I have always found John Hick an invigorating author: the first book of his I read was Evil and the God of Love, published in 1966. The author of an article on Hick in Wikipedia writes, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hick),
“This was the first of Hick's books to have a dramatic and controversial impact on evangelical Christendom, chiefly for its concluding that there can be no such thing as Hell (as traditionally defined)…..Aside from evangelicals and Catholics, most leading theologians have not found a way to defeat Hick's argument.”
The Myth of God Incarnate & Metaphor of God Incarnate
Little that Hick has written since has endeared him to Biblical and Dogmatic fundamentalists. Perhaps the biggest outcry followed the publication of a collection of essays in 1977, The Myth of God Incarnate. Hick comments on the uproar in the first chapter of a later book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, first published in 1993 and recently re-issued with two new chapters. Looking back at the storm produced by the Myth book, Hick writes:
“what strikes me most now…is how strongly and even frenetically polemical it was….[A]t the Anglican Synod [i.e. of the Church of England] the authors of the book were likened to ‘German Christians’ who supported Hitler; the Church Times’ headline was ‘Seven Against Christ’”.
What immediately struck me as I re-read this passage after many years were the parallels between the Reception of the Myth book and Essays and Reviews, published in 1851. Basil Willey, a delightful and neglected author, wrote of the reaction to the publication of Essays:
The book [Essays & Reviews] "slipped unobtrusively from the press, yet within a year of its publication the orthodox English world was convulsed with indignation and panic. The Protestant religion, as by law established, had weathered the Gunpowder Plot and the Popish Plot [reintroduction of R.C. hierarchy in Britain]; it had survived the Reform Bill [1832], the Tracts for Times [catholic revival in Oxford], the Hampden case ... [Regius professor, attacked by Newman and other ultra conservatives; censured, but later made Bishop of Hereford whereat the whole clamor began again] ... and the Gorham controversy [XXXIX Articles, Baptismal regeneration]; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. Cries of horror, grief and pain rang from the press and the pulpit; the Bishops protested; the Court of Arches and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council came into action. The authors of the book were denounced as 'Septem Contra Christum', the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse'". (Nineteenth Century Studies , 137).
Trinitarian & Christological Issues
Central to the furor in 1851 and again in 1977, anyway from the Anglican perspective, was the issue of the Incarnation. John Barton, writing about biblical studies in the 19th century C. of E., writes, “When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (Biblical Interpretation p. 59).
In the Preface to this new edition of The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick says, “This book was first published twelve years ago. Since then the focus of much theological discussion has moved from christology to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is partly because theology always does go the rounds of traditional topics – creation, sin, incarnation, atonement, Trinity, church, heaven and hell.” (xi). As I typed this I wondered about the lower case of all the topics but the trinity and was amused when the spell check tried to make me change christology and atonement to upper case for the first letter. More seriously, I wondered about Hick’s claim that the doctrine of the Trinity has become central. Perhaps this is clear to someone deep in an academic environment; I have to confess that I no longer regularly read the Princeton Theological Review, The Journal of Theological Studies or The Expository Times, and it is in such Journals that the change would be clear. In the more general reading I do, and in pastoral contacts I still find that the issue of the incarnation is a center of focus. Indeed, having made the point of a shift in emphasis, Hick himself justifies re-issuing a book on Christology and continues:
“[T]here would have been no occasion for this expansion from the unitary God of Judaism to the Trinity of Christianity without the more basic belief in the deity (as well as the humanity) of Jesus. For this reason the idea of Jesus as God incarnate remains basic and foundational, and without it the concept of the Trinity evaporates’. (ibid.).
Chronologically, the drive to define the manner of Jesus’ relationship to God came first, producing several 2nd and 3rd century explanations that were unacceptable, and therefore ‘heretical”: most well known are various forms of Monarchianism, often called Patripassionism and some forms of Modalism, exemplified in the teaching of Sabellius (or what we might assume to be his teaching from rather scattered fragments). The best known and frequently execrated effort was that of Arius whose teaching led, among other factors, to the Council of Nicaea. In spite of frequent confusion, it needs to be emphasized that the issue was not Christological but Trinitarian. Some way, they felt, had to be found to put into words how Jesus was related to God. But Hick is surely right that without the already well established tradition of treating Jesus in some way or other and in some degree or other as divine, the Trinitarian discussion would not have been necessary.
The abstruseness of the Trinitarian debates is suggested to me by a wonderful Punch cartoon of the 1950s. It depicts a lovely perpendicular village church in a clearly still very rural setting. The Vicar, looking very like those who appear in Masterpiece Theatre productions, – bald pate with circlet of hair and small oval spectacles, – is leaning out of the pulpit surveying the gathered farm hands, wagging a finger and saying, “I know what you’re thinking. Patripassionism!”.
Centrality of Biblical Interpretation
Surrounded by ideologues wearing bracelets inscribed WWJD (or is it “have said”?), one is reminded that lying further back behind the Trinitarian discussions and the Christological controversies is the issue of the status of written holy books. And this, of course, is not only a matter of the Judaeo-Christian collection. Among the many conservative reactions to the Myth of God Incarnate in the 1960s was a passionate denial of modern biblical scholarship. Typical is the following, found on line under one of the many entries under the Myth book:
“Hick appears to follow somewhat conservative scholarship with respect to New Testament dating. But, what about the charge that none of the writers (presumably of the Gospels) were (sic.) eyewitnesses? Though Mark and Luke were not, Matthew and John were. External evidence dated from the late second century claiming John, the son of Zebedee and one of the twelve, authored both the Fourth Gospel and the three epistles of John is virtually unanimous. Paul D. Adams, The Mystery Of God Incarnate.
The attempt to re-establish the Fourth Gospel as the earliest and most reliable of the four gospels is repeated in each generation by the most conservative scholars (and occasionally by more main stream ones like Farmer and John Robinson), but it is a dead duck. One can only respond in some memorable words of the late Senator Moynihan: “One is entitled to one’s own opinion, but not to one’s own facts”.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Sermon for Pentecost XIII, September 3, 2006
St. George’s Chapel, Indian River Hundred in the Parish of All Saints, Rehoboth, Delaware
Mark. 7, 1-24
I was disconcerted when I looked at the gospel as printed in today’s insert and found that a verse had been omitted by the Lectionary framers. (See my Whatever happened to Mark 7.19?) It is verse 19 which reads, “since it [the food one eats] enters not into the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? (Thus he declared all foods clean)”. The Greek construction here makes it clear that this startling verse is an editorial comment of the Evangelist . This suggests that some decades after the death of Jesus, Christians in some churches, (possibly most churches) understood that Jesus had not only challenged a whole series of ritual actions such as purification rituals, but had gone further and had contradicted the food laws of the Old Testament.
Peter's Vision
There is a story in the early part of Acts about Peter having a vision of a great carpet let down on which were all kinds of animals, many, apparently “unclean” by strict Judaic standards. A heavenly voice commands Peter to ‘kill and eat’, but the Apostle is still firmly embedded in the old taboos, and rather self-righteously puts Jesus right on the matter: “By no means, Lord: for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean”. The voice (presumably that of the risen Jesus) sets the record straight and reiterates the point that Mark’s editorial comment makes, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. You may recall that as soon as this vision is over, Peter is called to go and Baptize a Gentile Roman NCO. (Acts, 10.1-23). Mark’s comment and this story, together with much in Paul’s letters tells us that the battle over exclusiveness or inclusiveness was pivotal in the first two generations of Christians.
The missing verse is of central and definitive importance for our understanding of just what it was that Jesus said and did. The immediate issue was about forbidden foods, but lying behind that is a vastly more important perspective. It goes, ultimately, to the understanding of God and God’s dealings with humanity that underlies any religious system. In a book full of insight and wisdom, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg suggests that two visions lie side by side in the Old Testament, (and, it needs to be emphasized, in many other religious systems). One is the concept of holiness, the other of compassion.
Marcus Borg - Purity Systems
Holiness is a central element in many religions; it emphasizes the otherness of God, the majesty and the over-arching, transcendent Being of God: but all too easily the human response is to require strict rules to mark off all that is not holy: it therefore easily tends to become rigid and legalistic.
Compassion, on the other hand, tends to emphasize the close presence of God with people, expressed in Isaiah’s famous use of Immanuel, ‘God with us’, the reading that we hear at Christmas time: compassion is not so bothered about the lesser details of a legalistic system because the needs of suffering individuals and communities are paramount.
While it is common to see the O.T. as primarily centered on the Power and distance of God, thus favoring Holiness as its central theme, it is important to note that within the collection of Hebrew writings, there is a very powerful statement of the alternative vision. It is found mainly in the Prophetic writings and begins with Amos’s bitter denunciation of social injustice, and also in trenchant criticism of the ritualistic sacrificial system, a system that is dealt with at length in the Book of Leviticus, a section of which is known to modern scholarship as “the Holiness Code”. Following Amos, a whole succession of Prophets denounces the lack of compassion for the poor on the part of the powerful: perhaps, the most complete and succinct statement comes from the Prophet Micah, “What does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”. (6.8). Here the word “kindness” could equally well be translated ‘compassion’.
Jesus and Compassion
The picture we get of Jesus from the first three gospels, suggests strongly that while he accepted the vision of a Powerful, Holy God, he emphasized the Prophetic vision of the closeness of God. It is clear that he framed his teaching and actions in terms of compassion. Frequently, the writers remark that he was “moved with compassion”, and the Levitical injunction in 19.2, “you shall be holy, for I, Yahweh, your God am holy”. Is offset in the words of Jesus in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount by “Be compassionate just as your Father in compassionate” (Lk. 6.36).
The records indicate that Jesus presented a new and radical approach to religion. He consistently welcomed to his table fellowship people who were not pure, not part of the holiness scheme; tax collectors, made unclean by so much contact with gentile Romans, Prostitutes, unclean by breaking the rituals of sexuality, and disabled men and women, excluded by Levitical regulation from the assembly of Yahweh’s people. It is also clear that this pattern of behavior was one of the major reasons for his being hounded by the religious authorities.
The Wider Perspective
This suggests that we need to look at the wider picture. A purity system was not and is not unique to the Hebrew people. Many forms of religion have food laws, caste systems, and tight legal restrictions of various groups within society. At random there comes to mind: the Indian mutiny sparked among other things by the use of animal fat in greasing a cartridge (pork fat upset Muslims, beef fat upset Hindus); the depressed status of women in Islam, Judaism and, let it not be forgotten, in Christianity after a brief period following the death of Jesus, and the lack of acceptance by “established” society of racial groups and minorities marked as ‘unclean’ by their sexual orientation. The list could be prolonged, but these examples expose the central point. It is that in declaring all food acceptable, Jesus rejects the purity system as a whole in its much wider forms of operation (the poor are dirty; foreigners smell; homosexuals are bestial and so on). Marcus Borg sums up much of this splendidly when he writes, “Whereas purity divides and excludes, compassion unites and includes. For Jesus compassion had a radical sociopolitical meaning. In his teaching and table fellowship and in the shape of his movement, the purity system was subverted and an alternative social vision affirmed”. (op. cit. p.58).
Paul at his best recognized all this when he wrote, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are on in Christ Jesus”. (Gal. 3.28). Sadly, we know that this vision has often been severely obscured in Christian history, but it is still the ideal, and calls us to resist those who fear the radical nature of Jesus’ teaching and want to cling to forms of a purity system that imposes inflexible theological boundaries, and sets up, “sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners”. (Borg p.59).
Purity Systems Now
The wider conservative evangelical scene in the US is a dismal one: its level of commitment to an out-worn purity system leads it to declare that AIDS is God’s punishment for “dirty” behavior, and some of its leaders declare that since the end of WW II uncounted billions of humans have gone to hell because they did not confess that Jesus alone is the way to God.
Nearer to home, there is a strong conservative wing within the Anglican Communion that goes back to the complicated history of the Church of England from the 16th to the 19th centuries. That whole area needs careful exploration, best done in the context of a study group, but here it needs to be said that while the positions are not as extreme as those found in conservative US civic religion, they still exhibit a tenacious hold on an inflexible approach to both the biblical writings and to Dogmatic definitions of the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries. Central is the rejection of women’s ministry (though nowadays that is often carefully cloaked) and a refusal to re-think the ethical issues of celibacy, and sexual relationships of differing patterns. This does not sound like Jesus declaring an end to purity systems, and I want to give the last word to our Presiding Bishop elect, Katherine Jefferts Schori, “We need to get busy about healing the world. That’s what we’ve been called to do. We need to stop focusing on our internal conflicts. The mission of the church is the centerpiece”. (Episcopal Life, Front p., Sept 2006). I would just add that central to that mission is the following of Jesus’ radical rejection of legalism in favor of compassion.
Mark. 7, 1-24
I was disconcerted when I looked at the gospel as printed in today’s insert and found that a verse had been omitted by the Lectionary framers. (See my Whatever happened to Mark 7.19?) It is verse 19 which reads, “since it [the food one eats] enters not into the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? (Thus he declared all foods clean)”. The Greek construction here makes it clear that this startling verse is an editorial comment of the Evangelist . This suggests that some decades after the death of Jesus, Christians in some churches, (possibly most churches) understood that Jesus had not only challenged a whole series of ritual actions such as purification rituals, but had gone further and had contradicted the food laws of the Old Testament.
Peter's Vision
There is a story in the early part of Acts about Peter having a vision of a great carpet let down on which were all kinds of animals, many, apparently “unclean” by strict Judaic standards. A heavenly voice commands Peter to ‘kill and eat’, but the Apostle is still firmly embedded in the old taboos, and rather self-righteously puts Jesus right on the matter: “By no means, Lord: for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean”. The voice (presumably that of the risen Jesus) sets the record straight and reiterates the point that Mark’s editorial comment makes, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. You may recall that as soon as this vision is over, Peter is called to go and Baptize a Gentile Roman NCO. (Acts, 10.1-23). Mark’s comment and this story, together with much in Paul’s letters tells us that the battle over exclusiveness or inclusiveness was pivotal in the first two generations of Christians.
The missing verse is of central and definitive importance for our understanding of just what it was that Jesus said and did. The immediate issue was about forbidden foods, but lying behind that is a vastly more important perspective. It goes, ultimately, to the understanding of God and God’s dealings with humanity that underlies any religious system. In a book full of insight and wisdom, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg suggests that two visions lie side by side in the Old Testament, (and, it needs to be emphasized, in many other religious systems). One is the concept of holiness, the other of compassion.
Marcus Borg - Purity Systems
Holiness is a central element in many religions; it emphasizes the otherness of God, the majesty and the over-arching, transcendent Being of God: but all too easily the human response is to require strict rules to mark off all that is not holy: it therefore easily tends to become rigid and legalistic.
Compassion, on the other hand, tends to emphasize the close presence of God with people, expressed in Isaiah’s famous use of Immanuel, ‘God with us’, the reading that we hear at Christmas time: compassion is not so bothered about the lesser details of a legalistic system because the needs of suffering individuals and communities are paramount.
While it is common to see the O.T. as primarily centered on the Power and distance of God, thus favoring Holiness as its central theme, it is important to note that within the collection of Hebrew writings, there is a very powerful statement of the alternative vision. It is found mainly in the Prophetic writings and begins with Amos’s bitter denunciation of social injustice, and also in trenchant criticism of the ritualistic sacrificial system, a system that is dealt with at length in the Book of Leviticus, a section of which is known to modern scholarship as “the Holiness Code”. Following Amos, a whole succession of Prophets denounces the lack of compassion for the poor on the part of the powerful: perhaps, the most complete and succinct statement comes from the Prophet Micah, “What does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”. (6.8). Here the word “kindness” could equally well be translated ‘compassion’.
Jesus and Compassion
The picture we get of Jesus from the first three gospels, suggests strongly that while he accepted the vision of a Powerful, Holy God, he emphasized the Prophetic vision of the closeness of God. It is clear that he framed his teaching and actions in terms of compassion. Frequently, the writers remark that he was “moved with compassion”, and the Levitical injunction in 19.2, “you shall be holy, for I, Yahweh, your God am holy”. Is offset in the words of Jesus in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount by “Be compassionate just as your Father in compassionate” (Lk. 6.36).
The records indicate that Jesus presented a new and radical approach to religion. He consistently welcomed to his table fellowship people who were not pure, not part of the holiness scheme; tax collectors, made unclean by so much contact with gentile Romans, Prostitutes, unclean by breaking the rituals of sexuality, and disabled men and women, excluded by Levitical regulation from the assembly of Yahweh’s people. It is also clear that this pattern of behavior was one of the major reasons for his being hounded by the religious authorities.
The Wider Perspective
This suggests that we need to look at the wider picture. A purity system was not and is not unique to the Hebrew people. Many forms of religion have food laws, caste systems, and tight legal restrictions of various groups within society. At random there comes to mind: the Indian mutiny sparked among other things by the use of animal fat in greasing a cartridge (pork fat upset Muslims, beef fat upset Hindus); the depressed status of women in Islam, Judaism and, let it not be forgotten, in Christianity after a brief period following the death of Jesus, and the lack of acceptance by “established” society of racial groups and minorities marked as ‘unclean’ by their sexual orientation. The list could be prolonged, but these examples expose the central point. It is that in declaring all food acceptable, Jesus rejects the purity system as a whole in its much wider forms of operation (the poor are dirty; foreigners smell; homosexuals are bestial and so on). Marcus Borg sums up much of this splendidly when he writes, “Whereas purity divides and excludes, compassion unites and includes. For Jesus compassion had a radical sociopolitical meaning. In his teaching and table fellowship and in the shape of his movement, the purity system was subverted and an alternative social vision affirmed”. (op. cit. p.58).
Paul at his best recognized all this when he wrote, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are on in Christ Jesus”. (Gal. 3.28). Sadly, we know that this vision has often been severely obscured in Christian history, but it is still the ideal, and calls us to resist those who fear the radical nature of Jesus’ teaching and want to cling to forms of a purity system that imposes inflexible theological boundaries, and sets up, “sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners”. (Borg p.59).
Purity Systems Now
The wider conservative evangelical scene in the US is a dismal one: its level of commitment to an out-worn purity system leads it to declare that AIDS is God’s punishment for “dirty” behavior, and some of its leaders declare that since the end of WW II uncounted billions of humans have gone to hell because they did not confess that Jesus alone is the way to God.
Nearer to home, there is a strong conservative wing within the Anglican Communion that goes back to the complicated history of the Church of England from the 16th to the 19th centuries. That whole area needs careful exploration, best done in the context of a study group, but here it needs to be said that while the positions are not as extreme as those found in conservative US civic religion, they still exhibit a tenacious hold on an inflexible approach to both the biblical writings and to Dogmatic definitions of the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries. Central is the rejection of women’s ministry (though nowadays that is often carefully cloaked) and a refusal to re-think the ethical issues of celibacy, and sexual relationships of differing patterns. This does not sound like Jesus declaring an end to purity systems, and I want to give the last word to our Presiding Bishop elect, Katherine Jefferts Schori, “We need to get busy about healing the world. That’s what we’ve been called to do. We need to stop focusing on our internal conflicts. The mission of the church is the centerpiece”. (Episcopal Life, Front p., Sept 2006). I would just add that central to that mission is the following of Jesus’ radical rejection of legalism in favor of compassion.
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