Speaking off the cuff, John Milbank gave a very interesting and compelling account of his own theological programme, or agenda. It was polemical and aggressive in tone, to say the least!
The great insight of Radical Orthodoxy is the claim that there is no such thing as the secular. Milbank pointed to the fading away of sociology as a discipline as vindication of his own book in particular. He mentioned Benedict XVI's Regendsberg address as evidence of his own influence! Which is to say, the claim that the Pope made that faith and reason integrated is the best, nay only defence against the arrogance of reason unfettered and the lunacy of pure fideism. What both he and the pope agree on is that there is the need for a 'mediating metaphysics'.
1. Achievements. Milbank claimed that RO is one of the most influential and significant movements in theology today. It claims to revision philosophy as well as theology and to bring theology back to the centre of thought as in the medieval university. He claimed that the movement had global reach.
2. Themes 1. RO is a critique of the secular. The secular is an illusion! This is to me is the great attraction of RO. It has real apologetic teeth at this point. There is no neutrality when it comes to metaphysics. It is all metaphysics - just good or bad metaphysics. In analytical philosophy we see not argument but a buried theological decision. Theology saves common sense!!
2. Postmodernism. RO is very positive about the destruction of modernism and wishes to 'embrace the postmodern flux'. The flux is however not a cause for despair AT ALL but a sign of divine plenitude. Once again, I find this a very attractive feature of RO.
3. RO rests on a peculiar and contested genealogy. This to me is the least interesting feature of the movement. Duns Scotus is cited as the point of departure - where subsequent Christianity went wrong. As a post-Reformation theologian, this leaves me a little sidelined!
He went on a little here to speak about the mode of theological writing. The point is, that if you stick to pure rational discourse, you will go wrong, says Milbank. He has a bit of a point here: Christian theology when it attempts a pure rationality fails to capture the richness of its own scriptures. I would cite 17th C. scholastic protestantism as guilty of this. Narrative and metaphor in fact SAVE the grand tradition, says JM. To strip them away is a fatal move.
4. Theological ontology... RO talks a great deal of participation in the divine being. This it has learnt from thinkers like Maximus, and this participation is expressed liturgically and especially eucharistically. This is unashamedly platonistic - Milbank says that Christianity is inherently Platonist.
3. Criticism. Milbank said there were no serious criticisms. Sure, he said, you get politically correct US rant and you get a British version which is nitpicking about his reading of various thinkers, but these are not serious.
4. Future directions. JM spoke here of a number of themes that he was interested in exploring: geopolitical theology, the idea of gift exchange and so on. He was quite unabashed about being a supercessionist! He also spoke of an educational programme: theologians should be soaked in the classics and in philosophy and literature. And he has an interest in parish life and so on. He claims an ecumenical reach beyond Anglicanism.
A vigorous question time followed.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Friday, October 20, 2006
John Milbank on Radical Orthodoxy After Seven Years
This was a lecture/debate I attended here in Oxford last night.
Milbank began by eschewing 'false humility'! And went from there making sweeping and hubristic claims for his own project! It was a tantalising performance.
A summary and reflection to come.
Milbank began by eschewing 'false humility'! And went from there making sweeping and hubristic claims for his own project! It was a tantalising performance.
A summary and reflection to come.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Martyr of the Month - Charles Godden
I cite the following from a Moore Theological College newsletter.
Recently, the Sydney Synod (rather gracelessly in my view) refused an opportunity to recognise Godden as a martyr on the grounds that he was not called upon to give up his faith!
OUR FORGOTTEN MARTYR
Remembering the death of Charles Christopher Godden
BY JOHN HARRIS
On 16th October, 1906, on a lonely jungle track high on the slopes of the brooding
volcano that is the island of Ambae, Charles Godden met his violent death, Moore
College’s first and only Martyr.
An orphaned country boy, Charles was converted at confirmation classes in Euroa,
Victoria. He immediately offered for the ministry. At 19, he entered Perry Hall,
Nathaniel Jones’s little college in Bendigo. In 1897, when Jones was appointed
Principal of Moore College, he brought Charles with him. He was ordained by the
Archbishop of Sydney in 1899 and appointed to St Michael’s Surry Hills.
A year later, the Bishop of Melanesia, Cecil Wilson, spoke at St Michael’s of islanders
‘crying out for someone to teach them the gospel’. Charles instantly offered for
missionary service. He wrote prophetically, ‘There have already been six martyrs … I
shall therefore have the opportunity of glorifying God by my devotedness to the lost
sheep whom the Good Shepherd is seeking.’
After training on Norfolk Island, he was appointed to Ambae, part of the New
Hebrides but now the independent nation of Vanuatu. He reached the isolated little
Lolowai mission on the coast in April 1901 during the last days of ‘blackbirding’, the
infamous Queensland labour trade. Just 24 years old, he was the only missionary,
visiting coastal people by boat and venturing inland to jungle villages. He gained a
reputation for his enthusiasm for teaching the Bible, his medical skill, his efforts to
begin schooling for children and his devotion to the discipling of new converts.
In December 1905, Charles returned to marry Eva Dearin at St Michael’s Surry Hills.
His best man was David Knox, Broughton Knox’s father. Charles spent some of his
leave drafting an Ambae translation of Mark’s Gospel. In April 1906, the couple
arrived at Lolowai mission amidst a crowd of islanders with welcoming flowers.
In October a Christian family from a jungle village asked him to come to baptise new
converts. Lolowai people warned him not to go. Alameamea, a ‘blackbirded’ labourer
returned after being jailed and tortured in Queensland, had threatened to kill the first
white man to tread on his land. Charles, however, considered it his duty. He left
Lolowai on Monday 15th October, travelling down the coast by boat and walking up
steep jungle tracks.
After the baptisms, while walking back down, Alameamea shot him with a musket.
His companions fled. He fell to the ground and his assailant rushed out, striking him
in the neck with an axe. His friends returned, tearing up clothes to bind his wounds.
Carrying him down the mountain, they rowed him home along the coast. Just as
they reached Lolowai, Charles died of his wounds. His final words were: ‘Let there
be no fighting because of me. Let there be peace.’
His grave is at Lolowai. A stone cross in the jungle marks the place of his
martyrdom. A simple monument at a little church high up the volcano contains the
stones on which his blood fell. He has two memorials in Australia, one in St John’s
Euroa and another in the Moore College Chapel.
He was the first Australian missionary to die in Melanesia and one of the first
evangelicals to be martyred as a missionary anywhere in the world.
Recently, the Sydney Synod (rather gracelessly in my view) refused an opportunity to recognise Godden as a martyr on the grounds that he was not called upon to give up his faith!
OUR FORGOTTEN MARTYR
Remembering the death of Charles Christopher Godden
BY JOHN HARRIS
On 16th October, 1906, on a lonely jungle track high on the slopes of the brooding
volcano that is the island of Ambae, Charles Godden met his violent death, Moore
College’s first and only Martyr.
An orphaned country boy, Charles was converted at confirmation classes in Euroa,
Victoria. He immediately offered for the ministry. At 19, he entered Perry Hall,
Nathaniel Jones’s little college in Bendigo. In 1897, when Jones was appointed
Principal of Moore College, he brought Charles with him. He was ordained by the
Archbishop of Sydney in 1899 and appointed to St Michael’s Surry Hills.
A year later, the Bishop of Melanesia, Cecil Wilson, spoke at St Michael’s of islanders
‘crying out for someone to teach them the gospel’. Charles instantly offered for
missionary service. He wrote prophetically, ‘There have already been six martyrs … I
shall therefore have the opportunity of glorifying God by my devotedness to the lost
sheep whom the Good Shepherd is seeking.’
After training on Norfolk Island, he was appointed to Ambae, part of the New
Hebrides but now the independent nation of Vanuatu. He reached the isolated little
Lolowai mission on the coast in April 1901 during the last days of ‘blackbirding’, the
infamous Queensland labour trade. Just 24 years old, he was the only missionary,
visiting coastal people by boat and venturing inland to jungle villages. He gained a
reputation for his enthusiasm for teaching the Bible, his medical skill, his efforts to
begin schooling for children and his devotion to the discipling of new converts.
In December 1905, Charles returned to marry Eva Dearin at St Michael’s Surry Hills.
His best man was David Knox, Broughton Knox’s father. Charles spent some of his
leave drafting an Ambae translation of Mark’s Gospel. In April 1906, the couple
arrived at Lolowai mission amidst a crowd of islanders with welcoming flowers.
In October a Christian family from a jungle village asked him to come to baptise new
converts. Lolowai people warned him not to go. Alameamea, a ‘blackbirded’ labourer
returned after being jailed and tortured in Queensland, had threatened to kill the first
white man to tread on his land. Charles, however, considered it his duty. He left
Lolowai on Monday 15th October, travelling down the coast by boat and walking up
steep jungle tracks.
After the baptisms, while walking back down, Alameamea shot him with a musket.
His companions fled. He fell to the ground and his assailant rushed out, striking him
in the neck with an axe. His friends returned, tearing up clothes to bind his wounds.
Carrying him down the mountain, they rowed him home along the coast. Just as
they reached Lolowai, Charles died of his wounds. His final words were: ‘Let there
be no fighting because of me. Let there be peace.’
His grave is at Lolowai. A stone cross in the jungle marks the place of his
martyrdom. A simple monument at a little church high up the volcano contains the
stones on which his blood fell. He has two memorials in Australia, one in St John’s
Euroa and another in the Moore College Chapel.
He was the first Australian missionary to die in Melanesia and one of the first
evangelicals to be martyred as a missionary anywhere in the world.
God's word is not chained
It is an honour to give this sermon at St Giles Normanton in the memory of George Seamer, a man who stood firm on the Word of God.
My text today is these verses from 2 Timothy:
8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God's word is not chained. 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.
[2 Timothy 2:8-10]
On October 6th, 1536, in a prison yard in the castle of Vilvoorden just north-east of Brussels a 42-year-old Englishman named William Tyndale was strangled and then burnt at the stake for heresy and treason. Tricked and betrayed by an agent of King Henry VIII, he had endured 500 days of harsh imprisonment and a farcical trial prior to his execution. As he died, it is reported that he cried out ‘Lord open the King of England’s eyes!’
What was the nature of his crime? Why was he such a threat to the King and to the Church that he had to be silenced?
Apparently fluent in eight languages, the scholar Tyndale’s crime was to translate, print and distribute parts of the Bible into the English tongue, something that had been expressly made illegal in 1409. Tyndale’s life was committed to the power of words. He was convinced that God himself has spoken in words that ordinary people could understand.
The God of Jesus Christ is not a mysterious, distant and unknown deity who, if he speaks at all, speaks in a babble of Latin. By no means: the message of Jesus Christ and his victory over the devil and the grave is for all people everywhere, of every tribe and every tongue.
This message is not static, but dynamic: it is marvellously potent. It is the power of life itself! What Tyndale realized was that power of God himself lay not in the structures of the church, or with popes and bishops, or even with Kings, but in the word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.
Tyndale staked his life and safety on the power of God’s word. He knew that the word of God in the hand of the ploughboy was dynamite to kings and popes because it was the word about the rule of the Lord of lords. The irony of it was that not so long after Tyndale’s death King Henry himself authorized an English translation of the Bible which was substantially based on Tyndale’s work and which forms the basis for our English translations up to the present day.
God’s word is not chained!
Tyndale knew this because he knew what the apostle Paul knew.
These few words from 2 Timothy 2 are written by a man who also knew the deprivation and despair that comes with the loss of freedom. This was the man who had a calling from God to preach to the Gentiles, from one end of the earth to another. He had big plans: even to visit Spain with his good news, at the far edge of his known universe. But: he wasn’t going there while he was rotting away in chains. He wasn’t able to be with the churches that he had planted, or to be there in person to guide Timothy, timid Timothy, through his first stumbling steps in ministry. Was the mission going to fail? The question must surely have crossed Paul’s mind. What was the future to be? How could the gospel of Jesus possibly go forward with its chief apostle off the pitch and out of action? Would the Christian movement wither away and become a quirk of history, an artifact to be discovered and pondered over by antiquarians but of no ongoing significance?
If Paul knew first hand the impotence of his imprisonment, he knew also the shame of being chained up ‘like a criminal’, as if he was not the messenger of a mighty and glorious God but one of the numberless villains and vagabonds that frequented the Roman Empire. He was being treated as an enemy of good order and a threat to peace. This was not supposed to be the position of a respectable and cultivated Roman citizen; he was certainly not going to get access to the top end of town in his current position, nor influence the movers and shakers in society. What influence could he possibly have as a common criminal?
But the problem of the apostle’s imprisonment was deeper even than this: it was a real question mark over God himself. For, if his great apostle to the Gentiles is cooling his heels under house arrest somewhere in the empire, what is God doing? Is he really as powerful as he pretends? Is he really the master of events, or have events somehow conspired to master him? Is trust in the promises of this God somehow misplaced, if so little apparent progress can be charted?
It is a question we ourselves may feel like asking, even today. We experience from some quarters an open hostility to the gospel and a flagrant rejection of the word of God as if it were a polite suggestion.
That is more often a voice from within the church, sad to say.
From without, we experience rather the complete apathy of our friends and neighbours, the yawns and bored stares rather than the raised voices. Perhaps it is the apparent dagginess and the irrelevance of the gospel to most people that is more depressing than its explicit rejection by some. For every full church in the UK, there is at least one down the road that is virtually empty.
We may well ask: where today is the evidence of the power and authority of God?
But let us turn back to Paul at this point. What is his response?
He is not despairing: for, as he says: ‘God’s word is not chained!’
Why can he be so sure? Why can he be so confident when the evidence of the shackles jangling around his wrists would say otherwise?
What Paul says is that it is in the nature of his message. His gospel is what gives him confidence in his gospel.
And what is his gospel?
Have a look at verse 8. He asks his readers to ‘remember Jesus Christ’ – and two things about him in particular.
It has two parts:
First, Jesus Christ was ‘raised from the dead’.
That is to say, this man, the figure at the centre of Paul’s preaching, had been victorious over sin and death! The prison of the tomb could not keep him in. The chains of death and hell could not hold him: on the contrary, on the third day he had risen victorious. His grave is empty!
It is worth us pausing here to think: what kind of power is needed to raise the dead? Clearly this is not merely a human power: it is beyond the power of human beings to achieve. It is a power beyond our ordinary conception of what is powerful.
The word that Paul preaches is a message not only about life beyond death: it is a message of the defeat of death. It is a declaration that death has been reversed.
So: Paul’s gospel is about God’s power to reverse the effects of sin and death. It’s an announcement of the forgiveness of sins! And it’s a message from the same God who called light out of darkness and called things that are not as though they were.
What’s more: this power is also the power to transform lives. It’s a power that makes a difference for individuals. Paul could talk about this from his personal experience, of course: a man who once sought to murder the followers of Jesus but then miraculously became one of his leading followers. In Romans 8:10-11 he writes:
10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
People here today know about this. People here have been changed by the power of God’s word, brought out of darkness into God’s wonderful light; they know the power of God’s word to liberate us from captivity to sin and death. People here live in full expectation that sin and death will not have the last word; and that they will have eternal life together with God. Like Paul, they have experienced it for themselves – they have heard this word of God and know how powerful it is.
The second part of Paul’s gospel: Jesus Christ was ‘descended from David’
This may at first seem like unremarkable thing to say. After all, lots of people could claim that they were descended from David: Joseph for example. But here it is far more significant that that: as the son of king David, Jesus was the heir to Israel’s throne and to all the promises of God that came to David. Back in 2 Samuel 7, God had made a covenant with King David that his kingdom would be without end. He had said to David:
12 When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
A son is promised; a direct descendent of David who will rule, and for ever. Though David will one day die, this Son of David, will live and live. In his gospel, Paul proclaims Jesus Christ as the one through whom God’s promises come to fruition.
God is powerfully true to himself. The true king who has ascended on high and NOW rules! The resurrection was not just the beginning of new life for Jesus: it was his enthronement as Israel’s mighty king: the king who was to rule not only Israel but the nations as well. All authority in heaven and earth is given to him. Jesus now rules: he is LORD. This was another way in which Paul summarized his gospel: Jesus is Lord.
And so, Paul’s gospel is powerful precisely because it is about power: it is a message about who is in charge, really. It is a word from and about a king who calls on people everywhere to recognize his authority and to submit to him as the son of David and the true heir to his throne. This word of God, about the rule of Jesus, has no regard for what human beings think is powerful: even though it be spoken by a man in rags or a by a poor woman it demands that kings, and princes and presidents and prime ministers and chief executives submit to his rule and the rest of us along with them.
So: Paul is able to say that God’s word is not chained because of what that word, his gospel: it is about: Jesus, raised from the dead, descended from David. And for Paul this means that he endures everything for the sake of others who believe it. He is able to withstand even his imprisonment, with all its deprivations and shames, because he knows that God’s word is powerful to accomplish his will. He is not despairing. He is not browbeaten. He is not bullied into silence, or embarrassed into defeat. Paul is all the more encouraged to continue on in hope, knowing that if even he should die with his mission unfulfilled that God’s word go to the grave with him. He endures everything (vs 10); he puts up with the trails and persecutions with an unbattered confidence in the power of the gospel. He knows that his own failings and weaknesses and sufferings are not an obstacle to God accomplishing his word.
So: for us there is I think a great comfort, but also a strong rebuke as well. We’ll start with the rebuke:
There is a sharp reminder for us that when we think that the word of God is chained to our programmes, our business, our effort, and way of doing things we are completely and arrogantly mistaken. It is a great temptation for evangelical churches in these days of thinking strategically about our church’s mission, and analyzing church growth, and signing up for programmes and courses and what have you. We do tend to think that the gospel could not possibly go forward without us and without our strenuous efforts. Our busy-ness which we offer to God to use does not make him dependent on us, though he certainly loves to make use of us. We must certainly resist this belief in our own indispensability: but I am afraid that in lots of evangelical churches resistance to this temptation has been rather minimal. We have started to believe in the power of the means that we use to do evangelism and run church services and not in the Word of God itself. We have fallen in love with our own technical excellence and forgotten that the only thing that advances the cause of the gospel is the gospel: that it is a powerful word about a risen king, a word that doesn’t need power-point to make it powerful. This morning I would like to invite us to re-consider our attitudes in this matter – not that programmes or thinking about the practicalities of our mission are wrong, but that we put them in the right place and recognize afresh our dependence on God’s word.
But also and more obviously here we have a great comfort: the word of God is not chained - so do not fear and do not despair at the attacks on the gospel or at the apathy of the wider community. Do not be afraid of standing on the word of God: where else can one stand? Do not be perplexed by the self-serving cleverness of those people who would tell us otherwise. Do not be surprised by resistance to the gospel – it is in its nature that it is a message as much rejected as accepted. Do not be surprised when the gospel is criticized for its irrelevance or its dowdiness – people need to find excuses to evade it, after all. But there is no need for us to be cowed or depressed either. Rather we can take great strength from the fact that God’s word does not return to him empty. This was after all the word that created the worlds, that caused the sun to shine and put the moon in its place; this is the word that rules the sea and the stars. God said, and it was so. And it is the word that brought Jesus out of the tomb; it is this word that rules: it is the authoritative word, the last word.
Let this church then be one that never ceases to rest wholly and only on the word of God, and nothing else. Let it be fearless in its declaration of the message of the gospel of Jesus, though it be foolishness or a stumbling block to others. Let it not trust in the brilliance of its ministry team or the magnificent planning, efficiency and wisdom of its PCC. For the word of God is not chained.
William Tyndale not only translated these magnificent words, he believed them too. And, he was not despairing even though his opponents in this work were popes and kings. He was not despairing even as he went to the stake with his work incomplete, and with the full realization of his dream – that the bible be freely available to all English men and women in their own tongue – was several decades away. His example is a great witness for us in our experience today of hostility and apathy to the word of God to endure everything.
Let’s finish with Paul’s words:
2 Timothy 2: 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. 11 Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; 13 if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.
My text today is these verses from 2 Timothy:
8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God's word is not chained. 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.
[2 Timothy 2:8-10]
On October 6th, 1536, in a prison yard in the castle of Vilvoorden just north-east of Brussels a 42-year-old Englishman named William Tyndale was strangled and then burnt at the stake for heresy and treason. Tricked and betrayed by an agent of King Henry VIII, he had endured 500 days of harsh imprisonment and a farcical trial prior to his execution. As he died, it is reported that he cried out ‘Lord open the King of England’s eyes!’
What was the nature of his crime? Why was he such a threat to the King and to the Church that he had to be silenced?
Apparently fluent in eight languages, the scholar Tyndale’s crime was to translate, print and distribute parts of the Bible into the English tongue, something that had been expressly made illegal in 1409. Tyndale’s life was committed to the power of words. He was convinced that God himself has spoken in words that ordinary people could understand.
The God of Jesus Christ is not a mysterious, distant and unknown deity who, if he speaks at all, speaks in a babble of Latin. By no means: the message of Jesus Christ and his victory over the devil and the grave is for all people everywhere, of every tribe and every tongue.
This message is not static, but dynamic: it is marvellously potent. It is the power of life itself! What Tyndale realized was that power of God himself lay not in the structures of the church, or with popes and bishops, or even with Kings, but in the word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.
Tyndale staked his life and safety on the power of God’s word. He knew that the word of God in the hand of the ploughboy was dynamite to kings and popes because it was the word about the rule of the Lord of lords. The irony of it was that not so long after Tyndale’s death King Henry himself authorized an English translation of the Bible which was substantially based on Tyndale’s work and which forms the basis for our English translations up to the present day.
God’s word is not chained!
Tyndale knew this because he knew what the apostle Paul knew.
These few words from 2 Timothy 2 are written by a man who also knew the deprivation and despair that comes with the loss of freedom. This was the man who had a calling from God to preach to the Gentiles, from one end of the earth to another. He had big plans: even to visit Spain with his good news, at the far edge of his known universe. But: he wasn’t going there while he was rotting away in chains. He wasn’t able to be with the churches that he had planted, or to be there in person to guide Timothy, timid Timothy, through his first stumbling steps in ministry. Was the mission going to fail? The question must surely have crossed Paul’s mind. What was the future to be? How could the gospel of Jesus possibly go forward with its chief apostle off the pitch and out of action? Would the Christian movement wither away and become a quirk of history, an artifact to be discovered and pondered over by antiquarians but of no ongoing significance?
If Paul knew first hand the impotence of his imprisonment, he knew also the shame of being chained up ‘like a criminal’, as if he was not the messenger of a mighty and glorious God but one of the numberless villains and vagabonds that frequented the Roman Empire. He was being treated as an enemy of good order and a threat to peace. This was not supposed to be the position of a respectable and cultivated Roman citizen; he was certainly not going to get access to the top end of town in his current position, nor influence the movers and shakers in society. What influence could he possibly have as a common criminal?
But the problem of the apostle’s imprisonment was deeper even than this: it was a real question mark over God himself. For, if his great apostle to the Gentiles is cooling his heels under house arrest somewhere in the empire, what is God doing? Is he really as powerful as he pretends? Is he really the master of events, or have events somehow conspired to master him? Is trust in the promises of this God somehow misplaced, if so little apparent progress can be charted?
It is a question we ourselves may feel like asking, even today. We experience from some quarters an open hostility to the gospel and a flagrant rejection of the word of God as if it were a polite suggestion.
That is more often a voice from within the church, sad to say.
From without, we experience rather the complete apathy of our friends and neighbours, the yawns and bored stares rather than the raised voices. Perhaps it is the apparent dagginess and the irrelevance of the gospel to most people that is more depressing than its explicit rejection by some. For every full church in the UK, there is at least one down the road that is virtually empty.
We may well ask: where today is the evidence of the power and authority of God?
But let us turn back to Paul at this point. What is his response?
He is not despairing: for, as he says: ‘God’s word is not chained!’
Why can he be so sure? Why can he be so confident when the evidence of the shackles jangling around his wrists would say otherwise?
What Paul says is that it is in the nature of his message. His gospel is what gives him confidence in his gospel.
And what is his gospel?
Have a look at verse 8. He asks his readers to ‘remember Jesus Christ’ – and two things about him in particular.
It has two parts:
First, Jesus Christ was ‘raised from the dead’.
That is to say, this man, the figure at the centre of Paul’s preaching, had been victorious over sin and death! The prison of the tomb could not keep him in. The chains of death and hell could not hold him: on the contrary, on the third day he had risen victorious. His grave is empty!
It is worth us pausing here to think: what kind of power is needed to raise the dead? Clearly this is not merely a human power: it is beyond the power of human beings to achieve. It is a power beyond our ordinary conception of what is powerful.
The word that Paul preaches is a message not only about life beyond death: it is a message of the defeat of death. It is a declaration that death has been reversed.
So: Paul’s gospel is about God’s power to reverse the effects of sin and death. It’s an announcement of the forgiveness of sins! And it’s a message from the same God who called light out of darkness and called things that are not as though they were.
What’s more: this power is also the power to transform lives. It’s a power that makes a difference for individuals. Paul could talk about this from his personal experience, of course: a man who once sought to murder the followers of Jesus but then miraculously became one of his leading followers. In Romans 8:10-11 he writes:
10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
People here today know about this. People here have been changed by the power of God’s word, brought out of darkness into God’s wonderful light; they know the power of God’s word to liberate us from captivity to sin and death. People here live in full expectation that sin and death will not have the last word; and that they will have eternal life together with God. Like Paul, they have experienced it for themselves – they have heard this word of God and know how powerful it is.
The second part of Paul’s gospel: Jesus Christ was ‘descended from David’
This may at first seem like unremarkable thing to say. After all, lots of people could claim that they were descended from David: Joseph for example. But here it is far more significant that that: as the son of king David, Jesus was the heir to Israel’s throne and to all the promises of God that came to David. Back in 2 Samuel 7, God had made a covenant with King David that his kingdom would be without end. He had said to David:
12 When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
A son is promised; a direct descendent of David who will rule, and for ever. Though David will one day die, this Son of David, will live and live. In his gospel, Paul proclaims Jesus Christ as the one through whom God’s promises come to fruition.
God is powerfully true to himself. The true king who has ascended on high and NOW rules! The resurrection was not just the beginning of new life for Jesus: it was his enthronement as Israel’s mighty king: the king who was to rule not only Israel but the nations as well. All authority in heaven and earth is given to him. Jesus now rules: he is LORD. This was another way in which Paul summarized his gospel: Jesus is Lord.
And so, Paul’s gospel is powerful precisely because it is about power: it is a message about who is in charge, really. It is a word from and about a king who calls on people everywhere to recognize his authority and to submit to him as the son of David and the true heir to his throne. This word of God, about the rule of Jesus, has no regard for what human beings think is powerful: even though it be spoken by a man in rags or a by a poor woman it demands that kings, and princes and presidents and prime ministers and chief executives submit to his rule and the rest of us along with them.
So: Paul is able to say that God’s word is not chained because of what that word, his gospel: it is about: Jesus, raised from the dead, descended from David. And for Paul this means that he endures everything for the sake of others who believe it. He is able to withstand even his imprisonment, with all its deprivations and shames, because he knows that God’s word is powerful to accomplish his will. He is not despairing. He is not browbeaten. He is not bullied into silence, or embarrassed into defeat. Paul is all the more encouraged to continue on in hope, knowing that if even he should die with his mission unfulfilled that God’s word go to the grave with him. He endures everything (vs 10); he puts up with the trails and persecutions with an unbattered confidence in the power of the gospel. He knows that his own failings and weaknesses and sufferings are not an obstacle to God accomplishing his word.
So: for us there is I think a great comfort, but also a strong rebuke as well. We’ll start with the rebuke:
There is a sharp reminder for us that when we think that the word of God is chained to our programmes, our business, our effort, and way of doing things we are completely and arrogantly mistaken. It is a great temptation for evangelical churches in these days of thinking strategically about our church’s mission, and analyzing church growth, and signing up for programmes and courses and what have you. We do tend to think that the gospel could not possibly go forward without us and without our strenuous efforts. Our busy-ness which we offer to God to use does not make him dependent on us, though he certainly loves to make use of us. We must certainly resist this belief in our own indispensability: but I am afraid that in lots of evangelical churches resistance to this temptation has been rather minimal. We have started to believe in the power of the means that we use to do evangelism and run church services and not in the Word of God itself. We have fallen in love with our own technical excellence and forgotten that the only thing that advances the cause of the gospel is the gospel: that it is a powerful word about a risen king, a word that doesn’t need power-point to make it powerful. This morning I would like to invite us to re-consider our attitudes in this matter – not that programmes or thinking about the practicalities of our mission are wrong, but that we put them in the right place and recognize afresh our dependence on God’s word.
But also and more obviously here we have a great comfort: the word of God is not chained - so do not fear and do not despair at the attacks on the gospel or at the apathy of the wider community. Do not be afraid of standing on the word of God: where else can one stand? Do not be perplexed by the self-serving cleverness of those people who would tell us otherwise. Do not be surprised by resistance to the gospel – it is in its nature that it is a message as much rejected as accepted. Do not be surprised when the gospel is criticized for its irrelevance or its dowdiness – people need to find excuses to evade it, after all. But there is no need for us to be cowed or depressed either. Rather we can take great strength from the fact that God’s word does not return to him empty. This was after all the word that created the worlds, that caused the sun to shine and put the moon in its place; this is the word that rules the sea and the stars. God said, and it was so. And it is the word that brought Jesus out of the tomb; it is this word that rules: it is the authoritative word, the last word.
Let this church then be one that never ceases to rest wholly and only on the word of God, and nothing else. Let it be fearless in its declaration of the message of the gospel of Jesus, though it be foolishness or a stumbling block to others. Let it not trust in the brilliance of its ministry team or the magnificent planning, efficiency and wisdom of its PCC. For the word of God is not chained.
William Tyndale not only translated these magnificent words, he believed them too. And, he was not despairing even though his opponents in this work were popes and kings. He was not despairing even as he went to the stake with his work incomplete, and with the full realization of his dream – that the bible be freely available to all English men and women in their own tongue – was several decades away. His example is a great witness for us in our experience today of hostility and apathy to the word of God to endure everything.
Let’s finish with Paul’s words:
2 Timothy 2: 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. 11 Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; 13 if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Straining at gnats?
In the debate about sexuality a comment often heard from the more liberal side is that sexual matters ('sleeping arrangements') are a matter of very small importance compared to the really large issues of injustice and poverty.
The accusation from liberal quarters of the church is that conservatives are obsessed with sex, and that relative to bigger issues sex is unimportant. This is usually accompanied by something about how Jesus doesn't mention sex that much and is more concerned with greed and war etc etc.
But: sex IS important. It is such a crucial and personal feature of human life and identity; and it is such a yardstick for difference between the Christian community and the world around us, and always has been since the earliest days, not true? Sex is not merely a private matter (a Hauerwasian observation): any feminist knows this. (And actually, Christians knew it first).
And, concern for war and greed and sexual behaviour need not be mutually exclusive, surely? And, why is it the conservative side that is 'obsessed' and the liberal side not? Who keeps pushing the issue forward? Who makes an idol of sexual identity such that it trumps unity and biblical teaching?
I am interested not so much in the mud-slinging, as in the 'this is more important than this' argument. Granted, I think there is a critique to be made of an evangelical spirituality that is more concerned with swear-words and tax returns than about global poverty and mega death. This issue is perhaps: where does the ethics of individual personal everyday actions fit in with the so-called 'bigger' issues? And, does the practice of not-swearing, or at least, of keeping language holy (and the practice of chastity for the matter) actually form part of a larger whole?
The accusation from liberal quarters of the church is that conservatives are obsessed with sex, and that relative to bigger issues sex is unimportant. This is usually accompanied by something about how Jesus doesn't mention sex that much and is more concerned with greed and war etc etc.
But: sex IS important. It is such a crucial and personal feature of human life and identity; and it is such a yardstick for difference between the Christian community and the world around us, and always has been since the earliest days, not true? Sex is not merely a private matter (a Hauerwasian observation): any feminist knows this. (And actually, Christians knew it first).
And, concern for war and greed and sexual behaviour need not be mutually exclusive, surely? And, why is it the conservative side that is 'obsessed' and the liberal side not? Who keeps pushing the issue forward? Who makes an idol of sexual identity such that it trumps unity and biblical teaching?
I am interested not so much in the mud-slinging, as in the 'this is more important than this' argument. Granted, I think there is a critique to be made of an evangelical spirituality that is more concerned with swear-words and tax returns than about global poverty and mega death. This issue is perhaps: where does the ethics of individual personal everyday actions fit in with the so-called 'bigger' issues? And, does the practice of not-swearing, or at least, of keeping language holy (and the practice of chastity for the matter) actually form part of a larger whole?
How to talk right?
In our Hauerwas seminar today we spent a good deal of time reflecting on the Hauerwasian mode of discourse: polemical, violent (even), subversive, angular. Of course, to be studying this writer in the home of good manners (ie Oxford) amongst a people skilled in the art of not saying the truth is an interesting juxtaposition! Hauerwas's speech is justified in that he brings to light through dissonance the deeply embedded pagan assumptions of much Christian discourse in the West. The truth ought to be offered so that one may respond to it, if it is indeed the truth; and, the truth often comes through unpicking the assumptions that clump around its opposite.
The thing that saves Hauerwas from being just a naughty boy is that he has done his homework. Behind every verbal missile is a depth of thinking and reading, and a coherent and complex framework. It is thrilling that Christian speech can be so dynamic, and also alarmed that it can be so rude! The truth ought to be so divisive.
Where it goes wrong is that imitators of the Hauerwasian style (or imitators of other similarly aggressive and polemical Christian thinkers) imitate it as a style. There is the provocation of the prophet and then there is plain bad manners. The two are not the same; and just because something is done with no taste and complete bad manners does not make it true, or right; and certainly, the person who is merely rude can not call themselves persecuted when they are attacked.
The thing that saves Hauerwas from being just a naughty boy is that he has done his homework. Behind every verbal missile is a depth of thinking and reading, and a coherent and complex framework. It is thrilling that Christian speech can be so dynamic, and also alarmed that it can be so rude! The truth ought to be so divisive.
Where it goes wrong is that imitators of the Hauerwasian style (or imitators of other similarly aggressive and polemical Christian thinkers) imitate it as a style. There is the provocation of the prophet and then there is plain bad manners. The two are not the same; and just because something is done with no taste and complete bad manners does not make it true, or right; and certainly, the person who is merely rude can not call themselves persecuted when they are attacked.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Does this bother you? David Hicks in Guantanamo
David Hicks is an Australian suspected of involvement with the Taliban in Afganistan. He has been detained without trial or charge since 2002.I have no doubt that he has some objectionable views and may have got up to some reprehensible activity: but the way in which this whole procedure has been carried out without the bounds of ordinary systems of justice bothers me a great deal.
Why has justice been so slow in coming? What is going on? Am I right to be concerned?
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Some stirring words from Stan about preaching
" When was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on war? Furthermore, when was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on abortion? When was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on the kind of crae we ought to give to the ill? When was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on the political responsibilities of Christians? The problem is that we feel at a loss about how to make these kinds of matters part of the whole church. So, in effect, preaching betrays the church. I do not mean to put all the blame on preaching, but ministers do have opportunities to address moral issues that almost no one else in this society has - except for television. It is not much, but it is something. At least preachers can enliven a discourse that is not alive anywhere esle, and people are hungering to be led by people of courage." (Hauerwas Reader, p, 622)
I generally can't stand 'issue' sermons, because they are so much opinion and so little word of God. They are so prone to all the worst vices of preaching. But if we preach the scriptures, won't these matters arise ALL the time? Oh, for courageous inhabitants of the pulpit!
I generally can't stand 'issue' sermons, because they are so much opinion and so little word of God. They are so prone to all the worst vices of preaching. But if we preach the scriptures, won't these matters arise ALL the time? Oh, for courageous inhabitants of the pulpit!
Monday, October 02, 2006
'Order' in Genesis 2 - 3
I am teaching a class in Moore's Introduction to the Bible.
This week we are looking at one of my favourite sections: Genesis 1-11.
But there is a strange comment in the notes about the order of creation and its reversal in the fall. That is, in Genesis 2 you have a hierarchy of man, woman, creature; in the fall the problem is the woman listens to the creature and the man listens to the woman; and then in judgment, the right order is restored as God addresses man, woman, creature. I have heard this preached in sermons, read it in books and heard it bandied about as evidence of the order and the sin which is at root the upsetting of this order.
Only: in Genesis 2 we don't EVER see order established in this way! In fact, the creatures are made it seems before them both... It is a curious logic indeed.
This week we are looking at one of my favourite sections: Genesis 1-11.
But there is a strange comment in the notes about the order of creation and its reversal in the fall. That is, in Genesis 2 you have a hierarchy of man, woman, creature; in the fall the problem is the woman listens to the creature and the man listens to the woman; and then in judgment, the right order is restored as God addresses man, woman, creature. I have heard this preached in sermons, read it in books and heard it bandied about as evidence of the order and the sin which is at root the upsetting of this order.
Only: in Genesis 2 we don't EVER see order established in this way! In fact, the creatures are made it seems before them both... It is a curious logic indeed.
Friday, September 29, 2006
A Christian but a passive thing...
I was reading Tyndale, our martyr of the month today. Wow:
'A Christian man in respect of God is but a passive thing, a thing that suffereth only and doeth nought, as the sick in respcet of the surgeon or physician doth but suffer only. The surgeon lanceth and cutteth out the dead flesh, searcheth the wounds, thrusteth in tents, seareth. burneth, seweth or stitcheth and layeth corsies to draw out the corruption, and last of all layeth to healing plasters and maketh whole. The physician likewise giveth purgations and drinks to drive out the disease and then with restoratives bringeth health. Now if the sick resisteth the razor, the searching iron and so forth, doth he not resist his own health and is cause of his own death? So likewise is it of us, if we resist evil rulers which are the rod and scourge wherewith God chastiseth us, the instruments wherwith God searcheth our wounds, and bitter drinks to drive out the sin and to make it appear, and corsies to draw out by the roots the core of the pocks of the soul that fretteth inward. A Christian man therefore receiveth all things of the hand of God both good and bad, both sweet and sour, both wealth and woe.'
'A passive thing'. Well Tyndale was writing this in exile on the continent in fear for his very life at the hand of his own king, which gives us some perspective here, too...
'A Christian man in respect of God is but a passive thing, a thing that suffereth only and doeth nought, as the sick in respcet of the surgeon or physician doth but suffer only. The surgeon lanceth and cutteth out the dead flesh, searcheth the wounds, thrusteth in tents, seareth. burneth, seweth or stitcheth and layeth corsies to draw out the corruption, and last of all layeth to healing plasters and maketh whole. The physician likewise giveth purgations and drinks to drive out the disease and then with restoratives bringeth health. Now if the sick resisteth the razor, the searching iron and so forth, doth he not resist his own health and is cause of his own death? So likewise is it of us, if we resist evil rulers which are the rod and scourge wherewith God chastiseth us, the instruments wherwith God searcheth our wounds, and bitter drinks to drive out the sin and to make it appear, and corsies to draw out by the roots the core of the pocks of the soul that fretteth inward. A Christian man therefore receiveth all things of the hand of God both good and bad, both sweet and sour, both wealth and woe.'
'A passive thing'. Well Tyndale was writing this in exile on the continent in fear for his very life at the hand of his own king, which gives us some perspective here, too...
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Now, bring on the Urn
Well it is vitally important that I post my analysis of the upcoming Ashes series in Australia. I have had a good look at some of the English team and so I feel uniquely placed. I have copped English smugness for too long!
This English team is very strong because they major on important things, like batting and fast bowling. Most of the batsmen are in form and know the way to three figures. Kevin Peterson could on any given day do anything: he is like Gilchrist in this regard. Because he is attacking, he can change a game really quickly. Strauss is very consistent and tough to get out. Alastair Cook makes a solid number three (though he may open if Trescothick doesn't get his head back together). Collingwood is solid and even Bell has scored runs - though I think he is the new Darrell Cullinan when it comes to Shane Warne.
In the bowling, Hoggard, Harmison and Flintoff have some real meanness and consistency about them - though I don't think they will find the reverse swing they got in England. And now they have Panesar, who is a left arm bowler who can take wickets (unlike the world's most boring bowler Ashley Giles - what were they thinking by making him a test player?). Panesar is also fun to watch. They have dropped Geraint Jones which was a great move for the team because now at least some catches will go in.
When they lost this year against Sri Lanka, and failed to beat Pakistan on a couple of occassions, it was because they got spooked by top class spin and dropped heaps of catches. And their fast bowlers seemed to lose interest, or the support bowlers bowled rubbish. The biggest problem of course for England is injuries. If Flintoff plays more than three tests I will eat my hat. Seriously. He is a great player, but they squander him on one day cricket and other money spinners, and he eventually breaks down. Sure as eggs. Likewise if Harmison goes the whole season I will be very surprised.
The Aussie problem will be picking the right team. McGrath is a concern: a champ of old, but is he really the same as he was? He is my age, for heaven's sake! Can Gilchrist get his batting mojo back? Will Hayden look like he is in good need of a counselling session again? Will Langer get injured in a bizarre way? Will Lee give away six runs an over for the whole season? Will they be strong enough not to pick Michael Clarke just because he is a glamour boy? The Aussie selection process was too rigid and sentimental and not based on form- - exposed in the last Ashes.
It could come down to catching you know: I notice both teams have been butter-fingered of late. England can make even Sri Lanka look good by dropping easy catches.
So: Aussies to win, 2-1. The English'll win in Melbourne, as they always do, and they have a chance in Perth. But the Australians will take Brisbane. Adelaide will be a draw as always. Sydney to the Australians.
I'd love to hear your predictions!
This English team is very strong because they major on important things, like batting and fast bowling. Most of the batsmen are in form and know the way to three figures. Kevin Peterson could on any given day do anything: he is like Gilchrist in this regard. Because he is attacking, he can change a game really quickly. Strauss is very consistent and tough to get out. Alastair Cook makes a solid number three (though he may open if Trescothick doesn't get his head back together). Collingwood is solid and even Bell has scored runs - though I think he is the new Darrell Cullinan when it comes to Shane Warne.
In the bowling, Hoggard, Harmison and Flintoff have some real meanness and consistency about them - though I don't think they will find the reverse swing they got in England. And now they have Panesar, who is a left arm bowler who can take wickets (unlike the world's most boring bowler Ashley Giles - what were they thinking by making him a test player?). Panesar is also fun to watch. They have dropped Geraint Jones which was a great move for the team because now at least some catches will go in.
When they lost this year against Sri Lanka, and failed to beat Pakistan on a couple of occassions, it was because they got spooked by top class spin and dropped heaps of catches. And their fast bowlers seemed to lose interest, or the support bowlers bowled rubbish. The biggest problem of course for England is injuries. If Flintoff plays more than three tests I will eat my hat. Seriously. He is a great player, but they squander him on one day cricket and other money spinners, and he eventually breaks down. Sure as eggs. Likewise if Harmison goes the whole season I will be very surprised.
The Aussie problem will be picking the right team. McGrath is a concern: a champ of old, but is he really the same as he was? He is my age, for heaven's sake! Can Gilchrist get his batting mojo back? Will Hayden look like he is in good need of a counselling session again? Will Langer get injured in a bizarre way? Will Lee give away six runs an over for the whole season? Will they be strong enough not to pick Michael Clarke just because he is a glamour boy? The Aussie selection process was too rigid and sentimental and not based on form- - exposed in the last Ashes.
It could come down to catching you know: I notice both teams have been butter-fingered of late. England can make even Sri Lanka look good by dropping easy catches.
So: Aussies to win, 2-1. The English'll win in Melbourne, as they always do, and they have a chance in Perth. But the Australians will take Brisbane. Adelaide will be a draw as always. Sydney to the Australians.
I'd love to hear your predictions!
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Rushdie and evil, or is it good?
The problem, for Rushdie, apart from the savagery that he sees is the outcome of this way of thinking, is an epistemological one: how does one know that what is experienced as a revelation from God is in fact just that: from God? The novel tells of a moment in which Mahound/Muhammed himself was taken in for a time by the ‘Satanic Verses’ – verses of prophecy that in fact had a diabolical rather than divine source – undermines the terrible certainty with which religious believers assert their beliefs. God and/or Satan: which is it? Or is it both? In fact, may not both stem from the same origin? Rushdie puts these words in the mouth of a vision Gibreel has of Rekha Merchant, later in the novel:
This notion of separation of functions, light versus dark, evil versus good, may be straightforward enough in Islam…but go back a bit and you see that it’s a pretty recent fabrication. Amos, eight century BC, asks: “Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?” Also Jahweh, quoted by Deutero-Isaiah two hundred years later, remarks: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.” It isn’t until the Book of Chronicles, merely fourth century BC, that the word shaitan is used to mean a being, and not only an attribute of God.’
This is a rather unlikely bit of biblical scholarship (which takes on the tone of an encyclopedia entry); but it illustrates what for Rushdie is so problematic in the religious worldview. It is impossible for the believer to be certain that the voice that she is hearing is that of the divinity and not that of some more sinister force; or that the God in whom she believes is not somehow to be found in two guises in any case. With more than a hint towards the classic philosophical problem of evil, Rushdie intimates that the religious believer has to accept, ultimately, that either that good and evil are both committed by the same God, or that the this God is not truly God in the way that the monotheist religions have imagined. But, more than that, good and evil are perhaps not so easily distinguished as the religious traditions have thought; it is not so easily a case of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The victim mentality, which accuses the other of evil on a diabolic scale, ignores the evil within; it does not admit the possibility of its own complicity in evil. Victims are also perpetrators, though this is an unpalatable truth; and this means that causes cannot be pursued in expectation of some triumphal, final vindication. Evil and good form a complex web in which human beings and communities are entangled with one another.
This notion of separation of functions, light versus dark, evil versus good, may be straightforward enough in Islam…but go back a bit and you see that it’s a pretty recent fabrication. Amos, eight century BC, asks: “Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?” Also Jahweh, quoted by Deutero-Isaiah two hundred years later, remarks: “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.” It isn’t until the Book of Chronicles, merely fourth century BC, that the word shaitan is used to mean a being, and not only an attribute of God.’
This is a rather unlikely bit of biblical scholarship (which takes on the tone of an encyclopedia entry); but it illustrates what for Rushdie is so problematic in the religious worldview. It is impossible for the believer to be certain that the voice that she is hearing is that of the divinity and not that of some more sinister force; or that the God in whom she believes is not somehow to be found in two guises in any case. With more than a hint towards the classic philosophical problem of evil, Rushdie intimates that the religious believer has to accept, ultimately, that either that good and evil are both committed by the same God, or that the this God is not truly God in the way that the monotheist religions have imagined. But, more than that, good and evil are perhaps not so easily distinguished as the religious traditions have thought; it is not so easily a case of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The victim mentality, which accuses the other of evil on a diabolic scale, ignores the evil within; it does not admit the possibility of its own complicity in evil. Victims are also perpetrators, though this is an unpalatable truth; and this means that causes cannot be pursued in expectation of some triumphal, final vindication. Evil and good form a complex web in which human beings and communities are entangled with one another.
Matthew 10:1-42
In Matthew’s gospel we discover how close to the identity of the believer the idea of witness under trial is: the experience of rejection is not to catch them by surprise because of their close identification with the Christ who was likewise rejected, even by his own. Matthew’s collection of Jesus’s teaching about mission, (10:1-42) which he dramatizes as an address to his apostles on the cusp of their mission to Israel, is clearly also intended to be a word to the church of the apostles that is trying to live out its witness under the conditions of rejection. It is part of Matthew’s intention that his readers receive encouragement in their identification with Christ in knowing that if they are rejected, then indeed it is Christ that it is being rejected. The 'least of these' (25:45) and the 'little ones' (10:42) are not merely the suffering poor of sentimental exegesis but those who represent Christ as his witnesses and are of the house rejected on his account: they are offered his vindication in the eschatological court of judgment. The hostility that is received by the apostles as they are handed over to councils and flogged in synagogues emanates from within Israel itself, with the collaboration of the Gentile authorities: the rejection of the witnesses is close to home. It is the rejection of brother by brother, son by father, daughter by mother. Jesus is hailed here as a figure of division, bring not peace, but a sword indeed (10:34); and so it will be for his followers, for ‘a disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!’ (10:24-5). Being now a member of this new household contrasts with – and is held as some comfort for – the fact that enmity will come from home. (10:36). Hospitality towards the disciples and their message – the poti,sh… epoth,rion yucrou/ (10:42) – is the sign of the promised eschatological vindication, just as rejection is the sign of coming judgment. Thought Jesus brings the sword on earth, and not peace, it is not because his followers are wielders of the sword, or the provocateurs of conflict. The violent rejection they receive is despite their innocence: they are sent out as sheep amongst wolves and are to be innocent as doves (10:16). It is a statement about the way things are, rather than an incitement to violent conflict. In any case, as Jesus says here, before the king it will be ‘not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you’ (10:20). That is to say, the witness itself is not the act of a human person, or a mark of their zeal to make themselves martyrs. It is the testimony of the Father by the Spirit to the Son: those who so testify cannot avoid drawing on themselves the hatred of the world.
But: what of the moment when the conflict dissipates, and the persecution appears to end?
But: what of the moment when the conflict dissipates, and the persecution appears to end?
Friday, September 22, 2006
Bruce Smith, d. 2001
I would hope for nothing more than to do theology like Bruce Smith, my friend and teacher who died of leukemia in 2001.Bruce modelled for me the possibility of a completely evangelical theology that is also a theology with its eyes and ears open. He read widely and deeply, but was never a boring to be with. He was a raconteour who could tell a story that was sad, as well as a funny one. He arrived at one dinner party at our house equipped with a children's story to read to us all. His house was filled with art works and music and poetry, and artists and musicians and poets!
Bruce dwelt in more than one world: Moore College was where he lived and worked for a long period; but he also taught classics for almost twenty years at Sydney Grammar School, an academically selective school for boys. I feel like I saw him operate in both worlds - not worlds that readily appreciated his significance in the other - because I taught at Grammar and then was a student at Moore. What was remarkable was the quality of the friendships he had with the amazing people who were his colleagues at Grammar - the respect and fondness with which they spoke of him.
Emil Brunner was his favourite; and he told the story of a trip to Zurich to visit Brunner's old university department... of walking in to the office to see if he could find anyone who had worked with the old theologian and could perhaps supply an anecdote or two. A office worker offered to ring Brunner's son, himself; only to discover that he, the son, had just died...
His knowledge of the Bible was extraordinary. His ability to relate the message of the Bible to the heart, mind and soul was unparalleled. His ear for language and his delight in an extended metaphor was amazing.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Was Calvin any better (a cheeky post?)
The Hildebrandian option was tried in a Protestant form (it could be argued) in Calvin’s Geneva. To his credit, Calvin was not satisfied with the banal merger of spiritual into political order which was the tendency of the Lutheran princes; nor was he in any sense convinced by the Anabaptist aversion to politics. Calvin's thought shows a determination to keep the two kingdoms parallel with one another, after the manner of Gelasius. So, though it would be hard to make absolute the case from Calvin’s writings that theocracy was his preferred response to the issue at hand, in practice the submission of secular authorities to the person of Calvin (though he was without office) in Geneva, and the continued fussy intrusion of the consistory courts on the daily life of the town meant that the difference from the Pope’s Christendom was only really a matter of scale.
Papal authority
Papal power finds its emblematic exponent in Gregory VII (Hildebrand) and the ‘reforms’ which he initiated in the eleventh century. Since Gelasius in the fifth century the powers of priest and king had been arranged in separation and in precarious balance with one another; though, by the time of the Carolingian dynasty, this had apparently been misunderstood as a submission of the church to the emperor.[1] Gregory was determined to command the obedience of the kings and bishops of Christendom. He wielded the threat of excommunication; and, in an unparalleled step, took for himself the position of supreme and universal judge. He wrested back the legacy of Gelasius for the side of the papacy. The Dictatus Papae (1075) is a terse list of assertions of papal will over secular princedoms and local sees without qualification. We may note two of these decrees:
VIIII Quod solius papae pedes omnes principes deosculentur; (only the pope's feet may princes kiss)
and
XII Quod illi liceat imperatores deponere. (the pope can depose emperors)
The pope alone is he whose feet may be kissed by the princes it is his right to depose; which gives the pope a unique secular power in addition to his spiritual authority. In him the two power are thus to be brought to heel.
The unity of the papal powers has its theological source in the power of the keys given to Peter by Jesus in Mt 16:18-19, to which Gregory repeatedly refers. The power of the keys he interprets as that power to administer a binding justice on earth as in heaven. In a gloss on this passage he writes:
Are kings excepted here? Or are they not of the sheep which the Son of God committed to St Peter? Who, I ask, thinks himself excluded from this universal grant of the power of binding and loosing to St Peter unless, perchance, that unhappy man who, being unwilling to bear the yoke of the Lord, subjects himself to the burden of the Devil and reuses to be numbered in the flock of Christ? His wretched liberty shall profit him nothing; for if he shakes off from his proud neck the power divinely granted to Peter, so much the heavier shall it be for him in the day of judgment.[2]
Moreover, he claims that the see of St Peter is actually in possession of the merits of St Peter such that it can assume an authority of innocence compared to the guilt of kings that approach it. Gregory urges on kings a rightful humility corresponding to Christ’s own humility, the humility that Saul lacked:
If they humbly imitate him, they shall pass from their servile and transient reign into the kingdom of eternal liberty.[3]
However – and this is the accusation that the Tempter makes, too – the papacy at this point seemed to exempt itself from the virtue of humility; and to so assure itself of its inherited Petrine merits that it is immune to the lust for power which so affects princes. It was of course the indubitable historical reality of papal corruption that made the Gregorian edifice crumble.
[1] Oliver O'Donovan and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought 100-1625 (Grand Rapids, Mich., Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1999), p. 178.
[2] Letter 8.21 in Ibid., p. 243-44
[3] Letter 8.21 in Ibid., p. 249
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Rushdie doesn't like martyrdom much...
In martyrdom we find victimhood and religious self-identity combined in a potentially lethal way: it is not an accident that Rushdie opens his novel with the act of a person claiming martyrdom for herself. He has elsewhere written: ‘[O]nly fanatics go looking for martyrdom’. It is for him an inauthentic and dangerous way to establish one’s identity. In the chapter entitled ‘Ayeesha’, Gibreel has a vision that he, as an angel carries ‘the Imam’ – a character strongly resembling the Ayatollah Khomeni – back to the capital city of Desh. Gibreel notices the streets swarming with people, converging in a regular pattern upon a grand avenue leading towards the palace of the Empress (who echoes the hated Shah of Iran, disposed by the Islamic revolution of 1978). The people march in their hundreds towards the gates of the palace:
Seventy at a time, they come into range; the guns babble, and they die, and then the next seventy climb over the bodies of the dead, the guns giggle once again, and the hill of the dead grows higher. Those behind it commence, in their turn, to climb. In the dark doorways of the city there are mothers with covered heads, pushing their beloved sons in to the parade, go, be a martyr, do the needful, die. ‘You see how they love me,’ says the disembodied voice. ‘No tyranny on earth can withstand the power of this slow, walking love.’
This scene of ‘slow, walking love’ is viscerally awful, especially from the point of view of a secular individualist like Rushdie: the filmic quality of the narration adds to the revulsion that the reader must feel. That the mothers approve of the death march adds to its horror, that people could be so possessed of an irrational desire to self-destruct. For his part, Gibreel lamely suggests to the Imam that they are in fact driven not by love of him, but rather by hatred for the Empress: a revolutionary zeal in other words, rather than a religious devotion. The Imam replies:
They love me…because I am water. I am fertility and she is decay. They love me for my habit of smashing clocks. Human beings who turn away from God lose love, and certainty, and also the sense of His boundless time, that encompasses past, present and future; the timeless time, that has no need to move. We long for the eternal, and I am eternity. She is nothing: a tick, or a tock.
The religious emphasis on the transcendent, in other words, enables the appalling scene before us, because it holds out the promise of something even more substantial than one’s own life. It promises a substance more solid than the power of empires, which come and go along the ebb and tide of history. The cost of offering oneself to the Imam – life itself – is nothing compared to the reward that he promises.
Seventy at a time, they come into range; the guns babble, and they die, and then the next seventy climb over the bodies of the dead, the guns giggle once again, and the hill of the dead grows higher. Those behind it commence, in their turn, to climb. In the dark doorways of the city there are mothers with covered heads, pushing their beloved sons in to the parade, go, be a martyr, do the needful, die. ‘You see how they love me,’ says the disembodied voice. ‘No tyranny on earth can withstand the power of this slow, walking love.’
This scene of ‘slow, walking love’ is viscerally awful, especially from the point of view of a secular individualist like Rushdie: the filmic quality of the narration adds to the revulsion that the reader must feel. That the mothers approve of the death march adds to its horror, that people could be so possessed of an irrational desire to self-destruct. For his part, Gibreel lamely suggests to the Imam that they are in fact driven not by love of him, but rather by hatred for the Empress: a revolutionary zeal in other words, rather than a religious devotion. The Imam replies:
They love me…because I am water. I am fertility and she is decay. They love me for my habit of smashing clocks. Human beings who turn away from God lose love, and certainty, and also the sense of His boundless time, that encompasses past, present and future; the timeless time, that has no need to move. We long for the eternal, and I am eternity. She is nothing: a tick, or a tock.
The religious emphasis on the transcendent, in other words, enables the appalling scene before us, because it holds out the promise of something even more substantial than one’s own life. It promises a substance more solid than the power of empires, which come and go along the ebb and tide of history. The cost of offering oneself to the Imam – life itself – is nothing compared to the reward that he promises.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Gurus and growing up...
OK, a little bit more of a pastoral discussion: but no smacking!
As a young Christian, as I suppose is true of any young person, I was quite actively on the lookout for gurus. I was hungry to be someone's disciple: to find someone who had the bigness of vision and insight and wisdom so that I could latch on to them. There were two or three people who filled this role especially. I remember hanging on their every word, hungry for a little attention ("a shoe, a shoe! It is a sign...") and ready to do what they said to the letter.
But of course, it never lasts: because as you grow older and get to know the person better you get to see them as an ordinary fallible person - that they make mistakes, that they are guilty of faulty logic, that they have character flaws. This can be quite a traumatic period I think - especially as some people invest far more than I ever did in their gurus. It can be devastating to realise that the person isn't what you thought they were, especially if you have incorporated a great deal of their way of thinking into your own decision making about your life. But, it is also extremely liberating - the moment when you realise that the guru's advice is not right and make your own decision! At best, you then become friends with the guru ... i would have to say that by and large the guys I held up as gurus have now become my genuine friends: the dynamic has shifted.
What do we make of this phenomenon, especially within the church? Especially as a pastor, is it in the best interests of the other person to cultivate these kind of relationships? It is an incredibly powerful feeling to have people attach to you and to offer you the keys to their life! I think a crucial thing is if the pastor has the capacity to release the person from this kind of attachment by exposing the real them. It is unhealthy for these relationships to continue into adulthood - they may be useful for a time, but they do not allow the person to grow in to a mature and responsible Christian person capable of discerning the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their own life. And yet, I have seen pastoral relationships where this is the case: where people have real difficulty in breaking this dynamic with a pastor and moving on to maturity, even well into mid-life. At its worst, the pastor has become instead of a witness to Jesus, an alternative to him, grabbing more than a little of his limelight.
As a young Christian, as I suppose is true of any young person, I was quite actively on the lookout for gurus. I was hungry to be someone's disciple: to find someone who had the bigness of vision and insight and wisdom so that I could latch on to them. There were two or three people who filled this role especially. I remember hanging on their every word, hungry for a little attention ("a shoe, a shoe! It is a sign...") and ready to do what they said to the letter.
But of course, it never lasts: because as you grow older and get to know the person better you get to see them as an ordinary fallible person - that they make mistakes, that they are guilty of faulty logic, that they have character flaws. This can be quite a traumatic period I think - especially as some people invest far more than I ever did in their gurus. It can be devastating to realise that the person isn't what you thought they were, especially if you have incorporated a great deal of their way of thinking into your own decision making about your life. But, it is also extremely liberating - the moment when you realise that the guru's advice is not right and make your own decision! At best, you then become friends with the guru ... i would have to say that by and large the guys I held up as gurus have now become my genuine friends: the dynamic has shifted.
What do we make of this phenomenon, especially within the church? Especially as a pastor, is it in the best interests of the other person to cultivate these kind of relationships? It is an incredibly powerful feeling to have people attach to you and to offer you the keys to their life! I think a crucial thing is if the pastor has the capacity to release the person from this kind of attachment by exposing the real them. It is unhealthy for these relationships to continue into adulthood - they may be useful for a time, but they do not allow the person to grow in to a mature and responsible Christian person capable of discerning the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their own life. And yet, I have seen pastoral relationships where this is the case: where people have real difficulty in breaking this dynamic with a pastor and moving on to maturity, even well into mid-life. At its worst, the pastor has become instead of a witness to Jesus, an alternative to him, grabbing more than a little of his limelight.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Hauerwas vs O'Donovan on martyrdom
Stanley Hauerwas asserts with no small vigour the view that by ‘taking up Rome’s project’ and making it their own, the Christians were bankrupting themselves of their own witness.[1] In accepting the power of Rome as a weapon for their own armoury, the church was conceding its own identity to the world against which the martyrs had so successfully fought. Martyrdom stood as a sign against Rome’s attempt to victimize Christians. Though the refusal to obey Caesar was (it seemed to the pagans) an irrational act, it witnessed to a higher rule; and by doing so, undid that rule’s claim to absoluteness:
‘The church – exactly because it does not seek to rule through violence, though it necessarily manifests God’s rule – triumphs by remembering the victory of the Lamb through the witness of the martyrs.’[2]
The new offer of a share in Rome’s rule was an understandable temptation, because Christians had always proclaimed the ultimacy of God’s politics; and here was a chance to exercise that politics – to demonstrate in practice the truth of the claim. For the ancient Christians so for the Christians of today: the temptation of collusion with rule threatens to dim the light of the church’s witness to the risen Lord of all. Hauerwas sees the issue as being ‘how we [i.e. the church] can witness to God’s rule through church without ruling’.[3] In other words: no matter how friendly and peaceable the offer of co-operation be, the answer for Hauerwas will always be ‘no’.
For Oliver O’Donovan, however, the victory of the martyrs is to be understood somewhat differently. He finds Hauerwas’s version of Christendom to be historically doubtful, for Hauerwas too readily assumes that the Christians who applauded the conversion of Constantine did so because they wanted to pursue the growth of the church by means of the apparatus of the empire. In fact, the picture is more complex: there were those who warned about the dangers, and those who declared no more than that the ruler had submitted to the rule of Christ. They were not ‘taking up Rome’s project’. This is not collaboration with coercion, necessarily. Rather, the very hope of vindication for which the martyrs yearned had, in part and temporarily, come to pass. Yet, under the ministrations of a Hauerwas, this same hope comes to look like a temptation! Rather, for O’Donovan:
…since true martyrdom is a powerful force and its resistance to Antichrist effective, the church must be prepared to welcome the homage of the kings when it is offered to the Lord of the martyrs.[4]
It is not surprising – indeed it makes good theological sense – that the rule of God should manifest itself in history though not yet absolutely. Martyrdom is not merely a stance of eternal dissidence; it is a witness to the rule of God in Christ. As such, it can be faithful witness to say yes as well as no. Hauerwas’s martyrs die shouting ‘they make take our lives, but you will never take our freedom’ just as Mel Gibson’s William Wallace did. And yet, as Augustine himself said ‘it not the punishment, but the cause, that makes a martyr'.
[1] Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), p. 39
[2] Ibid., p. 38
[3] Ibid., p. 43 Hauerwas’s somewhat surprising ally is Augustine (or at least, his re-reading of Augustine).
[4] O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, p. 215
‘The church – exactly because it does not seek to rule through violence, though it necessarily manifests God’s rule – triumphs by remembering the victory of the Lamb through the witness of the martyrs.’[2]
The new offer of a share in Rome’s rule was an understandable temptation, because Christians had always proclaimed the ultimacy of God’s politics; and here was a chance to exercise that politics – to demonstrate in practice the truth of the claim. For the ancient Christians so for the Christians of today: the temptation of collusion with rule threatens to dim the light of the church’s witness to the risen Lord of all. Hauerwas sees the issue as being ‘how we [i.e. the church] can witness to God’s rule through church without ruling’.[3] In other words: no matter how friendly and peaceable the offer of co-operation be, the answer for Hauerwas will always be ‘no’.
For Oliver O’Donovan, however, the victory of the martyrs is to be understood somewhat differently. He finds Hauerwas’s version of Christendom to be historically doubtful, for Hauerwas too readily assumes that the Christians who applauded the conversion of Constantine did so because they wanted to pursue the growth of the church by means of the apparatus of the empire. In fact, the picture is more complex: there were those who warned about the dangers, and those who declared no more than that the ruler had submitted to the rule of Christ. They were not ‘taking up Rome’s project’. This is not collaboration with coercion, necessarily. Rather, the very hope of vindication for which the martyrs yearned had, in part and temporarily, come to pass. Yet, under the ministrations of a Hauerwas, this same hope comes to look like a temptation! Rather, for O’Donovan:
…since true martyrdom is a powerful force and its resistance to Antichrist effective, the church must be prepared to welcome the homage of the kings when it is offered to the Lord of the martyrs.[4]
It is not surprising – indeed it makes good theological sense – that the rule of God should manifest itself in history though not yet absolutely. Martyrdom is not merely a stance of eternal dissidence; it is a witness to the rule of God in Christ. As such, it can be faithful witness to say yes as well as no. Hauerwas’s martyrs die shouting ‘they make take our lives, but you will never take our freedom’ just as Mel Gibson’s William Wallace did. And yet, as Augustine himself said ‘it not the punishment, but the cause, that makes a martyr'.
[1] Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), p. 39
[2] Ibid., p. 38
[3] Ibid., p. 43 Hauerwas’s somewhat surprising ally is Augustine (or at least, his re-reading of Augustine).
[4] O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, p. 215
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Richard Hooker
Richard Hooker is perhaps the most influential exponent of what became known as ‘Erastianism’ in the Anglican tradition. The eighth book of his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, published posthumously from notes he made rather than from a finished text, seeks an alternative to the apparent disloyalty of Allen’s papalism and Cartwright’s separationism. After all, as he argued, in Elizabethan England the Church and the Commonwealth could not be distinguished by differences in membership:
‘We hold that seeing there is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the Commonwealth, nor any man a member of the Commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England, therefore as in a figure triangular the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the selfsame line, is both a base and also a side; a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest: So albeit properties and actions of one kind do cause the name of a Commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a Church to be given unto a multitude, yet one and the selfsame multitude may in such sort be both and is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied to be also of the other.’ (VIII.i.2)
What the rather clumsy metaphor of the triangle illustrates is that for Hooker it is the ‘properties and action’ and ‘qualities and functions’ that distinguish church from commonwealth, not the membership. It is, firstly, a matter of looking at the same thing from different angles, and, secondly, of discerning different actions carried out by the same people. As Hooker understands it, the church is after all that society which maintains the true religion as Israel had done of old. He will happily admit that prior to Constantine, the church of Rome and the commonwealth of Rome were two different societies. However, when the state embraced Christ, that separation could not be maintained:
‘The Church and the Commonwealth therefore are in this case personally one society, which society being termed a Commonwealth as it liveth under whatsoever form of secular law and regiment, a Church as it hath the Spiritual law of Jesus Christ, forasmuch as these two laws contain so many and so different offices, there must of necessity be appointed in it some to one charge and some to another, yet without dividing the whole and making it two several impaled societies.’ (VIII.i.4)
The theological lynchpin of Hooker’s account of church and state is his direct unmediated comparison of the ‘Commonwealth of the Jews’ with the ‘Commonwealth of England’. He asks:
‘If therefore with approbation from heaven the Kings of God’s own chosen people had in the affairs of Jewish religion supreme power, why not Christian Kings the like power in Christian religion?’ VIII.iii.4
Like David, Asa, Jehosaphat, Hezekiah and Josiah before her, the Christian monarch could assume supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs – calling together general councils and the making of church laws. Futhermore, kings were to be exempt from subjection to Ecclesiastical Courts. For Hooker, the complete overlap between the commonwealth and the church meant that the analogy with Israel was obvious and decisive.
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