Words to sink your ears into

Missing your lectures? Eyes need a break? Need to kill some time over the Christmas period? Want to impress your friends (and enemies) with your learnedness? Check out some of the following links (which are mostly from our friends at Holden Village):

H. George Anderson

• Creation Accounts – Part 1: Old and New (1980)
• Lutherans and God’s Mission – Part 1 (1982)

Karl Barth

• “Was ist für Sie Mozart?”. Gespräch mit R. Schmalenbach (Text Schweizerdeutsch Text Standarddeutsch). Aus “Musik für einen Gast” (Radio Interview vom 17.9.1968, geführt von R. Schmalenbach). [mp3]
• Weihnachtsgruss 1960 (siehe auch Letter Nr. 12) [mp3]
• Institutio-Jubiläum 1959 (siehe Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nr. 158, vom 11./12. Juli 2009, S. B 3) [mp3]
• Aus dem Gespräch mit den Tübinger Stiftlern vom 2. März 1964 über die Entstehung der Barmer Theologischen Erklärung (siehe K. Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968, hrsg. von E. Busch [Gesamtausgabe, Abt. IV], Zürich 1997, S. 111–114; auch in: K. Barth, Texte zur Barmer Theologischen Erklärung, hrsg. von M. Rohkrämer, Zürich 2004², S. 221–223) [mp3]
• Aus dem Gespräch mit der Kirchlichen Bruderschaft Württemberg vom 15. Juli 1963 über die Bedeutung von Barmen (siehe K. Barth, Gespräche 1963, hrsg. von E. Busch [Gesamtausgabe, Abt. IV], Zürich 2005, S. 54; auch in: K. Barth, Texte zur Barmer Theologischen Erklärung, hrsg. von M. Rohkrämer, Zürich 2004², S. 191) [mp3]
• Aus “Die Liebe”, Abschiedsvorlesung Karl Barths vom 1. März 1962 an der Universität Basel (siehe K. Barth, Einführung in die evangelische Theologie, Zürich 2004⁵, S. 220) [mp3]
• Aus “The Community”, Vorlesung Karl Barths vom 26. April 1962 in Chicago und 2. Mai 1962 in Princeton (siehe K. Barth, Evangelical Theology. An Introduction, Grand Rapids, MI 1979, S. 41) [mp3]
• Aus “Commentary”, Vorlesung Karl Barths vom 23. April 1962 in Chicago und 29. April 1962 in Princeton (siehe K. Barth, Evangelical Theology. An Introduction, Grand Rapids, MI 1979, S. 9–12) [mp3]
• Tondokumente aus Letter Nr. 6.
• Gespräch mit R. Schmalenbach. Aus “Musik für einen Gast” (Radio Interview vom 17.9.1968, geführt von R. Schmalenbach). [mp3]
• Gespräch mit der Kirchlichen Bruderschaft in Württemberg. Aus dem Gespräch am 15.7.1963 im Restaurant Bruderholz in Basel. [mp3]
• Gespräch in Bièvres. Aus der Diskusion am 20.10.1963 über Fragen im Zusammenhang seines Buches «Einführung in die evangelische Theologie». [mp3]
• Podiumsdiskussion in Chicago. Aus dem Schlusswort bei der Podiumsdiskusion in Chicago 26.4.1962. [mp3]

Carl Braaten

• Authority & Power in the Church (1984)
• Evangelization in the Modern World (1984)
• Fireside Chat
• Kingdom and the Church’s Mission (1984)
• Ministry Offices in the Church (1984)

Walter Brueggemann

• Enculturation of the Church – Part 2: Out of Slavery: Problem of insanity (1975)
• Fireside Chat With Helmut Thielicke: Lutheran Theological Conference at Holden Village (1975)
• Enculturation of the Church: Part 1 (1975)
• Enculturation of the Church: Part 3 (1975)

Nancy Eiesland

• Disability and the Politics of Care (2005)
• Experience and Theology (2005)
• The Bible Problem & Disability (2005)
• The Disabled God (2005)

Terry Fretheim

• Bible Study – Part 1: What Kind of God Do You Believe In? (2008)
• Bible Study – Part 2: Did God Create the World Alone? (2008)
• Bible Study – Part 3: Are the Bible and its God Committed to Environmental Causes? (2008)
• Bible Study – Part 4: Did God Create the World Good, but NOT Perfect? (2008)
• Bible Study – Part 5: God and Natural Disasters (2008)
• Creation – Part 1 (2005)
• Creation – Part 2 (2005)
• Creation and Job (2005)
• Creation and Relationship (2005)
• Creation and Suffering (2005)
• Emotions of God (1988)
• God & Our Enemies (1984)
• God & the World (1984)
• God, Power & Prayer (1984)
• Presence of God (1984)
• Prophets for Today – Part 1: True and False Prophets (1986)
• What Does God Know? (1984)
• What Kind of God Do You Believe In? (1984)
• Promises, Promises: Abraham and Promises (2010)
• Promises, Promises: Abraham and Covenant (2010)
• Promises, Promises; Abraham, Sodom & Gomorrah (2010)
• Promises, Promises: Abraham and Near Sacrifice of Isaac (2010)

Martin Marty

• Christian Responses: Alternatives (1980)
• Hardline Religion vs the Sacred (1993)
• Historical Perspective (1994)
• Holden Fireside Conversation (1980)
• Hunger For Wholeness (1980)
• Legitimate Hungers (1980)
• Sacred and the Active Life (1993)
• Softline Religion and Healing (1993)
• Worship the Sacred (1993)
• Between World Views (1969)

Bonnie Miller-McLemore

• Children and the Christian Faith – Part 1: How has history understood children (2005)
• Children and the Christian Faith – Part 2: How has Psychology understood children (2005)
• Children and the Christian Faith – Part 3: How has scripture understood children (2005)
• Children and the Christian Faith – Part 5: How has the family understood children (2005)
• Sanctifying the Ordinary (2009)
• Paying Attention (2009)
• Doing Justice (2009)
• Reading as a Spiritual Practice (2009)
• Blessing and Letting Go (2009)

Jürgen Moltmann

• The Parchman Endowed Lectures, Baylor University. Session 1; Session 2; Session 3 (2000)
• Biography and Interview (2007)
• “God’s Unfinished Future: Why it Matters Now, Part One“; Part Two; Interview; Biography; Lecture given at Trinity Wall Street, January 23-24, 2007.
• The Vital Power of Hope (2007)
• Sighs, Signs, and Significance: A Theological Hermeneutics of Nature (2008)
• Darwin and the Interpretation of Natural Theology (2008)
• The Church in the Power of the Spirit

Ched Myers

• Baptism: Vision Quest (1996)
• Jesus, Presence in the Storm: Questioner of Our Answers (1996)
• Through the Waters: Liberation (1996)
• Under the Waters: Judgement (1996)
• Who Is This?: Journey to the Other Side (1996)

Lesslie Newbigin

• Nihilism
• Christ: Unique and Universal (1991)

John Polkinghorne

• Universe as Creation – Part 1: The Context of Creation: Anthropic Principle, etc.  (2001)
• Universe as Creation: The History of Creation: Evolution, Divine Action (2001)
• Universe as Creation: The History of Creation: Evolution, Divine Action (2001)
• Universe as Creation: The Future of Creation: Cosmic Futility, Eschatological Hope, etc.  (2001)

Dorothee Sölle

• Allah has a Hundred Names (1998)
• An Outline for a Mystical (1998)
• I Am What I Do (1998)
• Introduction to Mysticism (1998)
• Loving God – Without Whys and Wherefores (1998)
• Mysticism and Resistance (1998)
• Peter, Paul, and John (1998)
• Speaking of God (1998)
• Still, Still With Thee (1998)

William Stringfellow

• Civil rights movement – an interview with Robert Penn Warren: Part I, Part II (1964)

Helmut Thielicke

• Death & Eternal Life (1975)
• Sermon – Unconditional Forgiveness (1975)
• What is Christian Freedom? (1975)
• Crisis of Progress or Progress Devours its Children (1975)
• Teilhard de Chardin or the Future of Man (1975)
• Sermon – Christian Joy (1975)

Vitor Westhelle

• The Church as Community of Solidarity & Protest I: The Case for a Weak Church (2002)
• The Church as Community of Solidarity & Protest II: The Church as a Community of the Cross (2002)
• The Church as Community of Solidarity & Protest III: Church & Society (2002)
• The Church as Community of Solidarity & Protest V: Church & the Kingdom (2002)
• The Church as Community of Solidarity & Protest IV: Church & Tradition (2002)

Rowan Williams

• The Future of Interfaith Dialogue (2011)
• What should the Word of God sound like? (2011)

Umhau Wolf

• Death & Dying: On the Modern Scene (1979)
• Eastern Orthodox Connection – Part 3: Forgotten Sacrament – Foot Washing (1979)
• How Old is Old? (1979)

John Howard Yoder

• Apostles of Non-Violence – Part 1 (1981)
• Apostles of Non-Violence – Part 2 (1981)
• Hiroshima & The Augsburg Confession (1981)
• If We Can’t Rule the World With the Gospel: What Can We Do? (1978)
• Political Shape of the Gospel – Part 1 (1981)
• Politics of Jesus – Book Discussion (1981)
• The “Free Church”, Alternative to “Main-Line” Christianity – Part 1: Reformation or Restoration, an Alternative to History (1978)
• Theology of Peace – Part 1 (1983)
• Theology of Peacemaking – Part 2: The Fall and Rise of the Just War Tradition (1983)
• What Can Justify a War? (1978)
• What Kind of Political Person was Jesus and Why? – Part 1 (1978)

Helmut Thielicke on preaching

It would be fair to say that I am not known for my speediness. That confessed, I am currently racing to finish off a wee manuscript on the sermons of PT Forsyth (hence the relative paucity of posts here at Per Crucem ad Lucem). So I’ve been thinking much of late not only about Forsyth but also about preaching. And in regards to the latter, it’s been fun to revisit some of my old reading notes on preaching. Here’s one from the pen of Helmut Thielicke that I wanted to share:

‘The aim of the sermon, after all, is to create something living and set it in motion. Consequently, it should be directed not only at the intellect, but must at the same time also be aimed at the conscience, will, and imagination. It is addressed to the whole person! Corresponding to the complexity of this goal are the wealth of reflections in which one is absorbed before one makes ones way to the pulpit.

The extremely pluralistic composition of my audience forced me to still further reflections. The different levels of education and social background necessitated an inquiry into that aspect of human nature that is common to all human beings, that center of their being in which – each in his own different way – human beings are moved by fear and hope, by their finitude, by ambition, desires, the search for meaning, by the burden of guilt and torment of conscience. My goal – and I strived to attain it at least partially – had to be above all to ensure that everyone could say afterwards (because he had been personally touched in this center of his being, “I was the subject of this sermon, he meant me.”

In order to find associations with the text for my sermon and so to illustrate it with images, stories, and a human touch, I constantly kept an eye open during my varied reading for anything I could use in the pulpit. I started various collections in files and card indexes in order to have suitable quotations and other material at hand. If this material then nevertheless failed to hit the mark, I could at least comfort myself with the fact that I had done all that I could.

I did not, by the way, keep to the prescribed readings, that is, to the texts stipulated for use in church sermons. At best these prescribed texts have one useful function, namely, they safeguard the preacher from misusing the text by preventing him from choosing a text simply as a motto for his pet ideas. Preachers who do this quickly preach themselves dry. Their only achievement is to cause deadly boredom – probably not only to the audience but also to themselves – by their constant rummaging through the remnants of a crop that has long since been completely harvested. A prescribed text is certainly the best protection against the law of inertia taking effect in this way. It is also possible for the preacher himself to build a defensive wall against this temptation. This can be done in the following way.

I forced myself to give series of sermons oriented towards a sequence of biblical texts or a single subject. This is how the aforementioned series on the Lord’s Prayer, the parables, the biblical creation story, the pastoral conversations of Jesus, the creed, and many others came about. I also gave openly “didactic” sermons, which were a sort of catechism lesson for adults, in which I explained, for instance, the theological significance of historic-critical textual research and allowed the congregation to take a look into the workshop of academic theology. This principle of preaching series of sermons proved to be fruitful for both sides. It was fruitful for the preacher because it subjected him to a salutary constraint and safeguarded him against arbitrarily choosing texts on his own authority. It was fruitful for the audience because their interest was sustained by the continuity and development of a particular subject or train of thought, as a result of which they always looked forward eagerly to the next sermon.

The fact that I brought current events into play in my sermons should not be taken to mean that I had been talking politics in the pulpit. In my opinion, there are two types of degenerate sermon, both of which, although very different in themselves, are today having a ruinous effect on the life of the church service.

The first of these decadent forms is the transformation of the sermon into a set political speech proclaiming a particular political position as the Christian position. In my experience, this mostly gains the upper hand among people whose spiritual substance is too diluted for them to give a rousing proclamation of the Gospel. They are then forced to give their sermons a political shot in the arm to lend their dead spirituality the appearance of life. But this form of sermon has no permanence. People very soon wonder why it should need the circuitous route of the pulpit to get this political message across and whether they could not get the same thing cheaper and without the Christian paraphernalia simply by going straight to a political meeting.

The second type of degenerate sermon is a certain ritualism that suppresses or at least obscures the personal faith of the individual through the excessive use of time-honored phrases and traditional musica sacra.

This brief look into the “theological laboratory” has not yet touched on what goes on inside the preacher. This remains hidden to outside eyes. I can only give the following hint at where one should look for an answer. Whoever sees so many eyes directed towards him is in great danger. He may believe that they are directed towards “him,” whereas he is in fact only the ambassador of another. In the sacristy of the Church of St. Michael there is a little altar where the preacher prepares himself to approach the pulpit and arms himself against the temptations that threaten him. This is all that I wish to say about this matter’.

– Helmut Thielicke, Notes from a Wayfarer: The Autobiography of Helmut Thielicke (trans. David R. Law; New York: Paragon House, 1995), 291–93.

Psalm 6: A reflection

For the director of music. With stringed instruments. According to sheminith.

A psalm of David.

¹O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.

² Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.

³ My soul is in anguish.
How long, O LORD, how long?

⁴ Turn, O LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.

⁵ No one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave?

⁶ I am worn out from groaning;
all night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.

⁷ My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

⁸ Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the LORD has heard my weeping.

⁹ The LORD has heard my cry for mercy;
the LORD accepts my prayer.

¹⁰ All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed;
they will turn back in disgrace.

The problem with a hymnody that focuses on equilibrium, coherence, and symmetry (as in the psalms of orientation) is that it may deceive and cover over. Life is not like that. Life is so savagely marked by incoherence, a loss of balance, and unrelieved asymmetry.[1]

What strikes me most about Psalm 6 is that (like Job), when under the cloud of defeat, David doesn’t whinge to others, nor does he use the occasion to cultivate a calloused heart toward God. Fear, pain and distress constitute his world (and little else, or so it would seem). And his enemies want him dead.

But David turns to God. His turning constitutes a refusal to settle for things as they are, a snub to recognise the world as it would seem. His song is an act of relentless hope that considers that no situation falls outside of God’s capacity for transformation, nor of God’s responsibility.[2] Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III, in their book Cry of the Soul: How our emotions reveal our deepest questions about God, recall that:

The Psalms do not offer an analytical treatment of emotions. They are not a how-to text from which we can extrapolate four easy steps to resolving difficult emotions. Such simplistic reductions of our inner world, and of life itself, strip the heart of calling out to God in the darkness of His mysterious involvement with us. Instead, the Psalms invite us to question God. But they do this in the context of worship – they were the hymnal used in public worship. God invites us to bring before Him our rage, doubt, and terror – but He intends for us to do so as part of worship.[3]

So David calls out to God, and he recalls, among other things, God’s unfailing love.

Yet what if we were to listen in on this prayer as if it were not only David’s, but also that of a frightened man in Gethsemane, afraid that his impending death would mean the end of fellowship with God. ‘Who praises you from the grave?’ There is no resurrection hope here. So Thielicke:

Sheol [is] the land of no return, which means exclusion from God’s saving dealings with his community. Since salvation is history – in God’s mighty acts and in worship – exclusion from history is particularly painful. It involves the contradiction that on the one side life is ordained for God’s honor and praise and the other side is lost in the land of no return.[4]

When the Son takes on flesh and becomes Jesus, he becomes our brother, fully identifies with us in all the experiences of life, entering into the depth of creaturely existence ‘so savagely marked by incoherence, a loss of balance, and unrelieved asymmetry’. And as our brother, he dies our death, the death of all. All humanity enters Sheol in him.

And on the third day … Jesus – and humanity in him – turned to God.

---

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Spirituality of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 25.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 29.

[3] Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III, Cry of the Soul: How our emotions reveal our deepest questions about God (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1994), 37.

[4] Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith, Volume Three: Theology of the Spirit (ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 401.

Helmut Thielicke on the conscience

‘The conscience is not serene or troubled according to what we have done or not done. Peace of conscience depends solely upon what we are, i.e., on whether we believe – and the extent to which we believe – in the boundless unconditioned mercy of God … It is theologically wrong to try to pacify a conscience-stricken person by talking away his sins. To do so is to try to cure him by means of the “outer tent.” But there is no healing here, and cannot be. In fact the heart of his problem is that he is still loitering in this forecourt. The only way we can help is to point him to the εφαπαξ that which took place once-and-for-all for him in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ’. – Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics Volume 1: Foundations (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), 310.

Helmut Thielicke on How Crises in Faith Arise

‘We are all aware of everything that we have to keep in mind, and we also know how the constant round of thinking can wear us down and leave us without a word to say. Do we have any brain cells left over for the process of faith to use? Isn’t every thought about God a deviation form the current task we have been given? When bombs are bursting around us, or even when we are in the working-day harness, we have not time for extra thoughts. And faith, after all, is a thought – or is it?

Certainly everyone has had that experience. And if faith is taken seriously, that experience can make us miserable and sometimes almost tie us in knots. But it is crucial to be clear on this point, because then it become apparent that we cannot base our life on our faith. Faith is often conspicuous by its absence. How few moments there are when I consciously recognize that I am performing an act of faith, when I can establish completely, clearly, and unambiguously, “Now I believe.” Furthermore, faith is also very unstable. Sometimes on a quiet evening, perhaps after hearing Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, I am completely filled with faith, in fact, I am downright enraptured. If I should die at that moment, heaven’s gates would be wide open. But the very next morning it takes only one blow from an ugly letter to snuff out that feeling again.

No, we cannot base our life on faith. Even the disciples do not live from their faith in that moment when they are battling anxiety and seasickness. They hardly remember that they are believers. There’s simply no time to think about it. That may be put very crudely, but that’s how it is nevertheless! At that moment the disciples do not live from the fact that God is in their thoughts (because he is not!), but they live because Jesus Christ is thinking of them, and the stillness that surrounds his conversation with the Father is filled with these thoughts about his own. Our faith’s grip on the Father may loosen. But he in whom we believe holds us fast in his grasp. Jesus’ high-priestly prayer does not stop even when we quit praying. Thus, there is really no such thing as “Psychology of Religion” because the decisive events between God and me do not happen in my psyche, my consciousness, at all; they occur in the heart of my Lord. Here (and only here) there is constancy and faithfulness; here there is a love that will not let me go, even though my fever chart fluctuates between faith and little faith, between trust and doubt, and no reliance can be placed on my defiant and despondent heart. I don’t need to tell you what a comfort it can be to know that, and how that knowledge can help me survive those times when my own faith is cold and empty and dead and a sealed heaven arches above me’. – Helmut Thielicke, How To Believe Again (trans. H. G. Anderson; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 69-70.

The Devil’s Eggs

‘ … the devil succeeds in laying his cuckoo eggs in a pious nest … The sulphurous stench of hell is as nothing compared with the evil odor emitted by divine grace gone putrid’. – Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father, 133.