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!