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Great Theologians Anselm 2. Grammar, Prayer and Beauty

You wouldn’t think being an expert in grammar was essential for a theologian. And you might be right. Anselm was the author of De Grammatico, a highly technical and all but unreadable grammar handbook – yet he was also the author of some of the most beautifully crafted Prayers and Meditations in the entire Christian tradition. Anselm held ‘an understanding of reality that is based on the conviction that the harmony and unity, the beauty and fittingness that is part of God’s being have been imprinted on creation’. Harmony, unity, beauty and fittingness – grammar provides the framework within which words are brought into those kinds of relations, and so words become sacraments of grace revealed.

For Anselm, words are conduits of meaning and conductors of human thought, to be brought into relation with each other to express what we perceive to be reality, truth and significance. It stands to reason that when addressing the Creator and Redeemer, the fons et origo of all beauty, harmony, unity and fittingness, that words be used with a precise care for their order, setting and fittingness. The honour, majesty, glory and beauty of God should be reflected in prayers where syntax, vocabulary and grammar become artistic disciplines combining creativity and precision. It is one of the fascinating and illuminating aspects of Hogg’s book that he understands the importance of aesthetics for Anselm; there is a discernible correspondence between the creation and the Creator, between the transcendent beauty of God and human appreciation for beauty, symmetry, harmony, and unity. Hogg’s exposition of the Prayers and Meditations is full of interest as he demonstrates how Anselm carefully chiselled and crafted words, then selected and set them, till they were words worthy and capable of God talk.

In the theology of Anselm, whether in his major writings on the incarnation and atonement, as in Cur Deus Homo?, or in his Prayers and Meditations, or in his more philosophical works like De Veritate, the ideas of beauty, harmony and fittingness are pervasive. For Anselm the work of God in Christ the God Man, intends the recovery of a distorted, disfigured and disjointed creation to a renewed harmony, beauty and unity in Christ. Each chapter of this demanding but rewarding treatment has been a learning experience – for once Anselm is appreciated with criticism that is both praise and appraisal. And I’ve learned much about his context, his purposes as a monk-theologian, and some of the inner dynamics of his theology that explain why his views on the atonement still excite informed, and uninformed, discussion today.

So Hogg’s whole approach to Anselm is quite different from many other, perhaps unfairly familiar portrayals of Anselm, as an arid, cerebral, philosophically abstract thinker fixated on medieval feudal and legalistic categories. Hogg’s book is a determined and erudite defence of Anselm’s entire theological corpus, as deserving a more appreciative and contextual reading than most give him.

Two observations. Amongst the many things I learned in this rich book, were words what I needed the dictionary for to understand! Word like perennated, neoterized, perlustration, indagating – maybe Hogg was enacting Anslem’s passion for words and grammar in his own writing. Second, this book is written by a fine scholar of medieval culture and theology, whose perceptive sympathy and extensive learning expose unfair caricatures of Anselm’s Catholic theology, and he teaches in North Carolina at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary – as a Baptist who worries about our tradition’s narrower tendencies, I find such theological fair-mindedness about the great Christian tradition, surprisingly reassuring.

Here is Hogg in one of many quite splendid paragraphs that place Anselm in an altogether different light, and show why this book is significant theology in its own right. He is arguing that in Christ dwells ‘the fullness of creation and creator, the immanent and the transcendent, the finite and the infinite, and paradoxically, beauty and ugliness’. Exposing the nerve centre of Anselmic theology, and the underlying thesis that Anselm’s theology is an aesthetic theology, a theology of beauty, Hogg goes on:

How strange that he who is supreme beauty and who communicates that beauty to all creation should become buffeted and scourged, pierced and punctured, made to drink bitter tears and endure scoffing from those who never wept; yet how glorious that although Christ was handed over to die He became the power to overcome death, and that through the loss of his life others may gain theirs. In the last analysis, then, what appears to be Christ’s defeat in disproportionate suffering and discordant mocking is actually the very means by which ‘the world is renewed and made beautiful by truth’. Even the moment of supreme disfigurement is, from a divine perspective, transformed into an act effecting unparallelled beauty. (page 15)

14 October 2007
Friendship – our national game: Scotland 3 – Ukraine 1

I’ve always made space in my life to gaze on icons. And yes the word iconic is overused. And yes, too, the word icon means more than something you click on, or the latest everybody wants to see celebrity. But now and again I succumb to popular cultural pressures.

James McFadden is an icon! That goal in France gave me one of the greatest fottballing moments of a getting quite long life. And now today he made the first goal, scored the third.

Scotland 3 – Ukraine 1

This morning I was in Glasgow and encountered numerous clan representatives of the Tartan Army claiming the city centre in a benevolent invasion. Straight out of central station, into Greggs for the sausage rolls, scotch pies and at least one largeish mince round, then out they came, wearing off the shoulder Lions Rampant, waving the saltire, singing traditional Scottish tunes with radically modified lyrics. In Starbucks there were more sporrans than handbags; up and down Buchanan Street the buskers were competing with the spontaneous entertainment from the infantry recently arrived via Queen Street. Several happy and bemused Ukrainian fans were having photos taken with mobile phones, good natured and generous Scottish supporters draped around them (sharing the mince rounds). This is international football at its best before the ball is even kicked.

Earlier I had been in Borders and they had a classic Bob Dylan CD playing. Dylan’s voice, grating and soulfull, singing songs I’ve known for decades….and then the one that always makes me want to sit down and listen, ‘Blowin in the Wind’. Having posted last night to express my sadness and protest at the events in Iraq, I listened to a song that since I was a teenager says what I feel most deeply about our human capacity to wound and kill each other. As Dylan prayed out his questions, I waited for that plaintive interrogative mouth organ, and then heard the question that brought tears to my eyes,

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

I realised that this too, is sacred music; this is the voice of the prophet, asking the question that lies deep in the heart of every human being whose dignity and value should never be erased by the unilateral say so of the powerful. And when it is, other human beings hear people cry, and protest and make it their calling to call power to account, to name evil, and to stand up for humanity – because as a follower of Jesus, I believe each human being is iconic, made in the image of God, valued and loved beyond any calculation I can make.

So on a day when our country won a football match, and I am as daft as any other Scottish supporter, I celebrate not only the win, but the image of Scottish and Ukrainian fans outside Borders, leaping across barriers of culture language and nation, sharing food and having fun – and Dylan’s great hopeful, prayerful series of questions re-echo within, and I listen for the wind of the Spirit blowing across our world, the go-between God, and I hope.

13 October 2007
How long, O Lord? The real meaning of collateral damage…

This is a picture of Iraqi children learning in school, courtesy of UNICEF.

The following quotation is taken from the front page of the Herald today:

American forces killed 19 insurgents and 15 women and children in air strikes north of Iraq’s capital targeting suspected leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the US military said last night. "We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism", Major Brad Leighton, a military spokesman said. "These terrorists chose to deliberately place innocent Iraqi women and children in danger by their actions and presence."

I have two initial comments. The first is a tiresomely persistent question: What is the difference between the suicide bomber who targets innocent civilians motivated by their own unchallengeable sense of their own rightness and justice, and a military attack in which coalition forces target terrorists who use innocent civilians as a human shield, said military forces motivated by their own unchallengeable sense of their own rightness and justice?

Secondly, the terrorist doesn’t care about the slaughter of the innocent, indeed terrorism can be defined as seeing the innocent as dispensable in pursuit of the greater goal. If the terrorists chose to deliberately place innocent Iraqi women and children in danger, why didn’t the military deliberately choose to restrain the use of lethal force? Isn’t that what defines the difference between terrorism and ‘legitimate military action’ – the respect for human life that makes such an action as deliberately targeting terrorists in civilian areas unacceptable – because making the killing of civilian innocents an acceptable cost is far too near the moral nihilism of terrorism?

I am struggling to understand the moral difference, from the point of view of the women and children, whether in the market place, or in a target area as human shields, between these decisions made by others to end their lives? There are times when I am ashamed of what we have come to tolerate. And of what the UK and the US increasingly judge acceptable levels of ‘collateral damage’ (a serpent tongued phrase if ever there was one).

Incidentally, The Herald’s coverage of this story was given less than three column inches. The story about the Speaker of the House of Commons spending £21,500 of public money defending a libel got SEVEN times as much. £21,500 might buy you a second-hand, lower end of the market 4×4; or a few components needed for the guidance system of air to surface missiles. Alongside 15 lives…………….9 of them children – subtract the first two rows from the picture above….

How long, O Lord? How long?

12 October 2007
Great Theologians: Anselm 1. Loving God with the mind

Anselm of Canterbury. The Beauty of Theology, David Hogg (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). £16.99. 207 pages. Thanks to Ashgate for a review copy.

There are different ways of doing theology, and I can become enthusiastic about most of them. Systematic theology is the attempt to render a coherent account of Christian faith and doctrine such that the inner mechanisms allow balancing truths to bear the weights and tensions of each other. This is faith seeking understanding. Applied theology explores the application of theology and doctrine to human life and experience, individually and communally, ecclesially and politically. This is faith seeking faithful practice. Pastoral theology is the appropriation of theology and doctrine to human care and community. This is faith seeking to resource love. Biblical theology is identifying through study of the ancient text and its context, those ideas and insights which shaped, and go on shaping, the theology and doctrine of God and God’s ways with humanity and creation. This is faith seeking normative roots. Historical theology traces the origin and development of Christian doctrine through studying the history and development of theological ideas, personalities and historical contexts. This is faith seeking its own shared and continuing story.

When a publisher embarks on a series called Great Theologians it’s an interesting question which of these various approaches to theology is being used. My own view is that an adequate account of any great theologian needs to engage with all these perspectives – and I would want to add another. I’m not aware anyone (apart from the late James W McLendon) has used the phrase ‘Biographical theology’, or ‘theological biography’. But once we set out to study theology through its greatest exponents we are embarked on the study of theology mediated through personality, set in a particular historical context. And therefore study of theology through how it was lived by a particular person. In that sense lived theology is faithfully enacted Gospel, a bearing witness to truth demonstrated in a particular kind of life.

Which brings me to Ashgate’s series, Great Theologians. The books in this series, by concentrating on individual theologians, aim at offering around 200 pages on each figure, and ‘at the upper level of study and academic research.’ The first volume I’m reading is on Anselm, whom I first encountered in a philosophy class where we were introduced to the ontological argument; and I first asked the question of what earthly use philosophy of religion was to people who just wanted to get on with life!

I’ve since repented of such impatience with intellectual aerobic exercise. (Not me in the picture, just in case you were wondering). The image is both intended and specific – to learn how to think clearly and highly about God, to force the mind to push at its own barriers, to develop stamina, muscle and mental energy resources by wrestling with truths that make us feel the discomfort of breathlessness, is to prepare ourselves for the equally demanding exercise of pastoral care offered by minds fit for life.

Or to change the image, for those preparing for Christian ministry, it is crucial to effective service in Christian ministry, that we love God with our mind, that strategic and critical thinking is developed by engaging with levels of thinking way above those ideas which are the educational equivalent of cheaply purchased, mass produced objects sold in the ‘Less Than a £1’ shops! Quality of ministry, and the theological competence of those who preach, teach, serve and seek to enable Christian communities, can’t be acquired at Primark prices.

11 October 2007
A train of thought, or thoughts about trains

Mixed experiences on my jaunt to Musselburgh to do my talk on Evangelical Spirituality on behalf of the Diocese of Edinburgh. From Paisley to Queen Street, 23 minutes. But the 3.30 and the 3.45 to Edinburgh were cancelled due to the failure the points system somewhere ( the announcement said where – but it was indecipherable, and in any case I didn’t need to know where they failed, just that that they had). So I waited with moderate displays of patience for the 4.00 p.m. "express" to Edinburgh – got on and it left on time. But once we were ensnared in the carriage, and five minutes out of Glasgow, it was announced that the train would divert to Dalmeny, and this would add a further 20-30 minutes to the journey.

There is a tangible sense of annoyed resignation ripples through the carriages when such morale deflating announcement is made. One passenger who wasn’t prepared to allow resignation to temper annoyance, was half way through ( at a conservative guess) his umpteenth can of Strongbow. He was already complaining to everyone that he wanted to go to Glasgow not Edinburgh – no he wasn’t on the wrong train, the train was going to the wrong place. He needed to go to Glasgow because he was going to Dublin, to see his sister, who wanted to give him some verbal because he was drunk…..

It was a long journey, and I struggled to read my book on Anselm. I suppose Scotrail, Strongbow and the Ontological argument are a reasonable challenge to those creative thinkers who can always make connections. The train confused our inebriated Robert Carlyle lookalike in shades so much he decided to use his compromised gifts of rhetoric getting us all onside to complain. Not helped when the train stopped, then began to travel back the way it came, in reverse. Maybe we were going back to Glasgow – but no, this was a train doing the equivalent of a three point turn – at 5.25 we got into Waverely.

From there I went down to Leith to pick up my car which Aileen had used for her holiday. Walking towards her house, dressed in my suit and carrying my brief case, a small elderly woman, stopped me and said,

‘Oh hello, is that you Dr Stewart.’

I said no – and she was clearly disappointed, but went on to tell me anyway, ‘Well’, she said, ‘it’s just that you prescribed the wrong pills for me’.

I explained I wasn’t Dr Stewart, she squinted into my face, smiled, and it dawned on her I was right, she apologised, and went on her way.

After that, drove to Musselburgh, did my talk, enjoyed the company of the folk and drove home to get in just before 11.00pm.

I am still trying to work out what theological reflections, spiritual lessons, human insights, arise from such a day…… Suggestions……

10 October 2007
Call to Conversion

Just finsishing a paper on Evangelical Spirituality for Edinburgh Diocese tomorrow night. Got me thinking again about what it means to be converted! I was converted on April 16, 1967 – like George Whitefield I can still see the place, and recall the exact time. I have, however, been converted many times since, and always by that same grace of God that found me that night. Here’s Jim Wallis on conversion, which he argues (rightly as I see it), is not only a personal event or process of turning, but also that constant turning that is part of our faithfully following the One who goes ahead and doesn’t always walk in a straight line.

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We are called to respond to God always in the particulars of our own personal, social and political circumstances…As such, conversion will be a scandal to accepted wisdoms, status quos, and oppressive arrangements. Looking back at biblical, saintly conversions they can appear romantic. But in the present, conversion is more of a promise of all that might be; it is also a threat to all that is. To the guardians of the social order, genuine biblical conversion will seem dangerous…there are no neutral zones or areas of life left untouched by biblical conversion. (Call to Conversion, Lion, 1981, page 6)

Where the Kingdom of God collides with all the other status quos, that is precisely the point where conversion and witness to the One who called us, coalesce in response to God. Mission is our response to the divine commission. As John Stott put it, avoiding that pietistic, devotional self-centredness that wants to privatise faith, "Love for God is not an emotional experience but a moral obedience". Conversion is just that – the regeneration of moral life, through a renewed will, inspired by revived religious affections, and turned outwards in a passionate following of Jesus in the service of the Kingdom of God – which, as Jim Wallis so consistently witnesses, calls all status quos into question.

8 October 2007
Words are feeble…yet priceless things

Over at Euangelion, Mike Bird has draw attention to the death of C. F. D. Moule, former Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. I still remember reading his book The Birth of the New Testament, and wondering why other writers of New Testament Introductions needed to write books two or three times as long, to say half as much that was important for understanding where the New testament came from and what it was about.

I also remember R E O White, former Principal of our College, coming to teach us NT Greek armed with Wenham’s Elements of NT Greek, Arndt and Gingrich’s Lexicon, and C F D Moule’s Idiom Book of NT Greek, to answer the more elusive questions about this or that text. Below is a revealing extract from Moule, a friendly caution to those of us who live by words, and written in Moule’s little book The Holy Spirit. The book was written in 1978, when a lot of words were written about the Holy Spirit, charismatic experience and renewal, much of it anecdotal, only some of it theologically grounded, and even less of it related through careful scholarship to the evidence of the NT documents. Moule offered neither comfort for charismatics, nor ammunition for anti-charismatics – instead, measured reflection refusing to rush to conclusions:

Words are feeble things – never adequate for the job; yet priceless things – seldom dispensable. They are dangerous things, for they are so fascinating that they tempt the user to linger with them and treat them as ends instead of means. But the Word became flesh; and a word that is not in some way implemented goes sour and becomes a liability instead of an asset.

Charles was an important name in 20th Century British New Testament scholarship – Charles H Dodd, Charles Kingsley Barrett and Charles Digby Moule. I think it would be a good idea to have an alternative to the calendars of saints – how about a calendar of biblical scholars when we celebrate through the year, the gift to the church of countless hours of labour and devotion, poured like precious nard, upon those ancient documents that together we call the Bible. And on their feast day, a reading from that part of Scripture on which they have shed the light of their learning? Open for suggestions…..

7 October 2007
The Saxophone and Sacred Longing

Last night I was writing a responsive liturgy for one of our Baptist communities. It’s intended to invite all those who work and serve within the church to rededicate their gifts of time, energy and ability – and to seek the blessing and strength of God. While all this was happening I was listening to Christian Forshaw’s CD, Sanctuary. I first heard this during advent two years ago, sitting outside Parcel Force while Sheila collected our mail, with Classic FM on. The track that was played was ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence’.

I sat transfixed. It was one of those brief interludes when something other than the music is heard, but which can only be heard through the music. It was as if the Holy Spirit pulled up the blinds, and left me with my eyes screwed up against early streaming sunlight. And that moment was recpatured last night, as again this stunning piece of music simply opened my eyes – the eyes of my mind, the eyes of my imagination, the eyes of my soul – whatever part of us it is that needs to be opened in order to see the glory and beauty of what always lies beyond our senses.

Christian Forshaw is the Professor of Saxophone at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. One of his great passions and current interests is music as an experience of purity and intensity, particularly as music within the context of worship.

‘I first began working with the church organ in 1995. I was intrigued by the way the saxophone could sit within the sound of the organ, but could also add a far more expressive dimension. The sound of the organ is static once the key is pressed, whereas the sound of the saxophone is ever changing and moving.’

On this disc the combination of human voice, church organ and saxophone make possible enormous variety and subtlety of mood, of pace, of sound. There are episodes of rumbustuous joy and passages of gentle, persuasive assurance; at times I find the invitation to worship which is inherent in this music, an irresistible grace, and at other times the longing and yearning conveyed in tones ranging from the shrill to the plaintive, is more reminsicent of the flickering sun and shadows of the Psalms at their most poetic and disturbing.

The rendering of Come Down O Love Divine, ends with a passage of saxophonic improvisation that expresses my spiritual longing more authentically than any words I could ever write. This is a track of the most sublime sacred music – by which I mean music that makes the sacred not only plausible but audible, not only imaginable but desirable with that desire that is fuelled by the eternity that God has put in our hearts.

The CD can be found on the Quartz website here. You order it from them as it isn’t easily available in High St megastores. (Which makes me feel unreasonably and sniffily superior!)

6 October 2007
Karl barth and Hans Urs Von Balthasar 6. The light of the hope of the world

The last sections of Wigley’s Karl Barth and Hans Urs Von Balthasar, examine Von Balthasar’s understanding of truth. The last three volumes of his trilogy he called Theo-Logic, an exposition of truth as reasoned truth about God, revealed in Christ, by the Spirit. By now Wigley has persuaded me – Von Balthasar’s masterpiece is shaped and formed in response to the theological pressures, both attractive and disruptive, that he believed were exerted by Barth’s theology. Here is one paragraph of Wigley, expounding Von Balthasar…and as I said earlier in this series, I’m not perturbed but strangely reassured when I encounter theological writing that has to be read twice! I’d find a God who could be done and dusted in strap line prose unpromisingly boring.

In his exposition of how the Spirit works to establish the universal truth of Christ…Von Balthasar establishes the Spirit as the one who "interprets" Christ, and in so doing "introduces" people into the Christian life, using three key themes for this mission of the Spirit, namely ‘Gift’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Witness’….He is looking to show how the Spirit is at work trinitarianly (and thus in creation and redemption) in both objective and subjective terms. In subjective terms, this witness to the truth is seen in the life of the individual Christian in prayer, forgiveness and in the gifts and of the Spirit, and in the witness of a ‘Christian life’. But equally, …it is also evidenced in objective terms, namely in the tradition, in Scripture and above all in the apostolic ministry of the Church. (Wigley, 134)

Scripture bracketed between tradition and the Church would always pose a theological obstacle for the Reformed Barth, just as Von Balthasar’s view that Barth lacks an adequate ecclesiology created inevitable distance for a mind so passionately Catholic.

What Wigley has achieved in this book is an account of two theological friends, whose differences were never negotiated away in a bland and ultimately false ecumenism. Instead, they spent their lives and their best intellectual energies, in creative dialogue carried out on a theologically gargantuan scale, each seeking to know what it might mean ‘for the Church to be the people or the place where the glory of God is revealed’.

Wigley has also shown that an ecumenical theology needn’t be about lowest common denominators, or agreed statements that understate difference. It can be discussion about the core doctrines of the Christian faith, as lived, thought and articulated by theologians from across the Christian spectrum, in which difference does not provoke defensive hostility, but evokes an exchange of truth as each understands it. Both Von Balthasar and Barth bore passionate witness to truth – together they were admirers of Anselm, and his famous dictum, faith seeking understanding.

Which brings me to a final comment on this fine book. There is a form of intellectual snobbery that thinks books about books, or theologians theologising about other theologians, lacks originality and is a kind of parasitic reliance on other people’s ideas. I’ve never shared that view. Some of the best theology I have read is by those who seriously engage the theology of others with sympathy and critical appreciation. In the past few years Bauckham on Moltmann, Mark McIntosh on Von Balthasar, Webster on Barth, Davies on Aquinas, Marsden on Edwards, Zachman on Calvin, Lohse on Luther, have represented some of the best creative and interactive theological writing. From earlier years Rupp on Luther, Wendel on Calvin, Gilson on Aquinas, Busch on Barth, Burnaby on Augustine, Bethge on Bonhoeffer, remain theological classics.

Wigley’s study of Barth and Von Balthasar is more narrowly focused because it is exploring and explaining how one theologian influenced another – and does so by allowing us to overhear, and at times imagine, the conversation of two friends, whose agreements and differences arose from their own theological integrity. And though neither would countenance convenience-driven compromise, they seldom approached each other’s thought with less than appreciative criticism. One last extract from Von Balthasar, about the penultimacy of the Church and the ultimacy of Christ the Word, demonstrates considerable overlap in theological commitment:

The Church…is the moon not the sun; the reflection, not the glory itself. Put more precisely, she is the response of glorification, and to this extent she is drawn into the glorious Word to which she responds, and into the splendour of the light without which she would not shine. What she reflects back in the night is the light of the hope of the world.

Amen, and Amen.

5 October 2007
Dniprio 1 – Aberdeen 1

Now I don’t want to get into debates about mathematics, epistemology or metaphysics. I don’t care if there are some people out there who don’t understand how a draw can be a win. Take my word for it – a 1-1 draw is a victory. Aberdeen are in the group stages of the UEFA Cup thanks to a nail-biting, nerve shredding, blood pressure raising, language straining 94 minutes in the Ukraine.

Dniprio 1 – Aberdeen 1 – and for once a Scottish team has gone through on the away goal. See that – it’s juist pure metaphysical so it is!

4 October 2007