The Air We Breathe

Glen Scrivener's new book, The Air We Breathe, carries an endorsement from the historian Tom Holland, and it's not difficult to see why.  Holland's book Dominion is never far in the background, with its argument that modern Western culture is only explicable as the result of Christian influence.  I reviewed Dominion previously; I expressed there some hesitation about how Christian apologists might (mis)appropriate Holland's thesis to argue that the impact of Christianity on the West has been uniformly positive and that all good things (and no bad things) stem from Christian influence.

I'm happy to say Glen has avoided this pitfall.

The essential argument of this book is simple: many of the values which we take for granted, which are so familiar as to be a part of 'the air we breathe' are not, in fact, universal values, but are firmly rooted in Christianity.  In particular, Glen traces the origins of our thinking about equality, compassion, consent (particularly in the arena of sexual relations), enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress - and shows how in each case our view of these things is decisively rooted in Christian teaching.  This is illustrated historically and philosophically, and rooted in the opening chapter ('The Night Before Christmas'), which shows how the values of the ancient, pre-Christian West differed so radically.

Take, for example, the chapter on equality.  Glen asks us to imagine the ancient philosopher Plato being brought onto a television chat show.  He's there to comment on the claim that 'some lives are worth more than others' - but of course "it is trivially obvious to the father of Western philosophy that lives are of unequal value".  He can't even understand the debate.  Of course women are worth less than men; of course slaves are worth less than freemen.  With ample quotations and examples, Glen demonstrates that the idea that all human beings are of equal worth depends on the Christian story, and only entered the world with the Christian gospel: "the God story and the equality story stand or fall together."

I said Glen avoids the pitfall of arguing too much.  What I mean is that he is clear that the church and Christian thinkers have not always been, so to speak, on the side of the angels.  In the chapter on science, for example, it is acknowledged that the church has in fact not always been a friend to the scientific project (although, as also noted there, the mutual hostility has been much exaggerated in the retelling over the centuries).  The chapter on Enlightenment is even clearer in this regard.  But the point is that where Christians have gone wrong, it is because they have not been true to their own deepest beliefs.  The resources, then, to correct those wanderings are also present in the Christian message, and in fact even when we judge them for going wrong it is Christian-inspired standards we are applying.

Where Glen is able to go furthest beyond Tom Holland (and I should say that the book is far from just being a re-hash of Dominion, however much influence there might be) is in asking the question: is the Christian story true?  In chapter 10, 'Choose Your Miracle', we are asked to consider not just whether Christianity has had a huge cultural impact; the previous chapters have demonstrated beyond a doubt that it has.  Here we are asked to consider whether the influence of the Christian story on the modern world is explained by the fact that the Christian story is true.  This chapter leads to a final appeal: to those who have no faith, to investigate the person of Jesus; to those who feel done with Christianity, to think twice before abandoning the church, despite its failings; to those who call themselves Christians, to lean hard into the weirdness of the Christian story, to understand and express how radical it really is.

I think this book is persuasive.  I find it more persuasive because in a sense it has properly limited aims: it just invites us once again to consider Jesus.  It shows clearly that we in the modern West are not done with him, even if we think we are.  It helps us to navigate our Christ-haunted culture, and asks gently whether it is not in fact the Risen Christ, rather than the ghost Christ, who explains it all best.

You can, and if I were you I would, pre-order it now.

The Good Book Company were kind enough to send me a free copy of The Air We Breathe.  They didn't commission or influence this review.

News and reflections

Way back in February 2016, I shared here the news that I was taking on a part-time role as a pastor of a new church plant in Cowley.  In due course that part-time role became a full-time role, and it has been a huge privilege to minister to this little church community over the last six years.

On Monday, however, we voted together as a congregation to close our doors (so to speak; we meet in a community centre, which will no doubt continue to open its doors).  May 15th will be our last Sunday Celebration together.  This has been the culmination of a few months of discussion and prayer together, and although I'm more gutted about it than I can say, I am convinced it's the right course of action.  In due course I will reflect on what's led to this closure, but for now suffice to say that two years of covid-related restrictions and pressures have exposed and intensified our fragility, and there isn't the energy to start again.  So here we are.  Thankfully a number of other churches have started in the last six years, and Cowley certainly won't be left without a gospel witness; nor is there any shortage of churches for the remaining members of CCC to move into.  Nevertheless, it's all very sad.

For us as a family, this means an uncertain future.  I have been planning for some time to do some more study - I have a PhD plan related to writing a theology of preaching.  Where we had been assuming this would be part-time alongside ministry, we now feel that perhaps we are being providentially led to start full-time.  That carries all sorts of challenges, mainly financial.  If you want to hear more about that, let me know, and I'm sure there will be updates in the future!

One line of reflection that I've been pursuing is around God's faithfulness.  I noted on Twitter the other day that a church was marking its 40th anniversary, and celebrating this evidence of God's faithfulness.  Has God, then, not been faithful to us, as we shut up shop just after our 6th anniversary?  But then I think about how it could have gone: we are not closing because of any great scandal, or because of any declension from the faith once entrusted to the saints.  People have grown spiritually in the last six years, and will take that growth into other church fellowships and be a blessing.  The Lord has carried all of us through tough times - not only covid, but other terrible things.  He has, over and over again, demonstrated his faithfulness to us.  Celebrating the 40th anniversary of a church should indeed be an occasion to give thanks for his faithfulness; in a different way, perhaps in a minor key, closing a church could also be an occasion for thanksgiving.  He is faithful, and will surely continue to be faithful to each member of the church as we move on.

Another line of reflection has been prompted by CCC members looking around for churches to go to.  There are plenty of solid churches in Oxford; we are deeply privileged that way.  But it has made me think a lot about the wider church.  I completely understand why many church leaders have become suspicious of anyone who has an agenda for the wider church.  We've had enough of the power hungry and the controlling.  I completely understand the priority of humble service in one local congregation.  But as the people I've been commissioned by the Lord to care for move on into different churches, I find that I can't be indifferent to the state of those churches.  Yes, what we need most of all is people who will work unobserved and unpraised in their little corner of the vineyard; but we do also need people who will seek the reform of Christ's churches on a wider scale.

My final line of reflection is prompted by a sermon I heard in college chapel many years ago.  The preacher was a Lutheran, and it being college chapel he was able to deliver what was basically a lecture about Dietrich Bonhoeffer rather than an exposition of Scripture.  Ordinarily that would make me grumpy, but this was useful, and I come back to it often.  I wish I could remember who the guy was!  He talked about Bonhoeffer's notion of life as fragmentary.  There is so much in life that we start but are not able to finish; so many bits that don't quite seem like finished projects.  Even the projects which do seem finished often don't seem to obviously fit into a 'whole life'.  Life is a series of fragments.  And yet the Lord is able to collect all the fragments of our lives, and make of them one whole: a really, whole person, fully integrated, and beautiful, like a mosaic.  Nothing wasted (remember the fragments of bread they gathered in Galilee!), everything properly placed.  We are closing our church in the Easter season, knowing that everything we put dead into the ground the Lord is able to raise into glorious new life.

The death of the sinner

As we approach the end of Holy Week, I've been thinking again about the significance of the death of Jesus Christ.  I've noted before that a central element of the New Testament presentation of this significance which I think is often missed in contemporary reflections is the death of the sinner in the death of Christ.  That is to say, when Jesus died on the cross, sinful humanity died a warranted, judicial death in him.  To unpack that a little:

-A real thing happened when Christ gave up his spirit and died.  It is not 'as if' we sinful people died there; we actually really did.  In God's sight, we died in his death.  The reality of this is, so to speak, crucial.  The foundation of the believer's response to the death of Jesus is faith expressed in baptism, and in baptism we are said to be buried with Christ.  But this can only be the case if antecedent to our recognising and entering into this being dead in Christ we had actually died with him.  In Christ, we really died.  (That might mean we need to rethink what death actually means!)

-The death of Christ was the death of sinful humanity per se.  The Lord Jesus took on our nature (not, note, an individual human being, but human nature).  He carried that nature through temptation and cross, and ultimately to the point of death.  Though he was not a sinner, it was the nature - the flesh - of those who were sinners which he had vicariously assumed.  There is no future, then, in sinful humanity.

-The death which was carried out in Christ was a death sentence, a warranted judicial death.  It was, in fact, the execution of God's just sentence on sinners.  I've been thinking a little, provoked by this post from Ian Paul, about the extent to which we can say, with the hymn, that in Christ's death 'the wrath of God was satisfied'.  This sits at the heart of the understanding of the cross as penal substitution - the idea that Christ bore the punishment merited by sinful humanity.  I think we can and should say, and sing, that God's wrath is satisfied, but amongst other qualifiers I would add that this only makes sense if we understand that God's wrath was satisfied by the removal of the object of his wrath.  It is not that there is a conflict in God - he really loves humanity, but he is wrathful against sin - and so to resolve the conflict he exhausts his wrath on Jesus, like a child punching a pillow until they've let out all their anger.  No, God's holy love and holy wrath are one and the same, and in his holy love for sinners he pours out his holy wrath on them (in the person of Christ) until sinful humanity is done away with.

-The heart of the gospel is that all this happened in him.  That he voluntarily assumed our place, identified with sinners, and carried their case through to death - this is amazing.  When we recognise who he is - the very God against whom we had offended, the God whose holy wrath burns with all the heat of his infinite holy love - well, then it is simply breathtaking.  That my death took place in him, that the death which awaits me is merely the shadow of death with nothing of judgement in it, this is the wonderful significance of the cross.  The key question, I think, which it provokes is: if all this happened to me in him, what then is to happen in me?  And the answer to that is essentially that being dead in him to sin, I ought to (and must) die in me to sin; that by the Spirit I am to be enabled to make real in my life and experience what is already real in my very being, because real in him.