Christian Biblical Theology Reformed Evangelical Protestant Catholic Anglican
The Bible speaks of various postures in prayer (standing, kneeling etc.).
We have just had a few days holiday in Spain. At the departure gate, a group of maybe ten young men from south London formed a prayer huddle - an inward facing circle, arms around one another.
Good for them, I thought. I'm not sure it would be quite my cup of tea, but it seemed to express a resolve and solidarity: the boys on tour contra mundum.
THE CHRISTIAN DRESS CODE
FOR MEN AND WOMEN
FOR CHURCH
(Useful background reading: Genesis 1-3)
1 Corinthians 11:1-16 (page 1152)
INTRODUCTION: Fasten your
seatbelts!
Ch 11-14 – the public
gathered worship of the church – note v1
Difficult and
controversial
Important and useful
Not Christianity 101!
True, good and beautiful
TWO UNDERLYING
PRINCIPLES:
(1) Men and women are
human: equality
(2) Men are not women;
women are not men: difference
IMPLICATIONS: These two
principles should be appropriately expressed in life and especially in public
worship
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS:
Hats, haircuts and our contemporary culture
The Necessity of
Excommunication
Chapter 4: Being stewards
of the grace of the cross means taking repentance and change seriously that we
might be a holy covenant community
(1) For the sake of the
salvation of his soul (v5)
(2) For the sake of the
purity of the church’s Passover Feast (vv6-12)
Good news?
Us?
(The Book of Common Prayer
Communion Service and The Canons of the Church of England - B 16 Of
notorious offenders not to be admitted to Holy Communion)
Over the course of my ordained ministry, I must have conducted hundreds of funerals. And yet each one is special and unique. It is always a privilege to be involved. And often I find out something fascinating even about those I have known quite well. There may be periods or areas of their lives that some of us knew nothing about: that service in the Navy, the early job as a baker, the passion of jazz or the prize-winning gymnastics.
I
can sometimes go quite a long time without taking a funeral and then several
seem to come along at once. Recently there have been four. To stand in church
with the coffin, or at the graveside, or in the crematorium remains a stark
reminder of our mortality. This end will come to us all (unless the Lord Jesus
returns speedily).
So
death and the world to come have been much on my mind. Alongside this, I was
also at an event for Christian ministers when we were sitting around discussing
the gospel. What is the essential good news of the Lord Jesus which the church
is trying to communicate to the world? A number of those present wanted to
emphasise the real day-to-day benefits of faith. And quite rightly so.
Christianity is not just pie in the sky by and by when we die, but ham where we
am. One even audaciously said that giving a hungry person baked beans from the
food bank is the good news. Now, I can see that food is good news to the
hungry. And they may not be in a place to receive any other message than this
tangible demonstration of love. There may be ethical issues too about giving
out rice and Christ.
But
I think we dare not withhold Christ from people – from anyone. Christ is what –
whom - the Christian church must always offer. He is our USP. Unless we get to
explicitly holding out the real Jesus of the Bible, we might as well join some
secular organisation (even if our motivation is quietly “religious” or inspired
by the Gospels).
It is essential that we Christian have
much to say for this life of course. We believe in life before death. But we
must also have something to say about the Last Enemy and the looming eternity. Permit
me a lengthy quote from the New Testament because it is directly relevant to
these questions: What is the gospel? And what does it say to our dying race? The
Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth:
“Now, brothers and
sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which
you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold
firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to
you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third
day according to the Scriptures, and that
he appeared to Cephas [=Peter], and then to the Twelve [Disciples /
Apostles]. After
that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the
same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all
the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me
also, as to one abnormally born….
And if Christ has not been
raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false
witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from
the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ
has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you
are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ,
we are of all people most to be pitied.
But Christ has indeed been raised from
the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the
resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will
be made alive.” (1 Corinthians chapter 15, part of verses 1 to 22)”
The
whole chapter would repay thoughtful reading. It would be a very suitable passage
for a Christian funeral. An essential part of the Christian message is that the
crucified Jesus lives as Lord. He gives an indestructible life to any who will
trust in him. That coffin is not the end of the story. For those who have faith
in Jesus, nothing is in vain.
May
God bless you with joy and peace in believing both for Wednesday morning and
for the ages to come.
Parish Magazine Item for August 2024
From
The Rectory
I
won’t be saying here or from the pulpit how I voted in the general election. Perhaps
there is a good case for keeping these things private. You know, discussing
religion or politics might end up in an argument! And I shall certainly be praying
for our new Prime Minister. I could easily have written about many things Tory
or other candidates have said with which I disagree. But I would like to highlight
a prominent statement by Sir Keir.
Standing
on Downing Street, the newly electing PM has promised us "a government
unburdened by doctrine."
Charitably,
he means he will be pragmatic and not doctrinaire or ideological.
However,
a government entirely without doctrine is neither possible nor desirable.
We
cannot imagine that, even if his Manifesto was a little thin, Sir Keir will
really approach every issue entirely without beliefs and seek to work out what
works. We do not believe he has a blank sheet of paper and nor should he. One
only has to ask: “What works for whom? To achieve what?” We are back to
doctrine. We all have and need these fundamental beliefs and guiding
principles.
The
British Army would tell him that you need your doctrine worked out, understood,
shared, applied and open to revision. It is no good turning up in a battle and
launching a three-year study with options for how the enemy might be defeated.
You will find yourself overcome while you worry about rules of engagement or
methods of attack.
Even
if Sir Keir has a very broad and ill-defined aim such as “the flourishing of
the British nation”, he will still need doctrines about what constitutes the
good life, who shares in the British nation, and how advancement for many or
all might be achieved by governments. Politics actually gets almost theological
pretty quickly, it seems to me.
We
do not want a government burdened by false doctrine, but served by true, good
and sound or healthy doctrines, which are open to reformation if there are new
arguments or evidence, and which may be adapted to changing
circumstances.
Likewise,
Christians have sometimes used “doctrine” as a sort of boo-word. It can sound a
bit boring or irrelevant. And wouldn’t love be better than dogma? But in fact
this is a false dichotomy. Belief and behaviour belong together. Doctrine ought
to lead to delight and duty.
Granted
the church too could be too ideological, doctrinaire and dogmatic. The old
slogan: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love”
still holds good. There could be inappropriate theological hair-splitting or
unreasonable degrees of intellectual enforcement, but these are unlikely to be
the main dangers for most of us in the C of E.
Our
creeds are an attempt (in response to errors of their days) to state some of
the most fundamental Christian doctrines. The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene
Creed continue to provide a basis for broad Christian unity. We might want to
add something about grace and salvation, the cross, the Scriptures or ethics, since
these have been matters of great controversy since the early centuries when our
creeds were agreed.
But
I think we (church, army, government, individuals) can all be clear that we
need a certain amount health-giving doctrine. We cannot avoid beliefs. The
question is where we will get them from and how they will guide us. The church goes
back to the Bible, the Word of God written, aided by her traditions and reason,
as she seeks doctrines which will serve her common life afresh in this generation.
The Revd Marc Lloyd
Standing on Downing Street, the newly electing PM has promised us "a government unburdened by doctrine."
Charitably, he means he will be pragmatic and not doctrinaire or ideological.
However, a government entirely without doctrine is neither possible nor desirable.
We cannot imagine that even if his Manifesto was a little thin, Sir Keir will really approach every issue entirely without beliefs and seek to work out what works. What works for whom? To achieve what? We are back to doctrine.
The British Army would tell him that you need your doctrine worked out, understood, shared, applied and open to revision. It is no good turning up in a battle and launching a three year study with options for how the enemy might be defeated.
Even if Sir Keir has a very broad and ill defined aim such as the flourishing of the British nation, he will still need doctrines about what constitutes the good life, who shares in the British nation, and how advancement for many or all might be achieved.
We do not want a government burdened by false doctrine, but served by true, good and healthy doctrines, which are open to reformation if there are new arguments or evidence, and which may be adapted to changing circumstances.
Sir Keir also offered actions not words. In a speech. And it would be petty to quibble that words are actions. But let us hope that what Keir does is perhaps a bit better thought through than what he says, or tells us he believes.
I have sometimes been surprised that people more learned and cleverer than me read some Bible texts so differently from the way I do.
Our assumptions or presuppositions make a big difference.
A huge question is whether we are inclined to read a text in its canonical context (that is, as Holy Scripture) and whether we assume it is in harmony with the rest of the Bible and the Christian tradition of not. If this is the Word of God, we should look for unity in it, whilst acknowledging its rich variety.
It is obvious that no two texts are exactly the same. If they were there might be little point in having them both. Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, John and Mark all have distinctive things to say in their different voices.
But do we assume that Paul got Jesus wrong?
That Peter and Paul couldn't agree?
That Paul and James had a different gospel?
Or that John contradicts Mark?
And that is before we try to bring Old and New Testaments together.
In my experience, biblical scholars are sometimes especially prone to make a difference into a contradiction unnecessarily. But is a reasonable harmonisation possible? If so, why not embrace it?
A difference of emphasis need not be a repudiation of substance.
Someone obviously thought that these texts could be read coherently together as they collected them up.
The great tradition knew about the law of non-contradiction and has affirmed all these texts as infallible. The differences are not a new discovery and were not thought an insurmountable problem or a barrier to affirming all these texts as true.
Augustine and Aquinas may have erred in many ways, but we should take their sense that the Bible's many voices constitute the voice of God to us seriously. Our Anglican formularies commit us to such a view. The human Scriptures are the Word of God to us - and God does not contradict himself.
Each bible text enriches our understanding. It qualifies but it does not cross out the other texts.
In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul has some pretty strong things to say
about his accountability to God alone: I do not care if I am judged by you or
by any other human court. Let us wait for God’s judgement.
This could be a disastrous text if we applied a particular spin
on it in a simplistic way.
As always, we must read the text in context and alongside other
texts. The text is “true” and has an important and useful meaning, but we must
not read it in a particular way and then totalise or absolutize its meaning and
apply it to other contexts unreflectively. We must always say, “this Bible text
is obviously correct and relevant to us (we know that: it is the Word of God),
but in what sense is what it says true for us and what does it mean in
our context?”
Any text can be used or abused. And it isn’t hard to see how
this text could be license for the most unaccountable maverick self-indulgent
and frankly dangerous off the rails ministry practices – even potentially for illegality.
One might say Paul was an Apostle. Quite right. He was
uniquely called and authorised by Christ compared to ministers today. But even
this doesn’t “solve” the issue as we know that Paul held Peter publicly
accountable for his conduct. Even the Apostles did not, or should not, act as
they please and say, “O, God alone can judge me: I am the Authorised Ambassador
of Christ, don’t you know!” The Apostles were not perfect and infallible and
they knew it. They were open to learning from others.
So if there are some things the Bible text does not mean,
what does it mean?
The broad thrust in context is clear, true and useful, I
think.
Christian leaders (and indeed all believers) are ultimately
responsible to God alone. God is the ultimate judge. It is vanishingly
unlikely, but it is possible that God will be true and every man a liar and
that it will be you against the world. If this seems to be the case, it should
give you serious cause, but it might just feel as if all your circle think you
are mad. You should still do the right thing. Though of course your conscience might
need educating.
We can see the particular relevance of saying all this in 1
Corinthians 4 if there is a temptation for charismatic leaders to win a
following for themselves by their worldly wisdom, learned rhetoric or supposed
power. In the context of division and factions with groups seeking to attach
themselves to impressive or influential patrons, what Paul says makes perfect
sense.
You are called by Christ. Responsible to Christ. Ministry is
not a popularity contest. We are not holding a referendum on the Word of God.
It obviously does not mean that leaders (or anyone else) should
fail to listen to others, or follow rules, or can never be held accountable to
any human standards or tribunals. Not least, Paul’s whole argument is a correction,
a rebuke, a warning, a call to repentance and reform, to conform ourselves to
the cross of Christ and the counter-cultural wisdom of God which has us on
display as the scum of the earth, called to humble self-sacrificial service,
not arrogantly grandstanding and asserting our independence or untouchability.
1 Corinthians 3 (page 1145)
A GROWN-UP CHRIST-CENTRED VISION
OF CHURCH, CHURCH LEADERS AND ALL THINGS
1:10-12 – response to
divisions and rivalries
The apparently weak and
foolish word of the cross is real wisdom and power for Christians (“the mature”)
– 2:6
Ø Don’t walk like merely human unspiritual, fleshly,
babies (vv1-3)
Ø See Christian ministers not as rival party leaders but
as co-workers with God (vv4-9a)
Ø See yourselves as God’s field, God’s building, God’s
Temple (vv9b-17)
Ø See yourself as a “fool” in need of God’s wisdom
(vv18-20)
Ø See all things as yours, and yourself as Christ’s
(vv21-23)
Our reading from 1
Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings.
But that’s not its
original context.
Paul is writing to the Christian
church at Corinth, which he recently founded.
And no bride in Corinth
would have chosen this passage for her wedding.
In context it is a telling
off, really.
The Corinthian Christians
have been behaving badly and Paul is showing them the more excellent way of
love:
He’s telling them to stop
fighting and competing and so on, and to love one another like real Christians.
God’s love should cause
them to love one another.
They need to repent and
change.
It seems fitting to speak
of love at a funeral.
Death gives us
perspective.
It shows us what really
matters.
And love is surely what we
rightly care about most, when we stop to think about it:
Those we have loved.
Those who have loved us.
You’ll be thinking of your
love for ********, and her love for you, and all that she loved.
Love is what matters most
and what lasts, what we long for and what we remember.
The Bible would tell us
that we are made from love and for love.
That we often fall short
of love.
But that God is love.
And that he goes on loving
us – even though we’re not always entirely lovely.
In fact, he loves us so
much that he gives his only Son, whom he loves, for us, that whosoever believes
in him might not perish but have eternal life.
Jesus has a love stronger
than death.
He is the risen Lord of
life and love.
His love has won and death
is vanquished.
And he offers his love to
us today – to all who will receive him in repentance and faith.
So our great reading about
love is not just for weddings or for funerals.
It raises our eyes to the
God who is love, who loves us.
And it calls us to depend
on that love today and every day, to receive the free gift of his love, knowing
that even the grave cannot overcome it.
May you know and love the
God who is love, and may that love overflow to others, for Jesus’ sake.
Amen.
It is always worth remembering that men and woman are human beings. That’s probably most of most of the interesting and important stuff about them.
But men and women are obviously not identical nor interchangeable.
Differences between men and women might be influenced by
creation and / or the fall.
They might be a matter of nature and / or nurture, creation and / or
culture.
We ought to distinguish between narrative and normative,
description and prescription: is and ought.
There could be questions of principle and application. Or of
a rule and its situational expressions.
There could be exceptions.
Valid generalisations are valid, as generalisations. If we
concluded that (in general) men are physically stronger than women, that doesn’t
mean that Sally couldn’t box my ears.
1 Corinthians 2v6-end (page 1145)
TRUE SPIRITUAL WISDOM FROM GOD
“Nones”
Spirituality / Wisdom /
Power / Rule
In response to divisions
and rivalries in the church (1:10-17; 3:1-4)
Bold claims (e.g. v6, v16b)
The message of true wisdom
(the good news of the cross) Paul, the apostles and all faithful Christians
proclaim is…
… not the wisdom of this
age (v6)
… nor of the rulers of
this age (v6)
… secret / was hidden (v7)
… foreordained for our
glory (v7)
… not understood by the rulers
of this age (v8)
… inconceivable to human
beings, but revealed by God’s free gift of the Spirit in Christ (vv9-16)
So…
Ø Receive this wisdom (the work of the Spirit needed! -
vv10-15)
Ø Live according to this wisdom (without boasting, rivalry
and division etc. and…)
It’s hard to escape politics at the moment.
I’ve found myself wondering about left and right. What do those
categories mean? Are they useful?
Maybe we might compare the conservative (right?) and the
progressive (left?). Does the Christian faith line up with either?
Christians are, in a way, fundamentally conservative. They receive
creation as a gift to be preserved. We don’t make or define ourselves. What we
have we receive. We conform to the reality which the Creator confers on us.
Christianity is in a sense a Tradition to which we are to be loyal and which we
are to hand on.
But Christians also think we world has gone radically wrong.
They think change – a revolution – is needed. We are not for conserving this
world order as it is. We are for the lifting up of the humble poor and for the
over-turning of the tables of the money changers. Jesus has already brough in a
New Creation. There is a new power at work in the world, new life,
transformation. Our prayer is that earth might be more like heaven. We are
progressing to an end. There is an arc to history which ends with the Kingdom
come in all its fullness.
Christianity, then, is both profoundly conservative and
radically progressive.
1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 (page 1144)
THE CHRIST-CRUCIFIED REVOLUTION:
Not words of wisdom (1v17) but the word of the cross
(1v18)
Divisions and rivalries
(1:10-17)
§ The apparent weakness and foolishness of the cross to
those who are perishing, but its power and wisdom to those who are being saved
(1vv18-25) [1st person plural: we]
God’s
revolutionary cross-shaped wise and powerful purposes proved by:
(1) The recipients of the gospel who were mostly
unimpressive (1vv26-31) [2nd person plural: you]
(2) The preacher / preaching of the gospel which were
mostly unimpressive (2vv1-5) [1st person singular: I]
Ø Who / what will you boast / glory / rejoice / put your
faith in? (1v31; 2v5)
I know next to nothing about online feminism, Louise Perry
and Mary Harrington, but I found their wide-ranging discussion on The Maiden
Mother Matriarch podcast 84 ‘The Trouble with Modernity’
interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6qDj_YyVoc
We might say that modern people tend to be a
bit like ancient magicians. They think they can master the world by technology.
They do not welcome the world as it is with all its givens. They try to control
and tame it.
But birth and death alike are things that
happen to us. They are done to us and we must receive and endure them. We do
not do them.
This seems intolerable to the modern person. We
medicate our pain and eliminate it. We do not think that suffering is
compatible with human dignity. So we choose when and how to give birth, and
increasingly in the modern West we choose not to. And we say we must choose
when and how to die, and be assisted if our suffering is too great.
(All this got me thinking about the cross too:
voluntarily chosen suffering which is both a death and a birth).
Perhaps this is a fundamental difference
between left and right, progressive and conservatives. Do we think there are
natural givens which we must accept, or is everything (life, death and the in-between)
open to revolution? Do we receive the world on its own terms, or do we use it
aggressively, seeking to master, control, change and tame it for our own ends?
From
The Rectory
At
the Warbleton and District History Group in June, we had an fascinating talk on
the life and family of Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), and his home, Batemans, Nr.
Burwash. Despite a full hour, there wasn’t much chance to talk about his writing,
so I thought I’d say something here about his most famous poem, which has also
been voted the nation’s favourite, If. You know: “If you can keep your
head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you… / If
you can fill the unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds’ worth of distance
run, / Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, / And—which is
more—you’ll be a Man, my son!” Refresh your memory online e.g. at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
Leave
aside for a moment the hot topics of masculinity, toxic or healthy, and think
about the poem as a vision of human flourishing. There is certainly much to
admire: a calm level-headedness, trust, waiting, goodness, thinking, truth,
resilience, perseverance, diligence, industry.
But
I can’t help thinking that the whole thing is impossibly Stoical and far too
buttoned up. To contemporary ears, the poem sounds decidedly repressed. Kipling
certainly reflects Christian virtues such as turning the other cheek and doing
to others as you would have them do to you. But I think the Bible would be
rather more realistic about Triumph and Disaster. They’re not the same and life
often hurts – sometimes terribly. There are times to rejoice and times to
mourn. Many of the Bible writers find themselves lamenting and crying out to
God. They don’t just sail serenely on and pick themselves up for another throw
of the dice.
If
holds
out a vision, but it gives us little help as to how that might be achieved.
Frankly, I find it impossible and – as I say – not wholly desirable.
The
biblical book of Proverbs is advice from a father to a son. He is warned to
avoid the adulterous woman, Lady Folly. With all her promises and supposed
charm, she seeks to lure him to unfaithfulness which will be his ruin. Instead he
is to marry Lady Wisdom. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the LORD is the
beginning of wisdom. God seems entirely lacking from Kipling’s poem, but of
course knowing God as our loving heavenly Father makes all the difference to how
we think and live. Although this is a hard truth to grasp, Christians believe
that God is on the throne of the universe and all things (triumph or disaster) come
to us from his loving hand. Life is sometimes horrific and horrible. But Christians
believe that we can build our lives on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, who is
an immovable foundation and shelter, through all the storms and “chances” of life.
The cross shows us that God loves to use even the worst evil for good. God
exalts the humble and lifts up the broken hearted. When all seems death and despair,
there is resurrection hope.
Jesus
said as he faced his own death, that it is possible to trust in God with an untroubled
heart, even if you are betrayed and facing death, or bereavement. As all Jesus’
disciples’ hopes are dashed, their dreams in tatters, Jesus says that they can
have a peace and a joy, even, which the unbelieving world cannot give,
understand, or take away. Christians are not promised an easy, charmed life
this side of Glory, but they can have the kind of secret inner security to
which Kipling encourages us to aspire. They key is not our own fortitude, but
that Jesus holds us fast.
Elements
of Kipling’s heroic vision need to be combined with a sense of our humble dependence:
our weakness, our finitude and, frankly, our many and frequent failures – some of
them deliberate. The Bible’s message to us is more than: Man Up! There is grace
and forgiveness in The Man Jesus Christ, who alone had a perfect trust in God.
Life will sometimes buffet and batter us. But we have a Saviour who has gone
before us and who can bring us through. We won’t always sail on through life placidly
unaffected. But we need not be anxious. Rather than pressure to live up to an
impossible standard, God invited us to cast our worries on him, knowing that he
cares for us.
The Revd Marc Lloyd
Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West
Andrew Wilson
Crossway, 2023 (ISBN:
9781433580536 hb, 360pp)
I have really loved this
book. It is an education from poetry to economics. If you are at all interested
in history or ideas or understanding yourself and your world, I couldn’t recommend
it highly enough.
This is a fascinating and
compelling account of something of our WEIRDER (Western, Educated,
Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic) age, its origins
and how Christians might respond.
The cover depicts Wilson ten
object related to 1776:
The quill pen
Thomas Pain’s, Common
Sense
A rose (to represent Romanticism)
The cylinder from James
Watt’s steam engine
Cook’s ship, HMS
Resolution
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire
Gear from the Watt steam
engine
Flywheel from the Watt
steam engine
A Revolutionary War-era
flintlock pistol
Wilson argues that grace,
freedom and truth provide a pathos (how we feel), ethos (how we act) and logos
(how we think) which speak especially powerfully to the spirt of our age.
Some jottings follow:
The American Declaration
of Independence’s self-evident truths haven’t seemed obvious to most people.
Andrew Wilson writes: “The Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov expressed the
non sequitur at the heart of Western civilization with a deliciously sarcastic
aphorism: “Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another.” Yuval
Noah Harari says: “There are no such things as rights in biology.” Expressed in
biological terms, the Declaration might have said: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain
mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of
pleasure.” (p131)
* * *
At the age of 30, Richard
Trevithick was the first to build a working locomotive. Without warning and to
widespread astonishment, he rode his Puffing Devil up Camborne Hill on
Christmas Eve 1801. However, when the drivers went off to the pub for the evening,
leaving the engine running unattended in a shed, everything burnt down.
Trevithick started work on
a tunnel under the Thames which he never finished and was declared bankrupt. He
went to South America to make his fortune in mining but got caught up in the
fight for independence, designing a new gun for the army. He fled from the
Spanish in Peru across the jungle, narrowly escaping being eaten by a crocodile
and ended up in Colombia, where he bumped in to Robert Stevenson who leant him
£50 for the journey home.
John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson
was so obsessed with iron that he had an iron coffin made for himself and kept
it in his office. Unfortunately, when he died the coffin was found to be too
small for his body and then too large for his grave. He was buried four times
in total, most recently in 1928.
The making of British
manufacturing was made by metals, mechanization, management, marketing and
money. (pp173f)
The HR department at
Jedediah Strutt (b. 1726)'s factory was kept busy. Offences included riding on each
other’s backs, throwing tea on Josh Bridworth, calling thro' window to some
soldiers, putting Josh Hayne's dog in a bucket of hot water, throwing water on
Ann Gregory very frequently. (p177)
* * *
The English Puritan John Owen published over eight
million words. The Banner of Truth edition of his works is 16 volumes. Yet Carl
Trueman points out the remarkable fact that he never mentions the loss of his
wife and all eleven of his children. (p190)
* * *
The
difficulty of defining Romanticism and an eight-word sketch:
Inwardness
Infinity
Imagination
Individuality
Inspiration
Intensity
Innocence
Ineffability
(p189f)
William Blake, “Britain’s
greatest Romantic genius” – ‘I went to the Garden of Love’ poem (p205) – Chapel,
“Thou shalt not” writ over the door – etc. (p206)
Rousseau – “the greatest
autobiography since Augustine (Confessions), the most important work on education
since Plato (Emile)… the most influential piece of political thought of his
generation (The Social Contract), and the eighteenth century’s bestselling
novel (Julie).” (p207)
Rousseau’s talent for
opening lines – footnote p207
Inwardness – Truthfulness,
sincerity, authenticity (p208) – free to follow your heart
Robert Bellah, “expressive
individualism”; Philip Rieff, “triumph of the therapeutic”; Charles Taylor, “age
of authenticity” (p209)
Romanticism + Marx, Nietzsche,
Darwin, Freud
Donna Tart, The Goldfinch
– be yourself / follow your heart – “What if one happens to be possessed of a
heart that can’t be trusted?” and for some reason leads you towards ruin, self-immolation,
disaster etc. – See Wilson, p211
* * *
The transformation of
health, wealth and prosperity – the great escape / the great divergence / the
great enrichment / the European miracle (p214)
A thousand years of living
standards pretty constant for most people.
GDP per person per year roughly
$550 for Shakespeare and King David
The Malthusian Trap was first
described in 1798, just as people were beginning to escape from it for the
first time (p214)
“Today, human beings
consume around seventy times more goods and services than we did two centuries
ago – an increase… of 7,000 percent – while world population has only increased
by a factor of seven….. the average person today … has a standard of living
around ten times higher than in 1776. If the Pilgrim Fathers lives on $2 a day
in today’s terms, and the average person in the eighteenth century lived on $3
a day, the average person now lives on more like $30. In richer countries, it is
closer to $100.” (p214)
Graphs – p215f – income per
person, life expectancy, social development index (energy capacity,
organisation, IT, capacity to make war – a proxy for the sophistication of a
society – Ian Morris)
Adam Smith – kidnapped by
a gypsy woman? (p218) – terribly absent minded etc. – Samuel Johnson called him
“a most disagreeable fellow” who was “as dull a dog as he had ever met” (p218)
“led by an invisible hand”
(p219)
The productivity of labour
and Gross Domestic Product (p219f)
Reasons for this economic explosion:
institutional, socioeconomic, ideological and cultural, geographical (pp220ff)
Secure property, law,
contracts, representative government, religious pluralism etc. p221f
Acemoglu and Robinson, Why
Nations Fail
Ferguson, Civilization
William Cobbett, Britain as “Old Corruption”
(p223)
Gregory Clark: The IMF
& World Bank might have rated Britain better in the medieval period than
today (p223f)
GREED – Guns, Resource
Extraction, Enslavement, Death (p224)
Thomas Thistlewood – “the
worst man in the world” (p226)
Monopolies and slavery as
counterproductive (p227)
A modern breakfast &
luxury goods (p227)
An industrious revolution?
(p227)
Consumer culture &
cotton (p228)
The “lords of the loom”
(industrial revolution, cotton etc.) depended on “the lords of the lash”
(slavery, colonialism) (p228)
The effects of the black
death – 1/3 of population died, wages increase, peasantry empowered, feudalism destabilised,
agricultural improvements incentivised (p228, fn)
Bejamin Franklin as a most
modern person – pragmatic, cosmopolitan, sense of humour, his career &
abilities, inventions, wit etc. – diligent, frugal, prosperous, normal, can-do,
upwardly mobile, middle class, democratic, optimistic, Protestant-lite (p229)
A culture of growth,
curiosities, novelty, improvement (p230f) – discovery, possibility
“virtually all cultures
put a higher value on tried and tested ancestral wisdom than on newfangled, unproven
contemporary innovation” (p231)
Christianity –
individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, non-conformist, analytical (p231)
– town folk (p232)
Rejection of Jesuit astronomy
in China (fn, p231)
A. N. Whitehead on the
importance of “the rationality of God” and his providence etc. for science
(p232)
Yuval Noah Harai increases
in knowledge leading to “the discovery of ignorance” – there is so much you don’t
know, you are driven to investigate (p232f)
A divided church, a
heliocentric cosmos & America! (p233)
The reception / partial
rejection of Aristotle in this period (p233)
Books in Europe and China –
movable type printing, Protestantism, a relatively free press, literacy,
correspondence etc.
Cf. attituded to maths and
money in Shakespeare and Johnson (p234)
Competition, productive
fragmentation – independence and connection (p235)
Walter Scheidel – polycentrism
/ “competitive fragmentation of power” (p236) – competition, diversity,
innovation, options
Maps not chaps (p238)
The Eurasian steppe and
pastoral nomads (p238f)
Separation of church and
state but also Christianity / language etc. in common (p239) – political fragmentation
and cultural connection in Europe (p240)
The republic of letters –
a market of ideas (p239)
I’ve been in my job serving three small rural churches for thirteen years. The population of the benefice is c. 1700.
I can’t say revival has broken out. But
by God’s grace the churches have held on while pubs shut down around us!
Sometimes my four kids have been the
only young people in church.
Last week the official statistics
showed that we had 11 under 16s at one service. And one of my children had been
to the earlier service. And some regulars were missing.
Of course things are still small and
fragile but we’re enormously grateful for this little uptick / mind-blowing %
growth.
For quite some time, 25% or more of the Church of England's
congregations have no children attending regularly. On
average, nine children attended each service across all Church of England
churches in 2016. And the pandemic hit some places hard. Habits of church going
were hard for some people to recover.
The Church of England has published
‘Youth and Children Growth research - Research amongst churches which have
grown in their under 16 Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) 2014-2019 - Sample: 217
churches - Jan-April 2022.
The Vicar gets a lot of credit (p11)!
They also conclude that that “growth resulted from an active, intentional
choice, as opposed to something that happened organically.” (p12). 88% of
growing churches agreed that there had been an active choice to engage more in
youth, children and families work in your church in the past five years. Well,
okay, I’m not sure how much that really tells us. Only 11% said the growth had
been organic growth over time (not a result of specific changes). (2% of
churches didn’t know). (p12) People are likely to credit their actions with working
after the fact, aren’t they?
“When asking churches which, if any,
changes have taken place within your church community, the top answer was
Increased emphasis in working with families (57%), followed by changes in
church style or programme (51%), new church leadership (50%), Increased
investment by adults in the wider church (43%) and employing a youth,
children’s or families worker (42%). However, when asked about how important
that decision was in contributing to the growth of youth and children’s
attendance in your church, 82% of those that had employed a youth, children’s
or families worker rated it as’ very important’ in contributing to the growth
of youth and children’s attendance in your church, with 74% rating increased
emphasis in working with families as very important and 64% rating both changes
in church style or programme and increased investment by adults in the wider
church as very important.” (p13)
We’ve worked really quite hard at
church growth over the years. We did a diocesan course about it. We’ve worked
on our welcome. We’ve used a special prayer for church growth and we often pray
about it at our monthly benefice prayer meeting. We’ve had two benefice
missions with outside teams, and all sorts of one off and regular events,
courses, holiday clubs, initiatives and Mission Action Plans – some of them
multiple times. We did Messy Church in the village hall on a Sunday at 4pm for
a few years. We have had a youth group. Toddlers is sometimes at capacity. I
could go on, but I can’t say we have any single silver bullet.
Inevitably some people move away and
some people become too ill to come to church any longer. So you need to grow to
stand still. We have seen a few new people at all three churches in recent
times. Mostly they have just turned up, been welcomed and kept coming back.
We can’t see people’s hearts or
predict the long term, but it’s humbling to think that we can’t manage or
control church growth. None of this is to say that we shouldn’t plan nor do X
or Y, but the Spirit moves wherever He pleases, sometimes through our careful
organisation, maybe sometimes despite it.
Perhaps that also means we should try
not to be too anxious or obsessed about numbers. Of course we want as many
people as possible to know, love and follow Jesus. But numbers aren’t
everything. Our job is faithfulness. Naturally we long to be fruitful. But fruit
is God’s job.
It turns out that the Bible is right.
If there is to be any growth, God gives the growth. And we give thanks for all
those who have planted and watered. Only eternity will reveal what fruit was
good and lasting. Much growth might for the moment be unseen or elsewhere.
In the meantime, I’m immensely
grateful, in particular, for the flexibility and perseverance of our children’s
Sunday Club leaders. Well done to them for preparing each week when there might
be no customers and coping if the size of the group doubles!
1 CORINTHIANS 1:1-9 (page 1145)
CALLED TO LIVE IN CORINTH AND IN CHRIST
Background:
marclloyd.blogspot.com/2024/05/1-corinthians-one-page-a4-introduction.html
Introduction: The Word of
God to 1st Century Corinth & 21st Century Sussex
Ancient letters: FROM… TO…
GREETINGS / thanksgiving
(1) God’s call to Paul
(v1) – an apostle
(2) God’s call to the
church in Corinth (v2) – holy
Ø Be holy in Corinth and in Christ (v2)
Ø Be thankful in Christ’s rich grace (vv3-6)
Ø Be confident in Christ’s keeping power (vv7-9)
… and now for some of your
issues! (v10ff)…
Posts
All Comments
