Confessing 2

4. The New Testament
The baptism that John the Baptist offered involved the confession of sins (Matt 3:6). The baptisands are seen in contrast with the Pharisees and Sadducees, who are lacking the attitude of sorrow for one’s own sins. As in the OT, the mourning of the blessed, and their poverty in Spirit, prepare the way for the coming of the messiah’s great salvation (Matt 5:1-12). The tax collector, who stands far off and crestfallen, and who prays ‘have mercy on me a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13) is the one who goes down justified – his godly sorrow is met by forgiveness and justification. Sorrow for one’s sins, expressed in confessional prayer to God, is the disposition, or mindset, that is answered by the good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God in the person of the messiah himself, who will offer himself as an atoning sacrifice for sin. Christ remains in his role of intercessor with the Father on our behalf (1 John 2:1 ).

5. Simul iustus et peccator
There is no hint in the NT of the Roman Catholic view that conversion is necessary for Christians even after baptism. The problem with the system is a failure to see that forgiveness and justification are once and for all, and bring the fruit of adoption into Christ’s family by the Spirit. The NT Christian is addressed as a saint, not a sinner; and there is the expectation of a robust conscience full of confidence in the atoning blood of Christ. This life is still lived in the flesh, of course. Luther’s insight was that in the gospel one could be both fully righteous and yet still a sinner. Because the Christian life is still lived in the flesh, confession of sin plays a crucial role in reminding the believer how it is that he or she can claim to stand with any confidence before God. It is a protection from the haughtiness and presumption so often condemned in scripture. The practice of confession of sin powerfully reminds us of our dependence at every turn on the mercy of God

...the beginning, and the even the preparation, of proper prayer is the plea for pardon with a humble and sincere confession of guilt.
John Calvin


ARTICLE XVI
Not every deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable. Wherefore the grant of repentance is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after Baptism. After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given and fall into sin, and by the grace of God we may arise again and amend our lives. And therefore they are to be condemned, which say they can no more sin as long as they live here, or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent.; and encourages us to further repentance.

Confession signals that the Christian life is an ongoing act of repentance, steeped in recognition of the holiness of the character of God himself. It points us back to the great salvation-historical moments of redemption, and most especially to the cross of Christ as the once-for-all sacrifice for sin. Confession is effective because of the advocacy of Christ in before the throne of God in his present heavenly session. This is not in any way to compromise the assurance of a clean conscience that the Christian ought to experience – as the doctrine of justification by faith alone teaches. As Calvin writes: The godly man enjoys a pure conscience before the Lord, thus confirming himself in the promises with which the Lord comforts and supports his true worshippers. It is not our intent to snatch this true blessing from his breast; rather we would assert that his assurance his prayers will be answered rests solely upon God’s clemency, apart from all consideration of personal merit. Confession is, in fact, a great recognition of the security and sure hope of an answer that is given in the gospel of Jesus Christ – while at the same time, being recognition of the seriousness with which the Christian takes sin. It is therefore important to encourage a practice of confession individually and corporately among God’s people; but alongside this to declare the gospel of grace – in this sense fulfilling Jesus’ commission to the apostles in John 20:23.

6. Confession as therapy?
We probably shouldn’t despise the therapeutic effects of confession either. James 5:14-16 reads: 14 Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. The confession in this instance is mutual and communal rather private. The healing effects of the experience of forgiveness are palpable.

Calvin on the Radio

Here's Sunday night's program on Calvin.

Confessing 1

The Christian life is, while united into the family of God by the Spirit in Christ Jesus and living in the expectation of being perfected, still haunted by sin, and acknowledged by the Christian to be so.

1. Forgive us our sins?
Confession means admitting that one’s actions have been displeasing to God. If we say we have no sin says the author of 1 John, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. On the other hand if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1:8-9). Is John merely talking about the beginning of the Christian life here, or is he rather saying that the whole of the Christian life ought to be marked the habit of confessing one’s sins? The context would seem to demand understand this confession in an ongoing sense. But does this then undermine justification by grace through faith? If the Christian is already walking in the light, and cleansed from all sin by the blood of Jesus (vs 5-6) – then what need is there of a habit of confession of sin? Does this not merely tempt us to despair? The problem is: what to do with Christian sin. What effect do sins have on the Christian life?

2. Confession in Roman Catholicism
The Roman Catholic Church insists on a sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. Though it inaugurates the new life of grace, baptism does not abolish the weakness in our human nature. Neither does it remove our concupiscence – our inclination to sin. Thus, Christ instituted the sacrament in order to enable the conversion of the baptised (John 20:22-23). This conversion involves first of all contrition – which is an interior movement of the heart in sorrow for one’s sins and with a firm intention not to sin again. Confession is to be made, via the intermediary action of the priest, of all mortal sin. These have to be remembered and enumerated. Prayers can be part of an act of penance, which then prepares the way for reconciliation of the sinner with God at the Eucharist.

3. Confessing in The Old Testament
Part of Adam and Eve’s fall involves their refusal to accept responsibility for their actions. Rather, they blame others. It is not a surprise that things are meant to be different. The Levitical sacrifices involved an act of confession of sin over the head of the sacrificial animal (Lev 1:4, 16:21). However, it is in the historical narratives that confession becomes significant for Israel, especially in the midst of national calamity. Inspired by the prophecies of Jeremiah, Daniel makes an extensive confession of Israel’s sins to God. The confession in particular emphasises the consistency and faithfulness of God to his promises in contrast to the faithlessness of Israel. His plea for mercy focuses on the memory of the Exodus and the fact that Israel’s restoration will bring glory to Yhwh’s name. In post-exilic Israel, Ezra makes a shame-faced prayer of confession to God on behalf of the people (Ez 9:5-15; see also Neh 9:6-37 and Isaiah 64:1-12). These are collective, national prayer-acts occasioned by particular moments of Israel’s history; but significantly, they are articulations of the kind of repentant spirit that prepares the way for the salvation of Yhwh. A more personal prayer of confession is given to us in Ps 32 (see also Ps 25) – but the attitude and purpose are the same. Confession of sin, individual and corporate, is the proper preparation for the saving intervention of Yhwh. This is not because it forces God’s hand, but because it prepares the way for atonement and forgiveness.

Asking 2

4. Petitioning

Barth and others make a very strong case that, in the first instance, prayer is petitionary: an asking, seeking and knocking directed towards God. Of course, this must and will involve praise and thanksgiving and confession. But in petitioning, the praying subject comes to God with nothing and on nothing dependent except for the knowledge that God is gracious and loving and has promised to give to those who ask. The prayer of asking, if it is to be a Christian prayer, ‘derives from what the Christian already receives’. It is an asking which already knows that God has drawn near to us in his Son. Addressing God as ‘Father’, as we are bidden to do by Jesus, means that the request depends on an already existing relationship between God and us. The gospel declares to us how this is possible, of course: by the purification of our sins through the blood of Jesus Christ and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit into our hearts, we receive the gift of Son-ship (Gal 4:6-7). Jesus’ reassurances about asking and the providence of God in the Sermon on the Mount point towards his own saving action – it is not merely general providence that refers.

5. What we can ask for
The man who really prays comes to God and approaches and speak to Him because he seeks something of God, because he desires and expects something, because he hopes to receive something which he needs, something which he does not hope to receive from anyone else, but does definitely hope to receive from God. Karl Barth (C.D. III.iii.268) There is in principle nothing for which the Christian cannot ask. Christian asking is premised on the generous character of God our Father, who knows already our needs before we ask (Matt 6:8) and who loves to give to those who ask. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Asking God is greatly preferable to the murderous wrestle with others for things (see James 4:2-3). The petitions of the Lord’s Prayer however remind us of the nature of the times in which we are living – that we pray not only on account of and according to God’s general providence, but also on account of and according to his special providence. We learn to pray for God’s will to be done – not because this is some remorseless impersonal force, but because we recognize his wisdom and sovereignty alongside his Fatherly care of us. And we are permitted to wrestle with God in our prayers. We see this in the Psalms of course, which give voice to human doubts. The remarkable instance is of course Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. The pleading of the Son - that it be some other way - clearly do not fall outside the bounds of what is righteous behavior for the creature. At the same time he acknowledges the priority of the Father’s will – which is done, and revealed to us, by the crucifying of the messiah. The prayer of Paul for the Colossians that they be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding (1:9) points not to some secret knowledge of providence, but to the revelation of the will of God the Father in the cross of the Son. Praying for the provision of daily bread – or the eschatological bread – points to the way in which the Lord Jesus is the answer to the prayer he teaches his disciples. The special providential nature of prayer does not negate the general providential aspect – rather it orders it, in Christ, to an eschatological end.

6. What we get
What can expect when we pray? Firstly, we can expect that our prayers are heard by a God who as our Father wants for our good, and has provided for us in Christ. Secondly, we can expect that he delights to use and respond to our prayers. The NT always speaks as if God responds to our prayers in ‘real time’ (not just that by chance our prayers coincide with what was decided beforehand). Thirdly, we can expect in particular to receive the counsel and knowledge of the will of God that the Holy Spirit provides as we pray. Not for nothing Calvin calls prayer a treasure. As he describes it, prayer to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit is itself its own answer.

7. So – pray without ceasing!
Why not? It seems that prayer is an undiscovered benefit of the Christian life for many of us – an un-exercised muscle that is surprisingly powerful when finally it is put to use. We neglect to pray because we don’t see how good God is, and what treasures lie stored up for us in prayer. What is more, we don’t pray because we don’t grasp the power and majesty of God. We confine our prayers, afraid to ask for too much, as if God were somehow either too stingy or too puny to give us what we ask for. What we need is to cultivate our faith in God’s goodness and his greatness – both of them unmistakeably revealed to us in the Son, by the Holy Spirit.

For whom Christ died, and John Calvin on the radio

I am part of a three-sided discussion on Michael Bird's blog on the thorny issue of 'For whom did Christ die?' My formidible opponents are Ben Witherington and Paul Helm!! Lucky I have got truth on my side ;-)

Last night I was part of a panel discussion on ABC Radio about John Calvin's influence. You can listen in here, when the podcast becomes available.

Asking 1

The Christian recognizes the providence of God as it is realized in the cross and resurrection of Christ Jesus, and is unafraid to ask for what she needs; while at the same time praying ‘your will be done’...

1. The absurdity of what we are doing
Talking about and analysing prayer is a fraught practice. It is possible that dismembering prayer like this will dishonour the God to whom we pray. Just as an analysis of humour is rarely funny, a analysis of prayer can stifle prayer. It is worth reminding ourselves that prayer is not in the end an activity that can be really understood from the outside, despite what William James might have thought. Having said that, thinking about prayer is vital, since there is so much anxiety and confusion amongst Christians about prayer and what it is.

2. Why we don’t pray
On the one side, our ability to pray is effected by our flesh – its tiredness, its proneness to distraction, its desires and needs. The husband is given the wife as a co-heir, ‘so that nothing may hinder his prayers’. Sexual abstinence between a married couple is only permitted by Paul for the purpose of prayer (1 Cor 7:5). Fasting is seen (though not commanded) as an accompaniment to prayer (Matt 6; Acts 13:3) – is this a reminder that prayer is many ways an onerous task requiring from us the self-mastery that we can only get from the Holy Spirit? On the other side, the failure to pray is actually often a fault in faith. That is, it is a misapprehension of who God is that deadens our prayers. This is not merely a flaw in our conception of God – it seems to be a flaw in the affections, a deficit in love for God. Authentic prayer is heartfelt, a genuine expression of our own dependence on God – hence the priority of private prayer given in Matt 6.

3. Motivated to pray?
So, what is the remedy to prayerlessness? Rightly, we fear making prayer a kind of work; or, we fear making prayer itself become a means for impressing God, or of nagging him. Calvin’s answer is simply that we are commanded to pray, on the one hand; but that this command comes attached to a promise of much benefit to us. Ask, and it shall be given to you. The person who comes to God in prayer therefore exercises both submission to his command and also trust in his promises. That is to say, the desire to pray is cultivated best by a deeper knowledge of the character of God. Calvin concludes: ‘accordingly, among our prayers, meditation both on God’s nature and on his Word is by no means superfluous’ (Calvin, Institutes III.20.13)

(To be continued...)

Thanksgiving

The Christian acknowledges God as the gracious source of all good things, in the creation and in redemption, and receives them with thanksgiving.

1. Another impossibility in the Christian life?
How could we ever thank him who made us and redeemed us? It seems presumptive that our thanks could ever be an adequate response to that we have received in Christ. But that is because we tend to lapse back into thinking of divine-human relations a operating according to an exchange economy. Human gratitude could never be the response which triggers the acceptance of God, or which forms a return of grace in some way. Properly understood, thanksgiving in prayer is the appropriate response to grace. Since faith is merely a taking hold of the promises of God, thanksgiving could never be more than this. Faith and thanksgiving are linked in just this way in the story of the tenth, Samaritan leper who alone returns to Jesus in thanks and to whom Jesus says ‘your faith has healed you’. (Luke 17:12-18). The story is as much an indictment on the nine, Israelite lepers who were ungrateful as it is a celebration of the gratitude of the Samaritan.

2. The antitype of gratitude: Israel in the desert
The experience of Israel in the desert illustrates for us the very reverse of the right response to the redemption wrought by Yhwh. If they are condemned for anything, it is for the sin of ingratitude. They forgot the blessings that they had received at his hand. They grumbled about his provision for them of food and drink. They complained about his invisibility and lack of immediacy. From this sin we may perhaps learn its opposite. We too live between Egypt and the promised land – and much we experience challenges the goodness of God. Like praise, the acts of thanksgiving remembers and rehearses the great deeds of God, appreciative of the blessings that he showers upon us and turning us to him in hope. In thanksgiving, the pray-er not only retells the great deeds of God: she recalls receiving the benefits of them for herself. As it turns out, Paul identifies a lack of thanks as crucial to the spiritual blindness of the human race as a whole in Romans 1:20-21. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

3. The Psalms and thanksgiving
The thank offerings commanded as part of the sacrificial system (Lev 7:11-16) are, it could be suggested, designed to ensure that Israel did not forget to give thanks again. Whatever the case, the Psalms are overflowing with thankfulness to God. Some twenty or so Psalms enjoin Israel to thank the Lord: O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. 2 Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, those he redeemed from trouble 3 and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.(Psalm 107:1-3). Once again we need to ponder the relevance of the Psalms for the Christian life – they articulate the pattern of prayerful response to the grace of God.

4. Jesus gives thanks
At several moments in Jesus’ life he gave thanks to his Father. Most often he did this over food – at the feeding of the five thousand, and at the Last Supper. Once again, there is in this receiving of food a counter to the ungratefulness of the Exodus generation for God’s provision for food. There is also a pointer to the significance of food as a symbol of God’s gift of the body of the substitute. Jesus also thanks the Father for having heard him (John 11:41) and for the paradoxical miracle of the revelation of the divine mysteries (Matt 11:25). That the Son thanks the Father shows grace and thanksgiving to be a part of the divine life
Thanking God and glorifying him belong together. This is why doxology and the closely related hymns have remained basic in Christian prayer. But in content the original Christian hymn is through and through Christological. Christian doxology extols God’s action in sending the Son and the glorifying of the Son by the Spirit. It is thus Trinitarian doxology in which thanking God for his redeeming work is taken up into the adoration of his manifested deity that now already anticipates the eschatological praising of God by the community that is brought to fulfilment in the new creation.
Wolfhart Pannenberg (Systematic Theology III.208)itself. Jesus’ prayer life, as the exemplary human worshipper, features thanksgiving, even though the model prayer he offers his disciple does not.

5. Early Christian prayer
Despite this lack of thanks in the Lord’s prayer, the motif of thanksgiving is ubiquitous in the prayers of the early church. Paul especially cannot pray without giving thanks. Paul wants all requests to God to be made with thanksgiving (Phil 4:6) and that unceasing prayer redound with thanks (1 Thess 5:18). As Pannenberg explains, gratitude for God’s saving action in Christ gives Christian prayer its context. Already as creatures we owe thanks to God (Rom 1:21); now in the power of the Spirit of Sonship we are able to thank the Father as we truly ought. Further, Paul’s prayers of thanks repeatedly mention the work of God in other Christians as God’s grace to him.

Dr Brian Rosner on Paul and the Law

Rosner on Paul and the Law

The sacrifice of praise

Doxology seems to be a good place to start an account of prayer because it is the eschatological picture of prayer. It is the task of the creature as a creature to glorify God; and so it will be in the end, in the final gathering around the throne. This is not merely to please God’s own vanity, but because it is the right purpose of the creature and brings the greatest dignity to the creature. This is the picture of Revelation with its numerous hymns.

But certainly, praise pleases God. In Hebrews 13:15 we read: Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. There is no sense in which, of course, this praise of God is justifying. It is not the performance of a condition. It is only ‘through him’ that this ‘pleasing’ of God is enabled. But it is the case that in him the sinful human being is enabled to get on with the task of living out the call of human beings to please him. It pleases God in that the creature is praising him: not that he needs to know the information contained in the doxology, or craves compliments, but rather that he craves the worship of his people.

That it pleases God makes praise an inescapably aesthetic act. As a form of words, praise elicits from creatures their creativity and imagination. Praise is not the rapid and efficient transferral of information – rather it exists for the enjoyment of the recipient. Praise involves detailing and cataloguing the praiseworthy features of the person involved. It takes time. The setting of praise to music is not accidental. Praise is, then, sacrificial in that involves the time and the creativity of the praiser.

Praise is a theological act, because right praise involves a true doctrine of God. It involves recalling God’s characteristics revealed in his great acts. The Psalms frequently rehearse Israel’s history and infer from these encounters with Yhwh his praiseworthy characteristics. In the NT, it is not surprising that praise becomes thoroughly Christological in content. Christian praise recalls and rehearses the particular and decisive work of God in Christ. The great examples are of course the Philippian and Colossian hymns. The chorus of praise is led by Christ (Heb 2:12) but also has Christ as its object.

Declaring the praises of God has a missionary dimension as well (1 Peter 2:9-10). It is part of the mediatorial calling of the church that they are to amplify the praise of God in the hearing of the nations. But this is not to reduce the praise of God merely to a horizontal act for the benefit of humans. It is, miraculously, in Christ, something we can do for God.

The Perseverance of the Saint

Reformed theologians, developing the tradition of Augustine, have always asserted that the work of perseverance is a divine work. There are of course many, many texts in scripture that urge believers to vigilance and perseverance to the end, to remain in Christ, to continue in faith and so on. There are texts that certainly speak as if one could deny the faith: 1 Cor 10:12, 2 Peter 2:1 and so on. Most theological traditions have taught therefore that it is possible to lose grace once one has received it. The question is, however, whether God could allow a grace he begins to be ruined by the power of sin. Even Augustine divided into two the kinds of grace a believer receives, asserting that only the second, superadded grace produced perseverance.

The Reformed have explained by contrast that perseverance is a work of God through believers. In regeneration and faith he gives a grace that is unbreakable and inadmissible. The admonitions and warnings of scripture are ‘the way in which God himself confirms his promise and gift through believers’ (Bavinck). Apostates in scripture (1 Tim 4:1, Heb 6:4-8, 2 Pet 2:18-22) must, according to Bavinck, be either examples of incomplete apostasy (later restored?) or evidence of false conversion in the first place. Although I think his exegesis at these points is stretched beyond credulity, the theological point is a good one: God cannot/does not break his own covenant. Even Paul mourning over Israel does not conclude the God is faithless, even when Israel is. Rightly construed, the doctrine is of great assurance and comfort to Christian believers – God who begins a good work in us will bring it to completion (Phil 1:6). The Christian life is not fragile, even though it is tested.

The Reformed doctrine should not however be the cause of undue speculation as to one's inward state, nor should it give rise to passivity. The warnings to endure and to resist should be heeded as serious, live warnings. Hebrews seems able to blend at the one time both admonishment and comfort – which makes sense if perseverance, like the Christian life itself, is a divine work in and through human agents. It is the inward search for a certainty of one's own heart that makes the doctrine disturbing just when it is claimed it should be most comforting. Actually, the comfort lies in the character of God revealed in Christ: that even human weakness is not an obstacle to his purposes. But human fickleness is not thereby excused.

Perhaps the doctrine is better labelled 'the perseverance of the saint'. There was one who perservered, and so we can hold out confident hope of our own perseverance. Christ was tempted in every way as we are but did not sin.

Is it just me, or is there a decency pattern emerging?

Ok, a theory. In the last couple of years in Australian public and media affairs, things seems to have taken a surprisingly conservative turn towards 'the decent'. Firstly, Big Brother got cancelled. Then there was outrage at the Bill Henson affair - mystifying the artistic community. Then the success of the uber-nice Masterchef. The outrages over Matty Johns (footballer and orgyist), The Chaser and now Kyle and Jackie O.

In almost every case, there has been a volley of opprobrium aimed at media figure who transgressed. I am alarmed somewhat by the way in which no forgiveness seems possible in this, I have to say. But I wonder if it is premature to surmise that Australians are:
1 - sick of having the freedom of public speech, or the freedom to behave as you want, abused;
2 - sick of the coarsening of the public space;
3 - unwilling to use law to respond to it;
4 - barely able to articulate why it is so, but finding common ground with many others on what 'the good' might look like all of a sudden.

Interesting times...

Reading a life

Biographies prove to be one of the best-selling niches in the book industry. There is something about the attempt to capture in one narrative the course of a human life that is always fascinating to those of us who have to live human lives in search of meaning. This is especially the case if the person is remarkable in some way, though the biography of an ordinary person who lived in extraordinary times can have its own fascination.

And how does one encapsulate a life in a single literary narrative and do it justice? Of course, the biographer must always be somewhat aware of the artificiality of the process. They have to weave a coherent story from what is necessarily fragmentary – from such letters that survive, from the eyewitnesses that are willing to speak about the person, from their knowledge of the context of the person’s life. From all this external material, they have to give us what we modern readers want to know – an insight into the motives and feelings of another person. From what is on the outside we try to get at what is on the inside.

This is very much an idea that has a Christian, and especially Protestant, source. The idea of self-examination, of scrutinising motives and temptations, of revealing one’s secrets, of the human self being a coherent whole – these are ideas that enter into Western culture through Christianity. If you read ancient biographies (such as those of Plutarch) the focus is on the character’s outward actions rather than on their inner life.

And, as we know, giving a bare record of a person’s words and actions is of limited interest and makes for a very dull biography! The good biographer gives us an explanation, not simply a description.
That is, a biographer acts as a judge. But how should this be done without knowing everything? What is really the key to summing up a life?
It is not surprising, therefore, that biographies can be extremely controversial. One of my favourites, The Passion of Michel Foucault, caused an enormous stir when it was published and resulted in a number of counter-biographies. Poet Les Murray’s biography, written by Peter Alexander, was originally pulped because of its contentious material.
Here are some biographies that, to my mind, have succeeded the best. The list is limited by my limited reading – guided of course by my prejudices! Which would you add?
Patrick White: A Life, by David Marr. A truly outstanding account of a difficult genius, written with the co-operation of his subject but none the less sparing us none of his faults. It is hard to think of a better model of what a biography should be.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, by Ray Monk. This is a moving account of a truly remarkable man. I learned much affection for this complicated and surprisingly spiritual man from Monk’s work.
Vaclav Havel: A Political Life in Six Acts by John Keane. Keane experiments by trying to narrate the Czech president’s life as a quasi-Shakespearean tragedy – including speculating about his future funeral. It doesn’t quite work, but the journey is filled with grand views on mid-20th century life.
Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion. Fans of Larkin weren’t quite ready for what they discovered in Motion’s work, which revealed the unpleasant private truth about one of England’s favourite literary sons. But it is a humanly true biography: great genius and humanity exists side by side with the sordid and the petty.

You need some Anglican Identity!

Anglican Identity Master's Course at Moore

There's still time to sign up for Moore's Anglican Identities course, taught by renowned scholar Dr Ashley Null with meself assisting! Feast your eyes on this syllabus:

1. Catholic Humanism
a. The Sacramental Way of Salvation in Late Medieval England
b. Lady Margaret Beaufort and Catholic Humanism
2. John Fisher on the Penitential Psalms
3. Doctrinal Tensions
a. Competing Understandings of Salvation
b. Defence of Roman Catholicism
4. The Rise of English Evangelicals
a. The Process of Evangelical Conversion
b. Katherine Parr, The Lamentacion of a Sinner
5. Henry’s Church: 1534-1539
6. Henry’s Church: 1539-1547
7. Edward’s Church: 1547-1553
a. Edwardian Religious Policy
b. Cranmer’s Mature Theology
8. The Homilies
9. Cranmer’s Liturgies
10. The Elizabethan Settlement and Hooker
a. The Elizabethan Compromise
b. The Debate over Hooker
11. Hooker on Law
12. Hooker on the Sacraments and the Prayer Book
13. Classical Anglicanism Today
a. Is Lay Presidency authentic Classical Anglicanism for today?
b. Is the Jerusalem Declaration authentic Classical Anglicanism for today?

The Christian Life: Hearing

For if you ask a Christian what the work is by which he becomes worthy of the name “Christian”, he will be able to give absolutely no other answer than that it is the hearing of the Word of God, that is, faith. Therefore, the ears alone are the organ of a Christian, for he is justified and declared to be a Christian, not by the works of any member, but because of faith.

Martin Luther, (Luther’s Works, vol 29, p. 224)

Hearing indeed comes only through the Word of Christ...the Apostle here (i.e. in Rom 10:16-17) emphasizes the fact that he is speaking of a Word which no one can comprehend. It can be apprehended only hearing it in true faith.

Martin Luther (Commentary on Romans, Kregel Publications, p. 152)

It is by a divine call, that sinners are made partakers of the benefits of redemption. And the influence of the Spirit by which they are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, is a vocation, or effectual calling.

Charles Hodge (Systematic Theology, vol II., p. 640)

Hearing
The Christian life begins, and endures, insofar as the Christian is called by and hears the Word of God and responds in faith – itself a work of the Holy Spirit.

1. ‘Come, follow me’
Jesus called his disciples: ‘come, follow me’. And hearing his call, they left what they were doing and followed him. Hearing is the first act of the Christian life because the Christian life is a life that corresponds to the call of God in Christ. Discipleship is a metaphor for the Christian life because it indicates a type of pedagogy: hearing which results in following – and thus more hearing. And discipleship as a term reminds us of the voice of God that we have heard in Christ, his Word: This is my son, whom I love… listen to him (Mk 9:7). The word of God flourishes and produces fruit because it is planted in responsive and fruitful soil. However, Jesus teaches in parables ‘so that they may be…ever hearing but never understanding’. His teaching conceals as it reveals, obscures as it clarifies. Some hear, but do not respond. How is this possible?

2. ‘My sheep hear my voice’
Israel were the people who were called, and who followed the voice of Yhwh out of Egypt. The preaching of Deuteronomy marks them out as a hearing nation: ‘Hear, O Israel’. Yahweh is the Shepherd. To follow his guidance meant survival for Israel, the sheep. In John 10:1-21, Jesus picks up the ancient and messianic image of the sheep and shepherd. The sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd. Already there is in the true sheep an instinct to respond to this, their shepherd. That is: the doctrine of election is in view in the Christian life – the hearing of the elect is a mark of their election in Christ.

3. ‘Faith comes from hearing’: Martin Luther and the hearing Christian
Faith itself arises from hearing – hearing the gospel (Rom 10:16). Faith in this way has its own basis in the promises of God. For Luther, the emphasis on the hearing of the gospel – the powerful Word – was illustration of the passivity of the believer. Faith is only a weak, passive response, but since what it responds to is so mighty, it is powerful to save. The preaching of the gospel is the intensification of the divine call to all creation – it is the way God has chosen to bring his people to himself. Notice Ephesians 1:13-14. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession-- to the praise of his glory.

4. ‘The call’ in Reformed theology
Reformed theologians have distinguished between the ‘internal’ or ‘efficacious’ call and the ‘external call’, to explain the way in which only some individuals respond to the universal gospel of Christ. While the gospel is a call addressed to all humankind, it is also the means by which God gathers his chosen people. The inward teaching of the Spirit is necessary in addition to the declaration of the truth to give it effect. And this further explains how faith may be ‘not of yourselves, but a gift of God’ (Eph 2:10). The language of calling or vocation, klhsij, is especially applied in the NT to the believers: ‘those who are called’ (Rom 1:7, 1 Cor 1:2, 24). The great sequence of divine actions in Rom 8:30 shows how election precedes calling: those whom he predestined, he also called; those whom he called, he also justified. By speaking thus of the internal call Reformed theologians such as Bavinck and Hodge hope to distinguish their position from the Lutheran, Methodist and Roman Catholic, who in their various ways teach that there is something by nature – however small - in a person that predisposes them to respond to the call.
5. The call to personhood
The Christian life is a hearing life – but then the true human life was a matter of vocation, too. That human life always was given in response to a divine call reminds us that the Christian is only becoming more truly a human. ‘Personhood is a vocation’ as Kevin Vanhoozer says. To be human is to be summonsed to glorify God in or created life – this is the ‘chief end of man’. The first human beings were called into a life together with God and each other in the created world. Jesus Christ lives out this vocation and embodies it: he is both the Word of God, the divine communication AND the model and properly representative human response to that Word. This life is what it means to depend utterly on the Word. The gospel of Jesus Christ ‘summons the self to its proper vocation – faithful speech agency… (Vanhoozer).

6. The practices of hearing
…you have opened my ears… (Psalm 40:6). What does it mean to ‘have the ears to hear’? The theological ear needs to be trained. If the word of God to us is a word about our utter dependence on God in our fallen-ness and in our creatureliness, then hearing it is dependent on us being made in the image of his Son and being enabled by his Spirit to respond rightly. The Christian life continues as a life dependent on and nourished by hearing. ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’. The OT shows Israel committed to a life of memorizing, revering and reciting the word of God. The Christian life is in this sense no different. Scriptural study is its sine qua non, because in Scripture, by his Spirit God continues to speak to us today. Luther described the threefold process of listening to the voice of God as oratio (prayer), meditatio (meditation on the text), and tentatio (agonizing struggle). Psalm 119 is the model text in this regard!



Further reading

Stephen H. Webb The Divine Voice – Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound, Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004

Kevin J. Vanhoozer ‘Human Being: Individual and Social’ in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. C.E.Gunton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 158-188

Christian Life Reading List

The possibilities for reading in this particular part of the course (that I am teaching on The Christian Life here at Moore) are enormously varied. This is because the division between ‘academic’ theological works and ‘spiritual classics’ is necessarily blurred more than at other points on the course. The key thing is to get reading- and thinking! Hopefully, this little list will help.

Reformed
It would be great to revisit Calvin’s masterful treatment in Book III of the Institutes – especially looking at how he treats topics like Prayer and Faith. From there, it would be good to dip into a major systematic theologian in the Calvinist tradition: someone like Charles Hodge or (my favourite) Hermann Bavinck. Look first at the table of contents. How do they organise their material? What are they communicating by the placement of the material on sanctification in this place, in this order? What do they say about prayer and the sovereignty of God, if anything? John Owen has much to contribute in his works Sin & Temptation: The Challenge to Personal Godliness and Spiritual-Mindedness. You will get a chance to read Jonathan Edwards’ The Religious Affections in 4th year, but Edwards is a hugely influential figure in the Reformed tradition of the thinking about the Christian life even to this day (John Piper is very very Edwardsian!). Karl Barth was also a Reformed thinker, and engaged critically with the tradition of Calvin. Read from his Church Dogmatics, IV.iv, , pp. 3-40 and the brilliant piece on Faith, Prayer and Obedience from III.iii, 239-288. Kevin Vanhoozer’s The Drama of Doctrine has some very exciting material on the Christian life – but use the indexes to find it. Finally, there’s Bruce Demarest’s work The Cross and Salvation – for a contemporary, textbooky approach.

‘Spiritual Classics’
As pastors, we neglect these to our peril – since they are often read by those whom we are seeking to teach. It is hard to go past Augustine’s Confessions for an earlier work – although the Sayings of the Desert Fathers give you something quite different. For the middle ages, you could read Bernard of Clairvaux’s On the Love of God. He was an abbot who had a huge influence of Calvin, believe it or not. You could read Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ – a massively influential book even today. Teresa of Avila was a Spanish nun and mystic, and her book The Interior Castle you could easily dip into and be surprised by. On the Protestant side, you can’t go past The Pilgrim’s Progress. Or John Piper’s Desiring God. My own personal favourite is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. The trick with these works is to read with theological eyes well open.


Other traditions
It would be important to engage in some way with John Wesley – such a huge figure for the evangelicalism that has come after him, and in many ways the forerunner of the contemporary charismatic movement. He wrote enormous amounts of material – his sermons and other papers are easily available. You could trace the way in which he was influenced by the Moravian Brethren, and especially the pietism of Count Zinzendorf. Like Wesley, he is more interesting to read about than to read, and his influence has been transmitted through hymns as well as sermons and other writings.
It is fascinating to see what Roman Catholicism is doing too. Of course, the Eucharist looms large in the thinking of theologians on that side of the fence. You could dip into Hans Küng’s On Being a Christian ¬– he sounds strangely Protestant at times!

And finally...
David Peterson’s book Possessed by God is, for my money, the gold standard on sanctification from a biblical theological point of view.

Is Scripture Enough?

On Saturday, I was guest panellist at the St James' Institute's gathering entitled Is Scripture Enough?

My co-panellists were Rev Dr Dorothy Lee and Rev Prof Andrew McGowan, both from Melbourne's Trinity College. Being theologians, we all answered the set question by stroking our chins and saying "it depends what you mean."

In his address, Andrew in fact focused more the clarity rather than the sufficiency of Scripture. I think we found a sort of consensus in the fact that Article VI is pretty much normative for Anglicans - the sufficiency of scripture is to do with salvation. The regulative principle view is in fact that which Anglicans rejected. However, we are not to view a Classic Anglican like Richard Hooker as placing reason or tradition above or even alongside scripture - for him scripture is authoritive, though reason and tradition are instrumental in its reading (though this has been the reading of Hooker since the 19th century, it is actually inaccurate, as Andrew acknowledged. He never mentioned the three-legged stool!).

Rather the issue is clarity. Both Andrew and Dorothy were at pains to state that they did not hold to a kind of postmodern interpretative free-for-all. Nevertheless, Scripture contains some difficult places and some complexity and richness (which of course is what 2 Peter says about Paul!). These have to be acknowledged and addressed. For Andrew, 'the gospel itself is clear' in Scripture (he sounds a lot like Peter Jensen's The Doctrine of Revelation at this point!). This does not mean that an absolute textual clarity follows. In fact, Scripture itself describes itself as having an obfuscating role for some - it is even a judgement on them that this is the case.

So - the question is, for me: what is the corollory for the actual textual clarity of the words of Scripture of the Reformation teaching of the spiritual or evangelical clarity of scripture (as expressed in the Westminster Confession no less!)? And further: what hermeneutic can help us not give too much weight to the claims and counter-claims of historians, without becoming obscurantist?

These a major questions of course, and will lead to major differences. However, if the normative and authoritative role of scripture for the church can be agreed I think the ground has shifted in an interesting direction. Twenty or thirty years ago I think you might have heard a more magisterial view, or a more decisive authoritive role given to tradition, or experience, or perhaps a more optimistic view of human reason. The work - and let's not be under any illusions, this is a big task - remains to be done on the text of scripture itself. What is it actually saying? How are we to receive it?

7 reasons to sign up to Calvin@500 today

Moore College is holding its very own School of Theology in honour of John Calvin's 500th birthday. Why should you fork out the funds and book out the time?

1. Oliver Crisp. Oliver is one of the most interesting and prolific of a younger breed of evangelical theologians currently working in the UK. He has published on Jonathan Edwards and other figures in the Calvinian tradition.

2. Paul Helm. Paul Helm is already the author of a very, very good book on Calvin: John Calvin's Ideas. His intellect is formidible - his mastery of concepts extraordinary. Worth the price of admission!

3. Ashley Null. Ashley's expertise is in Tudor Anglicanism, and especially in the thought of Thomas Cranmer. One of the most exciting features of the conference (for me anyhow!) will be tracing the influence (or not) of Calvin on the faith that became Anglicanism.

4. Assessing the New Calvinists. Time magazine called 'the New Calvinism' one of the top ten ideas changing the world right now. Have the New Calvinists - much beloved of a younger generation of Christians world-over - got their hero right?

5. Calvin in Australia. Two papers, by Peter Jensen and Colin Bale, will assess Calvin's often unconsidered place in Australian history generally and in Australian church history especially.

6. Calvin as a theologian of the Holy Spirit. David Hohne's paper promises to lift the lid on Calvin's pneumatology! Calvin the charismatic?

7. Purchase the book of the conference AT the conference. The papers will be available in a hot-off-the-press volume entitled 'Engaging Calvin' (pub. IVP) at the conference.

My piece on Calvin in The Australian

Here!

Jesus was ... 'ill-advised'

From Matthew 5, the words of Jesus:

27"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

I heard recently a well-known media figure say of these words 'I think they were ill-advised'. It isn't often, even in secular Australia, that you hear the teaching of Jesus challenged as to its wisdom. I was too shocked to respond with quickness of wit I am afraid to say. Not that secular people shouldn't challenge or question Jesus' teaching directly - it is just that they rarely bother to do it...

Not that my conversation partner was without insight here of course. He understood quite well that in this teaching Jesus raises the stakes for moral discouse quite appreciably. For Jesus, it is not only external actions that count - action that can be calculated as to the hurt they cause to others. No: the inner world of thoughts and desires are part of the picture. My disposition and my mindset - my 'heart': these are not out of the game, as far as Jesus is concerned. In this he is reminding Israel of the 10th commandment, against covetousness - a prohibition against ill-directed desire rather than against an evil action.

Was this 'ill-advised'? Did it bequeath to the Christian tradition a tendency to inwardness that leaves a legacy of psychologically harmful guilt? Did it leave us unable to think healthily about desire, unable to seperate the 'harmless' secret contemplations of the 'normal' individual from the pathologically harmful deeds of the criminal or the adulterer? Did it leave us terribly afraid of depictions of nudity in art (for example), depictions that are in fact harmless and even beautiful?

I don't think it was 'ill-advised' (of course). I think there is a terrible naivety - exposed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount - in imagining that we are capable of such self-mastery that we can nurture ill-directed desire without it affecting our outer world of relationships. Can a wife fantasise about another man while sleeping with her husband and imagine that there be no ill-effects - quite apart from the shattering inauthenticity and hypocrisy of the act, an act which is meant as an expression of desire for a particular other, and turns out not to be? Can we really leave lying around in the supposedly private chambers of our heart the desire that another fail, or be harmed, or even die, without resulting damage in the public world? Can we - ought we - live in such a two-faced way, that our inner and outer worlds are completely different? Is that what makes for whole and healthy, authentic people?

This IS the word of the Lord - and thanks be to God...

We have been very happy in our new church home, All Saints' Petersham. Today in church we had one of those moments that church attending ought to give you - a moment of real discomfort and dissonance. Frankly, if your church isn't making you uncomfortable some of the time, then change. Well, I mean, if your church doesn't allow the word of God to make you feel uncomfortable...

You see, we had a reading and a sermon from 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. And I am not just going to trot out the old line about how this challenges our cultural assumptions blah blah. That is a device used by complementarians to avoid being themselves listening too carefully to the text. (Mind you, at least they are listening to the text...)

No: this text is a test to see if we really do hold to the authority of the Scriptures. Do we really believe it when the reading is finished and the reader says 'this is the word of the Lord'? Can we really say 'thanks be to God'? This text, it seems to me, refuses to be mastered by the knowing exegete. It is teasing and mysterious and confronting and awkward. What can 'on account of the angels' mean? What does Paul mean by 'nature teaches us' (phusis)? It's the Bible at its best - turning our worlds upside down. Judging us just when we thought we were going to judge it. It can only be preached - and heard - with fear and trembling (and full marks to our preacher, Antony Barraclough, for not flinching).

Let me be honest: I don't like what this text is saying. I don't see how it makes sense (yet). It seems offensive and it is embarassing. But shouldn't the word of God - if it really IS the word of God spoken into the dark world - get precisely that reaction from me? And doesn't this word prove trustworthy and true again and again?

Theologian at work

The Riddle of Christian Subjectivity (and my 1000th post!)

Who is the Christian?

In what, of what, does the Christian life properly consist? If we have given an Augustinian and Reformed, and so Pauline, account of the depravity and death-ward-ness of human nature apart from grace, and then if we have given complete supremacy and initiative to God in the reconciliation of human beings to himself, then in what sense has the Christian any life left to live that may properly be called theirs? In what sense can we understand that the Christian is an acting subject, a person with a task to do which is properly his or her own, and a unique and distinctive voice with words to say that are not merely a piece of ventriloquism on behalf of God, and an individuality? Is the Christian still so corrupt, so shot through with sin, that they cannot properly be called the agent of any good whatsoever? Furthermore, if ‘it is no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me’ (Gal 2:20) – if even my identity, myself as an ‘I’ wanes, while he waxes – then have ‘I’ not utterly dissolved? Am I not in fact a non-entity? If faith means the giving up of any claim I might have had at asserting myself as a someone before God (coram Deo) – self-justifying, in other words - and receiving instead the life that emanates from Jesus as a gift, justified by grace, through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, then in what sense am I still an ‘I’? If even faith is ‘the gift of God...so that no-one can boast’ (Eph 2:8-9), then how is it that this faith, which must surely involve my will and affections, is really mine? Is the freedom for which Christ set me free (Gal 5:1) really no freedom at all, because I am in no sense the agent of my own actions?

And yet of course, if we read the New Testament we find that, yes, the Christian is enabled to step out on the journey. The blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame leap for joy. The dim eyes, the stopped-up ears, the withered and useless legs – these are now used for seeing, hearing and leaping. The creature who is faithless, and false, and even aptly described as dead in sin, is now faithful, and true, and alive to God. She who was unable to respond, now responds. She who was active only in wickedness is now an agent of righteousness. She now labours not in vain (1 Cor 15:58) – not merely as the conduit or channel for some divine will, but as a free subject whose will is co-ordinated to the divine will.

We have then not available to us the option of denying the reality of Christian agency and identity. These, if we are to read the Bible, are givens. But so is the priority of God in redemption from beginning to end. We cannot either consider a co-operative model in which man on his own strength completes an action initiated by God, or replicates in his own life the model given to him by God in Jesus Christ. These explanations are on every side altogether too tidy.

The Life of Jesus - CPX

The guys at CPX (the Centre for Public Christianity) have really excelled themselves with the new Life of Jesus package. The Life of Jesus screened on Australia's Channel 7 at Easter time in an hour long format, and I was impressed then by the production values, the clarity and depth of the presentation and the brilliantly constructed programme. The DVD comes with two and half hours of material, much of which is shot on location in the Holy Land. Alongside the 'life of Jesus' stuff comes a series of shot explanations of various questions such as 'Is there a God?' and 'Can you be good without God?'

The Life of Jesus comes with a very useful guidebook which is stuffed full of information, scripts, questions and notes, meaning that the DVD can operate as a six-part course. I think it would be fun to do in a class or group. It is sophisticated and serious enough to provide a real challenge at an adult level while being clear and simple enough that senior high school groups could easily use it.

The great benefit of the course is that it provides an antidote to the crackpot theories that make so much headway in the media. John Dickson's strategy is to show that even liberal-minded or non-religious scholars agree on the basic outline of Jesus' life - the impression given sometimes in the media that almost nothing can be known of him is quite wrong.

But more than this, it presents an account of Jesus the man that is plausible without being overstated. It takes us in to the story of his life, presenting it too us not only a historical reasonable narrative, but as a story that has life-changing implications for everyone.

As a theologian, I am quite suspicious of an apologetic strategy that relies on historical proof. The Life of Jesus uses an evidentialist type of apologetic, and unashamedly so. But there is no suggestion that just providing this evidence is enough to instill faith. And it is the case that quite often theologians have conceded the historical ground to the sceptics prematurely. The Life of Jesus shows this brilliantly.

Furthermore, the plethora of scallywag accounts of Jesus' life is allowed to grow because theologians have said 'it doesn't matter'. No - it does matter, theologically, that we can go Israel and see with our own eyes the ground on which Jesus walked. He was not a fantasy, or a principle. He was a man of flesh and blood and bone, and as far as any man of flesh and blood and bone may be traced in history so we should expect and in fact rejoice that traces of Jesus' presence among us are there to be found.

Keith Condie on Richard Baxter

We interviewed Keith Condie about his project on 17th Century legend Richard Baxter today. It was quite fascinating - including revelations that Keith has found some hitherto undiscovered documentary evidence about Baxter!

It led us to discuss the religious affections and the devotional life of the believer too. Enjoy!

With God, nothing is impossible...

This weekend's Sydney Morning Herald magazine included a feature on the minority of people who have chosen not to have sex before (or outside) marriage. (Unfortunately it is not published online, or I would link to it). Though the author, Amanda Hooton, interviews a number of people who are celibate or trying to be (including the admirable Jason Stevens) and does so sympathetically, she throws a great deal of doubt on whether the celibate lifestyle and its promotion is healthy and safe.

She cites statistics which show that celibacy pledges actually achieve nothing by way of stopping pre-marital sexual activity, and actually increase the likelihood of such activity occurring in an unsafe way. Further, by linking sex to guilt and shame, religious groups are making it more difficulty for teenagers to behave in a mature way, not easier (is the claim).

Hooton writes:
It [sex] is...on some basic level, part of what it is to be human; part of life. And chastity, in this context at least, feels like a denial of life. Can it really be a path to happiness and contentment? Perhaps no-one can answer this question for anyone else...but one can't help wonder about the coercive powers of chastity movements en masse, rather than on an individual basis, in which so many people are manoeuvered into decision that are not only evidently wrong for them, but potentially dangerous.

So here we have the usual stuff about personal authenticity and sex as an expression of it. And the importance of the personal in sexual ethics.

All the people interviewed in the article are religious in one way or another, and extremely so -Pentecostal Christians and Mormons, which increases the impression that this is not a 'rational' way to behave. I was disappointed at how unconvincing they were. While some of them give a good account of themselves, the reasoning of some of the people interviewed far too easily falls into a lame consequentialism. That is, they seek to establish that sex before marriage is in some way demonstrably bad for you. 'You'll get pregnant'. 'You'll get disease'. 'You'll be psychologically damaged'. Trouble is, the secular person can respond to all these by saying 'good education prevents these', and 'teens are just as likely to have pre-marital sex with a chastisty pledge as without'.

And this is where I wonder whether Christians have got the reasoning about this all wrong and fallen back into a kind of terrible Pelagianism with regard to sex before marriage. In the first instance, the consequentialist arguments about pre-marital sex are not very convincing - and in fact there has emerged a counter argument (that celibacy is bad for you, or at least, for many). At this point the celibacy movements are looking more than a little shaky. They haven't convinced people that the consequences of sex outside marriage are that devastating. And the heated rhetoric they use seems to belong to a different age.

And times have indeed changed: in a former time, social pressure and shame would have pushed most people in the direction of pre-marital abstinence. People would have lived out a Christianised ethic in their sex lives, but on the basis of conformity to social norms. And the dangers, especially for girls, of misbehaviour were very severe. Without reliable contraception or easy access to abortion, self-control was a necessary weapon against the terrible stigma of teen pregnancy or worse. Religious teaching of course played a part, but in a negative sense: reminding people of the terrible spiritual consequences of misbehaviour rather than the potential for grace and forgiveness.

Now social pressure runs the other way (it is a truism to say!). 75% of people think pre-marital sex is fine. Religious groups are in decline. The public square is saturated with sexual images. It is thought normal and healthy to experiment with sex outside marriage, so long as you don't hurt anyone. It is 'part of a life' - felt to be part of really living. Girls and boys are taught that to be a full person you need to express your sexual self, not exercise restraint. And their bodily appetites confirm this.

This is where a theological account of human nature needs to come in. Whereas before, conformity to social norms made celibacy humanly possible, the new context makes it (for many people) humanly impossible. And this is where just telling people to try harder, or getting them to make pledges, or take cold showers, is bound to fail. Or, it gives them false hope in their ability to master themselves. It trusts too much in the flesh over which we have in the end so little power - without the Spirit of God. If you are a youth leader wondering how on earth you can tell your young people to keep their hands off each other, well let us acknowledge the reality of the situation: it is impossible. It is impossible because of social convention, because consequential arguments don't convince, and because human flesh is weak.

But Jesus said:
With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. This applies to randy teenagers as much as to greedy rich men. With the Spirit of God, it is possible even for young people to remain celibate until they are married. I am convinced that this is the teaching of the Bible, which is good for human beings - even when they can't explain how. If it weren't at least sometimes the case that the Word of God asked of us something that runs counter to what is apparently reasonable and decent in the contemporary world, I would doubt that it was the Word of God!

In defence of doctrine

My article In Defence of Doctrine has just been published in The Briefing - you can purchase on-line as well as hard copies from Matthias Media here.

Love to have your feedback!

Tracks to follow

Here's our interview with Bill Salier (Vice-Principal at Moore College) on Theological Education.

(Get the RSS feed here.)

Also, I wrote about punishment here, and I think the discussion has gone in an interesting direction.

Terry Eagleton: Reason, Faith and Revolution

Terry Eagleton's latest book is a stinging attack on all things Dawkins and Hitchens, or 'Ditchkins' as he calls them.

In amongst the ridicule he rightly heaps on them, there is some fantastic prose about the essence of Christianity. Not surprisingly, this bit caught my eye:

The most radical form of self-denial is to give up not cigarettes or whiskey but one's own body, an act which is traditionally known as martyrdom. The martyr yields up his or her most precious possession, but would prefer not to; the suicide, by contrast, is glad to be rid of a life that has become an unbearable burden. If Jesus wanted to die, then he was just another suicide, and his death was as worthless and futile as a suicide bomber's messy finale. Martyrs, as opposed to suicides, are those who place their deaths at the service of others. Even their dying is an act of love. Their deaths are such that they can bear fruit in the lives of others. (p. 26)

Eagleton, a socialist from way back, can see the radicalism of the New Testament in clear focus: 'The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do.' Quite... And here's more:

The Christian way of indicating that faith is in the end a question of choice is the notion of choice. Like the world itself from a Christian point of view, faith is a gift. This means among other things that Christians are not in conscious possession of all the reasons why they believe in God... (p. 138)

Intriguingly, Eagleton has also noticed that some of the most vigorous intellectual discussion taking place in the West is being done by theologians (to the great surprise of Ditchkins)

...theology, however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialised world - one whose subject is nothing les than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life. These are not questions one can easily raise in analytic philosophy or political science.

Eagleton describes Christianity as a kind of 'tragic humanism', a type of thinking that holds that only 'by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own'. (p. 169). By George, I think he's got it...

O'Donovan on Torture

In The Ways of Judgment, Oliver O'Donovan is happy to accept a certain cultural relativism when it comes to the practices of punishment. It is possible to stand against capital punishment, for example, without regarding it as a universally forbidden practice.

But then he asks:

May it not be that even torture is accommordated within the symbolism of some penal languages? And if we define torture purely anatomically, as performing certain painful acts upon the human body, perhaps it may be so; and perhaps it may be lack of imagination that makes it seem incompatible with respect for human dignity - we need only think of the measures used by admirers of the Japanese samurai culture to commit suicide! As things stand, however, the practices we condemn as torture are clearly not viewed in that light by the societies which practice them. They are performed in secret, without due process, without legal specifications as to duration or intensity; and they in no way seek to tell the truth about the crimes they punish. These features identify such practices as subversive of the norms by which those societies formally operate. Understood in this sense, as the infliction of 'cruel and unusual' suffering outside prevailing norms, torture may be regarded as universally prohibited. (p. 122)

The very secrecy of the practice of torture gives the lie: those who practice it know already that it is wrong! But O'Donovan hones in on a problem for those descriptions of torture which rather simplistically say that it is a matter of inflicting pain on the body pure and simple. In a strange way, torture has its own language.

Why don't the New Calvinists say anything about the US government's torture policy?

I posted this question on my facebook update, and the following (I think interesting) discussion ensued. I have reproduced it here. It could be that the New Calvinists - who I take it as representing a theological position as very close to my own - have said a great deal about torture, but I haven't read it. I choose them to pick on as a form of self-criticism.


Nat Smith at 23:57 on 17 May
because they have better things to care about; like people going to hell.

Michael Jensen at 04:18 on 18 May
On the contrary: Piper has a lot to say about abortion for example. It just seems to be a selective choice of political issues to care about.

Jim Wackett at 08:37 on 18 May
Selective indeed. It'd be good to see an application of a 'reformed' world view on those parts of life that exist between the possibility of abortion and euthanasia, and not just limited to same-sex marriage.

Nat Smith at 08:50 on 18 May
waterboarding is flogging a dead horse, abortion, sam-sex marriage and euthanasia are more relevant in obama's america. i guess for piper the priority might go like this; saving innocent lives from death > saving guilty lives from pain.

Jim Wackett at 09:24 on 18 May
Actually, I think Piper would hold that there is no such thing as an innocent life.

David Starling at 09:26 on 18 May
They do - e.g. here:http://theologica.blogspot.com/2009/04/defining-and-condemning-torture-what-it.html

Michael Jensen at 10:43 on 18 May
hmm, alas the links to the Mohler and Neuhaus papers is broken. Never mind. But I am glad to see it. Nat - I am staggered that you would come up with such an awful equation and attribute it to Piper. After all, he knows that Jesus died for the guilty... how we treat the guilty is litmus test of our own understanding of the gospel, isn't it?

Michael Jensen at 10:44 on 18 May
Still, the NC's are far more vociferous in defence of their trad 'family values' issues than they are on this, and that's a bit disappointing. It suggests that American nationalism dies very hard... no?

Roger Fitzhardinge at 11:01 on 18 May
@nat: interesting description of waterboarding ;)

David Starling at 11:07 on 18 May
Two quick thoughts: 1. I think it is entirely legitimate for an individual (e.g. Piper) to pick one or two big social/ethical issues and focus his campaigning on those, rather than issuing a thousand forgettable pronouncements on a thousand different issues. 2. I think it's a bit lazy to respond to Nat's point by playing the 'no such thing as an... innocent person' card. Before God, we're all guilty, of course (and even unborn children are part of a fallen race) but that doesn't mean that the categories of 'innocent' and 'guilty' are irrelevant in interpersonal ethics and public justice. [btw, this is not an argument for the legitimacy of torture, or, for that matter, for the assumption that all Guantanamo detainees were 'guilty' - just an argument against misusing theological categories]

Michael Jensen at 11:15 on 18 May
Well maybe. But I don't think torture IS a forgettable issue. Like abortion, it is an issue that strikes at the very soul of a society.How powerful would their criticism of the former Bush govt be if they preached against this woeful hypocrisy and the endorsement of evil by bureaucratic means! The laziness was Nat's in the first instance (no ... offence, Nat!). One shouldn't have to choose this over that. Neither should preaching the gospel of grace be sectioned off from the prophetic witnes to the egregious crimes of a rather smug society... no?

Jim Wackett at 11:25 on 18 May
David...1. Agreed. But the focus on particular issues can be understood and pursued with a little more integrity if they are placed within a broader context of a commitment to 'life' from cradle to grave. So yes, there should be NC types speaking out on abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. There should also be NC types speaking out on ... poverty, human trafficking, torture etc. 2. Not lazy... just time-starved! ; ) I only sought to make a single, and relevant, point, not articluate an entire response. I don't believe I misued a theological catagory, just addressed that fact that what was being articulated as 'piper's priority' didn't seem to me to hold with his writing/preaching.

David Starling at 11:27 on 18 May
I didn't say that torture was a forgettable issue. What I said was that a thousand statements on a thousand different issues (all of which could, in themselves, be issues of enormous importance) all end up being forgettable statements. And I'm not sure that accusing Nat of "the laziness" (even if the accusation sticks) absolves the rest of us in the thread of the possibility of being guilty of the same crime!

Michael Jensen at 11:37 on 18 May
Yes, thousands statements yes yes. But it is interesting, and sad, that the issues of choice for the NCs are traditional 'right' issues - so therefore easy to dismiss as so much predictible white noise. I am also concerned by the militarism of some of things I hear and read... it'd be nice to hear a counterpoint to that.

David Starling at 11:40 on 18 May
Thanks Jim for the responses. On point 1: I agree that it's a good thing for NC types to be speaking out on poverty, human trafficking, torture, etc. Of course! It happens (eg. this post on Joe Carter's blog the other day:http://evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/author/lindsay-marshall) and maybe it should happen more. But I do think it's also fair to say that on the abortion issue there are very few voices in the public square, apart from conservative Catholics and evangelicals, who are speaking up for unborn children. And as Nat said in his second comment (with the unfortunate mixed metaphor) it's a bit late to be prophetic on the torture issue in Obama's America, but there's still plenty of opportunity to be prophetic on abortion.... On point 2: fair enough - time starved is not the same as lazy! But I still do see plenty of not-so-time-starved people making the sorts of arguments (e.g. the 'no such thing as an innocent person' argument used to flatten moral distinctions

David Starling at 11:58 on 18 May
Thanks Mike for the comeback, too! I agree that in some cases the clarity and gravity of the anti-abortion case can be almost completely obscured by a whole lot of predictable RW white noise. It's one thing to be a principled social conservative - it's another to be a captive to the GOP and the machinations of a Karl Rove.Mind you, the abortion issue can just as easily get lost in a forest of more politically fashionable LW concerns in the discourse of the Campolo/Wallis types as well.... Piper's case, I'm not sure he can be quite so easily pigeon-holed and dismissed as predictably right wing. (e.g. he's been prepared over the years to lose friends within the conservative evangelical constituency on issues like race and gun laws, and I don't remember him being a flag-waver for the 'War on Terror' or the invasion of Iraq).

Michael Jensen at 11:58 on 18 May
The reason it is a bit late to be prophetic on torture is that the government - at the highest level - has been telling porky pies!!! Torture is ALWAYS like this - especially in democracies. It is a secret evil. So when IS the right time to speak out on it?

David Starling at 12:15 on 18 May
Sorry - I think our comments crossed...So this really is the last comment from me. I agree that it's never the wrong time to speak out on torture. All I was saying was that it's no longer 'prophetic' to speak out on that issue. Thankfully, the torture issue is one on which we now have the luxury of swimming with the tide of (majority) public opinion and holding the Obama administration to account for the transparency and consistency with which they follow through on their pre-election rhetoric. That's not necessarily an easy task, bit I'm not sure it's 'prophetic' (in the popular sense of the word).... Unless I'm missing something?

Michael Jensen at 12:48 on 18 May
Well, I dunno about public opinion. You can see that Cheney's arguments are persuasive with a lot of people: the requirement for national security trumps over even the most basic sort of respect for human dignity...the ends is still justifying the means.The thing is - we shouldn't imagine that this is an end to torture. We have known about the use and practice of torture for many years - and that democracies, despite their self-congratulatory rhetoric, continue to practice it anyway.

Con Campbell on Union with Christ

Con Campbell on Union with Christ

Two must-reads

You just have to read Oliver O'Donovan's lecture on the Authority of Scripture, which riffs on The Jerusalem Declaration - including this:

'We shall be obedient to Scripture to the extent that we have learned and acted upon what Scripture has said of them. But Scripture does not provide us with the concrete act itself, which we must perform right now. Devising that act is precisely what practical thought does, and devising it faithfully to the norm is what obedience is all about....Obedience is never predetermined, it has always be thought through and sought after.'

I was also taken by this 'Theological Vision for Ministry' published by the Gospel Coalition. Their confessional statement is rather dull: but this 'vision' actually takes it all somewhere, addressing (among other things) epistemological and hermeneutical issues with an honesty and self-awareness rarely seen. It is still a creature of the American context, however...

Oh, and I killed a baby, by the way...

The Christian Life – a sketch for a lecture series

Thesis: The Christian life consists of acts that are a response to the new identity given to human beings by the Father, in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, performed in the world, in expectation of the renewal and judgment of all things.

Faith – the ground of the Christian life
1. hearing
2. testifying
3. watching
4. waiting

Prayer – the words of the Christian life
5. praising
6. confessing
7. thanksgiving
8. asking

Obedience – the works of the Christian life
9. leaving
10. living
11. loving
12. suffering

How to read theology - a guide for the perplexed

Let's face it - not everyone's a natural reader. Not everybody finds reading an easy or pleasurable task. And reading theology is not an exception.

In fact things may be worse. For one thing, even though the subject matter is glorious, writers of theology are not necessarily good writers. It is often translated from Latin or German. And it is also the case that, like its cousin philosophy, theological writing can be highly abstract, deploying a specialised vocabulary, and requiring the reader to juggle several mental items at once.

So: here's some help.

1 - Orient yourself to the writer and his or her work by using Wikipedia. It is not definitive, but it is very useful as an introduction.

2 - Ask 'what is the purpose or occassion of the work?' And 'who was this written to convince?' Much of the best theology is written out of controversy, or to suit the historical occassion. We need to know how important Pelagius was for Augustine, for example.

3 - Now - you want the potted version. So: look for where in the work the author summarises what they are trying to say. With a more modern work, find online reviews of the work that boil it down to a couple of paragraphs. This is not a substitute for reading of course!

4 - Try to get a sense of the outline of the argument or the structure of the work. Flip forward to passages that might stand out as offering this help - to headings, conclusion and introductions.

5 - Check the indexes. You get a really good sense of what is most important for an author this way - and you might be guided to some purple passages.

6 - Have to hand a work like Grenz's Dictionary of Theological Terms or McGrath's Christian Theology An Introduction, and don't be afraid to pause and clarify in your own mind what you don't get.

7 - Use a pencil and write all over the text. Go on! This helps with memory and with re-reading. And you have to decide what is important in the text. It is less effort than making summaries but increases your attentiveness.

8 - Join a reading group that is committed. There's nothing better than helping each other at the level of comprehension. Don't be afraid to invite an expert to share every now and then.

Addendum: 9 - you have to learn to read with your ears. That is, reading anything, not leasts theology, is about hearing the author's own distinctive voice. This isn't just a matter of their style: it is about picking up the shape of their thought, their favourite expressions, and the habits of their mind.

This Present Age?

I trotted off the following piece just before Easter. It was an attempt to subvert the usual process of public theology a bit, given that the appeal to the usual authorities doesn't seem to work. My hunch is, that given the choice, the inert masses will actually not choose atheism. Why not goad them into making a choice. The high enrolments in church-run schools I cite as evidence...

Anyhow, when I discussed it with some older, wiser heads, the feeling was that in fact this was a foolish piece to run. I publish it now here in the subjunctive form: here is what I might have written; here is what I might think...or, possibily not as the case may be... Love to have your thoughts.

This present age is an age of such spiritual inertia and cowardice that we don’t even believe in our own unbelief.

We haven’t the courage of our secularist convictions. Churches are still afforded protection by the law. Christian organisations are still exempted from all kinds of discrimination laws and given multi-million dollar tax breaks. Church schools receive government funding. We let Christians hold us to ransom on euthanasia laws and genetic engineering. And yet, most of us never go within coo-ee of the church (unless someone carks it, or gets hitched...).

So passionless are we that we think we can repudiate the Christian church and yet
cling to the bland middle-class morality called Christian ‘values’. This is a morality for the gutless, with its thoughtless (and godless) worship of hard work and the nuclear family. ‘Working families’, and all that guff.

So mindlessly nostalgic are we that we have forgotten to scrape off the sticky residues of Christian belief. In a recent survey published by the Centre for Public Christianity and reported in the Herald it was discovered that 45% of unbelievers still believe that Jesus rose from the dead! If this is really so, why are so many people sleeping in on Sunday mornings when they think that there is another world to prepare for?

Most of us – even the professed atheists among us - still hold to the essentially Christian teaching that human beings are special. But we have no idea why we think it, other than it is convenient. The atheist philosopher John Gray, of the London School of Economics, writes that ‘contemporary atheism is a Christian heresy that differs from earlier heresies chiefly in its intellectual crudity’. An atheistic humanism, he says, is plainly ridiculous. If unbelievers are going to embrace their unbelief, they had better leave such vestiges of Christian faith behind. We are still happy to let Christian churches pick up the slack of our welfare programmes, and let them do a large proportion of our educating and our health services. Are there no secular reasons to be committed to these things? Is it only those with views we consider pre-modern and pre-scientific that believe in community?

And we still want the holidays! We can’t yet rid ourselves of these unnecessary and inconvenient reminders of all that we have left behind us. We have to keep celebrating the death of the Christian saviour and his resurrection because some of us can’t get around to finally affirming that we don’t think it happened. Can’t we at least be consistent?

The unbelief of Australians is better described as non-belief. It has nothing to do with informed opinion. It is just couch-potato stuff, unthinkingly inherited from our parents. It has nothing to do with careful consideration of the claims of the faith we reject, let’s face it. I am sure we can find other more meaningful excuses for a long weekend. How about ‘when you’re dead you’re dead’ Sunday? Or ‘Philip Adams’ Friday?

These are blasphemies against our secular faith. There are in Christianity shocking contradictions of all we hold most dear as a community. We ought to live out the meaning of our unbelieving creed and have done with it all – at least for consistency’s sake. We ought to protect our public space from such blather – if that’s what we think it is - and do so with all the vigour we can muster.

Some links to follow

Here's my thoughts on human plasticity.

Mark Thompson has fired up his blogging engines once more and has a bit to say about John Webster and the Trinity.

David Hohne meanwhile gets all spiritual. Well, Jesus does.

Andrew Katay wants to stop hogging the leadership here.

The 10 most pressing issues for evangelical theology today

With a dash of hubris (why not, it's a Monday morning) - here are the issues on which I think evangelicals have some work to do. Not that individual evangelicals don't hold strongly to some of these - it is just that either the 'traditional' view is under challenge, or that there is a lack of consensus among evangelicals. This list is, like all lists, meant to provoke and challenge of course - it is meant (and I hope will be received!) in that spirit.


1 - scripture
How is inerrancy best to be understood and expressed - if indeed it is the most appropriate and useful word to express and uphold the highest possible commitment of the authority of scripture? Can we move beyond the use of the word as line in the sand and actually articulate what we mean by it in the midst of a post-biblical culture? Can evangelicals actually have a mature discussion about this? (I really like what The Gospel Coalition is doing with this, actually)

2 - God
Now that the 'openness of God' distraction has been overcome, there still seems to be a tension between the position known as 'classical theism' and the more 'biblical personalist' position. How are the attributes of God to be addressed, then, by the biblical Christian? Does classical theism help or hinder?

3 - election
Election is always a tough one. Double or single? Have new readings of Paul made a difference to what needs to be said about Israel? What is the purpose of the doctrine of election, dogmatically speaking?

4 - the atonement
Even between those who would agree that penal substitution is an indispensible part of the Bible's teaching on the atonement - what place does it have within the whole scope of the Bible's teaching? How does it relate to other elements?

5 - justification
The debate between Wright and Piper over imputation reveals some faultlines. Imputation seems a necessary corollory of an evangelical testimony to justification by faith. But what are its exegetical foundations? And will 'union with Christ' prove to be a more fruitful model to explain this teaching? (with much good work to come from Moore's own Con Campell)

6 - anthropology

I think theological anthropology is right at the missional cutting edge, and the more thinking evangelicals can do about it the better. That is not to fall prey to the temptation to collapse theology into anthropology, or to get distracted by all kinds of anthropologically interesting byways, but to give a full and rich account of the meaning and purpose of human life lived under the hand of the God who is mindful of man (to steal from Psalm 8).

7 - sin

Sin is a corollory of the doctrine of man... Once again it is a missionally urgent task to give an articulation of sin that is as full-orbed as we can make it. This is one instance where 'biblically faithful' and 'culturally aware' are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The mute incomprehension of our contemporaries as they hear contemporary preachers talk about sin highlights the problem... The answer is not in their hearts of course. The word of God is better than we think it is.

8 - philosophy & theology

Evangelicals seem genuinely undecided about this as a group. Is philosophy good, bad, or indifferent? A friend, or a foe? Is a philosophy-less theology simply naive? or is a philosophy in addition to theology a blasphemy? What have we to say about thinking?

9 - apologetics

A connected issue, then, is that of apologetics. Ought we to do apologetics at all? Many evangelicals have invested very heavily in apologetics. But to what end? Are the models of apologetics - evidentialist, presuppositionalist (does anyone actually understand what the heck presuppositionalist apologists are saying?) - enough for the needs of the day?

10 - church
Evangelicals have always prided themselves on being ecclesiology-lite. They have achieved far more in terms of ecumenical co-operation than other forms of Christianity as a result. Ecclesiology is secondary. However, there are numerous settings where this needs to be revisited, given the rapid realignment of denominations and the retreat of Christendom. So you see some pretty heavy church-speak from evangelicals these days: the Nine Marks ministry says some pretty particular things ecclesiology-wise. The Federal Vision movement is likewise (though very different) heavy on sacraments and covenant/church talk. This is not an isolated trend.

11 - hermeneutics
I don't mean hermeneutics in the sense of perspectival readings etc, but in the sense of asking the question: what makes the bible a unity? In what does a richly theological reading of Scripture consist? There are some very exciting developments on this front, building on the work of a previous generation - biblical scholars now collaborating with theologians on the matter of scriptural interpretation.