Eyre Lines

There’s this chap called Kevin DeYoung who blogs on Gospel Coalition, it seems. I hadn’t heard of him before the “40 questions” he asked of “Christians now waving rainbow flags” became one of the most talked about posts in a lot of progressive Christian circles. This is not surprising, because I don’t identify with his flavour of Christianity very well, which I gather he regards as “Evangelical”. However, a lot of those who now self-identify as “progressive” have come from the “Evangelical” camp and still retain roots and connections there, and I read quite a lot of them, and agree with quite a lot of what they say, and find their faith journeys to be particularly interesting. And, in a spirit of complete disclosure, my main church at present, although denominationally Anglican, would identify itself as “Evangelical” as well, as would the majority of the congregation there (I think).

So I’m probably not his target audience – indeed, he’d probably dismiss me as “Liberal”. However, the post did engage the interest of a lot of people I tend to see eye to eye with, and I wondered if my answers would differ radically from theirs, many of which have been linked by James McGrath. I quote the main bulk of the original text below in blue. My replies are in white.

If you consider yourself a Bible-believing Christian, a follower of Jesus whose chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, there are important questions I hope you will consider before picking up your flag and cheering on the sexual revolution. These questions aren’t meant to be snarky or merely rhetorical. They are sincere, if pointed, questions that I hope will cause my brothers and sisters with the new rainbow themed avatars to slow down and think about the flag you’re flying.

Well, I can reasonably identify with the description in the first two lines, though there may prove to be some argument as to what “Bible-believing” means – particularly when it’s capitalised. Usually any use of the term, and particularly when it has capitals, means that it demands a sadly literalist view of scripture and the use of a particular set of lenses through which it has to be read, lenses which were invented many years after the scriptures were written, and some as recently as the late 19^th century. I take the Bible extremely seriously; far too seriously to read it that way. From the point of view of most Evangelicals, that puts me in the category of “bible-burning liberal”, which is amusing, as actually I generally want to ignore less of the Old Testament than they do, and not infrequently less of the Gospels as well. I contend that I fit as well into “bible-believing” as the majority of those who would use the term of themselves.

I don’t do a lot of flag-waving, personally, and the recent Supreme Court decision doesn’t have any effect on me or on anyone I’m close to, as none of my gay friends live in the States, but I am heartened by the fact that it’s occurred. The similar but earlier change in the law here has allowed some friends to give legal status to what has been a de facto position for years, and I’m glad for them, and so glad for those in the States for whom that has now become possible. So I may be a rather half-hearted flag-waver in his eyes.

However, I beg leave to question Mr. DeYoung’s description of his questions. I spent enough years moderating on a religion discussion forum to recognise loaded questions designed to be unanswerable, or unanswerable without giving away something the author would consider a victory. Had these questions been raised on that forum, I would have been having some serious words with the writer about encouraging discussion rather than argument.

But I am a sucker for considering my position and answering questions about my faith, and have an historical weakness for a spot of proof-texting which I’m attempting to recover from with only partial success, so:-

1. How long have you believed that gay marriage is something to be celebrated?

I have to admit that it wasn’t until about my mid-20s, (i.e. nearly 40 years ago) when I was asked to try to replicate as nearly as possible the legal position, had they been married, of a committed gay couple. What I could do was not straightforward, and there was a lot I couldn’t achieve, because the UK was quite a few years off civil partnerships at the time.

2. What Bible verses led you to change your mind?

None in particular, though I could point to the trajectory of scripture from the regulation of an iron age tribe through towards an universal religion prioritising inclusion of the underprivileged and excluded. But then, it wasn’t really a matter of changing my mind – I’d have thought the same way earlier, except (to my embarrassment now) it had never really crossed my mind, and it should have, because I had friends who were gay, and had even spent some serious time discussing the position of the gay Christian with one of them.

Though Jesus’ injunctions to love our neighbour as ourselves, love one another as he loved us and the like would spring to mind. I don’t see that sexual love is necessarily excluded from the generally loving nature one is supposed to have, though I do think there are excellent reasons for restricting eros to one person, while relationships with others can make do with various other flavours of love.

3. How would you make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be celebrated?

The same way I’d make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two people of opposite sexes is a blessing to be celebrated, i.e. probably the Song of Solomon. Though, in conscience, I’ve never felt the need to use Scripture to make either case. Loving mutual commitments are a different matter, but that isn’t the question asked.

4. What verses would you use to show that a marriage between two persons of the same sex can adequately depict Christ and the church?

You have to be joking, yes? Christ was (is?) male, I’m a man, and I’m part of the church (as, so far as I know, was Paul). It’s already conceived as a same-sex union.

I will confess that the way in which Teresa de Avila wrote about her relationship with Christ is one which I find personally exclusive, as an heterosexual male – maybe a male of a different sexual formation might find that easier?

In fact, of course, Paul was not thinking of the sexual aspect of love when he wrote in these terms, but of the complementarity of married couples; it seems to me that such complementarity is largely independent of sex. Aspects like mutual dependence and inseparability would also figure, I think. Neither, I think, was Teresa actually thinking of explicit sexuality, but her use of charged imagery does make it very difficult not to see her as talking of a sexual relationship.

5. Do you think Jesus would have been okay with homosexual behavior between consenting adults in a committed relationship?

I’m pretty confident he would have been, if he’d had any examples to consider, yes.

6. If so, why did he reassert the Genesis definition of marriage as being one man and one woman?

Because he was asked to speak about divorce, which presumed a marriage, which in those days could only be between a man and a woman (and he was issuing a rebuke to the asymmetric and unfair divorce provisions of the day). Reference to Gen. 2:24 is rather problematic here; firstly, the immediate previous verses indicate that their cleaving together is because they’re actually the same species rather than particularly opposite genders (previously offered mates were animals), secondly, Eve is presented as a kind of clone, which is going to have to come within prohibitions against incest these days. In addition, enquiring minds might want to know in what way leaving father and mother was relevant to Adam and Eve…

7. When Jesus spoke against porneia what sins do you think he was forbidding?

Probably heterosexual promiscuity beyond a single adultery (which is dealt with using a different term earlier in the passage in Matthew 5).

8. If some homosexual behavior is acceptable, how do you understand the sinful “exchange” Paul highlights in Romans 1?

Until really quite recently, I’d have taken that as actually condemning the actions he mentions as such in passing (and naively accepting that that did mean homosexuality in all its forms), and I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago lamenting the fact that I actually agonised about this with a gay Christian friend many years ago without coming to a better answer than the one I then gave, namely that Paul was a man, not in any manner God (and therefore massively less reliable than Jesus), and (if you credit him with all the epistles which bear his name) wrote some stuff which is morally reprehensible, e.g. that slaves should obey their masters and women should be silent and not teach, but admitted on one occasion that occasionally he wrote stuff which came from him and which was not divinely inspired. However, I have now read Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God” and find that a better reading is to ascribe all of this section of Romans to a view Paul puts forward as being that of his opponents, which he then proceeds to use to lambast people for being at least as bad as this caricature. Clearly Paul’s account of a position opposing his should not be taken as binding!

An Anabaptist correspondent of mine used to be keen on suggesting that if you broke any commandment (such as, for instance, failing to give all your money to the poor) you were equivalent to an homosexual prostitute. He was, of course, using these passages as a basis, and both he and Paul were appealing to the base prejudices of their audiences.

9. Do you believe that passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Revelation 21:8 teach that sexual immorality can keep you out of heaven?

I think any manner of worldly preoccupations can keep you out of heaven, and that the most dangerous of those (at least according to Jesus) is the pursuit of money, though abuse of power comes in a close second. A preoccupation with sex is certainly among the lesser ones.

10. What sexual sins do you think they were referring to?

I’m not wholly certain, apart from a strong suspicion (from the use of “malakoi”) that Paul disapproved of effeminacy, and (from the construction of “arsenokotai”) that he wasn’t keen on anal intercourse (which would give quite a number of heterosexual couples a problem), but better scholars of the period and language than me raise a good argument that he may have meant abuse of young men by old ones and male prostitution.

11. As you think about the long history of the church and the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther failed to grasp?

I don’t actually see much Church disapproval of same-sex activity as distinct from sexual activity generally (which a lot of the Church has disapproved of for much of its existence) until the late 19^th century. Most writers during that period, including those, said very little if anything about the issue, and none of those that I’m aware of said anything about committed same-sex relationships.

However, the question indicates that the writer misses the overarching trajectory of scripture; Jesus was unworried about modifying (for instance) the rules of divorce or the exclusion of Canaanites and Samaritans from fellowship with Jews, Paul was unworried about modifying the rules regarding the major Jewish distinctives of circumcision and dietary particularity, both being modified in the direction of greater inclusion of those thought of at the time as “beyond the pale”. Augustine was keen to accommodate parts of his tradition to Roman rule (which would have had both Jesus and Paul in fits), including the very retrograde step of a theory of Just War. Aquinas accommodated his theology to Plato and Aristotle, which I also think was a retrograde step; Luther and Calvin rejected the previous 1000 years of Church authorities’ interpretations of the Bible en masse, retaining only what they thought they could justify directly from scripture, and in the process accommodating to an increasingly individualist strain in Northern Europe; some of their innovations were in line with the trajectory set by Jesus and the early Paul, following the Prophets, some were not.

You present me with a set of examples none of whom thought previous authority was sacrosanct and all of whom paid attention to the society in which they lived; why should I not follow their example, and of course those of Jesus and Paul?

12. What arguments would you use to explain to Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not culturally conditioned?

I think I might start by pointing out to them that every understanding of sexuality, including the Biblical one(s), theirs and mine is culturally conditioned. I, for instance, have a culturally conditioned revulsion towards the marrying off of girls of a very tender age (sometimes as young as 12), and towards the forced marriage of girls of any age on the say-so of their fathers. Those are, of course, things which were regularly approved in the Bible. So was slavery; so was genocide (consider the Amalekites and Canaanites, for instance).

13. Do you think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were motivated by personal animus and bigotry when they, for almost all of their lives, defined marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman?

I have absolutely no idea (not my circus, not my monkeys) but in any event particularly applaud their move towards celebrating a wider conception of marriage if, in fact, it represents repentance of previous animus and bigotry. I might point out, however, that the question assumes that anyone who might approve of marriage equality would also support these people; both of them are far too right of centre for my social-democratic taste!

14. Do you think children do best with a mother and a father?

Not as such. I think children do best with more than one loving parent and even better with a more extended family – I think “It takes a village to raise a child” is a very wise statement which ought to be Biblical, but isn’t. They do better with only one parent than with two opposite sex parents in a state of constant conflict, though.

It seems possible, however, that you are actually asking whether children benefit from having the kind of attributes modeled to them which are commonly thought of as “masculine” and “feminine”, in which case I would say “yes – but masculine attributes are not the exclusive preserve of genetic males nor feminine ones the exclusive preserve of genetic females”. I also consider that gender stereotyping is bad for children.

15. If not, what research would you point to in support of that conclusion?

30 years experience as a family lawyer is not enough?

16. If yes, does the church or the state have any role to play in promoting or privileging the arrangement that puts children with a mom and a dad?

I am not at all confident that it was a good idea for the church to start attempting to regulate marriage, which it did not do for its first thousand years (it didn’t solemnise them in church either for even longer). I’m very happy that churches will bless and confirm at least some marriages, however.

The state does have an interest in the welfare, education and happiness of all its citizens and in particular its children (which are its future) and so will naturally wish to privilege relationships which promote that at minimal cost to the taxpayer.

17. Does the end and purpose of marriage point to something more than an adult’s emotional and sexual fulfillment?

Very often, yes, but not necessarily (as otherwise what becomes of the infertile or sterile).

18. How would you define marriage?

By whatever happen to be the ruling laws or custom and practice of the day in the country which I’m considering. As the Biblical writers did, in fact.

19. Do you think close family members should be allowed to get married?

Probably not, and in saying that I am aware that I am going completely against Biblical precedent, which favoured (for example) marrying cousins (Abraham) or the brother of a deceased spouse (Ruth). Exactly how close is a matter of argument, but unions capable of producing children need to consider genetic issues, and any sexual relationships between close relatives have a strong possibility of involving unacceptable imbalances of power.

20. Should marriage be limited to only two people?

Quite clearly the Biblical writers, at least those in the Old Testament, did not think so (consider David and Solomon, both of whom are held up as shining lights of followers of God). As a matter of legal practicality, I do think the state has a potential interest in prohibiting multiple marriages, as regulating property and children issues in the event of marriage breakdown becomes unreasonably complicated; also most such marriages in practice involve unacceptable imbalances of power. Of course, if polygamy is allowed, polyandry should also be allowed, as should intermediate conditions.

In addition, extending the range to seriously multiple marriages offers much scope for tax avoidance.

21. On what basis, if any, would you prevent consenting adults of any relation and of any number from getting married?

See above.

22. Should there be an age requirement in this country for obtaining a marriage license?

Probably, on purely pragmatic grounds, though as a matter of principle I would prefer a test of mental capacity and the absence of duress (including from family members), but there I need to point out that duress from family members would appear to have been the Biblical norm as the society of the time was patriarchal.

23. Does equality entail that anyone wanting to be married should be able to have any meaningful relationship defined as marriage?

See above. However, the State will legislate according to what it sees as the most appropriately restricted range of relationships to which it will afford tax and other privileges.

24. If not, why not?

See above.

25. Should your brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with homosexual practice be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs without fear of punishment, retribution, or coercion?

Of course. Though I might suggest that they try reading Romans 1-8 along the lines suggested by Douglas Campbell.

26. Will you speak up for your fellow Christians when their jobs, their accreditation, their reputation, and their freedoms are threatened because of this issue?

Probably not, because their jobs, accreditations and freedoms, at least in the UK, will not be legally threatened as a direct result (I cannot speak for their reputations), and if they have chosen an occupation which demands that one abide by the law of the land and they refuse to perform part of that job, they should not expect me to speak out if they lose their job or accreditation as a result; they should be prepared to suffer some penalty if they do not follow Paul’s injunction in Romans 13:1-7. I will, however, be happy to state publically and regularly that I respect their convictions on the issue and that they should not automatically be regarded as homophobes and bigots.

27. Will you speak out against shaming and bullying of all kinds, whether against gays and lesbians or against Evangelicals and Catholics?

I will certainly speak out against shaming and bullying of gays and lesbians, as they are persecuted minorities (they are still to some extent persecuted even in my own country, which has not rid itself of a large homophobic contingent, and will always be in the minority according to my understanding of population genetics).

I will also speak out against the shaming or bullying of any Christian for being a Christian, even if that includes disapproval of homosexuality. However, I will not support any Christian in shaming or bullying others, and I reserve the right to criticise them for it. If they feel that to be shaming or bullying, “judge not, lest you be judged” springs to mind.

28. Since the evangelical church has often failed to take unbiblical divorces and other sexual sins seriously, what steps will you take to ensure that gay marriages are healthy and accord with Scriptural principles?

I am really not interested in policing anyone’s marriages (or morals) other than my own. I am always happy to explain why I consider some sexual (and marriage) practices to be damaging if people enquire.

29. Should gay couples in open relationships be subject to church discipline?

I have grave misgivings about churches policing individual morality at all.

30. Is it a sin for LGBT persons to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage?

Not as such, provided no person is harmed and full and mature consent exists (exactly as I would say for heterosexual persons); in saying this, I am aware that Biblical precedent supports the rape of female captives and the forced marriage of young women, neither of which I think should be permitted. It is, moreover, extremely easy to sin in connection with sexual practices (as in all situations where heightened emotions occur) and care should therefore be taken. Promiscuous sexual activity whether heterosexual or homosexual is almost always damaging to everyone concerned and should be avoided. The least potentially damaging situation other than celibacy (which, as Paul says, is not a viable option for most) is long term monogamy, in my experience, and I therefore encourage it as an ideal.

31. What will open and affirming churches do to speak prophetically against divorce, fornication, pornography, and adultery wherever they are found?

Not being in a situation of leadership in one, or in any danger of becoming such a leader, this is not really my problem. I do, however, consider that there are very many far more damaging things about which churches should speak prophetically.

32. If “love wins,” how would you define love?

I might well start with 1 Cor. 13:1-13. But frankly, I would just suggest you go out and experience it; if you need it defining, you should involve yourself more with humanity.

33. What verses would you use to establish that definition?

See above. But, frankly, although I could also give any number of dictionary definitions (including the six types of love in koine Greek), poetry would be better – so move on from 1 Cor. to the Song of Solomon, perhaps.

34. How should obedience to God’s commands shape our understanding of love?

Haven’t you got that the wrong way round? The Great Commandments both enjoin love, the first for God and the second for our fellow men; that should shape our understanding of any other commands.

35. Do you believe it is possible to love someone and disagree with important decisions they make?

Look, I’ve been married for over 35 years and am happy still to be in that state. What do YOU think?

36. If supporting gay marriage is a change for you, has anything else changed in your understanding of faith?

My earliest understandings of God and Jesus showed me that the divine approves love in general, without restriction; if my attitude has changed, it has been to realise that perhaps some of the Biblical writers who I thought were condemning homosexuality were not actually condemning it in all its aspects, and that therefore I could have a little more confidence in their writings.

I have been wrestling with faith for nearly 50 years now, and my understanding changes in small ways fairly often – but when I say that, I suspect I mean something different than you do. I do not mean by “faith” a set of rules for conducting my life. I mean love for and trust in God.

37. As an evangelical, how has your support for gay marriage helped you become more passionate about traditional evangelical distinctives like a focus on being born again, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the total trustworthiness of the Bible, and the urgent need to evangelize the lost?

Ah well, that’s where we really part company in a big way. I am evangelical only in that I accept and seek to follow the Great Commission and to bring people where possible to a conscious relationship with God and to seek to develop that relationship. I do not consider the instant conversion “born again” experience to be the only or even the principal way to get there. I have never felt any affinity with substitutionary theories of atonement and consider that exemplary, participatory and anti-violent concepts are far the most important ones we can see in Jesus’ willing self-sacrifice, and I don’t expect to start feeling affinity with substitutionary concepts now.

As far as the trustworthiness of the Bible is concerned, the more I study it the more I consider it trustworthy as an account of the spiritual experience at the time of the writers. However they cannot be regarded as writing reliable science or history or, indeed, anything other than their spiritual (and therefore interior) experience. The more I study the history and customs of the times they lived in and the languages and philosophies they used to think, the more I feel some kinship with them. However, I do not live in that time, do not have that cultural background, do not speak their languages and emphatically do not subscribe to their philosophies; I am therefore likely to express myself differently from them on many occasions and on many subjects, always honouring their contributions and seeking to make use of their perspectives so far as is possible in order to illuminate my own experience of God.

38. What open and affirming churches would you point to where people are being converted to orthodox Christianity, sinners are being warned of judgment and called to repentance, and missionaries are being sent out to plant churches among unreached peoples?

I do not know of any church near me which entirely accurately fits my ideal of what a church should be (and, along the same lines as Groucho Marx, if it existed it probably wouldn’t want me to join). I would mention, however, that I see no Evangelical churches which convert people to what I would describe as orthodox Christianity, as they all teach concepts which have no place in the orthodoxy of (say) the second century. I also see very little warning of sinners and calls to repentance in relation to other sins, such as arrogance, gluttony and lack of care for the needy, per Ezekiel 16:49 (which I point out describes the “Sin of Sodom”, in the process radically reinterpreting earlier scripture…). My current church comes as close as can be expected.

39. Do you hope to be more committed to the church, more committed to Christ, and more committed to the Scriptures in the years ahead?

Yes.

40. When Paul at the end of Romans 1 rebukes “those who practice such things” and those who “give approval to those who practice them,” what sins do you think he has in mind?

Oh, we’re back there, are we? Again following Douglas Campbell, I think he is chiefly encouraging his audience to look at the beam in their own eyes and to shut up about the motes in the eyes of other people. But you have to read a few more chapters than just Romans 1 to get the picture…

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, I think.

 

This all makes me wonder at the conception of God which Mr. DeYoung must have. My own conception of God drawn from the life and sayings of Jesus is that God’s attention is far more directed to issues of charity and attention to economic and social justice than it is to what his followers’ sexual activities might be. This, I can use as a basis for sharing the gospel.

A picture of a God whose current principal preoccupation is the sexual habits of a minority who have been born with minority sexual orientations is one which I cannot use as that basis; it’s a picture which, frankly, people laugh at. In all honesty, I resent Mr. DeYoung and those of his understanding being so loud about it; it gives me an immediate obstacle to evangelism before I can start talking of the love of God exemplified by Jesus.

In small group last week, we were looking at Matthew 14:22-33, which is the story of Jesus walking across the rough waters of the Sea of Galilee to the apostles in their boat, Peter asking Jesus to call him to walk on water, and Peter’s limited success. Limited in that while it initially worked, Peter became frightened and began to sink, and needed rescuing.

I commented that I had difficulty with this passage, as I could not put myself into Peter’s position. Asked why, I said I didn’t believe in the supernatural. There was a silence, and then someone said “But, you’re a Christian?” Others chipped in, and the moment passed, but I felt I hadn’t dealt with this well; in addition, I notice that we’re going to be looking specifically at the question of belief and faith next week. I think it worth clarifying the position.

Accurately, I don’t believe in physical miracles, that is to say of the “walking on water” or “water into wine” variety. Healings and exorcisms are a different matter; I have seen cures through faith, and have talked to other people’s demons as well as my own (and you should read that very metaphorically!). Communications with God are also very much another matter, including tangible apparitions. I don’t think anything physical is actually happening in these; what is happening is changes in people’s consciousnesses and the results of that, so far as I’m concerned.

Against that, I don’t actually disbelieve miracle stories as such. As miracles are, by definition, exceptionally unlikely events, I would not expect the normal rules of how things work necessarily to apply to them if they did happen, and so the presumption that everything always works along naturalistic lines would be too strong – it definitely works along naturalistic lines almost always, but the absolute statement is one which I would think it foolish to make.  I might like to be able to believe in miracles the way many of those in my faith community do, but I can’t. The nearest I can get is suspension of disbelief, an acceptance that maybe, just maybe, things will not be the way every ounce of my rational thinking says it will be.

Thus, in Peter’s position, if I stepped out of the boat I would with huge confidence expect to sink.

But that isn’t the only reason why I couldn’t put myself in Peter’s position. As someone else noted in the group, there was no obvious reason for Peter to walk on water. From Peter’s point of view, he was putting himself in danger in order that God could save him miraculously, and in Matthew 4:1-17 we have seen Jesus tempted. Note particularly verses 5-7, where Jesus is invited to endanger himself and trust in a miracle, and responds that you should not put the Lord to the test. Peter is going completely against this principle. I’ve spent years training myself not to do that, after a certain youthful enthusiasm many years ago – though that never went quite as far as one of those preaching the previous Sunday on the subject, who did actually try to walk on water…

That said, I have occasionally hoped for a miracle without any belief that one would occur, but only when every other avenue was closed to me, and only a miracle would suffice. On a very few occasions, things have, to my amazement, worked out – not always in any way which I might have asked for, but worked out nonetheless. I can’t, however, say that any of those required a physical miracle, though they have certainly required psychological ones more than once.

The thing I’ve increasingly come to recognise as I’ve studied scripture over the years is that the real message of the miraculous stories is not in the fact that a miracle has occurred, it’s something else, a deeper message which can be found (and sometimes more than one). I don’t need to believe in the occurrence of the miracle to see the deeper message. In this case it’s that one should have absolute trust in Jesus; once Peter’s trust faltered, he was in trouble.

For me, indeed, miracles which just show that Jesus (or Peter, or Paul) was something really special don’t do the job they were supposed to. Rowan Atkinson has an extremely funny satire on this attitude on You Tube. I hope readers will see this not as lampooning Jesus, but as lampooning the attitude of some, at least, of his followers. I’ve done enough studying to know that a large number of famous people of the first century and before (and a few after that) had miracle stories attached to them; the New Testament is not unique or even particularly unusual in attributing miracles to its leading characters, and (for instance) Alexander the Great, Hippocrates and Augustus Caesar have such stories, as do quite a few rabbis of the first to fourth centuries, such as Eliezer and Honi the Circle Drawer. If I accept miracles in the New Testament, I have no way of rejecting them in (for instance) the Talmud, or the Koran. Those in the Gospels, at least, do have messages beyond just “this was a very important man whom you should pay attention to” – and I don’t need miracle stories to pay attention to Jesus.

Indeed, going back to the story, if I were in that boat on the sea of Galilee and rather than asking to walk out to Jesus, Jesus asked me to step out of the boat, I would probably do that. I would expect to sink, but hope not to – and in any event trust that what he asked me to do was the right thing. Even if I drowned.

I say “probably”. I am only too conscious of the fact that I have other allegiances as well as to God and Jesus which, at least to date, I have not been willing to set aside and follow the Great Commandments to the letter, or the injunction to the rich young man. (I don’t qualify as rich by the standards of my immediate society, but by world standards there’s no doubt of it). My other allegiances are to my wife and family, and unlike the disciples, I balk at leaving them in order to follow Jesus.

But, to date, all I have is scriptural statements. If I were to have a personal message? I don’t know. I’d certainly argue, taking my cue from plenty of Biblical figures from Abraham onwards, but might obey nonetheless.

So, may be I can put myself in Peter’s shoes (at least when they were dry) after all. I feel the statement “Oh ye of little faith” could be directed squarely at me. As I’ve blogged before, maybe that makes me merely an aspiring Christian, or a not-very-good Christian. But I think, for some value of “Christian”, that’s what I am.

A chance following of a link from a friend’s facebook feed led to me finding the Jericho Brisance blog, on which is a section labelled “Journey”. The writer, Matt Barsotti, is there chronicling his steady realisation that the scriptural foundations of his conservative Christian belief were untenable, together with the resulting loss of faith, and he does so very well, and very movingly.

I, of course, have moved in exactly the opposite direction, though I’ve ended up with complete agreement with Matt’s sources (just not with his disillusionment). By the age of about 9, I had decided that the entirety of scripture was exactly as believable as stories of Santa Claus or W.E. Johns’ “Biggles” books. In other words, it was complete fiction, possibly enlivened by some reference to actual history (as were some of the early Biggles books). However, at around 15 (it might have been 14, I’m not now sure which side of my birthday it occurred) I had a peak spiritual experience, species mystical, and embarked on a quest to find a way of repeating it and a language in which it could be talked about (and scientific-rationalist-materialist-reductionist just didn’t do the job for the second purpose).

(Incidentally, apologies to those who have read about this bit of my story in other posts; blogposts tend to be read individually, and it needs rehearsing for that reason).

As I shortly afterwards attended a lecture on Mysticism and bought Happold’s book on the subject, much of the search for a language centered round those religions whose mystics formed part of Happold’s anthology, while the search for repetition involved various occult groups as well, plus some “native religions” and their shamanistic practices. I was adequately convinced, before long, that most (if not necessarily all) major religions provided a functional basis in which mystics could find a language of expression, and that all their scriptures without exception needed to be viewed as something other than history. Some, I found, were very keen that their mythos be regarded as fact, others (such as Hinduism) regarded their myths much more lightly, and some (generally the modern pagan revivals) were arriving at the idea that their god-images were constructs.

I spent significant time exploring most of those which were accessible to me (much aided by a period at university where faith traditions which were unrepresented in my somewhat backwoods home town were available) at least far enough to get a decent picture of “how they ticked” from a believer’s perspective, and, of course, how their spiritual practices worked – and I tried the latter. Unsurprisingly, considering my working hypothesis, I found praxes from a wide variety of sources which seemed (in a purely anecdotal sense) to improve the chances of peak spiritual experience.

Now, among Happold’s anthologised writings were a couple from St. John and St. Paul, and a couple from the Oxyrhyncus papyrii (which since Happold wrote the book have proved to be fragments of the Gospel of Thomas). The Oxyrhyncus fragments convinced me that Jesus was a mystic (or at least that the Jesus portrayed in Thomas was a mystic; if in fact he were not, there was a major mystic in the framework whose writings were attributed to Jesus). I had rather more difficulty with the apostles – they were very heavily Christ-focused, and my working hypothesis as to Jesus was that he was a human mystic with a particularly close connection with the divine, whereas both John  and Paul saw a sort of divinised figure only loosely connected with the human Jesus as being that entity with which they had connection. It took me quite a while (and a study of outright Christ-mystics such as Teresa de Avila, John of the Cross, Augustine, Thomas a Kempis) to see them as experiencing what they called Christ as what I had come to call God.

In the meantime, my favoured Christian mystics were pseudo-Dionysus, Meister Eckhart and the writer of the Theologia Germanica, who wrote of God rather than of Christ. After considerable time, however, I arrived at the concession that while I did not think that the Jesus who taught in Palestine in the first century was equivalent to that which the Christ-mystics had experienced, post mortem the way in which Jesus had survived had become so much identified with God that I could treat them as merely using an alternative term for the root of what was effectively the same experience, and at that point St. John  and St. Paul began to open up for me to some extent (an opening up which is continuing – I still have some challenges with both).

Now, reading Matt Barsotti’s account of his slow and painful exit from Christianity, I note that he does seem on occasion to have had experiences which might potentially have given him a basis to develop a strong praxis leading to deeper experience. The trouble is that he was fixed with a whole rationale for faith based on an understanding of what the scriptures are which conflicts with science, archaeology, extra-Biblical texts and historical-critical scholarship, and he found that unsustainable – as he puts it “error in line one”. I have never been in that position, having never had any of this baggage.

Sadly, on at least two occasions (many years ago now) I know that my position has served to propel someone else into a path like Matt’s, ending in a lack of any faith whatsoever – I’ll call them Sue and Steve, though those weren’t their names. I would really prefer not to be the instigator of that kind of pain and loss, particularly if (as proved to happen with Sue and Steve) the result was a collapse of faith without a replacement understanding. My problem is that I do not know of any reliable way in which a peak unitive mystical experience can be forced (merely a set of practices which seem to encourage that assuming that you have already formed the pathways to get there through a prior experience). I can’t, therefore, say “do this and you will have an experience like mine, which will be self-validating”, only “I have found that doing these things tends to improve the frequency of such experiences if you’ve had one to start with” and without that it’s difficult for me to propose with confidence an alternative way to belief.

I ask myself if there is a way to move in the same direction as Matt, but to do so with a safety net of an alternative understanding which is at least reasonably proof against modernity. In my last post, I reviewed a really rather good attempt to provide such an understanding. I suspect that that would not have done for Matt, nor for Sue nor Steve. It is not aimed at a specifically Christian belief, after all, merely at one which sees validity in a sort of theistic belief of huge generality – as one might expect from a twelve-step desire to justify “a God of your understanding”.

Also among my recent reading has been “The Evidence for God” by Prof. Keith Ward. Prof. Ward is an Anglican clergyman and a philosopher and theologian of some note, having enough earned doctorates to satisfy any two or three lesser academics. I wonder, would that have helped? In fact, I don’t think so. Prof. Ward puts forward a very convincing “on balance” argument for the rationality of belief in a personal God, using his philosophical skills to do so (and in an eminently readable fashion), but it stops short of justification of a specifically Christian faith. I move on to “The Predicament of Belief” by Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp, which I have just finished reading.

This is an excellently reasoned and equally accessible book; it passes through some of the philosophical background with rather more speed than does Prof. Ward’s, accepts the major challenges to Christian belief (which it identifies as science, the problem of evil, religious plurality, the state of the historical record (i.e. the principal area which Matt found insuperable) and finally the claim of resurrection. It’s also aimed at preserving what it calls a “minimally personalistic theism” which will allow of acceptance of the most foundational Christian positions without compromising any adherence to science or historical method, particularly when bolstered by personal experience (which any rationalist needs to accept may well be evidence for them, but is not evidence for a disinterested outsider), and to my mind does it very well indeed. It even goes so far as to put up a philosophically sustainable argument for retaining a scientific-rationalist mindset and yet preserve a form of belief in a physical resurrection, should that be thought necessary or desirable. I doubt it would suffice as a tool for evangelism, but that’s not its aim; that is to permit someone with an existing commitment to Christianity to remain within at least the “liberal Christian” fold.

I have to ask, however, whether even this would have been enough to help Matt preserve even a minimal Christian identity (or Bart Ehrman, who is perhaps the best known individual to have trodden this path, and whose books form part of Matt’s path). The problem there is that having once accepted the inadequate and, to my mind, often downright false set of arguments for conventional evangelical Christianity (and I have in mind, for instance, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel and Nicky Gumbel as major proponents of these), to have them demolished involves a major loss of trust. I’m not sure how you would go about repairing that.

Any reader who has not so far vowed never to read my blog again (unless by chance they’re new to my thinking) is probably not going to be advancing the kind of apologetics I’ve been criticising here, but just in case some doughty soul has managed it, this is a plea to review your apologetics and try to advance the possibility, at least, that the standard evangelical model might, just possibly, not be entirely sustainable for all Christians. Just a possibility that it could be wrong (and that there are nevertheless possibly sustainable ways of maintaining a Christian faith) might be sufficient, sometime in the future, to prevent another departure to atheism or (at best) to the ranks of the “nones”.

Speaking for myself, I tend these days to be careful to avoid raising the objections to McDowell apologetics if there are signs that someone is getting too stressed by the suggestion. I don’t, after all, believe in salvation by correct intellectual conception. In addition, if someone has had any kind of spiritual experience, I strongly suggest that they hold on to that, and remember that you don’t have to understand someone in order to love them.

Jesus is presented throughout the gospels as a healer, but some of his most controversial healings (such as those in Luke 5:20 and Luke 7:48) involve him stating that someone’s sins are forgiven.

Now, my scientific rationalist head tells me that this is a wonderful way of healing an illness which is psychosomatic. As can be seen in, for instance, John 9:3, the thinking of the day, at least among the religious conservatives, was that any ailment was a divine punishment for some transgression, either of the individual or his forbears. This can be seen at length in the book of Job, where Job’s friends go to great lengths to try to work out how Job absolutely must have deserved all the ills with which he was being showered; of course, in the last portion of the book God is seen very explicitly to tell his friends that they are mistaken. However, Job goes against the grain of much of the Hebrew scriptures (as do Ezekiel 18  and substantial portions of Ecclesiastes, for instance Ecc. 8:14 in which the wicked prosper and the good suffer). It is hardly surprising that some of the conservatives of the day ignored these few scriptures in favour of a philosophy whereby you got only what you deserved.

Thus, if an illness were to some extent psychosomatic, with the sufferer convinced that they were being punished for some sin, being told their sins were forgiven could produce an immediate cure. At least, it could if it were believed. Jesus must have spoken with colossal authority and charisma in order for this to work.

Of course, we have little difficulty in accepting that Jesus must have spoken in just this manner, and can remember that he was said not to have performed healings when he went home to Nazareth (Mark 6:4) – it is always more difficult speaking with authority to people who remember you as a child!

However, this was met with howls of protest from the religious conservatives (labelled Scribes and Pharisees in the gospels, although it would be a mistake to consider that this conservative attitude actually typified the Pharisees of the day, still less those of later times), ostensibly because only God had the power to forgive sins. To my mind, however, the protest stemmed from the privilege of the conservatives, who were well off and respected, and saw their position as justified by their exemplary character. What could be more threatening to them than to be told that their wealth and social position was not justified by relieving the suffering of those on whom they smugly looked down?

And yet, this was a thread running through Jesus’ entire ministry. The first were to be last and the last first, the preferred companions were publicans and sinners, even the occasional prostitute or adultress, who were more worthy of heaven than the overtly religious.

Christian theology has tried repeatedly to get a grip on this principle, and has regularly failed. Conventionally, we are justified through faith alone rather than works (although James reminds us that faith without works is dead), but for the most part this has come to mean that we much have the correct intellectual appreciation of how we are, in fact, smugly justified (i.e. we must adhere to a creed or another statement of faith). And, of course, our works show that for all to appreciate…

Which leads me to contemplating the case of Rob Bell. Rob is a hugely gifted communicator, who became a “star” by founding and growing to mecachurch status the Mars Hill congregation in Grandville, Michigan, being much sought after as a visiting preacher and teacher. His “Covered in the Dust of the Rabbi” talk illustrates this . He could preach a two hour sermon to me any day (as reference to the videos I link to here and below indicates he’s very able at), and I doubt I’d look at my watch once. I pointed a Jewish friend of mine at that talk a while ago, and he responded with “boy, is he charismatic!”. Granted, he is not really a theologian, and as I agreed with my friend, the image he paints in that talk is almost certainly not authentic to the period in which Jesus was teaching, as the system of pupils of Rabbis didn’t really develop in the form he talks of until significantly later, so far as documents can reveal. However, the message of the talk is not in the slightest impaired by the fact that it probably isn’t actually historically accurate.

Incidentally, it’s probably worth pointing out that Rob may well be naturally gifted and turbo-charged by the Holy Spirit, but he also puts a huge amount of work into his craft, as another set of videos shows.

Over the last two or three years, however, Rob has been regularly vilified by the evangelical establishment for whom he was once a shining star. The reason, originally, was his book “Love Wins”, in which he has the temerity to suggest that God might actually be powerful and loving enough to not condemn significant numbers of people to endless torment. (I don’t necessarily recommend the book for reading, as it isn’t theologically rigorous and reads like one of Rob’s talks – it would be better read aloud – but there is an audiobook).

Since then, he’s compounded the felony by suggesting that homosexuality is not, in fact, a sin over and above all other sins (which is a picture I tend to get from many evangelical commentators) but an expression of one person’s love for another which should be at the very least accepted. This too is beyond the pale, as we clearly need a new category of publicans and sinners on whom to look down.

This regular condemnation has recently had a resurgence, as Rob now has a prime-time programme on Oprah’s TV network in the
States. As the link I include indicates, whereas most evangelical preachers would cut off their left arm for such an opportunity in (relatively) mainstream TV, rather than the “preaching to the choir” outlets of the regular televangelists, the fact that it is Rob who is doing this is just unacceptable.

I think I see a parallel here (although Rob would probably be uncomfortable at favourable comparison with Jesus). “Love Wins” is actually saying that everyone’s sins will be forgiven (if, indeed, they aren’t already), and his stance on homosexuality is reminiscent of Jesus’ in relation to (for instance) tax collectors. The religious conservatives are again up in arms when a charismatic and authoritative preacher suggests that God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, extends to everyone, and not just the elect few. In this case the complaints are from the increasingly Calvinistic spokesmen for “evangelistic Christianity” rather than the gospel’s “Scribes and Pharisees”.

The Pharisees, it seems, will always be with us, much like the poor.

In the course of some editing work recently, I came across an author who always talks of the “Empire of God” (or of heaven) and seems to think this is the accepted terminology. It isn’t what I’m used to, however – what I’m used to (in the various bibles I’m most familiar with) is “Kingdom of God”. Of course, seeing something which I didn’t quite expect put me on alert, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it seems to me that the biggest single unique idea in Jesus’ words as told to us by the gospels is “the Kingdom of God”. Or, indeed, “the Empire of God”, because the term in the original is “Basilea Theou”, and “basilea” is possibly better translated as “empire” than as “kingdom” – it is, after all, the term used in Greek for the Roman Empire, and the counterpoint in the gospels is between Jesus as Lord in the Kingdom of God and Caesar as Lord in the Roman Empire. However, “king” is translated by the same word, so my set of translations originating in the King James bible, in all of which the term is “kingdom” are not wrong.

I’ve also seen it translated as “Imperial Rule” – and that’s a perfectly good translation as well, as “basilea” does duty for that as well, much like the word “reign” in English. There are, however, very few self-styled empires around these days (though see below), and those aren’t really empires (including Japan); it maybe isn’t therefore as useful a term as “kingdom”, of which there are quite a few more.

However, I’ve recently read a few American commentators who want to translate it as “the Commonwealth of God”, and there I start having problems. Saying that, I recognise that English translations all go back to the KJV and before them to Wycliffe and Tyndall, and were composed in a kingdom; it was the model of government with which the authors were familiar. A fair proportion of English speaking Christians these days do not live in a kingdom; even less of them live in something which is called an empire, though the USA is about as close as we get in the 21st century to Imperial Rome.

I will grant very readily that the earliest Christians were very egalitarian – holding property in common, giving freely and coming as close as I think Christianity has ever got to the ideals of Mark 10:21, Matt. 18:21 and Luke 18:22 (and that makes me recall “anything I say three times is true”…), and possibly even those of Mark 10:35-43. However, “commonwealth” has the baggage of a democratic system of some kind, and “basilea” definitely does not; it is a reign, and a fairly absolute reign at that. “Commonwealth”, to me, therefore detracts from the supremacy of God, the implicit requirement to ask for and follow his instructions (“praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out” from step 11, and “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God” from step 3 for those of you who are 12 steppers).

The Commonwealth of God would be the Kingdom of God from which God was absent.

Shifting from the language of the Gospels to that of Paul, you cannot proclaim (as was the standard declaration for early Christians) “Jesus is Lord” and think of a commonwealth. Commonwealths do not have Lords.

I think this is important, in particular because the statement “Jesus is Lord” was coined at a time when a very major part of that declaration was the implicit claim “Caesar is not Lord”, the rejection of the Empire of Rome – and today, the rejection of the idea that any of us are first British (or American, or Canadian, or Australian, or…) and secondly Christian (we can, however, reasonably do things the other way round, and walk the extra mile with the soldier of the occupying army carrying his stuff…). The call to follow Jesus (Matt. 10:37-39), to turn to God (Ez. 18) is absolute, and while there are two Great Commandments (Matt. 22:36-40) the first is to love God, the second (and lesser) is to love your neighbour.

The commonwealth deals only with the second. It’s good, but not, to my mind, what is meant by “basilea theou”. For that, I’ll stick with “Kingdom of God”.

And Jesus is Lord.

I saw the first facebook mention of Richard Dawkins’ recent comment about it being (potentially) immoral not to abort a Downs Syndrome foetus and winced. For a very bright guy, occasionally Dawkins shows all the mental acumen of the average flea.

Firstly, a Twitter message is clearly entirely inadequate to do justice to the moral implications of the situation. I’m not sure the several additional messages and articles which have appeared following that tweet are adequate either, but a tweet is just blatantly a stupid way of doing this.

Secondly, within his own rationale (of reducing suffering), he was unable to arrive at the conclusion he did on the basis of the information available. He didn’t know enough about the circumstances.

Thirdly, he seems to have ignored the testimony of very many parents of Downs Syndrome children and of those who know Downs Syndrome people, which should have led him to question his blanket assumption that they were likely to suffer. In fact, on the evidence I have (which is also inadequate), it seems to me that a majority of Downs Syndrome children lead very happy, if tragically short, lives.

However, a principal reason why I winced was that I anticipated the storm of comment likely to emerge from conservative Christian voices. I needed only to wait for Sunday, and a sermon in which this was mentioned. This thing was, the preacher added that in a way he respected Dawkins for following his atheism to it’s rational conclusion, whereas so many atheists didn’t. His assumption, of course (shared by the vast majority of his congregation) was that any Christian would know that this was just wrong. Not necessarily wrong because of any consideration of the life quality of a Downs Syndrome person, but because abortion is just wrong in every case. Wrong because it is forbidden to kill another human being, and because a foetus is another human being.

It is not clear to me that the general course of Christianity historically has held this, far less the previous course of Judaism. It is correct to say that from a very early stage, Christianity generally has frowned on all forms of preventing new life arising from sexual relations, but the rationale for this has not historically been avoidance of killing, but the transmission of human life as a primary purpose of the sacrament of marriage. The focus was, therefore, on banning contraception until the mid 20th century. This is not, I think, now the majority position within Christianity, although it is still the declared position of the Catholic Church. Abortion, of course, was a somewhat aggravated case of contraception from the point of view of the Church.

I do not think, given the current overpopulation of the planet, that Christianity should be advocating for unlimited increase of humanity any more.

As the tenor of thinking in society generally shifted in favour of planned parenthood, abortion became the touchstone, but in conservative protestant churches on the alternative ground that it was the killing of another human being. This required a shift of thinking, as prior to then, a foetus had only generally been regarded (as were sperm) as a potential human being. Indeed, if you go back to (say) the Middle Ages, it is uncertain whether the church generally regarded under age children as being fully human beings; various states had “lesser crimes” of infanticide for small children, for instance, and children still lack many of the same rights or privileges attaching to adults more or less everywhere. An abortion, in other words, was wrong, but a far lesser wrong than was murder.

It has thus become an entirely tenable position within modern Liberal Christianity that, in certain circumstances, abortion is permissible; indeed, a major factor in decision making should be the alleviation of suffering (just as Dawkins proposed) both of the anticipated child, if born, and of the mother.

As it happens, as a result of my panentheism, I do think that abortion is always a wrong, as it results in the death of a living organism. I do, however, see a spectrum rather than a somewhat arbitrary fixed line, so it is also a wrong to kill a sperm (but a far lesser wrong), and it becomes progressively more wrong as a foetus progresses towards birth. But then, I also see it as a wrong to kill any living thing (a wrong which I commit on occasion, including euthanising pets who are in extreme pain and swatting insects, and which is extremely frequently committed on my behalf, bearing in mind that I eat meat – though vegetables are also alive…). I am not convinced that we draw the line between permissible and absolutely wrong in the right place. Indeed, I am not completely sure that a line should be drawn on one side of which is an absolute.

Of course, in point of fact, most laws in ostensibly Christian countries allow (and have allowed since the earliest Christian country) the killing of even adult human beings in some cases; self defence or the prevention of serious harm to others, for instance, war (which I massively disapprove of, though I’m not necessarily a pacifist – yet) or, in some places, as a punishment for offenders (which I might countenance only on the basis that it’s a better option than life in some prisons, and then as an option offered to the prisoner). There are even a few prominent Christian voices supporting voluntary euthanasia in some extreme cases, to reduce suffering (using, so far as I can see, the same “social hedonism” utilitarian argument which Dawkins was using). In Christianity, therefore, the killing of even another human being is at most a wrong which can be outweighed by a greater wrong.

Why not in the case of abortion? It clearly cannot be because killing is always an absolute wrong, because that is not what Christianity has historically held or what conservative Christianity holds now. Is it, perhaps, because it involves the killing of “an innocent”? How can it be, given that conventional Christianity has the concept of “original sin”, and there are therefore arguably no innocents anyhow?

The answer, I think, does not lie in logical argument. In fact, it lies in an emotional revulsion to using logical argument in the case of the taking of human life. I feel this myself (for any readers who wish to take exception to my argument, rest assured that I can echo Peter Rollins and say that I may offend them, but hey, I offend myself as well). I don’t think this is something for which we can find an answer in logic (although we may well find it in evolutionary biology). I have never killed another human being myself, but having at times spent significant amounts of time with soldiers (courtesy of being a Civil Defence Scientific Advisor) I know both that they more or less unanimously attest that there is something viscerally different about killing another human, something with a deep emotional impact which surprised some of them, and that meeting people for the first time, one of the questions everyone wants to ask (although some are hesitant to do so) is “have you ever killed someone?”.

Dawkins, in other words, was going to places which we are typically both fascinated by and repulsed by, and seemed unmoved by that. That isn’t the hallmark of an atheist, it’s the hallmark of someone who is intellectually brave. There have been plenty of intellectually brave Christian thinkers, and sometimes their logical excursions produce stomach-churning results too (and I’m thinking of Calvin’s predestination here).

Or maybe the intellectually foolish. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between brave and foolish.

I was interested to read Doug Hagler’s piece on finding a church at “Two Friars and a Fool”. Particularly interested because the number one characteristic which he suggested progressive Christians should avoid is any church which advertises the Alpha Course.

Now I probably qualify as progressive, possibly as radical – I have elements of both. I normally read “Two Friars…” which is progressive tending to radical in stance, and nod in agreement at what any of the three mainstay writers say. But I also attend a church which not only advertises an Alpha but runs at least three courses a year – last year, they ran six or seven. Not only that, but one of the main reasons I stick with that church (as well as attending a less “evangelical” church which is actually my local parish church, much closer to home) is in order to be a helper with their Alpha courses.

Now, it may well be that this church takes an unusual approach to Alpha. They are, for a start, an evangelically oriented church within a mainline denomination (Church of England). Also it may not carry on doing that, as the current Alpha coordinator has just stepped down. But he actually recruited me to help with Alpha despite my telling him that I disagreed with most of the content and had actually been asked to leave the previous Alpha course I’d attended. He argued that I would make sure that there was lively discussion after the talks – and I really like any opportunity to talk theology and biblical history.

So I’ve now been doing that for just over a year. I find I don’t just keep the discussion lively, but I also provide an example of how one can be a Christian but not toe the evangelical party line – and Alpha does that. So, occasionally, do the speakers; this church doesn’t rely on the video talks which are produced centrally, but gets a different person from within the church for each talk; one result is that no two of the talks I’ve attended on any of the Alpha topics have been exactly the same.

The leadership of the church considers that Alpha is the best single tool for evangelism which they have, and that is probably correct. Doug would probably feel that this is evangelism into the narrow confines of evangelical thinking, and consider it a bad thing – but is it? I think not.

It hasn’t escaped my attention that I’m rather unusual in terms of my formation, having started as an atheist, and having to work hard over many years to find a way of functioning in a Christian community pretty much all of which will be substantially more conservative-minded than I am. I can’t give up methodological naturalism (i.e. I expect there to be a naturalistic, scientifically explainable reason for everything) even if I wanted to, which I don’t particularly, and have had to find ways of Christian expression which do not conflict with this – and I think I have found people who have reasonably compatible viewpoints in the community which tends to wear the label “progressive”.

None of the well known names in this community started out as atheists and inched their way into Christianity following an apparently uncaused peak spiritual experience as I did, however. Some started in mainline churches, but the overwhelming majority started off in one of the churches labelled “evangelical”. In other words, they started with the kind of theology which Alpha puts forward and in their own walks of faith found that the evangelical touchstones were impossible for them to assent to any more. Peter Enns is currently doing a set of testimonies of progressive scholars, the second of which is here; these are I think fairly typical. Having looked at Peter Rollins’ experiments in radical theology, they are universally aimed at people who have existing familiarity with the conventional Christian tradition and wish to move on.

I also know of no programme similar to Alpha which looks to recruit people directly into the more liberal traditions. “Living the Questions”, for instance, assumes basic Christian knowledge and seeks to move from a conventional to a more progressive stance. “Emmaus” does not engage liberal or progressive viewpoints well and generally functions as a formation programme for those who are already Christians, although it can be and sometimes is used as an entry level course, and John Vincent’s “Journey” is specifically a post-conviction radical discipleship course. I also know of no way of successfully presenting a liberal/progressive/radical gospel in easy soundbytes, such that you could use this for direct evangelism, assuming for a moment that the less conservative churches gained a sudden missionary zeal.

Thus it seems to me that the ranks of the liberal, the progressive and the radical are very largely dependent upon more conservative forms of Christianity in order to increase their ranks. In order to have more liberal, progressive and radical Christians, we need more conventional-to-conservative Christians.

In an ideal world, the move from conservative to progressive (if a person’s faith journey went in that direction) could happen within one denomination, and the Anglican tradition seems to me the best candidate for one sufficiently broad to allow this, assuming that it can avoid pulling itself apart over issues which have little or nothing to do with the centrality of the gospel. Even better would be the ability for this to happen within one church. I am earnestly hoping that I have found such a church, given their tolerance for my liberal-progressive-radical viewpoints on their Alpha course!

I also, of course, find myself in the position of accepting the “Great Commission” (“Go forth and make disciples of all nations”), while being unable to share from my own experience a path which is at all likely to resonate with those who hear me; the vast majority of people, it seems, do not have major life-changing spiritual experiences from a position entirely outside religion. Try as I might, I cannot now travel by a different route to the destination I am already at in order to produce experience which would actually be useful to anyone else. I do what I can using St. Francis’ “Preach the gospel; use words if necessary” principle, but other than that, all I can do is assist others in the process of creating disciples.

So, do I have any measure of agreement with Rev. Hagler? Well, I can testify from personal experience that being theologically liberal in a more conservatively minded church without being divisive is not easy (it isn’t trivially easy in a conventional mainline church either), so if there is a “progressive” church available, perhaps progressives looking for a home will feel more comfortable there. I think, however, that they will then find difficulty in fulfilling the Great Commission.

If anyone has a magic solution to making disciples the progressive way, I want to know. But on the whole, I don’t believe in magic solutions…

 

A while ago, there was a bit of an upset in the blogosphere when Tony Jones criticised Marcus Borg for an answer he was pressed to give on whether he accepted a physical resurrection; Marcus answered that he did not – and blogs all over the place erupted for and against the concept. Now, I’ve written before on the question of a physical resurrection, in particular in a series “And God saw that it was good” of which the first is here.

I’ve just revisited one of the responses, out of Homebrewed Christianity, with Tripp Fuller in conversation with Jonnie Russell (scroll down to “Marcus Borg, Tony Jones and the Resurrection, and in the podcast itself you can skip the first 20 minutes) talking about the pros and cons of believing in a physical (rather than a spiritual or metaphorical) resurrection. I have a lot of time for Tripp Fuller – he knows a lot of stuff. A LOT of stuff (and I say this having been introduced around my church on occasion as someone who “knows a lot of stuff” – I know very little compared with Tripp, and am not nearly so adept at juggling competing theologies and philosophies – particularly philosophies).  Incidentally, there are a load of really interesting podcasts available in their Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown and other series, and most of them can be downloaded free.

Now, I very much liked what Tripp had to say about what is essentially an operational view of the Jones versus the Borg view, commenting that absent the theoretical distinction, both of them would affirm that resurrection was fundamental to Christianity and a real and present force. I would affirm that myself. In addition, having accepted that, Jones and Borg would both engage in very much the same actions in the world, as I would myself. Operational definitions in psychology reduce situations to things which can be measured, or in other words what behaviours result from thought processes (rather than what is said about them). The operational definitions of these two viewpoints are therefore pretty much identical. And as Tripp remarked (paraphrasing), every Christian believes in the resurrection, they just believe in differing ways.

They do throw up some differences, however. First is outlined by Jonnie, and it is that there is a need among evangelicals to assert that in Jesus God was doing something new and unique, or in other words that the incarnation was the “fulcrum of history”.

Now, I’m not sure that I think this myself. On the plus side, we can now look back at history and observe that the Jesus event sparked a really major change in world history; history would have been radically different had Christianity not flowed from that event (and it’s worth pointing out that Islam flows in part from the existence of Christianity – the second largest world religion may not have existed or may have been radically different). We can look at the past lives of some billions of Christians which have been changed as a result (and the lives of perhaps similar numbers of non-Christians which have also been changed, not necessarily in a positive way – though those of some Christians have also been negatively impacted). But there are implications which I don’t necessarily go along with.

The main one is that this was an unique intervention by God, a deliberate act of God to change human history in its tracks. As might be gathered from my “no tricks” post which I link to above, I’m sceptical that the God of my understanding would intervene in quite this way, even if no individual miracles were involved. I know that God can and does intervene in individual human lives on occasion (he intervened in mine – there is no way I can see a causal link between anything about me or my environment prior to my first ecstatic experience and that experience absent something entirely non-physical) but this posits an intervention which God knew would have major repercussions, and which (inter alia) will have limited the free will of billions of people since the event.

But I’m even more sceptical that this intervention was unique to Jesus, or even the first time such an intervention had occurred, much less the first and only time. I can. for instance, trace the same kind of mystical consciousness as I see in Jesus in Buddhism, four or more centuries earlier, and in Vedantic Hinduism, probably at least six centuries earlier. I grant that Christianity is unique in its scope and development (although Islam had a more rapid early spread), but in the case of Christianity I can identify at least two and probably four other significant mystics during the first century (Paul and the author or inspiration for the Fourth Gospel definitely, Thomas and tentatively the author of “Matthew”) and one of these was also a seriously charismatic church planter.

That being said, those who follow my blog will know that I see God’s creation of the world (and universe) being the original act of kenosis and incarnation, pouring himself out into creation and thus abrogating the power to control it. In terms of humanity, that becomes particularly strong once humanity gains self-awareness, as I talked about in “The Fall and Rise of Original Sin” and follow up posts. However, it represents an initial act of self-limitation. Seeing things this way results from the fact that the only God-concept which at the moment really makes sense to me given my mystical bent is a panentheistic one, in which God is radically immanent in all things.

I would then argue that even in giving individual existence to (say) the original atoms formed shortly after the “Big Bang”, God limited his power over them; they became independent even if they were incapable of being aware of this, and in effect possess a form of free will, even if it is not “will” at all.

It is therefore unique that in Christ we see in sharp individual focus such an act of kenosis and incarnation, and one which subjects God to the vagaries of human existence. It is a microcosmic expression of the original and far greater subjection of God to creation. I think, though I cannot prove, that Jesus was uniquely aware of his status as part of God’s incarnation. We then see him as resurrected, as of course he has to be (God, with whom Jesus has identity, being incapable of being truly and absolutely dead short of the end of the universe, and probably all universes). In this sense, therefore, he was unique.

It’s also true to say that many people seem to rely on the promise of their own physical resurrection. Personally I don’t see this; I don’t see the eternal preservation of a physical body as necessary, as feasible or even as desirable. I can appreciate that some may feel differently – after all, a significant proportion of Second Temple Judaism did not consider that soul and body were separable; to have one you had to have the other. In addition, if (as may well be the case) consciousness is an emergent property of life, which is an emergent property of matter, those first century Jews may well have had the right idea. They are welcome to think that way, but I cannot, and would prefer not to feel excluded because of that inability. I have, after all, a rather light grasp on the self. The mystical consciousness assures me that I am part of a larger whole which is as immortal as immortal can get, and I think Paul refers to this when he talks of “not I, but Christ in me” living. If I am in Christ and Christ is in me, the “I” of me is not me but Christ, and Christ lives, then I live. I need nothing more than that.

Sadly, after the good things Tripp says earlier in the podcast, he then starts explaining (at about 40 min) why he is no longer a “Borgian”, i.e. follows Marcus Borg’s understanding of the resurrection. The argument runs (paraphrasing) “Jesus is the example of a perfect human life to follow; however Jesus was a poor homeless Jew who got axed by the Romans and didn’t really resurrect – is that what you put forward as ‘perfect’? Is that what we should aspire to?”.

As Jonnie comments “That will preach”. Unfortunately.

Now, in fact, Tripp then comes back from there to the “operational definition” kind of approach, and observes that although the difference in view is what actually drives Marcus’ or Tony’s theology, the practical effects are the same. I have confidence in Tripp – although the guy can preach, and he can preach viewpoints he doesn’t agree with completely with huge persuasiveness (perhaps there’s a great trial lawyer in there who’s missed a vocation, may the Lord be praised), he generally comes back to something with which I am comfortable.

But really, I think we probably should be preaching that you should follow Jesus irrespective of the fact that it may lead to poverty, homelessness and even death. As Paul remarked, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. In fact, during the period of Christianity’s greatest expansion (to the early fourth century) following him frequently did lead to poverty, homelessness and death, as Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire. Quite rightly persecuted, as well, from the point of view of the Empire, as “Jesus is Lord” excluded “Caesar is Lord”, and they were attempting to live the Kingdom of God within the Empire of Caesar. I would argue that they were doing that quite successfully. Quite rightly, too, as in fact after some 300 years, Christianity took over the Empire, and empires resist being taken over. (I grant that in some important ways, the Empire then took over Christianity, but that’s for another post!).

I’m not convinced that in today’s world, “take up your cross and follow me” preaches. I’m even less certain it preaches without the fallback of “and then you’ll be physically resurrected later on”.

But perhaps it should.

 

 

 

On Sunday, I congratulated the preacher after the service, and he commented that he enjoyed my facial expressions during his sermons. He singled out two items, firstly any time he mentions Lewis’ trilemma, secondly any time he mentions “the word of God”. Apparently I’m unable to prevent myself wincing. OK, frankly, I don’t try to prevent myself wincing at any mention of Lewis or any occasion when “the word of God” is accompanies by waving a bible in the air, and it was the second of those which had attracted his attention.

In the interests of full disclosure, previous winces during the same sermon included when a graphic appeared behind him in which the word “ressurection” appeared. Yes, that is how it was spelled – and despite the fact that it was correctly spelled “resurrection” further down the same graphic, but sadly in a less prominent position and typography. Clearly, blessed are they who do not proofread as part of their occupation! There were also a few winces associated with the four repetitions of the words “and finally” spread over some ten minutes.

However, my biggest wince was definitely the transition to waving the Bible and proclaiming it as “the word of God”, exacerbated by the fact that this had no sensible connection with the rest of the sermon and therefore engaging my inner editor.

There is a collossal baggage associated with the proclamation that the waved tome is the word of God (and I should probably capitalise “word” in order to show the stress). Mostly, it involves inerrantism (there can be no error of any kind in “the word of God”, quite clearly) and literalism (the term is far too solemn no admit of there being fictional stories, poetics, exaggerations and metaphor in there), but also the concept that you can proof-text, lifting any text out of context and having it function independently of the rest. After all, if the text is perfect, it must be perfect in every particular, no?

Well, no.I reject all of those pieces of baggage.

The text isn’t perfect, for a start. There are a host of textual variations, and while most of them are fairly subtle, some of them make a considerable difference when the words are taken in small doses as being propositional theology. We read in translation, unless we have the facility to read Koine Greek and Hebrew, and translation can make a huge difference. Textual analysis has revealed that most of the contents have been revised, extended, chopped about and thus moved in unknowable directions from whatever the original texts said – and we have no original manuscripts of any biblical text. We read those texts which a combination of popularity within the early Christian community and authoritative decisions by major church figures, often based on spurious claims as to the origin of the texts, has left us – and this has varied between different Christian communities and still does – the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, for instance, has quite a few more books in the New Testament than do we in the Protestant descendants of the Western Church, and the Catholics have the apocrypha, including ten additional books and additions to two others. Which of these is “the word of God”, we may reasonably ask?

No church currently includes the Gospel of Thomas within its scripture, nor the Didache, though both of these are accepted by a massive swathe of biblical scholars as among the earliest texts we have (the Ethiopian Church does have the Didascalia, which incorporates a substantial amount of the Didache, much amended, however). 1 Clement, similarly early, is now only accepted by the Coptic and Ethiopic churches, despite having clearly been canonical in many other places as late as the fifth century. There are many other works which might potentially have been included, but are not, and some of them we now know only by mention in other writers, as no copy of the full texts is now known to exist (though Biblical scholars continue to live in hope!).

In addition, if I stoop to proof-texting for a moment, John 1 does contain a definition of “the Word” (of God): “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God” and “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”. Jesus was and is “the Word of God”, and forgive me for this, but Jesus is not a collection of old books. Jesus is not something you can wave in the air during a sermon.

What at least the gospels in the New Testament are is a written understanding of what Jesus said and did during and shortly after his lifetime; most of the remainder of the New Testament as we know it records the understandings of various followers of Jesus (mostly Paul or attributed to Paul) written sometime after his death. The generality of biblical scholarship does not think that any of these books were written by someone who witnessed the events of Jesus’ life (the attributions to Matthew, Mark and John are traditional, but the probable dating of them and their contents do not admit of them having been written by direct followers, and Luke is admittedly a secondary source; Paul’s authority rests on post-crucifixion ecstatic experience). What they are is therefore in part tradition, in part early rationalising of the impact of Jesus.

That leads me on to the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” of scripture, tradition, reason and experience. A very interesting article by John Cobb discusses this in the context of process theology, and I agree his tentative privileging of experience. Let’s face it, tradition is experience, it’s the accumulated experience of other people, and as such extremely valuable to guide us and let us see where we may be mistaken or on which we can build the better to understand our experience (and, if current psychological thinking is correct, which I strongly believe it is, the better to be able to have experience). As I think I’ve shown, scripture is also tradition, albeit very early tradition (plus some reason), and is thus also experience.

I need here to counteract any impression that in stating the limits of scripture, I am seeking to negate its importance. It is the nearest we can come to the actual teaching of Jesus and our earliest tradition of experience of the risen Christ; the Hebrew scriptures form the basis for the New Testament writings and give a large amount of the context for those (as, incidentally, do at least ten of those books which are not now part of our canon, what we call “scripture”). It is therefore extremely important and very authoritative, just not of ultimate importance or authority (although the social gospel of Jesus comes very close to that status in my thinking).

To quote Cobb:- “The second pole is the Bible. The Christian tradition as a whole judges itself in light of the normative account of its origins. Although it prizes the Hebrew scriptures along with the New Testament, it reads the Bible as a whole in light of Jesus’ message,actions, death, and resurrection and of the early church’s interpretation of this. That there are four different accounts of Jesus blocks the attempt to absolutize any single picture of him. The fact that the epistles interpret the Jesus event diversely inhibits any claim to finality of doctrine about him. Thus there is no fixed reference for the tradition. From the beginning it was multifold and developed through interaction among various communities that sought to live from this event. To be a Christian, therefore, is to live in a fluid context, seeking to be faithful to God as one has come to know the God of Israel in the Christi event, informed by the many achievements of the tradition, but critical of every attempt to treat any of these as fixed or final”

This very much illustrates the resulting attitude. There are no simple pat answers. There is a tradition, but that tradition continues to develop, expand and accommodate new developments in thought and fresh experience; it is not a fixed and inviolate answer to everything, but it is part of the route towards better answers. This is entirely in keeping with my view of science; science does not give us truth, it gives us new approximations to truth which are a little closer to accurately and fully describing what is happening and what is out there. I do not expect theology and bible study to be able to do more than can science – indeed, in a sense, it is itself a scientific process, using much the same rational principles to move forward. Granted, it is perhaps short on the experimental, but I would not expect it to be short on the experiential.

In fact, without the experiential, there is no point in any of this endeavour. I would not be thinking about these subjects and writing about them now had I not had personal experience, personal convicting experience. For me, therefore, experience comes first. I then apply reason, and then call in aid scripture and tradition in order better to understand and explain the experience, and in order better to have future experience. My four legged stool, my quadrilateral, is therefore experience, reason, scripture and tradition.

 

(The title can be translated “Not only but also”, but refers mostly to doctrines such as “sola scriptura” “sola gratia” and “sola fide”)

University of South Carolina have a magazine “Religion Dispatches” in which is an interesting article. It looks at “nones” in America, i.e. those who give “none” as an answer in questionnaires under “religion”. If it’s anecdotal conclusions are correct, the “social gospel”, i.e. the sayings of Jesus relating to how we should act and in particular how we should treat other human beings have a huge following outside Christianity.

I think, although I can quote no statistics for the conclusion, that the same applies in the UK, where a significantly greater proportion of the population are either “nones” or if pushed will answer “C of E” despite having visited an actual church at most a handful of times since they left school other than for weddings and funerals. We may not be as overtly “Christian” in our declarations as our cousins over the pond, but the social gospel is, I think, very deeply embedded in our society quite irrespective of religious practice or belief. This is not to say that we are particularly good at following the social gospel (and I happen to think we have become rather less good at following it over the course of the last 30 years), but that we accept it as being a laudable model to aspire to. Indeed, it may be that as overt religiosity has declined, the social gospel has leached out into society as a whole in a way which is no longer very dependent on professed Christians spreading the gospel.

Against this background, I am remembering the Alpha talk from Wednesday evening. Two things particularly stood out to me; the first was the speaker saying that Jesus spent a large proportion of his time talking about himself.

Well, if all you read is the Fourth Gospel, that is entirely correct. However, if you read the synoptics (the other three gospels), the picture is rather different – Jesus spends very little time talking about himself, and in Mark actually repeatedly asks his disciples not to talk about who or what he is. The major themes of the synoptics are the social gospel and the advent of the Kingdom (whether of God or of Heaven) on earth, in which the social gospel is actually followed. Where Jesus talks of himself, it is either referring to his forthcoming death (and resurrection) or of his judging at a point in the future.

It is interesting in that context to read Matthew 25:31-46. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory”, it does not seem that those who can put the best construction on his statements about himself are chosen, or those who believe that certain statements about his nature, purpose or relationship to God; it is those who actually practice the social gospel who are placed with the sheep on his right hand. Matt. 7:21 is relevant as well, and possibly John 14:15 so as to involve the Fourth Gospel at least somewhat.

The other thing which stood out was the emphasis on Lewis’ trilemma, the “either-or” trio created by C.S. Lewis in his recreational occupation of apologist. As a reminder, what Lewis wrote was:-

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (quote from Wikipedia; link above).

I am sure that most Christian apologists who use this (and it is in every edition of the Alpha manual to date) think that this is a slam-dunk argument that forces anyone who has a high opinion of Jesus (which, as we see above, is a very large proportion of the “none” population) to accept that he is Son of God and is God. I can testify from picking up the pieces after this tactic has been used previously on many occasions that this is not the case. A few do accept this, and I have no interest in giving them more complex arguments, but in my experience more don’t and in an increasingly scientific-rationalist world, often can’t.

The more inquiring and those who have been trained in logic will, of course, enquire whether the trilemma is valid, and find that it is not. Some of this I covered last year in “Will the real Jesus please stand up”, but in broad terms, the excluded options are (1) Jesus didn’t actually say these things (2) he said them, or something like them, but they didn’t mean what Lewis takes them to mean (3) he was a prophet speaking on behalf of God or (4) he was a panentheist mystic (which may amount to much the same thing as “prophet”), talking from a point of view of a personal sense of unity with God. Unfortunately, most of those who I have tried to help after the trilemma was fired at them have not been logicians or had sufficient tenacity and curiosity to arrive there.

Happily, only a few have said to themselves “OK, being God is excluded*, so he was mad or diabolical, and therefore I will avoid following any of his teachings in future”. “A few” is, of course, far too many, but I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

By far the most common reaction is “OK, God is excluded, being the Devil is excluded* and my opinion of Jesus is that he was clearly a great moral teacher who I look up to (and so not mad), so the trilemma is rubbish and therefore everything the person who put the trilemma to me is saying is rubbish and I will not listen to any of this stuff any more”.  Some of them are by then walking away so fast that I can’t catch up with them and persuade them that it isn’t that simple and that there actually is merit in sticking around to hear more…

[* “Being God is excluded, being the Devil is excluded” may need unpacking; for a human being to “be God” in most people’s concept sets requires a whole load of inventive theology which is not in evidence at the point where the trilemma is wheeled out, so this option is likely to be dismissed out of hand. For the Devil to be similarly constrained has similar problems, but the negative to this is usually that the hearer has far too high a view of Jesus to admit this as a possibility.]

But actually, if we look back at Matthew 25, this may not be quite so dispiriting as it seems – as long as they hold Jesus as a great moral exemplar, the chances are fairly reasonable that they may go on and do some things which will find them on the side of the sheep. They will, of course, miss all of the benefits to them of living as part of a community of followers of Jesus, and will probably not follow him as closely or in as dedicated a way, but they may well still follow him.

Perhaps we are in sight of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “religionless Christianity”? Richard Beck blogged some more about this on Friday after a series in 2010.

However, I think this misses encouraging one aspect of following Jesus, which is the experiential, sometimes mystical, always relational link with Jesus as a living force in the world. You do not have to be part of a community of belivers to experience Jesus in this way, but it is definitively easier. It is possible to do this without going down the route of the Fourth Gospel with all its implicit theological complexity, recognising that we are in relationship to Jesus also being in relationship to God in a particular way without the support of a group of others, but it is easier to walk in company than alone.

Lewis’ trilemma can, and in my experience is quite likely to, damage the possibility of someone walking in company in the future. So this is my plea to Alpha speakers everywhere – ditch the trilemma! It may well be a powerful weapon, but it’s likely to backfire…