Music in Church in the 21st Century: part 2 - 'if music be the food of love...'

In my previous post, I put forward the tentative thesis, disguised as someone else's, that 'folk' music was the best way to describe the form of music that ought to be found in churches. It is a particular expression of a theology of church of course. It is missional, in that adapts to local conditions; it is non-elite, in that it is accessible by the community without asking extraordinary skill or learning (thus reflecting the priesthood of all believers); it is open to being sanctified for its use by the Christian community.

Necessarily, some forms of music are going to be excluded from this because they are not aesthetically shaped to the purpose of singing together to God. While no particular form of music is commanded or sanctified in scripture, as we try to adapt different forms of music to use in Christian fellowship as expressions of common life we will soon realise that some styles are just so ill-suited they will never work.

In each age, certain musical styles offer themselves in different ways for adaption for use in church meetings. The traditional tunes that we find used in 'Be Thou My Vision' or 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God' are already deeply embedded in the history and culture of the community from which they emerged as an expression of commonality - the pride and security of togetherness is the note they immediately sound. These features really work for church music because of the overlap - Christians want to express precisely those feelings and truths about their God. The return of Celtic-sounding melodies in the music of Townend and Getty works because we associate that style of music with rousing fellow-feeling. If anything, the danger is that it is a little militaristic - they all sound like national anthems in the end!

In our day, the popular song is the form that we find ourselves most aping in our church music. The popular song is nicely fit for purpose when it comes to church music, too - but in a different way. I would want to argue that popular songs of the 20th century are all about love and desire. When we hear a popular song, we immediately associate it with this erotic theme. The singer is an individual singing about his or her longing or loss. That's the genre: when the Beatles play around with this genre and singing about Walruses and whathaveyou, we recognise that this stretching of the genre is taking place, and ride with it. The music of U2 is an interesting case of course: they express desire and love, but most often it isn't for another human being. It is often suggestive of a desire for God....

And this is quite apt. The Psalms give us this theme of longing and desire for God. We Christians recognise that the popular song is a ready-made vehicle for the expression of longing and desire for God, because we instantly think of this when we hear it.

However, this is where the pitfalls lie, too. Since the 1930s the popular song has revealed itself to be capable of quite complex and even profound expressions of grown-up and mature emotions. But it has also been the musical vehicle for short-cuts to emotional fruition. It has lent itself to cheesiness - to the trite, the cheap, the quick, and the disposable. It has a tendency to be an adolescent form of music for expressing adolescent experiences - challenging no-one about anything. It can be extremely limited as a mode.

And while the popular song expresses much of what we might want to say to God, it doesn't capture all of the gestures and attitudes that are available to us...

Music in Church in the 21st Century: my paper for TWIST

This Saturday I will be giving a seminar at TWIST, EMU Music's conference to be held at Angel Place in the city.

Here's my blurb:

The influence of popular music since the invention of mass recording is inescapable, even in the church. But has it always been for the good? Are there forms of music that are by their nature unsuitable for use in singing the praises of God? Should the church just make use of whatever it finds in the culture around it? (Have you noticed that church music now sounds like Coldplay?) Can, and should, new forms of music emerge from the corporate worship of the church? How will good theology influence music itself (and not just the words)? This seminar asks probing theological questions about the relationship between sacred and secular, traditional and hip.

And here's my thinking in draft form: churches have on the whole moved beyond the sacred/secular divide when it comes to styles of music. This means they have become 'post-aesthetic' - which means that they have decided that the style of music is only incidental to the business of singing in church.

Nowadays, most evangelical churches imagine themselves choosing a style of music on the basis of its cultural relevance. The right style of music, then, is the style that clicks best with the congregation of the day. Or something like that.

There are good theological instincts at work here. The Bible does not mandate a style of music, though it talks about music often and is operatically full of songs. People in the Bible are constantly singing! What is more, we recognise that the gospel does not come to us bound hard to a particular cultural expression - in fact, the missionary genius of Christianity is that it transcends cultural expressions. Church singing in Africa and church singing in Indonesia are going to be different - thank goodness.

Furthermore, a healthy doctrine of creation and a cursory glance at church history will show us that the church adapts forms of music to its uses rather than needing to invent them from scratch. So: today's beer hall song is tomorrow's Lutheran hymn; that familiar sea-shanty will be turned to use in the Methodist chapel. The creative process of course involves borrowing from the world around us.

But does this mean that church musicians are aesthetic relativists? I don't think it can mean this. We don't want to offer short-cuts here - ie, that the organ is a more sacred instrument than the electric guitar. That is just silly. No: what I mean is this. Without prescribing what the outcome is, I would expect that as music is pressed into the service of congregational singing and worship of God, it will be transformed as music. And this means that the church will continually be generating fresh styles as it puts the music it hears to holy purposes.

Which means that, while church musicians ought to be open to repeating what they hear around them, they ought also to be encouraged to innovate and develop their musical style as a reflection of what they are doing. Borrowing and transforming is one thing; aping is another.

How might this work out in practice? A preacher I greatly admire once said to me when I put the relativist/pragmatic argument forward that no, there was definitely a style for church music. He said it was 'folk music'. Now, I think there is something in this - though I am not quite sure what he meant by 'folk'! That is, a style of music that achieves a marriage between the words of praise and the use in congregational singing can never be arbitrary, though it may vary enormously over time and place. It will be 'folk', I guess, if it is in the service of the people. And it is no accident that Christians have been responsible for developing some highly original forms of music from asking 'what musical style best serves and edifies the people of God?' and 'what musical style best correlates with the words of scripture?'

Why the Philosophy of Education?

Well thanks to thoe who helped me with texts on Education.

Why was I asking? Part of working in a denominational seminary as a theologian is being available to help the denomination think theologically about some of its practices. I have had some involvement in a project on 'community' for Anglicare, the Anglican church's vast welfare arm.

One of other things we are involved in a major way of course is education. We have, in Sydney, 40 or more schools, many of which are less than 20 years old. Some of them are what you would call 'elite' private schools, but many of them are low fee-paying schools in the less-advantaged western suburbs of Sydney.

But there is no consistent thinking about what it means to be a Anglican educational institution. Or, at least, such thinking as there is is quite ad hoc. The 'Christian' component gets tacked on somewhat, by having chapel services or some such. I would guess that little sustained thought goes into thinking through the implications of theology for the curriculum, or the practice of discipline, for example. Or, to what degree do schools foster social inclusiveness.

On the other hand, the Christian schools model, insofar as it promotes a sectarian view of knowledge and of the Christian community, is not the way forward either. Furthermore, taking models from the US and trying to replicate them in Australia ignores the massive cultural and historical differences between us on the very issue of education. So - I will read Doug Wilson, for sure: he is ALWAYS interesting, perceptive, funny and ... well, eccentric. But what works in remote Idaho in the political context of Obama's America is not automatically transferrable to Oz.

So, what is needed is a bit of theological thinking about education which will help educational practioners do their job to the glory of God.

Thoughts anyone?

Theory of Education

Help me -

I need to compile a must-read reading list in the theory and philosophy of education. It ought to include classics as well as state-of-the-art works. And I am not interested in the tin-tacks of teaching: I need to get over education as a philosophy.

Any ideas?

Doubt - your experiences?

I am conducting some research into why Christians - and ex-Christians - doubt. And what helped them through it, if anything did. I'd love to have some personal testimonies here ... though doubt has some features that are common in every experience, because it is so personal doubt is very different for different folks. Things one person just lives with, the next person finds crippling.

Please feel to go anonymous if that helps.

My article on Christopher Hitchens at the SMH

It's on the online opinion section (not the print bit). It isn't a knock down or anything, but...

Feel free to join the discussion there!

Hi everyone, Here's a link to my podcast: http://thecommonroom.podOmatic.com See you there! - - Michael

Hmm ... Jensen thinks again

In my Doctrine 2 lecture today I said something like this:

Some have decided, given the plethora of reconstructions of the life of Jesus, that there is no way to access the real Jesus, no knowing the truth about his human life. Albert Schweitzer wrote in 1906, after reviewing a century of scholarship that the best we could hope for in Jesus is a subjective experience of one unknown:

[Then I quoted Schweitzer himself]:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the task which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.

A.Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, p.401

Well, as two students pointed out, this is not entirely a fair representation of Schweitzer's view. Schweitzer, with some confidence that the NT documents represent some contact with a 1st century reality, represented Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet of the Kingdom of God whose prophecies came to naught because of his death. The strangeness that Schweitzer speaks of is as much Jesus's weirdness in relation to our modern world - ie, he isn't after all a liberal white Frenchman (sorry Ernst Renan). My emphasis on his unknownness as a historical unreachability is, true, more characteristic of Bultmann's position.

So: got me. However, I wouldn't want to concede everything. And I have read Schweitzer (yes, Doug! though not recently...). Schweitzer concludes indeed that Jesus cannot be known by historical research but instead by the kind of Christ-mysticism proffered (he said) by Paul. Jesus' words - his ethical teaching - are what makes him transcend times and places.

My 'Open Letter to Nathan Rees' in the SMH

This weeks Anglican Media column, entitled An Open Letter to Nathan Rees has been picked up as an item of interest by the Sydney Morning Herald. Which is funny, since they rejected it in the first place!

In part, the piece was a response to the way I had heard even Christians scoffing about Nathan and his cronies. There's plenty to scoff about, but to pray for civic leaders is a recognition of who we really think is in charge...

A Lecture I gave on Torture at UNSW

Download Audio

Reading for Doctrine Two - some suggestions

Theology is a subject that requires reading – not just of lecture notes or text books but reading of stimulating and challenging theological works.

Every evangelical theological student (that means you!) MUST read J.I. Packer’s seminal article ‘What did the Cross Achieve – The Logic of Penal Substitution’. You can find it online at http://www.the-highway.com/cross_Packer.html and in other places too. The article is gold not only for what Packer says about the cross, but for what he says about theological method.

Closely followed in this are two great evangelical works - The Cross of Christ by John Stott, and The Death of Christ by James Denney. Pierced for our Transgressions, the recent book by Ovey, Jeffers and Sach, is worth a read, though it has its limitations (very minimal reference to the gospels, for example). For a better defence of penal substitution, Steven Holmes’ The Wondrous Cross is the benchmark in my view. There is also Paul Molnar’s book Incarnation and Resurrection - I haven’t read it, but it looks good! :-)

Of the classic works on the work of Christ in the Christian tradition, Athanasius’ On the Incarnation of the Word, written when he was 21, is the standout. Anselm’s Why God Became Man? is the pinnacle of medieval theological thinking about the work of Christ. Calvin’s treatment in Book II of the Institutes is the first real exposition of penal substitution in the tradition. In the 17th century, John Owen’s The Death of Death is the supreme example of a Protestant account. B.B. Warfield’s book The Person and Work of Christ shouldn’t be overlooked. In the 20th century, Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God and Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Jesus: God and Man are the two most sophisticated works from a German point of view and they do not overlook contemporary difficulties brought about by historical and ethical thinking since the Enlightenment. For a Roman Catholic account, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Mysterium Paschale is good value. Colin Gunton’s The Actuality of Atonement is a very stimulating, if not entirely satisfying book. On the reformed end of things, John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied will get your pulses racing.

Don’t be shy about dipping into great works of systematic theology – all of which will have to say something about the cross. Use the indexes! Check out Francis Turretin, Charles Hodge and Herman Bavinck, for examples of classic reformed accounts. You ought to purchase one of these as a resource for your ministry. Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV.1 can’t be ignored though – even if you only dip in and get your toes wet.

Lastly, I think everyone should read John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus. Usually it comes up under ‘Ethics’ – but it is a very challenging exploration of the significance for today of the Biblical Jesus in social, political and spiritual terms.

Jesus: Connections for Life

With the 'Jesus All About Life' campaign primed and ready to go this month, the good folks down at Christians in the Media have done us all a favour and put together a resource to take the conversation futher. The TV ads will prompt discussion: will Christians be able to take it to where it counts? The Jesus: Connections for Life coursewill do just that.

There's a professionally produced booklet and DVD package which could be used by a group, a church or an individual. It's all very well done and rates very low on the hokey factor. Dominic and his gang have been able to put substance in. Go order some copies today!

Andrew Shead on translation

Andrew Shead talks about translation.

Given the recent announcements about the NIV, this is a timely discussion!

A New Evangelical Anglican Vision?

Just this past term I have had the great pleasure of co-teaching – with Professor Ashley Null, the renowned Cranmer scholar - a MA unit offered here at Moore College entitled ‘Anglican Identity’. In it we made careful study of the development of the English reformation and the works of leading figures like Fisher, Cranmer and Hooker.

A highlight was reading the moving testimony of Catherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII, to her conversion to the gospel of justification by faith.

I was curious, however, as to why so few Sydney clergy thought this was a subject that might interest them, or that the study of the founding documents of our denomination might be well worth their while.

This was confirmed by casual conversations with Moore students. I asked them ‘how do you understand your identity as an Anglican?’ – and was met with baffled looks and shrugs. The denomination is a ‘good boat to fish from’, mostly, but there is (it seems to me) no great passion for Anglicanism itself and no great commitment to study its formularies and its history.

Perhaps it is because the international controversies have become wearisome and even a source of embarrassment. Perhaps it is because the denomination changes at glacial speed – and we in our time are addicted to change, even for its own sake. Perhaps we are also in the grip of the ‘lone ranger’ vision of the brave church planter, unencumbered by denominational vagaries.

But I was surprised that even the GAFCON movement, with its bold and remarkable vision for an global Anglican movement, has not caught the local imagination. It has been perceived as a political rather than a spiritual movement - which is certainly not the way it was perceived by those who were present in Jerusalem.

More than ever, we need to renew our vision of what it means to be an evangelical Anglican. My conviction is that not only is being evangelical the most authentic way of being Anglican – we’ve been saying that for years - but also that being Anglican is a great way of being evangelical.

How come?
Firstly, because the Anglican formularies (the 39 Articles, the Prayer-Book and the Homilies) subject themselves at every turn to the authority of scripture. They offer themselves to be tested against a scriptural norm.

Second, because Anglicanism has a great sense of what is of primary and what is of secondary importance. Other Protestant denominations have a tendency to make secondary issues – like the manner of baptism or church discipline or church government – primary. And they endlessly divide because of it. The Anglican formularies commit us to important things – and allow us freedom under Scripture on the secondaries. The great evangelical bishop JC Ryle called this a 'studied moderation about things non-essential to salvation'. What a blessing!

Third, Anglicanism is a great mission strategy. From the beginning, Cranmer and the others knew that they were in a battle for hearts – hearts, like Catherine Parr’s, that needed conversion. Today, the opportunities opening up for mission because of our Anglican networks are extraordinary - nationally and globally. Anyone interested in Christian mission ought to be interested in what is happening through Anglican church today - yes, despite all our well discussed flaws.

I am sure I could add more to this list. But I am not sure that the message is being heard.
The text of Ed Loane's wonderful speech to the Anglican Church League is here. In it, Ed recounts the League's century-long determination to defend the evangelical character of the diocese of Sydney from liberalism and tractarianism. It struck me however that for most of that century evangelical Anglicans knew what the Anglicanism they were defending was. There was a strong positive as a corollory to the negative. If today we have lost a sense of what that Anglicanism really is, then a determination to defend it becomes merely negativity for its own sake, or sectarianism. We need urgently to relocate the evangelically beating heart of our Anglicanism - that ought to be the go-forward mission of the ACL. No amount of fighting off charismatics or New Perspectivists will seem meaningful if there is not this real sense that being Anglican is worth it for a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical.

And that leads me to a final point. We urgently need a liturgical renewal or even revival - and our Anglican heritage gives us the resources to make it possible. Now: I don't want to be misunderstood here. I am NOT calling for nostalgia, for dressing up, for antiquarian services in 16th century English or anything of the kind. Far from it. BUT it seems to me that Cranmer's great insight was that the habitual and regular gathering of God's people - corporate worship - was a crucial moment in which the distinctive emphases of Christian doctrine were to be embedded in the hearts of believers (and preached to non-believers). The thirty-nine articles envisage that in diverse times and places new expressions of corporate life will needed to embody and embed these same truths - showing us that the content and not the form was the thing that mattered.

Too often, Sydney Anglican meetings are characterised by what they are NOT. They are not charismatic and they are not Catholic. Fine. But I can't believe we are satisfied with these negatives. What is more, we have a real envy problem when it comes to the charos - why are their people having so much fun? Why do they enjoy such theologically lite services so much?
The BCP is a standard which we ought to emulate in our own way - it is one of the best things we have! It dramatises the Christian gospel and the Christian life in response - teaching us justification by grace through faith and the authority of scripture and nurturing us in those. It makes a feature of preaching, but it puts even the preacher under the authority of the scriptures that are read aloud. In rejecting the theology of Roman Catholicism, the Protestant reformers at the same time had a compelling alternative to offer. And done rightly, it hits the Christian experientially deep down. Could we one day be able to say again that what we do in church meetings is the one of the best things about being a Sydney Anglican?

Calvin @ 500 - sign up quick!

If you are planning to come to the Calvin conference at Moore - then I advise you to book in and sign up quick! The word on the street is that more than 150 delegates have signed in from interstate. Sydney-siders have been leaving it till the last minute - but they will have to let us know they are coming for catering purposes or they will GO HUNGRY.

Andrew Cameron on the Podcast

Andrew Cameron on the Trials of Theology

Great stuff - latest Common Room episode.

Ten Reasons the Ashes are Gone

OK, the Ashes are gone and it's time for a post mortem. Congratulations to the England team - but I think they will admit that their side isn't the strongest one they have fielded. In the stats and averages, the Australians looked dominant in terms of volume of runs, centuries scored, and wickets per bowler. But it didn't translate into victories. Here's ten reasons it went pear-shaped...

1. Failure to win in Cardiff. One wicket was all that seperated the two teams in the end. Australia were dominant in Cardiff and couldn't finish them off. Lack of a quality experienced spinner and some strange captaincy on the last day helped England.

2. Mitchell Johnson at Lords. What went wrong? I am still shaking my head in disbelief. Johnson looked like a moody teenager and bowled like he was bowling with the wrong arm. Strauss was gifted a century, England were gifted a very large and rapid first innings total - and we never looked in it from there.

3. Batting collapses in the first innings three times. Killed us at Lords. Got us in a spot of bother at Edgbaston. Killed us again at the Oval. North, Ponting and Clarke got big runs, but failed when the chips were down.

4. No quality spinner. Without a really viable spinning option, Ponting had nowhere to turn to when the batsmen get set, or when one of his pacemen has an off day. In the end, it was absurd to play four quicks at the Oval.

5. Michael Hussey. Sorry Mr Cricket, but you were a big gimme in the middle of the batting order. You made runs when it didn't matter anymore and got ducks when it really did matter. You were a passenger, basically.

6. Bowling on Strauss's pads. Why do this? He's good - but not THAT good. Gifted far too many easy runs.

7. Variety in the England bowling attack. No single bowler was dominant. But each of them took a turn - Flintoff at Lords, Anderson at Edgbaston, Broad at the Oval with Swann.

8. Late order England runs. The sight of Swann and Broad swinging the bat is enough to give me nightmares. Prior, Bopara, Collingwood, Cook and Bell were disasters for England. But it didn't matter in the end.

9. Inability to play swing bowling. Not quite as pronounced as in 2005, it was still the case that the Aussie batsmen were vulnerable to inswinging deliveries.

10. Some WOEFUL umpiring. Not decisive, perhaps, but certainly there were some embarassing decisions against the Aussies. Phillip Hughes got at least two, and he only batted three times. Not easy to build confidence - or large scores - with trigger happy umps.

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.