I've just been reading an excerpt from Rowan Williams on Maurice Wiles at Michael Jensen's blogging parson.
MJ tells us to note that Williams says doctrine (or something) is ofetn very variously and very confusedly articulated in our primary documents (such as Scripture).
The word I am duly noting here is confusedly.
Note that it is not confusingly (which would tell us about Williams: that the Bible confuses him) but confusedly (which tells us about the authors, human and divine ?, that they were confused).
Williams may be able to hold on to some sort of idea of the authority of the Bible, but he has lost its perspicuity or clarity, so for my money for all practical purposes he has given up on the functional authority of Scripture.
What is his practical substitute, I wonder?
Maybe the Revd Mr Jensen can enlighten us?
I doubt Williams can.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
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5 comments:
[compliments on this great blog, by the way]
Well, I have been thinking about this. Let's give RW the benefit of the doubt for a second. Remember, he was actually trying to defend orthodoxy against Maurice Wiles, one of the direst liberals ever to graduate from Ridley College (and I believe a Bash camper before that...)
It is true that the NT speaks with a diversity of voices. When we read it, we have to make some adjustments of vocabulary and literary style in order to account for say Paul and James. Synthesising the narratives of the gospels is a tricky business, strictly speaking. Paul and co wrote occassional and polemical pieces rather than compact and neat treatises. 2 Peter 3 indicates that Paul is hard to understand.
Hmmm... I still don't think I would say 'confused'...
Oh yeah, and as far as I can make out: for Williams, the authority of scripture lies in its transformative and parabolic power to bring about new human possibilities. It is what the text does, rather than what it is.
He is HEAVILY indebted to Ricoeur.
Thank you for your speedy and true resoponses. And your kind words, by the way!
I think I agree with you.
We may say the human authors spoke better than they knew and so were in places confused, but as a global description of the Bible it is wicked.
What do you make of Garry William's Latimer Trust booklet on RW? He deals with revelation at length and RW's apothatic stuff - eg all we know of God is his articulate inarticulateness, his presence in adsence, like the call of a spastic child (I paraphrase from memory)!
I think God has not got a lisp.
Mark Thompson must be able to tell us all about this?
Well: the complaint about Garry's booklet was that it was too polemical and didn't 'get' Williams on his own terms. Hard task I know; and polemic has its place of course. I haven't re-read it recently enough to judge. But I am preparing an essay and I would like WIlliams to be able to read it and say 'yes, that's me'.
Thing about apophatic stuff is of course that Williams didn't just invent it: it has a LONG tradition as you know, and Williams (ans Psuedo-dionysius) would argue, a biblical one.
BTW, Calvin said that God lisps...surely you aren't disputing Calvin? (or is it beacuse Turretin corrects him? ;-) )
It is easy to caricauture the spastic child thing: but I think Williams isn't say God is imprisoned or disabled like this: rather that he deliberately communicates with us in non-powerful ways, through weakness rather than strength, in the language of the unexpected outsider (an Australian perhaps?) rather than through a power discourse.
Thing about him is, he is a complete child of the 60s. FOr him, power discourses are the great evil. He is always looking to overturn power language. Strange: since he has so much power!
Interesting. Can see how power through weakness might give us a cross shaped doctrine of revelation.
Sure, we want RW to think we ve been fair to him, even if GW was in fact fair to him!
Yes, no one is saying that apothatic theology has no place. God is not a man etc. But God speaks clearly to us, both negatively and positively so apothatic theology must not be totalised. There is no place for no place for positive revelation.
Sure, one can abuse a metaphor and caricature a striking similie. (Insert examples, wittily).
Calvin has in mind that God speaks baby language to us for our sake, perhaps? RW is v different in that God can only speak in that way.
Do you know what Mark Thompson makes of all this, as he is our expert on clarity of Bible, and a good Anglican?
How much power does RW really have & what's he done with it???!!!
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