“The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were—the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them.”

― John Calvin, Commentary on Psalms, Volume 5.

 

It's Monday morning, and I guess not many beyond certain constricted Christian circles will think a quotation from the severely stern Genevan Reformer John Calvin is a good way of starting the week well. Beyond the church the name of Calvin is more likely to be part of the brand names Calvin Klein, or Calvin and Hobbes when you put it in an Amazon or Google search without a filter.

So far this summer has been a joyous time with my camera when we've been out walking. I happen to subscribe to Calvin's idea of the world as a theatre of God's goodness. But that's probably because I also see something profoundly mysterious in the beauty, resilience, connectedness, adaptability, fragility, diversity, fecundity and recurring source of wonder that is the world in which I live. 

Late in life I look back to those beginnings when for the first 15 years I lived on farms where my dad was in charge of the dairy herd. In the 1950's and 1960's in South West Scotland, at times more than three miles from a village or town, it felt I became part of a landscape, placed in a living environment where I could flourish. A place where the burns were well populated by minnows, trout and 'beardies'; where post war trees were planted and were now young forests filled with all kinds of birds; where fields were made noisy by peewits, curlews, snipe and skylarks; where there were hills that took an hour or two to climb, small deep lochans with water hen, coot, mallard, grebe and sometimes swans; and where I became familiar with a variety of small birds that has long since been reduced to levels of scarcity that now tests the resilience of species to survive.

In any summer we would see swallows, house and sand martins, swifts, greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, yellow-hammer, pied and yellow wagtail, house sparrows, hedge sparrows, starlings in huge numbers, and the sound if not often the sight of the cuckoo. Around the farm in those early years Clydesdale horses, cows of various breeds, several working dogs, and any amount of fields to trek, trees to climb. burns to trace for miles to source, and levels of freedom I've never known since.

I mention all of that as the context and environment in which I grew up. Later, the idea of the world around me as a created masterpiece was never a theological problem issue for me. I've always found the world a source of wondering curiosity, a stimulus to joy understood as contentment, at-homeness, a sense of fitting in and belonging alongside whatever else lives around me.

So Calvin's idea of the world as the theatre of God's goodness resonates with much of who I am and have become. I've little interest in trying to prove the existence of the Creator, or defending a particular theory of creation. The biblical accounts at the beginning of Genesis are both wonderful texts, and texts intended to evoke both wonder and gratitude. For myself, a walk in a wood is an exercise in both wonder and gratitude. With eyes open and ears attuned, in the theatre of God's goodness you can hear the orchestration, see the stage with the curtains pulled back, and watch countless performances of swan and cygnet, yellow-hammer and Ringlet butterfly.

Then there is the garden, where we get the chance to plot and plan our own small theatre, and direct our own home made performances with roses and geraniums, livingstone daisies and clematis, hydrangea and heathers.

Of course you can be closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth. But the 'anywhere else on earth' is the essential background and justification for any garden. Alongside the sense of the natural world as gift, there is the responsibility to care for and cherish this living environment on which our lives depend.

I'm intrigued at the popularity of Eleanor Farejohn's poem, 'Morning has Broken', originally written to celebrate her local village, Alfriston, in East Sussex. Cat Stevens (now Yusuf) turned it into a hymn to both creation and Creator. In the past year or two it has been sung at weddings and funerals in which I've shared – and seemed entirely appropriate at both. I have a feeling the hard to please John Calvin, would have been reasonably satisfied with such a simple Psalm-like piece of praise, and the sheer enjoyment of a world coming awake with life, energy and wonder. Calvin and Cat Stevens – a good Monday combination! 

"There dwells Christ in both his natures, the human and the divine, sitting on the same throne with the Father. And there dwells the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of divine love, in whom the very essence of God, as it were, flows out, and is breathed forth in love, and by whose immediate influence all holy love is shed abroad in the hearts of all the saints on earth and in heaven.

There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love — this eternal Three in One — is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows forever. There this glorious God is manifested, and shines forth, in full glory, in beams of love.

And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!"

At a difficult time in my life, and in the church where I was pastor, I discovered there is a balm in Gilead. By which I mean I found someone who opened up and interpreted with honesty and passion and razor sharp learning, those ancient documents which we call the Old Testament. And he did so in ways that helped me understand and respond to life situations with a faith more honest and less insecure. Walter Brueggemann is someone to whom thousands of pastors and Christ-followers owe the same debt of being helped to find a faith that is resilient, faithful, utterly honest before God, and not spooked by the angularity and strangeness of Old Testament faith and theology.

I know perfectly well that "There is a balm in Gilead" is an African American spiritual, and the balm is applied by the Great Physician, Jesus. The song has a Christological focus, and is amongst the most beautiful works of devotional solace ever sung. If you need convincing, listen to this link with Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqlDbqKaFks   The words come from Jeremiah, and they answer one of the most poignant questions in the whole blessed Bible:"Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? (Jeremiah 8.)

Such questioning sorrow, and struggle of faith, such protest and supplication, seeks a theology robust enough to sustain and inspire the imagination that kindles hope. "Hopeful Imagination" is one of the great gifts Walter Brueggemann unwraps and displays for those who read and wrestle with him. With its companion volume Prophetic Imagination, the theme runs like a platinum thread through Brueggeman's entire opus. Ever since reading those two books, Prophetic Imagination and Hopeful Imagination, I have read, pondered, argued with, been thankful to God for, and been led to pray by the sentences and books of Walter Brueggemann. He is not the only writer to have decisively shaped my faith, but he is uniquely the scholar who has given a thorough education in the persuasive power of a faith without pretence, with open eyes, and with a capacity for hope rooted and grounded in the faithful mercy of God. 

Back to my own first encounters with this then little known Old Testament Professor from some place called Eden Theological Seminary.After being in Baptist ministry for a few years, various life events and more than one quite intractable difficulty began to take their toll on health, spirituality and capacity for good work. As with many of life's problems I tend to try thinking my way through them, around them, seeking both understanding and an inner resolution that, by God's grace and Spirit, makes it possible to live into and then beyond them. The person who has helped me to do that for the past 40 and more years is Walter Brueggemann.

I mention all of this simply because Walter Brueggemann is now 90, and I've passed the biblical entitlement of years myself! So I'm revisiting one or two of those early books, and discovering that Brueggemann's take on God and suffering, 'hesed' and faith as hopeful imagination, Psalms as the faithful believer's playbook and prayer book, – those exegetical stepping stones that help us cross the Jordans that seem uncrossable – they still convince, persuade, reaffirm, and unsettle in a creatively reassuring way. 

The treatment of Genesis 1-3 in his commentary is a rich exposition of what the text is about in telling what God was and is about in creating. This isn't science or history, it is proclamation of God as Creator and creation as that to which God binds himself in a covenant of love, mercy and purposes of goodness leading to life. This is a third read of those 50 pages and I'm not sure I know of a more succinct and theologically sensitive exposition of the doctrine of Creation. These 50 pages would make a brilliant slim paperback with a title like "Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed." 

Oh I know other interpretations of Genesis are available – from Gordon Wenham to Terence Fretheim, from Gerhard von Rad to John Goldingay, and Claus Westermann to Derek Kidner (still a brilliant wee Tyndale commentary). But Brueggemann's Genesis was one of the places I found theological reassurance when life was falling in.

He wrote things like:

[In Genesis 1-3] the news is that God and God's creation are bound in a relation that is assured but at the same time is delicate and precarious." (p.27) 

Or this:

"As a result, our entire world can be received and celebrated as a dimension of God's graceful way with us." (p.27)

And again:

"Creator creates creation. The accent is finally on the subject. And the object must yield, not to force, but to faithful passion. Both the strange resistance of the world and the deep resolve of the creator, persist in the text." (p.20) 

Creation is God's love affair with all that is. The broken world is not left broken. Neither are our hopes and desires for life as God intends. The good news of Genesis is that Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer are words freighted with the eternal purposes and persistent mercies of God, culminating in the great unveiling of that loving purpose when "The Word became flesh and lived amongst us", when "God so loved the world that he gave his only son", and when "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself."

I'm not sure I could have written that paragraph exactly like that if I hadn't enrolled in Walter Brueggemann's distance learning class 40 years ago, and learning to read and ponder the stories that make up the story of "the strange resistance of the world and the deep resolve of the Creator."

This isn't your usual biography. It is neither a straightforward life narrative, nor a 360 degree study of all that helps the reader fully understand Tim Keller the man. It is an uncritical narrative of an intellectual and spiritual journey, and I think it leaves important questions unasked. Instead it is a study of the influences that shaped the thought, theology and practice of Keller, from early education right through to the last years of his life. In that sense it is an odd but enlightening combination of intellectual biography and evolving spirituality. 

I enjoyed reading this book, and over the years have come to respect Keller, despite disagreeing with some of the positions he has championed. And that's as it should be in the arena of theologically contested views about doctrine, ethics and ecclesial practices. But what becomes clear in progressing through the book is that Keller was a man of quite intentional intellectual integrity. In his ministry and public speaking he combined his theological convictions with a ministry of preaching and apologetic conversations engaging the surrounding culture – first in a small church in Rothwell, a post-industrial town in Virginia, then later in New York as a church planter of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

Keller adopted a Reformed theological position from early days at Seminary and never departed from those 'doctrines of grace' as exemplified in such figures as Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, C H Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd Jones, John Stott and R C Sproul. At the same time he was a voracious student of social and cultural studies, seeking insights and a way of both understanding and communicating with postmodern culture still tied to many of the assumptions of modernity.

That makes this book a fascinating study of how one Christian pastor went about evangelism, apologetics and mission. He did so by listening to and learning from the best cultural critics (Robert Bellah, Terry Eagleton, Charles Taylor, James Hunter), and then addressing the issues and questions they posed from the standpoint of a Reformed theology with a strong and high view of Scripture, a conversionist theology, a covenant understanding of the church as a community of redeemed but still grace-dependent sinners, and each of these convictions intersecting at the living hub and centre which for Keller was Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

The book is in four parts. Part 1 covers the first 22 years from 1950-72, in which Hansen describes Keller's high school and University education, his involvement with Inter varsity Christian fellowship, and meeting Kathy who would become his wife. The impact of C S Lewis and R C Sproul are described in some detail, as complementary influences which shaped Keller's approach as evangelist, apologist, preacher and later Christian public intellectual.

Part 2 goes deeper into the spiritual evolution given impetus by his time at the Conservative Evangelical seminary, Gordon-Conwell. There his teachers exemplified rigorous thinking, and in Roger Nicole one who personified the importance of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

Keller's well-known opposition to women in church leadership positions is grounded in the influence of Elizabeth Elliot; a full paragraph quotation from an Elliot class lecture is as uncompromisingly complementarian as any other passage I know. (p.77) Just as significantly, the influence of Roger Nicole schooled Keller in Reformed theology and neo-Calvinism (Kuyper and Bavinck) and Richard Lovelace opened up the rich seams of spirituality under the odd but freighted word "Pneumodynamics; by which is meant the Christian life energised and fuelled by the work of the Holy Spirit in the formation and vitalising of the Christian soul.

Part 3 gives an often moving account of Keller's first pastorate, his feelings of inadequacy, the search for his own preaching and pastoral voice. He encountered Edmund P Clowney, who became mentor, exemplar and a source of some of Keller's missional strategies and ecclesial vision. When Keller went to Westminster Seminary to teach he was pushed deeper into study of Reformed theology, and forced to find ways to communicate that faith effectively and persuasively. Increasingly Keller believed the Church and the individual Christian are called to be moulded by the Gospel of Christ, to embody and communicate the love of God without ever ignoring the sin that tested that love to Calvary. 

Part 4 covers 1989-2017. In these years all the tributaries of his education, pastoral experience, reading and study, the formative relationships with mentors and teachers, all began to flow together into a work that planted a church which grew from 5 to 5000, and which became one of the most effective centres of Christian witness in Manhattan and wider New York culture. By preaching the Gospel, explaining to skeptics and 'urban professionals', conversing with those who had questions, listening to the concerns and questions and hurts of contemporary life, Keller sought to create a church which would demonstrate, share and live joyfully and obediently the wonders of grace in creative and faithful ways. This section in particular I think is an impressive account of how one particular pastor worked out the best ways of sharing the Gospel in the city God had called him to love. 

I enjoyed this book, and have learned from it. The writer weaves Keller's life experience, education, pastoral and preaching life, study and reading, into a narrative that is less about Tim Keller and more a case study of how God takes the specific identity and particular gifts of one man, and asks for an obedience just as specific and particular. Keller never felt that what he was doing was a template for others, though the underlying principles of 'pneumodynamics', Christ centred church, covenant community committed to (acts of) mercy and the trusted grace of God in Christ ,mediated by the Holy Spirit.

The wider world of Christians from many traditions shared the sadness felt when news broke of Tim Keller's death a few weeks ago. It is good that this book has been written, and he was content to have it published with his blessing. Reading it is to our blessing. You don't have to agree with all that someone says to recognise authentic faith seeking understanding, and that same faith seeking words and gestures of redemption for others. Holidays are coming – this would be a stimulating, at times provocative, read for pastors wondering what on earth they are about!  

Philip Toynbee once commented that books were his royal way to God. This was late in life, in End of a Journey, the second volume of his Journal. The first volume, Part of a Journey, covers 1977-79, and is as honest and moving an account of spiritual search as I have read. In End of a Journey Toynbee knows he has a terminal illness and his spiritual search intensifies with deep reading in Julian of Norwich and other mystics. There is courage, openness and vulnerability 'in the face of life's great mysteries', as Toynbee reflects backwards on his life, and tries to understand its meaning, his own significance, and how best to face and navigate what is to come. I underlined that line of his, "Books are my royal road to God."

I am a kindred spirit, and recognised from quite early on in my own life, that books are an essential ingredient of my intellectual, emotional and imaginative health. By the time I had made a commitment to Christian faith, and soon after to a vocation as a Baptist minister, I too was finding that books are "a royal road to God." The right books at the right time open up avenues to theological understanding, identify and school our religious affections, and form and foster an all but sacramental relationship with words written to affirm, question, persuade, rebuke, or inspire, on this human journey from here to wherever. 

But this post is about one book bought yesterday in the Oxfam shop, and the train of thought it kicked off. As evident in the picture, the book is a nearly new copy on a subject that has been of constant interest to me since College days in the mid 1970's; New Testament Theology (NTT). Oh, first there was Bultmann's unsettling two volumes, which I was first compelled to read with a gulp of humility – Bultmann was usually dismissed by Evangelicals terrified by his unrelenting scepticism about the historicity of the Gospel documents, and hostile to Bultmann's infamour bogey word 'demythologising' – whether or not they had read him, or understood what Bultmann meant by it. But he was, and remains, unignorable.

Then came Hans Conzelmann's Outline of New Testament Theology, another tough read, though with scintillating passages that required re-reading and pointed to deeper realities, suggesting newer perspectives. Then, just as I was graduating out came W G Kummel's Theology of the New Testament. According to Its Major Witnesses. Jesus, Paul, and John. By then I was hooked and ever since have followed developments in NTT as a sub discipline in biblical studies. 

So when George Eldon Ladd published A Theology of the New Testament in 1975, with many other evangelicals I welcomed it and lapped it up. In revised form it remains in print and is still a standard in a field that in danger of being overpopulated, at times with volumes that are derivative, repetitive, and nothing like as exciting as some of those earlier books. 

Then came the major publication event when Paternoster started to issue the three volumes of The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (1975-78). These were sumptuously produced, edited by Colin Brown, widely and positively reviewed, and by many seen as a major alternative to Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. TDNT had come under serious critique from James Barr who questioned the basic methodology of 'word studies' which use semantic and lexical data to form (often erroneous) theological conclusions. NIDNTT was the first major reference theological dictionary to take on board Barr's critique, avoiding false equivalences between lexical data, linguistic usage and assumed theological concepts and conclusions. I still have those three volumes, monuments to past scholarship, much of the material still holding its own, but yes, now dated. The recent revision and expansion provides an improved resource for this generation – but I'm happy to hold on to these old friends.

I remember several conversations with Howard Marshall when he was writing his own New Testament Theology over 20 years ago. He too wrestled with how to deal with the unity of the New Testament message and the diversity of the writers and contexts out of which the New Testament documents came. By then we had Donald Guthrie's huge volume which worked on a synthesis of the NT writers and used a thematic structure akin to a systematic theology with slight adjustments.

The weakness of Guthrie's approach had already been exposed in another ground-breaking volume. J D G Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament had established beyond argument that such a synthesis flattened and muted the variations of context, content and occasion that gave each document its unique voice, emphasis and message. Indeed, out of Dunn's overarching thesis of unity in diversity, he edited a widely respected series of volumes covering the entire New Testament, titled Theology of the New Testament; but each volume had its own title, as for example, The Theology of Matthew, or Romans, or again, Revelation. This series too is being entirely replaced by a new series as scholarship takes new turns, and new approaches and disciplines require new wineskins.  

In the intervening 30 and more years, several other major contributions have been made, including that of Udo Schnelle, yes, he whose book I gladly brought home yesterday. Schnelle fully acknowledges the challenge of listening to the diversity of New Testament voices, while also listening carefully for the cantus firmus which holds them together in a single canonical composition. The result is a brilliant contribution to our understanding of the New Testament as symphony, or better a choral symphony, a complete work made up of different pieces, which is different from all the pieces, and performed by a diversity of voices. I read some of Schnelle a while ago (using a library copy) – I look forward to diving in again, and enjoying some time at the deeper end of NT scholarship.