In Between Days

New Blog at St Matthew's Unichurch Website

2008-07-29T10:38:00.004+08:00

I am now blogging over at the St Matthew's Unichurch Website. The Unichurch blog will be my more regular, week-by-week blog, whereas In Between Days will be a much more irregular affair, concerned mainly with a) stuff related to my thesis and b) for saying stuff you can't say as a church pastor.

The blog at the Unichurch Website will be an extension of the teaching/learning ministry of our church. This semester, for example, we are grappling with the book of Genesis on Sunday evenings and so most posts will be related to that. Of course, it will also be a venue for addressing other pastoral and contemporary concerns as they arise in the life of our church. The blog itself can be found on the Unichurch website here.

Swearing Christians

2008-07-18T08:33:00.003+08:00

When I was growing up Christians didn't used to swear. Now many do. Does that matter? And why has there been this change? I feel like I missed the meeting at which our new policy was discussed and decided on. Anyone got the minutes?

Frankly, Mr Shankly re-launches as In Between Days

2008-07-16T15:40:00.005+08:00

I am re-launched my humble blog under a new title and with a new purpose. Now called In Between Days, this blog will be (mostly) a place to try out ideas and review books related to my thesis.

I am comparing the place of history in Karl Barth and N. T. Wright. I think it's a question worth asking(?). The intuition is that both Barth and Wright are self-consciously writing theology post-enlightenment, both see that the enlightenment's assault on biblical history and historicity raises a challenge for theology, and both respond with prolegomena that include extensive discussion of the role history plays in theology after the enlightenment.

I'll begin this new blog by finishing off some unfinished business from the old blog--namely, reviewing Hart's book The Doors of the Sea. Then on to Busch's biography of Barth and whatever comes next.

I'm thinking-out-loud in the hope that better and smarter people will provide helpful feedback as I proceed. So, if you're better and smarter than me, you're comments will be gratefully received.

I know it's over: Frankly, Mr Shankly calls it a day

2008-05-10T10:22:00.006+08:00

The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
Originally uploaded by littleredglass

"I know it's over." So said Morrissey about yet another failed relationship, and so says Rory about his blog Frankly, Mr Shankly. It's over.

It's been fun to write this blog over the past few years, and I think I will be establishing a pastor's blog for St Matthew's Unichurch in the next few months. (I'll post a link here when that happens).

"A million voices cried out at once and then were silent." Princess Leia (or was it Obi Wan?)

It's been fun. Thanks.

Rory

Western Australian Words

2008-05-08T09:53:00.003+08:00

I have to run some errands. If you wait at the Deli near the extensive flavoured milk section, I'll get my bathers on and then come by and give you a dink to my place, but. Then we can pick up the gidgey.

We had some friends over from Sydney recently and we enjoyed comparing notes on words and phrases used in WA that are not in use over east (like, for example, the phrase over east). The above is my crack at a sentence that I think would be unintelligible outside of WA. Anyone (not from WA) want to have a go at translating? Western Australians: feel free to contribute more words to a growing pool of Western Australianisms.

This is also a post to say that I have been out of action on the posting front for a few weeks. Sickness, holidays and work-stuff. Back on game next week, God willing.

Holidays

2008-04-20T07:37:00.001+08:00

The Moore River
Originally uploaded by crossey

Off for a weeks leave with some friends to Moore River, north of Perth in Western Australia. Back posting by 27 April.

Stuff White People Like

2008-04-16T19:30:00.002+08:00

Evidently like a lot of other people, I am finding this site pretty addictive. If you haven't yet discovered it, it's here. Enjoy.

Doors of the Sea # 4

2008-04-14T20:21:00.004+08:00

Dostoyevsky
Originally uploaded by litmuse

Universal Harmony Section V
For Hart Voltaire's poem doesn't get us deep enough into the heart of the problem of evil. As a child of the Enlightenment, there was for Voltaire a 'depth of reflection upon the darker mysteries of existence, and on the power of the irrational, that was forever closed to him.' (36)

So, says Hart, if you want to get the question right; if you want a subtle, tortured, haunting and unrelenting case for outrage against God in the face of suffering, you don't go to the great Enlightenment man-of-letters Voltaire, you go to the great Christian novelist Dostoyevsky. It is here, says Hart, that we find a 'treatment of innocent suffering [which possesses] a profundity of which the deist Voltaire was never even remotely capable.' (37)

Through the character of Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov the case is made. Ivan, in Hart's words, is a 'rebel' and not merely an 'unbeliever.' He accepts Christianity's hope that 'at the last all wounds will be healed, all scars will disappear' etc—in short, that 'universal harmony' will be established by God (38). It is not that Ivan disbelieve this, it is that he rebels against it.

Through Ivan Dostoyevsky invites us to consider the suffering of children. Ivan recites a litany of real-life (found by Dostoyevsky in newspapers) events: of babies torn from their mother's wombs by the bayonets of soldiers, of a peasant boy stripped naked, hunted and killed by the hounds of his master, of a little girl whose punishment for fouling her bed was to have her mouth filled with excrement and to be locked into a freezing outhouse for the evening. Ivan asks his brother Alyosha whether anything (any eschatological hope) could be worth the absurdity of that little girl's torments? He rejects anything 'that would make the suffering of children meaningful or necessary.' (41)

Ivan's argument gets Hart to where he wants to be. For Hart it is, unlike the deism of Voltaire, 'a Christian argument...because in disabusing believers of facile certitude in the justness of all things, it forces them back toward the more complicated, "subversive," and magnificent theology of the gospel...[whose] inner mystery is an empty tomb, which has shattered the heart of nature and history alike (as we understand them) and fashioned them anew.' (44) Hart concludes:

Voltaire sees only the terrible truth that the history of all suffering and death is not morally intelligible. Dostoyevsky sees—and this bespeaks both his moral genius and his irreducibly Christian view of reality—that it would be far more terrible if it were.

Super-summary: Section V in two sentences
The Enlightenment's struggle with God and suffering isn't nearly as scary as Christianity's own struggle with the issue. Voltaire shows us how the traditional theistic answer doesn't work; Christianity shows us how horrifying this world would be if it did.

Questions and Comments
- This section, which serves to frame the question Hart goes on to address, is of course crucial. Any help in grasping it will be gratefully received.
- I am only just at the beginning of reading The Brother's Karamazov so I'm obviously at a disadvantage there.
- According to Hart Ivan rejects Christianity's eschatological answer to the problem of suffering (which is to say, he rejects salvation). Hart's own response is, from memory, eschatological in character, so I assume the trick with the second half of the book is to discern where Hart and Ivan's eschatology differs. Right?

Posting

2008-04-14T08:50:00.002+08:00

Obviously, I have been struggling to get to posting in recent days. Still keen to put up the last post in the Lessons Learned in the UK series, and to keep blogging my way through Hart's brilliant book. So, just a note to regular readers (aka my Mum) to say that I should be posting again some time this week.

The Doors of the Sea # 3

2008-04-02T13:36:00.002+08:00

Erlöserkirche St. Petersburg P6040013
Originally uploaded by Andreas Helke

Universal Harmony, Section IV

In this section, Hart turns his sights away from the "village atheists" to Christian apologies he finds unsatisfying (and in some cases, repugnant).

After briefly dismissing the log-cabin crazies, Hart finds fault with two mainstream apologetic traditions: the Reformed and the Catholic. Though different from each other in content (in the examples he uses, the Calvinist explains suffering as revealing aspects of God’s glory, while the Catholic argues for the meaningfulness of suffering as a sharing with Christ in his suffering) Hart argues that they have something in common: they proceed wishing to believe that 'there is a divine plan in all the seeming randomness of nature's violence that account for every instance of suffering, privation, and loss in a sort of sum total.' (29)

Hart acknowledges that 'there is a transcendent providence that will bring God's good ends out of the darkness of history' but argues that providence is 'not simply a "total sum" or "infinite equation" that leaves nothing behind.'

For Hart, these theodicies become so comprehensive that they cease to explain anything at all. Without room for created freedom, you end up asserting nothing more than 'the world is what it is.' (29)

Hart also rejects the notion that original sin means that any suffering experienced by humanity is, strictly speaking, deserved. Despite some differences between the Eastern and Western theological traditions on the doctrine of original sin, Hart concludes that in neither tradition 'is it possible intelligibly to assert that the death of a small child is in some unambiguous sense an expression of divine justice.' (34) To argue that all suffering is deserved is, in the end, to argue for, in some sense, the non-existence of evil.

So, Hart rejects any apologetic impulse that attempts to resolve the problem of suffering 'that precludes the possibility of any absurd or pointless remainder in the order of creation...' (34-5). Then Hart preempts his own answer (if "answer" be the right word) by alluding to the New Testament language of cosmic warfare, the Chritus Victor motif and the general New Testament refusal to find any final reconciliation with death (e.g. 1 Cor 15). Hart acknowledges the New Testament teaching that even suffering and death can, in God's good providence, be turned to God's good ends. But he concludes:

...the New Testament also teaches us that, in another and ultimate sense, suffering and death—considered in themselves—have no true meaning or purpose at all; and that this is in a very real sense the most liberating and joyous wisdom that the gospel imparts.

Super Summary: Section IV in two sentences
Many Christian theodicies try to show that every instance of suffering and death is (theoretically) explicable and meaningful. But, says Hart, who wants meaningful and explicable evil? Surely we don’t want an explanation of evil, we want it to be got rid of.

Questions
- As a reformed Christian, I found this section quite challenging. Nevertheless, even in the reformed tradition, we don't understand God to have a symmetrical relationship to good and evil, right? And reformed writers like Henri Blocher (Evil and the Cross) sound similar warning bells about apologies that leave no remainder and therefore no room for a cosmic victory. So, Hart's just talking about the bad reformed guys, right? Not us nice ones.
- Is Hart's appeal to created free will substantially different from the way Arminian Protestants would use it? I just don't know enough about Eastern theology to know.

Theodicy for two

2008-03-31T20:09:00.004+08:00

Every Monday I meet up with a good friend of mine to discuss a host of issues, the biggest ticket item being Christian theodicy. In a number of places Dostoyevsky's The Brother's Karamazov has come up as a must read, so we are going to read it together. I've never read it before. Looking forward to it!

The Doors of the Sea # 2

2008-03-24T08:57:00.003+09:00

Porto - Portugal
Originally uploaded by PortoNortePortugal-Francisco

Summary: Universal Harmony, Section III

Hart's prose is so beautiful it can be tempting to quote him at length (a temptation I think I succumbed to in my last post on this topic). However, the purpose of this little series is not to extol the virtues of Hart's writing. It is to try and clarify in my own mind Hart's argument and to summarize it so that you, dear reader, can a) test my comprehension of Hart's argument and b) help me in reflecting on its value. So, a more disciplined post this time.

Hart now turns to discussing Voltaire's Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. In 1755 a massive earthquake struck the Portuguese capital. It was a Sunday morning and most people were in church. The earthquake became a benchmark for horror in the age of enlightenment, much like the 2004 Tsunami is for ours.

Voltaire's poem rails against the sort of theodicy apparently popular at the time--that this is the best of all possible worlds and that incidents of cosmic evil are part of a system of universal law "...that have been set in place to assure the greatest possible good for creatures and are therefore, necessarily, binding even upon God." (17)

Voltaire heaps scorn on this view. Hart says he "invites all philosophers who say that 'all is well' to come and contemplate the wrack and ruin of Lisbon."(18) By what calculus is horror like this a cosmic necessity? If it is God's vengeance, what of the 'infants crushed and bleeding on their mother's breasts?" (Voltaire, quoted by Hart, 19). Hart concludes that 'either response, in the face of such suffering, is manifestly repellent." (19)

So, Voltaire ridicules a view worthy of ridicule. But, says Hart, he ridicules a view (or a god) 'not directly concerned with the God of Christian Doctrine'.

That is, this view (the 'best of all possible worlds view") concerns a god who governs a world that is exactly as he intended it to be. But the Christian God governs a world which is not as he intends it to be.

And so Voltaire buries a god for whom Christians need not mourn. But does that end the tension? No. For Hart, even though the object of Voltaire's rage is not our God, he is non-the-less a faint and distorted echo of our God. The atheist who argues against God on the basis of worldly suffering argues from moral expectations of God 'shaped at the deepest level by the language of Christian faith.'

For Hart, though their arguments may 'fail strictly at the level of logic', and though they 'may not demonstrate a keen understanding of the Christian tradition', they still grasp toward the Christian God because they demand of God something like what Christian doctrine claims of him--utter moral goodness.

Super Summary: Section III in two sentences
- Figures like Voltaire ridicule a god who is not the Christian God because the Christian God governs a fallen world, not the 'best of all possible worlds'. Still, the outrage of Voltaire et. al. demands an answer from Christians because, for all their faults, their arguments against God are shaped by expectations of God derived from Christian tradition.

Questions
I think I pretty much grasp this section (though correct me if I don't). One question: when Hart says that the classical argument against the existence of God on the basis of suffering and evil (i.e., 1. God is all good, 2. God is all powerful, 3. Evil exists: one of those can't be true) fails strictly in terms of logic, where exactly does it fail? I get where it fails in that it ends up talking about a different god to the God of Christianity, but where does it fail in terms of logic?

CPX goes live with its website

2008-03-22T07:13:00.004+09:00

The web will be richer for the addition of this site, launched over Easter. (Any Christian website that reminds you to go pick up the new Nic Cave album has to be worth something, right?)

Big it up for Bruce

2008-03-19T21:06:00.002+09:00

Bruce Springsteen
Originally uploaded by mauriceandjeannette

They say you can’t take it with you,
But I think that they’re wrong,
Cause all I know is I woke up this morning and something big was gone.

“Devil’s Arcade” from Magic, by Bruce Springsteen.

To all you losers who have written off Bruce Springsteen as an aging stadium rocker, even a cursory listening to the new Album Magic will have you writing a letter of apology to The Boss for your attitude. Springsteen has to be in the top 5 popular music singer-songwriters of all time (up there with Dylan and Cohen for sure).

(PS: Regular readers may have noticed the last few posts have been a tad frivolous. This may have surprised people popping in to follow the promised series on David Bentley Hart’s stunning [anti] Theodicy The Doors of the Sea. As it happens [among other things] a few people close to us have recently faced personal situations where a theodicy wouldn't have gone astray. I’ll be returning to the series presently, though this time with a more than academic interest. Also got one more post to go on my Lessons Learned in the UK series.)

A suggestion

2008-03-17T16:57:00.005+09:00

Talking to a friend today, we both agreed that if the new Rudd Labor government in Australia wanted to cement its popularity, Rudd should definitely make Hot Cross Buns available all year round. One week out from Easter and I'm just warming up.

Mission Shaped or Mission Flavoured?

2008-03-11T10:36:00.001+09:00

A great little article on this important distinction can be found here.

H/T Josh Appa

A nice bit of Jewish Eschatology

2008-03-06T20:24:00.002+09:00

Jerusalem - Western Wall's Letters to God
Originally uploaded by *Checco*

In a recent speech to The Sydney Institute, Israeli journalist Herb Keinon said this:

“In Israel my Rabbi kept getting asked by people 'What’s going to be with the terrorism? What’s going to be with the Palestinians? What’s going to be with the process? What’s it all going to be?'”

One man was driving [my Rabbi] crazy with these questions day after day. And so he took him aside and said, ‘Look. We’re Jews. As Jews we believe that in the end everything will work out. In the end there will be redemption. In the end there will be peace. In the end everything will be roses.’

‘Your problem’, he said to the man, ‘is that you were born in the middle.’

A tip for the over-worked

2008-03-04T08:20:00.001+09:00

used crayons
Originally uploaded by chromatophobe

I find that when I am really under the pump and the work is overwhelming, it helps to write out my morning's 'to-do' list in crayons. That way it looks more like the happy wish-list of a child and not the aggressive work-list of a grown-up.

"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers" (2 Corinthians 6:14)

2008-03-03T18:43:00.001+09:00

Anyone preached on this text before? I am this coming Sunday at church. Any hot tips gratefully accepted.

A church is born!

2008-02-24T15:14:00.003+09:00

This morning at about 10:12am a new church (or congregation) was born. It was a home-birth (happened in our lounge room). The church--called at the moment Unichurch AM (as opposed to Unichurch PM, its mother-congregation)--is the result of a number of years of prayer and planning, and represents in particular a mission to the international students who come to Perth to study.

Who knows where all this will lead? But it's great to have started! Random prayers for this new life gratefully accepted.

A break from posting till early March

2008-02-21T09:02:00.002+09:00

With O-week and University semester nearly upon us, with beginning a new church-plant in our lounge room this Sunday, and with me resuming preaching at Unichurch this weekend, I'm going to struggle to get to the blog for a few weeks. I'm looking forward to posting my final post in the "Lessons Learned in the UK series" as well and continuing the summaries and reflections on David Bentley Hart's The Doors of the Sea when I get back.

Posting should resume in early March. Till then...

Goodbye Dullsville?

2008-02-16T08:14:00.005+09:00

The Western Australian State government has recently unveiled its plans to radically redevelop the Perth foreshore. Perth--aka Dullsville--has infamously developed in a way that has turned its back on the Swan River. At the point it reaches the city the river looks more like a large harbour, so it's not like turning your back on the Torrens or the Yarra.

What do you think? I really like it. I know, it's tacky, it's bombastic, it's overblown, it looks like something from Bladerunner. But then again, Perth's future was never going to be as a quaint town of Georgian Squares and High Victorian Terraces.

For reasons I can't full explain--beyond growing up here and being therefore painfully aware that, as a city, Perth has always managed to be less than the sum of its parts (as someone once said "how can 1.5 million people be so dull?")--I say bring it on!

Thoughts?

A touch of irony?

2008-02-14T08:43:00.005+09:00

Funny that yesterday, when the Australian Parliament said sorry for past wrongs to indigenous people, sitting member Wilson Tuckey stayed for the prayer --Forgive us our sins-- but then boycotted the apology.

The Doors of the Sea # 1

2008-02-03T08:49:00.000+09:00

Summary: Chapter 1 Universal Harmony, sections I and II
Hart is no mean writer, and his book begins with an eloquent reflection on the natural phenomenon of the Tsunami in language reminiscent of the book of Job (the title of the book is, of course, an allusion to Job 38:8). Turning to the human cost of the event, he says:

Considering the scope of the catastrophe, and of the agonies and sorrows it had visited on so many, we should probably have remained silent for a while...There are moments, simply said, when we probably ought not to speak. But, of course, we must speak. (6-7)

Hart turns in section II to the rush to explain. He considers first the triumphalistic atheist who feels compelled to leap at once into the breach and stridently to proclaim that here, finally, the materialist creed has been vindicated: that here we have an instance of empirical horrors too vast to be reconciled with belief in a loving and omnipotent God, and that upon this rock the ship of faith must surely founder and sink... (8) Hart (who will later go on to be highly critical of some Christian responses) at this stage has his sights set on the atheists who felt the rush to explain. Of one he says:

Nor, certainly, does he address what Christian theology has traditionally said over the centuries about the nature of evil, principally because he clearly has no idea what that is.(12)

Nevertheless, Hart finds some good in the atheists' reactions: contempt for facile theodicies that disencumber God of his omnipotence, for theodicies that explain all natural disaster as divine retribution, and theodicies that look for isolated anecdotes of survival amid the ruins and rest a case for the goodness of God there.

Hart ends the section by dismissing the terms on which the atheist account sets the argument. The standard theistic setting for the dilemma (from the evidence of our world, if God is omnipotent, he is not good; if he is good, he is not omnipotent) does not wash with Hart:

It is an argument, says Rosenbaum, that so far no one has succeeded in refuting. In point of fact, though, there is no argument here to refute; the entire case is premised upon an inane anthropomorphism—abstracted from any living system of belief—that reduces God to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes are measurable upon the same scales as ours, and whose ultimate ends for his creatures do not transcend the cosmos as we perceive it. This is not to say the argument is without considerable emotional and even moral force; but of logical force there is none.

According to Hart, the logic of the argument fails because Unless one can see the beginning and end of all things...unless one knows the precise nature of the relation between divine and created freedom...one can draw no conclusions from finite experience regarding the coincidence in God of omnipotence and perfect goodness. One may still hate God...or deny him, but one cannot in this way "disprove" him

Hart's scorn for the atheistic-materialist account of suffering peaks with this:

At some level, it is even tempting to think that since strict materialism is among the most incoherent of superstitions—one that has never really asked the question of the being of things in any depth or with any persistence...—it is incapable of imagining any conception of God more sophisticated that its own. The materialist encounters an instance of unjust suffering and, by a sort of magical thinking, concludes from the absence of any immediately visible moral order that there must be nothing transcendent of material causality, much in the same way that certain remote, primitive ancestors might have seen a flash of lightening and concluded that some god must have flung it from on high. In neither case does the conclusion follow from the evidence (though in the latter case the reasoning is somewhat more rigorous); and in neither case is the god at issue much more that an affective myth.

In concluding the section, Hart says that while it is tempting to simply dismiss these arguments, we cannot. Indeed, he says that they should warrant our sympathy because at the heart of all such unbelief lies an undoubtedly authentic moral horror before the sheer extravagance of worldly misery, a kind of rage for justice...that no one who believes this to be a fallen world should want to disparage.

He concludes by saying:

For the secret irony pervading these arguments is that they would never have occurred to consciences that had not in some profound way been shaped by the moral universe of a Christian culture.

Questions and Reflections
- Atheistic materialism is much more vulnerable before suffering than it makes out. Traditional theodicy fails because it takes on the terms of an argument that is fundamentally theistic, rather than Christian. Nevertheless, the horror of the atheist before suffering ironically draws on a Christian view of the world. That's roughly how I understand where he gets to in this section. Sound right?

- The 'isolated anecdotes' is a good point. When people say that God rescued so and so from such and such, I am often amazed that they don't think "Why didn't he just stop such and such in the first place?" Nevertheless, is there evidence for something at least approaching this line of thought in scripture? For example, 2 Corinthians 1:9-10

Indeed, in our hearts we felt in ourselves the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us...

Here Paul does seem to see God's hand, not so much in the 'deadly peril', but in the fact that he was delivered from the deadly peril. Could you say on this basis that survival anecdotes do in some way show God's hand, because our God characteristically 'raised the dead'?

- Can anyone think of a simpler and more apologetically-winning way to say that traditional theodicy is 'premised upon an inane anthropomorphism'? In my enthusiasm for this book, I tried to get a conversation going along these lines at a wedding on Saturday, but bombed badly because, once someone asked me what I meant, I realized I wasn't sure.

David Bentley Hart: The Doors of the Sea

2008-02-03T08:48:00.001+09:00

Blue beached fishing boat DSC_0316
Originally uploaded by vishakaws

I intend to return to my series on Lessons learned in the UK soon. However, I have recently read David Bentley Hart's amazing book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? and want to spend a few posts thinking it through.

Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and the book deal with the question of theodicy--the defense of God in the face of suffering and evil. I didn't want to leave the book behind without really coming to terms with it and I thought the blog would be a good place to think it through out-loud, so that smarter people than myself could see what I was thinking and perhaps help me in my understanding.

This little series is dedicated to my cousin, whose own thoughts on God and suffering have taught me and encouraged me more than he knows.

A Humble Suggestion

2008-01-30T16:10:00.000+09:00

I don't know that Kevin Rudd (the Australian Prime Minister) reads this blog. He is a friend of mine on Facebook, so I assume he pops over every now and then.
At any rate, Mr Rudd is preparing to say sorry to Australia's indigenous population for past wrongs. The date set is 13 February. I assume you only get one shot at this kind of thing (the idea of subsequent governments putting forward their own particular sorries would just get tacky), and so we need to do it right, right?
So my suggestion: get the Governor General to say sorry. He is the head of government in Australia, and he holds a position that is above party politics. Whatever you think about the virtues or otherwise of the current government, surely addressing this part of our history is bigger than who won the last election. I can only think that an apology coming from the GG would better speak for the nation, and it would allow the apology to loose itself from any particular party.
Just at thought....

Bah! Humbug!

2008-01-26T08:37:00.001+09:00

Australian flag blowing in the wind
Originally uploaded by PFP Sean

Here in Australia today (26 January) is Australia Day. Now I am very thankful to have been born in this country, and to that extent having a day set aside to express that thanks is fine by me.

However, I must admit I find the whole rhetoric surronding Australia Day a bit tedious. The whole thing of "we are so unique", "that's just the Australian sense of humour (dry, ironic, sarcastic, self-depreciating)", "that's just so Australian." Gimme a break.

Proclaiming how unique/funny/dry we are is too much like the individual who declares themselves to have a "wacky sense of humour." And the sub-text of the humour thing is that in this regard we are unlike America. Sarcasm, irony and understatement are all distinctively Australian. Americans don't get irony. "My uncle went to America and no one got his jokes," etc.

I assume that this thesis means that things like Spinal Tap, The Simpsons, Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfield were all ghost-written by Australians and then watched in droves by an American public that didn't really get what was happening, but endured it politely.

(As discussed previously on this blog, if you are looking for a decent foundation for Australian Exceptionalism, may I suggest our flavoured milk products? I think at this point our greatness is beyond controversy.)

Happy Australia Day.

Hart on Suffering

2008-01-18T14:54:00.000+09:00

"Voltaire sees only the terrible truth that the history of suffering and death is not morally intelligible. Dostoevsky sees—and this bespeaks both his moral genius and his irreducibly Christian view of reality—that it would be far more terrible if it were."
David Bentley Hart The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?

A New Book: The Donald Robinson Volumes

2008-01-12T20:42:00.000+09:00

Donald Robinson—churchman, bishop, New Testament scholar and senior statesman of Australian evangelicalism—has recently been honoured with the publication of a series of essays to accompany the publication of his Collected Works. (Donald Robinson has probably influence my approach to New Testament theology and exegesis more than anyone else, and I have been therefore chuffed to contribute a couple of essays to the Festschrift myself.)

Many of us owe an enormous debt to Donald Robinson for his work in the area of biblical theology. If you don't know Robinson's work, but have appreciated the work of (among others) Greame Goldsworth, William Dumbrell, Paul Barnett and Peter Jensen, then you owe him something too!

He has also made what I think is a vital contribution to understanding the significance of Israel in the New Testament, and his conclusions steer a much needed course between supercessionism on the one hand and dispensationalism on the other. One of my hopes is that this volume will make this contribution available to a wider audience.

His work on tradition, baptism, the doctrine of church, the faith/faithfulness of Jesus Christ, the New Testament Canon and New Testament eschatology are also well worth grappling with.

To whet you appetite, here are the contents of the Appreciation volume. The book (along with the two Collected Works Volumes) are available from Moore Books (Phone (02) 9577 996; Email: info@moorebooks.com.au) I commend them all to you.

Donald Robinson Selected Works: Appreciation
Edited by Peter Bolt and Mark Thompson, (Sydney: ACR/Moore College, 2008)

Appreciation
1. Mark Thompson: Donald William Bradley Robinson
2. Rory Shiner: An Appreciation of D. W. B. Robinson's New Testament Theology

Jesus Christ
3. Anthony Petterson: Towards a Theology of the Virgin Birth
4. Andrew Leslie: Christ's Faithfulness and Our Salvation
5. Michael Stead: ho katechon in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7

Jew and Gentile
6. Bill Salier: Jew and Gentile in John
7. Martin Pakula: A Biblical Theology of Israel in the New Testament
8. Jeff Read: 'That you may not be conceited'
9. George Athas: Reflections on Scripture. Using the Distinction between Jews and Gentiles as an Exegetical Key
10. Ma'afu Palu: The Significance of the Jew-Gentile Distinction for Theological Contextualization

Apostle to the Gentiles
11. Gavin Perkins: Paul's Suffering and the Gentile Mission
12. Lionel Windsor: Paul's Covenant of Ministry
13. Con Campbell: Finished the Race? 2 Timothy 4:6-7 and verbal aspect

Scripture and the People of God
14. Mark Thompson: What have we done to the Bible? or Lessons we should have learned from Donald Robinson on the Authority of Holy Scripture
15. Ben Underwood: Preaching the Word
16. Matthew Jensen: Being 'Sons (children) of God' in 1 John
17. Robert Doyle: Suppressed Truth: Donald Robinson's contribution to understanding baptism
18. Martin Foord: We meet again! In Heaven or on Earth? Donald Robinson's Ecclesiology
19. Donald West: Petitionary Prayer in the 'Now' and the 'Not Yet'
20. Jane Tooher: Bishop Robinson's 'Questions about Marriage in 1 Cor 7.' An appreciation

The Ministry of Women
21. Rory Shiner: Tradition and Reality in Donald Robinson's New Testament Theology: some comments of Robinson's line of argument in the debate over the ordination of women
22. Claire Smith: Robinson, Apostolic Tradition and the Ordination of Women
23. Carmelina Read: Old Wives' Tales

Australian History
24. Peter Bolt: The Family Correspondence of Thomas Moore, Esq., of Liverpool
25. In God We Trust: The Impact of The Great War On Religious Belief in Australia

Loving Perth

2008-01-10T19:16:00.001+09:00

my new favourite thing about perth
Originally uploaded by oceanpark

I recently read a post of 20 things the blogger loved about their city. I will try and draw up a personal top 20 for Perth one day, but I can say straight away that Perth is the undisputed flavoured milk capital of the world. Sustained by a large Bogan popular (flavoured milk being their non-alcoholic drink of choice), the flavoured milk market in Perth has thrown up a vast array of fine quality milks—Iced Coffee, Choc-Milks, Moccas; Spearmint, Strawberry, Vanilla, Honeycomb; drinks that get thicker when you shake them, drinks that are double strength, drinks that mix unusual flavours.
A native Perthian expects even their corner Deli or local Servo to stock a good couple of shelves of the stuff.
So, if flavoured milk is enough to get to you move state or country--come on over, the milk is waiting for you.

A gripe!!!

2008-01-10T08:45:00.000+09:00

Sometimes it takes a while to realize someone can't write; other times all it takes is one glance. I am speaking, of course, of people who over use exclamation marks. One glance at a piece of prose containing a bevy of exclamation marks and your suspicions are aroused. "See you soon!" "It was a great day!" "Thanks for passing the salt!" Over use of the exclamation mark is, as Clive James says, to ask your punctuation to do what your prose is suppose to do. It is normally a sign that the writer cannot create energy with their prose so they try and inflict energy on their prose with their punctuation.

The rule is: Only use an exclamation mark when the sentence would look odd without it. And a sentence that looks odd without an exclamation mark is a very rare thing indeed. Today's Australian contained an example. In an article about Hillary Clinton Geoff Elliott writes "Hill's back. The sisters have spoken. What a sequel." Elliott could probably have used an exclamation mark there no problem.

Using more than one exclamation mark in a row is a criminal offense.

If like me you are not an especially gifted writer, knowing this rule at least buys your prose a second glance before people realize.

Happy New Year.

Exam + Christmas + Holidays = No Blog Posts Until 14 January

2007-12-20T09:02:00.000+09:00

The title says it all really. A blessed Christmas to you all. See you again after the 14th.

Blainey on Dark Green Spirituality

2007-12-17T08:33:00.001+09:00

Melbourne University Arts Building
Originally uploaded by _elizabeth_

“In part [the dark green movement] is a religious or spiritual movement. Many of its dedicated adherents see nature as a god, or a shrine to be worshipped at. Nature is seen as the home of an intricate and a delicate inner harmony. The dark greens have gained from the decline of organized Christianity. They are evangelicals, though they build no churches; the believe—to invoke the New Testament Language—that “man cannot live by bread alone”. I think it’s fair to suggest that some green enthusiasts might have been Christian pastors if their prime of life have come 60 years earlier.”

(Australian Historian) Geoffery Blainey. The 2001 Boyer Lectures.

Not really making a comment, just thought it was interesting.

What he whispered: The Final Scene of Lost in Translation

2007-12-14T21:42:00.001+09:00

lost in translation
Originally uploaded by zene

(Spoiler Warning) In Sophia Coppola's wonderful film Lost in Translation the film ends with Bill Murray's character whispering something into the ear of Scarlett Johanson. The intention, of course, is that you are supposed to wonder what it was. But thanks to modern technology, you need wonder no more. Someone worked out how to jig the sound so that you could hear it. You can see it for yourself
here , or I can just tell you that he said:

"I have to be leaving, but I won't let that come between us, Okay?"
"Okay"

Nice.

Lessons Learned in the UK # 6 The Minister and the Missionary

2007-12-13T13:53:00.001+09:00

Clergyman chatting on Cobbled Street
Originally uploaded by UK Yorkie

I’m not normally one for faddish neologisms, but in the current conversation about ministry in a western post-Christian context, the word missional is, I think, a good one. The word emergent carries a lot of baggage—sometimes referring to a worship renewal movement that has little to do with mission, sometimes to faithless departures from the gospel, sometimes to healthy and constructive new expression of church. Missional on the other hand captures the very simple idea that the modern west is a missionary context (so Newbigin), and therefore churches need to be missional in order to reach the modern west (with thanks to
Hamo for clarifying this for me in a conversation). The concept is easily grasped by conservative Christians, because even the most conservative of us know what a missionary has to do: none of us would flinch to read in a missionary prayer letter that that missionary had had to think hard about how to reach their adopted culture, that they were trying new things, that work was slow, and that some of their assumptions were being called into question by the challenges of the context. A missional church in the west simply says “It’s like that here too now!”

The Crowded House, which I visited in Sheffield, is a stirling example of a group trying to take on this challenge.

At the moment I am thinking about how to train our interns, the first of which will appear at St Matthew’s Unichurch next year. If Newbigin et. al. are right, then presumable we should be training missionaries.

To clarify this, I’ve tried to contrast a missionary with a ‘minister.” And so:

- A minister* will expect people to come to them; a missionary will expect to have to go to people.
- In teaching, a minister will spend most energy thinking about their content, on what they say; the missionary will spend almost equal energy thinking about how they say it and how their listeners will understand it.
- A minister may expect an office, a full time stipend, and the associated privileged of formal employment; a missionary will not be surprised to have to meet people in cafes and work in public libraries, to work part-time in secular employment, and to forego the privileged of formal employment.
- A minister will assume the forms of their ministry, and work at getting people to participate in them; a missionary will allow their context to significantly influence the forms of their ministry.
- A minister will emphasis Christian edification; a missionary will emphasis evangelism.
- A minister will be able to assume the culture of the people (being culturally the same as them) and dedicate themselves to being students of the word; a missionary has no choice but to be a student of the people (being culturally different to them), and must therefore study the people at the same time as being students of the word.

*"MInister" here is just being used for the sake of the contrast. Of course, many fine ministers are missionaries in this sense, and many people do fine Christian work as ministers in the sense described here.

Praying for Israel

2007-12-11T15:47:00.001+09:00

In peparation for my exam, I've been reading through Cranfield's commentary on Romans. I love it! I'm not really up to speed on the world of biblical studies, but does everyone still rate him?

Looking at Cranfield on Rom 9-11 also has the advantage of being a bit of a 'Barth's doctrine of election for dummies'.

Anyway, I was struck by this comment on 10:1:

In this prayer for Israel's salvation he has set an example for the Church to follow. A church which failed to pray for Israel's salvation would be a church which did not know what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ. Cranfield, Romans 9-16, 513.

The church's relationship to Israel is beset by what are (in my estimation) a series of false turns: A liberal Christianity that has ceased to pray at all for Israel (let alone offer the gospel to her), a fundamentalist Christianity that confuses a people with geographic location, and large sections of reformed and evangelical Christianity that do exactly what Paul does not do in Romans 9-11 and accepts a Christian supercessionism.

Cranfield surely starts us at the right place (i.e. Paul's place), with a call to pray for Israel.

Finished!

2007-12-11T15:44:00.000+09:00

I am currently printing out my 10,000 word essay on Herod Agrippa I. I shall soon walk up to the local post office and send it to the people who need to see it. Yay! Whenever I hand in a piece of assessment I always comfort myself by considering my marker and thinking "this will hurt you more than it hurts me..."

Now, off to swot up on Romans 9-16 and 2 Corinthians...

Time to study

2007-12-07T14:31:00.001+09:00

Coffee and Study
Originally uploaded by Chadwise

I am sitting an exam in two weeks on Romans and 2 Corinthians. (There is something unbecoming about 32 year olds sitting exams, but there you go.)
Anyway, I am going to have to start using every nook and cranny of the day's free slots to kick-start my Greek, which means posting here at Frankly, Mr Shankly will cease until the exam. I'll probably post something for Christmas, and then we are off for two weeks to a place where the mobile phones don't work and the internet doesn't reach (actually, both those claims are untrue--I'll be turning off my phone and my parents have dial up, but there's no dignity in dial-up.)
So, that's the long way of saying that posting--apart from the odd thing here and there--won't resume here till around 14 January. Thanks for dropping by. I'll look forward to resuming the conversation again in the new year.
Love and blessings,
Rory

Vale T. F. Torrance (1913-2007)

2007-12-04T06:27:00.000+09:00

Scottish Theologian Thomas F. Torrance died on Sunday. Discovering the work of TFT, via Robert Doyle, was one of the highlights of College for me. Reality and Evangelical Theology has been a significant influence on my thinking about the nature of theological knowledge and I still remember the slog and the rewards of working inch by inch through The Christian Doctrine of God in a fourth year unit with Doyle.

Next year our Mid Year Conference is on the Trinity, so there will be opportunity to pass on the favour on and introduce students and staff to some of his thought.

"...the objective truth of the Blessed Trinity belongs to the very heart of the Gospel, for it gathers up and embraces the evangelical message of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the Communion of the Holy Spirit." Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons, 33.

Commentaries on Genesis?

2007-12-03T19:27:00.000+09:00

Next year I will be teaching a course on Genesis and preaching through it at church. Any tips on killer commentaries or books? At the moment I've only got Wenham in the Word series, Andrew Reid's popular commentary and intent to buy Brueggemann's Interpreter's commentaries on the strength of the author.

Ricky, Steve and Karl on puns in tabloid journalism

2007-11-30T19:48:00.001+09:00

Karl Pilkington
Originally uploaded by georgeaye

This is my favourite interaction from the Ricky Gervais Xfm show from a couple of years ago. For your amusement (possibly just for the fans--don't know if it works if you don't know Ricky Gervais?).

Steve: And [the Sun article] says ‘A young mother says her partner has dumped her to become a vampire, Rebecca Roberts from Somerset’ hmm ‘Said Matthew Barott fell for a blood-worshipping woman in a US cult, the 23 year old mother says he began shaving all his body hair, dressed in black and used Rebecca's lipstick to redden his eyes. Rebecca caught him performing weird blood rituals infront of his computer at night, cutting himself to prove commitment. She said ‘I thought it was just a hobby’.
Ricky laughs
Steve: ’Everyone's got a right to one, I was pleased he'd found an interest.’.
Ricky: Brilliant.
Steve: This is apparently from The Sun erm, apparently he's left, he's gone to America, he's living in this Ohio-based cult, but it's the last bit where she's been asked whether or not if he came back would she take him back.
Ricky: Sure.
Steve: And this is where I wonder if the jounalist, you know how jounalists are supposed to just report the news, be objective.
Ricky: Yeah.
Steve: I wonder if maybe the journalist here has maybe had some interferance.
Ricky: Made the quote better for them than.
Steve: Possibly.
Ricky: Go on.
Steve: Because it says errm ‘I never thought this would take over his life. Now if he came back, I'd say ‘Fangs, but no fangs’.
Ricky laughs
Steve: But, I can't believe, imagine you're the woman Rick .
Ricky: Ok.
Steve: And I've come round.
Ricky: You're the jounalist.
Steve: I'm the journalist and I've come in and I've said ‘Ok I've read’.
Ricky: All I have to do is not say that, ok.
Steve: You've come you come ‘I mean obviously you're quite upset’.
Ricky: ’Yeah’.
Steve: ’Your husband's gone off’.
Ricky: ’Gutted’.
Steve: ’Erm, if he came back would you take him back?’
Ricky: ’Definitely not’.
Steve: ’Right, what would you say to him then?’
Ricky: ’Really, just get lost’.
Steve: ’Right but I’.
Ricky: ’I'm really pissed off with you’.
Steve: ’Would you perhaps say something a bit more pithy?’.
Ricky: ’Pithy? No, in this situation no, he cuts himself, he drinks blood, he's left me’.
Steve: ’Sure’.
Ricky: ’No, sod off I'm not interested mate’.
Steve: ’Because I tell you what’.
Ricky: ’Go on’.
Steve: ’I mean, I like what you've said there but I wonder if we could condense that, a bit more, if he came back would you say-’.
Ricky: ’Go away’.
Steve: ’Would you say some-, would you ever say something like ‘Thanks, but no thanks?’’.
Ricky: ’No, cos that sounds, makes it flippant, cos I'm really angry’.
Steve: ’I know you're annoyed but’.
Ricky: ’And I'm upset so I wouldn't say’.
Steve: ’Sure’.
Ricky: ’I certaintly wouldn't say thanks, I'd say, I might say no thanks’.
Steve: ’But what if you, what if you said it like aggressively like you were giving him the finger? Thanks, but no thanks, like you didn't really mean it’.
Ricky: ’What sort of sarcastically’.
Steve: ’Sarcastically, would you possibly say it?’
Ricky: ’I might say thanks but no thanks, and that would be it’.
Steve: ’Right, right’.
Ricky: ’And that's, and I'd leave it there, and I'd never change that’.
Steve: ’Sure’.
Ricky: ’I'd never change those words’.
Steve: ’Can I ask you a question?’.
Ricky: ’Go on’.
Steve: ’Do you like puns?’
Ricky: ’N-, hate them, I don't watch Countdown, I don't like QI, I don't like any of those posh Cambridge Oxford type, I, I hate puns’.
Steve: ’If you had to say thanks but no thanks in the form of a pun, what would you maybe say’.
Ricky: ’I wouldn't, I never would’.
Steve: ’Right’.
Ricky: ’I'd say thanks but no thanks, I would, you know I'd, I mean, I feel embarassed that'd I'd even say that, because I don't think I would even say thanks but no thanks’.
Steve: ’Ok’.
Ricky: ’But if I did go that far, I'd leave it there’.
Steve: ’Sure, sure’.
Ricky: ’So’.
Steve: ’Have you ever noticed, as I have’.
Ricky: ’Go on’.
Steve: ’The similarity between the word thanks, and fangs?’
Ricky: ’Not really’.
Steve: ’It's very similar, thanks, fangs thanks fangs’.
Ricky: ’No really, F, T, H, there's a K’.
Steve: ’Fangs very much’.
Ricky: ’G, A and N, well the A the N and the S, but that's about it’.
Steve: ’Would you agree it sounds marginally similar?’
Ricky: ’Err, yeah sor t of’.
Steve: ’Is it possible you might one day say ‘Fangs but no fangs’?’
Ricky: ’I wouldn't no’.
Steve: ’Right, I could put that though could I?’
Ricky: ’But don't say I said it’.
Steve: ’Right’.
Ricky: I mean, yeah. Fangs but no fangs.
Steve: Yeah. This is the thing, this is the thing, just if you ever read an article in the Sun, The Mirror, anything, do not believe it, really seriously question and query it, because.
Ricky: If it end with Fangs no fangs.
Steve: If it ends with a pun, almost certaintly they never said it.

Lessons Learned in the UK # 5: The Honey Pot and the Glass Ceiling

2007-11-27T10:13:00.001+09:00

Stained glass ceiling
Originally uploaded by _Robert C_

The strategy of the Honey Pot is simple: you resource strong churches/movements with good staff and send into all the world from there. This is a strategy not to be mocked: just think of Antioch, Rome, Geneva, Cambridge and so on. It makes sense, it has tradition behind it, and it has runs on the board.

So here's the thing that's been niggling at me. My second favourite church in Perth (obviously, St Matt's Unichurch is my first favourite!) is a church whose young people were lead for over a decade by a young man who in every way would be the kind of person you'd love to appoint as leader of the Honey Pot. However, for the whole time he lead the church, it was known to him and to the people that he was on track to spend the rest of his life as a missionary in a country in the middle east/east asian region. (He's praying God will give him 60 years).

The church is in a privileged area, and you could mount ample arguments that he should have stayed and been involved in sending however many people into mission and ministry from there over the next 60 years. But he went.

And the result is a church culture where the natural assumptions of what following Jesus might mean are off the scale. When your leader has gone to a country where the prospects of seeing conversions are tiny and the prospects of getting killed are reasonable, it creates a culture where people have a pretty expansive view of what following Jesus could mean for them. They now have a tribe of people on track for mission and ministry that would be the envy of many Honey-Pots.

A leading Australian evangelical once told me a story about some Jesuits in Latin America who were agitating for change in their order. They consulted a radical communist leader about how to work for change. He said to them:

"The answer is easy, but you won't do it, and because you won't do it, you will never change anything. The answer is this: Go home today, take the invisible mitre* out of your wardrobe and throw it in the bin. You won't, and because you won't, things won't change."

Are there glass ceilings, or invisible mitres, that are hampering what we (and for "we" read "Rory") are prepared to do for the mission of God? Would the Honey Pots, in the long run, do better by sending their leaders out on glass-ceiling smashing assignments?

*The tall headdress worn by bishops ("bishop" being the highest position attainable in Anglican and Catholic churches).

Lessons Learned in the UK # 4: The Loop

2007-11-25T10:45:00.001+09:00

Mobius Loop (photo 4)
Originally uploaded by drlsculpture

One of the mantras of ministry is to target the FAT: the Faithful, the Available and the Teachable. Plenty of wisdom there, right. You have limited resources in terms of time and energy, so who are you going to invest in? Answer: Those who are Faithful (to the gospel, to commitments), those who are Available (don't chase people who don't want what you've got when there are people around you who do), those who are Teachable (go for those who want to learn what you are offering.)

My question is: has this created a gospel ministry loop from which we are struggling to break.

Case study #1: In the UK, there is a long and noble tradition of targeting (as they used to say) "the best boys from the best schools". The theory, of course, is that if you reach the natural leaders, you will lead the nation toward Christ. However, my ill-informed, under-researched and tentative observation is that evangelical Christianity has by this method got more or less stuck in the loop of the social classes that are the target of this strategy.

Case study # 2: In Australia a similar thing seems to have happened. We have adopted a honey-pot type idea: Get your best people (to use a non-gospel category!) around the honey-pots and send from there. There are, of course, any number of examples of where this has happened admirably. My question is: has it happened to the extend that the strategy is vindicated? (Genuine question).

Has the FAT idea bred a conservatism about who we invest in, to the point where we invest in and then produce 'people like us', who will then only reach 'people like us'? Has reaching the reachable, the FAT, made us all, in the end, fat?

Lessons Learned in the UK # 3: Being Big

2007-11-22T08:32:00.001+09:00

Blues Point Tower, Sydney
Originally uploaded by fabian-f

Blues Point Tower is one of Sydney's truly great buildings. The thing that first strikes you about it is how unrelated it is to everything else around it: it doesn't have a relationship to the contours of the harbour, it doesn't have a conversation with the city sky-line or the Opera House, it doesn't relate to the piece of land it is on: it's just there. If it were to disappear tomorrow, you wouldn't look at the space and think "it looks like a building is missing".

And that's my little analogy for big church. While in the UK I was privileged to go along to the thriving parish of Jesmond in Newcastle. Jesmond Parish Church is one of the large, leading evangelical churches in the UK, mentioned in the same breath as St Helen's and All Souls. It has a large student ministry, and (I understand) well over 1000 people as active members of the parish. It is like the others, but more so. That is, Jesmond is self-consciously and comfortably large, and keen to get larger. The great advantage for someone like me who is comparing and contrasting church models is that Jesmond is not sheepish or circumspect about being large--it is happy to be so, and staff are able to articulate why that it.

I think the advantages of a large church are obvious. At Jesmond, for example, the quality of what you are exposed to in terms of music, preaching, programmes etc is very high. The resources of a large church allow for specialization (for example, full time staff dedicated to students, another to international students and so on). And a large church gives you 'clout'. The Vicar, David Holloway, is often in the media making comment on various issues, and working from a base like Jesmond no doubt makes that profile possible.

My questions (and at this point I move away from thinking about Jesmond qua Jesmond and am reflecting on large churches generally) are:

- How does a large church engage its members in mission? At most of the large churches I have seen, people seem to end up on the receiving end of teaching and programmes. It is not uncommon, for example, for large student churches (including ours in some ways) to gear their programmes around students being on the receiving end of teaching for the whole course of their degree. The benefits of this are, of course, massive, but compared with (say) The Crowded House, I kept thinking to myself: "How are the students involved in mission?" "Does evangelism amount to more than inviting people to events?". "Are we victims of a training fetish, beholden to some sort of foundationalist pedagogy in which people are constantly laying the foundations for ministry, but forever deferring actual engagement in ministry?" With everyone you see up the front being paid staff, do your average members simply become inviters?

- Large churches always seem to struggle to impart their theological and missional vision to their members. The experiment of asking the guy you sit next to in a large church what the theologically commitments of the church are is often a sobering exercise.

- Large churches seem to be able to have a national voice, but do they have a local voice? One of the strange phenomena of large evangelical churches in the UK is that, no matter where they are in the UK, you almost never hear the local accent in them. Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham etc--what you hear is the standard middle-class southern English accent, but you have to go somewhere else to hear someone in church who sounds like they are actually from the city in which the church is situated.

Like Blues Point Tower, large churches are un-missable on the horizon. But if they were to go missing overnight, would anyone in the local area regret their demise or even notice they had gone?

In the meantime...

2007-11-19T14:07:00.001+09:00

I will return to the UK series shortly. In the meantime, my mate Pete got me onto this. Probably just for the fans (of U2 that is), and some of the langauge could best be described as colourful, but I do think this is brilliant and rather moving.

Proclaiming Jesus: Lessons Learned in the UK # 2 The Crowded House

2007-11-12T08:15:00.001+09:00

Terraces
Originally uploaded by ClydeHouse

The presenting reason for going to the UK was to attend The Crowded House's conference Total Church. Their recently published book of the same name puts on the public record their thinking about church and gospel, so I won't repeat that here. (I am half way through the book at the moment, and it has proved very valuable so far.) In brief, The Crowded House is a church planting initiative, focussed largely (though not exclusively) on household congregations. Some features of the initiative look 'emergent', though that word is never used. Certainly, the ecclesiology is radical, but the theology is conservative evangelical. 'Emergent' is probably the wrong word at any rate. 'Missional' does a much better job of describing what they do and why.

Some random reflections in no particular order:

- I made a point of talking to regular members and interns and discovered that people involved in The Crowded House were very good at being able to articulate the visions and goals and theological commitments of the group. (Try this experiment at a large conservative evangelical church and I think you'll discover, as I have, that people have all sorts of reasons for why they are there--often unrelated and sometimes even in opposition to what they hear from the pulpit.)

- Everyone is 'on mission.' In the household congregations, the person who cleans at Tesco's is prayed for and treated like a missionary every bit as much as the person working full time for the church. And there is an excellent Newbigin-type grasp of the missionary context of the modern west. One of the most impressive things I witnessed was a group of young women (early 20s) from the church who had elected to live on a housing estate, which was only recently demoted from the title-holder of 'worst in Britain.' Like good missionaries, they are slowly gathering intelligence on what it means to be a part of this community, and what shape a church would need to take to have a hope of reaching the people there. They are committed to being there indefinitely.

- Another very positive aspect of The Crowded House was what the commitment to household does to the kind of leadership you need to generate to plant churches. As a case study, to be prepared for my current role, I spent two years in a ministry apprenticeship, four years at theological college and two years finding my feet after College. So that's 6-8 years of training and I am barely holding my head above water. I feel like I am constantly running on slightly less than the bare minimum you need to do my job well.
Contrast that with what is needed to run a household congregation. What do you need do that? Essentially, just the basics of pastoral ministry: integrity in your personal life, righteousness in family like, a commitment to the apostolic gospel and a capacity to teach (not necessarily preach) God’s word. If this is right, then it could revolutionize how you generated leadership and the speed and rate at which you were able to plant churches. Indeed, every Bible Study leader would become a potential church planter.

- Finally, the tendency to work among marginalized communities was very attractive and impressive. Like a dodgy shopping trolley that tends off in one direction, The Crowded House ministries tend off toward the marginalized. This is done deliberately, but not conspicuously or exclusively. It is a lovely contrast to the rather harrowing story I heard of a large conservative church in the UK planting in an area of both middle class professionals and a working class housing estate and had a serious discussion about whether they should advertise the church on the estate, given that that wasn't their demographic! (Fortunately in that case the gospel won out.)

Barth and Evangelicalism

2007-11-06T22:03:00.001+09:00

In the story of twentieth and early twenty-first century theology, Barth is the bomb and everything else is the shrapnel. Because of this, to ask the question “how have they related themselves to Barth?” has become one of the most instructive and fruitful questions you can ask of any theologians or movements of the last 60 years.
The story of how evangelicalism has related itself to Barth’s project is fascinating and instructive: sometimes warm, other times hostile; sometimes helpfully critical, other times ill-informed and aggressive. With this in mind, I was very pleased to learn that David Gibson and Daniel Strange have edited a new book called Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques (Nottingham: Apollos, due January 2008).
With contributions from Henri Blocher, Mark Thompson, Michael Ovey, Paul Helm and Donald Macleod (among others), it looks to be a promising volume. Evangelicalism can learn much from Barth. It could also, I believe, be a source of useful critiques. Either way, it needs to engage with Barth, which is exactly what this volume looks like it will do.
The publishers are running a website related to the book called “Engaging with Barth”, which can be accessed here

Proclaiming Jesus: Lessons Learned in the UK #1

2007-11-05T17:49:00.000+09:00

As readers of this blog will know, I have just spend a little over two weeks in the UK engaging with a series of evangelical ministries in that country. The aim is to find ways to improve the ministry I am involved in back in Perth. I especially targeted ministries trying to do what we are trying to do—reach students, plant churches and take seriously the post-Christian, missionary context of the modern west.
This series will consist of a series of reflections on what I have seen here. It will include posts on:

The Crowded House in Sheffield
A church planting initiative in the North of England that has a focus on house-based churches, work amongst the marginalized and a well thought out approach to missiology in the modern west.

Jesmond Parish Church
A self-consciously large evangelical Anglican church with a student ministry. Jesmond presents two features that do not feature in our ministry back home: (a) a commitment to church growth in the tradition of Saddleback Community Church and (b) a commitment to being a public voice on national political issues in the UK.

Para-church students ministries of the UCCF and Navigators
The UCCF (University and Colleges Christian Fellowship) is a flagship evangelical organization in the UK and the mother of the AFES and the international IFES. The UCCF is interesting because it preserves what the AFES would have been if that ministry had not undergone its radical changes under the leadership of Andrew Reid in the 1990s.

Navigators is another students ministry with a strong emphasis on one-to-one work. It is a significant part of the puzzle for grasping student ministry in Australia because a number of its commitments have been incorporated into the AFES.

Church on the Corner, Islington, London
An Anglican church in one of the grooviest parts of London, with some ‘emergent’ features.

St Ebbs, Oxford
A classical model of church-based students ministries in one of the greatest institutions of the western world.

The British Museum
Not technically a church, but because I wagged church to go there, I thought I’d better include a post here.

Final Reflections
Reflections on what I have learned here, as well as some wider (and wildly ill-informed) comments on evangelical theology in the UK as seen it its preaching.

I am well aware that two weeks in the UK, and an average of 3 days per church/ministry is far to short to start lobbing criticisms. So in the series I will list the positive things I learned in each place, and then pose a series of “questions” which can be understood as (a) a euphemistic way of voicing criticisms or (b) a genuine list of questions for which there may or may not be positive answers.

Cemetery Gates

2007-10-31T18:28:00.001+09:00

Highgate Cemetery West
Originally uploaded by msknight

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine

So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people all those lives
Where are they now?
With the loves and hates
And passions just like mine
They were born
And then they lived and then they died
Seems so unfair
And I want to cry

You say: "ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well, and I've heard them said
A hundred times, maybe less, maybe more

If you must write prose and poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loans"
There's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Who'll trip you up and laugh
When you fall

You say: "ere long done do does did"
Words which could only be your own
And then you then produce the text
From whence was ripped some dizzy whore, 1804

The Smiths, Cemetery Gates, from The Queen is Dead

The Smiths are making for good company on my iPod as I travel around North England.

Greetings from Sheffield

2007-10-26T16:21:00.000+08:00

Having a brilliant time in Sheffield UK with the guys from The Crowded House network. Plently to process about ecclesiology and missiology.

I asked someone (who would know) how Karl Barth is generally received in English evangelicalism--friend or foe? He said that basically he's not read.

I'm starting to develop some theories on English evangelicalism and theology and, given that blogs were invented for rants based on half-baked, under-researched opinions, those theories will probably appear here soon.

Off to England

2007-10-23T06:43:00.000+08:00

In a couple of hours I'll be getting on a plane for the UK. Going to a conference with The Crowded House people in Sheffield, and visiting a few other churches while I am there.
I'll be away until 9 November. I hope to be able to post while I am over there, but in the event that I can't/don't, I'll be back in a couple of weeks.

An attempt to summarize the ten commandments into one sentence

2007-10-21T15:52:00.000+08:00

"You shall not covet your neighbour's god."

Busted Custard or No Biggy: Preaching other peoples' sermons

2007-10-18T20:13:00.000+08:00

I've recently listened to a couple of sermons of coveting in preparation for my own on Sunday. I got two from two evangelical churches in the UK and discovered that two different people from different churches had preached almost exactly the same sermon! Same structure, same quotes, sometimes verbatim use of words and phrases. I listened to both again and took notes and I am sure that either a) one copied the other or b) they both got it from someone else.

So, my question is: does that matter? Is that bad form, or is that a perfectly acceptable practice? "All things are yours" (1 Cor 3) or "you shall not steal" (Exodus 20:15)?

Discuss.

Commandment Number 10

2007-10-16T15:03:00.001+08:00

Ten commandments
Originally uploaded by redcord

"So here in the last commandment we discover what the whole Decalogue is about—namely, that we were created to love God, and when that love is misdirected, life degenerates into a jumble of disordered desires, fragments testifying that we were meant to be something quite else than what we have become."
Hauerwas, The Truth About God, 130.

iSermons

2007-10-16T14:50:00.000+08:00

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the iSermon discussion. It's one of the largest discussions ever hosted on this humble blog and I learnt a lot from the contributors. Thanks!

As a parting anecdote, I was doing something today and thought, "this is pretty brainless--I'll listen to an iSermon." I started to look around for my iPod, only to discover that I already had it on as was already listening to a sermon!

On Lying

2007-10-11T06:49:00.000+08:00

“Preachers who do not preach truthfully often justify their pastoral deceit on the basis of “love”. They are such kind and caring pastors, they don’t want to make their congregations’ lives more miserable by telling them the truth. Congregations complain that this makes for boring, predictably trite sermons. What they ought to be complaining about is paternalistic pastors who have so little respect for their congregations as to assume that they are fated to be liars.” Stanley M. Hauerwas & William H. Willimon The Truth about God: The Ten Commandments in the Christian Life, 120.

‘The world is deeply threatened by even one little life lived truthfully.” Hauerwas, 124.

This Sunday at St Matt's Unichurch: "You shall not bear false testimony against your neighbour"

On London

2007-10-08T18:56:00.001+08:00

London Souvenir II
Originally uploaded by Vesuviano

"It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent"
Henry James, quoted in V. S. Pritchett's London Perceived, 1962, 13.

An iHarvest of righteousness?

2007-10-03T09:25:00.001+08:00

iLove
Originally uploaded by ilREdelNIENTE

Thanks to my little iPod shuffle, I now listen to some considerable amount of sermons and lectures every week as I get about. I know many others who do the same.

So, if lots of Christians are doing this, can we expect a great harvest of righteousness in the coming years? More God's word = more righteousness (joy, peace etc.). Does it work that way?

On the one hand, capitalizing on new technology is part of our story--think of the way protestants jumped on the opportunities provided by the printing press.

But on the other hand, is listening to sermons on an iPod deficient or second best? Does listening to some sermon given to some other congregation in some other place by some other pastor lessen the impact? Does it matter that you are jogging or shopping at the time?

What are the pros and cons of iSermons?

Child Sacrifice?

2007-10-01T20:16:00.000+08:00

"Yuppies can be seen as the monks of modernity. The Yuppies...refrain from having children...That is their great sacrifice to their gods." Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon, The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in the Christian Life, 1999, 111.

Breadth or Depth? Deciding on a church's teaching programme

2007-09-29T14:39:00.001+08:00

UniChurch034
Originally uploaded by roryjwshiner

A bishop once told me that the slogan of conservative evangelical pedagogy should be "never mind the depth, feel the breadth!"

I am thinking about our preaching and teaching programme for St Matthew's Unichurch next year and am facing the 'depth versus breadth' dilemma myself. This year for example at church we taught through:
- First Half of 2 Corinthians
- Ten Commandments
- 5 chapters of Luke
- Micah
- Random Psalms, Christmas, Easter and Trinity Sunday

And at Bible Study
- 1 Thessalonians
- Micah
- "6 Steps to Talking about Jesus"
- "The World We All Want"
- The Sermon on the Mount

At a glance that definitely seems to err on the side of breadth! So, image a year where in Bible Study and at Church on Sundays you essentially just did:

- All of Genesis (Bible Study and Sunday Service)
- Second half of 2 Corinthians (Bible Study and Sunday Service)
- "Introducing Jesus" (Bible Study and Sunday Service--Evangelistic)

(+ Philippians, Revelation 2-3 and major Calendar Days--Christmas, Palm Sunday, Easter, and Trinity).

I think you'd wallk out of the year with a fairly deep grasp of Genesis and 2 Corinthians. Would that be a good year? Better than a shallow grasp of a larger number of books?

Unto Us by Spike Milligan

2007-09-26T20:12:00.000+08:00

Somewhere at some time
They committed themselves to me
And so, I was!
Small, but I WAS!
Tiny, in shape
Lusting to live
I hung in my pulsing cave.
Soon they knew of me
My mother —my father.
I had no say in my being
I lived on trust
And love
Tho' I couldn't think
Each part of me was saying
A silent 'Wait for me
I will bring you love!'
I was taken
Blind, naked, defenseless
By the hand of one
Whose good name
Was graven on a brass plate
in Wimpole Street,
and dropped on the sterile floor
of a foot operated plastic waste
bucket.
There was no Queens Counsel
To take my brief.
The cot I might have warmed
Stood in Harrod's shop window.
When my passing was told
My father smiled.
No grief filled my empty space.
My death was celebrated
With tickets to see Danny la Rue
Who was pretending to be a woman
Like my mother was.

Posted because, having recently preached on Exodus 20:13, I have been troubled by this issue.

Unichurch Podcast

2007-09-25T15:39:00.000+08:00

After a gap of some weeks due to technical difficulties, St Matthew's Unichurch is now podcasting again. The latest is my effort on Exodus 20:13: You shall not kill. You can subscribe at iTunes (just search for "Unichurch") or get them off the website.

If you haven't got time to listen, no worries. The basic idea is: If you're thinking of killing someone, don't.

You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13)

2007-09-22T09:41:00.000+08:00

"One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend." Stanley Hauerwas, The Ten Commandments, 89.

Preaching on Exodus 20:13 this Sunday at St Matthew's Unichurch: "You shall not murder." Prayers for insight, boldness and faithfulness gratefully received.

Evangelicals and American Politics # 3

2007-09-20T08:52:00.001+08:00

Washinton Cathedral 2
Originally uploaded by suelee14

Here are the final quotes I will post from the Brooks/Sullivan discussion. May do one more most on the topic with my own reflections.

David Brooks:

“When I look around the world, I see that it is often the Christian politicians who are most useful, because they understand something, they understand that human beings are not just profit-maximizing creatures who respond to incentives. They understand the dark aspects of human nature because the doctrine of original sin is core to their being…And so when they look at the middle east and see that someone will commit suicide just to kill people, that is not a surprise to them, because the Bible has prepared them for depravity.
I was in Africa recently and I went to a hospital—with Michael Gerson in fact—where 848 women were being treated for AIDS…They were trying to bring their male partners in to get tested for HIV as well. Out of the 848 women, 8 men came in. This is not self-interested, rational, profit-maximizing behaviour, And to me the Christians and people with strong religious faith have understood the reality of human nature, which is the core lesson of the post 9/11 world.”

And this
“And so with me, when I look at the role evangelicals are playing, I’m where Lincoln was. I don’t share a lot of the beliefs, I certainly don’t share some of the faiths…but I know that evangelical Christians, people who have a sense of right and justice in the world, have provided many of the most important civil rights movements in the country. Whether it’s abolitionism, or the civil right movement—and I would recommend a book called The Stone of Hope which argues that the civil rights movement was not a political movement with a religious taint, but a religious movement with a political taint—and Lincoln said that I’m not with these people. I’m not among these people, but I am with these people..."

Evangelicals and American Politics # 2

2007-09-18T10:33:00.001+08:00

The White House
Originally uploaded by Darwynn

A couple of quotes from David Brooks:

On meeting evangelicals:

“If I go to dinner with evangelicals, I have to come with an empty briefcase, because they're going to give me histories, they're going to give me biographies, there will be a few C. S. Lewis tapes they want me to list to—I’ll come home festooned with books, cause this a is a group of people who never shut up. They want to talk and talk and talk.”

On Sullivan's claim that evangelicalism (like Islam) cannot live with doubt:

“If you look at the people who were most absent of doubt in the Bush administration, and who I think have harmed the Unites States and the Bush administration—and conservatism—more than anyone else, I would say that person’s Donald Rumsfield—not an evangelical Christian, not someone subsumed by faith…If you want to ask me who has been most honest, among the people who have been most honest, about what’s going on in the world, who have been most constructive to America, I would say it’s Michael Gerson, the Presidents former speechwriter, who Andrew lists in his book as a fundamentalist, but who, if you want someone who can face up to unpleasant truths, to the evidence, I would say it’s Michael Gerson, who went to Wheaton College, and who is a serious religious person…”

Evangelicals and American Politics # 1

2007-09-16T07:53:00.001+08:00

American flag waving at US Capitol Building
Originally uploaded by jcolman

The word 'evangelical' has been prominent in the media in recent years, owing largely to the role this grouping (or a section thereof) have played in conservative American politics in recent years. So it was with interest that I listened to a recent Cato Institute podcast, where David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan were discussing ‘the conservative soul’—whether it has been lost in the Bush administration, and why (according to Sullivan) evangelicals were to blame. It was very interesting so I thought I’d post some extracts from this exchange over the next few days.

For some context, Sullivan is a gay Catholic conservative. He initially supported the war in Iraq, but has in recent years lost faith in the Bush administration. Part of his analysis is that ‘Christianism’—his term for fundamentalist Christianity—has betrayed conservatism, the essence of which, according to Sullivan, is doubt.

In the podcast he is in discussion with David Brooks, a Jewish New Yorker who has taken an interest in evangelicals and in trying to explain them to the wider American society. For example, he recently wrote an article in the New York Times entitled “Stott, not Falwell’, where he explained to New Yorkers that if they wanted to understand genuine evangelicalism, the needed to look at John Stott, not Jerry Falwell.

So that sets the scene: a gay catholic arguing with a Jewish New Yorker about American evangelicals! In the next few posts I’ll be quoting from Brooks on evangelicals. Sullivan also has some interesting things to say about the nature of conservatism and its relationship to religious conviction and to doubt, which I may post on later.

Away

2007-09-10T09:04:00.001+08:00

Moore River
Originally uploaded by UnclePedro

I'll be away from the blog for a week. Up to Moore River on the Western Australian coast for our church staff retreat. See you in a week.

Lost in Translation?

2007-09-05T19:59:00.000+08:00

I was listening to a podcast from the Acts 29 network today called "The practices of a missional church". The speaker said he has benefited from the preaching of "...Dick Lucas, who's a high church guy over in Great Britain."
I'm guessing the words "high church" mean something different in the US to what they do in Britain?!

Doing Exegesis

2007-09-05T10:39:00.001+08:00

Greek NT
Originally uploaded by chewywong

Like most pastors, I have developed a fairly predicatable routine for preparing to preach on a passage. I would be interested to hear from other people about the processes they use. I'm always open to new ways of getting close to the text. My process these days (ideally--it doesn't always work out like this of course) is:

1. Do a grammatical flow-diagram of the passage.
2. Translate the passage as best I can.
3. Look up lexical and grammatical stuff.
4. Look at other translations.
5. Refine my own translation.
6. Grapple with the passage, bombarding it with questions.*
7. Try to come to a mind on what I think it is saying.
8. Go to the commentaries.

* This one is almost always the most productive part of the process for me.

From there I begin writing the talk, which is a whole other process for a whole other post.

Other things I have tried include:
1. Reading the text out-loud a number of times to grapple with how to read it well.
2. Recording a reading the text and then listening to it repeatedly on the iPod (works best for whole books)
3. Listening to recordings of it in the original language (just trying this out now. Will let you know how it goes.)

What do you do to exegete a text?

Spong's new book

2007-09-01T19:05:00.000+08:00

For two worthwhile reviews of Bishop Spong's new book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, see Ben Myers's review here and the comments of Rowan Williams here. Neither could be accused of being raving fundies, and both offer some very helpful insights into the problems with Spong's project.

Top Five Writing Books

2007-08-27T08:17:00.000+08:00

Over the years I have collected a number of grammars and style manuals to help my writing. Their presence at my desk might make me look like a serious writer, but only on the same logic that concludes a man is in good health because he is always seeing doctors.

Anyway, here is my topic five:

1. The Politics of Language by George Orwell (essay)

2. The Economist Style Guide

3. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk & E. B. White

4. The New Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by R. W. Burchfield

5. Troublesome Words, by Bill Bryson

Do you have a book that helps you write good?

Lie back and think of England...

2007-08-24T12:43:00.001+08:00

Houses (Chelsea - London)
Originally uploaded by scalleja

It looks like I've scored a trip to the UK at the end of the year. As a moderate-to-fair Anglophile I'm rather excited. I have started to put books beside my bed to get me in the mood. So far, I have decided to read or re-read:

Falling Toward England, May Week Was In June & North Face of Soho by Clive James

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Churchill by Roy Jenkins

Boswell's Life of Johnson

What would you read to get excited about a trip to the UK? What would you do with three hours to spare in London (I'm actually going for work and at the moment three hours in London is looking to be the extent of my free time.)

Absent

2007-08-20T12:20:00.000+08:00

Sorry, but I have been unexpectedly absent from the blog for a week or two. Should be back on track this week.

Not the TNIV's finest moment

2007-08-08T19:00:00.000+08:00

At our church we use the TNIV and I generally think it's pretty good. However:

"No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him know."

Turns John's poetry into something that sounds like it was hammered out by a committee. Apart from being ugly prose, it leaves nothing unexplained, which might be good language for a mission statement or corporate memo, but straight forward, anyone-can-get-this explanations is surely not what John was going for in his prologue.

Sabbath and Resurrection

2007-08-06T07:54:00.000+08:00

"Sabbath so understood is cosmic, but then so is the Resurrection. That our time was changed by the Resurrection means no subjectivist accounts of the Resurrection are truthful; that is, that Resurrection names but the vivid memory of Jesus in the disciples. Rather, Resurrection is about the reordering of time, the redemption of creation from sin and death. The Decalogue, under the dispensation of the new age begun in the Resurrection becomes life-giving because we can now see the commandment in the light of the Resurrection."

Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon, The Truth About God (1999), 57.

Speaking on the Ten Commandments at St Matthew's Unichurch next Sunday. Plannning to read Calvin, Hauerwas, and a couple of essays. Any other hot tips? And you Barthians, what is Barth's point in putting the Sabbath at the front of his discussion of Ethics in CD 3/4?

Easter and Tragedy

2007-07-31T08:39:00.001+08:00

The Ethiopian church on the roof of the Church of Holy Sepulture
Originally uploaded by Tierecke

"In a narrow sense, then, one might say that the chief offense of the Gospels is their defiance of the insights of tragedy--and not only because Christ does not fit the model of the well-born tragic hero. More important is the incontestable truth that, in the Gospels, the destruction of the protagonist emphatically does not restore or affirm the order of city or cosmos. Were the Gospels to end with Christ's sepulture, in good tragic style, it would exculpate all parties, including Pilate and the Sanhedrin, whose judgments would be shown to have been fated by the exigencies of the crisis and the burdens of their offices; the story would then reconcile us to the tragic necessity of all such judgments. But instead comes Easter, which rudely interrupts all the minatory and sententious moralisms of the tragic chorus, just as they are about to be uttered to full effect, and which cavalierly violates the central tenet of sound economics: rather than trading the sacrificial victim for some supernatural benefit, and so the particular for the universal, Easter restores the slain hero in his particularity again, as the only truth the Gospels have to offer. This is more than a dramatic peripety. The empty tomb overturns all the "responsible" and "necessary" verdicts of Christ's judges, and so grants them neither legitimacy nor pardon."
David Bentley Hart, "God or Nothingness" in I Am The Lord Your God: Christian Reflections on the Ten Commandments 2005, page 66.

Real-Life Mixed Metaphors

2007-07-28T09:01:00.001+08:00

Tower Bridge
Originally uploaded by Simon Crubellier

All witnessed in real-life by me.

“She is steaming along on all fours”
“That’s so refreshing. It’s like oil on parched ground .”
“Leave that aside for the moment. We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it".

Organizing your books

2007-07-26T21:09:00.000+08:00
What's the wisdom these days on organizing a personal library? At the moment my rather simple structure is:

- Reference Books: Random

- Commentaries: Genesis-Revelation

- Theological Books: A-Z by author

- Biography: A-Z by subject

- History: Chronological

- Non-fiction: A-Z by author

- Novels: Random

I'm doing some re-organizing over the next few days, so if anyone has better ideas on this, let me know.

Resurrection Top 5: Number 1 The Resurrection of the Son of God

2007-07-25T21:53:00.000+08:00

My number 1 book on the resurrection is, perhaps predictably, N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. (2004)

At 740-odd pages, this book has come under criticism in theological circles for allowing the whether question to dominate over the why question (i.e., if it happened over the theological significance of why it happened and what it means for the gospel.)

I do confess that there were points at which, as we moved inch by inch through the inter-testamental literature, I grew weary. However, it was on the whole fascinating stuff. And I think the historical work was a demand placed on the work by both internal and external forces. Internally, it’s worth remembering that the projected five volume Christian Origins and the Question of God series is actually interested in Christian Origins. An historical angle to his treatment of resurrection is therefore only to be expected.

Externally, the need to return to questions of historicity has been generated by 200 years of liberal ascendancy in which such questions have been marginalized. If the a-historical treatment of, for example, Peter Carnely’s The Shape of Resurrection Belief is to be adequately answered, then Tom Wright really had no choice but to write the book he wrote.

I enjoyed it.

Idolatry and Protest

2007-07-24T09:40:00.000+08:00
"Idolatry is also the ever-present danger of thinking that it might be possible for us to effect our own redemption by our obedience, our enlightenment. God's world is so good and God has endowed humanity with such gifts that we can be tempted to believe that we are sufficient unto ourselves...Prayer is the protest against idolatry. In prayer, we give the Creator what is due, acknowledging the joyful surprise that we exist. Moreover, in prayer, we claim our existence as a gift, grace. The Decalogue is God's gift to Israel continually to teach Israel how to live, not by wits, but through gift.
Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon, The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life (Nashville, Abingdon, 1999), 35.

I confess

2007-07-14T13:40:00.000+08:00

A little while ago now, Ben, Byron and many others wrote memes on the theme ‘I confess’. They were specifically intellectual confessions, inviting people to come out of the closet and make confessions about their thinking on line.

A little late, but here’s mine:

“I confess that even though I was once a Luddite and a Provincial and am a humble Anglo-Baptist evangelical believer, I was shown mercy because I blogged on theology in ignorance and under-education. The grace of free blogger software was poured out on me abundantly, along with the longsuffering and good humour that are in the wider world of theological bloggers who know what they are talking about.

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance—theological blogs came onto the internet to save try-hard writers, of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason, I was given a theological blog, so that in me, the worst of theological bloggers, other bloggers would humour me as an example for those who would blog after me and receive their own try-hard blogs.” (with apologies to 1 Tim 1:12-15)

In other news, I will be away for the next 6 days, speaking at our AFES Mid-Year Conference. I am looking forward to returning to blogging after that, with some posts already in store, including my number one Resurrection book, my top five mixed metaphors (e.g. "She came down on him like a pack of cards") and a series of posts on whether evangelicals are too idealist, with case studies from our stance on gambling, evangelical art and literature and our (sometimes) uninspiring church services. Prayer for speaking at MYC gratefully received. See you after then.

PS: I also confess that I cannot work out how to bold or italicize anything on my posts. I try the Ctrl thing, but to no avail. Has my trusty little MacBook been letting me down, or is there some trick I don't know of?

Resurrection Top 5: Number 2 Jesus: God and Man by Pannenberg

2007-07-14T13:35:00.000+08:00
Wlofhart Pannenberg's Jesus: God and Man

Jesus God and Man is a truly great christology. As a conservative evangelical, I was deeply impressed by his defense of the resurrection of Jesus as public truth, open to historical investigation. Such a defense has not been a mainstay of German scholarship, and I welcome it wholeheartedly.

Even more impressive is his capacity to think the resurrection back into the doctrine of the trinity and the doctrine of God. Writing on resurrection often gets caught in an evidentialist maze from which it rarely emerges. Pannenberg, however manages to take the evidence and think theologically from it. Great stuff.

Resurrection Top 5: Number 3 Resurrection and Redemption & Raised Immortal

2007-07-12T11:07:00.000+08:00

Resurrection and Redemption by Richard Gaffin & Raised Immortal by Murray J. Harris

Like number five, number three is a tie between two books. Both are biblical studies on the topic of resurrection, both are from a reformed evangelical perspective, and both, in my opinion, listen attentively enough to the witness of the scriptures to allow the biblical teaching on resurrection to break the old wineskins of more traditional refromed soteriologies.

Graffin works through the Pauline material and, as the older title of the book suggests, discovers 'the centrality of the resurrection' to Pauline soteriology.

Harris seeks to relate resurrection to the concept of immortality, showing them to be complimentary rather than competing concepts.

I couldn't come with Harris on his view of 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, who rejects the idea that an intermediate state is on view (in the 'nakedness' Paul speaks of), but he argues well and a number have followed his lead in this exegetical judgement.

Good news for Perth

2007-07-11T18:58:00.000+08:00

I had my first coffee from Epic Espresso in West Perth today, and the good news is that these good people make coffee that is every bit as good as Campos in Newtown, Sydney (better even?!). Hoorah!

Resurrection Top 5: Number 4 Resurrection and Moral Order

2007-07-10T07:32:00.000+08:00

Resurrection and Moral Order by Oliver O'Donovan is the best book in this top 5 list, but it appears at number 4 because it is not as strictly about resurrection as the other four.

It is as its subtitle suggests 'an outline of evangelical ethics'. The resurrection is the theological engine room of O'Donovan's project, because the resurrection (of Jesus) demonstrates that the NT gospel is fundamentally a vindication of the created order and not an escape from it. The resurrection testifies to both the continuity and to the transformation in God's eschatological purposes. Continuity (i.e., that it is this creation God is saving) means that the created order is relevant to ethics; but the transformation tells us that ethics still needs to be evangelical--of the gospel. Thus, so-call creation ethics versus kingdom ethics need not be in conflict, once the purpose of the kingdom is seen to be about the vindication of this creation.

This is the book that I think first drove home to me what it is to think theologically. It taught me that theology is more (though not less) that simply amassing the data of the Bible under topical headings. Rather, theology (to use a dodgy etimological argument) is theo-logy; that is, it is about the logic of God, about how to think and speak reasonably about God from God's revelation in scripture.

In this sense, theology is architectural. It is about grasping not just the data of the Bible but its shape. It is about seeing that this pillar holds up this part of the roof; that without this beam the structure would be less sturdy, and less beautiful. It was O'Donovan's insight into how the resurrection structures Christian theology to which I owe this great lesson.

Quick Question

2007-07-09T14:38:00.000+08:00
Most biblical scholars seem to assume that Paul believed in a resurrection of the righteous only (in line with one of the two main Pharisaic options of the day--the other being a reurrection of both the righteous and unrighteous ala Daniel 12:2 etc). Is this on the assumption that Luke has put Acts 24:15 ("...there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and unrighteous") in Paul's mouth erroneously?

Honest question.

Resurrection Books: My Top 5

2007-07-08T12:12:00.001+08:00

This week, in the lead up to our Mid Year Conference on Resurrection, I thought I'd post my top 5 Resurrection books. (If you can guess the next four in advance, you get a lollie [=’Candy’ for North American readers]).

Number 5: The Easter Enigma, by John Wenham & Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection by Stephen Davis

Coming in at number 5, these are the two best ‘evidential’ books on the resurrection of Jesus I have come across. Both mount a lively case for the historicity of the resurrection without falling into the more naively evidentialist school of apologetics.

Wenham’s book is a short, energetic and earthy attempt to grapple with the information our sources give us, with a particular interest in dealing with the apparent discrepancies. It reads a little like detective literature, complete with maps, character profiles and reasoned conjecture concerning how the events might have pieced together. The book was apparently formed while the author was resident in Jerusalem, and the keen sense of place attests to this as the Sitz im Leben of the book.

The whole project of working out ‘what happened’ on that Sunday morning is often disparaged by mainstream biblical scholarship. Ironically, Wenham’s book is often criticized by scholars who, while dogmatically agnostic about the historicial value of the resurrection accounts, are at the same time incredibly confident about what historical insights these same documents can give us into (for example) the “Community of Q”—its existence, its geographic location, that they took breakfast at 8:00 and that they preferred Beyonce’s earlier work.

If you understand that Wenham is not pushing the evidence to say ‘this is what happened’ but merely that the accounts can be brought into an historical harmony, ‘and here’s one attempt’, then it is a worthy little book.

Stephen Davis, on the other hand, provides a philosophical defense of the belief in a empty tomb and bodily resurrection of Jesus in time and space. Sensible, modest, conservative and compelling.

(For other intelligent defenses of the historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection, see N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 685-718 and [with more critical assumptions] Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, 53-114.)

A week in Albany

2007-06-27T07:12:00.001+08:00

York Street, Albany.
Originally uploaded by Ron42
I'll be spending a week with friends in my home town of Albany. Posting will resume here from 4th July.
Till then,
Rory

Ten Commandments

2007-06-25T15:26:00.000+08:00
I'll be preaching through the ten commandments at St Matthew's Unichurch next semester. Trying to think of titles for the series. I welcome any suggestions/critiques:

1. The gods that don't help you ("No gods before me")

2 & 3. The worship God wants from you ("No images/no name in vain")

4. The break you need ("Sabbath")

5. The home you left ("Father and Mother")

(A four week break then)

6. Happiness is a warm gun ("Murder")

7. Let's talk about sex ("Adultery")

8. Download this song ("Stealing")

9. Sex, Lies and Videotapes ("Lying")

10. Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? (coveting)*

*Or, possibly, 'Your neighbour's ass"

Sydney

2007-06-22T11:21:00.001+08:00

Sydney Harbour Bridge
Originally uploaded by Trevor_MTB
"I despair of being able to convey to any reader my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour. I have seen nothing equal to it in the way of land-loced scenery; nothing second to it. Dublin Bay, the Bay of Spezia, New York, ad the Cove of York, are all picturesquely fine. Bantry Bay, with its nooks of sea running up to Glengariff, is very lovely. But they are not equal to Sydney, either in shape, in colour, or in variety ... It is so inexpressibly lovely that it makes a man ask himself whether it would not be worth his while to move his household goods to the eastern coast of Australia, in order than he might look at it as long as he can look at anything." Anthony Trollope

PS: No gratuitous comments from Sydneysiders please. I don't think Trollope ever made it to Perth. Who knows what he might have said?

Agrippa the Ripper?

2007-06-20T18:12:00.000+08:00
The essay I am working on is arguing the thesis that Herod Agrippa (Acts 12) is more important for the history of early Christianity that is often realized. I am arguing (with some and against others) that the first century in Judaea was unevenly divided into a relatively peaceful (emphasis on relatively) period from AD 6-44 and a more turbulent period from the death of Agrippa (44) to the Jewish war of 66-70.

I am arguing that, with the end of Agrippa, all hopes of significant Jewish home rule were dashed, and that Judaea subsequently became increasing volitile and apocalyptic in mood, culminating in the Jewish War.

In terms of Christian history, this meant that Jerusalem became and increasingly conservative place, as did the church under the leadership of James. Conversely, the apocalyptic and nationalistic mood probably had the opposite effect on the Pauline mission, leading to a more confident evangelistic effort of offering of a law-free gospel to the Gentiles and Gentiles (which, in its own way reflects Paul's own apocalyptic expectations, see Romans 9-11, 15:7ff).

If you've read this far, you probably know something about the topic. Any thoughts (good books, contrary or supporting arguments, etc?)

How good is Campos Coffee really?

2007-06-20T18:10:00.001+08:00

Campos Coffee
Originally uploaded by russ.au
You may be wondering from a distance just how good this Campos Coffee is? Let me help:

Imagine yourself sitting down to drink the best Nescafe Blend 43 you’ve ever had—the water is hot, the tea-spoon is heaped with coffee, and the milk is just right. Got it?

Now, imagine you are about to enjoy this sublime treat at a little table overlooking a groovy inner-city streetscape. Got it?

Now, imagine, just before the rim of the mug hits your lips, two coffee-terrorists come screaming toward you with A-K 47s, shouting at you: “PUT DOWN THE MUG OR WE SHOOT!”

You drop the mug and they knock you to the ground screaming: “How dare you, you who knows of the existence of Campos Café, how dare you sit there drinking something that should be reserved for times of war, famine and caffeine-dependency clinics!”

“Promise us you will never drink that stuff again, and nobody gets hurt. Meanwhile, we are off to deal with people that live in a 100 mile radius of Campos and still drink instant.”

It’s something like that.

Coffee at Campos

2007-06-20T07:18:00.001+08:00

Coffee
Originally uploaded by 1869
Had one of these in Newtown this morning. Worth the trip across the country just to have one. Viva La Campos!

Hengel on the Jewish Church

2007-06-19T13:49:00.000+08:00
"One of the tragic developments in the history of Christianity is that the 'church of the Jews,' which showed great powers of perseverance even after AD70, was not tolerated and supported in the further history by the Church of the Gentiles, despite the warning given by Paul in Rom 11:17ff." Martin Hengel, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity, 1979, 121.

On the SideBar

2007-06-14T14:45:00.000+08:00
I've added two new links to the sidebar. One is my mate Stephen McAlpine who is working with The Crowded House network in Sheffield, UK. The other is my conservative-evangelical-Messianic-Jewish-fellow-Donald-Robinson-fan friend James Mendelsohn. Both worth checking out.

Efficient Research

2007-06-12T14:37:00.001+08:00

Essay time (Postmodern Feminism): My Desk
Originally uploaded by Tim Riley 澳大利亚
As someone who has to hand in a 10,000 essay next Friday, my mind has been on essay and research technique recently. I have no pretensions to expertise in this area, so I am opening myself up to anyone’s helpful advice.

The best bit of research advice I’ve had in recent years was from Peter Bolt, who advised me to adopt the technique of “making every lap count”. It’s the research equivalent to the administration idea of “never touching a piece of paper twice”. In a research context it means that whenever you read a text (book, article, essay or whatever), instead of just taking some notes, writing a few thoughts or whatever, and saving the write-up phase till later, you should rather response in full, essay-level prose to what you’ve just written. Don’t move on to the next text until you’ve responded properly and in good prose to what you’ve read.

Now, this is totally against nature for me, but I’ve been doing it this essay and it works a treat. You don’t move as quickly, but you avoid double handling and you move forward in a way that means the final stage of the process is far less painful.

That’s my golden tip. Anyone else got any killer research tips?

The Wright Title

2007-06-09T16:28:00.001+08:00

N.T. Wright at The National Cathedral
Originally uploaded by wyclif
People: Let’s place a moratorium on essays, articles, books and blogposts that deal with the work of N. T. Wright and employ titles that play on the word Wright/Right. Recent examples include:

“What’s Right with Wright’s New Perspective on Paul?” (Seminar Title)

“What’s Wrong with Wright?” (Aggressive Booklet)

Etc.

Before the moratorium kicks in may I also suggest:

“Wright of Centre? N. T. Wright’s political commitments”

“Do the Wright Thing: Tom Wright’s books and Spike Lee’s films. A Study.”

“Wright on the Left: More on N. T. Wright’s politics”

“The Bill of Wrights: Tom Wright’s appearance fees considered”

“The Wright to Bear Arms: N. T. Wight on the US Constitution”

“Born at the Wright Time: Tom Wright and Paul Simon’s Music”

“Gay and Lesbian Wrights: Famous homosexuals who share the same surname as the eminent New Testament scholar Tom Wright”

Hitchens on Religion and Art

2007-06-07T20:59:00.001+08:00

The long entrance
Originally uploaded by RIchard S Levett
[After a conversation where Adam's was bemoaning the fact that, as of 2007, religion had not yet been got rid of. At this point Hitchens says "well, perhaps you are more of a materialist that me" and goes on to say:]

Christopher Hitchens: Maybe it's just my upbringing, but I couldn't imagine a world without gothic architecture, or without say the poetry of George Herbert or a few other examples. I don't care much for devotional painting I must say...even Leonardo when he's doing devotional paintings seems phoney to me. But that's just my point of view. I couldn't do without devotional music and architecture and poetry I must say. I've never thought it was eradicable, or that anyone should try [to eradicate it]...

Philip Adams:...Yes, religion has given us some pretty impressive art and artefacts and so on. Is that because very talented people had to work within a religious framework to make a quid?...

Christopher Hitchens:...We cannot be sure of an architect or a painter, that they didn't have to do as their patron requested, but it would be very cheap to say that about the poetry of John Donne, say, that he only wrote that way because he knew what side his bread was buttered on. I can't bring myself to say that.

Philip Adams: Well, poets don't need that degree of patronage...

Christopher Hitchens:...I couldn't say it did it for a few bob. I wouldn't want to say that, and I wouldn't trust anyone who did.

From an interview on ABC Radio National's "Late Night Live" 10/05/07

Taking the Trouble: A quote for Trinity Sunday

2007-06-03T10:35:00.000+08:00
"Theology means taking rational trouble over the mystery. But all rational trouble over this mystery [i.e. the trinity], the more serious it is, can only lead to interpreting it anew and genuinely as a mystery and making it visible as such. For that reason it is worth while to give in to this rational trouble. If we are unwilling to take the trouble, neither shall we know what we mean when we say that here we are dealing with God's mystery."
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1, p 432.

In Praise of Atheism: How Hitchens Helps

2007-05-31T17:08:00.001+08:00

Christopher Hitchens
Originally uploaded by FrogMiller
In the current conversation about atheism, it can be tempting to pillory the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins as aggressive polemicists. However, there are many ways in which (especially) Hitchens can help us.

In particular, Hitchens has repeatedly pointed out the sad phenomenon of religions banding together to defend “faith” in general and oppose opposition to “religion” in general. Take for example the appalling way in which a number of Christian leaders a few years ago defended, not Salman Rushdie’s right to write The Satanic Verses without the threat of death, but rather spoke out against his apparent offensiveness and blasphemy when the man was under a death sentence (Fatwa) from religious leaders in the name of God!

Or take the sentimentality with which much American evangelicalism dealt with the recent revelations about Ted Haggard—he may have been sleeping with a male prostitute and buying Crack on the streets, but he’s still one of us, and his restoration is no doubt imminent.

Or take the general way in which, in the assault headed by Dawkins and Hitchens, Christian apologists have so often responded with a general defense of something called “faith” that is apparently shared by all religious people. Take the very notion that all people of faith should make common cause against atheists, presumably on the assumption that, whatever differences we might have, compared to dreaded atheists, we’re all pretty close.

It is worth remembered that our early Christian forebears went to their deaths in the Roman Empire on the accusation of being Atheists—a misunderstanding because (a) they had no cult and (b) there were just so many gods they simply did not believe in! (There is a lot of atheism in Christianity—just count how many gods we don’t believe in! Atheists only beat us by 1!) Are we now standing with the modern equivalents of the ancient pagan religions and the emperor cult against the apparent threat of atheism?

I think rather we should recover our nerve and stand with Hitchens when he rightly denounces the ways in which religion so often plays on the credulity of people, the way it so often corrupts, and its leaders so often exploit. We ought to have stood with Salman Rushdie and the Danish Cartoonists—at least to the point of denouncing the religious forces that amassed against them. We should have nothing to do with the sentimentality surrounding the Ted Haggard scandal and instead clearly state that, when you are one of the key voices against homosexuality and for family values, you don’t get at the same time to also be sleeping with prostitutes and expect the Christian family to respond in sympathy. As a Christian leader, you just don’t get to do that. Sure, the gospel declares that a Ted Haggard may one day stand before God forgiven and restored—of course it does!—but that fact doesn’t mean we should be declaring cheap grace to a Charlatan and an abuser of the good faith of God’s people. Surely we should join with Hitchens in denouncing the way Iraq is currently being ripped to shreds by the “parties of God.”

And in our apologetics, surely we must recover our nerve and remember that we are critics of idolatry, not defenders. That we do not worship “God” in general, but the God of Israel, the God who is Trinity, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in particular. That we do not defend prophets (or profits!) in general, by Jesus in particular. That we do not extol “faith” no matter its object, but the faithfulness of Christ in particular, who alone rightly illicit our faith.

So, two cheers for Hitchens for having the nerve to denounce religious evil.