Category Archives: bible

Is Christ Divided? session 8

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Click ‘full post’ for text of latest notes on 1 Corinthians – chapter 7 this time.

Is Christ Divided?
Notes for the house groups on 1 Corinthians.

Week eight, beginning Sunday 25 June: 1 Corinthians 7

Main themes: Marriage and sexuality

Questions to prompt discussion

1.Does Christianity have a positive understanding sexuality? Our wider non-Christian culture would undoubtedly shout ‘No!’ – why is this? Where has the radically disordered understanding of sexuality in our society come from? Is there anything that the church needs to repent of?
2.Is it ever permissible to seek a divorce?
3.Divorce is now prevalent in our culture, and in our church community – how do we live with this situation as Christians?
4.What does Paul mean when he says that ‘the time is short’ (v29)? Was he wrong, or do we just need to ‘spiritualise’ his comments?

Supplementary thoughts:
Paul is now beginning to respond to other questions raised by the Corinthian church in a letter to him; we can guess at their views: a) those who are single should avoid marriage; b) the married should refrain from sex; c) those who are married, especially to unbelievers, should be divorced; d) those who are engaged should not proceed to marriage. Paul goes through each of these points in turn.

Paul very rarely states explicitly that his teaching is ‘from the Lord’, yet he does so for the teaching on divorce in verses 10 and 11, which ties in with what Jesus says in the gospels (Mk 10.2-11 and parallels). Yet Paul seems to have a very pragmatic attitude in much of this passage, and a distinct awareness of human vulnerability and weakness – see verse 11 in particular. Another passage of relevance is Mark 12.25, within its context. Paul is also quite moderate in his attitude, seeming to allow for the possibility that he might be wrong (verses 6, 25, 40).

Much of Paul’s argumentation rests on the desirability of not changing a present state (married/virgin/slave etc), in the light of tribulations soon to arrive – Paul expects the end of the world to arrive within his lifetime (see 1 Thess 4.15 and 1 Cor 15.52 for parallels), though his views moderated over time.

Notes on verses
v 1: literally, ‘it is good for a man not to touch a woman’, ie have sexual relations. ‘Marriage’ is not mentioned.
vv 3&4: Paul is very radical and egalitarian in his teaching here
v 7: it is not known what Paul’s ‘state’ was – he was either celibate or a widower.
vv 12-16: note Paul’s reversal of the direction of contamination (again, very radical!)
v 17: ‘called’ probably means that state in which one was converted, not a vocation to which one is summoned (cf v 20, 24)
v 19 is rather paradoxical, which was probably Paul’s intent – ie ‘rethink the assumptions!’

Running out of the Bible

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At that rather significant PCC meeting the other week I recommended changing the Bible that we used in our worship. I had thought this was going to be a simple and straightforward process but I was blindsided by a critique of the proposal, which made me think that a) it wasn’t anywhere near as straightforward as I had expected, and that therefore b) I needed to be much clearer about what I was recommending and why. The PCC, rather sensibly, agreed to defer a decision on the matter. My thoughts haven’t reached a settled stage as yet – I am still pondering what the right way forward would be – but prompted by reading this post I thought it would help (help me at least!) to set out my present thinking on the subject. Click ‘full post’ for text.

The presenting issue needing to be addressed was literally that we were running out of the Bible in our 9:30 service. One of the few changes made to the 9:30 since its inception was introducing a corporate reading of the Psalm set for the day, which change seems to work well. However, we have only some 40 copies of the NIV in church, and given that we are now regularly attracting 70 or more worshippers, we need to have more bibles to use (or more psalters – see below). I explored a little bit about what corporate advice was given on the subject of purchasing Bibles and discovered that a) the NIV is not authorised for use at BCP services (of which we have several), and b) that the Church of England recommends using a Bible that contains the deuterocanonical books, and makes provision for reading from those texts in its lectionary. From my point of view this led quite strongly to shifting from the NIV to (probably) the NRSV; in part my attitude was conditioned by a tacit sense that the NRSV was the ‘officially approved’ text, that is, in terms of wider material and usage the NRSV seems to be the one chosen by the hierarchy – so, for example, the Revised Common Lectionary is available in NRSV and (so far as I can tell) not in any other translation.

As I say, I was blindsided by wider issues being raised at the meeting. In part these were issues about the importance of ‘literal translation’ and so on, but more substantially it was pointed out that the provision of NIVs had been made some 15 years or so earlier, by a dearly loved curate, and that the worshipping community had now become accustomed to the NIV, not simply through use in church but also through the purchase of their own study bibles. This is by no means a trivial point, and the weight of it is what I am presently spending time pondering! I don’t believe it to be absolutely conclusive, but it is certainly enough for me to believe I was wrong in considering this a straightforward question for the PCC to resolve rapidly. Hence these further thoughts, as I think out loud on my blog…

So there are various issues to explore.
The issue of translation itself: there are (simply speaking) two concerns in translation – a ‘word for word’ rendition, and a ‘meaning for meaning’ rendition. Some translations will concentrate more on the former; some the latter. Translation is very much an art, not a science, and requires judgement in order to work effectively. It’s also something that is perpetually necessary, especially with regard to the Bible, because even if the original texts don’t change, the language use in the receving community does – and so preservation of one translation in perpetuity leads to an ever-increasing loss of intelligibility (though that point can and does need to be qualified further). So the choice of translation as such is a judgement call, and partly a matter of taste. I don’t personally like the NIV very much – but that’s probably because I am less used to it, having been trained using the RSV. (NB That preference is by no means sufficient for changing the Bible being used.)

One substantial concern about the NIV, as opposed to other versions, is the absence of the Deutero-Canonical literature. This is one way in which the NIV’s nature as a ‘Protestant’ Bible becomes clear, and this becomes a source of contention. However, I do take seriously the authority of the church on this question (something I tend to do in any case) and I therefore see it as a serious lack that we don’t have use of this literature for our edification, either in worship or in private study. As an example of why this might matter, consider this (taken from here)

I would expect to use Sirach to elucidate the Fourth Gospel. Put these texts side by side:
Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits. For the memory of me is sweeter than honey, and the possession of me sweeter than the honeycomb. Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more. (Sirach 24:19-21, NRSV my emphasis)
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35 NRSV)
I don’t know how to expound the second text doctrinally or spiritually without referring to the first. I’m not sure that this is to ascribe “derivative” (John’s term) authority to the deutero-canonicals. It seems to me that it is more than that, because in this case the canonically disputed text of Sirach has been caught up in the canonically undisputed text of John.

It seems to me that it would be a good, positive development to be able to use the deuterocanonical literature in this way – and it certainly ties in strongly with some other theological points – but given where West Mersea is as a whole this is not a sufficient argument in and of itself.

A wider question related to translation is the thorny one about inclusive language. The NRSV, amongst other amendments to the RSV, ‘inclusivises’ many of the texts, in such a way that where gender-specific language is not consciously intended the translation is changed to make the ‘whole of humanity’ aspect clearer. Whilst my instincts are to prefer a translation which ‘tells it like it is’ (because where do you stop if you start adjusting!) this seems to be more a matter of translating ‘meaning for meaning’ being given proper prominence. Treating women as second class citizens is no longer seen as acceptable, and where a text raised up and emphasised in worship is HEARD as advocating that injustice, then the translation needs to alter. That’s simply a reflection of the different cultural context within which the text is received. Given that West Mersea is a church which embraces women’s ministry in various forms (including having a female ordinand currently in training) it is a little bizarre to hold on to a translation which runs against that practice.

As well as these issues about ‘which translation to choose’ there is the more profound aspect concerning what form of spirituality is being fostered and developed. Why have a Bible used in church at all? After all, faith comes by hearing, and the use of the Bible in worship is historically through a relationship and human communication – the speaking of the Word and the hearing of the Word. Reading of the Word came in only after the invention of the printing press and is tied up with the individualising of worship that is responsible for so much spiritual poverty in the Western world today. (Sorry, I’ll try not to rant). I don’t expect that point to be accepted, and in fact I do think there is a strong case for saying that use of the Bible in worship encourages a sense of easy familiarity with the text which is devoutly to be encouraged.

The thing is, there is (with some noteable exceptions) a profound ignorance of the Bible within the church (not just this church, but the church in general). Even where there is knowledge of the Bible, it can be a ‘flat’ knowledge, rather that the proper engagement with Scripture that is transformative. Perhaps I’m dreaming a little here, but I do think an essential task of a church is to foster lectio divina – the new bible groups are a step towards that, but so much more is possible.

A central part of such a project would undoubtedly be a more widespread use of the Daily Office – for that to be seen and accepted as simply a normal part of Christian discipleship. I am greatly encouraged when I see the emergent community embracing this ancient practice; the issue seems to be ‘evangelicals of a certain age’ for whom any form of corporate liturgical prayer is anathema (for it offends the great idol of individual relationship with God). This saddens me, but I’m certain that the Spirit is moving on this topic. I’m certainly greatly blessed whenever people join me in prayer, and I think the Office is irreplaceable as a means to soak the believer in Scripture.

Which brings me to where my pondering has now reached: why do we need a new Bible at all? Why not simply purchase psalters for use at 9:30 and 6:30? Well, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘Common Worship Psalter’ as such – but the psalter is contained in both the core ‘Common Worship’ book itself (= “CW”), and within the Office book Daily Prayer (“DP”). One possibility is simply to purchase sufficient copies of CW for the congregation to use. This has the advantage of not just containing the psalter but also the texts for various different services, and could be used for both Morning and Evening Prayer on Sundays – it would give a fair bit of flexibility and more resources if we went down that route. If we purchased lots of copies of DP then we’d get the psalter (a better version, in fact) along with some tremendously good resources in terms of canticles and so on, but we wouldn’t get the orders of services that we use on Sundays. The upside of using DP, though, would be that it would be much easier to accustom people to the Office – and I do see pursuing that as carrying a great potential for blessing. We might even encourage people to purchase their own copies, for use at home – or even, for those a bit frightened of the main DP book (which is a bit chunky) the rather excellent introductory form which Tim Chesterton put me on to, called Time to Pray.

The more I ponder these issues, the more I become aware of the size of the question, and the more silly I feel for thinking it a straightforward matter. Being someone who gives great respect to church authority and tradition I was unaware of the ‘third rail’ aspect which discussions of the Bible can have amongst evangelicals. Yet it is precisely that authority and tradition which provides the richest standpoint from which to engage with Scripture, and which allows for a solid spiritual and Scriptural foundation for the worshipping community. The issue is what provision can we make which will most strengthen the community in its walk with God – bearing in mind that we are not simply engaging with the community in its present form, but also making decisions on behalf of those people who are coming into the faith without much background. If I was a dictator I’d say ‘NRSV and DP!’ – but I’m not, so I’ve got to keep pondering a little longer.

The Tilling Statement of Inerrancy

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I thought this rather good:

I believe that all scripture[1] is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.[2]
I believe that the prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit and Spoke from God.
I believe that God speaks in many and various ways,[3] and most definitively he speaks about God’s Son.[4]
I believe that as we read scripture, we are invited to approach Christ,[5] and hear the final and definitive Word God speak to us in his Son.[6]
I believe that as we read and study scripture seeking Christ, we are addressed by God, that through scripture God speaks to us.
I believe the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.[7]
I believe that humans do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.[8]
I believe that the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times.[9]
I believe scripture is trustworthy and precious, deserving of my study, love, time and energy.

Is Christ Divided? session 7

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Notes for the house groups on 1 Corinthians.
Week seven, beginning Sunday 11 June: 1 Corinthians 6

Click ‘full post’ for text.

Main themes: 1: Lawsuits
2: Theology of the Body

Questions to prompt discussion

1.Can a Christian ever take another Christian to court? What about insurance claims? What about a car crash?
2.If not – or even if generally not – how should the wider church community be involved? (Think discipline; think also about care and relief; think about what status this gives to the church as a practical (legal?) organisation)
3.Why not rather be wronged?
4.The wicked will not inherit the kingdom – but what if they are believers? (cf Rom 7.15)
5.What are the implications of our bodies being members of Christ?
6.Why ‘flee’ from sexual immorality? That is, why not try and fight it?

Supplementary thoughts:
Again the theme of judgement within the church community, and therefore of church discipline, is prominent. Paul is arguing strenuously for the community being competent within itself to resolve internal disputes. Appeal to an outside authority is an appeal precisely to the world, and therefore not an application of ‘kingdom values’. Compare this attitude with that advocated in the Sermon on the Mount, especially in terms of inner spiritual orientation.

The second half is really an application of this first point to practical affairs, ie what people DO with their bodies. This isn’t just about sexuality, but about the whole of human life, especially economic life – and therefore justice.

“Everything is permissible” – the heresy of antinomianism may have been behind the dispute in chapter 5 (antinomianism = there is no law; a misapplication of the freedom in Christ which believers enjoy). Freedom can itself become a form of slavery, to the individual will, so Paul is making two warnings – a choice can be harmful to the wider community (we’ll come back to this one in chapters 8-10) but it can also be harmful to the individual themselves – ‘mastering them’, like an addiction. Paul has a much stronger sense of the nature of sin than do the Corinthians, and therefore of how individual choice is inevitably compromised or overwhelmed.

Notes on verses
vv 1-6 compare with Rom 13.1-7 (!)
v 2 compare Daniel 7.22; Rev 2.26-27
v 7 ‘cheated’ (NIV) = defrauded, ie financial dispute
vv 9-10 compare Gal 5:19-21
v 11 probably a reference to baptism
vv 12 & 13 probably quotations from Corinth
v 13 ‘sexual immorality’, Greek porneia anything sexually illicit, fornication
v 15 ‘members’ = limbs

Is Christ Divided?

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I’m going to be providing notes to the house groups in Mersea, so that all the different groups, though separated, are working through the same material. We’re going to be working through 1 Corinthians for the next few months. This is the material for week one (click on ‘full post’ to read).


Is Christ Divided?
Notes for the house groups on 1 Corinthians.

Week One, beginning Sunday 15 April: 1 Corinthians 1.1-17

  • Corinth is in central Greece. Sacked and destroyed by Romans in 146BC; rebuilt and repopulated by Julius Caesar in 44BC. Wealthy outpost of Roman civilisation; a seaport; cosmopolitan; an ‘international crossroads’; looked down on surrounding area. What might this tell us about who Paul was talking to? Any parallels/contrasts with Mersea? What might Paul need to be aware of if he was talking to the people of Mersea today, in terms of cultural assumptions and processes?
  • Paul founded the church in Corinth, 50/51 AD (Acts 18.1-7); the letter is written from Ephesus a few years later, before 55 AD.
  • Paul mentions Jesus in almost every verse – what conclusions can be drawn from this?
  • Paul’s principal concern is for unity, and the avoidance of faction. What are the criteria for unity in a church? Consider:
    • verse 2 of this passage (‘all who call on the name of the Lord…’)
    • Romans 10.9
    • Matthew 7.21
  • What is the origin of the factions? Culturally the Corinthians were accustomed to ‘choosing’ amongst different philosophical debaters – a sort of classical ‘pop idol’ contest. What does it say about their understanding of the gospel that it was incorporated within those cultural assumptions? Are there ways in which we do the same today?
  • Who is Apollos for us today? (Or Paul, or Peter, or whomever) Does the success of certain teachers (eg Rick Warren) or certain models of church (“mega churches”) raise any dangers for a church community? What are the divisions within the church on Mersea? Across churches (CTIM itself isn’t comprehensive); by worship style or time of worship – compare 8am congregation to 9:30am; by belief? How can these divisions be minimised or overcome? A useful word: adiaphora: ‘things indifferent’, or ‘this is not worth dividing a church over’; Richard Baxter: “In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity” – adiaphora is that which is not necessary for salvation.
  • What does it mean to be ‘sanctified’ in Christ Jesus (v2)? or ‘called to be holy’? Consider:
    • Matthew 5.13-16
    • the ‘pure church heresy’ (technically called ‘Donatism’), that only the morally pure could be ministers or members of a church
    • how far should Christians be involved in a local community; how far should they (we) be a separate society?
    • many of these questions will recur throughout this letter
  • What does Paul mean (v6) about his testimony being confirmed in the Corinthians? Can the same be said of our church?
  • Whose faith is emphasised? (v9) Does faith achieve salvation (Rom 10 again) or is it the faith of Christ which achieves salvation? (Gal 2:16 in KJV, in Greek ‘pistis Christou’ – a genitive; NB this is a highly debated question. You might like to compare the verse from Galatians as presented in the KJV and NIV)
  • What does Paul mean in saying ‘Christ did not send me to baptise’? Compare with the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel.
  • What does this passage say to the present crisis in the Anglican Communion? Can we use Paul’s analysis helpfully? Again, this issue will recur as we work our way through the Epistle.

A bible meme

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I was pondering those questions which One Salient Oversight was putting to the President, particularly the one about familiarity with the Bible. And a meme occurred to me (this may have been done before but I haven’t seen it).

1. How many bibles are in your home?
2. What rooms are they in?
3. What translations do you have?
4. Do you have a preference?
5. Nominate an interesting verse

So for me:
1. About 20
2. Most in my study, two in the bedroom, two or three in the main living room. Some abridged versions in the kids rooms as well (not included in the 20)
3. NRSV, RSV, NIV, KJV, Douay (on my LifeDrive, along with NIV), Good News. I use Bible Gateway to look at other versions when preparing sermons. I also have various versions of the New Testament in Greek.
4. RSV for accuracy; one of the modern ones for readability (Message or UK English equivalent)
5. “With you is my contention O priest” (Hosea 4.4)

It’s not a meme without tagging, so I tag:

The Ranter
Kyle
One Salient Oversight
and, to compare and contrast 🙂
Ian.

Anglican Liberalism, and the interpretation of Scripture

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My mother-in-law lives near Lampeter, where there is a university with a good theological faculty (indeed, should I ever be enabled by God to scratch the theological itch and finish a PhD I may well end up doing it there). Whilst on holiday I attended a lecture given by Professor Paul Badham on Anglican Liberalism. After a promising start, it was deeply disappointing.

The promising start was the argument that Anglican liberalism was not driven by the agenda of the Continental Enlightenment. Badham pointed out that in the dispute over Henry VIII’s divorce, the salient question became ‘what is the authority to interpret Scripture?’ In other words, if the authority of the Pope was rejected, what was to be put in its place?

Cranmer’s answer was: ‘the consensus of the universities in Europe’. From this Badham argued that the Anglican tradition had developed a liberal ethos on a different track to that of the Continental theologians, arguing, amongst other things, that Schleiermacher’s writings were not translated into English until very late in the day (some 20th Century) and that Anglican Liberals “derived their views direct from their Biblical and theological work”. The continental theologian that Badham felt was most influential was von Harnack, whose work ‘What is Christianity’ was apparently the best-selling theological work before John Robinson’s ‘Honest to God’. In addition to that, Badham alleges that the Enlightenment critique of religion had been considered answered within British culture by the writings of Joseph Butler, especially his ‘Analogy of Religion’ in 1736.

Badham sees the Liberal tradition as defined by an acceptance of Modern Biblical Criticism (MBC), and he went on to run through the key stages by which influence of the Liberal tradition within the Anglican establishment developed – so 1862 marked the legal acceptance of MBC by clergy, and 1864 saw the right of clergy to deny substitutionary atonement and the doctrine of hell; 1917 saw the appointment of Henslow as Bishop of Hereford despite his denial of the Virgin Birth; 1938 saw the publication of a Church Doctrine Commission affirming the place of Liberalism within the Anglican church; 1995 saw the same Doctrine Commission denounce the doctrine of Hell as ‘incompatible with belief in the love of God’. So Badham argues that Liberalism is now the broad mainstream of church opinion within the Church of England: all theological faculties accept the validity of MBC, and consequently (after Cranmer), the Church of England is a Liberal church.

Some of Badham’s historical material was interesting, and plugged a few gaps in my knowledge, especially in terms of the 19th century. Yet on the whole his argument seemed weak, almost vacuous. One suspected a desire to protect his flank from contemporary criticisms, given his beginning with a distancing from the continental enlightenment, yet – although I believe a significant argument could be made supporting the point – Badham did not succeed in persuading this particular listener that Anglican Liberalism was not hugely influenced by the mores and assumptions of the Enlightenment. In large part that is because I follow Roy Porter’s analysis of the Enlightenment, rooting it in English culture of the seventeenth century, most especially the influence of John Locke. (The links between Locke and the Anglican church, esp Clarke, are an area of much interest for me.) Badham, for example, cites Paley as being ignorant of the Enlightenment – and thus an instance of the ‘separation’ from the Continent of the English tradition – due to his deployal of an argument from design, despite Kant having ‘demolished’ such arguments a generation previously. This argument does not achieve what Badham wants it to achieve. Irrespective of its relationship to Kant, Paley’s argument is saturated with Enlightenment assumptions, not least the notion that the correct analogue for the creation is a mechanism, viz a watch, thus betraying the thorough-going Newtonian perspective governing his approach. To say that the lack of reference to Kant demonstrates the independence of English thought from Enlightenment presuppositions is vapid.

My suspicions were confirmed at the end of the lecture when I asked Badham about his beginning with Cranmer. Was it not the case, I asked, that when the church accepts an authority outside of itself (the interpretation of Scripture no longer being a matter for the church to determine, but for the ‘consensus of the universities in Europe’ to establish) it has lost something essential, that it has ‘sold its soul’? Badham was robust in his response: No! the church is accountable to Reason!

The voice of the mid-twentieth century could be heard clearly in the seminar room, on this January evening in 2006.

There was nothing in Badham’s lecture that could not have been said and argued fifty years previously. Fifty years previously this may have been stimulating. A young theologian would have found much to ponder – and not much room for disagreement. The theological consensus was overwhelming – there was no middle ground between fundamentalism and the relentless march of MBC – and so Liberalism would indeed have been the accepted consensus.

Yet these last fifty years have witnessed a tremendous transformation of the terms of the debate, and the greatest disappointment of the lecture, especially given the promise of its beginning, was the complete lack of attention given to the way these debates are now shaped, not least through a more developed suspicion of MBC, and an awareness of what the church as a whole has lost through its ‘delegation’ of the authority to interpret Scripture. To make an appeal to ‘Reason’ as an arbiter of Biblical interpretation is vacuous – it merely marks the argument as one long past its sell-by date. More than this, it seems a virtual dereliction of duty to be making such an argument in the context of teaching undergraduates for a university degree in theology. All the most interesting theology of the last thirty years – most especially Alasdair MacIntyre and John Milbank, but there are many others – has been concerned with overhauling this naïve construal of ‘Reason’. In such a context Badham’s arguments meet a far worse fate than being wrong, they have become dull.

Thomas Kuhn argued that a paradigm shifts not so much from force of argument as from a generational change. Where there is a dispute over the most fundamental framings of discussion, the old guard do not change, they die out, and new students coming in to a discipline simply don’t engage with the assumptions of the fading paradigm. The new one holds out much more interest.

It seems to me that the core debate within the church as a whole remains the question which Cranmer pondered – how to interpret Scripture? What authority governs the interpretation of Scripture? Fundamentalism is itself a creature of the Enlightenment, and offers very little in the way of theologically creative hermeneutics – and thus is of no service to the church community, proving by its lack of compassion the terminal absence of the Holy Spirit. Nor does the delegation of authority to the universities meet the need: this may, conceivably, have had some merit in an environment where theological faculties were staffed by committed Christians, where you had to take Holy Orders in order to teach – but now? The vast majority of theological faculties are wholly captured by secularity, both in terms of governing intellectual attitudes and the more obviously malign forces of government funding and bureaucracy. For the church to remain beholden to the interpretations of such a community is for it to remain in Babylon. How can we sing a love song in a strange land?

I am more convinced than ever that the centre of theological gravity must return from the academy to the cloister; that no coherent understanding of the faith can be formed apart from a viable eucharistic community. It is this line of thinking that every so often makes me wonder whether I should become a Roman Catholic, for there the lines of authority are much clearer – it is the Magisterium which provides for the definitive understanding of Scripture (a structure which, despite the most strenuous denials, is replicated in substance within the various Protestant establishments; so it seems to me, and at least the RC has [some] history on its side!).

Yet this offers not much more than the removal of one problem by the imposition of another: the Reformation was not without abiding purpose, after all. So the Anglican system, as developed by Hooker, with its three-fold division of authority between Scripture first and foremost; then the teachings of the early church; and then finally the application of our reason – there is something here that is beautiful, and is perhaps the distinctive gift of the Church of England to the wider church. A way in which to negotiate the hazards of premature closure to discussion; an openness to the continual promptings of the One who leads us into all Truth. That is the via media which seems authentically liberal; not one which takes its bearings from Modernist epistemology and Enlightenment secularity, but one which is centred upon the ongoing inspiration of the church; which takes the fruits of the Spirit seriously, not least in the gift of Scripture itself, the ordering of the church, and the creeds; and is therefore one which gives freedom, for it is for freedom that we have been set free.

This side of the eschaton, the final resting place for the interpretation of Scripture is, for me, the consensus fidelium – the considered and settled opinion of the faithful – and that settled opinion can itself develop over time, and change. It is expressed, most of all, through worship – lex orandi, lex credendi – this is why it must be rooted within the communion, when we sing our love songs to Jesus and renew our marriage vows. It is when we break the bread and renew the new covenant that we are authentically the church, that we are authentically the Body, and that we can authentically listen to His voice. It is when we are enabled to truly hear the word that we are enabled to interpret the word; and then to speak that word within the world. Scripture belongs to the church – it was formed by the church for the church, and it is for the church to interpret it, so help us God.

Only love can believe

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This is a ‘Blue Peter’ post (“Here’s one we prepared earlier”). I wrote it two years ago.

“Only love can believe”
What does it mean to believe in the resurrection?

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Peter 1.3)

The resurrection is both the origin and the definition of Christianity – Christianity could not have come into being without the resurrection, nor can it be sustained except by a belief in the resurrection – “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15.14). Yet there is still room to ask, what does it mean?

It should first be pointed out that there is no clear harmony between the different accounts given in the New Testament. The appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus, for example, is rather different to the experience of Thomas. So there is room within Christianity for differing understandings of what the resurrection was.

Many people see reason to doubt the resurrection, citing various scientific, critical or exegetical grounds for doubt. Perhaps the story was made up by the early church. Perhaps the apostles had psychological disturbances which they interpreted as ‘appearances’. Perhaps it was a group pscyhosis, brought on by a combination of grief and guilt. And so on and so forth.

To my mind, these issues, although of some intrinsic interest, are beside the point. To explain why, let us engage in a little ‘mind-experiment’. Imagine that somehow, we were able to send a team of scientists back to AD33, to the time of the crucifixion. These scientists can take whatever instruments and techniques they want, and they are to assess the ‘evidence’.

Firstly, they examine the body of Jesus after the crucifixion. They confirm that Jesus is dead – the heart has stopped beating, the brain has stopped functioning, the body has begun to decay.

Let us next assume that, on the third day, they see something like what is described in John’s gospel, specifically the experience of Thomas. Like Thomas, they examine Jesus’ wounds; they positively identify that this person is Jesus; that he is alive.

The scientists then return to our own age, and proclaim – in the manner that scientists are somewhat prone to – ‘Science has displaced religion! We can prove that Jesus rose from the dead!!’

To my mind, this is to miss the point. For Christian belief in the resurrection is not belief in a matter of fact, no matter how wonderful that fact might be. Christianity sees the resurrection as a miracle – as THE miracle – and, as Wittgenstein put it, “The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle”.

There are many reasons for this difference in approach between science and Christianity, which I shall not enter into here. For what I would like to do is give an indication of what Christian belief in the resurrection is actually about. At its core, at its most simple, it is a claim about Jesus, that Jesus was justified by God and raised in glory – and that glory is something which the Christian participates in, by grace. In other words, belief in the resurrection is a belief that Jesus was the Messiah – and vice versa. Consider the sequence of events. Jesus proclaims the gospel, a new law of love and forgiveness, of including the outcast and healing the sick. He comes into conflict with the political and religious authorities, and is crucified. Now this demonstrates that Jesus has been rejected by God –

‘And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.’ (Deuteronomy 21.22-23)

The disciples are shattered, downcast, scattered and leaderless – and these people then establish a church which ‘conquers’ the known world. Clearly something happened, which transformed those downcast disciples into apostles and missionaries, filled with enthusiasm for proclaiming the gospel.

Whatever that something was, it justified Jesus. Instead of Jesus being condemned by God, he was instead held up by God in special honour – he was vindicated against his accusers. The world says this; the world makes this judgement about Jesus – yet God says this, and makes this judgement about Jesus.

We thus have a difference, right at the beginning of Christianity, between the judgement of the world and the judgement of God, and therefore the origin for all contrast between Law and Grace. For Grace is the principle of the resurrection – to stand condemned, and yet to be free from punishment. It is to be forgiven, to be included, to be accepted.

It should be clear, then, that this justification of Jesus cannot be divorced from who Jesus was in his life, and how he lived. For Jesus taught the path of forgiveness, of healing the sick and binding up their wounds. This was rejected by the religious authorities – and yet it was vindicated by God. So clearly God is like Jesus, and Jesus is like God. And the resurrection reveals Jesus in glory, a divine glory – a glory that we are called to share in.

We share in it through living that same life of grace that Jesus lived, ie by following the path of healing compassion, of including the outcast, of forgiving the sinner. That path was broken open by Jesus (the ‘pioneer and perfecter of our faith’), in his life, death and resurrection.

In other words, belief in the resurrection is really a commitment to living the Christian life – that which was opened up and vindicated by the resurrection of Jesus, whatever that event could be described as in scientific terms.

Once more, Wittgenstein demonstrates his sure understanding of Christian identity:

‘Only love can believe the resurrection. Or: it is love that believes in the resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the resurrection; holds fast even to the resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.’ (Wittgenstein, 1937)

A new perspective on Jesus

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Took a trip to London on Tuesday night to catch up with some friends, and, on the train journey there and back, I managed to read James D G Dunn’s “A New Perspective on Jesus”. (It’s a short book that fitted into my jacket pocket…)

I thought it was excellent. It goes through the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’ and skewers some liberal assumptions about the nature of the tradition, and gives a straightforward account of how the oral tradition would have functioned. The book is really a short summary of his longer book, “Jesus Remembered”, which I guess I’ll now have to read. Not for beginners in New Testament studies, I wouldn’t have said, but if you know what ‘form criticism’ or ‘Q’ refer to, then you’ll be fine.

It turns out that Dunn was the person who coined the phrase ‘A new perspective on Paul’, referring to the post-Sanders revolution in how to understand the Apostle, which I had always associated with Tom Wright (coming to a Learning Church near you in the autumn ;-). I hope Dunn makes a similar impact with his work here.