maggi dawn

Female scholars

Rose asked the other day in the comments to Female Bishops, "I am working on some studies, could you recommend your top two female N.T. scholars?"

New Testament isn't really my area, so I have limited knowledge in this. But I do eat my lunch at least once a week with Professor Morna Hooker, whose books & lectures are excellent, and she is a great conversation partner. A much younger, v. interesting British N.T. scholar is Paula Gooder.

Anyone else like to recommend their top two women in New Testament Studies?

another take on Ascension...

(These are the notes for my homily today. The story in the middle is "nicked" - Someone sent it to kathryn, Kathryn gave it to me, I rewrote it freely and sent it back to Kathryn, and we have both now reworked it for our sermons. The original, I believe, is a story by Edward Hays. Reliably informed that Hays has written many more thought-provoking parables and stories like this, I have just ordered several of his books. Go thou and do likewise...)

SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION, 2008

It’s a common mistake in Sunday School theology to make the Ascension sound like the moment when earth and heaven are separated from each other… as if Jesus looks back at the messy earth, post resurrection, and says, "job done, I'm out of here."  A view of the Ascension that separates God from us, heaven from earth, is a woeful theology, and misses the balletic beauty and completeness of the Easter season. So today I was going to tell you about why we celebrate Ascension, and how it was only by leaving the earth that Jesus could become permanently present with all of us. I was going to talk about how the disciples stood there gaping at the sky hoping he would come back, when what they need to do was go and wait in the Upper Room like he’d told them, so that he could send them his Spirit.

But then I came across an ancient story that I think may throw a better light on the subject. See what you think…

In 1999, some archaeologists were having a New Year's Eve party in a Coptic Church in Egypt, when a champagne cork flew into the air and broke a little part of the ceiling away, revealing a glint of bronze. Abandoning the party, they climbed up and pulled out a container full of old scripts, which contained the sayings and revelations of Abba Sayah, an old hermit who was visited by Gabriel and other heavenly visitors.

One of Abba Sayah’s stories is about the Ascension – a story, he says, that St Anthony told to St. Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory told to St. Basil and Gregory Nazienzus as they sat around the campfire. It’s a story that can’t be verified with any evidence at all.

But there is no doubt whatsoever that it’s true.

As Abba Sayah tells it, after forty days of resurrection appearances, Jesus knew it was time to leave his disciples – his mother, his brothers and sisters, his companions in the Way. It was hard to say goodbye, but he knew that the time had come. After all, he was the truth and we humans can only take so much of that.

So Jesus called them all together on the mountain top, and made his farewells. It was a tearful moment. Mary was crying. John was crying. Jesus was crying. Even Peter, the immovable rock, was reaching for his handkerchief.

They knew that Jesus had said he would always be with them. But they also knew it wasn't going to be the same. There would be no more breakfasts by the seashore, no more late night discussions around the campfire.

Jesus was sad too, but he was glad to be returning to his Father, and he knew it was all part of the plan. And so he began to ascend.

As Abba Sayah told the story, just as Jesus began to rise, slowly and gracefully into the air, John just couldn't bear it. He grabbed hold of Jesus' right leg, and refused to let go.

"John?" said Jesus “What are you doing?” And John shouted back, "If you won't stay with us, then I'm coming too."

Jesus calmly continued to rise, hoping that John would let go. But John didn't let go. And then to make matters more complicated, Mary suddenly jumped up and grabbed hold of Jesus' other leg. "I'm coming too," she shouted.

By now, Jesus’ big exit had obviously been ruined, but he looked up into heaven, and called out: "Okay, Father... what do I do now?" And a voice came out of the clouds, deep and loud like the rumbling of thunder in the distance.

"Ascend!" the voice said.

"Ascend?" Jesus asked?

"Ascend!" the voice replied.

So Jesus continued to rise through the air, with John and Mary holding on until they too were lifted off the ground.

Well, then, ALL the other apostles, not wanting to be left behind, jumped on too. Imagine if you can – a pyramid of people hanging in the middle of the sky. Jesus at the top. John and Mary next. The apostles hanging on below.

And then - what was this?  Suddenly all kinds of people were appearing out of nowhere.

friends and neighbours that had followed them up the mountain.

The crowds he used to preach to.

Old people.

Young people.

Jews and Gentiles.

Men and women.

All of them grabbing the last pair of ankles and holding on.

And above it all the voice of God calling out, “Ascend!"

But all of a sudden, from the bottom of the pyramid, there came the voice of a small child.

"Wait!” he yelled,  “I've lost my dog!  Wait for me”

"I can't wait," Jesus called back, "I don't know how this thing works." But the little boy wasn't going to be left behind, and he was determined his dog was coming with him. So, still holding on with one hand, he grabbed hold of a tree with the other, and held on with all his might.

For a moment, the whole pyramid stopped dead in the air - Jesus pulling upwards, and the little boy holding on to the tree, scanning the horizon for his lost dog.

But Jesus couldn't stop. The ascension had begun, and God was pulling him back up to heaven. 

At first it looked as if the tree would uproot itself.  But then the tree held on, and it started to pull the ground up with it. Sort of like when you pull a rug up in the middle, the

soil itself started moving up into the sky.  And hundreds of miles away, where the soil met the oceans, the oceans held on. And where the oceans met the shores, the shores held on. All of it held on, like there was no tomorrow.

To make a short story long: Jesus DID ascend to heaven, He went back to his natural habitat, living permanently in the presence of God’s endless love and care and wholeness and laughter. 

But, as Abba Sayah tells it, he pulled all of creation – the whole kit and caboodle – everything that ever was or is or ever will be – he pulled it all up into heaven with him.

Archaeologists are still wondering about the authenticity of Abba Saya’s scrolls. Are they revelations from heaven that are more reliable than Luke’s account? Or are they the work of an over-active imagination?

Which was the truth – was it that Jesus came to earth to transform us with the presence of God? Or was Abba Sayah right, that he took earth back with him to heaven?

Whichever way you look at it, the work of Jesus was to transform us and the world we live in by infusing everything with the presence of God.  Heaven meets earth; earth is drawn into heaven.

And, as Abba Sayah said, that's where we've been ever since.

This homily has shamelessly borrowed the story of Abba Sayah; for more go and find Edward Hays books.

----

Female bishops

The Anglican Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand, recently announced that Bishop Matthews will be their new Bishop.  The Anglican Church of Australia announced her first female bishop last month.

Meantime, the good old Church of England continues in seemingly endless chicken-licken style discussion. In my more bleak moments it makes me think of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Fresh Expressions? A Missional church? All around us there are people hungry and thirsty for the story we have to tell, yet all they can hear is our endless circumventions of an argument that is out of date. 

Will we ever see women in the Episcopate? Probably. A while from now. And then another round of hissy fits and arguments. Now, I have no personal career/ministry agenda in this: do not mistake me for someone who would want to be a Bishop. My gifts and inclinations clearly lie elsewhere. And in any case by the time the discussions are over I shall be on the verge of retirement. But I still feel deeply sorry that the Church I belong to continues to maintain levels of its organisation as a boys' club, wastes the talents of women who would be brilliant Bishops, and by inference misrepresents the gospel to the world around us. 

Bishop Alan is on fine form this morning on the subject. Go read.

term starts again

After McDonaldization

I am REALLY looking forward to getting hold of John Drane's new book (coming out next week). After McDonaldization is the sequel to The McDonaldization of the Church. The new volume promises some thoughts on theology, ministry and mission in a postmodern culture. I am a long time fan of John's work. Put this one on your wish list right away.

Krister Stendahl dies aged 86

Krister Stendahl, Swedish Bishop and New Testament scholar, has died aged 86. This brilliant man shifted the ground in New Testament Studies (especially re. St Paul), and has been a clear influence on "big" names that followed on, such as J. Dunn and N T Wright.  Give yourself a treat today and read his lovely essay, "Why I love the Bible" in which he describes reading the scriptures as "... an ever-transforming affair of the heart."

lies, damned lies and theology

You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs. I admit, you can practise Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar.

Dorothy L Sayers

Beginnings and Endings

My new book is just about to be published. Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between) looks at the big themes of Advent. The book is laid out as short chapters, one for each day from 1 December to 6 January, to last from Advent to Epiphany. But you can just read it in one go if you'd rather.

Beginnings are important because Advent anticipates the coming of Christ into the world; because candles in the Advent wreath represent the signs of new beginnings through the salvation story - the journey of the Patriarchs, the promises of the Prophets, the announcement of John the Baptist and the conception of Christ. As well as writing about these themes, I also look at the way each of the four gospel writers begins their gospel. In literary terms, what does their starting point tell us about the way they are telling the story?

Advent is also about Endings, because it anticipates the second coming of Christ, and the end of the world as we know it. That's an idea shrouded in mystery, but it reminds us that every new beginning implies an end of something else.

Most of our lives, of course, are lived in between, with dozens of small scale beginnings and endings going on in and around our daily lives. Births and marriages, deaths and funerals, promotions, redundancies, retirements, graduations... all these milestones lead us through endings and beginnings. The characters in the story of salvation also lived through these, and we can trace through their stories some wisdom as we live through our own.

This book was a labour of love; lots of stories close to my own heart, lots of ideas I have carried around in my head that never had an outlet. It was fun to write (though Kathryn, David, Jason and Caroline, who read and critiqued the drafts for me will no doubt remind me of the moments when I said "why did I ever say yes to this???). I hope you'll enjoy reading it.   

available on amazon stateside from 21 september

Pierced for our transgressions

It's been pointed out to me several times that the name of a new book on one particular theory of atonement has the same name as one of my songs. I gather the book is a response to some of the arguments that have been going on lately since the Chalke-gate thing happened a  couple of years back. I haven't read this latest book yet; I am almost finished with A.K.M. Adam's rather wonderful Faithful Interpretation (good enough that I am actually reading all of it, carefully, not just giving it a speed-read review) and on the other side of the desk I am also reading Alan Jacobs' absolutely splendid tome, A theology of reading. I hope to blog-review these in more detail ere long, but already I would urge anyone interested in how we go about the interpretation of the Bible to get both of them.

But back to He was pierced...  here are some random lunchtime thoughts on atonement theory and disagreements about doctrine.

Any thorough-going atonement theory (i.e. a theory of how the death of christ "works" to put right a broken relationship between God and humanity) is going to include some close attention to sacrifice and judgement - God's forgiveness is certainly full and free, but it isn't cheap and fluffy, and neither is it blind to the serious ills of the world. All the same, no thorough-going theology should (even unintentionally) present God as mean, judgemental and narrow-minded. I rather suspect that is really what Steve Chalke was trying to get at in his book, even though he left himself open to misunderstanding.

John MacIntyre reckons there are at least 27 different theories. I find something of value in all of them, and I don't think that any of them, in isolation, nor even all of them put toegether, are sufficient to give a full understanding of the consequences of the death of Jesus Christ. There's a lot to be said for holding different theories together - they aren't mutually exclusive, but can balance each other out and offer a richer understanding held together than by choosing one as pre-eminent over all the rest. A thoroughgoing theory of atonement needs to be multi-faceted. It needs to include an understanding of the rightful anger of God against violence, hatred, injustice, the abuse of power - in fact against all that mitigates against love. That's what sin means. An atonement theory also needs to include the idea that the cross is an inspiration and example to us to lay down our lives for our friends. (I'm quoting John quoting Jesus there, I didn't make that up). And further, it also needs a more universal view, something that reflects the idea that atonement is not limited to the sins of an individual, but that the world and everything in it is released not only from human sin, but from the grip of evil and the tendency for things to degenetrate into violence and destruction.  An associated idea that should always be noted, I think, is the warning that anyone (Jesus being the first among equals in this regard) who devotes their life to justice and peace and love is likely to end up paying dearly for it. Finally, any discussion of the atonement needs to aknowledge an element of mystery - because however much sense-making our theology does of the atonement, there's always an added sense that we don't totally know "how it works", although that needn't stop us knowing it does work.

I find it really sad that something as fascinating, as poignant, as ijmportant and life-changing as the atonement is becoming a peg on which to hang arguments between different factions of the Church.  I can't decide whether this spoof of the Old Rugged Cross - Old Argued Cross - is funny or sad. How particularly ironic that it was just as Easter unfolded this year that the latest argument erupted over theories of the atonement. Surely we are not supposed to be fighting about whose theory of the atonement is "the right one". Isn't the point precisely that we are not right; that we don't understand; that all our musings about God are incomplete? That only God can see everything; only God can make things right? Of course it seems unbelievable that God could be quite as generous as some dare to believe; there is this human instinct that comes variously from fear, meanness, or a form of tribal exclusivism, that wants to insist that only if we sign the "right" doctrinal statement or buy into the "right" interpretation, will God's grace work and people be allowed to belong to the Christian Club. I am so tired of liberals slagging off Evangelicals for being narrow; of evangelicals dismissing liberals for being woolly. It's so pointless. I hear the words of the Epistles of John echoing in my head - written, it would appear, by an elderly man who sums up the wisdom of his years by saying, "Children, you know the only thing that really matters in the end? - that you love one another. "

The longer I live, the more I believe that the beauty of the atonement is not that it only works if you believe it in the right way, it's that it works even if you don't understand it at all. I'm not going soft on doctrine - I love doctrine with a passion, and I spend a good slice of my life teaching it - but even I have to admit that we aren't saved by doctrine, and that God can be visibly and awesomely at work in the lives of people whose doctrine is well wide of the mark.  The grace and generosity of God is, I'll grant you, completely outrageous. He seems to insist on including people in the Kingdom of God who are not like me at all. Where does it come from, this need to have doctrinal proof of someone else's salvation? I have to wonder whether that isn't precisely the kind of thing that Jesus died to save us from.

It's been pointed out to me several times that the name of a new book on one particular theory of atonement has the same name as one of my songs. I gather the book is a response to some of the arguments that have been going on lately since the Chalke-gate thing happened a  couple of years back. I haven't read this latest book yet; I am almost finished with A.K.M. Adam's rather wonderful Faithful Interpretation (good enough that I am actually reading all of it, carefully, not just giving it a speed-read review) and on the other side of the desk I am also reading Alan Jacobs' absolutely splendid tome, A theology of reading. I hope to blog-review these in more detail ere long, but already I would urge anyone interested in how we go about the interpretation of the Bible to get both of them.

But back to He was pierced...  here are some random lunchtime thoughts on atonement theory and disagreements about doctrine.

Any thorough-going atonement theory (i.e. a theory of how the death of christ "works" to put right a broken relationship between God and humanity) is going to include some close attention to sacrifice and judgement - God's forgiveness is certainly full and free, but it isn't cheap and fluffy, and neither is it blind to the serious ills of the world. All the same, no thorough-going theology should (even unintentionally) present God as mean, judgemental and narrow-minded. I rather suspect that is really what Steve Chalke was trying to get at in his book, even though he left himself open to misunderstanding.

John MacIntyre reckons there are at least 27 different theories. I find something of value in all of them, and I don't think that any of them, in isolation, nor even all of them put toegether, are sufficient to give a full understanding of the consequences of the death of Jesus Christ. There's a lot to be said for holding different theories together - they aren't mutually exclusive, but can balance each other out and offer a richer understanding held together than by choosing one as pre-eminent over all the rest. A thoroughgoing theory of atonement needs to be multi-faceted. It needs to include an understanding of the rightful anger of God against violence, hatred, injustice, the abuse of power - in fact against all that mitigates against love. That's what sin means. An atonement theory also needs to include the idea that the cross is an inspiration and example to us to lay down our lives for our friends. (I'm quoting John quoting Jesus there, I didn't make that up). And further, it also needs a more universal view, something that reflects the idea that atonement is not limited to the sins of an individual, but that the world and everything in it is released not only from human sin, but from the grip of evil and the tendency for things to degenetrate into violence and destruction.  An associated idea that should always be noted, I think, is the warning that anyone (Jesus being the first among equals in this regard) who devotes their life to justice and peace and love is likely to end up paying dearly for it. Finally, any discussion of the atonement needs to aknowledge an element of mystery - because however much sense-making our theology does of the atonement, there's always an added sense that we don't totally know "how it works", although that needn't stop us knowing it does work.

I find it really sad that something as fascinating, as poignant, as ijmportant and life-changing as the atonement is becoming a peg on which to hang arguments between different factions of the Church.  I can't decide whether this spoof of the Old Rugged Cross - Old Argued Cross - is funny or sad. How particularly ironic that it was just as Easter unfolded this year that the latest argument erupted over theories of the atonement. Surely we are not supposed to be fighting about whose theory of the atonement is "the right one". Isn't the point precisely that we are not right; that we don't understand; that all our musings about God are incomplete? That only God can see everything; only God can make things right? Of course it seems unbelievable that God could be quite as generous as some dare to believe; there is this human instinct that comes variously from fear, meanness, or a form of tribal exclusivism, that wants to insist that only if we sign the "right" doctrinal statement or buy into the "right" interpretation, will God's grace work and people be allowed to belong to the Christian Club. I am so tired of liberals slagging off Evangelicals for being narrow; of evangelicals dismissing liberals for being woolly. It's so pointless. I hear the words of the Epistles of John echoing in my head - written, it would appear, by an elderly man who sums up the wisdom of his years by saying, "Children, you know the only thing that really matters in the end? - that you love one another. "

The longer I live, the more I believe that the beauty of the atonement is not that it only works if you believe it in the right way, it's that it works even if you don't understand it at all. I'm not going soft on doctrine - I love doctrine with a passion, and I spend a good slice of my life teaching it - but even I have to admit that we aren't saved by doctrine, and that God can be visibly and awesomely at work in the lives of people whose doctrine is well wide of the mark.  The grace and generosity of God is, I'll grant you, completely outrageous. He seems to insist on including people in the Kingdom of God who are not like me at all. Where does it come from, this need to have doctrinal proof of someone else's salvation? I have to wonder whether that isn't precisely the kind of thing that Jesus died to save us from.

Poems for Christmas: BC:AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

U.A. Fanthorpe (born 1929)

more reflections on Advent and Christmas here

theology matters

Further to my post the other day, in which I owned up that it's hard to say out loud that theology matters when you do it for a living, because people just think you're being either defensive or self-important...

...here's a great quote from Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall:

“…It may appear defensive and self-serving when a theologian asserts, in effect, that theology matters. But if by theology one means the continuous process of disciplined and prayerful thought through which a community of faith seeks to understand what it believes and thus to be guided in its living out of that belief,…then to deny that theology matters…is tantamount to opening up the ever-ready floodgates of irrationality, [expedience and pragmatism] and mindless, boundless spiritualism. Worse still, it makes a gift of that spiritual energy to powers and principalities that have vested interests in deploying it…”

Hat tip: Prodigal Kiwi

unanswered questions

Chase asks how I woudl interpret 1 Tim 2:12-14 - one of the places where Paul seems to be ruling women out of ministry. Martin and Tony B have both asked for a more robust response to Richard Dawkins.

It's not that I have nothing to say, or am not listening... I'm writing (real book, real paper pages!!!) to a deadline right now. Once I have a bit of space I'll come back to it. thanks for the comments.

Meantime, other commenters are welcome to pitch in...

pastors need to be theologians

There is an idea that pastors don’t have the luxury of doing serious study. That is to be left for those living in ivory towers. In the real world we just need to get busy and find out what works. But pragmatism leads to theological error. Pragmatism leads to moral failure. Pragmatism leads to a human agenda.
More than ever, pastors need to be theologians.

I'm always painfully aware that if I say something like this someone will (someone usually does!) come straight back and mock the "ivory tower" I live in (although I've spent more time at casualty/emergency admissions in the local hospital this term than in the Chapel, so how my job isn't "real", I still don't understand)

but it's good to read from somone without an ivory tower "agenda" that I'm not alone in my belief that ministry has to proceed out of good thinking as much as it does from anything else. Read the rest of Missional Leadership III here.

evil as nothingness

I've been re-reading around the set texts for the courses I contribute to here in Cambridge. Some of them are texts I know so well I could quote them in my sleep - and that's a dangerous place to get to, as you can lose your freshness and start missing things because you think you know it too well. It's a good discipline to go back and try to read again as if you don't know the text. Often a new angle, or a different aspect, will strike you on a fresh reading. 

One of our regulars - unsurprising for anyone who knows their way round modern theology - is Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics.  There are things I like about Barth and things I don't. But one of the things I do like is the way he talks about evil as nothingness - not a personified creature (with or without horns and a tail), but more like a kind of cosmic black hole which sucks into itself and negates everything that is loving and kind, positive and good. I have never been face to face with anything that resembles a comic-book devil. But I completely relate to the idea of evil as a kind of vacuum of nothingness.

Here's a clip from the Big Man himself:

[God] knows the Nothingness. He knows that which he did not elect or will as the creator. He know Chaos and its terror. He knows its advantage over his creature. He knows how inevitably it imperils his creature. Yet he is Lord over that which imperils his creature. Against him, the Nothingness has no power of its own. And he has sworn faithfulness to his threatened creature...

He would rather let himself be injured and humiliated in making the assault and repulse of Nothingness his own concern than leave his creature alone in this affliction. He deploys all his glory in the work of his deepest condescension. He intervenes in the struggle between Nothingness and the creature as if he were not God but himself a weak and threatened and vulnerable creature…. This is how God himself comes on the scene.

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3, 358

Jesus and interesting Heresies

The Way started up again this week. Under the title "Who is Jesus", we talked about the tension between the means we have of knowing about Jesus and the difference between that and knowing God in some connected, spiritual, living sense. It's probably impossible to have the knowing without the knowing about, but it's very easy to get lost in knowing about and lose connection with the knowing. We also thought about reading scripture and the problem of projection; and about what sense we make of the relationship between Jesus in history and the Christ we believe in now.

The Way meets again on October 23rd, and Andrew will be starting off a session on "Decisions, Decisions (or, What would Jesus do?)". This is normally only for Robinson members; anyone else needs to ask me in advance whether we have room for guests. 

ain't I a woman?

I get asked pretty often to comment on the place of women in the church.  It's not an issue that I pursue from an academic point of view, although I've read loads of the relevant literature and wrote a few papers on it back in the early 90's.  An older, wiser woman once said to me that there were two choices with this stuff - you could either talk about the place of women, and make that your project, or you could choose another project and just bash down the resistance and take your place in the world, but you can't do both. To be good enough, she said, (in the Church especially) to make any impact you have to be at least as good as the best of the men. And the likelihood is you'll be raising kids and running a home at the same time. SO that doesn't leave any spare time for being a part-time expert on feminism. Instead of commenting on feminism, therefore, I'm going to let one of the great heroes of the women's movement say it, in her famous words from a century-and-a half ago. I've posted this once before - back in 2003 I think - but these are words that bear another visit.

Sojourner Truth gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. (The women's rights movement grew in large part out of the anti-slavery movement.) No formal record of the speech exists, but Frances Gage, an abolitionist and president of the Convention, recounted Truth's words. There is debate about the accuracy of this account because Gage did not record the account until 1863 and her record differs somewhat from newspaper accounts of 1851. However it is Gage's report that endures and it is clear that, whatever the exact words, "Ain't I a Woman?" made a great impact at the Convention and has become a classic expression of women's rights.

The Classic Report
Several ministers attended the second day of the Woman's Rights Convention, and were not shy in voicing their opinion of man's superiority over women. One claimed "superior intellect", one spoke of the "manhood of Christ," and still another referred to the "sin of our first mother." Suddenly, Sojourner Truth rose from her seat in the corner of the church.

"For God's sake, Mrs.Gage, don't let her speak!" half a dozen women whispered loudly, fearing that their cause would be mixed up with Abolition. Sojourner walked to the podium and slowly took off her sunbonnet. Her six-foot frame towered over the audience. She began to speak in her deep, resonant voice: "Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North - all talking about rights - the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about?"

Sojourner pointed to one of the ministers. "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman?"

Sojourner raised herself to her full height. "Look at me! Look at my arm." She bared her right arm and flexed her powerful muscles. "I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman?"

"I could work as much, and eat as much as man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?"

The women in the audience began to cheer wildly.

She pointed to another minister. "He talks about this thing in the head. What's that they call it?"

"Intellect," whispered a woman nearby.

"That's it, honey. What's intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

"That little man in black there! He says women can't have as much rights as men. ‘Cause Christ wasn't a woman. She stood with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. "Where did your Christ come from?"

"Where did your Christ come from?", she thundered again. "From God and a Woman! Man had nothing to do with him!"

The entire church now roared with deafening applause.

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them."

theology of priesthood

Tom has been doing some thinking on the way orders of priests have developed in the Church of England - rightly pointing out that OLM, NSM and Stipendiary have to a large extent becme hierarchies of priests (in fact long before I was ordained I remember having a discussion with someone about the new "OLM" idea, and thinking that theologically, either you are a priest or you aren't...

Anyway, his thinking is creative and good (IMHO) establishing the difference between priesthood and specific roles within the Church. It probably won't interest readers who are not Anglicans/don't believe in priests anyway, but for those to whom these issues are alive, Tom is worth a read. (And, Tom, I'd like to read more as you develop the idea) Link: Bigbulkyanglican: Priests today.

Edit: Definitions: an OLM is an Ordained Local Minister - for a definition, the Guildford Diocesan vocations booklet is clear and concise.

Stipendiary means that a priest is given enough material benefits that they can manage without having a paid job and concentrate their energies entirely on the Church and her mission. A stipend is not a salary, and it's not much to live on, but that's partly the point! Receiving a stipend also usually means promising not to receive any additional income from other sources.

NSM means non-stipendiary minister. In practical terms re. ministry within the Church setting that can either mean someone who devotes all their time and energy to the ministry but for whatever reason does not need a stipend, or it may mean someone who has a paid job, either full or part time, and devotes whatever time they can above and beyond that to the Church. However this definition fails to account for the fact that many people become NSM's because they feel that their priestly ministry is specifically lived out in the mission context of their "secular" setting. There is a debate there that needs to be had more thoroughly - it would be valuable a) to challenge the idea that the work of a priest is confined to the CHurch, but also b) that there is any distinction between the vocation of an NSM who is a priest-at-work, and the fact that all Christians in work have a vocation, both to their work and to the context in which they do it. But for this blog, at least, that's a debate for another day!

The development of all these categories, like everything else in the physically manifest church, has been affected both by theological reasoning and by practical necessity. Any revisions to them should also take both of those things into account, since we do actually live on earth and not in heaven.

I do not have a personal relationship with Jesus

John Suk, a professor of homiletics at Asian Theological Seminary in Manila, The Philippines, challenges popular evangelical jargon by questioning whether having a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ" is poor theology or, worse, a capitulation to theraputic secular values...
Read his post here.

Hat Tip to Richard for the link 

The Way (iv)

The Way happens again tonight. This evening's ten-minute opener will be on

The Bible - word of God? Or just words?

Open discussion follows - we don't require anyone to arrive at a conclusion, or to sign up to anything. And we have snacks and drdinks while we talk, so the whole atmosphere is relaxed even though the subject matter gets quite deep sometimes.

8pm in the Chaplain's rooms - all Robinsonians welcome

Photo: Martyn Clayton    

The Way happens again tonight. This evening's ten-minute opener will be on

The Bible - word of God? Or just words?

Open discussion follows - we don't require anyone to arrive at a conclusion, or to sign up to anything. And we have snacks and drdinks while we talk, so the whole atmosphere is relaxed even though the subject matter gets quite deep sometimes.

8pm in the Chaplain's rooms - all Robinsonians welcome

Photo: Martyn Clayton    

The Way happens again tonight. This evening's ten-minute opener will be on

The Bible - word of God? Or just words?

Open discussion follows - we don't require anyone to arrive at a conclusion, or to sign up to anything. And we have snacks and drdinks while we talk, so the whole atmosphere is relaxed even though the subject matter gets quite deep sometimes.

8pm in the Chaplain's rooms - all Robinsonians welcome

Photo: Martyn Clayton    

saved FOR, not saved FROM...

The Way was a really good discussion on Monday. In fact, all three sessions so far have been really good - lots of deep thought, but not exclusively on an intellectual/cognitive level, rather connecting up the dots between rational thought, emotional response, psychology, experience, language... and so on. Faith for the whole person, not just for the brain.

We talked this week about salvation. The abiding thought, for me, is that a lot of our talk about salvation revolves around the idea of being saved from something...  saved from sin, saved from punishment, from isolation or alienation, from sin, from death, from hell.  But really the whole tenor of Christianity and the New Testament is that we are saved for something - saved to be more fully human, saved to be "in" Christ, saved to be re-connected to each other, saved for life, for love, for justice...

Come back next week for thoughts on The Bible: Word of God? or just Words?

Faith - what it is, what it isn't

The Way started last night. (For serena's comments go here.) One of the interesting things about our opening discussion was the vast array of different meanings people attach to the words faith, belief, doubt. What is faith? - intellectual assent, blind faith, emotional conviction, effort of the will? Is your faith a response of joy to the calling of love? Or is it motivated by fear of the consequences?

Here's what Anglican theologian W H Griffith-Thomas (1861-1924) had to say on the subject:

[Faith] affects the whole of man's nature. It commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence; it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and it is crowned in the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.

The Way

The Way starts tonight - a group of college members who want to spend some time talking about issues of faith. We are starting each session with a ten-minute opener from one person who has some experience or expertise on the issue of the evening - not the last word by any means, but enough of a starter to prevent the discussion being merely a pooling of ignorance.

I am somewhat suspicious of "discussions" that are organised with and evangelistic motive - a persuasive agenda on the part of the initiator. I think "discussion" is a misnomer for that kind of event. The Way aims to be a discussion without such an agenda - not a discussion without opinions, but a discussion where people can feel free to think independently.

Tonight's discussion is on faith, doubt and belonging. What does doubt do to faith? What does faith do to belonging? Can you belong if you doubt? 

Photo: Martyn Clayton (used with permission! Thanks, Martyn) 

(BTW this one is open only to Robinson members! space dictates...)

Tennyson, In Memoriam

We're having a poetry reading of Tennyson's In Memoriam here in the Chapel next month. I have taught in the Faculty on this poem, along with Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Manley Hopkins Wreck of the Deutschland - three poems that all deal with themes of theodicy, guilt, death and reward, and doubt and certainty. The course I taught on has just been replaced by a new thing, so I guess I'll have to mothball this particular combination for the time being. But it will be nice (in memoriam) to take part in this reading...

science and faith

We're having a series of evening sessions this term looking at issues that matter to Christians. The objective is to make it as accessible for those who don't have faith but are interested, as it is for those who do have faith and want to think through the issues.

I have various different people coming along to present a starting point for each discussion. One of them is a computer scientist, very brainy and well-read, who thinks at 90 miles an hour. He has a much more interesting and well-thought out view than angry-atheist Richard Dawkins on the way in which science and faith interact; the way in which each poses a challenge and sometimes a threat to the other, and how to negotiate faith honestly in the light of it. I'm really looking forward to it. 

Pondering

I preached a whole Christmas sermon on the word "ponder" once. In King's College Chapel, I think. Ponder, I seem to recall, comes from the Middle English, and there's a whole wealth of spiritual meditation within its etymology.

Nice to read Tom Allen's reflection on pondering and the permission to be thoughtful, tongue-tied even:
...'what has God done in your life in 2005, and what are your hopes for 2006?'. Not as some vague New Years resolution, but as an honest sharing of experience and then meeting and talking with people where-ever they are. 

It is not a sin to say "very little" - the danger is not acknowledging it. For those who are able to talk fluently there is always the challenge of what next: I like to remind people of the experience of Mary when she met with the Shepherds and they told their story and experience - the Gospel records that Mary "pondered these things in her heart" she didn't say "well that's fantastic"

My thoughts on pondering are in  my book on Advent and Christmas, Beginnings and Endings

Changing your mind

Some sermon notes for a sermon I never preached...

Galatians 1: 23  "the one who was formerly persecuting is now proclaiming..."

What an amazing thing it is to be able to change your mind. People traditionally joke, of course, that it's a woman's prerogative. But Saint Paul gives us a great ancient example of a man who changed his mind.

Changing your mind isn't always easy. Sometimes we WANT to change our minds - but really struggle to come to terms with the new ideas the world throws at us, worrying whether perhaps the new ideas are too different, and whether the old ways will be lost. Sometimes changing our minds involves looking foolish, or making an apology.  Sometimes changing our minds is liberating, and a huge relief. Sometimes it leads to reconciliation, and rejoicing - but sometimes it leads to conflict and irritation.

Sometimes we work enormously hard to change OTHER PEOPLE's minds - within the Church, for instance, there have been recent and ongoing campaigns to change people's minds over the ordination of women, and the acceptance of homosexuality.  There is a current anxiety that hostage-holders will change their minds over death threats; there are constant campaigns within Parliament and through public lobbying to change the mind of government over large issues and small.

What is remarkable about Paul's experience, though, is that he started off with no intention of changing his own mind, and he certainly wasn't under pressure from anyone else to do so. He was a well-respected religious leader of his day, and he was faced with a new movement within his religion. It's easy for us, with the benefit of hindsight, to read about first century Pharisees in the New Testament and take the view that they were stubborn old stuck-in-the-muds who refused point blank to see sense. Sometimes the gospels make them out to be deliberately obtuse. Yet the Pharisees were the highly respected religious leaders of their day. And St Paul - or Saul as he was known then - was a leading Pharisee.

Saul, as far as he was concerned, was not persecuting anyone. He would have been amazed to think of it like that. What HE thought he was doing was defending the faith - standing up for the true faith, stopping it from being watered down and infiltrated by the ideas of these less-than-educated young upstarts. What he didn't realise was that - in this instance at least - the Upstarts were the ones who had really got the message. It was Paul himself who was missing the point. But the upstarts didn't need to defend themselves for long. They didn't need to change Paul's mind, to make him realise that by defending the old ways he was, in effect, stopping God's work. Because God himself stepped in to change Paul's mind.

I noticed three things to learn from this little moment in Paul's life. The first thing is that when we are caught up in conflict in the Church - conflict between old ideas and new ones - our own attempts to persuade each other by reason or charm or bullying or manipulation will only end up increasing the conflict. Our own efforts at changing each others' minds are most likely to polarise us even further. Paul didn't have much impact on the Christians - except to hurt them - and they had no success trying to convert him to their way of thinking. Human effort all by itself is not enough.

The second thing I noticed is that it when God changed Paul's mind, he didn't do it by explaining the other side's point of view! When God steps into our conflicts, he doesn't take sides. He always shows us something much bigger - something that puts the whole conflict into perpective - by showing us a revelation of Himself. When we are locked in conflict in the church, we don't need to search for the answer from God as to who is right - we need to look for a vision of WHO GOD IS. There is all the difference in the world.

The third thing I noticed is that once Paul stopped persecuting the Christians, he still didn't agree with them! Paul went on to be one of the most argumentative, bossy, but absolutely wonderful leaders. He was the grit in the oyster - that was his personality! Resolving conflict doesn't change our neighbours into the people we wish they were. People stay largely the same - we're never all going agree on everything! But if, like Paul, we are open to receiving GOd's personal revelation of himself, then our whole personalities - our irritating habits just as much as our virtues - are brought into the service of the Kingdom.

The Church continues in conflict today as much as ever. Ten years ago people feared that ordaining women would split the Church. Today disagreements over homosexuality threatens to split the communion. But what we need is not a definitive "right answer" to the conflict - but a revelation of the person of God, who will, if we receive his grace, enable us to live together in rich diversity, by changing our minds, not merely our opinions.

theology for seven-year-olds

"Mum, I think I know who Jesus was," announced my son the other day, as we were driving up the motorway to visit my frail old aunt.

My son has, ever since he could talk, been fascinated by theological ideas, and has regularly left me stumped with his searching and complex questions. I sometimes think I'd be well able to answer in long strings of complicated 5-syllable words. But the point of teaching someone is not to impress them with how much more you know than they do, but to teach them how to think and learn for themselves, whilst at the same time continuing to be a Learner yourself. 

To communicate theological ideas lucidly to undergraduates for whom the concepts are fairly alien, I have to think quite hard. To communicate them to congregations I have to think differently, as the concepts are often not alien at all, but academic language is. But I have to think REALLY hard, and differently again, to say something of substance in seven-year-old language. I try my best never to water down an idea, but to work it round in pictures and conversation until I'm convinced that he has understood; that I have done OK at explaining. During these conversations he sometimes ends up being the one to articulate something succinctly, or he throws fresh light on the subject at hand. I teach him, but I learn something in the process, and both of us gain the joyful experience of deepening relationship.

Conversation is also key to academic life. Our teaching system in Cambridge still has the luxury of the supervision system, where lecturers, researchers, even professors, engage in regular, in-depth conversation with students, either one-to-one or in a very small group. The perceived purpose of the supervision system is that the teacher teaches the students, but the reality (at its best) is that we create a learning community, and teacher and student walk together as both continue to learn.

In the course of supervising, I do a whole lot more than just explain things to students. I get them to rehearse things back to me so that I get the sense of what they've taken on board, push them with further questions to develop the ideas, ask them to tell me what they've read, why they think as they do.  I pick them up on errors when they are there, but more often the task is to make them read closer, think harder, write more clearly. Sometimes I have to struggle to communicate something to someone who keeps missing the point, and in the process I feel I have engaged more deeply with the subject matter myself. But in these conversations I also hear theology spoken back to me in ways that throw light on to it for me too; I hear questions raised that I don't always know how to answer. The purpose of teaching is only in part to communicate what you know to someone else. Much more important than teaching them WHAT you think and know, is teaching them HOW to think and read and learn.

Theology as conversation has its part to play in academia, then. But the principle (bring what you have to share; let everyone else chip in; learn together) holds true for church life, and for parents teaching faith to their children.

"Go on, then," I said to my son. "Who is Jesus?"

"Well," he said, "Jesus is God and not God at the same time. He's not God because when Jesus is here, God is still somewhere else. But he is God really, only the human version of God."

Not bad for seven, I'd say.

God might ruin your life...

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians...pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

words that say what they mean?

Tom Wright says

"There is a lot about postmodernism I like, but when it comes to the law of the land, I want words that say what they mean and mean what they say."

It's a nice idea, isn't it? That somewhere there must be a place - in religion, or in law - where you can cut through the mystery, the confusion, the multiplicity of meanings and interpretations, and just get down to the plain truth? Shame for the Bishop, and for the rest of us who often hanker for a world where the plain truth were that simple, that even when it comes to the law of the land, language is neither plain nor simple. The whole of the study of law is a hermeneutical exercise - it's about interpreting what the law ACTUALLY means in this or that situation, not about judging situations according to a plain, clear and unchanging truth. 

Avoiding feelings and using reason alone is no more a recipe for the "plain truth" than anything else is. You can try to eliminate feelings from debate, and sometimes it hepls to do so, although it should be recognised that it can be nothing more than a technique designed to serve those who are better at disguising their feelings behind a reasoned argument, and not a means of removing people's keenly felt personal agendas from debate. But even in a debate that is based on what we think, not what we feel, words that "say what they mean and mean what they say" are somewhat more elusive than we would like. Once Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein had messed with our scientific world view there was no possibility of going back to a pre-modern one. And now that Wittgenstein, Russell et all have  uncovered the realities of how slippery and problematic language  is, there is no going back to a simplistic view of it.

Cyber-conference

ETREK - I'm going to a conference in the USA without even leaving my desk. How clever is that?

I'm feeling smug about the  carbon emissions I will not be creating . And wondering what it will feel like to "talk" to a conference when there's no eye-contact.

Julian of Norwich as a blogger...

Steve Collins poses the unthinkable questions as usual...

The one thing needed...

The one thing needed in life is to find the idea for which I can live and die.
Søren Kierkegaard, 1836

Amen

Holiness is first and foremost a “positive” concept—i.e., one that gives affirmations of what we are to be rather than merely negative assertions as to what we are to avoid.

from chuck, via WIll

parables

Tony over at Storytellers has been reading Simon Goldhill’s Love, Sex and Tragedy: Why Classics matters. Simon was a colleague of mine in my previous post; he has an enourmous personality, and a sense of humour to match. I love this story that Tony has cited from Simon's book:

Sarah, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a friend of mine, was being prepared at school for a public exam in Religious Studies. For homework, she was asked the question ‘Why does Jesus tell parables?’ She was encouraged by her father, a pleasingly troublesome man, to read the Gospel of Mark, and especially chapter 4 verses 12-14, where Jesus explains his teaching technique. She dutifully did so, and quoted Mark in her answer: ‘I tell parables so that outsiders will not understand.’ Sarah’s teacher corrected her and said, “No, Jesus tells parables so that he could make his message available to all. Parables are a good way to get through to the ordinary, simple folk whom Jesus loved.” Sarah pointed out that the Gospel said the exact opposite. Parables are to exclude and baffle people. Her teacher underlined that ‘The answer is “so that everyone can get the message”.’ What’s a Gospel compared to a standard exam answer?

theology for everyday life

Which commenter was it asked the other day what APOPHATIC means? There is quite a decent little summary here, I noticed today - challenging the idea, among other things, that apophatic is merely "negative theology" (i.e. defining God by what he is not). There's another account here which looks OK on the whole...  and there's a definition at Wikipedia which is, alas, misleading in its brevity... anyone got ten minutes to go and sort it out? (Tony? Si?...)

Benedict

"...the promise to live in stability is the most drastic way imaginable of recognising the otherness of others – just as in marriage. If the other person is there, ultimately, on sufferance or on condition, if there is a time-expiry dimension to our relations with particular others, we put a limit on the amount of otherness we can manage. Beyond a certain point, we reserve the right to say that our terms must prevail after all. Stability or marital fidelity or any seriously covenanted relation to person or community resigns that long-stop possibility; which is why it feels so dangerous."
Rowan Williams  'God’s Workshop'

What the Bible really teaches

Christianity is contracting in Europe and North America, and that, too, is because of the impact of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists have managed to convince many people that the real Christian message is a literalistic one about the violent end of the world and the miraculous salvation of a few people with fantastic beliefs. Consequently, the majority of Western people have turned away from Christianity, as irrelevant to their hopes and concerns. So in the West as in the rest of the world it is important to distinguish Bible teaching and evangelicalism from fundamentalism, and expose the errors of fundamentalist interpretation.

Keith Ward, What the Bible Really Teaches, p.181

was Jesus an embryo?

interesting conundrum thrashed out here. Homoousios, anyone?

Losing my religion

When I wrote about "honest Thomas" earlier this month, I wish I'd had this quote to hand:

"The experience of losing your faith, or of having lost it, is an experience that in the long run belongs to faith; or at least it can belong to faith if faith is still valuable to you, and it must be or you would not have written me about this. I don't know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this experience that you are having right now of unbelief. "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith."

Flannery O'Connor

middle sex

Channel 4 is showing a moving documentary tonight called Middle Sex

Some of the work I have being doing recently on hermeneutics in and around the issues debated in the Windsor Report has led me into discussions with scientists (obstetricians in particular) who have spent a lifetime working in this area. What they have to say is that, however definitely most of us might experience our sexuality, there are people - one percent or so - whose sexuality is not clearly differentiated in the same way as the majority of the population.

Why and how that happens is becoming more and more clear as research continues. How those individuals should be treated - as babies, as young children - is a dilemma, and thinking about that has changed dramatically over the last few decades, particular after "remedial" therapies have proved tragically inadequate.

The theological question, I think, is not merely an ethical question concerned with the minority, but one that impinges upon all of us. Emerging scientific knowledge clearly challenges the idea that sexuality is simply differentiated between two poles. And the question that follows (or, more correctly, is one step back from that) is whether you have to be "normal", or like the majority of people in order to be fully human. What does it mean to be human? Whatever it means, in theological terms, it must be a categorisation that can include every person, whatever their idiosyncracies, and however much a minority they may be.