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Contemplative Theology

Contemplation far from being opposed to theology, is in fact the normal perfection of theology. We must not separate intellectual study of divinely revealed truth and contemplative experience of that truth as if they could never have anything to do with one another. On the contrary, they are simply two aspects of the same thing. Dogmatic and mystical theology – or theology and “spirituality”, are not to be set apart in mutually exclusive categories, as if mysticism were for saintly women and theological study were for practical, but alas, unsaintly men. This fallacious division perhaps explains much that is actually lacking both in theology and spirituality. But the two belong together. Unless they are unitied there is no fervour, no life and sporitual value in theology, no substance, no meaning and no sure orientation in the contemplative life.(T. Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 244-5)

This is Thomas Merton at his opinionated best. Making allowances for gender stereotypes, his take on theology and spirituality says the important things. Theology rooted in divinely revealed truth as experienced in personal encounter with the Divine, and spirituality as experience of God with substance, meaning and ‘sure orientation’. These are the guiding principles of one who was novice master for over a decade, charged with the formation of heart and mind towards study, work and devotion to God.

Again and again I have found Merton to be an honest, humane director of souls; his heightened awareness of his own needs, his habit of being too hard on himself, his struggle to be humble, his unmistakable love for God and desire for an authentic life of holiness and love, his instinct for the Presence of God discerned in the world, in other people, in the vacillations of his own heart – all of these are qualities of saintliness, the more attractive because he would have laughed at the idea of Merton the saint.

And rightly – for sanctity is not a destination now, but that to which we journey, in union with Christ; holiness is that which we seek, but it is grace and demand, free gift and grateful response, buth intoxicating invasion of joy and the lived out disciplined love for God and others in a life both cruciform and oriented by resurrection. Even then, we love because he first loved us, we are forgiven sinners learning to forgive, reconciled enemies learning the ways of peace, rescued runaways who have found our way home – or been found and brought home- only to be sent out to find others and bring them home too, new creatures in Christ living out of and towards the new creation.

10 July 2008
Welsh Baptists, Blackwell’s Oxford and Plum Tatin

My time with the English Speaking wing of the Baptist Union of
Wales at their annual Assembly was a great experience of cross fertilisation.
Ideas, new visions, evolving strategy, long perduring problems (why do we
insist on calling problems ‘challenges’, as if that made them easier to
solve!), tough decisions, balanced realism along with equally balanced
imaginative and hopeful faith – all these and many conversations with
ministers, church leaders and delegates.

My own ministry was warmly appreciated, something
that no amount of experience should ever take for granted. I’ve always found
such affirmation humbling, and important in supporting ministry by necessary
encouragement. For myself I greatly enjoyed developing some themes I’ve thought
about and wanted to preach.

The new President is Peter Dewi Richards whose
Presidential address was a crucial contribution in the life of English speaking
Welsh Baptists. Peter was for 15 years General Secretary and knows the
churches, the associations and many, many of the ministers and church leaders.
In his address he touched prophetically on such issues as the importance of
ever closer collaboration between the English and Welsh speaking Baptists; the
necessity for denominational distinctives to enrich and foster wider and more
generous ecumenical co-operation in a common bearing witness to Jesus and the
Gospel; and the Gospel imperative for Christians to be in conversation with
other faiths in a dialogue aimed at deeper more sympathetic understanding of
each other, and dialogue aimed at social and moral co-operation on matters of
national and global interest. The result was an address that spoke to Welsh
Baptist Experience locally, nationally and globally – and delivered with long
earned authority, unmistakable Gospel passion, and generosity of mind and heart
that was deeply moving to witness. I’ve never heard a better address to a
denominational assembly by a President, and it was a privilege to be there.

Following the Assembly we went over to the
vicinity of Oxford to share a
brief holiday with family who were in the area. This meant a visit to the place
where all Bibliophiles eventually come – Blackwell’s. Bought only three books –
two of them on my to get list anyway, the other a spur of the moment purchase
that now seems less must-have than it did before I paid for it. I’ll read it,
and say something about it – if it’s worth it! But much of the three days was spent in family conversation, hilarity and a determined effort to sample Tea Rooms and Pubs as places of refreshment and necessary replenishment. Thus Queens Tea Room in Stow on the Wold gets first vote for a superb, delicious, light gluten free double-decker Victoria sponge for one of our party that was devoured as very manna from heaven – I had the walnut and coffee cake accompanied by Cinnamon Chai tea – in the Cotswolds. The Swan is a pub by the riverside – only recently opened after flood damage that immersed the interior in 4 feet of local river – the only time in the history of a village dating back hundreds of years. The landlord a cheerful, philosophically inclined recently retired rock musician who reckoned the flood merely hastened the refurbishing process. The food was superb – apart from Cotswold Lamb done absolutely right, may I mention the open Plum Tatin with Pecan and Maple Ice cream – the plums caramelised with the blowtorch and scorched enough to make them bitter-sweet. One of those desserts you don’t want to finish and can’t wait to eat. .

9 July 2008
Evangelicalism, the Gospel, and Hopeful Imagination in Wales

As the sidebar shows I am reading around Puritanism as a movement at once pastoral, polemical and theological. The recently published Emeregence of Evangelicalism has the subtitle, Exploring Historical Continuities. It is a collection of essays which enter into critical and appreciative conversation with David Bebbington’s contention that Evangelicalism properly understood is the movement that began in the early 18th Century Awakenings, an argument supported by evidence shaped around the accompanying defining quadrilateral. Bebbington’s thesis is that biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism and activism, represent a cluster of defining characteristics which indicate Evangelicalism was something new in the 18th Century, related to but not continuous with such other movements as Puritanism, Reformed Scholasticism and Continental Pietism.

The question of assurance is a central and contentious theological debate, important in Bebbington’s case, where he argues that, for the 18th Century Evangelicals, the search for personal assurance of salvation came to its conclusion in the experience of conversion and regeneration which became itself evidence of salvation. The Enlightenment privileging of empirical experience as evidence rationally interpreted, can be detected in the use by Evangelicals of such words as ‘I feel’, and ‘I know’, with reference to personal spiritual encounter.

Following widespread adoption of Bebbington’s quadrilateral and its accompanying corollaries, his treatment and defintion of Evangelicalism has become a standard benchmark, broadly received by historians. But there are now other voices questioning whether the discontinuity between earlier movements and Eighteenth Century Evangelicalism are as clear cut and historically certain as Bebbington argues. Several important articles have appeared in recent years, and now this collection of essays throws the debate much more widely open. The resulting statement and restatement of continuities and discontinuities gathers a fascinating, at times persuasive, at other times frustrating chorus of voices. Part of the frustruation is that several of the essays accuse Bebbington of caricaturing earlier expressions of ‘evangelical’ faith, but come near to caricaturing the position they critique. The fascination comes from many of the essays which undoubtedly raise important questions which require at least a re-alignment of emphases, or a redrawing of the chronology of developments and features.

The response chapter written by David Bebbington is characteristically gracious, and acknowledges the validity of some criticisms, agrees certain emphases need restating, but overall holds to the general proposal that Evangelicalism was something new in the 1730’s, but with strong historical continuities with Puritanism and Pietism, that it was strongly influenced by Enlightenment categories, and that it has a remarkable capacity for reflecting and adapting to, the cultural moods of the age, whether the age of Reason, Romanticism or Modernity – and now post-modernity?. In any case, Evangelical historiography is alive and well, and is an essential source of inspiration and education for contemporary Evangelicalism which is in danger of losing continuity with its own historical precedents and values.

This weekend I’m looking forward to being with the Baptist Union of Wales at their Annual Assembly in Carmarthen. I have the great privilege of being invited to be the keynote speaker for the Assembly on the theme ‘Hopeful Imagination’. Readers of this blog will recognise the name of a blog hosted by Andy Goodliff; the phrase is from one of Walter Brueggemann’s earlier books on the exilic prophets. There he introduces hopeful imagination as the faith stance of those who, with ‘the God who makes all things new’ on their cognitive horizons, imagine a different world into being, by giving themselves to serve the new actions and purposes of God in their generation. Here are his words from 1985:

These new actions of God were discernable and spoken precisely by these persons with their enormous prophetic imagination. These poets not only discerned the new actions of God that others did not discern, but they wrought the new actions of God by the power of their imagination, their tongues their words. New poetic imagination evoked new realities in the community.

It may be that preaching today (is it nearly a quarter of a century later?) requires this kind of proclamatory conversation, enabling the community of Christ to discern the new actions of God, and with prophetic imagination, to enter into the new work of God as agents of His kingdom, as witnesses of the Gospel of Christ and as those who confront the growing pessimism and cynicism of a culture afraid of its own dissolution. Hopeful imagination is bold enough to conceive of a different future.

2 July 2008
Antoine de Saint Exupery, The Little Prince, and living responsibly

I still remember doing Higher French at night school, following an early exit from secondary education, being relieved at passing it and hoping I’d never have to do French language again. But the Scottish MA requires a modern language component, so I did French Studies, which opened up a world I still explore off and on thirty-odd years on. The course included

French History from the Revolution to the present including the troubled history of the Republics, Algerian independence, failed policies in Indo China, De Gaulle and the early days of the Common Market

French Literature, in French and English translation- this was where I first read Camus – in French but cheated by reading The Plague (La Peste) also in English, because I wanted the story quicker than I could read French

French Current Affairs accessed through Le Monde on the contents of which we had several memorably embarrassing tutorials as we were asked to translate in front of les autres

We also spent time with French 20th century philosophy (mainly Existentialism) including Sartre, Camus and the writer I go back to again and again, Saint Exupery.

I still remember the first time I read Saint Exupery on flying, the desert, and the way that the courage and discipline of risk-taking is an important element of what it means to be a human being fully alive. Wind, Sand and Stars is a beautiful prose poem of human behaviour observed by one for whom the role of spectator was impossible – few writers understood and celebrated the human imperatives of action and engagement with the physical elements of existence with the passionate perception of this pilot who wrote sublime prose.

But the Saint Exupery book that I’ve read most often is Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). This fable, tale, parable, story – it defies pinning down definitions – can be read slowly in half an evening, and it opens the mind and heart every time, for me. Some of the clearest observations about the meaning of life, what’s important, what is foolish, and what is absurdly grown-up, are contained in the dialogues between the Little Prince and the pilot stranded in the desert.

“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere underneath there is a well.”

“One sees only with the heart, the essential is invisible to the eye.”

And from The Wisdom of the Sands, “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.”

Not sure how many copies of the Little Prince I’ve bought. My first copy cost £1.25. My current aging one £2.50. The smaller one bought yesterday for a friend who will appreciate the wisdom and vision of the book cost £5.99. More than most, this is a work of art, and if French Studies had given me nothing more than an introduction to this clear-sighted French existentialist reconnaissance pilot who was able to offer a philosophy of human existence rooted in responsibility to and for the other, then it was worth all those hours and hours, working with that French dictionary, and the Larousse Illustre, and those hilarious tutorials reading Le Monde with a French tutor whose sense of humour enabled her to survive spoken French mangled by a raw and unrefined Lanarkshire accent!

1 July 2008
Self Indulgence is OK occasionally

You take two modest sized fair trade bananas and place them in a dry covered pan, skins on. Five minutes gently griddled and the bananas are warm but not cooked. Meanwhile chop almond, hazel and brazil nuts into big chunks and put them in another wee saucepan to gently roast them, and then add a generous helping of maple syrup (a gift from New England friends over for a visit) and turn off the heat.

Nice long desert dish and place a peeled warm banana on each side, a not small scoop of ice cream in between, and then pour over the roasted nuts and maple syrup, and sprinkle with cinnamon.

No idea what it’s called cos it came out of my head – but as preparation for the Euro-Final I had two portions of fruit, some sugar, carbohydrate and protein. Balanced diet, balanced indulgence, eh?

29 June 2008
Zimbabwe, Mugabe, Politics and Prayer
Like most other folk who hope for a world where everybody gets a decent life chance, I’ve watched the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorate in a process of unravelling from corrupt oppression, through violent intimidation, to what is now a tangled mess of human misery, fear and suffering, and the very real possibility that Mugabe is there to stay for the foreseeable future. My emotional responses move from visceral outrage, to impotent rage to headshaking disbelief at the lack of international machinery capable of removing such a brutal threat to the lives and wellbeing of an entire nation.

Discussions, arguments, negotiations, opinions, resolutions, – there is a very real danger in our world when there is no international forum capable of withstanding the defiance and violence of those who seize power and use it against their own people. The United Nations once again presents as an instituiton so administratively cumbersome, so politically timid, so addicted to rhetoric, so crippled by the impossible expectation that it can perform balancing acts capable of meeting the vested interests of the key actors, that it has been marginalised in a process that has gone on now for years. And the South African President who has favoured quiet background diplomacy is now identified with an election that wasn’t only dishonest, a sham and a mockery of the people of Zimbabwe, but an election which has also become a dangerous focus of polarised enmities and intimdiation. Neighbouring states and African para-national organistations will have their own reasons for non-intervention – but whatever else those reasons are, it is hard to consider them humanitarian or motivated by any balancing concern for political and social justice.

I’ve never pretended that this blog is a place of political expertise, and on serious matters it is more important to be wise than clever, reticent than outspoken.The contemporary political complexities of Africa are so tied up with colonial history, imperial legacies, economic inequities, tribal hostilities and nationalist and political ideologies, that it is is hard to see past them to the human tragedy of a continent rich in resources, so vibrant with human life in its diversity and possibility. So I’m not looking for, becuase I’m not sure if they are there to be found, quick, painless or even painful solutions.

But as a Christian theologian I am not prepared to back off as if the Gospel of Jesus Christ has no relevance, as if our calling as ministers of reconciliation has no practical purchase in such an unreconciled world, and as if our bearing witness to Jesus as the one in whom the Kingdom has, is and will come, was and is merely wishful thinking. So I am spending a while today thinking about Zimbabwe; wondering what crucifixion and resurrection, love and reconciliation, mercy and judgement, as revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, might lead me to conclude and to pray –
- for the people of Zimbabwe
- for Robert Mugabe
- for the United Nations
- for Africa and its future
I invite you to join your voice with all those praying for justice, peace and reconciliation.

Update

Just watched the Andrew Marr show and heard Desmond Tutu followed by John Sentamu. Two Anglican church leaders, with deep, deep roots in Africa, speaking truth to power and doing so as those with moral authority. Their right to speak on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe, and the influence their words have, give further strength to the international community. Off to church now, to pray and imagine a hopeful future for those who live in fear and despair.
29 June 2008
Speaking truth to twaddle

Browsing through the recent issues of First Things (The March 2008 Issue), I came across this interestingly no nonsense observation on what the Lord requires of us today:

It’s always an encouragement to see a bishop speak truth to twaddle.
The National Catholic Council for Hispanic Ministry chose as the theme
for its meeting in San Antonio “Paradigmatic Changes in Hispanic
Ministry.” The archbishop of that fair city, Jose Gomez, said in his
address to the council, “The Scriptures don’t talk much about paradigm
change. Instead, the Bible talks about kairos—the time of
decision. . . . . The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only real paradigm
that matters. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom is at hand. The
decision each of us has to make every day is this: Will we repent and
believe? Will we continue our daily conversion to Christ? Will we try
every day to more and more conform our lives to Christ and to his
teaching?”

I couldn’t say it better.

28 June 2008
Still Living Wittily – The 500th Post

When I started blogging it was an experiment in thinking, writing and conversation all in one. I do some of my best thinking with a pencil, pen or keyboard – in any case through writing. This isn’t for everyone, and plenty of folk think better than I do without all the in between stuff. But writing involves a process of word selection, sentence construction, self-expression through the discipline of articulation, and is an important way in which I theologise, ruminate, laugh at myself, pin down experience long enough to have a better look at it.When this is done with a pencil, pen, paper in the absence of a keyboard, it’s also a way of making sure at least some of the significant stuff that flows through my stream of consciousness doesn’t float away unobserved, unregarded and unappreciated.

A number of folk comment either on the blog or by email – and some who know me pick up conversation around the themes and idiosyncracies of Living Wittily. I’d never put myself in the same universe of spirituality, theological fervour, lucid expression or obsessive writing as Richard Baxter – but he said of his own humungous output, ‘I was but a pen in God’s hand’. My own claim is that ‘I am but two index fingers prodding a keyboard, to my heart’s content’; whatever blessing it might otherwise produce for those who happen by Living Wittily is just another reason to prod on. The portrait of Thomas More links to the words at the head of my blog page, because I am still persuaded that living faithfully for Christ, thinking Christianly and looking on the world with a sense of the purposefulness and mercy of God, requires of us that we “look humanely forth on human life”, and recognise that we are called to “serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds”. Christian wisdom might be another term for such intentional effort to know, to understand, and to live faithfully after Christ.

27 June 2008
The Pastoral Care of People with Mental Health Problems

This post is an unashamed advertisement for a good book written by a good friend and colleague. The Pastoral Care of People with Mental Health Problems, by Marion Carson, has just been published by the SPCK Library of Pastoral Care. Marion trained and practised as a psychiatric nurse, is a theological educator at International Christian College where her research and teaching span the bridge between New Testament and pastoral care, she is an active member within her own church community and serves on the Board of Ministry of the Baptist Union of Scotland. This book is therefore a coalescence of professional experience, theological scholarship, pastoral engagement and personal reflection on the nature and impact of mental ill health on the quality of human life, and also on the ambivalence and uncertainty of Christian communities to welcome those with mental health difficulties with 'radical friendship'. (John Swinton)

The book is not intended to provide technical medical information, nor is it an attempt to provide a detailed and conceptually advanced theology of disability. This has been done by people like Hauerwas, Swinton and most recently Thomas Reynolds' courageous and moving book which is a profound theological reflection on disability and hospitality informed by the experience of caring for a son with complex learning difficulties. (I will review and give details of this book later). Marion's book is more specific in its aim; it is an informed and informative book that covers several major human conditions, offering enough information to provide an undergirding awareness of the condition and the issues it raises for the person affected, their carers and the professionals who seek to help. As such it combines clear description of certain conditions, provides suggested practical responses, relates the process of understanding and care to an underlying theology that is pastorally rooted in the expereinces of those of whom she writes. Each chapter is therefore an important resource for pastoral response, theological reflection and better understanding.

The seven core chapters deal with mood disorders; anxiety, phobias and stress; schizophrenia; addictions; dementia; eating disorders and self-harm; personality disorders. Listed like that they are an intimidating list of human conditions which can seem like the extreme end of human difficulty in negotiating the complex world of relationships, perceived reality and self knowing. Marion Carson is well aware that the Church often makes unhelpful responses to the presence of people with mental ill health – either shunning them because of their capacitry to be disruptive, or intervening in ways that can be dangerous or ill informed. The book is therefore intended to help communities and individuals to befriend, support and care for those who suffer and their carers. There are case studies and explanation of the condition; theological reflection on what pastoral care would look like in this situation; and practical suggestions to ensure that care is appropriate and responses constructive.

I've been a pastor for many a year now, and met and walked with people who have suffered from the kind of conditions considered in this book. The treatment here is sensible, compassionate, practical, informed and above all rooted in an expereince both professionally skilled and theologically alert, and therefore pastorally responsible and responsive. At 168 pages, chapters around 23 pages long, a writing style that is never talk down but is nevertheless deliberately practical and at times didactic, this is a book that fills the important space this side of the technical diagnostic or theologically advanced books, which remain important but are less accessible. I wish such a book had been around at some of the times when in the context of church life people in such difficulties found their way to our doors.

I finish by quoting the last two paragraphs which are written in such a way that those of us who know Marion, can hear the ipsissima vox Carson!

It is precisely in recognizing our own vulnerabilities that hope springs. Only thus are we led to build communities in which our collective and individual dependence on the triune God is acknowledged. In such communities we can admit when we get things wrong, support each other as we learn from our mistakes, and forgive one another – all the time looking to God for guidance and wisdom. In such communities, we will be enabled to follow the incarnte Christ and serve those whom society considers 'inclean'. In such safe communities, radical friendship can flourish.

In the process of following Christ's example, we may have to change our
ideas about what it means to be human beings in relation to others. We
may have to rethink how we should go about providing pastoral care. But
if we open ourselves up to our own and others' vulnerabilities, if we
are willing to take the risk, we will go some way to providing a safe
place for sufferers and those close to them. The relationships we find
ourselves in may not be conventional, but we will be enriched by them,
and we will see God at work in ways we could never have imagined. (pages 147-8)

25 June 2008
Church History as keeping memory alive… Henry Chadwick, 1920-2008.

“Nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory, and the church
which has lost its memory is in the same state of senility.”

The words are by Professor Henry Chadwick who died yesterday. Chadwick, with his brother Owen, represent between them some of the finest written scholarship in Church History in the 20th Century. The Early Church, the first of the Penguin History of the Church Series, was the preferred undergraduate text book when I was in College in the early 70's. The Church in Ancient Society, a massive volume in the Oxford History of the Christian Church series, is written with that elegant, deceptively effortless authority you can almost inhale from the pages. His translation of Augustine's Confessions and his short study of Augustine in the Oxford Past Masters Series combine to present Augustine as both attractive and unsettling as a mind massively learned, passionately engaged, and theologically alight.

It could be argued, and I do so argue, that it is the duty of church historians to keep the church's memory alive, alert and interested in its own story. Only as that story is known, reflected upon, learned from, absorbed as both inspiration and correction, only then is the church in a position to think of its life here, now. Impatience with the past arising from a dangerous privileging of the present, creates a know it all culture, that undervalues what it never tried to understand. In that sense I think reading history, reflecting on the insights of previous generations, learning lessons from past experience, is an important expression of humane reflection on human life – it is humanising. The church historian, a category in which I include all those Christians not so obsessed by contemporary experience that they ignore the historical roots and shoots of our faith, is someone who is interested in receiving the faith humbly though not uncritically. Those with a sense of the history of our faith, and who enquire how people down the generations have tried in their time and in their way to understand who God is, the meaning of Jesus, and how to follow after him faithfully and well, wisely refuse to hijack the story in order to tell only their part of it as if the rest didn't matter.

Confining the list of honours only to Britain, and to those who happen to be on my shelves, Henry Chadwick, Owen Chadwick, R W Southern, Gordon Rupp, Frances Young, Jay Brown, David Bebbington, Tom Torrance, Michael Watts, Gillian Evans, Adrian Hastings, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Rowan Williams – are people who help the church keep its memory alive – lest we suffer from historical senility.

One more thought. Several of us heard the same TV interview with a rather pedantic self appointed guardian of the english language. He was infuriated (not annoyed, upset, angry) – infuriated, when BBC announcers and sports commentators misused the word "oblivious", as in 'Fabregas was oblivious of Van Nistelroy's run into the penalty box'. The word oblivious does not mean totally unaware; it means, so our semantic purist argued, 'to forget that which we used to know'. It would be a pity then, if we were oblivious of those things by which the church has lived and grown down through the centuries. It would also be a pity if we were ignorant of the same, and had never taken the trouble to know them in the first place.

Which brings me back to Henry Chadwick, whose scholarship, sympathy and curiosity about the past, enabled him to help us understand and learn from the great cloud of witnesses who surround us, so that we can run our race with patience….and due humility.

24 June 2008