Tell Her Story

I've just finished reading Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Nijay K. Gupta.  I really liked some aspects of it, and found some others seriously lacking.  The following is not a full review by any means (though by your leave I'll label it as a review), but just a series of thoughts and reflections.  I would welcome push-back if you've read it and liked it more (or less) than I did!

Things that I liked:

The survey of women in the Greco-Roman world (chapter 3) is great at showing that there was significant variety to the experiences of women in the first century.  It is certainly not true that first century women were universally restricted to the house, or that they never had roles outside the domestic sphere.  If in your imagination the background to the New Testament is a world of very rigid gender roles, I think it's helpful to see that things were more varied than that.

One line of argumentation that I've never heard deployed in person, but have witnessed on the internet and therefore gather is current in American Evangelicalism, is the idea that "women can't perform such and such a role in ministry because they are too..." (10) - fill in the blank as you please.  This sort of argument, based on the (demonstrably false) idea that there are immutable traits which mark out all women (and all men) is never advanced in Scripture, and this book takes it apart rather well.

Highlighting the role of women in the narrative of salvation history - whether that's a character like Deborah in the Old Testament (ch 1), the women who encountered and often accompanied the Lord Jesus (ch 4), or the women named by Paul as co-workers (chs 5-9) has the potential to enrich our understanding of God's work.  There will also certainly be points at which meditating on these women and their stories will point to changes that need to be made in the thinking and practice of the church today.

Things that I found frustrating:

The chapter on Genesis 1-3 is seriously underdeveloped, given the importance of the contents for this whole discussion - and placing it after the portrait and discussion of Deborah seems a little tendentious to me.

Much of the proposed reconstruction of women's lives and ministries in this book is very speculative, and involves more reading between the lines than I think responsible exegesis can support.  I lost track of the number of times we were told that we couldn't be certain of something, but then that same something was used to develop the argument as if it were certain (or the other way around; we are told that "it is more certain" that Euodia and/or Syntyche held the title of episkopos or diakonos (104), but then later we find it is only "quite possible" - and even then no particular evidence is offered in support (106).  Was Phoebe tasked with reading the letter to the Romans publicly?  We don't know (124), but we're asked to imagine it anyway.  The three chapters on Phoebe, Prisca and Junia seem to me to be trying to do far too much with the scraps of relevant text that we have, and consequently I can't see them convincing anyone who didn't already want to be convinced.

There seems to be some indecision or confusion at one key point in the book's argument, relating to offices in the early church.  Gupta endorses Wayne Meeks' conclusion that "Acts and the Pauline letters make no mention of formal offices in the early Pauline congregations." (81)  The rest of this chapter, however, discusses the nature of the diakonos, episkopos, and presbyteros in some detail.  These are described as 'roles' rather than 'offices', but I'm not sure I see the difference.  This becomes of great importance when a central plank of the complementarian position is that women did not serve as overseers or elders in the early congregations.  (As an aside, I appreciated Gupta's clear evidence that women did serve as deacons - although this was somewhat undermined by the vagueness about whether this was a formal office or not - and also his insistence that 'deacon' was a leadership position, with significant authority and responsibility).  I think Meeks' conclusion is completely unsustainable, and overall the presentation here seems to fall into a slightly 19th century way of contrasting an informal, charismatic early church with 'early catholicism' emerging (to the church's detriment?) a little later.  Given Titus 1 and other passages, I think it is clear that the appointment of elders was a central part of the Pauline mission, and that these elders were genuine office holders.

There also seems to be confusion about the extent to which the apostles were able to break from their own sociological background.  So we are told that "I don't think it is the case that the apostles blindly followed 'culture' when it comes to sexual anthropology" (49), but the chapter on the household codes assumes that the authors of these texts couldn't have imagined a more egalitarian setup, and so were limited by their cultural horizons (195).  I'm not sure the latter perspective fits comfortably with the inspiration of Scripture.  It's a shame, because there's a lot in the reading of the household codes here which seems evidently correct to me.  There's a similar confusion going on about householders hosting church - they must have been elders, because sociologically it would have been impossible for them to play host and not be church leaders.  But sociologically, the criteria for eldership would have been largely different from those laid down by Paul, who is obviously not thinking in sociological but theological terms here.

Other thoughts and reflections:

The particular arguments and scenarios that this book is written against are not ones that occur directly in the context I know best, and I believe it is very important that complementarians distance themselves from the extreme forms of patriarchy that are, apparently, being endorsed in parts of the church.  (One is sometimes tempted to think cutting off all cross-Atlantic communication might be a blessing, to be honest).  I will say that careless language, and perhaps behind it careless thought, can sometimes give the impression that we hold positions we do not in fact hold, or at least are not consistent with our deepest convictions.

If the key question is 'ought women ordinarily to serve as elders in churches?', I don't think this book successfully proves the affirmative, and I don't think it is correct to insist that the burden of proof lies with the other side (91 and other places).  The reason, it seems to me, that Gupta thinks the burden of proof lies with the complementarian camp is that he doesn't offer any sort of theological anthropology in this book.  The Scriptures do tell us some things doctrinally about the nature of humanity, and specifically the nature of humanity as gendered, which are absent from this discussion, and which to my mind swing the burden of proof back the other way.

If it is correct that elders ought ordinarily to be men - and I haven't given any argument for that here, I know, but I think it's true - then one thing that is clear from this book is that ministry, including Word ministry, authority, and responsibility must not be limited to the elders.  The diaconate should be open to women, and should not be restricted to administrative tasks.  There should be leadership and ministry opportunities for women at every level in the church, notwithstanding the restriction of the eldership.  There is a dangerous tendency in some churches I know towards an increased focus on the elders as ministers - such that they do all the teaching, almost all the leading, etc. - which when combined with a male-only eldership ends up denying complementarianism and falls over into outright patriarchalism.  I think we also need to think hard about how the elders hear female voices, and what it looks like for there to be Mothers as well as Fathers in the church.

Some reading

Here are some brief thoughts on three books I read recently - they're not particularly connected, except to say that they are all books which take things seriously, and I appreciated that.  All three are good reads, and I'd recommend them to you.

Firstly, and most substantially in terms of both volume size and intellectual depth, I got around to reading Carl Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.  The book is itself a triumph, albeit a painful one.  Here we get a reasonably detailed look at how the West got to be where it is today - framed by looking at how it came to pass that a statement like 'I am a man trapped in a woman's body' came to be taken as both serious and important, rather than considered to be nonsense, as it would have been until relatively recently.  In short, Trueman shows how the self became psychologised (that is to say, my internal reality defines who I really am), the psychological became sexualised, and the sexual became politicised - broadly, those movements correspond to the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries in the intellectual history of the West.  I found the analysis compelling, and I would say the book needs to be the starting point for any attempt to address, from a Christian perspective, the descent of our culture.  Trueman only begins to hint at a potential answer t the question of what should be done, but there is material here to build on in the future.

Second, a much briefer book: Mike Reeves' Gospel People.  Subtitled A call for evangelical integrity, this book falls into the genre of 'appeals to evangelicals to be more evangelical'.  Against the backdrop of debates over whether the very term 'evangelical' has become too tarnished to be of use - especially given the political associations the term has picked up in the US - Reeves shows the theological priorities at the heart of historic evangelicalism and calls the church to return to its roots in the gospel.  His summary of the heart of evangelical identity, in terms of theological markers, is very helpful, rooted as it is in the doctrine of the Trinity.  The only disappointment in the book, for me, is that Reeves repeats the old Stott line about adhering to compromised denominations.  I understand his point that evangelical unity is not primarily institutional but spiritual and doctrinal, but I can't understand why institutional expression of that unity should be so quickly dismissed as a desirable goal, nor why it should be okay for evangelicals, given their beliefs, to be institutionally bound up with heretics.  But the reason that sticks out for me is that the rest of the book is so clear on gospel priorities.  I commend it to you, particularly if you've been troubled about the future of evangelicalism as a movememt.

Third, I've been reading Deeper by Dane Ortlund.  I'll be honest, I've not finished this one.  I've had time, and it's a short book, but it does demand slow reading, and so that's what I've been giving it.  The question of how we go deeper in the Christian life is perennially important, and from my perspective half-way through, this book is a good answer.  It is by pressing into Christ, continually repenting of sin and looking to him, that we grow as believers.  Our great need is not a technique, but the Lord Jesus himself.  This one would be good for anyone, even or perhaps especially if you don't particularly feel the need for it at the moment.

Take up and read!

The Air We Breathe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live Not by Lies

The latest book from Rod Dreher is a sequel of sorts to The Benedict Option, and continues the author's attempt to navigate a way forward for orthodox (small o, although Dreher is big O) Christians in contemporary Western culture.  I found The Benedict Option stimulating and helpful; I think Live Not by Lies is a significantly better book, which I'd recommend to anyone - and perhaps especially to those who weren't persuaded by the earlier volume.  This might clinch it for you, or at least clear up some of those areas where you had questions.

The book falls into two parts, with the first part diagnosing the problem and the second proposing particular ways to respond.  The whole is really a reflection on the experience of Christians and other dissidents under Communism, in the USSR and its satellite states.  Dreher points out that various survivors of that context have been sounding the alarm at the direction of Western culture in the last few years, pointing out similarities to the rise of Communism in their youth.  Of course, we know that totalitarianism could never take off here - could it?  Dreher knows that we know that; but he also knows that the people of Eastern Europe knew that before the Communists arrived.  Everyone thinks it couldn't happen here.  Until it does.

Dreher describes the current situation in the West as pre-totalitarian.  He means that the situation is ripe for the rise of totalitarianism, but we aren't there yet.  There is some comparison with Tsarist Russia; there is some interaction with Hannah Arendt.  I found the symptoms of pre-totalitarianism listed by Dreher to be terrifyingly convincing: atomisation and loneliness, the loss of faith in institutions, the desire to transgress, the mania for ideology...  Yep, that's us alright.  The soil is prepared for totalitarian takeover, because the things which cultivate normal, healthy human society - family, community, hierarchy, limits - are so badly eroded.  It's worth noting that Dreher does a good job here, partly through the use of pre-revolutionary Russia, of pointing out that it is often the conservatives in society who have failed to make the case for these things; the liberals have not been forced to argue against the institutions of society, because conservatives have so obviously used those institutions to their own advantage, preventing them from working as they should.

But really, totalitarianism?  Could that happen here?  Well, Dreher isn't expecting state totalitarianism of the USSR type - not in the West, although of course that still exists in China and other places.  Rather, what he fears is 'soft totalitarianism'; what you might call social or cultural totalitarianism.  Where certain opinions cannot be spoken; where the pressure to conform is so great.  I don't find this hard to believe.  When I worked for the University, explicit support of a political position by staff would have been frowned upon; but chatting to people still there it sounds like the pressure to wear the rainbow lanyard and signal approval of a particular position on sexuality and gender has now ramped up.  It's just social and cultural pressure; you won't be fired for not going along.  But does anyone think that makes the pressure any less real?  Chatting in the pub, I quietly express my view that perhaps biological sex might be important; though I know a number of people around the table agree, there are nervous glances and somebody says 'you can't say that'.  You can't, you see, even though legally you can.

If you still think that 'woke' just means concerned for justice, and that political correctness is just politeness, I'd encourage you to read this book.  I think you're being naive, and I think in the long run that naivety is likely to come with a cost.

Having said that, I think the chapter on surveillance capitalism is a little paranoid.  So maybe I'm naive.  And I guess just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

The second half of the book is about how to respond.  The chapters are shot through with extraordinary stories from the Eastern Bloc - stories which illustrate the resistance which Christians were able to offer to Soviet-style totalitarianism.  Many of these are stories of suffering, but Dreher's interviewees repeatedly stress that the appalling suffering was worth it, was even blessed.  Each chapter ends with an application to our own setting, or rather to the encroaching soft totalitarianism which may lie in the future.  An absolute commitment to truth, the value of the family as the primary 'resistance cell' where values can be passed on, the need to have something for which one is prepared to die...  These are things we need to think through.  As Dreher highlights, it was a conscious decision on the part of these dissidents to take a stand; they had already decided before the trial came what they would do.  We must, of course, hope for grace when the moment comes, but we should not just assume that we will be able to stand then if we are not getting ready to stand now.

For those who feared that The Benedict Option was advocating a sort of Christian isolationism, I hope this book will set you straight.  I can see how it could be taken in that direction, but that's not where Dreher is going with it.  His stories of Christian dissidents who remained so open to wider society, even as that society turned against them, or who worked with secularists to stand against the Communist regime, count against that reading.  I think that he is just taking seriously that if you want to engage the culture, in a way which has the potential to be transformative, you need to be doing so from a place that is deeply grounded, from within a community that is committed to truth, from within a deep understanding and practice of your own religion.  My guess is that it is only with those things that Christians can have the courage to be open and to engage.

I wonder somewhat hesitantly about the intersection between Dreher's concerns and the movements for liturgical renewal in the church.  I think there is overlap in strategy at least - renew the centre for the sake of the church's witness to the world.  I think that is worth thinking through further.

The title for this book comes from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  We may not be ready to take a courageous stand for truth, not yet; but at the least we can avoid living as if the lies were true.  "Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies!"  I think Dreher is a helpful guide as we wake up to this responsibility in our own context.

Seeing by the Light

 Part of my holiday reading was Seeing by the Light by Ike Miller, subtitled Illumination in Augustine's and Barth's Readings of John.  This is the first book I've read in the Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture series, published in the UK by IVP under the Apollos imprint, but the aim of the series - to promote constructive contributions to systematic theology from an evangelical perspective through faithful Scriptural engagement and engagement with the tradition of the church - definitely appeals.  This particular book fits the vision perfectly, exploring the important theme of illumination - that is to say, how it comes about that certain people are enlightened, enabled to see the truth of the gospel.

Miller tackles his subject in three sections.  The first two look at Augustine and Barth respectively, and in particular the readings of John's Gospel in Augustine's sermons and Barth's lectures of 1925-6.  In both cases, Miller takes us first to the systematic/dogmatic statements of the theologian in question, to show us their general thoughts about illumination as a topic.  He then turns to their treatment of John's Gospel to see these principles worked out in exegetical practice.  For Barth, in particular, he highlights the contemporaneity between the lectures on John and the writing of the Gottingen Dogmatics.  We can be confident that 'theory' and 'practice' were being developed together.  Both historical sections of the book were fascinating, even if I did get a little bogged down in some of the discussion of Augustine reception.  I have always found Augustine pleasantly straightforward to read; books about Augustine less so!  But Miller helps us to navigate certain critical points around the influence of Neo-Platonism on Augustine's thought as it touches on the subject of illumination, clarifying especially that for Augustine light is not a faculty of human reason, but is a divine gift.  It will come as no surprise to the regular reader here that I was particularly interested in the section on Barth.  What comes across clearly here is that, whilst Barth does not devote much space to discussions of illumination within his dogmatic works, this is largely because he subsumes the topic under the heading of revelation.  This is not incidental; for Barth revelation has not occurred unless it has gone all the way, so to speak.

The third section of the book is devoted to turning these historical exercises into a constructive theological proposal.  Here Miller draws on the resources offered by Augustine and Barth, but is not afraid to supplement and correct them.  By offering first some Biblical Theology - an attempt to draw out the doctrine of illumination presented in John's Gospel (and Epistles) - he ensures that his work is not merely a reflection on past theological constructions, but a positive contribution to theology now.  The proposal proper is offered in two chapters, dealing with the theological nature of illumination and illumination as a human experience.  The latter in particular draws heavily and positively on Barth's Church Dogmatics II/1.

You'll need to get the book to see the full proposal, but here are a few things that I'm taking away from it.  Firstly, if we're going to treat the theme of illumination in a way which conforms linguistically and conceptually to Holy Scripture, we need to avoid making illumination merely an annexe of Pneumatology.  The 'Spirit as spotlight' version of illumination is not consonant with John's Gospel as a narrative of Christ entering the world as its light.  Second, we need to see the doctrine of illumination as what Miller calls 'an economy of light'.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are working in their distinctive but united ways to shed the divine light abroad in the world and in human hearts.  Third, we need to recognise that the experience of illumination is one which simply may not be explicable in human terms, because it is grounded firmly in God himself and his action.  That is to say, illumination is something that happens to human beings; it comes from without.  Fourth, it is helpful to see illumination in terms of participation.  The Spirit enables us to participate in Christ's own knowledge of the Father.

The topic of illumination is surely of critical importance, particularly in this cultural moment.  At a time when Christianity is very definitely a minority interest, and belief can no longer be taken for granted, it becomes more important than ever that believers be able to give an account of how they come to be believers.  This matters for us, in terms of having a secure basis in our faith; and it matters for our witness to the world.  So as I got to the end of the book, I wanted another couple of chapters.  I want to think about what the Biblical doctrine of illumination means for apologetics and evangelism; and I want to think a bit more about whether what is being proposed here is necessarily a version of fideism - and what that means for those who struggle in their faith.  But maybe that is all somewhat beyond the scope of this volume, and is stuff I will need to think through for myself.  When I do so, I think Miller will have provided me with plenty of theological fuel for my ponderings.

Dominion

Everybody seems to be reading Dominion, the latest offering from popular historian Tom Holland.  Everybody has the right idea; this is an excellent book.  If you're not already familiar with Holland, he is a) not Spiderman and b) a writer of gripping narrative history.  If you want to get a feel for the collapse of the Roman Republic, a sense of what it was like to live through, you can't do much better than his Rubicon.  If you want to become acquainted with the Caesars and their world, and if you can stand to wade through the inevitable smut which goes with that acquaintance, then Dynasty is fantastic.  And In the Shadow of the Sword tackles the origins of Islam in a way which is both fascinating and - in the way it challenges orthodoxy - brave.  He has also written other things; I have not yet read them.  So many books, so little time.

Dominion is something a bit different.  It is, if you like, a narrative history of the whole of Western culture, in particular of Western Christendom.  How on earth would you write something like that - and keep it to a size which the average mortal would be willing to read?  Holland does it through snippets, visiting a particular incident and exploring its significance before jumping sometimes hundreds of years to the next episode, all grouped together into three broad eras: antiquity, Christendom, modernitas.  The impression is like a vast picture which has been sketched out, with only some details here and there painted on in full colour.  But those individual episodes are enough to give the shape of what is going on more generally on this vast canvas.  To mix metaphors, through these little tasters one gets the genuine flavour of the different moments, and anyway there would be far too much to digest if you ate everything on the table.

The overall picture, beginning in pre-Christian antiquity, is of a world turned upside down.  In a classical world in which power was everything, the news of the crucified God explodes like a bomb.  Values are decisively changed.  The weak are valued; status hierarchies are upended.  And in the ebb and flow of the centuries Holland shows how this revolutionary message lay behind so many of the cultural movements of the West: from the Christianisation of the Empire, right through to the building of new empires.  The revolution often ossifies - the Papacy under Gregory VII sets out to reform the world in the image of the Gospel, but the same institutions, now settled down and entrenched in power, in the next few centuries become the targets of reformers with the same aim.  The revolution creates tensions - it is Christianity which makes European powers feel superior and therefore entitled to enslave others, but it is Christianity which gives Europeans an uneasy conscience about this state of affairs and ultimately leads to abolition.  The revolution can be and has been misunderstood, misappropriated, misdirected.  But it has kept coming back.

Holland's main thesis is this: that we are so steeped in Christian values that we have forgotten they are not universal.  The modern humanist who asserts the worth and dignity of each individual thinks they are stating something self-evident - so did the French revolutionaries.  But in fact these claims have their roots in Christian teaching.  Even such anti-Christian movements as revolutionary Marxism make no sense apart from the revolution of the cross; why care for the poor and downtrodden at all?  The modern 'woke' scene springs from very Christian apprehensions.  The #MeToo movement only makes sense to us because of hundreds of years of sexual ethics which are rooted in the Christian message.

I find all this very persuasive.  One senses behind the narrative the influence of Charles Taylor - but to be honest, this is much more fun to read than Taylor's magnum opus.

Some quibbles - in a book of such vast scope, some detail necessarily gets left behind.  The treatment of the apostle Paul, and the tension between the law written on the heart and Torah, does not, to my mind, get to grips with the complexity of the issue - in particular, why does the apostle continually cite Torah if he is primarily (only?) interested in an internal law written by the Spirit?  I think that's important, because by the time we get to The Beatles we really do need to understand that 'all you need is love' means something very different on their lips than it does coming from, say, St Augustine - and the difference lies in the objective content which the law of love possesses for the apostolic writers and their descendants.  I'm not saying Holland doesn't see this difference - clearly he does - but that the particular contours need to be brought our more clearly.  But then, this is not a work of philosophy or theology, but history, and as such it really works.

Just a thought about what Christians should and shouldn't do with this book.  Firstly, what not to do: don't make out of the narrative a theology of glory.  'Aha!  Everything good in Western culture comes from Christianity!  Behold, the clear and straightforward link between Christian belief and goodness!'  That wouldn't do justice to the nuanced picture that Holland paints, in which Christian belief has often led to oppression and war; nor would it suit the gospel itself, which as Holland shows is about the triumph of weakness, a victory through obscurity and suffering, not through just being the best.  Then again, we also need to avoid overstating the conclusion.  Holland does argue that many contemporary movements only make sense because of our Christian past; it would be incorrect to infer that they are therefore Christian.  We cannot, in a straightforward way, claim #MeToo or Extinction Rebellion or whatever as Christian movements.

The use we should make of this work is much more limited.  It is helpful to be able to show that the values which many of us take for granted are not, in fact, universally obvious.  The world order which has been shaped by the influence of the West bears the hallmarks of the Christian past.  As Holland argues, even the universal claims of these value systems derive from the universal claims of the gospel.  Perhaps, then, those of us who are Christian apologists might be able to use this work to show that in fact the influence of Christian belief on the world has not been as negative as many of our contemporaries assume - precisely because many of the good things about Western culture which they and we take for granted actually stem from Christianity.

"All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution which has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross."

Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship

The thrust of this book, by Andrew Wilson, is pretty simple: the church should bring together in its worship the sacramental and liturgical, on the one hand, and the charismatic on the other.  Hence 'eucharismatic', the combination of eucharistic and charismatic.  But what does that mean, and what would it look like?  In six chapters (this is not a weighty tome), Wilson tries to show us, and to persuade us that this is not only a possibility but a necessity.

The first chapter is really just a brief portrait of what could be.  Imagine bringing together, not the weaknesses, but the strengths of traditional liturgical worship on the one hand and the experiential and expressive worship characteristic of the charismatic movement on the other.  "Imagine a service that includes healing testimonies and prayers of confession, psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, baptism in water and baptism in the Spirit, creeds that move the soul and rhythms that move the body.  Imagine young men seeing visions, old men dreaming dreams, sons and daughters prophesying, and all of them coming to the same Table and then going on their way rejoicing." (15)  Okay, I'm imagining it, and it sounds good (except the rhythms that move the body; I am not a person for whom rhythmic movement is ever a desirable thing).  How would we get there then?

As it turns out, via what seems like a detour, but is actually an essential part of the trip.  The second chapter lays out a theology of gift.  The basis of our worship is not anything we can bring, but is God's gift.  This chapter is beautiful in its own right.  All is grace.  And when it comes to corporate worship, this means we should receive with thankfulness everything that God has given us.  "Marginalizing a particular divine gift because it does not fit with our denominational tradition, if it is indeed a divine gift, should not be an option." (38)  Just so, although that 'if it is' seems pretty important; we'll come back to it.

The third chapter is about the only appropriate response to God's gifts: joy.  Wilson loses me a bit here.  Not in principle, of course: I am in favour of joy.  But a sentence like "In many church traditions, especially Western ones, we find it easier to lament than to rejoice" (41) does not chime with my experience at all - in fact, isn't the evangelical world filled with laments about how difficult we find it to lament?  But let that pass.  Oh, but then there is a bit of a snipe at Thine be the Glory for apparently featuring low and gloomy chords even when it's calling for us to sing with gladness.  Yep, you lost me.  Moving on.  Some good reflections on wine (46-49), I can feel myself rejoining the party.  And then the point: Christians are meant to be joyful, because of God's goodness and grace, and that joy can be expressed both eucharistically and charismatically.  I think I get this.  Wilson admits that we are all likely to find one way more natural, more in line with us (cf. my comments about rhythmic movement above), but that is a good reason why church should be both.  I get that.  Why do we put up with our current sorting hat approach to churches and denominations, with the reserved types going one way and the more emotional folk the other?  So look, I take the point of this chapter overall, but I have some questions about whether the expression of joy isn't somewhat restricted here.  I can sing joy in a minor key, even with low and gloomy chords.

The fourth chapter covers the specifically eucharistic element to being eucharismatic, and we're talking about more here than just an emphasis on sacraments.  Actually Wilson is arguing for being embedded in the Great Tradition.  After all, part of the gift we are given is the gift of being in the catholic church, the gift of our forebears in the faith and their thinking and their worship.  There is a useful table here (81-82) showing how different elements of the tradition - from the sacraments themselves to the church calendar - can benefit the church.  I'm already sold on all this, but if you're not you'll find the chapter interesting and perhaps challenging.  Much of the argument draws heavily on James Smith, and despite my reservations about some of his points I think it's all still broadly helpful.  This chapter also helpfully reflects on the fact that much of this stuff is just directly biblical; the emphasis on the sacraments and regular participation at the Table is right there in the NT.  So hurrah for being eucharistic.

Chapter five seeks to be equally persuasive on the charismatic front.  A lot of it is given over to a defence of the ongoing availability of the spiritual gifts mentioned in the NT.  I find the arguments persuasive, particularly as they are set here: in the context of a wider reflection on the spiritual experience that seems to be central to the Christian life as we see it unfold in the NT.  There is a handy discussion of angels and demons (96-100), which might not seem immediately relevant but is actually really helpful for establishing that we basically can't get around the supernatural, and the immanence and agency of the supernatural, in the Bible - and if we downplay it today, why is that?  I found this chapter really helpful in so far as it goes.  The big takeaway is that if you're not a convinced cessationist - and I'm not - then you should be actively pursuing spiritual gifts.  Okay, but...  Well, I'll come to that at the end.

Chapter six tries to draw it all together, with some useful tips on how we might lead our churches in the direction of eucharismatic worship.  It's mostly very good.  But here's where I get stuck with the whole project.  I can introduce my church to liturgy; I can plan the year around the church calendar; I can push for the great significance of the sacraments.  All these I have kept from my youth.  So look, we're covered for eucharistic.  But as far as I'm aware, there is no way of programming in the gifts of the Spirit.  I've grumbled about this before, I know.  But what to do about it?  Pray, of course.  But is that all?

So I guess I want a follow up book.  I want a book about what we do when we've been in church all our lives and we just haven't seen this stuff.  I want a book about how to be a eucharismatic church when nobody in the church seems to have the more miraculous gifts.  I did wonder also as I was reading whether there might have been some virtue in separating out things which Wilson joins up - for example, although I see how dealing with the sacraments embedded in a view of liturgy and catholicity is helpful, it might be more persuasive for some folk if we make the biblical case for a high view of sacraments without immediately drawing in elements of the Tradition which are less obviously biblical.  Similarly, unpicking general spiritual experience (not to mention exuberance and expressive worship) and the particularities of the gifts might have been helpful.  Maybe.

In the meantime, there's a lot I'll take away from this.  Joy - even if I'm not sure it has to look the way it's described here - needs to be a bigger part of our worship.  The presence of the Spirit in the here and now needs to be emphasised more.  More expectation.

It's a beautiful vision for church.  I'm sold.  If I could get there, I would.

Undivided

I have just finished reading Undivided by Vicky Beeching, her memoir of struggling with the tension between her evangelical faith and her secret attraction to women, and finally her coming out as a lesbian and the ruptures it caused between her and the church tradition she loves.  It is a powerful book, and a book that will be widely read.  It deserves to be widely read, perhaps especially by conservative evangelicals.  It ought to ring alarm bells for us on so many levels.  This is not really a review so much as a series of thoughts and reflections, relatively unprocessed (I have literally just put the book down, having read it in a few hours - it's a page-turner).  My thoughts roughly group themselves under three headings: how should we read this book?  what do we need to change as a result of reading it?  what is the implicit theology at work within this book (and therefore presumably within Vicky Beeching's life)?  Then I just have a concluding reflection.

Firstly, how to engage with this book?  I've read reviews suggesting that it is a mistake to treat it as a polemic or apologetic, a mistake to expect theology, because this is a memoir, a personal reflection.  This is, I humbly submit, to completely misunderstand this cultural moment.  Everything is now autobiography: philosophy, politics, theology.  Everything is personal.  The way in which polemic, apologetic, and yes, even theology, are now conducted with most success is precisely through the medium of self-reflection and self-presentation.  Vicky Beeching has written a powerful apologetic for a revisionist position on Christian sexual ethics.  And there is a theology contained and taught therein.  The problem is, we're not yet used to engaging critically with this sort of writing: we've been educated to think that somebody's experience is not open to debate.  Of course there is some truth in that: if this is the way it seemed to you, then this is the way it seemed to you, and I have no right or reason to question that.  But it is easy to smuggle in the assumption that if this is the way it seemed then this is the way it was.  In that way, a memoir gets behind our defences and makes us agree without ever having to argue.  So, engage critically.  And yet...  It is still a memoir.  This is a real person's life, and empathy is called for.  Critical thought, compassionate heart.  Engage both to the maximum setting.

Second, what does the church need to learn from this memoir?  Oh, so many things.  There are parts of this book that grieve me deeply.  The subculture of shame which Glynn Harrison talks about in his excellent book A Better Story is evident throughout: the church culture in which Vicky Beeching grew up was apparently one in which sex was shameful, and homosexual feelings were particularly shameful.  (See chapter 29 especially for the appalling ways in which this affects people of all sexual orientations, and page 13 for a desperately sad recollection of Beeching's own first sense of shame).  If only the gospel has been applied at this point!  If only it had been possible to be open about what was going on, without the sense of shame!  But that clearly wasn't possible.  Would it be better today, in our churches - in my church?

The book also presents a church culture in which asking hard questions was discouraged.  One of the most telling passages in the book for me came early on, when Beeching describes her childhood struggle with various stories from the Old Testament.  It seems like this was the beginning of a period of repressing the tough questions, and therefore of maintaining a distorted picture of God (because how can you not have a distorted picture of God if you repress aspects of himself which he has revealed?).  Churches need to get much better at seeing doubts and questions, not as threats to faith, but as opportunities to deepen faith through tough engagement with God's word.

There is so much other stuff.  Dealing with hypocrisy - openly and clearly - and applying discipline (56 - there is a lot to be disturbed about in Beeching's description of her time at Wycliffe Hall).  Not relying on big conferences and events, but rather on the regular ministry of word and sacrament (see chapter 5).  Getting rid of a bad theology of easy change.  Thinking carefully about mental health issues (163).  Banishing a triumphalist theology.  All of this and more.  I would like every church leader to read this book and think about our weaknesses as they are exposed in this memoir.  We can and must do better.

Third, what about that implicit theology and apologetic?  Well, this is a conversion story.  It turns on a  reading of Acts 10: Peter is taught that God has called Gentiles clean, and this is then applied to gay people. (See pages 168-172).  That doesn't work as a reading or application of the story, to be honest.  The Lord is not berating Peter for being a religious bigot who needs to liberalise here; he is announcing to Peter a new stage in salvation history.  But that doesn't matter, because Beeching felt God himself make the application to her (171).  "God had spoken" (172).  This sort of subjectivism is not uncommon, of course, in evangelical circles - maybe I should have included it as one of the things the church needs to learn to lose.  For Beeching, this is the scales-falling-from-eyes moment; from here on, she is an undivided person.

So what is the theology here?  I've already noted the way in which Beeching struggled as a child with passages in the OT that showed God's judgement (15-17).  It seems more accurate to say she didn't struggle with them: "My simple childhood faith was rooted in God's love and kindness, so I tried to focus on the stories that emphasized those qualities." (17)  Fair enough, you might think, for a child, but when this reminiscence is picked up later, after the coming out story, it's clear that they never have been processed (see page 224 - note that the sort of vitriol Beeching recounts here is indefensible in terms of the passages of Scripture cited).  The practical theology operative here involved denying aspects of the biblical witness to God in order to remake him in more amenable image.  A God totally without wrath - certainly not the God of the Bible.

Along with this, the assumption that what God really wants for us is that we should just be ourselves.  That we are all accepted just the way we are.  I suppose that follows.

A lot of the theological approach involves downplaying the idea of doctrine or of the faith as a deposit of revelation to be received.  Kallistos Ware appears as a catalyst to Beeching's developing feeling that the life of faith is not about knowing, but about pressing further into mystery (96).  This sort of mysticism allows for a sense that we're all on a journey, and that greater knowledge of God lies in the future, not in any past revelation.

That is significant for the apologetic, which has three main prongs.  The first is that the church has historically supported ethically bad things, and has only been dragged out of its moral morass by a few principled crusaders. (This is, I think, the thrust of chapters 9 through 11).  Beeching presents this as a pattern: the church always wrong, with the exception of a few progressives.  It is, of course, the standard story of liberal society (based on and derived from the liberal Christianity of the 19th century).  It won't stand up to historical scrutiny, but it doesn't need to: just the impression that those who remain orthodox on sexuality are on the wrong side of history is enough.

The second prong is to make people aware that there are scholars who read the Bible differently.  I've written about this (in a slightly sarcastic tone...) before.  If it can be shown that someone somewhere, ideally an 'expert', holds a different interpretation, that is enough to throw off the shackles of orthodoxy (see, for example, 86-7).  It is worth noting again that one need not actually decide that the alternative interpretation is the most natural one; that it exists is enough.  In the memoir, it is striking that it is not finally reading liberal approaches to the Bible's teaching on sexuality that brings the breakthrough, but a highly subjective sense of God speaking through Acts 10 whilst sitting in the Brompton Oratory.  The different interpretations just serve to prise one's fingers slightly from orthodoxy.

The third prong is the apologetic of harm.  So much of the book is devoted to showing that the church's teaching on sexuality harms people.  This is powerful, because doing no harm is basically the only value left in our society.  If something makes people unhappy, causes them hurt - then it is morally bad.  I'd want to say three things to that: firstly, that it isn't true - there are other values which also have to be considered; second, that the church clearly has harmed people (not least Vicky Beeching), and we need to both grieve for that and seek to be better; and third. that I do not believe it is orthodox teaching on sexuality which has done the harm but certain caricatures of it coupled to a shame culture.

This has become very long, so briefly a concluding thought.  The saddest thing for me throughout this memoir is that I'm not convinced Vicky Beeching has ever really understood, or at least appropriated, God's grace.  She characterises herself as a perfectionist, desperately aware of her flaws (50), and gives the impression that she's always felt anxious about letting people, and God, down.  She admits having an obsessive need to be theologically right about everything (94).  When she finally sat down in the Brompton Oratory and felt God change her perspective through her reading of Acts 10, "It was hard... to accept a new perspective.  I was offended at the idea of losing the badge of righteousness I had earned by holding to traditional Christian views."  (171)

The impression here is of someone sadly trapped in legalism.  And with that in mind, I can't read this as a story of liberation.  How I would have loved it to have been the story of how that need to establish one's own righteousness was vanquished through the acceptance of God's righteousness freely bestowed!  But there isn't that: just the realisation that she's been righteous all along, because righteousness means self-acceptance.  Maybe I'm wrong.  But that's how it reads to me.

Look, you should read it.  It's important.  I think the conclusions to which Vicky Beeching has been driven are incorrect.  I think there are better ways of reading the Bible, and better ways for all of us to face up to our sexuality in the light of the gospel.  But here is the challenge of a revisionist reading wearing a real human face, the face of someone you instinctively want to like.  Read it, because other people will.  Read it, because painful as it is, it will do you good to think and pray this stuff through properly.

Reflections on Desiring the Kingdom

Given that James K.A. Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom was released in 2009 - and given that it has since received two sequels, which I've not read - it hardly seems needed or appropriate for me to offer any sort of Jonny-come-lately review.  So this isn't that.  It's just some reflections on the book and the way it's disappointed me.  Because I really thought I'd like it, and I really didn't.

The book is subtitled Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.  I think it has two main points, with one larger analysis sitting behind them.  The first main point is that many of the cultural activities in which we are encouraged to engage day by day are in fact deeply liturgical.  Smith gives an amusing look at a shopping centre (a 'mall', if you will) through the eyes of a Martian anthropologist (19f).  The conclusion is that the shopping centre is set up as a place of worship, designed to appeal to the deep desires of our hearts.  Smith considers the advertisers, who rather than trying to sell a particular product are trying to sell a whole life style (102ff.), indeed a life.  And the point is that these 'liturgies' of commerce are formative.  They subtly cause us to adopt particular patterns of thought and behaviour when it comes to satisfying those desires - and these go unnoticed, because they don't appeal to our conscious, critical minds.  We are gradually programmed to imagine that consumption is the way to satisfy our deepest desires.

The second main point is that Christian liturgy is also in the business of cultural formation.  The Martian anthropologist goes to church (155ff.) and sees people being inculturated into a different way of seeing the world - a different social imaginary.  More on this in a moment, but just note that the really useful thing about this analysis is that by telling us that things we typically think of as cultural are actually liturgical, Smith causes us to look differently and more critically at those activities; and the same is true in reverse - we look more carefully at the Christian liturgy when we are thinking of the church as a place of cultural formation.

The larger analysis sitting behind the two main points is a whole way of looking at humanity, an alternative anthropology.  Smith contends that by adopting whole-sale the 'worldview' way of interacting with the world, we in the church have also swallowed an unbiblical anthropology, thinking of people primarily in terms of their ideas or beliefs.  Smith contends that it would be better to think of "the human person as lover" (39), as "homo liturgicus".  Desire is primary.  It is not that there is no place for worldview talk, or discussion of ideas and beliefs; it is just that so much of what we think and do, and who we are, is shaped by non-cognitive forces.  Habits, enshrined in and enforced by liturgies and rituals, are key.  Physicality matters; in fact, repeated physical actions and reactions have a profound effect on how we approach or imagine (Smith uses 'intend', borrowing helpfully from 20th century continental philosophy) the world.

So, what's not to like?  Emphasis on the embodied nature of human existence?  Good!  Critique of the formative aspects of cultural engagement which often slip under our radars?  Good!  Encouragement to think of the ways in which the church's liturgy helps to counter-form us in a different culture?  Great!

But two particular points in the analysis jarred with me.  Here is the first: Smith suggests that sacraments (which, of course, sit well with his thesis) "are particular intensifications of a general sacramental presence of God in and with his creation" (141).  This cannot be right (and I am inclined to think that his reference to "the doctrine police" worrying about it [147] is a snide way of trying to head off the criticism).  Think about what it would mean for the Incarnation - was it just a particular intensification of a general presence of God in humanity?  Absolutely not!  The Incarnation represents the contradiction of all the possibilities inherent in human nature.  The entry of Christ is a new thing.  The gospel is News with a capital N.

And here's the second: Smith asserts the "priority of liturgy to doctrine" (138).  Doctrines, he thinks, emerge from reflection on the practice of liturgy, not vice versa.  "Christians worship[ped] before they got around to abstract theologizing or formulating a Christian worldview" (139).  Note the poisonous use of 'abstract' here!  What about concrete theologizing?  Did Christians start to worship Christ, for example, and then on reflecting on the practice decide that he must be in some way divine?  Absolutely not!  Again, what is lacking here is the news, the gospel.  It is not just that Christians found themselves adopting certain liturgical practices and worked backwards to what God must be like.  They received news of what God was like and what he has done, and that news evoked their liturgical response.

So here's the thing: I think for Smith the God-stuff, the Christian-stuff, is just there, and all we need to do is inhabit it.  We just need to be formed by the liturgy into this always-present awareness of God and his works and ways.  What I want to know is: where is revelation here?  Where is the good news as news?  Christian worship will always revolve around the cognitive and not merely the affective, because it is through our brains that we receive and process news.  And isn't that a more biblical way of thinking about (trans)formation?  Don't the apostles encourage us to think that the shaping of our moral character will come through the renewal of our minds?  Don't they proclaim our new identity in Christ as something that must first be thought and then enacted?

Going all Benedict?

I've recently caught up with the rest of the Christian world by reading Rod Dreher's book The Benedict Option.  For those who have not managed it yet, it's an attempt (in an American context, and that's important) to re-think how Christians engage in society, culture, and politics.  The thesis is built on a negative, but I would say accurate, premise: that we lost.  In the US context, Dreher particularly means that Christians lost the culture war; you can expand it to the UK context by noting that we lost without fighting.  However it happened, Christians have lost most of their influence over culture and politics, and now find themselves a minority in a society in which they might formerly have felt at home.

Dreher is not painting the past as some golden age.  He knows there were challenges 'back then' as well.  But we don't have to live then, we have to live now.  What should we do?  His answer is: take the Benedict Option.  Which means what, exactly?

Well, this depends on a perhaps more controversial development of the negative premise.  For Dreher, the culture of the West is so tied up with the Christian religion that the loss of the latter necessarily means the loss of the former; hence we are entering a new Dark Age, a period of history in many ways parallel to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.  (I hear echoes of Bonhoeffer here, particularly in his Ethics.)  I say this is controversial, because I think certainly in my context there is a lot of wariness about tying Christianity and (Western) culture together in this way. But I find it persuasive, at least from a historical point of view.  Western culture means that particular form of the interaction between the Classical past and the Christian message which took root in the West - and that is what is being lost.

The parallel between the new Dark Age and the old one invites the more positive parallel which Dreher wants to develop: orthodox Christians need to follow the example of Benedict, in developing means of resisting the disintegration of faith and culture.  But what does that look like?  For Benedict it meant the monastery, but Dreher knows that isn't realistic for most of us.  So what then?

Essentially, it seems to me, what Dreher is advocating is just being the church - and he acknowledges that in one sense this is really not rocket science - but being the church more seriously and more intensively than we have become used to.  Creating real, close communities that foster the handing on of the Christian tradition.  Being prepared to opt out of society where it is impossible for us to participate without compromise.  Taking more care in the education of our children (which for him means withdrawing them from public, and most private, schools).  Being much more prepared to be weird.

This is not, by the way, isolationism.  What Dreher calls 'Benedict Option communities' - and he envisages them taking many different forms - will remain fundamentally open and engaged.  But they will do it on terms set by the gospel, and they will do it from a place grounded in a distinctively Christian culture.  Fundamentally, BO communities are seeking to maintain Western culture so that when the experiments in atheistic culture, with its cheery or depressive nihilism, come crashing down, there is something for people to come back to.

I find the vision of this book inspiring, even where the detail doesn't really transfer well into my context.  Christian communities developing ways of maintaining 'thick' Christian culture amidst a disintegrating world.  But are we ready for it?  Dreher recounts how his own Orthodox Church used to insist that anyone who wanted to take the Eucharist on the Sunday must attend Vespers on Saturday night - it's an example of shaping life around church, not just squeezing church in at the margins.  Would we be up for that?  Are we ready to live as if the gospel of Christ really were the most important thing?

Those who wait

My friend Tanya Marlow has written a book about waiting.  Waiting, which we're so bad at.  Waiting, which is just a part of life.  Waiting, which is essential to our faith.  Honestly, it's not the sort of book I normally read (it's all creative and stuff, and I usually take my theology straight up and a little more staid) - but I think you might benefit from reading it.  Yes, you.  Because you're waiting too, aren't you, for something?

The majority of the book is given over to re-tellings of the stories of four Biblical characters - Sarah, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Mary.  The stories are narrated in the first person, and each split into five short chapters.  There is some great writing here, and a sense of immediacy which really pulls you into the world of the Bible.  Importantly, on only a few occasions (e.g. the first chapter of the Mary narrative) does the imaginative detail end up carrying the main point of the chapter - always a risk with these sorts of reconstructions!  The story-telling here is genuinely inviting us to look again at the Bible, without on the whole obscuring the Biblical narrative behind its own story-telling.  

And this may not be that exciting to many readers, but I was really pleased to have an appendix in which Tanya explains some of the interpretive choices she has made, and some of the ways in which she has avoided making interpretive choices (e.g. what exactly happened to Sarah in Egypt?)  Having that working on display is both a fascinating insight into the creative process, and a great reminder that Tanya is a responsible exegete and insightful theologian as well as a story-teller.

So, waiting.  How useful it is to be reminded that waiting for God to act has been a central experience of the fathers and mothers of our faith throughout the centuries!  Through the lenses of these stories we see different aspects of what waiting means: disappointment, delay, doubt, disgrace.  No doubt different stories will resonate with different people; perhaps listening to and engaging with the stories that resonate less immediately with us will help us to understand better the struggles of others.  But Tanya is not just reflecting on how hard it is to wait.  We are also reminded through these stories that we are waiting for someone - for God - to act: and we are reminded that he does indeed act, even when we don't see it.  It is worth it.

The book is rounded off by a fifth section, which moves away from story-telling to apply some of the insights we've hopefully picked up along the way into our own personal stories.  This section is brief but astute; I could have had more of it.  Then there is a second appendix with questions for group Bible study, which highlights that this book could be used in lots of different ways.  It would work really well as an advent course for homegroups, for example.

So, no, I wouldn't normally read this sort of book, but I'm glad I read this one.  The theme is important, and Tanya is just the person to tackle it.  And despite my general preference for a weighty theological tome, I wonder on reflection whether this isn't just the way to write about waiting - because after all, the wait isn't just a doctrine, but a lived experience of groaning and hoping.

As Tanya helps us to pray:

Lord Jesus,

Who waited for centuries in the light of heaven

Nine months in the warm darkness of a womb

And three days in a tomb

Be with us in the waiting, we pray.

Living Philosophically

I recently read A Brief History of Thought by Luc Ferry, and I would recommend that anyone interested in philosophy, or indeed Western culture more broadly, take a look.  The book is subtitled A philosophical guide to living - and that is what it aims to be.  By taking us on a walk-through of the history of philosophy, Prof Ferry tries to show how philosophy ought to have an impact on our daily lives.

You can cut this book two ways - diachronic and synchronic, if you like.  Structurally, it is a history, and takes us from ancient philosophy (especially the Stoics) through Christendom to the Enlightenment, then beyond into post-modernism and then the contemporary philosophical scene.  The book is driven forward by the repeated question of why people abandoned the thought of one epoch in favour of the next.  But then within each chapter the period in question is dealt with in terms of three areas of thought: theory (what is the universe like?), ethics (what ought we to do?), and soteriology (what is it all about and how we will cope with our own role and finitude?)  It is this last question which places Ferry firmly within the Continental tradition, and which makes him interesting.  He is not content that philosophy analyse the human condition; he wants it to provide hope and meaning.  For that reason, he quite sensibly places philosophy on the same plane as religion.  They are meant to do the same thing.

As a Christian reader, I'm fascinated and frustrated by Ferry's interaction with Christian thought.  He understands aspects of the gospel very clearly, but misses other things.  I suspect that the problem comes from treating the gospel as if it were a philosophy rather than a history.  What he does understand is that in contrast to philosophy Christianity is about humility: the humility of God who becomes incarnate, and the humility of the believer who finds truth, ethics, and salvation in accepting the word of another rather than thinking himself out of the problem.  In the end, Ferry thinks Christianity is too good to be true, offering as it does real life after death; for him, there is no such salvation, and philosophy should occupy itself with questions of how to face the inevitability and finality of death.

In other words, philosophy seeks to find salvation from the fear of death; Christianity offers salvation from death itself.  Ferry would of course prefer the latter - but the former is all he thinks we can realistically expect, and in the end the prescription to overcome the fear of death is disappointing: just a radical emphasis on the present, with the prospect of death spurring us on to do now what we will not be able to do later.

By emphasising the element of philosophy which contemporary thought (at least in the Anglo-Saxon world) most neglects - soteriology and the question of human meaning - Ferry inadvertently highlights that philosophy is unable to answer the ultimate questions.  By taking us through the history of philosophy, he shows that fashions of thought have changed over time - philosophy is a ship at sea, blown this way and that by various winds of doctrine.  The story is fascinating, but the conclusion is strangely hollow.

Kingdom Through Covenant

I recently finished reading this book by Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum.  In essence, the book is an attempt to show a 'third way' between dispensationalism on the one hand and a Reformed covenantalism on the other.  If that immediately confuses you, think of it like this: this is a debate about how much continuity and discontinuity there is along the Biblical storyline.

For dispensationalists (although there are various flavours and varieties), there is a great deal of discontinuity.  The way God deals with human beings changes over the course of salvation history.  The discontinuity is greatest when we reach the 'new covenant' in Christ, when in the classical dispensationalist scheme the church is understood as a sort of parenthesis in God's plan, which is really still focussed on the Jewish people.  For dispensationalism, the covenant with Israel and the covenant with the church are totally different things.

In the classical Reformed scheme, on the other hand, there is one covenant, and it is common to talk about the 'unity of the covenant of grace'.  (Actually, on some versions of Reformed thinking there may be a couple of other covenants, notably the 'covenant of works' broken by Adam - but these are not hugely relevant here).  This is why many Reformed folk are keen on infant baptism, and not keen on Christian Zionism - the covenant is the same, so if infants were circumcised they are also to be baptised, and the people of God is also the same, so non-Christian Jews cannot still be related to God via a different covenant with different terms (although the covenant of grace may still have implications for them).

Gentry and Wellum's middle way has a lot to commend it.  The book itself I found quite hard going, but I think that is just because there was a lot of very, very detailed exegesis.  I struggle with that level of detail!  Actually, the book itself promised to be a mix of Biblical and systematic theology, but in fact it was almost entirely the former with a slight consideration of some of the headline implications for the latter.  But that is by the by,

The system itself is clear: the Biblical storyline is driven by the covenants, which really are different (contra the Reformed), but which all point in the same direction (contra dispensationalism) and all find their climax in the death and resurrection of Christ.  This is, I guess, a 'Reformed Baptist' hermeneutic, so it's no surprise I found it fairly convincing.  One of the most useful points I took from the book as a whole is the nature of all the covenants as both conditional and unconditional.  Whereas there has been a tendency to divide the covenants into those which are unconditional - God will uphold them no matter what - and those which are conditional - they depend on human obedience for fulfillment - Gentry and Wellum helpfully show that a large part of the narrative of Scripture is driven by the fact that all the covenants require human obedience, and yet underneath that requirement is God's sovereign determination to establish his covenant. It is the tension which this introduces, given the constant failure of the human partner, which drives the narrative forward, and is only resolved in the perfect human partner, Christ.  This also helpfully highlights the need for a clear doctrine of Christ's active obedience.

On the whole I found the book more convincing when tackling dispensationalism, but that could just be my bias.  I'd like to see more attention given to the implications of this Biblical Theology to Dogmatics/Systematic Theology.  Maybe that would be another book; this one is long enough!  But if you're up for a thorough examination of the issues, you could do much worse than this.

Lifted

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.

Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide

So, my friend Ben wrote a book. As a result of writing this book, and of the other work he does, my friend Ben was denounced as an antisemite and a holocaust denier. To reassure you, he is certainly neither of those things. But he has written a controversial book.

I finished reading this a couple of days ago, but I need to put some thinking time in before I reviewed it. I can see why people are angry about it. I can see why it has attracted a lot of negative press. But I think you should read it. I really do.

Ben takes us through three broad sections. The first relates the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It tells the story of the rise of Israel, and the subsequent displacement of the Palestinian people. It is a powerful story, powerfully told, using quotations from early Israeli leaders and interviews with Palestinians affected. What comes across most clearly is the awareness that the Zionist project would require the eviction of the Palestinian people if it was to succeed - and great lengths were gone to in order to ensure that it did succeed. At the end of the section, I was angry. Very angry.

The second section has to do with the current apparatus of Israeli apartheid. Ben talks us through the situation on the ground for Arabs within Israel and those in the OPT, again drawing on a wide range of sources. It is painful reading. When I got to the end of this section, I felt more or less despair. How could anything change such a system?

And so the third section, which outlined action that I could take, was great. Ben refuses to allow us to walk away because the situation is too complex, or the solutions too distant. We must do something; I must do something. Ask me in a few months what I've done - I know that I am too prone to laziness, and am likely to let this challenge pass me by.

After the final section is an excellent FAQ, which helped to answer some questions I had about the topic, and should probably be made available online if at all possible. It would by itself lend a lot of clarity to discussions of the issue.

Ben has been criticised for writing a one-sided story. It does come across as one-sided. But then, it seems pretty clear that the reality of the situation is also one-sided. The book does acknowledge Palestinian violence, and perhaps is not as clear in denouncing it as some would like. But the picture here is of an occupied people fighting against their occupiers - is that really so clear cut, so obviously morally wrong? I suspect that only those who have never experienced the situation could say so.

Ben has also been criticised for quoting innacurately. I don't know whether that's true or not; Ben has defended himself here. But it doesn't ultimately matter all that much.

Because the reason people are so angry at this book is because it makes the one critique of Israeli policy that is worth making, and that goes to the heart of the issue. Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. In other words, it defines itself in ethno-religious terms. Only Jews can be Israeli nationals; all Jews are welcome in Israel. Imagine if someone suggested that Britain should define itself in terms of a particular ethnic identity! Oh, wait, that would be the BNP - and we don't like them, right?

Ultimately, Ben argues that Israel/Palestine must be a place where Jews and Palestinians are equal under the law, and a state which exists for the good of all its citizens. This is much more radical than the two-state solution, much more difficult to move towards than even that mirage. But anything else enshrines racism as a successful nation building strategy.

The world really doesn't want to go there.

Words of Life

Just finished reading Timothy Ward's new book Words of Life. This isn't really a review, but just a couple of things I noticed about it.

Firstly, this book very helpfully begins by looking at the way God's speech works in the Bible itself. This seems to me an essential first step in constructing a doctrine of Scripture. Rather than jumping straight to the Bible, and straight to the question of how the Bible works, we begin by asking bigger questions about language, the relation of God's speech to human speech and the like. Ward's chapter on the subject briefly surveys Biblical records of God's speech, noting primarily that God's speech accomplishes things, God's speech represents in some sense his personal presence, and very specifically that God's speech is covenant-making speech. This is all excellent - I would have liked more detail, but this is a relatively short book. The only issue I had with this whole chapter is the tendency to be reductionist in seeing "God's speech" and "revelation" and "God's presence" as interchangable. This is in spite of Ward's acknowledgement that God's revelation is not always or only verbal. Despite this, the treatment of the ark of the covenant - namely, that it is holy because of the word deposited in it - seems to me an example of this sort of reductionism. It's a minor point, but it highlights a larger one. Although in this book we are taking a step back from the Bible and considering God's speech more broadly, I wonder whether we've stepped far enough back? Might not one more step allow us to place God's speech in the context of God's revelation more generally?

Secondly, I note in passing that Ward treats Barth much more fairly than most evangelicals, tackling his refusal to subscribe to the traditional doctrine of inerrancy on the basis of Barth's own stated theological concerns for the centrality of Christ, rather than blaming him for being tied up by and in awe of critical scholarship. I still don't think Barth's argument is open to the critique offered here, but this is not the place to go into detail on that one.

Thirdly, I find the conclusion interesting. Ward sums up part of his argument thus: "Scripture, by which we mean the speech acts performed by means of the words of Scripture, is the primary means by which God presents himself to us..." (p179). At several other points Ward touches on speech act theory. I am convinced of the usefulness of this tool in building a doctrine of Scripture, but I have trouble understanding what the sentence I've quoted means. It is entirely possible that I am just dense, or possibly it is because elsewhere Ward characterises this presence of God in Scripture as "mysterious in some ways and hard to spell out conceptually" (p65). Either way, I'm not sure I get it.

Fourthly, Ward has a discussion of Scripture and tradition which is very interesting. I actually think that he fails to "set Scripture free" to a sufficient extent. He writes off the radical reformation as making revelation subjective and Biblical interpretation subject to personal whims. Tradition, meaning the subordinate rule of faith derived from Scripture, helpfully guards against this. In all honesty, I think this entrusts too much to tradition. Once again, I find myself to be an anabaptist! It is only in Scripture that we are confronted by the prophets and apostles, and through them by Christ - and every tradition is open to critique. We need to trust the Holy Spirit a little more, I think.

Fifthly, Ward affirms inerrancy, but relegates it to a secondary implication of the main thrust of the doctrine of Scripture, which is inspiration. I agree.

If I were writing a review, I would say that this book offers an excellent overview of the doctrine of Scripture from a conservative evangelical perspective. I would say that I found it a useful read, and that I would be happy to recommend it. Nevertheless, I think a more thorough rethinking - from the ground up, the ground being the content of Scripture itself - of the doctrine of Scripture is needed.