Living Wittily

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  • The day started early even for me. Boarded the plane at 6.00 am – announcement that there was ‘a baggage anomaly’, and we can’t move till it’s resolved. Ten minutes later it’s resolved, but we’ve lost our slot for take-off and landing at Gatwick – estimated take-off time now 7.55 am. In fact 7.45 we took off and 20 minutes into the flight breakfast is served – said breakfast has been kept piping hot for over two hours, and manages to appear even less appetising than usual. Manage to salvage some edible bits, then we hit turbulence and ‘tea and coffee service is suspended’.

    Britishairways586 Where else in modern life are you more restricted by a totalitarian regime than a plane once you’ve boarded it? About two feet square of space, with just enough leg room for a man my size – poor guy next to me was bigger than me horizontally and vertically. Between us, trying to avoid elbowing each other, as fragments of breakfast ascended precariously attached to the plastic fork, and the turbulence adding a bit of unpredictability, we managed to negotiate the space between us in a semi-civilised way. Took it in turns using the elbow room….! And all this as we daintily maneuovered around the items on the small plastic tray, all the deemed to be essential acoutrements of an airborne re-fuelling exercise, plastic cutlery, cup, orange carton inflated by air pressure, sugar tube, milk, salt / pepper, roll in a ballooned plastic sealed bag, kerrygold butter, and foil metal tray with previously mentioned pre-fried, long-life breakfast.(I mean the breakfast was long-life – not the eater once the dietary impact of over indulgence in this sort of thing kicks in). The one above looks better than the one I had.

    Why do we do this? I suppose cos, late plane or not, I left Glasgow at 8.00, was in Gatwick at 9.20, on a train at 9.30, in a taxi at 9.55, and in Spurgeon’s College by 10.10. Meeting finished at 1.00pm – quick lunch, then I did it all backwards and was home by 5.15 pm. And left a dirty big carbon print somewhere up there around 35,000 feet at 550 mph. Would going in the train have been greener? Would refusing breakfast have been healthier? Did the negotiated settlement of surrounding the eating arrangements contribute to peacemaking strategies? Dinna ken….but I’m glad I don’t do this all that often. It is, in the full technical, existential, social and personal senses, dehumanising.

  • Happy Birthday Sheila

    Happy Birthday SheilaSmile3t -14/06/47

    Sheila is incredibly, unbelievably, remarkably, inconceivably, astonishingly but undeniably 60 TODAY. She doesn’t look it, and I say this as an entirely impartial, disinterested, objective observer who’s jealous cos I do look my age.

    Well but it’s been a great day. As usual with me it began early, and finding right words to write on the ginormous birthday card,(decided to eschew discreet and go for attention seeking); finding written words to say important things to the one who usually knows exactly what I’m trying to say requires a little literary finesse. Then take up the early morning cup of tea, one of the routine touches of marriage collaboration evolved over decades, and as natural as holding hands. Then Sheila gets to open the prezzies – chosen by her, paid by me, and therefore the perfect gifts – what she wanted, and at a price that she didn’t need to worry about.

    Away then to work, cos birthdays don’t mean holidays – just as well cos the staff threw a lunch time surprise party for Sheila at the nursery school and she came home with a large (half eaten) cake, a bunch of gloriously rust, orange and yellow flowers, and enough money to buy something from Ortak.

    Windows2 Home for a quick change where there were more flowers, and then in to Glasgow to Windows at the Carlton George for a meal served over candlelight, with champagne, looking out over the roofs of Central Glasgow, then a wee dauner along Argyll Street, but too cold so back on the train and home…where there were more flowers, this time for the garden.

    Now I’m simply recording here my gratitude to God, that my best pal was born 60 years ago, and I’ve known her for 37 of those years, and today was unashamed celebration of the life that quality controls the happiness, wisdom and stability of our home.

  • Theological hospitality

    Acciwsunset_2 Along with systematic theology applied to pastoral purpose, history of the Christian tradition as revealed in the diversity of Christian traditions, is a major area of personal and academic research. I dislike theological culture wars where our personal interests, predispositions, prejudices, intellectual tastes are used to disenfranchise other theological styles, approaches and disciplines. You know the kind of thing.

    Systematic theology is hopelessly cerebral and abstractly conceptual and with no meaningful reference point to the REAL world. (So some practical theologians).

    Practical theology is intellectually soft, inherently pragamtic, and so relativised by context that it has little conceptual constancy other than praxis. (So some systematic theologians).

    Historical theology is (this is my daughter’s good natured take on my previous work on James Denney), studying theology written by some bloke that’s deid!

    I believe in theology – pretty well all of it. I don’t believe everything theologians write – who does? I don’t enjoy every kind of theological writing, how could you? I can’t keep up with the cataract of theological publishing as I stand beneath the waterfall, but who said I have to drink it all – just paddle, shower or swim in it!

    At its worst theology can fall into several categories: needlessly obscure, pretentiously complex, dangerously reductionist, comically naive, worryingly dogmatic, smugly exclusive, intentionally controlling, culpably ill-informed – feel free to add to the crime list.

    At its best theology can be impressively relevant, community defining, spiritually creative, healingly illuminating, inconveniently disturbing, satisfyingly or frustratingly provisional, lifestyle transforming, …add to this list too.

    The Congregational Puritan Thomas Goodwin wrote important words about theological hospitality:

    As for my part, this I say, and I say it with much integrity, I never yet took up party religion in the lump. For I have found by a long trial of such matters that there is some truth on all sides. I have found Gospel holiness where you would little think it to be, and so likewise truth. And I have learned this principle, which I hope I shall never lay down till I am swallowed up of immortanlity, and that is, to acknowledge every truth and every goodness wherever I find it.

    I’ve tried to live out that spirit of humble acknowledgement by trying not to restrict my own theological interests by not allowing qualifying adjectives in front of the word theology, to become exclusive claims to what ‘real’ theology is about. Which brings me to my long time conversation with Wesleyan theology in its various Methodist guises, and my interest in the rich legitimate diversity of the Christian spiritual traditions.

    511exkgk4hl__aa240_ David Hempton’s book Methodism. Empire of the Spirit, is not a self-consciously apologetic denominational history. It is a history of one Christian tradition; it is an analysis of rise and decline, of the search for identity and growth in diversity, of the theological style and social significance of a global Christian tradition. Later in this sentence I’m using the word "emerge" in its contemporary loaded sense,- Hempton’s account exposes the importance of social context, adaptability and marketing know-how that enables a new movement to emerge, take root and flourish. But he also shows how such movements in turn accomodate, institutionalise, and zeal and newness fade as revival gives way to routine. Which raises an important historical question – In the early days of the revival, were we seeing the eighteenth century equivalent of emerging church? Yes….and no. More of this anon.

    By the way – the photo at the start of this post is Aberdeen city – notice the protruding spires – I can recognise at least four denominations – and I knew as friends those who ministered there in the 80’s and 90’s. Theologically hospitable – as Thomas Goodwin might have said, ‘Way to go’.

  • Community Theologians and Christlikeness

    I said something in my last post (on June 7) on the community theologian and the theological community that I’d like to develop a bit.

    “Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith is bedrock truth, and practical theology is Christology understood as transformative living truth embodied in discipleship and exalted in doxology. “

    Christology as transformative truth lies at the heart of Baptist spirituality – not to the detriment of Trinitarian thinking but as the revelatory centre of our knowledge and experience of God. My personal commitment to community is inextricably linked to a profound conviction about the living presence amongst Jesus’ followers, of the Risen Jesus himself. We are the Body of Christ; when we gather in His name He (the defining theological centre) is in the midst of us as the Servant Lord, calling  us through the Spirit to obedient living after the pattern of Christ, as revealed in Scripture. Christology not only requires orthodoxy in our thinking, but orthopraxis in the purchase what we believe about Jesus actually exerts on who we are. And who we are determines how we will live, and why – and that takes us back to Christ.

    Hanna17_2  Now if a community theologian is seeking to accompany the community through faithful presence, and stimulate reflection and decision through their speaking, and encourage and heal through self-giving ministry, and both give and receive in the mutual costliness of love, then I begin to sense something quite deep is taking place. That last sentence is an extended paraphrase of two words – kenosis and paraclete – self-emptying and accompanying helper. When a community names Christ as its centre, the One dwelling in our hearts through faith, then that confession is also a surrender to the transforming grace of the living presence of the risen Lord. And if Christlikeness is about both practical imitation through Christlike actions, it must also be about convictions, attitudes, motives and ways of relating, through a Christlike spirit. And if I had to choose two words to help give a sense of what the spirit of Christ might be, I’d be pushed to choose better than kenosis and paraclete.

    Do these two words both describe the role, and safeguard the style, of the community theologian? And if they were to become pervasive within the community, would they confer such evidence of authentic Christian lifestyle, relationships and personality, that it would be true to describe such a group as a community of theologians? Now I’ll want to pick up these two deeply Christian ideas, kenosis and paraclete another time – then I want to look at a couple of biblical stories – then I might have just about started to begin to get an initial idea of what a community theologian could, perhaps, look like – and more to the point act like!

    Meantime here’s a quotation from a new book by Gabriel Fackre, Christology in Context. (Interestingly subtitled, A Pastoral Systematics – a combination of theological styles that I think is essential).

    41mv2hm3dkl__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5 While mutuality means both enrichment and interpretation, it cannot be forgotten that these are movements from points of primary particular ministry. The “pastor and teacher” [for my purposes read community theologian] exist to equip the saints for their ministry, not to pre-empt it. And those called to the church scattered cannot domesticate their gift and claim it in the household of the church gathered. If the particularity of these ministries is neglected, the body is seriously crippled. That particularity is, as we have seen in our reflection on mutuality, not the monopoly by the ministers of identity and vitality of these functions, but their faithful stewardship of them. This stewardship entails seeing that the tasks get done by whoever can best do them, not by the steward’s compulsion to perform all of them by themselves. Particular ministry therefore is custodianship of those special ways  that keep the body  of Christ alive in its vitality and awake in its identity. (page 52)

    That I think is a good description of the community theologian – and there are glimpses of my two chosen words, kenosis and paraclete…….going to think some more now……………

  • Triptych: three panels of an interesting day

    Saturday, sunny, warm, summery, and Sheila and I off for the weekend. Went in to pay petrol. Cashier type attendant chewing gum as if she had a grudge against it. Offered sympathetic comment, ‘You’d probably rather be elsewhere on a day like this’. Without breaking the rhythm of her jaw exercises, ( I assume her commitment to intense training for mastication for the nation), but making fierce eye contact, she managed to growl, ‘Aye. Ah widnae mind like. But ma’ pals are doon at the beer garden – thanks for phonin’, eh?’ Decided the best response to this was a sympathetic but wordless smile, took my Switch Card and discreetly tip-toed back to the car.

    12547 Saturday in Pitlochry. Walked past the Chocolate Cafe. Menu board said  Chocolate Cafe: Soup of the Day

    Left me wondering….what would chocolate soup be like? Don’t mock the idea – the shop has two chocolate fountains – a white one and a milk chocolate one. And there are two ladles beside them!! I’m still fantasising about White Chocolate soup of the day……..yummmmmm.

    Queens Evening drive out to Queen’s View on a country road. Red car approaching from the rear fast. Head, shoulders then torso appear through the sun roof (not the driver, one of the passengers. Follows us to Queen’s view and stops at the car park and out get four pleasant, high spirited, young Asian men. Charming, laughing, told me no need to buy the parking ticket cos it was after 6. They, and we, enjoyed the sunset, the view, the sense of quiet and beauty with my favourite Scottish mountain in the background, Scheihallion. And yes I did think about the mess in Iraq and the culture of suspicion; and no I don’t know the backgrounds of these young men; but yes, I do intend to resist the media generated trustlessness towards people who ‘are not us’. I was glad, and gratified to meet them – and have them talk with us.

    A triptych of impressions from a memorable day – food for thought, and prayer. A young worker who on a sunny day wants to be in the beer garden; four young tourists out for fun; oh, and the chocolate which I didn’t have but wish I had…..lead us not into temptation…..

  • Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament

    9780802845603_m Not often that the publisher’s blurb is worth quoting as a good working theological definition. How about this from the blurb on a new book on holiness and ecclesiology? As a definition of what the church is for, and Who it is for, it is as succinctly to the point as any other I know.

    ‘…..to stimulate churches to imagine anew what it might mean to be a publicly identifiable people who embody God’s very character in their particular social setting.’

    The book is announced by Eerdmans in their Fall catalogue – which has far too many good books forthcoming. I feel waves of temptation which are going to have to be resisted…..mostly.

    Tomorrow I will post some further reflections on the community theologian’s role in a theological community.

  • Sparrows of the Spirit? Eh?

    41dn6hdmvyl__aa240__2 Read some more John Wesley last night. His sermons are foundational in shaping classic methodist theology and spirituality. It isn’t that Wesley’s sermons are rhetorically clever, or devotionally inspirational – they are substantial essays, replete with biblical reference, focused on experience which is to be understood by reason as well as appropriated by the heart. He is a formidable theologian of the heart.
    The modern edition of his works, published by Abingdon, running eventually to 34 volumes, is solid, dead scholarly looking, and serious fun for historians. Serious because each volume is equipped with full critical notes relating to the text; fun because some of the information just is, fun. Here’s one snippet I never asked to know, it won’t change my life, but it did make me send an email to Stuart about the creative homiletics on offer in the early Augustan period!
    A certain Mr Tavernour preached in Oxford St Mary’s and this was the opening sentence of his sermon:
    Arriving at the mount of St Mary’s in the stony stage wherein I now stand [ie the high pulpit] I have brought you some fine biskets baked in the oven of charity and carefully conserved for the chickens of the church, the sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation.
    Now if that was the opening sentence – the rest of the sermon must have been like serving a sentence. Anyway, when you go to church tomorrow I hope you chickens, sparrows and swallows get some fine biskets baked in the oven of charity.
    If not, come home, go online, and get a Wesleyan wholemeal sandwich with organic filling – try one from this online list. Acts 4.31 is on Scriptural Christianity. But don’t expect to eat without chewing………..

  • Community Theologians in the Community of Christ

    Jason wrote in a helpful comment

    Jim. I think the answer must include the kinds of words you note, but must extend further less the theological conversation and attendant ‘discoveries’ or, better yet ‘revelations’ become reduced to no more than a life-sapping circularity in which the belief and practises of the particular community are only ever affirmed and never really challenged – leaving that local body unreformable and closed off to the prophetic and corrective word of Scripture and unaccountable to the wider body whose tradition and future it shares. Great challenges though, and worthy of life-long pursuit for any community of faith.

    I’ve taken a few days to respond to Jason’s comment because I think what he is saying is an important caution against the wrong kind of theological community reflection, growing out of the exaggerated sense of a community’s own importance. I mean such community sins as spiritual introspection, intellectual self-indulgence, theological myopia, intentional ignorance of wider traditions, relational exclusion of those who differ, all of these and other communal expressions of that inward curving, self concerned overconfidence in our own insights that William Temple called ‘our original sin’.

    Eagle_nebulae Of course these dangerous distorions are the potential dark side of any community that makes ‘community’ ‘our community’, and ‘our community’ more important than that which calls us together, Christ, by the Spirit, in the name of the Father. When I talk of the reciprocal relationship of community theologian and community of theologians, I am thinking of Paul’s stupendous prayer ( in Ephesians 3.14-21), which is ontologically definitive for Christian community, and theologically definitive for that community’s way of doing theology together. The sheer scale and scope of Paul’s thought annihilates any pretensions that Christian community can ever be other than graced into being, called to God’s purpose, nourished and sustained by God’s love, part of a purpose eternal yet to be lived here and now, limited by human finitude yet touched by holiness infinite in both demand and gift. ( The image is of the Eagle Nebulae – my favourite Hubble photo – vast as it is, incomparably superceded by the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ).

    Ephesians 3.14-21 is one of those prayerful aspirations that act as a doxological corrective to self-fascination, but also acts positively by exulting in the incalculable possibilities of discovering together the transforming presence of Christ, inwardly and outwardly. The anchorage isn’t ‘the community’ but its rootedness and groundedness in the love that calls it into existence and sustains it. And what we seek to comprehend together is the impossible possibility of knowing the love of Christ that passes knowledge, though we will be lifelong learners determined to go on trying. And while a community can degenerate into a self-preserving, self-promoting, and yes self-destructive circle of self-loving, and become too full of itself, the antidote to all of this is to know the love of Christ and be filled with all the fullness of God.

    And yes I know. That is ‘all very well in theory’. But for me an insistence on practice and pragmatism can never take priority over ontological truths which define what we practice, and how and why, with reference to the One of whom all our theology seeks to speak – humbly, but not without confidence. Practical theology is the practice of what we believe – and what we believe is truly discovered, tested and adjusted by practice – but Paul is right. Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith is bedrock truth, and practical theology is Christology understood as transformative living truth embodied in discipleship, expressed in community in the Body of Christ, and exalted in doxology.

    So I suppose what I am arguing is that the community theologian is one who accompanies, facilitates, shares the mystery, encourages the seeking – but in a community centred not on itself but on Christ; founded not on its own values but rooted and grounded in redeeming, reconciling, mystifying and transformative Love. Paul has little time for the singular ‘you’ – and in this prayer he uses the inclusive you plural – this is indeed a community of theologians – true theologians are those who pray, and those who pray are true theologians. I’m still thinking about all this…….

  • John Wesley on domestic (dis)harmony

    Doing a lot of digging around the history of Evangelicalism in preparation for a revised edition of my book on Evangelical Spirituality. Came across a paragraph in one of John Wesley’s sermons that made me blink, think, and again reflect on the rich flawedness, spiritual complexity and surprising commonsense of the founder of Methodism.

    Scan_4 One of my treasured possessions is a Victorian cockle plate with John Wesley’s portrait on it – he looks as if butter wouldn’t dare melt in his mouth! The passage was about domestic violence – in 18th Century, urban and working class culture, this apologist for Christian perfection, this strategic organiser of new forms of community, uncompromisingly tackled the issue of violence against women. No he doesn’t use the obvious answer – it’s just wrong, unacceptable, and he doesn’t use the blunt ‘no man has the right’. But in an age when often such violence wasn’t even a moral issue, he underpins his rejection of domestic violence against women by rooting it in principles derived from a practical and prudent spirituality from which God’s love imperative can’t be diluted by social conventions.

    But you cannot dismiss you wife, unless for the cause of fornication, that is adultery. What can then be done, if she is habituated to any other open sin? I cannot find in the Bible that a husband has authority to strike his wife on any account, even suppose she struck him first, unless his life were in imminent danger. I never have known one instance yet of a wife that was mended thereby. I have heard, indeed, of some such instances; but as I did not see them, I do not believe them. It seems to me, all that can be done in this case is to be done partly by example, partly by argument of persuasion, each applied in such a manner as is dictated by Christian prudence. If evil can ever be overcome, it must be overcome by good. It cannot by overcome by evil: We cannot beat the devil with his own weapons. Therefore, if this evil cannot be overcome by good, we are called to suffer it. We are then called to say, "This is the cross which God hath chosen for me. He surely permits it for wise ends; ‘let him do what seemeth him good.’ Whenever he sees it to be best, he will remove this cup from me." Meanwhile continue in earnest prayer, knowing that with God no word is impossible; and that he will either in due time take the temptation away, or make it a blessing to your soul.

    From Wesley’s Sermon ‘On Family Religion’

    I wonder how many other Eevangelical leaders were as outspoken, defensive and socially specific in the application of Christian ethics. Anyway, for me it was a welcome glimpse of Wesley’s conviction that the whole of life is to be brought under the scrutiny of the ethic of love.

  • Trinitarian Haiku

    Trinity This week follows Trinity Sunday – I’m still reading slowly through T F Torrance’s Christian Doctrine of God. One Being Three Persons. Just negotiated my way through one of those chunks of hard to grasp theological granite for which Torrance is renowned – all about different epistemic levels ‘n a’ that stuff.

    Anyway the following were written for the class last Semester when I was teaching a course on Rediscovering the Triune God. They are an exercise in theology pared down to the essentials of language, within the discipline of form and playfulness.

    .

    Trinitarian Haiku

    …

    Holy Trinity!

    Grace-filled life in fellowship,

    Love in triplicate!

    …

    Living Creator,

    Creative adventurer,

    Father of mercies.

    …

    Reconciling Son,

    Redeeming Ambassador,

    Love as surrender.

    …

    Comforting Spirit,

    Articulate Paraclete,

    Truthful Advocate.

    …

    Perichoresis!

    Cappadocian genius!

    Love co-inhering!

    …