Five questions on creation

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Elizaphanian

This is extremely interesting (via Doug).

1. Do you believe in God, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen?
2. Do you believe that the claim that God is the maker of heaven and earth, if true, provides a good explanation of the existence, or some of the characteristics, of the world in which we find ourselves?
3. Do you believe that this claim provides an explanation of matters that would otherwise be inexplicable – such that this explanatory power constitutes a good reason for believing the claim?
4. Do you believe that this claim stands or falls by its explanatory power – such that if it is shown not to have such explanatory power, it follows that it should be rejected?
5. Do you believe that the meaning of the claim is constituted by its explanatory power, such that ‘God’ essentially means only what is needed to provide this explanatory power, and anything that follows from it?

A lot depends upon how the terms are defined (especially ‘explanation’ – is it meant in a scientific sense, ie causal?) but I would say yes to at least the first four I think. Which makes me unorthodox by his lights!

The possibility and relevance of unmediated experience

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Elizaphanian

An essay I wrote for my MA at Heythrop, relevant to a debate going on at the moment.

1. This essay will be concerned with the possibility and relevance of unmediated experience, that is, an experience which is not determinatively shaped by the prior conceptual background of the subject. The essay therefore seeks to understand the debate provoked by Steven Katz in his original article ‘Language, Epistemology and Mysticism’[1], and taken forward in particular by Robert Forman in his edited work ‘The Problem of Pure Consciousness’[2]. Forman’s work was provoked by the work of Steven Katz, and much of the development of his ideas comes in dialogue with Katz. In this essay, therefore, I shall first outline the argument as Katz presents it, provide a summary of Forman’s response, and indicate my own position. I shall then consider what is at stake in the debate as a whole, drawing on some criticisms made by Grace Jantzen.

‘There are NO pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences’

2. Katz’s article is concerned to argue the following case:

> there is no such thing as a pure experience;
> therefore all mystical experience is constituted by a formative tradition; and therefore
> the proper form of study of mystical experience is through respecting difference.

Katz begins his article[3] by taking issue with the attempt to account for the phenomena of mystical experience by assuming that there can be any experience apart from the cultural grounding in which such experience is found. Katz claims quite baldly that there can be no such thing as a pure experience. He writes:

‘…let me state the single epistemological assumption that has exercised my thinking and which has forced me to undertake the present investigation: There are NO pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences. Neither mystical experience nor more ordinary forms of experience give any indication, or any ground for believing, that they are unmediated. That is to say, all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes itself available to us in extremely complex epistemological ways. The notion of unmediated experience seems, if not self-contradictory, at best empty.’[4]

For Katz both the experience itself as well as the report made of it are ‘shaped by concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience…the forms of consciousness which the mystic brings to experience set structured and limiting parameters on what the experience will be’[5]. Once Katz has explained this guiding assumption, the remainder of his article is concerned with drawing out the implications for the study of mysticism.

3. Katz develops his argument by first considering recent work by Zaehner and Stace. He criticises Stace for being arbitrary in choosing which experiences are to be counted as prior, and for seeing the full force of the point that experience is mediated. Zaehner is criticised on three counts: he is concerned only with post-experiential testimony; his account is distorted by the need for Catholic apologetic; and his phenomenology, although not without merit, is ultimately too simplistic – ‘Zaehner’s well known investigations flounder because his methodological, hermeneutical, and especially epistemological resources are weak.’[6]

4. This is followed by discussions of different forms of mysticism: Jewish, Buddhist and then Christian, the weight of which is concerned to establish the way in which tradition and formation shapes what is experienced. In the course of this discussion, Katz also criticises reliance upon a sense of the ‘ineffable’ to establish commonality between mysticisms. He points out that, purely as a logical matter, if ‘the mystic does not mean what he says and his words have no literal meaning whatsoever then not only is it impossible to establish my pluralistic view, but it is also logically impossible to establish any view whatsoever. If none of the mystics’ utterances carry any literal meaning then they cannot serve as the data for any position…’ (This is supported later in the paper when he points out that merely to say that mystics share an experience of an ineffable and paradoxical nature is not to say that those experiences are of the same ineffability or paradox: ‘To assume, as James, Huxley, Stace and many others do, that, because both mystics claim that their experiences are paradoxical, they are describing like experiences is a non sequitur.’) Katz reaches the interim conclusion that ‘mystical experience is ‘over-determined’ by its socio-religious milieu: as a result of his process of intellectual acculturation in its broadest sense, the mystic brings to his experience a world of concepts, images, symbols, and values which shape as well as colour the experience he eventually and actually has.’[7]

5. In the final section of his paper, Katz broadens his concern to look at questions of language in the study of mysticism. He is concerned to argue that much study of mysticism is misled by superficial resemblances in the surface grammar of mystical speech, without proper regard to what the meaning of such speech might be in its original context. He writes ‘What emerges clearly from this argument is the awareness that choosing descriptions of mystic experience out of their total context does not provide grounds for their comparability but rather severs all grounds of their intelligibility for it empties the chosen phrases, terms, and descriptions of definite meaning.’[8] For Katz, such considerations ‘lead us back again to the foundations of the basic claim being advanced in this paper, namely that mystical experience is contextual’[9] because ‘This much is certain: the mystical experience must be mediated by the kind of beings we are.’[10]

The Possibility of Unmediated Experience
6. This paper is concerned primarily with the possibility of ‘unmediated experience’, which Katz openly describes as an ‘assumption’ in his article, and so it will not closely examine other elements of his paper. Suffice to say that the assertion that the traditional background of a mystic will play some part in preparing for or influencing what is experienced, and that it will determine the way in which such experiences are described – in other words, the second element in his argument – is comparatively uncontroversial; and consequently the third element of his argument, although not without problems relating to the emphasis on difference[11], is also comparatively uncontroversial. However, before beginning to focus on his guiding assumption, it would be worth pointing out that Katz’s avowed pluralism leads to significant problems with his overall project, on three separate grounds:

a) The claim to neutrality between different religious claims is self-refuting, as it takes up a position antagonistic to the claims of the religions themselves;

b) Similarly, with respect to his relativistic perspective, which pretends to a neutral stance from which to observe phenomena without acknowledging the commitments of that stance itself; and

c) His claim that religious perspectives are incommensurable is problematic as that would disallow any form of comparative religious study (for what is to count as a religion?) and therefore rule out the possibilities of articles such as his own.

Put broadly, Katz is situated within a distinctly modernist (post-Kantian) sensibility, which seeks to articulate an objective perspective over diverse phenomena, and which is silent on its own (significant) commitments, as it seeks to arbitrate between different concerns. Such a standpoint is illegitimate if it claims to provide the ‘final truth’ about the nature of mysticism.

7. Forman takes issue with Katz on a number of grounds. He begins his criticisms[12] by stating that Katz ‘maintains two interconnected theses which are linked by an unstated presupposition’. Those theses are, first, Katz’s assertion that all experiences are mediated by our conceptual understanding, and, second, that different religions provide different ‘sets’, i.e. different beliefs and concepts. According to Forman, the logical product of these theses is pluralism, which Forman takes to be important for Katz and others as it represents the rejection of the ‘perennial philosophy’ which maintains that there is a common experience in mysticisms across different traditions.[13] The first of these theses Forman characterises as constructivism, and for Forman this is the source of the difficulties in Katz’s outlook (Forman considers the second thesis, concerning different ‘sets’ to be something which ‘no right thinking person would disagree with’[14]). According to Forman, Katz describes ‘a process in which we impose our blanks or formularies onto the manifold of experience and encounter things in the terms those formularies define for us’[15], which can fairly be characterised as a constructivist position. Forman argues that Katz needs to be committed to a ‘complete’ constructivist thesis for his argument to hold. A modified constructivism might allow for some experiences to be only partly formed by the prior conceptual map, yet that would immediately allow for the claim that it is the non-conceptually formed part of an experience which is essentially mystical, and Katz’s argument breaks down: ‘the best way (perhaps the only way) to protect the pluralist hypothesis is through a complete constructivism’.[16]

8. Moving to specific criticisms of Katz’s article, Forman argues that Katz’s position has the virtues of credibility and respect for the differences between different traditions, but that these virtues are vitiated by fundamental problems with the overall perspective. Forman makes the following points:

a) Katz commits the fallacy of petitio principii, by which he assumes what he is trying to prove. Katz does assert that his paper ‘will attempt to provide the full supporting evidence and argumentation that this process of differentiation of mystical experience into the patterns and symbols of established religious communities is experiential and does not only take place in the post-experiential process of reporting and interpreting the experience itself: it is at work before, during, and after the experience.’[17] Yet as Forman correctly points out, ‘All [Katz] offers are summaries of religious doctrines and restatements of the original assumption. These are instances of an assumed claim, not arguments.’[18]

b) The argument as developed by Katz and colleagues is systematically incomplete. That is, there is no indication as to what concepts and beliefs are to count as important for the shaping of experience. Yet if no limits are applied, the argument is evacuated of meaningful content, for at that point it would have to be argued that all concepts shape all experiences, and ‘all of my experiences would change with every new notion learned. This is clearly absurd, for…I can only learn within a coherent set of experiences which are part of a single consistent background for any experience’.[19] This impales Katz upon a dilemma, for either no limits are applied, which renders the argument empty, or else limits are applied, and this opens up scope for asserting the existence of parallel experiences shaped by a common heritage (e.g. from neo-Platonism in Jewish, Sufi and Christian mysticism), which undermines the pluralism thesis.

c) Katz is careless of the distinction between sense and reference, i.e. that similar language can refer to different things, or, conversely, divergent language can refer to the same thing. Conceptually, as Forman points out, it makes sense to imagine cases where different religious traditions might consider the experiences of a concrete individual, and say ‘that is experience X’ or ‘that is experience Y’. Forman writes ‘There is no problem in using different terms with different senses to refer to the same experience. Whether this is, in fact, what they would say is not a matter for a philosopher to decide in advance’.[20]

d) Forman’s final specific point claims that Katz commits the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Logically, it is perfectly possible that the relationship between belief and experience is contingent rather than necessary, and Forman refers to the different gastro-intestinal experiences undergone by an Eskimo and a Frenchman – the differences in culture and expectation will no doubt shape the experiences undergone, but that does not mean that the culture caused the experiences themselves (the food did that).

Interim conclusions
9. What can be made of Katz’s assertion that ‘There are NO pure (ie umediated) experiences’, for this does represent the foundation of his argument? The first thing to note is that there is no epistemological discussion concerning what is to count as ‘experience’ – whether pure or not – and this is part of Katz’s general inadequacy on questions of epistemology.[21] If experience is taken to mean ‘whatever may happen to an individual’ then it would seem uncontentious to suggest that humans might experience something which is unmediated by prior concepts or beliefs – an obvious example is of a small child experiencing pain, but that can extend to, eg, the instinctive recoil from a hot stove which happens without any nerve signal passing through to the brain. Yet this is not of great significance for our discussions, as the discussion of mysticism depends upon the reports made by mystics of what they have experienced (or, more accurately, upon the teaching of the mystics). The question therefore stands as to what is to count as an experience. An interim definition might be ‘an event undergone by an aware subject, which impinges upon their understanding’. The argument that there is no such thing as a pure experience is therefore that there are no events, which have consequent implications in terms of understanding etc., that are not themselves the products of a prior understanding, and related to this is the argument that it is meaningless to talk of ‘non-conceptual’ experience (because ‘non-conceptual’ is itself a conceptual term). A useful interlocutor to introduce at this point would be Thomas Kuhn, for his understanding of the way that scientific understandings change can provide a non-religious parallel for our discussions. It seems to me that there is a parallel between the constructivist position articulated by Katz and what Kuhn describes as ‘normal’ science, and between the experiences that Forman is concerned with and what Kuhn describes as ‘creative’ or ‘revolutionary’ science.

10. Over the last thirty five years or so there has been a great deal of historical investigation of the way in which scientific revolutions or paradigm shifts take place, sparked in the main by Thomas Kuhn’s ground-breaking study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. [22] Contrary to the received (modernist) opinion that science provided a sure path to knowledge, and that science developed in slow methodical steps to a greater understanding of the truth, Kuhn showed that there were a large number of non-rational factors at work in any paradigm shift. For Kuhn, the great majority of scientific enquiry normally takes place within a particular paradigm. For example, to establish the particular way in which one species has evolved requires research, and the way that that research is constructed is governed by the assumptions inherent within the dominant paradigm. It is rather as if the paradigm has set down railway tracks down which the practice of scientific enquiry must travel. In this way the normal practice of science, in fact the vast majority of what is currently described as science, is a deductive and non-innovative activity. The practice of scientific method is applied to a particular area, in line with the assumptions of the dominant paradigm, and the conclusions derived from experiment or observation are then added in to the relevant body of knowledge. Most science is essentially puzzle solving. As such, this form of scientific endeavour is determinatively shaped by the conceptual background of the researcher, and is open to the type of constructivist interpretation favoured by Katz.

11. However, in contrast to this is revolutionary science, which is when a dominant paradigm is overturned in favour of a different understanding. Classic examples of revolutionary science are the change from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican cosmology, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the change from a Newtonian paradigm to an Einsteinian paradigm. As normal science proceeded within a particular paradigm data experienced would be either incorporated into the prevailing worldview or be rejected as erroneous, but over time there would develop an increasing number of anomalies and inconsistencies between the information gathered and the dictates of the overarching paradigm. The paradigm would be revised piece by piece until the weight of anomalies became too great. At that point the most creative scientists would develop a different paradigm which, once articulated, would then be used to interpret the information gathered in a new and more productive way. As Kuhn writes[23] ‘the perception of anomaly – of a phenomenon, that is, for which his paradigm had not readied the investigator – played an essential role in preparing the way for perception of novelty’. This would seem prima facie to be a well understood example of an experience which was not conceptually determined by the background attitudes and beliefs of the observer. Indeed, by definition, such background details cannot have formed the experience, for it is the status of the attitudes and beliefs that is called into question by the experience.

12. I would argue that the constructivist position, as articulated by Katz, is ultimately a sterile one, which precludes any understanding of normal intellectual (or spiritual) development. Forman makes this point when he argues that the constructivist hypothesis has difficulties in finding a place for creative novelty in their schema[24]. As such I would argue that it IS possible to have an experience which is not mediated by a prior conceptual world-view, and that there is such a thing as unmediated experience. The anomalies described by Kuhn fall into that category by definition, because they are experiences which are not fully understood – the scientist is baffled – and it is only at a later stage, once the overall conceptual framework has changed, that the experiences are able to be linked in with the beliefs and conceptual heritage of the individual concerned. I therefore judge that Katz is wrong to disallow any possibility of unmediated experience, and that Forman is correct to argue for its possibility.

The relevance of unmediated experience
13. Forman spends much time, with his colleagues, in developing a theory of the ‘Pure consciousness event’ and exploring some of the ramifications of this theory. Whilst I have some sympathy for his account, not least in the way in which it can have a spiritually beneficial function in provoking a growth of understanding, this last section of my essay shall be concerned with a criticism of Forman’s approach. This line of criticism is not concerned so much with the possibility of a pure experience, as with its religious relevance.

14. In her book ‘Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism’[25] Grace Jantzen makes the argument that who is to count as a mystic, and what is to count as mystical writing, has changed over time, and been subject to political, especially patriarchal control. From its original sense relating to ancient Greek mystery cults, through the early Christian understanding relating to the discernment of meaning in scripture, in our present age mysticism has come to refer to a highly exalted state of feeling: ‘Instead of referring to the central, if hidden, reality of scripture or sacrament, the idea of “mysticism” has been subjectivised beyond recognition, so that it is thought of in terms of states of consciousness or feeling.’[26] This transition from the public realm to private sensation has the political consequence of marginalising the testimony of the mystics and a significant part of Jantzen’s argument is to show that this transition coincided with the growth of women’s voices in the mystical tradition – so part of the effect of this shift has been to minimise the impact of women’s voices: ‘It was only with the development of the secular state, when religious experience was no longer perceived as a source of knowledge and power, that it became safe to allow women to be mystics…The decline of gender as an issue in the definition of who should count as a mystic was in direct relation to the decline in the perception of mystical experience, and religion generally, as politically powerful’.[27]

15. My interest here is not so much with the gender issue as with the broader political issue. For it seems clear that the modern conception of mystical experience, deriving from Schleirmacher via William James[28], which emphasises the importance of personal feelings, stands in marked contrast to the testimony of the Christian mystics themselves. In particular, the idea of ineffability (that is, the via negativa, or the apophatic path) has changed from being an imagery concerned with letting go of false idols to being a direct report of personal experience. The principal reservation that I have about Forman’s account is that he is concerned with an abstraction from living religious traditions. Although he concedes that this is only one part of the spectrum of mystical experiences, and he does ‘not regard it as salvific in and of itself’[29] I would put the case more strongly: unless these experiences are able to be absorbed and valued by a religious community, then they are irrelevant to theology.

Conclusions
16. Katz’s paper was explicitly based on the assumption that ‘There are NO pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences.’ This assumption is unwarranted. For the reasons outlined by Forman, and by consideration of the parallel experiences in scientific research it would seem clear that there are experiences which are not wholly constructed by the conceptual background of the individual. To assert that there are no such experiences is to deny any possibilty of creative development, and, if nothing else, that stands in contrast to the mystical teachings which Katz is claiming to study. However, the existence of unmediated experience is, of itself, not religiously significant. Forman would appear to stand in the line of modernist interpretation which emphasises the importance of the individual experience[30]. Yet this highly academic approach does seem to have disengaged with all that is most vital and distinctive in the religious tradition itself. Two points are worth making in conclusion. The first is that the mystics worked and taught within the context of a living tradition – they were deeply engaged with the inheritance of faith. As Bernard McGinn puts it, ‘No Mystics (at least before the present century) believed in or practiced “mysticism”. They believed in and practiced Christianity (or Judaism, or Islam, or Hinduism), that is, religions that contained mystical elements as parts of a wider historical whole’.[31] Secondly, the mystical path, the attempt to discern the nature of God – and to thereby be transformed by God in turn – has what would now be considered essentially political consequences. The fruits of mystical contemplation were to be found in increased social engagement – in the search for justice and mercy in the wider social sphere, hence the concern for the relief of poverty on the part of the mendicant orders and the Beguines. As such, the existence of unmediated experience needs to be subjected to a rigorous religious critique. Fortunately, the writings of the mystics themselves provide the ideal raw material for such a study.

Bibliography
Language, Epistemology and Mysticism, Steven Katz, in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, Steven Katz (editor), Oxford University Press (London: Sheldon Press), 1978.
The Problem of Pure Consciousness, Robert K C Forman (editor), Oxford University Press, 1990.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 2nd Edition, 1970.
Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge University Press, 1995
Mark A McIntosh, Mystical Theology, Blackwell, 1998
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God, Cambridge University Press, 1995

Footnotes
[1] Language, Epistemology and Mysticism, Steven Katz, in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, Steven Katz (editor), Oxford University Press (London: Sheldon Press?#), 1978. Hereafter LEM.

[2] The Problem of Pure Consciousness, Robert K C Forman (editor), Oxford University Press, 1990. Hereafter: PPC.

[3] LEM p23-4.

[4] LEM p26. Emphases in the original.

[5] LEM p26-7. Emphasis in the original.

[6] LEM p32.

[7] LEM p46.

[8] LEM p46-7.

[9] LEM p56-7.

[10] LEM p59.

[11] For example, the fact the people share a common humanity (a common physiology), born of a common existence on one planet, would provide some grounds for optimism relating to the exploration of common elements between different religions.

[12] PPC p9.

[13] I should point out that Forman is not consistent in his discussion of ‘theses’ and ‘axioms’. He moves from claiming that there are “two theses” linked by a “presupposition”, to describing the second thesis AS the “unstated presupposition”, and then to describing a “third axiom of the essay”, as a product of the first two. The “two theses” that he refers to at the beginning can therefore be taken to mean either 1. No unmediated experiences AND 2. Different religions have different sets; or 1. No unmediated experiences AND 2. Pluralism. My account takes the first of these two options as determinative, as the references later in the article seem to imply that this is Forman’s own preference.

[14] PPC p10.

[15] PPC p11.

[16] PPC p14.

[17] LEM p 27.

[18] PPC p16.

[19] PPC p17.

[20] PPC p18.

[21] For a detailed discussion of this point, see the essay by Donald Rothberg, Contemporary Epistemology and the study of Mysticism, in PPC, pp163 – 210.

[22] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 2nd Edition, 1970.

[23] Kuhn, 1970, p57.

[24] PPC 19-21.

[25] Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge University Press, 1995

[26] Jantzen, p317.

[27] Jantzen, p 326.

[28] For an overview of the history, see Jantzen pp304-321.

[29] PPC p9

[30] To be fair to Forman, his position is a little more subtle. In his discussion of Eckhart, for example, he concedes that Eckhart’s intention is that ‘the contemplative life is only complete when brought into action’ (PPC p114).

[31] Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A history of Western Christian Mysticism, p xvi, quoted in Denys Turner, The Darkness of God, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p261.

Theology is not an academic subject

Posted on May 17, 2008 by Elizaphanian

This is by way of an interim response to John’s comment. It’s a bit of a rant, and I’m sure that calm reflection would lead to rephrasings and more careful language, but I am more and more convinced of the main point as time goes on. (This is from my ‘Let us Be Human’ lectures.) Click ‘full post’ for text.

“Hear the word of the Lord O people of Israel for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty and no knowledge of God in the land, swearing, lying and murder and stealing and adultery break out, bloodshed follows bloodshed, therefore the land mourns and all who live in it languish, together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.” So what I said before about ecological crises and so on, links into faithfulness, righteousness, that the wider environment is giving feedback on the moral state of the people.

And it goes on “Let no-one contend and let none accuse – for with you is my contention O priest, you shall stumble by day, the prophet also shall stumble with you by night and I will destroy your mother,” which is Israel or the church, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me and since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children, the more they increased, the more they sinned against me, they changed their glory into shame, they feed on the sin of my people, they are greedy for their iniquity and it shall be like people, like priest. I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.”

In other words all these things that are going wrong, it’s the priest’s fault. It’s because the people who have custody of the knowledge of God and whose duty it is to teach that knowledge of God and to train people in God’s ways – they have failed. So that’s the theme for this morning. I hope you excuse me if it becomes a little bit of a rant. Hopefully my spleen will last long enough to keep us going to half past ten but I might run out, anyhow….

“My people perish for lack of knowledge.” I have been talking about idolatry a lot, that idolatry is when we get our priorities wrong. That we give too much importance to things which aren’t that important and we don’t give enough importance to that which is most important – which is the love of God and the love of neighbour. These two sides of the same coin. And the role of the religious authorities is precisely to teach people about what is important and what is not important, because this is what leads to life. This is the task of the religious teacher. To enable the life of the faithful. It is not simply about filling heads with words. It’s about changing the shape of the lived out faith in order that the life itself is fruitful, and the church, small c, has manifestly failed….

Next heresy: the academy. One of the major ones which definitely makes me angry. Theology is not an academic subject. It is not something which accepts the norms and the authorities which are accepted in the academy. And in one sense the origin of everything that has gone wrong with the church in the last thousand years is that theology got shifted from the cloister, from the Eucharistic community, into the academy. It got divorced from the practice of Christian life and worship and this happened in the Middle Ages, around 1100, the rise of Scholasticism, a change in the way that theology was understood, the way it changed the way that God was understood, and suddenly you have this very abstract understanding of the faith coming in, which has all sorts of barbarous consequences. I’ve gone into this in other sessions before, I am sure that I will go into it again, but atheism for example is the direct consequence of theology forgetting what it is there for. That the defence of the belief in God didn’t rest in Scripture or revelation, but rested on academic, philosophical proofs. And this process went on over centuries and culminates in secularism and atheism. The idea that this is just an abstract sense of what you can believe. This is where things really started to go wrong. And of course what it has meant is that theology and the teaching of theology has been absorbed by modernism, by the philosophical agenda arising in the seventeenth century. And the sense that theology or faith is a thing about private preference, that theology is all well and good but keep it to yourself. You know, what I was saying about Qutb last week, I’ve got a lot of sympathy with some of the things he says.

But theology is rotten. Fortunately this is starting to be understood, but things like how you train priests, how you train the clergy, you are not going to get faithful ministers if you train them in academic criticism of the Bible. This might sound like a really obvious thing, but the way in which clergy are trained in the Church of England, and also in many other denominations, is through the academic study of texts. I think there is only one theological college in England which does it properly and that’s Mirfield. Has anyone heard of Mirfield? The community of the resurrection. And their emphasis – they don’t have lots of teams of cleaners and cooking people, working for the students to make sure they can concentrate on the academic study of the text, they have the students looking after each other, they clean their own rooms, they actually live out a life of service. That is what is shaping them to be priests….

David Ford: "If you have the Bible in one hand, what do you have in the other?"

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Elizaphanian

The clergy of the Chelmsford Diocese gathered together today at the Cathedral to hear David Ford give a talk about the Bible. Some notes available if you click ‘full post’.

Ford began by telling an anecdote about a train journey he had recently shared with Prof Nicholas Lash and Prof Eamonn Duffy, when he had asked them what the answer to the title question should be – Lash said ‘a glass of wine’, and Duffy riposted with ‘an Armalite rifle’…

The origin for the question was Karl Barth’s comment that the Bible should be read with a newspaper in the other hand – in other words we should relate what we read in Scripture to what we engage with in our world on a daily basis. After a brief discussion of Hans Frei, which I couldn’t quite hear well enough to determine how relevant it was(!) Ford said ‘What we most need in our church today is a wise interpretation of Scripture’ – which I thought was spot on, and this was really his theme.

Ford remarked that we clergy use Scripture professionally every day, and suggested three things that needed to be ‘in the other hand’.
1. Scholarship directly related to Scripture, of which there is an abundance to be used.
2. Interpretations of Scripture from Christian history (eg Augustine, Luther etc) so that we become aware of how texts have been understood in history, and therefore the need to re-read Scripture in the light of every new situation.
3. Contemporary theology, which is itself refreshed by contributions from 1. and 2.

This last was crucial, he argued. There are different grammatical moods available in Scripture, including the interrogative, indicative, imperative and subjunctive – but also, most crucially, an optative mood. In other words, our understanding of Scripture has to remain open-ended, constructed around a desire for something that we have not yet achieved. He said that we are on a road, in via, now we see through a glass darkly etc – and therefore the fundamental mood of our faith is desire and longing. It is therefore essential that we don’t wrap up our interpretation of Scripture in a tight package of indicatives and imperatives – something vital to faith would thereby be missed.

At the heart of any interpretation of Scripture is a relationship with the living Christ, and Ford discussed the Emmaus story in this light – that as Christians we bring a particular ‘resurrection hermeneutic’ to the text, and that this allows something new to be discovered – Christ explained the Scripture to the disciples and then their hearts burned within them. What is allowed, encouraged even, is a creative engagement with the text that allows new things to form. The best example of this was John’s gospel which begins with a Christian midrash on a Jewish text.

Lying behind the title question was the theme of how to live as a Christian in our contemporary society, and Ford said a little about Charles Taylor’s recent book on the secular age, commenting on how secular thought has its own set texts and axioms. There was a digression to discuss an American Jewish author whose name I didn’t quite catch (possibly Michael Fishbane??) but this brought Ford to his next major point – that we have to study and interpret the bible in the context of our worship and liturgy. He insisted that we must daily be exposed to reading and being read by Scripture, and that the Daily Office was irreplaceable, radical and basic. It is only by repetition that we become sufficiently immersed in Scripture and enabled to understand it. He remarked that one of the best forms of Anglican theology was the collect, eg from the BCP, and he read out the ASB collect for Pentecost which he regretted having lost:

“Almighty God, who on the day of Pentecost sent your Holy Spirit to the disciples with the wind from heaven and in tongues of flame, filling them with joy and boldness to preach the gospel: send us out in the power of the same Spirit to witness to your truth and to draw all men to the fire of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

He remarked that Scripture is full of cries, of pain and joy, and that the hallmark of wise interpretation was the ability to understand those cries.

Finally he ran through some other possible answers to the title question: an empty hand; a blessing; someone else’s Scripture; a quinquennial report (he had been a church warden for five years so knew about these); poetry, novels, radio local newspapers etc; a computer mouse and a diary.

On that very last point Ford finished with an impassioned cri de coeur for clergy to take more seriously the responsibility of preaching. He asked how much time we give to our sermons, and whether we mark out particular time for it in our diaries. It is sometimes the only contact that people have with the world of the Bible, and people have died for our ability to do this, so ‘please please please take this incredibly seriously’. We should have as our aim in preaching that people should leave with their hearts burning within them…

In questions he recommended some authors: Ellen Davis (three books of hers, especially this one); Luke Johnson; Richard Hays; Tom Wright; Richard Bauckham and, with warm endorsement, Rowan.

A really solid talk, and it was good to catch up with a number of fellow clergy.

TBTM20080511

Posted on May 11, 2008 by Elizaphanian

You can’t make bargains with God.

Bread of Life (2): Passover

Posted on May 8, 2008 by Elizaphanian

So what’s going on when Jesus initiates this feast?

Well, what’s the sort of thing going on in the background, what are the traditions that he is drawing on as he shares this supper? The first one of course is Passover. Was the Last Supper a Passover meal? It’s ambiguous. The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke say it was, John and possibly Paul say it wasn’t. John is fairly clear in specifying that the meal takes place on the day before Passover – John’s gospel has this slightly different chronology because he is having Jesus killed at the time that the lambs for the Passover meal will be killed, he’s really emphasising Jesus as the Lamb of God, which is one of the main themes in the Johannine literature, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. So that’s John’s emphasis, the Synoptics say that the Last Supper itself is the Passover meal and that Jesus is killed the next day. However, whether it’s on the day before Passover or whether it is the Passover meal itself is, in a sense, secondary. All of the witnesses agree it is in the context of the Passover, the great festival being celebrated in Jerusalem. And Paul says quite clearly, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, so let us celebrate the feast.”

So what is Passover? I am sure you are all very familiar with the story of Exodus, with the Hebrews being taken out of the land of slavery and you have got the ten plagues, Pharaoh refuses to let his people go, and the people of Egypt suffer because of his stubbornness and in the end there is the slaughter of the first-born and so on. God says to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to slaughter a lamb without a spot or blemish and to daub the blood of the lamb on the lintels and mantels of the doors of their house.” And then when the Angel of Death comes, who is going to kill all the first born in the area, the Angel of Death will pass over those houses which have been daubed with the blood of the lamb, so those who have identified themselves by this marker, become exempt from the death which is coming. That’s the core symbolism of Passover: the lamb is slaughtered and those who identify by the blood of the lamb do not then share in the death.

Of course there are other aspects: you are meant to eat it standing up, the meat is meant to be roasted, it is meant to be done with bitter herbs and so forth, it is meant to be done in haste because it happened to the people just before they were about to escape, and so the whole story of Exodus, of the people being led out of slavery into freedom into the Promised Land, this captures the moment of God’s activity, when God acts to redeem the people. As you will know, Passover, even now in the Jewish faith, is so crucial, this is very much the marker for the community.

For our purposes an important element is that this meal begins as the literal marker so the Angel of Death passes by, but it is maintained and renewed. When the people, the Hebrews, come together for their Passover, it is one of the principal ways in which their community is maintained as they keep telling the story. It is a memorial of the salvation but it is also an expression of identity with those who are saved. In other words it is not just past tense. It is not simply, “Hey we are the people and God acted a long time ago,” it is a re-enactment, “we are the people today whom God is redeeming”. It is a present tense process. Does that make sense? It is not just telling a good story, it is actually re-enacting. When it says in Scripture how you are to celebrate the Passover there is a role for the youngest child who can speak in the service, and the youngest child says “Why is this different from any other night?” “This is the night when we were freed,” “what is the meaning of this service?” You shall say to them, “It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord.” Not this was the Passover, it is the Passover. Just to emphasise it is an ongoing thing.

So that’s one root and a very important root, the Passover meal that remembers and retells and re-enacts God’s saving activity to the people of Israel bringing them out of the Egypt.

Reasonable Atheism (17): Preventing the supernatural

Posted on May 7, 2008 by Elizaphanian

I’ve been putting off writing this post because I wanted to do some more research, but I think that’s not the wisest course, and I don’t want to let go of this sequence. So here is my take – in unresearched and unreferenced terms! – of what ‘the supernatural’ might mean. Click ‘full post’ for text.

There is a wonderful prayer in the BCP that begins: Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings…. This isn’t asking God to stop us from doing something – it is asking God to ‘go before us’ and allow or enable things to happen by grace, because that is what the word ‘prevent’ meant at the time the BCP was written. It’s a good example of a word that has changed its meaning over time. The trouble is, the same thing has happened to the word ‘supernatural’ – but fewer people are aware of this.

In the medieval period the word ‘supernatural’ had its sense within a particular anthropology, a particular understanding of what it meant to be human. The human being had certain natural qualities and capacities (eg of body and mind) and was created in the image of God. Consequently it found its fulfilment in a supernatural end, the beatific vision, and those things which prevented that supernatural end were sin. Sin prevents us from achieving our created end; grace enables us to achieve our created end. So: the word supernatural took its meaning from a particular way of talking about human nature and human behaviour; it was a way of describing the meaning and purpose of human life, and integrating that into a larger moral framework. So a supernatural miracle, one might say, was, eg, a charitable act. Our sinful nature would tend against doing good deeds; doing a good deed was a product of grace enabling us to act charitably and thereby fulfil the intentions that we were created for. Those who spent their lives caring for the poor and sick were living supernatural lives. Hence that BCP prayer, in its full form:

Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with Thy most gracious favour, and further us with Thy continual help; that in all our prayer and works begun, continued and ended in Thee, we may glorify Thy Holy Name, and finally by Thy mercy obtain everlasting life. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Who livest and reignest with Thee, in the Unity of the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Now the word supernatural as we use it commonly today means something completely different. That medieval construction has vanished, and in its place, I suggest, is something like this: the world is amenable to scientific investigation, principally through the understanding of the ‘hard’ physical sciences like physics, chemistry and biology. This is the natural world, what can be studied by the natural philosophers. That which is not amenable to scientific analysis is ‘supernatural’, it is beyond the natural. Dependent on the person doing the categorising, this can include: psychic phenomena like telekinesis or telepathy, the occult, various superstitions and, of course, religious beliefs of various sorts.

The underlying mental construct is that only that which can be measured independently of the person doing the measuring can count as ‘real’. Only this can be ‘objective’ and safe for the realm of public knowledge. The alternative to this objectively real knowledge is the subjective realm, of feelings and intuitions and other sentimental woolliness.

Which flags up a rather crucial point: this underlying mental construct has itself been abandoned by the hard physical sciences. Reality doesn’t fit into that ‘subjective-objective’ model. Unfortunately the cultural influence of that now-discarded image is still strong, and most references to ‘supernatural’ that I come across in my conversations with atheists presuppose this framework.

What this means is that, in almost all cases, the word ‘supernatural’ has no specific intellectual content, it merely functions as a sort of swear word or insult, along the lines of ‘you’re a moron for believing this’.

In other words, a mark of the division between the humourless and the sophisticated is whether the word ‘supernatural’ is given some definite and agreed meaning, which can serve to illuminate the matters under discussion. Personally I think that we need to take a holiday from the word completely, and maybe in a generation or two it can be rehabilitated.

UPDATE: in response to the early comments. The principal source for the medieval perspective is Henri de Lubac’s ‘Surnaturel’ (see also here or here) which, I should point out, I have not read(!) However I’ve read a fair bit of work derived from it, and I think I’ve got the gist of his argument. (He’s influenced the Radical Orthodox, for example. Milbank’s ‘The Suspended Middle’ is on my bookshelf but not yet read – it was what I wanted to read prior to writing this post, but I felt a need to put something up rather than let the sequence grind to a complete halt.)

Bread of Life (1): He gave them a meal

Posted on May 6, 2008 by Elizaphanian

I’m going to start transcribing, in edited form, my learning church talks on communion into the blog, but in small chunks, which may make them easier to digest!! Click ‘full post’ for text.

What is the Eucharist? The word refers to the giving thanks of the community. ‘Eucharist’ is simply a Greek word meaning thanksgiving and it’s the ecumenical word, in other words when the different churches come together to talk about it, that’s the word they use to describe it and it doesn’t necessarily have any other great theological import other than this. Of course what name you give to the meal is freighted with all sorts of politics – I tend to try and ignore the politics so far as I can! – whether you call it the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass or the Eastern Orthodox call it the Synaxis, there are all sorts of names, but breaking bread and wine and sharing it as the community of the faithful telling the story of Jesus, that’s what we are talking about.

This is Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham:

“I firmly believe that when Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.”

In other words, it’s when we actually share this meal and take part in this process that we start to understand what our faith is all about. The earliest description we have, as I am sure you are all aware, comes in 1 Corinthians 11 and Paul says,

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the passage, it is pretty much the heart of what the priest says every time there is communion. In some churches it is exactly St Paul’s passage which is used, in some churches it is slightly repackaged, rephrased, but that is the earliest text we have got referring to it. And it is within about twenty years after the event.

We don’t know exactly which year it was when Jesus died, but it’s not unreasonable to think it being from early to mid-thirties AD and that Paul’s letter is early to mid-fifties AD, so you are talking about twenty years after the event, in other words it is within living memory. Just to emphasise that, it is not really very long at all after the event, and it is in a context where there is an existing practice, the people he is writing it to are aware of this, the story has gone before them, and they are acting on it. So Paul is referring to something which is already going on, which means that the Eucharist, as an ongoing practice within the church community, was established long before Paul is writing his letters.

Therefore: we can be pretty confident that the heart of the Eucharist goes back to Christ himself, and that it is not something invented out of whole cloth by the later church (compare a couple of references in Acts to the Apostles coming together to break bread on the first day of the week and so on).

But what did Jesus mean by it?

Oh yes

Posted on April 22, 2008 by Elizaphanian

“the number one problem with Christianity today is that the Christian life is no longer convincing. It doesn’t convince anyone. So his program is the formation of [what he calls] creative minorities, throughout the world, that will offer not words but the witness of a life full of humanity, of peace, of joy, so that people from what is a cruel world will find a home in these communities.”

Sounds like he’s been reading Hauerwas – although he was probably arguing for this long before Stanley was! Found here.

Tesco is a big red herring (April Synchroblog)

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Elizaphanian

This month’s synchroblog is on the theme of Christianity and Social Justice.

Social justice is undoubtedly a Christian concern – it saturates the Bible, Jesus emphasises it, and the pursuit of it is a necessary constituent part of a faithful life. Over two thousand verses about poverty. And so on and so forth – this is all well and good.

There are various specific ways in which that concern for social justice can be pursued. For me, one aspect came in denouncing Tesco (eg http://elizaphanian.blogspot.com/2008/03/thou-shalt-not-shop-at-tesco-sermon.html). I’m coming to believe that this was – if not quite a mistake, then at least a misapplication of effort. Indeed, perhaps there was even a little spiritual sin involved.

After all Tesco itself is not completely bad – I don’t see much wrong in buying a CD from them for example – my concerns are primarily to do with their food business, in terms of its sustainability, vitality of produce and their treatment of food suppliers. On all these things Tesco seems particularly poor, irresponsible and short-sighted. It seems straightforward to me that shopping at, say, the Co-Op is significantly more supportive of social justice than buying your food at Tesco.

However, the real problem is the underlying system itself, within which it can make sense for a company to be as reckless about social justice as Tesco is. In other words, the problem is about corporate law and the financial markets, who oblige the authorities at Tesco to pursue short term profit margins. (One of the reasons why the co-op, or John Lewis, is much better.)

This system is at the root of much that ails our present world. It is why the peaking of the oil supply will be a catastrophe rather than a bump in the road. It is why global warming will harm more people than it need to. It is why governments are going to war to preserve their way of life. It is why the life in the oceans is denuded, the water available to much of humanity declining, the top soil depleted. There are lots of symptoms telling us that something is wrong, and lots of people objecting to symptoms.

What is the Christian task here – that is, what is the specifically Christian task? Obviously it is a good thing for Christians to be involved in trying to relieve the symptoms, to campaign for social justice, to advocate good environmental stewardship and so on.

Yet I believe the specifically Christian task is a separate one. The ideological system within which the likes of Tesco takes on its role has a specific spiritual root; it is a knotting together of idolatries – of Mammon in particular, but also an excessively high regard for both law and science. All of which are good things, but they have become distorted, elevated above themselves, and consequently they have become life-denying and destructive. As a society and culture we are worshipping false Gods. What we need to do is to proclaim the true God, the one who gives life in response to worship.

In this context, to spend time denouncing Tesco is to waste time that might be better spent digging out the spiritual roots, and teaching people what right worship actually consists in. It is a temptation – to succumb to a desire for control, to engage in a worldly struggle, possibly even a matter of pride – for if you fight an organisation as large and important in British life as Tesco, then some of the importance reflects back on you – and then the real you gets lost, and you become ‘the vicar who is fighting Tesco’, and the gospel is eclipsed.

Hence my present line of thought: Tesco is a big red herring. If Christians are serious about social justice, and right environmental stewardship, then our paramount task is simply this: we must preach the gospel. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

~~~

Other people blogging on this theme today:

Cobus van Wyngaard at My Contemplations

Phil Wyman at Square No More

Mike Bursell at Mike’s Musings

Bryan Riley at at Charis Shalom

Steve Hayes at Khanya: Christianity and social justice

Reba Baskett at In Reba’s World

Prof Carlos Z. with Ramblings from a Sociologist

Cindy Harvey at Tracking the Edge

Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church

Matthew Stone at Matt Stone Journeys in Between