God promised that there would come a man who would crush the ancient serpent, defeating once and for all time the rebellion of men and angels - though he himself would be bruised.
God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son, the son on whom all his hopes for the future were pinned, the son who was himself the fruit of God's promise - and then at the last minute, when hope was gone, stopped the knife and sent a ram instead.
God rescued his people from Egypt, but not without blood, for in truth their firstborn were not better than the firstborn of Pharaoh, and an animal had to die - the slain lamb painting the doorposts of the house, death on the outside and life within,
God gave his people animal sacrifices, rivers of blood through the generations, hands laid on goats to transfer sin and guilt - so that sin could be done to death, and sinfulness sent away to the wilderness.
God spoke to his people through the prophet Isaiah, at the point of their great rejection of him, and told them of his servant, the one would who would himself be rejected by the people - and yet would bear sin and transgression to death.
God sent his own Son into the world. Crucified, he achieved all that had been symbolised and promised. Here is Satan defeated. Here is the loving Father offering his only Son. Here is the rescue from sin by blood. Here is the sacrifice which does to death our rebellion and removes our guilt. Here is the Servant who submits to taste death for all.
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!
Friday, March 25, 2016
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
We don't know people
There is a lot of angst to be seen amongst American friends and acquaintances today, who are dismayed at the progress of Donald Drumpf. One of the things that I notice coming up a lot is this: "who are these people? Nobody I know is voting for him, so who is?" I've just been reflecting on the fact that hardly anyone I knew was voting Tory in the UK last time around, and yet here they are, in government. My Facebook feed was filled at the time with people saying "how can this be right? We don't know anyone who voted for them!"
Obviously the application goes beyond politics. How can I present the gospel to people I don't know or understand?
My conclusion is this: I don't know many people, and the people I do know are not representative of society at large.
Implication: the perspective I have on things is very narrow. If I draw conclusions about where society is, or where society is going, based on the circle of my acquaintances, I will probably be wrong. I need to stop being baffled by the fact that there are lots of people out there who think very differently from me and my 'set'.
Application: I need to try to understand people who are coming from very different positions from mine. I can't just write them off because they don't match the type of people with whom I regularly rub shoulders.
Obviously the application goes beyond politics. How can I present the gospel to people I don't know or understand?
Work to do.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Church buildings
Some churches own buildings. Some do not. The church of which I have been a member for the past decade owns a building which is too small for its congregation; it would like a larger building. The church of which I have just become a member does not own a building at all, and does not particularly aspire to own one; we might not take one if it were offered for free (although we might - if you have a building going free, let me know, and we'll see...)
It's all just irrelevant, right? Just a matter of preference and pragmatics. Certainly I've never really read anything discussing the theological or ecclesiological importance of church property (except in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 1179-1186; it is the usual quasi-sacramental stuff that characterises much Roman theology).
Except buildings become symbols, and symbols take on significance they may not have had in original intention. Because church buildings are not particularly gospel things, they are also not particularly controlled when it comes to their symbolism. Being a long way from the heart of the Christian faith and its practice, they can take on different meanings very easily; they are not tied closely to any particular interpretation of the faith. So a building could become a fortress; in here we are safe, in here it is holy, in here the world will not get us. Or it could become a temple; in here God is present, in here God is working, in here prayers are heard. Both of these would be very unhelpful symbolism.
I would guess that the most useful symbolism you could apply to a church building would be that of an embassy. An embassy is the sovereign soil of another country, and so in a way the church building, by dedicating a particular portion of the Earth to the service of God, becomes an embassy of heaven. It is a strange embassy in one sense, because part of its central message is that this ambassadorial role is temporary; there will come a day when all of the Earth will be similarly consecrated. As such, the church building can have a prophetic role. Like an embassy, it can also aim to display something of the kingdom it represents. Obviously that will mainly happen through the people who gather there, but it can also happen through the architecture, the liturgy, the sheer ambience of the place - and, given that we have a Servant King, perhaps also the regularity with which the building is available to others to use.
Of course people in the church will only think of the church building that way if the general culture of the church leans in that direction. It is easy for error to creep in here, and I wonder whether the way that church members think about their building might be a good indicator of how sound their grasp of the gospel is overall...
One thing I have seen a lot of recently is the idea that the church building is inherently detrimental to mission. If we have a building, people say, church members will start to feel disconnected from the wider community; they will start to think that evangelism just means inviting people in on to our territory and not going out on to theirs. Well, to this I can only say pish, and perhaps also tosh. It is true that people might start to feel that way, but it will not be the building that makes it happen; it will be the preaching and teaching, or lack thereof. Moreover, where do you think the congregation are for the 90% of their lives when they are not in the church building? They are scattered, hopefully being salt and light in all of the places God sends them. I'd also like to ask whether it might not work the other way around - whether lacking a church building might not symbolise a total lack of boundaries and distinction between the church and the world..? Mightn't it?
Some churches have a building. Some don't. It doesn't really matter, although there might be important reasons why at a particular moment in a church's life a building will be a huge blessing or a great liability. What really matters is what sort of symbol we allow it to become, and to what extent we see it in the light of the gospel.
It's all just irrelevant, right? Just a matter of preference and pragmatics. Certainly I've never really read anything discussing the theological or ecclesiological importance of church property (except in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 1179-1186; it is the usual quasi-sacramental stuff that characterises much Roman theology).
Except buildings become symbols, and symbols take on significance they may not have had in original intention. Because church buildings are not particularly gospel things, they are also not particularly controlled when it comes to their symbolism. Being a long way from the heart of the Christian faith and its practice, they can take on different meanings very easily; they are not tied closely to any particular interpretation of the faith. So a building could become a fortress; in here we are safe, in here it is holy, in here the world will not get us. Or it could become a temple; in here God is present, in here God is working, in here prayers are heard. Both of these would be very unhelpful symbolism.
I would guess that the most useful symbolism you could apply to a church building would be that of an embassy. An embassy is the sovereign soil of another country, and so in a way the church building, by dedicating a particular portion of the Earth to the service of God, becomes an embassy of heaven. It is a strange embassy in one sense, because part of its central message is that this ambassadorial role is temporary; there will come a day when all of the Earth will be similarly consecrated. As such, the church building can have a prophetic role. Like an embassy, it can also aim to display something of the kingdom it represents. Obviously that will mainly happen through the people who gather there, but it can also happen through the architecture, the liturgy, the sheer ambience of the place - and, given that we have a Servant King, perhaps also the regularity with which the building is available to others to use.
Of course people in the church will only think of the church building that way if the general culture of the church leans in that direction. It is easy for error to creep in here, and I wonder whether the way that church members think about their building might be a good indicator of how sound their grasp of the gospel is overall...
One thing I have seen a lot of recently is the idea that the church building is inherently detrimental to mission. If we have a building, people say, church members will start to feel disconnected from the wider community; they will start to think that evangelism just means inviting people in on to our territory and not going out on to theirs. Well, to this I can only say pish, and perhaps also tosh. It is true that people might start to feel that way, but it will not be the building that makes it happen; it will be the preaching and teaching, or lack thereof. Moreover, where do you think the congregation are for the 90% of their lives when they are not in the church building? They are scattered, hopefully being salt and light in all of the places God sends them. I'd also like to ask whether it might not work the other way around - whether lacking a church building might not symbolise a total lack of boundaries and distinction between the church and the world..? Mightn't it?
Some churches have a building. Some don't. It doesn't really matter, although there might be important reasons why at a particular moment in a church's life a building will be a huge blessing or a great liability. What really matters is what sort of symbol we allow it to become, and to what extent we see it in the light of the gospel.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
What should evangelicals REALLY make of Karl Barth?
Earlier this week, the Gospel Coalition carried an article by Justin Taylor, reporting some brief comments of Don Carson's on the theology of Karl Barth, particularly as it relates to the doctrine of Scripture. There is a lot to like about Carson's comments, especially the fact that the major misunderstandings that seem to characterise a lot of American conservative reading of Barth (I'm thinking of Van Til, Schaeffer, Frame) seem thankfully absent. Even the disagreement is done in an irenic style, as one would expect from Carson. This is all good.
Having said that, I did (of course) have a few thoughts, and since it is good to share, here they are.
Firstly, let me say something about contradictions. Sometimes reading Barth it feels like his thought is heading off on two parallel lines, and it is difficult (impossible?) to see how they will ever be brought into contact. I think the doctrine of Scripture is a clear example of this: Barth insists strongly on the mere humanity of Scripture; he insists equally strongly that Scripture is the place we turn to hear the authoritative word of God. Is it just that Barth is being unduly 'extreme' about either of these positions? I don't think so. As far as I can see from my reading of Barth, this sort of structure springs from the fact that his theology is genuinely 'eccentric', meaning simply that it has its centre outside itself - in the reality of God himself. When it comes to the doctrine of Scripture, the humanity and divinity of the witness it bears are genuinely contradictory from a human point of view, and at no point can they be logically brought together or co-ordinated; they are brought together only in the act of God himself working to bring them together. In other words, if God doesn't exist, Barth's theology will be self-contradictory - but then, of course, it will also be meaningless.
I think this sort of structure can be seen in various aspects of more traditional theology without causing any disturbance. Consider, for example, the Biblical truth that God is a god who punishes evil, and the equally Biblical truth that God is a god who forgives. These are two parallel lines stretching to infinity, apparently without ever touching. They are brought into contact only at the cross of Christ; the action of God makes two apparently contradictory statements to be in fact identical (in the sense that they have an identical referent). If this is "dialectical thinking", it is more Biblical than Hegelian, and I don't think we need to feel threatened by it.
Secondly, it is true that Barth affirms that there are errors in Scripture, although he does say at one point that Scripture's errors are more illuminating than the truths of other books (can't find the reference for this one right now). It is not clear to me that Barth ever makes use of the idea of errors in Scripture; he doesn't build anything on it. It feels to me that he thinks himself obliged to affirm the presence of errors in order to assert the true humanity of the Scriptures, against what he regards as a dangerous fundamentalism which overlooks this aspect of Scripture or at least minimises it. I think he is right to see this danger, but wrong in his defence. Although to err is human, not every human errs in every single thing they do. It should be entirely possible for Barth to affirm that Scripture is free of error in what it affirms (propositionally), but that it is still a human book, not in itself divine revelation unless God brings the human and divine together in the event of the Spirit's illumination.
I suspect this is related to Barth's Christology. Barth claims that Christ's human nature is thoroughly Adamic, that is to say fallen - it is like our nature in every way. This is a substantial departure from mainstream orthodoxy, but it is worth noting that he is also clear that Christ did not take on our fallen nature in order to do in that nature what we ourselves habitually do - i.e. he did not actually sin, but carried our sinful nature in obedience to God. Might he not, in parallel, have affirmed that the humanity of Scripture meant it was thoroughly capable of error, without in fact erring?
Thirdly, it is worth highlighting that perhaps Barth's greatest concern in all his theology, and certainly in his doctrine of Scripture, is that the church must continue to rely absolutely on God, and on his present day activity. There is no sense in which God, having acted in the past in Christ and in the inspiration of Scripture, now leaves his revelation in the hands of the church and the world. No, revelation is always God's personal activity. Although Scripture and preaching (and even the human nature of Christ?) constitute the locus of revelation, they are not themselves revelatory unless God acts by the Spirit to make them such. God is in control, always the subject of his own becoming object. In practice, that means whenever we turn to Scripture, or stand up to preach, or sit to hear a sermon we are genuinely driven to prayer, that the impossible would happen in the grace of God, and the words of men would be to us the true and living word of God .
Having said that, I did (of course) have a few thoughts, and since it is good to share, here they are.
Firstly, let me say something about contradictions. Sometimes reading Barth it feels like his thought is heading off on two parallel lines, and it is difficult (impossible?) to see how they will ever be brought into contact. I think the doctrine of Scripture is a clear example of this: Barth insists strongly on the mere humanity of Scripture; he insists equally strongly that Scripture is the place we turn to hear the authoritative word of God. Is it just that Barth is being unduly 'extreme' about either of these positions? I don't think so. As far as I can see from my reading of Barth, this sort of structure springs from the fact that his theology is genuinely 'eccentric', meaning simply that it has its centre outside itself - in the reality of God himself. When it comes to the doctrine of Scripture, the humanity and divinity of the witness it bears are genuinely contradictory from a human point of view, and at no point can they be logically brought together or co-ordinated; they are brought together only in the act of God himself working to bring them together. In other words, if God doesn't exist, Barth's theology will be self-contradictory - but then, of course, it will also be meaningless.
I think this sort of structure can be seen in various aspects of more traditional theology without causing any disturbance. Consider, for example, the Biblical truth that God is a god who punishes evil, and the equally Biblical truth that God is a god who forgives. These are two parallel lines stretching to infinity, apparently without ever touching. They are brought into contact only at the cross of Christ; the action of God makes two apparently contradictory statements to be in fact identical (in the sense that they have an identical referent). If this is "dialectical thinking", it is more Biblical than Hegelian, and I don't think we need to feel threatened by it.
Secondly, it is true that Barth affirms that there are errors in Scripture, although he does say at one point that Scripture's errors are more illuminating than the truths of other books (can't find the reference for this one right now). It is not clear to me that Barth ever makes use of the idea of errors in Scripture; he doesn't build anything on it. It feels to me that he thinks himself obliged to affirm the presence of errors in order to assert the true humanity of the Scriptures, against what he regards as a dangerous fundamentalism which overlooks this aspect of Scripture or at least minimises it. I think he is right to see this danger, but wrong in his defence. Although to err is human, not every human errs in every single thing they do. It should be entirely possible for Barth to affirm that Scripture is free of error in what it affirms (propositionally), but that it is still a human book, not in itself divine revelation unless God brings the human and divine together in the event of the Spirit's illumination.
I suspect this is related to Barth's Christology. Barth claims that Christ's human nature is thoroughly Adamic, that is to say fallen - it is like our nature in every way. This is a substantial departure from mainstream orthodoxy, but it is worth noting that he is also clear that Christ did not take on our fallen nature in order to do in that nature what we ourselves habitually do - i.e. he did not actually sin, but carried our sinful nature in obedience to God. Might he not, in parallel, have affirmed that the humanity of Scripture meant it was thoroughly capable of error, without in fact erring?
Thirdly, it is worth highlighting that perhaps Barth's greatest concern in all his theology, and certainly in his doctrine of Scripture, is that the church must continue to rely absolutely on God, and on his present day activity. There is no sense in which God, having acted in the past in Christ and in the inspiration of Scripture, now leaves his revelation in the hands of the church and the world. No, revelation is always God's personal activity. Although Scripture and preaching (and even the human nature of Christ?) constitute the locus of revelation, they are not themselves revelatory unless God acts by the Spirit to make them such. God is in control, always the subject of his own becoming object. In practice, that means whenever we turn to Scripture, or stand up to preach, or sit to hear a sermon we are genuinely driven to prayer, that the impossible would happen in the grace of God, and the words of men would be to us the true and living word of God .
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Sort of news
This won't be news to all of you, but by way of an explanation for the slow rate of blogging (which is likely to persist for the next couple of months), I have tidings of life, and broadly the tidings are that there is change afoot.
Most of you will know that I have been serving as a lay elder in Magdalen Road Church for some time. What you may or may not know is that for the last few years MRC has been working on establishing a church plant in the Cowley area of Oxford. That plant is Cowley Church Community, and since the beginning of January I and the family have been members - and I have been serving as one of two part-time pastors. At the moment I'm doing that alongside my full-time job at the University, but that job will be coming to an end at the end of March. CCC currently meets every other week on a Sunday, and in two mid-week groups. We're not yet independent of MRC, but we're working up to it, and part of that plan is that we'll be meeting every Sunday from Easter - hence my stepping away from the day job. I'm looking forward to being able to preach more regularly, and to having the time to put into getting to know people within the little church better - as well as getting to know the Cowley area and its residents better than I currently do. Although we live very near to Cowley, in some ways it is a very different part of Oxford, and there is definitely going to be some adjusting to do.
Alongside helping to lead CCC, I am back at school! Specifically, I have begun studying for an MA in Contemporary Church Leadership at WEST (or at least, it was called WEST when I enrolled; now it's part of the Union School of Theology - and what's more, the course I am doing has been dropped from the offerings of the new School, so if you thought you might also like to do that sort of course I'm afraid you're too late). The hope is that the combination of study and practical ministry will mean theory informing practice and practice being subjected to critical reflection - and therefore hopefully growth.
This feels like a huge, and yet decidedly daunting, opportunity. If you're the praying sort, we'd very much appreciate your prayers. We will be sending out proper 'prayer letters' shortly, so if you'd like one and you haven't already asked for one, do get in touch. In the meantime, the blog will be updated as and when there is time and energy...
Most of you will know that I have been serving as a lay elder in Magdalen Road Church for some time. What you may or may not know is that for the last few years MRC has been working on establishing a church plant in the Cowley area of Oxford. That plant is Cowley Church Community, and since the beginning of January I and the family have been members - and I have been serving as one of two part-time pastors. At the moment I'm doing that alongside my full-time job at the University, but that job will be coming to an end at the end of March. CCC currently meets every other week on a Sunday, and in two mid-week groups. We're not yet independent of MRC, but we're working up to it, and part of that plan is that we'll be meeting every Sunday from Easter - hence my stepping away from the day job. I'm looking forward to being able to preach more regularly, and to having the time to put into getting to know people within the little church better - as well as getting to know the Cowley area and its residents better than I currently do. Although we live very near to Cowley, in some ways it is a very different part of Oxford, and there is definitely going to be some adjusting to do.
Alongside helping to lead CCC, I am back at school! Specifically, I have begun studying for an MA in Contemporary Church Leadership at WEST (or at least, it was called WEST when I enrolled; now it's part of the Union School of Theology - and what's more, the course I am doing has been dropped from the offerings of the new School, so if you thought you might also like to do that sort of course I'm afraid you're too late). The hope is that the combination of study and practical ministry will mean theory informing practice and practice being subjected to critical reflection - and therefore hopefully growth.
This feels like a huge, and yet decidedly daunting, opportunity. If you're the praying sort, we'd very much appreciate your prayers. We will be sending out proper 'prayer letters' shortly, so if you'd like one and you haven't already asked for one, do get in touch. In the meantime, the blog will be updated as and when there is time and energy...
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Preaching God's commands
A checklist for preachers, based on part of Psalm 19.
In preaching the commands and requirements of God, am I:
In preaching the commands and requirements of God, am I:
- presenting the commands without apology or embarrassment, as the expression of absolute perfection in moral conduct and good living?
- wearying my hearers with a burdensome command, or refreshing them with a commandment which is good news?
- delivering the commands in a way which shows their logic, so that they shape the hearers into people who can make wise decisions in other ethical areas?
- showing how right living is a cause for rejoicing?
- opening people's eyes through the commands to see the big reality that lies behind them, rather than presenting isolated and abstract demands?
- provoking a hunger for God's good commands and a savour for obedience?
- warning the listeners of the consequences of disobedience, and holding out the prospect of eternal reward for obedience?
Tuesday, January 05, 2016
Incomprehensible
Just a last quick Christmas thought before the decorations come down tonight.
I don't think we understand the incarnation. To put it more strongly, I don't think we can understand the incarnation. Think about what we say: we say that God became a man, took on flesh, clothed himself in our nature. I think it's quite possible to understand some or all of these words and concepts - but is it really possible to grasp what they actually indicate? Can we really have any understanding of what it means to say that God becomes a human being?
It's interesting to read the history of christological controversy in the early church as an attempt to understand this - and it is interesting that orthodoxy, as far as I can tell, always comes down on the incomprehensible side. The heretics are trying, as a rule, to simplify things, or at least to bring them within the realm of things we might be able to grasp. What is Arianism, after all, but an attempt to make the incarnation a bit less incomprehensible? Arius does it by making the incarnate actually something less than God, and in so doing seems to avoid the apparent category mistake of the orthodox, who insist that it is actually God, the invisible God, who appears in the human nature of Christ.
Or the various disputes about the natures and will of Christ. The monophysites want to make Christ a mix of divine and human (actually, whether they wanted to do this is debatable; certainly their theological descendants would repudiate this project. But that is the tendency which the orthodox thought they saw in monophysite thought). Although that is still pretty hard to understand, it does at least mitigate the harshness of saying that Christ is at once infinite and finite, invisible and visible, God and man. A blend is easier to comprehend, but it is heretical. On a less ontological and more psychological point, the monothelite want to give Christ but one will, the divine will standing in for the human. Simpler, sort of makes sense. But the orthodox insist that Christ has two wills, divine and human - even though this makes it more or less impossible for us to imagine or comprehend his inner life.
The point is that we don't understand, and that has to be okay. If we understood, it wouldn't be God-in-the-flesh. Our concepts can do nothing more than point us to the reality, which is Christ; that's why in Christian theology the story is prior to the concepts, which can only serve it.
I don't think we understand the incarnation. To put it more strongly, I don't think we can understand the incarnation. Think about what we say: we say that God became a man, took on flesh, clothed himself in our nature. I think it's quite possible to understand some or all of these words and concepts - but is it really possible to grasp what they actually indicate? Can we really have any understanding of what it means to say that God becomes a human being?
It's interesting to read the history of christological controversy in the early church as an attempt to understand this - and it is interesting that orthodoxy, as far as I can tell, always comes down on the incomprehensible side. The heretics are trying, as a rule, to simplify things, or at least to bring them within the realm of things we might be able to grasp. What is Arianism, after all, but an attempt to make the incarnation a bit less incomprehensible? Arius does it by making the incarnate actually something less than God, and in so doing seems to avoid the apparent category mistake of the orthodox, who insist that it is actually God, the invisible God, who appears in the human nature of Christ.
Or the various disputes about the natures and will of Christ. The monophysites want to make Christ a mix of divine and human (actually, whether they wanted to do this is debatable; certainly their theological descendants would repudiate this project. But that is the tendency which the orthodox thought they saw in monophysite thought). Although that is still pretty hard to understand, it does at least mitigate the harshness of saying that Christ is at once infinite and finite, invisible and visible, God and man. A blend is easier to comprehend, but it is heretical. On a less ontological and more psychological point, the monothelite want to give Christ but one will, the divine will standing in for the human. Simpler, sort of makes sense. But the orthodox insist that Christ has two wills, divine and human - even though this makes it more or less impossible for us to imagine or comprehend his inner life.
The point is that we don't understand, and that has to be okay. If we understood, it wouldn't be God-in-the-flesh. Our concepts can do nothing more than point us to the reality, which is Christ; that's why in Christian theology the story is prior to the concepts, which can only serve it.
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