Butterfield and elasticity of mind

Richard Rorty wants we citizens to be 'ironists': to hold loose to our ideological commitments and to our metaphysical beliefs. This is the basis of the healthy disrespect necessary for the maintenance of sound liberal political order. Ideology causes us to be cruel.

Of course, one difficulty as with many liberal suggestions, is that it asks religious people to be two people instead of one - something Tony Blair has recently said himself. Even as PM, he had to maintain a secret double life as a Christian believer, pretending that he made decisions without reference to his beliefs. But, more than this: is the ironic stance beloved of Rorty really feasible in a time of crisis when something more is required?

Actually, the rule of Christ ought to give the Christian just the sense of irony about human systems of rule that Rorty wants - with all the pragmatic benefits (if we must stoop to his level). Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield, writing in the aftermath of WWII, wrote this remarkable conclusion to his book Christianity and History:

In these days ... when people are so much the prisoners of systems - especially of those general ideas which mark the spirit of the age - it is not always realised that beleif in God gives us great elasticity of mind, rescuing us from too great subservience to intermediate principles, whether these are related to nationality or ideology or science. It even enables us to leave more play in our minds for the things that nature or history may still have to reveal to us in the near future. Similarly, Christianity is not tied to regimes - not compelled to regard the existing order as the very end of life and the embodiment of all our values. Christians have too often tried to put the brake on things in the past, bu at the critical turning-points in history they have les reason that others to be afraid that a new kind of society or civilisation will leave them with nothing to live for. ..There are times when we can never meet the future with sufficient elasticity of mind, especially if we are locked in the contemnporary systems of thougt. We can do worse than remember a principle which both gives us a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our minds: the principle: Hold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.

This 'elasticity of mind': I think this is superior to Rorty's irony, and founded on something other than merely what apparently 'works'.

Bible Commentaries - a plea for sanity (or, in praise of eisegesis)

It's got to stop...


I was just checking through some Bible Commentaries yesterday and I was astonished at the proliferation of mighty tomes that have been published in the last few years. Ephesians is a case in point, with several major commentaries being published in the last decade - including the daddy of them all Hoehner's 960 page volume. Or, take the case of the Book of Revelation: Aune's three-volume account is matched by Beale's 1245 page effort!

This phenomena is fairly recent, I think. In the sixties and seventies, perhaps one major commentary would be published per decade (correct me if I am wrong). But with the computerisation of academia and the growth of theological education in the US especially, the steady flow is now an avalanche of commentary. Library shelves are heaving with the things: and the books themselves get bigger and bigger...

I don't think this is a sign of health. The sheer size of commentaries indicates that commentators are still working with an encyclopeadist's mentality, accumulating references and knowledge, and trying to provide as comprehensive an account of the field as possible. No article or monograph is left unreferenced; no alternative argument left unconsidered. Each new commentary pleads to be considered the one-stop-shop for all your Ephesians needs - until the next one comes along, and like an upgrade of Windows, makes everything before it redundant.

There seems to be a tacit assumption that more information equates to better knowledge and greater enlightenment. It doesn't. The commentator operates still with an objectivist mindset: the assumption being that the skill of exegesis means the removal of all personal touches from the commentary whatsoever. That is to say: exegetes assume that textual interpretation is best served by a quasi-scientific distance and dispassion. It isn't!

Further, this tendency heightens the impression (long fostered by those in the field of biblical studies) that expert knowledge is utterly indispensible for any comprehension at all. It is just impossible for a non-specialist to get accross it all - you could give a life time just to reading commentaries on the book of Romans written since 1980! In addition, the experts are under pressure to come up with some new way of reading in order to make their name professionally and so get a nice job and some recognition. Now, I don't want to be too cynical or obscurantist here, but this leads to crackpot theories getting more airtime than they ought, just because they are novel (here's a particularly egregious example). Or you find the commentator almost wondering aloud whether he/she has anyting new to say: I found Douglas Moo on Romans to be one of the least helpful on this score: he can't decide between various readings, so he blends them all together, leaving you even more confused than you were before.

My first degree was in English literature. I was trained in the art of reading - reading texts closely, and in relation to other texts. When I began my theological studies, I had assumed that I would find Biblical Studies the sub-discipline that attracted me most. I was quite dismayed to find that the art of reading texts had nothing to do with biblical studies by and large. The two disciplines were not at all related - despite some hokey attempts around the 80s and early 90s to introduce 'literary criticism' in to the field. These were pretty much like seeing your old dad dancing at your 21st...

The best commentaries, to my mind, aren't by exegetical specialists but by people who were preachers, theologians and churchmen. The commentaries of Calvin, for example: meant as a companion set with his sermons and the Institutes. Luther's landmark work. Barth on Romans. Augustine. What is different here? Well, partly, it is that there is no hint of an attempt at pseudo-objectivity. In each case, the context and personality of the commentator is unashamedly in evidence. You could correct the reading of each in numerous ways - but then, they are not attempting to be comprehensive and definitive for all times. You need to be an eisegete in order to be an effective exegete. That's how reading texts works. This isn't postmodern relativism: this is just how texts work!

So, a plea to Biblical Studies boffins: stop and delate all those major commentaries you were working on. They aren't helping! We don't want them! Rather: let's have more wood and fewer trees. Let's have a disciplined limit on the length of commentaries (if we must have them) - no more than 250 pages please. And, liberated from that task, get on and do something that serves the church.

And to preachers: stop purchasing the things! They aren't helping your sermon preparation - and they certainly aren't helping your sermons. They are high-cost high redundancy items. Find the absolute classics in each book and stick with those. Buy some theology instead, or read a novel or two, or a biography, or philosophy. Make your Greek better and read the text for yourself! Spend more time in prayer even. Your spouse will appreciate the space you save by not buying commentaries, too.

David Bentley Hart on the first commandment

Try this sample of David Bentley Hart. He must be tough to play Scrabble against! Here's a taste of the sample:

'....developed Christian theology rejected nothing good in the metaphysics, ethics, or method of ancient philosophy, but—with a kind of omnivorous glee—assimilated such elements as served its ends, and always improved them in the process. Stoic morality, Plato’s language of the Good, Aristotle’s metaphysics of act and potency—all became richer and more coherent when emancipated from the morbid myths of sacrificial economy and tragic necessity. In truth, Christian theology nowhere more wantonly celebrated its triumph over the old gods than in the use it made of the so-called spolia Aegyptorum; and, by despoiling pagan philosophy of its most splendid achievements and integrating them into a vision of reality more complete than philosophy could attain on its own, theology took to itself irrevocably all the intellectual glories of antiquity. The temples were stripped of their gold and precious ornaments, the sacred vessels were carried away into the precincts of the Church and turned to better uses, and nothing was left behind but a few grim, gaunt ruins to lure back the occasional disenchanted Christian and shelter a few atavistic ghosts. '

hybrids...

This email was passed on to me this evening:

As you may know a Bill shortly due to come before Parliament would permit experiments that much of the world would like to see outlawed. Scientists will be permitted to create 'true hybrids', embryos that would have a human parent and a nonhuman parent. These embryos would be destroyed at 14 days but the question remains: what kind of creatures would they be? In every country law and ethics distinguishes human embryos from pig embryos. What then should be said of a half human half pig embryo? I believe that we are in danger of following Dr Moreau in the novel by HG Wells, who says of his animal-human creations, 'I went on with this research just the way it led me. I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter.'If you like me are opposed to the creation of human nonhuman hybrids (and perhaps like me more than a little sceptical of the supposed necessity for the research) then please sign the following petitions and also pass on this email.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/stemcell/
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/HybridEmbryos/

Professor David A Jones
Professor of Bioethics
St Mary's University College,
Twickenham

Bultmann on demythologizing

We have been reading Bultmann, and I am sorry Ben Myers, but we have all been quite disappointed. It just seems so, well, dated. Never mind - he puts this really good question to all of us: where do you demythologize? We all do it (he says), so where do you?

In many cases we demythologize unintentionally and unreflectively by taking the mythological statements of the Bible as pictures that have long since lost their originial mythical sense. This is done most easily, naturally, with poetic writings in the Bible like the Psalms, in which the mythological language may in many cases already have been intended poetically. In our daily life, also, we use pictures that stem from mythical thinking, as when we say. for example, that our heart prompts us to do this or that - a statement that no one understands any longer in its original mythological sense, But those of us who have to interpret scripture responsibily ought to be conscious of what we are doing and to remind ourselves that honesty at this point requires us to be radical.

More radical? I am not sure: certainly, more honest and more systematic perhaps. Perhaps, too, the problem lies in calling this process 'demythologization', which implies a certain discovery of the 'real' intentions of the author - intentions that he not have been aware of himself.

Stout on academic theology

While I wait for my copy of Charles Taylor's book The Secular Age to arrive, I have been dipping in to Stout's book Ethics After Babel. He some very perceptive comments to make about the disconnection between seminary professors and their students (on the American scene anyhow). The problem for the seminary prof is that constituency in the classroom (ie, the fee-paying students) are on the whole embarassingly pietistic and dogmatic (from Stout's perspective). And yet they long for academic credibility - so they have distance themselves from their own students. Stout continues:

...secular intellectuals have largely stopped paying attention. They don't need to be told, by theologians, that Genesis is mythical, that nobody knows much about the historical Jesus, that it's morally imperative to side with the oppressed, or that birth control is morally permissible. The explanation for the eclipse of religious ethics in recent secular moral philosophy may therefore be rather more straightforward than I have suggested so far. It may be that academic theologians have increasingly given the impression of saying nothing atheistis don't already know.

So, are we just going to blog forever, or what?

Sometimes I do wonder what is to become of all this blogging. It is such a new medium. What does it mean for how one is perceived, for example? When I meet people who say 'oh, yes, I have read your blog' I feel quite embarassed for some reason (maybe it is obvious to you readers out there!). I suppose it is because, even though this is a very impersonal blog as far as blogs go, they know something about me already.

I also perceive a certain contempt for blogging from older people, especially older Christians, who think (with some justification) that blogs are sinkholes for gossip and half-formed thoughts written by people who couldn't accept the discipline of publishing something.

And I do notice that when I encounter someone else who blogs a lot my first instinct is to say 'they clearly don't have enough to do at work!' I am not sure yet that having a blog is a way to be taken very seriously!

I am also conscious of the responsibility of the teaching office to which I have been called (in whatever way you understand it): that half-baked thoughts undermine the dignity of the calling somewhat.

Am we just supposed to blog from here to kingdom come? Is that it?

Baddeley on 'Creation' 'Science'

Mark Baddeley does some excellent stuff critiquing 'Creation Science' (so-called) -

here, here and here.

My favourite point is that Creation Scientists don't take Genesis literally enough.

Seumas on Cyprian on Martyrdom

Seamas sent me a copy of his project on Cyprian's theology of martyrdom. And very interesting it is too. Here are a couple of highlights from his conclusions:

Confession consummated in martyrdom is ultimately grounded in Christ's martyrdom. Martyrs do not follow Christ so much as Christ confesses through them.

Cyprian repeatedly relates the reward of martyrdom to fidelity, not to the act of martyrdom itself. In doing so he shows a real insight into the nature of providence, the justice of God, and the vicissitudes of life.

Cyprian, following Tertullian, situates the key theological issue as idolatry. Confession and persecution in his context does revolve around the issue of idolatry, not merely persecution for the sake of being Christian, and the tortures of Christians are aimed at apostasy through idolatry, not infliction of penalty per se. Cyprian’s exhortations involve a strong urging to true worship, by unmasking the reality of idols and idolatry, gravely warning of the consequences, and reinforcing the superiority of Christian religion. Cyprian’s treatment demonstrates a theological depth and integration with doctrine unprecedented with regard to martyrdom. This integration is thoroughly Christological, centered around the person and work of Christ, and monotheistic: to confess Christ is to worship God.

Christian music for kids and the sovereignty of God

For one of my kids, the music of that great Aussie Christian entertainer Colin Buchanan has really started to catch on. And it is great stuff. We call it 'Calvinism for Kids!'

However, I notice that in the album I have anyhow ('Remember the Lord') he overwhelmingly emphasises the Sovereignty of God. So: 'My God is So Big'; 'Nothing Takes God By Surprise'; 'Old Black Crow' (about providence); 'And God Said'.

We are more than half way through the album before Jesus and the Gospel get a mention ('We all like sheep have gone astray'). But the direction of the theology is from God's sovereignty to God's grace: whereas, I would have thought to go the way around. We know of God's sovereignty, and his power in creation and his providential care from the cross outwards...

The possible problem of starting with Sovereignty is (and it is an old problem for some Calvinism): a tendency to make God seem remote and inscrutable, so that the statements about the love of God seem to strike a jarring note. Colin's terrific doctrine of creation means that he points to creation as evidence of God's power, but he tends to just assert God's love rather than give evidence of it in the same way. It's there, but it comes down the list.

Thoughts? Anyone else noticed?

NOTE: I think Colin is a special gift of God to Australian Christians and want it to be understood that I 100% support his work and I have purchased and play lots of his CDs. And will continue to do so.

The Jesus Storybook Bible

The inestimable Gordon gave a rave review to The Jesus Storybook Bible - and so we obediently purchased a copy.

It came today - and it looks really very good in every respect. We haven't put it to use yet, but the pictures by Jago are very, very good and the text by Sally Lloyd-Jones (from the little bits we have read) is everything we could wish for.

Go buy a copy! Your Christmas giving problem is solved!

Revolutionary Calvinism - Stout again

Stout speaks passionately about democracy, and against the anti-liberal-democratic reading of history proposed by Hauerwas and co:

The first modern revolutionaries were not secular liberals; they were radical Calvinists. Among the most important democratic movement in American history were Abolitionism and the Civil Rights movement; both of these were based largely in the religious communities. Religious colleges and seminaries provided strong support for both movements. If religious premises had not been adduced in support of them, it is unlikely that either movement would have resulted in success. The Christian majority needed to be persuaded in both cases that commitment to scriptural authority was at least compatible with the reform being proposed. If the religious Left does not soon recover its energy and self-confidence, it is unlikely that American democracy will be capable of counteracting either the greed of its business elite or the determination of many whites to define the authentic nation in ethnic, racial or ecclesiastical terms. Democracy and Tradition, p. 300

This reminder is salutary. I think a nice renaissance of religious reasoning is occurring in Australia, and it isn't just a Right wing thing. I wonder if it will bear fruit... Stout could have added Prohibitionism to his list, and that was a movement stemming from the same source but which squandered a good deal of political capital as far as religious groups were concerned.

Evangelical Anglicans and the sectarian temptation

Caveat: in general, I find church-political blog entries drive me nuts. But this is just a thought I am trying to put into words, so indulge me!

I take it as a fait accompli that the Anglican communion as it has been known for about 120 years is on the point of disintegration. Now, I am a Protestant, so I don't find this as alarming as some do. I find unity for unity's sake, shorn of any content, incomprehensible.

But: there is a danger that as the new alignments emerge evangelicals will pursue sectarianism to its logical extreme and split even amongst themselves.

The benefits of being Anglican for an evangelical are actually quite considerable.
For one, the formularies and liturgy are ones which we can happily and even proudly sign as an expression of the Reformed and Biblical faith. Still.

Second, the besetting sin of Protestantism - sectarianism - is considerably ameliorated. So, evangelicals are protected from their own tendency to pursue an ideal and over-realised church on earth. (The problem of course is a lack of clear church discipline, which has got us into this mess!) While taking doctrine seriously - very seriously - it is not so to the extent that adiaphora become matters for schism. Reformed and Presbyterian groups are notorious for this finding of ever more strict and particular theological positions.

Third, the intellectual and cultural and political heritage of Anglicanism has protected us from the anti-intellectualism, obscurantism and culture-hostility that is feature of much evangelicalism. So, you won't find many young earth creationists amongst Anglican evangelicals. When I meet Americans for whom 'evangelical' equates to a particular political stance and a craven capitulation to the culture, we take a long while to sort each other out!

Fourth (and this is a somewhat perverse point) - being in a denomination alongside liberals and catholics has meant that evangelicals have had to fight major theological battles rather than minor ones. And think this means strength.

Fifth, while we hold to a the ultimate authority of the Bible, we are still brought into engagement with a lively (even firey?) tradition of Christian orthodoxy. We are of the magisterial reformation. And, we aren't wedded to the Regulative Principle (whew!).

There are more advantages to be outlined, doubtless. My question is: in the forthcoming new Anglican world order, which for some evangelicals will mean a purer and more faithful church certainly, what will be lost? Is there a danger of becoming sectarian? How can it best be avoided?

Stout savages Hauerwas

Hauerwas is so dominant in the thinking of a generation of American theologians that is a relief to hear him challenged. But Stout does so as a non-theologian: it is a shame that it took a non-theologian to do it:

A cynic might say that the secret of Hauerwas's vast influence in the church in the 1980s and 1990s lay in the imprecision of the sacrifice he appeared to be demanding of his followers. Surely he was not proposing that the strength of one's sentimental identification with the church could by itself secure noncomplicity with the evils of the world. His favourite patristic text appears to be Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom. [Actually, here Stout is taking a piece of O'Donovan's rhetoric in Desire of the Nations rather literalistically! - a bit of a schoolboy error. MJ] But in the absence of a clear statement of the price Christians must be willing to pay, his audience was able to indulge itself in fantasies of martyrdom without experiencing
actualy poverty or persecution at all. (p. 158)

Ouch - harsh but fair. Tenure at Duke hardly seems like persecution, now, does it? He charges Hauerwas with inconsistency over his reading of Scripture. Hauerwas wants to make non-violence thee central feature of the Christian message. But is the pacificist case really convincing on the basis of Scripture? And how come he is such a rigorist on this issue, but not on others - say, on remarriage after divorce? As Stout says:

It is hard...to escape the conclusion that his ethics rests on an extremely selective reading of the Bible. (p. 160)

And further, Stout articulates a point I had thought of but not really expressed before: Hauerwas's church, his 'peaceable kingdom', doesn't seem to exist. When he says 'the church', which church is he talking about? What does he mean? As Stout says,

The actual church does not look very much like a community of virtue, when judged by pacificist standards. (p. 161)

Jeffrey Stout asks three good questions

It's been a hard couple of weeks!

Stout challenges MacIntyre, Hauerwas and Milbank - who have harboured such resentment against modern secular democracy. He asks three good questions (Democracy and Tradition, p. 104):

is it not possible to discern the workings of the Holy Spirit, and thus some reflections of God's redemptive activity, in modern democratic aspirations?

is there nothing in the political life of modern democracies, or in the lives of those who are struggling for just and decent arrangements within them, that a loving God would bless?

if the plenitude of God's triune inner life shones forth in all of creation, cannot theology discren some such light in democratic political community?

Well indeed. I would add a fourth question: is it not the case that modern democratic community is the child of Christendom, even if it is somewhat of a prodigal?

Jeffrey Stout and Piety

Jeffrey Stout is a very interesting figure in the American political philosophy and ethics scene. For one, he is a liberal who takes theologians and theology seriously. In particular, he addresses the work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre as 'new traditionalists', and even adds to this company John Milbank. Stout is a finder of common ground, a man who mediates between seemingly intractable positions.

In his 2004 book Democracy and Tradition, Stout traces some interesting themes. Often, democracy is accused of 'impiety' by traditionalists: it emphasises self-reliance rather than observance of the conventions of the community and the spirit of place. Yet, in his reading of Emerson and Whitman, Stout finds that piety is in fact reconfigured rather than abandoned. He would contend then, that democracy is spiritual and pious, if not religious.

More on this anon.

Martyrs and providence

To accept a martyr’s death in the name of the one in whom all things are reconciled to God is not then as astonishing as it might seem. The nonchalance with which the first generations of martyrs are depicted as accepting their terrible fate is no doubt exaggerated: but the truth that it serves to illustrate is that for the disciple of Christ there is both a way to make sense of the persecution and no reason to fear its consequences. Not only are the martyrs recorded as entrusting themselves to the providential care of the Father in the face of demonic opposition; the very martyrdoms themselves are depicted as being (in Eliot’s words) ‘by the design of God himself’. They even understand their own suffering as under his providential hand. As the author of ‘The Martyrdom of St Polycarp’ comments:

Blessed indeed and noble are all the martyrdoms that took place in accordance with God’s will. For we must devoutly assign to God a providence over them all.

Under interrogation, Pionius replies to the question ‘Which god do you worship?’ thus:

The God who is almighty…who made the heavens and the earth and things that are in them, and all of us; the God who richly furnishes us with everything, the God we know through Christ his Word.

Pionius knows God in Christ; and in Christ he knows God the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And for that divinity, he is prepared to die ­– though, as he describes it, he is ‘not rushing towards death, but towards life.’

New Testament faith in providence

The saints of the Old Testament could have prayed the Lord's prayer on the basis of the memory of God’s historical acts and the witness of the prophetic word. Their faith was not in a different Lord. But the New Testament adds to the history of God’s people the decisive appearance of the Son of God (Heb 1:1-3; 11:39-40). In his death and resurrection, the kingdom of God inaugurated. We have from the story of Abraham and Isaac the view of divine providence as not merely the provision of sustenance but the provision of a sacrifice that God himself demands of his creatures. God himself is the provider of what he requires of men and women. On the other hand, Jesus’ own teaching about the kingdom of God points to its eschatological nature. The world and its history as they are lie under the judgement of God. Its destiny, as things stand, is to be wound down, unravelled and subject to destruction. The testimony of the New Testament authors, on the basis of the resurrection of Christ from the dead in the power of the Spirit, is that Jesus Christ was the sacrifice provided by God to meet his just requirement and reconcile fallen humankind to himself. This was not only decisive for individuals, but indeed for the destiny of the whole created order (Col 1:19-20; Rom 8:19-23).

What Paul knows, and what he doesn't...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the noetic point on which a belief in providence has its entire basis. Belief in providence is not an inference from history; nor is it a claim to know the pattern of the times. It is not augury or cloud-reading. Belief in providence is not a claim to special knowledge of the providential plan, but merely a claim to knowledge that there is such a plan and that has been made by one with the power and the will to accomplish it. From the covenant history which culminates in the Son of God’s action for salvation of the world we learn of the purpose and character of God to which all other history is ordered. When Paul exclaims, at the end of his troubling discussion of the election of Israel in Romans 9-11 –

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.

– he is not expressing in apophatic terms a despair of ever knowing the ineffable deity who must himself remain ever discreetly hidden behind a cloud of unknowing, but rather his joy in the righteous and loving character of God revealed in the gospel of his power (Rom 1:16). Though the plan of God is a yet concealed from view, his character has in fact been made known in gospel. This thought is Paul’s consolation.

Introduction to the Bible: some notes V - 2 Samuel 7

Some notes on 2 Samuel 7 for the interested:

Some readers are tempted to conclude that this covenant abrogated the existing covenant with Israel, but the close interweaving of 2 Samuel 7 with earlier covenant material should prevent this conclusion ‘The covenant of David fits within the covenant structure of Israel’ (Dumbrell 1994, 72). What is more, David receives this promise as Israel’s representative; as the king he embodies and represents the people (Köstenberger 2001, 39). Note the hope of royal priesthood in Exodus 19, which allows us to conclude that the person of the king ‘embodies the covenant expectations of Exodus 19:6’ (Dumbrell 1994, 72). 2 Sam 7:14 should thus be read against Exod 4:22; and 2 Sam 7:1 should be read against the goal of the exodus. ‘Through the occupant of the throne of Israel, Davidic kingship is to reflect the values that the Sinai covenant requires of the nation’ (Dumbrell 1994, 71f.).

Likewise, we have seen how the Davidic covenant takes up the promises to Abraham. The ‘great name’; the ‘place for my people Israel’; the ‘rest’ from enemies still to be given which echoes not only exodus but the creation rest to which the exodus rest pointed, all suggest a reiteration of the Abrahamic covenant in such a way that God’s saving purposes for humanity through Abraham are seen to be continued through the Davidic king, YHWH’s viceregent in his rule over the nations (Köstenberger 2001, 39f.).

Bill Dumbrell also writes:

Through Davidic kingship, divine government through Yahweh’s appointed intermediary, to whom the world must be subject, is established. Thus, Yahweh’s full intentions for the human race will be realized through wise administration by Israel’s messiah. The notions of the charter for humanity, of the dominion which that is to confer, and of kingship over Israel exercised by the Davidic representative were all finally brought together and fused in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who as son of David was son of Abraham, yet also Son of God.

This Blog's Greatest Hits

Well, here is a list of the posts that have scored the most comments on this blog. What I note is that those with more pastoral themes (such as the previous post) seemed to have garnered most interest. The list:

bible and theology

jungel

sacraments

the art of blogging

talking to an atheist

the great evangelical bible swindle

creatio science and calvin

von balthasar and impassability

corporal punishment

violence what is it

if Christian schools were really Christian

gurus

order in genesis 2 and 3

straining at gnats

David Hicks

power of scripture

a tension in evangelicalism

about blogging

brief sydney lives

pierced for our transgressions

is postmodernism passe?

office politics

cuteness and its relevance for evangelical ethics

professionalism vs amateurism

gentle answer turneth away wrath

a good lecturer

collapse of evangelical consensus

gentle answer discussion continued

The Pastor's Wife - an observation in the age of professionalism

The role of the minister's wife is in a state of flux, it seems to me (at least in the Sydney diocese with which I am most familiar). Back in the day, it was obvious (ok I am simplifying) - Rev and Mrs were in it together. A parish was more like a small business than a profession. If you went to the corner store in Sydney, you might get Con or you might get Tula (back in the 70s anyway). Both of them were in the business together. This went without saying. Over at St Bloggs, it was pretty much the same. I worked for one minister and his wife for whom this was exactly how it was: Mrs was in charge of all ministry to women in the parish and had input on all decision making at every level pretty much.

Nowadays, we expect our pastors to be professionals. If there's a ministry to be done, we pay for it. So, we have a women's pastor and a youth worker to do what was previously done by amateurs. And this means team meetings and five year plans and training and all the rest. Frequently now the pastor does not work from his study at home but goes out in the morning to an office with a secretary and his colleagues.Often, the pastor's wife is in an odd situation then: is she part of the team or not? She and her husband may have planted the church: now it is bigger, is she still given input in decision making? Does she 'outrank' the young tyro curate fresh out of college and full of ideas? What should her role be now that we have a women's pastor who has a theological degree? He is trained after all, and a professional. She is merely amateur. Also, because most of our ministers and their wives come from the professional classes, she may be pursuing her career outside the parish, and we have come to accept this as her right since she is not the one being paid, and so we don't even inquire.

The negative results have been: trouble on ministry teams where it was felt the minister's wife was interfering, when all she was doing was expecting the kind of input that she formerly had when the church was small; or, an increasing dislocation from the church felt by ministry wives.

However: looking at some websites of Charismatic churches, I noticed a real difference. Time after time you are welcomed to the church not by the pastor but by the couple: Brian and Bobbie for example, or Phil and Chris. I don't think that this churches have a particularly egalitarian theology, so it is not merely a case of a difference at that level. But I have yet to find the Sydney Anglican church where this is done: inevitably you are greeted by the professional - the man, in other words. The contrast is quite marked: you are left in no doubt that the charismatic church is a family affair, with a ministry shared by male and female (whatever view of headship is expressed).

Barth on the Christian seeing differently

Barth's chapters on Providence highlight the existential and pastoral aspects of the doctrine. The doctrine of Providence is in a very real sense all that separates the Christian who lives in the world of tsunamis and cancer and his neighbour who lives in the same world. What makes him different? Firstly, Barth says that is because the Christian as a creature affirms his own 'creaturely occurence'. That is, the Christian accepts his own being as a creature and not as a being of pure will, or an evolved organism. But he goes on...

Our answer can be the very simple one that he sees what the others do not see...What makes him a Christian is that he sees Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the humiliation but also in the exaltation of His humanity , and himself united with Him, belonging to HIm, his life delivered by Him, bu also placed at His disposal. (C.D. III.iii.241)

Being a Christian is looking with different eyes on the same view.
It is merely a matter of seeing things differently.

Sharing in Christ's sufferings

A few posts back, Gordo reminded me of the texts that speak of the believer (well, the apostle) sharing in Christ's sufferings. I was pointing out that suffering persecutions was only to be expected as a condition of life as a believer in Christ - but that these sufferings were not our own but rather his. I cited 1 Peter 4:12.

But 1 Peter 4 continues:
But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.

The nature of the martyr's sufferings are that they are, wondrously, a participation in Christ's.

The verse Grodo was alluding to is Col 1:24:

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

It's is a very interesting passage all up, coming as it does after a declaration of the cosmic scope and sufficiency of Christ's sufferings on the cross.

What could possibly have been lacking in Christ's afflictions? Can we allow Paul a hyperbole here - an ironic overstatement? i.e. 'I am supplying what is lacking in Christ's sufferings (not really meaning that something was, but I am suffering in participation with the sufferings of Christ etc)'. Is that his point? Or is that there needed to be an ecclesiogical working out of Christ's suffering in some manner?

Rowan Williams and Tendenzkritik

In his essay on Maurice Wiles, Rowan Williams finishes with this question:

Wiles is far from insensitive to this priority of krisis over Kritik; but how can his model of doctrinal criticism allow it its proper weight?

By Kritik Williams is indicating not just that historical criticism which questioned the integrity and historical objectivity of the New Testament texts as texts, but also Tendenzkritik - that criticism, originating with FC Baur and the Tubingen School, which sought to uncover the interests at play in the text. In other words, the text is a site of, or a move in, a power struggle, and we can reconstruct the struggle, and then interpret the text in the light of the struggle.

So, Williams is saying to Wiles - 'sure, we ought to enquire as to whose interests are being served in this text, and do some pretty serious unmasking. But even thought you claim you are really interested in how people encounter Christ, can you really show that you put this as a priority?' It's a good question, but one that Williams himself doesn't necessarily evade. In his own work, he does take a great deal of time talking about the moment when people encounter Jesus and how that breaks open into new things, new possibilities; but can he really admit so much Tendenzkritik in and still hope to rescue an inner kurnel of pure Jesus from the mess? By accepting that so much of the Bible is impure and obscure, how can he not have knocked away the supporting testimony to Jesus Christ in its credibility?

Acts 4:24 in the Martyr-acts

When they [the believers] heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. (Acts 4.24)

One text reappears in the ancient martyr-acts more than any other: Acts 4:24.

It is used by Apollonius in his interrogation. 'Yes, I am a Christian...and hence I worship and fear the God who who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them.' (Musurillo's Acts of the Christian Martyrs, p. 91). When Pionius is asked 'which go do you worship?' he replies 'the God who...'. (p. 157). Cyprian likewise identifies the singular object of his worship. Fructuosus likewise (p. 179). Irene declares herself unwilling to sacrifice 'for the sake of the God almighty who...' (p. 289). Crispina says 'May they never find it easy to make me offer sacrifice to demons: but I sacrifice to the Lord who...' (p. 305). Euplus adds an affirmation of the Trinity (p. 317). Phileas cites this text in answer to the question 'which God?' (p. 339-41).

What can we infer from this? A couple of suggestions:
1- the martyrs and their martyrologists consciously identified themselves with the situation of the apostles and the early church recorded in the book of Acts, and saw the language recorded there as theirs to use. They took what was recorded as a prayer and used it as a part of their witness to their captors and interrogators.
2 - an affirmation of monotheism in all its aspects is a crucial to the martyr's perception of their own witness. That is, worship was due to this one deity without compromise or comparison. He is not a tribal deity. For a Gentile Christian this must have been axiomatic.
3 - this is not because of a soteriological motif (which surprises me) but because of his sovereign power in creation. This verse attests to the power and worth of God, the Christian God, over all creation - this isn't a matter of inner conscience, but of universal declaration, even (dare I say) truth.
4 - the Christian's identity is ordered to this affirmation of the sovereignty of God. 'I am a Christian' they say, 'namely, one who worships the Lord of everything and not just of Rome'.

Gunton on Providence and the Spirit

Gunton's great contribution (one of) was a reinspection of the theology of the Spirit and his role in the work of God towards the world.

The Spirit is both the one who upholds the human Jesus in the truth of his being and calling and the one who, by mediating the Father's action in raising him from the dead, transforms his body to the life of the world to come. All particular acts of providence derive from and take something of the shape of the paradigmatic redemptive act. The Triune Creator p. 177-8

It is worth asking what this means, 'take something of the shape of'...? A martyrdom, for example, is a particular act of providence which certainly derives from the resurrectional work of the Spirit - but does it take something of the shape of it? He continues:

As a form of enabling personal action, providential action, the Spirit's action is that which libeartes things and people to be themselves, as, paradigmatically, the Spirit's leading enable the human Jesus to be truly himself in relation to God the Father and the world. p. 184

I like especially how he picks up the way in which the Spirit ministered to Jesus in the Gospel narratives - something somewhat eclipsed in the Augustinian tradition.

Dame Helen Gardner

Helen Gardner was of the old school of literary critic - you know, the sort that wasn't obsessed by theory or by discerning what ideological interests were at play in the text.

But she wasn't afraid of sticking it to such eminent figures as T.S. Eliot (much beloved of this blog). In her The Art of TS Eliot she really gives Murder in the Cathedral quite a panning. She's right of course: as a play it makes a good church service. Essentially, nothing happens in the play (always a downer for an evening out at the theatre). The 'action' is concealed from the audience because it is spiritually realised. And Thomas isn't even very likeable. Gardner uses the expression 'classic prig'. As she puts it:

The problem is whether drama can deal with sin, and still be drama, or whether like the law, it can only deal with crime.

She goes on:

The central theme of the play is martyrdom, and martyrdom in its strict, ancient sense. For the word martyr means witness, and the Church did not at first confine the word to those who sealed their witness with their blood; it was a later distinction that separarted the martyrs from the confessors. We are not to think of a martyr as primarily one who suffers for a cause, or who gives up his life for truth, but as a witness to the awful reality of the supernatural.

Quite. The best bit of the play, she thinks, is the Chorus:

...the play transcends its origin and occasion, and the chorus becomes humanity, confronted by the mystery of iniquity and the mystery of holiness.

Emil Brunner on Providence

Ever wondered what to think when the next Grammy-award winner thanks Jesus for her success? Hear Brunner:

If the Cross of Christ be the greatstumbling-block of the world, then the visible fate of so many Christians in the olrd, measured by the standards of the world, is also a stumbling-block. Things do not happen as they do in little pious tracts; they do not 'always turn out for the best'. God does not take sides with his own, in the sense of the secular idea of good fortune or happiness....

But this does not mean that there are no visible signs fo divine help and guidance. A purely ascetic and heroic conception of Divine Providence is just as untrue as an exaggerated eudaemonistic idea of the experience of faith or of the divine promise. The undercurrent of divine co-operation comes to the surface now and again. To try to eliminate this feature from the life of the saints...would be to act in a very arbirtrary manner. God constatly give his own 'signs' of His fatherly guidance; clear witness to this truth is given by those apostles who had such a full share in the suferings of Christ that they have a valid claim to the title of 'martyrs'.
The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 158-9

Scruton on the Religion of England

I am reading Roger Scruton's England: An Elegy. It is, as its title suggests, a book lamenting the passing of an English character that once was and now no longer is.

Put very briefly, the Church was domesticated in England, defined, like everything elses, by a place rather than a doctrine or a chain of command. It adapted to the core religous experience of the English, which was of the consecrated nature of their island. Its ceremonies and liturgies sanctified the English language, the English landscape, the English law and institutions and the English Crown - the mysterious corporation sole which is also the supreme fiction in this fairytale. p. 18

The Anglican religion in other words has helped formed the English social imaginery- to define its dreaming. The trouble is, if you shatter the myth, you lose the dreaming. And there is little you can find that will replace it...

Still, this is an explicitly religious view of Anglicanism, and one which shows how deeply unChristian Anglicanism can be ...

Emil Brunner on the Devil

Rationalism has always made short work of the devil - at least in theory!

The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption p. 137

Emil Brunner was my late teacher Bruce Smith's favourite. In many ways he was a lesser Barth, but he wrote in his own distinctive voice. Because, unlike Barth, he believed in the business of apologetics (though he called it somewhat enigmatically 'eristics') his work has dated not so well: the contemporary references and issues have died away somewhat and left Brunner's most urgent work sounding shrill.

However - and this is what Bruce was hoping we would see I think - Brunner writes with faithfulness to the witness of Christ and perception of the depths of the message of the Bible, his great source. I enjoyed this:

The most important truth about the Devil is this: Jesus Christ has conquered him. The Cross is the exact opposit of, and therefore the reaction against the 'fall of Lucifer': the rebellion against God of that being who could not endrue not to be equal with God. The Cross is the Sign of the Devil's defeat, and a continual reminder of Him who conquered him; it is alos the Sign of Him who 'emptied Himself' of His Divine power in order to express in His own person the Divine self-giving to the uttermost. p. 145

All my trials...

This paragraph practically killed me:

If Christ has experienced his trials and temptations and overcome them, then what of the disciples of Jesus? The disciples are not spared further peirasmos; on the contrary, temptation and trial come at them with a renewed force if anything. Thlipsis is to be expected as normal; they are not to be surprised by the coming of the ‘fiery trial’ (1 Peter 4:12). The allusion to Jesus was offered in Hebrews to comfort believers who were in the midst trials. The disciple is thrown back on the human question of the flesh, faith and allegiance to God. Can he himself now overcome the peirasmos, perhaps because he looks with new eyes on the old problem?

That would mean that Jesus merely exemplified the right response to peirasmos. The testimony of the NT is otherwise: Jesus supremely and uniquely passed through this test and tempation. The disciple, who in affliction may even become a martyr, does not witness to his own overcoming of peirasmos but to the victory of Christ in the flesh, in faith and in allegiance to God. That he is tested and remains steadfast even to the death is a witness to Christ’s decisive defeat of the Devil – not to a fresh victory, but only to a sharing in the same original victory that belongs to him.

I just want you to know it is hurting!

Barth on Affliction

Some comments from the older Barth on the Christian expectation of affliction:

If the ministry of witness is the primary determination of Christian existence, and if the ministry of witness unavoidably brings the Christian into affliction, then we have to say that none can be a Christian without falling into affliction. To be sure, we have not to desire or seek or provoke it, as martyrdom or the so-called baptism of blood was coveted 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....

Barth goes on to note that affliction may indeed come from within the Christian community. But: supposing the world gives the Christian not much trouble? What then?

If...a man is not oppressed by his environment, if he has nothing serious to fear or to suffer at its hands, he has reason carefully to ask at least whether and how far he is genuinely a Christian at all and not fundamentally self-deceived in this respect.

Church Dogmatics, IV.iii, p. 618-9

A thought about Christology

In the temptation/testing of Jesus we do not observe so much the victory of moral rectitude, or finally of one human being who has developed the strength to overcome; but rather we find an example of dependence on the Word of God and trust in his will. He overcomes not by being superhuman, but by being MORE PROPERLY HUMAN. He is victorious by following the human vocation as it was originally given...