Confessing Evangelical

John H May 30th, 2010

Over on my politics blog yesterday I wrote a post about David Laws, chief secretary of the Treasury until his resignation over questionable expenses claims.

One of the points I made in that post was that the circumstances of (what turned out to be) Laws’ downfall had actually made me warm to him as a person: had made me see him as a human being rather than a “dessicated calculating machine”; in a word, had made me like him.

My use of the word “like” was deliberate, and was influenced by James Alison’s use of the term, as exemplified in the title of the book by Alison that I’m currently reading: On Being Liked. For Alison, it is a key truth that God not only loves us – a much overused word – but that he likes us. That’s a truth to stop us in our tracks.

God so loved the world that he sent his only Son – yes, but had love alone been the motive, why did Jesus devote three years to spending time with his disciples and with outcasts: tax collectors, prostitutes, “sinners”? Because he liked them, likes people, likes us.

“Liking” may seem like a modest emotion, but often it is where our true humanness is to be found. Alison describes the response to 9/11 as one of “unanimity and grief” – in which the sacrificial order made sacred and meaningful what was (like the fall of the tower of Siloam) without any God-given meaning. But in the midst of it was something else:

There was the sacred grief I described, but there were also, mixed up with it, genuine outbursts of compassion: wonder at the two who jumped out of the building holding hands; a warmth of heart as news emerged of the messages of simple love bereft of any huge religious significance left on answering machines.

At the same time as the sacred violence extended its lure, we also made little breakthroughs of our own into simply liking humans.

Alison goes on to observe that the “moving images on film” failed to move him in the same way as did reading about the events in the next day’s newspapers, where “the human dimension managed to start to break through for me.”

He argues that Jesus (and in particular his resurrection) teaches us to escape the “sacred lie” of unanimity found in the sacrificial exclusion of some “other”, of our compulsion to impose “meaning” on meaningless violence. Jesus’ desire is “for us not to be trapped in death”, which leads Alison to a conclusion that is “apparently terribly banal but, I think, of earth-shattering significance”:

The person who teaches us to look away [from worldly patterns of desiring] and models for us another way of desiring actually likes us. It is only possible to imagine doing something like that for someone you actually like.

Alison continues:

The staggering thing that this means, for me, is that the most extraordinary fruit of contemplation in the shadow of the violence which we are experiencing is: God likes us. All of us. God likes me and I like being liked.

There is an important contrast between “being liked” and “being loved”:

The word “love” which we have overused can have for us the meaning of a forceful intervention to rescue us, and we can forget that behind a forceful intervention to rescue us, which may indeed be how love is shown in a particular circumstance, there is something much stronger, gentler and more continuous, not dependent at all on needing to rescue us. This is liking us.

We are surrounded by the “false manufacturing of meaning and frightening power displayed by the satanic”. But in the midst of this:

we are being taught that our being liked and held in being is at the hands of something infinitely more powerful, infinitely restful, and we can live without fear. What is being revealed is the power of the Creator. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

So there’s a good message for this Trinity Sunday. The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, likes you. Think about that. And don’t be afraid.

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John H May 29th, 2010

A new strapline for my blog: “Test everything; hold on to what is good” (based on 1 Thessalonians 5:21, long one of my favourite texts).

This reflects my approach to blogging: whatever I’m blogging on, I tend to prefer to talk about the “yes” (the good that I’m holding on to), and to leave the “no” (the rest) implicit. Equally, that doesn’t mean you should assume I agree with everything said in any book, or by any writer/speaker, mentioned on here.

It also reflects how I hope people will read this blog. I’ve been here a while (since 2004): I’ve changed my mind on a lot of things, and talked a certain amount of crap about a lot of other things. N.T. Wright has said that 25% of what he says is wrong: he just doesn’t know which 25%. I wish I could aspire to such a low figure…

• Blogging about Blogging
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John H May 25th, 2010

An outstanding post from Mike “Chaplain Mike” Mercer at Internet Monk: What I like about Lutheran baptism.

Mike’s a former Baptist pastor who describes himself as a “Lutheran in progress”: more precisely, a “post-evangelical” who has been a member of a Lutheran church for the past couple of years.

You need to read his post, but here’s Mike’s list of reasons why he likes Lutheran baptism:

• because it understands baptism as God’s act, not a human act.
• because it emphasizes the Word of God.
• because it appropriately broadens our understanding of the Great Commission.
• because it enlightens us about the true nature of faith.
• because it emphasizes the ongoing significance of baptism.

Why are you still here?

• Lutheran Triumphalism , Theology
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John H May 25th, 2010

Kim Fabricius’ “propositions” are always worth reading, and his latest – Ten propositions on the God hypothesis – is no exception.

By “the God hypothesis”, Fabricius means the argument that “the empirical evidence of both physics and biology actually points to the existence of God”; in contrast to Laplace’s famous, if possibly apocryphal, statement to Napoleon that he “had no need of that hypothesis”.  Fabricius observes that Laplace predicted the existence of black holes, and suggests that “a collapse into intellectual oblivion would be a fitting destiny for the God hypothesis”.

Why? The heart of his objection to the God hypothesis is found in proposition 5:

To put it simply: the God hypothesis cannot be the God hypothesis – at least if this God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ.

In other words, the God hypothesis may or may not demonstrate the existence of a creator entity of some type, but not the living and true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The problem lies in the whole concept of a “hypothesis”. A hypothesis, by its nature, is:

• an explanation;
• either probable or improbable; and
• provisional.

As to the first, Fabricius affirms that “God is not an explanation”, and indeed he argues that using God as an explanation is what led to the development of modern atheism. He quotes Nicholas Lash as follows:

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the word ‘God’ came to be used, for the first time, to name the ultimate explanation of the world. And, when it was in due time realized that the system of the world was such as not to require any such single, overarching, independent explanatory principle, the word ‘god’ was dispensed with, and modern atheism was born.

As for the second, God’s existence is not a matter of probability. “The Creed does not begin ‘On balance, we believe…’”, observes Fabricius. Rather:

the non-existence of God is inconceivable. A deity who might not exist is contingent and therefore not worth the name of Yahweh (Exodus 3:14).

This is “the truth behind the unfortunately named ontological argument” of St Anselm (actually a prayer). (For more on Anselm’s “exquisite argument”, and why it doesn’t matter that it isn’t particularly convincing, see this post. See also my more recent post on why God does not exist.)

Finally, and more straightforwardly, our belief in God is not provisional, not contingent on future evidence that may emerge. We do not have “a god the evidence for whom we must ever be checking and rechecking”, our faith in whom could be shattered by our next trip to “the science section in Waterstones”.

If you try to build a “God hypothesis”, then “at best you get a designer god who is not the Creator, let alone the Trinity”. We can know God only “in practice, not in theory; with commitment, not disinterestedly”:

One can only know God by confessing, praising, and loving God. Science can only stand at the bus stop, checking Paley’s watch (now digital), and telescopically peering at the corner which Godot never turns.

(Again, for more on this see this post on “relating to Jesus”, and this post concluding my series on James Alison’s book Knowing Jesus.)

Fabricius concludes by quoting R.S. Thomas (one of my favourite poets, when I’m in the mood):

I have waited for him
under the tree of science,
and he has not come.

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John H May 24th, 2010

In the modern Anglican and Roman Catholic calendars, this is the day the church emerges, blinking, from the successive dramas of Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide and Pentecost, and returns to the steady cycle of “ordinary time”.

Despite what I’ve said in the past about the “long green season”, over the past couple of years I’ve become a lot fonder of ordinary time, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me. (I was only joking on Twitter when I said it was because I’m turning into a liberal Catholic. I think. )

As for the name “ordinary time”, there is some uncertainty in online sources over whether this refers to the “ordinal” numbering of Sundays, or whether it is linked to, well, the ordinary meaning of “ordinary” (see this page for more details). The Latin term which it loosely translates – Tempus per annum, “time through the year” – suggests the latter meaning more than the former.

Timothy Radcliffe OP gives some compelling reasons to love ordinary time in his book What is the Point of Being a Christian?, though he begins by acknowledging that it can at first seem a little drab compared to the other seasons of the church year:

We inhabit a story that gives us hope, the Christian year. This carries us from Advent, when we wait for Christ to come as a child, to the end of the year, when we wait for him to come at the end. … Much of the year is what we call “ordinary time”. This sounds rather boring, as if we were just hanging around waiting until the next exciting event in the liturgical year. It fills the gap between the fun of Christmas and Epiphany and the drama of Holy Week, and then between Pentecost and the end of the year.

However, it is a mistake to see ordinary time as just a dull interlude (as I’ve been guilty of doing in the past):

Ordinary time celebrates what is fundamental to being human, which is that we are ordered, pointed beyond ourselves. It has its own contribution to make to showing the point of Christianity. We are ordered to each other. We cannot flourish alone. And we are ordered towards the Kingdom, in which we shall finally flourish together. …

Ordinary time is about community and, though Fr Radcliffe doesn’t use the word, vocation (in the “Lutheran” sense):

The Church should be a community in which one discovers the delight of being ordinary, of belonging to each other. God says to St Catherine of Siena, “I could well have made human beings in such a way that they each had everything, but I preferred to give different gifts to different people, so that they would all need each other.”

This is then reflected in the role of church leaders (and here I’m sure Fr Radcliffe would acknowledge he is moving beyond whatever is the literal etymology and meaning of “ordinary time”!):

Bishops are called our “ordinaries” not because they are boring but because they are charged with cultivating a community in which we may learn how to belong together. In the eighteenth century the word was also used for people who delivered messages, the early equivalent of postmen, who were vital to the interchanges of the community.

All this is reflected in the liturgical colour for the season:

The liturgical colour of “ordinary time” is green, because it is the season in which we learn to flourish together.

So whether you’re starting ordinary time today or next week, let us go forth and “learn to flourish together” over the next 188 days…

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John H May 23rd, 2010

Not only do our Lutheran Confessions proclaim the Spirit-breathed theology of Scripture, not only do they reveal the Spirit-filled life and testimony of their authors, but they emphasize throughout in a remarkable manner the saving and comforting work of the Spirit in the life of every believer and throughout the church.

Robert Preus, Getting Into the Theology of Concord

For the last of this trio of Pentecost posts (see previous posts 1 | 2), some links to posts I’ve done in the past on the work of the Holy Spirit, in particular as that work is understood by the Lutheran tradition.

At the heart of this understanding is the following statement from Article V of the Augsburg Confession, which I’ve previously described as the engine-room of Lutheran spirituality, providing the crucial link between justification by faith (Article IV) and the life of faith (Article VI):

So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the gospel and administering the sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and the sacraments as through instruments the Holy Spirit is given, who effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the Gospel…

Both sides of this statement need to be kept together: first, the Word and sacraments cannot be separated from the work of the Holy Spirit, as if they had some inherent power distinct from the Spirit’s work; second, the principal way in which the Holy Spirit works in us is through the Word and sacraments, rather than through “direct” means separate from those instruments.

Sometimes Lutherans speak so highly of Word and sacrament that we forget to speak of the Spirit whose instruments they are. Sometimes Christians from other traditions (especially from the charismatic tradition) see the Word and sacraments as almost in opposition (or at least stark contrast) to the life-giving work of the Spirit. Article V is a corrective to both groups.

In 2008 I wrote a couple of further posts on the Holy Spirit in the Lutheran confessions:

• Part 1, looking at who the Holy Spirit is and what he does (drawing in particular from the Small Catechism).
• Part 2, looking at how the Holy Spirit carries out his work of calling, enlightening, sanctifying and keeping us, forgiving our sins and raising us on the last day (drawing on Article V of the Augsburg Confession and expanding on the brief comments made above).

The last word, though, goes to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Augsburg Confession places the work of the Spirit squarely in the communal life of the church. A Spirit who works through Word and sacrament is necessarily a Spirit who creates (and works through) community, rather than individualistically. As Bonhoeffer writes (in The Way to Freedom, quoted in this post):

It will again be found in the fact that it pleased the Holy Spirit to promise himself not to the individual, but to the gathering. It is the visible gathering which receives the Spirit and which is brought to koinonia through the Spirit.

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John H May 23rd, 2010

Looking through the archives, I posted this one for Pentecost before, back in 2004. Well, I’m posting it again:

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

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John H May 23rd, 2010

Intercessions for morning prayer on Pentecost Sunday, from the Liturgy of the Hours:

On this day of Pentecost, the Church is filled with joy. Strengthened with measureless hope, we pray to Christ, who is calling his Church together in the Holy Spirit.
Lord, renew the face of the earth.

Lord Jesus, raised on the cross, you poured out the water of rebirth for the life of the world – Quicken the life of all people with the gift of the Spirit.
Lord, renew the face of the earth.

Raised up to God’s right hand, you bestowed on the apostles the Father’s Gift;– your Church now waits for the same Gift, the same hope.
Lord, renew the face of the earth.

You breathed your Spirit upon the apostles, and gave them the power of forgiveness:– set all people free today from the prison of sin.
Lord, renew the face of the earth.

You promised to send us the Spirit of truth, that we might become your heralds throughout the world. – Through his presence in the Church may we bear faithful witness to you.
Lord, renew the face of the earth.

And the collect:

Lord God,
you sanctify your Church in every race and nation
by the mystery we celebrate on this day.
Pour out the gifts of the Holy Spirit on all humankind,
and fulfil now in the hearts of your faithful
what you accomplished
when the Gospel was first preached on earth.
Amen.

Image: Lawrence OP (licence).

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John H May 11th, 2010

Much excitement at the moment about the possibility of a “rainbow coalition” uniting Labour + the Lib Dems + the nationalist parties + Caroline Lucas (Green) + anyone else who might turn up, in order to shut the Tories out of power. I’ve posted at The Wandering Hedgehog on why (despite being a Labour party member) I think this is a really bad idea: indeed, worse than a crime.

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John H May 10th, 2010

Following on briefly from my previous post, it is worth noting the understanding of “liturgy” that lies behind James Alison’s description of the atonement as “liturgy”:

[A]tonement was something of which we were the beneficiaries. That it is the first point I want to make when we are talking about a liturgy rather than a theory. We are talking about something that we undergo over time as part of a benign divine initiative towards us.

It’s worth comparing this with Luther’s understanding of worship as described in this 2004 post, and in particular his insistence on:

[the] distinction between worship as sacrificium – a sacrifice offered to God – and worship as beneficium – a gracious gift of God to His people.

For Luther, medieval worship had become concerned with sacrificium, but this had to be rejected in favour of an understanding of worship as beneficium, in which God (“who gives but does not take”) comes to us, speaks to us and gives us his gifts in word and sacrament.

It will be seen that Fr Alison’s understanding of worship is clearly much the same as that of Luther: that it is beneficium rather than sacrificium (another heartening convergence between Rome and Reformation). What Alison adds to this is an understanding that the atonement itself is to be understood as beneficium rather than sacrificium. One positive effect of this is to make clearer the alignment between atonement and liturgy – between the gospel as historical event and the gospel as living reality offered to us week by week, particularly in the sacrament of the altar.

As a final thought, it will be seen that this makes liturgy (and particularly the liturgy of the Supper) far from a “secondary” or “inessential” matter. On the contrary, it is vital for preventing the atonement from becoming merely an abstract theory rather than a continuing reality in the church and in our lives. At its heart, Christian worship is Jesus our high priest emerging from the Holy of Holies to declare absolution to his people and to distribute the gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation in his body and blood. The more it looks like that – not necessarily in terms of “high ceremonial”, but in its structure and content – the better.

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