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John Bunyan on the proper “status” of Baptist ministers

Most Baptists, including myself, claim John Bunyan was a Baptist in the best and most important senses of that ecclesial descriptor. By 1669 his Bedford congregation were described as Anabaptist. Whether he would own the modern denominational term or not, he held in classic Baptist terms to a profoundly unclerical non hierarchical view of the church and her ministry, and has some uncompromising correctives for all those in whatever tradition, who want to link ministry with authority rather than service, and for whom office and status seem more important than gift and privilege.

The quotation below comes from The Minister's Prayer Book. An Order of Prayers and Readings, ed. John W Doberstein (London: Collins, 1964). This book is a wide and eclectic gathering of orders for daily devotions, shaped around aspects of ministry, supplemented by an anthology of readings. I bought it for 75 pence second-hand years ago and it has travelled most places with me as a focus for reflection and prayer.

The following extract from Bunyan is on page 191. Unfortunately it was culled from another anthology so I can't give the precise reference to Bunyan. It's from Solomon's Temple Spiritualised and you can find it online over here.:

"Gifts and office make no men sons of God; as so, they are but servants; though these, as ministers and apostles, were servants of the highest form. It is the church, as such, that is the lady, a queen, the bride, the Lamb's wife; and prophets, apostles and ministers are but servants, stewards, labourers for her good."

"As therefore the lady is above the servant, the queen above the steward, or the wife above all her husband's officers, so is the church, as such, above these officers."

4 September 2009
Arthur McGill: “The Scriptures function as a servant of their Lord”.

Below is a quotation that providess an important perspective on what the Bible is, how the Christian community is to read it and live in it and through it – or rather, how through it's reading of the Bible, the Christian community is to live in Christ. The extract comes from Arthur McGill's slim but profound account of how Christians might seek to do theology in a world where suffering is interwoven in the textures of existence. The book, Suffering. A Test of Theological Method, was originally written in 1968 so the language is not gender inclusive:

"If the Christian in his existence and in his thought focuses on Christ, this is because Christ is present to him. And Christ is present to him because of Holy Scripture…Above and beyond the various details that they contain, the Biblical documents mean to point – or witness – to Jesus Christ as the power and wisdom of God. The books of the Old Testament point in expectation and those of the New Testament point in fulfilment… "the Scriptures are not a witness among others [to Jesus Christ], but the witness without parallel".

It is not as a history book or as a scientific book or as a book of events or even as a record of man's religious beliefs that the theologian reads the Bible, but as a witness to Christ. The Scriptures function as a servant of their Lord. We are meant not to rest in them but to move through them and beyond them to the One they serve.

Theology is often tempted to rest in the words of Scripture and to read these books as if they transcribed God's life and light for man into words. But theology must resist this temptation. The Bible as such is not the light of the world; nor is the Bible as such the principle of openness which no darkness can overcome. In all its investigations theology must move beyond the Scriptural statements and seek to discern the form of Jesus Christ himself."

Arthur C. McGill, Theology. A Test of Theological Method (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1982) pages 29-30.

3 September 2009
Terry Eagleton and the radical claims of the Gospel of Jesus

Now here's a long passage from Terry Eagleton, whose approach to Christian apologetics is rather novel. As a non theistic cultural critic not averse to strongly worded criticisms of Christian faith, he nevertheless insists (against Dawkins, Hitchens and the rest) that counter arguments should enage with real Christianity not ignoramus caricatures; and that hostile critics should tackle real Christianity which at every level including the rational, is a scandal.

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" is a notoriously enigmatic injunction; but whatever it means, it is unlikely to mean that religion is one thing whereas politics is another, a peculiarly modern prejudice if ever there was one. Any devout Jew of jesus's time would have known the things that are God's include working for justice, welcoming the immigrants, and humbling the high and mighty. The whole cumbersome paraphernalia of religion is to be replaced by another kind of temple, that of the murdered, transfigured body of Jesus. To the outrage of the Zealots, the Pharisees, and right wing rednecks of all ages, this body is dedicated in particular to all those losers, deadbeats, riffraff, and colonial collaborators who are not righteous but are flamboyantly unrighteous – who either live in chronic trnasgression of the Mosaic law or, like the Gentiles, fall outside its sway altogether.

These men and women are not being asked to bargain their way into God's favour by sacrificing beasts, fussing about their diet, or being impeccably well behaved. Instead, the good news is that god loves them anyway, in all their moral squalor. Jesus's message is that God is on their side despite thier visciousness – that the source of the inexhaustibly self-delighting life he calls his Father is neither judge, patriarch, accuser or superego, but lover, friend, fellow accused, and counsel for the defense….Men and woman are called upon to do nothing apart from acknowledge the fact that God is on their side no matter what, in the act of loving assent which is known as faith. In fact, Jesus has very little to say about sin at all, unlike a great many of his censorious followers. His mission is to accept men and women's frailty, not to rub their noses in it."

Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith and Revolution. Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven: Yale, 2009), pp. 19-20.

Now one part of me wants to make this long apologia for the Gospel of Jesus the basis of an essay assignment on Contemporary Mission Strategy and the Gospel of Jesus, with the uncomplicated instruction – "Discuss".

Another part of me is left wondering why an agnostic who is resistant to Christianity makes a far better job of stating the core of the Gospel than many a Christian preacher and / or theologian.

In any case – the book is a tonic – not so much comforting as bracing, and not so much an apologia for Christian faith as an apology for the intellectual sloppiness of much new atheism dogma.

2 September 2009
Philippians – a huge commentary that should have been twice the size!

Earlier this year John Reumann's Anchor Bible commentary on Philippians was published. It has xxiv, + 805 pages. By any standards a massive volume. (By the way, I think the woodcuts used in the dustcovers of the Yale Anchor Commentaries are powerful images resonating with the biblical text). In the Preface readers are informed that Reumann's original manuscript was nearly halved to fit the publisher's demands. When it came into the College Library, given my interest in kenosis, I had a read at Reumann's treatment of 2.5-11, the great Christ Hymn. The section was hard to read, frustrating to follow, and mostly made up of highly condensed notes. It felt like notes for a commentary rather than the notes of a commentary. Anyone people-watching in the library would have seen disappointment written in giant font bold italics underlined and filling the screen of my face.

The recent review of Reumann's work by James Dunn places the blame for the virtual un-useability of the volume on the publishers. Given Reumann worked on this commentary for over thirty years, the work should have been allowed two volumes, the same as Ephesians by Markus Barth. When it comes to metaphorical images, Dunn uses one to describe the failed editing process that is memorably incongruous and hilariously apt.

"Overall the volume gives the impression of being subjected to a form of liposuction with the resulting "lumpiness" caused by "oversuction"."

I refrain from offering any graphics. You can read the whole review over here. Meanwhile us Philippians buffs are now waiting for the next commentary blockbusters – Paul Holloway's volume in Hermeneia (still a few years off), and the new International Critical Commentary by N T Wright, the Bishop of Durham and storm centre of much debate about what Paul did and didn't mean – I hope Wright's will be published this side of the eschaton – otherwise there may be a few exegetical debates in heaven between Paul and N T Wright, or as his less charitable opponents call him, N T Wrong.

1 September 2009
Love of learning and the desire for God. Pastoral vocation in the academy.

Saying no in order to say yes isn't so much a paradox as an important principle in time management. When it comes to research, writing and the life of the mind, there are necessary choices – times to say yes, and no. You just can't read all you want to, or follow all the nudges and hunches that push and pull your curiosity down different intriguing research paths.

My own intellectual and spiritual landscape has several well worn paths. One of my favourite hills is Tinto, in Lanarkshire (pictured in winter, with snow on last year's foreground stubble). It's criss-crossed with paths, evidence of thousands of trudging feet over many a year. There are several ways to the top, and none would get you there unless you stay on them! That's not to say you can't make your own way up, ignoring established paths, and ploughing through heather, bracken, moorland grass, the odd bog and on one side some dodgy screes.

I think of my research map as a kind of inner Tinto! There are well worn paths of reading, writing, study and research! Sometimes they criss-cross, sometimes they just stop and don't reach the top. Now and again I want to go up a different way. Familiar paths for me include Evangelical, Baptist and Scottish spirituality; Scottish theology, the poetry of George Herbert, Julian of Norwich, Trinitarian theology, Baptist identity and theology, Bonhoeffer, theology and disability, and more recently the possible conversations between poetry and theology, kenosis and pastoral theology, and the relations between Scripture and Christology.

At my ordination I chose a hymn that in its first verse also uses the image of hill climbing.

Christ of the upward way,
my Guide divine,
Where Thou hast set thy feet
may I place mine:
And move and march wherever Thou has trod
keeping face forward up the hill of God.

The impetus to study, the attractiveness of truth and wisdom, the love of learning and the desire for God, are I think integral to the spirituality of the pastor theologian. As a Baptist minister serving our churches in theological education, I've never relinquished that sense of ministry as following the Christ of the upward way, and keeping face forward up the hill of God. Pastoral vocation is a deep and searching calling to a ministry in which the qualifier pastoral defines what I am about as a theologian. Academic research and following Christ, theology and pastoral care, intellectual work and heart work, continually weave together in a pattern of discipleship whose dominant motifs eventually define and reflect who we are.

This weekend I marked the 33rd anniversary of my ordination. For reasons I hope are theological as well as personal, I've always viewed that event on August 28, 1976, as utterly decisive and vocationally defining for me. It was the day I promised to follow Christ on the upward way of a pastoral preaching ministry. Whatever else I am in terms of my gifts, and however others see me in terms of gifts or faults, inextricably woven through my own self-understanding was that call to ministry which has been my way of following faithfully after Christ.

So I'm still climbing, keeping face forward up the hill of God. Here is the whole hymn – it still touches deep chords of longing, aspiration and an astonished sense of privilege.

Christ of the upward way, my Guide divine,
Where Thou hast set Thy feet, may I place mine;
And move and march wherever Thou hast trod,
Keeping face forward up the hill of God.

Give me the heart to hear Thy voice and will,
That without fault or fear I may fulfill
Thy purpose with a glad and holy zest,
Like one who would not bring less than his best.

Give me the eye to see each chance to serve,
Then send me strength to rise with steady nerve,
And leap at once with kind and helpful deed,
To the sure succor of a soul in need.

Give me the good stout arm to shield the right,
And wield Thy sword of truth with all my might,
That, in the warfare I must wage for Thee,
More than a victor I may ever be.

Christ of the upward way, my Guide divine,
Where Thou hast set Thy feet, may I place mine;
And when Thy last call comes, serene and clear,
Calm may my answer be, “Lord, I am here.”

Walter J Mathams – composed circa 1915

30 August 2009
Victoria Plums – a prelapsarian fruit and reminder of Eden?

Victoria plums are back in the shops. As a boy I helped pick several varieties of plums in the orchards which ran the length of upper Clydeside in Lanarkshire – and you were allowed to eat as you picked. The sensible psychology was that a picker would soon have had enough. A theory which worked even for me – there are only so many plums even greedy connoisseurs can eat and enjoy. But I haven't yet encountered a fruit I enjoy more.

Those orchards are long gone – either garden centres, road upgrading or housing developments have removed all but a couple which are now neglected. The season is late August to mid September so it isn't long to enjoy your favourite fruit. And maybe the sheer enjoyment of them is because they are only available once a year, and not for long. The imported other kinds of plum don't come near British Victorias. You can find out why over here.

William Carlos Williams has this delightful poem about eating cold plums from the fridge, and about the temptation to eat them before anyone else does:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

30 August 2009
R S Thomas and the heart of pastoral care

"Preach the simple gospel. Make sure the old woman who sits at the back of the church can understand you". That kind of comment is patronising nonsense not far away from uninformed arrogance. So forgive me, but I've just heard it or something like it one too many times.

On a par with thinking visiting older people is a chore rather than a privilege, or an inefficient use of a dynamic church leader's time, a task for ancillary ministry rather than strategic leadership. As if accompanying friendship, pastoral companionship, available presence, attentive conversation, weren't a privilege, a gift and an opportunity to share in richly textured experience.

Some of the finest practical theologians I know sit in the back
seats at church, or at their tea table, and I've coveted their nod of approval for the truth I've tried
to speak, framed in words with maybe half the depth of their experience of life with God.

Hence the prophetic edge to this entire treatise in pastoral theology distilled into just over 60 words. An R S Thomas prose poem, written late in life, that tells us why we might never be near good enough to preach up to, let alone down to, the level of "the old woman who sits in the back pew".

'The holiness of the heart's affections.' Never tamper with them. In an age of science everything is analysable but a tear. Everywhere he went, despite his round collar and his licence, he was there to learn rather than to teach love. In the simplest of homes there were those who with little schooling and less college had come out top in that sweet examination.

(R S THomas, The Echoes Return Slow (London: MacMillan, 1988), 62.

—<>—

29 August 2009
Terry Eagleton: “Truly civilised societies don’t hold predawn power breakfasts”

This book is one of the best reads for a long time – pity the dust cover is so dull, even if the simulated tear is meant to symbolise the torn fabric of human ways of knowing). In the London Review of Books, Eagleton (no friend of religion) previously punctured the ego of Dawkins by administering what can only be called a massive dose of qualified rationality! The straw men set up by Dawkins, the caricatures of religion in general and theism in particular, the sloppy argumentation, his culpable unawareness of his own prejudiced assumptions and emotional toxins – an absolutely unanswerable critique of a book that had it been submitted as an undergraduate dissertation would have struggled to survive the flaws of its own methodology. Treat yourself to the tonic of refined academic polemic, a masterclass by one of the sharpest and most controversial literary and cultural commentators. Eagleton in full flow can be read here in his review "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching".

This book, Reason, Faith and Revolution consists of lectures he recently delivered in the United States (hence the references throughout to USA). Here he takes on the new atheists with the same verve, conflating Dawkins and Hitchens into the new protagonist Ditchkins – and sometimes with hilarious effectiveness.

"Jesus, unlike most responsible American citizens, appears to do no work, and is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He is presented as homeless, propertyless, celibate, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinsfolk, without a trade, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, careless about purity regulations, critical of traditional authority, a thorn in the side of the Establishment, and a scourge of the rich and powerful. Though he was no revolutionary in the modern sense of the term, he has something of the lifestyle of one. He sounds like a cross between a hippie and a guerilla fighter. He respects the Sabbath not because it means going to church but because it represents a temporary escape from the burden of labour. The sabbath is about resting, not religion. One of the best reasons for being a Christian, as for being a socialist, is that you don't like having to work, and reject the fearful idolatry of it so rife in countries like the United States [and United Kingdom!]. Truly civiled societies do not hold predawn power breakfasts.

Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith and Revolution. Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven: Yale, 2009), page 10.

Quite so!

28 August 2009
R S THomas on “the contemporaneity of the Cross”.

There were other churches from which the
populations had withdrawn, Celtic foundations
down lanes that one entered with a lifting of the
spirit, because there were no posts, no telegraph
wires. Is God worshipped only in cathedrals
where blood drips from regimental standards as
from the crucified body of love. Is there a need for
a revised liturgy for bathetic renderings of the
scriptures? The Cross always is avant-garde.

—<>—

The church is small.
The walls inside
white. On the altar
a cross, with behind it
its shadow, and behind
that the shadows of the shadow.

The world outside
knows nothing of this
nor cares. The two shadows
are because of the shining
of two candles: as many
the lights, so many
the shadows. So we learn
something of the nature
of God, the endlessness
of those recessions
are brought up short by
the contemporaneity of the Cross.

(R.S. Thomas, The Echoes Return Slow, (London: MacMillan, 1988), 82-3.

In this slim volume Thomas juxtaposes prose and verse, and both must be read as twin perspectives, perhaps as two light-casting candles. In the prose poem, my copy has no question mark after "crucified body of love". Was that Thomas's intent or a miss-print? Is the absence of the question mark a hint that such a rhetorical question is no question, but a statement from one who had thought long on the human capacity to shed blood and think it justified in heaven, and had shaken his head in defiant negation? The cross is not the validation of war but its nemesis. And for Thomas, God is known not in the theology of glory but in the theologia crucis. So that the crucified God, symboled in shadow-casting light and crucified love, remains the most powerful critique of a theology of glory dressed up in religion too closely aligned with the centres of secular power.

27 August 2009
The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality

If you are at all interested in Christian spirituality as both personal discipline and intellectual interest, then this is a book you might want to have on your desk, rather than the shelf – it's way too big for reading in bed. There are now several text books on Christian Spirituality, suitable for class use or personal study, offering breadth but not always depth. What makes this book worth buying and working through is the obvious virtue of its having grown in dialogue with students, being refined through collaboration with other scholars, and the alert attention the author has paid to his own spiritual development; and all this taking over thirty years of slow and healthy gestation towards publication.

At 500 pages, double columns and hardback, the book has every appearance of meaning business. Each chapter begins with a clear outline and aim, then ends with a section on Christian spiritual practice, a chapter summary, several focused questions and a section for further study with suggested resources. There are sidebars developing content, excerpts from classic texts and figures in Focus boxes and illustrations which aren't there simply to break up the text.

All in all I reckon this is the most user friendly substantial Introduction to Christian Spirituality now available, and one mercifully free from the desire to be comprehensive at the cost of depth. I've spent time on and off over the past few days reading, browsing, getting a feel for the overall schema and discourse level. My feeling is that the book still reads as a substantial handbook on Christian Spirituality which balances essential information and analysis of key theological concepts and disciplines, with practical focus on the personal and formative implications of spirituality. At around £15 Hardback and high quality production, the book is good value – and in more ways than the near giveaway price.

This isn't a review – just a mention of a book I bought on the recommendation of friend and colleague, Deans Buchanan – who knows a thing or two about Christian Spiritual development. Have a look for yourself at the Brazos Press website here. .

26 August 2009