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The two volumes of Wiesel's autobiography are titled, All Rivers Run to the Sea, and The Sea is never Full. They are the writing of Wiesel's mature years, retrospective and reflective, honest so far as any one of us can claim honesty in our deepest and most difficult to process memories.

Reading this biography is an exercise in hearing a gentle and respectful corrective, as the biographer helps the reader understand why the autobiography is written as it is. Berger is a journalist, skilled in examining motive, adept at interpreting human narrative, with an eye for the significant facts, and also with the benefits of hindsight.

Autobiography and biography giving their separate accounts of the same person, is like listening in stereo to separate speakers, the two voices trying to tell the same story, one from within, and one as external observer. And both are required to hear the full range of the music.

Writers and speakers (and preachers), note the advice given to the young cub reporter Elie Wiesel: "If you want to hold the reader's attention, your sentence must be clear enough to be understood and enigmatic enough to pique curiosity." (Page 57)

O God Beyond me, you dwell in unapproachable light. Teach me that even my highest thoughts of you are but a dim and distant shadow of your transcendent glory.

Teach me that if you are in nature you are still greater than nature.

Teach me that if you are in my heart, you are still greater than my heart.

Let my soul rejoice in your mysterious greatness.

Let me take refuge in the fact that you are utterly beyond me, beyond the sweep of my imagination, beyond the comprehension of my mind.

Your judgments are unsearchable and your ways past finding out.

O Lord, hallowed be your name.

(Diary of Private Prayer, John Baillie, Day 17 Morning Prayer)

In a world fixated on explanation, obsessed with transparency and 'the right to know', curious beyond reasonable limits to know the private details and revealing gossip of what makes up others' lives, this prayer is a request for humility of mind, proper reticence and reserve about what we need to know, and a contentment that comes from glad resignation to the mystery of the One who is beyond our knowing, and who refuses to 'put it all out there'. Except for one explicit and specific statement, God's final and definitive revealing of God's own truth, "He has spoken in his Son." 

Or as T F Torrance never tired of reminding people, "There is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ." The full quotation reads like this:

"What God is in eternity, Jesus Christ is in space and time, and what Jesus Christ is in space and time, God is in his eternity. There is an unbroken relation of Being and Action between the Son and the Father, and in Jesus Christ that relation has been embodied in our human existence once and for all. There is thus no God behind the back of Jesus Christ, but only this God whose face we see in the face of the Lord Jesus." (Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 243-244)

Baillie and Torrance were not contradicting each other. Baillie's prayer bows the heart before the mystery of Love Eternal that is beyond knowledge; Torrance's doxological theology lifts the heart to gaze on the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

My friend Ian from College days, is amongst other forms of art, a very good cartoonist. He used to entertain us in class by drawing on the blackboard between classes. Sadly, these quickly drawn illustrations of the lectures were always rubbed off, and in the days long, long before we had digital cameras to capture such transitory genius. I remember one lecture on the Gospel of John, and the discussion around which John wrote the Gospel. Probably John the Elder of Ephesus seemed to be the leading candidate (in the early 1970's). In a minute or two we had an entire scene drawn, with the pillars of a Temple, and standing on the steps, the dominant figure stood with a zoom lens camera poised, dressed in first century Greco-Roman clothes, bald and bearded. The caption read, "John collecting material at Ephesus." Fifty and more years on, that is still a smile trigger of an image.

When I left College I asked Ian if he world draw me a particular image, my favourite passage from the Gospel of John. That moment, when Jesus takes Peter aside and asks him, "Peter, do you love me?" Three times, the same question, but each time more searching. Three times Jesus didn't take Peter's "Yes" at face value. It's a story that the author of John's Gospel had to get in, and it sits there as the climax of a Gospel that began with the Eternal Word of the Creator God, and now ends with the confession, "Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you." The three times denier has just confessed and owned Jesus three times, and life can begin again. 

The image above is now a bookmark on many of my books. I had several hundred of them printed and used them for years. It still moves me when I look at it. The strong tenderness of Jesus, the insistence that Peter be honest with himself as well as with Jesus, the breakfast meal of fish sizzling away as the background accompaniment of words that restored a friendship and a faith. 

I've written here before about my long immersion in the Gospel of John, ever since working through the Greek text in 1975, using C K Barrett's now venerable commentary. I still have Barrett's commentary, for me irreplaceable as the first expert guide through the narrative landscapes and theological mountains of the Fourth Gospel. More than once I have preached through the Prologue as an Advent series; Holy Week is impossible for me without time spent in the Passion story of John; the Farewell Discourse, and our Lord's Prayer for his followers and the Church from my first serious exegesis of it, has shaped both my spirituality and formed and sustained in me an ecumenical spirit, a lifelong desire for fellowship with all those who stand as I try to do, with John and Peter and all the rest of them, beneath the Cross and beside the now empty tomb in a garden in the early morning. And to share the wonder, gratitude and fellowship of those who have come to know the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. 

Then there's the woman at the well, the man at Bethesda, the wedding in danger of running out of wine and street credit, the man born blind and Nicodemus who had a different kind of visual impairment. And Peter, loud, confident in his own force of personality, impulsive to a fault, a repeat offender at promising more than he could deliver, but never more than he intended. And Jesus, the friend of sinners, the conversationalist with a woman at a well, the tough teacher rebuking the obtuse or timid Nicodemus, the weeping friend at Lazarus's grave, the silent interrogator of Pilate, the risen Lord mistaken by Mary as the gardener. This is a Gospel that is infinite in range and scope as readers behold (a favourite Johannine semantic domain) its treasures of story and sign, characters and conversations, and enduring capacity to transform the way we see the world, God, ourselves, and what Jesus promised when he said, "I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly." (John 10.10)

So, yes, John sits at the top of my canon within the canon, a document that Has taken more of my time and thought than any other part of the Bible – even the Prison Epistles,¹ which incidentally, operate on the same cosmic scale of reconciling love that reaches out to and embraces "all things…making peace by the blood of the cross."   

Later this month our reading group will meet. This happens every second month, we choose a book, and along with the good conversation of long-time friends, discuss said book. This time round it's a book by one of our own circle, pictured above. Conversations By the Sea. Reflections on Discipleship, Ministry and Mission, Andrew R Rollinson. (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 2023). I'll do a separate post reviewing this after our Reading Group has met. For now, this is yet another profound and searching opening up of the last chapter of John's Gospel, where 'both the miracle and the meeting provide assurance of a new future and a new fruitfulness." (p. 8) 

^{1 Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon.} 

I suppose it depends on your view of the Bible, what it is, who it is for, where it is from, how it came to us, and what we are supposed to do with it. I'm not sure how many times I've read all of the Bible. I suppose there are stones left unturned in some of the darker corners of the Old Testament, but not many. But I've been reading the Bible every day for 56 years, and for most of those years preached every week once, twice, even three times a week for some of those years.

Not every day, but several hours a week I've taken spade and pickaxe, fork and rake, and I've worked the exegetical soil until most of the textual garden has a reasonable tilth. In other words, exegesis of a text is an exercise in cultivation, preparing and maintaining fertile soil, fertilised (with manure), supplemented with humus. Seeds of thought are sown, the harvest of the work is the fruit of the Spirit and the growth in whatever wisdom the grace of God can smuggle past our assumed cleverness, which is another phrase for pride!

Like everyone else I have favourite corners and patches of this large variegated garden. The more technical term for this dubious practice of having preferences for certain parts of a Bible we are supposed to think comprehensively authoritative, is having a canon within the canon – favourite verses, chapters, books we go back to, often to the neglect of other chunks we can't get on with. Come on, every reader of the Bible however conscientious, risks losing their footing in Leviticus, or even losing their way in Numbers, like those first pilgrims stumbling towards the promised land.

So, confession time. My favourite chunks of text; my canon within the canon; the parts of the Bible that for me reach the parts other parts of the Bible more often than not don't reach. Oh, there are surprises, beams of light, food for the soul, a slap in the face, a hefty shove in the right direction, and these can come from the most unexpected texts. But more often there are corners and plots of text that unfailingly do it for us, connect with those deep and not always understood longings and prayers and anxieties and hopes that are part  of the life we bring to the text, wanting to hear God's voice speaking the right words from the Word. 

The Gospel of John is an obviously treasured text, of which more another time. Psalms, all of them, but several of them known by heart because in them deep speaks to deep. Ruth and Jonah, two very old stories that reverberate down the centuries and hammer at the doors of our prejudices and contented exclusions. 

Then there's the Sermon on the Mount, the radical realism of Jesus the King proclaiming the reign of a different kind of Kingdom. From all of Paul, my favourites have long been the Prison Epistles, the Colossian Christ 'making peace by the blood of the cross'; the Ephesian Christ, Lord of the Church and "breaking down dividing walls of hostility"; the Christ of Philippians, the divine love of the Son spiralling downwards from equality with God to the form of a human slave, now exalted in the power of resurrection and promised life.

Oh, and Isaiah 40-55, that chunk of text the critics call Deutero-Isaiah, with some of the most fabulous poetry used to vision-cast even more fabulous promises of streams in our cultural deserts, peace between weapons manufacturers who agree to reconfigure their production lines and produce ploughs instead, deserts blooming with new possibilities for beauty, truth and goodness.

And, of course, the three Gospels, Synoptics we call them, three perspectives on Jesus because one viewpoint could never capture the glory and the grace of the Word of Creation become flesh and living amongst us. The parables and the healings, the arguments and the parties, dumb disciples and amazed crowds. And at the centre of each telling of this story of divine love let loose, a carpenter teacher, showing us what compassion looks like, and anger at cruelty and unjust systems, and ways of thinking about God that dismantles our fears and reconstructs the foundations of what a human life can be.

And at the end of all four Gospels, the cross, and our struggle to find words that describe it – horror, tragedy, judicial murder, deterrent of all dissent from empire. In historical terms, perhaps that lethal word, 'deterrent', whether the Roman military machine crushing any refusal of its authority, or the religious obsession with controlling the sacred to the point where even when confronted and contradicted by divine goodness personified, they (and sometimes we) don't see it.

And each Gospel ends, not with the end, but with a new beginning, which we call resurrection, the triumph of life over death, love over hate, hope over despair, and light over darkness – "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."

Such is my canon within the canon, my favourite plots in the garden of the biblical text, the corners I've worked to a fine tilth where seeds grow, flowers bloom, fruit is there year round. That doesn't mean neglecting the rest – the Apocalypse which power washes lazy imaginations encrusted with far too much accumulated normality; Acts of the Apostles as a permanent reminder of the Church as Spirit filled and impelled communities of grace and forgiveness, a Church animated by the restless energy of young life let loose in a world too preoccupied with power, profit and status.

Genesis that sweeping saga of creation and fall, promises made and broken, and the journeys of those who would learn to call God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the God of Joseph and his brothers and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat. Exodus the most filmed book in the Old Testament from eminently solemn The Ten Commandments, to the Dreamworks version Prince of Egypt, to  Exodus. Gods and Kings; the book itself is the identity conferring text for the people of Israel, and woven boldly throughout the Hebrew Bible's narratives, prophecies and Psalms.

My point in this long biblical catalogue of good bits, is that, one way or another, these texts that make up the Bible can be quite risky to take seriously. But it's worth the risk. In a world as broken as ours now seems to be, we need some of Isaiah's vision of streams in the desert. We could do with Ruth telling us how migrants ought to be treated. And the divine compassion and resistance to all that dehumanises and diminishes people that we encounter in Jesus in the Gospels, aye, we need a complete re-education in compassion and neighbour love, the cruelties of sin and the healing of forgiveness. And much more. Go read your Bible, find the good bits, and stay with them till they stay with you. 

It is this close affinity between Holy Communion and Christ’s real presence, between created things and the uncreated but incarnate Lord, that is the clue to George MacLeod’s implacable resistance to nuclear weapons. The reality at the heart of all things, the power and energy that holds all things together, is Christ the light and life, the energy and vitality of the universe.

When the constituent element of matter, locked into the atom, is split to release the creative energy of the cosmos, and then that same energy is harnessed for purposes of mass killing, then something happens which transcends science, technology, politics and military hubris. Matter is defiled, the substance of the physical world, sanctified by the creator, incorporated by the Word become flesh, is now turned against flesh. Creation is thrust into reverse, human life faces obliteration, and humanity created in the image of God pursues power over others with suicidal intent.

One of his addresses on peace indicates the theological and moral outrage of one who always saw atomic war as inexcusable blasphemy, the abomination of desolation, the holiness of created matter commodified into the searing sacrilege of a mushroom cloud.

"Spirit and Matter. [Christ] is both these because he is the Light and Life of the world. He is ‘in and through’ the material, [all things]. We have so spiritualised our message, that when atomic warfare was first used we did not grasp its appalling nature. The day that Atomic warfare was first employed (at Hiroshima), happened to be the Day of the Feast of the Transfiguration, when Jesus revealed himself to His chosen disciples as both physical and spiritual. What we did at Hiroshima was to take the Body of Christ and use it for bloody Hell.

The aeroplane shot up to 33,000 ft and in seconds the mushrooming cloud from the explosion encircled them even at that height. Captain Lewis, the co-pilot, amazed at the cloud going so instantly above them looked up and said, ‘My God what have we done?’

Well what had they done that Aug 6? You remember another cloud that circled the Mount of Transfiguration … Jesus the atonement between heaven and earth; His body translucent; a sort of preview of His Resurrection Body. Was He spirit or was He matter? He was the atonement between spirit and matter. He is the Life of the World and the energy of the world."¹

^1. Address on Peace, Acc.9084/582, 2, 13 (Macleod's papers are held iat The National Library of Scotland)

The article from which this extract comes, was originally a paper at a colloquium on George Macleod, held at the Scottish Baptist College in 2008, subsequently published in Theology in Scotland in 2009. It is available as a PDF free access at the link below. Please note that it remains copyright to the author and the Journal.

https://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/TIS/article/view/53/73

When I remember, which is most days, I read the selection from A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I have to say, I've often smiled at the likely response of Pastor Bonhoeffer to the thought his writing would one day be a daily devotional.

Reading Bonhoeffer is an exercise in expansion, deepening and toughening;

1) expansion so that devotional isn't about a theology of my spiritual demands, but a theology of the cross;

2) deepening because for Bonhoeffer devotional is a word redolent of sacrifice, cost, consequence and daily dying; 

3) toughening because everything Bonhoeffer wrote that has enduring value for the Church is a distillation into words of the experience of confronting, subverting, challenging and having to live under the oppressive controls of National Socialism.

The July 24 reading has these words: " The people who love, because they are freed through the truth of God, are the most revolutionary people on earth. They are the ones who upset all values; they are the explosives in human society."