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  • Confessions of a Bibliophile. A long awaited new book

    Now and again you get tired of superlatives, you begin to suffer from overstatement fatigue. Whether it’s the latest, coolest, fastest, cheapest, most reliable, healthiest, longest lasting, exclusive, superb, benchmark, unrivalled, bestest, very bestest, very bestest ever, really very bestest ever…see what I mean. Tediously repeated superlatives are like a dimmer switch attached to the brain; they’re as annoying as the monotonous musically vacuous bass beats of sound systems in passing cars; meant to communicate more or less justified enthusiasm, superlatives end up being a turn-off.

    51zi6vsyltl__aa240_ So what do I say about The Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, the latest (note the only remaining superlative in this review) dictionary published by IVP? It’s a revision and expansion of a previous volume called A Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters, which has served well as a reference book on the history of biblical interpretation. The new edition enhances that usefulness by widening the scope of the contents and bringing the entire volume up to date. It is plain fact to say there isn’t another volume that covers this ground, and this much ground, in such a comprehensive and representative scale. (1100+ pages). There are five chronological chapters adding up to over 100 double column pages, providing an overview of historical context, key personalities and important developments in scholarly examination of the Bible.

    At a time when serious attention is being paid to the history of biblical interpretation, and the history of text reception within the community of faith is being given significant hermeneutical weight, such a reference book offers substantive discussion of key personalities, and opens up a diverse and crucial field of study. Most articles about the biblical interpreters selected explore four areas of their respective subject – the context, the life and work of the person, main interpretive principles, and continuing significance.

    The selection has sought to be representative and inclusive, incorporating Catholic and Protestant, conservative and progressive, ancient and modern, men and (far too few) women, hugely weighted towards Europe and America, and spanning two thousand years. Intentionally, nearly all those included are dead – so living scholars either wait a later edition!, or another book is needed looking at contemporary practising interpreters. This editorial decision goes some way to explaining the Euro-American male dominance of entries, without excusing the history that underlies it. But Phyllis Trible and Schussler Fiorenza are there, and thankfully are still here – a wise editorial act of positive discrimination and inclusion.

    However the Dictionary can only include those who are indeed the significant players in the history of interpretation, and this it does under the overall editorship of Donald McKim, an experienced and reliable editor who is himself a contributor to the academic discussions arising from biblical interpretation. As an indication of the range of interpreters treated here is a list of ten, chosen on a quick skim back and forwards through the book:

    Hugh of St Victor, Gerhard von Rad, E Schussler Fiorenza, Pilgram Marpeck, John Owen, Paul Ricouer, Erasmus, Didymus the Blind, C K Barrett, C I Scofield.

    Eyrwho121 As a Scot I am delighted that A B Bruce, James Moffatt and James Denney (pictured) are included – by the way, has any other church ever been more privileged in the New Testament expertise of its ministers than Broughty Ferry East Free Church which had these three influential Scottish scholars within the space of around forty years?

    Then there are the premier league scholars of the 20th Century; from Europe Barth, Von Rad, Bultmann, Cullmann, Eichrodt, Kasemann, Lohmeyer; and from Britain C F D Moule, Vincent Taylor, G B Caird, C K Barrett, C H Dodd, T W Manson; from America H J Cadbury, Brevard Childs, Bruce Metzger, Walter Brueggemann (another thankfully still with us inclusion) G Eldon Ladd, Raymond E Brown; from the tradition of great commentators Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Matthew Henry, J A Bengel, J P Lange, H A W Meyer, Keil and Delitzsch. And so on. And the dictionary short changes none of them. No half column digests of facts – each a substantial article, and all articles supported by generous up to date bibliography.

    For biblical interpreters, aspiring or established, who want to understand how we came to be where we are in the scholarly study of the Bible; and for those fascinated by the immense labour and human devotion that has gone into the faithful study of the biblical text; and for those like myself who are both captivated by the story of how the church has listened, learned and interpreted Christian scripture, this is a superlative book!

    And in these days of required transparency and declared interests, I have to inform you that the article on James Denney was written by me, and the volume is much the better for it – not because I wrote it, but because Denney was a superlative interpreter of Scripture!

  • Jurgen Moltmann: Academic Theology and Christian testimony

    51urzon0g0l__aa240_ Testimony is always more persuasive, more human, less argumentative, less concerned with point scoring and logical victories as a form of personal witness, perhaps because testimony and witness point beyond ourselves to the One of whom we testify, and to whom we bear witness. Thus what is at stake isn’t the otucome of an argument, but the reality of our experience. Unless theology arises out of the church’s witness to the Gospel, and unless Christian theologians are able to speak of God from experiences of God’s presence and absence, then theological discourse will be ‘academic’ in the least useful sense of that badly abused word.

    In Christian terms, academic theology at its best is a form of prayerful reverent study, a reflective dwelling in the essential and crucial realities of our existence, as those to whom God has come in the glory and grace of Jesus Christ. Jurgen Moltmann is an academic theologian in this sense; his writing and teaching combine personal testimony, Christian witness and what he calls speculative systematic theology. Speculative but disciplined by the constraining cords of the biblical, ecclesial and doctrinal traditions of Christian faith, in all their changing continuity and diversity.

    Hand1 I guess one of the reasons I read Moltmann both avidly and critically, is that even when his ideas and speculative suggestions are wide of where I think the mark is, I never doubt that he is seeking to faithfully and truthfully understand more of the love and grace of God in Christ crucified. His emphases on eschatology and the future Kingdom’s ‘nowness’ (my word), his passionate belief in the passion of God, his willingness to be caught out in inconsistency if new thinking leads him to review and revise earlier positions, his refusal to ignore the political implications of faithfulness in following Christ today; these and much more, make me pause, ponder and if necessary, dissent. And yes, he admits that what he offers are contributions to systematic theology rather than a finished systematic theology with a tidy overarching comprehensiveness. But Moltmann so often has said what needs saying, and what pastors need to hear. I still remember the coincidence of reading The Crucified God at Easter while accompanying several families through terminal illness and bereavement.

    As a pastor, for me serious theology, yes academic theology, has always mattered, because human life and people’s deepest experiences deserve our best thought. People’s perplexities, their struggles to understand, the sheer effort just sometimes to go on being faithful, deserve from us that attentiveness to truth and such sensitivity to human longing and hurt, as only grows in minds and hearts patient of God’s incomprehensible ways, and impatient with all ad hoc paperback solutions to those problem areas of our lives where what we seek is not solutions, but God. Just God.

    All of which is by way of saying Moltmann’s theological story, told through his life, and his life told through his theology, is yet another important ‘contribution’. The now characteristic mixture of testimony, theological exposition as familiar themes are revisited and further summarised, and with the occasional page or two where eyebrows go up and I want to politely, but appreciatively, dissent.

    Something of what I find so attractive about Moltmann’s spirit is the humility and gratitude to God that is the low background music of this book (and of a number of the others). Here’s just one such doxological hint:

    Ricoeur for his part convinced me about the ‘logic of undeserved overflow’ in Pauline theology, implicit in the phrase ‘how much more’ with which Paul extols the overmastering power of grace over against sin, and Christ’s resurrection over against his death on the cross. (page 107)

  • Reinventing English Evangelicalism 3 Vision Inflation

    Spstandard_9781842275702 Entrepreneurial Evangelicalism arose within the conversionist activist, predominantly charismatic axis of the movement, and Warner examines this in relation to the spectacular and symbiotic growth of the Evangelical Alliance and Spring Harvest from 1980 to around 2001. Pragmatist enthusiasm, product branding, vigorous and franchised marketing, features normally associated with business growth and management, came to be applied to a movement that had previously been modest in its social and political goals.

    ‘Calverism’ is Warner’s term for the centrality of Clive Calver in the rise of both Evangelical Alliance and Spring Harvest as focal points for Evangelicals hungry for identity and influence beyond their own constituency. Calver’s driven personality, charismatic leadership, expansive vision, punishing personal itinerary and extensive network within Evangelicalsm are depicted as the primary engine behind the early mushrooming of personal membership of EA and the increasing popularity and influence of Spring Harvest. However Warner’s analysis of personal membership figures, claims of EA to represent over a million Evangelicals, and other factors behind the presented success story, suggest that such claims were either exaggerated, or unsubstantiated by official statistical data.

    A sociological examination of a movement, and of the influence of a prominent leader seeks explanations through causes, influences, personalities, historical happenstance, and is always likely to sound reductionist. There are times when Calver’s influence and personal impact does indeed seem to have been a decisive factor. What Warner calls the ‘collapse of the Calvinistic hegemony’ in the late 60’s and early 70’s, left the way open for EA to reinvent itself under Calver by including large constituencies of Pentecostal and charismatic new churches within its orbit. Spring Harvest became a recruiting ground for EA personal membership, and the annual gathering a place where styles of worship, teaching emphases, corporate experience of learning and listening in seminars and large worship gatherings, began to present a new brand of Evangelicalism increasingly confident in the relevance, influence and public expression of an Evangelical programme mediated through EA and Spring Harvest and their branded products.

    Warner has serious questions about claims about EA personal membership, (potential 100,000, actual highest 50,000+), and indeed he demonstrates that the higher figure was always an aspirational claim rather than data supported realities. In addition, he argues that personal membership taken out at an emotionally charged gathering such as Spring Harvest, did not imply that from then on, new memebrs were committed to evangelical activism and significant funding of EA once the fervour of the big occasion cooled. The failure ‘to sustain the period of meteoric growth’ Warner attributes to the fact that ‘personal members were passive, and unwilling to become active recruiters’ of others. So personal membership was never an accurate guage of active committed support expressed in funding, activism or recruiting.

    The point of all this for Warner, and his argument has to be read in its detail and complexity, considered critically, and weighed honestly, is that through Calverism, the conversionist-activist axis of English Evangelicalism underwent significant transition. That transition may have triggered short term rapid growth – but the long term effects of ‘vision inflation’ will be felt within Evangelicalism as a whole, and may not be a fruitful legacy. Here are three observations Warner makes, which give a flavour both of his critique and his conslusions about EA in the last 20 years.

    Many Evangelical had unconsciously made a transition from traditional evangelicalism that affirmed the truth of the gospel, to late-modern entrepreneurialism that assumed wholehearted adherence to the gospel guaranteed success for the church. (page 63)

    The EA failed to deliver, not because of lack of effort, but because its visionary goals were unrealistic, not merely in terms of propsepcts for future recruitment of personal members, but because of a wholesale  failure to grasp the corrosive effects upon evangelical influence and identity of the ineluctable cultural transitions of secularization and postmodernity. Evangelicals lacked a coherent socio-political critique and had failed to come to terms with the implications of a secularized and pluralistic culture; enthusiastic rhetoric and ethical conservatism are no substitute for rigorous and reflexive analysis. (page 64)

    The legacy of evangelical boom and bust is apparent; disappointed expectations, a sceptical distrust of subsequent expressions of ambitious vision, and a shift in attitude towards the Alliance so that allegiance to the organistiaon became more provisional, more episodic, more post-institutional. (page 65)

    Warner’s style is at times unsparing of mistakes more easily discovered with hindsight; and he was himself a participant in much that he now critiques. But the underlying impression I have is of one who now sees the serious theological and strategic miscalculations evangelicalism makes when it buys into a consumerist approach to faith sharing and faith celebration. Bono’s scathing observation that joiners of mail order organisations are less "members" than "consumers" of a cause, providing only "cheque-book affiliation", is embarrassingly to the point.

    Amongst the uncomfortable questions raised (for me at any rate), by Warner’s case study of EA, is whether entrepreneurialism, market penetration, pragmatic activism, evangelical branding and franchising, the search for political influence and social recognition, are anything more than reflections of core values and principles inimical, or at least secondary, to a people seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness……. but more of this anon.

  • Moltman”s theological autobiography

    51urzon0g0l__aa240_ The first 60 pages of Moltmann’s autobiography are a mixture of memoir, hindsight, family gossip and reflections on the formative experiences of war and the political and spiritual rebuilding of Europe. Some of the central insights and arguments of Moltmann’s later theology are traced to experiences that now, with hindsight and from the perspective of an established theologian, he sees to be of decisive impact on his development. To that extent, autobiography provides important context for his theology – and it’s up to us, the readers, to decide if this is crucial inside information that drove his theological interests, or whether his established theological positions are being read back into earlier experiences. Almost certainly both, and who better to interpret and contextualise the personal world out of which theology grows, than the person who lived in it and through it. Of course there are other contextual perspectives, perhaps better detailed by more objective observers – but they don’r have the passion, the poignancy and the personal nerve centre that vitalises theological autobiography.

    Here’s one of Moltmann’s pastoral memories – worth pondering by those called to preach living words to living people that enhance life. he is recalling his early days as a totally inexperienced pastor in a rural and remote farming community:

    My own personal theology developed as I went from house to house and visited the sick. If things went well, on Monday I learnt the text for the following Sunday’s sermon, took it with me as I visited the congregation and then knew what I had to say in my sermon. Here a ‘hermeneutical circle’ developed, not the one between textual interpretation and one’s own private interpretation…but the one between textual interpretation  and the experience of a community of people, in their families, among their neighbours, and in their work. In conversation I came to believe that this was a shared theology of believers and doubters, the downcast and the consoled.

    Jurgen Moltmann, A Broad Place, pages 59-60.

  • Holbein18 It’s a year today since I gave up lurking and started blogging. Enough folk have been positive and encouraging about their visits to livingwittily for me to feel that, though it’s a place where I can think in words and try ideas, others like those reading this now, are listening / reading / commenting / appreciating – and that, whether or not you are agreeing.

    373 posts represents a lot of words, ideas, time and work – so the question why I go on blogging needs some justification, if only to me.

    1. a place to think in words
    2. a forum to try ideas
    3. a way of enhancing the good stuff in life by noticing it and telling it
    4. a regular excuse to celebrate the joy and contentment of reading
    5. a meeting place with others who are usually critically appreciative companions
    6. a voice that tries to speak truth about what it means to be human, and to care about justice and long for peace
    7. a form of theological reflection aiming at acting faithfully by living wittily!

    I suppose I could keep the list going, but most of these are reason enough, at least for me and for the moment. I don’t doubt that communication technology, developments in software, social habits, will mean folk move on to new things, or maybe blogging will exhaust itself as a useful, or amusing, or socially relevant form of virtual or literary conversation.

    This week sees the birth of a Scottish Baptist College Blog. You can find it here. This won’t be updated daily or anything like as often. But it will feature a number of posts a month, ranging from College news, information about previous students, book reviews, theological reflections on this and that, and some ongoing discussions about such obvious areas as training for ministry, theological education, changing patterns and approaches to how we express our life together in a Scottish Baptist context, and anything else we think would be interesting, important, aye, and fun. Where significant new posts are added I’ll mention them here.

    I haven’t forgotten the Haiku Introduction to the NT. All NT books are now done – but I can’t get the software on Typepad to accept large chunks of cut and paste without it doing daft things to it. So in spare moments, I’ll begin to type up the end result and post it when it’s complete.

  • The problem with the problem of money, and moneylessness

    Two consecutive news stories this morning.

    This is the day in the month of January when a large percentage of UK citizens have no money. The post-Christmas pay-check isn’t due, the credit card and store card bills are due, and apparently the option for many is more credit or use savings. The Finance Adviser was asked how people can avoid such levels of personal debt – apparently a significant number of us are still paying off Christmas 2006. Her advice was straightforward – re-schedule existing debt to as favourable a rate as possible; make a payback plan and stick to it; don’t spend more than you can afford; save modestly in an ISA. Overall advice, spend less.

    Second story. The high street retailers are anticipating a difficult time between now and the summer, and particularly up to Easter. The credit crunch, the big Christmas overspend, the overall uncertainty in the financial world, are all leading to a slowdown in spending and a lowering of consumer confidence. Even if interest rates come down that might not be enough. And if businesses fail, jobs are lost, credit remains unpaid, mortgaged homes are at risk, so we need to stem a rising tide of threatening business liquidations. The answer – consumers need to spend more.

    So to avoid debt, spend less. To avoid recession, spend more. Consumer prudence and consumer confidence, with mutually exclusive results, it seems. Now Mr McCawber was no financial adviser, and had he lived in our era of Credit Card Consumerism he’d have ruined himself in a week. But he still had the right kind of idea even if he couldn’t live it.

    Income 20 shillings a week, expenditure 20 shillings and sixpence a week – result, misery.

    Income 20 shillings a week, expenditure 19 shillings and sixpence a week, happiness.

    OK if you can do it. But I’m left wondering about the relationship between consumerism and contentment; and about the connection between the urge to buy and the hunger for personal value; and about how as Christians we live wisely, and follow Jesus faithfully, in a society where spending  and not spending can be at one and the same time social virtues, and moral problems, or social problems and moral virtues!

    What would it mean to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness in a society where moneylessness and money availability, credit and consumerism, are apparently both necessary for our common life to function? Forgive us our debts………hmmmm?

  • Reinventing English Evangelicalism: 2 Evangelicalism divided

    "Being ‘born again’ can be profitable. Jesus saves, but Jesus also sells. Evangelicalism is big business".

    Not only big business, but with aspirations to political and social clout, as witness the unseemly scramble of US presidential candidates to talk up their religious credentials. In Britain since the 80’s and 90’s, Warner argues, English Evangelicalism has also claimed to be an important movement, to be taken seriously as capable of making a transformative impact in politics, media and other cultural expressions of social life. The claim however, goes alongside the inescapable evidence that religious decline shows no partiality and Evangelical communities have not been immune to its ravages.

    Rob The introductory section of Warner’s book is unsettling for those who fondly imagine an Evangelical unity that remains inclusive and widely representative of those who hold to shared Evangelical principles. The last 20 years have seen a process of increasing polarisation, as Evangelicalism has gone through a period of reinvention, redefinition and realignment. Warner is unsparing in his criticism of those whose critique aims to privilege that particular expression of Evangelicalism which answers to their own doctrinal commitments or ecclesial and missional practices. Warner contends that David Wells and particularly Don Carson, two of the more trenchant internal critics of Evangelicalism, demonstrate an increasingly hard-edged rejection of legitimate diversity, and a refusal to enter into open dialogue with other professed Evangelicals unwilling to subscribe to statements of doctrinal rectitude mapped to Reformed dogmatics.

    However this is only one instance of the underlying malaise Warner’s study seeks to expose, explore and explain. The historic movement of pan-Evangelicalism, has in the past been held together despite many internal tensions, by agreed principles generously interpreted. These were identified by Bebbington as the centrality of the cross, the authority of the Bible, the necessity of conversion and the evangelistic activist imperative. What Warner argues is that in late 20th century English Evangelicalism, these four essentials in the Evangelical bar code have through a process of bifurcation split the Evangelical movement into two axes. The first is the crucicentric biblicist axis which is essentially Reformed, doctrinally defensive, leans heavily towards fundamentalism and is increasingly separatist. The other is the conversionist activist axis, which is entrepreneurial in style, pragmatic in approach and mainly driven by and ecclesial pragmatism baptised in the Spirit, but less doctrinally precise. Both are increasingly discredited.

    The first Warner argues is tied to Enlightenment categories of reason and epistemology, which are no longer intellectual currency with effective purchasing power in the modern marketplace of ideas. The second borrows uncritically from a modernity founded on consumerism, technology and rampant individualism. Between these two axes there are further and emerging strands of cautiously open Evangelicals and progressive Evangelicals, each to varying extents unwilling to be identified with, and no longer satisfied with, either of the two axial options. What this adds up to is that Evangelicalism is now a contested tradition, with the emerging progressive strand still in process, and its commitments yet to be settled, and the cautiously open likely to opt for one or other of the axial divisions. What is clear is that Evangelicalism is now in process of decisive theological reconfiguration, a process that will consign the notion of an inclusive pan-Evangelicalism to an earlier, more generous era, now sadly gone.

    The conceptual framework Warner constructs borrows critically from, and extends, Bebbington’s quadrilateral. Warner adds to the Bebbington’s four, Christocentrism, transformed life, and revival aspirations. These are also constants in Evangelical theology and spirituality and it would be hard to argue against any of them as characteristics of Evangelicalism. Bebbington’s point though was that the four he identified are, when applied cumulatively, sufficient as identity marks. The three Warner adds are each equally characteristic of Evangelicalism, but are surely not absent as features of other Christian traditions. If all seven are applied I’m  not sure what more is added that makes the seven a better conceptual tool than the four, providing the four are agreed to achieve the same end, identity marks which taken cumulatively amount to a definition.

    The rest of the introduction is a careful review of secularisation theory, outlines a justification for Warner’s ‘revisionist account of the historical narrative of pan-Evangelicalism, notes the hotly debated relationship between Evangelicalism and fundamentalism, and takes time to explain the sociological significance of Evangelical sub-cultures. There is then a careful defence of his own position which started as observer participant and moved to participant observer, signalling Warner’s own felt need for critical distance and personal integrity. All in all this first 35 pages is an education in what Callum Brown called the ‘integration of history, sociology and religious studies in the examination of Christianity in the context of contemporary secularisation.’ And it is carried through by one who is an informed insider, now highly critical of aspects of a movement to which he has been a major contributor and leader; it may be that one of his most important contributions is to enable Evangelicalism to face up to the reality of its own failure to make essential theological transitions, within a legitimate diversity held together by common commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    Charles Wesley, that too easily neglected ecclesiologist, at the watershed of the Evangelical movement, wrote about the work of Christ perfecting the church below. Twenty first century Evangelicalism could do with a mighty dose of that ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’, which, if not included in any quadrilateral, with or without additions, is nevertheless the core of all Evangelical religion:

    Love, like death, has all destroyed

    rendered all distinctions void;

    names and sects and parties fall

    Thou, O Christ, art all in all.

  • Reinventing Evangelicalism 1.

    Reinventing English Evangelicalism, 1966-2001. A Theological and Sociological Study, Rob Warner, (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2007), £19.99. ISBN 978-1-84227-570-2

    Spstandard_9781842275702 This is a book that compels contemporary Evangelicalism to become more self-critical and less self-congratulatory, more aware of changing social, cultural and global realities and less absorbed in preserving partisan self-interest. It is a study that presents astute social analysis rooted in historical research, displays theological acumen which combines sympathetic exposition and at times astringent critique, and draws upon personal experience of the high points and subsequent developments of late 20th Century Evangelicalism as one who played a central role in some of those developments. It is a hugely important theological and sociological audit, based on empirical data, carried through with honesty and clarity, and providing a reality check for a movement not averse to ‘vision inflation’.

    The central thesis can be stated succinctly: in under 40 years, a homogeneous yet diverse movement, grew rapidly through entrepreneurial vision building, paralleled within the movement by another wing much more theologically conservative. The theological transitions Warner charts during these years expose the growing bifurcation between those increasingly committed to a form of fundamentalist conservation of Evangelical essentials, and others seeking an Evangelicalism more accommodating and progressive in its response to the mission situation of the third millenium. This is not a comfortable conclusion, but it is supported in the book by evidence-based research, cogent argument, and a clear understanding of the various trajectories already well plotted within and beyond the current English Evangelical scene.

    This is, in my view, the most important analysis of Evangelicalism in Britain since David Bebbington’s ground-breaking account published in 1989. It is of course a different kind of study, and in important ways, moves the discussion forward. Bebbington  provided a detailed survey of Evangelicalism as a movement rooted in the Enlightenment, influenced by Romanticism, responsive to social and cultural changes, and for that reason capable of remarkable degrees of adaptation and self-reinvention. Bebbington explored with characteristic precision and authority, definitions, origins, core theological values, historical analyses of Evangelical diversities which were nevertheless containable within a set of shared characteristics.

    Warner’s study intentionally covers only the two latest generations, and deals with recent developments; but by so doing he provides a diagnosis so accurately evidenced, so current to the present scene, and supported by his personal inside experience, that his overall argument, and offered prognosis has to be taken very seriously indeed. And the prognosis is not reassuring for those of us who wish to go on using the term Evangelical in the hope that it still expresses something meaningful about ‘the fellowship of the Gospel’, and that it will go on representing a tradition that enriches the Church with its own peculiar yet vitalising emphases.

    The real questions that arise in my mind as I compare Bebbington and Warner can be asked three ways:

    1. at what stage does a movement’s capacity for adaptation to environment become accommodation?
    2. who safeguards the tradition if refusal to change closes down the possibility that ‘the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word’?
    3. who decides when change has gone so far that continuity with the original tradition is harder and harder to trace?

    This book will be the subject of a number of posts, as I try to weigh the implications of questions like these as they impinge heavily on the future of British Evangelicalism.

  • The Snow Leopard and Extreme Pilgrim

    Last night for the first time in ages I watched two consecutive TV programmes and greatly enjoyed them both. The first was a Natural World feature on my favourite animal, the snow leopard.(photo courtesy of here). The second was Extreme Pilgrim, the first of three programmes presented by a Church of England vicar looking for a sense of meaning, identity and inner peace, and doing so at the extreme edges of religious devotion in three of the world’s great faith traditions. (See here)

    Milantrykarsmallsl My interest in the snow leopard goes back twenty or more years when I first read Peter Matthiessen’s masterpiece, The Snow Leopard. The book isn’t so much about the animal, as the quest to see the snow leopard in its native habitat, the Himalayas. The expedition to Nepal and into the mountains was a quest not only for a sight of the rarest of the big cats, but for a new sense of purpose and worth in living, following the death of Matthiessen’s wife. It is that human quest for meaning in the midst of grieving, alongside the naturalist’s search for the ultimate prize of seeing the wild, elusive beauty and the sovereign freedom of a creature perfectly at home in wilderness, that makes the book a moving account of human longing.

    Last night’s programme was about this magnificent animal – it’s sovereign freedom now being eroded by encroaching human activity. The scientist who trapped a mother leopard and fitted it with a large non camouflaged radio collar, explained that the data uploaded to satellites would be invaluable in helping understand more about the snow leopard. I can see why that’s important; information about movement, habitat, breeding, human intervention will enable more strategic and effective conservation measures in the future. But I was upset by the sight of this magnificently adapted cat, whose camouflage makes it all but invisible against mountain rocks and screes, having the handicap of a high profile collar while hunting for food.

    Peteowenjones Extreme Pilgrim was another kind of search altogether, and yet just like Matthiessen who is himself attracted to Buddhism, Peter Owen-Jones was drawn first to the famous but now tourist-driven Shaolin Temple, and then to a less commercialised monastery, in search of enlightenment, or at least the first stages of freedom from self absorbing attachment. The rigours of martial arts training took a heavy toll on a man who was unfit, and whose lifestyle by his own cofession was more about self-dissipation than self-discovery. I started off being impatient, not liking him much – but as the programme continued I began to sense that behind the camera-conscious presented self, was a man genuinely searching for a sense of self, and not sure if he would like what he might find. Several of those with whom he spoke exuded the kind of peaceful purposefulness that is perhaps only possible to those for whom peace is their purpose.

    Sure there are arguments, discussions, dialogues – choose your noun – to be had between any two of the world’s great faith traditions. But alongside the theology and philosophy, the practices and the devotions, the traditions and the cultures, there is sanctity, the person in process, the human life, personality, character, soul, – and their awareness of that which is sacred and transcendent. Sanctity is not an argument, it is testimony. Sanctity has a transparency that much other religious baggage lacks, and last night, more than once, the discipline and wisdom of Buddhist monks contrasted with the fragmented anxieties of a Christianity torn between, on the one hand western consumerism and its addictive habits of thought, and on the other, the deep realisation that you cannot serve both God and mammon. The question for the church in the West and North, may well be one of where we think our treasure is; and the story of the rich young ruler has an oblique but searingly true light to shine upon a Church anxiously possessive of status and its own survival, and unwilling to sell all it has, give it away to the poor, and follow after Jesus. The question where our treasure is, what we are most attached to, should not need to be asked of us by a Buddhist monk. That it was, and with such courteous deference, should suggest our need for humility and repentance as urgent prerequisites to mission.

  • Blogs, birthdays and books

    Thought I might mention several thoughts and plans for this blog which will be a year old on January 10.

    I’ve revised the list of blog destinations I regularly visit. The initial enthusiasm for Blogging seems to have cooled off, and some folk are now doing different things, or have other priorities. I’ve added two theological blogs that I often visit. Don’t know the full name of Halden, over at Inhabitatio Dei, but he is writing some important and thoughtful stuff on a number of theological issues I’m interested in. You might want to look in and see if it’s your kind of thing.

    I’ve resisted the long lists of "just about everybody who blogs", and rely on several existing bloggers on my own select list for taking me further afield – mainly Ben Myers at Faith and Theology and Cynthia Nielsen at Per Caritatem. If you click on their names in my sidebar and browse their sidebars a very large and varied blogging community opens up.

    As I think through what I want to do with this blog for the coming year I’d be interested in suggestions, comments from regular readers and anyone else who happens by. But I reserve the right to go on posting a mixture of the serious and whimsical, the book stuff and theological reflection, and to ‘have a view’ on some of the issues, stories and happenings that seem to me to be significant clues to what it might mean to live wittily in the tangle of our minds, seeking by so doing to live faithfully after the pattern of Christ.

    Now and again I want to take time to write a more substantial post, which I hesitate to call an essay since that sounds too much like an assessment instrument! Yet the essay is a long established and honourable forum for developing ideas, building persuasive argument, educating and shaping and challenging commonly accepted values, tastes, and perceptions – and that process includes the wiriter. I mean the kind of reflective, meditative, inquisitive question-raising such as I posted on forgiveness on Thursday Jan 3rd.

    Books02619x685 Those who know me know books are an essential element in my humanity, as vital to my life quality as heat and light, food and drink, friendship and work. Books are, as Philip Toynbee once admitted, ‘My royal route to God’. Of course not everyone is book daft – not everyone’s mind works the same, not all personalities learn best through literary forms, not everyone finds verbalised concepts interesting or that ideas interiorised through reading are easily processed into practical wisdom that is life transforming. But for me spiritual discipline, theological reflection, the journey of self-discovery, sympathetic human understanding, intellectual maturity, and contemplative humility before the mystery of God, are some of the blessings of reading – hence the literary bias of this blog!

    In the last week or two I’ve come across several claims that such and such a book is a theological classic. Confining suggestions to the 20th Century, there are those in the blogosphere who nominate (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) P T Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, H R Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, H R Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, Elisabeth Johnson, She Who Is, G Guttierez, A Theology of Liberation, J V Taylor, The Go-Between God, D Bosch, Transforming Mission, and T F Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God. I suspect most of these reflect personal enthusiasms, but none of them are lightweight either. Suggestions – either supporting some of the above or other nominations – which books would you argue is a 20th C theological classic?  Of course at some stage we have to define ‘classic’ – but for now just go by your own definition.