51ka0d0GNNLI am continuing with my chapter-by-chapter, essay-by-essay review of Good Disagreement?  Previously:

N. T. Wright. Big fan.  I’ve been exploring the depths of his perspective for some time now.  In this contribution to Good Disagreement? he not only delivers his insights into the broader framework for conflict, he actually applies it to the issues at hand.  Are sexual ethics a matter for indifference in the church?  Wright’s answer is a resounding “no”.

Wright identifies a “double stress” in the current problems: an apparent tension between “unity” and “holiness.”  For Wright this is only an appearance because “properly understood, they do not form a paradox, pulling in opposite directions… they actually reinforce one another.” (p67).  I suspect those who would differ from him on sexual ethics would also resolve the tension; but for a different understanding of ‘holiness.’  The tension exists when there is need to agree to disagree.

For matters of adiaphora, (so-called “things indifferent), this tension is resolvable in charity – significant charity!  Speaking of Paul’s appeal at the end of Romans, Wright offers:

He does not here ask the different groups to give up their practices; merely not to judge one another where differences exist.  As Paul well knew (though we sometimes forget), this is actually just as large a step, if not larger, than a change in practice itself.  …That is, of course, why the apparently innocuous “live and let live” proposals for reform are the real crunch, as most reforming groups know well. (pp76-77)

I love this summation of how the tensions of adiaphora are to be handled:  “Messiah-people will make demands on one another’s charity; they must not make demands on one another’s conscience.” (p77).  And similarly:

…the subtle rule of adiaphora is about as different from a modern doctrine of “tolerance” as can be imagined. “Tolerance” is not simply a low-grade version of “love”; in some senses, it is its opposite, as “tolerance” can imply a distancing, a wave from the other side of the street, rather than the rich embrace of “the sibling for whom the Messiah died. (p81)

I think I was saying something similar earlier about the danger of mere “conversation” being the stuff of theological strangers.

For issues that are not indifferent, the “live and let live” tension is simply not tenable. They are matters which define and undergird the unity, rather than those which are worked out in the charity of unity.  On such matters the difference is not simply a tension, it is a chasm.

To discern, therefore, the scope of what is adiaphora we must come to where Wright begins, to his understanding of Paul’s “vision for the church.”  Here we have straight-down-the-line New Perspectives ecclesiology.  In fact, for those getting into the New Perspectives, this chapter is not a bad introduction.  The detail does not need rehearsing here and he is explicit about his conclusions:

Certain things are indifferent because…

The divine intervention, as Paul saw it, unveiled in the messianic events concerning Jesus, was to create a single worldwide family; and therefore any practices that functioned as symbols dividing different ethnic groups could not be maintained as absolutes within this single family. (p70)

Certain things are not indifferent because…

This divine intervention…. was that this single family would… embody, represent, and carry forward the plan of “new creation”, the plan which had been the intention for Israel from the beginning; and that therefore any practices that belonged to the dehumanizing, anti-creation world of sin and death could likewise not be maintained within this new-creation family. (p70)

And this is where Wright picks his side.

Now, others would use these categories on their side.  For some, I’m sure, the church’s traditional view of homosexuality is “dehumanizing” and therefore the correction of that through the blessing of same-sex relationships etc. is a matter of necessity, and is not adiaphora.  Despite the protestations of some (I think particularly of Loveday Alexander’s declared intentions that I heard recently) it is clear that the current disagreements are much more than letting some getting on with what they want to do; it’s each side seeing the gospel denied in the other.  I cannot see how, if “live and let live” is the outcome of the shared conversations, we will have done much more than prove the insipidity of the identity we have left in common.

Wright’s basis for his position enters right into that ecclesial identity, and the call on the church to embody both new covenant and new creation:

In terms of creation and new creation, the new creation retrieves and fulfils the intention for the original creation, in which the coming together of heaven and earth is reflected in the coming together of male and female.  This vision of the original creative purpose was retained by Israel, the covenant people, the “bride” of YHWH, and the strong sexual ethic which resulted formed a noticeable mark of distinction between the Jewish people and the wider world. (p71)

Paul insists that the markers which distinguish Jew from Gentile are no longer relevant in the new, messianic dispensation; but the Jewish-style worship of the One God, and the human male/female life which reflects that creational monotheism, is radically reinforced. (p72)

The line he draws around the adiaphora clearly rebuts the tired argument by which critics of the church’s position play the “why aren’t you obeying the whole law?” card.

The differentiation he introduces has nothing to do with deciding that some parts of the Torah are good and to be retained (sexual ethics) and other parts are bad and to be abolished (food laws, circumcision and so on). That is not the point… Some parts of Torah – the parts which kept Israel separate from the Gentile world until the coming of the Messiah – have done their work and are now put to one side, not because they were bad but because they were good and have done their work. Other parts of Torah – the parts which pointed to the divine intention to renew the whole creation through Israel – are celebrated as being now at last within reach through Jesus and the Spirit.  The old has passed away; all things have become new – and the “new” includes the triumphant and celebratory recovery of the original created intention, not least for male and female in marriage. (p74)

There can be no good disagreement if the scope of adiaphora cannot be agreed to.  It is the very playing field upon which the charitable and constructive tussle of church life can occur.  Wright has provided, here, a thorough and thoughtful determination of the shape of that playing field; but the very same things have also determined which side he is playing on.  Those who “play on the other side” must also justify a field of play that is coherent with their position. The danger of course is that the conversation is then cross-purposed: to extend the metaphor to breaking point, one side turns up to play football on a football field, and the other turns up with rugby kit across town; by what rules do the two engage?

Or, with more precision, the ongoing problem is outlined by these concluded remarks from Wright.  It’s a problem to which he offers no solution:

We of course, live in a world where, in the aftermath of the Enlightenment’s watering down of Reformation theology, many have reduced the faith to a set of abstract doctrines and a list of detached and apparently arbitrary rules, which “conservatives” then insist upon and “radicals” try to bend or merely ignore.  It is this framework itself which we have got wrong, resulting in dialogues of the deaf, or worse, the lobbing of angry verbal hand grenades over walls of incomprehension. (p82)

Next: Part 6: Good Disagreement and the Reformation by Ashley Null

51ka0d0GNNLI am continuing with my chapter-by-chapter, essay-by-essay review of Good Disagreement?  Previously:

It is simply a matter of honest observation that there is currently division in the church.  If there wasn’t then there would be no need for shared conversations and the like.  The question (I hesitate to call it an “open question” as there are clearly many for whom it is answered and closed) is as to the sort of division it is.  It’s a question that creates a predicament: in answering it we don’t find the way forward before we find out the harder reality of who we are, right now, in the present.

Michael Thompson, vice-principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, makes his contribution to Good Disagreement? by surveying the sorts of divisions that are described in the New Testament, and the disciplinary responses that they engender.  It is a good and helpful analysis which raises the right thoughts and espouses the correct attitudes.  But Thompson doesn’t, as I’m discovering is the way of this book, take us as far as applying these things to the current perturbations.

In simplistic terms, there are two sorts of division: inevitable and schismatic (to use my own terms).  Thompson picks up on the same point as Ian Paul that sometimes the “the gospel brings division” (p43):

…there is no indication that Jesus sought deliberately to divide his hearers; it was the inevitable result of a message which some joyfully accepted but others rejected or simply did not understand. (p44)

This gospel-based division, if you like, falls within the semantic range of the original word, schism.  But we have come to use the term schismatic in a narrower sense, in which the unity of the church is attacked or damaged by things such as false teaching and the failure to discipline immorality.

The point of application that is left for us is to consider is whether the current division(s) are of one sort or the other.  Neither option is particularly pleasant.

It may be that we are simply encountering the inevitable division that comes from the preaching of the gospel: the gospel as it is conceived by one side, is neither received nor understood by the other.  It is tempting to draw this conclusion; the depths of difference appear to run very deep, and are not simply isolated to one point of doctrine, but extend across the core of the worldviews in question.

If this is indeed what we are facing then the way forward is clear: good disagreement is not about discipline, but about persuasion, evangelism, and proclamation.  Indeed, we might say, that it is about “shared conversation.”  This is because this is not the division of brothers and sisters, it is the division that exists when one group has not and refuses to “buy in” to the other.  Good conversation is what theological strangers do.

So perhaps the other option applies: we are actually dealing with schismatic division.  This is also a tempting conclusion to draw.  Either side can readily think of the other as effectively heretical: that they are preaching a gospel that is, even if they are too polite to say it, from their perspective, false.  Thompson’s survey thoroughly shows how schismatic division in the New Testament coheres with false teaching and false teachers, fellow Christians who deny the gospel.

On this point I initially thought that Thompson had shown his colours, at least implicitly, as he applies Pauline rebuke to “…those who innovate at the expense of church unity, with a claim of being “prophetic”, and to those who lead others away from the church in response to such innovations.” (p46, emphasis mine).  But then I realised that even the progressive sides of this debate are seeking to claim historical ground, and accuse the traditionalists of the innovation.  Consider the recent interview with Ian Paul and Jeremy Pemburton (link) which, beyond the immediate considerations of an employment tribunal, has the progressive interlocutor appealing to one of the Thirty-Nine Articles.  Thompson’s consideration applies symmetrically.

If the response to the inevitable division of the gospel is persuasion; then the response to schismatic division is discipline.  Thompson’s consideration of church discipline is the most helpful part of his contribution.   Discipline is deliberate, and it can result in separation and exclusion; but it’s heart and motivation is restoration and re-unification.  It’s what you do when you have “bought into” the welfare of the other.  It’s a family mode of operation that appeals at beginning, middle, and end to the head of the family, which is Christ.  Thompson’s conclusion sums it up:

Biblical discipline is not punitive, but excludes in order to protect and aims to restore.  The practice of gracious and effective discipline of this kind, in the spirit in which Jesus called for it, is not often seen in the church today.  The risk of acting in anger rather than with love is great.  Equally dangerous, however, is to allow spiritual cancer to spread instead of confronting a threat to the entire community. (p60)

Thompson’s essay is the first in this book to make me seriously cogitate on the fundamental wisdom of the shared conversations process.  Does conversation, rather than discipline, connote that we are already such strangers to one another that we must interact as such?  Is this logic our reality? :- The deeper the division, the more the road ahead looks like conversation and not discipline.  But the more it looks like conversation, the less we are actually invested in each other.

Mind you, it has also made me cogitate about some of the alternative approaches.  The conservative GAFCON Primates, for instance, want “repentance and discipline” on the table at the forthcoming meeting in January 2016.  Are they, by this, acknowledging fraternity, albeit a wounded one which requires addressing?  Similarly the litigious and disciplinary actions of TEC against churches and dioceses that are now part of ACNA presuppose by the attempt at accountability, a fraternity.  Consider how Thompson offers wisdom for determining the basis of interaction:

It is of course true that “by their fruits you shall know them”; the difficulty is when to measure the fruits.” (p52)… Within the church this means treating people with the “charitable assumption” that their profession to belong to Christ is true and encouraging them to live by it. (p52-53)

I find it hard to see “charitable assumption” being exercised on either side, yet the discipline they want presupposes a mutual belonging.  Perhaps if the Primate’s Meeting is simply a conversation then we will finally be sure of who we are to each other.

There is much more that can be gleaned from Thompson’s considerations.  His calling us to humility of Christ, and warning of “uninformed Christian zeal” (p47) is something that I should have emphasised more.  Similarly his unpacking of judgement ultimately ends in a deference to the judgement of Christ and it is worthy of a fuller exploration, by Thompson himself and by his readers.  Consider the constructive possibilities that could stem from this observation:

The seven churches in Revelation 2-3 are rebuked for serious error and called to repentance, but are not told to dissociate from each other, and Christians are not instructed to separate from them.  Rather it is Jesus Christ who will discipline… (p61)

It is insightful that he concludes with Romans 12: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”

Next: Part 5: Pastoral Theology for Perplexing Topics: Paul and Adiaphora by Tom Wright

51ka0d0GNNLI am continuing with my chapter-by-chapter, essay-by-essay review of Good Disagreement?  Previously:

My respect for Ian Paul as a reasonable and reasoned voice in contemporary debates has only grown since I’ve been in the UK.  I heard him speak at a recent introduction to the Shared Conversations in Oxford and was impressed by both the substance and demeanour of his presentation.

Paul’s contribution to Good Disagreement? is a chapter on reconciliation.  It is a short and simple analysis, beginning with a lexical summary of the word “reconciliation” and teasing out some principles from the Pauline epistles and the Gospels.  He helpfully summarises himself on page 38.  Here is a summary of the summary:

1) Reconciliation is primarily the work of God and is primarily between God and humanity…
2) The language of reconciliation and peacemaking is arguably of central importance in both Paul and the Gospels…
3) Reconciliation between humanity and God then flows out into reconciliation among humanity…
4) It is therefore not possible to separate reconciliation among people from their reconciliation to God; the first flows from the second…
5) Paradoxically, because the reconciled unity of humanity is always connected with God and his purposes, God’s offer of peace can actually be a cause of division…

It’s a helpful analysis.  The most helpful emphasis for me was on the centrality of God’s agency.

Disagreements and conflicts can be confusing, chaotic affairs.  They often involve a mix of negative emotions as well as reasoned arguments.  Injustices can occur on both sides.  Differences become entrenched and assumed. Wise peacemakers can do much; they can de-escalate tensions, they can clarify differences, they can ensure polite and reasonable modes of engagement.  But true reconciliation, true restoration of unity, rests on the work of the Holy Spirit changing hearts and building his people.  Reconciliation is not simply a godly idea (although it is that), and it not simply a mode of obedience (although it is that), it is first and foremost divine action.

This thought gives us a fundamental mode for good disagreement: seek God.  It is only by his power that we will be reconciled to meaningful unity.  It’s a thought that might also highlight a danger with the current shared conversations: that the focus might come off of God, and onto ourselves and one another.  The danger of meeting together without common focus is that all we do is simply meet one another’s brokenness and hard-hearts.  The task is not simply to come together for it’s own sake; the task is that, together, we seek out God.

Because reconciliation is something that God effects (rather than being simply a desirable state of affairs) and because reconciliation between people cannot be separated from reconciliation to God, then the will of God has to be central to the task of reconciliation between parties who are in conflict. (p39)

The concern then, of course, is that we may have different ways of seeking God, perhaps even mutually exclusive ways.  If that’s the case (and it is certainly the observation of some1) then at least the disagreement has been brought to its fundamental question.  As one of the reflective questions at the end of this chapter states, “to what extent can we be reconciled with others without a common understanding of the gospel?” (p41).

It’s a telling question which raises another of Ian Paul’s emphases about the reconciling work of God: that it sometimes results in division “between those who accept God’s agenda of reconciliation, and those who reject it, either in relation to its terms or in relation to its goal” (p38).  The parable of the prodigal son is used to illustrate this point on page 36, and we could ask the question: what do you do when each side, on the other’s terms, are in “older brother” mode, rejecting the grace (as it is conceived) of God?  It is hard to reconcile.  It seems impossible that the older and younger brother are able to seek the Father together.  It would take a miracle.  It needs divine intervention, and that is the point.

But there is one final corollary of the primacy of God’s action in reconciliation and that is this: assurance.  Even if the disagreements, at their depths, end up with no common way of seeking out God, we are not unfamiliar with it.  We experience it every time we bear witness to Christ to our neighbours, when we speak of the message of reconciliation that has been committed to us (2 Cor 5:19).  We cannot change the heart.  We cannot ensure that our persuasion (2 Cor 5:11) is effective.  Indeed, we may be considered to be out of our mind (2 Cor 5:13): “I don’t need to be reconciled to God, there’s nothing wrong with me, why on earth would you think otherwise?”  Yet we do it.  And we do it because we trust that God indeed has the power to reach hearts, convict of sin, and bring solace, comfort, and a peace that passes all understanding.

And so the current disagreements may frustrate us, drain us, stumble us and even cripple us.  But in some sense, they should not worry us.  God is bigger than this.  And so we enter into even intractable disagreements confident not in ourselves, but in the God who reconciles.

Next: Part 4, Division and Discipline in the New Testament Church by Michael Thompson

Footnotes:

1) I am reminded of the words of Greg Venables, then Primate of the Southern Cone, who remarked after the 2009 Primate’s Meeting:  “We were all agreed. There are two very different understandings of the Christian Faith now living together, indeed at war with one another in the Anglican Communion and the situation has no long term resolution. It would take a miracle to keep it together and Dr. Rowan Williams understands that. He will try and keep it together for as long as he can under his watch.” (source)

51ka0d0GNNLI am continuing with my chapter-by-chapter, essay-by-essay review of Good Disagreement?  Previously:

In this first chapter the book’s editors, Andrew Atherstone and Andrew Goddard, outline something of the programme.  They look to the Scriptures at the (many) times disagreement occurred amongst God’s people.  They raise the question of what “good disagreement” might look like and, indeed, whether it is actually possible.

Atherstone’s and Goddard’s contribution is substantial necessary work, but contains nothing that is stunningly insightful.  As with many theological “problems” two aspects are presented in tension:

The first is the importance of defending the truth:

…gospel truth matters and is a blessing to the world, so should be defended against errors that obscure the gospel and can be seriously detrimental for people’s spiritual health.  Error is dangerous and needs to be strenuously resisted and named for what it is – a powerful force that opposes the God of truth and threatens to damage the life and mission of the church. (p5)

There is no doubt about this.  Indeed there are times when Scripture literally anathematises falsehood.  Unity and agreement is not for it’s own sake; the people of Babel were united!  So-called “mis-unity” is just as deleterious to the gospel as disunity.

The second aspect is the importance of relationship. Referring to Paul:

He is clear that there are ways of disagreeing and patterns of conflict which, although they rise among believers, have no place in the Christian community. (p6)

It’s been an adage of mine to aspire to being not only correct (propositionally) but right (relationally).  All of us who have passed through the zeal of theological formation know the mishaps of sometimes being correct but also terribly wrong.

Nevertheless, a truths-in-tension framework here is fraught; because the two sides are not independent.  In reality, you can’t balance “defending the truth” with “relating well” because if you don’t relate well you can’t defend the truth, and if you won’t defend the truth you can’t relate well.  They are subtractively connected (the absence of one reduces the other), not additively combined (the presence of one augments the other towards something new).

Which is why, on the things that matter, as Atherstone and Goddard point out, “agreeing to disagree” is not the answer.  At the end of that path both the defence of truth and the depth of relationship are reduced to nothing.  The foundations of “Good Disagreement” are therefore not relational but epistemological.  It must ask and answer, “What are the things that matter?”  With the answer to that question both the defence of the truth and right-relationship can be built, without answering that question neither can find grounding.

The crucial task is to identify those foundational truths.  If all views are embraced within the church, then it has ceased to take seriously its calling to be a witness to truth and righteousness and to have a distinct identity as the body of Christ in the world. (p9)

This epistemological necessity is woven throughout Atherstone and Goddard’s treatise, but usually only implicitly. “Controversy and disagreement in the church is not simply a curse” they say on page 13, and “It can be a blessing in disguise because it forces us to go back to the Bible with renewed diligence and prayer, to clarify the issues at stake.”  Which is to say, disagreement becomes an epistemological exercise, a return to Scripture.

Similarly, they critique the ad clerum of October 2014 in the Diocese of Oxford.  The statement from Oxford aspires to believe that those with differing views “are bearing witness to different aspects of the truth that lies in Christ alone,” and asserts that “not only is all truth God’s truth, but God’s truth is ultimately bound to be beyond our grasp because our minds are but miniscule receptors before the great and beautiful Mystery of God.”  This is clearly an epistemological statement and Atherstone and Goddard appear to have issue with it:

It argues that we should “respect” and “honour” not only the other person but also their views.  This fails to make a key distinction – that not every view held by a Christian is necessarily a legitimate Christian view: some of our opinions may be sub-Christian, or even anti-Christian, and in need of correction.  Furthermore the statement presumes that all these views bear witness in some sense to the truth found in Christ, without any reference to their content. (p18)

This chapter scopes what “good disagreement” might look like.  Atherstone and Goddard, like good facilitators, leave the question open.  But it seems to me that the trajectory of their discourse is this: that the question is not “what is the truth?” but “what is actually core and common to us?” and the manner is gracious, freedom-offering relationship.

There are two observations I would make:

Firstly, the other question inevitably involves relational wounds, irrespective of the gentleness of the parties.  On the issue of sexual ethics, for instance, we could ask “what is the Christian view on sexual identity and activity?”  Ask this question and the held-truths of one side inevitably hurt the other.  From either side, no matter how well it is phrased, or how gently it is expressed, the actual position of the other side is “you do not adequately know or appreciate the love of God, you have embraced a cognitive dissonance by which you justify a refusal to submit to His life-giving ways in Christ.”  I haven’t picked sides here – this is what either side inevitably hears from the other.

If an attempt to answer that question is what is meant by good disagreement then what we are being asked to embrace is ongoing mutual wounding, an ecclesial life of pain.  That is not necessarily a bad thing – after all it wasn’t just Westley-the-farm-boy who noted that “Life is pain” and life does not flourish in avoiding it, as the way of Christ does surely show us.

Nevertheless, the church is called not only to the birth pains, but to the new life of the covenant, in which the fractures of human brokenness are identified and resolved, not incarnated.  And so the more basic question is required, i.e. “is our belief and practice on sexual identity and activity something that must be core and common to us?”  It’s a less wounding question, but one that presupposes an existing, and entrenched, separation.

Secondly, it is telling that in many of Atherstone’s and Goddard’s examples of “agreeing to disagree” – I’m thinking particularly of their reference to Wesley and “in essentials unity, on doubtful matters freedom, in all things love” (p10) – the application of that good disagreement is not to koinonia (within the fellowship) but ecumenism (with others of a different fellowship).

It struck me that this is an implied admission that we are already talking as if this is a problem between churches (plural) rather than within the Church.  It struck me particularly as my observation of the Church of England slowly grows.  There is a sense in which the Church already operates as different churches.  For instance, in Australia, there are annual Diocesan Synods in which there is a clear ongoing expression (for better or worse) of all clergy and many laity gathered around their Bishop.  There is less of that in England.  Collegiality is expressed more through ecclesial societies and relational networks.  Episcopal leadership appears to operate in a slightly different mode – more of a “I’ll help you be who God is calling you to be” rather than “come with me, where God is leading us.”  This is observation, not value judgement!

But the point is, unlike in Australia, I can see room to conceive of the Church of England as two or three geographically intermingled ecclesial communities, that are, outside of administrative, historical, and legal realities, effectively separate in relational and theological terms.

I could be wrong.  In fact, I’m likely to be!  These are initial observations only and still very much from an “outsider’s” perspective.  But if this is the case, then honesty about this is necessary for any good disagreement.  After all, the goal of unity in diversity can only find it’s equilibrium when the diversity is given its fullest freedom, including the freedom to change name and walk apart.  Whatever the outcome of the current disagreements, which I have every hope will be done well, it must be gracious honesty and reality that ground the way forward, not well-meaning pretence.

Next: Part 3: Reconciliation in the New Testament by Ian Paul

51ka0d0GNNLI have recently obtained a copy of Good Disagreement? Grace and Truth in a Divided Church.  It is of current significance here in the Church of England as it informs and colours the contemporary debate about sexual ethics and gender identity in the Church.  The ongoing Shared Conversations process is the current internal step for resolution, and the forthcoming meeting of the Primates in January 2016 is the last-gasp step in the wider Anglican Communion, as it currently formally exists.

I have come to this book as someone with a deal of familiarity with the issues, but somewhat from afar.  I have been following the debate since the touchstone issues of 2003 in The Episcopal Church (US).  I have been involved in briefing senior figures in my former diocese with respect to the Windsor Report, Lambeth 2008, the development of the now effectively defunct Anglican Covenant, as well as the foment and formation of GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

But I am new to the Church of England and there appears to be a deal of difference here.  By my (limited and recent) observation, the rhetoric is more precise, the politics are understated, and the balance between parochial and episcopal influence is more even.  The different parties exist along the spectrum here (although the edges are fuzzier) and the ability to not encroach and to live and let live runs deep… until some of the things that are held in common are touched.  And then it matters.  Because those common things tend to be core things.

For better or for worse, sexual ethics and gender identity is core.  And so the current conflict in my mind has three different outcomes; we discern what is “really core” and resolve to move differences to the periphery and walk together; we resolve differences and either reaffirm or adjust what is core, which remains common ground; we cannot resolve our differences, which remain core, and so we agree to walk apart on different ground.  In my current mind I cannot conceive how the first of these is tenable, the second would take a miracle, and the third would be regretful.  To that end I admire Archbishop Welby’s resolve to sail through these waters nevertheless.  I am hoping that Good Disagreement? might help plot a chart.  ++Justin writes in the Foreword:

Whether each side has much or little in common with one another, whether the outcome is unanimity or separation, it seems the only way to imitate Christ in our conflicts is to invest trust, love, and time in the people from whom we are currently divided.

Could we call that grace-filled realism?  Perhaps it’s just a long way of saying “speaking the truth in love”, which cannot be ad nauseaum, and does foresee an “outcome.”

Unlike other book reviews that I provide here, I am not going to reflect after the fact.  I am going to consider this book chapter by chapter; it is after all a series of essays.  This book will be a journey for me, and I will reflect on the journey as we go. Bon voyage.

npmeI’ve read many books that seek to present a biblical view of manhood.  We are not the first era to have waning numbers of men at church.  Recent solutions for ecclesial emasculation have tended to range from exegetical insipidity to testicular ferocity.  All fall short.  Nevertheless, I was looking forward to reading this very recent contribution from Christian blogger, Nate Pyle.  Pyle also falls short, but he comes the closest I’ve seen.

This is because Pyle takes a firm Christocentric approach.  The goal of the human life is not to be more “manly” (or more “ladylike”) but to be more like Jesus.   “Jesus is calling men and women to become more wholly human” (p156).

Pyle’s approach is therefore not only well grounded but also very useful.  He can talk about the weakness, pain, vulnerability, and integrity of Jesus.  All men must encounter such things, and embrace them healthily, in order to mature as a person, and therefore as a man.  This is great stuff.  When I think of the “strong” men that I want to emulate, I think of those who find strength in weakness, embrace the pain of life and persist, who are open and vulnerable, and who have the integrity of being the same person in all circumstances.  When I counsel myself, or others, it is areas like these that need to be confronted: don’t do the bravado thing, don’t turn pain into anger, don’t run away in fear, don’t divide your life with false comfort and sin.

The book is therefore rich and applicable.  It balances the “American Christian Man” caricature which is (as I have discovered about most American caricatures) not caricature but disconcerting reality.  The MMA-loving, Promise-Keeping™, Courageous™, Man of God urging his brothers to “man up” while backdropped by ammo boxes and warplanes may work for some, but is unhelpful, at best, for many others.  At worst this caricature turns being a husband into not much more than “looking after the little lady” and links male human value with some narrow form of productivity.  Gladly, Pyle, is much more in tune with the real world.

It is unfortunate, therefore, that he couldn’t have been slightly more coherent in his pursuit.  He runs into, and doesn’t overcome, an age-old problem.  I encountered it for myself when training as a preacher.  We were encouraged to present sermons that were accessible to both men and women.  But what does that mean?  Should I use illustrations that cross the full-range of stereotypes; should I make an equal number of references to knitting compared to football? Or should I simply presume that both men and women would have the wits to understand and dissect whatever point I was trying to make in the way I was trying to make it?  99% of the time I choose the second option which doesn’t play the gender game, but ignores it, which is the point.  But Nathan Pyle has written a book about masculinity and also doesn’t want to play the game.  And this is the problem: he wants to engage the issue of manhood, but spends the whole time hovering around without landing on the heart of the issue.

On the one hand “masculinity” is for Pyle the caricature that he wants to avoid.  Therefore he is at pains to show that “nowhere does the Bible say that Jesus came to model masculinity” (p92).  On the other hand, Jesus is the model human, whom men are called to imitate, who exhibits “both feminine and masculine characteristics” (p93).  So does Jesus encapsulate masculinity or not?  Is he redefining masculinity, or is he transcending it?  Does the goal of becoming more wholly human mean denying my masculinity, or embracing my femininity, or does it mean redefining masculinity in terms of the balance?  Pyle never gets his semantics locked down.

Masculine characteristics (“Men love to be agents of change in the world” (p160)) are sometimes presumed, sometimes belittled, other times embraced by Pyle.  Sometimes they are simply dismissed as being not something that a woman couldn’t also exhibit.  Nothing he says is wrong, its just that he mixes and matches his observation, articulation, rejection and aspiration of the masculine without bringing it together.  It’s great that Jesus is our goal, but why are men like men, and what particular issues might they face in seeking their goal? It’s not enough for him to throw his hands in the air, as he does, and say “it’s complex.”  That’s not why I bought the book! I can do that myself!

Having said that, Pyle has made me think my own thoughts.  In particular he clears the ground for what might be called vector complementarianism which goes like this:  Let us not define gender in terms of characteristics (that can happen, but it’s secondary and therefore very blurry).  mfvectorsRather, if being wholly human is our goal, and if that goal is centred on Jesus Christ, then let us consider gender differences in terms of direction.  mfvectoraddIn general, men and women will grow towards Christ in different directions, like radials of a circle approaching the centre.  Men and women do not absolutely need each other in order to do this, but the propensities of one, added to (not eliminating) the propensities of the other can result in a Christward direction.  That’s something to work on.

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Gill and I are long time fans of the Australian Christian musical phenomenon that is Sons of Korah.  Headed by Matthew Jacoby, the Sons of Korah project is to set the Old Testament psalms to music.  Their philosophy is one of interpretation rather than re-interpretation; they provide a literal musical “translation” more than a paraphrase.  The lyrics are often word-for-word of an English text.  The composition makes heavy use of strings and multi-layered folk melodies to communicate not just the meaning, but the feeling, of the psalms.  They are both affective and effective.

It was a great delight, therefore, to have Matthew Jacoby’s book Deeper Places thrust into my hands by Gill after she had eagerly devoured it herself.

Here Jacoby lays out not just his philosophy for approaching the psalms, but the philosophical imprints of the spirituality that he has learned from them.  It is the essence of his doctoral studies and so this is no touchy-feely pop-psych pseudo-tract; it is a deeply applicable theological treatise.  It has fed my soul, expanded my mind, deepened my homiletics, because it has drawn me to the Word of God and the words of God’s people.

For Jacoby the psalms express an holistic spiritual journey.  The ultimate end is to instil “rightly oriented desire” (p68) in the hearers/readers/singers.  It is no accident that the “chief end of man” is quoted towards the end of the book as he explores themes of enjoyment and praise.

At the highest point of the spiritual journey portrayed by the Psalter, we find people enjoying God.  In their enjoyment of God, they become vessels of praise to God. This deeper sense of praise is precisely what is meant to “glorify.”  We can praise God in a shallower sense with words alone, but we can only glorify God by enjoying him. (p161)

But, as they say, it’s the journey that counts.  The psalms are not just about praise and glory, they are also full of query, doubt, tension, and raw lament.  It is in the consideration of these aspects that Jacoby’s commentary is of the greatest value.

Jacoby locates the beginning of the praise-bound journey not in victory but in the raw brokenness of this world.

From our perspectives, they [the psalms] express the desire to feel loved, to be affirmed and validated, to feel secure, and so forth.  This earthly spirituality, as I have called it, is also seen in the psalms in the ample expression they give to the complications of our human dysfunction.  Human dysfunction does not guide these expressions, but our dysfunction does cause a constant tension in our relationship with God that must be brought to the surface with honest communication, as it must be in any relationship.  This is what we see in the psalms. (p26)

In his definitive metaphor God is imaged as an ocean in which we are suspended.  The human dysfunction is a shell that not only insulates us from the divine, but propels us upwards to the shallows like a bobbing submarine.  In contrast, the journey of the psalms is ever deeper, and necessarily a journey of tension; the lament of human hurt mixes with the life-filled promises of God until the shell bursts and we are consumed inwardly and outwardly by God’s presence, which we therefore glorify.

“…the psalmists deliberately bring two things into tension.  They deliberately highlight the reality of their situation as it stands in tension with the reality of God and his promises.  As both realities are amplified, this very tension then becomes the seedbed for faith and hope.  Faith is conceived by the injection of the divine promise into the open wound of a heart that has allowed itself to be wounded by reality.” (p86)

I have long rejected the association of “spiritual” with “ethereal.”  To be spiritual is to go deep, into gut-level issues. And spiritual work is work that (often painfully) adjusts our foundations, or is so rooted upon our foundations that the depths of our soul is welled up and out.  Jacoby threads this notion through the Psalter, revealing it’s nature not just as a song-book but as an exercise-book for life.

Like his songs, Jacoby has taken what already exists and has brought it to life in lively language that I for one will be referencing again and again.  He has done the preacher’s task in an extraordinary way.  In the very best sense he has opened the Word of God.

 

51o3i8plmUL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Given my appreciation of David Stern’s Complete Jewish Bible translation I was looking forward to a brisk read through his diminutive Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel.  I was a little disappointed.

I was hoping for an exposition of the Gospel which tapped into the depths of it’s Jewish roots.  I wanted to be excited with soteriology and eschatology filled with the earthy historicity of God’s ancient people.  There was a little of that, but only parenthetically.

I was also hoping for insight into the common roots of Christian and Jewish spirituality.  There’s a little more of this.  Here’s an insight that’s quite helpful:

What is it that God through his Messiah, Yeshua, does for human beings? The answer: (1) He makes them conscious of what sin is, and through Yeshua the Messiah he offers forgiveness of sin… Then, if they are Gentiles and therefore do not already belong to his own special people, the People of God, (2) he makes them part of the People of God, (3) he makes them participate in the covenants, (4) he fulfills his promises, (5) he gives them hope in this difficult world, and finally, (6) he makes his very self known to them.  If they are Jews and therefore do belong to the People of God, they already have items (2) through (6) and do not need to be given them again.

But mostly this short treatise is an attempt to convince Christians that engagement with Judaism is necessary, not merely as an evangelistic strategy, but as a fundamental aspect of God’s overall plans for salvation history.  But perhaps some people need convincing of that; I don’t think I do.

So the question raised and answered by the title is merely “Yes, we should restore the Jewishness of the Gospel”, not “The Gospel is actually Jewish, here’s what that means for you.”  Not bad, but not as useful as I hoped.

IMG_20150912_132133The Diocese of Oxford is currently engaged in the Shared Conversations process about approaches to human sexuality in the Church of England.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a morning’s presentation on the issues at Christchurch Oxford.

I am posting in order to provide a link to video recordings of the presentations.

They were thoughtfully and irenically presented. There is not much I can usefully add to the prevalent commentary on this process.  I will only add my thoughts that the morning was more a good articulation of the differences and the divide than a clarification of the way forward. The initial presentation by Scot Peterson was factually useful.  Both Professor Alexander and Dr. Paul put across their points of view clearly and carefully.  I now have more understanding of both sides; it has gently reinforced my agreement with Dr. Paul.

https://vimeo.com/139928603 https://vimeo.com/140174738 https://vimeo.com/140169783

Gill and I attended the Anglican Futures Conference in Melbourne earlier this year.  A highlight for me were the lectures from Ashley Null on Cranmer.  Null taps the depths of Anglican spirituality.  The following videos are now available and I’m linking to them here for future reference if nothing else:

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