1 Sam 13-31: an interaction - 1

The second half of 1 Samuel narrates the enmeshed tales of the fall of the house of Saul and the simultaneous rise of the house of David. But both houses are enmeshed in ways that ensure that the tragedy of the fall of Saul is fully felt by the readers. David is linked to the family of Saul by marriage to Michal and by his deep friendship with Jonathan. But it is also David’s insistence that the Lord’s anointed be protected at all costs – even when he is the mortal enemy seeking to hunt him out and kill him – that serves to prevent the reader from too readily casting Saul as a despised villain. This in fact heightens the tragedy, prolonging the civil war and means that Saul has to bring about his own destruction. Of course, the secret to the whole narrative is that it is Yhwh who is sovereign over Israel and the life of her king.

Monarchy gets off to an inauspicious start in 1 Sam 13-15. From the very beginning of his rule it is clear that Saul is doomed. By 13:13 Samuel is declaring the whole thing off: using language that pre-empts the covenant in 2 Sam 7, he tells Saul that his kingdom will not continue. The air of inevitability hangs over his decline and fall from here on. The effect of this is tragic: we know the outcome of this phase of the story must end in his demise. The question for the reader is “how?”
His crimes do not appear that severe: merely filling in for a late prophet in the matter of sacrifice at the behest of the people. The dialogue between Samuel and Saul reveals a little more. In 13:11 Saul’s words suggest he felt that he was losing his grip on the people, and was responding in order to maintain his popularity. In 13:13 Samuel views the sin as disobedience of a direct command of God; and then implies that by contrast with the man the Lord is about to appoint that Saul is definitely not a man after his own heart.

Just as his anointing was a complex story told from several angles, so the reason for his decline is given to us over several episodes. We are given the story of his rash oath, of which Jonathan fell victim – a story which hearkens back to the story of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges, but with a different outcome illustrating perhaps a man of insufficient integrity; and of his sparing the Amalekite king Agag contrary to the clear command of God. By these incidents, Saul is proven to be rash and far too easily prey to the will of the people. The rejecting of Saul is more fully ratified by Samuel’s curses in 15:10-35; and symbolized terribly in the tearing of Samuel’s cloak. Saul makes a pitiful grasp for power, but it will be no use. In 16:14ff we find him tormented by an evil spirit; and he becomes prone to depressive episodes and murderous rages.

To be continued...

The Anglican Thirty-Nine

But, as one closes down...

I have started a new site for the purposes of writing about and commenting on the Thirty-Nine Articles. Some of the material at first may be familiar to long-time readers of this blog. Hopefully, more progress will be made on the idea this time!

Closing down Youbook blog

The YOU project is with the publishers, and I am excited about a possible release later this year. Karen did amazing editing work. So, the blog that helped get it going is closing down. Thanks everybody!

Martyrdom in the Gospel of Judas

Harold Attridge has a fascinating review article of some books on the gnostic Gospel of Judas here.

Interestingly, Elaine Pagels and Karen King read the Gospel of Judas as an anti-martyrdom tract - in contrast to the orthodox promotion of martyrdom, which they read as propping up the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Of course, a contemporary theological protest against martyrdom is very much in evidence in their sympathetic reading of Judas. Attridge puts it this way:

'Not far below the surface of their analysis, it should be said, lies a fairly clear theological position that is open to debate. Their book, in other words, offers not simply a historical analysis but also a contemporary argument, though the two are almost always interconnected. They clearly want to protest the kind of religiosity that glorifies martyrdom, a glorification they see as contrary to efforts to improve the human condition. In an age of suicide bombers and jihadists, many might sympathize with that critique of a bloodthirsty religion. But perhaps there is also something to be learned from the Church that celebrated martyrs, told tales of their gory ends, built shrines to their memories, and linked their deaths with that of Jesus.

'A yearning for death and fascination with pain and suffering are certainly pathological and inimical to human well-being. Yet suicidal martyrs are only a part of the story of early Christianity and the contemporary Church. Alongside the fanatics, and probably outnumbering them, were those who insisted that divine reality demands both justice and compassion, that violence is not the way to solve human problems, and that by the example of their deaths they were upholding, and helping to spread, these beliefs. It is a willingness to stand firmly for peaceful Christian values, even at the cost of death, that the Christian martyrological tradition celebrates, and can be seen from many examples, starting with Saint Stephen in the first century and Perpetua and Felicity in third-century Carthage, and continuing on to Archbishop Oscar Romero and Sister Jean Donovan and her companions in twentieth-century El Salvador.'

This is well put. There is no point in denying there were maniacal martyrs in the early church - there certainly were! But that is not the whole story, not by a long shot.

-ize or -ise ?

So: which is to be preferred?

'Relativize' or

'Relativise'?

Shall I will?

OK -

account for the difference in usage between 'shall' and 'will'.

When will I use 'shall'? And when shall I use 'will'?

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians - VIII

Intellectual Deviation Story Right at the close of The Secular Age, Taylor deploys this term to refer to other historical accounts which are not, he feels, in conflict with his, although they are different. He cites John Milbank's work as an example. Milbank sources the rise of the secular to the work of Scotus and Occam - the nominalists who critiqued late medieval realism (a la Aquinas). The link is made between nominalism and mechanist science; an instrumental view of human agency; and the distinction between nature and supernature. The sense of a great analogy of being falls away. Once this move has been made, God becomes more easily conceivable as a Prime Mover and Designer.



This is what Taylor calls the 'Intellectual Deviation' story, or ID. He accepts it as complementary to his version, but doesn't think that it is the main story behind secularity. Rather, Taylor sees what he calls the Reform Master Narrative as the most important explanation. ID is not the mass phenomenon it needs to be to pull off the secular turn... It just doesn't deliver enough social imaginary to be convincing.

Sermon for Anzac at St Helen's Bishopsgate, London

It is said of Alan Bond, the famous 80s business tycoon, that, with his yacht Australia II trailing by three races to one in the final of the America’s Cup, he reminded his team of Gallipoli and then said: ‘We had our backs to the wall there and we won that one...’

Bond’s mistake is forgiveable: it is certainly strange that Australians and New Zealanders choose to celebrate a military disaster. But I think it is a happy oddity. Anzac Day is a great day for a war remembrance because we are reminded by it of the moral ambiguity and futility of war. We not tempted by the memory of April 25th 1915 to indulge in a sickening triumphalism; neither is it a day that brings old resentments bubbling to the surface. This day tells us that it is hard to make sense of war, because war itself is a grim absurdity.

The generation that lost its young men in the trenches recognised this. As the task of memorialising the dead began, the sheer horror of what had occurred evidently sank in. There were heroes, but not many. How do you honour the deaths of those who were evaporated by heavy explosives, or who drowned in the mud? What honour was there in dying that way, or of lying falling on a piece of ground that would be lost to the enemy in a few months?

And so, the one Bible verse that is most frequently found on war memorials and graves is the one from John’s gospel – a saying of Jesus himself: ‘Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends’. This almost makes sense: it speaks of sacrifice for others in a way that isn’t saying something about dying for love of my country, or the empire, nor for love of some great principle or cause, whatever that might be. We modern people in our ignorance and inexperience of the real world are now more hesitant to accept that these things are worth dying for in the first place. But, to die for your friends? – It’s a thought that resonates with antipodeans, because we know what counts is your friends – your mates. But can those whose intent it was to kill others really be given credit for the greatest of all loves? That was their calling as soldiers, after all. Can applying this verse to the fallen give their deaths meaning, or redeem something for us from the absurdity of war? I confess that I feel more than a little disquiet when I read these words on a memorial of war.

Whether it can or no, the memorial makers at least knew where the template for loving sacrifice of a life was to be found. They knew, in a way that we have perhaps forgotten, that Jesus’ death on the cross was the sacrifice of love par excellence. Jesus dies ‘for his friends’ – in their place and for their benefit. He dies for his friends because they are threatened by great enemies – evil, sin and death – and helpless to battle them alone. These enemies are more fierce and more insidious than Turks, or Germans, or Viet Cong or the Taliban. They have us in their grasp and won’t release us.

He was not a conscript, but a willing volunteer. He left the safety and comfort of his Father’s throneroom and faced down the things that threaten us with with utter disintegration, seeking the reconciliation of human beings with their God. He himself suffered the indignity and apparent futility of a cruel and violent death, offering his own body as a sacrifice for the sins of humankind. Yet this was not meaningless suffering. This was the greatest of loves: it was selfless, painful and costly. But it was not pointless: it was a death that defeated death. Death and sin were outflanked by this divine man’s death.

War continues: and it stands as evidence of the spiritual darkness that still besets all of us despite our potential for noble and valorous action. We should remember on Anzac Day that the most glorious things human beings do are found next to the most obscene. Courage and inventiveness lie side by side with incompetence and bloodthirstiness. Remembrance of war should never be a comfortable thing, if we are to be honest. It should never be romanticised. As the generations of those who actually witnessed the two world wars passes on, we may be tempted to forget how awful war was for them; and to remember not the real Gallipoli, but the Gallipoli that Mel Gibson was at. It’s a temptation we would do well to resist.

When we pause at a war memorial, however, and read the text ‘Greater love has no-one than this’ we have reason to feel something else, too: gratitude. Gratitude to those who served and died to protect others certainly, whatever we feel about war itself. But, moreso, we be can thankful to Jesus Christ who died to set us free from sin, evil and death: all the components that go to make up a war. The death of the soldier may or may not have been in vain; it certainly did not bring an end to hostility between human beings. But by using this verse, even wrongly, the survivors are bearing testimony both to the inescapable power of the evil which brings us down and also to a death which did make a real difference. The death of Jesus Christ signals the end of enmity – between God and humankind, and between human beings themselves. There is the possibility for us now, in accepting his offer of friendship, of experiencing for ourselves the greatest of loves – an offer we have only to receive.

Brief Editorial

Apologies for the silence: a bout of tonsillitis laid me low all week.

Next week, we are off to Devon for some holidays!

See you all soon.

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians - VII

Secularity 1, 2, 3 Taylor distinguishes between three senses of 'secularity'.
Secularity 1 has to do with public spaces allegedly emptied of God. Our common institutions and practices have been deliberately drained of any reference to God or to the ultimate. You can do politics, and never meet God.

Secularity 2 has to do with the falling off of religious belief and church attendance. Of course, 1 and 2 are not at all the same, though they are often felt to be. The framers of secularity 1 had no intention of inducing secularity 2 (think of the American Constitution).

Secularity 3 however is the one that interests Taylor the most. It is related to both the other senses, but: it focuses on the conditions of belief. This shift to secularity consists in a move 'from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace' (The Secular Age p. 3).

Thus, Taylor says, is his intention: 'the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others'.

Now, church attendance in the US may be as high as mosque attendance in Pakistan. But it still may be the case that the US is secular in the 3rd sense. Why? That's what Taylor wants to know.

In a way, he will 'blame' Protestantism and particularly Calvinism for making an option possible...

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians - VI

The Immanent Frame In trying to describe the 'conditions of belief' which now obtain in the modern West, Taylor coins the term 'The Immanent Frame'. The buffered self which arises in the age of Reform (of which more later) moves in a constructed social space 'where instrumental rationality is a key value, and time is pervasively secular' (The Secular Age, p. 542).

In addition, this frame constitutes now the 'natural' order as distinct from the 'supernatural' one. Instead of the two orders being intertwined, the transcendent is now seen as quite separate from the immanent - which condition of course makes it possible later on to disavow the transcendent altogether.

So, the rise of the individual, now called to a more rigorous and disciplined life in the affirmed ordinary world, coupled with the emphasis on constructive action (because Providence itself now works via the medium of human action) and seen in the context of time now measured accurately by machines rather than charted by prophets or seers in epochal terms - these conditions comprise 'the immanent frame'.

If you are to be a religious believer, you have to believe against the backdrop of these conditions of belief, then.

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians - V

Horizons of Significance For Taylor, our selfhood is necessarily dialogical. We are selves with reference to 'horizons of significance', as he explains in his The Ethics of Authenticity.
Personal authenticity can’t be defended in ways that deny horizons of significance. In fact (and here Taylor is especially suggestive of the theological) even the sense that choice is the root of my personal significance is grounded on the understanding that ‘independent of my will there is something noble, courageous, and hence significant in giving shape to my own life’.(p. 39)

Horizons of significance come to us from outside of ourselves: they are given. There is already, anterior to the choices of the individual, a picture (or pictures) of what human beings are like, or ought to be. Even positing self-choice in itself as a moral ideal requires that there are choices that themselves are significant. As Taylor says, ‘[I] can define my identity only against the background of things that matter’ (p. 40); and if I am to bracket out from consideration history, nature, society and everything except for that which I find in myself, I am surely not choosing for myself anything other than the trivial. ‘Authenticity is not the enemy of demands that emanate from beyond the self; it supposes such demands’ (p. 41). Some reference to the self-transcending – whether God, nature, nation, ideology or whatever else – is necessary for authentic selfhood. Choice itself cannot be basic.

Fair enough: but is it a distraction to see this as pre-theological in some way? Can we just substitute in any 'horizon', as if there were ready made alternatives that we could just attatch?

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians - IV

The buffered self. This is one of my favourited Taylorisms, suggesting as it does a figure wearing a kind of padded suit...

The buffered self is the self that develops in early modernity in contrast to the 'open and porous and vulnerable' self of the previous epoch. That former individual, living in a world that was held to be 'enchanted', was vulnerable to the world of spirits and powers. The porous self is exposed to the whims of a suprahuman benevolence or malevolence residing in the cosmos. His feelings are bound up with goings on that are external to him - the motions of the stars and so on. He lives in a world not inconceivably that far different from a Bosch painting.

The buffered self, by contrast, is able to take a distance from everything outside the mind. This self can 'see itself as invulnerable, as master of the meanings of things for it'. (The Secular Age, p 38). The buffered self may read a Bosch painting as a code for various inner states, but he has been taken out of the world in which these are thought of as external conditions.

However (and here is Taylor's punchline): despite the appearance of the buffered self there is also a powerful nostalgia for the porous self. Of course, we do this as mere tourists, trying to get an impression of what it must have been like to be really porous by having our stars read - but, as Taylor says, 'Our peasant ancestors would have thought us insane. You can't get a frisson from what is really in fact terrifying you.' (p. 38) Taylor of course goes on to chart the role of Protestantism in producing the buffered self.

I am interested that this powerful nostalgia for the porous self is being played out within Christian theology at present. The Radical Orthodoxy is only its most esoteric and elitist manifestation. But popular spirituality both Catholic and Protestant evinces this yearning to be more porous - more richly metaphysical in its encounter with the phenomena of the material world. I think our 16th century forebears, who were so relieved to be liberated from enslavement to this kind of vulnerability to the world inhabited by ghosts and demons, would have thought this daffy, just as Taylor points out.

Peter Bolt's Living with the Underworld

I have just received my copy of my former teacher and colleague's new book, Living with the Underworld (available to British readers here). I will be writing a review for The Briefing.

But, can I say how excited I am by the book thus far. Firstly, here is theology written for a general adult audience that is not insulting to their intelligence but is fast paced and engaging. There are some big ideas in this book, but the writing is crisp and light, and certainly not without plenty of wit. It is a journey into the underworld with Tony Soprano as our guide.

Bolt also touches on a number of issues of how the Biblical cosmology ought to be read by modern readers without having to engage in a wholesale demythologisation programme. So, there is some interesting theological method being developed in the background, too. Go read it and see!

A taster:

It is a pity that moralism has always been so rampant amongst people who say they are trying to live by the Bible. if Christians were to read the New Testament and grasp its central message, they could never join the moralists, and they would be the most sympathetic people this world has ever seen. p. 68

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians III

By the way, you really must check out The Immanent Frame.

Social Imaginary Taylor uses this term in his latest work The Secular Age, but also in Modern Social Imagineries. He means by it to indicate something of the way people imagine their social existence. It is crucially an act of imagination rather than an intellectual scheme: it involves the myths and stories and legends that we tell about our common life and identity, and so on. As Taylor puts it, he means how people 'fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations'. (MSI, p. 23)This term, then, can include the way ordinary people think about their common identity as well as a more elitist, theoretical account.

Of course, it is a complex business to describe a social imaginary, because it is a complex idea! It 'incorporates a sense of the normal expectations we have of each other, the kind of common understanding that enables to carry out the collective practices that make up our social life.' (MSI, p. 24) And yet, this term is crucial for Taylor's project: because it is 'social imaginaries', modern and less modern, that he is largely in the business of describing. It is part of his intellectual bravery that he is willing to embark on such a risky strategy, because it is so obviously open to challenge at every point of the description.

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians - II

The Affirmation of Ordinary Life: This term is probably not really a Taylorean invention, but it features very prominently in his account of the history of ideas. As he says, the affirmation of ordinary life 'has become one of the most powerful ideas in modern civilisation' (Sources of the Self , p. 14). Though it has avowedly secular variants (such as utilitarianism), it is a term associated with the theological shift in the Reformation period away from the spirituality of the elite and towards the sanctification of the everyday. 'With the Reformation, we find a modern, Christian-inspired sense that ordinary life was..the very centre of the good life.' (p. 13). You could, with Luther, praise God while changing a baby's nappy. You could labour in your dead-end job and still possess the dignity and spirituality of a monk.
The fruit of this affirmation of the ordinary include a protest against needless suffering and an emphasis on human welfare and dignity. And it underlies much of political self-understanding in the West even today.

A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians - I

Readers of this blog - both of you - know that I am a bit of a fan of Canada's greatest contemporary philosopher, Charles Taylor. Not that I am uncritical: but, what a voice he has! Taylor, like many great philosophers, works up his own vocabulary - a repository of terms which become a shorthand for the arguments already established. I thought a glossary of these terms might be a useful thing. However, I find that whenever I propose to myself that I will do a series on this blog, it is a guarantee that I won't complete it... so, no promises...

Subtraction Story - In his The Secular Age, Taylor calls a 'subtraction story' any of those 'stories of modernity in general and secularity in particular which explain them by human beings having lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge.' (p. 22) These stories chart the emergence and liberation of true human nature from the imprisoning forces of religion, now set aside. The Secular Age is Taylor's vigorous response to this kind of narrative. He wants to argue that subtraction stories are mistaken because they do not see the new-ness of Western modernity. Secularity comes not from seeing things that were there in the first place, but from the construction of new self-understandings and practices - things that cannot be seen as always residual in human life.

MacIntyre and stories

Alasdair MacIntyre writes:

...man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth. But the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?' We enter human society, that is, with one of more imputed characters - roles into which we have been drafted - and we have to learn what they ae in order to be able to understand how others respond to us and how our responses to them are apt to be constured. It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kinds, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the dram into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words. After Virtue, p. 216

This is even more so of being a follower of Christ, yes?

More Ricoeur, this time on death and narrative

As for death, do not the narratives provided by literature serve to soften the sting of anguish in the face of the unknown, of nothingness, by giving it in imagination the shape of this or that death, exemplary in one way or another? Thus fiction has a role to play in the apprenticeship of dying. The meditation on the Passion of Christ has accompanied in this way more than one believer to the last threshold.' Oneself as Another, p. 162

By 'fiction', Ricoeur isn't saying 'it's made up': rather, he is pointing to the literary features of the account.

Ricoeur on Literature & Ethics

A moment of clarity looms up through the fog:

There is no ethically neutral narrative. Literature is a vast laboratory in which we experiment with estimations, evaluations, and judgments of approval and condemnation through which narrativity serves as a propaedeutic to ethics. Oneself as Another, p. 115

[propaedeutic = 'a prelimary body of knowledge or rules necessary for the study of some art or science']

Total Church - my review

And quite a lot of other material about the book, too.

Philosophy and Theology

I have to say Paul Ricoeur's Gifford lectures published as Oneself as Another ranks among the most difficult books I have ever tried to read.

But I was interested to read in the first chapter to the book how Ricoeur sees his largely philosophical work in relation to theology. He had, he said, written a couple of more explicitly theological chapters, but does not include them in this book.

He is adamant that he doesn't want his philosophy of the self to be seen as a crypto-theology. It is certainly the case that he discovers all these conceptual difficulties and problems that seem to be suggestive of a theological resolution. Does not the philosophy of the self point us inevitably to the need for some kind of divinity? This is the move he wants to resist

And, what's more, he doesn't want to see it the other way around: theology as taking the place of philosophy. Theology doesn't give the 'ultimate foundation' (rationally speaking) that philosophy strives for but can never attain. That would be stretching theology to do work it isn't designed to do:

If I defend my philosophical writings against the accusation of crypto-theology, I also refrain, with equal vigilance, from assigning to biblical faith a cryptophilosophical function which would most certainly be the case if one were to expect from it some definitive solution to aporias that philosophy produces in abundance... (p. 24)

No: theology does not answer the questions that philosophy has raised. The irretractable problems that a philosopher discovers are not susceptible to a theological answer. The problems remain, and remain to be addressed by philosophy. What he has instead from theology is assurance, which is to be taken by faith. This is how he puts it:

The dependence of the slef on a word that stripsit of its glory, all the while comforting its courage to be, delivers biblical faith from the temptation, which I am here calling cryptophilosophical, of taking over the henceforth vacnt role of ultimate foundation. In turn, a fiath that knows itself to be without guarantee...can help philosophical hermeneutics to protect itself from the hubris that would set it up as the heir to the philosophies of the cogito (ie Descartes) and as continuing their self-foundational claim. (p. 25)

What is 'the self' anyway?

In his monumental work Oneself as Another Paul Ricoeur makes a distinction between the two major meanings of the word ‘identity’ in terms of the Latin words idem or ipse.[1] Idem-identity has the sense of ‘sameness’. Under this definition, a person’s identity can constituted from matrices or horizons that stem from comparison to others. So, I identify with those who are the same as me and over against those who are different. On the other hand, ipse-identity invites an understanding of identity in terms of ‘selfhood’. As an identity, the self ‘has to be reflexively made’.[2] Self-identity refers at the outset to the one I am speaking about when am able to speak self-consciously about myself. It is already an indication of self-awareness, a capacity for ‘seeing’ oneself. We might describe it as a mental gaze at one’s own reflection in a mirror. This self-awareness is not self-understanding as such, or an appreciation of the meaning of oneself; but it is a prompt to self-understanding. The very notion of oneself invites one on a quest to discover or make sense of who it is one is talking of when one refers to oneself.

If I am to make sense of myself, I need a point of reference or comparison. I must be able to trace in some way a coherence, a pattern in this entity I name ‘self’. Time offers that to me in two ways: firstly, by an act of remembering I can trace my own actions and experiences across time. I can begin to see patterns of cause and effect; to makes sense of motivations and intentions; to have feelings of nostalgia and regret; and so on. In other words, I begin to see my own narrative emerging, the story of my self. In turn, secondly, I can begin to exercise my other mental faculty relating to time, my imagination, and to project into the future the next stages in the emplotment of my life.

To persue this invitation to understand oneself, then, suggests that it is a narrative that is needs to be understood – in Ricoeur’s terms, the ‘hermeneutics of the self’. It is true to our experience of embodiment to think this way, too: that we are not selves known in abstract, as if we are static types, but rather that we are revealed, to others as well as to ourselves, as characters in a sequence of causally related events. We notice then of course that were are not, even in this moment of reflexivity, cut off from the phenomenal world – but rather, thoroughly situated within in it. In other words, this reflexive sense of identity finds its expression in the form of a narrative. That is what our memories do for us: they narrate the self into identity, interpreting the past for us and projecting out of that past a future, the open horizon to which our personal history is moving.[3] Story is a remarkable mnemonic device. In fact, personal identity takes this narrative form because of its inherently historical nature.

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

If ipse-identity requires narration, then it also draws the self into realm of the ethical. This is for two reasons. One the one hand, the realisation that we are actors and agents, who may participate and contribute to the chain of causality. As selves in time, we are immediately in the position of asking what it is we are going to act in a way that it is consistent and coherent with our conception of our self-identity. How are my actions going to make sense as coming from me, as being ‘mine’? Insanity is a way of describing someone whose actions do not emerge from some evident sense of self – a judgement even the insane person might make as they find themselves unable to answer the question ‘why did you do that?’

The second point is not unrelated: the notion of the self is also an invitation to pursue the ‘true’ or perhaps ‘authentic’ self. The corollory of this that individual must have, or develop, some conception of the good by which to judge the self that might emerge. Yet, with the turn of the self to the good does not come an automatic description of the good. So, if the chosen measure for self-realisation is ‘authenticity’, for example, then the concept must be given some relatively substantial account if the authentic self is to be recognised when it appears. Which is to say: the hermeneutics of the self orients the self to the pursuit of the good, without also giving thereby a definition of what the good is. That discovery remains to be made; or, that revelation remains to be given...

[1] Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 2.
[2] Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity : Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1991), p. 3.
[3] George W. Stroup, The Promise of Narrative Theology : Recovering the Gospel in the Church (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), p. 107.

Hans Frei on Typology or Figural reading

Hans Frei has done most in recent decades to rehabilitate figurative or typological reading as a necessary component of Biblical hermeneutics. Building on the work of literary scholar Eric Auerbach, Frei argued that the Bible points to its own unity and inner coherence by inviting figural interpretation. In Auerbach’s terms:

Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or person in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while second involves or fulfills the first. The two poles of a figure are separated in time, but both, being real events or persons, are within temporality. The are both contained in the flowing stream which is historical life, and only the comprehension, the intellectus spiritualis, of their interdependence is a spiritual act.[1]

In other words: typology shows that two events or characters are part of the one connected stream of history in way that is not necessarily obvious from mere analysis of causality. The prefiguring of one by the other is discerned by (or, perhaps better, revealed to) the reader. In theologian Frei’s words:

In figural interpretation the figure itself is real in its own place, time, and right and without any detraction from that reality it prefigures the reality that will fulfill it. This figural relation not only brings into coherent relation events in bibical narration, but allows also the fitting of each present occurrence and experience into a real, narrative framework or world. Each person, each occurrence is a figure of that providential narrative in which it is also an ingredient.[2]

Unlike allegorical reading, typological interpretation points to the embeddedness of the events in a common narrative framework governed by providence.[3] These are ‘real’ or ‘historical’ at least in the sense that they gain their meaning from a relation to divine providence – the same providential narrative in which the reader of the text then in turn finds herself.[4]

This observation dovetails with Nicholas Lash’s proposal for a ‘performative’ reading of Scripture. There is a sort of double typology at work: the reader of Scripture is invited to see not only types of the Messiah in the OT narratives, but also then to model his own life (and death) after the pattern of the life of Christ. The structure of shadow and fulfilment is not repeated in the life of the believer (the believer’s life is not the reality prefigured in some way by Christ); but the typological similarity serves to bind the disciple into the same reality as the world of the text, within the frame of the same providential narrative. The text may serve not only as a type of Christ but also, in a secondary way, as a type of the follower of Christ.

[1] Erich Auerbach, Mimesis : The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 73.
[2] Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative : A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 153.
[3] The great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye, for his part, wrote: ‘Typology points to future events that are often thought of as transcending time, so that they contain a vertical lift as well as a horizontal move forward.’ Is ‘transcending’ the right verb? Typology as it is used in the NT, and as observed by Hans Frei, reconfigures time certainly, but doesn’t overcome or dispense with it (if that is what is meant by ‘transcending’ here). Northrop Frye, The Great Code - the Bible in Literature (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1982), p. 82.
[4] This is what Frei argued had been ‘eclipsed’ in all the debates about what it was the texts refered to.

The Centre for Public Christianity

These guys are good, very good.

Nicholas Lash on Performing the Scriptures

This notion of ‘performing the Scriptures’ was highlighted in an influential essay by Nicholas Lash.[1] He begins from the rather obvious point that reading or interpretation of a text depends largely on the kind of text being used: ‘different kinds of text call for different kinds of reading’.[2] To read some texts – in particular, those texts which are ‘works of art’ – does require the assistance of experts; however, the role of experts in reading texts while indispensible, is subordinate. Their expert ‘reading’ is not the fundamental form of interpretation. Rather, ‘there are at least some texts that only begin to deliver their meaning in so far as they are ‘brought into play’ through interpretative performance’.[3]

Having used King Lear and a Beethoven score as examples, Lash now applies his insight to the New Testament, suggesting that ‘the fundamental form of the Christian interpretation of scripture is the life, activity and organization of the believing community’.[4] Christian practice can properly be described as ‘interpretative action’ – a performance of the texts, in other words. This performance, in its turn, is an enactment of the conviction that the best (‘best’ because most appropriate to the text in question) reading of these texts is as the story of Jesus, human beings and God. The performative interpretation of Scripture can also be called ‘Christian discipleship’. Lash allows that performances may differ over history, as circumstances change; but though the story may be told differently, it cannot be a different story if it is to be a performance of this text. The original meaning of the text gives an appropriate constraint to later performances of it.

This points to an important difference between Scripture and King Lear, which has to do with history. The New Testament self-conciously adheres to particular past events. Its original meaning was not merely that Jesus Christ was representative of certain fundamental human virtues, but that he was one man ‘in whom the mystery of divine action is seen to have been embodied and disclosed’.[5] So, for Lash, to suppose that we could render an authentic performance of the New Testament utterly disconnected from the historical would be to tell a different story from the one the New Testament itself tells. Lash goes on: ‘…for the practice of Christianity, the performacne of the biblical text, to be true…must not be not only ‘true to life’, but ‘true to his life’; and not only ‘true to his life’, but ‘true to God’.[6]


[1] Nicholas Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," in Theology on the Way to Emmaus (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005).
[2] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 38.
[3] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 41.
[4] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 42.
[5] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 45.
[6] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 45.

Romance, by Christine Breillat - a review

I wrote this review of Christine Breillat's film 'Romance' in 2002. I was invited to see it by Anglican Media Sydney, and to participate in a panel organised by the Sydney Morning Herald. The film had been banned, and then the ban overturned. The panel included a feminist, a pornographer who had formerly been a censor (would you believe), a 'concerned parent', and me, the Christian.


Let me be direct: don’t go and see this movie. Romance is crude, pretentious, repugnant, sad and dull. I could not recommend this film to anyone, on either moral and artistic grounds. However, should this film have been banned (as it was momentarily by the Australian office of Film and Literature Classification)? Should Christians have campaigned against the public screening of this and similar pieces?

Having seen the film (participating in a panel run by the Sydney Morning Herald at the behest of Anglican Media), I think not. If you list the various sexual activities depicted in this film you would be likely to question my judgement: genital nudity, oral sex, sado-masochism, rape, and most controversially, scenes of actual (as opposed to simulated) sexual intercourse - the whole repertoire. However, there were certain features of the context of these depictions, as I will explain, that made them different in character even to some less technically revealing M and MA-rates films.

Romance is a deliberately ironic title. Director Catherine Breillat narrates the sexual odyssey of Marie, a young school teacher. Marie is in love with the narcissistic Paul, but he is sexually cold. As a result, she leaves his bed and seeks satisfaction in bold sexual experimentation with a variety of partners. None of the new experiences seem particularly satisfactory; some are even abusive. The men Marie meets are her biggest problem - though she desires them, they are almost all twisted in some way. Her sequence of experiences lead to a devastating rape at the hands of a casual lover. Eventually, her only liberation from her relationship is through a pregnancy and the murder of Paul. We are then treated to a technicolour childbirth scene - which drew the only gasp of shock from the audience!

This is a French film with all the surrealism and metaphysical ruminating, existentialism and feminism one could want for. It is not particularly erotic. In fact, the result of showing so much was rather comic at first, and then extremely dull. Having prayed “lead me not into temptation” as I entered the cinema, I found my prayer unexpectedly answered. It is a cold journey: the audience is not drawn to sympathise with any character in the traditional way. Marie’s sexual journey is a tragic, frustrating and disappointing one.

I would not call Romance pornographic. Pornography exploits desire in search of profit. It is about lust, quick, on-tap, sexual fantasy without the bother of a relationship. Romance was bad - even revolting - but it wasn’t porn. It was sexually cold. It was aimed at a cappuccino-drinking, art-house crowd and will only be shown in small inner-city cinemas. If it hadn’t been banned, it wouldn’t have made it to our screens at all, I daresay.

The experience of viewing Romance led me to several observations. The first is that the response of law - banning in this case - is almost always counter-productive, especially when the work involved has something to say, not just an intent to titillate. Advocating a ban is a simplistic reaction to something which asks for a more complex response, and inevitably brings more people in to see the film! Romance continues an ongoing exploration of female sexuality in our society which includes women’s magazines and televised inanities like Sex in the City and Ally McBeal. At least this film is honest, and doesn’t glamorise promiscuous sex, unlike Pretty Woman and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Here was a raw and open portrayal of the curse’s consequence for the female: “your desire will be for him, and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16). For all her attempts at liberating herself, Marie repeatedly assumes attitudes of submission to men, even in her fantasies. While claiming feminist credentials, I felt that Breillat allowed us to see the degrading of Caroline Ducey, the actress playing Marie. I was interested that the representative feminist on the panel was quite disappointed with the film.

Secondly, even though I would not have others banned from seeing this film, I must discourage them. The cinema opens our souls like almost no other art form. Our eyes are the lamps of our whole bodies, as Jesus said (Matt 6:22); what we see effects us. In some way, human beings feel that to watch acts of whatever type is to participate in them in some way, to come dangerously close to committing the act itself. The veterans of war know this too well. Our memories capture images, and they may never fade away. Christians know the fragility and vulnerability of the inner human only too well. While allowing a choice for adults to view this film, we can also urge them to choose not to.

Thirdly, as was all too evident at this special preview screening, sixties-style liberalism is a hypocritical and condescending ideology. In an introductory lecture, we were told of the “principled” distributors and film reviewers who pushed for the review of the ban; and of the speaker’s fundamentalist father, who didn’t understand art. Liberalism pretends to appeal to “principles”, like “freedom of speech” and “the right for adults to choose what they watch”, all the while advocating nothing of the sort. Would the liberal press have argued so strongly for the right to see an anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi film? Or a gory anti-abortion film? Of course not - and neither should they. We are all absolutists, and we all believe in censorship, ultimately. But liberals try to conceal their absolutism with an appeal to these golden principles of the Enlightenment. It is about time their bluff was called!

The dangers of small beer...

John Dickson on Easter

This is a terrific piece by Dr John Dickson.

He resists trying to prove too much.

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.