'a gentle answer turneth away wrath': the place of polemical speech

Over at Giraffepen we have been discussing the place of offensive (I don't mean swearing!) and aggressive language in Christian debates.

This is something that has concerned me for a while: I recognise my own love of a fight and try not to indulge in it (not being a particularly good arguer helps!) and also the apologetic disaster such speaking is. In Australia, some of our politicians are quite brutal and colourful in their speech on the floor of parliament almost by convention. However, these men are those who have most spectacularly crashed and burned: Paul Keating and Mark Latham spring to mind. They were popular, but also deeply unpopular. I guess they could say Jesus was too...

It concerns me that Christians will speak in a rude and offensive manner and then claim to be martyrs when people respond in kind - when in reality, they have just brought in on their own heads by being rude. That is not to say of course that flattery or obsequious speech is any better - this if anything is a more English vice!

Notes on Humility VIII

Ok, this IS possibly a bit weird: posting a link to the audio of my sermon on humility but there you go.

On the way in to church to preach this sermon my dear spouse raised the possibility, ever so gently, that blogging was actually an exercise in wanting to be noticed: i.e., not exactly humble.

Great time to tell me!

Amor Sui: the problem of self-love

The sun is out in Oxford! Freya has a beer with a Macedonian theologian.

If I am to love my neighbour as myself -

how am I to love myself? What does self-love mean? How is self-love possible without narcissism, or when it lies so close to what the Bible says is sin's essence?

After all, Augustine says 'the primal destruction of man was self-love'.

Barth's Syllogism Martyrium

If the ministry of witness is the primary determination of Christian existence, and if the ministry of witness unavoidably bring the Christian into affliction, then we have to say that none can be a Christian without falling into afflication. To be sure, we have not to desire or seek or provoke it, as martyrdom or the so-called baptism of blood was coverted in some circles in the early days of Christianity. This could only rest on misunderstanding, as though the bearing of affliction made the Christian a Christian. In fact, it is only the call of Christ, as His calling to the ministry of witness, which can constitute Christian existence as such. C.D. IV.3.2 p. 618

Wonderful stuff... striking the right balance between that unavoidable affliction which is a mark of true Christianity and provoking it willfully: this is the challenge.

Charles Taylor on the space for religon in the modern state

Just received Charles Taylor's Modern Social Imagineries. An intriguing passage jumped out at first browse:

We can now see the space for religion in the modern state, for God can figure strongly in the political identity. It can be that we see ourselves as fulfilling God's will in setting up a polity that maximally follows his precepts, as many Americans have done...Or our national identity can refer to God, if we see ourselves as defined partly by our unique piety and faithfulness.

Taylor goes on to say that this reference to God cna degenerate so that piety fades and only chauvanism remains (examples abound), 'but this identity presence can also nourish a living faith'.

This is the new space for God in the secular world. ... in the public world, the disapperance of an ontic dependence on something higher can be replaced by a strong presence of God in our political identity. p. 193

We may live in a less enchanted universe, but God's will can be very present to us as 'the inescapable source for our power to impart order to our lives, both individually and socially.'

Notes on Humility VII

What does it actually look like to live out this humble calling?

One false trail in Christian spirituality has been to institute outward signs and symbols and practices of obesiance so as to make a great public display of humility. But these become quickly corrupted with the perverse human tendency to find pride even in these symbols. So, for example, the church procession always puts the most important person at the back rather than the front: the first shall indeed be last! But we all know of course that the last person in a church procession is the most important and usually the most prettily dressed. Even practices like footwashing become opportunities for pride rather than true humility, because in symbolic or ritual practices they become something else other than what they originally were.

Humility as a virtue finds difficulty in being expressed symbolically, or outwardly. How could it not?

I think, rather than religious displays of humility, we rather ought to be seeking reminders of our utter dependence on the grace of God alone. We need to know even better than we do how vulnerable we actually are, and how needy, and how poor. In practice, Peter wants us to live amongst our fellow citizens, and even amongst ourselves, in quiet devotion to doing good. We not subversives or revolutionaries - at least not in the way we normally think of it. Our revolution is a quiet one: we point power to its own source by freely submitting to it. We lead through care and by service, not looking for the benefits of leadership. We put aside our natural tendency to disrupt leaders of all kinds. We take the immense risk of laying down our freedom to self-realise through our action, to express ourselves and our wills in reference only to our own selves, in favour of following the model of Jesus Christ, who used his freedom in humble and obedient service and died an ignominious and shameful death. His risk is our risk, too: we risk not being who we could be. But his promise is our promise, also: as he was raised from the dead, so we have a guarantee of our own exaltation, or the glorious inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade...

Notes on Humility VI

Luke 14:11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Humility means giving up your own personal ambition to be exalted. It means giving up on celebrity! But it is not without reward: the NT never says, oh, humble yourself because humility is just a good thing to do in and of itself. That's not to say it isn't, but the Bible consistently urges humility in light of the promises of God to raise up the humble and oppose the proud. A mistake is to see this as some kind of exchange or economy of heavenly merits: do humble acts, or be humble and sure as eggs exaltation will follow.

No. Humility is not an investment now for later pride. The reward that is on offer is not what the worldly seize at. It is something exceeding it: glory - you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away (1 Peter 5:4). The crown of glory is bathed in the light of the glory of God. You will shine like stars in the universe because you will glow with the radiance of God himself.

Pseudo-Dionysius redux

I have this term in a reading group been reading the influential mystical writer Pseudo-Dionysius. I have been experiencing alternatively bafflement and excitement in reading his stuff: perhaps more bafflement to tell truth. As Bertrand Russell once pointed out, it is hard to tell sometimes between a profound paradox and complete nonsense.

Here is a classic Dionysian passage, from his letter to Gaius:

Darkness disappears in the light, the more so as there is more light. Knowlegde makes unknowing disappear, the more so as there is more knowledge...However, think of this not in terms of deprivation but rather in terms of transcendence and then you will be able to say something truer than all truth, namely, that the unknowing regarding God espcapes anyone possessing physical light and knowledge of beings: His transcendent darkness remains hidden from all light and concealed from all knowledge. Someone beholding God and understanding what he saw has not actually seen God himself but rather something of his which has being and which is knowable. For he himslef solidly transcends mind and being. He is completely unknown and non-existent. He exists beyond being and he is known beyond the mind. And this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.

Is it just me, or is there a bit of slippage in the use of the word 'knowing' here? Is this utterly orthodox, or is it heterodox mystical neoplatonism? Is the knowledge of God which is revealed to us (ie John 1:1-14) in fact some kind of unknowing knowledge? What the?

Notes on Humility V

Of course, Nietzsche hated the humility of Christianity and derided it as servile, base, low and disgusting. Oh, and womanly. It was ignoble, and not worthy of the great-souled individual.

1 Peter specifically addresses wives and slaves and asks that they be humbly submissive. That much perhaps we may have expected - isn't this cringing debasement precisely what is most natural to women and slaves (to channel N for a minute? But it also enjoins all citizens to submit to the emperor; and young men to submit to elders in the church.

How Nietzschean is contemporary culture? Well certainly I think it has adopted a belief that only through the spirited action of the great souled individual will humanity ever be truly free. Perhaps we are more democratised than he would have been. But still, the desire to soar, to be great, and glorious: is this not Nietzchean?

As he writes in Beyond Good and Evil: 'The noble soul has reverence for itself'. I don't think he means a cringing vanity here, nor even that bizarre self-reflexivity you encounter when sportspeople refer to themselves in the third person: rather, the noble soul is in thrall to its own destiny to the point of religious fervour. This is more worshipful a reverence...

A bustle in our hedgerow...

Yesterday we noticed a hedgehog behaving very strangely in our garden: he was running around and around in circles.

It took as a while to decide what to do, but to cut a long story short, Simon and I decided to put the hedgehog in a cardboard box and ring around for help. When we picked him up, he curled up tight into a trembling ball: it was pathetic and cute all at once.

The British being the British, of course the have a whole Hedgehog protection society with designated carers for each county. We rang the lady in Oxfordshire, but she wasn't in. Finally the man from Berkshire advised us to get him to the vet, because he was probably suffering from parasites. So we drove him off to Woodstock 5 miles away to the all night vet. There, we discovered that he had ticks, and fleas, and also had a damaged eye and some blood on his fur. The vet promised to give him some anesthetic and some antibiotics and give him a warm place to stay.

When we got home, the phone rang. The lady from our region had rung back. 'I am always home' she said 'except this evening'. She asked after our hedgehog. Then: 'I have had some bad news myself tonight: I have a secondary cancer in my spine. The doctors give me 18 months with radiotheraphy.' 'Do you have anyone to call?' I asked. 'No, no family, no-one', she said. She looks after hedgehogs.

Please pray for E.

Notes on Humility IV

1 Peter 5:8-10
8Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
10And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

This whole passage is reminiscent of the teaching of Jesus and particularly as he spoke to his disciples in Gethsemane. 'Be alert' he kept telling them, and they kept falling asleep. 'Keep watch': be ready for the coming of the end, and the coming of the devil, too. Vigilence is required, and presence of mind.

Is it too much to imagine that Peter has in mind the beasts of the arena, who feasted on human flesh as a spectacle? It is certainly a vivid picture. The trial is coming when you will be tempted to deny Christ. That is the devil's aim. He uses many and various means; but the result of conceding to him is destrution. Resistance however is not futile: the suffering of the Christian is not isolated. The real devouring beast in the arena was not the slathering furry creature who was eyeing off the victim for its lunch: no, to get eaten was fine! This was not self-destruction. Rather, to deny Christ was to fall prey and become easy meat to the 'lion'.

Notes on Humility III

1 Peter 5:6-7: 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you...

In Greek literature, 'humbling yourself' was almost always used in a derogatory and negative sense: we might better translate it 'debasing oneself', or 'acting in a servile and lowly manner'. Epictetus for example, would write that 'all that alienates man from himself and makes him dependent makes him small (ie humbles him). It is an expression used of the trivial or the petty, the lowborn, ignoble and crass.

What does it look like to humble yourself anyhow? I note first of all that it is not 'humility' as a virtue, or an attitude, that is looked for here. Rather we have a reflexive verb: 'humble yourselves'. It is something one does, rather than something one is. It not here a quality that you possess.

But it is kinda hard to describe it as an activity, isn't it? There are no outward forms or movements described. It is not something you do with your body - though you may express it through your body or represent it through your body.

If we imagine that vs 7 as a parallel to vs 6 fills out and completes the sense, we see that 'humbling yourself' and 'casting all your anxiety' do inform one another. Grundmann in Freidrich's TDNT writes: 'As the context shows, this consists in man's putting his whole confidence in the grace of God, who cares for those who subject themselves to Him.' Notably, in the post-apostolic era, once the sense of the imminent return of Christ had passed, the notion of humbling oneself was channelled away from this not active action and into penitence and fasting and similar ritualised and symbolic activities.

The humbling of oneself here is vis a vis God but of course it must reference others too. Indeed it springs out of a discussion of the mutual relationships within the church community. If you are humble towards God, then so must you be to others as a matter of course.

Notes on Humility II

1 Peter 5:1-4

1To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ's sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: 2Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; 3not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 4And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

Peter's address to the elders of the church both upholds and relativises the order of church government here. It is as an equal, not as a superior apostle, that he addresses the eldership: he makes his appeal to them in terms of their shared expectation and status, not in terms of their difference. By doing so he shows them exactly what he wants them to do. He recalls for them the twin poles of suffering and glory that have dominated the letter, and which are the frames on the Christian life. Humility does not mean not leading. The exercise of humility does not mean that there is no authority or power involved. But rather, it means the service and care of those who are lead. Note that this is to be real heartfelt and eager care, not reluctant and merely dutiful care. This is not the description of a professional, or a bureaucrat; there is not the kind of exchange economy of labour here in speaking of eldership. The elders of the church were most likely quite literally 'olders', not a seperate class of individuals called to a particular life-long ministry. They are simply senior, and entrusted with the care of the flock.

They are to exercise the function of overseers (vs 2). I think this passage is a great example of how, in the NT, the form of church government is quite flexible. There is order, but not a specific order as later evolved in terms of bishop, priest, deacon; nor a kind of pristine egalitarian early church presbuteral church government model. The functions of church ministry are there: oversight, eldership, pastoral example, diaconal service and so on; but these are not attached to specific titles and offices as a hard and fast rule.

For further reading: JB Lightfoot's 1888 Philippians Commentary has a great piece on 'The Christian Ministry'. Wonderful.

Notes on Humility

1 Peter 5:6-7
6Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

It seems to me that the path of humility is risky. This is the reason we are afraid of being humble. This is why these two verses belong together: a lack of humility may result from an anxiety that we will be overlooked if we are not proud: that if somehow we don't broadcast our own success and achievements we will be less than authentic selves. Unless we get the recognition we deserve, we will live unfulfilled lives. Somehow, we learn from childhood that the value of a deed is not complete until it is recognised and applauded. The acts we do need their answer, their reply in the form of honour and recognition, if they are to be meaningful acts. I don't mean anything too dramatic by this. The thing women say about men and housework - that when they do the vacuuming they expect a cheer squad and grateful thanks - reflects a deep pattern within us (both genders) of wanting to be noticed for our achievements. And frankly, sometimes you need to create the conditions by which your own deeds can be recognised.

The whole of life is like a job interview... or, it sometimes seems this way. That's how we educate kids, anyhow!

Peter realises that we may be hesitant about persuing humility, especially in the context of the patterns of society vis a vis leadership, roles, and so on. Being humble is not secure: there seem to be no guarantees that you will ever get what you deserve if you are humble, nor even survive. There is no promotion without a bit of self-promotion. But in this 'being humble' there is a particular future in view. It is under the protective and caring oversight of God himself that we humble ourselves, placing ourselves - i mean our very selves, though we are uncertain yet of what these might become - into the care of the almighty, in the palm of his gentle hand at the end of his might arm. This is faith exercised in hope: that he might lift you up in due time.

Speaking of women: it is interesting that Peter at first addresses this comment to young men in the context of their submission to the elders in the congregation. But then he broadens out his comment to include 'all of you'. Feminist theologians since the early 60s (Valerie Saiving was the writer of the first article along these lines) have argued that pride is not women's besetting sin, in fact. So telling women to be humble is not actually going to be a hard sell because they are culturally conditioned, even now, to be humble to the point of self-deprecation. In fact, this itself can be sinful: a rejection of God's Yes to the female self as worthwhile, in Christ. Oughtn't we be telling women to HAVE some pride and stop being so darn humble? Aren't there too many Marthas already?

Well, while I think Saiving and her friends have a point that is psychologically and sociologically apposite (though perhaps this is for women to say rather than me), I am not sure how theologically helpful it is. Which is to say: the kind of humility she is talking about is not quite the same as the humility that is asked of Christians. The NT does not envisage Christians debasing themselves, or seeking the dissolution of the self. The NT does not uphold low self-esteem somehow: rather it puts self-esteem on a proper footing, in Christ. Generally as a human being and as a woman and particulary as an individual she can count herself worthy, in Christ: her humanity has been assumed in him and so healed in him to (to use the expression of Gregory of Nazianzus). The kind of low self-esteem that Saiving says is women's besetting sin is not a deep acceptance of the providential hand of God that 'he will lift you up in due time', but a collapsing into despair, or a resignation to self-hatred. This is not the humility of the Mary of the Magnificat, but something else again.

Neither should we think we are being humble when we play the cultural game of false humility. The English are especially good at it; though Australians have their version of course. Some cultures are happy with displays of out and out gauche pride. In England and Australia this is not the norm. One has to be more refined than this. So, when sportsmen are interviewed after a particularly impressive performance, they must praise the team, or say 'the conditions were right for me today' or somehow deflect glory from themselves in order that they may bask in it all the more. In England, you may meet someone and ask what they do: if they say, 'oh, I dabble in medicine' you may just find out later that they are the Professor of Surgery and a world leader in their field. But this is merely a cultural convention, I think rather than a true practice of humble living.

In Peter's terms, and the whole of First Peter is about this really, humility means giving honour and obedience and submission to those whose role it is lead, to the point of suffering; and for those who lead, to lead not by exploitation or accruing honour to yourself. It's not very revolutionary, is it?

A personal note: as a 'young man' of the much maligned Gen X, I am increasingly frustrated by the unwillingness of baby-boomers to pass on power and leadership to the next generation (what is John Howard doing?) This is, it seems to me, just as true in church circles as elsewhere. The baby-boomers have no concept of tradition except as a negative, (even the church ones): they grew up seeing themselves as the radicals who would bring about the revolution (even the church ones). They were extremely rebellious, and were not particularly submissive to the twittering grey-haired fools of the previous generation that they thought were spoiling everything (even the church ones). They challengened social orders, hierarchy and the authority of office (even the church ones). Of course, what this means is that, in inheriting power in church and society, they have become much more authoritarian, because they excercise power through personality and not through office. And they expect we gen Xers - the most pliant and apathetic and weary generation in history - to fight them for power as they fought their predecessors...

And yet, this is not how authority is to be transmitted intergenerationally in the church. But the boomer 'born to rule' mentality should not be answered by more of the same. The message for me and others of my generation is to reign in our natural (male?) combativeness, our need to win in some generational conflict to earn the right to share in the leadership of the group (as if we were a pride of lions or something); and to exercise a submissive humility. Our we worried 'our time' will never come? Our we counting down the days till our leaders retire? When will they notice us, and stop treating us like we are in short pants? He will lift you up in due time.

Experts, Climate Change, and Religious Knowledge

Oxford is basically as I write floating away. It always has been one of the dampest places on earth but today it resembles Kevin Costner's Waterworld - and we know what a success that was.

Anyhow, as usual, climate change is being blamed. And I have to say any mention of this kind of environmental science leaves me head-scratching. Why? Because it is so inherently dependent on experts for information. We are utterly reliant on them one way or another. And if you want to oppose climate change thinking you have to produce your own expert. This is because the reasoning involved is way beyond the ordinary person, even the educated ones. I am not a climate change sceptic: but I am an expert sceptic (as in, I am sceptical of experts). I hate being so reliant on people whose knowledge I can't test, and yet I guess it is a fact of modern life (see Anthony Giddens on this). What alternative have I? But I can't help noticing the way climate change talk feeds into our primeval apocalyptic fears so well (and into the general English pessimism too!). It is what we want to hear, strangely enough. And it is coated in the priestly/sacred language of science, with all its totemic power.

This feeling of bewliderment and disempowerment is however something that many people feel towards theological and religious questions. They can see that there is a lot of disagreement; they know that there is an industry devoted to specialised knowledge that they could never hope to master; and they haven't time to go further. I remember teaching a bright class of 17 year olds - one boy threw up his hands in exasperation and said 'how can I know what is true when there is so much to know and there are so many different answers!' I guess having people like me studying away at university becoming experts doesn't help matters either...

The gospel however is not a piece of expert information. It isn't shrouded in the darkness of arcane knowledge that it takes years to acquire. Christians and their theologians have a call to present it not as a piece of expert knowledge but as something else...

Postmillennialism - a temptation best avoided

Calvin taught a doctrine of the Church “continuously actualised within history”2 - the Body of Christ is not invisible, or concealed, but rather, although humbled in condition by suffering, actually glorious. Calvin’s eschatology has three socially-oriented consequences for the Church: to gather its members (i.e. mission), to discipline itself continuously, and to unite:3

What is the purpose of the coming of Christ but to gather us all together in one from this dispersion in which now we are wandering? Therefore the nearer His coming the more we must bend our efforts that the scattered may be brought together and united and that there may be one fold and one Shepherd.4

Calvin is not so hopeful about society outside the Church: the only remade society is the fellowship of believers. Yet the state (or prince) could play a positive role in the advancement of the Kingdom. In Book 4 of the Institutes he describes the work of governments which may indeed be called “Christian”.5 In the seventeeth and eigthteenth centuries it was Puritanism and Pietism that extended this optimism to the coming of the millennium within history. This was “post-millennialism”, as espoused by John Owen, Jonathan Edwards and later, James Orr,6 for example.7 Secular versions of post-millennialism have been foundational to the national identities of many modern states. Dutch theologian Hendrikus Berkhof goes so far as to propose that world has been sanctified by the rise of “Christian” culture.8

But Jurgen Moltmann is right to critique this “historical millennialism” on the grounds that it has been used to legitimate ecclesiastical or political power.9 Biblically speaking, post-millennialism rightly emphasises the binding of Satan (Luke 10:17, 18, John 12:20-32) and urges the Church to mission to the whole world (cf. Rev 7:9). There is a present reality to the reconstitution of society in the Church. We ought to believe in the present rule of the Ascended Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit in the world. However, post-millennialism can not withstand its own historical failure; nor does it properly account for the inevitability of suffering and persecution. It is also a doctrine which in the end emphasises the power of human works to achieve a social utopia in the here-and-now; it is little wonder that this theology is a parent to secular industrial modernism. God is too easy to removed from the post-millennial picture.

1 H.R. Niebuhr, op.cit., p.218
2 T.F.Torrance, op.cit, p.60
3 ibid., p.62
4 Comm. on Heb 10:25, tr W.B. Johnston, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963)
5 J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Battles, F.L., (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), IV.20.3-4. See R. Doyle, op.cit., p. 45
6 J. Orr, The Progress of Dogma, London, (J.Clarke & Co, 1901)
7 D.Bloesch, op.cit., p.193
8 H. Berkhof, Christ The Meaning of History, tr. L. Buurman, (Grand Rapids: Baker. 1966); a position he modifed in Christian Faith - An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, tr. S.Woudstra, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 1979), pp.511-21
9 J.Moltmann, The Coming of God - Christian Eschatology, tr. M. Kohl, (London: SCM Press, 1994), p.192

Barth on Election

Please allow me this foray into Barth without labelling me forevermore 'a Barthian'! (Though I think I have a rather cheeky article in me entitled 'the Barthianism of DB Knox'...!!!)

I am currently reading Barth's Church Dogmatics II.ii. In this volume he puts forward perhaps his most remarkable - and controversial - theological innovation: his doctrine of election. He is well aware of the novelty of his position: but his claim is that this is the only biblical way of construing the doctrine. That at least on the face of it is his ground.

Of course, Barth is a Reformed theologian in the tradition of Calvin, and so it is the Reformed commitment to predestination and election that drives him. And it is the Reformed tradition that he must supercede if he is to establish his version. His discussion of the Supra- vs Infra- lapsarian positions - in small print of course - is absolutely crucial. What he claims is that the Supralapsarian position - the least popular and least accepted alternative - is the more consistent and more rigorous. The tendency of Infralapsarianism is to offer the incarnation as God's plan B - a response to the fall rather than a decree from all time. But Supralapsarianism, with its implication that God has decreed some for damnation even before the fall is a tough sell! Which clears the ground for him to offer his correction of both positions.

And it is this: Jesus is the answer. Before the foundation of the world, God in Christ made his double decree of election and reprobation. Where he scores a hit against the Reformed construals is in their tendency to rely on an account of God's decrees which makes them inscrutable and mysterious, invisible and unrevealed. Speculation abounds (and it does!) Whereas, by making Jesus the electing God and the elected man, he is able to talk about the election of God as revealed in full view of humankind.

Now I need to read some critiques of his position - or hear them from my kind readers....

Migraine

I have had perhaps four or five episodes of migraine headaches in my life. I don't want any more.

It is inadequate to call a migraine a headache: it is more a whole body displacement. It is like going out of focus. The nausea rises and rises until you are blind with it. But it is a nausea of its own kind somehow not digestive. Do I want to eat, or not? So, you eat something...but, no, I didn't want to eat at all, the food lies flat and heavy in your mouth. The metallic taste that seeps down from your brain through your skull and onto your tongue makes you feel like you are chewing on a nice fragment of the handlebars on your bicycle. You can barely see: or, rather you look but you don't see. Light itself suddenly feels poisonous, vile and agressive. People speak words to you but they don't speak syntax. Words no longer run like tickertape lines across the bottom of your brain's screen. They are now like heavy lotto balls swimming round and round and popping suddenly out! one by one but not with any sense of relief just outness. You feel regret for something you must have done to feel like this, but you can't remember what it was, because there wasn't anything. You make yourself promises you'll never drink coffee again, or red wine, or any other headachy thing, but they weren't to blame. You go to sleep, but it isn't sleep that you have, it is just shutting your eyes and waiting with the neckstiff burr of blood on your plastic-waxy eardrum tom-toms.

A migraine is an assault on being itself. It's dreadful power lies in the fact that you can't locate it anywhere, so you can't mollify it or tame it. It seperates you from your body even though you know that without your body you aren't anyone.

Nominalism: no, not a post about medieval philosophy

I have been a fan of St George Rugby League Club in Sydney since 1980 (they were champions then, and have failed to win since). However, I own only one piece of club paraphenalia (a beanie I sleep in sometimes), and I have been to perhaps three games in the last 27 seasons. I am not aware of their current form, nor of the names of their current players. Their coach is Nathan Brown (or was last time I looked). I don't watch their games on TV (even when I am in Australia). However, I do want them to win, and if they are in a major game it is them that I barrack for (that means 'support' in Australian). St George RLC is certainly not aware that I exist - but I think that they could make a better effort to flush me out.

Am I a St George fan?

Well, I think I am. But a diehard, every game attending fan will most likely despise me for my lack of commitment. But how dare they!

It strikes me that this is how many, many people think about their membership of the Anglican church, at least in Sydney. Apparently, there are fewer of them than five years ago (see here), but it is still a whopping 20+% of the population - more by far and further than support St George, even more than support Rugby League!

Evangelicals have in the last thirty years seen such people as a bit of a nuisance, because they asked for baptisms and funerals which took a lot of time but in many cases didn't really believe what they are doing - it's a horrible feeling performing a sacred ceremony when you know people are basically perjuring themselves before God, believe me. Or, perhaps they lingered on as Christmas and Easter attenders who complained when anything changed, but didn't really care about what happened the rest of the time.

But: some 700,000 people in our city already think if themselves as members of our club, which I would think means that they have some vaguely positive feelings towards us. So: what are we doing about it? This is a huge potential missionfield.... What is the statistical information that we have on this vast population of people? Why are they still connected, but absent?

Herbert on Humilitie

I am preaching next week at St Ebbe's on 1 Peter 5, the theme of which is humility (stop laughing family members!). Anyhow found this poem by George Herbert, who is one of my favourites. It takes a bit of looking at: he describes a scene where the Virtues are presented with symbols of submission by a series of animals.

Humilitie.
I Saw the Vertues sitting hand in hand
In sev’rall ranks upon an azure throne,
Where all the beasts and fowl by their command
Presented tokens of submission.
Humilitie, who sat the lowest there
To execute their call,
When by the beasts the presents tendred were,
Gave them about to all.

The angrie Lion did present his paw,
Which by consent was giv’n to Mansuetude.1
The fearfull Hare her eares, which by their law
Humilitie did reach to Fortitude.
The jealous Turkie brought his corall-chain;
That went to Temperance.
On Justice was bestow’d the Foxes brain,
Kill’d in the way by chance.

At length the Crow bringing the Peacocks plume,
(For he would not) as they beheld the grace
Of that brave gift, each one began to fume,
And challenge it, as proper to his place,
Till they fell out: which when the beasts espied,
They leapt upon the throne;
And if the Fox had liv’d to rule their side,
They had depos’d each one.

Humilitie, who held the plume, at this
Did weep so fast, that the tears trickling down
Spoil’d all the train: then saying, Here it is
For which ye wrangle, made them turn their frown
Against the beasts: so joyntly bandying,
They drive them soon away;
And then amerc’d2 them, double gifts to bring
At the next Session-day.

1 Mansuetude = Gentleness, meekness.
2 amerced = With a penalty of the amount expressed.

In short, without humility the other virtues fall easily prey to passions. But why humility?

Harry Potter released in Oxford (no spoilers)

So, Simon and I braved the rain and the crowds (my goodness, the crowds!) to pick up the last Harry Potter at midnight last night. (We are dressed as wizards in case you didn't pick it).

A couple of thoughts about things Potter:

• Rowling really isn't a great writer and she writes with no ear for how words sound. The Potter books are really quite tough to read aloud (and I should know) compared to classics like the Narnia series. This to me is a test of the quality of children's literature. She writes in choppy uneven paragraphs and uses quite colourless bland language. But that isn't her gift: her gift is her sheer inventiveness with characters and ideas to fill the world she has imagined. Like Dickens, there is always something new around the next page, some new brilliantly conceived person or thing. Like Dickens (at his worst) she sometimes uses this technique to keep the plot going when it is flagging.
• The Potter books are incredibly nostalgic. Remember Enid Blyton? She channels Enid Blyton half the time: the private school setting, the two-gendered friendships, the resourcefulness of the child heroes and what have you. Have you ever read The Naughtiest Girl in the School? And Quidditch resembles Lacrosse, which is the game the Naugtiest Girl plays. Potter harks back to that British children's literature which deals with upper middle class children in schools that no-one can actually afford.
• I always like to ask kids 'what kind of a hero do you think Harry Potter is? What makes him heroic?' It isn't actually his magic that does anything. It is his courage. I think he is a very courageous person rather than a talented one. To me it is interesting that Harry Potter and his friends always are prepared to break the rules if circumstances demand it - and are rewarded for doing so.

Review of Urban Tribes by Ethan Watters

“Why isn’t she married yet?”

Pretty much everyone knows by now that people are putting off the decision to settle down and get married until they are well past thirty: which means that for members of the so-called “Generation X”, there is a decade-long (or more) period of adulthood between leaving education and becoming a member of a traditional family unit. Social commentators and politicians alike have seen this as a result of rampant individualism and shallow hedonism. Gen-Xers are charged with being commitment shy and selfish. We are a generation of wanderers, dreading the thought of “settling down” and extending our adolescence well into our thirties. We will, it is prophesied, reap the rewards of our attachment phobia in spades of loneliness.

In his intriguing book Urban Tribes, Californian journalist Ethan Watters argues that, in fact, young adults are forming their own significant communities in place of traditional family units; and finding in these groups some of the benefits that family life offers. Watters claims he discovered the mass phenomena of the Urban Tribe almost accidentally: having written a brief magazine piece on the idea, he was invited on TV to discuss it. In the following weeks his email inbox was inundated by twenty-somethings from all over the US who felt that he had articulated something very real to their lives. They had found community in all sorts of areas: among college friends, in book clubs, at the gym, or even in groups that just kinda evolved from friends and friends-of-friends. People performed different roles within the tribes in order to enable organization and decision-making, nurturing and entertainment. Some group members were valued even though they contributed very little to the group at all.

Watters is insistent that the sense of belonging and loyalty he and others feel is just as strong as family ties may be. He recounts example of remarkably loving and self-less behaviour, and the experiences of great tenderness, group rituals and generous sharing. As he puts it:
After more than a decade, my sense of living as a single person in a modern American city was that of belonging to an intensely loyal community of people. (p.39)

The social conditions that have lead to this phenomenon centre on the remarkable freedom that young adults in western cities now experience. They are wealthy, with a high disposable income; and may choose voluntary poverty in order to study, travel or follow a dream without to much hardship. They have grown up in the age of contraception and sexual liberty which means that sex does not appear to need the safety-net of marriage. The women of this group are the first “post-feminist” generation, aspiring to have a meaningful career as a priority. Socially acceptable behaviour has become a much broader category. Watters notes that the advice that Xers have received from their baby-boomer parents has been strangely reticent and devoid of any heavy moralising. “Only conservative politicians”, he writes,

"continued to give lifestyle advice as if it were still in style. It was pretty easy to read this for what it was: political posturing. George W. Bush’s advice that we abstain from sex before marriage was an excellent example. Given that many of us were delaying marriage until we were thirty or thirty-five, his just-say-no-to-sex rhetoric read like a blatant pandering to the Christian Right or willful ignorance of social trends or both. Regardless of whether we voted or these conservative politicians, the idea that we would let their advice influence our personal choices was laughable." (p.28)

Watters goes on to make the case that separating sex from the decision to marry and delaying that choice leads to much more mature decisions. Gen-Xers, as the first generation who were children of divorced parents, are understandably slow to commit themselves given the domestic disasters they have witnessed.

What Watters describes I found resonated with what I see my contemporaries experiencing in Sydney and in Oxford, where very similar social conditions apply. It strikes me that many evening church congregations or university-based churches resemble urban tribes, in a way which would have been unimaginable only a generation ago. The longing for belonging that so many twenty-somethings feel is an opportunity for these communities. However, it may be the informal contact and the spontaneous social gathering that most unites the group as much as the formal meeting.

I feel strongly however that churches also have the opportunity to remind the generations that they are not the only generation. We must resist and transcend the segmenting of our community into demographic sub-groups, which is chiefly driven by marketers and journalists. The cry of generational identity (“we are such-and-such”) is also a cry of non-identity (“and we aren’t like you old so-and-sos”). The community of Jesus is built around the shared experience of forgiveness and conversion, not the shared experience of being brought up in the 80s.
Then there’s the sex thing. The powerful social trend to delay marriage that Watters notes is fairly universal. For the Christian determined to pursue chastity there are two options – marry early, or marry late and remain celibate. Both choices fly in the face of prevailing cultural wisdom; for the young adult with non-Christian parents it will be probably even counter to their easy-going baby-boomer advice. Trust and commitment in matters of the heart are going to be rare qualities indeed.

Jurgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas, one of the contemporary world's leading political philosophers and no Christian (as far as I know) recently said this (according to Philip Jenkins:

“Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.”

Wow. Full marks to Jurgen!

'There is no such thing as a 'reader' '

Brian Brock examines in detail Augustine's exegesis of the Psalms, and Hannah's Song. As he concludes:

...Hannah's Song is paradigmatic for Augustine for understanding the Psalms because it is a text that, because of its narrative location, tells us something essential about biblical Psalms - that they cannot be 'read'. Therefore, there is no such thing as a 'reader' for Augustine, unless this describes the activity of those who make this song an 'objective' text devoid of any personal claim because they see human strength as determining of world events. This distancing stands in contrast to those who affirm Hannah's praise of God by singing with her...the form of Scripture that is called a psalm, and the interpretive ontological claims Augustine brings to this form, work together to question a basic commitment of contemporary hermeneutics: that we can describe a general hermeneutical strategy that is appropriately applied to the biblical texts. Because this is not simply a text, but Scripture, to read the Psalms as a text is to consolidate our self-emasculation in deciding in advance that they point only to human activities. The psalm form is thus correctly understood only when it appears as an invitation to the community of faith to sing God's praises.

That is: you can't just read the Bible. You must sing it (well the Psalms, anyhow).

Further on Biblical Studies and the Bible: Brian Brock

I mentioned my surprise at the chasm between Biblical Studies and Doctrine/Ethics in terms of use of the Bible. Brian Brock in his fascinating new book writes:

No academic discpline can be posited as privileged or primary in its relationship to Scripture, including biblical studies. The only solidity to which the Christian faith can cling in its exploration of the Bible is Christ as body, head, and Word. Any concept or academic discipline that makes itself the arbiter between rival interpretations would have to be established as another axiomatic truth. p. 266

Brock opposes the development of some academic superstructure that operates like a bureaucracy through which the Bible must pass if it is to be made available for theological/ethical reflection. Actually, sometimes I feel like this: a theologian wants to use a passage of the Bible in his work. Has he filled out the right forms, and applied to the New Testament department for permission to use the passage? If so, he must wait, and only then use the passage within carefully defined parameters, subject to and with reference to the most important commentaries on the subject... Then, he must develop a sophisticated hermeneutic which meets with all our criteria.

Sigh!

Annual Diocesan Jamboree?

Here's an idea that will never come to pass:

Why doesn't the diocese of Sydney run an annual conference in the way that Hillsong does? That is, an unmissable city-based ministry conference which fulfills the aims of:

• allowing cross-pollination of ideas
• enabling people in the diocese to meet up and communicate with one another in a forum other than Synod
• the shared process of identity building in a positive and non-adversarial context
• a chance for lay people in particular to participate in building the diocese

You could have plenary sessions and seminars on a broad spectrum of topics.

At the moment, CMS Summer School is treated like this by a certain generation of clergy, but the trouble is firstly that it is in Katoomba, and secondly that its focus is narrowly on overseas missions and thirdly it is at the wrong time of year (January). We have the annual Synod, but this is a parliamentary body which meets for politico-legal reasons, and excludes those who have not been elected to it. Already there is a very crowded calendar of events, but you just trump them by being better than all of 'em put together.

Anyhow, since I had the idea it is probably very unlikely ever to come to pass!

Benedict XVI on faith and politics

Great stuff from Ben 16, even if he doesn't want to acknowledge me as any but a separated bro:

...Faith does not make reason superfluous, but it can contribute evidence of essential values. Through the experiment of a life in faith, these values acquire a credibility that also illuminates and heals reason. In the last century (as in every century), it was in fact the testimony of the martyrs that limited the excesses of power, thus making a decisive contribution to what we might call the convalescence of reason. Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 29

So long as they aren't Protestant martyrs, I guess..!

I think this idea of faith healing reason is quite a contribution. Martyrs, by showing in extremis that human power is relative, temporal and not as powerful as it thinks it is, actually contribute to general human flourishing. That is, they are not anti-social, but rather help politics learn its true meaning for the greater human good.

Benedict XVI on changing things...

I bet the Pope uses a Mac. He likes everyone to be the same everywhere... He has even brought back the Latin mass. That's regress for you!

Politicians of all parties take it for granted today that they must promise changes - naturally, changes for the better. The once mythical radiance of the word 'revolution' has faded in our days, but far-reaching reforms are demanded and promised all the more insistently. This must surely mean that there exists in modern society a deep and prevailing sense of dissatisfaction precisely in those places where prosperity and freedom have attained hitherto unknown heights. The world is experienced as hard to bear. It must become better. And it seems that the task of politics is to bring this about. So since the general consensus is that the essential taks of politics is to improve the world, indeed to usher in a new world, it is easy to understand why the word 'conservative' has become disreputable and why scarcely anyone views lightly the prospect of being called conservative, for it appears that what we must do is not preserve the status quo but overcome it. Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 11

Change is the one constant of political discourse it seems...

The passion of Mac-users: a theory.

My new Toshiba laptop arrives today.

Thanks for all your help. What amazes me though is why, even though I gave no indication of dissatisfaction with PCs, Mac users thought I just had to know about the Mac option and ought to change. I have been a Mac User. I know the product. It is OK, I guess. I don't find it much easier to use or more logical than PC. I don't find it more reliable at all (that bomb sign haunts my dreams!). It is still the case that you can't assume Mac is compatible with everything. Mac is much more expensive. I know that in institutions who have a network running Mac and PC compatibility means that the institution has to invest in extra equipment that duplicates the function and also in the man-hours to fix everything up. But, you know, if that's what you want to do...go for it. I just don't think the difference is so great that it matters. I really don't care, except when I get made to feel defensive by you one-eyed Macmen and women!

Why is that Mac users are so passionate about their brand choice, so evangelistic and fervent? I really think this is a one way debate in terms of passion: PC users just don't exhibit the same dewey-eyed brand loyalty. I think it is just that when you outlay significant sums of money on an item which effects your whole interaction with the digital world, you so badly want to have made the right decision that your talk becomes part of convincing yourself you have... I think this applies to other consumer items, like cars, too. Your identity can really get caught up in having a Ford.

It would be fascinating to me to learn whether Mac use was at a higher rate in the Christian world than it is in the rest of the community. Could this be true? Anecdotally I feel that it is!

Update

The view from my room at Nuneham College, Cambridge.

Well it has been a slower period than normal on what my sister affectionately calls 'the most boring blog in the world.' Not that I'm sensitive...

Chiefly, the reason is that my HP/Compaq laptop has given up the ghost, and it has taken the Uni computer dudes a few days to decide this. This is the longest I have ever owned a single laptop: others have been lost to lightening strike, theft, water spillage (what idiot left a paper cup of water on the computer desk at Moore College), and virus. I would love your help on a replacement: at the moment I am favouring a Toshiba Satellite Pro.

Cambridge was excellent: I went to a Symposium on Oliver O'Donovan's Ways of Judgment which is proving to be a re-readable book - which in a world of many great books is high praise. Trouble with the English in formats like this is that they are too polite, and so it is hard to tell when they are actually having an intellectual disagreement. Jonathan Chaplin, Nigel Biggar and Ben Quash gave papers, and O'Donovan responded to each. He is a very fine and engaging speaker, and concedes very little!

The Tyndale Conference followed: this was more of a mish-mash of issues and papers. We heard some very interesting stuff on Islam, and also from David Ford (Prof at Cambridge) on 'Scriptural Reasoning'. He has a new book out called 'Christian Wisdom' which looks enticing. Basically, he is suggesting that inter-faith dialogue (and ecumenical dialogue) take place on the basis of reading one another's scriptures. This prevents an annoying liberal consensus having to be established first (WCOC style). Brian Brock gave a great paper on Genesis 1-4 and ethics. We heard some other papers on politics that made me feel more and more that Christendom wasn't so bad, crusades and what-not notwithstanding. Whenever I hear a Christendom-basher make huge sweeping statements about some fourteen centuries of Church-state relations - as is currently the fashion in Hauerwas-dominated circles - it makes my toes curl. I am becoming more grumpily conservative in me old age...

I also went to one of the Biblical Theology papers given by Brian Rosner. What was fascinating for me is that I realised that there is a HUGE chasm between the methods of biblical studies scholars and those involved in doctrine and ethics. And it seems to me that there is not a great deal of mutually respectful conversation going on between the two...

Since then: I have been reading Barth's Dogmatics II.i, one of the must-read volumes. His review of the Supralapsarian-Infralapsarian controversy is fascinating... though you can see how he is introducing his own position as the only alternative through his account.

I should also report that I have an almost complete first draft of my thesis. Blogging has not hindered but rather helped this! Having had a couple of readers review parts of it, I am encouraged to do a lot better of course. But at least I am getting better at answering that 'what is your thesis about' question...

Rorty on literary criticism

The recently deceased pragmatist liberal Richard Rorty, in his key text Contigency Irony and Solidarity makes the fascinating observation that for 'ironists' - by which he means people who deny that there is any metaphysical referent to our language and that we ought always be aware of that as we use grand sounding words - for ironists, literary critics are 'moral advisors', not metaphysicians.

As he writes:

literary criticism does for ironists what the search for universal moral principles is supposed to do for metaphysicians. p. 80

Literary critics, you see, engage in the placing of books into traditions of books. Their business is not absolute claims, but relative ones: relating books to other books. Literary critics have basically read alot, and so are less likely to get sucked in by any one book. The critic's job goes well beyond the bounds of mere literary criticism, of course:

...the critic is now expected to facilitate moral reflection by suggesting revisions in the cann of moral exemplars and advisers, and suggesting ways in which the tensions within this canon may be eased - or, where necessary, sharpened. p. 82

Persecution reported

An interesting report in the Melbournian paper The Age .

Nice to see persecution of Christians not neutralised into 'religious violence'.

The Anglican Communion - worth saving?

At the moment, I don't think it is. The present arrangement is a fairly recent affair born of the collapse of the British Empire. The denominational formalities are becoming increasingly absurd ('we are/are not in communion with X diocese' etc etc) and an obstacle rather than an aid to truth speaking and the actual unity of Christians with one another. I was prepared to believe that Rowan Williams' softly softly strategy might actually work, but today I think that it has been mealy-mouthed: he should have had the courage to say either 'look, I am pushing for the full inclusion of active homosexual people in the ministry of the church, like it or lump it' or 'I am not prepared to accept it at all and if you push for it you are not in communion with me, go choose another church.' (A third option would have been to resign).

Either way, we would have known we all stood. As it is, I think the communion is going to be worse broken than it would have been. Sheesh.

In Cambridge

This week I am off to Cambridge for a couple of conferences. Should be fun but -

pray for Catherine at home with Simon, Sacha (that's Fireman Sam to you!), Matilda and Freya.

My hat is off...

...to the sound/PA team at St Ebbe's. We had, by turns, some uplfiting and full-bottled singing, prayers really well done, bible reading excellent (as usual) and an A-grade sermon from Pete Wilkinson.

And not a single PA glitch. Not a one.