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Sean’s meme – I have read enough …….
Here’s my attempt to respond to Sean’s meme here.

I have read enough…..
1. I have read enough Thomas Merton to know that silence and solitude are not self indulgent pursuits of the ultra-spiritual, but the necessary disciplines to self giving love, that make it possible to have a self worth giving.
2. I have read enough Kathleen Norris and Esther De Waal to know that the Rule of St Benedict provides a framework of spirituality that takes the ordinary routines of life and integrates them into a spirituality that values stability founded upon, and community centred upon, the Word of God read and lived together.
3. I have read enough Chaim Potok, Elie Wiesel and Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the apostle Paul, to know that my own Christian faith is deeply indebted to, genetically connected to, the life and thought of God’s ancient people Israel as they emerged from their encounter with God.
4. I have read enough George Herbert to know that words used with pastoral precision and poetic craft, in the 17th century as the 21st, become sacraments of truth and gifts of grace.
5. I have read enough James Denney to know that ‘the last reality of the universe is eternal love, bearing sin’.
6. I have read enough novels by Anne Tyler, Gail Godwin and Carol Shields to know that when it comes to understanding what goes on inside us, what drives our deepest family relationships, what is the meaning of forgiveness and of love as costly self-expense, what to make of disappointment, how to hold on to friendship faithfully but not possessively, how to creatively use or destructively express anger, how to live through broken trust and learn to trust again, just how to make something of that whole fankled emotional liability we call the human heart, then these women novelists are far more perceptive guides than most pastoral theology I’ve read – much of it still written by men!
7. I have read enough Jurgen Moltmann to know that he isn’t the last word in systematic theology, and that I don’t always agree with him, but his is a passionately written theology of the Passion, drawn from a conception of the Triune God defined by intra-Trinitarian love that is kenotic, passionate and redemptive – and therefore liberating.
8. I have read enough Karl Barth to know that I’ll probably never be able to read all of Karl barth, but it won’t be because I’ve stopped trying.
9. I have read enough of Rick Warren.
10. I have read enough of Julian of Norwich to know that her Revelations of Divine Love constitutes one of the high points of medieval theology, one of the masterpieces of Christian mysticism, one of the most profound reflections on the cross ever written, and is the first major theological writing by a woman in English.
19 October 2007
Warning – prolonged rant, Part I

Every month we pay our TV Licence by direct debit. As a fully paid up licence holder I am entitled to express my response to Micahel Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, who makes the unqualified assumption he knows what I want. He says, and I quote,

"What [the public] want to hear…is every pound is being squeezed to get the maximum value. And the BBC is going to be more disctinctive in the future. The BBC needs to be more distinctive doing things that other people don’t do, and also those things it does do, doing them in a distinctive way."

I am SO tired of the asumption that what I (a member of the public) want is value for money at all costs. And I am even MORE tired of the assumption that value is index linked to pounds sterling. I value the BBC for reasons that have nothing to do with money. In any case, value for money is such a subjective judgement. I happen to think that a couple of million spent producing quality drama is better value than half that amount spent on reality TV productions. Dr Who or X Factor, which is best value for money?

Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philarmonic or Spooks? Eastenders or Panorama, Casualty or Newsnight? Or again, take televised sport. The major sporting occasions are not value for money if it means the BBC has to outbid huge commerical interests to bring major events to terrestrial TV, and thus slash the budget for other forms of TV programme much more representative, educational, culturally significant – all of which are themselves fairly subjective judgements. And I am, unabashedly, fitba daft masel’, like!

I’m not against reducing wasteful spending; or reviewing staff levels in relation to technological change; nor am I critical of any major public institution which must change in order to remain effective, adaptable and secure in its cultural and social role as an institution supported by and accountable to, the public. The BBC has an obligation to be financially prudent, but also a duty to preserve its fundamental values – which are not all financially calculable. Yes, include value for money in discussions about value; but also include values which are not indexed to finance, which indeed might cost significantly in order to preserve and promote precisely these values.

Like reporting on violence against Buddhist monks in Burma; or attempted genocide by stealth in Darfur; or the double standards of objecting to nuclear development in developing countries while new generations of nuclear weapons are commanding major budgets in the West. That kind of reporting will never be value for money – it’s too important for that. So don’t make value for money, filthy lucre, the benchmark value of any public I belong to.

Less factual, news based programmes is one of the key proposals, and where staff cuts will be deepest, according to the BBC’s own News Programme. Now whatever else I expect, and value, from the BBC, naive as it may seem, I expect quality reporting which is politically independent, accurate and current, reflective of the realities in our world and informed about how they impinge upon our own cultural, social and political life. I expect the BBC to have some of the best correspondents, some of the most informed and reflective minds engaging with the events, people and circumstances that shape our history as today’s news becomes yesterday. Good quality news coverage, factual documentaries whether political, current afairs, the arts, natural history or whatever, should not be reduced to release funds for more populist agendas. This is the hard dilemma of major educational and public institutions – do you give what is demanded, or seek to offer that which influences the culture out of which such demands come? Should the agenda be populist or elitist? Important questions – and not to be short-circuited by reducing everything to making sure every pound is squeezed to get value for money. There are other, more valuable values to be cherished.

I know, there is another side to all of this – but maybe Part II tomorrow.

18 October 2007
An honest day’s work – and a fair day’s pay?

A visit to The Museum of Scottish Country Life was a journey back in time to my first 16 years of life in the 50’s and 60’s. I lived in rural Ayrshire and Lanarkshire and spent my growing up years on farms, where my father was a dairyman. I found myself looking at farm implements now consigned to a museum, that I used to handle, and used to earn pocket money during the summer holidays. I recognised and knew the names of such exotic implements as harrowers, grubbers, reapers and binders, mole-traps, turnip chippers, sheep shearing scissors; and watching a video of milking in the 1950’s – something I used to help my dad with when I was 10, and before I went on the school bus!

The Y shaped scythe was nearly as big as me and I was paid 2/6d (12 and a half pence!) a day to cut down the profusion of thistles in the fields where the dairy herd grazed. The draining spade, with its enormous left hand blade, I used to jump on when I was small and allegedly helping my dad re-cut the draining ditches of the silage fields.

The milking apparatus, complete with four chrome cups lined with Alfa Laval rubber sheaths, a pulsator, a rubber can gasket and a hose for fitting to the vacuum pump – I remember helping to do the milking, pasteurising the milk, sterilising the equipment, mucking the byre and hosing it all down on a daily basis. I could assemble the milking equipment with its complicated network of hoses and fittings with practised ease by the time I was 10.

I was driving a tractor in the fields by age 12, and in the various farms became familiar with several makes of tractor – all of which I saw at the Museum of Scottish Country Life. The David Brown (always called the Davie Broon, first picture above), the Massey Ferguson which was the regular mechanical work-horse, the Nuffield which was a big brute of a thing, and the impressively new Fordson Major, (pictured here) which for a while the farmer didn’t let anyone drive but himself!

You can follow the history of the plough – from single blade drawn by horses, to early tractor drawn triple bladed, all the way through to the modern left foot, right foot, multi-bladed swivel versions. An important family picture shows my dad using the horse drawn plough. I’ve posted it again just as a piece of personal indulgence – and because it captures formative years in the development of my own values, my view of working people and of work, of money and what it costs to make a living by the labour of human hands, and my admiration for the sheer tenacity of those who worked the land when mostly what was available was their own resilience, stamina, and yes, pride in their work. My favourite passage in the Wisdom of Sirach pays tribute to farm labourers like my dad:

He sets his heart on ploughing straight furrows,

and he is careful about fodder for the cattle.

Sirach, ch.38.26

That sums up my dad’s work-ethic – in my best moments I hope something of that pride in doing the routine things well, and doing an honest day’s work is genetically transferable. And I also wonder what an honest day’s work is worth for a man who worked up to 80 hours a week – more than the meagre pay-packet he brought home – always, but always, unopened!

18 October 2007
Central heating, Morton’s rolls and Die Hard seagulls

One of the long term failings in my make-up is that when I come off a long period of working too hard, and take a holiday – the first few days I am like a bear with a migraine discovering somebody’s been eating my porridge. So I don’t live to any agenda, structure, timetable, plan, schedule or any other device that hints at control.

Aye, but then what happens when the central heating gets its service on Monday, and goes on the blink on Tuesday, eh? And both days I’m told the gas engineer will come anytime between 1pm and 6 pm so I can’t go out? And the shower is at best a cool tepid, but I give thanks that the blessed boiler had at least taken the chill off. With studied patience (one of several under-developed fruits of the Spirit in my life) and pious resignation, (one of the carnal attitudes that occasionally surfaces) I took to the sofa with a book, made a cafetiere of coffee, watched the rain run down the windows, made a veritable vat of lentil and herb soup, and descended to the depths of cultural vacuity by watching some daytime TV. The gas man came, fixed the solenoid, then it stopped again, replaced the valve, but it needs a pump -so the gas man will come Wednesday as well – three days of non agenda living huh? Holiday not dancing to anyone else’s tune, eh?

Still – by Tuesday afternoon, leaving our cool home (the word cool means cold, not trendy), Sheila and I went to Lochwinnoch for a brisk, healthy, stress-busting walk. At the side of the loch a couple had come to feed the birds – gulls as it happens. What impressed me was the fact that it was Morton’s rolls they’d brought. Not your imported doughy, synthetic dissolve in your mouth baps, and none of your healthy high fibre bran and wholewheat curling-stone rolls either.

No – the real thing, Morton’s rolls. These folk had come to ‘feed the birds’. And not your Mary Poppins London pigeons, more your Die Hard Lochwinnoch seagulls, complete with grubby vests.For those who don’t know, Morton’s rolls are the Rolls Royce of the roll industry. When someone in Glasgow says they are just going to get the Rolls, it isn’t the car they mean. A Morton’s roll is better than Somerfield’s SO GOOD and Sainsbury’s TASTE THE DIFFERENCE rolled into one! (rolled – get it?). Crusty, light, requiring enough Lurpak butter to leave visible tooth prints a minimum of umpteen millimetres deep.

A different class of gull at Lochwinnoch – discerning scavengers from rural suburbia by the loch. I came back feeling that the world is still a surprisingly good place to be.

17 October 2007
Colin Gunton, The Barth Lectures – a guide to the Matterhorn

Colin Gunton, The Barth Lectures (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 285 pages, £25.

(Review copy courtesy of T&T Clark)

I met Colin Gunton only once, at a P T Forsyth symposium at King’s College, Aberdeen. Since then I’ve read most of his published volumes. I am also an amateur reader of Barth – by which I mean Barth is a kind of theological hobby, a source of stimulus and refreshment, and of spiritual sustenance, to be read now and then, even studied for a while, but not allowed to absorb mental energy and time I need to give to much else that my life is about!

Reading Barth is my equivalent of remembering to increase the proportion of organically healthy theology in my diet, to prevent that dangerously convenient trend towards over-processed stuff with artificial flavourings! Barth is wholewheat, high fibre theology; Barth is to the theological palate, what dirty carrots from the farmer’s market are when compared to those washed, watery, flavourless, peely-wally, plastic packaged supermarket baby carrots!

Back to Gunton. This is an unusual, and unusually enjoyable book for several reasons. First, it is a lasting memorial to Colin Gunton’s skill and passion as a theological educator, because the contents are the recorded and transcribed lectures Gunton delivered to post and undergraduate students at King’s College, London. Second they were so faithfully heard and transcribed that those privileged to be there, can hear the voice, envisage the face, recall the energy and passion of Gunton in full theological flow. Third, the book is one person’s transcribed and edited account (Paul Brazier) of the views of one of the best British theologians in a generation (Colin Gunton), expounding the 20th Century’s most influential European Protestant Theologian (Karl Barth). Fourth, because the lectures are recorded pretty much verbatim, and with diagrams and charts and explanatory sections and questions for further discussion, the book reads often like a handbook to major divisions of the Church Dogmatics, with short focused sections making up carefully structured chapters. This series of lectures provide as accessible a way up into Barth’s higher altitudes as I know.

Barth is a huge presence in the interchanges, suggestions and counter-suggestions of theological blogs. Those who want to encourage others in their reading of Barth know well that some of the most important works are also the most theologically demanding, bordering on the forbidding. Not this one – I think Gunton on Barth through Brazier, rendered into lecture note form, works extremely well as a way of enabling ordinary theological mortals to follow Barth’s complex, prolix, brilliant, dense, unrelentingly demanding and endlessly inviting theology, and know that the view after the hard climb is worth the effort.

The first 75 pages set Barth’s Dogmatics in their intellectual and historical context, of Enlightenment philosophy, ascendant 19th Century liberal theology, the cultural and theological crisis of the Great War, the Romans commentaries and Barth’s critical appropriation of Anselm. Much of this is available in secondary literature elsewhere, and not so selectively and tendentiously as Gunton’s treatment here. It’s still good stuff though, from a teacher completely at ease in 19th century continental theology and philosophy.

Then chapter by chapter from the Triune God, to the being of God, the doctrine of election, and on to the hugely impressive work of Barth on Christology and soteriology, where Gunton is at his theologising best. Reading this book isn’t only an exercise in hearing a theological lecturer tell students about Barth.It’s to overhear and visually imagine a conversation between Gunton and Barth, complete with head nodding affirmation, raised eyebrows of surprise and quips of humour. But also to hear a significant number of corrective comments and courteous demurrals,the whole performance charged with intellectual energy, alive with restless but reverent curiosity. Thankfully Brazier hasn’t edited out Gunton’s lecturing mannerisms, and on page 145 he makes the statement-question of every good theological teacher, ‘You see…..you see’. Gunton, and Barth through Gunton, conducts theological education in the tradition of John the Evangelist – ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us…. and we beheld His glory’. You see?

‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’ You see?

I’ve read a number of books on Barth, the intellectual background and development of his theology, and each one with their own take on how best to tackle this theological Matterhorn. Von Balthasar, Berkouwer, Torrance, Webster, Busch, McCormack, Hunsinger, Dorrien – now if pushed to say which were the most helpful guides for me in my amateur mountaineering amongst the Dogmatics, they would be Busch’s The Great Passion, Webster’s Barth in the Outstanding Christian Thinkers series, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth. And now these distilled discourses of Colin Gunton, The Barth Lectures. But not because Gunton gives a definitive interpretation, or a comprehensive survey – he does neither.From the others I learned a lot about Barth – but it is just as important to learn what Barth was about. These lectures demonstrate how to engage with Barth, to use him as a massive presence to be tackled because he is there, and then to start climbing.

The Introduction by Stephen Holmes is an affectionately respectful eulogy, honest about the limitations both of the book’s form and content, but enthusiastic about the book’s value. This, together with Christoph Schwobel’s Foreword, enables two of Gunton’s friends to offer some evaluation not only of this volume, but of the theological impact of Gunton’s teaching – perhaps best gauged by those, like these two, who learned from Colin Gunton a lifelong commitment to doing theology, and doing it well, because ‘as to the Lord’, which indeed it is!

I always carefully choose the book that will accompany me through Advent – this year I think I’m going to let Gunton guide me through Church Dogmatics 59.1 ‘The Way of the Son into the Far Country’. Then during Lent and towards Easter, perhaps he can take me further through 59.2 and 59.3. and the meaning of ‘The Obedience of the Son of God’.

16 October 2007
Autumn Haiku

Decided to play around with inner feelings of being on holiday in autumn. The profusion of yellow, gold and brown, the windy wet drizzly day, the crab apple tree in our front garden, and the increasing irrelevance of harvest thanksgiving as a liturgy for local, rural agriculture in a globalised world – all combine to create a mood mostly playful but with an elegiac hint of Autumn’s annual reminder to us all! I’ve always liked autumn in a kind of sorry to see summer go sort of way – the changing colours of trees and garden, the sense of season’s coming and going, the rhythm of vitality in spring, maturity in summer, fruitfulness in autumn and dormant rest in winter. And maybe also because my roots are in country rather than city. In any case, here’s some of the inner conversation going on just now.

Autumn Haiku

Windy autumn rain.

Showers of yellow falling leaves;

trees prepare to sleep.

.

Like much too early

frosted scarlet Christmas balls,

crab apples hang down.

.

Harvest fruit gathered;

winter storage, dated since

globalisation.

.

A fruitful autumn,

like ripe middle aged people,

well preserved wisdom.

.

A fruitful autumn,

like well preserved people,

middle aged wisdom.

15 October 2007
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