Martin Luther (not so good after all)

As a recovering Evangelical I often revisit my heroes of the faith. Martin Luther has avoided my gaze over many years; his stand against the despicable practice of selling indulgences (cash for forgiveness) was well judged. Whether the nails and church door are myth or not the message was appropriate. His extended Bible study that led him to understand pardon by grace alone was one of the best Quiet Times anyone ever had.

So it was with some disappointment that I read Tanit Koch's excellent 'Germansplaining' column in The New European last week. She pointed out that Luther, in 1524, wrote a piece called 'Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants' although those peasants were revolting against heavy taxes on farmers. His pamphlet was all the ammo the ruling aristocrats needed to kill 70,000 (yes, you read that right) peasants.

So, maybe it's easier to rely on God's grace when you're loaded.

Violence, Bible and Palestine

I wonder if you can get your imagination to a place where you feel so persecuted that you can imagine causing harm to the children of the persecutor?

I have been fortunate to have never come anywhere near this point but I have lived a very safe and sheltered life. I can disagree with the government without fear of arrest. My land borders are not disputed. The authorities take no interest in my clothes or sexual orientation. It has been my privilege not to be persecuted.

My formative teenage years had a backdrop of IRA atrocity. I was in Birmingham's Tavern in the Town the night before a bomb exploded there killing many. I've felt fortunate since then. The further away from it I get the closer it seems.

I found it hard to grasp a cause which dealt with the innocent like that.

Then, in 1988, I read, on an album sleeve of all places, this:

'On October 5 1968, a peaceful civil rights march in Derry (including parents and members of the band) was brutally attacked by the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the instructions of the Unionist-controlled Stormont Government. This was followed by the organised attack of a peaceful student march from Belfast to Derry by Unionist extremists setting a precedent of anti-nationalist violence in the subsequent months and culminating in the British Government's decision to draft in its troops to uphold 'law and order'.

'In the face of such belligerent intransigence, it was a small step from demanding civil rights to demanding a complete severance of ties from Britain and the establishment of a Socialist Irish State. The resurgence of the Irish Republican Army, largely dormant from the late '50s, heralded an age where constitutional politics went from sick-joke status to complete irrelevancy for the nationalist community.'

I make no claims about the factual accuracy of the piece. It simply became a personal tipping point. I understood the gut-led emotional reaction of anger of five young Catholic men utterly helpless in the face of aggression. Of course I am not defending the IRA. And the young men responded with music not violence

Psalm 137 was put on the lips of every young person of my generation in 1978 when Boney M charted with By the Rivers of Babylon. In fact the song was a cover, the original dating from 1970. Psalm 137 is a response to a taunt. People in exile in Babylon are asked by their captors to sing one of their Hebrew songs. They respond, I paraphrase, 'How can we sing the Lord's songs in a strange land?' Songs of the Temple won't work elsewhere.

At the end of Psalm 137 is a verse that Boney M chose not to sing. Again to paraphrase, 'Happy (is he) who takes your little ones and bashes their heads against the rocks.' Maybe, as Robert Alter says, it is a good job the captors did not understand the Hebrew in which the song-response to the taunt was delivered. Whether there was ever any intention of acting so, I doubt. But the song tells of a people angry enough to think it.

The religions of the Book have the highest possible care for the non-combatants during war-time. Hebrew Scriptures emphasise reasonable response (eye for eye, tooth for tooth). The New Testament suggests loving your enemy and praying for those who persecute you. The Quran specifically prohibits the killing of innocent people.

People often deride religions for causing wars. These days it is usually land-grabbing that causes wars and religion is sometimes enlisted for justification on either or both sides. The Hebrew Scriptures are a story of God-condoned land-grabbing and also, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, 'a national literature of self-criticism.'

I lament for the innocent of Israel and Palestine. I don't understand how the national boundaries can be finalised without concessions. I do understand why a first reaction is to bang the heads of the enemy against the rocks. Trouble is, we've been having nothing but first reaction for two and a half thousand years. And the children get their heads smashed in.

The Godless Gospel

 

If you are unfamiliar with the work of populist philosopher Julian Baggini then this may not be quite the place to start. My introduction to him was the best-seller The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten: And 99 Other Thought Experiments. Which made me think.

In The Godless Gospel (Was Jesus a Great Moral Teacher?) (Granta 2020) Baggini attempts to remove Jesus' moral teaching from its theological framework to see if there is anything to help those who don't want to swallow the whole God thing.

It is an interesting exercise, applauded  on the jacket by no less than Richard Holloway, he who wrote Godless Morality whilst still an Archbishop although he has since moved nearer to godless than god-fearing.

Does it work? There is good stuff in the opening sections, especially about individual attitude, humility and the process of doing thinking. He acknowledges that reading the gospel is not like reading a modern treatise on moral philosophy. It is not an argument to be followed but a biography to be pondered. Whether you can think about it clearly whilst dismissing the thing that holds it all together is the big question. The attempt to distance Jesus' teaching from his understanding of God, the Father, in whom he trusted and who he believed he served, seems, to me, to pull on a thread that unravels everything.

The last third of the book is a new version of the Gospel, replacing mentions  of God with 'good' in many cases and yet leaving references to prayer unaltered. If there was no God and he was mistaken about praying then surely the whole of Jesus' manifesto implodes? The parable of the kingdom and the return of the king are included. To be fair, Baggini discuses this at length but we draw different conclusions.

Annoyingly Baggini chooses to word his Gospel harmonisation in the language of the Authorised Version because he prefers the poetry. Which makes it harder, not easier, to follow. Living words need lively translation, not archiving or confining to the theatre. 

Interesting effort and nicely written but I wasn't convinced. The Gospel writers all, for sure, had axes to grind and used what Karen Armstrong calls mythos to make their points. But they wrote that we might have life in all its fulness in Jesus' name (John says this directly), not that we might pick and choose which bits we like.

Silbury Hill

I like to read a local book when staying away from home. It's a habit I began about twenty years ago when I happened to read Captain Corelli's Mandolin on a Mediterranean island and, even though it was the wrong island, the book came alive.

We've been staying a few miles down the road from home, in Castle Combe; proof positive that you don't have to get away far to get away. In a bookshop in nearby Corsham I asked the friendly proprietor what to read. I wanted something that wasn't a guide book but was good writing, evocative of the area. She gave me a fine selection but On Silbury Hill by Adam Thorpe stood out. It has been an amazing companion; a metaphysical, biographical introduction to the area known as the Wiltshire Downlands covering six millennia of history from Neolithic times.

We went to Avebury and Silbury Hill. As Adam Thorpe (almost the same age as me) recalls his Marlborough College school-days so I recalled my own, not least because in about 1967 I came there on a school trip.

To be fair I can remember only one incident clearly from the trip. Walking from what was probably then the coach park to the hill we were approaching a gate and Max Oates ran at it and cleared it in, what I later found out was actually called, a gate-vault. Max arrived at King Edwards (a place that gave an experience not unlike Marlborough but was not a boarding school and thus reduced the bullying hours somewhat) as a highly proficient gymnast and diver. My reaction, as one who had been convinced that getting into King Edwards was a verdict on my all-round genius, was 'Why can't I do that?' It was one of the first of many steps to realising that in order to really get on you have to be more than a smart kid. I grew up in a big old house but it was rundown and we had little money for much of my school-days.  I got a free place through the entry examination. But I hadn't had gym classes, diving lessons or the pushy parents to lead me to young specialism. Indeed I spent my secondary school days trying out every new opportunity and moving on. Fives, squash, hockey, rugby, cricket, tennis - I never settled, always looking wistfully over my shoulder at the sacrifice of going to a school that thought rugby football was the only type of football worth playing. I also had undiagnosed asthma, which meant my shortness of breath when running was treatable (and eventually was, aged 24) but I merely thought I wasn't very good at it and kept trying harder.

Silbury Hill is an enigma. The conclusion of most experts, after two to three hundred years of modern archaeology, is that they don't know what it is. It is a thirty metre high mound in the middle of a huge natural downland amphitheatre. It is the largest human-made mound in the world and is near the largest standing stone circle in the world. The secret it has revealed is that it was human-made over a couple of  hundred years and has at least twelve cycles of layering. It reminds me of a a cairn where every newcomer places a stone. Except that generations have placed huge layers of chalk, turf and sandstone without, or at least without us being able to tell, if of any of them had the first idea of what the point was.

So today it just sits there, next to a busy road. Visitors are not allowed to climb because of erosion although we saw two do so during our brief visit. They would have had to squeeze through a gap, ignore two notices and climb a fence so I guess they knew what they were doing. Walking a mile away to West Kennet Long Barrow the Silbury Hill becomes small - looks like a spoil heap in the wrong place.

The Standing Stones, Barrow and Hill are accessible without paying. It has managed to resist becoming the downlands visitor experience although there is some of that in the museum and nearby Avebury Manor and Gardens (National Trust). Otherwise local agriculture simply lives and works alongside.

On a grey February day the place conjured up all sorts of alternative thoughts. It's not what some theologians call a 'thin place'. I felt it was a full place. When we don't know what something means everyone has a go at defining it. It's become somewhere with too much meaning - none of it that helpful. It's a reminder of people keeping their eyes on something bigger, grander and out there. A striving for meaning. A desire that the point of all this be something other than my own self-actualisation. Which is, at the very minimum, what the Christian Gospel does; it anchors the truth elsewhere.

Avebury and Silbury change your vision by looking at the work of people who bothered to change their horizon. The lack of clarity about why they did it leaves their work as the record of a universal question.

The book is a knowledegable friend on the same journey.

39 Articles - A Summary

THIS Book of Articles before rehearsed, is again approved, and allowed to be holden and executed within the Realm, by the assent and consent of our Sovereign Lady ELIZABETH, by the grace of God, of England, France, and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, &c. Which Articles were deliberately read, and confirmed again by the subscription of the hands of the Archbishop and Bishops of the Upper-house, and by the subscription of the whole Clergy of the Nether-house in their Convocation, in the Year of our Lord 1571.

This paragraph is how the 39 Articles end. We discussed earlier how the job of the ordained in the corridors of the good and the great is to speak truth to power. Bishops in the House of Lords have that responsibility. Trouble is, dumbing down at the other end of the priestly spectrum does not mean we should see our job as speaking truth to stupid. But we might accidentally behave like that. Sorry.

In one of his essays Martyn Percy uses a wonderful quote from writer Bill Vanstone about the Church of England, 'Why, he asked, is it like a swimming pool? Answer: all the noise comes from the shallow end.'

This last few weeks has been an opportunity to have a go at some of the harder and deeper things, understand them, and try to make their meaning plain. You will be the judges as to whether I have succeeded.

These 39 Articles were set out at a time when the Parish Priest was often the most educated member of the community and had a leadership role because church and state were connected.

I take from this exercise not a desire to be shouting spiritual truths into the shallows as an over-confident deep-ender. No. I want more people to come to the deep end. There are things to explore and it's not dangerous. Try swimming. You can do it. Let's have deeper conversations.

Sincere thanks to my companions on this journey:

On the Thirty-Nine Articles (Conversations with Tudor Christianity)

Oliver O'Donovan

SCM 2011 (1st published 1986)

Thirty Nine New Articles

Martyn Percy

Canterbury Press 2013

Reformed and catholic; happy Easter to you all.

Little Fall-outs - Article 5/39

5. OF THE HOLY GHOST

THE Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.

The eastern Christian church would take comfort from the word 'orthodox' – believing the right things. The west from 'catholic' – being everywhere. It is amusing to think that these two statements are not contradictory. This door is white; no it's not, it's rectangular.

But little Article 5 is the point of contention. It is fascinating that some of the great divisions in the way the world now is show a change of language – from Before Christ to Anno Domini, English to Latin. No wonder academic communities are gradually educating us to the better model of BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (take a wild guess).

So the two issues over the wording of the creeds behind this Article are expressed in different languages. The first in Greek – the homoousios (of one substance) problem. What is the commonality between the persons of the Trinity? Is there a hierarchy? What sort of equal are they? O'Donovan points to the priority of the Father as the one who loves; the one who sends the Son.

The second dispute is expressed this time in Latin – filioque (and the son). Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father ('he will send another comforter') or from the Father 'and the Son' as the Article states?

On such matters do churches separate and indeed, divide. Suffice it to say that theologians care but at grass roots Christians around the country are trying to work out what we can do together before we worry about what separates us. Indeed we have found so many things we can do together here in this little corner of the south-west, that our minds are distracted from that which separates us. Perhaps that's how things are meant to be. Father Tom may not be able to administer bread and wine to me but to the extent that it means something, we cannot doubt that the two of us are in some sort of communion which makes us content.

What the Article is trying to do, and I hope we still try to do, is to make the highest possible acclamation of the divinity of the Spirit of God (sometimes even called the 'Spirit of Jesus' in Acts). If somehow, mysteriously, the Spirit can be sent to dwell in humankind, and that spirit is the Spirit of God, how could it be any less divine than God? Separate, yet one. It is expressing that which causes all the trouble. Better to try and live it.

Going Up - Article 4/39

4. OF THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

CHRIST did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man's nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day.

There are, as Percy says, no obvious answers to life's questions at Christmas. We have to put time into the relationship with the baby and let him grow, if we are to hear him speak. If we are to believe the hymn that suggests the little Lord Jesus makes no crying even, then it will be a while before we get to hear parables.

The set question in the Gospels, perhaps most clearly put in Mark is 'Who is this man?' Hiding behind the theological complexity of Articles 2-4 the question still has legs and still brings life to those who would pursue the relationship.

Back in the day when I was churning out Bible study books for teenage groups at the rate of two a year we always had interesting discussions about titles. We had no debate about the title of our book on Jesus' resurrection. It came to me and it was the only one ever considered. Didn't he used to be dead? I'm still proud of it.

The Article wishes us to affirm a bodily resurrection – I love the idea of flesh, bones and all things... He even took his unmentionable bits with him. Bless.

O'Donovan says '...a human body is something more than its material constituents, and what became of those constituents in the resurrection of Jesus's body is a question on which some reticence might be appropriate.'

And on that ascension he adds, 'The verb 'ascended', like the verb 'came down' in the Creed, can refer to no form of spatial movement known to man.'

For Paul the resurrection was key. It was the resurrection which affirmed that the death of Christ dealt with the human relationship with God once and for all. Not everyone who is a useless preacher is a useless preacher because of lack of faith in the resurrection. But for Paul if there is no resurrection our preaching is useless. Literally without use. A waste of time.

So, has our understanding of what actually happened that first Easter morning moved on since the resurrection. Yes, I think it has. But it has moved in the direction of mystery not certainty. I used to think that it was evidence that demanded a verdict, influenced by books such as Frank Morrison's 'Who Moved the Stone?'

I now read a paragraph such as the one which follows from Martin Percy and feel much more comfortable:

'In the oldest account of the resurrection (by Mark), and in the earliest Greek manuscripts, the Gospel ends mid-sentence, with the innocuous Greek word gar (meaning 'for': “they were afraid for...”).

'Thus, a proper conclusion to the story is withheld, and it is up to the reader to say what happens next. The followers of Jesus are invited to write a resurrection conclusion with their own lives.'

It is also true that it makes Mark's Gospel a better piece of literature. Throughout Jesus' life he warns people not to tell about him, but they do. Post-resurrection, witnesses are invited to share the news. But they don't. Will you?

Going Down - Article 3/39

3. OF THE GOING DOWN OF CHRIST INTO HELL

AS Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell.

We're not good at death. Our feelings are not having a good time and our language tries to clutch at straws of hope. And conversations never continue well after one party has said 'Go to hell.'

No, we're certainly in a deathmess. I have been required to overhear so many final eulogies about, let's call her Violet, 'looking down on us and smiling'. No amount of accurate preaching of the gospel and the resurrection that is to come will shake Violet's family and friends from the comfort they take from that 'looking down'.

Christ really, actually died. He didn't swoon and resuscitate. That is what Article 3 wants us to know. Whatever it means to be dead between Good Friday afternoon and Easter Sunday morning – that is what Jesus was.

Oliver O'Donovan again: 'We think, quite properly, that the liberation of the dead is something which has been accomplished. And we think of the blessedness of the dead as present. We remember Paul's conviction that to die was to gain more of Christ, and Jesus's promise to the thief on the cross, 'Today you will be with me in Paradise', and we cannot believe that the dead are kept hanging around. The three tenses, the past present and future, are all points at which a reality beyond our time touches our time. They are all correct tenses to use. But we are mistaken if we try to systematize them into a series of temporal events which befall the dead, as though in our time, with hypotheses of intermediate status, purgatories and so on.'

And furthermore Belinda Carlisle was wrong. Heaven is not a place on earth. Although there are some gripping glimpses and thin places.

We need to embrace the welcome of death. After six hours on a cross death comes as a merciful blessing. We would all prefer to say goodbye to our family and friends whilst gripped by superior palliative medicine. Better than mind that car, what car, splat any day (I think I stole that from Red Dwarf – respect).

In The Amber Spyglass Philip Pullman invented a species of a humanlike race which lived with their own death as if a personalised accomplice. So when that creature whispered in your ear 'It is time', there was no fear. You went off hand in hand to another place.

Just the Three of Us - Article 1/39

1. OF FAITH IN THE HOLY TRINITY
THERE is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Possibly the first thing we will note, and which will annoy us throughout, is the seemingly random use of capitals. But there is a method. Here we find capitalisation for God, members of the Godhead, pronouns for Him and active attributes of Him – Maker, Preserver in this case. It is a type of respect from which we have moved.

They start with God. They could have started with method – this is how we will do this and these are our working assumptions. But no. They start with God.

They remind us that today we need to recapture the otherness of God. Over fifty years on from the publication of John Robinson's 'Honest to God' our culture's professional atheists still argue against a God that is too small. A god of the gaps shrinks as science explains. The Articles say more than that our God is a great big God and he holds us in his hands. That song, fun as it is, suggests the existence of other, smaller gods. Article 1 says no. It's all metaphor though. God is real and language is metaphor. Creeds, Articles and other proclamations are inadequate. And God is certainly not what is left after science has finished explaining.

This Article is a not entirely unexpected Trinitarian formula, the test case for classic Christianity. We believe in one God, Father, Son and (we now say) Holy Spirit.

O'Donovan describes the gospel as the proper tension between the transcendence and the incarnate nearness of God. So if you want to know what God is like, says Paul to the Colossians, look at Jesus. We will. Tomorrow.

39 Articles - Intro

Forty days of Lent (Sundays don't count) seems like a good opportunity to post daily on a theme. This year's theme is The Articles of Religion. During days of occasional requirement to be present at a Book of Common Prayer service, and being graced ever so occasionally with a less-than-imposing preacher, I found myself reading the Articles in the back of the Prayer Book. They are not for the faint-hearted. That said they are interesting, mainly because, for me, they are assented to each time I take up a new post.

A word, first of all, about that 'assented to'. It is less stringent than that. I declared, at my last licensing, my '...belief in the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness...'. There is no sense in which I am tied to those 'historic formularies' which is what the Articles are. I am tied to the faith to which they bore witness. It is the Christian faith that is unchanging; witnesses, formularies, biblical and creedal interpretations and expressions of worship change a lot.

Yet the Articles seem obsolete in parts, often disregarded and tough to follow. They have a sixteenth century context when we had different issues and, as we will discover, different enemies. Simple evidence of this is provided to the reader who attempts to read the Articles in the English of their time, nearer to Chaucer than to today, and who encounters the 'Father, the Sonne and the holie Ghost'. Then it gets harder.

I shall be accompanied on my journey by two fine writers. Oliver O'Donovan and Martyn Percy. O'Donovan interviewed Tudor Christianity in an imaginative work. Percy, more recently, surveyed the landscape of Anglican faith and produced thirty nine new articles.

I am not an academic theologian but, if anything, a populist one. My attempt will be to unravel some of the mysteries of each Article for the ordinary reader and church-goer. I will link each post to Twitter and Facebook so any comments or questions are welcome here or in those two places.

The length of time over which I will post may not correspond precisely to Lent as I will start early (I have a week's holiday booked) but by Good Friday there will be 40 posts to read.

Reformed

My perspective right now is Christian, C of E, and, if you'll forgive me, liberal and evangelical. Deal with it.

I have been observing social media whizzing past shouting Reformation jokes out of the window in a nasty outbreak of drive-by Lutheranism today. Some have been quite good although, as ever,  Archdruid Eileen (excuse me) nailed it.

But it is worth taking a moment to ponder the appalling atrocities that were inflicted upon theological dissenters down the centuries, whatever the nature of their dissent. TV's Gunpowder (see previous post) has left the smell of burning, treasonous heretic on the breeze and, frankly, roast Christian doesn't really do it for me. My particular gift has been to be a slightly controversial minister in times when that has been a safe thing to be.

Silence and respect to all who stepped on to the gallows on matters of doctrine or ethics.

But, after centuries of conflict, Catholic and Protestant Anglicans have a gentle truce which only occasionally overspills into minor jibes at diocesan conferences. Here at ground level we rock on pretty well and all pray together nicely. Puritan abstinence and higher tracts are both under the ecumenical umbrella these days. No bad thing.

Most times we don't change the church from the top down.

My concern for the LGBT gang wasn't imposed upon us from above. I like people. Well, most of them.

My desire to occasionally not wear robes is now legal but I have been doing it for thirty years or so. All that happened was that General Synod legislated that it was OK for the ship to sail after it had voyaged a few thousand times, returned and been sold for scrap. It has a reputation for that kind of speed. I need some new not robes.

My reading of the Bible leads me to christocentricity, co-operation, conversation, broad inclusivity, welcome, hospitality and creative exploration of ways to do and demonstrate faith. One supply of  water to return to but few fences to stop me roaming.

I think that is the nature of my Christian belief 500 years on from the Wittenberg church door becoming the centre of attention for a bit. My church don't own a door.

Empathy

We began to watch the much-trailed new TV series, Gunpowder on Saturday. Opening, as it did, with the horrific scene of the cruel execution of a Catholic woman for treason (hiding a Jesuit Priest) we chose to turn over. Maybe it is an age thing but I find it less and less entertaining, or helpful, to have to watch inhumanity.

Recently a song I love stopped me in my tracks. I must have sung When I Survey the Wondrous Cross a thousand times. I have even performed it.

I love lines such as:

Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my life, my soul, my all.

But I realised, for the first time, that I didn't like the word wondrous. Which victim of execution, looking towards the gallows, would be glad to imagine the method of  their destruction becoming an object of worship?

Gratefulness better than gaudiness, methinks. When I survey the empty cross, anyone?

Time for a bit of a rethink maybe. The writers of Gunpowder say they wanted the viewers to understand the level of anger that led to the Gunpowder Plot. Did it need to be that graphic? Reviewers are divided. I think they could have demonstrated the cruelty with more dialogue and less  screaming. Sometimes a cutaway says more than a lingering camera.

So why is this about empathy? In Karen Armstrong's excellent Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life she has a chapter on empathy and shares this quote:

'...when we look at the crucifix, our hearts break in sympathy and fellow-feeling - and it is this interior movement of compassion and instinctive empathy that saves us.'
(Peter Abelard)

Now I imagine my extremist evangelical reader has probably gone elsewhere now, but should any new ones be around I know that we are saved externally, not by any action of our own. By grace and by God. But take a moment to ponder that any saving that has happened round here was not worth a thing without a response that makes the world less a place of suffering and more a place of love.

Grace and Peace My Friends

Writer, speaker and broadcaster Rob Bell has been a useful resource to me over the years. He was the creative muse behind the NOOMA series of short discussion starter films. Click here for an example.

His books have intriguing titles such as Velvet Elvis, Or Jesus Wants to Save Christians. They are always nicely laid out with lots of white space. Easy to read for those who don't read a lot. Plenty of points at which you need to stop and say hmmm though.

He is American and Bible-based. But he is neither Bible Belt nor Brian McLaren. He prods all evangelicals with a stick but does it gently. He was once asked to leave a church because of his attitude to women. But not how it sounds. Turns out he was far too enabling and promoting of them for the likes of his eldership.

Now I have found The RobCast. If I might start with a criticism it is that he starts with 20 minutes material and crams it into an hour, but it is a light hour and feels like someone chatting to you in his shed. In fact for the most part he is in what he calls the back house - which I'd like to imagine is a shed.

The episodes are a bit like an interesting uncle chatting about life and faith in the corner. You can phase in and out of concentrating.

But he also has guests with whom he has conversations. Pete Rollins is a delightful guest. Pete's delightful Belfast accent totally baffles Rob when he talks about seeing a cow from a car. Both nouns sound the same. Identical even. Pete is also an ace Christian thinker. Sometimes I think he has read and memorised everything. But as Rob gets him to open up, and to explain the tricky bits of theology and philosophy, we all learn.

My favourite guest so far has been the episode where Rob's wife (Christen, I think) turns the tables and interviews him. And in overhearing this conversation we are party to the amazing happenstance of the marriage of a creative communicator and an editor. She is clearly the one who makes his books more concise than his podcasts.

I commend this podcast very highly,. If you have not found it already, seek it out.

Which Festival?

Figure 1

I have been mining some of my of pre-iPad note books for gold.

And a warning. Incomplete thinking in progress. This is what blogs are for.

Recipients of my training technique will know that there are very few problems that cannot be better understood by reducing them to four boxes.

I am grateful to the unidentified (in my notes), and no longer recalled, conductor of the Bath and Wells pre-Advent retreat in 2012. I took jottings as the addresses began and then I disappeared, as I often do, into a world of my own. Quotes from the saints became imaginings from the St.

So let's imagine that we divide the church's year into two parts. Those that focus on memory and those that focus on hope. By 'memory' I mean those festivals that look back on some key biblical Christian event. By 'hope' I mean those festivals that look forward to something happening in the future.

I am aware that many festivals, with good preaching, can do both of these things but stick with me.

Now let us make a further division. We divide those festivals that look upon that thing with thanksgiving and gratitude (something has been or will be done) compared with those that require us to be penitent (we are sorry it happened, or will happen).

This gives us Figure 1's four box grid.

Figure 2

Now let us look at the church's year and see which festivals fill the boxes. Top left (Figure 2) we have Lent. We look back on our lives, on Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and, starting in the dust of Ash Wednesday, we proceed slowly and gently, head down, with humility and restraint.

Lent is a time for reflection, for looking back and for adjustment of behaviour in the light of the journey to the cross.

There is little thanksgiving and only the hope of death in the air.

Advent (Figure 3) is a shorter time for reflection. It is largely replaced, in the eyes of the world, by Christmas, a season which runs from the day the John Lewis Christmas advert first airs until the first whiff of a sale is in the air.

Figure 3

Christians reflect while the world rushes past. Upon what do we reflect? Firstly the incarnation - the truth that this story of a baby somehow universalises God with us. Secondly a look longer ahead to a time when we will be revisited and encompassing the desire not to be unprepared for that. It is hope but it is penitent hope.

We try and put the brakes on the world giving thanks until Christmas Day. We fail, but we keep trying. No-one wants a confessional at the office Christmas party, even if it is being held in Advent 1.

The parables of the kingdom fit here. Wise and foolish virgins. Tenants in the vineyard. Wedding banquets where folk don't turn up.

Figure 4

So when do Christians do happy? Ideally, and primarily, on Easter Day (Figure 4). The memory of what happened to Jesus on the third day is a thing of great joy. We look back on what the hymn writers see as the greatest day in history. We have a corporate memory to be thankful for. Thine be the glory, risen conquering son (we find it hard to shake off our military metaphors though).

Of course all these festivals are, really, is us telling our great stories again. Stories told in and of faith. About faith. For faith. The stories are all set in history - they grew out of a particular time and in a particular place, but their historicity is not completely available to us. It is what the stories are for that is important, which is why we ought to be able to point to a festival which adds hope to thanksgiving (Figure 5).

But no one Christian event gives us access to this combination, easily.

Figure 5

I wonder if this was the place where the great evangelistic rallies used to fit. They are largely replaced by the Alpha Course these days. Summer camp talks on how to find 'The Way' were an annual marker in my Christian walk for many years. They were certainly occasions of  thanksgiving for a new future and hope inserted where previously there had been none.

But I tentatively ask this question. Is there a festival we should make more of because it fits best in the bottom right box? All Saints?

If not then we need to remember that each one of our three markers, Lent, Easter and Advent, needs unpacking by preaching, that it may point to the future and do it with hope.

What does what has happened have to say to us about what will happen?

Comments gratefully received in any of the usual places.

Substitutionary Atonement

A comment in a preachers' support group meeting recently; what is your view of the atonement? Since many great and mighty tomes have been written on the matter, only some of which I didn't understand, I asked for a more precise question to answer.

I have been fond, in recent years, of preaching on Jesus by telling people how others made sense of his life, death and resurrection and inviting them to make their own conclusions. I have avoided putting my own stamp on any one answer.

Here is the question as it has now been posed to me:

Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for your personal sin, thereby allowing the only means of your personal salvation?

Let's break it down:

Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross...

Yes. Seems as clear as any historical 'fact' can be that that is what happened to him.

...to pay the price for your personal sin,...

It is hard to tell from the Gospels if that is what Jesus thought he was doing. The New Testament passages giving theological meaning to that which he was about to do were all placed on his lips by the evangelists after he had done it. But Isaiah 53 sits there awkward and needing to be true. He was pierced for our transgressions? Who did the prophet mean?

It is clear that, post-resurrection, theologians tumbled to the truth that sacrifice was needed no more, death had no more threat and the devil (meaning something then that we probably don't mean now) was defeated.

The rest of the New Testament is written trying to make sense of the fact that, despite these truths, the church had problems and Christians were made to suffer.

One way of looking at it is to think of sin needing to be paid for and Christ pays the price. Another, perhaps one I prefer, is that in Christ's death and resurrection we have a demonstration of the futility of self-reliance. In Jesus I prefer the metaphor that something was restored rather than something purchased. I also like the example of the man of perfect obedience pointing us in a similar direction, albeit in intention only for we will stumble.

I do sing at Easter:

There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin
He only could unlock the gates
Of heaven and let us in
(There is a Green Hill)

But those verses are pretty metaphor-rich in oh so many ways.

thereby allowing the only means of your personal salvation?

What happens to me is down to God. Trying to be his servant and a Jesus-follower leaves me tentative. 'The only means'? Who could ever know?

Many of my very conservative evangelical friends will go beyond seeing substitutionary atonement as a metaphor. They will say it is what actually happened. It is this attitude that led to Steve Chalke criticising that theology as cosmic child-abuse (which got him into trouble) and, I recall, thrown out of the Evangelical Alliance

Fact is that the cross remains a hinge-point of human history and a turning point of sacred mystery. It calls more for worship than black and white theological insistence. If this gospel was to be grasped by uneducated Galilean fishermen and passed on then it can't be the case that the finer points of Christian doctrine are of any importance. It must be a huge, general question with a huge general answer. Say yes to God. Whatever that means.

So, after almost a year of wondering if I dared write this final sentence. It is this. No.

But I also think the question is inadequately posed to allow for a yes/no answer. Thus the essay, so you could tell, I hope, which bit I was saying 'No' to.

How Many Trees?

I wonder if you have ever noticed the awkwardness presented in Genesis 1-3 about the number of trees in the garden. Let me work through them, reference by reference:

In Genesis 1 everything is straight-forward (in a literary way). God creates vegetation, including trees, on day three (1:11).

There are two separate accounts of creation and in Genesis 2 we have a more human story. There is a garden and in the centre of it are two trees. One is the tree of life and one the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:9).

God tells the man he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17). The woman has not yet been created.

At the beginning of Genesis 3 a serpent pitches up and asks Eve (now in existence) what the rules are. She refers to the one tree in the middle of the garden and explains that it cannot even be touched or she will die (3:3). She doesn't name the tree.

After a bit of intrigue in which the serpent offers a convincing argument (to Eve) she eats and shares the fruit with her husband. Note, it is not an apple.

In 3:11 God asks the man (he addresses Adam) if he has eaten from the tree he was told not to eat from. He blames the woman, she blames the serpent.

Before chucking them out of the garden for good God says (to himself?) that he must do this in case the couple eat from the tree of life also and live forever (3:22).

Many ancient creation legends have a tree of life. As far as I know only the Hebrew/Christian one has a second tree. And even the author/editor of the story seems a little unclear about how it all fits together. Life, death and knowledge. Inter-connected but complex. Nice little allegory.

Jesus, Virgins and Christmas

Andrew Lincoln was one of my college lecturers and gave some ground-breaking New Testament expositions. This book, a detailed and academic look at the doctrine of Jesus' virginal conception, is quite simply one of the best works of theology I have read.

I confess to using my theological library as a point of reference rather than as a set of tomes to devour from beginning to end, although I am trying to change. I read this book from cover to cover, stopping many times to ponder or look up references. It is now covered in highlighter pen.

Andrew, Portland Professor of New Testament at the University of Gloucestershire, shows how much weight we have heaped upon the two short stories at the beginning of Luke and Matthew's Gospels. He goes on to explain why this might have been, what sort of writings they are and how it is possible to have the highest possible Christology without knowing anything of, or relying at all upon, these accounts, referencing John, Paul and Hebrews.

He then, helpfully, advises all of us who might find it hard to say the creeds if we are required to be saying history, of the manoeuvres we make all the time and every day, to interpret things in different ways whilst saying the same thing as each other.

He also helps us preachers keep our integrity whilst preaching the birth narratives at Christmas.

But, as someone said to me after a carol service this year, maybe more people would come to church if they didn't feel they had to swallow all this nativity stuff as history? Maybe indeed.

Christians share one faith, even if Southern Baptists are rather closed-minded about what that faith is.

Great stuff.

Dr Theo

This morning we welcome back Dr Theo Claptrap, eminent Anglican scholar, academic and eccentric, to the site to answer your questions on matters liturgical, biblical and ecclesiastical. Prepare for insensitivity if our experience is anything to go by. Welcome Dr Theo.

Morning. Do you have questions or what? I'm busy.

Quite. Only one today. That Royal Baptism? Was it a proper baptism or just a Christening?

Two words for the same thing. You had me drive all the way out here just to say that?

So why do we use two words?

Well the non-conformists - you know Anabaptists, free evangelicals, house church movement, other fruit loops - don't think what happened was a proper baptism so they tend to use the other word. Plus lots of people who can't tell their font from their baptistry just like a nice do for the baby and they avoid the b word.

Methodists?

Who cares what the Methodists think?

So why don't some people think it was 'proper'?

The general objection is that you need to make a profession of faith from your own lips before you can be baptised. Babies can't do that.

Isn't that where confirmation comes in?

Well yes. But a moment's thought tells you several reasons why others - the dumb, the stoopid - also can't make a profession of faith from their own lips so it ain't a hard and fast rule.

So you would say the only way to include someone in the household of faith is to baptise them?

Not just me. The Bible sees whole households baptised and this was the practice of the early church from way back when. It's only those whack-jobs who want to make faith a 'personal' thing who get this utterly, utterly wrong. It's about inclusion not maturity.

Some people say the service must be public.

Yeah right. Like the Ethiopian official in Acts?

And how many godparents?

Three is plenty but give royalty a bit of leash. You don't want to go upsetting Benjamin Battersby-Blenkinsop or the co-Prince Regent of Lower Bavaria.

Are those real people?

Idiot.

Sprinkling or immersion?

Who cares? Inuit have a problem either way.

Re-baptism?

What, like re-building, re-constructing, re-opening?

Yeah.

Well it's nothing like those things. Only thing you can do is argue that the first baptism wasn't valid. Either it was the opening ceremony or not. You don't re-open something that has never been closed.

Re-launch?

Have a re-affirmation of baptism vows. Or a confirmation. Chuck some water around if that's what makes you happy. Inuit watch out for the sharp bits.

Christening gowns?

No time to stitch those up or get them cleaned. Bible's motto is 'Quick, get the water.' One baptism. Once. Now.

Thank you very much Dr Theo.

My burden. Got any gin?

Well that should won't might get on the agenda of theological colleges any time soon. Dr Claptrap will be back when the flack has died down. About two years is normally the gap. Thanks to the late Miles Kington for doing this sort of thing so well.

Redefining Marriage

Many of you will know Anthony Bush of Noah's Ark Zoo Farm, Wraxall. He wrote to our church leadership team about the consultation on redefining marriage. After an exchange of emails he and I have agreed to publish our correspondence in the hope that it may inform the debate. It is quite lengthy but I hope helpful.






Dear HT Leadership Team,






Conscious that Noah would have been in the heroic book of failures had he taken same-sex couples on the Ark (especially his family) and that he was a preacher of righteousness I am trying to follow his lead.






Hoping that HT might discuss the subject I am enclosing a letter I have sent to some in the press and most of it to the Prime Minister.






With best wishes,






Anthony









'So Cardinal O’Brien is reported as saying Britain would be shamed in the eyes of the world by the grotesque madness of redefining marriage to include same sex couples. Not the Anglican moderation we are used to, but understandable. Many of us are searching for God’s mind in this, aware that, for the Israelites entering the profligate Canaan and Christians struggling to please God in promiscuous Rome, Corinth and Ephesus, the Old and New Testament texts were given. These texts unambiguously prohibited both homosexual acts and heterosexual adultery with equal clarity and force (Lev 18:22-4, 20:10,13, Rom 1:26-7, 1 Cor 6:9-10, 1 Tim 1:8-10). The argument that marriage is about love not gender parts company with Genesis 2:24, where it is all about gender. Love was and is a luxury extra, and remains all too transitory.






'All of us are trying to help ourselves and others reach heaven and please God. Some of us might want to put a more pastoral angle to these texts in the light of young adolescents with ambiguous sexuality until they are perhaps 25, in an age where experiencing sexual activity of some sort seems to be an increasing media imperative. Temptations or tendencies should be absolutely free of condemnation, but lots of young people are confused and easy prey to media writers, commentators and others grooming them for promiscuity of any sort. Chastity is ridiculed and any sexual temptation used as a means of fixing a person’s sexuality far too young. It has always seemed to me that God was fierce in His apparent prohibition of homosexual acts not only because He wants procreation, but also because they were easier to fall for than the harder work of forming heterosexual friendships and marriage. And casual sex of any form is easier to fall for than patiently working at a prospective exclusive, loving, life-long marriage.






'I could myself so easily have become a homosexual, but for the prohibitions of the day and the intervention and help by some caring people and some sensitive spousing. Our 4 children, 14 grandchildren and Golden Wedding last month are a consequence. I hope Christians will discourage the State from rushing into redefining marriage just because a vociferous few covet the same name for a different union. They cannot use “husband” or “wife”, so why are homosexual couples not content with the legal rights of marriage they already have in a civil partnership?'












Anthony,






As many of my colleagues know I disagree most strongly and have written why here. Even more though is that, whatever our intention, we will be seen as homophobic if we object to the change of definition. This is a time to keep our heads down.






You may not know that many gay and lesbian couples do choose to identify their partner as their husband or wife.






You know that you and I disagree in many ways in our interpretation of a scripture. I join with you in condemning promiscuity and sex without commitment. I part company with you in your willingness to condemn loving, permanent, same sex, to-the-exclusion-of-all-others relationships. I will not.






St










Hi Steve






Thanks for your reply. Robust as I would expect from you, but in my opinion you are not right, as you would expect from me!






First, you apparently ignore the Biblical evidence advocating heterosexual marriage over homosexual acts. Yet Scripture is given for our good and for everyone’s long term health and wellbeing. You use the emotive word “homophobic” to imply a persecution of downtrodden people. I am opposed to the wrong use of explosives/fire, of soil/mud, of laser/light not to persecute the users, but would want these used correctly.






Wikipedia suggests that in 2008, 6% of the country described themselves as homosexual or bi-sexual. I am sad for them and in the next generation would hope that number was reduced. You are saying that we, or is it I, will appear homophobic (defined on the Web as ‘with contempt, aversion, or irrational fear of homosexuality?’) if I want the definition of marriage to remain. As is so often the case with an angry minority, the opposite is the case. Why should a tiny number insist on a change of definition to suit themselves? And then call us homophobic if they don’t get their way?






I am not contemptuous of homosexuals, I talk to some often without aversion, I have no fear whatever of them, I want them to know Jesus loves them, but God does not approve of homosexual acts. God is also against adulterous acts, but he is not against all those with heterosexual inclinations or homosexual inclinations, He has better plans. I think homosexuals are too often heterophobic, in the sense of having irrational fear of a close relationship with the opposite sex; and I would like them helped and delivered.






As Dr Christopher Shell, writing to the CEN this week suggested, heterosexual and homosexual intercourse should not be equated for “six massive differences. The latter bears no fruit, making its biological purpose questionable. It’s high risk even without promiscuity. It involves penetrating a sphincter. It involves no lubrication. It involves a wall-lining only one cell thick (so that contraception dangerously increases pressure on surrounding skin). It involves micro-fold cells which actively attract microbes. How are we either loving or intelligent if we normalise this?” Dr Shell asks.






I know pastors like you Steve do not want to appear judgmental. I wholly understand that and the motive is probably good. But the prophetic can be lost and thousands will suffer if we fail to teach what Jesus taught. My reading this morning was Matthew 5, and there is some very tough stuff in there, including v 17-20 and lots more which will probably never be covered at HT if we are only concerned about not appearing judgmental. More important is winning people for heaven and God being pleased with us. I think people will know whether we love them by how we do this.






I expect we agree on this bit anyway.






Your brother in Christ






Anthony










Well Anthony,






Here we are again. I do enjoy our little chats online although you are an infuriating debating opponent. One moment we are talking about a legal definition and suddenly the discussion has broadened out into all sorts of other areas. It is this particular tendency of the anti-homosexual-practice lobby that so inflames matters.




Still. To take your points in order (and not raise any new ones):






Just because I didn't recite all the biblical evidence dos not mean I ignore it. I take my Bible seriously and it is my more or less constant companion. I do not believe the culture of the Bible world (spread over its two millennia) says anything about the one group of relationships we are talking about - the long-term, committed, same-sex, exclusive ones. It seems to me to be anti homosexual offenders and to have ritual, cultic and casual prostitution in mind in its criticism. The world of the Bible starts (if you take it all as history, which as you know I don't) with the confusing question of who Adam and Eve's children were fruitful with, goes through a period where a king has 1000 wives and concubines but is only criticised when they lead him to foreign gods, and ends with an instruction that a leader should be the husband of but one wife (so presumably a follower can have more). In other words there is a developing understanding of relationships and our job is to apply the principles not get stuck with the precise examples.






I used the word homophobic not to accuse you but to anticipate what you will be accused of if you say what you believe in public and loudly. You are wrong when you talk of an angry minority. I think the majority of society are now becoming comfortable with the presence and aspirations of gay people. Many people will not object to the change of definition being debated.






No-one, as far as I know, has accused you of being contemptuous towards homosexuals. If they do I will defend you. I have seen you in action. You are not.






Dr Shell accidentally betrays his disgust. Whilst I didn't intend this to be part of our discussion it gives the game away. Like it or not people have been having sex without the prospect of procreation for a long time now. I am up to 27 years and counting. There is no limit on where you can put lubrication. Anal sex is not only a homosexual phenomenon. Imaginative sex can take place in many different ways and, maybe, a hint of danger makes it better. Who knows what turns people on?






I have no problem with being judgmental. I judge, and pronounce, that our church is insufficiently geared towards the alien and the stranger and the poor and I said so on Sunday. I have great problems with being judgmental about something that needs attract no judgement.






I am sure that one day we will find out, when the dead rise again to be in the place where there is no marriage, what it was we were striving after in all these messy and complex human relationships. Meantime let's tread gently. I am not even going so far as to say that same-sex, exclusive and permanent relationships are undoubtedly all OK. All I am saying is that I will not condemn them and do not think other Christians should.






I would be happy to make our correspondence more public. Would you?






Have a good day my friend,






St










Hi Steve






Thanks for your thoughtful reply and yes I would be delighted to publicise our correspondence further, though if my opponents are like the last ones my staff may not thank me for the next two years of demonstrations!






I am glad to hear you take your Bible seriously. However you have a liberal tendency to write off lots of it as being culturally out of date. When I was on the General Synod’s Marriage Service Revision Committee in 1982 we had difficulty finding a Biblical example of a monogamous marriage. Isaac is the only certain one in the whole Bible. That does not alter Genesis 2:24 for those of us who believe Genesis is God’s word about marriage, confirmed, word for word by Jesus and Paul. Most Biblical teaching about marriage implies its purpose is physical union more than for breeding babies and you are unfair on Dr Shell by saying his comments about anal intercourse betray his disgust. He is reminding us which orifice was made for what purpose and which defences they have naturally and which they don’t.






When I was in Nigeria the reason for “husband of one wife” became highly relevant as lots of Muslims were becoming Christians having up to 4 wives. European missionaries made them divorce all but one, so the CAC started as an indigenous denomination (to whom I was preaching) with more compassion for the wives, but the pastors only had one wife.






You seem to be selective about which homosexual acts you think the Bible indicates are wrong, quoting the NIV (UK) translation of 1 Cor 6:9, arsenokoitai, (literally man-coitus) as “homosexual offenders” to mean homosexuality with ritual, cultic or casual-only meaning. The original NIV and other translations have “men who have sex with men”, or men who practice homosexuality, or homosexuals. The OT law points to all homosexual activity being wrong, because the Israelites were told (Lev 18;22) “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable”. That sounds clear. Before you suggest its context makes it a text for its time only, then follows an anti-bestiality command, with the reason “that is perversion”. These are preceded by hygiene laws with no moral comment, and by the laws of incest (for the first time, probably, as Abraham’s marriage with his half-sister was the blessed one). These incest laws were evidently needed now, despite the Pharaoh’s being compulsorily incestuous for god to marry god. They also remind us where Adam’s descendants came from - marriage between his children, likewise probably with Noah, for those of us happy with the historicity of the whole text. The gene-pools would have been strong and unlikely to produce harmful mutations through close breeding, for thousands of years. Indeed lots of animals breed that closely now with no harmful effect.






So I cannot see that you have any grounds for saying God’s view of same-sex activity depends on how serious or permanent they appear to be. “Detestable”, sounds very different from His view of creation after He had made both male and female as being “very good” (Gen 1:31). In Jesus day homosexuality was probably unknown in Israel but widespread in the Roman Empire (especially its emperors) so Paul mentions it to warn the Romans, Corinthians and Ephesians, as I quoted last time.






I am all for treading gently. No one wants to be condemning, but we have young people looking for guidance, struggling with their sexuality and making friends and decisions which could mean they marry and have children or not. There is also a Gay Pride lobby who are keen to get into schools and “help” the children. I personally feel sure lots of youngsters who end up homosexual could have become heterosexuals with the right encouragements. I am one who narrowly escaped, so am biased. My book in April will tell more.






In many ways this is a similar debate to the remarriage after divorce one, which I was also deeply involved in on G Synod. That one was partly about how marriages begin, the choice of spouse and purity or otherwise before marriage; the effort each side puts into keeping the marriage hot and free from predators. Obviously those who are on their second marriage will not like first timers being told those words of Jesus that suggest remarriage equates to adultery. So the church is silenced for fear of sounding condemning. Perhaps many of the voices that shouted “crucify him” were of those whom He upset.






In case we all need to know how many people the redefining of marriage is for, the ONS states there were 6281 civil partnerships formed in 2009, which were 2.7% of the number of marriages that year. It is difficult to compare break-ups at 5.5% for CP’s as they have only been going since 2005. I would expect them to be far less, as children are a huge extra strain on marriages, so marriage is so much more difficult than CP that for this alone it deserves its own exclusive name. I would be happy to leave Civil Partnerships as they are, with that name, or invent a new name for them.






A la prochaine fois – meilleurs voeux






Anthony










Morning Anthony,






We might have gone as far as we can because we have isolated the one thing we disagree about - our use of Scripture.






Trouble is I love watching the twists and manoeuvres extremely conservative evangelicals have to make to preserve their insistence upon historicity in the Bible. I would find it great sport if it wasn't so sad to the outside world that there are still people out there who hold such views.






I will not publicise this if you don't want me to but I had in mind putting it on my blog and telling my Facebook friends and Twitter followers where it was. Of course you can do likewise and we might be able to step back and watch the debate in the comments box. The blog traffic is not particularly heavy - 100 or so people a day at the moment tops.






I will not accept '...you have a liberal tendency' as anything other than praise. I know what you mean by it but it seems to me that we are all liberals when it comes to the Bible - we simply draw the line in different places. For me a liberal wants to give fellow humans as much freedom as the Bible describes God giving all of us. And a liberal approach to the Bible sees it as divinely inspired but as an agreed starting point rather than a fixed end (Rowan Williams' expression). 2,000 years of history gives us many things that the Bible knew nothing of and we have to apply its principles rather than look for proof texts (often out of context). For Jewish scholars the whole business of Midrash - discussing the scriptures - was as much doing scripture as reading it. I am tentatively trying to work out what it means to be liberal and evangelical.






Genesis 2:24 says 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother...' It is not obvious which of the previous clauses is the reason:






Because he needed a helper


Because the woman was made from his rib






It seems to me to be a story to answer a child's question about why people leave home. It can't, by itself, be used to support monogamy. We must beware of asking one text to bear more weight than it can.






And I am unconvinced by your specific quotations from Leviticus. It seems to me that the past is another country and they do things differently there. We can admire the desire of the fledgling community of Israel to keep themselves pure and holy listening, as they thought they were, to the voice of God the while, but we have to beware of cherry-picking our favourite prohibitions from the Law whilst ignoring the clear, apparently divinely condoned acceptance of destroying whole ethnic groups, stoning people to death for what we would now call relatively minor matters and a whole bunch of stuff about fabrics and spots.






I look forward to your treatise on orifices and their specific purposes. Do you mind if I pick my nose while I write? No-one is looking.






I'm not sure people will find it easy to listen to examples from Nigeria these days as a place of reason and tolerance but I accept that our Victorian missionaries did harm as well as good.






Your church would obviously be quite a hard place to be a divorcee, a homosexual and a liberal. I hope mine isn't. What have I achieved if I tell someone who is on their second marriage that they are committing adultery?






And finally I fear that your closing paragraphs anticipate a disaster that will simply not happen, a floodgate that will remain resolutely closed. If people, who are gay, opt to live an openly gay lifestyle it is not the thin end of any wedge. If some Christians, who are gay, choose to read the scriptures carefully and come to the conclusion that God is interested in mutual encouragement and support one for the other just as much as he is about procreation, I will not condemn them. If some of those want to enter into life long commitments I will not condemn them. If some of those wish to call their relationship 'married' I will not condemn them. If they wish to find some way to raise children as a couple I will not condemn them.






I'll look forward to reading your book.






I'll let you have the last word. Once you have replied I will put this on the blog unless you tell me not to.






Given that we seem to have changed our greetings into a foreign tongue (for added gravitas?) then I sign off as all Brummies do,






Tarrarabit.






St










Hi Steve






Thanks for your amusing caricature of my position. I smiled quite a lot and you deserve readers of your blog as you are an entertaining writer.






However as you know you are the same age as my children so I would expect you to have a different set of understandings of Biblical text. The beginning of WW2 saw this country extremely serious about calling on God and expecting His help. He appeared to give us astonishing deliverances. My book expands this. Subsequently the secular world and much of the church moved from this dependence on God and sincere search for His will in the Bible, to a more man-centred theology, with God brought in often, but not as final arbiter. Post rationalism has become the norm; if it feels good it is probably OK as long as no one gets hurt. The trouble is people do get hurt, often quietly. What God thinks about it is assumed to be fine; He is a nice forgiving guy. He doesn’t want anyone to perish, it says, so do what you like, He will have you in the end. Going to church is not one of those things, so those churches’ attendances are declining.






As you know there is also a conservative wing of the Church that thinks largely as I do. You cannot be ignorant of this position, so you must choose to parody it and ridicule it for other reasons; perhaps entertainment on the blog? If I am to take your reply seriously it will probably not make entertaining reading, though a few might get through it.






When Christina and I were married divorces stood at about 30,000 per year. Quite worrying, because in 1858 (or so) there were 2, when divorce first became permitted, and there were about 2,000pa until WW2. Divorce law was sought by liberals, promising that a tiny number of people were hurting badly from bad marriages, but after a few years of bulge the figures would settle down again. They were warned it was Casanova’s Charter and divorces would double, we needed to put in place marriage preparation, marriage counselling or the social fabric of the country was in danger. We would become the divorce capital of Europe, hurting single mothers and disfunctional children. They denied it vehemently or course and it went ahead. 8 years later divorces were 110,000, and another 6 years later they were 168,000. We have become all that was prophesied.






My book will show you our response. I am skeptical about younger people who were never taught their history. The law on abortion was changed with similar promises, sex education and contraception were introduced into schools without any moral background. We warned that we would become the abortion capital of Europe, the unmarried mother capital, etc. Sadly all this has happened. Where were most theologians? Living blameless lives answering questions no one was asking.






So I am skeptical about your plan to keep your head down over homosexual marriage and let this all pass; because you think no one will really be badly affected. I foresee much more inflationary consequences, as I suspect do the advocates of change. You have been warned.






My own take on all of this is that the church has lost conviction about God. There is lots of talk about loving neighbours, doing stuff in the community, living good lives if possible. But most people do not really think God is there, and if He is, then He is not particularly interested. “Do you believe in God?” I often ask. No nature all came from the big bang and evolution.






So I am not going to deal with any of your parodies of Old and New Testament verses. I am just going to say that God in His mercy can forgive all the messes we have made and do make every day. Repentance and seeking Him are key to His revival. No one is turned away, no matter how many abortions they have had or how many marriages. Jesus still says “neither do I condemn you, go and do not sin again”. We desperately need to be forgiven and filled with the Holy Spirit daily and have the courage to reach people where they are, in all the ways He can inspire us. This will need considerably more courage than is usually displayed by God’s people, but it is not too late.






I hope we are concluding on common ground, Steve. I will be delighted to discuss any of this again when we next meet.






With my love in Christ






Anthony










Thanks Anthony,






Profoundly tempting as you have made it for me to want to write again I will, as promised, not and will now publish and let people make up their own minds.






St

RIP Tom Smail

In the mid 1970s The Fountain Trust came to St Stephen's, Selly Park to lead a weekend. At the time this organisation was the vehicle mainly for the teaching of Tom Smail. His book Reflected Glory arose out of such. It was an attempt to put a theology and understanding of the Holy Spirit back on the agenda of a church which had lost it. It was a good weekend. One moment I recall clearly is that one of the speakers asked Tom for a brief input half-way through his session and Tom took over. 'You can sit down now' he said to the original speaker after realising he wasn't going to give the platform back up. It was taken in good spirit. Here was a team working but it was one person's work they were doing.

First lesson from Tom. It's OK for the person in charge to be in charge.

A few years later Tom left Fountain Trust which was closed down. It was set up to do a particular work and when that work was done it was stopped. He joined the staff of St John's College, Nottingham, a theological college training people for ordination, and wrote another book, The Forgotten Father. He taught Christian Doctrine

Second lesson from Tom. When you have done what you set out to do, stop.

Third lesson from Tom. If you see your mission as restoring balance you will be constantly emphasising different things.

In 1981 I went to St John's to train. Some of the lectures were hard. Some were dull. Some felt pointless. Two hours a week with Tom for the first two years, the first on Mondays at 9.10 a.m. I recall, were redemptive. He built our doctrine up from scratch, not ignoring the difficulties those of us from a conservative background would have with more liberal theologians, gently helping us through. I loved his lectures and still re-read my notes from time to time. Seminars were harder. He was smart and a good debater. Those of us who were young and timid found it hard to contribute. He liked the cut and thrust with the more academic students and was not so good at encouraging along the slow stream. But I came top of my year group at doctrine in 1983 and got a comment on an essay from him that began 'I liked this essay a lot.' It still only got 58%. But he had enjoyed reading it. Another helpful piece in the jigsaw that eventually convinced me I could write. (He had told us Barth wouldn't get 70%.)

Fourth lesson. Theology isn't beamed down. It needs building.

Fifth lesson. It doesn't matter how gifted the student; if you tell them you like their work it helps.

Tom went back to parish ministry for a few years before retiring. His congregations would have been well taught.

So thanks Tom. We haven't kept in touch but I am one of your students who is glad to have been in your presence those few short years. RIP