The cricket problem

[don't forget to drop by my blog HIM: An Introduction and add you comments.]

It is a miserable summer for Australian cricket. To lose to India and then South Africa - and the latter at home for the first time - shows that our stocks have plainly fallen a long long way.

How has this come to pass? Well some of it is just happenstance. Warne retired, and then so did Hogg and MacGill. It is unreasonable to expect any international team to have more than three back-up spin bowlers. Then, we have had some frankly bizarre selections and mysterious non-selections. Beau Casson? Jason Krezja? Cameron White? What the?

But in the fast bowling department the failure to prepare for the retirement of McGrath is very distressing. Fast bowlers win tests. And so they need careful protection. The strain of too much cricket and overzealous training is telling on bowlers like Stuart Clark and Brett Lee. Shaun Tait had personal problems. Likewise, Brett Lee's failure to fire stems from the time his marriage disintegrated. Perhaps 'pastoral' issues play a more significant factor in this then we are led to believe. It is a very English problem to have so many injuries to key players. In the Steve Waugh era, our team was able to play test after test unchanged because the top players had so few injuries.

It all takes me back to the bad old days of the 1980s when Lillee, Chappell and Marsh all suddenly retired leaving a generation of young cricketers exposed. There were bizarre selections then, too (Glenn Trimble anyone? Robbie Kerr? Chris Matthews?). The scent of desparation hung over the team for a good while.

What did it take to revive our fortunes? It took several years, a tough minded skipper (Alan Border), the gradual coming to experience of bowlers like Lawson, McDermott, Alderman and Hughes, the persistence of the selectors with an underperforming Steve Waugh and the discovery of some consistent top order batsmen (Marsh, Boon, Taylor). Warne and McGrath appeared after all of this.

Which is by way of saying: I don't think the solution is around the corner. But whacky selections will really slow the process down.

Training and hiring

In the New Yorker - an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell about trying to predict who will be right for the job. He focuses in on NFL Quarterbacks and the teaching profession. And he focuses on the fact that success at training levels (or college football) is no indicator of success in the actual profession. His essay has important things to say about how we train ministers of course, too.

He writes:

In teaching, the implications are ... profound. They suggest that we shouldn’t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander’s training camp. It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated.

Simply touting 'high standards' and 'rigour' for no good reason is pointless unless the standards track with what we think is most important. When he says 'standards should be lowered' he is speaking of entry requirements - and I don't think the training itself should be at all compromised. It is however worth asking if what is asked of students, and therefore measured in them, is any helpful indicator of how they will go as ministers.

Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology

Introducing - an important course offered to fourth year students at Moore College!

Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology is a reading and seminar style course which seeks to give the student an orientation to current themes and debates in theological thinking. This is in part at least to help the student conduct some self-analysis about their own theological thinking, its context and the influences on them. To do this, we will be narrating the story of Protestant theology in the last two centuries with special reference to four main thinkers: Schleiermacher, Newman, Warfield and Barth. Each of these thinkers is both an individual of immense and original influence on theological thinking, and also representative of (roughly speaking) 'schools' of theological thought within Protestantism. What is also of significance is that each of these thinkers is trying to do Christian theology in a faithful way in response to the modern world of the industrial revolution, the rise of the nation state, the Darwinian revolution in science, the politics of tolerance and charity and the inevitable progress of human culture.

Schleiermacher is of course the representative of the turn to 'feeling' and experience over and against the rationalism of Kant; Newman (who of course ended up as a Roman Catholic, but whose influence on Protestant/Anglican thinking is ongoing) turns to the church and tradition; Warfield is the orthodox Calvinist, and an American as well; and Barth represents the single most impressive attempt to reposition Protestant orthodoxy within modernity.

We see some themes beginning to emerge even from the planting of these four stakes in the ground. What is the place of academic theology vis a vis the church? What role can scripture plausibly have in modern theology after the fact of the rise of biblical criticism? What can theology say about politics in the modern world? What is the response of theology to the rise of science?

Here is the reading list:


Schleiermacher, F.
The Christian Faith. 1821. Repr. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999, 52–93; 11–19.

Newman, J.H.
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, 93-178

Warfield, B. B.
‘The Church Doctrine of Inspiration’. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948. 105–165

Barth, K.
Church Dogmatics, I/1. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956, 125-186.

Church Dogmatics, II/2, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956,145–194.

Moltmann, J.

Theology of Hope. London: SCM, 1967, 15–36.

Pannenberg, W.
from Revelation as History. London: Sheed and Ward, 1969, 123–158.

Gunton, C.E.

Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, London: T&T Clark, 2003, 3-18


Torrance, T.F.
"Theological Realism." The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 169-96.

Wiles, M.
Working Papers in Doctrine, London:SCM, 1976, 1-17; 180-193

Packer, J.I.
“Hermeneutics and Biblical Authority,” Themelios 1.1 (Autumn 1975): 3-12.

Frei, H.
Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, Hunsinger & Placher eds., New York: OUP, 1993, 94-116.

Lindbeck, G.
The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Lousville: Westminster John Knox, 1984), 73–90

Williams, R.
‘On the Unity of Christian Truth’ in On Christian Doctrine, Oxford: Blackwells, 16-28

Milbank, J.
‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’, in G.Ward (ed), The Postmodern God, Oxford: Blackwells,1997, 265-78

Horton, M.
Covenant and Eschatology: Divine Drama, Louisville: John Knox, 2007, 1-19

Vanhoozer, K.J.
The Drama of Doctrine, 1-30

Knox, D.B.
Selected Works, Vol 1, Kingsford: Matthias Media, 37-50, 73-95


Robinson, D.W.B.
Selected Works:Vol 1, Camperdown: ACR, 230-53

(about 550 pages in total)

Christianity's internal tensions..

OK - bear with me here. This is a historical rather than a theological point.

It seems to me that in the history of Christianity a number of tensions exist that never seem to be decisively resolved (in historical terms). Now, I must emphasise that highlighting these tensions isn't to say I don't have positions on each of these.


1. aestheticism vs iconoclasm

2. hedonism vs asceticism

3. universal vs local church

4. rationality vs experientiality

5. celebration of marriage vs celebration of virginity

6. optimistic vs pessimistic views of sanctification

7. free will vs bondage of the will

What does the New Testament say about false teachers?

The term 'false teacher' is thrown around with some (gay?) abandon. It is increasingly the case that this term is used to describe any Christian or putative Christian whose teaching differs from mine – or, I say with all seriousness, to describe someone whose work I don't understand and haven't read at any depth. But what does the NT actually say about who 'false teachers' are and what should be done about them? Because the term sounds like it is biblical one, it is important that those who use it use it biblically, true?

So I have made a small investigation. Truth is, the term 'false teacher' hardly appears, though 'false teaching/doctrine' does and 'false prophet' certainly does.

In Matthew 7:15-16 Jesus warns the 'new Israel' against the infiltration of false prophets among them:
¹⁵ "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. ¹⁶ By their fruit you will recognize them.

He doesn't tell them what the false prophets will teach, but he does say to them that they will be recognized by their fruit. What is their fruit? Is it what they teach? Or the immorality of their behavior? Jesus does not specify, other than to say that we will be able to recognize them as false by what they produce – and that they are doomed to destruction.

In Matthew 24:24 Jesus teaches that in the end times many false Christs will arise along with false prophets. There will be declarations of the appearance of Christ that are false accompanied by great displays of miraculous power in order to deceive people.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul admits that if Christ is not raised he would indeed be a false witness about God – it is clearly an essential and decisive truth about God that is at stake for him and that would make him a false witness if it failed.

In 2 Cor 11 it is the false super apostles, who preach a faith of glory and not of suffering weakness. These guys are motivated by greed, power and vanity – and it is quite clear to Paul that they are feigning their role as apostles of Christ. There is no hint of honest error in what Paul's opponents are accused of.

In Galatians 2:4 Paul speaks of false brothers who have spied on the freedom of the Galatians. Of course, in Galatians, Paul's gospel and Paul's commission to preach it to the Gentiles itself is at issue, and he is very strong in his repudiation of those who have compromised its integrity by their behavior.

In 1 Timothy 1, Paul urges Timothy to be firm with certain men who are teaching falsely out of their ignorance:

³ As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer ⁴ nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work-- which is by faith. ⁵ The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith….⁷ They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

False teaching in good faith can be dealt with firmly but restoratively. After all, as Paul says of himself: ¹³ Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

Later in the same letter Paul asks to Timothy once again to be firm with those who teach false doctrines (not 'false teacher', note)

³ If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, ⁴ he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions ⁵ and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. ⁶ But godliness with contentment is great gain.

That is to say: if the one who teaches falsely won't listen to rebuke – well, watch how the consequences are destructive of community. Watch how constant friction circles about this person. And notice again – Paul has reason to think financial gain is on the horizon of those teachers in question. The content of the false teaching in 1 Timothy seems to be 'myths and genealogies': a devotion to the obscure and useless knowledge that is of benefit to no-one but of interest to many.

IN 2 Peter we read:

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ² Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. ³ In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping…

Once more – these are people – ex-Christians no less - who really want to make money out of the religion business. Just as Israel was infected by smooth talking false prophets, so the false teachers of the coming time will be in the church. Their teaching? A denial of the sovereign Lord who bought them! There seems however to be an immoral content to the teaching of these false prophets – as Peter goes on, it seems that debauchery is the result of what they teach: ¹⁸ For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error.

It is quite specific: these false teachers are open in the immorality and in their lust for sex and money. In Jude, while 'false teaching' isn't mentioned per se, it is the case that the church is likewise infected by divisive and argumentative types who are also openly immoral – who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

In I John 4:1ff we are told that many false prophets have gone out into the world, and that they are to be recognized by their denial of Jesus' coming in the flesh.

To sum up:

1. 'false teacher' itself is a rare terminology, only occurring in 2 Peter – though there it is given an extensive exposition.
   
2. false prophets/teachers are not usually thought to be sincere, since the NT authors hold them to be motivated on the one hand by profit and on the other hand by lust.
   
3. the content of false teaching in the NT is often a Christological issue – the incarnation, for example, of the Lordship of Christ.
   
4. it is also libertarian in character – advocating grace as an excuse for licence.
   
5. false teachers are divisive and argumentative, especially over trivialities, like genealogies and myths. The trivialities prove a distraction to the feeble. One of the worst results of their teaching is the division they cause in the church.
   
6. those who teach falsely may at first be rebuked and corrected with forbearance. It is possible to teach falsehood without being (technical term) a 'false teacher'.
   
7. the NT authors reassure (and warn) Christians that unrepentant teachers are doomed to an extra-hot end.
   

SO: The NT alerts Christians to the ongoing presence of teaching that will a) compromise the divinity and/or humanity of Christ, for the purpose of b) promoting division amongst Christians and licentious behavior.

 

Ursula Le Guin on fiction:

 

The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor....

I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing. I am describing certain aspects of psychological reality in the novelist's way, which is by inventing elaborately circumstantial lies.

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find- if it's a good novel – that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little...

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words...

Lots to ponder!

Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness

At Michael Paget's recommendation I have been reading Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. Sci-fi has never been my bag, but it has to be said that some fairly amazing working out of the themes of human existence occurs in sci-fi writing. Think of Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale, or Bladerunner (based on Philip K Dick's work), or William Gibson's Necromancer.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, a lone emissary from Earth travels to the planet 'Winter' on which people exist who have no gender except at certain regular time, the kemmering, in which they can be either male or female.

...Anyone can turn his hand to anything This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable...Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the smae risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else. ...There is no unconsenting sex, and no rape....there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

It is not quite a recipe for utopia, however. The narrator-envoy finds himself in a labor camp where prisoner's are chemically castrated. He observes:

They were without shame and without desire, like the angels. But it is not human to be without shame and without desire.

 

 

 

Full-text notes and pedagogical practice

I am a theological lecturer. I believe in the content of my course material.

Since I have returned to teaching, I have had repeated requests from students for full-text notes of my lectures.

I have refused these requests, on the grounds that I do use a text-book and allocate set-readings, and that my lecture 'notes' are not of publishable standard. The notes are actually for me, as a prompt to my oral delivery of the course content.

Futhermore, I think giving out a set of full-text notes is not that way I want to teach. I think it encourages 'bulimic learning' - the rote learning of information for an exam which is quickly forgotten. I would like to encourage what they call 'deep learning' - and to regard the lecture itself as not an injection of information but an educational experience.

Am I missing something?

Theology of the Human Being course 2010

This is a draft of a draft of a proposed Masters course on theological anthropology.... see what you think.
The rationale is that it is meant to engage both theological and non-theological voices and draw out a theological reading of scripture. The cases of torture at Abu Ghraib invites consideration of the human person in many contexts, since it was an attempt to strip certain human beings in terms of their gender, religion, culture, the image of their bodies, and their liberty. Not only that, but contemporary discourses about human rights circulate around this incident too. A theological analysis is not far away either - the cross of Christ is a similar incident, yet it is held to be a great human victory - or the inauguration of a new humanity...

What a Piece of Work is Man: A Theological Investigation into the Human Condition

1. Abu Ghraib and the Disappearance of Man
readings from M. Foucault Discipline & Punish

W. Cavanaugh Torture & Eucharist
Tertullian On the Spectacles
excerpts from Luther
Scripture text: 2 Corinthians 3-4

2. Born Free? Erasmus & Luther and Human Servitude
Luther & Erasmus texts
John Carroll The Wreck of Western Culture
Galatians

Philemon


3. Radiant Hair: Human Gender and the Glory of God
Luce Irigary This Sex That is Not One
Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex

1 Corinthians 11

Genesis narratives

Song of Songs


4. Homo Laborans: The Human Task
Miroslav Volf A Theology of Work
Hannah Arendt The Human Condition
Ecclesiastes


5. After Humankind? White Teeth and the Human Future
Zadie Smith White Teeth
Michel Houllebecq Atomised
Donna Harroway FutureMouse
Moltmann The Coming of God
1 Corinthians 15

Revelation




6. The Gift of Speech
Habermas?
Alister McFadyen The Call to Personhood
Vanhoozer

Psalm 119


7. My Family and Other Animals
R. Gaita The Philosopher’s Dog

C. Darwin Origin of the Species
from Barth, CD. III
Gregory of Nyssa
Job; Genesis 6-9

8. Realising the Authentic Self with Charles Taylor and Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Charles Taylor Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity
Bonhoeffer Letter and Papers from Prison, Ethics

John 4


9. The Human Being on Trial: Temptation and Identity
Paul Ricoeur Oneself as Another
Bonhoeffer Temptation
Hebrews 4-5
Gethesamane, Wilderness narratives


10. Social Being, Human Rights and Violence
Cain & Abel; Revelation; Deuteronomy
Ellul The Meaning of the City
Volf Exclusion and Embrace
Rene Girard

11. Homo Adorans: The Religious Being
Hans urs von Balthasar Theological Anthropology

Proverbs; Acts 17


12. The Problem of Human Evil

Dostoyevksy, The Brothers Karamazov

McFadyen, Bound to Sin

Jenson, The Gravity of Sin

Romans

13. Memory, Imagination and the Inner Self
Augustine Confessions
Volf Memory

14. Martyrdom as a Type of Authentic Human Existence

In praise of academic administration

In my days as a postgraduate student one of the things I enjoyed not being a part of most was the process of academic administration - the meetings and chores that inevitably crowd into an academic teacher's life and prevent him/her from doing what he/she feels called to do - teach students, research, publish and so on. Academics often wish they could be freed from the grind of admin in order to do the real thing.

Today was the marathon meeting of our academic year at Moore, the famous post-exams 'Board of Studies' meeting. It is 8 hours of hard slog, for the most part. Meditating on the process when I was supposed to be thinking about something else, I realised that the nexus between academic administration and academic knowledge (in the best sense) is tighter than it feels. It just isn't true that they have nothing to do with each other. Governing the process of teaching and learning depends heavily on - and in turn informs - teaching and learning itself. The ordering of education is in itself educative. While the process can be more or less pleasurable, it is still part of the business of academic thought to which academics are called.

The history of the university depended on this observation: that knowledge was united and its various parts ordered to one another in a certain way was at the heart of the medieval university. And theology, of all the disciplines, held the honoured place - 'the queen of sciences'. The university, as much by its structures and by its location and communal disciplines as by its curriculum, upheld and reinforced a view of knowledge.

It doesn't make it more pleasant, but hopefully makes it feel more purposeful!

On Rowan Williams here in Australia

On Rowan Williams is available here in Australia - at the legendary Moore Books.

It contains essays by Andrew Cameron, Greg Clarke, Matheson Russell, Byron Smith, Ben Myers, Rhys Bezzant, Tom Frame, and Andrew Moody. .

Oh, and me.

Intro is by Oliver O'Donovan

From the blurb:

Theologian, poet, public intellectual, and clergyman, Rowan Williams is one of the leading lights of contemporary British theology. He has published over twenty books and one hundred scholarly essays in a distinguished career as an academic theologian that culminated in his appointment as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. Williams left this post to serve in the Anglican Church, first as Bishop of Monmouth, then Archbishop of Wales, before finally being enthroned in 2003 as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.In this collection of essays, a talented younger generation of Australian theologians critically analyzes the themes that bind together Williams' theology. These sympathetic yet probing essays traverse the full breadth of Williams' work, from his studies on Arius, the Desert Fathers, Hegel, and Trinitarian theology to his more pastoral writings on spirituality, sexuality, politics, and the Anglican Church.

Calvin on Biblical interpretation

Calvin's letter to Simon Grynaeus, which opens his Romans Commentary ought to be a must read for all Protestant exegetes. His explains here his preference for 'lucid brevity' in commentary – because his task is to unfold the mind of the author as much as possible. But then he recognizes that commentators, even good ones, differ and have always have differed. This is not because the text is problematic, but rather because human beings have been limited by God – even the ones guided by the Holy Spirit. Here is what he writes:

God has never so blessed His servants that they each possessed full and perfect knowledge of every part of their subject. It is clear that His purpose in so limiting our knowledge was first that we should be kept humble, and also that we should continue to have dealings with our fellows. Even though it were otherwise highly desirable, we are not to look in the present life for lasting agreement among us on the exposition of passages of scripture. When, therefore, we depart from the views of our predecessors, we are not to be stimulated by any passion for innovation, impelled by any desire to slander others, aroused by any hatred, or prompted by any ambition. Necessity alone is to compel us, and we are to have no other object than that of doing good.

Pannenberg on Anthropology

Christian theology has been suspected of being just a form of anthropology since the 19^th Century, and the work of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzche and so on. The danger is that God may be indeed eliminated from the study of theology! This was Barth's great worry, of course, and the root of his insistence that theology not be translated into anthropological terms. He was adamant that this not be the case: and critical of those theologians who he saw as collaborating in the anthropological reduction of theology.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, however , refuses to accept that theology can be cordoned off from other sorts of human knowledge. Or at least, it is a matter of theology's own self-authenticity that it not do so: it cannot park itself off the highways of human reason in a quiet little driveway and remain anything other than superstition. He writes:

If it can be shown that religion is simply a product of the human imagination and an expression of a human self-alienation, the roots of which are analyzed in a critical approach to religion, then religious faith and especially Christianity with its tradition and message will lose any claim to universal credibility in the life of the modern age. The Christian faith must then accept being lumped together with any and every form of superstition.

Without a sound claim to universal validity Christians cannot maintain a conviction of the truth of their faith and message. For a 'truth' that would be simply my truth and would not at least claim to be universal and valid for every human being could not remain true even for me. This consideration explains why Christian cannot but try to defend the claim of their faith to be true. It also explains why in the modern age they must conduct this defence on the terrain of the interpretation of human existence and in a debate over whether religion is an indispensable component of humanness or, on the contrary, contributes to alienate human beings from themselves. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 15)

Pannenberg argues that there isn't an option for Christian theology: it must

begin …reflection with a recognition of the fundamental importance of anthropology for all modern thought and for any present-day claim of universal validity for religious statements. Otherwise they will, even if unintentionally, play into the hands of their atheistic critics, who reduce religion and theology to anthropology, that is, to human assumptions and illusions. By narrowly focusing on the question of human salvation, theologians have undoubtedly forgotten in great measure that the Godness of God and not human religious experience must have first place in theology.

He goes on:

Theologians will be able to defend the truth precisely of their talk about God only if they first respond to the atheistic critique of religion on the terrain of anthropology. Otherwise all their assertions, however impressive, about the primacy of the Godness of God will remain purely subjective assurances without any serious claim to universal validity. p. 16

He maintains, furthermore, that rejecting this anthropological ground is in fact conceding the ground to anthropological suppositions – by reducing theology to mere subjectivity.

Which way are evangelicals going to swing on this?