Back to school kinda cool

Wow, something feels very different. I have returned to college and I think I have taken the whole of me with me, if you understand what I mean. Now that I look back on terms one and two, I sense that I had left half of me behind. I felt different to how I had felt as a part-time, independent student, but not quite as 'all there' as I am now.

I think I am starting to live in the present moment a little bit more. The whole black (probably fuschia shirt), white plastic thing is there in the future, I guess, but I feel less heavy with the weight of this awesome institution I need to fathom and considerably lighter, in that I am experiencing this great big God, so much bigger than this creature we call the Church of England. I am seeing the adventures that this God is involving his people in outside and beyond gathered communal singing and liturgy. I saw all that before, but at the moment, it is like I have put my 3D glasses on and God is blasting it all at me in Dolby Surround Sound. It's exhausting and exhilarating.

I am seeing him in different shapes and sizes and in the places I wouldn't have expected him to hang-out. He is awesome and transcendent and yet imminent and knowable.

Part of this comes from having experienced street pastor work, some of it comes from finding a prayer partner who sustains me and gives me guidance and part of it is down to my placement church. St Alkmund's, Derby, is taking me to houses where undergraduates discuss God's omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence in Genesis, to signing group with theatre visits, to Storehouse which feeds the homeless and marginalised, to a cafe church with 60 young people and then to Church on Sunday where we are invited to express our love for God without inhibition. Discipleship is big, mentoring is big and accountability is huge. This is not your average mainstream Anglican church. So in some senses, it is reminding me of my 'conversion' adventures (I think I can call them that even though I was brought up in a Christian home, no space here for the 'second blessing' debate). This feels like conversion to the institution, no that's not quite right, I do not know quite how to express it but it is like there is this current of electricity running through the denomination I sit within, and it seems that God is very serious about using the Anglican church to reach people and equip them for his service. So just leave me here for a while so I can soak it all up, it really feels like a very 'good' place to 'rest' for a while.

Emmm....Open theism?

How should we conceive of God's providential relationship to the world? Critically survey the current spectrum of theological opinions and then try to reach your own conclusion.

Okay - Molinism, Theological determinism/Classical Theism, open Theism and Process Theism - need to get my brain cells to stretch themselves around this lot.

Open theism is perhaps a position somewhere between Classical and Process Theism. Anachronistic though it is, I am figuring this is like a position between Arminianism and Calvinism, so I guess I am back in the old debates again, although this time I am even further back, trying perhaps to fathom how Enlightenment thinking might have led to this relatively new but perhaps old position - that of the Open Theist.

I could be a bit confused with the above but that will just go to prove I am right at the beginning of this research. I have recently dared to link to the Open Theism site in my blogroll, so that's my first port of call. So I'll spill out thoughts here as I go, as I usually do, as I seek to discover where I might position myself on the spectrum and find out more about this knowable/unknowable God who has led me to consider these things in the first place - ah but was that foreknown or not? Emmmm.....

Quite a relief from the LEP

Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity that is. Tonight for homework I made fluffy crosses out of cocktail sticks instead. Well, one needs a range of skills for the ministry, doesn't one! ;-)

Richard Hooker on Women Bishops

I have finally finished my essay on Richard Hooker's theological method and its significance for Anglicanism. I did not get on too well with Nigel Atkinson's appraisal and I think I challenge his appropriating Hooker for his anti-ordained women stance. I am not too sure how successful I have been and I am aware that I come to the Ecclesiastical Lawes with my own agenda.

Actually, in some ways, it is quite freeing to think that we can not help but consider anything without our own baggage getting in the way. I  have become friends with a TEDS Graduate (Trinity Evangelical Divinity seminary) through Facebook, a Dr in Biblical Studies and an ex-Pentecostal preacher (I know, great combination for spiritual/ theological discussions) and he is writing to me about Bultmann whom I hope to start reading soon. Bultmann discusses 'Is Presuppositionalist Exegesis Possible?' in Existence and Faith: shorter writings of Rudolph Bultmann, and concludes that it is not because we all have presupposition (Vorverstandnis).

Anyway I include below my interpretation of some of Richard Hooker's thoughts about how the church can change:

(In my essay for a module on Anglicanism)

What has been handed down by tradition is 'true only so far forth as those different ages do agree in the state of those things, for which at the first those rites, orders, and ceremonies, were instituted.'¹ Hooker explains how '...some answere that to learne... we have no other way then onely tradition... But is this enough?²

In response to his own question, he limits the ability of tradition and steers our return to Reason and then Scripture by arguing:

Reason or '...learning and judgment... [must be employed]... to discern how far the times of the Church and the orders thereof may alter without offence,'³ and changes to tradition must be tested against scripture so that they 'be proved to be of God'.⁴

If this all seems like rather circular reasoning, it is because of the exquisite interdependency of the three strands. Harrison describes how Hooker enables Anglicans to declare with confidence that 'Life has changed and so must the structure of the church, in order to be truly faithful.'⁵ Tradition is the sum of the customs adopted by our forebears, which they deemed appropriate by application of their reasoning faculties, inspired as they were by the Holy Spirit as they read the Scriptures. The theological method must always involve the interplay of Scripture, Tradition and Reason for a church that will continually change and respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Article 34 states 'It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like, for at all times they have been diverse, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, [yet] so that nothing be ordained against God's word.'⁶

As Hooker describes it, 'Canons, Constitutions, and Laws which have been at one time meet, do not prove that the Church should always be bound to follow them.'⁷

There are interesting implications in Hooker's reasoning for the debate currently impacting Anglicanism, the consecration of women. Although Atkinson⁸ uses Hooker to support his conservative stance, Hooker reasoned that the church must change if change is justified by considering 'the ende for which it was made, and by the aptnes of thinges therein prescribed unto the same end.'⁹

Hooker's appeal to the Puritan conscience, disturbed by episcopacy, might speak today to those whom, for matters of conscience, can not accept the episcopacy of women. Hooker describes how if 'Things were disputed before they came to be determined; men afterwards were not to dispute any longer, but to obey.' Hooker calls for an obedience to the majority decision as 'ground sufficient for any reasonable man’s conscience... whatsoever his own opinion were as touching the matter before in question.' ¹⁰

So Hooker's call is for obedience, except if there is 'any just or necessary cause'¹¹ against it. However, necessary causes must not be those that can not be substantiated by everyone else's consciences being equally disturbed. He explains, 'Neither wish we that men should do anything which in their hearts they are persuaded they ought not to do, but,' and the “but” betrays, with what follows, that he will not look kindly on individual dissenters, when 'my whole endeavour is to resolve the conscience ... [to] follow the light of sound and sincere judgement, without either cloud of prejudice, or mist of passionate affection.'¹² Passionate affections can lead people astray, is the implication, and dissenters are to be guided by the majority opinion on a matter of possible controversy.

Hooker's aim, in the middle of controversy, is for unity.

1 Preface, Ch. iv. 4

2 Book III, Ch. viii. 14

3 Preface, Ch. iv. 4

4 Book I, Ch. xiv. 5

5 Harrison, 'Prudence and Custom'

6 C of E, The Thirty Nine Articles

7 BOOK VII, Ch. xv. 14

8 See Atkinson, 'Hooker’s Theological Method and Modern Anglicanism'

9 BOOK, III, Ch. x, 1

10 Preface, Preface, Ch. V. 3,

11 Preface, Ch. vi. 5, 6

12 Preface, Ch. vii. 1, 2

 

Ramsey on the incarnation

It would be a bit of an oversimplification to say (but perhaps not too much of one) that in Anglican theology through the centuries the incarnation has been a more central and prominent doctrine than that of the cross and redemption, and certainly more so than justification or predestination. (p.9 Michael Ramsey, The Anglican Spirit and Scripture, Antiquity and Reason).

Interesting. And yet scholars seem to discuss it less than those other truths mentioned, perhaps because as a communion we argue about it less.

A-ha, there's hope for my argument yet

I am currently reading Sykes on Hooker, a relief from Atkinson. Sykes is demonstrating that it is more likely that Hooker would have supported the ordination of women to the priesthood with neat little paragraphs like the one below.

In order to be critical, we are encouraged to find those scholars who might argue with one another so that as students we can pick flaws in their arguments and propose some theories of our own. Emmm, I wonder if I can drop my presuppositions long enough to hear out both theories and consider whose might be the most convincing.

Those who urge the Church's tradition as an argument against women's ordination are inconsistent with that tradition in failing to deplore female monarchs, prime ministers, members of parliament or members of church synods, heads of church colleges, and chairpersons of bodies of great power in state and church. To have capitulated in this arena in order to preserve a cordon sanitaire around the Church's ministry is absolutely to have abandoned Hooker's position. 

What we discover, then, in Hooker is an undeniably Anglican doctrine of the Church that enables us to reflect seriously on the implications for church polity of a new understanding of female/male relationship. It is a position that has no obligation to be unremittingly hostile to church tradition in order to satisfy the instincts of radical feminism, nor, on the other hand, is it obliged to assume the immutability of laws even of divine origin. It is a position, moreover, that has a high doctrine of the apostolic ministry, and no a priori objection to the existence of a hierarchy. It would not feel obliged to impose the same structures upon all cultures at the same time, and could enjoy what Hooker describes in a felicitous phrase as the "manifold and yet harmonious dissimulitude of those wayes whereby his Church upon earth is guided from age to age.

After Eve, Janet Martin Soskice, ed. (London Marshall Pickering, 1990)

Opportunities

I hope to bring out some reflections and teaching points for this 'parable' (debate as to whether it can be identified as a parable or not). 

How does this 'parable' speak to us today? 

Moreover how might it resonate with us if it is read as one meditation within a few that address the theme 'Jesus and the justice of God's Kingdom'.

In what way is its resonance heightened by it being read as we approach advent?

How can its message from Jesus who challenges us here regarding the kind of practices that compromise just living, be proclaimed in a contemporary way?

My reflection will be delivered as part of a five week advent programme.  I will submit 300 words.


I think I want to say something about all the opportunities God gives us to reach out to others by his first having reached out to us through the prophets, his Word, his Son and even the very gifts he has given us, material and spiritual so that we might impact the lives of the people around us and be used as his instrument. 


What does this passage mean to you? 

How to share your faith ....NOT!

Funny

The frustrations of freedom

 Dave Walker CartoonChurch.com

Perhaps I'll have a little more time to prepare!!

Like this

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die...
(Kierkegaard: Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing).

Actually that is a little dramatic.

My situation is simply that I could extend my ordination training so that I have two more years to complete it, rather than one.
 
This means I have two years to complete a Masters in Theology rather than one year.

At the end of this academic year, I will have completed the equivalent of one full time academic year in two years because I began studies a year before ordination training as an independent student. Once I was through BAP, to begin training for the Church of England, I had already completed some of the modules required. I have had fewer deadlines this year as a consequence.

So perhaps it makes sense to complete another academic year over two years again.

I am never too sure against the example of the self-emptying of Jesus, (Phil. 2:5-11), how much we should suffer and sacrifice or how much we should seek a kind of shalom for our lives. Does the suffering and sacrifice bring a kind of shalom, it can I suppose.

All this makes me pause to wonder whether it is my own selfishness that quests for a life with these elements in it.

In no particular order: Family, friends, worship, prayer, study, reading, newspaper reading, blogging (which fulfils my need to write and reflect), voluntary engagement in the community.

I am slightly alarmed there is no need here for the outdoors or exercise. Give me a library that is at the same time filled with chatty and gregarious people who are debating engagingly (I know, unlikely) where we can worship to the North, access the internet to the East, welcome new people to the West and be served tea and toast to the South and you have my idea of heaven.

So if I take two years rather than one, there is more of a chance of me doing these things, less the imaginary heaven, more those things above. I will not be looking for a curacy yet. I will not be ordained in 2011 but 2012.

I will not be trying to find a job, complete 8 more modules, write a Masters dissertation, work at church, sell our house and find a new school as well as just live and serve, and all before next June.

So perhaps I should say yes if the diocese get back to me with the go-ahead in a week's time (they might not).

Perhaps I say 'no'. Suffer for fifteen months. "Get in, get on and get out" - to use a phrase of my dad's, hand in mediocre assignments, function as best I can, get out there to do the real job?

Perhaps I have to think about what it is I am defining to be 'real'. What does it mean to be 'real' with God and other people? My friend, knowing nothing of my dilemma had a picture whilst he prayed for me. He said the picture was of a cherry or meat pie and that the word was that it was the inside of the pie which needs exploring for the sake of God's people, not the shiny crust, no matter how attractive. I think that there might be something in this. Quite literally!

So

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know...

I know what I need to know: I need and desire to know God a little better and his plans and purposes, the people around me, their plans and purposes and my own purpose.

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do....

Emmmmm

Quod semper, quod ubique quod ab omnibus.

What was right was right for all times and places.

I am not convinced that I am going to be able to argue easily that Richard Hooker would have supported my ordination. I am having trouble fathoming just how much accord he gives to tradition.

Nigel Atkinson uses Hooker to reason that we ought to concern ourselves over the consecration of women in the Anglican church because it breaks with what has come before. Atkinson is not so much preoccupied with biblical hermeneutics as he is with the fact that decisions about women in the church were built initially on a dodgy premise which seemed to disrupt clear teaching on the movement of priest to bishop. Women have been prevented from fulfilling the office of bishop up until now by hitting a glass ceiling at priest. They could be priests but not bishops.Could it be then that in now legitimising the consecration of women, the church is redeeming itself of this past error?

What I have discovered is that Richard Hooker, contrary to much scholarly and popular thinking, did not champion reason over Scripture and never proposed a kind of enlightenment reason, whereby our thinking and reasoning governs us. Reason always was about divine revelation anyway. But as regards tradition, which is probably the least important of the three chords for him, he did nevertheless accord it great weight saying that:

'Neither may we . . . lightly esteem what hath been allowed as fit in the judgement of antiquity, and by the long continued practice of the whole church; from which unnecessarily to swerve, experience hath never as yet found it safe'.
(Hooker, Ecclesiastical Lawes, Book V, ch vii, 1)

Now here he certainly is correct. These are unsafe times for the church indeed. There is so much infighting and the elections for Synod are going to be crucial, Reform encouraging their men and women to take a stand so that their desires might be realised and me hopeful that Open Evangelicals will put themselves forward. 

So how far does antiquity give us a pattern for the organisation of the church in future societies, according to Hooker? Can I argue that his thoughts about the 'Gafcon'ites and 'ACNA'ites, might have construed him to think that they, like the Puritans,  are attempting to form their own form of government and he might have questioned the legitimacy of that. 

Regarding women in the offices of priest and bishop, I have to think about whether in his esteeming antiquity, he would have aligned himself with the past or whether tradition for him does not necessarily govern the future. 

Emm, much more work to be done, methinketh!

If I could just find a more sensible online edition of all his writings that would help. There are either hundreds of unsearchable PDFs because they are photographed rather than in a text edition or they are small and scribbly and very hard to read. 

Any advice would be appreciated.

Be part of the Solution

Crucial to engage this time around particularly.

Go, go, go for it - Open Evangelicals!! It will be history-making!!

Scripture as a 'yard-stick'

Somehow, I seem to blog here and respond to the blogs of other people with reflections that often at their core are exploring the 'authority' we accord the scriptures.

I accord the Scriptures the highest authority but there is more going on than just that. I am very aware about avoiding a kind of legalism, which I have witnessed at play in certain circles of which I have been on the fringes, even if only 'virtually'.

I am always looking for ways of articulating what I understand about the way God has revealed himself. My latest discussion here was with someone who was at great pains to warn me about subjective experience, faith coming only from hearing the Word. I agree and yet I am somehow uneasy about the precision of this assertion, it seems too narrow, not that God's Word is narrow, just that it also points beyond itself. Somehow the assertion, 'faith comes through hearing the word' fails to capture the expansiveness I am after.

So I have enjoyed meditating on this from our very own A B of C, this afternoon:

The Bible shows us people who are governed by the contemplation of divine wisdom without reference to Scripture; paradoxically, it displays its own limits when it relates the virtue and insight of its own characters (who never read it). 'The bounds of wisdom are large' (II.1.4); God teaches by many means, and we do no honour to God or to the Bible by imagining that all God might ever wish to say to us can be contained in one volume. We learn from nature, from spiritual inspiration, from sheer experience. And God is not glorified if we assume that we can please him only by doing exactly what Scripture specifies and no more.

Theological Writings & Speeches, 2005 

The Richard Hooker Lecture: Richard Hooker (c1554-1600): The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Revisited The Temple Church, London

Hooray - vestments in small sizes!

I have only ever once worn churchy gear i.e. vestments and that was for a comedy sketch. I am 5:1 and 7 stone something or other and look like I am dressing-up because the sizes are all huge. I borrowed an alb from the St John's cupboard and had to hoist it up off the floor with a belt.

...so I am very pleased to see that they are beginning to provide clothes for the smaller frame (haha).

Dave Walker covers this story at the Church Times Blog and the creations are made by Julie Blake Fisher. She has a facebook page here Friends of Episcopal Priest Barbie.

Plea

Anybody got a copy of “Via Media? A Paradigm Shift,” Anglican and Episcopal History 72 (2003), 2-21 they could mail over?

Spong on the Resurrection

After being compared to Spong by one of Re vis.e Re form's contributers, I thought I better refresh my understanding about his views. He has some interesting things to say about the resurrection, with which my own position does not accord. I find I share few of Spong's theological positions.

"This is the first time in Christian history that the Resurrection is presented as physical resuscitation."

"... the resuscitated body of the deceased Jesus."

" Luke has heightened dramatically the physicality of Jesus' resuscitated body."

"In Luke, the resuscitated Jesus walks, talks, eats, teaches and interprets."

"...it was some fifty years before that transforming experience was interpreted as the resuscitation of a three days dead Jesus to the life of the world."
 
Spong repeats this idea of a "resuscitated" Jesus throughout his essay. I think this is where his argument is weak. Christians are not claiming a "resuscitated Jesus" and Tom Wright explains this carefully in his weighty volume "The Resurrection".

He explains why we should believe that it has a legitimacy in terms of a historicity. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 fails to mention the empty tomb. He has two reasons for this perhaps. Primarily there was no need to mention it, it would be like mentioning that it was your feet that you walked on as you walked to the shops, the feet we take for granted and they do not need stating. Similarly, the empty tomb did not need mentioning because with a resurrection, the assumption would have been made by 1st century Jews that this meant a tomb was empty. The first century Jews did not conceive of the idea of resurrection without it being a full bodily resurrection. They did not separate the body and the soul as we are prone to do in our culture. There was no separation - only a complete person dead and then a complete person resurrected.

The other reason why Paul failed to mention the empty tomb was because the first witnesses were women and he didn't fail to mention them because he was necessarily a product of his patriarchal culture, although he must have been to an extent but because his audience were conditioned by a patriarchal culture. The witness of a woman would not have been believed and it took two women to bring a charge against a man and the testimonies of women did not stand up in the courts of the day and so Paul knew that it would not help to deliver the message of the resurrection convincingly if he talked about these first witnesses being women.

That the resurrection actually happened is made even more convincing for us considering that the gospel accounts are about women witnesses, for surely if something like this was going to be made up, the last thing that would have been included in any retelling would be the stories of women, considering this culture's belief in the validity of women's testimonies.

Christ's body is not a resuscitated body, it is a new body. It is something that has never been before. It is a new creation. It is not like Lazarus' body, resuscitated to die again. This, is, I think where Spong's analysis is at its weakest. He accounts for the women, believing they are embellishments, but he does little to explain Christ's body. For him, like Borg and Crossan, it must be visionary or, as he concludes, resuscitated. Christianity is claiming that it is something else altogether. 


Spong is a liberal, I suppose, and there are many liberal theologians within Anglicanism. As I progress through Hooker and my research for an essay about him, I am grasping his generous orthodoxy but also realising that some prominent members of the Anglican communion have perhaps gone beyond this.

I am quite Barthian in that I believe everything starts with Jesus. God is over and above reason and science and rationale. I loved reading Justin Martyr who, in chapter 54: The origin of Heathen Mythology in THE FIRST APOLOGY OF JUSTIN, described how all the things that man-kind has ever expressed to know have their origin in Wisdom, Logos: the pre-existent Christ, it's just that humanity has not for most of time and history been able to understand from where their knowledge has its origins and it has become twisted by sinfulness. Some of the task of apologetics in proclaiming the Good News to people involves working with facts, history, reason - man's ways of ordering and understanding his world. Of course, these things will always fail to convince and indeed no-one can be convinced to believe. Faith works with something different but perhaps something not altogether opposed to reason, just different, nevertheless. Perhaps unlike Barth, we are not to feel overly worried about our apologetic method. Even Jesus met the sceptic half way, presenting facts. He met with Thomas the doubter (John, chapter 20) with such grace. As a people involved in apologetics, we can meet the skeptic half-way. Jesus met Thomas thus - touch my wounds he offered. Thomas doubted, we will too. The task is a little like Jesus in his engaging with Thomas where he was at. We need to meet people where they are at and welcome their questions and allow for our own questioning too. Jesus allows for it and provides for it. If we meet the resurrection with a renewed sense of wonder this Easter, we should ask Jesus to show us afresh the wounds in his hands so that we might understand anew the real fleshiness of his suffering and resurrection and therein understand all the better our own. If we meet those that doubt in the same way that Jesus met Thomas, perhaps we are starting from the better place. So I am not too concerned, after all, that I have been compared to Spong, whom I am sure would have a lot to teach me, even if my position on the resurrection is different to his. NT Wright, too big a book for the bank holiday break? Check out Rob Bell:

Thank you Jesus...the curtain is torn

Keeping it Real, very real...

Watch below to remember what Christ did for you, no holes barred

Passover

Tonight my family and I will eat Seder-style as we think about the last meal that Jesus ate with his disciples. I showed my children the film above to remind them of our heritage. It is sometimes with amazement that I consider just how far divorced Christianity has become from the stories of the first Jewish people.

My explanation to school children, at church this morning, (our Easter experience takes them through the passion narrative in an active way) that in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed 'Abba' in Aramaic to his Father, received less raised eyebrows than I anticipated. I was also impressed by just how much of the passion narrative these 6 and 7 year olds were familiar with. I read to them from Mark's gospel and some of them could tell me where else in the Bible I would find this account.

Many of the children knew that Jesus was betrayed by Judas with a kiss and that the disciples had fallen asleep in the garden as Jesus prayed. One little boy could even tell me they had done so three times.

Are children really as biblically illiterate as the statistics try to persuade us?


Here you can watch the first episode free of an Easter Experience for adults if you wish.