Anzac Day in London

I am delighted to have been invited to speak at St Helen's in London for a lunchtime service on Anzac Day.

I guess it's our equivalent of Remembrance Day, though it is particular to our own antipodean experience.


Any suggestions of what to talk about - especially given that it is combined NZ and Australian service? Texts and topics greatly received.

Emotions and ethics

Once, a while back, I mused about cuteness and its relevance for ethics. It seems to me that our affective reactions are by and large not part of the way we frame discussion of ethics, in the churches or in the West in general.

Charles Taylor writes this:

Modern enlightened culture is very theory-oriented. We tend to live in our heads, trusting our disengaged understandings: of experience, of beauty (we can't really accept that it's telling us anything, unless about our own feelings); even the ethical: we think that the only valid form of ethical self-directon is through rational mazims or understanding. We can't accept that part of being good is opening oursleves to certain feelings; either the horror at infacticide, or agape as a gut feeling. The Secular Age, p. 555

Of course, the picture is more complicated than this. In one sense, the West celebrates and even sacralises the expression of feelings.

Conversational Terrorism

I love this page about conversational terrorism.

Some of these tactics seem awfully familiar.

“That inscrutable object of adulation”

A lecture I once gave... [the title comes from an essay by RS White “Don Bradman: That Inscrutable Object of Adulation” Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region, ed. Bruce Bennett and Dennis Haskell (Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, Nedlands, 1992), pp. 193 - 200.]


'Every culture throws up its heroes: figures that take on iconic status for the culture and in some way embody the dreams and aspirations of the culture. In Australia we have several: Ned Kelly, Simpson and his donkey, Breaker Morant, Gough Whitlam, Dawn Fraser and others. Study of these figures is a short-hand way of analysing a culture. But that doesn't mean it is a simple matter...

And so I have chosen to give an hour to thinking about Don Bradman: partly at least because of my own passion for cricket and the availability of resources about him; but mostly because he is a remarkable figure, a person so dominant in his field that his achievements seem almost superhuman.

And yet Bradman remains an enigmatic figure: an idol of Australians who yet remained somewhat aloof; a tall poppy who managed himself with modesty; a man who to the end replied to hundreds of fan letters and yet was almost reclusive. It striking that Australians should so revere a man in so many ways unlike them. Why, we dare to ask? And what does Bradman symbolise for Australians?

The history of Australia as a unified entity is comparatively brief. Though to us it seems as if states rights are a fairly insignificant matter, in the nineteenth century the states could not even agree on a common railway gauge. While the various football codes and other sports were regionally aligned, cricket evolved as a uniquely national sport in a federated Australia. To this day, no other national sport captures the imagination of the nation in quite the same way; no other sport is so central to our cultural self-identity. Only swimming perhaps is a rival.
Cricket was first played in Australia in December 1803 by the officers of the ship Calcutta. Australian natives quickly took to the sport and were aided in the spread and growth of the game by the waves of fresh immigrants arriving from cricketing England. Cricket was a suitable game for our climate; and it finds a place in both rural and urban settings quite comfortably.
The first test match was played in Melbourne between Australia and England, before Australia had even become a nation. Much to everybody’s surprise, Australia won by 45 runs. Finally, the young upstart nation had found a way to compete against the home country: a way to shine in international company and particularly to gain the notice of the Home Country.

The Boy from Bowral
Donald George Bradman was born in Cootamundra in August 1908. He was the son of carpenter. In 1911 the family moved to Bowral, where the young Don grew up in a cricketing environment. As a young boy he entertained himself at home by hitting a golf ball against a cylindrical corrugated iron water tank. With this tricky game he honed his hand-eye co-ordination. In 1950 he wrote “I can understand how it must have developed the co-ordination of brain, eye and muscle which was to serve me so well in important matches later on.”
He does not ever seem to have been particularly religious, though he sang as a youngster in the church choir at Bowral...

The Bodyline Series
...
Bodyline was a watershed: here was a genuine cause for indignation against the colonial power. Australians revered the English and felt very much part of the British Empire: and yet the values that they felt essential to that Empire, embodied in the game of cricket, were here being treated with cynicism and contempt by the honoured representatives of England herself. The myth of glorious mother England was exposed as a fallacy; just as it would more seriously in the Second World War. And secretly perhaps Australians felt proud: proud that our Don Bradman was so good that the English had to sell out their values to try and defeat him.

The Invincibles
We pass over the great swathe of Bradman’s career that ran from 1933 to 1947, including the war years when no cricket was played and when Bradman’s health took a turn for the worse. It was in 1948 that he returned to England for the fourth and last time as a player and now as captain.

The tour was long anticipated: though the clouds of war had lifted, the English were still suffering the deprivations of food rationing and the various other effects of an arduous struggle. Bradman led an all-star Australian line-up unsurpassed for sheer all-round talent and maturity until perhaps the present day. The team remains the only team of any nation to have gone through England without losing a single game. Against Essex they were able to score 721 in a single day. And they won the tests 4 to nil.

Bradman’s last test was to be at the Oval in London. As walked to the wicket he was not aware that if he scored just four more runs he would be able to boast a test average of 100 (the next nearest player in the low 60s). The Englishman gave him three cheers. Then he settled over the bat. The bowler was Eric Hollies, a leg spinner from Warwickshire. The first ball Bradman played carefully. The second ball turned the other way, deceived Bradman and crashed in to the stumps. He had been bowled for a duck, and so his average remained at an incredible 99.94. Though he was so extraordinarily dominant in the game over twenty years, his last innings was a reminder that even Bradman was mortal.

So what do we make of this amazing figure in Australian social history? Bradman was no larrikin, no show pony – unlike many of our other sporting heroes. The Bradman museum website offers this conclusion:
Don Bradman has offered all Australians the same silver-lined story. The hope to achieve great heights from humble beginnings.



This is too simplistic in my view. The Bradman myth is far more complex.
He was a private, modest and direct man who was undemonstrative and reserved. He was not a drinker and enjoyed playing the piano to relax. He was not a womaniser or a gambler. In fact, he caused some dissension in the ranks of his team-mates because he was not seen to relish carousing.

Perhaps his quite reservation was in fact a reminder of what a previous generation actually admired in a person: a steely resolve and a self-discipline, a resourcefulness and a dedication that was needed to survive in the midst of the Great Depression. He was not flashy or flighty: he was just very very good at batting.


Since his death in 2001, Bradman’s character has come under more scrutiny. Suggestions of some ruthlessness in his business dealings in South Australia as a stockbroker have been aired; also Bradman’s parsimony and conservatism as a cricket administrator has been criticised by a younger generation of players, now themselves esteemed commentators (Ian Chappell being chief among them).


Certainly it mattered as it always has that England be the vanquished. Bradman perhaps best represented our belief in ourselves as a new nation ready to throw off the shackles of colonial influence and go it alone with sheer resourcefulness, native talent and iron determination. The friendly environment of sport was a lot less awkward than a war of independence. But there was still something of the cheeky little brother in Australian's love of sticking it to the Poms. Perhaps, as Australia passes from adolesence into adulthood as a nation, figures like Bradman will seem less important.

Learning the biblical languages

Now, don't get me wrong here: in principle, I am in favour, strongly in favour, of trainees for pastoral and teaching ministry being made to learn Greek and Hebrew.

In practice, I have yet to see how this actually works. Learning a language to a proficient level is extremely time-consuming for most students - Hebrew especially so. My own experience of three years of studying Hebrew in the context of a busy theological degree was that, while I could pass the course well, I don't think I was ever able to get a 'feel' for the language such that I can use it. It was useful of course to learn something of the atmosphere and fluidity of the language, and to gain an insight into the Hebrew mind - but for all that effort I think the results were paltry. And the opportunity cost was high, too: I could have been reading more and more widely in theology and history. My bet is that hardly any pastors would use Hebrew on a regular basis. So, was the time well spent? I am not convinced.

Greek is easier and more containable, of course, but still: the hours that an average student spends on Greek will be far and above the value it grants. Mostly we do not reach a level of Greek that enables us to make independent translational and interpretational decisions. We turn out to be still reliant on lexicographical sources.

In addition: a little learning is a dangerous thing. Teaching some Greek and Hebrew to students can give them a false confidence as to their ability to read the text in the original in a sensible way and come to useful, interesting and sound theological conclusions. It can give them the sense that now the text has been decoded, there is no more work to do. The tendency to make lexicography into theology (to use Gordon C's phrase) is the fruit of this.

So: let's have a discussion about the Biblical languages and their value for theological training for most pastors! How can they be taught so that a level of proficiency can be reached? Is it worth persisting, and why? Convince me!

Take the hermeneutics quiz...

... and tell me what you scored.

I got 71, which, in author Scot McKnight's book makes me a 'progressive!' I thought I was more moderate than that...

martyrdom and bellydancing...

We were talking about martyrdom and the act of relinquishment of self-hood that it models. And then my friend (whose identity I won't disclose) said:

it is kinda like doing the shimmy in belly dance... you gotta learn how to stand right, to position yourself, to hold it... and simultaneously let go so that your fat wobbles

Personally, I wouldn't know... but if she says so!

Reading the Bible in the old South Africa

Richard Burridge, who wrote a remarkable work on the genre of the gospels, has a new book called Imitating Jesus - An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics. While I have yet to discover what he means by 'inclusive' - a word that normally makes me reach for my gun, because it is a such a loaded term - I have been impressed by his determination to recover the role of the Bible, and of the Biblical Jesus, in ethics. He relates the problem to the apartheid era in South Africa, when genuine Christians prayerfully earnestly and intelligently reading their Bibles decided that it supported racism. Does this mean that the Bible ought to be rejected, because it is open to such uses? By no means: though merely appealing to the Bible does not guarantee good reading of it.

Interestingly, he quotes CESA Bishop Frank Retief's submission, made in 1997, to a hearing of 'Faith Communities'.

...when the government made legislation that accorded with our moral or biblical understanding, we supported them. However, on the great issue of justice for all, we were often insensitive. We had not made the connection between gospel and society...We were witnesses to how the Bible and its message can be misused to support an evil ideology. National government used the Bible to support its policies, to give the impression that they were a Christian government. But then so did some liberation theologians who finally supported violence as a means of continuing the struggle...Where we have been negligent, careless and insensitive to biblical injunctions and mandates as we have been, may the Lord graciously forgive us....The fact that the Bible was used in the past to condone injustice does not mean its true message may be ignored today...It is our belief that this day and hour calls for men and women of conviction and integrity to apply the message of the Bible more accurately and faithfully to our emerging society... p. 397-8

I have met Bishop Frank and heard him speak, and I find this an impressive and moving statement. But, Burridge asks, what gives him and others (and the rest of us) confidence that we aren't making similar mistakes now?

Burridge gives an analysis of how the South African churches got into this mess - and notes on the one hand a lack of self-criticism and on the other a theology which overlooked the central place of Jesus for all Christian ethics. Could a church that was actually prioritising Jesus - the Jesus of the gospels, but also the Jesus of Paul and the other authors of the NT - have allowed itself to lapse so badly? Make no mistake, there was some sophisticated theological and exegetical work done in the theological faculties of South Africa in the apartheid era... but, says Burridge, the voice of Jesus was strangely silent even so.

So, argues Burridge, if churches want to avoid falling into the group-think which has resulted in such terrible misusing the Bible, they need to practice self-reflection and self-criticism as a matter of course. And also, they ought to pay attention to Jesus.

[Note: to any South African readers - I am only here reporting from Burridge. I cannot know and do not pretend to know what it was to live in those times and to be a Christian in those times. Nor do I know what it is to live as a Christian with this as a legacy - though Australian Christians have made their own mistakes of course.]

Talal Asad explains why we find suicide bombing horrific

Asad's examination of this subject should cause the secular liberal west an uneasy conscience. It is a fierce account indeed.

Why is that suicide bombing produces this reaction of particular horror from westerners? He gives four reasons, each of which points to 'identity being destroyed'.

1- an unexpected suicide is always shocking - it disrupts the pattens of everyday life with an unregulated violence. War, by contrast, though even more horrible possibly, is legitimated and deemed necessary to defend our forms of life.

2 - we in the west depend on laws which make crime and punishment seperable. But in suicide bombing, there is no possibility of punishment or restitution.

3 - modern subjectivity is held together by the tensions between individual self-assertion and collective obedience to the law, reverence for human life and its legitimated destruction and so on. Suicide bombing pays no regard to this fragile balance of tensions on which the democratic state seems to depend.

4 - Asad suggests that the Judeo-Christian tradition has bequeathed to secular witnesses the thought that there ought to be redemption in death. The suicide bomber communicates only that there is death and only death...

How much of this loathing is ALSO felt at the thought of martyrdom? I think a great deal. Asad is right: it isn't the idea of a redemptive death that is abhorrent to the secular person. Despite WWI, we accept deaths in the cause of horizons of significance like 'democracy' not exactly readily, but certainly, we find them intelligible. And we don't overturn governments that sanction this kind of sacrifice. But public deaths for a religious cause are horrifying because religion is essentially private. That dividing line is brutally shattered in martyrdom, as it is in suicide bombing.

Volf on 'soft difference'

Miroslav Volf's article entitled 'Soft Difference' from Ex Auditu in 1994 is one of those ones I come back to again and again. In it he tries to describe from 1 Peter the way in which the Christians are supposed to differ from their surrounding culture. It is, he says, a 'soft difference'...

It might be appropriate to call the missionary distance that 1 Peter stresses soft difference. I do not mean a weak difference, for in 1 Peter the difference is anything but weak. It is strong, but it is not hard. Fear for oneself and one's identity creates hardness. The difference that joins itself with hardness always presents the other with a choice: either submit or be rejected, either "become like me or get away from me." In the mission to the world, hard difference operates with open or hidden pressures, manipulation, and threats. A decision for a soft difference, on the other hand, presupposes a fearlessness which 1 Peter repeatedly encourages his readers to assume (3:14; 3:6). People who are secure in themselves—more accurately, who are secure in their God—are able to live the soft difference without fear. They have no need either to subordinate or damn others, but can allow others space to be themselves. For people who live the soft difference, mission fundamentally takes the form of witness and invitation. They seek to win others without pressure or manipulation, sometimes even "without a word" (3:1).

Benny Hinn tours Australia

This is a fascinating article on the Hinn ministry. But the two journalists concerned practice an act of deception on him, by pretending that one of them was wheelchair bound...anyone else got a problem with that? Hmm.

Nevertheless, Hinn seems to be fair game.

The article finishes:

Could it be that my scepticism blinded me to the possibility that God was in that place? Were we mocking God's work and, despite the excesses, Hinn is an instrument of healing? It is possible that a very few were healed? But I say that is despite Hinn. I judge him by the measure of the one he claims to be following. Jesus never promised people wealth, or instant healing. He didn't promise his disciples houses on the coast. Pastor Benny has recast Jesus in his own image. He has forgotten that his Lord died, humiliated, tortured, alone and penniless. But how do you sell that?

Quite. Well said.

Talal Asad - On Suicide Bombing

Talal Asad is a terrifically interesting writer on religion and secularism - though his views are certainly not incontestable. I picked up a copy of his book On Suicide Bombing.

In its opening pages he writes that:

...I draw on some aspects of Christian theology: the crucifixion is the most famous suicide in history, whose horror is transmuted into the project of redeeming universal humanity - again through a combination of cruelty and compassion. p. 3

I did a double-take of course. A suicide? Hmm... Turning to the later passages in his book he DOES have some very interesting things to say about the atonement (as Charles Taylor does in The Secular Age). But he takes as his guide Aulen's very dated Christus Victor...

Trying to get the crucial paragraph right

As it seems to happen with theses, refining the argument is pretty much the last thing to fall into place. So, here is an attempt to get the crucial paragraph in the introductory chapter really right. Hmmm...

This dissertation asks: what kind of self is the Christian martyr? – and by doing so, seeks also to critique existing concepts of selfhood and identity. What are the implications for human identity of Christian martyrdom? Confessing ‘I am a Christian’, as the martyrs do, is also a refusal to accept alternative construals of one’s identity. It is a refusal to make or discover one’s own meaning through (for example) security, pleasure, power, action, nationhood, ethnicity, or honour. Rather, in the midst of a world in which the human individual is under threat of disintegration, it is an offering of one’s self up to the providence of God. This is learned from and empowered by the life, death, resurrection and promised return of Jesus Christ. As such, the martyred self offers a sharp appraisal of other forms of self-making.

From Text to Doctrine

In thinking recently about the doctrine of the church I have been led to reflect further on the standard evangelical method of doing theology.


It is not too much of a caricature to say that much evangelical theologising is no different from a Bible Dictionary article. Or, that we are content with what such a dictionary article might say about a word.

So, asked to give an account of 'the doctrine of the church' we fly off to our Greek dictionaries and look for the word 'ekklesia'. How is it used? What does it mean? Or more often: what DOESN'T it mean? By this process we also hope to pick up - and correct - distortions in the tradition.

But of course, the NT usage of the word ekklesia and the Christian doctrine of the Church are two different (though related) things. We have other words, for example, that are used to describe the people of God in the NT (I don't think anyone denies this). What's more, this is not limited to words: we have a number of different texts doing different things that contribute to our knowledge. What's more, I think it is properly evangelical to give consideration to traditional answers to the questions we are asking.

That's not to say that this kind of process of checking how the Bible uses its terms isn't a necessary and useful one: merely that it isn't enough to do theology.

Three unpreached sermons on Faith and Reason

It's an idea, anyway:

1. The Getting of Wisdom

2. The Critique of Reason

3. Taking Every Thought Captive

Calvin and Hermeneutics

I have been invited to contribute an essay to a proposed collection on Calvin for his 500th birthday next year.

The suggestion was to write something on Calvin and Hermeneutics. But of course, there already exist some general overview articles on this subject, and even a book-length study by TF Torrance. So, an angle is needed.

Furthermore, I would rather not write a piece of merely antiquarian interest. It seems to me that if we have nothing to learn from Calvin's hermeneutical theory and practice, then the piece isn't really worth writing.

So: what do you think my angle should be?

I could:

• take a key text and see how Calvin handles it in his commentaries and his institutes, as an examplar of his method;
• write about his polemic against allegory, and against Origen in particular (preferring Chyrsostom);
• compare and contrast Calvin with a near contemporary - Bucer perhaps?
• or see how Calvin's hermeneutic was received by Anglicans (if it was);
• I would love to see how Calvin's interpretational method was embodied in the Geneva Bible, an English Bible translated by English exiles living and working alongside Calvin in Geneva while Mary was Queen;
• or, an essay entitled 'the Postmodern Calvin?' Calvin and Derrida, perhaps??! Calvin and Ricouer? (Someone has already tried this, admittedly)
• It would be cool to see how someone like, say, John Milton or some other more literary figure learnt from Calvin, if he did.

Any other ideas?

Paul Avis - The Identity of Anglicanism

T&T Clark have just released Paul Avis' The Identity of Anglicanism, and give you a peek at the first chapter if you look here.

Interesting: I was delighted that he picked up the definite confessionalism in Anglicanism, and also that Anglicanism has never asserted itself as the whole church catholic - it has always accepted the possibility of other churches. This is a quite crucial aspect of Anglican ecclesiology.

New books on martyrdom

Two very good and readable books which explore martyrdom have come to my attention recently. One is Chris Huebner's A Precarious Peace; the other is Craig Hovey's To Share in the Body.

Both writers are clearly of the Hauerwas-Yoder school, though I don't mean that to be a pigeon-holing of them. I particularly enjoyed this, about promise, from Hovey:

...the truth of a martyr's testimony is like the meaning of the martyr's death: both are gifts. Promise is the way that a gift is known. It is known without being grasped, leaving the promise maker free to fulfill the promise. It is impossible to have a promise without the promise maker. Grasping after promises turns promises into brute knowledge bereft of surprises and alienates the free action of the promise maker. Ultimately grasping actually results in the death of the promise maker, just as the heri in the parable of the vineyard is not just beaten and sent away but killed. A bruised heir will still inherit the vineyard according to the promise of inheritance; the heir's death is the only way to secure tenancy as a possession.

In the same way, a dead Jesus allows for a knowledge of grasping, controlling, and manipulating. Promises are unwound, detatched from both thei beginning and end. They float free as words and phrases that are made to function according to the logic of convenience, persuasion, defense, and ideology. When they are spoken, it becomes impossible for such words to constitute true testimony because their truth was only ever bound up with the continuing faithfulnes of the one who gave them to us. Ironically, the grasping and controlling that released knowledge from promise in hopes of imparting direct access to them has actually worked counter-productively. Such knowledge may be useful for accomplishing ends, but it can no longer be true knowledge, as direct apprehension is revelaed to be a myth in which what is apprehended is evacuated of anything new of real. A dead Jesus means dead knowledge.
In contrast, though, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of the risen Christ, whose presence owes to Jeuss's promise to remain with his disciples and not leave them on their own. The gift that is the Holy Spirit continues to give the gifts of promise... p. 145-6

Anvil

Please pardon the blatant self-promotion, but - what is a blog for if not that?

In the latest issue of Anvil, I have an article on Chris Wright's The Mission of God - much of which was trialed here on this blog. Chris also adds his response to the four reviews that appear, and there admits to having read the debate as it developed here!

In the same issue, I have smaller reviews of Mark Thompson's A Clear and Present Word , Bernd Wannenwetsch's Political Worship, and Sam Well's God's Companions.

I also note that Wannenwetsch has edited a collection of essays, Who Am I? Bonhoeffer's Theology Through His Poetry. Alas, T&T Clark are offering it at the mighty price of £55!! That's 140 AUD!! (or 110 USD). Ouch - looks like a trip to the library to read that one...

Revolutionary Martyrs of China

Yes, Marxists have martyrs too!

Talal Asad - on secular cruelty

Talal Asad wrote, in response to the Rushdie crisis:


In the West today, intolerance of Europe's Others has again become more strident. Collective cruelty is, of course, neither new nor confined to the West. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians continue in our day to perpetrate acts of violence and cruelty. But it is the secular moder state's awesome potential for cruelty and destruction that deserves our sustained attention - as citizens and as athropologists of modernity.
from Genealogies of Religion, 1994, p. 306

Has subsequent history confirmed his analysis? It is hard not to think so. It is interesting that opposing cruelty is the very thing Rorty thinks secular liberalism has to offer the world...

Ben asks a great question

My old uni friend Ben T. asked this great question in response to an earlier post. I thought it was too worthwhile to be buried, so I have taken the liberty of reproducing it:


Hey Michael, can I pose (badly) two questions that have been concerning me over the question of martyrdom and the contemporary Western church? I'minterested to know what you think.
The first is a question that I am sure you have done much more thinkingabout than me. In Desire of the Nations, O'Donovan says:

"Much martyrdom is suffered simply at the hands of the barbarians orcivilisational revanchists, for whom the combination of irreligion andviolence is more attractive than the rule of law. One can be martyredfor refusing sexual demands, for opposing ruthless landlords, forasking embarrassing questions about forgotten prisoners, and for manyother things. But these occasions of martyrdom are sporadic andunpredictable. The martyrdom to which the church must always be lookingforward (from what distance, who can tell?) is the martyrdom exacted bycivilisation itself when it lifts its arms against God. A church too determined to be at home in the world will be unprepared for this, andso unprepared for mission."

It is not clear to me why and how the martydom "exacted by civilisation itself" is any less sporadic and unpredictable than the other martydoms "simply suffered" on O'Donovan's account. Is it really possible to demarcate "first-class" and "second-class" martyrs in this way?My other question relates to your research overall. I am interested in what you are doing, but in thinking about that, I had to stop andquestion why I was interested. I guess I want to ask, "In a privileged, powerful,politically-connected church context (which I think is not an unfair characterisation of Sydney Anglicanism and mainstream academic UK Anglican theologising), what relevance does examination of martyrdom have?"You and I are exceedingly unlikely to become martyrs, and it sometimes seems to me that Christians (especially evangelicals) play with such labels to magnify any slight quarrels we might have in the workplace, or with our wider culture, in order to lend a significance to our ideological positioning that it would not otherwise deserve. Being a martyr is a powerful, and completely un-self-serving position - while being a beneficiary of an overwhelmingly congenial political/theological settlement is not. How can we think in any way of ourselves as martyrs when we are, in empirical fact, amongst the most privileged people on the planet, and in our societies?

I think these are such important questions I am not going to answer them straight away....

A thought about leadership...

Unformed and unfinished as always...

It seems to me that leaders, including and especially Christian ones, need to seek out people who disagree with them but are prepared to do so in a constructive, creative and loving way. It is good to have loyal and reliable supporters: but uncritical loyalty is not really loyalty at all. Yes-men are in fact the worst kind of traitors. They isolate leaders from reality. And what is more, if you encourage people to be passively loyal to you in this way, you actually stunt their emotional and personal growth.

It does take enormous maturity and discernment to be able to listen to criticism of course without falling in a heap or just dismissing it. The leader who is always listening to critics will be a mess, just as the leader who never listens to them will be corrupt. But it seems to me that a critic, or a person who annoys you, is almost always telling you something about yourself. I think it is really helpful to ask 'what is it about me that makes this person so annoying to me?' The point is then not to smooth over all the difficulties or to produce a monolithic point of view but to respond with wisdom. And to invite the potential dissident to be a loyal opposition, before things get out of hand, and bridges are burnt....

Total Church - Timmis and Chester

I finally got my mitts on a copy of Steve Timmis and Tim Chester's Total Church. I had read it at speed some time ago, but now I have contributed to their royalties!

Can I just say that for Sydney pastors and congregations contemplating a year of mission activity in 09, this is a must-read? I think it will pretty much change everything. I think this book could give us the shot in the arm that we need in thinking about mission and church.

Timmis/Chester don't make it particularly complicated. It's about the gospel, on the one hand; and it's about the people of God on the other. What they are into is small church + high buy-in from members. The model we tend to pursue is large church + low buy-in from members (plus high stress for paid clergy who are the 'professionals').

My favourite section is on 'Success'. Steve tells of a meeting with a conference organiser:

Steve: We could invite X to speak.
Committee member: I don't think so. He hasn't got a big enough congregation.

ARGHH!! It is SO true!
I'll write more (perhaps!) as I read more, but: I really think we ought to give this book a thorough reading, and soon.

Sorry. We really are...

Today a whole nation repented. I found this incredibly moving.

Here's the wording:

That today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

That's pretty good for Australia I think: a nation at times very much an adolescent among nations. It's pretty articulate, too.

But to hear a Prime Minister say the word 'sorry' in the House: wow.

Andrew Goddard on the Williams controversy

I think this piece by Andrew Goddard is as good as I have seen on the whole Williams matter. It is good because it doesn't make Williams out to be guiltless in the whole debacle, but also shows how truly interesting his argument was. Goddard's very sympathetic reading of Williams says basically 'hey, Rowan was exposing the necessity for theological discourse when it comes to thinking about law, and you guys all fell for it!' Perhaps this is giving the Archbishop too much credit for a crafty rhetorical strategy. But even Goddard admits that the Archbishop's mode of expression, in the interview and in the lecture, were ill-advised.

However, as the Ugley Vicar points out , the media coverage hasn't been all ignorant and unprofessional. And, while there are some who think Rowan W can do no right, there are certainly those who seem to think he can do no wrong... and they are doing just as much damage to clear debate, in the church and without.

Even he doesn't believe this!

The Rowan Williams affair

Readers of this blog will know that I have rather a fascination with the bearded one, and may have expected comment from me on the unfolding controversy over his comments on the possible integration of Sharia law in the UK.

Well, here is my two cents.

Yes, the immediate reaction of the media was disgraceful - deliberate stupidity always is.

But, as the controversy unfolded, there was in fact a variety of very intelligent comment in the British papers, interacting with the actual lecture that Williams had given and for the most part disagreeing profoundly. So, the media reaction was not all as bad as Williams' defenders would have us believe.

As Williams himself admits, his main fault was obscurity of expression. I maintain that this is serious - it is not a minor flaw. Being a public intellectual means an awareness of how public discourse operates. The 'oh it is very subtle and complex' defence just isn't good enough. It is no good bleating 'why does everything have to be media grab size'; he knows the way the media works already. And besides which, it is expecting far too much of even very interested people to make an effort to understand what he is saying. When you talk, as I have, to intelligent and educated British people who haven't been to church for many years, everything they fear about the C of E is confirmed by the way their chief bishop talks to them. That is, that he can't speak plainly, and that he hasn't really got confidence, even quiet confidence, in what he is saying. I am not saying that this is true, but that that is the impression given.

However, the reaction to the issue is fascinating to me because it reveals that secular Britain has a choice. Does it really believe in its own pluralism? I think the debate reveals that it doesn't; on the whole, even secular Britons would rather the Archbishop stick to defending Christian 'values' or a Christian way of life for Britain! Secular Britain is just as hypocritical as Christian Britain was¬!

Hauerwas - oh, it's provocative and its brilliant!

One of my favourite Hauerwas quotes:


'One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.'

de Lubac on Christianity and history

Not bad stuff this, from Henri de Lubac, everybody's favourite mid-century French Catholic theologian:

The Bible makes an extraordinary impression on the historian: the conbtrast between the humble beginnings of Israel and the potency of the seed, or rather the explosives, which it contains; its concrete shape shrouded from the outset in the loftiest beliefs; then its stately expansion its confident though hidden progress to a boundless and unpredictable end: nowhere else can be found anything in the least like it. Nothing resembles the stupendous incoherence of its prophetic literature; only a transfiguration of the whole, glimpsed in sudden flashes, can prevent overwhelming and endless contradictions. The historical character of the religion of Israel can be understood in all its originality only through its consummation in the religion of Christ. We should never forget that the explanation of Judaims is not to be found within itself. Catholicism, p. 164

I think he is right about the OT... its coherence (without Christ) is rather slippery. Deuteronomy is a wonderful case in point: a law book that points to its own redundancy and to the inevitability of its own insufficiency... amazing.

O'Donovan on the foundations of ethics

O'Donovan speaks mucho truth:

The foundations of Christian ethics must be evangelical foundations; or, to put it more simply, Christian ethics must arise from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Otherwise it could not be Christian ethics. Resurrection and Moral Order, p. 11

A belief in Christian ethics is a belif that certain ethical and moral judgements belong to the gospel itself; a belief, in other words, that the church can be commited to ethics without moderating the tone of its voice as a bearer of glad tidings. RMO p. 12

That is, the question has to be, how can we preach/do ethics, and at the same time preach the good news?

Fergus Kerr on Charles Taylor

Kerr's book Immortal Longings is a magnificent treatment of the subject of the self in contemporary philosophy and theology. Of Charles Taylor he says (rightly I think):

...Taylor insists that some explanatory frameworks give us a better sense of reality than others. True, it is not easy to judge one superior to another without appealing to epistemological foundations that stand outside all frameworks, or merely to list the technological achievements of Western science (say). There can be no going back on the lesson of modern philosophy: we have no access to sources of knowledge independently of whatever conceptual scheme we have in place. But pragmatic success is not a good enough criterion either: for one thing, what counts as success may vary from one society to another. p. 137

Can Morality Be Christian? John Milbank

I have only come lately to this essay by Milbank, and what a piece of provocation it is! The answer is, in short, no: morality cannot be Christian! It is quite a Protestant piece for him. He ends thus, with his best impersonation of Luther in full cry:

So no, the Christian man is not a moral man, not a man of good conscience, who acts with what he knows of death, scarcity and duty to totalities. He has a bad conscience, but a good confidence: for he acts ith what he does not know but has faith in. In absolute trust he gives up trying to be good, to sustain a right order of government within himself. The Romans that Paul wrote to did this already, but they still needed a letter from Paul - to hear what? Simply to hear the other, receive the other, and through the other receive the gratuitous God. Cease to be self-sufficient in the face of scarcity. Instead to be good as first receiving from the all-sufficiency of God, and acting excessively out of this excess.

The Wondrous Cross

Over the weekend I read Stephen R. Holmes book The Wondrous Cross.

I think it is a very sensible and clear book. It is brief (much briefer than Pierced for our Transgressions!), and written for a wide audience.

Holmes offers a stout defence of Penal Substitutionary Atonement but does so without overplaying his hand or becoming shrill. He doesn't overstate the scriptural case, for example. One of the things he notes is how the Bible rarely gives us an explanation of how the atonement works. Neither does he overstate the presence of PSA in the tradition: he can only find one clear reference, in Gregory the Great. It is with Calvin that the doctrine comes to full flower.

Furthermore, Holmes does think the doctrine has a contemporary relevance. One of the annoying things (for me) about contemporary missiological works is how the declare with such absoluteness and authority what everyone in contemporary culture does or doesn't think. Holmes seeks a more subtle account, and suggests that PSA may yet have a great deal of resonance with the culture of the West.

One strength of the book for me was that Holmes seeks an account of the atonement which recognises all the different 'stories' of the atonement that we find in Scripture and does not play one off against the other. The tendency for evangelicals who want to defend PSA is to make it the only or the absolutely determinative model of the atonement: something that is certainly hard to justify from Scripture. As Holmes shows, even Calvin would have no truck with this.

There's more to say. These are just a few jottings rather than a review: suffice it to say that I think it is a book that should be more widely read than it is.

Weaknesses of Anglicanism?

I think one of the great things about the list that Justin generated of the strengths of Anglicanism is that it shows that Anglicanism has the possibility of becoming aware of its own weaknesses. Inbuilt in Anglicanism is the possibility of its own ongoing reformation. It is not beholden in an unrepentant way to its own traditions. This is more difficult for Roman Catholics and for non-conformists, I think, whose identity is more to do with a specific ecclesiology. Yes, that's one of the funny things about Anglicanism: it is (or ought to be) quite pragmatic about ecclesiological matters, in fact (read Richard Hooker to see this) - and what a relief it is too! You know, that is partly why Anglican Evangelicals are even 'lower' church than many Baptists and Presbyterians. Because, if you are a Scriptural Christian, then you can't possibly hold to Anglican church order as the only possibility!

There are some weaknesses worth exploring, however. I think Anglicanism's attachment to an Impirical political vision has yet to be repented of. There is a kind of superiority complex that Anglicans have which is inherited from the English superiority complex. We barely notice it until non-conformists point it out! We are just used to be the church of establishment. Even in Australia, where we are NOT the church of establishment, we act as if we are.

Let's be fair: the British Empire was one of the more benign empires of world history. And Anglican Christianity often ameliorated the rapine capitalism that drove the unprecedented conquest of territory. If you believe in Providence, as I do, then God used even British greed to spreed the gospel to the nations. And the Anglican Communion is perhaps the last vestige of that Empire, apart from the Commonwealth Games. Perhaps you could add to that the dominance of the English language globally, I guess.

Anglicanism, as the church of respectabilty and establishment, has a tendency to elitism and intellectual snobbery. It also licences aestheticism and nominalism. The political liberalism of the contemporary Church of England is not different in style to its former conservatism: it is still very much an establishment politics, a politics of respectability.

Because of the its links to government, too, it has aped the bureacratic structure of liberal government, and has imported its managerialism.

Some Bloglican stuff

The Ugley Vicar has produced for us a great passage from JC Ryle that is extremely timely. It supplements well Justin's series on the 10 great strengths of Anglicanism.

Maybe it ain't all bad after all!

John Donne: The Reformed Soul

Not a review, but a recommendation:



John Stubbs' book John Donne: The Reformed Soul is a biography from the top draw. Thoroughly enjoyable. Stubbs casts Donne as both genuinely a man before God and someone who at the same time changed with the political weather in order to survive and thrive.


Thankyou, Exiled Preacher for recommending it to me!

Moffatt on way Anglicanism rocks

Justin has a great series going on the 'Ten Elements of Historic Anglicanism'.

It is great, great stuff: drawing from Barnett and Packer.

Give it a read.

Start here and scroll down to see how Anglicanism is Biblical, Protestant, catholic, Reformed and liturgical - and more to come.

On this last post, I commented:

Trouble is, you can't say, oh, I had A great experience of liturgy last Sunday. All you can say is: the hundreds of Sundays accumulated have made a great experience.
Liturgy is like a habit. It is meant to be repeated so that you don't notice what it is doing (partly). Through liturgy, I know several great passages of scripture by heart, because I was exposed to it as a kid. But a single experience? Harder to pin down.
My kids won't have the same benefit, alas, because liturgy has all but disappeared from our culture.

Williams, on Williams

Rowan Williams gives a nice, almost lucid summary of his own thought:

...the tradition of 'negative theology' in Christian thinking needs to be be understood not just as a corrective but as something of definitive importance in itseld. It is not just that theologians make positive statemenst and then add 'Mind you, this only applies in a rather extended sense, not too literally.' It is rather that both the subject matter and (for lack of a better word) the style of good theology insist upon a radical change of attitude. A doctrine like that of the Trinity tells us that the very life of God is a yielding or giving-over into the life of an Other, a 'negation' in the sense of refusing to settle for the idea that normative life or personal identity is to be conceived in terms of self-enclosed and self-sufficient unities. The negative is associated with the 'ek-static', the discovery of identity in self-transcending relation. And accordingly, theology itself has to speak in a mode that encourages us to question ourselves, to deny oursleves, in the sense of denying sustems and concepts that are the comfortable possession of individual minds. This means both that theological language has to open out on to a sort of darkness - not the darkness of obscurity or confused ignorance, but the darkness of sheer resistance to the finite mind on the part of the divine. And at the same time, theological language must be the language of a community of persons actively engaged in the common life of building the Body of Christ. (Wrestling with Angels p. xiii)

So: apophatic theology is not an addendum: the whole of theology is shot-through with apophaticism.

How Suicide Bombing Began...

David Brooks, in the Atlantic Monthly of June 2002, conflates martyrdom and suicide bombing in discussing how since the 1980s Islamic terrorists have changed their tactics:

The red passions of the bombers obliterated the grays of the peace process. Suicide bombing became the tactic of choice, even in circumstances where a terrorist could have planted a bomb and then escaped without injury. Martyrdom became not just a means but an end...

...Recruits are sometimes made to lie in empty graves, so that they can see how peaceful death will be; they are reminded that life will bring sickness, old age, and betrayal. "We were in a constant state of worship," one suicide bomber (who somehow managed to survive his mission) told Hassan. "We told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were they would whip us to death! Those were the happiest days of my life!"

...Martyrdom has replaced Palestinian independence as the main focus of the Arab media. Suicide bombing is, after all, perfectly suited to the television age...

...it's time to face the reality that the best resource the terrorists have is the culture of martyrdom. This culture is presently powerful, but it is potentially fragile. If it can be interrupted, if the passions can be made to recede, then the Palestinians and the Israelis might go back to hating each other in the normal way, and at a distance. As with many addictions, the solution is to go cold turkey.

Christology and martyrdom

[I will return to the write up of the Providence conference soon, promise!]

Reading Stauffer was interesting. He made the rather obvious point that, if martyrdom is read as an imitation of Christ, then it matters a whole lot what your Christology is in the first place. So, he gives an account of martyrdom which applies his reading of NT Christology.

I think this is true of many contemporary accounts of martyrdom which rest on a rather adoptionist Christology and a subjective view of the atonement. Martyrdom is then primarily an exemplary act, an act of spiritual heroism which is sanctified somewhat after the fact. Or it is a primarily political act whose chief significance lies in its disruption and subversion of power. If you see Jesus chiefly as one who stood up to tyrannical authorities, then martyrdom for you will have this meaning too. And also, it is easier to say that anyone who dies standing up to tyrannical authorities is a martyr after the pattern of Jesus.

A traditional account of the person and work of Christ gives very different results. If for example we take the triplex munus Christi of Calvin, imitating Christ's death becomes more specifically related to the unique and unrepeatable work of Christ. And as such, martyrdom must be read as an extension of Christ's work in the power of the Spirit. It isn't an imitation of it, merely: it actually participates, shares in, the sufferings of Christ himself. The martyr does not become prophet, priest and king: but she shares in the prophetic, priestly and royal work of Christ.
The martyr is a prophet after Christ, because it is an act which speaks. It witnesses to the divine - it is an embodied proclamation of the gospel of Christ. It certainly isn't silent: Stephen's great prophetic speech in Acts 7, for example, continues in the tradition of the OT prophets, and shares their fate of rejection.

The martyr performs a priestly act of sacrifice, offering his or her life up on behalf of others. The early martyrologies have no doubt about the blessing that the martyrs were to the churches; but also, that is was by martyrdom that many came to faith. sanguis semen ecclesiae... This is not some blasphemy in suggesting that Christ's work is repeated, or that Christ is resacrificed in some way. Paul is quite clear in 2 Cor that his sufferings are a rounding out of the sufferings of Christ. The martyrs die for the redemption of the world too: not that their blood pays for sin in the sense that Jesus's does, but in the sense that because of them others come to know Christ.

The martyr is enthroned in death: over and over again we hear of them 'receiving a crown (a stephanos, note!). The martyrs 'overcome'; they 'conquer'. Not because they themselves conquer but becuase, in union with Christ and his death, they share in his victory over the powers.

To complement this schema, I should like to apply the great second-generation Lutheran Martin Chemnitz's christology, too - in his 'humiliation/exaltation' pattern. That's the next step.

'Still Deeper' Conference on Friendship

Still Deeper
‘They speak truly but touch on only half the matter:
We must go deeper.’

Day Conference: Friendship

Still Deeper is a new initiative aimed at encouraging people to go Still Deeper in their engagement with theology and culture. God has provided deep resources for living life – sadly these are often ignored. Many long to make the connections between God and the rest of life, to bring evangelical reflection to bear upon all parts of life. Still Deeper is a forum to do that. Our new web based journal will be online shortly, with commissioned articles engaging with a wide variety of issues and topics. Meanwhile, our first Day Conference is on the topic of ‘Friendship’. Our culture enables us to amass friends on Facebook, but leaves many struggling with loneliness in the real world. As technology makes connection easier, we long for depth in friendship. Christian doctrine has not traditionally had much to say about friendship, but there are deep resources in the Bible and Church History that could breathe fresh life into our friendships. We also hope the conference will be a chance to make new friends!

Dr. Brian Crowe will explore from a Christian perspective our culture’s view of friendship. Brian is a political analyst and is married with two children.
Rev. Melvin Tinker (Vicar of St. John’s, Hull) will bring an exposition from the Bible titled ‘Friendship with Jesus: Preconditions and Pitfalls’. Melvin is a well known author of books on issues of culture and theology.
Peter Sanlon will present a doctrinal session that asks if Christian doctrine has anything distinctive and valuable to say about friendship. Peter is writing a doctoral thesis on Augustine’s preaching, at Cambridge University.
Sam Allberry (Student Minister at St. Ebbes, Oxford) will discuss his experiences of friendship in ministry and the student world.

When: Sat. 23rd Feb. ’08, 10am-4pm
Where: The Round Church, Cambridge, CB2 1UB
Cost: Lunch will be provided for a small charge. The event is free and we welcome voluntary contributions to cover costs.

Wannenwetsch on Martyrdom

Political Worship is a book with myriad juicy excurses (as well as a compelling central thesis too).

In responding to Milbank, Wannenwetsch writes:

'Here we are forced to remember that it was actually the Church in the form of its martyrs, who refused to submit to the power of those who were stronger, which gave what was perhaps the most forceful political thrust towards the dissolution of the Roman Empire, as people withdrew from the political worship of the Empire. The effect of the Christian martyrs must, of course, not be interpreted to mean that the principle of non-violence proved superior to Roman violence. Their impact was not based on any ontological ascendancy of non-violence over violence. It was due to the fact that the refusal to go along with the worship of the gods of war, who represented the imperial claim to rule, pointed to the question about the authorization or empowerment for such action. If Christians found this empowerment in their worship, that worship did not merely reflect the impossibility of joining in the worship of Roman tyranny; it also showed the possibility of seeing this risky refusal through. Even today, the decisive constructive question of political ethics is the question about the formation of power.' (p. 114)

'If the Christians had viewed their worship as a private domestic cult, they could easily have enjoyed the religious tolerance betsowed by the Roman authorities in this respect, and would have been spared the experience of martyrdom. As it was, martyrdom was inevitable, since the ekklesia was bound from the beginning to celebrate 'political worship'. It could not worship the Lord of the cosmos as the penates were worshipped' it had to do so in a way which its pagan environment could not avoid viewing as an insult to the gods of the state, and was bound to suffer the sanctions imposed upon an 'atheism' hostile to this state...' (p. 148)

Ethelbert Stauffer on 'The Martyr Church'

One of the few New Testament Theologies to pay direct attention to the concept of martyrdom is that of Ethelbert Stauffer, published in the 50s (at least, the English edition).

'We have already remarked how the life of Christ constitutes a prototype for the life of the believer. Nowhere is this pototype more concretely and seriously expressed than in the correlation between th epassion of Christ and the sufferings of the martyr Church.' p. 185

'The man who confesses Christ is taken up into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings; indeed his destiny is conformed to the death of Christ.' p. 185

Stauffer argues that the passion of Christ was envisaged under three themes: doxological, antagonistic and soteriological, and that the imitation of his passion must follow the same pattern.

Thus, martyrdom doxologically undergoes great suffering on the path to glory. Via crucis - via lucis ! What the world rejects, God honours and accepts and even glorifies.

Of course, this rests on the antagonism of the world: 'the doxological interpretation of martyrdom finally comes to expression in an antagonistic conception: the tempter, the accuser, the opponent, the violent enemy and slanderer and evil one, the opponent of the generation of the righteous, puts everything in the wolrd to action so as to effect the downfall of the saints of God, or to destroy them... (p. 186). Hence, the imagery of a battle or a struggle become more and more the stock in trade of the martyrologist - 'It is but a little thing for the Satanic powers of the world to get rid of God's witnesses. But the Christian who has confessed CHrist in his death stands for a power in history that cannot be got rid of, a reality not of this world that the persecutor can never master.'(p. 187)

The soteriological understanding of martyrdom links for Stauffer to the indea of the final massacre of the saints...'The witness who gives his life helps by his death to complete the toll of suffering that God has descreed for the world as punishment and expiation for its sin, so that the divine wrath should be truned and at long last the day of grace should dawn.' (p. 188) Martyrs in this way actually bear the afflictions of Christ in the service of his Church. The bear upon themselves the punishment of the world (after a fashion). Not in quite the decisive way that Christ does of course, but in imitation and conformity to him. After all:

'it is not just the Church of Christ that will benefit from the atoning power of the apostle's sufferings - the confessor suffers for mankind that despises him, the martyr dies for the cosmos that rejects him...the death of the martyrs is a plea for the ending of affliction, culminating as an intercession for the sins of many. (p. 188)

‘Deus Habet Consilium’ - The Providence Conference, Day 1 - III

Alister McGrath - The Secularization of Providence

Though I have read many of his excellent books, I had never up to this point heard Alister McGrath give a lecture. I have to say this was a virtuouso performance in terms of sheer communicative ability and clarity of thought. McGrath is a master lecturer - on top of his material, clear, concise, interesting, on top of power point technology and so on. Very impressive.

His material was very interesting too, and set in train one of the themes of the conference which was the relation between scientific theories of causality (namely, evolution) and theological thought about the same (namely, providence). McGrath began with three issues: Darwinism as a view of reality that leaves no space for Providence; the elimination of the transcendent; and the elimination of Providence as a doctrine. What he was trying to indicate was that we could in fact have Darwinism and Providence, despite what Dawkins and other agrressive atheists say. McGrath was at pains to point out that Dawkins has smuggled in metaphysical claims, stretching Darwinism beyond its brief.

Darwinism has in the hands of Dawkins and co become a worldview - indeed, a totalizing vision of reality. It now operates as the explanatory principle par exellence. But at this point it becomes quite vulnerable. Because it must admit its own provisionality ... A further unresolved tension in Dawkinsism is that between 'rationality' and 'chance'.

(my notes unfortunately peter out somewhat after this point... suffice it to say, McGrath is optimistic about the potential for natural theology. He is giving the Gifford lectures soon, so it should be interesting to see where he goes with this.)

‘Deus Habet Consilium’ - The Providence Conference, Day 1 - II

The second paper was delivered by Prof. Andrew McGowan from Highland Theological College: ‘Providence and Common Grace—A Reformed Perspective’.

McGowan's paper suggested that the Dutch Neo-Calvinist explanation of 'common grace' offers the most promising way forward for Reformed dogmatics. Especially, he commended to us the work of Herman Bavinck. Talking to Prof McGowan later, he told me that Bavinck had been a fairly late discovery for him. The recent translation of his works by John Bolt and others has been not before time.

McGowan began by noting how Calvin's doctrine of common grace gave a very positive account of the human arts and sciences even among the reprobate. That is, God's providence serves to ameliorate the effects of the fall to such a degree that it is possible to see his blessing in human civilisation outside the church. For Calvin, nothing takes place without God's deliberation: he is intimately involved in every aspect of the created order. Calvin was of course prepared to attribute both good and bad harvests to God - he was not prepared to countenance any dualism (this was something contested by others at the conference, notably David Bentley Hart). Calvin does have a doctrine of secondary causation of course: and will not allow the Sovereignty of God to absolve us from blame. But the doctrine is a great encouragement to believers. Though our natural and spiritual gifts are somewhat damaged, we do retain a certain aptitude in the arts and sciences. No splitting of nature and grace for Calvin! Everything good we do is the result of grace. Grace is why human beings are not as bad as they could be.

In post-Reformation theology this identification of nature with grace was continued. But the theme of common grace is not picked up or emphasised in the 17th century documents and confessions, McGowan noted.

It wasn't until ABraham Kuyper that common grace was given its due attention as a doctrine. Kuyper developed the theme on a grand scale, but also he pushed the antithesis between the Christian and the non-Christian. He developed the idea of Christianity as an entire worldview (following the Scot James Orr in this). He also developed his doctrine of sphere sovereignty.

Bavinck's exposition of common grace is, for McGowan, a superior model. He rejected natural theology while maintaining general revelation. Common grace (not nature) is the basis for special grace. Nature and grace are not set in opposition, but rather grace purifies and restores nature. This is a key to Bavinck's theology! There is 'an organic relationship between nature and grace'. This is also a key to his very interesting doctrine of Scripture (which differs from Warfield's rather problematic one).

The fall damaged but did not eradicate the imago dei. But common grace is not enough to restore us. It compels us, but does not change us. Christ does not create an entirely new order, then, but transforms what is. Bavinck roots common grace in the incarnation...

So, where according to his doc of common grace Kuyper advocated the development of Christian institutions - a Christian university, a Christian newspaper, a Christian political party, Christian schooling and so on - Bavinck, who was much closer to Calvin and much more moderate in this, held that the antithesis was of principles and not of people. Common grace properly understood means that we don't have to listen to Christian music: we can observe the operation of common grace in human music making in general.

McGowan left me wanting to purchase the remaining volumes of Bavinck's dogmatics! I wonder too, if one rejoinder to 'creation' 'science' is that it lacks a proper doctrine of common grace in its outright suspicion of non-Christian scientists. It couples paranoia with all its other problems.

‘Deus Habet Consilium’ - The Providence Conference, Day 1 - I

Day one at the Providence conference was 'Protestant dogmatics' day (by and large.) We were given the most curiously diffident welcome by an obviously disinterested University bureaucrat, which contrasted with the air of expectation amongst the conference attendees!

1. Owing to a late arriving plane, Professor John Webster of Aberdeen opened the conference in the place of Katherine Sonderegger with a paper entitled 'On the Theology of Providence'. It was an inspiring beginning, though not designed for note taking I am afraid! Webster gave a characteristically dense thesis statement which he then proceeded to unpack (I wish I could have recorded what it was!). Providence is a contrary doctrine, because it contrasts with our experience of the world. That is what makes its task urgent. Providence is a 'distributed doctrine': in formal terms, its dogmatic location lies both within theology and economy. It must of course preserve its Christian specificity. Most properly, Providence is a description of salvation history. We grasp the knowledge of Providence by faith that is the result of mortification and vivification. And what we have revealed to us is that there is lament, but not tragedy - we realise that God is for us (by the cross). Knowledge of Providence thus becomes practical knowledge - faithful reason's receiving of consolation.

God orders his world out of his divine life and blessedness: he bestows life on the creature, and then sustains it, for he cannot merely 'make'. He gives being for a historical nature. Providence is an expression of the love of God which helps the creature to flourish. It is not only an aspect of cosmology; it is a teaching about the creature's dependence in an ongoing way on the creator. Creation bestows being... which then has its own independence...but needs help to persist. The church is the interim relocation of the goal of the creature.

Of course, the big problems for any doctrine of providence are the creature's freedom, and the problem of evil. How is Providence for the creature's good? Webster asserted that God's governance actually secures the creature's freedom - proper creaturely freedom that is. Freedom is not WON From God, but rather given by him and receieved by creatures. God moves us with an inner movement. As Turretin said, it is the fount of all error to equate liberty with spontaneity. Caused causes are still properly (though secondarily) causes.

Providence is a gospel consolation. But we must reach that comfort at the right pace. Belief in the doctrine of providence is something learned...

Some photos from Canterbury Cathedral to do with the martyrdom of Thomas

Yoder on suffering

Yoder says:

...the true missionary congregation is marked by suffering. This suffering, like that of the faithful servant in 1 Peter, is not the result of misbehaviour but of conformity with the path of Christ. It is not the resigned acceptance of limitations or injustice in an imperfect world but the meaningful assuming of the cost of nonconformed obedience.

It is no accident that the word 'martyr' has the double meaning of testimony and innocent suffering. The suffering of the church is not a passing tight spot after which there can be hope of return to normalcy; it is according to both Scripture and experience the continuing destiny of any faithful Christian community... (From The Royal Priesthood p. 86).

Is it the continuing destiny? Is that true of experience, really? If suffering is here persecution, then surely that is not the case experientially. The suffering of the faithful servant in 1 Peter is not the sign of his faithfulness: it is, rather, the very real possibility that he courts. But his duty is not suffering but faithfulness. His faithfulness is the sign rather than his suffering. There is no hope of a return to normalcy, true: but neither is it quite true to say that it is the 'continuing destiny' of any faithful Christian community, as if the lack of suffering was a sign that the plot had been well and truly lost. Suffering itself conveys no dignity of its own.

Report from Aberdeen

Kosta Milkov and I headed oop north on Monday for the Providence Conference. And what a feast it turned out to be: 18 top-draw speakers crammed into 3 days. I have to say that the standard of the papers was uniformly high. The organisers should be congratulated for identifying an issue that is evidently on the boil - and attracting an impressive range and calibre of speakers. The one drawback of such a packed programme was that each speaker was allowed a cold hour, which almost all speakers used completely, and so there was very little time for questions and interaction.

Time now for some general comments and observed themes - more specific ones to follow. I was interested that Calvin was a prominent and properly celebrated and respected reference point, at least for the Protestant speakers. David Bentley Hart of course made a very significant attack on Calvin's doctrine of providence from an Orthodox perspective, but that Calvin was a reference point at all was, to me, a very significant in modern theology. Aquinas was of course prominent in the more Catholic papers. A key issue it seems to me is what Charles Taylor calls 'the disenchantment': that shift in metaphysics that occured at the time of the reformation which can be seen as the harbinger of the modern scientific and mechanistic world view. By reducing Providence to causation, (the argument runs), the presence of God has been chased out of the world itself. Further, by proclaiming God as Supreme rather than as properly Transcendent, the mistake has been intensified in all Western theology since. Deism and then atheism are inevitable.

Sarah Coakley suggested that a new model of evolution as co-operation might actually complement theology and so end the war between them. This was an interesting countepart to Alister McGrath's paper (what an excellent speaker he is) responding to Dawkins attack on providence. Kathryn Sonderegger proposed that, counter to most traditional accounts, death itself prior to the fall was 'natural', and even a sacrifice the creation offered to its maker. We ought to seperate first and second death, especially in our readings of Romans 5 and so on.

Another strong theme in the conference was the consideration of the use of providence in Public theology. Notwithstanding an inevitable Americo-centricism here, there were three excellent papers on political theology. Oliver O'Donovan's influence was palpable, which makes me very happy: and we had proper and convincing accounts of political engagement and just war (Hauerwasianism is getting rather monolithic and tiresome!). I was especially intrigued by Philip Zeigler's use of the English Civil War and Oliver Cromwell (much maligned of course) in this. Trust in God, and keep your powder dry!!

Of course, the pastoral implications of Providence were never far away, and we had two excellent contributions on this theme. Providence is in a very real sense the ground and comfort of the Christian life.

Anyhow, these are just some first broad brush strokes. More to come!

Off to Aberdeen

Canterbury Cathedral. So far we have visited Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, Coventry, St Albans, St Paul's London, York, Salisbury and Canterbury.

Tomorrow I fly up to Aberdeen to attend ‘Deus Habet Consilium’ An International Conference on the Career & Prospects of Providence in Modern Theology.

See the conference programme here. I am especially looking forward to Alister McGrath, John Webster, Andrew MacGowan and David Bentley Hart.

My dream is to blog as I go, but I am not sure what internet facilities will be available. So perhaps a full report on Thursday.

Foucault, as often, gets it...

Nice stuff from Michel Foucault. By exomologesis he means the acts of penance by which you show yourself penitent...

Foucault / HERMENEUTICS OF THE SELF

To justify this exomologesis and this renunciation to oneself in manifesting the truth about oneself, Christian fathers had recourse to several models. The well-known medical model was very often used in pagan philosophy: one has to show his wounds to the physicians if he wants to be healed. They also used the judicial model: one always appeases the court when spontaneously confessing the faults. But the most important model to justify the necessity of exomologesis is the model of martyrdom. The martyr is he who prefers to face death rather than to abandon his faith. The sinner abandons the faith in order to keep the life of here below; he will be reinstated only if in his turn he exposes himself voluntarily to a sort of martyrdom to which all will be witnesses, and which is penance, or penance as exolmologesis. Such a demonstration does not therefore have as its function the establishment of the personal identity. Rather, such a demonstration serves to mark this dramatic demonstration of what one is: the refusal of the self, the breaking off from one's self. One recalls what was the objective of Stoic technology: it was to superimpose, as I tried to explain to you last week, the subject of knowledge and the subject of will by means of the perpetual rememorizing of the rules. The formula which is at the heart of exomologesis is, in contrary, ego non sum ego. The exomologesis seeks, in opposition to the Stoic techniques, to superimpose by an act of violent rupture the truth about oneself and the renunciation of oneself. In the ostentatious gestures of maceration, self-revelation in exomologesis is, at the same time, self-destruction.

Justin's MO on preaching

My old old mate Justin Moffatt has a really interesting description of his sermon preparation method here. The results he comes up with are pretty good I think, so I am interested to see how he does it.

More on Williams and Wiles...

Has Williams succeeded in outflanking Wiles? Has he, in other words, managed to burrow into the world of the text such that krisis – that moment of decision when we are confronted, yea even judged by what we meet in the text ­­– is allowed its prominence? Williams attempts to see from within: but has he smuggled in an objectivism – the kind of objectivism he repudiates – somewhere along the line? Tendenzkritik, that form of criticism most interested in uncovering in the text the interests of various individuals and communities, per definition tends to be hypersuspicious of ‘interests’. It holds as its moral starting point the critique of power itself. Is it not the case, however, that Williams’ version of krisis – his teaching on the judgement of Christ – resembles the values of Tendenzkritik?

That is to say: Williams seems to operate with a definite set of moral presuppositions. For example, he is tentative in his claims about language because of the tendency of individuals and groups to use language – and perhaps religious language more than any other kind – for their own interests. This is what the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth exposes to us, on his account. Williams would argue that Kritik is the right kind of intellectual work prompted by and encounter with Jesus: it takes his judgement and applies it self-critically to the practice of Christian speaking and thinking about God. Yet is it not surely the case that this reading of Jesus, and this application of Jesus’ teaching, is itself generated by the application of critical methods to the New Testament? It goes without saying that the history of New Testament scholarship is dominated by the triumphant revelation by each generation of the prejudices and preferences of the previous one.[1]

My charge is that Williams’ exposition of krisis is a product itself of Kritik, rather than the other way around. The problem is, once Tendenzkritik is in the tank, it tends to devour all the other fish. Where does Kritik end and krisis begin? Can we so readily shift from one to the other? Is this a moral possibility to have a text which is so beset with interest-laden and inadequate human talk as authoritative Scripture, as the catholic church has always held it to be? It is difficult to see how, on Williams account, we can read the New Testament with any confidence that we are able to apply the right filtration to the text and so be judged by it in exactly the right way. Can we really be both radically suspicious and humbly naïve about the text at one and the same time?

[1] See Stephen Neill and N. T. Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1986, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Webster and Inspiration - Verbal Inspiration

I found Webster's book Holy Scripture - A Dogmatic Sketch a very stimulating little book. He mounts a defence - or a restatement - even of the much maligned doctrine of verbal inspiration (chapter 1. p. 30ff.):

'Here we reach the particala veri (ie, limited truth) of the notion of verbal inspiration. Because verbal inspiration was routinely misconstrued (sometimes by its defenders and nearly always by its detractors) as entailing divine dictation, the notion of inspriation has been 'personalised' or 'de-verbalised' and redefined as authorial illumination. This distancing of inspiration from the verbal character of the text is considered to ease the difficulties of offering an account of inspiration by thinking of the words of the text as a purely human arena of activity, whether of authors, redactors or tradents. But the result is again docetic. The implied distinction between (inspired) content and creaturely form is awkward, and very easily makes authorial (or perhaps community) consciousness or experience the real substance of the text, of which the words are the external expressions. This is uncomfortably close to those styles of eucharistic theology in which the sacrament is considered to be a transaction between the gospel and the religious consciousness, to which visible forms are accidently attached. No less than consecration, inspiration concerns the relation of God's communication and specific creaturely forms;
inspiration, that is, involves words...' (p. 37-8)

(Is he thinking of Calvin's view of the Supper here? hmm...) He continues:

'Properly understood, 'verbal' inspiration does not extract words from their field of production or reception, does not make the text a less than historical entity, or make the text itself a divine agent. Nor does it entail neglect of the revelatory presence of God in favour of an account of originary inspiration. It simply indicates the inclusion of texts in the sanctifying work of the Spirit so that they may become fitting vessels of the treasure of the gospel.'
(p. 38)

This 'may become' is not just a case of the Scripture becoming the word of God as it is read by the church: he is definitely ascribing to the process of the text coming into being an inspiration by the Holy Spirit.

Rowan Williams raps with Ricky Gervais

This is an intriguing encounter from an apologists point of view. Mainly because Gervais is floundering and inarticulate, and because Williams just waits. Gervais comes across I think as typical of people one meets: wants to own to the word 'spiritual' and also makes it clear just how moral he is, but 'I am living my life'. He also does the typical race from one question to the next without waiting for an answer. I think the best moment was when Williams says 'is fundamentalist religion the only type of religion?' and Gervais goes on to say something along the lines of, 'well, if God exists he would be full on wouldn't he?' This IS quite a revelation I think - it is a similar line of attack to that of Dawkins. He almost refuses to talk seriously any kind of faith but the most fundamentalist kind, so that he can reject it.

Could Williams have done any better than he does here? I think he plays it quite well to score a 3-0 victory in the face of Gervais's blather. It is hard to play such opposition without sinking to the same level. Gervais is becoming more and more like his alter ego David Brent...





He then went on to an interview where he was reported as having denied the nativity story. What in fact he denied was the extra-biblical legendary materials: the big star, the stable, the donkey, that there were THREE kings (when there were certainly three gifts, but who knows how many Magi) and so on. Then he said you could become a Christian without believing the virgin birth, though he himself believed it. Scarcely controversial - but I guess when you have a name for being controversial, people hear what they expect to hear.

Application in sermons

Preachers find the hardest part of the sermon to craft that bit of the end. No wait: actually, I think we preachers would find it hard if we spent any significant time doing it! Also, I have to say we do a rather one dimensional job of it when we do get to this point.

I was prompted by a youth work book I once read to think of the application as touching on three aspects - because 'spiritual development/maturity' also ought to touch on these three aspects. They are:

KNOWING
FEELING
DOING

We need to move from knowledge about God to a deeper knowledge OF God himself.
We need to move from our experiences of God to a deep affection for him.
We need to move from legalism and disobedience into a life overflowing with good works.

Now, each sermon doesn't have to touch on each of these. But it is a helpful guide, to ask at the end: what did I ask people to do (or as a listener, what was I asked to do) in terms of each of the three aspects. And most sermons could touch on each of these in some way.