Author: Will

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This is one of those “an oldy but a goody” books.  It’s by Michael Green and was first published in 1987.

I had a reason for reading it.  It was one of those awesome moments of messy missiology when gospel realities and ecclesiastical niceties don’t quite line up:  My Bishop was leading a reaffirmation of baptism service for two refugees from a local immigration detention centre.  And I was tasked with considering the liturgy, talking with the two men, unpacking what they meant by the ceremony, what we meant, what was meant to be meant etc. etc.

It reminded me of a number of occasions doing ministry at Somerset where people would join the church.  Some were baptised as infants, some as adults, some as both, some not at all.  How do we bring cohesion and coherency to all this without losing hold on the real meaning of baptism, its significance and value, and ultimately its contribution to the worship of our lives?

This book by Michael Green helps us wade through this sort of quagmire.

While Green clearly holds a paedobaptist (infant baptism) position, the framework of the book interacts with three streams of churchmanship – the Catholic, the Protestant and the Charismatic.

The bulk of the book interacts between the Protestant and Catholic which, if you know the history of the debate, is understandable.  I want recap it here, but the particularly insightful contributions that I came across included the best exposition yet of a correlation between circumcision and baptism as a covenantal sign (p25) and chapters five and six which give an excellent defense and apology for the validity and value of infant baptism.

Green does not ignore the need for constant reform, however.  Errors have been made on every side.  This is where the practical usefulness of the book is apparent.  We are given some key guiding principles (e.g. no liturgy can create reality p95, baptism is a witness to grace, not faith p114).  We are also given some help in applying these principles in the messy world of reality.   The consideration of baptism reaffirmation spoke to my immediate need.

This is a short, sharp book which gives a thorough overview with the occasional gem that explores some depths.  An excellent introduction to the subject and absolute must for those who truly want to genuinely wish to engage and understand his side of this particular debate.

Posted on Posted in Politics, Australian Politics, Book Reviews 2 Comments

I’ve been looking forward to reading former Federal Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner’s Sideshow.  Tanner always came across as a thoughtful politician when he was in public office – it was clear his book was going to be no Lathemesque tell-all whinge but a critique of our governance in our society from a unique perspective.

But it isn’t a groundbreaking revelation of the whys and woes of Australian politics.  Tanner gives a thorough commentary – particular with regard to the events surrounding the 2010 federal election – but often he is simply shedding light on the bleeding obvious: our politics has become driven by spin, show-horses get more power than work-horses, and ideas and thoughtful governance are being forced to give way to the charade of “look like you’re doing something and don’t offend anyone important” (crf. p15).

Much of this book explores the codependent interplay between journalists and politicians.  “Calm makes for terrible telly” – Tanner quotes Michael Roux on page 58 – and so politicians are forced to create drama and manhandle debate into narratives that excite but don’t invite a consideration of social value.

There was a modicum of challenge for me: I was one of those who bemoaned the “Kath & Kim” nature of the last Federal election campaign which seemed ruled by focus groups made up of the disengaged.  My opinion firmed up – let’s get rid of compulsory voting – let the engaged people vote, and the disengaged exercise their abstention by default.  Tanner himself muses on the possibility (p208).  The challenge is in the recognition that I am, perhaps, one of the “cultural elites” with “waning power… to enforce notions of respectability and community values across our society.” (p180).  I hope not.   I long not for enforcement but for engagement, yet we are caught in a spinning spiral of cynicism and childish, formulaic, leadership-by-the-numbers.

The book is a good read.  It will continue to form some of the political engagement I have the opportunity to participate in these days.   My one frustration was that Tanner does not leave us with a solution.  I think perhaps it will take a crisis and a miracle to restore our national political integrity, let us pray they go together.

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Over the weekend I get hit with 1000+ spam through the Q&A inputs on this blog.

This means, unfortunately, that I have had to implement the inconvenience of including a captcha input to prove the input is from a human.

It also means that if you have posted a question in the last four days I will not receive it as all new Q&A submissions for that period are being deleted.

Thanks,

W.

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St Paul’s Vestry asks: When there are more rabbits beneath the church than believers attending, is it time to fold-up?

Hi Vestry,

I don’t know, there can sometimes be a lot of rabbits beneath the church – 10’s, 100’s! 🙂

You question goes to viability and numbers, but also goes to the essence of ‘what is church’ – what exactly would be “folded up”?

1) Essence of church – without wanting to put in a big ecclesiological treatise, let us say that a church is a local community of the people of God through which the Spirit is at work in the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

2) Numerical viability.  At what numerical point does this essence disappear?  Obviously you cannot have a church of one. Jesus talks about where “two or three are gathered”  (Matthew 18:20) in the context of bearing witness to the truth in confronting sin – perhaps that’s enough. Early churches, based on the synagogue model, expected 10 men to form the community – it might be myth, but I’ve heard this was the basis in early-Anglican-reformation days for only having a service of Holy Communion if 10 households signed up to receive it.  More recently viability has been financially determined – the ability to support a paid cleric who can provide the ministry of word and sacrament, or where the ministry is provided voluntarily and locally, to simply maintain the necessary organisational infrastructure.  One wonders what the correlation to the essence of church is, however – after all a lounge room doesn’t take much to maintain and it may have a lot of rabbits underneath!

So if by “folded up” you mean ceasing to meet and no longer being church – my answer would be “not necessarily”, even “no!” – particularly if there were no other churches nearby.  If by “folded up” you mean something like “change the way in which the ministry is organised” or “sell the building” – my answer would be “probably” – but you wouldn’t really be folding up, you would simply be changing the form in which the essence of the church is held.

Of course, if a group meets in the name of Christ only but is not essentially the church then it should either get serious or pack up and go home, irrespective of size or the local rabbit population.

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I’ve been known to say that (give or take the incarnation) the perfect man would be a cross between Bear Grylls and (ABC election analyst) Antony Green – perfect wildness, perfect geekiness.  (I’ve since suggested that a seasoning of Jamie Oliver to the mix would improve even that perfection).  Needless to say, I’m a big Man vs Wild fan, a show that resonates with the teenager in me that tramped through some interesting parts (both on-track and off-track) of the Tasmanian Wilderness.  And the inner five year old that likes mud, guts and all things gross.

Which means I responded to the gift of Bear’s autobiography with something of a girlish giggle.  And now I’ve got round to reading it.  Very quickly.  Because it’s hard to put down.  It’s written in short sharp chapters that have much the same pace as MvW  tracing his survival journey through school, SAS training, and climbing Everest, with some reflective commentary on his more recent life at the end.

There were some surprises. I hadn’t known Bear was an Eton old boy, for instance.  I had assumed his faith was found later in life for some reason.

There were also some points of identification for me.  The sense of drive built upon a complex childhood.  The awkwardness with girls.  The consuming danger of “never doing anything else of value with my life” (Page 372).  The faith, built on an unashamed childlikeness of “Please, God, comfort me” (Page 93) resonates with my own, as well as the pattern of calling going through birth, death and resurrection (Page 181).

Bear admits he had to learn the art of story telling.  He seems to have mastered it.  The realism is such that I know that I do not ever want to offer for the SAS, or climb Mt. Everest – yet I am now more motivated to seize hold of the purposes, plans and challenges that God has put before me.  It has ignited a fire for further faithfulness and has provided pressure away from cruising through life.

I must admit to some jealousy.  Half way through I found myself thinking “lucky bastard” in my head – to have had the opportunity to live life on the exciting edge must have required some good fortune that passes others (myself?) by.  But then I realised something:  Bear gives the date of his arrival at the SAS barrack gates, March 23 1994.  It was the same date that my wife and I started “going out.”  Since that date the adventure I have had, with stimulating wife and precious children, and the shared joys and fire of ministry and sickness and the evil black dog and all those other adversities is a true (ongoing) adventure.  I’m just as much a lucky (grace-receiving) bastard as him, and given the tenor of the final family-man chapters of his book  I think he would agree with me.

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Within the first few weeks of my moving to Hobart I happened to find myself at a book launch that someone had pointed out to me in the local newspaper.  The event involved a local author writing on religious issues, and it also involved wine and a professor of philosophy at the nearby university. It intrigued me enough to go.  The speech by the author, Douglas Lockhart, exhorted the church to redefine itself and its doctrine to be more reasonable, and intrigued me enough to buy the ebook.

There is a companion volume of philosophical theory and The Mar Saba Codex was consequently touted as being fast-paced, suspenseful, with interesting characters in interesting places.  Although I wasn’t expecting anything Dan Brown-esque I was hoping to find something with some grip and engagement.  I was a little disappointed.  The characters are monochrome, the plot somewhat-stagnant, and the eventual suspense anticlimactic.  I realised I was reading what could only be called a “narrative philosophy” – a sequence of dialogues loosely tied together around a mythical motif that attempts to espouse the benefits of a form of humanism that feels it necessary to demand the second mile from the Christian church and the borrowed guise of the Christian cloak.  I feel no need to read the companion volume.

The narrative is wrapped around the finding of a letter written by an early bishop called Theophilus.  The letter affirms an understanding of Jesus that underplays (eliminates?) the divine, eschews trinitarian theology, and embraces a somewhat-non-theistic somewhat-Jewish human messianicism.  As we are introduced to the main characters – in particular Jack Duggan, a former priest-in-training, ongoing ancient-text expert and now disgruntled journalist – this letter is set up as a touchstone against dogmatism, absolutism, and revelatory epistemology – as if the divinity of Christ somehow is the cornerstone for all that is wrong with the Christian religion.

For instance,

“I gave up believing in belief a long time ago.” Duggan was faintly dismissive, “It’s about power and very little else…”

“Choice is by definition heresy,” said Mayle, reminding Duggan of an ancient truth, “You can’t have choice if truth is a fixed entity. You either believe, or you do not believe.”

In Paul’s hands, the term ‘Christos’ has been used to create a God-man, a theologically inflated figure that even in Theodore’s day, had generated bitter conflict for Christians and pagans alike.

In the Nazoraen view, which was the Aposotolic view, Jesus had not been the Second Person in a divine trinity… Only later… has this act of believing in Jesus been transformed by St. Paul into the magical rite of salvation through faith alone.

I did begin to wonder if Lockhart was going to simply use the characters’ voices to tear down.  It is one thing to fight against an edifice – but is it from a substantive philosophy that can build in its place?  There are hints at the beginning that become explicit at the end – a subjective, experiential, humanism is Lockhart’s answer

“Faith is more than knowing doctrine and Church teachign ; it is discovering God in experience and allowing experience to inform conscience.”

“The ‘I Am’ of your being is not in place. ‘Recognize what is before your eyes, and what is hidden will be revealed to you.’ That’s a quote from the Gospel of Thomas. The person who wrote those words was wide awake…. It’s the Christianity behind the Christianity.  It’s what’s been lost to doctrinalized Christianity for centuries.”

And all this is well and good, I guess.  Lockhart is a decent writer and a stimulating intellect.  I could enjoy engaging with his ideas in their own right.  But why this task of whiteanting them into Christian spirituality – a spirituality that he doesn’t seem to grasp?  He sees no positive in engaging with the bible as revelation, the sense of dependence on God is assumed to be stultifying and imprisoning, not releasing and freeing as so many have found it to be.

In the midst of all the voices – which I take to be Lockhart’s own because they all sound so similar – the crux of the issue, becomes the point.

“God had never at any time worked miracles to make up for human deficiency.”

Lockhart’s philosophy, then, like all humanism, is a gospel only to the elite, the intellectually rigorous (for some definition of that) – the well able, the unbroken, the self-actualised – the non-deficient.  In reality, the outcome of such a framework is the fruit of selfish selves.  We do have a human deficiency, without God working miracles, there is no answer from humanism in the real world.

Perhaps this is why I found the story ultimately unreal.  From the depiction of an Anglican Archbishop of Sydney – the sort of character I know quite well in my real world – that is simply strange, to a plotline involving an AWOL pope that requires a shark to be jumped.  Maybe it was just because all the typos continously broke down the fourth wall.

But it was a good stimulation.  It caused thoughtfulness on my part.  It  demonstrates an expertise and an academic studiousness that I do not and can not match.  At the book launch Douglas Lockhart offered me a conversation over a glass of wine, or a decent whiskey.  Perhaps I’ll go find him and take up the offer.

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Bright spark! asks: Is it now possible to be an electronic Christian via all the technology?

What’s an electronic Christian?  I assume you don’t mean robotics (‘Pastor Data’) so I take it referring to the use of technology in the necessary exercise of the Christian faith.

To which the answer is yes.  But then, at that level it’s possible for someone to be a penpal Christian, a sign-language Christian or even a liturgically-dancing one.

But to focus on technology.  Christianity is a communicative faith – it involves proclamation, and the bringing of good news.  Over the centuries Christian mission has promoted and embraced new technologies.  The early church leadership made use of letters and constructed networks for passing messages around different congregations.  Church proclamation helped standardise languages – Latin and Greek in earlier times, German and English in later times.  The earliest use of the printing press was to print Bibles, and later, tracts and magazines etc.

The electronic communication media is no different except perhaps in the sense that the Christian mission as received rather than innovated the technology – there are many examples of Radio, TV, VHS/DVD mail orders, Web sites, Social Media all being used for Christian purposes even if they were not developed for them.

So yes, you can be an “electronic Christian” but this is not a revolutionary thing, in fact its quite an old idea.

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Big Bad Wolf asks: What is the practical role of recent retired people in the church? Stacking chairs and serving cups of tea?

Hi Wolf,

Is their some personal hurt behind your question?  I would understand if there was because I have come across churches where the retired/older people are relegated to (what might sometimes be considered to be) menial or trivial tasks, and this is hurtful.  So there might be a question behind your question.

But to interact with your question as it stands…

A church, like any organised community, takes a lot of energy to run.  If people are to be blessed, particularly newcomers, then there is a necessary reliance on people putting their hand up to serve the community in many various ways.  This includes stacking chairs and serving cups of tea!

So, there is no reason why a recently retired person should be excluded from acts of service, if they are willing and able.  I have come across many recently retired people who have delighted to serve the church in such a way, and have valued the fact that they can carry some of that load while they have the energy and the freedom from caring from children etc. that may not be afforded to others.  Let us not denigrate the necessity, importance, and value of those so-called menial tasks of service and those that volunteer for them.  As someone who has reached the end of service to be faced with 100 chairs to pack up, having someone say, “Will, I’ll do that” is such a relief and a blessing, truly soothing.  I value it greatly.

But perhaps your question implies an “only” – is that the “only” role for the recently retired?  Absolutely not!  Each member of the body is gifted according to the Spirit one to another so as to build the people of God and further the gospel.  The task of the church is to encourage everyone, regardless of their age, towards ongoing maturity and the wise application of their gifts and talents.

However, if there is one direction that I would, generally speaking, encourage the “recently retired” to particularly explore, it is the task of mentoring.  The age group you refer to have a particular wealth of experience and knowledge to gift the church with.  If they can be involved in some way, large or small with the ongoing task of identifying, apprenticing, releasing and commisioning newer leaders they will have blessed God’s people and produced much fruit for his glory in that way, and it may be a useful framework for their direct hands-on ministry.

Thanks for the question,

W.

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Anonymous asks:

G’day Will,

I was raised to believe that hell was a place of eternal torment.

I always had trouble accepting this teaching, as it seemed contrary to God’s character and that it seemed to be playing a role in turning people away from God……. “If God could be so mean and nasty as to painfully torture people in hell for eternity, then I don’t want anything to do with God”….. Perhaps you may have heard someone even speak these very words.
Strangely, I believe the bible does not teach this at all (eternal torment – eternal life in hell)

Eternal life is a gift, by the grace of God, to those whom give their hearts to Jesus. The alternative is to “perish”. The Lord shall “burn them up” to become “ashes”, leaving them “neither root nor branch”.

They “shall go away into everlasting punishment” and this punishment is to be eternally cut off from God, by death.

Jesus makes it ever so clear;
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

Interestingly, it was the devil who was first to suggest that sinners would not die (Genesis 3:4). A hell where sinners never perish would prove the devil right.

Question: Can you please share some of your thoughts about this subject? What is it that you believe?

Thanks

Hi Anonymous,

I thought I had blogged about this topic before but I can’t seem to find it.  If I do I’ll update this post with the link.

The view you are describing is a form of annihilationism with which I have some sympathy.  In this view the hope of the gospel for salvation is towards eternal life forever in the peace and presence of God.  But the question remains as to what happens to those who do not come to faith but choose to remain in their rebellion.  Some say that all people will eventually come to faith (universalism, something I disagree with), or that those who do not trust in Jesus remain eternally in the power of their sin (the “traditional” eternal damnation viewpoint), or, as you espouse, that those who are not in Christ do no attain to the “eternal” as well as the “life” of “eternal life.”

There are some variations in the position – as to when the “ceasing to be” might happen – depending on the nuances of one’s eschatology – e.g. does it take place at death, before a millennium, after a millennium etc.  My view is that for annihilationism to have any biblical justification it must be taken to be in effect post-judgement.

For me it is not a first order black-and-white issue.  There are complexities around what the Bible means at various places by “death”, “second death”, “perishing”, “punishment” etc.  Sometimes death is clearly relational only, sometimes it may be ontological.  Some stories (such as Lazarus and the Rich Man) presuppose an ongoing existence, but possibly only during an intermediate time before the final judgement.

My response is:

1) To firstly assert the clear positive, the hope of the gospel is eternal life in and with Jesus Christ our Lord in the glory of God our Father.  1 Corinthians 15 makes the immortality of resurrection life very clear.

2) Turning to the back of the book, Revelation 19 and 20 refers to the imagery of a “lake of fire that burns with sulfur” (19:20). This lake of fire is interacted with as follows:

  1. 19:20-21 The beast and the false prophet are “thrown alive” into the lake – yet the rest (kings of the earth) were simply killed.
  2. 20:9-10 The devil is thrown into the lake, but those who are with him (nations gathered for battle) are “consumed” by fire from heaven.
  3. 20:10 The torment of the devil, beast and false prophet is clearly “day and night forever and ever”
  4. 20:14 Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire.
  5. 20:14 The lake of fire is described as “the second death”
  6. 20:15 “Anyone whose name is not written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
The doom for Satan, beast and false prophet is clearly eternal, unceasing torment.  That is undeniable.  However, torment language is not used when we get to Death and Hades and those that are in them (and not in the book of life) – here the fire is described simply as the “second death.”
Matthew 25:41 refers to an “eternal fire” but it is specifically referenced as that which is “prepared for the devil and his angels” (thus matching Revelation).  The question remains open as to whether the judged join the devil and angels eternally or are consumed by the fire that is also used to torment the devil and his angels.
Mark 9:48 picks up on Isaiah 66:24 however, and references “hell” – where “the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.” I take this as a reference to the unquenchable nature of the fire and the decay (represented by the worm) – in other words, it represents something that can not be overcome.
Taking all this – if there is any eternal conscious torment, it is restricted to the demonic host.  There is also eternal judgement on all people – no one escapes – but it is quite defendable biblically that this eternal judgement can take the form of annihilation or of being consumed, experiencing a “second death” etc.

Hope this helps,

W.

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