Showing papers in "Theology in 2006"
25 citations
12 citations
TL;DR: Pittenger is remembered in British theology for having helped to introduce process thought and for being one of the earliest voices for the acceptance of homosexual relationships as discussed by the authors, but his contributions to both areas have received attention, but his work remains to be interpreted in terms of panentheism.
Abstract: Norman Pittenger, whose birth-centenary fell in 2005, ‘was above all a talker’.2 He published more than 1,400 books, articles and reviews, over seventy years. David Edwards, who was Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, when Pittenger retired there in 1966, has said that most of Pittenger’s output was ‘in the two fields . . . “God and Sex”’.3 Pittenger is remembered in British theology for having helped to introduce process thought; and for being one of the earliest voices for the acceptance of homosexual relationships. His contributions to both areas have received attention,4 but his work remains to be interpreted in terms of panentheism. This paper argues that Pittenger’s work provides a particularly clear example of panentheism, and indeed that panentheism is the key to the two contributions for which he is remembered. It argues furthermore that his work illuminates the origins of modern panentheism, and also panentheism’s promise for theology.
8 citations
TL;DR: The best book is the best book for each of us as mentioned in this paper, and we offer the best here to read, after deciding how your feeling will be, you can enjoy to visit the link and get the book.
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6 citations
TL;DR: The last time there was a tsunami in Indonesia, it had serious repercussions favouring decolonization as discussed by the authors, and a significant religious impetus came from the teachings of Haji Abdul Karim, a Javanese Sufi mystic.
Abstract: Natural disasters such as a tsunami can produce diametrically opposite political consequences – of decolonization or re-colonization. The last time there was a tsunami in Indonesia, it had serious repercussions favouring decolonization. When the 1883 tsunami eliminated the entire Dutch East Indian island of Krakatoa, the Muslim clergy of Java made deliberate connections between the natural disaster, God’s judgement and colonial rule. Simon Winchester argues that while this natural explosion generated the ‘political mood of the movement’,1 a significant religious impetus came from the teachings of Haji Abdul Karim, a Javanese Sufi mystic. Karim predicted that a mahdi, a messiah-like figure, was coming to liberate the people from the infidels following a series of portents: ‘There will be diseases of cattle. There would be floods. There would be blood-coloured rains. And volcanoes would erupt, and people would die’2 (italics in original). True to this prediction, the portents unfolded. The tragedy of Krakatoa was the final omen. The mullahs immediately pounced upon these events as God’s sign, and used them to strengthen their hold on the people and to whip up anti-colonial sentiments:
5 citations
TL;DR: The T-group movement as discussed by the authors was a movement which offered a place to reflect in new ways, with others not of our choosing, on God's work in life experience, including the confusions and conflicts, which are modes of God's paradoxical activity with us.
Abstract: What happened in the 1960s and 70s in some of the training departments of the Christian churches in South Africa, Canada, the USA and Britain could be described as a story of courage, vision, resilience or, for some, depravity. I wrote about it in 19831 and want to revisit a subject which remains for the most part locked in oral history. It was a movement which offered a place to reflect in new ways, with others not of our choosing, on God’s work in life experience, including the confusions and conflicts, which ‘are modes of God’s paradoxical activity with us’.2 I want to argue that we need to find a contemporary equivalent, a space between the moment of knowing that change is inevitable and that of finding the resources to cope with it. I shall confine my account to structured group-work events in Britain between 1957 and 1972, by which time there had been 3,388 attendances at 171 five-day residential Training Institutes and Application Conferences. All were sponsored by the Church of England Board of Education and 70 per cent of those attending were Anglican clergy, with 203 priests or ordained ministers coming from other denominations. Women were predominant among the laity and the religious, and I shall argue later that their participation had significant consequences in the next few decades. The T-group movement (‘T’ for training) had a vision of setting up what has recently been described as ‘a properly functioning human group, doing what human groups under God are meant to do . . . one where we are engaged in learning quite intensively about the pressures that make us run away from the task God sets us’.3 My starting date is 1957, because of an unprecedented event – a Church and Group Life Conference at King’s College Hostel, London University, staffed by a team from the Episcopal Church of the USA and administered by Bruce Reed, later to become Director of the Grubb Institute. The King’s Lab, as it became known to its friends, was planned by a small group inspired by post-war strands of theology and social concern. New things were happening in the American church. In 1949 one Theodore Wendel, the only cleric among 150 people, attended a three-week Laboratory of Group Dynamics at Bethel, Maine, run by Kurt Lewin, based on his work at the Institute in Group Dynamics at MIT. Lewin, a Jewish refugee, had been appalled by the demonic power of groups in Nazi Germany and was trying to understand how groups could be helped to operate in a benign, inclusive, cooperative way. Writing of the Laboratory, Wendel
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Min argues for a vision of positive, life-affirming cooperation in which the ethical affront of mutual marginalization is replaced by genuine, mutually life-giving reciprocity.
Abstract: This is an exposition of an agenda both for Christian theology and (in intention and hope) for the self-reflective activity of other religions, notable for its clearheaded balance as much as its engagement with real issues of life in a concrete, historical world. In Christian terms, the focus is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and the project is in effect to examine the meaning, in our present historical and global context, of the koinonia typically associated with her (to follow the author’s choice of pronoun). ‘Solidarity of others’ can be seen as his account of that classical term: ‘solidarity’ denoting both the multifarious interdependence that is an inescapable condition of reality not least in the present age and also the working together for good into which that raw fact of togetherness must urgently be transformed; ‘others’ denoting both the irreducible ethical challenge of other persons, groups, cultures and faiths and also the particular challenge of the disadvantaged and excluded, treated as ‘other’ by the ‘insiders’; ‘of’ and not ‘with’ to indicate that all are in the same situation vis-à-vis each other and none is in a privileged, ‘central’ position. Using the Hegelian concept of ‘sublating’ or transcending by dialectical process both the unitary aspirations of modernism and the dogmatic pluralism of postmodernism, and beginning his exposition with sympathetic critiques of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, Min argues for a vision of positive, life-affirming cooperation in which the ethical affront of mutual marginalization is replaced by genuine, mutually life-giving reciprocity. Among the strengths of his argument are recognition of the reality of disagreement and insistence on the actuality of a structured world where issues of divisiveness and injustice must be addressed politically and not merely theoretically. This liberationist perspective leads, in the central theological chapters, to a critique of accounts of the Holy Spirit that focus exclusively on either the inspiration of individuals or her work in the Church, in favour of a genuinely cosmic account seeking to identify the Spirit at work in the whole world. A weakness of this central section is a wholesale reliance (in what is also one of the least accessible chapters for non-expert readers) on the Western image of the Spirit as the Love uniting Father and Son, without even reference to alternative models in the Christian East or (even in the West) in the school of St Victor. It can be argued that the Western model inhibits the dialectic between plurality and unity for which Min is seeking, by seeing the agent of relationship as less person-like than those related, whereas the Eastern model gives a better grounding for genuine interpersonality in the ever-present reality of a third Person in all
3 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that the inclusion of a Last Supper narrative in the Eucharistic prayer was largely motivated by catechetical reasons: to remind worshippers of the grounds and meaning of the liturgical rite being celebrated.
Abstract: measured against a preconceived model of what constitutes a full Eucharistic Prayer. The conclusion to which Bradshaw moves is that the inclusion of a Last Supper narrative in the Eucharistic Prayer was largely motivated by catechetical reasons: ‘to remind worshippers of the grounds and meaning of the liturgical rite being celebrated’ (p. 140). This is an interesting and persuasive case, but does beg further questions regarding the origins of the diverse Last Supper tradition itself. The third-century influx of new converts certainly led to the fixing of Eucharistic Prayers in written form, and the increasing requirement (first enunciated by Irenaeus) that forms of prayer should agree with the pattern of orthodox Christian believing. Bradshaw shows how strands of the Last Supper tradition were freely combined by writers into new patterns. The fluidity of tradition is beyond doubt, as is its potency in shaping the emerging model of eucharistic faith and practice, both East and West. Bradshaw works primarily as an historian, and so the writings of Justin Martyr, for instance, come under fresh scrutiny, and questions are pressed further. Why, when and where, for instance, did the Eucharist become detached from the context of a full meal, and the timing of the Christian assembly shift from a Saturday evening to Sunday morning? The theological weight of the evidence is presented in Chapter 5, where Bradshaw accounts for the emerging consensus and development of concepts such as offering, consecration, invocation (increasingly seen as a primitive feature of Christian prayer), presence, priesthood, intercession and prayer for the departed, making this a challenging and informative book.
3 citations
TL;DR: The role of a diocesan bishop in the Church of England is set out in Canon C 18 as discussed by the authors, which is the basis for the ordination of women to the episcopate.
Abstract: Episcopacy has always been one of the key themes of ecumenical dialogue with non-episcopal churches and also with some episcopal churches (such as those whose bishops have not stood in the historic succession of the laying on of hands, or whose bishops have roles markedly different from those of bishops in the catholic tradition). The proposed ordination of women to the episcopate in the Church of England has also placed the question of how the Church of England understands episcopacy back in the centre of its own internal debate. The authorization of new Ordination Services for the Church of England, which are likely in many dioceses to be used for the first time at Petertide 2006, makes this an opportune moment to attempt to identify, from authoritative texts, the elements of episcopacy as the Church of England understands it. The role of a diocesan bishop in the Church of England is set out in Canon C 18.
3 citations
TL;DR: The question of what can we reasonably believe about the nature of God's involvement with the world has been a fundamental question for anyone who believes in God, be they Christian, Jew, Muslim or, indeed, of any other religion as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: What can we reasonably believe about God? That seems a fairly fundamental question for anyone who believes in God, be they Christian, Jew, Muslim or, indeed, of any other religion. And what, in particular can we believe about the nature of God’s involvement with the world? I imagine most theists will believe that God is the ultimate creator of the universe, and perhaps we can see his hand in the nature of the world; that in the very long run good does seem more powerful than evil; that truth is more lasting than lies. I imagine also all of us will probably believe that responding to God makes a difference to how we behave; God makes a difference because of the difference he makes to believers. But is there any other form of involvement by God in the more detailed things that happen in the world, as, for example, appears to be the belief of the biblical writers? Such questions have for long exercised my mind, so when I had the opportunity of a three-month sabbatical I thought I would look at that question, but do so in the light of a religious tradition other than my own, the Jewish one, and in particular to look at it in the light of that awful experience of the Holocaust. Theodicy, or how we can believe in a good God in the face of the evil that happens in the world, is one of the critical questions that lies behind our understanding of God, and Jews more than anybody have had to face that question in their recent history. I approached it as someone with a general awareness of the Holocaust but I had never formally studied it nor the theological responses to it, and I certainly cannot claim that in three months I more than dipped into a massive body of written material. You do not need me to say just how terrible that experience was. The basic statistics are well known; of the eleven million people liquidated by the Nazis six million were Jews, one and half million of them children, with one and a half million dying in Auschwitz alone. Before the Holocaust Eastern Europe was the spiritual centre of world Jewry and 90 per cent of that community was destroyed, a third of world Jewry in all, but over 80 per cent of the Jewish scholars, rabbis and full-time teachers and students of the Torah. And they were murdered not because of what they said or what they did, or even what they believed, but simply because of what they were. Being a Christian convert from Judaism was no escape, for the Nazi policy was to consider a Jew anyone who had a grandparent who was
3 citations
TL;DR: In a previous piece of work as mentioned in this paper, we have identified a hierarchy of credibility as a social ranking that confers a greater degree of credibility and reliability upon some people often at the expense of others.
Abstract: The impetus for the work arose a number of years ago when I first began to work alongside local church congregations in the West Midlands area of the United Kingdom. Most of these church communities were Black majority, comprised mainly of African Caribbean migrants, many of whom had travelled from the Caribbean to the UK in the 1950s and 60s. They and their descendants now constitute the majority of the membership of these faith groupings, located primarily in inner city, urban priority areas of large metropolitan cities. On my travels with the various groups I noticed that an ongoing feature of these churches was the almost complete silence of the mainly older Black members.1 In matters of theological reflection, worship, mission and pastoral care, particular groups of people (often a small number of White middle-class persons living in suburbia and commuting into the church) tended to dominate the discourse within the church. The articulation of spiritual and theological matters by Black people was largely absent within the church. What was also significant within these settings was the sense that what these Black people had to say was largely ignored or not considered to be of any import. It was not so much that they were ignored (which in many respects was the case), as that their voice was not considered of sufficient importance to affect the discussion to any great extent. I will say little about the phenomenon of being without or denied a voice in a short while. At this point, however, it is instructive to note that these individuals in these churches were the recipients of a pernicious phenomenon which sociologists and anthropologists have termed a ‘hierarchy of credibility’. In a previous piece of work I have identified this hierarchy of credibility as ‘a social ranking that confers a greater degree of credibility and reliability upon some people often at the expense of others. The latter are perceived to have less status than the former.’2 The social ranking within a hierarchy of credibility is linked explicitly to our notions of epistemology and what we assert as being truth. Black theologians have long argued that the alternative truths of Black experience (which often stand in stark contradistinction to White hegemony) are regularly disparaged or denigrated by those who possess the power to nullify the voice of the other.3 As many Black people of Caribbean origin can testify, what is recognized as truth is
TL;DR: Coulson's work on valence-bond theory was published by Oxford University Press and written by Charles Coulson, the Rouse Ball Professor of Applied Mathematics at Oxford University as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Many Chemistry students of the 1950s, 60s and 70s will be familiar with the book entitled Valence which was published by Oxford University Press and written by Charles Coulson, the Rouse Ball Professor of Applied Mathematics at Oxford University.1 Indeed, after Coulson’s death, Valence was revised and reissued in a third edition.2 It was to this third edition that I owed much of my own personal understanding of the theories of molecular bonding. Although his work on valence-bond theory is undoubtedly Charles Coulson’s main scientific claim to fame, he was also a leading member of the Methodist Church and a co-founder of Oxfam. In this latter role, Coulson has left a legacy in our high streets through the retail outlets of the charity which he helped to establish. As a noted scientist and a leading member of the Church, Coulson also gave a great deal of thought to the relationship between his scientific work and his Christian beliefs. However, if we search for his name in the bibliography of any modern work in the now burgeoning academic field of science and religion, then we look almost in vain. Among my own collection of books on this subject, the only reference occurs in the textbook edited by Southgate.3 This lack of reference to the ideas put forward by Coulson is unfortunate, for it can be argued that he was the first in the series of post-war British scientists who have contributed so much to the debate on the relationship between science and Christian theology. Arthur Peacocke, Russell Stannard and John Polkinghorne are the three most obvious names who have followed in his footsteps. In the mid 1950s Coulson drew his ideas together in order to deliver the 1954 John Calvin McNair lectures at the University of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. These lectures were subsequently published by Oxford University Press in 1955 under the title Science and Christian Belief.4 Fifty years after Coulson delivered his lectures, it is now time to ask how his views have stood up to the changes of opinion which have occurred during that half-century and also to give both Coulson and his thoughts some of the attention which they deserve in the present day.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a vision for the peace process in Israel and Palestine, where they see in a football stadium a large crowd of Jewish Israelis and Muslim Palestinians, with some of the Jews holding a placard with some word of Jesus: ‘Forgive and you will be forgiven.’
Abstract: I have a vision for the peace process in Israel and Palestine. I see in something like a football stadium a large crowd. There are in the stadium Jewish Israelis and Muslim Palestinians. And there are Palestinian Christians too. Some of the Jews hold a placard; it reads ‘God forgives’. The Jews holding it recognize that they, like God or Adonai, need to offer forgiveness. There is a group of Muslims holding another placard, this time with a verse from the Qur’an: ‘If a person forgives and seeks reconciliation he will be rewarded by Allah.’ A group of Palestinian Christians holds a placard with some word of Jesus: ‘Forgive, and you will be forgiven.’ Muslim and Christian Palestinian leaders step onto the dais. The two ask for forgiveness for acts of violence committed in the name of the Palestinian people: for the suicide bombers who have struck at cafés and hotels, at night-clubs and on buses. Together the Palestinian people, Muslim and Christian alike, ask Allah for forgiveness. Then it is the turn of a rabbi. He stands on the dais next to his Palestinian brothers. He asks forgiveness for acts of violence committed in the name of the Jewish people: for Deir Yassin, Mujd al-Kurun, al-Bina and others. The rabbi then turns to the two Palestinian leaders. He acknowledges that those who perpetrated violence on the Palestinian side often thought that they were doing what was right in the face of what was seen as injustice. He reminds the Muslims and Christians present in the stadium that Allah is a God who forgives. The Palestinian leaders then acknowledge that those who committed violence on the Israeli side also thought that they were doing what was right. They remind the Jews that Adonai too is a God who forgives. An almighty shout then echoes around the stadium: ‘Allah o akbar; Allah o akbar’ (‘God is great’). Christian and Muslim Palestinians praise God for the fact that he is a forgiving God. Then there is another shout, this time from the Jewish Israelis: ‘Baruch atah adonai; baruch atah Adonai’ (‘blessed be the Lord’). It is the turn of the Jews to praise God for his forgiveness. Then in recognition that there can only be one God, even though Jews, Christians and Muslims may perceive him differently, both communities shout their praises together.
TL;DR: The parochial system is not to be identified with church buildings, but with a vision of Christian community in the service of wider society that is in itself a means of mission as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: If the watchword now is mission, fifteen years ago it was evangelism. We had a whole decade of it. Mission is the better word, since it is about God rather than us. It is about the way in which God gives himself away in the sufferings, struggles and hopes of humankind. It is about the inner life of God overflowing in creation and salvation, and found most supremely in Jesus Christ. His overflowing continues in the activity of the Holy Spirit in the world. We get caught up in God’s mission in the world. We don’t create it. We don’t cause it. We participate in it. We are always catching up with God’s activity, sometimes finding it hard to recognize him since he is active in the most unlikely of places. So a mission-shaped church is to be approved of, even if the phrase does not trip lightly off the tongue. A mission-shaped church encourages us to be disciples sent out into the world where the risen Christ goes before us – ‘he is gone before you to Galilee’ (Mark 16.7). Our task is to help people recognize God’s presence and saving power and respond to his call in love and obedience. We are still naming unknown gods as St Paul did when brought to the Areopagus (Acts 17.19–34). I start from this perspective since this is a subject where opinions and convictions are easily caricatured. In Anglican dioceses bishops cast in very different mission shapes all support the life and work of their parishes as well as encouraging the growth of new groups, networks and styles of worship within the parochial context and well beyond it. Having said that, I want to commend the versatility and flexibility of the parochial system. We often regard new ways of being church as infinitely flexible and the parochial system as being rigid and fixed. That is the consequence of those fixed structures on the landscape – nowhere more prevalent than in the diocese of Norwich – called parish churches. The parochial system is not, however, to be identified with church buildings. If the parochial system has completely had its day, then we need to reassess just what we mean by a Christian community. At its best the parochial system is founded upon a vision of Christian community in the service of wider society that is in itself a means of mission. It has not yet died, though it needs reformation and renewal, as it has done in every previous age.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the relation of identity between Christ and the Christian and apply trinitarian perichoresis, the doctrine of the divine persons mutually indwelling each other, as a solution to the problem.
Abstract: In this article I propose to explore the relation of identity between Christ and the Christian. I shall outline what salvation seems to require. Traditional attempts to provide this, both catholic and protestant, will be sketched. The catholic approach employs real universals, that is, the idea that general properties of things exist in their own right, for example the redness of red individuals subsists apart from and prior to these individuals; or the idea that the redness exists only in the individuals but is a real common factor shared by them. The protestant approach uses social conventions. It will be shown both approaches are unsatisfactory. Associated psychological recipes will also be considered. Then I intend to apply trinitarian perichoresis, the doctrine of the divine persons mutually indwelling each other, as a solution to the problem. I shall ground perichoresis in the trinitarian context and then try to apply the notion of mutual indwelling to the relation of Christ to the Christian, as St John seems to demand.
TL;DR: Copley as discussed by the authors investigates the effect of religious education on young people of a secular ethos which appears so prevalent in contemporary Britain and assess whether this reflects a new type of indoctrination in our education system.
Abstract: Terence Copley is an acknowledged researcher and writer in the field of religious education, contributing seminal works which have inspired practitioners over many years. His latest book is a wideranging assessment of the place of religious education in our increasingly secular and multi-faith society. He goes beyond previous debates about whether compulsory teaching of religion in school is tantamount to indoctrination, in order to review the impact on young people of a secular ethos which appears so prevalent in contemporary Britain and to assess whether this reflects a new type of indoctrination in our education system. Copley first traces the decline in religious adherence to formal religion as judged, for example, by church attendance figures. He explores secularization as the possible reaction to liberal Protestant theology and the rationalism of postmodern religion, which has also seemed to result in the more emotional outreach of the evangelical churches attracting growing numbers of young people in our secular environment. Reflecting on Bauman’s observation that fundamentalism is ‘the legitimate child of post-modernity’, Copley notes the current success of ‘Alpha’ courses and Premier Radio. Muslims too are seen to react against the secularism around them, turning to traditional Islam for clearer guidance on how to live. Yet, even if in the 2001 census 71.6 per cent of Britons claimed to be Christian, there is an increasing trend to see religion as a purely private matter which is more about an individual’s search for truth than a recognition of the value of religion for our society. The shift from the apparent authority of religious belief to the more personal choice of seeking spirituality, such as at Glastonbury, offers evidence of the desire for a more aesthetic than rational approach to religion. Copley then focuses his attention on education: how far is an implicitly secular indoctrination occurring in society and, if so, is education helping or hindering the process? The plethora of government initiatives in curriculum and target-setting has left little space for any meaningful philosophical evaluation of the purposes of education (such as took place in 1944) other than a ‘market’ utilitarianism.
TL;DR: Can music be an expression of a spiritual experience or act as a door into it? Behind this question lie questions about the very nature of music: can it express any experience outside itself and if it is indeed in some sense a language, what kinds of meanings can it most readily convey? The first part of this article is a brief attempt to address this general issue, looking in particular at two comparatively recent contributions to the subject; then follow some short studies suggesting what I take to be fairly common spiritual experiences which can lie within the orbit of music as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Can music be an expression of a spiritual experience or act as a door into it? Behind this question lie questions about the very nature of music: can it express any experience outside itself and if it can, if it is indeed in some sense a language, what kinds of meanings can it most readily convey? The first part of this article is a brief attempt to address this general issue, looking in particular at two comparatively recent contributions to the subject; then follow some short studies suggesting what I take to be fairly common spiritual experiences which can lie within the orbit of music. A number of thinkers about music, Stravinsky most famously among them, have felt that in its essence it cannot with certainty make such connections. Auden put it succinctly when, in his poem ‘Anthem for St Cecilia’s Day’, he gives to the saint the poignant words: ‘I cannot grow; / I have no shadow / To run away from, / I only play.’ Two centuries earlier Kant saw virtue in this: that music’s lack of cognitive meaning (i.e., a meaning exactly expressible in words) was what gave it a universal stature. A different line of thinking is found in the fourth century in the writings of St Augustine, who inherited the Pythagorean concept of music as embodying number and consequently the principles of cosmic ordering. For him music could convey an inexpressible ecstasy and promote congregational solidarity. But he also had a problem: there was an ambiguity in the effect of music such that it could also lead to carnal thoughts in the listener. Something of the same dichotomy lingers on in Nietzsche’s nineteenth-century view of music as both Apollonian, inviting contemplation, and Dionysian, inciting emotional involvement.1 I think it helpful to look at these ideas in the light of the work of two twentieth-century scholars of the aesthetics of music. Terence McLaughlin2 has written about the kind of mental activity involved in listening to music. Starting from the simple notion (though its ramifications are complex) that almost all musical systems involve the generation and release of tension, he has argued that the stress patterns of music correspond closely to the patterns in time of the flow of emotion and of our brain activity in the physical and mental (and I would add spiritual) events of our lives. I have taken up the idea of stress patterns in several of the studies in the second part of
TL;DR: The authors argues that the Church's failure to develop ecclesial practices that recognize gay and lesbian partnerships amounts to a departure from the Reformed tradition, and suggests a theological rationale for considering same-sex unions as Christian marriages, consonant with Reformed themes of covenant and public good.
Abstract: The debate over same-sex marriage, and sexuality in general, has raged with particular intensity among Reformed Christians over the last several years. Many attempts to make sense of the debate resort to the nature of human sexuality by exploring moral dimensions of rightly or wrongly ordered sexual relations. Some voices that argue for rituals that embrace same-sex unions claim that monogamous, mutual gay and lesbian relations are manifestations of a supremely diverse creation, which God has ordained good. On the opposing side are those who suggest that gay sexuality represents a disruption of divine intentions; same-sex covenants, therefore, have no place in the Church’s liturgy. Many arguments on both sides, however, place sexuality at the centre of the discussion, reflecting current fascination with genital sex rather than sustained theological reflection on the nature of marriage and partnership. When the Reformed churches attend to their heritage on the theology of marriage, they are better equipped to negotiate the contentious disputes. This essay argues that the Church’s failure to develop ecclesial practices that recognize gay and lesbian partnerships amounts to a departure from the Reformed tradition, and suggests a theological rationale for considering same-sex unions as Christian marriages, consonant with Reformed themes of covenant and public good. When the Church moves carefully, in dialogue with its theological tradition and voices of the contemporary faithful, it also calls attention to the broken nature of human relationships. Blessing marriages – straight and gay – is both a sign of God’s grace and our ever-feeble response to the God who creates human persons in God’s image, persons made for communion.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine two approaches to gain insights into the search for contextual churches in England, and to bring the approaches together to suggest a shape for contextual Church of England that may help us towards greater renewal and growth.
Abstract: The interest in ecclesiology in recent decades is becoming focused in the Church of England as pressure mounts from all sides to find new ways of being church that provide the hope of survival and growth. Rowan Williams speaks of a ‘real watershed’ in which ‘the Church of England, for all the problems that beset it, is poised for serious growth and renewal’.1 The key to such growth is seen in the discovery of a variety of contextual churches that work together in mission. This fits with the wider development of contextual ecclesiologies whose impact in the West has been limited to date.2 Hidden beneath much of the discussion are the questions as to which aspects of context are being considered and which of these need adapting to or challenging. The search for contextual churches has gathered pace with the publication of the report Mission-Shaped Church (MSC) that advocates contextual churches building positively on the network character of contemporary communities.3 Yet the same week a perhaps less publicized book was published that takes a different outlook, John Inge’s A Christian Theology of Place (CTP).4 Inge argues for a fresh valuing of ‘place’ in our understanding of church, implicitly challenging the drift towards a loose network culture. He develops a contextual understanding of churches as ‘shrines’. The aim of this article is to examine these two approaches to gain insights into the search for contextual churches in England, and to bring the approaches together to suggest a shape for contextual churches that may help us towards greater renewal and growth.
TL;DR: The Church has failed to be a community of friendship, in the sense of being a place in which friends are explicitly nurtured and celebrated, as opposed to being merely a place marked by friendliness.
Abstract: In 376, when he was barely out of his teens, Augustine of Hippo’s friend died. It was a devastating blow that deeply unsettled him. Their friendship had been to him more ‘than all the joys of life as I lived it then’. They had become that rare thing, one soul in two bodies. Augustine was lost, and living in his home town became a ‘grim ordeal’. So he left. As if that was not enough, Augustine’s grief tormented him for another reason. He realized that to hope for much in friendship is to risk much too. For all the joys they bring, friends, it seemed, will forsake you – sometimes in parting, sometimes in malice, sometimes because they are simply not up to it. ‘What madness, to love a man as something more than human!’ he exclaims in his Confessions.1 This ‘silent tragedy’,2 as Peter Brown calls Augustine’s search for friendship in his biography of the saint, is one manifestation of a long shadow that hangs over friendship in the Christian tradition. Friends may be celebrated as a great delight, and even thought necessary for a happy life. But somehow the Church is ambivalent towards friendship. As the House of Bishops recognizes in a recent discussion document,3 the Church has failed to be a community of friendship, in the sense of being a place in which friends are explicitly nurtured and celebrated, as opposed to being merely a place marked by friendliness. The bishops argue that it must consider how ‘it can give public recognition to the importance of friendship’. Though the very suggestion somehow reveals the difficulty of doing so: how, one wants to know, might this be done? The bishops are not alone in this, for philosophers writing on friendship exhibit a similar ambivalence – in the sense of simultaneously recognizing friendship’s worth and its ambiguity. In the Lysis, the Platonic dialogue which is the first extended discussion of the subject in the Western canon, Socrates both confesses that he values friendship more than anything else, ‘even all the gold of Darius’, while at the same time admitting to the individuals with whom he talks that although they suppose they are friends, what friendship is they have not been able to say. The aporia that haunts friendship has appeared in various guises in the intervening centuries, including Montaigne’s assertion that soul friendship occurs in the human population only about once every three centuries,4 and Kant’s speculation that in a morally perfect
TL;DR: The anthropic principle as mentioned in this paper states that a universe capable of producing entities of the complexity of anthropoi is a very special world indeed, and that the laws of nature governing cosmic history took a very specific, "finely-tuned" character from the beginning.
Abstract: The universe we observe today started as a ball of energy some fourteen billion years ago. Its present life-bearing character is not only the consequence of a long evolutionary process, but it also required that the laws of nature governing cosmic history took a very specific, ‘finely-tuned’ character from the beginning. While carbon-based life did not appear until the universe was ten billion years old, the cosmos was pregnant with its possibility from the big bang onwards. The collection of insights leading to this remarkable conclusion is commonly referred to as the Anthropic Principle: a universe capable of producing entities of the complexity of anthropoi is a very special world indeed. All scientists agree that this is so, but the argument begins when one asks what to make of the discovery. Three kinds of metascientific response have been canvassed. One simply treats this fine-tuned universe as a brute fact without which we should not be here to worry about it. Many are rightly not happy with so intellectually unsatisfying a response. Stances of greater explanatory power take the form either of the assumption of a multiverse, a vast collection of different universes with different laws of nature, in which ours, by chance, is the one where life can develop; or design, a creation endowed by its Creator with the conditions necessary for a fertile history. Which of these metaphysical explanations, each appealing to what lies beyond our direct experience, should we choose? Rodney Holder’s book is a careful analysis of how one should respond to this question. He first presents a detailed account of the necessary science. The most exacting fine-tunings relate to the initial incredibly high order of the universe, necessary to initiate the thermodynamic character of its subsequent processes, and to the magnitude of a kind of possible antigravity which turns out to be at most 10–120 of what might naturally have been expected to be its value. In evaluating explanations, Holder makes extensive recourse to Bayes’ theorem, a mathematical procedure for estimating the way in which evidence enhances the likelihood of a given hypothesis. Detailed mathematical manipulations are relegated to appendices, but the author gives in the main text a clear account of the principles involved that should be accessible to a general reader prepared to take some trouble with the argument. Holder’s conclusion is that fine-tuning enhances the probability of both the multiverse hypothesis and of the design hypothesis, though he believes the latter to have the greater probability. However, two technical points, fully acknowledged by the author,
TL;DR: In the face of moral relativism some Christian criticism can appear censorious when only ever seeming to say ‘no’ as discussed by the authors, and gaining a reputation for only ever saying ‘yes' can be viewed as insipid.
Abstract: Like the guides taking tourists through alleyways to dark, haunted graveyards in Edinburgh, fundamentalist evangelists can seem too keen that people sense the horrors from which faith rescues them. In contrast, liberal Christians can be like sceptics of parapsychology who rush into dank rooms in the Castle towers, fling the windows wide and assure visitors that there is nothing of which to be scared. Accepting that this is something of a caricature, it captures the contrasting ways in which Christians can react to the doctrine of hell as exclusion, loss and perdition. By rehabilitating hell, rather than adopting it uncritically or dismissing it embarrassingly, this article suggests an approach that can unlock its salience as a narrative of decision-making in social criticism. In the face of moral relativism some Christian criticism can appear censorious when only ever seeming to say ‘no’. On the other hand, gaining a reputation for only ever saying ‘yes’ can be viewed as insipid. Our rehabilitated doctrine of hell is critically inclusive and as a result energizes a Christian capacity to say both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Postliberalism provides us with a way of approaching doctrines with particular attention to their working in practice. This moves from the question, ‘Is Christianity true?’ to ‘What is Christian?’1 It understands doctrines not as first-order propositions affirming ontological truth but as expressing second-order guidelines for Christian discourse. Doctrines are primarily ‘communally authoritative rules of discourse, attitude and action’ rather than expressive symbols (as in liberalism) or truth claims (as in propositionalism).2 Hell need be neither a metaphor for a universal human experience of loss or separation nor a destination for the impenitent beyond death. The themes of exclusion, destruction and separation are evident within the Christian narrative and thus require to be taken seriously. To what extent any are dominant over other, more inclusive, themes is not a matter for this study. Our focus is upon a contemporary practical use for these exclusionary themes. Our journey to such an outcome needs to begin by asking how the theme operated in earlier contexts. Presenting themselves as culturally and religiously different from surrounding communities is presented as of critical importance for the people of Yahweh. This is the case during their period of sojourn in Egypt (Exodus 1—13), the wilderness wanderings (particularly the idolatry with the Golden Calf in Exodus 32), the occupation of
TL;DR: A short man dressed in grey stepped forward and thrusting a leaflet about Palestine into my hand, he looked at me intently. ‘Please help us,’ he urged, ‘please do all you can.’ I realized he had seen my clerical collar, and I muttered something supportive.
Abstract: As the chanting crowd reached the gates of Hyde Park, a short man dressed in grey stepped forward. He was perhaps in his fifties and had sadness written into his features. Thrusting a leaflet about Palestine into my hand, he looked at me intently. ‘Please help us,’ he urged, ‘please do all you can.’ Taken aback, I realized he had seen my clerical collar, and I muttered something supportive. With the government apparently hell-bent on waging war in Iraq, my wife and I had gone to demonstrate. Only just over a year after the appalling events of 11 September, the Islamic world was apparently guilty by association with al-Qaida. Yet the ravaging of Palestine continued unabated, and the western world looked on in 2002, as it does today, unprepared to act against Israel. I have a second abiding memory of that demonstration. The visible presence of so many British Muslims, seeking peace by peaceful protest, contrasted starkly with the almost invisible Church. I spotted two other clerical collars, and a huge banner swinging above a Baptist youth group. Perhaps Christians were there in force, but marketing was not their strong point. And so a journey began. What, I wondered, are the threads of thought and tradition in Islam that demand wider understanding if injustice is to be tackled in Palestine or elsewhere?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors test whether Trivasse should have described this set of postulates (hypotheses? axioms?) as a "model" by asking three questions: Does this model cohere with physical reality as we currently understand it? Does the action in patterns framework occupy a position on the conceptual map which no other conceptual framework occupies?
Abstract: I In the November/December 2004 issue of Theology Keith Trivasse1 did me the honour of employing what he called ‘Torry’s model’, a model which I have defined and refined in two previous articles in Theology.2 In the first article I suggested that we should regard action, rather than being, as the real. There is nothing permanent, there is no substance, there is only action. In the second article I described as ‘patterns’ the stabilities which we experience, and thus moved to a description of the real as ‘action in patterns’, with the patterns themselves constantly changing. In this article I intend to test whether Trivasse should have described this set of postulates (hypotheses? axioms?) as a ‘model’ by asking three questions: Does this model cohere with physical reality as we currently understand it? Does the ‘action in patterns’ framework occupy a position on the conceptual map which no other conceptual framework occupies?3 Would a theology built on this model occupy on the theological map a position which no other theology occupies? – for, after all, the model was constructed in the first place in order to do Christian apologetics in a fast-changing world, so to test its resultant theology for uniqueness will be a test of its usefulness as a model. If the answers to these questions are affirmative then there might be some sense in continuing to write about this model of reality – though for obvious reasons I would prefer it to be called the ‘action in patterns model’ rather than the ‘Torry model’.