Contextualisation, and so on.

I am always surprised by the naive but belligerent talk one hears from evangelicals who are disdainful of "contextualisation'' - usually with an equally vehement contempt for ''hermeneutics".

I understand the fear. The craven accommodation of the gospel to the fads and fashions of the time is appalling to see. Even now, the fad of the 1980s to have 'perspectival' theologies - black theology, lesbian theology, latino theology and whatever - looks simply laughable. Why did anyone ever take that seriously?

But the alternative is to be blind to our own context, and to our own (sinful and human) propensity to distort things. The Bible needs to be interpreted ever anew, not because it isn't clear or effective or coherent, but because we tend to get it wrong. Faithfulness to the original demands not parroting it but hearing it again as fresh for today and today's people. To borrow an analogy from bible translation: ''dynamic equivalence'' is the most authentic and faithful means of transmission!

Daniel Treier on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture

Daniel Treier's stimulating book Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture serves as a kind of companion to the Dictionary of Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Treier's claim is that there has been in the past two decades a movement towards the recovery of a hermeneutics that is properly theological. This movement, which is fascinating in its ecumenical breadth, respects the unity of the Scriptures and the wisdom of the great interpreters of the past. I say ecumenical breadth because it appears that Roman Catholic, Lutheran, conservative evangelical and reformed thinkers have simultaneously made a discovery/recovery of this kind of interpretation.

Some samples from Treier:

From the ancient masters we can recover a way of integrating Scripture study with piety that has been virtually lost in much of late modern Western culture. We can also learn to read the Bible as Christ-centred in a way that makes possible spiritual participation in the realities of which Scripture speaks. Moreover, we can imitate reading for application with theological, not just narrowly exegetical, guidance and restraint. p. 54

Theology is the practice of all Christian people growing in their knowledge of God amidst their various life activities and church practices. The academic discipline of theology is not entirely separate from, or more important than, ordinary Christian growth in biblical discernment. Rather, professional theologians ought to pursue the same practices as lay Christians but with different intensities of inquiry, amounts of time and levels of expertise. p. 188

The Christian Life – too urgent to rush?

Christians are, I think, living a life somewhere between the lateness and urgency of the hour ('the time is short') and the long view of time that comes from worship of the God for whom a day and a thousand years aren't very different. I think it is the latter that conditions the former: that is, the 'urgency' of living in the last times is not a frantic rush but a realisation that only good things are worth doing. It is the kind of urgency that comes from knowing our 'times are in your hands'.

The Christian attitude to time is marked by 'patient endurance'. It is more a five-day Test than Twenty-20; more gourmet meal with mature cheese and vintage wine than McDonalds; more epic than haiku; more stone than weatherboard; more Mahler than Kylie; more ocean liner than speed boat. It is more family than business. Christians don't respond rapidly to social change, on principle – and thank goodness.

So why is church life so busy? Why do ministers collapse under the burdens of the work, too exhausted to think? Why do run so many events but see so little of one another?

F. LeRon Shults on fear in theological education...

LeRon Shults' book Reforming Anthropology is by turns enriching and annoying. Shults does not write lucidly I have to say; and like many American writers he seems to have to quote or cite everybody. But he is full of insight, too, including a chapter on 'relationality and pedagogical practice', where he writes:

I suggest that the ultimate remedy to the repression that keeps seminarians from transformational learning is to fear the only One worth fearing, so that they can overcome the fears of this world. For truly transformational learning to occur in seminarians, it is crucial for us to provide an integrative environment in which they see their intellectual task (theological exploration) as inherently connected to their relation to God (spiritual and personal formation) and to their ministry with the people of God (transformational leadership). p. 67

He argues that theological education should, of all studies, be an aesthetic exercise:

The aesthetic dimension in theological learning includes the pleasure and pain of the learner's life story, one's systemic and sensible relations to community, one's emotive and optative investment in the whole history of humanity, and of course one's experience of God. p. 69

It is fear, the psychologists tell us, that keeps us from learning. But the theological response to this is not the removal of fear, but the changing of fear's object. This is the conquering of other fears by fear of God. Fearing God in fact is the purest of fears, and is 'the beginning of wisdom': it is the purest pedagogical principle! Therefore, theological education ought to cultivate the fear of the Lord. Shults writes:

Human love of God includes the element of fear but it is transformed infinitely into the terrific delight of worship, not merely a worship that is ritualistically compartmentalized, but a doxological way of living in relation to the Holy that constitutes the whole of one's identity in the lived world. p. 74.

Wow.

On Rowan Williams is available!

The collection of essays by a group of Australian Anglican theologians edited by Matheson Russell is now available.

Is Church Politics possible?

Like many Christians, I feel ambivalent about church politics. Church politics is, of course, reported in the NT - think of the council of Jerusalem! As a human reality, the church on earth needs - and indeed is called - to order and govern its mutual life in accordance with its discipleship, to decide and affirm right doctrine, to manage common resources, and to make space for the exercise of right authority. To say otherwise is to have an over-spiritualised ecclesiology. Even the most free of free churches has to agree with this. Anarchy is not in any sense properly Christian. On the other hand, church politics as we experience it, in denominations or congregations, can be exceedingly unpleasant and a travesty of the gospel. It is possible to make it better? Here are some principles:



1 - the process is as important as the outcome. If God is truly sovereign in the church as he is in the world, then it is not necessary to use means that are not his means. His means might not be politically expedient or efficient. That means that love has a priority over outcomes.

2 - give reasons for your position that you believe, and not just reasons that are likely to persuade. Being Christian, we believe certain things about speech and its integrity to speakers. It is impossible to carry on a genuine disagreement with the possibility of mutual enrichment and edification if people are arguing merely in order to manipulate those voting. If you speak in this way, then I can not actually speak to you.

3 - seek more mutual accountability, not less. That is, the ordering of church life ought to have a realistic doctrine of sanctification. The child abuse scandals have taught us that 'trust me' isn't enough - there was a naivety about the extent to which the Christian is progressing in sanctification. Now most churches have all sorts of accountability structures in place in this area. Why not extend this to other areas of church life too? It is boring and painful, but isn't it actually right?

4 - respect the process. manipulating the process demeans the process. The law is an ass if it is treated like an ass... Church laws exist as an expression of mutual purpose and accountability. If the words and intentions of the framers of laws are twisted, then the law no longer protects the fellowship of believers. If no-one can trust anyone else, then we might as well be in the NSW state parliament. Which, if you don't know, is bad.

5 - protect ourselves from groupthink. People would much rather leave the messy business of church politics to others. It is hard work to think through church life at an organisational and theological level, and what is more, most people actually don't like conflict and would prefer to avoid it. We would much rather just do what the agenda says we ought to do and live harmoniously. This pattern does not lead to wise or mature church-political processes. Those entrusted with decision-making ought to be diligent, or give up their votes to someone else.

6 - practice agreeable disagreement. That is, it ought to be possible to strongly disagree without casting doubt on the other person's salvation. And the 'winners' in any decision ought to seek reconciliation if necessary with the 'losers' - indeed, it is their responsibility to do so. Don't label those you disagree with as defensive. Also: understanding and agreement are not the same...I can actually understand you and still not agree with you. Please don't keep shouting!

7 - take the long view. Christians understand history in a particular way. We don't need to rush! Theological and ecclesiastical discernment takes time - sometimes generations. Patience practiced in church politics means that sometimes thirty years thinking about a particular issue isn't enough.

8 - don't pretend that political acts are somehow not political. There's nothing wrong with them being political. The processes of lobbying and grouping together to urge for change are not in themselves wrong. On the contrary, they are perfectly appropriate to an exercise of church government. What really stinks is when someone exercises or achieves political power in a church context and calls it something else - spiritualises it so that it doesn't appear to have all the supposedly grubby aspects of politics. If we can call it 'politics', then when can judge it for what it is. Indaba groups are not somehow more spiritual or less political that a synodical style with parliamentary rules! They are just different.

any other ideas?

A YOU review

Mark Barry reviews YOU here.

The poor, and so on

It is easy to be glib and romantic about the poor, disadvantaged and socially outcast from the theological ivory tower. In principle - and it's more than a principle - yes, it is disgraceful that churches perpetuate the social alienation of the economically disadvantaged, the unemployed and so on. James tells us to show the poor man to the pride of place, and so we should.


The reality of life for church communities is that overcoming the factors which cause social exclusion is far more complicated. Economic disadvantage is (in the welfare state) rarely just economic disadvantage; social exclusion is rarely just social exclusion. These things often come with a raft of other problems. In my pastoral experience I have encountered some people who, while wanting to members of the church community, were really, really difficult, for whatever reason. They came with alarming or disturbing or deeply unpleasant personality traits. (Sometimes this was the result of a mental illness, though not always; and, it must be said there are those with mental illnesses who do not exhibit these anti-social behaviour patterns.) There were those who frightened off other church members, or who were inappropriately attentive to members of the opposite sex. There were those who told lies and took advantage of the charity of the church - in one case, to the tune of several hundreds of dollars. There were those who feigned serious illness in order to get attention.

And, anti-social behaviour, it turns out, is well named: people like this can drain the resources of a community and sap its growth. As a young pastor, several times I poured my heart into people who were difficult, trusting that my naive trust would be rewarded. It rarely was, I have to say (not with any bitterness).

So what is the way forward? How does the community of God's people take seriously the teaching of the NT and yet do so with wisdom? How have others - especially in inner city ministries - dealt with this issue?

Which Theologians would have made good bloggers?

Which theologians would have been successful bloggers? Or, which theologians do you reckon would have had blogs if they had been available at the time?

Luther - the pamphleteer and controversialist in Luther would have been attracted to the medium of blogging. He was a master disseminator of his own ideas using the printing press. His colourful language would have got him a seat in Australian parliaments. And he was quick on his feet. Perhaps verbosity would have got in his way.

Newman - A controversialist too, but with an acid tongue and an piercing application of sarcasm when needed. Aren't the 'Tracts for the Times' really just blog entries?

Augustine - a more ponderous thinker and not equipped for the brevity necessary for good blogging perhaps: but quite the controversialist and up for a good argument. You certainly wouldn't have wanted Augustine lobbing comments on your blog!

Tertullian - a master of Latin style, an orator and a lawyer. Great with the extended metaphor, and the wry observation. A little mad - it helps!

Broughton Knox - our local Aussie theologian never wrote much, but had a flair for the compact observation, the scribbled down note, the timely saying. Also a noted controversialist in the vein of a Luther. His piece on nude sunbathing in (I think) the Selected Works Vol 1 is a blog entry pure and simple!

Any others?

Francis Watson and interpretative practice…

An interpretative practice working within the world of the text may offer many insightful observations about the workings of that world. But it will tell us nothing at all about the one thing that actually matters, the relation of that imagined world to reality. If it wishes to engage responsibly in theological construction, biblical interpretation must there abandon the myth of the self-enclosed text and learn to correlate the text with the reality to which it bears witness, understanding the text as located primarily within the church which is itself located within the world. Interpretation must take the more demanding but also more rewarding way of seeking to discern the truth mediated in the texts of holy scripture. And it must not be deterred by the skepticism that such a project is sure to evoke.

                            Francis Watson, Text, Church and World p. 293

 

The temptation for conservative interpreters has been to cordon off the scriptures from the more ornery questions of its existence in the world – the questions that historians might ask, for example. However, (and I am sure Watson would agree), the text has something to say about the world which changes it. If the text is in the world, then it is also true that the world is in the (this) text. Can both be held without compromise?

YOU at Good Book Co!

http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/You-an-introduction-you_1037/

Jurgen Moltmann – The Crucified God

Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God is an attempt to come at Christian theology in a manner different to his previous work Theology of Hope, with the accent now on the cross of the risen Christ rather than the resurrection of the crucified Messiah. This is not a regressive step, he says, but an examination of the reverse side of the theology of hope (p.5). Methodologically he appeals to Adorno and Horkheimer's 'negative dialectic' because "[U]nless it apprehends the pain of the negative, Christian hope cannot be realistic and liberating" (p.5). The perspective of the problem of theodicy is thus prominent, together with the motif of the loving solidarity of God with the suffering of the world. His trinitarianism is a dominant strand of the work, and central to his explanation of the cross. The voluntary fellow-suffering of God on the cross with those who suffer godforsakeness is the key to Moltmann's theologia crucis. Everywhere is his admirable concern to articulate the faith in terms that make practical sense in the bloody twentieth century. As he says of his own experience of returning to the lecture halls after three years as a POW: "[A] theology which did not speak of God in the sight of the one who was abandoned and crucified would have had nothing to say to us then" (p. 1)

Chapter Six of The Crucified God is explained as an attempt to develop the consequences of the theology of the crucified Christ for the concept of God - that is to say, an attempt to understand God in light of the godforsakeness of Jesus on the cross (p. 200). In particular, Moltmann wishes to chart a course between modern existentialist atheism on the one hand, and traditional Christian theism on the other. Moltmann argues that traditional explanations of the cross have been restricted to soteriological questions, and have not pushed forward to ask the explicitly theo-logical question, "What does the cross of Jesus mean for God himself?" (p.201). He critiques the tendency to speak of a "death of God" even in Rahner and Barth, and insists that the answer to this question must be trinitarian - Jesus' death must be understood rather as a death in God (p.207).

The tradition of philosophical theism is then subjected to a thorough examination with Martin Luther enlisted as an ally. The theologia crucis means a new epistemology, a "crucifying form of knowledge", contrary to human pride. Metaphysics of the Greek strain cannot stand in the face of this cross of Christ - the theistic concept of the God who cannot suffer, the God who is pure causality, is incompatible with a Christian understanding of reality. In fact, it is necessary to speak of a "history of God" which the cross reveals. Atheism, too, has been an unbelief of the theists' God, not the crucified God. Moltmann hopes that if metaphysical theism disappears, then protest atheism will also die. This is because the crucial problem for the protest atheist is not God's existence, but his righteousness. Thus Moltmann's key strategy contra atheism is a theodicy. God must be understood as the suffering God in the suffering of Christ and the one who utters the cry of dereliction.

Moltmann now examines traditional christology and finds in the doctrine of Christ's two natures a possible docetism. He carefully examines the early church statements against Arianism, monophysitism and the via negativa. What is needed is a christological doctrine of the trinity (p.235), and western Christianity, as Rahner has noted, has been more monotheistic than truly trinitarian. Importantly, God's being and God's acts cannot be separated. The cross - God's act - is essential to who God is - trinity. But further, on the cross the Father delivered up the willing Son, and so suffers the death of the Son. This voluntary act on the part of God is solidarity with the godforsaken world. Even in this point of separation the Son and the Father are united in their love for the world. The trinity is not a closed circle, but an open embrace of the world in its godforsakeness. God becomes not other-worldly, but this-worldly (p.252). The problem of suffering is not "solved"; rather it is met by God's voluntary and loving suffering in identification with the world. This is to be the praxis of the church also. Moltmann also wants to speak of a trinitarian history of God, rooted in his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:28. Further, he wishes to propose that Christ does not face redundancy in the eschaton. In fact, the Sonship of the Son is consummated in the handing over of the kingdom.

One can see how Moltmann develops his Christian panentheism from such beginnings. The suffering of God means that man is taken up, whole and entire, into the life of God. Not only is God in the world: his embrace is so strong that the world is in God. Ultimately, God is in Auschwitz and Auschwitz is taken up into God, and this is grounds for an extraordinary hope.

Moltmann's theodicy is the great strength of this work, in that it directly engages the protest atheism of the mid twentieth century without negating the powerful emotional impact of its claims. We are returned to the cross as the heart of the Christian message repeatedly - it is no accident that Luther features so strongly and so positively in these pages. Further, the rigour of his penetrating search for the implications of the cross for God himself has led him rightly to the trinity, and stands as a rebuke to the western tradition for neglecting this understanding of God for so long. The atonement is necessarily a trinitarian event/process. The sense of God identifying with human beings in Christ is also very strong. Moltmann develops a theology of the atonement with a cosmic scope, and does not fall into the trap of individualising the work of the cross.

We might complain that Moltmann's doctrine of God suffers from an overdose of Hegelianism, by presenting the history of the world as God's history, the process by which he realizes himself. By rejecting impassiblity and divine aseity, does he allow a compromise of God's freedom? This having been said, is God still as impersonal as he ever was under the scholastics? Further, the God presented here seems almost dependent on, or at least intrinsically tied to, the world. His is a vulnerable God. Moltmann's trinitarian reflection leaves him open to the charge of tritheism - however, he more than responds to such a charge in The Trinity and the Kingdom of God; and he is recapturing a biblical emphasis, after all.

While the cosmic vision of Moltmann's theologia crucis is admirable, it says almost nothing about individual salvation - in fact, it almost non-soteriological. He describes God's judgement in the terms of the "giving up" of human beings to their godlessness, as in Rom 1 (p.242). The atonement is achieved not by any substitutionary work of Christ but by his identifying with human beings in their lostness, by solidarity with them. In the end, his panentheism leads him to a universalist model; and the preaching of the cross becomes a following of God's example in identifying with the lost and godforsaken.

One last quibble is with his lack of exegetical foundation at points, and a tendency (that I have noted in Moltmann's other writings) to recycle a few favourite passages (such as I Cor 15 and Rom 8, crucial though they may be).

Calvin, hermeneutics and history…

On the final page of his authoritative work The Unaccommodated Calvin, Richard A. Muller writes: 'A clever theologian can accommodate Calvin to nearly any agenda; a faithful theologian – and a good historian – will seek to listen to Calvin, not to use him.' Professor Muller's warning is salutary, not the least in the area of Calvin's hermeneutics. If anything, there has been since the 1960s a revival in interest in Calvin's interpretation of scripture, and an unseemly rush to appropriate or 'accommodate' him to new hermeneutical models. In the light of the slow dismemberment of the text of the Bible by scholars who hunkered around it like vultures pecking at a carcass, what else was to be done? The problem is that while this clinging to our forebear is driven by motives that are indubitably noble, it is by no means clear that Calvin has been listened to, and not used.

That is all very easy to say. The honest truth is that it is by no means obvious that listening to Calvin on the matter of hermeneutics is possible five centuries after his birth. The providential unity of the historical and Christological senses of scripture is no longer a assumption with which the contemporary interpreter can proceed. Stephen Edmondson voices the disquiet:

'These developments over the last four centuries have shut off any direct appropriation of Calvin's scriptural hermeneutic for contemporary interpreters concerned with the historical sense of the text. …it is problematic at this point to offer an historical reading of Scripture that is either unitive or generally theological, much less one that roots the unity of the narrative in a robust Christology. Calvin's history, then, is not our history.'

On the one hand, Calvin posited a single divine authorship to the Scriptures that was evidenced in its unity of voice and continuity of narrative; and that the text was a direct description of what actually happened in history. In direct and mutually-informing relationship with it, on the other hand, he held to a Christological theology of providence – the divine will shaped the events of history such that Christ was their consummation. If, first, the text could be shown to be not a united text but a plurality of competing texts, with an at best uncertain relationship to what actually happened in history, and second, if the view of the divine superintendence of historical events could be challenged and even discredited, then Calvin's reading of scripture could be made to look very odd indeed. Both of these were held to have occurred by the beginning of the nineteenth century; and so Calvin's narrative reading of scripture was 'eclipsed'.

[to be continued...]

Volf, new identity and the power of promises

The making of new identity in Christ and the effect of believing in promises have been themes in Volf's work since Exclusion and Embrace. No surprise to hear him saying these things in his book on Memory:

This new identity – not humanly acquired but divinely bestowed, even in the midst of our ruin – helps to heal wounded selves. We remember wrongs suffered as people with identities defined by God, not by wrongdoers' evil deeds and their echo in our memory. True, sometimes that echo is so powerful that it drowns out all other voices. Still behind the unbearable noise of wrongdoing suffered, we can hear in faith the divinely composed music of our true identity... p. 80

And then:

In the Christian view of life...future possibilities do not grow simply out of the actuality of the past and present...instead of arising simply from what was or what is, the future comes the realm of what is not yet...In Jesus Christ, God has promised to every human being a new horizon of possibilities – a new life into which each of us is called to grow in our own way and ultimately a new world freed from all enmity, a world of love. To be a Christian means that new possibilities are defined by that promise, not by any past experience, however devastating. If the traumatized believe the promise – if they live into the promise, even if they are tempted at first to mock it – they will...enter a world 'marked by a genuinely open future that they could not have imagined in the living death of the old world they have constructed for themselves... P. 82

Theological Anthropology – reading list?

I am compiling a bibliography for a Master's level course on Theological Anthropology for 2010. Any suggestions of items that ought to be on the list?

Love covers a multitude of sins

Miroslav Volf just does not know how to write dull books. His book The End of Memory is a stimulating discussion of memory and forgiveness. And it asks the very good question – how will the past, much of it evil and painful, be remembered in the age to come? How will God mend what is unmendable because it has happened and so cannot unhappen? Love, after all, 'keeps no record of wrongs'. Is the divine love in some way forgetful? How can love 'cover a multitude of sins' without somehow looking past them? (1 Peter 4:8)

Volf says: '…truthful memory does not have to be indelible memory. The purpose of truthful memory is not simply to name acts of injustice, and certainly not to hold an unalterable past forever fixed in the forefront of a person's mind. Instead, the highest aim of lovingly truthful memory seeks to bring about the repentance, forgiveness and transformation of wrongdoers, and reconciliation between wrongdoers and their victims. When these goals are achieved, memory can let go of offenses without ceasing to be truthful. For then remembering truthfully will have reached its ultimate goal in the unhindered love of neighbour'. (p. 65)

Paul Helm and Calvin’s Ideas

I have been reading Paul Helm's excellent John Calvin's Ideas in preparation for an essay that I am writing - for a collection to be published in celebration of Calvin's 500^th birthday next year.

Helm shows, in his opening chapter "God in Se and Quoad Nos" that Calvin's thought shows continuity with that of Aquinas – more than commonly assumed. Calvin's famous ranting against speculation, Helm claims, was as a recognition of the division of labour between philosophers and theologians. He was perfectly prepared to admit speculative questions in their place.

For Helm it is important to show that Calvin's approach to the divine essence is 'consistent with and indeed requires a robust metaphysical theism'. And so:

In both Aquinas and Calvin some of the human language about God is univocal, but it is couched mainly in negative terms. But apart from this …'negative core', all other language about God is analogical or accommodated language, with elements of univocity but also with elements of equivocity. Modern discussion recognizes that we readily employ metaphors, similes, and analogies when talking about God; nevertheless, it takes there to be a univocal core that is usually much more extensive than that envisaged by Aquinas or Calvin, for it embraces the entire concept of God…

Helm complains that modern theologians are far too ready to draw analogy between nature and the divine character. So, for example, the change we observe in nature is in no way for Calvin and Aquinas a flouting of God's immutability. 'Part of what a negative, reserved theological approach to divine goodness and immutability implies is that we cannot draw valid conclusions about God's character either a priori or a posteriori. But if God has, by revelation, said that he wills to do such-and-such, then such-and-such either cannot be evil or it cannot be willed as evil by God; and if he has said in unconditional terms that he will do so-and-so, then he cannot not do so-and-so.'

 

Quite!

You for the Brits

If you are in the UK, YOU: An Intro is available for pre-order

here or here for only £6.99

In Australia, try here (you get a sample chapter, too).

YOU is available!

You can grab copies of my book, YOU: An Introduction right now! (A sample chapter and TOC is available too.)

If you are in the US, go here.