Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Reader Response: Church Dogmatics ch III (intro)

Some years back (checks number of years, slightly shocked to find that it's 6 years) I ran a couple of series of posts engaging in a bit more detail than I normally do with some big books.  I looked at Bonhoeffer's Ethics, and chapter VII of Barth's Church Dogmatics, the chapter which looks particularly at the doctrine of election.  I called the series 'Reader Response' to try to highlight that, although I would be attempting to explain what the 'big book' was actually saying, I was also going to include some of my own response to it, and thoughts about how it might inform church, theology, and Christian life today.

I'm going to try to resurrect that concept, albeit with significantly less time for reading at the moment than I had back in the day.  So whereas the previous series was a weekly effort, this one will be more irregular, and might sometimes end up looking at quite small chunks in each post.  We'll see how we go.

I'm going to be reading Church Dogmatics chapter III, which you'd find in volume I/2.  It is Barth's main treatment of the doctrine of Scripture.  Now, if conservative evangelicals know anything about Barth, it is that he is dangerously weak, if not actually heretical, on Scripture and its authority.  I think one of the things that gives this impression is the sheer size of Barth's treatment.  This chapter occupies nearly 300 pages, and is situated in an even larger discussion of the nature of revelation which takes up the whole of volumes I/1 and I/2.  There is a suspicion, I think, that anybody who needs to take this many pages to explain their view of Scripture is probably making things deliberately complex.  After all, doesn't it just boil down to the question of whether it's the Word of God or not?

Interestingly, for Barth that simply isn't the question, or even a question.  He takes it for granted that the dogmatic theologian, standing within and for the church, stands on the acknowledged reality of the word of God in Scripture.  To ask the apologetic question - is the Bible the word of God? - is to remove oneself from this position, if only hypothetically and for the purposes of discussion.  That isn't what Barth thinks he is doing.  For many contemporary evangelicals, the apologetic question is acute, and it is therefore hard to imagine a doctrine of Scripture that does not really engage with it.  But perhaps Barth can push us here to see things we wouldn't otherwise see.

For Barth the question is more 'how is the Bible the word of God?', boiling down into the practical question of what it looks like to live under the authority of the word of God in Scripture.  I hope that over the next few weeks we'll be able to see whether Barth's answers have anything to teach us.

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

A theology of self-service checkouts

Karl Barth said that 'in its basic form, humanity is fellow-humanity' (CD III/2, 285).  This claim is not difficult to defend from Scripture.  The creation narratives point out that it is not good for the man to be alone; human being, it seems, requires other human being in order to make it whole.  This is a point which goes well beyond the context of marriage, although that is a particular example of 'fellow-humanity'.  For Barth, of course, the primary evidence that humanity simply is fellow-humanity is derived from the Lord Jesus.  Christ came to be with us.  If real humanity is seen in Jesus, and only in Jesus, then what we see is humanity as being-with, humanity as fellow-humanity.

We see more than that.  If true humanity is seen in Jesus, then true humanity is being-with-in-service.  Christ's service of his people, his sacrificial love for them, was not something extra added to his humanity; it was a display of true humanity as that true humanity can only fully exist when energised by the presence of God.  Real humanity is not whole and entire to itself, but is oriented in service towards others.

Note that this is, for Barth, the 'basic form' of humanity.  We tend to think of the individual first, defining him or her within his or her own limits.  Only then do we look outward.  Being-with becomes something the human, complete in himself, does (or does not do); it is extrinsic.  This is doubly the case when it comes to being-with-in-service.  But this is not a true representation of humanity as we are taught to think of it in Jesus.  In actual fact, the self-complete human of our imagining is barely human at all; I said that we think of him or her within his or her own limits; but in fact in a crucial way this imaginary human - the human we like to think of ourselves as being - is free of limits.  He is whole and entire in himself.  He is a sphere which may come into contact with other spheres.  Whereas the true human is limited, and thus defined; he has shaped edges, and those shapes are contoured to the shapes of others.  Being-with is not a thing he chooses (or declines to choose); it is who and what he is.

Which brings me to self-service checkouts.  Self-service checkouts, and other self-service machines, are everywhere now.  It is very difficult to see a human being in my bank - the robot will deal with you.  Our local Sainsbury's has just taken out half it's old (manned) checkouts to replace them with more self-service machines.  Part of the motivation for the current rail strikes in the UK is apparently the threat that ticket office staff will be replaced with machine.

I confess, I make use of self-service checkouts.  They are quick and convenient (except when they aren't, because they go wrong, or the person in front of you in the queue doesn't understand the system).  But to a theological view of humanity, the self-service checkout is at the least an unfortunate development.  Anything that removes an element of being-with from our everyday tasks, usually in the name of efficiency, helps to conceal from me a central truth about myself: that I need other people, not merely to help me achieve my goals, but to be human.  The same sort of thing could be said about other trends in working life at the moment - the increase in remote working, for example.  Something important about being human, that sense of being-with-in-service is diminished.

Two arguments are usually advanced in favour of self-service checkouts.  The first is efficiency.  The business is viewed here as if it were a machine.  Why not cut out some unnecessary cogs?  Why not make the whole thing flow a bit faster?  But this assumes that the goal of human life is to get things done, and that anything that makes getting things done easier and quicker is therefore a good thing.  I can easily think just the same: anything that speeds up my weekly shop must be good.  But what if the snippet of conversation with a cashier is actually one of the most valuable things that can happen in the shop - more valuable than the goal-oriented act of shopping, because oriented towards another human being, a little slice of being-with that goes to the heart of our mutual humanity as created in the image of God?

The second argument is that this sort of automation removes low quality jobs, freeing people to do better things.  The idea is that we get rid of drudgery.  But I wonder whether this has a lot to do with our faulty perspective on service.  Sure, if we treat the shop like a big machine, and the people like parts of the machine, this might make sense.  But if they are actual human beings, whose basic existence is being-with-in-service, whose deepest reality is shaped by Jesus Christ as the one true Human, isn't there a huge dignity in serving in this way?  And doesn't the encounter at the checkout offer a brief opportunity for mutual service as you recognise one another's humanity?  I hope that if you're a Christian you always make some effort to chat with the cashier!

So anyway, I'm not proposing that we all be Luddites and resist every technological innovation in the sphere of work.  I'm just suggesting that we try to think Christianly about what these innovations do to us, in terms of our view of humanity.  Maybe sometimes that will mean resisting societal and technological change, but I suspect more often it will mean resisting the cramping effect on our own hearts and minds which these changes bring along, so that whatever is going on out there, I can still be an exhibit of real humanity, pointing to Christ the great Servant of his people.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Three reasons to meditate on the doctrine of the Trinity

On Trinity Sunday, here are three reasons (many more could be given) why it is good to think long and hard on the doctrine of the Trinity:

1. To know God.  Most basically, if you want to know God, you need to think about the Trinity.  God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, from eternity to eternity.  This is not an extra, deep and ultimately optional piece of knowledge about God; it is not something obscure which is only for advanced believers.  The doctrine of the Trinity describes God's name - Father, Son, Spirit - and somebody's name is perhaps the first and most basic thing you learn about them.  In one sense the whole of redemptive history can be read as God introducing himself, over the course of thousands of years, as Father, Son, Spirit.  It is his name.  And whereas for us a name is a fairly arbitrary label - many names have meaning, but they don't really relate to who we are - God is wholly himself in every presentation of himself: his name conveys the depths of his reality.  Knowing God as Trinity is both basic knowledge - his introductory name - and deep knowledge - because God is not divided, does not hide behind his name but is his name.  To know God, meditate on the doctrine of the Trinity.

2. To understand the gospel.  I take it that the gospel is essentially the good news that Jesus Christ has given himself up to death on the cross and been raised to new life.  His broken body and shed blood are given for the life of the world, for the forgiveness of sinners, for the redemption of the nations.  But how, and why, does this work?  How does the death of one man atone for the sins of countless millions?  Why can death not hold him?  The answer is manifold, but at root it is this: it is the human life of the eternal Son of God which is offered up on the cross and raised up from the tomb.  It is God himself, God the Son, who offers obedience to God the Father, taking up our cause.  And then again, how is it that this comes to affect us?  How does what Christ did there and then come to mean something for me here and now?  It is because the same God, God the Holy Spirit, lives in me and causes me to live.  One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: this is at the foundation of the gospel history.

3. To delight in our blessings.  The gospel tells us that we are invited in to share the love that has always existed between Jesus and his Father; it tells us that we are given the life which Jesus has in himself, having been granted it from his Father.  The doctrine of the Trinity helps us to see that we are beckoned, indeed welcomed, into the life of God himself.  As we are joined to Christ by faith and by the Holy Spirit, we share in the love which the Father eternally has for his Son in the unity of the Spirit.  We are given by grace to share in the divine life of God.  The Spirit poured out on us, enabling us to pray and to praise, is nothing other than God himself - a God who is close at hand as well as far away, inhabiting our own hearts.  To meditate on the Trinity is to gain deep insight into the manifold ways in which we are blessed as believers.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit -
as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever.
Amen!

Sunday, June 05, 2022

The Lord's Prayer, on the Day of Pentecost

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be your name in my own heart,
and in the hearts of all your people,
by the presence of your own Holy Spirit.

Your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven;
with the same prompt obedience and holy joy as angels and archangels before your throne,
may I and all your creatures do your will.

Give us today our daily bread,
and by your Spirit sustain us in our life;
for when you withdraw your Spirit we perish,
and when you send your Spirit the earth is renewed.

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,
and cleanse our consciences from all sense of guilt
as your Comforting Spirit ministers to us
the forgiveness secured by the cross and resurrection of Christ our Lord.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,
sending your Spirit ahead of us to prepare our way,
and walking with us by your Spirit in every step we take.
Equip us, gracious God, by the gifting of your Spirit,
to live in holiness, by whatever path you lead us.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God,
now and forever.

Amen.