Eyre Lines

The recent death of Nelson Mandela has prompted a flood of postings. Many of these are just adulatory, many of those are from people who, 40 years ago, wouldn’t have had any time for Mandela at all.

Some put another slant on things. As this piece by Mark Steel comments, Mandela was originally a terrorist (aka freedom fighter – the terms are usually interchangeable depending only on whether you approve of them) and we would not be remembering his massive achievements in forgiveness and non-violent action had the movement he was a leader of and a symbol for not succeeded. Mr. Steel thinks this would not have happened without an armed struggle, which Mandela originally supported (and was thus not entirely unreasonably imprisoned); I note that the success came when non-violent routes became predominant and prefer to recall the post-Robben Island Mandela’s attitude as having avoided a bloodbath, which was what I had personally expected for some years. However, as Gandhi (the most famous exponent of non-violent protest) noted, non-violence can only be properly practiced by those who have proved themselves capable of violent action and have resolved to renounce it, it is not a route for the cowardly. Mandela was therefore authentic in his non-violence. His greatness lies in him having continued to follow non-violence and reconciliation once he achieved power.

Some have noted, accurately, that Mandela was cordially detested by many conservatives (and that goes for UK conservatives as well as US ones) because of his stance against a number of well-recognised favorite conservative policies (such as the wars in Iran) and his links with the USSR as the main bankrollers of the ANC and with the South African Communist party as major allies. Cosying up with Castro also cannot have won him many American conservative friends, nor can an enthusiasm for such communist concepts as the eradication of poverty, racial equality, anti-imperialism and labour unions.

The greatest among those, I suspect, was the communist and USSR links. The world I grew up in was dominated by the fear of the USSR and communism, and in conservative circles that was absolute. In the UK, while the fear of the Russian military rolling west over Europe (and not stopping at the Channel) was strong in the majority, there was not quite the same level of visceral revulsion for communism which seems to have gripped the USA from the 50s onwards, it seems to me.

Possibly this was in part due to the British Communist party splitting in the 50s, possibly it was due to the fact that the Communist party here never really got enough support to challenge Labour for the left wing of British politics. Ironically, although in the States very few Democrats could legitimately have been described as closet communists, in Britain a lot of communists found themselves able to join the Labour party, and in my teens there were many Labour MPs who were communists (and even more who visited the “workers’ paradise” of the USSR and came back with glowing reports. Labour was preserved from outright takeover by the fact that it had a much broader base, and owed much to the cooperative movement and to the nonconformist (i.e. anything but Anglican) churches, which were not communist. The sterotype of “You’re Welsh, so you’re Methodist and vote Labour” had enough statistics behind it to not be completely laughable, for instance. However, the States had McCarthy and we didn’t, and we had what was not unreasonably seen by the right in our country as a USSR-loving mass movement, and the States didn’t.

The root problem there was the presence of an ideology which was supra-national and which looked to it’s establishment as the ruling ideology, coupled with the presence of a centre outside the country. The fear was that allegiance was to a foreign power before it was to the country itself, and that was not too unreasonable given the attachment of the British Communist party to all things USSR and Stalin, though that took a major knock after the Russian tanks rolled into Hungary in 1956 to suppress a popular mass movement.

I’m reminded there of another facet of my childhood, which was a certain reserve about Catholics, which was coupled in the more right wing with a suggestion that Catholics were governed by the Pope, not by the government of the country. This was a view much pressed by Ian Paisley, the Northern Irish Unionist. Historically, of course, the feeling against Catholics was very deep rooted, and went back to the situation after Henry VIII declared the English church independent of Rome in 1533 (and himself the head of it, as the monarch in England has been almost all the time since then). The Pope of the day naturally took exception to this, and save for a period under Mary (a Catholic) there remained a real threat of invasion by one or more of the continental Catholic powers at the behest of the Pope for well over 100 years; one result was active persecution, of Catholics under almost all the monarchs except Mary and of Protestants under Mary, for 200 years. Perhaps the last gasp of the active form was the Gordon Riots of 1780. Catholics remained debarred from many things until much later (largely 1829), however, and are still debarred from the monarchy today (which survival will probably last until the Anglican church is disestablished and is no longer the established religion).

The Northern Ireland troubles, of course, cast a shadow well into my adult life, and led to part of the anti-Catholic feeling; here again was an ideological group operating within the country and owing allegiance to a foreign power, in this case the Republic of Ireland. In truth, it was anti-Irish Catholic feeling, but many could not distinguish between Irish Catholics (who were the majority of Catholics in most English Churches) and Catholics more generally. Even so it was misplaced, as not all Irish Catholics were in favour of an united Ireland (some of them had the good sense to realise that incorporating territory with a majority population of Ulster Protestant Unionists was a recipe for disaster!).

I can, therefore, understand the problems for someone attached to their own nation state (i.e. a “patriot”) in accepting someone whose ideological stance involves adherence to a supra-national organisation as being truly “one of them”, particularly if that ideology is closely linked with one or more foreign states, and even more so if those states have credible military force. I can understand this reaction, for instance, to Islam. Though, in conscience, I don’t consider the military force of Islamic states (even combined) to be a really serious threat to the UK, far less the USA. There’s terrorism, of course, but even 9/11 was, in conscience, a pinprick compared with the might of the USA (or the USA’s or our reaction to it).

A word about terrorism. It’s scary, not knowing if you’re going to suddenly be a civilian target where you’ve thought you were safe. However, there’s been a present terrorist threat here since I was about 10, and I’ve consistently been in far more danger crossing the road than I have of being blown up by a terrorist. You can get used to a certain level of unpredictable threat, and I would argue that getting used to it would have been a better solution than moving ourselves several steps toward being a police state. Indeed, I’m slightly amused to consider that I attend (inter alia) the church where Guy Fawkes was baptised in 1570. He, of course, became a very early (and Catholic) home grown terrorist, and a part of the threat perception which skewed English attitudes to Catholics for the next two hundred years.

I do hope we can get over our current panic quicker than that…

However, continuing my historical musings, I go further back and can understand the feelings of Roman Emperors faced with the early Christians, who denied the god-like authority of Caesar (i.e. the Roman state) in favour of allegiance to Christ the King. The early Christians weren’t, of course, the first; the Jews had already been treading that path for years and the first Christians (who initially weren’t certain they weren’t Jews of a new variety, and neither were the Jews of the day) merely learned from them. The Jews had honed their skills in this direction under the Seleucids, and indeed the Maccabees for a while achieved independence, Judas Maccabeus being a sort of Nelson Mandela of his day.

And yes, I can understand the Seleucid’s feelings as well. All these examples are of a group of people who answer the call of a different drum, who are dedicated to an ideology at odds with the nation state in question. What I condemn is, of course, the methods, whether of the oppressor states or of terrorists/freedom fighters, particularly where they involve targeting civilians.

The early Christians did remarkably well during the period of Roman persecution, which lasted from the mid first century until 312, when Constantine the Great decided to espouse Christianity as a result, it is said, of a vision. In that, they were probably still following the example of their Jewish precursors. Within a few years, Christianity had not just ceased to be persecuted, but became the national religion of the Roman state. Judaism did not have that kind of safety anywhere for nearly 2000 years.

And, entirely unlike Nelson Mandela and the ANC, but very like Mary I of England and (to a lesser extent) her immediate protestant successors in the other direction, immediately started to persecute pagans and the less orthodox members of its own community.

Mandela was no saint, he was a reformed terrorist, but he was a great man, because he renounced violence and revenge. The early Christian Church fathers? No Mandelas there, mores’ the pity.

Every so often when I mention to one of my friends who is not religious that I’m going to church, they say “Say one for me”.

And, of course, I do, though I have serious reservations about any form of petitionary prayer which is not aimed squarely at receiving some form of enhanced consciousness for myself – for instance “Come, Holy Spirit” or “Please Lord, help me understand this!”.

The thing is, it seems to me they’re asking me to have a personal relationship with God on their behalf, to function, if you like, as a kind of priest. To intercede, to use my connection on their behalf, to capitalise on my (seriously faulty) piety to make up for their own lack of it.

Which would be absolutely fine in my eyes if I thought there was the slightest chance that it would work. But I don’t. A personal relationship means that there should be no need for an intervening third party (well, not most of the time, at any rate – I have some history of acting as an advocate and as a mediator, and don’t underestimate the value of those roles, but they apply only when there’s a serious problem which needs to be resolved, and it’s generally essential that the person I represent be present…)

It’s like asking someone else to do your Steps for you in a Twelve Step programme. You can help and encourage someone do them themselves, you can explain them, you can help dispel intellectual barriers to doing them, but you can’t actually do them for someone.

The first times this happened to me were when I was between 19 and 22, and having worked hard for a few years following my initial “zap” experience, had developed a spiritual practice which seemed to encourage and facilitate frequent further experience of the presence of God and had developed a set of ideas as to how and why this worked. Animated by the kind of spirit which led to this blog post, I was happy to share my conclusions with anyone who was interested in listening, while exploring all possible avenues as to how to improve my praxis and my understandings.

The snag is, people kept expecting that I could somehow transfer my experience directly to them, that by hanging on my every word and by regarding me as a leader, somehow it would mean that they would have the same experience, without having had the same original experience or having done the hard work of developing the praxis. I could communicate the understandings just fine (although I was less successful in persuading people that these were provisional and interim understandings and that I was still working on improving them), but I could not pass on the consciousness of the presence of God except occasionally (erratically) and for very limited periods of time. I could tell them what my praxis was and had been (as by then I had refined it to something very streamlined and minimalist), but as I knew it was building on an initial peak spiritual experience for which I had not worked in the slightest and for which I could propose no explanation (other than “grace” or “just one of those things”), I wasn’t confident that following the praxis would deliver them the same quality of experience (and by and large, my scepticism on that point seemed justified).

I found I was being referred to by some as “the Guru of Castle” (“Castle” being the nickname for my college), and I didn’t want to be a guru. Not, at any rate, unless I could reliably induce a “zap” experience in someone, and probably not even then, as my understandings were so provisional. They also didn’t fit neatly into any one faith tradition at the time (some may argue that they still don’t 40 years later!), so becoming a functioning part of one of those was not an option; I’d have had to form my own variant faith, and I was entirely confident that I lacked the ability and assurance to do that. Besides that, God was definitely not calling me to do that! What I seemed called to do was to launch out into the “normal” world, with employment, house, mortgage, wife, family and, in some way, combine that with personal spirituality.

[In case you’re wondering, my thinking at the time included elements of Christianity, Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Paganism and Kabbalah. That may not be an exhaustive list!]

It seems to me, though, that there’s a very widespread wish among people for others to be holy (or spiritual, or learned, or committed, or observant) on their behalf. I don’t particularly feel that, but neither do I feel that it’s my calling to do that for anyone else – well, perhaps apart from “learned” in a small way, doing the intellectual heavy lifting and helping provide some intellectual answers occasionally.

So that brings me to my thinking about priests and other clergy. In this, I am definitely Protestant; I think the “priesthood of all believers” concept is vital. I don’t, in other words, think that having someone else act as intercessor for you is a valid concept except, perhaps, for a few special occasions. Thus, for instance, much as I may currently feel that Pope Francis is a person I could cheerfully follow, I couldn’t be Catholic, as he’s only the second pope during my lifetime who might fill that role. I’m not even really comfortable with the situation in the Anglican church, where only ordained clergy can perform the sacraments (though that’s something I swallow in favour of what has to be the broadest Church in existence). I don’t value the existence of monastic orders as, somehow, giving me vicarious sanctity if I support them, for instance.

Of course, what I do value is a system which allows some people to specialise in theory and to provide newer and alternative understandings (and praxes), and also people who have perfected a praxis and can teach it to others. Someone who can act as an example of praxis is clearly desirable. I also value the possibility of, for a period, joining an intentional community which has a strong praxis and devotes it’s time to this; somewhere to go on retreat. This is how I see the main functions of clergy, including monastics.

So, what do I think about “say one for me”? I recall Psalm 139:-
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is as bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

If someone says to me “say one for me”, they have already said one for themselves. God is with them and knows their thoughts, even if they have no consciousness of that themselves.

And I’ll put in a word or two for them as well.

 

 

There has been some discussion in the blogosphere recently about good and evil (James McGrath’s facebook feed has more of it), generally along the lines of whether God can be regarded as entirely good, and if good can exist without evil, and if so whether there must perforce be an “evil” deity (I would assume “Satan”) and whether therefore this evil deity must necessarily be equal to as well as opposite to a good God. In the process there has been mention of Taoism, and how it regards “good” as being attained from a balancing of yin and yang, positive and negative aspects. Those positive and negative aspects are sometimes confused with “good and evil”. There is also discussion as to whether this Taoist viewpoint can possibly coexist with Christianity.

So far as Taoism is concerned, I don’t think the fact that Taoism is a religion means automatically that Christians need to reject the yin-yang concept; Taoism is also a philosophy (the religious aspects are not fundamental to the philosophy), and Christianity should, I think, be able to adapt itself to being seen in the light of more than one overarching philosophy (though I’m inclined to think that the adaptation to scientific-rationalist materialism is fraught with problems resolvable only via some species of post-modernism).

I am naturally tempted to quote Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (KJV – most other translations avoid “evil” but still have much of the same sense, and the Hebrew definitely has in part the sense of “evil” as well as “calamity” or “disaster”), and to point out that the “satan” of the Hebrew Scriptures is determinedly an agent of God, most notably in Job. I am inclined to think that the Satan of the New Testament represents an element of dualist thinking creeping into Judaism (via the intertestamentals, notably Sirach, Jubilees, Wisdom and overwhelmingly Enoch).

I don’t relate well to dualism. My own experience (the “zap”) pretty much precludes there being more than one deity or deity-like entity in existence (using “existence” in a very loose way indeed). The Jewish tradition which developed into Christianity became possibly the most ardently monotheist religious tradition of any (and no, I don’t think this is particularly dented in theory by trinitarianism, however much the practice may start looking like tritheism). I am therefore predisposed to see the dualist tendency of the intertestamentals as being an aberration which we could do to move beyond, rather than as an innovation to be adopted and incorporated. My recent post about fatted calves indicates pretty well how I am obliged to see the relationship of God with creation.

As such, the Taoist concept of balancing positive and negative to produce a “good” result (which nonetheless may not be “good” from the perspective of some part of it) has some attractions. It goes beyond the concept of thesis-antithesis-synthesis with which I am very comfortable (and which is a sound corrective to “either-of” thinking), and gives the possibility of thinking of things as inevitably both-one-and-the-other, rather than as eliding the opposites and thus losing any benefit of making a distinction in the first place. It also resonates well with the Isaiah 45 quotation.

However, I am inclined to think that there is a basic error in the whole “good -v- evil” dichotomy, and that is in using the terms without a referent. I start with evil; I cannot conceive of absolute evil, for many reasons including that it would be instantly self-destructive. If I can’t do that, it becomes difficult to think of absolute good.

Indeed, when I settle down to think of what “good” or “evil” is, I inevitably end up asking myself “relative to who or what?” The vast majority of things which occur can be seen to be “good” in relation to something while being “bad” in relation to something else, even without invoking any general principle of good relative to A must be bad relative to not A (which does not invariably work, as sometimes cooperative strategies function well). Indeed, I have yet to see some “good” effect on anything or anyone which I cannot see as “bad” in relation to something or someone else. There are, of course, quite independent of religion, concepts of morality and ethics which prefer the good of the many to the good of the one as being logically superior (though taking this to extremes results in extremely painful decisions which most people would balk at). However, I end up finding it very difficult to accept that any absolute good or absolute bad (or evil) can be said to exist, at least not in the real world.

It is, of course, clear that an absolute morality can be constructed by appealing to something independent of material reality. Certain philosophies (for example political philosophies) will do, for instance, and probably all religions will do. The first depend on some abstract principles which are “above” any effects on humans (or any lower form of existence), the second on God; that which is good in relation to God is an absolute good, as God (at least a monotheistic God) is absolute where everything else is relative. However, then to say “God is good” becomes a redundancy; of course God is good to God (and conversely, referring back to an earlier argument, Satan must be evil to Satan, and therefore cease to be). It seems to me that we have in the Hebrew scriptures at least a near approach to this position, which (to adjust a well known phrase) is basically “God commands it, I do it, that settles it”.

Despite Paul’s apparent attitude in Romans 3:10-18 (in which “all have sinned” and the Law is held up as impossible to follow adequately), in Phil. 3:6 he says he is “as to righteousness under the law, blameless”, and this rather confirms the position of some observant Jews of my acquaintance, who do not find strict adherence to all of the 613 mitzvot difficult (let alone impossible) even as massively extended by generations of rabbis “placing a fence around the Torah” and extending their scope to as not to come even vaguely close to actually contavening one of those. They don’t actually say “God commands it, I do it, that settles it”, but this is close to their position.

I can see the attraction of that; a detailed code rather smaller than the list of laws of most developed nations (which one is also expected to follow perfectly by the civil authorities!) which is all that God requires of you as a condition of being righteous, i.e. “good”. But I am not Jewish, I was not brought up Jewish, I am through and through a Jesus-follower with the sermon on the mount (Matt. 5-7 cf Lk. 6:12-49) prominent in my consciousness as a standard – and that asks that we be “perfect, as our father in heaven is perfect”, that we not even bear anger towards our fellow men (or call them “fool”), that omissions are as worthy of blame as commissions. And that, as was pointed out in the second Alpha talk last night, is impossible for everyone.

I therefore don’t have the “God commands it, I do it, that settles it” position, just a “God commands it through Jesus in his lifetime teachings, I get as close as I can to doing it, nothing is settled by it”. The talk (as I’ve adverted to previously) presented a straight PSA answer to why I should nonetheless feel secure; I can’t swallow PSA myself, and will be adverting to the reasons shortly (I hope, should I ever finish writing the relevant post series). In point of fact, I experience God (and Jesus), I love and trust God (and Jesus) and that is sufficient. Sure, I can never feel smug about being perfect and never will do, but that’s OK with me – and actually, for all their theoretical reliance on Torah observance, my Jewish friends tend also to feel they can always do more and better.

But really, this only tells me (or my Jewish friends) what I should do and not do, it does not give me any overarching concept of good and evil. As I outlined recently, my very existence is from the point of view of some organisms or entities a bad thing, a sin, an evil – and yet from the Godly point of view in Genesis 1, it is at least in principle good. My experience forces me to see God in everything, everything in God, and “everything” includes bad things, even evil things, includes “natural evil” in the form of natural disasters and accidents. Is this a Taoist yin and yang position after all? It certainly arrives at much the same position. Beyond that, I can really see no alternative to complete relativism.

My own balance is found in trying to tread lightly on the world (rather than any insects), in trying to treat my fellow humans as I would treat Jesus (mindful of Matt. 25) and in attempting to remember always that the earth and all that is in it is sacred, holy, in God, and to be treasured and taken care of.

This morning I listened again to the curate reading from John (3:16) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.

I’m in the process, among other things, of catching up with Richard Beck’s outstanding “Experimental Theology” blog, which I discovered about three months ago. I’ve made it from the beginning up to mid 2011 so far, and one of the recurring themes is Universalism. Prof. Beck is an Universalist. He makes a very good case for Universalism, as you can see if you follow that link (and others with that tag – there are quite a few of them!). As a psychologist, he has also written about death anxiety being at the root of a great deal of Christian theology.

In conscience, I’m not really best targeted by the passage from John, as I have no fear of death at all. I have a very healthy fear of many of the means of getting from here to there, mind you! The reason lies partly in the content and nature of my original peak spiritual experience (which I’ll call the “zap”), but also in the thought that my consciousness goes offline every night (well, nearly every night now I’ve got reduced insomnia) and until I wake up, I could well die and never know about it. My late Uncle John passed away like that many years ago; fell asleep reading his morning newspaper and just never woke up. I’ve always thought that you couldn’t design a better way of leaving life, whether or not there is something beyond that.

There were, however, a few aspects of the zap which are pertinent. One was the dissolving of the boundary between “self” and “other”, a complete oneness with everything, animate and inanimate, near and far, human and divine. The sufi Baba Kuhi of Shiraz wrote about this kind of experience, saying “In the market, in the cloister, only God I saw; in the valley and on the mountain, only God I saw”. Meister Eckhart said “Thou shalt know him without image, without semblance and without means. – ‘But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me’. – I say, God must be very I, I very God, so consummately one that this he and this I are one is, in this isness working one work eternally…” All things were God, in which I “lived and breathed and had my being” as someone else said, well before Teilhard de Chardin suggested the “Milieu Divin” ground of all being concept.

That boundary has never really returned in fullness (it was previously absolute); one effect of this was to become significantly empathic (the pre-zap Chris was NOT noted for empathy) which is a somewhat mixed blessing – yes, I can be far more responsive to the needs of others, but also I tend to soak up emotions from others and become too affected by them (which means that in order to function at all, I often have to wall off my emotions, which has a distinct downside). Another, though, is to see the Chris inhabiting this particular structure of bone and flesh as nothing like the whole extent of that-which-is-Chris; if this bit dies, the whole of that-which-is-Chris doesn’t (though I grant the continuity of consciousness is likely to be somewhat lacking!).

It is, incidentally, very difficult to have this kind of consciousness and not “love your neighbour as yourself”, or regard your neighbour as Jesus, aka God in disguise as is set out in Matthew 25:31-45 ending “Truly I say to you, as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me”. For they ARE you. And, indeed, they are more than you.

I may go away (indeed, I expect to) but God endures, and therefore I endure. Another aspect of the zap is the strong desire to conform myself to God, to become a part of God which is more in tune with the rest, less of a discordant note. I see echoes of that in the concept of the Church as the body of Christ, in which I occasionally say that I am the ingrowing toenail. I have aspirations to be less irritating than that! My best template for that is Jesus, who I inescapably regard as having had this consciousness (only more so, probably more so than anyone else who has lived); I seek to cultivate Christ-in-me, and as I do so that-which-is-Chris will diminish. I doubt the process will be anything like complete during my life!

An important aspect of the zap was the feeling that, if I could just let myself go a little more, the ecstasy of union with God could be complete – but that my “self” would in the process be extinguished; there would be nothing but God. The image of a moth in a candle flame came to me, but as an image of intense joy. The first time, that scared me, and as a result I pulled back, but I have pulled back less on subsequent occasions and think that I may soon be able to let go completely, if another zap of that intensity is granted me (I practice the presence of God as best I can, but it seems to me that the more intense zaps are given, not worked for). Baba Kuhi ends by saying “But when I looked with God’s eyes – only God I saw. I passed away into nothingness, I vanished, and lo, I was the All-living – only God I saw”. Eckhart writes “But he manifests as different and the soul is destined to know things as they are and conceive things as they are when, seized thereof, she plunges into the bottomless well of the divine nature and becomes so one with God that she herself would say that she is God” but also, speaking of the soul, “Wherefore God has left her one little point from which to get back to herself and find herself as creature. For it is of the very essence of the soul that she is powerless to plumb the depths of her creator”. Perhaps he is right, and the process will always stop just short of complete extinguishment of the self. But perhaps not, and that is an ecstatic end.

On one occasion several years ago, I was in serious fear of death, as someone far more physically powerful than me was pounding me. Yes, it hurt – but thinking I might die, a strange peace came over me as I looked forward to the ecstatic reunion with God which death would provide. Maybe that might reduce my fear of physical pain? Probably not, as generally I’m not expecting to die from it. As it happened, the disconnect of me smiling seraphically while this guy hit me was sufficient to make him stop and ask why I was doing it – I said “it’s only pain” and he walked away, confused.

I expect, therefore, that at my death, that which is other-than-God will be destroyed, that which is God will remain, cannot but remain. The Theologia Germanica says “Nothing burns in Hell save self-will, therefore it has been said ‘put off thy self-will and there will be no Hell’ “. I intend that there should be as little that is not God as possible at that time, but expect that the remainder will burn, be burned away, indeed. This is very akin to Dr. Beck’s concept of Hell as a purification prior to universal salvation.

So, am I an Universalist? I’m attracted by Dr. Beck’s thinking, and certainly I expect everyone regardless of their beliefs and actions to arrive at the same point. However, I am not so confident that all will survive the refiner’s fire of Hell (be it ever so brief). I have met people in whom any spark of the divine seems exceptionally weak; I can envisage that rather than submit to the fire of cleansing, a few may be able to elect to resist, and that they may remain in that condition forever, or even that in a very few, the spark of the divine may have been extinguished completely during their lifetime, and there remains nothing but self. Some of those I have met, for instance, have been sociopaths. I am not particularly optimistic for them.

And so I think I have to accept the Arminian view of salvation, which acknowledges God’s wish that we all be saved and our freedom to choose, but effectively denies that in this salvation God is omnipotent.

There is one final aspect of the zap which has a bearing, and that is that it appears to give a glimpse into eternity. That eternity is not, as most seem to think, a very VERY unimaginably long time, it is atemporal. The zap is a “timeless moment”, in which all that is and has been is as one (possibly all that will be as well, although I cannot confirm). As such, all that you have been and done and are during your life is present, and this can be an extremely painful situation, alleviated only by the knowledge of God’s love and acceptance (of the essence of you, not of your actions). Perhaps it is possible not to repent in a powerful zap, I don’t know; I certainly couldn’t have withstood it’s force.

In this atemporality, my life just represents a set of boundaries; once I did not exist, as I had not been born, in the future I will not exist (in one sense, at least) as I will be dead. All that is between those remains, atemporal, eternal. In this, there can be no annihilation, no unmaking of what has been. I have to an extent had one foot in this atemporality much of the last 45 years, as my cultivation of conscious contact with God, the practising of the Presence of God, has developed. Beside that, temporal limits appear irrelevant.

Timor mortis non conturbat me.

 

I was maybe a little taken aback to see the congregation at St. Michael le Belfrey invited yesterday afternoon to form groups and do their own intercessionary prayers. Once we had our little huddle of four, I commented that we wouldn’t get beyond Syria and the Middle East – and we didn’t.

One thing we did not pray for, at least not vocalised, was for the various Muslim leaders involved. I think we should have. We did pray for the people of the area, for the Christian churches in Syria and Egypt and, finally, for western leaders to have wisdom (and I’ll come back to that). But we didn’t pray for the people whose decisions will have far more actual effect on how things proceed in the desperate situation in Syria and the very difficult one in Egypt; President Assad and his government and army leaders, ex-President Morsi and the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood there.

So, I’ll express openly what I didn’t have time to express openly yesterday; may all of them remember that they very regularly pray “in the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate” and take it to heart; may mercy and compassion overflow in their hearts and those of the people generally.

I am having a difficult time with the news reporting of these situations. My wife, indeed, has mainly turned away from news, because she doesn’t want to know any more. We see pictures and hear reports of appalling things happening on a daily basis, and the need to do something, anything, in order to stop the beating our compassion is taking is very strong. Obama clearly feels it; Cameron and Clegg seem to have as well – but amazingly parliament has listened to the voice of the people and has decided for the UK not to take any military action.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Well, I would like to think the west could change something and would have the courage to do that. Is this a matter of courage? Is Obama being courageous, and the UK parliament being cowardly? Well, probably yes; to a great extent I think the parliamentary vote was because we don’t want to see much money spent and British lives lost in another foray into the Middle East. But that may also be the wise thing to do, and after all, we elect our politicians in a representative democracy to be wise on our behalf. I feel the pull of the Myth of Redemptive Violence here, very strongly; the situation is intolerable, something must be done, someone has used violence, let’s use more violence against them and “put things right”; I’m sure the parliamentarians who voted feel that too. Perhaps, therefore, the really courageous thing to do is to restrain ourselves?

What I do see is that, as in Iraq, the long term results of military intervention cannot be sensibly mapped out. Syria is not a situation in which there is a “right” and a “wrong” side; there are not two, but at least five distinct interest groups involved (probably significantly more), and the major force opposing Assad is linked with al Quaeda, which should at least give us pause in doing anything which may be seen to support them. Indeed, we should not do anything military unless we have a clear plan for the peace afterwards (as we did not have in Iraq). The only way I can see in which the multiple interests in Syria can coexist peacefully is in a fudged compromise (which is what the Assad regime really rested on until recently), and the only way to get that is for the parties to negotiate between them. There is certainly no clear path to a partition there; the various groups are far too closely intermingled.

I also see no clarity as to who is “at fault” and who is “innocent”. Both sides have been guilty of killing civilians fairly indiscriminately as well as on a narrow sectarian basis in the past; it is by no means clear to me that the recent sarin attack was by government forces (and there is every reason to believe that they would not want to cross that line, but that the rebels would want that line to be crossed as long as it was blamed on the Assad regime). Again, there is no “right” and no “wrong” side.

Neglecting for a moment moral considerations, including such things as public and world opinion, the solution might be to say to the two sides “You will come to the negotiating table NOW and make peace, otherwise we will attack both sides indiscriminately”; of course, if the threat is made, we must be prepared to carry it out, and there seems a huge danger that that might happen. But public and world opinion would never condone such an attitude, and probably neither would the consciences of our leaders.

No, if there is anything the West can do, with its massive supply of manpower and weapons, it would be the non-violent expedient; move in soldiers tasked to do no more than defend themselves and place them between the warring factions, then call for peace talks. In other words, an UN peacekeeping mission. That would require courage (not least from the PBI – “poor bl**dy infantry – on the ground), and it would not directly foster the myth of redemptive violence. I am not sure whether this should be done either; it might still not be successful in bringing the parties to negotiation, and could end up with the forces on the ground being the target of all sides. However, it is, I think, the only courageous and proactive thing which could usefully be tried, diplomacy having so far signally failed.

Do we need the courage to change this, as we can, or do we need the serenity to accept the situation and do nothing? I don’t know, I am praying for wisdom. But I am praying more for the leaders on the ground to find their mercy and their compassion, and a very large amount of courage to change.

Dear XXXX,

I received a private communication from you yesterday in which you said that you were bothered about the last line of my “Direction finding with Jesus” post in the light of what I said in “A Letter to my Reader”. You were worried that despite me addressing myself to you as if you were of any religion or none, because I said in “Direction finding” that I pointed to Jesus, you thought the whole idea was to convert you to Christianity by stealth.

Don’t worry, that isn’t the case. Remember that I said at the top that that was a recycled sermon? Well, everyone I was talking to there was a Christian, so I wasn’t bothered about (say) the odd Jew among that audience.

I happen to think that you have to be a really tough nut if you can’t be comfortable with the extremely stripped down concepts I have as to what you actually need in order to be a Christian – these are Faith in God (or at least the desire to get there) and acceptance of a similarly stripped-down Jesus as exemplar. You also need to want to develop your spiritual experience so that you can feel more connection with whatever it is that I call God, but you can call what you like – it’s only a label on a box.

However, as you say you really can’t do that, don’t worry. I’m better at Jesus stuff than I am at anything else, but I can also point you at quite a few other faith systems which might fit you better – Buddhism and Taoism are the most stripped down I know of, for instance. I know quite a lot about some other faiths as well, and either by joining for a while or by close discussion with those who practice them, I can relate my experience to them as well. If you want to write back, I suggest you take the SelectSmart Belief System Selector test, and let me know your results. If you score high for something, chances are that it’s worth looking at. Though I only score 68% for liberal-to-mainline Christianity (though 100% for Liberal Quaker) on my most recent test, so you can get by with something in the mid range fairly OK.

If none of these fit, I will be very surprised. However, it may be that you either need to be a solitary practicioner of spiritual practices (which I can help with as I’ve spent most of my life being one) or that you need to found your own faith. OK, I once nearly did that at the request of a group of people, but the only person in my head who thought that was a good idea was bighead SR (scientific rationalist Chris) and he got outvoted. I don’t recommend it, therefore, but I can probably still give tips.

Keep reading! You never know, you might find something in here even if you disagree with 99% of what I say. This is about my experience and my way of getting my internal GF functioning well; you’re a different person, and different things will probably work for you.

Happy seeking!

Hello, thanks for reading something I’ve written, and I hope you’ve read “Witness, share, apology” as well.

Yes, I hope there’ll be more than one of you, but at the moment it’s just you and me, OK?

Now, I don’t know who you are, whether you have any faith or no faith or even if you aren’t sure which.

I don’t know if you’re some kind of twelve-stepper or not, or if you have any of the various compulsive behaviours (including addiction), psychological peculiarities or other defects of character which I may share about, whether they have their own Twelve Step programme or not.

I don’t know if you’re a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Bah’ai, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Sikh, a Jain, a Taoist, a Wiccan, a Pagan, a “Scientific Pagan, a Druid, a Shaman, a Practical Kabbalist, a Ritual Magician, a “Born Again Agnostic” or….. well, just because you’re not mentioned doesn’t mean I don’t mean you, and if you give me a nudge I’ll try to include you in the next version of this. As it is there, I have friends who describe themselves as each of these, and I’m pretty confident that they’ll read this sooner or later.

By “Christian” I mean you have faith in God – or at least want to – and try to follow Jesus as best you can, whatever conception you may have of what “God” means, what “Jesus” means, what “faith” means or what “follow” means. In other words, whatever “flavour” of Christianity you belong to – and if you’re a Seventh Day Adventist or a Latter Day Saint and think you’ve been missed out, I count you in Christian. I count me as Christian too, if you push me hard enough.

I don’t care about these labels. I think I mean that as an absolute statement, but if it turns out to be wrong, I am trying to move towards it as an ideal.

If you’re human, I mean to include you. I’d include anyone who wasn’t human as well, but I don’t think they’ll be reading this. You get the picture…

There is only one thing I really want to change your thinking about, and it is this. Please consider moving towards thinking of your fellow human beings more as I try to. They are all “us”, none of them are “them”.

Otherwise, don’t panic. I am not trying to convert you. On the “Art of Dharma” site, there is this quotation:-

To a man who asked to become a Buddhist, the Dalai Lama replied, “Please don’t. Stay in your own religion, and meditate.”  Further , he has stated, “It is better to stick with the wisdom traditions of one’s own land than to run from them pursuing in exotica what was under your nose all the time.”

I take his view, for the most part. If you have a belief structure and it’s working for you, use the maxim “If it ain’t bust, don’t fix it”. If you have no beliefs and it’s working for you (i.e. you’re a true agnostic, to my mind, though you may call yourself an atheist and that’s OK with me), use the same maxim. It’s possible there may still be something in what I write which is helpful to you, and I hope there is, but I’m not really writing for you. Sorry!

But if you have some beliefs and they’re not working well for you, I may have more to say (or not – I can only tell you how it is for me, and it’s up to you and, I suppose, chance whether you can find anything in my writing). Again, if you have a belief structure, I’d prefer you to be more comfortable with what you know rather than to shift wholesale; I may still have experience which is helpful. If you don’t have a belief structure, but feel a need for one, I may be talking about the one for you. Or not.  It is going to need to feel right and to help you develop faith, by which I mean love and trust, in whatever you can comfortably conceive “that thing which I tend to call God” to be.

I have a special note for you if you’re an atheist or an agnostic. I started the journey I’m on as an evangelical atheist, that’s to say I believed strongly that God didn’t exist, that the mere concept of God was pernicious and damaging and that I should try to convince everyone else of that. I then spent a significant amount of time as an agnostic, not knowing but still seeking.

And in some ways it would be fair still to regard me as an atheist (and some of my fellow Christians do); it would certainly be fair to regard me as an agnostic still, as I don’t know that any of what I believe is true, I just take positions on the balance of evidence or because they are useful to me and I can relate to them (though I have no option about faith; love and trust doesn’t get argued away easily) and there are still a fair number of the stories Christianity tells which I don’t relate to well, or sometimes at all. I know where you’re coming from. I’m on a journey, moving in a direction, and my beliefs have had to change along the way and will probably change further (though, granted, the changes recently have tended to be fairly subtle).

Please don’t get me wrong; I am very happy indeed with the belief structures I have and I think it would be really cool if you liked them too and tried them for size. For me, Christianity has the best, the most varied, the most useful stories – but to a great extent that’s because I grew up with these stories and know them better than I know other people’s. You’re not me.

I think everyone would be better off with a faith, and that their faith should be strong (as long as it doesn’t damage others or get in peoples’ faces or tell them what to do), and that some of what I’ve learned over some 45 years might help you with that. But I can’t tell you you’d be better off with more faith, as such, just that I’m convinced I am (and yes, it could easily be argued that I’m not from reading things I write about my experience; I try to signpost the points where I think there are dangers and what they are, though).

Finally, before you go further reading my witness, my share, my apologia, please be careful of one possibility. I have had people individually and sometimes collectively wanting to follow me, for me to be their leader.

Do not even think of doing this.

·         Firstly, you can’t get where I am by proxy, only by doing some things and having some experiences. You are not me, your experiences will be different, you can’t borrow mine, only find things in them which speak to your experiences and situation.

·         Secondly, I do not want to be put in the position of telling people what to do, it will embarrass me, and, within my belief structure, you should not be following me anyhow, you should be following in the direction I point. I want people to walk beside me, not behind me.

·         Lastly, I don’t want to be put in the position of having to say “no”, because that would pain me, but I would have to say no anyhow.

The snag turned out to be, when I got there, that this wasn’t actually talk 6 “How does God guide us” which I’d prepared for, but talk 10, “How can I resist evil”.

After a chat with the guest speaker beforehand (remember, I’m trying to be a constructive pain in the neck here!), he got started. And that gave me problems, because I didn’t want to tear the thing to shreds immediately.

The talk started off by following the standard line of saying “the Devil” is referenced in the Hebrew Scriptures. And he’s not. There is the serpent in Genesis, there’s the morning star/lucifer in Isaiah and there are a few references to “Satan”. The Hebrew “ha-Satan” (meaning “the accuser” or sometimes “the adversary”) has pretty much the function described in Job; he’s an agent of God, there to act as something like counsel for the prosecution, to test faith by temptation. According to Judaism, he’s absolutely nothing like a personalised force of evil and, frankly, where there doesn’t seem to be any need to look at it too closely, I’m very happy to let Judaism claim prior copyright in the Hebrew Scriptures and let Jewish scholars do the interpretation. Call it intellectual laziness or “standing on the shoulders of giants” as you like. Also according to Judaism, the serpent is ha-Satan, as he is performing a somewhat similar function, so not “the Devil”. haSatan is regarded as real, but as a servant of God (hence permission being asked and given in Job).

Lucifer, in Isaiah, is a translation of the Hebrew words which indicate “morning star”, and this passage specifically refers to a king of Babylon. So, also not the Devil. (From this point, if I wasn to indicate the Jewish conception, I will use “haSatan”, otherwise if I use Satan it means the Intertestamental/Christian conception.

Yes, the New Testament concept is more like our current ideas of “The Devil”, and it doesn’t derive from the Hebrew “ha-Satan”, it derives from the intertestamental literature, Hebrew writings from between the Hebrew Scriptures and the time of the new Testament, notably the Book of Wisdom and the Second Book of Enoch. Wisdom is part of the apocrypha, i.e. it appears in the Catholic Bible but not in Protestant Bibles; it was part of the Septuagint (i.e. the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) but is not part of the TaNaKh (the Judaic Hebrew Scriptures). Enoch is usually regarded as pseudepigrapha (generally a polite term for “fake”) but is accepted as canonical by the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. Both of these are quoted in the New Testament.

There is an immediate problem here for those who are not Catholic or from the two small Orthodox churches mentioned; that is that the concepts which become quoted in the New Testament are themselves not canonical; the church fathers, in other words, thought that they were unreliable.

There is a much bigger problem, though, and that is that one of the probable reasons they are not canonical in most of Christianity or in Judaism is that they are considered to do two things, one being to introduce a tendency to gnosticism, the other being to be heavily tainted by Zoroastrian thinking. Zoroastrian is a dualist religion with equal opposing good and evil Gods (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman or Angra Mainyu). The Zoroastrian concept of Ahriman is quite similar to the concept of the Devil in the New Testament, and I think transmission of this idea is a certainty.

Judaism is an ardently monotheistic religion, and in theory so is Christianity (arguments about the Trinity set on one side here). Zoroastrianism is not.

Some time ago, I wrote “If the Devil existed, it would be necessary to disbelieve in him”. The theological reason for this is that I am a panentheist, and in this conception there is just no room in metaphysics for a second force; I could point out that if we believe in omnipresence (and panentheism is to a great extent an extreme and literal assertion of omniscience) then, if there were an “evil god”, then God would permeate him as well. Also, the presence of an opposing force of real power limits the conventional belief in God’s omnipotence and, in order to function with any actual power at all, his omniscience. God stops being almighty, and whatever you say about God having the final victory, this has to be the case. In any event, I cannot read Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all of these things” (KJV) and not consider that there is direct biblical authority for there not being any creator whether of good or evil than God. Yes, you will find the word “ra-ah” in Hebrew translated by all sorts of words other than “evil” in other, later, translations, for instance “woe” in the RSV, but it is impossible to get away from a very strong connotation of evil and still preserve the meaning of the original.

And as has happened earlier in the course, they have to quote C.S. Lewis. Lewis was an amateur theologian only, his academic background lay elsewhere and he was best known as a novelist and poet. How it is that Lewis has become the theologian of choice for Alpha beats me, because I have never encountered a C.S. Lewis quote used in this kind of situation which is not theologically unsound and/or logically false. In this case, Lewis claims there are two mistakes to make, disbelief and unhealthy interest. I agree with him on the second, but not, as you can see above, the first. I’ll deal with this more later.

In the questions at the end of the main discussion, what I then made was the point that a “real Satan” was untrue to the Jewish monotheist tradition from start, and introduced the real risk of a slide into complete dualism. However, I said I agree that if you the New Testament references metaphorically and referring to inner forces, then I find little to argue with. There was quite a bit of agreement.

At the discussion later, reference was made to Paul’s use of the term “God of this age”, also rendered “God of this world”, but I didn’t have an opportunity to address it. This is even more dangerous terminology as it can easily be read to indicate actual dualism, and also to support a gnostic concept of the material world being incurably bad, annd the only good to be reached post-mortem. It’s beyond the scope of what I’m writing here to say more than that gnosticism was thoroughly disliked by the early Church Fathers (this is Irenaeus’ position) and led to the non-inclusion in the canon of the New Testament of the Gnostic Gospels. (There is one of those, the Gospel of Thomas, which I regret not being included, on the grounds that firstly it’s the only pure “sayings” gospel I’ve read, secondly that it contains the one scripture which most persuaded me that Jesus was to be followed, “I am the light that shines over all things. I am everything. From me all came forth, and to me all return. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there.” (Tho. 77) and thirdly that if it’s gnostic at all, it’s less gnostic than John, on which very much Christian doctrine is based).

I didn’t mention, but will note here that when taken metaphorically, the New Testament references to Satan or cognates encourage a form of exteriorisation of our own baser urges. There can be psychological benefits to this (which I why I agree the metaphorical interpretation is worthwhile) but there are also some significant psychological dangers, particularly in persons with mental illnesses or psychological disorders; I would recommend that this kind of concept is not used by anyone with such a mental health background without the utmost of care.

Firstly, it is an unfortunate fact that the more you stress the reality of something “bad” and stress it’s power, the more attractive you tend to make it. If it’s powerless and/or imaginary, it isn’t attractive. Put very briefly, I can speak from personal experience, as though by around age 9 I was atheistic as far as God was concerned, all things occult fascinated me, and even after I lost any serious interest in those as a possible way of getting power, I remained interested on an academic level until my 20’s. The detail of this must wait for another day, but suffice it to say that I have personal experience of some aspects and have past or current friends who actually practice in various areas.

It is the case that we now live in a scientific-rationalist society, and science has ostensibly left no room for there to be any supernatural element in the church. No miracles, no prophecy, no healing; all are scientifically impossible. (Yes, there are a few studies indicating there may be some minuscule benefit to prayer, but they’re much attacked). This has had, and still gets, a big press, and no, I don’t think that that’s because atheists, science or the press are agents of Satan; it’s because the church has historically got itself an extremely bad name (and parts of it continue to) and it’s therefore a large and popular target. On the other hand, although science has been equally used to debunk every supposed supernatural event from the wide field of the occult, that isn’t so unpopular, and it has the cachet of being “a bit naughty”, and after all, everyone looks at their horoscope in the papers, don’t they?

I’m not saying that guarantees a slide into eventual Satanism (and I remind you that Satanism is firmly based on Paul’s “God of this world” statement), but if someone believes in any kind of “magic”, other kinds become easier to look for.

This Wikipedia article on magic isn’t too inadequate or unbalanced. Neither is this on Wicca or this on Freemasonry. Aside from pointing out that Wicca is a religion rather than specifically an occult practice and that due to Christianity’s past history, there is a saying in Wicca “never more the burning times”, these are mostly harmless, and scare articles in some Christian sources which I’ve actually investigated have always proved to have some non-supernatural explanation but some deplorable human behaviour. Again, that’s a big subject and one I may come back to.

However, some occult practices and those who use and pursue them are extremely capable of messing with people’s heads, so I urge caution. Mind you, that can be said of some branches of Christianity and even, dare I say it, Alpha (which one atheist friend of mine is convinced is a form of brainwashing). Ho hum

On Sunday, I met with a friend. Now, this guy is fired up with God, with Jesus and with scripture. And that’s all good. It’s better than good, it’s warming those he comes into contact with. I am really happy for him. He’s also fired up with a completely different view of scripture from my own. A different concept of God, a different concept of Jesus… I could go on.

We acknowledged to each other that we are in two completely different places (he reads my blog, bless him) but that we share one faith, one fire. He’s been used to my own fire being somewhat damped (I suffer from clinical depression, inter alia, and have done for quite a few years), but on Sunday, courtesy of some new medication, I was not feeling damped.

Now, I’m confident that as we were acknowledging that to each other, both of us were thinking with at least part of our minds “I’m in the better place, and you’ll eventually join me there”. I can’t see that happening myself, and I’ve no doubt that he can’t see himself joining me in my thinking. But we are one in love, we are one in spirit, we are one in religion (even, at the moment, denomination), we are one in whom we follow.

I think I see how there can be one church. I know there should be only one church, of all the followers of Christ (as a minimum). At my last count, however, there were several thousand denominations, and I found that depressing, particularly when one flavour of follower of Jesus shuns, anathematises or kills another flavour of follower.

We are very different. And we are exactly the same.

The title of the talk is “Why and how should I read the Bible”, mostly focussing on “why”. I have a host of answers for that, but none of them is that “It’s the Word of God” (quoting Matt. 4:4 “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which comes from the mouth of God”) and is “God-breathed”, quoting 2 Tim. 3:16-17. Rendering vv. 15-17 (RSV), we see “and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”.

First Matthew. Even Orthodox Judaism does not think that the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures “come from the mouth of God”, though they have a fairly high concept of inspiration.

Then the letter to Timothy. Assuming it to be genuinely written by Paul, it is talking of sacred writings which his hearers have been acquainted with from childhood, and therefore definitively the Hebrew Scriptures, not any part of the New Testament (of which Paul was the earliest writer). Christians in general do not use large swathes of the Hebrew Scriptures for reproof, correction or training in righteousness, not least the bulk of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

A defence is to quote Matthew 5:17. I’ll quote vv 17-19 here: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”The argument then goes that Jesus “fulfilled” them and that “all was accomplished” by dying and rising again.

Frankly, I don’t think that argument works. It frankly reads more naturally as all being accomplished BY heaven and earth passing away, and that Jesus’ “fulfilment” rested in his generally scandalous proposals that societal outcasts such as women, the disabled, heretics (Samaritans) and even Romans should be consorted with in table fellowship., and that the spirit of the law (in the two Great Commandments, Matt. 22:37-40) should override the letter.

Yes, I am not ignoring Paul’s ad-hoc theologising in Romans. Frankly, for gentiles I do not think it was in any way necessary – not being Jewish, I have no need to consider the laws of Moses. I agree with the Rabbinic chain of reasoning which results in the Noahide Commandments, though not personally feeling a need to follow the principle of “building a fence around the Torah”, I don’t necessary follow the full expansion. I don’t personally see that I need any relaxation or setting aside of those. I did share in a previous post that I have seriously contemplated whether, in order to imitate Jesus more closely, I should act as if I were Jewish (without obligation, of course), but have so far dismissed that. It seems clear to me that Paul was avoiding there being a “two tier” Christianity, with those of Jewish origin being unable to be in full fellowship with those of Gentile origin unless the Gentiles also followed Mosaic Law.

I grant that had the Jewish Christians taken fully to heart Jesus’ scrictures about the validity of the purity provisions, for instance (Matt. 15:11) they might have been able to get round this. Paul may not have had any knowledge of these sayings of Jesus, of course, as Matthew hadn’t yet been written (and so far as I can see, wouldn’t be for about another 40 years). But then, Paul doesn’t actually display very much knowledge at all of Jesus’ lifetime sayings.

Thank goodness we only had “The Message” translation quoted in the pre-meeting, as this renders “Scriptures” in 2 Tim 3:15 as “Word of God”. Even so, really the whole presentation was predicated on the whole Bible being “the Word of God”.

It is hugely clear to me that this is not a tenable position. No form of inerrancy can be sensibly defended against discrepancies (which abound), the fact that no original manuscripts exist, the textual evidence of several layers of rewriting (by different people) in most if not all of the New Testament, and the clear evidence of development in the various writer’s conceptions of very many things through the long history of assembly of the set of books which now comprise the Bible, both within the particular books (textual criticism) and of the whole (formation of the canon).

I hope that no-one reading my blog will, however, be inclined to say “If you don’t take the whole of it as inerrant, you pick and choose what bits you like” (an excluded middle argument with which I have no patience) or that I don’t take scripture seriously – very seriously. To my mind, I “pick and choose” less than do those who mine the text for a set of proof texts which support a position they’ve arrived at. I assess everything I read there critically and prayerfully, trying to see how the inspiration of the various writers was moulded by their language, their preconceptions, world-view and philosophy (and that of their audience) and arrive at what they were really trying to tell those reading them. Where I am in any doubt at all, I refer to experts, and I don’t limit myself to experts of one particular denomination of inclination, liberal or conservative. And I assess the contributions of the experts critically and prayerfully as well.

I am not wonderfully happy that some texts were included in the canon and that others were excluded, but accept that it is the tradition of some 1700 years that these are the scriptures, at least for the Western Churches (with a few additions for Catholics). However, I see no reason why I am precluded from reading the excluded ones and taking them in much the same way as I take the canonical texts (having regard, of course, to the reasons given for their not being included). So far as the others are concerned, there are still many passages which I have not studied in full depth as yet, and yes, I have problems with some of them. I am not, for instance, entirely happy that I want to regard injunctions to exterminate every last Amalekite as being “inspired”, as just one example (particularly the contents of 1 Sam. 28:18). At least, if they are inspired, I have to consider the possibility that the inspiration was very seriously warped by the characters of the (faillible) humans involved in and transmitting the story!

Which leads me neatly back to 2 Tim. 15-17, which I read primarily as Paul’s caution against taking what anyone, however much inspired (or “filled with the spirit”) they may be without comparing it with what those before have written from their own inspirations, and reproving or correcting accordingly. He is talking about the Hebrew Scriptures there, as well, so we really have to view the New Testament through the lens of the Old, which as Paul says, all the New Testament writers took as their authoritative scripture.

Needless to say, I only had the opportunity to hint at bits of these lines of reasoning in the discussion last night and in a number of individual conversations afterwards.

There is one point more, though, which I did not get to talk about, for shortness of time. Nicky Gumbel’s guide for starting Bible readers was promoted. I hate it, not least because, assuming a theological agenda, it picks and chooses those bits of scripture which support that agenda to the exclusion of others. I would still hate it, even if the theological agenda were one with which I did not disagree thoroughly.

If I am granted the strength, I will continue this tomorrow or Saturday…