My piece on the financial crisis

... is here.

Thanks to Laurence, Justin, and Bruce for their help at various times.

In praise of difficult children

Adam Phillips has a brilliant piece in the latest London Review of Books about difficult children! He asks 'When you play truant you have a better time. But how do you know what a better time is, of how do you leanr what a better time is?'

He argues that you have to be bad in order to discover what good is - a kind of self discovery through sin. Adults who look after adolescents are in the vexatious position of wanting them to behave badly, so that they can learn, and of wanting to stop them. In order to do this we need to have 'traunt minds' - to see the value of the experiment, the experience and the trespass. The adolescent is 'the person who needs to experiment with self-betrayal, to find out what it might be to betray oneself.'

If a child is never really difficult, then, or is difficult and has adults who just cave in, he never really grows into adulthood, because he never finds the limits. And he always envies the adolescent his freedom to tresspass...

Phillips makes an intriguing reference to Romans 7 in which Paul noted the function of the law was to increase the trespass. The rules are an invitation to find out what sort of person you are... only for Paul of course (and Phillips misses this) the transgression of the rules actually 'unself' him. They don't lead to his self-discovery at all; or, they do, and it is a complete mess. Which means that true self-discovery is the realisation that grace is needed...

Missiological assumptions?

Born in 1970, I am a post prayer-book Anglican. That is, I grew up in the era when formal liturgies and distinctive clergy dress were become a sign of the moribund and alien past. The outsider (so the argument ran) was alienated by such things, which were at best mysterious and at worst signs of a theology we wanted to repudiate. Formality in and of itself was part of everything that was wrong with the church of the 1960s which so many people had decided to...well, not attend.

When I was a Chaplain at the Cathedral school, following this logic, and with 90% of the kids unchurched, I moved school chapel services out of the Cathedral building itself and into the hall next door. I very rarely wore my collar. The services were informal, the music contemporary and the prayers spontaneous. The Christian students were especially supportive of this, because it was like the churches they went to. Surely the non-Christians would love it too...

But one day, one of the unchurched kids came to me and said 'look, why are you trying so hard to be like our culture? Surely the best thing you have going for you is your difference. The old thing is the thing you do best - that makes sense to me. And I can't stand your contemporary Christian songs'. (well that was the gist of it...)

Here's the thesis I am running, anyhow: The reason we eschewed formality in church services was because that was what WE on the inside wanted (or some of us, anyway) - the missiological reason was in fact only a justification for it.

There were some mistaken, or at least challengeable, assumptions here -

1 - that the outsiders prefered us to look like TV shows, and not like 'church' as they knew it
2 - that familiarity is always good, dissimilarity is always bad
3 - that formality equals insincerity and pomposity (it certainly can do, but not always)
4 - that formality equals impersonal, bumbling and ineffectual
5 - that church meetings/services should be attractional (as opposed to church communities)
6 - that a prayerbook service with a robed clergyman will be understood by an outsider as a sign of Tridentine catholic theology of the priesthood and sacraments

So - what's the evidence?

Top Theological Research Centres?

A colleague wrote:

I need a list of the top theological libraries / research centres in the world. This does NOT refer to the building but to the collection and resources and facilities for research.

I would appreciate it if, just off the top of your head, you would list what you understand to be the best 10 in the world. No need to try and put them in order of importance, just a list. You do not need to try and justify the selection as all I need now is a list of possibilities.

I replied (in no particular order):

Oxford
Cambridge
Princeton
Aberdeen
Tubingen
Vatican
Yale
Duke
Durham
Edinburgh
King’s College, London

What would you say? My ignorance of the European scene is quite profound of course...

Upcoming Moore Chapel series

I am planning a three part series for Moore College Chapel on, well, God.

1. The Oneness of God
2. The Glory of God
3. The Wisdom of God

These are putative chapters of HIM: An Introduction.
What texts spring to mind?
What are the implications for us of the oneness, glory and wisdom of God?

Help me out here.

Another YOU review

Peter Sanlon

An interesting one, this.

On Sorry day

Sorry, we really are...

More on Calvin’s Hermeneutics…

...Awareness of the context of our reading allows us also to undermine the apparent dominance of the historical-critical approach. If contemporary interpreters must be aware of the way in which the intellectual and political context shaped Calvin's reading of scripture, then we must also be aware of the way in which intellectual and political history shaped historical-critical readings – and indeed, shape ours. These intellectual decisions about the meaning and nature of history were no less determined by historical context and cultural forces than in Calvin's time, and in ours. This is not to reduce ideas to their historical contexts, or so utterly to historicize them as to empty them entirely. But the point has particular force given the claims to objectivity and universality that attend historical-critical scholarship. The apparent threat to the unity and historicity of the Bible is itself not above proper contextualisation.

The proof of the pudding is in the discovery that its ingredients taste good in combination. Is Calvin's exegesis, which treats Scripture as a unity, but does not ignore the human differences between authors, convincing? Is it rash or speculative? Having taken a Pascalian wager on the unity of Scripture, it is readily apparent that the coherences and correspondences between its different parts proceed to flow. Calvin's exegesis is a reminder that the unity of Scripture is a theological discernment in the first instance, and only secondarily a literary one; but that we need not suppose that the diversity and plurality of the human voices of scripture threaten it. On a literary or textual level, Scripture may indeed present us with a number of valid and Christological ways of conceiving of its own unity. Calvin's lesson for modern interpreters, which Krauss notes well, is that the presumption that Scripture is unified remains for us the basis on which theological interpretation of Scripture may proceed.

HIM continues

Don't forget to help me out at:

http://himanintroduction.blogspot.com/

I'd love to have your thoughts. Vent your spleen if you like!

My article at ABC online - for Valentine's Day!

LOVE, THE LAST GOD STANDING?

Latest Defence Against the Dark Arts entry

Is Postmodernism Passe?

Rudd in the Monthly

I have just finished Aussie PM Kevin Rudd's essay on the financial crisis in The Monthly. In it, he mounts a strident attack on 'free-market fundamentalism' which he blames for our current woes - positioning himself as a pragmatic 'social democrat' in the meantime. It is interesting to see such an ideological turn from an Aussie politician - usually we steer clear of that stuff. It is a rather turgid read I have to say - but he lays the challenge out there to neo-liberals: how has your ideology done anything but expose us to this terrible danger?

I have never been fully persuaded that by the small govt mantra of the neo-liberal/Reaganite. I can understand some apects of it, but my theological appraisal of human nature (that we are unusually evil AND stupid) means that I don't trust the free market to produce just outcomes anymore than I trust government not to become corrupt and self-serving. Neo-liberalism has its own utopian vision - a dream of unfettered market forces aligning to produce prosperity and security for all. This is just as dangerous as the utopian vision of the socialist of course, with a completely planned and fixed economy. The trouble with neo-liberalism is that it hopes that a human vice - namely, greed - will produce much virtue.

The Pauline account of the role of the state focuses on justice - the restraint and punishment of the wicked (Rom 13). That is, in its own way, minimal - a 'small' government. Does it square with Rudd's view of the role of the state? -

Government is not the intrinsic evil that neo-liberals have argued it is. Government, properly constituted and properly directed, is for the common good, embracing both individual freedom and fairness, a project designed for the many, not just the few.

Well, I think so: here is a vision for the adminstration of justice - with the government taking its proper role of serving the people and not itself. The state is after all 'God's servant to do you good'. The language of 'fairness' echoes a kind of Rawlsian philosophy of justice, perhaps - and that could be debated, certainly. Rudd here speaks of 'the creative agency of government' - a phrase that could alarm neo-liberals and Reaganites, but which, in the current circumstances is prbably justified.



As Sarkozy says: Le laissez-faire, c'est fini.

Religion

Religion is great experiment to see if the human body can be mastered. It can't.

Defence Against the Dark Arts

I am doing a weekly blogspot now for Sydney Anglicans, called Defence Against the Dark Arts. The title is meant to be ironic-ish, if you hadn't guessed...

Here is my opening post.

I'd love you to comment there - but also, I'd love some feedback as to how the posts are coming out.

What will this mean for The Blogging Parson? I am not sure, but I tend to do 'recreational' blogging here (if you hadn't noticed). Some ideas tried out here will definitely be recycled - but that's a secret!