Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus

“Outside the Church you cannot be saved” was a view first propounded by Tertullian; it was the start of the ironing out of diversity since “church” was coming to mean “orthodoxy”, consigning the heterodox to the anathemas that later were to conclude the Creed of Nicaea in 325 C.E. The creed that has been used liturgically since around the ninth century is not that of Nicaea, but of Constantinople, promulgated around 381 C.E. (I think that it is technically Constantinople II). The 325 Creed has an alarming addendum of curses on the heterodox which usually only church historians read.

Salvation only in the (R.C.) Church still Dogma

In time, not all that much of it, the Church (in the West, that is) came to mean the vast religious-political organism centered on the Roman papacy, and the dire consequences of being ‘outside the church’ can be seen in the threats of excommunication of whole nations. It is not a phrase that is heard all that much in Roman Catholic circles today, having been taken over in an even more virulent form by conservative evangelicals. This should not lead us to assume that it is no longer relevant to the R.C. position; it is, though several great R.C. theologians (e.g. Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx) of the 20th century have tried to soften its implications. However, just as the invalidation of all Anglican ordinations by Pope Leo XIII still stands, so does the extra ecclesiam nulla salus doctrine. (Why we get so fussed over the authority of Canterbury and the antics of Peter Akinola seems strange since in the eyes of the “only true church”, we are neither real Bishops nor real Priests!).

Posting recent Sermon

The essays I put on this Blog are almost entirely of a theological/historical kind, though some sermons clearly relate to contemporary society and current affairs. A week ago on the fifth Sunday in the season of Easter (it is a season, not just a single day) the fourteenth chapter of the Fourth gospel was the reading set for the day; the reading contains a tendentious verse (6) - “no one comes to the Father except through me”. I debated whether to take on this controversial text and decided it was worth it. More than that I approached the whole issue as a matter of “context”, looking briefly at the equally controversial Leviticus verses (18.22; 20.13).
I was interested, therefore to note that a question about this very verse was given to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in one of his several controversial TV appearances recently; I am not sure that his reply, quoting John 10.16, really answers the question. After all, the “other sheep” are to become “one flock”, and it is still Jesus as the shepherd who alone is to lead them to God.

My Easter (Sunday V) sermon tried to give a very different answer and so I decided to post it, but with caveats. This is not the 16th century, and 25 minutes, perhaps even no more than twenty, for a sermon in Episcopal circles is the maximum that is regarded as “proper”; mine often go longer because the written text is a sort of template to which I add footnotes and excursuses as I preach (not read) the sermon. Even so the time constraint means that issues tend to be over-simplified and qualifications are not made.

Contrast Christian Right with Wright

In closing this introduction, I have been interested to note that in the dozens of journalistic “analyses”, magisterial statements and often inaccurate (or ignorant) theological musings, not a single one has touched on what seemed to me to be of significance about Pastor Wright’s position. It is that he is light years from a conservative evangelical position, and this came out most clearly in his address to the NAACP. How you think, he said, of God, theology, will determine how you think of humanity, anthropology, and that in turn will influence how you think of society, sociology.

It is not possible from the limited things he said to determine precisely what his position is on the ways the Bible can be read, or how important he thinks is the massive biblical scholarship of the last two centuries. I do not know whether he would accept the distinction between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith”; antiquated as this distinction is now held to be by post moderns, I think it is still a useful one. I do not know, either, how he would react to the litmus test I used to use with theological students who were sent to me for tutoring after doing poorly in final exams: how do you understand the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth Gospel?
One thing, however, is pellucidly clear; he does not adhere to some of the central dogmas of Conservative Evangelicalism: he advocates inclusiveness against exclusiveness; he implicitly refuses to endorse the current evangelical strategy of using homosexuality as a means to power in various branches of the church, particularly the Church of England; and he rejects the extra ecclesiam doctrine. All these positions and many more are dear to the Christian right as is the interpenetration of the political sphere by the religious, which, it seemed to me Pastor Wright explicitly rejected.

Sermon Preached at St. George’s Chapel
Indian River Hundred
In the Parish of All Saints and St. George’s Rehoboth, Delaware

[The passages set for the day to which I referred explicitly are Acts 7.55-60 and John14.114. In referring to the Acts passage, in one of the many interpolations into my written text, I quizzed the congregation about who had done their homework, who had read Acts 7.1-54 since it was not possible to make much sense out of the final five verses without the context? No one had, and most laughed at themselves.]

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Introduction

A great deal of rather unpleasant public discourse has been going on for months now in the name of informing us about the relative merits of aspiring presidential candidates. As I have listened to the so-called debates and to the snippets of speeches that news editors suppose to be as much as a dim-witted electorate can deal with, I have been struck again and again by the absence of context. Yet most of the volleys of invective from all sides can easily be seen to be mere politicking and point scoring as soon as the offending sentence is put in context.

I was thinking about this at the same time as I was pondering the readings for today, and it struck me that it is not only in politics that context is important. Indeed, the more I thought about it, it seemed that in almost any sphere of discourse, context is essential for true understanding. A classic example of not knowing the context is, of course, a common dramatic technique: a half-heard conversation can lead to tragic or comic consequences; a misdirected letter can cause chaos.
And, by now, I suspect that you are beginning to think where is this ramble leading us? I said at the beginning that it was while I was pondering today’s readings that this detour to context began, and it is the context of the biblical story that I want to look at.

Context, context, context

Firstly, there is the context of the whole collection of books; a context composed of a myriad of factors: geographical, political, economic, cultural to mention but a few.
Then, there is the context of a particular book within its particular collection: was it an early or a late production in the collection as a whole? Was it the product of a particular sect or party with a specific agenda? Again, the list could go on.
Thirdly, is the context of an individual verse in the book as a whole.
Finally, and in many ways by far the most important consideration when it comes to applying the biblical text to contemporary issues, is to consider the book in the context in which we, in the 21st century read it.
There is, of course, one central contextual fact that everyone knows, but which is often ignored or misunderstood: it is the division which, from the second century, has named the Hebrew writings as the Old Testament, and the writings of the sect that sprang from Judaism as the New. One of the striking ways in which this major division is ignored is the practice of conservative commentators to use quotations from the O.T. in such a way as to suggest that every single passage of that collection of books has exactly the same status as the recorded words of Jesus. As a result, such commentators insist that every verse of the O.T. is still definitive for 21st century Christians.

Collecting ‘Proof’ Texts as Missiles

One glaring example is the way in which verses from the Book of Leviticus (e.g. 18.22; 20.13) have been bandied about in the discussion of the status of Christians who do not have the same sexual orientation as the majority of the population. If the context is carefully considered, it is clear that Leviticus takes for granted that polygamy is the norm, and many of the injunctions which today are read as a code of sexual morality are in fact to do with the rights of a husband over multiple wives. So presumably if you want to use these verses, torn out of context, to exclude homosexuals, you should logically allow polygamy.
Another example of failing to differentiate the two collections of holy writings is the way in which disasters are taken by some to be God’s punishment for sins: quite reasonable in an Old Testament context, but totally unacceptable in the context of the New Testament.

Contrasting Context of New Testament

When we turn to the N.T., we are in another context. It would be impossible to make much sense of the N.T. without knowing that one important element in its context is Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures. However, when we look at the collection of books that make up the N.T., it is clear that the central context is the world of the Roman Empire with its pervasive Graeco-Roman culture: all the books and letters were written in Greek, and although a background of Judaism is evident, the majority seem to be addressed to converts who were outside the faith of Israel. All these factors are crucial in reading the Fourth Gospel, and I want to focus now on today’s reading.

Reading the Bible

Before I do that, however, I think it is important to emphasize that it is quite possible and entirely laudable to read the Bible directly and simply for spiritual sustenance. Today’s first lesson, for example has a great deal of contextual material that would have be considered if one were going to use it to make historical or doctrinal statements. But it can be read with immense benefit as an inspiring guide to the indomitable faith of one of the early followers of Jesus, and applied in many ways to our own situation; we could meditate on the presence of Jesus in the word, or on the way in which Stephen echoes his Lord in forgiving his enemies. The fact that this is the only place in the N.T. where someone other than Jesus himself uses the title Son of Man, requires contextual knowledge and suggests that such might add to the fruitfulness of our mediation and repay the study required.

Only through Jesus

Finally, I think the contextual approach can help us to read today’s gospel, particularly Jesus’ answer to Thomas, “No one comes to the Father except through me”. This and one or two similar verses lie behind the prevalent conservative conclusion that if you don’t believe in Jesus you are damned. John Hick notes a statement of the Congress of World Missions in (as late as) 1960, which said that since WW II, “more than a billion souls have passed into eternity and more than half of these went to the torment of hell fire” because they had never heard of Jesus. (Metaphor of God Incarnate 2nd Ed. P 86). This, though not so crudely stated is also the position of the R.C. church, and was articulated in the third century by Tertullian in a phrase that became a central dogma– “Outside the church, that is no salvation” – Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. It was of course taken for granted that Church meant the one centered on Rome ruled by the Pope.

It is true that there are a few N.T. verses that suggest such a view, but again the context is crucial. Some of the passages merely reflect the thinking of Judaism – what was true for God’s chosen people must be true for the new Israel. The case of today’s passage is more complex; in a contextual approach we need to see the verse in relation to the book as a whole, and, more importantly, we need to take into account our context reading a very late first century book in the 21st century.

The Synoptic Gospels & the Fourth Gospel

We need to recall that the fourth Gospel is very different from the first three. It is dealing with philosophical issues of the Hellenistic world that Jesus was not concerned with. Thus, John’s opening, “In the beginning was the Word” refers to Greek ideas of the centrality of order and reason in the universe – that is why it is called a universe and not a multiverse. For John, to be ‘in tune’ with the principle of creation is to come to know God and Jesus is the embodiment of this rational principle.
A series of sermons would be needed to deal with the 4th Gospel in today’s context, but the central factor is the vastly increased knowledge of the world, including an understanding that other faiths also offer ways to salvation. The author, we are fairly sure, knew nothing of Buddhism and did not fore-see the rise of Islam, and so it is hardly legitimate to apply the verse directly into our 21st century context.
I close with a quotation from John Hick (op. cit. P 149)

There may indeed well be a variety of ways in which Christian thought can develop in response to our acute late-twentieth-century awareness of the other world faiths, as there were of responding to the nineteenth-century awareness of the evolution of the forms of life and the historical character of the holy scriptures. And likewise there will no doubt be a variety of ways in which each of the other great traditions can rethink its inherited assumption of its own superiority. But it is not for us as Christians to tell people of other traditions how to do their own business. Rather, we should attend to our own.

An Eastertide Sermon

“Early on the first day of the week”, writes St. John at the beginning of his Easter narrative (20.1), slightly modifying Mark’s very early on the first day: in either case, it was probably too early for most of us! The first day of the week and hardly light yet; the sound from the bed is something between a groan and a moan as a jolting jingle of electronic musac pierces his ears. “Oh no, not already”; slap the snooze button. But in another ten minutes, reality has to be faced; it’s back to work; it’s get the children up and off, get off to work. The alarm announces that one is back in the same old routine after a brief weekend’s rest.

We all know the scene only too well. But there is something wrong here. Clearly John is not talking about Monday morning coming round once again. Not only is he not talking about Monday, he is absolutely not introducing a story of the on-going grind, one darn thing after another.
What might we suppose someone steeped in the Hebrew scriptures and used to Rabbinic methods of exegesis would think if you asked, what is important about the first day of the week? I suspect there would be a very good chance that he/she would reply, “In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth…..God said, ‘Let there be light, and God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness….and there was evening and there was morning, the first day”. (Gen. 1.1-2).

The first day, and, of course, the Genesis narrative of creation ends with the seventh day. The author tells us on that day God ‘rested’; the Hebrew word for rest is shabath, and so what we call Saturday became the day of rest for all of Judaism, as it is to this day. In later Judaism, the Sabbath became a litmus test for strict adherence to the law; it was this inflexibility that Jesus is recorded challenging on several occasions: picking ears of corn, and healing a severely arthritic woman on the Sabbath among several other references.

John's Resurrection Narrative, Chapter 20


So it is early, perhaps very early on Sunday morning, an ordinary work-day for both the Jewish and the Hellenistic population of Jerusalem. Presumably it would have been that also for Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, and the rest of those who had come to Jerusalem with Jesus, that is, if their state of grief and loss they could have faced the world. But it turned out to be anything but the ‘same old thing’. Mary had gone to the grave alone and the way John records the event is rather strange. Mary sees the massive entrance stone rolled back from the hollow in which it would sit to give security to the closed tomb; possibly she jumped to the conclusion that a tomb robbery had taken place. Possibly, this is the author’s familiar elliptical way of writing which takes for granted that the readers know well the older accounts and is asking them to meditate on them anew. Perhaps it points to the special status of Mary Magdalene as spiritually perceptive.
The Fourth Gospel’s dramatic narrative (20.1-18) is fuller than anything in the earlier resurrection stories and, as always in John, is pointing us to theological reflection. Perhaps the most prominent details are in the section where the author describes Peter’s seeing the precise positioning of the grave wrappings.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that John is here making a conscious contrast with the story of the raising of Lazarus: that action of Jesus’ led to a meeting of the Council, of which John says, “From that moment they planned to put him to death”. (Jn. 11.53). Lazarus was raised, but hobbled out of the tomb and had to be released by the command of Jesus, “’Unbind him, and let him go’”. (v. 44). John’s account declares that Mary was wrong to suppose that Jesus had been taken away, but the scene presented to them raised puzzling questions. John indicates this very clearly in the next verse. In spite of the fact that he has just written that Peter “saw and believed”, he goes on, “as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead”. (20. 8 & 9).

Shaking the Roman Empire

It is at this point that we come to very center, the very nucleus of all the gospel accounts, disparate, and even contradictory as they may be. Moreover, we come, as it were, to the fuse that ignited the explosion that was to shake the Roman Empire. We come the burning centre not only of the written gospel manuscripts, but of the Apostolic preaching of the Good News, the Gospel, that God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself (II Cor. 5.18). That center is not, as John is determined to make clear, an empty tomb; they had yet to recall Jesus’ words and study the Hebrew scriptures. It is difficult to find a specific verse in the O.T. that is ‘fulfilled’ here. In any case, that is not John’s main method in referring back to the scriptures. What he expects is that we take a broad sweep, and if we do that, we note over and again how the O.T. stories speak of life from death. Sarah’s child, born to “one as good as dead” says the writer; the very survival of the sons of Jacob/Israel as a result of Joseph’s position in Egypt; the almost unbelievable restoration of the remnant of Israel after the captivity in Babylon, so eloquently given us in the poetry of Deutero Isaiah. The list goes on and on.

Centrality of Faith

The center then is not a empty tomb: it is the living faith of the first disciples that God, has overcome death, giving a whole new kind of life to Jesus which he, in turn, will share with those who come to believe. And so we return to “early on the first day of the week”. This sounds so like any time table, but it was not that at all; it was one of the shock waves that spread from the explosion of faith. That we meet for Eucharist each First day of the week, that is on Sunday and not Saturday as many of our roots might decree, is our weekly reminder of God’s action in raising Jesus from the dead. No amount of historical investigation, no philosophical ingenuities about the nature of the natural order and the possibilities of miracle can give us certainty. The only certainty we have is that we are part of the holy body which has staked its life on faith in God: faith that God in Christ acts to save us, faith that death and evil do not have the final word in this universe. And the only certainty we can have is to share this faith.
John, surely, meditating on the Book of Genesis, had in mind that God on the first day of creation created light, and divided light and darkness: he had in mind that early on this first day of the week was the beginning of a New Creation where the light “shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it”.

The Biblical Understanding of Creation

This paper was given as the third talk in the Lent Course at All Saints Episcopal Church Rehoboth, Delaware, on February 28, 2008.

The title of the course was Creation: Perspectives in Science and Theology

Old Testament references to Creation

It has been said that there are, in the end, only two questions that should occupy Philosophers: What is the nature of the universe in which we find ourselves, and,
How should we live in that world?
The Hebrews were not, until very late in their history, much given to philosophical musings; nevertheless in many places in the collected writings we call the Old Testament they give a profound theological answer to these two basic questions. It is often assumed, even by some who should know better, that it is only in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis that we find how the early Hebrews thought about creation. The point is well illustrated by a quick search of the Web under Biblical creation. Almost all the articles deal only with Genesis 1 & 2, with a depressing majority focused on what they call the “conflict between science and religion”.
The first point to be made is that ch. 1 of Genesis is not at all an early piece of the Hebrew Scriptures; indeed it is quite late and might well be thought of as a preface to an already completed corpus of writings. The second point is that there are multiple passages in the Psalms and the Prophetic writings that give us important insights to the subject. Typical of the ideas found in the Psalms is Ps. 33. The psalm is not at all a treatise on the creation; its central emphasis is on the Lordship of Yahweh, and almost incidentally the Psalmist writes:
By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made…
He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle…
He spoke and it came to be.

This is not a unique reference: we find important passages in Ps. 8, 104, 102, 136 and 148, the first 12 verses of which are paean of praise for Yahweh’s continuing creative direction of nature.
There are, too, countless references to the creative activity of God in the prophetic writings, but the most significant are found in the that part of Isaiah written by an anonymous prophet known as The Second Isaiah (Deutero Isaiah), who was active well over a century after Isaiah of Jerusalem. This collection of poems comes from the final years of the exile of Israel in Babylon (which began c. 586 BCE), and is vibrant with the hope that Yahweh will reestablish the nation. Several themes are tightly intertwined: the certainty of rescue; the insistence that there is no God besides Yahweh (clearly stated here for the first time in Hebrew writings); the assumption that God created the physical world, but also the moral order, and an amazingly inclusive attitude to the nations of the world who do not at present accept the One God:
Thus says God, Yahweh, who created the heaves and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it…I am Yahweh, I have called you in righteousness…I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light of the nations. (Isa 42.5-9).

Middle Eastern Creation Myths

Not long after the critical study of the Bible began towards the end of the 18th century, early archeologists were also discovering ancient texts from Sumeria, Babylon and Canaan, and it became clear that the accounts of creation in the O.T. had some striking affinities to the Myths recorded in these texts. One of the central stories of the texts tells how the gods fought for supremacy; Marduk overcame Tiamat, the chaos monster, and cut her in half making the earth from the lower part of the body and the heavens from the upper: that is the earth contained the womb from which life continued to emerge, and the heavens the breasts that dropped sustenance for the human race. This battle is a recurring theme in the middle-eastern myths appearing, in stories where the chaos monster is overcome and stability and order in nature are established.
Traces of these stories are embedded in the O.T. references to creation. For example, the placing of the dome of (Gen. 1.6) is an attenuated form of the Tiamat myth. Even more striking is the unexpectedly large number of references to a primeval chaos monster, slain by Yahweh. It is important to note that the Hebrew writers completely eliminated the idea of multiple gods fighting for supremacy; everything is achieved now by the One God, Lord of all creation and of all Nations. Sea monsters called Rahab and Leviathan are said to be slain by Yahweh. (Job 9.13; Pss. 74.13-14. 89.10; Isa 27.1; 51.9).

You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves arise you still them
You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.
…the world and all that is in it – you have established them (Ps.89. 9ff).

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh!
…Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep[?] (Isa. 51.9-10)

Adaptation of Creation Myths in the Old Testament

In these passages, it is clear that the creation of the world we inhabit is the sole work of Israel’s God, whose creative activity consists in the overcoming of darkness and chaos and the establishing of light and stability. In the light of this background much in the mythic stories of Genesis chapters 1-11 is made clear. But before looking at some of the particular passages that resonate with the older myths, it would be help briefly to say something about the two accounts of creation with which the O.T. opens.
At the end of the 18th century, scholars began to look at texts critically, a move suggested by a whole new approach to history writing. It soon became clear that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Pentateuch) were not a unity, written by one author in a set period of time. At first two major components were identified, one which referred to God as El, the other as Yahweh; chronologically, these two were relatively close and were fairly early in the emerging writings. It also became apparent that there was another, very much later and very important strand to the finished books. Indeed, these later authors (known as the Priestly writers) were in a sense the final editors and left a significant mark on the O.T. as a whole. This is the source of the first creation account in Genesis (ch.1 – 2.3).

The Genesis Accounts – No Word for Soul in Hebrew

To return to the accounts themselves, we look first at the older one in ch. 2. Clearly the author is not at all interested in what we would call cosmology; all that is said is, “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens…there was no one to till the ground”. (2.4-5). The account is almost completely focused on God’s creation of human life, and what we read here established what might be called the definitive anthropology of Hebrew thinking. It is really a very simple point. But one for extremely complex historical and doctrinal reasons, that is hardly recognized in contemporary religious thinking:
Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being (Heb. nephesh). (Gen. 2.7)

The word for ‘formed (yasar) is regularly used of a potter at work, and is a strong contrast to the word used in the first (P) account; it suggests a clay sculpture of a human male, an inanimate object: the crucial event is God’s putting breath into this model. In the first account, God’s Spirit is said to sweep over the formless void with power; the Heb. word is ruach, basically wind or breath, like the Greek pneuma which very frequently translates it, but it comes to mean the power of God active in the world and so we are told the result of this in-breathing is that Adam, man, “became a living being” - a nephesh. This is almost always, confusingly, translated ‘soul’, but it is important to note that the first human according to this account did not have a soul, he was a body/spirit unity; we might say a ‘psychosomatic’ being. The Hebrew meaning is retained in older English, as, for example in, “twenty souls perished in the ship-wreck”. The Greek, Platonic idea of a ‘soul’ encased in a body of flesh is quite alien to Hebrew thought , and this absence of dualism is definitive in the Hebrew understanding of creation. In Greek thought, the matter, and therefore the human body, was counted as inferior or even bad; the soul was a divine spark, pure and immortal: for the Hebrew matter is good, “God saw everything he had made…and it was very good”. (Gen.1.31)

The Priestly Account

When we turn to the much later and more sophisticated account, we do find something like a cosmology. God no longer is envisaged in anthropomorphic terms, a potter making a clay statue; rather God is the great Transcendent One, who creates as it were at a distance; the very verb for create, bara, is most often used of divine activity and looses its original mean of “to shape or fashion” something. The spirit/ruach of God is the agent of creation and it rushes over a formless deep. Many O.T. scholars believe that here we have an echo of the Babylonian myth since the Heb. word for deep (tehom) is etymologically connected with the chaos monster Tiamat (whom we recently encountered, so to speak). This account emphasizes that God’s creative activity is the bringing of light where there was darkness and order where there was chaos. It is important to note the very first act of creation in this Priestly account: “God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light”. It is important because it signals to us that this account is deeply theological, and not a scientific treatise. Light is the power of God made visible, in which all else is seen. Only later, on the fourth day does God create the “two great lights”, one to rule (that is, to mark it out), the other the night.
Both the second and third days have faint echoes of the Babylonian myth, though, of course, highly sanitized. The dome (Gen 1.6-8) is a standard element in the older Semitic myths, and the containing of the waters is, perhaps, the master key to grasping the biblical understanding of creation. For the Hebrew religious thinkers, water is a two-sided image. Over and again, the writers emphasize the importance of water for life as in, for example, Ps.147.8: “He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills”. It is, however, the other aspect of water that predominates in the O.T.: water out of control is deadly; it destroys as in the Flood and as in the Exodus story where it overwhelms Israel’s pursing enemies. Several Psalms refer to the raging of the sea, which can quickly destroy a ship, and a fairly late Psalm uses the metaphor of overflowing waters to express despair:
Save me, O God for the waters have come up to my neck…
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. (Ps. 69.1-2).

Creation Ex Nihilo?

This takes us back to the opening verses of Genesis. What precisely is God understood to have done at the moment of creation? Much later Christian dogma, heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, insisted that God created “out of nothing”, ex nihilo is the Lain phrase. In this classical view God not only ordered the universe but provided all the matter. This is clearly not the Hebrew view (and we may be virtually certain was not the view of Jesus either, and that makes one wonder about the common conservative Evangelical question, “What would Jesus do/think?”). In this first account, and by implication in many other references, God operates on an already existing “formless void”, paradoxically a kind of totality of nothingness shrouded in an absolute darkness where the chaotic formlessness is unintelligible. S.H. Hooke writes in a commentary on Genesis, “Chaos, tempest and darkness are all symbols of what is opposed to the divine purpose and must be overcome”. (Peake’s Commentary p.179a).
The essential core of the Hebrew understanding of creation is expressed in Ps. 93.3-4:

The floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift p their roaring.
Mightier than the thunder of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea,
Yahweh on high is mighty.

Transition to the New Testament

I need to spend the last part of this paper with a brief look at what is made of all this in the N.T. An important bridge between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian writings is the fact that in many places in the O.T. God’s creative activity is intertwined with the divine act of rescue or salvation. In this conjunction the sea plays a central role: as God separated and bound the waters at creation, so He separated them at the Red Sea in the central act of salvation that colors the whole of O.T. theology. I have already quoted the passage from Deutero Isaiah that begins, “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh!”, and I purposely did not finish it:

Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces and pierced the dragon?
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep,
And made the depths of the sea a path for the ransomed to cross? (Isa. 519-10)

This is just one of dozens of passages in which God’s creating and redeeming activity are equated. And there is yet another development in the O.T. which is of cardinal importance for the N.T. writers: it is a late theme, but a very important one. As God repeats, as it were, the act of creation in rescuing the people, so the Third Isaiah prophesies the God will execute a new creation, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered”. (Isa. 65.17).

Central ideas of the New Testament

The treatment of creation in the N.T. really requires another lecture, and all I can do here is to give the headlines of the sections it might contain.

1) The earlier strands of the NT, the Synoptic Gospels and the earliest letters of Paul all affirm the Judaic faith in God as creator, who has a purpose for the creation and sustains it. We find references to the original creation in Mk.10.6 with reference to the institution of marriage, in Lk.11.50 – guilt for the death of the prophets “since the foundation of the world”. These are typical examples of many that could be given.
Other related themes are of immense importance. It seems highly likely that the miracle stories connected with the stilling of a storm on the lake reflect the ancient notion of God’s creative power as controlling the forces of chaos: it is worth looking at Ps. 107.23ff as one reads Mark’s story in ch.4: “[God] made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed”.
We have noted that the Exodus delivery is firmly connected with God’s creation of the world, and in the NT the writers see the ministry of Jesus as inaugurating a new Exodus and founding a new Israel. For example, Lk. in his version of the Transfiguration refers to Jesus’ impending death as an “exodos”, and the Temptation stories are redolent with imagery from the stories of Israel’s wandering in the dessert. Finally, and most significant, is the sealing of a new Covenant, most clearly seen in the narratives of the Last Supper. The NT thus sees Jesus as leading a new Exodus, and inaugurating a new Covenant for a new and purified Israel.

2) It is not surprising, therefore, that we find the idea of a new Creation very prominently displayed there, particularly in the writings of Paul. In his second letter to Corinth Paul writes,
The God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness”, (who) has shone n our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (4.6)

Here we have clear reference to the original creation and the action of God in Christ that re-creates us. The identical point is made rather more clearly in 5.17,
So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new (kainos) creation: everything old has passed away: see, every thing has become new!
The Greek kainos (as opposed to neos) means absolutely new, unique.
Then there are the passages in Paul’s letters which imply that Jesus is a second Adam, Rom.5.15-21, and the implication is clear in I Cor. 15.22, “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”.

3) In the later strands of the NT, the 4th Gospel, and some of what are known as the Deutero Pauline writings, we find the view, which was to become Christian orthodoxy. Christ is now a pre-existent figure, patterned to some extent on the Hebrew concept of the Wisdom of God. In the Book of Proverbs ch. 8 there is a seminal passage about the function of Wisdom (virtually personified) as God’s agent in creation. This idea is taken up by the author of the 4th Gospel and combined with the Greek idea of Rationality as the principle of creation; this Greek idea was expressed by the word Logos, which, of course is translated ‘word”. So we read:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…without him not one thing came to being. ….The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (Jn. 1.1-5)

John could hardly have made his point more clearly: ‘In the Beginning’, are the first words of Genesis, and the darkness (chaos) cannot overcome the creative power of God.
4) One final headline would be to introduce an exposition of the magnificent climax to the teaching of both the OT & the NT on the subject of creation in The Book of Revelation ch.21.1-6:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” [i.e. chaos is finally conquered] “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See the home of God is with mortals.” …And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See I am making all things new.”.”

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The Book of Revelation: Study Outline Part 3

Part 1 of this Study Guide was posted on August 9, 2007, and
Part 2 on September 2, 2007. Click on the appropriate month at the left to retrieve them.


Opening Theophany & Second Seven

Austin Farrer’s scheme of ‘seven’ is followed here; this is his revised format expounded in the Commentary which refines the earlier thesis of The Rebirth of Images. He thinks that the apocalyptic concept of weeks and “half weeks” (see Daniel) is the overall framework. Since 7 does not divide easily in half, the author splits it as 4+3); this is very clear in the first seven (Letters) where letters 5, 6 & 7 show striking parallels to
Letters 1-3

With Chapter 4, John moves to the central theme of his book, “what must take place”. It is a mistake, though, to assume that from now on the book is entirely a futuristic prophecy, for it moves back and forth between the heavenly worship and the goings-on of the world, particularly the nasty goings-on like the powers of evil, corrupting God’s creation and the resistance to evil on the part of faithful saints.

The introduction to this second Seven is parallel to that of the first Seven section (4+3 Letters). There is the voice of God (1.10 & 4.1) which in both cases is introduced by a Theophany (lit., an ‘appearance of God’, i.e. a vision or an audition that enables humans to get some picture of that which, in the end, is unknowable, unseeable, unhearable etc.)
Since the opening of the first week is “the Lord’s Day”, we may assume that this is the Sunday of the second ‘seven’, and much that follows confirms that suggestion, for we are enabled to see a heavenly liturgy in progress.

Parallels with the Genesis Creation Story

Day one of creation is light; Revelation (chs 1-3, the first group of 7) is shot through with the images of light (candlesticks, Christ’s face like the sun etc.)
Day 2 of creation ends with the ‘sky’ in place, providing, as it were, a shield against the waters above. NRSV uses “dome”; the older English translation was the “firmament”. Boman, however, claims that the firmament is a theological concept, not a cosmological one (separating the threatening waters). It is that which protects humans from the powers “above”, particularly from direct force of the glory of God. A recurrent OT theme is that the direct sight of God in His glory is terrible, and usually deadly for weak humans. (cf. Isa 2.19; Ex 19.21; 3.6; 33.20-23. cf. also Jud 6.22-23 where even the mediating presence of an “angel” does not reassure Gideon). So the ‘sky’ (dome/firmament) shields us from the direct power of Yahweh.

This second Seven begins with John passing through the ‘firmament’ “to penetrate the veil and see the glory of God” (Farrer, p.60) This is a contrast to Judaism, for God is no longer unseeable. V. 6 refers to the crystal dome (firmament) that holds back the waters, and the whole section is an “unsealing” or a revealing of God, his glory and his purpose.
The sixth seal (note Friday is day six in the Jewish week) initiates a judgment in which the protective shield is removed - “the sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up”. And what results? The kings and great ones of the world are left unprotected from the direct gaze of God and face their judgment in terror. John uses. Isa. 2.19 and Hos. 10.8 here.

The Theophany of chs 4-5

Just as the first set of seven (letters) is preceded by a heavenly vision of the Risen Christ in glory, this second set (of seven seals) is prefaced by a much longer scene of the heavenly court. We need to read chs 4 and 5 together as a great poem in which John gives us the results of his meditations on the nature of God, the relationship of Jesus to God, and the meaning of Salvation for the people of God. The focus of the poem is God, the ‘one who sits on the throne’. The whole creation is represented as worshipping. For the O.T. material John is using here see: Gen 1.7; Ps. 29.10; Ezek. 1.5-25; Isa. 6.2-3. For a New Testament // cf. Heb. 12.18-24. Did John know the letter to the Hebrews?
It is possible that John’s cry of distress in 5.45 is an echo of Isaiah’s response to God’s “Whom shall we send?”.
The 24 elders may = the 12 Patriarchs (sons of Jacob/Israel) + the 12 Apostles. Some commentators have suggested that the whole picture may be related to the emerging pattern of Eucharistic worship in a bigger church gathering of the time.

vv. 6ff. The living creatures seem to represent the spectrum of creation (cf. Genesis creation story again) - wild and domesticated animals, birds, fishes and humankind. They may also stand for the characteristics of created beings - Strength/lion; Fertility/Ox; Wisdom/humans; Swiftness/Eagle. In any case, we are not required to get a visual image of eyes “before and behind” (see notes in Part 2). The imagery tells us that those who worship God are eternally focused on Him, eternally vigilant. An older commentator fails to get the idea and says, somewhat primly, there is some difficulty in understanding a conception of a “creature with a face like a man and yet full of eyes in front.”! (R.H Charles, Revelation, vol. 1, p. 124)

Chapter 5

The scroll (book) is the record of God’s plan for creation, and is sealed so that it is impossible for an unauthorized person to open. cf. Ezek. 2.9. It was unusual, but not unknown, to write on both sides of a papyrus scroll; possibly a suggestion of the immense scope of God’s overall plan?
The purposes of God are revealed by Jesus. The figure of the Lamb is introduced and we hear the song that proclaims him as the “author of our salvation”, the center of the New Passover. The epithet “Lamb”, has become a central Christian symbol, but it is worth noting that it does not appear in the earliest gospels, and only once in the Fourth Gospel (John Baptist’s, “behold the Lamb of God”, 1.29). It is found at I Pe. 1.19, and about 28 times in Revelation. Nevertheless, the idea that is expressed by it is firmly based in the oldest tradition of the Last Supper and sayings of Jesus like the one in Mk 10.45 and Luke’s version of the Transfiguration where Jesus speaks of his “exodus” (i.e. death) in Jerusalem, connecting that death with the Passover. (Lk. 9.21).

v.5 The assumed family connection of Jesus to David is not all that strong in the N.T., interesting, since it was such a powerful part of the Jewish messianic hope. cf. Rom 15.12 and a few times in the synoptic gospels, most in Mt. the most Jewish of the gospels.
The Lamb is also the Lion! Two striking characteristics of Jesus the savior and the warrior. Perhaps also an echo of the messianic hope - “the lion and lamb will lie down together”.
vv 9-10 note the universal nature of the church. God’s plan is for all nations and tribes, and the church as a whole has a priestly character. The church, that is, stands as the mediator between God and the world.

Chapter 6

Here we move into the second Seven as the seals are broken and the realities of a sinful and suffering world are seen in contrast to the worship of heaven, but within that suffering is the drama of redemption, seen in the passage that intervenes between the sixth and seventh seal opening ch 7. It is the “sealing” (baptism?) of the chosen, not only of Israel, but “from every nation...peoples and languages” (v.9); they are those who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (v. 14).

But this follows on the grim scenes enacted as the first four seals are opened.

The First Seal The white horse of aggressive imperialism; one of the continuing evils of the world.

The Second Seal releases the horse of war, the inevitable concomitant and result of power-hungry empires.

The Third Seal carries on the sequence, presenting the image of famine that inevitably follows war. v.6 is not all that clear, but the voice may be pointing to an exorbitant price for staples of food such as we see in Iraq today. (cf. II K. 7.18). Farrer suggests that the vines and olive trees are reserved for a later judgment.

The Fourth Seal reveals the pale green horse, the symbol of death by war and plague. Probably the destruction of a mere 25% is because John is giving us a picture of an unfolding process. One of the more pessimistic tenets of the apocalyptic writings is to assume that things will go “from bad to worse”. (See e.g. Mk. ch. 13, particularly vv. 7-8 and //s in Mt. & Lk.)

The Fifth Seal reveals the elect of God who witnessed to him even so far as dying for the Name. The cry “how long? is ancient and poignant. (cf. Zech ch. 1 which is clearly in John’s mind as he writes this whole section).

The Sixth Seal ushers in a “mini apocalypse”; it has all the signs of the end. But John has much more to say; this is an anticipation of the end not the end (yet). Note how in this second Seven, (corresponding to the second day of creation, the firmament is removed (see above).

Two visions of Salvation

Then before the final seal is opened, John interposes two visions of salvation in the face of all the chaos we have been witnessing. It is as though, he says, all these
horrors are going on, and will go on getting worse, but “be of good cheer” : God, in Christ has overcome; there is an answer to “Lord how long?” It lies in faithfulness to God in spite of anything that can happen. “Remember that whenever you gather to make Eucharist, you join in the heavenly liturgy”.

Some notes on ch..7

The sealing of the 144,000 is a play on words characteristic of John. “Sealing” is a sign of ownership, and, in the NT, has clear baptismal connections - see II Cor. 1.22; Eph. 1.13; 4.30. There are also many OT allusions here. In Ezek 9.4ff, a mark is put on the foreheads of those to be saved from execution, and it was to be a tau (t), written in old Hebrew as “X” or “+”. There may also be a hint of the blood of the Passover lamb daubed on the door posts In Rom. 6.3ff all the ideas come together; baptism is to be marked for God by sharing the cross of Christ and being raised with him. (Note from J. M. Sweet’s Commentary)
The number of the sealed is 12X12 and the thousand adds intensification. Since it was axiomatic in first century Christianity that Christians were a “new Israel” (cf. Gal. 6.16), the 12X12 almost certainly tells us that the elect are both Jews and Christians.

vv.9-12 in accordance with the basic anatomy of this writing, the next section anticipates the end, with evil overcome and eternal life given to those who have remained faithful. It is an heavenly liturgy. It is a pre-view of the final “Lord’s day” in heaven, but the drama is not finished yet and so in 8.1-5, the

Seventh Seal is broken and it introduces what seems like a total anti-climax, - thirty minutes of silence! [Austin Farrer writes, “The numbered seventh vision introduces a more modest Sabbath (than the previous vision of a heavenly Liturgy) - the half-hour’s silence of incense-offering”. Rebirth p.40 The evidence for silent prayer on the Sabbath during the offering of incense is not given by Farrer, but is plentiful and an echo of it is found in Lk. 1.8-10 & 21.]
In fact, this represents the Sabbath of this second Seven, and sets the scene for the third Seven to unfold out of the second.

The third Seven, 8.7-11.19

The locale is back on earth. The seven trumpets introduce more portents of a cataclysmic end. The blast of the first trumpet shatters the peace of the Sabbath prayer and brings down judgment on the wicked of the earth. After the 6th trumpet (as in the second 7 2), there is additional material before the seventh trumpet sounds. This pattern can hardly be accidental.
There also seem to be on-going connections with the Genesis creation story. The third day of creation is of dry land and vegetation. In this third ‘Seven’ of revelation, land, vegetation and sea are smitten; the fact that only one third is destroyed may also fit into the overall scheme, that at this point, only three of the Sevens (“weeks of history” as seen by Apocalyptic writers) have passed.

Religion, Faith and Dogma

[This paper was first published in the on-line edition of Witness Magazine, which has since ceased publication. My attempts to locate it in various archives were unsuccessful, and I thought it worth re-publishing here.]



INTRODUCTION

In December 2004, Bill Moyers received an award from The Center of Health and the Global Environment at Harvard. In his speech of thanks he addressed some of the difficulties that face a journalist reporting on environmental matters. The most difficult challenge, he noted, is “the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality”.

The cast of mind that is portrayed here is strongly conservative, particularly in matters of religion and doctrine. Both theses words are frequently used inter-changeably, and both have different shades of meaning. The common assertion of conservative theology that doctrine and practice are a ‘given’, and are immutable, needs careful examination. Doubtless, its proponents will defend the position quite as strongly as their predecessors in the mid-nineteenth century insisted on the immutability of the species in spite of the clear evidence of the fossil record, but some attempt to clarify the usage of the words and the connected issues is worth pursuing.

RELIGION

Reasonably reliable statistics repeatedly tell us that the USA is one of the most religious of the western industrialized nations with a vast majority of those polled affirming some kind of belief in God (or, perhaps, god(s)). In contemporary American English, the word religion is used in so many ways that fundamental distinctions are frequently blurred. It covers personal piety, public forms of worship (or rejection of any forms), attitudes to social questions, running day-care centers, and assertions about God, heaven, purgatory and hell, and, more recently, crystals, labyrinths and ley-lines.
Since the Enlightenment, repeated attempts have been made to produce a definition of religion. Very broadly, they fall into two groups: those which have some theological base (stating or implying the objective existence of a Transcendent, or, at least, transcendence), and those which have anthropological, sociological or psychological bases.

Definitions of Religion

In the first group are absolutist theories, propounded by a religious body: the only ‘true’ religion is this organization, and to be a member is strictly to adhere to all its requirements, (e.g. worship, doctrine(s), discipline, patterns of behavior). Usually it is quite explicit that these requirements are the revealed will of God by holy books, holy men or special visions. This, it would seem, is the position of the relatively new Pope.
Still in the first category, theories shade off into a more relativist approach. Religion is envisioned as the human search for some transcendent reality, but taking many forms. Such theories imply that there is a universal longing for the “Ultimate”. Some suggest that their particular religion is the best way to God, or is the way God has most clearly revealed true religion, while allowing that other religions all have some of the truth. Finally, other theories suggest all religions are ways to the transcendent, the vast array of differences resulting from cultural and linguistic factors.

In general, all the other theories of religion, give up any premises of theology, and, in the light of anthropological study and a more accurate appraisal of world religions, commonly hold that religion in some form or other seems to have been universal in human behavior. Barbara Smith-Morgan in an interview in Science & Spirit said, “I believe that as a species we are religious by nature, just as we are musical by nature”.

Religion: A human activity

Karl Barth gave a theological reading of the view that religion is a natural human activity of (fallen) humanity:
“Religion is unbelief....it is the one great concern of godless man”. And again, “Religion is never true in itself and as such”. On the other hand, religion can be redeemed and sanctified; “like justified man, true religion is a creature of grace”. (Church Dogmatics, quoted in McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader, p. 323)
As always, Barth seems extreme and paradoxical, but his remarks resonate with contemporary experience. Certainly, religion does not seem to be a very good influence in many parts of the world: in its name, people in Ireland have been killing one another for centuries. In the Middle East, religion lies behind terrible, continuing and bloody conflicts, and the genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo was fueled by religion; and in the US, as Bill Moyers points out, religion is a powerful force for a political polarization that threatens paralysis.

In spite of the great diversity of the religious scene in the USA, it seems that there is a kind of national religion, or, perhaps, more accurately, a religiosity, and it may well be that the fierce polarization over the ethics of sexual behavior and issues of birth and death are much more the result of cultural/religious positions, than of theological ones.

FAITH

The confusions in the uses of “religion” are compounded when we consider how the word and concept of faith are used. In Roman Catholic usage, ‘the faith’ signifies rational assent to the authoritative teaching of the church enshrined in creeds, dogmas, authoritative statements of Councils and Popes, and, ultimately, in assent to unchangeable propositions. The epicenter of the Reformation earthquake was a powerful rejection of this view and an attempt to understand anew the biblical meaning of faith. Luther’s re-presentation of the Pauline teaching has continued to influence much modern biblical study with its emphasis on faith in the gracious God, rather than faith that dogmas enshrine what we need to know of God.
The emergence and continuing growth of historical criticism has made it increasingly difficult to base faith on undeniable “facts” of history and the conviction that absolute truths had been transmitted to us. Anselm’s credo ut intellegam , “I believe in order to understand”, may sound as though faith in, commitment to, the living God is primary. But Anselm was a rationalist and the content of belief in his adaptation of Augustine’s original statement was supplied by the dogmas of the Roman church, understood to be the distillation of an ancient faith.

Absence of ‘propositions in earliest Christianity

Before there were any Christian writings there was a handful of followers who recalled the words of Jesus and tried to make sense of what had happened to him, who believed that they had a real and continuing relationship with the one they now called Messiah. In this situation, faith must have seemed a very risky business, much more like a Kierkegaardian leap in the dark than a rational assent to propositional doctrines; even some versions of the Reformation “faith alone” removed much of the element of risk with the other bank reassuringly delineated; the faith needed to make the leap seems like an offering as a condition for forgiveness.

DOGMA

It is hardly surprising that the confusions in talk about religion and faith are not found in the case of dogma, for the very word suggests absolute clarity and order; perhaps used less than at one time, ‘dogmatic’ is often applied pejoratively to those with whom one disagrees. It is, however, still quite central to Roman Catholic discussions of church teaching, and its Protestant equivalent, the Confession. In conservative Evangelical circles, confessionalism is very much alive. The dissenting group within the American Episcopal church, for example, aims to make itself a “replacement jurisdiction with confessional standards, maintaining the historic faith of our [Anglican] Communion”. (Mr. Chapman writing on behalf of the American Anglican Council – Washington Post 1.14.04. My italics). This is revealing since one of the great differences in the English Reformation was that the C. of E. has avoided Confessions of the Lutheran or Calvinist kind.

George Lindbeck & the status of Doctrine

The precise status of doctrines and confessions is at the center of the divisions and crossed lines of communication between various branches of the Christian church: doctrines develop, but how much can they change and can they become obsolete? Can ‘new’ ones, such as the Assumption of the BVM, emerge? How is teaching about central beliefs connected to teaching about practice? For example, does the earliest church’s absolute pacifism – no soldier could even be baptized – have the same status as the later statements about orthodox Trinitarian belief?
A land-mark book by George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia, 1984), provided new and clarifying insights. He outlines the two major ways in which doctrine has been understood:
(a) a cognitive approach which emphasizes that doctrines function as propositions giving us information about God, the world and our place within it;
(b) an approach that treats doctrines as expressions of deep religious experience. This assumes a basic religious experience common to humanity that can be expressed in endless ways, closely parallel to an understanding of religion noted at the beginning.

A new paradigm

Lindbeck offers an alternative which might give hope of rapprochement between many diverse traditions. He suggests that the form of a given religion (belief/practice system) is what structures our experience, rather than the experience producing the belief/practice.

"[R]eligions are seen as comprehensive interpretive schemes, usually embodied in myths or narratives and heavily ritualized, which structure human experience and understanding of self and world" (Lindbeck, 32). The fundamental paradigm for this approach emerges from the work of linguistic philosophers, and a comparison is made between the way in which a language shapes a particular culture and the way in which Religion provides a frame-work that gives shape to experience.
Religion "is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities" (p.33). Just as one learns a language by being exposed to it and practicing over and over again, so with religion, one internalizes the experience of the living community which one joins: what one learns, or perhaps, more accurately is "conformed to" is a tradition deeper and richer than could possibly be articulated in propositions. "Sometimes”, writes Lindbeck, “explicitly formulated statements of the beliefs or behavioral norms of a religion may be helpful in the learning process, but by no means always. Ritual, prayer, and example are normally much more important." (p.35).

Responding to new contexts

Among the many advantages of this approach, one is that it facilitates consideration of change and development in doctrinal positions in response to changing situations. In the midst of current tensions and controversies surrounding ethical issues of sexuality, life and death, what Lindbeck has to say is worth attending to:
“Religious traditions are not transformed, abandoned, or replaced because of an upwelling of new or different ways of feeling about the self, the world, or God, but because a religious interpretive scheme (embodied, as it always is, in religious belief and practice) develops anomalies in its application in new contexts”. (p.39, italics added).

He goes on to point out that faithfulness to a doctrine does not require slavish adherence to a fourth or fifth century formula; rather, it calls for new formulations within the guide-lines of the old. Traditionally, a grammar book gives the form of a basic ‘regular’ verb or noun. This is a paradigm one then applies to new vocabulary. It will get you nowhere endlessly to repeat the paradigm unchanged. Lindbeck comments, “amo, amas, amat " operates as a paradigm when one says, e.g., "rogo, rogas, rogat," not when one insists on parroting the original." (p.81).

CONCLUSION

The reasons why an absolutist, politicized kind of religion is becoming dominant in the USA are complex and need treating at length, but it is clear that a great deal of ‘parroting’ is going on be it of biblical verses wrenched from the context, dogmatic Trinitarian and Christological formulae or disciplinary rules of antiquity. The great majority of lay Christians are unlikely to know or care about Chalcedon or about the details of a particular theory of atonement, but specific, and usually anachronistic, formulations of Christology or Atonement can be made into rigid, immutable requirements for membership in a church and also into offensive weapons with which to fight “heretics”.

Limitations of Doctrine

Lindbeck’s approach might make us more aware of the limitations of doctrine. The absolutist position (RC - Fundamentalist) assumes that doctrine is perfect, final and all-surveying. On the contrary, it is frequently imperfect and inevitably culturally colored. It is also clear that faith positions have changed. Luke’s early chapters of Acts can plausibly said to reflect an 'adoptionist' type theology: Jesus is not the eternal Word, as in the Fourth Gospel, but God’s chosen son/servant (pais), a highly unorthodox teaching judged by the standards of Nicaea and Chalcedon. In a living language, vocabulary certainly changes and grammar gets modified. If we are to have a living faith and religion, not tied to Aristotelian categories, but underpinned by teaching that makes sense in the light of an entirely changed world-view, doctrine must be re-stated and faith must be strong enough to make some blind leaps, leaps where the precise location of the other bank may not be at all clear.

Sermon for Christmas Day - 2007

This sermon was delivered at All Saints Episcopal Church, Rehoboth, Delaware
on Christmas morning 2007

Something happens today that most people in this United States of America would, I think, be very surprised to hear about, something that they would find very hard to believe. It is the simple fact that Christmas began about ten hours ago. What has been going on for weeks with a relentlessness that probably only a cash till can demand has not been Christmas.

Much of what we have heard in the weeks since Thanksgiving has not been Christmas. It was a time, when we within the community of faith have been meditating deeply on what it means to say that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us"; we have been listening to the stern words of Jesus about judgment. In the world around us, though, this has hardly been the case; rather, we have had to listen to the tinkling of electronic parodies of deeply mystical and spiritual poetry full of deep theological import. And an objective view of the last few weeks must suggest that in a society in which it is said a vast majority believe in God, there is a complete failure to understand the nature of that God, and the significance of the divine presence that was unveiled to world on the first Christmas.

Had the world been in an Advent mood instead of an artificially engendered festive mood, it might have listened to the staggering theological statements of the carols, (all sung four weeks too soon). "God and sinners reconciled"; "Late in time (notice that, the end of the ages is upon us) behold him come, off-spring of the Virgin's womb. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;” "Yet with the woes of sin and strife, the world has suffered long". The carols of Christmas move naturally out of the themes of Advent with its twin emphasis on God's judgment on all human sin, coupled, nevertheless, with a vibrant hope that we shall not be left in the throes of the mess we have made of God's creation, because the Messiah, God's servant will come to us. They move from Advent to focus on the wonder of God’s saving work, but the best of the carols of Christmas, do not forget the realities of human sin and suffering, and they do not melt down into sentimental mush. They sing of the offering of real hope to a human race that is really lost.

Some words of (then) Bishop Rowan Williams as he preached a Christmas sermon some years ago, suggest the superficiality of the pseudo Festival that has been imposed on us. He writes, "The tightly swaddled baby is a gift-wrapped object; passive and docile for use in our business, our transactions; a lucky mascot; the sleeping partner in the firm (the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay)." (A Ray of Darkness, p. 27).

Something happens today that most people in this United States of America would, I think, be very surprised to hear about, something that they would find very hard to believe. Something is recalled and celebrated today that does not fit with the common assumptions of our culture and our national religion. It is not only that Christmas is only just beginning: it is that God has come into the human situation. “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see” we sing as though this were a routine affair; as though the coming into the very fabric of human life and, therefore into human pain and sin as well as into human greatness and joy were something we could glance at and then return to the time-consuming business of getting the last parcel wrapped; get back to all the hassle of the cultural Christmas that has dominated us for weeks.

Christmas, the Christian celebration, begins here today. Certainly it is about a baby, one born in less than a salubrious situation; but it is also, and primarily about the God who created each one of us and gave us life. And it is about the mysterious way that God chose to put right the mess that the human race finds itself in. How we understand this saving work of God in Christ is fundamental to the way in which we shall live our lives, fundamental to our understanding of what we mean by living a life committed to God and to one another.

I think that it is because we often do not take seriously all the implications of just what it is we are celebrating in this Christmas Liturgy, that we all too often have unsatisfactory notions about God and the way God works to save us. Too easily we slip into the notion that God is the ultimate, celestial Mr. Fixit. Intellectually we would probably deny this, but if we examine the way we pray when faced with pain and loss, we may discover that we are addressing God as the celestial doctor who will always cure; or the celestial conflict resolver who will settle our family, church, national and international power conflicts which quickly escalate to disastrous proportions.

Christmas tells us of the reality of God incarnate, tells us that God’s power works in the weak things of this world. It tells us that God comes to us in the helplessness of a baby. Rowan Williams whom I quoted earlier points out that if God is with us in a real child, he is not so neatly gift wrapped for us to use for our own ends. A real baby is a mystery, needing care and compassion, but, nevertheless, with a will and a voice of its own; and what a voice. Which parent among us does not recall that insistent and continuous crying that disturbs a night or interrupts a meal? Rowan reminds us that here we have “the inarticulate crying of God in the stable”, which looks forward to the cry from the Cross. This is not a fanciful idea; it is firmly there in the text of the gospel narratives. St. Luke who tells us the story of the stable birth, very soon records the words of Simeon to Mary, “This child is destined for the rising and falling of many, and a sign that will be opposed ..... and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (2.33).

So what all this tells us is that God’s saving work among us is not to be understood as some great success story; on the contrary, it overturns the glorification of power, which is the norm of the world. Jesus is not the one who comes to exercise that kind of power; does not come with advanced organizational skills, or with fiats that undo the stupidity and sinfulness of generations upon generation of self-willed humans. Jesus, who is the very presence of God, comes to be born with us, to be fretful and colicky with us; to grow up through the embarrassments and frustrations of adolescence with us; to experience misunderstandings and rejections with us, and in the end to die with us. This is something deeply mysterious and wonderful; something that electronic carols can never capture, but it is what the Christmas Liturgy proclaims.

And it is wonderful news; it is indeed, the Good News, the Evangel, the Gospel. It tells us we are not alone, shut up in the hatreds and divisions of humanity. It tells us that whatever we go through, God, in Christ will go through with us, for God, in Jesus has gone through the process of birth, and growth and death. And that is why today we sing Gloria in excelsis Deo, Glory to God in the highest. Amen.

Sermon for Thanksgiving Day - 2007

Harvest Festival

When I first came to live in the US, I assumed that Thanksgiving was the kind of harvest festival I knew from the village church to which I was reluctantly and uncomprehendingly taken for “high” days: Christmas, Easter and Harvest Festival. The 17th century building was aglow: the pulpit ledge piled high with local produce, several outsize sheaves of wheat leaned against the Choir Screen and the back of the church was filled with heaps of vegetables. This was not, of course, a national holiday, and vast numbers of the UK population had long been torn from their agricultural roots by the Industrial Revolution, and although some of their great, great grand children would probably say, “I am, C of E” (i.e. Church of England) they never crossed the portals of churches that are to be found in every city, town and village. In other words, Thanksgiving was very much a religious affair, and was always on a Sunday.

My First Thanksgiving in the US

So what did I make of the scene here? My first impression was that the holiday was about food, family and the pre-eminence of the USA, and I was struck by the feeling that this was as much a secular, national holiday as a religious festival. When I came to do a bit of reading I noticed several things. That it was, at the very beginning, the harvest festival of the old England transplanted to New England and lasted three days seemed historically accurate, but that its first celebrants were paragons of free choice and religious freedom suggested by a recent writer on the Web who says: “Thanks to the Pilgrims, we have greater freedom in religion & government today” struck me as wildly off target historically.
As so often happens, a persecuted minority became persecutors almost as soon as they established authority over others, displaying typical Puritan attitudes: rigid control of private and familial behavior; devaluation of other faiths; interpreting misfortune and sickness as divine judgment, all these soon became mandatory in the earliest colonies.
I learned that it was not until 1863, Lincoln proclaimed the final Thursday in November to be kept as a national holiday, and I concluded that the evolution of Thanksgiving as a national holiday displayed many of the ambiguities of the emerging doctrine of separation of Church and State.
While no particular form of religion (various brands of Christianity and, in the last half century, other religions than Christianity) has been connected to any established or State church, a generally diffused and somewhat vague belief in God has remained a potent force in our society. It is that, I think, that has produced a festival that has clear overtones of national greatness mingled with religious sentiments.
I would suggest that an antidote to all this ambiguity is to draw a distinction on the one hand between a biblical understanding of just how central thanksgiving is in Christian theology and practice, and, on the other, the perfectly laudable festival of Thanksgiving, established by Presidential decree with its emphasis on the greatness of America and the importance of family cohesion.

Thanking In the Bible

The Bible is permeated with a sense of our human dependence on and our total debt to God for simply everything we have or can do. In the O.T. there are two places, however, where this sense is particularly striking: the first is the Book of Deuteronomy. This is a fairly late re-write of the earlier traditions and it stresses again and again that it was Yahweh alone who made the Hebrews a nation and gave them their own land. It is interesting to note that the authors foresaw the dangers of jingoism: in ch.7 .7 we read, “It was not because you were more numerous (therefore stronger & greater) than other people that Yahweh…chose you – for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because Yahweh loved you…that [He] has brought you out with a mighty hand.” This is not the only time the authors express this idea, and it is always followed with an exhortation to remember Yahweh and give thanks.
The other place where thanksgiving is prominent is in the Psalms, some of which, like Ps. 136 are entirely a Hymn of thanksgiving; today’s gradual Psalm is typical of many others.

The New Testament

The note of thanksgiving is even more pervasive in the N.T. Paul frequently begins a letter with profound thanks to God for the growth of commitment to Jesus, the gift of whom is the focus of all Christian thanksgiving. C.B.E. Cranfield, writes, “Thanksgiving is not meant to be merely words, but the very mainspring of Christian living, the right motive of all service”. (Theol. Word Bk. Bib p. 254). There are very few recorded sayings of Jesus in which he explicitly says “thank you” to God, but the whole tone of Jesus’ teaching exemplifies the attitude of thanksgiving. In everything he does, Jesus looks to God. He does not claim to heal by his own power, but acting as the agent of the loving Father; he says that he casts out demons “by the finger of God”. All the accounts of his praying imply an attitude of complete dependence on God, most strikingly in Gethsemane: “your will be done”.

The Essence of Thanksgiving

This sense of utter dependence on God is at the heart of thanksgiving, which is to be the central attitude of the Christian towards God, and this is of central importance, it is also to be our attitude towards others who, as members of the body of Christ, share with us total indebtedness to God. All this is brilliantly summed up in the General Thanksgiving, composed for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and found in our present PB at the end of Morning Prayer. We give “humble thanks” to God “for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life; but above all for [the] immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ”. (BCP, 1979, p. 101).

Two Closing Points

The placing of thanksgiving at the center both of the Christian life and of prayer, suggests that Thanksgiving Day can be a time to re-evaluate the way we use the personal pronouns “me” and “mine”. “What I do in my own backyard is nobody’s business” is a view frequently expressed, but it is hardly acceptable even on a secular, social level. For a Christian it should be unthinkable, knowing that all I possess is not mine in any final sense, but given me by God as a trust to be used for the divine glory and the common good.
Finally, it is no accident that the gospel for today is a meditation by the author of the Fourth Gospel on the central act of Christian worship, the Eucharist, which, of course, is the Greek word to give thanks. What is central to the Christian life is also central to Christian worship. As Jesus gave thanks over the bread and the wine, so week by week we give thanks as we celebrate the Eucharist which sums up all our thanks to God “for all the blessings of this life” and above all for the life and death of Jesus by which we are re-united with God.

BIBLICAL INSPIRATION

Sermon for St. George’s Chapel, October 21, 2007 – Pentecost XXI (P. 24C)

The scripture readings set for Sunday, October 21 in the American B.C.P are:
Genesis: 32.3-8 & 22-30
II Timothy: 3.14 – 4.5
St. Luke: 18.1-8a

Preliminary Note

The story of the wrestling Jacob is so full of possible sermon themes that I found it hard not to begin work on it. On the other hand, the gospel reading did not seem so promising. It is not one of the more vivid parables relayed to us by Luke, and in light of work on the parables by scholars like C. H. Dodd, Joachim Jeremias and Eta Linnemann one has to wonder whether its original intention was to teach perseverance in prayer; after all, Mt. 6.7 tells us mê battalogêsête, ‘don’t use repetitious prayers’. Moreover, the whole issue of intercessory prayer is skating on thin ice (see my posting of Saturday, July 28 – The Use of Praying), and, so, I turned to the Epistle.

The set reading is a continuation of sections from the Pastoral Epistles, which, though still announced as by St. Paul, are probably not. II Timothy 3.16 together with
II Peter 1.21 have been regarded as key texts by those who have fought for a theory of plenary verbal inspiration. David R. Law in the recently published Christianity: The Complete Guide (Ed. John Bowden, London 2005, pp 629ff.) has an excellent short article on “Inspiration”. He notes that it was in the era of “Protestant orthodoxy” (c. 1600-1750) that this theory received a great deal of attention. Another very busy period was the latter part of the 19th century in the writings of the Princeton Seminary Calvinists. The claim that the doctrine, with particular emphasis on the inerrancy of the text, is taught by the bible seems to be a perfect of example of a circular argument: these key texts say that the words of the bible are inerrant, and since they are written by biblical authors, the key texts themselves must be inerrant. Law writes: “The Protestant concern with the inerrancy of scripture is a consequence of the doctrine of sola scriptura. Since for Protestantism the only legitimate foundation for theology is the Bible, this foundation had to be made absolutely secure”. (p. 630).

Conservative Reaction to Historical Criticism

Another crucial factor in the conservative position, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, was an increasing fear in the latter part of the 19th century of scientific and historical study. In the Roman Catholic sphere this took the form of fierce opposition to democratic movements and the institution of the “anti-Modernist Oath”, required at ordination of all R.C. priests well into the 20th century. In Protestant circles, it led to the issuing of the The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, a series of booklets published in the U.S. betwen1910 and 1915.

The sermon, which now follows, is over-long, though many members of the congregation assured me that they would have been happy to have another thirty minutes. It is also, inevitably I think, over-simplified. There are, after all, problems with historical method, and alternative ways to think about biblical inspiration that do not involve ideas of plenary verbal inspiration. All this, however, would have added much more than thirty minutes and would have made the sermon even more like a lecture than it already is.

The Sermon

Whenever we open a bible, we are faced by a challenge, but the reading from the Letter to Timothy raises the question about the status and use of scripture quite explicitly.
What precisely is the challenge? Very briefly put it is: How do we understand the biblical message in 2007? How doe we read the accounts that imply a world-view that is, and indeed for several centuries has been, untenable?
The N.T. writers fairly often refer to the sacred books as “the scriptures”, or in Greek, the writings, and it is cleat that they mean the sacred writings of the Hebrews, what we call the O.T. It is clear that the earliest Christians accepted the Rabbinic view that God spoke through the Prophets, and, of course, that included Moses. Today’s epistle speaks of the “writing(s)” and refers to them as “inspired”; a literal rendering of the Greek would be, “breathed by God”.
Within the historical context of the first century C.E., all this made sense. It was the normal view of the divine throughout the world that the gods spoke directly to people, that they directed events in a singularly ‘hands-on’ way and that, furthermore various rituals, prayers and holy people could interact with the divine forces to change the weather, to heal people or to kill them, and, in short, to ameliorate any conceivable divine action. Of course, within Judaism there was a different view of God: for the Jews there was only one God, whose name was Yahweh, and he was not a capricious God. Nevertheless, the principle remained that Yahweh directly orchestrated all the natural phenomena of weather, farming, and human health and wealth.
It is a vast over-simplification, but in the most general sense true, that this view of the world lasted for almost 1500 years. A good example would be the history of what meteorologists call the “little ice age” which lasted for over four hundred years. During the early centuries of the second millennium, famine became endemic in N. Europe, and millions died. Contemporary science suggests three possible causes for the frigid summers and almost arctic winters: a reduction of radiation from the sun; a significant increase in volcanic activity or, paradoxically, the previous warming period that poured vast quantities of fresh water into the Atlantic, cutting off the warming currents. The one explanation that is unacceptable today is the one given at the time based on the world view which the writers of the biblical books shared: the terrible crop losses were the result of the activity of the devil operating through witches, (and of course, passages of the O.T. demanded the death penalty for witches). Perhaps as many as two thousand people were executed as witches accused of causing the withering of crops and the devastation of the herds. It is another aspect of this same world-view that the vast majority of those murdered were women.

Origen & Allegory

Before the 15th century, reading the bible was not without problems. That there were challenges is not in doubt. A very early one was to question why the Hebrew bible was part of the Christian scriptures. It has, after all, a remarkable number of stories that seem to negate the picture of God we find in the teaching of Jesus, for example, the approval of genocide of Canaanite peoples in order for the Hebrews to inherit the promised land, and long lists of forbidden foods; the latter was a particular stumbling block for the early Christians since they knew that Jesus had “declared all foods clean”. (Mk. 7). An early theologian called Origen commented at the beginning of the third century that if the dimensions of Noah’s ark were accurate, there would be room to take onboard only two elephants and their food supply for the duration of the flood. The escape from these conundrums was provided by that same Origen. He stressed the undoubted spiritual nature of the writings, and said that very often the surface, obvious meaning, was not primary; what mattered was the inner, spiritual significance. In short, he claimed that the bible writings were one big Allegory whose hidden meanings we had to tease out. Shell-fish became quite OK for Christians because what the book of Leviticus was really telling us was that sins of the flesh are like limpets that once attached stick hard, and that is what we must avoid. All the early commentators treated the parables in this way: the Priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan are not there because it is a realistic story, a scene that any traveler might have witnessed. Rather they represent the priestly class of the Hebrews, superseded by Christ. The oil and the wine are not (as , in fact, they were), the normal first-aid kit of the first century, but the sacraments of the Eucharist and anointing.

Changing World-View

About five hundred years ago, the intellectual climate began to change. Long-accepted formulae began to be questioned. It is not necessary to trace out the course of the scientific revolution that began with a new examination of the vast universe around us and moved on to the discover the miniscule universe within us. Parallel to, and closely linked with the scientific revolution was a revolution in how history is to be understood. Sources have to be checked, early MSS have to be examined, and obvious prejudices of the writers have to be taken into account: these factors and many others, it was realized, are essential for understanding the past, rather than merely creating an ideological account of it. Thus as the scientific advances exposed more and more problems with the biblical text, (like the impossibility of the earth’s being a mere 4004 years old), the study of history provided a new way of reading the scriptures. It became clear that the Bible is not a coherent single document. It is a collection of different texts, composed, revised, re-written by dozens of often anonymous authors spanning nine centuries. But it also became clear that we could trace growth in how we might think about God. We were not forced to continue to hold early ideas of a God directing every minute detail of the material universe or as leader in wars of extinction.

Centrality of Rule of God in teaching of Jesus

Above all, we could take a new look at the teaching of Jesus. To take one quite central factor, we were no longer forced to hear the parables as allegories. We understood that they are stories that try to get across a central point. The details are not important in themselves, as, say in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; they are there because that is how the story goes. This approach made it clear that Jesus’ teaching centers firmly on the coming of the Kingdom of God, the Rule of God. It was those disciples who heard the teaching and passed it on to the next generation that formed the community within which they believed (and still do believe) that the living Jesus continues to operate. At its best (which has not been all that often) the Church has lived by and held up for the world a view of God as loving and suffering with humanity.

How Envisage God?

This revolution in the understanding of the bible involves abandoning older views of God, and I think that it may well be this factor rather than a slavish insistence on the absolute accuracy of the biblical text that lies behind much contemporary fundamentalism. To have a god who continually manipulates our environment, a god to whom we can send a message asking for a situation to be altered (be it the removal of a terminal disease or the lack of a parking place when shopping), may be much more comforting than having One who is love incarnate, and who, instead of changing things, agrees to suffer along with us giving us new life based on love rather than power.

Inspired how?

Finally, of course, this approach to the bible requires us to abandon the older view of the divine inspiration of the scriptures, which, you may recall, was my starting point. Instead of a mechanical view where God uses the writers as a kind of ventriloquist’s dummy, we need to envisage the writer as a member of a believing community, who as a representative of that community is deeply in touch with the divine and who often in poetry, tries to put into words the meaning of the divine for human life.
We stand within that community and we share the faith that Jesus inspired in those first intimate disciples that the Rule of the God of love is the ultimate reality of the universe. Because of the insights of historical study, we understand the words of Jesus in today’s gospel not as asking God to do things for us that he hadn’t noticed we needed, but as an unshakeable faith that God wills “quickly to grant justice” to all humankind.