von Balthasar and impassability

In his Mysterium Paschale Hans Urs von Balthasar tries to understand how the incarnation and death of Christ can be squared with the eternal nature of God. Does God suffer in some way? Is he 'changeable'?

The idea he expounds here is that the incarnation and passion were already existing 'possibilities' or 'realities' within God himself from the beginning. The Lamb of Rev 13:8 was after all 'slain before the foundation of the world'.

He quotes PT Forsyth saying:
'There was a Calvary above which was the mother of it all...His obedience as a man was but the detail of the supreme obedience that made him man.'

The cross in other words already 'exists' in the relationship of the Son and the Father from before all worlds... it is not a new thing in that sense. Or, it always was a new thing...

Creation 'Science' and Calvin

I have to say that Creation 'Science' makes me hopping mad (and perhaps it is too easy a target for hopping and not many of my readers will demurr, though I could be wrong)... so forgive the lack of balance in what follows. I know it comes from an often godly desire to uphold the authority of the Bible, but as such it is a human attempt and actually serves to diminish its authority. It is bad science, but - worse - it is bad exegesis and bad theology. Though well intended, it is apologetically disastrous.

I always think it is weird how the 'Creation' 'Science' people like Answers in Genesis put lists of qualified scientists on their website. On the one hand, 'Creation' 'Science' urges us to mistrust secular science and the academy; on the other, they plead for credibility from the very thing they repudiate. Which is to be? Further, though apparently we can't trust non-christian scientists to date the earth, we can trust them to come up with life-saving drugs... There seems to be a real confusion here.

Interestingly Calvin in his fabulous Institutes II.14-16 has a very high view of the capacity for 'secular' human science within its prescribed limits:

'if we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonour the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we contemn and reproach the Spirit himself.'

Mmm... pears...

Augustine’s development of the biblical tradition intensifies the typological reading of the OT found in Hebrews and also in Paul. Human longing may have false objects, including that found in the form of nostalgia for the past. However, this longing for the soul’s true home has a true object in the city of God revealed in the Son. But it is not enough to say that this lies completely in the future: two more observations are required.
Firstly, the Son ‘Today’ reveals the time of the Father, such that the city of God is now here already present, and the Church in Christ is now already present in it. Though invisible, it is visible to the eyes of faith.
Second, Augustine’s point is that the fact of the longing itself reveals that is something remembered; and thus not only does the city of God lie ahead but it is also the soul’s origin. It is not then the longing for the past itself that is denied but rather any imperfect and merely penultimate objects of this longing.

Which for Augustine, means pears... He says in the Confessions:

'There is an appeal to the eye in beautiful things [like pears!]...This life we live here below has its own attractiveness, grounded in the measure of beauty it has and its harmony with the beauty of all lesser things....Yet in the enjoyment of al such things we commit sin if through immorderate inclination to them - for though they are good, they are of the lowest order of good - things higher and better are forgotten, even You O Lord...' (II.5)

Like Christ, the martyr experiences in the most extreme form the press of time.The witness that the martyr makes is to his renunciation of the nostalgic vision of the past with its ripe pears and her affirmation of homesickness for the kingdom of God.

At the crossroads...

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

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

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

Remembering Augustine

The Confessions themselves represent an attempt to adopt a stance to the past that avoids the nostalgic vision for the pre-conversion self. Augustine attempts not so much to have done with the past but to order it aright by narrating it as confessio - adopting a stance critical of his former self. What is intriguing in relation to our current discussion is the philosophy/theology of memory he gives in book X of the Confessions. Memory was described by Plato in terms of the soul’s reminiscence of its own origin within the world of ideas. Augustine baptises this conception;[1] and because the origin of the soul which it remembers is now the eternal and living God, the capacity of memory is found to have a indescribable depth. Commenting on 1 Cor 2:11 (‘no man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him’), he explains that it is only through God, whom man himself does not know, that man can know himself (X.5-6). God, then, lies within his memory, and yet is not contained by his memory.[2] This tension is replicated in the human subject itself: the vast caves of the memory hold immensities that are not conceivable even to the soul that contains them. Augustine’s subterranean journey through the caverns of his own memory leads to encounter with his own past self:

…in my memory too I meet myself – I recall myself, what I have done, when and where and in what state of mine I was when I did it. X.8

However, this strange meeting is partial and fleeting:

In fact I cannot totally grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is not large enough to contain itself: but where can that part of it be which it does not contain? X.8

How shall he then find the God for whom he searches? He equates the search for God with the search for ‘the happy life’ (X.20). This longing for the happy life is universal, he says, even amongst those who cannot consciously remember being happy, strictly speaking. Yet this longing for happiness is evidence that in fact all human beings have known the happy life – for if it were not in their memories they would not know it to love it.[3] God has never been absent from his memory, in fact; he always deigned to dwell in it:

Certain I am that You dwell in it, because I remember You since the time I first learned of You, and because I find You in it when I remember You. (X.25).

[1] Roland Teske, "Augustine's Philosophy of Memory," in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 150
[2] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Man in History: A Theological Study (London; Sydney: Sheed & Ward, 1968), p. 2-3
[3] Teske, "Augustine's Philosophy of Memory," p. 154; Balthasar, Man in History: A Theological Study, p. 5

Calvin's reticence

I know it's not fashionable....

But I have been re-reading Calvin's Institutes of late. What has intrigued me in particular is his theological method. First of all, he starts from humankind and works out, like the good humanist that he was: knowledge of ourselves is what he seeks, though of course (and this is where he differs from an Erasmus) that knowledge will only be found in reference to God and in comparison to his holiness.

Calvin is insistent - repeatedly insistent - that theology must not indulge in speculation as to the inner working of the divinity. The scripture is a revelation which is accomodated (like a nurse-maid lisping!) to we daft human beings and our limited and corrupted faculties: we must reckon with that if we are tempted to look behind it and rationalise God's mysteries. There is certainly an inscrutability about Calvin's God...

Now I do think that the accomodation hermeneutic has its problems, especially when it is inconsistently applied (ie, when ever Scripture appears to contradict your theological system you say 'of course, this is just accomodationary'). But I really like Calvin's 'less is more' approach to theological reasoning. Seeking rationalist unificatory patterns behind the witness of the scripture is a dangerous practice.

Notably, he does not begin with election/predestination under the heading of the knowledge of God the creator, but places these doctrines much later, in his discussion of soteriology (ie how we are saved).

On Longing...

Nostalgia is a form of longing: specifically a romantic longing for the past. In her critical account of the ‘social disease’ of nostalgia in postmodernity, Susan Stewart defines it as ‘the repetition that mourns the inauthenticity of all repetition’. That is to say nostalgia makes the idealized and exaggerated past into the site of immediacy, presence and authenticity. Stewart further describes nostalgia as a narrative form about the past which only heightens the sense of lack felt in the present. It focuses on what has been lost rather than what it is possible to gain. The problem is that nostalgia itself recognizes the very impossibility of a return to the past: hence the irony in Stewart’s definition which captures so well the temptation facing Thomas. As she puts it, nostalgia is ‘the desire for desire; it is a desire that folds back on itself in a deliberate (and for Stewart, self-destructive) sadness which is ultimately inauthentic.

Ultimately her accusation is that nostalgia makes an idol out of the past. Is this a bit harsh? I happen to like 80s parties and Happy Days... after all? Isn't innocent fun? Well not for Stewart: she sees this stuff as symptomatic of an ideological conservatism, a desire for comfort that blinds us to the urgent present. It is a malignant cultural tendency, for her.

There has to be place for a proper traditionalism that doesn't treat the past like nostalgia does. It would be easy to slip into a kind of amnesia without some way of bringing the past present. But there certainly is a fawning traditionalism: the kind that builds neo-gothic cathedrals in the Antipodes!

Of course, this is all reminiscent of the great theologian of longing: Augustine. Stewarts definition of nostalgia as ‘desire for desire’ meets its counterpart in Augustine’s confession of being ‘in love with love’ in his Confessions. In the latter part of the Confessions, Augustine writes powerfully about memory (revealing his Platonic influence). However the best memory - and the supreme and right object of the heart's longing - is the memory of the beatific vision which lies in the future!


Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 23

Nostalgia and Lot's Wife

The faith of Abraham – that emblematic faith for the Scriptures and the Christian tradition – was expressed in his leaving behind the comforts of Ur and heading for an unseen land of Yhwh’s choosing. It is the faith of a wealthy man, a man with a considerable amount to lose. However, the step that the martyr is called to is not the faith of first setting out, but a faith-on-the-way. This temptation he encounters having already set out on his journey away from his luxurious past towards the kingdom of God. We do not find Abraham, despite his faults, hearkening back to Ur and the lifestyle he has lost.

Within the Abraham cycle, there is however one figure known for succumbing to the temptation to look back: Lot’s wife. With the brimstone hailing down on her home, she looks longingly back. If the salty judgment on her seems harsh, it serves to underscore her lack of belief that the call of God to the future really is the future. That is to say: she can see plainly that there is no way back to the past and yet her heart is still in Sodom and Gomorrah. She still yearns for that which she knows had fallen under the judgment of God. Her sin is a nostalgic longing for the past, not a faithful longing for Yhwh’s future.

Lot’s wife serves as a precursor to the great moment of inbetween-ness in Israel’s history – the wilderness journey between Egypt and the Promised Land. Moses’ wrestle with the people in the desert is often cast in terms of their longing for the pleasant Egypt of their enslavement in preference to the hardships of their journey. With their backs to the Red Sea and with Pharaoh’s army closing in on them, they complain: ‘[I]t would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’ (Ex 14:12). Likewise, their hunger (Ex 16:3; Num 11:4-6) and their thirst (Num 20:1-8) contrast with the plenty that they had had in their former home in bondage to Pharaoh.

Their looking-back is not at all unreasonable. As for Lot’s wife, the difficulties and uncertainties of the journey of faith contrasted unfavourably with the simple pleasures and security of the past. The experience of being a refugee has little to commend it, especially when the basic requirements of daily living are not apparently being met. The disconnection of personal and communal identity involved is also what is at issue for the Israelites. Far better to be the slaves of the Egyptians and to know who one is than to be trapped in this condition of uncertainty – dis-located and dis-identified. Throwing off the shackles of Pharaoh means disavowing his identification of them as a slave-people. Israel is not the maker of her own identity however; rather, she called to an identity that is given to her by Yhwh. Yearning for the fleshpots of Egypt is a yearning to be identified as one formerly was, a longing for the old self. In the end, this nostalgia for the past self presents a rosy vision of what once was. The speech of the Israelites about the Egypt that they have left behind seems to bear little resemblance to the real Egypt. Slave labour, racial segregation and ethnic cleansing were conveniently excised from the Egypt of their complaints to Moses. There is a tendency to lie that comes with the nostalgic vision. It is a self-delusion of the heart: it trades in the desire for what once was, even though the route back is impossible to traverse.

If you were having a girl baby...

What name would you choose from below?

Freya
Eloise
Celeste
Bridie
Sabrina
Arabella
Miranda
Violet
Chloe

Or would you be able to suggest another perhaps?

Amyraldian ... and proud!

You can check out some debate over on Mandy Curley's site. Amyraldian by the way is a term used to label those Calvinists who do not hold to Limited, or particular atonement - the teaching that Christ only died for some (the elect) and not for the whole world.

We could also ask about why this debate matters so much? That would be a really great question to ask to people of both sides.

For me, it goes to the nature of God and to a very significant hermeneutical issue: do we assume that behind the God we meet in scripture is another more logical God? And, do we let the narrative of Scripture govern our theology or is our theological system the determiner of scripture? (BTW I am immune to the insult 'Barthian'!). It is worth noting that many of the texts that LA proponents offer as evidence do not overtly teach it to the exclusion of the non-LA position. Carson in his Love of God book is quite excellent on this. I have a couple of theological (rather than exegetical) points to add for consideration:
1 - i haven't seen anyone deal with my contention that LA is the result of starting the theological system with an abstract doctrine of God conditioned by the philosophy of Aristotle rather than with the drama of salvation-history and especially Christ. You can see this tendency in Owen and others however biblically committed they thought they were. Owen uses Aristotelian language and categories which then govern his whole theological system.
2 - a conceptual difficulty also arises because the atonement is conceived of as being an amount of 'stuff' that you can limit, like liquid in a bottle.
3 - the syllogism on which in depends (something like 'what God wills, sin cannot deny') is perhaps the problem. There is a hermeneutical problem here, isn't there, because the nature of God has already been decided...
4 - it is worth asking how the doctrine of creation - and God's love for all that he has made - fits in.
5. The relation of election in the whole biblical narrative to God's plan for the whole world needs to be accounted for. God's particular election has the whole cosmos in view, even when you think of Abraham and Israel...
6. LA (I would argue) is not Christocentric enough: since the full revelation of God's wrath and his love in his Son, the whole world is now judged according to this standard... The rejection of God's offer of redemption really is inexcuseable. But if LA holds of course it isn't a real offer anyway...
7. I am always suspicious of theology falling into too neat a 'system.' This is not an anti-rationalism: rather it suggests that theology has become beholden to some other system of rationality other than its own...

Of course there is more to say, and more lucidly.

Secular Western Liberalism in my sights again...

Secular western liberalism is a species of political thought that consciously rejects religious ideas from public consideration. It argues that for peaceful human cohabitation a truce needs to be achieved between conflicting visions of human flourishing.

Postmodern critiques of secular western liberalism expose its weaknesses, especially in the areas of epistemology and anthropology. Lyotard and Foucault have uncovered the hidden metaphysical, even theological, commitments of liberalism, suggesting that its appeal to universal or rational concepts is less compelling than at first glance. However, the postmoderns were themselves guilty of some problematic arguments...

Secular western liberalism trespasses frequently beyond the boundaries of the role of ‘contributing to a social order less unjust’. At least in part this is because of the deliberate step liberalism has taken away from divine authority that it might assert its own (covert) theology instead. It would be preferable for liberalism to name its theological commitments; or at least to assert openly its ‘thick’ moral vision and give up the pretence of moral minimalism. Public discussion of preferred theologies and of the telos of human life need not exclude in this way some of the strongest commitments people have (namely, their religious ones); neither would religious people be asked to frame their public discourse according to the theological and/or moral commitments of liberalism. In turn, the theological and moral assertions of secular western liberalism could be properly evaluated, if at least they were made explicit.

What must be heard is a call to the end of the open hostility of contemporary liberal order to Christianity. We can see in liberalism a prodigal child of Christianity: a millennium of Christendom meant that politics in the west has been moulded out of theological clay. We would not assert, for example, that Freedom and Equality are bad ideas in themselves; rather, that without an understanding of them as they were given birth by Christian theology they lack coherence and may become harmful. Christians can support a vision of liberal order that permits people freely to hear and respond to the gospel of God, which itself calls its hearers to deep concern for justice and peace in the present age while at the same time promising a final divine intervention to ‘shatter the spear’. However, the dominant form of liberal order on the contemporary scene is remorselessly secular...

janani luwum, archbishop and martyr

The story of Archbishop Luwum of Uganda is a remarkable one: we don't have many martyrs in the Anglican communion (though we have made a few). He was murdered by Idi Amin in 1977. You can pick up the full details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janani_Luwum

Like many modern martyrs, the exact meaning of his death is contested. Was he killed as the authorities said in a car crash? Was he shot by Amin himself? And how exactly did the death of Luwum testify to Jesus? Did he rebel to late? Or should he have been more compliant?

Anyhow: ponder his life - and his death - for a minute.

Salman Rushide and the Satanic Verses

I have been reading Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses partly because of its status as a cultural icon of our times. It is a fascinating self-fulfilling prophecy: an attack on fanaticism and revealed religion which becomes the focus for fanaticism.

The controversial part of the novel hinges on a confusion of identity between Satan and Gabriel: Mohummed (Mahound in the book) is unable to discern their voices as they whisper the Quranic verses to him and so delivers some non-monotheistic pronouncements. A major oops..

Anyhow, the point is ask the believer in a divine speech: can you tell that its the voice of an angel you are hearing and not the voice of a devil? And what is in fact the difference in any case, since both are servants of God? Are not both in the case just pieces of divine ventriloquism?

NT Wright and AE McGrath actually liberals?

This is one to goad the fans of NTW a bit (and let's face it, it is about time!! ;-) ). Andrew Moore writes in Anvil (20/1 2003):

'In seemingly conceding to the historian the authority to judge the truth of the Gospels, and in apparently removing from the theologian the right to challenge the scientist on theological grounds, have Wright and McGrath adopted the liberal principle?...
Is Christian truth to be measured on the same scale, construed in the same terms, as scientific and historical truth? Wright and McGrath seem to want to have it both ways: they wish to grant normativity to both Christian truth and to scientific and historical truth. My argument is that this option is not open to us: Christian truth is revealed principally in the person of Jesus Christ. It is unique because he is unique.'

Might he not have a point here? Perhaps he is being unfair to NTW and AEM. And the question ought to asked - if you go down this Barthian track are you not conceding the field to the sceptics? To which Moore might reply: 'yes - but it isn't a field worth having'...

George Pattison on Preaching as sacrament

Oxford Professor of Divinity George Pattison writes in his 'Short Course in Christian Doctrine':

'...if we no longer live in a golden age of Christian preaching, few Christians will not at some point have experienced something of the sacramental dimension of preaching- that preaching, no less than the sacraments more narrowly understood, is a way of God becoming present in time to the believing community. Preaching too can be a way of making-present the 'conversation in heaven' to which God is constantly drawing us. Seeing preaching as sacramental in this way goes against the widespread assumption by both preachers and congregations that preaching is primarily a form of teaching, the aim of which is simply to offer an explanation or application of the biblical text, or to demonstrate the logical, historical or psychological grounds for accepting Christian belief. On such a view the purpose of pracehing will primarily be to persuade, convince or, simply to argue a point...' p. 108

His point: that preaching ought to be done as if we are encountering God himself in the preaching of the sermon - that is, that he is communicating to us in it. I wouldn't use the word sacrament as he does perhaps (in fact, I think the sacraments are types of WORD!), but you get his drift...

Wouldn't this change the whole tone of the sermon? And for the better?

narrating yourself?

It is pretty much axiomatic among contemporary thinkers (secular and theological) to use the category of narrative in relation to the self - as a way of understanding or interpreting the self. Ricoeur, Taylor, Benhabib, Giddens, Hauerwas: even Hannah Arendt was using this idea in the 1950s. The value of this perspective lies in the way in which you can analyse a self as a body and not just a mind, as an individual-in-relation and not an individual-in-isolation, and a person in time and history and not a person somehow standing aloof to the conditions and passing of time. Time, body, mind, action, others.

But what does it mean to 'self-narrate', or to see oneself in terms of a narrated life? It is both a hermeneutical and an ethical response to the question posed by existence. Telling your story both interprets the events that have already happened and plots a trajectory into the future. 'Narrating' means 'ascribing some form or meaning to a series of events'.

One responds to the events of one's life as a sequence of cause and effect, as an emplotment (Ricoeur's term). One chooses subsequent attitudes and actions in keeping with the pattern that emerges over time (perhaps) or in response to some deeply held intuition about what should happen next. One plays a role as a character in relation to other characters, as an actor situated next to other actors ('neighbours' even). So, we might ask, what genre is my life? Tragic? Comic? Epic? Romance? Fairy Story? Absurdist Drama?

Seeing life in narrative terms can factor in things outside our control that are crucial to who we are: our gender, our national indentities, our accidents, our historical circumstances. The thing about a narrative is that it is like DNA: no narrative is completely the same as another's, though it may resemble it in type. It is a great way to identify someone.

It is interesting to think about biography and autobiography here. Both of these never quite contain the actual narrative of the person, do they? Autobiography - the telling of one's own tale - is so often an exercise in self-deception, or in choosing the wrong genre. And the problem is that it is always a tale half-told, because your death is not included! To include the manner of dying seems to be essential to the genre of the story.

Is it ever possible to tell the truth about oneself?

kata'angelism: a contribution to missiology

Missiology seems to me to be a rather odd thing to study. It is highly dependent on the findings of sociology - which are notoriously variable and uncertain. On the other hand, I am certainly aware - and passionately believe - that theology HAS to take mission seriously if it is to be true to itself. AND that Christians need to be better listeners to their own culture etc...

Anyhow, my proposal is that the church ought not to accomodate the gospel to its culture but rather trade on its dissonance with culture. Why not proclaim the real gospel and not sweeten the pill? What do I mean:

I mean, tell them that when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die (with Dietrich B.). Tell them they are going to suffer persecutions and humiliations. Tell them that they might as well forget about respectibility; and that they are going to have far fewer sexual partners and drink less. Tell them are going to have un-PC views, and so be out of kilter with the cool inner city crowd. Tell them that they will no longer be numb to the sufferings of others or be able to stand by. Tell them that they may be poorer and be called to live in a smaller house and not wear a Rolex. Tell them their family may reject them or consider them an embarassment... Tell them they will actually feel bad when they do the wrong thing. Tell them that they will have to deal with church and all its human mess.

Then hand out the comment cards...

What do you think?

I need your advice

Ok, this is the bit where I seek advice as to how my dissertation paper (which is meant to be a 15000 words foray into my eventual thesis) ought to proceed. I am kinda hoping that I will get some clarity by just typing... so here goes.

As y'all know, I am asking about martyrdom and the self: that is, I want to ask 'what difference does christology make for being a human self'? and martyrdom is very interesting way of lancing that boil. That is, what kind of self is the martyr? I think it is an interesting question, especially when you put it next to the usual ways in which we think of telling our own stories/identifying ourselves etc.

My strategy? I am using TS Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral (about Thomas Becket the martyr archbishop) to generate the concepts, language and structure of the discussion so that I have something substantial to get to grips with. From there I flesh out the concepts with stuff from the scriptures and the tradition. Thomas is in the play met by four tempters who he refuses, thereby suggesting exactly what martyrdom isn't, very helpfully. In the dissertation I am taking ONE of the temptations and giving it a working over. (The examiners are supposed to go 'wow, he should be allowed to do the rest of these!')

Now, in this paper I have two possible ways of proceeding: A and B.
A:
1. martyrdom is a way of narrating yourself that is pretty weird.
2. Here are the ways in which we (modern/postmoderns) narrate ourselves today.
3. Here is how via Eliot's play we can see that a martyr self-narrates (partly)
4. See the differences/similarities?

OR

B:
1. martyrdom is a way of narrating yourself that is pretty weird.
2. Here is how via Eliot's play we can see that a martyr self-narrates (partly).
3. NOW compare it with some ways in which we (moderns/postmoderns) narrate ourselves today

Which is it? (Sorry for the echoes of 2WTL...!)

Mad as an animal rights activist?

The Animal Rights movement in the UK is far more visible than it is in Oz. Britain is beset by some really passionate people prepared to take extreme measures for their cause, including in one celebrated case, digging up the corpse and bones of the granny of a guinea pig farm owner and hiding them.

Generally everybody thinks they are maniacal idiots. They don't accept the normal rationality of society and so are subject to ridicule. They make a big and ugly noise on Oxford's streets and they wave placards with gruesome pictures in our faces. They are obsessive people who won't abide the law.

But are Christians really any different? Are we not fanatics? What exactly is wrong with fanaticism (except the grave-robbing bit...)

Paul Zahl and Biblical Theology

http://www.tesm.edu/deans-corner/dcblog/bibtheo

This little article is a US evangelical episcopalian's take on what in Moore College/Oak Hill circles has become known as 'biblical theology'. In brief, Zahl's take on it is a Lutheran one: pointing out that the Goldsworthy-style biblical theology has a strongly Reformed heritage for starters. His complaint is interesting: that BT collapses the OT into the NT, such that you cannot hear the message of the OT except as a kind of pre-NT. Certainly, I have heard preaching on the Psalms for example which allows no other reading than the christological one - a method which I think is hard to sustain and necessarily subdues some of the best bits! Often the schema is used more rigidly than you would ever hear from Graeme himself (as always happens with systems and schemas...)

Zahl accuses BT of 'colonizing the Old Testament on behalf of the New.' His (very Lutheran!) response is that the OT is God's 'first word' designed to convict the world of sin - to which the NT, his 'second word', is the complement. The OT, if you like, is the bad news, and the NT is the good. (perhaps this caricatures PZ's position, but ... maybe not).

There is something in this I think. However, is not Christ the lynchpin here? Is not God's word in the OT AND the NT still Christ?
AND - doesn't Zahl's proposal risk minimizing the aspects of the OT which consist of promise, redemption and grace? Is the law really just a matter of a very high standard which no-one can keep but which makes you feel really bad? Why does the Psalmist (19, 119 eg.) delight in the law in that case?

It should be remembered also that BT is a response to so much evangelical preaching on the OT which was either hopelessly allegorical or hopelessly moralistic. (sometimes you feel that same principles could have been drawn from Homer or Jane Austen). BT reminds us that the bible is a grand narrative of redemption and to locate ourselves according to that narrative when we read the OT. Thoughts anyone? (btw, do read Zahl's very brief article as well).

The Great Evangelical Bible Swindle

In standard evangelical church services these days (at least the ones I go to) it is usual practice to read the Bible only from the passage to be preached on. It is rare to have an accompanying reading from the other testament, and unheard of to have a Psalm.

I think myself this is terrible. If you pop into a more Catholic or more liberal church - one supposedly less commited to the authority of the Scriptures, you will get in fact a feast of scripture. I went to church at an Anglo-Catholic parish in Cornwall and this was in fact the case. It was brilliantly read. (Fortunately, there was no sermon: the effect may have been spoiled!)

Why is this so? Is there are fear of unexplained readings? In which case, what kind of doctrine of Scripture are we practicing? Or is it that reading aloud well is a lost art? Have we fallen for a new kind of clericalism? I think there is a tendency for evangelical ministers to treat their congregations like idiots. They forget that we can absorb far more than one point on any given Sunday. And they don't trust us to hear the word of God for ourselves. It is unprotestant!!

What we lose is the rich symphony of scripture week by week, and all those passages that will never get preached on.

What can be done to arrest this dumbing-down? Who will join me in the campaign to get the BIBLE BACK INTO CHURCH??

Seyla Benhabib: postmodernism and feminism and the 'end of the self'

Seyla Benhabib is a Turkish-US feminist political philosopher I have been reading...

What is she talking about? The philosophical debate she enters is one in which the reasoning subject of Kantian philosophy has been severely attacked by postmodern thinkers in particular. But is there any 'universal human' we can rescue?

Postmoderns wish to destroy all essentialist conceptions of human being or nature. In fact Man on this account is a social, historical or linguistic artifact not a noumenal or transcendental Being. 'Man' is a construct of our discourse. 'Man' is forever caught in the web of fictive meaning, in chains of signification, in which the subject is merely another position in language. Taken very strongly, this means that the subject dissolves into the chain of significations of which it was supposed to be the initiator. Ouch!

For Benhabib, this version is NOT compatible with the goals of feminism.

She admits: ‘Surely, a subjectivity that would not be structured by language, by narrative and by the symbolic codes of narrative available in a culture is unthinkable. We tell of who we are, of the ‘I’ that we are, by means of a narrative.’ p.214 BUT: we can concede all that but we must argue that we are not merely extensions of our own histories but are author/characters in our own stories…

She attacks Judith Butler's position that we are all self-constructed performers:
‘if we are no more than the sum total of the gendered expressions we perform, is there ever any chance to stop the performance for a while, to pull the curtain down, and only let it rise if one can have a say in the production of the play itself? Butler's work undermines the normative vision of feminist politics.

Further, she says, it is impossible to get rid of the subject altogether and claim to be a fully accountable participant in the community of discourse and inquiry: the strong thesis of the death of the subject undermines the discourse of the theorist herself. Good point!

INSTEAD: we can think of the self as a subject, but as a 'situated subject': that is, a person who is a body and so gendered, situated in time and space and so on, and so place in a context of unique or close to unique conditions from which the self responds and reasons.

She says:
‘my goal is to situate reason and the moral self more decisively in contexts of gender and community, while insisting upon the discursive power of individuals to challenge such situatedness in the name of universalistic principles, future identities and as yet undiscovered communities.’ p.8
Nice.

it wasn't just a rain shelter...

thinking about the self with Linda Woodhead

Linda Woodhead makes a very perceptive observation when she says that the common dictum that 'the postmodern self is fragmented' needs to be looked at more closely. In fact, the fragmentary thesis is worked out in several different ways, and there is major disagreement about the processes by which the self became fragmented anyways.

She asks: was the self ever a stable entity? Can we point to an easier period to be a self? Woodhead questions the handwringing 'we are in a time of crisis' assumptions that undergirds a lot of secular and theological thinking (she has Anthony Thistleton in her sights, for one).
Thinkers construe 'the self' in one of four ways:

1 - it is bestowed. That is, there is an authoritative source/s from which selfhood comes to us. True selfhood responds to the bestowal.
2 - it is rational. That is, the self is a thinking reasoning entity above all else. Being a true self is being more reasoned.
3 - it is boundless. That is to say the self is a free entity. True selfhood = freedom!
4. - it is effective, in the sense that it is chiefly an expressive entity.

Theological thinkers usually try to assert the first type of self over against the others. That is, they say - people think of themselves as (say) rational selves but that isn't right - they are and should realise that they are bestowed selves.

Woodhead says: wait a second - it is more complicated than that...

Church Buildings

OK - time for honesty: which are the best and which is the worst church building? Now, to answer the question, you are gonna have to say WHY. Which means, come up with some criteria as to what makes it the best or the worst. It might be that the people can testify to a building that has really grown on them over time. For example: I went to a mission at West Wollongong Anglican (terrific people). They have a highly unusual building to say the least, much derided by even the congregation. However, it was actually a good building to be in, to preach in and to sing in (in my opinion) and it felt like a warm and yet reflective environment too. Again, i worked in St Andrew's Cathedral, a beautiful building, brilliantly restored but quite awkward for some kinds of meeting. However it did start to grow on you after a while because it was light and yet at the same time serious: and filled with people it can really be a glorious place to worship god in.

The issue behind the issue is - to what degree are aesthethics important? To what degree to pragmatics over-rule everything? hey, it would also be great if we could be able to attach photos to the posts...Ahh. Now we have had some interesting personal testimonies to warm us up (so to speak) - let's have some reflections on what it is we are looking for... do pragmatic and bodily considerations trump all? Do the aesthetics count for anything? Is the 'it's just a rain shelter' philosophy really enough?

The worst 'church building' I had experience of was Unisearch House when Mathias united its congregations for a year or two back in the 90s. It was terrible: it was ugly and the acoustics meant that you couldn't hear the singing of anyone but those around you, and the preacher seemed like he was talking through a loud hailer. It was an unpleasant place to be and mitagated against community. You couldn't find it in the dark, or park within cooee. The standard of the music went down (I was one of the musicians) beacuse it was given a 'why bother' kind of attitude. What if: a new suburb was opening up and you had been zoned space to build a church building: what would you tell the architect? Should the church building look like every other building, or should it look different? What values should it project to the community and to those who use it?

The desire for heavenly glory

The desire for heavenly glory is what the brothers Zebedee, James and John, bring to Jesus in Mark 10:35-45. The story seems to sit as a counterpoint to the promise of eternal life as an affirmation of the disciples in 10:29-31. The approach of the brothers in the first place is crass in its attempt to elicit a blank cheque from the Messiah: (‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask’ 10:35). Their request is not a small thing either, as it turns out: to be seated in the places of honour next to the exalted Son in his heavenly session (10:37). They wish to usurp the highest positions in order that they might bask in the glory of the Christ. The abruptness of the request should not prevent us from seeing it as a genuine desire for closer proximity to holiness and a desire to be seen as pleasing in the sight of God. They are willing to take their discipleship of Christ to the very throne-room of heaven.

Jesus’ reply reminds them of the true demands of that discipleship if it is to be true discipleship of the true Christ. Their request betrays in fact their ignorance of the path he is about to tread (‘you do not know what you are asking’ 10:38). The real proposition for the follower of Jesus Christ is the one he next puts to them: ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’ (10:38). The ‘cup’, in Mark’s symbolic world the cup of divine judgment from Isaiah 51:17, 22, returns as a recognizable image in Gethsemane when Jesus cries out ‘[T]ake this cup from me’ (14:36). Can the brothers join with Jesus in the God-forsakenness of the execution of the Christ? Likewise, the baptismal image points forward to the bloody conclusion of Jesus’ earthly career. Origen for one reads both images as referring to martyrdom: his reading is confirmed by Jesus’ prophecy about the brothers (10:39). However, Origen curiously seems to imply that a promise is hear given to those who would pursue martyrdom of a greater reward, as if Jesus’ question (‘can you…?’) is a condition that the brothers can chose to meet. He overlooks the brothers inability to realize the full meaning of their own question; and the rebuff strongly implied in ‘to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant’ (10:40). The request for the seats of privilege is not denied outright: the brothers will learn the real meaning of following Jesus in due course. God’s hand will not be forced in the name of serving him. ‘The first shall be last, the last first’ does not mean that being the last ought to be pursued as a way of coming first - as if this were the point of Jesus’ reversal. Rather, it is a promise of vindication given to those who would follow him in the giving of life in service (10:45).

Too neat?

Who wants to be a saint?

In a letter to Eberhard Bethge written in July 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remembered a conversation with ‘a young French pastor’ (identified by the editor as Jean Lasserre):

He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast.

Bonhoeffer’s intuition is that intending ‘to become a saint’ is not the way to become one. Even though desiring the honour of heaven appears to be a way to surmount the lust for earthly glory, it is merely a displacement of the same desire.

Hmm: here's a problem then. What place does the heavenly prize have in the motivation of the holy to serve God? Does the offer of a heavenly reward or a martyr’s crown corrupt the pursuit of true sanctity? The question is most troublesome: the very idea of martyrdom threatens to collapse under its weight. Is the heavenly city merely the earthly city on a larger scale? Is the desire for a higher place in heaven, which Origen among others certainly believed would be bestowed on the martyrs, any better than a desire for earthly glory? Could we discover ourselves in an untenable situation of wanting that for which the desiring makes the having apparently impossible?

Help me out here...

Radiohead's OK Computer: Airbag

Airbag [Elation]

“Airbag” opens with a swirling, distorted guitar figure and a crashing drum loop like Mack trucks rumbling past on a motorway; and bizarrely, sleigh bells. It’s a grim and slightly menacing sound alleviated only by some angelic-choir synth. The guitar lead flexes up and down a middle-eastern mode, sounding like a call to prayer.

in the next world war
in a jack-knifed juggernaut.

It’s a diabolical scene, a postmodern-ordinary apocalypse: the freeway car/truck crash.

In a voice that is dreamy and unreal, Thom Yorke tells a mini-narrative of a quasi-religious experience: the feeling of elation you get when you almost die in a car crash. It is an unlikely scene for an epiphany: the modern motorway is a soul-less no-place from which nature has been erased; a not-anywhere-really, a place for flesh and blood to be ground down by steel and rubber; where the natural sounds are the shriek of brakes and the suck of tyres.

As the music builds, soaring wordless monk-chant vocals come in, adding to the sense of a new beginning of spiritual dimensions.

I am born again.

It’s a moment of sheer grace. The buzz of adrenaline creates a feeling of that life is new. This is consciously religious language: but in the dark asphalt world of the song perhaps that is as good as it is ever going to get. Yet Thom howls triumphantly:

In an interstellar burst I am back to save the universe!

His brush with death makes him feel impregnable and immortal. For a moment, he forgets the vulnerability of the human body before the whizzing masses of the mechanical monoliths, and feels superhuman, capable of might feats.

I’m amazed that I survived/ An airbag saved my life.

Technology is one of the great themes of OK Computer. Here at least technology is a life-saver: his face instead of beating the steering wheel of his fast german car plops gently into the inflating airbag, and he walks away from the accident. The technology may have created the danger, but also saved his life.

It’s faintly ridiculous, of course. The scene for this exhilarating experience is banal and dispiriting. The salvation is only momentary. But for a moment, life is precious and delightful: ironically, it takes a flirtation with death to fill us with an appreciation for life.

But it isn’t a moment of grace: it is only luck.

Talking to an atheist...

What follows is an email I sent to an atheist who emailed me after I wrote a review of Sam Harris' The End of Faith.


Dear Mr Coupland,

Like many atheists I have spoken with – and like Sam Harris - you employ what I would call a ‘scatter gun’ method in attack and the ‘small target’ method in defence. By which I mean this: that you put forward arguments of differing nature across a range of fields, some of which are important and serious, some of which are red herrings and some of which are just (with respect) ill-informed. You attack Catholics as if they are fundamentalists, Protestants as if they are Catholics.

On the defence you posit atheism as not really asserting anything at all and so don’t feel you have a case to answer. Hence, to any suggestions that you might show some proof for your position, you don’t respond, since you claim you aren’t asserting anything.

Let me try to clarify: some of your arguments are philosophical, or have a philosophical position at the root - so, vis a vis ‘miracles’, you rule them out a priori whatever the evidence because of a philosophical position. Some of your arguments pertain to the Bible and the reliability of its sources. Some of your arguments relate to the morality of religious groups/ the church. And so on.

Now, I could answer in detail each of these, but I think I’d be wasting my time. Clearly anyone who cites Barbara Thiering as an authority over the vast majority of non-confessional scholarly academic opinion (the Jewish Oxford scholar Geza Vermes for example) is following a pattern of prejudice not ‘reason’. Because I think the real issue is not logical or rational but existential. Clearly, your religious upbringing has prejudiced you against Christianity and other religions. If you hadn’t had that upbringing, perhaps you would have been less likely to pursue atheism as an adult. This may sound impertinent, but of course it is the logic you use to characterize religious believers…

My contention is that atheism is as much a matter of ‘belief’ as theism is. Not that belief is bad: it is in fact something humans do all the time everywhere. We do not subject even very important beliefs to scientific scrutiny: that would be both laborious and unnecessary. We take many things on trust (or ‘faith’). Not that trust is ‘blind’ as you say it must be; not at all. It is just what we do all the time because we can’t know everything! We base our lives around the credibility of those we know and whose authority we trust. Generally I don’t ask my wife to take a cat scan to understand her mental states. When you believe the words of a guy with a M.D. and a white coat about your body you are exercising trust. We may of course be deceived, or have our trust misplaced; but that is a necessary risk that all humans take at both trivial and profound levels. We need to do this to be what we are. It is a false dichotomy to pit so-called ‘reason’ against ‘faith’.

Is atheism like this? Of course it is. It is existentially convenient for some not to believe in God, because it may justify their hatred of the church or religious people (and religious people have of course on occasion acted appallingly). It may underpin their politics or their ethics (it is no accident that atheism has been historically associated with libertinism). It may quiet their uneasy consciences. It may be that they want to sleep in on Sunday mornings. The atheist has to believe the impossible and the illogical: that the universe has no cause and no beginning. He or she has to believe that there is no life after death. He or she has to take the infinitesimal odds that life began from the primordial soup by blind chance. You have to believe that despite the deeply held sense that the majority of us have that some things humans (religious ones often) do are really profoundly evil, that this is nothing but a matter of power and that justice really only boils down to whatever it is we can enforce. And so on… Sure, I think you can take those odds, and you can believe atheism. But don’t call it other than what it is: a belief! Don’t be shy! Then, we can talk about which beliefs are more justified, more plausible or more likely. It interests me that you seem very happy to have faith in the authority of scholars whose credibility is highly dubious because it supports your belief (I can’t believe you seriously suggest the ‘Jesus wasn’t really dead’ argument – to put that forward really takes some believing!) I may be wrong, but I doubt you have checked all the evidence for yourself first-hand. But then it was you who said ‘don’t believe everything you read’… you must be a very busy man, what with learning all those ancient languages and visiting archaeological sites and deciphering ancient manuscripts and the like!

Ahh: you are now going to bring the tooth fairy out and dangle her in front of me (along with Santa Claus). This is the small target defence. Basically, you say, it is very hard to prove a negative proposition, even ones that the majority of us know to be obviously true (ie “the tooth fairy doesn’t exist”): so we ought only to accept those positive propositions for which there is proof and deny those for which there is no proof (ie “there is no positive proof for the tooth fairy, therefore she does not exist”). However: proving the existence of anything or anyone other than yourself is actually very difficult if you have such a high standard of evidence. Now, we can I suppose trust our senses to give us trustworthy data – but even this is not always the case. We know that people can have sense experiences of things that don’t exist – and we ordinarily class them as mentally ill. It is even harder when it comes to historical figures or people that you haven’t met. I take it you believe that I exist and do so along with Winston Churchill, Henry VIII and Julius Caesar though you have very little direct empirical evidence of any of us. And yet your proof for these beliefs is actually quite flimsy, if you compare it to the standard of proof you are demanding for the existence of God.

In addition, it is important to say that believing in God isn’t like believing in the tooth fairy at all of course. The difference is of course massive and obvious: the tooth fairy has no link to the way things are in the world. And very few people have ever claimed to have an experience of the tooth fairy. In addition, we might say, that it is part of the definition of the tooth fairy that she, like unicorns and Homer Simpson, is fictional. So it is commonly agreed by all that the type of existence she has is as a fictional or mythical entity as part of a game we play with children. On the other hand, the vast majority of human beings over history and across cultural differences testify to the existence of God in some form: they have posited (and continue to do so) that it was reasonable to believe from observing the way the world is that it was the work of a creator being of some kind. And many many people testify to having had experiences of God of some kind. The neurological data used to explain away religious experience that Harris introduces seems to me to be completely silly and typical of his arguments: he thinks by explaining a cause of something he has explained the entire thing away. This is a net full of red herrings… Now, truth isn’t democratic (thank goodness) of course. But if you are to assert something against the vast majority of the race in this way I think you do have to offer some kind of proof. Otherwise, stop being an atheist and be honest: you are really an agnostic.

Or, you could join Professor Anthony Flew, who after a lifetime of advocating atheism in public has decided that theism is the most defensible position philosophically (without becoming religious in anyway).

'Don't fall asleep'...The Loneliness of Jesus (a sermon)

It can be very hard to stay awake if you are really tired. If what your body is telling you is that you really need to be asleep then it is very difficult to over-ride that by using reason. I don’t know if you have ever felt sleepy while driving: it’s a very frightening experience, isn’t it? You open the windows to let the air rush over your face; you find the most discordant music you can and play it at jumbo jet levels; you pinch yourself and you try to talk to the other people in the car. But still, your eyelids droop, and still you catch yourself drifting out of consciousness, barely aware of what you are doing. Even though we know rationally the consequences of napping while in charge of a speeding automobile are deadly for ourselves and for others, the imperatives of the body command us; and we tend to respond.

Part of being human is this ongoing struggle with the weakness of our flesh. We cannot escape the needs of our physical natures, or pretend that somehow our rational capacity will always override our appetites. Our intentions may be noble or profound; but somehow the weakness of our flesh tends to result in compromises that disappoint us or worse. Not that the need for sleep is sinful any more than our desires for food or sex or water or reality TV are as fundamental human appetites.

In this serieshave been trying to understand who we are as human beings theologically speaking. But we have taken an unusual tack, admittedly; seeing Christ as the human being par excellence, we have honed in on the moment of crisis in his life, the point at which his humanness seemed to collide most directly with his mission: the scene in the garden of Gethsemane. First we spoke of the horror of Jesus in this story, his terrible confrontation with the meaning of his own mission. This man was true human being, tested to the limit, knowing himself the frailty of a bodily existence, with its tears and tremors. And then we saw how this true human responded to this extreme situation in prayer and obedience. Obedience to the Father is proper for humankind, we learn; and prayer to God is likewise the reaction of the real man to the extremity of a situation like this.

But we have still only considered the story in two of its three dimensions.

The perspective we have missed so far is the perspective of the disciples who were with Jesus in the garden and who witnessed his agony. Or who would have, if they could have stayed awake. For the disciples, it had been an alarming evening to say the least: Jesus had predicted to them that one of their number would betray him, to which they all answered “surely, not I?” (14:19-20). But Jesus had gone on to say:

“You will all fall away…for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.” (14:27)

And then he had predicted that Peter, even Peter! would deny him three times that very night. “But Peter insisted emphatically “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same.” (14:31) They had all the best intentions in the world as they entered the Garden of the olive-oil press, or Gethsemane.

And entering the garden, Jesus tells them to “sit here, while I pray”. Jesus seeks for a quieter spot and so takes along with him Peter, James and John, the trio he had selected as his chief witnesses: they had witnessed the raising of Jairus’ daughter; they had witnessed the transfiguration and heard the voice of God; and with Andrew they had heard Jesus talk of the signs of the end of the age, in chapter 13: it was they who had heard Jesus deliver his eschatological imperatives, (13:35ff) “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back - whether in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: “Watch!” This trio had also had their moments of pride: Peter’s rebuke of Jesus at Caesarea, and James and John’s request for the best seats in the eschatological dinner table.

And now to them comes the instruction “Remain here and keep awake”, or “keep watch” (14:34), as Jesus moves a little further on and falls on his face in desperate prayer to his Father. Why are they to watch? What are they to watch for? Are they to be sentries to alert Jesus to the approach of his capturers? Perhaps, on this literal level that makes sense: but the command so strongly echoes the commands of chapter 13 to watch for the coming of the Son of Man that we are meant to hear this as a testing for the disciples of their capacity to this other “watching” too.

And it is a test that they fail badly, isn’t it? Jesus returning to his disciples, found them sleeping. “Simon” says Jesus “are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?” Evidently not - it had been a busy day and so Peter and the others had nodded off, unable to stop themselves though they heard the direct command of Jesus to stay awake and watch. Not a lot of watching was going on at all.

And so Jesus delivers this lesson: “Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (14:38). The echoes of the Lord’s Prayer in this passage are fascinating: Jesus prays “Abba, Father”, and that his will be done; and now, they are to pray not come to the time of testing. Of course, the time of testing is just round the corner. But here is a lesson in discipleship: stay awake, and pray. Be alert to the possibility of NOT doing what God wills, but what you will instead; of choosing the weakness of your flesh over the intentions of your spirit, so to speak. Jesus knows that the only way to meet this terrible trial is to keep awake and call on God.

“Could you not keep watch for one hour?” No he could not; and neither could the others. Again and again he was to find them sleeping: “because their eyes were heavy”; and from embarrassment and shame, caught like rabbits in the headlights of their own disobedience, they did not know what to say to him. Entering the garden with all the devotion to service of their Lord, they fall asleep at the very moment they ought to be most alert and calling on God to deliver them.

And so it is no surprise, with disciples such as these, that we find Jesus deserted, betrayed and denied. Remarkably, Peter denies him three times, pretending dishonestly that he has no first-hand knowledge of Jesus, for fear perhaps of sharing the same fate as Jesus. So much for taking up your cross and following Jesus.

Of course Judas’ betrayal is as one of Jesus closest circle: his is not a denial of Jesus but an acknowledgement of him by a kiss.

And the disciples as group dishonoured themselves in the crucial moment by fleeing from the armed mob that had come to capture him. This included even the mysterious streaker of 14:51, who fled naked: perhaps, people have suggested, this is the author, too ashamed to add his own name to his disgrace. The disciples lose their nerve: they fall into an unruly mob. In contrast, Jesus faces his trial and death with calm composure, having expressed his fears to God in prayer.

"This desertion means that in this moment Jesus is utterly alone. It is not self-evident that he should be alone at this point. He had called his disciples to be his apostles, the foundation of his community in the world. He had made his cause theirs. He himself would be there in their midst, as he says in Matthew. It was perfectly possible that the disciples might have been crucified along with him. But, though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. The flight of disciples and the denial of Peter show just how weak it is. Though he asked them to watch and pray with him, they could not do it; and just at the crucial moment they dozed. While the saviour wept, the Church slept! Though the Christian community could say, yes, we were there, in the Garden of tears, alongside the saviour, it could never say its behaviour at that moment was honourable or that it contributed to the work of Jesus in even a supporting role at this point. No: Jesus is utterly alone in his prayer in the garden and his going to the cross." (K. Barth)


This is an important rebuke to any sense of ecclesiastical triumphalism, any sense in which churches might think of themselves as contributing to the work of Christ. Of late we have seen the impressive grandeur of a particular church on display in the pageantry of the late Pope’s funeral and the selection of his successor. And according to one commentator favourable to Benedict XVI, “the church is in good hands”. The church is certainly not in good hands if it is in any hands but those of Jesus its Lord. How Benedict’s supposed predecessor behave when it came to the crunch? But we too are frequently guilty of this pretension: that by our activity and relentless pragmatism we may somehow think we share Jesus’ burden, or repeat his work. The danger of success in church-building may be that we forget that the church was forged in a terrible failure of its own nerve: and that only the saviour went forward at the vital moment. In our current environment of planning and planting and building and leading and vision-statement creating we must take great care not to think we ever supplant or contribute to what Jesus did for us once for all. This is blasphemy of the highest order, but it is a real temptation for us in the culture we inhabit.

And so it was Jesus who watched and prayed in their place. They left him in frightful loneliness, asleep when it most mattered: and he did it for us, willing to obey God, though he full knew the horror of what was to come. As one writer puts it, “if there is anything which brings out clearly this simple “for us” as the content of the Gospel, then it is this aspect of the event in Gethsemane, in which the act of God in Jesus Christ had absolutely nothing to correspond to it in the existence of those who believe in him. They could not watch with him even one hour. He alone watched and prayed in their place.”

And so: Stay Awake! Keep Watch! Pray lest you fall into temptation! Following Jesus is about being on your guard and, because the flesh is weak, praying for God’s help. We ought not to be found dozing at the wheel in our lives of faith, but rather found alert and prepared. We need to recognise our body’s weaknesses and our dependence on God for mastery of them. Obedience to God, which is what liberates human beings to be themselves, is a hard road to follow, and full of pot-holes. And yet someone has gone there for us.

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.

Jerry Springer the Opera and Taking Offence

Christians and other religious people seem to be known for their willingness to take offence. That's what religious people are, by and large: people who get offended about cartoons in newspapers on behalf of their divinities.

Recently in the UK there has been a stage show produced called Jerry Springer the Opera. It is a vile piece and not really that good - I saw some of it when it was shown on the BBC. It has a gay Jesus among other things, and some incredibly bad language. It has some satirical component to it I suppose, but it isn't that funny and it isn't that clever. Of course, with a piece like this which religious people are offended about, the liberal commentators blather on about what a great work of art it is, and how important it is that it be shown etc. The issue of censorship is bandied about as if it is the greatest cause in the universe etc. Of course, the possibility of SELF-censorship on the grounds of offending a large number of people and whether that might be a good thing to freely choose to do is never discussed, because we only discuss these things in terms of LAW (it is worse in the UK even than OZ in this area).

But is the right Christian response to get outraged and to protest? Certainly that is the right Muslim response, it seems... But Christians are not those who assert their rights in this way. Surely we don't want to participate in the protest/victimhood discourse that is so harmful to our community? Surely we can speak about the hurt and the (more to the point) the terrible danger of blasphemy without using the same gestures that people use to get a public hearing these days? I think it actually damages the cause of the gospel when we pose as another protest group in society that is making noise for its own space...

Honourable Death?

You might be - must be - familiar with this terrible image, if not because you have seen then because you have imagined, or dreamt it. A man in an office one morning, faced with the alternative of dying at the hands of the terrorists or dying at his own hand, chooses to take his own life. He jumps. This photo has been read as a symbol of the ultimate act of defiance against terror: they may take our lives, but they may never take our freedom. It is death with honour, in other words.

The ancient world knew this kind of rhetoric as it applied to death. For the Romans, victory was important. But if you couldn't have victory, then death with honour was just as glorious. So noble suicide was a way of rescuing dignity from defeat. It was an act of will when none seemed available: like choosing to jump rather than be burned. Lucan tells the story of the noble-souled Volteius and his men, who committed mass suicide rather than face death at the hands of their enemies who surrounded them. This kind of death meant that they would live on in glorious memory rather than be forgotten.

I think this ancient honour ethic of death is at work in the contemporary world. The 'euthanasia' debate appeals to the common feeling that illness and suffering that we can't control demean us as human beings. To at least take this final step out of our own volition removes us from the grasp of the cancer (for example).

The early Christian martyrologies also use the language of honour. They are full of militaristic imagery: they become soldiers of Christ, fighting a battle against the enemy, and so on. And the voluntaristic aspect is not entirely absent: it is important to show that the martyr chooses to die for Christ. But there is a difference: many of the Fathers wrote against the practice of Christians actively seeking martyrdom (which evidently was a problem as it is today) and nowhere was suicide given as an option nor practiced, and certainly not celebrated as glorious.

What is the difference? Well, I think the WILL issue is key. That is, the martyr does exercise her will, but she does so in obedience to the will of God. The great Bishop and Martyr Polycarp said ‘Blessed and noble are all martyrdoms that happen according to the will of God. For we should act with discretion leaving the power over all events to God.’ This is the vital difference... The honour that the martyr gets is not in an exercise of what free will remains, but in joining her will to the will of God, and so praising and honouring God himself. Further of course the difference is that, whereas the Romans had only statues to memorialise the honourable death, Christians looked forward to resurrection bodies - glorious and honourable bodies, radiant with the glory of God.

A great martyr once said: “I shall be a convincing Christian only when the world sees me no more” (Ignatius of Antioch). Contrast this with the pagan longing for honour and fame...

mike carlton

Well, back from holidays: Cornwall is wonderful!

Here's something that has been sitting on my chest for a while.

Sydney journalist and talk-back radio host Mike Carlton has for a couple of years lampooned the Jensens in his Sydney Morning Herald column on a Saturday. His satire is based on Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers and takes the form of a mock parish newsletter. It would be amusing if we were not the target! I have wondered long and hard how to respond. Carlton is impervious to letters, of course and refuses to meet up to discuss it. Somehow, humanising your targets takes the fun out of tearing them down in public, doesn't it?

The premise of the entire lampoon is the charge of nepotism that Herald journalist Kelly Burke aired some time ago. The source of the charge was Rev John Cornish, the former head of Anglicans Together. He grumpily commented in this way on the appointment of my uncle as Dean of St Andrew's Cathedral and then my mother as a member of a women's ministry committee and my appointment to Moore College. I rang up John Cornish and asked him what evidence he had about my appointment to suggest that it was nepotistic. Of course, he had none, but that did not mean that he issued any kind of public apology - nor has he since. My mother's position is not a job at all, but membership of a committee on which several other women sit, and she receives no payment. My uncle - who is widely regarded as one of the more successful rectors in Sydney in the 80s and 90s to say the least - was not the first person asked to be the Dean, but in any case would have deserved consideration on merit alone. (Cornish's gripe was with his churchmanship). In any case, no-one who knew anything about it saw the Dean's job as anything but an extremely difficult task with little thanks. Anyhow, it doesn't matter now: Cornish's slur has gained a life of its own, and appears everywhere in its distorted form as fact. I hope he is happy.

This is what is galling about Carlton's method. He is an 'opinion' writer. His business is not to report but to comment on the news. He evidently has not the time for his own research or fact checking. All he does is read the SMH and go from there. And that's the problem! As anyone with first hand experience knows, the SMH is notorious for publishing inaccuracies and perpetuating myth. Carlton's fatuous comments are then built on this. It is ignorance by convenience because the facts would get in the way of his satire. He refuses to speak with any of us face to face because it would spoil the fun.

A recent example: the Herald published a distorted, incomplete and one-sided account of an upcoming defamation suit against an Anglican rector, and linked it bizarrely to the women's ordination debate. Because it was a lawsuit, it was impossible to respond to the inaccuracies at all. And yet Carlton has the temerity to use this as material for his latest squib, further cementing in the public's mind the orginal distortions perpetrated by the paper.

I have to say that it hurts to read it. I don't say that we ought to be spared criticism but it is hard when it is based on such baloney. It is hard when you meet people whose view of me and my family has been coloured by this. And it is hard when Carlton is in such a position of power and a far larger platform for expressing his views than we have. Where is the right of reply?

What comforts me? Well, Carlton's attacks on the Howard government (of which I am no fan) seem to be wildly out of touch with most Australians. He is one of those baby boomer journalists who think they invented sliced bread and that their opinions are self-evidently true - and yet can't see how out of touch they are with most people. I also have to remember that the journalist's ravings are like the wind: here today but wrapping paper tomorrow. And also, I remember that a few barbs from the likes of Carlton are nothing compared to what Christians face in the Sudan right now.

giddens and self-identity

I have been reading a terrific book called "Modernity and Self-identity" by Anthony Giddens.

He is very good at describing how we cast ourselves as selves in the contemporary world. Modernity's fundamental attitude towards knowledge is radical scepticism and doubt...which means that when it comes to 'making the self' we have to do it alone..'reflexively'. But we do it amidst a bewildering array of options and possibilities. That is a fact of post-traditional life. No wonder we are anxious...

Trust is basic to modernity, because we have given over knowledge in so many areas to experts. We need to trust them in order to operate: that the train driver knows what he is doing, that the vitamins we take won't give us cancer, that omega 3 oils are good for us, etc. Which is why when expert knowledge is proven mistaken or corrupt we are thrown into such anxiety... it is also true that some of this expert knowledge is getting us into trouble, because we can't integrate it into a whole. So, we may take a pill that solves one problem, only to find it gives us another.

Modernity, says Giddens, is a 'risk culture'. He means that the concept of risk is fundamental to the way we organise the social world. We assess the future by means of calculating risk (rather than entrusting ourselves to prayer, for example). But at the same time, modernity has introduced new, global risks... apocalyptic risks, you might say. Paradoxically, moderns still talk of fate and destiny...

So: 'self-identity becomes a reflexively organised endeavour. The reflexive project of the self...consists in the sustaining of coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives '. We see oursleves as 'writing'/'performing' on life's stage. This is where 'lifestyle' comes in: it is our choice of life-story as far as we have a choice. It is also interesting that the intimate relationship - the 'pure relationship', not formed from anything other than choice - has become so crucial to the way we project our lives.

This affects the body as well... the body as an outward form of our self is subject to our construction and control, or at least our attempts to do so. He notes along with this that our culture has a powerful sense of shame attached to bodies especially, and has largely lost our sense of guilt.

Giddens also notes that the reflexive project of the self generates programmes of actualisation and mastery, though these lack moral meaning.... 'authenticity becomes both a pre-eminent value and a framework for self-actualisation, but represents a morally stunted process' (p. 9).

Wow: there is so much dense thought here and so much of relevance for my project and for Christian thinkers generally. I think martyrs are interesting here because of the way in which they incorporate death into a life-narrative: and also because they have a specific attitude to the future which supercedes calculation of risk...

(NB: I will be away in Cornwall for two weeks: blessed Passiontide and Easter to everyone).

The Psalms and the martyrs

Today I read Psalms 1-72 in one sitting (meant to do the whole lot, but ... tomorrow maybe!).

The Psalms, I suspected, give voice to a perspective that the martyr inhabits.
Impressions? Well I think that suspicion was right. In taking up the Psalms we are immediately thrown into a world characterised by conflict, confusion, doubt, enmity, violence. That's just the external world! On the inside, while there are some clean-handed Psalms in which the poet comes to God with a clear conscience, there is also a sense of self-doubt too. The Psalmist lives in a hostile world, where even his own self conspires against him...

And part of the whole point of the Psalms, coming as they do in the middle of history is a sense in which God's response remains to be seen. His character is known: especially his love for justice and his all-knowing perspective. So the Psalmist seeks refuge in God again and again and again. God is the rock, the shield, the fortress. But: what will this mean in reality? What will God do? How will it come to pass? Even the short cut to the christological answer here leaves more to be said. How will God bring his purposes to bear on the world of confusion? How will he shield us from the worst?

Initially I felt that there is an ugliness to his demands for a divine vengeance on his enemies. Here is anger, hatred, frustration, bewilderment, a wishing for the damnation of the enemy. However, there is a sense in which this part of a proper patience - entrusting action to God who judges rightly. Which also goes hand in hand with the strong theme of repentance and pleading for mercy - for if you call down God's justice on others, a moment's self-scrutiny will surely make you realise what a dangerous strategy this is.

A postmodern martyr?

Well I have to report that I dutifully attended the service at St Mary the Virgin to commorate the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer 450 years ago.

It was a 1662 Lord's Supper, and I think they even toned down the bowing and scrapping that usually goes on. Still, the influence of the Oxford movement was much in evidence...
Rowan Williams preached the sermon. It was astonishing really. I was glad that a particular friend of mine was not in earshot: he would have hurled a stool. I certainly came close. What we got was a 21st century Cranmer in postmodern agnostic dress: a man who had become aware that human words (like.... John's Gospel was the example pulled out for us) can never exhaust the divine word. "The word of God is not bound" was the text he preached from. This was the explanation for Cranmer's use of repetition in his liturgy - that is, the inability to ever perfectly capture the divine word in human expression.

So what did Cranmer find to die for? In the end this was the question i felt was not really resolved by His Grace. Where was the truth that one finally might decide to offer oneself up for burning for?
Then we marched up to the cross in Broad St and heard from Foxe's book of martyrs read by Roger Beckwith, while the tourists stared blankly and took photos because I am sure they thought something must have been happening.

hey did you see this?

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/mission/missionthinking/blogging_will_take_the_world_by_storm

liberal political philosopher Rawls....

John Rawls writes provocatively, ‘[F]or the purposes of public life, Saul of Tarsus and Paul the Apostle are the same person. Conversion is irrelevant to our public, or institutional, identity’.

This is a revealing comment: Rawls’ liberalism in effect asks citizens to exhibit a fissure in their identity. This is repeated mantra-like by media boffins everywhere - here in the UK and at home in OZ. (Mike Carlton I am thinking of you). Though Rawls recognises the anthropological/psychological problem here, he offers no satisfactory resolution from that perspective.


The public sphere is not the zone of neutrality he assumes. Quite clearly, Rawls allows a preferred position for certain kinds of truth and not for others in determining what goods society is to pursue. And yet the religious person might rightly protest that without consideration of God at this very point, the kinds of goods that belief in God might entail are deliberately excluded from consideration – and that these beliefs are not easily privatised.

What do you think?

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).