faith and evidence

A quick comment on the relationship of faith to evidence.

It's faith all the way. There does however, need to be an actual physical counterpart to the Gospel. This might be Christ's human body, a miracle or a community of compassion. None of these things can form part of a conclusive case for the truth of the Gospel, on their own or together. It is however right and proper (and necessary?) that they are there, even if it takes faith to recognise them.

God Reveals Himself

Barth argues (see below) that Calvin's basing the authority of Scripture in the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is a way of ensuring and realising that God must reveal himself. Calvin does list what might be termed evidences for Scripture's inspiration (sorry for the lack of references) but these are not conclusive.

I'm sure there must be a wealth of literature on this subject, but I have a hunch even trying to ask the question 'what is this testimony' will only leave us going round in circles, attempting to securely pin down something which floats through our hands.

If this is the case then the multiplicity of Reformed confessions is inevitable and necessary because we have no way to arrive at a public and universal statement (as Barth argues the Augsburg confession was). Even our canon is arrived at by faith. The Church lives by faith all the way down ...

How is the word of God to be read?

The holy Scriptures are to be read with an high and reverent esteem of them; with a firm persuasion that they are the very Word of God, and that he only can enable us to understand them; with desire to know, believe, and obey the will of God revealed in them; with diligence, and attention to the matter and scope of them; with meditation, application, self-denial, and prayer.

Larger Westminster Catechism

Scripture alone ...

Not very anglican this, but hey.

In reading Barth's "Theology of the Reformed Confessions" it has been helpful to have the contrasting attitudes to public Church documents of the Catholics, Lutherans and the Reformed laid out with some of their consequences.

Barth is less than optimistic about the current likelihood of the Reformed Church of his day getting down to writing any new confession (The book consists of lectures from 1923) although he thinks any significantly reenvigorated Reformed Church should get round to this task.

The Scripture Principle is for Barth a defining idea characteristic of the Reformed. It occurs to me, however, that even this would need to be rethought in any new confession, not inorder to remove or undermine it but to preserve it.

Part of the problem I forsee is that when the appeal was made to Scripture during the Reformation, it was made with some implicit theological assumptions. Defining what these are is not easy. They would include, I think, a doctrine of God, his goodness and oneness, his history of care for Israel; a recognition of Scripture as set apart by God for his purposes; an understanding of humanity - that the authors of Scripture and its modern readers stand, fundamentally, in the same relationship to this one God. Although this probably risks opening up a can of worms, we could call these things a 'rule of faith'.

The reason all these things become significant is because of the treatment of Scripture during the Enlightenment and beyond. The appeal to go back to the Scriptures of any new confessional movement is potentially thwarted by the recognition that modern readers (reading without some of the above assumptions) have returned to the Scriptures generally speaking they have found only a plurality of voices, confusion and moral ambiguity.

So, in conclusion, is it possible to hold onto a simple Scripture principle? If it is possible to ennumerate the theological assumptions of the Reformers and would we want to share them? Either way, what would be ours and from where would we get them? From Scripture?

Now, perhaps I could be accused at this point by a wagging finger, the person behind which would complain that these readers are simply unrepentant sinners, not reliant on divine grace, etc. and that the answer to our hermeneutical question is one of 'prayerful' reading. The irony is, such a position contains within itself innumerable theological understandings and indeed relationships to God. I think piety is an essential element of any answer here, but the very idea brings with it the question 'what kind of piety?' and 'who is this God I am worshipping?'.

I would like to find a way of laying out these tensions and questions in a stable manner ... or, at least, if the instability is fundamental to the task, be in a position to recognise this to be the case.

The Other Side of the Coin ...

In fairness, apart from the unnecessary dismissal of everyone to the left, right and behind him, this is not that bad! I appreciate the attempt to nuance our view of Scripture from a recognition of its historical origin and theological relation to Christ. I'm still unconvinced that the dramatical model is either particularly new or helps us with any of the 'difficult' issues.

http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=334

I suppose it would be interesting to hear some interaction from those who would disagree with Wright on his position on homosexual practice ... and whether his ideas on Biblical authority move the discussion on at all.

Theology or History?

"What matters for our purposes in the present book is the ground of Paul's argument, since unlike him we are not presupposing Jesus' resurrection and building on it a theology of Christian hope, but examining his theology of Christian hope in order to understand more precisely what he thought had happened to Jesus."

N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003), p. 315. My italics.

An infelicitous phrase? A valid academic exercise ...

Healing of the Heart

What is the point or goal of psychological healing? Is the answer, perhaps, to relieve distress or alternatively to make 'whole'? What constitutes as the 'norm' or the acceptable state to which we aim to bring people who are in need in of healing? Further, who is it that is in need of healing? Perhaps we should not assume we know this. When we attempt to heal, are we actually trying to bring people to our state of being? Might we ourselves be in need of healing? How can we answer these questions as Christians, and when we do so what will be the relationship of God, and particularly the Holy Spirit to these processes of healing?

The created purpose of humans is to love God and neighbour. This might not seem the obvious place to start. Much ink is spilt on disputed questions about what it means for humans to exist in the image of God. I would say this, however: focussing on an inherent God given dignity of humans - in effect using the imago dei as a cipher for human rights - risks obscuring that the nature of God, in whose image we are made, is finally revealed in Christ and Christ tells us in word and deed to love God and love neighbour as he, God, has loved us. The created and ultimate purpose of humans is to love God and neighbour.

People need healing when an aspect of their lives impedes their freedom to love God and neighbour as he has loved us. Consider addiction. The addicted person is not free to love God and neighbour as he or she ought. The individual feeds their addiction before they can interact with the world. If the addiction is concealed, because society looks down upon it, then the individual lives with a lie and is at least in part unable to fully reciprocate relationships. One might argue that the purpose of healing is to alleviate suffering. It is, without a doubt, true that our freedom to love our neighbour should result in our actually loving our neighbour and working to remove distress. But is this the ultimate end for Christians? A life of painlessness is not a Christian ideal.

One consequence of this idea is that medical healing now appears to have a different character to psychological healing. It is not the case that those with broken bones, or indeed cancer, are unable to love God or neighbour even if illness may well make practical demonstrations of love impossible.

An advantage of viewing people as loving agents is that we cease to view anyone as completely healed or, to put it another way, as having arrived at a position in which grace is no longer necessary. Human beings are not so much returned to a state of health, as faced with the ongoing need day by day to surmount obstacles which impede their freedom to love.

Two questions remain for me at the current time. These are how the above relates to the work of the Holy Spirit and to eschatology.

I shall start with eschatology. The resurrection reveals the relativity of all human health! Although this may not be the most helpful term, it may be useful to think of all healing as having the character of sign. The purpose of using this term is not to undermine the significance of the healing of affliction, but to recognise all such healing can only be understood as temporary or partial when viewed from the perspective of the whole world and in the shadow of mortality. Healing, then, points us to the greater transformation which Christians wait for at Christ's return. If we forget about eschatology we risk being disillusioned at the scale of suffering in the world.

The Holy Spirit is the bringer of life. Life is freedom. Christians have received the Spirit of God. It was the Spirit of God who brings them and sustains them in union with Christ and so brings them into new life. It is on the basis of this Spirit established life and freedom from a past life of sin that the Christian is urged to live in step with the Spirit, that is to seek to love God and neighbour with fewer impediments. The freedom of the Spirit is not an immediate emotional or relational healing with God or neighbour. It involves the granting of the knowledge - indeed only partially appreciated - that God has loved the individual and it involves the inviting of the loved to embark on a transformation of their love toward God and neighbour. It will be appropriate for Christians to use all the God-given means of grace at their disposal in order to enjoy this transformation. These will include worship and the use of the sacraments, loving and being loved in the community of the church, the practice of 'disciplines' and also the hearing of God's word as it informs us of the basis and on going necessity of all of these things, that is God himself.

Pride and Faith

But it is the essence of ignorance to attach importance to that which it does not understand. Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interests of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced by the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.

Percy Byssche Shelley

Men and the Church (3)

Musing further, it occurs to me that it may be helpful to be able to distinguish between sex and gender in this discussion.

The biological fact of the distinct sexes is affirmed as part of God's creation in Genesis. We can make a distinction between this and gender, by understanding gender as an "individual's self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex". Disagreements will often arise amongst Christians with regard to what degree or in what way the fact of our sex brings with it, in the light of revelation, moral imperatives concerning our gender.

Scripture affirms the distinct sexes. Does it demand we form particular ideas of gender?

In making this distinction, it seems all the more difficult not to address passages such as Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11. Are there any other passages which need to be addressed?

Men and the Church (2)

Here is some qualification on the earlier post.

Firstly, the Church is incredibly varied and I can only speak for my experience of the Western (largely evangelical) and British angle of things.

Secondly, I began the earlier post by arguing that conventional masculinity could be said to have been dramatically called into question by the Lordship of Christ. While this may be true, this hasn't stopped males dominating the hierarchy (?!) of the Church for most of its history. The Church in the West has adapted with the prevailing feminist trend in the last forty years and begun to recognise its lack of openness to the fullness of the gifts possessed by women. This has surely brought with it a criticism of the apparently failing (dropping Church attendances and influence on society) male dominated Church. Certainly, from a Reformed perspective, the male who leads through the preaching of the Word does look ... anachronistic. The Church today certainly does not (I'm not arguing it should) think this is sufficient.

So it is better to point out, I think, that the idea of Christ as someone who radically criticises conventional ideas about the place and role of men in society, is a relatively modern one. This is not to say that this criticism is not there in Christ and his work, and that it is purely a modern invention, but that our particular understanding of it and emphasis on it, has come with the modern reassessment of gender outside and inside the Church. To put it simply (thanks Jake), we were patriarchal and this must continue to be regretted; we're now experiencing a matriarchal response; is it possible now to encourage the Church to gain a more balanced position?

Men and the Church

Men were in charge, with occasional exceptions, in the times of the Bible. That is, they were the chief protagonists in culture and politics. They formed governments, raised taxes, executed justice and waged wars. I'm sure a more attractive picture of their activities could be given, and I'm sure that women had a more significant influence than I imply, but anyway ...

Insofar as Jesus' teaching, and the significance of his resurrection and revelation as Lord, calls into question the ultimate significance of all human rulership, and achievement, then Jesus could be said to be criticising forms of masculinity. Feminists rejoice.

But, this risks leaving men broken, criticised and undermined and without a positive ideal. What does it mean to be men? What is good about masculinity? Is it really the case that masculinity must be universally repented of?!

Behind this questioning is an awareness of a trend in the UK of a lack of men in Church. It's possible that at least part of the reason for this is because the Church is embarrassed by masculinity. This may reflect wider 'educated' society which, to be be blunt, views football, 'lads mags' and beer as Neanderthal. Would it be any surprise if our educated laity and clergy wondered equally what on earth masculinity was for?

My hope would be that there may be faithful ways of expressing and living the gospel which don't simply critique masculinity but offer an aspirational model of it. It's tempting to define at this stage what that masculinity is, and then to look for affirmation of those qualities in Scripture. We should probably start further back, however, and trust that Scripture and therefore God will reveal to us what we need, not assume we know what we need and look to God to supply it.

Two small metaphors for theology and some pastoral implications ...

Doctrine is not a cathedral, but rather a mud hut built on solid foundations.

Theology is notes, made in the margin of Scripture.

Paradoxically as it may seem, ministry is not about constructing a coherent belief system from sacred texts and presenting it to a congregation or the world. Instead, ministry is always firstly about divine action, in the past and in the present. We have our role, and it is important, but it is God who reveals himself. Our role is to correct ourselves and each other by pointing each other back to the source of grace.