Living Wittily

Category: Theology

  • Autism and Religion.

    Sbanner_left In December 2007 and March 2008 I will be taking part in two inter-disciplinary symposia on ‘Religion and Autism’. It is sponsored by the Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability at the University of Aberdeen. You can find out about it here. I have been invited to take part and am offering a paper entitled, ‘Is a Sense of "Self" essential to Spirituality?’

    I am interested in the subject of these symposia for several reasons, personal and pastoral. My wife Sheila has many years of wide experience in areas of disability and additional support needs, including in the past 5 years working with pre-school children with autism, and with their parents as part of an early intervention and support programme, which includes EarlyBird training. On my own part, I served for many years as Chaplain in a school for children and young people with a range of learning  difficulties including autism. In pastoral charges we have accompanied families which include people with autism and have explored ways of providing appropriate support and inclusion within a local church setting. Some of these families we have known and accompanied for over 17 years and have shared the challenges of the growth and development of several children with autism – now teenagers.

    At a more theological level I have for some time taken an interest in the theological, pastoral and human implications of those conditions which often mean a person has an impaired sense of self. Any condition which diminishes a person’s sense of self, and which impairs their capacity to relate in a self-conscious, appropriate and socially interactive way with others, raises questions about what the reality of God, religious experience and religious practices might mean for such people. Autism is one such condition of which I have close experience. As a Christian theologian I am thus compelled to examine my own tradition to explore the theological possibilities that enable such working concepts as spirituality, humanity, identity, self-awareness and Other awareness, to be defined in ways that include and affirm the place of the autistic person within a faith community. For me a first step in this would be a head on facing of the question that is the title of my proposed paper:

    Is a Sense of ‘Self’ Essential for Spirituality?

    On all of this I will keep those of you who read this blog posted. Maybe even set up one or two areas for exploration, suggestion and shared insight.

  • Eucharist: The Real Presence, and the real presence

    Cathedral_1_sm_2 Years ago Ken Roxburgh and I went to a clergy retreat at Scottish Churches House in Dunblane. It seemed like a good opportunity to maintain a rich friendship while also sustaining two people working through the rigours of being Scottish Baptist ministers. The programme looked good, and the speaker was Bishop John V Taylor, writer of several award winning books including The Go-Between God, still a book so stimulating and original that it draws the reader into the same adoring wonder, about God and the world around, that seemed to captivate its writer.

    Well anyway, at the first meeting with the good Bishop, the two dozen or so clergy were told that the Bishop had decided (no communal discernment allowed – he was a Bishop!) that it would be a silent retreat. This wasn’t on the publicity, and alarmed most of us – but the Bishop, as is their wont, wasn’t into negotiation. No talking or conversation outside of set devotional times – and meals also to be taken in silence. That kind of put the dampers on Ken and I, who had come to talk, to pray, to listen and learn – but not to be silent for 48 hours! Apart from the careful handwritten notes, written in a John Menzies A5 spiral notebook, used by Bishop Taylor to guide us, with slow spiritual deliberation, through the several retreat talks, two further less pious memories dominate.

    80270 The first was the near hysterical inner reaction I had to sitting at breakfast table, surrounded by another 7 hungry clergy, in a room devoid of human chatter, listening in the imposed semi-silence to the sound of muesli being chomped, coffee being slurped and toast being munched – and being reminded of feeding time in the byre when I was a boy on the farms! The second was the wonderful game of football Ken and I watched at the Dunblane Hydro in order to have at least one evening’s conversation between friends who had gone to some trouble and expense to spend some time together. Anyway we is Baptists – and it’s a point of principle to uphold the freedom of the individual conscience in matters spiritual

    315aegfzzcl__aa240_ I was thinking about John V Taylor again recently. His book The Primal Vision written 40 years ago was an early foretaste of what has become a major theological discipline in its own right – missiology. Here is J V Taylor’s take on what gives the Eucharist both its missiological and its witnessing function within the church, written by a man whose missionary vocation made him one of Africa’s most sympathetic interpreters:

    "So many of our Eucharists fall short of the glory of God because while purporting to concentrate on the Real Presence of Christ, they seem to be oblivious to the real presence of people, either in the worshipping family or the world around. To present oneself to God means to expose oneself, in an intense and vulnerable awareness, not only to him but to all that is."

    The real presence of other people at the eucharist, and a Christlike intense and vulnerable awareness of God, and all that is – including these my sisters and brothers, around this table, and beyond, to those sharing with me the space and resources of this God-loved world. A properly eucharistic theology inevitably means we present ourselves to God, in response to divine love, and for the sake of the world.

  • Colin Gunton, The Barth Lectures – a guide to the Matterhorn

    Colin Gunton, The Barth Lectures (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 285 pages, £25.

    (Review copy courtesy of T&T Clark)

    41llnvifl__bo2204203200_pisitbdp500 I met Colin Gunton only once, at a P T Forsyth symposium at King’s College, Aberdeen. Since then I’ve read most of his published volumes. I am also an amateur reader of Barth – by which I mean Barth is a kind of theological hobby, a source of stimulus and refreshment, and of spiritual sustenance, to be read now and then, even studied for a while, but not allowed to absorb mental energy and time I need to give to much else that my life is about!

    Reading Barth is my equivalent of remembering to increase the proportion of organically healthy theology in my diet, to prevent that dangerously convenient trend towards over-processed stuff with artificial flavourings! Barth is wholewheat, high fibre theology; Barth is to the theological palate, what dirty carrots from the farmer’s market are when compared to those washed, watery, flavourless, peely-wally, plastic packaged supermarket baby carrots!

    Colin20gunton20with20pimms Back to Gunton. This is an unusual, and unusually enjoyable book for several reasons. First, it is a lasting memorial to Colin Gunton’s skill and passion as a theological educator, because the contents are the recorded and transcribed lectures Gunton delivered to post and undergraduate students at King’s College, London. Second they were so faithfully heard and transcribed that those privileged to be there, can hear the voice, envisage the face, recall the energy and passion of Gunton in full theological flow. Third, the book is one person’s transcribed and edited account (Paul Brazier) of the views of one of the best British theologians in a generation (Colin Gunton), expounding the 20th Century’s most influential European Protestant Theologian (Karl Barth). Fourth, because the lectures are recorded pretty much verbatim, and with diagrams and charts and explanatory sections and questions for further discussion, the book reads often like a handbook to major divisions of the Church Dogmatics, with short focused sections making up carefully structured chapters. This series of lectures provide as accessible a way up into Barth’s higher altitudes as I know.

    Barth is a huge presence in the interchanges, suggestions and counter-suggestions of theological blogs. Those who want to encourage others in their reading of Barth know well that some of the most important works are also the most theologically demanding, bordering on the forbidding. Not this one – I think Gunton on Barth through Brazier, rendered into lecture note form, works extremely well as a way of enabling ordinary theological mortals to follow Barth’s complex, prolix, brilliant, dense, unrelentingly demanding and endlessly inviting theology, and know that the view after the hard climb is worth the effort.

    The first 75 pages set Barth’s Dogmatics in their intellectual and historical context, of Enlightenment philosophy, ascendant 19th Century liberal theology, the cultural and theological crisis of the Great War, the Romans commentaries and Barth’s critical appropriation of Anselm. Much of this is available in secondary literature elsewhere, and not so selectively and tendentiously as Gunton’s treatment here. It’s still good stuff though, from a teacher completely at ease in 19th century continental theology and philosophy.

    Then chapter by chapter from the Triune God, to the being of God, the doctrine of election, and on to the hugely impressive work of Barth on Christology and soteriology, where Gunton is at his theologising best. Reading this book isn’t only an exercise in hearing a theological lecturer tell students about Barth.It’s to overhear and visually imagine a conversation between Gunton and Barth, complete with head nodding affirmation, raised eyebrows of surprise and quips of humour. But also to hear a significant number of corrective comments and courteous demurrals,the whole performance charged with intellectual energy, alive with restless but reverent curiosity. Thankfully Brazier hasn’t edited out Gunton’s lecturing mannerisms, and on page 145 he makes the statement-question of every good theological teacher, ‘You see…..you see’. Gunton, and Barth through Gunton, conducts theological education in the tradition of John the Evangelist – ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us…. and we beheld His glory’. You see?

    ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’ You see?

    The20incomparable20matterhorn I’ve read a number of books on Barth, the intellectual background and development of his theology, and each one with their own take on how best to tackle this theological Matterhorn. Von Balthasar, Berkouwer, Torrance, Webster, Busch, McCormack, Hunsinger, Dorrien – now if pushed to say which were the most helpful guides for me in my amateur mountaineering amongst the Dogmatics, they would be Busch’s The Great Passion, Webster’s Barth in the Outstanding Christian Thinkers series, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth. And now these distilled discourses of Colin Gunton, The Barth Lectures. But not because Gunton gives a definitive interpretation, or a comprehensive survey – he does neither.From the others I learned a lot about Barth – but it is just as important to learn what Barth was about. These lectures demonstrate how to engage with Barth, to use him as a massive presence to be tackled because he is there, and then to start climbing.

    The Introduction by Stephen Holmes is an affectionately respectful eulogy, honest about the limitations both of the book’s form and content, but enthusiastic about the book’s value. This, together with Christoph Schwobel’s Foreword, enables two of Gunton’s friends to offer some evaluation not only of this volume, but of the theological impact of Gunton’s teaching – perhaps best gauged by those, like these two, who learned from Colin Gunton a lifelong commitment to doing theology, and doing it well, because ‘as to the Lord’, which indeed it is!

    I always carefully choose the book that will accompany me through Advent – this year I think I’m going to let Gunton guide me through Church Dogmatics 59.1 ‘The Way of the Son into the Far Country’. Then during Lent and towards Easter, perhaps he can take me further through 59.2 and 59.3. and the meaning of ‘The Obedience of the Son of God’.

  • Great Theologians Anselm 2. Grammar, Prayer and Beauty

    51acv3t3ral__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5 You wouldn’t think being an expert in grammar was essential for a theologian. And you might be right. Anselm was the author of De Grammatico, a highly technical and all but unreadable grammar handbook – yet he was also the author of some of the most beautifully crafted Prayers and Meditations in the entire Christian tradition. Anselm held ‘an understanding of reality that is based on the conviction that the harmony and unity, the beauty and fittingness that is part of God’s being have been imprinted on creation’. Harmony, unity, beauty and fittingness – grammar provides the framework within which words are brought into those kinds of relations, and so words become sacraments of grace revealed.

    173_large_2  For Anselm, words are conduits of meaning and conductors of human thought, to be brought into relation with each other to express what we perceive to be reality, truth and significance. It stands to reason that when addressing the Creator and Redeemer, the fons et origo of all beauty, harmony, unity and fittingness, that words be used with a precise care for their order, setting and fittingness. The honour, majesty, glory and beauty of God should be reflected in prayers where syntax, vocabulary and grammar become artistic disciplines combining creativity and precision. It is one of the fascinating and illuminating aspects of Hogg’s book that he understands the importance of aesthetics for Anselm; there is a discernible correspondence between the creation and the Creator, between the transcendent beauty of God and human appreciation for beauty, symmetry, harmony, and unity. Hogg’s exposition of the Prayers and Meditations is full of interest as he demonstrates how Anselm carefully chiselled and crafted words, then selected and set them, till they were words worthy and capable of God talk.

    In the theology of Anselm, whether in his major writings on the incarnation and atonement, as in Cur Deus Homo?, or in his Prayers and Meditations, or in his more philosophical works like De Veritate, the ideas of beauty, harmony and fittingness are pervasive. For Anselm the work of God in Christ the God Man, intends the recovery of a distorted, disfigured and disjointed creation to a renewed harmony, beauty and unity in Christ. Each chapter of this demanding but rewarding treatment has been a learning experience – for once Anselm is appreciated with criticism that is both praise and appraisal. And I’ve learned much about his context, his purposes as a monk-theologian, and some of the inner dynamics of his theology that explain why his views on the atonement still excite informed, and uninformed, discussion today.

    So Hogg’s whole approach to Anselm is quite different from many other, perhaps unfairly familiar portrayals of Anselm, as an arid, cerebral, philosophically abstract thinker fixated on medieval feudal and legalistic categories. Hogg’s book is a determined and erudite defence of Anselm’s entire theological corpus, as deserving a more appreciative and contextual reading than most give him.

    Two observations. Amongst the many things I learned in this rich book, were words what I needed the dictionary for to understand! Word like perennated, neoterized, perlustration, indagating – maybe Hogg was enacting Anslem’s passion for words and grammar in his own writing. Second, this book is written by a fine scholar of medieval culture and theology, whose perceptive sympathy and extensive learning expose unfair caricatures of Anselm’s Catholic theology, and he teaches in North Carolina at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary – as a Baptist who worries about our tradition’s narrower tendencies, I find such theological fair-mindedness about the great Christian tradition, surprisingly reassuring.

    Here is Hogg in one of many quite splendid paragraphs that place Anselm in an altogether different light, and show why this book is significant theology in its own right. He is arguing that in Christ dwells ‘the fullness of creation and creator, the immanent and the transcendent, the finite and the infinite, and paradoxically, beauty and ugliness’. Exposing the nerve centre of Anselmic theology, and the underlying thesis that Anselm’s theology is an aesthetic theology, a theology of beauty, Hogg goes on:

    How strange that he who is supreme beauty and who communicates that beauty to all creation should become buffeted and scourged, pierced and punctured, made to drink bitter tears and endure scoffing from those who never wept; yet how glorious that although Christ was handed over to die He became the power to overcome death, and that through the loss of his life others may gain theirs. In the last analysis, then, what appears to be Christ’s defeat in disproportionate suffering and discordant mocking is actually the very means by which ‘the world is renewed and made beautiful by truth’. Even the moment of supreme disfigurement is, from a divine perspective, transformed into an act effecting unparallelled beauty. (page 15)

  • Call to Conversion

    Just finsishing a paper on Evangelical Spirituality for Edinburgh Diocese tomorrow night. Got me thinking again about what it means to be converted! I was converted on April 16, 1967 – like George Whitefield I can still see the place, and recall the exact time. I have, however, been converted many times since, and always by that same grace of God that found me that night. Here’s Jim Wallis on conversion, which he argues (rightly as I see it), is not only a personal event or process of turning, but also that constant turning that is part of our faithfully following the One who goes ahead and doesn’t always walk in a straight line.

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    Wallis We are called to respond to God always in the particulars of our own personal, social and political circumstances…As such, conversion will be a scandal to accepted wisdoms, status quos, and oppressive arrangements. Looking back at biblical, saintly conversions they can appear romantic. But in the present, conversion is more of a promise of all that might be; it is also a threat to all that is. To the guardians of the social order, genuine biblical conversion will seem dangerous…there are no neutral zones or areas of life left untouched by biblical conversion. (Call to Conversion, Lion, 1981, page 6)

    Where the Kingdom of God collides with all the other status quos, that is precisely the point where conversion and witness to the One who called us, coalesce in response to God. Mission is our response to the divine commission. As John Stott put it, avoiding that pietistic, devotional self-centredness that wants to privatise faith, "Love for God is not an emotional experience but a moral obedience". Conversion is just that – the regeneration of moral life, through a renewed will, inspired by revived religious affections, and turned outwards in a passionate following of Jesus in the service of the Kingdom of God – which, as Jim Wallis so consistently witnesses, calls all status quos into question.

  • A holding cross

    Cross This morning Stuart gave me a gift of a holding cross. For which thanks and appreciation both for the gift and what informs it. Wood is one of my favourite materials, though funnily enough I’ve never been very good at making things with wood. But I love its touch, its warmth, the flow and contours of the grain, the varieties of colour, tone and texture. One of my treasured possessions is a hand tooled beech wood bowl from the children and staff of Beechwood School in Aberdeen, a place where some of my most hilarious, holy and hilariously holy moments were enjoyed. Another is the Victorian Oak picture frame that holds one of my own designed tapestries of a stained glass window – think I’ll blog on it when I get a decent photo of it. So now to add to these, and other wooden artefacts (like Victorian hand carved book-ends in the shape of two parrotts), I have a holding cross.

    The leaflet that comes with it has several prayers and readings. But nowadays when I think of the cross, and search for words that are anywhere near adequate, my inner default takes me to James Denney

    When we look at Christ crucified and risen, the revelation of God it makes to us is this; God is redeeming love, in power of omnipotence; or God is omnipotent power in the service of redeeming love.

  • Evangelism as benevolent barrage?

    Aehrenleserinnen_hi John Stackhouse is one of the most stimulating and clear-thinking theologians writing on mission, culture and evangelical theology. His recent article in Books and Culture says important things about gospel faithfulness, cultural relevance, legitimate and effective innovation, and intellectual and theological humility. He is reflecting on what needs to be learned, and unlearned, by a church seeking to embody the call of Christ responsibly and with gospel integrity. The whole article can be read here.

    I’ve quoted the last couple of paragraphs because (for me) they confirm my own underlying uneasiness at the increasing dependence on programme, technique,and ‘resourced mission’ where the resources seem increasingly dependent on human agency. Evangelistic fervour channelled into pragmatically driven activity and missional aspirations which sound more dependent on human energy than the divine work of the Holy Spirit invading and converting, calling and transforming, can easily replace that humble recognition that when allis said and done( by us), there is more to be said and done (by God). This is not to minimise the church’s missional imperative – it is to remind ourselves that it is God’s mission, in which we are invited to share – and the resources are God’s too, which we are invited to offer.

    We have to unlearn, however, our tendency to rely on technical skill and relentless pressure, as if we can manufacture conversions by dint of expertise and enthusiasm. We especially have to discard the dangerous dictum, "Pray as if it all depended upon God, and work as if it all depended on you." That is simply nonsense—or, much worse, a recipe for arrogance, burnout, frustration, and finally hatred of both missions and the neighbors we are supposed to love when they do not yield to our benevolent barrage.

    Conversion is the hardest work in the world, since fundamentally it means to change someone’s loves. (Have you ever tried to change your child’s values? Have you ever tried to change your own?) Such change is literally a miracle of transformation each time, and thus the special province of the Holy Spirit. Yes, let us marshal all the tools and skills and energy we can, but let us use them not anxiously nor proudly, but in the humble confidence that comes from doing God’s work in league with God’s Spirit, under his direction and in his own good time, in his truly global mission.

  • Dry and Boring Evangelical Theology

    Andy Goodliff, on July 3, has been ‘fessing up to all kinds of virtues and vices. He says, with honest courage and reckless integrity,  ‘I confess: I find ‘evangelical theology’ dry and boring’.

    Right. But that raised for me the problems of definition – All evangelical theology? This isn’t only a (good natured) response to Andy, but my way of agreeing with most of what Andy means, and suggesting a little less generality and a little more generosity!

    1. Now if what is meant is evangelical popularist, best-selling pragmatic, self-therapeutic, feel-good theology that rewards me with what I want, rather than transforming desire and revolutionising motives, then I find it both dry and boring, and not very evangelical anyway.
    2. If what is meant is chronic evangelical defensiveness, pedantic appeals to recognisable evangelical shibboleths, nostalgic attachment to sound and orthodox formulations that used to cut it, and these accompanied by a lust for excommunicating those who don’t say the words, sign the statements, toe the line, then I find this boring but also unfaithful to a gospel that is a cataract of grace thundering down on these little buckets held under Niagara.
    3. If what is meant is that kind of theology, which when published by certain publishers, becomes predictably safe, the content edited and shaped to conform to the brand name, a theology without surprises, eschewing innovative thought and nervous of its constituency approval, then, yes, boring and dry, and in danger of fossilising.
    4. If what is meant is a way of doing theology that is either a monologue amongst the like-minded, or a polemical  hostility to those whose experience, insight, and living out of the Christian Gospel is different, then I find these dry and boring; but also lacking the open intellectual curiosity and spiritual humility and adventurous integrity that should be possible for those who look on the world as created, fallen, redeemed and translucent of sovereign purposive grace revealed as redemptive self-giving love, and thus instilled with hope.

    So – evangelical theology dry and boring. A matter of definition. Was Colin Gunton a non-evangelical? Or Stan Grenz? Or Donald Bloesch? Or Helmut Thielicke? Or T. F. Torrance? I would count them in – and so I suspect would Andy…which suggests to me that sometimes confessions need to be more specific…which of course makes them more interesting. So WHICH EVANGELICAL’S theological peregrinations are dry and boring? Now I can think of a whole raft of names to insert in the four clarifications noted above….but prudence constrains. Would be an interesting list to compile though???

    Or in order to avoid chronological snobbery, what about those Evangelicals of previous generations – and here I get a wee bit self-defensive – P. T. Forsyth and James Denney, Wesley’s hymns and Jonathan Edwards best Sermons. Four of my personal pantheon – but of course at least two of them would be disenfranchised by those who want to be guardians of their brand of Evangelical theology – and excluding them would make Evangelical theology significantly drier and boringer!

  • The Paraclete as Community Theologian

    This is the last reflection for now in the community theologian conversation. I want to gather this thinking together and see if it can be formed into a viable model worth developing. I admit today’s reflection may seem a bit obtuse – but it is out-loud thinking not yet as clear as I’d like. But I think the underlying idea is at least to be considered;

    that the Paraclete mirrors a form of theological ministry of interpreting Jesus to which the Christian community is called to respond.

    Spiritpicasso18_2 Amongst the community of Jesus the theological interpreter par excellence is the Spirit of Truth, the Counsellor, the Paraclete.  So John 16 8-15 is a seminal passage for any Christian community that takes seriously the reality and activity of God the Spirit, in the church, throughout the world. In John’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit – the Counsellor and Comforter- is the community theologian. Indwelling the Christian community is the Paraclete, none other than the interpreter of Jesus, and the critic of the world that crucified him. As the Spirit of truth, negative judgement is passed on the hostility of the world to the name and the way of Jesus; as the Spirit of truth positive affirmation is given in guiding Jesus followers into the things of Jesus, and enabling Jesus’ disciples to faithfully witness to the reality of the crucified, risen Christ.

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    I don’t want to push this too far – but I do wonder if the role of community theologians is, to even a small extent, to be called to be a paraclete with a very small p – one who listens to the coalescing voices of world, culture and society and detects the latent inevitable discord of values, convictions and commitments, between church and world. At the same time the community theologian as paraclete (very small p again) seeks to lead and guide along the way of truth to the mystery of the One who is the Truth, Jesus – by hearing Scripture, seeking to discern God’s voice amongst the voices, nurturing the faith and vision of those whose life intent is following after Christ.

    152956604_ce1b5c69a7_m Community theologians will not therefore glorify themselves but bear witness to Jesus, and seek to discover in the life of the community, the living reality of Christ, revealed in Scripture, experienced in transformed lives, encountered as holy personality and demanding gracious presence – community theologians, as paraclete, point towards and lead into, the truth of Jesus.

    So the paraclete bears witness to sin, justice and judgement – and to the One who overcomes sin, establishes justice and is Himself the judgement of the world’s fallen-ness, brokenness and incipient hostility to all that Jesus represents. Two foci then – world and Jesus; two spiritual claimants – one hostile to truth, light and life, the other the bringer and protector of truth light and life, such that He personifies truth, contains the true light, and gives life abundant.

    .

    And therefore two spheres within which we live our lives, in the daily dialectic of pulling loyalties, obedience worked out in the often painful, always stretching tension, of being a follower of Jesus in a world that doesn’t recognise, acknowledge or love him. Community theologians take seriously these unaccommodating contrasts of living in the world and living for Jesus; and every community of Christian theologians must learn to live with both the discomfort of unresolved tension, and the assurance that such tension is a sign of spiritual vitality, moral alertness and determined faithfulness.

  • Theological hospitality

    Acciwsunset_2 Along with systematic theology applied to pastoral purpose, history of the Christian tradition as revealed in the diversity of Christian traditions, is a major area of personal and academic research. I dislike theological culture wars where our personal interests, predispositions, prejudices, intellectual tastes are used to disenfranchise other theological styles, approaches and disciplines. You know the kind of thing.

    Systematic theology is hopelessly cerebral and abstractly conceptual and with no meaningful reference point to the REAL world. (So some practical theologians).

    Practical theology is intellectually soft, inherently pragamtic, and so relativised by context that it has little conceptual constancy other than praxis. (So some systematic theologians).

    Historical theology is (this is my daughter’s good natured take on my previous work on James Denney), studying theology written by some bloke that’s deid!

    I believe in theology – pretty well all of it. I don’t believe everything theologians write – who does? I don’t enjoy every kind of theological writing, how could you? I can’t keep up with the cataract of theological publishing as I stand beneath the waterfall, but who said I have to drink it all – just paddle, shower or swim in it!

    At its worst theology can fall into several categories: needlessly obscure, pretentiously complex, dangerously reductionist, comically naive, worryingly dogmatic, smugly exclusive, intentionally controlling, culpably ill-informed – feel free to add to the crime list.

    At its best theology can be impressively relevant, community defining, spiritually creative, healingly illuminating, inconveniently disturbing, satisfyingly or frustratingly provisional, lifestyle transforming, …add to this list too.

    The Congregational Puritan Thomas Goodwin wrote important words about theological hospitality:

    As for my part, this I say, and I say it with much integrity, I never yet took up party religion in the lump. For I have found by a long trial of such matters that there is some truth on all sides. I have found Gospel holiness where you would little think it to be, and so likewise truth. And I have learned this principle, which I hope I shall never lay down till I am swallowed up of immortanlity, and that is, to acknowledge every truth and every goodness wherever I find it.

    I’ve tried to live out that spirit of humble acknowledgement by trying not to restrict my own theological interests by not allowing qualifying adjectives in front of the word theology, to become exclusive claims to what ‘real’ theology is about. Which brings me to my long time conversation with Wesleyan theology in its various Methodist guises, and my interest in the rich legitimate diversity of the Christian spiritual traditions.

    511exkgk4hl__aa240_ David Hempton’s book Methodism. Empire of the Spirit, is not a self-consciously apologetic denominational history. It is a history of one Christian tradition; it is an analysis of rise and decline, of the search for identity and growth in diversity, of the theological style and social significance of a global Christian tradition. Later in this sentence I’m using the word "emerge" in its contemporary loaded sense,- Hempton’s account exposes the importance of social context, adaptability and marketing know-how that enables a new movement to emerge, take root and flourish. But he also shows how such movements in turn accomodate, institutionalise, and zeal and newness fade as revival gives way to routine. Which raises an important historical question – In the early days of the revival, were we seeing the eighteenth century equivalent of emerging church? Yes….and no. More of this anon.

    By the way – the photo at the start of this post is Aberdeen city – notice the protruding spires – I can recognise at least four denominations – and I knew as friends those who ministered there in the 80’s and 90’s. Theologically hospitable – as Thomas Goodwin might have said, ‘Way to go’.