The Ugley Vicar

Some of the best stuff you'll read on the Trinity ...

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:15:25 PDT

One of the books that most shaped my theology, indeed my life, was a rather cumbersomely produced reprint of a document called The Practical Approach to Muslims, which I picked up in St Andrew's Bookshop, Plaistow.

This book made such an impact on me that I bought a second copy so that, were I to lend out the first and not have it returned, I'd possess a backup!

The book consists simply of the lecture notes of Bishop Jens Christensen (1899-1966), but it is a goldmine of theological insight and challenge.

What made (and makes) Christensen's book so interesting is that his theology developed not in the usual Western environment of faith in God vs unbelief, but in one of faith in God vs another 'faith in God'. As such its perspective is therefore often quite different from that of Western theology.

Christensen considers, for example, the political role of Christianity over against the Islamic concept of the theocratic state - and has many insightful things to say to us as a result.

His material on the Trinity is also developed from a different angle. Most 'Westerners' think the problem is how to explain something incomprehensible. To Christensen, the issue is how to present a unique truth that the target audience regard as blasphemous - not what most preachers face on Trinity Sunday.

Indeed there are many things in Christensen's book which speak to questions that we ought to be asking but often aren't because we've grown up with a 'Christendom' shaped mindset, where the alternatives are 'belief in God' or 'no belief in God'. However, as events in the last week have shown, that is not the only problem our society faces. Equally, it was not the problem faced by the early Church. The result is a book full of theological gems.

The good news is that you can get Christensen's book for nothing (and I don't have to worry about a backup). Follow this link and you can download a pdf file. Get it, read it, learn from it.

Here's some of his thoughts on the Trinity:

"The common religion of the majority of people in most western countries might be called unitarian Deism."

"Let us remember, however, that clergymen are usually just ordinary people who do not rise above the level of the prevalent thinking of their own particular community."

"Another difficulty, found not only among laymen but also all too often among missionaries, is that it is utterly impossible for them to discover any vital difference between Islam and Christianity. The Supreme Being, they say, is the same, whether you call him God or Allah. As long as people worship Him and live decent, moral lives, what difference does it make if the outward formalities and rites differ? Naturally the person of our Lord has no unique meaning for people who think along these lines."

"your first question should not be how you can present the dogma of the Holy Trinity: it should be either whether you yourself are just wanting to defend an old teaching of the Church, or whether you want to know how best to witness to a faith which genuinely conditions your own life."

"for about three years something was actually happening. And that which happened affected the lives of a certain group of people so radically that it would have been ridiculous of them to stop and argue the how, why and wherefore of it all. They simply said: ‘Father, Son, Holy Spirit’, and they said it naturally. To expect then to argue the how or the possibility or the reality of the Holy Trinity would be just as ridiculous as asking any man how God is God."

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Does anyone have the faintest idea ...

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Thu, 23 May 2013 09:48:56 PDT

... how Arum Palaestinum came to be known also as 'Solomon's Lily'?

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Martin Luther's "sin boldly" quote in context

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:52:27 PDT

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious³¹ sinners. Be a sinner and sin³² boldly,³³ but believe and³⁴ rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world]³⁵ we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness,³⁶ but, as Peter says,³⁷ we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness³⁸ dwells. It is enough that by³⁹ the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.⁴⁰ No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins⁴¹ by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.⁴²

³¹The translation here is based on the text offered by the manuscript copy of this letter; the printed editions have a text which can be translated as: “only fictitiously sinners.”

³²The manuscript copy of this letter has the following text: “et peccaris,” “and you will have sinned,” which makes little sense; therefore the translation is based on the text offered by the earliest printed edition.

³³Passages such as this were misunderstood and used as main arguments against Luther. Luther was interpreted as encouraging laxity and licentiousness. When the Peasants’ War broke out, this opinion was strengthened. Erasmus, for instance, constantly suspected that Luther was stimulating discontent and even rebellion with his ideas and work. For the proper understanding of this statement, see W. H. T. Dau, Luther Examined and Re-examined (St. Louis, Mo., 1917), pp. 111 ff. See also pp. 12 f.

³⁴The phrase “but believe and” is missing in the manuscript copy of this letter but is found in the earliest printed edition.

³⁵The word “here” is missing in the manuscript copy of this letter but is found in the earliest printed edition.

³⁶The manuscript copy of this letter offers instead animae, i.e., “of the soul”; the translation is based on the earliest printed edition.

³⁷II Pet. 3:13.

³⁸The manuscript copy offers instead anima, i.e., “soul”; the translation is based on the earliest printed edition.

³⁹The manuscript copy offers a text which has to be translated: “that we have come to know the riches of God’s glory”; the translation is based on the earliest printed edition.

⁴⁰John 1:29.

⁴¹See I Cor. 6:20 and I Pet. 1:18–19. The printed editions of this letter offer a text which has to be translated: “think that the price and the redemption [paid and] completed for us by … is too small?” The translation is based on the manuscript copy of this letter.

⁴²So according to the manuscript copy of this letter. The printed editions offer a text which has to be translated: “for you are a mighty.…”

Martin Luther, vol. 48, Luther's Works, Vol. 48 : Letters I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works, 48:281 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999, c1963).

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A Saviour from Invincible Sins

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:50:43 PDT

My guest blogger today is Dr Martin Luther:

“The main knowledge and true wisdom of Christians, then, is this: to regard as very serious and true these words of Paul, that Christ was given over to death, not for our righteousness or holiness but for our sins, which are real sins—great, many, in fact, infinite and invincible. Therefore you must not think of them as minor or suppose that your own works can remove them. Nor must you despair on account of their gravity if you feel them oppressing you either in life or in death. But you must learn from Paul here to believe that Christ was given, not for sham or counterfeit sins, nor yet for small sins, but for great and huge sins; not for one or two sins but for all sins; not for sins that have been overcome—for neither man nor angel is able to overcome even the tiniest sin—but for invincible sins. And unless you are part of the company of those who say “our sins,” that is, who have this doctrine of faith and who teach, hear, learn, love, and believe it, there is no salvation for you.”

Martin Luther, vol. 26, Luther's Works, Vol. 26 : Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works, 26:35 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1963).

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Rob Bell's train wreck on same-sex sex

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 03:17:22 PDT

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Après cela, le déluge — from women bishops to LGBT inclusion in the elections to General Synod

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 03:18:16 PDT

Here in the Diocese of Chelmsford we have a casual vacancy for General Synod in the House of Clergy. Nominations are in (no, I’m not standing) and voting papers are going out.

Mine haven’t arrived yet (!), but I have seen the list of candidates and the addresses they give in support of their election. As one might expect, the position of candidates on the issue of women bishops is generally made clear. What is perhaps less expected is that in some cases, so is their explicit support for ‘full inclusion’ of same-sex relationships.

Of course this was bound to happen at some stage. I had long thought that if the matter of women bishops were not sorted out this summer (and what are the chances of that, I wonder?) then the next round of elections to the Synod, in 2015, would be a two-issue race. In the event I was just a year and a half out.

So watch this space. Perhaps when the votes are in I will be able to offer an analysis.

Certainly, however, it bears out the prognosis of many (and a statement made to me by a leading Anglican theologian) that there has been an agenda: defeat the Anglican Covenant, get women bishops, get LGBT inclusion.

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He Ascended into Heaven

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:49:06 PDT

Today is Ascension Day (or the Feast of the Ascension), when we remind ourselves of something affirmed in the Creeds and made explicit in the Thirty-nine Articles:

Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day. (Article IV)

For some, of course, this is a piece of nonsense. “You don’t mean to say Jesus went up like a rocket into the sky, until he disappeared? There’s nothing up there — only space.”

And no, we don’t mean to say that (although one of the shrines at Walsingham dedicated to this festival does have an impressive and amusing pair of feet disappearing into the ceiling). For a start, I’ve long taken it that the cloud that hid Jesus from the sight of his disciples (Acts 16:9) had more to do with the glory of God (cf Dan 7:11) than the meteorology of Israel.

But in any case, the point being acted out before the disciples has more to do with the issue raised in our Articles than with the geography of the universe (though let’s face it, we still think of heaven as somehow ‘out’ or ‘up’ there — it is simply natural to us, like thinking of the sun ‘rising’).

Look again at Article IV. “Christ did truly rise from death”. I think it would be fair to say virtually all Christians agree he ‘rose from death’. The Article pins down what this means — how he ‘truly’ rose, and that is in his body of flesh and bones. It was, as we say, a ‘physical’ resurrection. Notions of a ‘spiritual’ resurrection are excluded by this, as they are by the resurrection accounts themselves.

But the Article also seems to be making another, and fundamentally important point, namely that these things — his flesh and bones — are included in those “appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature”.

Now this immediately goes against the grain of a lot of people’s thinking. ‘Flesh and bones’ we easily regard as secondary to the true ‘nature’ of humanity, or even as an impediment to spirituality.

The notion of Christ’s ‘flesh and bones’ ascending to the heavens is in danger of being derided as a ‘primitive’ understanding, unworthy of a ‘higher’ spirituality. It was not what he meant, but it comes close to what a former Bishop of Durham sounded like he was saying when he referred to a ‘conjuring trick with bones’. Careless talk costs souls.

But it is precisely for this reason that the Ascension confronts us with its uncompromising physicality, reminding us that human nature is embodied. We are not souls ‘in’ bodies, we are “ourselves, our souls and bodies”.

The Ascension, in short, is an affirmation of physicality — of the fact that God made a world of ‘stuff’. Where there was ‘formless void’ (Gen 1:2), he introduced substance and ‘shape’. And that was a good thing — a very good thing (Gen 2:31)!

Our nature is to be ‘embodied’. A ‘disembodied’ person might exist, but they would be incomplete — in biblical terms ‘imperfect’ (which can mean not ‘defective’ but ‘unfinished’, cf Heb 2:10).

Of course our flesh is frail and fallible, but as I indicated elsewhere, this perhaps ought to be given more recognition in terms of the interconnectedness of the physical and spiritual that we find in Scripture.

Meanwhile, on this Ascension Day, rejoice at the value God puts on your body:

¹³ “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food”—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ¹⁴ By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. (1 Cor 6:13-14)

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My apologies to those who like poetry

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:47:14 PDT

My apologies to those who like poetry. This was ‘inspired’ by a number of things I’ve heard over the years and prompted by something else.

THE LIFEGUARD

1. The day had seemed to start quite well,
The ‘sea of life’ a gentle swell.
When all at once I felt a change,
The world around was growing strange.

2. I felt a ‘rip-tide’ drag me down,
I felt myself begin to drown.
Fear rose, a tide within my breast,
A band of panic round my chest.

3. I struggled in the waves alone,
I searched around, all help had flown.
And then a voice came, close at hand,
“To call the lifeguard, raise your hand.”

4. “You need not shout, but only wave,
He looks for whom he needs to save,
He watches closely sea and sand.
To call the lifeguard, raise your hand.”

5. “For some, it is the grip of sin,
That threatens, like the circling fin
of ‘Great White’ shark, whose mouth of death,
Can take away your very breath.”

6. “For others, it’s the weight of life’s
pains, thorns and thistles, griefs and strife,
That drags them far away from land.
To call the lifeguard, raise your hand.”

7. My hand went up, and lo, HE SAW!
My hand went up, I did no more.
He ran across the far-off beach,
He ran, this drowning soul to reach.

8. But all of this was lost to me,
As I was drifting out to sea,
By death’s dread terrors quite unman’d
All I could do was raise my hand.

9. And then I heard a voice draw near,
Me, overwhelmed by waves of fear,
He, strong to bring me back to land,
Said, “Mate, looks like you need a hand.”

10. My fear for what lay underneath,
Began to give way to relief,
For where I had imagined harms,
I found were everlasting arms.

11. When Jordan’s verge I someday tread,
These words I’ll hear inside my head,
“If you would see the Promised Land,
To call the lifeguard, raise your hand.”

12.. So if you see my hand go up,
Don’t hand to me the water cup,
Or fetch the bedpan, next of kin —
These cannot save me from my sin.

13. And do not think that I am calm,
That’s not why I lift up my arm!
It’s just this thing (you’ll understand),
“To call the lifeguard, raise your hand.”

13. For he’ll be looking for that wave,
That says, “Saviour, come now to save,”
My anxious fears he’ll bid subside,
He’ll land me safe on Canaan’s side.

14. The lifeguard, who himself once died,
Who sank under death’s awful tide,
Knows how it feels to be so weak,
You cannot pray, you cannot speak.

15. He asks only we trust in him,
And not ourselves, to draw us in,
To land us safely on the sand,
“To call the lifeguard, raise your hand.”

(PS: In case you’re wondering, I’m OK.)

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Where Shall Wisdom be Found, if Not in Waterstones?

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Thu, 02 May 2013 00:15:45 PDT

Today I was in Waterstone’s bookshop in Cambridge, buying yet another book that will have to get in the queue.

Reflecting later about the material on display, however, I find myself thinking about Paul in Athens. In his case, his spirit was provoked because, “he saw that the city was full of idols”. In my case, it was not idols that filled the bookshop, but it was certainly idolatry.

Here was volume after volume on the same issue: why are we here and what does it mean?

And as we know, idolatry has a strong component of worshipping and serving the creature, but failing to acknowledge the Creator (Rom 1:25).

Most of these books were what might be called pop-science or pop-philosophy. There was inevitably little that would qualify as hard science or serious philosophy and that was in the specialist sections upstairs. (I was grateful that serious philosophy was only on the third, not the fourth, floor or I would be writing this from a hospital bed.)

One can therefore easily dismiss these works precisely for their popular appeal, their lack of seriousness: Darwin By Design, Why Your Brain Can Think for Itself — I made these up, but as titles they would easily be at home amongst the works on offer. Yet for all their fatuousness, they would just be the equivalent of “To An Unknown God”. Real books purporting to explain reality to us (and to explain us away as a side effect of the real world) were everywhere.

There was even a stack of books on something like Reading the Bible as Science. Everyone got a look in. (Perhaps there was an Agnosto Theo, after all!) But just as there was little serious science or philosophy, so it seemed there was no genuine Christian input. The Christian books were also in a little section to themselves, up on that third floor where you really felt the lack of oxygen.

Yet surely if the displays on lower floors say anything about market forces, there is a crying need — indeed a desperate want — of something telling the truth.

On my way out of the shop, therefore, the words that came to mind were those of Job 28 (9–12, ESV)

Man puts his hand to the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots. He cuts out channels in the rocks, and his eye sees every precious thing. He dams up the streams so that they do not trickle, and the thing that is hidden he brings out to light. “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?”

Science? Been there. Technology? Done that. Big Bang? Sorted. Evolutionary psychology? Sussed.

But wisdom and understanding — where are they? If anyone possessed them, surely people of all nations would travel the earth to hear it, sent by the kings of whole world, just as they did to Solomon.

Dear brother, dear sister, you and I have the wisdom that is from God.

You do believe that, don’t you? Whether you are an ‘evangelical’ or a ‘liberal’, a ‘conservative’ or a ‘radical’, a ‘traditionalist’ or a ‘reformer’, indeed whether you believe it or not, it is true:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption ... (1 Corinthians 1:26–30, ESV)

Make no mistake though! This ‘wisdom from God’ is not confined to ‘the good news about Jesus’. Solomon’s wisdom encompassed botany and horticulture (1 Ki 4:33). He could hold his own with the wisest of Egypt and the East, just as in another generation, three young Jewish boys surpassed the ‘magi’ of the Babylonian court. And his forerunners in the business of Temple building, men like himself “filled with the spirit of wisdom” (Ex 28:3, KJV, Heb) were both craftsmen and artists of the first order.

It is emphatically not wise to say, “All you need to know is Jesus.” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), but it is not the end, nor is it a substitute for wisdom. Rather, it is the gateway through which we enter into that elusive storehouse where wisdom is actually to be found.

Thus it is that which takes a ‘big bang theory’ or indeed (dare I say) the process of natural selection (which is not so much a theory but, as I think John Lennox says, a truism – a commonplace statement of the obvious) and interprets them — critiquing them so as to question some of the assumptions made by those who hold to them, and applying them in such a way as they fit the known facts of the universe (including consciousness, reason and moral value), not the doctrinaire assertions of those who assume what the facts must be.

Thus we will engage with the likes of the Nobel-prizewinning biologist Jacques Monod and, whilst relishing his discoveries about biology, shout ‘phooey’ to his pronouncements about the meaning(lessness) of it all.

When I read his Chance and Necessity back in the 1970s, even I could see that smuggling in the principles of French Socialism on the back of a case that life is the result of biological accident and chemical determinism was a bit far-fetched. Yet there are pronouncements about ‘the meaning of life’ being made to day by those of the same mind which are no less tosh for the fact that the fanfare accompanying them is louder and more socially acceptable.

Soldiers of Christ, arise and put your armour on — or rather, take up the sword which is the word of God and the pen which is supposedly mightier than the sword. Write, write and keep writing until what you’re writing finally takes a form that will penetrate even the ears of those who gather round them people to tell them what their itching ears yearn to hear.

Speak against the idols. Or even better, do as Paul did and begin from those idols to tell them about the God who actually made the world and everything in it (big bangs, black holes and all), who is not far from every one of us and who desires that we should seek him and reach out for him and perhaps find him.

It is a task beyond me, I’m afraid, but it could be you.

Good luck. God bless you. I’ll see you in the assembly area.

(Sorry, I completely slipped into another character there.)

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"The Role of the Bible in the Contemporary Church" (Review)

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:47:53 PDT

Few Anglicans in Brisbane have any depth of knowledge of the Bible; few read or study the Bible regularly; and few have any sense of encountering the reality of God in and through scripture. Consequently, few Anglicans speak passionately about their experience of God or feel comfortable speaking about their faith with others.

So says the Archbishop of Brisbane, and those who are not tired of the subject will find an erudite analysis of some of the reasons why this is so here in Mark Thompson's review of "The Once and Future Scriptures: Exploring the Role of the Bible in the Contemporary Church".

As one, however, who has grown very tired of the level of discussion about the subject on this blog, I am keeping comments here closed.

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Misleading Headlines

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:30:42 PDT

I love it when newspapers publish stuff like this:

Bungalow partially demolished after new £25,000 Audi smashes into wall when convertible driver collapses at the wheel

Obviously they should make those drivers less 'bendy'.

Thanks to the online Daily Mail.

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Towards a Christian aesthetic

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:57:24 PDT

I have just had one of those 'penny dropping' moments when you feel you have been unbelievably slow to spot something that is blatantly obvious.

For some time now I've been teaching on the biblical wisdom literature and enjoying the study this involves. One thing in particular is the way that the structure of 1 Kings 1-11 emphasizes stresses Solomon's wisdom as absolutely foundational to his kingship. It is not just that he is a king who 'happens to be wise'. He is the expression of wisdom.

1 Kings 1-11 follows a precise 'chiastic' structure, at the heart of which is the building of the Temple. (I'll post on this another time.)

Up until now, however, I'd simply presented the temple-building as the necessary 'hinge' in this passage - allowing the narrative to stress Solomon's wisdom both on the 'way in' and the 'way out' of the chiasm.

Doh!

Then today on Facebook (yes, I know), I saw a post about Christianity and aesthetics. This is also a subject that interests me, and as I was putting in my two penn'orth, the light slowly began to dawn. This is (pretty much) what I posted:

I often ask, "Who were the first people in the Bible we are told were specifically filled with God's Spirit and why was this?"

The (surprising) answer is:

“See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you (Exodus 31:2–6 [ESV]).
Unfortunately, the ESV (even more so than the NIV) blows it in 28:3, which it translates, "You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron’s garments etc." Compare the AV: "And thou shalt speak unto all that are wise hearted (חַכְמֵי־לֵב) whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom (רוּחַ חָכְמָה), that they may make Aaron’s garments etc."

Putting the two together, building the Tabernacle is a task requiring wisdom expressed in the aesthetic crafts. Who is the next 'Tabernacle builder'? Solomon, the 'man of wisdom'.

And who is the true Tabernacle Builder?

Of course there should be a Christian aesthetic, flowing out of the Wisdom of God through us, into the world. Wonderful, eh?

So in other words, the chiasmus of 1 Kings 1-11 is not built around the temple building merely because of its importance as an event, nor just to give us two bites at the 'cherry' of Solmon's wisdom, but because Wisdom is the key to temple building.

Make of this what you will. I need to give my poor brain a rest.

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Manchester 'Statement of Needs' violates existing Church 'code'

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:12:43 PDT

Once again (following a similar situation regarding the Bishop of Salisbury) the 'Statement of Needs' put out by a diocese seeking a new bishop has violated the code on appointments regarding views about the ordination and consecration of women.

In section 6 of the Statement of Need for the Diocese of Manchester it says the bishop,

... will be open to the ministry of women at all levels of the church’s life whilst respecting and seeking to hold together those of differing views.

The first section of the 1993 Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod states, however, quite plainly:

There will be no discrimination against candidates either for ordination or for appointment to senior office in the Church of England on the grounds of their views about the ordination of women to the priesthood.

Of course "the times they are a'changing". Everyone knows that. But they have not changed yet. And the language of the statement of needs is plainly incompatible with the present situation regarding senior appointments in the Church of England.

The question I find myself asking is why it is OK to ignore the rules in this case? What makes this so special? And where else does this allow rules to be broken?

And did anyone on the panel drawing this statement of needs not realize what they were doing? If they didn't they should have. And if they did, well, shame on them.

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The Word who guarantees the word

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 01:19:09 PDT

Readers of this blog may recently have noticed a contribution which went something along the lines of “The Bible is not the Word of God, Jesus is.”

In one form or another, this is actually a remarkably common view, held by people who feel they are not merely being reasonable but are standing up for dogmatic orthodoxy (though they might be hesitant to subscribe dogmatically to that notion). “Some Christians,” they will argue, “Seem to believe in a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Scripture. But God is not a book!”

It is subtle, it is appealing, it is (if I might say so) flattering to the self (“I have seen the light”) — and it is seriously wrong.

Not least, though, it is wrong because it sits on the very branch it is sawing off.

As a statement in itself, it is analogous to that old conundrum, “Everything I say is untrue.” Ah, but if everything you say is untrue, then what about that statement? Is it also untrue? And if it is untrue, then everything you say is not untrue. But then that means what you’ve said is untrue, which means it was a lie ... and so on.

The statement “Jesus is the Word of God” comes to us from the Bible. But according to the proponents of this position, the Bible is not is “the Word of God”. So when they say, “Jesus is the Word of God”, the one thing they don’t have is God’s word for it.

At this point, however, we must watch out for a bear trap, namely a circular argument that the Bible is God’s word because it says so in the Bible. It does say so, and a certain amount of ‘foundationalism’ is unavoidable when it comes to the authority of Scripture. To what else can we appeal for that authority except the Bible?

But the statement “Jesus is God’s Word” is actually fundamentally helpful — as no doubt it was intended to be! And it helps us see how and why the Bible can be God’s Word.

The problem with all of this, as the postmodernists began to observe some decades ago, is that it is all just words. As one correspondent here put it, “just ‘words’ about the Word”. But as another, from a similar perspective as the first, said, “Words are always in search of a meaning.” They are, from the postmodern perspective, not ‘meaningful’ like numbers. Everything is ‘interpretation’.

Who will rescue us from this Babel of verbal confusion?

The answer lies in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word”, and its assertion that Jesus is, indeed, the Word of God. For what this means is that at the heart of God’s own self is the quintessence of words: ‘the WORD’.

This does not, however, relegate words to the status of ‘just words’. In fact its effect is the exact opposite of the conclusion drawn by those who say, on this basis, “The Bible is therefore not the Word of God.” On the contrary, it is the very guarantee that God speaks words and that words speak of God. The statement “Jesus is the Word” is actually the anchor holding fast the ship, not an island standing on its own in a sea of verbal confusion.

After all, what is the statement, “Jesus is the Word of God”? Is it not itself ‘just words’. What I think our debaters want to reply is this: “Of course it is! Indeed what it says is that behind all the words we discover something else — a person!”

It all sounds terribly noble. But the problem is that what we are told about this person — the way to regard the ‘personality’ — is not (in this particular instance) as Saviour or Lord (surely viable options) but as Word. And what is a word? It is not just a communication! It is not a ‘sign’ or a ‘wonder’ — things by which God indeed communicates and by which this one will (we are told) reveal his glory (Jn 2:11). No, it is verbal communication. It is the basic unit of speech.

However, the fact (I am assuming it is a fact) that this One is ‘the Word’, means that ‘the words’ do not just communicate about God. Rather, they are very basis of communion between me and the God with whom this Word was from the beginning. Words draw me into the Word and share his essence.

This why we are told we live “by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” It is not ‘just words’. It is not just that God speaks and we listen — much less that people speak about God and we interpret as best we can. It is that the Word comes to us in the Word of God.

One last thing. This argument, such as it is, generally tends to revolve around the Bible and its authority. But the Word of God is not just the Bible! The Bible is, as the Anglican Articles put it, “God’s Word written”. It is also (according to the Apostolic testimony) theopneustos — God breathed (2 Tim 3:15). It has a special status.

But the Word of God is a living Word, which goes out through preaching and proclamation. Where the Bible is preached (declares the Proclamation Trust), God’s voice is heard. Where the gospel goes (says Luke) the word of God spreads.

What has come into the world is the Word of life. That stands written in the Word of God (1 Jn 1:1). And it is proclaimed in the Word of God, preached and taught, “so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete” (vv 3-4). It is all words, but not ‘just words’, for from the Word comes the Word which brings us to the Word.

EM Forster’s character, Mrs Moore, in A Passage to India, evidently derided “poor little talkative Christianity”.

We reply, wrong! Blessed, fortunate Christianity, whose Saviour sustains all things by the power of his Word (Heb 1:3) and whose Word has power to save (Jas 1:21). Indeed, whose God is Word. Hallelujah!

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Please note ...

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:29:18 PDT

"Jesus is the Word of God." True -- it says so in the Bible.

"The Word of God is Jesus." False -- it includes the Bible.

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Does "the flesh" really mean flesh after all?

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:38:33 PDT

When I was at theological college, we were still using older English versions of the Bible like the RSV for our studies. Quite often we would come across the word ‘flesh’ used in a pejorative sense. Thus, for example, in Romans 7:25 we would read, “I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

Always we were told, however, that the Apostle didn’t really mean ‘flesh’ — there’s nothing wrong with our bodies, we were assured, and especially there’s nothing wrong with sex (the subject that usually came to mind when people talked about ‘sins of the flesh’).

Not only were we told this, but later translations came to reflect it. In the NIV84 edition, that same verse from Romans reads, “I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” The physical has disappeared, to be replaced by pscyho-spiritual.

And certainly we might make an argument for this. When Paul writes earlier about our former life “in the flesh” (v5), there is clearly a sense in which this clearly describing something other than just ‘our bodies’, since we are clearly not now ‘disembodied’ — whatever this former ‘in the flesh’ means, it clearly has a spiritual component, contrasted with our “new life of the Spirit” (v6).

Yet recently I have been wondering — though it is only speculation — whether we haven’t been too quick to discard the idea that “the flesh” means exactly that, and that there is an intrinsic connection between our bodies and sin.

Over my post-Easter break, I enjoyed reading Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. Nagel is an atheist, but he is not (at least in this book) a career ‘believer-basher’. He doesn’t believe in any sort of god, but he doesn’t rely on ‘disproving’ religion to bolster his arguments or gee up his audience.

In Mind and Cosmos, his asks how three fundamental features of the universe — consciousness, reason and value — can be explained and understood, and he asserts strongly that since under the present ‘Darwinian-materialist’ model they can’t be, that model is “almost certainly wrong” and needs to be refined.

One of the points he makes about consciousness, however, has (I believe) important convergences with the biblical understanding. Nagel observes that consciousness is bound to matter, and that whilst it is not merely a ‘side effect’ of physical processes, it relies on those processes for its existence.

Now something else I was taught in the 1970s was that the same is basically true of us. The Bible does not encourage us to think of ourselves as ‘souls in bodies’, but as ‘living beings’. The Hebrew term we were pointed to is nephesh (eg Genesis 2:7), which can be translated ‘soul’ but which earlier has applied to every living creature (1:20,21,24,30). In other words, at the material level, human beings are just like the animals — a thought, incidentally, we find reinforced in the observations of The Preacher of Ecclesiastes:

Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit (ruach) of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? (Ecc 3:19-21)

Observationally, The Preacher is right — who can know? And therefore the thought he expresses in v 18 is also justified: “As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals.”

In short, flesh is not just something which we inhabit, like a driver sits in a car. It is that by which we are constituted. Of course we are more than flesh — that is a point Nagel makes — but flesh is the means through which are able to ‘be’.

The way I have illustrated this in other contexts is to compare ourselves at the level of our consciousness to a tune played on a piano. What we think of as ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ is like the pianist, the piano is our ‘flesh’, and as the pianist hits the keys and the pedals, so the music flows. The music is neither ‘the piano’ nor the pianist — separate one from the other and see what happens. But neither is there music (or, to apply my illustration, a living human consciousness) without a piano.

And there is another feature to this illustration which I believe is helpful. If the piano is damaged, the tune changes. I have often applied this to people when talking about a disease like Alzheimer’s. We should not be surprised or too disturbed, I have said, to find the person is not the one we knew — the piano is damaged and the tune is not the same. But what if they got a new piano? Then the tune would come back, and even better!

(Incidentally, some of this thinking I owe to the late Professor Donald M MacKay, an outstanding communications scientist and Christian who taught at Keele University when I was there.)

Furthermore I would argue that this model finds some support in the biblical text. The distinction between man and the animals in Genesis is the connectedness of the former to God, and therefore man’s rule over the animals. But at the physical level they are one and the same (note how the blessing of 1:28 has to do duty for both man and the animals, cf 1:22). And this is emphasised by the verdict of 3:19: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” — words echoed, of course, by the Anglican funeral service.

This is further underlined, of course, by the message of the resurrection, which ought to be more prominent in our theology than tends to be the case. I have often said that the Christian hope is not that we go to heaven when we die, but that heaven is coming to earth when Christ returns. (A simplification, but it makes the point!) Take Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5:

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (1-4, NIV84)

There is a surely a sense here of being burdened not just in the body but by it. We are dwelling in this mortal body, looking forward to a heavenly one. Yet importantly this does not lead to a devaluing of the body, but an elevation of its importance:

God raised the Lord will also raise us up by his power. [...] Therefore glorify God with your body. (1 Cor 6:14, 20, ESV)

Meanwhile, however, we live in this body — this flesh — and we live in the knowledge that ‘all creation’ is groaning whilst we wait (and it waits) for “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:22-23). And that we live in this body, which is part of the fallen creation, does that not have implications for the self which is manifested in through body?

Bear in mind, we are not saying that the ‘living self’ is a helpless projection of the body. Though such ‘epiphenomenalism’ is increasingly popular, it fails to fit the evidence — let alone the testimony of Scripture. We remain creatures with reason and choice.

Nevertheless, our flesh is the stuff with which we reason and make choices — and clearly it is limited in the first regard. I have immense admiration for people who can do hard sums. I don’t mean things like long division (though that is bad enough) but rather things like working out Fermat’s Last Theorem or following Andrew Wiles’s proof. At that point I am happy to admit there are things some brains can do which mine can’t.

But if it applies in the area of reason, why not in the area of moral choice? Remember, we are not just talking about ‘the brain’ — though that is crucial. I am not just a brain on legs, I am a body, and my body is how I am manifested. This is why the biblical writers (as were others in their day) are suspicious of the appetites — of the “passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul” (1 Pet 2:11). No wonder Paul writes,

So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Cor 9:26–27, ESV)

Now imagine a body which not only neither ages, nor gets ill (something we often remark on), but which suffers from no fleshly passions. Will not resisting sin be a different matter? And is this what the Apostle means when he writes in Romans 7:4, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Perhaps, after all, ‘the flesh’ really is the flesh, not because sexual sins are particularly bad (though they are, cf 1 Cor 6:18), but because we are “Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail”.

I leave it to you to consider.

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Further Thoughts on Sexuality and Gender

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:17:23 PDT

Marriage, Sex and Covenant

We have seen previously (here, here and here) that the biblical understanding of marriage boils down to two elements: sex and covenant.

The terms of the covenant include a sexual commitment — no one to whom I am not married is allowed the same ‘privileges’, and sexual transgression is taken so seriously. The seventh commandment explicitly forbids adultery, which is a violation of this covenant.

But both elements — sex and covenant — are central to marriage. Without a covenant, we have fornication or prostitution. And without sex it might be said we have ‘just good friends’.

But what do we mean by sex, and why does it matter?

The Nature of Sex

In the context of current debates, when people hear the word ‘sex’ they often think of what human beings get up to ‘between the sheets’. But as any biologist will tell you, sex is something much more basic and much more widespread.

Indeed, sex is found throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. Birds do it, bees do it, and not just ‘educated flees’ but trees, grasses, fungi and even some bacteria. What all these organisms have in common, however, (contra Cole Porter’s popular song) is not ‘falling in love’, but the fusion of two gametes to form a zygote.

In organisms which reproduce sexually, the chromosomes — those structures made of DNA which contain the information necessary for cellular life and which also give the organism its individual characteristics — exist in joined pairs.

For sexual reproduction to occur, these chromosome pairs separate and form into cells known as gametes (or gametophytes in plants). These ‘haploid’ cells have a single chromosome where a normal cell has a pair.

A gamete from one ‘parent’ organism then fuses with one from another parent to form a zygote — a cell with the normal chromosome pairs but with a mixture of the two parents.

The result: he’s got his father’s mouth, but his mother’s nose — and so on. Sexual reproduction is thus a brilliant way to shuffle the genetic deck dealt to new organisms, so as to produce constant variation.

The Biblical Beginnings of Sex

This means that when we turn to Scripture the first place sex is actually mentioned is Genesis 1:11:

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. (NIV)

Of course, the writer of Genesis may not have known the details of plant reproduction — but then it may well be that neither did you until now, so it doesn’t really matter too much. It’s a bit like us knowing that the ‘stars’ of Genesis 1:16 include galaxies. The important thing is that ‘the Lord God made them all’.

But in the case of the sea creatures and birds of 1:21-22, their reproductive habits would have been more obvious, even to people who lacked the technology we have today. And the key thing here is God’s word of blessing:

²²God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”

Incidentally, the Hebrew word ‘be fruitful’ (p’ru) is related to the word ‘fruit’ (p’ri) in v 11. The reproductive life of plants was thus seen as at least comparable to that of animals. How much more than that they understood you’d have to check with an expert in ancient agronomy, which I am not!

The important point is that, just as we know sex to be a shared activity of plants and animals, so the text of Genesis presents their ‘fruitfulness’ as a similarly shared attribute. And it is also an attribute shared by human beings, for in Genesis 1:28, after the creation of the human race is first introduced, we read,

²⁸God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Notice two things: First, God blessed the human race in exactly the same terms as he had previously blessed the fish and the birds: “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill ...”

Secondly, the blessing given to the human race apparently has to do duty for the livestock as well! Unlike with the fish and birds, the land animals of 1:24-25 do not get their own blessing.

And in both these ways we get a hint that human beings and animals are not that widely separated when it comes to the ‘facts of life’. Cole Porter was onto something after all. What we do is, in this sense, exactly what the birds, bees and educated fleas do.

The Biological Anomaly of Same-Sex ‘Sex’

When we start from biology, however, there is clearly something anomalous about same-sex ‘sex’.

Whilst opposite-sex sexual activity does not always result in successful reproduction, same-sex activity can never result in reproduction. But more than that, it is biologically a contradiction in terms. There is no ‘sexual’ activity where the same sexes are concerned.

Our generation has coined the term ‘sexual orientation’ to address what a previous generation called ‘homosexuality’. But it would be more accurate to talk about sexual disorientation.

Of course, this itself is a ‘natural phenomenon’, insofar as it occurs in nature. But wherever it occurs, it is still a disorientation of the sexual instinct, insofar as it is directed to the wrong object.

The ancient Greeks had a term for this, which occurs in the Bible itself. In Romans 1:26, the Apostle Paul writes,

... their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.

The phrase Paul uses for ‘unnatural’ here is para phusin (cf tēn phusikēn chrēsin,‘natural’ usage or sexual relations).

This para phusin is the opposite of kata phusin. Romans 11:24 refers to “an olive tree that is wild by nature [kata phusin]” and its branches that were, “contrary to nature [para phusin]”, grafted into a cultivated olive tree.

Much earlier, however, around 400 bc, the philosopher Plato used both these terms with a specifically sexual reference:

... one certainly should not fail to observe that when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature [kata phusin], but contrary to nature [para phusin] when male mates with male or female with female ... (Plato, Leg. 636c)

The Apostle therefore seems to be using a common term, para phusin, to refer to same-sex relationships as ‘unnatural’.

The argument is sometimes heard today, however, that since homosexuality is the ‘nature’ of the homosexual, same-sex intercourse is therefore ‘natural’. The difficulty is that, by nature, sexuality as such is obviously ‘hetero’ sexual.

Sex and Infertility

But what of infertility? If the ‘nature’ of sex is fundamentally connected to reproduction, aren’t infertile couples disqualified from marriage?

As it happens, infertility appears remarkably often in Scripture, from the story of Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament to that of Zechariah and Elizabeth in the New. God almost specializes in such couples!

But in all these situations, infertility is seen as a challenge, not as an ‘alternative lifestyle’. And when it occurs involuntarily, infertility is almost invariably a negative result of infirmity, illness or ageing — which are theologically effects of the Fall.

At best, the appeal to infertility as a justification for same-sex marriage means acknowledging that same-sex attraction parallels with other instances of dysfunctional sexuality.

Furthermore, even where there is infertility, the sexual drive in heterosexual couples is still rooted in the natural drive to sexual reproduction and the use sexual organs themselves still corresponds to this drive.

In fact the recent legislation to introduce same-sex marriage in England and Wales has been forced to recognize just this fact by omitting definitions of ‘consummation’ and ‘adultery’ for same-sex couples.

And if the law acknowledges that same-sex sexual activity is intrinsically different from heterosexual activity, it is reasonable enough to make the same observation in our discussions elsewhere.

Homosexuality and Morality

It should be recognized that the fundamental point of contention is not whether heterosexuality corresponds to ‘nature’ in a way that homosexuality does not (clearly it does) but whether this matters morally.

In his 1999 book Queens’ Country (London: Abacus), gay author and activist Paul Burston makes a telling, if somewhat scathing, observation:

Marriage has become one of the key debating points for gay rights campaigners in the 1990s. In his virtually unreadable book, Virtually Normal, Andrew Sullivan claims that opening up the institution of marriage to lesbian and gay couples would strike right to the heart of homophobia. For Sullivan, lesbian and gay marriage is not only a question of legal protection but also a way of sending a message to the world that lesbians and gay men are just the same as everyone else. (152)

In other words, for Sullivan and others gay marriage is fundamentally about the ‘normalization’ of same-sex sexuality — a way of establishing that homosexuality is really no different from heterosexuality. Yet Burston himself argues this is not the case. In response to the suggestion that “lesbians and gay men are just the same as everyone else”, he writes bluntly, “The only problem is, we aren’t.” He comments,

Sullivans’ argument is based on the naïve assimilationist assumption that the only thing distinguishing us from heterosexuals is what we do in bed, and that our sexual orientation has no bearing on how we function as social or political beings. (152)

For Burston, homosexuality is a matter of a total identity different from that of heterosexuality. What this particular exchange reveals, of course, is that even amongst those who have no moral problem with homosexuality, opinion is divided over the difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality.

What all are agreed, however, is that it differs at least regarding sexual behaviour. Opening up the institution of marriage to same-sex couples, therefore, would necessarily entail changing the way we think about marriage, insofar as sex and marriage properly go together.

From an institution bringing together people of the opposite sex, central to which would be procreative sex (though without a guarantee, or therefore a requirement, of success), it will become a relationship in which procreative sex is no longer fundamental and which can be between people of the same sex.

That is a fundamental change, whose effects are bound to be far reaching on our understanding of ourselves as male and female.

The Gender Agenda

Any discussion of male and female-ness, however, soon has to consider the issue of gender, which is much broader than sexuality.

At some stage in our lives, all being well, we develop what are known as secondary sexual characteristics. Men’s voices deepen, they begin to develop bigger muscles and body hair, women grow breasts, start having periods and so on.

But from the very moment of conception (except in the case of certain recognized medical ‘syndromes’) we are either a boy or a girl. From the cradle to the grave, every cell of our body carries the genetic information that makes us male or female (in the case of girls, two X chromosomes, in the case of boys, an X and a Y).

The difference this makes to us as persons, however, is a matter of fierce debate, witness the fact that the discipline of ‘gender studies’ has spawned an entire industry, to say nothing of a multitude of university departments.

Within this debate, perhaps the most fiercely held position is that gender differences are largely down to social conditioning. According to this view, if boys and girls grow up different it is because they are taught to be different.

In essence, so the argument goes, male and female are not just of equal value as persons, they are in all important respects equivalent.

Over against this, we find the kind of thinking behind the popular book Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus (and its many offshoots). And indeed there is considerable evidence that there are substantial and measurable differences between men and women. Large sample testing seems to show that abilities and preferences do, to some extent, correlate significantly with gender and even with sexual preference.

Yet the relationship between cause and effect continues to be debated. And in any case, was with same-sex attraction, the measurement of a difference does not dictate what we should do about it. On average, men are taller than women, but this does not make them ‘better’, even though most of us look up to tall people.

Genesis and Gender

For Christians, any such discussion comes back to theology. Once again, we turn back to the first pages of the Bible, though even here we find the data and the conclusions drawn from it, hotly contested.

Some fervently want to argue that ‘male dominance’ is the outcome of the Fall and that prior to this there was complete ‘egalitarianism’ verging on equivalency.

Others, as has Jerome Gellman of the Ben Gurion University in a deliberately provocative article, argue that no such equality is to be found anywhere in the text:

... the attempt to read Genesis 2-3 as woman friendly, and to neutralize the theme of male sexual domination, does not and cannot succeed. We are doomed to understand this story as androcentric in nature. (‘Gender and Sexuality in the Garden of Eden’, Theology and Sexuality 12, no.3 [2006] 335)

It is possible, however, to adopt a position which has features of both equality and difference — one which might be described as non-reversible asymmetry. Identical twins would be both symmetrical and reversible. You could swap one for the other and it would make no difference. Adam and Eve, however, are ‘asymmetrical’ insofar as he is a man and she is a woman, and their relationship one to the other is not ‘reversible’.

Thus, for example, Adam is older than Eve and has experienced things she has not. Presumably, therefore, he would have shown her round the Garden, rather than the reverse, and he would also have informed her of God’s mandate and command.

Similarly, Adam named the animals on his own authority, whereas Eve would have used the names he had given. More fundamentally, he is the source of her life, not the other way round, as the Apostle Paul recognizes when he writes that in the beginning,

⁸... man did not come from woman, but woman from man; ⁹neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Cor 11:8-9, NIV)

Eve is made as Adam’s helper (Gen 2:18). Yet even this does not tell us a great deal about ‘gender roles’. Indeed, the word for helper (ezer) is elsewhere principally used of an ally in times of war or of God himself (“My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth”, Psa 121:2.)

Like Euodia and Syntyche with the Apostle Paul (Phil 4:2), it seems that Eve was to be a fellow-worker with Adam rather than his servant. Indeed, there is remarkably little evidence in the Bible for what might be called ‘gender stereotypes’. The girl of the Song of Songs, however, is no shrinking violet and the wife of Proverbs 31 is no stay-at-home ‘little woman’.

Gender and Society

Where gender difference matters in the Bible, and especially in the New Testament, is not so much in determining social roles but in the relationship between the sexes. And here, the controlling principles outside the context of marriage are modesty and respect.

The governing pattern for relationships between the sexes is the family. Thus Timothy is instructed:

¹ Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, ² older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. (1 Tim 5:1-2)

Timothy is to respect gender differences, but not to be constrained by them: “Treat older men like your dad, older women like your mum and the rest like your brothers and sisters,” is the essence of Paul’s advice.

Compare that with the strict segregation found in other religious communities and we understand better the liberty and liberation brought by the gospel.

Gender and Marriage

The other place where gender matters is within marriage, and here is also the only place where sex matters as a determinant of roles, because it is the only place where sex should take place.

In marriage, the governing model is that of Christ and the church, as put forward in Ephesians 5:

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. ²² Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ... (Eph 5:21-25)

Notice, although the Greek text of 5:22 does not contain the word ‘submit’, the NIV text is right, in common with other English versions, to infer the verb from v 21.

Secondly, although the Greek of v 22 does contain the phrase ‘your own’, there is no need to translate it (“submit to your own husbands”). In Greek (as in Hebrew) there is no specialist word for ‘husband’ as distinct from ‘man’. Thus the phrase tois idiois andrasin means not “your own (as distinct from other people’s) husbands” but “your husbands” as distinct from “men generally”.

Following from this, however, we need to be careful to distinguish where Paul is clearly talk about male-female differences and where his focus may be, more specifically, on husband-wife relationships.

Arguably, for example, 1 Timothy 2:12 has as its reference point wives and husbands, particularly in the light of Paul’s argument from Genesis (vv 13-14) and his reference to childbearing (v 15).

Furthermore, contrary to what is often assumed, Paul does not say in Ephesians 5 that the husband is the ‘head of the household’. His ‘headship’ applies to his wife, and she, correspondingly, is his body.

When it comes to the household, however, the husband and wife are ‘joint rulers’. Thus in 1 Timothy 3 (following close on his comments about the role of women), Paul writes that an overseer (‘bishop’),

⁴ ... must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. ⁵ (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)

But then a little later on he encourages younger widows (who might otherwise have been looking to depend on the congregation for support),

¹⁴ So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes ... (1 Tim 5:14)

The last phrase here is oikodespotein — which we might over-literally translate as ‘to be the house despot’.

Again, when Paul is addressing children, he stays within the biblical tradition of instructing them to respect both parents (Eph 6:1-3, cf Prov 1:8).

When it comes to gender roles in the household, therefore, we are once again at liberty to choose who does what. The one proviso is that, on the basis of the fact that marriage is a reflection and model of the Christ-Church relationship, the husband is the head of his wife, and she, as his ‘body’, respects and submits to his ‘headship’.

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Toward a Biblical Theology of Marriage — the New Covenant

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 02:22:38 PDT

From Old Testament to New

The Old Testament contains two contrasting narratives regarding marriage. On the one hand, there is the decline we looked at in session 1 ‘from the garden to the harem’. The great king Solomon accumulates wives and concubines who, in the end, prove to be his downfall.

On the other hand, there is a clear understanding throughout the history of Israel that the nation stands in a ‘marital’ relationship with God — a relationship that is not abandoned by God, despite the unfaithfulness of the nation.

Hence in Jeremiah 3:14 we read,

¹⁴ “Return, faithless people,” declares the Lord, “for I am your husband. I will choose you — one from a town and two from a clan — and bring you to Zion.”

This, despite the circumstances of v 20:

“But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord.

Significantly, the New Covenant promise in Jeremiah makes reference to this marital relationship:

³¹ “The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. (Jer 31:31-32)

This New Covenant is to be unbreakable (see vv 33-34), and so we may assume that the people of God will at last be his faithful bride. However, at the end of the Old Testament, that hope remains yet to be fulfilled. The arrival of Jesus signals its fulfilment.

The Bridegroom Comes

Within Jesus’ own ministry, there are already hints at the ‘bridegroom’ role he plays. John’s gospel records that John the Baptist clearly understood the implications of the Christ’s coming in these terms:

²⁸ You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.’ ²⁹ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. ³⁰ He must become greater; I must become less. (John 3:28-30)

The way that John describes the revelation of Christ’s glory at the wedding at Cana in Galilee John 2:1-11 is probably also meant to be seen as picking up this motif.

In the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) there are also references to Jesus as the bridegroom. In Matthew 9, challenged as to why his disciples do not fast, Jesus replies,

How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. (9:15; cf Mk 2:19-20; Lk 5:34-35)

In the parables, the return of the Messiah is also depicted in terms of the arrival of a bridegroom for a wedding feast (Matt 25:1-13), and the inauguration of the kingdom is compared to a wedding feast (Matt 22:1-14).

Christ the Bridegroom

It is in the epistles (including Revelation), however, that we see the most developed understanding of Christ’s role as the bridegroom.

This ought not to worry us unduly. In the gospels, it is possible for Jesus to say to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29), or for the disciples to ask in terror, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him.” (Mk 4:41). At this point, there are a number of possible answers (though only one correct one).

By the time we get to the epistles, however, the post resurrection-Christ and the Holy Spirit in the apostles, have already done their work, and those questions now receive definitive answers.

Thus, since Christ is the one in whom “the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form” (Col 2:9), all the Old Testament promises regarding God as the husband of Israel are transferred to Christ as the husband of the Church.

Indeed the apostle Paul sees his own apostolic role as that of a marriage-broker. In 2 Corinthians 11:2, he writes,

² I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.

And in the book of Revelation, the final ushering-in of the kingdom is depicted as the revealing of a bride for the Saviour-Messiah:

²I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. (Rev 21:2)

The last dialogue in the Bible is between the Spirit in the earthly Church and the longed-for Bridegroom:

¹⁷ The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” [...] ²⁰ He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. (Rev 22:17,20)

In fact there may be a link theologically between the word spoken in v 17 above and the clearly primitive (because it is in Aramaic) invocation recorded in 1 Corinthians 16:22, where Paul writes, “Marana tha” (“Come, O Lord!”, NIV)

Arguably, this invocation (presumably quoted rather than coined by the apostle) is the same voice of “the Spirit and the bride” we read in Revelation — in other words the understanding of the Church as the ‘waiting bride’ was a very early tradition. Certainly we would not have to look far for the sources of such a tradition, for of course it is as old as the Old Testament itself.

Marriage and Salvation

It would be fair to say, furthermore, that Paul’s ‘marital’ understanding of the relationship between Christ and the Church is central to his soteriology — his understanding of salvation.

In Romans 7, for example, the Christian community is likened to a woman whose husband has died, freeing her to marry another.

² For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. ³ So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. (Rom 7:2-3)

The illustration is complex, however, because the Church is itself depicted as dying:

⁴ So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. (Rom 7:4)

This may seem muddled, but the complication arises because Christ is both the husband who has died and the live husband. When he dies, he dies under the law — he is in the place of our first ‘husband’. But we also die with him (a fact expressed by our baptism ‘into his death’).

The same background thinking is present in Galatians :

¹⁹ ... through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Gal 2:19-20a)

¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” (Gal 3:13)

Our old ‘husband’, the law of sin and death, dies on the cross when Christ dies for us. What is often overlooked, however, is that not only does Christ die for us, but we die with him. There is an identity between the ‘sinful sinner’ (namely ourselves) and the ‘sinless sin-bearer’ who is Christ. And this identification depends on the marital relationship between the Redeemer and the redeemed.

The Body of Christ

Anyone reading Paul will soon discover his liking for ‘body’ language in relation to the Church. In Romans 13 and 1 Corinthians 12 particularly, the church is compared to a body with many parts, so each believer is encouraged to see that they do not have to be a ‘Jack of All Trades’, but rather have particular (and limited) gifts which contribute to the life of the whole.

This is not just a convenient illustration, however. We might make the same point in other ways, for example by talking about an army with different units or a city with different trades.

The body language Paul uses stems from his understanding that the Church is specifically Christ’s body. And it is his body because of its marital union with him.

In 1 Corinthians 6, for example, he writes,

¹⁶ Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” ¹⁷ But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

This idea is most fully developed, however, in Ephesians 5. Here, husbands and wives are urged to see themselves as living in a symbiotic relationship which reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church. Thus he writes,

²⁸ ... husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. [...] ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church — ³⁰ for we are members of his body. (Eph 5:28a,29-30)

And the rationale for this is drawn directly from the second chapter of Genesis, which Paul immediately quotes from to reinforce his argument:

³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.(Eph 5:31-32)

For Paul, this is another example of biblical typology, where something found in the Old Testament reaches its fulfilment in the events of the New. In Colossians 2, Paul applies this to festivals, new moons and the Sabbath:

¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. (Col 2:17)

Here in Ephesians, he sees the ‘one flesh union’ of married couples, beginning with Adam and Eve, as fulfilled in Christ and the Church. These two also become ‘one’, which is how Paul can go on to say so categorically that we died with Christ, we are raised with Christ and even that we are circumcised in him (Col 2:11).

The sixteenth century Reformer, Martin Luther, made great play of this in his understanding of salvation. Thus he wrote,

By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage — indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage — it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers? (LW 31:35)

Luther, I think, captures well the implications and application of the Pauline position.

Marriage and Relationship

What we must understand from this, therefore, is that marriage is not simply a human ordinance or a social construct. Rather, as the Roman Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx rightly says, it is a ‘saving mystery’. The Church of England reflects this understanding in its marriage service, where the Book of Common Prayer says,

... holy Matrimony ... is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church ...

Human marriage takes its being from something far more significant than a social convention, a biological imperative or a legal construct.

Human marriage ultimately mirrors the relationship between the Creator-Redeemer God and his created-redeemed people, which is a saving relationship not just because of the love of God for his people, but because of the union of Christ with the Church.

The linguist and social theorist Noam Chomksy once coined the term ‘deep structures’ to talk about those aspects of language which lie beyond the mere use of ‘names for objects’ and ‘words for actions’ — aspects we codify as ‘grammar’, but which make up a kind of fundamental, inbuilt pattern that shapes all language.

In a similar way, we might say that theologically speaking, marriage is part of what we might call the ‘deep structures’ of the universe — as foundational to reality as ‘love’, ‘goodness’ and ‘personhood’.

The relationship between Christ and the Church is almost as significant as the relationships within the Trinity — diminished only by its being secondary, rather than primary, in defining the nature of God — for in that relationship we find the key to salvation itself.

It is because God can do something in relation to us — something which brings us into ‘union with Christ’ — that salvation is effected through Christ’s death on the cross and our union with him in his death.

Furthermore, we need to understand that this ‘marriage’ between the Creator-Redeemer God and his created-redeemed people is possible because of the nature of God himself. God is one who can be in a marital relationship.

An important insight into the nature of persons in the Trinity is provided by the notion of ‘perichoresis’. What this means is that each person in the Trinity is defined in terms of relationship with the others.

This is easy to grasp when we think of terms like ‘Father’ and ‘Son’. One can be an individual on one’s own, but one cannot be a ‘father’ without a corresponding child or a ‘son’ without a parent.

So both the differences between and identities of the persons of the Trinity arise from their distinct relationship to the others.

But the marital relationship between Christ and the Church shows that God has a further relational potential — to relate to something outside himself, something which is not his own self, but whose qualities are such that God can relate to it almost, we might say, on equal terms. After all, what is a marriage if not a relationship between beings who are profoundly alike — or as Adam’s words in Genesis 2:23 put it, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”?

The Genesis of Marriage

In Ephesians 5, as we have noted, the Apostle applies the principles of Genesis 2:24 to Christ and the Church. But there are other ‘Christological’ elements of New Testament theology drawn from the narrative of Genesis 1-3.

Philippians 2:6-8, for example, is generally agreed to be contrasting the behaviour of Adam with that of Christ who, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (cf Gen 3:5).

Or again, Christ’s lordship over all things may be seen as the ultimate fulfilment of the Genesis mandate. When Ephesians 1:22 speaks of all things being under Christ’s feet, it echoes the language of Psalm 8 (see v 6) which, with its reference to “all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea (vv 7-8) is itself clearly echoing Genesis 1:28:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

J V Fesko, Academic Dean and Professor of Systematic Theology and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary, California, helpfully explores this Christological reading of Genesis in his Last Things First: Unlocking Genesis 1-3 with the Christ of Eschatology (Fearn Ross-shire Great Britain: Mentor, 2007).

In the present context, we would note that a Christological reading of Genesis 2 is particularly helpful in understanding the profound depths of the Christ-Church relationship.

It may seem odd, for example, to think of Christ as in any sense resembling Adam at the point of the latter being put in the Garden to til and keep it. But it has been pointed out elsewhere that the language of Genesis 2 at this point parallels the priestly task of the Levites in relationship to the tabernacle — the dwelling-place of God — and that the tabernacle itself represents a miniature ‘Eden’ (see Gregory K Beale, ‘Eden, the Temple and the Church’s Mission in the New Creation’, JETS 48:1, 2005, 5–31).

And to think of Christ as the ‘temple keeper’ is by no means a demeaning of his person or his task.

Provided, therefore, we keep in mind that Adam is, in the words of Romans 5:15, “a pattern of the one to come” rather than the reality itself, it is perfectly legitimate to apply narrative details concerning him to the one of whom he is a pattern — in other words, to get clues as to how we should understand Christ by reading the account of Adam.

This being the case, however, we may also understand from the narrative of Genesis something about the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Thus, once again, it may seem odd, to say the least, to appear to suggest something lacking in Christ’s nature when we read in Genesis 2:18 that it was not good for the man to be alone and apply this to Christ.

Yet a ‘not good’ is not the same as a ‘bad’. To put it another way, ‘not having reached perfection’ is not the same as ‘having an imperfection. Specifically, when we read in Hebrews 2:10 that Christ was made perfect through suffering, this doesn’t mean there was something wrong with him.

Rather, we might think of a cake which, until it is baked is not finished, but is not ‘going wrong’ in the earlier stages of its preparation. And so Adam’s condition of ‘not good’ does not imply a fault in creation, but simply that the job is not yet finished.

Yet surely to suggest that Christ, like Adam, needed a ‘helper’ implies an inadequacy? In reply, we would simply point to what the New Testament itself declares, and observe that in relation to creation a ‘helper’ is precisely what Christ must and will have, and that this helper is his Church:

¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Cor 5:18-19)

Again,

²⁸Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matthew 19:28, NIV)

Or again,

²²And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. (Eph 1:22-23, NIV)

What, then, of Eve’s origin from Adam? Clearly the physical details do not apply, yet the Puritan writer William Gurnall was happy to draw a spiritual comparison (and I suspect from his Latin reference may have got this from an earlier source):

E latere Christi morientis exstitit ecclesia – the church is taken out of dying Jesus’ side, as Eve out of sleeping Adam’s. (The Christian in Complete Armour, Part 11, ‘Justifying Faith, as to its Nature)

Furthermore, the creation of Eve from Adam, if applied to the Church, is a reminder that human beings derive their nature from that of the one for whom they are made, for we are not just another creature, but the very ‘image of God’.

We should not forget that God has made us to be “conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom 8:29), and that therefore we will one day ourselves be images of the image (cf 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:9). Hence our claim above that we may legitimately apply spiritually to the Church in relation to Christ what Adam said physically of Eve:

This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh ...

The Gender of God

And this itself helps us answer the question as to in what sense God is ‘gendered’. In a world where godesses were commonplace, the Bible is unequivocal in applying the male gender to God.

Yet clearly a God without physical ‘parts’ is not ‘a man’, or even, in the biological sense, ‘male’.

Even so, he remains ‘he’, and as we have seen, in the marital relationship between God and Israel, he is the husband and Israel the bride.

Some might suggest this is a merely social convention, appropriate to a world in which patriarchy was the norm. But as we have seen above, the marital relationship between God and Israel, fulfilled in the relationship between Christ and the Church, is of too profound a significance to relegate to a matter of cultural convention.

Rather, we should see that the ‘masculinity’ of God, like the ‘Fatherhood’ of the Father or ‘Sonship’ of the Son, is relational — though in this case the relationship is not within the godhead, but rather between the godhead and that which is created to be the image of God.

The Creator-Redeemer God is ‘he’ in relation to that which he has created and redeemed — that which is his bride and in union with which he brings to pefection an image of his own self to which he will finally relate ‘face to face’ (cf Ex 33:11; Dt 5:4; 1 Cor 13:12).

This is the profound truth about marriage, and one which ought to govern our thinking.

(All Bible quotations are from the NIV 1984 editions unless indicated otherwise)

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"Men and Women in Marriage" -- clarifying the fog

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:46:34 PDT

A short while ago I received an email from a clergy colleague who, as they used to say, was obviously 'exercised' by the report in the Daily Telegraph regarding the recently-released statement, 'Men and Women in Marriage' (pdf), drawn up for the House of Bishops by the Faith and Order Commission. Given the opacity of this statement and the misleading nature of the Telegraph's reporting, I have post my attempted clarification below.

********************
Dear N

When I compared this headline [in the Telegraph] to the actual document, my first comment (to someone else) was that it was "hard to stomach". Frankly, I think it was mischievous and misleading, as were the comments by Giles Fraser, which seemed almost designed to muddy the waters further.

Things are not helped by the apallingly opaque language of the statement itself. However, it has to be read in conjunction with the existing 'pastoral statement' on civil partnerships issued by the House of Bishops in 2005.

That statement was itself problematic, but in the relevant section, "The Blessing of Civil Partnerships", it makes clear that the position of the Primates of the Communion, adopted in 2003, is to be upheld, that when it came to the blessing of same-sex unions, ‘we as a body cannot support the authorisation of such rites". However, the 2005 statement goes on to say, "One consequence of the ambiguity contained within the new legislation is that people in a variety of relationships will be eligible to register as civil partners, some living consistently with the teaching of the Church, others not" (17). Hence it rejected the idea of formal liturgy connected with registering civil partnerships and added, "the House of Bishops affirms that clergy of the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership." (my emphasis).

However, it did allow for a variety of responses, given the potential variety of partnerships: "It will be important, however, to bear in mind that registered partnerships do allow for a range of different situations- including those where the relationship is simply one of friendship." (18). "Hence ..." paragraph 18 continues,

"... clergy need to have regard to the teaching of the church on sexual morality, celibacy, and the positive value of committed friendships in the Christian tradition. Where clergy are approached by people asking for prayer in relation to entering into a civil partnership they should respond pastorally and sensitively in the light of the circumstances of each case."

Now we may feel that this is unnecessarily convoluted or pastorally unhelpful overall, but that is the position the House of Bishops has adopted and I don't think the new statement changes that. Having touched on the issues of remarriage after divorce and African responses to polygamy, it says this:

48. [...] With regard to civil partnerships, which are not marriages but raise some analogous issues, the Bishops addressed what might be an appropriate form of pastoral response in 2005. (15) The wider questions surrounding these continue to be a matter of study.

49. The meaning of such pastoral accommodations [ie to divorce, to polygamy and to civil partnerships] can be misunderstood, as though the Church were solving pastoral difficulties by redefining marriage from the ground up, which it cannot do. What it can do is devise accommodations for specific conditions, bearing witness in special ways to the abiding importance of the norm. Well-designed accommodations proclaim the form of life given by God’s creative goodness and bring those
in difficult positions into closer approximation to it. They mark the point where teaching and pastoral care coincide.

The footnote to 15 above then refers directly to what I have quoted from the 2005 statement: "15. Civil Partnerships: A Pastoral Statement from the House of Bishops, para. 18: ‘Where clergy are approached by people asking for prayer in relation to entering into a civil partnership, they should respond pastorally and sensitively in the light of the circumstances of each case.’"

In other words, nothing is necessarily envisaged by the new statement that is not already permitted under the existing provisions. In summary,

no approved public liturgy connected with civil partnerships
no blessing of civil partnerships
but prayer in relation to a civil partnership where it takes proper account of the teaching of the church on sexual morality, celibacy and the positive value of committed friendships in the Christian tradition.

The headline in the Telegraph, "Church of England gives blessing to recognizing civil partnerships" is about eight years too late and misleading in its use of the trigger-word 'blessing'. The subheading, "The Church of England yesterday gave a green light to wedding-style services for couples in civil partnerships despite its official opposition to same-sex marriage" is just balderdash.

I hope this clarifies things.

John
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Men and Women in Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:47:40 PDT

OK, I've come back from a few days' break and just read the document "Men and Women in Marriage", and I feel like my head is full of fog. Did I forget how to do theology while I was on holiday? Has anyone else felt the same?

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Better Never to Have Been?

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:40:08 PDT

“I am expecting to kill myself.”

Not my words, I hasten to add, but those of the writer and broadcaster, Will Self, speaking on Radio 4’s ‘A Point of View’ back in January.

The reason he gave for this gloomy prognosis was that life will eventually become so intolerable that suicide will be the preferable alternative. Many of us wind up with painful illnesses for which the only relief is morphine. Others suffer mental degeneration. What is needed, he argued, is the honesty to admit that this is the case and the courage to make the appropriate provision in medicine and law.

But what do we mean by an ‘intolerable’ life? Just a few days later, the papers carried the story of 46 year old Belgian twins Marc and Eddy Verbessem, who apparently chose euthanasia when they discovered they were going blind. According to reports, the twins, who had lived together since birth, were already deaf and could not bear the idea of a future in which they would also be unable to see one another.

Meanwhile, at the same time I was hearing Will Self and reading about the Verbessem brothers, I picked up a book by South African philosopher David Benatar titled Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence.

Benatar’s thesis is simple. Life always involves suffering and this suffering generally increases as we get older. But it is there even while we are young. Think how much babies cry. And it is more of a feature of life than we care to admit. (Are you sitting comfortably? I thought not.)

Now this doesn’t mean we should all immediately rush out and kill ourselves, Benatar argues. Once we are alive, we will naturally want to prolong our existence — provided the positives, or potential positives, outweigh the negatives.

But, says Benatar, not existing means not suffering at all. Therefore, as the title of his book says and taking everything into account, it is ‘better never to have been’. Hence, he concludes, a completely rational approach to suffering would mean, as far as possible, avoiding procreation.

And given Will Self’s gloomy outlook, he surely has a point. Why have children who are just going to grow up, grow old, get ill and kill themselves?

“But what about all the fun they might have in between?” you ask.

“Ah, but you said ‘might’,” we can imagine Benatar replying, “My point exactly. But they are certainly going to suffer. Better never to have been than to experience suffering, to know it is just going to get worse and eventually to contemplate killing yourself.”

It’s enough to put you off your breakfast. But there may be an alternative. The other thing Will Self and David Benatar have in common, apart from a gloomy view of life, is that they are both atheists. (What I admire about Benatar is that he is a consistent atheist, ready to admit that whilst our lives may be worth prolonging, there is a reasonable argument that life itself is better not begun.)

Christians, however, have just been commemorating Easter and remembering a life which began in a food-trough and ended on a cross — the life of someone whom the Bible calls “A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

Yet Christians also believe that the man who died on the cross rose from the dead three days later, appeared to his followers and commissioned them to preach his resurrection to a world living in the shadow of death. Many people today dismiss this as irrational. Actually it is one of the few things that makes rational sense of life as we know it.

This post first appeared as the 'Vicar's Letter' in our Benefice village magazines for April 2013

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Recovered Stolen Goods

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:39:17 PDT

If anyone recognizes the items below, recovered from a South London scrap-metal yard, they should contact the police at fusion@btp.pnn.police.uk.

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'Leaping the Vicarage Wall' - a book to ponder

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 11:14:14 PDT

Back in the 1980s, I was good friends with Gordon and Ronni Lamont, a couple I got to know through helping on the CYFA Arts Workshop which then formed part of the CPAS summer camps scheme.

Sadly, we drifted apart over the years (something I’ve been rather prone to) and so it was only through the vaguest of grapevine rumours I heard Ronni had become ordained as one of the first women priests.

In a similarly vague fashion, I discovered more recently that she has now left parish ministry. More concretely, I also found out she’d written a book about it, and out of curiosity I decided to buy it. Partly this was out of interest in an old friend, partly because, given my own hesitation about women’s ordination, I am curious to read about the experience of women in Anglican parochial ministry.

Leaping the Vicarage Wall, the story of Ronni’s entry into, experience within and exit from, parochial ministry is a book that should be read and pondered by many – especially anyone thinking about ordained ministry or involved in selection, training and oversight. (A similar book I also intend to review some time is A Clergy Husband’s Survival Guide.)

Unfortunately, it is not terribly well written! There are numerous ‘typos’ that a good editor should have spotted. Sometimes there are inaccuracies (a complaint under the Clergy Discipline Measure is not called ‘a measure’, p113). And Ronni’s sentence structure is sometimes awkward (up to and including missing out a verb.) This is a shame, but it does not detract from the significance of a book which addresses something that receives far too little analysis and consideration – the stresses and impact of parish life on clergy and their families.

Part of the problem, as Ronni identifies, is that there are three quite different expectations involved in parish ministry. First, obviously, is the expectation of the minister. Typically, this begins with great idealism about serving God and serving others. Secondly, however, is the expectation of the congregation and parishioners, which can vary a great deal depending on the local history. And thirdly there is the expectation of the ‘hierarchy’ – the bishops and archdeacons – manifested through structures which whilst often described in terms of ‘support’ may actually result in extra ‘demands’.

Someone who feels called to ordination is bound to have high ideals about what this will involve. These ideals may even be heightened by the selection process. Typically, for example, one has to give an account of the way priesthood is perceived to be ‘special’. And if you get over all the hurdles and through the hoops, you are bound to feel, in some sense, ‘chosen’.

The trouble is, you can’t know what the job is like until you’re actually in it. And as Ronni identifies, this brings unique, and often unforseen, pressures. Not least is the fact that you are indeed perceived as ‘special’ but certainly not in the way that a Diocesan Director of Ordinands is looking for.

You live in a special house. In some areas this will make you a special target, for vagrants, for beggars and even for thieves. When I was in Sparkbrook during the time I best knew Gordon and Ronni, the biggest pressure I faced in my ministry was the ring of the doorbell of my enormous, isolated, expensive-to-heat and mostly 1960s glass (hence easy to break into) vicarage, signalling the presence of a vagrant looking for ‘a cup of tea and a sandwich’. When you’re in the middle of trying to prepare a sermon or do some piece of administration, this is not a welcome break.

You also wear special clothes. Or in my case, you learned only to wear special clothes in some circumstances because there are people who will zoom in on a dog-collar, hand outstretched for money. Many clergy experience the quite different reactions they get from people when they are out of or in ‘uniform’. On the plus side, I once got a free Mars Bar from a sweet counter from a woman who insisted I didn’t need to pay. On the minus side, you can be halfway through a conversation and realize the reason someone is talking to you ‘strangely’ is you do/don’t have your collar on.

You also have a special role in the community. In other words, as Ronni observes, everyone knows who you are, so that even a trip to the corner shop becomes a kind of ‘parish visit’ – to say nothing of the care you have to exercise regarding what you buy when you get there. (Remember the Adrian Mole line about the vicar buying luxury toilet paper instead of saving on the cheap stuff to give to the poor?)

As a ‘vicar’, you and your family undoubtedly live in something of a goldfish bowl. (In my case in Sparkbrook, almost literally.) And nothing can prepare you for that experience. The answer is to develop a tough skin, but this takes time and not everyone (and certainly not everyone’s spouse and children) has a natural capacity for that.

Then there is the job itself. And as Ronni identifies, this is not always a straightforward subject. For a start, just exactly what are we supposed to do?

Think, for a moment, how many churches have drawn up a vision or mission statement. Ronni even includes one in her book. Can you imagine, though, if every branch of Tesco did that? Undoubtedly Tesco has a vision, but its not up to each branch to work out what it is. In the Church of England, however, that is virtually what happens.

And when you’ve drawn up your vision statement, how do you measure your progress? The thing with general ‘pastoral’ work is that it never ends. And the more you succeed numerically, the more there is of it to do.

One of the things I experienced early in ministry (back in the 1970s), and something which comes across in Ronni’s book, is the draining effect of this lack of clarity about goals and methods. As an organization, the Church of England doesn’t really tell you what to do, and it doesn’t really tell you how to do it. Ronni’s book has a section on theological training, but you get the impression the ‘theology’ bit didn’t really count for very much. What she really felt the lack of was direction in how to cope.

Personally, I feel my own experience of parish ministry in the ’70s and ’80s would have been greatly enhanced by better theological education that was more consciously related to the outcomes of pastoral ministry. Thankfully I feel I am now in that position. But I was certainly not ready for parish life either when I left college in 1976 or when I took up my post as a priest-in-charge in 1981.

And like Ronni, I certainly experienced all the difficulties of boundaries and identity that she describes. Indeed it was a great relief, in 1983, to go into ‘sector’ ministry as a college chaplain, to live in an anonymous house like everyone else, and to be able to detach myself from the role of a clergyman. For the first six months, however, I felt I was simply rediscovering who ‘I’ was – as opposed to the persona forced on me by parish life.

Ronni’s book particularly interested me as presenting a more ‘middle of the road’ viewpoint of parish ministry. I have no proof to back this up, but it does seem to me that evangelical clergy as a whole are in a somewhat better position to deal with some of the difficulties she encountered. Ronni clearly found the structures of clergy Chapter and CMD (post-ordination training) somewhat lacking. For example, she describes the atmosphere of Chapter as ‘competitive’. I am not sure what she means by this, but it obviously wasn’t a good thing.

Evangelicals, and particularly those who belong to bodies like New Wine or Reform do, I think, have a sense of collective identity that can be helpful and a network of events that can provide meaningful input and ‘respite’. I simply do not know whether the same is true for those who would class themselves as more ‘middle of the road’ – but surely it would be helpful if the Church did some research to find out.

When you are faced by constant demands, by people who do not see the Christian life, and therefore Christian ministry, in the same terms as you, by a hierarchy that offers benign advice whilst constantly reducing the supply of staff (and expecting full payment of the quota assessment they impose on you), by social isolation and public scrutiny, and all the time trying to live out your faith and fashion the lives of “you and yours ... after the rule and doctrine of Christ, that ye may be wholesome and godly examples and patterns for the people to follow”, the surprise is not that some leave the job but that so many stay.

Yet as Ronni observes, some of those who stay do so because they have nowhere else to go. They may have kept their faith – in fact ‘loss of faith’ seems to be a rare reason for quitting – but they may certainly have run out of steam.

So I commend Ronni’s book, even though I wish it had been written differently. You may be reading this as a minister and thinking ‘that’s not me’. But it is a lot of people, and as a member of the Anglican clergy, it would be helpful for you to know that.

And if it is you, don’t feel too bad about it. Maybe you are a square peg in a round hole – there is no shame in that. One of the turning points in my life came when, sitting in the vicarage in Sparkbrook, my eye was caught by Romans 12:6: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (RSV).

I had thought that God had called me to this particular job, despite many people telling me it was not a good idea, because God calls you through feelings and signs, even to do things you don’t seem cut out for. This was what happened in the books I’d read. But I was desperately unhappy and hanging on by a thread.

Suddenly I had this sense of revelation. According to the passage, you should use the gifts God had given you. So the right job would be one where you could do that. But according to what I’d learned, the right job had nothing to do with your gifts. You went where your feelings led you. Now I found myself thinking, either my view was right, or the Bible was right. And it was blindingly obvious which!

At that moment I realized that (a) I ought to find a job which matched my interests and abilities and (b) it was OK to leave.

Ronni has now found a place where she can thrive. With a bit more careful thought about Romans 12, perhaps others could do the same.

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Reflections for Good Friday: 4, The Body on Which we Feed

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:59:23 PDT

Talk 4: 1 Corinthians 10:14-17, The Body On Which We Feed

¹⁴ Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. ¹⁵ I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. ¹⁶ Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? ¹⁷ Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.

What I have been trying to emphasize in these talks today is the importance and significance of Christ’s body — something which is often not greatly considered in our branch of the Christian Church, but which was of immense significance to the New Testament Church.

We tend to think of ourselves as individual Christians and of Church as a collection of Christian individuals.

We believe in Christ, and we acknowledge our debt to him: “In Christ alone,” we sing, “ my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song ...”

It is a great song, and I love to sing it, but there is something not quite right — not quite biblical — about the way we sing. Indeed, there is something not quite right about a lot of what we do in church, as a church.

At one end of the spectrum, you had the lonely isolation of your typical old-style churchgoers (now less typical, I’m glad to say) — people who would turn up to a service once a week, always the same service, always the same time, always the same pew — but who had no relationship with anyone else in the same building that owed anything to their churchgoing. It was a private matter, between them and God.

Then, at the other end of the spectrum, you have the modern worshipper — face turned heavenward, eyes closed or staring upward, arms outstretched, lost in wonder, love and praise, yes, but at that point oblivious to those around them. As we used to say in the seventies, ‘tripping out’ on Jesus.

Then look at the Bible:

¹⁶ Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? ¹⁷ Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.

We are reminded here of the death of Christ. It is not just his body, it is his blood that is taken and consumed. We are, at this point, in the moment of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. As Paul says a little later,

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Cor 11:2)

Notice, it is his death, not his resurrection that is proclaimed by the elements in the Lord’s Supper. So where is his resurrection? Here I am tempted to quote the inscription on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in St Paul’s Cathedral,

LECTOR SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE

which being translated means,

Reader, if you require a monument, look around

For that is what we should do in Holy Communion. If you want to see the living Christ, look around you. The wine we drink, the bread we eat, are a participation in the blood and body of Christ. But where have they gone?

The answer is obvious: into you! But the lesson is sometimes missed, which is why Paul has to spell it out: because we all share one bread, we are one body — his body.

And he emphasizes it in his instructions in chapter 11:

For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. ^{... 33} So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. (1 Cor 11:29, 32)

Yes, the body of the Lord is given to you in tokens of bread and wine. You should know and respect that. But it goes out into the all the believers, and you should know and recognize what is going on there. What it means is what we read in 12:27: “you” and it is you plural, “you are the body of Christ”.

If you want to see the living, resurrected Christ, look around you.

The other week, I was sitting in Chelmsford cathedral during a Diocesan Synod debate about mission. Above the chancel arch is a statue of Christ — a modern statue of Jesus with his arms out.

Now I don’t much like statues in churches, but as I was sitting there listening to the debate on mission, I thought to myself, “It would help us if people realized that when they look at that statue of Christ, everything from the neck down is themselves.”

As Ephesians 1:22-23 puts it,

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

This is the other outcome of Good Friday. Our sins are forgiven, we are reconciled to God, through the death of the body of Christ on the cross.

But precisely because of that, his body takes on a new life, lived in us and through us. We are the body of Christ, crucified for sin, dead to sin and now alive, living out the kingdom and proclaiming the gospel to the world.

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Reflections for Good Friday: 3, The Body to Which we Are Joined

noreply@blogger.com (John Richardson) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:58:54 PDT

Talk 3: Romans 6:1-8, The Body To Which We Are Joined

¹ What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ² By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. ⁵ If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. ⁶ For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— ⁷ because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. ⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

The mood of many Good Friday meditations and hymns is to see ourselves as onlookers. ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ is just one of the hymns that depicts us watching and contemplating the crucified Christ.

And that is well and good. Had we been there in the crowd that day, onlookers is exactly what we would have been — spectators to a public execution.

But sometimes what we might call our ‘cultural theology’— the beliefs we absorb through the things we do as part of our church culture — isn’t always as helpful as it might be.

We see this in a lot of our hymns about heaven, which often forget the biblical perspective, and the true Christian hope, of Christ who is going to come again.

But we see it also in this attitude of detachment — of Christ who is ‘over there’ whilst we are ‘over here’. And this can create problems.

There are theoretical problems about our understanding of salvation. How are our sins forgiven if somebody else died for them? If he is righteous and we are not, what connection is there between his righteousness and ours — or does God just, as it were, pretend we are righteous?

And there are practical problems about our understanding of ourselves. What may be true of Christ is all well and good. He is perfect, he is righteous, he is without sin, he is in heaven ... and so on. But I am a flawed, I am unrighteous, I am a sinner, I am earthly.

When the Prayer Book says we are ‘miserable’ offenders it uses a word that means ‘in need of mercy’. But sometimes miserable is exactly what we are in the modern sense. We know we are forgiven — we’ve learned that much. We even know we are loved by God — the Bible tells us so. But we don’t really think we are very much liked by God.

Of course God would like Jesus. That’s obvious. But Jesus is Jesus and I am me.

That is, until we look again at the language of Scripture, for whilst we are thinking about Christ on the cross, we read,

... we have been united with him ... in his death ... our old self was crucified with him... we died with Christ ...

Had you been there in the crowd on that day, you would have been a spectator, looking on him, standing apart from him.

But something incredible has happened. Paul reminds us of it here in Romans 6:1,

... don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

The incredible thing is that you have been baptized — baptized into Jesus. V 4:

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

So often we get hung up about the when and how of baptism. Should we baptize infants or adults, new believers or people who have stuck it out for a while, by sprinkling or immersion, and so on?

What we forget is the ‘what’ of baptism — what being baptized means to the baptized person. Sometimes we are rightly nervous about attributing too much to baptism. But the result is that almost invariably we attribute too little to it.

Baptism is a sign of salvation, and we are quick to say is only a sign. But it is a real sign of a real thing.

My wedding ring is only a sign. But I am really married to a real person. Perhaps more appropriately, we might think of a handshake on a deal. It is only a handshake, but it tokens something irrevocable, something that commits you, something that expresses trust and faithfulness.

Until the handshake, you are still negotiating. After the handshake, there is no going back. But it is only a handshake.

Well baptism is only baptism. It isn’t magic and it requires two parties. In the Prayer Book Catechism, children are asked, “What is required of persons to be baptized?” And the right answer, which they are supposed to learn, is this

Repentance, whereby they forsake sin: and faith, whereby they stedfastly believe the promises of God, made to them in that Sacrament.

Notice, these are a requirement, not an option. Without repentance and faith you are not baptized in the biblical sense of the word.

But if you are baptized you are not just ‘baptized’ — you are not just someone who has received a little token, like a Christening Bible, or something like that.

You are baptized. You have taken hold of the promises of God, his outstretched hand which you have shaken on the deal. And you are now joined — as joined as it is possible to be — to the body of Christ.

As he died, you died. As he was raised, you have been raised spiritually and will be raised physically. What was true for him is true for you. You are no longer a spectator, you are a participant.

As you survey the wondrous cross with the eyes of faith, you see not just him. You see you.

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