be given the promised kingdom, where with their Prince, ‘the king of ages’, they will reign, world without end. (XV.1)

The church is an eschatologically gathered polis, in other words. In the book of Acts, the scattering of the disciples - because of persecution - is the impetus for mission. It parallels the scattering of the peoples in the early chapters of Genesis. In this way, the church ought not to exalt in its earthly structures as if these are in some way more than replicas or shadows of the eschatological reality in which it really has its existence. The church ought not to seek to foreshorten the eschatological gap between present experience and the promise that lies ahead. It ought not to proclaim the end of its pilgrimage, or that in coming to one place on the globe it has finally arrived at its destination, its promised land, its Jerusalem. It ought not to imagine that whatever unity it can construct here on earth is the definitive eschatological unity that will one day be realised. In fact, the organisational unity of churches may be a hinderance to the real unity and fellowship of Christians.

Admittedly, Augustine may not have taken this thought in this direction. For him, the impressive historical reality and success of the church was a very strong apologetic for its message...

Rahner on doctrinal boundaries

In the light of the Anglican Communion's drawing of a line in the doctrinal/ethical sand - well, kind of - I was interested to read this from our old friend Karl Rahner:

...a church cannot be a church if it would never have the courage to declare something anathema, if it could tolerate absolutely everything and anything as an equally justified opinion among Christians. (p. 382 Foundations of Christian Faith)

However: has there ever been such a church? Even the ultra-liberal revisionists have anathemas. They are forced to show where and who they would definitely exclude in order to meet precisely this criteria.

Immediately we have to ask about specifics. What are the core and basic truths? What are the negotiables? Rahner won't admit, as he goes on, that the dogmatic propositions of the faith are so easily detatchable from one another. They have a structure, which may be dislocated if even a small part is changed.

Authority again

I have been invited by a Catholic priest and theologian acquaintance of mine to discuss the ARCIC document The Gift of Authority. The document says:

The meaning of the revealed Gospel of God is fully understood only within the Church. God’s revelation has been entrusted to a community. The Church cannot properly be described as an aggregate of individual believers, nor can its faith be considered the sum of the beliefs held by individuals. Believers are together the people of faith because they are incorporated by baptism into a community which receives the canonical Scriptures as the authentic Word of God; they receive faith within this community. The faith of the community precedes the faith of the individual. So, though one person’s journey of faith may begin with individual reading of Scripture, it cannot remain there. Individualistic interpretation of the Scriptures is not attuned to the reading of the text within the life of the Church and is incompatible with the nature of the authority of the revealed Word of God (cf. 2 Pet 1.20-21). Word of God and Church of God cannot be put asunder.

Can we assent to this really and maintain a Reformation understanding of the authority of scripture? It sounds to me as if this is paving the way for the authority of the Church to interpret scripture ...

'Within Tradition, the Scriptures...'

Within Tradition the Scriptures occupy a unique and normative place and belong to what has been given once for all. As the written witness to God’s "Yes" they require the Church constantly to measure its teaching, preaching and action against them. "Since the Scriptures are the uniquely inspired witness to divine revelation, the Church’s expression of that revelation must be tested by its consonance with Scripture" (Authority in the Church: Elucidation, 2). Through the Scriptures God’s revelation is made present and transmitted in the life of the Church. The "Yes" of God is recognised in and through the "Amen" of the Church which receives the authentic revelation of God. By receiving certain texts as true witnesses to divine revelation, the Church identified its Holy Scriptures. It regards this corpus alone as the inspired Word of God written and, as such, uniquely authoritative.

(From 'The Gift of Authority' Anglican-Roman Catholc International Commission, 1999)

Am I happy with this? Are the scriptures 'within Tradition', or is that somehow not enough? I do appreciate the statement about the uniqueness and inspiration of the Scriptures...

One Faith – JI Packer and Thomas C. Oden

Evangelicals seem to be great squabblers. They divide over all sorts of issues: from creationism to the millennium and all the bits in between, it seems. The word “evangelical” itself seems particularly rubbery, implying “fundamentalism” to some, “charismatic” to others, referring to a liturgical style at one point or to a right-wing social programme at another. It can appear that to be an evangelical is to live in a lonely world. What I mean is: there just aren’t that many amillennial paedobaptist four-point Calvinist theistic-evolutionist episcopalian congregationalist non-charismatic complementarians out there...[and if you are out there, could you please give me a call?]

The thesis of One Faith-the Evangelical Consensus by J.I. Packer and Thomas C. Oden is that a comparison of statements of faith from across the evangelical world in fact reveals a remarkable consensus of belief. The evangelical movement, much derided in some quarters as an aberration or a dinosaur, is in fact a growing cohesive global entity. The creeds compared show that this unity is founded on an orthodox doctrine of God in three persons, and on the evangelical distinctives of the authority of scripture, the necessity of the atoning blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, justification by grace through faith alone, the work of the holy spirit in conversion and the hope of Christ’s return.

After an interesting introduction, the bulk of the book is a list of creeds garnered from evangelical organizations world-wide and compared on various topics. It isn’t exactly a scintillating read, I have to say, and never quite rises to the dizzying heights its editors promise. The worth of the book is more as a reference with an essay attached. Disappointingly, while doctrinal statements from Canada, Belgium, Japan and South America are used, not one Australian statement made it into the lists. Left off again!

The listing of the extracts from the statements offers, however, heart-warming evidence that evangelicalism is a vibrant world-wide movement with a remarkable consensus of belief shared by its adherents - despite denominational, national, linguistic and other differences. Our theological views cannot be dismissed as eccentric, novel or aberrant; in fact, they are biblically and historically grounded and intellectually robust.

The section on “the People of God” reveals very little on church order and sacraments – it is characteristic of evangelicalism that matters ecclesiological are held to be second-order. The evidence presented in this book proves that evangelicals have always sought to work across denominational boundaries and are still seeking to do so without waiting for merely bureaucratic solutions. Here is indeed a true ecumenism. I was encouraged to remember that true agreement on the great truths of the faith is widespread.

However, I wonder whether the book concealed some of the deep differences among evangelicals, too. While the section on scripture contained some very strong affirmations of the authority and inerrancy of the Bible it is clear that this is worked out in vastly different ways among people who would own the name “evangelical”. Evangelical scholars need to continue to work hard at clarifying their doctrine of scripture. The section on “the Last Things”, also papered over some very wide cracks...

Rahner on Sola Fide

Rahner makes a virtuoso attempt to outline a Catholic ecclesiology that has a place for the Reformation as a movement within Catholicism. Interestingly, he goes to the Reformation solas and tries to show how, in fact, these were and are true Catholic teachings.

About Sola Fide he says:

'...the act of response to God's grace which alone gives salvation is not a work, but rather, in Pauline terms, it is faith. The Catholic doctrine is that this faith is not merely a dogmatic theory, that this faith must be based interiorly on a hope in the pure grace of God, and that this faith must be interiorly illuminated and fulfilled by what Holy Scripture calls love, calls justifying and sanctifying love. Basically an Evangelical Christian cannot raise any objections against this...' p. 361

Well, wait a minute! Perhaps not an objection, more a quibble: I do think he has clarified helpfully that faith does not equal 'some knowledge believed' (which causes such great confusion). I just don't understand what love is doing there: what can he possibly mean by this love that justifies/sanctifies? What texts is he refering to? Isn't this just a way of sneaking works back in there (in a semi-Pelagian move)?

Of course the Catholic church may decide it agreed with the Reformation all along on this, but unless it becomes the 'article on which the church stands or falls' (Luther), there is still a large difference.

Rahner on Church...

We are looking at Rahner as the counterpoint to Calvin on the church. Here's what he has to say:

If, then, there are very many Christians today who basically regard the different ecclesial communities as equally legitimate churches, this relativistic opinion in ecclesiology presupposes either that the church of Jesus Christ as he willed it does not exist at all, or that in spite of divisions among Christians it exists to such an extent that it does not really have to be brought about. Basically, then, all ecumenical efforts and endeavours for a single church would be superfluous to begin with, or ecumenical endeavours only strive for an additional unity which ultimatley would have nothing to do with the essential unity of the church which already exists. Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 353-4

To which I say, 'well, yes...!' If by unity, he means a kind of organisational or heirarchical unity, which is no unity at all unless there is a single mindedness of course...

Calvin on leaving a church

No doubt in Calvin's time they didn't have the phenomena of church-hopping. However, lest we think he has a merely functional view of the visible church, he says:

...However it may be, where the preaching of the gospel is reverently heard and the sacraments are not neglected there for the time being no deceitful or ambiguous form of the church is seen; and no one is permitted to spurn its authority, flout its warnings, resist its counsels, or make light of its chastisements - much less to desert it and break its unity. For the Lord esteems the communion of his church so highly that he counts as a traitor and apostate from Christianity anyone who arrogantly leaves any Christian society, provided it cherishes the true ministry of Word and sacraments. He so esteems the authority of the church that when it is violated he believes his own diminished. (Institutes IV.1.10)

Arrogantly is the key adverb (ok I admit it, I wrote adjective the first time!), isn't it?

Is Calvin guilty of individualism?

I have begun attending a Systematic Theology Reading Group at the university chaired by Dr Philip Endean SJ on Calvin's Ecclesiology. Fascinating to dialogue with a Rahner scholar about Calvin! The accusation against Calvin was aired last week that he was an individualist: on the basis that his ecclesiology is the end of his system rather than the beginning of it, and that he calls the church the 'external means or aims by which God invites us into the society of Christ and holds us therein'.

I think this accusation misses a crucial distinction in Calvin's thought between the visible and the invisible Church. The visible church granted he treats as a means to an end, and it does not loom large in his system. The emphasis on inward faith rather than outward formal church attendance or membership or ritual does lead to an emphasis on the individual believer. However, the people of God united with Christ most certainly do feature in Calvin. Calvin's believer is by faith called into membership of the invisible and eschatological family of God in Christ Jesus. The true church itself belongs to the realm of faith: 'just as we must believe therefore that the former church is invisible to us [ie, the heavenly church] is visible to the eyes of God alone, so we are commanded to revere and keep communion with the latter [ie the visible earthly church], which is called 'church' in respect to men'...

The visible church, though, has still a role: Calvin is not docetic about this. The visible church is aptly entitled 'mother'. He says: '...there is no othr way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breats, and lastly unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels...Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from he school until we have been pupils all our lives.'

The squares of course with the utter seriousness with which Calvin took the business - the discipline and ceremonies and government and teaching - of the earthly church.

At the crossroads...

The Church and its members stand at the crossroads between times, as it were; and the complete pattern of progress on the journey is not visible to it. And yet there is a sense in which the journey is already over, and the Church has come to its heavenly home.

In his poem “Burnt Norton” Eliot writes (with strong allusion to the incarnation and passion) ‘only through time time is conquered’. Is ‘conquered’ the best theological verb to use? The incarnation of the Logos in time offers time to a divine experiencing of it. Time, and its sinister twin, Death, were not avoided by him by transcended in him. If they are ‘conquered’ by him it is not because they are denied by him but rather because they are experienced by him. Both remain, but their negative affects are attenuated.

As von Balthasar (reading Augustine) says, temporality as it stands ‘is an absence of the creature from unified eternity’ – which means death. It is not possible to grasp eternity in time: even Augustine’s impressive inventory of his memory does not lead him unambiguously to that condition. It is only by obedience, and in ‘acceptance of the renunciation which is imposed upon him’ that the journeying Christian and the pilgrim Church can experience that indwelling of the eternal in the temporal.