I'm not old

From Monty Python and the Holy Grail...
[thud]
[King Arthur music]
[thud thud thud]
[King Arthur music stops]
ARTHUR:
Old woman!
DENNIS:
Man!
ARTHUR:
Man. Sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
DENNIS:
I'm thirty-seven.
ARTHUR:
I-- what?
DENNIS:
I'm thirty-seven. I'm not old.

I couldn't agree more...

Cruelty - the worst thing we can do?

As Richard Rorty tells it (and he gets this from Judith Shklar), a liberal is someone who thinks that 'cruelty is the worst thing we do'.

Shklar herself wrote:

Sins are transgressions of a divine rule and offenses against God; pride, as the rejection of God, must always be the worst one, which gives rise to all the others. Cruelty, as the willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear, however, is a wrong done entirely to another creature. When it is marked as a supreme evil, it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a rejection of God or any other higher norm. It is a judgement made from within a world where cruelty occurs as part both of our normal private life and our daily public practice. By putting it irrevocably first—with nothing above it, and with nothing to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty—one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality.

Cruelty stands alone as a kind of self-referencing evil: for Shklar it is evil on its own terms and not because of some higher norm. Christians may loath cruelty, but unless they put it first and worst, she argues, they will always find a reason somewhere to excuse it. She sites Christian history to prove it - the terrible episode of the Conquistadors being just one.

Of course, liberal democracies have also been complicit in cruelty - whether by participating in economic systems which produce it or by the explicit use of torture in war.

Psalm 95 at St Ebbe's

Listen to my sermon on Psalm 95

Rorty: America is an experiment

Yes, you Americans: the whole American idea ain't nothin' but a great experiment and y'all are its lab rats. Richard Rorty says so:

Both Jefferson and Dewey described America as an 'experiment'. If the experiment fails, our descendants may learn something important. But they will not learn a philosophical truth, any more than they will learn a religious one. They will simply get some hints about what to watch out for when setting up their next experiment. Even if nothing else survives from the age of the democratic revolutions, perhaps our descendants will remember the social institutions can be viewed as experiments in cooperation rather than as attempts to embody a universal and ahistorical order. It is hard to believe that this memory would not be worth having...

So, what hints do you think the next generation ought to get from the American experiment? Here's some:

1- don't say anything about arms in your constitution!
2- state religion actually makes religion more boring, not less.
3- Texas oughta be its own country.

Got any others? Don't go being rude now...

Rorty on an analogy with the decline of religious faith

The Last Judgement Mosiac on St Vitus' Cathedral, Prague.

Here's old man Rorty on the decline of religion and the theology of heavenly rewards:

That decline, and specifically the decline of people's ability to take the idea of postmortem rewards seriously, has not weakened liberal societies and indeed has strengthened them. Lots of people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries predicted the opposite. They thought that hope of heaven was required to supply moral fiber and social glue - that there was little point, for example, in having an atheist swear to tell the truth in a court of law. As it turned out, however, willingness to endure suffering for the sake of future reward was transfered from individual rewards to social ones, from one's hopes for paradise to one's hopes for one's grandchildren...

Fascinating, this, given the rhetoric of environmentalism AND also technological triumphalism which reference grandchildren, though both contradict one another profoundly.

However, his comment about ethics is interesting: one which Christian apologists fail to realise frequently. Somehow, humans continue to behave in more or less ethical consistency in liberal society without reference to religion. (By which I mean: sure, people remain sinful and greedy, but chaos does not reign as we might expect it to). How is this to be accounted for? Has Rorty perhaps overestimated religion's decline? Are people still referencing some kind of divine judgement seat even though they do not articulate it in this way? Are people merely doing what helps them (and theirs) to get along best - ie, is it actually in their self-interest to act 'ethically' and so they do it?

The Mission of God X

In his zeal to show the continuity between the testaments, Wright has not (to my mind) sufficiently accounted for the difference between them. Marcionitism was attractive precisely because it has a point: in Christ, something new comes to pass. Or at least, the themes and concerns of the Old Testament are presented in a surprising new way. This is true of Wright’s particular emphasis on mission. It is precisely because of the revelation of Christ that it becomes possible to read the Old Testament in the light of mission. That this is an emphasis of the Old Testament becomes apparent on a re-reading of this text after the fact of the encounter with the New Testament. If reading the New Testament must be a canonical business, then so also must reading of the Old.[1] It simply will not do to read off a concept or theme found in the Old Testament, and apply it to the church without careful theological qualification. The church is not Israel. Wright is of course well aware of the danger of this kind of application. He insists: ‘[W]e are not Old Testament Israelites living within a theocratic covenant bound by Old Testament law’ (see p. 304-5). He rightly complains about the tendency of liberation theologians to do this with the exodus. But I am not convinced that he himself has completely evaded it. Especially, this comes into play in his discussion of the jubilee, one of his favourite biblical themes (p. 290ff). Wright says: ‘Mission belongs to God - the biblical God. The message of mission is to be drawn from the whole of God's biblical revelation. So we cannot simply relegate the powerful message of events such as the exodus or institutions like the jubilee to a bygone era. They are an integral part of the biblical definition of God's idea of redemption and of God's requirement on his redeemed people’. (p. 306) Certainly, Wright is right: relegation is not an option for a full-orbed biblical theology. But how are we to handle the transition between the social legislation directed to Israel and the era of the Church? Wright’s response to that question would be that the New Testament explicitly declares some Old Testament material to have been provisional – the food laws, for example, and the sacrificial system. There is an explicit rationale for our nonobservance of these ‘matters’ (p. 305). In other words, for Wright, ritual requirements are made particular to Israel’s own identity in time and space; whereas, the ethical principles gleaned from the Old Testament are universalised. But can this distinction be so easily sustained from reading the Old Testament itself? Wright seems to overlook the fact that the Jubilee itself was not merely an ethical teaching or principle, but precisely a ritual practice with an ethical and theological meaning that Israel was to engage in on regular occassions. Which is to say: the line between ceremonial and ethical command is not so easily drawn as Wright imagines. The critique of the latter prophets was not against ritual practice per se but against ritual practice set against a context of injustice and idolatry. Isn’t the charge that is frequently made against Calvin’s division of the law into moral, ceremonial and civil law – that it is an arbitrary division not found in the text, which for its part simply speaks of the whole as torah – also a charge that can be made to Wright’s proposed reading of the Old Testament ethical material? Certainly, many theologians in the history of the church have made proposals for criterion by which the Old Testament material ought to be received by Christians A further query I have along these lines is as to what Wright makes of holy war in the Old Testament. The relationship of Israel to the other nations surrounding her was frequently marked by armed struggle at the command of Yhwh. If there was an international perspective on view it was that that the defeat of the nations and their submission to the Lord’s anointed one was to be the way in which Israel would carry her mission to the nations. There was then a definite negative side to Israel’s mission: she was not merely the bearer of divine blessing to the nations, but also the bringer of divine curses. This too had been promised in the Abrahamic covenant of course. How is this negative aspect of the mission translated into the era of the church?

I find myself agreeing with Philip Ruddock!

A Bill of (so-called) Rights would be a spectacularly BAD idea for Australia, just as it would be for the UK.

I hate to agree with Ruddock, but... there you go.

The Unity of the Bible?

All this talk in Chris Wright and Graeme Goldsworthy about 'overarching frameworks' and such makes me want to ask: in what does the coherence of the Bible lie? How can it be properly described?

Narratives cohere (often) around a central character or set of characters. Or, as in a saga, like D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow, several generations of people living in the same place provide the threads of interconnection between the succesive stages of the novel. One novel I read, Annie Proulx's Accordian Crimes, coheres around an inanimate object (an accordian) as its finds itself in successive sets of hands. In Anna Karenina two plots are interwoven though there is little connection between them - they are connected in that the characters share in family relations of a somewhat distance kind.

Ultimately, it is the collecting of the elements together in the single work that unifies them, though usually there are more elements of formal coherence than that. Think of a painting in an art gallery: it is the framing and placing of the elements within the frame and on the wall that invites us to consider them as a unity, even if the elements of the painting are quite discordant. If they are discordant, we tend to ask why they have been juxtaposed and wrestle to discover what relation there might be or that we might find between them.

These formal coherences - often unimportant in themselves - invite the reader to consider and discover thematic coherences as suggested by the stories. Sometimes these are quite surprising, granted. Sometimes the formal coherences do not account for all the elements in the work, at least not obviously. But the human love of comparing and contrasting, and of finding patterns, makes for the most enjoyable part of engaging with narrative art forms.

The other aspect of our apprehension of coherence when it comes to narratives is of course time. We experience time in narratives through emplotment. No matter how many post-modern novels cut and paste their narratives, the narrative form relies heavily on a succession of events and invites us to consider (or tells us) what the relation between the events consists in. EM Forster famously wrote: 'The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then the queen died of grief is a plot.'

The canonical Bible has a coherence in a formal sense in the first instance in that it traces the history of Israel with its God in a roughly chronological order. The New Testament claim is that it continues and indeed completes this history. However, there are things that are collected within the lists of Law, Writings and Prophets that are not obviously part of the main succession of events. Very few clues are given as to why Job, for example, has been placed within the canon: which is for us readers an invitation to consider what it does contribute. It is almost as if it has been placed there by intuition: (from the human side) by an editor not quite knowing what he was yet looking at but sure that what he had was of inestimable value, and recognising in it the divine voice.

I suppose what I am leaning towards saying is this: the formal unity of the Bible consists of the collecting of these books together as Scripture; and its relation to salvation-history. The Bible describes a series of events that were connected to one another over time, in place, and by a people connected intergenerationally. This formal unity allows then for multiple strands of thematic coherence to be discerned, some of which are more prominent and others less so, and which have complex relations to one another. Of course, some of these coherence is quite obvious, as the authors of scripture deliberately cite each other, and play with and develop - even critique - the themes and other content of other scriptural books. This is also why it is inadequate to read any passage of scripture without due consideration to its relationship to salvation-history and without relation to how the particular themes within it are treated and developed within the canon.

Psalm 95 - if you hear his voice today

Cesky Krumlov

This week, I am preaching on Psalm 95. It is a Psalm that haunts me. When I went to St Andrew’s North Oxford as a kid in the 1970s they would chant this Psalm just before we went out to Sunday school. So the words got buried in my head right next to the multiplication tables and the words to Abba songs.

My kids won't have this experience, because we don't do liturgy like that anymore...

But this Psalm also haunts me because it is such a disquieting and uncomfortable Psalm. It starts out as a very normal and upbeat sounding Psalm, a Psalm of praise to God. But half way, it turns into a stern warning. It is like a cute furry animal you pick up and cuddle, that then bites you so that you scream... If you hear God's voice today, you better be ready and responsive. You had better be ready for what comes, receptive to its most angular and critical parts. You had better be soft-hearted...

It was a great choice to have this Psalm in morning prayer, just as the word of God was about to read. Come, let us sing for joy to God the rock of our salvation!... but, if you hear his voice today - and let's not mistake it, you ARE hearing his voice - be ready to receive it. Don't be deaf to it...

Some holiday reading

Sacha gazes out over Prague.

Prague Castle with St Vitus' Cathedral from the Charles Bridge.

OK - we are are back. Czech Republic was great. Sadly, the churches seems to be emptied out shells, and I could see no evidence of Protestantism at all. The land of Jan Hus is no longer a place of the kind of preaching he was known for, even though his statue is in the Old Town Square.

I read while I was away:

Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost. I went through an Ondaatje phase back in the mid 90s - I read all his poetry and novels. Loved his poetic style and his depictions of love and pain. He is a writer who really knows about the human body. Then I never got around to this novel which he sets in his native Sri Lanka. It is brilliantly written - three or four terrific, wounded characters. And more suffering of an appalling kind mixed in with illicit and licit love. The narrative has a kind of CSI flavour which is becoming a bit tired now after all those TV shows (the main character is a forensic anthropologist).

Franz Kafka - The Trial. OK, I tried here and failed again. I have tried several times to enjoy this book and where better then in Kafka's home town? But frankly, it is a dull book. Perhaps it is badly translated...

Will Self - The Book of Dave. I enjoyed this immensely. I am a self-confessed Self fan (??). He is a real surrealist. This is a kind of dystopian fantasy of what England would like if the mad, racist and misogynist ranting of a London cabbie of today were written on metal plates and found in a post-apocalyptic future and then treated as a divine revelation. It is a non-too-subtle satire of revealed religion and its capacity to wreak havoc. But Self also endears us to Dave, who by the end of the novel has been redeemed sufficiently to have written a second, more humane book... Wonderful passages written entirely in Cockney.

Sam Wells - God's Companions. I have to review this book - as I said before, I think it is frustratingly cheesy. I won't put it like that in my review...the best thing is that Wells has discovered the local church as the site of theo-praxis. Evangelicals I think have know that the local church is where the action is for years. The emphasis on symbolic practices is curious to me: Wells wants us to practice foot-washing, for example. It is funny that ritualists read scripture literally at this point, and non-ritualists read it metaphorically...

Charles Taylor - Modern Social Imagineries. Interesting take on the way in which revolutions come about and why or why not they are successful. There needs to be a vision of what a society could be under a new regime - merely opposing the current ruler will produce chaos unless there is a deeply felt sense of an alternative national/social/political identity. Why did the Velvet revolution succeed in 1989 without bloodshed? Because it was obvious to the Czechs that there was another and better way of being Czech, without communism. Maybe Taylor is only saying what is obvious in different words... also, he clearly feels he has earned the right to make sweeping historical statements without footnotes or evidence. It is hard to challenge him when he is writing like this.

Roger Scruton - Modern Culture. Scruton is a fabulous English conservative. The real thing. And thoroughly Kantian. His thesis in this book is that without religion 'high' culture will die. He mounts a sterling defence of high culture against the dominance of 'cultural' 'studies' in our schools and universities. I have to say he has my sympathies: good writing just is good writing I am afraid. You can't make pop culture better by clever criticism of it I am afraid. One of his best points is that the canon of Western culture is already a tolerant and diverse and self-critical canon - and is so because of Christianity. To present as a single monolithic ideology is simply false. Scruton is an unabashed Kantian, and I feel this is his great weakness - because he presents Kant's view of religion rather than the really Christian one. Christianity for Scruton seeps out of the English soil and is the natural accompaniment to Englishness. Only an Anglican of a certain blinkered and rural kind could think that.

A break

Well, we are off:

it's time for a holiday and so we are going to visit relatives in the Czech republic!

Back in two weeks or so: but feel free to rake over the coals of a few of the discussions below and add your thoughts.

Rowan Williams on Maurice Wiles

Yesterday I went to a cafe and read an essay that Williams wrote in 1993 on his former Oxford colleague Maurice Wiles. In the 1970s, Maurice Wiles made quite a stir by challenging the incarnation, among other orthodox Christian doctrines.

The essay represents an intriguing generational shift, however. Williams is highly critical (in a very polite British way of course!) of Wiles because, in his re-appraisal of Christian doctrines, Wiles applies a kind of Kantian 'abstract universalist rationalism.' Williams, the child of the 60s, and more of a neo- Nietzchean, suspicious of power claims and special interests, wants to question this whole method: why is this rationalism immune from critique? What methods can settle the legitimacy of doctrinal claims? Even though Wiles claims to have recovered a pre-dcotrinal Jesus, he has done so by de-historicising and universalising him. Williams rightly disputes this procedure:

If Jesus is constitutive for Christian language about God and for the present reality of the believer’s relation to God, in such a way that what is said, done, and suffered is strictly unintelligible without continuing reference to Jesus in a more than historically explicatory way, doctrine will be an attempt to do justice to the way in which the narrative and the continuing presence (or presence-in-absence, if you want to nuance it further) of Jesus is held actively to shape present horizons, in judgement and in grace. The disagreement is not over whether doctrinal utterances are or are not to be received uncritically, but over whether any kind of critical method can settle the legitimacy of the distinctively doctrinal enterprise itself as generally conceived by Christians, an enterprise resting as it does on the conviction, variously and often very confusedly articulated in our primary texts, [note the doctrine of scripture here! MJ] that our world of speech and corporate life has been comprehensively remade, so that new conceptualities are brought to birth. Kritik can look hard at those conceptualities, with a wide variety of suspicions; but not all Wiles’s reasoned eloquence should persuade us that it is in a position to disallow the underlying unsettlement of our thought: the question, ‘What is it that is true of Jesus of Nazareth that would make some sense of the Church’s commitment to new imaginings of God and humanity and of the possibility of new relation to God and humanity?’ I believe that this is in fact the question that arises from taking with full seriousness the notion of parable which Wiles finds so attractive – an event which interrupts us and compels us to take up new positions by showing us quite unexpectedly where and what we are in respect of an unforeseen reality set down before us; something more than an extended simile. Wiles is far from insensitive to this priority of krisis over Kritik; but how can his model of doctrinal criticism allow it its proper weight?

The answer is no! See how Williams gets from Ricoeur this idea of parable interrupting and compelling new and unforeseen ideas: and how vague Williams is because he is speaking of what may yet come about in an unpredictable way.

Kostenberger and O'Brien on Mission

I found this comment from Kostenberger and O'Brien to be a helpful clarification (Wright's book suffers from conceptual confusions):

The mission of the exalted Jesus is accomplished through the witness of the apostles in the power of the Holy Spirit. The one who is himself sent by God sends his representatives to bear testimony to his salvation, to announce the forgiveness of sins and to make disciples of all nations. In other words, his witnesses continue the mission of Jesus by declaring to men and women everywhere the glorious gospel of the grace of God. As the Father has sent him, so Jesus sends them. Moreover, this testimony to Jesus and his saving work involves a wide-ranging series of activities that result in believers being built up in Christ and formed into Christian congregations. It is not limited to primary evangelism and its immediate results...

And so: good works of all kinds, that flow from the impact of Christ in the power of the Spirit, are rightly ordered to mission (and to ecclesiology, too).

K and O'B do a much better job at a 'Biblical Theology of Mission' I find, partly because they don't overplay the OT to the extent that Wright does.

The Mission of God IX

How big is our gospel? Chris Wright asks, in his chapter on God's model of redemption. (I am curious about this language of 'models'... I think there is a problem here, not sure what yet).

He goes on:

The scope of our mission must reflect the scope of God's mission, [Granted] which is turn will match the scale of God's redemptive work. [well i think I get what he is trying to say...] Where do we turn in the Bible for our understanding of redemption? Already it will be clear enough that in my view it will simply not do to turn first to the New Testament. ...

What!??

YOU project starts again

My on-again off-again project is on again!

Love to have you comments.

The Mission of God VIII

An important issue to settle for me is 'what IS mission'? That is: does mission include any good work that Christians may do? Is fighting for 'social justice' (whatever that means!) found theologically speaking under the heading of 'mission', and if so, why? What about taking care of the environment?

There are two ways of arguing. One (my preference) is to say that we participate in the mission of God as we call people from darkness into his marvellous light, making disciples of all nations. Paul's mission to the Gentiles, for example, did not seem to have a lot to do directly with 'social justice' - though it certainly had the effect of changing society remarkably in lots of ways as people heard the gospel and responded to it. Neighbour love is, then, an imperative outworking of mission, but it isn't mission in and of itself. Having said this, it is true that the loving actions of Christians may indeed result in others giving glory to God, and that the NT has a lot to say about the coupling of actions to words in mission. Fair enough: but mission refers to the work of God in reconciling the world to himself in Christ. We do 'mission' insofar as we work to this end. Commending the gospel in word and deed is our mission. Question is I guess: does me secretly reducing my carbon footprint (for example) contribute to the mission of God? Has a Christian agency whose aim is alleviating poverty without any other evangelistic consideration have the right to call itself a 'mission' agency? (Note: I am not for a second questioning the importance of such agencies; merely wondering whether 'mission' is the right theological heading for them. Nor am I saying that one ought to preach the gospel without alleviating suffering where it is found. On the contrary).

The alternative position is that almost anything given to Christians to do can be called 'mission' if it seen to be fitting in the purposes of God . So, yes, caring for animals: mission. Alms-giving: mission. Lobbying for fairer laws: mission. Campaigning for fair-trade: mission. In fact almost anything we do having been sent out at 11:00am Sunday until we meet at 10:am the next send can be labelled mission, if it is doing what God wants done.

Brock, on Augustine, on the Psalms

Brian Brock's readings of the Psalms are really doing it for me:

...the love of earthly goods without the love of their giver turns into a fear of losing them. And fear of losing them develops into a social rationality - an ethos. Augustine asks, Do all those who trust in technology live better lives? Do all those with comprehensive insurance coverage avoid disaster? Does ever-increasing investment in medicine stop untimely death? Augustine saw clearly that whole societies are structured around the avoidance of pain, embodying the escape from their primal fears.... 'Singing the Ethos of God' p. 161-2

I am sure Augustine didn't know about comprehensive insurance, but still, the point is made: security is never quite secured as we hope it will be.

Brock goes on...
Augustine shows how this vision of the blessed life shapes the Christian understanding of the church, which is conceived not as a safe haven from the world but as the focal point of a praising people caught up in Christ's service to the world.
This is the pilgrim church, we might say: secure, yes, but also exposed and vulnerable. Liable to get persecuted; but secure in hope.

Pionius and Sabina see the funny side...

Pionius said: 'Would that I were able to persuade you to become Christians.'
The men laughed aloud at him. 'You have not such power that we should be burnt alive', they said.
'It is far worse', said Pionius, 'to burn after death'.
Sabina smiled at this, and the verger and his men said: 'You laugh?'
'If God so wills,' she said. 'I do. You see, we are Christians. Those who believe in Christ will laugh unhesitatingly in everlasting joy.'

The Acts of Pionius, 8.

The Mission of God VII

Chris Wright says:

How then can it be suggested that evangelistic proclamation is the only essential mission of the church? It seems impossible to eme to justify such reductionism if we intend to sustain any claim to be taking the whole Bible seriously as our authority for mission and as that which defines the content and scope of our mission. Mission belongs to God - the biblical God. The message of mission is to be drawn from the whole of God's biblical revelation. So we cannot simply relegate the powerful message of events such as the exodus or institutions like the jubilee to a bygone era. They are an integral part of the biblical definition of God's idea of redemption and of God's requirement on his redeemed people... p. 306

This is typical Wright, and it is problematic in a typical way. I would never dispute that we need the whole Bible for our understanding of mission. This is what Wright has got so wonderfully right. However, Wright does not sufficiently account for the difference between the Old and New Testaments. He has over-reacted to a contemporary Marcionitism by going to the opposite extreme, it seems to me. We cannot relegate the exodus and the jubilee to a bygone era, sure: but also we cannot simply take them on board in an undifferentiated way. We are not Israel. We are the church. This basic observation cannot be overstated! Things are different: even the most ardent advocate of a third use of the law knows this. Wright gives (as far as I can see) an insufficient account of the difference.

Wright is of course highly selective in his reading of what aspects of the OT are still operative, though he keeps banging the 'holistic' drum. His version does not highlight the moral law, as forms of Calvinism do; rather, he pulls out some aspects of social justice and concerns of a vaguely left-wing nature. But it is just as arbitrary. This particularly obvious with the year of Jubilee, which is given a quite questionable amount of emphasis in this book considering its lack of prominence in the Scriptures. And I keep searching for an enunciated principle of differentiation that would account for his selectivity.

Evangelistic mission, I would argue, is deserving of particular emphasis and priority, also. But more of that later.

The living out scripture meme

Jason and Byron tagged me with this meme begun originally by Andy Goodliff. I haven't done them before because I get confused doing all those links... but this is a good one.

The brief is to post "that verse or story of scripture which is important to you, which you find yourself re-visiting time after time".

For me: Colossians 1:15-20:

15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

I guess I just didn't realise how big the work of God in Christ was until I 'discovered' this passage. It's the scope that gets me: not only is Christ the supreme means and end of the whole creation in all its material and immaterial aspects, he is also its final destiny. Even death is not insurmountable, though of course the passage points to Christ's death as the point of peace and reconciliation between all things and himself. The atonement is a universal reconciliation of all things in Christ, to Christ.

The song that comes to mind? Radiohead's Everything in its Right Place. I am sure they didn't mean it to be a Psalm, but it is.

[PS: I notice that in Pierced for our Transgressions the authors make nary a mention of this key passage. Shame.]

Rowan Williams on Christian beginnings...

...what is mysterious in Christian beginnings is not the experience of hearing the Christian kerygma but the record and image of Jesus himself. His is conceived as a parabolic story, yet it is remembered in diverse and less than wholly coherent narrative forms, whose historical foundation is uncertain. To be introduced into relation with such a figure is to encounter what is not exhaustible in word or system - or so Christians have concluded: it is to step into faith (rather than definitive enlightenment). In so far as certain features of the development of canon and orthodoxy paradoxically worked against the absorption of Jesus into a thematized religious subjectivity and a system of ideas, they preserved the possibility of preaching Jesus as a questioning and converting presence in ever more diverse cultures and periods, and the possibility of intelligible debate and self-criticism within Christianity. 'Is it possible to speak of a pre-Nicene orthodoxy?' p. 17

Well this is an interesting encapsulation of Rowan Williams' theological vision. Williams accepts the historical-critical paradigm of the gospels, but actually tries to make what may have seemed like an insurmountable difficulty into a virtue. That is, the gospels themselves show, in the difficulty they have in rendering the life of Jesus into a credible and unified narrative form, how inexhaustible the figure of Jesus is: he won't sit still even for his portraitists. He eludes even them: so that we cannot merely absorb him into our theological system of ideas. The canon, and orthodoxy with it actually ensured this: orthodoxy prevented a far too glib schematisation of Jesus with the massive benefit that the gospel of Jesus is rich enough to be preached even today. What is important for Williams - a central tenet of all his theological work (or such that I have read) - is that Jesus functions as 'a questioning and converting presence': his a parable of a life, functioning to bring about transformation in human beings.

What this conversion might be, Williams doesn't want to pre-empt: that would be to short-cut the process, which would render the process of transformation and conversion a still-birth. That is why I think he is often so infuriatingly vague: because his Jesus is a Jesus who holds out who knows what possibility for newness in human life, a newness that can't be described beforehand but can only be prepared for by attentive and self-critical listening to what the Spirit may be saying.

It is interesting that parable features so prominently: I think that this is because for the historical-critical writers at their most sceptical, the parables are what can be traced to the authentic Jesus himself. (So, JD Crossan, for example). So, the gospels then represent a churchly attempt to grapple with this parable of a life... It is the grappling that we are to imitate, not the answers that they necessarily were able to achieve from their grappling.

Charles Taylor's 'social imagineries'

Taylor offers an interesting analysis of the ways in which societies conceive of themselves:

By social imaginery, I mean something much broader and deeper than the intellectuual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how thigs go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations. 'Modern Social Imagineries' p. 23

To talk about a social 'theory' is not enough to capture this, because people don't think of their societies in terms of a theory so much as in terms of legends, myths, values and images. However, theories can infiltrate the social imagineries by a kind of trickle-down effect.

'I am not a religious person'

When a person says: 'I am really not a religious person', what are we to understand them to mean? I am tempted to say back 'I am not religious either'. I don't see myself as a religious person, but I take it that they would usually think I was.

In a way I want to disbelieve them though: aren't all human beings religious in some way? Aren't we homo adorans?

I guess I am asking: 'what is meant usually by 'religious' in the sentence 'I am not a religious person'?

The Mission of God VI - 'Frameworks'

At Stowe Gardens. Simon pretends to be a tree. No-one else takes any notice.

Wright has a couple of guiding metaphors. He offers his reading of the Bible as the 'key to unlock' the Bible's narrative (is the Bible a safe that needs cracking? a door that needs opening? is it somehow closed without the key?). This sounds uncomfortably reminiscent of George Eliot's scholar Casuabon and his never-ending project to find the 'key to all mythologies'. He also repeatedly speaks of the theme of God's mission as a 'framework', or an 'overarching framework'. (Goldsworthy uses the same vocabulary). Though it isn't a framework, really (which is a structural metaphor), but, in the way Wright uses it, an organising motif. But: why do we need a 'framework'? Why do we need such intensive exploration to uncover the 'framework'? Why are there competing 'frameworks' of equal plausibility? Are we saying that without the framework, the Bible's unity and coherence is in question somehow? (Interestingly, Wright does not discuss at any length other suggestions for an organising principle, though there are many). Isn't Jesus the Christ the organising principle (at least for Christians) and all the framework that is needed? Part of the problem here is the Wright wants to make more of the OT ethically speaking than a properly Christological reading of the OT will let him.

Interestingly, Wright starts by offering his theme 'the mission of God' as one possible hermeneutical key among many. By the end, it has become THE right and correct way to make sense of the Bible. So, he is saying more than: this theme is a neglected theme and look how much of the Bible is related to it. Now he is saying 'this is what the Bible is about, and it isn't about something else'. It becomes less a book about mission, and more a book about how to read the Bible.

Publishing Clangers

I received a copy of my old teacher Graeme Goldsworthy's newish book Gospel-Centred Hermeneutics today.

Imagine my surprise when on closer examination, instead of Goldie's friendly visage (as per left) on the dust-jacket, some strange middle-aged professorial-looking face stared back!!

IVP Academic have printed the WRONG PHOTO on the book!! How embarassing is that!! What a clanger!

Mind you, IVP UK have published Chris Wright's The Mission of God without putting page-numbers in the table of contents. This is a real inconvenience in such a massive tome. It is amazing to see such sloppiness from the people who reep the bulk of the profits.

Life is Good - the martyr Pionius

The record of Pionius death is one of the most complete and interesting Martyr-Acts.
Pionius was implored by his pagan fellow-citizens to recant:

'Listen to us Pionius, we love you. There are many reasons why you deserve to live, for your character and righteousness. It is good to live and to see the light!'

Pionius replied: 'I too agree that life is good, but the life that we long for is better; and so too of light, that one true light. All these things are indeed good, and we do not run from them as though we are eager to die or because we hate God's works. Rather, we despise these things which ensare us because of the superiority of those other great goods.

Christian martyrdom never was intended to spring from a hatred of life, or from a death wish.

The Mission of God IV

[Caveat: I am responding to the book as I go rather than producing a well-thought response. Things may annoy me now that won't when I see the whole vision of the book.]

Mission that claims the high spiritual ground of preaching only [sic!] a gospel of personal forgiveness and salvation without the radical challenge of the full biblical demands of God's justices and compassion, without a hunger and thirst for justice, may well expose those who respond to its partial truths to the same dangerous verdict....if faith without works is dead, mission without social compassion and justice is biblically deficient. p. 288

Yes, yes, yes: but it is the conceptual looseness that confuses me here. Is social action part of 'mission'? (Actually, I have a problem with the term 'social action' anyway). Or is social action the result of mission? Or is social action mission? The false dichotomies and straw men don't help. He is attacking nameless opponents: do they exist? Who knows? As he says:

There may be an element of caricature in the way I have sketched this view, but it is not unrepresentative of a certain brand of popular mission rhetoric. p. 280

This is frankly annoying. We are in the middle of what purports to be a scholarly work and what we get is hearsay and gossip! Come on, Chris! I am not interested in whether you can show up a 'certain brand of popular etc.' Who cares? Find a serious thinker who would oppose you and show where THEY are wrong and that your argument is stronger.

In this section, where Wright starts to use the OT to draw ethical implications for Christians today, I start to scratch my head, as I did with his OT Ethics book. It just seems so arbitrarily done, or done with so little reference to the distinctive character of the Church qua Church and Israel qua Israel. Unless you are quite ruthlessly and unbiblically supercessionist, you can't just say that the Church adopts the habits and marks of Israel except in a carefully qualified way. I remain to be convinced as to whether the qualifications have been made here. But I have a long way to read!
Is the Jubilee such a prominent theme that it warrants a whole chapter? Also: I will be very interested to see what he does with the wars of conquest. Mission in OT perspective was carried out by means of the sword! (no index entries under 'Conquest' or 'War' I note)...

Is your pastor a reader?

I was once involved in interviewing some candidates for the ministry as part of a panel. I decided to ask each candidate (as the representative of the academic training institution rather than of the denomination) 'would you call yourself a reader? Do you read for pleasure?'

Of ten articulate, well-above average intelligence, gifted candidates (all males), nine said 'no'.

What is the meaning of this? Should we be concerned?

The Mission of God III

Wright asks:

‘I would ask that the missional framework I propose in this volume be exaluated for its heuristic fruitfulness. Does it in fact do justice to the overall thrust of the biblical canon? Does it illuminate and clarify? Does it offer a way of articulating the coherence of the Bible’s overarching message?'

Help me here: isn't this last sentence a tautology? I mean isn't he saying 'does it offer a way of articularting the coherence of the Bible's coherence?'?

Is it the coherence that needs articulating? Or is it the message itself?

The Mission of God II

The Mission of God opens with the bold claim that 'Mission is what the Bible is all about'. He wants to ask 'can we take mission as a hermeneutical matrix for our understanding of the Bible as a whole?' p. 32

But mission is a rather rubbery word. Has Wright succeeded in taming it? A little further on we read:

Down through the centuries it would probably be fair to say that Christians have been good at their messianic reading of the OT but inadequate ... at their missional reading of it. We read the OT messianically or christologically in the light of Jesus; that is, we find in it a whole messianic theology and eschatology that we see as fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. In foing so we follow his own example, of course, and that of his first followers and the authors of the Gospels. But what we have so often faikled to do is to go beyond the mere satisfaction of ticking off so-called messianic predcitions that have 'been fulfilled'. And we have failed to go further because we have not grasped the missional significance of the Messiah. p. 30

It seems by 'mission' Wright means something like 'purpose'... so, the missional perspective is always asking 'what is God doing here' 'what is his purpose or his plan?'

The 'gentle answer' discussion

It would help me (and might help others) if were to crystallise my position on the matter of Christian polemics. Partly, the debate has revealed that there is a consensus at a theoretical level, and that what we are discussing is a matter of discernment or wisdom. What's my big problem?

• an apologetic issue - I really think we forget how aggressive rhetoric and polemics from the pulpit is a big turn off for a large numbers of people. Politicians now know this, and even Tony Abbott (an Australian politician) is trying to be more winsome.
• the biblical evidence - while there are examples of strong rhetoric and polemic in the Bible it is usually at the point of the extreme, and on the lips of the prophets, or Jesus, or Paul - ie someone who has a particular and unusual authority. It is almost always the case that when a command or proverb is given to us as to how we are to speak, then we are to be winsome, gentle, peaceable etc.
• a foothold for the devil - so many of the NT lists of sins include things like quarreling, dissension, strife and discord and what have you. As a hotheaded young man, hearing preachers regularly denounce other versions of Christianity fed the self-righteousness and pride of my heart. I think it has taken me some years to repent of this. I don't think I was a very unusual young man - and so it is pastorally unwise to encourage this tendency, I feel. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is like passing Playboy around a group of young men, but... it certainly is encouraging in them a temptation that lies close at hand.
• a matter of integrity - the use of hyperbole and extreme rhetoric is effective. It gets people thinking. It can blow apart people's frameworks. But the line between hyperbole and outright dishonesty is quite a blurry one, isn't it? Saying one thing in public and yet conceding that things aren't so simple in private leaves me scratching my head: was the rhetorical effect really worth the perjury? Shouldn't we eschew the rhetorical tricks of politics and advertising?
• educationally unwise - in the short term, the use of extreme language can be convincing, even overwhelming. It can be transforming. But it doesn't help people to encounter the world in a mature and wise way, because the world is complex and difficult, and people need a depth of wisdom to live in it by God's spirit. Also, when people find that things aren't as it was explained to them they experience a great sense of dissonance, and lose trust in the original speaker.
• keeping your powder dry - remember that teacher you had in school who only ever shouted at the class once? And that was enough?
• the impression of defensiveness - too much negative and aggressive speech actually conveys to outsiders the impression that we don't believe what we are saying. Can't God defend himself?

Over at Giraffepen, Tony P asked a great question:

... in our postmodern world, does the accusation of nastiness, or being overly critical partly stem from a deep aversion to truth telling?

I am sure there is something in this. My own research is into moments when truth-telling becomes a matter of life and death, in fact. Jesus predicted it. But, my question in return would be: is an accusation of nastiness or being overly critical then become a necessary hallmark of truth telling?

The Mission of God I

I have been asked to write a review article for Anvil on Christopher Wright's magisterial new book The Mission of God. So as always, a few notes here first.

The scope of this book is truly impressive, as is its aim: to give an account of all of the Bible ordered to the concept of God's mission. In one sense it feels like old hat, because this is the kind of thing that Moore College has been serving up for years via Dumbrell, Robinson and Goldsworthy.

I notice, however, from looking at the index and the bibliography that hardly any of the authors cited are theologians. They are almost entirely contemporary biblical scholars of one kind or another. He reference precisely no patristic sources; no Augustine; no medieval writers; no Reformation greats (oh, I think Calvin gets a mention); no evangelical revival era or Protestant scholastic thinkers; no Puritans; no Karl Barth (no Karl Barth!). No Moltmann, no Guttierez, no Gunton, no Webster, no John Frame. Vanhoozer gets a couple of passing references.

And so far, no mention of martyrdom!

Brueggemann, Wright, N.T., Bauckham, etc: they are all there. Lots of contemporary missiologists, of course.

Is this another example of the mutual deafness between the disciplines?

Aestheticizing Tendencies - beware

Simon at Douai Abbey in Berkshire where we visited old old friend Fr Hugh Somerville-Knappmann OSB (Scott to us!). This is Watership Down country... so they say.

It's been a tough day (not personally, but academically).

At my last meeting, one of my supervisors told me that I had to 'confront my aestheticizing tendencies.' I think this means that I tend to just say 'wow, that idea is way COOL!' (in academic language) rather than actually provide arguments. Or, I narrate: just wheel in some biblical narrative and assume that it does all the work for me.

Re-reading my stuff, I realise how true this is. Now I have to go and actually provide some substance. Probably, you long-suffering blog readers knew this months ago!

'a gentle answer turneth away wrath': the place of polemical speech

Over at Giraffepen we have been discussing the place of offensive (I don't mean swearing!) and aggressive language in Christian debates.

This is something that has concerned me for a while: I recognise my own love of a fight and try not to indulge in it (not being a particularly good arguer helps!) and also the apologetic disaster such speaking is. In Australia, some of our politicians are quite brutal and colourful in their speech on the floor of parliament almost by convention. However, these men are those who have most spectacularly crashed and burned: Paul Keating and Mark Latham spring to mind. They were popular, but also deeply unpopular. I guess they could say Jesus was too...

It concerns me that Christians will speak in a rude and offensive manner and then claim to be martyrs when people respond in kind - when in reality, they have just brought in on their own heads by being rude. That is not to say of course that flattery or obsequious speech is any better - this if anything is a more English vice!

Notes on Humility VIII

Ok, this IS possibly a bit weird: posting a link to the audio of my sermon on humility but there you go.

On the way in to church to preach this sermon my dear spouse raised the possibility, ever so gently, that blogging was actually an exercise in wanting to be noticed: i.e., not exactly humble.

Great time to tell me!

Amor Sui: the problem of self-love

The sun is out in Oxford! Freya has a beer with a Macedonian theologian.

If I am to love my neighbour as myself -

how am I to love myself? What does self-love mean? How is self-love possible without narcissism, or when it lies so close to what the Bible says is sin's essence?

After all, Augustine says 'the primal destruction of man was self-love'.

Barth's Syllogism Martyrium

If the ministry of witness is the primary determination of Christian existence, and if the ministry of witness unavoidably bring the Christian into affliction, then we have to say that none can be a Christian without falling into afflication. To be sure, we have not to desire or seek or provoke it, as martyrdom or the so-called baptism of blood was coverted in some circles in the early days of Christianity. This could only rest on misunderstanding, as though the bearing of affliction made the Christian a Christian. In fact, it is only the call of Christ, as His calling to the ministry of witness, which can constitute Christian existence as such. C.D. IV.3.2 p. 618

Wonderful stuff... striking the right balance between that unavoidable affliction which is a mark of true Christianity and provoking it willfully: this is the challenge.

Charles Taylor on the space for religon in the modern state

Just received Charles Taylor's Modern Social Imagineries. An intriguing passage jumped out at first browse:

We can now see the space for religion in the modern state, for God can figure strongly in the political identity. It can be that we see ourselves as fulfilling God's will in setting up a polity that maximally follows his precepts, as many Americans have done...Or our national identity can refer to God, if we see ourselves as defined partly by our unique piety and faithfulness.

Taylor goes on to say that this reference to God cna degenerate so that piety fades and only chauvanism remains (examples abound), 'but this identity presence can also nourish a living faith'.

This is the new space for God in the secular world. ... in the public world, the disapperance of an ontic dependence on something higher can be replaced by a strong presence of God in our political identity. p. 193

We may live in a less enchanted universe, but God's will can be very present to us as 'the inescapable source for our power to impart order to our lives, both individually and socially.'

Notes on Humility VII

What does it actually look like to live out this humble calling?

One false trail in Christian spirituality has been to institute outward signs and symbols and practices of obesiance so as to make a great public display of humility. But these become quickly corrupted with the perverse human tendency to find pride even in these symbols. So, for example, the church procession always puts the most important person at the back rather than the front: the first shall indeed be last! But we all know of course that the last person in a church procession is the most important and usually the most prettily dressed. Even practices like footwashing become opportunities for pride rather than true humility, because in symbolic or ritual practices they become something else other than what they originally were.

Humility as a virtue finds difficulty in being expressed symbolically, or outwardly. How could it not?

I think, rather than religious displays of humility, we rather ought to be seeking reminders of our utter dependence on the grace of God alone. We need to know even better than we do how vulnerable we actually are, and how needy, and how poor. In practice, Peter wants us to live amongst our fellow citizens, and even amongst ourselves, in quiet devotion to doing good. We not subversives or revolutionaries - at least not in the way we normally think of it. Our revolution is a quiet one: we point power to its own source by freely submitting to it. We lead through care and by service, not looking for the benefits of leadership. We put aside our natural tendency to disrupt leaders of all kinds. We take the immense risk of laying down our freedom to self-realise through our action, to express ourselves and our wills in reference only to our own selves, in favour of following the model of Jesus Christ, who used his freedom in humble and obedient service and died an ignominious and shameful death. His risk is our risk, too: we risk not being who we could be. But his promise is our promise, also: as he was raised from the dead, so we have a guarantee of our own exaltation, or the glorious inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade...

Notes on Humility VI

Luke 14:11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Humility means giving up your own personal ambition to be exalted. It means giving up on celebrity! But it is not without reward: the NT never says, oh, humble yourself because humility is just a good thing to do in and of itself. That's not to say it isn't, but the Bible consistently urges humility in light of the promises of God to raise up the humble and oppose the proud. A mistake is to see this as some kind of exchange or economy of heavenly merits: do humble acts, or be humble and sure as eggs exaltation will follow.

No. Humility is not an investment now for later pride. The reward that is on offer is not what the worldly seize at. It is something exceeding it: glory - you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away (1 Peter 5:4). The crown of glory is bathed in the light of the glory of God. You will shine like stars in the universe because you will glow with the radiance of God himself.

Pseudo-Dionysius redux

I have this term in a reading group been reading the influential mystical writer Pseudo-Dionysius. I have been experiencing alternatively bafflement and excitement in reading his stuff: perhaps more bafflement to tell truth. As Bertrand Russell once pointed out, it is hard to tell sometimes between a profound paradox and complete nonsense.

Here is a classic Dionysian passage, from his letter to Gaius:

Darkness disappears in the light, the more so as there is more light. Knowlegde makes unknowing disappear, the more so as there is more knowledge...However, think of this not in terms of deprivation but rather in terms of transcendence and then you will be able to say something truer than all truth, namely, that the unknowing regarding God espcapes anyone possessing physical light and knowledge of beings: His transcendent darkness remains hidden from all light and concealed from all knowledge. Someone beholding God and understanding what he saw has not actually seen God himself but rather something of his which has being and which is knowable. For he himslef solidly transcends mind and being. He is completely unknown and non-existent. He exists beyond being and he is known beyond the mind. And this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.

Is it just me, or is there a bit of slippage in the use of the word 'knowing' here? Is this utterly orthodox, or is it heterodox mystical neoplatonism? Is the knowledge of God which is revealed to us (ie John 1:1-14) in fact some kind of unknowing knowledge? What the?

Notes on Humility V

Of course, Nietzsche hated the humility of Christianity and derided it as servile, base, low and disgusting. Oh, and womanly. It was ignoble, and not worthy of the great-souled individual.

1 Peter specifically addresses wives and slaves and asks that they be humbly submissive. That much perhaps we may have expected - isn't this cringing debasement precisely what is most natural to women and slaves (to channel N for a minute? But it also enjoins all citizens to submit to the emperor; and young men to submit to elders in the church.

How Nietzschean is contemporary culture? Well certainly I think it has adopted a belief that only through the spirited action of the great souled individual will humanity ever be truly free. Perhaps we are more democratised than he would have been. But still, the desire to soar, to be great, and glorious: is this not Nietzchean?

As he writes in Beyond Good and Evil: 'The noble soul has reverence for itself'. I don't think he means a cringing vanity here, nor even that bizarre self-reflexivity you encounter when sportspeople refer to themselves in the third person: rather, the noble soul is in thrall to its own destiny to the point of religious fervour. This is more worshipful a reverence...

A bustle in our hedgerow...

Yesterday we noticed a hedgehog behaving very strangely in our garden: he was running around and around in circles.

It took as a while to decide what to do, but to cut a long story short, Simon and I decided to put the hedgehog in a cardboard box and ring around for help. When we picked him up, he curled up tight into a trembling ball: it was pathetic and cute all at once.

The British being the British, of course the have a whole Hedgehog protection society with designated carers for each county. We rang the lady in Oxfordshire, but she wasn't in. Finally the man from Berkshire advised us to get him to the vet, because he was probably suffering from parasites. So we drove him off to Woodstock 5 miles away to the all night vet. There, we discovered that he had ticks, and fleas, and also had a damaged eye and some blood on his fur. The vet promised to give him some anesthetic and some antibiotics and give him a warm place to stay.

When we got home, the phone rang. The lady from our region had rung back. 'I am always home' she said 'except this evening'. She asked after our hedgehog. Then: 'I have had some bad news myself tonight: I have a secondary cancer in my spine. The doctors give me 18 months with radiotheraphy.' 'Do you have anyone to call?' I asked. 'No, no family, no-one', she said. She looks after hedgehogs.

Please pray for E.

Notes on Humility IV

1 Peter 5:8-10
8Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
10And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

This whole passage is reminiscent of the teaching of Jesus and particularly as he spoke to his disciples in Gethsemane. 'Be alert' he kept telling them, and they kept falling asleep. 'Keep watch': be ready for the coming of the end, and the coming of the devil, too. Vigilence is required, and presence of mind.

Is it too much to imagine that Peter has in mind the beasts of the arena, who feasted on human flesh as a spectacle? It is certainly a vivid picture. The trial is coming when you will be tempted to deny Christ. That is the devil's aim. He uses many and various means; but the result of conceding to him is destrution. Resistance however is not futile: the suffering of the Christian is not isolated. The real devouring beast in the arena was not the slathering furry creature who was eyeing off the victim for its lunch: no, to get eaten was fine! This was not self-destruction. Rather, to deny Christ was to fall prey and become easy meat to the 'lion'.

Notes on Humility III

1 Peter 5:6-7: 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you...

In Greek literature, 'humbling yourself' was almost always used in a derogatory and negative sense: we might better translate it 'debasing oneself', or 'acting in a servile and lowly manner'. Epictetus for example, would write that 'all that alienates man from himself and makes him dependent makes him small (ie humbles him). It is an expression used of the trivial or the petty, the lowborn, ignoble and crass.

What does it look like to humble yourself anyhow? I note first of all that it is not 'humility' as a virtue, or an attitude, that is looked for here. Rather we have a reflexive verb: 'humble yourselves'. It is something one does, rather than something one is. It not here a quality that you possess.

But it is kinda hard to describe it as an activity, isn't it? There are no outward forms or movements described. It is not something you do with your body - though you may express it through your body or represent it through your body.

If we imagine that vs 7 as a parallel to vs 6 fills out and completes the sense, we see that 'humbling yourself' and 'casting all your anxiety' do inform one another. Grundmann in Freidrich's TDNT writes: 'As the context shows, this consists in man's putting his whole confidence in the grace of God, who cares for those who subject themselves to Him.' Notably, in the post-apostolic era, once the sense of the imminent return of Christ had passed, the notion of humbling oneself was channelled away from this not active action and into penitence and fasting and similar ritualised and symbolic activities.

The humbling of oneself here is vis a vis God but of course it must reference others too. Indeed it springs out of a discussion of the mutual relationships within the church community. If you are humble towards God, then so must you be to others as a matter of course.

Notes on Humility II

1 Peter 5:1-4

1To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ's sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: 2Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; 3not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 4And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

Peter's address to the elders of the church both upholds and relativises the order of church government here. It is as an equal, not as a superior apostle, that he addresses the eldership: he makes his appeal to them in terms of their shared expectation and status, not in terms of their difference. By doing so he shows them exactly what he wants them to do. He recalls for them the twin poles of suffering and glory that have dominated the letter, and which are the frames on the Christian life. Humility does not mean not leading. The exercise of humility does not mean that there is no authority or power involved. But rather, it means the service and care of those who are lead. Note that this is to be real heartfelt and eager care, not reluctant and merely dutiful care. This is not the description of a professional, or a bureaucrat; there is not the kind of exchange economy of labour here in speaking of eldership. The elders of the church were most likely quite literally 'olders', not a seperate class of individuals called to a particular life-long ministry. They are simply senior, and entrusted with the care of the flock.

They are to exercise the function of overseers (vs 2). I think this passage is a great example of how, in the NT, the form of church government is quite flexible. There is order, but not a specific order as later evolved in terms of bishop, priest, deacon; nor a kind of pristine egalitarian early church presbuteral church government model. The functions of church ministry are there: oversight, eldership, pastoral example, diaconal service and so on; but these are not attached to specific titles and offices as a hard and fast rule.

For further reading: JB Lightfoot's 1888 Philippians Commentary has a great piece on 'The Christian Ministry'. Wonderful.

Notes on Humility

1 Peter 5:6-7
6Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

It seems to me that the path of humility is risky. This is the reason we are afraid of being humble. This is why these two verses belong together: a lack of humility may result from an anxiety that we will be overlooked if we are not proud: that if somehow we don't broadcast our own success and achievements we will be less than authentic selves. Unless we get the recognition we deserve, we will live unfulfilled lives. Somehow, we learn from childhood that the value of a deed is not complete until it is recognised and applauded. The acts we do need their answer, their reply in the form of honour and recognition, if they are to be meaningful acts. I don't mean anything too dramatic by this. The thing women say about men and housework - that when they do the vacuuming they expect a cheer squad and grateful thanks - reflects a deep pattern within us (both genders) of wanting to be noticed for our achievements. And frankly, sometimes you need to create the conditions by which your own deeds can be recognised.

The whole of life is like a job interview... or, it sometimes seems this way. That's how we educate kids, anyhow!

Peter realises that we may be hesitant about persuing humility, especially in the context of the patterns of society vis a vis leadership, roles, and so on. Being humble is not secure: there seem to be no guarantees that you will ever get what you deserve if you are humble, nor even survive. There is no promotion without a bit of self-promotion. But in this 'being humble' there is a particular future in view. It is under the protective and caring oversight of God himself that we humble ourselves, placing ourselves - i mean our very selves, though we are uncertain yet of what these might become - into the care of the almighty, in the palm of his gentle hand at the end of his might arm. This is faith exercised in hope: that he might lift you up in due time.

Speaking of women: it is interesting that Peter at first addresses this comment to young men in the context of their submission to the elders in the congregation. But then he broadens out his comment to include 'all of you'. Feminist theologians since the early 60s (Valerie Saiving was the writer of the first article along these lines) have argued that pride is not women's besetting sin, in fact. So telling women to be humble is not actually going to be a hard sell because they are culturally conditioned, even now, to be humble to the point of self-deprecation. In fact, this itself can be sinful: a rejection of God's Yes to the female self as worthwhile, in Christ. Oughtn't we be telling women to HAVE some pride and stop being so darn humble? Aren't there too many Marthas already?

Well, while I think Saiving and her friends have a point that is psychologically and sociologically apposite (though perhaps this is for women to say rather than me), I am not sure how theologically helpful it is. Which is to say: the kind of humility she is talking about is not quite the same as the humility that is asked of Christians. The NT does not envisage Christians debasing themselves, or seeking the dissolution of the self. The NT does not uphold low self-esteem somehow: rather it puts self-esteem on a proper footing, in Christ. Generally as a human being and as a woman and particulary as an individual she can count herself worthy, in Christ: her humanity has been assumed in him and so healed in him to (to use the expression of Gregory of Nazianzus). The kind of low self-esteem that Saiving says is women's besetting sin is not a deep acceptance of the providential hand of God that 'he will lift you up in due time', but a collapsing into despair, or a resignation to self-hatred. This is not the humility of the Mary of the Magnificat, but something else again.

Neither should we think we are being humble when we play the cultural game of false humility. The English are especially good at it; though Australians have their version of course. Some cultures are happy with displays of out and out gauche pride. In England and Australia this is not the norm. One has to be more refined than this. So, when sportsmen are interviewed after a particularly impressive performance, they must praise the team, or say 'the conditions were right for me today' or somehow deflect glory from themselves in order that they may bask in it all the more. In England, you may meet someone and ask what they do: if they say, 'oh, I dabble in medicine' you may just find out later that they are the Professor of Surgery and a world leader in their field. But this is merely a cultural convention, I think rather than a true practice of humble living.

In Peter's terms, and the whole of First Peter is about this really, humility means giving honour and obedience and submission to those whose role it is lead, to the point of suffering; and for those who lead, to lead not by exploitation or accruing honour to yourself. It's not very revolutionary, is it?

A personal note: as a 'young man' of the much maligned Gen X, I am increasingly frustrated by the unwillingness of baby-boomers to pass on power and leadership to the next generation (what is John Howard doing?) This is, it seems to me, just as true in church circles as elsewhere. The baby-boomers have no concept of tradition except as a negative, (even the church ones): they grew up seeing themselves as the radicals who would bring about the revolution (even the church ones). They were extremely rebellious, and were not particularly submissive to the twittering grey-haired fools of the previous generation that they thought were spoiling everything (even the church ones). They challengened social orders, hierarchy and the authority of office (even the church ones). Of course, what this means is that, in inheriting power in church and society, they have become much more authoritarian, because they excercise power through personality and not through office. And they expect we gen Xers - the most pliant and apathetic and weary generation in history - to fight them for power as they fought their predecessors...

And yet, this is not how authority is to be transmitted intergenerationally in the church. But the boomer 'born to rule' mentality should not be answered by more of the same. The message for me and others of my generation is to reign in our natural (male?) combativeness, our need to win in some generational conflict to earn the right to share in the leadership of the group (as if we were a pride of lions or something); and to exercise a submissive humility. Our we worried 'our time' will never come? Our we counting down the days till our leaders retire? When will they notice us, and stop treating us like we are in short pants? He will lift you up in due time.

Experts, Climate Change, and Religious Knowledge

Oxford is basically as I write floating away. It always has been one of the dampest places on earth but today it resembles Kevin Costner's Waterworld - and we know what a success that was.

Anyhow, as usual, climate change is being blamed. And I have to say any mention of this kind of environmental science leaves me head-scratching. Why? Because it is so inherently dependent on experts for information. We are utterly reliant on them one way or another. And if you want to oppose climate change thinking you have to produce your own expert. This is because the reasoning involved is way beyond the ordinary person, even the educated ones. I am not a climate change sceptic: but I am an expert sceptic (as in, I am sceptical of experts). I hate being so reliant on people whose knowledge I can't test, and yet I guess it is a fact of modern life (see Anthony Giddens on this). What alternative have I? But I can't help noticing the way climate change talk feeds into our primeval apocalyptic fears so well (and into the general English pessimism too!). It is what we want to hear, strangely enough. And it is coated in the priestly/sacred language of science, with all its totemic power.

This feeling of bewliderment and disempowerment is however something that many people feel towards theological and religious questions. They can see that there is a lot of disagreement; they know that there is an industry devoted to specialised knowledge that they could never hope to master; and they haven't time to go further. I remember teaching a bright class of 17 year olds - one boy threw up his hands in exasperation and said 'how can I know what is true when there is so much to know and there are so many different answers!' I guess having people like me studying away at university becoming experts doesn't help matters either...

The gospel however is not a piece of expert information. It isn't shrouded in the darkness of arcane knowledge that it takes years to acquire. Christians and their theologians have a call to present it not as a piece of expert knowledge but as something else...

Postmillennialism - a temptation best avoided

Calvin taught a doctrine of the Church “continuously actualised within history”2 - the Body of Christ is not invisible, or concealed, but rather, although humbled in condition by suffering, actually glorious. Calvin’s eschatology has three socially-oriented consequences for the Church: to gather its members (i.e. mission), to discipline itself continuously, and to unite:3

What is the purpose of the coming of Christ but to gather us all together in one from this dispersion in which now we are wandering? Therefore the nearer His coming the more we must bend our efforts that the scattered may be brought together and united and that there may be one fold and one Shepherd.4

Calvin is not so hopeful about society outside the Church: the only remade society is the fellowship of believers. Yet the state (or prince) could play a positive role in the advancement of the Kingdom. In Book 4 of the Institutes he describes the work of governments which may indeed be called “Christian”.5 In the seventeeth and eigthteenth centuries it was Puritanism and Pietism that extended this optimism to the coming of the millennium within history. This was “post-millennialism”, as espoused by John Owen, Jonathan Edwards and later, James Orr,6 for example.7 Secular versions of post-millennialism have been foundational to the national identities of many modern states. Dutch theologian Hendrikus Berkhof goes so far as to propose that world has been sanctified by the rise of “Christian” culture.8

But Jurgen Moltmann is right to critique this “historical millennialism” on the grounds that it has been used to legitimate ecclesiastical or political power.9 Biblically speaking, post-millennialism rightly emphasises the binding of Satan (Luke 10:17, 18, John 12:20-32) and urges the Church to mission to the whole world (cf. Rev 7:9). There is a present reality to the reconstitution of society in the Church. We ought to believe in the present rule of the Ascended Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit in the world. However, post-millennialism can not withstand its own historical failure; nor does it properly account for the inevitability of suffering and persecution. It is also a doctrine which in the end emphasises the power of human works to achieve a social utopia in the here-and-now; it is little wonder that this theology is a parent to secular industrial modernism. God is too easy to removed from the post-millennial picture.

1 H.R. Niebuhr, op.cit., p.218
2 T.F.Torrance, op.cit, p.60
3 ibid., p.62
4 Comm. on Heb 10:25, tr W.B. Johnston, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963)
5 J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Battles, F.L., (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), IV.20.3-4. See R. Doyle, op.cit., p. 45
6 J. Orr, The Progress of Dogma, London, (J.Clarke & Co, 1901)
7 D.Bloesch, op.cit., p.193
8 H. Berkhof, Christ The Meaning of History, tr. L. Buurman, (Grand Rapids: Baker. 1966); a position he modifed in Christian Faith - An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, tr. S.Woudstra, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 1979), pp.511-21
9 J.Moltmann, The Coming of God - Christian Eschatology, tr. M. Kohl, (London: SCM Press, 1994), p.192

Barth on Election

Please allow me this foray into Barth without labelling me forevermore 'a Barthian'! (Though I think I have a rather cheeky article in me entitled 'the Barthianism of DB Knox'...!!!)

I am currently reading Barth's Church Dogmatics II.ii. In this volume he puts forward perhaps his most remarkable - and controversial - theological innovation: his doctrine of election. He is well aware of the novelty of his position: but his claim is that this is the only biblical way of construing the doctrine. That at least on the face of it is his ground.

Of course, Barth is a Reformed theologian in the tradition of Calvin, and so it is the Reformed commitment to predestination and election that drives him. And it is the Reformed tradition that he must supercede if he is to establish his version. His discussion of the Supra- vs Infra- lapsarian positions - in small print of course - is absolutely crucial. What he claims is that the Supralapsarian position - the least popular and least accepted alternative - is the more consistent and more rigorous. The tendency of Infralapsarianism is to offer the incarnation as God's plan B - a response to the fall rather than a decree from all time. But Supralapsarianism, with its implication that God has decreed some for damnation even before the fall is a tough sell! Which clears the ground for him to offer his correction of both positions.

And it is this: Jesus is the answer. Before the foundation of the world, God in Christ made his double decree of election and reprobation. Where he scores a hit against the Reformed construals is in their tendency to rely on an account of God's decrees which makes them inscrutable and mysterious, invisible and unrevealed. Speculation abounds (and it does!) Whereas, by making Jesus the electing God and the elected man, he is able to talk about the election of God as revealed in full view of humankind.

Now I need to read some critiques of his position - or hear them from my kind readers....