Category: Loving the Church

A personal essay on the importance of ideas in the practical renewal of the church

Ever since I heard Alexander Broadie lecture on Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan in the undergraduate Moral Philosophy Class at the University of Glasgow, philosophy has remained a cantus firmus in my spiritual and theological development. The phrase means an underlying melody which supports the harmony of various independent voices, such as in plainsong. (I first learned to use this phrase as a metaphor for the theologically informed life and Christian discipleship from Craig Gardiner in his excellent Whitley lecture).

In 1971-2, my first year at Glasgow University, Broadie was a young lecturer just launched on a glittering career as a philosopher, historian and Scottish intellectual. His lecturing style was memorably fascinating to a young recently converted Lanarkshire Baptist, slowly realising the range and depth of faith and human experience, and who was about to discover the exhilaration and scary attractiveness of intellectual engagement of a quite different order. Broadie had a glass decanter of water, and a glass which before each lecture he meticulously filled, then held in both hands, and strolled back and forth across the platform, thinking as he spoke, and speaking as he thought. It was mesmerising, and deeply impressive. Broadie taught me not only how to think, but the moral reasoning that is essential if intellectual work is to have integrity, humility and honesty.

It was one of the great providential blessings of my life that I had opted to take Principles of Religion, in parallel with Moral Philosophy. It was a course of ridiculous diversity and ambition, but opened doors in directions I'd never imagined, some of which have become areas of major importance in my own formation. Amongst these was a short section of the course – I think about 12 weekly tutorials – on Pirkei Avot, loosely translated "Ethics (or Sayings) of the Fathers", a small tractate of the Mishnah.
The teacher, by a stroke of singular providential luck (!), was the same Alexander Broadie whose own faith tradition is Judaism. It was a masterclass on ethics, exegesis, logic, religious imagination, moral seriousness and inter-faith exploration. I loved it. I learned so much about myself, about reverence for text, about listening for the polyphonic harmonies in a writing of spiritual power – and about the importance of hearing the heart as well as the words of people of other faiths. When I came to study closely the Sermon on the Mount*, I heard unmistakable echoes, discovered ethical and spiritual coincidences of thought, and rejoiced in the Jewishness of Jesus teaching. Which says a lot about Christian preconceptions – of course the teaching of Jesus the Jew would be saturated with Jewish ethical wisdom! – just as Scottish people speak with a Scottish accent!

*(I look back on a careful reading in 1977, of W D Davies' The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount as the equivalent of an exegetical epiphany.)

All of which is to say, amongst those to whom I am intellectually indebted, is Professor Alexander Broadie, who couldn't have know that a 21 year old Lanarkshire Baptist would be decisively influenced by his exposition of Leviathan, Hobbes' bleak political philosophy of absolute power, and his exposition of Pirkei Avot, with its humanising ethical maxims growing out of the Jewish Wisdom tradition. But so we are all shaped in ways we don't always recognise at the time.

Over the years since, and every year, several philosophy books sneak onto my shelves, and eventually push onto my desk. I don't mean only philosophical theology, either as Christian apologetics or theistic critique. I mean books of moral philosophy, that branch of the humanities dedicated to the searching questions of ethics, the significance of values, the nature of the virtues, understanding of human formation and thus alert analysis of our cultural and moral history. Again and again I've found that the important issues about discipleship, witness and Christian presence in the world come into clearer focus when they are explored from the standpoint of faith engaged in philosophical questioning and search, faith committed to ethical reflection, and faith sympathetic in pursuit of cultural understanding. Issues of faith are deepened not ignored, clarified not confused, put on fresh expression rather than recycled cliche, and are invested with practical urgency rather than pragmatic relevance, by a process of disciplined, dedicated and honest thinking. And if that kind of analytic and diagnostic thinking is to be done by the Church it will be done at its best when the standpoint of faith is demonstrably open to other insights and criticism. And it will be done at its most credible, when the Church shows itself capable of self-critique and renewal through the Spirit of Truth, because it has learned the requisite humility to listen and learn.

At a time when programmes, practice, and pragmatism make up a not always holy trinity of approaches to Christian living, it is far too easy to be dimissive of ideas, impatient with theory, disinterested in that which begins as abstract principle or argued conviction. Best practice is surely the result of sound thinking; effective (Christian) programmes as surely require principles that mark them as Christian; and the philosophy of pragmatism, however effective, will always require underlying evaluative questions about appropriate means and ends that meet the Christian criterion, which is the Gospel of Christ. I suppose this is a plea that the contemporary Church, in the midst of cultural flux and chronic fast paced transition, recover confidence in the gift of thinking, rediscover the power of ideas, respect the vitality of conviction, and accept again the adventure of intellectual risk-taking in the service of Christ, and in the living of a Gospel that is far too big an idea to be reduced to a flat pack faith of utmost utility, but which lacks credibility and durability in the rapid climate change that is the 21st Century
zeitgeist.

So perhaps along with all our other committees and work groups, and short term task groups, local churches and denominational centres might consider forming groups whose remit is to think, to explore ideas, to clarify convictions, to listen to cultural voices, and so follow the advice of the sages in Pirkei Avot, "Make your house be a meeting place for scholars, and sit at the dust by their feet, and drink up their words with thirst." (1:4)

So I still read philosophy, spend time with ideas, pay attention to what I believe and why, ask questions of the church, of myself, of what it means to think and act and thus live faithfully for Christ, in whom as Logos incarnate, human experience and intellectual reach find their fulfilment.

** The photo is of my friend Becky's church in Henniker, New Hampshire. It is displayed here for no other reason than that it is a beautiful church, and the snow seems just right for the weather we and they are having just now. Greetings Becky and Bob – I still remember my visit to Hanover some years ago, and the hot tub in February at -25 degrees, my hair with icicles, and the absolute requirement to jump out of the hot tub into a snow drift! Oucha!! Great days, my friends!

4 January 2010
The central mystery of Christmas and the human predicament

This blog began as a way of sharing much of what I think, feel and believe about many things.

I've kept it going because it combines the discipline of writing with the fun of sharing.

It's a forum for theological reflection on the stuff that happens, and also a place for exploring with others the fruit of reading and thinking.

Now and again, a blog allows not only wider conversations, but deeper ones – the old fashioned phrase "the human predicament" is only old fashioned in terminology, not in reality. As human beings we are indeed in a bit of a predicament – God help us!

And in addition to all that, this blog is for me some substitute for that part of me that always leans towards opening conversations with others around what it means in practice to follow faithfully after Jesus today.

That's all asking a lot, but there it is.

Sometime on Christmas Day the electronic counter will indicate that the 100,000th visitor clicked in. I hope the importance of that isn't only an ego thing – but an indicator that people find stuff here that is worth the bother of looking in the first place.

Anyway.

In a world where even peace prizes no longer seem to make a lot of sense

where post Copenhagen climate change raises major issues of justice to future generations

where religious ideological conflict is replacing the old cold war dichotomy

and where the economic and political self-interest of the rich create dangerous pressures against the poorer half of the world;

in a world like that, our world,

may we know the dawning reality of the Love that moves the earth and the stars,

may we gaze again on the central mystery of the Word become flesh whose glory we behold,

and may we live in obedience to Jesus Christ,

the One whose mission of peacemaking and reconciling love

defines the Christian God,

and sets the trajectories for our own life mission within and beyond the Church.

And in the light of that – a joyous Christmas to you all.

25 December 2009
“Tiny as we are” (Jacques Maritain)

Jacques Maritain was one of the great Catholic intellectuals of the 20th Century. His book True Humanism deeply influenced Dorothy Day. Asking herself why she and ten other Catholics made a spectacle of themselves as a way of voicing opposition to war, why they made themselves "a spectacle to the world, to the angels and to men", she found the answer in her annotated personal copy of Maritain.

"We are turning towards men to speak and act among them, on the temporal plane, because, by our faith, by our baptism, by our confirmation, tiny as we are, we have the vocation of infusing into the world, wheresover we are, the sap and savor of Christianity."

Words like these transcend Christian differences, elude the grasp of categories, render traditions and denominations relative though not unimportant. These are words of Christian witness that vibrate with purpose, are born of authentic spiritual experience, sourced and resourced in Christian conviction, and as clear a statement of determined compassion as an indifferent world is likely to hear – even if it stopped long enough to listen. Maritain is both Catholic enough and Christian enough to recognise the foolishness that confounds the wise, to smile knowingly at the strength that resides in weakness as a paradox of grace, and to register a gentle defiance in that four word qualifier, "tiny as we are…"

The call to discipleship, the imperative mood of the Gospel, the uncompromising yet persuasive voice of Jesus calling us to follow faithfully after him, now, here, in our time and place – these are each implicitly present, and to be explicitly lived out in Maritain's one sentence missiology: "the vocation of infusing into the world, wheresoever we are, the sap and savor of Christianity." I am not so narrowly Baptist I don't recognise the authentic New Testament adventure of grace such vocation implies. Of course our capacity to infuse, and that which we infuse, is gift and grace, and mystery and mercy; and of course the different sacramental theology of Maritain feels like an annoying and persistent elbow in the ribs for self-respecting Baptists like myself. But I share the vocation because I hear the same voice, and it calls all God's people; I can only be the light of the world as Christ commanded, if Christ the light of the world radiates through my being; and that word savor (even with its American spelling), is a welcome if unnecessary reminder of how the function of salt is directly dependent on, well, its savor.

8 December 2009
“Fellowship” according to Bonhoeffer – “to kindle the flame of the true fire of Christ.”

One of my problems with the word 'fellowship', and an increasing diifculty with the word 'community', is the cosy, soft, non-angularity of the words. These are words with a marshmallow softness, a painted-with-a-pastel-palette look that's more impressionist than real, a squishy shapelessness under pressure that gives no confidence we know what their real shape is or would look like. I also worry that both words are more about feelings than actions, and that their overuse makes them sound like sacred alternatives to secular expletives, which tend to be the unthinking blanks inserted to sentences to convey emotional engagement or just as often as a vain repetition by habit.

Which is why now and then it matters to have someone say something about 'fellowship' and 'community' that unsettles us, and dissipates the devotional haze that obscures what fellowship and community at their demanding uncomfortable Christlikeness might actually look like, feel like and be like. And one of the people who regularly does that for me is one of my best theological friends, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A theological friend is one who isn't interested in reinforcing my conceptual comfort zones, or ignoring my bad intellectual and theological habits, and whom I trust enough to listen when he tells me I'm talking or thinking nonsense.

So. To the popular notion that fellowship and community are directly tied to intimacy, like-mindedness, mutual knowledge of each other's story, sharing of personal needs and problems, and current place in the world, Bonhoeffer enters a disconcerting disclaimer. Like the good theological friend he is he confirms his trustworthiness as a friend not by agreeing with us but by telling us why we are wrong. In Sanctorum Communio,in a discussion of the Lord's Supper Bonhoeffer compares the experience of those who know each other well with those who break bread as strangers:

It has been deplored that urban congregations celebrating the Lord's Supper are faced with the unfortunate fact that participants do not know one another; this situation allegedly diminishes the weight placed on the Christian Community and takes away from the personal warmth of the ceremony.

But against this we must ask is this very kind of a church-community not itself a compelling sermon about the significance and reality of the community of saints, which surpasses all human community? Isn't the commitment to the church, to Christian love, most unmistakable where it is protected in principle from being confused in any way with any kind of human community based onb mutual affection? Is it not precisely such a community that much better safeguards the serious realism of the sanctorum communio – a community in which the Jew remains a Jew, Greek Greek, worker worker, and capitalist capitalist, and where all are nevertheless the Body of Christ – than one in which these hard facts are quietly glossed over?

Wherever there is a real profession of faith in the community of saints, there strangeness and seeming coldness only serve to kindle the flame of the true fire of Christ; but where the idea of the sanctorum communio is neither understood nor professed , there personal warmth merely conceals the absence of the crucial element but cannot replace it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 245-6

8 October 2009
Conformitas Christi……

L Gregory Jones writes theological ethics. In his approach, the credibility of any theological assertion has to be established through the Christian practices such theologising engenders. Theology to be real has to be embodied, not only in the individual, but in the community that takes the name of Christ. What is believed is most authentically expressed not in words and articulation, but in practice and performance of a life shaped by Christ.

Here's a couple of paragraphs from Transformed Judgment. Toward a Trinitarian Account of the Moral Life (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008) that have had me thinking again about the how, and why and what of following after Christ. The painting by Caravaggio is a favourite – the young Jesus inviting middle aged Peter and Andrew to follow him.

What is needed is a way of speaking of the prior action of God, namely the saving life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which also calls forth an account of the shape human activity is to take in response. Such an emphasis is found by recovering the relationship between being conformed to Christ and being called to imitate – or as I think is preferable language, to pattern one's life in – Christ. God befriends humanity in Jesus Christ, and in that gracious action, which originates in God alone, humanity is conformed to Christ independently of particular characters, virtues and actions. Grace is the fundamental orientation of Christian life. The context of this conformitas Christi is discovered in the salvation wrought by Christ; it is a salvation revealed throughout the context of his life, deathn and resurrection.

In the light of Jesus friendship, the Christian's vocation, in response to God's prior action in Christ conforming humanity to his righteousness, is to pattern her life in Jesus Christ through discipleship.A person is called and enabled to pattern her life in Jesus Christ because God in Christ has patterned human life into God's life in order to save humanity. Such practices as baptism, eucharist, forgiveness-reconciliation and "performing" the Scriptures are indispensable practices, whereby people learn to become disciples, whereby people learn to be frinds of God and to befriend and be befriended by others. Through such practices, people are aenabled to acquire the habits and skills reflective of the pattern discovered in Jesus Christ." (pages 110-11)

That's about as attractive and complete an account of following after Christ as I've read for a long while. Conformitas Christi. Wouldn't mind a T-shirt with that on it –

Conformitas Christi!

23 September 2009
Music, Calvin, cultural critique, and missional relevance

Here's an extract from a readable and sympathetic biography of Calvin:

In the very depths of his being Calvin had a most intimate awareness of the power of music. He feared and relished it at the same time. It possessed an ascendancy over souls and bodies that could either capture them by its evil spells or liberate them by its beauty: "Among the things that are proper to divert a man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the most important….For there is hardly anything in this world that can more readily bend the manners of men this way and that…And in fact we find by experience that it has a secret and almost incredible ability to move hearts one way or another."

Music, that deceitful power, should be put to the service of the text and the Word, illustrating them and not obscuring their meaning. "All evil speech…, when accompanied by music, pierces the heart much more strongly and enters into it in such a way that, just as wine is poured into a vessel from a funnel, so also venom and corruption are distilled to the bottom of the heart by melody."

Calvin analysed the double potential effect of music, at once destructive and creative, on a sensibility whose dangerous instability he perceived, an instabilty that would shortly reveal itself to be fundamental to baroque psychology.
Bernard Cottret, Calvin. A Biography, (Edinburgh:T&TClark, 1995), pages 173-4.

There is a pastoral realism and cultural awareness about Calvin that is annoyingly inconvenient for those who simply want to dismiss him as either cultural philistine or theological bogey man. When Calvin's shortcomings are acknowledged, and the problems of his thought aired, he remains a theological source and resource for a church desperately looking for its voice, and struggling to remember the words that articulate the Word. For all our fascination with relevance, our accommodation to the postmodern mindset, our neglect of transcendent mystery in favour of the accessible and experiential, the contemporary Church often enough lacks a sense of its own calling to bear witness to the Eternal, to see the world as the theatre of God's glory, and to understand its own vocation as the Body of Christ which embodies the Word it proclaims in repentance, faith and the fear of God.

One remedy, astringent and at times uncomfortable, is to include the voice of Calvin in the conversations the Church must always have between surrounding prevailing culture, its own diverse theological traditions, and the innovative impulses of a Church so anxious to be missionally relevant that it can fail at the level of its own vocational integrity as the community of Christ. Missional relevance itself can be driven by the Church's survival instinct as much as by Gospel imperatives – Calvin's theology of divine sovereignty, built on the centrality of the Word, is a necessary corrective.

This year is the 400th anniversary of Calvin's birth, on 10th July 1509. I'm going to celebrate it by reading his sermons on Ephesians. However, Calvin is only the second most important person born on July 10 – that's also my mother's birthday!

The portrait of Calvin above is less severe than some of the more popular ones on book covers. And given the sheer volume and quality of Calvin's written output – what would he have done if the quill had been replaced with a keyboard?

14 May 2009
Arithmetic-free generosity as the default monetary policy of the Christian community!

A conversation the other day about churches, Christians, money – and the relations between the three of them. Well actually, since we were talking of those who confess Christ, and who seek to embody the life of Christ in their living, and through the witness of Christian community, the relation of all three to Christ. The particular issue was the way Christians often want to do things, or have things, on the cheap.

Now for communities of people who believe that grace is undeserved favour, and who 'have no problem' with Paul's theological extravagances in Ephesians 1, all of this puzzles me. For example – "God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing…according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us..and the riches of His glorious inheritance among the saints…". And so on, using words like lavished, immeasurable, incalculable and climaxing in the great Evangelical cry, "For by grace you have been saved…."

So how does it come about that followers of Christ, themselves receivers of the most extravagant, reckless, arithmetic-free generosity, can often sound as if the spending and giving of money, the cost of celebration, the creation of beauty and the investment in human wholeness, joy and friendship, should all be subject to budget considerations, financial reality checks and the communal and personal self-interest that considers money more valuable than giving?

I'm not arguing for financial irresponsibility – but for instinctive generosity, for a recovery of the Christian default response of giving rather than saving, of sharing rather than keeping. I wonder where in the care of our churches, in the support of our ministries, in the setting of priorities for spending, in our love for God's world and the people in it, in the key decisions we all make about what to do with what we've been given, I'm wondering – where is the place of extravagance, generosity, that lavish uncalculating, joy-discovering , grace-driven, Christ-inspired gift of giving. When did Christian stewardship move from generous costly gift to prudent wise planning? Where in all our budgetary balancing, do phrases like those used by Paul feature as primary levers for the kingdom – "abundant joy and extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity…" and this rooted in the key evangelical principle "He was rich yet for our sakes became poor that we through His poverty might become rich".

Anyway. My own heart has its own constraints, its own inner resistances. As a follower of Jesus maybe I need less stewardship and more generosity, less responsibility and more responsiveness, less prudential giving and more prioritised generosity, not saving but giving. What would happen in our lives, communities, neighbourhoods if as followers of Jesus, words like lavish, extravagant, generous, graceful, were amongst the first to be used of how as Christians we live our lives, and bear witness to the One "from whose fullness we all have recieved, grace after grace after grace …" (John 1.16)

Here are some wise words from an unjustly obscure saint:

There are two ways
   of bringing into communion
   the diversity of particular gifts:
      the love of sharing
      and the sharing of love.
Thus the particular gift becomes common
   to him who has it
   and to him who has it not:
      he who has it
         communicates it by sharing,
      he who has it not
         participates by communion.

(Baldwin of Ford, quoted in Esther De Waal, Seeking God, page 125)

22 April 2009
Seeking God – Benedictine Spirituality for Baptists

I'm blogging over at

Hopeful Imagination today. One of the books that has been decisive and enriching in my understanding of pastoral faithfulness. Here's a sample of Benedict's idea of a good pastoral style! I particularly like his dig at those hollow greetings that lack intentional goodwill.

Your way of acting should be different from the world's way: the love of Christ must come before all else. You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit.Never give a hollow greeting of peace, or turn away when someone needs your love.

23 March 2009
What are the benchmark statements on Christian leadership?
Yesterday I shared in the funeral service for Jim Wood, one of the finest Christian leaders I've ever known, and one of Scotland's most committed Baptists. I'll finish this post with an extract from what I shared about Jim in the funeral service. Reflecting through the week on the life and character of this remarkably able and unselfconsciously modest man, led me to some interesting thoughts about the way we think about leadership.

Leadership has many styles, and God's gift of leadership needn't always demonstrate the same virtues and qualities. Jesus was a leader – though I'm not sure I'm entirely comforable with a word so compromised by power baggage – but the style of leadership, the way Jesus exercised authority, the goal and end of his 'leadership initiatives', were responsive to context and situation, and to the people in those situations and contexts.

There is in the life and ministry of Jesus that kind of leadership
- which takes initiative with loaves and fishes and makes things happen
- which invites trust and risk in leaving the safety of the boat for the turbulence of the waves
- which silences argument and heals wounded relationships by taking a basin and towel
- which stops and asks the name of Legion, touches the scars of the leper, and throws parties for the unwanted and too easily ignored
- which teaches prayer by doing it and so encourages discipleship by embodying obedience to the Father
- which 'wastes time' that could be used 'more productively', talking at the well with a woman to help her move beyond what we now call 'a chaotic lifestyle'
And so on. The whole Christian leadership thing has become a major area of study, contention, training, and concern, in churches looking for ways to survive, to grow, to be seen to be alive and relevant. And it's right to constantly explore and review how the dynamics of the Christian community work. But also in doing so to repeatedly, regularly, persistently, compare what we are saying and practising with the life and example of the One in whose name that leadership is expressed and all sharing of the Good News authorised.

As I reflected on the character, life commitments, behaviour and influence of Jim Wood, I came to realise that he embodied a form of leadership which could never develop from intentional task-focused training, or from programmatic initiatives and approaches aiming to 'grow' leaders. There are times when our definitions of leadership, as strategically focused and missionally practical as they are (and perhaps need to be), are nevertheless far too pragamtic. There are other, perhaps as important styles of leadership which embody something less tangible and more crucial – a spirit of loving awareness and other-centred service in which we see authentic glimpses of Jesus, through which we recall loaves and fishes, gale lashed waves, welcomed strangers, a basin and a towel. Out of such a spirit comes the capacity to be the medium of a gospel of reconciliation, a conduit of that honest to goodness sincerity that touches lives with the gentle push in the right direction, which we call grace. Such is a style of leadership crucial to the health of our Baptist fellowships as discerning communities, which few are able to exercise. But Jim Wood did.

Jim
was a Christian, a Baptist Christian. His attendance at the church’s meetings,
at Denominational Assembly and organisational gatherings was because he
believed in the gathered church meeting for worship, prayer, and discerning
together the mind of Christ. Natural courtesy, his measured thought, his
moderated words, genuine belief in the importance of listening to the voice of
Christ through the voices of individuals in the community of the Spirit, meant
that his was an important presence. Not least because it would never have
occurred to him that his voice carried more weight than anyone else’s.

The qualities
of curiosity and open-mindedness,
of inner conviction and community involvement,
of courtesy and conversation, meant that Jim was ideal in the always important
role of Conciliator. Leadership
takes many styles in contemporary church life; Jim Wood would never have
claimed to be a leader. But he was.

Inevitable tensions arise in the life of a
healthy church, relationships become strained, misunderstanding or disagreement
can develop. At such times every church needs those rare people who can see
both sides of the argument and understand the different feelings and responses.
They can interpret, bridge-build, calm hurt feelings and enable good
communication. There is a form of leadership which looks to guide and encourage
good decision-making by the pastoral care of those in danger of becoming too
involved in their own agendas.
16 November 2008
Does the future have a Church?

There Shall Always Be the Church

There shall always be the Church and the World
And the heart of Man
Shivering and fluttering between them, choosing and chosen,
Valiant, ignoble, dark and full of light
Swinging between Hell Gate and Heaven Gate.
And the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.
(T S Eliot)

So did Eliot anticipate the demise of the Church in Western society? The prescience of the poet a sharper discernment than the statistical trends of the sociologist, or the adjustments and accommodations of uncertain theologians? The ambiguity that lies at the heart of an institution that is at the same time a community that dares to claim allegiance to Jesus, is captured in the ‘fluttering’ between world and church, and the ‘swinging’ between Hell and Heaven. But the final prevailing word belongs to Heaven – the Body of Christ crucified, risen and ascended is the spiritual reality that lies behind a Church besieged by uncertainty, under pressure to justify itself by relevance and marketability to a post-modern consumerist culture.
‘And the Gates of Hell shall not prevail’ – is that because the Church will adapt to cultural demands to survive, or resist them as witness to a Kingdom not of this world? What is it that will ensure ‘there shall always be a church’ over and against the world?

28 April 2008