Yet, if mission is the Christian community enlisting in God's revolutionary acting in the world, it first becomes necessary to identify where God is acting. This, to quote Pachuau, is missio dei's "most serious drawback," for it leads itself to projection, becoming more a gauge of the values of those identifying God's actions in history.

John G. Flett, The Witness of God, p. 53

Kingdom Justice

There is a fairly common line of thought that Christians should be involved in 'social action', concerned for issues of justice for and wide. The need for a theological justification of this is rarely felt these days and when it is, it tends to be generally rather tiresomely produced by references to Amos and appeal to the 'goodness' of creation reaffirmed by the bodily resurrection of Christ.

Ho hum.

There seems to be something missing. Isn't there something fundamentally world-denying in Christ's kingdom teaching and actions? I couldn't dispute for a moment that Christ brought the good news to the downtrodden and powerless, but did he not equally deny his mother and brothers? And, to get to the meat of the matter, did he not instruct his disciples to take up their crosses, to lose their lives for the sake of the Gospel and, further, is that not precisely what he did himself?

So, here's my contention. Hear me through to the end. The Church is not called to bring justice to the world. Instead, or perhaps more precisely, the Church is called to give up all claim on this world in worshipful obedience to Christ and in order to love the world. In so doing, the Church is to call the world in its turn to give up its claim on this world in worshipful obedience to Christ and in acts of love for others.

In other words, I suppose this is an appeal for ethics to be considered as part discipleship in Christ.

The Parish System - Close, But No Cigar

I think there is a lot to be learnt from Milbank's criticism of fresh expressions for giving up on society and community and its relationship to God. But, not having read the new book - only Milbank's article from 2008 in Studies in Christian Ethics - my guess is that it doesn't go far enough for me.

Community and society does matter, and for that very reason the parish system presents a problem.

Society is socio-economically divided. Not a profoundly original comment, but when was the last time I found the church recognising this and working against it. Redistribution of parish share is just guilt money! Schools? Yep, ok. More guilt money and evidently ineffective on any significant level.

Up and down the country, parishes are divided along these lines. Even if we set aside the problem of evangelical gathered congregations, full of the like-minded middle-class, the parish system on its own simply christens social division. Rich people live, by and large, in prosperous areas. Poor people live in the housing they can afford. Some parishes do cross boundaries. Many do not.

What would it take for comparatively rich educative Christians to live with and contribute to the community of poorer neighbourhoods?

Perhaps you could say that the parish system isn't broken, but society is. As things stand though, it is too small a unit to effectively combat this.

What would it take for Christians to recognise this and for individuals and families to play their part in turning this upside down?

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.