Monday, March 04, 2024

Anti-intellectualism

Every now and again, the critique is raised of evangelicalism that it is anti-intellectual.  I think that critique is in some ways fair, and in others not so much.  Here is a little exploration of anti-intellectualism with some thoughts on how we can renew a Christian intellectual culture in our churches.

Firstly, I want to point out that there is a good, justified, and theologically well-founded anti-intellectualism which rests on two distinct grounds.  The first is that God's wisdom is not the wisdom of the world.  "Since, in God's wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached."  The message of the cross contradicts the wisdom of this age; the deep-thinkers of the world stumble over the apparent foolishness on display in the crucified God.  When the Apostle tells us that Christ Jesus "became wisdom from God for us", he is not only establishing where wisdom is, but also telling us where it is not.  Christ became wisdom for us by going to the cross, by demolishing everything that the human intellect would naturally think about God.  This demolition job goes to the foundations of natural thinking about God.  It is not that we mostly had God right, but were surprised by this one thing that he has done.  Christ who becomes wisdom for us in the incarnation and supremely at the cross is in himself and from eternity the Wisdom of God.  The apparent foolishness of the cross goes to the heart of who God is, and the fact that the cross appears foolish to us when in fact it is wisdom which reflects the eternal Life and Being of God is a sound rebuke to human intellect.

The second ground for anti-intellectualism is grace.  I think this is where a lot of evangelical anti-intellectualism comes from.  God doesn't expect us to climb up to him, either morally or intellectually; he comes down to us.  The message of the cross is devastatingly simple.  An infant can begin to understand it.  There are no theology exams for salvation; simply, child-like trust is all that is required.  Wherever an intellectual barrier is erected which seems to threaten the simplicity of the gospel, a certain amount of anti-intellectualism is justified and indeed required.

However, anti-intellectualism is not itself a good thing.  From the fact that God has created us with brains and the ability to engage in more or less complex reasoning, we really ought to assume that he wants us to use them - and why, if we are called to use them in life generally, would we not be expected to use them in understanding God and his works?  In fact already in the Scriptures and then in the Tradition of the church we see plenty of rigorous intellectual work, grappling with the reality of God's revelation, seeking to describe it and trace out its implications.  What puts people off that sort of work in the church?

To an extent in evangelicalism I think it is, as already mentioned, the desire to keep the simple gospel simple.  Fair enough, as far as it goes.  But we do our own faith, and our appeal to outsiders, no favours if we decline to engage in thought about what we believe.  The danger looms of a purely subjective faith - I believe it because I believe it - with so little intellectual content, so little concern to explain what we believe and why, and so little effort to connect this faith to a general view of the world, that it becomes unassailable but also inexplicable.  The gospel is simple, but it is also huge in its claims and its implications, and really the church does need to take up the task of exploring and explaining these.

There is also, if I read things correctly, an unhelpful biblicism at work.  Of course evangelicals are Bible people; that's the whole big idea.  But when the Bible is used as if answers can just be read off the surface of the text, and as if any attempt to reflect more deeply on how those answers join up, whether certain parts of the text might be key for interpreting and applying other parts, whether the text might imply a metaphysical hinterland (and perhaps foreground) - well, then I think we're in trouble.  Holy Scripture doesn't work that way.  If we insist on just sticking to the words and formulations of the Bible, we may well end up in heresy - many heretics have been very keen on the text of Scripture! - but at the least we will miss the depths of what is being portrayed in Scripture.

If we want to avoid anti-intellectualism in our churches and foster a thoughtful theological culture, I think we need to consider a few points.  Firstly, those of us who like theology and read big books for fun need to rein it in.  It is very easy for theology enthusiasts to give the impression that they have graduated from the simple gospel to something more profound.  In reality, there is nothing more profound.  Those who have done the most intellectual work need to be able to speak the language of simple faith in church, even as they hope to guide people deeper into that simple gospel.  Even as we go deeper, it should be very evident that we are going deeper into the same message, and certainly not moving on from it.  And this should be clear not only in what gets said, but where the focus and the enthusiasm are.  I get nervous when people seem more excited about metaphysics than they are about Christ crucified.

Second, the links between the Bible and theology need to be clearly spelt out, and it needs to be absolutely clear that the Bible is in the driving seat.  I have no time for that approach that says you need the Nicene Creed or whatever in order to properly understand the Bible.  Rather, I want to show that the Bible itself teaches Nicene Trinitarianism, because that is how God has revealed himself.  There is a temptation for theologians to scorn those who just want to stick to the Bible; instead, why not help people to see that sticking with the Bible is exactly what we want to do, and that the way to do it is to think through the nature and identity of the God revealed in the Bible?

Finally, we need to be clear that the intellectual work of the church is not intended to make the message of the cross appear wise to the world.  Clever folk who are converted to Christ will need to keep on putting to death their natural wisdom in order to start thinking on the basis of God's wisdom - in order to have the mind of Christ, to think on the basis of Christ in the wisdom which the Spirit displays.  Thinking that starts from Jesus and returns to Jesus, making much of him - that is what we need.


Monday, February 12, 2024

The Theological Task

 A sentence from John Webster that deserves some unpacking:

The primary theological task... is the dedication of intelligence to devout indication and description of Christian verities, whose goodness, once known and loved, dispels anxiety and draws both intellect and affections to satisfaction.

This is from God Without Measure Vol 1, page 100.  In the immediate context, Webster is discussing the doctrine of creation, but the description of the theological task seems to be more generally applicable.  I wanted to try to expand some of the phrases.

The primary theological task...

That immediately indicates that there are also subsidiary or secondary aspects to theology.  Webster mentions polemics and elenctics, both of which might be generally classed as apologetics.  We might add ethics, liturgics, and other branches of theological knowledge.  All these things are important.  They are all part of the theologians job description.  But they are not primary, and they won't be done well if they are allowed to take the primary position.  The primary task is not argumentative but descriptive.

...is the dedication of intelligence...

The theological task is an intellectual endeavour.  In my experience the church does not like this fact.  Intellectual tasks feel elitist.  People like the (biblical!) idea that the gospel is simple enough for anyone; they are less keen on the (biblical!) idea that there are depths in the gospel to stretch the brightest mind.  Theology doesn't always help itself.  It is easy to turn this intellectual endeavour into intellectualism, with accompanying intellectual arrogance.  But it doesn't have to be this way.  Intellectual endeavour is to be in the service of the church.

...to devout indication and description of Christian verities...

The subject and method of theology are dealt with here.  Theology is about Christian verities, the truths which are given in revelation, and the primary job is to indicate and describe these verities.  Because they are objective truths - things that are really real - the first job is simply to point toward them.  This is true of the metaphysical and the historical realities upon which the faith depends.  Theology ought to be very obviously not spinning theories but drawing attention to realities.  A second aspect to this is to describe these realities.  The key thing here is objectivity.  Theology is tied to reality, and therefore it can only follow reality.

...devout...

Just to highlight that one word.  Theology is an intellectual task, but it is also a task to be undertaken with devotion and worship.  This is not just an ideal; it is of the essence of the theological endeavour.  One cannot think right thoughts about God unless one's heart is humbly inclined to worship.

...whose goodness, once known and loved...

The description of Christian truth includes, necessarily, the display of the goodness of this truth.  This is not, or at least not yet, apologetics.  It is not necessarily conscious effort to persuade people to love the truths of the Christian faith.  It is just recognising that unless the goodness and beauty of these truths has been shown, the description of them is not yet complete.  God is goodness and beauty.  You cannot rightly indicate or describe anything about him without describing it in its goodness.

...dispels anxiety and draws both intellect and affections to satisfaction.

Theology seeks to satisfy the mind and the heart, and its task is not complete until the realities which it describes and indicates have taken root and brought out the fruit of delight.  Again, this flows from the subject matter: God is the eternal fountain of goodness and love.  Such a fountain is not accurately described without conveying something of that goodness and love.  Theology can provide genuine satisfaction, not in itself as a description, but insofar as it genuinely points to the source of satisfaction.  Webster's point about dispelling anxiety is important here.  Far too much theology, particularly in this age of cultural pressure on Christian faith, is undertaken from an anxious or defensive stance - it is, in a sense, already apologetics.  The primary task of theology, though, is to be undertaken with a calm attention to the subject matter which rules out anxiety.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

Forgetting what is behind

In the lectionary reading for Morning Prayer today, we find the Apostle Paul's determination to 'forget what is behind and reach forward to what is ahead'.  That kicked off some reflections for me.

What is Paul determined to forget?  In the context of Philippians 3, I think two things.  Firstly, he is determined to forget all of those marks of his identity and achievement which might seem to be a sound basis for confidence before God.  He is an Israelite, he is - in the legal terms of the Mosaic covenant - blameless.  He has lived zealously for God.  All that is behind him now, and to be forgotten.  What he had once considered to be to his credit, he is now happy to regard as loss - because of "the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ".  At his conversion - which the church celebrates today - Paul sees clearly that all this stuff is worthless.  I take it there is more than this, though.  He is also committed to forgetting his achievements since his conversion.  He hasn't yet been made perfect or achieved his goal, but he sees Christ ahead of him, and runs toward him with all his might.  There is no time for constant retreading of the course already run.  What matters is to keep running to Christ.

There is a second thing beside his achievements that Paul must be forgetting, though.  When he speaks about his zeal for God before his conversion, he includes the fact that he persecuted the church.  Paul's pre-Christian zeal was misdirected; his understanding of God and his works and ways was faulty.  There is not only achievement in his past, but also sin and error.  That, too, he has to forget, in order to strain forward to Christ.  He is not meant to be endlessly caught up in guilt or regret.  The past has been decisively put in the past by the work of Christ.  Therefore it is to be forgotten, so that with both eyes fixed on the Christ who is ahead of him Paul can respond to the heavenly call of God.

An appropriate forgetfulness seems critical to the Christian life.  It is a part of repentance, which genuinely puts off the sins of the past and turns to face Christ.  It is a part of faith, which genuinely entrusts whatever was good in the past to the care of the Lord, seeing it as his work in and through us, and turns to face Christ.  The surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord renders everything else... forgettable.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Nature, Grace, and Herman Bavinck

The relationship of nature and grace is a key theme in the Reformed Dogmatics of Herman Bavinck.  For Bavinck, "grace restores nature".  This is, according to his editor, "the fundamental defining and shaping theme of Bavinck's theology".  It leads Bavinck to a robust doctrine of creation, and a holistic vision for discipleship and the Christian life.

So far so good.  But I can't help feeling that the way this plays out in Bavinck's thought is rather skewed.  Consider this (from volume 4, 395):

The gospel of Christ never opposes nature as such.  It did not come into the world to condemn but to save, and it leaves the family, marriage, and the relationships between parents and children, masters and servants, and governments and people intact.  The gospel, finding nothing reprehensible in itself and everything created by God as good if it is received with thanksgiving and consecrated by the word of God and by prayer, allows everyone to remain in the calling in which one was called... Still, while averse to all revolution, it is all the more committed to reformation.  It never militates against nature as such but does join the battle - always and everywhere, in every area of life and into the most secret hiding places - against sin and deception.

So Bavinck takes an extremely conservative social position, on the grounds that nature is good, and grace does not come to overturn nature but to restore it.  The gospel will slowly "reform and renew everything", but it will not be revolutionary; it will not upset the apple cart, so to speak.  I am not sure this fits with the more apocalyptic strand of the New Testament - with the teaching of Jesus, for example, that seems to dramatically relativise the natural family (e.g., Luke 14:26, Matt 12:48-50), or with the teaching of Paul about marriage and singleness.  The gospel seems, in Bavinck's view, to sanction human authority, but I am missing something of the radical question mark which it also puts to all human authority.  Consider the Magnificat, and the upending of human society which it envisages.  Is Bavinck's conservatism really compatible with this vision?

Earlier in the volume, Bavinck argues that the practice of infant baptism "maintains the bond between nature and grace".  That is to say, in the baptism of infants a close link is displayed between the natural family and the spiritual family, between natural birth (into the covenant community, as Bavinck would see it) and spiritual birth into the family of God.  As a baptist, I found reading this section alternately humorous and painful, as Bavinck tries very hard to square this with the New Testament.  Suffice to say: the church is not a natural family; grace is not tied to nature in this way.  That is the whole point of Romans 9-11, alongside many other passages.  Grace disrupts the natural order of things - the Lord Jesus came to divide families, to turn children against their parents, etc.

Some slightly disconnected reflections:

  1. Bavinck sees very strong continuity between the world as originally created and the world as it exists now.  "Substantially and materially the creation after the fall is the same as before the fall". (436)  I'm not sure we can be so confident as that.  I tend to think that Bonhoeffer had a better understanding of the natural.  That is to say, there is much about what appears natural to us which does not necessarily reflect created design.  Nevertheless, the natural is good, in that it preserves creation at God's will.  I just don't think it's as absolute as Bavinck seems to think it is, perhaps because I see it as one step removed from creation per se.
  2. I worry that for Bavinck the gospel seems to be merely an episode in the restoration of creation.  It is creation he is really excited about, it seems to me, and the natural life; the gospel seems to function as a necessary response to sin, but not as the highpoint of created purpose.  "The gospel is temporary;" Bavinck writes "the law is everlasting and precisely that which is restored by the gospel."  He means that "in heaven all its inhabitants will conduct themselves in accordance with the law of the Lord" - and the gospel seems to just be the means to get them to that state.  I do not agree.
  3. I wonder whether Bavinck's position at the tail-end of Christendom (not that he knew it was the tail-end, of course) allowed him to see lots of things as 'natural' and as open to natural reason which in fact spring from the gospel and its long influence on European culture.  I wonder whether he is in some ways able to draw such a tight connection between nature and grace because he lived in a culture which had been so saturated with the gospel.  I wonder whether we can do that today.
  4. Connected to this, it interests me that Bavinck's social positions seem quite radical today - in an anti-authoritarian, even anarchist, age, the idea that the gospel legitimises the family, the state, etc etc. is very appealing.  But as I try to read it with late 19th century glasses on, it seems rather bourgeois.  I worry that people who are appealing to Bavinck and others like him are actually sometimes missing the radical nature of the gospel and focusing on social implications of nature instead.  There is a lot of talk about the family from those who identify Christian ethics with conservative social positions, but less talk about the way in which the New Testament radically relativises the family!
I have more thoughts that I can't quite make choate right now.  Bavinck feels very alien to me, compared to most of the theology I've read, and uncomfortably at home in this world.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding him?  Or maybe I just don't agree.

Wednesday, January 03, 2024

Fulfilled time

It is a pretty commonplace observation, but perhaps one that strikes home in this season, that the more years you have under your belt, the faster they seem to accumulate.  How can it be the new year again, already?  I'd barely got used to 2023, and there it is, in the rear view mirror.  All so fast.  Increasingly it is hard to pinpoint memories in time - what year was that exactly?  The annual celebrations merge into one, and come around more quickly than seems possible - remember how long it took to get to Christmas when you were a child?  And of course, there is the awareness that in all likelihood there is more road behind than there is ahead...

I find the liturgical year a comfort in the face of the rapid slipping by of the years.  Yes, this Christmas celebration looked a lot like the last one; yes, Easter will roll around very rapidly.  But the point is that at these key points I am taught to look for the Lord Jesus in time, and in fact to see time not as the empty road flashing by, but as full of Christ.

The great mystery of the Christian faith is that time was inhabited, for 33 years or so, by eternity.  The eternal Son of God lived a succession of human years, one after the other.  The full life of God was lived not only in eternity, but in time.  The love of the Father and the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit took place in human history as well as from eternity past to eternity future.  There was a time, two millennia back, when eternity was also, and without any loss, now.  And in the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, time was in a sense gathered up into eternity.

The recurring celebrations and commemorations of the Christian year keep us in touch with the fact that time and eternity are thus related: that by entering our time, the Son of God has sanctified it, healed it, lifted it up into the eternal life of God.  All time is about Christ.  It always was - time before him awaited him - and it always will be - in him time has found its meaning.  The successive years exist in relation to those years, those years in which Jesus walked amongst us.  And because he is alive now, those years are not just distant history: he is with us, our time has been claimed for him, for our relationship with him.

Time slips by, but it isn't lost.  Jesus is Lord of time.  Yesterday, today, forever: he is the same.  The rolling years can't separate us from him as we celebrate him in faith.  And one day those years will give way to the eternal day of glorious sight.

Friday, December 22, 2023

Things I learnt from Eugene Peterson

I recently re-read Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson, and was fascinated to see how much this book - and the series of which it is a part - have shaped my thinking about the Christian life.  Here are three ways.

The centrality of participation.  Before there was anything in creation, there was the blessed life of God in the Holy Trinity.  The love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit - the eternal life of the one God - comes first.  And that means that in everything - in creation, in redemption - God comes first.  He is active first of all; everything else follows after.  The Christian life is therefore about being attentive to what he is about, and only secondarily thinking about how I get involved.  It will often be the case that if I am attentive I will find that the secondary question doesn't occur, because I am already involved, already right in the middle of it all.  I get to participate in God's prior activity.  But more than that, astonishingly we as Christians are invited to participate in the very life of God himself.  The relationship of love that characterises the Godhead is the relationship which is, if you like, opened up to us in the incarnation and the sending of the Holy Spirit.  Joined to Christ by faith, we are called to participate in his eternal relationship with the Father.

I think this is a rebuke to the activism which characterises evangelical Christianity, and particularly to the visionary leadership we often think we need.  What we do matters, but what God does and who God is matter far, far more.  It is not up to us to work out a vision and a plan; we are called to join in with God's vision and plan, which is laid out in Scripture.  This has had lots of practical outworkings in my thinking.  For example, I've come to think that having a set liturgy better represents this participation than starting from scratch each week.  But mainly, I've realised that the heavy lifting is done.  If we participate in Christ's relationship with the Father, it is a relationship which already exists perfectly.  We just get to join in, we don't have to make it.  Prayer?  He does the heavy lifting.  Worship?  He does the heavy lifting.  Battle with sin?  He does the heavy lifting.  Good works?  He does the heavy lifting.

The importance of congruence.  Something Peterson is really big on is the need for congruence between ends and means.  It is not okay to set about the Lord's work in worldly ways.  This is related to the former point.  When we think that the Christian life, or the church's task and mission, is something a bit like a job - where we've been given the job description and now just have to make it happen - we can easily look around for techniques to achieve the results we want.  Of course, if the life of the individual Christian and the corporate church is actually a participation in God's activity, this simply cannot be!  The means are not up to us to decide any more than the ends are.  Jesus is the Life, and Jesus is the Way.  You can't do it any other way.  It is blasphemous to try.

Practically, that makes me pretty suspicious of bringing worldly wisdom into the church.  In my experience, 'sanctified common sense' is not often all that sanctified.  Away with management consultants, away with analysts, away with targets and techniques and gurus!  There is no way to build the Christian life or the Christian community except the way of Christ: the word, the sacraments, deep and sacrificial relationships, confession and absolution.  Evangelicalism is deeply pragmatic, and that is, I have come to think, a grave sin.  The reality of the Christian life and community is spiritual, and cannot be addressed pragmatically.  That something works is not a reason to do it, and that it doesn't seem to work is not a reason to stop doing it.  Walking with Christ is all that matters.

The value of small and slow.  Connected to this, Peterson has taught me to see the value of the seemingly insignificant.  When God works, it is not always - or even usually - in big, dramatic ways.  It is often the still, small voice.  It is archetypally the baby in the manger, the hidden life in Nazareth, the concealed glory of the cross.  The Lord is not in a hurry.  Nor is he putting on a show.  The slow, seemingly insignificant work of the church, and the frustratingly slow progress of the Christian life - that is how God is working.  To bring it back around, Peterson has taught me to be attentive to those little flashes of God's glory that we do see, and to take assurance from those things that he is at work, deep at work underneath all the busy-ness and fuss of life.

Despite recent protests, evangelicalism still has a bias towards the big and the obviously successful.  We still want to get things done, and we are chronically impatient.  Peterson has a lot to teach us here.

Monday, November 06, 2023

On changing a doctrinal basis

This week hundreds of pastors and others will be attending the FIEC Leaders' Conference in Blackpool.  Wish I could be there!  It has always been an encouraging time when I've been in the past.

One thing the assembled delegates will be doing this week is voting on a change to the FIEC Doctrinal Basis.  This is the document which defines those core beliefs which FIEC churches are required to uphold.  The proposal is to add a statement on marriage, worked into the article on humanity, which now becomes two articles: 'humanity' and 'the fall'.  You can see the current DB here, and a post detailing the proposed revisions here.  Since I'm not a delegate or a church leader, I haven't hugely engaged with this, but the more I think about it the more I think this is a bad move, or at least that it ought not to be done in this way.  So, too late to do anything constructive about this, I thought I'd share my thoughts here.

Firstly, let me put on record that I agree with the text of the proposed changes.  I don't have any doctrinal objection whatsoever to the statements, in the sense of thinking that they are saying anything wrong.  I could still sign up to this revised doctrinal basis.  So that means that for me this is not a 'to the barricades' moment; this is not a hill on which I would be prepared to suffer a serious wound, let alone die.

Nevertheless, I have three objections to the proposed changes.

1. I think it is clear that this is reactive theology.  That is to say, we feel pressured to make this change not because of some internal development of our theology, or because of a closer attention to Scripture which has brought something new to light, but because the secular culture has moved and we feel the need to respond.  Of course, a great deal of theology is reactive.  The development of the Nicene Creed was a reaction to heretical thinking in the church.  There is nothing wrong with reacting.  But there is always the danger when we are reacting that our theology is not in the driving seat.  We may be responding theologically, but what is setting the agenda?  It seems to me that these proposed changes are driven by an agenda which is not, ultimately, theological.  The statement about 'biological sex' as the identifier (?) of gender does not look like the church speaking on its own terms, out of its own beliefs; it is a response, in terms which are alien to biblical revelation, to an issue raised by the surrounding culture.  Again, that does not make it wrong.  But it does, for me, make it unsuitable for inclusion in a statement of fundamental beliefs.  Here, I would hope to see an unfolding of Christian doctrine with its basis in revelation.

2. I think the changes have the potential to distort our anthropology (and therefore our Christology).  Because the statements are reactive, they are also partial.  They do not unfold what it means to be human on the basis of Scripture, but make a couple of statements about the particular elements of human existence which are controverted (gender, and marriage).  The result is to make gender and marriage appear unduly important in our understanding of humanity.  This exaggerated emphasis has a knock on effect in a number of areas, including singleness (which seems to be problematised by the revisions) and Christology, in understanding the relation of the (male) Jesus to this fundamentally bifurcated humanity.

3. More practically, I don't understand how these changes don't involve "elevating an ethical matter into the Doctrinal Basis" (to quote the FIEC article).  The FIEC already has an ethical position paper on gender and marriage; churches already have to uphold this position.  But now churches which use the FIEC DB as their own statement of faith will have to require people not only to submit to the church's discipline practically, but to agree doctrinally - i.e., not just maintain the ethos of the church, but commit theologically to the truth that backs that ethos.  Now, I hope people will agree with it; I think it is right and good and true.  But I don't want to underestimate the confusion in our world and our churches on this issue.  I don't want to raise barriers to people being members of evangelical churches where they will hear the truth taught.  Otherwise there are plenty of liberal churches they can join.

For these reasons, as well as the apologetic/evangelistic reasons advanced by Richard Baxter (not that one), I'd love these changes not to go through, at least not in this form.  I guess they will, and it won't be the end of the world.  But that's what I think.