The homosexual marriage debate is not about homosexuality. It is not about 'gay-bashing' and Christians who are often intimidated by that unjust jibe should not be afraid to take on the government over the issue of redefining marriage. It is not even about marriage. It is about: who is God? Is God God? Or is the government God? For in the proposal to redefine an institution which has its roots in the Bible and in ancient antiquity, the government is behaving with breathtaking audacity worthy of atheistic totalitarianism. One is reminded of the attempts by the French and Russian Revolutions to redefine the week.
There is an elderly Christian lady of my acquaintance who regularly tries to persuade me that Tony Blair is the anti-Christ. I remain agnostic on that equation, but I will say that never has the whiff of sulphur hung so pungently over a political leader as when David Cameron (yes, that nice man who defends the family) announced last week that he would seek to redefine marriage, at the same time as he bullied the supine party faithful to applaud him.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less'.
'The question is,' said Alice 'whether you can make words mean so many different things'.
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' (See 'Through the Looking Glass').
The question here, of course, is not just who is to be the master of words, but who is to define the reality that the words represent. The present government has taken upon itself that task.
There are two levels of reality. There is reality according to Truth, that which is as God made it, and of course marriage at this level will always be between a man and a woman. Nothing will ever change that. Homosexual marriage is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, and nothing the government ever does will be able to change that.
But there is another level of reality which is according to the Lie. This is the level at which people live most of their lives and which is the controlling sphere; it is the 'world', life according to the flesh. At this level meanings can be changed and manipulated. At this level marriage will, if the government has its way, come to include same sex relationships. People will be conned into living a lie. It is an example of the contemporary ability for what George Orwell would have called 'doublethink' in Newspeak (in '1984'):the acceptance of two mutually contradictory statements as correct (a very postmodern ability).
The government will have its work cut out. Why should marriage be restricted to one man / woman and A.N Other - why not allow for polygamy and polyandry? What will happen to the definition of adultery? And what of grounds for divorce?
Procreation does not feature as such in the present legal definition of marriage, but it is most certainly a key purpose of biblical marriage; clearly that will have to go.
This is without mentioning the place of religious bodies who will have all manner of objections to performing such ceremonies. My astonishment will sound naive I know but how can the government, for the sake of a small minority, go against millenia of religious belief and moral teaching of the world's major religions?
Christians must give the government a hard time over this issue; it is a most serious attack not only on Christian morality but on the nature of marriage and the family, on society, and on the prerogative of God to declare what is right.
'If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?'
The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord's throne is in heaven ; his eyes see, his eyelids test, the children of man.
The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence...
For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face'. (from Psalm 11:3 - 7).
Monday, 10 October 2011
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Commitment! Commitment! (as sung by Tevye to the tune of 'Tradition!')
So now we know. The moral imperative behind permitting homosexual marriages and the concomitant redefinition of marriage, is the desire and need to foster 'commitment'.
I am glad to know this - glad, that is, in the sense that having a bad answer to an investigation into one's health can be better than no answer at all - because I had asked Ms Lynne Featherstone in a letter to her after the Lib-Dem conference what the moral drive behind homosexual marriage was. I have yet to receive a reply, but the Prime Minister has rather answered it for me. Equality - yes (as I suggested to Ms Featherstone but also thinking there must be something else) and now we know, according to the PM - commitment.
Commitment is the fig leaf with which the government is going to try to lend moral decency to this breathtaking proposal. It is in some ways a shrewd move. Commitment is of course something no-one could easily oppose. It is a Good Thing. Faithfulness in relationships is something to be encouraged and applauded. We would want to see it in marriage. In any relationship. And if the committees (is that the right word in this context for two committed people?) happen to be two men in a sexual relationship, then surely we should expect it of them too. So let's encourage it and let them get married.
Indeed it could even be sung as a kind of anthem - as Tevye, the Topol character in 'Fiddler on the Roof' sings 'Tradition!' It sounds good, worthy, moving even.
The problem is that, like tradition, it is ultimately completely morally empty. Commitment is a 'formal' virtue; is is the husk to the kernel, the insulating protection to the wire that conveys the current. It has a definite usefulness; but it derives its real value from the matter it contains or carries. One can, it should not need to be pointed out, be utterly committed to totally the wrong thing. There is a certain honour among thieves, by which we normally mean they are loyal to each other for their criminal purposes. Men and women show incredible (even enviable) commitment to the most cruel, perverse and self-serving ideals and activities and have done all through history. Idolatry is a case study in commitment.
Nor is a distinction between commitment to people and to ideals or tasks valid here. All types of commitment have to be measured in the end by this criterion: commitment to what or whom or for what purpose. Commitment in itself means very little. It may even be a moral evil.
So I remain unimpressed by the moral high ground the government is occupying in this iniquitous and arrogant matter. Equality has come to mean that people must be allowed to do what they like (within grounds circumscribed by the government of the day of course). Commitment is dragged in to bolster what is obviously regarded as a weak case, but it is a staff to splinter in the hand that leans on it. Commitment to an immoral relationship will never make the relationship moral. In fact if it presumes to dress itself in the institution of marriage, so that marriage, that God-given ordinance,is now stretched and distorted to embrace moral perversion, then commitment has become an instrument of great evil. Law, as Francis Schaeffer might have said, has never been so sociological.
I am glad to know this - glad, that is, in the sense that having a bad answer to an investigation into one's health can be better than no answer at all - because I had asked Ms Lynne Featherstone in a letter to her after the Lib-Dem conference what the moral drive behind homosexual marriage was. I have yet to receive a reply, but the Prime Minister has rather answered it for me. Equality - yes (as I suggested to Ms Featherstone but also thinking there must be something else) and now we know, according to the PM - commitment.
Commitment is the fig leaf with which the government is going to try to lend moral decency to this breathtaking proposal. It is in some ways a shrewd move. Commitment is of course something no-one could easily oppose. It is a Good Thing. Faithfulness in relationships is something to be encouraged and applauded. We would want to see it in marriage. In any relationship. And if the committees (is that the right word in this context for two committed people?) happen to be two men in a sexual relationship, then surely we should expect it of them too. So let's encourage it and let them get married.
Indeed it could even be sung as a kind of anthem - as Tevye, the Topol character in 'Fiddler on the Roof' sings 'Tradition!' It sounds good, worthy, moving even.
The problem is that, like tradition, it is ultimately completely morally empty. Commitment is a 'formal' virtue; is is the husk to the kernel, the insulating protection to the wire that conveys the current. It has a definite usefulness; but it derives its real value from the matter it contains or carries. One can, it should not need to be pointed out, be utterly committed to totally the wrong thing. There is a certain honour among thieves, by which we normally mean they are loyal to each other for their criminal purposes. Men and women show incredible (even enviable) commitment to the most cruel, perverse and self-serving ideals and activities and have done all through history. Idolatry is a case study in commitment.
Nor is a distinction between commitment to people and to ideals or tasks valid here. All types of commitment have to be measured in the end by this criterion: commitment to what or whom or for what purpose. Commitment in itself means very little. It may even be a moral evil.
So I remain unimpressed by the moral high ground the government is occupying in this iniquitous and arrogant matter. Equality has come to mean that people must be allowed to do what they like (within grounds circumscribed by the government of the day of course). Commitment is dragged in to bolster what is obviously regarded as a weak case, but it is a staff to splinter in the hand that leans on it. Commitment to an immoral relationship will never make the relationship moral. In fact if it presumes to dress itself in the institution of marriage, so that marriage, that God-given ordinance,is now stretched and distorted to embrace moral perversion, then commitment has become an instrument of great evil. Law, as Francis Schaeffer might have said, has never been so sociological.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Augustine, sin and grace
I am nearing the end of the remarkable biography 'Augustine of Hippo' by Peter Brown, first published 1967, new edition 2000.
There is much more I want to work at, but two things have deeply impressed themselves on me. First, the unshakeable grip Augustine had on the depravity of human nature, inherited from Adam - original sin. His defence of this against the pride, optimism ans superficiality of Pelagius and his disciples is an object lesson in tenacity as well as in unscrupulousness. He held firm to his convictions, and whenever Augustine was convinced of something, he really was convinced, and fought for it. His errors were big too, but his efforts on behalf of the church were heroic.
How ironic it is that in an age when we are witnessing the empirical truth of what Augustine taught about human depravity, in wars and rumours of wars, collapsing regimes, corrupt politicians and financial leaders, in moral perversion and cruelty to the weak, at a time that is when you would have thought people may have lent a listening ear to the doctrine of original sin, on the contrary, they are busy proclaiming the opposite. In other words, the more that sin has dominion, the more it conceals its true nature; the more depraved man becomes, the less he is aware of the real nature of his problem. How right Augustine was, whatever reservations we may have about elements of his arguments. He was right on the big issues. Unlike some of us today, too, he fought for them.
Second, Augustine was a hero of grace. Nick Needham calls his book on Augustine 'The Triumph of Grace' and it is a good reflection of the man's great vision of God and of God's ultimate victory. The triumph of God and his church was, to Augustine, assured, in the midst of all the moral decay, superficial intellectuality and political collapse he saw around him. God was sovereign and would conquer. Grace will reign through righteousness unto everlasting life; sin abounds, but grace superabounds.
That is a vision of God worth going to bed on; and waking up with; and taking into the pulpit; and living and dying for.
There is much more I want to work at, but two things have deeply impressed themselves on me. First, the unshakeable grip Augustine had on the depravity of human nature, inherited from Adam - original sin. His defence of this against the pride, optimism ans superficiality of Pelagius and his disciples is an object lesson in tenacity as well as in unscrupulousness. He held firm to his convictions, and whenever Augustine was convinced of something, he really was convinced, and fought for it. His errors were big too, but his efforts on behalf of the church were heroic.
How ironic it is that in an age when we are witnessing the empirical truth of what Augustine taught about human depravity, in wars and rumours of wars, collapsing regimes, corrupt politicians and financial leaders, in moral perversion and cruelty to the weak, at a time that is when you would have thought people may have lent a listening ear to the doctrine of original sin, on the contrary, they are busy proclaiming the opposite. In other words, the more that sin has dominion, the more it conceals its true nature; the more depraved man becomes, the less he is aware of the real nature of his problem. How right Augustine was, whatever reservations we may have about elements of his arguments. He was right on the big issues. Unlike some of us today, too, he fought for them.
Second, Augustine was a hero of grace. Nick Needham calls his book on Augustine 'The Triumph of Grace' and it is a good reflection of the man's great vision of God and of God's ultimate victory. The triumph of God and his church was, to Augustine, assured, in the midst of all the moral decay, superficial intellectuality and political collapse he saw around him. God was sovereign and would conquer. Grace will reign through righteousness unto everlasting life; sin abounds, but grace superabounds.
That is a vision of God worth going to bed on; and waking up with; and taking into the pulpit; and living and dying for.
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Why pray for revival?
Yesterday I was present at a discussion among ministers about revival. We had had a stimulating and encouraging talk about the north Wales revival of 1904-05. The discussion tended to follow lines one has heard before, though it was none the worse for that.
A central issue always is: what is the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility? Can we in any way 'prepare' for revival? Can we contribute to a chain of causation leading to its coming? The human contributions may consist of prayer, preaching, penitence (repentance) and purity (a holy life - 'God can't fill a dirty vessel') yet the history of revivals shows God is notoriously difficult to pin down and bestows his blessing where he wills. There may be common themes in revivals but it would be a brave man who said 'this must happen or else there will not be revival' or 'if this happens, then revival will follow'. Charles Finney was such a man, of course.
Let us look at prayer for revival. Who would not pray at some point, 'Lord pour out your blessing on this land'? Increasingly one hears Christians , at long last slowly being brought to our knees and our senses by the abject failure of the church in its cleverness to make any inroads on the darkness around us, realising that without a great movement of the Holy Spirit we are lost.
Yet systematic prayer for revival is also characteristically tied to a postmillenialist eschatology - as in Jonathan Edwards' 'Humble Attempt' (1747). Revival is the way in which the gospel prepares the way for the Lord's return. If one is a premillenialist, then characteristically one would pray for the Lord's immediate return, as the Brethren apparently did in the 19th Century (and I have been told they forbade praying for revival).
What of the poor Amillenialist? The optimistic representative of this group is close to the postmillenialist and may pray in that manner; the pessimistic amillenialist is likely to think more like the premillenialist.
Can prayer for revival be separated from eschatological concerns?
Not entirely one would hope, or we are being less than fully theological about things (and that is something with which we could never charge Jonathan Edwards).
But surely the true Amillenialist is concerned above all with the glory of God (and I am not suggesting our friends in other eschatological camps are not). With this in mind, is not revival principally seeking God for his own sake and for his presence? It was rightly concluded at yesterday's meeting that the presence of God, felt and powerful, is the characteristic of revival proper. It is not the results, even though Jonathan Edwards would be right to see widespread revival as bringing in a gospel 'golden age'. But why does God send revivals? It would be presumptuous to think there is only one answer to this, or that we could certainly know it. One might, for example, say that it is because the world is getting so bad. But why at certain times in certain places, when we could say with some justification that other places and other times are as bad if not worse. Did the Isle of Lewis need that much more purifying in 1949-51?
Or is it because the people are praying, or holier than others? Or the church deader than others? It is difficult to pin down - why in 1904 did revivals break out in Rhos near Wrexham? The people were gathered for a series of meetings to deepen spiritual life. Is it preaching? Iain Campbell (Lewis) has said he has studied many sermons of the early 20th century of preachers used in revival times in Lewis, and there is no discernible difference on paper between times of revival and times of non-revival. The content is the same. The difference is the (greater) presence of the Spirit of God.
Is it because the people are seeking God? Even when, as we often see, no more than in 1904-05 perhaps, the theology leaves something to be desired?
Perhaps praying that is more concerned with the Giver than the gift is the prayer which , while we would not presume to call it or anything else the key to revival, is the praying that is closest to the heart of revival and most correspondent to the true effects of revival - a people enraptured with God. Perhaps it is out of his desire to cause people to love him for himself that God makes it so difficult for us to define the terms on which revival will come, and acts so gloriously sovereignly as to both time and place. Yet it may also give a hint as to why some areas are and have been more blessed than others.
As to fruit - Jonathan Edwards is surely right to say that love will be the fruit of a true work of God.
A final point - the theology of worship that says we gather together only to encourage and edify one another but not to 'worship', is surely selling itself short here in relation to expecting or longing for the felt presence of God. It is a theology that is inimical to revival. Yet those of us with a fuller theology of the Lord's Day meeting should not be triumphalist; God is known not to bless only because of correct theology.
A central issue always is: what is the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility? Can we in any way 'prepare' for revival? Can we contribute to a chain of causation leading to its coming? The human contributions may consist of prayer, preaching, penitence (repentance) and purity (a holy life - 'God can't fill a dirty vessel') yet the history of revivals shows God is notoriously difficult to pin down and bestows his blessing where he wills. There may be common themes in revivals but it would be a brave man who said 'this must happen or else there will not be revival' or 'if this happens, then revival will follow'. Charles Finney was such a man, of course.
Let us look at prayer for revival. Who would not pray at some point, 'Lord pour out your blessing on this land'? Increasingly one hears Christians , at long last slowly being brought to our knees and our senses by the abject failure of the church in its cleverness to make any inroads on the darkness around us, realising that without a great movement of the Holy Spirit we are lost.
Yet systematic prayer for revival is also characteristically tied to a postmillenialist eschatology - as in Jonathan Edwards' 'Humble Attempt' (1747). Revival is the way in which the gospel prepares the way for the Lord's return. If one is a premillenialist, then characteristically one would pray for the Lord's immediate return, as the Brethren apparently did in the 19th Century (and I have been told they forbade praying for revival).
What of the poor Amillenialist? The optimistic representative of this group is close to the postmillenialist and may pray in that manner; the pessimistic amillenialist is likely to think more like the premillenialist.
Can prayer for revival be separated from eschatological concerns?
Not entirely one would hope, or we are being less than fully theological about things (and that is something with which we could never charge Jonathan Edwards).
But surely the true Amillenialist is concerned above all with the glory of God (and I am not suggesting our friends in other eschatological camps are not). With this in mind, is not revival principally seeking God for his own sake and for his presence? It was rightly concluded at yesterday's meeting that the presence of God, felt and powerful, is the characteristic of revival proper. It is not the results, even though Jonathan Edwards would be right to see widespread revival as bringing in a gospel 'golden age'. But why does God send revivals? It would be presumptuous to think there is only one answer to this, or that we could certainly know it. One might, for example, say that it is because the world is getting so bad. But why at certain times in certain places, when we could say with some justification that other places and other times are as bad if not worse. Did the Isle of Lewis need that much more purifying in 1949-51?
Or is it because the people are praying, or holier than others? Or the church deader than others? It is difficult to pin down - why in 1904 did revivals break out in Rhos near Wrexham? The people were gathered for a series of meetings to deepen spiritual life. Is it preaching? Iain Campbell (Lewis) has said he has studied many sermons of the early 20th century of preachers used in revival times in Lewis, and there is no discernible difference on paper between times of revival and times of non-revival. The content is the same. The difference is the (greater) presence of the Spirit of God.
Is it because the people are seeking God? Even when, as we often see, no more than in 1904-05 perhaps, the theology leaves something to be desired?
Perhaps praying that is more concerned with the Giver than the gift is the prayer which , while we would not presume to call it or anything else the key to revival, is the praying that is closest to the heart of revival and most correspondent to the true effects of revival - a people enraptured with God. Perhaps it is out of his desire to cause people to love him for himself that God makes it so difficult for us to define the terms on which revival will come, and acts so gloriously sovereignly as to both time and place. Yet it may also give a hint as to why some areas are and have been more blessed than others.
As to fruit - Jonathan Edwards is surely right to say that love will be the fruit of a true work of God.
A final point - the theology of worship that says we gather together only to encourage and edify one another but not to 'worship', is surely selling itself short here in relation to expecting or longing for the felt presence of God. It is a theology that is inimical to revival. Yet those of us with a fuller theology of the Lord's Day meeting should not be triumphalist; God is known not to bless only because of correct theology.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
A History of Christianity
Diarmaid MacCulloch's 'A History of Christianity' is a Big Book - over 1000 pages and by my reckoning about 480 words to a page. I began it on holiday (25th July to be precise) and have just finished it (16th September). I have rarely managed more than about 25 pages an hour, often less, so it represents at least 40 hours reading over 7 or 8 weeks. It wouldn't have been feasible at any other time of year.
MacCulloch describes himself as 'a candid friend of Christianity' from a strong Anglican background. His approach is not that of a believer; his references to the Bible are usually sceptical, treating it as a human document and sometimes as a species of propaganda (eg the book of Acts). Pluralism rules. He treats all forms of Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, Eastern, Coptic etc - and Mormonism too), as equal, and all religions as equal too (in terms of truth claims at least) as far as one can tell. King David was a murderous usurper. Jesus is (probably) merely human - MacCulloch explicitly follows the reconstruction of the life of Jesus by the 19th century German scholar D.F.Strauss. The effect of the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield is described as 'mass hysteria'. Events are given a reductionistic psychological, political or economic rationale; the idea of a supernatural providence or purpose is (of course) not canvassed.
Yet I have enjoyed reading it. On occasions I have paused to thank God for giving a man the ability to know and organise such a quantity of information - aware of how one struggles sometimes even to put a sermon or an essay together - so that it is extremely useful and (largely) interesting to read. It is excellently indexed and often helpfully cross-referenced within the text itself to help one refer to earlier or later mentions of the subject he is dealing with. It is, therefore, a valuable reference work.
Parts of it were hard-going. The labyrinthine political and ecclesiastical struggles of Byzantium and of Russian Orthodoxy and the papacy do not interest me much. At page 551 you come to the period leading up to the Reformation and at p. 604 to the Reformation itself. This is where it began to take off. Three times the author quotes or refers with approval to Warfield's dictum that the Reformation was the triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over his doctrine of the church. With some exceptions (such as the dreary twentieth century history of ecumenism)the last 400 pages have been more gripping than the first half of the book.
Jensen brothers in Sydney: take a bow. You get mentioned on page 1009, as leaders of an 'aggressive' style of Evangelicalism that wants to alter 'the direction of worldwide Anglicanism towards what it might have become in a more radical sixteenth-century English Reformation combined somewhat anachronistically with a campaigning style of evangelism borrowed from American revivalism.' Oh well.
I have learned a number of new (and often useless) facts; that 'chapel' comes from 'capella' , the name first of the short cloak that 'St' Martin of Tours gave to a beggar and then the name of the small buildings where this cloak was later displayed - and there's me thinking it was a non-Conformist word; that Freemasonry seems to have begun in 16th century Scotland - probably another Presbyterian split; that 'empiricism' comes from the name of a 3rd century scholar called Empiricus rediscovered in the 16th century; and that Napoleon made bees his emblem because decorative golden bees were found in the tomb of Childeric, the long dead father of the slightly less long dead Clovis.
How have I lived without knowing all this - and much more?
Particularly sobering (though not from his point of view) is MacCulloch's observation that in the modern world among many aspects of traditional Christianity to have been jettisoned without fuss, the most notable casualty has been Hell. It has dropped out of preaching and out of popular concern: there is, I think, some irony in the author's question, 'does this continent [Europe], arguably so far the world's most successfully balanced consumer society, need a Christian Heaven and Hell?' In theological terms he traces it back to F.D.Maurice and others in the nineteenth century so that the fires of hell 'hardly flicker at all now in worldwide televangelism'.
Significantly too our customs at death have changed: in 2000 70% of British funerals and 25% of American were cremations, from a base of nil in 1860. The scattering of ashes is becoming, says MacCulloch, a new personalised ritual for a secular society, one fireworks enthusiast using Roman candles to send his ashes into space, someone else using an unmanned satellite to send them even higher. 'Death is not so much distanced as sanitised or domesticated, made part of the spectrum of consumer choice in a consumer society...Changing attitudes to death and Hell mark a growth of this-worldly concerns in a large part of contemporary Christianity'.
Reflections?
1. It is a spiritually 'drying' experience reading a book of such scepticism - though MacCulloch is even handed, and is no doubt working by the canons of professional scholarship. But I was glad to be reading other more uplifting books at the same time. Constant reductionism is hard on the soul; not when one is reading a book about physics, football or the history of Greenland perhaps, but the history of the church from the secular perspective is particularly gruelling. I must read a Merle d'Aubigne next.
One has to ask though - how objective is such an approach? How can an unbiassed author dismiss the spiritual experience of, say, a miner converted in Bristol under the preaching of Wesley or Whitefield, as 'hysteria'? Surely objectivity demands that people's claims for their own experiences be taken with all seriousness unless proven absolutely bogus.
2. How much the history of Christianity is reflected in its art and architecture! And how much it is to do with ritual and liturgy. But then, spiritual Christianity cannot be measured; it leaves books but otherwise fewer incontrovertible traces, though in fact it is the salt of the earth. More of the good in society than we shall ever know has been due to the presence of the saints. Love to God and to one's neighbour and the countless words and actions (let alone thoughts) that demonstrate the existence of God are rarely accessible to the science of the historian.
3. Such a 'history of Christianity' is probably better called 'the history of the visible church' or of 'Christendom' (a term apparently first coined in 9th century England by a scribe trying to translate into English the concept of 'universal Christianity' in a work by by the fifth century scholar Orosius - useful eh?). Reading this history is a sobering education in what has been done in the name of Christ and of his church (including by those bearing the label Protestant and Reformed) - crusades, witch hunts, slavery for long before it was abolished and the financing of mission in China on the back of the opium trade. These are hackneyed criticisms (and MacCulloch is not out to 'do Christianity down' as he recounts these facts of history) but there is uncomfortable truth in them.
How much of it is truly 'Christianity' of course depends on defining terms. When one thinks of the countless lives touched by grace, and however feebly, lived out in praise of a gracious God , a book like this is not getting close to real Christianity. Behind the visible church there is the body of Christ, not of course completely dissociated from it, but neither by any means to be identified wholly with it.
4. Yet history is the story of God's providence. The great benefit of a book like this is the panoramic sweep both of time and space that it gives. Even what we might be tempted to call Christendom and worse has been decreed and guided by God. The story of the visible church has been under his control. He works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. All is ultimately to his perfect satisfaction and to the glory of his Son. We cannot be dismissive of what we do not like about 'church history'. It is still very much our story.
In the end we look from Christianity to Christ and to God. This book in essence sees religion as a human phenomenon. Thank God it is not merely that. There is a God and in a world that through the most religiously privileged people of that day crucified his Son, he is working his purposes out to their inevitably glorious conclusion.
MacCulloch describes himself as 'a candid friend of Christianity' from a strong Anglican background. His approach is not that of a believer; his references to the Bible are usually sceptical, treating it as a human document and sometimes as a species of propaganda (eg the book of Acts). Pluralism rules. He treats all forms of Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, Eastern, Coptic etc - and Mormonism too), as equal, and all religions as equal too (in terms of truth claims at least) as far as one can tell. King David was a murderous usurper. Jesus is (probably) merely human - MacCulloch explicitly follows the reconstruction of the life of Jesus by the 19th century German scholar D.F.Strauss. The effect of the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield is described as 'mass hysteria'. Events are given a reductionistic psychological, political or economic rationale; the idea of a supernatural providence or purpose is (of course) not canvassed.
Yet I have enjoyed reading it. On occasions I have paused to thank God for giving a man the ability to know and organise such a quantity of information - aware of how one struggles sometimes even to put a sermon or an essay together - so that it is extremely useful and (largely) interesting to read. It is excellently indexed and often helpfully cross-referenced within the text itself to help one refer to earlier or later mentions of the subject he is dealing with. It is, therefore, a valuable reference work.
Parts of it were hard-going. The labyrinthine political and ecclesiastical struggles of Byzantium and of Russian Orthodoxy and the papacy do not interest me much. At page 551 you come to the period leading up to the Reformation and at p. 604 to the Reformation itself. This is where it began to take off. Three times the author quotes or refers with approval to Warfield's dictum that the Reformation was the triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over his doctrine of the church. With some exceptions (such as the dreary twentieth century history of ecumenism)the last 400 pages have been more gripping than the first half of the book.
Jensen brothers in Sydney: take a bow. You get mentioned on page 1009, as leaders of an 'aggressive' style of Evangelicalism that wants to alter 'the direction of worldwide Anglicanism towards what it might have become in a more radical sixteenth-century English Reformation combined somewhat anachronistically with a campaigning style of evangelism borrowed from American revivalism.' Oh well.
I have learned a number of new (and often useless) facts; that 'chapel' comes from 'capella' , the name first of the short cloak that 'St' Martin of Tours gave to a beggar and then the name of the small buildings where this cloak was later displayed - and there's me thinking it was a non-Conformist word; that Freemasonry seems to have begun in 16th century Scotland - probably another Presbyterian split; that 'empiricism' comes from the name of a 3rd century scholar called Empiricus rediscovered in the 16th century; and that Napoleon made bees his emblem because decorative golden bees were found in the tomb of Childeric, the long dead father of the slightly less long dead Clovis.
How have I lived without knowing all this - and much more?
Particularly sobering (though not from his point of view) is MacCulloch's observation that in the modern world among many aspects of traditional Christianity to have been jettisoned without fuss, the most notable casualty has been Hell. It has dropped out of preaching and out of popular concern: there is, I think, some irony in the author's question, 'does this continent [Europe], arguably so far the world's most successfully balanced consumer society, need a Christian Heaven and Hell?' In theological terms he traces it back to F.D.Maurice and others in the nineteenth century so that the fires of hell 'hardly flicker at all now in worldwide televangelism'.
Significantly too our customs at death have changed: in 2000 70% of British funerals and 25% of American were cremations, from a base of nil in 1860. The scattering of ashes is becoming, says MacCulloch, a new personalised ritual for a secular society, one fireworks enthusiast using Roman candles to send his ashes into space, someone else using an unmanned satellite to send them even higher. 'Death is not so much distanced as sanitised or domesticated, made part of the spectrum of consumer choice in a consumer society...Changing attitudes to death and Hell mark a growth of this-worldly concerns in a large part of contemporary Christianity'.
Reflections?
1. It is a spiritually 'drying' experience reading a book of such scepticism - though MacCulloch is even handed, and is no doubt working by the canons of professional scholarship. But I was glad to be reading other more uplifting books at the same time. Constant reductionism is hard on the soul; not when one is reading a book about physics, football or the history of Greenland perhaps, but the history of the church from the secular perspective is particularly gruelling. I must read a Merle d'Aubigne next.
One has to ask though - how objective is such an approach? How can an unbiassed author dismiss the spiritual experience of, say, a miner converted in Bristol under the preaching of Wesley or Whitefield, as 'hysteria'? Surely objectivity demands that people's claims for their own experiences be taken with all seriousness unless proven absolutely bogus.
2. How much the history of Christianity is reflected in its art and architecture! And how much it is to do with ritual and liturgy. But then, spiritual Christianity cannot be measured; it leaves books but otherwise fewer incontrovertible traces, though in fact it is the salt of the earth. More of the good in society than we shall ever know has been due to the presence of the saints. Love to God and to one's neighbour and the countless words and actions (let alone thoughts) that demonstrate the existence of God are rarely accessible to the science of the historian.
3. Such a 'history of Christianity' is probably better called 'the history of the visible church' or of 'Christendom' (a term apparently first coined in 9th century England by a scribe trying to translate into English the concept of 'universal Christianity' in a work by by the fifth century scholar Orosius - useful eh?). Reading this history is a sobering education in what has been done in the name of Christ and of his church (including by those bearing the label Protestant and Reformed) - crusades, witch hunts, slavery for long before it was abolished and the financing of mission in China on the back of the opium trade. These are hackneyed criticisms (and MacCulloch is not out to 'do Christianity down' as he recounts these facts of history) but there is uncomfortable truth in them.
How much of it is truly 'Christianity' of course depends on defining terms. When one thinks of the countless lives touched by grace, and however feebly, lived out in praise of a gracious God , a book like this is not getting close to real Christianity. Behind the visible church there is the body of Christ, not of course completely dissociated from it, but neither by any means to be identified wholly with it.
4. Yet history is the story of God's providence. The great benefit of a book like this is the panoramic sweep both of time and space that it gives. Even what we might be tempted to call Christendom and worse has been decreed and guided by God. The story of the visible church has been under his control. He works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. All is ultimately to his perfect satisfaction and to the glory of his Son. We cannot be dismissive of what we do not like about 'church history'. It is still very much our story.
In the end we look from Christianity to Christ and to God. This book in essence sees religion as a human phenomenon. Thank God it is not merely that. There is a God and in a world that through the most religiously privileged people of that day crucified his Son, he is working his purposes out to their inevitably glorious conclusion.
The Abiding Presence
I am a fan of Hugh Martin (1822-85). He did not write a lot, as far as I am aware, but the works I have - 'The Atonement' , his commentary on Jonah and expositions on Simon Peter - have satisfied at every level.
Recently I purchased 'The Abiding Presence' (Christian Focus, 2009) and read it over my holiday. It is a remarkable book. His starting point is the conjunction of the presence of Jesus with his people (Matt 28:20 )and the existence of the gospels - the 'memoirs' of Christ ('the book of the generation of Jesus Christ' Matt 1:1').
He shows from John 14:16-26, 16:13-22 that the presence of the Spirit is the real presence of Christ.
'You may have his perfect and all sufficient biography; but without the Spirit of Jesus you cannot appreciate the life of Jesus; for you are not yourself quickened to live in the same spiritual world, or atmosphere and realm, with him.'
He expands on how the living presence brings the 'biography' to life, and illustrates from particular events in the gospels (the baptism, the temptations, the sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, and the cross)how these speak to us today through the abiding presence of Christ. The section on the 'perpetuity of the sacrifice' in relation to the cross is particularly helpful in showing how the cross, while being a 'once for all' sacrifice, has still a present efficacy for the believer.
There follow sections on the application of the principle to other parts of the New Testament, discussion of the twofold revelation of Christ (to us and in us) and a closing section on the presence of Christ in his people - its causes and consequences, and cautions concerning it.
A book that probably needs to be read more than once - but penetrating and full of insights.
Recently I purchased 'The Abiding Presence' (Christian Focus, 2009) and read it over my holiday. It is a remarkable book. His starting point is the conjunction of the presence of Jesus with his people (Matt 28:20 )and the existence of the gospels - the 'memoirs' of Christ ('the book of the generation of Jesus Christ' Matt 1:1').
He shows from John 14:16-26, 16:13-22 that the presence of the Spirit is the real presence of Christ.
'You may have his perfect and all sufficient biography; but without the Spirit of Jesus you cannot appreciate the life of Jesus; for you are not yourself quickened to live in the same spiritual world, or atmosphere and realm, with him.'
He expands on how the living presence brings the 'biography' to life, and illustrates from particular events in the gospels (the baptism, the temptations, the sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, and the cross)how these speak to us today through the abiding presence of Christ. The section on the 'perpetuity of the sacrifice' in relation to the cross is particularly helpful in showing how the cross, while being a 'once for all' sacrifice, has still a present efficacy for the believer.
There follow sections on the application of the principle to other parts of the New Testament, discussion of the twofold revelation of Christ (to us and in us) and a closing section on the presence of Christ in his people - its causes and consequences, and cautions concerning it.
A book that probably needs to be read more than once - but penetrating and full of insights.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Riots in London
'An orgy of rioting and looting' over four days in August, and 200 people arrested. This was how the 'Liverpool Daily Post' described the aftermath of the police strike in Liverpool in 1919. It did not take much, even directly after the Great War, to cause people to lose their inhibitions about stealing and violence - just the removal of the threat of being caught.
So these things are not new. I am not trying to sanitise the present troubles in our cities by relativising them, but a sense of perspective is helpful. OK - so there was no police strike this time, but a large part of the scale of the present riots has been because people suddenly realised that if they come out in enough force, the police are, at least initially, helpless. There is no fear of getting caught.
Nor are riots in London particularly a new thing. Read Peter Ackroyd's 'London: The Biography' or a similar history of London to see that the city has frequently exploded. We have seen it in our own time, though not on the same scale as this week. The city is like a simmering pot that occasionally only needs a slight disturbance to boil over, apparently unpredictably. How much anger is there below the surface? How thin is the veneer of control and respectability.
Nor can people take the easy option that some may be tempted to take and blame immigrant communities. London has been made up of immigrant communities for most of its history. All colours and races have been visible on our TV screens in the thick of the trouble.
Nor is it new in history. 'Before the age of the Caesars, the Senate could not keep order. Armed gangs terrorised the city of Rome and the normal processes of government were disrupted as rivals fought for power. Self-interest became more significant than social interest...Then, in desperation, the people accepted authoritarian government.' (Francis Schaeffer in 'How should we then live' chapter 1).
Mob rule is a funny thing. A common feature shared by many - often a sense of resentment, anger and hatred, coupled with greed - is suddenly ignited by a spark - in this case the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham. Fanned by the modern phenomenon of 'social media' (though it used to happen without that) a mood of rebellion takes over. Fear of authority is reduced and disappears; the boundary of conscience is easily crossed as is the boundary of respect for law; the appetite takes over, the exhilarating focus on what can be done physically, for now the only boundary to action is what is physically possible. Anything that can be done is done. Shops can be looted with impunity, so - just do it.
Perhaps a new feature is the prominence of the young, though that is by no means necessarily novel. Yet a clergyman had a good point in a TV interview when he said (in terms) that if we have undermined the authority of parents at home and of teachers at school, and instilled in children the idea that they need not be told what to do, we can hardly complain when they go onto the streets and do not listen to anybody.
A certainty in all this is the spiritual absolutes. However novel or not the present experience of our cities is historically, it is the expression of sin which is lawlessness. The immediate manifestation may have new features, and elements of it may be explicable in terms of contemporary issues, but ultimately it is, like all sin, inexplicable and irrational.
It is, of course, nonetheless wrong for that. God's glory is challenged as authority is held in contempt; his laws are trampled on; love for him and one's neighbour are forgotten. Lament the spiritual state of a nation that behaves like this. Pray for his mercy, for his salvation to be made widely known. But do not falsely grieve over a supposed golden age when things were so very different.
So these things are not new. I am not trying to sanitise the present troubles in our cities by relativising them, but a sense of perspective is helpful. OK - so there was no police strike this time, but a large part of the scale of the present riots has been because people suddenly realised that if they come out in enough force, the police are, at least initially, helpless. There is no fear of getting caught.
Nor are riots in London particularly a new thing. Read Peter Ackroyd's 'London: The Biography' or a similar history of London to see that the city has frequently exploded. We have seen it in our own time, though not on the same scale as this week. The city is like a simmering pot that occasionally only needs a slight disturbance to boil over, apparently unpredictably. How much anger is there below the surface? How thin is the veneer of control and respectability.
Nor can people take the easy option that some may be tempted to take and blame immigrant communities. London has been made up of immigrant communities for most of its history. All colours and races have been visible on our TV screens in the thick of the trouble.
Nor is it new in history. 'Before the age of the Caesars, the Senate could not keep order. Armed gangs terrorised the city of Rome and the normal processes of government were disrupted as rivals fought for power. Self-interest became more significant than social interest...Then, in desperation, the people accepted authoritarian government.' (Francis Schaeffer in 'How should we then live' chapter 1).
Mob rule is a funny thing. A common feature shared by many - often a sense of resentment, anger and hatred, coupled with greed - is suddenly ignited by a spark - in this case the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham. Fanned by the modern phenomenon of 'social media' (though it used to happen without that) a mood of rebellion takes over. Fear of authority is reduced and disappears; the boundary of conscience is easily crossed as is the boundary of respect for law; the appetite takes over, the exhilarating focus on what can be done physically, for now the only boundary to action is what is physically possible. Anything that can be done is done. Shops can be looted with impunity, so - just do it.
Perhaps a new feature is the prominence of the young, though that is by no means necessarily novel. Yet a clergyman had a good point in a TV interview when he said (in terms) that if we have undermined the authority of parents at home and of teachers at school, and instilled in children the idea that they need not be told what to do, we can hardly complain when they go onto the streets and do not listen to anybody.
A certainty in all this is the spiritual absolutes. However novel or not the present experience of our cities is historically, it is the expression of sin which is lawlessness. The immediate manifestation may have new features, and elements of it may be explicable in terms of contemporary issues, but ultimately it is, like all sin, inexplicable and irrational.
It is, of course, nonetheless wrong for that. God's glory is challenged as authority is held in contempt; his laws are trampled on; love for him and one's neighbour are forgotten. Lament the spiritual state of a nation that behaves like this. Pray for his mercy, for his salvation to be made widely known. But do not falsely grieve over a supposed golden age when things were so very different.
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