Thy Kingdom Come, on Bended Knee

My adoration for hymns and pretty much everything from high church liturgy has been developing for many years. At chapel last Sunday, we sung a hymn that I had never heard before: ‘Thy Kingdom Come on Bended Knee’. It is an odd first line but the words are incredible, and give a fantastic exposition of some elements of kingdom theology. You can get music and words here. Though the rhythm is very slightly wrong in the quick steps down twice toward the end (about the only bit that isn’t crotchets and minims), you get the picture…

Gok Wan II

In an addition to my earlier post, i think saying something about Gok Wan's sexuality is important, and not something i'll be posting on the Camp blog page.

Christians frequently suggest all sorts of reasons why gay people, usually men, offer little or nothing to the lives of anyone other than themselves - they have no biological children, masses of disposable income, break natural law and offer nothing that cannot be achieved from elsewhere. While i would challenge each of these individually, i think the last one is an important thing, which many people miss.

Having earlier sung Gok's praises for his valuing of women, i would extend this to many gay men as well. Women are frequently abused by men - physically, mentally and emotionally - and the existence of male friends who are certain to have no interest in them sexually is surely of profound significance to women in this situation. Of course, gay men can abuse women in all sorts of ways, and straight men can value and support them also - but there seems to be a genuine point of contact between gay friends of mine and their female friends, which transcends a shared love of Smirnoff Ice. Women feel safe with gay men, which is good.

Gok Wan

Gok Wan is not someone to whom I am instantly drawn with great affection. But I have learned two lessons from him (as well as lots of ways to dress better and how to look good naked if I ever have a sex change).

Firstly, the value of valuing people for who they are, rather than who they try to be. The women on his show seem to really trust him. He listens to them, asks counselling questions and tries to encourage them to engage with their self-identity in interesting ways. He suggests a holistic approach to feeling better about oneself – dress, diet, exercise, self-worth and all the rest; and constantly slags off cosmetic surgery – the ultimate in easy non-solutions to the real problems, which are addressed only from within. I think he is a model for how men can be in relation to women.

Secondly, he taught me to not judge a book by its cover. I saw him and instantly made huge judgements about the person that he was, only to be embarrassed and put wrong later when his sensitivity, warmth, hospitality and welcome to potentially vulnerable people shone through in his programme (which I now watch religiously).

Not very theological in one sense, but perhaps these distinctions are always more difficult than we may claim – I think Gok Wan is doing the work of God: valuing women who feel oppressed by male expectation and suppression, and encouraging them to develop ways of valuing themselves. Loving oneself is such an important part of being at peace with all things, and I apologise for my judgmentalism, and seek to learn from his example.

Camels and Bells

Having sort of (or not really) had a go at Rob Bell in a previous post, I now think some other stuff I wrote comes out quite in favour of what he’s up to.

Bell understands that Jesus was a Jew, and his social position was what of a rabbi – a ‘great one’ (‘rab’ in Hebrew is from the root rbh, ‘to be great/many’). They were, and still are, wise people, highly respected and knowledgeable about the Scriptures.

I was fortunate to spend an hour doing Hebrew with a Rabbi a couple of months ago. He was less than thirty (or certainly less than thirty-three), and knew so much. His wisdom and insight used the great Rabbis of Jewish tradition and applied their insight to how the text might function in faithful communities today. I had the most profound respect for him.

Back in the first century, people were rather more mobile and less tied-down than today. They could up and leave, following a wise teacher and committing themselves to learning from them if they so chose. Bell talks of those who followed Rabbis as ‘talmidims’, which comes from the Hebrew root lmd, which means ‘to learn/teach’. The followers of Jesus were committed to learning his ways and coming to know his interpretation of the Law, Jewish tradition and contemporary society.

Perhaps the best example of Jesus’ rabbinic teaching is Matthew 23 (it’s in Luke too), with the seven woes to the Pharisees. Jesus interprets the Law in his way, and denounces the interpretations of some others. My favourite is:

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!’

Rob Bell preached a series before Christmas about the seven woes, and had lots of Rabbinic stuff in them. I like that he is a Pastor of a megachurch, but one who actually engages with some real Theology and recognizes the Jewishness of Jesus and his message.

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In summary, Rob Bell is far from the greatest theologian ever – but then, he’s not trying to be anything other than, well, himself. But he does take the Jewishness of Jesus seriously, and engage with some rabbinic commentary on the OT, in order to understand something of what Jesus was trying to do.

Dan’s tips for the day:

1. Have a go at reading the OT with some Rabbis to help. Rashi (ie, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi) is a pretty good place to start.

2. Get in touch with a Rabbi and see if you can chat with them. All the ones I’ve met are extremely wise and really happy to share their knowledge, tradition and faith with pretty much anyone who wants to know. They’re great.

Dickie Dawkins etc.

After the reference section (Bible, Hebrew Bible and Dictionary) of my bookshelf lies a copy of Richard Dawkins’ work ‘The God Delusion’ – in pole position, one might say. Yet while its placement as such is entirely the result of my categorisation strategy and not a desire to hold him above some of the genuine heavyweights of historical and contemporary Theology, I can’t help but feel he’s a rather good thing.

Lots of Christians spend lots of time slagging Dawkins off – indeed, with good reason; Dawkins’ understanding of Christian Theology is wildly simplistic, and shows a total lack of engagement with most of the classic pieces of Christian biblical interpretation and Theology. But something came to me last night: I a fortunate enough to know a tiny amount of the rich heritage of the Christian tradition and its Theology (which does, literally, mean ‘talk about God’), and so can see the simplicity of Dawkins’ work, but a lot of Christians don’t know some of the most central theological things written by the Church’s great authors.

I came across a wonderful example of this on Thursday this week, yet again in a brilliant module I am fortunate enough to take. We spoke briefly about Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of God being not a ‘thing’ like other things in the universe, and the difficulty of much biblical language speaking of God in very anthropomorphic (ie, human) terms, having conversations with people and doing things and using human words in the manner of a big human from up above. How to reconcile this with a view of God as NOT a ‘thing’ in the universe, but, as Nicholas Lash says, the mystery of existence which we may speak about but never tie down, is a big issue.

I think Dawkins is a remarkably naïve writer because of his overly simplistic view of God and Theology, and I also think that the God he rejects is the God of many Christians, who also operate on a similar understanding. I feel very uncomfortable being patronising to the faith of many, which is deeply-held, profoundly liberating and life-giving – that is certainly not my intention. I think my problem is with some of the leaders of some churches, who largely are not interested in these great works and ideas, such that they may not be passed on to those to whom they minister. There’s a lot of emphasis on leaders engaging their congregation’s hearts and emotions (which is no bad thing), and not a lot on engaging their heads and really encouraging them to think about some of these big issues about the nature of God. If that were the case, I think Christian leaders and those to whom they are accountable could give Dawkins a far better ride than the ‘well he’s an atheist so I don’t take him seriously’ one finds quite often.

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I think qualifying this post is a little important. I am fortunate enough to be paid to study some of the classic works of Theology full-time, and when writing things like this it is easy to drift into ‘it’d all be so much better if all Christians were like me’ mode. That really is not my intention. Of course, I think that Christians should get past the idea that Rob Bell is the most radical theologian ever to have written anything, and would benefit massively from reading some Augustine or Rashi or Aquinas – but I acknowledge that time is short and life busy, often filled with other profoundly liberating and worthwhile practises which my life lacks; for sure, I also have plenty to learn from those whose emphasis lies elsewhere. Yet I do challenge church leaders’ lack of engagement with their rich heritage, which fails to offer the intellectual stimulation and theological brilliance that Dawkins’ simplistic account also misses.

Interestingly, the work of perhaps the greatest Rabbi (Rashi) is available here. You have to negotiate to find the chapter a bit, and then click to add the commentary to the translation – but it’s well worth it ☺.

Dates

Opposite the bus station in Durham is a grocer’s shop, Robinson’s. It reminds me of old Mrs Derbyshire’s grocery in the village where my parents used to live – friendly, good people who care about their produce, and run a small business to pay the bills. I just picked up about 1.5kg of fresh raspberries for £3, and a huge packet of (about 30) Medjool dates (which sell in Waitrose down the road at about £2 for 8) for £1 – not only is the shop locally-owned, the produce largely locally-sourced and fantastic quality, it’s mighty cheap.

Opposite Robinson’s is currently a building site, which is renovating an old wine shop into a Tesco Metro, opening in a few weeks’ time. I was discussing this with my housemates a day or so ago, and contemplating what this will mean for the grocery shop, fearing that like so many small businesses, it will suffer or even close when a supermarket opens nearby. Needless to say, I will definitely be shopping at Robinson’s until I leave Durham.

I value Robinson’s very much, and will be sorry for both them and myself if they close. Capitalism does tend toward monopoly, but only if price is the dominant factor in attributing value to goods – I hope this test-case will disprove my fears about the things people value…

Barth/Bart - all the same to me

Today I had a seminar about Karl Barth (pronounced ‘Bart’, as in Simpson – he was German), for which I read some very interesting stuff – most notably, his commentary on Romans from 1933.

As a Christian interpreter of the Bible, he was in a rather difficult situation, feeling somewhat out of place in both the University and the church. I feel somewhat similar for much of the time.

University Theology departments in Barth’s day were into historical criticism, which looked for the historical circumstances that gave rise to the production of the biblical texts. It was largely uninterested in questions of truth or meaning – only questions of history: did this happen? Why did people write it down? What purposes was the writer (and any who modified the work after its original conception) writing/changing it for?

Partly in response to this, many Christian adopted a view of biblical authority based on its ‘inerrancy’ – simply, there are no errors in the Bible, as though it dropped from the sky, Special Delivery from the mind of God into those who wrote it (though this is a little crude). Cue lots of ‘all Scripture is God-breathed etc’ from Timothy (I think).

I have experienced the views of lots of academics on the side of the historical critics, and even more on the side of the inerrantists. I agree with neither, and neither did Barth.

I quote an analyst of Barth’s legacy:

‘[for Barth] Scriptures are not in and of themselves the Word of God, but they bear witness to the Word that always lies on a horizon beyond themselves… Thus… biblical authority does not reside in any inherent property the texts supposedly possess (eg, inerrancy) but in the nique function they perform in the life of the church.’

This is called ‘functional authority’ – the texts have authority not because of their essential nature, but because of their ability to point to God who is the truth, made known in Christ.

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Turning to Barth himself, he received much criticism from historical critics who saw him as smuggling in Christian principles to his readings of the texts, and finding nothing wrong with the teachings of Paul in Romans. They call this ‘Biblicism’.

Returning to his view of Scripture as pointing towards God, rather than possessing authority in and of itself, Barth replies in a beautiful way:

‘When I am named ‘biblicist’, all that can rightly be proved against me is that I am prejudiced in supposing the Bible to be a good book, and that I hold it to be profitable for [people] to take its conceptions at least as seriously as they take their own.’

As someone who has great difficulty with many Christians’ view of Scripture as a simple answer book, I like Barth very much. I find a lot of Christians are rather naïve when it comes to interpreting the Bible, and his views offer a means of opening oneself to and participating in the drama of interpretation that seems to be wanting in a lot of churches.

Anyway, if anyone reads Barth’s ‘Church Dogmatics’ (about 40 volumes I think), there’s a cream tea in it. Or any of it, to be honest (which would be more than I).

Life, and life to the full.

I watched the news today, which contained a piece about the changes to the transplant law in the UK. The piece was about the death of a seven year-old, Jade, and how her family came to the agonising conclusion that her life support machine should eventually be turned off.

Jade’s mother was recounting the process after Jade’s death, and how they decided very quickly that if Jade had understood what was going on, she would have wanted to help others in whatever way she could – she was just that type of person, who would give away her last sweet if it would bring a smile to someone’s face, intent on making people happier and serving them. The donation of Jade’s organs saved the lives of four people.

Christ came to bring the fullness of life, to show us how to live in line with God’s priorities where Israel had failed. This mission is achieved and embodied most significantly in his brutal and agonising death. Christ was, in some sense, resurrected: new life arose from the despair and agony of death.

Bodies symbolise our identity, they are important to who we are and how we relate to others. Our body parts are also like those of almost everyone else – an ear is (more or less) an ear, and a right leg is (more or less) a right leg. As such, at death our body parts become useless to us as biological components, yet still retain something of our identity. I wonder if the giving of transplants offers a means of resurrection – life beyond death as the result of profound generosity and self-giving.

The tragedy of death may yield new life – continued life for the transplant’s recipient, and resurrection for the donor. Jade’s body was broken and given to many, that they may have life.

French anthropologists, moustaches, going to the pub, and poor widows...

Until recently, my interest in Marcel Mauss stretched little past his amusing name and very French moustache. But then I read his 1925 book, ‘The Gift’, which examines the nature of social gift structures in Polynesian society. Mauss suggests that society operates on a system of gift exchange, enacted in three-part sequence of obligation:

1. The obligation to give.

2. The obligation to receive.

3. The obligation to give in return.

The everyday examples of this are, of course, many; and the underlying system of relationship embodied by this system is deeply felt by lots of people, especially when it s broken.

I have many more than two thoughts on Mauss, who I find thrilling – but two I will write here.

Firstly, I find the second part the hardest.

The Christian tradition’s emphasis on the receipt of gift comes through its concepts of ‘grace’. I see the gift of grace as something like an enlightenment, where one’s view of the world and oneself changes, and one (at least in Christian terms) seeks to commit oneself to the pattern of Christ’s life through learning the practices of discipleship.

I think that Christ would have let people buy him drinks and not immediately sought to buy them one back, or have accepted the kind words of someone else without seeking to repay them. Not that these are bad things or bad responses to gifts, but they insist that grace is a transaction, which I find difficult.

Many Christians talk of being ‘saved’ as a transaction, where for one’s faith in Christ is ‘rewarded’ by being welcomes into God’s fold, usually through a substitutionary model of human sin and Christ’s death. I acknowledge the significance of this model in Christian tradition, and the importance it holds for many people, yet I find it rather cosmic and mythical, and rooted ultimately in transaction, rather than grace.

I would offer a different construal of being ‘saved’, as the process through which one comes to see the world in a way different to one’s evolutionary and social hardwiring has taken place, particularly towards self-obsession and idolatry (see my earlier post on Nicholas Lash). When one’s desires are purified after the example of Christ’s self-giving, made especially known on the cross.

My final point here leads seamlessly onto the second suggestion. Perhaps this purification of desire as the receipt of salvation/grace/gift (from that which we call ‘God’) does require giving in return but not in a transaction model. Most obviously this is done through the enaction of one’s salvation in the lives of others through compassionate, justice-seeking action and mercy.

My second point regards a recent interpreter of Mauss, Maurice Godelier. Again, after an initial period of name amusement and moustache contemplation, I found Godelier’s work exciting as well.

Godelier distinguishes between two types of gift: alienable, and inalienable. Alienable gifts are exchanged through transaction, and can be ‘alienated’ from their current owner – eg, I bought my mum some jewellery for Christmas from a nice shop where I live. I have no attachment to the gift, other than that I bought it for my mother. Inalienable gifts, though, are of a much deeper significance, such that their transfer of ownership does not ‘alienate’ their current owner from the gift – the best example is the transferral of tribal land from one generation to another: the former owners are inalienable from the gift’s significance, which is not conceived in transaction value. A wedding ring is another example.

I think the NT has an interesting example of gift giving, in Luke 21:1-4:

[Jesus] looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said: “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

Question: is the woman’s gift alienable, or inalienable?

On one level, it is certainly alienable – money is a rational form of quantified transactional exchange, and is transferable between different people without loss to their identity. But I suggest the actual substance of her gift is not two small coins, but commitment to the values of self-sacrifice and costly giving, putting in ‘all she had to live on’. Godelier’s insight that gifts need not be physical, quantifiable or transferable is sharp – giving to God of these things makes them all the more significant in these terms.

This poor widow has been saved. Saved from our social hardwiring that tells us to take, rather than give. Saved from the conception that her small offering is worthless against the heftier gifts of the rich. Saved from the conception that her low status render her incapable or unworthy of participating in the religious life of the community. Her inalienable gift express her values in the same way as a tribal head passes on land to his eldest son – her commitment to the demands of discipleship: Christ-like self-giving.

Eve and Adam

My endebtedness to Nem, and particularly her post yesterday, is important to note at the outset here!

I briefly mentioned the nature of ‘fallenness’ in the Lash post yesterday. I have just read some interesting comments by Phyllis Trible, an American feminist OT scholar whose lucid and profound interpretation of some particular ‘problem texts’ in the OT is well-known – I will write about her and Judges 19 (surely the most horrifying of all biblical stories) at some point.

She was asked in an interview if she would talk about ‘Adam and Eve’. She replied: ‘Eve and Adam would be better’. Asked why, she suggests: ‘It got your attention for one thing. If shifts the whole discussion. It undercuts the concept of order, the man first and the woman second.’

It’s interesting what happens when our familiar language is subverted. Perhaps most noticeably, we take a second look and think about something in a fresh way that our former familiarity with the language may not have permitted. This is a central feature of Trible’s scholarship, of looking for the voice of the woman in a story told almost exclusively by powerful men.

I was schooled in the Roman Catholic tradition, and most of my teachers were women. The Romans get a rather bad press about their view of women, particularly in the priesthood – and not without good reason. Yet the centrality of Mary in its liturgy and symbolism makes an important commitment to the witness of women in Scripture, and especially the story of Jesus. After the festive period, the person of Mary is often forgotten, and even during the festive period the gospel of Luke is not read very often. The Magnificat remains one of the central pieces of Anglican liturgy, with its message of humility, peace and the inversion of power structures nowhere better embodied than in the one who sings it: Mary, a young girl.

Dan Brown’s stuff about Mary Magdelene marrying Jesus is interesting enough, but risks drawing attention away from the real concerns of women in Scripture. Interesting that in Brown’s view, Mary Magdalene is associated with scandal and illegitimacy – a persistent and damaging view of women. Forgetting Brown’s mention of the apocryphal ‘Gospel of Mary’, perhaps feminist scholars are attempting a construction of the testimony of women in biblical stories, of using different language and ideas as a way of shedding some new light on these ancient texts.

A further point about Dan Brown is his seeming unwillingness to actually get the real shape of the gospels’ portrayal of women, in which Mary Magdelene is a part. If the early church sought to discredit Mary Magdalene through giving her the traditional status of a prostitute, they did a rather bad job. Mary’s clear place within the gospels’ array of usually poor and devout women, attentive to the words and works of Jesus (I might add, because of his hospitality and welcome towards them) makes their place in the narratives hardly worthy of one sought to be ‘slandered’, as Brown suggests.

If you’ve made it this far, my sincere thanks, and apologies for a second essay-length post. Perhaps being more concise might be a wise new year resolution.

Lash-tastic

Phew. Formalities done.

I’ve been reading lots of Nicholas Lash recently. He was until recently a long-time academic in Cambridge’s Theology department and taught one of my current tutors there. His personal history was influenced by lots of time in India, where his grandfather was a Bishop. As a result, he engages in conversation between Christianity and Hinduism, which he sees as a helpful way of rediscovering some classical Christian ways of thinking about God which were lost post-seventeenth century in the west (see lots of later posts I hope).

He makes several suggestions about the place of religion in the modern world.

Lash has a fascinating view of humanity – particularly interesting in terms of Christian concepts of ‘fallenness’, from which we are somehow ‘saved’. I quote:

‘All human beings have their hearts set somewhere, hold something sacred, worship at some shrine. We are spontaneously idolatrous – where, by ‘idolatry’, I mean the worship of some creature, the setting of the heart on some particular thing (usually oneself).’

Also (though I would wish to note that rather a lot of the people who do worship God are reactionary and simple-minded):

‘It is taken for granted, in sophisticated circles, that no one worships God these days except the reactionary and the simple-minded. This innocent self-satisfaction tells us little more, however, than that those exhibiting it do not name as ‘God’ the gods they worship.’

In this context, Lash searches for the place of religion.

His suggestion is that religious traditions – understood properly, having broken the shackles of the Enlightenment’s misunderstanding of the nature of God (again, see lots of later posts I hope) – may offer a helpful context for ‘the common twofold purpose of weaning us from our idolatry and purifying our desire.’

Again:

‘Against this background, the great religious traditions can be see as contexts in which human beings may learn, however slowly, partially, imperfectly, some freedom from the destructive bondage which the worship of the creature brings.’

The characteristic Christian emphasis on the self-sacrifice of the one in whom the supreme presence of God in human history came to dwell serves to enlighten this purpose of religion. The formation into ever-increasing Christ-likeness is the central concern of the Christian tradition. In my essay, I have argued that Christianity’s focus on the self-giving of its patron and the perpetual desire to be formed into the likeness of Christ accurately models Lash’s typology of religion as a helpful context for the purification of desire. Christ is the embodiment of pure desire.

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I like Lash a lot. His desire to engage in multi-faith dialogue as a resource for better understanding what Christians mean when they speak about God is admirable and very successful. Further, his engagement with ‘eastern’ traditions (mainly Hinduism and Buddhism) offers a helpful critique of many contemporary ‘western’ models of God, which distort the traditions that produced them. I am sure I will write more on him.

That mandatory introduction post in full...

So, it’s blog time.

The mandatory introduction post will hopefully introduce my intentions for the blog, as well as me as a person.

I like lists:

1. Intentions

Focus my thoughts and give me an outlet for them
Let people know some of the ways I think about things to do with faith, God and religion
Let people know it’s OK to think about things in different ways to other people
Encourage people to think about what they think, and engage in dialogue with those they disagree with

2. Me

Dan
Theology and Religion MA Student
21
Musical
Thoughtful
Inclusive
Creative with punctuation