tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-304368442024-03-07T03:48:04.453+00:00Shiny Ginger ThoughtsInside my head there are thoughts. The thoughts are shiny. Their orange shiny-ness shows through in my hair.Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.comBlogger782125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-51418030470793844232024-03-04T12:47:00.000+00:002024-03-04T12:47:02.935+00:00Anti-intellectualism<p>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.</p><p>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. <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+1%3A18-25&version=CSB" target="_blank">"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."</a> 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 <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+1%3A30&version=CSB" target="_blank">"became wisdom from God for us"</a>, 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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?</p><p>To an extent in evangelicalism I think it is, as already mentioned, the desire to keep the simple gospel <i>simple</i>. 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 <i>huge</i> in its claims and its implications, and really the church does need to take up the task of exploring and explaining these.</p><p>There is also, if I read things correctly, an unhelpful <i>biblicism</i> 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.</p><p>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 <i>into the same message, </i>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.</p><p>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?</p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-39657575684812205012024-02-12T08:47:00.003+00:002024-02-12T08:47:32.558+00:00The Theological Task<p> A sentence from John Webster that deserves some unpacking:</p><blockquote>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.</blockquote><p>This is from <i>God Without Measure Vol 1,</i> 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.</p><p><i>The primary theological task...</i></p><p>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.</p><p><i>...is the dedication of intelligence...</i></p><p>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 <i>intellectualism</i>, with accompanying intellectual arrogance. But it doesn't have to be this way. Intellectual endeavour is to be in the service of the church.</p><p><i>...to devout indication and description of Christian verities...</i></p><p>The subject and method of theology are dealt with here. Theology is about <i>Christian verities</i>, the truths which are given in revelation, and the primary job is to <i>indicate</i> and <i>describe</i> 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.</p><p><i>...devout...</i></p><p>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.</p><p><i>...whose goodness, once known and loved...</i></p><p>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.</p><p><i>...dispels anxiety and draws both intellect and affections to satisfaction.</i></p><p>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.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-37996182013923335542024-01-25T10:12:00.003+00:002024-01-25T10:12:27.241+00:00Forgetting what is behind<p>In the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil+3%3A1-14&version=CSB" target="_blank">lectionary reading for Morning Prayer today</a>, 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. <a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-new-year-with-jesus.html" target="_blank">The past has been decisively put in the past by the work of Christ.</a> 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.</p><p>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.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-77122013352631940212024-01-10T13:57:00.003+00:002024-01-10T13:57:26.280+00:00Nature, Grace, and Herman Bavinck<p>The relationship of nature and grace is a key theme in the <i>Reformed Dogmatics</i> 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.</p><p>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):</p><blockquote><p>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.</p></blockquote><p>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., <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+14%3A26&version=CSB" target="_blank">Luke 14:26</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+12%3A48-50&version=CSB" target="_blank">Matt 12:48-50</a>), 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?</p><p>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 <i>not</i> a natural family; grace is <i>not</i> tied to nature in this way. That is the whole point of Romans 9-11, alongside many other passages. Grace <i>disrupts </i>the natural order of things - the Lord Jesus came to divide families, to turn children against their parents, etc.</p><p>Some slightly disconnected reflections:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>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 <a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2020/01/two-crucial-concepts-from-bonhoeffer.html" target="_blank">understanding of the natural</a>. 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.</li><li>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.</li><li>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.</li><li>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!</li></ol><div>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.</div><p></p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-26848004931733038802024-01-03T11:02:00.003+00:002024-01-03T11:02:38.560+00:00Fulfilled time<p>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...</p><p>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.</p><p>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, <i>now</i>. And in the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, time was in a sense gathered up into eternity.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-48878207525468735632023-12-22T08:35:00.003+00:002023-12-22T09:25:48.455+00:00Things I learnt from Eugene Peterson<p>I recently re-read <i><a href="https://www.eden.co.uk/christian-books/understanding-the-faith/general-theological-issues/christ-plays-in-ten-thousand-places?site_id=162595&adtype=pla&device=c&product_id=1122169&gclid=Cj0KCQiA4Y-sBhC6ARIsAGXF1g5E18ktJzyEpLlXuABvaejCoQBiLnWMRSJiGL_KUkT4TvJN5tRE970aAn5-EALw_wcB" target="_blank">Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places</a></i> 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.</p><p><b>The centrality of participation.</b> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p><b>The importance of congruence.</b> Something <a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2007/09/jesus-way.html" target="_blank">Peterson is really big on</a> is the need for congruence between <i>ends</i> and <i>means</i>. 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.</p><p>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 <i>something works</i> 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.</p><p><b>The value of small and slow.</b> 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 <i>do</i> see, and to take assurance from those things that he <i>is </i>at work, deep at work underneath all the busy-ness and fuss of life.</p><p>Despite recent protests, evangelicalism still has a bias towards the big and the obviously successful. We still want to <i>get things done, </i>and we are chronically impatient. Peterson has a lot to teach us here.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-80415678030483423122023-11-06T15:04:00.002+00:002023-11-06T15:04:39.990+00:00On changing a doctrinal basis<p>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.</p><p>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 <a href="https://fiec.org.uk/who-we-are/beliefs" target="_blank">here</a>, and a post detailing the proposed revisions <a href="https://fiec.org.uk/news/proposed-changes-to-our-doctrinal-basis" target="_blank">here</a>. 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Nevertheless, I have three objections to the proposed changes.</p><p>1. I think it is clear that this is <i>reactive</i> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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 <i>and our churches</i> 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.</p><p>For these reasons, as well as the <a href="https://reformedweb.wordpress.com/2023/04/26/doctrinal-basis-and-ethical-issues/" target="_blank">apologetic/evangelistic reasons advanced by Richard Baxter</a> (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.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-42658196089538364272023-11-01T07:34:00.004+00:002023-11-01T07:34:58.535+00:00The cheering crowd of witnesses<blockquote> Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.</blockquote><p>The author of the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%2012&version=CSB" target="_blank">Epistle to the Hebrews</a> has just rattled through a list of the faithful from the Old Testament era, those who pointed the way and passed on into death still holding to their hope in God. He envisages them, and also I think those faithful Christians who have fallen asleep in the Lord, as the crowd in the stadium, cheering on the believers who are still toiling in the race. Those runners are not looking at the crowds; they are looking to Jesus, who stands at the finish line and beckons them on, just as he stood at the start line and set them running in the first place. Nevertheless, the cheering crowds are surely an encouragement to those who are growing weary.</p><p>I've been thinking in the last couple of days that sometimes the Christian life feels less like a race on a stadium track and more like a lengthy cross country. The course is not always as clearly marked as you'd like. It seems to have been designed to take in as many obstacles as possible. Sometimes you find yourself running through streams, or dodging through trees, and wondering if you've taken a wrong turn. Sometimes you can't really imagine that the race will ever be finished - unlike a stadium race, you can't see the finish line clearly and you might not be sure how far through you are. Has anyone, in fact, ever completed this gruelling course?</p><p>And of course the primary encouragement when we feel like this is that the Lord Jesus ran this way. Even when we struggle to lift our eyes to see him at the finish line, we see marks along the way that remind us of him. Yes, he also battled through these brambles; we see the signs of his passing this way. That sharp rock on which you stumbled and cut yourself is already marked with the blood which he shed there. Christ ran this way, and he reached the finished line. Lift your eyes to him.</p><p>But also - do you hear the crowds? There are so many. Some of them have barely had time to change out of their running kit; some have been there in the crowd for millennia. They cheer us on. They made it. They ran the race, they reached the finish. We are all mud-bespattered, but they are gloriously clean. Some of them still carry marks from the wounds they picked up in the race, but healed now; mere memories of suffering, emblems now of triumph, in some ways more significant than the crowns they wear. And they cheer us on. They made it; we can make it.</p><p>Let's keep running.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-13385324596805657712023-07-04T08:50:00.001+01:002023-07-04T08:50:28.675+01:00The order of doctrineIn principle I don't think too much ought to be read into the order in which doctrines are treated by various authors. What matters is the conceptual core, the weight put on different doctrines, the organisational structure. And that cannot be read off a contents page. Some people, after all, save the best til last. You have to actually inhabit a person's thought for some time before it becomes possible to discern the central pillar. So I wouldn't want to give this little thought more weight than it warrants.<div><br></div><div>Still, it seems to me that order is not wholly insignificant. Schleiermacher saved the doctrine of the Trinity for the end, and that is revealing. More recently I've been reading volume 3 of Bavinck's<i> Reformed Dogmatics, </i>and I think it is somewhat significant that he begins his soteriology with a chapter on covenant before moving on to the Person of Christ. It seems to me that this formal order affects the material content. Salvation is a matter of a legal structure, and the importance of Christ is that he makes the legal structure work. I think that is skewed away from the content of the biblical witness. It is striking as well that the covenant idea is read back, in this stream of Reformed theology, into the Trinitarian foundation of the economy, something which I think ought to make us all uncomfortable.</div><div><br></div><div>So, without making too much of it, I think the order of theological presentation can matter.</div>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-91268639821294188022023-06-21T13:32:00.007+01:002023-06-21T13:32:51.134+01:00Law, Reality, Gospel<p>I think it clarifies various aspects of Christian ethics to see the commands of God operating on three different levels. This is more obvious in some cases than others, and may not hold true in every case at all, but the pattern of my thinking has been this.</p><p>At the first and most obvious level, a command of God is Law. The Law says 'you must', or 'you must not'. At the level of Law, the key consideration is the rightful authority of the One giving the command. Because it is God the King who says 'you must' and 'you must not', the proper response of all who belong to God (and we all belong to God) is implicit obedience.</p><p>This is not the only way God's commands work on us, though. At another level, the commands of God simply represent Reality. That is to say, because God is the ultimate Reality, and all created reality depends upon him and is shaped by him, the command also says 'you can' or 'you cannot'. There is a sense in which Christian ethics simply aims to describe the way things really are, and then to bring our lives into conformity with that reality. (Note, by the way, that this must be a view of reality properly informed by God's own revelation; we as sinners are very bad at discerning what reality really is).</p><p>And then third, God's commands take the form of Gospel, good news. Because he is our good and kind Father, the commands of God show the best way. As well as 'you must' and 'you can', they tell us 'you may'; as well as 'you must not' and 'you cannot', they tell us 'you need not'. The life of faith, the life that is founded on trust in God, brings us to green pastures and leads us beside still waters. The commands relieve us of burdens - the burdens brought on by living wrongly in God's world, but also the great burden of having to define good and evil out of our own limited resources.</p><p>A worked example: the first commandment. God says 'you shall have no other gods before me'. At the level of Law, this commandment tells me that I must not worship other gods; this is a matter of loyalty to the God who has created and redeemed me. At the level of Reality, the commandment tells me that there are no other gods to worship; not only am I told I must not worship other gods, I am also told that I cannot, since in reality there are none. And finally, at the level of Gospel I am told that I need not worship other gods. The one true God is all-powerful, and provides for all my needs, so that I need not placate or pursue other deities. It is a liberation from the burden of polytheism.</p><p>Our culture tends only to think of the commands of God at the level of Law, and because it sinfully rejects God's right authority it hates his commands. People imagine that doing away with the Law of God will bring liberty - no great authority telling us what we can and cannot do. But here's the thing: in pushing away the Law of God it is increasingly clear that we have also lost touch with Reality. If the point of escaping the Law is to allow me to be whatever I want to be, that of course must also involve pushing away from the way things are. Reality, no less than Law, constrains my self-expression. Therefore it must be rejected. Just look at the treatment of gender for an acute example.</p><p>But what really strikes me is how we therefore lose commands as Gospel. If you can really construct yourself, make your own meaning, rule the direction of your own life, decide your own values - well then, you <i>must</i> do those things. Otherwise your life is without meaning, you have no values (or value), and perhaps you do not even meaningfully have a self. But this is to be as god - in terms of responsibilities, at least. Can we fulfill those responsibilities, with our human resources? <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/nietzsche-madman.asp" target="_blank">Must we ourselves not become gods?</a></p><p>There is good evidence that young people today are increasingly unhappy. Might not part of the reason be that they are carrying the intolerable burden of creating and sustaining themselves - and indeed the whole world, for what is a world but the projection of my internal consciousness out into the meaningless void? Might it not be good to hear God say not only 'you must not be your own god', but also 'you cannot be your own god', and supremely 'you need not be your own god, for I will be your Father and will keep you to the very end'?</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-3102993863130228202023-06-13T08:39:00.002+01:002023-06-13T09:03:26.495+01:00Sin concealed and revealedIt seems a shame that the lectionary divides <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+chron+34&version=CSB" target="_blank">2 Chronicles 34</a> in half; had the whole chapter been read this morning a powerful theme would have shown through all the readings, namely, the way in which the Law of God unveils sin.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+32&version=CSB" target="_blank">Psalm 32</a> sets the overall context: it is a superlatively good thing, a blessed state, to be one who acknowledges and confess sin, and is consequently in God's grace cleansed of sin. To hide sin, from the world and from oneself, is deathly. There is a psychological aspect to this, of course, but the imagery of the Psalm goes further, into the physical and I think the existential. Not to acknowledge sin is to be in a fundamentally false position, towards God and towards ourselves. This is anguish.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+36&version=CSB">Psalm 36</a>, on the other hand, notes that the wicked simply have no dread of God. In apparent tension with Psalm 32, the sin-denying life of the wicked seems to be one of psychological and existential peace - until, that is, God himself brings them into judgement.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a sense in which 2 Chronicles 34 explains this tension. Under Josiah, the people of Judah were, for once, behaving reasonably well. The idols were destroyed, the temple was repaired. There was reason to feel good. But when God's Law is discovered, all of that is shown up to be desperately inadequate. In a sense the reading of the Law represents already God prosecuting sin. The righteous requirements of the Law reveal the people of Judah, even in the midst of their great reformation, to be guilty sinners. The only response is anguish and penitence.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+7%3A14-25&version=CSB" target="_blank">Romans 7</a> really pushes this deeper. The person who genuinely loves God and his Law finds nevertheless that sin continually corrupts even their best endeavours. They are a person divided against themselves - in a deeper sense even than is envisaged in Psalm 32. The believer - and I take that is who we're seeing in this chapter - has accepted the judgement of the Law on their sin, specifically as it has been carried out in Christ, at the cross. Sin has been unmasked by the Law and the Gospel. The believer is made wholly new in Christ and his resurrection. And yet... In experience, they find themselves still entirely old. Day by day they know again just what it is to be sinful, in a way that nobody else can. Because they are really renewed, really made clean, the stain of sin shows out so clearly. The division against themselves which is revealed in the gospel goes deeper even than that revealed in the Law.</div><div><br /></div><div>But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!</div><div><br /></div><div>Because the movement of faith is to continually respond to each new unmasking of sin in my old self by looking to Jesus, in whom that old self really is already dead, and in whom I am already really given new life. Because he has, once for all, rescued us from this body of death, so day by day he can deliver us.</div><div><br /></div><div>My prayer this morning has been that God will not let me be ignorant of my sin, even if having it unmasked is desperately painful. But my prayer is also that it will be in Jesus, gentle Jesus, and his gospel that the Law will be applied to me, revealed sin put to death and the deep blessing of the forgiven - new life! - breathed into me by his Spirit of Life.</div>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-53012817350991215022023-04-24T09:52:00.003+01:002023-04-24T10:04:25.173+01:00Contra Parris<p>Over the Easter weekend, Matthew Parris published an article complaining that the exaltation of victimhood, based in the victimhood of Christ, is ruining society. I do not think he was entirely wrong. At the very least, I have big questions over the application of the word 'victim' to our Lord in his death; whilst the NT does present Christ as the sacrificial victim, the fact that it also presents him as the offering Priest rather heavily qualifies the sense of victimhood. It seems clear to me, at least, that the contemporary use of victimhood cannot be applied to the Lord Jesus. I think that in some cases where this language is used of Christ contemporary progressive politics rather than the gospel is setting the agenda, or perhaps it is just an over-egging of the <a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2019/10/dominion.html" target="_blank">Dominion thesis</a>. That Scripture shows God as being on the side of the weak and marginalised is certainly true; that it somehow makes weakness and marginalisation a virtue is false.</p><p>Anyway, Parris has now followed up with a <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/irelands-violent-men-of-peace-2/" target="_blank">second article</a>, this time in the <i>Spectator</i>, in which he argues that "the whole atonement thing is a terrible muddle". "Trying to make sense of it", he thinks, "is a waste of time". And yet, many millions of people seem to think that it does make sense, that it is coherent and powerful as an idea, and moreover that it is a liberating and saving reality. Parris advances very weak arguments for his position, but since they are in public it may be worth briefly taking the time to refute them, to which end I offer the following analysis.</p><p>After an initial complaint about the language of Christian doctrine, which he suspects is meaningless even to many believers, Parris makes his first substantial(ish) point, about authority. "Where does the doctrine of atonement through Christ's crucifixion find its roots?" Parris is surprised to find that Jesus said nothing on the subject; I am also surprised to hear this, since I find <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+10%3A45&version=CSB" target="_blank">in my Bible</a> that Christ clearly taught that he had come to offer his life as a ransom for many. Matthew Parris, presumably not seeing this and similar verses, advances the tired old argument that it was really St Paul who invented the idea of atonement. Now, I will cheerfully grant that some of the clearest teaching about the atonement in the Bible comes from the pen of the Apostle Paul, but this simply does not mean what Parris thinks it means.</p><p>The argument that 'Jesus never said anything about that', even granted it were true (as in this case it is not), will not carry the weight Parris puts on it, and it's worth thinking through why because of course this argument is used in other cases. Christians do not treat the words of Christ as somehow a canon within the canon, as if it is the words of Jesus which have the real authority. No, we see that the whole of Scripture bears witness to the work of Jesus. So behind the gospel narratives stands the whole Old Testament history of sacrifice as a means to cover guilt and gain access to God. It is inconceivable that when the gospel authors record the tearing of the temple curtain at the point of Christ's death that they are not thinking of his death in terms of sacrifice, propitiation, the removal of the sin and guilt which prevents sinful humanity from gaining access to God. We do not need specific words of Jesus to draw this very clear inference. And in fact that is all that St Paul is doing when he writes on the atonement; seeing Jesus as the Messiah, the fulfillment of all the Old Testament story, and drawing out the meaning of the death of Christ in that way.</p><p>Moreover, by way of an aside, I would point out to Mr Parris that in fact the church <i>does</i> teach that the Apostle, in his writing of Scripture, "could never have been wrong". But even if it were not so, the understanding of Christ's death in terms of redeeming sacrifice is demanded by the events themselves as seen against the backdrop of the Old Testament. So much for the question of authority.</p><p>The second part of the argument, if I've followed it correctly, is that Paul was essentially a salesman, and needed a hook to get the Gentiles interested in Jesus. Salvation "from our own misdeeds" was the offer, and a powerful one, since everyone has conscience troubles. But for Parris this means the crucifixion was not about justice, but about "rescue from justice". This account ignores two things. Firstly, that St Paul was not an obvious choice for salesman to the Gentiles. How did he come to want them to believe in the first place? The idea that this devout Pharisee just suddenly decided to break out of the bounds of Judaism is utterly implausible; the only possible answer is that Mr Parris is incorrect when he asserts that Paul never met Jesus! Second, Parris ignores the Apostle's careful argument about God's justice in the Epistle to the Romans. The point of the cross, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+3%3A26&version=CSB" target="_blank">according to Paul</a>, is that by it God can be both just <i>and</i> the one who justifies those who trust in Jesus. The crucifixion of Jesus upholds God's justice, and if that doesn't look like justice as Mr Parris imagines it, I suspect that the Almighty's notions will outlast his.</p><p>The third part of the argument returns to the question of meaning. How does the ransom metaphor apply? Is ransom paid to the devil? What about propitiation? Who is propitiated and why? These are old questions, much kicked around in the history of Christian theology; but there are quite clear answers for anyone who wants to hear them. Yes, ransom is a metaphor, and therefore of course it doesn't carry over to the reality one-to-one; it represents liberation at cost, and carried thus far is a powerful image. No need to bring the devil into it; nobody owes <i>him</i> anything. The logic of propitiation - of turning away wrath through substitution - makes perfect sense if one grasps both the doctrine of the Trinity and the holiness of God. The holiness of God demands judgement for sin (that Parris thinks that "The God we've fashioned over the millennia is not like that" demonstrates that part of his difficulty is that he's trying to make sense of the atonement on the presuppositions of a very liberal theology, which is of course rather difficult; suppose we stick to the God who has revealed himself rather than the idol that we've spent millennia fashioning, everything will be clearer). And once we grasp the nature of the Trinity, we can see the wonder of the cross: that <i>God</i> propitiates <i>himself</i>, the Son willingly taking on our nature and our guilt so that the wrath of God might be borne away in his Person.</p><p>Contra Matthew Parris, it all makes a lot of sense. It is in fact our sinful notions of God, justice, and the nature of the human condition which constitute a hopeless muddle. But certainly neither Jesus nor Paul can be blamed for that.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-72804899585579459952023-03-13T11:29:00.002+00:002023-03-13T11:29:42.178+00:00On Marriage and Christ<div>If you've escaped the recent controversy surrounding The Gospel Coalition and their publishing of an article on sex as an icon of the gospel, well done. This post is a very limited response to a part of that controversy, but should make sense even if you didn't follow it at all. The point I want to respond to is the claim by a number of people that the problem with the article was that it over-extended a metaphor. That is to say, it is true that Scripture draws a metaphorical connection between marital union and the spiritual union of Christ and his people, but by reflecting explicitly sexual language the article had stretched that metaphor beyond its biblical usage, and thus invalidated it.</div><div><br /></div><div>My response here is simple: I do not think the Bible presents marriage as a <i>metaphor</i> for the gospel. As I understand it - and I confess freely that I am no literary theorist - metaphor is a way of relating two things or concepts which have no (or at least no necessary) <i>real</i> (that is, ontological or conceptual) connection; it is allusive, linking two things which are not directly linked in order to shed light on one or the other. Metaphor is limited in what it implies, and is essentially <i>linguistic</i>. It does not imply or establish any real or ongoing link between the two items. Rather, it uses language to appropriate one thing or concept as a means of 'opening up' another.</div><div><br /></div><div>My contention, then, is that this is not the sort of link Scripture envisages between human marriage and the gospel. In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul is not casting around looking for a great illustration of the gospel and arriving at marital love. Nor is he looking about for some justification for the institution of marriage and chancing upon the gospel - that direction of thought would be impossible for him. Look at the way he uses the quotation from Genesis. His argument depends on there being a <i>real link</i> between human marriage and the relationship between Christ and his church. It depends, in fact, on finding the <i>primary application</i> of the "one flesh" saying from Genesis in the gospel, with the obvious historical sense of the saying in its Genesis context becoming a secondary application. This makes sense in a world where primary ontology is about God and his actions, and creation represents a kind of secondary ontology, a derived, contingent being which is dependent on the Lord God for both existence <i>and meaning</i>. This latter is crucial.</div><div><br /></div><div>The question, then, is this: is created reality <i>inherently</i> ordered towards the gospel?</div><div><br /></div><div><i>There is another way of approaching this which asks a question which is similar, but in the end totally different: does created reality have inherent meaning and structure? If we're asking </i>this<i> question, we're in the territory of natural law, and perhaps in territory which envisages a natural end to human life and created existence apart from the gospel. I don't want to go into this territory. I don't think it's a good place to be. I am proceeding on the assumption that the heart of created reality is the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the underlying reason of human existence and indeed the whole created order is the gospel of Jesus Christ.</i></div><div><br /></div>What is at stake here?<div><br /></div><div>On the one hand, the grounding of Christian ethics is at stake. I mean this is in a very particular way. The <i>essential</i> ground of Christian ethics is the command of God. As believers we ought to wholeheartedly commit ourselves to being impaled on one horn of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma" target="_blank">Euthyphro dilemma</a> - the morally good is determined by the will of God, and God himself is bound by no external standard of goodness. In that sense, when we are asked about sexual ethics and why we hold particular positions we can simply respond 'God says so', and point to the relevant commands in Scripture. But the doctrine of creation means that we can say something more about the particular way in which Christian ethics is grounded. The divine commands do not hang in the air, because the God who commands is also the God who structures reality. What he commands is morally good because he determines moral goodness, but we can also say that this goodness reflects the structure of created reality - or more accurately, perhaps, that it is reflected in the structure of created reality. Once we pull in the doctrine of redemption - that the God who commands and creates is also the God who save - we can argue that the divine command is reflected in creation which is itself oriented toward the gospel. The gospel, then, reveals the significance of created reality, and thus of the divine commands. Far from being arbitrary rules, they reflect both creation and redemption, because God is one and his goal and purpose is one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Grounding Christian ethics <i>in this way</i> binds it together with the gospel, in a way which seems to me central to New Testament thinking. The Christian sexual ethic is good news because it signifies The Good News. We joyfully submit to this ethic and call others to do so because the end goal of created reality is the marriage supper of the Lamb.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, our ability to think and speak about the Christian life in a way which reflects the full richness of Scripture is at stake. When Scripture tells us that the 'one flesh' relationship of husband and wife is oriented towards the relationship between Christ and the church, that opens up the reading of - for example - the Song of Songs as a beautiful representation of spiritual communion with Christ. The question 'is this about marriage or is it about Christ' is, in the end, a non-question if human marriage is itself always related to Christ and his gospel. We can read the Song in a perfectly natural way as a collection of beautiful human love songs, and indeed as a celebration of erotic love, and <i>therefore</i> as having reference to the relationship between Christ and his people. And in fact we can see this latter as in a sense primary for a canonical reading of the book.</div><div><br /></div><div>Simone Weil points out that real things exist in three dimensions, and can therefore be viewed from different perspectives. If there is a real, ontological link between human marriage and the gospel, then it becomes legitimate to look from different perspectives at both. I think the Song legitimates us in seeing the sexual as one such perspective. The 'one flesh' union of marriage is enacted in sexual intercourse; the spiritual union of Christ and the church also has moments of 'enacted' reality, most notably perhaps in the sacraments. I don't intend to particularly develop this here, but just to note that the <i>real</i> link between marriage and the gospel enables and perhaps even mandates this sort of reflection, whereas a <i>metaphorical</i> link would shut this down.</div><div><br /></div><div>One warning: we must always continue resolutely to say No! to natural theology. (Should we so desire, we can say it in German). That means that revelation, the Word of God, Christ as witnessed by the Scriptures, remains in control. I take it this was one of the key complaints against the TGC article: that the direction of thought which is so obvious in Paul - from the gospel to marriage first, and only subsequently and indirectly from marriage to the gospel - was in danger of being reversed. Revelation interprets created reality, not vice versa. Wherever spiritual reflection on marriage and sex approaches this line - and it must in a sense approach it - we need to be on our guard that the line is not crossed. If it is appropriate to describe marriage as an icon of the gospel - and I think it is - we need to be careful that we are looking 'along' the icon to the reality and not stopping short at the content of the image, or worse projecting aspects of the image into our thinking about the reality in an uncontrolled way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another warning: we know marriage and sexuality only in a fallen mode. There is a sense in which everything we experience of it is tainted. This introduces a sad requirement for theology: just at the point at which we would like to speak rapturously of Christ and his love for his people, we must stress very carefully the limitations of our thoughts. We know it is easy for people to abuse the Scriptures - to take, say, the teaching in Ephesians 5 and twist it to abusive ends. How much more so our secondary spiritual reflections on marriage and sexuality! In one sense this is just the movement of all theology: we draw analogies, show that Christ is <i>like</i> something in our experience, but then immediately have to qualify it, because he is also <i>unlike</i> anything in our fallen world. This is also true of the icon of marriage.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of which is to say, these are dangerous waters - but beautiful to sail if navigated carefully! What a wonderful bridegroom is our Lord Jesus. What grace it is that he should welcome us, sanctify us, call us his bride. What a high privilege it is to enjoy spiritual communion with him. (And husbands should love their wives).</div>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-66474306966187090232023-03-03T13:49:00.001+00:002023-03-03T13:49:45.484+00:00An update on what I'm doing<p> <i>An excerpt from the newsletter I've sent today - if you'd like to get regular updates, please let me know and I can add you to the distribution list.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhffiMnIGlp9QXUX1KbZDM9-A5S_LvwM1fTX8rqjvwSsP-vgwMO8aISSZOF0pUyBC0vvR3iozXJD64c_SIZjc1-Y49_8Zg5gPeyDka3hVf43LXac4OTOP1fCi0KxLZEHnlkz2mVcrfL9qKdPTtUgwmrIXv1GhNj4VOi3eWI0moV1cPgdeKd4Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1108" data-original-width="2296" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhffiMnIGlp9QXUX1KbZDM9-A5S_LvwM1fTX8rqjvwSsP-vgwMO8aISSZOF0pUyBC0vvR3iozXJD64c_SIZjc1-Y49_8Zg5gPeyDka3hVf43LXac4OTOP1fCi0KxLZEHnlkz2mVcrfL9qKdPTtUgwmrIXv1GhNj4VOi3eWI0moV1cPgdeKd4Q" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-contextual-alternates: no; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none; mso-number-form: default; mso-number-spacing: default;">At the beginning of February, I officially
started a full-time PhD with Union School of Theology. The project I am
undertaking looks at a systematic theology of preaching. There are lots
of books out there about how to preach, but I want to look more carefully at
the why and the what of preaching, starting from the doctrine of the Trinity
and the Word of God as the second Person of the Godhead, and working through
the earthly ministry of Christ as the supreme Prophet of Israel, the Scriptures
and their role as God’s word written, and finally the situation of the preacher
in the local church today. I want to think carefully about how God communicates
himself to his world and particularly his assembled people, and how preaching
fits into that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-contextual-alternates: no; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none; mso-number-form: default; mso-number-spacing: default;">I’m excited about the project; it’s something
that has come out of my experience of preaching weekly, and feeling the need to
understand more deeply just what it was I was doing, or trying to do.
I’ve also had a chance to run my ideas past some people who really know what
they’re talking about on preaching and on theology, and it’s been encouraging
to hear that they also think this is a worthwhile piece of research.
There is certainly a gap in the market, so to speak, and it seems like one
worth filling.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-contextual-alternates: no; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none; mso-number-form: default; mso-number-spacing: default;">In the evangelical church generally there is, it
seems to me, a need to recover a vision for preaching which clearly links it to
God’s activity and communication. We need preachers with confidence and
authority. The New Testament calls those who speak to do so as if
speaking God’s own words (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+pet+4%3A11&version=NIVUK" target="_blank">the very oracles of God!</a>) - but how do
we do that when we know our weakness as preachers? We also need preachers
who step up into the pulpit with fear and trembling, understanding the awesome
weight of their task, knowing that they are called to speak from and for
God. No method or formula can bring God’s word to God’s people, and if
our confidence rests in those things perhaps we need shaking up!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-contextual-alternates: no; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none; mso-number-form: default; mso-number-spacing: default;">I hope this project might be a small
contribution to a deeper understanding of what preaching is, and therefore to a
greater expectation of what God is able and willing to do through the preaching
of the gospel. At some point I hope the research will turn into a book,
but even before then I am looking for opportunities to share what I’m learning,
particularly with pastors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-contextual-alternates: no; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none; mso-number-form: default; mso-number-spacing: default;">Right now, day to day study looks like trying to
read everything I can get my hands on to do with preaching, especially anything
that approaches it from a systematic theology perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is important to get a solid understanding
of the current state of research in the field, and this will form part of the
literature review at the beginning of the study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far I have been confirmed in my initial
impression that there isn’t that much material out there which tackles
preaching in a systematic way from a theological point of view.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-79999402683971132402023-01-23T09:16:00.006+00:002023-01-23T09:16:41.340+00:00Material, not just formal, unity<p>These are bewildering times for Christians seeking to live faithfully to Christ, under his authority. I think they are times which require us to rethink our approach to a number of things, not least how we understand Christian unity.</p><p>The approach to Christian unity which has characterised evangelicalism rests, I think, particularly on a <i>formal</i> principle: the authority of Scripture. We can unite with people who share our commitment to the authority of Holy Scripture. There is a lot of sense in this. Whilst we can have a conversation with all sorts of people, there is no likelihood of agreement where there is no common commitment to a <i>way of knowing</i>. Disagreements between people who are equally committed to Scripture at least have some hope of resolution, and an agreed way (in principle) of reaching that resolution: we read and study and debate Scripture together. Take away that <i>formal </i>agreement - either by taking away the commitment to Scripture, or by adding to it another authority - and <i>material </i>agreement becomes much more difficult, perhaps even impossible. At the very least, we are having a different sort of conversation if we're talking to someone who isn't happy to follow us into the Bible for answers, and who isn't pre-committed to accepting and submitting to those answers if they're satisfied that they really are biblical.</p><p>And so the authority of Scripture is a sensible rallying point. But it has never been the case that commitment to this formal principle alone is sufficient for Christian unity. There have always been heretics who claim to hold to biblical authority, and even make an impressive show of deference to the Bible. Leaving actual heresy aside, even amongst mutually acknowledged Christians there are limits to how much practical unity we can have purely on this formal basis. And so we qualify our basis for unity: we have unity with those who take Scripture as their authority (the formal principle) <i>within certain bounds </i>(and here we are introducing material beliefs). Normally for evangelicals that means there is a minimalist statement of faith which we look to as a standard; and so long as people subscribe our minimum standard, and remain committed to the formal principle, we allow latitude on a whole bunch of issues.</p><p>And here's where it gets tricky. Our minimum standards don't tend to address the hot-button issues of the day, like racism or human sexuality. The latter in particular is becoming a significant dividing line amongst professing Christians, and it isn't addressed in our evangelical standards. So what do we do? Typically we fall back here on the formal principle: you have to believe what the Bible says about sexuality. We turn it from a material issue (about theological anthropology, say) into a formal issue (about the authority of the Bible). But this raises two issues. Firstly, what do we do when people on the other side of the debate claim to be submitting to the authority of Scripture? We can debate them, in that case, on biblical grounds, and hope to persuade them of our reading of Scripture, but in the meantime is this an 'agree to disagree' situation? I don't see how it can be. Second, if this is in fact a fracture point, do we understand why it is so significant? Why must we divide over <i>this</i> disagreement about the interpretation of Scripture, but not over so many other things which we have (for the sake of unity) designated 'secondary issues', outside the scope of our doctrinal statements?</p><p>Here is a difficult thing: we don't want to divide over issues like baptism (who, when, how), or church government, or our understanding of eschatology, but we will divide over sexuality. Doesn't it sound like we're just cherry picking issues? Might it not seem as if this is driven basically by homophobia rather than doctrine? Why, after all, pick this issue as the line? It will not do to claim that sexual ethics is more important or central - more important than baptism, "which now saves you"? (Elevating anthropology and ethics above the church and soteriology is not a great way to go, I think). I am also not convinced it will do to claim that Scripture speaks more clearly on this issue - I think it is also perfectly clear on baptism!</p><p>It seems to me that the way forward is a renewed confessionalism, which will show that our formal principle is not merely formal, but carries material content. That is to say, we need to be able to show that Christian doctrine does not proceed in two stages - first sorting out the source of doctrine in Scripture and then moving on to what the Bible actually says. Rather, we need to show that our commitment to Scripture and its authority is part of a whole view of God's being and activity; that it already carries with it material content; that the nature of Scripture and its place within the dispensation of grace entails a particular way of reading. We need a thicker, more substantial doctrine of Scripture, along with a broader confession of Christian truth that goes beyond the bare minimum. Nobody wants to build higher fences unnecessarily, but I'm not sure we have any other option if we want to maintain Christian orthodoxy in our churches.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-15581705523138628842023-01-06T09:18:00.000+00:002023-01-06T09:18:03.526+00:00Epiphany Theology<p><i>See earlier posts for <a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2017/12/advent-theology.html" target="_blank">Advent theology</a> and <a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2022/12/christmas-theology.html" target="_blank">Christmas theology</a>, if you fancy working through the church year.</i></p><p>A consciousness of Epiphany should, I think, bring three distinctive emphases to our theology: light, grace, and a sense of awe.</p><p>By light I mean this: that though it is surely true that <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+kings+8%3A12&version=CSB" target="_blank">God dwells in total darkness</a>, and that <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+97%3A2&version=CSB" target="_blank">clouds and thick darkness surround him</a>, out of that darkness real light shines. There is a school of thought that emphasises the darkness, that suggests that because God is so very different from us, and because our language and concepts are so inadequate to describe him, in the end we can only say what God is <i>not</i>. In some more mystically inclined theologians, this ends with saying that God is nothing: "whoever speaks of God as Nothing speaks of God properly", according to Meister Echkart. But this will not do. Epiphany tells us that God shines forth; that in the face of Christ we see the light of the glory of God. Theology is a positive discipline. It proceeds in the light of God, to speak of the God who has made himself known.</p><p>Then again, Epiphany is a celebration of the fact that God has revealed himself to the <a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2015/01/gentiles.html" target="_blank">Gentiles</a>. It's a desperate shame that this is neglected. It is good for those of us who are Gentiles to pause and realise the tremendous grace of God displayed here. It was not only to Israel, his ancient people, that God revealed himself, but Christ was <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+2%3A29-32&version=CSB" target="_blank">a light for revelation to the Gentiles</a>. That revelation and salvation reached <i>even us</i>, who by nature were utterly alien to the covenant and people of God, should cause us to be astonished. It is good to remember that the reason - the deep reason - behind this revelation is that <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa+49%3A5-7&version=CSB" target="_blank">Christ is too glorious</a> for his ministry to be restricted only to the lost sheep of Israel. That is to say, if the truth of God reaches us, it is not because we are so great, but because Jesus is so great. And of course, whether we are Gentiles or Israelites this should drive home the amazing kindness of God, which causes his light to overflow all boundaries and to reach into all nations. So theology as a discipline must be careful never to take for granted any of its material. Every doctrine, every glimpse of God's glory and work, must be received in humble gratitude. This is not confident intellectual system building, but humble reception of that which we could never have grasped if the glory of the Lord had not arisen and shone upon us.</p><p>And so the net result should be awe. Awe that we really see in Christ Jesus the eternal light of the Godhead. Awe that this light reaches even into our deep and morally culpable darkness. Awe that true knowledge of God can exist amongst sinners who naturally delight in unknowing. I have read quite a bit of theology which I have not agreed with, but I have often found it profitable nevertheless when it breathes this spirit of awe before the Lord. Conversely, sound theology which lacks this sense of awe leaves me cold. (The same, incidentally, can be said of preaching, of hymnody, of liturgy...) Let us tremble before him - not only because of the thick darkness, but because of the light which shines through it; not only because of our sin, but because of his grace which overcomes all sin - and set about our theology with humility and awe.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-9699247616883213512023-01-02T08:20:00.004+00:002023-01-02T08:20:36.762+00:00A new year with Jesus<p>I guess for many people the beginning of the year is an exciting time for a fresh start. The old year, filled as it had inevitably become with disappointments, has passed; the new year stretches ahead, its story as yet unwritten. Might not this be the year you finally make it at work, or find a spouse, or kick that vexing habit? It might be, or at least there is nothing written about this year yet to say it won't be. (Of course we all know that really there is a distressing amount of continuity between the years, and nothing has really changed. But that is the great virtue of endings, drawing a line across the paper and saying 'now we start afresh'. Otherwise, what hope?)</p><p>For the Christian this turning from the old to the new is the perpetual motion of life. <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+cor+5%3A17&version=CSB" target="_blank">The old has gone, the new has come</a> - and on this basis we turn (in repentance) from our old selves to be renewed (by faith). And we do it again and again and again. New mercy, not just each January, but each day, with every night a chance to practice dying to what we are and every morning an opportunity to have what we will be amended by God's Spirit at work in us. Always a turning, because we know that in this life we will never have fully and finally turned. The new self and new life towards which we turn is real, concrete and accomplished in Jesus, but in our experience it is always that towards which we are journeying.</p><p>Time is a bit funny for the Christian, or at least the way it works has been redefined. When we say 'the old has gone', that is not a bit of autobiography, with a date when the old was done away with. In actual fact, as far as our experience goes, the old is still very much with us. And when we say 'the new has come', we are not saying that we have turned over a new leaf, or even that a new leaf has been turned over for us. The 'new' remains, to our experience, something more often than not out of reach. You cannot show this 'old' and 'new', and the dividing line between them, on a calendar. Nevertheless, it remains the case that the old really has gone, and belongs always to the fading past, and the new really has come, and constitutes the bright and shining future. In Jesus Christ, the old humanity has been put to death and buried, and the new has been raised from the grave. This was a once-for-all movement, a transition from old to new which is definitive for all our time. Because Jesus in his time passed from old to new, the old has been decisively and forever consigned to the past - even if my calendar future contains so much oldness, so much past-ness! In Jesus the whole of life is like the new year.</p><p>And yet not quite. One of the attractions of the new year for many is its sheer blank-ness. It awaits content. This is not so for the Christian. Consider Ephesians 2:10:</p><blockquote>For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.</blockquote><p>Going into the new year, we don't go into empty territory, yet to be shaped, but into the landscape God has prepared for us, stocked with the things which he has providentially readied for us to do.</p><p>Now there is a burdensome way to read this, and I think I've often fallen into thinking of it like this: as if the apostle is telling us that God has written a to-do list for us already, before the year has even begun, and we now need to get on with ticking off the jobs he's got for us. No doubt there are in fact tasks and acts of service which the Lord has prepared for us to undertake, but to focus here is to miss the middle of the verse and to view the new year in abstraction from Christ. We are 'created in Christ Jesus for good works'. Jesus Christ remains the determining factor in the new year. It is not as if we were plucked from death and the power of the devil by God's grace and then sent off to face the new year by works. It is not as if in Jesus our old sins are removed, the page wiped clean, but we are then left to write the new story ourselves, perhaps with a little divine help.</p><p>No, what the apostle is saying is that the resurrection of Jesus means that our time is already fulfilled. He has accomplished all the good works necessary. Our role now, going into this new year, is simply to keep close to him, to walk in his footsteps. And then we will find that the works he has prepared are there waiting for us, not as a to-do list but as the contours of the land in which we walk. He has not wiped out our past time without preparing for us a future time - and that not an empty wasteland or even a proving ground, but the <a href="https://hymnary.org/text/come_we_that_love_the_lord_and_let_our" target="_blank">hill of Zion, which yields a thousand sacred sweets even before we reach the heavenly fields and golden streets</a>.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-37786777870192727652022-12-19T09:45:00.003+00:002022-12-19T09:45:41.582+00:00Christmas Theology<p>Five years ago I wrote a little piece on '<a href="https://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2017/12/advent-theology.html" target="_blank">Advent Theology</a>' - mostly trying to make the point that because our theology awaits Christ's final revelation, it is always provisional and subject to correction. (I said other things too; it's only short, why not read it).</p><p>As this year's Advent season begins to fade into Christmas, I want to add something: as well as being Advent theology, all sound theology must be Christmas theology.</p><p>Christmas is the time of the baby in the manger, of the Word become flesh. Christmas is the time of Immanuel, God with us, God as one of us. Christmas is 'God draws near'; Christmas is 'our God contracted to a span' - not without his continuing to fill heaven and earth, of course! At Christmas, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+1%3A14-18&version=CSB" target="_blank">we see his glory</a> - the glory of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. Though no-one has ever seen God, the one and only Son has made him known. Christmas is when God, in a miracle of grace, becomes an object in our history, our space and time, counted amongst us as one body alongside other bodies, to be <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+john+1%3A1-4&version=CSB" target="_blank">heard, seen, touched</a>.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2CzomkEKmEznbjj-ATBhXlap9ZdJsWIdSQYjeSzcACZ1fhKAPxegO8in9JGJh_KNGr5qKbZcygLAhLJ_vCWaHoi4b8yhW7VmOKh2aq6FVkh5P9HacDsWTLgrGRrMt6N87j1HAYfLfzvtXatOfHWH5zDceg3JI4AjGhMmfU1vKh7CwIzehyg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="620" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2CzomkEKmEznbjj-ATBhXlap9ZdJsWIdSQYjeSzcACZ1fhKAPxegO8in9JGJh_KNGr5qKbZcygLAhLJ_vCWaHoi4b8yhW7VmOKh2aq6FVkh5P9HacDsWTLgrGRrMt6N87j1HAYfLfzvtXatOfHWH5zDceg3JI4AjGhMmfU1vKh7CwIzehyg" width="320" /></a></div>Christmas is the miracle of how we come to know God.<p></p><p><i>(There is another side to this miracle, a subjective component to match this objective - but that will have to wait for Pentecost theology).</i></p><p>So Christmas theology must be confident, restrained, and simple.</p><p>Confident, because God has really walked amongst us. We are not making stuff up, neither are we speculating about God on the basis of some element of human experience, or our understanding of the nature of reality. We are not constructing a Babel-Tower of philosophy to reach up to God; rather, he came down to us. It is noteworthy that there is essentially no philosophy, no metaphysics, in Holy Scripture - there is instead <i>witness</i>, witness to what God has said and done in our midst. Because of Christmas, we stand on solid ground as we theologise.</p><p>Restrained, because if God has come to us and shown himself to us, we are not free to seek him elsewhere. We <i>need not</i> engage in metaphysical speculation, but far more strongly than that: we <i>must not</i>. If God gives himself to be known, if he tells us that <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14%3A8-9&version=CSB" target="_blank">to see Jesus Christ is to see the Father</a>, that <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+cor+4%3A6&version=CSB" target="_blank">it is in the face of Christ that we are to seek and see the glory of God</a>, then we are not at liberty to look around elsewhere. Christmas, by giving us a <i>real </i>basis for theology, gives us the <i>only legitimate</i> basis for theology.</p><p>Simple, in two senses. In the ordinary everyday sense of the word, simple because the story is simple. God lay in a manger. This is a truth a child can understand, and perhaps one of the great virtues of Christmas as an annual celebration is that in invites us to see as a child again. There is no sophistication here, no complex intellectual scheme. There is just God, present as one of us. But as if to contradict that, Christmas theology is also simple in the technical sense. Simplicity, as an attribute of God, tells us that since God is One, and is not made up of parts, wherever God is and under whatever aspect we consider him, the whole of God is there and the whole of God is implicated. God is not partly mercy and partly justice, for example, in the way that we might be divided and potentially conflicted. God is all God. And so Christmas theology looks to the manger and expects to see - and does see - true and full God in the truly and fully human baby. Christmas theology tells us that we don't need to worry that we're missing out on some deep and hidden things of God by focussing on the incarnate Word; no, rather the deep and hidden things are right there, mysterious and yet revealed, in Christ Jesus.</p><p>A word, briefly, to those who love theology. I think Christmas theology is a rebuke to us when we get caught up in and enjoy the technical apparatus of theology; when we delight in the complex discussions of Nicene Trinitarianism or Chalcedonian Christology or whatever. It is noteworthy that many of the greatest theologians are on record as wishing that none of this technical apparatus had to exist; they would have preferred simply to use the language of Holy Scripture to bear witness to Christ. If the abuses of heretics forced them to construct a technical vocabulary, it was only to safeguard the approach to the manger. Whilst I think we ought to have a grasp of these things, especially if we are teachers of the faith, let's not delight too much in the technicalities, but get inside the fence which they represent to see God in Christ. And in particular, let's not make them a fence against simple Christian faith, which is far more value than any of our complex distinctions. Perhaps for theologians, the chief emphasis of Christmas theology is that we need to bow before the baby - a test of our humility!<br /></p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-56982786689077890242022-12-13T07:42:00.002+00:002022-12-13T07:42:23.225+00:00Walking in darkness<p> Isaiah 50:10-11:<br /></p><blockquote>Who among you fears the Lord<br />and listens to his servant?<br />Who among you walks in darkness,<br />and has no light?<br />Let him trust in the name of the Lord;<br />let him lean on his God.<br />Look, all you who kindle a fire,<br />who encircle yourselves with torches;<br />walk in the light of your fire<br />and of the torches you have lit!<br />This is what you’ll get from my hand:<br />you will lie down in a place of torment.</blockquote><p>I come back to these verses often, because it seems to me they are a standing rebuke to much of our contemporary culture, within and without the church, and because they describe an aspect of the life of faith which we would rather forget. Isaiah is writing to the exiled people of Judah, to those who have suffered disgrace and who have no obvious earthly hope. But his words in these verses reach even further across the centuries, to speak to us in the here and now.</p><p>The prophet describes two groups of people. Both groups are in the midst of darkness, but they react to the darkness in very different ways. One - perhaps from a human perspective the most sensible, practical group - set about making light. Fire! Torches! Drive back the darkness! The other, in a move which does not seem humanly speaking to be very wise, walks on in the dark. We might expect that their ultimate destinies would reflect their choices, and so they do - but not in the way the image would lead us to expect. It is not those who prudently make themselves lights who avoid danger; no, they will lie down in torment. It is those who walk in the dark, leaning on the Lord, who avoid stumbling and falling on the way.</p><p>In a pragmatic, technological society like ours, the first question which naturally comes to our minds when confronted with an issue is 'what ought we to do?' - how can we address the problem? How can we fix it? Whether it's public health issues, or personal issues, this is just how we're wired to think. This is just as true, I think, within the church as outside it. How do I fix this feeling of being spiritually dry? How do we reverse the decline in church attendance? What do we <i>do</i>?</p><p>And there is a very real danger that in every case we are just scrambling around lighting torches.</p><p>It is hard for us to shift our sense that things <i>just ought to work</i>, and that there must be something we can do to fix it if they don't. But this is not a sound instinct. Life is not a machine. The life of faith, in particular, does not mean relentless activity to drive back the darkness, as if it were some sort of strange intrusion.</p><p>Rather, our posture is to be: fear the Lord, listen to his Servant.</p><p>The Servant, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ - and the rest of the chapter makes clear why it is that the life of faith must consist largely of walking in darkness. It is because in this world Christ our Lord suffered, submitted himself to humiliation, walked the path of the cross. He walked the way of darkness. We ought to follow him.</p><p>It is not that we should never try to solve any problems or fix any issues. It is just that that is not to be our first response. First we bow before the Lord, acknowledge his sovereignty, hear again the message of the Lord Jesus, consider again that this is just the way of the cross. Because sooner or later we're going to hit problems we can't fix - ultimately, death! - and we will not be ready to go into that great darkness unless we have become accustomed to walking in the dark, leaning on the Lord.</p><p></p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-36211009565974019682022-12-02T07:29:00.006+00:002022-12-02T07:29:46.162+00:00Why follow Torrance?<p>In my <a href="http://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2022/11/theological-science-with-tf-torrance.html" target="_blank">previous post</a> I attempted to sketch out T.F. Torrance's approach to theological knowledge. Here I just want to outline a few reasons why I think this, or something very like it, is a good model for thinking about how to do theology.</p><p>1. Christ is central. It is a sound theological instinct to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ in every aspect of thinking about God, to take <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+10%3A3-5&version=CSB" target="_blank">every thought captive</a> for obedience to him. In Torrance's structuring of theological science, Christ is the focus at every level, and indeed he is the link between doxological piety and theological reflection. He is our assurance that we are dealing with a real, objective truth - he is God in his revelation. He is the one who ensures that our thoughts do not fly off into ungrounded speculation. It is all about the Lord Jesus Christ, all the way through.</p><p>2. It doesn't leave behind or disparage the pre-conceptual knowledge of God in Christ. It can be easy for theologians, who have wrestled with 'the Trinitarian grammar', to look down on the 'simple faith' of the average worshipping community, and to regard the piety of the average Christian as something that needs to be supplanted by a refined conceptual apparatus. There is no supplanting in Torrance; rather, it seems to me, his system rightly puts theological science at the service of doxological piety. The real knowledge of God, if you like, does not happen only as we progressively ascend the levels of theological purity; it happens on the ground, in praise and worship and preaching and sacrament. There is no superior knowledge of God open to the theologian; just the same knowledge expressed conceptually.</p><p>3. It maintains that we do have real knowledge of God in himself, but that we approach this knowledge through God's revelation. I think this is key. In Torrance's stratified model, knowledge of God is not restricted to knowledge of the economy - that is to say, the work of God toward us in creation and redemption. Rather, <i>through the economy</i>, we are enabled to see and understand something of God's life in himself. God is not collapsed into his works, but neither is his life separated from his works. It is the fact that Christ himself is truly God as well as truly man which makes this connection possible. We see, as we reflect on Christ, the real inner life of God - the processions which stand behind the missions. But we are not encouraged to speculate about this; we are encouraged to learn about God where God has elected to teach us, in the face of Jesus Christ.</p><p>For these three reasons, and probably more, I think Torrance is helpful here, and I'd commend his scheme to anyone.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-89111913509497320782022-11-30T11:14:00.004+00:002022-11-30T11:14:32.005+00:00Theological science, with T.F. Torrance<p>T.F. Torrance sees theology as a science. This does not mean that theology proceeds by a method analagous to the natural sciences; for Torrance, the essence of a true science is that it allows the nature of the object being investigated to determine the method of investigation. A science is radically open to external, objective reality, to the point of allowing that reality to determine the very approach to knowledge. Theological science, for Torrance, is at one level similar to natural science - it approaches an objective reality and makes enquiry about it - but on another level utterly distinct from natural science - because the nature of the object investigated in theology is unique, and therefore the approach must be unique.</p><p>Torrance maintains that the object of theological science is primarily Jesus Christ, 'God in his revelation'. It is in Christ that God makes himself objective for us, in our human sphere, in our space and time and history. Theological science, then, must allow Christ to shape its investigations.</p><p>Theological knowledge, Torrance maintains, occurs at three levels; he is drawing here on the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi" target="_blank">Michael Polanyi</a>. At the most basic, but also most important, level, God is known in personal experience, through the believer's encounter with Christ and through the liturgical and ecclesial life. This knowledge of God is not conceptually refined, being rather lived than analysed, but it is profound - the person who encounters God in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is caught up in a deep, albeit implicit, knowledge of who God is. The focus here is Christ, and the awareness of genuinely seeing God in Christ.</p><p>Christ remains the focus at the second level. Here the believer's experience of Christ is analysed and clarified conceptually. For Torrance, the process of doctrinal development which culminated in the Counicll of Nicaea represents the paradigmatic move to the second level. Aware that in Christ she encounters God himself, the church moves to conceptualise this knowledge. The <i>homoousion</i> - the genuine identity in being between Christ and the Father - is central here. It allows a movement from an informal knowledge that God was at work in Christ to a conceptual understanding of the missions of the Son and the Spirit in the Triune work of redemption. That is to say, through the <i>homoousion</i> the believer is able to conceptualise the work of the economic Trinity clearly, and what was implicit in the experiential knowledge of the first stage is made explicit; an experiential knowledge of the Trinity becomes a doctrine of the Trinity.</p><p>At the third level, further conceptual clarification takes place. Once again, the <i>homoousion</i> is central and the person of Christ is the focus, but at this level we are driven to understand that it is not simply God in his relations to us that is revealed in Christ, but that if Christ is truly of one being with the Father then we are shown God <i>in himself. </i>The immanent life of God must be the ultimate foundation of God's work towards us; the processions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are revealed as the ontological ground of the missions in the work of redemption. A further clarification of our concepts occurs at this level, and indeed a simplification as we move through the <i>works</i> of God to consider their ultimate ground in the very <i>being</i> of God.</p><p>Two things are particularly critical for Torrance in this account. Firstly, Christ is central throughout. For Torrance, the <i>homoousion</i> is the central commitment of Christian metaphysics. It is through the genuine oneness of Christ with God the Father that we can be confident that our experience of Christ leads to true knowledge of the real God. We are not, in the Lord Jesus, having to do with a reality outside of God which may or may not point towards God, but with God himself in his revelation. It is because of the <i>homoousion</i> that we can move from the evangelical experience of God's presence and work in Christ to the conceptual clarity that is provided by the doctrine of the Trinity, both economic and ultimately immanent. The <i>homoousion</i> means that we are not speculatively reaching up toward God in our conceptual analysis, but we are (as genuine theological <i>scientists</i>) following the nature of the object presented to us.</p><p>Second, the three levels of theological knowledge strengthen and support one another. They are interrelated through Christ, who is central at every level. In particular, the 'higher' levels do not leave behind the pre-conceptual, doxological knowledge of God in Christ; in fact, this basic experiential Christianity remains the most important level of theological knowledge and the most profound. Whatever conceptual clarifications may take place, they cannot displace or undermine the life of faith and the implicit theology expressed in piety and worship. Perhaps we might say that whilst the third level provides the ultimate conceptual grounding for the other levels, there is a sense in which the first level provides the existential ground for the others. Ontologically, of course, the ground for all three is the Lord Jesus Christ in his reality as the revelation of God.</p><p><i>I want to unfold some of the implications of this approach in another post. If you want to dig into Torrance more in the meantime, this little sketch is heavily reliant on 'The stratification of knowledge in the thought of T.F. Torrance' by Benjamin Myers (Scottish Journal of Theology 61(1): 1-15).</i></p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-10015946572115228072022-11-09T09:27:00.002+00:002022-11-09T09:27:55.829+00:00Look to him<p>"We don't mainly mortify sin by looking at it... We suffocate sin by redirecting our gaze to Christ."</p><p>Thus Dane Ortlund, in <i>Deeper</i>, p 139.</p><p>It is a strange kind of fight we're in, the fight against sin. In pretty much every other war, the essential dictum is 'know your enemy'. There is something of that in the fight for holiness - <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+cor+2%3A11&version=CSB" target="_blank">we are not unaware of the devil's schemes</a> - but knowing our enemy is not going to take us to victory. Doing reconnaissance, getting to understand sin and our own dark hearts better, is not going to get us there.</p><p>The only thing that will bring victory over sin is looking to the Lord Jesus, gazing at him, seeing his beauty and glory and goodness, delighting in him.</p><p>This is a battle of loves. The problem with focussing on the enemy is that at some level, even as Christian believers, we love the enemy. There would be no temptation to sin if we did not love sin. But we do. All human beings love sin; in certain circumstances we also hate it, and as Christians that hate becomes a real and significant force in our lives by the Holy Spirit. But we still love sin.</p><p>So it is all well and good to assess what our chief idols are, or to pick up what false beliefs we might be holding. But those things won't make us holy. We fight the sin that we still love by seeing Jesus and loving him <i>more</i>.</p><p>Can I make a particular appeal to preachers and pastors? It is common to hear McCheyne quoted from the pulpit - "for every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ". Great, that's wisdom. But can I encourage you to look at your sermons, your counselling sessions, your Bible studies - is there ten times as much time going into describing and depicting and verbally delighting in the goodness and grace and glory and love of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus? Please, don't just set this as homework ('this week let's try to look at Jesus more') but actually devote sermon time to it. If we're meant to be looking at Jesus, show us Jesus.</p><p>And for those of us who are not preachers and pastors, think about what the main goal of your private devotions is - how much time is spent in just looking at Jesus? And how do we respond to our sin, whether temptation or actual failure - is it to look to Jesus?</p><p>Love elicits love, you see. Do you see the Lord Jesus, suffering the agony of the cross? Then you see love, deep love, love for sinners who hated him. When he prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him - that was love, the eternal love of God displayed in mercy and grace to his enemies. And you and I were just such enemies. We weren't there, but it was our sin that he bore. We can stand before the cross of Calvary and say with the apostle "the Son of God loved <i>me</i> and gave himself for <i>me</i>". We can sing of that love vast as an ocean, loving kindness like a flood - and know that it reaches <i>me</i>, even me. His love has no beginning - he is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the one who has always been devoted and committed to your good even at the cost of his life, at the cost of cross and hell - and his love will have no end, because the crucified One is risen and now lives to intercede for you before the Throne.</p><p>Let the love of the Lord Jesus for you draw out your own love for him. And then follow what you love, and that will suffocate sin.</p><p><br /></p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-2810025391672624992022-11-04T07:21:00.002+00:002022-11-04T07:21:16.574+00:00On death and Christmas parties, or How to inhabit timeThe office Christmas party - more likely in my experience to be the office meal out - is a standard fixture of December, and often the only occasion when colleagues will socialise together. I've been out of the office environment for a number of years, and this is one of the things I've really missed. But this year I've noticed that it doesn't seem to be really happening. I know people whose 'Christmas' meals have already happened; others who will delay having lunch together until January. The festive period is just too busy already, perhaps with work or perhaps just with the preparation for Christmas proper. So the office do gets moved, one direction or the other.<div><br /></div><div>At one level this is just perfectly sensible pragmatism, and it really doesn't matter at all. But on another level I wonder what it says about the way we view time. I think we are used to being able to rearrange time around ourselves. It doesn't suit me for it to be Christmas right now, so I'll move the date. This picture - the individual sovereign over time - really doesn't sit well with the biblical picture of time at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Consider the structure of the biblical account of time. The first creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:3 is built around the seven days of the week; it is a time focussed account of creation. (The second, in the rest of chapter 2, is space focussed. One of the reasons I think it is a mistake to try to harmonise them is the loss of these two crucial perspectives on created life). Time is given, according to Genesis, by God as the gracious framework for human life. That time is a gracious gift is underlined by the institution of the Sabbath, a day of holy rest, for worship and the enjoyment of God - not to be filled with the strivings or the pleasures of the individual, but to be entered into as a thing prepared by the Creator. The Sabbath gift shapes and defines the rest of the week.</div><div><br /></div><div>This pattern continues through the history of Israel. The weekly Sabbath, along with the annual festivals, define time as something which relates the history of the nation with God, and therefore as a means of living into the relationship established in that history. Israel is not to claim mastery over time, but to live in its God-given rhythms. It is only as <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut+28%3A67&version=CSB" target="_blank">part of the covenant curse</a> that the relationship with time becomes fraught and desperate.</div><div><br /></div><div>This matters for two reasons. Firstly, in a big picture theological sense, time is the created echo of God's own eternity - his gift to us to allow us, finite beings, to enjoy relationship and being-in-sequence, analagous to his own eternal Being and Trinitarian relationship. So to inhabit time properly matters. Time, with its proper structures, is to be received and entered into as a gift, not regarded as a resource to be infinitely manipulated for my convenience. Time is about knowing God and relating to him. The church, I think wisely, has followed the example set by the Lord for Israel and related time to salvation history through the calendar of fasts and feasts, and I see that as an important way to reflect this approach to time. It isn't necessary to do it this way, but it is important to do it <i>some</i> way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second, one day you will die. Time, you see, is not infinitely malleable. There is a date and a time marked in the calendar - not in <i>your</i> calendar, not on your personal timetable - when the last bit of time (as far as you are concerned, at least) will befall you. (The only way this will be avoided is if Christ returns first, in which case your last bit of time will be everyone's last bit of time; at least, time as we know it). Pretended sovereignty over time in the day to day of our lives does not prepare us well for the fact that we will one day hit an appointment we can't shift. It certainly doesn't prepare us to receive that appointment as coming from the hand of the gracious Lord of our time and all time.</div><div><br /></div><div>So anyway. Have your Christmas party as and when, I guess. But don't kid yourself that you are master of your time. It is a gift; enter into it with joy, and perhaps then you will leave it when you have to with contentment.</div>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-35433481779638778362022-11-01T09:09:00.004+00:002022-11-01T09:09:57.702+00:00Some disconnected thoughts on All Saints Day<p>1. I'm guessing not many people in my ecclesiastical neck of the woods will be celebrating All Saints Day, and there are good reasons for that. However, if we carefully observe that in biblical usage a 'saint' is not a believer of superior rank, but simply anyone who is sanctified (saint-ified) by union with the Lord Jesus through faith, that removes most of the theological objections. All Saints Day is a day to remember the believers who have gone before us.</p><p>2. In our day, there has been a lot of helpful pushback against talk of 'heaven' as the Christian's ultimate destiny, with the more biblical emphasis on 'new creation' coming to the fore. That is all to the good, but it would be a shame if in the recovery of the great Christian hope we lost something of the penultimate hope, which is to depart and be with Christ. It is true that we will not all sleep, and we cannot say whether we are the generation that will not die but will see Christ's return - but many of our brothers and sisters have slept, have gone to be with the Lord, and it's right that we bear in mind that they are safe in heaven.</p><p>3. It is a huge encouragement to know that there are those who now enjoy something of what we will one day rejoice in forever. It seems to me that the New Testament does not say that departed believers currently enjoy the vision of God which will captivate them for all eternity; there is a sense in which they cannot yet see the Lord as he is, because they are not wholly themselves - they await the resurrection at the Lord's appearing. They currently rest in peace; they will rise in glory. Like us, they do not yet know what they shall be. But what a blessing to be in the presence of the Lord, even if it means being away from the body! <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+84%3A10&version=NIVUK" target="_blank">Better to be a doorkeeper in the house of our God...</a></p><p>4. There is real and living fellowship between those who have gone before and those of us who still labour on earth. I don't think we have immediate access to the departed saints - I don't think we can or should pray to them, for example - but we have something in a sense more intimate than immediacy. We are joined to Christ, and they are joined to Christ. We are one body with them, united by the one Spirit. They pray and praise above, we pray and praise below, and it is all taken up in one great worship service, presented before God as the offering of the whole church in Jesus. When we gather we worship, we gather into their presence, because we gather to Christ and to the heavenly Zion.</p><p>5. All of this answers, with a firm and unsentimental reality, the dim groping after hope that we see in so much funeral mawkishness. They are not dead, but have simply gone nextdoor - that sort of thing. For the dead in Christ, how gloriously true it is that they are not really dead! How we can rejoice in their comfort and joy! In Christ they all live. Alleluia.</p>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30436844.post-19372874089096400942022-10-14T07:41:00.001+01:002022-10-14T07:41:29.826+01:00Some readingHere are some brief thoughts on three books I read recently - they're not particularly connected, except to say that they are all books which take things seriously, and I appreciated that. All three are good reads, and I'd recommend them to you.<div><br /></div><div>Firstly, and most substantially in terms of both volume size and intellectual depth, I got around to reading Carl Trueman's <i><a href="https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Rise-and-Triumph-of-the-Modern-Self-by-Carl-R-Trueman/9781433556333" target="_blank">The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self</a></i>. The book is itself a triumph, albeit a painful one. Here we get a reasonably detailed look at how the West got to be where it is today - framed by looking at how it came to pass that a statement like 'I am a man trapped in a woman's body' came to be taken as both serious and important, rather than considered to be nonsense, as it would have been until relatively recently. In short, Trueman shows how the self became psychologised (that is to say, my internal reality defines who I really am), the psychological became sexualised, and the sexual became politicised - broadly, those movements correspond to the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries in the intellectual history of the West. I found the analysis compelling, and I would say the book needs to be the starting point for any attempt to address, from a Christian perspective, the descent of our culture. Trueman only begins to hint at a potential answer t the question of what should be done, but there is material here to build on in the future.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second, a much briefer book: Mike Reeves' <i><a href="https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Gospel-People-by-Michael-Reeves/9781433572937" target="_blank">Gospel People</a></i>. Subtitled <i>A call for evangelical integrity,</i> this book falls into the genre of 'appeals to evangelicals to be more evangelical'. Against the backdrop of debates over whether the very term 'evangelical' has become too tarnished to be of use - especially given the political associations the term has picked up in the US - Reeves shows the theological priorities at the heart of historic evangelicalism and calls the church to return to its roots in the gospel. His summary of the heart of evangelical identity, in terms of theological markers, is very helpful, rooted as it is in the doctrine of the Trinity. The only disappointment in the book, for me, is that Reeves repeats the old Stott line about adhering to compromised denominations. I understand his point that evangelical unity is not primarily institutional but spiritual and doctrinal, but I can't understand why institutional expression of that unity should be so quickly dismissed as a desirable goal, nor why it should be okay for evangelicals, given their beliefs, to be institutionally bound up with heretics. But the reason that sticks out for me is that the rest of the book is so clear on gospel priorities. I commend it to you, particularly if you've been troubled about the future of evangelicalism as a movememt.</div><div><br /></div><div>Third, I've been reading <i><a href="https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Deeper-by-Dane-Calvin-Ortlund/9781433573996" target="_blank">Deeper</a></i> by Dane Ortlund. I'll be honest, I've not finished this one. I've had time, and it's a short book, but it does demand slow reading, and so that's what I've been giving it. The question of how we go deeper in the Christian life is perennially important, and from my perspective half-way through, this book is a good answer. It is by pressing into Christ, continually repenting of sin and looking to him, that we grow as believers. Our great need is not a technique, but the Lord Jesus himself. This one would be good for anyone, even or perhaps especially if you don't particularly feel the need for it at the moment.</div><div><br /></div><div>Take up and read!</div>Daniel Blanchehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15525641726889468099noreply@blogger.com0