Re-thinking the term “propositional revelation” or, What Broughton Knox Really Said.

The use of particular terminology in any given field is meant to clarify rather than obscure. Terms are only useful as far as they communicate accurately the concepts they signify. When, owing to shifts in culture or context, terminology becomes confusing, it should be abandoned or replaced. I don’t think any theologian would dispute that this is especially true in theological discourse.

I have noticed for some time now a confusion with the term “propositional revelation”, a term strongly associated with DB Knox (who defended it in a 1960 RTR article) and in common use amongst Sydney Anglicans. I wish to argue that this term badly distorts the doctrine of scripture that Sydney Anglicans actually uphold in practice – such that our critics and some of our students have entirely misunderstood what was meant by the original use of the term. It is time for us to revisit our use of this terminology, and I shall argue, abandon it. It is no longer communicating even what Dr Knox mean by it, as an examination of his 1960 article will show.

The word “propositional” has, of course, strong overtones of logical positivism. The logical positivists were a mid-twentieth century philosophical school associated with the early Wittgenstein, AJ Ayer and Karl Popper; and in very brief summary, they were interested to uncover from language the basic propositions and concepts, stripping away the formal and affective shell in which the nut of meaning was carried. Language, for all that it might be conveyed in poetic or narrative form, was reducible down to the simple propositions contained within it. What was needed was a systematic reduction of human knowledge to logical and scientific foundations: its basic propositions, in other words. With the passing of time, the logical positivists have faded from view and their approach discredited (rightly or wrongly), such that the application of the term “positivism” has the ring of the perjorative about it.

When applied to the idea of scriptural revelation, then, the term “propositional revelation” is understood by some to mean that the narrative or poetic or epistolary form of scripture is irrelevant to the actual meaning that it contains. These matters of genre or structure are merely the wrapping of the content of revelation which needs to be stripped away. In this understanding, “propositions” indicate something like “axioms”, or bare statements of literal fact.

We see this understanding of “propositional revelation” in Archbishop Peter Carnley’s recent book; and in Rev Humphrey Southern’s (appalling - over 20 plain errors of fact!) article in Theology 107/836. As he understands – from his interviews with Sydney Anglican leaders - Sydney theology
…starts with a small handful of propositions that are entirely axiomatic and shape with inevitable logic the whole of what follows. Fundamental to this theological method is the understanding that truth – theological truth as much as scientific – can only be expressed in terms of intellectual propositions. Neither narrative nor metaphor nor allegory can convey truth, though they can illustrate it or illuminate it. (p.120)
As Southern sees it, this leads to a distorted and unbalanced reading of scripture:
…The method also involves strict selectivity in how it allocates authority to Scripture. It is not merely that it affords greater authority to some passages over others, or some biblical writers over others, because of preference: it is the selectivity that says the parables of Jesus, because they are narrative and metaporical or allegorical, are inherently less capable of informing doctrine than propositions that may (however tendentiously) be drawn from some Pauline writings. (p.122)

This sadly reductionistic and emaciated understanding of scripture was nowhere taught to me in my studies at Moore College and is not now; nor do I see it (often) in practice in the pulpits of our churches. However, one increasing danger of the use of the term is that not only our critics but also our students – especially those of a scientific or pragmatic bent – will adopt it, thinking this is what the Sydney doctrine of revelation means for interpreting scripture. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is at least occasionally the case.

However, reading the 1960 article of DB Knox, it is obvious that this reductionistic meaning of the term is not what he meant. The article, written in Dr Knox’s clipped, almost terse, style, addresses then-fashionable idea that revelation is an event, and that the scripture merely witness verbally to the revealing event. The Scriptures, according the view Knox is contrasting with his own, are not the word of God but are reflections on the deeds of God in which he reveals himself. Not so, asserts Knox; revelation is propositional: that is, to say, to do with words and the concepts they express. He writes:
The denial of “propositional revelation” is the denial that God reveals himself to men through the medium of words, that is to say, through meaningful statements and concepts expressed in words, for such is the only sense that can be given to the word “propositional” in this phrase. (The Collected Works of DB Knox 1.308).
Words written meaningfully are, of course, propositions. (CW of DBK 1.309)

“Propositional” Knox defines broadly. In order to explain what he means by “propositional revelation”, Knox does not apply a kind of reductive exegesis, distilling unambiguous statements from all kinds of texts: rather he points to the texts themselves including the form in which they appear as propositional, because they are meaningfully verbal. For example:
One of the most important revelations through vision is Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man in Daniel 7. Both the vision itself, and the vital interpretation of it, cannot be described otherwise than as “propositional revelation.” (CW of DBK 1.311)

Knox did not want to tie the idea of inspiration too closely to the exact words on the page in the manner of the Qu’ran. Somehow, the concepts of scripture are translatable from one language into another, and yet still remain revelational. But Knox did not mean that the narrative or poetic form of the text was therefore merely a shell to be discarded in favour of the kernel of truth contain within it. My (I believe realised!) fear is that, though that is not what Knox or his followers mean by “propositional revelation”, it is what is being understood by it.
Knox’s article is admittedly modest, and it is more than forty years old. It addressed a particular controversy in theological discourse. A full-blown monograph on the Doctrine of Revelation now exists, written by PF Jensen. It continues the use of the term “propositional revelation”, but clearly does not mean by it what the critics (and some followers) assume it means. As he explains on p.87ff, “Christian revelation is basically verbal”, in that it conveys both relationship and information. In no way is this idea intended to surpass the affective or aesthetic dimension in the texts of scripture, as is borne out in the rest of the book.

So: do I have an alternative terminology to suggest? I am attracted to “verbal revelation”. However, the criticism of this suggestion is that it is not the words themselves but what they say that is the locus of the divine speech, so that the words of God may indeed be translated from one medium, form or language into another. I would respond that these translated forms – whether sermon, commentary or ESV – are only secondarily or derivatively the word of God. Something will always be lost in translation.

Perhaps there doesn’t need to be a replacement term: perhaps what this discussion reveals is that a simple word has obscured something that actually needs many words to explain accurately. In that instance, it is all the more urgent that we find out and then say what we mean by “the Bible is the word of God”.

Imitating Christ again

Imitation of others is inescapable; though it puts a question mark against our human ability to self-describe our own individuality. The tendency in public discourse to simultaneously construct and deconstruct exemplars ('I want to be like Mike') is evidence of the way in which imitation has become a problematic mode of the ethical discourse - I mean the cult of celebrity! (Do we like Paris Hilton or not?) The casting of social outsiders as human ideals seems likewise evidence of a deep confusion about human virtue.

As we have seen, the Pauline imitatio Christi (mediated via an imitatio Pauli) offers a very different account of how imitation might work. Of course, the object of imitation (Jesus Christ) is, for Paul, unsurpassable, even un-imitatable. But he becomes the empowering source for those who are ‘in him’ by means of his death. The cross becomes the symbolic and actual centre of Paul’s call to imitate Christ – it provides both the means and the form for such a human life. Imitation of Christ is not then about finding an identity, but rather about enacting it. However, as evidenced by what I have identified as the need for phronesis – which Paul himself displays in his mediation of Christ’s example - the imitation of Christ does not reduce all identities to the one same identity, but rather liberates the individual to be herself.

The content of this imitative practice consists, not in acts of self-assertion (as in the secular account), nor in a retreat into contemplation (as in the mystical tradition), but rather in a willingness to bear with a variety of negative possibilities for the sake of the other and the edification of the church community in an attitude of patient endurance. The imitation of Christ (as Paul reads it) turns the believer toward the other believer, for his or her sake, whatever the cost. It is, in the true sense, the passionate life.

Doctrine: a rationale?

Why do we need to do doctrine? What does it add, except for confusion?
In my personal experience Doctrine, or Theology, as a subject has had rather a bad rap in evangelical circles. Few people at college put it as their favourite subject (though I could be wrong); and the majority of time we spend in study is usually allocated to Biblical Studies; we rarely preach on doctrinal issues. There is an understandable reluctance to move what seems to be one step away from the clear text of the Bible itself.
Why is this the case? I have three suggestions:

§ The problem of systems
We may rightly be wary of letting a constructed theological system or tradition override the text. We have all seen Biblical texts squeezed out of shape in order to make them fit a theological presupposition. Roman Catholic dogmas about Mary’s perpetual virginity are one example we may cite, where the most likely meaning of the gospels is that Jesus had brothers; yet the Roman Catholic system, with a prior commitment to Mary’s perpetual virginity will not allow this reading. [I, for one, think that Limited Atonement is exactly this kind of teaching.]

§ the plain meaning of the text
Theology might be seen as a way of subduing or domesticating the text of Scripture - of putting it in its place under or alongside a more important source of doctrine, such as Reason, Tradition or Experience. Or it may be that one text, or theological idea is allowed to condition all the others. In current church debates about women’s ministry for example, the principle of gospel equality is held to override texts that ascribe different roles.

§ A commitment to an empirical method
Further, there is rightly enough a commitment to the epistemological empiricism of our Anglo-Saxon heritage. Simply put, we tend to see that the answer to any theological question can be found by listing the biblical data, perhaps leavened with some historical background. On the other hand, without explicit Biblical data, we become suspicious that we are engaging in speculation.
Personally, I think that Biblical scholars have been part of the problem here, with the greatest of respect. They drag their heels when it comes to theology - from both the conservative and the liberal end. [What are you doing, guys and girls?] We need to release the bible from its captivity to biblical scholars, actually...

so: why we should "do" doctrine:

i. because we all have a “theology” whether we like it or not - so better an informed and reflective one than not.
There is no reading of the Bible that does not already rest on theological assumptions. Doctrine enables us to test these assumptions honestly. It is frankly dishonest to claim that we can do without theological reflection. “Just reading the Bible” is a myth!

ii. because it is an evangelical necessity: the ancient gospel is being preached in new situations and so requires fresh and faithful re-articulation in every generation.
In particular, the demands of our time are enormous and require responsible and creative work.

iii. because it helps to inoculate the church against false teaching.
Doctrine is our “defence against the dark arts.” After all, the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim the principle of “Scripture alone”. We need an understanding of doctrine in order to tell what is truly Christian.

iv. because it is a pastoral necessity
Doctrine enables us to address the teaching of scripture about the reality of God to the questions, the trials and the sins of our flock (and of course to our own lives).

Compiling THE LIST:

If a student had a year to read just theological works, what would you tell them to read?

Criteria (necessarily artificial of course!):

Genre: “the treatise”, rather than imaginative or mystical or devotional works or commentary.
Orthodoxy: broadly defined by creeds
Perspective: 21st Century Protestant (evangelical) - so a Western bias probably...
‘Classic’ Author: some authors demand inclusion (a la epistles of Paul in the NT)
‘Classic’ Work: some works demand inclusion (a la Hebrews!).
'Classic-to-be': the books of the last 20-30 years that are must-reads in the sense that they will be read in years to come!

ERAS:
PATRISTIC

MEDIEVAL

REFORMATION (16th-17th C.)

18th - 19th C.


20th C.


CONTEMPORARY

Is the church a family?

Frequently we say that the best metaphor to describe the church is 'family'. That is, I think, we are saying that the private/public distinction which we observe in the rest of the world doesn't hold here. When I go to church I am still at home, if you like. Israel is kinda the model for this because they were a nation but all related genetically- ie they could say (really) that they were a giant household.

Anyhow, the question is: how do you apply this family idea? I think there is obviously good warrant in the Bible for it: calling each other "brethren", the adoption of sons etc. In which case, what of my biological family? What place do they have in the scheme of things then?

This matters especially when it comes to ministry. Are ministers mothers and fathers of their congregation? And if so, what is the scriptural/theological backing for this?

The analogy has been especially used when it comes to gender difference to explain why it is that we can vote for a female prime minister or work for a female boss and yet not have a female chief minister or preacher: that is, the church is a family, and so husband is to wife so male minister is to female (is that the logic?)...

Anyhow come on you who read and never comment: what do you think?

1 Peter 1:13

The NRSV’s translation of 1 Peter 1:13 as ‘[T]herefore prepare your minds for action’ in my view strikes entirely the wrong exegetical and theological note with its emphasis on action. Literally, the verse reads ‘Therefore gird up the loins of your mind’. The girding of the loins signifies preparedness; but the reference to the mind suggests that something other than action is what the person is to be prepared for. What the rest of the verse (and indeed the rest of the epistle) commands is rather a posture of patient and hopeful waiting for the final revelation of their salvation. Whatever actions are commanded in the letter as such, they are ordered to this more passive stance. They are invited to a "passive action": submitting, accepting, enduring, waiting, answering. The particular theme of holiness in the letter points towards a disciplined, purificatory activity in the same preparatory key (see 1:13-21)...

"Passive action": is that enough to characterise the Christian life? (Reinhard Hutter calls it pathos...)

Responsibility!

I have been reading in Bonhoeffer's Ethics. What we have is really a series of unpublished papers written under the pressure of the years just before his arrest when he was involved in the plot against Hitler.

Bonhoeffer argues that responsible action is that which is most in accordance with reality. That reality is ‘the reality of the God who became human’. This action, however, is neither an endorsement of the status quo nor a blessing of revolution. It begins with the action of God in Christ ‘reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor 5:18).

Responsible action is grounded and circumscribed in Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer is clear that this is not merely an ideology which carries all before it. ‘The task is not to turn the world upside down but in a given place to do what, from the perspective of reality, is necessary objectively and to really carry it out’ – that is, to do what is possible within the human domain. God becoming human means that responsible actions likewise have to occur within that domain. The ultimate evaluation of these actions is only for God. Responsible action ‘must completely surrender to God both the judgment on this action and its consequences’.

Bonhoeffer turns to the Sermon on the Mount, where he finds a powerful picture of suffering action:

"The Sermon on the Mount confronts those who are compelled to act within history with the event of the reconciliation of the world with God in Jesus Christ, thus placing them into genuine Christian responsibility."

The Sermon on the Mount is not a manifesto of withdrawal from the historical-political sphere, contrary to the way in which it has been read for much of Christian history. Historical-political action and Christian action have been seen as opposites – statehood without self-assertion or force is thought impossible. ‘Turning the other cheek’ or ‘love your enemies’ are not plans for kings to rule by, as ordinarily conceived. Bonhoeffer also points out that even the most cynical uses of power in the west ‘always need a mask of Christian concepts in order to succeed’.

Again the response is christologically framed: the action of God in taking human flesh and inserting himself into the world of real human beings, in its very particularity shows that he is concerned for real human beings in the concreteness of their existence and not merely for the idea of them. The Sermon on the Mount is the voice of the incarnate love of God calling people to love one another and to a renunciation of everything that gets in the way of that possibility. This must include action in the sphere of the political, because God’s love for the world is not partitioned. To act in accordance with Christ is to recognize that ‘the world is loved, judged and reconciled in Jesus Christ by God’, which is the true reality of things.

Responsibility’ (Verantwornung) is a key notion for Bonhoeffer, and includes the sense of ‘answering’ not perhaps captured in the English word. Bonhoeffer expounds responsibility in terms of Stellevertretung, or ‘vicarious representative action’. Jesus was the model of this type of action in becoming human, in dying as crucified and in the resurrection; and ‘all of life through him is destined to be vicarious representative action’ - to act as a representative of his people, in their stead and for their good. However, Bonhoeffer differentiates Stellevertretung from a self-appointed representation by claiming that only the selfless person is able to act responsibly – as parent, as pastor, as citizen.

more on friends and ... others...

It might be protested that the references to friendship as such in the scriptures are few, especially in the NT. The ecclesio-relational metaphors that are most prominent are organic or filial ones – the Vine, the Body, the Brotherhood. This certainly helps protect the church from becoming a community of people I like, or of people like me: in that friends are typically freely chosen for friendship, whereas ecclesial relationships are established on an entirely different basis – namely by the choice of God.

On the other hand, the church is not a biological entity either, in the sense that it is not composed only of people who have a particular genetic or racial identity in common. The NRSV’s decision to render the Greek 'adelfoi' as ‘friends’ rather than ‘brethren’ would completely change the grammar of ecclesial relationships (if accepted). What is perhaps most overlooked in this discussion is that material in the NT which is actually most relevant – the actual ecclesial experience of Paul and the others that we glimpse in the greetings and farewells of the epistles (e.g. Phil 4:1; Romans 16). Here we see that there is apparently a genuine and heartfelt experience of ‘friendship’, touchingly and lovingly recorded in these incidentals. These are those who Paul addresses 'agapetai', 'dearly loved ones' (2 Cor 12:19). But this of course is given to us alongside the experience of a painful enmity, too, from within the ecclesial sphere. The apostle does not always count his enmity as outside the church and his experience of friendship as inside. Rather, he actually encounters both in the present reality of church. There is a reminder in this that Judas was one of the Twelve; and that opposition to and treachery against Jesus came from within the small band of apostles who were with him from the very start.

Friendship - how to conceive of it Christianly?

Related to a previous post: something i wrote on friendship.

Jesus speaks of the love of one ‘laying down his life for his friends’ (Jn 15:13): that is the greatest love. It is love that he exemplifies; but it is the kind of love that will also be at the heart of discipleship. His public life was a life lived amongst his friends over and against even his own family (Luke 8:17-19). Friendship with him was a matter of performing his words (Jn 15:14); which elevates the status of disciple from servant to friend. However, the fickleness of human friendship was of course something Jesus himself experienced. Not only did he count among his friends Judas, who betrayed him; but at the crucial moment of testing, his disciples fled and left him alone. He went to cross solo; watched only from distance. Unsurprisingly, then, part of his teaching to his friends was that they were risking the possibility of this affliction themselves. In Luke 21, he prophesies their betrayal by family and friends (21:16-17). ‘You will be hated by all because of my name.’ The experience of martyrdom is clearly on view here. Archbishop Thomas the disciple does not count the experience of friendship with the King as a matter of expedience – even though it is now over. However, Christian discipleship is promised by Jesus to have a destabilizing effect on these earthly relationships, which may even result in violent rejection. Perhaps laying down one’s life for one’s friend may mean dying at his hand.

But the connection of love with friendship by Jesus is the key here. The divine love of Jesus for real human beings represents a turning toward human beings in friendship despite and even through their violent enmity towards him. In death, Jesus alone stands in the place of his fellow human beings, bearing their implacable hatred towards God on his shoulders. And yet, the point at which he suffers betrayal, rejection, torture and death becomes the point of greatest divine love for human beings and human love for God. (See Romans 5:1-11). In turn, this great realized and actual love of God for human beings and of one human being for God becomes the great example of love for the disciples of Christ (John 15:13-15; 1 John 4:1ff; see also the language of sacrifice in Rom 12:1-2). That such a love will involve concrete, actual bodily sacrifice is unmistakable in the language of the NT. This love is shot through with pain – possibly the pain of unreciprococity. This means for the Archbishop that he cannot abandon the King altogether, though there may be violent consequences. Though Thomas has been offered the chance to shut the door on Henry by the Third Tempter, this is not ultimately for him a Christian possibility. Rather, he calls out ‘Open the door!’ (II.??); and, with this, calls down on himself his own murder.

Mission and theology

“What would happen if theology took the mission of the church seriously?

In his (in my opinion very poor) book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross Joel Green asks what I think is very good question: what would happen if theology took the mission of the church seriously?

It’s a good question because it inverts our expectations. We ordinarily imagine that mission ought to take theology seriously: if only we get our thinking about mission right, we say, then we will mission more effectively. We believe I guess in a priority of theory over praxis. The problem with this view is ineffectiveness: revivals are not usually begun in the academy, you may have noticed. There is a tendency for theory to be closed to the questions people are actually asking.

On the other hand, I guess there are some of you who can already sense the artificiality of this: you have already been out there presenting the gospel and living it, and seeing lives changed and people won for Christ. Having to come and sit and think about it seems quite futile: it’s already going on! The problem with this view, I suggest respectfully, is pragmatism. Pragmatism means that we become like advertisers hawking products: we will do anything for a sale, including distort the message out of shape, perhaps casting aside or hiding uncomfortable parts of the scriptural teaching in order to fit in with the culture of context.

This is why Green’s question is a good one: because theology needs to realize the urgency of mission! Theology must not be indulgent or merely speculative. And on the hand, those engaged in mission have the weighty responsibility of speaking and acting in and with truth. Mission must remain faithful to its source in scripture or it will be unable to address cultures - it will only reflect them. If theology took the mission seriously, not only could theology be forced to rediscover its own deep scriptural resources, but also mission could be reinvigorated by the work done in the thinking about it.

When I don't like people

Ok, I know blogs can get this awful confessional tone sometimes. But here goes!

I think at present my most difficult struggle in the Christian life is with other Christians I just don't like personally. Don't worry, there aren't that many of you! The trouble with being a person who works and lives among Christians all the time is that you are bound to encounter these troublesome individuals. Somehow it feels easier to not 'click' with a non-Christian person, doesn't it? Personally, I found my years at theological college (as a student) very difficult spiritually for this reason. There were people there who I just didn't like that much.

I am amazed at the pettiness and jealousy that I so easily feel when I hear of others' success sometimes; or the inward smile at their failures. Usually, it is somehow that they are a threat; or perhaps there is the perception of a personal slight. There is a person who slighted me once in a private email some time ago now - and forgiving that person has been very hard, partly because of the triviality of the incident (I am sure they did it inadvertently). This is how trivial it is: they took a patronising tone with me.

Is there a type of person that I just don't like? I know I find ridiculous and strident dogmatism very hard to bear (believe it or not). Sometimes, if I am honest, a person I don't like has a flaw that I fear in myself: arrogance, or pomposity perhaps. I am always tempted to play down the other person in conversation with others.

How should we deal wisely with this? I think not liking everybody is ok. But we may be called upon to work together in partnership for the gospel - and what then? How do you get to a place where not liking someone doesn't spill over into terrible inner bitterness - or even turns into regard, even perhaps affection?

I have to say that there are some Christians - saintly ones in my view - who never have a bad word to say about anyone. They seem naturally to be able to cope with people's difference in a very God-like way... How did they get there?

Narrative...

OK, go with me here.

I wrote this in an attempt to get a methodological section going the other day. The question I would like to discuss (if this makes no sense) is: "is narrative the best way to approach theology"?
Or, perhaps:

"Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth."

What I wrote:

"What we have in narrative is a binding together of word and event: the event is described and given coherence by the application of the shape and categories of narrative. Narrative applies a causal and teleological form to events as we experience them; though this is not altogether arbitrary. The sequentiality of events invites the search for causal links between them. This is something we recognize even in our own bodies: as they change over time, collecting scars and wrinkles, we experience in ourselves the results and effects of our experiences. Our memories, also, tend to make sense of our past by narrating it to us (as we have seen). This is not to say that our narrating of the events of our experience is the final truth about them; or, that every account that we give of events we have experienced is absolutely comprehensive. It is the tracing of a path through a forest as best we can: though we do no see every tree in the forest, and though at times the going is rough, and we lose our bearings, we still are able to make our way. Though there is difficulty, there is not incoherence, necessarily.

The advantage of an emphasis on narrative is the ability that narratives have to present, simply and irreducibly, a complex account of reality. This again accords to human experience and adds to the explanatory power and intrigue of narrative. Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth. Joseph Conrad’s minor narrator in Heart of Darkness says of the great story-teller Marlow: “…to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…” We need not, perhaps, be as pessimistic as to speak of a “haze”; but still, this is a good description of how meaning clings to narrative and is generated by it. Readers do not read them well if they attempt to strip away the narrative husk to reveal the meaning lying dormant within."

Patriotism

can a Christian be patriotic?

I am a proud Aussie: however, my recent study has given my cause to rethink this nationalistic pride.

Is nationalism and patriotism really something that the followers of Jesus have any truck with?
Isn't patriotism one of the uglier things we see around?

Example: why should you buy Australian or British given that the citizens of other countries are my neighbours also?

sacraments

Karen wrote asking about the sacraments: so some thoughts!

Part of the heritage of living in a society where the Protestant-Catholic divide used to be more prominent in our consciousness than it now is is an extreme jitteriness about the sacraments. In evangelical Anglican churches, we have been so afraid of appearing Catholic, or of appearing to say that the sacraments actually do something, that we have denuded the sacraments of any significance in our church life entirely. It was also part of a reductionistic and rationalistic turn in Sydney Anglican theology (in my opinion) of which Broughton Knox was the father.

This was an unfortunate and unnecessary overreaction which has robbed a generation of hearing the power of the Word of God preached in this way. The sacraments are powerful precisely because they are the enacted word of God - and the word of God is powerful indeed! It is a shame, because by focussing on controversy, we became afraid of doing something wrong and so missed out on something that is so very good. Of course you don't have to be baptised, if it is understood as a work that achieves your salvation. But you do have to do it as a command of the Lord Jesus. The logic here is the same as saying "you don't need to have sex to be married - sex is only the symbolic physical enactment of your marriage, and we are beyond it and also, people often mistake the symbolic physical enactment for the real thing so we should avoid confusion by making sure we never even appear to have sex."

I think there is an important principle BEHIND the issue for evangelicals however. Do we do only that which is ordained in the Bible? Or, given that the Bible does not speak about many matters, do we listen to and give heed to tradition in its stead? For example, the Bible tells us not very much about how the Lord's Supper was celebrated. But since the earliest times (and I mean the very earliest times) it has been celebrated in a particular form. Isn't that worth something? I am not saying that it has an absolute authority, but surely it allows that this was the way in which early Christians understood this matter and so we would not be wrong to do the same.

The Third Temptation

In Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas is visited by four mysterious "tempters". Each has a different path to offer him.
The first offers to him the path of sensuality and the good life.
The second points out to Thomas the possibilities of political power that lay before him in returning to the king’s side – even the good he may do by means of this power. After all, as he puts it: ‘Power is present. Holiness hereafter.’

The third Tempter, though similarly a tempter to power, conversely offers him the chance of an allegiance of church authority with the barons, in the name of the people and true patriotism, in open defiance of the king.

It is this third temptation that interests me today.

It is a nice alternative to the violent death of the martyr, isn't it? It is the possibility of a neat power-sharing arrangement. And it is possible to rationalise it, too, because the church can in this temptation (apparently) remain the church and be itself but do so in coalition with earthly powers in a revolution. Think what good could be achieved by this mighty conjoining of the two! Think what new possibilities emerge from the uniting of the temporal and the spiritual!

Thomas of course renounces this path on his way to martyr's death. Which leads to a question: How exactly is it that martyrdom is found in renouncing a patriotic and possibily democratic sharing of power? Why is the martyr's path different to this one?

Thomas' answer is a good one:

If the Archbishop cannot trust the Throne,
He has good cause to trust none but God alone.

In other words, though the monarch may be corrupt and monarchy as a system of power undesireable, there is no alternative type of human political system to which a Christian may give absolute trust. Democracy, for example, for all its virtues, is not to be trusted any more than monarchy is; if you can't trust Sadam, how can you trust those who work for his undoing? (we might say). (an interesting question to put to Dietrich Bonhoeffer perhaps?) I think sometimes that US rhetoric about democracy posits democracy as an absolute and rational good, negelecting the nature of practices of government as embedded historically in a people-group or nation. That is to say, you can't make Iraq a democracy by declaring it so: it has no tradition of democracy.

The martyr witnesses to the power and trustworthiness of God alone. He or she does not court open rebellion against the ruling authority, or seek to engineer regime-change in the idealistic hope that the alternative government will be any better. The martyr is not swayed by nationalist fervour.

That is not to say that martyrdom does not bring about regime-change, or radically alter the shape of governments. The Constantinian revolution - perhaps the most remarkable transformation of a political landscape history has ever seen - was the great victory of the army of martyrs, who fought against the Emperor while remaining loyal to him as God's ordained ruler. This they did by dying in the arenas. They publically witnessed to a greater power than the absolute power of Rome itself - can you imagine it? - and in doing so exposed the facade of Rome's power.

inner/outer

Well, and I thought the anonymity issue would spark off some real HEAT...

I watch a lot of bad tv. It is an addiction I am trying to break. HOWEVER, one observation I make of a lot of what I call "makeover shows" is that they assume a particular relationship between an inner self and an outer self.

What inevitable happens is that they get you a new outer self - wardrobe, weightloss, plastic surgery, makeover, organise your house, whatever - and then make all these claims about the inner self having changed. "I am a totally new person" - because I have had a haircut.

Now, at first I laughed at this. How silly. Of course the inner self is the same self - changing the outer is merely window-dressing, merely surface level change that doesn't effect the "real" me.

But then, I thought, "actually, there is something true about this. The outer self is not a lesser self or merely a means by which we experience the world. It IS ourself in the world. So change it, and there are at least inner effects...."

or something like that...

Anonymity

Well here's an issue:

It strikes me that the web affords you the possibility of acting in an entirely anonymous way in all sorts of areas. I have had several experiences of people on message boards speaking anonymously in a way that is extremely offensive and would be unacceptable if they were a face and/or a name. Check out "ship of fools" if you want to see what I mean.

It feels kinda wrong to me. I just think that you should be accountable for your words as well as your actions. And online, you aren't a character in a story - you are a real actor, no matter how virtual your identity. Your words and deeds still attach to you in some way (I believe). There isn't a suspension of the ethical in the virtual realm - or is there?

There are of course people who use pseudonyms more like nicknames, and their identities are easily traceable if anyone should care.

So, what ethical parameters could there be for using anonymity? If any?

(a thought: virtual interaction has the same moral temptation as overseas travel - if you go somewhere where no-one knows you, then you can behave in a way that those who know you wouldn't recognise as true to you as they know you... it feels like a place without consequences.)

Pragmatism

Here's a ministry issue.

It's particularly relevant to the diocese of Sydney, where I am from, but also to evangelicalism around the world.

It seems that the attitude of "whatever works" (to promote the gospel of course) is prevalent in our churches. That is, we have a principled end, but are entirely pragmatic about the means to get there.

So, whatever structural or political means are necessary to achieve the ends we will do. We will concede everything to our culture in order to get them into church: marketing the church and even Jesus like a product, making Christianity fit with the lifestyle of our suburb, and so on.

It takes different forms wherever you go. Sydney Anglicans for example will treat the political process of the denomination as a means to an end and do whatever it takes no matter how tough it seems, because of the ends in view.

TS Eliot says:

This last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

I think we tend to do the opposite: The wrong deed for the right reason...

In my view, pragmatism is a vile creeping poison. But what do others think?

The Art of Blogging

Ok, I have just realised some things about blogging.

Firstly, you have to keep your entries SHORT in order that people can have a quick look and get something. Fair enough!

Second, you have to be regular in adding to your blog, or regular users give up looking.

Third, you have to keep monitoring and engaging with discussions.

Have I got it?

Murder in the Cathedral

Hey any help with this little speech by Thomas in Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral?

"They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.
They know and do not know, that action is suffering
And suffering action. Neither does the agent suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
In an eternal action, an eternal patience
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still".

In Thomas Becket’s sermon on martyrdom in T.S. Eliot’s drama Murder in the Cathedral the audience hears these words:

Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.[1]

Martyrdom takes place paradoxically as a moment of delight and of mourning. Archbishop Thomas makes plain the double-edge of the sign of martyrdom – that it reveals both a demonic repudiation of God and a glorious acceptance of him in the one event. Thomas reveals in his sermon that behind the play’s presentation of historical events contrived by human agents lies the counter-narrative of Christ, that the feast of Christmas celebrates. The providential design of God is always in consideration when it comes to martyrdom:

A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident…A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.[2]

Martyrdom is ultimately an act of God and not of the machinations of human plotters, nor even of the martyr him- or her-self. At least, the martyr acts in so far as he freely conjoins his will to the divine will – not in order that he might be glorified as a saint, but in order that the will of God be done, as Thomas has said earlier “that the wheel may turn and still/ Be forever still.”[3]

Thomas knows just what it is that he has renounced in accepting the path of martyrdom, which makes the sermon a moment of quiet resolution in the face of what is to come. He is visited in the first act by four tempters.[4] The first offers to him the path of sensuality and the good life. The second points out to Thomas the possibilities of political power that lay before him in returning to the king’s side – even the good he may do by means of this power. After all, as he puts it: “Power is present. Holiness hereafter.”[5] The third tempter, though similarly a tempter to power, conversely offers him the chance of an allegiance of church authority with the barons in open defiance of the king. Lastly, and with most subtlety, comes the fourth tempter, who encourages him to “think of glory after death”, for “Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb”.[6] If he seeks the way of martyrdom he will not only bear the crown of glory but be able to enjoy the spectacle of his enemies “in timeless torment…beyond expiation.”[7] This is most troubling for the protagonist and hardest to renounce: it is most difficult to disentangle his own will-to-glory from the rightness of the path he is about to take. As he says:

The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.[8]

This turning of his motive towards his own self-interest would corrupt his martyrdom. Thomas recognizes that it can scarce be avoided.

And yet, knowing the complications and the risk of perdition, Thomas offers in his sermon his own resolve to submit only to the will of God. He renounces the pragmatism and hedonism of the tempters, and the thinking of those who “argue by results…to settle if an act be good or bad”;[9] in sight of the swords of his killers he gives his life “To the Law of God above the Law of Man”, in confidence that:

We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the Cross, now
Open the door! [10]

Thomas neither acts nor even suffers for his own ends. He takes his decision “out of time”.[11] It is, in other words, an eschatological decision: while it is open to question and scrutiny as to his motives and to the relative impact of the act in time, what really matters is whether his act stands (or falls) in eternity. As a true martyr he displays a self-abegnation that is a true expression of his faith in Christ.

The play itself invites the process of a judgment “in time” as with no small irony the four assassins offer their rationalizations for their actions, in plain ignoble prose. They explicitly make appeal to the “fair play” of the English audience, who feel themselves privileged as judges over the action they have just witnessed. Thomas was a provocateur; he had a fanatic’s death-wish; he was complicit in the politics of the day; and so on. Eliot admits to the table the quite credible counter-witness of the knights; and they appear to have the last say. However, the play closes not on this note but with the song of the Chorus celebrating the entry of Thomas into glory. And at this point another kind of invitation is issued: an invitation to thankfulness and repentance:

Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire… [12]

The audience is pointed to their own complicity in the shedding of blood through their tolerance of injustice and apathetic acceptance of the status quo; and invited to contemplate the example of Thomas in his submission to the will, and the love, of God.

Eliot’s re-narrates the murder of Thomas as a martyrdom for the twentieth century testifying against both cynical political pragmatism, and an ultimately self-regarding religious fanaticism. The passion of Thomas is conjoined to the passion of Christ, as in the early Christian Acts of the Martyrs; his suffering echoes Christ’s suffering and is made meaningful in those terms. However, an ambiguity remains - exactly in the way Eliot himself envisages it. On the historical plane, the nature of Thomas’ death remain subject to an element of concealment. Are not the knights quite plausibly arguing against the reading of Thomas’ death as a martyrdom? Isn’t the verdict of the chorus, simply posited as it is at the end of the drama as a kind of divine judgment (in the manner of Sophoclean tragedy) a presumption of a divine perspective on these events that isn’t really available (except in the theatre)?

[1] Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 56
[2] Ibid., p. 57
[3] Ibid., p. 32
[4] Allusions abound in the scene to the Temptation of Christ by Satan. The downfall of Thomas is being narrated in imitation of Christ’s death.
[5] The words of the Second Tempter. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 37
[6] Ibid., p. 47
[7] Ibid., p. 48
[8] Ibid., p. 52
[9] Ibid., p. 79
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., p. 91

John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason

The work of John Milbank is a daring attempt to demolish secular social theory from a Christian perspective. This audacious move is a characteristic of the ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ movement, whose other chief protagonists are Graham Ward and Catherine Pickstock. Milbank proclaims nothing less than to prove that the ‘governing assumptions’ of theories like secular western liberalism are ‘bound up with the governing assumptions of orthodox Christian positions’. In fact, it is not necessary to try and relate theology and social theory to one another, for, as Fergus Kerr summarises, ‘theology is already social theory, and social theory is already theology’. What Milbank attempts is to expose the theology (and anti-theology) implicit in the so-called secular disciplines like sociology. Conversely, and with much deference to Augustine, he extrapolates the social theory inherent in theology.

Milbank’s critique of political liberalism shares much in common with those of Foucault and Lyotard. Indeed it is self-consciously postmodern: Milbank explicitly adopts the Foucauldian tactic of an historicizing, ‘genealogical’ inquiry in order to expose the network of power struggles and claims to dominance at the root of liberal thinking. He claims that the discourses of liberalism, from which the secular is first constructed, read the world in terms of an ‘ontology of violence’ – ‘a reading of the world which assumes the priority of force and tells how this force is best managed and confined by counter force’. Violence is assumed to be basic; as a result, political theory is developed assuming that violence has to be forcefully surmounted. Following Foucault, Milbank asserts that any truth claims are in fact a means to assert the dominance of the inevitably clashing centres of power in society. Kant’s liberalism, for example, makes claims about freedom that are really only gestures in a wrestle for power. The liberal move – the ‘Kantian delay’ – only temporarily staves off the nihilism of Nietzche.

Milbank’s scepticism removes for him the possibility of theology building on the foundations of some secular discipline:
Theology has frequently sought to borrow from elsewhere a fundamental account of society or history, and then to see what theological insights will cohere with it. But it has been shown that no such fundamental account, in the sense of something neutral, rational and universal, is really available. It is theology itself that will have to provide its own account of the final causes at work in human history, on the basis of its own particular, and historically specific faith.
Consequently, Christianity does not recognise this ontology of violence but rather thinks of the prime reality as a ‘harmonic peace’: Milbank at this point introduces the triune God as ‘transcendental peace through differential relation’. The meta-narrative of Christianity – its ‘counter-story’ – is at least no less credible than the meta-narratives of violence by which modern social theories (including and especially liberalism) describe themselves, since all alike are unfounded in the traditional sense. The existence of a primal violence is challenged by a counter-history, which is established by the coming of Christ into history; a counter-ethics, in which love becomes the core of virtue; and a counter-ontology, in which true peaceful co-existence is won from violence by the practice of forgiveness. Christianity, for Milbank, is unique in that it
…does not allow violence any real ontological purchase, but relates it instead to a free subject who asserts a will that is truly independent of God and of others, and thereby a will to the inhibition and distortion of reality.

Echoing Augustine, Milbank posits the Church as the political anti-type or counter-society. In the Church there is an ‘ontological priority of peace over conflict’ : there, ‘difference’ is the foundation not for violence but for harmonious peace. Here is one of Milbank’s great difficulties; for the Church as a historical entity has not fulfilled this ‘vision of paradisal[sic] community’. As he rather wistfully admits:
Insofar as the church has failed, and has even become a hellish anti-Church, it has confined Christianity, like everything else, with the cycle of the ceaseless exhaustion and return of violence.
Nevertheless, it is the Christian vision of ontological peace that provides the only alternative to absolute nihilism.

Milbank’s critique of liberalism is dazzling. He is able to show how secular liberalism, like other theories of society, is not secular at all but in fact involves necessarily theological or anti-theological moves. He is able to show how liberal thinking has its own mythos or meta-narrative, despite its pretensions to an abstract universalism; and how it has not finally eluded the gravitational pull of nihilism’s black hole. His introduction of the Christian meta-narrative in response rightly points to the distinctive Christian emphasis on relationality generated by the triune God as an attractive conceptual alternative.

Nevertheless, Milbank’s thesis is problematic for a number of reasons. First, his self-conscious appeal to postmodern thinking enables him to make a devastating critique of secular reason; his own evasion of the critique is less than convincing. He adopts Foucault’s notion of genealogy, by which the power claims implicit in the political discourses he examines are brought to light and exposed as relying on an ‘ontology of violence’. And yet he also claims that his Christian ‘ontology of peace’ escapes this Foucauldian critique. An Icarus flying too near a postmodern sun, he relies on Foucault to prove that Foucault is ultimately wrong.

Secondly, Milbank’s strategy rests on a questionable ecclesiology, which is far too sanguine about the ‘church militant’. His is an over-realised ecclesiology, blurring the traditional distinction between the church visible and the church invisible, focussing on the concrete historical institutions of the universal Church at the expense of its local congregational instances. More recent ‘Radical Orthodox’ writings have tended to make the Eucharist the means by which the ‘ontology of peace’ is realised, following an almost medieval sacramental theology. Christopher J. Insole goes so far as to accuse Milbank of a tendency to theocracy. And yet Milbank seems genuinely baffled by the refusal of the Church to be itself within history. Within the Scriptures themselves, the churches were as much a site of struggle as of peace (the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, to take but one example, or the Corinthian church). Peace with God was declared in the gospel, but by no means automatically or easily realised in ecclesial relationships. God’s once-for-all act of reconciliation on the cross is not continued or repeated in the acts of the church this side of Christ’s return.

Thirdly, it seems pertinent to ask, along with Wannenwetsch, if the only way to defeat the violent ontologies of secular reason is by positing an alternative ontology. Milbank has difficulty, having so successfully deconstructed the ontology of political thought, in convincingly constructing something of the same species. The proclamation of the gospel of peace, which founds the church, is not a counter- ontology, but a promise. Further, the NT describes the cross of Christ as achieving peace through a victory against the powers of sin and evil – depicted in terms of a violent exclusion (see Rev 19-22 for just one example).

This third complaint leads to a fourth, which is that while Milbank offers a virtuoso reading of vast tracts of political philosophy, liberation theology and postmodernism, his method is insufficiently grounded in basic Scriptural exegesis. He offers almost no reflection on Israel’s political life; nor does he offer extensive readings of the relevant NT material – all of which ought to condition his explanation of the Church as alternative polis. Strangely, though he claims to be offering Christianity as an alternative meta-narrative, he nowhere offers his retelling of that story at any depth nor an engagement with the authoritative texts of the tradition he is advocating.

An article I wrote on apologetics

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/indepth/16_verbs_for_a_21st_century_apologetics/

The 39 Articles

We live in an age which doesn’t really like ideology very much. Systems of doctrine and great schemes of knowledge have caused plenty of trouble in our world. Demanding that there is a right way to think seems to be a way to bully others. The great “isms” of the 20th century – Marxism, Stalinism, Fascism, Nazism – left the globe awash in blood; the religions of the world are famed for their links to violent outrages. And for most right-thinking people in the West enough is enough: enough with the doctrines that claim to have an answer for everything, that say they can make a complex world neat and tidy by imposing a grid of ideas and forcing everybody to fit. It was almost ninety years ago that the Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote

The best lack all conviction,
While the worst are filled with passionate intensity.

His words have a contemporary ring: wouldn’t it be better to “lack all conviction” and just get on with everybody? Hasn’t “passionate intensity” wreaked enough havoc, caused enough megadeath? Aren’t convictions inherently dangerous? Aren’t convictions “prisons”, as Nietzsche thought? (Anti Christ p. 184)
Furthermore, we live in a deeply skeptical age. Many people doubt that anyone can have confidence in things you can’t experience first hand. I was going to say that people doubt things you can’t experience with your senses, but it is true that there is quite a lot of “spirituality” about – that is, it is quite fashionable to speak of yourself as “a spiritual person” who is in some way in contact with the divine or the higher being or something like it. To speak of having personal religious experiences is quite common. I can be sure at least about what I feel. But to speak confidently of things that seem so outside of oneself – to say that the one God is three persons, for example – is surely impossible. To make statements about what you believe seems to be just the wishful thinking of another age.

However, much as we might imagine that it is the path to a safer world, it is impossible to live without convictions. Believing - that some things are true and that some other things are not, and that some things are good and that some other things are less good – is a part of what it is to be human. Even the person who loves peace and whatever it takes to achieve it, so that they can get on with their life as they wish to live it, is saying something about what they believe to be most important, and is staking a commitment to it. Sometimes these beliefs may be carefully worked out and thought through; sometimes they may be merely what everyone else thinks; and sometimes they may be “gut reactions”, things we are aware of the level of our instincts. But these are all at some level “convictions” about how things are and how they ought to be. So, the question is not “do I have convictions” but rather “what am I convicted about”?

Christians are people who have a particular set of convictions. Primarily, they are convicted that in Jesus of Nazareth, a human person like one of us, God the creator took on human flesh, died for sins and rose again; and that today among us we may know him by his Spirit.[1] Now, this isn’t a dry-as-dust set of propositions put to them in some kind of philosophy tutorial: it means for them that they had encountered the very source of life itself in Jesus. It transforms their lives. For the earliest Christians, this explained why they were worshipping this Jesus - a man - as the only true God – something that had been unthinkable before. These “convictions” were not a matter of ticking the box on some survey; they were a life-transforming reality, something that many of them would be happy to die for, as it turned out.

This small group of convictions obviously needs a bit of mulling over, and explaining. And there are any number of questions that you could put to them. And so, since the time of the early churches, Christians have attempted to put some flesh on the bones, so to speak: to clarify and interpret and explain them, to say what they weren’t saying sometimes as much as what they were. And so, they produced at various times great statements of the faith in order to say as clearly as possible, “these are the things which we are convinced are true (and here is what we know isn’t)”. One of these was the great creed known as the Nicene Creed, developed over the course of the 4th century AD. In it, the churches asserted that the Jesus they worshipped was both fully man and fully God.

This is an interaction with another statement of faith: a set of Christian convictions produced by leaders of the Church of England as their statement of belief in the 16th century – The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. The Church of England – known today as the Anglican, or Episcopal Church in many parts of the world – had its beginnings not with high-minded theological convictions but with the needs of international politics. In 1534, Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic church and the authority of the Pope and made himself supreme governor of the Church in England – in the first place because he needed a divorce from his Spanish wife in order to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn.

And yet there were matters of genuine theological conviction in play – it was more than a just a matter of a king’s love life. The movement we know now as the Reformation had begun to sweep Europe in the 1520s under the influence of people such as Martin Luther in Germany and Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland. Its influence had certainly been felt in England: so much so that King Henry had written a piece staunchly defending the Pope’s position against Luther! In brief, the Reformation made a two-pronged attack on the version of Christianity that the Roman Catholic church was at that time presenting.

The first substantial issue was a matter of authority. The champions of the Reformation saw themselves as returning to the Bible as the supreme authority in the Christian faith. Only Scripture was ultimately authoritative: not the Church itself or its Pope or its traditions. These needed to be under the Bible, and shaped by it. And so translating and distributing the Bible was a major task that the Reformers and their supporters undertook at this time.

The second substantial issue was answering the question of how someone might be saved (what theologians call soteriology). All were agreed that the death of Jesus for sin was a necessary component of human salvation – but how did the whole scheme fit together? In the medieval period, various theories had been suggested as to how this came about. How much was human effort, and how much was God’s work? For example, one theory demanded that a person had to do whatever was within them to please God; recognizing this, God would graciously accomplish the rest in Christ. By their intense study of the Bible, the Reformers had discovered that no human effort was required for salvation at all – not the least because no human effort could achieve it. Rather, a person is justified by faith in the work of Christ on the cross only, and not at all by their own efforts to please God.[2] Doing good things was only the outworking of what God had done, not part of the process of being saved in the first place.

These two themes, as we shall see, underlie the attempt to provide a summary of the Christian faith that we find in these articles; for through Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and others Reformation ideas – particularly those of Luther, and later John Calvin - became a feature of the Reformation in England. In many ways the Thirty-Nine articles are a statement of faith for their own time. They reflect the controversies of their day, not ours. For example, there is an extended statement on the Lord’s Supper – which was a real bone of contention between the Reformation and the Roman Catholic church. They are certainly not a perfect list. They seem to leave out what to us may seem like important things – they say hardly anything about the return of Christ, or about the Creation of the world, for example. And they overemphasize perhaps unimportant things – a whole article is given over to Jesus’ descent into hell, and another to the swearing of oaths. At points they reflect the necessary evil of compromise rather than present a single pure vision of what is true. The grubby fingers of the committee process is certainly in evidence.

So: are they worth studying today? Today very different issues confront all Christian believers and Anglicans among them. We ask, what is the right way for Christians to behave sexually? How can we square our faith with the scientific knowledge on which we so depend? What is the best way to order our churches and what should our services look like? How should we relate to the political world in which we live? I would argue that the convictions outlined here are most certainly worth revisiting in our times. These articles are not an embarrassing skeleton in the Anglican closet but rather the result of a careful listening to the Bible and its teaching. They are an attempt to express what God says to his people in the Bible. In them, the Church of England declares itself subject to God’s Word in Scripture, and not free to do anything else but listen to what the Bible says and respond in obedience. Those who framed them were well aware that times would change, and that there would be different customs and cultures in which Christians would have to live out their faith. They themselves had lived through turbulent and difficult times, when beliefs were in a tremendous flux and when there was enormous pressure on individuals to change their beliefs to suit the times.

Our times are no less tricky. The churches that identify with the Anglican tradition are no less in a crisis of self-identity today. People who call themselves “Anglican” seem to spend an enormous amount of energy disputing what that exactly means and over who has the right to call themselves really “Anglican”.[3] The Thirty-Nine Articles - along with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer - are to this day a touchstone for what being an Anglican might be.

But more than this: these articles are reminder that for all Christians convictions do matter. They remind us that even though stating what you believe is not easy, that it is a task incumbent on Christians of every time and place. They are not a dull list of abstract statements, but the implications of thinking through a living faith in Jesus Christ, God’s Son. Agreeing to them is not at all the same as having a saving faith in Christ Jesus; but they help to protect and frame and shape the preaching of that same Jesus Christ by some of those who would follow him.

[1] There are a couple of early summaries of Christian belief in the Bible itself. 1 Cor 15
[2] This is a really brief summary of the Reformation which is one of the most interesting periods of history that anyone can study.
[3] I frequently hear people use the word “Anglican” to mean a more formal style of church service, as in “that church is more Anglican than this (usually more laid-back) one is”.

Martyrdom - something to die for?

The Greek word marturion of course means "witness" or "testimony". Already in the NT we see the possibility of this idea being linked to the shedding of blood - a testimony unto death. Jesus himself of course did exactly this. The gospel accounts - especially John - make much of the sham trial at which Jesus was convicted as a kind of ironic antitype of the real eschatological trial at which he was mightily vindicated. The truth about Jesus' "kingdom of God" and all his teaching about his Father and himself and the state of the world under sin were all revealed by his death and resurrection.

The life of the follower of Jesus is thus always already a life lived in preparation of the possibility of such a trial. The hatred of the world for Jesus is shared by his followers. They already lay down their lives, and take up their crosses and follow him. They die to the world... Baptism is a symbol of this offering of the old self over to death which is what every Christian does as a testimony to the truth of Jesus Christ. Every Christian, we might say, is already a martyr. That there are some who suffer to the point of pain and death is a glorious sign for us of the reality of this.

Martyrdom is a radically unsettling idea for the secular individual. The world characterised by avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure, even in its most honourable forms, has little place for the possibility of martyrdoms. The old rhetoric of martyrdom applied to the war-dead now seems rather hollow given that these lives were given to dubious causes and by questionable means. A life in which the possibility of martyrdom has been accepted is not a life that appears to be lived to its greatest possibility. It is perhaps freely determined, but it is given away too cheaply; it has too little regard for the ties of family and friends; it is too committed to a notion of 'truth' which has fallen into disrepair. It is too unassertive and too tragic. It tries to make meaningful that which we have decided already is meaningless - suffering. The martyr is committed to another way of understanding the world - a "superior realm of signification" (Castelli) - an understanding which is not merely an idea for the martyr, but in the act of offering of the body to its own destruction becomes a material reality. At this moment, the testimony of the martyr to the other-worldly reality intersects with the material world and displaces the complancy of the materialist. It makes the lovers of comfort uncomfortable.

Martyrdom is not a cult of death, for the Christian martyr loves life. The death of the martyr is not a resignation to fate, but truly has a tragic, mournful aspect: for it points to the value of life. You cannot consider laying down one’s life for your friends a sacrifice of any significance if you hold life cheap. Charles Taylor notes that there is a “powerful sense of loss” at the heart of Christian martyrdom, because life is hallowed by it in its fullness. Jesus came to give abundant life (John 10:10), after all – an intensification of life. This is important – the structure of resurrection belief is an affirmation of the goodness of the created order, pointing not its eradication by the coming new order but its transformation. Liberation theologian Boff writes: “The resurrection of the martyr Jesus Christ has, among others, this theological significance: who loses his life in this way receives it in fullness. To the martyr is reserved full participation in the meaning of life, that is, enthronement in its immortal kingdom.”

Martyrdom exposes the death of Adam for the hollow sham that it is. The martyr who dies the death of Christ by faith shows that death has lost its sting. He or she does not embrace oblivion or rush headlong into nothingness; rather, it is an entry into an endless end (Karl Rahner).

The martyr is an imitator of Christ par excellence. The early martyrologies dramatized martyrdoms as repetitions of the passion of Christ.
Of Sanctus, the martyr of Lyons, it is written by Eusebius: ‘And his body was a witness of his sufferings, being one complete wound and bruise, drawn out of shape, and altogether unlike a human form. Christ, suffering in him, manifested his glory, delivering him from his adversary, and making him an example for the others, showing that nothing is fearful where the love of the Father is, and nothing painful where there is the glory of Christ.’

Of Blandina: ‘Blandina was suspended on a stake, and exposed to be devoured by the wild beasts who should attack her. And because she appeared as if hanging on a cross, and because of her earnest prayers, she inspired the combatants with great zeal. For they looked on her in her conflict, and beheld with their outward eyes, in the form of their sister, him who was crucified for them, that he might persuade those who believe on him, that every one who suffers for the glory of Christ has fellowship always with the living God.’

The gesture of the suicide bomber is not at all the same, though an attempt to use the same word is made. The self-destruction of the suicide bomber is a radical denial of the goodness of life. By his or her gesture, he or she says like the martyr “I testify to another reality, superior to this one.” However, this other reality is not of the nature of an affirmation of this one, but its denial. By choosing death, he says to the enemy: “you have made my life not worth living: let me return the favour”. He cannot find any corrupt judicial process, or false testimony, or unjust law to take his life, so he does the job himself. He aims to produce fear; and by and large succeeds, because secularism has no good alternative. His gesture does not call for those outside his tribe to be included in it, but rather points to the ongoing exclusion of most people from it. His death does not expose state-sanctioned violence for what it is; but rather perpetuates it. Where the true martyr may actually absorb spilt blood and by the beauty of his or her gesture reveal to a culture the futility of its persecutions, the suicide bomber only invites a conversation in blood. He proclaims his own victimization and makes a victim of himself at his own hand, which

Martyrdom is a political gesture. It is a witness to citizenship in another kingdom, to service of another Lord. The earliest martyrs instantly recognized – or were forced to recognize – that theirs was a choice between two forms of worship, two forms of citizenship. When the aged Polycarp was commanded to sacrifice to the genius of Caesar and to revile Christ, he replied to his persecutor:
Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?
For Polycarp there was no choice: the two Kings were rivals. Only one was worthy of his allegiance. Polycarp’s “he hath done me no wrong” seems a little subdued, admittedly. But, has Caesar saved him? His reasoning is the simple logic of the servant.

The early martyr narratives emphasis the possibility of escape for each martyr – just as Jesus was at all times in the gospel narratives shown as going to the cross freely, though he could have escaped. The voluntary act of choosing for martyrdom shows that Caesar’s coercive power has not succeeded. The martyr is a revolutionary in that way, for the political power that would exercise itself through killing the body is shown to be no power at all.

But while martyrdom unsettles the secular self, the rhetoric of martyrdom itself is not unproblematic. The Christian church has made martyrs as well. It is a fact of history that those who have martyred readily make martyrs of others, (apparently) unconscious of how self-defeating it is. The celebration of martyrs can appear to link sacrifice and violence inextricably. The glory of martyrdom requires a culture that punishes heterodoxy violently; and it reflects a culture that makes violent death meaningful.

The martyr is first of all a witness, then a performer of a dramatic action, which is in turn witnessed. It is a witness that compels further witness. It “requires an audience, retelling, interpretation, and world– and meaning-making activity. Suffering violence is in and of itself not enough” (Castelli, p. 33). Interestingly, baptism is a kind of proto-martyrdom, with the act of testimony to Christ and renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil. The plunging into the water symbolises a death and then a rising to new life. In 1 Tim 6:12ff Paul explicitly compares the "good confession" of Jesus under Pilate with the confession of Timothy made at his baptism.

Bonhoeffer and "authentic" humanity

Well it's about time I posted again. Sorry to anyone who has been checking this site to see any updates...

In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer spoke of a “sincerely intended love for humanity that amounts to the same thing as contempt for humanity”.[1] This particular notion is founded on evaluating human beings “according to their dormant values”,[2] aspects not visible on the surface always or even at all, but always felt to be potential somehow. The great problem of this way of thinking is that extraordinary evil can be excused on its account, as it had been of course in Bonhoeffer’s own time. “One loves”, he wrote,

a self-made picture of human beings that has little similarity to reality, and one ends up despising the real human being whom God has love and whose being God has taken on.[3]

In other words, we count the potential human and not the actual one; we may even appease what is monstrous in the actual one because we are imagining the potential one. The problem with an "ethic of authenticity" is that it invites an evaluation of some potential self and not the self as it really is. Bonhoeffer’s reply gives a reason as to why finally the ethics of authenticity is not as companionable to Christian theology as might have first appeared:

Only because God became human is it possible to know and not despise real human beings. Real human beings may live before God, and we may let these real people live beside us and before God without either despising or idolizing them…The reason for God’s love for human beings does not reside in them, but only in God. Our living as real human beings, and loving the real people next to us is, again, grounded only in God’s becoming human, in the unfathomable love of God for us human beings.[4]

[1] Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 87
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.

Authenticity

The ideal of authenticity is very strong in western culture. That is to say, people feel they ought to live a life that is authentic to who they really are. They want to live according to the truth of themselves as beings. This longing is partly in response to a sense that cultural conditions - technology, urbanisation, mass immigration - have made discovery of authenticity in life much harder, because our freedom has been so restricted.

It looks pretty selfish, and it has had some nasty outworkings. If you think that the authentic me is only discoverable internally to myself, from some intuitive sense of who I am without the constraints of what others say or the influences of others, then you can see what would result. If the ideal of authenticity is coupled with self-defining freedom, then what we are left with is a mess.

Interestingly, our great heroes are the artists who create (not copy or imitate). Rock musicians, for example, need to write AND perform the songs, because we value originality as a sign of authenticity. These heroes are above the constraints of ordinary relationships and boring morality. They can do what the heck they want - they do it almost on our behalf, because the rest of us can't.

But is the ideal of authenticity itself the problem? Charles Taylor (a Canadian philosopher) thinks most definitely not. Seeking to fulfil ones sense of self is surely one of the most basic drives of any human being. However, if the MEANS to fulfil myself is cut off from factors that are external to me - friends, family, morality, even God - then authenticity lapses into incoherence as a human ideal.

But authenticity isn't necessarily defeated by this. Authenticity as an ideal to strive for at least acknowledges that we human beings at least begin as strangers to ourselves. We do not start as people at one with who we are and what we are here to do, but rather feel we need to seek it. We are 'fallen', 'in the dark'.

For me, the question is: can this discussion of authenticity as an ideal be appropriated for theological discussion of what human selves are about?

I think that we should not be surprised to discover human beings longing to discover who they really are: one of the effects of the fall has been to hide even our true selves from view, to obscure us from ourselves. What do I mean? We seem to be at odds with those things that are essential to our identity formation: God, friends, family, others, world. We also aware of our own possibilty, and our own falling short of that self we imagine ourselves to be.

That the answer to the quest for the self is not found within the self is no surprise either for a theological world-view. The self is never posited as an enclosed independent system in a world-view that begins with a creator.

But is following another, namely Jesus Christ, in tune with this ideal of self-discovery? Can we say that becoming a follower of Jesus is finding your true self?

Stanley Hauerwas

Stanley Hauerwas is a fascinating thinker who reckons that narrative and character are the keys to moral thinking in the Christian life. He writes this:

"We do not become free by conforming our actions to the categorical imperative but by being accepts as disciples and thus learning to imitate a master. Such discipleship can only appear heteronomous from the moral point of view, since the paradigm cannot be related to, or determined by, principles known prior to imitation. For the Christian, morality is not chosen and then confirmed by the example of others; instead, we learn what the moral life entails by imitating another.”

What he empahises is that Christian moral teaching is not something "out there", abstracted from the people who live such teaching out in their daily lives.

He thinks too, that Protestant doctrines of justification haven't helped us to live out our discipleship in the world actually:

“The Protestant condemnation of moral theology did not help, as Protestants did little more than assert that good works “flow” from faith. Concern for moral development from the Protestant perspective was thus seen as a form of works righteousness”.

The result he says is that Protestant morality has just been an adaptation of local moral values and ends up being just "decency".

I think he has a point: when i hear people explain what it is to be Christian in practice sometimes it just sounds like they are just talking about middle-class moral decency and not the kind of costly discipleship that Jesus seems to advocating.

He also says:

“What is crucial is not that Christians know the truth, but that they be the truth”.

Which brings me to a further issue: what is the role of suffering for the Christian? Can middle-class white educated Christians (like me) with every privilege going really speak of themselves as taking up their crosses and following Jesus in any convincing way?

An introductory paragraph

“Yes: we are all individuals.” (The Life of Brian)

Imitation of others is not merely a matter of choosing some deeds over others but is basic to the formation of the self. Though the idea that our identities are a composite of those we know is not one that contemporary culture enjoys, it is really not a matter of choosing whether we will imitate someone, but who it is we will imitate. Sociologist George Herbert Mead wrote “the individual develops a self by first becoming an object to himself and he does this by adopting the ‘attitudes’ of the individual members of the group to which he belongs”.The moral self is constructed from the impress of other selves: usually consisting of a conglomeration of parental and societal influences. In the contemporary world of course celebrity and fame have assumed an exalted position in imitation: the exalted figures are, ironically, paradigms of individual freedom and hedonistic excess.

"Jesus the exemplar": what could that mean?

[This may be long and rambling but I would appreciate your comments: one of my supervisors has asked me to "open myself to the kiss of imagination"(!) and write something "wild" in order to hone in on my thesis topic.]

Well, then, what role has/does/should Jesus of Nazareth in moral theology?

"Jesus plays a normative role in Christians’ moral reflection."

"Jesus lived a particular life that has universal meaning; the analogical imagination recognizes how to be faithful to Jesus in ever new situations."
William C. Spohn Jesus and Ethics p.2; p. 186


It is scarcely disputable that Jesus plays “a normative role” in the moral reflection of Christians.
What is in dispute is what that normativity consists of. I like Sphon's observation, that Jesus lived a particular human life - located in space and time quite precisely, and not repeatable, unique in many ways, but that it has a "universal meaning". Jesus' human particularity must be upheld: he is not the instance of a type, or the first of many Christs. You cannot paint an African Christ, or a female Christ, or a Western, blond Christ (more to the point) without doing real violence to true meaning of Christ. He was "like us in every way", but precisely in being himself: he couldn't have been just any of us for exactly that reason.

This means that Jesus' life is made available to us as a pattern of life but only in a way that is conditioned by this particularity and uniqueness. However, I would want to strength the "analogical imagination" idea and say that Jesus is still present, but in a way universally present. He has overcome that particularity by being pneumatologically present in the members of the body and by incorporating them into himself, so that they are at home with him, his brothers and sisters under the Fatherhood of the Father.

Karl Rahner writes:
The imitation of Christ does not consist in the observance of certain moral maxims which may be perfectly exemplified in Jesus, but which have an intrinsic value in themselves independently of him…[but] in a true entering into his life and in him entering into the inner life of the God that has been given to us.

The great Roman Catholic theologian gets it right here: following in the way of Jesus Christ is not a matter of pursuing the values that Jesus represented or embodied, though it is often presented as such. Discipleship of Christ is not merely a matter of resembling him in actions but of "participation" in his life: living with him. "Entering into his life", as Rahner puts it.

The resurrection is a key here because an exemplar can be dead, a mere memory we invoke. But Christ - according to the fundamental Christian testimony - is not dead: he is risen. The resurrection explodes the regular use of Christ as a pattern, because in seeing him resurrected by his Father in the Spirit we know that we can never without external aid follow him in this. We could conceivably even suffer a more a tragic death than Christ's, on behalf of others even: but the resurrection is his and his only to share with us by faith.

Interestingly, the New Testament has a role for a mediated pattern of the way of Christ, in that the apostles and saints were to be afterChrists - I think this Stanley Hauerwas' term.

Bernd Wannenwetsch on sex and the Trinity

Bernd Wannenwetsch replies to an advocate of Christian homosexual marriage, raising some interesting issues for applying the Trinity to our social relationships:

"This necessary move to the doctrine of creation within the doctrine of the Trinity makes a crucial difference to Rogers’ (pro-homosexual marriage) argument, which brings the Trinity into immediate relation with marriage. The Trinity may be the “paradigm or perfect case of otherness as an exchange of gift and gratitude”, as Rogers says. But it cannot as such render the proper model for sexual unions exactly because the Trinity is not a bodily union…

Now it is easy to see why this non-bodily “perfection” of communion may provide a model perfectly suited for Rogers’ claim, which feeds on the marginalization of the meaning of bodily differences. But invoking the Trinity to suggest a “richer” and theologically fuller account of marriage should not make us overlook the bare fact that nowhere in the Scriptures are human sexual unions intended to mirror the Trinity (or at least the union of the Father and Son). Rather, they are specifically assigned to mirror the union of Christ and the church which is a “material”, sensual, in fact a bodily relationship.

That these bodily differences characterize our creaturely existence, means that we should mirror God’s will for human beings to the extent that it can be known from (the witness of) God’s deeds in creation, salvation and perfection. Therefore, when Rogers claims “marriage can represent the Trinity in space and time” he claims at the same time too much and too little. Seeking the sort of perfect community in mirroring God’s Trinitarian life seems to be, at best, a triumphalist anticipation of the eschaton, and, at worst, a denial of our creaturely finitude. "

anyone?

use of Greco-Roman background

How ought knowledge of the historical and cultural context be applied to Paul’s thought, especially as exemplified in 1 Corinthians? Since H.-D. Betz's 1979 commentary on Galatians, Paul’s epistles have been read in the light of the alleged influence of the various streams of First Century Greco-Roman culture. The tendency is to read for (and emphasize) similarity with the background and not to notice difference. It is frequently assumed that Paul is a creature of his times, incapable of challenging the mores and fashions of his day; or, perhaps, of producing from a synthesis of various strands of thought something novel. So it is suggested that Paul uses conventional Greco-Roman rhetoric (so Betz); or apes Platonic thinking about hierarchies (so Castelli); or imports a particular local ideology of the body (so Martin). While in general, the investigation of the conditions for the production of any text is to be applauded, this strategy risks becoming blind to the originality of Paul and the uniqueness of his message; and of a perhaps arbitrary selectivity over which elements of Greco-Roman culture are to be applied in each case.

So, the question is: (humanly speaking) is Paul a genius who come up with something new, or merely a product of his times? To what degree ought we to see his thought as ground-breaking?

Dining with Terrorists anyone?

My review of "Dining with Terrorists" is online here:


http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/culture/reading/dining_with_terrorists/


Love to hear your thoughts. I wrote it along time before the recent spate of "terrorist" attacks...

Imitation as an ethic for today? Some po-mo babble

The value of imitation as an ethic has its detractors. Is the imitation of an example a feasible approach to ethical thinking today? Gender theorist Judith Butler, in an essay entitled “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”, argues in the context of sexual – and particularly homosexual – self-identification that the rhetoric of imitation is dependent on an ordering of the inferior and derivative copy to the superior and authentic original:

[R]econsider then the homophobic charge that queens and butches and femmes are imitations of the heterosexual real. Here “imitation” carries the meaning of “derivative” or “secondary”, a copy of an origin which is itself the ground of all copies, but which is itself a copy of nothing.

For Butler, however, imitation is dubious because the so-called imitated is dependent on the imitator for its status as the original:

Logically, this notion of an “origin” is suspect, for how can something operate as an origin if there are no secondary consequences which retrospectively conform the originality of that origin? The origin requires its derivations in order to affirm itself as an origin, for origins only make sense to the extent that they are differentiated from that which they produce as derivatives…the entire framework of copy and origin proves radically unstable as each position inverts into the other and confounds the possibility of any stable way to locate the temporal or logical priority of either term.

Butler seeks thereby to subvert the entire logic of imitation by undoing the precedence of the original. She cites in particular Jacques Derrida’s riff on Mallarme’s “Mimique”, his “The Double Session”. Derrida’s strategy is to show that an imitator, such as a mime artist, does not in fact imitate some prior thing, but instead actually constitutes the spectre of the original in and through the mime:

[H]e represents nothing, imitates nothing, does not have to conform to any prior referent with the aim of achieving adequation or verisimilitude. One can here foresee an objection: since the mime imitates nothing, reproduces nothing, opens up in its origin the very thing he is tracing out, presenting or producing, he must be the very movement of truth. Not, of course, truth in the form of adequation between the representation and the present of the thing itself, or between imitator and imitated, but truth as the present unveiling of the present... but this is not the case.... We are faced then with mimicry imitating nothing: faced, so to speak, with the double that couples no simple, a double that nothing anticipates, nothing at least, that is not itself already double. There is no simple reference... this speculum reflects no reality: it produces mere "reality-effects"... in this speculum with no reality, in this mirror of a mirror, a difference or dyad does exist, since there are mimes and phantoms. But it is a difference without reference, or rather reference without a referent, without any first or last unit, a ghost that is the phantom of no flesh...

Further, the structure of imitation, for Derrida, is radically compromised because the imitation can only exist insofar as it is not a perfect imitation. If imitation succeeds too well, then it dissolves itself:

For imitation affirms and sharpens its essence in effacing itself. Its essence is its non-essence…A perfect imitation is no longer an imitation…Imitation does not correspond to its essence, is not what it is – imitation – unless it is in some way at fault or, rather, in default. It is bad by nature. It is only good insofar as it is bad.

Imitation undoes itself. Derrida is mainly concerned with mimhsij in the aesthetic sphere, as in Plato and Aristotle; Butler, by casting human identity as performative, appropriates Derrida’s deconstruction of mimetic ideas for what is essentially an ethical discussion.