Zzzzzzz

Ex 33.14: And He said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Jer 6.16: Thus says the Lord, “Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, Where the good way is, and walk in it; And you shall find rest for your souls.

Ezek 34.15: “I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord God.

2 Sam 7.11: and I will give you rest from all your enemies.

Deut 5.33: “according to all the way which the Lord your God commanded thee to walk in it, that he may give thee rest...” (LXX)

Jer 31.25: For I satisfy the weary ones and refresh everyone who languishes.

I begin research for a paper on the Sabbath. I am not to look at Genesis but Exodus and Deuteronomy instead and whilst I am interested in the theology and pastoral application of the Sabbath, I have a feeling that much of the paper requires a technical approach. The question for the most part is 'What does the development of the Sabbath laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy suggest about the way OT law functions in comparison to Ancient Near Eastern law codes?'

I think therefore I have to look at progressions/changes between the Exodus and the Deuteronomistic Sabbath descriptions and somehow use this as an example of  how the OT law functions in comparison to Ancient Near Eastern law codes. So far I am suspecting that the Biblical laws differ in that very often they are ethical imperatives for living a life in response to God and ones neighbour in a way that the Ancient Near Eastern laws are not. The Ancient Near Eastern laws are probably more prohibitions. They probably have one envisage the law court before the state of the heart and are addressed to those wanting to stay on the right side of the law rather than live in harmony/shalom with those around them.

I hope I can 'get into' the study. It might be a bit of a stretch.

The last part of the question grips me more immediately and is where I am able to offer reflections in response to whether the Christian practice of Sunday provides a model for the re-use of OT law in a Christian context.

Any tips for books and articles greatly appreciated. 

Church in a 'state'

EDM 1364

Field, Frank

That this House welcomes the current moves by the General Synod of the Church of England to pass legislation permitting women to be bishops; notes that the Synod is currently engaged in consulting the Dioceses on the Women in the Episcopate: draft bishops and priests (consecration and ordination of women) Measure; further notes that General Synod expects to debate the final approval stage of the Measure in July 2012; encourages the House of Bishops to commend the Measure as currently drafted; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to remove any exemptions pertaining to gender under existing equality legislation, in the event that the Measure has overwhelming support in the dioceses but fails through a technicality to receive final approval in General Synod.

How do you feel about the government abolishing the Church's current exemption from equality laws relating to gender discrimination so that it might consecrate women?

Surely, we have to hope that this reform is passed by the Church first. I am not sure how any real credence will be lent to the situation if it is pushed through by government.

How able are Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes, Labour former Home Secretary David Blunkett, Diana Johnson, Labour ex-minister Stephen Timms, Natascha Engel, and veteran Conservative Sir Peter Bottomley actually able to engage with the theological debate?

Julian Mann points our attention to the fact that this is the last thing that us Open evangelicals might actually benefit from.

Oh yikes!

This move to consecrate women has to be authored by the church first. 

It must be decided after scripture and in accordance with proper theological debate. Hooker writes about how the church should conduct itself in the face of dissent. Perhaps those opposed to women bishops should consider 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.' The Government are correct in thinking that the majority agree with the consecration of women bishops. Could it not be that those opposed come to see eventually that this move to consecrate women to the episcopate is of God. Hooker's is a call for obedience, except if there is 'any just or necessary cause' 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.' 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. Passionate affections in this case have led people to give up on the church altogether and move to Rome, surely those remaining will see the light eventually. 

Someone I found interesting to read for her beliefs about those who argue from tradition and against women bishops was Janet Martin Soskice. 

She says: 

"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)

So Diana Johnson and Natascha Engel have an opinion and are voicing it. Conservative evangelicals have no problem with women in secular authority but they do have a problem with women having authority in the church and the home. It seems strange that for once open evangelicals might be less happy about these women interfering in the church's process to make women bishops. Government help or government hinder? I wonder how this one will unfold.

Middle Eastern Christians

"Imagine for one fleeting moment that you and your family are attending mass in your local church when a suicide bomber blows himself or herself up in front of you and in the process kills and maims members of your family as well as friends and acquaintances. Or that you are sitting at home when an anonymous message is surreptitiously dropped into the mailbox accusing you and your family of being infidels who should pack your bags and leave the country - your native country incidentally - or else face certain death.

How would you - the reader - react to those two nightmarish situations or to other variations of those perils? How should the authorities of the country whose citizenship you enjoy also react in the face of such threats?" hbv-H @ 21 January 2011

For more from Dr Harry Hagopian click here

New Atheists good for the faith?

"To expect to learn anything about important theological problems from Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett is like expecting to learn about medieval history from someone who had only read Robin Hood." Rodney Stark

Do you think this is true or have the new Atheists caused Christians to re-articulate  aspects of the faith which have been raised as problematic by the new Atheists?

Scrutinising Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Just a few thoughts as I prepare to debate the atonement.

Do our interpretations of the cross tell us more about the contemporary situation than about the cross?

So, for example, did a modernist obsession with individualism and punishment infect the penal substitutionary theory?

Does the story of the atonement need re-articulating as we take seriously the human condition from which people need salvation. Does the historical particularity of our human situation change? How does this kind of thinking become also a discussion about classic or open theism?

Must Christ's representative work on the cross be articulated in another way because it does not make sense to us? Does sense matter? How far to we take the idea of the 'foolishness' of the gospel?

Can PSA really be articulated as a denial of individualism? Is it really the case that no one has ever conceived of it as a transfer between two separate persons? Is there really a corporate Christ who is the ground for substitutionary atonement? Is he the federal head with those represented by him becoming one mystical body – so that we are punished too– and have paid in Christ himself? Is this classic PSA or a warp of it to combat charges of individualism-  that so-called pos-tmodern affliction?

What does it do to 'church' to argue that God is 'appeased' (propitiated) through an act of violence?

Does the wrath of God only take the form of his allowing us to go ahead with our actions so that we suffer their consequences? What about the actions of God in the Old Testament. I am about to start reading "Is God a Moral Monster," to help on this front. You can hear the book's author, Paul Copan talk about his book here. 

Am I more persuaded by the idea that Christ enters into our experience of sin and restores people to God so that sin is exhausted in Jesus? The cross absorbs. We must not describe it as penal because if we understand Paul aright, the poisonousness of sin has gone and the cross is preventative?

...to be continued.

Facebook and networks, Mother and priest

I have just joined 'Clergy mummies' over at Facebook which looks promising. It is the idea of the Rev Katie Tupling, who contributed to Mums The Word blog the other week. I think that these thoughts by Rosemary Lain-Priestley might speak into this.

... when I later considered taking on my own parish I felt I could only do it by significantly re-shaping people’s expectations of how a vicar might operate or taking a step back from the day to day care of my children.

Some clergy women have courageously done the former and women in all walks of life have skilfully managed the latter. Arguably fathers have always had to do it, but many have had wives who have made this possible and still others regret the sacrifices involved.

I genuinely rejoice in the achievement of those who live that particular juggling act, whilst choosing for myself a different way forward involving part-time and voluntary roles.

I now know numerous female clergy who are doing the same because they are perplexed by how to provide for pre-school children when your stipend doesn’t cover the cost of childcare, by the lack of part-time parish roles because two families cannot share one vicarage, and by how to construct a diary responsive to the needs of funeral directors and parishioners in crisis as well as your partner and children.

The Church has always sought to adapt its ministries to the needs and opportunities of the world around it. Traditional clergy jobs within parishes, cathedrals and chaplaincies are continually being reshaped by imaginative and energised priests. But some of us whose lives do not dovetail with such roles have begun to ask whether priesthood might unfold in us in other ways. We think about this as we chat with parents at the school gate, have dinner with friends, volunteer for a charity, walk the dog and engage in all sorts of activities that do not relate to church but are just as redolent with the sacred. We are also listening intently to questions that our children have reawakened and re-formed in us: questions about risk, about death, about what life is actually for, and about how to engage young people in a living, exploratory and intelligent dialogue with the idea of God.

I continue to explore the new shape of my life post-parish, post-fulltime role and post-being-sure-what-comes-next. I discover others who are doing the same. Together we wonder whether the institution on whose edges we exist is beginning to notice our energy and restlessness. Whether it might sit with us in wonder and reflection. And whether it will encourage our tentative steps as we seek the sacred where many do not engage with the Church yet are alive to the idea of God.

I hope to discover those women who combine full-time stipendiary ministry with young children but still think that Rosemary's grappling with these dilemmas is helpful.

The Samaritan woman's encouragement to us to engage in theological discourse

We are in Samaria. We are at a well. It is mid-day. This public space of the well becomes a private space because there are no other characters in this scene (4:8) and no witnesses to their dialogue, apart from the reader and no other voices, apart from the narratorial voice.

This Samaritan woman becomes a dialogue partner to Jesus. She is acceptable despite her misunderstanding and her hesitant belief. Jesus is not a reprimanding dialogue partner. It could be his command 'Give me to drink,' (4:7) is less 'harsh and abrupt' (Matthews, 2010, 220) and motivated more by his wanting to reassure her that thirst is his need. Wyckoff (2005, 92) believes that there is 'no suggestion in the Greek text of impoliteness or a demand.' They would both be aware that in a culture where unrelated men and women are not to meet unchaperoned, the honour of both could be easily compromised. In her response to Jesus, the Samaritan woman introduces the idea that theirs is both a gender and an ethnic difference. Here, however, she is safe and intimacy with Jesus is based on the sharing of truths.

Our ideas about intimacy often have sexual connotations and it is interesting that in her disclosure about having five husbands, we regard her immoral, aware as we are of her unusual noon-day visit to the well (so she might avoid day-break or evening crowds). Reader-response theories wonder if the text seeks to undo us for the judgements we impose on the text. She might have outlived her husbands in a culture where levirate marriage was the norm, or more convincingly Schneiders (1997, 249) argues that 'the entire dialogue … has nothing to do with the woman's private moral life.' Schneiders (1997, 247) and Moore (2003, 282) believe there is an allegorical significance to the woman's five husbands being representative of Samaria's colonial past, with the present man representing 'the Samaritans' false worship of the true God,' (Barrett, 1965, 225). Other scholars (Witherington, 1984, 58-59; Thettayil, 2007, 34-35, Neyrey, 2009, 156) are less likely to believe this is the case. We might ask ourselves questions about times in our own lives where worship has been misplaced and another exalted instead of Jesus. Shneiders believes the Samaritan woman is quite able to decode Jesus' metaphorical language and rejoin with similar language of her own, aware that she represents her people before him and that as a people, they are without a 'husband' in the Hebrew pictorial sense of a Yahweh groom to his people, his bride. Reader-response critical approaches do much to uncover the literary games that the gospel's author might be playing. However, Eslinger (1993, 177) over-sexualises the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, in ways that are problematic for an egalitarian hermeneutic which sees the pericope as something pastorally efficacious for women. Delicately handled, it could prove fruitful, in so much as readers are being shown that they too fail to understand Jesus, just like the gospel characters. Perhaps we should be alerted to the importance of coming to an understanding of Jesus in community, just as the other Samaritan citizens, by the end of the pericope, come to faith. Christian fellowship is important and Jesus' is an invitation into this as well as a life within himself.

The growth that has occurred in our character in the pericope is perhaps suggested by the bucket being discarded at the end. Does this hint at the relationship that this woman will come to have with Jesus. She has the living water which gives any bucket a metaphorical redundancy. Her knowledge of who he is also transforms her status within her community as she spreads the good news. In terms of relationship with Jesus, it is interesting to notice that Jesus corroborates with the woman's understanding of his identity at each stage. He is 'a Jew' (4:9) and speaks of what he knows as a Jew. He is 'a prophet' (4:19) because he knows about her life, be this allegorical or not. He is 'Messiah' (4:25) (even though she be hesitant about it- 4:29), indicated with his use of the 'I am', reserved for God in the Old Testament and he is 'the Saviour of the World,' as his message extends from this one Samaritan woman to her entire city. Previous identities are not discarded, they are just subsumed within his ultimate identity. For the woman too her identity transforms so that each of the ways in which she understands herself are held within her ultimate identity as a child of the Father and receiver of eternal life. When she says to Jesus, 'I have no husband', this works also on an inividual level. The gospel writer has revealed to us that Jesus is the true bridegroom at Cana and Jesus is offering a spiritual communion with this woman. The intimacy of relationship with Jesus is there in the text's use of the Greek word μένω at 4:40. Coloe (2007, 146) describes how the verb is used in the context of the Samaritan citizens and their request that Jesus remain (μεῖναι) with them; Jesus does so (ἔμεινεν) for two days. This has a theological meaning because this verb's semantic range: remain, dwell, abide, indicates that mutual indwelling which is a result of true discipleship in the gospel of John.

We are encouraged similarly to see that every aspect of our identity is precious to Jesus, it is not replaced, it is transformed into something new and his is an invitation into a mutual indwelling. 


Speak with Jesus and see what happens!

My caricature is banging on about Hooker and the cooker again

See here

I wonder if there's much gap between my caricature and the reality. Emmm...

I suspect my caricature is cleverer than I am. In truth, I was quite eluded by Lindbeck but my caricature says:

"But postmodernism leads to enhancing the Word because it allows us to be neo-orthodox, like along the lines of Hans Frei and the Church has a clear identity like with Lindbeck. We have the space to be and become Church."


The 'like' - sentence affliction belongs to her not me, though.

Discuss!

Emm - things to think about...

'Whereas epistemology represses the other by absorbing it into explanatory schemes, ethics does justice to "others" precisely by letting the other be,' (The Atonement in Postmodernity, 368).

...theologies of the atonement seem unable to articulate a theory that explains the saving significance of Jesus' death without betraying the rich testimonies to the event of his death, (The Atonement in Postmodernity, 369).


Joel Green and Mark Baker have recently suggested that the penal substitution model...betrays telltale hallmarks of modernity: an anthropocentric tendency to see the significance of Jesus' death as limited to human beings; an individualistic tendency to see Jesus' death as benefiting isolated persons; a moralist tendency to see Jesus' death as a punishment for the acts of sinful individuals, (The Atonement in Postmodernity, 370)

Would you believe it, 'Penal substitution is one of thirteen models of the atonement examined by John McIntyre.'(The Atonement in Postmodernity)

I find this really stimulating:
Jesus' death is efficacious, not because it satisfies God..., but "because it is the inauguration of the political practice of forgiveness...(Millbank). (The Atonement in Postmodernity)

...and this
Rom 6:23 '"The logic of punishment was a logic of equivalence (the wages of sin is death); the logic of grace is a logic of surplus and excess." In Ricoeur's view, the doctrine of atonement belongs, not in an economy of crime and punishment, but in a hyper-economy of gift and grace.' (The Atonement in Postmodernity, 396)

So we have a debate exercise coming up. I wonder if debating models of the atonement might be fruitful.

I remember writing this once:

Ultimately, N.T. Wright is correct in exhorting us to ' embrace, and preach, the genuine biblical doctrine, while avoiding both the caricature and the rejection of the caricature as if it were the reality.'1 The atonement must be considered within the context of the trinity and articulated as an act of love. We must uphold the biblical view of a just and loving God – this constitutes his holiness. We must present PSA as just one of the ways in which the Bible bears testimony to the work of Christ, for that work is a multi-faceted gem of divine complexity.

Indeed, with any articulation of the work of Christ on the cross, we should say with Paul only that 'now I know in part’ (1 Cor. 13:12). I believe that Christ did take upon himself the punishment which I deserve. At the cross, Christ took our place (Isa. 53:4-6), became sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21), and bore our sins in his body on the cross (1 Pet. 2:24). He stands in my place in the divine law court, suffering punishment and canceling out my debt: 'having canceled the written code, with its regulations...he took it away, nailing it to the cross' (Col 2:14). I also believe that Christ accomplished much more besides.

Christ is a moral exemplar; he came to show us what the Father is like. He is the sacrificed paschal lamb of the Passover and the priest offering himself as a sacrifice in the temple: the eternal Malchizedek. He is the ransom paid in the slave market, redeeming humanity from its bondage. He is also the 'Christus victor' in a cosmic battle (Col. 2:15).

More importantly, we should never separate the death from the resurrection lest an articulation of the cross becomes a stumbling block. We must instead be able to say with Cyril of Jerusalem:

I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection; for if, after being crucified, He had remained as He was, I had not perchance confessed it, for I might have concealed both it and my Master; but now that the Resurrection has followed the Cross, I am not ashamed to declare it. 2

1 Wright,N.,T.,'The Cross and the Caricatures' Durham Cathedral

2Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 13, Section 4

Looking at this now, my position is somewhat different. This conclusion from a few years ago seems somewhat naive and something of a cop-out. Emmm.

Hooker, Indaba and Christian Unity

For Hooker, the unity of the Church centres around its ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’ (Eph. 4:5-6).

Hooker encourages unity in all things and just as he describes how, 'the Church and the commonwealth... should always dwell lovingly together,' (Hooker, Op. cit. BOOK VIII. Ch. i. 5), unity within the church is essential and motivates the way Hooker addresses his opponents with a 'Charity which hopeth all things, [and] prayeth also for all men,' (Hooker, Op. cit. BOOK V. Ch. xlix. 2).

Aware of the divergent hermeneutical approaches groups brought to the scriptures in his own day, Hooker, like Rowan Williams, would have valued indaba1 because we have every need to keep listening to one another. Anglicanism, if it really is imbued with Hooker's theological method is a modest, generous and listening church. Although a gifted polemicist, we can perhaps, with a less cynical approach, detect a genuine hope for fraternal unity, and sorrow at the prospect of schism, in Hooker's writings. He trusts that although,

...contentions are now at their highest float...that the day will come...when the passions of former enmity being allayed, we shall with ten times redoubled tokens of our unfeignedly reconciled love, shew ourselves each towards [the] other...(Hooker, Op. cit. Preface, Ch. ix. 4)

The Virginia Report describes how, 'Anglicans are held together by the characteristic way in which they use Scripture, tradition and reason in discerning afresh the mind of Christ for the Church in each generation,' (The Virginia Report, p. 15).


Hooker defended the reformed and catholic church, the Ecclesia Anglicana, which is today reforming still. If it is faithful to Hooker, Anglicanism guards what has been 'taught by Christ and his Apostles in the word of God...' (Hooker, Op. cit. Preface, Ch. iv. 1). It is suspicious of anything that 'no Church ever have found … out, … till this present time,' (Hooker, Op. cit. Preface, Ch. iv. 1) but aware also that, 'The orders therefore which were observed in the Apostles times, are not to be urged as a rule universallie either sufficient or necessarie,' (Hooker, Op. cit. Preface, Ch. iv, 5). A faithful reading of Scripture, and the ends for which it was given, must be informed by our attention to both tradition and reason, so that church practices are appropriate to particular times and contexts.

As the Church of England struggles to implement structures for the reception of women bishops, our reformation occurs slowly in response to changing times. This is because, faithful to Hooker's spirit of generosity, it reforms carefully, as it hopes for the assent of all its people to the changes it makes. It laments that some leave its fold.

I am excited at the prospect of serving a Church with Hooker as a forerunner. Rowan Williams believes Hooker's methodology proved that he opposed any position that 'refuses the work of interpretation or that pretends that history has come to a halt,' (R Williams, The Richard Hooker Lecture, transcript). It will be a church that moves with the times, but does so faithfully to its maker.

Although as a church, we argue and debate, and at times the world reckons that there is little love amongst us, we should speak words to one another, like Hooker, in his controversies with the Puritans and the Romanisers, that prove that we

...labour under the same yoke, as men that look for the same eternal reward of their labours ...in bands of indissoluble love... as if our persons being many our souls were but one, rather than in such dismembered sort to spend our few and wretched days in a tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions...(Hooker, Op. cit. Preface, Ch. ix. 4).

1 Rowan Williams describes indaba thus:

"We have given these the African name of indaba groups, groups where in traditional African culture, people get together to sort out the problems that affect them all, where everyone has a voice and where there is an attempt to find a common mind or a common story that everyone is able to tell when they go away from it. This is how we approached it. This is what we heard. This is where we arrived as we prayed and thought and talked together."

Archbishop's Reflections on Lambeth Conference 2008 at The Lambeth Conference official Website [online at http://www.lambethconference.org/lc2008/news/news.cfm/2008/4/23/Archbishop-of-Canterbury-Better-Bishops-for-the-sake-of-a-better-Church]

He IS ....

Sydney fascinates me...I wonder how different life is there at the beginning of a new decade

This is from the launch of a magazine 10 years ago. I wonder how different the faith is there a decade on:

The stakes are, after all, high, a reputation within a diocese that is essentially isolated from the outside world. Theological education is in the monopoly hands of Moore Theological College. Three of the four Australian-born archbishops (who are all the archbishops since 1966) have come from the faculty of this college. Almost all senior diocesan appointments are made only from within the diocese. No new theological leadership in the diocese has come from outside within the experience of most of its members.

...

The emphasis of the prevailing theology on the Bible, not in itself a bad thing, has led to the identification of theology with biblical exposition. This is part of the issue, raised earlier in the essay, about the role of the reader in the interpretation of texts. If theological discussion is tied so closely to a text and if the interpretation of the text is almost the sole sign of orthodoxy, discussion is inevitably constrained. It is not that there are no publications within the diocese. The teachers at Moore College publish continuously. The diocese has a newspaper, Southern Cross, the Anglican Church League has its journal, The Australian Church Record. The two latter are linked to the dominant theological discourse of the diocese. Matthias Media has its long-standing journal The Briefing, also a major organ for promoting the dominant view.

A significant problem for theological debate within the diocese is that most of the talk is carried on in code. The use of such codes allows those within the mainstream to identify each other and detect the unorthodox. One example of this code is that the theological term ‘atonement’ means the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement, not a more general reference to the process by which humans are reconciled to God and which may be described in various ways. The appropriation of language in this way makes discussion a difficult and potentially dangerous exercise.

We launch this electronic journal in this context. We assert that there are respectable and alternative views to the dominant theology of the Diocese of Sydney. We assert that such alternative views are within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy as historically conceived. We know that many faithful members of the diocese hold such views. This is their forum, but not theirs alone. It is open to all sides of the debate. It is open to outsiders as well as insiders. We invite you to join us in promoting an alternative debate around the issues that arise in the Diocese of Sydney, the Anglican Church of Australia and the Anglican Communion.

... not just an ordinary sandwich,.. an M and S sandwich

The power and the presence

MS

From ESS to MS, MS being Multiple Sclerosis. My dad has this condition, diagnosed when I was about 20. Today, I healed a little in terms of my own coming to terms with this, perhaps it was not even that, more that God through David Runcorn and Roy McCloughry challenged my confident evangelicalism, my name it, claim it, expect God to heal confidence. I have not quite worked all this out yet, only that I am learning more and more about grace and its exuberance and that I can not predict what grace will look like, what transformation will look like, that I have not eyes big enough, heart absorbent enough or horizons wide enough to begin to articulate our God at work.

You know those moments where the bridge drops down across a chasm of liminality and as you look back you see the place you were and recognise your happiness there but at the same time see that the bridge has been lifted again and now you stand in a different place where the grass feels more luxurious, today was one of those days. I am a little changed because of what I heard today from these two men, I think we all were. I will say no more but simply leave you with perhaps similar threads to those that were delicately woven today, in the form of a talk from the Enabling Church Conference, oh, and a link that is my father's response to his situation so focussed on enabling and being able because God does not see the prefix we attach but sees us with the widest of lenses.

For your engagement with ESS

Michael Bird has been in touch with this link. I am yet to read this article but I have my cuppa Yorkshire ready and a small bar of Cadbury's dairy milk and I am about to start reading.

I also hope to watch the debate from TEDS.

Peter Carroll, for whom I have great respect, as a theologian, who as well as a being a practitioner, is also a grace-filled academic, has posted his latest thinking on ESS. I learn a great deal from the clarity with which he expresses his ideas. He has been thinking about the subordinationist position and has written an enlightening response. Please read that here.

Tomorrow, I head off for the New Wine Women in Leadership training/refreshment weekend. I have been thinking a lot about New Wine's new approach to women in leadership and feel hopeful that this conference will be the beginning of a new wave in which we see ordained and lay female speakers finding their way to the main stage to preach the gospel at New Wine Summer Conferences - long overdue.

We continue to be in this strange place as a church as we cut our teeth and find our feet. Peter Carroll points our attention to some of this strangeness in an echo of our evening college sermon's attention to exactly this same issue, whereby, in Peter's words:

on the representational theory of priesthood, a woman may not be a priest because she is not male like Jesus; but on the subordinationist theory of priesthood, a woman may not be a priest because she is like Jesus, destined to be 'eternally' subordinate!!


On a slightly related but somewhat tangential note, I have been reflecting on my own somewhat emotional response to this picture:

Now this is, of course, a picture of Anglican men becoming deacons in the Catholic church because they do not think that I (not particularly me, I hasten to add, just to avoid any confusion ;->) should become a priest in the church because I am a woman. (Okay, I know that there are probably more issues involved than that one but straws and the backs of camels and all that - you know what I mean.)

You know, all I am struck by is the beauty of these human beings prostrating themselves in submission before the living God. This is where I am with this picture.  So, yes, I know, I will still investigate these doctrinal positions where humanity attempts to orientate its own relations onto the trinity and factions vie for the mainstream or even the most orthodox orthodoxy but somehow, it all feels a little different now. I am beginning to realise that this church of ours needs waking up to the Lordship of Christ, that it just might be that God laments less than we do our strange quarrels and diverse theologies. That however mainstream and state-aligned we consider ourselves, we are still a remnant people commissioned to fulfil The Great Commission. Our dialoguing can be a healthy probing into the heart of God and our prayer must be for grace because whilst his heart is strong enough, I know from my own experiences, that our own hearts rarely are, and so I encourage any discussions we have to acknowledge the bond that we have in Christ so that all may be done to engender peace. (mwah!) 

AWESOME RESPONSE TO REFORM

How interesting, especially following in the light of my engagement with ESS. The Awesome network have released this articulation of their point of view.


For more hit here 

Further areas which have arisen in our conversations and which we believe require ongoing discussion among evangelicals include:

1. 1. The effect on biblical interpretation of different understandings of the relationship between exegesis of specific texts in their original contexts, wider biblical theology, and the role of doctrine and systematic theology
2. 2. The form and significance of creation order in relation to being made male and female, especially as revealed in Genesis 2 and later biblical appeals to it.
3. 3. The doctrine of the Trinity, in particular whether or not language of submission and obedience is to be used for the eternal intra-Trinitarian relationship of the Son to the Father and the significance of any such order within the Trinity for the ordering of relationships between men and women in the church and husband and wife in marriage
4. 4. The relationship between submission and obedience and whether there is a universal Christ-like mutual submission among Christians or a specific submission of wives to husbands whose position as head is to be understood in terms of |Christ-like authority
5. 5. The connection between any ordering in relationship between husband and wife and any ordering of men and women within the ministries and offices of the church
6. 6. The nature of episcopal jurisdiction and the provision therefore required for evangelicals opposed to women bishops when women become bishops

Although this particular process has now reached its end, we hope that it will mark the start of wider, ongoing discussion among Anglican evangelicals on the various issues which we have considered together.  In order to resource this we will endeavour to make available on both our websites all the papers prepared and discussed at each of the three consultations.

I am very glad that they say this: 

We therefore reject the view that our differences are to be explained in terms of either misogyny and cultural conservatism or secular feminism and cultural conformity. We believe evangelicals need to beware and repent of elevating exegetical disagreements in such a way as to deny Christian charity.

The Convenors are David Banting – Reform and Lis Goddard – AWESOME

Eternal Subordination of the Son

At last the video streaming of a debate on ESS is available. At some point, I will look into all this again, now that it has been brought up again by David, one of my blogging friends.


With little time at present to dedicate to this, although I hope to pick it up in my studies at some point or perhaps explore it as part of a Masters dissertation (sorely tempted to write some practical theology too though), I leave you with a number of links about The Eternal Subordination of the Son position, which is quite a huge area for investigation for complementarian and egalitarian Christians. This idea (ESS) became something hotter on the agenda since the tying of this status of Jesus to gender subordination without ontological inferiority became a way of justifying women's submission to their husbands in the home and the church. Some read this as concurring with scripture, others with culture.

David Ould, my friend in Sydney references the debate again and his exploration of a proof-text which he supposes might support ESS. As with proof-texting, which is not a fail-safe way, by any means, of determining the mind of God (difficult to discern in this world without human error), there are as many texts that can be raised to support ESS as to deny it.

You might want to read these resources, if this kind of stuff matters to you. Essentially we are looking at the minutiae here, doctrine and the ways it can be interpreted. I became interested in this doctrine because of its use by CBMW etc and some of the ways it was being used to justify all sorts of behaviour suffered by women in patriarchal expressions of Christianity, particularly in the US.

However, here we are.

David Ould can be accessed here.

Trinity Journal 30 NS 2 (2009) includes:
Kevin Giles
"Michael Bird and Robert Shillaker: The Son is Not Eternally Subordinated in Authority to the Father"

AND

Michael Bird and Robert Shillaker
"The Son Really, Really is the Son: A Response to Kevin Giles"

I have a copy of this but encourage you to get in touch with Michael Bird for a copy.

Paula Fether is good for introductory reading

This makes for essential reading

There was a debate at TEDS on the very issue, which Christianity Today introduces here
It comprised of the following: 


Defending the non-subordination view: Tom McCall, Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at TEDS. Keith Yandel, Professor of Philosophy University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Representing the Complementarian position which affirms that a structure of authority and submission will exist for eternity in the Godhead. Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware. These two are well-known across the evangelical world on the gender issue.

The live video streaming for this is my first link at the top.

Here is a very scholarly interpretation of the debate, followed up again here and here

You can see I have been trying to get my head around this one for a while
here

Women and religious writing

Lesley Fellows writes about the top female Religion blogs. This site is mentioned.

I wonder why there are not more women blogging.

The top 50 biblioblogs suffered the same lack of women blogging biblical studies, although things have improved there of late, well, it's that or people have started to rebel with their own rankings.

I can not quite work out what is going on over at Biblioblogs 50, it all seems to have gone a bit random.

I also remember college lamenting the lack of highly enough qualified female applicants for a post to teach New Testament Studies.

We currently have a Hebrew and Old Testament lecturer who is a woman with us for a year but on the whole our lecturers and tutors are men.

I wonder whether it is that our education is interrupted by the raising of children? Are we able to be less single-minded? Or is there really still some impenetrable glass ceiling?

On the blogging-front, I would not imagine it is because women have anything less to say than men.

Are there cultural and psychological reasons for there being less women? I am not sure.

Any ideas?

Political, religious power

We are studying postmodernism. We are looking at Lindbeck and Lyotard, Derrida and Foulcault etc

It is fascinating.

I read about those bishops defecting and joining the ordinariate. I think about Reform and Anglican Mainstream. I think I am developing a healthy understanding of the pitfalls of Religion. For me this stands to the side of revelation and Jesus Christ. Religion is what Jesus came to throw-over and critique, as I understand him. It is always strange to answer 'No' to the question people ask, 'Are you religious?' It strikes them as definitely strange, especially if you are standing there in a cassock and I can understand their confusion.

Religion is full of factions and competing truth claims even inside the ultimate truth claim of meaning residing in faith in Christ. Language is also power and none of us can escape this. Even the blog is a language game, I suppose, where meaning escapes and can not be controlled and interpreters are on a large scale so that there is perhaps 'the death of the author' and of any particular meaning, when all that you say can be quibbled over and misinterpreted.

So i am not imagining that I am not both contaminated by and a contaminator of this thing we call faith, for as soon as its articulated in words, it becomes full of error.

I have been trying to understand Lindbeck and his theory that there is some way to get closer to the truth in our assertions about faith. He finds flaws with both propositional tendencies to making doctrine and liberal appeals to experience. However, his proposal for some kind of cultural/linguistic approach, an intertextual approach, which is conscious of the fact that the faith world-view maps meaning onto the world rather than the world assessing the reasonableness of faith, seems naive at best, I think.

How is this really possible?

I have found an article at Wiley, which is helping me to critique Lindbeck but also seems to speak with a loud voice into some of the experiences I have had or witnessed or believe to be occurring, within this world of 'Religion,' into which I have somehow become absorbed.

In any tradition there are multiple factions, often roughly equivalent in terms of membership and degree of religious commitment, vying for mainstream status. Even when one faction has attained a position of undisputed dominance over the others, the identification of this faction as the mainstream is not an innocent matter of empirical determination. To identify the dominant faction as the mainstream is to contribute to the recognition that sustains its hegemony. Crediting the religious mainstream with safeguarding the ‘inner logic’ of the tradition simply normalizes the religious habits of the faction that happens to have achieved social dominance. 

THE POLITICAL NATURE OF DOCTRINE: A CRITIQUE OF LINDBECK IN LIGHT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP, HUGH NICHOLSON, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA

If anyone else knows about anything good to read on Lindbeck, please let me know.

I am beginning to learn to articulate some of my own feelings about doctrine. I will adhere to doctrine as part of my ordination ceremony in six months' time, but I am aware that within the beauty of to whom it testifies, there lies something about which I feel ambivalent:


...doctrines mobilize identity by establishing an in-group/out-group contrast. The twofold nature of doctrine thus reflects the sociological principle that conflict on one level of analysis produces solidarity on the level below it.(HUGH NICHOLSON, 870)

To what are we called?

Management?

Oversight?

Administrative competence?

We are to facilitate others to make disciples.

We are to make disciples too but we are over-seeing others in their taking up of the Great Commission. So perhaps we should not imagine ourselves covering lots of services and if we do, we might have to think about to what it is we are really called.

I remember one of my own mentors and her ability to delegate, to ask God to give growth to lay-led ministry. It worked. Ministry teams now fulfil original visions and she is able to initiate new visions.

Ephesians 4:7 'he gave gifts to his people.'

Paul looks at the ascent and the descent. Christ comes as his Spirit descends and with the indwelling of his Spirit comes equipping of God's people. (The language here draws from Psalm 68 and YWHW's assent to Mount Zion, there are also echoes of Moses' ascent to Sinai here.)

The Spirit gifts us for the body and makes apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. We look today in class at how to facilitate the ministry of others.People are called right where they are. This is what I hoped to communicate in my preach this Sunday, gone, that the church is called to disciple its people so that its people can disciple right where they are. God's kingdom is bigger than the institution of the church.

We look at a ministry of encouragement. This is great. I feel passionate about this. We look at the power of a 'thank you' and that this is no trite thing.

But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me and Silas and Timothy—was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

How do we see people?
How can we encourage people?
We must pray about the people we are in contact with, tell people what we see in them, identify giftings and leadership in people. If people have not then got the time or inclination, we work with this: wait, pray and trust it to God.

There is then the necessary investment to be made and then trust. We need to trust and give away responsibility. A few years ago, I was asked to take over the toddler chuch. I really did not fully understand the gospel. Someone took a risk on me. I did not really know who Jesus was. But as I taught stories from the Lion Children's Bible, I got to know this Jesus I was talking about. I began to discover who Jesus was. I wonder what you think about that? Should that have occurred? It required that the church disciple me and they did. It required some kind of mentoring, explicit, maybe implicit. It also relied on faith in the Holy Spirit. It meant that I also made mistakes and was encouraged to learn from these mistakes.

Sometimes we have to be conscious about the roles people take on. We need also to train and mentor. Sometimes by trusting all, we avoid the necessary investment and the hard work required. There is an important sense of balance. With input, people can then develop a confidence through competence as well as a confidence through who they are in Christ. The two are not mutually exclusive, the threads weave through each, our God of the whole person!

We look at some of those buzz words in church life: mentoring, coaching etc Mentoring is more about input for the whole person, more long-term. Is coaching more task-orientated? These two things are related and it is better that we do not bring dichotomy to bear unhelpfully. Is apprenticeship a term that combines these two or has apprenticeship become a word too contaminated by its worldly associations?

We share together how for us it will always be that Jesus is our number one, our raison d'etre, reason for living, our every day. We also need to see that people have other callings on their lives, as indeed we do too. We need to see the whole person. I think that this is a good way to end this morning's session. I sometimes think it is all too easy for clergy to lose touch with the world and a God at work beyond the institution of the church.

I must admit, later as I reflect on all this and some of the discomfort I am feeling about all the future paper-work and bureaucracy, I think I need to think of this 'God of the whole person' again and how even though I feel this call to evangelism and preaching, God's grace also extends to the admin and the maintenance. We'll see.

 

How should we read 1 Cor 14.34-35?

This image conveys my thoughts that St Paul's interest is in orderly worship. I think that this is what he is wanting to foster within the church. I do not think this means that our worship should be 'contained'. Exuberance in worship is often lacking in our churches. I think that Paul was referring to the chattering that was going on regarding the teaching. Those new to the faith or lacking education were asking lots of questions, hungry as they were, I assume, to know Jesus' teachings. I think Paul is recommending that questions should be explored later so that distractions do not interrupt people in their worship and prayerful communications with God. This would stand for all time. I suppose in the context of a service today, it would be considered inappropriate to converse with one's neighbour all the way through someone's sermon. Questions are invited in good churches and there are lots of opportunities to ask questions and explore but as with many occasions, we instinctively know, and if we do not, we can bring biblical teachings to guide us into acting towards one another in love and with respect. 


Psephizo …it all adds up
How should we read 1 Cor 14.34-35?

There is a conversation about this teaching beginning here.

Christmas in the mountains

I spent Christmas in the mountains.

For the first week I went to Samaria. The first week was interesting, hanging out near Mt Gerizim. You seriously build up a thirst in the dusty country but my travelling companion had no bucket for the well. Interestingly on the first day, we met this local woman. She was unaccompanied, which we thought rather odd and she seemed rather urgent as she went about her task, collecting water for her household. Guarded at first, she wondered what our motives might be in requesting that she fetch us a drink from the well but she soon warmed up and before we knew it we were having an interesting theological conversation about what constitutes proper worship. We never got our drink though, time seemed to pass quickly and before we knew it she had discarded the very bucket she came to the well to fill to run off in a desperate hurry in some state of considerable excitement.

She returned however, bringing people with her, so keen they were to talk with us that we accepted an invitation to be hosted by the town for a couple of days so that we could learn from one another, discuss our common ancestry and clear up a couple of issues. It was all really rather nice and we left feeling hopeful that relations between ourselves and the Samaritans might be greatly increased as a consequence.

Week two Polish Christmas preceded English Christmas and then my husband and two children left me home alone for a few days so I could travel to Galilee for a promised meeting. I can not remember the precise name of the mountain I climbed with a party of eleven others but quite instinctively we felt very quickly that we were making progress in the right direction. It was a hard climb and I must admit several of us were in a high state of anxiety, not knowing quite what was in store for us.

I am left quite speechless about what we witnessed on that mountain and words do not come easily to describe whom we encountered, only to say we were all left changed forever and have a new sense of purpose to our lives. There was an empowerment and a promise of the continual presence of he whom we had been requested to meet. We have been commissioned for the greatest of missions and really can not predict what the future might look like. Each of us has a new sense of security about what we must do, knowing anew that we are resourced by a person whose power has no end. The future looks bright.

And tomorrow, I am back to college for the last six months of a journey that began about seven years ago when I was asked to lead the toddler church. In six months' time, a four year curacy will begin and then who knows where we will be going next, whatever happens the plan is just to keep on walking it out.

Award

The first blogger to send me a picture of them eating KFC and reading the KJV at the same time will receive the 'like a little KFC with my KJV' badge which they can show-off proudly on their blog/facebook etc page, well, you can stick it where ever you like really for such a chivalric undertaking.

(Badge design in progess).

KJV or KFC?

Okay, so I am wondering whether that blog-title works.
It polarises the debate: we either glory in the thees and thous or quite trash the Bible with our 'fast-food, instant gratification, serve it all up on a plate so that people do not think it through for themselves' methods. Told you I was polarising. Of course, there's a middle ground, engaging with meaning, genre etc you know all that good stuff they teach you about exegetics and hermeneutics (oops, don't we so easily talk in language people do not understand!)

This anniversary of the KJV we will celebrate this year is wonderful, and all that.

However, as a teacher, as I was back in the nineties, it was no mean feat translating Chaucer and Shakespeare into modern day parlance for the benefit of confused teenagers, whilst still preserving their appreciation of the beauty of the language.

After listening to some man wax lyrical on the KJV and its superiority, the other evening on Radio 4, I wonder really whether aesthetic delight is enough. Well, it isn't of course, in answer to my own question and I want to uunderline the fact that this chap did seem to come to faith through the KJV and that's a good thing. I think, however, that at the same time we must remember that the Great Commission teaches that we are to 'make disciples' so that the church has to communicate to God's people in words they understand. What I can not relate to is the way that we tend to think language structures of the 16th, 17th century are more Godly. In the history of time eternal, this was just one epoch. Whilst we can remember fondly and pay tribute to this Bible, which was carried overseas with missionary zeal, we must not forget either that the Church is now 4 centuries on - now there's a sobering thought.

See here for Tim Goodbody's response to the KJV.

M'envoyer...Manda me....wysłać do mnie ....send me

I'm spending a few days with Matthew and Jesus up a mountain somewhere in Galilee. Kinda liked this.

Mutuality

“You know what I am talking about,” Mack was a little frustrated. “I am talking about who’s in charge. Don’t you have a chain of command?”

“Chain of command? That sounds ghastly,” Jesus said.

“At least binding,” Papa added as they both started laughing, and then Papa turned to Mack and sang, “Though chains be of gold, they are chains all the same.”

“Now don’t concern yourself with those two,” Sarayu interrupted, reaching out her hand to comfort and calm him. “They’re just playing with you. This is actually a subject of interest among us.”

Mack nodded, relieved and a little chagrined that he had again allowed himself to lose his composure.

“Mackenzie, we have no concept of final authority among us, only unity. We are a circle of relationship, not a chain of command or ‘great chain of being’ as your ancestors termed it. What you’re seeing here is relationship without any overlay of power. We don’t need power over the other because we are always looking out for the best. Hierarchy would make no sense among us. Actually, this is your problem, not ours.”

“Really? How so?”

“Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that people could work or live together without someone being in charge.”

“But every human institution that I can think of, from political to business, even down to marriage, is governed by this kind of thinking: it is the web of our social fabric,” Mack asserted.

“Such a waste!” said Papa, picking up the empty dish and heading for the kitchen.

“It’s one reason why experiencing true relationship is so difficult for you,” Jesus added.

“Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. You rarely see or experience relationship apart from power. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.”

“Well,” said Mack sarcastically, sitting back in his chair.” We sure seem to have adapted pretty well to it.”

Sarayu was quick to reply, “Don’t confuse adaptation for intention, or seduction for reality.”

(Young, William P., The Shack, Los Angeles:windblown, 2007.)

Not looking forward to getting up early again for college....