I have just made a start on Paul Griffith's Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2009). It contains this pithy little summary of why the academic (by which I mean disciplined and appropriately critical) study of theology is necessary:
" ... the extent to which any particular account ... seems obviously or uncontroversially true to you is exactly the extent to which you have not thought about it." (p.3)
This is the title of a recent little book by John Franke who teaches at the Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. As someone who has argued for a similar construal of the nature of biblical interpretation, I was interested to read Franke's theological defense of notions of plurality. The book is easy to read, and Franke is a good theologian. I guess, however, that it is written to help those whose own cultural or ecclesial location already tilts them in the directions that he lays out. My own experience in speaking about interpretative pluralism among Baptists in the UK suggested that for many people, there needs to be a much more extensive and rigorous demonstration of why many of the inherited and assumed epistemological models are problematic. (Incidentally, it is his concern to do this kind of ground clearing work that makes Douglas Campbell's book on Justification Theory in Paul 200 pages longer than it might have been - and all the better for it). Franke's book therefore provides a starting point - but the questions raised here require deeper levels of engagement with the tradition, the traditional views of truth, and with the contemporary implications for ecclesial life, biblical interpretation and theological method than we find here.
Here is an excerpt from Franke's conclusion:
'Plurality in the Christian community is not a problem to be overcome but is instead the very intention and blessing of God who invites all people to participate in the liberating and reconciling ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. the plurality of the church constitutes the manifold witness to the plurality of truth lived out in the eternal life of God, made known in the revelation of the Word of God, and exemplified in the pages of Scripture. We cannot bear this witness alone. we were never intensed to do so. we need each other. It cannot be otherwise.'
John R. Franke, Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth, Living Theology. Nashville: Abingdon, 2009. pp.136-137)
One might compare this view with that expressed in the quotation from Timothy Ward in his book on Scripture and God which I mention here. Mark Thompson also has a lengthy review of the book in which he argues for the kind of direct, unmediated form of divine revelation that Ward also endorses.
Good books often have you hooked within a page or so. Something novel, exciting, bold, imaginative, grabs the attention and whets your appetite for what follows. I have just started J. Kameron Carter's Race: A Theological Account. How about this as a discussion starter:
Discuss.
Although I always have good intentions of reading theology when I am in airports, I usually end up with my head in a novel. A recommendation, then, and a quotation.
The recommendation is Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. You may have seen the film, but if you have or haven't then let this be your introduction to, in my view, the best living American novelist. No Country is a chilling thriller, written in the pared down, stark but still beautiful prose that is McCarthy's trademark. His recent writing (cf. The Road) has become more explicitly apocalyptic and religious in force (in the sense that McCarthy's work seems to me to be an attempt to articulate the consequences of God's absence). If you enjoy it then go back to All the Pretty Horses, which is the one that got me hooked.
The quotation comes from a couldn't-be-more-different-if-it-tried novel, Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea, or rather from the introduction to the edition I am reading by the writer John Burnside. He is discussing the human desire to withdraw and escape from the demands of living in the contemporary world:
For may of us, the only sphere of authenticity is the personal; the public realm, the political and social, appears to have become corrupted beyond redemption. The desire to withdraw, to be quiet, to stake out some limited, controllable space, is widespread, and the longing for authenticity is presented, not as a profound spiritual need, but as a form of treatable neurosis ... Most important of all is the way in which we have been persuaded that what we need/want is parephernalia, rather than a path; entertainment, rather than thought; tidiness, rather then order.
John Burnside, 'Introduction' to Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea (London: Vintage, 1999), ix.
I spent a part of this morning looking again through Micheal O'Siadhail's recent collection Globe (Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2007). O'Siadhail's poetry has long been a part of my thinking and reflection about the (cliche alert) meaning of life, etc.. I have never been into Jazz that much, but the use of Jazz as a metaphor for the fragility and responsibility of human life and relationships (from the personal to the global) is in O'Siadhail's hands, almost endlessly suggestive. It is no surprise that he has been a strong influence on a number of theologians (David Ford and Dan Hardy to name but two). In Globe, I have found again poems that resonate with some of my thinking and writing about interpretation and pluralism and that draw on the Babel story. This poem is from the climactic sequence 'Angel of Change'.
Skeins
Never to forget the towering dreams
Of heaven-hankers before their time,
Brick for stone, for mortar, slime
So many offered for madcap schemes.
Over and over again some other fable
Of perfection: Let us make a name.
Another skyscraper and still the same.
Fall and fall all spires of Babel
To lovely confusions of our gabble.
Scattered abroad on the face of the earth
As slowly we relearn each other's worth,
Difference and sameness incommensurable.
In all our babble birds of a feather -
Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile,
Beetle knows beetle - Qui se ressemble
S'assemble - all over flock together,
Skeins of hope, gleich und gleich...
Like to like, kind calls fellow -
Rui wa tomo o yobu in Tokyo.
Around our globe, a netted Reich,
Of random trust, cross-ties of civility,
Farflung jumbles 0f non-violent voices
Argue our intertwining choices
To weave one planet's fragile city.
Micheal O'Siadhail, Globe (Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2007), 112.
I am taking this week off, with no more than a passing thought for those who are spending parts of the week retreating (fellow staff and students) or researching (hope its going OK Catriona). So I have been out on the spend, the results being:
The Box Set of Karl Richter's recordings of Bach (Matthew and John Passions; B Minor Mass; Christmas Oratorio and Magnificat). This is a bargain on Amazon at the moment (£3.00 per CD)
Apple keyboard. There have been some comment recently in the blogosphere about the relative merits or demerits of Apple kit. But tell me, what would you rather use - a cheap, nasty Dell keyboard, each key of which requires depression
to the depth of about half an inch, or a chrome and white streamlined wonder of engineering; not only beautiful but functional beyond any reasonable expectation (full numeric keyboard; 2 USB ports; one key to expose the desktop; full control of ITunes etc etc etc)?
Oh yes, and books, but not theology.
John Stubbs' highly praised biography of John Donne (hardback, local Oxfam bookshop for a few quid)
Edward Said's lectures on musical performance and interpretation.
Allow me to make a suggestion for anyone who wants to do some in-depth exploration of the nature of Easter Faith. Alan Lewis' Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday is one of the most profound and poignant theological works that I know. T. F. Torrance in the blurb on the jacket calls it 'the most remarkable and moving book I have ever read'. Essentially it is a work that explores cross and resurrection from the perspective of the mid-point of Easter Saturday. Its is not an easy read (over 450 pages of deep theolohical reflection) and Lewis' reflections are shaped by immersion in the theology of Luther, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Jungel, Moltmann and von Balthasar. What gives the discussion its edge, however, is the fact that mid way through writing it Lewis was diagnosed with a cancer from which he eventually died, before completing the work. This renders the final chapter on 'Living the Story in Personal Life' a classic of spiritual and theological autobiography. Here are two quotations from that final chapter to whet your appetite. I recommend that, following your Easter celebrations you get a copy, as a way of getting a better understanding of what you have just been celebrating, and as a way of preparing for next year.
On Death
Death is relationlessness and utter isolation, the absence of others and the final severance of those connections with neighbors, friends and family which have been in an accelerating process of collapse throughout the period of one's dying. By the end, all relationships are broken, and our solitude is complete, save for the presence of the fearful by all-gracious Judge. No matter how the dying of a loved one might break our hearts and make us wish that we could substitute our lives for theirs, suffering and even dying in their stead, that is one act of selflessness which is denied us. To lay down one's life for one's friends can give them at best a temporary reprieve. The time still comes when they and we, utterly bereft of community or substitutes, must complete a journey which no one else can take. Then, if not before, with the self quite naked and absolutely singular, the question, however much evaded through life and theologically perhaps best left to last in any case, will be postponed no longer. It is the final question raised by Easter Saturday, when God's own self, clothed in our humanity, lies dead and buried, abandoned, solitary, all alone: the question ' Who am I?' (438-439)
On Baptism
To be baptized, and thus appropriate to oneself the historical event in which once and for all one's identity was crucified and buried with Christ Jesus, is itself nothing less that to have an Easter Saturday identity. Baptism confirms our unity with Christ, and thus our participation in his repentance which led from the cradle to the Jordan, to the cross and tomb. In this union, sealed with the sign of water the drowns, cleanses, and gives new life, we repent of our old identity, consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, who himself has died to sin and ended death's dominion. For at whatever age this sign is laid upon us, we receive it with empty hands open for the gift of grace, becoming like the little children of whom God's kingdom is comprised. (447-448)
I think this book is a theological and spiritual classic, and deserves to be better known. Hence this recommendation!
There is a debate running around the house at the moment as to whether we should be giving up TV (not including DVDs) or sugar for Lent. We did alcohol last year, and anyway a nice delivery from Avery's arrived on Saturday so that option is clearly excluded.
Whichever we decide, I am committing myself to picking up and reading Raymond Brown's The Death of the Messiah over Lent: synopsis in hand. It is 1524 pages long, excluding indices, which amounts to about 38 pages per day. There is lots of bibliography though, so it isn't as bad as it looks. If i find anything interesting, I'll let you know.
NB, the Amazon link is to second hand copies of the hardback volumes, hopefully in their beautiful slipcase. You can buy the single volumes in paperback if you wanted to - but as with well done beef...what is the point?
We have been working with students this semester on aspects of preaching. I have been wondering why some of the insights and examples we have been sharing have failed to meet with the same kind of enthusiastic response that they created in me when I first encountered (say) aspects of the new homiletic. Barbara Brown Taylor's discussion of the importance and power of imagination for the preacher leads me to suspect that we all, staff and students alike, suffer from a dearth of imaginative resources, a shrinking of our imaginative capacities. We struggle to read Scripture and use imagination to shape our perception of what we read - and the result is all too often flat and lifeless. This is her definition of imagination as revelation:
In the imaginative act, we are grasped whole. Revelation is not a matter of thinking or feeling, intuiting or sensing, working from the left side of the brain or the right. It is a shocking gift of new sight that obliterates such distinctions, grabbing us by our lapels and turning us around, so that when we are set back down again we see everything from a new angle. We reason differently, feel differently, act differently. Imagination does more than affect us; it effects change in our lives.
Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Lanham: Cowley, 1983), 48.
What she says about our attitude to the world in general, goes also for our atttitude towards Scripture. She speaks of:
...an imaginative enterprise, in which I must first give up the notion that I know what I am looking at when I look at the world. I do not know. All I know is that there is always more than meets the eye and that if I want to see truly I must be willing to look beyond the appearance of things into the depth of things. (p.52)
How to cultivate imagination for prospective preachers? How do I, as someone whose imaginative life is fed as much by novels and poetry and music as well as film and TV, help those who don't read that stuff? Once, in a meeting of seminary teachers on the subject of spirituality within the curriculum, a tutor from the Baptist seminary in Cuba stated that he felt that his calling and that of his institution was to help his students (prospective pastors and preachers) to 'appreciate beauty' - what would it look like if we took such a calling seriously?
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