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  • Raging with compassion 4: Evil resisted and suffering absorbed

    Johnswinton As promised in the previous post on John Swinton’s pastoral theodicy, Raging with Compassion, here is the second quotation from T F Torrance. Incidentally, both this and the earlier quote are good examples of Torrance’s long theological sentences, with their extended cadences and cumulative clauses, pushing the reader relentlessly and persuasively onwards to a destination and conclusion never far from the saving grace of God in Christ crucified and risen. Torrance represents Scottish theology at its best – erudite, evangelical, experiential, indebted to and constructively critical of the Reformed tradition.

    "Yet this is only at the cost of an act, utterly incomprehensible to us, whereby God has taken the sorrow, pain and agony of the universe into himself in order to resolve it all through his own eternal righteousness, tranquility and peace. The centre and heart of that incredible movement of God’s love is located in the cross of Christ, for there we learn that God has refused to hold himself aloof from the violence and suffering of his creatures, but has absorbed and vanquished them in himself, while the resurrection tells us that the outcome of that is so completely successful in victory over decay, decomposition and death, that all creation with which God allied himself so inextricably in the incarnation has been set on the entirely new basis of his saving grace".

    It is Swinton’s aim to show the theological and practical implications of such a theology of the cross as they are applied in the life of the Christian community as it encounters and experiences evil, human suffering and the inevitable brokenness of life in a disordered creation.

    "In like manner", he argues, "the community that seeks to image God and wait faithfully for the return of God’s Messiah is called to develop modes of being and forms of action that will similarly absorb suffering and resist evil". (p. 67)

    080282997x_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ Swinton is not aiming to answer the question ‘why’ evil and suffering exist. Accepting the theological assumptions of a broken, disordered, fallen creation, the reality and pervasiveness of sin, and the deeper definitively  foundational reality of eternal love that is responsive to the sufferings of God’s creation, Swinton pursues strategies that seek to answer the question ‘how’: how to understand "who God is, what evil is, and what it might mean to live with the reality of evil in a way that maintains our faith and hope in the providential goodness of God". (p. 68)

    There are five further chapters in which Swinton attempts to expound such gestures of redemption and strategies for resistance. So over the next couple of weeks, five more posts on the remaining five chapters.

  • Cherry blossom, snowflakes and haiku

    2758184200034295584pcnpni_th_3 2961024440010403809rcgbks_th_2 Out running in the park yesterday I passed a cherry tree while it was snowing, and blowing a minor gale. It was cold enough for me – and I was left wondering what Arctic breezes would do to the chances of cherries later.

    So as I passed, around me pink petals and snowflakes were falling together – left me wondering about global warming and local winter – and thinking how unusual it was to stand watching a shower of two such delicately formed, fragile gems of natural beauty – the geometric perfection of snowflakes, and the tinted living filligree of cherry blossom petals.

    What our children used to (mockingly) refer to as ‘an emotional moment’!

    Un-Seasonal Haiku

    Iced wind from the North-

    Driven horizontally

    Wet snow falls swiftly.

    …

    Blustery blizzards –

    Seasonally adjusted

    Snow, falls in springtime.

    …

    Late frost and wind chill-

    Early blossom buds promise,

    A fruitless autumn.

    …

    Designer snowflakes,

    Early pink cherry blossom,

    Winter confetti.

  • Raging with Compassion 3. Resisting evil and suffering love.

    "080282997x_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ Evil occurs when human beings or systems created and controlled by human beings carry out actions that deliberately or consequentially engender forms of suffering, misery, and death which are marked by the absence of hope that there is meaning and order in the world or a God who exercises providential care".

    "The real problem of evil is not simply that evil and suffering exist, but rather its ability to separate suffering human beings from the only true source of healing and hope; knowledge of the love of God and a sense of providential meaning and hope. Evil is that which destroys hope in and love for God.." (Swinton, p.59)

    There is considerable courage in defining evil in such theologically clear terms, and in separating human suffering from human evil except where human responsibility and accountability require such a causal connection. And while in practice, and in empirical evidential terms, it may be difficult to determine how far, if at all, one person’s suffering is related to their or another person’s evil, it is a crucial theological move to require that any suggested causal connection between suffering and evil be proven rather than assumed.

    When Swinton goes on to describe proper forms of resistance to evil, it is precisely in terms of the quotations above – that is, if evil is that which destroys hope in and love for God, resistance to evil will involve patterns of behaviour and response that restore hope in God and encourage again love for God. The theological grounding for this view Swinton finds in the profound metaphysic of divine love expounded by Thomas Torrance, in his remarkable book, Divine and Contingent Order. Two lengthy quotes say much of what needs to be said to embed the theological imperative of resisting evil with good in the deepest truths of Christian faith. I’ve decided to quote both of them – one today – and one tomorrow:

    Ttorrance This movement of God’s holy love into the heart of the world’s evil and agony is not to be understood as a direct act of sheer almighty power, for it is not God’s purpose to shatter and annihilate the agents  and embodiments of evil in the world, but rather to pierce into the innermost center of evil power where it is entrenched in the piled up and self compounding guilt of humanity in order to vanquish it from within and below, by depriving it of the lying structures of half truth on which it thrives and of the twisted forms of legality behind which it embattles itself and from which it fraudulently gains its power. Here we have an entirely different kind of and quality of power, for which we have no analogies in our experience to help us understand it, since it transcends every kind of moral and material power we know.

    (Divine and Contingent Order, Oxford, 1981, p. 136)

    As Swinton goes on to observe, it is the cross of Christ that demonstrates God’s response to evil  and models how ‘the church which follows and seeks to image such a God, should act in response.’ By rooting his developing argument in such assured traditional Christian doctrine, this non-traditional theodicy rests on a significantly strengthened foundation. Of which more later.

  • Moderatorial hugs, touring buskers and carefully written prayers

    Tartan_shirts_ Earlier this week I was in Edinburgh and several wee happenings came together to make it an interesting day.

    Macleod_2 I was in Edinburgh doing research amongst some of the personal papers of George Macleod, founder of the Iona Community, Kirk minister, Peer of the Realm, Peace activist and apologist, and, undoubtedly, a man of prayer. I was spending the time researching his prayers – an odd word for the process of literary and theological criticism, which involves reading, comparing, analysing, organising, of all things, written prayers. As if one man’s devotions should ever be the object of another person’s intellectual curiosity!

    Many of those prayers were typed on A6 paper of the kind inserted in small leather bound loose-leaf folders in the days before they became ‘personal organisers’. Typed – complete with deletions, insertions, revisions. In several of them, like a palimpsest, you could trace the first draft, the corrections, the re-wording to capture the particular nuance of spiritual longing which guided the prayer towards completion. Macleod was passionate about the worthiness and worth of what was offered in worship, and therefore careful in the spiritual discipline of finding fit words, to speak the Word, of the Word, fittingly.

    Pgmodsmcdonald24 But later I called up another folder, this time his Peace sermons – and there was his address from the mid-80’s,to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, about Trident. The shaky but still bold scrawl of handwritten words, aides memoire scored into the paper, reminders for a nonogenarian clergyman outraged by the blasphemy of nuclear weapons and not wanting to be short of ideas. I thought about the current Moderator, the Right Reverend Alan MacDonald, a good friend and supportive colleague from my Aberdeen days, and a long time outspoken critic of nuclear deterrence as an acceptable policy, and one involved in recent protests at the renewal of Trident. And this on the day of the vote at Westminster. Well on the way home, walking down the Waverley ramp, who’s coming towards me but Alan – and I was given that most efficacious of informal sacraments, the Moderatorial hug.(Photo shows footwashing after a long march of protest against Trident, another sacramental act of political and spiritual critique).

    Greyfriars_13 Earlier I’d been in the sandwich shop near Greyfriars Bobby and had ordered a grilled Foccacio with chorizo, brie and black olives – and sat beside Jock (on an ex-church pew – complete with worn varnish and backside-numbing hardness), a pretty good busker, complete with guitar, black coffee, a Snickers and a good line in conversation. He’s off to a gig in – well, where else – Mexico – at the end of April. Somebody heard him sing, thought he’d be a good support act, and so off he’d go. Long way to go for a gig I suggested – ‘Aye but I love eatin’ Mexican – it’s the chillies’, he said. Fair enough. And I hope that, and much else, works out for him.

    Then accosted by a young lad thrusting a flyer at me asking if I was interested in the concert. Not your usual big name rock stuff – no, Russell Watson and Kathryn Jenkins. Probably costs a fortune, so I declined pleasantly and continued the hike along Princes St to Waterstones – I have shop tokens remember? I’ve still got them!

    So, a hug from the Moderator who mixes politics with religion as a way of being faithful to Jesus; touching and handling the prayers of Lord Macleod legible and still prayable with all their corrections; a blether with Jock about his trip to Mexico to do a gig; a concert I didn’t know about and might just decide to go to, a wee bookshop crawl albeit unsuccessful. Not a bad day – aye, and ‘we are being renewed day by day’, by the grace of Christ, encountered at times, in the people who walk into our lives and walk out again…, a’ the time!…..if we live witttily enough to notice.

  • Julian of Norwich and mile high apple pie

    Ever since I came across this modern icon of Julian of Norwich and her contemplative cat (which bears an uncanny resemblance to Gizmo Gordon), I’ve enjoyed Julian_2 occasionally setting it as my desktop background. Not wonderful art, but it does capture something of the crisp clarity with which this woman theologian thought and wrote about the revelations of divine love she had received.

    Several years ago I was invited to teach a course on Julian and her remarkable book in New Hampshire, New England. It was February and the temperatures were between 6 degrees and -25 degrees. The students were a mixed group of mature, persistently curious, hungry-to-learn, Christian, cultured folk from the villages and hamlets around Hanover, New Hampshire – they were a joy to teach, and fun to be with. They came on three consecutive all day Saturdays, on one day through a blizzard. And as we thought about the world, our lives and God, Julian the medieval contemplative became a favourite source of wise optimism. Her sense of God as ‘our courteous Lord’, and of God’s purposes as ensuring ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’, provided a strong sub-structure from which we explored the spirituality of divine love in a broken world.

    Winter_2 And then to walk out in the snow, wrapped up in layers of wool and other heat preserving fibres, enjoying the cold because we knew we would soon be warm – I’ve never forgotten the friendship and conversations, and am still in touch with one or two of the folk.

    251672537_3aa86e5df1_t So now when I read Julian I think of blue skies, white snow, millions of trees, praline flavoured latte, and mile-high apple pie! Oh the ascetic life!

  • Christ have mercy!

    Police_have_charged_a_uk_news_3_1_b Before yesterday I didn’t know Paul Bennet. Unaware of the quiet, effective ministry of a man determined to push the church into the community, and to be himself a sign of love as availability and vulnerability. For reasons yet unknown, he was stabbed to death.

    Explanations and recriminations don’t help much – from his wife who held him as he died, to his chidren who mourn his death and the manner of it, to his congregation who clearly loved him, and from the small town of Trecynon in South Wales, to all of us who now hear what happened, the ripples extend outward. Acts of violence do that – their impact is not contained, the consequences ripple out, and the killing of a human being diminishes us all.

    Dear Lord and Father of mankind

    Forgive our foolish ways.

    Reclothe us in our rightful mind

    In purer love thy service find

    In deeper reverence praise.

    Lord have mercy!

    Christ have mercy!

    Lord have mercy!

  • Raging with Compassion 2

    080282997x_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz__2 One of the very interesting features of John Swinton’s approach to theodicy is his impatience with all attempts to respond to evil and suffering at the intellectual, philosophical and theoretical levels. Theoretical theology is for Swinton, if not a contradiction in terms, then an incongruous non-alignment of truth with practice. Theology lives as it is lived, is true if it has purchase on action, and Christian doctrine must be embodied in an interconnected cluster of redemptive practices. Here is his own summary statement of a practical theodicy, followed by further comment from Hauerwas, whose thinking resonates at many points with Swinton.

    Practical theodicy is the process wherein the church community, in and through its practices, offers subversive modes of resistance to the evil and suffering experienced by the world. The goal of practical theodicy is, by practicing these gestures of redemption, to enable people to continue to love God in the face of evil and suffering and in so doing to prevent tragic suffering from becoming evil.      (Swinton, p. 83).

    Then this from Hauerwas’ Naming the Silences, p.53:

    Historically speaking, Christians have not had a "solution" to the problem of evil. Rather, they have had a community of care that has made it possible for them to absorb the destructive terror of evil that constantly threatens to destroy all human relations.

    Winter_1  As one who has spent years in pastoral care confronting suffering and accompanying those for whom suffering is a challenge to faith, I recognise the truth, that theodicy is not ‘a philosophical question needing solution, but a practical challenge requiring a response’. And while I have found some help in much of the theological and philosophical literature, when it comes down to the reality of human suffering and the many evils that cause it, the responses that are most profoundly Christian are practical and pastoral. Such a theodicy aims at enabling and embodying those redemptive gestures that support, affirm, acknowledge and cherish those human people for whom suffering has deep and decisive reality. The Christlikeness of such practical and pastoral redemptive gestures is evidenced throughout the gospels in stories of compassionate actions rooted in the redemptive purposes of God.

    I tried exploring Swinton’s approach the other morning, in the theology class I am currently teaching, as an alternative to traditional philosophical and theological theodicies – the response from the students was positive and engaged. Having worked away at various forms of the traditional defences, they warmed to Swinton’s approach, which encourages active engagement in redemptive gestures of lived resistance, for a Christian community, the more effective response. It was a very interesting experience of students grabbing at tough theology and finding ways to use and apply it to the lives we all live.

  • My main post for today is at hopeful imagination. Took the chance to mention my current Lent Book, Raging With Compassion and connect it with a couple of really big questions? Couldn’t resist another wee post on the astringent wisdom of James Denney though! See earlier post here today!

  • James Denney, ‘asserting our origins….’

    Eyrwho121 Amongst the real treasures of Scottish theology, any responsible student of Scottish Christianity would be compelled to set the writing of James Denney, the quintessential Edwardian Scottish minister and scholar. I know. I’ve been known to mention this before! And it wasn’t only Denney – there was James Orr, A. B. Bruce, Henry Drummond, T. M. Lindsay, Alexander Whyte, George Adam Smith, James Moffatt, and in England P. T. Forsyth. What a galaxy of theological talent. Now and then I’ll post some brief reminders of those broad minded but Christ-centred thinkers. Denney was, in my entirely biased opinion, the most lucid, precise and in every important sense, one of the most evangelical of writers.

    The Christian Religion is identical with Jesus Christ; if there is no accessible Christ, there is no Christianity. It is the Church’s being to trust in Christ;it is her vocation to bear witness to Christ; if the shadow of uncertainty or of unreality falls upon Christ, her testimony is paralysed, the breath of her life is withdrawn. (British Weekly, 1902, p.73)

    The primary function of the Church is to assert its origin: it is to bear witness to Christ as the author of all the blessings it enjoys. Its first duty, as its primal impulse, is worship; and worship is the adoring confession of the God revealed in Christ and possessed in the Spirit as the Redeemer of sinful men. There is nothing so characteristic of the Church’s life as doxology.

    (The Church and the Kingdom, p.7)

  • Raging with Compassion

    Johnswinton John Swinton’s book Raging with Compassion is unusual, and unusually good. Because he combines nursing, pastoral and theological disciplines he approaches the problems of evil and suffering as a practical theologian – a theologian who seeks to apply Christian belief to Christian practice in ways appropriate to context and faithful to the Gospel. Early in this book he is uncompromising in his criticism of theoretical theodicies, intellectualised solutions to the problem of evil. Evil is not a philosophical conundrum or a challenging test of theological ingenuity. Indeed the attempt to solve ‘the problem’ of evil as a mental / philosophical / theological exercise, so reduces the realities of human experience to ideas and theory, that such intellectualised distancing contributes to the problem by excusing God or blaming the victim. it then exacerbates the problem because theorising is isolated from both the expereince of the sufferer and from responsibility to respond to and resist evil in practice. Philosophical and academic theodicy merely ‘solves’ the problem by a logically coherent argument within the framework of theism.

    080282997x_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz__1 Swinton’s alternative is to pursue a practical and pastoral theodicy, a way of responding to evil that is not based on adjusting the pieces of an intellectual board game. The practical theodicist is concerned, not about logical coherence but about pastoral consolation of the sufferer, and developing practices of resistance to evil and suffering wherever it is encountered. So Swinton identifies certain practices which in their interconnectedness, create communities of resistance to evil, and assume an understanding of the human being that is affirmative, protective, supportive and ultimately rooted in the love of the Triune God. This is one of the most satisfying considerations of ‘the problem of evil’ I have read (from Hick’s Evil and the God of Love [1966] to McCord-Adams Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God [1999]. This book isn’t so much a theodicy of intellectual apologetic, but a theodicy of Christian responses to evil that are essentially and redemptively Christlike.

    The four core practices are lament, forgiveness,thoughtfulness and friendship and they make up over half the book. They are preceded by a critique of classic theodicy, a careful chapter defining evil, and an account of practices of redemption which are inherently resistant to human suffering and the evils that add to it. But practices of resistance have an interconnectedness that give them cumulative and embodied effectiveness – in that sense Swinton is arguing for

    i) a form of ecclesiology defined by Christian practice rather than doctrinal distinctives;

    ii) the church as a community that expresses in a practical and pastoral theodicy, the resistance of God to evil and suffering;

    iii) and a community which does so by reflecting in lament, forgiveness, thoughtfulness and friendship, the mercy and grace of God in Christ;

    iv) and persists in such practices because they are deeply rooted in the nature of the Christian God, and the Christian expereince of God as loving creator, incarnate redeemer, active sustainer.

    Next few days I’ll post several key quotations – but near the end of the book is a sentence which summarises the books argument, and indicate the qualities of its writer:

    Learning to practice in the ways described in this book is much more than just human striving. It is an ongoing task carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit and within a community of thoughtful holy friends who recognise whose they are and remain open to the dangerous possibility of meeting Jesus in the multitude of ways in which the stranger comes to us.