Author: Theology Everywhere

by Ed Mackenzie.

It’s a familiar maxim today that all theology is contextual. In other words, our ideas about God and God’s relationship with humanity are always constructed in relationship to the wider cultural, religious and social context in which we exist. This does not mean, of course, that there is nothing stable or foundational in Christian discourse; there is indeed a ‘faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints’ (Jude 1:3, NRSV) which the church is commissioned to proclaim. But the different contexts in which we find ourselves does mean that we are always wrestling with the relationship between the coherence of Christian faith and its contingent expression in our own contexts.[i]

Just as theology is contextual, so too is discipleship. While the New Testament points to a specific shape to discipleship, it also gives us a vast array of images and motifs, instructions and examples to guide us in the way of Jesus. It recognises too that different people will be called in different ways to follow Jesus.

We can see this dynamic played out in Paul’s instructions to the early Christians in Colossae. For Paul, there are certain values and ‘fruits’ that all Christians are called to pursue. But at the same time, Paul recognises that how we live out our discipleship may look different depending on our situation.

To begin with the ‘coherent’ features of discipleship, Paul calls all Christians to reject the life of sin (Col 3:5-9) and to embrace the way of Christ(Col 3:12-14). We ‘put to death’ the values of our old self, such as impurity, greed and evil speech, and ‘put on’ the values of Christ, such as kindness, patience, and – above all – love.

Paul’s vision of discipleship here points to a ‘double-movement’ that is found throughout the whole of the New Testament: to be a disciple is always to turn from sin and turn to Christ. Such a double movement is not just a ‘one-off’ decision but needs to characterise our lives as a whole. As Martin Luther put it in the first of his 95 theses, ‘When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of penitence.’[ii]

For Paul as well, discipleship involves growing closer to Christ through community (Col 3:12-17). The way of Christ emerges as we relate to one another, and so Paul calls all believers to let the ‘word of Christ’ dwell within their lives and their communities. All within the church are called to encourage each other and learn together to do all for the sake of Jesus.

But Paul in Colossians also recognises that our own contexts – where we find ourselves in life – will shape our discipleship too. This becomes especially clear in Paul’s instructions for Christian households (Col 3:18 – 4:1). While all within the household are to orientate themselves to the ‘Lord’, those in different circumstances will live out their calling in different kinds of ways. The calling of parents will differ from that of children, for instance.

While the household code raises interpretive challenges for today, perhaps especially in its treatment of slavery, it nonetheless shows that Paul was attentive to context when calling people to follow Jesus. What it means to live to the Lord will be expressed in different ways depending on our circumstances in life. God knows our contexts and want us to follow Jesus in and through them.

It’s for this reason that a focus on discipleship rightly explores what is essential for all who follow Jesus and what is helpful for different ages and stages. Following Jesus for a child will look different from an adolescent, and different still for someone in work or someone in retirement. As we journey with Jesus together in faith, we can encourage one another both in what we share and in the specific challenges and choices our lives bring us. This is part of what it means, in Paul’s words, to ‘teach and admonish one another in all wisdom’ (Col 3:16b).

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[i] I am drawing this language from J. C. Beker. Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).

[ii] Cited in Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. J. Dillenberger (New York: Anchor Books, 1962), p. 490.

by George Bailey.

Last week I was thinking about the epistemological frameworks which underlie practical research into the life of the church and Christian faith. This was informed amongst other things by reading Andrew Root’s book Christopraxis: a Practical Theology of the Cross (2014) – a theological methodology for practical theology based initially on Root’s research in youth ministry. At the weekend, I then took a group of young people to the Methodist Church’s children and youth assembly, 3Generate…

Root is one amongst several theologians arguing for a theological critique of the social constructionism which is dominant in the social sciences, prevalent in popular culture, and which can make a significant difference to several theological fields. The basic idea of social constructionism is that all knowledge is socially constructed. At one level this makes a lot of sense – we learn a shared language and associated understanding through social relationships. However, what does this mean for a faith perspective? How far does the theory go – are we unable to know any thing real? Can we only know our socially constructed version of reality? This could leave us in an infinite regress like a painter painting a picture of themselves painting a picture of themselves – in every painting within the painting there is an easel upon which you can see another picture of the painter and the easel. Is the only knowledge we can hold about God, ourselves and the world in some way socially constructed and not necessarily related to any actual reality?

Critical realism is an alternative framework with foundations in the natural sciences. For any science, in the broad meaning of that term – the deliberate human effort to know about reality – strong social constructionism is a problem because it can remove any concept of objective reality; all there is to know about are human attempts to talk about knowledge. Both the natural sciences and theology (the human effort to know about and talk about God) might need to argue for the existence of reality outside of our socially constructed knowing and for the recognition of a way that this reality interacts with our experience. Reality is really there and really knowable, but as soon as it interacts with our social constructions (that is, as soon as we experience it, and therefore interpret it, and so can think and talk about it) it is filtered through social constructions which always need to be critically analysed – hence ‘critical realism’. For Christian faith, this helpfully encompasses the way that although we live within socially constructed ways of understanding God, the world and ourselves, God is also a reality entirely outside of us and of our knowledge, and God can break into that social construction – we can experience God, and this is a new voice in our social construction which interacts with and develops our knowledge. How we interpret this experience is variable and sometimes conflicted, but it is nevertheless potentially a real experience of a real God which has a causal effect on our knowledge and action.

Root is keen to maintain as well that this experience of God is both individually interacted with and also communally the subject of social interpretation and knowledge formation. To reduce this only to individual subjective experience risks the extremes of some evangelical theologies which resist communal hermeneutic analysis. To only consider communal interpretation risks a move too far towards strong social constructionism akin to some liberal or post-liberal theologies which resist the possibility of direct experience of God affecting our understanding.

With this recent reading of Root’s version of critical realism in my mind, I arrived at 3Generate. Here the social construction of Christian faith is very apparent, and an analysis of that social construction is an inherent part of the ministry practiced by the organisers and youth group leaders. A large Christian youth event includes within it the desire of the faith community to help its young people inhabit the same conceptual space as the church. The language of faith and Christian discipleship is to be handed on carefully; yet what version of this socially constructed faith is to be shared? To what extent are the young people to be introduced not just into the broad terms of the communal language of faith but also to the tensions and conflicts that exist within that broad community? A further question is being negotiated within the event as to what extent the young people might receive the tradition of the Christian community, and to what extent can they by joining the community also shape and change it?

To stop there though could leave the youth event functioning within a purely social constructionist view of reality. The theme of 3Generate this year has been ‘In Tune’: how are we in tune with God? A critical realist epistemology is necessary to allow this expectation that young people (and old!) can have subjective experience of God which co-exists within a reasonable, and I would argue necessary, degree of social constructionist analysis. These issues are usually (hopefully) present in any local church’s life of worship, discipleship, mission and fellowship, but they can also often be left unspoken or lie hidden under the accepted way that things operate. As young people at 3Generate actively debate the way that they can experience God, and also how their voice might be formed and heard by the rest of the church, for me it is very clear that we all need to work harder at analysing our social constructions of knowledge, our subjective experiences of God, and how they are brought together in a critical realist epistemological framework to form a coherent and developing account of Christian faith.

This is the third of our series of articles through the year from Spectrum, on the theme ‘Darkness and Light are both alike to Thee’. This month the article is by Catherine Bird.

As I began to acknowledge some of the physical and emotional reactions which darkness stirred within me I was reminded of God and of God’s activity in my own life. As I began in later life to reach longingly for the shade rather than the sunlight, and for night rather than day, I found myself questioning some deeply ingrained Christian metaphors and needing to express them in a way which could give expression to my relationship with God. Metaphors, of course, are rarely complete. Yet sometimes, they become so associated with their object that it is almost impossible to imagine anything else. For example, God as Father, or the use of the word ‘black’ to describe something negative. We have, thankfully, to a certain extent at least, recognised that these things are destructive in terms of how they lead us to make connections which are not necessarily helpful, and we are beginning to move away from them but there is still some way to go of course. God as light and Evil as darkness is one such metaphor and is still the predominant narrative.

Whilst I would not like us to lose light as a positive metaphor,  it is important to recognise that it is not universally helpful – light has many harmful and destructive qualities –  and if we deny that Darkness can also describe God we are perhaps missing some very important characteristics of God, as well as being rather unfair on darkness. George Orwell said, “uncritical acceptance of existing phrases can shape thinking and hinder new thought.”

I wrote my Dark Creed as an attempt to put into a liturgical context some of the ideas that were playing around in my head.

 A Dark Creed

I believe in God
The creator of darkness,
Who conceived of its potential,
And allows it to live.

I believe in Jesus Christ,
The prince of darkness,
Who raises a canopy of grace
to shade the startled ones .

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
The inner shadow,
Who clings to our soul 
and distorts the shape of our sorrow.

Like images, we also approach words and language with our own perspective and experience, perhaps our own biases and assumptions and it’s not unusual for people to react quite strongly when they read it.

If you find the image of Jesus as ‘the Prince of darkness’ concerning, then I ask you to reflect on the term Lucifer – which actually means ‘bearer of light’ or ‘Morning Star’

During the Exile of Israelites to Babylonia, there they encountered the King, who was the son of Bel and Ishtar, associated in local mythology  with Venus, the Morning star (so called  because of its closeness to the sun and appearance in the sky just before sunrise)  So, the King of Babylon became known as the  ‘Morning Star’ or Lucifer.

In Isaiah 14:12-16, the prophet is talking about how God will restore the people to Israel and they will taunt the fall of the King of Babylon (Lucifer) from his earthly throne. In verse 12 the writer gets a bit sarcastic – he talks about the fall of Lucifer from a metaphorical Heaven into a metaphorical hell. He is speaking metaphorically, about deposing the King. Sadly, over time, the sarcastic tone was lost and the verses came to be understood as being about the fall of Satan from Heaven.  Hence Lucifer becomes Satan.

Satan as the bearer of light. Jesus as the prince of darkness.  So it’s interesting to consider why, if Lucifer means bearer of Light, do we find the idea of Jesus as the Prince of darkness so difficult?

For Reflection

• Reflect upon the ‘Dark Creed’ How do you respond to it?
• What common metaphors for the Divine work for you or don’t work?
• Are there other ways of describing God or words you could use which might seem unusual?

by Raj Bharat Patta.

In the patriarchal society of Abraham, women were restricted to the private spaces, for Sarah had to do all the cooking for the guests, but had no chance of coming out to meet and speak to the guests. But the divine who came as three strangers in Genesis 18, by enquiring Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?” (v9) was trying to break open those patriarchal stereotypes that women are limited to the domestic private space and men are out in the public space. On hearing from Abraham that Sarah was ‘in the tent’, one of the strangers spoke loudly so that Sarah can hear, and pronounced that in due season Sarah shall have a child. Then Sarah laughs to herself. The tent was her own space, for over the years that space would have been a space for her to weep, to laugh, to pray, to lament and to sit in silence. On this occasion, Sarah in her own space, in her own freedom, laughed to herself, for all that she was, she and herself. Out of the fear generated by the patriarchal society, later on Sarah denies that she laughed and Abraham insisted that she did laugh (v15), for I think the stranger-guests and Abraham would have heard her chuckle from inside the tent. But for Sarah, laughter was an expression of her freedom, an expression of who she was and served as an act of subversion for her. It was an act of subversion against the patriarchal society which confined women to a private space like the tent, and never allowed them to laugh out loud in the public spaces.

In Sarah’s laughter, I recognise a subversive prayer. For in that laughter as Sarah spoke to herself with a question, “after I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” (v12), she was being heard by God. In her laughter as a way of prayer, Sarah was not questioning the miraculous power of God. Sarah’s laughter as a way of prayer demonstrates that the God she believed in is not a God who works through unrealistic fantasy, but a God who works through people. Sarah’s laughter was not a laughter of cynicism but a laughter of realism, where prayer is about realistic things. Our prayers therefore reveal the kind of God we believe and the kind of God we believe is exhibited in the way we pray. When Sarah laughed, God not only heard and responded to her laughter, but I think God would have joined in laughing with Sarah to fulfil the promise God has made to her.

On hearing Sarah’s laughter, God was quick to speak to Abraham, opening wide the revelation of the divine. Sarah’s laughter did not make God angry. The patriarchal society demeaned and diminished Sarah’s laughter as a sign of unbelief to the promise of God, but there is freshness in Sarah’s prayer which was seen in her laughter. The laughter of Sarah was not seen by God as offensive, for God on hearing the laughter of Sarah did not curtail God’s promise nor cursed Sarah at that point, rather God revealed God’s character of doing wonderful things in their lives offering hope to them. It was because of Sarah’s laughter that God spoke to Abraham, reassuring him, ‘is anything too wonderful for God?’ Sarah’s laughter paved the way for the actions of God’s wonderful acts to flow on in their lives. When things unfolded as promised, I can imagine Sarah would have kept laughing at every point of her life that followed and eventually named her son Isaac, after her deep spiritual experiences of laughter with God.

Laughter is a natural expression of human spirit, and when the future appears bleak, when things are annoying around us, when the going gets tough, laughter as a faith space helps us as a defiance against all those oppositions. May the courage of Sarah be with each of us so that we can laugh at ourselves on hearing that God is leading us into an uncertain future with a confidence of new hope in Jesus Christ. Let us together join with Sarah in laughing out loud and celebrate hope, for God works wonderfully through each of us. God hasn’t given up on the Christian faith nor on the church, but is leading us to offer hope in our community by building on laughter, kindness, peace and justice.

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by Tom Greggs.[i]

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The idea of the Wesleyan quadrilateral is pervasive that it is almost no longer fittingly spoken of as ‘Wesleyan’.[ii] Theological statements rest on the coalescence of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience, and what is most particular in this for the theology of Wesley’s own time is the final of those four categories—the role of experience in theological statements. [iii] In distinction from Hooker who saw the sources of theology as Scripture, reason and tradition (alongside natural law),[iv] Wesley, adds the experiential in faith as a datum for the claims of the faith: the faith by which we believe is for Wesley, with his emphasis on sanctification, a contributory component of the faith that is believed, and thereby a source of theology.

In using experience as a datum of theology, however, there is a need to be aware of its limits. Experience is not some kind of uncritical, unadulterated subjectivist interiority. Experience is rather, for Wesley, an account of the experience of the church: ‘the experience not of two or three, not of a few, but of a great multitude which no man can number. It has been confirmed, both in this and in all ages, by “a cloud of” living and dying “witnesses”’.[v] Furthermore, Wesley is overtly aware of the limitations of this source of theological knowledge, and the capacity for self-deception:

“How many have mistaken the voice of their own imagination for this ‘witness of the Spirit’ of God, and thence idly presumed they were the children of God while they were doing the works of the devil! These are truly and properly enthusiasts; and, indeed, in the worst sense of the word.”[vi]

It is only in conjunction with Scripture, the teaching of the church (tradition), and reason that experience can recognize that which is sanctified, and thereby as that which is part of the material of theology. Doing theology is not a case of reflecting uncritically on any and every experience the human has, but rather a case of locating experience in relation to the other sources and norms of theology to judge experience’s capacity to offer theological truth: only when adjudged as part of the sanctified life can the experience of the creature be understood as s source for theology. Part of this judgment is a critical appraisal of experience because the sanctified believer realizes that the fundamental form of sanctification rests on the recognition of the believer’s own propensity to sin and self-deception, and the need to fall back on the grace and mercy of God.[vii] The one who does not, in being conscious of God’s presence in her spirit, repent,[viii] but becomes confident of her assurance, grows ‘haughty’ in her behaviour and thereby in the sense of confidence she may have in her own experience. There is always the need in relation to the category of experience to be reminded: ‘Discover thyself, thou poor self-deceiver! Thou who art confident of being a child of God … O cry unto him, that the scales may fall from thine eyes …’[ix]  Enthusiasm in the unlovely sense of the word is what it means to mistake our own voice with the voice of God; Methodism is more about the experience of the believer methodically and reasonably related to the life and experience of the church as a whole in its traditions as the church lives under the sovereign authority of Scripture as witness to Jesus Christ.[x]

This description of experience points out something very fundamental: in describing the quadrilateral of sources for theology, these four locations of theological data do not exist as independent and un-related or competitive sources of theological information; they exist rather only in relation to each other. Anna Williams points helpfully in this direction when she states about the point of the quadrilateral:

“do not stand on a par with each other: the claims of tradition, reason, and experience to the states of free-standing warrants are exceedingly weak. They serve as interpreters of scripture, rarely as autonomous alternatives to it. The claim of scripture to be the sole warrant is equally implausible…”[xi]

Key is the relationality of the different components of the quadrilateral to each other: they are ‘radically interpretable’.[xii] They do not function to provide end points to theological discussion, but starting points (as sources), and the interpretation of each of them rests in each’s relation to the others by and through which their interpretation will be made possible.

Theological method is not, for Methodism, about locating what Scripture, then tradition, then reason, then experience may say about a given topic, and then coming to some judgement on it. Theological method is about what each area of theological data says in relation and in conversation with the other. It is not that we have four squares, so to speak, but rather four sides to the one quadrilateral. Indeed, I would want to argue that we need to move from thinking about the single one-dimensional quadrilateral to thinking more fully about theology as a multi-dimensional hexadecahedron: an expression of the sources and norms of theology variously inter-related to one another in complex and multi-dimensional ways.

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[i] The ideas in this piece (and some of its content) are taken from a longer treatment of these themes. See Tom Greggs, ‘On the Nature, Task and Method of Theology: A Very Methodist Account’, International Journal of Systematic Theology (2018), vol. 20, no. 3, 309-334.

[ii] Indeed, Anna Williams, discusses these in an extremely helpful summary as ‘warrants’, discussing Wesley largely in relation to her consideration of experience; see Anna Williams, The Architecture of Theology: System, Structure, and Ratio (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 89-91.

[iii] The origins of this approach to theology are, however, remarkably recent. The term ‘quadrilateral’ is not one original to Wesley, but is a coda or hermeneutical key for unlocking Wesley’s approach to theology, as described by the great Wesley scholar Albert C. Outler. However, it is certainly true (with an acknowledgment of the complexity of this and of these terms) that for Wesley the data of theology (the authority on which theological statements might rest) is fourfold. For a survey of Outler’s approach, see ‘The Wesleyan Quadrilateral – in John Wesley’, Wesleyan Theological Journal vol. 20:1 (1985), 7-18; cf. Gunter W. Stephen, Ted A. Campbell, Scott J. Jones, Rebekah L. Miles, Randy L. Maddox, Wesley and the quadrilateral: renewing the conversation (Nashville: Abingdon: 1997). The term is foreshadowed in the work of Colin W. Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today (London: Epworth, 1960) in his account of authority and experience (ch. 2).

[iv] Cf. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, edited by Arthur McGrade(Oxford: OUP, 2013), 1.16 & 3.9.

[v] Wesley, Sermons I, 290.

[vi] Wesley, Sermons I, 269.

[vii] As Wesley puts it in his sermon on the witness of the Spirit: ‘The Scriptures describe that joy in the Lord which accompanies the witness of his Spirit as an humble joy, a joy that abases to the dust; that makes a pardoned sinner cry out, “I am vile! …” And wherever lowliness is, there is patience, gentleness, long-suffering. There is a soft, yielding spirit, a mildness and sweetness, a tenderness of soul which words cannot express. But do these fruits attend that supposed testimony of the Spirit in a presumptuous man? Just the reverse.’ Wesley, Sermons I, 280. Cf. Luther: ‘God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to one but the dead. He does not give saintliness to any but sinners, nor wisdom to any but fools. In short: He has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace. Therefore no arrogant saint, or just or wise man can be material for God, neither can he do the work of God, but he remains confined within his own work and makes of himself a fictitious, ostensible, false, and deceitful saint, that is, a hypocrite.’ Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Jaroslav Pelikan and Daniel E. Poellot (ed.), Arnold Guebert (trans.), vol. 14 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1958), 163. 

[viii] This is a point that is made repeatedly by the Blumhardts. For a helpful account of the dangers of experience as a warrant or norm, see Williams, Architecture, 89-94.

[ix] Wesley, Sermons I, 281-2.

[x] See Clive Marsh ‘Appealing to Experience: What does it mean’ in Methodist Theology Today, ed. Marsh et al., 118-30 for an account of some of the complexities and issues at stake in the role of experience in Methodist theology.

[xi] Williams, Architecture, 94.

[xii] Williams, Architecture, 111.

by Christopher Collins.

“this path
carries the sacred and holy
around life’s circumference
in the expecting family
and excited toddlers,
and arm-locked lovers,
and funeral go-toers

“For what wears down your sole
Works in you to raise your soul
for on holy ground, you stand,
I made it so.”

From the anonymous poem “City Paths”[i]

This ugly, tarmac, dirty footpath is not holy ground, so I was prone to protest as I walked suburban streets in January this year.  I was sponsored to walk a hundred miles in the month and I deliberately chose to walk the same route of about three miles every day so I didn’t have to think too hard during an otherwise busy month. Over the thirty-one days I learned all the nooks, crannies and cracks of the walk. Met the frequent dog-walkers and the one-time passers by off to a funeral, or the pub, or both. It was, mostly, an unremarkable path. But, something kept nagging me about “holy ground” but I persisted in my resistance that this was holy.  The route had not been declared “holy” or “sacred” nor had centuries of pilgrims trod the path before me on a way-marked route guaranteed to lead to a holy place. Yet, over the course of the hundred miles, something began to change in me that transformed by ambivalence about tarmac which had seen better days into a eucharistic connection with this holy ground. This trammeled tarmac woke up something of God within me.

This has come back to mind since I joined in the “Camino to COP” as pilgrims passed through my circuit between Malvern and Worcester. The route was designed to get us from A to B and had no particular historical significance as far as we knew. Nevertheless, we reflected in our ramblings about what made this a pilgrimage as we weren’t following, as we would perhaps usually do on such a journey, a path described as sacred.

Was it a pilgrimage, we wondered, because we were walking it with a holy intention – to highlight the cause for climate justice and to demand that proper action is taken when the COP meets in Glasgow in November? Yes, that is surely part of it within the great tradition of historical marches – Jarrow, Salt and Washington to name a few.

But I’ve been troubled that this reduces the potential for holiness to what humans can do to the earth. We make it holy by walking it? Isn’t the ground already holy because it is made and shaped by the creator’s hand. It was God, remember, who declared the ground on which Moses stood as holy. We forget to our peril that Genesis tells us God formed humanity out of the ground of earth, and to the earth we shall all return. And isn’t it the attitude that we have complete dominion and control over the earth that has got us into the mess we were walking about anyway?

So I wonder if the pilgrimage was having the opposite effect. The holy earth shaping holiness in us as we felt the connection between our bodies and the ground under our feet pulling us closer and reminding us that we are all part the wholeness of creation. Reminding us that neither earth nor humanity can fulfil our destiny to flourish in God’s gaze if we don’t recognise the holiness in each.

The pilgrimage led me to a “thin place,” where, as Kerri ní Dochartaigh writes: “Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in place between worlds, beyond experience”[ii]

Which led to that led to the great hymn in Paul’s letter to the saints in Philippi:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who,…humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross”[iii]

For Jesus chose a non-violent path of humility that opened up the possibility of new life.

A Camino to COP reminds me that I need to let go of my vested interests in our domination over the earth and our siblings for whom climate’s crisis has a greater devastating impact than I can ever imagine. We are all holy, shaped by God in God’s image and that’s why we need COP26 to deliver a holy justice.

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[i] You can read the full poem here: City Paths (revdchristopherjcollins.com)

[ii] Kerri ní Dochartaigh, “thin places”, (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2021), p.23

[iii] Philippians 2:5 & 8 [NRSV]

by Neil Richardson.

We Christians in the western world relate our faith readily enough (more or less) to our personal lives and our churches. We find it harder to relate it to national and international affairs. Think of our divisions or our silences about the nuclear deterrent, Brexit,  Britain’s housing crisis, and much, much more. Yet, in these dark times, King Zedekiah’s question to Jeremiah must be ours: ‘Is there a word from the Lord?’

   In listening for such a word, we may have to  wrestle with biblical and theological themes we usually shy away from. But the vocation of a prophetic Church is to preach the truth. We’re called, not to offer opinions, solutions or programmes for action, not even to preach Kingdom values – a slippery term! (1)- but the truth which sets us free, (John 8.32).

   To talk of ‘the truth’ these days is unfashionable, and can be intolerant and  dangerous. But this is our basic currency: the reality about ourselves, the Church, the world and  God,  the Ultimate Reality. And this, of course, includes the story of Jesus.

     What are the themes we shy away from? I suggest four: judgement and wrath, sin and  repentance.  I’m not arguing that we use the words themselves; they are widely misunderstood, or not understood at all.  They are certainly offputting, and we want naturally (but mistakenly?) to offer an attractive gospel.

    We must face the realities to which the words point, because there is no full gospel without them. To begin here with judgement: we know Christians shouldn’t be judgemental, (Matthew 7.1),  but what about God’s own judgement? When did we last preach or hear a sermon on divine judgement – final or otherwise?

   A cautionary note is necessary. Most of us have inveighed against a materialistic world and all its works. But we often think of that ‘world’ thought  as ‘out there’: a dark reality over against  the Church.  Thomas Merton, however,  searchingly asks, ‘Where do I look for the world, if not inside myself?’ In any case, what charge should the Church make against ‘the world’?

     John’s gospel points the way: ‘This is the judgement (Greek, krisis): the light has come into the world but people preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil’ (John 3.19).

    Here is the primal sin:  we humans choose darkness, illusions and idols, putting them before light, truth and  the living God. And no-one, not least the Church, (compare prophets like Amos on Israel!) is exempt from this judgement.

     Our currency is truth.  And the reality about ourselves is what it has always been: ‘original’ sin, made though we are in the image of God. Sin, of course,  is a word almost impossible for the Christian preacher to use unless he or she explains it.  Many think it refers to moral failings, especially sexual ones; but they are the symptoms, not the root. Many reject the idea of sin  altogether as an outdated, unduly negative estimate of human beings. But as a great Methodist historian once wrote: ‘faith in human nature…. Is a recent heresy and a very disastrous one’ (2).

    Yet we can’t make ‘sin’ the centre of our preaching, even though the reality of it is all around us and within us, polluting almost everything. But we live in a culture which can’t or won’t face this reality. Maybe this is because we have become strangers to holiness and the holy.

    In the Bible, people become aware of their sinfulness in the presence of the holy God. ‘Sin’ is, first and foremost,  a religious and relational term; it is to  ‘fall short’ of God’s glory, (Romans 3.21). Isaiah and Simon Peter recognized their own sinfulness in the presence of the Holy One, (Isaiah 6, Luke 5.11). With this we come to the theme of repentance.

     The story of the prodigal son reminds us that ‘sin’ is a relational term, not a moral one.  But when did the prodigal repent? Not, I suggest, in the far country. That was where he came to his senses, recognizing on which side his bread was buttered. The change of heart came later, as his father ran to embrace him, before the son had even begun his carefully prepared speech.

   Samuel Coleridge, poet and theologian, wrote that Christianity is not so much the gift of forgiveness to those who repent, but the gift of repentance to those who sin. An overstatement? Possibly, but much nearer the truth than the widespread assumption that repentance is a condition of forgiveness.

     The wrath of God is perhaps the most difficult of the four themes we tend to shy away from. As I pointed out in my blog of 2018, it’s best understood as the opposite of God’s life-giving light: God ‘hiding his face’, (e.g. Isaiah 64.7, in contrast to ‘the light of his countenance’ in Numbers 6.25).  In this darkness, spiritual, moral and social, our idolatry and illusions slowly but surely dehumanize us, degrade our behaviour and damage our communities, (Romans 1.18-32)(3).

    This is difficult language. But these disasters which we bring upon ourselves underline the truth that this is God’s world, created, redeemed and permeated by his love. But if we go against the very grain of the universe and our own God-given natures, we run into, as it were, the adverse wind of his wrath – the sure sign, especially in our current crises, that this is not only God’s world, but that God cares passionately about it and for us.

     Our currency is indeed truth. It is the truth as we believe we see it in Jesus, above all in Christ crucified and risen.  In that gospel there is a deep joy and  a hope which is unquenchable in all the darkness and pain.  We can’t make ourselves praise God in the darkness, but the Spirit will help us so to do, even in such a time as this.  In the words of a saintly, early apostle to India, Father Andrew, (H.E. Hardy (4)): ‘Man’s affliction is God’s opportunity’.

                              

1. See Eberhard Jungel on ‘value-free truth’ in his Theological Essays II , (T&T Clark 1995), pp.191-215.
2. Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History, (G. Bell 1949, Fontana 1957), p.66.
3.  The homosexual practices referred to in this passage are now widely recognized as the exploitative, often oppressive and promiscuous relationships prevalent in the Graeco-Roman world.
4. Author of hymn no. 172 in Hymns and Psalms, ‘O Dearest Lord…’.

by John Howard.

When the powerful King David arranges for the death of Uriah the Hittite because he fancied Uhiah’s wife, the prophet Nathan condemns David for what he has done. It was brave of Nathan to do so but the issue was pretty clear. The powerful David abused his power to get what he wanted. Likewise John the Baptist was courageous in criticising Herod for his immoral behaviour. The powerful behaving badly is rightly condemned.

But what happens when the poor, the weak or the powerless behave badly? Rahab the prostitute is justified by her taking in of the Hebrew spies (Joshua 2). Subsequently through this act she is seen to have been complicit in genocide, but she is not condemned for this. It seems that as she is on the winner’s side – it is all justified!

Is this really how God sees things? Because Rahab was on ‘God’s side’ she can’t do a thing wrong? Surely that’s not how God sees it – even if it was how the writers of the book of Joshua saw it. She was poor, she was vulnerable but that can’t mean that she is innocent of moral wrong.

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 & 6) challenges us to be on the side of the poor and the powerless. But how do we continue to support the poor and the powerless when they act unjustly? How do we act when others we are working with compromise their principals because of the extreme situations they find themselves in, through no fault of their own?

What does the Sermon on the Mount say about people who are poor and corrupt? Jesus’s teaching to the crowd is simply ‘Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.’ (Matt. 5.48)

Few modern day political issues are pure right and wrong. Take the issue that I spend a considerable amount of my time and energy on – the conflict between Israel and Palestine. It is very clear who the weak and the powerless are – the Palestinians. There is huge injustice done to powerless Palestinians, the Israeli army acts in terribly unethical ways, but there is still much in Israel that is good. The treatment of the LGBTQi community is hugely better than takes place in Gaza or the West Bank. There is corruption in the Israeli Government, but it is as nothing compared to the corruption in the Palestinian Authority. Where do we look in the bible to find a ‘theology of grey areas’ that addresses such issues?

In his sermon on love, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul speaks of the primacy of love and seems to acknowledge the imperfection of the aspects of faith that are otherwise considered good. There is perhaps a recognition here of ‘grey area’: ‘As for tongues they will cease, as for knowledge it will come to an end… when the perfect comes the imperfect will pass away.’ The imperfect is transient, there will come a time when such dilemmas are past – but for the moment we have to deal with them.

In the letters to Timothy we have advice to a young leader in the church which recognises the extent to which those we work with – in Timothy’s case members of his church – might well fall short of what we might hope. In 2 Timothy 2 the writer addresses the relationship between the Christian pastor and those who fall short. The advice seems to be ‘(you) must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient correcting opponents with gentleness’(2:24). The advice then is to address the grey areas but in no way compromise with them. Can that be taken as suggesting that in our dealings with the poor and the powerless who are violent or dishonest, we are required to sustain the relationship with them but be careful to distance ourselves from the violence or dishonesty? That seems fine – until you are in the midst of a violent disturbance unjustly inflicted upon your colleagues, who react to defend themselves and in doing so behave less than perfectly. Standing by someone in the fight inevitably brings you into the fight itself, for right or wrong.

But the approach that makes no compromise of love seems to reflect Paul’s attitude elsewhere when he asserts the manner of Christian behaviour without making any compromises for relationships with those who behave in non-Christian ways.  We see Paul expounding this view in Ephesians 4.17 – 5.20: ‘So then, putting away falsehood let all of speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another’(4.25).

It also seems to be the approach taken by James in chapter 2 of his letter. Here he speaks about behaving towards the rich and the poor without prejudice. He speaks about the rich as oppressors and so it is not too large a leap to suggest that he would take a similar approach for other oppressors – such as occupying forces. Here we might also make a link to Jesus’ teaching about turning the other cheek (Matthew 5.39). Each takes the very hard approach that the Christian response is always to uphold the integrity and honesty even in the most extreme of situations. One might wonder what Paul would say to refugees starving for want of the generosity of neighbours – is stealing food still theft?

Essentially this brings me to a very uncomfortable place. The biblical approach seems to be that Christians compromised by the behaviour of their non-Christian friends in struggles between the powerful and the powerless still need to uphold the highest principals of moral behaviour, turning the other cheek, sustaining non-violence, refusing to demonise the enemy, love even those who abuse their power over you, even if this then alienates you from your allies.

by Anne Ostrowicz.

Reflecting back over this last academic year teaching RS in a secondary school in Birmingham, my mind is drawn to all I have been learning in my endeavours to chair the school’s new Diversity Forum promoting Equality, Diversity and Inclusion[i].

Seeing a pupil reading Malcolm X’s autobiography[ii], got me reading his story, too, and it turned out to be the most significant book for me of these last twelve months. As a teenager I had only heard of Malcolm X as a dangerous thinker. Why four decades later was I so captured by his story?

On the one hand there was a driving cause-and-effect necessity about his life-story: the environment he was born into stacked up pain and rejection including the early death of his father when he was just six years old (some believing he was intentionally run over by racists) which brought disintegration to his family, but also the downplaying by his schoolteachers of his academic talent. Both created a deep anger towards white people. Yet at the same time there seemed present a golden thread of grace running through his life, a vortex inexorably drawing him in closer to the hope that is Love. At 21, finding himself in prison, he began to read widely and voraciously, so launching his intellectual journey. When released, he expressed his new faith and philosophy in passionate dedication to Elijah Muhammed’s Nation of Islam. However, after his expulsion from that organisation, it was the Islam he met on hajj in the Middle East, and then in Africa, which drew him to embrace the family of all human beings, a growing revelation cut terribly short by his assassination.

So now alongside Martin Luther King Junior, Malcolm X is in the ‘canon’ of thinkers whose pictures wend their way around the top of my classroom walls. And whenever a new face goes up it doesn’t take long before a pupil will notice and ask, “Who is that, Miss?”, eagerly hoping to hear their story. Ideas get passed on powerfully to teenagers when they come ‘wrapped’ in the life story which produced them.

Seeking reading advice on theology and race, Professor Anthony Reddie encouraged me to read black liberation theologian James Cone. I began with his inspirational, The Cross and the Lynching Tree[iii], where the crucifixion is movingly interpreted as the identification of Christ with the oppressed of this world. I introduced Cone to my (mostly BAME) GCSE RS pupils who found his approach inspirational: now he regularly surfaces in classroom discussions and in written work.

Malcolm X’s autobiography led me to the autobiography of Martin Luther King Junior[iv], and then to another of James Cone’s books where he synthesizes the thinking of these two civil rights activists: the one who had a dream, the other a life which he described as a nightmare[v]. James Baldwin writes, “As concerns Malcolm and Martin, I watched two men, coming from unimaginably different backgrounds, whose positions, originally, were poles apart, driven closer and closer together.”[vi]

Whilst James Cone’s focus is theology, black theologian Willie James Jennings[vii] writes on all that has been lost not just in theology but in wider education in the West by the years and years of de-valuing the voices, wisdom, experiences and cultures of those not white and western, challenging those of us in education to steer the rudder of this heavy ship into new, deeper and rich waters.

My pupils teach me much, too. Listening to an assembly on how religion can be pro committed gay relationships, I was surprised to notice a pupil who I thought would be delighted by the content, looking stony-faced.  What was wrong? He pointed out that the assembly presented a binary approach to gender and sexuality, instead of his own experience of gender as a spectrum. The assembly had made him feel that who he is was not being acknowledged, his existence not worth including. I heard profound pain and frustration. Later he eloquently channelled his thoughts into the creation of an informative booklet on sexuality and gender which the PSHE department will be using in lessons this term.

As a new academic year begins, I look forward to communion with those I will meet. Listening to the tragic news about Afghanistan and of the refugees who will be coming to live in Birmingham, I wonder if there might be some way in which my school can be a part of welcoming them into our community.

---

[i] Begun Summer term 2020, a direct response to the death of George Floyd in the U.S.

[ii] The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Penguin Books, 1965

[iii] The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James H. Cone, Orbis Books, 2013

[iv] The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr, Abacus, 1999

[v] Martin and Malcolm and America, James H. Cone, Fount Paperbacks, 1993

[vi] I Am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin, p.37, Penguin Classics 2017

[vii] After Whiteness, An Education in Belonging, WJ Jennings, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020

This is the second of our series of articles through the year from Spectrum, on the theme ‘Darkness and Light are both alike to Thee’. This month the article is by Inderjit Bhogal.

In this presentation I explore a model for ministry.

If I asked you to give me a summary of the Bible in a couple of sentences, what would you say?

In my view the first two verses of the Bible provide the key to unlock the rest of it. These two verses are a summary, and what follows in the rest of the Bible illustrates this summary. Use the wisdom of these two verses to reflect on where you find yourself now. I offer a few thoughts.

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, and the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2)

This is the beginning, not the end.

There is a formless void, darkness, and what is termed “the deep”. God does not create this. It is just there. But God dwells in the midst of it all. This is where the spirit of God is, creating something new.

The “deep” is described elsewhere in the Bible as a trembling, a disturbance, a stirring, or a storm within a person, in the mind, in circumstances or in the environment around us. It is a stirring, which can also be scary, but in which new things happen. See for example, Jeremiah 23:9, Daniel 7:2 and John 5:2.

In Sanskrit the word is “vritti”, which signifies a whirlpool. 

This is what is being described in the two opening verses of the Bible. And such scenarios are real throughout the Bible.

The stories of the Bible are reflections of a people, their journeys in life, and how they experienced and interpreted God in the midst of the harsh realities of their meanderings and troubles, conflicts and hurts, and the points at which they found meaning and hope.

The Word of God is discerned by the people of the Bible as they reflect on their often terrifying and troubling experiences. Their reflections reveal God who is with them in their travel and travail as the still and secure and creative presence at the heart of it all. When everything seems out of control the love and presence of God holds firm. Biblical witness illuminates and unfolds this insight.

The life of God flows in the “deep”, and is the ground of all creation. God weaves darkness and the deep into all creation, makes new and beautiful things, and calls human beings to share in this work, to protect and take good care of life and all created things, and to do all things with wisdom (Genesis 1:26-28).

The work of any true guru, and ministry, is to model exactly that. To be prepared to dwell in darkness, to accompany people in darkness, and to do all things with wisdom. A true guru will not lead people from darkness to light. A true guru will sit in the darkness with people and help them to find wisdom from the deep, and stillness within the stirring of life and the whirlpool of the mind. A true guru does not say there is a silver lining to every cloud, and does not speak of light at the end of the tunnel.

A true guru is tuned in to the attendance and echo of God in the storm, points to God in the shadows, and helps people to see darkness as a place of sacredness. So, a true guru will not hurry people out of darkness, or speak negatively of emptiness, and will be healing not hurting, hospitable not hostile, holding out hope not despair, modelling holiness.

This is a model of ministry I have found helpful.

Questions:

1. What does the concept of ‘darkness’ mean for you?
2. What do you envisage, positively, will emerge from the pandemic experience?
3. What is your ‘model of ministry’ as a Christian disciple today?