Hans Küng on Global Ethics, Roman Catholicism, and other stuff

Last night, Rachel Kohn, presenter of ABC Radio’s The Spirit of Things, aired an interesting interview with the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng. Among other things, they discussed global ethics (‘a program which can integrate again secularists and clericalists’), Roman Catholicism under Benedict (that ‘the Catholic church is in a period of roman restoration’) and genital mutilation. You can also download/listen to the conversation here.

John Webster on T.F. Torrance on Scripture [updated]

In his recent lecture on ‘T.F. Torrance on Scripture’ (presented in Montreal, 6 November 2009, at the Annual Meeting of the T.F. Torrance Theological Fellowship), Professor John Webster argued that Torrance’s most sustained writing on Scripture lay not in extended cursive exegesis but rather in ‘epistemological and hermeneutical questions – in giving a theological account of the nature of the biblical writings and of the several divine and human acts which compose the economy of revelation’ (p. 1). Such an account requires the theologian to both develop an anatomy of modern reason, in order to expose a ‘damaging breach in the ontological bearing of our minds upon reality’ (Reality & Evangelical Theology, 10), and to make an attempt at ‘repairing the ontological relation of the mind to reality, so that a structural kinship arises between human knowing and what is known’ (ibid., 10). Webster contends that Torrance’s writings on these matters constitute ‘one of the most promising bodies of material on a Christian theology of the Bible and its interpretation from a Protestant divine of the last five or six decades – rivalled but not surpassed’, Webster suggests, ‘by Berkouwer’s magisterial study Holy Scripture’ (p. 1).

Webster devotes the bulk of his paper to three related areas of Torrance’s thought on Scripture: namely, that (i) Scripture must be ordered from a trinitarian theology of revelation; (ii) that the biblical writings are complex textual acts of reference to the Word of God; and (iii) that the Bible directs its readers to ‘a hermeneutics of repentance and faith’ (p. 4).

On this first point, Webster notes that ‘a theological account of the nature of Scripture and its interpretation takes its rise … not in observations of the immanent religious and literary processes, as if the texts could be understood as self-articulations on the part of believing communities, but in the doctrine of the self-revealing triune God. Torrance is unhesitatingly and unrelentingly a positive dogmatician at this point, in a couple of senses. First, and most generally, he takes revelation as a given condition for the exercise of theological intelligence, not as a matter about which intelligence is competent to entertain possibilities or deliver a judgment … Second, more specifically, Torrance’s positivity concerns the way in which knowledge of God, including knowledge of God through Holy Scripture – arises from the specific modes in which God deals with rational creatures’ (pp. 4–5). In support of this claim, Webster cites from (among other sources) Torrance’s Divine Meaning:

‘The source of all our knowledge of God is his revelation of himself. We do not know God against his will, or behind his back, as it were, but in accordance with the way in which he as elected to disclose himself and communicate his truth in the historical theological context of the worshipping people of God, the Church of the Old and New Covenants. That is the immediate empirical fact with which the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New testaments are bound up’ (Divine Meaning, 5).

Such a move, Webster recalls, enables Torrance to develop an account of revelation in which the relation of divine communication to the biblical texts is not fundamentally problematic, but rather is one in which ‘creaturely media can fittingly perform a service in relation to the intelligible speech of God’ (p. 6). He continues:

‘It was this, perhaps more than any other factor, which led to his estrangement from mainstream British theological culture, preoccupied as it was both in biblical and doctrinal work with the supposedly self -ontained realities of Christian texts, beliefs and morals, struggling to move beyond historical immanence, and weakened by a largely inoperative theology of the incarnation. Torrance was able to overcome the inhibitions of his contemporaries by letting a theology of the divine economy instruct him in the way in which God acts in the temporal and intelligible domain of the creature’. (p. 6)

Webster proceeds to note that the ultimate ground of Torrance’s claim that only God speaks of God is the Word’s assumption of flesh, an event which ‘carries with it the election and sanctification of creaturely form’ (p. 7). He concludes the section by underscoring Torrance’s refusal to be ‘trapped either by the kind of revelatory supernaturalism in which the Bible is unproblematically identical with the divine Word, and so effectively replaces the hypostatic union, or the kind of naturalism in which the Bible mediates nothing because it has been secularised as without residue a product or bearer of immanent religious culture’ (p. 8).

In the next section, Webster recalls how for Torrance the relation between the divine Word and the human words of Scripture is a positive one: ‘there is no crisis about the possibility of human text acts serving in God’s personal activity of self-presentation to intelligent creatures’ (p. 9). At this point the doctrine of Scripture exhibits similar formal features as does that of the hypostatic union. And Webster goes on to identify three ways in which Torrance amplifies this basic proposal: (1) Scripture as an accommodated divine Word (a theme that betrays Torrance’s indebtment to Calvin); (2) Scripture as sacrament; (3) Scripture’s expressive or referential relation to the divine Word. On the first, divine accommodation, Webster writes:

‘A theology of accommodation is a way of overcoming the potential agnosticism or scepticism which can lurk within strong teaching about the ineffable majesty of God. Doctrines of divine transcendence can paralyse theological speech, severing the connection between theologia in se and theologia nostra, and cause theology either to retreat into silence or to resign itself to the referential incapacity of secular human words. If, however, we think of divine revelation actively accommodating itself to creaturely forms, we make use of language about divine action, but without the assumption that divine action can only be efficacious an trustworthy if it is direct and immediate, uncontaminated by any created element. We retain, that is, a measure of trust that divine communicative activity is uninhibited by creaturely media, which it can take into its service and shape into fitting (though never wholly adequate) instruments. In terms of the doctrine of Holy Scripture, this means that, although we do not receive the Word of God directly but only ‘in the limitation and imperfection, the ambiguities and contradictions of our fallen ways of thought and speech’ (Divine Meaning, 8), nevertheless we do have the divine Word. Creaturely limitation, imperfection, ambiguity and contradiction do not constitute an unsurpassable barrier to the Word as it makes itself present to created intelligence … Divine appropriation, moreover, brings with it the transformation of creaturely speech, its transposition into a new field of operation and its being accorded a new set of semantic functions’ (pp. 11, 13).

In the next section, Webster turns to the question of biblical interpretation, where he allows the agenda to be set by Torrance’s own questions; namely, What is biblical interpretation’s most characteristic posture before the divine Word? What is the general tenor of its activity? From whence does it come, and to what end does it move? How does it come to learn to dispose itself fittingly in the domain of the divine Word? Webster recalls that for Torrance, the governing rule for the interpretation of Scripture is that the Scriptures ‘are to be interpreted in terms of the intrinsic intelligibility given them by divine revelation, and within the field of God’s objective self-communication in Jesus Christ’ (The Christian Doctrine of God, 43). He later cites from Torrance’s brilliant Reality & Evangelical Theology, noting that for Torrance theological interpretation is, therefore, a matter of ‘subjecting the language used to the realities it signifies and attend[ing] to the bearing of its coherent patterns upon the self-revelation of God which it manifestly intends’ (Reality & Evangelical Theology, 117). Webster concludes that ‘because of this, hermeneutics is not a poetic activity. The interpreter is not a co-creator of meaning by the work which he or she undertakes with the text. And so, in biblical hermeneutics the interpreter’s task is more than anything to receive with the right kind of pliability the gift of meaning which the divine Word extends through the text’s service. It is this all-important alertness to the text’s relation to the reality which it signifies which constitutes the scientific character of biblical hermeneutics … If the all-important property of the Bible is the semantic relation between divine Word and created text, the all-important hermeneutical activity is that of probing behind or beneath literary phenomena in order to have dealings with that which the phenomena indicate. The “depth – surface” language, that is, goes hand in hand with what has already been said of Scripture as sign or sacrament: the movement of which the Bible is part does not terminate in itself, and the interpreter must not be arrested by the merely phenomenal, but instead press through the text to the Word of which it is the ambassador’ (p. 16, 17).

A gravely important point. Webster does not, unfortunately, unpack the claim about poetic activity, nor does he proceed to relate this directly to preaching, and to what sense (if any) preaching – and, indeed, the Church’s entire liturgical witness – entails poetic action, that divine speech in Scripture calls not only for ‘crucifixion and repentance’ (Divine Meaning, 8) but also for a rigorous affirmation of the imagination, not as, to be sure, a ‘co-creator of meaning’ or where readers and hearers might be said to ‘make’ meaning, but as part of the Word’s faithful and sanctifying unveiling. Is imagination somehow not included in the claim, made earlier, that the Word’s assumption of flesh ‘carries with it the election and sanctification of creaturely form’ (p. 7)? I think here of Brueggemann’s Finally Comes The Poet, of Nicholas Lash’s Holiness, Speech and Silence (see, for example, pp. 3–4), and, indeed, of Torrance’s own The Mediation of Christ. Unless I have misunderstood Webster here, surely this is a matter of both/and. So Trevor Hart:

‘We must insist, to be sure, that God’s self-revealing initiative (in Scripture, in his own self-imaging in his Son, and in his personal indwelling of the church in his Spirit) be taken absolutely seriously and accounted for adequately in Christian discipleship and theological construction. Yet we must also acknowledge the vital roles played by imagination in laying hold of the reality of this same God and in enabling our response to God’s engagement with us. For faith, as evangelicals above all know very well, is a relationship with God that transforms and transfigures. It is a relationship in which the Father’s approach in Word and Spirit calls forth from us ever and again imaginative responses as we seek to interpret, to “make sense” of, and to correspond appropriately with what we hear God saying to us. It is not a matter of having a divine image impressed on us like tablets of wax but of having our imagination taken captive and being drawn into a divine drama, playing out the role that the Father grants us in the power of the Spirit, whom he pours out on the entire group of players’. – Trevor A. Hart, ‘Imagining Evangelical Theology’, in Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theological Method (ed. J. G. Stackhouse, Jr.; Grand Rapids/Leicester/Vancouver: Baker Books/Inter-Varsity Press/Regent College Publishing, 2000), 197–8.

Professor Hart, who has, I think, engaged with these questions more deeply and more satisfactorily than most in recent centuries, has argued elsewhere that imagination remains a key category for any discourse about themes eschatological, that in order to make sense of the kind of hopeful living towards God’s future that Scripture bears witness to demands that we take the imagination seriously. ‘One of the key functions of imagination is the presentation of the otherwise absent. In other words, we have the capacity through imagination to call to mind objects, persons or states of affairs which are other than those which appear to confront us in what, for want of a better designation, we might call our “present actuality” (i.e. that which we are currently experiencing). I do not say “reality” precisely because the real itself may well prove to be other than what appears to be actual’. He continues: ‘Another key role of imagination in human life is as the source of the capacity to interpret, to locate things within wider patterns or networks of relationships which are not given, but which we appeal to tacitly in making sense of things. We see things as particular sorts of things, and this is, in substantial part, an imaginative activity. And, since more than one way of seeing or taking things is often possible, what appears to be the case may actually change with an imaginative shift of perspective, rendering a quite distinct picture of the real’. – Trevor Hart, ‘Imagination for the Kingdom of God? Hope, Promise, and the Transformative Power of an Imagined Future’ in God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (ed. Richard Bauckham; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 54. In other words, the present, Hart insists, does not contain its full meaning within itself, but only in its relation to what is yet to come.

It is precisely imagination, the capacity which is able to take the known and to modify it in striking and unexpected ways, which offers us the opportunity to think beyond the limits of the given, to explore states of affairs which, while they are radical and surprising modifications of the known, are so striking and surprising as to transcend the latent possibilities and potentialities of the known. If, therefore, the promise of God is the source of hope, it may be that we must pursue the suggestion that it is the imagination of men and women to which that promise appeals, which it seizes and expands, and which is the primary locus of God’s sanctifying activity in human life. (Hart, ‘Imagination’, 76)

Returning back to Torrance (and to Webster), it seems to me that the graced value of the imagination is not necessarily excluded from Torrance’s own rigorous scientific method, though, as Tony Clark has argued in a 2006 paper given at St Mary’s College, St Andrews, Torrance does have a tendency to see the scientific nature of theology as an exclusive paradigm for theological knowledge and in this the Scottish Presbyterian ‘discounts or marginalises other approaches to theology which ought properly to complement the “scientific model”’. [BTW: I heartily commend the published version of Clark’s PhD thesis, Divine Revelation and Human Practice: Responsive and Imaginative Participation]. If Webster’s point that hermeneutics is not a poetic activity is simply to underscore the basic unilateral givenness of the text then I can have no problem with his statement, but if by this claim he means to suggest that ‘the scientific character of biblical hermeneutic’ takes place apart from human imagination, then I would want to suggest otherwise.

To be sure, Webster touches on something of this in the final section of his lecture wherein he alludes to ‘a theology of the Word’s majestic freedom and condescension in appropriating and adapting created speech to revelation’ (p. 24), but he leaves this point undeveloped, electing instead to focus on Torrance’s trumpeting of ‘a genealogy of exegetical and interpretative reason … not only to give a pathology of hermeneutical defect but also to retrieve a set of useable dogmatic, metaphysical and spiritual principles by which to direct the interpretative exercise’ (p. 25).

My relatively-small reservation aside, Professor Webster’s paper is a superb introduction to Torrance on Scripture, and betrays his own longlasting engagement with questions of Scripture and hermeneutics, most obviously in Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch but also in other places. It certainly rekindled my appetite for Webster’s own forthcoming commentary on Ephesians (as part of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series). Many thanks to the TF Torrance Theological Fellowship for making Professor Webster’s paper widely available.

Patterns of Abuse: Photographs of rural life in a militarized Karen State

I have sometimes used this blog to draw attention to the humanitarian abuses facing Karen and Burmese people, two people groups most dear to me. And a few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Karen Human Rights Group (whose important work focuses on the human rights situation of villagers in rural Burma) has produced a 98-page photo-annotated album called Patterns of Abuse: Photographs of rural life in a militarized Karen State. This nicely-produced book contains 125 images taken over a 17-year period and depicts life in rural Karen State. My copy of the book arrived in our mailbox yesterday, and it powerfully documents the most tragic of human rights abuses against a most resilient people living under – and resisting – one of the most oppressive and evil regimes in history. A well-written introduction presents an accurate survey of the historical and political context that the Karen face, and subsequent sections illustrate and describe village life in Karen State, life in State Peace and Development Council-Controlled areas, life in non State Peace and Development Council-Controlled areas, as well as sections on soldiers and various portraits.

That neighbouring-Thailand’s welcome increasingly seems to be running dry only adds to the deep sense of anxiety that the 133,000+ Karen refugees experience, an anxiety further fed by the increasing sense of donor fatigue over a prolonged refugee crisis.

Please consider purchasing a copy. All proceeds support the work of KHRG.

Two worthwhile pieces on ministry

1. Kate Murphy reflects on whether youth ministry is killing the church:

‘when our children and youth ministries ghettoize young people, we run the risk of losing them after high school graduation … I think I’ve done youth ministry with integrity. But I may have been unintentionally disconnecting kids from the larger body of Christ. The young people at my current congregation—a church that many families would never join because “it doesn’t have anything for youth”—are far more likely to remain connected to the faith and become active church members as adults, because that’s what they already are and always have been’.

2. Joseph Small (who is no stranger to this blog) on why ‘clergy’ and ‘laity’ ought be dropped from all Presbyterian usage:

‘Clergy and laity are two words that should never escape the lips of Presbyterians … Ministry within the church needs to be the responsibility of all the leaders — deacons, elders and pastors … Deacons, Small noted, have too often been relegated to serving coffee on Sunday and sending flowers to shut-ins … Elders “have become the board of directors of a small community service organization.” And … “What happened to ministers? They became clergy,” and clergy have ‘emerged as the power in the church.” The divided role of ordained leadership in the church needs to change … and the walls between ordained offices torn down. Deacons are called to “leading the whole church in the ministry of compassion and justice … Elders should ’share equally in the administration of the ministry of word and sacrament,” … [and] the “primary role” of ministers should be that of “teacher of the faith.”

Small said he favors use of the terms “teaching elders” and “ruling elders.” But … “ruling does not mean governing.” The correct meaning … “is rule like a measuring stick.” Ruling elders measure the congregation’s “fidelity to the gospel” and the “spiritual health of the congregation.” Small called ordained leaders in the church to be “genuine colleagues in ministry.”

Without collegial ministry, he said, the position of pastor becomes one of a lonely leader. He described the history of ministers in the United States as one of accumulated roles, where responsibilities always have been added but never withdrawn. Beginning on the frontier, Small said, pastors were called to be revivalists to “inspire and uplift.” When small towns grew on the prairie, the ministers were still expected to “know more about the faith,” but in addition to being inspirational preachers, ministers were expected to be community builders. As small towns grew into cities, ministers, he said, were expected to also be therapists, who helped those in the congregation “cope” with new stress.

As cities grew, ministers became “managers of an increasingly complex social organization called the church,” and today a pastor is expected to be a entrepreneur and innovator. “It’s just one more layer added on …’.

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part IX, On Lutherans

We’ll make this the final post on Lischer’s, Open Secrets. Fittingly, it’s on Lutherans:

‘Lutherans fill their vacancies more deliberately than any of the churches in Christendom. Vacant congregations go months without thinking about choosing a new leader, and pastors, once they have received a call, may sit on it for additional months before hatching a decision. The time isn’t used for negotiating more favorable terms; it is simply filled with prayer and dormancy. The President-elect of the United States names a Cabinet faster than the smallest Lutheran congregation picks a pastor, because Lutherans consider the latter process far more important. All is left to prayer and the brooding of the Spirit, and everyone knows the Spirit always works slowly’. – Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, 220.

Here’s a list of the earlier posts:

• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part I, On Theological Education
• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part II, On Theological Education 2
• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part III, On Homiletical Gridlock
• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part IV, On the Trinity
• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part V, On Symbols and National Flags
• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part VI, On Gossip
• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part VII, On the Church Calendar
• Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part VIII, On Abortion

A Script to Live (and to Die) By: 19 Theses by Walter Brueggemann

These 19 theses by Walter Brueggemann are the most interesting thing I’ve read all day [to be sure, it's been a bit of an admin marathon today], an encouraging invitation to those of us striving to live by, and to train others to live by, what Brueggemann calls ‘the alternative script’:

1.        Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or explicit. It may be recognised or unrecognised, but everybody has a script.

2.        We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process of nurture and formation and socialisation, and it happens to us without our knowing it.

3.         The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socialises us all, liberal and conservative.

4.        That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism) enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us happy.

5.        That script has failed. That script of military consumerism cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the unhappiest society in the world.

6.        Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which we are profoundly ambiguous.

7.        It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us. That is, to enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.

8.        The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.

9.        The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism.

10.    That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature – its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son, and Spirit.

11.    That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence – [a] huge problem for us.

12.    The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must be taken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.

13.    The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves – liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims of the script and so to debilitate the focus of the script.

14.    The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”

15.    The nurture, formation, and socialisation into the counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialisation by the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action, spirituality, and neighbouring of all kinds.

16.    Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and mumbling in ambivalence.

17.    This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue for the Spirit, so that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.

18.    Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is crucially present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the new script.

19.    The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable in our society precisely because there is no one except the church and the synagogue to name and evoke the ambivalence and to manage a way through it. I think often I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I think, my God, what would happen if you took all the ministers out. The role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult.

[These theses were presented at the Emergent Theological Conversation, September 13-15, 2004, All Souls Fellowship, Decatur, GA., USA]

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part VIII, On Abortion

‘The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade meant that country girls like Leeta or Teri or others like them, who found themselves “in trouble,” would have the option of privatizing their problem by removing the stigma of an unwanted pregnancy from the eyes of the congregation. It wouldn’t be necessary for the community to promise to help raise the child. The church would not have the opportunity to offer the hospitality of Jesus to a scared teenager and her family. Nor would it have a chance to fail to do so, as it had sometimes done in the past. No one would know. It was none of the community’s business’. – Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, 208–9.

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part VII, On the Church Calendar

‘The Protestant church was already in the process of discarding the named Sundays of Lent and Easter even as we blessed and planted the seeds. Now they bear the evocative names “The First Sunday in Lent,” “the Second Sunday in Lent,” and so on. The fourth Sunday in Lent was once named Laetare, which means “rejoice.” It was known in the church as Refreshment Sunday. On this Sunday rose paraments replaced the traditional purple of Lent, and, psychologically and spiritually, we breathed a little easier. The color rose seemed to say, There’s light at the end of the tunnel. Even at the dead center of Lent, Christ is risen.

The Protestant church got rid of Laetare as well as Rogate and many of the other days for reasons I have never fully understood. It created a bland church calendar and liturgies du jour in the image of people who have been abstracted from place and history, who have no feel for the symbols and no memory of the stories. They live, work, and worship in climate-controlled buildings. They have largely adopted a digitalized language. Their daily routines override the natural rhythms and longings of life.

I can only say that the Latin words were not too much for my high school dropouts. The simple outline of church history didn’t overtax their imaginations. The liturgy and church year made sense to the farmers in New Cana, for who better than a farmer understands the circularities of life? The church year had a rhythm, and so did their lives.

Some would argue that the observance of Rogate arose in an agricultural world and is, therefore, irrelevant to all but the 1.7 percent of Americans who still live on farms. But my congregation understood the metaphor that underlay Rogate, which is this: When we do any kind of useful work, we join the act of creation in progress and help God keep the universe humming’. – Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, 144–5.

‘The proclamation of the word … has no functional equivalents in secular culture’

‘Most ministers were “set apart for the gospel”, as Paul says of himself … The preacher’s vocation was once a kind of circle that began and ended in the word. Whatever it was that made you a minister was aimed at its eventual public expression. The minister’s whole existence was concentrated to a point of declaration. Today, however, the circle has been broken.

Our culture devalues proclamation while elevating other associated forms of ministry such as counseling or community work …

But the proclamation of the word cannot be professionalized. It has no functional equivalents in secular culture. It cannot be camouflaged among socially useful or acceptable activities. Its passions are utterly nontransferable. The kerygmatic pitch, as Abraham Heschel said of the prophet’s voice, is usually about an octave too high for the rest of society. If you are filling out a job application, see how far it gets you to put under related skills: “I can preach”.

When ministers allow the word of God to be marginalized, they continue to speak, of course, and make generally helpful comments on a variety of issues, but they do so from no center of authority and with no heart of passion. We do our best to meet people’s needs, but without the divine word we can never know enough or be enough, because consumer need is infinite. We are simply there as members of a helping profession. We annex to our ministry the latest thinking in the social sciences and preface our proclamations with phrases like ‘modern psychology tells us,’ forgetting that the word ‘modern’ in such contexts usually indicates that what follows will be approximately one-hundred years out of date. What we lack in specialized knowledge we can only offset in time by making ourselves compulsively available to anyone in need.

I am convinced that no seminarian or candidate sets out to minister with such reduced expectations, and not everyone succumbs to this scenario, but ultimately the marginalization of the word of God fractions it into a hundred lesser duties’.

Richard Lischer, The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence (The Lyman Beecher Lectures in Preaching). (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), 22-24.

[H/T: Kim Fabricius]

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part VI, On Gossip

I recently posted on Luther and Calvin on Slander; now here’s Richard Lischer offering a different take on a similar theme – gossip:

‘The word gossip originally implied a spiritual relationship. A gossip was a sponsor at a baptism, one who spoke on behalf of the child and who would provide spiritual guidance to the child as it grew in years. A gossip was your godmother or godfather. Gossiping was speech within the community of the baptized.

For all its negative associations, gossip retains something of its salutary function in a small town … Gossip is the community’s way of conducting moral discourse and, in an oddly indirect way, of forgiving old offenses. In our town all desires were known, no secrets were hid, and every heart was an open book. Every life was gossiped by all, and all were gossips.

The continuous reworking of the community’s stories, characters, and themes served two purposes. Gossip helps soften the edges of people who are simply too accessible to one another, who irritate one another to death, but who can’t escape one another or their common history. Gossip also explains peculiarities … and tells how they came to be.

Second, our gossip was common discourse. It contributed to a moral consensus on, say, what constitutes decent farming, honorable business, tolerable preaching, or effective parenting. Gossip was our community’s continuing education … Gossip is always a painful business but, when it functions as speech in the community of the baptized, it can serve a constructive end. In my wife’s case, the sifting of stories led to grudging appreciation of a ‘peculiar” sort of prairie wife’. – Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, 95–6, 99.

January bests …

From the reading chair: Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief by Christopher Morse; Secular Christianity and God Who Acts by Robert J. Blaikie; The Calvin Handbook edited by Herman J. Selderhuis; Studies in Theology by James Denney; Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition by John Calvin, edited by Elsie McKee; Markings: Poems and Drawings, and Berlin Diary by Cilla McQueen; Practical Theology: An Introduction by Richard R. Osmer.

Through the iPod: The Astounding Eyes of Rita, Le Pas Du Chat Noir, Astrakan Cafe, ECM Touchstones: Conte de l’Incroyable Amour, Le Voyage de Sahar, Thimar, Barzakh, and Khomsa, all by Anouar Brahem; Available Light by Dave Dobbyn; Arvo Pärt: I am the True Vine by Paul Hillier; Britten Choral Works by Choir of King’s College Cambridge

On the screen: The Wire (Season 1); Mary and Max [2009].

By the bottle: Olssens Nipple Hill Pinot Noir 2008

Thinking baptism

Since the birth of his daughter Aurora, Byron Smith has been posting some great little reflections on baptism, on whether to dunk, dip, douse or dribble?, and his latest on timing and why parents should not wait:

… when it comes to baptism, church family trumps blood family. No waiting until great aunt Gertrude can make it up from the farm; the child is welcomed immediately by and into the congregational family at their next major gathering. And this makes good sense. If children are to be welcomed into the household of God so that they are always raised within the Christian faith (as the practice of baptising infant baptism implies), then to be consistent, this baptismal welcome should occur as soon as possible …

Therefore, resolve to make your arrangements for a baptismal celebration prior to the birth. Expectant parents often spend hours researching prams and selecting nursery colours. Why not also (instead?) put some time into making preparations for the child’s spiritual growth? Settle your conscience on the good gift of infant baptism. Meet with your priest or minister to discuss any concerns and to ensure you understand what baptism means and how it will work. Think about godparents early (and remember, godparenting is not primarily a chance to honour your closest friends, but a responsibility for those who will be faithful in prayer and example, taking the lead in discharging the duty and privilege of the whole church family in raising a new child in the faith and love of Christ). Check your church has a font or pool large enough for the infant to be dipped into. Have your child baptised at the first service available after their birth. And read your prayer book.

Great stuff Byron.

New Sidebar Category: Pastoralia

I’m starting to pull together some new sidebar items under the subject of Pastoralia. Really happy to hear of any suggestions, but here’s what I’ve linked to thus far:

• Alban Institute
• Covered Dish
• Deep and Wide
• Faith and Leadership
• Fresh Expressions
• Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Ministry Resources
• John Mark Ministries
• Lewis Center for Church Leadership
• New Creation Teaching Ministry
• New Way
• Priscilla’s Friends
• ReSource
• Rural & Migrant Ministry
• Rural Ministry
• SpouseConnect
• The Connection

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part V, On Symbols and National Flags

First Church, Dunedin

‘It all begins with the symbols. They capture primal relations, like water and death, fire and purification, seeds and hope. The stories do not come before the symbols, but they emerge from them and bring them to life. The stories explain the symbols, and the symbols make the stories worth remembering and telling. The window in the Lumbee church said, “See, under this sign of suffering, we will accept one another as brothers and sisters.” A congregation lives most deeply by its symbol-bearing stories. They tell us who we are.

Any cultural anthropologist would have warned me not to rearrange the furniture in our church. Of course, there were no cultural anthropologists in New Cana. Had there been, they would have reminded me that the physical focus of worship symbolically “freezes” the community’s story into a sacred universe. Therefore, to shuffle the furniture in the chancel or to alter the ritual, say, by moving the flag or changing the music, is to offend against the stories and derange the universe itself.

Who knew?

I should have known not to try to remove the American flag from the chancel. To me, the national flag represented an intrusion into the sacred space of the congregation, an obvious symbol of civil religion. Theologically, the flag has no business beside the altar.

At one of our congregational “town meetings” I patiently explained that I had nothing against patriotism but that it was a short step from “God and country” to “God equals country”. These were the last hours of Vietnam and the early days of Watergate. How can Christians minister prophetically to the country, I asked, if we embrace the nation’s chief symbol and admit it into our sanctuary’. – Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, 89–90.

I’ve blogged on this theme before too. See Aliens in the Church: A Reflection on ANZAC Day, National Flags and the Church as an Alternative Society

Howard Zinn on prostituting God, history, democratic education, and patriotism

Saddened to read today of the death of Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times, Howard Zinn on Democratic Education, Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice, The Politics of History, Marx in Soho: A Play on History, Emma, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress and a host of other books. James Carroll’s assessment of this ex-air force bombardier is spot on, that ‘Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream’. Typically provocative, and always timely, I don’t always agree with Zinn, but I’ve appreciated everything I’d read from his engaging pen and the gentle courage with which he said it.

For those unfamiliar with Zinn’s thought, here are a few tasters:

‘It is interesting that God is brought into the picture when the government is doing great violence. Maybe it’s when you are doing great violence that you desperately need some support. You’re not going to get any moral support from any thinking person, but since God isn’t thinking at the moment, maybe you can pull out God to support you’. – Howard Zinn, Terrorism and War (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 94.

‘History is always a good entity to call upon if you are hesitant to call upon God because they both play the same role. They are both ab­stractions; they are both actually meaningless until you invest them with meaning. I’ve noticed that President Bush calls upon God a lot. I think he’s hesitant to call upon history because I think the word history throws him; he’s not quite sure what to do with it, but he’s more familiar with God. History is invoked because nobody can say what history really has ordained for you, just as nobody can say what God has ordained for you. It’s an empty vessel, which you can fill in whatever way you can. So you can say that history has decided that the United States will be the great leader of the world and that American values, values being another empty vessel that you can fill with anything you want, will be transmitted to the rest of the world. So you can fill history, that ab­straction history, with anything you want, use it whenever you want. Political leaders, I guess, suppose that the population is as mystified by the word history as they are by the word God, and that therefore they will accept whatever interpretation of history is given to them. So the political leaders feel free to declare that history is on their side, and the way is open for them to use it in whatever manner they want’. Howard Zinn and David Barsamian, Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics (Pymble: HarperCollins, 2006), 131–2.

‘To me, a democratic education means many things: It means what you learn in the classroom; it means what you learn outside the classroom; it means not only the content of what you learn, but it means the atmosphere in which you learn it; it refers to the relation­ship between teacher and student. All of these elements of educa­tion can be democratic or undemocratic.

And so for the content of education to be democratic, it must take its cue from the idea of democracy, the idea that people will determine their own destiny. And therefore, it means students have a part in this. Students as human beings, as citizens in a democracy, have the right to determine their lives, have a right to play a role in the society. And therefore, a democratic education gives students the kind of information that will enable them to have a power of their own in the society.

And what that means is really to give the students a kind of education that, going into history, suggests to the students that historically there have been many, many ways in which ordinary people – people as ordinary as the student feels as he or she is sitting in the classroom – can play a part in the making of history, in the development of their society. So that a democratic education in that sense is an education that gives the student examples in history of where ordinary people have shown their power and their energy in not only reshaping their own lives but playing a part in how society works. That would be the substance of a democratic education, or part of the substance of a democratic education.

And then the relationship of the student to the teacher. There is democracy in the classroom. The understanding given to the stu­dent that the student has a right to challenge the teacher, that the student has a right to express ideas of his or her own. That educa­tion is an interchange between the experiences of the teacher, which may be far greater than the student in certain ways, and the experiences of the student, which are unique, since every student has a unique life experience, one which a teacher has not had, and therefore the student is in a position to throw into the educational reservoir of the class the student’s own experience. So the inter­change between student and teacher, the free inquiry that is pro­mulgated in the classroom, a spirit of equality in the classroom, to me that is part of a democratic education’. – Howard Zinn and David Barsamian, Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics (Pymble: HarperCollins, 2006), 132–3.

‘Patriotism is being used today the way patriotism has always been used, and that is to try to encircle everybody in the nation into a common cause, the cause being the support of war and the advance of national power. Patriotism is used to create the illusion of a com­mon interest that everybody in the country has. I just mentioned the necessity to see society in class terms, to realize that we do not have a common interest in our society, that people have different inter­ests. What patriotism does is to pretend to a common interest. And the flag is the symbol of that common interest. So patriotism plays the same role that certain phrases in our national language play, and that is to create the illusion of common interest. The words that are used are national security, pretending that there is only one se­curity for everybody, one kind of security for everybody; national interest, pretending that there is one interest for everybody; national defense, pretending that the word defense applies equally to all of us. So patriotism is a way of mobilizing people for causes that may not be in the people’s interest’. Howard Zinn and David Barsamian, Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics (Pymble: HarperCollins, 2006), 148–9.

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part IV, On the Trinity

‘God is persons and nothing else. There is no waxy residue of divinity that is not wrapped up in these three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s who God is. God is (est) each of these three persons, but the persons are distinct from one another (non est). God is both: alone in majesty and at the same time forever radiating love through each person of the Trinity … We are only able to love each other because the Father loves the Son through the Holy Spirit. We want to be with one another as friends, lovers, and neighbors for the same reason. That’s not an argument that would appeal to most theologians, but that’s what the Trinity meant for us’. – Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, 81.

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part III, On Homiletical Gridlock

‘Like most preachers, I grossly overestimated the importance of my part in the sermon. When I thought of preaching, I did not consider it to be a congregation’s reception of the word of God, but a speaker’s command of the Bible’s hidden meanings and applications, which were served up in a way to showcase the authority and skill of the preacher. In those days the gospel lived or died by my personal performance. My preaching was a small cloud of glory that followed me around and hung like a canopy over the pulpit whenever I occupied it. How ludicrous I must have appeared to my congregation.

In my first sermon I explained the meaning of an epiphany, not the Epiphany of God in the person of Jesus – no, that would have been too obvious – but the category of epiphanies in general. To this end, I drew at length on the depressing short stories of James Joyce in Dubliners. “Each of these stories has one thing in common,” I said. “In each the central character comes to a deeper and more disturbing understanding of himself. Nothing really happens in these stories except that in the midst of the daily routine a character is unexpectedly exposed to the predicaments of estrangement in his own life. One man realizes that his wife has never loved him. Another recognizes that he is trapped in his vocation. Another finds himself to be a hopeless failure. The human condition is full of such epiphanies …”

Before I could talk about Jesus, I apparently found it necessary to give my farmers a crash course in the angst-ridden plight of modern man. With the help of clichés from Joyce, Heidegger, Camus, and even Walker Percy, I first converted them to existential ennui so that later in the sermon I could rescue them with carefully crafted assurances of “meaning” in a meaningless world. Along the way I defiantly refuted Marx’s view of religion as an opiate that permits us to escape the hard realities of existence. It didn’t concern me that the problem of meaninglessness had not occurred to my audience or that Marx’s critique of religion rarely came up for discussion at the post office.

It’s not that I minimize the importance of the major themes of modernity. No doubt my parishioners would have understood themselves better had they opened their eyes to the intellectual context of their lives. But they did not and could not. The giants of modern thought – Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre – and the movements they unleashed, would never touch New Cana. My parishioners lived in a prison whose view was limited to the natural world and the most obvious technologies of the twentieth century. Aside from formulaic complaints about Communists, perverts, and radicals, they did not engage the modern world.

But then I did not bother to engage their world either. It did not occur to me that I needed a new education. I treated the rural life as an eccentric experience in ministry. I was a spectator once again, as I had been in college, watching a slide show of interesting scenes and odd characters. And since I was the viewer and they were the viewees, I was in control. When I preached, I always stood above my parishioners and looked down upon them.

Consequently, my sermons carried too many prerequisites to be effective. About 90 percent of my listeners had not graduated from high school; the majority of that group had not attended high school. There was no one with a four-year college degree in the church with the exception of a regular visitor named Darryl Sheets, our Lone Intellectual, who was principal of the high school in nearby Cherry Grove. Darryl regularly cornered me in long and fruitless conversations on the possible meanings of the Hebrew word for “young woman” in Isaiah 9:14 and how they all pointed to “Virgin.” But the truth is, Darryl and his wife Marvel didn’t drive all the way to Cana because of my expertise in Hebrew or the intellectual content of my sermons. Darryl was a tongue-speaking, fire-anointed charismatic who for some reason suspected that I might be one, too. It didn’t take him long to figure out he was wrong, and then we saw quite a bit less of Darryl and Marvel.

My audience paid a heavy price for the gospel. The farmers had to swallow my sixties-style cocktail of existentialism and psychology before I served them anything remotely recognizable. I implicitly required them to view their world and its problems through my eyes. All I asked of them was that they pretend to be me.

The only person who appreciated my sermons was my wife, who, like me, lived from books. Tracy was completing her course work for a Ph.D. in English and, therefore, considered poetry and literary allusions to be the most natural of all forms of communication. What’s a sermon without, “Perhaps Milton said it best when he wrote …” But among the rest of the congregation my preaching produced a standoff of sensibilities: If the idea for a sermon did not come from a book, I was not interested in pursuing it. If it did not emerge from life, my parishioners were not interested in hearing about it. In a few short months we had achieved homiletical gridlock’. – Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, pp. 73–5.

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part II, On Theological Education 2

We continue on with citations from Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery, and with another on theological education:

‘The congregation and I were insignificant figures in a larger and older pattern. The church has always identified its potential leaders, indoctrinated them, and then rudely inserted them in some setting or other where they almost never belong. At seminary we brooded over the mysteries of God for four years only to turn up later as chaplains to covered-dish suppers and car washes with the youth. One part of the church goes to great expense in order to prepare a theologian for another part of the church that wants a guitar player. Like misshelved books, we are there waiting to be used, but will anyone ever find us? As partners in an arranged marriage, my congregation and I might fall madly in love, which, in this creaky old church already seemed unlikely to me, or we could accommodate ourselves to what, if we were honest, each of us knew to be a mismatch’. (pp. 48–9)

Myanmar’s empty promise to free Aung San Suu Kyi

There’s been a lot of hype in recent days about the announcement that Aung San Suu Kyi is ‘to be freed in November’. But Mark Farmener, from Burma Campaign UK, wisely cautions that celebrations arising from this news are premature and we have in fact every reason to belive that the junta’s words are ‘hollow and that the 64 year-old Nobel Laureate will remain in detention’:

‘They [Myanmar's government] know this will get the media interested. They know this this will get lots of positive publicity and that will give the excuse to governments like Germany and Spain and others that have been wanting to relax the pressure on Burma’s generals’.

‘The regime has made it really clear in their actions that they are not interested in releasing Aung San Suu Kyi. They have doubled the number of political prisoners since the monks’ uprising in 2007. While they’re very good at this kind of spin, the reality on the ground is very different … We need to look at what’s actually going on not the constant lies of the generals’.

This interview (00:05:24) with Farmener on Radio Netherlands Worldwide is well worth listening to.

Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: Part I, On Theological Education

As one whose vocation concerns the formation of ministers, I am for ever on the lookout for resources that assist in this task. One such book is Richard Lischer’s Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery. Rather than write a review of it (Want a review? Just read the book! Repeat: Read the book! There you go), I thought I’d simply post a few of my favourite sections of it over the next week or so. It won’t and it can’t substitute for reading the book, and isolating snippets out of a novel and its narrative is frightfully problematic, but it may at least help to introduce the book to those unfamiliar with it, and, even without wider narrative-bearings, encourage some fruitful thought. So here we go:

‘Exactly why I had arrived at my first call with such a developed sense of entitlement, I’m not sure’. (p. 12)

‘I didn’t ride through eight years of education on a crisis, nor did my co-travelers in the System. We put one foot ahead of another as if following snowprints through a Wisconsin woods, but with no horizon in view. Some of us emerged from the journey open to new learning and experience, and some fancied ourselves as completed ministers of the gospel. But all of us were missing something. Our education taught us to speak the System’s language, but it did not disclose the language that “speaks us” by possessing our spirit and shaping us as human beings. It is not a question of how did we survive the voyage. Surely, at one time or another every boy in that school must have fought through a crisis as quietly as I did mine. The real question is, how did those long years open a path to ministry?

There’s a New Yorker cartoon in which a pompous-looking doctor hands a prescription to his patient and says, “Take this. It will either cure you or kill you.” I’m afraid my education was something like that. It didn’t attend to the gifts of the Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, patience, and long-suffering. It did not help me develop Jesus’ instinct for compassion toward the outsider or outrage toward injustice. Our professors didn’t invite us into the agony of race or war; they never intimated that God could grieve over the poor or that Jesus really cared about the fate of women. Perhaps it was the substructure of Greek humanism that kept us to the middle way, which caused us to overlook God’s grief and anger and the essential excesses of Christianity.

The spirituality imparted to us was the safe spirituality of structure but not of passion or abandonment. The theological categories we memorized would either stifle true spirituality for the rest of our lives or provide the skeleton for a growing and adapting organism.”We’ve given you a vocabulary,” my teachers seemed to say, “Now, what are you going to do with it?

Likewise, the enforced chapel services into which we dutifully filed morning and evening could either kill you or make you well. If you paid too much attention to the sermons of Dean Axelmann and others, you might die in the spirit. But we also sang Matins every morning, and four hundred male voices chanting the Te Deum couldn’t be wrong:

To You all angels cry aloud,
The heavens and all the powers therein.
To You cherubim and seraphim continually do cry,
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth!

Take that prescription five mornings a week for eight years, and it just might save your life’. (pp. 36–7)

95 Theses Rap

Yale is not only about Harold Attridge, Adela Yarbro Collins, Bruce Gordon, John Hare, Denys Turner, Miroslav Volf, and a host of other great scholars. It’s also home to Bulldog Productions, a student-run film company who are producing some really great stuff. Here a clever wee clip from 2007 on Luther’s 95 Theses:

If you havin’ Church problems then don’t blame God, son …
I got ninety-five theses but the Pope ain’t one.

VERSE 1

Listen up, all my people, it’s a story for the telling
’bout the sin and injustice and corruption I been smelling:
I met that homie Tetzel, then I started rebelling
Once I seen the fat Indulgences that he been selling.
Now the Cath’lics of the world straight up disgracin’ me
Just because I waved my finger at the papacy.
My people got riled up over this Reformation …
That’s when Leo threatened me with Excommunication.
I warned y’all that Rome best agree to the terms.
If not, then you can eat my Diet of Worms!
You think you done something spectacular?
I wrote the Bible in the vernacular!
A heretic! [What?] Someone throw me a bone.
You forgot salvation comes through faith alone.
I’m on a mission from God. You think I do this for fun?
I got ninety-five theses but the Pope ain’t one.
Save me!

CHORUS

Ninety-five theses but the Pope ain’t one.
If you havin’ Church problems then don’t blame God, son …
I got ninety-five theses but the Pope ain’t one.

VERSE 2

One Five One Seven… that’s when it first went down.
Then the real test was when it started spreading around.
Sixty days to recant what I said? Father, please!
You’ve had, what? Goin’ on fifteen centuries?
“Oh snap, he’s messin’ with the holy communion.”
But I ain’t never dissed your precious hypostatic union!
“One place at one time.” Well, thank you Zwingli.
Yeah, way to disregard that whole “I’m God” thingy!
Getting’ all up in my rosary … you little punk.
Your momma shoulda told you not to mess with no monk.
What you bumpin’ me for? Suddenly you sore.
Keep that up, you’ll have yourself another Peasant War.
You blame common folk for the smack they talkin’ …
You ain’t even taught them proper Christian doctrine.
With my hat, my Bible, and my sexy little nun,
I got ninety-five theses but the Pope ain’t one.
Save me!

CHORUS

VERSE 3

When I wrote the ninety-five, haters straight up assailed ‘em.
Now they only care whether or not I nailed ‘em or mailed ‘em.
They got psychoanalytic. Now everyone’s a critic,
And getting on my case just because I’m anti-Semitic.
I’ve come back from obscurity to teach y’all a lesson,
Cuz someone here still ain’t read their Augsburg Confession.
I said Catholicism brings a life of excess,
And we all remember what went down with Philip of Hesse!
But you forgot about me and my demonstration?
Like you can just create your own denomination?
“We don’t like this part, so we’ll just add a little twist.”
Now we Anglican, Amish, and even Calvinist.
I gave you the power, you gone and abused it.
I gave you God’s truth, you just confused it.
Don’t you never underestimate the s*** that I done …
I got 95 theses but the Pope ain’t one.
Save me!

CHORUS

Shout out to Johann Gutenberg … I see you baby.

Weekly wanderings

Lindis Pass

• Davey Henreckson on Charles Taylor and on Calvinists and disenchantment.
• Beth Doherty on Haiti and the best and worst of Christianity.
• Bruce Simpson asks (hopefully) whether the whole Google and China thing might be the thin end of the wedge.
• Thomas Bartlett on why ‘Google needs to realise that China is simply being China’.
• American VI: Aint No Grave by Johnny Cash – it’s a coming soon!!!
• Michael Wood reviews Avatar.
• Jessa Crispin, the editor and founder of Bookslut, on ‘the predictable American response to translated literature’.
• Mike Bird on ‘What is happening to Intervarsity?’
• Andrew Errington posts 10 reasons on ‘why I believe in infant baptism’.
• Robert Fisk on the never-ending exodus of Christians from the Middle East.
• C. Baxter Kruger on why Paul Young (author of The Shack) and Athanasius are singing from the same song sheet.
• The Karen Human Rights Group has produced a 98-page photo album containing 125 images of life in rural Karen State. The book is called Patterns of Abuse: Photographs of rural life in a militarized Karen State. It’s a fundraiser for a very worthwhile group, so please join me in buying a copy – or more – if you can.

Seamus Heaney: ‘Death of a Naturalist’

I’m really looking forward to spending this weekend with the St Martin Island Community and with Cilla McQueen, a Bluff-based poet who is New Zealand’s Poet Laureate for 2009-2011. (Some of her work can be read here). It will, unsurprisingly, be a weekend of poetry and a celebration of place. Here’s one of two poems that I hope to share:

Death of a Naturalist

All the year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampots full of the jellied
Specks to range on the window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

- Seamus Heaney

Gifted to serve the Lord

So I’m wondering if God’s doing a bit of a post-suffering Job thing on me. You know, the bit where ‘the LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys’ (Job 42:12). I say this because I’m kicking on to middle age now (seriously, how many people do you know who live past 100!) and I get this email today from a Mrs. Mellisa Lewis, a 59 year old sister who was two years ago diagnosed with cancer. She writes:

‘I will be going in for an operation later today. I decided to WILL/donate the sum of (Fourteen Millions Two Hundred Fifty Eight Thousand United States Dollars) to you for the good work of the lord. Contact my lawyer with this email: Name: Mr Jay Mchenry Email:(jmchenry@rcweb.net) (+44 792 435 0212) Tell him that I have WILLED 14.258M to you by quoting my personal reference number JJ/MMS/953/5015/GwrI/316us/uk’. As soon as you contact him with this details quoted above, he should be able to recognize you and help in claiming this amount from my Bank. Be informed also that i have paid for the state tax on this money to be transferred to you. Meanwhile you are advised to keep this mail and it contents confidential as i really want my wish accomplish at the end of the day. Please do pray to God for my recovery. God Bless Regards, Mrs. Mellisa Lewis’.

Now here’s where I need your help faithful readers: While I’m a little gutted that I’m not the only recipient of Mrs Lewis’ generosity, and while it’s somewhat refreshing to get an email (in my spam box) from someone who’s not convinced that Viagra is the answer to all my problems, and while straight moola is (I assume) considerably more easy for me to bank than is six thousand camels, and while I’m not one to break such sincere confidences (especially when so much greenback is at stake for the Lord’s work), I’m not sure yet what ‘good work of the lord’ might be birthed or encouraged with this gift. I mean, ‘Fourteen Millions Two Hundred Fifty Eight Thousand United States Dollars’ can buy a lot of love.

So, all suggestions considered.

And yeah, don’t forget to join me in praying for Mrs. Lewis’ recovery.

Create challenging learning environments

It could be that we need to spend less time writing lectures and more time thinking about springing surprise tests on our students; that is, at least, if Nate Kornell and Sam Kornell are right:

‘… errors are not necessarily the enemy of learning; they can, in fact, enhance it. Likewise, the widely held belief that testing serves no purpose other than assessing performance is built on a similar misconception. In reality, testing — whether self-testing or testing in the classroom — can, under the right conditions, better promote learning than can studying … We tend to assume that the best way to consume and remember information is through the application of rigorous, extended study. What we fail to see, however, is that the process of trying to work through a problem to which we don’t know the answer focuses our attention on it in a way that simply studying it does not. The desire to get the answer right, and the frustration of failure, is partly to account … Create challenging learning environments, make mistakes and then learn from them’. – Nate Kornell and Sam Kornell, A Really Hard Test Really Helps Learning.

Either way, the spoon-feeding days are over.

Hypochondria and the pain of fame

Here’s an adapted taster from Brian Dillon’s forthcoming  book The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives:

‘Doesn’t the hypochondriac—anxious, death- and age-obsessed, hypersensitive and self-absorbed—sound suspiciously familiar? Pumped into lumpy strangeness at the gym, filleted and stitched by the surgeon, embalmed in Botox, our contemporary celebrities look more like survivors than people who are going places.

In the 18th century, hypochondria became almost fashionable, and was thought to be a symptom of excess luxury and ease. Today we appear to have excelled the hypochondriac cultures of the past by elevating the morbidly self-involved to the level of paragon. Hollywood has long been the land of fixed teeth and busts, blurred hairlines and effaced waistlines. But fame increasingly consists in a state of almost constant near-collapse.

Howard Hughes seems to have set the standard for today’s hypochondriac celebrities’ tics and reclusion. The grim scenography of Hughes’s decline—his solitary, twilit self-neglect, combined with elaborate prophylactic rituals against the outside world—is a familiar warning about the potential price of power and fame. His biographers have conjectured that Hughes’s hypochondria began in childhood, with his mother’s excessive concern for his health. This tempting and no doubt simplistic explanation has been suggested too in the case of Glenn Gould. The pianist’s manifold eccentricities on the concert stage—playing in coat and scarf, humming along to his own renditions of Bach—were matched in private by his horror of physical contact and habit of keeping a sedulous record of his (largely imaginary) symptoms.

With Gould and Hughes, hypochondria was mostly a matter of keeping the world at bay. Today’s celebrities seem to advertise their fears and symptoms. The most obvious precursor of our present hypochondriac culture was Andy Warhol, who lived most of his life in a state of anxiety regarding the ailments and imperfections of his “bad body.” The artist’s diaries record an array of obsessions, including acne, baldness, weight loss, weight gain, aging, cancer, AIDS and brain tumors.

Warhol seems to predict the fate of the figure that best exemplifies the hypochondria at the heart of contemporary celebrity. At the time of his death in June 2009, the depredations Michael Jackson had visited on his own body had perhaps been overshadowed by his 2005 trial and, latterly, his worsening finances. In the decades since his surgery and skin-bleaching first made us wonder about his mental state, a fretful attitude about one’s body has become an essential requisite for the vocation of modern fame. As the abject circumstances of Jackson’s death began to emerge, one was reminded again of the sheer weirdness of the physical refashioning that he seems to have pioneered for the rest of the culture.

Even conservative estimates suggest that Jackson’s ruined nose was the result of at least 10 operations. The bleaching of his skin seemed intended not so much to make him look like a white person as to ensure that he vanished altogether, a classic hypochondriac fantasy. Beyond a certain point of success, it seems he lived in a welter of bodily and mental pain. If Jackson’s problem was a sort of hypochondria, it was on an ambitious and Gothic scale.

The medical catastrophes suffered by contemporary celebrities are often, of course, the result of (or deliberate covers for) drug dependence. Yet even here a species of hypochondria is at work. It is no accident that prescription painkillers have featured so tragically in recent celebrity deaths, such as those of Heath Ledger and, allegedly, Brittany Murphy. It seems somehow normal to us now that success brings with it agonies that can only be treated with opiates.

Having studied the case histories of various historical hypochondriacs—from Charles Darwin to Marcel Proust—I can only surmise that there is a point of crisis beyond which excessive concern with one’s body turns into an actually dangerous or even lethal pathology in itself. It seems that for some sufferers hypochondria is a way of guaranteeing inviolable privacy; consider Proust laboring in his cork-lined room. An inward-tending obsession with one’s own body, whether expressed as illness or an excessive urge to improvement, can guarantee certain advantages in the outside world. Unstopped, however, it will tend to the morbid, and few, historically, have had such resources or occasions for self-mutilation as the rich and famous in our century.

We tend to think of hypochondria as a kind of selfishness. The hypochondriac remains a disreputable figure, solipsistic and even immune to the real suffering of others. But psychologists tell us that hypochondria is often also part of a group or family dynamic; the patient acts out the expectations of others who somehow need him or her to be sick. What better description could there be of our attitude—at once awed and repelled, envious and disproving—to the bodies of certain celebrities? What better image of our grisly concern when the heroic patient takes an Icarus fall? The professionally adored may toil to stay youthful and fit. They will be doing it for us, and our morbidly projected fears for our own bodies’.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]

The Body of Christ

Giovanni Bellini, 'The Lamentation over the Body of Christ', c.1500

‘The church likes to refer to itself as the “Body of Christ”. But it behaves as if it thought it could be the Body of Christ painlessly, as if it could be the Body without having to be stretched, almost torn apart, as if it could be the Body of Christ without having to carry its own cross, without having to hang up on that cross in the agony of conflict. In thinking that it could be thus painlessly the church has made a lie out of the expression the “Body of Christ”’. – M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace (London: Rider & Co., 1987), 300.

‘What’s Right with the Prosperity Gospel?’

The word ‘content’ occurs three times in the Pauline corpus in my NRSV:

‘Therefore I am content (eudokō) with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong’. (2 Corinthians 12:10)

‘Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content (autarkēs) with whatever I have’. (Philippians 4:11)

‘… but if we have food and clothing, we will be content (arkesthēsometha) with these’. (1 Timothy 6:8)

In each case, a different Greek word is translated with the same English word. In each case, we are given an introduction to how Paul understands the basic posture of the gospel-soaked heart. And in each case, Paul bears witness, albeit not explicitly, to the faithfulness and generosity of God that he points to more explicitly elsewhere (Rom 10:12; 1 Cor 1:9; 10:13; 2 Cor 1:18; 8:9; 1 Thess 5:24; 2 Thess 3:3; 2 Tim 2:13).

All of which brings me to something else. James K.A. Smith, who blogs at fors clavigera (a great blog), has a wee 2-page piece in Forum (a publication of Calvin Theological Seminary) titled ”What’s Right with the Prosperity Gospel?’ wherein he writes:

‘[I]mplicit in the prosperity gospel—and buried under all its perversions and distortions—is a lingering testament that God is concerned with the material conditions of the poor. And God’s economy does not just envision some “bare minimum”  survival, but a flourishing, thriving abundance. The New Jerusalem is not some spartan, frugal space but rather a city teeming with downright luxury—a luxury enjoyed by all. In a similar way, the marriage supper of the Lamb doesn’t have to observe the frugality of a downsized corporate lunch policy! Creation’s abundance is mirrored and expanded in the new creation. Prosperity has a biblical ring to it’. — James K.A. Smith, ‘What’s Right with the Prosperity Gospel?’, Forum 13/3 (Fall, 2009), 9.

Smith avoids falling into the trap of being a ‘preacher with an economic hobby’, a crime of which Forsyth warned us. He also avoids trumpeting a divine preference for middle-classness. And he notes the tension explicit in the biblical narrative itself: that we are presented with ‘a picture of abundance and overflowing generosity as part of the warp and woof of God’s creation’ and that ‘in our fallen, broken world, the prophets consistently denounce those economic systems which concentrate wealth and abundance in the hands of the few, and often at the expense of the many’. Rejecting the habits of ‘ascetics who are just waiting for an abundance to come’, Smith proposes a response which revolves around how we inhabit time: ‘An intentional asceticism or abstinence which voluntarily chooses to forego abundance attests to the persistent injustice of current economic systems, expressing solidarity with the poor and refusing the idolatry of materialism’. But such an approach, he writes, ‘can run the risk of spurning God’s abundance and can unwittingly fall prey to a logic of scarcity. On the other hand, an absolute enjoyment of abundance in the present almost inevitably lives off the exploitation of others and is prone to idolatry’, and he cites Colossians 3:5 in support.

Drawing upon the kind of ‘rhythm of fasting and feasting’ underguirding the church’s own time economy – and given shape to in the liturgical calendar – Smith contends that the ‘two problematic options’ with which it seems we are confronted by in the Bible’s own witness is ‘not either/or if we think about this dynamically with respect to time … The rhythm of fasting and feasting calls the people of God to bear witness to both of these realities at different times and in different seasons: we rightly celebrate and enjoy God’s abundance, but we also rightly lament and resist injustice and poverty. During days or seasons of fasting—which, in a way, should be the “default” habit of the church’s sojourn—we say “no” to abundance as a witness to the fact that so many lack not only abundance but what’s needed just to survive. [Presumably there are other reasons too for why we 'say “no” to abundance']. But during days and seasons of feasting, we enjoy a foretaste of the abundance of the coming kingdom’. I found Smith’s way of speaking here very helpful, not least because of the way it helps us to bear witness to the impregnable relationship between ethics and worship.

Still, while he alludes to it, and while it is only a short piece, one might hope that Smith had devoted (or might subsequently devote) — not least given Forum’s readership — some more ink in this piece to what it might mean, what it might look like, for those who claim to be Jesus’ disciples to pull their boats up on shore, leave everything and follow him (Luke 5:11), to be those whose very being is reconstituted by their participation in the way of the cross, and whose joyful anticipation of the ‘abundance of the coming kingdom’ is described in terms of the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, those who have leprosy cured, the deaf hear, the dead raised, and the good news is preached to the poor’ (Matthew 11:5//Luke 7:22). (To be sure, Smith gives some indication near the conclusion of the piece about the shape that such a life may take, naming regular fasting, the observation of a ‘Sabbath rest from global economic systems and local markets’ and the restoration of a Sunday feast), but I wanted to hear more. This is an indication of my apprecaition for what Smith is trying to do, and an invitation to him to say some more.) This is not to ‘fall prey to a logic of scarcity’ so much as to recognise that the currency of the divine economy still remains unaccepted at all of this world’s foreign currency exchange depots, and not merely on regular non-Sabbath days. Still, Smith’s argument betrays a confidence in One who is both the abundantly-generous fountainhead of every blessing and creation’s just Sovereign, and calls us to faithful stewardship unencumbered by the paralyses of shame and motivated fully by the holy love of God — themes hard-wired into Smith’s (and my own) Reformed DNA. Again I was reminded of Forsyth’s words:

‘[Jesus] discarded a piety like Judaism, which had become one of the professions, and which must be a religion for the well-to-do, because it was so expensive to keep up, owing to the amount of alms, observances, and attention it required. He had no sympathy with wealth which was not inwardly rich toward God. A plutocracy would find nothing in Him; and it finds Him now a tutelary God only by editing and perverting Him. Riches were to Him no sign of God’s favour. God did not exist to secure property, the existing order, and the county families. And “between modern comfort and the comfort of the gospel there is little in common but the name.” He despised wealth that was secured to the conscience of its possessor by a doctrine of “ransom”; wealth which was settled by God absolutely on its owner in tail, on condition of a tax paid out of it for alms; wealth which was entirely a man’s own except the portion earmarked as a toll to God in philanthropic uses. He held no terms with property consecrated to a man’s selfish use by a bargain with God on the basis of a fraction devoted to religious or charitable purposes. Of his whole wealth a man was but steward. She who gave all she had gave more than all the large benefactions. That was the class of poor that caught Christ’s eye and moved His speech. On the other hand, His blessing on poverty was not on poverty as such, but only because of the facilities poverty offered in His day for the true wealth of the kingdom. If Christ had said blessed are the merely poor, then the poorer the more blessed; and the paupers would be either saints in being or saints in the making. But with a poor democracy, set upon soup and circuses, beer and football, He could have no more in common than with a plutocracy whose tastes are at heart the same’. (Socialism, the Church and the Poor, 60—1)

Finally, Smith’s (and Forsyth’s) piece reminded me of a sermon preached early last century by E.A. Burroughs wherein the very reverend gentleman noted that ‘Prosperity has always been an excellent passport, and well-doing often seems to weigh less with one’s next-door neighbour than an obvious ability to do oneself well. But that is only in life. The advent of death forces even shallow contemporary judgment to take up the measuring-rod of eternity to see the man we consorted with yesterday as posterity will see him, should his name survive’.

So, content with the status quo? No way! Content to trust myself to a ‘faithful Creator and continue to do good’ (1 Pet 4:19)? I’m trying! Enjoy all that this faithful Creator has given us so ungrudgingly to enjoy. Unequivocally yes! Understand that at least part of such doing good means joining in with the prophets who ‘consistently denounce those economic systems which concentrate wealth and abundance in the hands of the few’. Definitely!

[BTW: If you're into this stuff, you might like to check out Andrew Denton's interview with Hillsong attendee Tanya Leven about her experiences of Pentecostalism, charismania and the prosperity gospel]

International Journal for Religious Freedom

The latest issue of the International Journal for Religious Freedom 2/2, (December 2009), produced by the International Institute for Religious Freedom, is out and freely available online (can be downloaded as pdf) for a few weeks. Articles include:

• ‘Thinking twice about the minaret ban in Switzerland’, by Thomas K Johnson
• ‘Christian suffering and martyrdom: An opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation’, by Richard Howell
• ‘The role of government and judicial action in defining religious freedom: A Sri Lankan perspective’, by Roshini Wickremesinhe
• ‘The religious other as a threat: Religious persecution expressing xenophobia – a global survey of Christian-Muslim convivience’, by Christof Sauer
• ‘Christianity and democracy’, by Thomas Schirrmacher
• ‘Agonizing for you: Christian responses to religious persecution’, by Charles L Tieszen

As the professor snips the richest bud for his lapel, his scalpel of reason lies on the tray: some weekly wanderings

• Steve Salyards (an elder of the La Verne Heights Presbyterian Church, PCUSA) offers a ‘modest proposal for an “extended lectionary”’ and reflects on the intention of the five Otago-Southland presbyteries (of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand (PCANZ)) to form one Presbytery for the area south of the Waitaki and identifies some broader implications for Presbyterian polity.
• Trevin Wax interviews NT Wright about his latest book After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters.
• Trevor Cairney posts on what rappers can teach us about language.
• Eclipse over Burma a Bad Omen, Say Astrologers.
• The January 2010 (3:1) issue of American Theological Inquiry is out.
• Miep Gies has died, aged 100.
• Robert Minto is getting into Barth’s Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century.
• Michael Dirda reviews Umberto Eco’s The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay.
• George Hunsinger on ‘Are the gospels reliable?’
• John David Penniman shares a ripper from Moby Dick
• Is Google good for studying history? See also Dan Cohen’s piece.
• Jim Gordon on contemporary theologians he can’t live without.
• Finally, a warning to bloggers: ‘I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned’. (Jesus, in Matthew 12:36–37)