Philip Toynbee once commented that books were his royal way to God. This was late in life, in End of a Journey, the second volume of his Journal. The first volume, Part of a Journey, covers 1977-79, and is as honest and moving an account of spiritual search as I have read. In End of a Journey Toynbee knows he has a terminal illness and his spiritual search intensifies with deep reading in Julian of Norwich and other mystics. There is courage, openness and vulnerability 'in the face of life's great mysteries', as Toynbee reflects backwards on his life, and tries to understand its meaning, his own significance, and how best to face and navigate what is to come. I underlined that line of his, "Books are my royal road to God."
I am a kindred spirit, and recognised from quite early on in my own life, that books are an essential ingredient of my intellectual, emotional and imaginative health. By the time I had made a commitment to Christian faith, and soon after to a vocation as a Baptist minister, I too was finding that books are "a royal road to God." The right books at the right time open up avenues to theological understanding, identify and school our religious affections, and form and foster an all but sacramental relationship with words written to affirm, question, persuade, rebuke, or inspire, on this human journey from here to wherever.
But this post is about one book bought yesterday in the Oxfam shop, and the train of thought it kicked off. As evident in the picture, the book is a nearly new copy on a subject that has been of constant interest to me since College days in the mid 1970's; New Testament Theology (NTT). Oh, first there was Bultmann's unsettling two volumes, which I was first compelled to read with a gulp of humility – Bultmann was usually dismissed by Evangelicals terrified by his unrelenting scepticism about the historicity of the Gospel documents, and hostile to Bultmann's infamour bogey word 'demythologising' – whether or not they had read him, or understood what Bultmann meant by it. But he was, and remains, unignorable.
Then came Hans Conzelmann's Outline of New Testament Theology, another tough read, though with scintillating passages that required re-reading and pointed to deeper realities, suggesting newer perspectives. Then, just as I was graduating out came W G Kummel's Theology of the New Testament. According to Its Major Witnesses. Jesus, Paul, and John. By then I was hooked and ever since have followed developments in NTT as a sub discipline in biblical studies.
So when George Eldon Ladd published A Theology of the New Testament in 1975, with many other evangelicals I welcomed it and lapped it up. In revised form it remains in print and is still a standard in a field that in danger of being overpopulated, at times with volumes that are derivative, repetitive, and nothing like as exciting as some of those earlier books.
Then came the major publication event when Paternoster started to issue the three volumes of The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (1975-78). These were sumptuously produced, edited by Colin Brown, widely and positively reviewed, and by many seen as a major alternative to Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. TDNT had come under serious critique from James Barr who questioned the basic methodology of 'word studies' which use semantic and lexical data to form (often erroneous) theological conclusions. NIDNTT was the first major reference theological dictionary to take on board Barr's critique, avoiding false equivalences between lexical data, linguistic usage and assumed theological concepts and conclusions. I still have those three volumes, monuments to past scholarship, much of the material still holding its own, but yes, now dated. The recent revision and expansion provides an improved resource for this generation – but I'm happy to hold on to these old friends.
I remember several conversations with Howard Marshall when he was writing his own New Testament Theology over 20 years ago. He too wrestled with how to deal with the unity of the New Testament message and the diversity of the writers and contexts out of which the New Testament documents came. By then we had Donald Guthrie's huge volume which worked on a synthesis of the NT writers and used a thematic structure akin to a systematic theology with slight adjustments.
The weakness of Guthrie's approach had already been exposed in another ground-breaking volume. J D G Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament had established beyond argument that such a synthesis flattened and muted the variations of context, content and occasion that gave each document its unique voice, emphasis and message. Indeed, out of Dunn's overarching thesis of unity in diversity, he edited a widely respected series of volumes covering the entire New Testament, titled Theology of the New Testament; but each volume had its own title, as for example, The Theology of Matthew, or Romans, or again, Revelation. This series too is being entirely replaced by a new series as scholarship takes new turns, and new approaches and disciplines require new wineskins.
In the intervening 30 and more years, several other major contributions have been made, including that of Udo Schnelle, yes, he whose book I gladly brought home yesterday. Schnelle fully acknowledges the challenge of listening to the diversity of New Testament voices, while also listening carefully for the cantus firmus which holds them together in a single canonical composition. The result is a brilliant contribution to our understanding of the New Testament as symphony, or better a choral symphony, a complete work made up of different pieces, which is different from all the pieces, and performed by a diversity of voices. I read some of Schnelle a while ago (using a library copy) – I look forward to diving in again, and enjoying some time at the deeper end of NT scholarship.
Yesterday I enthused about Emil Brunner, a theologian whose work I've read off and on throughout the years of my ministry. It all started with a paper I was asked to do as a young minister, on the theme of human relationships. Amongst the resources I used was Brunner's hefty volume on Christian Ethics, The Divine Imperative. I still remember diving into his discussions of human sexuality, marriage and the irrevocable nature of covenant promises. So much has changed since then, but he modelled theological ethics in the service of the church and the pastoral response to the human experiences of love and commitment.
I started looking for Brunner's works second-hand. Reason and Revelation was bought in 1978 for 90 pence! Man in Revolt and The Mediator took a bit longer but I was looking for clean copies – and this was before the days of the Internet, Google and the world as bookshop. It was much later before I found a fresh set of his 3 volume Christian Dogmatics, one of the best systematic theologies around, I think.
Other volumes have been added over the years: The Misunderstanding of the Church is a brilliant summons away from church as institution to church as Spirit inspired community; Our Faith started out as one of those slim, eclectic but often fascinating volumes issued by the SCM Book Club, and remains a persuasive apologetic for a faith engaged and engaging; Truth as Encounter is an essential title which characterises and confirms Brunner's theological development towards a relational ontology, the I-Thou theme explored earlier in The Divine-Human Encounter bearing fruit in his later exposition of truth as encountering God in relationship, rather than truth as only statements about God requiring intellectual assent as beliefs. Brunner had no doubt doctrine and the content of belief are essential, but are to be experienced in and by the divine-human encounter with the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ, and those truths appropriated and applied by the regenerating, renewing and reconciling work of the Holy Spirit.
It has always surprised me how little known Brunner is, and I suspect those who read him today will be a small band of those fortunate enough to have discovered him for themselves. I think there are several reasons for the unwarranted neglect of Brunner's theological work.
1. Of course the immediacy and urgency of some of his writing arose out of the theological cultural and historical contexts within which he was doing his theological thinking and writing. Reading it now, I'm aware we are in a different world, and some of his references and assumptions sound dated, because they are. Though that is the case with most classical theological writers being read generations later. His core theology remains vital, engaged and embedded within Scripture interpreted in conversation with and drawing resources from the traditions of the church, and for Brunner, especially the Reformation.
2. During his lifetime, and even after his death, the overcasting shadow of Karl Barth was at times like a large dense tree keeping the sun from the garden. For myself, I read both Barth and Brunner, value both for different reasons, and wish to God (I mean that quite literally) they had been able to understand each other better during their lifetime.
3. By the time the third and final volume of Brunner's Dogmatics was published in 1962, the 1960's were launched with all the radical changes and challenges to cultural assumptions, social conventions, and a new intellectual ferment that would be new wine in old wineskins, with the inevitable result. The 60 years since have changed the planet, human life, and raised questions Brunner (nor Barth for that matter) would not have conceived in their scale of challenge and threat to human existence itself.
At this stage of my own life which is pretty late in the day now (!), I can make a good case for reading the theology I enjoy. I don't mean that in any superficial consumerist pleasure quest. I mean enjoy in the serious sense of a theology that addresses me and points to the God who addresses each human heart and seeks relationship in an encounter that summons us to truth, and to the Truth. The best theologians do this. Brunner is amongst those, and remains, for me and any who happen to come across him, a source of profound insight and passionate apology for the God of truth, eternally bent on encounter with his creatures.
Here is a brief sample of Brunner at his thoughtful best:
In Christ God Himself lays his hand on me, he opens Himself to me and opens myself to Himself, He breaks through to me through the walls of my I-solation. He establishes fellowship with me and thereby at once becomes my Lord. That Christ is my righteousness is the same as that Christ is my life; the righteousness of God is nothing less than the new obedience. That I turn from self to Christ is already itself the new life; that through faith I participate in the love of God which is in Christ is already the love of God poured into my heart through the Holy Spirit.
(The Divine Human Encounter, Emil Brunner, (Lutterworth Press, 1943, p.113)
Incidentally the two photos above are a telling contrast of the stern theologian sitting in front of his theological army, and the laughing theologian who finds the joy of God in his calling as witness to the Word of God in Christ.
On holiday last week we walked a lot; sometimes it took a while because I stopped a lot. In his poem happily called "Leisure", the Welsh poet W H Davies asked the question most of us know by heart, but forget to practice: "What is this life if, full of care / we have no time to stand and stare?"
Now there's walking, and then there is walking. Every day I'm trying to stay active and the nagging little phone app tells me how many steps I've taken – and how many still to do to meet the target daily step count. Really? Well, yes, but not to be taken too seriously. Little point in competing with yourself to prove to yourself that you can beat yourself. It's a guide, a help to self-awareness.
But then there's the walk where "we go for a walk". This isn't about the daily constitutional; this is intentional, planned, something I set out to do in a particular place which can be the beach, a wood or a circular from our door. Back to last week. We were on holiday in Findochty; for those who don't know, a small fishing village on the Moray Coast, which is a great place to walk. Any amount of walking. Also a good place for stopping "to stand and stare."
When I 'go for a walk', I take my camera. I know that as well as walking I'll be looking, and seeing, and stopping. Last week I took a lot of pictures, many and maybe most of them discarded. But several of them record important moments of encounter and of falling in love again with a world far too easily taken for granted. I love the natural world of land and sea, birds and flowers, moss and trees, rocks and lichen, the close-up and the far away, the sunlit and the clouded grey. A camera can be a prayer book with the added feature of a shutter click.
Prayer can be an exercise in patient waiting, and no guarantee that what you wait for will happen; at least, not the way you want or expect it to. Last week I watched rock pipits. They're quite shy, and reluctant to pose conveniently for that guy over there who stops and stares. Those minutes standing still, watching and waiting, hopeful but not certain, alert for the right moment when my intrusion is forgiven and the bird comes into focus – sometimes prayer is just as frustrating, and rewarding.
When the Psalmist writes "I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me" he is saying exactly what I felt at the moment this rock pipit hopped on to this rock and winked at me! I suppose what I'm saying is that prayer isn't always rewarding or satisfying; nor is it meant to be. It is an encounter, a seeking for the other, a longing to see and wonder at the beauty and reality of One who may be elusive, on the move, just beyond the moment of capture, and inviting us to keep looking and hoping and longing. And now and then, we are forgiven the intrusion and we sense "He inclined unto me." (Psalm 40.1)
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled."
Whatever else the follower of Jesus is meant to think about the plight of migrants on the seas and oceans, it should feel like a life threatening hunger and thirst for righteousness, an inner ache and longing which we call compassion, generosity and respect for each human life. And the cry of the heart to God, is that such hunger be satisfied with the bread of life.
Let Justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream.
"Righteousness as a mere tributary, feeding the immense stream of human interests, is easily exhausted and more easily abused. But righteousness is not a trickle; it is God's power in the world, a torrent, an impetuous drive, full of grandeur and majesty. The surge is choked, the sweep is blocked. Yet the mighty stream will break all dikes.
Justice, people seem to agree, is a principle, a norm, an ideal of the highest importance. We all insist that it ought to be — but it may not be. In the eyes of the prophets, justice is more than an idea or a norm' justice id charged with the omnipotence of God. What ought to be, shall be!"
A J Heschel, Insecurity of Freedom, (pages 99-100)
Postcard of David Hockney, "The Sermon on the Mount", sent by a work colleague years ago from the London Exhibition