God's word is not chained

It is an honour to give this sermon at St Giles Normanton in the memory of George Seamer, a man who stood firm on the Word of God.

My text today is these verses from 2 Timothy:
8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God's word is not chained. 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.
[2 Timothy 2:8-10]

On October 6th, 1536, in a prison yard in the castle of Vilvoorden just north-east of Brussels a 42-year-old Englishman named William Tyndale was strangled and then burnt at the stake for heresy and treason. Tricked and betrayed by an agent of King Henry VIII, he had endured 500 days of harsh imprisonment and a farcical trial prior to his execution. As he died, it is reported that he cried out ‘Lord open the King of England’s eyes!’

What was the nature of his crime? Why was he such a threat to the King and to the Church that he had to be silenced?

Apparently fluent in eight languages, the scholar Tyndale’s crime was to translate, print and distribute parts of the Bible into the English tongue, something that had been expressly made illegal in 1409. Tyndale’s life was committed to the power of words. He was convinced that God himself has spoken in words that ordinary people could understand.

The God of Jesus Christ is not a mysterious, distant and unknown deity who, if he speaks at all, speaks in a babble of Latin. By no means: the message of Jesus Christ and his victory over the devil and the grave is for all people everywhere, of every tribe and every tongue.

This message is not static, but dynamic: it is marvellously potent. It is the power of life itself! What Tyndale realized was that power of God himself lay not in the structures of the church, or with popes and bishops, or even with Kings, but in the word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.

Tyndale staked his life and safety on the power of God’s word. He knew that the word of God in the hand of the ploughboy was dynamite to kings and popes because it was the word about the rule of the Lord of lords. The irony of it was that not so long after Tyndale’s death King Henry himself authorized an English translation of the Bible which was substantially based on Tyndale’s work and which forms the basis for our English translations up to the present day.
God’s word is not chained!

Tyndale knew this because he knew what the apostle Paul knew.

These few words from 2 Timothy 2 are written by a man who also knew the deprivation and despair that comes with the loss of freedom. This was the man who had a calling from God to preach to the Gentiles, from one end of the earth to another. He had big plans: even to visit Spain with his good news, at the far edge of his known universe. But: he wasn’t going there while he was rotting away in chains. He wasn’t able to be with the churches that he had planted, or to be there in person to guide Timothy, timid Timothy, through his first stumbling steps in ministry. Was the mission going to fail? The question must surely have crossed Paul’s mind. What was the future to be? How could the gospel of Jesus possibly go forward with its chief apostle off the pitch and out of action? Would the Christian movement wither away and become a quirk of history, an artifact to be discovered and pondered over by antiquarians but of no ongoing significance?

If Paul knew first hand the impotence of his imprisonment, he knew also the shame of being chained up ‘like a criminal’, as if he was not the messenger of a mighty and glorious God but one of the numberless villains and vagabonds that frequented the Roman Empire. He was being treated as an enemy of good order and a threat to peace. This was not supposed to be the position of a respectable and cultivated Roman citizen; he was certainly not going to get access to the top end of town in his current position, nor influence the movers and shakers in society. What influence could he possibly have as a common criminal?

But the problem of the apostle’s imprisonment was deeper even than this: it was a real question mark over God himself. For, if his great apostle to the Gentiles is cooling his heels under house arrest somewhere in the empire, what is God doing? Is he really as powerful as he pretends? Is he really the master of events, or have events somehow conspired to master him? Is trust in the promises of this God somehow misplaced, if so little apparent progress can be charted?
It is a question we ourselves may feel like asking, even today. We experience from some quarters an open hostility to the gospel and a flagrant rejection of the word of God as if it were a polite suggestion.

That is more often a voice from within the church, sad to say.

From without, we experience rather the complete apathy of our friends and neighbours, the yawns and bored stares rather than the raised voices. Perhaps it is the apparent dagginess and the irrelevance of the gospel to most people that is more depressing than its explicit rejection by some. For every full church in the UK, there is at least one down the road that is virtually empty.

We may well ask: where today is the evidence of the power and authority of God?

But let us turn back to Paul at this point. What is his response?
He is not despairing: for, as he says: ‘God’s word is not chained!’

Why can he be so sure? Why can he be so confident when the evidence of the shackles jangling around his wrists would say otherwise?

What Paul says is that it is in the nature of his message. His gospel is what gives him confidence in his gospel.
And what is his gospel?
Have a look at verse 8. He asks his readers to ‘remember Jesus Christ’ – and two things about him in particular.

It has two parts:
First, Jesus Christ was ‘raised from the dead’.

That is to say, this man, the figure at the centre of Paul’s preaching, had been victorious over sin and death! The prison of the tomb could not keep him in. The chains of death and hell could not hold him: on the contrary, on the third day he had risen victorious. His grave is empty!

It is worth us pausing here to think: what kind of power is needed to raise the dead? Clearly this is not merely a human power: it is beyond the power of human beings to achieve. It is a power beyond our ordinary conception of what is powerful.

The word that Paul preaches is a message not only about life beyond death: it is a message of the defeat of death. It is a declaration that death has been reversed.

So: Paul’s gospel is about God’s power to reverse the effects of sin and death. It’s an announcement of the forgiveness of sins! And it’s a message from the same God who called light out of darkness and called things that are not as though they were.

What’s more: this power is also the power to transform lives. It’s a power that makes a difference for individuals. Paul could talk about this from his personal experience, of course: a man who once sought to murder the followers of Jesus but then miraculously became one of his leading followers. In Romans 8:10-11 he writes:

10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

People here today know about this. People here have been changed by the power of God’s word, brought out of darkness into God’s wonderful light; they know the power of God’s word to liberate us from captivity to sin and death. People here live in full expectation that sin and death will not have the last word; and that they will have eternal life together with God. Like Paul, they have experienced it for themselves – they have heard this word of God and know how powerful it is.

The second part of Paul’s gospel: Jesus Christ was ‘descended from David’

This may at first seem like unremarkable thing to say. After all, lots of people could claim that they were descended from David: Joseph for example. But here it is far more significant that that: as the son of king David, Jesus was the heir to Israel’s throne and to all the promises of God that came to David. Back in 2 Samuel 7, God had made a covenant with King David that his kingdom would be without end. He had said to David:

12 When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

A son is promised; a direct descendent of David who will rule, and for ever. Though David will one day die, this Son of David, will live and live. In his gospel, Paul proclaims Jesus Christ as the one through whom God’s promises come to fruition.

God is powerfully true to himself. The true king who has ascended on high and NOW rules! The resurrection was not just the beginning of new life for Jesus: it was his enthronement as Israel’s mighty king: the king who was to rule not only Israel but the nations as well. All authority in heaven and earth is given to him. Jesus now rules: he is LORD. This was another way in which Paul summarized his gospel: Jesus is Lord.

And so, Paul’s gospel is powerful precisely because it is about power: it is a message about who is in charge, really. It is a word from and about a king who calls on people everywhere to recognize his authority and to submit to him as the son of David and the true heir to his throne. This word of God, about the rule of Jesus, has no regard for what human beings think is powerful: even though it be spoken by a man in rags or a by a poor woman it demands that kings, and princes and presidents and prime ministers and chief executives submit to his rule and the rest of us along with them.

So: Paul is able to say that God’s word is not chained because of what that word, his gospel: it is about: Jesus, raised from the dead, descended from David. And for Paul this means that he endures everything for the sake of others who believe it. He is able to withstand even his imprisonment, with all its deprivations and shames, because he knows that God’s word is powerful to accomplish his will. He is not despairing. He is not browbeaten. He is not bullied into silence, or embarrassed into defeat. Paul is all the more encouraged to continue on in hope, knowing that if even he should die with his mission unfulfilled that God’s word go to the grave with him. He endures everything (vs 10); he puts up with the trails and persecutions with an unbattered confidence in the power of the gospel. He knows that his own failings and weaknesses and sufferings are not an obstacle to God accomplishing his word.

So: for us there is I think a great comfort, but also a strong rebuke as well. We’ll start with the rebuke:

There is a sharp reminder for us that when we think that the word of God is chained to our programmes, our business, our effort, and way of doing things we are completely and arrogantly mistaken. It is a great temptation for evangelical churches in these days of thinking strategically about our church’s mission, and analyzing church growth, and signing up for programmes and courses and what have you. We do tend to think that the gospel could not possibly go forward without us and without our strenuous efforts. Our busy-ness which we offer to God to use does not make him dependent on us, though he certainly loves to make use of us. We must certainly resist this belief in our own indispensability: but I am afraid that in lots of evangelical churches resistance to this temptation has been rather minimal. We have started to believe in the power of the means that we use to do evangelism and run church services and not in the Word of God itself. We have fallen in love with our own technical excellence and forgotten that the only thing that advances the cause of the gospel is the gospel: that it is a powerful word about a risen king, a word that doesn’t need power-point to make it powerful. This morning I would like to invite us to re-consider our attitudes in this matter – not that programmes or thinking about the practicalities of our mission are wrong, but that we put them in the right place and recognize afresh our dependence on God’s word.

But also and more obviously here we have a great comfort: the word of God is not chained - so do not fear and do not despair at the attacks on the gospel or at the apathy of the wider community. Do not be afraid of standing on the word of God: where else can one stand? Do not be perplexed by the self-serving cleverness of those people who would tell us otherwise. Do not be surprised by resistance to the gospel – it is in its nature that it is a message as much rejected as accepted. Do not be surprised when the gospel is criticized for its irrelevance or its dowdiness – people need to find excuses to evade it, after all. But there is no need for us to be cowed or depressed either. Rather we can take great strength from the fact that God’s word does not return to him empty. This was after all the word that created the worlds, that caused the sun to shine and put the moon in its place; this is the word that rules the sea and the stars. God said, and it was so. And it is the word that brought Jesus out of the tomb; it is this word that rules: it is the authoritative word, the last word.

Let this church then be one that never ceases to rest wholly and only on the word of God, and nothing else. Let it be fearless in its declaration of the message of the gospel of Jesus, though it be foolishness or a stumbling block to others. Let it not trust in the brilliance of its ministry team or the magnificent planning, efficiency and wisdom of its PCC. For the word of God is not chained.

William Tyndale not only translated these magnificent words, he believed them too. And, he was not despairing even though his opponents in this work were popes and kings. He was not despairing even as he went to the stake with his work incomplete, and with the full realization of his dream – that the bible be freely available to all English men and women in their own tongue – was several decades away. His example is a great witness for us in our experience today of hostility and apathy to the word of God to endure everything.

Let’s finish with Paul’s words:
2 Timothy 2: 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. 11 Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; 13 if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

Straining at gnats?

In the debate about sexuality a comment often heard from the more liberal side is that sexual matters ('sleeping arrangements') are a matter of very small importance compared to the really large issues of injustice and poverty.

The accusation from liberal quarters of the church is that conservatives are obsessed with sex, and that relative to bigger issues sex is unimportant. This is usually accompanied by something about how Jesus doesn't mention sex that much and is more concerned with greed and war etc etc.

But: sex IS important. It is such a crucial and personal feature of human life and identity; and it is such a yardstick for difference between the Christian community and the world around us, and always has been since the earliest days, not true? Sex is not merely a private matter (a Hauerwasian observation): any feminist knows this. (And actually, Christians knew it first).

And, concern for war and greed and sexual behaviour need not be mutually exclusive, surely? And, why is it the conservative side that is 'obsessed' and the liberal side not? Who keeps pushing the issue forward? Who makes an idol of sexual identity such that it trumps unity and biblical teaching?

I am interested not so much in the mud-slinging, as in the 'this is more important than this' argument. Granted, I think there is a critique to be made of an evangelical spirituality that is more concerned with swear-words and tax returns than about global poverty and mega death. This issue is perhaps: where does the ethics of individual personal everyday actions fit in with the so-called 'bigger' issues? And, does the practice of not-swearing, or at least, of keeping language holy (and the practice of chastity for the matter) actually form part of a larger whole?

How to talk right?

In our Hauerwas seminar today we spent a good deal of time reflecting on the Hauerwasian mode of discourse: polemical, violent (even), subversive, angular. Of course, to be studying this writer in the home of good manners (ie Oxford) amongst a people skilled in the art of not saying the truth is an interesting juxtaposition! Hauerwas's speech is justified in that he brings to light through dissonance the deeply embedded pagan assumptions of much Christian discourse in the West. The truth ought to be offered so that one may respond to it, if it is indeed the truth; and, the truth often comes through unpicking the assumptions that clump around its opposite.

The thing that saves Hauerwas from being just a naughty boy is that he has done his homework. Behind every verbal missile is a depth of thinking and reading, and a coherent and complex framework. It is thrilling that Christian speech can be so dynamic, and also alarmed that it can be so rude! The truth ought to be so divisive.

Where it goes wrong is that imitators of the Hauerwasian style (or imitators of other similarly aggressive and polemical Christian thinkers) imitate it as a style. There is the provocation of the prophet and then there is plain bad manners. The two are not the same; and just because something is done with no taste and complete bad manners does not make it true, or right; and certainly, the person who is merely rude can not call themselves persecuted when they are attacked.

Does this bother you? David Hicks in Guantanamo

David Hicks is an Australian suspected of involvement with the Taliban in Afganistan. He has been detained without trial or charge since 2002.

I have no doubt that he has some objectionable views and may have got up to some reprehensible activity: but the way in which this whole procedure has been carried out without the bounds of ordinary systems of justice bothers me a great deal.

Why has justice been so slow in coming? What is going on? Am I right to be concerned?

Some stirring words from Stan about preaching

" When was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on war? Furthermore, when was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on abortion? When was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on the kind of crae we ought to give to the ill? When was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on the political responsibilities of Christians? The problem is that we feel at a loss about how to make these kinds of matters part of the whole church. So, in effect, preaching betrays the church. I do not mean to put all the blame on preaching, but ministers do have opportunities to address moral issues that almost no one else in this society has - except for television. It is not much, but it is something. At least preachers can enliven a discourse that is not alive anywhere esle, and people are hungering to be led by people of courage." (Hauerwas Reader, p, 622)

I generally can't stand 'issue' sermons, because they are so much opinion and so little word of God. They are so prone to all the worst vices of preaching. But if we preach the scriptures, won't these matters arise ALL the time? Oh, for courageous inhabitants of the pulpit!

'Order' in Genesis 2 - 3

I am teaching a class in Moore's Introduction to the Bible.

This week we are looking at one of my favourite sections: Genesis 1-11.

But there is a strange comment in the notes about the order of creation and its reversal in the fall. That is, in Genesis 2 you have a hierarchy of man, woman, creature; in the fall the problem is the woman listens to the creature and the man listens to the woman; and then in judgment, the right order is restored as God addresses man, woman, creature. I have heard this preached in sermons, read it in books and heard it bandied about as evidence of the order and the sin which is at root the upsetting of this order.

Only: in Genesis 2 we don't EVER see order established in this way! In fact, the creatures are made it seems before them both... It is a curious logic indeed.

A Christian but a passive thing...

I was reading Tyndale, our martyr of the month today. Wow:

'A Christian man in respect of God is but a passive thing, a thing that suffereth only and doeth nought, as the sick in respcet of the surgeon or physician doth but suffer only. The surgeon lanceth and cutteth out the dead flesh, searcheth the wounds, thrusteth in tents, seareth. burneth, seweth or stitcheth and layeth corsies to draw out the corruption, and last of all layeth to healing plasters and maketh whole. The physician likewise giveth purgations and drinks to drive out the disease and then with restoratives bringeth health. Now if the sick resisteth the razor, the searching iron and so forth, doth he not resist his own health and is cause of his own death? So likewise is it of us, if we resist evil rulers which are the rod and scourge wherewith God chastiseth us, the instruments wherwith God searcheth our wounds, and bitter drinks to drive out the sin and to make it appear, and corsies to draw out by the roots the core of the pocks of the soul that fretteth inward. A Christian man therefore receiveth all things of the hand of God both good and bad, both sweet and sour, both wealth and woe.'

'A passive thing'. Well Tyndale was writing this in exile on the continent in fear for his very life at the hand of his own king, which gives us some perspective here, too...

Now, bring on the Urn

Well it is vitally important that I post my analysis of the upcoming Ashes series in Australia. I have had a good look at some of the English team and so I feel uniquely placed. I have copped English smugness for too long!

This English team is very strong because they major on important things, like batting and fast bowling. Most of the batsmen are in form and know the way to three figures. Kevin Peterson could on any given day do anything: he is like Gilchrist in this regard. Because he is attacking, he can change a game really quickly. Strauss is very consistent and tough to get out. Alastair Cook makes a solid number three (though he may open if Trescothick doesn't get his head back together). Collingwood is solid and even Bell has scored runs - though I think he is the new Darrell Cullinan when it comes to Shane Warne.

In the bowling, Hoggard, Harmison and Flintoff have some real meanness and consistency about them - though I don't think they will find the reverse swing they got in England. And now they have Panesar, who is a left arm bowler who can take wickets (unlike the world's most boring bowler Ashley Giles - what were they thinking by making him a test player?). Panesar is also fun to watch. They have dropped Geraint Jones which was a great move for the team because now at least some catches will go in.

When they lost this year against Sri Lanka, and failed to beat Pakistan on a couple of occassions, it was because they got spooked by top class spin and dropped heaps of catches. And their fast bowlers seemed to lose interest, or the support bowlers bowled rubbish. The biggest problem of course for England is injuries. If Flintoff plays more than three tests I will eat my hat. Seriously. He is a great player, but they squander him on one day cricket and other money spinners, and he eventually breaks down. Sure as eggs. Likewise if Harmison goes the whole season I will be very surprised.

The Aussie problem will be picking the right team. McGrath is a concern: a champ of old, but is he really the same as he was? He is my age, for heaven's sake! Can Gilchrist get his batting mojo back? Will Hayden look like he is in good need of a counselling session again? Will Langer get injured in a bizarre way? Will Lee give away six runs an over for the whole season? Will they be strong enough not to pick Michael Clarke just because he is a glamour boy? The Aussie selection process was too rigid and sentimental and not based on form- - exposed in the last Ashes.

It could come down to catching you know: I notice both teams have been butter-fingered of late. England can make even Sri Lanka look good by dropping easy catches.

So: Aussies to win, 2-1. The English'll win in Melbourne, as they always do, and they have a chance in Perth. But the Australians will take Brisbane. Adelaide will be a draw as always. Sydney to the Australians.

I'd love to hear your predictions!

Rushdie and evil, or is it good?

The problem, for Rushdie, apart from the savagery that he sees is the outcome of this way of thinking, is an epistemological one: how does one know that what is experienced as a revelation from God is in fact just that: from God? The novel tells of a moment in which Mahound/Muhammed himself was taken in for a time by the ‘Satanic Verses’ – verses of prophecy that in fact had a diabolical rather than divine source – undermines the terrible certainty with which religious believers assert their beliefs. God and/or Satan: which is it? Or is it both? In fact, may not both stem from the same origin? Rushdie puts these words in the mouth of a vision Gibreel has of Rekha Merchant, later in the novel:

This notion of separation of functions, light versus dark, evil versus good, may be straightforward enough in Islam…but go back a bit and you see that it’s a pretty recent fabrication. Amos, eight century BC, asks: “Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?” Also Jahweh, quoted by Deutero-Isaiah two hundred years later, remarks: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.” It isn’t until the Book of Chronicles, merely fourth century BC, that the word shaitan is used to mean a being, and not only an attribute of God.’

This is a rather unlikely bit of biblical scholarship (which takes on the tone of an encyclopedia entry); but it illustrates what for Rushdie is so problematic in the religious worldview. It is impossible for the believer to be certain that the voice that she is hearing is that of the divinity and not that of some more sinister force; or that the God in whom she believes is not somehow to be found in two guises in any case. With more than a hint towards the classic philosophical problem of evil, Rushdie intimates that the religious believer has to accept, ultimately, that either that good and evil are both committed by the same God, or that the this God is not truly God in the way that the monotheist religions have imagined. But, more than that, good and evil are perhaps not so easily distinguished as the religious traditions have thought; it is not so easily a case of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The victim mentality, which accuses the other of evil on a diabolic scale, ignores the evil within; it does not admit the possibility of its own complicity in evil. Victims are also perpetrators, though this is an unpalatable truth; and this means that causes cannot be pursued in expectation of some triumphal, final vindication. Evil and good form a complex web in which human beings and communities are entangled with one another.

Matthew 10:1-42

In Matthew’s gospel we discover how close to the identity of the believer the idea of witness under trial is: the experience of rejection is not to catch them by surprise because of their close identification with the Christ who was likewise rejected, even by his own. Matthew’s collection of Jesus’s teaching about mission, (10:1-42) which he dramatizes as an address to his apostles on the cusp of their mission to Israel, is clearly also intended to be a word to the church of the apostles that is trying to live out its witness under the conditions of rejection. It is part of Matthew’s intention that his readers receive encouragement in their identification with Christ in knowing that if they are rejected, then indeed it is Christ that it is being rejected. The 'least of these' (25:45) and the 'little ones' (10:42) are not merely the suffering poor of sentimental exegesis but those who represent Christ as his witnesses and are of the house rejected on his account: they are offered his vindication in the eschatological court of judgment. The hostility that is received by the apostles as they are handed over to councils and flogged in synagogues emanates from within Israel itself, with the collaboration of the Gentile authorities: the rejection of the witnesses is close to home. It is the rejection of brother by brother, son by father, daughter by mother. Jesus is hailed here as a figure of division, bring not peace, but a sword indeed (10:34); and so it will be for his followers, for ‘a disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!’ (10:24-5). Being now a member of this new household contrasts with – and is held as some comfort for – the fact that enmity will come from home. (10:36). Hospitality towards the disciples and their message – the poti,sh… epoth,rion yucrou/ (10:42) – is the sign of the promised eschatological vindication, just as rejection is the sign of coming judgment. Thought Jesus brings the sword on earth, and not peace, it is not because his followers are wielders of the sword, or the provocateurs of conflict. The violent rejection they receive is despite their innocence: they are sent out as sheep amongst wolves and are to be innocent as doves (10:16). It is a statement about the way things are, rather than an incitement to violent conflict. In any case, as Jesus says here, before the king it will be ‘not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you’ (10:20). That is to say, the witness itself is not the act of a human person, or a mark of their zeal to make themselves martyrs. It is the testimony of the Father by the Spirit to the Son: those who so testify cannot avoid drawing on themselves the hatred of the world.

But: what of the moment when the conflict dissipates, and the persecution appears to end?

Bruce Smith, d. 2001

I would hope for nothing more than to do theology like Bruce Smith, my friend and teacher who died of leukemia in 2001.

Bruce modelled for me the possibility of a completely evangelical theology that is also a theology with its eyes and ears open. He read widely and deeply, but was never a boring to be with. He was a raconteour who could tell a story that was sad, as well as a funny one. He arrived at one dinner party at our house equipped with a children's story to read to us all. His house was filled with art works and music and poetry, and artists and musicians and poets!

Bruce dwelt in more than one world: Moore College was where he lived and worked for a long period; but he also taught classics for almost twenty years at Sydney Grammar School, an academically selective school for boys. I feel like I saw him operate in both worlds - not worlds that readily appreciated his significance in the other - because I taught at Grammar and then was a student at Moore. What was remarkable was the quality of the friendships he had with the amazing people who were his colleagues at Grammar - the respect and fondness with which they spoke of him.

Emil Brunner was his favourite; and he told the story of a trip to Zurich to visit Brunner's old university department... of walking in to the office to see if he could find anyone who had worked with the old theologian and could perhaps supply an anecdote or two. A office worker offered to ring Brunner's son, himself; only to discover that he, the son, had just died...

His knowledge of the Bible was extraordinary. His ability to relate the message of the Bible to the heart, mind and soul was unparalleled. His ear for language and his delight in an extended metaphor was amazing.

Was Calvin any better (a cheeky post?)

The Hildebrandian option was tried in a Protestant form (it could be argued) in Calvin’s Geneva. To his credit, Calvin was not satisfied with the banal merger of spiritual into political order which was the tendency of the Lutheran princes; nor was he in any sense convinced by the Anabaptist aversion to politics. Calvin's thought shows a determination to keep the two kingdoms parallel with one another, after the manner of Gelasius. So, though it would be hard to make absolute the case from Calvin’s writings that theocracy was his preferred response to the issue at hand, in practice the submission of secular authorities to the person of Calvin (though he was without office) in Geneva, and the continued fussy intrusion of the consistory courts on the daily life of the town meant that the difference from the Pope’s Christendom was only really a matter of scale.

Papal authority

Papal power finds its emblematic exponent in Gregory VII (Hildebrand) and the ‘reforms’ which he initiated in the eleventh century. Since Gelasius in the fifth century the powers of priest and king had been arranged in separation and in precarious balance with one another; though, by the time of the Carolingian dynasty, this had apparently been misunderstood as a submission of the church to the emperor.[1] Gregory was determined to command the obedience of the kings and bishops of Christendom. He wielded the threat of excommunication; and, in an unparalleled step, took for himself the position of supreme and universal judge. He wrested back the legacy of Gelasius for the side of the papacy. The Dictatus Papae (1075) is a terse list of assertions of papal will over secular princedoms and local sees without qualification. We may note two of these decrees:

VIIII Quod solius papae pedes omnes principes deosculentur; (only the pope's feet may princes kiss)

and

XII Quod illi liceat imperatores deponere. (the pope can depose emperors)

The pope alone is he whose feet may be kissed by the princes it is his right to depose; which gives the pope a unique secular power in addition to his spiritual authority. In him the two power are thus to be brought to heel.

The unity of the papal powers has its theological source in the power of the keys given to Peter by Jesus in Mt 16:18-19, to which Gregory repeatedly refers. The power of the keys he interprets as that power to administer a binding justice on earth as in heaven. In a gloss on this passage he writes:

Are kings excepted here? Or are they not of the sheep which the Son of God committed to St Peter? Who, I ask, thinks himself excluded from this universal grant of the power of binding and loosing to St Peter unless, perchance, that unhappy man who, being unwilling to bear the yoke of the Lord, subjects himself to the burden of the Devil and reuses to be numbered in the flock of Christ? His wretched liberty shall profit him nothing; for if he shakes off from his proud neck the power divinely granted to Peter, so much the heavier shall it be for him in the day of judgment.[2]

Moreover, he claims that the see of St Peter is actually in possession of the merits of St Peter such that it can assume an authority of innocence compared to the guilt of kings that approach it. Gregory urges on kings a rightful humility corresponding to Christ’s own humility, the humility that Saul lacked:

If they humbly imitate him, they shall pass from their servile and transient reign into the kingdom of eternal liberty.[3]

However – and this is the accusation that the Tempter makes, too – the papacy at this point seemed to exempt itself from the virtue of humility; and to so assure itself of its inherited Petrine merits that it is immune to the lust for power which so affects princes. It was of course the indubitable historical reality of papal corruption that made the Gregorian edifice crumble.

[1] Oliver O'Donovan and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought 100-1625 (Grand Rapids, Mich., Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1999), p. 178.
[2] Letter 8.21 in Ibid., p. 243-44
[3] Letter 8.21 in Ibid., p. 249

Rushdie doesn't like martyrdom much...

In martyrdom we find victimhood and religious self-identity combined in a potentially lethal way: it is not an accident that Rushdie opens his novel with the act of a person claiming martyrdom for herself. He has elsewhere written: ‘[O]nly fanatics go looking for martyrdom’. It is for him an inauthentic and dangerous way to establish one’s identity. In the chapter entitled ‘Ayeesha’, Gibreel has a vision that he, as an angel carries ‘the Imam’ – a character strongly resembling the Ayatollah Khomeni – back to the capital city of Desh. Gibreel notices the streets swarming with people, converging in a regular pattern upon a grand avenue leading towards the palace of the Empress (who echoes the hated Shah of Iran, disposed by the Islamic revolution of 1978). The people march in their hundreds towards the gates of the palace:

Seventy at a time, they come into range; the guns babble, and they die, and then the next seventy climb over the bodies of the dead, the guns giggle once again, and the hill of the dead grows higher. Those behind it commence, in their turn, to climb. In the dark doorways of the city there are mothers with covered heads, pushing their beloved sons in to the parade, go, be a martyr, do the needful, die. ‘You see how they love me,’ says the disembodied voice. ‘No tyranny on earth can withstand the power of this slow, walking love.’

This scene of ‘slow, walking love’ is viscerally awful, especially from the point of view of a secular individualist like Rushdie: the filmic quality of the narration adds to the revulsion that the reader must feel. That the mothers approve of the death march adds to its horror, that people could be so possessed of an irrational desire to self-destruct. For his part, Gibreel lamely suggests to the Imam that they are in fact driven not by love of him, but rather by hatred for the Empress: a revolutionary zeal in other words, rather than a religious devotion. The Imam replies:

They love me…because I am water. I am fertility and she is decay. They love me for my habit of smashing clocks. Human beings who turn away from God lose love, and certainty, and also the sense of His boundless time, that encompasses past, present and future; the timeless time, that has no need to move. We long for the eternal, and I am eternity. She is nothing: a tick, or a tock.

The religious emphasis on the transcendent, in other words, enables the appalling scene before us, because it holds out the promise of something even more substantial than one’s own life. It promises a substance more solid than the power of empires, which come and go along the ebb and tide of history. The cost of offering oneself to the Imam – life itself – is nothing compared to the reward that he promises.

Gurus and growing up...

OK, a little bit more of a pastoral discussion: but no smacking!

As a young Christian, as I suppose is true of any young person, I was quite actively on the lookout for gurus. I was hungry to be someone's disciple: to find someone who had the bigness of vision and insight and wisdom so that I could latch on to them. There were two or three people who filled this role especially. I remember hanging on their every word, hungry for a little attention ("a shoe, a shoe! It is a sign...") and ready to do what they said to the letter.

But of course, it never lasts: because as you grow older and get to know the person better you get to see them as an ordinary fallible person - that they make mistakes, that they are guilty of faulty logic, that they have character flaws. This can be quite a traumatic period I think - especially as some people invest far more than I ever did in their gurus. It can be devastating to realise that the person isn't what you thought they were, especially if you have incorporated a great deal of their way of thinking into your own decision making about your life. But, it is also extremely liberating - the moment when you realise that the guru's advice is not right and make your own decision! At best, you then become friends with the guru ... i would have to say that by and large the guys I held up as gurus have now become my genuine friends: the dynamic has shifted.

What do we make of this phenomenon, especially within the church? Especially as a pastor, is it in the best interests of the other person to cultivate these kind of relationships? It is an incredibly powerful feeling to have people attach to you and to offer you the keys to their life! I think a crucial thing is if the pastor has the capacity to release the person from this kind of attachment by exposing the real them. It is unhealthy for these relationships to continue into adulthood - they may be useful for a time, but they do not allow the person to grow in to a mature and responsible Christian person capable of discerning the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their own life. And yet, I have seen pastoral relationships where this is the case: where people have real difficulty in breaking this dynamic with a pastor and moving on to maturity, even well into mid-life. At its worst, the pastor has become instead of a witness to Jesus, an alternative to him, grabbing more than a little of his limelight.

Hauerwas vs O'Donovan on martyrdom

Stanley Hauerwas asserts with no small vigour the view that by ‘taking up Rome’s project’ and making it their own, the Christians were bankrupting themselves of their own witness.[1] In accepting the power of Rome as a weapon for their own armoury, the church was conceding its own identity to the world against which the martyrs had so successfully fought. Martyrdom stood as a sign against Rome’s attempt to victimize Christians. Though the refusal to obey Caesar was (it seemed to the pagans) an irrational act, it witnessed to a higher rule; and by doing so, undid that rule’s claim to absoluteness:
‘The church – exactly because it does not seek to rule through violence, though it necessarily manifests God’s rule – triumphs by remembering the victory of the Lamb through the witness of the martyrs.’[2]

The new offer of a share in Rome’s rule was an understandable temptation, because Christians had always proclaimed the ultimacy of God’s politics; and here was a chance to exercise that politics – to demonstrate in practice the truth of the claim. For the ancient Christians so for the Christians of today: the temptation of collusion with rule threatens to dim the light of the church’s witness to the risen Lord of all. Hauerwas sees the issue as being ‘how we [i.e. the church] can witness to God’s rule through church without ruling’.[3] In other words: no matter how friendly and peaceable the offer of co-operation be, the answer for Hauerwas will always be ‘no’.
For Oliver O’Donovan, however, the victory of the martyrs is to be understood somewhat differently. He finds Hauerwas’s version of Christendom to be historically doubtful, for Hauerwas too readily assumes that the Christians who applauded the conversion of Constantine did so because they wanted to pursue the growth of the church by means of the apparatus of the empire. In fact, the picture is more complex: there were those who warned about the dangers, and those who declared no more than that the ruler had submitted to the rule of Christ. They were not ‘taking up Rome’s project’. This is not collaboration with coercion, necessarily. Rather, the very hope of vindication for which the martyrs yearned had, in part and temporarily, come to pass. Yet, under the ministrations of a Hauerwas, this same hope comes to look like a temptation! Rather, for O’Donovan:
…since true martyrdom is a powerful force and its resistance to Antichrist effective, the church must be prepared to welcome the homage of the kings when it is offered to the Lord of the martyrs.[4]

It is not surprising – indeed it makes good theological sense – that the rule of God should manifest itself in history though not yet absolutely. Martyrdom is not merely a stance of eternal dissidence; it is a witness to the rule of God in Christ. As such, it can be faithful witness to say yes as well as no. Hauerwas’s martyrs die shouting ‘they make take our lives, but you will never take our freedom’ just as Mel Gibson’s William Wallace did. And yet, as Augustine himself said ‘it not the punishment, but the cause, that makes a martyr'.

[1] Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), p. 39
[2] Ibid., p. 38
[3] Ibid., p. 43 Hauerwas’s somewhat surprising ally is Augustine (or at least, his re-reading of Augustine).
[4] O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, p. 215

Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker is perhaps the most influential exponent of what became known as ‘Erastianism’ in the Anglican tradition. The eighth book of his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, published posthumously from notes he made rather than from a finished text, seeks an alternative to the apparent disloyalty of Allen’s papalism and Cartwright’s separationism. After all, as he argued, in Elizabethan England the Church and the Commonwealth could not be distinguished by differences in membership:

‘We hold that seeing there is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the Commonwealth, nor any man a member of the Commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England, therefore as in a figure triangular the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the selfsame line, is both a base and also a side; a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest: So albeit properties and actions of one kind do cause the name of a Commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a Church to be given unto a multitude, yet one and the selfsame multitude may in such sort be both and is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied to be also of the other.’ (VIII.i.2)

What the rather clumsy metaphor of the triangle illustrates is that for Hooker it is the ‘properties and action’ and ‘qualities and functions’ that distinguish church from commonwealth, not the membership. It is, firstly, a matter of looking at the same thing from different angles, and, secondly, of discerning different actions carried out by the same people. As Hooker understands it, the church is after all that society which maintains the true religion as Israel had done of old. He will happily admit that prior to Constantine, the church of Rome and the commonwealth of Rome were two different societies. However, when the state embraced Christ, that separation could not be maintained:

‘The Church and the Commonwealth therefore are in this case personally one society, which society being termed a Commonwealth as it liveth under whatsoever form of secular law and regiment, a Church as it hath the Spiritual law of Jesus Christ, forasmuch as these two laws contain so many and so different offices, there must of necessity be appointed in it some to one charge and some to another, yet without dividing the whole and making it two several impaled societies.’ (VIII.i.4)

The theological lynchpin of Hooker’s account of church and state is his direct unmediated comparison of the ‘Commonwealth of the Jews’ with the ‘Commonwealth of England’. He asks:

‘If therefore with approbation from heaven the Kings of God’s own chosen people had in the affairs of Jewish religion supreme power, why not Christian Kings the like power in Christian religion?’ VIII.iii.4

Like David, Asa, Jehosaphat, Hezekiah and Josiah before her, the Christian monarch could assume supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs – calling together general councils and the making of church laws. Futhermore, kings were to be exempt from subjection to Ecclesiastical Courts. For Hooker, the complete overlap between the commonwealth and the church meant that the analogy with Israel was obvious and decisive.

Constantinianism, continued...

If on the one hand John of Patmos accentuates the bestial aspect of the imperium, it is a tone moderated by the refusal of Paul to see the powers as falling outside of divine providence. For both, the expectation was that hostility to those bearing the Messianic name would be a feature of the new age. This is as it turned out, although sporadically rather than consistently in the first few centuries. For some Christians, the lack of hostility was problematic, so accustomed had they become to identifying with the idea of martyrdom. The longing for a martyr’s death was so strong that Augustine, for one, spent not a little effort in reminding Christians that martyrdom was not to be invited. Origen in his Exhortation to Martyrdom falls just short of recommending Christians provoke it where it is not on offer. Stories are told of Christians presenting themselves for martyrdom at the local governor’s door, much to his annoyed surprise! The martyrs had been so exalted that it was hard to think of martyrdom as not the norm; and Origen (for one) had declared it a sure path to heaven.

Thus the conversion of Constantine, which itself almost immediately followed a period of intense persecution (that of Diocletian), was not an eventuality for which there were obvious theological resources. As O’Donovan writes ‘[T]here was no revealed political doctrine in the New Testament, prescribing how the state was to be in Christ.’[1] The Christians were as unprepared for the peace as they had been prepared for the war. Where it had been the tendency prior to 315 to demonize the imperium as implacably hostile to the kingdom of God (forgetful of Romans 13), in the new dispensation it was perhaps rather the tendency to sacralize the emperor. The temptation was to see this as the moment of victory – that here was an end to the need for mission because the mission had apparently been accomplished.

[1] Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 219

A Rushdie of Blood to the Head

The act that begins the action of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is a sadly familiar act of religious terrorism. A group of Sikh fanatics have hijacked an airliner and its passengers, the Boeing 747 Bostan. Tavleen, their female leader, is heard saying to her colleague as she executes a hostage:

Martyrdom is a privilege…We shall be like the stars; like the sun. (p. 86)

Even though her fellow-terrorists fight her, in the end it is Tavleen who explodes the bomb as they fly over the English Channel, ‘and the walls come tumbling down’ (p. 87): she herself is killed and the plane destroyed; and frenetic and bizarre narrative is strangely propelled as the two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha fall towards the earth.

It is of course somewhat old hat to say that Salman Rushdie’s fiction both represents and expresses the clash of religious and secular world-views in an unprecedented way. His 1989 book The Satanic Verses provoked outrage from Muslims which culminated in the Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa. Ironically, the book itself was a thinly-veiled attack on the kind of murderous religious fanaticism that it provoked. Though Rushdie took aim at the excesses of Sikhs and Christians in the book (and has attacked Hindu extremism in others of his works), Muslims were right to feel that they were its chief target, especially given the extended passages that related to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed (called ‘Mahound’ by Rushdie).

However, it would be a mistake to characterize Rushdie as merely an anti-religious zealot. Discussion of religion naturally emanates from the discussions of identity-politics that are more deeply entrenched in his work. Rushdie is witness to a world in which personal and communal identities are constantly shifting against a backdrop of massive and rapid historical, cultural and political change. The drawing of borders on maps has enormous – sometimes enormously destructive – consequences for individuals on the ground and how they identify themselves (the partition of India in Midnight’s Children being but one example). It is a world of immigrants and exiles, no longer at home and yet deeply homesick. This fluidity of identity is experienced with delight by some Western individualists; yet is easy to see how this ‘freedom’ is frequently experienced as anxiety. Those who are in situations where they are (or feel themselves to be) on the outer as a minority or a perhaps a disempowered majority struggle to find the capacity to assert their identities alongside those given more easy access to a satisfactory identity. The question that Rushidie’s characters - who are frequently thrown in to new situations that make their former understandings of themselves impossible to sustain - continually ask of each other, themselves and even of God, is ‘what kind of idea are you’?

The Edict of Milan (315) - when the Empire Christianised officially (or thereabouts) - was the surprising vindication of the martyr’s cause, it seemed. Even the New Testament itself does not foresee a triumph of this scale. It is scarcely imaginable for Paul as he pens the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of Romans that the Imperator might in fact invite the active participation of Christians in his government and offer them a share in his rule. The obedience of the believer to the superior authority (13:1) is in surprising recognition of the divine source of the exousia This is not the default position in the New Testament by any means, and certainly it was not the experience of the early Christians, who could point rather to their experience of unjust rejection at the hands of the rulers who seemed to have set their faces determinedly against the Almighty and his Holy One. In fact, the church had its existence from the fact of Jesus’s sham trail and execution: it knew of itself from this moment of victimization. Its earliest narratives testified to its angularity to the government and citizens of the Empire.

Two remarkable things are salient in Paul’s thought here. First, the apostle does not lapse into a dualism at this point and comfort the believer by pitting Caesar’s regime holus bolus against Christ’s. He is consistent to his own statement of the unity of the power of God, his earlier theme. God has no favourites: the gospel is for all, Jew first, then Gentile. His judgment is similarly universal in scope; that the ruler is his unwitting agent in judgment is not as surprising as it might initially sound. But what is more: 'he is the servant of God to you for good' ! The ruler is the servant of God for the good of the Christian! There is a stern warning to not to resist the authority; which is to say that the superiority of the authority of God does not obliterate the operations of human authority.

Second, Paul refuses to cast the Christian in the role of the victim seeking vengeance. The comfort comes not from knowing that one is rightly a victim and so justified in seeking reprisal, but rather from the controlling hand of providence. The ruler – even the vain and idolatrous emperor – was unwittingly the servant of God, doing the business of a deity he did not even acknowledge. These were not his ancestral gods, but the God of a very minor group indeed – not even of a nation. Yet their insignificance was not evidence of the impotence of their God.

News item on smacking

here

Constantinianism, anyone?

Oliver O'Donovan is often accused of 'Constantinianism', especially by the likes of Stanley Hauerwas and his followers. In fact, at a recent conference I am lead to believe that this accusation was given quite an airing - though not in his presence! What I think they mean is that he does see some positive place for state-craft, and a requirement for the church to be at least attuned to it, or in conversation with it, especially when providence delivers a repentant 'king'. What were the Christians supposed to do come the Edict of Milan 315 AD? Say to Constantine, 'thanks, but no thanks'? Does the church really insist that the state return to its former persecuting ways and undo its gesture of repentance? I suppose it is easier to live with a hostile state because we all know where we stand!

Of course, the Constantinian arrangement has produced some rather rotten fruit: medieval papalism on the one hand, and Erastianism on the other. One makes the church into a (parallel?) secular power (the pope having armies for example) to which kings must give allegiance; the other makes the church merely the puppet of the state (as with the German Christians in the 1930s). Strangely, in both cases there is an exchange of evangelical authority for the instruments of earthly rule. In the case of papalism, a misapplication of the doctrine of the keys from Matthew 16 is brought forward: 'binding' and 'loosing' become acts of judgment and punishment in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities. The context of Peter's declaration of Jesus as Messiah is eclipsed...

Today in the West (at least in the US and Australia - Christians in the UK seem politically toothless) a resurgence in the political power on offer to Christian groups appears as a temptation for them to forget their primary task of preaching the gospel and instead pursue what are actually secular ends by secular means. The terrible danger is that we think we are building the kingdom of heaven by engineering a 'Christian' government. But that does not necessarily mean that the repentant politician or the political party which wants to know what Christians would like to see should be left swinging in the wind.

Martyrdom, as ever, provides an interesting point of divergence between the two views. O'Donovan sees martyrdom as a possibility latent in the Christian experience but at times not a necessary path to pursue, when the ruler appears to be genuine in his/her desire to submit to the authority of God. Hauerwas would ask at this point 'why isn't anybody killing us?' and seek to emphasis the points of divergence to such a degree as to produce a violent reaction against the church... While I am attracted to Hauerwas' radicalism, I am also disturbed by it!

Wrestling with the Mystery

Ever since I read Peter Carnley's version of Anglican Orthodoxy - which was so counter to everything I had ever thought - I have been struck by the place of mystery in Christian theology. It is important for Rowan Williams, too: though for these theologians who place great emphasis on the apophatic and mystical traditions in Christian theology I think there is a lack of a corresponding affirmation of a positive revelation. In the negative theology there is a hidden arrogance I think: that they can somehow see beyond the revelation to say that God is not like that. That is to say, they seem to claim for themselves a privileged position from which they can see and interpret the true reference of theological statements. It is its own form of speculation...

But they have highlighted something very important, to be fair, someting that evangelical theologians are prone to forget. That is, that mastering speech about God is never a possibility for human beings; that in the revelation of God in Christ which we encounter in the Bible we are still met by something beyond us. The trinity is the great example - God is revealed to us as trinity, but in this revelation he still retains his difference from us, his mystery (we might say).

Karl Barth writes:
Theology means rational wrestling with the mystery. But all rational wrestling with this mystery, the more serious it is, can lead only to its fresh and authentic interpretation and manifestation as a mystery... C.D. 1.1.368

This is surely no more than what Paul had in mind when he exclaims in Romans 11: 33-36

33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" 35 "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Of course, we need to place this in the context of all that Paul has affirmed theologically in the preceding chapters. But still, there is a line that even the apostle himself refuses to cross. It's a question of tone, in part, isn't it? As the preacher mounts the pulpit, does he do so with trembling knees and stammering tongue?

William Tyndale - Martyr of the Month

Well the dangers of starting a 'series' are obvious (remember the 39 Articles?)... but here goes with the Martyr of the Month series.

William Tyndale is a great way to start us off. Of course, he was renowed as a bible translator, and it was for pursuing this illegal activity that he was caught by the authorities, tortured and burnt in 1536.

I think Tyndale knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that the scriptures in translation were political dynamite. In the hands of a people well-versed, the word of God would transform everything. The Authority of the Word would itself relativise the power of the Pope and the power of the King. And yet, he did not counsel insurrection, but rather obedience to Kings and princes.

His work The Obedience of a Christian Man is a remarkable piece of English Lutheranism - a withering critique of Papal absolutism and a muscular statement of the sole authority of Christ in his Word. It was because - and insofaras - the scriptures themselves testified to Christ the Lord that they a power to challenge thrones and popes.

Hear him addressing his enemies, in full knowledge of what they could and as it turned out did do to him:

Christ is the cause why I love thee, why I am ready to do the uttermost of power for thee, and why I pray for thee. And as long as the cause abideth, so long lasteth the effect even asit is always day, so longas the sun shineth. Do therefore the worst thou canst unto me: take away my goods: take away my good name: yet as long as Christ remaineth in mine heart, so ong I love thee not a whit the less and so long art thou as dear unto me as mine own sould, and so long am I ready to do thee good for thine evil, and so long I pray for thee with all mine heart. For Christ desireth it of me and hath deserved it of me. Thine unkindness compared unto his kindness is nothing at all, yea it is swallowed up, as a lottle smoke of a mighty wind, and is no more seen or thought upon. Moreover, that evil which thou doest to me, I receive it not of thine hand, but of the hand of God, and as God's scourge to teach me patience and to nurture me...

Violence: what is it?

Following on from our lively discussion of smacking - there was some dispute about the use of the word 'violent' (that is, that this word implied an unwarranted aggression). I know online sources are a bit unreliable, but Wikipedia's definition is interesting:

"Violence is deliberate behaviour resulting in physical injury to other human beings, or more broadly to other animals as well, and is often, but not necessarily, associated with aggression. Some forms of violence are socially and legally sanctioned, others are crimes. Different societies apply different standards relating to approved and non-approved forms of violence.
Forms of violence include:
Assassination
Assault
Boxing
Corporal punishment
Domestic violence
Drive-by shooting
Dueling
Genocide
Judicial execution
War
Martial arts"

This is a more neutral definition of violence - in which case smacking is most certainly violent. It is just a sanctioned form of it.

Balthasar on the Ernstfall

Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a very special book called The Moment of Christian Witness (Ernstfall = decisive moment). I like it because it is biblical, theological and exciting. In part the book is an attack on the 'anonymous Christian' idea of Rahner - that somehow, acts of true Christian love can be meritoriously performed by those who are not expressly or openly Christian. Balthasar writes:

The love of Christ is not only the inner core, and the blood of Christ is not only the outer skin; faith is founded on the unity of the two. And for this reason it is not possible to shelve or postpone the decision to an assent of faith. (p.100)

That is, you cannot split away love as if it has not relation to the cross of Christ. The anonymous Christian on the other hand is dispensed from the criterion of martyrdom...he or she can disown or never own Christ and yet still be 'Christian', it would seem... Balthasar shows by his analysis the indispensibility of martyrdom for thinking about Christian identity.

Trying to get a handle on my project...

Some people seem to be able to trot out their complete doctoral thesis outline at an early stage.

This is not me. My work seems to be more evolutionary... I am try not to lose my nerve over this of course! The worst moments are when someone asks you 'so, what is your thesis on?' and nothing much coherent or convincing comes out of your mouth. Arghh!

However: here is an attempt to get my thoughts together at this stage, almost a third of the way through (!). Please feel free to chip in your two cents worth, and please excuse the academic-ese:

What kind of self is a Christian martyr? This dissertation seeks to explore and expound Christian identity via the motif of martyrdom. Martyrdom is the possibility latent in the Christian identity, for all Christians are called to the ‘witness’ or ‘testimony’ (martyrion) that might result in bloody martyrdom.[1] As Balthasar writes:

…this does not mean that every single Christian must suffer bloody martyrdom, but he must consider the entire case as the external representation of the inner reality out of which he lives.[2]

Christian baptism is a symbol of the offering of the old self over to death which is what every Christian does as an identification with Jesus Christ. It is a kind of proto-martyrdom, with its act of testimony to Christ and renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil.[3] The martyr ‘externally represents’ the church’s way of understanding both the world and the situatedness of the self in that world. It is an understanding which the martyr shows is not merely theoretical, for in the act of offering of the body to its own destruction it is revealed as concrete. At the point of the sword, the testimony of the martyr to another reality intersects – fatally – with the material world. An analysis of martyrdom thus suggests itself as a way to understand Christian identity, both on its own terms and in comparison with alternatives.

However, we must surely be aware of how dissonant this witness is with non-theological conceptions of human meaning and purpose. Part of this dissonance lies in the inevitable association of martyrdom with the spectacle of horrendous religious violence that is the signs of our times. As the suicide bomber shows, the line between killing and dying for a cause is all too thin: to the secular mind the two are barely distinguishable as species of insanity.[4] The association of martyrdom with fanaticism, religious violence and the spectacle of suffering complicates discussion about the meaning of martyrdom as a self-narration. It is a problematic and contested discourse – perhaps supremely so. How might a discourse characterized by the notion of the ‘authentic’ self (for example) accommodate the possibility of self-abnegation to the kind and degree that the martyr demonstrates? Martyrdom – even the possibility of martyrdom – seems to be the enemy of human potential. True, it may be freely determined (though only as a form of suicide), but it is given away too cheaply; it has too little regard for the ties of family and friends; it is too committed to a notion of ‘truth’ which has fallen into disrepair...

In order to elucidate martyrdom as a way of seeing the self, this study makes use of T.S. Eliot’s martyrological drama Murder in the Cathedral (1935) as a lens by which to focus the theme. In the instance of Eliot’s literary creation Thomas we are given an imaginative reflection on martyrdom in the Christian tradition as a whole.


[1] See e.g. Mt 10:18f.
[2] Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, Communio Books (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), p. 22
[3] Origen makes the connection between the baptismal promises and the test of martyrdom explicit in his Exhortation to Martyrdom. Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom; Prayer; First Principles, Book Iv; Prologue to the Commentary on 'the Song of Songs'; Homily Xxvii on 'Numbers', trans. Rowan A. Greer, The Classics of Western Spirituality. (London: S.P.C.K, 1979), iii.17, p. 157-8
[4] As Salman Rushdie puts it:: ‘Only fanatics go looking for martyrdom.’ Salman Rushdie, Step across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002 (London: Vintage, 2003), p. 240

Rowan Williams on 'Judgement'

One of the most prominent themes in Rowan Williams' theology is that of 'judgement'. He means the word in all of its senses - discretion or discernment, criticism, and in some senses, the 'final' judgement that lies ahead.

This quote is fairly typical:

part of my thesis is that the interpretation of the world ‘within the scriptural framework’ is intrinsic to the Church’s critical self-discovery. In judging the world, by its confrontation of the world with its own dramatic script, the Church also judges itself: in attempting to show the world a critical truth, it shows itself to itself as Church also.
On Christian Theology p. 31

What he has in mind by this term is the inexhaustible critical function that the narratives of Jesus have over the world and the church. In this sense there is a call for judgement by the church, but only insofar as it involves a self-criticism that involves giving attention to the pattern of life that was Jesus's and a recognition of the provisionality of our speech about God and its tendency to serve our ideological ends.

Slavoj Žižek Again - he's kinda fun!

Žižek writes:

Christianity introduced into this global balanced cosmic Order a principle that is totally foreign to it, a principle which, measured by the standards of pagan cosmology, cannot but appear as a monstrous distortion: the principle according to which each individual has immediate access to universality...I can participate in this universal dimension directly irrespective of my special place within the global social order. The Fragile Absolute, p. 120

Z applies this to our thinking about human rights (so-called): a set of universal principles that all of us imagine we have access to in some way. This is Christianity's idea secularised... under the Christian way of thinking, it is that which transgresses and upsets the primordial balance of things that is holy: not the ways things are as we find them. It is not our place in the global order of things that matters but rather that which undermines said order - ie, the gospel of Christ, he who calls on us to hate our mother and father etc. A funny version of 'family values', isn't it?

Simon at the beach in Cornwall

Kevin Vanhoozer 'The Drama of Doctrine'

This book represents a landmark in genuinely reformed evangelical thinking about the theological task.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, who is currently Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is well known for his work on questions of fundamental theology (First Theology) and hermeneutics (Is There A Meaning in This Text?). As usual, in The Drama of Doctrine he manages to combine real creativity and a remarkable knowledge of contemporary debates with faithfulness to conservative evangelical orthodoxy – which ultimately of course means faithfulness to the scriptures themselves.

This work is occasioned by the calcification of contemporary evangelical theology and the unwillingness of church pastors to pay any attention to it at all out of suspicion and/or boredom. In answer to serious cultural, intellectual and theological challenges, evangelical theological voices have certainly been more loudly raised; but they have not been persuasive in the debate or attuned to the pastor’s weekly task of proclaiming the gospel to contemporary people. Evangelical scholars have either retreated further into fortress of Enlightenment rationalism (Carl Henry, Wayne Grudem) or given craven concession to postmodernism (Stanley Grenz). The situation into which The Drama of Doctrine is written calls for a reinvigoration of the theological task in a way which avoids both of these dire pitfalls.

The purpose of this work is to present Vanhoozer’s vision of a ‘canonical-linguistic’ theology organized around the metaphor of dramatic performance. Doctrine is not merely a set of flat propositions, but rather a dramatic direction to be performed by Christians, individually and collectively. That is to say, it is a gospel to be lived! The exposition of his theme falls into four parts. In the first, “The Drama”, Vanhoozer shows how theology responds and corresponds to the words and deeds of God and serves as ‘direction for the church’s fitting participation in the drama of redemption’ (p. 31). It is rooted in the gospel itself as its first premise. Second (“The Script”), Vanhoozer addresses the place of Scripture and tradition and how they should relate. Against the post-liberals who make scripture merely subject to the church, he wishes to affirm sola scriptura. However, he is receptive to the insight that these doctrines of scripture do describe and prescribe ecclesial practices of scriptural reading. This is the real strength of the book, in this reviewer’s opinion: Vanhoozer has offered a way forward from the intractable battles about the doctrine of scripture without conceding its constitutive and authoritative place for the church’s life. Here is at last an evangelical doctrine of scripture which does not ignore ecclesiology. With John Webster, Vanhoozer also argues that Scripture has less an epistemological than a soteriological function.

Part III (“The Dramaturge”) fleshes out the role of the theologian in the ‘canonical-linguistic’ approach to theology following the theatrical model. Vanhoozer coins the term ‘post-conservative’, a move which nods to the emphasis on communal practices in post-liberalism and yet preserves an authoritative canonical script. The theologian engages in both practices of scientia in interpreting scripture and sapientia in reading and engaging with the contemporary cultural context. The aim of the theology is to enable Christians to better ‘perform’ the Christian life as disciples of Jesus by ‘improvising’ on the script(ures). Vanhoozer here proposes a move beyond both propositionalism and foundationalism in theological method while affirming the place of propositions and foundations as necessary to theology.

The fourth part (“The Performance”) extrapolates the task of theology in its congregational and pastoral setting, using the doctrine of the atonement as a case study. Doctrine is something that we are invited to live out in the church and the world: “The direction of doctrine…enables us…to render the gospel public by leading lives in creative imitation of Christ” (p. 32). One of Vanhoozer’s favourite themes – martyrdom – here emerges as a disturbing sign to the church of what imitating Christ might mean. It is a rare piece of systematic theology that can address the Christian walk so concretely. Under this schema, and with his ears attuned to postmodern currents, he is able to emphasise the need for action without losing the theological reason for it. Doctrine and ethics flow seamlessly together - as of course they should.

Some features of the book serve to dampen my overall enthusiasm. First: the guiding metaphor of ‘drama’ is a well chosen development on the insights of narrative theology; but it does at points feel stretched further than it will go. In particular, the pastor as ‘director’ (Part IV) feels like a poorly chosen equivalence and smacks somewhat of clericalism. Surely it is the Spirit who directs the church. Second, Vanhoozer’s incessant quotation of other authors impedes the smooth flow of his text; and at times appears forced. He seeks congruity in quotes but not in arguments; but when he quotes someone – say, Geoffrey Wainwright on the role of the sacraments (p. 412) - who is diametrically opposed to his conclusions, it is less than convincing as an appeal to authority. Third, Vanhoozer tends to state rather than argue his case. He articulates his point with great clarity and even aesthetic flair. This is a deliberate and self-consciouslessly postmodern strategy of depending on the explanatory power of the ideas themselves to convince his readers rather than leaning on some evidence external to the subject matter. With that I have much sympathy: however, this reader felt that there may have been more for Vanhoozer to offer by way of argument. I am surprised he spends so little time, for example, on showing how the scriptures themselves demonstrate his case by presenting a word that demands performance from its readers.

However, these shortcomings should not deter potential readers. This is a courageous and timely book that exemplifies theology taking mission seriously; and should be read by pastors, students and teachers who are like-minded. Vanhoozer does not ignore or side-step the toughest questions of postmodernism. Most salutary is the call of this book for the churches to renew our communal practices. Vanhoozer shows what an evangelical theologian can achieve if he or she is truly attentive to the task of serving the church. His vision is to recapture the reformed vision of deep theological reflection as belonging to pastors and lay people, not the preserve of the academy. Here is no brittle orthodoxy; rather, we have in The Drama of Doctrine an imaginative reiteration of evangelical truth.

www.youbook.blogspot.com

I need your help. I am planning to write a book (I hate saying that). The book is entitled YOU, and it is about being a human being but put theologically, or christianly. It is aimed at the 'popular' end of things, so it is meant to be easy to read but provocative as well. I want my readers to be challenged about who they are and what their lives are on about. And ultimately to commend Christ as the concrete example of human life well lived. Without it being a brainstrain to read...


Anyhow, this is the plan - a bit of an experiment that mightn't work at all. I am going to publish parts of chapters at www.youbook.blogspot.com and then open it to your input and comments. Don't just sit there! Chip in your 2 cents worth! The caveat is that in doing so you assign your comments over to me to shape and use in creating a readable discussion for the purposes of the book. (I will observe every courtesy in doing so.)

And also, it is meant to be a book open to a broad readership: so you could invite people you know would disagree with it to drop by and comment. That'd be grand.

(do it NOW!)

Slavoj Žižek: Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek makes an audacious defence of Christianity - since he is an atheist! He argues that the core radicalism of Christianity is sorely needed in the Europe of today to overcome violent tribalisms. He seems to get how perverse Christianity is.

‘…it is love itself that enjoins us to ‘unplug’ from the organic community into which we were born – or, as Paul puts it, for a Christian, there are neither men nor women, neither Jews nor Greeks…No wonder that, for those fully identified with the Jewish ‘national substance’, as well as for the Greek philosophers and the proponents of the global Roman Empire, the appearance of Christ was a ridiculous and/or traumatic scandal.’

The unplugging of the Christian (and her ‘replugging’ into the community of the Spirit) diminishes the demand of duty to the ‘natural’ communities to which she belongs – to the bewilderment of the natural community were such demands are absolute.

Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute - or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? ed. Slavoj Žižek, Wo Es War (London; New York: Verso, 2000), p. 121

Bonhoeffer as Martyr: Craig Slane

Craig Slane's interesting book "Bonhoeffer As Martyr" makes the case that Bonhoeffer was indeed a martyr (surprising I know, the title kinda gives it away I guess...).

This isn't obvious of course. Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed not for his explicit testimony to Christ, but for his part in a plot to kill Hitler. He was guilty in other words of attempted tyrannicide.

However, it is hard not to have sympathy with his course of action given that Hitler was exceptionally bad as a tyrant. But does he then fit the pattern of martyrdom?

Slane argues that in the 20th Century, martyrs have become 'political' - by which he means, they have often died because of their intervention in political affairs. They have testified to Jesus not by their words so much as by their actions. They have risked and accepted death for the sake of others. Thus, Bonhoeffer's case fits this expanded pattern.

But there is a certain circularity here: Bonhoeffer's case has been central to this suggested redefinition of martyrdom; and yet by this redefinition according to B's case, Slane tries to judge his case. So, of course Bonhoeffer is a martyr by these terms...

Smacking: some summary thoughts

Well: thankyou everyone for the discussion! I thought I would just post a concluding reflection, trying to draw the threads together somewhat. I offered the debate without claiming to be a particularly successful or expert parent: I think I am just as frustrated and bewildered and delighted as everyone else by the whole experience!

I guess I knew already that this would be a controversial issue. Almost anything to do with parenting is. I think this is partly to do with the universality of the issue – we have all experienced the parenting of our parents, and many people are or are potentially parents. But also, it is because of the dearth of guidance available as to how to do the really difficult job of parenting. We could add to this the fact that we have so much of ourselves invested in our children: our whole vision of what it is to be a human being, or ought to be. And, we do love them, and we don’t want to think we have erred in bringing them up. It is even more sensitive than sexuality, I venture to say.

It is worth saying that this is true of this issue in the wider community, and not just amongst Christians. If you check the pages of parenting magazines you will find some of the most passionate and articulate debate about what it means to be human going around.

I raised the issue of smacking. We don’t do it, though I am not opposed to smacking per se. For me, it was a practical as much as philosophical decision. (I need to add that none of the opinions expressed in this blog are necessarily those of my wife!) I think that the following debate was marked by some confusion, because some of the proponents of smacking equated non-smacking with non-disciplining. This is far from the case: however imperfect our system might be, we certainly do discipline and rebuke our children.

The issue of the bible was raised: smackers claimed that there was ‘clear biblical evidence’ in favour of smacking and noted how little scripture was forwarded by the other side. There certainly are some strong statements in Proverbs about discipline that appear to relate to corporal punishment, for example:

Proverbs 13:24 24 He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.
Proverbs 23:13-14 13 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. 14 Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.

However, it was in my view rightly answered that the verses refer to discipline per se and not necessarily to the method of discipline. Further, to take the verses literally would mean investment in rods, which pro-smacking parents haven’t seem by and large to have done. On the other hand, there is no missing the very strong affirmation of the value of discipline for the child here. So: I think that corporal punishment is permitted, but not demanded at this point. (Which I think was all you were arguing for CraigS, right?)

This lack of biblical evidence leads me to another observation. On many issues on which people are looking for direct guidance, the Bible offers little or piecemeal advice. The bible is not meant to be comprehensive in these matters. But our tendency is sometimes to overstate the advice the bible gives. I think this is true on gender issues – we just don’t get that much information on being a man or a woman in the Bible, but we keep looking for it. Sure there is some guidance: but not as much as you would think, given the way we keep talking about it. Within the Bible’s teaching there are many many ways to be a man or a woman.

Likewise with parenting. One of the worst things about some Christian parenting manuals is the way in which what amounts to practical wisdom is given a quasi-scriptural authority - you know, ‘this is growing children God’s way’ and all that. You’d think Genesis was actually all about routine feeding of babies. Strangely, it isn’t. One of the worst examples of this is the way in which the life of Israel is used as a direct example for the life of Christian families without any differentiation in terms of the gospel. The notion of covenant is particularly misused in this regard.

Christians ought to be good at life wisdom, and do have the foundation for knowing all sorts of things about the world that secular people might be blind to see: but wisdom is a broad and flexible category of knowledge about the world. (This is why Solomon’s botanical manuals didn’t end up in the Bible, I imagine… though a piece of his erotica did, didn’t it?)

Which is all by way of saying: there just isn’t that much information about the issue of smacking in the Bible on which to make a dogmatic statement about it.

However: it does seem to me that a number of theological/philosophical/ethical issues have been raised by our discussion that would definitely feed in to a discussion of parental discipline.

1 - There seemed to be some differences as to what the point of parenting should be and then the role of discipline within that.

2 – Coupled to that: was childhood a thing to be enjoyed for its own sake, or is it to be seen as a preparation for adulthood mainly? Is the exuberance of childhood to be celebrated or curbed?

3 – What is the relationship between anger and punishment in the parent-child relationship? In fact, what IS punishment?

4 – What is violence? Is smacking violent?

5 – How does all this relate to the character of God the Father and his chastisement of Christians for their good? I am thinking of Hebrews 12:7-11 :
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it

corporal punishment

My wife and I are non-smackers of our children.

This is a reasonably controversial thing to be amongst Christians. And, I have to say, most people who were adults now (in Anglo-Saxon countries anyhow) were smacked as children - and most without any ill effects.

Our 'philosophy' is really just pragmatic: we think it is more effective not to smack and to discipline by other means. So, we are happy to say smacking might work for someone else but not for us. I have to say it is really useful to have such a policy in place for those times when you really get mad...

Any thoughts?

A more attractive photo of Freya!

I realised that that first photo had a kinda squashed look. She really is prettier than that!

Still more on Article II

It is worth pointing out that the Article - along with many creeds of course - omits any reference to Jesus' life and teaching - his obedience and his prophetic office in other words.

And yet there is a significant biblical emphasis on this aspect of Jesus' work - even in Paul, who seems to emphasise the cross/resurrection more.

Is this indicative of tendency in the tradition to instrumentalise the humanity of Jesus - ie to make it a matter of utility , that he is purpose built (purpose-driven?) for the passion?

More on Article II

Though both approaches to the person of Christ - from above and from below - can claim scriptural warrant, their deficiencies are significant. Is there some alternative approach? It seems to me that thinking exclusively from above or from below is unsatisfactory, and not quite a reflection of the Biblical record. The important insight is that if we see the work and the person of Christ as a unity we will perhaps avoid the difficulties that beset the two positions.
TF Torrance writes:
the proper theological procedure we adopt in Christology is not to understand the Person and work of Jesus Christ by approaching him either from below or from above, but from below and from above at the same time, for it is in the light of what we learn from below that we appreciate what derives from above, and in the light of what derives from above that we really understand what we learn from below […] we apprehend both together.
Further, we might ask whether the whole assumption on which the “above/below” debate rests is a good one; namely, that there is a sharp gulf between time and eternity. We could certainly conceive of other ways of relating the two.

Article II: Of the Word or Son of God, which was made very Man

The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.

The identity of Jesus of Nazareth is an issue of continuing interest and controversy, both within and without Christianity. As NT Wright puts it: “who was Jesus?” and “so what?” - these remain challenging questions to answer. In the contemporary context of pluralism, traditional Christology comes under particular assault because of the scandalous suggestion that he might be so related to the God of the universe at the level of being that he represents the only real opportunity of knowing the true God. How can he have been genuinely God and genuinely human at the same time without either of these descriptions being compromised in one way or another? Can we say with Paul “God was in Christ”; and what might we mean by it?
The problem is twofold. Firstly, the human, historical Jesus has been the subject of frenetic scholarly argument over two centuries. It remains a real question to challenge us: what can we know, if anything, of Jesus’ earthly life, and how should we understand his mission? Some have decided, given the plethora of reconstructions of the life of Jesus, that there is no way to access the real Jesus, no knowing the truth about his human life. Albert Schweitzer wrote in 1906, after reviewing a century of scholarship that the best we could hope for in Jesus is a subjectively experience of one unknown:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the task which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
A.Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, p.401

Rudolph Bultmann wrote in 1926:
I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus…
R.Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, p.8

Secondly, there is a philosophical problem: if we start, as most modern theology has done, with what we know of the human Jesus, how can we begin to speak meaningfully of the eternal Christ, the Son of God? The problem runs the other way, as well: if we start with statements about the eternal or transcendent, how can we proceed to connect those to the temporal and immanent? Since the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in the late 18th Century, this issue has deeply vexed theologians.

A prayer for a new child

Sent to me by a friend:

O God, who dost renew all life on the face of the earth and dost reveal to human parents the mystery of thy creative work in the birth of a child, enable this couple, and all who found families where children grow, to express the tenderness of divine love, the innocence of divine community and the authority of divine instruction; that each new generation may have wherewith to seek thee, and all history resound to thy praise, until the coming of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Values continued

talk of ‘values’ is reductive and selective, inevitably. ‘Values’, as we have seen, tends to indicate a conservative expression of conformist and traditional aspirations: diligence, ‘a fair go’, self-reliance, integrity and so on. However, the set of values labelled as ‘Christian values’ very rarely includes the kind of challenge to the status quo that Jesus himself modelled, as the Old Testament prophets had before him. There is nothing prophetic, we might say, about ‘values’ (which is where Brendan Nelson’s use of the word ‘comfortable’ should set off alarm bells). Cultural critic Guy Rundle writes:

The elite schools are multimillion-dollar educational entrepreneurs, whose attachment to the religion is now simply a form of thematic branding, a bit of spiritual swoosh.

He is speaking of the Melbourne scene, where various high-priced schools have doggedly fought off the intervention of the churches in their affairs while retaining a nominal link – a keeping up of appearances. His comment would not be fair to the schools I know in Sydney. But it is true that talk of ‘values’ tends to reduce the Christian affiliation of schools to a mere badging of middle-class aspirationalism. The language of ‘values’ robs the gospel of its counter-cultural edge. Though it will be popular with potential customers/parents, it offers an emaciated moral vision. Parents want their children’s selves realised, fulfilled and actualised; but Christ calls us to die to our selves.

Freya Louise Jensen!

Freya Louise came into the world 7/7/06 at 7.5 lbs!!

She caught us by surprise being two weeks early!

Mother and baby well.

Rowan Williams on Theological Integrity

I find Rowan Williams a fascinating if frustrating figure. He is capable of some of the most conceptually rich and stimulating theologically thinking I have read - but yet, his starting assumption seems to be that there is no speech FROM God available, and certainly not in Scripture.

Here: a couple of interesting comments from an essay called 'Theological Integrity':

'Having integrity...is being able to speak in a way which allows of answers'.

'Religious practice is only preserved in any integrity by seriousness about prayer; and so, if theology is the untangling of the real grammar of religious practice, its subject matter is, humanly and specifically, people who pray.'

1. Faith in the Holy Trinity (continued)

The articles could have started in a different place. It is interesting that they do not begin with a statement about revelation. They do not first give an epistemological grounding of the knowledge of God before moving on to substantive expressions of what that knowledge is. Neither do they start with Christ and the incarnation, or the gospel, and work out from this point (as a 20th century theological statement might have).

However, starting with God in this way reflects the order of reality, not the order of knowledge. The starting point is the God who is the source of all things, not the nature of our access to him - even the Son is here first introduced as ordered to the Father. Jesus does not exist in or for himself - there is a priority of the Father over the Son. The Son's orientation is towards the Father.

There is no question but that this statement employs terms that are Platonic rather than distinctively Christian, as the Cyberpastor noted. Christian thinkers have since very early on found platonic terms a congenial way of expressing what they found in the OT. These terms are especially useful in speaking of God's absolute transcendence - his sheer infinity.

The question is: is this use inappropriate? Does it fatally distort the doctrine of God? If you take the first article in toto, we do see that there is in place a dialetic between God's oneness and threeness which we could certainly read as heavily qualifying those Greek terms in a distinctively Christian way. That is, the article does not stop at God's infinite distance from us, but also by speaking of Father, Son and Spirit, implies his nearness to us: and flows on into the second article, which more properly announces the coming of the Son of God into our midst.

Oliver O'Donovan on 'The Failure of Liberalism'

The first of a series of seven.

39 Articles on the 39 Articles: 1. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity

At this tumultuous time for the Anglican Communion (or is it now 'Federation'?) I thought it would be good to revisit our classic statement of faith: The Articles of Religion. So, today I begin a series of um, 39 Articles on the 39 Articles. For an intro you can see my earlier post 'The 39 Articles'.

Article I: Of Faith in the Holy Trinity
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

We begin with the radical monotheism of the Old Testament. It is easy to forget just how outrageous the claim that there is but one God is. Surely in the vast universe with all its diversity and array and all its flux and change there is room for a variety of gods. In fact, why should we believe that the tumult and struggle we encounter about us does not correspond to a divine tumult and struggle: that there isn't a chaos of gods with their special interests and foibles?

There are other spiritual beings. But none of them is divine. The one-ness of God means that all of reality has a unity too: a unity in him. It is all connected, however distant or discordant it seems: in him. His oneness also means that no religious tribalism is possible. Even as this God chose for himself a special people, he reminded them of his oneness: they could not hold him as their possession or talisman. The election of Israel was based on God's election of Adam.

The Articles emphasise the sheer transcendence of this deity and his freedom, matched by the three-fold cord of his classic attributes of power, wisdom and goodness. That he is without passions is most controversial to contemporary readers - but what this terms is meant to convey is that he is not prey to his emotions or whims. He is not irascible or moody, a victim of his own nature.

(to be continued...)

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's linguistic theory...

"All language is metaphorical, and if we insist that particular words have only one meaning and the way we understand those words is the only possible interpretation, we have elevated that text to an idol..."

Well I am not unhappy with language being metaphorical and all... but where's the logic in the accusation of idolatry? Of course, if you undermine the authority of texts, then all you have left is... the tyranny of the bishop.

I think this is the case of someone who thinks they are being all postmodern-hip not really understanding the pomo thing anyhow.

Weird.

"Values"

This is from a document entitled:
National Framework
for Values Education
in Australian Schools 2004

In the Glossary it defines "values" by giving two quotations without any explanation:

• “… the principles and fundamental convictions which act
as general guides to behaviour, the standards by which
particular actions are judged as good or desirable.’”
(J Halstead, J and M Taylor, ‘Learning and teaching about
values: A review of recent research’, Cambridge Journal of
Education, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2000, pp 169-202);

• “the ideals that give significance to our lives, that are
reflected through the priorities that we choose, and that
we act on consistently and repeatedly” (Emeritus Professor
Brian Hill), keynote address, first National Forum on Values
Education, Melbourne, April 2004.

What is interesting here is relationship in both quotations between 'principle' and 'action', and the relationship between both of these and 'judgment' or 'significance'. What kind of moral universe does this reflect?

My gut reaction as a Christian is that 'following Jesus' doesn't really work with either of these, because it is not an 'ideal' or a 'principle' - though it is more like the former than the latter.

Of course, the question that is begged by all of this is: 'which 'values' '? Or better, 'whose'?