SimonSurmises

2011-12-29T12:45:00.000-08:00

Sermon for the Twelve Days of Christmas

And any other Day of the Year

Christmas Comes Again

There is a modern version of the Carol “Christmas Comes Once More’. So far as I recall it has images of a brightly burning fire round which is gathered a happy family. There are also the stock references to Santa, snow and reindeer. The original version of 1817, originating somewhere in Bavaria has a first verse that goes:

The happy Christmas comes once more

The heavenly Guest is at the door,
The blessed words, the shepherds thrill,
The joyous tidings, peace good will.

It goes on for another five verses tracing in some detail the combined Birth Narratives given us by Matthew & Luke. One must admit that the “jingly” rhyming scheme gets rather tiresome, but the contrast between today’s welcome of Christmas’s coming round again and that of two centuries ago could hardly be more stark.

The secular Christmas is part of the whole system of public holidays which provide a break for working people whom the Romans called them the “plebs”, and each holiday has to have something brand new – a game, a product a “grand slam giveaway” - to cheer up the dreary stretches of life in between; (the Romans called it panem et circuses). Providing the regular spectacles was the responsibility of the Senatorial class, notorious for their graft and greed, but willing to spend vast sums on the Coliseum productions for the political clout that could result.

I leave you to consider any parallels to this Roman history.

Doubtless, this cycle of our public holidays is of great importance to the social fabric and helps people through life in the rather sorry conditions of what is now called the 99%.

In this scenario, Christmas really does go away; it is packed up with the Christmas lights, put out with the discarded fir trees and ruefully contemplated in a “party’s over” mode as the credit card balance is presented.

Christmas Never Went Away

In contrast to this, for committed Christens, Christmas never went away. It is true that the symbols, and what one might call the “props” of the Liturgy, the crèche, the special candles and Christmas banners are stored in some deep place behind the Vestry, but the essential meaning of the Festival is with us always, woven into the very fabric of the life of the Christian Community. Furthermore we do not need something totally different (as the Pythons would say) each year to titillate the senses and relieve our boredom. A dominant theme of the secular Christmas is that everything from medicines to mattresses is “a new formula” or completely new design.

In contrast the Christmas Liturgy is content to make its way each year through the stories of the Nativity. We are not bored with this because it freshens up for us an essential aspect of everyday Christian life that sometimes becomes somewhat forgotten.

Promises of God

This is true of the whole of the annual progression of the Christian calendar, mot clearly understood in the case of the Easter Liturgy. Its particular rites and symbols come and go: any spare Palms are put away; the Paschal candle stick is carefully stored and the text & music for the Exsultet is put in its folder. A central, perhaps the central tenet of Christian belief is that Easter does not go away, but is woven into the fabric of everyday Christian life, and each Sunday Liturgy reminds us of this fact.

The major festivals of the Christian year commemorate historical events of the life of Jesus or the Church. Lying behind this is the central tenet of Judaism, which became central to the Christian tradition: it is that the one constant God is involved in human affairs and acts in historical events. In contrast to all ancient religions before the emergence of the Hebrews Yahweh is not capricious, not likely to fall into a rage because a pinch of incense was missed. To use an O.T. mode of speech, what does anger God, the Prophets clearly saw, was the failure of humans to apply God’s standards of faithfulness and compassion to one another.

This is the historical context of the birth of Jesus. The birth of a baby to an itinerant family is a common experience of humanity. This particular birth remains central to the Christian faith, however, because it proclaims the faithfulness of God to the promises made in the Covenants of Judaism, and to be fulfilled in the life and death of Jesus. The promise “Emmanuel”, God is with us is given concrete content in the teaching and healing work of the Messiah. The blazing truth of this birth, is the promise that the chaos of human life is human doing, not God’s; the promise is that the divine plan will, in the end, prevail over the powers of chaos and darkness that so mar our existence. This is the meaning of Christmas, and this is why Christmas does not go away when we pack up the Liturgical symbols of the Festival.

Christmas and Easter come year after year, but the theological truth they embody is with us always.

Christmas, Lent, Easter, Advent (repeat)

There is, however, one other important Liturgical season lying between Christmas and Easter. The season of Lent reminds us that the final victory only comes after a bitter struggle with the powers of the abyss: greed, hate, the exercise of unbridled power, lying and self-aggrandizement, to note a mere sample of the all too long list.

We see Jesus throughout his life engaged in this struggle, and, from the beginning, individual Christians have known that they are to join with him in the fight with the Christmas assurance that God, in & through Jesus is with us, always until the end (Mt 28.19)

Something the Arch of Canterbury said in his Christmas sermon last year is, I think, relevant here. It caused some ruffled feathers in the Tory press, but the Guardian, that staunch advocate of a liberal position, praised it and made a snide comparison to the Queen’s Christmas message which emphasized the power of Athletics to bring people together.

The Socio/Political Implications

The Archbishop of Canterbury says much the same as I have just said: that Christmas is about the unshakeable love of God for us, and the solidarity of Jesus with humanity.

He suggests, in line with the great Hebrew Prophets, that we think about our own solidarity with our fellow citizens, our own keeping of the social covenant. He goes on (I quote him):

"Faced with the hardship that quite clearly lies ahead for so many in the wake of financial crisis and public spending cuts, how far are we able to sustain a living sense of loyalty to each other, a real willingness to bear the load together? ….. [W]e can and will as a society bear hardship if we are confident that it is being fairly shared; and we shall have that confidence only if there are signs that everyone is committed to their neighbour, that no-one is just forgotten, that no interest group or pressure group is able to opt out. That confidence isn't in huge supply at the moment, given the massive crises of trust that have shaken us all in the last couple of years and the lasting sense that the most prosperous have yet to shoulder their load”.

Christmas speaks of “God with us”, specifically in the mission of Jesus who has total solidarity with us. St Paul calls the Church “one Body” in which “if one suffers, all suffer”. So in solidarity with Jesus and one another we go through the trials of Lent, fighting the dark powers; and Easter proclaims that as Jesus the Christ is raised to new life, so we are raised with Him.

It might well be said that as a nation and a global community we are in a deep Lent, and Rowan Williams’ words translate Christian belief into the present challenge, that all members of the community shoulder their fair share of he pain.

One can see why the Conservative press took umbrage, but for those of us who know and live by the truth that Christmas, Lent and Easter do not come and go but are knit into our daily lives, his words makes perfect sense.

Sort Of - God's Action in the World

2011-07-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

All Things Bright

On Trinity Sunday, one of the hymns at the Eucharist was All things Bright and Beautiful. I cannot recall when I last sang this hymn, but it produced in me a great flood of nostalgia; together with Away in a Manger I think it is one of the first hymns I learned in Kindergarten and our somewhat tuneless voices squeaked through it at least once a week.

The eight o’clock congregation at St Peter’s, Lewes, is totally atypical for such a service , particularly in the UK, but also in a fair number of Episcopal parishes: the church is full, the average age does not hover around 72 (which is probably a conservative norm for most “8 O’clocks”), the singing, led by a very competent organist, is lusty and does not drag, and, most blessed of all, this congregation is not shackled to Rite I (not to mention those who still regard the 1928 Book of Common Prayer as a Textus Receptus).

What was I Hearing?

With all this is mind, it is not surprising that I found myself singing more heartily than my now rather croaky tenor has achieved in years. “Each little flower that opens … the purple headed mountain … the cold wind in the winter”: verse after verse, I belted out the words, perhaps, for a fleeting fragment of a second glimpsing some of the wonder of a five-year old, but certainly for a moment transported to a less complicated state. As we got into the third verse, however, I sensed a sort of descant, not the one provided in the Hymnal music, which doubtless for artistic and not theological reasons, shortens “the Lord (should it be LORD?)† God” to a simple God –El(ohim) ; clearly the complexities of J & E were not an issue for Cecil Frances Alexander. I listened through the billows of enthusiastic sound. What was the descant? “In a manner of speaking. Sort of, but don’t let that matter”.

What Caused the Echo?

Luckily, there was an excellent sermon on the Trinity (“Who says, ‘Oh my Trinity’ when presented with a brand new kitchen?), or I should have spent the rest of the time mulling over the words of the descant and trying to work out what I really do with liturgical texts that pitch fork one back to an intellectual norm of two and a half centuries ago. Of course, the consideration of liturgical texts is a relatively innocuous occupation, but the boat begins to rock seriously when one moves to dogmatic and formulaic texts, and then, inevitably, to scriptural ones.

The reasons for the echo descant in my head are far too great in number and enmeshed in complexity even to begin to ‘unpack’ here: I suspect that that would need a full autobiography, which would, inevitably, not get at the many influences to which I am blind. Suffice it say that I moved from a childhood only tenuously connected to “Church” (and it was made clear to me that “Chapel” was not ‘our kind of thing’). I was of course Christened, i.e. baptized, and confirmed, but it was not until I was in the Royal Navy, aged 18 and training to be a Radar Mechanic, that I came into contact with the tiny Christian community served by a remarkable C. of E. Chaplain on a Naval station of almost 2000 trainees of various kinds. I suppose I moved from a kind of Deism (developed by hours of discussion in my latter years at school), to a kind of C.S. Lewisian and rather aggressively “orthodox” position. The typical Chesterton/Lewis/Greene/Belloc position was that it could only be 'invincible ignorance' that prevented people seeing the obvious superiority of Roman Catholic claims, going with a rather superior attitude towards “heretics”. C.S. Lewis’ remark is fairly typical (and slick) that if one approached the N.T. with an open mind one could only reach the conclusion that Jesus was God (sic) or mad.

Reassessing Ideas about God

It was at several years into my theological training before I completely escaped the dogmatic blinkers imposed by Lewis’s kind of Christian apologetic, a trajectory that has continued now for over 40 years with, it seems to me, an accelerated pace in the last decade.
A bumper sticker I have seen recently might sum it up, - except for the fact I didn’t have a car as a theological student: “My karma ran over my dogma”.

So behind the descant is a long development. The trigger for its appearance at “the Lord God made them all” resulted from a great deal of reassessing of orthodox views concerning the transcendence/immanence of God, the Christological dogmas of the fifth century, the nature of Christian prayer and a renewed tussle with the issues of theodicy.
Perhaps the immediate trigger was the feeling that the author of this rollicking hymn clearly took for granted a God who on a regular basis “meddled with the molecules” to borrow a phrase of David Jenkins. In a book with the rather quirky title, God, Miracle and the Church of England. On p. 61 he asks, “Did God push the Emperor Theodosius off his horse on 28July 450?” [This accident had significant historical and theological consequences, particularly in the framing of Christological dogma.]

How Does God Interact with the Universe?

This is not a frivolous question; it is, in effect, asking how does God interact with the universe; I assume that if one wishes to remain within the broadest perimeter of a definition of a Christian Theologian, one accepts as axiomatic some form of divine origin for the Universe.
At the same time, if one is not to remain a purveyor of formularies that depend on an understanding of the physical universe that is no longer in any sense tenable, the need for theological recasting of the central tenets of the Christian faith is urgent and paramount.

Even decades after the geological writings of Charles Lyell (Principles of Geology, 1830-33), Charles Darwin (Origin of Species, 1859), and a host of physicists, astronomers and chemists, conservative theologians, that is, the vast majority outside a few German universities, had hardly budged since the 14th century. The uproar over David Jenkins', views (particularly after his appointment as Bishop of Durham) suggests that more clergy than one would suppose have not come to grips with the total shift of world-view which any serious theologian must face. So far as the “person in the street” is concerned, we have daily evidence that this is the case; almost every day we see someone on TV, standing in a scene of desolation, giving thanks that God saved their house alone out of a row of a dozen.

God not an Arbitrary Meddler

David Jenkins writes, “Unless we can be clear that between the scientific and historical causalities of the universe and of the world on the one hand and the actions and transactions of God with persons on the other there is a space, then the problem of evil is absolutely overwhelming. I personally would sympathize with those who find evil overwhelming in any case. But as a Christian who believes that there is a real and basic sense in which God interacts with the world as he is in Jesus, I do not believe this. Nonetheless I am increasingly clear that God is not an arbitrary meddler nor an occasional fixer.” (p.63).

The Hymn with my Descant

In the light of all this, I hope it might be clear why my mentally edited version of All Things went like this

Refrain

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

Descant 1: In a manner of speaking

v. 1 Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.

Descant 2: So to speak

It is rather unlikely that you will find the following verse in most contemporary Hymnals, though I am thinking of ‘main-line’ churches, and it is clearly a sentiment that would not be seen as outrageous by some (many?) of our millionaire Senators. It certainly seems to be a Republican Party strategy to keep things more or less this way.

v. 2 The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Descant 3: Join the tea party

The following four verses envision God pushing up the mountains (no tectonic plates), keeping the sun on time, apparently fashioning not just whole fruit trees, but each apple, pear or plum –

The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.

Descants 1 & 2 are repeated alternately at the end of each following verse.

In closing, it must be remembered that the hymn was written specifically for children who are unlikely to be bothered with issues of divine omnipotence and omniscience. Still, it raises something like the Santa Claus question at a much more serious level. After all, it is quite unusual to meet even a ten-year old who thinks it is worth putting out milk and cookies for Santa, whereas fully grown men and women go through life with images and concepts of God that affect them at every level. Would it be too absurd to suggest that such unreal ideas can cause governmental paralysis?

_________________

† LORD, in upper case characters is used in most contemporary English bible translations when the original Hebrew has the name of God, i.e. JHWH, mistakenly transcribed by the earliest translators like Tyndale as Jehovah.
In the early parts of the O.T. it was noticed (early 17th century C.E.) that sometimes the word God (El) alone was used - Gen. 5.1 and several hundred more! – and at others, the name of God was added – Gen. 3.1 ditto. This was one of the early clues that the first five books of the O.T., the Pentateuch, were by no means a single work (authored by Moses), but were made up of many elements.
Sections with El alone were called the “E” source, and those with the added name JHWH were designated “J

____________________________________

Part II of this essay will consider the “so to speak” aspect of reading the Chalcedonian Definition. Mercifully, that text has never, so far as I know, been included for congregational use in the Liturgy, though the Athanasian Creed, which is neither by Athanasius, not, strictly speaking, a Creed was mandatory for use at least three times a year in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. (In the 1552 Book, it was called for at least a dozen times a year).
The Theological College (Seminary) I attended in the UK of 1950s, dutifully followed the rubric, plumbing the depths of liturgical torture on Trinity Sunday when the thing was chanted in Plainsong. When we reached the passage which goes :
Such as the Father is, such is the Son : and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate : and the Holy Ghost uncreate. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible : and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible,
the plainsong at least covered the sotto voce chorus/descant,
“The whole damn thing incomprehensible”.

Part II will take as its starting point John Hicks’ The Metaphor of God Incarnate.

Eucharistic Spirituality

2011-05-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

A Lecture given at All SS Episcopal Church, Rehoboth, Delaware in Lent 2011.
Anyone who knows the works of Joachim Jeremias, Dominic Crossman and Marcus Borg will recognize my great debt to these scholars, though doubtless, many others of my past teachers also can be overheard; this is especially true of Roland Walls, who died recently. He was a great New Testament scholar, and my first guide to the study of the Gospels and Epistles.

What is 'Spirituality'?

A consideration of what part the Eucharist plays in the spiritual life might help us to get a better understanding of what “spirituality” means. I say this because I sometimes get the impression that the popular use of the word is to express something ethereal, something untouched by the messiness of matter. It also often seems to imply an activity, or perhaps an attitude, that is intensely private, solitary and personal; if this really were the case, it seems fairly clear that the Eucharist, which is public, corporate, shared, would not be all that helpful in the spiritual life.
Since it is fairly generally agreed that the Eucharist is an essential factor in living the Christian life, it seems that we need to have a rather clearer understanding of what precisely we are talking about when we use the phrase, “the spiritual life”.

Meaning of 'Spiritual Life'

The word itself has acquired a much broader meaning in the contemporary religious scene than it has in the biblical writings. This can, I think, be illustrated by browsing the “religious” section of any sizeable bookshop. In the sub-section labeled “Spirituality”, we shall find books on Yoga; cosmic meditations; the importance of crystals in the spiritual life, and, quite probably books on “self improvement” through spiritual exercises. Now, I do not want to belittle this very broad understanding of spirituality, and it is laudable that people seek for goals beyond a crass materialism. My point is that this is not what is meant when we speak of “eucharistic spirituality”.
So before directing our thoughts to the Eucharist, I want very briefly to look at the way the spirit is presented in the Bible.

Spirit in the O.T.

In the very first paragraph of the O.T. writings the book of Genesis gives a kind of preface to the long story of God’s dealing with humanity, we hear the words:
“Darkness covered the face of the abyss while the breath of God swept over the chaos”. (Gen. 1.2)

In Hebrew the word is ru’ach. This is the Spirit of God, and it is used to describe God acting in and on the material universe. It is the dynamic behind all the living things that appear as the story goes on. But the early bard/theologians focused particularly on human beings. In the first account, humans are said it be in the “image of God”, endowed with reason, will and conscience; in the second account, God breathes into “his nostrils the breath (ru’ach) of life”. The Hebrew understanding of human nature was very different from the that developed in Greek philosophy: the giving of God’s breath (spirit) did not create , as it were, two components for a human being, the material and the spiritual, but what we might call a psycho-somatic unity.

The Eucharist – Preliminary Points

It should, I think, be clear that this has profound implications for our understanding of “spirituality”, and we need to keep that in mind as we turn to consider the importance of the Eucharist in our understanding of spirituality. Louis Weil begins an essay on the Eucharist by saying,
“ [T]he eucharist is the action which most fully embodies the many dimensions of the Christian faith” (Christianity, Complete Guide p.395).

This is an excellent characterization of the Eucharist; I would like, however, to amplify the phrase “many dimensions” by an explicit mention of the dimension of prayer. It seems to me that the eucharistic service is one of the best frameworks for prayer that we have. It is important to note that this refers to the service as a whole and not just to a few sentences, the so-called ‘words of consecration’, that became the center both of bitter controversy and also an incredibly narrow kind of spirituality; I will return later to consider this point.

Eucharist – Medieval

We tend to see the Eucharist viewed through the lens of the medieval period, but by the fourth century much of the original context and significance of the early church’s celebration had been transmuted into an intense concentration on the Presence of Jesus in the elements of bread and wine. Moreover an actual eating of even a symbolic meal at Communion (‘making my Communion’) became extremely rare. The congregation stood around in the pew-less nave until the bell sounded: then all attention was on the elevated Host and Chalice. One of the main targets for the Reformers’ discontent (to put it mildly) with the established church was the many aspects of the Mass, which they believed had significantly departed from primitive practice, and, more importantly, from the foundational beliefs of the earliest communities. In this they were more or less correct, but since the Reformation, we have learned a great deal more about the background to the Eucharist, about the views of the early believers and about the way they celebrated this central act of worship. Their insight is,however, clearly expressed in the re-naming of the Mass as the “Last Supper”.

Meals in Judaism & the N.T.

It is on the central importance of the meals, not just the final one, however, that Jesus shared with his closest followers to which I want to direct our attention. It is here, I believe, that we can see most clearly the meaning of the Eucharist for the Church, and it is here that we understand its unique importance for our corporate and individual spirituality. It is here, too, that we penetrate a good deal of later, overlaid material, and get to the heart of Jesus’ message: something one might suppose was important for our own spirituality.
I think we all appreciate the social importance of meals we share together; there are the gatherings for big occasions, Christmas, a birthday, or a victory celebration of a football club. But on a much more regular basis we share family meals, though we hear increasing laments that they are an endangered species. For a majority in contemporary society these meals have great social significance, but no religious connotation. When we turn to Jewish society in Palestine at the time of Jesus’ ministry, nothing could be further from the truth.

Food as Total Sustenance

The Hebrew understanding of human nature as a material and spiritual amalgam meant that a shared meal nourished the whole person, not just the muscles and other tissue. It should be noted, however, that ‘amalgam’ is hardly strong enough: there is no hint of “mixture” in Hebrew thought. Thus, as Judaism developed from an early Israelite base, meals began and ended with a “blessing”, which in Hebrew means a thanksgiving. The first thanksgiving was when the host broke up a large pita-like bread. It could be your own prayer, but various fixed forms also developed which thanked for the bounty of the earth and for sustaining us, but often included metaphorical extensions. One was a prayer for the gathering back together of all the Jews scattered in the Diaspora of the 5th to 2nd centuries. Wine had also become part of the normal diet, though meat (lamb or goat) was normally served only on festival occasions. Most obviously, a Lamb dish was an essential ingredient in the most special meal of the year, the Passover. Just as the breaking of the bread was invariably accompanied by a Thanksgiving, so the first cup of wine was blessed before being shared round, as was a final one at the end. (It may be that Luke’s puzzling variation, where he adds a second cup, may be closer to the actual form of the Last Supper) The prayers connected with the cup, often reminded those present of the vine as a symbol for Israel.

Jesus’ Meals – Key to Understanding the Message

As scholars have discovered more and more about the life and religion of Judaism, it has become clear that it is a mistake to concentrate all our attention on the final meal that Jesus shared with his disciples: it was, rather, the last of a long sequence. True, it was special, and Jesus gave, as was customary, a special Passover Thanksgiving for the shared bread and the common cup, but it had a very clear context in the life of that embryonic community.
There are far more references to Jesus’ table fellowship, both during his ministry and after his execution than you might realize. Furthermore, the reports of his radical actions are often linked to these meals: he did not follow the required ritual of hand washing (Mk. 7.1-5; Mt. 11.35); here, as is often the case in the recording of Jesus’ meals, some central teaching is delivered at the meal; he points out that hate and a whole catalogue of sins do not come from the food we eat, but from a disordered human will; so Mark comments, “Jesus declared all food clean”, a radical rejection of Judaism.
The rules of fellowship not only decreed what you could and could not eat, they also regulated with whom you could share a meal. In his practice Jesus was, in effect, giving an answer to a pressing contemporary question: “Who is a true member of the chosen People of God?” His answer was so radical that it was one of the main factors in his eventual execution as a heretic. Everyone is a member of God’s family he said, even those who are excluded by your purity laws. This is clear in Mt. 9.10f:
“As he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collector and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples”.

The Pharisees began to criticize and ask the disciples why Jesus flaunts the traditions and laws. Jesus hears this and responds,
“Those who are well do not need a doctor, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous but sinners”.

An Inclusive Community

It is also clear that the issue of Jesus’ table fellowship was a focus of orthodox criticism as a saying recorded by Mt, & Lk. makes clear. John came, he said and because he was ascetic you accused him of demonic fanaticism;
I am here enjoying the spiritual blessing of shared meals and you say: “‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”. (Lk. 7.31ff.). Marcus Borg sums up the importance of Jesus’ teaching and actions as follows:

“[T]he meals of Jesus embodied his alternative vision of an inclusive community. The ethos of compassion led to an inclusive table fellowship, just as the ethos of purity led to a closed table fellowship. Ultimately the meals of Jesus are the ancestor of the Christian eucharist”. (On Meeting Jesus Again 1994, p.56).

Inclusive Teaching & Acts

Once we understand the importance of these table fellowship stories, much else in the acts and teachings of Jesus becomes clearer. So many of the parables make the point: the Good Samaritan story rejects racism; the Prodigal Son teaches God’s acceptance of sinners; the Laborers in the Vineyard says clearly that supposing one belongs to a specially favored group is an illusion
Not only does Jesus’ teaching reject exclusiveness, so do many of his actions: healing lepers and mad people was, in effect, bringing them back into God’s family from which Judaic purity laws excluded them. Perhaps the most dramatic statement in action is Jesus’ turning out the tourist traders who had virtually taken over the court of the Gentiles; quoting Isaiah Jesus drove them out, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations” (Mk.1.17).
The idea that unclean Gentiles should have access to Judaism’s holy place must have caused a good number of pursed lips and narrow looks.

All this is quite enough to explain the fury of the orthodox establishment, which led to the decision to get rid of such a heretic.
And at the end, Mark has an editorial comment of staggering insight. As Jesus died, Mark reports, “The veil of the Temple was rent in two”. The Holy of Holies is opened to all people. Everyone is called to come into the Kingdom of God.

The Eucharist and the Church

Here we have all the ingredients that went to produce the act of worship, which both gave solidarity to the embryonic movement, but also was a powerful formative influence in its growth. There is just one more factor of paramount importance: it was the occasions after his death when the gathered disciples are reported to have been assured of his presence with them, (which in rather an academic way are labeled “Resurrection Appearances”); significantly several of these are in the context of sharing food (Lk. 24.41ff; Jn. 21.9ff.). Most important is the account of the meeting on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24.30f) which ends with Luke’s reporting that “He was known to them in the breaking of the bread”: in effect, they recognized that the Risen Jesus was still presiding at their table fellowship, still offering them the assurance of God’s love, still reminding them of the love in action in making people whole again and still calling the whole of humanity to come into the realm of God’s loving rule.

Summing Up

Where, then, do we look to find Eucharistic spirituality? Although it might not seem so, I think I have been demonstrating the answer all the way through.
Let me try in a few brief theses to highlight the salient points.

1) At the centre of the Eucharist is the Resurrection faith;

2) At the center of Jesus’ life is the long tradition of Hebrew religion, particularly the teaching of the Prophets, but illuminated by a deep and personal closeness to God.

3) At the center of the ministry of Jesus is a devoted group of disciples who regularly share their fellowship at the common meal, to which, contrary to tradition, all are welcome.

4) The openness of these meals is all of a piece with Jesus’ teaching and message. All people are the children of God, not just a chosen race. The God with whom Jesus is seen to be intimately close is a compassionate God who requires justice and love in all human dealings, and whose will it is to unite humanity under the Rule of God.

5) Several sayings in the reliable traditions of Jesus’ teaching, use the common meal as a metaphor for the end age, the completing of God’s plan and the banishing of sin.

6) The shared meals gave material and spiritual sustenance, provided by the food eaten and the fellowship shared: they are spirituality for the whole person.

7) After his death, the disciples re-assemble and continue the table fellowship with the deep conviction that Jesus still presides at the meal, reinforcing his teaching, reminding them of the parables and leading them into new insights.

At this point I need to break into the list of theses to mention, however briefly, the important place of the Holy Spirit in all parts of the N.T. References are most apparent in the Fourth Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul’s letters, strongly suggesting the importance of this dynamic force at work in the earliest communities. There is not time to look further, but it is important to note that the concept had considerable fluidity at this early stage. The Holy Spirit is not always distinguished from the Spirit of the Risen Lord, and Paul often makes little distinction between the Holy Spirit (of later doctrine) and the Spirit of Christ. So to the final thesis:
8) In the service that came to be known as the Eucharist, the gathered community were sure of the Presence of Jesus, the Savior and Messiah; this was the same as the Presence of God’s Spirit among them, the very Spirit that breathed over the waters of chaos, bringing into being an ordered universe; the very same spirit that God breathed into humans, forming them in the divine image.

The Spirituality of the Eucharist

The Spirituality of the Eucharist is that we gather in table fellowship, as big and small communities have gathered, first in Europe, and then world-wide: in that gathering, we are intensely aware that this Presence and this Power are with us, and at every Eucharist we are reminded that this sacramental sharing is a foretaste of the heavenly Banquet, to which God calls all people:

“In the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ, and bring us to that heavenly country where with all your saints, we may enter the everlasting heritage of your sons ad daughters” (Eucharistic Prayer B, B.C.P. p.396).

All Things Necessary for Salvation

2011-03-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

Centrality of the Bible

A predominant and recurring theme in An Anglican Communion Covenant (1) is the references to the “Scripture(s)” as necessary for salvation. This assertion is found twice in the Introduction to the Covenant Text, and thirteen times in the text itself. This number of references in a relatively brief document surely suggests that the framers regard assent to the Scriptures as one of the major unifying factors for the holding together of a diverse collection of autonomous churches. (2)

In this, they are clearly correct: the animadversion to this centrality is entirely laudable and firmly in the normative Anglican tradition, as the various footnotes clearly show. The biblical writings have long been accepted as one of the primary “legs” of the C of E (later on, the Anglican Communion) stool; the second leg, tradition, is something of a slippery character, but the third, reason, has enabled most Anglican scholars to resist pressures to prop up an irrational approach to the canonical writings. It is almost a reflex reaction to refer to the Scriptures when defining the characteristics of the Church that finally emerged from the Elizabethan Settlement.
The phrase has proved very useful, since it can cover a multitude of hermeneutical positions. Herein, however, is the difficulty that its over-arching presence in the Anglican Covenant presents.

How do We Read the Bible Today?
Is it not incumbent on those who want assent to a strict uniformity from all parts and shades of the Anglican community, to give some indication of the way many contemporary Anglicans read the Scriptures, as compared with the way a vast majority read them towards the end of the nineteenth century? Indeed, in 1888, the date of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, a century of study and critical assessment had already passed, but this movement had moved much more slowly in Britain and the USA than in Germany, and the memory of the outrage following the publication of Essays and Reviews (3) was still very much alive among the Bishops.

It is true that the Covenant ¶ 1.2.4 , as it were, takes brief glance out of the window as the train rushes by, but the paragraph takes the Anglican principle of saying as little as possible as vaguely as possible to new heights. I would be quite happy with that, but the whole point of this document seems to be radically to alter that long and useful tradition. In the light of this, I think we need to take some time to assess as accurately as possible what modes of reading the scriptures are commonly practiced by 21st century Anglicans.

Honest to God Furore

One might begin by recalling the uproar that followed the publication of John Robinson’s Honest to God (SCM Press 1963). John Robinson was by then Bishop of Woolwich, and this was an added cause for outrage among conservatives. The truth is, however, as many of John’s defenders pointed out, that there was nothing in the book that had not long been said again and again in University Lecture Halls, Tutorials and Seminars. In the UK the connection between University Theology Departments and the training of Ordinands was nowhere near as strong as in Germany; nevertheless, several leading Theological Colleges (US English – Seminaries) were in Universities, and the Faculty of the others, often set in a Cathedral close, had been educated in exactly the same approach to the Old and New Testaments as had Robinson himself. It was the hermeneutical norm of the Theological Colleges with the exception of about half a dozen Conservative Evangelical colleges: Wycliffe Hall, Oxford; Ridley, Cambridge; Oak Hill, London: Clifton, Bristol and two or three more.

Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was in a difficult position; he had had a brilliant academic career, first as Sub Warden of Lincoln Theological College (where I first got to know him) and then as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. His own writings took for granted the methods of historical criticism, but in this instance he was forced to give an official reprimand, and said that these issues should be pursued in the privacy of a Don’s rooms.

Robert Morgan & John Barton on Interpreting the Bible

Robert Morgan and John Barton give an excellent survey of the development of biblical interpretation from the end of the eighteenth century to almost the end of the twentieth in their book, Biblical Interpretation, Oxford 1988.
One of the recurring themes is the importance of holding together the biblical accounts and theological constructs (which involves the religious use of the texts by members of a believing community). When the biblical record was accepted more or less tout court it provided a foundation for the structure of Catholic dogma – Trinity, Christology, Soteriology and the rest, a doctrinal system universally accepted and the basis for the religious life of Christian communities. What happened in the 19th century, beginning with Strauss’s Life of Jesus, was fatally to undermine that foundation:

“For most Protestants, even in Germany, the truth of Christianity depended to an extent now difficult to imagine on a belief in the inspired holy scripture, free of all error”. Strauss showed that “this view was no longer generally held in university theology and among the educated: in some sense, the bible might be inspired; inerrant it evidently was not”. (46).

The authors’ phrase, “now difficult to imagine” is, in effect, the agendum for the rest of the book. They demonstrate clearly, how, by the end of the nineteenth century, the historicity of the gospels had been thoroughly examined, and how clear it is that the Fourth Gospel is almost a different genre from the Synoptic Gospels. This was a major factor in the rejection of the old dogmatic structure since it is in the Fourth Gospel alone that Jesus is heard to proclaim his own divinity.

“The historian investigating Jesus is greatly helped by having four sources…Comparison of these lies at the heart of critical study”. The painstaking analytical work made crystal clear “the contradictions between the accounts, especially between John and the Synoptics. … The centuries-long practice of Gospel harmonization is now discredited, though far from dead”. (64).

The Anglican Storm

I have added the italics to pinpoint the eye of the storm sweeping across the Anglican sky. Virtually all the vortices of the present storm go back to Christians who have not been able to come to terms with the historical, literary, sociological and scientific developments of the last two centuries.
The fundamental opposition to the ordination of women is grounded by an appeal to scripture; the insistence that homosexuality is a sinful aberration springs from the interpretation of a few texts; the rejection of evolutionary biology relies on the dogmatic framework that collapsed long ago. All these conflicts and many more result, ultimately, from the clash of views on how the Scriptures can (perhaps, should) be read some two centuries after new historical methods have increasingly revealed that the biblical records could not hold up the massive doctrinal superstructure that had been erected on them.

Revising Theology
Morgan and Barton, as I noted, are consistently concerned to show us how successive generations have attempted to hold together the results of historical criticism with a reasonable theology that will make sense to their contemporary readers. I quote one of the many passages which centers on this important task:

“ [A] theologian has to show that these texts are speaking of God, i.e. the God that he or she acknowledges. A theologian cannot, like a historian, rest content with having described someone else’s religion… In order to fulfill this further theological task… it is necessary to use language, which is not only appropriate to the texts, but which the modern interpreter also deems appropriate to the subject matter. Since theologians understand the subject-matter of the Bible as the transcendent God, who lays claim to them too, theological interpretation has to use the language in which the modern interpreters themselves speak of God. Conservative theologians, who are happy to express their own faith in purely biblical terms, have no problem here; they can simply repeat Paul’s language. But liberals, conscious of the difference in world-view between themselves and Paul, are more aware of the problem of translation or interpretation”. (73)

This, it strikes me is a moderate and calm, not unfriendly view of Fundamentalism. I think it sad that in so many places in the world, people either do not know the facts, or knowing them, are unwilling or unable to face up to them. This second case must surely be true for the churches of Europe and the USA, and I cannot escape the feeling that what we are seeing is a power play in which the Covenant plan is to some extent complicit. In the UK particularly, Evangelicals felt aggrieved by their gradual loss of power from the mid nineteenth until the end of WWII.

They believed that an increasing number of Anglo Catholic and Moderate Bishops were being appointed; that, perhaps because of this, there were fewer preferments to “plum” parishes for Evangelic clergy, and that the increasing solidification of the “centre” with a growing consensus of moderate Catholicism was presenting a church with liturgies and ceremonials of a quasi popish kind: too many candles, too many vestments and even spaces for private confession.

I can remember well, in the earliest phase of my education in theology and history in what might be called a Theological College catholic orientation, though with a lower case ‘c’, witnessing a resurgence of evangelicalism. It seemed as though the Puritan movement was waking after a long sleep, induced perhaps by James 1st’s riposte, “No Bishops, No King”.

Twentieth Century Developments

Before returning to consider the Covenant itself, it is important to note that the task of interpreting the Bible in the light of the flood of new information did not stop at the beginning of the 20th century. Indeed, several highly important and suggestive techniques have developed: Form Criticism, Redaction Criticism, the increasing importance of Sociology in historical study, and a great deal of work on the development of early Christianity, resulting from a new understanding of the importance of the non-canonical writings.
From all this study, a new understanding of the centrality of the community has emerged. Older concepts of “getting to heaven” were clearly less important to the earliest disciples than Jesus’ central teaching about the Rule (Kingdom) of God so pointedly set out in the parables when allegorisation was recognized and discounted. The conservative view of Form Criticism and other approaches to the understanding of the biblical texts is that they are “faithless” and undermine the trust of ‘ordinary’ believers. The truth is that while it is clear that we know a good deal less about the actual course of Jesus’ ministry than was assumed before the nineteenth century, that we cannot assume the words of Jesus in the long discourses of the Fourth Gospel are actual verba Christi, and that not only the Fourth Gospel, but also the Synoptics are under girded by not one theological position, but several, there have also been great gains.

What we have Gained
One of Christianity’s strong claims is that its faith and practice grew out of a real historical context: it was not just another form of the pervasive nature myths of the Mediterranean world. Its positions, therefore, are vulnerable to historical investigation and, indeed, disproof. The critical scholarship of the last two centuries means that we do not have to fight to maintain a position that very few cotemporaries think is a rational one: very few but by no means all, and therein lies the conflict.

Among the other very many gains, we note the greater appreciation for the central place of the early Community: its understanding of this loving, enabling man who revitalized the prophet message of God’s demands for justice, care for the weak and sick, who, indeed, stood accepted criteria of success and power on their head, and taught, in his open table fellowship ,an inclusiveness that Christians have so easily and quickly forgotten. It was as though all they could know of God they saw in Jesus, whom they soon came to call the Anointed One.

Looking beyond the confines of the New Testament we now understand much more about the development of this earliest Community. We understand why “orthodoxy” seems to have overwhelming historical support. Archaeological finds like Nag Hammad i suggest a more varied and complex scene; orthodoxy won and ensured that the records showed it was really the only choice.
We know, too, an immense amount more about the Hellenistic age and can identify its considerable influence both on the development of the New Testament writings and on the doctrinal gestation period of the first four or five centuries C.E.

Both Too Little & Too Much

It seems to me that the phrase, “the results of rigorous study” (Covenant 1.2.4) cannot possibly be adequate to encompass the significance of the development I have so briefly outlined, and which Barton and Morgan lay out for us in great and telling detail. It would, of course, be absurd to expect a short quasi-legal document to present the situation in a succinct paragraph, and this suggests to me the wrong-headedness of a “Confessional” approach. The history of required oaths for a specific and often narrow political or religious position is not a happy one; the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 is a good example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solemn_League_and_Covenant), and the anti-Modernist oath of 1910 is another; this remained in force until the 1960s, stifling genuine biblical study in the Roman church.

If those who believe in a rational approach to biblical interpretation sign on, they run the risk of compromising scholarly integrity; and, in any case, those who take a less rational approach will continue will to insist on an immutable interpretation of the texts and demand the exclusion of those who do not share their position. Ostensibly, this will be on issues like the ordination of women and the accepting of homosexuals: in fact it will be about how we can read the scriptures in 2011.

1) See: No Anglican Covenant Anglicans for Comprehensive Unity

2) Most of these, by the way, are no longer Provinces as in the mid-nineteenth century when Bishop Colenso’s case ultimately arrived at the Privy Council, though the occasional use of ‘Province’ in the Covenant suggests a certain backward (nostalgic?) glance. It is odd that some still wish to be called a Province with its colonial overtones.

3) This book of essays was published just a few months before Origin of the Species, and the ensuing storm over an historical “attack” on the Bible, somewhat delayed the reaction to yet another from science, though when it came, it was even more virulent.

See my essay on “Anglican Polity & New Knowledge”:

4) The Birth Narratives are good example of continuing harmonization: angels, shepherds, lowing cattle and eastern Sages all appear as in a scripted Nativity play. Two of the gospels have no narratives about Jesus’ birth (unless you count “the Word was made flesh"), and Luke and Matthew have widely divergent accounts.

Shaping Jesus

2011-01-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

The following was delivered at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Rehoboth, Delaware, the first lecture in the 2010 Advent series. The overall theme was “Shaping Jesus”. Lecture 1: The Context of his Life & Work

I) INTRODUCTION

a) In this kind of quest, one is always faced first with the question, “Where shall we begin?” If you consider the life situation in which you find yourself, the innumerable factors at work almost deny analysis, though most of us can discern the more dominant influences. This ad hominem approach suggest a long list of questions we need to ask: where was I born, when was I born, what kind of parents did I have, and, come to that, what kind did they have? With that last question the field has already opened out to six individuals, four grandparents and two parents.

b) The task of finding and defining the influences that shaped Jesus is infinitely harder than the process required for a more or less contemporary person. Genetic factors are powerful, but the influences of geography, history, culture and religion are also immense. In the case of Jesus, we are dealing with a long past history, with a culture that is very different from ours and a religion that was by no means the monolithic structure that is the more traditional picture of Judaism.

II) THE REAL HUMANITY

Furthermore, there is a salient question that must be addressed before we can go any further. It is to what degree we are still tied to a pre- modern, dogmatic view of Jesus, of the church that emerged and the causes of the march of events that produce the narratives of history. It is a rather loose generalization, but, I think largely true that a pre-Enlightenment view of the matter would suggest that asking what shaped Jesus was a non-question: there can be only one influence in the shaping of Jesus, the divine plan that arranges everything in the appropriate sequences, and directs history like a puppet master. The post-Enlightenment view, is that history has its own dynamics and reports of what happened cannot always be taken at face value.

A surprising number of conservative Christians still hold the “puppet master” view, and, therefore, they would say to ask what shaped Jesus is unnecessary or absurd, perhaps even blasphemous. This approach is, of course, firmly linked to the Christological issue. That is, how Jesus can be thought of as divine and also human. In spite of protesting very loudly that they do not approve of monophysitism, a heresy condemned in the fifth century (which, very roughly, sees Jesus as fundamentally a divine being with a human apparatus, possibly temporary, cf. the Carol, “Veiled in flesh, the God head see”), conservatives have tended in practice to emphasize the divine and fudge stories that show Jesus as human, as fallible, for example, statements that indicate that Jesus, unsurprisingly, held a pre-critical view of Old Testament authorship such as assuming that David ‘wrote’ all the Psalms. The more extreme are quite happy to talk about God traveling around Galilee, a remark I heard from a Televangelist the other day: the question of blisters on the foot or sun stroke was not addressed; presumably this god was immune from the “thousand shocks and heart aches the flesh is heir to”.

III) SHAPING INFLUENCES

i) Important Clarifications

With an intelligent, open-minded audience at the start of the 21st century, I feel sure that I can assume a solid belief in the complete humanity of Jesus. Much of importance follows from this, since it puts Jesus in an historical context, subject to the usual pushing and pulling of human development. It suggests that we cannot always take at face value the picture of Jesus we find in the gospels, particularly the Fourth one. This is not to say that we have nothing left with which to form a picture of Jesus, the Galilean preacher, but it does mean that we need always to beware that many influences were at work to form the books we call gospels that were not, repeat not, formative forces for the shaping of Jesus from Nazareth.

We also have other sources: writings of Roman historians, (remembering that “history” here means something rather different from today); Jewish writings, like the Talmud, the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran) and a Jewish soldier historian, Josephus, and we should not forget the valuable contributions of significant archeological finds all of which paint the background for us in general terms, though the actual mentions of Jesus outside the pages of the N.T. are sparse indeed until we get to the second century C.E.

ii) The Shaping Influences –Culture, Politics, Religion & History

If we ask what was the primary force shaping my life, I suppose most would answer, my family, and this must have been true for Jesus.
It is important, however, to note that two of the gospels, Mark and John, say nothing about Jesus until he appears as a preacher. The other two, have stories about his birth, and only one Luke, says anything about him between his babyhood and a young boy who goes to Jerusalem with his parents. We know from Mark (3.31) that Jesus was not an only child, in spite of later dogmatic assertions. So what we know about Jesus’ early life is meager verging on next to nothing. We do, however, know enough of the typical family of the time to make some fairly solid assumptions. Time does not allow us to cover the many influences at work in any detail, and so the best I can do is to summarize the results of a century and a half of intense critical research that seem to have withstood minute examination and analysis.

(iii) Some Conclusions of Critical Study

Bethlehem may have been where Jesus was born, but, more probably, it is so designated as a result of strong, later theological presuppositions about the Davidic ancestors of Jesus. However, that he spent his youth, early manhood and ministry in Galilee is well attested by many direct and incidental references in the Synoptic gospels.
The fact that the family lived in Galilee is, perhaps, the most important fact that we know about the shaping of Jesus, and it is here that we need to examine the politics and religion that loomed large in his small world. It is also important to note that where one is brought up is as important as the kind of family that nurtured one.

We can, I believe, make the following assumptions with some confidence. I will later one suggest some significant references in the words of Jesus and in the editorial material about him that give weight to these assumptions. We may assume: that he attended the synagogue with his father and brothers (while his mother and sisters sat segregated); [See endnote on Synagogues in Galilee in First century C.E.];
that he worked on a tiny small holding of hardly more than an acre; that he was apprenticed to some trade or other (carpentry is as good a guess as any!);
that he spoke the lingua franca, Aramaic, but learnt a little Hebrew at the Synagogue, memorizing important passages, of the Torah and Prophets;
that living where he did (I will come too that soon) he might have had a tiny smattering of common Greek. He certainly had the experience of living in an occupied country under the domination of a powerful foreign military government.

(iv) The Distant Scene

• The origins of the Hebrew people are lost in the mists of time.
Disparate groups of Semitic nomads came together and gradually infiltrated into Palestine, bringing with them early sagas of their origins and the beginnings of a revolutionary way of thinking about God.

• By the tenth century, we see the emergence of a nation state, and, of paramount importance, the developing of a script for their language, an offshoot of north western Semitic. This period of the monarchy saw the appearance of the Prophets, establishing a firm basis for a unique view of God: not a god of caprice, who had to be flattered or appeased; not a god demanding rituals of the natural seasons, but a consistent and just God they called YHWH.

• The preaching of a whole line of prophets from Amos to Malachi established the revolutionary idea that God wanted justice, loyalty and love. Perhaps two and a half centuries of Prophetic teaching is best summed up in the succinct statement of Micah: “[W]hat does Yahweh require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness,, and to walk humbly with your God?” (6.8). The prophetic movement is truly one of the great advances of humankind. For the first time, in the West anyway, religion was seen to involve personal responsibility for others; it was no longer to be a matter of performing the correct ritual at the right time. By the time of Jesus, however, a second tradition had developed within Judaism that often eclipsed the insights of the Prophets. It was a central core of Jesus’ message that he took us back to the Prophets.

• In 586 BCE the nation state abruptly ended in an event that set a pattern for the Jewish people from then on. They were enslaved by the Babylonian empire. Escape from slavery is a dominant theme of the whole Hebrew Scriptures, and reappears in the NT. The early sagas had put at least some of the early Hebrews in Egypt as slaves, from where they had escaped. The story of the Exodus is paradigmatic for almost all the biblical writers.

• So when a century or so later when a few stragglers returned from Babylon (by then incorporated into a new empire of Persia) to a ruined Jerusalem, they thought in terms of a second liberation, a second Exodus. What they established, though, was a mere shadow of the earlier State of Israel, more like a religious community, centered on a re-built temple (stripped, as contemporaries lament, of all its precious adornments). Another momentous development resulted from the exile: it was the dispersion of Jews to other Mediterranean lands, a movement of immense importance for the future of Judaism and the spread of an embryonic Christianity. It was, however, the small group in Jerusalem that for the next few centuries forged the religion we call Judaism into which Jesus was born and in which he received his earliest religious ideas.

(v) Characteristics of this Community:

• It became the “people of a Book”. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries, the books of the O.T. were assembled and edited. There was no more a living voice of the Prophets declaring “Thus says Yahweh” delivering a stern message recalling Israel to its true religion. The final editors are known as the Priestly writers, and they stamped large tracts of the scriptures with their distinctive theology, a theology significantly different from that of the Prophets.

• It emphasized the need for the Jews to be quite separate from other cultures – qu’dosh, ‘holy’, has the root meaning ‘to separate’, thus to avoid any contamination of their absolute monotheism. In time, however, this became an assumption of superiority, a conviction that God cared only for Jews. Everyone else, ‘the Gentiles’ were outside the pale.

• With the finalizing of the scriptures, came a re-writing of the older laws to cover innumerable details of ritual and rules to keep “clean” from the great unwashed. Of course, the central core of the commandments was there, but it was now heavily overlaid. A new emphasis on the absolute holiness of the Sabbath is heard. The first creation story in Genesis is the work of the P(riestly) writers, and with its seven-day format, clearly exhibits their extraordinary insistence on the holiness of the Sabbath – one of the many ways of establishing Jewish identity and exclusiveness. The increased importance of the circumcision rite is another. This was to be an issue of central importance for Paul’s missionary work.

(vi) The Political Backdrop

• Several other characteristics of the Judaism of Jesus’ time are so intimately connected with politics and the play of international forces that we must take a look, however fleeting,

• The geography of Israel made it vulnerable to frequent foreign incursions and occupations. To the East was the series of Empires based on the Tigris/Euphrates river basin; to the West was Egypt, and for a thousand years the one tried to dominate the other, marching back and forth across a bridge formed by Palestine. Babylon, Persia, Alexander the Great, one after the other dominated the tiny state. After Alexander’s death one of his generals, Seleuceus and his successors, ruled Syria and subjugated Judea.

• One of the major legacies of Alexander’s brief ascendancy was to spread Greek language and culture widely round the Mediterranean and eastwards, almost to India.

• In around 160 BCE, the attempt to force the Jews into a Hellenistic pattern, produced a revolt led by the Macabees who after a long guerilla war gave the Jews about 60 years of independence.
This was a crucial period; the tiny state became a sort of theocracy ruled by the High Priestly families. It was at this time that the various religious parties known to us from the NT formed – the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes, to mention just a few.

• In 63 BCE, the Romans, pushing their borders eastwards, swallowed up Judaea with the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean seaboard. This was the situation when Jesus was born and for the whole of his ministry.

(vii) Religious & Economic Consequences

• As one power followed another, oppressing the Jews, they looked back to their glory days, particularly to David, and hoped and prayed for a new Davidic King. The word they used was messiach, - ‘anointed with oil’, the ancient rite of coronation. As the Roman domination repressed freedom, this hope burned brightly and produced a freedom movement. The remarkable things is that Jesus seems to have resisted any attempts to cast him in the role of Messiah as it was popularly understood, but messianic movements produced immense civil unrest and counter military measures.

• The last years of the century also saw great economic hardship. The only fertile land was a narrow coastal strip and it was heavily over-worked. The Roman presence produced a large slave population that made laboring work hard to find (cf. laborers in the vineyard parable), and taxes were a crushing burden, imposed both by the Jewish authorities, and the Romans.

IV CONCLUSIONS

The major forces at play were, (a) Judaism with its rigid legalism, yet instilling great reverence and the need for compassion. From the sayings of Jesus we know that he reacted against the legalism of official Judaism: “The Sabbath is made for people, not the other way round”. It seems that he also reacted against the narrow exclusiveness of Judaism, displaying a more tolerant attitude to Gentiles and taking note of women and children (who tended to be regarded as “non-persons”).

(b) Clearly he was strongly influenced by the reading of the Scriptures in the Synagogue, but in an amazing way, his teaching suggests that he went back behind the Priestly influences to the Prophetic core.

(c) He knew and shared in the burdens of foreign occupation, but remarkably refused to join in the popular resistance movement. “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”. Indeed, it is virtually certain that he advocated a stance of non-resistance.

(d) Perhaps more than anything else, his parables reflect the formative influences:

Agricultural life in a Galilean village (The sower, Mk. 4.1ff); J.Jeremias Points out that the details - stones collected year by year, piled at the edge; weeds soon growing there; a hard, trodden-down path, the result of a short-cut during the winter, - all these details give an accurate picture of typical ploughing and sowing methods.

The hardships of foreign occupation where press-gangs rounded men up; Mt 5.41 illustrates the occupation and Jesus’ admonition to do good to an enemy. A Centurion could press gang a group of men to carry baggage to the next village; one can hardly imagine the reaction of some hard-bitten veteran when the response to his barked “Fall out you dogs” was “Don’t go to the trouble of pressing a new squad; we’ve done one mile, we’ll do a second”

The Good Samaritan (Lk.10.29) illustrates both Judaic exclusiveness and Jesus’ rejection of it. The Prodigal son story (15.11ff) makes the point of God’s wide compassion for all.

The hardship of the day laborer is clearly seen in the parable of the farmer hiring men who gather in the market square to find work each morning; as late as five p.m., men are still there (with no hope of feeding the family that night). Mt. 20.1ff. The story not only gives us significant sociological information, but also goes to the heart of Jesus’ revolution in theological thinking: God’s love is the divine Being; it cannot be earned by working longer hours. It can only be received with amazement and thanksgiving.
Indeed, it is a mistake to see the sociological details as central; as in all parables, they are contextual, certainly not to be treated allegorically.

It is fitting, therefore, to close with this parable that gives us in story form, one of the foundational insights of the Christian Gospel which the first Theologian, St. Paul, formulated so strikingly in his Letter to Rome.
He begins this subtle and complex exposition establishing the very point of Jesus’ parable: “If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. … [T] o one who works , wages are not reckoned as a gift (charis) but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (4.2ff).

In spite of all the discussion that has gone on about Paul’s showing so little knowledge of the verba Christi, I remain convinced that this whole passage in Romans is anchored on the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. In the rest of the exposition Paul is concerned to understand how what happened to Jesus (rejection and execution of the supremely good man) was somehow connected with the central theme of God’s love. And so, many pages later he concludes: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come…nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God (i.e. ‘God’s love for us’) in Christ Jesus our Lord”. (8.37ff).

Note: Synagogues in Galilee

In the last several decades scholars have questioned the tradition of Jesus attending the synagogue on the grounds that the remains of only three such buildings have been found by archeologists. Nevertheless, the tradition of Jesus's religious observance is very strong, and since the Deuteronomic law of Jerusalem alone as the place of worship had never been followed, other solutions have been suggested. The main one is that the word sunagoge has a much wider connotation than its later use of a building suggests.

James D.G. Dunn in his magisterial work on the origins of Christianity (Vol. 1 Jesus Remembered) gives an excellent summary of the matter pp.302-306. He notes an analogy with "'church'=people' and 'church'=building", and says that here we have another reminder "of the need for historians of Jesus to jerk themselves consciously out of their contemporary perspective." (p.306).

Father of Lies

2010-11-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

The subtitle of this Blog is “A site for reflection on contemporary theological issues, biblical studies and the present state of the "Anglican Communion" .
Readers of essays I have published in the last year or two will know that political issues are not thereby excluded. Indeed, it could well be argued that what is most needed at the present time is some penetrating theological analyses and criticism of the contemporary political situation.

Sad Reflections on Elections

Many would, I think, agree that this has been the most lie-laden political season within memory; a much longer historical perspective would modify that judgment as anyone who has read the political broadsheets of 18th century British politics will know. I will come to the lie that I think is most pervasive and frequently told by politicians later, but, at the moment, I want to turn our attention to the New Testament, with a glance at the O.T. background.

Light & Truth in John’s Gospel

One of the main threads of the Fourth Gospel is the contrast between light and darkness, truth and lies. At the very beginning of his book, John (it is too cumbersome to write “the author” every time, and perhaps he was called John) writes, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”. (Jn. 1.5). As the narrative proceeds, John weaves this theme in an amazing way; darkness is the state of pre-creation chaos, the abyss from which emerge the beasts of falsehood and evil in The Apocalypse of John the Divine, that is, ‘Theologian’; this is the final book of the N.T. Canon, a book that reflects many Johannine ideas, but clearly is not by the same author as the Fourth Gospel.

Falsehood as Idolatry

A glance at the Old Testament shows that the predominant understanding of lying (Heb. kazab & sheqer) is in the worship of something other than the One God, Yahweh, summed up in the word idolatry, (cf. Isa.44.20, Jer. 10.14 and a myriad other references). It is not without significance, surely, that Adam’s first actual ‘conversation’ with God is based on a downright lie. In the course of the J narrative of the creation, God has spoken directly to man, Adam, (vv. 15 & 18), but it is only at 3.8 that a dialogue begins. What Adam says in v. 12 is “factually” true, but the whole tenor of his reply is a tissue of lies: perhaps a pattern for many political commercials. In summary, the O.T. writers proclaim the need for putting God first in all things; not to do that is to be out of touch with the reality of the human situation. St. Paul picks this up at the beginning of his letter to Rome, “[T]hey exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator”. (1.25)

A Pivotal Passage in John

Of all the passages in the New Testament one might consider, John 8.39-45 is possibly the best to illustrate the general point. It is part of the working out of the general theme I have mentioned. . It is a pivotal point of John’s theology that Jesus is the “way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn.14.6), and the contrary is that Satan is “the father of lies”. Moreover, the devil “was a murderer from the beginning”, almost certainly a reference back to the early narratives of Genesis (where the lies poured out by the serpent-devil lead to the introduction of death within the created order); this is a point that is underlined by the next step: the murder of Abel by Cain. Indeed, it is the position of all New Testament writers that lying is the root of all other human disobedience and sin, murder, greed, lust for power and on through the sorry list.
John sees the death of Jesus as a final assault of falsehood against the truth of God: “[Y]ou look for an opportunity to kill me” (Jn. 8.37) is the way John introduces this whole discourse on the power of darkness and falsehood: murder is abominable, but it springs from something even worse, the human propensity to lie.

The Hater of Truth; The Fate of Liars - The Apocalypse

Appropriately, I will conclude this brief biblical excursus by considering how this same theme is dramatically displayed in the Apocalypse of John the Divine. In the Fourth Gospel, the theme uses much Old Testament material in a quasi-philosophical way characteristic of John’s style.
By contrast, in the Apocalypse we are given a full-blown dose of myth and apocalypticism. Evil appears embodied in beasts from the abyss; the struggle between light and darkness is played out in scenes of war, famine and ruin on the earth and the casting of Satan from heaven, followed by the blood of martyrs flowing over the altar and heavenly choruses singing Hagios, Hagios, Hagios.
The climax of this great myth of catastrophic battles of the powers of good and evil is the establishing of the New Jerusalem. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…and I heard a voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people… and death shall be no more’” (Apoc. 21.1-5). It is tempting to spend much more time on this passage, exposing the many layers of the Seer’s imagery and countless allusions to earlier texts both Jewish and Christian, but I will resist and move to verse 8 of this chapter.

Blind to Truth

There we are given one of the typical “sin lists” that appear in the Epistles (Rom. 1.29ff.;Gal. 5.19ff.; Col. 3.5ff; I Cor.6 9f.); it is quite possible that they originate in the classical stoic tradition, but they are given, as we have seen, a new underpinning in the New Testament. The Seer places liars (psuedes) at the end of the list for emphasis. Psuedos is a much stronger word than ‘liar’, which suggests someone who twists the facts or makes up his own. In the Johannine context it means someone who is not capable of recognizing the truth, who in fact hates it; (perhaps this is the result of inhabiting by choice a fact-free zone over a long period). In any case, the result is that such a state is to be out of touch with reality, out of tune with the heavenly harmony. This, surely is the way we should read Mark 3.28, which follows the pericope where Jesus speaks of the opposition he has aroused; his opponents are ultimately unable to tell truth from falsehood: what is patently good and from God, that is, healings done “by the finger of God” (Luke’s addition), from the work of the demons of evil. The cost of such a level of lies is to be cut off from reality, in effect, to ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’, which is, above all, the spirit of truth.

The Contemporary Scene

Such a biblical perspective, must inevitably give us a gloomy view of contemporary politics, for it suggests that lie-laden political campaigns are not really about preserving “this great nation of ours”, or a concern to rescue and perpetuate “the American dream”, but an almost demonic drive to gain (or retain) power at any cost. This, in turn, points to a deeply embedded blindness of the kind that has again and again led to the downfall of empires.

Turning (did I hear someone sigh, “finally”?) to the mundane issue of lying politicians, I will reveal what I think is the most egregious lie proclaimed frequently by politicians of every possible hue.
It is like an antiphon that is chanted before every canticle, every political speech, and like an antiphon it is “doubled” on all special occasions. It is
“The American people are not stupid”.

Without doubt that is true of the majority, but many claims and incidents in the last six months must force any rational person to ask how big is the minority that does not seem wise?

• Last summer we witnessed the frenzied activities of constituents, meeting with members of the Congress, convinced of the establishment of ‘death panels’, the removal of all right to choose a doctor, and what was called (screamed?) a ‘government take-over’ of all health care; frequently, many senior citizens were the most vociferous in this last delusion, apparently completely unaware of the immense benefits they received from Medicare.

• We have seen more than enough pictures of rallies where placards have proclaimed the President to be a Fascist, and a Communist, totally unaware, apparently that the two positions are mutually exclusive.

• I am not able to give documentation, but more than once I heard news reports of someone in a mid-Western State making an angry protest because Michelle Bachmann’s name was not on the voting list.

• At the same time, our intelligence has been assaulted by the ‘Birthers’, and those who fervently believe that the President is a Moslem.

The following excerpt of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle (August 18, 2010) makes somber reading.

Poll: Growing number in U.S. say Obama a Muslim; more Republicans say he's Muslim than Christian

It's not true, but that doesn't stop a lot — and we mean a lot — of Americans from believing it.
A new poll released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that 18 percent of American adults believe that their president is an adherent of the Muslim faith — up from 11 percent last year. Meanwhile, just 34 percent of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Christian, down from 48 percent a year ago. Obama is a Christian Protestant.

The misperception about the president is strongest among Republicans. More GOP adherents insist that Obama is a Muslim than believe he is a Christian. Thirty-one percent say he is a Muslim, while 27 percent say he is a Christian and 39 percent say they're not sure. That's a massive turnaround in the minds of American Republicans. A year ago, by 47 percent to 17 percent, Republicans acknowledged that Obama is a Christian.

Ignorance not Stupidity

As the author says, “it’s not true”. Just a little reading and some competence in scrutinizing an argument and just a normal amount of critical thinking would have revealed the depths of these lies.
It is important to look carefully at what is actually being said in the “they are not stupid” chant. The bald statement is, without a doubt, true: clearly the majority of us cope with the complexities of a highly technological society; we make reasonable decisions about family responsibilities, about finances (on the whole!), and show common sense (mostly) in the complications of life.

So what has made over 30% believe that Barack Obama is not a Christian? I have to resort to the over-quoted remark of Samuel Johnson when one of his Dictionary definitions was questioned, “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance”. Far too many are so ill-educated that they have never learnt to engage in analytical thinking; even the better levels of education in our schools encourage fact collection and regurgitation, and not critical thinking. It is not that thirty to forty percent of the
American electorate is ‘stupid’. It is that they have been deprived of a good education.
If this conclusion be accurate, I suggest the following anatomy of the political slogan which I have called the ‘most egregious lie’ of the politicians.

Anatomy of a Big Lie

What is the function of this frequent claim? I suggest it is two-fold.

• Firstly it is used as an anesthetic to a populist audience. The speaker is saying “I (and my Party) know that you are not stupid; we understand your needs and will meet them.
• But secondly, it is a stealth attack on the Opposition. In effect (though carefully hidden) it says: “It is our demonic opponents who assume you are stupid. They assume that you are so stupid that you will accept the misinformation and made-up ‘facts’ we have been pouring out. They think you are so stupid that you will not notice that in the health reform they have hidden a diabolical plan to set up Nazi-type death camps: they think that while they blame the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression on the previous Administration you are so stupid that you will not notice that it is they who are really to blame.”

• There is no need to add to the almost endless list of examples, but this dissection lays bare, rather like an anatomy class, the inner workings of this great lie. It is a lie of biblical proportions straight from the Abyss.

Priorities

In a factual sense it is more or less true, but its use perverts the truth to a degree that blurs the distinction between truth and falsehood. There are no hidden death camps; the economic situation has been years in the making; the President is an American citizen.
In fact the slogan is saying, “the American People are not stupid (sotto voce they are ignorant)”. And why is there so much ignorance? The fact is that the party that uses this lie to the greatest effect are themselves often to blame for that lamentable state of ignorance though this also is deeply hidden.

But consider their priorities in spending: we must make the richest richer; we must increase the spending on the military, in spite of the fact that our military spending hovers around 44% of the world’s total arms bill. Yet when we are called to tighten belts, it is education, social services and care for the poor that has been starved.

John’s contrast between light and darkness, truth and lies could hardly be better exemplified than in this morass of distortion, manipulation and naked self-interest.

When a passion for truth flies out of the window, we are left in great peril. “The truth will make you free”, writes John (8.32), and if it is supplanted by carefully camouflaged lies wrapped in populist flattery, we are swallowing a bitter pill in a sugar coating that will destroy that freedom.

Script for Political Message

2010-09-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

The scene: Outside view of very modest single storey house, with mail box prominent by the side walk.

Characters: Harry, a retiree in his late sixties (whose short-term memory is a bit patchy) and Louise, his wife*, a year or two younger than he.

Scene I

Wide angle shot of a very modest single storey house, with the mail box by the sidewalk in the foreground. Camera pans in on H. coming to pick up the mail; he takes out 3 or 4 letters and looks through them more than once.

H. More medical bills.

Examines the mail again with puzzled look; turns and goes back to the house.

Scene II

H. goes through the hallway into kitchen where Louise is sitting at a table.

L. Is there anything interesting?

H. Well, you might call it interesting that my Social Security check has still not come; it’s days late.

L. Harry, your short-term memory is really getting a bit frayed. Who’s got the majority in Congress now?

Louise gets up and comes round stand behind H. with an arm round his shoulder

H. Of course, the Republicans scraped by with a tiny majority last November, but that still doesn’t explain the delay in my check.

L. Oh yes it does.
Don’t you remember that they handed Social security over to Big Banks on Wall Street, and after the plunge in the markets a few weeks ago, we got a message saying that it would be at least two months more before any payments could be made.

H. Oh God! Of course, But it sure leaves us in a big hole, and what do we do about all these medical bills? We seem to be billed for much bigger co-pays these days.

L. Yes, that’s because instead of paying 80% of approved procedures, Medicare now pays only 50%; and fewer procedures are approved.

H. This’ll mean using up that little reserve we kept for the grandchildren.

l. Yes. This really isn't just a political issue; it's a matter of social justice. It may be cold comfort, but at least we stood up for principle and didn’t vote for the party of the rich.

H. Why would any sane person have done that?

Fade out; bring up banner caption:

BE QUITE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT VOTING REPUBLICAN
MEANS FOR YOUR FUTURE

* You may remember Harry & Louise from earlier political commercials.

ERRATIC INERRANCY

2010-09-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

A Clean (almost) Slate

I sometimes give thanks that I came to my theological education with a tabula (relatively) rasa. I was duly baptized and confirmed in the good old C of E and the family was counted as “a sound supporter” of our strongly evangelical village church (they regularly held a ham supper on Good Friday!). My mother came near to hysterics when my sister announced that she was getting engaged to a doctor of Irish nationality and popish religion: even worse, my sister was to be received after instruction from – you guessed – a Jesuit. My father, a naval officer, was, I think, as I look back, an open-minded pantheist: by and large, he strongly opposed racist and ethnic prejudices, which were so prominent in the officer class of the early 20th century. There was, however, a striking exception. It arose, as he frequently told us, from his early experiences as a midshipman visiting S. America and Malta, an experience which produced a pronounced antipathy to everything “popish”; he regularly referred to Roman Catholic priests as “black crows”, for superstitious sailors a sign of ill luck.

The upshot of this family background for me was, firstly, a general, interest in what are grandly called ‘ultimate questions’; secondly, a profound distrust of religious, ethical and political absolutes: in my mid-teens, for example, I was attracted to the short-lived “Common Wealth” party (see an article in Wikipedia).
Thirdly, I read a lot of Penguin books on religion and social concerns. I was unduly influenced by the apologetic writings of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, and it was not until my second or third year of studying history and theology that I managed to delete much of what had seemed witty and reasonable. The Chestertonian, “he was either a madman or God” argument seemed plausible to a fourteen year old.
How I ever came to the conclusion that I might seek ordination in the C of E is not at all obvious in the light of this record, but that is another narrative of a length beyond the scope of this little essay. Perhaps I may return to it at some future time.

Context & History in Biblical Study

Suffice it to say I that began the study of theology without any significant baggage labelled either Evangelical or Anglo Catholic. The Seminary (we called them “Theological Colleges") I attended was liturgically slightly on the high side of middle-of-the –road, but intellectually fairly radical. I recall a member of the Faculty some time in the very early 1950s heaping scorn on the arguments against women’s ordination on “theological” grounds.

It is not surprising, therefore, that I was never impressed by apologetic arguments that argued for a Chalcedonian Christology on the basis of Old Testament prophecies, and that the notion of an inerrant bible (whose contents had been for me somewhat sketchy) seemed absurd. The concept of inerrancy perhaps needs a little parsing. My notion that Fundamentalists were those who read the bible ‘literally’, was overturned in my second year when I read James Barr’s excellent book, Fundamentalism; he points out that, on the whole, Fundamentalist readings of the bible very often resort to “figures of speech” to avoid a literal reading. A very good example is the treatment of “days of creation” in Genesis 1. These, of course are not literal days, but “eras of history”. These shuffles and shifts are essential if the primary tenet of Fundamentalism, - the Bible is the authentic word of God and is totally without error – is to be maintained.
In the years since my student days, my continued study has deepened, and, I hope, refined my theological positions, but I remain committed to an historical, contextual and critical study and reading of biblical texts.

A Disconcerting Experience

Imagine, then, my complete disorientation when it suddenly seemed clear to me (I suppose in evangelical terms, I experienced a conversion moment) that the contemporary political situation in the U.S.A. is clearly foreshadowed in Scripture. I resisted this sudden conviction: apparently this is normal in the conversion process, though many evangelicals would maintain, that if conversion is not instantaneous and complete, it is not valid. But resist it I did. First of all, I had to be clear about the verse itself. And there it was II Peter, 2.22 (could such a row of ‘twos’ be without significance?), “For them the Proverb has proved true: ‘the dog returns to its own vomit’, and the sow after a wash rolls in the mud again’”.
In a sense, this seemed to have double strength: it is an Old Testament passage wrapped round and ratified by the New.

Text and Vocabulary

I tried the ploy of a textual variant somewhere in the verse; Manuscript scholars, it is well known, are enemies of the gospel who regularly demean the sacred King James Bible, suggesting that it descends from a “corrupt” family. On the other hand, their results can be used when necessary. But Nestle’s definitive edition of the Greek text, which has an extensive apparatus of variant readings, gives not a whiff of scribal emendation or homoiteleuton.

My last, desperate attempt to avoid the clear meaning of this verse was to look up the word ’εξεραμα (exerama, vomit). Arnt and Gingrich, Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, closed that last escape route. The interesting thing about the word is that this its only appearance in the New Testament, and it appears also in a medical treatise of the late first century C.E. by Dioscorides. Critical scholars use this example of what they call an hapax legomenon – a word that occurs only once in the whole bible - (together with dozens of words unique to 2 Peter) as an argument for a very late date for the letter, therefore discrediting its Petrine authorship. In fact (sic), the use of a very rare word may well point to divine dictation. So what does this verse foreshadow, perhaps, even, foretell?

Astounding Polls

Simply, the astounding poll result that 75% of the American electorate want to return to the policies of the Bush/Cheney years.

There the matter might have rested, leaving me dismayed, and amazed at this example of Democracy, ("Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill in a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947), awaiting only “the inevitable end”. But I could not stop worrying at the thing, like a dog with an old bone (to carry on the imagery).

Then, another bolt from the blue (divine message? Direct line to the celestial exchange?). A passage in the Old Testament, as it were, flashed up before me. It does not cancel out the message of 2 Peter, but it poses the question: “how valid are the data of the poll”? The75% number comes from a Gallup poll, and the lit-up message directed me to I Chronicles, 21.1-6 (N.E.B. translation). “Now Satan, setting himself against Israel, incited David to count the people”. Some of his advisors tried to dissuade him; Joab warned him that doing this “would only bring guilt on Israel”.
So here we have an unmistakable reference to a Gallup Poll, for what does Gallup do but “count the people”? Unhappily, those taking part in these exercises seem not to recognize that they are involved in Satanic activity.

Waking Up

As is so often the case in disturbing dreams, it took several seconds before a feeling of relief flooded in; I had not, after all, become a Fundamentalist. But as I reflected on the fragments of the dream that lingered on during the day, it occurred to me that both the author of the Book of Proverbs and the anonymous author of the Seond Letter (of) Peter, had hit on a truth of crowd psychology: a crowd, when fed enough inflammatory material, will not behave rationally, a situation exacerbated in our case by decades of a failing education system. The Proverb suggest that the dog is attracted back, but does not consider the consequences: that certainly seems to be the case of the 75%.

II Peter 2.21 certainly is not in any way prophetic; indeed the letter is a sad piece of work, and might have been best left out of the Canon, as it is in some third century lists, which often include the Letters of Clement of Rome, a much better bet.

It is, though, a good image for the possibility of a Republican return to power, and whether they regain power or not, the Old Testament passage stands as a warning about Polls: satanic or not, they need watching in more than one sense.

Sweat and Water…Blood & Wine

2010-07-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Invalid Sacrament?

My great friend, Mark Harris, recently returned from leading (supported by eight other adults) a group of 14 young people (14-18 year-olds) on a pilgrimage journey to Navajo land. His resilience in enduring primitive camping conditions for two weeks – no shower for a week! - in his late sixties, is only surpassed by his empathy with this age group. Detailed accounts and comments can be found on his Blog, Preludium.
This was not a Work Camp; it was, so far as I understand it, an opportunity to experience another culture, another world-view, and to spend time in some questioning, ‘mulling over’ the day-to-day contacts and experiences and to share in the life of a temporary community.

Daily prayers were a part of the schedule and it was planned to visit the nearest Episcopal Mission to attend a Eucharist. In the event, this turned out not to be practical (travel time particularly), and so it was decided to celebrate the service in the Camp. An immediate problem, though, was the absence of any wine, camping as they were in a totally “dry” locality. So, they went ahead with the Eucharist, using bread and water. Hearing of this, doubtless, Anglo-Catholics (or the tatty remnants of that movement) will be moved to a state of near apoplexy: one can visualize headlines in the Church Times or Living Church, Episcopal Youth Leader Celebrates Invalid Eucharist. Possibly the other extreme might not fuss too much; after all, they were at one time so intertwined with Temperance Movements, that grape juice was normal in ‘low church’ English parishes.

Mark had made the point that water in Navajo land was very scarce and precious: a vivid symbol of life, (recall Leviticus, “the blood is the life”) and it assumed a strongly sacramental quality in this service.

The Gethsemane Pericope

Mark’s reporting of the Eucharist with water as a potent eucharistic and not just baptismal sacramental symbol, turned my attention to Luke’s account of Jesus’ praying on the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane (Lk. 22. 43-44).
Verses 43-44 are in parentheses in most contemporary editions of the Greek New Testament. That is because the MS evidence provides a relatively strong probability (but not a certainty) that the verses are a later, though very early insertion. More recent textual critics have tended to give more weight to some of the MSS that have these verses and note that the passage is quoted by Justin Martyr, c.150 C.E.
[If anyone is interested in the complexities of contemporary textual criticism, I should be happy to produce a short essay on the subject: leave on note in the Comments.]

First Generation Christians & the Death of Jesus

In what follows, I assume that what we have in these verses is an early comment, a kind of Targum, by a first-generation reader of Luke. (If the reading should be original, even better, we have Luke’s own views). This marginal note to a first edition of Luke suggests for us what the earliest readers understood Luke to be saying about the death of Jesus: the basis for its saving efficacy, which was for them a ‘given’; the way in which his followers should participate in it; and its underpinning of both Baptism and Eucharist.

I have always thought that the Gethsemane story in Mark, followed by both Matthew and Luke, stands as a connecting link between the Last Supper and the execution of Jesus. Jesus and his disciples join in the Passover Hallel, says Mark, and go at once to this quiet place of prayer.

Obedience

What follows gives in graphic, dramatic narrative form, what is one of the central theological interpretations of the meaning of Jesus’ death to be found in the New Testament. The centrality of Jesus’ obedience stands out definitively in Romans 5.19 – “[J]ust as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”. But it is also found in Hebrews 5.8, a verse which follows what may well be an allusion to the Gethsemane story.
It is not easy to produce ‘proof texts’, but the whole tenor of Mark’s account stresses the obedience of Jesus to the will of the father: the temptation narrative, and the compulsion to preach the evangel; and the fourth Gospel emphasizes the theme: “I came not to do my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me”.

Metaphors for “Saved by the Cross”

The New Testament uses many metaphors to elucidate what was, to those first followers of Jesus an empirical fact, the reality that underpinned their sense of freedom and of living a new life: the reality was an absolute conviction of “salvation” , connected in Greek with the verb ‘to heal’ (sõzõ), ‘to make whole’. The conviction of this new ‘wholeness’ was somehow inextricably linked to the life, work and death of Jesus, and the multiple metaphors used in the New Testament were attempts to put an ineffable experience into inadequate words: an attempt to get at the meaning of Jesus’ death in itself and for the life of his followers.
Many are found on the writings of Paul:

• a law court where, against all expectations the Judge says, “Not guilty” [justification ] ;

• a meeting of high-level diplomats working out a treaty [reconciliation];

• the fight of a righteous man against evil forces experienced as demonic [Christus Victor],

• and, of course, the sacrificial metaphor [atonement].

In all these instances, we find parallels in the Synoptic gospels and other N.T. Letters.
Luke has a parable about sending an ambassador to make peace, Lk. 14.31ff., Mark reports Jesus’ words about binding the ‘strong man’ (i.e. the powers of evil) 3.27, and the whole sequence of healings in Mark, often followed by Matthew and Luke, centers on the Christus Victor theme. The sacrificial theme, too, is prominent in these gospels. Mark 10.45 with the words “ransom for many” (λυτρον αντι πολλων) is interesting because it combines the sacrificial metaphor with yet another one – the manumission of a slave, which has strong overtones of the Exodus theme.
Yet, in this great welter of attempts to get to the essence of the divine salvation, the central act of Jesus’ obedience stands out as preeminent.

Gethsemane Narrative & an Early Comment

And so I return to the very early addition to Luke’s account of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Several things are presented in this picture of Jesus:

• The undoubted humanity of Jesus: the Johannine Christ is not remotely present in this picture. The cost of obedience is immense. This is not part of a drama whose victorious outcome is known to Jesus, a view that hovers around later Christology; it is a terrible struggle with powers that keep human beings from God, both within their very being and in the world where they find themselves.

The commentator (or Luke) uses this occasion to stress the central importance of a sacramental theology.

• Water is primary: The biblical record is, one might say, flooded with it. The Spirit broods over it at creation; Yahweh leads the People through it to freedom, into a land that is watered from “the heavens” and not by “the foot” (irrigation) Deut 11.10f. Jesus’ ministry begins with it and the New Testament ends with it: “The angel showed me the river of life…flowing from the throne of God”. (Rev. 22.1)

• From the time the Hebrews made the Passover the linch pin of their faith and the center of their Liturgical life, water has been inextricably linked with blood. Both words supply powerful and paradoxical metaphors: water gives life and takes it; blood flows from death, but is also a sign of life (Lev. 7.14).

• It is not surprising, therefore, that water and blood come together in the New Testament where a further layer of metaphor is added. The Old Testament figure of the cup of wine is also a two-facing symbol. It is a sign of blessing “that makes the [human] heart happy”, (Ps. 104.15), but it is also the wrath of God.

A Pivotal Point

Luke’s version of the Gethsemane pericope, (with its comment, if it is not all from Luke’s pen) brings together all these elements, and makes this a pivotal point for understanding the life and death of Jesus and their relevance for the on-going life of his followers.

Connecting the Last Supper and the Cross, it places the obedience of Jesus at the center of his life and of his relationship to God.
In the sweat – (the water of life) – that is as blood – (the wine of blessing and of judgment) - it connects the process of God’s salvation, effected through the obedience of a faithful Servant, to the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. And it is in this sacramental mode that Christians come to learn about and share in that obedience. So Paul writes that those whom God calls are “to be conformed to the image of (his) the Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family” (Rom. 8.29).

Invalid?

So in these particular circumstances, is water for the cup of blessing an invalid sacrament? What I suggest in this essay is that this is not an “open” question. That precise language, Latin, has two ways of dealing with “loaded” (as opposed to “open”) questions; if the implied answer is “yes”, one begins the sentence with nonne…?.

If “no”, the sentence begins with num…? I’m strongly in favour of num.

CAPITALISM UNCOVERED

2010-07-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

A Sliver of Autobiography

When I was eighteen and in the middle of training to be a Radar Mechanic in His Majesty’s Brittanic Navy, I was stationed in the East End of London, attending the Northampton Polytechnic, undergoing a crash course in physics and the theory and technology of radio and radar. The naval ratings on the course were billeted in a large building in Hoxton that had been a hostel for “fallen girls”; it had been commandeered by the Royal Navy to become HMS some-thing-or-other . (All R.N. shore facilities are “Her/His Majesty’s “Ship”). Hoxton, among the worst of London’s East End ‘slums’, was not a pretty place: rows and rows of houses thrown up in the last part of the nineteenth century, still, in some places with a communal tap for a group of huddled houses, and often noisy at night with drunken brawls. From this dreary area, we walked to the Old Street Underground station and arrived in Islington for our first lecture – 8.00 a.m.

Labor Landslide

Depressed as it was, when the results of the first election after the War (WW II) came out, the whole area erupted with joy and enthusiasm. The people had spoken clearly - no return to closed mines, idle railway marshalling yards and decaying agriculture: no return, in effect to unbridled Capitalism with its endless queues of men picking up a pitifully small ‘dole’, as the unemployment relief was then called. But, of course no patriotic American mentions the ‘C’ word.

Profit before People

There is much that can, and needs, to be said about the Socialist experiments of the nineteen fifties and sixties, but the advent of Lady (the iron one) Thatcher, demonstrated unequivocally that capitalism was still (not, perhaps in its virulent form of the era of the first Factory Acts of the nineteenth century), very much alive, and still much more interested in profit than people.
See: a summary of the Acts and Parliamentary Committees

The religious and ethical issues raised by capitalism are extremely complex, and, so far as I can tell, infrequently mentioned in the main-stream media and in political discussions; this contrasts strikingly with the acrimonious debates about the morality of abortion, euthanasia and the sexual dallyings of prominent politicians. But before I turn to consider what theologians and ethicists have said about capitalism, I want to ponder the flood of news reporting, political rhetoric and Congressional hearings that have engulfed us for almost two months now.

Right-about: Turn

Not long ago, we were hearing cries of anger and pain from the right (not always so very far right either) about government “interference” in our health system. An alarming number of older citizens, while chanting this mantra in a kind of 1984 regimentation, managed at the same time to demand, “hands off Medicare”. Appalling posters and caricatures were waved in the pepped up rallies, and mutually contradictory accusations of Socialism, Fascism, and Communism were hurled at the President. I, for one, could not escape the feeling that all this hate was motivated by unspoken, perhaps these days unspeakable, deep-rooted racial resentments. But that is another issue for another essay.
In the light of all that outcry from the right, one is, I feel, justified in expressing utter amazement that we have recently heard from these same right-wing politicians, apparently speaking in all seriousness, that the President is failing in his leadership by not, in effect, nationalizing the Oil Companies!
The thing that has struck me forcibly is that in all this flood of official reports, populist frenzy, endless news reports and even more ‘expert’ news analyses, I cannot remember once hearing the word capitalism.

Why Taboo Word?:

As I tried to work out why this was so - since it seems very obvious to me that this issue is like an immense dead camel which all discussions tread warily around, - that part of the explanation must lie in the political development (or under-development?) of the U.S political system. My grasp of U.S, history is not as good as my knowledge of British and European history (and even there, there are lamentable gaps), but I think it would be generally agreed that any Socialist movement in the U.S. has been relatively peripheral, and there certainly has never been anything like a functioning Party with substantial representation in the Congress. What is more, the failure of such movements to take off, is as much the lack of support from the working class majority as the active opposition of the upper, plutocratic classes.

Sine qua Non for the “Dream’

America as the “land of promise” for all the millions of immigrants in the last century and a half, has been so tightly tied to the tenets of the inviolability of private property, the absolute right to climb the ladder of social and economic betterment, (hard luck for the head on a lower rung), and, in effect, the embracing of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, that there is a deeply embedded and largely unexamined commitment to unrestrained capitalism. It is this commitment, a majority seems to believe, that makes possible the “American Dream”; at the same time, the actual conditions necessary for entering the dream world are rarely examined: dreams do tend to fade as one awakes to the real world again.

Rusty, Clanking Machine

It appears, in the last analysis, that the relationship between the government and the many powerful corporations that, in theory, operate at its bidding is hopelessly ambiguous (one might say dream-like), defined in a vast corpus of Congressional Acts, Presidential Executive orders and the operation of an army of “regulatory” agencies. The confusion appears to be demonstrated in the outcry against a moratorium on the drilling of new deep wells out at sea, which goes along side shrill denunciations of the Administration for ‘not cleaning up the mess’.

I had already written the previous paragraph when I came across Hendrick Hertzberg’s comment in the current New Yorker. He points out that it is the “out-of-control of a dwindling resource” that lies behind the Gulf disaster, and suggests that the most efficient way to deal with this would be a realistic tax on carbon production together with a reduction in the payroll tax. He continues:

“This is what some European countries have done, and it may well be what Obama would do if he had the kind of legislative power that European prime ministers have and many Americans of all political persuasions, assume that he has, too”. [As an ex-pat Brit I wonder what that says about the US educational system?]
But the President does not have that kind of power and so he is attempting to achieve “the maximum that…our rusty, clanking legislative sausage machine is capable of delivering”. (June 28, 2010 p. 18).

This ‘rusty machine’ has failed dismally to develop some viable alternative to naked, uncontrolled capitalism: an alternative that would give structure to the balance between government and free enterprise.

Contrast with Britain

There is I think, a striking contrast here with the British scene, where the vested interests of the “landed classes” began to converge with those of the new captains of industry. Indeed, the latter quickly surpassed the old aristocracy in wealth, frequently marrying off their daughters to a Duke or Marquis, and sending their sons to Eton or Harrow, the unquestioned leading public (i.e. private) schools in the land.
There was, though, a distinct difference between the two classes regarding the poor. The aristocratic tradition staunchly believed in noblesse oblige, and agricultural workers, though often grindingly poor, at least had a primitive social support system provided by the great house.
The plight of the industrial worker was far different, and the reports of the working conditions of the first half of the nineteenth century are hair-raising to read. (see Web reference above).

Beginnings of Control

It was out of these conditions that the Liberal Party, even though committed to a policy of laissez faire, began to establish regulatory laws: six year olds could no longer work for more than twelve hours underground; factory workers must be given a break to go to the bathroom; some minimal standards were established to protect workers against flailing drive belts and grinding gears.
By the turn of the century, however, a more radical politics emerged in the form of the Labor Party, which, after WWII, came to power with a landslide victory. A much more ‘socialistic’ program than anything the Liberals had envisaged was put in place with uneven results over the next half century.
Overall, however, Britain has had a much more controlled form of free enterprise capitalism than has ever existed in the U.S.A., and the present Gulf disaster has revealed some significant confusions. Not a few in the Republican party would agree with Rep. Joe Barton if it were at all politically possible, while the further right (Tea Partiers et mult al.) exhibit an apparent approval of the worst excesses of the British Mill owners of the 1830s and the U.S. Robber Barons later in the century. At least these folk seem to know where they stand.

The Moderates’ Bind

It is the rest who appear lost in a deep fog: the behavior of BP is seen by most as flagrant, but they operate very freely, almost independently, under a complex system of legislation that the government, committed to the rule of law, is bound by, and which, as I suggested above, is the deeply ingrained position of many working people. (What else could account for so much support the Republican Party from that group when such support is clearly inimical to the longer-term well-being of workers?)

Theological & Ethical Issues

Is there anything that theology and the history of Christianity can teach this nation which proudly claims to be “One…under God”?
It might be worth pointing out right at the beginning that the New Testament has immensely more references to the use of money and the treatment of the poor than it has about how people should behave in bed (or perhaps on a sea shore or a mountain top). Moreover, the majority of the references are not exactly gentle about the rich.
This would suggest that at the very least our contemporary imbalance of emphasis on the two ethical issues is strikingly at odds with the New Testament writings and the teaching of Jesus. [I am well aware that the contrast between what is recorded in the gospels and the teaching of Jesus would not be accepted universally, but it is widely acknowledged in biblical studies, and does not preclude some relatively reliable conclusions about Jesus’ teaching].

Prophetic Tradition in the New Testament

When we turn to the NT, we find Jesus firmly in the prophetic tradition in sayings about the poor and the misuse of power: both in his recorded sayings and in the writings of the earliest followers the same themes recur; the rich man who built new barns; the parable of Dives and Lazarus; the Rich young man to whom Jesus said, “sell all you possess and give it to the poor”; a camel struggling to get through a needle’s eye; Peter’s address to Jesus, “we have left everything to follow you”; the Beatitudes, and especially Luke’s highly radicalized version of Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit”, which becomes “blessed are the poor”: period. These are just some examples of a radical criticism of the lack of compassion so often displayed by the powerful and rich. We have heard very recently just how relevant these criticisms still are when people who cannot find work are characterized as Hobos.

Poverty in Church History

Christian history has witnessed movements that involved total renunciation of ‘the world’. Very early on, this rigorous interpretation was inter-twined with Hellenistic elements of thought, which denigrated the material world and regarded sexuality as demonic. These movements in turn, set up fierce theological and ecclesiastical tensions, evidenced very much later by the Papal suppression of the Franciscans because of their advocating extreme poverty in the 14th century, and the heated discussions of the Reformation period.
A consensus emerged favoring a via media. Total poverty and some communal form of living was not required: possessions were not sinful, though they could all too easily become an occasion for sin. The dangers were underlined for the church as a whole by the lives of ascetics and by the network of Benedictine communities that peppered the medieval map of Europe.

Usury Dethroned

Perhaps this mediating position was an important factor in the rise of a merchant class, though its move to something like modern capitalism was checked by the Church’s continuing complete ban on usury (which, in effect, regarded money as an artifact: the money gained was not from a service, or from a product).
It is fairly widely held, though increasingly questioned, that it was Calvin who loosened the bind and suggested that earning interest was not in itself wrong. Dennis McCann writes:

“Calvin’s reinterpretation of the biblical arguments against usury, especially those based on Deuteronomy 23.19-20...enabled Christians to participate fully in the development of the institutions of the modern Western financial system.” (Christianity: The Complete Guide, Ed. John Bowden, London 2005. p.186. Quoted hereafter as CTCG).

This is not to say that Calvin would have approved of the contemporary failure to examine the ethical issues raised by global corporations as his comment on Acts 16.15 suggests:

“Many place angelical perfection in poverty, as if the cultivation of piety and obedience to God were impossible without the divestment of wealth…Many fanatics refuse rich men the hope of salvation, as if poverty were the only gate to heaven, although it (poverty) sometimes involves men with greater disadvantages than riches. But Augustine reminds us that rich and poor share the same heritage. …[And] we must beware of the opposite evil, lest riches hinder or so burden us that we advance less readily toward the kingdom of heaven”. (Quoted in Bouwsma, Calvin, 198).

Christian Reactions to Industrial Revolution

Commentators point to the undoubted fact that “in modern times, Western Christianity has been perceived as the religion of rich and powerful people” (Michael H. Taylor CTCG 959), and the novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century provide overwhelming evidence of this. The same trend is glaringly present in the mega churches of the “Prosperity Gospel”, and sits uneasily beside a rather older frugality preached by John Wesley and his followers.
Donald Hay, in an excellent article in Modern Christian Thought (MCT) edited by Alister McGrath, points out the peripheral influence of Christian Theology in the last two centuries, the period of intense development of economic theory and practice leading to our present situation; this means that economics is saturated with utilitarianism. It is, says Hay, “almost exclusively an Enlightenment discipline ". He goes on to note however, that there has been a constant flow of commentary and criticism from historians and theologians in the last 150 years. The evangelicals of the 1850s deplored the many social evils of the industrial revolution, but their tone of superior morality and a view of divine providence that suggested people should keep and be satisfied with their “station” in life, was somewhat cold comfort.
More humane and more theologically sophisticated were the incarnational views of F.D. Maurice, which were “taken up by the Christian Socialists in the latter half of the nineteenth century and by Charles Gore and William Temple in the first part of the twentieth century”. (MCT pp. 136f).

Hay points to the significant contribution to the discussion of ethical issues of capitalism by a group of scholars who came to be known as Christian Socialists, (would such an oxymoron be remotely possible in the U.S.?): B.F. Westcott, Charles Gore and Scott Holland. “They rejected the concept of the economic system as a natural order of cause and effect uncontrolled by any moral responsibility”. (MCT p. 137).

The Roman Catholic church has also produced a steady stream of commentary, mainly in the form of Papal Encyclicals, the first of which to bear on the modern situation was Rerum Novarum (Dealing with conditions of labor). Issued in 1891 by Leo XIII - New Things –suggests a rather late entry into the field, but it did insist on justice for working people and advocated a degree of governmental control of private enterprise. As was normal in papal pronouncements it took the opportunity roundly to condemn Socialism, and frown sternly on Democracy.

Closing Considerations

1) It seems clear from an empirical point of view, that some forms of Capitalism work better than many forms of Socialism: producing better living standards, wider opportunities and happier lives for very many people.

2) On the other hand, it is equally clear that capitalism, left to itself in Smithian fashion, quickly produces unacceptable inequalities, which have a deleterious effect on Society as a whole: incomes, education, health care are endangered for the poor as the rich become richer (often staggeringly so) and the poor, poorer (with a rapidity that should embarrass us).

3) Religion has been enlisted by both sides (Prosperity Churches), and some biblical verses. For example, ‘the poor are always with you’ can be read (and used) like so many of Jesus’ sayings, in more than one way. It may be quite pragmatic, that is to say, experience shows that this is a (sad) fact of human history: a more ominous view of the saying might be that poverty is, as it were, built into the order of things, an item of the lex naturalis . Such a view is quite explicit in many economic theories of the last two centuries, which suggest a pool of unemployed people is required ; it will hardly be a surprise to note that this is a view held by Adam Smith and his followers.

4) Clearly, the churches cannot legislate (though there are still a few theocracies in the world where the religious authorities can dictate to the State). One of the strategies of those who have moral qualms about capitalism has been to set up countless agencies staffed largely by volunteers doing magnificent work to alleviate some of the more obvious suffering caused by the capitalist system: hunger, homelessness, unemployment, severely limited educational activities – there is no need to prolong this gloomy list. Tacitly, this may seem to endorse the first interpretation of Jesus’ words about the poor, weakening the drive for direct action. Hay, whom I have already quoted, says of this situation:

“While personal charity and concern for the poor are to be encouraged, the claims of economic justice require that action be taken by governments to ensure that no one is left in poverty”. (MCT p. 66)

5) But here is the rub: U.S. elections over the last thirty years suggest that half the electorate (some times a bit more, sometimes less) vote precisely on the grounds that government should keep its hands off (except, of course, when a disaster like the current one is about to have grave financial consequences for conglomerates. Then those on the Right feel free to castigate the Administration and forget election slogans of “No Socialism”).
A further problem is the growing political influence the religious right (particularly discernible in the eight years of the Bush Presidency). Too often, the religious drive is transmuted into a passionate jingoism: a very strong military, and readiness for pre-emptive action are paramount; ethical issues of personal behavior are more important than social issues; and, sometimes, a reversion to early nineteenth century views about the divine ordering of master and servant is openly expressed. Clearly if these ideological positions form part of the majority in an election result, one can hardly hope for government action; and when the party of the right, with support from the much further right, is not the majority, strenuous reaction to, and blocking of, any proposed legislation which aims to improve the lives of those blighted by unregulated capitalism, can be expected.

Conclusion

So what can middle-of-the-road Christians and many others (very probably a larger number) who share the same moral concerns, though not professing any specific religious faith do?
Writing in 1926 R.H. Tawney pointed out the failure of the theological community to keep up with the rapid changes of the industrial revolution:

“In an age of impersonal finance, world-markets and a capitalist organization of industry, traditional social doctrines had nothing to offer, and were merely repeated when, in order to be effective, they should have been thought out again from the beginning and formulated in new and living terms” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Penguin , p 184).

At the time, it seemed to Tawney that the churches had failed miserably in meeting the challenge, but I have noted the writings of F.D. Maurice, and the cogent pamphlets and books put out by the Christian Socialists following him, which might suggest some modification of his stringent criticism. Indeed, the final part of the 20th century and the first decade of this one have witnessed an increasing pressure on the part of the Vatican and main line Protestant churches to draw attention to theological and ethical issues of poverty, power and the structure of capitalism.
What the individual can do is continually to exercise her/his social conscience; to support those seeking election to public office who convincingly display an awareness of the moral dimensions of society, and who are not beholden to the pressures of capitalist lobbyists.
However, much we can achieve by “good works”, we must continue to insist that government has an important and legitimate role in the ordering of a just society.

Perhaps, too, we should take every opportunity to remind people just how deeply capitalism is embedded in our society: to such an extent that we do not mention it because we take it so much for granted, and, therefore take for granted as inevitable, deprivations and injustices that ultimately conflict with our Constitutional principles.

A Tale of Two Churches:The Church of England in Crisis

2010-04-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Canterbury Tale

The current New Yorker (April 26) has a masterly article, an essay in effect, on the present state of the established church in England. Jane Kramer, the author, has a sharply focused view of a scene that is often murky and obscured by the notorious English fogs; she regularly contributes the Letter from Europe for the magazine.

Note well that that is the Church in England, not the United Kingdom, since the established church in Scotland is not part of what is now known as the “Anglican Communion”, being Presbyterian in polity, not Episcopalian. Nevertheless, the situation where the Queen is both head of an Episcopal body and also head of a Presbyterian one is rather typical of British systemic ambiguity (where a ‘Public School’ is in fact a private institution and the Constitution is not readily available to the lay person). It also points us back to the origins of the kind of incipient schisms that Kramer so admirably delineates.

James I & the Puritans

King Henry was hardly a reformer: he attended the Latin Mass every day of his life and only very reluctantly agreed to a vernacular version of the Mass, for that is really what the first Prayer Book of 1549 actually was. It was his daughter, presiding over what is called “the Elizabethan Settlement”, who in some measure held together those who looked still to Rome and those who looked to Geneva. After her death, leaving no direct heir, the throne passed to James VI of Scotland, the son of her cousin Mary. (Henry’s sister, Margaret, was Mary, Queen of the Scots’ mother).
The Reformers who felt that things had not gone anyway far enough under Elizabeth were delighted; here was a monarch brought up in a strict Calvinist country, formed by the fiery John Knox. Surely, they believed, at last a real reformation could be accomplished. This is not the place to follow the meetings of the Hampton Court Conference, called by James in 1604. He clearly was not sympathetic to the Puritans who could not accept the 1552 B.C.P., and he was adamant on the issue of an Episcopal polity. At one point he railed at the suggestion of a Presbyterian form of church government, “If you aim at a Scots Presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil!” He more or less dismissed them with the often-quoted line: “No Bishops, no King”. One wonders how direct is the connection to that day’s meetings to the sailing of the Mayflower, the (dire?) results of which are with us today!

Women Bishops & Gay Clergy

Kramer gives us a fair account of the dilemma of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but she quotes Diarmaid MacCulloch, a revered Oxford historian, saying,
“Rowan has enormous grace, he gives his opponents space, but he has a lack of killer instinct, which I’m afraid is a necessary quality for leadership”,
and makes it clear that the Archbishop supports the logical next move in the ministry of women: ordaining women priests as bishops. It is this issue, however, that has caused the latest violent rocking of the boat.
For several years, the center stage has been held by the conservatives, the Evangelicals, who made a fairly deliberate change in strategy some years ago, more or less abandoning opposition to the ordination of women to concentrate on opposition to any form of same gender blessing and particularly to condemn the ordination of openly homosexual men. Not surprisingly, the consecration of Gene Robinson provided them with a big arms cache. Stephen Bates in A Church at War, (London, 2004) gives an excellent account of the differences between the conservative US religious right and the much older British evangelical tradition (ch. 7), but also notes, as does Kramer, that recent decades have seen the adoption of the crude anti-scientific attitudes of the US groups by British conservatives. Bates traces the development of the anti-gay evangelical strategy with immense insight and detail.

GAFC ON

The anti-gay agenda was certainly significant in the emergence of GAFCON, of which Kramer says:

“In 2007, the conservative evangelicals attached themselves to a group called GAFCON, for Global Anglican Future Conference, which a year later emerged from the shadows of the Internet to hold an alternative bishops conference in Jerusalem. The meeting was hosted by, among others, the schismatic Nigerian archbishop, Peter Akinola, who retired this month, and the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen - a man described by one liberal Australian Anglican as ‘taking over our church by stealth, ordaining anything evangelical that moves.’”.

In the ‘mother’ church the center has moved. As Kramer makes clear the burning issue is about consecrating women bishops, and an alliance is emerging (as it did in the case of the scheme for reunion with the Methodists) of the conservative Evangelicals and the conservative remnants of the Anglo-Catholic movement.

To quote Jane Kramer again:

It took seventeen years of wrenching Synod debate for women to be ordained, and when they were, some five hundred male priests fled in protest - two-thirds of them, as the saying goes, ‘to Rome.’ The prospect of women’s elevation to the House of Bishops has been even more divisive. This isn’t a question of High Church and Low Church differences. England’s church has always been (the common word) ‘inclusive.’ It grew as an uneasy accommodation between the traditionalists of the Apostolic Creed and Catholic ritual and devotions now known as Anglo-Catholics and the brimstone-and-Bible Protestants born in the chapels of the Reformation, making common cause against the Church of Rome. Today, it covers a sliding scale of beliefs and practices, with the majority of England’s Anglican parishes somewhere in the middle. But the argument about women bishops cuts across all the old divisions.

The Wider Anglican Communion

The broader issues of the Anglican Communion are not central to Kramer’s account, but are clearly a significant ‘backdrop’; she writes,

Geoffrey Kirk, an unabashedly misogynist London vicar who is the national secretary of Forward in Faith, told me that, for him, the tipping point was the Episcopalian bishops’ election of Jefferts Schori as their presiding bishop. He called it ‘a fundamental scandal’ and added,
" ‘I think Mrs. Jefferts Schori is a layperson. It’s not my doing. They decided.’ He said that a shoplifter was ‘more qualified, per se,’ to be a bishop than a woman was, so long as the shoplifter didn’t say that shoplifting was good, or that he was a Marxist spreading the wealth around.'"

It is, she implies, the deep desire of the Archbishop to hold together the “Anglican Communion” that leads to the appearance of ineffective leadership. He “is determined to preserve what remains of that bond [the connection “with the mother church in England]”. In this context, Kramer remarks that “(s)chism is hardly new to Christianity”, and one may add, not new to the C of E in particular, Methodism being the most striking example.
Perhaps it might help to put in perspective the possible exodus of a thousand or more clergy in the C of E to look at some earlier history.

Church & State in Mid-Nineteenth Century

Owen Chadwick’s The Victorian Church (Part I, pp.309-324) gives a lively account of the attempts to revive the Convocation(s) in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Convocation of Canterbury had not been allowed to meet since 1717, except at the call of new Parliament when an address affirming the royal supremacy was made to the King/Queen.
The attempt to re-vivify the Convocation began in the wake of the Gorham case debacle, which started in 1847 and dragged on until 1853; in that year the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overturned the judgment against Mr. Gorham for departing from the apparent teaching of the Book of Common Prayer (B.C.P.) that infant baptism alone resulted in unconditional regeneration. Evangelicals were not happy with any view of the Sacraments that smacked of ex opere operato, insisting that baptism needed conscious repentance to achieve moral regeneration. The issue was clouded because the B. C. P. and Thirty-nine Articles (XXXIX) are not entirely consistent on the matter, but it was the assertion of State power over Church Doctrine that was at the center of the uproar. It was now the turn of the Tractarians to threaten wholesale departure from an Erastian church: the Evangelicals had threatened departure should the judgment against Gorham be upheld.

Two Churches

The attempts to revive Convocations were, of course, part of the Church/State tension so clearly displayed in the Gorham case. At one point when Lord Aberdeen was, briefly, Prime Minister, it seemed clear that a meeting of Convocation to receive a committee report could not be stopped. The Law Lords so gave their opinion. The State could not over-rule the Church in this matter, but this was only one battle in what might prove to be a long and costly war. If the church got the bit between its teeth, an inevitable clash with Parliament loomed. Aberdeen had searing memories of the split in the Established Scottish Presbyterian Church in 1843 when over the very issue of the power of the State to dictate to the Church, rather more than one third of the ministers seceded to form the Free Church, and so he was unhappy with the Law Lords’ ruling. It is reported that Aberdeen said to his son:
“Your friend is right who says the Church of England is two churches only held together by external forces. This unnatural apparent-union cannot last long, but we may as well defer the separation as long as possible.” (p. 319).

What Now?

That was in 1853. One hundred and fifty-seven years later, the policy of deferring the separation seems to be at least still breathing: but the ecclesiastical boat continues to rock, almost swamped at times by sudden squalls Yet the situation is very different from 1853. The C of E is realistically at least three churches now, and the autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion have embraced a bolder view of the scriptures and take more seriously the facts of scientific research. (Of course, a significant number of center members of the C of E would concur). This has led to internal schisms, notably in the US, led by the deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, but by and large, they are strong. Perhaps the final break up will not be the naughty behavior of Canada, the US, New Zealand and others, but the long predicted sorting out of Rome and Geneva in the English church.

Lift Up Your Hearts

2010-04-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΟΜΕΝ ΣOI - A Lecture given as part of a Lent Program
All SS Church Rehoboth, 2010

“Private” Prayer

It has become a truism to point to the significant increase in emphasis on the individual since the age of the Enlightenment. A symptom of this is clearly seen in the literature on prayer in the 18th-19th centuries: many books were written to be used in ‘private’ prayer, centering on methods for Meditation, or were guides dealing with topics like “Problems in Prayer”. Even in the context of the Mass, in continental Europe at least, one has a picture of a congregation busily engaged in saying the rosary while the liturgical action wends its separate clerical way, often behind a massive stone choir screen.

I would like to remind us that, on the contrary, the prayer of the gathered community is the earliest form of Christian prayer of which we know; furthermore, in spite of periods when, what we call the Liturgy, has lost its central position (for example the 18th century C of E), the Eucharist has constantly reminded Christians that the central elements of prayer are worship and thanksgiving. To day, I want to focus primarily on this Eucharistic worship of the church; the next lecture will consider the many other forms of liturgical prayer, known as the Offices, that have developed down the ages.

The Liturgy & the Daily Offices

First a brief note on two technical terms, Liturgy and Office: in Hellenistic Greek the word leiturgia meant an act of public service. In the NT it was used of the saints serving one another, but also of the community serving God, and since the main, perhaps, only service humans can give to God is to say “Thank you” (which in Greek is eucharistõ soi) the word was soon applied to the Eucharist. The word ‘Office’ comes from the Latin officium, originally the duty of a civic leader. Its use broadened into any ‘official’ responsibility, and, in the 4th and 5th centuries, it came to be applied to the round of weekly or daily prayer to which Christians,, particularly those in the emerging religious communities were duty bound. St Benedict called the Offices, the opus Dei, the work of God.

The New Testament

Where to begin? Perhaps some passages we find in the early chapters of Luke’s companion book to his Gospel, The Acts of the Apostles are as good a starting place as any. In 2.46 we hear of the earliest disciples, still, apparently, living in Jerusalem, “day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes”. In some ways, this is a ‘blue-print’ for the way the Christian Liturgy developed its distinctively two-part format. As Luke’s narrative continues, charting the movement of the church from Jerusalem into the wider Hellenistic world, we hear of Christians going to the synagogue, but celebrating the Lord’s Supper, (or, perhaps, Agapé meal?) in the developing “house churches”.

By around 70 C.E., it seems that a final separation between church and Synagogue was happening: Christians no longer thought of themselves (or were thought of by others), as a sect of Judaism. Nevertheless, the early influence of the Synagogue remained, as it does to this day, on the structure of the central act of Christian prayer: and not on its structure only, but in the fact that this central prayer was (as had been the case of synagogue worship) essentially a corporate act, not individual.

Development of the Eucharist

Having laid out some introductory material, I want to outline the development of the Eucharist from the earliest times of which we have evidence, and, as we proceed, to consider what the community has understood the meaning of its gathering to be in celebrating this central act of worship.

We do not find descriptions, let alone texts, of the services of the earliest communities. We do, however, have some hints in the NT itself, and, by the middle of the second century, evidence of how the church was worshipping. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (known often by the first word of its Greek title – the Didaché), which may be as early as 110 C.E., records the words to be said at the blessing of the bread and wine.

In the NT itself, the first reference to a solemn blessing of the bread and wine is found in Paul’s first letter to Corinth (11.23ff). Written c. 52 C.E., the letter is very much a pastoral guide, full of advice and not a few admonitions about irregular behavior and departures from the teaching that Paul had delivered to them. The immensely important information about the early memorial meal comes in a context that suggests that at this stage, the celebration was still a proper meal followed by a narrative of the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples, set in a telling of the happenings surrounding that meal itself. Paul repeats the words of Jesus at that final Passover, and adds a significant comment of his own: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (26). This may well be one of the first (and, perhaps, definitive) theological musings on the life, death and resurrection pf Jesus, the Christos, and on the significance of the community meal for the ongoing life of the church.

Other N.T. References

It is not, however, the only passage in the NT that reflects the centrality of the Eucharist. In the Synoptic Gospels, the stories of the feeding of the crowds abound in eucharistic allusions, and all the Evangelists give a central place to a Passion Narrative which gives prominence to the Last Supper, and as the great Liturgiologist R.C.D. Jasper writes, “[NT] books such as Hebrews and Revelation clearly indicate a knowledge of the eucharist”. (Dict. Liturgy & Worship, SCM Press 2nd Ed. p. 315).

So clearly from the very earliest times, the disciples met to share a common meal. Why did they do this, and what did it imply? I will try to outline the consensus views of biblical and liturgical scholars. Perhaps the single most important factor was the growing faith that death had not ended the life and mission of Jesus: a faith, that is, that Jesus’ presence continued with them. It is worth noting just how many of the resurrection stories in Luke and Matthew (Mark has no Resurrection Narrative) take place in the context of a meal. This is even more striking in the Fourth Gospel.

What Does it Mean?

The first theological reflections on the life and death of Jesus center on the primacy of the Rule of God, and on the conflict between it and the power, or rule of evil. In the light of the resurrection faith, the death was seen not as a defeat, but as the triumph of God’s love, a love on which Jesus had staked his whole being. The belief the Jesus continued to be present in the church very soon came to be focused on the sharing of the common meal and reciting Jesus’ own words. Of course, those words themselves are full of new interpretations and carry a strikingly new message: the disciples are under a new covenant, with the implication that they are a new People of God; Jesus’ willing submission to the powers of evil is seen as the way in which God is saving the people. It is a new way, not by animal sacrifice (though the metaphor is powerfully used), but by willing obedience to the rule of God. St Paul, with his customary theological acuity, gets the point precisely in his letter to Rome, “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”. (5.19).

Center Point of Prayer

Thus, Christian prayer revolves round this center point: God’s will to rescue humankind, entangled in its own folly, by the work of the chosen Messiah, Jesus. Again Paul hits the nail right on the head. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation…everything has become new. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ… that is, in Christ, god was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us”. (II Cor. 5.17ff).
Believing this with all their hearts, is it any wonder that when we come to earliest texts of a service we hear the central act beginning with:
“Lift up your hearts; lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God; it is very proper and our bounden duty (note here: “our Office”) to do so.”? Is it any wonder, either, that they called this act of worship the Eucharist, the Thanks-to-God-giving?

Liturgy of the Word

While the primary focus of the celebration was the final days of Jesus ministry, it was by no means the only thing that mattered to the disciples. The wider context of Jesus’ teaching, healing and welcoming ministry was essential for Paul’s conclusion noted above. The centrality of the Rule of God is only apparent if we listen to Jesus’ words in those incomparable stories, the Parables, and take note of the shorter sayings, found throughout the synoptic record.
It is here that the influence of the Synagogue is most clearly seen. E.J. Grisbrooke writes, “The synagogue service was composed basically of three elements – readings from the [Hebrew] scriptures, psalmody, and prayer, and these three are from the beginning the constant basic elements of the Christian [service]” (in Dict. Liturgy & Worship SCM Press, p.501).

We know that the three readings usually came one each from the three divisions of the Hebrew bible: from the Torah (Pentateuch), the Prophetic writings, which included what we call the ‘historical’ books like Joshua, Judges and Kings, in the division of the Prophets, and from the “Writings”, what we call the Wisdom literature, containing books like Job and Proverbs.
There was also a homily that commented on the readings and was usually delivered in Aramaic, since classical Hebrew was not longer the living language of the Jews. A written collection of such homilies is called a Targum (plur. Targumim), and they are an important source for our understanding of first century Judaism and sometimes reflect a different text in use. The custom of giving a homily is clearly seen in Luke’s account of Jesus, in the Synagogue of Nazareth: “He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day as was his custom”. Clearly, he is already regarded as a Rabbi (through popular acclaim), and he gives a homily on the reading from Isaiah that they had just heard. (Lk. 4.16f). The custom is even more clear in Luke’s report of Paul in Pisidian Antioch: “On the sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After the reading of the Law and the Prophets, the officials sent to them a message, saying, ‘Brothers, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, give it’”. (Acts 13. 15f.)
It seems that very early forms of the Christian service used an OT lesson and two NT lessons, one from the gospels and one from the Epistles, but by the 5th century, the OT lesson dropped out and remained out until the liturgical revisions of the 20th century restored them.

Before the Written Records

But what happened before gospels had assumed a written form? It seems most probable that in the years around 32 – 65 C.E. that after the OT reading the worship leader (Peter, Paul and other close followers of Jesus) would recount the remembered parables and saying of Jesus. Biblical scholars see this as one of the major formative influences on the emerging written accounts of Jesus’ acts and words because these clearly were interpreted and applied to the current needs of the community. On cannot imagine a house church gathering in Corinth, say, around 55 C.E. when the Leader having heard the OT lesson then said, “I’m afraid, brothers and sisters, that brother Mark has not yet finished his book so I have nothing to tell you about Jesus this morning”.

Understanding the Eucharist

I want to close by summing up some of the salient points about the Eucharist.

1) The church understands prayer to be primarily the function of the gathered community. This is not to say that prayer on one’s own is not also part of an individual Christian’s spiritual sustenance: we have, after all, the striking example of Jesus whom the Evangelists record drawing apart to a quiet place to pay. This is a time for introspection and examination.

2) From the very beginning, the central act of worship has been the Eucharist. This primacy strongly emphasizes that the centre of prayer is Thanksgiving and Adoration of a God who can be addressed as a parent and who holds all things together, bringing light out of darkness, order out of chaos and life out of death. It is light years away from a pagan (and unhappily, all too often contemporary) understanding of prayer as presenting a wish list to the ultimate entrepreneur. It is not only a thanksgiving for what God has done in Jesus, but for the wider understanding of all things being ultimately in the hand of God. (See Eucharistic Prayer D, BCP)

3) The structure of the Liturgy has from the beginning has been two services: (a) a recital of the saving acts of God in word, inherited, in part, from the Synagogue, and (b), the recital of the saving acts of God in symbol and sacrament: essentially a re-presentation, and emphatically not a representation. In broad terms, the first part of the service looks to the Hebrew context in which Jesus moved and presents to the community the narratives of his life and the essence of his teaching.
The second part centers on the words of Jesus at the Last Supper , set in a Thanksgiving Prayer that places Jesus as the central actor in God’s saving actions. Eucharistic Prayer B in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is an excellent example, incorporating much ancient material.

4) The words of Jesus at the Last Supper pose innumerable question since Mark, Matthew and Luke have significant differences between one another, and Paul, certainly our earliest witness, is different again. However the overall meaning is the same: Jesus is instituting a new Passover, for a new, universal people of God - the faithful followers of the Messiah, united as one with him, sharing in the obedience to the Rule of God. This involves sacrifice and that is what lies behind the strong symbolism of the sacrificial lamb; in this context, God also provides a New Covenant for the New Israel.

Remembrance of Me

It was in this common meal that the early disciples experienced the presence of the risen Lord. The excruciating conflicts about how Jesus is present were far in the future, and, perhaps, if the vital faith of the early years had not faded and been overlain with philosophical musings, need never have occurred.
The most striking element in the words of Jesus is the command to “remember”, for it encapsulates how the community understood what was happening. In Paul’ account, after both the blessing of the bread and the blessing of the wine, we hear, “do this for my remembrance”. In the English this sounds straightforward: we are to recall the events of the last Supper. This, however, is to ignore the evidence of the OT use of the idea where it is God who is asked to remember. Jeremias writes, “God’s remembrance, however, has always a quite definite meaning in Holy Scripture: it never means a mere recollection on the part of God; but when God remembers somebody, He acts, He does something, He sits in judgment, and grants his grace, He fulfills His promise”. (Eucharistic Words of Jesus p. 162).
Thus at each celebration we not only remember that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”, but we also call on god to fulfill his promises, and to be present with the Messiah and the gathered people who are his body.

One of the earliest Liturgies we know has this in its Eucharistic Prayer:

“Remember, Lord your church to rescue it from all evil, and perfect it in your love, and gather it from the four winds; make it holy to be part of your Kingdom (Rule) which you have made ready for it”. (Didaché 10.5, my translation).

A Christmastide Sermon - 2009

2010-01-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

The Cost of Christmas

During the last few weeks, I have noticed a distinct trend in the Advertisements that urge us to buy and buy again. Of course, the circumstances of this particular “shopping season”, otherwise known as Advent, create immense difficulties for the advertising industry. Even the most ingenious and bare-faced practitioners of the art of persuading us that what we would like is in fact a need which we fail to meet at our peril, even they have had a hard sell. One Mega store has adopted the slogan “Christmas Costs Less at (let us call it) Xmart”; after muting the rest of the spiel, for the second or third time, and as I sat waiting for the program to resume, I began to muse: “What, in fact, is the cost of Christmas? Is it calculated as, presumably, the GNP is worked out by examining a sheaf of statistics? What statistics? Then I asked myself, “What did the first Christmas cost?”

Costs: Immediate and Hidden

Certainly, the accounts suggest crowds with, one assumes, not a spare seat in any donkey cart, but our records do not say anything about last minute shopping, though there is a note of urgency since “Mary’s time had come” and a place was needed for the birthing. Knowing businessmen everywhere, the shed was probably not gratis, but the cost must have been very small. So, from a purely commercial point of view that first Christmas was even cheaper than shopping at Xmart. “But”, I mused on, “what about the hidden costs, those pages of small print?” Cost cannot be reckoned merely in dollars and cents, though we consistently seem to think so.

As is so often the case, the true cost of something is not always immediately obvious; this is surely true of some of the more stupid things we do, but it is also true of our generous actions. In these cases, we usually know the immediate cost, and if we are realistic, accept the fact that unexpected costs may lie ahead. But we have taken all that into account and will stand by our decision to offer help.

I think that something like this is the true cost of Christmas. Luke records the visit of Mary and Joseph to the Temple for the ritual purification required after childbirth, and adds the prophecy of Simeon. “This child is destined…to be a sign that will be opposed…and a sword will pierce your very being”. (Lk, 2.35): a chilling intimation of costs to come. We know that Jesus was destined not only to be spoken against, but to be viciously attacked.

Jesus the Realist & Human Fantasies

If we are realistic about helping someone, we are prepared for unexpected costs, and there is no doubt that Jesus was totally realistic about the consequences of his mission. Dozens of his recorded sayings show that he knew he was in danger. Some Pharisees, says Luke, came to him and said, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you”, and Jesus replies that he must continue with his mission of proclaiming the Rule of God, because it “is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem”. (Lk. 13.32).

Perhaps the most costly thing of all is to refuse to face reality: to live in a world of fantasy. Of course, when we do that it is often others who have to bear the greater cost. The examples of the human tendency to prefer fantasy to reality are unlimited. To begin with a biblical example, we may note the Genesis story of the building of the tower of Babel. This is the climax of the early Myths recorded in chapters one to eleven in Genesis. They begin with the fantasy that we do not have to follow God’s plan for us because we are so clever, and end with the futile attempt to place ourselves as the divine at the top of a Ziggurat, the dwelling place of the gods.

In our own day it must be obvious to any thinking person that the advertising industry encloses us in a cocoon of fantasy: every family is perfect and each member has gleaming white teeth; diamonds are for ever and will ensure eternal love; a cruise in a totally artificial environment (ski slope; mini tropical forest) will…goodness only knows what it will do. Perhaps one of the potentially most costly (indeed bankrupting) fantasies is that there is no danger from a rapidly melting ice pack. The terrible cost will face our grandchildren as coast line shrinks, unless we can all come to grips with the reality of the situation very quickly.

Transformation of God

In a sermon preached long before he was ArchBp of Canterbury, Rowan Williams says that human love at its best, giving up personal interest and risking safety on various levels to help a fellow human being ‘provides a hint’ of what happened at Bethlehem. “A human being comes into existence who so transforms what we mean by “God” that we can boldly and almost playfully say that God has moved, or changed places”. (A Ray of Darkness (1993) p. 18). Yet, our power to turn the reality of God’s love into fantasy is very clear in so much associated with Christmas. As Rowan Williams says in another Christmas sermon, “The tightly swaddled baby is a gift-wrapped object…a lucky mascot”. (op. cit. p. 27). That human being who was to pay such a cost for us, has been made into a marketing symbol. Could anything be further from reality than the carol verse: “The cattle are lowing…But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”. Rowan comments that there can be no parent who is not incredulous at such a report. 'Lowing' is an understatement; the cattle were doubtless creating a racket; angels were shouting a chorus and people were tramping in and out. Any real baby (not the fantasy one of carols and Hallmark) would be giving full voice with a scarlet face and clenched fist.

The Gift & Cost of Christmas

And the whole point is that Jesus was real; a real baby, a real adolescent and a real man, perhaps the most real human being ever. In his humanity he showed us what the love of God means and challenged us to leave our fantasy world behind and live in the reality of the Rule of God. It was this commitment to reality that brought him into conflict with the authorities and led, ultimately, to his execution, the hidden cost of his birth in Bethlehem.

It might seem that this is a far too gloomy reflection for Christmastide, but it need not be. Could anything be a greater gift than to be enabled to receive the outpoured love of God, which Jesus so unstintingly mediates to us? Who would not seize the opportunity to escape from an unreal world into the reality of God’s kingdom? To be able to answer Jesus’ question, “Do you still not see” by a resounding “Yes”.
St. Augustine said that God will ultimately penetrate our deafness. I suggest that it will be by the continual and loud crying of the Baby in the Crib, followed by the resounding Prophetic proclamation of a God who loved so much that Paul could say, “The foolishness of God is greater than human wisdom”. (I Cor. 1.25).

Reflections for Advent

2009-12-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Incarnation

The word Incarnation occurs quite frequently at this time of year; a notable example is one of the most popular of all Christmas carols: “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. One wonders, as this song pours our from every broadcasting system in every Mall in the land, what the vast majority of listeners make of verse 2:

“Late in time behold him come, offspring of the Virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the God-head see; hail the incarnate Deity”?

Even log-time members of one of the established Christian churches (of course, I do not refer to Episcopalians) have a hard time in explaining the theological implications of the word Incarnation. I am reminded of a ten-year old Sunday School student who, on being quizzed by his parents about that morning’s lesson (it was close to Christmas), said it was all about canned milk.

A Definition?

The Incarnation (from the Latin in which not surprisingly means ‘in’ and carnis, flesh), very baldly stated is the name given to the belief that in some mysterious way, the divine, or perhaps, The Divinity lived in, was joined to, was one with the human life of a man born in Galilee around 4 BCE and brought up in a pious Jewish household. You might gather from the fuzziness of this definition – either divine or The Divinity, and three attempts at describing the kind of relationship between God and Jesus – that whenever a try to say something about the incarnation, I am aware that a quagmire looms ahead. It may well be the case that one can hardly put together more than a sentence or two on the doctrines of the Incarnation or the Trinity without be accused as an heretic.

Carols & Metaphors

Consider the carol just quoted: “veiled in flesh the God-Head see”, and then consider verses from other carols: “God from God – Light from Light eternal, Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb” ( from O Come All Ye Faithful); or “How silently the wondrous gift is given! So god imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven” (O Little Town), and, finally, out of dozens of actual or implied views that might be quoted, “Behold the world’s creator wears the form and fashion of a slave” (From East to West).
There is a considerable variation in the metaphors used to describe the relationship that faith sees between God and the birth of Jesus. A ‘veil’ suggests someone (God?) walking around looking human, but, perhaps, not fully so.
O Come All Ye Faithful is a great deal more robust: it suggest that the divine presence – “Light from Light Eternal” itself spent nine months in Mary’s womb. Here we have a clear Trinitarian theology with Light Eternal being God the Father and the Light emanating thence being the Son, whom the 4th Gospel prologue calls the Word; moreover, says John, the Word is “the true light than enlightens everyone”, who came into the world: “The Word was made flesh and lived among us”. (John 1. 9 & 14).

At the other end of the spectrum is Little Town of Bethlehem. Here, the birth is an undefined ‘wondrous gift’ and its purpose is to give to all humanity the ‘blessings of [his] heaven’. This is, what one might call a very soft version of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and, perhaps, that explains the popularity of this beloved carol.

Early Faith to Developed Dogma

It seems quite clear from the early documents of the group that came to be called Christians that from the very first they believed that Jesus was inseparably close to God, and that God worked though him to break down the barriers they experienced in coming to God and embracing others They also embraced Jesus’ teaching about the Rule – Kingdom - of God. The Prophets had looked for One, who would come to inaugurate the Last Days, and Jesus was seen as fulfilling that promise; the parables of Jesus speak of the Rule of God already operating, but also point to a future fulfillment.

This is the beginning of a development that produced a specific “doctrine” of the incarnation, but it was not until Christianity became a lawful religion after the baptism of the Emperor Constantine in 356 C.E., that Christmas became a central festival, and the season we call Advent began its rather long liturgical development.
Before Christmas became the central winter festival, (mainly, as the church spread into northern pagan areas, to replace the rituals of the winter solstice, lighted fir trees and that kind of thing), Epiphany had been central; it was one of the times for Baptism and was preceded by some weeks of preparation for the candidates. It was this period of preparation that gave Advent its quasi-penitential element when it became the preparation for Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation. So it is that Advent has notes of joy in anticipation of Christmas, but also an undertone of penitence for the human failure that lies behind so much suffering and pain in the world.
A final ingredient was added to the Advent Liturgy somewhere around the ninth century: it was an emphasis on the Second Advent, the second coming of Christ at the end of the ages. The vibrant faith of the earliest believers that Jesus would return within their lifetime, had long centuries ago died, but as the fact that the end of the millennium was approaching sank in, there was a surge of interest in “the Last Things”. It seemed appropriate to put together the joy of the first Advent with the coming judgment of the Second, and a look at the readings for the season will quickly illustrate the point.

Systematic Theology

It remains true, however, that the reality encapsulated in the theology of the incarnation is central. Having said that this doctrine is central is not to say that it is paramount. Some theologians say so, for example, Samuel Wells in a recent guide to Christian doctrine writes, “The doctrine of the incarnation is the central doctrine of Christian theology, from which all other doctrines flow”. (Christianity – The Complete Guide, (CCG) Ed. John Bowden p. 617; my italics).
A good deal depends on how one approaches doctrine in general. Wells approach might be called a “systematic theology”; such an approach is concerned to produce an overall, neat pattern, which gives a somewhat theoretical picture. This systematizing tends to depend more on philosophical principles than on history. Early signs of this mode are seen in the fourth century where, in the Nicene Creed of 325, the Bishops resorted to a Greek philosophical, term, homoousios, in an attempt to nail down, categorize, the exact nature of the relationship between God and Jesus.
The apogee is seen in the Scholastic theologians of the 13th &14th centuries when it was argued whether the Incarnation would have taken place anyway, even without the fall of Adam. St. Thomas Aquinas thought not, and thus named the first transgression a felix culpa – a happy sin.

Pragmatic Approach

A more pragmatic approach is to begin with the foundation documents of the church, and, using the tools of historical criticism, to trace how the developed teaching about God, Jesus, humanity and the complex relationships between them developed. Since the Enlightenment, this has increasingly been the approach of those scholars who have not remained firmly in a conservative position, as in Calvinism and the Roman Catholic church.
It will, I am sure, come as no surprise to anyone who has read articles on Simonsurmises that this is the approach with which I feel most comfortable. So, I will begin with the biblical picture. It is often assumed that the doctrine of the incarnation is based, above all, on the stories of Jesus’ birth. It needs to be stressed, however, that of the four canonical gospels, two do not have an account of Jesus’ birth. Mark, our earliest witness, begins with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, and the 4th Gospel has an introduction strongly influenced by Hellenistic philosophy. That Prologue, as indeed the whole of the Fourth Gospel, was to be an immense influence in the development of Christian Doctrine; it is here, probably only here, in the New Testament, that there is an unambiguous statement of the pre-existence of Christ, expressed in the theology of the Logos.

The Central focus

On the other hand, all four gospels spend a disproportionate amount of time on the story of the Passion, and it is abundantly clear from the rest of N.T. that the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus were both the focus of individual faith, and the spearhead of the earliest preaching. It is also noteworthy that in the development of Christian worship, Holy Week and Easter were the first to have specific liturgies attached to them, almost four centuries before the celebration of Christmas became normative. The conclusion is clear: the central doctrine of Christianity is connected with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Background to Ministry of Jesus

So, paradoxical as it may seem, I think we need to start with the ministry of Jesus, and particularly with its climax in Holy Week and Easter. It is immediately clear, of course, that if we are to make any sense of the accounts of Jesus’ life and death, we have to go back much further into the seedbed of Judaism. The O.T. gives us a dramatic presentation of the faith of the Hebrew people, the first (at least, in the Western world) to embrace a belief in One God. A battle between the gods 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. We find many 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).

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)

God’s creative activity consists in the overcoming of darkness and chaos and the establishing of light; essentially this battle sums up the message of the Prophets, which is foundational to the ministry of Jesus, and is central, also, in the rest of the N.T. The second story of creation in Genesis, the much older one tells of the beginning of the estrangement between the human race and God; in a sense, as John says centuries later, human beings loved darkness rather than light. By their hubris, the idée fixe that they we self-sufficient and smarter than God, they joined the forces of darkness and chaos.
The repeated offers of a Reconciling Covenant with Yahweh are met with repeated acts of disobedience and hubris. The Prophets see this disobedience not as ritual failures, but as a moral issue – the break down of justice, the exercise of unrestrained power and the blatant exploitation of the poor. Yet they consistently hold out hope that God will send a righteous leader.

The Early N.T. Traditions

All this (and so very much more) lies behind the writers of the N.T. as they record for us the early traditions about Jesus of Nazareth and, in the Letters, give us their first attempts to understand what it is that God is working out among them. There seems little doubt that Jesus collected a group of enthusiastic and committed followers, who listened to his teaching, and accompanied him as he journeyed round Galilee; above all, they spent that last period of his life with him in Jerusalem. Whether at the very early stage they called him Messiah, Christos, we cannot be sure, but it was a title that they applied very soon after his death, firmly believing that he power of God had been given him back to them in what thy called the Resurrection. The early speeches of the Apostles recorded in The Acts of the Apostles suggest that they were the ones who took out the message, what the, called the Euangelion, – the Good News.
We also learn from the same source that the simple declaration of faith required at Baptism was, “I believe that Jesus is Messiah (Christos)”: a Creed that would have seemed hopelessly inadequate to the Bishops who framed what we call the Nicene Creed in 325. [More precisely, the Creed we use liturgically is the Constantinopolitan of 381].

What did the Apostles Think?

It seems unlikely in the extreme that the Galilean fishermen, based firmly in Judaism thought that they were following a man who was also fully God (as the later creeds put it) as they went from village to village; it would be repugnant to their faith in the One God. But it also seems clear that by the end of his ministry and especially in his martyr’s death they came to the conclusion that he was unique among human beings; that God worked through him; that his teaching about the coming rule of God was an authentic divine message.
Perhaps most central of all, they experienced peace and reconciliation. This is portrayed again and again in the accounts of the miracles. A person tortured by madness (in 1st. century terms, possessed by a demon), is seen to be healed. The word in Greek is sõzõ, which also means to save. A saying recorded by Luke sums up so much of what they thought about Jesus. Luke uses St. Mark’s account of the Pharisees’ accusing him of casting out demons by black magic. As in Mark, Luke reports Jesus saying that if Satan is casting out Satan, then that is good news. But significantly, then adds, “If I by the finger of God cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you”. (Lk. 11.20). Jesus is understood to be a mediator of the love of God, making people whole, and overcoming the powers of darkness.
Even before the earliest Evangelist, St. Mark, Paul had written to the Christians in Corinth, somewhere between 52 and 54 C.E., that is, only two decades after the crucifixion:
“We are convinced that one has died for all…(17) So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through the Messiah and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is in the Messiah God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us”. (II Cor. 5.14ff).

Here we have the germ of what was to be one of the fundamental doctrines of the church, the Atonement, but we also have the clearest statement of who the first generation Christians thought about the Relation of Jesus to God, and our relation to Jesus, and, thus to one another and to God.

Paul to Chalcedon

It is a long way from this to the “official” view of the Incarnation that was sealed in the 4th and 5th centuries, particularly in the Creed of Constantinople and in the statement issued at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E., known as the Chalcedonian Definition. How the Church got from St. Paul to Chalcedian is a long and fascinating story, which must wait for another time. However, the position of Chalcedon on the relationship between God and Jesus remained set in stone until the 18th century when critical study of the biblical texts began, and the dogmatic authority of the Roman church began to be challenged even more strongly than it had been at the Reformation.

Two Contemporary Views

I end by juxtaposing two contemporary views. One from Samuel Wells, who defends the immutability of the views set out in the Chalcedonian Definition and the other from John Robinson’s book, The Human Face of God. John was a C. of E. bishop and caused an almighty uproar when he published his first book, Honest to God.
First, Samuel Wells:

The doctrine of the Incarnation is that at a certain time, God the second person of the Trinity … took flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and growing from infancy to adulthood, walked on earth in human form. [Yet throughout his life] Jesus never ceased to be divine, the second person of the Trinity; nor did he did he [ever] cease to be human…nor to be one person… a person with divine and human nature; and [never did] the Creator and creature cease to be distinct orders of being. (CCG p.612)

Wells goes on to say that this doctrine is “not easy to grasp in today’s world”. Some of the critics of the Definition would go much further than that and say that the doctrine, in its traditional form, is incoherent, but that what it stands for is important for Christian faith.

So, John Robinson writes:

I believe that the word [incarnation] can just as truly and just as biblically (in fact, more truly and more biblically) be applied to another way of understanding it. This is: that one who was totally and utterly a man – and had never been anything other than a man or more than a man – so completely embodied what was from the beginning the meaning and purpose of God’s self-expression (whether conceived in terms of his Spirit, his Wisdom, his Word, or the intimately personal relation of Son-ship) that it could be said and had to be said of that man, ‘He was God’s man’ or ‘God was in Christ’ or even that he was God for us”. (Human Face (1973) p.179.

A Sermon for Advent

2009-11-30T08:04:00.000-08:00

Delivered at St. George’s Chapel, Indian River Hundred, Delaware
November 29, 2009

Advent has always been one of my favorite seasons. The readings contain some of the more majestic passages of the scriptures, the music, the poetry and the theology are impressive. But as I thought about it, I was struck by the many contrasts of Advent.

Contrasts of Advent

There is the contrast that in the world around us, Christmas is already under way while the church keeps a season of penitence and preparation for the joy of Christmas (which begins in about three and a half weeks!) The readings for Advent, too, abound in contrasts. The theme of the fulfilling of a long-held hope is heard in the prophecies of the coming Messiah. But there is also a note of the Judgment to come – a kind of Second Advent, directing our attention to the way we live our lives day by day, because judgment is seen more as a process than a future apocalyptic happening.

Established yet Uncertain

But perhaps the biggest contrast of all, and the one I want us to reflect on for a while this morning, is between settled traditions of the past and the uncertainties of the future. Advent is part of an established round of liturgical worship; it represents a settled, familiar round of worship. Advent looks in two directions. It gathers up all the longings of the People of Israel for the coming of their Messiah, and in that, it is a preparation for our celebration of the coming of the Messiah child in Bethlehem. It also looks to the future, to the completing of God’s rule, and in this way, the message of Advent points up the temporary nature of social conventions and institutions that look as though they are set for ever in stone.

Without doubt, the Gospel & Epistle for today (Luke 21.25ff; I Thess. 3.9ff) direct out attention to the future aspect of Advent, and Jeremiah speaks to sixth century Hebrews of a future hope. The Old Testament sees history as a finite process, a flow of events and people, which has a beginning in the creative act of God, and moves to an End., "I am the Alpha and Omega, says the Lord God, who was and who is to come, the sovereign Lord of all." is how the book of Revelation puts it. (Apoc. 1.8)
Many pictures of the end suggest great trials, but they also assure the Christian community that if it is faithful all will, in the end be well. Paul, writing to the Christians in Thessalonika expects the end very soon, but he writes in a tone of confidence and counsels the community to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all”. The same contrast of trial and trust is clear in the gospel passage from Luke. “People will faint from fear and foreboding”, but to the faithful community he says, “stand up, and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.

What we really think about the Eschaton?

Yet another contrast is between our theological positions which take for granted this future aspect of Advent, and our real feelings on the matter. It is one thing to long for the end and the establishment of God’s rule, it is quite another to live one’s life with the conviction that all our cherished institutions are transitory and passing away. After all, if we have a carefully worked out scheme of things, an organized religion, a clear code of law which tells you what to do and what not to do, do we really want a new heaven and a new earth putting in place a totally God-centered rule? Perhaps it is better to have a God at a very safe distance. Later Judaism would not allow Yahweh, the name of God to be spoken, replacing it with surrogates like, “The Holy One” or “the Heavens”. In the Christian tradition we are not afraid to say “Yahweh”, but it may be that our theological structures have made God into a safe abstraction, carefully enclosed in the Nicene Creed.

So, perhaps it is safer to stay with the order one knows; perhaps we are content to enjoy the poetry and music, and to treat this season of Advent as the preparation for the certainty of the Christmas message with its overtones of general good will and family reunions.

Christ in us & we in Him

This would be fine except for the fact that it really isn't like that. As we are reminded again and again, much more than half the world cannot look forward to the joys of family reunions, warm fires and piles of presents. It is precisely the function of the Advent message keep us focused on the here and now while directing us to meditate on the completion of God’s plan. That is what Paul does when he urges the Thessalonians to continue and increase in love as they wait for the end. The paradox is that the One who is to come, already stands in our midst; stands, but also lies bleeding from snipers bullets in too many places in the world, lies emaciated with starvation in many parts of Africa, and is rejected by many in our own culture.
Jesus tells us that we are to see him in each of his children. That, if you recall, is the central idea of the parable of the sheep and the goats. The parable tells of the time “when the Son of Man comes in his glory”, sits in judgement and separates the sheep and the goats. Jesus says to them "Anything you did (or did not do)for one of my brothers or sisters here, however humble, you did (or did not do) for me." (Mt. 25). This is to say, that Jesus meets us in a myriad of unexpected ways. It is to say that we cannot have the kind of solid, unchangeable certainties that a fixed religious system may give us so that all our inter-personal transactions can totted up on a calculator, and we can make sure that we keep our heavenly account in balance, or even with a bit of credit. Rather, we have to deal with each new situation in the light of the love shown by Jesus.

Radical Demands

The Jesus who stands among us is greater than the Law and the Prophets,and makes more radical demands than the law, calling us to move out of the certainties of our comfortable traditions. The two-sided nature of Advent calls us to re-evaluate our attitudes as Christians to the kind of consumer excess that floods over us at this time of year. It challenges us to take note, and to take action on behalf of the vast number of people among us who are in real want. It challenges us, as the Intercession says, “to work for justice, freedom and peace”; and that not in an abstract way, but in examining our personal attitudes to issues of social justice, to the status of Minorities, and the scandal of the startling inequalities in our national life We need to consider that this One who stands among us and is to come in judgement had some hard things to say. We must resist the temptation to sentimentalize his message. He makes immense demands; he says that he will bring division to households; he suggests that our every-day actions are to be judged by the way we treat others. This is the message of Advent. It bids us question our comfortable assumptions, and it reminds us that the Judgement of God is not some far off event that is not of immediate concern; it is rather ever-present process that was initiated by the birth of that child in Bethlehem.

Some Reflections: Inclusiveness, Personal history, Education

2009-09-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Background

A few days ago I searched with increasing frustration for a file that I was sure I had placed on the desktop of my computer. As the state of utter clutter was borne in upon me, I reminded myself that it was only virtual clutter, but, as the word actually suggests, it was ‘as good as’ real (?) clutter. In the process of disposing of unwanted memos, lists, itineraries of summer trips long past and sermons that have several versions (to allude to a deadly clerical secret), my finger was poised to remove a sermon I gave at the chapel service of the Alumni gathered at St. Andrew’s School a year ago. As is so often the case when doing a ‘clear-out’, I felt I must just glance at what I had said. With real files, of course, this is disastrous: reminders of the 1986 UK trip require further shuffling through and one probably arrives in Greece about ninety minutes later, wondering why there are so many entrance ticket stubs to Mycenaean remains and Peloponnesian museums.

In any case, I kept this file because I felt it might be worth sharing, partly as a tiny piece of autobiography that might interest the small number of people who seem to like reading what I post, and partly because the group I was addressing contained a relatively large proportion of men (no women in those days) who had attended the school long before the current usage of the word ‘gay’ had appeared (though doubtless not its totally unspoken reality) and when not a single minority student was at the School. It is greatly to the credit of the Headmaster, who hired me, Mr. Robert Moss, that he integrated the school, enrolling the first African American students; abolished corporal punishment (which in fairness, it should be noted, had not been anything like what we hear of Rugby and Eton almost into the 20th century); and, a few years before his retirement, enrolled the first girls, setting the course for the almost 50/50 gender distribution that now obtains.
These small beginnings have blossomed under the guidance of the two Heads who followed him, especially under the present Headmaster, Mr. Tad Roach.

The Sermon

Some Autobiography

When I joined the Faculty of St. Andrew’s School, the school was 42 years old: I was 44 and when I retired in 1992, was approaching 66. My wife, Nan, taught on after I retired, giving between us a combined total approaching 60 years of involvement in and commitment to the life of this School: not bad considering that I was hired in 1971 as a one-year sabbatical replacement. At the time, I confidently assumed that it would be for one year. I assumed that I would soon return to teaching graduate students in a Seminary as I had in the UK. During the year, I considered several job offers, one of which required me to complete a Ph.D. begun in the UK, and to concentrate on Semitic languages: I had some Hebrew, but the thought of tackling Acadian and Aramaic was too much. This was not the only reason, indeed, not by any means, the main reason why I agreed to Bob Moss’s invitation to stay on.

Moving From Tertiary to Secondary Education

I soon discovered that teaching bright high school students was quite as challenging as dealing with Undergraduates & Graduate students and the distinctly English feel of the Campus made me feel at home. Above all, I was impressed by the underlying philosophy of St. Andrew’s, and by its unrealized potential. Although there was only a handful of minority students in 1971, the essential breakthrough had been made; the chapel program was being reshaped so that it no longer looked like the regimen of a Junior Seminary; although still tiny, there was an established Art Department under the loving care of Eleanor Seyffert. I was impressed, too, by the absence of the elitism so prevalent in English Public (Private) schools, and, I suspected, in many US Private Prep Schools. Change was beginning, but there was a considerable rigidity both in the schedule and in the application of discipline.

Students & Religion - 1971

In my second year, the Headmaster asked me to head a group to revise the Handbook and we reduced a forty page printed rule book to four typed pages. In the Chapel, I felt it was time to let some fresh air, relaxation and humor into the program. For the first time ever, a Sunday Eucharist was held on the grassy bank overlooking the lake, the communion table surrounded by student-made banners, the singing led by several guitars.
I soon realized that it was particularly important to address openly the wide-spread student skepticism about religion in general and the resentment about compulsory chapel attendance in particular; this I tried to do, firstly by acknowledging these facts openly, and then attempting to present a fresh view of the foundations of Christianity, emphasizing that even if one couldn’t conscientiously join in the creed, accept a bible reading or receive communion, it was possible to have some space for reflection, time to think of the needs of others and perhaps to gain new perspectives.

The Gospel Reading – St. Matthew 9. 9-13 & 16-18

This was not a matter just of externals to sweeten the pill: it had a firm theological base, a base, which by a happy chance of the Lectionary framers, is embedded in today’s gospel reading.
I had never felt comfortable with Christianity’s emphasis on absolute statements, a certainty that it was possible to give a sort of diagram of God’s inner being, with the doctrine of the Trinity displayed like a circuit diagram. The almost obsessive dedication to rules and dogma I also found off-putting. My theological education enabled me to come to grips with these issues, and years later, teaching 5th and 6th Formers (i.e. 11th & 12th graders) at St. Andrew’s, it was clear that issues like this still were a road block for them. This was not surprising since most popular understandings of religion present a travesty of the New Testament view of God.

Jesus’ Disregard of Purity Standards

Today’s gospel suggests a picture of a God very different from many popular images: the punishing God or, on the other hand, a God who only accepts certain groups or a God for whom all ethical issues are black or white, or a God who perpetually meddles with the molecules in response to prayer requests from favorite petitioners. As we read the story of the call of Matthew, we might ponder on just how great a scandal this was, given the rigidity of first century Palestinian Judaism. The incident in today’s reading is by no means an isolated one: much of Jesus’ reported activity centers on the central activity of the common meal, and many of his important sayings, are elicited by criticism of the way he welcomes non-Jews, notorious sinners, even bank managers to the common table.
In this story we have two memorable sayings: only sick people need a doctor, and a reference to the Prophet Hosea, - “I desire mercy not sacrifice”. In his breaking of the current rigid purity standards that any good Jew would observe, and in his frequent reference back to the Prophets, we see one of the central elements of Jesus’ ministry. By the time of the ministry of Jesus, the immense contribution of the Hebrew Prophets who lived in the years from around 750 to 500 BCE had been largely overlaid by an exclusive legalism. The Prophets had provided totally new insights into the way the early Hebrews might view religion: in the Prophetic preaching, religion is seen as more than keeping the rules and performing the correct rituals. Sin is not the failure to offer a sacrifice of the right kind at the right time, or cooking a meal on Saturday, but the self-willed rejection of the moral underpinning of human society. And so Jesus says, “Go and learn the meaning of, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’”.

Return to the Prophets

Today’s gospel and very many other reports of Jesus’ actions and sayings suggest that he cut through the legalism of the day and recalled his hearers to the Prophetic message. The story of the growing conflict between Jesus and the authorities is punctuated by the criticisms of the Pharisees: why do you eat with “tax collectors and sinners?”; why do you allow your disciples to work on the Sabbath, and most pointedly, why do you perform healings on this Holy Day? Luke reports in this connection that the authorities began to “watch him closely”. It was Jesus’ continued declaration of the breadth of God’s love, standing over against human constructions of narrow exclusivity that led to his execution.
As we know from the early history of the Church the battle went on; Paul had to oppose exclusivist opponents and insist on the fact that you did not have to be a Jew first to become a Christian; that ‘in Christ’ gender differences are irrelevant. Down the centuries, the openness of God has had to be continually re-asserted against human efforts to maintain a narrow, closed community, and repeated efforts to insist on a rigid legalism. As we are well aware, the struggle is part of our contemporary scene: too many people make it their job to defend God against the kind of people Jesus welcomed to his table.

Conclusion

It is my hope that the message I tried constantly to deliver and which I am sure my successors have continued, has elicited a response, at least in some of the students we have been privileged to teach and support pastorally. I hope that they have learned something of the quality of mercy, been moved to seek the truth and always to fight for justice.

Only the other day a saw a bumper sticker that in some ways might stand as a motto to sum up my guiding principle as a school chaplain:

“My karma ran over my dogma”.

Away from my Desk

2009-08-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

Answering Service Theology, Continued

For some reason, I have recently been finding analogies to, or suggestive links for, theological issues in the whole technology of telephone answering systems; (about these, let it be said I know next to nothing except that contemporary ones are diabolical and the early technology relied on machines that had reels of tape that frequently ran out, resulting in a series of alarming beeps).

The Task of Theology

Of course, some have said that every problem is ultimately a theological problem, every issue, a theological issue, and so it is not surprising that an electronic voice triggers a theological response: rather like a European Mayor on a visit to NY, surveying the city from the top of the Empire State Building and responding to the question, “What are your impressions?” with, “It reminds me of sex”. The startled guide asked why that was so. “Oh, I don’t know, everything reminds me of sex”. Such a position has its problems; if everything is theological what meaning is left for considering a theological position in contrast, say to a sociological one? If everything is a theological issue, is anything so?

Theology must be in touch with the surrounding culture, but that is not to say all questions are theological. Professor Werner G. Jeanrond of Lund University puts it well. “Theology must…always be sensitive to the surrounding context and to its questions, concerns, values, expectations and fears…A theology that does not engage critically with [contemporary] culture runs the risk of talking only to itself [presumably other theologians] or at best to those members of the Christian community who do not want to confront any change in church and society”. (Christianity, The Complete Guide, Ed. John Bowden - CCG, p 1175)

On Another Line

But this to get ahead of myself. It is, perhaps, possible to understand how listening to endless lists of menu options delivered in that inimitable electronic voice might suggest parallel theological frustrations of a theologian who wanted to look at, for example, ethical issues in the light of contemporary knowledge of physics, genetics, neurology and so on, or to consider our reading of the bible in the light of historical, manuscript and textual research.
This time, it was not an endless menu that triggered a theological reflection. I had to make a series of calls to an Insurance company as a result of a gentle sideswipe by a teenage driver. Amazingly, I negotiated the Menus, only repeatedly to be told: “I am away from my desk or on another line”. Taking a firm stand against my (what I might call), “pantheologism”, I told myself that there wasn’t even a trace of theology here. My resolution did not last long: what about questions of theodicy? what about the Old Testament’s insistence that it is not possible to ‘see’ God (perhaps there had always been a Deus in hoc machina?) what about the overseeing of multiple other planets – “on another line” perhaps?

Death of God Theology

My first musings centered on the defunct “death of God” movement that had a brief life in the late nineteen sixties. Various positions emerged at that time in response. The hard version: perhaps there never had been anyone (thing?) at the desk and from time to time genuine-sounding messages had instilled the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent and all-directing presence in human affairs. And then, the soft version: perhaps there was a CEO, but for complex reasons of developments in our world-view, we were now suffering from a massive blockage of perception and heard only a message of absence.

Mystical Theology

This second view, of course, was somewhat analogous to positions that had been held often before: mystical theologians had spoken of a via negativa, and of the need to negate all images. A type of theology known as apophatic sprang from the writings of the Pseudo Dionysius, formerly known by the New Testament, and rather more exciting name, of Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17.34). In his book, The Mystical Theology, Dionysius writes of God: “It (sic.) is not sonship or fatherhood and it is nothing known to us or to any other being. It falls neither within the predicate of non-being nor of being. Existing beings do not know it as it actually is, and it does not know them as they are. There is no speaking of it [‘apophatic’ derives from the Gk, apofasis - ’απoφασις ) a denial, a negation] , nor name nor knowledge of it”. (Quoted in CCG p 512; Art. God by George Pattison).

Influence of Dionysius

In Dionysius, He/She/It certainly seems away from the Desk with a vengeance! Lest we dismiss this approach as Neoplatonic (which it certainly is) or Gnostic (which it often echoes), it is worth recalling that it was a very powerful influence in Mediaeval philosophical theology, particularly on the “Angelic Doctor”, Thomas Aquinas. Moreover, Pattison goes on to point out, the same strain is found in a less philosophical form in Mediaeval English texts like The Cloud of Unknowing, where we read, “that of God Himself can no man think”. “It should be added”, he continues, “this denial of any intellectual…access to God is complemented by an insistence that we can, nevertheless, come to ‘know’ God in the mode of love…These kind of texts certainly resonate with modern uncertainties as to how to think and speak of God”. (p 512).

Johannine theology is surely one of the sources of this mode of ‘understanding’ (note the paradox) access to God by experiencing rather than by ratiocinating: “‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father;’”. This might possibly suggest a rather Blake-like view: divinity is in perfect humanity; be that as it may, it surely endorses the main Old Testament position that direct vision of God is not for human beings. (Jn 14.9; see also, Jn 6.46; I Jn 1.18 & 4.12).

Unquestionable Directions from God

Is the upshot of this to say something like, “Deal with my Personal Secretary who knows exactly what’s on my mind and in whom I have absolute confidence”? Of course that is heretical, certainly “Subordinationist”, possibly “Sabellian”, but note what Paul says in I Corinthians 15.28, an awkward text for Chalcedonian theology.

At the very least, this approach should be a warning to those who in a cavalier fashion imagine that they have direct contact with God who will give them His (note that) daily orders about the ordering of life, and if they be political leaders, explicit directions in domestic and foreign affairs.
Statements like, “It is clearly God’s will that we…..” or “God’s Word has settled the issue” should trigger immediate questioning. What God wants of us is not to be learned from a morning message on the red telephone, but in the patient waiting on the guidance of the Spirit, which comes through the myriad changes and chances of human existence, both sacred and secular.

A Second Answering Service Reflection

The absence message also triggered a second reflection, which resulted from wondering if it was altogether a bad thing if the boss was “away from her desk”; this further reflection brought to mind something in David Jenkins’s book with the somewhat quirky title of God, Miracle and the Church of England. As an aside, you may recall that David Jenkins was the Bishop of one of the leading Dioceses in England, and it was his fearless pursuit of the difficult, but insistent questions that face both theologians and thinking lay people that led to a mounting outcry against him from the evangelical right. Instead of David, we now have Tom Wright, an exchange that might suggest something about the current politics of the Church of England.

The Action of God in the World

Jenkins is exploring how we can conceive of the action of God in human affairs; he has fun with a ‘thought experiment’ about the death of the emperor Theodosius, which had significant repercussions at the Council of Chalcedon (451 C.E.): his successor, the Empress Pulcheria, first of all deposed Bishop Chrysaphius, the political intriguer who had been protecting Eutyches; she then married a Thracian army officer, Marcian, who was a firm supporter of Pope Leo.

Thus Theodosius’ fatal fall from his horse, “ensured” that the Greek tradition based on the Nicene settlement of “speaking of the ‘one nature’ (=one Person) of Jesus Christ” was trumped by the Western tradition, which had been defined first by Tertullian in the terms that “Jesus Christ is one Person, and that in him are two natures of Godhead and manhood” (R.V Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon, pp 96f., quoted in Jenkins, p 45). So, presto! Theodosius falls off his horse and the Definition of Chalcedon emerges. As David Jenkins points out, this has been, and still is, frequently used as ‘proof’ that the Definition is a kind of hot line from God; by this admittedly circuitous route, (viz. causing Theodosius’ horse to stumble, this killing the emperor) God so organized events that the final and definitive information about the Incarnation was given to us (from the horses mouth, so to speak). So, let no one question the direct message from God.

Meddling with the Molecules & the Problem of Evil

The question, then, for the thought experiment is, “Did God push the Emperor Theodosius off his horse on 28 July 450?” (p. 61). Not surprisingly, Jenkins returns a resounding “no”, but points out, as I just noted, that many discussions about current happenings in the church often seem to imply an affirmative answer. In summing up this section David Jenkins writes, “Unless we can be clear that between the scientific and historical causalities of the universe and of the world on the one hand and the actions and transactions of God with persons on the other there is a space, (italics added) then the problem of evil is absolutely overwhelming.
I personally would sympathize with those who find evil overwhelming in any case. But as a Christian who believes that there is a real and basic sense in which God interacts with the world as he is in Jesus, I do not believe this. Nonetheless I am increasingly clear that God is not an arbitrary meddler nor an occasional fixer.” (p.63).

Then with what seems to be an allusion to a form of process theology, the section concludes: God is “a God of open personal transactions who insists and persists in a self-giving way of risk, and a self- denying way of invitation that has not yet established anything like a total persuasive sway over or in a universe which – to borrow Austin Frarrer’s phrase – God has made so that it has to make itself.” (p. 64) (I have a strong feeling that Farrer wrote, “can create itself”, but perhaps the difference is only of interest to philosophers).

Perhaps, a CEO who is not always at the desk suggests a good ‘management style’, an ability to delegate and to receive feedback, certainly not a puppeteer responsible for every single thing that occurs. One would suppose that Organizations that have a micro manager at the top might not prosper. If the leader is so busy checking up on every leaking tap, every latest graffito that needs cleaning up and every “environmental worker” who has left a small pile of dust in some corner or other, it is most unlikely that She/He will be attending to the overall situation, working for a successful outcome (eschaton?).

Postscript

I can already hear, as it were proleptically, shouts of derision, joining the chorus of the ages, insisting that the analogy of the CEO is silly, weak and inappropriate. What folly to suppose there is any comparison between the omnipotent God and a shadowy human pattern. Well yes, but ‘omnipotent’ is also analogous language and the problem of this particular “omni” in conjunction with a whole host of others (…scient, …present etc.) has presented significant problems for philosophical theology. There has also been considerable discussion about the meaning of omnipotent anyway. Can God do self-contradictory things, and if not is that a limitation of total power? Perhaps at some future date I will revisit the Mediaeval chestnut: “Can God create a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it?”

PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY

2009-07-25T07:01:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks I have had occasion to call:

• the dentist, to check on an appointment time;
• several appliance stores, to select a replacement for a dead dishwasher;
• several furniture stores, finally to replace a desk made of an old door and two orange crates that has served me for more than two decades;
• an automobile service center, to arrange a time for a visit;
• a specialist food shop, to see if they sold buckwheat pasta,
• and a bank to order a new supply of checks.

One might well wonder what all these diverse enterprises had in common? It will probably surprise no one to learn that it is the opening response when the ‘phone, in a manner of speaking, is picked up. “Please listen carefully as our Menu options have changed”. What lies behind this all but universal practice? Perhaps it is a following of restaurant practice where the menu changes with the seasons. Or is it to keep busy the tech member of staff who has not got enough to do? One wonders if there are firms dedicated to reorganizing business menus on a weekly/ monthly schedule for a moderate fee, and, of course, the first three months free. Whatever the reason I find it highly irritating, especially when the process descends into a sub-menu, followed by further refining of issues, (for Windows press 1; for Mac press 2 » for installation press 6; for other problems press 7; to speak with one of our Technicians, press '0'. This, needless to say, is a very truncated version. Furthermore, if you do not have 45 minutes to spare, don’t bother pressing '0').

New Menus Welcome

Irritating as all this, there is, perhaps, one place where one would be overjoyed to hear the announcement. What if I ‘phoned Church House Westminster, or Lambeth Place and was told to “listen carefully”? How much more significant and heartening it would be if the same message was heard on placing a call to the Vatican and by pressing 2, you were directed to the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”. Possibly, getting to the center of the Orthodox Churches, if there be such a place as the “Center” for Orthodoxy, would require many ‘phone calls, and even less obvious is how one could reach some central Office of Ultra Conservative Evangelicals (OUCE) given the fissiparous nature of American Christian evangelical communities. But what a joy it would to be informed of a “new menu”.

If, mirabile dictu, one heard, “Please listen carefully because our menu has been updated to take note of developments in the following fields of human endeavor: historical research; scientific discoveries; the psychology of human beings; the nature of sexuality, and the status of Dogma", what a cause for rejoicing it would be.

Change, and Two Kinds of "New"

Before considering what would such a new menu look/sound like, we might focus briefly on the word ‘change’. When I hear “the menu has changed”, I do not expect to learn of an entirely new service, treatment, or technique that has been added; rather, the internal connections of the system have been shuffled around. As is often the case, the Greek language gives greater precision: it distinguishes the two kinds of change. Neos means a new configuration of the old; kainos, on, the other hand, means something entirely, dramatically new. St. Paul illustrates this well when he writes, “If anyone is in Christ there is a new (kainos) creation.” (II Cor. 5.16). In general, people find this second kind of change unsettling and tend to reject it: better just to re-arrange the deck chairs.

Change as Universal

William Bouwsma in his book The Waning of the Renaissance 1550-1640 has some interesting reflections on the anxiety caused in that period by the discovery that change, since classical times, understood to be a characteristic of earthly existence (as opposed to the perfection of the heavens) – “birth, copulation and death” – was “now discerned even in the heavens…Galileo’s discovery of sunspots was especially troubling. These, he demonstrated, ‘are generated and decay in longer and shorter periods’…The growing acceptance of change was, for many, the reverse of reassuring” (122).

Bouwsma goes on to suggest that this increasing anxiety, particularly about human mutability and frailty, was part of a growing discontent that in turn generated calls for reform: “Widespread complaints about the times often implied the possibility, even the urgency, of setting things right”. (127). He closes with a remark that is particularly germane to our consideration of a possible new ‘phone menu for Christianity: “Much reformist sentiment was also still focussed on the church, though, unlike the Protestant reformers of an earlier generation, reform proposals were now chiefly institutional rather than theological, and often politically motivated”. (128)

Opposition to Change

We are all too well aware of the ploy that presents cosmetic ‘touch ups’ as a grappling with some of the deeply troubling and important questions that have been raised both by the advance of historical research and our vastly increased knowledge of the universe, questions that raise more questions than they provide answers. This process is deeply worrying to the conservative mind and usually elicits hostility to the questioners, for example:

Galileo and the Curia;
Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce;
Loisy and the framers of the ‘anti-modernist’ oath.

Most pertinent are new stances of the Canadian and USA Anglican churches based on a serious consideration of advances (dangerous word – euphemism for evolution?) in historical, cultural scientific, psychological and biblical research, which have elicited violent regressive opposition from GAFCON and many similar bodies with an increasing number of acronyms. The possibility that the Holy Spirit, the divine creative force as experienced in human affairs, could be pushing us fully to accept Paul’s cry “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”, (Gal. 3.28) is brushed aside as mere accommodation to secular humanism. Paul’s foundational statement amplifies and makes quite specific what he says in his “second” letter to Corinth: “in Christ there is a kainos creation”, that is, not just a re-writing of Genesis chs. 1-3, but a whole new narrative. The divine push is fully to accept this and honestly work out its consequences for Christian faith and practice, not to treat the saying as open to cosmetic treatment, deck chair re-arranging, or to exegetical conjuring.

New Menu for Christians

What would a new menu sound like after we had been told to listen carefully? Clearly, given the myriad gradations of position among Christians resisting change in the name of tradition or an inerrant bible or political positions, and usually a mix of all these things, it is impossible to produce a neat three-course menu. However, one might hope to hear something along these lines.

Please listen carefully because we have a brand new (kainos) Menu.

For issues of Belief, Faith and Dogma - dial one;

For various new approaches to the ethical dilemmas we face - dial two;

There is no need to prolong this list, which might go on to “dial 20” or beyond, taking us to Liturgy, Canon Law, Ecumenism, Ecclesiology, Hagiology…

So I will pursue for a little way the sub menu that is heard upon dialing one, issues of faith and Dogma.

For a complete survey and re-consideration of the development of Doctrine since 150 C.E. -
dial 1;

For a discussion of the growing acceptance of the need for historical criticism of the biblical documents, leading to a reassessment of the dogma of biblical inerrancy - dial 2;

For cogent reasons for abandoning the dogma of the absolute uniqueness of Christianity -
dial 3;

For the case for rejecting the supposed incompatibility between Science and Religion - dial 4; [For the specific issues of evolution and creationism – wait for a representative. Note: your conversation may be recorded for entry into THE Book];

For the systematic undermining of Vatican II in the last twenty years or so (of interest not only to Roman Catholics) - dial 5.

The list would be much longer, but one gets weary of endless menus. One thing is fairly likely though.
At some point you will be told to press ‘0’ if you wish to consult with an Arch Angel and if you want a message from the Most High you will be directed to “Stay on the line and keep silent”.

As We Forgive

2009-05-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

The necessity of forgiveness in human affairs is a recurring theme in the New Testament and our continual human experience suggests that all aspects of life could be greatly improved if there were a lot more of it in human affairs.
Matthew’s Gospel gives us the parable of the ‘king’s’ remitting a servant’s debt of something like half a million dollars in today’s currency, only to report that same servant threatening court action against someone who owed a mere ten thousand dollars. (18.21ff). And Luke reports Jesus’ using, as so often, an everyday illustration of forgiveness: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back”. (6.37f)

Forgiveness not a Contract

Misunderstandings of the biblical position are frequently to be found, for example, the common tendency to assume that forgiving others is a condition for God to forgive us, as though this were some contractual arrangement, implying that God will not forgive us until we act forgivingly.
Close attention to what Luke says tells us that that was not in any way the position of Jesus. The scene was well known to Jesus’ hearers: a woman buying grain would hold out her apron as a kind of shopping bag. The description of what is poured in suggests an unlimited supply (which only God could give, and the passive, “it will be given” may well reflect the Hebrew usage for the action of God). The words ‘pressed down’ and ‘shaken together’ (think of trying to get the end of a bag of sugar into a canister that already looks full) in each case translate the perfect tense – pepiesmenon, sesaleumenon - which implies “something done whose effects continue into the present”. Interestingly, the final characteristic of this ‘overflowing’ gift is a present participle – “continuing to overflow”, that is, on and on and on (indefinitely). So God’s forgiveness is beyond our human imagining.
But what of the supposed contract? All this bounty has to be earned, it is regularly held, by our forgiving actions. This Lukan saying contradicts such a notion: the size of your measuring cup is crucial. If you use one of those one-cup Pyrex measures, that is how you go about things: giving with a small measure and capable of receiving far less than is offered. If you have, and regularly use, an eight-cup Pyrex measure, that, is your modus operandi.

The Gift & the Reception

So the central message of the Gospel says something very different from our usual contractual understanding: God’s forgiveness, it says, is free, unlimited and immediate, and what is at issue is our ability to receive it; this ability, moreover, is indissolubly linked to our own pattern of forgiving. A fundamentally unforgiving person cannot properly understand the meaning of forgiving and thus finds it difficult to receive forgiveness. The first words of Jesus in our first Gospel to be written are, “Repent, because the Rule of God is coming on you”. The word translated ‘repent’ in the Greek means “change your mind”, but, because of the history of its use in Greek translations of the Old Testament, it carries the much stronger connation of “turn yourself around”: it calls, in effect, for a conversion, which is the Latin form of the order, “about turn”.

Divine Providence & Forgiving

Everyday, in our personal lives, in national affairs and on the international scene, events occur that seem inexplicable for religious faith, events that raise two linked issues: our capacity to forgive, and God’s involvement in human affairs (Divine Providence).
Two events in particular, in the last eight years have shaken the American sense of immunity from the sort of disasters that have flooded across Europe and Asia for the last century.

Of course, it is not just 21st century American Christians who find events like the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the devastation of hundreds of miles of coast lands, including a major city a serious problem for their understanding of the love and justice of God: events that put an immense strain on our ability to forgive whoever we feel bears the responsibility. Natural disasters, plagues, famines and war have not only tested our capacity to forgive, but have always raised questions about the Nature of God and the extent of divine direction of human events and natural phenomena. In the face of disaster, anger with other human beings, and, perhaps, ultimately with God, is very common but such questions have become particularly problematical for Christians of the 21st century. In the face of both natural disasters and also the catastrophic situations that we bring upon ourselves and on one another, if we cannot at least make a start towards forgiveness, we are left with the alternative: an attitude of revenge and an assertion of power on the human level, and for some an assumption that God punishes wickedness by these means.

New Testament Ambiguity

That the New Testament itself is not unambiguous in this matter is clear. Among the Synoptic gospels, Matthew echoes the “contractual” approach to the dealings of Yahweh with the people of Israel seen for example in Deuteronomy, and a vengeful approach explicit in Joshua and Judges (total destruction of the Canaanites, for instance). On the whole, however, the emphasis falls on a recall to repentance and an assurance of the limitless love of God. It is true that St. Paul speaks frequently of the wrath of God, but it is clear that his meaning is far from a personal vindictiveness. Many contemporary scholars have suggested that wrath ('οργη) is, indeed, impersonal in Paul’s usage, an inevitable result of ignoring the moral structure of the world. Moreover, against this must be set Paul’s teaching about the grace of God, a theme that underpins almost everything he says: “For God has shut up everyone in disobedience, in order to be merciful to everyone (τους παντας)” (Rom. 11.32).

Apocalypse of St. John

A New Testament book that seems to endorse revenge, The Revelation of St. John the Divine, is, perhaps, closer to an Old Testament theodicy than any other part of the New Testament. John Sweet (Commentary) argues, fairly persuasively I think, that the strong language of condemnation and judgment of a vast part of human kind, is offset by a repeated call to repentance, and by the fact that the destruction is held back again and again, as in the plagues of Egypt where the final fate of the death of the first-born is put off as “smaller” afflictions fail to produce repentance.

A very different view is expressed by Marina Warner in a Times Literary Supplement Review article (August 19 & 26, 2005, p.14).
She writes: “Armageddon…will engulf all of them Satan, the Beast, the Dragon, the Whore of Babylon, the unchaste and the lukewarm, dogs and sorcerers, and all those other famous embodiments of evil”: all these will go and only a tiny minority will survive. She concludes, “The language of denunciation, ostracism, anathema on the enemy amounts to this: a spell of exclusion”.
To what extent the Seer did mitigate his strong emphasis on the horrific judgments he predicts is largely academic when one considers the later history of the Book and its influence on sectarian Christianity. After a hesitation of several centuries, the book was finally established in the New Testament suggesting that the disasters that we agonize over are the judgments of God on a sinful world. This view of Divine Providence was not the only, but by far the most influential, until the 16th century when Luther, awakened from his “dogmatic slumber”, recalled (some of) us to St. Paul’s central message, (and, challenged the dominance of a “contractual” view of forgiveness). Luther’ work, however, left much of the older approach in place, and Armageddon, a predication of the final great battle which will engulf us all, became the key word for millenarian Christianity.

Reactions

In the last century and a half, most thinking Christians have found such a view increasingly intolerable; most, but not all. Conservative Evangelicals remained quiet about the destruction of New Orleans; however, several voices were heard after the catastrophe of September 2001 affirming it as God’s judgment on wicked New York. Perhaps the cry of outrage from many US citizens on that occasion has led to a muting of the response over the New Orleans disaster.

At issue is how far we can have the faith and courage to dare to re-read and re-fashion our theological structures, (and, therefore, our entire Christian orientation) in the light of the vastly increased knowledge that we have been given in recent centuries. In many ways the Anglican church has undertaken this task beginning in the1850s, often timidly and with enough over-reaching, followed by retractions, for its critics to say it has no mind of its own. A contrast is frequently drawn with the apparently monolithic church of Rome by Anglo Catholic apologists, and there have always been those who insist on the immutability of dogmas and the inerrancy of the biblical record.

Need to Refashion Dogma

Not only do we need to take contemporary science seriously, and there are reassuring signs from President Obama’s administration that such is now the case, but we also have to read the New Testament with all the tools that scholarship has given us in the last two centuries. One of the dogmatic readjustments that is paramount is how we understand God’s action in the world. Unless we can, as it were, make some space between God and the divinely created universe, we shall be locked into a view of God as punishing by means of natural disasters and human folly, a viewpoint opposed to what we learn of Jesus from the Gospels. The author of the 4th Gospel gives us the answer of Jesus to a question from Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”. (Jn. 14.9) When we look at Jesus, we do not see vengeance and destruction, but love and healing, and we hear words of forgiveness.

Thinking About God

David Jenkins writes, “God is not the mastermind of a great construction activity … moving on inevitably to a predetermined end ….. [God] is much more like a master artist...committed passionately, launched by love ….making ways forward by freedom and in freedom” (God, Politics and the Future, SCM, 1988, p. 109). The freedom is ours as well as God’s, and this, of course, is where forgiveness becomes crucial. It would be little short of blasphemy to attribute the terrible human suffering in the wake of Katrina to God’s wrath. Meteorological conditions are one thing; physical and social structures brought about by human activity are quite another, though there is mounting evidence that human activity is significantly affecting meteorological conditions. In October 2004, Joel, K. Bourne wrote a long article in the National Geographic Magazine which began: “The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble-with dire consequences for residents, [and] the nearby city of New Orleans.” Other scientists have pointedly told us that if global warming continues, other coastal cities round the world will share the fate of New Orleans.

The Way Forward

So it is crucial for Christians not be drawn into the “blame game”, seeking retaliation on others or blaming God. I think a poem of R.S. Thomas, in a collection called Frequencies, 1978, catches something of what I want to say about our way forward. It suggests a coming to maturity in our theological speaking; precise statements ‘falsify’; ‘God’ explains everything, and when things prosper, God is praised: it is a different story when disaster strikes. So we need to be much more reticent, more tentative, and much less certain that we can produce a blueprint of the inner workings of the Godhead.

Waiting

Face to face? Ah, no
God; such language falsifies
The relation. Nor side by side,
Nor near you, nor anywhere
In time and space.

Say you were,
When I came, your name
Vouching for you, ubiquitous
In its explanations. The
Earth bore and they reaped;
God, they said, looking
In your direction. The wind
Changed; over the drowned
body it was you
they spat at.

Young
I pronounced you. Older
I still do, but seldomer
Now, leaning far out
Over an immense depth, letting
Your name go and waiting,
Somewhere between faith and doubt,
For the echoes of its arrival.

Good Friday, 2009

2009-04-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

The seventh Word, St. Luke 23.46

Faith – Formula or Trust

Among books on Prayer and Spirituality I have read in the last 50 years, the author who has made most sense to me is Neville Ward, a Methodist Minister and Theologian. Rereading some of his meditations for Good Friday gave me a jumping off point in preparing this homily. He begins by noting that the Church has always insisted on the primacy of faith. I think, however, that we need to distinguish two ways in which faith has been understood in western Christianity. It has often come to be taken as assenting to dogmatic statements or intellectual formulae. I turn rather to the biblical understanding of faith, characterized as trust in and commitment to, a person be it another human being or God. Ward comments“[Y]ou have as much chance of finding God at the end of an argument as you have of finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.” (Friday Afternoon, p. 128).

The Words from the Cross

Contemporary biblical study has concluded that it is an impossible task to reconcile the series of words recorded as Jesus was dying on the Cross: they possibly represent different traditions that developed in disparate church groups, but they are used by the individual writers as part of their particular interests and overall themes. Traditionally, the final word in John is not the final word used Liturgically. John’s final word, (τετελεσται) “it is finished”, is much better understood as “accomplished” rather than something like, “it is over”, and one might wonder what can be said after that. Perhaps, the words of Jesus that Luke places last might be seen to suggest, in the briefest possible compass, just what it was that Jesus accomplished.

Abba, Father

The first thing that leaps out at us when we turn to Luke 23, verse 46, is the opening word, Father. Jesus is addressing God directly, and we know from our oldest sources in two of Paul’s letters (Rom. 8.15 & Gal. 4.6) and in our oldest Gospel, Mark, that Jesus used the Aramaic word “Abba” to address God: a tiny but significant point, for this is a more informal form of address, as to one’s earthly father: not the reverential form “my Father” normal in Jewish prayer. When we address God, speak to God, the usual understanding is that we are praying, so what Luke gives us here is Jesus’ final prayer to a God to whom He is so close that he is, indeed, his Father in whom he has total and explicit trust. This, surely, speaks volumes about the mission that Jesus has declared ‘accomplished’. Clearly, there have been and are, many views of God: some have seen god as a cruel tyrant, demanding an annual sacrifice of children; to some, God is a being who can be bribed and manipulated, and to yet others, God is an empty word, the expressing of a deep, but fantasy longing for a safe haven.

Unflinching Realist

But this final prayer of Jesus presents us with a loving God to whom Jesus said we are so well known that “the hairs of [y]our head are all numbered” (Lk.12.7). But, more than this, the prayer suggests a life-long commitment to God and a deep understanding of the human condition. Jesus comes across to us as an unflinching realist. By that I mean that the accounts strongly suggest that his understanding of God and our relationship to the Divine Being leave no room for sentimentality, self-pity, carefully nurtured grudges against others and a thousand other psychological ploys that we, almost instinctively, use. The prayer implies the total acceptance of the present circumstances.

It is so different from so many of our own prayers. In desperate situations like epidemics, natural disasters, and the personal chaos we sometimes allow our lives to descend to, we so often turn to fervent prayer, even if we can hardly remember when we last engaged in that activity. And what kind of prayer to do we use? “God don’t let the roof of my house get destroyed; God please keep me safe from the SARS virus” and so on. A moment’s thought will show that these are manipulative prayers, and what is more, often imply “destroy my neighbor’s house and not mine”: hardly the kind of love for others so strongly stressed in the teaching of Jesus. Neville Ward points out that it behoves us to note carefully what Jesus did not say, and goes on, “he did not say that death is the wages of sin. He did not say that God would save his friends from the violence of life; indeed he warned them to be prepared for it.” (Ward p.128).

God the Manipulator ?

For all sorts of reasons, Western people in the 21st century find it hard to hold onto trust in God and, at the same time, to take a hard-headed, realistic view of the human condition. It is assumed that if you are going to be truly realistic, you probably have to drop faith in God, and, on the other hand, we are faced with far too many examples of people who hang on to that faith by ignoring the realities of life. This is partly because Christian thinkers by and large have shied away from coming to grips with what science tells us about the world; they cling to the view that God is behind all the events of the on-going world, as though sitting in a massive heavenly traffic control station. To say, as Jesus, reported by Luke does, that God knows how many hairs you have is not to say that God will prevent your going bald.

Jesus did not have any idea of the scientific developments of the last two centuries, but the amazing thing is that his attitude to the real world is compatible with them. He speaks of natural events and says, “Your Father … makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Mt. 5.45). He knows only too well the potential depths of anger, cruelty and hate that can be practiced by human beings; this is part of the reality of the human situation and must be dealt with under the over-arching faith that God’s love is the ultimate power of the universe. We hear how Jesus deals with such anger and hate in one of the first words of Jesus given us by St. Luke in his Passion narrative: “Father”, that same word again, “Father forgive them”. It seems that Jesus’ strength and calm, and his ability to communicate that to others, comes from a serene acceptance of the real word and its events, but with a life founded on a deep faith that God is (as St. Paul says) “all and in all”. (I Cor 15.28).

Ultimate Intuition

This issue of faith, with which I began, turns out to be pivotal. If one wanted to put the matter in less religious terms, one might say that each of us has a deep, deep intuition of what human life is all about. It might be called a vision of the world, but that would be too precise and so I prefer to call it a deep intuition, which often we may not be able to articulate. Nevertheless it is there, influencing all our thoughts and actions. If deep down, we really trust that good is stronger than evil, justice than injustice, and life not death is the ultimate scheme of the universe, we may be able to share the kind of acceptance Jesus brought to living: our faith though tested by all the evidence that seems to contradict such an intuition will hold. If deep down our intuition is much less optimistic, resulting from the obscurities of our very early experiences (Ward, p.131), we may feel that the reality of massive evil in the world presents an insuperable obstacle to faith. Indeed, for most of us there is likely to be some oscillation between these two positions. Perhaps the cry “Eli Eli lama sabach-tha-ni” - 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me' (Mt.’s version at 27.46) - hints that Jesus was not immune from such an oscillation.

Final Affirmation

If that were so, Luke is clear that it is not the last word. Recalling Psalm 31, Jesus dies with the affirmation that everything is held together by God’s sustaining power. The metaphor of the arms and hands of God in the Book Deuteronomy expresses God’s love in choosing Israel and keeping her safe: “The eternal God is your dwelling place,// and underneath are the everlasting arms”. (Deut. 33.27).
“Into your hands I commend my spirit” is emphatically not a statement of passive surrender; it is, rather, a strong affirmation of a life lived in a real world of failure and sin, hate and suffering, but lived with the unshakeable confidence that God’s love is stronger than all these enemies of life. It is a great mistake to assume that Jesus knew what followed after one’s last breath; doubtless, he shared the Judaic view that this life was not the end, that God’s sustaining hands were there beyond the final frontier of earthly life, but he was given no supernatural previews of what was to happen. So he died, as he had lived, totally committed to God, sure of the ubiquity of the divine love:

“There was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour … and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.” (Lk. 23.46).

The Book Of Revelation – Study Outline Part 5

2009-04-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

Part 1 of this Study outline was posted in August, 2007
Part 2 in Sept 2007
Part 3 on January 14 2008
Part 4 on Aug. 17 2008
Click on the appropriate year/month in Blog Archive (top, right) to find earlier sections

Overview

As the fourth section of Revelation ends, it might be worth quickly reviewing John's plan so far to ask if he has any kind of time sequence in mind. Farrer points out that "the visions of the seals have their centre in the present," but their conclusion points to the end of all things (though it is a pointer not the actual end). "The woes of the horsemen are also of the present age". He also notes that the seals and the woes of the trumpets are partial destruction. Final judgment waits until the section we are about to begin. Chapter 12, too, seems to look back to the ministry of Jesus, but it is followed by the revelation of the Beast (Antichrist) and the beginning of his reign.

Influence of Mark ch. 13

It is here that we need to recall the immense authority that Mark 13 would have had for the author. Critical study of the last century and a half has increasingly suggested that the apocalyptic sections of the Synoptic gospels, with Mark as the focus, may well contain original sayings of Jesus, but also strongly reflect the position of the first generation church. Denis Nineham writes that scholars have suggested (among many other theories) “that a Jewish-Christian document, drawn up in A.D. 40 to encourage and advise Christians, was subsequently incorporated into the tradition of Jesus’ words”. (Penguin Commentaries - St. Mark p.353). A footnote to this section reads, “No doubt of it [the document] emanated from a Jewish-Christian ‘seer’, it was thought of from the beginning as, in a very real sense, a word of the exalted Lord.” The conclusion is that we cannot be certain that every word in this section goes back to Jesus, though there can be no doubt that John certainly believed that to be the case.

First Generation Eschatology

Christian belief (about the end, eschaton) in the latter part of the first century seems fairly clear. The divine intervention was centered on the coming of Jesus, and the events of his ministry, and, above all, on his atoning death and resurrection. This was was seen as the decisive act of God, the beginning of the end of history, (cf. Paul you are already saved, and the 4th Gospel's repeated insistence that those who believe have already passed from death to life, already share eternity). Nevertheless, it was also strongly believed that the process of history was not quite complete, and would be completed by a speedy return of Christ (“the second coming”), and the imagery of Daniel’s Son of Man, coming on the clouds of glory, is firmly incorporated into the words of Jesus as they were passed on and finally written down. That he also used the term to refer to himself as humble and identified with suffering humanity (cf. Mk 10.45 and many other refs.), may suggest the origin of the later apocalyptic usage, and it remains possible that Jesus pointed to the theme of vindication in Daniel: applied to the persecuted saints and then to the saints in glory, vindicated by God. (Dan 7.22 & 27ff). The Christian tradition, though, has made a sea change. In Daniel the Son of Man is going to God to receive the reward of perseverance in the face of persecution: in the later NT, he is coming from God (returning to complete the divine plan and finalize the Rule of God).

The Markan Apocalypse

Mark 13 begins with warnings against deceivers. (Letters to Churches, week 1). It says before the end there must be wars, rumors of wars, famines and all kinds of distress. (Four horsemen, week 2). Mark’s Apocalypse includes persecution that reaches a climax (Mk 13.14) with the 'abomination of desolation'. John Sweet writes, “In Revelation all this is rephrased in terms of the two witnesses and the two beasts which form the climax of the trumpet plagues. In John’s time the danger was not....’false Christs’... the danger now was not of Rome desecrating the temple at Jerusalem - it had already been destroyed - but of the Roman world desecrating the spiritual temple, the church, in the person of Christian fellow-travelers”. (i.e. those who fell prey to emperor worship, or at least to “accommodation” with the imperial power). (Commentary on Revelation p. 20).

All this suggests that the final action of the apocalyptic scene is beginning. Mark 13 “has little to say about this final stage of the drama, and goes on to warnings about preparedness: it will happen within this generation, but no one except God knows the precise day (Mk 13.28-end)” (Sweet, p. 20f).
Revelation 19.11-16 gives us the climax of the Apocalypse, and so between 15.9 and 19.11 we seem to have prophecies of judgment, preceding the end and revealed as each “bowl” is poured out.

Chapter 16

We are presented with a series of judgments on the rebellious world. The first four "bowls of wrath" follow closely the pattern of the plagues in ch. 8, and, therefore, hark back to the Plagues of Egypt. In this 'week', though, the destruction is total. The powers of nature are taken from humanity (since they have abused the trust given them), and, in poetic justice, are turned on the desecrators.

vv.5-7 Specifically, the beast and his followers have killed the righteous ones.

Vengeance in the Book of Revelation

We have noted that using the conventions of Jewish apocalyptic writings, this is clearly a Christian apocalypse. It is moving to a Trinitarian view of God; it places the atoning life and death of Jesus at the centre of God's saving plan (Lamb is used 28 times), and it takes for granted a Christian liturgy. Even so, many feel that there is a strong taste of the OT about this book (cf.6.10; 14.11 & 20; 18.20; 19.17-21, etc.). There is a feel of vengeance, almost gloating over enemies, that goes beyond the exercise of righteous judgment. Above all, there is no reference to love.

Various answers have been given:

a) the wrath is against corrupt institutions rather than individuals;
b) it is part of the exaggeration of apocalyptic style;
c) there are some hints (much less aggressive) in the teaching of Jesus (cf. his condemnation of the Pharisees).

It has also been noted that the image of the Lamb is one of sacrificial giving (=love in the fully Christian sense).

Sweet has an excellent comment: The beast that looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon (13.11) "is a deliberate parody of the spirit of the Lamb, whose only power is that of the sword which issues from his mouth (1.16; 2.12; 19.15) - his words that pierce men's souls (cf. Heb. 4.12). Is this 'slaughter' simply punitive, leading to eternal torment? Or does it represent the impact of truth on illusion - the only possibility of true healing?”*1 (Revelation p. 51)

vv.9-11 still no repentance is seen, following the pattern of Pharaoh's 'hardened heart'.

12-end the 6th and 7th judgments, (a) open the frontiers to the barbarian hordes (the stock pattern of judgment in Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah), (b) set the scene for the final "battle" somewhere near Megiddo (Harmagedon = mountain of Megiddo) ), and (c) administer the coup de grace on the created order; the power of John's writing is seen in the short verse 20.

v. 15 note the clear reference back to the fifth letter (3.3), and a reminder that in spite of 'baroque' excursions, there is an overall pattern in the book.

Chapters 17 & 18

As in the case of earlier 'sevens', two substantial codas are added to the week. Here we get a kind of "close-up" of the destruction that has been mapped out in ch. 16.

Ch. 17 is in a general sense about the corrupt and corrupting power of imperial Rome, though the precise references of the symbolism in vv 9-14 are probably lost to us. (cf. chart in HarperCollins Study Bible p. 2330; none of the counting is entirely satisfactory). Seven Caesars are implied and the sixth is reigning. As usual, if this is a prediction of the end of history, it was wrong. John might have taken Jesus' warning to heart not to ask when and where.*2
It is more probable, thinks Sweet, that John is using the numbers symbolically. Note that six and eight appear again (as in the number of the beast and the number of Christ). Six is Friday, the day when evil seems dominant, and the eighth is a parody of the Christ who "goes to perdition"; (i.e. the anti-Christ pointing to the end)

Chapter 18
Here we have one of the ‘purple passages’ of the bible: full of dramatic movement and intense feeling, even so, it sets out the fundamental theological position of the book. There is an ultimate rejection of all that is contrary to truth and justice. Money, political power, military power, hierarchical dominance, and flagrant exploitation of the poor, have dominated human history and apparently have the upper hand. The Book of Revelation, and this chapter in particular, say that is not so in the end, and we ought to have known it was not so by looking on the crucified one, the Lamb whose only weapon is the word of God and obedience to the Righteous (judging) and Loving (accepting) God.

v.4 "come out" cf. God' warning to Lot in Gen 19.15. cf also Isa. 52.11

HarperCollins Study Bible has some pertinent notes on this chapter.

This section closes (as have the earlier septets) with a Liturgy - ch. 19.1-10.

v.3 is probably an intended and ghoulish contrast to the incense of heaven (5.8 & 8.4)

vv. 1-4 give thanks for deliverance from the corrupt and evil power of 'Babylon' (= the center of world power century by century).

vv 5-10 center on the reign of God. The negative side is the judgment of Babylon, the positive is the marriage of God with his people, an image that dominates the closing section of the book. The idea is found in the OT in the Prophet Hosea where Yahweh's choice of Israel is seen as a marriage cf Isa. 54.6. In the NT see II Cor 11.2 and Eph 5.25-27.

v.9 combines the stock idea of a "messianic banquet", the sign that the new age has dawned with rejoicing and plenty. In the Christian tradition, the development of the Eucharist owes much to these eschatological ideas, and also exemplifies a specifically Christian theme we have already noted, namely that the age to come has come and that Christians already have a foretaste of the joys of heaven.

The Concluding section - 19.11-22.7

What follows is in my notes from lectures by one of my Seminary Professors, Fr. Gabriel Hebert SSM, a great NT scholar. I assume that I added the extended quotation form Austin Farrer after the lecture, based on the given page references
"Farrer says (p. 302) that after our Lord has come, (19.11ff), ‘the order of events is simply narrated; it is the accepted stock of rabbinic eschatology, the Great Battle, the Kingdom of Messiah, the rebellion of Gog, the Last Judgment, the World to come...We may draw the general conclusion that St. John describes only two future stages of history, in addition to the present stage; the Advent of Antichrist and the Advent of Christ … The Advent of Christ releases the eschatological series proper, from the Great Battle to the World to come. St. John treats this as a unit, because to the Christian everything is secured once Christ has come'.
So it is in Mark 13, where nothing more is described after the coming of the Son of Man with power and great glory. This seems to be right. 19.1-11 is set forth with great beauty; but the events which follow are lightly treated, and St. John does not get going again till ch. 21 and the magnificent description of the New Jerusalem.
Yet it is this intervening section, including the bit about the Millennium, which has attracted most attention from the expositors."

Gabriel was pointing out the dangers of concentrating on a single passage quite out of context leading, in the case of millenarianism, to both theological and political distortions on a sometimes disastrous scale.
The fusion of right wing conservative millenarianism and USA foreign policy in the last half century is chillingly exposed in a recent book by Angela M. Lahr: Millennial Dreams & Apocalyptic Nightmares – The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelism OUP, 2007

The climax of the Book

i) 19.11-16 The Rider on the White horse. The picture correlates with the opening vision (1.12-16). A series of names indicate his being and function. The unknown name may refer to Mt. 11.27. It has overtones of the fact that in Judaism, the name YHWH (Yahweh) was replaced by "Adonai" (Lord).

ii) 19.17-18 A summons to great battle foretold in prophecy and apocalyptic (Ezek 39.4, 17-20).

iii) 19.19-21 The victory (cf. 17.12ff)

iv) 20.1-3 The binding of Satan for 1000 years. This one piece of fairly unimportant symbolism (for John an apocalyptic "prop" that was ‘required’ in apocalyptic writing) has assumed an importance out of all proportion to its meaning here (see comment above on Millenarianism). The seven days of history scheme often assumed that each day = a thousand years (II Pe 3.8), and so Satan is retrained to allow his victims to be released (cf. Mt. 12.29).

v) 20.4-10 The idea of two resurrections is peculiar to John; the Pharisaic view was of a "general" resurrection at the end of this age. John puts in a further "last throw" of the empire of evil. (It reminds one of many historical final desperate offensives of failing empires).

vi) 20.11-15 The universal judgment: a truly awe-inspiring piece of writing.

vii) 21.1-8 The New Jerusalem; creation restored, God is all in all, and Evil is finally conquered.

As in previous "sevens", there follow two more sections, a vision of the New Jerusalem and the River of living water.

Epilogue (21.8-end)

John closes with a brief epilogue. We are back in Patmos; the warnings against apostasy are renewed, and the certainty of Jesus’ second coming is emphasized. The Prayer is Marana tha. Amen, found at the end of I Corinthians, and in one of the very earliest eucharistic prayers known (in The Didaché):
Let grace come, and let this world pass away.
Hosanna to the God of David.
Whoever is holy, let him come; whoever is not, let him repent.
Marana tha. Amen
The book ends like a letter, reminding us that all the visions are part of the Pastoral Letter to the churches, which themselves have allusions to the visions (cf 3.12; 3.18; 2.10). There are clear overtones of the Eucharist (as in 3.20), for in the Eucharist, Christ comes with a foretaste of heaven. In the closing verses of the Apocalypse, "There is a last call to the hearer to choose, and a final prayer to Christ to come, and bring with him the Holy Communion of eternity". (Sweet, p. 314)

___________________________________

1. Farrer has something along the same lines. "There is nothing amiable about refusing to awaken the consciences of your impenitent neighbours to the impending coals of fire.....When nature breaks forth in singular disasters or when the madness of (man) is permitted to break loose in war and its attendant horrors....we ought to see warnings of what the arm of the Almighty cannot for ever with hold". He goes on to suggest that if St. John returned today, he might say I warned you that fire would fall from heaven. "'well it has fallen. You complain that it is vindictive of me to give you warning. If you had repented...you would have had cause to be grateful. And if you still think that God will build into the stainless city any that loves or works a lie, rather than cast him into everlasting fires. I advise you to look to your consciences.'" (Rebirth of Images,
p.34

2. Another excellent insight from Farrer: "the two constituent parts of pagan power are military kingship and urban wealth. Ever since the days of Alexander the two have been unhappily adjusted". The city hopes the military emperor (a god) will keep his armies away and she offers homage to achieve this. At times, however, the General pillages the city. "Such are the loves and quarrels of the Beast and Babylon, the parody of that marriage there is betwixt Christ and his Church". (R.I. p. 298).
We might meditate on the alliance of urban wealth and the military infrastructure in our own imperial world.

The Jesus of Dogma

2009-03-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

This is the second lecture in the Lenten series: Jesus from Synagogue to Cathedral

After the New Testament

The latest writings of the New Testament may be as late as 100 C.E. (some would say even later), and the following century is not a period that is bursting with historical data. Nevertheless, there are enough writings in the period 125-250 C.E. to give us a fairly clear picture of the development of the Church in the first three or four generations of the increasing number of people (almost entirely Gentiles) who followed Jesus. The goal of this lecture is to try to understand how the picture of Jesus with which we leave the New Testament period at the end of the first century becomes the portrait we find by the end of the sixth century C.E., firmly painted by a series of doctrinal statements: an ‘official’ series of Creeds and Definitions, but also a vast body of theological, writings. By the end of the process, (though the very concept of the process ending is a matter of serious contemporary debate), these writings were divided, in general, into two categories: ‘orthodox’ (from orthos, straight and doxa, opinion) and ‘heretical’ (from hairesis - choosing [a peculiar view]).

Two Pictures

Briefly to anticipate the conclusion, the two pictures are different: some would say totally different, others somewhat different, but clearly different. The crucial question, that has been asked increasingly urgently since the start of the critical study of the early church is how far are we bound by the dogmatic definitions of the early centuries: how final and unquestionable, that is, do we consider the process, the end result of which, was the “orthodox” portrayal of Christ as the “second Person” of the Trinity, of “one substance” with the Father; as fully human and fully divine and yet a single person?

Two Natures – One Person

Just to give the ‘feel’ of what we might call the dogmatic portrait of Jesus (though, significantly “Christ” is used much more than Jesus), here is a very brief quotation from the statement that is regarded as the definitive, final position of the Catholic Church on the person of Christ, the Definition of Chalcedon of 451 C.E.:

We all unanimously teach (here the Bishops insert virtually the first part of the Nicene Creed, and then go on, He is the)…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, made known in two nature without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures being by no means removed because of the union, but the property of each nature being preserved and coalescing in one person (prosopon) and one individual being (hypostasis)*1 – not parted or divided into two prosopa, but one and the same son, only-begotten, divine Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.

One might contrast this with the scene in Mk. 2.23ff where we see a Rabbi going for a walk with a few of his disciples, or even with Lk. 24.13ff, where a few days after the crucifixion, two disciples are again walking in the country. Jesus, as a stranger, walks with them and appears again in a rabbinic role, “[B]eginning with Moses…he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Moreover, Luke implies that it was in the common meals they held that they became aware of the presence of Jesus, not as dead, but as risen.

More than a Prophet

By the end of the N.T. period, as I noted last time, Jesus was remembered as a, friend, a Rabbi and wise man whose teachings presented new possibilities of the human relationship with God. Above all, he was seen as God’s chosen agent in the battle with the evil powers, as a defender of the poor and marginalized, and as one who had the charisma to implant in people, the assurance of God’s healing and forgiveness. But we also saw that by the 80s of the first century, Christians were accepting Jesus as more than a Prophet and Rabbi: they sensed that he was adopted by, or exhibited, or shared in the Divine; (all these positions were held and debated in the early centuries). As early as 52 or 53 C.E. Paul could end a letter to his converts in Corinth with the Aramaic words, written in Greek characters for the sake of his readers: Μαρανα θα, Marana Tha, Come Lord, a prayer for the speedy return of Jesus, already addressed as “Lord” (Kurios).

Regula Fidei

This is still worlds apart from the language of the Chalcedonian Definition, and it seems to have been the kind of non-dogmatic view of Jesus that prevailed well into the third century. It is certain that a body of oral tradition existed before any of the NT was written and it is clear, from the references we have in the years 100-250 that this same body of tradition continued alongside the written scriptures for some while. In writing about tradition, Richard Hanson notes that several of the early Church Fathers, particularly Irenaeus and Tertullian in the west and Origen in the east speak of what they call the rule of faith (regula fidei) as clearly distinct from the written records. Elsewhere, he writes, “During” [the years 150 to around 285], “it was the ‘rule of faith that expressed orthodox belief in a fluid and undogmatic way”.*2
This approach was probably important for the emergence of a structured Ministry of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, that we find in place by the beginning of the 4th century, because a custodian of the tradition was needed, and the local Bishop became the one who was entrusted to receive the tradition and to pass it on, untouched, so to speak, to the next generation of the faithful.

Emergence of Hierarchy

The changing view of ministry in the Church is another aspect of the critical study I have referred to several times. The ‘orthodox’ view had been that the orders of ministry (Bishops, Priests & Deacons) were put in place by Jesus.
The Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church has a “Preface to the Ordination Rites” that reflects the scholarship of the last two centuries, but leaves wiggle room when it says: “[S]ince the time of the New Testament, three distinct orders … have been characteristic of Christ’s holy catholic Church.” (p. 510). “Since” is probably purposely ambiguous: it more naturally means after, which would be the consensus of most non-R.C. Church Historians; but it leaves room for conservatives from Catholic to Charismatic, who insist on the pre-critical view.

Contemporary Emphasis on Christ of Faith

It is interesting that this is not Jesus’ church, but Christ’s holy Catholic Church. This seems to be just one very small example of the way the Jesus of history has often been swallowed up by the Christ of faith, a process that began in the 5th century and continues today (though often hidden – I call it “crypto-monophysitism”!) For example, almost any newspaper report of an amazing escape, a totally unexpected recovery from sickness, or even a face appearing in your pancake can be reported as divine interventions or manifestations, attributed to Christ.

Move to Definition

In a way, the emergence of a systemized ministry can be seen as the early signs of what was to follow, when it was felt necessary by philosophically minded theologians to provide a kind of blueprint of the ‘inner’ workings of God (in the Nicene creed), and to explain the mechanics of Jesus’ two natures (defined at Chalcedon). The ministry of the Church moved from the picture we get in the NT to greater definition, by the end of the process consisting of seven orders: Door keeper, Lector, Exorcist & Subdeacon leading to the three major orders. (The list of the "minor orders" varies from time to time and place to place).
In the New Testament, we hear of Apostles, Prophets, Exorcists, Elders (the Greek word is πρεσβυτερος – Presbyter) Deacons, and, in the very latest strands of the NT, coming from around 95 C.E we have about five references to episcopoi – literally ‘overseers’ - bishop, a word that comes into the language from the Greek via late Latin, (e)biscopus. Of much more importance than is often allowed was the order of Prophets, and, indeed, some Prophetesses. A mid-second century book called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, (known as The Didache), contains some detailed rules for welcoming a Prophet to the local community, warning that a stay of over three to four days may indicate a charlatan.

Montanism

Perhaps the earliest move to tighten up on belief came when the Prophet Montanus (c.156) led a charismatic, apocalyptic movement which the authorities considered dangerous since its Prophets and Prophetesses uttered “words of Jesus” which were taken as authoritative additions to the Gospels. Another straw in the wind was that the movement received condemnation by Zephyrinus, the Bishop of Rome (198-120), in the early 3rd century, a foreshadowing of the growth of papal power. The pattern was set that the preaching or writing of speculative thinkers often triggered tighter definition of the rather loose “rule of faith”. Another, less pleasant practice also emerged. It is one with which we, having endured an interminable Presidential campaign, are all too unhappily familiar with, consisting of innuendoes, exaggerations and downright lies. It was not difficult to find mud to sling at Montanus and his followers. The genders mixed freely in ecstatic outdoor meetings - (Hellenistic society was remarkably puritanical about such public meetings) - and it was easy to suggest that spiritual ecstasy soon led to physical heights of sexual passion.

Fathers & Heretics

Among the main figures who raised questions in the fourth and fifth centuries were Arius, a Presbyter in Alexandria and Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the 430s, This is to mention but two from a cast of many dozens. Required reading in Seminary for this period of Church History was Dr. Prestige’s Fathers and Heretics; colloquially known as, “Dads & Cads”. It takes three hundred pages to get through the ranks the of the boat-rocking heretics and the defending ranks of the-truth-is-absolute-and-we-have-it orthodox. Still, these two heresiarchs stand as the immediate (but by no means only) cause of two violent controversies. Among the notable defenders of orthodoxy, by far the most effective, and since he led the winning side, also the best known was Athanasius; born at the very end of the third century, he became Bishop and Patriarch of Alexandria in 328.
The majority of biographies of Athanasius see him as the one who saved Christianity, and it is certainly true that his role in the Council of Nicaea was pivotal. There has been, however, a growing appreciation of just how big a role power politics played in the development of the central dogmatic statements of the time, and Athanasius was certainly a major player in the game.

Some Background

The third century was not a bumper time for the empire. Peter Brown writes:

“After AD 238, all classes in the Roman world had to face up…to the unpleasant realities of empire. Between 238 and 270, bankruptcy, political fragmentation and recurrent defeats of large Roman armies laid bare the superb nonchalance on which the old system of government had been based”.*3

He goes on to point out that a few strong Generals restored the empire over which Diocletian reigned from 285 to 305: much tighter, centralized control of the Provinces and an enlarged bureaucracy led a badly shaken society back to order. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that the rescue from a failed state is not infrequently the result of a military dictatorship: one thinks of the Weimar Republic and several more recent S. American countries.

Persecution of Diocletian

Before the rise of Diocletian, the Church had been growing quietly: “The Christian church enjoyed complete tolerance between 260 and 302”.*4
Though Christians were still a small minority, people were aware of the growing power of Bishops and their congregations, and many in the empire blamed the terrible crisis that had overtaken them on the increasing failure of civic duties, the failure to offer the ancient and proper devotion to the immemorial gods.

So it was not surprising that Diocletian unleashed a bitter persecution, perhaps, the first such total effort. The persecution failed, though while it lasted a large number of biblical manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed. In 312 the Emperor Constantine was converted to the new religion, convinced that the Chi/Rho sign he had seen in the sky was Christ’s signal to him of victory in return for conversion. This event was, perhaps, the most momentous (some would say “disastrous”) turn of events in the whole history of the Christian church. The scattered autonomous communities, each led by their chief Pastor, the local Bishop, had, in effect become a State Church.

Nicaea and Chalcedon

I need to turn now to the two main controversies that raged in the church in the 4th and 5th centuries. What mattered to most Christians was the closeness of the community, the bonding of brothers and sisters, and, above all, the bonding of the community as a whole with Jesus. The weekly Eucharist reaffirmed the presence of the risen Lord and gave assurance of coming close to God. It was also the time when offerings were made for the poor and sick of the Christian community; this was seen as one of the striking characteristics of the new communities in a society where such concern, in spite of Societies and Guilds for specific groups, was largely absent. Such involvement was much more personal and intense than anything converts had experienced in the rites of the old religion dedicated to the gods of the city or a particular locality, but the finer points of theology were in the hands of the theologians, and before Nicaea, the fluidity I noted at the beginning remained the norm for the laity and many clergy. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (263-340), for example, held views very like those we noted at the end of the NT period. Peter Brown writes, “[The One] High God…had reached down to earth, to make his commands plain through a series of privileged representatives of His will, of which Christ had been the greatest.”*5 Still, it was normal to pray to Jesus and it was felt that he was more than a mere ‘representative’.

Demand for Clarity

These positions, however, were being questioned: briefly the issue was that philosophically minded theologians began to ask, “What precisely is the relationship between the Lord Jesus and the One God? If he is divine, how do we escape the charge of polytheism? But if he is merely a Prophet, does not that leave the One High God distant and not part of human vicissitudes?” It was an Alexandrian Presbyter, Arius, who brought things to a head by teaching something very like the views of Eusebius. At this point the great Athanasius entered the fray and he was to hold center stage in the controversy for over thirty years. Constantine was not a little irritated to find that his new “spiritual” arm of the state, so to speak, was rent by conflict. This is not what he expected, and he summoned the Bishops to meet in the city of Nicaea, and thus what is known as the First Ecumenical Council came into being. After weeks of wrangling and acrimony, the Bishops produced a document that they said laid out the faith always held, and, for the future, was always to be held by the Church.

Like God - The iota that split an Empire

Not all signed it, and those who refused were made aware of the Emperor’s displeasure, often by banishment. The minutes of that Bishops' meeting in 325, after several more decades of dissension, discussion and change, became the Creed of Constantinople, published in 381: this is what is generally called the Nicene Creed today. Gone was the old fluidity. God was defined in philosophical terms by the use of the Greek word homoousios - same substance (in the Latin una substantia, one substance); it was, indeed, the use of this unscriptural term that caused so much dissension, but it was felt to be the only way to exclude Arius’ teaching that Jesus was only a high-powered messenger/prophet.

A substantial body of Christians was excluded by this new standard. They wanted to say that Jesus was like God (not homoousios, but homoiousios, a minute difference that led to the remark that this was ‘an iota that split an Empire'). Semi-Arianism, as it was called, became almost the dominant form of Christianity in northern Europe as the Visigoths were converted.

Christological Question

Having, established the full divinity of Jesus, it was inevitable that questions would arise about how he could be fully human and divine at the same time, and conflicting views led to the Council of Chalcedon, which insisted that it was necessary to believe that Jesus was fully human, fully divine, but one 'person': in the end, however the Council did not (could not?) explain how this could be.*6 The view that his “central person”, so to speak, was divine and that his earthly body was temporary, or a mere shell for the time of his ministry, was roundly condemned, but that has not, unhappily, prevented it from forming a very powerful undertow to Christian thinking and practice ever since. (see above on “crypto-monophysitism”). The Council also aimed to exclude once and for all the teaching of Nestorius who was thought to consider Jesus as no more than a super prophet.

Conclusion

Perhaps one of the most unfortunate results of these controversies was the suppressing of alternative ideas, and giving to human formulations the status of unalterable, divinely approved blueprints of the inner workings of the Godhead: moreover, they are formulations tied to classical philosophical views, and are strongly culturally conditioned.

My experience has been that the vast majority of believers still function more as was the norm in the 2nd to 4th centuries, where Jesus is experienced as the One who walks with us, brings us close to God and understands “the changes and chances of this mortal life”: One who was adopted by, or exhibited, or shares in the Divine. All these positions are more or less heretical, though it is comforting to note that St. Luke seems to espouse the notion that Jesus was an “adopted Son”.
I always used to warn my Seminary students never to put more than five words together on the subject of the doctrine of the Trinity since if they said more, they would surely fall into heresy, and we know that there are heresy hunters everywhere.

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1. In the period that the Creeds were emerging, endless confusion was caused by a group of Greek words taken from philosophical writings: substance – ousia; an individual thing/person – hypostasis; person – persona Lat; prosopon Grk, and others like ‘nature’ and ‘form’.
The confusion was confounded because of growing separation of E. and W. resulting in a smaller number of bilingual theologians: St. Augustine, born in mid 4th century, for example, could not read Greek. The situation was not helped by the fact that the history and etymology of each word shows variations of use by different classical authors.

A further cause of misunderstanding and conflict between the theologians of the East and those in the West was the use of the two words substantia & hypostasis which are etymologically equivalent: ≈ standing beneath, i.e. the essence of a thing, person. In Greek, however, hypostasis was regularly used to mean an individual thing, person.
Before Nicaea, the West had settled on the formula, una substantia, tres personae; so, when a Greek spoke of three hypostases, to Latin ears this sounded like saying there are three Gods (tres substantiae).
See The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith, pp. 20ff. ed. T.H. Bindley, London. 4th Edition, 1950

2. Dict. of Christian Theol. pp. 341b & 246a. Tertullian (c.160-220); Irenaeus c.130-200); Origen (186-255)

3. The Rise of Western Christendom. Oxford 1996 p.19

4. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity London 1971 p.68

5. Rise of W. Christendom p.71

6. The use of the word 'person' (persona, prosopon) is a further considerable complication in any contemporary efforts to make sense of Chalcedon. The modern sense of 'personality' is quite absent in the classical use; indeed, the Latin per-sona has its origin in the mask of the dramatic actor - 'sounding through'.

Jesus in the New Testament

2009-03-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

As Lent approached, I was asked by the Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Rehoboth, Delaware, to suggest a theme for the five Lent Luncheon Lectures offered every year. I first considered taking the Apostles’ Creed as a basis, (though who could compete with Karl Barth?), or, perhaps, the vexed issue of the Church and State, and then I contemplated several other possibilities, but none of them sparked a great deal of enthusiasm. Then, in a space of a few days of fairly desultory TV watching, the contemporary use and frequent misuse of the name ‘Jesus’ stuck me, and I came up with:

Jesus: From Synagogue to Cathedral

The Central Question

The basic question is: How did we get from an unconventional Rabbi, born a Palestinian Jew around 4 B.C.E, whose education was almost certainly minimal, and who joined the other village lads from time to time in the Synagogue to learn some foundational passages from the Torah and Prophets: how did we get from there to the massive basilica built by the emperor Constantius II, Constantine’s son, where the great dome, with a vast mosaic of Jesus the Christos, reigning in glory dominated the building? Many such churches followed and the reigning Christ oversaw the rich pageantry of solemn Liturgies.

Norman Perrin writing about the figure of Jesus in the N.T., says, “In part, he was the Jesus who had lived and proclaimed his message in Galilee and Judea…But in still larger part he was the risen Lord present in the Christian communities; still conducting his ministry to them and through them”. (The New Testament – An Introduction 277). And it is because of the “larger part” of the N.T. records that we are meeting today, for we do not meet as an antiquarian society, but as a believing community, part of a vast throng of believers down the ages.

Why Were Two Pictures not Seen?

Before we can even begin to deal with this lecture’s subject, we have to take seriously what Perrin says and consider its implications. For over 1500 years the fact that there are two portraits of Jesus in the N.T. was not a problem. There are, indeed, more than two, but the central issue is the two that Perrin identifies, which are frequently differentiated as the Jesus of history, going round Galilee teaching and exorcising, and the (Jesus) Christ of faith, the center of the community’s devotion, giving them access to God. We need to ask why it was the ancients were able to see one clear portrait of Jesus and we are faced with multiple, overlapping pictures?

The simple answer, that infuriates traditionalist conservatives, is that we know a great deal more about how the NT writings came into being than was known in the late second century C.E. This answer produces responses like “sheer hubris”, but a moment’s thought will show that we accept this in every other area of human thought and practice. Jesus and his contemporaries firmly believed that infectious diseases were caused by evil spirits that got into you: it is not hubris for us to say they were wrong and that cholera, for example, is caused by the ingesting and spreading of a bacterium, vibrio cholerae; nor is it human pride when we say that we know that things burn because of a reaction between oxygen and carbon, and definitively not because they contain a mythical substance called Phlogiston, which early research was forced to conclude must have negative weight.

The Harmonized Picture

Along with all other areas of human thought, the understanding of history underwent a startling change from the 18th century on. No longer was it assumed that a report was more accurate because it was repeated endlessly: documents Number Two through Twenty might all be quoting number One or each other, for example. The distinction that Perrin draws also gradually became clear. Odd as it may seem, the early theologians, while noticing that the four gospels exhibited different characteristics, nevertheless, did not feel that the differences were all that important. Consciously or unconsciously the approach to the gospels was to harmonize them, to assume, for example that when Mark and Matthew tell the same story, but with significantly different details, what we have is accounts of two happenings. This approach is epitomized by a mid-second century work called the Diatessaron (= one from four). To quote Elliott and Moir, “He [Tatian] produced a ‘scissors and paste’ life of Christ from the four Gospels”*1 . The work was widely used and was the forerunner of many more in the third to tenth centuries, indicting very clearly why it was thought that a single, focused picture of Jesus could be presented.

Emergence of Critical History: A New Picture

Modern critical study suggests a different picture. Not only do the four gospels exhibit distinctly the interests of each author, it is also clear that they were written at different times and with different audiences in mind: Matthew clearly writes for and to that group of Christians that retained a strong element of Judaism in its belief and practice, whereas Luke writes for communities in the Hellenistic world who had little or no background in the Hebrew scriptures. One of the most striking developments was the separating of John’s gospel from the other three. It became very clear that the first three have some complex textual inter-relationships. That is to say they either used each other or some original document that did not survive. In the early days of critical study, this second alternative was much favored, but as study progressed it became much more likely that the first three gospels used one another in some sequence or other. For this reason, they became known as the Synoptic Gospels, (from the Greek συν οπσις - syn-opsis) because they could be looked at together in parallel columns high-lighting common passages. In critical history writing of any kind, unanimity is hardly to be expected, but the end result of intense literary analysis of the Synoptic gospels is that a large majority of scholars hold that Mark is our first gospel, written around 68 C.E., followed by Matthew and then Luke in the next decade.

The Fourth Gospel

It had been recognized in antiquity that John’s book was different from the others, and even a few voices were raised questioning its authority. The majority view however, expressed by Clement of Alexandria, was that this was “a spiritual gospel”, suggesting that it looked for the divine reality behind the ministry of Jesus. So in spite of the differences between this and the first three gospels, it was assumed to give us more historical information about Jesus.
In fact, the picture of Jesus we get from John is much more firmly in the second area that Perrin identifies. He is still the historical Jesus, but he has acquired traits of the glorified Savior and Lord. Jesus is clearly a human being, he weeps and is angry, but he is on the way to being more; he is according to John a bodily manifestation of God; at the very beginning of the book, John strikes a note very different from anything we find in the Synoptic Gospels, using a term from Greek Philosophy when he writes: “the Word (Logos) was made flesh and dwelt among us”. John assumes that Jesus knows what someone is thinking, and astonishes Nathanael*2 when in answer to the question “when did you get to know me?” Jesus replies, “‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you’”. (1.48).

St. John’s gospel was not the last to be written, but it is the last of the four that the church ultimately designated as “official”, known as the canonical gospels; it is also the one that exhibits most clearly the move from the Jesus of history to the Jesus Christ of faith. People often do not know that beside these official four there is at least a dozen or so more so-called ‘non-canonical’ gospels, the best known of which is The Gospel of Thomas.

Synoptic Gospels Not Neutral

It would be a big mistake, however, to assume that the Fourth gospel was the one that was all theology and that the Synoptic gospels are all “simple facts”. “That’s the truth pure and simple” is often used in rhetorical polemic, and, as has been frequently pointed out, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. The same can be said about ‘simple historical facts’; for instance, recording ‘A’ rather than ‘B’ is in itself the first step to interpreting.
To return to Norman Perrin’s distinction with which we began, it is clear that it is not only the Fourth Gospel that gives us a strongly interpreted picture of Jesus: the process was well under way in the earlier Synoptic Gospels.

One of the striking elements of interpretation was the effort, begun by Mark, to make sense of the death of Jesus, who, by the time Mark wrote, was accepted as God’s anointed one, the Messiach, the Christos. For the earliest believers this would be quite a stumbling block since in all the messianic expectations of the OT there is no evidence of a belief in a Martyr Messiah. Mark used, possibly following the teaching of Jesus himself, texts from Isaiah which speak of God’s Servant taking the message to the Gentiles, suffering and being rejected. In their original context these sayings*3 had no reference to a Messiah, indeed, it seems that it was the “holy remnant” of Israel who suffered for the nation as a whole. Another very important interpretative element in Mark (which is taken over particularly by Luke) is to see Jesus in his ministry fighting with the powers of darkness who appear again and again in the form of demons causing sickness, paralysis and blindness. Mark suggests that the earthly rulers of Rome and Jerusalem joined forces to destroy Jesus: thus Mark notes that as Jesus died a great “darkness came over the whole land”. *4

Can We See an ‘Historical’ Jesus?

Can we get behind this interpretive element to meet Jesus the Rabbi as he went to the Synagogue? This question has been at the center of much scholarship for over a hundred years: it has been named ‘the Quest of the Historical Jesus’. Some have felt that we can get behind the interpretive screen, so to speak and others that it is a hopeless quest. Perhaps a very tentative consensus has settled on a middle position. Careful and intensive work suggest that it is possible to identify the very earliest traditions about Jesus and the reporting of his message.

The Parables

The primary source is the parables. Linguistic analysis strongly suggests an Aramaic undertone, and though Jesus might have known a little Greek (the land, after all, was occupied by Greek speakers) he almost certainly spoke Aramaic. The parables strongly suggest that the fulcrum of Jesus’ message was the coming of the Kingdom (more properly, “the Rule”) of God, which, you may recall, is the very first thing that Mark records Jesus proclaiming after his baptism. Many of the parables begin with “The Kingdom of God is like … a father who had two sons…a merchant in the market for pearls … a shepherd seeking a lost sheep". The parables often imply a reversal of human standards and expectations, suggesting a view of God far from a narrow, exclusive legalism. *5 The strange parable of the farmer who paid all the day workers the same irregardless of how long they had worked, sets out the “amazing grace” of God, one of the central themes of at least two of Paul’s letters.

God's Grace & Jesus' Openness

This view of God as, one might say, ‘profligate’ was (and, one might say, still is) infuriating to legalist authorities, and Jesus put it into practice in his open table fellowship, which, the gospel writers note, caused grumbling and then, enmity. This openness, his willingness to put love of people before the strict letter of the law and the politics of the Jewish rulers dependent on Rome seem enough to account for Jesus’ arrest and execution. This approach seems to give us the outlines of a picture of the historical Jesus. What follows on the execution, however, is beyond history. It is based on the faith of that small band of disciples who understood that the powers of darkness had not defeated God, but believed that the power of love had overcome hate, and that life was stronger than death.

A Picture and a Portrait

This presents us with two pictures of Jesus, rather like two photos printed one over the other and we cannot have one without the other. If we are looking for something like a modern biography, the NT will disappoint us: we do not know, for instance the color of Jesus’ hair or eyes; we do not know if he was tall or short; we do not know if certain food gave him indigestion. Those earliest followers in the Way had known Jesus as a man and friend, set at a certain point in the flux of history; he was in no way a mythical divine hero to them like the gods of the Hellenistic world, but from the beginning they sensed that he was adopted by or exhibited or shared in the Divine; (all these positions were held and debated in the early centuries), and that, of course, definitively colors the portrait that became the norm, what later was to be called the “orthodox” view.

The Other Writings of the N.T.

I am aware that time is almost out, and I have not even looked at the rest of the N.T. That may seem strange particularly because the earliest of Paul’s letters were written something like 10-15 years before Mark wrote the first gospel. On the other hand, the Letters, by and large, take for granted the traditions that were encapsulated by the Evangelists, and, as a result, we find few references to events in the life of Jesus. The exception to this is the way the letters, particularly Paul’s, concentrate on the death and resurrection of Jesus, suggesting various metaphors as ways to explain how God rescues fallen humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus. *6 Perhaps the most succinct summary of this in the whole N.T. corpus is in Paul’s Second Letter to Corinth: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation”. *7 Paul is also considerably exercised by the fact that God’s chosen people, Israel, seemed to be rejecting the Messiah, and he employs all his Rabbinic skills in an attempt to show that the Scriptures can be read to show that Jesus is the next stage of salvation, beyond the preparation provided by the Torah.

The Proclamation

We cannot end without noting the Acts of the Apostles; in the first ten or so chapters, Luke gives us a glimpse of the beginnings of the Church, or perhaps one should say ‘churches’, as new tiny communities sprang up outside Palestine. Most interesting is the series of speeches Luke reports. There is a common pattern, that looks, incidentally, very like the framework of Mark’s Gospel:

The work of Jesus is to rescue humanity from its self-made chaos, a chaos exemplified by the evil powers that cause madness, and all kinds of human sickness.

The healing stories, indicate that the power of God is working through Jesus;
His activities, in welcoming those regarded by the Law as unclean, bring him into conflict with the authorities, who in alliance with the demonic forces, conspire to destroy him.

The apparent victory of these powers as Jesus dies on the cross, is reversed by the mighty action of God who declares the ultimate victory of good over evil, love over hate in the Resurrection of Jesus.

I end with another quotation (edited) from Norman Perrin, which points us on to the theme of next week’s lecture: *8
"[Jesus] who proclaimed the Kingdom of God began himself to be proclaimed as (a) the one about to return on the clouds of heaven. {Apocalyptic Christianity} (b) as the one who “died for our sins and was raised for our justification”: {Paul} (c) as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. {Johannine literature}. *9

1 Manuscripts & the Text of the New Testament. Edinburgh 1995 p 77
2 This is one among hundreds of occasions when John gives information not found in the Synoptic Gospels.
3 Found in Deutero Isaiah. Chs. 40-52
4 Mk. 15.33 There is also more than a hint that the powers of darkness and chaos, overcome by Yahweh in the command 'let there be light', here seem to have returned in victory.
5 St. Paul grasps this central point in I Cor. 1.25 – “Gods’ foolishness is wiser than human wisdom”. Who but a fool would send off a feckless 18 year old with half his equity?
6 One should also note Paul’s account of the Last Supper, the earliest we have, and several references the actual words of Jesus.
7 II Cor. 5.18f
8 Jesus in Dogma – The Age of Controversy
9 Op.cit. 302

Sermon for Vth. Sunday in Epiphany, Feb. 8, 2009

2009-02-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Readings: Isaiah 40.21-31; I Cor. 9.16-23; St.Mark 1.29-39

I had just completed preparing this sermon for the coming Sunday, and had no intention of publishing it when I looked at the current edition of The Living Church. Its very first piece is a sermon using the Markan reading as a text. I felt that an alternative (I was going to say 'antidote') might be a useful contribution; so here it is.

The Gospel before the "Gospels"

In his letter to Corinth, a fragment of which we just heard, St Paul speaks twice of the ‘gospel’; the Greek word is euangelion, “good news”. He begins by insisting that he has no choice: he is compelled to spread the good news. His words have all the urgency of the cry of the Second Isaiah from which our first lesson came: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” Then Paul ends today’s passage: “I do [everything] for the sake of the gospel”.

After the reading of the epistle we come to a rubric in the PB: Then, all standing, the Deacon or Priest reads the Gospel, and in today’s context this means the passage from St. Mark that we just heard. This suggests an ambiguity in the word ‘gospel’, for when St. Paul speaks of the gospel as he writes to Corinth, he is not referring to an older copy of Mark’s book, hand-written on a papyrus roll. He is not doing this because Mark’s book did not exist when he wrote to Corinth. Paul’s letter to Corinth was written at least fifteen years before Mark put pen to paper (or more accurately to papyrus). So, Paul is referring to the passing on of a message that was in existence and being spread by the early followers of Jesus long before any of our four gospels was in existence: not to mention some dozens more that appeared from the early second century onwards.

There may have been written collections of Jesus’ sayings and versions of his parables, but Mark was the pioneer of a new format, the first of the Gospel writers. He gives us the first book that tries to encapsulate the salient feature of Jesus’ life and teaching, but far more importantly, a book that aims to interpret the things that happened to Jesus and things that he said. He reveals for us, that is, the fundamental faith of first and second generation Christians, the faith, as St Paul puts it, that, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation”. (II Cor. 5.18f.)

Mark's Book

Mark’s book is the shortest of the four canonical gospels (that is, the ones the church designated as “official” by the end of the second century). His account has very few parables, Jesus’ favorite method of teaching, has no stories like Matthew and Luke that tell of Jesus’ birth, and perhaps, most strikingly has no accounts of Jesus’ time with the Disciples after his execution, what we call the ‘resurrection narratives’.

The Importance of Mark's Gospel

Why, then, is Mark’s book so important? This question needs much more time than one sermon, but at least I can try to give the headings of what would need to be a whole lecture course.

1) Mark is our earliest gospel and provided the framework for the work of both Matthew and Luke.

2) Mark’s brevity suggests that the Gospel message that Paul refers to was well known among the churches by the year 50 C.E. so that Mark can take quite a lot for granted. It is worth noting that Mark is clearly not a shortened version of Mt. or Lk. as was often held in antiquity.
Mt & Lk are much longer because they add to Mark the stories and teachings just mentioned. When a passage from Mk used by Mt is compared it is found that it is Mt who has shortened Mk., removing details or redundancies.

3) His book reflects the unwritten gospel of the first few decades of which Paul speaks.
Interestingly, the speeches given by Peter and others in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles also give us insight to the framework of the Gospel before the written Gospels.

4) The framework is something like this:

Jesus is doing the work of God; he is known in the early community as God’s anointed, Messiah in Hebrew, Christos in Greek.

The work is no less than to rescue humanity from its self-made chaos, a chaos exemplified by the evil powers that cause madness, and all kinds of human sickness. And I want to return to this point later.

The healing stories and nature miracles, that are so prominent in Mark, indicate that the power of God is working through Jesus to overcome the power of evil, or to calm the turbulence of nature, giving back life and health to humanity.

Jesus’ activities, and particularly his welcoming of those regarded by the Law as unclean, bring him into conflict with the authorities, who in alliance with the demonic forces, conspire to destroy him.

The apparent victory of these powers as Jesus dies on the cross, is reversed by the mighty action of God who declares the ultimate victory of good over evil, love over hate in the Resurrection of Jesus. It is important to note that most references to the resurrection do not say Jesus rose from the dead, but that God raised Jesus from the dead. The emphasis throughout Mark is that Jesus is God’s servant.

5) Finally, and most important of all, Mark’s book is significant because it is not merely a reporting of events, but gives us important clues to what Jesus’ life, teaching and death meant to his followers.

The Basileia Theou - Kingdom (Rule) of God

I want to spend the rest of our time considering what it is that Mark sees as central to the good news resulting from Jesus’ ministry. Mark records Jesus baptism and retreat to the dessert, and continues, “Jesus came into Galilee preaching the good news, and he said, ‘the appointed time has arrived and the Kingdom of God has drawn near’”. The phrase kingdom of God is better translated the ‘rule’ or the ‘power’ of God and Mark uses it another 20 or so times in his book. Much of what follows in Mark is designed to show just how the power of God is now working and what it will mean for Jesus.

The Rule of God Operating: Jesus' Fight with the Demonic
& His Rejection of Exclusion

Mark does this by concentrating on the theme of the struggle between Jesus and the powers of darkness, the demonic forces.
The theme emerged last week when a mentally ill man is cured, though the diagnosis in not schizophrenia or any other psychiatric term we use: the man has “an unclean spirit” which is conquered by Jesus, though Mark clearly understands that it is God’s power that is at work. Today’s reading tells us of Peter’s mother-in-law cured of a fever, and then goes on to a summary section telling of cures of physical and mental illness. Next week the gospel will tell of a leper who is healed; this not only continues the theme of the divine conquest of sin and sickness, but also introduces, in a way we do not recognize unless it is pointed out to us another central theme: it is the way Jesus welcomes those who are beyond the pale: lepers were excluded from the community of Israel, and Jesus not only welcomes them, but makes bodily contact. Incidents like this are important because Mark suggests that the fight against the powers of evil also becomes a fight with the establishment of Jerusalem.

Demons Today

We need, however, to grasp the nettle of demonic activity. As I just noted, where we would diagnose mental illness in psychiatric terms, Mark speaks of an unclean spirit. This reminds us that it is essential to read a first century C.E. book in its historical context, and we know from multiple sources that the belief in demons and evil spirits as the source of human ills was virtually unanimous. That Jesus shared this view is quite clear and the attempt to get round this by shuffles like “he only accepted the popular view to accommodate to human limitations”, merely undermines the real humanity of Jesus. It is sobering to remember that not a single doctor knew about the bacterial basis of endless killer diseases until into the second half of the 19th century. It would be odd indeed if Jesus had said, “This man is suffering from a serotonin deficiency”, and even fundamentalists, so far as I know, do not go to an exorcist when they have an appendicitis.

The fact that most people in the Western world do not explain sickness, mental ills and natural disasters by the action of demonic forces does not in itself negate Mark’s central act of faith that God was working (and we believe, continues to work) through Jesus to overcome evil with good and hate with love.

Later on in Mark, we shall come to the story where the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being in league with the demons. Luke’s version entirely grasps Mark’s central theme. Jesus says, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then has the Kingdom, the Rule, of God come upon you”. (Lk. 11.20). This is a summary of Mark’s central message: God’s power is operating in a new way through the obedient work of his servant, Jesus, fighting the powers of evil. It is a work that involves conflict and suffering and Mark makes it clear that those who follow Jesus must be ready to share that suffering with the Messiah. Moreover, this is addressed not just to his first century readers in Rome, but to all Christians down the ages, and to us today.

INAUGURATION PRAYER

2009-01-12T08:23:00.000-08:00

The immediate furor over the choice of the person who is to deliver an invocation at the Inauguration of President elect Barack Obama seems to have died down. It has left me wondering, “Invoke what precisely: or, more likely, vaguely?"

God’s reassurance that America has a divine mission? God’s promise to rescue us from the mess that is largely our own making? Or a summary of recent history with an agenda for the future, so loved of extempore pray-ers?” ("Lord, you will have read in the Washington Times.......")

Is it too much to hope that something along the lines of the Lord’s Prayer in the paraphrase version given in the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book might be given us?

The Lord's Prayer from the Prayer Book
Of the Anglican Church in New Zealand

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. AMEN.

Sermon for Christmas Morning 2008

2008-12-23T15:29:00.000-08:00

All the pre-festival rush is over and for now we can enjoy a time of quiet and thanksgiving. For the rest of the day we shall be caught up again in the family rituals and customs of the season, with meal preparations and dealing with over-excited children and grand-children

From Epiphany to December 25

The customs of this festival are many and different in different parts of the world. The history of the festival day is also interesting. The earliest church, before it left the confines of the Mediterranean, rejoiced to recall God’s wonderful gift to human kind on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany. It is here that we find the beginning of the custom of giving gifts at Christmas. In later centuries, as the church expanded into the cold, dark Germanic north, new dates were given and new customs introduced.

The church from its very birth has never grown in a vacuum, but in a culture permeated with older religions. Spiritual forces and gods were everywhere as were the places and the rituals that attended them. Two strategies were used; one was opposition on an intellectual and legal level, the other, was to incorporate some of the less objectionable elements of the old religions. This happened in the case of Christmas. Some German bishops of the 8th century decided that the pagan rites of the winter solstice must stop. They were wily enough not to choose the exact date, December 21; any sensible Thor worshipper would see through that one. So for northern Christianity, December 25th became the time to recall that in the deepest gloom of the year the bright light of God shines forth; at a later time, but from the same provenance came the fir tree covered in lights to our ceremonies, a sight that would have astounded any Galilean peasant.

Persistence of Gift Giving

Whatever customs have been introduced to Christmas in various parts of the world, the custom of gift-giving has remained central, not surprisingly because the focus of any theological understanding of this day is the amazing gift of God to us in the birth of Jesus. The gospels try to give us a feeling of the magnitude of the gift in the stories of brightness in the dark, the shining Angels announcing a great gift to the shepherds and singing a chorus of praise. We also get the message of the amazing nature of this gift in Matthew’s story of the wise men of the East who bring gifts of magnificence and deep symbolism to a little shed.
We all love gifts: both to receive them, but also to give them. Receiving them has a certain ambiguity: do I really need another packet of handkerchiefs? I recall how I received with some reservations the “useful gifts” that came from a Godmother – a pair of gloves one year, handkerchiefs another (what eight year old looks kindly on crisp linen squares?) and a book of devotion on yet another. On the other hand, there was an uncle who knew just what I wanted. A chemistry set, guaranteed to wreak havoc at the kitchen sink, an addition to the mecano set or a magician’s kit.
As I grew older, a greater appreciation grew of gifts that were carefully selected to meet real needs as well as to give pleasure. I also began to learn the joy of giving gifts as well as receiving them.
I am sure we all share these personal experiences and they are all woven into the meaning of Christmas.

God's Gift

The center of the Christmas message is God’s unimaginably generous gift to us. What, precisely, is that gift that formal theological language calls the ‘incarnation’? It is a gift carefully chosen to meet the real and desperate needs of the human race, which has tried to leave out God, even to replace God, in our affairs. At first sight God’s gift at Christmas might seem odd. What can a small defenseless baby do for us? But this is a gift of a very special child, one destined to make clear the Divine presence in all human affairs in spite of the mess that human self-will and pride have created. God’s gift in the birth of this child, and in all that followed from it, is an offer to humanity of reconciliation with God, with one another and, finally, within each torn human psyche.

The story of Christmas, in Matthew’s telling of it, also speaks of gifts of gratitude that are brought to the manger. The gifts are, on the face of it, a strange mixture; the gold, certainly, would be welcomed by a poor peasant family; but a bunch of joss sticks and a pot of strange smelling ointment were hardly immediately useful. Commentators get us out of this awkward moment of unwrapping a gift that seems oddly inappropriate, by reminding us of the deep symbolism: gold for a king, incense for the worship of God and myrrh for funeral rites. Perhaps, though, Christina Rossetti gets it right in her poem, In the Bleak Mid-Winter:

What can I give him, / Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd / I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man / I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him - / Give my heart.

A 14th Century Miracle Play

What, indeed, can we give as a gift to this God of immeasurable love, who, in spite of general human nastiness and individual sins of self- centeredness, gives us the assurance of the divine presence in our midst. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, a poet and an amazingly subtle theologian, addresses this very question in a collection of sermons entitled A Ray of Darkness.

He quotes from one of the 14th century Miracle plays that were performed in churches at the Christmas season. Three ordinary Yorkshire workmen bring gifts; they are the Shepherds not to be outdone by the high and mighty Lords of the East. The first one says, “Lo, he laughs, my sweeting! Ah! A well fair meeting! Have a bob of cherries”. The second one goes on, “Hail! I kneel and I cower. A bird have I brought to my bairn.” And the third one concludes:
“Hail! Put forth thy hand. I bring thee but a ball: Have and play thee withall, and go to the tennis.” (22-23).

What a wonderful collection of gifts for a little child: a bunch of cherries, a canary in a cage and a tennis ball. Could anything say more clearly that God has entered into human life, its joys as well as its woes, than that last line: take the ball and go to play a game of tennis; go and express that true humanity through which the light of God will shine.
Williams comments, “What can I give him, poor as I am? What indeed! For God today has recreated the world and refashioned you and me in his own image. God today has burst open the frontiers of all possible and imaginable experience and come among us”… The Child through whom and in whom God comes to us “reaches out his hand and touches the bob of cherries that a [Yorkshire] workman offers him. And for the reaching out there is no exchange, there is no fit return we can make. God’s pure causeless, gratuitous love can have no answer, except some faint fumbling echo of that very gratuity … itself: the gift too great to make sense of. All we can do, like the (workmen), is to offer our meaningless little presents. All we can give to God is the equivalent of what the (workmen) here give; a packet of sweets, a canary in a cage, a tennis ball.” (ibid. 23).

Our Fumbling Gifts

Those ‘fumbling’ gifts will include all that we can do for others, the care we give to children and older people, the patience with which we forbear those who irritate us, the joys we share with family and friends. They will include our often puny efforts at prayer and our taking part in worship, but all these little offerings are taken up in a Great Thanksgiving, an ongoing Eucharist, a great Eucharistoumen, Thank You, which is, in the last analysis, the only return we can give for so immense a gift as we celebrate today.

Knowledge, Experience & Wisdom

2008-10-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

Expressions of disbelief, expert & experienced economists reduced to ‘speechlessness’, and a significant consensus of experienced experts confessing “we didn’t see this coming” have dominated the news of the last ten days.
I am only a dumb theologian, and wonder why it is that I am not in the least surprised?

Haves & Have Nots

This Web page is explicitly focused on contemporary theological issues, biblical studies and current ecclesiastical affairs. This does not, I feel, exclude comment on the current political scene though theologians need to tread warily here.
So here goes!

When I first came to live in the USA in 1971, I remember the Real Estate page (note the singular) in the New York Times Magazine section; there were usually about a dozen ‘superior’ properties listed, ranging in price from about $250, 000 to (very occasionally) $1m. At the time, since we were working in a boarding school that provided excellent accommodation, we began to think about where we would live when we retired. We agonized over the price of $68,000 with a loan rate of 12.85% for a house that was for sale.
It was this contrast that first began my musing about the structure of American society, wondering how anyone could afford what seemed to me the astronomical prices of the NYT advertisements; with my wife and I both working, our combined income was around $ 28,000 (including housing costs), and I was speechless that people could be making enough to pay a million or more for a house. Did this mean that they had an annual income approaching a million dollars?

We all know that in the last three decades the gap between the haves and the have-nots has become a canyon whose floor is almost out of sight, the result of unbridled capitalism that has made the river run uphill. The most recent edition of the NYT Magazine section has about a dozen real estate pages introduced by the title: Best of Luxury Homes & Estates. I did not have the time (4 or 5 hours?) to go though the whole collection carefully, but my quick check found just two properties, if that is the correct designation, for somewhat less than a million dollars. Each had one bedroom and a “spacious” additional living area, and one of them came with a $600 monthly fee for maintenance and security. The most expensive pied-à-terre I came across was an estate selling for $59, 000,000.

In another section of the NYT, I saw an advertisement for a Gucci handbag for the bargain price of $3,290.00. I almost feel like saying: “The case rests”; that would be so if the case were that vast economic inequalities have historically led to severe social and political instability: qu’ils mangent de la brioche (Let them eat cake).

But the case I want to make is, I realize after all, theological and not primarily about politics or economics.

Monumental Commandments

I have noted in several previous essays the striking difference between the USA and most of the rest of the industrialized world when religious statistics are compared. The overwhelming percentage of Americans who profess belief in God is remarkable; even more striking, (though not so striking as it once was) is that what is being referred to is the Christian God: sometimes just a ‘generic’ [g]God, but often Jesus, where Christos is not understood as a title – ‘the Anointed of Yahweh’, but as a kind of divine name. How much does his vast following really know about the New Testament, about the Jesus of history presented as the Christ of faith?
One test that suggests itself is the publishing of the Ten Commandments in the public domain, often in stone. The ensuing uproar suggests a profound commitment to Yahweh and to some pre-Israelite laws that treat wives as personal property. This is probably not the position of the generic god theists, but has more than enough adherents to create the uproar when the legality of the action is questioned.

In contrast, I do not know of any attempt to set up a monument inscribed, for example, with Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, or any other version for that matter. It is not clear to me what the reaction to such an attempt would be. Perhaps some, reading the Beatitudes for the first time, might find them interesting; right wing Republicans would probably accuse the author of being a Marxist, and very Conservative Evangelicals might mildly approve, while insisting that it was quite in order to own and drive several SUVs: fundamentalists, after all, do not insist on a literal reading of the text – a day can = a year, a century, a millennium – but on its inerrancy. Doubtless, the 10% who do not register belief in God would actively raise the Church and State issue.

Theology & the Social Contract

The theological crux of the whole matter is that the Beatitudes lead to the Cross, and what has been lost in the frenzy of spending, increasing year by year ever since WW II, is any attention to the sacrifices needed in individuals, families, corporations and the world at large for the maintenance of a stable, productive society. The execution of Jesus clearly does not emerge in the story at the eleventh hour. As early as his third chapter, Luke notes that the authorities consulted on how to get rid of him. The Beatitudes sum up the pattern of behavior that Mark and the Evangelists who followed him, clearly laid out for us: rejection of legalism; cutting across deeply embedded social and ethnic frontiers; a very clear understanding that love in a clash with power (bottom line – gold/$$/££ etc.) will inevitably suffer. It is that suffering, willingly accepted that constitutes sacrifice. I am not suggesting that a society can flourish only if all members are theists of one kind or another, but that the principles of, say, the “Golden Rule” can be followed by anyone.

The Politically Unspeakable

It is abundantly clear that there are things that politicians not only do not ever say, but cannot ever say. They cannot say that democracy is endangered when far too big a segment of the population, while literate, has never been trained to do any analytic thinking. Above all, they cannot even hint that our present situation is not only the result of bad policies, greedy financiers and supine legislators, but also the behavior of a vast majority of the population: wastefulness on an unprecedented level in history; piling up personal debt on multiple credit cards at astronomical levels; an increasing disregard for the most vulnerable section of our fellow citizens.

Of course, we hear that “belt tightening” will be necessary, that we may have to forgo some of our comforts (a house heated to 74°, fewer Christmas decorations), but has anyone heard a speech like Churchill’s in mid-1940 when he told the British people he could offer them nothing but “blood, sweat and tears”? I wonder what would happen if all night-time sporting events were to be cancelled.

Sub specie aeternitatis, this might seem a relatively small sacrifice, but would the fact that it would save countless millions of kilowatt hours, stem the howl of rage? I rather doubt it. And such a policy would be only a miniscule first step in the implementation of the much more draconian measures that are really needed.

Too Much Religion

Perhaps what emerges is that the USA has far too much religion, religion of the smiley face, hand-clapping kind; religion that insists that getting filthy rich is what Jesus really wants for us; religion that harks back much more to the Old Testament than to the New; religion that fails to take into account the potentials of human sin (except for homosexuals and commies). Perhaps what we need is not only an economic rescue, but an evangelical rescue, where ‘evangelical’ does not mean far right fundamentalism, but an embracing of the Evangel so clearly set out in the New Testament.
We also need wise leaders, and that brings me at long last to the title of this essay.

In Canto I of Choruses from ‘The Rock', T.S. Eliot says:

Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

It might be the height of presumption, but I would like to add:
“Where is the the information we have lost in Campaign Ads?”

Validation by Experience

There has been a great deal of talk about the importance of experience for many months now, and as is most often the case in political discourse, the talk is full of hidden assumptions, suppressed protases (first part of an “if” clause) producing damning apodoses (the “then” part of a conditional clause):

if X is educated, then he/she is out of touch.

Or, if Y is a septuagenarian, then he/she ought to have retired.

In the case of ‘experience’, the argument seems to be: if you have travelled widely, then you know how to deal with other nations. Unhappily, I know people who have spent their life travelling, who take pride in not knowing a word of any European or Eastern language, who insist that there is nothing like a good old American hamburger and who keep track of their itinerary by noting that it is Wednesday today.

It really does not take a great deal of thought to work out that experience which is not subjected to critical thought and analysis is somewhat like a frozen bank account. Quite by accident, as I was writing this I came on a passage in an essay of Michel de Montaigne, On the Art of Conversation (Four Essays in the Penguin 60s series - 1995 Translated by M.A. Screech).
Montaigne notes that in a conversation people of rank often get away with arguments that “are vain and silly”, and then they “clobber you with the authority of their experience” (52). He next introduces the case of a surgeon (doctor) to whom he would like to say that a recital of all his experience with this or that illness & success with many surgical procedures is in itself beside the point. What matters is how he is able “to extract from [his experience] material for forming his judgment”. His experience is irrelevant “unless he knows how to convince us that he has been made wiser by the practice of his medical art”. (53).

Perhaps Eliot is saying something like this in the last line of section II of East Coker:

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

Certainly the financial wizards with whom I began had a great deal of knowledge and immense experience, but they seemed signally to lack the wisdom that comes from humility.

The Book of Revelation: Study Outline Part 4

2008-08-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

Part 1 of this Study outline was posted in August, 2007
Part 2 in Sept 2007
Part 3 on January 14 2008
Click on the appropriate month at left to find earlier sections

An Overview of 8.7 – 14.20

The section (8.7-11.19) is given its structure by the third seven marked by the blowing of seven trumpets, which again introduce a series of apocalyptic judgments, pointing to a final great catastrophe.

In his first attempt at the exegesis of this book (The Rebirth of Images) Austin Farrer tried to get seven sevens from the total text, seeing a series of seven sevens, though only four of them were clearly marked: the Messages, (2-3); the unsealings, (6-7); the trumpets, (8-14), and the bowls (15 ff.) The ‘unmarked ones were delineated by reference back to parallel themes and to a series of clues like a repeated “then I saw”.

In the later Commentary, he abandoned this (highly criticized) effort and, suggested the potentially more fruitful and much simpler structure of “the half week”, a variant of the common apocalyptic scheme of “a week of weeks” (cf. Dan 9 –“a time, times and half a time” and notes in Part One, published on 8/9/07)

Week Three - The Seven Trumpets

Ch 8, v.7 The series of seven begins almost at once and there is no opening Theophany as in the two previous weeks, but there is a very brief scene in the ‘heavenly throne room’. In v. 5, fire again shows its ambivalent nature - the fire that is a symbol of the glory of God becomes also the fire of judgment.

vv. 7 & 8 may reflect another of the sub-themes, the parallels that keep popping up with the Genesis creation story. God created the earth, sea, vegetation and trees on the third day; here at the first three trumpet blasts in the third "seven”, the earth, trees, vegetation and sea are one third destroyed.

v.10 the falling star is possibly a reference to the saying of Jesus in Lk.10.18, but this is not the final conquest of Satan which is reserved for 12.1-12, (typical; of the book's cyclical approach). cf. also Isa 14.12-14 which suggests the Satanic power operating through the secular state.

"Wormwood" is in Greek apsinthos. (artemisia absinthium) a bitter but not poisonous herb. In both OT and NT it is a metaphor for "bitterness" cf. Amos 5.6f; 6.12;Jer. 9.15.

vv.12-14 The fourth trumpet initiates destruction of the heavenly bodies. Is it a coincidence that the fourth day of creation in Genesis sees the placing of the “great lights" in the firmament?
Another obvious piece of O.T. background to this section is the story of the Egyptian plagues.

Chapter 9

The final verse of ch 8 introduces three woes, which are spelled out by the next three trumpet blasts, (cycles within cycles!). Again Farrer suggests this is the pervasive half-week pattern: 4+3.

The fallen star is another preview of Satan's fall (12.12).

The rest of ch. 9 is a picture of demonic forces let loose on the world. "The bottomless pit" of v. 1 is, in Greek, abysson, that is, in the mythology of the OT, the place of chaos overcome by God at creation. "This is spiritual geography, signifying the reservoir of evil, out of which the beast ascends (11.7, 17.8)". (John Sweet, Commentary, p. 167). For the description of the demonic monsters, see earlier note; here he is portraying the sins of imperialism, the fascination of sex and the ravages of sin.

v. 6 is a shattering picture of horror, much worse in its poetic brevity than the synthetic gore of a contemporary horror movie.

The sixth trumpet sounds marking the progress of this "week' of judgments, and the second woe gives its content.

v.14 seems to imply wicked angels, common dramatis personae in apocalyptic writing.
Sweet has a good note in this section. He writes, "We may find these plagues revolting, like pictures of the effects of nuclear war or ecological arrogance.... John is not threatening pagans but revealing to Christians the spiritual nature and destiny of the world to which they are tempted to conform. It is deeper diagnosis than that of many of our contemporary prophets of doom, and it is encapsulated within a more positive vision." (Commentary, p. 171).

v. 20 suggests much for us to apply to our own society, and the story of the plagues in Egypt suggests the pattern of stubborn refusal to turn to God that ends in a refusal to receive his grace.

Chapter 10 & Chapter 11.1-14

In the second week (seals), John makes a break between numbers six and seven, and so he does again here.

He inserts, two 'interludes', so to speak, ch 10, and 11.1-14 before the blowing of the seventh trumpet introduces yet another Sabbath liturgy.

v.2 the little scroll is linked to the sealed scroll of 5.2 ('mighty angel’, allusion to Ezek 2.8-3.3).

Sweet suggests that the little scroll is a suitably scaled down version of the great scroll now already opened in heaven (i.e., God's purpose is "in place"). It is given to John and his fellow Christians to "eat" = digest the message and, (v. 11), prophesy to many nations. Christ's victory is to be worked out by those who share his bitter cup (Mk 10.18) and his baptism of death (Lk 12.29ff).

Ch 11.1-14 is the second 'interlude'. It is a sort of parable of what John is doing by writing his book. A separation is made between those who will hear (v.1), and those who will not and remain outside the temple and the city (v.2).

This section weaves together material from Zech chs 2-4, Ezek 40.3 and Dan 7.25 & 12.7. Both the time references in vv. 2 & 3 = three and a half years, and this was a standard number (coming from Daniel) for the period of distress heralding the end (eschaton). It is also, in 13.5-7, the period of the "beast's" war against the saints, and, in 12.6, the time of nourishment for the woman who bears messiah,

The temple that is measured is not the one in Jerusalem; that had (a majority of scholars would concur) been destroyed almost two decades before John is writing. The temple is the Christian community (cf. 1 Cor 3.16; Eph 2.21; John 2.19ff) He seems to make a distinction between "the church in its inward being, measured as the 144,000 were sealed (7.1-8), and the church in its outward life, already the holy city (3,12), but not yet measured as it will be (21.15)". (Sweet, Commentary, p. 184)

vv. 2-14 give what can be seen as a "summary of the reign and fall of Antichrist, of the persecution and final redemption of the saints." (Farrer, Rebirth of Images, p. 44). The two witnesses may be Moses and Elijah, but probably represent the witness of the whole church, and the fire (v.5) is the word of God; like Elijah (I K 17.1) God empowers them. Note that when Jesus refers to the incident in Lk, 4.25, he says the "heavens were shut up for three and a half years".

v.7 the city is not a single geographical place. True, in Jerusalem the power of evil was most clearly seen in the execution of Jesus, but John says he is speaking "spiritually" (the literal Greek = allegorically); the death of Christ was at the hands of "the rulers of this age" (I Cor 2.6-8). Sweet writes: "The city is the social and political embodiment of human self-sufficiency and rebellion against God" (ibid. p.187). At various times, the center has been Sodom, Babylon and Egypt. As John writes, it is Rome, and later in his book, he will equate Babylon and Rome.

Chapter 11.15-19

At v. 15, John returns to the structured seven to close this third ‘week’. The reader is reminded that in spite of all the sin and rebellion, chaos and suffering caused by human obduracy, the glorious God reigns and His Christ shares that rule. The rule of God (‘Kingdom of Heaven’ in Matthew’s gospel) is ultimate, but not yet acknowledged by the rebellious creation.

For this section, and in many places later, John is using yet another O.T. source; this time Psalm 2. A quick scan of that Psalm will suggest why he found it so appropriate. (see also Rev 12.5; 14.1;16.14;17.18;19.5 7 19).
Echoes of the Jewish New Year Festival also can be heard.

v.17 note that John does not use the usual future reference in God's triple title; he is emphasizing that the end is not yet.

v. 18 (cf. 19.2) "Destroying the destroyers is the key to the destructiveness of Revelation" (Sweet p.192). The destruction is, in fact, brought about by the forces of evil both within and beyond human kind which are essentially (self)destructive - the disordered will, in the end, leads to the tearing up of the fabric of creation, so that God may remake it.

v. 19 the ark is the symbol of the presence of God, here revealed, presumably to the elect. The passage looks back to Mark 15.38.

Chapter 12.1 to Chapter 15.8

In his earlier exposition Farrer tried to show that the “gap” between the end of the trumpets and the casting of the contents of the first bowl could be a series of seven (marked by ‘and I saw’ or ‘was seen’), as follows:
(i) And a great sign was seen in heaven, a woman...and there was seen another sign in heaven, and behold a dragon..(12.1-3).
(ii) And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea (13.1).
(iii) And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth (13.11).
(iv) And I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing upon the Mount Zion (14.1).
(v) And I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven (14.6).
(vi) And I saw, and behold a white cloud, and on the cloud sitting as a
Son of Man (14.14).
(vii) And I saw another sign in heaven great and marvelous, seven angels having seven
plagues (15.1).

In the later Commentary he sees it as a recapitulation of the major apocalyptic themes of the battle between good and evil, the action of God in sending a Messiah who gathers to him the Holy Community, the inevitability of judgment (built into their situation, so to speak) for those who reject God and persecute his chosen and the hope of ultimate peace, "All nations will come and worship before you" (15.4).

Chapter 12
vv.1-6 John's book abounds in 'images' (= more or less "metaphors"), but in this section they are so thick on the ground that they jostle one another to be seen.

Psalm 2 is here, but also parallels from Persian, Greek and Egyptian mythology (e.g. goddess Roma, the great earth mother Cybele) (so Sweet). The dominant imagery is OT. The serpent's defeat of the woman is reversed (Gen 3.15ff). The chaos monster is overcome (Gen 1) see also the Exodus tradition (Isa 51.9-11 where the overcoming of "Rahab" (cf. Leviahan in Pss) is connected with Yahweh's bringing the Israelites out of Egypt).

The proliferation continues with the image of the woman. Her seed bruises the dragon's head (v.17 - Gen 3.15ff). She is the bride of Yahweh (S. of Sol 6.4 7 10);

"She is Mary, but only in so far as Mary embodies faithful Israel, and mothers the Messiah and his community (John 19.26f). She is the church, but only in so far as the church is continuous with God's people from the beginning and with Eve, 'the mother of all living' (Gen 3.20)" (Sweet, p. 195).

Note the "unholy" trinity of the Dragon, the Beast and the Second "Beast" who is a kind of False Prophet and is called thus at 16.13,19.20 and 20.10) - a parody of Elijah?

v. 7 The victory is Christ's; Michael (= 'who is like God?’) 13.4 is a parody of this.

v.12 the third woe is completed (11.14f).
For the earth swallowing God's enemies, see Ex 15.12; Num 16.32-34)

Chapter 13
The powers of evil continue their attack. The details refer to historical sequences of kings and the passage relies on Dan 7.3ff.

The notes of the HarperCollins Study bible are excellent for this section.

v.17 Greek, Latin and Hebrew letters had numerical values; thus a number could be turned into a name (or hide a name). For example, Iësous = 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888.

(According to Farrer 888 is the number for the resurrection Sunday, for it is the final Sunday, the octave of the first day of creation and the inauguration of the New Ctreation. Similarly 666, whatever else is hidden there is Friday, the day of crucifixion. The device is called gematria, and many efforts have been made to find a name that fits 666. Caesar Nero, written in Hebrew letters turned into their numerical values is a possibility, but a bit of fudging has to be done. Farrer suggests that 666 is a parody of 888 (Jesus). This points to Friday as the day (6) of the Crucifixion, and to day eight as Easter Sunday; 666 is also two thirds of a thousand (the time Antichrist has left to reign, one third having been destroyed already).

The problem of course with a Gematria is that with sufficient ingenuity almost any name can emerge from almost any number; 666 has given us Nero, any number of Popes of various names, Hitler, Stalin and a variety of one’s most hated politician!

Chapter 14

While the "nations rage" (Ps 2.1; 46.6), the steadfast love of God continues. See Ps 2 again, "I have set my king on my holy hill". Those marked with the name of Christ hold out against those who are marked with the mark of the beast (13.16f). At least two of the Letters to the churches suggest some Christians had fallen away. At times, John seems to imply a narrow view of those who will be saved (as here), but overall he is a universalist (see 5.9f; 7.9ff; 21.24ff).

v. 4 has been called "a monkish interpolation". Sweet argues that this is not the case. "Unchastity is a regular biblical metaphor for religious infidelity" (p. 222). In addition the need for abstinence when on priestly or military duty is an accepted norm of Judaism. There are, however, passages like I Cor 7.32-35 and Mt 19.10-12 to consider and it is possible that the Jewish view of sex as good, is already being overlaid with Hellenistic influences where matter is seen as inferior to spirit.

vv. 6-19 give us two days of judgment which is now imminent.

Chapter 15. 1-8
closes the section with a Sabbath liturgy in which celebration of the original Exodus is joined to a celebration of the Victory of Christ.

The status of homosexual persons *Some Theological Perspectives

2008-08-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

Although it is almost ten years since I wrote this paper, I feel that it is still relevant to our current situation. Indeed during that time, instead of the question being reasonably and calmly debated, new levels of polemic and rhetoric have dominated the discussion.

Because of the length of the piece, I am putting it out in three parts:

A) A consideration of the nature of religion and its relationship to Christian practice and theology. (See Blog, August 1, 2008)

B) The nature of doctrine and an examination of how (if so be the case) it develops and changes. (See Blog, August 7, 2008)

C) Theology and the Bible in changing world-views, with special reference to the Anglican Communion’s record in this matter.

In one or two places I have edited my original text; any substantial changes are marked by […]

Bible, Doctrine and Practice in the Anglican Tradition

The Church of England as it emerged at the Elizabethan Settlement had a distinctive polity, but one very different from continental (and Scottish) Protestantism on the on hand and from the Counter Reformation Roman Catholic church on the other. There was, and is, no powerful central authority, let alone an absolutist one like the Papacy since the First Vatican Council.

Church of England (Anglican?) Polity

Timothy F. Sedgwick writes (Our Selves, 38), “Anglican churches reflect the English tradition of common law. In this tradition the rule of law is not, as in Roman law, a matter of principles that are understood to be based on the nature of things, and are applied to individual cases. Instead, the law arises from individual cases themselves and as such represents the accumulation of a people’s practical wisdom ... Authority - the legitimate voice to speak and decide upon an issue - is in this sense borne by the community and dispersed through its life”.

In practice, this means that a great deal has been left to conscience.

Untidy System

This polity, that recognizes the Ecumenical Councils, that works with collegiality rather than papacy, that allows for the exercise of reason, individual conscience, and for flexibility in biblical interpretation, has always seemed incoherent to Confessional churches and particularly to Roman Catholics. It was, for example, a constant source of ridicule from Roman Catholic writers like Belloc, Chesterton, Graham Greene and their successors as the 20th century progressed. It seems messy, but it has enabled the Anglican Communion (as it emerged from the Mother Church of England from the middle to the 19th century) in some measure and in a very halting way to come to grips with the upheavals in world-view of the last 150 years.
This kind of polity has worked where there has been a measure of cultural uniformity, but, as Sedgwick points out, as the Anglican Communion has embraced more and more cultures it is losing its stability. Sedgwick’s conclusion is, I think, somewhat pessimistic. He notes an increasing tendency to put more weight on conscience than on Canon Law: the ordination of the Eleven in Philadelphia in 1974, the continuing refusal to some congregations to use the 1979 Prayer Book, the “ordination of homosexual persons living in sexually active relationships” (Selves 39), and the refusal of some dioceses to allow women to exercise their ministry.

Comment

[It is important to note that Sedgwick wrote this over twelve years ago; his examples focus on ECUSA, not the Anglican Communion. At this stage, he did not, apparently, consider the issues that have arisen when a diocese acts entirely within the Canons, and within the majority consent of a General Convention, and is yet seen as a spoiler and de-stabilizer. The focus has moved from an inerrant view of scripture as mandatory, the impossibility of ordaining women, and even the broader discussion of homosexuality to center on a demand for a central authority for the collection of regional churches (wrongly called “Provinces”) that make up the somewhat ramshackle confederation called the Anglican Communion.

What has emerged is a resurgent militant Puritanism, which seeks to dominate Anglicanism in a way rejected in the 17th century. Clearly, the actions of regional churches such as ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada are from this point of view seen as destabilizing.]

Yet, the C. of E. ( –> Anglican Communion) has come through some similar problems with a majority consensus. The number who have actually separated from the church is sad, but, so far, much smaller than both wings - Anglo Catholics and Evangelicals - have repeatedly prophesied, and the breadth of Anglican polity may even yet enable us to work through the current issues. Furthermore, this polity has enabled Anglicans to recognize that new knowledge has mandatory implications for the doing of theology and for the understanding of doctrinal formulations. It has enabled Anglicans to take account of new knowledge, but also to regard it as one of the ways in which God leads us.

Changing attitudes to Formularies - The Gorham Case

Two examples might illustrate these generalizations. The first is the way in which the emergence of new historical knowledge in the 19th century first caused the most immense uproar, but ultimately came to be accepted by a broad spectrum of Anglicans, though, it must be said, not by all. Extreme Evangelicals on one wing and ultramontane Anglo Catholics on the other, in general, stood aside from the central consensus. Much of contemporary minority dissent (and it is important to recall the size of the minority we are talking about in the face of continual propaganda) has its roots, I believe, in these 19th century "wings" of the Church of England.
A survey of the scene in the C. of E. in the mid 19th century is instructive. After the upheavals of the Tractarian movement in the thirties and forties, the church was convulsed by controversy just as bitter as anything we are experiencing today.

Baptismal Regeneration

I will return to the issues of science and historical criticism next, but turn now to the second example: the Gorham case, which hinged on the Evangelical reluctance to ascribe certain "regeneration" to Baptism administered to infants. Beginning around 1847 the case dragged on for years, and, as is often the case, the original dispute over doctrine was submerged in contentions about the authority of Parliament in church affairs, the authority of bishops and the status of canon law. In the varying court decisions that emerged, at one stage the threat of a great exodus of the Evangelicals seemed imminent; at a later date, it was the turn of the High Church party to organize petitions and talk about a mass secession to Rome.
One of the central issues that emerged was whether the XXXIX Articles 'over-rode' the Prayer Book concerning Baptismal regeneration since there was a clear (some said, “apparent”) discrepancy between the two. What is important for our purposes is to note that the doctrinal issue of baptismal regeneration has been resolved in typically Anglican comprehensiveness. That there are different shades of the doctrine is very clear, and that they can be held within a spectrum of belief is also clear.

XXXIX Articles

Even more telling is the status of Articles of Religion. In the mid 19th century they were a continual source of controversy, for both the Tractarians and the Evangelicals. In the ECUSA they are discreetly given an honorable retirement and reside in "Historical Documents". (For an excellent account of the details of the Gorham case, see Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, pp 250-271)

Geology, Historical Criticism and Essays & Reviews

Perhaps a clearer example of the way in which Anglicanism has coped with new knowledge is in the areas of scientific discovery and historical criticism.

Species not Immutable

The scientific revolution of the 19th century left all the churches in disarray, but by the turn of the century, it seems that the Anglican church as a whole was coming to some kind of rapprochement and, indeed, using new insights for a reappraisal of theological dogmas.
In the 1830s "books by Sir Charles Lyell and Dean Buckland established the geological succession of rocks and fossils, and showed the world to be much older than the accepted date for the Garden of Eden." (Alec Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution, p114; Penguin).
In spite of the troubling of the waters, at this stage, not only theologians but scientists managed to accommodate the new views (e.g. "days" in Genesis meant eons of time, and the geological evidence in no way suggested that God was not entirely behind creation). Biological science, however, was another matter; Vidler notes that "[a]round 1850 few scientists of any note had a good word to say for the idea of evolution" (p. 116). Moreover, we need to recall that the idea of evolution did not burst on the world for the very first time with the publication of The Origin of the Species in 1859. As early as 1801, Jean Baptiste de Lamarck had published Système des animaux sans vertèbres. The introductory essay seems to be the first statement of Lamarck's later widely discussed theory of evolution which suggested that the species are not (as had been believed from antiquity) immutable but had changed and, indeed, improved over geological time. These changes, Lamarck surmised, had been caused by the presence within organisms of 'an innate tendency to perfection'. As John Bowlby remarks, in the first half of the century, these views were "usually dismissed as either heretical or absurd". (Charles Darwin, NY & London, 1990, pg. 88).

Looking at fossil evidence, Lyell disturbingly pointed out that whole species had perished, and this was almost 30 years before Darwin's book. Yet Lyell and many other scientists were not all that shaken in their theistic faith. Basil Willey writes, "Lyell himself was quite willing to profess belief in the fact of divine activity, provided that science were left free to investigate and demonstrate the mode of it. This was the formula adopted (quite rightly) by the nineteenth century of reconcilers of science and religion in general". (More Nineteenth Century Studies, New York, 1956, p. 85).

Biblical Criticism

Intellectual developments in Europe in the 18th century had laid the ground work for the seismic shifts of the 19th. The period of the Enlightenment had produced philosophical systems that were not all that friendly to the rigid framework of traditional Christian metaphysics, and work had begun on the biblical text as early as Jean Astruc (1684-1766) who was the first to suggest that the book of Genesis was, in fact, the product of two traditions with different emphases; though, at this stage he merely suggested that Moses put the two together: nevertheless, the genie was out of the bottle.

Quite early in the 19th century, some scholars, especially some German ones, began to subject the bible to the kind of criticism that had recently been applied to other ancient texts like Homer. A succession of scholars at the University of Tübingen became known as a "school". First among them was David Friedrich Strauss whose the Life of Jesus (published 1834), ended by implying that no biography of Jesus could ever be written because of the impossibility of separating the nucleus of reality from the accretions of myth. This was a book that changed the theological landscape for ever.

Not many English scholars and churchmen read German, but the few who did were either very excited by the German work or thrown into paroxysms of rage. In any case, it was not too long before a translation became available; it was published in 1834 by "Marian Evans, the ex-evangelical Warwickshire girl of 27 years who is better known to posterity as the novelist George Eliot". (Chadwick, Part 1, 532). This translation was soon followed by translations of other German works, and these, in Chadwick's graphic phase, began to "rock the boat of faith at its moorings". What were some of the conclusions that critical study was suggesting?

The Old Testament Criticism Absorbed

It was study of the Old Testament that had begun the process. It became clear that the work was not a unity, that Moses did not write the Law books nor David the Psalms. Moreover, there were clearly errors of fact as well as statements that conflicted entirely with the findings of geology (not biology at this stage). And it is, perhaps, here that the real source of the panic can be found. For almost two millennia the inerrancy of the bible had been taken for granted as part of the belief that it was divinely inspired. Quite apart from the issue of accuracy, for a long time sensitive souls had been less than happy with the overall moral level of the O.T. Chadwick writes, "Thackeray, who once was intimate with the best of the Cambridge evangelicals, privately raged at what God was supposed to have done in the Old Testament. He refused to believe that God commanded Israel to slaughter the Canaanites or Abraham to kill his son". (Part 1 p. 529).

The Threat of New Testament Studies

More liberal thinkers had come to terms somewhat with these with Old Testament problems, but criticism of the New Testament raised anxiety levels to new heights. That is why Strauss's book and George Eliot's translation were regarded as little short of diabolical by the conservative elements of the church (that is to say the vast majority).

The critics were saying that Mark, not Matthew was the first gospel, that the other two used Mark. That the 4th Gospel was a different kettle of fish altogether; that by no means all the letters attributed to Paul were in fact by Paul; that we cannot be certain that the authors of the gospel were actually the people to whom they were attributed; that the actual text of the Greek bible was not as fixed as the "authorized" version would suggest. All this raised difficulties about the person of Jesus. The orthodox view is that Jesus was completely human, but his divinity had been so emphasized in both the mediaeval and Protestant epochs, that any suggestion he could be wrong (e.g. in predicting an imminent end of the world) was met with horror.

Christology

Within the C. of E. the major impact of historical criticism was Christological; if, for example, David did not write (compose) Psalm 110, what does Jesus' remark in Mark 12 imply about the limitations of his knowledge? Perhaps this is still an issue for extreme conservatives, but it hardly seems something that sets the ECUSA in a turmoil.
Indeed, it could be argued that the criticism of the bible has enabled us to have a much more "orthodox" view of Christology than was the 19th century norm. A view that Jesus, even in his earthly ministry had divine knowledge had become widespread; it was a kind of back-door monophysitism. Chalcedon had tried to exclude such views, but their popular power remained as the rising cult of Mary suggests, for she became the true human intercessor. Though the Protestant tradition departed decisively from the Roman church, this crypto-Monophysite Christology persisted. That is why so much ink was spilt over verses like Mark 9.1 and its parallels in a determined effort to show that Jesus could not have meant what the text says he said. Taking the historicity of the biblical text seriously encountered these older and more "orthodox" dogmatic assumptions.

Retreating Tide of Faith

By the mid century we find poets, philosophers and novelists bemoaning the "sea of faith" retreating like the tide going out. Within a year of each other two publications set the almost boiling pot to run over. The kind of invective, the hurled insults and lengthy magazine articles of the next two decades make the religious controversies of the late 20th century look like a genteel tea party.

The two publications were Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species over which he had been laboring for many years, appearing in 1859, and a relatively brief book containing seven essays, six of them written by clergymen and one by a layman, Essays & Reviews.

In the Press, in everyday social circles and particularly within the churches (which we have to recall embraced almost all the middle and upper classes), uproar ensued that for a while muted the response to Origins. Basil Willey describes this so well that it is worth quoting at length.

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; it had survived the Reform Bill, the Tracts for Times, 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; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. [This sounds so like the strident cries of +Rochester, and certain African Prelates].
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'". (Studies , 137).

The amazing thing is, that everything the essayists said is more or less accepted today, and indeed sounds somewhat conservative (except, of course to the spiritual successors of the proponents of scripture without any error, and a slavish insistence on a literal reading of the text). The very laudable aim of the essayists was, in Basil Willey's words, "To reconcile Christianity with criticism, to show its compatibility with the intellectual tendencies of the age, and thus to reconcile 'intellectual' persons with Christianity". (Studies, 141).
John Barton (Biblical Interpretation ) points out that with in a few years, Frederick Temple, one of the contributors to Essays and Reviews, had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, and that within the C. of E. a cautious biblical criticism was coming to be accepted as compatible with a doctrine of the Incarnation. It was this, he says that "interested Anglicans. The doctrine of scripture, which seemed so important to Continental Protestants, was not even in the creed. The Bible was used in liturgy, and that was not the context in which to press awkward questions. When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (p. 59)

Anglican positions on Divorce and Contraception

Divorce

At the beginning of the 20th century, divorce in most western countries was not easy. The R.C. church practiced (and still does) the dubious method of nullity, on which even its own canon law was not as clear as it might be. A common nullity verdict has often been based on the "Pauline Privilege" applied to a "mixed marriage", but canonists are not unanimous that this is a valid procedure.

If divorce was not easy in secular circles, it was impossible for clerics, and for lay people carried with it excommunication. Until quite recently any member of the clergy getting a divorce was inhibited for a significant period, and if he (there were only males then) remarried, he would be suspended from the ministry sine die. It was, moreover, impossible for a divorced person to be remarried “in church”.
In most Protestant branches of the church, a more permissive attitude to divorce, even among clergy, developed in the second half of the 20th century. This relaxation has also happened in the Episcopal Church.

The change has not been merely a slipping of standards, and yet another example of a "sliding away from classic Anglican theology and morals" (John Rodgers in The Living Church, Feb. 27, 2000, p.8). On the contrary, it has been the application of classic Anglican principles. The change in policy (which departs radically from scriptural prescription, see above) is the result of prayerful consideration of the realities of marriage breakdown. Such psychological, social, and personal realities, (like the realities of scientific revelation) have been taken seriously.

This position is not that of the R.C. church. The classic catholic position since the 13th century is that since marriage is a sacrament, "the marital bond between husband and wife is an, objective, ontological reality that cannot be dissolved". (Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, 179b). That means that divorce is not only wrong, it is impossible. (Compare the analogous argument about the ordination of women - an ontological impossibility). Conservative Evangelicals who, in spite of deep distrust of Rome and a rejection of many of its theological positions, agree on some moral issues like abortion and homosexuality; they also share a generally fundamentalist approach to scripture, but interestingly, Evangelicals do not share the R.C. view of marriage and divorce, (nor its stringent and continuing rejection of contraception).

An alternative view of marriage, which is common in Eastern Orthodox thought, is to regard it not as an ontological bond, but as a moral one, which depends for its stability on a high level of mutual trust. Thus, though ideally a marriage should not break down, the realities of human sin mean that if trust is irretrievably broken, the marriage is "morally dead".
The Episcopal church has made the change in typically Anglican fashion, piecemeal, with local arrangements first and changes in the National Canons much later. This same process may be seen in the wider communion. The C. of E. Synod is now [i.e. in 1998] considering a measure to allow the remarriage of divorced clergy under certain circumstances. The process is not tidy and it can be read as "sliding away" from some imagined neatly formulated position. But is not a sliding away from classical Anglicanism.

Finally, the analogies between policies for divorced people and those for homosexual people need to be stressed. There is as much (if not more) explicit biblical warrant for forbidding divorce (and remarriage) as there is for excluding homosexuals. There is also quite as strong a tradition in the matter in the sense that the church has always ordained homosexual people; (I am fully aware of this as a one-time Theological College Principal). If the Church cannot bring itself fully to incorporate homosexual persons into its life and structure, those branches of the Church which have liberal divorce policies ought, perhaps, in all justice and consistency seriously to consider the status of divorced persons in their communion. If we in the ECUSA cannot include homosexual persons, would it not be just to inhibit all divorced clergy, discontinue the practice of marrying divorced persons in church, and seriously consider their status as communicants?
[As I have said, I believe the change in practice concerning divorce was a good, pastorally sound development and therefore a change of policy for homosexuals is a just and reasonable corollary].

Contraception

The issue hinges mainly on how the "ends" of marriage are understood. The classic catholic position has been and still is, that procreation is the primary end of marriage, and that, therefore, coitus is to be engaged in for the sole purpose of procreation. In this view, a secondary end is the care and mutual support the partners give each other, but it is subordinated to the primary purpose of marriage and sexual intercourse within marriage. The shift from this position was clearly enunciated in a resolution of the ninth Lambeth Conference in 1958. The resolution notes that sex in marriage has a "relational" as well as procreative significance. "It is not by any means the only language of earthly love, but it is, in its full and right use, the most revealing....it is a giving and receiving in the unity of two free spirits which is in itself good.....There for it is utterly wrong to say that...intercourse ought not to be engaged in except with the willing intention of children" (quoted in Selves, 170).
This was a significant departure from traditional teaching about practice required of by a believer, and it is a departure that the R.C. church has still failed to make. Pius XI in Casti Connubi (1930) said the use of contraceptive methods was "intrinsically immoral". After Vatican II, the Commission that Paul VI set up, with married lay people among its members, advised by a considerable majority that in some instances the practice be allowed. Nothing was heard for two years when, in 1968, Humanae Vitae was promulgated, totally affirming the traditional position. It emerged that a secret committee made up of Curia members and conservative clergy, chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani, had been meeting and strongly advised the Pope to ignore the findings of the Commission.

In Closing

(a) The bombshell of Humanae Vitae is as clear and startling a contrast to Anglican polity as one could hope to find. [Though, perhaps not such a contrast to the sort of procedures some are bent on establishing. In what follows, I was referring to how things, ideally, have been within Anglicanism].
In contrast to the "process" leading up to, and the promulgation of Huamnae Vitae , the Anglican approach is open, not subject to secret committees of a particular bias; it is not centralized but allows for local movement; it allows for God's continuing revealing and guiding; it depends not on a central absolute authority which gives final and binding definitions and rulings, but on shared authority (collegiality of Bishops, participation of clergy and lay people in decision making). This does not lead to a tidy picture and does require high levels of trust within the autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion and between those churches.

(b) What has been said in this paper, shows, I think, that teaching about the faith and teaching about the practice of Christians who embrace that faith can change, and clearly have changed in the last two millennia. It also suggests that when change happens it often begins at the local level and may be almost imperceptible to the participants. To show that teaching about faith and practice can change is not necessarily to say that, in any given instance they it ought to. Yet, we must read the signs and we must take account of new knowledge. It is not enough to retreat to a fortress, hurling biblical quotations as though they settled the issue, and allowing tradition to become a bastion for bias.

Bibliography

Bowlby, John Charles Darwin, NY & London, 1990
Brown, Peter The Rise of Western Christendom, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996
Chadwick, Owen The Victorian Church Part I 1829-1859, London 1966
Part II 1860-1901, London 1970
Hefling Charles, Ed. Our Selves, Our Souls & Bodies, Cambridge. Mass, 1996
Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine, Philadelphia, 1984
McGrath, Alister, Ed. The Christian Theology Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995
McGrath, Alister, Ed. Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought,
Oxford: Blackwell l993
Morgan Robert with Barton, John Biblical Interpretation, Oxford, 1988s
Vidler, Alec The Church in an Age of Revolution, Pelican 1961
Willey, Basil Nineteenth Century Studies, New York 1961
More Nineteenth Century Studies, New York 1956

The status of homosexual persons - Some Theological Perspectives * Part B

2008-08-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

B Can Doctrine Change and Develop?

This section, that looks at some of the issues connected with the development and change in doctrine, and, indeed, the very nature of doctrine, relies to a great degree on two sources. The first is George Lindbeck’s seminal book, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia, 1984) and the second, much shorter piece is an essay by Charles Hefling in Our Selves, Our Souls & Bodies (Ed. Chas Hefling, Cambridge Mass. 1996)

1) Religion, Theology and Doctrine

Lindbeck begins his book with an analysis of various approaches to Religion, Doctrine and Theology. It is important to note the distinctions between the three areas at the same time as the obvious interdependence is acknowledged. “Theories of religion and doctrine are interdependent, and deficiencies in one area are inseparable from deficiencies in the other.” (Lindbeck, 7) Frequently, however, Doctrine and Theology are not carefully defined and it is important to emphasize the very clear distinction between the two. The confusion is apparent when one reads many books on “church doctrine” which are often, in fact, “wide-ranging theological treatises” rather than an examination of the specific doctrines regarded as authoritative by the church, or more realistically, by a particular branch of the Church. (Lindbeck, 76)

Doctrines as Communally Normative

To illustrate this and to sharpen the focus on the nature of doctrine it will be helpful to give a substantial quotation from what seems to me to be the central chapter of Lindbeck’s book.

“Church doctrines are communally authoritative teachings regarding beliefs and practice that are considered essential to the identity or welfare of the group in question. They may be formally stated or informally operative, but in any case they indicate what constitutes faithful adherence to a community. To disagree with Methodist, Quaker, or Roman Catholic doctrine indicates that one is not a “good” Methodist, Quaker or Roman Catholic. Someone who opposes pacifism, for example, will not be regarded as fully what a member of the Society of Friends should be . . . Operative doctrines, even if not official ones, are necessary to communal identity. A religious body cannot exist as a recognizable distinctive collectivity unless it has some beliefs and/or practices by which it can be identified” (Lindbeck, 74).

Reflection on this is instructive for the thorny issue of the development of doctrine. Lindbeck is surely right that a committed Quaker might be expected to embrace Pacifism, while this is clearly not a doctrine that is regarded as essential for a Lutheran, Roman Catholic or an Anglican. Yet, there is no possible doubt that it was essential for all Christians in the early church. Similarly, the Assumption of Mary is regarded not only as inessential, but as illegitimate by most Western Christians not in communion with Rome, whereas it is required doctrine for members of that communion. This suggests that doctrinal norms change, and that we accept, without thinking, various standards of doctrine set by specific groups.

2) Belief and Practice

Lindbeck does not make a very clear distinction between doctrines of belief (dogmas) and teaching about how a Christian should behave, but I suggest that such a distinction is important. His example of pacifism seems to fall into the second category (though it is clearly related to issues of belief, for example, about Jesus’ teaching on the matter). Perhaps this is true of almost all ethical issues, most clearly in the area of human sexuality. If one considers, for example, vivisection, it is not easy to find any consistent Christian teaching about its practice. Certainly some oppose it on religious grounds, but many do so on common humanitarian ones. A theological appraisal would need to consider beliefs about God, creation, human responsibility to animals and strategies for human health and betterment within God’s will for us.
In contrast, the central dogmas of the church do not in themselves prescribe any particular action. However, an authoritative Person or Group –Pope/Council – authenticates and enforces them in order to set limits on what a Christian can believe and still call herself or himself a Christian.

Change in Practice

When the question of change and development is put, it is easy to see that teaching about practice has changed in the course of the church’s history. Hefling suggests one very interesting and important example, usury, which will be considered later on. There is little doubt that central dogmas have also developed. It is arguable, for example, that Luke’s early chapters of Acts reflect an 'adoptionist' type theology, that is to say, that Jesus is not envisaged as the eternal Word (as, for example in the Fourth Gospel), but as being chosen by God and 'made' a son. Such a view is highly unorthodox judged by the standard of the central Chalcedonian dogma.

3) Views of Doctrine - Propositional/Expressive

Lindbeck has some interesting reflections on the nature of Doctrine, which may be some guide here. He outlines three approaches to doctrine, all of which are still current, though not many would subscribe to the first, propositional position.

The following positions are described:

a) A cognitive approach, which emphasizes that doctrines function as propositions giving us information about God, the world and our place within it. This approach has a long history and, indeed, before the 17th century, was in various forms the norm. Nevertheless, everything that has happened since the Enlightenment (not least the development of the historical/critical treatment of the canonical scriptures) has created immense difficulties for this view. (See Lindbeck, 78, para. 2 for an incisive criticism of the inadequacies of this approach in the contemporary situation).

b) In response to the mounting problems facing doctrinal formulations from the beginning of the 19th century, we see emerging the “experiential-expressive” view of religion, which tends to treat doctrines as expressions of deep religious experiences. In this view, they are not giving information about the inner being of God, but are rather an “existential orientation” of the believer. Most contemporary Christians who are not affiliated with a strongly traditionalist position (e.g. conservative RC, Protestant Fundamentalist) tend to accept (probably quite unconsciously) aspects of this position. The assumption here is that there is a root or basic religious experience common to humanity that can be expressed in endless ways. The tradition begins, perhaps, with Schleiermacher's placing the source of all religion in the "feeling of absolute dependence". (cf. Rudolf Otto's numinous).

c) A third approach attempts to combine the two approaches. “Both the cognitively propositional and the expressively symbolic dimensions and functions of religion and doctrine are viewed, at least in the case of Christianity, as religiously significant and valid” (Lindbeck, 16). This approach is highly favored by ecumenically minded RC theologians and by Anglicans who are in the tradition of Bishop Gore.

4) Alternative Paradigm

We are strongly conditioned because of the developments of Western thought in the last two centuries to think of religion as a 'product' of deep personal "experiences of the divine (or the self, or the world)”, Lindbeck, 30). This approach seems to offer hope of rapprochement between many diverse traditions and is, doubtless, one of the reasons it is so influential. Lindbeck, however, suggests an interesting alternative, the converse thesis that the form of a given religion is what structures our experience. He calls this approach "a cultural-linguistic" alternative. In this view, "religions 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).

Linguistic Studies

The fundamental paradigm for this approach emerges from the work of linguistic philosophers, particularly Ludwig Wittgenstein, and so 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". One of the great advantages of this approach is that it provides, as we shall see, a way of considering doctrine which allows for real development while maintaining a firm link with the deposit of the faith. It emphasizes, too, that Christian formation is crucial. "To become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and of Jesus well enough to interpret and experience one's world in its terms". (Lindbeck, 33-34)

Community Forms Belief

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 (or to which one is joined). What one learns, or perhaps, more accurately is "conformed to" is a tradition deeper and richer than could possibly be articulated in propositions. The ancient saying lex orandi, lex credendi is very close to this point of view, and it suggests that knowledge of propositions is secondary to living the faith. "Sometimes 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). St. Paul speaks of Christians being formed by "the mind of Christ" (I Cor. 2.16), and in a much later tradition Aquinas suggests that one so formed has "connatural knowledge" - a knowledge very different from that of a professional theologian and something like an intuitive grasp of grammar by a poet who is no grammarian.

5) Change and Development in Doctrine & Practice

Lindbeck suggests that we regard doctrines as analogous to rules in a language.

"The novelty of the rule theory is . . . that it does not locate the abiding and doctrinally significant aspect of religion in propositionally formulated truths, much less in inner experiences, but in the story it tells and in the grammar that informs the way the story is told and used". (Lindbeck, 80).

The linguistic analogy suggests the application of a division between vocabulary and grammar. In Christianity the core vocabulary (stories, rites, symbols, injunctions) comes largely from the Bible, though there are clearly some post-biblical additions (e.g. Trinitarian language), and, it needs to be noted, not all the vocabulary of the Bible is in common use (e.g. ritual laws of Leviticus). Doctrine is best thought of here as the grammar of the language. It works analogously in various ways. Some doctrines are rules for vocabulary (what is in or out of the Canon); some (most?) provide rules for the application of the core vocabulary to the spiritual and missionary life of the church.

The following quotations suggest why doctrines change and how that happens.

(a) "Most doctrines illustrate correct usage rather than define it. They are . . . paradigms for the application of rules. Faithfulness to such doctrines does not necessarily mean repeating them; rather it requires, in the making of new formulations, adherence to the same directives that were involved in their first formulation. It is thus - as I shall later argue - that faithfulness to an ancient creed such as the Nicene should be construed. Similarly, to take an example from Latin grammar, "amo, amas, amat " operates as a paradigm when one says, e.g., "rogo, rogas, rogat," not when one insists on parroting the original." (Lindbeck, 81).

(b) "Religious change or innovation must be understood, not as proceeding from new experiences, but as resulting from the interactions of a cultural-linguistic system with changing situations. Religious traditions are not transformed, abandoned, or replaced because of an upwelling of new or different ways of feeling about the self, the world, of 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. . . . Prophetic figures apprehend, often with dramatic vividness, how inherited patterns of belief, practice and ritual need to be (and can be) reminted." (Lindbeck, 39, italics added).

6) Some Conclusions

Limitations of Doctrine

(a) Such an approach might make us more aware of the limitations of doctrine. A continuing problem with the absolutist position (RC - Fundamentalist) is the assumption, either explicit or implicit, that doctrine is perfect, final and all-surveying. On the contrary, it is frequently imperfect and significantly culturally colored. All grammatical rules, as anyone who has tried to study Hebrew knows, have more exceptions than the tidy Grammar Books like to acknowledge, and this is analogously true of doctrine. This approach may also serve to remind us that in a living tradition (language or religion) vocabulary certainly changes and grammar gets modified.

Change & Stability

(b) It is true, that considerable stability is necessary both in syntax and in basic doctrines, but both change. The vocabulary of Chaucer is recognizable (just) as English, just as the Chalcedonian definition still gives some guidance about belief in the Person of Christ. It must be noted, however, that the English word ‘person’ means something very different from persona or prosopon in the Latin and Greek of the fourth century CE.
Syntax must remain fairly stable, but even here the rules change over longish periods, and similar parallel can be drawn with Christian doctrine.

(In American English, the embargo on the split infinitive is as dead as a dodo, and the distinction between ‘like’ (prep. + acc. case) and ‘as’(conjunction) has gone by the board even among highly literate speakers and writers: “she speaks like me” - “she speaks as I do” are no longer required forms. )

Syntax has changed, and the theory suggests doctrine, too, has changed.

Change in Behavior Patterns

(c) Accepted teaching concerning patterns of behavior is not separate from central doctrines of belief; nevertheless, such "practical doctrines" (Lindbeck) are on a different footing, and are the ones that develop and change more obviously in response (however slowly) to changing world views, alterations in human awareness of the nature of the human person, and, linked with that, the continuing growth of knowledge in chemistry, physics, biology and genetics.

Inherent Doctrines

(d) We may assume that some doctrines are permanent. For example, "God is love" (not actually formulated like that in the New Testament until the late Epistle of John). This could be said to be a sine qua non for claiming to be part of the catholic church. No Ecumenical Council has ever decreed it, but doctrines like this are "part of the indispensable grammar or logic of faith" (Lindbeck, 85).

Jesus on Divorce

(e) A distinction needs to be made between doctrines that are permanent and those which are abrogated by the developments noted above, but it is very important to note that some teaching which has quite specific New Testament backing (which very many behavioral rules do not) is no longer operative in many branches of the Christian church. The most obvious one is the current practice concerning divorce and re-marriage, which ignores Mark 10.1-12. Significantly, Matthew's parallel (Mt. 19.9), high-lights a very early shift in teaching on a practical matter, even though one of the ipssima verba of Jesus is at stake.

Accepted Doctrines Lacking Biblical Backing

(f) Most of the doctrinal statements of Ecumenical Councils have been regarded as permanent and required, though the emergence of the Athanasian as opposed to some semi-Arian position is an instructive study, and a doctrine like the immortality of the soul raises interesting issues. It can hardly be said to be a biblical doctrine, but it has become the norm for those Christians (the majority) in the West who, without realizing it, think in terms of a Hellenistic dualism heavily reinforced by Cartesian thinking. On the other hand, a better understanding of the Hebraism of the New Testament and contemporary criticism of the Cartesian position suggest it is not a permanent doctrine.

7) Hefling's Essay – Usury

Hefling begins his essay by noting that the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion is often cited as a good example of a change that defies all previous tradition and teaching. Certainly women's ordination shows that accepted teaching can change, but Hefling notes that it is not exactly parallel to the case of ordination of a practicing homosexual. Women were forbidden ordination not for something they had done or were doing, but because they were female. The case we are considering bases the prohibition on a moral consideration. A closer analogy would be the case of usury.

"Anyone who opens a saving account is, by that commonplace act, judged as the church would have judged it from earliest times and for many centuries, guilty of wrongdoing - not of some peccadillo, either, but of mortal sin" (Hefling, 159).

Usury as Sin

The prohibition in scripture is consistent and strong, and lending money to earn money remained a sin for Christians until the Reformation. Moral theologians explained this by saying that such a use of money was against its "nature", (an interesting parallel to many moral discussions of homosexual practice). Calvin was among the first to suggest that money was not by nature "barren", that is that it could not produce anything.

Calvin pointed out that "money locked in a box is sterile - any child can see that- but who borrows money to keep it in storage? Put it to work, and it can be as fruitful as many kinds of merchandise. Where does that leave the biblical commands and exhortations? They are to be construed in the light of the Golden Rule. Generosity and regard for the poor are still Christian virtues; cupidity and avarice are still vices; interest is still sinful it hurts one's neighbor, But moderate interest is not in any and all circumstances wrong" (Hefling, 160).

The application of this case is so clear that it needs no further explanation.

What is Sex For?

In the discussion that follows, Hefling examines this question.
The undoubted fact that the Anglican Church has, in the twentieth century, departed from a universal tradition in the matter is important (see Section C). Once it is allowed that the procreation is not the only purpose of human sexual intercourse, things not thought of at the time, may logically follow. The Lambeth Bishops of 1958 may well have been saying more than they thought when they approved the resolution that says:

"Sexual intercourse is not by any means the only language of earthly love, but it is, in its full and right use, the most revealing.... it is a giving and receiving in the unity of two free spirits which is in itself good...Therefore it is utterly wrong to say that...such intercourse ought not to be engaged in except with the willing intention of children" (Quoted in Hefling, 170).

As Hefling notes, this does not settle the matter, but it does, perhaps suggest that it is legitimate to ask what has been traditionally either a stupid or wicked question: Why should two committed people of the same gender not engage in sexual activity and still be able to call themselves Christian?