Shiny Ginger Thoughts

Gender and stereotypes

2012-01-23T09:14:00.000Z

There was a story on the news this morning - I haven't been able to find an online version, although I haven't looked very hard - about a couple who decided not to let anyone beyond close family know the gender of their child until he was five years old. Their stated aim was to avoid the stereotyping which they feel often goes on. They didn't want their son forced to conform to the societal norms for little boys; they therefore elected to keep his gender under wraps until such time as his true character had begun to develop, independent of expectations related to gender. There have been more extreme stories than this floating around - I saw one recently about a couple who told nobody the gender of their child, and deliberately dressed him/her (I can't remember which) in clothes which would normally be associated with different genders on different days.

I think this is pretty seriously wrong, but also a little bit right.

It is wrong because gender is a given, in at least two senses. Firstly, gender is biologically given. We are gendered creatures, and it is not given to us to decide to which gender we ought to belong. It is true that there are people who do not seem to be clearly gendered physically, but I would suggest that this class forms the limit of human experience - to be taken seriously, to be treated with respect, but not to be used as a source of norms. The attempt to escape from all forms of 'given-ness' is a part of our society's carrying on of the Enlightenment quest for autonomy. (Another way this shows itself is the desire to be disembodied, something which we see in the preference for digital media over face to face interaction. I heard someone on the BBC a little while ago say that she thought that our vestigial attachment to being in the same physical place as someone would soon wither and die. I doubt it). For the Christian, of course, these 'givens' - embodiment, gender - are given by God, and therefore to be taken doubly seriously. If I am male, I am called by God to be male, and to seek to do otherwise is disobedience.

Secondly, gender is socially given. It is a false model of human existence to assume that I can construct my own identity apart from the norms and expectations of society. I am born as part of a family, in a specific geographical, temporal, and cultural context. Many of the most important things about me are decided by these 'givens'. To try to escape them altogether is to try to be less than fully human. Again, this is all about the quest for autonomy, and it relates to the first point. The societal norms surrounding gender are about the regulation and expression of the biological differences. To deny society a voice altogether is to deny the basic biological difference, and in the Christian framework to deny the Creator.

But these people are also a little bit right. Unlike the God-given biological differences, the societal norms surrounding these differences are open to critique. The expression of masculinity and femininity is not the same everywhere and at all times, nor need it be. Moreover, there are certainly aspects of these norms which inculcate wrong (sinful) attitudes and aspirations. Whilst we cannot completely discard society's norms, neither ought we to accept them uncritically. There is a real masculinity and femininity which can only be disregarded by disobeying God; the ways in which these are expressed in a particular culture will vary, and indeed there will and must be variation between individuals within a given culture.

It is this point which I think is often overlooked by evangelical Christians when they talk about gender. Particularly amongst our North American complementarian brethren, there is a tendency to assume that when God calls men to be men he calls them to be rugged, individualist, North American men. Well, perhaps he does, in that culture, but perhaps not. Taking social norms and enshrining them as the only way to express God-given differences seems pretty risky to me. Perhaps we need to be a bit more open; to accept that masculinity and femininity are there, to be embraced and enjoyed, as part of our God-given identity - but then to think carefully about the way in which we are accustomed to express those identities, and to engage critically with our culture.

Creation and Covenant

2012-01-16T09:18:00.000Z

I started reading the Church Dogmatics at volume III/1. I can't remember why; possibly I was looking for a doctrine of creation. I found one. Although I would probably recommend that people who want to tackle the Dogmatics begin at the beginning, if that doesn't appeal for whatever reason III/1 is a pretty good starting point, especially if you are coming from a more conservative evangelical background. Most of the volume is taken up with a theological exposition of Genesis 1 and 2, and the close proximity of the Biblical text provides a sense of security whilst you get used to Barth's theological method and literary style. Moreover, the volume is relatively slender, and if you don't quite get what is going on when Descartes makes an appearance at the end, it shouldn't mar your enjoyment of the rest.

The gist of Barth's doctrine of creation can be summed up in his two-fold definition of the relationship between creation and the covenant. Creation is the external basis of the covenant; the covenant is the internal basis of creation. It is perhaps helpful to think in terms of spheres. Creation is the outer sphere, which contains and provides a medium for everything within; the covenant is the internal sphere, which supports and provides a reason for the outer. This means that the doctrine of creation is always looking toward the developing covenant of grace for its justification. "There is no independent reason for the creature's existence and nature, no independent teleology of the creature introduced with its creation and made its own" (p94). Creation exists for the covenant. On the other hand, because it exists for the covenant, creation has real value, not in itself absolutely but in itself as the realm within which God makes himself known and works out his purposes.

Barth thinks the two creation accounts reflect these two emphases. In Genesis 1, the emphasis is on creation, culminating in the creation of man and the commencement of the covenant relationship with him; in Genesis 2, the emphasis is on the covenant, with man forming the centre and creation shaped around him as a suitable environment. For me, this is a helpful and illuminating way to reflect on these two texts, and it is of interest that it is the second text rather than the first, which develops the covenant theme more clearly, which is open-ended and leads into the rest of Biblical history.

This relationship between creation and covenant underpins Barth's doctrine of creation generally. When he speaks of providence, for example, he means God's control in that outer sphere of general human and cosmic history, which has meaning because and as it forms the external basis of his covenant dealings in the election of his people. In really practical terms, when it comes to application to work, Barth will not say (as many who hold to a 'common grace' position will) that work has value in itself, but that it has value in so far as it has a relation to the covenant, to one's existence as a Christian. Of course, to state the relationship between creation and covenant in this way leads Barth to make claims which will be problematic when it comes to living: for example, he can only maintain that there is value in non-Christian existence because of Christian existence. If that is offensive, and it is, I would suggest that it is only what Scripture itself maintains.

Barth's doctrine of creation is powerful, and I am not aware of another way of looking at the issue which so clearly shows that a) all is about Christ and b) all is God's.

Centred on Christ

2012-01-06T19:58:00.000Z

The Barmen Declaration was substantially drafted by Barth, and formed the rallying point for Protestant opposition to the German Christians in the 1930s. This confession is the evangelical response to Nazism, and at its heart is the following assertion:

"Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and death."

And with it the corollary negative statement:

"We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and alongside this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation."

The power of this statement against the attempted Nazi takeover of the Protestant churches of Germany is obvious. For Barth, however, this is not just a defensive statement. Throughout the Church Dogmatics, this is the one theme to which everything is related. Just as the apostles asserted that there is no other name in which salvation is found, so Barth insisted that there is no other name in which (normative) revelation is found. God is to be sought only in Jesus Christ, which concretely means only in the prophetic and apostolic testimony to Jesus Christ which makes up the Christian Scriptures.

Barth's insistence on this point led him to recast several major areas of theology. The doctrine of Scripture is shaped by it, since even Scripture itself must bow to the Lordship of Jesus - it is only the word of God in a secondary sense, and in so far as it bears God's authorised witness to his Son. The doctrine of election is broken down and remade around a Christological centre - Jesus is the elect one, and the reprobate one in our place. Theological anthropology takes as its text, not humanity in general or even as created, but the man Jesus Christ.

Incidentally, it baffles me that a theologian like John Frame could write that "...Barth and Bultmann argued that though God still exists, His activity cannot be identified in space and time, that it affects all places equally and none in particular. Thus, in effect, there is no revelation..." I wonder whether he has read any Barth.

Whilst Barth's opponents on the scholastic end of Reformed Protestantism derided him as some sort of Christomonist, Barth himself felt that this was the theological battle of the 20th Century (and since it has not yet been won, I suppose it will be the battle of the 21st Century as well) - where the Reformation-era church was called to fight for the sole efficacy of Christ's work in salvation against a creeping semi-Pelagianism, the modern church is called to fight for the sole efficacy of Christ's work in revelation against a creeping natural theology. The latter is, for Barth, always idolatry, and practically paves the way for the German Christians.

I love Barth for this emphasis. That is not to say it does not get him into trouble - not, I think, in the places evangelicals often assume he gets into trouble (Scripture, election) but in slightly more obscure places. His doctrine of angels and demons is radically different from that of the rest of the church, mainly because he refuses to interpret certain verses about fallen angels in what appears to be the straightforward way - for no other reason that this would seem to leave them somewhat unrelated to Christology. What is happening here is that we are losing the "as attested in Holy Scripture" part of Barmen, and assuming a Christ who does not quite fit that testimony. Nevertheless, this weakness is the flip-side of a tremendous strength, which leaves me feeling that reading Barth I am being pointed again and again, and in a much more direct way than in most other theological works of this complexity and size, to the Lord Jesus.

And for that, I am thankful.

Love for the Barth

2012-01-04T19:38:00.000Z

This morning at seven, after sitting up with a poorly child for three hours, I became a member of what is, I imagine, a fairly exclusive club. I turned over the last page of volume III/4, and there it was: I had read the whole of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics at least once (and some volumes two or three times). This has substantially occupied my brain for the last five years, and I dare say will continue to require investment of cognitive ability well into the future as I wrestle with what I've read. Over the next few days, I wanted to share a few of the things that make me love Barth, even when I disagree with him, and hopefully give any suspicious evangelicals a chance to rethink any lingering antipathy they may have towards the great man.

Today, just a brief thought: I love Barth because he does theology.

That may seem pretty obvious, but actually I think there is very little theology going on in evangelical circles much of the time. There is quite a lot of exegesis, and a substantial amount of Bible reading, but not much pushing beyond this to do theology proper. Barth does theology.

One of the things that you notice when you get into the Church Dogmatics for the first time is that, whilst Barth regularly offers Scriptural exegesis and Biblical argumentation, this is usually confined to the small print passages. (For those unfamiliar with Barth's opus, CD contains two font sizes; the larger gives the main flow, whilst the smaller gives the detailed argumentation, and often offers interesting insights into historical theology as Barth sees it). The method being used is clearly very different from that of the conservative evangelical 'systematic theology', which tends to begin each major point with a section, or multiple sections, of Scripture. Barth's text flows with ideas, and when it stops to add argumentation it feels like an excursus. Does this mean he is less 'Biblical'? For those who have been taught to consider him a holder of a very dubious doctrine of Scripture, this could be the logical conclusion.

In fact, Barth is thoroughly Biblical. But he is a theologian. He is working at one remove from the Biblical text, or if you like at a point between the Biblical text and the contemporary world, or perhaps more accurately at a point in the contemporary world where the Biblical text and its message can be heard. He is not trying to present 'what the Bible says', in the manner of a systematic theologian; he is trying to present what he has heard the Bible say - and that is different. And that is connected to Barth's insistence on theologia viatorum - theology always on the way, never having within its possession divine truth, but only human echoes of divine truth. Theologia viatorum is theology liberated not to try to say divine things, but to say the human things which God demands. And therefore it is theology than can improve on itself, that can listen again, and can try to say again what it must say in response to what it has heard.

Of course there are others beside Barth who pursue this method, but I first really saw it in him, and I love that about him.

Christian country?

2011-12-17T09:08:00.001Z

Apparently, Dave says we're a Christian country here in the UK, and shouldn't be ashamed to say so. I struggle to know quite what to make of that; in fact, I find myself somewhat torn between Nietzsche and the Church of England - which is such an odd thing to say that I guess it needs some explaining.

On the C of E side, I can see the benefit to society of being grounded in an ethical framework, and I can see that the only viable framework within our culture is, for historical reasons, the Christian one. I know people who are personally atheists, but made sure to send their children to a CofE school, because they perceived the importance of the broad Christian tradition in shaping British culture and values. I think this is broadly what Dave is saying: that Britain has been historically shaped by Christianity, and that we're fools to completely turn our backs on this heritage. Sure, I think.

On the Nietzsche side, I think there is something fundamentally ridiculous about trying to maintain some sort of 'Christian ethos' in the absence of faith in the Christian message and a life of discipleship. Thus the crazed prophet himself: "They are rid of God, and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency... Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole..." Real Christian ethics is not a generic morality, but a life shaped by the gospel and the command of God. How can it be applied in a sphere where the gospel is not trusted and the command is not heard?

There must be a better way to shape the values of public life within a broadly pluralistic society, other than building them out of the corpse of Christendom.

Revelation and Advent

2011-12-06T20:26:00.001Z

Some thoughts on the topic of revelation, disconnected because they are still forming in my brain:

1. In the NT, revelation is substantially an eschatological concept. In the Pastorals, the appearing of Jesus is a technical term for his return (1 Tim 6:14, 2 Tim 4:8, Titus 2:13 etc.); this echoes other Pauline (2 Thess 1:17) and Petrine (1 Pet 4:13) passages about Christ being revealed at the end. Fundamentally, revelation is a thing belonging to the new age which is not yet consummated. Therefore, the revelation of God is an especially appropriate subject for meditation in advent, and looking forward to seeing God is at the heart of advent devotion. 1 Peter 1:8 captures the theme - we have not seen him, but we love him, and therefore we wait to see him.

2. Revelation is an eschatological concept even when applied to the ministry of Jesus. The end of John's gospel captures this, when it talks about Jesus resurrection appearances (e.g. John 21:1). However, the concept is present earlier in the gospel narratives, especially at the transfiguration, which is a preview of the resurrection appearances. When we talk about Jesus revealing God, are we talking about the eschatological light - the glory of the God-man in the coming age - breaking into this age? Even those who saw Jesus did not necessarily encounter this sort of revelation, but many who did not physically see him have encountered it.

3. Revelation, then, is not a static thing. It is not something which is always there, but it is something which breaks through. It is the new story which starts in the middle of the old story.

4. Because revelation is the story of Jesus, it is right that our advent meditations look backward as well as forward. The light has begun to shine, the story has begun to be told. It makes sense that advent terminates in Christmas, every year asking the question: will we see him this year? But also knowing that whether we do or not, we can see him in the apostolic testimony to his life, death, and resurrection.

5. Jesus is uniquely revelatory, because he is the new story and the light in himself. For something to break through - for a light to shine in darkness - it has to come from without. God stepping in to creation would be - is - a new story in the midst of the old and a bright light in the darkness. This is about incarnation. It will not do to begin our understanding of revelation anywhere else. If there is light anywhere else, it is because it comes from this source; if the old story starts to show some hope and some glory, it has been invested with it by the new.

Economical with the truth

2011-11-30T07:06:00.001Z

I am not an economist, or the son of an economist, but I have spotted a few aggravating untruths which are being either assumed or actively preached in much of the current debate over the British economy. Rather than allow my annoyance to build up to levels where I am in danger of bursting every time I watch the news, I thought I'd vent here. Thanks for listening.

1. In the normal course of things, we can expect to get continually richer. This has left- and right-wing versions, although increasingly they sound pretty similar. The gist of both is that if only the other guys hadn't done something wrong - fiddled with the market, or failed to fiddle with the market - then the good ship capitalism would be sailing along quite happily providing more and more wealth to more and more people. This is twaddle. There is no guarantee that we will get richer - no "British promise".

2. There has been a catastrophic failure in the system, but we can fix it. The system hasn't failed. What we are going through is a painful market adjustment, which is what the market is meant to do. If something is over-valued, even if that thing is the whole of the British economy, then eventually the bubble will burst. This is the system working. Maybe we don't like the system - you're welcome to propose a better one - but let's not pretend that this is some sort of aberration. It is business as normal.

3. We are poor. No, we're not. In the grand scheme of things, I imagine everyone reading this is stupendously rich by global standards.

4. People in the public sector are paid less than people in the private sector. There is no evidence that this is true.

5. You have to allow people to be paid stupid sums of money or they will take their business overseas. There is no evidence that this is true.

6. The rich don't pay enough tax. Actually, the top 1% of earners pay a whopping 27% of all income tax.

7. We can have it all. No, we can't. If we live longer, we have to pay more. If we want more money, we have to work harder.

8. Wealth will make us happy. And that's the big one. The whole debate is predicated on the idea that becoming more wealthy is the goal. Theologically, this is the idolisation of money, but even putting this to one side it's pretty stupid, and yet utterly pervasive. Money won't make you happy and it won't fix our social ills.

Here endeth the rant. That feels much better.

Jesus in the OT

2011-11-10T07:27:00.000Z

Let's take it as axiomatic that the OT, as Christian Scripture, is about Jesus. Of course there will be those who dispute this, but let's assume it for the time being. The question then becomes: how do I see Jesus in the OT? I think you have two basic approaches, which I will call the one-step and two-step interpretations. The one-step interpretation goes straight to Jesus; the two step-interpretation stops off somewhere else along the way. The one-step approach sees Jesus as the immediate meaning of the OT; the two-step approach sees Jesus as the ultimate meaning of the OT.

To illustrate, imagine you have just read Psalm 1. You ask yourself: who is this blessed man? The one-step interpreter says - this is Jesus. This description could never match anyone but Jesus. And then they will usually draw a link straight in to Psalm 2 and make the anointed man in that Psalm equal the blessed man in the other, and both of them identified as Jesus. The two-step interpreter is more likely to read Psalm 1 as a wisdom Psalm - a text which establishes the categories of blessedness and wickedness, into which all people could broadly be allocated. And then they would make the second step, pointing out that Jesus is of course the ultimate fulfilment of what it means to be the blessed man, and that this Psalm which deals in general categories only finds its grounding in human reality through Christ.

Or another example - suppose you are reading the Song of Songs (it's Solomon's, you know). The one-step interpreter says that this whole Song is about the relationship between Christ and his church, and sets out to show how the details match up with that relationship. The two-step interpreter says that the Song is an (often highly erotic) love song, telling the story of the relationship between a man and a woman. And then they would make the second step, showing that marriage itself is a picture of Christ and the church, and therefore seeing Christ in the Song.

I've been back and forth on this, but I'm now pretty firmly in the two-step camp. Here are some reasons why:

1. One-step interpretation leaves us open to the charge that we are just making stuff up. If we end up saying stuff which anyone with a basic grasp of comprehension would be able to expose as 'reading in', I think we're in trouble. So, when Moses struck the rock he was really striking Jesus was he? Then why is there no indication of that in the text? Why do we have to explain (away) so much of the Song in order to make it about Christ, or resort to arbitrary allegorising?

2. One-step interpretation undermines the uniquely revelatory character of the incarnation. When Christ came into the world, so did light - see John 1. The implication of this, and numerous other parts of the Old and New Testaments, is that the OT is full of shadows, which the one-step interpreter wants to disperse prematurely.

3. One-step interpretation seems to want to make the Scripture about Christ by denying that the Universe is about Christ. This is a bit obscure, but it's clear to me from the treatment of the Song. Is marriage - all human marriage - ultimately about Christ and the church? The Apostle says it is. Well then, what is the difficulty with saying that the Song is about human marriage? It shouldn't undermine the Christological and gospel importance of the Song in any way, unless you have a sneaking doubt that marriage really is about Christ, and feel that there is some need to short circuit this.

There's more, but I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on those?

The Scriptures which speak

2011-11-08T07:17:00.000Z

It occurs to me that if the first part of Psalm 19 is about the speech of creation, the second part is about the speech of Scripture. This may seem more obvious (although it is less clear in the Psalm!) - but how often do we treat Scripture as if it were just an artefact upon which we can work our wonders of interpretation and exegesis? What difference would it make if we expected Scripture to be the locus of personal communication from God?

Again, the issue comes down to what we might call the epistemic stance which we take toward the world. Are we expecting to come face to face today with a world which is at the deepest level personal and therefore communicative? Or are we expecting to be the only subjects in a world of objects? Theologically, this latter seems to be an expression of a sinful mindset. If the world is empty of meaning until I arrive at it - if Scripture is just a text until I interpret it - then I am king in my own universe. And I can express that even as I come to read the Bible.

The universe presented to us in the gospel is charged with personality; the Scripture given to us is filled with living communication. Are you listening?

The stars that speak

2011-11-07T07:17:00.001Z

The heavens declare the glory of God,
   and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
   and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
   whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
   and their words to the end of the world.

Thus Psalm 19.

I think there are two basic models for understanding this sort of text. On the one hand, there is the model which sees creation as a brute fact - something that is just there - from which it can be inferred that there is a God, and that he is glorious. This approach leads to cosmological and teleological arguments. On the other hand, there is the model which sees creation as communicative, as something that speaks and sings the glory of God. This approach leads to less arguments, and more mysticism.

It seems to me that Psalm 19 very definitely presents the latter approach to creation. The creation is not dumb, but speaks.

Our post-Enlightenment worldview does not prepare us well for this. We are expecting to be subjects approaching a world make up of objects. We are the active ones, and everything else is meant to be more or less passive. But this subject-object epistemology breaks down when faced with the communicative power of creation. Creation speaks - not of its own resources, but God speaks through it. We live in an inter-subjective universe; we are always in the presence of the word of another Person.

In practice, that means less arguments from creation and more marvelling at creation. It means that the feeling of wonder at the night sky matters, perhaps more than all the evidence of God that can be culled from philosophy. There is no getting away from the voice of God.

A/theism

2011-11-02T07:20:00.001Z

I find atheism pretty tempting at times.

This isn't because it is particularly attractive to me, or because I find atheism a particularly cogent intellectual position. I just find it inexplicably tempting. It's encouraging to me that Luther had similar temptations. Anyway, this is a reflection based on the time I've spent on the border between atheism and Christianity.

The main thing that baffles me about most avowed atheists these days is how easy they seem to find it. Unlike the earlier atheists - Nietzsche, the existentialists - there doesn't seem to be any struggle involved in their atheism. It makes me wonder if they get it. What could be more terrifying that being alone in a meaningless universe? How can anyone live with the burden of being their own god - deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong, forced to invest that meaningless universe with meaning conjured up from your own mind? Shouldn't there at least be a struggle?

Having said that, sometimes I look back into Christian territory, and wonder at the ease with which some people put their faith in God. Maybe it is a gift, but it eludes and confuses me. I see so much that seems to speak against God's existence, so much that raises doubts. Even the clearest revelation of God in history involves a cross; every light seems to be shrouded in darkness. Shouldn't faith also be a struggle? And what would it mean to live in a world in which I am not of ultimate significance - where I don't get to decide what life is all about? Isn't it terrifying to be in a universe that belongs to God, where everything is weighed down with value?

To despoil a phrase of the Duke of Wellington's, there can be nothing half so terrifying as a God who exists, unless it be a God who does not.

Jesus and the Bible

2011-11-01T07:10:00.001Z

"So much as we know of Christ, his sufferings, and his glory, so much do we understand of the Scripture, and no more."

Thus John Owen, in his meditations on the glory of Christ (Works I, p 343).

What would this mean for our reading of the Bible, if we took it seriously? What about our preaching? Our systematic theology?

The Empty Chair

2011-10-24T21:23:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, the philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig will give a lecture critiquing Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. Apparently there will be an empty chair present. This symbolises the fact that Prof Dawkins was invited to turn this lecture into a debate, and declined. Foes of Dawkins have made much of this, including an amusing but somewhat triumphalistic bus campaign.

I have some thoughts, naturally.

Firstly, if I were Dawkins I would certainly have turned down this invitation. If Dawkins debated Craig, he would lose, badly. It may well be humiliating. And it would mean nothing at all, in terms of the substantive issues. Craig is a very good debater; he thinks on his feet, exudes confidence, and runs rings around most other people. But that doesn't make him right. The debate format would hardly be likely to be helpful, if by helpful we mean allowing people to investigate the question of whether God does or does not exist. It would be a tribal exercise. And on that note, it is worth mentioning that even if Dawkins stood his ground it would just mean that both tribes had something to celebrate - I doubt anyone would change their minds. I remember reading a couple of different write-ups of a debate between Prof Dawkins and John Lennox, and surprisingly enough the atheist thought Dawkins won and the Christian thought Lennox humiliated him. Pointless exercise.

Secondly, any debate about the existence of God is likely to be useless at a deeper level. These sorts of debates are almost inevitably about theism, a concept in which the Bible has no interest. They also tend to revolve around philosophical arguments, whereas the Scriptural evidence for God's existence is historical rather than philosophical and testimonial rather than argumentative. I don't think there are any good philosophical arguments for God, but even if there were, what use would it be to demonstrate theism in this way - in a way which is so different to the method which God uses to demonstrate himself?

Thirdly - and this is my real point - the motivation behind this event is shown by the reaction of those on the Christian side. This could be characterised as triumphalism, smugness, and crowing. It depresses me. People seem to have remembered that atheism is a travesty, and forgotten that it is a tragedy. They seem to have remembered that God triumphs, and forgotten that he does it through the cross. They seem to have remembered that God's people get glory, and forgotten that they get it by being faithful unto death. Where is the humility? Where is the pain over the atheists' ultimate fate?

Anyway, since I've now sounded off in a self-righteous manner, I'm off.

Israel and Israel (and Israel)

2011-09-20T07:52:00.000+01:00

Recently I have been led to think a bit more deeply about Israel. As most of you will know, I have in the past (and, let's face it, the present) got pretty grumpy about Zionism. That is not likely to change. But as we recited on Sunday evening one of the Psalms, and sang about Zion, it got me thinking - partly about what the muslim in the room made of it all(!), but partly also about what I think about Israel. My conclusion is that I do not have thoughts about Israel, per se, but about Israels, plural.

The basis for this way of thinking can be found in the OT, but is summarised neatly by Paul in Romans 9: "not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel". This is simply a reflection on the writings of the prophets. There has always been a distinction within Israel, between those who bear that name simply because of their natural descent, and those who belong through their faith. The latter are generally presented in the OT as a minority, and in the later OT as a remnant - the left-overs of Israel. What is clear throughout the OT is that, although this distinction can be drawn, Israel also in some sense stands together. The faithful remnant is not exempt from the suffering of the nation more broadly; and in fact the nation as a whole is preserved for the sake of the remnant.

It is never going to be PC to trace out Paul's development of this thought, but let's not allow that to concern us. For Paul, the coming of the Messiah has brought this division into the open. There is now, just as there has always been, "a remnant, chosen by grace" (Rom 11:5). Paul sees himself as evidence of this remnant, which is defined by faith in Christ. There is not, for Paul, any idea of a faithful Israel without faith in Jesus. He is the dividing line. What is more, that dividing line is now extended from within the nation of Israel out into the world. Gentiles who believe are incorporated into faithful Israel; those who do not believe are shown to be on the outside. (This does not class them with unbelieving Israel, which remains a special case - see below).

This is not, then, 'replacement' theology - it is not a Jewish nation being replaced by a Gentile church. I doubt anyone has ever really believed or taught this. For Paul, and the NT generally, the church stands in continuity with faithful Israel - direct continuity in the case of Jewish Christians, indirect (and therefore all the more incredible and providing all the more evidence of grace) in the case of Gentile Christians.

What about the rest of Israel? Well, God's calling and election are irrevocable; their faithlessness cannot overturn God's faithfulness. Therefore, Paul envisages a future in which the nation of Israel will be shown mercy, and will come to faith. We still await that future. In the meantime, we are faced with Israel and Israel; we, the church, cannot be ashamed to call ourselves Israel - it would be a denial of Christ if we were. But we also cannot be ashamed of the other Israel, the people of Israel, with whom we are inextricably linked.

And then there is the state of Israel. How does that legal entity fit in? I can't say 'nowhere', because doubtless in his providence God has a plan for that state. It will serve his purposes for his people - those who are gathered into the church and those who are currently outside it. Nevertheless, the state of Israel is not Israel in either of the Biblical senses, and to apply the promises of God to this state is to sell out Christian birthright. From where I stand, the main position which Christians should take vis a vis the state of Israel is constructive criticism - sometimes even outright opposition, based on the flouting of international law which has characterised Israeli policy for decades. This does not affect, and should not be affected by, our identity as Israel (the church), or our identity with Israel (the people).

Truth versus reality

2011-09-14T07:05:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking recently about church life, and about my own life, and having - once again - that sense that something important is missing in both. It's a recurrent feeling, and one that I find personally encouraging; past experience tells me that often this sense of something missing precedes a period of spiritual growth. I suppose it is like the abnormal hunger that goes hand-in-hand with a growth spurt.

But what are we missing, I wonder? What is it that keeps us from being what we should be?

Increasingly I've become convinced that the problem is the gap between truth and reality. On the one hand, we line up all the things which we know to be true - all the great truths of the gospel. And I think we genuinely believe them, at some level. We genuinely seek to let them shape our lives. But we don't seem to see them worked out in our day to day lives. What we know to be true, and what we see to be real, don't seem to match up.

So we know that the gospel frees from sin and gives us power against temptation - but we still sin, and we still see sins in the Christian community which are appalling. We know that the gospel brings unity - but we look around at an increasingly fractured church scene and wonder what's going on. We know that the gospel brings new identity - but we still wonder who we really are. We know that the gospel brings peace - but we still itch with restlessness. Perhaps above all, and most troubling, we know that the gospel saves - but we don't see many baptisms these days.

What is to be done?

The thing is, we can't bring the reality. We can re-examine our truth, make sure it is true truth, make sure we have really understood it. But only God brings the reality.

What does it look like for us to wait patiently for the Lord?

Ebenezer

2011-09-13T07:44:00.001+01:00

Last weekend I turned 30. For reasons which I can't quite put my finger on, that feels like a significant age. Perhaps it is just because my biological age is starting to catch up with my internal age - as one friend put it, I've always been old, but at least now I (am beginning to) have an excuse. Whatever the reason, it feels like completing three decades of life is a good time to stop and reflect a little, and also to look back and express some gratitude; a good time to raise an Ebenezer. So, for the record, here are some things for which I am thankful.

I am thankful that I grew up in a family where love and forgiveness were on display. Sometimes it might be tempting to think that it would be nice if less forgiveness were called for; but I would rather have imperfection and forgiveness. Human love and human forgiveness are a pale reflection of God's love and forgiveness, but a reflection nevertheless, and should be valued and loved for that. Most of all, I am thankful that I grew up in a family where the gospel of Jesus was not just true but real - not just professed, but lived. I learnt priorities there, and they have stood me in good stead.

I am thankful that God allowed me to wander from him for some years as a younger teenager. That might seem strange, but at some point I needed to see what life on the run from him was like. I wouldn't go back to it now.

I am enormously thankful that at the end of that period, in my later teens, God called me to himself. I am astonished at his persistence with me. I remember the breaking point, where I was had to surrender to him, and then the realisation that this brokenness was healing.

I am thankful that as a teenager I met the girl I would marry; I am grateful that she worked out that we should be married, because I knew it almost straight away.

I am thankful for my time at University, for the education I got there, for the friends I made, and also for the opportunities I had to get involved in ministry.

I am thankful for a hard year as a Relay worker, and for the tears that God pressed out of me in ministry. I am grateful for the mistakes that I made there, which taught me so much for the future. I am grateful for surviving and growing, and I am grateful for the friends who helped me.

I am thankful for my time working with Christian Unions in Oxford and High Wycombe. What a joy to be involved in the lives of God's people at such a critical time, and what a privilege to be with them doing his work. Sometimes I bump into people I know from the CUs I worked with, and it is always fantastic to see them going on.

I am thankful for the four Relay workers I supervised during those years. I feel something akin to parental pride - illegitimate, considering how small a part in played in their lives, but there nevertheless - when I think of all of them and the things they are doing and will go on to do.

I am thankful for God's provision since I left UCCF. We have never known in advance that we would have enough, but we have always been covered. God is dependable. We have had the money we needed, and now I have the job we need to enable us to stay in Oxford and serve the Lord Jesus here.

I am thankful for seven years of blessed marriage, and the arrival of Rufus six months ago. God has entrusted precious things to me; I pray he makes me faithful in caring for them.

I am thankful that the future is in God's hands, and that he will walk with me into it, standing always between me and danger, and leading me into my eternal home.

Here I raise my Ebenezer; here by thy great help I've come.

Barth on Baptism

2011-09-07T07:40:00.000+01:00

To completely change the subject (although I may come back to the Law/Gospel stuff in a bit), a couple of weeks ago I finished reading Church Dogmatics IV/4. For those keeping score, that leaves me with just one volume I haven't read at least once (III/4), but I'm taking a little break from Barth and heading back into Owen for a while before I tackle that one.

Anyway...

IV/4 isn't really IV/4. That is to say, it's not the next bit of CD after IV/3. Rather, it is the bit which Barth had written before he realised that he was never going to finish. He consequently prepared this bit for publication separately, and it stands alone pretty well. It contains Barth's doctrine of baptism, and it is (to my mind) intriguing and controversial.

The book is split into two uneven parts. The first, shorter, part deals with baptism in the Spirit. This is the answer to the question 'how does the objective truth of reconciliation to God in Christ become subjectively real for me?' - a hugely important question at all times, and especially I would suggest in our time. Barth's answer is typically Reformed, with all the stress being on God's initiative. One emphasis which perhaps does not come across so much in other Reformed writers is the freedom of the human being who is baptised with the Spirit - not freedom to accept or reject this baptism, but freedom as a result of this baptism. By the power of the Spirit, a person is set free to walk in the way of faith in Christ. That means they are not free to do anything else, because for Barth freedom is not libertarian freedom; it is freedom to serve and trust God.

In the longer second part Barth deals with water baptism. He builds on the understanding of freedom in the first part to argue that baptism in water is the first free act of the newly freed man. It is requested from the Christian community, which administers it because it is called to do so by Christ. In so doing, the community recognises the baptised as a fellow Christian, and the baptised acknowledges the community. They commit to standing in solidarity of witness.

What is perhaps most controversial about Barth's account is his insistence that nothing sacramental occurs in water baptism. In the face of almost all church teaching through the ages, Barth argues against the idea that there are two subjects in baptism - the community which baptises, and God who acts sacramentally through the community's action. Baptism in water is, for Barth, a wholly human action, a response to the freeing presence and action of God the Holy Spirit. Partly this is driven by Barth's theological concerns - for the freedom of God, who is not bound to the community's actions, and for the freedom of the Christian, who is set on the path of obedience by the Spirit - but it is also backed by a lot of exegetical work. Barth asks the question: 'where in Scripture is baptism described in a way which implies a sacramental understanding?' - and finds no evidence to support this understanding. (To be more precise, he finds passages that could be construed in a sacramental way, but others which point decisively against it). I was also intrigued - and this is a challenge to my own previous thought - that Barth traces Christian baptism primarily back to Christ's baptism in the Jordan, making this the interpretive key for the whole doctrine.

Barth's doctrine, which deserves to be much more fully expounded than the hints I have given here, leads him to reject infant baptism, with a series of entertaining and incisive arguments which I recommend any of my paedobaptist brethren to take a look at - although doubtless they will not be persuasive if you don't buy into his whole picture. Predictably, I rather enjoyed this section.

So, here's my question - where does the idea of a sacrament come from, Biblically speaking? I am on the verge of saying, with Barth, that the only sacrament - understood as a divine action accompanying/underlying a human action - is Jesus Christ himself. Would I be catastrophically wrong to say so?

Jesus the Judge

2011-08-31T07:45:00.000+01:00

One profitable way to read John's gospel is as a lawsuit. In sending his Son, God prosecutes the world, beginning with his own people. The unfolding story of the gospel is the story of a sharp division, which is brought to light by (caused by?) the presence of God's Christ. This could be unpacked at length, but for now I just want to point you to John 3:16-21.

A few things:
v16. Jesus was sent to save the world, at great cost to himself. Of course, John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible, and the basic concept is very familiar. But it is useful, devotionally and theologically, to be reminded of it. The reason Jesus came into the world was to save the world.
v17. This is explicitly contrasted with condemnation, for which Jesus did not come into the world. The condemnation of the world was no part of the goal of Jesus' sending, which was aimed wholly at the salvation of the world through him.
v18. Nevertheless, the result of Jesus' coming is a division. Those who trust in him are not condemned; those who do not are shown to be "condemned already". Is this the bringing to light of a pre-existing condemnation? Not quite, because the reason for the condemnation is explicitly that they have not trusted Jesus. He is the dividing line.
v19-20. The rejection of Jesus is in line with people's prior behaviour - having always loved the darkness, they hate the manifestation of pure light which draws near in Christ. Desiring to continue in evil deeds, they retreat from the light.
v21. Those who do not retreat, but who come into the light, show in so doing that they are drawn by God, and that their good deeds are to be attributed only to his working.

So, Jesus' coming is all gospel, and Jesus' presence is all light - no alien God, no hidden God, in this passage. Jesus Christ is pure saving revelation of the one good God. He divides the world, not by turning towards one part in love and another in rejection, or by showing one part his gospel face and another part his law face. He divides the world by being the gospel - by loving with an everlasting love, and going to Calvary.

Reflections on Riots

2011-08-10T07:49:00.000+01:00

Just a few thoughts, from a Christian perspective, as I try to process what's going on.

1. I need to beware my instinct to look for some fundamental difference between me and the people who are out on the streets. I would love nothing more than to be able to say 'I am not like them', and of course there are significant differences - but if there are any ultimate differences they are based on Christ and not my own natural character. Suppose the looting and rioting to be driven by the basest motives - anger, greed, envy: are those things absent from my heart?

2. Seeing God's providential hand behind all the events, one has to ask 'what is being said to us?' Surely a wake-up call to a society which has assumed that it is affluent and secure, and can get by well enough without God and without any value system.

3. We must say at one and the same time 'the sin of individuals has caused this' and 'the sin of society has caused this'. Therefore, we must insist on the one hand that individuals be punished, and that society examine itself to see what systemic failings have contributed to these actions. Ed Miliband seems to me to have been clearest about this on the political side.

4. We must preach gospel-with-law, not just law. Only Jesus provides the meaningful narrative within which these people (and all people) must live their lives, and he offers transformation and a call to a better life. This is true of everyone regardless of background - nobody's background means they don't need it, nobody's background means they're too far gone for it.

5. Might it not be the case that creating a society with a massive sense of entitlement, and then creating a situation in which certain groups of people have very little, would inevitably lead to conflict? We need to address not just the deprivation, but also the expectation that the world revolves around you and you have a right to do and have whatever you want.

More thought needed.

The problem of Galatians

2011-07-19T19:22:00.000+01:00

Galatians is not the place to go to if you want to get a full-orbed understanding of Paul's view of the Law of Moses. It is, I think, an angular book, with lots of sharp edges. Any attempt to fit it into a systematic framework seems to fail - I have taught through it five or six times now, and every time I think I have it sorted I notice another corner poking out through a tear in my systematic theology. Over time, I've decided I'm okay with it. The purpose of Galatians is not, I think, to teach systematically about the relationship between Law and Gospel, but to burst through all our thinking and disrupt it - just as the Gospel itself bursts through all our human activity and disrupts it.

I think Galatians is primarily about cutting through one particular understanding of the relationship between human and divine activity. The link that the Apostle wants to sever is the one leading from human action to righteousness in the sight of God - where that righteousness is understood to include not only legal justification, but also the right relationship with God and with his covenant community that such justification entails. In Paul's world, the most obvious and most aggressively supported form of this link from human action to righteousness is the Law of Moses. The Gentile Galatians are being urged to accept it. Paul, I think, advances two arguments to explain why Gentile Christians should not adopt the Law of Moses:

1. An argument about the function the Law always served. The issue in Galatia seems to be that the Christians are being tempted to believe that they must pursue the Law of Moses in order to be righteous. This expresses itself in table fellowship - incidentally showing how corporate and communal the concept of righteousness in the NT, against our individualistic understanding. Elsewhere, Paul makes it clear that observance or non-observance of the Law of Moses is irrelevant - he is indifferent as to whether you observe or not. Only you must not make the Law a matter of righteousness, because to do so is to confuse the Law with the Gospel. Righteousness comes by faith in Christ - Christ as promised, for those who lived before his advent; Christ as present for those of us who live after his incarnation. The Law never was meant to bring this righteousness.

2. An eschatological argument. To adopt the Law now is particularly perverse, because the Law of Moses had a time-limited role. It was about keeping Israel looking forward to the Messiah, to bind them closely to the promise. Paul's argument here is complex, and there are parts which I think no-one understands, but the basic point is simple - the role of the Law was to keep the heir looking forward to the inheritance, which is now given in Christ. The Law is therefore passe. It will not do, incidentally, to try to find some part of the Law which is not subject to this argument - either by dividing it into ceremonial, civil, and moral or by any other means. The Law is in the past; Christ is the present and the future.

All well and good, and this seems to suit the Lutheran positioning of the Law very well - the Law comes first and prepares the way for the Gospel. Except for two things. The first is Paul's insistence that the Gospel came first in time. This is clearly very significant for Paul's argument, because it shows that the Gospel was always the point of the Law - the former did not replace the latter, because it came before it and always underpinned it. (One is reminded of John the Baptist - he is before me (in rank) because he was before me (in time) - Paul's argument is formally similar).

The other thing is that when it comes to positive instruction about the shape of the Christian life, Paul is happy to quote the Law of Moses. Is he saying that Christians are, in fact, bound to keep the law of Moses? Absolutely not. But he is pointing to the fact that the Christian life is not one of shapeless freedom. It is one of fulfilling the Law of Christ.

I submit, then - with the reservations that must follow from my first paragraph - that Galatians breaks the link that moves from human activity (according to the Law) to righteousness in order to forge a link that moves from righteousness to human activity (according to the Law, although not that of Moses). And this, I contend, is the pattern of all Scripture.

Under the law of Christ

2011-07-12T07:36:00.000+01:00

When Paul describes his evangelistic strategy in 1 Corinthians 9, one of the things he is keen to point out is his flexibility with regard to the Jewish Law. He is content to keep it, if doing so will win a wider audience for the gospel; and he is content to ignore it, if that is the best way to get a hearing for the good news. However, he is very clear that he is essentially free from the Law of Moses - "To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the Law I became as one under the Law (though not being myself under the Law) that I might win those under the Law". I take it that the second sentence is just an amplification and explanation of the first - to win Jews, who are or at least regard themselves as being under the Law, Paul, who is not under that Law, acts as if he were under it.

This is remarkable enough in itself, given the faultless legal obedience of which the apostle feels able to speak elsewhere. It shows how completely Paul's outlook has changed with his conversion.

But to understand the direction in which it has changed, we need to read on. "To those outside the Law, I became as one outside the Law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ)..." Paul has not become lawless in his conversion. Rather, he has moved from the domain of the Law of Moses into the domain of the Law of Christ. The latter is, of course, different in many ways - it is not codified but based on the gospel, it is not a burden but based on the completed work of Christ - but still, it absolutely claims Paul. In fact, his very chameleon like quality as an evangelist is an outworking of that Law of Christ - he must serve as Christ served, and he must take the gospel out to all because that is simply the logic of the good news.

Law in Deuteronomy

2011-07-08T07:49:00.000+01:00

Not long after I was baptised, my Pastor at the time advised me to get stuck in to the book of Deuteronomy, on the grounds that this book is the key to the OT. Great advice. Since then I've spent a lot of time in this foundational charter of the life of Israel. This covenant document explains the history of Israel and underpins the prophetic critiques and warnings of Israel's national life. So what does Deuteronomy have to say about the Law?

1. The relationship between Yahweh and Israel is not fundamentally based on Law. The historical preamble to the covenant (chapters 1 to 3) makes it clear that if this were the case Israel would be doomed - it is a sorry history of rebellion, focussed on the idolatry committed at the very foot of Horeb. That Israel's entry into covenant with Yahweh is in fact based on a unilateral elective action of God is made clear in, for example, Deut 7:6-11 and Deut 9:4-12. This is good news for Israel, because it extends hope for restoration after the prophesied exile which will follow their neglect of the Law - Deut 30:1-10.

2. The Law which is given to Israel is good for them. In Deut 8:1-10, for example, a description of the blessing which Yahweh has showered on Israel in the wilderness, and which he will multiply to them in the land, is intermingled with the a description of the Law. The Law will be the foundation of Israel's reputation for greatness and wisdom amongst the nations - Deut 4:6-8. Moreover, the keeping of the Law is repeatedly associated with rejoicing, for example the giving of the tithe.

3. Israel can keep the Law. When Moses says 'What does Yahweh require of you..?' and proceeds to list a series of things including keeping all the statutes and commandments of the Law (Deut 10:12-13), it is clear from the context that we are meant to think that this is only the minimum which ought to follow from the goodness of God which has been recounted in previous chapters. By the time we get to chapter 30, Moses is able to say "this commandment is not too hard for you". Nothing too difficult has been asked of Israel. They can keep this Law, and moreover it makes no sense for them not to do so - it flows logically from the grace they have been shown in the past, and carries with it promises of future blessing.

4. Israel will not keep the Law. Moses' last recorded words are a blessing on the tribes of Israel; but before this he has seen into their future, and given them a song which predicts their future apostasy. Indeed, Moses knows that after his death Israel "will do what is evil in the sight of Yahweh" (Deut 31:24-29). Why? Not because the Law is too hard for them, but because their hearts are not right - they have not yet been given a heart to obey (Deut 29:4). This is a promise for the future (Deut 30:6), after the exile. A time is envisaged when Israel will be changed and will keep the Law.

As well as helping us to understand the OT, isn't this important for our understanding of the NT?

Gospel, Law and the structure of Biblical narrative

2011-07-06T19:31:00.000+01:00

I think we sometimes (often?) get the relationship between the Biblical narrative and our systematic theology quite badly wrong. I suspect that our forebears were even worse at it than us. We often assume that systematic theology must embody 'timeless truth'; narrative by definition is not timeless. We also often assume that systematic theology takes priority over Biblical narrative; that means that we read the latter through the former more often than not. I think something like this is going on when people say that the Law takes priority over the Gospel - whether they mean that temporally, logically, or evangelistically.

I would argue that close attention to the Biblical storyline indicates that Gospel always comes first.

Let's take as our main exhibit the foundational narrative of the OT, the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to Canaan. It seems pretty clear from the narrative that there is no Law involved in the initial Exodus. The people cry to Yahweh, who hears and rescues. There is no record that they have to do anything to secure their rescue. As they head out of Egypt (and my mind goes to the rather dramatic scene in The Ten Commandments) all they can do is rejoice that God has delivered them. However, it is equally clear that their rescue was not without a purpose. Israel was being delivered from slavery in Egypt in order to serve Yahweh (thus Exodus 3:12, 7:16 etc). So Sinai is the logical destination, the place to go after the Exodus. Once you get there, of course you get the Law - Israel was not being set free in order to wander aimlessly, but in order to receive a new and infinitely better Master.

The point is, structure-wise, it is Gospel, then Law.

That basic structure is repeated throughout Scripture. I think the first example is creation itself, which is certainly presented as a Gospel, and certainly has a Law which follows it. And I am sure it is significant that when you step out of the realm of narrative, into, for example, the Pauline epistles, you so regularly have a structure of Gospel first, followed by instruction. (I will argue at some point that Biblically this instruction is Law - but not in this post). Not only is this clear structurally, but it makes sense of the relationship between Gospel and Law which is described in the OT - but more on this at a later date.

If at this point you're thinking either 'I'm not sure you can make this sort of doctrinal point from the shape of narrative' or 'but in the grand scheme of things, doesn't the Law of Moses come before the Gospel of Christ in the Bible?' - let me just point you to Paul's argument in Romans 4:9-12 and Galatians 3:15-18. Paul makes a great deal of the order of events, and argues explicitly that the Gospel was preached to Abraham centuries before the Law of Moses was promulgated.

The storyline of the Bible is Gospel first, then Law. What impact should that have on our doctrine?

Gospel and Law

2011-06-28T20:15:00.000+01:00

In response to a few comments on an earlier post, I've been seeking to clarify my own thinking on the subject of the relationship between the law and the gospel - a subject which has seen much ink spilt over the years, and which sits on one of the major faultlines of historic Protestantism (the divide between Lutherans and the Reformed). As I've thought about it, I've found that I have surprisingly strong opinions on the subject, which I think can be summarised under four headings:

1. Gospel always comes logically before Law.
2. The essence of Law is God's claim of a human being for his service.
3. The NT uses 'Law' equivocally, that is, to describe different though related things.
4. Law understood properly is Gospel.

I intend to write a little about each of those things over the next few days (or weeks, depending on how busy I am). Let me just say something here about why it matters.

Our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects our view of Christian obedience. What does it mean to live the Christian life? This is true not only in the small points (how does the detail of the Law of Moses apply to us today?) but in the big points (what does obedience look like? To what extent are God's demands codified and objective - and to what extent individual and subjective? What is to be my motivation?).

Our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects our view of evangelism. Does the Law, by laying out God's standard and highlighting our imperfection, prepare the way for the Gospel? Should we therefore preach Law in our evangelism? When we offer the Gospel, how freely can we offer it? Does it entail the Law following on, and must we tell people so in advance?

Our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects our reading of the OT. What is the OT about? Is it primarily a record of a legal covenant, pointing forward to the Gospel? Or is there more to it? How should we expound and apply it, in detail and in the big picture? To what extent does the OT/NT distinction mirror the Law/Gospel distinction?

Finally, and to my mind most importantly, our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects the way in which we understand the heart of theology. There is a central question: has God revealed himself in one way, or two ways? If the latter, which is the real God? If the former, how are we to understand the distinctions within that one revelation? What, ultimately, is the relation of the concepts 'Gospel' and 'Law' to the person Jesus Christ?

Meandering thoughts on all the above to follow shortly...

Not left as orphans

2011-06-12T09:18:00.000+01:00

Sometimes my mind wanders, and I start to wonder exactly what it must have been like on the Saturday after Jesus was crucified. Some pretty weird stuff had accompanied his death. I imagine many people in the vicinity of Jerusalem were a bit shaken up. But for Jesus' disciples, there must have been devastating sadness: their Master has been taken away (as had been predicted of him, if only they could have seen it). No wonder that when Jesus appeared on the Sunday they disbelieved for joy. But again, this is only what he had told them. His resurrection showed that he had gone victoriously through death and had returned to proclaim his triumph - first of all to the disciples, but through them to the whole world.

Jesus came back to us.

I also sometimes wonder what it must have been like after Jesus ascended into heaven. I wonder whether some of the disciples weren't tempted to question whether perhaps everything would just go back to being the way it was. Perhaps the death and resurrection of Jesus were important events, but not world changing events. Maybe they had some sort of deep significance, but they were ultimately one off things that could not be expected to have an effect on the whole of their own lives, let alone the lives of people who were geographically and historically distant. Then Pentecost came. The Spirit was poured out. The resurrection of Jesus was not a distant event; it was here, now, changing everything. We are still essentially in that situation - in need of the Spirit to come to us, to make it all not only true but real. And as we wait, he comes, and we rise up.

Jesus comes back to us.

And of course, the story is running on towards it conclusion. There is a slow train coming, up and round the bend. Even as the Holy Spirit makes Jesus present to us now, we feel all the more acutely his absence. As we gather in his name to worship, we see more clearly all the opposing names that are still raised against him. As we rejoice in what he has done to liberate us, we experience more deeply the grief of the ongoing slavery in the world. As we are thankful for our salvation, we acknowledge again and again our ongoing sin. But we know that it will come to an end.

Jesus will come back to us.

Linkage

2011-06-08T08:11:00.000+01:00

Just a few snippets from other people's thoughts that I think you ought to see...

Chris has some intriguing analysis of humanism here. He and I are looking at things from very different perspectives in lots of ways, but I think this is spot on. In particular, "there are fantastically hard - but interesting - dialogues that need to be pursued - our relationship to a web of deterministic natural causes, our relationship to the drives of our own bodies, and our relationship to the ecosystem around us, to name but three. Yet, these dialogues occur, or can only be driven forward through tension. Humanism, I would argue, whether it turns us into little gods or capacious animals, erases this tension. It pretends the questions have been answered." Have a read.

Krish Kandiah reviews Wayne Grudem's book Politics According to the Bible. With a title like that it was always going to be controversial. I think Krish goes to the heart of the issue, which is Grudem's hermeneutic. Proof-texting and a naive understanding of the perspicuity of Scripture can get you into all sorts of trouble. Perhaps we only see how much trouble when we move into an immediately and obviously controversial area like politics, where our cultural bias starts to really show through. Krish concludes on one section of the book "there is very little theology here, just a prooftext and some statistics." I wonder how often that could be said of evangelical theological writing.

Oh, and British Universities are a breeding ground for extremism. So watch out.

Personal Identity

2011-06-06T08:22:00.000+01:00

I would guess that there has never been a culture which struggled so much with the question of personal identity as ours does. We have invented a whole new period of life - adolescence - devoted to working out who we are. We are constantly being encouraged to be true to ourselves, without a strong sense of who/what we ourselves are, beyond our instincts and most basic desires. Our society is so unstructured that many of us spend most of our lives trying to work out what we should be doing, and then usually end up doing something different. My suspicion is that this is just as true in the church as it is outside it.

My guess is that this is at least partly a hangover from substance dualism. In substance dualism, a human being is divisible into body and soul, with the latter usually being regarded as the real 'you' and the former being basically a vehicle to which you are in some way attached. (The Biblical view of soul/body is rather different, as is now generally acknowledged. However, dualism ruled in Christian thought for most of Christian history. Unfortunate.) One of the many problems raised by substance dualism is that it locates my real identity in something which is basically amorphous and pretty hard to pin down. Where and what is my soul? How can I know myself if I am basically a substance to which neither I nor anyone else has real access? This problem develops through Hume (there is no soul; what I call myself is just a stream of perceptions which are in some sense tied together) and Kant (we are to understand the 'I' as a transcendental, and therefore inaccessible, object of pure reason, the postulation of which allows us to tie our experiences together) into the present uncertainty. We are left grasping for the 'real' us.

Two theological reflections:

Firstly, I don't know myself inside out, and searching within me for my identity is always going to be problematic. I find myself in my relationships with others, who often see things in me that I don't see. Ultimately, I find myself in knowing God, who knows me perfectly and sees everything there is to see in me. When he reveals himself in Christ, and through the death and resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit reveals me in Christ, I should be content that this is who I really am. Relax: you're identity is not yours to find or make. Yes, it is to some extent hidden, but it is hidden with Christ, and that is a good and safe thing.

Secondly, you and I have not finished living yet. Who we really are is pretty hard to discern amongst the diverse strands, the various stops and starts, the failed projects and the projected dreams, that make up our lives. It is really only after death that my identity can be written, and even then only from a limited perspective. But God knows every day of my life before a single one takes place. He knows who I will be. Relax: this stuff is in safe hands. Stop fretting about what you should be doing, and do what you find in front of you to do, to God's glory.

Which God?

2011-06-04T20:54:00.000+01:00

Suppose Anselm's ontological argument worked. Suppose it could be demonstrated, using nothing but commonly available logic, that there must exist a being greater than which nothing could be thought - and that we agreed that this is the being which all call 'God'. Suppose - and a valid ontological argument would yield this result - the existence of such a being were shown to be necessary.

Is this the God of the Bible?

We could ask, is the being described to be identified with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Is the being described that same being which is revealed by Jesus Christ?

Let me sharpen it up a little. Suppose we accept that the God we know from Scripture - the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ, and who makes himself known to us in the testimony of the prophets and apostles - could be described as the most perfect being imaginable. Would the converse be true? Could the most perfect being imaginable be described as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

I believe the answer is firmly 'no'. In fact, the two 'Gods' being spoken of here have nothing in common. The God of the ontological argument is perfect - but what does this mean in the abstract? Would it include dying in agony on a cross under the curse of God? Could it mean that? When we start from Christ, and then say that God is perfect, that word has content - and the content is Jesus. (Which is just to say, that word is the Word). But if we start from the 'God' of the ontological argument, we start from an empty being - an abstraction, a general and not a particular god - not God.

We are not, then, dealing with another source of knowledge of God which could be coordinated with Jesus Christ; we are dealing with an idol. And the same could be said of any purported knowledge of God apart from Christ. (This could even be said of knowledge derived from Scripture! John 5:39, in context).

Might not this flight into the abstract and general god be the last defence of humanity against the actual God - the God who interferes with my life and my rule over my own world? Might not theism be the last line of defence against Christ?

Knowing God?

2011-05-28T20:07:00.000+01:00

I feel like the question of how we come to know God occupies a lot of my time. It's a funny question. For me, it doesn't spring from any anxiety about my own knowledge of God. Perhaps there is some angst over the fact that other people don't see what I think I see. Mainly, though, the question is not an existential but a theological one for me. Given that we know God, how are we to understand that knowing? Given that it is the case, how can it be the case? The question is important because at all stages of the theological development of the church the different answers that have been given have represented fundamentally different views of what it means to be a Christian, and by implication what it means to be a human being. More importantly, different views of how we come to know God lead to different views of the God we come to know.

Consider the first few centuries of the church. The initial strong consensus that one comes to know God through Jesus Christ - the visible Son of the invisible Father, the precise image of God in the flesh - is challenged by a culturally much stronger and more acceptable form of mystery religion. Yes, Jesus, but also some sort of mystery - a kind of top-up knowledge. To really know God, you need Jesus+spiritual experience, or Jesus+secret knowledge. And of course, because knowing God is caught up with salvation, it turns out that your ascent to salvation is also through secret knowledge. And given this secret knowledge, one is able to 'see' that of course Jesus was not God in the flesh, but something else, something more refined and more worthy of the dignity of the deity revealed in the mystery.

Or consider the reformation period. Here there is a more promising starting point, for all are agreed that one comes to know God through Jesus. The question at issue between Protestant and Catholic is actually 'which Jesus?' Is it the historical, once-for-all Jesus, to whom the Scriptures bear witness with a finality that cannot be gainsaid? Or is it the Jesus who is present in the church, to the extent that the church's tradition and teaching reveal him? That cannot be unrelated to the main difference between the two sides when it comes to salvation: is it by the once-for-all achievement of Christ on the cross, or is it by the repeated sacrifice of Christ on the altar?

Or think about the 'enlightenment'. The early church period is in some ways reversed. The prevalent view is that common sense and experience can lead all people to know God. Jesus helps to clarify that knowledge, and sharpen it, and give shape to the relationship with God that all people everywhere have by virtue of creation. This view was opposed by versions of the Protestant and Catholic dogmas of the reformation era, both to some extent hardened and weakened, but both demanding (rightly) that Jesus comes in some sense first - although this was sadly muddied on the Catholic side by a strong commitment to the Aristotelian thought of Aquinas.

What is the point?

The point is simply this: whenever you see something co-ordinated with Jesus Christ as a source of knowledge about God, you know you are in trouble. Doesn't matter whether it's spiritual experience, natural theology, church tradition or anything else. It's trouble.

On which, more shortly...

Lead me all the journey through

2011-05-25T07:52:00.001+01:00

"Holy Scripture may be compared to the fiery cloud and pillar which in every age precedes the community and all its members as an invariably authentic direction to the knowledge of its Lord, to the gift which he gives and the accompanying task which he sets. It can and should be confessed always and everywhere and by all. It raises the claim to be heard, to be heard obediently and to be recognised as authoritative always and everywhere and by all. The biblical word is thus the concrete vinculum pacis of the church in every age and place. The community is always and everywhere summoned to regard its claim, to gather around its message, to pursue its investigation, exposition and application. We never do injury to a Christian or the community, nor are we in danger of leading a Christian astray, nor is it arbitrary but always and everywhere salutary and good, if we set ourselves and the community on the way which leads backwards or rather forwards to Holy Scripture. For since in Holy Scripture true words are always to be heard, this way is always the way backwards or rather forwards to Jesus Christ, to the one Word, to the reconciliation accomplished in him, to the one covenant between him and man, to the salvation effected and to be found in this covenant. However well or badly it may be followed, this way is always the good way, and to tread it is always and in all places commanded of the community and individual Christians, and is full of promise for them."

-CD IV/3, p130

Angels

2011-05-14T12:17:00.000+01:00

My reading in the Church Dogmatics has recently brought me to the end of volume III/3, meaning I have now read nine out of thirteen volumes (yes, I have skipped ahead). Towards the end of this volume, Barth conducts an intriguing discussion of angels and demons, a topic I've read very little about, and even less that came from the pen of one of the 'big hitters' in the theological world. So I was very interested to hear what he had to say.

Turned out I didn't like it much.

But one of the things that struck me, and pleased me, was Barth's matter of fact insistence on the reality of angels (and, in a sense, demons) and their work in the created world. He notes that angels often accompany and witness to God's revelation - the absence of angels during most of the incarnation being an obvious and important counter-point, showing that something unique is happening here, where God reveals himself and witnesses to himself, making the angelic witness doubly superfluous. But, as Barth points out, in some senses the angelic witness is always utterly superfluous. When we read in the Bible that an angel did something, we surely must understand the Scripture as saying that God did something through an angel - and if this is correct, is it not the case that God could have worked without an angel to the same effect?

So, why angels? Barth argues that their presence reminds us that God is not imminently within us, or easily within our grasp, but actually transcends our being and our understanding. Angels, coming from heaven, remind us that God always comes to us from elsewhere. Angels, turning up out of the blue, remind us that God does not come at our will but at his. Perhaps most importantly, angels keep us from an almost deist conception of God that binds him to the normal course of events, preventing him from surprising us with his presence and his grace.

I read somewhere that Francis Schaeffer used to open university missions by talking about angels. I don't know if that's true. If it is, I imagine his aim was to show what a very different, and in many ways very surprising, world we live in if Christianity is true.

I certainly wouldn't want to be without the ministry of angels.

No to AV

2011-04-26T19:24:00.000+01:00

I've been meaning to write about this for a little while, but it seemed too trivial to occupy blog space in the run up to Easter. But now the referendum draweth nigh, and we must all make a decision.

I will vote no.

I realise that this will come as no surprise to anyone. As a Conservative, it was always likely that I'd be saying no. And if I'm honest with myself, I recognise that one factor in the decision making process for me has been that deep instinct to resist change which lies in the heart of every Tory. I hope, however, that this has not been the only or indeed the most weighty factor. I hope I am not deciding on purely party lines - although I do recognise that the Tories arguably have the most to lose under AV. I hope, as well, that I am not making my decision on the basis of so much of the campaigning from both sides, which has been thoroughly negative throughout. Frankly, the No campaign has sickened me, and the Yes campaign has also left me faintly nauseous.

To be clear: I am not voting no because I think AV would benefit the BNP - it wouldn't; I am not voting no because I think AV would be too complicated to understand - it isn't (although it is more complicated if one wants to vote tactically, but one ought not to do so in my opinion); I am not voting no to spite Nick Clegg - I rather like him; I am not voting no because AV would cost too much - if it were really better, it would be worth spending the money.

I should also point out that I am a Tory in a seat where a Tory hasn't stood a chance of winning for 20 years - one of the 'safe seats' which the Yes campaign have been talking about. It is frustrating for me. But I just want to point out that it is absolutely not true that my vote 'doesn't count' because of this circumstance; it counts just as much as anyone else's. It's just that not enough people agree with me to make a difference in the outcome. If I was really that bothered, I should get out there and try to persuade them, not complain about the voting system.

And that brings us to the heart of it for me. It's about what sort of politics you want. The Yes people have been saying that AV would force MPs to work harder, to appeal to a broader range of people. Doubtless that is to a certain extent true. Except that it strikes me that very often the best way to appeal to a broad range of people is to be vague, bland, unexceptional. I think AV favours that sort of MP. It encourages non-ideological politics. Now, you may think that is a good thing. There would be more consensus. But I think that politics is about having a vision of a better society and persuading people to get on board with it. Political differences are not, after all, purely a product of circumstance - it is not that those less well off must support Labour, whilst the wealthy support the Tories, and the wealthy with a bad conscience support the Lib Dems. These differences are about ideas - huge, significant ideas, about humanity and society and morality. And ideas need arguments. They need arguments to showcase their grandeur.

I think AV would stifle that. To pick up second preference votes - and in many seats, that is what will matter - you're best off being the guy the others don't object to all that much. I think it's a shoddy way to choose MPs.

But I invite you to show me why I'm wrong...

Night

2011-04-23T11:30:00.000+01:00

Elie Wiesel, from 'Night':

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter...

The three condemned prisoners together stepped onto the chairs. In unison, the nooses were placed around their necks.

"Long live liberty!" shouted the two men.

But the boy was silent.

"Where is merciful God, where is He?" someone behind me was asking.

At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over.

Total silence in the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

"Caps off!" screamed the Lageralteste. His voice quivered. As for the rest of us, we were weeping.

"Cover your heads!"

Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...

And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "For God's sake, where is God?"

And from within me, I heard a voice answer:

"Where is He? This is where - hanging here from this gallows..."

Francois Mauriac, from his preface to 'Night':

And I, who believe that God is love, what answer was there to give my young interlocutor whose dark eyes still held the reflection of the angelic sadness that had appeared one day on the face of a hanged child? What did I say to him? Did I speak to him of that other Jew, this crucified brother who perhaps resembled him and whose cross conquered the world? Did I explain to him that what had been a stumbling block for his faith had become a cornerstone for mine? And that the connection between the cross and human suffering remains, in my view, the key to the unfathomable mystery in which the faith of his childhood was lost? And yet, Zion has risen up again out of the crematoria and the slaughterhouses. The Jewish nation has been resurrected from among its thousands of dead. It is they who have given it new life. We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Almighty is the Almighty, the last word for each of us belongs to Him. That is what I should have said to the Jewish child. But all I could do was embrace him and weep.

Using Easter well

2011-04-21T19:49:00.000+01:00

I wasn't brought up in a tradition where Easter was a big deal. On the whole, we maintained our non-conformity by ignoring the liturgical calendar. Christmas was a purely secular event; Easter was about chocolate. The rationale was two-fold: firstly, that we should be remembering the great events behind Christmas and Easter all the time; secondly, that Scripture didn't mandate or command the observance of these or any other festivals.

In more recent years, I've observed Christmas and Easter more closely. In essence, I moved away from the version of the regulative principle that said you couldn't do things that weren't directly commanded in Scripture, although I still think nobody can criticise people who choose not to observe the festivals, since there is no Biblical authority behind them. Moreover, I came to think that it was just impossible for human beings to remember everything all the time. Without a focus to our remembering, our remembering melts away. It's why we have communion, why we come together to worship: to provide a focus to our remembering of Jesus. Christmas, and especially Easter, helps me with that.

But I did make the mistake, as I moved to this position, of treating Easter as if it were mythical. Consider Tammuz, if you will. Tammuz is an annual dying and rising god. He comes and goes. In some ways he quite clearly stands for the coming and going of the seasons. His dying and rising were observed annually, with funerals and celebrations. These rituals did not commemorate anything; there was nothing to commemorate, since Tammuz was never thought of as a historical person per se. He was rather a personification of a timeless reality.

To treat Easter as a myth is to see the passage from Good Friday to Easter Sunday as a sort of re-enactment. In my case, it meant trying to find the right emotional response for each day: remorse passing into grief passing into joy. I suppose acting as if my participation made it real.

Easter is history. It happened once and for all. So, this weekend I will be remembering and celebrating, not re-enacting.

House of Mourning

2011-04-17T19:44:00.000+01:00

Last night, I think we walked home past a house where someone had died. I don't know that for sure, but the circumstantial evidence was strong: police car, ambulance, paramedics bike. The biggest indicator, a wail of grief. Inbetween sobs, somebody was crying out 'please, please!' I don't know with whom they were pleading: the paramedic, the departed, the universe, God? It was indescribably painful to hear, and although we only heard it in passing it left me really quite shaken.

Made me think about death.

I think everyone is either terrified by death, or doesn't understand death. To have such a final limit - and a limit which nobody knows when they will cross - is surely the most horrific thing. No matter how much people try to persuade themselves that death is just a part of natural existence, I cannot believe anyone is really as resigned to death as that position would lead us to expect. To pass from life - which means to pass from everything, including yourself - is the most appalling prospect. I will be honest: I dread it. In fact, I think dread could be defined as the subjective reaction to the objective prospect of death.

In the face of that, Christianity is about dying well. Oh, I know, it's about living well, enjoying the here and now, delighting in God's good creation, loving people around us, investing in the world. Of course it is. But all that stuff is just the stuff that is threatened by death.

If my faith in Christ doesn't help me to die, what use is it? If I cannot die in peace, how can I live in peace?

On political disagreement

2011-03-26T15:02:00.000Z

Big protest in London today against spending cuts. Fair enough, I guess, although I have to say I don't believe this is really a legitimate form of political expression when you live in a democracy. We had an election: if the left had managed to persuade enough people that they were right (so to speak), they'd still be in power. After all, I didn't march on the capital in 1997 when the Labour government which would spend the next decade ruining the public finances got into power. Maybe I should have done.

But this is not what I wanted to write about.

I wanted to write about disagreement. In politics, as in almost no other sphere that I know of (theology, actually, would be one), disagreement almost always turns bitter. The number of times in the last few months that I have heard friends of mine describe the current UK government's position as 'evil' has taken me a little by surprise, particularly as it is difficult not to imply that I am also regarded as a morally bankrupt person. And, in the interest of even-handedness, I must admit that the first para of this post reflects more than a little bitterness on my part too.

It is not all that surprising. I think I can see two reasons for the bitterness. One is that these disagreements are about things that are real; they have an actual effect on our lives. Moreover, some of the things that politicians do are quite difficult to undo. We see the world changing around is in response to political decisions, and that sparks fear, amongst other things. This is no abstract debate. The other reason is that these disagreements, when analysed, turn out to represent two very different visions of what society ought to be like. More than that, debates about what society ought to be like tend to be based on different understandings of human beings. These disagreements, which seem to be over fiscal policy (for example), often turn out to be disagreements over what it means to be human - what it means to be me or you. There is nothing more likely to provoke bitterness than a question which touches on my own sense of identity.

I don't know that I have an answer to this, except to ask that we all try to think a bit more. In particular:

1. If you think that your opponent's position is nonsensical, consider that you probably haven't understood it. Very few people hold ultimately nonsensical positions. Certainly it would be better to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you should take some more time to think about it.

2. If you think that your opponent's position is evil, consider that you may well be wrong. In particular, try to work out what is integral to their position and what is a side-effect. Ascertain what the goals are - is there nothing noble whatsoever? Finally, bear in mind that you are probably good friends with people who disagree with you - do their lives generally give you the impression that they are likely to be wholly evil in the political arena?

3. If you find particular representatives of a given position intolerable, consider that they are only human. They probably don't represent what is best about your opponents. Also, consider that they are human at the end of the day - with all the inherent nobility and tragedy that this name implies.

4. Don't expect to win all the time.

5. Try to see the roots of your opponent's position. Where are they coming from? Try to get inside the view of the world and humanity which would lead them to think as they do; consider whether there are incidental factors of your own upbringing and/or position in society which unduly influence your own perception.

6. Consider whether there is any common ground at all - it may provide a base from which to establish wider agreement. At the very least, it may serve as a reminder that we are all, at the end of the day, limited in our perceptions and understandings, and on the whole are only trying to do our best to work it out.

Now I must try to practice what I preach, and if I fail (as I already have a couple of times today), call me on it!

Who are you?

2011-03-07T20:17:00.001Z

If you start your investigation of human nature with Jesus - if Christology is at the centre of your anthropology - the possibility is raised that you do not know yourself. You may have to be told who you are. It may be that none of us knows inherently, or is able to deduce from our own behaviour or that of others, what it means to be human. That raises all kinds of issues.

One issue that has been floating around recently, mainly because of the case of Mr and Mrs Johns, is the attitude of Christians to homosexuality. Now, up front, I want to acknowledge that this is a hugely complex and, for many, painful issue. I also want to acknowledge that Christians don't all agree on this topic. But I have to say that as I read Scripture, and as I try to think theologically about what the gospel implies for humanity, I arrive at the conclusion that an active homosexual lifestyle is not compatible with the Christian message. I don't want to overplay that, and I also don't want to make out that this is a big part of my belief - it is not. (In fact, although from the news you would get the impression that evangelical Christians basically talk about this all the time, and also that they are raging homophobes, my experience has been that the topic comes up rarely, and when it does is tackled with pastoral sensitivity. I know that hasn't been everyone's experience.) Still, however peripheral this belief is - however much I may consider it to be basically an implication of an implication of the gospel, something which stands at considerable remove from the heart of the faith - nevertheless I am obliged to hold it.

And here's the point. This position comes in for criticism so often in the news, and raises such outrage amongst our contemporaries, because it challenges our notion of what it means to be human. Christians are saying something which is, despite all my disclaimers above, huge in what it means for human nature. Everybody knows that Christians want to tell people how humanity ought to be - it is part of the Christian message to say that we are not what we should be, and that we must be changed. This is, naturally, offensive to people. But I think we are actually saying something more offensive than that - we are saying that you are not who you think you are. Imagine if a Christian said this: 'if this lifestyle is incompatible with the gospel, it is not human'. Offensive! But that is implicitly what we are saying.

Of course, we are saying it to everyone, not just those who practice a certain lifestyle, and not just those outside the church. Still, sexuality is a point at which it is particularly painful, because it is so close to the heart of an individual's identity. The Christian message threatens to take their identity away, by telling them they are not really who they think they are at all. What insecurity this threatens! And what offence!

The flip-side is that if the gospel is true, then I am told who I really am, and can relax. I have no need to forge my own identity, assert my own individuality, or even wrestle with my own inner contradictions to quite the same extent. Who I am is decided elsewhere, and I am in a sense graciously given to myself to enjoy.

Being Human (3)

2011-03-06T22:22:00.000Z

One of the key points about Barth's Christological anthropology, as I understand it, is that the Christ who stands at the centre of it is the real Jesus of Nazareth, as witnessed in the Scriptures. Anthropology is not shaped around a centre defined by a logical or aesthetically appealing idea, whether that of the ideal human or that of incarnation. It is based around a person, and when we say a person we mean an event - a history, a happening. General anthropology is the periphery to which the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ form the centre.

One of the huge implications of this is that it is impossible that human beings should fail to be human.

Everything we know about the world and the people who inhabit it militates against this conclusion. In fact, we have already seen that the phenomena of human life exhibited all around us speak just as strongly of inhumanity as humanity. If we constructed our anthropology on the basis of experience, we would probably say that people could choose: they could affirm or deny their own humanity. In one sense we would be right. We can affirm or deny our humanity. I can choose to live as someone who stands before God and my fellow man, or I can try not to. I can seek to escape God, either by atheism or religion, and my fellow man, either by solitude or shallow relationships. It is the great tragedy of sin, from the human point of view, that it tends towards the dehumanising of human beings. It attempts to mask what and who we are.

But the event of Jesus Christ is and means 'God with us'. And it means 'he will save his people from their sins'. The presence of Jesus Christ - and especially the resurrection - means that humanity is not abandoned, just as Jesus is not abandoned to corruption. God affirms his creation, and upholds it against its own wilful fall and senseless drive to be nothing.

There is no single human being who can erase what Jesus Christ has done. There is therefore no single human being who can be really without God, or really without the fellow man, because Jesus Christ is both. All my attempted inhumanity cannot unmake me. The mask of evil which I choose to wear - and in so far as it lies with me, I will this mask to be my reality - is in fact not chosen for me, because Jesus Christ is with me as a human being and as my God, and I am upheld.

But how much worse this makes it! Every sin is against my own humanity, against the grace of God, against Jesus Christ. And every sin is an impossible attempt to be nothing when God has made me something. My sin may take me to the fire of hell, but it will not make me less than a person who stands before and with God and my fellow man. And that is a terrifying thought.

Being Human (2)

2011-03-05T14:11:00.000Z

So, what does Christocentric anthropology look like?

First of all, it begins with Jesus, and asks the question: what does it mean to be Jesus? Because if Jesus is 'the Man', the only real human being, humanity cannot be discovered apart from him. Of course, there are many ways we could look at Jesus, and many perspectives from which we could view him. When it comes to anthropology, we must consider Jesus the Man (albeit the Man who is God). There are two essential things to consider about this Man - two relationships. On the vertical axis, Jesus is man for God. This captures a number of different things. Jesus, considered as a human being, is God's creature; his human nature has no existence except that which is granted to it in the incarnation through its union with the Logos. The sense in which Jesus is man for God goes beyond this, however, to embrace his responsibility. Everything that is not God exists for God in some way, but Jesus exists for God as an active, responsible being. He exists to willingly fulfil the will of God. Meanwhile, on the horizontal axis, Jesus is man for man. At the surface level, this expresses the fact that Jesus comes to do humanity good. At a deeper level, the man Jesus would not exist except as he comes to do man good. Being 'for man' is not something that is incidental to Jesus; it defines his being as the incarnate Son of God. And then again, Jesus is 'for man' because in his life, death, and resurrection he takes the place and takes up the cause of the human race and each member of it.

To be Jesus is to be man for God, and man for man.

But secondly Christocentric anthropology recognises that Christology and anthropology are different things. We cannot read a general doctrine of humanity from the being of Jesus. He is the God-man, unique and above us in every way. Barth doesn't put it like this, but I suppose you could say we should not be Christomonist when thinking about humanity, but genuinely Christocentric. Jesus is the centre point of humanity, and general humanity stands around him; Christology is the centre and anthropology is the periphery. Nevertheless, we can move from the centre to the periphery. Humanity cannot be Jesus, but it must correspond to Jesus.

Jesus is man for God - uniquely so, through the incarnation. But corresponding to this is the determination of man generally as one who belongs to God and responds to God. This vertical relationship exists, whether the individual human being acknowledges it or seeks to efface it. The relationship holds because, in the faith of human unfaithfulness, and indeed the impossible yet frequently made decision for inhumanity on the part of individual human beings, God is faithful. Human beings cannot unmake themselves, or make themselves something other than what they are.

Jesus is man for man - uniquely so, through his representative and substitutionary role. But corresponding to this is the determination of man generally as one who stands with other men. No definition of humanity which makes the individual prior can possibly be correct. To be man, says Barth, is to be fellow-man, to stand in an I-Thou relationship with other human beings. Again, this must be so. We do stand in relationship to others, whether we like it or not. We cannot, and should not, stand in their place as Jesus does, but we should stand alongside. We exist to help one another. This being as fellow-man is shown most clearly in the existence of humanity as male and female, man and woman. "It is not good for the man to be alone".

These conclusions - that man is for God, and with other men - could be reached in other ways. But only from Jesus can they be shown to be certain and absolutely determinative for human existence.

Being Human (1)

2011-03-02T11:37:00.000Z

Shiny Ginger Thinking has been interrupted recently by the arrival of a brand new ginger boy into our family, which is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, but does cut into my computer time. Still, some background low-level thoughts have been bubbling up to the surface, and this is one of them.

Since I picked up my cheap-as-quite-expensive-chips reprint of the Church Dogmatics just before Christmas, I've been ploughing through some of what has, for me, been life changing and brain stretching theology. Volume IV.2 has changed the way I think about Barth, as he unfolds what might be called the more subjective side of salvation, something he is often accused of neglecting. Volume III.2, which I am now half way through, has been challenging my view of what it means to be human, and how we ought to talk about humanity. Let me share a few, possibly disjointed, reflections.

Barth begins his anthropology, as he begins pretty much everything, with Jesus Christ. He argues that we ought not to put together our definition of what a human being is on the basis of what we see in human beings around us. Partly, this is because we see as much inhumanity as humanity in human beings in the world. More profoundly, Jesus Christ is "man for man" - the human being, the one who lives out our created and predestined life of obedience for us. If we want to understand humanity, we should look first at Jesus. This does not mean that non-theological anthropology can't teach us anything about human beings; it simply means that anthropology that does not start with Christ cannot penetrate to the essence of what a human is. Barth's presentation recalls Kant at this stage, with his doctrine of the transcendental subject - for Kant, we cannot talk about what a human being really is in essence, because this is unknowable to us; we can only discuss what we see, the phenomena of humanity. Barth says, in effect, that this is true, in so far as we attempt to proceed without revelation, and seek our knowledge of humanity "in other ways than by the confrontation of man with the man Jesus Christ" (p. 198). All the phenomena of human existence - the things that can be studied by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and others - may well be symptoms of real humanity, but that cannot be known unless we have already been shown and told what real humanity is. Otherwise, they are like accidents without a substance (Barth uses the analogy of the mass!) - floating adjectives attached to no known subject.

By chance, I was flicking through Henry Bettenson's selections of extracts from the early church fathers (good toilet reading), and came across this from Athanasius: "[God] did not merely create man in the same way as he created all the irrational creatures on earth; he made man 'after his own image', giving them a share in the power of his own Word, so that they might have as it were shadows of the Word..." (De Incarnatione, 3). And also this: "We are called the image and glory of God not on our own account; it is on account of the image and true glory of God that dwells in us, namely his Word who later became flesh for us, that we have the grace of this designation" (Contra Arianos, iii. 10).

See what he's saying there? Humanity is found in Christ, the image of God. So anthropology starts with him. And this is not some abstract logos asarkos, but the real man Jesus Christ.

More to come, as and when I find the mental energy!

Images of the Church

2011-01-22T20:56:00.000Z

I've recently been reading a bit about the nature of church, and especially John Owen on the subject, and one of the things that strikes me is that Owen consistently relies on imagery to describe the church which doesn't show up much in contemporary discussion. For Owen, the church is primarily a society. His discussion of it revolves around the idea of a well-ordered society, and therefore around the appointment and function of officers within the church. There is more, and every-member ministry is there in the margins, but the main imagery is drawn from the state and civil society. By contrast, I would think that the most regularly recurring image used for the church in contemporary literature is the family. The emphasis is therefore much more on relationship.

It is not hard to see historical causes for these differences. Owen was writing against the backdrop of the Civil War, the Protectorate, and the Stuart Restoration (he would have loved the Glorious Revolution, but skipped it and went straight for the Glory). All the big questions of the day were about the ordering of civil society, the roles of magistrates, the constraints placed on rulers. And Owen was in the thick of all that. By contrast, such questions bore us today, but family life is very much out of the category of 'taken for granted', where it was when Owen wrote. Perhaps because, as a society, we're less secure in natural family life, the image becomes particularly powerful for us in relation to the church.

Of course, both images (and a host of others) are found in Scripture. The idea of the church as polis is there in the background to Philippians, for example, whilst the idea of family functions very strongly in Galatians. (Actually both images are in both letters, and are generally intertwined throughout the NT). The question that stands out in my mind is: what do we miss when we pursue this image of the church over all others? I can see what Owen missed when he pursued his image, but that is one of the wonders of hindsight. I wonder whether we end up giving in to our culture's general hostility or indifference to structure, using the language of relationships to justify our neglect of the Scriptural representation of this side of church life. And, as I look at Owen and wonder whether his one-sided use of imagery led to a damaging clericalism, I wonder what damage our neglect will do us in the long term.

Congregationalism

2011-01-19T16:25:00.000Z

Some thoughts on the church which I initially expressed on FB, but which I feel need some further work...

Free Church ecclesiology is based on the development of three doctrinal presuppositions.

Firstly, the Scripture principle. In the realm of ecclesiology, the Scripture principle is taken to imply that there is a particular model for the organisation, government, and communal life of the church given in Scripture. This model, because it is Scriptural, is authoritative (mutatis mutandis, the church today should strive to be like the church then; some would omit the mutatis mutandis), sufficient (there is no need to look elsewhere for manuals of church order), and clear (the model is expressed simply and is easily understood). The particular model that we see in Scripture is church government by Elders and Deacons based in a local congregation, which is organised so as to express familial care and encourage gospel growth.

Secondly, the active rule of Christ by word and Spirit. Of course, every Christian accepts this presupposition. However, in Free Church ecclesiology it is developed in a particular direction. There is a tendency to reject any position of authority which is not based on the ministry of the word. Ministers are Christ's servants (again, Christians would universally accept this), but concretely that means that their authority is not their own; it comes through their service of the word. The authority of church leaders is the authority of the word; no exercise of authority which is not ministry of the word can be legitimate church leadership. A further implication is what might look like democratisation to the watching world, but is in fact an affirmation of Divine Monarchy. In other words, decisions are made by the congregation, under the guidance of the Elders, with the awareness that Christ is present and is exercising his rule. This also counts against complex structures in the church, and Free Church polity can look chaotic from the outside (and the inside!) - but it is based on the presupposition that Christ is actually ruling, and does not surrender his throne to, or share it with, any other human being.

Thirdly, the relationship between the invisible, catholic Church and the particular, local church. In essence, the former is thought of as manifested in the latter. Consequently, no room is found for structures over and above the local congregation. Such structures would either be attempting to manifest an 'interim layer' - not the catholic Church nor the local church - which would therefore be denying the identity between the one and the other; or they would be seeking to express the catholic Church visibly, which would be simple imperialism.

The more I think about it, the more these three principles and their implications boil down to one thing: Christ rules his Church, and therefore nobody else does. Of course, every Christian accepts, at least in principle, the first clause; the second is the particular genius of the Free Churches.

Born of the Virgin Mary

2010-12-24T21:00:00.001Z

A few brief reflections on the theological significance of the virgin birth...

1. The virgin birth indicates a really new thing. The thing in question is of course the incarnation. There is a decisive break here with everything that has gone before, and the virgin birth is a signpost to point us to that. It is a biological break in the chain of human existence which points to a spiritual (and therefore fleshly - the two are not as opposite as we think) breaking in to human existence. Christmas is about newness.

2. The virgin birth indicates the incapacity of humanity. Our salvation is not a latent possibility within humanity as such. It is not as if we were just waiting for the right one of us to come along. Just as Mary cannot, as a virgin, conceive, so we as a race cannot bring forth our own salvation. Christmas is about our hopelessness.

3. The virgin birth is God's contradiction of our impossibility. Simple fact is, the Saviour was one of us; Mary did conceive. Not because she was given any special ability, or was in some way prepared for this, but because her impossibility was overcome by God's great possibility. Christmas is about God's 'yes', which triumphs even in the face of all our 'no's.

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God rest ye merry, gentlemen

2010-12-16T13:38:00.005Z

The Incarnation demands great seriousness of us. Of course it does. If God is there, and much more so if God was here, then everything matters. If we don’t feel that deeply, I wonder if we have understood what it means that God was one of us.

But there is a flipside, which I suspect gets underplayed because it appears to stand in conflict with that seriousness and to undermine all serious efforts to live the Christian life. That flipside is that the Incarnation really does demand great levity of us. Let me explain what I mean.

If Christmas is true, which is to say if God really became one of us, walked with us, talked with us, died for us, rose for us (for all of this is encompassed in Christmas, at least in nugatory form) – if this is true, then it means that God himself has taken up our cause as lost and fallen creatures. His own arm has wrought salvation for him. He has acted on our behalf, and that action is decisive. In Christ, God is good to us; in Christ, we are the recipients of mercy. It is done.

So, all those burdens and anxieties that we carry around are, strictly speaking, no longer ours to carry. How can we have any ultimate concerns if God is for us in this way, if he has taken up our cause in this way? Our apparently legitimate concerns and our obviously unfaithful fears are equally taken out of our hands. He bears them. He is for us.

The Christian is a serious person. He knows that his actions and decisions have significance, that they take place in a world that is full of meaning. But there is also a lightness to the Christian, because he knows that his actions and decisions do not have ultimate significance. He knows that although he must walk, he is ultimately carried. And so his seriousness, which may express itself in serious sorrow and serious joy – and certainly serious resolution and action – as the occasion demands, will sometimes give way to laughter that can’t be controlled and a smile that goes beyond the circumstances.

Let nothing you dismay.

Waiting for Jesus

2010-12-12T15:24:00.000Z

So much of the story of the Bible is about waiting for Jesus, in different ways and with different intensity.

Think about Abraham's wait for a son who would be heir to the promise; the prolongation of that wait, to the point where natural generation was more or less impossible, surely points to the long wait for The Son who was to come. Consider Israel's wait in Egypt, praying for deliverance, and the raising up of a deliverer who is both within and without Israel; surely a type of Christ. To be honest, think of the whole history of Israel, the whole story of the Old Testament, which is so powerfully summarised at the end of Psalm 130: I wait for the Lord. And of course, when Jesus comes, we see that the history of Israel had its meaning in that waiting, and that in so far as it was characterised by that waiting it was also the history of the world.

It is interesting that the New Testament also has a lot of waiting for Jesus. It becomes the central prayer of the church - Maranatha, come Lord Jesus. But even before that, there is the waiting for Pentecost, when Jesus comes to his people in his Spirit. Always waiting for Jesus.

A couple of things about that:

1. How is waiting for Jesus different from waiting for Godot? In other words, doesn't the constant waiting tempt us to think that perhaps we are waiting in vain, for someone who isn't coming? Well, of course we are tempted to think just like that. But the key difference is that we know for whom we are waiting, and we have not offered him "a vague supplication" with no certain expectation of fulfilment. The Crucified One is the Coming One, and vice versa, and we look to him for the restoration of all things because he himself is the restoration of all things, as demonstrated in his resurrection.

2. What do we do in the meantime? Obviously, we wait, and watch, and pray. We long for his appearing. But we also announce the Coming to anyone who will listen, because we know that it is not only us waiting. The whole creation waits. I take it that this includes all human beings, in so far as they are created, which is to say in so far as they are not utterly given over to the nothingness that is sin. (And of course they are not utterly given over, for it is not given to them to destroy themselves). Like Israel, we wait with knowledge in a world of ignorance; like Israel, we wait representatively for all the world.

Even if one rose from the dead

2010-12-09T11:52:00.000Z

Here is an odd question for you: what would count as evidence that you were in the presence of God incarnate? What facts or occurrences would qualify as good rational grounds to conclude that this human being was also, in reality, God the Lord, creator of all things visible and invisible?

What things spring to mind?

Virgin birth - assuming that could be verified beyond a doubt, which I suppose it could nowadays? Miracles - assuming that they were well-attested and we were sure there was no trickery involved? Inspired teaching - assuming that it really did go beyond anything that anyone else had said? Resurrection from the dead - assuming that this, too, could be verified absolutely, including a careful check that real death had occurred?

Or perhaps a cumulative case built up out of all the above?

Now, I have no interest in shaking anyone's faith. But I do want to point out that, as far as I can tell, it would not be legitimate to draw the conclusion that I was in the presence of God incarnate from any of those things, or indeed all of them put together. They are all remarkable, but frankly remarkable things do happen in the world. Taken together, they certainly seem to point to the action of some higher power, but we know that there are many powers at work in the universe.

We are faced here with an epistemological problem. What criteria could one apply to ascertain whether something absolutely unique had occurred? And here we do mean 'absolutely unique'. If God enters into his creation as a man, that is an event without parallel or analogue. It is not just one of those remarkable things that happens from time to time, and that is why none of the remarkable things mentioned can be sufficient evidence of it. Our categories of knowledge break down when we cannot compare an event with something similar, or at least something with which it stands in basic continuity. But there is no immediate continuity between the incarnation of God and any other event in all creation, because there is no immediate continuity between God and his creation. They are not in the same class of being.

Of course, it is necessary to our faith that all these things have actually happened and been true. They are necessary, but not sufficient, reasons to trust that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour, as he is to the whole world. But I think there is something significant in the fact that the most dazzlingly revelatory events - the Transfiguration, say, or indeed the resurrection itself - have deliberately very limited audiences. And even those audiences contain doubters and deniers - think of the guards at the tomb, or the 'but some doubted' of Matthew 28.

So, what are we to say to this?

Firstly, I think there is something we can say about continuity. The incarnation does stand in continuity with the history of Israel, or to be more precise (but less temporally straightforward) the history of Israel stands in continuity with the incarnation. In the light of Israel's history, we can understand Jesus as the mighty God come to save his people.

But secondly, we must recognise that even this connection can only be seen if we are given eyes. We can rehearse the evidences, the signposts that something extraordinary is happening in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. We can highlight the sense that he makes of Israel's history, and vice versa. But ultimately, unless it is shown us - shown to each of us personally - we cannot see it.

Veni Creator Spiritus!

Leap of faith?

2010-11-26T12:12:00.000Z

The concept of the leap of faith is pretty central to the view of religion which most people hold in western culture today. It can be given a positive or a negative spin. Negatively, the leap of faith is portrayed as ignoring the facts, running contrary to the evidence, 'committing intellectual suicide', throwing oneself into the darkness even though the light of knowledge is shining all around. On this view, a leap of faith means plunging into absurd mysticism, usually because one is unwilling to deal with the cold, hard facts of life. Positively, the leap of faith is portrayed as reaching out for something 'beyond', something that transcends the mundane, something that provides meaning and purpose in a universe otherwise devoid of both. Although the leap does take us beyond knowledge, per se, it is somehow a virtue to trust in something - almost anything - that will give our lives a bit of content - and who knows, maybe that something is really out there.

Christians tend to divide into those who hate the idea of a leap of faith and see no place for it in Christianity, and those who embrace it. Broadly speaking, the former believe that Christianity is based on evidence and rationality, can be demonstrated, and does not involve any leaping because it is all within the bounds of what is ordinarily referred to as knowledge. They tend to be keen on the discipline of apologetics, and to have some regard for natural theology. The latter, on the other hand, do not believe that the arguments and evidences will get you all the way. They may vary as to how far they will get you - perhaps very close - but at the end of the day, you will have to make a leap. You will reach the end of your intellectual resources, and the arguments and evidences will take you to a point from which you just have to jump. If God is there, presumably he'll catch you.

I would suggest, of course, that neither of these positions is quite right, mainly because they both have something desperately wrong in common. Both believe that human beings can work it out, sort it out, and live it out, without assistance. Either we have to think it through, or we have to jump. Either way, the decisive action is ours, and comes on our side.

What if revelation were needed - personal revelation, God stooping down to meet me? What if instead of the leap of faith we were presented with the 'leap of grace'? What if it was all, in the end, about receiving?

"If we know ourselves, as the Christian does, we cannot think that we are capable of this leap. And the whole idea of a leap that we have made or are making is best abandoned. No one makes the leap. As Christians, we are all borne on eagles' wings."

Future Prospects and Present Purity

2010-10-12T09:17:00.000+01:00

I don't know of anywhere in Scripture that expresses the Christian hope more beautifully than 1 John 3:2 - "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is". This is the Christian's personal eschatology. A few comments on it...

1. It is hope, because although it is already ours ("we are God's children now") we do not yet see it ("...has not yet appeared"). We live for the future, because our present status is something that we will only enjoy and experience in the future.

2. The Christian hope is entirely wrapped up in Christ. To see Christ is at the heart of it. That is why "the sky, not the grave, is our goal".

3. To see Christ truly is a transformative experience. We see this to some extent in the present life ("we all with unveiled faces...") but ultimately, when we see him - when faith becomes sight - then we will be like him.

It's worth noting the next verse. "And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure". If we expect this transformation in the future, if we hope to see him and be like him then, we should seek to be like him now. To me, this makes good sense. It is where we are going that decides the direction we strike out in. If this is where I'm going - toward purity, toward Christ - then it makes sense to make today a step in the right direction.

Who I will be defines who I am, much more than who I was ever could.

Reasons to teach eschatology

2010-10-11T09:24:00.000+01:00

'Eschatology' is just everything to do with the end - whether it's personal eschatology (what happens to me in the end?) or cosmic eschatology (where is the universe headed?) - and I think we downplay it more than we should. Here are a few reasons why I think it is important that eschatology play more of a role in our teaching.

1. If we don't teach people eschatology, someone else will. I suspect that one of the reasons we don't talk about the end very much is because we don't want to be one of those loons who is always banging on about the end of the world. However, to counteract an overemphasis by largely neglecting the subject is unlikely to work! I've met several people who have been won over to dispensationalist views just because nobody else ever gave them a framework within which they could think these issues through, or a way of interpreting Revelation that seemed to take the book seriously. If we don't want people to pick up bad eschatology, we need to teach them good stuff.

2. If we don't teach eschatology, people will be disappointed with the Christian life. One corollary of our neglect of eschatology is that Christians don't understand hope, and don't understand that the best bits of the Christian life - sinlessness, seeing Jesus, freedom from suffering - are all in the future. That means that we expect more out of this life than we are really promised, and that leads to disappointment. Proper eschatology keeps us oriented to the future, with a hope and expectation that will not be disappointed.

3. If we don't teach eschatology, people don't understand how to relate to the world. What is a Christian approach to ecology? How should I think about culture? How much emphasis should we place on poverty relief and development (and which of those should be prioritised)? All of these questions need a healthy eschatology to get a good answer.

I'm sure there are more...

Genesis in competition

2010-09-07T18:31:00.000+01:00

There has been a bit of a storm in a teacup in the last few days over Stephen Hawking’s claims that the creation of the Universe was, or at least very well could have been, godless. Various people have sprung to God’s defence in various ways, which is jolly decent of them. I’ve been pondering one very common line of defence, and thinking through the way the Biblical creation narratives work. Here’s where I’m at so far.

A lot of people, including the ABC for example, have argued that even if Hawking could demonstrate a complete physical explanation for the beginning of everything (I confess I don’t understand whether he has done so, and if not what his prospects are for the future) this would have no impact on religious beliefs about the beginning of the Universe. These are two totally different sorts of stories, and both could be true at once. This line of argument is manifestly seeking to avoid the accusation that theologians maintain a ‘god of the gaps’, deploying the Almighty only when there is no less plenipotentiary explanation to hand. That we avoid such a concept of God is, of course, vitally important, especially if we wish to maintain a specifically Christian theism. That just isn’t the way God reveals himself and his relation to creation.

So on that score, all well and good.

It does concern me, though, that it could appear (and may well be) that Christian apologists are seeking to assert a complete compatibility between whatever creation stories are floating around in our society and the Biblical accounts. This will not do.

At this point, one small piece of autobiography and one blunt assertion. The autobiographical point is that my background here is in young earth creationism, a position from which I’ve retreated, not, I hope, in the face of the rampant hordes of secular humanism, but through reflection on the Biblical texts themselves. Nevertheless, I maintain some respect for the YEC position, for reasons which will become clear. The blunt assertion is this: Hawking’s account of origins, like every account, is a story. There are no uninterpreted facts; every narrative of the beginning is a drama. That this drama deals primarily with material drawn from contemporary scientific method is irrelevant; that method itself is embedded in a wider worldview shaped by narrative.

A question: why were the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 written? On the most conservative assumptions of Mosaic authorship and an early date for the Exodus (assumptions I think possible and probable respectively), there were creation stories that looked a lot like Genesis floating around, and indeed dominating in sophisticated Ancient Near Eastern society, many centuries before Moses set pen to papyrus. We can read them in texts like Enuma Elish and Atrahasis. Comparison indicates that the author of Genesis is using some of the common building blocks of these accounts – for of course he lives in a broadly similar milieu – but is shaping these building blocks into a completely different building. In so doing, we must assume he is making a theological point. He is deliberately putting his creation stories into competition with the existing narratives. He accepts some common presuppositions – the solid firmament in the sky, for example, or the chaotic and threatening nature of sea – but delivers a completely different message.

It is worth noting also that both Genesis and the standard ANE accounts of origins are in some sense scientific; they work back from what they observe in the world as it exists now, and draw conclusions. I do not at all want to deny that the Genesis accounts differ in that they preserve a witness to God’s revelation which is not present in Enuma Elish and the like. But with this firmly acknowledged, I think there is a necessity to recognise the human mode of composition also. These are designed to be accounts operating at the same level – as complete religious/scientific/metaphysical/social explanations of the origin of the world. (In this the ancient world had an advantage over us – it did not divide knowledge into distinct and often hermetically sealed spheres as we do. I suggest that we might learn something here).

As Christians today, we need to take note of the way Genesis works. It does compete; it does not just set itself up as a deeper explanation. This, I think, is the insight that young earth creationism brings to the table, and we need to work harder at taking it seriously. On the other hand, the Genesis accounts are not completely rejectionist; they are happy to accept aspects of the creation stories prevalent in their culture – even aspects (like the raqia) which we can’t accept any longer (which incidentally is perhaps a warning to us that in our appropriation of contemporary concepts we should hold them lightly and provisionally). That is the insight which shines through theistic evolution, and deserves to be taken equally seriously. Understanding Genesis as it was plots the course for our understanding of the origins question in the here and now.

From emphatic to reductionist

2010-08-27T10:30:00.001+01:00

Justin Taylor quotes Fred Sanders on evangelicalism:

We have a lot to say about God’s revelation, but we emphasize the business end of it, where God’s voice is heard normatively: the Bible.

We know that everything Jesus did has power for salvation in it, but we emphasize the one event that is literally crucial: the cross.

We know that God is at work on his people through the full journey of their lives, from the earliest glimmers of awareness to the ups and downs of the spiritual life, but we emphasize the hinge of all spiritual experience: conversion.

We know there are countless benefits that flow from being joined to Christ, but we emphasize the big one: heaven

The whole post is great, and captures what is for me one of the biggest problems with evangelicalism today. Go read it, please.

God revealing and revealed

2010-08-24T12:11:00.000+01:00

I've been brushing up on my Patristics over the last couple of weeks, with the help of John Behr's books on the formation of Christian Theology. It's been really useful stuff. One of the things that has been driven home to me is that the foundational question of Christian Theology is 'does Jesus Christ reveal God?' Of course, it's possible that I'm reading things through this lens because I think that this is the central question to be asked and answered today; still, Behr does indicate that this is at the heart of discussions in the first four centuries of the Church as well. Indeed, he structures his discussion of the Fathers' doctrine around the gospel question 'who do you say I am?' - with each theologian giving subtly different answers.

An interesting contrast drawn by Behr is between Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons. Both are generally considered to be orthodox, which makes the comparison all the more interesting - we are not dealing with wild heresies, but with a discussion within the Great Church. Behr argues that for Justin, who never quite escapes his Platonist past, it is a presuppositional truth that God is utterly transcendent, and therefore not capable of being seen. He understands Christ as a second God, a visible God. He is not at this point heading into ditheism; he believes in, although he doesn't particularly develop, the oneness of the Father and the Son. But he does apply titles to Christ which would later drop out of use - he calls him an apostle and an angel. It wouldn't be too hard to show Scriptural support for both titles, but in Justin's theology they show the place of the Son: he bridges the gap between the Father and the creation, as a messenger. This enables Justin to see significant continuity between the Son and creation, and to claim all truth - even when uttered by pagan philosophers - as the Word of God. "[F]or Justin, the revelation of God in the Incarnate Word is the last, even if the most important, in a series of discrete revelations" (Behr). Moreover, for Justin the Word reveals the Word - God the Father, in his incomprehensible transcendence, remains essentially unknown.

For Irenaeus, on the other hand, there is no division between the Father and the Son; although distinct, they are absolutely united. The Son reveals the Father - "the Father is the invisible of the Son, the Son is the visible of the Father" (Against Heresies). The Son is not conceived of as a bridge (which in the end leads nowhere), but as the manifestation of the Father himself. The continuity between the Son and creation which creeps in to Justin is absent; God is revealed only in Christ, the incarnate Word, and not elsewhere. Where for Justin, the Son/Word as intermediary between God and creation can be seen throughout creation and only supremely in Christ, for Irenaeus the Son is seen in Christ alone. The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ are the revelation of God. Prior revelation, to the patriarchs and through the Scriptures, is to be understood as related prophetically to the incarnate Word. There is no room here for any logos asarkos.

It is interesting that the debates about Christology that developed long after Justin and Irenaeus were safely home would revolve initially around whether Christ really is God and therefore able to reveal God, and then around whether this happens in real humanity. It is all about whether God can be known, and how he can be known. The answer the orthodox arrived at in the fourth century is that God can be known, but only in his Son, who as true God truly reveals God, and further that the Son can only be seen as incarnate, crucified, and risen, as a true human being. That, for me, is the crux of all Christian theology: is God seen in Christ, and him crucified? Is he seen there truly? Is he seen there alone?

Faith School Menace?

2010-08-19T09:57:00.003+01:00

This was the title of a documentary which I watched last night on the subject of faith schools, presented by Professor Richard Dawkins. Now, I am not hugely excited about faith schools, but I am interested in Prof. Dawkins. I find him to be representative of a widespread cultural trend which disturbs me, for reasons which will become clear. For that reason, and not because I particularly feel the need to defend faith schools, I wanted to pass some comment on the documentary.

Firstly, a few relatively trivial things that I think Prof. Dawkins got wrong. In talking about the rise of faith schools, he seemed to neglect the fact that historically most schools have had some basis in or affiliation to religious teaching, thus making it appear as if a new wave of fundamentalism were sweeping the nation. I'm really not sure that's true. Moreover, I think Prof. Dawkins has seriously overestimated how much the average CofE school is actually affected by its links to the Church. I doubt there is much indoctrination going on in most of these schools. (Let's face it, you'd struggle to get yourself indoctrinated in the average Anglican Church, let alone the schools). Neither is there selection along religious lines to the extent that seemed to be implied by the programme. And in taking us to Belfast as an example of the divisiveness of faith schools, Prof. Dawkins rather failed to take into account the sheer complexity of the situation in Northern Ireland, which has at least as much to do with a legacy of colonialism as it does with religion.

That last point was unfortunate, because for me this was where the argument of the documentary had the potential to be most powerful and most interesting. It does seem to me that educating children in groups defined by religion is likely to be bad for social cohesion. By playing the NI card, Prof. Dawkins actually put a red herring into play - it is unlikely that SS Mary and John School just down the road from me is going to turn into a hotbed of sectarian violence. But there is a possibility (not with SSMJ, which as far as I can see has a pretty open admissions policy) that schools which select children according to religion will end up shutting those children off from other views of the world. This would be a bad thing. Of course, a faith-based school could still teach about other worldviews, but if there are no families represented who hold those worldviews they will always seem 'other' and alien. At this point I think there is a real discussion to be had. A balance has to be struck between the right of parents to bring up their children (which includes the right to decide how they are educated), and the need of society for people who understand a range of worldviews. It is a problem which stems from the fact that we in the West no longer agree about what the world is like and what life is about - not just in details, but in fundamentals. It will be difficult, I think, to reconcile the wishes of parents and the needs of society. I wish Prof. Dawkins had spent longer discussing this point.

The reason he did not do so became clear toward the end of the programme: Prof. Dawkins thinks there is no great difficulty. In fact, the situation is simple. Take the faith out of education, and the problem evaporates.

Let me just pick up a few issues that I have with this position. The first is that the position adopted by Prof. Dawkins assumes that there is some value-neutral and worldview-neutral way of educating children. I don't see how this could be done, neither do I think it would be desirable if it could be done. To educate children to adopt a stand-offish approach to every possible view of the world is to educate them to be isolated and probably unpleasant individualists. Moreover, the position collapses in on itself at the point where the question is asked: would a value-free education be a good thing?

That exposes the bigger issue, which is that Prof. Dawkins seems to believe that his own worldview is not culturally conditioned, has no fundamental presuppositions, and consists purely of uninterpreted facts. Just writing the sentence should make it clear that this cannot be so. I would love it if Prof. Dawkins could see that his own view of the world is one amongst many, and that it is not so self-evidently superior to all the others as he thinks it is. Of course, he thinks his worldview is right - true in the most absolute sense. We all do, otherwise we wouldn't hold the views that we do. But part of being one amongst many human beings in many cultures is to accept that others strongly disagree.

The deepest problem, I think, emerged when Prof. Dawkins began to talk about the advice he had given to his young daughter. I've heard him mention this before, and it is obviously important to him. He essentially urges her to ask questions about the world, not to take anyone's word for it, and to keep an open mind. I applaud all of these things. But he frames this discussion in terms of four sources of knowledge: evidence, tradition, authority, and revelation. Apart from completely misunderstanding what is meant by 'revelation' (he takes it to mean a subjective feeling), Prof. Dawkins gets into serious trouble when he argues that you should only ever believe something on the basis of evidence. At one level, this is the simple paradox: what evidence is there that believing things only on evidence will get me to the truth? At another level, there is the assumption that the natural sciences are essentially the only source of knowledge, another unprovable assertion. This gets you into all sorts of difficulty. For example, I must believe many things on authority; I don't have time to test all my beliefs! The point is, is this a trustworthy authority or not? There was an interesting point in the documentary when Prof. Dawkins decried the fact that faith was being allowed to over-ride the "facts of science and history". To put science to one side for the moment, one wonders what facts of history are being spoken of. Most of what we know about history derives from other people's accounts of it. I'm not sure how, on Prof. Dawkins' advice, we could claim to know any facts about history at all.

Perhaps the biggest thing I would love Prof. Dawkins and those who agree with him to understand is that Christians (I cannot speak for other religions, and anyway I am not interested in a defence of religion in the abstract, except in the sense that everyone ought to be free to believe and practice as they see fit) really think that they are talking precisely about the facts of history when they talk about their faith. Our faith in Jesus isn't a vague metaphysical thing; it is founded in what we think happened in history, a history to which we have access only through written accounts (which is simply to say, a history like any other). Let's argue about history, by all means. Let's talk as two people with different worldviews, different interpretations of the available evidence - I would even go so far as to say different faiths. And by all means let's have the discussion about faith schools - we might be surprised about how much we agree on the subject. But let's have no more about this supposedly neutral worldview based purely on facts; there is no such thing, and therefore no such thing can be taught.

Edit: Chris has a useful take on the documentary from a slightly different perspective which you should read.

Questions (and answers?)

2010-08-17T13:25:00.001+01:00

I've been mulling over the relationship between the Church and the world when it comes to questions and answers. I think I see two models which dominate our thinking.

In the first model, the world is thought of as having questions, whilst the Church has answers. The job of the Church, then, is to supply the answers to the questions the world is asking. This assumes a few things. Firstly, it assumes that the world is asking questions, and indeed not just any questions but the right questions. Secondly, it assumes that the Church is in a position of superiority vis a vis the world, as the possessor of answers. Thirdly, it assumes that the world, when seeking answers to its questions, is likely to come to the Church, or at least that the world will be willing to listen to the answers the Church provides. I think this model may have been useful, at some point in the past, when the big questions being asked in the world were in fact largely shaped by the Church, and therefore the Church genuinely was seen as the place to go for answers. I'm not at all sure it is very useful today.

In the second model, the world is thought of as having answers, while the Church has questions. The job of the Church on this model is to question the assumptions of the world, and attempt to make the world think more deeply about the genuineness of its answers. This model is probably more useful to us today, and underlies a lot of our apologetic strategy. Note, however, that this still puts the Church into a position of definite superiority; our questions come from a place of security and power.

I've been wondering what an ecclesiology that is deeply shaped by the cross looks like. I wonder whether in this instance it means not taking a position of authority. I've been wondering whether the role of the Church in the world might be to ask questions of God and of itself, and to be asked questions by God, so that the Church is able to stand in solidarity with a confused world and encourage the world to ask the questions it hardly dares to ask for fear of a lack of answers.

I wonder whether we in the Church could be a community of comforted questioners, and the comforted questioned. Might we not be able to say to the world: we too have questions and doubts, we too would like to ask God a thing or two, we too are confused and baffled by existence and terrified by non-existence, but we are comforted in the face of our questions and our fears by Jesus Christ, who asks the question with us - "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And then we might be able to say to the world: like you, we find our very existence thrown in doubt, we are forced to question whether anything means anything, and indeed we find ourselves standing under the great question of whether our being can possibly be justified, but we are comforted in these questions by Jesus Christ, who asks us a bigger question which leads us to hope - "who do you say I am?"

Anyway, I was just wondering what that might be like.

Unbelief in Eden

2010-08-09T15:31:00.000+01:00

We see two-stage unbelief in Eden.

First, Adam and Eve do not believe that God intends to be good to them, and therefore they suspect that his commands are actually restrictive rather than liberating. The result of this first stage of unbelief is disobedience, and it is inexcusable. They should have known from the fact of their creation that God is good, always good.

Second, Adam and Eve do not believe that God will sustain them and all his creation in the face of their sin, and therefore they doubt whether he will show them mercy. The result of this second stage of unbelief is hiding from God, and this too is inexcusable. They should have known from the fact of their creation that God is committed to upholding his creatures in the face of the chaos and darkness that threatens them.

I sometimes wonder whether we could truly talk of fallen human beings if there were not this second stage; might they not have been just stumbling human beings, recovered by grace?

Corresponding to this, 1 John 2 counters both stages of unbelief in the Christian:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Believe that God is good and don't sin; if you sin, believe that God is good and don't hide!

Simul iustus et peccator (2)

2010-08-07T10:50:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, this is getting more obscure in my mind instead of clearer. Nevertheless, I heroically press on with what is likely to be a series of questions rather than answers...

To push the dialectic theme a bit further, and perhaps to locate it at a deeper and more important place: What is the relationship between the righteousness of Christ and the righteous acts of the Christian?

Again, one could envisage a straightforward relationship, perhaps even a relationship of identity. I don't think Scripture allows us to tread that path. Christ's righteousness is once-for-all, and is now in heaven. He doesn't require our participation (in this sense) to complete who he is and what he has done. Jesus' righteousness and the Christian's righteous deeds cannot be identified in a straightforward manner at all.

I think I prefer to say - because I think this is what comes across in the Pauline writings especially - that the righteous deeds of the Christian are an answer (temporal, partial, inadequate, but nevertheless real) to the righteousness of Christ which is extended to the believer. Christ's righteousness (which is also my righteousness by faith) is one thing; my righteous acts are another thing, which relate to the former as a witness. To put it another way, an absolute monarch could make an absolute proclamation; if his subjects say 'yes' to it, it adds nothing to the proclamation, but merely shows their approval, their belief in the rightness of the proclamation. Does that make sense?

So I think there is a heavenly/earthly dialectic going on here. My righteousness is Christ, who is in heaven; my reply to that righteousness is righteous deeds.

But has anything really changed in me?

The answer is yes, but I won't write about it until Monday at least.

Simul iustus et peccator (1)

2010-08-06T13:29:00.000+01:00

The relationship between righteousness and sinfulness in the Christian life has always been a big theological issue. More than that, it is a big existential issue for any Christian with any self-awareness at all. Particularly, it is an issue where our self-awareness and our gospel-awareness apparently come into conflict, or at least into such sharp tension that resolution seems beyond us. To state the problem simply, the gospel tells me I am righteous, but I find myself to be sinful. What am I to do with these apparently irreconcilable insights? I want to explore that in a few posts (I've not yet decided how many). For those with a smattering of Latin, or some knowledge of classic Protestant Orthodoxy, my answer will already be apparent, although I may want to develop it in a way that differs somewhat from the Orthodox statement.

Let me put down some foundations. It seems to me that there are two basic ways of approaching this problem, two ways of relating the Christian's righteousness and his or her sinfulness.

On the one hand, there are constructions in which these two things are placed on one plane. At its most crude, this is expressed as a sort of sliding scale. You experience a mix of righteousness and sinfulness because you are a mix of righteousness and sinfulness. You are partly righteous, partly sinful. Righteousness and sinfulness are, on this model, considered to be basically the same sort of thing, albeit the same sort of thing in an opposite configuration. Now, I would guess this view is hardly ever expressed in such a crude way as this, but I think we can detect it lying behind the traditional Roman Catholic approach, for example. On this view, baptism is the beginning of righteousness, the first infusion of righteousness into me as a subject. Throughout my Christian life, I should expect that my righteousness increases (with the concurrent decrease in my sinfulness) as I make use of the means of grace, especially of course the sacraments. Of course, should I neglect the means of grace, or entertain temptation in some way, I can expect the scale to slide the other way. This view has the benefit of being straightforward, making sense of our experience, and being practical, giving us instructions in dealing with our relative sinfulness.

Before any Roman Catholics jump on me for presenting their theology in such a crude, and frankly shabby, fashion - I know it isn't quite like that. But that is the tendency I see at the heart of it. Am I wrong?

The other basic approach is to say that there is some sort of dialectical approach to righteousness/sinfulness, something which places them on different planes, or at least which makes their relationship much more complex than a sliding scale. On this side we have to place all Protestant answers, which have typically stated that the Christian is in some way both righteous and sinful at one and the same time (simul iustus et peccator) without implying that righteousness and sinfulness can be considered as present in different relative measures in the Christian. The classic Reformed position, which sees the Christian as totally righteous with the imputed righteousness of Christ, and yet in themselves sinful, is a good example of this.

The two approaches - the straightforward and the dialectical - can be related in one system, and indeed probably must be. So, for example, the Reformed see a sliding scale in the Christian's worked out or experienced righteousness/sinfulness, whilst holding an ultimately dialectical view; the Roman Catholic sees the righteousness of Christ lying behind the sacraments in a way which cannot be made to slot into the straightforward view. Nevertheless, the two positions are basically different in their approach.

There is of course the Wesleyan view, which to my mind is just confused as to which position it holds. Probably it ultimately comes down on the dialectical side. As a historical note, you could argue that Lutheranism is characterised by a more pure dialectical approach, whereas the Reformed tend towards a mixed view. More on that later, perhaps.

Now, it is my position that we must adopt the dialectical view: the Christian is both righteous and sinful, at one and the same time, but not in such a way that we can relate righteousness and sinfulness on a simple sliding scale. Righteousness is not the opposite of sinfulness in the Christian life, or at least not in the way that this sliding scale involves.

Well, that was all pretty obscure wasn't it? Might make more sense tomorrow, but I confess I'm thinking this stuff through as I type!

Not speech, but flesh

2010-07-19T10:14:00.000+01:00

A brief word for evangelicalism, which is so very over-wordy in all its doings:

"Why is the Lord's Supper not celebrated every Sunday in every church (at the very least in the presence of the whole congregation)) - even if this is at the expense of the length of our sermons and our excessive organ music? It would be legitimate liberation for the preacher and the audience...! And occasionally baptism could form the beginning of the whole service (also without an unnecessary flood of words). Would this not make us a comprehensive "church of the Word" - the Word which did not become speech, but flesh?"

Karl Barth

The Serpent's Academy

2010-07-16T11:46:00.000+01:00

Have you ever noticed how Genesis 3 reports the founding of the two oldest faculties of the University?

The first is theology. The serpent asks the question: "did God actually say..?" And, I imagine without substantial reflection and without consideration of the consequences, Eve joins in a conversation about God - the first such conversation. It does not end well. There is an inherent risk in the pursuit of theology, and a monumental danger. Talking about God in the absence of God, which is the nature of the conversation in the garden and is the nature of most academic theology today, leads with tragic inevitability to the assertion of my own opinions about God and his nature (I have in mind here the subtle failure of Eve to accurately quote God), which are no match for the enemy's counter-opinions (the serpent's assertion that God is a liar). My opinions about God may be good, in so far as they go, but unless they are based squarely on God's word - and may I suggest, not God's word as a remembered entity now absent (for the danger of misquoting is too great), but God's word as a present experience - they leave my understanding of God vulnerable to heretical distortion.

The second is ethics. The serpent suggests that eating from the tree will make human beings "like God, knowing good and evil". As has often been remarked, this does not mean that Adam and Eve are imagined as having no knowledge of the meaning of these terms; if that were so, the temptation could hardly be appealing. Rather, the temptation is that they could become like God in being able to discern what is good and what is evil. And of course, being able to discern this very quickly becomes being able to decide what is good and what is evil. Here is the launch of ethics as the pursuit of autonomous human beings. Rather than accepting God's word on the subject - "he has told you, O man, what is good" - human beings seek to work ethics out (and later, to impose their preferences under the cloak of ethics) in God's absence.

What a dangerous place to be the university is!

Not God

2010-07-15T16:25:00.000+01:00

Here are some things which evangelical Christians might be tempted to mention in the same breath as God, implying that they are to be loved and/or worshipped in the way that God is to be loved and worshipped:

The Bible - it is the word of God, and is to be loved as such, but it is not God. It witnesses to God and his salvation, it does not substitute for it.
The Church - it is the family of God, and is to be loved as such, but it is not God. It, too, witnesses to God and his salvation; it must never be ranked too highly.
The natural world - it is the creation of God, and is to be loved as such, but it is not God. Day and night it witnesses to God and his salvation.

The thick dividing line must be drawn between, on the one hand, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God now and forever, and on the other hand, everything else. The line is so easy to blur, in little and apparently insignificant ways, but we must not permit it to happen, even at the risk of being seen to have 'a low doctrine of Scripture' or 'too little love for the local church' or 'a gnostic attitude toward creation'. God is God, and nothing else is.

I've been reading about the Barmen declaration; could you tell?

Veiled in Flesh

2010-07-13T12:03:00.000+01:00

The curtain in the tabernacle, and later the temple, seems to serve one important purpose according to the Scriptural testimony: it keeps sinful people away from God. That was both a burden and a blessing. A burden, because it cut human beings off from the fellowship with God for which they were designed; a blessing, because in fact in their sinful state human beings could not stand that fellowship. No one can see God and live.

I have been wondering whether there is something else going on here, as well as the obvious. The question 'where is God?' sounds, to us, hopelessly naive, but it was a question to which the OT Israelite would be able to give three answers. Firstly, God is in heaven, whence he does whatever pleases him. Secondly, God is throughout the world, directing and sustaining all creation. Thirdly, God is in the Most Holy Place, in the tabernacle/temple. These are all true, and some of the tensions between them are captured in Solomon's prayer of dedication at his great temple, recorded in 2 Chronicles 6. What strikes me, though, is that it is surely the third answer which gives the Israelite the greatest comfort, and upon which his faith rests. The fact that the OT often reports the perversion of this faith, portraying Israel as presuming upon God's favour because of his presence in the temple (see Jeremiah 7:4), merely reflects and underlines the fact that for Israel the presence of God in the temple is the foundation of their confidence.

Why is that? Why is the Lord's presence in the Most Holy Place more significant for Israel than his presence in the highest heaven?

I would suggest that it is only by taking up residence behind the curtain that God can be Israel's God, or rather that they can know him as Israel's God. The God of the heavens, and the God of the cosmos, are frankly not entities which can be known. Where is God? If not behind the curtain, if merely everywhere, what answer can we usefully give to the question? And doesn't the God who is not behind the curtain - not in a particular place - all to easily become the God who has no particular characteristics, and finally not a particular God at all but a vague and unknowable force? Whether we then go for pantheism, or prefer polytheism as a way of filling the gap between this unknown God and us, we certainly lose the real God, the personal God who is with us and for us.

Ironically, it seems that God has to curtain off a small section of the cosmos he has made in order to show himself as the Lord of the whole cosmos; ironically, in order to reveal himself as the God he really is, Yahweh must conceal himself behind a piece of cloth.

Consider, then, Hebrews 10:19-20: "...we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh..."

Granted, the author of Hebrews has in mind primarily the curtain as the separation between holy God and sinful man - the more obviously Biblical application of the temple idea. But he does make the point that the tabernacle curtain was a sign of Jesus' human body - more than that, of his flesh, his whole human space-time existence. The particular God - the God who actually exists and is for us - takes flesh and hides himself in it so as to be revealed. God cannot be known in the abstract. He can only be known if we can give a satisfactory answer to the question 'where is God?'; and the answer we give is that God is in Christ.

In Hebrews, of course, the curtain is opened up. That, too, has happened. Christ's body, torn open on the cross, reveals God as he truly is - the crucified One, God in the depths, God suffering in my place. Is that, I wonder, why the veil of the temple was torn in two just as he died?

Irony: man in his sin hides from God, and is thus revealed to be the sinner he is; God in his righteousness hides himself from man, and is thus revealed to be the righteous God he truly is.

Implication: where do I look for God? Is it in his hidden-ness, or do I always clamour for the glory of the general God, the no-god?

Old self/New self

2010-07-01T11:15:00.000+01:00

I've been mulling over the relation between the gospel and holiness. On Sunday I preached an inadequate sermon on the Holy Spirit in Galatians, the main point of which was that Paul really seems to expect that we will be made holy in our actions by the Spirit (not our own efforts), and that we receive the Spirit as we hear the message of Christ crucified and respond in faith. Therefore, the key to practical, lived-out holiness is focussing on and believing the gospel.

I think there is something similar going on in Ephesians 4:20-24. Paul has just told them to change their behaviour - "you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do". Then he refers them back to their experience of hearing the gospel - "assuming that you heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self... and to put on the new self..."

Three things that I see going on here:
1. They heard about Jesus - that is to say, they heard the message about what happened to Jesus in his death and resurrection. They heard that Jesus truly died, and rose again.
2. They were taught in Jesus - which I take to mean that they were taught about what it means to be in Jesus, to be joined to him in his death and resurrection. In him, they also died and rose.
3. They put off the old self and put on the new - which simply means bringing their behaviour into conformity with what is true about them because of their unity with Jesus in his death and resurrection.

The key, again, is the mind - thinking and believing the gospel. But this is not just CBT. It is not just thinking ourselves into holiness. The foundation of it all is the little phrase "as the truth is in Jesus". This is not sanctification by wishful thinking; it is sanctification by the fact that my old self is really dead, and I have a newly created identity. I am a new man (note that old self/new self is old man/new man in Greek - this is literally the abolition of the person I was and the institution of a whole new person). This has happened to me, because of what has happened to Jesus.

The struggle of sanctification is the struggle to see myself "in Jesus", and therefore as dead and raised again.

Cuts and Motives

2010-06-21T12:16:00.001+01:00

So, here comes the budget. And here come the cuts. It's going to hurt.

But permit me, for a moment, to delve into something which I think is important: the motives for these cuts in public spending. A lot of people I know have already started banging the 'evil old Tories' drum - you know the one: the Tories love the rich, the Tories hate the poor, the Tories want to protect the privileged whilst grinding the worker into the dust. That sort of thing. I find it painful to listen to, and I want my friends to understand this. I believe in these cuts. That doesn't mean I think they're going to be great. Some of them I think are a good idea, like tightening up the welfare system and making sure it pays more to work than it does to claim. Others I think are an unfortunate necessity in the economic climate, like not building a visitors' centre at Stonehenge, or cutting arts funding. And I understand that for many people - including people I know and love - these cuts will mean personal hardships and even tragedies. I get that. But I think it is necessary for us as a nation to spend less - much less. There it is.

Now, I wonder whether my friends think I hate the poor? Maybe they do. If that were so, that would make me a rubbish Christian, and, let's face it, a pretty awful human being. But I promise you it isn't the case: I genuinely believe that this is better for all of us in the long run. Of course, you may think I'm wrong. But do you also think I'm evil?

I hope not many of my friends think that I am evil. In which case, I want to ask them to hold off on assuming that Dave, George and co are necessarily evil. If, just for a moment, we assumed that the people we disagreed with might have good motives, wouldn't that lead to a more constructive debate about the way forward?

To put it another way, it would be very easy for me to write off all my leftish friends as people who hate success, are driven by envy, and desperately want to take away economic freedom. That would, of course, be facile and frankly idiotic analysis. I don't think that. I think my leftish friends are wrong; but I think their motives are good. It would be nice if the compliment were extended in the opposite direction.

End of rant. As you were.

The Nineteenth Century

2010-06-15T16:51:00.000+01:00

I am just approaching the end of a term spent studying Protestant theology in Europe and America in the 19th Century. It has been fascinating, but only in the way that a documentary about the Titanic or a train-wreck might be fascinating. The 19th Century sees the complete marginalisation of orthodoxy within Protestant theology, and a move toward man as the measure of all things which is utterly destructive. By the time we get to the First World War, we are faced with the terrible sight of German theologians enthusiastically supporting the Kaiser's war, and theologians across Europe not only failing to protest the war but actually talking it up as a war for Christianity and civilisation, as if these two were the same, as if they were both in desperate danger, and as if leaving the youth of the continent dying in the mud would save them. And that was not a blip; it was the logical end point of the mainstream of theology over the previous century.

What went wrong?

Well, firstly, in the 18th century, theologians argued that Christianity was reasonable, and therefore ought to be believed. That doesn't sound like the precursor to a disaster; the whole exercise was in fact considered as necessary to stave off disaster and to equip Christianity to survive the Enlightenment. But at some point there was a switch. Instead of arguing that the whole of Christianity was reasonable and therefore to be believed, suddenly theologians were arguing that only what was reasonable was to be believed, and therefore Christianity must be subjected to a critique that removes everything reason cannot accept. This was, in many ways, just a frank acceptance that the 18th century apologetic project had failed. This failure was not immediately obvious. But as 'what can be rationally believed' gradually shifted, the ground upon which the 18th century theologians had taken their stand was eroded and eventually destroyed. A bare kernel of 'Christianity' was left.

Secondly, theology failed to assert the transcendence and immanence of God. Kant stressed the transcendence; Hegel in protest stressed the immanence. The former made God inaccessible, and was not hugely attractive to theologians (although philosophers liked it); the latter seemed much more likely to provide theology with what it felt it needed - a plausible philosophical basis. But for Hegel God was locked inside the system of the world, and especially human culture. The logical development of his thought was the 'History of Religions school', which sought to trace the development of religion in history in order to see the revelation of God. Protestant Christianity was seen as the highest point (absolute religion for the likes of Schleiermacher and Harnack; the best so far for Troeltsch). In this movement, revelation came to be identified with cultural development. It comes as no surprise that a theologian like Harnack, who wrote that Protestantism was the genius of the German national spirit, would ultimately fail to criticise the War. (In fact, he signed a manifesto in support of it).

What do we have to learn?

Firstly, to be suspicious of our felt need to make Christianity rationally acceptable to those around us. We could succeed in this apologetic task and still be putting down a time bomb in the church which will be devastating in a hundred years. In particular, we need to remember that there is not some timeless standard of rationality to which we can appeal; what seems reasonable to someone today may not seem so reasonable in a few decades. So we mustn't rely too much on the rationality of those around us.

Secondly, we need to be on our guard against moving with the times. Revelation always stands over against culture and critiques it from its own place. Whenever anyone discards a piece of Scriptural teaching on the grounds that it is old fashioned (and this happens often, under different guises), we need to ask whether the surrounding culture has been allowed to smother the voice of the apostles and prophets.

The sacrifice of God

2010-06-05T12:01:00.003+01:00

Once one sacrificed human beings to one's god, perhaps precisely those whom one loved most; the sacrifices of the firstborn in all primitive religions belong here...

Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, one sacrificed to one's god one's own strongest instincts, one's "nature": this festive joy lights up the cruel eyes of the ascetic, the "anti-natural" enthusiast.

Finally - what remained to be sacrificed? At long last, did one not have to sacrifice for once whatever is comforting, holy, healing; all hope, all faith in hidden harmony, in future blisses and justices? Didn't one have to sacrifice God himself and, from cruelty against oneself, worship the stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, the nothing? To sacrifice God for the nothing - this paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty was reserved for the generation that is now coming up: all of us already know something of this-

Thus Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, section 55.

I wonder to what extent this clarifies the death of God. It is not, in fact, a mere murder, but a cultic murder. God has not been merely killed, but sacrificed, in a final self-consuming act of religion. Again, it is to Nietzsche's credit that he recognises that this is a sacrifice. Of course, he thinks it will set humanity free in some sense, but it is nevertheless a suffering, a cruelty inflicted upon oneself which in some way forms the logical highpoint of asceticism (which Nietzsche considers to be the heart of religion).

The sacrifice of God plays out in different ways in the Christian tradition. The most basic statement that can be made about it is that God sacrifices himself - again, this is an event in the history of God, not merely a human event. Therefore the BCP can say of Christ's death that he "made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world". Perhaps the question to ask Nietzsche here is whether his own concept of the sacrifice of God is not merely an insufficient echo of the gospel.

More directly relevant, though, to Nietzsche's theme is the requirement that the gospel puts on Christians to be continually sacrificing God.

Now, before you think I've gone all Roman, I should say that I have in mind a mental process, and that strictly speaking I do not have in mind God. What I mean is this: the revelation of God in the gospel - in the face of Jesus Christ - teaches us that all of our ideas of God are wrong. Jesus Christ continually crashes through every symbol, doctrine, thought, image, or idea of God that I am able to devise. So I find myself in this position: I must have these symbols, doctrines, and ideas - without them I cannot think of God at all; but I am continually reminded that my symbols, doctrines, and ideas are inadequate - in fact, they are not truly representative of God.

So I am always sacrificing my image of God, always laying it on the altar - no matter how comforting or inspiring an image it is to me. I sacrifice it, to receive afresh the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And as soon as that knowledge has passed into memory and symbol, I am called to sacrifice it.

Is there, then, nothing steady - nothing lasting - in the knowledge of God? Yes - but the steady, lasting thing is Jesus Christ himself, from whose grace my inadequate (and in itself idolatrous) knowledge of God can live.

The death of God

2010-06-04T08:46:00.003+01:00

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

Thus Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Gay Science. The whole passage is very powerful and well worth reading. There are a whole load of things I'd like to say about this. I'd like to draw attention to the fact that Nietzsche, unlike many of the contemporary atheists I come across, understands just what the death of God entails, in terms of the loss of all values. I'd like to explore the history of the death of God as a concept, and ask some questions about whether Nietzsche is the inevitable result of trends in western philosophy and theology. I'd love to explore the extent to which the madman represents Nietzsche himself in this parable.

But for this post, I want to settle on one thing: the death of God is an event. It is a happening.

It seems to me that Nietzsche is not so much an atheist as a deicide. I don't mean that Nietzsche believed in an existent, metaphysical entity called God, an entity which humanity has now killed. I don't think he had much interest in metaphysical entities of any sort. But the vivid imagery of the death - indeed, the murder - of God is not the language of the man who has just realised that there never was any sort of deity after all and therefore we can all enjoy our lives. Something has changed. There used to be God - this earth used to be chained to its sun, there used to be warmth and light, there used to be meaning. Now it has all gone. And we have done it. What is left is the nihilism from which Nietzsche hopes to provide some escape (but only for some?) through his philosophy.

Now consider this stanza from a hymn of Faber's:

O come and mourn with me a while,

and tarry here the cross beside.

O come together, let us mourn,

Jesus our Lord is crucified.

The subject is, of course, the death - of God? I think we could be so bold as to say so. Because in Christianity, also, the death of God is an event, a happening.

There is debate about whether we can really speak in this way - is not the death of Christ really the death of his human nature, and not at all the death of God? I think there is good reason to reject this approach, although I recognise it has been the majority position in the church. Perhaps I'll write something about this at some point.

I suppose the main difference between Nietzsche and Faber is the little phrase "a while" in the hymn. For Nietzsche's madman, God is dead and remains dead; for Faber, there is just a little while to mourn the death of God. How is that?

For Nietzsche, the death of God is an event in human history, for which human beings must take responsibility, the aftermath of which it is up to human beings to sort out. For the Christian, the death of God is an event in divine history, for which God takes responsibility (though indeed, it is true that we have done it), the aftermath of which God has sorted out by raising Christ from the dead. The madman is driven frantic by the responsibility. We have killed God; now what must we do? Must we not become gods ourselves to be worthy of the deed? The Christian agrees: we have killed God. We will mourn for a while. But ultimately we know that God himself has taken responsibility for our - murder? deicide? - and has completely undone what we have tried to do.

O love of God! O sin of man!

In this dread act your strength is tried,

and victory remains with love

for thou, our Lord, art crucified.

Hope

2010-05-24T20:25:00.002+01:00

I struggle with hope. On a good day, I can manage something approximating to faith, even if it does more often than not sound more like 'if you say so' than 'may it be to me according to your word'; on a very good day, there is even something a little bit like love, although not in anything approaching 1 Corinthians 13 categories. But hope I find tricky. Frightening, actually.

Frightening?

Well, yes, because so often what you hope for doesn't happen. I don't have anything in particular in mind - in fact, if I'm honest, I have to say that many of the things (and most of the important things) that I have hoped for have come to pass. But there is a sort of generalised, low-level anxiety that hope just raises expectations which could be dashed; that it isn't quite clear what it would be safe to hope for on a daily basis.

I am aware that this is a very grave failing, and probably falls under the heading of cowardice. I would like to say I hope to get over it, but, well, you know.

But this morning I was reading my Church Dogmatics, as you do in the morning, and I came across Barth's discussion of hope, in his survey of the doctrine of reconciliation. He points out that for the Christian the big hope is to be with God, serving God, as a willing and righteous partner - he actually makes the interesting point that what we hope for is exactly what Pelagians and semi-Pelagians have always said we already have, namely the ability, given by grace, to really co-operate with God. That is the hope. And of course the big point is that this hope is already fulfilled in Christ. He, as a man, occupies that position now, and therefore guarantees that I will also occupy it. Hurrah!

But that wasn't the bit that really struck me. He goes on to say: "But in the one hope there will always be inseparably the great hope and the small hope. All through temporal life there will be the expectation of eternal life. But there will also be its expectation in this temporal life. There will be confidence in the One who comes as the end and new beginning of all things. There will also be confidence in His appearing within the ordinary course of things as they still move toward that end and new beginning..." Of course! Because all hope is wrapped up in, and joined to, that great big hope. Jesus is coming back one day, and therefore I expect to see him tomorrow - maybe not yet in the flesh, but at work in my life and my world. I have hope. And only for that reason: "the small hopes are only for the sake of the great hope from which they derive", but conversely "where there is the great hope, necessarily there are hopes for the immediate future".

Of course, these small hopes may not come true "in their detailed content", but "it is certainly in these many little hopes that the Christian lives from day to day if he really lives in the great hope. And perhaps he is most clearly distinguished from the non-Christian by the fact that, directed to the great hope, and without any illusions, he does not fail and is never weary to live daily in these little hopes".

Thanks, Karl. That transforms how I look at my future - the uncertainty surrounding employment in a couple of months time, the anxiety over future ministry, the various petty issues that will fog my vision tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on until I see Him face to face. Small hopes, relative hopes, not so certain hopes; but all witnessing and pointing to and grounded in a great, certain, coming hope.

Huzzah!

You can find all this in Church Dogmatics IV.1, around about page 120.

The Glory of Love

2010-05-13T09:17:00.002+01:00

Glen has a tendency to write the sort of thing I wish I'd written. Here is the sixth part of a series of posts - you should read all six. Right now.

Seriously, what are you still doing here?

Of first importance

2010-05-10T15:32:00.004+01:00

It is a commonplace of Evangelical theology to divide doctrines into primary and secondary - the primary being those which constitute the heart of the gospel message, and the secondary being the other stuff. It's a sensible, Biblically-sanctioned division, and it makes things possible in practice that couldn't happen otherwise. Bish has been writing a bit about dealing with secondary issues in CU, specifically baptism in the Spirit and women's ministry. Some of the responses - not so much on the blog, but on Facebook - have been pretty angry, especially about the latter post. It interests me, not only because of my history working with Christian Unions, but also because I think that it is, ironically, the way in which we treat these contested points which reveals our most basic theological commitments. Let me just share a few thoughts, some of which I've already mentioned on Bish's blog, and others which are new.

1. This isn't just an issue for CUs. It's an issue for churches. Of course, churches are practically limited in how broad they can be (they have to have a particular baptismal practice, for example, and you either have women preaching or you don't), but still, if you never have to work out how to get on with someone in your church when you disagree over doctrine it is probably because your church is too narrow.

2. The church is constituted by an act of divine sovereignty, by which the Father unites his Son to us, through the incarnation, and us to his Son through the work of the Spirit. Because it is an act of divine sovereignty, it is a given, not something to be achieved. When I come face to face with someone who disagrees with me within the church, I need to remember this fact. The church is not a club - not a free organisation of human beings, which I can be part of or not, and which I can casually exclude other people from. It is a creation of God.

3. The way we deal with secondary issues should reflect the fact that these secondary matters are really further definitions of primary issues. This throws up difficulties - for example, the Presbyterian and I both say that people are saved by grace through faith (primary truth!), but I can't see how his secondary idea of infant baptism can fail to contradict this, and he can't see how my idea of adult baptism can possibly be in line with it. Our ideas about baptism are a further definition of what we mean when we say 'saved by grace through faith'. So, the way I approach this difference cannot be to just live and let live - we have to both seek to give an account of our faith, explaining why our view on the secondary flows from the gospel. And as we do that, we have to keep reminding ourselves - keep believing - that the person we're talking does believe that same gospel, even if we cannot see it at the moment.

4. Jesus still rules his church. A discussion of secondary issues is not a comparison of opinions. It is a question of whether we will submit to the sovereignty of Christ over the church. Concretely, that means whether we will submit to Scripture, through which Christ rules. Therefore, the form of our disagreement must be exegesis and nothing else. As soon as something else comes into view - 'that opinion is old fashioned', 'that won't help our witness' - we are in the realm of our own thoughts and in rebellion against Christ. We start with Scripture, and end with Scripture. Only in so far as we are bound to the words of Scripture are we bound to the Word of God.

5. Where exegesis is the form of the disagreement, and where both sides are seeking to bind themselves to Scripture, we hope for resolution of the disagreement and we do not give up listening to Scripture together. In the meantime, we proceed by faith and work out how in practice we can have visible communion that expresses the invisible communion that we do have by faith. (It's at this point that Bish's posts come into play).

Vague constitutional ramblings

2010-05-08T19:28:00.003+01:00

Well, wasn't that all very exciting? I generally enjoyed the election, was quite pleased with the result, and am currently enjoying the fallout. All the talk is of electoral reform. Intriguing. I just had a few random thoughts that I wanted to share.

1. I'm not sure people understand British democracy. People are upset that they aren't getting the government they voted for - well, I have news for you: the British people don't vote for a government. You voted for your local representative. You may or may not have got the person you wanted, but you will have got the representative that most people in your area wanted. That is as far as your democratic rights go in this country. We choose representatives, and we trust them to have some influence on how the government is formed.

2. I'm sure the TV debates helped with this misconception. It felt like we were voting for Gordon, Dave or Nick - after all, they were the people we saw debating.

3. I am certain that pure PR would be a disaster. It's interesting to look at post-war Germany, and the power the FDP had. With only slight changes in the relative left-right balance, the FDP could decide who got to govern. I'd hate to have a system where the Lib Dems always got to choose the government.

4. I think we need to keep the link between MPs and their local constituencies. Moreover, I certainly want to vote for a person, not just a party.

5. If the British people want to elect their government (I would advise them against it), perhaps we could separate this government election from the election of MPs? That way, the governmental election could use some form of PR without messing with the current representative system. This would be something like a Presidential system, and would therefore completely mess up the constitution - it would probably move us in a republican direction.

On second thoughts, forget I mentioned it. It sounds dreadful.

In the meantime, it's all very interesting indeed.

The least bad

2010-05-05T15:31:00.004+01:00

Tomorrow, I will be voting for what I consider to be the least bad of the options put in front of me. None of the options is hugely inspiring, and none is particularly friendly to the Christian gospel. But then, I don't expect them to be. After all, the decisive encounter between Christianity and the state can be summed up in the phrase 'crucified under Pontius Pilate'. That phrase colours my whole idea of what the state is, and it doesn't lead me to expect much.

Can I suggest there are two main things we should be looking at?

Firstly, and most importantly, I can look for the people I think will most promote the common good. By the common good I mean not the interests of any particular section of society, but the good of all. Of course, we will have different conceptions of what the common good actually is; all I can really say to that is: be suspicious of your own ideas. It is very easy to con ourselves into thinking that 'what would be best for me' is the same as the common good. Moreover, the common good can be considered from lots of different angles - financial welfare, liberty, community coherence. Resist reductionism - the common good cannot be only a matter of economics, or only a matter of freedom. Who offers the least bad option, in terms of balancing the desirables?

Secondly, and particularly as a Christian, all I ask from the state is that they leave me free to live, preach, and worship (1 Tim 2:1-4). Who offers the least bad option on this front?

At the end of the day, I am waiting for perfect government, and I belong to a city where that government is vested in the hands of the Perfect King. That doesn't make tomorrow unimportant; but it does put it in perspective.

"But while they live in Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. (Christians) live in their own countries, but only as non-residents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners." - Diognetus, 2nd century AD

Step of faith

2010-05-03T20:44:00.002+01:00

People often assume that religion is all about a step of faith - you know the sort of thing, shutting your eyes and putting your foot firmly forward in the hope that there is something there. Christians often protest that their religion involves nothing of the sort - it is all jolly rational and makes perfect sense.

May I suggest that Christianity involves a huge step of faith, but not one that is located where most people intend it to be?

It is not at the beginning ("their might be a God, let's act as if there were and see what happens"), but at the heart, because there is one statement in the Christian faith which I suggest simply cannot be reasoned or argued. It must be taken on faith. And it stands at the very heart of things. That statement is:

"God is as he has revealed himself to be"

But then, we take something very similar on faith in every sincere relationship we have, don't we?

Election Debate, Round One

2010-04-16T09:18:00.004+01:00

So, yesterday the three chaps who want to be Prime Minister went head to head on TV. I confess, I have had some misgivings about this debate. I wondered in advance whether it would be a good format for discussion of policy and argument over important issues; I feared that it would instead just reinforce that central weakness of democratic politics, namely that people just vote for whoever seems the nicest man. After the debate, I feel those fears were justified. I would struggle to pick winners and losers. Unlike the debate between the potential chancellors, which I thought showed all three men in a good light, last night's little show didn't improve my opinion of anyone's policies. It made me think I'd rather go to the pub with Nick Clegg, but I'm not sure that means I want him running the country.

The big frustration for me was that there was not enough argument. The debate proceeded by claim and counter-claim. Cameron says money can be saved by cutting waste; Brown says it can't; Clegg waffles on about nothing in particular. I really wanted someone to stand up and say 'we have a vision for Britain, and this is why it is better than the vision our opponents are advancing'. I thought Cameron might do that. The Conservative manifesto finally got me excited that we might have a real contest about what society ought to be like. But it didn't materialise on the night. Instead we got bickering over detail.

An example: Trident. Clegg says scrap it, saying money which could be better spent; Brown and Cameron say keep it in case we need to nuke North Korea. Neither is a good argument. Behind the two approaches, one feels there must be more fundamental differences, relating to how the party leaders see the role of Britain in the world. What sort of country do we want to be? Do we want to keep playing with the big boys in terms of geopolitics, or do we want to retire to a lower league? I don't want to imply a value judgement in using that terminology. It may well be that the time has come to step back. (Actually, I personally don't think so). But nobody made a case, one way or the other. Nobody at this debate was giving me a metanarrative: a story of Britain's 21st century that I can believe in and get on board with.

Similarly on economic questions. I wanted Cameron to make the case for small government, but instead he just tried to reassure people that the Tories wouldn't make too many cuts. Clegg talked a lot about cuts, but for him it was clearly just an unfortunate necessity. Brown, of course, just wants to go on spending money. I was particularly disappointed in the way Cameron and Brown talked about spending issues. They were discussing fundamentally different views of how society works, and what government should and shouldn't do. But that never came across.

Still, if I had to pick winners:

1. Cameron. Mainly just for having the best closing speech. Of course, it helped that I mostly agreed with what he said. But disappointed that he didn't really argue for his course of action. Weaknesses on inheritance tax showed up the fact that the Tories still don't quite get the public mood on this.

2. Clegg. Had nothing to say, but said it pleasantly enough. I think I detect him positioning the Lib Dems for a Tory coalition.

3. Brown. I thought he behaved poorly throughout, defensive in tone and posture, frequently talking over the others and the (fairly ineffectual) moderator. Had no answer to any problem except to throw more money at it.

I really hope the next two debates have more substance to them. And I rather hope that next time round there won't be debates, but I expect that's too much to ask.

Leading worship

2010-04-13T09:08:00.003+01:00

So I've been leading more church services recently, and it's got me thinking about what church services are for. In most free churches, the person who preaches doesn't lead the service, so the first 30 minutes or so are in the hands of the service leader. It becomes quite easy to think of this time as the 'warm up' - the job being to get everyone in the mood for hearing a sermon. To a certain extent I think there is truth in that: the hearing of the Word is central to what we come together to do. But I've also been pondering what we should be aiming to do with that first half an hour, and I've come up with three big picture aims:

1. To show the church their location in time, between the two comings of Christ. I find it useful to structure the service around this, moving from remembering to expecting. It doesn't have to be done explicitly or in a big way. I will always choose at least one hymn that is explicitly about the cross and resurrection. Often, to introduce a note of expectation, I will just end the time of intercession by praying for Christ's return. The key thing is that we all be focussed on the Lord Jesus, and I think in a curious way on his absence - he was here, and we look back to it, and he will be here again, and we look forward to it. (Of course, he is here too. But in a different way).

2. To show the church their identity as the overlap of the ages. One of the things that any worship service needs to be helping people to do is process the week they've just had, and one of the things which will certainly have characterised that week for everyone will be sin. We've all sinned. How do we understand that, and how do we deal with it in the context of worship? I think the answer is again to locate the church: to show them that they do not belong to the old creation, despite their sin. But this needs to be balanced by an understanding that we are not yet in the new creation - we still await the redemption of our bodies. To process the week, and yet avoid despair, we need to see that we are both new in Christ and old in ourselves. We are the overlap of the ages. The most obvious way to do this is through a corporate prayer expressing sin, but I think we need to be careful how we frame it. Very often - and I think this is true of the Anglican form - a prayer of confession leaves us feeling that we belong to the old age but would really like to belong to the new. There is not enough emphasis on our changed status in Christ. If we can get that right, the prayer of confession can be an enormously helpful part of our liturgy.

3. To show the church their relationships with Christ their Head, and with the world. We need to be reminded constantly that we are in Christ. We need to be reminded that because we are in Christ we are loved by God. We also need to remember that we stand in the world. This is part of preparing the church for the week they are about to have. We will come into contact with a lot of people, many of whom do not know Christ. How should we live? How should we relate? We remind ourselves, then, that we are intimately tied to the Lord Jesus, and are therefore to be those who do his work through the week. The worship service needs to orient us in two ways - towards Christ, from whom we expect to receive throughout the week, and towards the world, toward which we must be prepared to give throughout the week. Leading intercessory prayer is clearly a big part of this, because it means explicitly invoking Christ's aid for the week ahead. There are songs which can also help to make this point.

All a bit theoretical, and not very coherently expressed, but I'm trying to make sure I'm not just filling time, or warming up for the preacher, or doing what I know people will enjoy...

Any thoughts?

Reading along the book of Job

2010-04-01T15:02:00.002+01:00

A preliminary note - Job really challenges our standard Evangelical reading practices. We typically read with a magnifying glass, taking a short passage and probing into all the details. That won't work with Job (I would question whether it's the best way to approach any book of the Bible!) because most of the dialogue expresses ideas which are explicitly condemned by God at the end of the book. So we need to read the whole. And when we read the whole, we will get a feel for whose viewpoint we ought to credit. I would suggest that we ought to not to credit entirely any of the human characters in the book. Only the Lord's speech is entirely true. However, Job's speech is to be given more credence than any of his friends on the basis of 42:7ff. With that in mind, we can attempt a Christological reading on the basis of the four methods previously explained...

1. Explicit prediction of Christ is found in Job 19:25-27. It is, of course, possible to explain this prediction away. But looking back from the far side of the life, death and resurrection of Christ it seems extremely arbitrary not to refer Job's confidence to his coming. "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth". We don't have to suppose here that Job understood and expected the incarnation; merely that Job has put his trust in the God who will come. That faith, in a God who intervenes and will intervene, is obviously crucial to Job in his situation. God's general providence is not a sufficient ground of his hope, since it is precisely that general providence against which Job is railing (apparently with justification). Job's faith is in a resolution - we know that resolution came (and will come) in Christ. Consider also Job 9:33, which although not a prophecy per se is pretty clearly crying out for Christ.

2. Job himself, I would suggest, is a type of Christ. (Note the limits on typology previously mentioned here!) Job is repeatedly described as a righteous man, and yet we see him suffering terribly. Of course, Christ also suffered, but the deeper resonance is in the fact that both Job and the Lord Jesus are explicitly forsaken by God. They are exposed to this suffering by the God they have served faithfully, in whom they have trusted for protection. By the end of the book, Job is restored - on which more momentarily. Suffice to say here that Job thus displays both sides of the OT picture of a righteous man: at the beginning and end of the book he prospers because of his righteousness, in the middle he suffers for it. That sets up point 3...

A slightly tangential point, though, before moving on. At the end of Job, the Lord informs us that Job has spoken rightly. In other words, he has maintained his innocence (not just protested it!) throughout. This is in contrast with his friends, who are forced to ask Job to intercede for them and to make sin offerings. Now, for anyone who has read the book carefully, I think this will come as a surprise. Frankly, Job is the only character who has not stood up for the honour of God throughout the long chapters of dialogue. True, we are told that he declined to curse God, but that hardly seems heroic. For most of the book, he complains bitterly about the way God has dealt with him. Is part of the point here that righteousness is not just about what is visible? We only know Job is righteous because he is vindicated in the end. In that sense, also, he is a type of Christ.

3. Job displays the pattern of suffering and resurrection very well. I don't know about you, but I always found the last seven verses of Job hugely unsatisfactory. Job receives back his health, his wealth and his standing in the community, and gets a shiny new family to replace the old one upon which a house unfortunately fell. It's almost as bad as if it had said 'then Job woke up and it was all a dream'. There is no logical link between what goes before and this ending. The only link there seems to be is Job's faith. Can I suggest that the same is true of the resurrection? It is a eucatastrophe. Everything is turned around, for the good. There is a difference though. In the story of Jesus, the resurrection makes sense. Although it doesn't follow logically, it does follow in terms of character and theme - in that sense it is a real eucatastrophe, and not just a case of deus ex machina (see the link for euchatastrophe for explanation). With the resurrection in mind, and only with the resurrection in mind, we can make sense of what happens to Job. Of course the righteous must suffer and be raised again. That is almost the definition of righteousness in the Bible.

4. The big problem in Job is that righteous people suffer. Note that it is righteous people, not just good people. It is not the fact that moral or innocent people suffer that raises the issue here, it is that people who know, love and serve God suffer. That problem is unanswerable in OT terms (which is why the end of Job seems such a cop out). It is only answerable when we see the suffering of the righteous concentrated in the only really righteous person as Christ dies. In fact, it only really makes sense when we understand that Christ is vindicated in the resurrection, and everyone who trusts him is vindicated there too.

How does this help us to read Job verse by verse? It explains why the friends are wrong when they accuse Job of sin; it explains why Job can trust the God who apparently abandons him; it explains why we cannot read God's character from the events that occur in our lives. It makes the problem of Job point us to Christ. Therefore, our own problems - the apparent God-forsakeness of our own lives - can point us to Christ also, as we look along the book of Job to the suffering and vindicated Messiah.

"It came out of nowhere"

2010-03-22T15:50:00.000Z

We sometimes talk about the Old Testament as being preparation for Christ, and at some level that must be right. Jesus came at just the right time, when everything was ready to be fulfilled. But at some other level I want to ask a question. Who exactly was prepared by the OT?

When you look at the characters in the gospels, none of them get who Jesus is on the basis of the OT. That's a pretty strong statement, but I advance it as a hypothesis - can anyone contradict it? Think of Nathanael in John's gospel - he needs a miracle before he believes; Peter in the synoptics has Jesus' identity revealed to him by the Father; the people who are really well trained in the Scriptures actually cite them to show that Jesus cannot be the Christ (a prophet from Nazareth?!) The big one for me is the beloved disciple, looking into the empty tomb. He 'saw and believed' but 'as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead' (John 20:8,9). The miracle came first, and only then did they go back to the Scriptures and understand them.

Outside the gospels, I think Paul is a test case. His conversion is related by Luke three times, and I can't help thinking that is because Luke wants us to see this as a paradigm of someone coming to Christian faith. Paul knows his OT, no doubt about it. But it takes a personal intervention from Christ before he understands that those Scriptures speak of Christ.

For all these people, despite centuries of careful preparation and witness to Christ in the OT, revelation came out of nowhere and bowled them over.

I think that's important for our understanding of how revelation works. Revelation is always grace - if anyone sees Christ, it is because he freely reveals himself to them. That means revelation is never something that I can get hold of, possess, tame, and call my own. It is always something that can jump out at me, as something new and quite possibly alarming. In that sense, the relation between the OT and Christ is a chronological representation of the relationship that always exists between the Scriptural witness as a whole and Christ.

But when they have seen Christ - and in particular, when they have seen the risen Christ - all these witnesses understand the OT to be all about Christ. They don't think they are significantly reinterpreting it. They are not reading Christ into the OT. But their understanding has changed. They see now, in the light of the resurrection, that Jesus is Lord. Specifically, that means Jesus is, and always has been, Lord over and in Israel's history. The resurrection vindicates Christ, shows that he is the Messiah and the culmination of Israel's hopes and dreams, and in the process shows what those hopes and dreams really were. It always was about him.

That means that when I approach Scripture - Old or New Testament - I approach it as something that genuinely is about Jesus. I do that even for the bits which don't immediately seem to be about him, and the bits which I just don't understand. I study it, wrestle with the content, try to work out what it is saying about Jesus. But I do all that on the understanding that my study and work is not able to produce a view of Jesus which will prompt me to faith and adoration. That would require a work of grace. Jesus is Lord, even over the Bible.

So as a Christian - as someone who has encountered the risen Christ through the Biblical witness applied by the Spirit - I have to read the OT this way. And yet every time I do, there is the possibility (in God's grace) that I will be bowled over again.

Reading along the Old Testament

2010-03-10T21:31:00.002Z

Oops. I accidentally didn't write on the blog for a month. Well, there will now follow a series of thoughts on reading the Bible in a Christocentric manner. Nothing too original, but just to get me back into the habit!

Whenever I start to read in the Old Testament, I should expect to see Christ there. By 'see Christ' I do not mean that I will always find explicit reference to Christ, or that the OT is shot through with appearances of the preincarnate Word (although there are plenty of both occurrences there). What I mean is that my reading of the OT should be a 2 Corinthians 3:16 experience (read the whole passage to get what I mean). Now, to a very great extent whether in fact I have such an experience is not down to me, but is a work of the Spirit. But it is promised, and therefore the action of faith is to read properly, with expectation, and await the Spirit's work.

So what reading practices do I employ as I set out to read by faith, to 'turn to the Lord' as I read the OT? Here are a few.

1. Look for explicit forward-looking references to the Messiah and his work. Despite all the sceptical work of OT scholars over the last 150 years, these are plentiful. Where you find them, consider whether they might not be the key to the understanding of the particular part of the OT you are reading. It's helpful to consider the particular import of each of these 'previews' of the person and work of Jesus - don't just think 'here's a prophecy of Christ', think through what in particular about Jesus this is highlighting. I personally find it very useful to try to imagine what it would be like to look forward to this as an initial step in understanding.

2. Look for types of Christ. A type is a character who, through their own life and actions, plays out some aspect of the life and work of Jesus. Whenever we look for types, we are engaging in an imaginative process. After all, nobody measures up to Jesus or strictly speaking does anything remotely like what he does. It is more of a case of catching the echoes of the life of Jesus - except these echoes are cast backward through history. Where we do see types of Christ, we should focus first on the particular aspect of Jesus' life and work that we have been reminded of; then (more cautiously) we should ask whether we are being commanded to show that aspect in our lives also (and the type can help us here to think what that might look like).

3. Look for patterns of events which recall Christ's work. Just like the characters who serve us as types of Christ, so events can serve us by bringing to memory different aspects of what Jesus has done. In the OT, we see the work of Christ refracted, as it were, through the history of Israel. Often that refraction will help us to bring out and focus on a particular side to Jesus' ministry which might otherwise get lost in the whole.

4. Look for problems which cannot be solved in OT terms. Where we see a passage which sets up a paradox - especially one of which the author seems very conscious - we will more often than not find that paradox resolved in Christ. These sorts of problems will more often become clear if we read longer passages, or try to fit particular passages into the OT as a whole.

I want to work this out in a particular example - the book of Job - before the end of the week. But I have an intervening post for those who react by saying something like: 'what a terrible hermeneutic! You've already decided what the text will be about before you even read it!'

...Although probably not many of those sorts of people read this blog.

Expecting and remembering

2010-02-17T10:26:00.004Z

How do the Old and New Testaments fit together? I would venture to suggest something like this. The OT is fundamentally and centrally characterised by expectation. It looks forward, in various ways and from different perspectives, to the decisive action of God in history which will redeem Israel. Psalm 130 captures the beating heart of the OT. Of course, this sense of expectation has its basis in remembrance. God has acted in the past, but the history of Israel is a demonstration that this past action was not decisive: it did not free Israel from sin or danger. It could only be a sign of the full and final action of God to come. The OT is basically forward looking.

By contrast, the NT is essentially about remembering. It is oriented backward, and is characterised by memory and testimony. The heart of the apostles' ministry is to pass on what they have heard and seen. The opening of 1 John is typical. Of course, the NT also looks forward to a glorious climax. But there is a sense in which the climax has already come. Nothing new is looked for or expected from God. The decisive action has been taken, and the expectation that there is is just for its completion. The NT is basically about remembering.

What conclusions can be drawn from this?

1. The Scriptures are a unity. This is not obvious, certainly not as obvious as many of us who have grown up with the Bible often assume. The unity comes from outside the text. The OT and NT are united in so far as the decisive action of God expected in the former is the same as that remembered in the latter. In other words, the Scriptures find their unity in Christ.

2. The unity of Scripture is not found in the similarity or (more strongly) the identity of the old and new covenants, but in their symmetrical relation to Jesus Christ. He is the main thing.

3. The Scriptures live by their relationship to Christ. He is the Living Word, who has life in himself, and the Bible lives from him. I would venture to suggest that the Bible only becomes life-giving when this relation is seen.

In short, to be a person of the Bible is to look beyond (better, through, or perhaps along) the Bible to the One expected and remembered there.

The Word in the word in the word

2010-02-12T19:21:00.002Z

It is a good thing for Christians to spend much time in Scripture, through sermons and their own reading. There is huge value in getting Biblical truth into our heads, and our heads into Biblical truth. It changes the way we look at the world, helps us to get God's perspective on things. But it can be an entirely unprofitable enterprise when it comes to eternal life. After all, the Jews of Jesus' day spent their time in Bible study, but it didn't help them much. "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life" (John 5:39-40). If we want eternal life, we need to read the Scriptures through the lens of the gospel of Christ. We need to catch the word within the word.

But even that can be unprofitable. Anyone who has spent much time around Christians will know that knowledge of the gospel message very easily turns into argument about the gospel message. What exactly is its extent? How do the details work? What is the centre, if there is one?

I would suggest that, just as Scripture only profits us if we read it for the sake of the gospel, the gospel only profits us if we love it for the sake of the Person, Jesus Christ, who stands at the heart of it. If we love the doctrines of the gospel for their own sake - because of their ideological value, say, or their philosophical beauty - we are in danger of missing Christ. We need to look for, and desire, the Word within the word within the word.

Cynicism

2010-02-10T19:25:00.004Z

I've been thinking for the last couple of weeks that cynicism is probably the signature sin of my generation. As I've turned that thought over and over, it occurs to me that I may only think this because cynicism is the signature sin of my heart. But I suspect I'm not alone. Cynicism is that diseased attitude of the heart which stops me from being serious about anything, creating distance between me and the world - perhaps for my own defence, perhaps out of a sense of arrogant detachment, perhaps a little of both. Let me run through some of the symptoms, and a course of treatment that I've been trialling on myself.

Symptoms:

1. Cynicism sneers at whatever appears genuinely noble or heroic. It belittles what is great and dismisses what is beautiful. This may present itself as a sarcastic remark, a flippant joke, a quick change of conversation, or just a sardonic smile. This may start as an occasional reaction, or perhaps something to fit in to the mood of the conversation, but if continued there is a risk that we lose the ability to even perceive or appreciate the good.

2. Cynicism shrugs in a resigned, or even dismissive, way at whatever seems evil, or just terrible. Disaster zone reports are met with a yawn, holocaust movies provoke off-colour jokes. Victims of crime 'probably had it coming'. This may start as a coping mechanism, but if pursued has a numbing effect on the heart which prevents us from seeing evil as evil, and kills off the ability to empathise with another's pain.

3. Cynicism believes that anything that looks good is too good to be true. There's no such thing as a free lunch. They must want something from me in return. What am I missing here? Pretty soon, no gift can be appreciated as anything more than a transaction which I must repay to keep face.

4. Cynicism doesn't believe in change. I can't change, you can't change. We'll just have to live with ourselves and the world as it is.

5. Cynicism won't argue. If what you say sounds smart, you're a smart-alec. If it sounds dumb, I'm smarter than you, so why should I listen? Sarcasm rather than truth-seeking characterises the cynic's conversation.

6. Cynicism can't dream. The imaginative faculties have been stifled. If I can't see it with my own eyes, I won't believe it. Even then, I might not.

7. Cynicism doesn't pray. Whether because of fatalism or atheism, the cynic is unable to envisage a world in which any higher power could change circumstances. If the cynic does pray, accidentally, in a moment of weakness, they are quickly able to explain away any apparent answer.

Treatment:

1. Cut yourself off from sources of scorn. For me, that's meant stopping watching various TV programmes, especially current affairs quiz shows. No more Mock the Week, possibly no more Have I Got News For You. It is impossible to sit in the seat of scoffers and not become a scoffer.

2. Re-stock the imagination with beautiful images. I've been re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia, and reminding myself of what a child-like enthusiasm for the world looks like. This morning, at the end of The Last Battle, I cried with joy as Aslan led his people out of the Shadowlands, and higher up and further in to the Real World. Of course, it helps that this is true - by which I mean Christian - imagery, but there is truth all over the place, not just in the Christian imagination.

3. Pray anyway. Enjoy doing it, even if you can't quite believe right now that it is achieving anything. Who said achieving stuff was so important anyway?

4. Cry in films. This has always been an easy one for me. Feel it. Don't protect yourself. I recommend Up as a recent film which caused me to cry like a girl (no offence, girls).

5. Spend some time day-dreaming. Wonder about what the future might hold. Don't spend all day on it, but take some time. And throw in some outrageous dreams. Why not? Anything could happen.

I wrote something similar before. You can find it here.

Sterile Ideas

2010-02-04T18:34:00.002Z

I have been forced over the last week or so to become very familiar with the documentary hypothesis. For those who are blessed with ignorance of this matter, and who can't be bothered to look at the Wikipedia article (you should, it has a diagram which illustrates the idiocy of the idea right there), the documentary hypothesis (henceforth DH) is a theory that says it is possible to trace within the Pentateuch (i.e. Genesis through Deuteronomy) four distinct literary sources which have been patched together by redactors to form a whole. The four sources are labelled J (the Yahwist), E (the Elohist), P (the Priestly source), and D (the Deuteronomist). Many theorists hold that it is also possible to discern some elements added by redactors; some think it is possible to discern distinct layers within the sources, such that you end up with E1, E2 etc.

As far as I can see, and I may be wrong, this idea is utterly sterile.

By this I mean, the DH doesn't lead to anything. It bears no fruit. If you begin to think seriously about it, it will not lead you to think seriously about other things. Books on the DH all seem to start and finish with the DH. Those who take the DH seriously make claims like 'it is no longer possible to read the Pentateuch as a unity' - something which is manifestly untrue, since these books have been and still are the subjects of expository preaching and teaching all over the world. The DH doesn't help you to understand, but in fact makes the Pentateuch impossible to comprehend at all.

It got me thinking: what makes an idea sterile? How can we spot the ideas which are likely to become hopelessly self-referential and curved in on themselves, like the DH? Ideally, how do we spot them before we invest too much time and effort in them? I had a few thoughts.

1. Is it possible for this idea to be firmly established? The DH cannot be firmly established, dealing as it does with subjectivities and the attempt to get behind the text into unseen precursors. The result is that arguments go back and forth over its validity, or the precise form it ought to take, without any real conclusions being possible. It can be talked about forever, and we will never be able to view it as settled and move on. So it is sterile. What other ideas might be like that?

2. How many layers of hypothesis are there between the acknowledged facts and the conclusion? The DH has all the features of a cloud-castle. Layer after layer of supposition, sprinkled with interim conclusions that make good sense if and only if you accept the previous hypothesis. This gives lots to talk about that isn't really the substance, and keeps the idea in the conversation without it really having anything to say. Sterility. How much theological and philosophical construction works in the same way?

3. Can the idea be rephrased or summarised in a way which would be useful to the average chap on the street (or in this case, the average church-goer)? This isn't totally foolproof, but I think it is a warning sign to us if our ideas are useless for living. It's a potential sign that they are sterile ideas. I'm guessing quite a lot of thought falls under this heading.

Any other ideas?

Knowing things

2010-01-21T20:21:00.002Z

I'm banging on about epistemology all the time. It gets boring, I know, but I'm just not convinced that we've got any sufficient answer to the question 'how does one come to know anything?'

It seems like that could be quite an important question to me.

This week, a lecture (on romanticism and theology - intriguing stuff) has got me thinking about the different factors that have an effect on my coming to know something. I'm sure there are loads, but I've been pondering six of them. I suspect that all 'coming to know' or acquiring knowledge involves a mix of at least these six things in different measures. And I further suspect that this makes the process much less straightforward than is often assumed. My six things were:

1. Sense experience. This is the 'given' of our knowledge, the stuff that is just external to us and over which we have very limited control. It is sights, sounds, smells, touch, taste - and perhaps other things too. But it is very limited by itself, being just sensations and nothing more.

2. Reason or understanding. We 'think' our world together into a whole. (Yes, this is Kant. So he wasn't wrong about everything). We don't experience pure sensation, but objects and scenery. That is a product of our brains putting our sensory information together.

3. Imagination. I'm thinking here of the way in which we tell the story of our lives. This experience, this thought, is not isolated, but fits into a pattern. Imagination tells me who I am, and where I have come from. Of course, this is not just me telling my story, although there is that. It is also me fitting my story into bigger stories, the stories of my culture, my religion, and the like. Just to clarify, I don't say 'imagination' because these stories are untrue, but because they are not 'there' in my experiences. The stories are a (necessary) way of construing and understanding our experiences.

4. Will. I believe things because I want them to be true. I am capable of resisting conclusions which appear to follow from my experiences, and of avoiding the obvious explanations to make my experiences fit different stories. As an aside, that is why in the Biblical narrative it is a sin, not just a mistake, to disbelieve in God. Again, this is not purely an individualistic experience. There is such a thing as a collective will, which expresses itself in expectations of belief and behaviour - what we might call, if it didn't have automatic negative connotations for us, peer pressure.

5. Memory. The storehouse of my previous experiences and knowledge is obviously a major source of knowledge, not only because of its basic contents but because of the connections and arrangements between 'things known' that are reflected there. Failure to remember - whether deliberate or accidental - is also, of course, important here. Again, not purely individualistic but includes cultural memory, often reinforced by ritual, like Remembrance Day, or the Lord's Supper.

6. Relationships. Much of my knowledge - indeed, most of it by a long way - is acquired from other people. Often in the process of coming to know something, my opinion of the person giving testimony can be the decisive factor in whether I adopt their point of view or believe that their testimony is fact.

Note that I haven't distinguished between 'coming to know' and 'coming to believe' in any of the above. I'm not sure I can think of any good way to do that. At least psychologically, there doesn't seem to be any difference. I know that there is a God; many people know otherwise. Neither of us would accept that our position is 'mere belief'. Besides, I think that language of belief is too often used to remove metaphysics and religion from the realm of what is 'really true' in a thoroughly illegitimate way.

Complicated, isn't it?

Of kings and temples

2010-01-20T07:54:00.003Z

I'm intrigued by the way Israelite kingship works. Permission to appoint a king "like all the nations that are around" is given in Deuteronomy 17, along with some laws about the king's behaviour. These laws do serve to differentiate Israelite from pagan kingship. The king of Israel is the Lord's deputy, bound by his law. But a king nevertheless. The book of Judges seems at first glance to add to the impression that Israel is not only permitted a king, but needs a king. Without a king, everyone does what is right in his own eyes, and social and religious chaos ensues. Gideon's misgivings (Judges 8:23) seem to be the minority report.

But when the people ask for a king, using words that are almost a citation of Deuteronomy 17, they are condemned as having rejected the Lord as king over them (1 Sam 8:7). Odd. And even more odd that they are granted a king anyway. The first two kings - Saul and David - in different ways embody the ambiguity attached to the office. It is never absolutely clear whether it is good for Israel to have a king or not.

Something similar happens with the temple. When David suggests building it, his court prophet is initially in favour. But God's reaction is essentially to say 'whoever said I wanted a house?' (2 Sam 7). It sounds like a rebuff. The Lord doesn't need a house; he's happy in his tent. And yet it is followed by the promise that, although David cannot build the temple, Solomon his son will do just that. The ambiguity surrounding the temple is in many ways deeper than that surrounding the king. This is God's house, but even the king who built it must confess that heaven and the highest heaven could not contain the Lord - how much less a human building! As the history of Israel rumbles on, the clearing of the temple by good kings and its desecration by bad ones becomes a running theme. And behind that, the presence of the temple fosters false security. Is the temple, at the end of the day, good for Israel or not?

A couple of theological questions off the back of that:

1. If this isn't about Jesus, what on earth is it about?

2. Is there something inherently dangerous to God's people about fixed structures and 'settling down'? (Think about the tabernacle vs. the temple, the judges vs. the king).

Party of privilege?

2010-01-13T13:31:00.003Z

I've been meaning to write a political post for a little while. So here it is.

A week or so ago I heard Ben Bradshaw MP make a comment contrasting the Labour party - the party of the majority - with the Conservatives - the party of privilege. I imagine we can expect to hear a great deal more along those lines in the next few months. What is being said is pretty clear: the Tories favour the wealthy and the elite, whilst Labour speaks for the 'ordinary' folk. But is it true?

It won't come as much of a surprise to learn that I think not. But I do think this gets at something which lies at the heart of the disagreement between these two parties, and perhaps constitutes the major fault line in British politics. It's all about fairness, and what fairness means. Allow me to attempt a discussion.

To start with, here are two statements which I think most people in the UK would agree with (If they weren't looking at them side by side):

It is only fair that the wealthy pay proportionately more tax than the poor.

Fairness means treating everyone the same.

Since I have put these statements side by side, I trust it's clear that they are quite contradictory. As soon as we have different rates of taxation, we are no longer 'treating everyone the same'. In fact, we are pretty clearly discriminating. For now, please assume that 'discrimination' is a value-neutral term: it may or may not be bad to discriminate. In fact, this lies at the heart of the argument. But what is clear is that either one of these statements is just false, or two different definitions of fairness are in operation here which are not compatible.

I would suggest that what those on the left tend to see as 'favouring the privileged' is in fact simply adherence to a view of fairness which would include the second of my two statements: treating everyone the same. Treating everyone the same means not 'picking on' one section of society and treating them differently. There is a long (and surprisingly radical) tradition in political theory standing behind this view, from Rousseau to Rawls. It does not just extend to taxation. This would also mean, for example, that 'positive discrimination' would be ruled out as unfair (as would what we might call 'negative discrimination'). Fairness means a level playing field, in the sense that the state at least does not apply different rules to different people.

I totally understand why this view could be seen by those on the left as 'unfair'. It leaves some people rich and others poor. But I support it. I support it because of its corollary in civil liberties: nobody is discriminated against, either positively (the government won't push a particular social agenda) or negatively. Laws are not passed which favour some of us over others. I think that's right. I also support it because I think it will generally lead to a state which does less: interferes less in our lives, makes less claims on our resources.

As an important aside, I do not think this view of fairness can be carried through with complete consistency, and that doesn't bother me. I think an instinct to treat everyone the same, coupled with the common sense to occasionally and in a limited way over-ride this instinct, is the ideal for government. So, I believe in limited 'progressive' taxation, I believe in reducing the tax burden on families with children etc. Consistency doesn't hugely bother me: it's unobtainable, and dull to boot.

It is worth noting one other thing. A party holding my view of fairness - everyone treated the same - can realistically claim to be protecting the interests of everyone. This is true even for those who currently would be better off under a left-ish government holding the other view of fairness. After all, why assume you will always be in that position? Poor today doesn't have to mean poor tomorrow. By contrast, the left-ish view of fairness inevitably makes the Labour party a sectional concern. They do not stand for everyone, but avowedly only for a particular section of society. I can't help thinking this is a bad thing in a national government.

You should also read Phil Blue's thoughts on a similar subject.

The limits of reflection

2010-01-08T09:07:00.002Z

This is my belated 'it's a new year, hurrah' post...

Despite the new year being a fairly arbitrary point on the calendar, it's a useful time for a bit of reflection. For people, like me, who generally don't like reflection, it's especially important not to pass up these opportunities. I need to keep an eye on myself - how are things going? Perhaps more importantly, in what direction are things going?

But a thought that occurred to me during this process a week or so ago was this: although reflection on the direction of life, and self-analysis, is very useful stuff, it has a pretty stern limit to its usefulness. In the final analysis - an analysis which will not be performed by me! - my life in 2009 can be divided into two categories: things I did which were bad enough to merit hell, and things I did which were not good enough to merit heaven.

So I guess I'm pretty thankful for what Jesus has done!

Incarnation!

2009-12-24T22:43:00.003Z

It means God cares about the world he made.

It means God isn't distant, but is so close as to be one of us.

It means a perfect human being is directing the universe.

It means that atheism may be an honest and respectable intellectual position, but also one that happens to be untrue.

It means that everything I see is significant because God himself entered his created universe.

It means that humanity will always live.

It means that I can live!

It means God united to us forever.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Mediaeval and Modern

2009-12-19T12:21:00.004Z

Barth rounds off his treatment of the Reformed confessions with an account of the Synod of Dort. Whereas the earliest Reformed confessions were primarily directed against Roman Catholicism, and then Lutheranism, Dort deals with a new opponent: Modernism. The Remonstrance, brought by the Arminian party, was based soundly on modern principles, modern views of humanity, modern approaches to the Bible. At Dort, we see the Reformed churches locking horns with what would become modernist, or liberal, Protestantism.

But Barth sees nothing new here. In fact, he sees this modernist Christianity as having just the same foundations as mediaeval Christianity: faith in reason, a high view of the human being, the freedom of the will. In short, both begin with the autonomous human being, and end up with a co-operative view of salvation which can be labelled semi-Pelagian. On both fronts, against mediaevalism and modernism, the Reformed stress the sovereignty and majesty of God, who in Christ is the sole agent in redemption. God, and only God, saves.

In short, Dort was fighting the battle that has always been fought when God's Word comes up against intelligent, refined human philosophers and theologians.

In the conclusion to his lecture series, Barth asks: how do things stand with us? His answer, in 1923, was not encouraging: "If we look at our theology, then what we see first of all is a pile of ruins". Certainly, that was true then, as liberal modernist Protestantism carried all before it. We have done some rebuilding since, but I wonder whether I am alone in thinking that sometimes the rebuilding looks like a museum rather than a house to be lived in. We can say the words of the old confessions, and mean them, but do we grasp (have we been grasped by!) the beating heart of their theology? Do we have the courage to be exposed to revelation, to hear the gospel again, and to wrestle with the issues our fathers wrestled with in the language and concepts and context of the 21st century?

Visible and Invisible

2009-12-15T14:37:00.003Z

Barth's longer section on the substance of the Reformed confessions is interesting in lots of different ways. The way he paints the historical picture is intriguing. He sees a rapid decline from the objectivity of the older confessions into a more subjective stance in the later - roughly, a movement away from talk about what God does, to talk about how I am saved. The Westminster Confession comes in for a lot of flack here! I don't know to what extent Barth is correct, but certainly I have observed in the English Puritans a certain subjectivism and emphasis on my assurance of salvation which does not seem to be so much of a problem in Calvin.

But that's not the main point.

Barth argues that what really ties the Reformed confessions together and makes them distinctively Reformed is that they hold together faith and obedience. Because the emphasis is on God, not human experience, the Reformed are able to see more clearly than, for example, Luther that faith and obedience flow from the same source - the Holy Spirit - and therefore they are able to stress both together in a way that Luther could not. This also allows them more substantial and enlightening engagement with the law than was possible on Lutheran soil. Barth uses the analogy of the incarnation. We hold that Christ has a human nature and a divine nature, and we do not confuse the two but neither do we divide them. In the same way, the Reformed confessions see God's action on the human being as bringing about faith and obedience - and they do not confuse these (faith justifies, obedience does not), nor do they divide them (faith without obedience is no true faith at all, because it cannot come from God - the author of obedience).

In other words, the Reformed hold the invisible (faith/justification) and the visible (obedience/sanctification) together because of their doctrine of the Holy Spirit. He is the personal source of both.

This overflows into ecclesiology - the invisible Church and the visible churches are held together, but never confused. Church discipline ensures that the visible church is conformed to some extent to the invisible Church, but there is never any attempt at complete purity because that is a trait of the invisible Church.

This tension is hard to hold, but I believe it must be held. The Christian life is a life of obedience and war against sin, not just peaceful basking in justification. The Christian church is a community of obedience and peace, not a live-and-let-live society of ease. The Holy Spirit, who creates justifying faith and therefore the invisible Church, also creates sanctifying holiness, and therefore the visible church.

The Reformed vs. Rome

2009-12-11T19:31:00.003Z

Barth moves on to discuss the substance of the Reformed confessions. What holds them together? What makes them distinctively Reformed?

One thing which the confessions have in common, although it is particularly pronounced in the earlier confessions for obvious historical reasons, is opposition to Roman Catholicism. "In the bitterness and disgust with which they speak of the pope and the mass, there is scarcely any notable difference between the Swiss and the German, the Eastern and the Western confessions". Barth argues that this opposition to Romanism is more deliberate, and more central, to the Reformed confessions than to the Lutheran, although all Protestant confessions carry the awareness that Rome is the undoubted enemy.

Barth sees two subtly different positions at work here. The Lutherans are cross with Rome because Rome robs Christians of assurance and despoils Christendom (thus dishonouring God); the Reformed are cross with Rome because Rome dishonours God (by robbing Christians of assurance etc). The Lutheran confessions stress salvation by faith in Christ; the Reformed confessions stress salvation by Christ through faith. The Lutheran position is pastoral first; the Reformed position is theological first.

Now, I don't know how accurate a portrait that is of Lutheranism, but I think it captures Reformed concerns perfectly. The point is that, contra Rome, the Reformed maintain that God does everything. Hence the typical (almost stereotypical) Reformed concern for the sovereignty of God, expressed in the doctrine of predestination.

Here is theology I can get behind!

The Principle of Scripture and its Grounds

2009-12-10T14:38:00.003Z

The second part of Barth's lecture series on the Reformed confessions looks particularly at the Scripture Principle. The principle is expressed by Barth thus: "The church recognises the rule of its proclamation solely in the Word of God and finds the Word of God solely in Holy Scripture". In other words, this is what has been called the 'formal principle' of the Reformation - Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone.

Barth again develops a contrast with Lutheranism. In many ways the Lutheran Church is the church of the 'material principle' of the Reformation - justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. This is the organising 'idea' of Lutheran theology, and it is noticeable that this has an effect on the way the Lutherans approach the Bible. Consider Luther's attitude to James, for example: it doesn't teach justification by faith alone, therefore it is secondary, unexciting. This also allows for the privileged position accorded in Lutheranism to the Augustana and to the work of Luther generally.

The Reformed churches, on the other hand, took up the 'formal principle' as their particular emphasis. That ruled out the possibility that they should become 'Calvinist churches' or 'Zwinglian churches' in the same sense as the Lutheran Church. Scripture alone also ensured that the Reformed confessions took on a very different role to the Augustana. The Reformed churches could only see their confessions as pointing to Scripture. They were not the light, but they pointed to the light (Barth develops the analogy with John the Baptist, an important one for his theology generally). In essence, Reformed Christianity is simply this attitude to Sola Scriptura.

He goes on to trace the idea of the grounds of this principle. In Calvin, the grounds of the Scripture Principle is simply the Spirit speaking in Holy Scripture. The Bible is God's Word because God address me in it. The Spirit in me and the Spirit in the Word are one. The early Reformed confessions generally take this line. Even at this early stage - and even in Calvin - it is acceptable to append arguments from the style or circumstances of Scripture, but they are understood as just that: appendices. The main point is Inspiration, and the witness of the Holy Spirit.

The sad history of the Reformed churches is a move away from this basis in two directions. Firstly, there is a tendency to make the arguments which had been appended to the Scripture Principle the real basis for taking Scripture as God's Word. A loss of confidence in the basis of the Principle in the doctrine (and experience!) of the Holy Spirit led to more emphasis on the arguments, and eventually to the arguments taking over. Scripture is made subject to the judgement and reason of human beings.

Secondly, there is a tendency to make the Bible just one thing amongst many others. Obviously, this goes hand in hand with the first. There is a movement away from seeing God revealed only in the Bible, to seeing the Bible as merely the pinnacle of God's revelation in creation and the human spirit.

In both cases, the door is opened to Protestant liberalism and modernism. That door is shut again only when we say that the Word of God in Scripture is self-authenticating. God witnesses to God. The Word of God is not chained, but speaks clearly and powerfully by the Holy Spirit.

The Theology of the Reformed Confessions

2009-12-09T14:09:00.003Z

I've just started reading Barth's treatment of the Reformed confessions, delivered as lectures in 1923. The first section deals with "the significance of the confession in the Reformed Church", and is extremely interesting to me, and I hope to other people.

Barth tells the story of the Reformed confessions by contrasting their reception with the place of the Augsburg Confession (the 'Augustana') in Lutheranism. The Augsburg Confession was very quickly considered to be on a level with the ecumenical creeds of the Church. The Lutheran Church was still very much wedded to the old Imperial ideal - one Empire, one Church - and so the Confession could hardly be received as anything else. Moreover, the Confession had been presented to the Emperor - albeit only as a protest, since it was not received. It was therefore a public and ecumenical confession, in the eyes of Lutheran theologians at least. It was only a small step from there to the Book of Concord, which upholds the Augustana, along with various other Lutheran products, as the standard of faith never to be shaken. As Barth points out, this leads to the exaltation of the Confession to the level of Scripture - the Formula of Concord makes regular reference to "the Word of God and the Augsburg Confession" as things which are hardly separable. Luther is seen as essentially a new apostle; the Confession is the product of the Holy Spirit.

This should never happen in a Reformed Church. The Reformed churches were happy for there to be numerous confessions, not fixing on one form of words, because they saw that the confessions were the products of particular churches. They confessed the faith which churches had received from the Scriptures. As such they were always in principle open to correction. Thus Zwingli: "where I have not now correctly understood the said Scripture, I am ready to be corrected and instructed from the aforesaid Scripture". Confessions in the Reformed tradition were understood to be provisional, even when loyalty to them was demanded of the church's teachers in the strongest terms.

It seems to me that (if Barth's view of Lutheranism is correct), the Lutheran Church views authority as coming from Scripture, via the Confession, to the Church. The Confession stands above the Church, as a kind of subordinate Scripture. Barth's picture of the Reformed view has authority come directly from Scripture to the Church, which produces the confession as a result of what it has heard and understood from Scripture. Because it is what the church has heard, the confession cannot then be set aside lightly, but it can be modified and even replaced in time.

Barth concludes that we don't have new Reformed confessions of the standard and profundity of the older confessions simply because we do not have Christians and theologians who are being reformed by the Scriptures. Reformed confessions come from Reformed Christians, and Reformed Christians are brought to birth by Holy Scripture.

"The current situation [now as in 1923!] does make it especially advisable that the Reformed church should set its only hope (truly its only hope) on the prayer 'Come, Creator Spirit!'"

A Hermeneutic of Trust

2009-12-08T13:47:00.004Z

Just some thoughts, not yet processed into proper prose.

1. A hermeneutic of trust approaches a text with the intention of taking it at face value, assuming that a text is a means of communication between (at least) two people.

2. A hermeneutic of trust takes seriously the nature of the text in question, looking carefully for indications of genre and statements of purpose (implicit or explicit). It seeks to read and interpret a text within the established 'rules' of genre.

3. A hermeneutic of trust is justified de facto by the need human beings have to rely on the testimony of others for both everyday and scientific knowledge; it is justified de jure by the revealed fact that ultimate reality is personal, making personal testimony of ultimate significance.

4. A hermeneutic of trust rejects individualistic approaches to epistemology. Knowledge is a collective enterprise, and testimony is central to that enterprise.

5. A hermeneutic of trust takes the character of the author seriously, at two levels. Firstly, it privileges the author in interpreting the text, seeking to discern the author's intention. Secondly, it asks concerning the moral character of the author, in so far as this has a bearing on the trustworthiness of the text.

6. A hermeneutic of trust steers a middle course between naivety and cynicism, following Ricoeur's principle: "first, trust the word of others, then doubt if there are good reasons for doing so".

Lifted

2009-12-06T15:22:00.004Z

There aren't many books out there on the subject of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not books that you could carry in your rucksack without injuring yourself, anyway. And the books there are tend to be focussed mainly on the evidence for the resurrection rather than the meaning of the resurrection. Of course there is huge value in the former. But isn't the resurrection of Jesus meant to be more than just a handy tool for Christian apologetics? Shouldn't it have an impact on our lives?

Sam Allberry's new book (so new it's not yet available, although you can pre-order it with Amazon) addresses the issue of the meaning of the resurrection, and for my money it does the business. Lifted is only four chapters long, but in those chapters I found again and again that I was getting more excited about the resurrection. The book made me believe in Christ's resurrection more - not because it produced new evidence, but because it explained what it meant to believe that Jesus not only died but also rose.

Sometimes it's simple stuff that hits you hardest. Like this from Sam's first chapter: "the resurrection is the consequence and demonstration of our salvation because death is the consequence and demonstration of our sin." Of course! But as Sam goes on, you'll find yourself struck by how obvious it is that sin leads to death, and how ridiculous you are every time you follow sin instead of the risen Lord. And how much assurance I can derive from the fact that Jesus is raised: "The cross is not a starter pack. It is not God stumping up even most of what we need so that we can fish around in our pockets and make up the rest. By dying and rising for us Jesus has closed the deal. God has signed for it, and his signature is the resurrection." The chapter on transformation takes this and runs with it - I can live differently, because Jesus is raised!

I also found the section on mission particularly useful. Mission is not just an addendum to the story of Jesus. It is the natural outworking of the fact that, by his resurrection, Jesus is exalted as King and Lord of the universe. Everything and everyone must bow to him. Mission is the royal summons of the exalted Christ to his creation. Powerful motivation for us as we seek to speak the gospel.

Any criticisms? Not really. I could have happily read another few chapters, so perhaps my critique would be that it's too short! But if that gets more people reading, so much the better. This is a witty and engaging, yet also hard-hitting, book. I am challenged to believe in and live out the resurrection of Jesus Christ in my own life, and I am thrilled that one day I will see the Lord in my renewed body, in his renewed creation, all because he died and rose.

Love and Security

2009-11-28T09:37:00.002Z

If it is true that perfect love drives out fear (and the Scripture cannot be broken!) then I am sure it is also the case that lingering fear drives out love.

This is a fairly obvious reflection on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. So much unloving behaviour flows from my felt need to protect myself and my own reputation. I need to look out for number one - how can I possibly have time for being loving? Even resentment or irritability can be traced back to fear about my own identity or the way others perceive me. By reckoning up the wrongs others have done me and meditating on them - which is resentment - I am really just reinforcing my sense of having been in the right myself. By reacting instantly with anger to the slightest crossing of my own will - which is irritability - I reinforce my sense of being at the centre of the universe.

I would need to be so secure, so totally certain that I didn't need to look out for myself, to love in the way the Scripture demands. I would need to really believe that my identity is secure in Christ. I would need to be sure that God sees me truly and loves me unconditionally.

It reminds me a bit of Luther. Luther argued that mediaeval Catholicism had got people so busy chasing after their own justification that they were not able to love others. The money that should have gone to the poor went on indulgences; time that should have been devoted to service of others was wasted in pilgrimages. The Church had people so busy chasing righteousness that they didn't have time to be righteous! If justification were given by grace, on the other hand, and received only by faith - why, then people could be free to live a life of love.

How happy should I be?

2009-11-25T10:57:00.003Z

We've been pondering love at church recently, working through 1 Corinthians 13. I've been challenged, rebuked and a little encouraged. It's been good.

Thinking through love, I think it's significant that the Bible doesn't exactly give us a definition of what love is. I suspect love is just too multifaceted a thing to be neatly defined. Instead, it offers us a model of love: the love of God for humanity, shown in Christ. What God does in Jesus - that's love.

It seems to me that one facet of love that we can see in Christ could be summarised like this: love is opening yourself up to the other, to the extent that your happiness depends on their good. In other words, love means I can't be happy unless the other person is prospering. Love is not the opposite of self-interest, but is extending self-interest to embrace and include other people. I want to be happy - that's natural; I can't be happy unless others are doing well - that's love.

Manifestly, people are not doing well in our world. So, how happy should I be?

Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with suffering. Wasn't that because he loved the world, and pegged his own happiness to the good of the world? Through free love, God freely admitted his creation into his concern, and freely determined not to be happy without his creation.

My question is: was Jesus a man of sorrows so that I don't have to be, or was he a man of sorrows to show me what I ought to be?

Sermon on the Mount: Impossible Ethics?

2009-11-10T09:47:00.003Z

"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48).

That is what you might call a tall order in the realm of ethics. In fact, the more you look at it the more the whole Sermon on the Mount smacks of (hopeless) idealism. Can anyone really do all this stuff? Is it even reasonable to ask?

The history of the interpretation of the Sermon is intriguing. There is a long tradition of avoiding its demands, toning them down to make them possible, or perhaps less universally binding than they appear to be at first glance. Especially in the established churches - from Constantine onwards - it has been usual to argue that the Sermon provides ethics for Christians in their private lives, but not in the public sphere, for example. Or it has been argued, in Lutheran fashion, that the Sermon represents Law (not Gospel), and is therefore only really designed to show us how far short we fall. It has tended to be radical movements - not all of them at all orthodox - which have taken the demands of the Sermon at face value. Sometimes this has led to thorough-going legalism, of which Tolstoy is a prime example, but not always. Sometimes it has led to radical Christian living.

It is worth observing two things about the structure of the Sermon. Firstly, it has at its centre the Lord's Prayer. Everything else seems to have been deliberately arranged around this prayer. I think Matthew intends us to see the sort of life Jesus describes in the Sermon as achievable, but only as the answer to the prayer: "your will be done on earth". The life of prayer comes before the life of radical obedience, and the latter is impossible without the former. Challenging. Moreover, the prayer assumes a relationship - God is "our Father" - into which we can only enter through Christ. Union with him, and relationship with the Father through him, is the sine qua non of the life of obedience.

Secondly, there are two passages in the Sermon, at roughly equal distance from the centre, which confirm this approach. In 5:13-16, Jesus describes the disciples as the salt of the earth, a city on a hill, a lighted lamp. Because they are all these things, they are to let their light shine before others, so that they may see their good works and glorify God. But it is clear that the good works emanate from a previous change in their existence, just as the light comes from the lamp having been lit by someone. Similarly, but from the opposite perspective, in 7:15-20 false prophets are to be recognised by their works - "a healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit". But the fruit does not make the tree healthy or diseased. That comes first.

So the Sermon demands radical obedience on the basis of a radical change that has happened to Christians and a radical prayer which invites God's action in their lives. If it looks impossible to me, am I perhaps thinking only in my own strength? Have I ceased to pray?

Sermon on the Mount: Jesus and Law

2009-11-09T16:09:00.004Z

Does Jesus abolish the Law? It would seem so: in some of the antitheses, those parts of the Sermon which are structured along the lines of "you have heard... but I say...", Jesus appears to contradict the OT - on oaths (5:33-37), for example, or on retaliation (5:38-42). What is more, the very form of this section seems to set Jesus' authority over against the Law. The Law said that, but now I say this. Even where Jesus is clearly teaching an intensification of the Law, it would be easy to see the way in which he does this - by his own personal authority - as undermining the Law. Is Jesus, perhaps, the New Moses, come to give a New Law in place of the old?

Does Jesus require his followers to keep the Law? It would seem so: 5:19 states that "anyone who relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven". Jesus appears to uphold the authority of the Law, and is clear that nothing can be taken away from it. In many of the antitheses he appears to be arguing against a false or shallow interpretation of the Law rather than the letter of the Law itself. Is Jesus, perhaps, a Jewish Reformer, come to restore the proper reading and practice of the Law by destroying false interpretations?

The answer must be that neither of the above is quite right. We need to read the Sermon as part of the Matthew's gospel, and the big point of Matthew's gospel is that Jesus fulfills the OT. He fulfills it in all sorts of ways: the gospel contains allusions to Moses (40 days and nights of fasting, 4:1), Elijah (multiplying food, 14:13f), the Exodus (2:15 amongst many others), Sinai (17:1-13, which also has echoes of Daniel's Son of Man), David (21:1f) and many others. Not all the allusions are precise, and they are not usually meant to be read in simplistic terms, like "Jesus is the new Moses/David/Israel" etc. Rather, by scattering a wide variety of allusions to Israel's history throughout his gospel Matthew makes the big picture claim that Jesus is the climax of the history of Israel, and the beginning of a new Israel - an Israel which begins with the salvation of the remnant of old Israel - gathered around himself.

And here in the Sermon we find Jesus saying "do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (5:17). The Law is, as far as Matthew is concerned (and Matthew could surely only have got this idea from Jesus), on a par with the Prophets. Both are fulfilled in him. He is the climax of everything they were about, the one who brings them to their intended end - in the teleological sense. Does the law pass away? No more than the prophets pass away! But both have reached that point in their existence where they can be, if you like, tied off. This is the conclusion. Henceforth, it is not the Law that defines our ethics, any more than it is the Prophets who define our expectation. It is Christ, and the Law and the Prophets as they reach their climax in him.

Sermon on the Mount: Who Listens?

2009-11-07T13:58:00.003Z

Been reading a lot in and about the Sermon on the Mount this week, for essay purposes. Thought I'd share a few thoughts in this direction...

Who is the Sermon on the Mount preached to? What is the intended audience?

Matthew 5:1 indicates that the disciples are the main audience. Jesus takes his seat on the mountain, waits for his disciples to join him, and then opens his mouth to teach them. That means the demands Jesus makes are for his followers. This is kingdom ethics, gospel ethics - not a general ethic for the world at large. That makes sense - as far as Matthew is concerned, the teaching in the Sermon is part and parcel of the preaching of the gospel. (Note the parallelism of teaching and proclaiming in 4:23). So we shouldn't expect this ethical discourse to be immediately applicable to everyone.

On the other hand, 7:28 indicates that the crowds heard Jesus' teaching, and reacted with astonishment. Doubtless this is deliberate on the part of Jesus - he is very capable of taking the disciples aside for private teaching when he wants to. Again, the preaching of this way of life is part of the preaching of the gospel. It is meant to be attractive (or repellent!) to the curious spectator. Like the gospel generally, it either draws people in or drives them away. This also has the effect of making it possible for people to measure the disciples' conduct against Jesus' ideal. No doubt this too is deliberate and planned. My lifestyle is meant to preach.

Probably the last group I'd want to mention weren't part of Jesus' audience originally, but they could be part of Matthew's (and therefore of Jesus' secondarily). I mean the hypocrites the Sermon makes regular mention of. They probably weren't on the mountain to hear their condemnation. But now as we read the Sermon we are invited to ensure that we are not in this latter group.

Where am I today? Following, spectating, play-acting?

The gospel: a good idea?

2009-11-04T10:05:00.004Z

Really interesting discussion going on over at Glen's blog. You should go read the original post, and the comments thread. Raises hard questions, like:

1. Is the gospel a worldview? I would argue that the gospel is the story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection - in other words, that the reason we call first four books of the NT 'gospels' is that this is what they are! In that sense, the gospel is not a worldview. I think that's important - a worldview is made up of lots of other things beside story (see The New Testament and the People of God, at length!), but it is the story of Jesus that constitutes the proclamation of good news. Only in a story - rather than a general discussion of what the world is like - can we hear about something that has been accomplished for us, by someone else.

2. Is the gospel logical? Can it be presented logically? I suppose I'd want to recast this question. A worldview can be logical or not, can be presented logically or not - a story is judged on different criteria, primarily (if it purports to be a story about history) the criterion of reference: did this actually happen? Still, the gospel story presupposes and entails a worldview, so can we talk about that being logical? I think the gospel-worldview is logical if and only if the gospel story is true. Therefore, I think we must take people to the story of Jesus rather than to the worldview if we are to make a convincing argument.

3. Can we do natural theology? Is there such a thing as general revelation? Nein. 'Nuff said.

4. Does this entail a 'super-spiritual' way of looking at the gospel? Does it mean the gospel is something totally different from every other message in the world? No, and yes. Not 'super-spiritual', but certainly God entering his creation is a unique event which cannot be compared to or ranked alongside anything else! So can we compare the gospel-worldview to another worldview? In one sense, yes: we can see what each has to say on different topics. But in another sense, no: we cannot, by comparison, work out which is more likely to be true. The truth of the gospel-worldview is dependent on the truth of the gospel story. And that cannot be received or believed without God opening blind eyes by the Spirit.

Materialism and Education

2009-11-03T09:34:00.003Z

Lord Mandelson annoyed me this morning. I know, I know, if he bugs me that much I should just stop returning his calls, but what can I say? He is a Peer of the Realm at the end of the day, and the attention is flattering.

Or it's possible I just read this story on the BBC. I forget.

Anyway, the gist of it is that HM Government believe that University education should be tailored more towards the needs of the economy. "University research", says the BBC article, "needed to be concentrated on providing economic benefits". Not only so, but Universities themselves should run in a more business-like fashion. Thus Mandy on students: "They are paying customers, they need to be given much fuller information about what they can expect to get back from their courses". Of course, this is quite consistent with other gov't policies, like the EMA, on which you should not get me started or I will not stop until I am literally foaming at the mouth and casting around for the nearest MP of ministerial rank into whom I can sink my rabies-infected fangs. Ahem. The point is, as far as our gov't is concerned, education is all about the bottom line. Because they expect everyone else to think so too, they have to pay people to go to school.

It is all very depressing if, like me, you are someone who believes that education is not ultimately about fuelling the capitalist machine. I really do think learning is its own benefit, and that the main role of education is as a vehicle of culture. But I guess culture doesn't pay.

I suspect this highlights a particular weakness of the Left. Although Marx is now very firmly in the background for most European socialist types, and certainly way way back for "New" Labour, his philosophy still stands at the foundation of all their thought. That means materialism. It means a commitment to reading everything in terms of material wealth. It's a very monotone way of viewing the world.

And it means, ironically, that the Left is more committed to preparing young people to be a cog in the machine than the Right ever has been.