Living Wittily

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  • They not only tingle, they soar…..

    When J P Struthers, the remarkable minister of Greenock Reformed Presbyterian Church in late 19th Century Scotland, offered to buy James Denney a set of the Standard Puritan Divines as a wedding present, it was a joke between two men who remained very close friends, and went separate ways theologically, at least so far as biblical criticism and modern thought was concerned. Denney’s aversion to Seventeenth Century theology can be explained in several ways; his own upbringing in a church tracing its ancestry to the Covenanters and to the turmoil of theological conflict; his openness to new thought and growing resistance to Westminster Calvinism as intellectually stifling and inherently hostile to views of the Bible which allowed a believing criticism; his taste for the 18th century Augustan plain style in language, on which his own lucid, to the point, reasonably argued style was modelled; and his impatience with prolix, argumentative or dissected divinity.

    However his contemporary P T Forsyth wasn’t as dismissive. The two great Congregationalist Puritans, John Owen and Thomas Goodwin, were honoured conversation partners in Foryth’s intellectual drawing room. Here is Forsyth on Goodwin:

    Theological truth was not the deposit of a scholl’s thought but the register of the Church’s experience of eternal things. There is soemthing more than Shakespearian in the dramatic majesty and passionate intimacy of some of Goodwin’s pages, because they apply  genius to a region of the soul above any that Shakespeare ever entered. They not only tingle; they soar; and they come home with a beauty and poignancy of spiritual truth which makes them, ever after they are read, ingredients in one’s own spiritual life. (Faith Freedom and the Future, pages 116-118).

    I’ve started two books on Puritan Spirituality, one of the research areas I am beginning to explore. I think I am somewhere between Denney and Forsyth as far as reading such people as Owen and Goodwin, Sibbes and Flavel, Baxter and Charnock, are concerned. Prolix yes; over-elaborated divinity – yes at times; scholastic Calvinism as a controlling intellectual grid often a given, yes; but there are times, actually many times, when they are saying important things the church can’t afford to forget, neglect or dismiss. One of my other enthusiasms is the theologian often called the last Puritan, Jonathan Edwards. He shares many of the characteristics, less of the faults, and is an important bridge in modern intellectual thought.

    Anyway – more of this later. Still not online at home, but there are fingers of light streaking the horizon suggesting a new internet connection maty be about to dawn.

  • April 16th – grace that defines and circumscribes my life

    On April 16, 1967, in a small cluttered vestry in Hamilton Baptist Church, at 9.45 pm, in the company of the Rev Charles Simpson, I gave my life to Christ. Not everyone’s conversion is as time and place specific, but that was how God found me. Ever since, April 16th has been as important as my birthday, my wedding date, the birthdays of my wife Sheila and my children.

    I don’t tend to compare these significant dates and draw up a priority list of significance. I am who I am because I was born of the two parents in whose love I was conceived. I am who I am because Christ called, and I followed, overwhelmed and apprehended by a grace I still don’t understand. I am who I am because since 1970 when I met her, and 1972 when we married, my life and heart have been given to Sheila with whom my life is now entwined. I am who I am because two other human beings who happen to be my children are likewise intertwined in some of the deepest relationships and commitments of our lives.

    49large All of which said, that grace that seeks and finds, that fills and impels, that renews and regenerates, that pushes and pulls, that grasps with inexorable gentleness and holds with steadfast intent, that judges with mercy and forgives with joy – that grace that entered my life with transformative purpose and power, that grace which is prevenient and immediate, sovereign and condescending, sufficient and demanding – to be saved by that Grace through faith, by that One full of Grace and Truth who dwelt amongst us, and dwells within the heart that trusts enough to surrender to Him – that Grace, is what defines and circumscribes the life I want to live and the person I wish to be in Christ. And just as well that God’s self-defining approach to us is so full of grace, mercy and peace – for in my weakness there is grace, my failures there is mercy, and in the assurance of the Gospel, there is, more or less, most of the time, peace. And when there isn’t, that may be because that same grace and mercy are again drawing me to the one who is our peace.

    Thanks be to God for his gift beyond words…….

  • Discipleship as surrender to grace – and sacrifice

    ‘Discipleship Courses’ as a programmatic approach to Christian nurture and catechesis would not have commended themselves to Bonhoeffer, and for deeply theological reasons which are embedded in a theology of grace. Paul, Luther and Kierkegaard all inform Bonhoeffer’s rigorous understanding of discipleship as a costly, self-sacrificing  and life threatening following after Jesus. ‘I am crucified with Christ – I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.’

    For Luther too, discipleship is not self conscious training in obedience, however useful and pragmatic that might seem – discipleship is surrender to the grace that invades to the very core of human being. So Bonhoeffer is characteristically uncompromising, ‘With the very first step, the substance of the Gospels requires an action that affects the whole of life’. Kierkegaard’s warning also provides Bonhoeffer with a strong conception of discipleship that is essentially and vitally lived as a theology of grace: ‘Not "disipleship", but "grace" is the place to begin; and then discipleship is to follow as a fruit of gratitude to the best of one’s ability’. And Kierkegaard, that most enigmatic writer skilled in paradox, knew perfectly well that the best of one’s ability is also dependent on the grace that enables.

    So for Bonhoeffer grace through faith, and faith as divinely given instrument, makes true discipleship possible. ‘Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient is a believer….Discipleship is a bond with the suffering Christ’ . For Bonhoeffer a programmatic approach to Christian training that uses the term ‘discipleship’ is in danger of trivialising the passion and suffering that gives discipleship its essential Christlike appearance and Christ-centred focus. ‘Whoever wishes to carry in his person the transfigured image of Jesus must already have carried in the world the battered image of the One who was Crucified.’ 

  • When James said "Count it all joy when you fall into different tests and difficulties" he was obviously living before the onset of the exquisitely complicated processes of changing one’s Internet Provider! I am at present without Internet access at home (waiting for hardware, software) and doing a crash course in patient negotiation with multitudinous persons at several Help Line / Call Centres scattered from here to there in our globalised world. Clipped West of Scotland accent through clenched jaws customer, (Me) speaks to various support staff well-trained in customer evasion and redirection, who have my money and tell me different stories about how my difficulties are to be solved. Every one of them has said, soothingly, ‘I understand your concern Mr Gordon…..’

    The result is involuntary enrolment in a post-graduate course in Patient Endurance and Serial Frustration’. So for now, Blogging will be intermittent, squeezed into those spare moments when I’m at a desk with internet access. In the meantime I will seek to learn the lessons that Providence clearly thinks I need to enage with……….. all comments to this post should seek to offer advice, consolation, mutual exchange of negative experience pour encourager les autres?

  • Bonhoeffer; personal identity and spiritual intensity

    Sd1 What I like about Sabine Dramm’s book on Bonhoeffer

    1. It is written by one who is familiar with both the theological amd philosophical subtleties, and the social and political commitments, that give Bonhoeffer’s theology and ethics their radical edge and uncomfortable diagnostic accuracy
    2. It is neither hagiography nor deconstruction, but a genuine engagement with the complexity of the man, the fragmentary nature of his writing, the large corpus of occasional and personal material, the air of menace and ominous probability that fell over Europe – and out of this nexus of varied perspectives she allows Bonhoeffer to emerge as a theologian who resists domestication
    3. The writing itself is theologically sharp and unafraid of necessary critical comment, at times Dramm is lyrical in exposition of Bonhoeffer’s key themes yet as translator rather than apologist for his ideas
    4. The book is structured in a way that covers biography, context, theological emphases, major written corpus, political and theological ethics in the context of his life, issues of continuing significance for the Church. But these are not sections of the book so much as threads woevn in and out of an overall pattern that is allowed to emerge from these given materials
    5. The book is rich in quotation from Bonhoeffer, but as aids to exposition rather than examples of cherry-picking enthusiasm, which explains the unusually high incidence of quotations not previously anthologised or decontextualised in the service of those who want Bonhoeffer to say certain things!
    6. Obvious affection for Bonhoeffer is all but absent, and instead an informed respect for the life of mind and conscience that shaped Bonhoeffer’s spirituality and impelled his sense of responsible freedom out into the world of politics and social consequence – obedience to Christ and live with the consequences is a breathtaking theological ethic, and it is used to explain the complicated sanctity of this least other-worldly of disciples.

    These are some of the things that make this book, for me at least, a clearer window into the radical, risk-taking consequences of one man’s commitment, in a dangerous world, to Jesus Christ as the centre and goal of all things.

    A couple of later posts will interact with one or two of what I consider the most interesting chapters in an overall valuable book.

  • In Memoriam – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martyr, April 9, 1945

    Bonhoeffer Last night, the anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I sat a bit later, reading his Discipleship. I had made time throughout the day to read some of his thoughts on the cost of following Jesus, and the cost of the grace revealed on the Cross, and which calls us in our own time and place so to follow. I wonder if too much is made today, of discipleship as a programmatic approach to Christian education and training, so that discipleship has lost some of its astringent costly demand. For Bonhoeffer the disciple is one who bears witness by following, whether to death or not; a Christian is a martyr.

    "Discipleship is a bond with the suffering Christ." (Discipleship, 82).

    Reading Bonhoeffer’s own words, reflecting as I worked in the garden, I felt a mixture of inspiration and sadness; a life so effectively given to Christ, a life so tragic in lost potential for his future and ours. His writing fragmentary but glinting with spiritual light, his life incomplete yet consummated in faithful witness; his execution such a waste, his witness a beacon of grace.

    These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. (Rev.7.14-15.)

  • Station 11A at Glasgow Central and the long walk home

    300pxam_glasgow_central_2  I don’t walk slow. In fact despite my legs being some inches shorter than most of my family and friends I am referred to by the, I presume modestly flattering name, "The Strider". Which is just as well. Not sure how many who read this blog ever have to travel by train from Glasgow Central to Paisley Canal Street. But it now leaves from Platform 11A. Not 11, and not 12, but 11A. And no it isn’t a take-off of Harry Potter, but it might as well be.

    Platform 11A is a good 5 minutes walk from the entrance of the Station from Gordon Street. Now I don’t mind walking – I do it quite a lot. But if a train is 4 minutes walk from the first illuminated timetables it does kind of put pressure on you if you assumed that arriving at the station a couple of minutes before the train leaves, and you’ve already bought your ticket, you have a decent chance of catching it. Just last Tuesday I watched a number of elderly folk (older than me, and walking slower though trying to walk faster) doing the long walk to 11A – more than one has muttered, not so soto voce, ‘Are we walkin’ hame?’

    Is 11A the longest train platform in Scotland? Should passengers be given a discount for walking the first 500 metres? Is there a case for courtesy buses, or buggies for non-striders?  Or are we just so used to convenience that we need the occasional Platform 11A to remind us that walking is a natural, healthy human activity? And of the 34 million who use it each year, how many are going to paisley canal Street anyway, huh? In any case, First Train aren’t going to reconstruct a classic Victorian train station, built in 1879, for the convenience of passengers travelling to Paisley Canal Street.

    Jm082_2 I may encounter 11A later today as I go to hear my Doktorvater, Professor David Fergusson deliver his second Gifford Lecture. First one on the rise of the new atheism was a good contextual introduction. Tonight we get stuck into the implausibility of religious belief. On the assumption they will be published, I’m not taking notes – just listening, thinking, and enjoying. By the way, ‘Stuff and Nonsense’ refers to the first part of this post – this last paragraph is why it is followed by the ‘Theology’ category. Just so’s you know!

  • Bonhoeffer: Divine Love, Fragmented Existence, Human Identity

    418o7xlyol__sl500_aa240_ Long before ‘authentic existence’ became the buzz words of mid 20th Cenutry existentialism, Bonhoeffer was working out the relationship between personal identity, inner thought, life commitments and moral actions. More than most theologians, Bonhoeffer demonstrates the vital and vitalising link between biography and theology. In few people is there such unambiguous and documented evidence of the connectedness of thought and life, of faith and action, of life commitments and the life that flowed from them. As Dramm comments, ‘[Bonhoefer’s] theo-logically centered life is inseparable from his life-centred theology’. (4) One of the telling epigrams used at the beginning of each chapter reads: ‘Blessed are those who have lived before they died’.

    The execution of Bonhoeffer in 1945, at the age of 39 brought to an end, from all human points of view prematurely, one of the most courageous and authentic Christian lives within the Sanctorum Communio (Bonhoeffer’s phrase of choice for the church as Body of Christ). His dissertation under that name, Sanctorum Communio, which reads as a mature and grounded piece of theological research and explication, was written by a twenty one year old theology student!

    Unlike some other studies, Dramm doesn’t try to impose a pattern, whether a theological motif that centres Bonhoeffer’s thought, or a narrative structure that imposes consistency on his views or actions. Instead she accepts the inevitably fragmenary and urgently occasional nature of his writings, the complexity of his thought and experience, and the disruptiveness and increasing danger of his life situation, and from this acceptance of incompleteness, explores what it is that gives Bonhoeffer’s life and thought that singular ring of authenticity, like struck crystal. ‘Is it not true that the lives of many persons remain forever fragmentary, even when they extend over more years than Bonhoeffer’s and finally shatter in a manner less brutal?’ (13) Bonhoeffer himself commented,’The unfinished fragmentary side of life is felt …with special poignance here. But it is exactly this fragment that can in turn point to a consummation no human power can achieve’. This to his parents when it was becoming clear that his own life was now under grave threat.

    And in all the unresolved fragmentariness of Bonhoeffer’ s own experience, much of it caused by the disruption, dislocation and discontinuity of the political, social and historical context of his own times, there was for him the haunting question, "Who am I?" The question became the title of one of his best known poems, written in the summer of 1944. The last two lines express both the fear and faith of a man for whom courage was a gift of undeserved grace rather than a self-sufficient moral virtue.

    Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

    Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

    Dramm’s earlier book on Bonhoeffer and Camus finds both similarity and contrast in two men whose lives were near contemporary. Both were driven to discover and live out the ideal of a truly authentic human existence. Bonhoeffer found it in the reality of God who comes in the human person who is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ; Camus in human life lived in authentic freedom, sustained by a humanism based on the absurdity that human life, in its combination of the tragic and the noble, has unique and non-negotiable value.

    While not imposing a structure on Bonhoeffers life and thought, this book is itself carefully structured to enable us to see Bonhoeffer – his thought and life- in all the variety and complexity of his character. I’ll give an overview of Dramm’s approach next post.

  • There’s nae justice for the bairns

    1908 As an Aberdeen fan, and a Christian, I watched last night’s game between Aberdeen and Falkirk with mixed feelings. In old fashioned Biblical terms, Aberdeen get into the top six of the Scottish Premier league as those who enter by the skin of their teeth. Falkirk played us off the pitch for big chunks of the game, including the first 15 minutes till we scored with our first attempt on goal. Then after conceding early in the second half, we grabbed a late winner, from an acute angle, with the ball a few millimetres still in play (if you’re an Aberdeen fan) or at least three inches out of play (if you support Falkirk [nickname, The Bairns]).

    What was funny, silly and, for fans who pay good money, frustrating but still funny, was the way each team tried to waste time once the score suited them. There’s something of the Primary 1 class level of non-grown-up behaviour in the playground, about professional players walking slowly, bending slowly, fumbling with the ball before lifting it, cleaning it on the shirt, then dropping it for the team mate to throw it, but not before he also slowly retrieves it, cleans it (cos it’s dirty again cos it was dropped, ye see), then feigning to throw half a dozen times before the ball comes back into play, yawn, zzzzz.

    Derekadams While desiderating on the fitba theme, congratulations to Ross County who won promotion from Division Two, on Saturday. Derek and the boys done good. A ten match winning run after Christmas, a blizzard of goals home and away, the place buzzing and confident for next year – not bad for one of the youngest managers in the professional game. So it’s been a good week to be on holiday and reflect on the deep and serious things by which men live. Sheila, by the way, has no problem with the non-inclusive ‘men’ in the last sentence – she wouldn’t want to be included in the sad, perspective-limited, theatrical worldview that us football fans willingly pay money to inhabit.

  • Spirituality, going slow and articulated blessings.

    If spirituality and speeding is an interesting theme for a previous (un)devotional blog, how about spirituality and going slow? The glee with which I welcomed the booking of the speeding BMW driver, must now to be compared with the plethora of spiritual and psychological pressures unleashed by motorists like me trapped behind big, slow moving, road hogging, articulated mobile warehouses.

    Press2_par_0009_image On my way to pick up a parcel at College, along Seedhill Road and cars parked both sides. Ahead of me a massive vehicle as previously described, moving with slow I’m-bigger-than-anything-else-around authority. So I possess my soul in patience, move smoothly down the gears, and try to persuade myself this is not a problem, I don’t have any appointment, no time limit. Get to the roundabout and the big doppelganger negotiates it with graceful aplomb. And as we turn the corner towards the traffic lights I see the blessed big truck has a twin just ahead of it. And the only way to get into the factory they’re going to is to go through the lights and do a U turn to come back the way they came. The only way to do that is to take up both lanes, including the filter lane I want to take. They form an orderly queue of two, about 50 metres long. So I miss three sequences of lights before reaching the junction, and the light is red again. By which time my soul is not so much posessed in patience as just possessed.

    What is it about minor delays (no more than five minutes all told), and what they do to minds and temperaments normally this side of placid? Why does maturity evaporate to be replaced by an inner head of steam? If there is only one way for XXXL trucks to negotiate a road, then in accpetance lieth peace, as Amy Carmichael famously advised in her poem.

    I remain convinced that the fruit of the Spirit provides the emotional and psychological sub structure of good driving. And I can think of several of the nine Paul mentions that are seriously undermined by two oversized articulated aids to sanctification.  Time is such a precious gift – seems a pity to waste so much of it worried and bothered about how much is being wasted. Or, to put it another way, time is never wasted, it’s just differently spent! And time is never saved, it just constantly needs re-allocated. Next time I’m stuck behind stuff that slows me down, I’ll try to say, slowly, meaningfully and efficaciously,’

    The fruit of the Spirit is ….patience…..gentleness…..self-control’.

    Hope it works.