maggi dawn

Facebook. Tried it, didn't like it.

Honestly, I have a life already. You wanna say something? Just send me an email or ring me up like you did before.

Emerging Christology (2)

So, blog readers, I'm delighted to see some of the issues that emerged out of the last post on Christology. I've thought for a while that there is a need for more theological work if this "Emerging conversation" continues to any length. So here are two questions for you:

1.  Where do YOU think the most significant Christological statements have been made so far in "Emerging" discourse? What are the books, the blog-posts, the podcasts etc., that you think make up the essential bibliography (however incomplete it may be) of issues surrounding Emerging Church and Christology?

2.  Is there one thing, one big question or one big stumbling block for you, in considering "who is Jesus Christ?"

Christology and Emerging Church

Christology has been a major theme of my week. I've been teaching/supervising various aspects of it with undergrad and postgrad students as well as in Chapel, and off-duty it's come up in blogs and emails from various Emerging Church people. Christology - or what we believe about Jesus Christ - is an absorbing and complex study, and although it's not the whole story, the belief that Jesus is both fully human and at the same time the son of God is precisely what lies at the heart of Christian theology.

The accusation has been levelled from time to time against various figures in the Emerging Church that they have an inadequate Christology - that all this incarnational talk makes Jesus human, but not divine. Are Emerging Church Christians really the Arians of the 21st century?

It's been a fashionable thing in both academic and emerging conversation in recent years to explore the sociality of the Trinity - a really interesting angle which I have written on myself, in the way this can cash out in literary form, hooking it up with some ideas from French philosophy, notably the amazing Luce Irigaray. Undeniably it would be possible, if Christology were never attended to at all, to migrate by degrees into a kind of post-Christian Trinitarianism. For the Christian, Trinity is more than just sociality; it must be related to Christology and Pneumatology (for the beginner, that means the doctrine of what we believe about Jesus Christ, and what we believe about the Holy Spirit).

But equally, for those who live as Christians in a culture that despises religion, there may be good reason to have a thorough-going orthodox Christology but not wear it on your sleeve in everyday conversation. Why would that be? Because if you frequently find yourself as the only Christian in a group of people you work or socialise with, you cannot help but be alive to the fact that the language of religion fails to connect people to any lively interest in Jesus or Christianity. For those of us who live in that kind fo culture (and I'm speaking here of 21st century England), however important an orthodox Christology is to me, it's not the first thing that arises when debating religious issues with those who are strangers to the faith. In my experience, people are more interested initially in whether and why observing religion at all is a viable possibility in 21st century Britain. In such conversations, I find myself describing what religion is not, and making connections between other people's spiritual experience, not to say they are all the same, but to say that in my experience true Christianity is not the outmoded museum piece people imagine, but precisely the kind of spiritual reality that we long for.

Not that any of this is particularly new, or even postmodern, mind you.  A couple of hundred years back, a theologian called Schleiermacher was accused of having a weak Christology when he tried to communicate the essence of religion to a changing culture. Schleiermacher's immediate circle of friends and colleagues viewed the Church as cold and rational, but saw the spiritual richness they longed for in music and literature and art and philosophy. Schleiermacher, who came from a pietistic background, devoted a good deal of energy and thought to how to get these people to understand that true Christianity was not the passionless affair they thought it was, but precisely what would meet their deep longing for spiritual truth. So in the first instance, he didn't pay a whole lot of attention to delineating the dual nature of Jesus Christ as divine and human. I don't think for a moment that Schleiermacher denied the divine and human characteristics of Jesus Christ; it was simply that the focus of his attention was how to communicate to this specific mindset. Brian Gerrish describes Schleiermacher's intent as trying to avoid the usual "Christological schizophrenia" (a problematic description in itself, I suppose) but with this memorable phrase, pointing out that Schleiermacher was moving in a world that was innured against religion because arguments about the two wills and two natures of Christ had begun to sound like nothing more than a debate like how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. If Christological debate drives people away from Jesus, then we need to ask whether we're having that debate in the right venue.

As Schleiermacher tells it, when people encounter God they do not first of all become aware of God as a doctrinally complete concept, nor of a three-personed Trinity. It takes time and patience to understand the God one initially encounters, and doctrines like Trinity and Christology are ways of learning to understand and articulate that encounter.

If Christology doesn't get much of an airing in public debate, though, it does need to maintain its right place in the Church's understanding of faith. It mustn't get lost along the way! I'm very glad that I observe my faith in a setting where I get to say the Apostles Creed out loud several times a week - for me, this is like an anchor for the soul and a plumbline against which all experiences and assertions about faith can be lined up and measured. 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, he descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy, Catholick Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, AMEN.

(edit: Neale intelligently points out in the comments below that it is precisely this archaic language that makes the creeds difficult for many people. I think it needs another post to open up that question... )

BrandNewVigorousWorship

Need a new domain name for your Fresh-ALt-Angli-Chari-Emerging worship group? (and something else to smile at on a Saturday morning?) Read the gen over at small ritual: brand new vigorous worship.

The End of the Internet

This is funny....

De-gelification

I was discussing Coleridge (that master of inventing new words) with some post-grad students this week, and in the process I think I made up a new word. This morning I read one of Christy's recent posts entitled "De-gelification" - another new word, the meaning of which is both funny and poignant, and the story she tells one of serious hope for anyone who has left the Church, or sits on its margins, feeling that they can't buy into it any more. Go read.

sshhh...

this sounds really good: malcolm chamberlain: ssshhh....

Rahner, his brother, and a joke

One of the great Catholic theologians of the 20th century was Karl Rahner. I loved reading him at College, waded through screeds of it in English translation. Rahner's style is highly complex, often circling round a subject several times in order to make his point, and sometimes you'd have to read a section over and over to get the hang of what he was saying. I always thought it was well worth the effort. Nicholas Lash used to tell this great (apocryphal?) story about the difficulty of following Rahner's thought:

Hugo, the lesser known of the two Rahner brothers, embarked on the awesome project of translating Karl's work into English. Someone congratulated him on this worthwhile endeavour, and admiringly said, "It must be a very difficult task to translate your brother's work into English."

"Sir", replied Hugo, "It would be difficult enough to translate my brother's work into German."

Which reminds me, I picked up this Rahner joke somewhere ages ago, and have quite forgotten where. Hat tip to... * * whoever it was!!

Hugo Rahner had an audience with the Pope. After a great deal of discussion, the Pope asked Hugo Rahner who, in his opinion, was the world’s greatest theologian.

Hugo squirmed a little, breaking eye contact with the Pope while he sought the proper and most humble way to answer the question. Finally, he looked up, shrugged, and said, “I suppose, Your Grace, I would have to say the world’s greatest theologian is my brother, Karl.”

The Pope’s eyes widened. He sat straight up in his chair in astonishment and exclaimed: “Your brother is KARL BARTH?!”

Do you know your archaeologist from your elbow?

Link: Raiders of the faux ark - The Boston Globe. Hat tip to blog-reader Hugh Aylward, AKA Serena's Dad.

laughing out loud

After a mutual venting session with my stepbrother this morning, we decided we both need cheering up. Then I read this, which cracked me up: AKMA’s Random Thoughts.

Why one Bishop will NOT boycott Lambeth

Bishop Alan is SO worth a read today, not only if you are interested in the details of Anglican polity, but just because it's a reality check and a good, holy post about being a Christian and not judging others. Go read: Bishop Alan’s Blog: What kind of party spirit am I on?.

I think, therefore I am

René Descartes is sitting in a pub, he’s had a bit too much to drink, and is beginning to feel the effects. 

“Another beer?” asks the landlord. “I think not,” says Descartes, and promptly vanishes.

sadness and hope

I'm going blog-lite for a few days, blog readers.  Too much sadness in the world. Last week a family bereavement, and a few days later news of a friend's bereavement.

I took this picture of a spring time tree earlier this year on a quick getaway trip to Guernsey. New life will come. Endings are grim, but eventually they give way to new beginnings.

a quote out of context...

"...the soldiers of Christ pride themselves on being permanently out of step..."

from Thinking Aloud.

keeping it personal

in the world of Amazon books and Tesco superstores, Real Live Preacher's approach to selling his books is a complete breath of fresh air.

Rinse - Spin - Repeat

Thought for the day: jen lemen on the fear of success.

writers, readers and conversations

I've read a bit lately that some Emerging Church bloggers (especially of the persuasion) have become disillusioned with blogging on the basis that it is not truly conversational. I am kind of surprised to read this in a way, because I never thought it was. Did you, honestly?

Blogging can be more interactive than writing books, perhaps in the way that Douglas Adams envisaged, and it's certainly more immediate than writing for traditional publicaton. And it can result in real relationships forming, though then the usual rules apply - do you keep in touch? do you have things in common? do you like each other?

If you blog to make relationships I think the blog will inevitably run dry after a while. You can't cuddle a computer (at least, I've never wanted to), you can't look into its eyes when you talk. But why should this worry a writer, or a reader? People's lives are changed, shaped, enriched by reading; always have been. And most of the time the writer doesn't know about the response of the reader. Perhaps the problem for bloggers who are not writers by nature is they need to know about the response? Or perhaps it's that a writer-reader relationship is not the same thing as a conversation.

Kester has always been dissatisfied with blogging because he really does want an online conversation, and has now found an alternative mode of internet conversation, something like a web-based seminar (or dinner party, I think he said...) where you set up a smaller group and interact in the one space, in a more genuinely conversational mode.

But a blog was never going to be that, was it? In the end is either going to be a disseminator of some specialised information - like how to do "worship tricks" or whatever - or it's going to be a way of publishing little bits of writing that are pertinent to the moment, whether the hors d'oeuvre of the writer of books, or the domain of the journalist.

Why do writers write (or singers sing, or mathematicians play with numbers?) If you do write it's part of your nature to do so. I have little bits of writing everywhere - little journal-style bits, essay sketches, lecture plans, nuggets for the next book - all over the place; on my computer, my laptop, in my Moleskines (along with lots of little sketches), and on the backs of envelopes and shopping lists. I have notebooks in my bag, and by my bed, and random bits of junk mail in the kitchen, and I write on all of them. I stop in the street, or pause during cooking the dinner, or wake in the night with an idea, and it gets written on the nearest bit of paper. Later I tidy them up (more or less) and some of them get converted into a sermon, a letter, a blogpost or a book.

If you're a blogger because you are a writer, you'll write anyway.