Lectures - for or against?

A while back I wrote about what makes a good lecturer.

I have been thinking - and reading - again about lectures and their place in tertiary education, and especially in the preparation of Christian ministers. Most seminaries I know of have a very heavily lecture-based programme, with few tutorials or seminars, if any. In contrast to university teaching, which is usually a rather sparsely arranged timetable of lectures, seminaries crowd their days with alloted teaching hours. Partly, I speculate, this is because of a view of theology as not only a method to be demonstrated but a body of knowledge to be passed on in an authoritative way by recognised teachers. Also, theology is such a composite of disciplines - language, history, text-interpretation, philosophy - that it is hard to leave anything out of the programme, or to allow for an option-based course of study.

But, speaking from my experience as a student, I found lectures a largely very frustrating and slow way to learn, unless the lecturer was peculiarly good. It is particularly inefficient if the lecturer feels he/she has to cover everything in a particular course, because the lectures are replacing the role played by a text book. Further, a lecturing style that depends on the questions of students loses impact with large classes. And, frankly, I am not interested in the ignorance of my fellow students (and neither are they in mine!). In theological colleges, lecturers are often too nice (believe it or not!) to students and pander too much to their worst vices (especially by catering to their passivity in learning...).

So: lectures - for or against? What are lectures good for? When do they work, when do they fail? What can a lecture give that you can't get from a book in less time?

Andrew Cameron on Homophobia

beyond homophobia

I have been waiting a long time for someone to say this, and to say it so well.

This one's better?

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A Wordle of my Thesis

Things Fall Apart - a sermon on Judges 19-21

I preached this sermon at St Mary's Maidenhead, 16 June, 2008. Apologies for posting it in full like this, but it helps me to have it here. Broughton Knox famously used to begin his sermon classes by saying 'where did this sermon fail?' I think I could make several suggestions! No doubt my friends in the blogosphere will be happy to add to my list.

"I want to start by turning with you to the last verse of the passage:

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.

Being able to do as you see fit, or to being given the right to determine what is right for yourself sounds great, doesn’t it? One of the most famous graffiti slogans of the May 1968 student revolutions in France – that moment in recent which has proved incredibly influential in Western culture – was it is forbidden to forbid. That could be a motto for today: to find yourself as your own moral yardstick is exactly what we 21st century people think of as maturity and freedom. It is mature because determining what is right in your own eyes is taking responsibility for yourself and your own actions, isn’t it? It is freeing yourself from having moral training wheels and riding the full size adult bike. And it is the freedom to be true to yourself, not beholden to moral standards that are imposed on you from outside – whether that is in the name of God or someone else. Ultimately, what matters is being true to your own vision of what is right and wrong – acting according to your own deeply-held convictions and intuitions, being an authentic and individual person because you answer the call of the voice within you, in your heart, and because you reject the rules and regulations that come from without, imposed on your life by others. What is right for me is right for me, in my perspective – this at least I know, whether or not it is right for you or not. This is what we want our children to learn: an independence rather than a conformity in choosing right and wrong, an ability not to accept everything there are told. It sounds like the height of civilisation.

But what is it like to live in such a world? Can human beings live like this, with every doing as he or she sees fit? In Judges 19-21 we have a ghastly reminder of what life is really like when everyone in a society becomes his or her own judge. Even a society with a claim to be the people of God himself is capable of terrible cruelty. In reality, men and women – and especially men concerning women, it seems – are only too ready to be completely barbaric, given the opportunity. No matter how enlightened are our minds, the heart of humankind is dark.
The chapter we heard read for us is just the beginning of a series of events that are a blot on Israel’s history and show that the high hopes for Israel’s future are completely in tatters. Just as last week you saw that Israel had chosen to worship God not in the way he commanded but according to their own choices, they are now choosing to determine right and wrong for themselves. Noticeably missing from this episode is … a Judge. No redeemer is sent by God to liberate Israel from her captivity to another nation, the Philistines or whoever. And this is mainly because Israel is not invaded in this episode. She doesn’t need saving from the grip of another nation; here, she is in captivity only to her own corruption.

The story unfolds in three stages. First, in chapter 19 we have the strange episode of the Levite with no name and his concubine. It starts, as you heard, with the man pursuing his runaway girl to her father’s place. And no matter what the argument was between the couple, the father-in-law and the husband seem to get on famously, and so it is with some effort that the Levite actually makes to leave to go home. And that is what causes the problem, because they are caught out on the road as night approaches; and they are somewhat afraid of seeking hospitality among foreigners in the city of Jebus. The man says (look at vs 12) "No. We won't go into an alien city, whose people are not Israelites. We will go on to Gibeah." Of course – among fellow Israelites we will be safe.

It is a horrible error of judgement – though an understandable one. The old man takes them home from the city square in Gibeah; but the mob still gathers, and demands the visitor so they can rape him. Of course it reminds us very strongly of another incident in the Old Testament – the story of Lot entertaining the angelic visitors in the city of Sodom, whose citizens also demanded that he send out the men so that they could have sex with then. Now, make no mistake: in the old story, these were pagans, non-Israelites, and this was a story that showed how disgusting and barbaric they were. And this episode is the reason that God destroys the city utterly.

What is different now? The mob in question are from Israel, and so are their would-be victims. Israel has become as bad as ever Sodom was… that is the extent of their distance from the God who had redeemed them.

And just as Lot offered his virgin daughters to the mob instead of his visitors, here too, a misguided sense of hospitality reigns: the old man offers his own daughter and the concubine as substitute victims for the Levite (vs 24). In the end it is the Levite who pushes out his concubine to mob, so that they can gang-rape her.

In the morning, there she is on the step. Is she dead at this point? We don’t know: but her humanity has been taken – utterly betrayed and unprotected by her husband, she has been treated like a piece of meat by the mob. As if to underscore that she has been destroyed as a person by this terrible night, her husband – who clearly had a talent for grand public statements – hacks her into pieces and sends her in twelve grisly packages to the tribes of Israel. And, after they got over the surprise and the smell no doubt, verse 30 explains that Everyone who saw it said, "Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!"

Well this then is the beginning of the second phase of the terrible tale; for the Israelites gather in response to the Levite’s call to work out what they ought to do about this terrible mob in Gibeah. Notice that Levite’s story tends to gloss over his own role in the death of his girl. It is self-justifying stuff – and our sympathy for him ought to drain away at this point. And so begins a terrible and destructive campaign of civil war, in which Israel, like the concubine, ends up being dismembered. There is death and destruction on a massive scale, even by today’s standards.
In this episode there is some inquiring after the Lord’s decision: but only as to which tribe is to go up first against the Benjamites (see vs 18). At the very opening of the book of Judges (1:2) is was the tribe of Judah who was to be in the vanguard against the Canaanites in winning the land. Once again, Judah is go ahead of the others: but this time, it is to their defeat.

Now this is an unexpected twist; why do they get defeated in this? Isn’t their cause right? Aren’t the Benjamites an awful crew of gang-rapists who need swift and sever justice? Isn’t the Lord behind that kind of thing? But this story isn’t as simple and straightforward as that. That Judah gets defeated here shows that in some way all Israel compromised, and that God won’t be manipulated by groups of human beings for their own purposes – especially in war.

We have to pass over the details of the civil war: it is enough to say that, like all civil wars, the consequences were devastating, the violence horrendous and the destruction enormous. The flower of Israel – all the best warriors and fighting men - are killed. By the end of the chapter, not only Gibeah but the whole tribe of Benjamin has been ruined. Only 600 men are left, even the women and children having been slaughtered in the struggle.

And now we reach the third part of the story: because the other tribes in Israel get caught in a bind here. See verse 1 - they make some rash promises – there are a few of those in Judges, aren’t there? – and then realise that they are dooming Benjamin to death. That they are hacking off one of their own limbs, because they are guaranteeing that Israel will never be whole again. And this, they realise effects them, because they will not truly be able to be Israel without Benjamin, yet they have promised not to provide them with wives. Here’s the dilemma, from vs 15ff:

15 The people grieved for Benjamin, because the LORD had made a gap in the tribes of Israel. 16 And the elders of the assembly said, "With the women of Benjamin destroyed, how shall we provide wives for the men who are left? 17 The Benjamite survivors must have heirs," they said, "so that a tribe of Israel will not be wiped out. 18 We can't give them our daughters as wives, since we Israelites have taken this oath: 'Cursed be anyone who gives a wife to a Benjamite.'

So, wives have to be found, and in large numbers… This leads to two mass abductions of women – firstly, of 400 virgins from Jabesh Gilead; and then 200 women of Shiloh are seized. This all because the Israelites are sticklers for their vows. Once again, their moral compass seems to be off: they are justifying the rape, en masse, of 600 women, because of their dutiful observance of their own promises. They have got things out of proportion... it is fair to say that here Israel is trying to do the right thing, trying to calculate the way forward through some very difficult problems. But in doing so it is coming up with some very tenuous and problematic solutions. In one sense, the behaviour of the mob in Gibeah – who are not trying to do good – is compounded by people who are trying to do good – to bring about restitution and righteousness. They only make it worse.

And so, by the end of the chapter the gap that the Lord in Israel made seems to be filled; but if you are a sensitive reader you won’t be feeling as if balance has been restored and all is right with the world and everything is tied up with a bow once again at this point. Something deeply troubling has occurred. The writer doesn’t shove it down our throats, mind you: he doesn’t have to. We can see that Israel looks as if it has completely unravelled. And so, we get to that strange ending of this blood-sodden book:

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.

The results of Israel’s lack of attention to the word of God and their stubborn insistence in deciding what was right for themselves are plain to see. At this point, Israel is not different to the nations around. And we ought to pause here to remember just how contemporary this story is. It would be easy to see this story, and the other stories of the book of Judges as being part of another world. We don’t recognise the place names, and the customs. It can feel more like Mordor than here. But we can only think that with a wilful blindness to what we 21st century people are like. We think because of our technology that we are more civilised and less prone to this kind of outrageous behaviour, less willing to condone the mistreatment and rape of women, less liable to go to war for trivial or misplaced reasons. Only someone without access to a newspaper could think that this is so. The story of the concubine could have happened today. If there is anything the history of the 20th century has taught us, it is that the animal brutality of human beings is not far from the surface. As the scholar George Steiner once said:

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

Being cultured or sophisticated or educated doesn’t protect us from ourselves.

And not even being Christian does: the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, in which people hacked each other to death with machetes, involved professing Christians. In fact, before the genocide, Rwanda was called the ‘most Christian country in Africa’, with a strong evangelical church. And yet this did not prevent an orgy of murder and rape. The book of Judges serves as warning to us that being inattentive to the word of God can only lead to moral and social chaos. That moral independence we so desire, that we think is a sign of our maturity and freedom, that we think can be attained by superior education and advanced knowledge of science or even by correct and true religion, is in fact a dangerous temptation. Christians like us are just as capable of becoming blind to our faults as anyone else. Being told to look inside our hearts to discover there what is right and wrong is a frightening idea, if you know the true nature of the human heart.

So what are we to do? Let’s look again at that last verse:

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.

Is this a suggestion that in fact Israel had its political system all wrong? That the answer to this chaos is to institute a centralised and powerful system of government capable of bring about some order, or exercising some decent authority? Is that what is needed?

It should only take you a minute to think through the later history of Israel to realise what a crock that suggestion is. You couldn’t have sat down in the dust, with the nation collapsed around you in the period of the exile and thought, well, yes, having a king was what we needed all along. Obeying the king who was intent on accumulating his own wealth and on providing shrines for all the other gods was not really any better than everyone doing as he saw fit, according to his own heart. What Israel really needed was not a systematic change of the style of government, but a king after God’s own heart – a ruler who would rule as God would rule, not in the interests of his own power, but for the good of all; and the people of Israel themselves needed a change of their own hearts.

This is where the book of Judges shows that it raises more questions than it answers. We can’t read it well without remembering that it is part of a bigger story – a story that tells of God’s faithfulness to his own promises as much as it tells of Israel’s repeated faithlessness. God alone fulfils his promises in this case despite of not because of his people. In fact, the two tribes that survived until the time of Jesus were… guess which? This is a huge encouragement at this point, of course: you might have thought at the end of the book of Judges that the whole Israel idea was dead and buried – or at best badly tainted. But God, the Lord of Israel, is not finished. And, he has provided for us in Jesus a king after his own heart: a true leader and Lord; and he has sent his Holy Spirit into our hearts so that we might respond to him in faith and obedience, as Israel failed to do.

We may well look around today and see that God’s people are in disarray. We can see deep uncertainty, even amongst avowed followers of Jesus Christ, as to what is right and what is wrong. We hear even Christians appealing to what their hearts are telling them over and against what the Bible plainly teaches. We are under tremendous pressure to conform to the culture around us, and in many ways we do just that. We are divided by multiple disagreements over things that are great and small. We are tempted to engineer our own solutions, or to trust in our own techniques and stratagems for building the church. And yet we need not be dismayed; because if Israel got this low and this corrupt and yet still God remained true, then we need not doubt him today.

God is working His purpose out as year succeeds year,
God is working His purpose out and the time is drawing near;
Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be,
When the earth shall be fill'd with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

Sacha Wittgenstein

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not about to make this a 'how cute is my kid' blog, but:

Sacha, aged 5, says to me the other day -

Opposite is opposite of same

I am still thinking about it...

Audio Bibles

Hey - does anyone have any advice on audio bibles?

I would like to get one I can listen to in the car - so either one I can burn onto CDs, or one that is already on CDs.

I don't much like cheesy synth music in the background, but if that's the way it comes, so be it... NIV or ESV.

Let me know!

Richard Muller, and the uses of tradition accounts/genealogies in theology

I have finally started reading Richard Muller's The Unaccommodated Calvin. And a scholarly work with a more authoritative tone I have yet discovered. Muller knows his stuff, and knows he knows his stuff. In a nutshell, his thesis is that Calvin needs to be understood in his own context and on his own terms, and that this yields a more complicated picture than the one we usually get. Calvin must not be accomodated to any latter-day matrix or theological system, whether Barthian or even 'Calvinist'. Furthermore, you cannot see him as utterly divorced from the intellectual context that preceeded him, even when he differed from it. And again: you can't conclude from a simple reading of the later edition of the Institutes that 'Calvin's doctrine of XYZ was...'. His writings are more complex and variegated than that. He showed more development and more subtlety.

So, is it possible to learn from Calvin, or indeed any figure from history, without the historian always blowing the whistle? Muller concludes, nicely that

A clever theologian can accomodate Calvin to nearly any agenda; a faithful theologian - and a good historian - will seek to listen to Calvin, not to use him. p. 188

But I want to know: how? Given all the caveats that Muller has laid down, is there any way of accessing Calvin for today? How would he have us do this?

Whch leads me to a methodological point. It is standard practice in theological (and some philosophical) thinking to give an account of the tradition in which you stand, and also to show how you are correcting a tradition that went wrong at point X with thinker Y. It's a rhetorically powerful move, of course. Theology does this much more than other disciplines, because it believes in continuity as essential: even Luther and Calvin were at pains to show that they were not merely innovators, for example. And yet, this is a process that is evidently fraught with danger. We can give a wry smile now at the neo-orthodox accounts of 'Calvin against the Calvinists', for example, which have been proven to be simplistic. John Milbank has been taken to task for his sloppy readings of Dun Scotus (Milbank cites Scotus as the point at which theology got it all wrong and it has been downhill ever since).

But, under Muller's method, is such a process even possible? Is it possible to narrate the tradition in the way that theologians of all colours do as a matter of course?

Thanks are due...

My interest in the topic of human identity – and the thought that Christian martyrdom might have some bearing on it – was provoked in the first instance by my daily encounters with the teenage skeptics that inhabited the classrooms of St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney, Australia, where I was School Chaplain from 2000-03. They were adamant that they were not going to accept a thin gruel of moralism from me as an alternative to the freedom to choose who to be on their own terms. Clearly, different ways of being a self were at issue. Thanks are due to them for not allowing their resident theologian to be happy with the glib answers that came immediately to mind.

I have been richly blessed by having, in Professor Oliver O’Donovan and Dr Bernd Wannenwetsch and more latterly Professor Nigel Biggar, teachers of the finest calibre in the field of moral theology. I am grateful in particular for the direction and stimulus given by my supervisor Dr Wannenwetsch throughout the writing of the thesis; and for his scholarly and personal example.

I would not have been able to consider coming to Oxford at all if not for the remarkable generosity of Mr Vanda Gould. In addition, he has been a source of prayerful encouragement and pastoral care to the whole family in his regular visits, emails and phone calls. I would like also to thank the Trustees of the Joan Augusta Mackenzie Travelling Scholarship, and the Principal, Bursar and Council of Moore Theological College, Sydney, for the Roberts Prize and other discretionary funds that were made available to us during our time in the UK. We have been truly blessed in this regard.

Friends new and old have been an integral part of the mostly solitary experience of writing a thesis. In particular, Kosta Milkov, Christopher Barnett and Guido de Graaff have been magnificent fellow travellers, along with Russ Dawn, Jonathan Brant, Matheson Russell and Charles Byrd. Reading new theological texts with the members of OXCAT on Friday afternoons has kept me going; and it was a joy to rediscover Calvin and more with Sam Allberry. We will never forget the welcome and support of the staff and members of St Ebbe’s Church of England. Justin Moffatt and David Höhne kept chivvying me along; Alan Lukabyo and Stephen Jacobs kept writing real letters, on actual paper. Bec Watson and Karen Beilharz sent Campos coffee beans. My sister, Anna Cox, and her husband Matthew brought me a new computer when the old one died. There were people I hardly know - and some I do - who stopped by my blog to give me helpful advice or pointed me to an overlooked reference.

My parents-in-law, Richard and Jackie Wallder, did not live to see the end of this project, though they were instrumental in it coming to pass. We miss them. To my own parents I owe an inestimable debt of gratitude. My mother, Christine Jensen, made more than one trip from Australia to keep us all going. My father, Peter Jensen, has read and re-read my work, often telling me what it was that I was trying to say when it had become unclear even to me. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

These years, though not without trials, have been happy ones for a young family. The joy of my life continues to be that I share it with my four intriguing and wonderful children, Simon, Sacha, Matilda, and our very own English rose, Freya; and with Catherine, who bore the load more than anyone, and to whom this thesis is dedicated, with love.

Handing in, today

Today's the day I hand in my thesis.

I am sure it will be an anti-climactic feeling... and then the waiting to have it assessed...

I am sure that I will discover a typo minutes after collecting it from the printers.

But, it is finished...

Princeton Seminary Youth Lectures

When I was a School Chaplain, way back in the day, I found this series of lectures on Youth Ministry just about the most stimulating thing going. I didn't always agree, but this was such a change from the usual shallow, technique-driven stuff that is around about youth ministry. Here is actual theology.

A particular highlight was this one, by Kenda Creasy Dean:

'Holding on to our Kisses: A Hormonal Theology of Adolescence'

but you can check out lectures from Miroslav Volf and Jurgen Moltmann among others.

Billy Graham in Australia 1959

My relatives went forward at the crusades in Sydney in the same visit to Australia.

Locke's tolerance - its limits

'Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon the atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.'

John Locke, Letter on Toleration


The father of modern liberal politics shows his true colours...

Anne Lamott

I have been reading two wonderful books by Anne Lamott:

Bird by Bird - a terrific book about writing;

and her spirutual memoir

Traveling Mercies.

I won't review them or anything: but they are books to change your life by.

Keller - the Gospel in all its forms

H/T to Stephen:

an interesting article by Tim Keller from New York, on how he preaches the gospel.
He sums up:

Today there are many who doubt that there is just one gospel. That gives them the warrant to ignore the gospel of atonement and justification. There are others who don't like to admit that there are different forms to that one gospel. That smacks too much of "contextualization," a term they dislike. They cling to a single presentation that is often one-dimensional. Neither of these approaches is as true to the biblical material, nor as effective in actual ministry, as that which understands that the Bible presents one gospel in several forms.

'.

or

.'

?

Churchman article

This Summer's Churchman has hit the shelves of theological colleges and pastor's studies everywhere and it includes the first in my series of three articles entitled The Christian Revolution. This issue contains 1. Liberty.

Lee Gatiss has an interesting article on Richard Baxter, too. And Tony Wright concludes his two-parter on Death, the Dead and the Underworld in Biblical Theology.

Frightening Children?

Jason cites a very interesting quote from CS Lewis about frightening children...

Personally, I find children terrifying.

[it's a joke]

In Praise of Teachers Meme

Back in September last year, I wrote a post in praise of teachers.

In it, I listed ten of my favourite teachers selected from the whole spread of my educational career (20+ years and still going...). I gave a brief explanation in each case.

Now, I am not much one for memes - but could this one work? I need your help.

Here goes:

List FIVE of your favourite teachers, and tell us what made them great. Then tag some people whose blogs you read...

I tag:

Justin, Karen, Ruth, Jason, Byron, Guy, Nicole and Sam

Songs of Sydney - 11

The Cicada that ate Five Dock, would you believe...

Why Christians are not people of principle

I read a terrific book by Stanley Fish once, called The Trouble with Principle.

That was a while ago; but for some reason I was thinking about it again this morning. Principled people - and there are Christians among them, granted - are some of the most dangerous people there are. That is: everything in moral reasoning becomes ordered to a set of ideals (or even a single ideal). That means, in practice that anything is justifiable in the name of these ideals or principles. You can invade Iraq and torture prisoners in the name of freedom, for example. In the name of fairer and better government with more integrity you can knife your political opponents in the back. Do evil, that good may result. It is (so the calculation runs) a lesser evil than the evil that may result if the ultimate good is not defended.

There is, naturally, a deal of suspicion of these kind of principles, too. What alternative is there to them is the problem - to be unprincipled?

But Christian discipleship is not the following of a set of principles. It is discipleship: it is following a master, imitation of an example (while at the same time being spiritually united to this master). It isn't a set of truths (though it is TRUE, and it trades in TRUTH, for sure) from which all else must be deduced in some process of ethical calculation. Even 'love' can't be held as a mere principle: it must be worked out in the light of the example of love given to us and worked in us.

Away then with principles!

Songs of Sydney - 10

The Skyhooks, and Somewhere in Sydney

Songs of Sydney - 9

The best of the lot: Gotta Love this City...

'my city is a whore...'

indeed.

Songs of Sydney - 6

Sydney, nights are warm, daytime telly, blue-rinse dawn..



At least, you won't have time to be bored...

Songs of Sydney - 4

The Miracle of Marrickville!

Songs of Sydney - 8

King St - well, now, this is the King St of my youth... Coles New World is now the Dendy cinema.

On King St, I'm a king...

Songs of Sydney - 2

Songs of Sydney - 3

Endnote trouble shooting

Does anyone know what you do in Endnote when you want to cite a work by a Pope?

It always comes out as II, John Paul...

Songs of Sydney - 7

Where else could this come from?

Songs of Sydney - 5

The sweat, the desperation, and the lure of a better view of the harbour...

Songs of Sydney - 1

Ah, Sydney: I can already smell the dog pee evaporating from your footpaths, and the rage of the drivers of a million cars on a February afternoon, and the dust blowing in from the drought...

The Short Abstract

Ok, we are down to the nitty gritty now, and I need help refining and clarifying this abstract. Remember, be CONSTRUCTIVELY critical and help protect my oh-so-fragile ego...

This thesis asks: what kind of self is the Christian, as it is discovered in Christian martyrdom? It will be argued that Christian martyrdom provides a coherent and compelling narration of the self in terms of the narrative of the life and death of Jesus Christ: a narrative that orients the self in hope towards the good and turns the self towards recognition of and sacrificial service of other selves. It is established (following Balthasar) that martyrdom is the external representation in the lives of some of the inner reality of all Christian disciples. A number of modern secular accounts of selfhood and identity recognize the importance of martyrdom as a key point in the conflict of the meaning of human identity. However, as is shown from the work of Salman Rushdie and Charles Taylor, these accounts do not successfully describe the self as it is revealed in Christian martyrdom. Rushdie even questions the authenticity of a religiously-construed self. The thesis then (chapters 3-6) offers a description and an analysis of self-identity as it is informed by martyrdom, in conversation with T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral. Christian discipleship is not the path of establishing oneself through security, pursuing the good made possible through collaboration with earthly power, making oneself an identity through action according to some ideal, or even seeking earthly or heavenly renown. Christian selfhood is (rather) narrated against the experience of peirasmo,j (temptation/testing) and with reference to providentia dei. Both themes are explained Christologically (chapter 7). Martyrdom is not a witness to the innocence of the martyr, but rather to her vindication by the divine judge on account of Jesus Christ. Finally, it is argued that the Christian self is offered to others as an act of suffering persuasion.

Augustine, our contemporary

Augustine, in giving voice to Roman hedonism, could be speaking of modern liberal Westerners:

"But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are nowise concerned that the republic be less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its victories, or still better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us? This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their pride. Let the people applaud not those who protect their interests, but those who provide them with pleasure. Let no severe duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden. Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures; not with a hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to another man's property, than of that done to one's own person. If a man be a nuisance to his neighbor, or injure his property, family, or person, let him be actionable; but in his own affairs let everyone with impunity do what he will in company with his own family, and with those who willingly join him. Let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for every one who wishes to use them, but specially for those who are too poor to keep one for their private use. Let there be erected houses of the largest and most ornate description: in these let there be provided the most sumptuous banquets, where every one who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit, dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it let him be silenced, banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who procure for the people this condition of things, and preserve it when once possessed. Let them be worshipped as they wish; let them demand whatever games they please, from or with their own worshippers; only let them secure that such felicity be not imperilled by foe, plague, or disaster of any kind."

He even has a role for the religious!


City of God, II.20

Iris Murdoch

Just a note this morning:

I have been reading the excellent novels of Iris Murdoch. They are shot through with her post-God attempt to find a moral ideal, a conception of the Good that will be tenable in the contemporary world. The themes? Well, love, sex, God and death of course! What else is worth talking about? It reminds me that the best moral thinking these days is done by novelists. The narrative form is such an advantage.

I have read thus far:
The Bell
Bruno's Dream
A Severed Head (read it ages ago)
The Time of the Angels

and I am reading

The Black Prince.

Next: Henry and Cato
and then -

The Sea, The Sea.

Sin in the Life of the Believer - 3

But ... don’t forget that Paul is stern with the sinful believer, too. In 1 Corinthians 6 he reminds the Corinthians that the Kingdom of God does not belong to the rampant sinner. Ephesians 5:5 is equally strong: “For of this you can be sure; no immoral, impure or greedy person…has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” The message for the sinful Christian is not, “well, we all sin sometimes, but “stop it and repent!”

Hebrews is even stronger. On the one hand, the author enthusiastically explains how the Christian has absolutely free access into the presence of God himself through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. There is every reason to be confident of our salvation. But, he is also uncompromising about sin. “If we deliberately go on sinning” writes the author, “no sacrifice for sins is left!” To the Christian who said “I sin all the time”, he would say “Don’t!” 1 John backs him up: “I am writing this so you will not sin” he says, “but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father.”

Not bad advice, actually. Christians (well, I, at least) do love to wallow in guilt. But maybe that’s not good enough. If I am to think more biblically I might instead remember who I am on account of Christ. And I might have courage to tackle my sin (with the Spirit’s help) and kill it off. It has no place in my life, after all.

However, I still live in a warzone, for the time being. I still live life in the weak flesh, I still live under the effects of sin, I still live (for now) on the wrong side of eternity. In Romans 8, Paul tackles exactly this state of affairs. (Before you read it, cross out “sinful nature” in the NIV and replace it with “flesh”.) The Christian continues to live in a sinful environment – even in a weak and sinful body – but is now controlled by the Spirit. The Christian experiences first hand the rot of the sinful era: but also yearns with the Spirit for the future redemption of the body. Most reassuringly of all for the overwhelmed believer, there is no condemnation for those in Christ. If God is for us, who can be against us? We are more than conquerors…

Sin in our lives is a contradiction of our very identity: an absurdity, given our destiny. It isn’t who we are any more.

Some Perspective

A poster on Ruth Gledhill's blog shared this:

"This is to let you know the sad news that David Mohamed Ali, a Somali Christian evangelist and a long-standing member of St Matthew's, was shot dead last week by two Islamist terrorists in Badoia, Somalia, because of his Christian faith. He had been sent to Badoia by Ethiopian and Somali borderpolice, for reasons that are not clear.

David was an intelligent and gifted evangelist who thought deeply about hisf aith. For a while he ran a website for Christian Somalis. I had recentlygiven him a reference to do a Degree in Theology at ETC (EvangelicalTheological College), Addis Ababa. He was single man, aged about 35, who was based in Addis Ababa but travelled widely sharing his faith.

We thank God for his life and courageous witness, and pray for his mother,sister and other members of his family. We also pray for the Somali Christian community, that they may be comforted and strengthened at thistime when Christians are under great pressure in Somalia.
David's death comes just two weeks after four Christian teachers (2 British Somalis and 2 Kenyans) were killed in Beledwayne, Somalia."



[Ruth has been running an excellent series on persecution - really different stuff for a major newspaper. ]

Someone is wrong

See my earlier post on The Joy of Being Cross.

Sin in the Life of the Believer - 2

So, what to do then?

One favourite strategy of Christians down the centuries has been to take a minimal definition of sin. “Lowering the bar” in other words. You define sin using a set of rules or behaviours, and then you design your life so to avoid transgressing. Live in a nice tree-lined suburb. Talk to nice people about nice things. Work hard, never offend anyone. Keep away from attractive members of the opposite sex. Go to church, pay your taxes, recycle. Do not count as sin the more alarming topography of your inner world. Thank God that you are not like other people. Neat, huh?

There are two problems with minimalism. Firstly, Jesus seems to have a maximal definition of sin. His Sermon on the Mount convicts me on the basis of my intentions as well as my deeds; and it also urges me to take radical action against sin. True righteousness is not a matter of merely avoiding sin. It is active.

Secondly, if I am to pursue the path of love commanded by Jesus, I will risk sin in my interactions with other people. Other people are so hard to love, but you can’t be loving without them! No wonder the monastics used isolation in their quest for purity.

But how does the Bible address sin in the life of the believer? It is good to remember the robust conscience of the New Testament writers on the one hand; and the severe warnings they give against sin on the other. Paul does not write to “the sinners in Corinth” but to the “church of God…to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy”. He calls the church the “temple of the Holy Spirit”, and “the body of Christ”. His strategy for handling sin in the life of the believer is to remind Christians of their radical change in status. “ Your life is hid with Christ”; “ You are dead to sin, alive to Christ”; “ you are all sons of God”; “now you are light in the Lord”; “you are not your own…you were brought at a price”; “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified”; “we…have the firstfruits of the spirit”. The Christian is a home for the Holy Spirit and lives by that Spirit.

Do we doubt the power of God’s Spirit to change us?

An Evangelical Manifesto

H/T to Craig for this: a group of prominent Evangelical leaders in the US have released this statement, entitled 'An Evangelical Manifesto'. It is not brief - 7,000+ words - but, by golly, it is fascinating. It is an attempt to grab back Evangelical identity from its political uses in the US, and to distinguish Evangelicalism from fundamentalism. Here's a bit to chew on:

...the Evangelical message, "good news" by definition, is overwhelmingly positive, and always positive before it is negative. There is an enormous theological and cultural importance to the power of No, especially in a day when Everything is permitted and It is forbidden to forbid. Just as Jesus did, Evangelicals sometimes have to make strong judgments about what is false, unjust, and evil. But first and foremost we Evangelicals are for Someone and for something rather than against anyone or anything. The Gospel of Jesus is the Good News of welcome, forgiveness, grace, and liberation from law and legalism. It is a colossal Yes to life and human aspirations, and an emphatic No only to what contradicts our true destiny as human beings made in the image of God.

There's much more, too. It needs thinking about and digesting.
Notable names amongst the signatories include Miroslav Volf, Kevin Vanhoozer, Darrell Bock, Leighton Ford, Walter Kaiser and Alvin Plantinga.

Sin in the Life of the Believer - 1

Sin is a remarkably persistent feature of the Christian life.

At least, it is of mine.

Despite of all the thousands of sermons, the stirring songs, despite all the evenings spent in bible study groups, the private prayer and bible study, the encouraging words of other Christians, the evident work of God in and around me, the conventions and conferences – I still look into my heart and find there envy, lust, anger, pettiness, selfish ambition, meanness and greed. Quite a collection, isn’t it? And I have become used to seeing them there, and resigned to it. They do not shock me at all. “After all”, I tell myself, “we will always sin this side of Jesus’ return.”

But in the life of a Christian, sin is an absurdity. In the unbeliever, sin is a symptom of rebellion against God’s authority. But the Christian has submitted to God’s authority, and received new life and has a life hid with Christ in God, and faces no condemnation. The Christian is no longer a slave to sin. Yet, sin still rides on the Christian like a stowaway. We live within a world-wide-web of evil; and despite the call to be different to it, we still log on. We still suffer the effects of sin; and we still transmit them.

Even more than suffering, the absurdity of sin leads to spiritual despair. “ I know it’s wrong and I know Christianity is true” said the high school student in my office. “But I just can’t handle life as a hypocrite and I don’t think I can give up going to parties and drinking too much. Life with a conscience is too hard.” The presence of those creeps in my own heart causes me to despair ever of overcoming them and so I give way to their power. They make everything so complicated. I feel like a drowning man.

So, what to do then?

Ambrose on Justice

A great discovery for me has been the writing of Ambrose of Milan. It is striking how contemporary he is in charting a course between submission to the state and subversion of it. Here he is writing about justice in The Duties of Clergy (which I think he grasps in a beautifully biblical way):

The foundation, then, of justice is faith, for the hearts of the juts are precoccupied with faith; and the person who justly accuses himself constructs his justice upon good faith, for his justice is apparent when he confesses the truth. So the Lord says through Isaiah, "Behold I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone." This refers to Christ as the foundation of the church. For the faith of all believers is simply Christ; and the Church is, as it were, the form that justice takes, the common right of all. Her prayer is the prayer of the community' her works are the works of the community; her trials are the trials of the community. A just man, in sum, worthy of Christ, is someone who accepts that he is not his own. And that is why Paul insisted that Christ must be the foundation; because faith is the foundation of our works of justice, it is on him that they should be constructed.

1 Samuel 13-31 - 6

So the damage of Saul has taken a lifetime to undo, even though he appeared doomed from the start of his reign. Kingship has not yet proved a solution for Israel for their complaint. While Saul is not portrayed as greedy in the way Samuel feared kings would be, he is vain, lazy, rash, moody and willful. Sometimes he is just plain stupid. The narrative portrays him as to blame for his own downfall; but at the same time, there is nothing he can do to change the outcome, it seems. The hand of Yhwh is guiding events as always. In one sense, too, Saul takes the wrap for the folly of Israel in demanding a king. The wickedness of Israel in pleading for a king has had devastating effects. She has learnt a terrible lesson; the new true king had better take note, and Israel with him. Otherwise the terrible consequence of disobedience – that God would stop communicating with them – would be meted out on them too.

Was he doomed from the very start? D.M.Gunn is a scholar who thinks so, and points to the deliberate contrast between God’s instruction to Samuel to “appoint for them a king” in 1 Sam 8:22 and his later announcement that he had provided for himself a king from the sons of Jesse in 16:1. By this reading, Saul is a king who cannot succeed because he was never truly acknowledged by God as his choice in the first place. The rejection of Saul is God’s response to the people’s rejection of him. This perhaps explains why Saul is condemned for apparently trivial offences – when later we see David doing worse and surviving as king. But as the rejection sayings in 15:23, 26 insist, it is Saul’s repudiation of Yhwh that has provoked Yhwh’s repudiation of Saul.

On the other hand, there is no question but that David is the right man. He is a model of trust in Yhwh and loyalty to his anointed, although of course ironically it is he who is the true anointed. He refuses to take matters into his own hands and assassinate Saul (and Nabal); but rather trusts in the promise and intention of Yhwh who will manage events without David’s intervention. That said, he is also portrayed as decisive, charismatic and effective: brutal when necessary but also just. He is not greedy for spoil as Samuel had feared a king would be. Are there perhaps some shadows emerging in David’s character? The incident with Abigail innocently shows his weakness for a pretty feminine face. Certainly as a military figure he involved in killing on a large scale. He appears to sail close to the wind with his pragmatism when he makes friends with King Achish, and was apparently only providentially spared from warring with Israel.

The joy of being CROSS

I was thinking just this morning how much of my internet browsing involves finding reasons to get cross. There are websites that make cross; blogs that make me cross; discussion forums that make me very cross; and so on. For example, I always read Mike Carlton of the Sydney Morning Herald not because I agree with him EVER, but because he makes me so jolly cross. And it is amazing how much emotional energy I can waste on this. Believe me, I have lost sleep over internet discussions. Real sleep! There are really valuable online debates that you can observe and participate in, but sometimes it isn't worth it all.

I am saying this not merely as a personal confession (perish the thought) but because I think I am not the only one! Being cross is a strangely addictive feeling. It gives one a sense of high dudgeon and moral outrage and self-righteousness. It gives one a sense of purpose in a strange way. By which I mean: we actually enjoy our crossness. Love it. It is a form of entertainment.

But how pathetic is it, really?

Change your life...

It's part of the Berlin wall...

1 Samuel 13-31 - 5

However the story is interrupted at this point by the terrible narrative of the witch or medium of Endor. Saul enlists the help of a medium to raise the ghost of a rather grumpy Samuel. As appropriate to Torah, Saul had expelled all the witches and wizards from the land, but now he has need of one and so goes contrary to his own principles. Once again, Saul is seen to have the desire to consult Yhwh but on his terms and using inappropriate means. His consulting the spirit of Samuel is a desperate act, as he himself says. God no longer replies to him by prophets or by dreams. Samuel’s answer is doom –laden – a prophecy of the death of Saul and his sons at the hands of the Philistines.

The stage is set for the collapse of the house of Saul at the hand of the Philistines and David. However, David is prevented from making the blunder he has so far avoided ie fighting against the anointed of Yhwh. He is spared the ignominy of warring with God’s people. The other Philistine kings reject Achish’s trusted mercenary (who ironically has been lying to him all along). Thus by the providential hand of Yhwh David takes no active part in Saul’s downfall and is also kept a free force able to fight for Israel when the Philistines defeat the armies of Saul and Jonathan.

The Ziklag incident (ch.30) delays the end further. We see in this episode David the great warrior, taking command of his potentially murderous group in the aftermath of a devastating raid by the Amalekites; and organizing successfully to take his revenge. David is a man of decisive action and military ability; but he also takes great care to distribute the spoils of victory in a just way. Here is perhaps a king who will not take, take, take: but one who will give. In vs 26 David’s language starts to assume the tone of one who fights the fights of Yhwh: he speaks there of “the spoils of the enemies of the Yhwh”, as he hands over the loot to the elders of Judah.
The final scene of 1 Samuel is the defeat of Saul and the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. The pathos is maintained by Jonathan’s death: we the readers are not to feel too triumphant here. The demise of this flawed king comes at the cost of defeat for Israel. Ironically, it is Saul himself who lifts up his hand against Yhwh’s anointed – perhaps this too is a false step, proving Saul a blunderer to the last. The bodies of Saul and his sons are shamed by the Philistines in the same way David had dismembered the fallen Goliath. The territories of Israel beyond the Jordan are occupied by the Philistines; and so the reign of David begins with a military complication that needs resolving.

1 Samuel 13-31 - 4

Interestingly, David’s deviation from religious practice in the Abinadab episode is not classed as disobedience in the way that Saul’s religious deviations were. Why?

The incident of Nabal and Abigail illustrates contrasting responses to Yhwh’s anointed. Abigail’s resourcefulness and her beauty win her a husband and David and his men win provisions. This is an interesting variation on a stock rape and pillage by a maraudering band. David does not have to steal Abigail from her stupid husband. Rather he is struck down by Yhwh. Abigail’s speech to David captures in a nut-shell the presentation of David in this story, 25:30ff: “and when the Lord has done to my lord according to al the good that he has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you prince over Israel, my lord shall have no cause of grief, or pangs of conscience, for having shed blood without cause or for my lord taking vengeance himself.” The long-term benefit of a clear conscience outweighs the rash moment of anger, even when it is provoked. Nabal’s death at the Lord’s hand without David’s intervention foreshadows the death of Saul to come.

David’s alliance with the King of Gath shows the level of desperation he has reached, as he explains in 27:1. This wins David peace from Saul, but obviously puts him in an invidious position: living outside Israel and in league with her enemies. By being more than a little loose with the truth, David is able to convince Achish that he is making raids on Israelite territories, when in fact he and his men were attacking the Canaanite tribes. It seems in 28:1-2 that David will even fight against Israel, such is the trust he has won. What will happen? Will David prove to be a mercenary of questionable loyalty, happy to kill the men of Israel?


to be continued

1 Samuel 13-31 - 3

At the end of the story Saul appears to have forgotten the name of his court harpist: it may be that we do not have a strict chronological series of events presented here. At this point the close relationship between Jonathan and David begins. This is the tragic romance of the book: Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as his own soul. Of course we reading from our cultural perspective find the closeness of their relationship quite confronting and more than a little homoerotic. David’s relationships with the women in his life do not seem as deep or affectionate. However, we must be careful not to project our own cultural expectations back on to the text at this point. The affection between the two young men, as we readers know, complicates matters extraordinarily. Jonathan is the heir apparent. It is he who stands to lose most from the rise of David and the fall of Saul. Yet he is a model of faithful friendship, protecting David from Saul’s rages in chapter 20, and providing for his escape by the symbol of the arrow. We readers know that Jonathan is a major obstacle to the rise of this second king in Israel; which heightens the tragedy for us as we realize that these close friends must eventually be separated. What the bond between the two men ensures for us is that this civil war between David and Saul is not a struggle to be continued by their descendents. Even the man who stood to lose most saw in David the true destiny of Israel according to Yhwh’s choice.

Saul’s envy of David grows with David’s success and fame. The women of Israel sing “Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands.” Even in the process of arranging marriage to Michal, David excels himself by returning with twice the number of Philistine foreskins as a comically grisly present for his king. In 18:28 Saul comes to the fatal realization: Yhwh is with David, and even Saul’s daughter loves him. Saul thus veers between anger and fear, with murderous consequences. From then on, David becomes a man on the run, hunted by Saul and operating as a freedom fighter on the boundaries of Israel. He never quite pursues out and out war with Saul; but he does make a tentative alliance with the Philistines, especially King Achish. In 24 and 26 we are told of incidents where David had the chance to kill Saul and yet held back, both taunting Saul with his power over him and assuring him of his respect for Yhwh’s anointed. This technique of the repetition of similar stories in the same narrative is commonly used in biblical literature: and yet critics of the old school have viewed this as sloppy editing or the presence of two traditions or versions of the same incident. However, as Robert Alter shows in his book The Art of Biblical Narrative, the repetition of two very similar scenes is a literary device the authors of scripture deploy quite deliberately.

To be continued

Black Watch

In a comment on a previous discussion, Drew alerted me to a very recent play, Black Watch. The play follows in the tradition of Journey's End, and The Long and the Short and the Tall, stage plays which described the horrors of war. Black Watch, based partly on interviews with real soldiers, does it for the current Iraq war.

Towards the end, one of the officers offers a monologue including this comment:

We in the West have failed to understand the logic of suicide terrorism. The choice to become a religious martyr is the outcome of a struggle to establish an identity in adolescence. The possibility of death, once accepted, presents an alternative idea of the self as a religious warrior. They're looking for glory, and they seem to be finding it in martyrdom. Glory, however, is something which my boys are very unlikely to emerge with. The controversy around this war means there'll be no victory parade for us... (p. 58)

I am interested that this text connects some of the themes of my study. Interestingly, the play is about the struggle for identity and an idea of self in the young soldiers on the Western side...Of course, I think Christian martyrdom evades this characterisation. This comment is revealing as to the extent that martyrdom is understood as a flashpoint... it's the possibility of death. In the West, it isn't accepted that this could present an alternative and valid idea of the self...

1 Samuel 13-31 - 2

The stage is obviously set for the entry of David, the man truly after God’s own heart.

Once again, the narrator comes at this important moment from several angles: his anointing by Samuel in Bethlehem, his ability as a musician and the slaying of Goliath. As we meet the shepherd boy we are told he “ruddy, and had beautiful eyes and was handsome”: he has the charismatic looks of a potential hero. That he is the least of the sons of Jesse is emphasized in 16:1-13: once again the Lord has chosen contrary to human expectation. He is anointed in this private way by Samuel, so that now in Israel there are two anointed kings, a situation that obviously needs resolution.

The David and Goliath story, which the narrator tells in detail, introduces David as a warrior in Israel. Like the boy Samuel, the boy David is able to teach his elders something about trust for Yhwh. David’s speech in 17:45ff is a paradigm for holy war. The battle is Yhwh’s: it is he who determines the victor, regardless of the disparity in power or weaponry from a human point of view. It is Hannah’s song fully illustrated once again: the theme is the same! The humble overthrows the mighty. Though his anointing is still secret and David does not appear to act out of a consciousness of being the anointed one, he has by his character displayed the attitude expected of God’s king in battle – not intimidated by enemies but rather trusting completely in the power of Yhwh. His weapon is his faith.

John Milbank doesn't like computers...

'Computers ... in so far as they impose the reign of information, are the enemies of truth and democracy. Our gaze at their screens is the constitution through watching and receiving of inherently violent transactions which in the end, when we step through their looking-glass, always involve real physical violence.

On line, therefore, we are clubbing each other to death, but invisibly, very very gradually and at a huge remove. When this process does appear, then we finally see what we collectively do, but assume that it has nothing to do with us, individually. But just as breathing is the most massive combustion, so also this slowed-down and distributed violence is actually increased violence, like a torture that is all the more torture through being long drawn-out.'
from Being Reconciled p. 37

Think about that when you next play Scrabbulous....

Him

I am also experimenting with a follow up to the YOU book, called HIM.

I'd love your thoughts.

Augustine and Calvin: do heavenly rewards spoil everything?

For Augustine love of God absorbs and reorders all other types of love; so that the one who desires the Heavenly City is driven by the vision of the holy God for which there are many benefits of course: though these are not the point. For him:

The earthly [city] lifts up its head in its own glory, the Heavenly City says to its God: ‘My glory; you lift up my head’ (Psalm 3:3). (Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, XIV.xxxviii. )

God himself is the glory of the Eternal City; it is in the longing for and submitting to God that glory and honour are returned to the Christian. Under this way of conceiving it, the true martyr does not pursue the golden crown or the higher position in heaven; rather she testifies merely to her love of God, and seeks his honour – and in doing so, basks in his radiance.

It still might be possible, however, to see in 'the love of God' the operation of an system of exchange. Calvin, at pains to show that he agrees with Augustine, at the same time clarifies and even extends his thought by means of the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. He interprets the promises of heavenly rewards a promise that comes after the 'free covenant of his mercy' - sealed not by meritorious works but indeed by grace through faith. The assurance given to believers that theie tribulations are not in vain is given in addition to the strength to endure. Without the free bestowal of grace upon the ungodly in Christ, there is no 'crown of righteousness' (2 Tim 4:8). As Calvin writes:

...the righteousness of good works depends upon the fact that God by pardon approves them. III.xviii.5

The emphasis lies on the self-consistency of God rather than on the rendering of a due payment.
For the purposes of the present discussion this is significant because of the motivation implied: the language of heavenly reward is not used in order to motivate a self-interested desire for heavenly reward: such a thing is impossible, in fact. Rather, heavenly rewards remind us of faithfulness of God to his promises.

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?