n light of lots of things really, and particularly some recent discussion that have occurred on here I feel that saying something about what I feel that camp is might help somewhat.
I fell in love with camp quite early, when I was about 14. I arrived and found a community of people who asked difficult questions and thought about religion in interesting ways. It was a place that had something about it – it’s hard to say precisely what – but there was definitely something.
I have always been aware that my thoughts about Christianity and religion more generally have been rather different to those of many people at camp. This is always difficult, and is something that I often struggle with in religious communities. In particular, I struggle with those who are unwilling to ask difficult and searching questions about religion, or whose difficult and searching questions stop well short of anything of genuine challenge or difficulty. So questions about what Richard Dawkins might have to say to Christians (rather than the tiresome polemic that many Christians direct against him)’ about what it might mean to speak of that which we can only call God, ‘who’ is beyond language and conceptuality; about what it means to hold a Canon of scriptural texts with some degree of authority given that their development, construction and authorship is rather more compex than some give account for, and, in any case, how to use such two- or three- millennia old texts in 21st century faith. These are all big issues for me, and I am glad that camp is a place in which thinking about them is not off limits.
So when I heard that camp was introducing a list of values, my heart sank. But this was short-lived. Instead I was left with a list of things about camp that captured in far better form than I had ever managed without them to encapsulate most of the things that I really love about camp: openness, unity in diversity, inclusion, respect for others, valuing people without condition, not taking oneself too seriously etc. They remain the best paper expression of what camp is about that I have ever seen, and start to explain to those who have never been precisely what it is about this community that is so special.
So here they are:
Our Values
Reality.
We won’t hide who we are – with all our flaws and failings – because God loves us are we are.
Generous Community.
We live our lives together and share ourselves with each other. It is a big ask, and daily surrender to the Holy Spirit as a team and individuals is the only way – it is costly stuff!
Acceptance and Healing.
We are a community of unconditional love in which people are enabled to find acceptance and healing.
Creativity.
We allow each other to be spontaneous and creative, and allow the surrounding beauty to inspire us. We want t reflect the creativity of our father – the Creator.
Space and Beauty.
We provide space for campers to be. To enjoy and breathe in the beauty of the creation. The ‘wow’-factor of the site shouts of the glory of God.
Laughter
.
We take God’s calling seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. We believe in a God who has a great sense of humour.
Simplicity
.
We live simply – an open fire, coal-fired boilers, shared tents, hot but basic showers. And it’s worth it – without the layers of complexity the pressure of normal life, we make space for God
--
I think the are something to be proud of, to own and to be challenged by.
Thursday 29 May 2008
Monday 26 May 2008
Natural and Conceptual Disasters: Where is God in the Chinese Earthquake?
I preached in our college Chapel last night. Here is what i said:
Knowing quite what to talk about in one’s first sermon is rather difficult; and the brief of ‘something from the news this week’, while broad, both frees and limits one somewhat. I hope in this brief slot to demonstrate something I believe very profoundly: that the resources of religious tradition – in this case the Christian tradition, with which I am most familiar – remain important resources that may enhance, rather than impede, the good living of human life. A great number of my sentences will begin with variations on a reflective ‘I wonder if’. This is entirely intentional, and, I think, the only legitimate response to some of the issues that I will talk about. To speak with certainty about God is surely to speak of an idol; and easy answers to these issues are rather more commonplace than good answers.
The last fortnight has seen China devastated by an earthquake, and Burma’s already suffering people inflicted by the presence of a massive cyclone. The Boxing Day tsunami a couple of years ago is also still in the back of our minds. My chosen angle of discussion is to ask where God is in all of this?; and how the resources of Christianity might be of help in formulating sensitive and searching means of engaging with these difficult issues.
The so-called ‘problem of evil’ has been the subject of many an A-level exam answer, pub conversation, CU event and even a sermon in this Chapel last term. Adopting largely philosophical and abstract understandings of the nature of divinity, these events may come to a variety of conclusions – some less awful than others. I hope to adopt a different way of thinking about God and the world, and see how things might work out as a result.
--
Our first reading today tells surely the most horrifying tale in all of Christian Scripture: a concubine, who is entirely under the control and influence of her religious master, ends up dying a lonely and painful death in order to preserve the sexual purity of her master’s host’s daughters, as well as that of her master himself. As a result, she is raped all night, and eventually cut into twelve pieces by the man to whom she is object – the man who sanctions her abuse in his place. In the whole story she isn’t the subject of a single active verb, and this dehumanisation is completed by her lack of even the dignity of a name.
As a brief aside, one might remember the recent finding of a Lithuanian woman’s dismembered head and hands on a beach in Scotland; the woman was a migrant worker. I can’t help but see some connection between the two women’s social status of vulnerability, as well as the mode of their being murdered.
An obvious omission from the Judges story is the intervention of God. Why does God not appear in this story, convicting the Levite, his host and the men of the town of the atrocities they have committed; protecting the woman from their malicious and murderous intentions? In a similar way, where is God in this week’s stories coming out of China and Burma? It appears that God is all but absent.
--
I wonder if we can continue to believe in a God who does things like we do things, says things like we say things, and exists in a personal form like we exist in personal forms? I wonder what it might mean to pay more than lip-service to God being beyond language and beyond human conceptuality, and to see language of God ‘speaking’ and ‘doing’ things as rather more symbolic than descriptive or propositional? I wonder what a rejection of God as the cosmized projection of the self might mean for our understandings of divinity?
I wonder if God might be in things, rather than outside of them; a presence that resonates deep within the depths of our experience, rather than one that acts on them from outside; if God might be the language that expresses – ever more partially – in symbolic and poetic forms the transcendent mysteries of existence, which are by definition beyond the remits of experientially-derived language. I wonder where this God might be in the story of the Levite’s concubine if God isn’t zapping the wicked, protecting the righteous and ensuring that they all live happily ever after?
To say a little more about this understanding of God, I note my indebtedness to Paul Tillich, a twentieth century theologian. Tillich suggests that:
‘The name of the infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means.’
God, then, is not a being, like you or I are beings; but the depth of being itself. This is mystical, for sure – but then the God of certainty is most surely an idol.
--
Commentators – not least Phyllis Trible, a feminist scholar – have drawn many parallels between the death of this woman in Judges 19 and the traditions of the death of Christ. She talks of this ‘text of terror’ in deeply moving terms: ‘Of all the characters in scripture, she is the least. Appearing at the beginning and close of a story that rapes her, she is alone in a world of men. Neither the other characters nor the narrator recognizes her humanity… Her body has been broken and given to many. Lesser power has no woman than this, that her life is laid down by a man.’
The Eucharistic and Christological undertones of Trible’s comments ring clear, and I wonder if our second reading might supplement this understanding: Christ’s presence in the poor, the naked, the imprisoned, the sick and the displaced locates divinity in the suffering of humanity – it is here that we should look for God, rather than in the grand actions – or, in these cases the lack of actions – that would appear to solve these problems in an instant.
--
Where might this understanding of Judges 19 leave our understanding of God, and how does this, in turn, offer a life-giving understanding of faith in response to natural disasters?
This is a difficult question, and one in which a brief bit of Hebrew might offer some help. Hebrew nouns are constructed from verbal roots, so ‘melek’ – ‘king’ – is derived from the verbal root ‘maalak’, which means ‘to rule’. As such, the root from which nouns are constructed most often offers a window into the scope and intention of these words’ usage as nouns. The Hebrew word for wilderness – ‘midbar’ – is interesting; it is made from the root ‘dabaar’, ‘to speak’. Precisely what the significance of ‘speaking’ in concepts of wildernesses is is open to much discussion, and the sense of finding quiet and potentially painful places to be ones in which speaking – the speaking of God, perhaps – might occur is an interesting understanding of such places. Of course, God does not have a voice and so does not speak as humans speak – but the use of the discourse of divinity in making sense of these experiences of ‘otherness’ may, as I have suggested, be a fruitful endeavour, and a persuasive remodelling of traditional theistic concepts.
In addition to this, I propose another verse of the Bible, from St Paul, to be of help in understanding how these ideas might be of some use in understanding the presence of divinity within suffering:
‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’
The precise scope of this rich verse is hotly debated, and I can only offer one particular understanding within the chorus of other understandings: in our suffering we become enjoined to the crucified Christ, who lives in us through both our suffering and self-giving for the good of others. When we become the wilderness Christ lives in us – for the wilderness is Christ’s home. See, the home of God is among mortals.
The paradox if finding of one’s home – finding one’s being – in the wilderness, rather than in the comfortable times of life, marks a rather different response to suffering than is often suggested in religious circles: Christ’s being was nowhere more revealed than in the suffering and desolation of crucifixion; similarly, through suffering we too may be brought into close relation with the depths of our being also, and may be open to the speaking of the divine in our experiences of midbar, our place of speaking, our wilderness. Through suffering, we become open to a deep engagement with divinity within, and as a result of this openness we may discover who it is that we are, and what God is in us. Through the pain of suffering we may discover true strength, which is found not in the preservation of comfortable life at all costs, but through a searching and authentic connection to the ground of our being: God, who is enjoined to humans in their weakness, and shares their pain.
But what comfort is this to those who are suffering as a result of recent natural disasters? I don’t know. But if the narrative of Christianity is about anything it is about hope, about true strength being found in the pain of weakness and despair, rather than the exaltation of power and strength. And out of this hopelessness and desperation can emerge peace and life and goodness. Not as a result of God poking his finger in and making everything alright again – for that is not the God of which I speak. Instead, God is somehow in the suffering of humanity in some mystical and unknown way, a compassionate presence that finds its being in all things. And through engaging with this God within we may be transformed.
Hope does not and should not do two things: firstly, belittle suffering in the present through a speculative ‘better future’; and secondly, offer mistaken hope through easy answers and clear solutions that ultimately end in disappointment and resentment.
I wonder what it more affirming and more hopeful than to acknowledge the presence of the divine in the suffering of humanity, and out of this to seek hope and life with the familiar discourses of divinity, which may articulate these experiences of ‘otherness’ in beautiful and poetic forms.
I have never heard a sermon on Judges 19 – in fact, I only came to know the story myself after a lecture in my first year. This is a great shame. To acknowledge religious tradition’s place in the articulation of that which grounds human existence requires that these most challenging and most dangerous modes of human being be not left without sacred symbol and story to engage and dramatise them. I find it deeply liberating that the Canon of Jewish and Christian Scripture contains stories such as these, as for many people in the world these events are not something that can be implicitly ignored at will, but are everyday reality. These stories contain nothing for religious people to hide – they say it like it is, and they don’t come up with easy answers to the issues that they raise. Instead, they invite us to think about them, to live them out, to listen for traces of these stories in those stories that happen to us and our fellow humans today, in the hope that they, and their broader context in Canon and Church might offer hope and life those who experience them in the present. As Denise Ackerman has said about another rape story in the Old Testament:
‘There is no prevarication, no avoidance of the horror, no cover up. "Saying it as it is” is the place to begin.’
--
I have made several points here:
• God is not a cosmic version of myself who either fails to or cannot act to prevent evil; instead, God is mystically intertwined in the everyday realities of human beings – an underlying mysterious presence that is present particularly in the poor and needy
• As an example of this, Judges 19 is a story in which God appears to be absent – yet it is actually a story in which the crucified Christ is the narrative’s victim: a nameless concubine, an object not a subject, who is mercilessly abused by the powerful
• God – the ground of our being – may be found in weakness rather than strength. The examples I have suggested offer some playing out of concepts of divinity within things, and particularly within things of suffering and hopelessness. It is here that God might be found in natural disasters, and this finding of God within these places may transform us and bring us life and hope
• And as a result of this, Theology – ‘God-speak’ – when thoughtfully and sensitively deployed, may offer suggestive and searching resources for coping with the otherness of suffering, and offer grounds for hope not rooted in the more or less subtle variants of ‘God is in control so don’t worry’ that many Christians espouse. The deployment of Christian jargons in affirming the suffering of the needy, and seeking to transform their experiences through an engagement with the ground of being is central to this
Whether this is of any consolation to the victims of the world’s recent natural disasters – or, indeed, those who are suffering here or anywhere – I am not to judge. But I hope that the conceptual disaster of the God of many Christians might have been restated in rather more helpful and humane terms as a result of these reflections, and that the thrilling, despairing and challenging resources of the Christian tradition might retain at least some usefulness in this crisis and those crises to come.
So my final reflective question is about the nature of God, and completes Paul Tillich’s paragraph from which I read earlier:
The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about [God]. You cannot call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God
My question – and it is a question, not a confrontational challenge – is exactly as mine at the outset: ‘where is your God in the sufferings of people in Burma and China; and where was your God in the rape and dismemberment of a nameless concubine?’
Knowing quite what to talk about in one’s first sermon is rather difficult; and the brief of ‘something from the news this week’, while broad, both frees and limits one somewhat. I hope in this brief slot to demonstrate something I believe very profoundly: that the resources of religious tradition – in this case the Christian tradition, with which I am most familiar – remain important resources that may enhance, rather than impede, the good living of human life. A great number of my sentences will begin with variations on a reflective ‘I wonder if’. This is entirely intentional, and, I think, the only legitimate response to some of the issues that I will talk about. To speak with certainty about God is surely to speak of an idol; and easy answers to these issues are rather more commonplace than good answers.
The last fortnight has seen China devastated by an earthquake, and Burma’s already suffering people inflicted by the presence of a massive cyclone. The Boxing Day tsunami a couple of years ago is also still in the back of our minds. My chosen angle of discussion is to ask where God is in all of this?; and how the resources of Christianity might be of help in formulating sensitive and searching means of engaging with these difficult issues.
The so-called ‘problem of evil’ has been the subject of many an A-level exam answer, pub conversation, CU event and even a sermon in this Chapel last term. Adopting largely philosophical and abstract understandings of the nature of divinity, these events may come to a variety of conclusions – some less awful than others. I hope to adopt a different way of thinking about God and the world, and see how things might work out as a result.
--
Our first reading today tells surely the most horrifying tale in all of Christian Scripture: a concubine, who is entirely under the control and influence of her religious master, ends up dying a lonely and painful death in order to preserve the sexual purity of her master’s host’s daughters, as well as that of her master himself. As a result, she is raped all night, and eventually cut into twelve pieces by the man to whom she is object – the man who sanctions her abuse in his place. In the whole story she isn’t the subject of a single active verb, and this dehumanisation is completed by her lack of even the dignity of a name.
As a brief aside, one might remember the recent finding of a Lithuanian woman’s dismembered head and hands on a beach in Scotland; the woman was a migrant worker. I can’t help but see some connection between the two women’s social status of vulnerability, as well as the mode of their being murdered.
An obvious omission from the Judges story is the intervention of God. Why does God not appear in this story, convicting the Levite, his host and the men of the town of the atrocities they have committed; protecting the woman from their malicious and murderous intentions? In a similar way, where is God in this week’s stories coming out of China and Burma? It appears that God is all but absent.
--
I wonder if we can continue to believe in a God who does things like we do things, says things like we say things, and exists in a personal form like we exist in personal forms? I wonder what it might mean to pay more than lip-service to God being beyond language and beyond human conceptuality, and to see language of God ‘speaking’ and ‘doing’ things as rather more symbolic than descriptive or propositional? I wonder what a rejection of God as the cosmized projection of the self might mean for our understandings of divinity?
I wonder if God might be in things, rather than outside of them; a presence that resonates deep within the depths of our experience, rather than one that acts on them from outside; if God might be the language that expresses – ever more partially – in symbolic and poetic forms the transcendent mysteries of existence, which are by definition beyond the remits of experientially-derived language. I wonder where this God might be in the story of the Levite’s concubine if God isn’t zapping the wicked, protecting the righteous and ensuring that they all live happily ever after?
To say a little more about this understanding of God, I note my indebtedness to Paul Tillich, a twentieth century theologian. Tillich suggests that:
‘The name of the infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means.’
God, then, is not a being, like you or I are beings; but the depth of being itself. This is mystical, for sure – but then the God of certainty is most surely an idol.
--
Commentators – not least Phyllis Trible, a feminist scholar – have drawn many parallels between the death of this woman in Judges 19 and the traditions of the death of Christ. She talks of this ‘text of terror’ in deeply moving terms: ‘Of all the characters in scripture, she is the least. Appearing at the beginning and close of a story that rapes her, she is alone in a world of men. Neither the other characters nor the narrator recognizes her humanity… Her body has been broken and given to many. Lesser power has no woman than this, that her life is laid down by a man.’
The Eucharistic and Christological undertones of Trible’s comments ring clear, and I wonder if our second reading might supplement this understanding: Christ’s presence in the poor, the naked, the imprisoned, the sick and the displaced locates divinity in the suffering of humanity – it is here that we should look for God, rather than in the grand actions – or, in these cases the lack of actions – that would appear to solve these problems in an instant.
--
Where might this understanding of Judges 19 leave our understanding of God, and how does this, in turn, offer a life-giving understanding of faith in response to natural disasters?
This is a difficult question, and one in which a brief bit of Hebrew might offer some help. Hebrew nouns are constructed from verbal roots, so ‘melek’ – ‘king’ – is derived from the verbal root ‘maalak’, which means ‘to rule’. As such, the root from which nouns are constructed most often offers a window into the scope and intention of these words’ usage as nouns. The Hebrew word for wilderness – ‘midbar’ – is interesting; it is made from the root ‘dabaar’, ‘to speak’. Precisely what the significance of ‘speaking’ in concepts of wildernesses is is open to much discussion, and the sense of finding quiet and potentially painful places to be ones in which speaking – the speaking of God, perhaps – might occur is an interesting understanding of such places. Of course, God does not have a voice and so does not speak as humans speak – but the use of the discourse of divinity in making sense of these experiences of ‘otherness’ may, as I have suggested, be a fruitful endeavour, and a persuasive remodelling of traditional theistic concepts.
In addition to this, I propose another verse of the Bible, from St Paul, to be of help in understanding how these ideas might be of some use in understanding the presence of divinity within suffering:
‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’
The precise scope of this rich verse is hotly debated, and I can only offer one particular understanding within the chorus of other understandings: in our suffering we become enjoined to the crucified Christ, who lives in us through both our suffering and self-giving for the good of others. When we become the wilderness Christ lives in us – for the wilderness is Christ’s home. See, the home of God is among mortals.
The paradox if finding of one’s home – finding one’s being – in the wilderness, rather than in the comfortable times of life, marks a rather different response to suffering than is often suggested in religious circles: Christ’s being was nowhere more revealed than in the suffering and desolation of crucifixion; similarly, through suffering we too may be brought into close relation with the depths of our being also, and may be open to the speaking of the divine in our experiences of midbar, our place of speaking, our wilderness. Through suffering, we become open to a deep engagement with divinity within, and as a result of this openness we may discover who it is that we are, and what God is in us. Through the pain of suffering we may discover true strength, which is found not in the preservation of comfortable life at all costs, but through a searching and authentic connection to the ground of our being: God, who is enjoined to humans in their weakness, and shares their pain.
But what comfort is this to those who are suffering as a result of recent natural disasters? I don’t know. But if the narrative of Christianity is about anything it is about hope, about true strength being found in the pain of weakness and despair, rather than the exaltation of power and strength. And out of this hopelessness and desperation can emerge peace and life and goodness. Not as a result of God poking his finger in and making everything alright again – for that is not the God of which I speak. Instead, God is somehow in the suffering of humanity in some mystical and unknown way, a compassionate presence that finds its being in all things. And through engaging with this God within we may be transformed.
Hope does not and should not do two things: firstly, belittle suffering in the present through a speculative ‘better future’; and secondly, offer mistaken hope through easy answers and clear solutions that ultimately end in disappointment and resentment.
I wonder what it more affirming and more hopeful than to acknowledge the presence of the divine in the suffering of humanity, and out of this to seek hope and life with the familiar discourses of divinity, which may articulate these experiences of ‘otherness’ in beautiful and poetic forms.
I have never heard a sermon on Judges 19 – in fact, I only came to know the story myself after a lecture in my first year. This is a great shame. To acknowledge religious tradition’s place in the articulation of that which grounds human existence requires that these most challenging and most dangerous modes of human being be not left without sacred symbol and story to engage and dramatise them. I find it deeply liberating that the Canon of Jewish and Christian Scripture contains stories such as these, as for many people in the world these events are not something that can be implicitly ignored at will, but are everyday reality. These stories contain nothing for religious people to hide – they say it like it is, and they don’t come up with easy answers to the issues that they raise. Instead, they invite us to think about them, to live them out, to listen for traces of these stories in those stories that happen to us and our fellow humans today, in the hope that they, and their broader context in Canon and Church might offer hope and life those who experience them in the present. As Denise Ackerman has said about another rape story in the Old Testament:
‘There is no prevarication, no avoidance of the horror, no cover up. "Saying it as it is” is the place to begin.’
--
I have made several points here:
• God is not a cosmic version of myself who either fails to or cannot act to prevent evil; instead, God is mystically intertwined in the everyday realities of human beings – an underlying mysterious presence that is present particularly in the poor and needy
• As an example of this, Judges 19 is a story in which God appears to be absent – yet it is actually a story in which the crucified Christ is the narrative’s victim: a nameless concubine, an object not a subject, who is mercilessly abused by the powerful
• God – the ground of our being – may be found in weakness rather than strength. The examples I have suggested offer some playing out of concepts of divinity within things, and particularly within things of suffering and hopelessness. It is here that God might be found in natural disasters, and this finding of God within these places may transform us and bring us life and hope
• And as a result of this, Theology – ‘God-speak’ – when thoughtfully and sensitively deployed, may offer suggestive and searching resources for coping with the otherness of suffering, and offer grounds for hope not rooted in the more or less subtle variants of ‘God is in control so don’t worry’ that many Christians espouse. The deployment of Christian jargons in affirming the suffering of the needy, and seeking to transform their experiences through an engagement with the ground of being is central to this
Whether this is of any consolation to the victims of the world’s recent natural disasters – or, indeed, those who are suffering here or anywhere – I am not to judge. But I hope that the conceptual disaster of the God of many Christians might have been restated in rather more helpful and humane terms as a result of these reflections, and that the thrilling, despairing and challenging resources of the Christian tradition might retain at least some usefulness in this crisis and those crises to come.
So my final reflective question is about the nature of God, and completes Paul Tillich’s paragraph from which I read earlier:
The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about [God]. You cannot call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God
My question – and it is a question, not a confrontational challenge – is exactly as mine at the outset: ‘where is your God in the sufferings of people in Burma and China; and where was your God in the rape and dismemberment of a nameless concubine?’
Tuesday 20 May 2008
Jonah II
Is there room for mystery in our understanding of God? Yes of course we will never get round all that God is - that goes without saying.
But I want to pick up on your question:
"What does it mean to say that ‘God spoke to Jonah’?"
As far as I understand the question, it can only come from a person who has never heard God speak; who doesn't have an understanding of a God who does perform miracles(similar to those recorded in the 'stories' of the Bible)in people's lives and intervene in a personal way; who doesn't have a personal relationship with God and who has never received direction from God.
Or else why ask the question? God speaks all the time and to me he speaks in English to Jonah he spoke in his native language.
Dannj I am intrigued by people who want to ask questions and would love to here your perspective (answer?) to that question:
"What does it mean to say that ‘God spoke to Jonah’?"
Surely we can only answer that question from experience, whilst checking our experience out with the way of the Bible?
----------------
First of all, thanks for this (Neil?). It raises a number of interesting and important questions that I hope to offer some comment on.
I must admit at the outset that some things in here may go deeply against the way you understand God and faith. I say these things not to offend or undermine, but to answer the question about how I would read things like God speaking to people. My intention is not to belittle anything you may think or believe, but simply to offer my reasons for not sharing the same understanding.
--
My posing of the question is based on an understanding of God that is entirely beyond our comprehension. Many people pay lip-service to this, and then go on to adopt rather crudely projected understandings of God as a more powerful, invisible version of humanity. As someone once said: ‘God made man in his own image and likeness; and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment.’
Given that this is the case (go with it), God does not have a voice, and does not speak in the way that humans speak one to another. Similarly, as I may knock a wall over, God does not, because God is not simply a super-sized version of myself, speaking to people, doing stuff and all the rest. God is beyond our understanding. But language and conceptuality can be of some help in understanding the nature of divinity – so long as this language and conceptuality is not absolutised and ‘realised’.
--
In the sense of God speaking like I may speak, you are right that I have not heard God speak. But in the sense of connecting on a deep and profound level with that which we consider to be divine, beyond description and ultimately a mystery, I have experienced things that may be put into the language and conceptuality of ‘God’ ‘speaking’ – though, of course, this language is used symbolically to express the inexpressible. Through doing this, I claim an element of continuity with the scriptural traditions that use these systems of language and conceptuality as well, and through doing so my own spiritual journey is enhanced and resourced.
Similarly, I have not seen someone get out of a wheelchair as a result of prayer or whatever (as an aside, I do believe very strongly in the placebo effect). I have, however, experienced and been on the receiving end of profound, inexpressible experiences as a result of the forces of nature and fellow humans – having wonderful conversations with friends, the thrill of white-water rafting, the joy of friends getting married or moving in together, listening to beautiful music, or the glimmers of hope and humanity among intense despair as I visited a friend in hospital at the weekend. These things can be described in physical terms (like I have done), but the depth of experience that makes them so special is beyond descriptive language. Language of miracle, transcendence and divinity provides a symbolic vocabulary for the expression and making sense of that which is beyond linguistic description.
--
So what does it mean to say that God spoke to Jonah?
I think it is making God into a character in the story, with ‘human’ attributes and practices as a result. Stories are an immensely powerful way of engaging with the nature of reality, and this is what I think is going on here. I have noted the strong literary devices at work in the narrative, which I think do a good job of telling the story. One might compare it to ET speaking to the children in the film – aliens don’t exist, and if they did they wouldn’t have a voice like that; but you go along with the story because it is a good story, and seek to learn from it in whatever ways one can.
A brief aside here may help. I think that the Church has an important role to play. I see the Church as the community of people who seek to dramatise and live out these ancient stories, and in so doing work out what it is that they might mean. The commitment of faith is the commitment to participate in this process through one’s everyday actions and experience, through study, through ritual, through dialogue etc; as well as being a commitment to these texts and traditions offering a meaningful and life-giving means of engaging with the world. The texts are the texts of a community, and to remove them from that context is to miss the subtlety of their scope.
--
With regards the final point about checking experience against the Bible, I have deep difficulties with this as a method. In my previous post I put something about how it is that Theology is done, and how I feel that notions of authority (scriptural or whatever) are often barriers to a searching engagement with God. As a result, seeing ‘the Bible’ (as a standalone authoritative entity, independent of interpretation or the communities that have preserved its contents) as the final arbiter of theological truth can be misleading, and negates the processes of interpretation that have to happen for its contents to become useful. There is no such thing as ‘just reading what it says’ – this is merely a rhetorical claim for power, of the type that I mentioned in the previous post. Of course, the processes and journey of theological interpretation can be deployed in the service of this ‘verification’ (for wont of a better word) – but the presence and legitimacy of these processes must be acknowledged.
--
Finally, I hope this has offered some answer to the questions posed. I don’t know all the answers, of course, and these are merely some reflections on the issues raised. It would be good to continue this dialogue.
But I want to pick up on your question:
"What does it mean to say that ‘God spoke to Jonah’?"
As far as I understand the question, it can only come from a person who has never heard God speak; who doesn't have an understanding of a God who does perform miracles(similar to those recorded in the 'stories' of the Bible)in people's lives and intervene in a personal way; who doesn't have a personal relationship with God and who has never received direction from God.
Or else why ask the question? God speaks all the time and to me he speaks in English to Jonah he spoke in his native language.
Dannj I am intrigued by people who want to ask questions and would love to here your perspective (answer?) to that question:
"What does it mean to say that ‘God spoke to Jonah’?"
Surely we can only answer that question from experience, whilst checking our experience out with the way of the Bible?
----------------
First of all, thanks for this (Neil?). It raises a number of interesting and important questions that I hope to offer some comment on.
I must admit at the outset that some things in here may go deeply against the way you understand God and faith. I say these things not to offend or undermine, but to answer the question about how I would read things like God speaking to people. My intention is not to belittle anything you may think or believe, but simply to offer my reasons for not sharing the same understanding.
--
My posing of the question is based on an understanding of God that is entirely beyond our comprehension. Many people pay lip-service to this, and then go on to adopt rather crudely projected understandings of God as a more powerful, invisible version of humanity. As someone once said: ‘God made man in his own image and likeness; and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment.’
Given that this is the case (go with it), God does not have a voice, and does not speak in the way that humans speak one to another. Similarly, as I may knock a wall over, God does not, because God is not simply a super-sized version of myself, speaking to people, doing stuff and all the rest. God is beyond our understanding. But language and conceptuality can be of some help in understanding the nature of divinity – so long as this language and conceptuality is not absolutised and ‘realised’.
--
In the sense of God speaking like I may speak, you are right that I have not heard God speak. But in the sense of connecting on a deep and profound level with that which we consider to be divine, beyond description and ultimately a mystery, I have experienced things that may be put into the language and conceptuality of ‘God’ ‘speaking’ – though, of course, this language is used symbolically to express the inexpressible. Through doing this, I claim an element of continuity with the scriptural traditions that use these systems of language and conceptuality as well, and through doing so my own spiritual journey is enhanced and resourced.
Similarly, I have not seen someone get out of a wheelchair as a result of prayer or whatever (as an aside, I do believe very strongly in the placebo effect). I have, however, experienced and been on the receiving end of profound, inexpressible experiences as a result of the forces of nature and fellow humans – having wonderful conversations with friends, the thrill of white-water rafting, the joy of friends getting married or moving in together, listening to beautiful music, or the glimmers of hope and humanity among intense despair as I visited a friend in hospital at the weekend. These things can be described in physical terms (like I have done), but the depth of experience that makes them so special is beyond descriptive language. Language of miracle, transcendence and divinity provides a symbolic vocabulary for the expression and making sense of that which is beyond linguistic description.
--
So what does it mean to say that God spoke to Jonah?
I think it is making God into a character in the story, with ‘human’ attributes and practices as a result. Stories are an immensely powerful way of engaging with the nature of reality, and this is what I think is going on here. I have noted the strong literary devices at work in the narrative, which I think do a good job of telling the story. One might compare it to ET speaking to the children in the film – aliens don’t exist, and if they did they wouldn’t have a voice like that; but you go along with the story because it is a good story, and seek to learn from it in whatever ways one can.
A brief aside here may help. I think that the Church has an important role to play. I see the Church as the community of people who seek to dramatise and live out these ancient stories, and in so doing work out what it is that they might mean. The commitment of faith is the commitment to participate in this process through one’s everyday actions and experience, through study, through ritual, through dialogue etc; as well as being a commitment to these texts and traditions offering a meaningful and life-giving means of engaging with the world. The texts are the texts of a community, and to remove them from that context is to miss the subtlety of their scope.
--
With regards the final point about checking experience against the Bible, I have deep difficulties with this as a method. In my previous post I put something about how it is that Theology is done, and how I feel that notions of authority (scriptural or whatever) are often barriers to a searching engagement with God. As a result, seeing ‘the Bible’ (as a standalone authoritative entity, independent of interpretation or the communities that have preserved its contents) as the final arbiter of theological truth can be misleading, and negates the processes of interpretation that have to happen for its contents to become useful. There is no such thing as ‘just reading what it says’ – this is merely a rhetorical claim for power, of the type that I mentioned in the previous post. Of course, the processes and journey of theological interpretation can be deployed in the service of this ‘verification’ (for wont of a better word) – but the presence and legitimacy of these processes must be acknowledged.
--
Finally, I hope this has offered some answer to the questions posed. I don’t know all the answers, of course, and these are merely some reflections on the issues raised. It would be good to continue this dialogue.
Authoritah
In response to Jon’s questions about authority, I will offer a few comments.
I’m not a terrible fan of notions of authority, and least of all authority in interpretation. I think that ‘authority’ is more often than not a claim for power, which I have deep problems with (if anyone is interested, I rather like Michel Foucault). The possession of ‘truth’ or ‘authority’, then, is something I am rather suspicious of. Instead of this, I feel that good leaders, good interpretation and good truth speak for themselves, and do not require such buttressing with labels of ‘safety’.
A simple matter of fact is that Christianity possesses a rich legacy of interpretation and theology that has contributed enormously to its development. As a result, to use the resources of Christian tradition in the formulation of interpretation is a helpful and legitimate practice.
--
In terms of Genesis I reject any suggestion that until the dawn of Darwin all Christians were good bible-believing literalists. This is a simple factual error. Most of the Church’s great thinkers adopt a far broader understanding of truth than many Christians today, one that includes knowledge not derived from ‘Christian’ reflection on the nature of reality. Theologians, scientists, and all of us do the practice of natural Theology, of working things out about the nature of God from the way things are in the world, all the time. Augustine (from a simple Wikipedia search, in which he is quoted) was not a literalist on Genesis, and talked of Christians ‘speaking so idiotically on these matters’ as a result of ‘[affirming] rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.’ No opposition of conflict is envisaged between different ways of knowing things, and where one understanding (such as a literal reading of Gen 1-3) is rendered null because of advances in another discipline (such as science), one ought not to oppose knowledge derived from outside one’s own tradition, but embrace it as part of the broader task of understanding the world as it is.
Concepts of authority, then, can serve to stifle this. Where some place authority on the Bible (with concepts of inerrancy etc), this prevents the engagement with and affirmation of truth from other sources. Further to this, concepts like scriptural literalism substantially misread the texts they attempt to ‘defend’ – as I have noted countless times before, a great number of texts in the Bible were not written as accounts of history in the modern sense. Placing authority on the Bible can obscure a thoroughgoing engagement with the texts’ own concerns, as well as negating legitimate and valuable truth from other sources.
Theology and science are different ways of engaging with the world, with different remits, different languages, different methods, different intentions etc. They form part of the rich tapestry of human experience that seeks to make sense of the world, and need not compete with each other in this end. Giving ‘authority’ to one over the other (or any other) risks negating the legitimate placing of others within this broad framework.
--
So how is it that theology is done in this context? I think that Anglicans have it about right: a starting point of Scripture that has been handed down through generations; interpreted in the light of tradition (theology, experience etc); and also through reason. This is a deeply Catholic method, seeking to embrace a variety of things in the service of truth. I conclude this section with a quote from Luke T. Johnson, a RC biblical scholar, from an essay entitled ‘What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship?’:
‘The truth of Christianity does not require the denial of truth and beauty everywhere else. Catholics celebrate God’s capacity for self-disclosure to both Jews and pagans. Such traces of God’s revelation are the surest pledge that God is also capable of revealing Godself to Christians.’
--
In summary, bullet-points will do:
• Inerrancy and literalism are not present (at least significantly) in Church tradition before modern fundamentalism
• Augustine in the 4th century (among countless others) saw no conflict between science and religion. Both play an important part in understanding the world, and they need not compete over the same territory
• Notions of scriptural authority can obscure good interpretation – reading Genesis historically refuses to take its authors on their own terms, and misses the subtlety of their means of communication
• An Anglican understanding of Theology is a helpful means of proceeding: the continual dialogue of Scripture, tradition and reason
--
As an afterthought, and in response to Jon’s instigation of these questions, it would be great to talk about these issues. If doing Theology is a decentralized, deauthoritized process then through dialogue we can continue the tradition of interpretation, and resource both others and ourselves. It would be wonderful to talk about the nature of Theology, concepts of authority, the ways in which people do it, the relationship between religion and science etc. One thing I am deeply unwilling to debate is the notion of inerrancy – for me, it is no more defensible than flat-earth cosmology and obscures genuinely interesting things from coming to the fore.
I’m not a terrible fan of notions of authority, and least of all authority in interpretation. I think that ‘authority’ is more often than not a claim for power, which I have deep problems with (if anyone is interested, I rather like Michel Foucault). The possession of ‘truth’ or ‘authority’, then, is something I am rather suspicious of. Instead of this, I feel that good leaders, good interpretation and good truth speak for themselves, and do not require such buttressing with labels of ‘safety’.
A simple matter of fact is that Christianity possesses a rich legacy of interpretation and theology that has contributed enormously to its development. As a result, to use the resources of Christian tradition in the formulation of interpretation is a helpful and legitimate practice.
--
In terms of Genesis I reject any suggestion that until the dawn of Darwin all Christians were good bible-believing literalists. This is a simple factual error. Most of the Church’s great thinkers adopt a far broader understanding of truth than many Christians today, one that includes knowledge not derived from ‘Christian’ reflection on the nature of reality. Theologians, scientists, and all of us do the practice of natural Theology, of working things out about the nature of God from the way things are in the world, all the time. Augustine (from a simple Wikipedia search, in which he is quoted) was not a literalist on Genesis, and talked of Christians ‘speaking so idiotically on these matters’ as a result of ‘[affirming] rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.’ No opposition of conflict is envisaged between different ways of knowing things, and where one understanding (such as a literal reading of Gen 1-3) is rendered null because of advances in another discipline (such as science), one ought not to oppose knowledge derived from outside one’s own tradition, but embrace it as part of the broader task of understanding the world as it is.
Concepts of authority, then, can serve to stifle this. Where some place authority on the Bible (with concepts of inerrancy etc), this prevents the engagement with and affirmation of truth from other sources. Further to this, concepts like scriptural literalism substantially misread the texts they attempt to ‘defend’ – as I have noted countless times before, a great number of texts in the Bible were not written as accounts of history in the modern sense. Placing authority on the Bible can obscure a thoroughgoing engagement with the texts’ own concerns, as well as negating legitimate and valuable truth from other sources.
Theology and science are different ways of engaging with the world, with different remits, different languages, different methods, different intentions etc. They form part of the rich tapestry of human experience that seeks to make sense of the world, and need not compete with each other in this end. Giving ‘authority’ to one over the other (or any other) risks negating the legitimate placing of others within this broad framework.
--
So how is it that theology is done in this context? I think that Anglicans have it about right: a starting point of Scripture that has been handed down through generations; interpreted in the light of tradition (theology, experience etc); and also through reason. This is a deeply Catholic method, seeking to embrace a variety of things in the service of truth. I conclude this section with a quote from Luke T. Johnson, a RC biblical scholar, from an essay entitled ‘What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship?’:
‘The truth of Christianity does not require the denial of truth and beauty everywhere else. Catholics celebrate God’s capacity for self-disclosure to both Jews and pagans. Such traces of God’s revelation are the surest pledge that God is also capable of revealing Godself to Christians.’
--
In summary, bullet-points will do:
• Inerrancy and literalism are not present (at least significantly) in Church tradition before modern fundamentalism
• Augustine in the 4th century (among countless others) saw no conflict between science and religion. Both play an important part in understanding the world, and they need not compete over the same territory
• Notions of scriptural authority can obscure good interpretation – reading Genesis historically refuses to take its authors on their own terms, and misses the subtlety of their means of communication
• An Anglican understanding of Theology is a helpful means of proceeding: the continual dialogue of Scripture, tradition and reason
--
As an afterthought, and in response to Jon’s instigation of these questions, it would be great to talk about these issues. If doing Theology is a decentralized, deauthoritized process then through dialogue we can continue the tradition of interpretation, and resource both others and ourselves. It would be wonderful to talk about the nature of Theology, concepts of authority, the ways in which people do it, the relationship between religion and science etc. One thing I am deeply unwilling to debate is the notion of inerrancy – for me, it is no more defensible than flat-earth cosmology and obscures genuinely interesting things from coming to the fore.
Sunday 18 May 2008
Ten Lepers, Tutu and Faith
Luke 17:11-19 is an interesting story. In it, Jesus heals ten lepers – but only one (a Samaritan) returns to thank him. Then (ie, post-healing) does Jesus reply to the man’s exuberant thanks:
‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? … Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
There are many interesting things here, most notably Jesus’ parting words to the Samaritan: ‘your faith has made you well.’ What is this faith? And how has it made the man well, particularly given that he had already been healed of his leprosy?
--
I recently found a piece from Desmond Tutu about this story:
‘It seems odd that Jesus should appear to repeat his cure, since the story has already recorded the healing of all ten. I have thought that perhaps this Gospel story points to a deeper leprosy in the spirit, the leprosy of ingratitude. To be unthankful, to be unappreciative, is in fact to be diseased. To cleanse our spirits of depression, of self-pity and other forms of spiritual leprosy, we have to be thankful, appreciative persons.’
The sense of faith (whatever faith is) working itself out in the inner workings of our being, and shaping the nature of our motivations and desires is something that resonates with me. The healing act of Christ in the narrative occurs once in the gift of healing, and again in the outworking of the man’s response to this gift through a thoroughgoing evaluation of his own inner processes and workings. Faith, then, might be the process through which one commits to a rigorous process of self-evaluation, which can be stimulated by both the graceful and graceless actions of others. Out of this may come healing of a deeper sort – in Tutu’s imagery, healing of the leprosy of self-obsession.
‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? … Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
There are many interesting things here, most notably Jesus’ parting words to the Samaritan: ‘your faith has made you well.’ What is this faith? And how has it made the man well, particularly given that he had already been healed of his leprosy?
--
I recently found a piece from Desmond Tutu about this story:
‘It seems odd that Jesus should appear to repeat his cure, since the story has already recorded the healing of all ten. I have thought that perhaps this Gospel story points to a deeper leprosy in the spirit, the leprosy of ingratitude. To be unthankful, to be unappreciative, is in fact to be diseased. To cleanse our spirits of depression, of self-pity and other forms of spiritual leprosy, we have to be thankful, appreciative persons.’
The sense of faith (whatever faith is) working itself out in the inner workings of our being, and shaping the nature of our motivations and desires is something that resonates with me. The healing act of Christ in the narrative occurs once in the gift of healing, and again in the outworking of the man’s response to this gift through a thoroughgoing evaluation of his own inner processes and workings. Faith, then, might be the process through which one commits to a rigorous process of self-evaluation, which can be stimulated by both the graceful and graceless actions of others. Out of this may come healing of a deeper sort – in Tutu’s imagery, healing of the leprosy of self-obsession.
Saturday 17 May 2008
Oxfam, Prosperity Gospel and the Meaning of Life
Whilst in London recently, a good friend of mine raised an important and interesting question: what is the meaning of life? His answer, with which i have an enormous amount of sympathy, is that there is none, that life is meaningless. But rather than being something that causes pain and existential angst, he (and I) saw it as something profoundly liberating and empowering, for if meaning is to exist at all we must create, and in that lies a challenge, a spark for creativity, and a mandate for innovation. I agreed with my friend’s suggestions, and developed them in my own way, modelling my own understanding of how I adopt an innovation of meaning.
I suggested that the meaning of life was to learn to know oneself, and to be the person that you are, whoever it is. Through a process of continual discovery, humans become themselves.
I will fill out these comments a little more.
--
I consider myself to be a Christian, though many Christians have deep problems with my understanding of faith being labelled ‘Christianity’. Why, then, as someone who considers life to be essentially meaningless, and that meaning must be created rather than simply absorbed from its legitimate source outside of the self, do I adhere to a particular religious tradition?
The answer is quite simple, and results from a simple matter of fact: Christianity is the understanding of reality that I am most acquainted with (having spent rather a lot of time in churches, gone to a faith school, studied Christian theology for 4 years and lived in a ‘Christian’ country all my life). I see doctrine as, in some sense, providing a narrative in which to live – the half-written pages of a book that inform and shape the writing of the other half as I live the doctrine out. Christianity is about living the story, and using the historic resources of others who have lived the story to inform one’s own journey. Through this living, contextualised within the doctrinal and scriptural traditions of the Church, one learns to become oneself.
My understanding, I suggested, can be placed in Christian jargon (ie, given a symbolic representation using the language and conceptuality of Christian tradition) through the use of concepts of humanity being made in the image of God – the task being to discover and engage with this inward godliness.
--
A further part of my answer talked about the process of discovering who one is through giving of oneself. I will use three images to explore this a little.
1. The Prosperity Gospel
The prosperity Gospel is a rather wicked teaching that suggests that as people give (usually to televangelists or already wealthy churches) they will receive financial blessing from God as a result. A few passages from scripture are used to offer some legitimacy to this position.
2. Oxfam
Oxfam have a new slogan as part of their ‘Be Humankind’ branding package: ‘Get Rich Quick. Give.’
3. The Crucifixion of Christ
Christ’s death models the principle of finding one’s identity through self-giving and self-sacrifice, rather than simply receiving and taking from others. Christians throughout history have found liberation and freedom in commitment to this pattern of giving; and when placed in Christian cosmology, in which Christ gives himself ‘for us’, people have committed themselves to a response of giving. This is found in what I think is one of the most searching verses of Scripture, Galatians 2:19b-20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Committing oneself to the pattern of Christ’s self-giving results from the narrative of Christ’s death being for the benefit of others, and one responding to this be enjoining oneself with the crucified Christ, in order that others may benefit from this commitment to self-giving.
In this sense the prosperity Gospel has something right: through giving of ourselves we receive. Oxfam’s slogan gets this about right, I feel – or at least, rather better than those Christians who talk of it. The Christians advocating this position construe giving and receiving in narrow, overly financial terms: financial giving is a means of acquiring further financial wealth. Perhaps, though, suggesting that we may discover ourselves through the process of giving rather than simply receiving enacts the reciprocity drama in far more accurate and far more interesting terms than the prosperity bunch.
--
In conclusion, the meaning of life is that there is no ultimate meaning that exists independently of our creation of it. My created meaning is one of finding oneself and being oneself, and the context of religious tradition may be a helpful means of achieving this. Of particular importance is the notion of finding oneself through giving of oneself – enacted through the death of Christ, prophetically taught by Oxfam, and wildly misunderstood by prosperity Christians.
I suggested that the meaning of life was to learn to know oneself, and to be the person that you are, whoever it is. Through a process of continual discovery, humans become themselves.
I will fill out these comments a little more.
--
I consider myself to be a Christian, though many Christians have deep problems with my understanding of faith being labelled ‘Christianity’. Why, then, as someone who considers life to be essentially meaningless, and that meaning must be created rather than simply absorbed from its legitimate source outside of the self, do I adhere to a particular religious tradition?
The answer is quite simple, and results from a simple matter of fact: Christianity is the understanding of reality that I am most acquainted with (having spent rather a lot of time in churches, gone to a faith school, studied Christian theology for 4 years and lived in a ‘Christian’ country all my life). I see doctrine as, in some sense, providing a narrative in which to live – the half-written pages of a book that inform and shape the writing of the other half as I live the doctrine out. Christianity is about living the story, and using the historic resources of others who have lived the story to inform one’s own journey. Through this living, contextualised within the doctrinal and scriptural traditions of the Church, one learns to become oneself.
My understanding, I suggested, can be placed in Christian jargon (ie, given a symbolic representation using the language and conceptuality of Christian tradition) through the use of concepts of humanity being made in the image of God – the task being to discover and engage with this inward godliness.
--
A further part of my answer talked about the process of discovering who one is through giving of oneself. I will use three images to explore this a little.
1. The Prosperity Gospel
The prosperity Gospel is a rather wicked teaching that suggests that as people give (usually to televangelists or already wealthy churches) they will receive financial blessing from God as a result. A few passages from scripture are used to offer some legitimacy to this position.
2. Oxfam
Oxfam have a new slogan as part of their ‘Be Humankind’ branding package: ‘Get Rich Quick. Give.’
3. The Crucifixion of Christ
Christ’s death models the principle of finding one’s identity through self-giving and self-sacrifice, rather than simply receiving and taking from others. Christians throughout history have found liberation and freedom in commitment to this pattern of giving; and when placed in Christian cosmology, in which Christ gives himself ‘for us’, people have committed themselves to a response of giving. This is found in what I think is one of the most searching verses of Scripture, Galatians 2:19b-20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Committing oneself to the pattern of Christ’s self-giving results from the narrative of Christ’s death being for the benefit of others, and one responding to this be enjoining oneself with the crucified Christ, in order that others may benefit from this commitment to self-giving.
In this sense the prosperity Gospel has something right: through giving of ourselves we receive. Oxfam’s slogan gets this about right, I feel – or at least, rather better than those Christians who talk of it. The Christians advocating this position construe giving and receiving in narrow, overly financial terms: financial giving is a means of acquiring further financial wealth. Perhaps, though, suggesting that we may discover ourselves through the process of giving rather than simply receiving enacts the reciprocity drama in far more accurate and far more interesting terms than the prosperity bunch.
--
In conclusion, the meaning of life is that there is no ultimate meaning that exists independently of our creation of it. My created meaning is one of finding oneself and being oneself, and the context of religious tradition may be a helpful means of achieving this. Of particular importance is the notion of finding oneself through giving of oneself – enacted through the death of Christ, prophetically taught by Oxfam, and wildly misunderstood by prosperity Christians.
Monday 12 May 2008
Jonah and God
A thought came to me today. I find what I think about the nature of God to be rather difficult to put into simple concepts or words, largely because I don’t understand what it is that I think. In previous posts I have drawn attention to some reflections on the nature of religious language, in particular, which go part of the way there. I thought that a blog post might help clear up my thinking a little further.
I wish to make two points:
1. That which we call God is beyond human language, conceptuality
2. God in Scripture is a literary character, that imperfectly reflects aspects of the divine mystery.
Point one is something I have said before, and so point two will be my main focus.
--
I take the book on Jonah as an example.
Here are some reasons to think the story is not historical (for those obsessed with history):
− No city called Nineveh has ever existed
− If it had done, it would have been larger than the biggest cities today – a nonsense if read historically
− Jonah is the worst prophet in the OT – he utters a single line prophecy, with a 40 day – rather than the more imminent (and standard) 3 day – warning time
− But he elicits the most comprehensive repentance in the whole OT
− The book is full of such irony, some of which I have mentioned before
− Folks don’t get swallowed by fish and survive in their bellies for three days…
So, given that it didn’t happen, what is my point?
Most people are happy to accept that Jonah is a character in the story; that Nineveh is a fictional city, constructed to make particular points relevant to the story’s audience; that no such fish existed, and that it played a part in the story, etc... And so on: all of the narrative’s characters and actors are seen as part of a literary genre that seeks to use language symbolically to tell stories. All of the narrative’s characters, that is, save one: God, for whom a special case is made.
One can, of course, argue for a special case – but that is not my concern. I wonder how a commitment to how the radical ‘otherness’ of God requires one to read stories in which God is an actor, in the same way as Moses, the fish, the sailors, the city of Nineveh, or the castor bean plant. What does it mean to say that ‘God spoke to Jonah’? Does God have a voice? Or a rational mind? Or the ability to encourage fish to choose Jonah to eat? Or make fish belch? Or plants grow, and then die? [Or fingers to write the Ten Words? And all the rest.] What if the concept of God as a big and powerful human (which all of these attributes suggest) personifies God, and makes God a character in a story? What if just as to reduce the theological truth that the story may contain to the requirement of a historical Jonah, the same might be said of the story’s concept of God?
--
Where, then, does this leave God? In short, I don’t know. What is God? Who is God? What does it mean to use language to express the inexpressible, or conceptuality to express that which is beyond comprehension?
I think this is where narrative comes into its own, and embodies my dislike of rigid doctrinal statements and propositions. Narratives encourage one to participate in the drama of theology, to use stories and traditions to engage with ultimate questions of theology, To reduce narratives to a series of doctrinal statements (such as ‘a personal God, as revealed in the Bible, exists’) misses the point of narratives, and the symbolic nature of their language – to point to something greater than the sum of their parts, and provide a context in which one can engage with the nature of God, whatever God is.
I wish to make two points:
1. That which we call God is beyond human language, conceptuality
2. God in Scripture is a literary character, that imperfectly reflects aspects of the divine mystery.
Point one is something I have said before, and so point two will be my main focus.
--
I take the book on Jonah as an example.
Here are some reasons to think the story is not historical (for those obsessed with history):
− No city called Nineveh has ever existed
− If it had done, it would have been larger than the biggest cities today – a nonsense if read historically
− Jonah is the worst prophet in the OT – he utters a single line prophecy, with a 40 day – rather than the more imminent (and standard) 3 day – warning time
− But he elicits the most comprehensive repentance in the whole OT
− The book is full of such irony, some of which I have mentioned before
− Folks don’t get swallowed by fish and survive in their bellies for three days…
So, given that it didn’t happen, what is my point?
Most people are happy to accept that Jonah is a character in the story; that Nineveh is a fictional city, constructed to make particular points relevant to the story’s audience; that no such fish existed, and that it played a part in the story, etc... And so on: all of the narrative’s characters and actors are seen as part of a literary genre that seeks to use language symbolically to tell stories. All of the narrative’s characters, that is, save one: God, for whom a special case is made.
One can, of course, argue for a special case – but that is not my concern. I wonder how a commitment to how the radical ‘otherness’ of God requires one to read stories in which God is an actor, in the same way as Moses, the fish, the sailors, the city of Nineveh, or the castor bean plant. What does it mean to say that ‘God spoke to Jonah’? Does God have a voice? Or a rational mind? Or the ability to encourage fish to choose Jonah to eat? Or make fish belch? Or plants grow, and then die? [Or fingers to write the Ten Words? And all the rest.] What if the concept of God as a big and powerful human (which all of these attributes suggest) personifies God, and makes God a character in a story? What if just as to reduce the theological truth that the story may contain to the requirement of a historical Jonah, the same might be said of the story’s concept of God?
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Where, then, does this leave God? In short, I don’t know. What is God? Who is God? What does it mean to use language to express the inexpressible, or conceptuality to express that which is beyond comprehension?
I think this is where narrative comes into its own, and embodies my dislike of rigid doctrinal statements and propositions. Narratives encourage one to participate in the drama of theology, to use stories and traditions to engage with ultimate questions of theology, To reduce narratives to a series of doctrinal statements (such as ‘a personal God, as revealed in the Bible, exists’) misses the point of narratives, and the symbolic nature of their language – to point to something greater than the sum of their parts, and provide a context in which one can engage with the nature of God, whatever God is.
Thursday 1 May 2008
What makes a Christian? Part I
Ask most Christians what makes them a Christian, and they will say how they have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. This is all rather vague, but is usually taken to mean belief in Christ removing one’s sin from you through believing that he died in your place and rose again; and as a result to make him Lord of your life, dictating everything that you do.
I have profound difficulties with this understanding, not least that when asked for ‘biblical’ arguments for this understanding (‘biblical’ being the rhetorical arbiter for many of these Christians) they flounder hopelessly. It seems that a searching engagement with biblical material is stunted, rather than enhanced, by the teaching of some in the Church, for whom the precise definition of what makes a Christian is accepted so implicitly, without the same sort of critical acumen that they may (or often, may not) apply to other scriptural texts and ideas.
As a result of this, I have had profound problems with this understanding of Christianity, probably because I don’t think that Christianity can be summarised or defined in a single line, to which one can respond with acceptance or rejection. I wonder if the richness of the scriptural witness to God might permit a broader and less monopolising understanding of what a Christian is.
A preliminary concern regards the nature of some elements of Christianity, which seek to divide the wheat from the chaff through clearly defined boundaries, which encourage those caught on the wrong side of the boundary to cross over to the right side. I have deep difficulties with the drawing of clear boundaries also, not least because it excludes people whose insight and experience may speak profoundly of the reality of God, but also (in theological speak) because the kingdom of God is not the same as the Church, because God is active in the world outside of (or perhaps, despite) the Church, and that each person, made in the image of God, ought not be excluded from God’s family.
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Coming back to Lingo’s suggestion about James and John (Mt 20:20-23), I wonder if there is an understanding of what a Christian is, that relates to some broader concerns of Paul in particular. Here is the text:
‘Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able.’ He said to them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’
I wonder if Christ asks all of us whether we are able to drink the cup that he drank: the cup of suffering, of self-giving, of challenging that which is dehumanising and all the rest. To drink the cup of Christ is to participate in his sufferings, in which Gal 2:19-20 comes out again:
‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’
Not much substitutionary escape from suffering there, and lots of participation in the Being of Christ.
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I wonder if this understanding of Christianity as being crucified with Christ and drinking from Christ’s cup marks an interesting and suggestive understanding of the nature of Christianity – sharing in the suffering and weakness of Christ, rather than escaping from that.
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PS. I find it rather ironic that the ‘bible-believing’ Christians who frequently come out with the tag line that formed the introduction to this post find it so difficult to isolate particular biblical passages that lend support to it. Such a vague and pithy sentence, though, could mean almost anything to anyone. // Wooly, fence-sitting liberals (‘liberal’ to many Christians simply meaning ‘someone who is wrong’, usually because they don’t take the bible seriously enough) like myself, on the other hand, seek to actually read some of the bible and unpack what it might mean. I don’t claim this to be the only way of understanding what a Christian might be, but it can be a single voice within a chorus – and to deny its place within the choir altogether misses the richness of the biblical witness in favour of a dull, lifeless, static and inaccurate picture that just comes more simply.
I have profound difficulties with this understanding, not least that when asked for ‘biblical’ arguments for this understanding (‘biblical’ being the rhetorical arbiter for many of these Christians) they flounder hopelessly. It seems that a searching engagement with biblical material is stunted, rather than enhanced, by the teaching of some in the Church, for whom the precise definition of what makes a Christian is accepted so implicitly, without the same sort of critical acumen that they may (or often, may not) apply to other scriptural texts and ideas.
As a result of this, I have had profound problems with this understanding of Christianity, probably because I don’t think that Christianity can be summarised or defined in a single line, to which one can respond with acceptance or rejection. I wonder if the richness of the scriptural witness to God might permit a broader and less monopolising understanding of what a Christian is.
A preliminary concern regards the nature of some elements of Christianity, which seek to divide the wheat from the chaff through clearly defined boundaries, which encourage those caught on the wrong side of the boundary to cross over to the right side. I have deep difficulties with the drawing of clear boundaries also, not least because it excludes people whose insight and experience may speak profoundly of the reality of God, but also (in theological speak) because the kingdom of God is not the same as the Church, because God is active in the world outside of (or perhaps, despite) the Church, and that each person, made in the image of God, ought not be excluded from God’s family.
--
Coming back to Lingo’s suggestion about James and John (Mt 20:20-23), I wonder if there is an understanding of what a Christian is, that relates to some broader concerns of Paul in particular. Here is the text:
‘Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able.’ He said to them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’
I wonder if Christ asks all of us whether we are able to drink the cup that he drank: the cup of suffering, of self-giving, of challenging that which is dehumanising and all the rest. To drink the cup of Christ is to participate in his sufferings, in which Gal 2:19-20 comes out again:
‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’
Not much substitutionary escape from suffering there, and lots of participation in the Being of Christ.
--
I wonder if this understanding of Christianity as being crucified with Christ and drinking from Christ’s cup marks an interesting and suggestive understanding of the nature of Christianity – sharing in the suffering and weakness of Christ, rather than escaping from that.
--
PS. I find it rather ironic that the ‘bible-believing’ Christians who frequently come out with the tag line that formed the introduction to this post find it so difficult to isolate particular biblical passages that lend support to it. Such a vague and pithy sentence, though, could mean almost anything to anyone. // Wooly, fence-sitting liberals (‘liberal’ to many Christians simply meaning ‘someone who is wrong’, usually because they don’t take the bible seriously enough) like myself, on the other hand, seek to actually read some of the bible and unpack what it might mean. I don’t claim this to be the only way of understanding what a Christian might be, but it can be a single voice within a chorus – and to deny its place within the choir altogether misses the richness of the biblical witness in favour of a dull, lifeless, static and inaccurate picture that just comes more simply.
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