The words of two men that I like and admire intersected this week: Russell Brand and Barack Obama. Brand’s introduction to the MTV Awards in the US began with a tirade against George Bush, and an endorsement ‘on behalf of the world’ of Barack Obama. Brand’s humour was wicked and cutting, and caused uproar (no bad thing if he is correct, I feel).
But what about Barack Obama? I feel such hope for the world when I look at him, and his weaknesses in experience are more than overcome by his vision, charisma and oratory skills, which the US needs far more than an experienced hand at foreign policy (he also isn’t Sarah Palin, and so receives about a million bonus points as well).
Obama made a speech in 2004 that propelled him to the forefront of the Democrats’ consciousness. In it he said this:
‘If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child.
If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and is having to choose between medicine and the rent not my grandparent.
If there's an Arab-American family being rounded, that makes my life poorer, even if it's up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.’
I find this quite an inspiring model for social organization, and an interesting challenge to the dominant individualism demonstrated by much of our culture. I wonder if it is also a rather good reading of St Paul’s analogy of the Church as a body in 1 Cor 12. It is also rather reminiscent of the African spirituality of ‘Ubuntu’, in which our own well-being is placed within that of the communities in which we find ourselves, and to which we give and receive. This radical notion of living in community, and of giving to and receiving from that community is a quite wonderful thing.
I have commented before on Desmond Tutu’s reading of the story of Christ and the ten lepers, which I think also has a lot to say here: our dependence on the good grace of others is to be matched by a deep thankfulness for the goodness that we have received. I wonder if this might be what the Kingdom of God is like – people realizing their communal interconnectedness, and the ways in which our lives are shaped by the good and bad actions of others, which, in turn, shapes the nature of our communities as a whole. The relationship of individuals becomes a microcosm of society as a whole, which is comprised of an enormous number of these relationships.
So Ubuntu, The Kingdom of God, the American Dream. Spot the difference?
Monday, 15 September 2008
Anglicans, OT/NT and Inerrancy
The current situation in the Anglican Communion is rather difficult: some within it have difficulty loving those who are seen to be eroding the very nature of Anglicanism, expressed in the authority of Scripture; others have difficulty loving those who condemn gay relationships as unscriptural as something that Church ought to oppose, rather than bless. How to deal with such diversity is a difficult question, with which many senior Anglicans – not least Rowan Williams – have been wrestling.
I had an interesting conversation with a lecturer yesterday, about an essay he was writing for a popular book on the Old Testament in Christianity. This, I think, discussion offered a profound insight into the current debate.
He used two NT examples of Christian engagement with the Old Testament:
- Jesus and the Rich Man - Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ (Mt 19)
- Paul on Abraham in Galatians - Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’ For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed. (Gal 3)
These two passages adopt rather different understandings of the OT: the Matthew passage places the Law as the defining feature of faithful response to God; Paul, however, uses Gen 15:8 to advance his justification by faith rhetoric against the Law.
I have often heard preachers dismiss the gospel story (or any number of others, also) as Jesus encouraging the man to keep the commandments in order to show him how much he needed to have faith, and thus inherit the Kingdom. This is a fine example of the substantial misrepresentation of important canonical texts in the service of an allegedly ‘high’ doctrine of Scripture (ie, iron out any difficulties in the biblical text in order to preserve the credibility and uniformity of the whole).
But this is precisely what the text does not do. The canonical editors, in particular, make no attempt to dot all the I’s, and cross all the T’s; or to ensure that ambiguities are resolved and difficulties removed. Instead, they canonise the diverse witness of the Church and its authors.
Before returning to the current state of the Anglican Communion, a brief comment on the inerrancy debates, to which I alluded earlier.
Some Christians are deeply concerned with ‘preserving’ and ‘upholding’ the inerrancy of Scripture – ie, that Scripture contains no errors, and that any error emerges out of poor interpretation rather than ‘fault’ in the text itself (in effect, creating a position that could never be denied, even in principle – a nonsense). One of my conclusions is to suggest that this approach inhibits, rather than enhances, a searching engagement with the scriptural witness. Rather than hearing Christ’s words to the rich man as they were intended, and exploring the tension between these words and, say, Paul’s in Galatians, this tension is explained away. Easy answers are preferred to good answers, and an interpretative monopoly favoured over genuine dialogue.
Returning to the current debates concerning the place of women and homosexuals in the Anglican Communion, I think that my lecturer’s argument has something to say: diversity is canonised, and held to be scriptural by the Church. Faithful witness does not require uniformity in experience and opinion, expression and doctrine. The subject matter to which Scripture points is more mysterious than anything else in out experience, and resists the formulation of simple, monopolising interpretations. Diversity in the Anglican Communion, then, and in our experience of God seems to have some legitimacy in the scriptural texts that form a basis for the Communion’s existence in the first place. Perhaps Scripture’s own diverse and unconcluded explorations of the nature of God, humanity and the world might offer hope to a divided Church, and encourage debating with and deep listening to each other, rather than dominating each other.
I had an interesting conversation with a lecturer yesterday, about an essay he was writing for a popular book on the Old Testament in Christianity. This, I think, discussion offered a profound insight into the current debate.
He used two NT examples of Christian engagement with the Old Testament:
- Jesus and the Rich Man - Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ (Mt 19)
- Paul on Abraham in Galatians - Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’ For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed. (Gal 3)
These two passages adopt rather different understandings of the OT: the Matthew passage places the Law as the defining feature of faithful response to God; Paul, however, uses Gen 15:8 to advance his justification by faith rhetoric against the Law.
I have often heard preachers dismiss the gospel story (or any number of others, also) as Jesus encouraging the man to keep the commandments in order to show him how much he needed to have faith, and thus inherit the Kingdom. This is a fine example of the substantial misrepresentation of important canonical texts in the service of an allegedly ‘high’ doctrine of Scripture (ie, iron out any difficulties in the biblical text in order to preserve the credibility and uniformity of the whole).
But this is precisely what the text does not do. The canonical editors, in particular, make no attempt to dot all the I’s, and cross all the T’s; or to ensure that ambiguities are resolved and difficulties removed. Instead, they canonise the diverse witness of the Church and its authors.
Before returning to the current state of the Anglican Communion, a brief comment on the inerrancy debates, to which I alluded earlier.
Some Christians are deeply concerned with ‘preserving’ and ‘upholding’ the inerrancy of Scripture – ie, that Scripture contains no errors, and that any error emerges out of poor interpretation rather than ‘fault’ in the text itself (in effect, creating a position that could never be denied, even in principle – a nonsense). One of my conclusions is to suggest that this approach inhibits, rather than enhances, a searching engagement with the scriptural witness. Rather than hearing Christ’s words to the rich man as they were intended, and exploring the tension between these words and, say, Paul’s in Galatians, this tension is explained away. Easy answers are preferred to good answers, and an interpretative monopoly favoured over genuine dialogue.
Returning to the current debates concerning the place of women and homosexuals in the Anglican Communion, I think that my lecturer’s argument has something to say: diversity is canonised, and held to be scriptural by the Church. Faithful witness does not require uniformity in experience and opinion, expression and doctrine. The subject matter to which Scripture points is more mysterious than anything else in out experience, and resists the formulation of simple, monopolising interpretations. Diversity in the Anglican Communion, then, and in our experience of God seems to have some legitimacy in the scriptural texts that form a basis for the Communion’s existence in the first place. Perhaps Scripture’s own diverse and unconcluded explorations of the nature of God, humanity and the world might offer hope to a divided Church, and encourage debating with and deep listening to each other, rather than dominating each other.
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Camp Values
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.
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.
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.
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