Living Wittily

Category: Scottish Christianity

  • Leadership – and all too human forms of community

    1175193430508_2 When a group of people who would (probably!) be considered ‘leaders’ amongst Scottish Baptists, meet together to discuss the nature of ‘leadership’, based on previously prepared papers, and with a whole day to expose areas and expressions of difference, disagreement, consensus, temperament, personal baggage, – it becomes clear that ‘leadership’ can have as many expressions as there are people, contexts, leaders! That’s what I was doing yesterday, along with five others, up in early autumn Pitlochry.

    So it was interesting to move throughout the day (guided by praying the daily offices of the Northumbria Community), to levels of agreement on some underlying principles, theological and pastoral assumptions – and also to be just as clear where there were quite fundamental differences in other key areas. I’m neither phased nor surprised at that. I think uniformity of model when discussing and exploring the nature of leadership within a Christian community would do violence to specific contextual realities. It would also overwrite individual giftedness and temperament, and would simply be one person / group’s construct, even if they claimed it was ‘biblical’ – ‘even THE biblical view’. All of which would ignore the variety and provisionality of the New Testament evidence, and the interpretations of such texts, and their translation into existing models of Church leadership. Diversity of practice so underlies our own Baptist traditions that it takes considerable care to identify what are the changing continuities of that tradition.

    My own paper was a further stage in my thinking about the community theologian(s), and in particular that person or more likely, group of people’s role in calling the community to faithful obedience to Christ. In fulfilling such a role I further developed two key ideas – kenosis (self-emptying as the notion is used in Phil. 2.1-15; and paracletos with its cognate paraclesis (with their core meaning of encouragement and accompaniment).

    The one sentence I’ll quote is the one that was affectionately but loudly mocked for its rhetorical flourish – och they were just jealous anyway!

    "Community theologians heighten awareness of divine activity amongst us, in our all too human forms of community – and do so by reminding us, with the gentle persistence of Scottish drizzle on a June day in the Trossachs, of the graceful kenosis and non-grasping love of God in Christ."

    Now what’s wrong with that as a piece of tartan theology? Eh?

  • Scotland, religion and education

    Two books came today. Expensive, hefty, sturdily bound by the Edinburgh academic publisher, John Donald. They are two volumes in a 14 volume set on Scottish Ethnology. They deal with Religion (vol. 12) and Education (11).

    41tzljoto1l__aa240_ The volume on religion covers the arrival of Christianity and brings the cultural story up to the 21st century. It is by far and away the most comprehensive and authoritative account of religion in Scotland, and it includes chapters dealing with the pluralistic and multicultural context of modern Scotland, and its inevitable and enriching consequence of religious diversity. This looks like one of the big books I’ll slowly work through as a course in culture, Christianity, religious diversity, folk theology, and the entwined relationship between social development, religious history and the contemporary cultural landscape. In a world fractured and fragile, where religion can be cause or cure of human suffering and conflict, it is a responsibility to understand our own religious heritage, context and peculiarities. Because in a diverse world, and in a pluralist Scottish society, for many, many people, Christians are ‘the other’; and more than ever we need the gift to see ourselves, as others see us, and to see the others, as part of who we are.

    41egvqb93gl__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5 The volume on Education is similarly comprehensive – tracing historical development, cultural influences and consequences on Scottish Education. Interesting chapters for me include the account of Special Education provision, Scottish Universities, ‘approved schools’ for troubled and troublesome children, Catholic education and women in education. Ever since I read and was converted by George Davie’s magnificent and wonderfully partisan account of the role and value of Scottish University education, in The Democratic Intellect, I have been passionate about education as more than preparing people for employability. As an expression of my own vocation in theological education, I am vocationally committed to education as formative, humanising and driven by aims significantly higher than market demands and other functional goals. These are arguably necessary to make education socially and economically viable; but the pursuit of learning and the search for knowledge have deeper goals in the human character, mind and will. Varieties of information when integrated bring knowledge; knowledge when assimilated into character and applied to life, brings wisdom – and we desperately need graduates in wisdom, and post-graduates in the science of living well.

  • The strange strife of thy peace….

    My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;

    I think thy answers make me what I am.

    Like weary waves thought follows upon thought,

    But the still depth beneath is all thine own,

    And there thou mov’st in paths to us unknown.

    Out of strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought;

    If the lion in us pray – thou answerest the lamb.

    George MacDonald, 1880.

    Macdonald George MacDonald is one of Scotland’s negelcted treasures. His Scottish novels are written in dialect, often rooted in rural village life. But he was also a Christian of refined and sensitive theological perception. It was his imaginative writings that captured the imagination of C S Lewis. Indeed he was one of several Scottish preacher theologians in process of rediscovering the imagination as an important route for the leading of the Spirit of God. (A B Bruce and Alexander Whyte for example). Macdonald’s Unspoken Sermons, his Diary of an Old Soul, and Collected Poems were important expressions of that growing uneasiness with Westminster Calvinism that seeped through the hardened walls of 19th century Scottish theology. Indeed his resistance to what he saw as hard edged Calvinism eventually led him to ‘the wider hope’, that generous understanding of the Gospel that is often dubbed ‘universalism’. That of course, got him into trouble with the deacons at the church he served in Arundel – they reduced his salary to persuade him to leave!

    The prayer quoted above is an important corrective to that self-confident blurting out of what we want God to do. Macdonald recognises the ambiguities of our asking, the mixed motivation in spiritual search, and the subterranean movements, even collisions, of self concern and divine grace.

  • Providence, the Edinburgh Subway and St Bride

    Earlier this week went to Edinburgh to meet up with several folk. Met with Professor David Fergusson, a friend and theological mentor and we tried to put the theological world right, but with only limited success. David will deliver the Gifford lectures in Glasgow next year – I’ll post the dates nearer the time. He has been working for some time on the doctrine of Providence which will be the theological focus of his lectures.

    Talking of Providence, walking down towards Princes St I was accosted by three excited American tourists who wanted to know where the nearest subway was. In my good humoured, smiling, best enunciated Scottish accent english, I explained that Glasgow, not Edinburgh had a subway, but Edinburgh did have a very good bus service. ‘No Sir, we want the nearest Subway’ she explained in her good humoured, smiling and best enunciated American accent English. And it dawned on me’ Oh, that kind of Subway’. The great big torpedo sized sandwich with shovels of filling type of subway. Since I wasn’t THAT sure, I suggested Rose St which has most of the eating places. Nearest Subway – come 5,000 miles across the Atlantic to Edinburgh, and need to find a…..Subway? Excuse the gender specific language but,’man shall not live by bread alone….it needs to be subway bread and with the familiar range of fillings etc’. Providence huh?

    Then I met with Aileen and we had lunch – which was very fine – a celebration of the new job which starts soon. Later we went to Harvey Nicholls for coffee and sinfully indulgent pancakes, chocolate sauce and ice-cream – well, we were celebrating the job, and Providence is occasionally about more than calorific minimalism – remember, ‘not by bread alone’, need the pancakes’n stuff now and then. Providence is also about celebration, fun and the important people in our lives.

    We also spent some time in the National Gallery doin our art critic and cultural browsing bit. There are a lot of magnificent pieces of art that don’t quite do it for me – I recognise their genius, their right to be considered masterpieces, but they don’t reach down into ‘that deep place we call the soul’ (Bono’s words). But some do – and one that always does it for me, is St Bride, by John Duncan.

    Professor Donald Meek is deeply sceptical about the historical accuracy of Scottish Celtic Christianity as popularly promoted. Fair enough, and Donald’s own book on the subject is by far the most authoritative. But Duncan’s painting isn’t about historical specifics; it is about the deep mysteries of faith expressed through art which is deeply indebted to Celtic culture but which resonates with contemporary spiritual longings. When I come back from holiday I’ll post a bit more on this painting. So not much happenning on this blog for a week.

    For now – enjoy and be exhilarated by the sheer glory of this painting. And if you can, go to the Scottish section and see it in all its ‘look at me’ splendour.

    Stbridel_3   

  • T F Torrance’s intellectual debts – in Haiku!

    Ttorrance_2 Hard to argue with the dominant presence of Tom Torrance on the Scottish theological landscape for over 60 years. He is a mountainous presence, admired worldwide for his contribution to the study of Barth and Calvin, the relations of Christian faith to scientific ways of knowing, the development of a viable theological rapprochement on the Trinity between the East and the West, and all these informed by deep long reading in patristic, reformed and ecumentical theology.

    But he doesn’t only gather, reconstruct and recycle the theological products of others, he is also a creative and cosntructive theologian in his own right. It is that combination of creative assimilation and constructive initiative that makes this book on the Christian doctrine of God such rich, hard, rewarding reading.

    In a more playful mood last night I drafted some Haiku in celebration of Torrance and his theological heroes. As always, I use the 5x7x5 haiku structure, the trinitarian structure indicating what Jonathan Edwards might have called ‘the shadow of divine things’!

    Torrance Haiku

    …

    Athanasius,
    Lucid apologist for
    ‘The Incarnation’

    …

    Homoousios,
    One substance with the Father,
    Torrance-structured truth.

    …

    Calvin’s Institutes,
    Reformed fons et origo,
    Torrance’s benchmark.

    …

    Barth’s Church Dogmatics,
    Everest meets Niagaran
    Grammar of The Word.

    …

    Scottish Dogmatics
    Displaying Reformed barcodes,
    Geneva and Basle.

  • Torrance and devotion to the Trinity

    41pmc6kwr3l__aa240__2 Tom Torrance’s theological debts are well known. Athanasius, Calvin, Barth, H R Mackintosh are primary influences on his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, his lifelong exploration of the unsearchable riches of Christ, the incarnate, crucified and risen redeemer as these are revealed, bestowed and appropriated, in communion with the triune God of grace. I argued yesterday that every believer is a theologian, and promised a sample of Torrance. In fact three extracts from early in the book, The Christian Doctrine of God – the third is from H R Mackintosh, Torrance’s teacher.

    The specifically Christian doctrine of God is thus inescapably and essentially Christicentric…..this does not mean that all our knowledge of God can be reduced to Christology, but that as there is only one mediator between God and man, who is himself both God and Man, and only one revelation of God in which he himself is its actual content, all authentic knowledge of God is derived and understood in accordance with the incarnate reality of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and is formulated in doctrinal coherence with Christology.

    [Jesus Chrts] is not some created intermediary between God and the world but the very Word and Son of God who eternally inheres in the Being of God so that for us to know him as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, is really to know God as he is in himself in his eternal Being as God and in the transcendent Love that God is. He is in himself not other than what he is toward us in his loving revealing and saving presence in Christ.

    The contrast between Torrance’s careful if convoluted sentences and Mackintosh’s sharp lucidity is obvious – but the theological vision is equally Christ centred, and definitive of the Christian apprehension of God.

    The words of Jesus are the voice of God. The tears of Jesus are the pity of God. The wrath of Jesus is the judgement of God. All believers confess, with adoring praise, that in their most sacred hours, God and Christ merge in each other with morally indistinguishable identity. When in secret we look into God’s face, still it is the face of Christ that rises up before us.

    41pmc6kwr3l__aa240__3 You can learn more about God, and more about the meaning of devotion and the God we adore, by reading the few pages from which these quotations come, than from a whole supermarket trolley of devotional pot-noodles !

  • Conference on Scottish Christian Spiritual Tradition

    Macleod Yesterday we held our first half-day conference at the Scottish Baptist College to discuss and explore the Scottish Christian Spiritual Tradition. Thanks to those who came and encouraged the work we’re trying to do.

    The theme, ‘Perspectives on George Macleod and the Iona Community’ gave us the chance to talk together about one of the most colourful and determined 20th C ministers of the Scottish Kirk. His two primary parish ministries were in the contrasting contexts of the West End of Edinburgh and then in Govan, Glasgow, though he is now associated in people’s minds with the restoration of Iona Abbey and the foundation of the Iona Community.

    Abbey2 Anne Muir, the official Oral Historian of the Iona Community has just completed the Oral History up to 1969; 86 Interviews now located at the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh. Using recorded audio material, she introduced us to a number of witnesses and testimonies, and we heard the voices of people who ‘were there’ at the beginning – with memories that were clear, impressions and opinions that were personal, specific, at times partial, but entirely authentic. Some of these we found deeply moving, as people spoke of their childhood and early years in Govan, or on the Island. Others remembered, not uncritically but always with respect, the personality and influence of ‘George’. Some skilled tradesmen, apprentices at the time, spoke of giving up their jobs for the summer to go to Iona for the restoration work, and had to go back home and find another job 4 months later. Who says vocation is only (even mainly) about clergy / ministers? 

    Anne spoke of her methodology and of the main themes of her research, including early years, Abbey restoration, women, worship, community. The result is a thorough, fascinating collection of slices of personal history told as story and testimony. A fascinating discussion about the merits of oral history, as people’s owned personal history and self understanding articulated from their own expereince – quite different from any official or authorised account. Raised for me interesting questions about the earliest memories, that became oral history and story and then became our written Gospels.

    Durrow20cross_2  Stuart demonstrated the craft and care Macleod took in preparing and in preaching his sermons. A broadcast sermon on ‘Why the Cross’ began with human experience and took that experience to the biblical passion stories. In his preaching, powerful integrating streams colaseced: his shrewd compassion for human nature, his deep hopefulness about the love of God, his passionate faith in the Cross as the place of new creation for humanity and for the Creation itself. The result was a man embodying truth through the attractive power of personality submittesd to the Word of God – and words he often used in his prayers, such as ‘pulsate’, ‘vibrate’, ‘radiate’ became true of this preacher who was clearly an accomplished performer of the Word.

    0947988017_02__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ My own paper was based on the written prayers now held at the National Library of Scotland. A number of these have been collected and edited for the slim book, ‘The Whole Earth shall Cry Glory’ – but there are many others, written in scrawled ballpoint or pencil, or typed with a ribbon hammered to near inklessness, the text itself littered and disfigured with corrections, insertions, deletions etc. The result though, confirmed by an interview Anne played for us, were prayers that, when offered in the place of worship, brought people to a knowledge and experience of the holiness and mystery of God they have never known since. When the prayers are read alongside his CND and peace addresses, it becomes clear also, that a theology that was Trinitarian and incarnational, informed the prayers and provided a profound theological rationale for protest against the military applications of nuclear technology.

    Stuart’s piece and mine will be available on the College Website later, and I’ll post a wee reminder then.

  • Kirkin o’ the tartan prayer

    Tartan_shirts__3 Came across this fine prayer while visiting some other theo-bloggers (HT to http://shadowsofdivinethings.blogspot.com/).

    Was taken with the honest acknowledgement of human weakness alongside the confident sense that we are made in God’s image, and in Christ, redeemable.

    KIRKIN O’ THE TARTANS

    In the morning light, O God,

    May I glimpse again your image deep within me,

    The threads of eternal glory

    Woven into the fabric of every man and woman.

    Again may I catch sight of the mystery

    of the human soul,

    Fashioned in your likeness,

    Deeper than knowing,

    More enduring than time.

    And in glimpsing these threads of light

    Amidst the weakness and distortions of my life,

    Let me be recalled

    To the strength and beauty deep in my soul.

    Let me be recalled

    To the strength and beauty of your image in every living soul.

    J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction

  • Moderatorial hugs, touring buskers and carefully written prayers

    Tartan_shirts_ Earlier this week I was in Edinburgh and several wee happenings came together to make it an interesting day.

    Macleod_2 I was in Edinburgh doing research amongst some of the personal papers of George Macleod, founder of the Iona Community, Kirk minister, Peer of the Realm, Peace activist and apologist, and, undoubtedly, a man of prayer. I was spending the time researching his prayers – an odd word for the process of literary and theological criticism, which involves reading, comparing, analysing, organising, of all things, written prayers. As if one man’s devotions should ever be the object of another person’s intellectual curiosity!

    Many of those prayers were typed on A6 paper of the kind inserted in small leather bound loose-leaf folders in the days before they became ‘personal organisers’. Typed – complete with deletions, insertions, revisions. In several of them, like a palimpsest, you could trace the first draft, the corrections, the re-wording to capture the particular nuance of spiritual longing which guided the prayer towards completion. Macleod was passionate about the worthiness and worth of what was offered in worship, and therefore careful in the spiritual discipline of finding fit words, to speak the Word, of the Word, fittingly.

    Pgmodsmcdonald24 But later I called up another folder, this time his Peace sermons – and there was his address from the mid-80’s,to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, about Trident. The shaky but still bold scrawl of handwritten words, aides memoire scored into the paper, reminders for a nonogenarian clergyman outraged by the blasphemy of nuclear weapons and not wanting to be short of ideas. I thought about the current Moderator, the Right Reverend Alan MacDonald, a good friend and supportive colleague from my Aberdeen days, and a long time outspoken critic of nuclear deterrence as an acceptable policy, and one involved in recent protests at the renewal of Trident. And this on the day of the vote at Westminster. Well on the way home, walking down the Waverley ramp, who’s coming towards me but Alan – and I was given that most efficacious of informal sacraments, the Moderatorial hug.(Photo shows footwashing after a long march of protest against Trident, another sacramental act of political and spiritual critique).

    Greyfriars_13 Earlier I’d been in the sandwich shop near Greyfriars Bobby and had ordered a grilled Foccacio with chorizo, brie and black olives – and sat beside Jock (on an ex-church pew – complete with worn varnish and backside-numbing hardness), a pretty good busker, complete with guitar, black coffee, a Snickers and a good line in conversation. He’s off to a gig in – well, where else – Mexico – at the end of April. Somebody heard him sing, thought he’d be a good support act, and so off he’d go. Long way to go for a gig I suggested – ‘Aye but I love eatin’ Mexican – it’s the chillies’, he said. Fair enough. And I hope that, and much else, works out for him.

    Then accosted by a young lad thrusting a flyer at me asking if I was interested in the concert. Not your usual big name rock stuff – no, Russell Watson and Kathryn Jenkins. Probably costs a fortune, so I declined pleasantly and continued the hike along Princes St to Waterstones – I have shop tokens remember? I’ve still got them!

    So, a hug from the Moderator who mixes politics with religion as a way of being faithful to Jesus; touching and handling the prayers of Lord Macleod legible and still prayable with all their corrections; a blether with Jock about his trip to Mexico to do a gig; a concert I didn’t know about and might just decide to go to, a wee bookshop crawl albeit unsuccessful. Not a bad day – aye, and ‘we are being renewed day by day’, by the grace of Christ, encountered at times, in the people who walk into our lives and walk out again…, a’ the time!…..if we live witttily enough to notice.

  • Scottish Spirituality?

    Dscn0071_1
    March 24 will be an important date for us here at the College. For some time we have wanted a place (Stuart would say ‘space’) to explore the diversity and significance today of the Scottish Christian Spiritual traditions. This isn’t a wee parochial talk shop about what makes Scottish Christians special, unique, peculiar; ‘Here’s tae us, wha’s like us’, is hardly a spiritually modest toast! It’s more about trying to understand the context within which we are trying to follow Jesus faithfully as witnesses of His Kingdom. There is no claim that there is such a thing as A  Scottish Christian Spiritual tradition anyway. There is a long, tangled, at times tragic, religious history that still deeply informs Scottish values and attitudes. Scottish spiritualities often emerged from controversy, a passionate againstness that found identity through conflict. Our heritage has powerful streams of Celtic, Catholic, Calvinist, and Kirk traditions that do not coalesce easily. To understand who we are, where we came from, what histories and memories shape our present and shove us into the future – this is a missional obligation.

    So there are no intended pretensions about all this. The invitation is to gather people together in a spirit of exploration, to take an interest in how Christians in our own nation and culture, past and present, have believed they were being faithful to Christ; to learn from their insights and their mistakes, because we are part of the same continuing but changing church. And while there may be occasional reflective papers, each event will be an occasion for spiritual reflection, prayer and thinking about who we are, and asking in the light of that, who God is calling us to be, here, now.

    Our first half day meeting (full details soon) has the overall theme ‘Persepctives on George Macleod and the Iona Community’. There was a spiritual courage that could be expressed both in belligerence and benediction in Lord George Macleod of Fuinary. His prayers are amongst the devotional treasures of Scotland. Here’s one of them

    Almighty God…
    Sun behind all suns,
    Soul behind all souls…
    Show to us in everything we touch
    And in everyone we meet
    The continued assurance of thy presence round us,
    Lest ever we should think thee absent.
    In all created things, thou art there.
    In every friend we have
    The sunshine of Thy presence is shown forth.
    In every enemy that seems to cross our path,
    Thou art there, within the cloud, to challenge us to love.
    Show to us the glory in the grey.
    Awake for us thy presence in the very storm
    Till all our joys are seen as Thee
    And all our trivial tasks emerge as priestly sacraments
    Within the temple of thy love    .