Jesus certainly did come to destroy the devil’s work, but His route for doing so was not conventional. Or at least, it was not the way any human would seek to do it. He did not rain down fire and death from the skies. He did not raise up an army and march off to war. He did not call on political leaders and those with money, power, and prominence to exert their influence and bring about change.

No, Jesus destroyed the devil’s works by doing the exact opposite things of the devil. He loved the unlovable. He forgave the worst of sinners. He healed the chronically sick. He fed the hungry. He empowered the weak. He extended grace to those who showed none. He was patient with repeat offenders. He did not seek to control. He never sought to enslave. He always refused to punish or condemn.

Amen!

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Norman has now revised and expanded his book and published it again, but for now only online, and free of charge. The extra material is about the early church’s teaching on the atonement. This is not formatted as an e-book but as one long HTML page, here: The Biblical Revelation of the Cross. See also Norman’s main Bible study website.

I have not read most of this material and so cannot review or endorse it. I can say from what I have read that it seems well argued. His conclusions seem to me on a skim reading a little too close to saying that Jesus’ death was only as a moral example. But I appreciate the way in which he links our salvation in with the Resurrection and the ongoing Christian life:

Our atonement, therefore, is achieved for us through our being raised up in Christ, who gave Himself for us that we might know God through Him and the power of the resurrection.

This is surely a book worth looking at for anyone interested in the atonement.

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I’m not sure what to add now, except that I agree with Joel Watts that

individual morality is not an issue the State should decide… If two consenting adults wish to engage in a commitment to one another … then so be it.

Meanwhile a friend of mine who was in a same sex marriage is hurting because she and her wife have ended their relationship. I hope she can find divorce equality if she needs it.

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The Departure of a Cardinal

In response to the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the BBC asks, Is it even possible to live a celibate life? On 22nd February Cardinal O’Brien raised this question, in the context of the celibacy required of Roman Catholic priests, in a BBC interview:

I realise that many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family of their own.

It was the very next day, 23rd February, that accusations of “inappropriate acts” by O’Brien, with three priests and a former priest, were made public and reported in The Observer. Two days later O’Brien was forced to resign. He later admitted that

there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

Now this raises questions of what dirty tricks might have been behind the timing of these allegations, forcing O’Brien out days before he was due to vote in the election for a new Pope, and so soon after he had hinted at what kind of candidate he might prefer. But my point here is not to discuss that, but to consider what the story might have to teach us about a Christian attitude towards sex and sexual orientation.

Is Keith O’Brien Gay?

A more significant question raised by these events concerns Cardinal O’Brien’s sexual orientation, if that is a meaningful concept. Is he in fact sexually attracted to primarily to men? To put it bluntly, is he gay? Has he tried to suppress this, but without complete success? Does he think it would have been easier to suppress this sexual preference if he had been married?

According to Wikipedia, O’Brien was at one time “regarded as “liberal” on the issue of homosexuality”. But by 2012 he was in the public eye as an outspoken opponent of same sex marriage, and the gay rights group Stonewall gave him their “Bigot of the Year” award. If the Cardinal is in fact gay, then I am sure such groups would also consider him for a hypocrite of the year award. But it would need a careful look at what he actually said before deciding if such an award would be fair.

Alternatively, the Cardinal may not actually be gay at all. Maybe he is attracted primarily to women, and could have been genuinely happy as a husband and father. But as a young man confined in an all male seminary and forbidden even to masturbate, he might have been driven by testosterone to inappropriate acts towards the only people who were available, his male students. If so, it would seem that enforced celibacy led him into what his church considers a greater sin than marriage, or masturbation: homosexual activity.

Whatever his natural sexual inclinations, surely the young priest quickly regretted those inappropriate acts. Very likely he came to hate them, and fear them being revealed, and that might well have fuelled a more general negative attitude towards same sex attraction and marriage.

Anyway, unless O’Brien chooses to reveal more himself, it is unlikely that we will ever know his true sexual preferences. And that is probably for the best. I would just say that it is sad that his distinguished career ended in this way, and wish him a long and happy retirement from public life.

Celibacy and Gay Bishops

While the Roman Catholic Church requires celibacy of its priests, with a very few exceptions, the Church of England can be said to require celibacy only of those who are homosexual. …

To be continued.

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The cardinal in his picture, clothed in bright red, is a male. But here in North America there are also female cardinals, although they don’t wear bright red. I haven’t seen any males recently, so perhaps they have all flown to Rome for the conclave. But the females seem to have stayed at home. After all, sadly no female can even dream of becoming Pope. So I saw a female just like this in our back yard:

Yes, I’m talking about the state bird of Virginia. You weren’t thinking anything else, were you?

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it is all part of  it is all part of an ancient conspiracy, arguably going all the way back to Eden, to deny to half the human race their status as equally made in the image of God.

Over the top? Maybe. Discuss!

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Peerage for the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

Wednesday 26th December 2012

The Queen has been pleased to confer a Peerage of the United Kingdom for Life on the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams Lord Archbishop of Canterbury upon his retirement from the See of Canterbury.

Rowan Williams will be created a Baron for Life by the style and title of Baron Williams of Oystermouth in the City and County of Swansea.

Dr Williams does not actually retire until 31st December, but most likely his Christmas sermon yesterday was his last official duty. So today was an appropriate day to announce this honour for him, a customary one for retiring Archbishops of Canterbury.

Paul Trathen, on Twitter, commented:

Oystermouth?! Eh?!? St John Chrysostom gets to be ‘golden-tongue’ and +Rowan gets to be ‘Oystermouth’?!?

Well, the name “Oystermouth” comes from the ruined mediaeval castle which overlooks Swansea Bay, and which was no doubt very familiar to Rowan as he grew up and went to school in the Welsh city of Swansea. In fact the name has nothing to do with the shellfish for which the bay is well known, but is a corruption of a Welsh word. But Rowan’s new title was asking for comments like Paul’s.

I replied to Paul suggesting that Rowan’s title might mean that he has

A mouth hard to open but when it does you find pearls of wisdom?

In response to this, Paul wrote:

As you are not much of a fan, I thought you might suggest indigestible, an acquired taste, or slightly fishy!?!

Well, I could have put it like that! It is undeniable (not least because it is well recorded on this blog) that I have had my differences with the retiring Archbishop. There was a time when, it seemed, whenever he opened his mouth it was to put his foot in it, rather than to bring forth pearls of wisdom. The Sharia law controversy was a particularly memorable example of that. He also admitted that he didn’t like the “political bits” of his role, leading me to suggest that he left it for an appointment where these “political bits” are not central. But I have to accept that he was landed with almost impossible tasks such as preserving unity through the 2008 Lambeth Conference and in the Church of England debate on women bishops. Could anyone else have done better with these tasks? Probably not.

Anyway, although Rowan is not dead, it seems to me bad form to speak ill of the newly ennobled. So I will repeat the substance of my tweet. As he transitions into his new appointment as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, I expect the new Lord Williams to live up to his “Oystermouth” title by opening his mouth in public only rarely, and only when he has genuine pearls of wisdom to offer to the church or to the world.

I wish Rowan and his wife Jane all the best as they return to the city and university where I knew Jane, and where she later met her husband.

I also wish all the best to Rowan’s successor, Justin Welby, now Bishop of Durham, as he prepares to move in the spring to Canterbury Cathedral and Lambeth Palace.

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The TARDIS, the Doctor’s time machine which on the outside looks like a British police telephone box, is famous for being bigger on the inside than on the outside. As reported by the BBC, an American Doctor Who fan has created a model TARDIS which, he claims, is “Bigger On The Inside. No, Really.” Apparently it’s all a matter of some software trickery called “augmented reality”.

I must say I’m not very impressed. My church in England manages to look bigger on the inside than on the outside. That’s not because of clever technology, but because its entrance is a small storefront and the sanctuary (at least that’s what they would call it here in America) is hidden behind the other shops. So it is easy to create this illusion, but not so easy for it to become a reality.

But it’s an interesting idea, a structure being bigger on the inside than on the outside. Where did it come from? The Doctor Who writers didn’t take it from my church, which was built in 1971. But could they have taken it from C.S. Lewis? In his festive post Christmas in Narnia Tim Chesterton, himself a Doctor Who fan, writes:

In the last ‘Narnia’ story,The Last Battle, we see the end of the world of Narnia. At one point in the story the children find themselves in a stable. Seen from the outside it looked small and dingy, but when they go through the door they find themselves in a beautiful country that seems to stretch on forever. Someone comments that the stable is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Indeed. The precise words of C.S. Lewis, in the mouth of the Lord Digory (p.128 of my Puffin edition), are

Its inside is bigger than its outside.

So, is this where the Doctor Who writers got their idea for the TARDIS? Quite possibly. Lewis’ stable is also connected with a kind of time travel, as it brought characters from the Narnia’s ancient past (indeed Digory watched its first dawn) into its last days. And The Last Battle (1956) was a recent book when the TARDIS was first shown in 1963. It is perhaps a good thing that Lewis never got to watch Doctor Who and see how his idea had been abused, as he died the day before the first episode was shown.

But where did C.S. Lewis get this idea from? Many of his science fiction motifs are derived from others, such as the spacecraft in Out Of The Silent Planet which is closely modelled on the one in The First Men In The Moon by H.G. Wells. In the case of the TARDIS-like stable, Lewis gives us a strong hint about his source in his next words in the story, also quoted by Tim Chesterton:

“Yes,” said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”

As Tim explains, the whole Narnia series is filled with implicit Christian teaching. But these words of Lucy are probably the only explicit mention of anything Christian in any of the books.

So, it seems, the original TARDIS was the stable in Bethlehem – or whatever the building was where Mary laid her child in a manger. This stable couldn’t fly; in the legend of the Holy House of Loreto it was Mary’s family home which flew to Italy, carried by angels. But the stable was the birthplace of the only true Time Lord. Jesus was bigger than the whole world, and he still is as he reigns in heaven. But he allowed himself to become human, and even for a time to be limited by the body of a tiny baby.

Why did he do this? He did it so that we, his human brothers and sisters, could share with him what God intended for humanity, to rule over his creation (Genesis 1:26) and to be seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6).

That birth in Bethlehem was only the beginning of the story. This Christmas, don’t stop at the end of Chapter One, but read on to the end, and find how you too can follow Jesus and play an important part in God’s reality show in this world, which is far more exciting than Doctor Who!

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Wishing you all a Merry Christmas!

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A memorial stone to writer and scholar CS Lewis is to be placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in 2013.

A service will take place on 22 November 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of his death.

Excellent news! We have exactly one year to wait for the big day – which I hope won’t be overshadowed by the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who the very next day. (Oh, and some President was assassinated, but will anyone remember that?) Thanks to Vernon White, Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey and an old friend from my Clare College, Cambridge (not sure if he will remember me!), for apparently being one of the driving forces behind this. Lewis well deserves his place among the greats of British literature.

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