Thursday, June 24, 2021

Egypt as death-land

 Speaking on Exodus 15 at the Evangelical Ministry Assembly (24/6/21) Nigel Styles suggests that in the Bible Egypt is characteristically thought of as death-land. 

It is fitting that modern museums' Egypt sections are devoted to embalming. 

When Joseph is sold into slavery, the traders are selling funeral supplies (Genesis 37:25). 

In the Bible one often goes down to Egypt, rather as if it were Sheol, the place of the dead. 

The waters of the Nile and the Red Sea are the waters of death - and of salvation (Exodus 1:22 and chapter 2; Exodus 14-15). 

Styles argues that the message of Exodus, and indeed of the Pentateuch, might be summed up as deliverance from death for dwelling with God.  

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Salvation through the waters (Acts 27)

One way of thinking about the story of the Bible is as salvation through the waters.

Salvation through the waters.

 

You may remember that in the beginning, in Genesis 1, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and God brought order to the creation.

God rules and separates the waters, creating the habitable world.

God is effortlessly in control and provides for human beings.  

 

In the Flood, the waters bring judgement, but Noah and his family are saved through the waters.

Christians have often thought of the church as a new ark: God’s provision of the place of safety from the waters of judgement, where God’s people can be kept safe.

Again, if we believe and obey God and enter the ark of the church, we will be saved.

And so it is in our chapter that the soldiers and sailors are saved by obeying Paul and sticking with him.

Staying with Paul and the boat means salvation.

 

In the midst of the storm, Paul gives the others the good advice to eat something.

But I wonder if we’re meant to think of Jesus taking bread and giving thanks and breaking it and eating.

Here’s the Feeding of the 5000.

Or the risen Jesus meeting with the disciples on the Emmaus Road and recognised by them as he breaks bread.

Or the Lord’s Supper, celebrating God’s salvation.

God will feed his people and bring them safe to glory.

 

In the Old Testament, the foundation story of the people of God is the Exodus is salvation through the waters.

The Lord’s Supper was a Passover Meal that looked back to that deliverance.

Maybe there are some other hints of Passover here:

Eating on the 14th Day.

Staying in the house or the boat.

Getting rid of the grain / no food left over.

After the Passover, in the Exodus, God’s people are saved through the waters of the Red Sea and again God’s enemies are judged and experienced a watery grave.

 (cf. Paul and Jonah) 

 

The Jews weren’t generally great sea-farers.

To them the seas represented chaos and danger, threat and death.

They thought of it as monstrous.  

The seas and the fishes could represent the pagan nations.

 

Jesus, of course, was often in a boat.

He taught on the Sea of Galilee.

He calmed the storm.

He walked on the waters.

He ruled over creation and chaos.

He saved from danger.

 

In the Old Testament, the typical leader was a shepherd.

But in the New Testament a number of the apostles are fishermen.

Jesus calls them to be fishers of people.

They are to take the gospel to the nations.

 

Paul is a great sea traveller.

He is the Apostle to the Gentile nations.

 

John the Baptist had spoken of salvation through the waters.

God’s people needed a new Exodus, they needed to be made clean.

 

And Jesus spoke of his death as a baptism he must undergo.

Judgement would flood over him and drown him.

He would die and rise that his people might live and be saved.

Salvation through the waters.  

 

And Jesus said his disciples would face a similar baptism.

They too would suffer and enter into the promised glory of the Kingdom.  

 

We’ve said before that Paul is like Jesus.

Both are tried but are innocent.

For much of Luke’s gospel, Jesus was on a great journey to Jerusalem.

And Paul is on this great journey to Rome.

In the final chapters of Luke and Acts we find a favourable Centurion.  

This storm and shipwreck may be Paul’s passion narrative, Paul’s suffering and cross – followed by a kind of vindication, a resurrection.

 

And in the end, the Bible tells us, in the New Creation, there will be no more sea:

no more danger, or threat, or chaos, or judgement, or death.

And no more Gentile nations because all who trust in Jesus will belong to the people of God.

 

So the message of the Bible is salvation through the waters.

Paul and Jonah (Acts 27)

What story is this?

A Jewish prophet heads west on ship.

There’s a storm.

The pagan sailors throw their cargo into the sea.

The prophet is central to the saving of the sailors.

He ends up in the water.

But then he is saved on the beach.

And the boat’s crew and many pagans are saved.

 

What Old Testament story is that?

 

Jonah!

But it’s Paul’s story too, isn’t it?

 

Paul is a new and better Jonah.

In some ways he’s an anti-Jonah.

Jonah was fleeing from God’s purposes; Paul was obeying them.

Jonah was running away; Paul was under arrest.

Jonah was reluctant but compelled; Paul was willing and compelled.

The sailors are saved by getting rid of Jonah but by sticking with Paul.

Jonah’s message was one of judgement; Paul’s is one of salvation.

But in both cases a great many pagans are saved as a result of their messages.

Both of them will bring the Word of God to a great pagan city.

 

So Paul is shown to be a true prophet.

God has spoken to him.

What he says comes true.

His word can be trusted.

Believe the word of God through Paul and you will be saved.  

Friday, June 18, 2021

Richard Woodman of Warbleton, Reformation Martyr (d. 22nd June 1557)


L. P. Hartley famously wrote: “The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there.”[1] We might feel that acutely when we think about Richard Woodman and the Reformation. It’s amazing to us that publicly disagreeing with the Rector of Warbleton can lead you to being burnt alive. And it’s hard for us to imagine how God and the Christian faith could matter so much to our society and that people would think it right to kill one another over the nature of Holy Communion. Woodman and his executioners agreed on so much.


They all claimed to worship the Triune God and believe the Bible. And yet they thought the points of disagreement worth killing and dying for. It’s inconceivable to us, really. But I think these things do matter and are worth remembering.

 

Woodman was probably born in Buxted in East Sussex in 1524. He became a farmer and iron-master, employing one hundred men, living in the parish of Warbleton in a meadow near the church, where he was church warden.

 

Woodman had become convinced of the Reformed or Evangelical Protestant faith of the Reformation.

 

If we wanted to pick one event as sparking The Reformation, it would be Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg on 31st October 1517, seven years before Woodman was born.

 


Luther was an extremely devout monk, but he had become concerned for the salvation of his soul. The question of how sinners can be forgiven by a holy God was at the heart of the Reformation.  

 

We can sum up the Reformation teaching about salvation in five statements – in Latin five “solas”, five “alone” statements:

 

For Luther and his followers, salvation is:

(1) in Christ alone

(2) by grace alone – by God’s free gift

(3) through faith alone – received by trusting in Jesus

(4) to the glory of God alone

(5) according to Scripture alone.

 

In other words, they thought the whole system of the Medieval church had gone wrong. Their protest wasn’t just about a few corrupt priests. They rejected the system of indulgences in which time off purgatory could be bought by priests saying mass for the dead. They thought the idea that good works could build up merit was wrong. We are put right with God by Jesus’ death in our place on the cross, not by the prayers of the saints or the sacrifice of the Mass. You don’t need the priest as a go between with God, you need to put your trust in Jesus.

And we know this from the Word of God, not because the Pope says so, or because of the tradition of the Church.

 

Those “solas” or “alone”s are really important because everyone believed in grace, and faith, and Jesus, and the Bible but the Reformers thought that by adding good works, and merit, and man-made traditions, the Catholic church had undermined the grace of God and the finished work of Christ.

 

The Reformation gained influence in England in the time of Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) and was thoroughgoing during the reign of his son Edward VI (r. 1547-1553).

 

And Woodman had obviously become passionately committed to many of these Scriptural truths.  

 

Our knowledge of him comes from John Foxe’s best-selling, Acts and Monuments of these latter and perilous days, sometimes known as The “Book of Martyrs”, which he wrote from 1563-1583, and which you can read online[2]. It claims to preserve Woodman’s records of his various arrests, release, escapes, trials and a letter he wrote.

 


Woodman’s troubles began during the reign of the Catholic queen, Bloody Queen Mary (r. 1553 1558), when he was arrested in the parish church at Warbleton for interrupting the Rector’s sermon and criticizing him for turning “head to tail” and preaching the exact opposite “clean contrary” to what he had previously preached. Like many, the Rector had adapted himself to the times. During the highly Protestant reign of Edward VI, he had married but after Mary came to the throne in 1553, he conformed to the Roman Catholic religion again.

 

Woodman’s story is often a dramatic one. He lived in the woods near his house for six or seven weeks with his Bible and ink and “other necessities”, so as to avoid arrest. He escaped to Flanders and from there to France but he secretly returned home. He was at last betrayed by his brother, whom he’d fallen out with over money.

 

On the day of his final arrest, he hid in the eaves of house while the authorities searched it for him, but thinking he was about to be discovered, in desperation jumping from his house without shoes on, he says, he stepped upon a sharp cinder with one foot, in a great mirey hole, and fell down withal, and was caught by Parker the Wild!

 

The Dictionary of National Biography recounts the tradition that Woodman was detained in the second story of the church tower at Warbleton, which, it says, bears some indications of having been used as a prison[3]

 

Woodman shows great courage and boldness at his various hearings (of which there were thirty-two in all) before an assortment of Bishops and others, including one unnamed fat priest, and they get into lengthy legal and theological arguments, and a certain amount of mutual abuse.

 

Though he can’t really understand Latin, Woodman shows better Bible-knowledge than some of his inquisitors who dismiss his arguments as “Bible babble, Bible babble”! He’s accused of heresy and of preaching, marrying and baptising without being a priest, which he denies.

 

Woodman is committed to the authority of Scripture and says he’s willing to be corrected by it, but he’s not persuaded by some of the traditions of the church or willing simply to accept the authority of his betters, much to their annoyance. They discuss familiar Reformation disputes: the marriage and learning of the clergy and the number of sacraments. There are detailed discussions about baptism, original sin and the freedom of the will. The Bishop of Chichester says that “We offer up in the blessed Sacrament of the Altar the body of Christ, to pacify the wrath of God the Father”. But Woodman says we are sanctified by the once for all offering of Christ on the cross.

 

Woodman was eventually condemned, he says, “for God’s everlasting truth” because he would not believe that there remained neither bread nor wine after the words of consecration at Communion and because he claimed that the body of Christ was only received by the faithful. 

 

This can seem pretty technical and obscure stuff to us, but the Reformed thought we risked idolatry if we said the bread and wine of Holy Communion become Jesus’ body and blood. And these arguments get us into how we can know God and be saved. Is it by obeying the Pope or believing the Bible? And is it through trusting Jesus or receiving the merit of the church and the saints?

 

After his trial, Woodman says to his accusers: “I am no heretic, I take heaven and earth to witness: I defy all heretics: and if you condemn me, you will be damned, if you repent it not. But God give you grace to repent all if it be his will.”

 

Woodman wrote during his final imprisonment: “So I was carried to the Marshalsea again, where I am, and shall be as long as it shall please God: and I praise God most heartily, that ever he hath elected, and predestinated me to come to so high dignity, as to bear rebuke for his name’s sake: his name be praised therefore, for ever and ever. Amen.”

 

Foxe concludes: “And thus have you the Examinations of this blessed Woodman, or rather Goodman: wherein may appear as well the great grace and wisdom of God in that man, as also the gross ignorance and barbarous cruelty of his adversaries…”

 


On 22 June 1557, along with nine others, Woodman was burnt at the stake in Lewes, in front of the Star Inn, where the Town Hall is today. This was the largest number of people burnt in England at one time and was intended to serve as a warning to others.

 


The Bible text on the Woodman memorial in the churchyard at Warbleton is John 16v2:

Jesus said to his disciples: “They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.”

 

Some words from Hebrews chapter 11:

 

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

 

 

 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

* * *

 

Foxe’s Acts and Monuments / Book of Martyrs: https://www.dhi.ac.uk/foxe/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Woodman_(martyr)

 

https://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/the-martyrdom-of-richard-woodman

 

https://www.sussexmartyrs.co.uk/stories-of-the-martyrs/warbleton

 

Many good studies of the Reformation exist:

 

Michael Reeves on the English Reformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB-Z2_va4wo

 

Michael Reeves, The Unquenchable Flame: Discovering The Heart Of The Reformation

 

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation

 

A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation

 

Alec Ryrie, The English Reformation: A Very Brief History (Very Brief Histories)

 



[1] The opening line of the novel, The Go-Between (Hamish Hamilton, 1953)

[2] In the 1583 edition, the material about Woodman is in Book 12 thematic section 12, pp2007 / 1983ff https://www.dhi.ac.uk/foxe/index.php?realm=text&gototype=&edition=1583&pageid=2007

 

Thursday, June 17, 2021

Biblioloatry?

 Christians are sometimes worried there is a danger of bibliolatry, of worshiping the Bible or of confusing God with his written Word. However, Tyndale was bold to say: "God is nothing but his laws and promises, that is to say, that which he bids thee to do, and that which he bids thee believe and hope. God is but his word, as Christ saith... my words are spirit and life." (Obedience of a Christian). Commenting on this, Peter Jensen says that for practical purposes to believe and obey the Bible is to believe and obey God, whose word it is: "our whole relationship with God via promise and command is shaped by these words. All true worship is response to the word." Global Anglican 135/1 (2021) p1. In Calvin's words, "We enjoy Christ only as we embrace Christ clad in his promises." (Institutes 2.9.3)

Monday, June 14, 2021

The Sun (Parish Magazine Item for July)

 

From The Rectory

 

Over recent weeks we have become reacquainted with that strange firey-yellow ball in the sky, which we might have been forgiven for forgetting. As I write it’s a glorious sunny day and I’ve been able to keep my sunburn more than adequately topped up of late, despite the silly hat and the factor 50. We even experienced that rarest of events: a hot bank holiday.

 

Sunshine is an amazing free gift, available to us all, and one for which we often fail to be thankful.

 

It’s possible to understand something of why some cultures have worshiped the sun, I think, though the Bible puts it firmly in its place as something God has made and rules. The Bible tells us that the creation displays the invisible qualities of its Creator: his eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:16). And in particular it waxes lyrical about the heavens and skies, and especially the sun:

         

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands….
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
    like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
    and makes its circuit to the other;
    nothing is deprived of its warmth.        (Psalm 19) 

 

If we reflect on sun, it can shed light on its Maker and our relationship to him. The Psalmist can also say: “The LORD God is a sun and a shield;” (84:2).

 

The sun is unimaginably great and we are relatively small and insignificant. The vastness and power of the sun are hard for us to conceive. It contains 99.7% of the total mass of our solar system and 1.3 million earths could fit inside it. We literally revolve around it! How much more, then, the One who created and sustains the sun, and countless other stars and planets.

 

At night we can’t see the sun and in Britain the clouds very often hide it. But of course it’s always there, as is God. And we always depend on the sun. Without its heat and light, there could be no life on earth. And, whether we realise it or not, we are equally dependant on God who gives light and life to all people (cf. John 1:1-5).

 

The prophet Malachi anticipates the judgement of God on wickedness, but he also says that for God’s people who revere his name, “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.” (4:2). This final chapter of our Old Testaments has often been taken as a prophecy of Jesus the Messiah, not least in the Christmas carol, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing:

 

Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Risen with healing in His wings;

 

Maybe next time we enjoy the sunshine, we might pause to remember the Light of the World who has risen from the grave. May his light dawn afresh in our hearts and scatter our darkness.

 

For further reflections biblical reflections on the sun, the stars and many other aspects of creation, I’d recommend Andrew Wilson’s book, God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World (Zondervan, 2021), on which I’ve drawn above.

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd

Sunday, June 13, 2021

Unmoved Mover and Proof of God?

I guess many of us will be vaguely aware of talk of God as Unmoved Mover or Uncaused Cause and maybe even of this as an argument for the existence of God: if stuff exists or changes, it must have a great Maker or one who affects it. 

Edward Feser puts forward what he calls an Aristotelian Proof for the existence of God both more informally and then more formally (in 50 points). This argument is that real change exists. It is the actualization of potential. And this is not possible unless there is something that can actualize without itself being actualized, a purely actual actualizer (Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Ignatius Press, 2017, p12). 

One thing that strikes me about this is that he argues not just for some great powerful creator. He argues that a purely actual cause of the existence of things which is immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, fully good, omnipotent, intelligent and omniscient is required (p37). In other words, the God of classical theism must exist. 

And this is only one of his five proofs. He also offers:

(2)  a neo-Platonic (composition / parts require One simple cause) 

(3) Augustinian (universals must exist in the mind of God)

(4) Thomistic (nothing could exist unless there exists a being whose essence is existence) and 

(5) rationalistic proofs (the principle of sufficient reason requires a necessary being the existence of which must be explained by its own nature). 

Feser argues that none of the objections to these arguments succeeds "and indeed that the most common objections are staggeringly feeble and overrated."

He says: "This is a confident claim, I realize. But natural theology, historically, was a confident discipline. A long line of thinkers from the beginnings of Western thought down to the present day - Aristotelians, Neo-Platonists, Thomists and other Scholastics, early modern rationalists, and philosophers of some other schools too, whether pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, or philosophical theists - have affirmed that God's existence can be rationally demonstrated by purely philosophical arguments. The aim of this book is to show that they were right, that what long was the mainstream position in Western thought ought to be the mainstream position again." (p15)

Saturday, June 12, 2021

Acts 25-26 jokes and patterns

Audio of sermon here but here are some jottings:

Perhaps Paul tells a kind of joke in Acts 26v19. He says to King Agrippa: “I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.” “So, your majesty, we could all agree to get rid of these chains, couldn’t we? But apart from that one little detail, your majesty, be like me!”

 Paul sometimes calls himself a prisoner of the Lord and a slave of Jesus Christ. That’s the hidden reality behind what’s really going on here.

Role reversals and hidden meanings can be the stuff of comedy. And maybe there’s something of that here as Paul begins to cross examine the judge, King Agrippa. V27: “King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do.” Paul is on trial, but in a way Agrippa is on trial here too, isn’t he? His thoughts and motives begin to be exposed and it all becomes too much for him and he walks out. Maybe God’s word will ask us some searching questions too. Perhaps it will convict us.

 The King perhaps thinks its laughable that in so short a time Paul should persuade him to become a Christian, but Paul defends faith in Jesus as perfectly reasonable. He says, for example, in v8, “Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?”

There’s also some word play in our chapter. In v24, Festus says to Paul, “you’ve gone crazy, you’re out of you mind to believe in Jesus and the resurrection.” “Your great learning has driven you insane.” It’s a kind of mania. And Paul defends himself: he’s not insane: what he’s saying is true and reasonable and a matter of common knowledge and public record and capable of investigation. Jesus’ ministry is well known and wasn’t done in a corner.

Paul has actually already used that mania, insane word earlier in his defence. In v11, he talked about his obsession, his rage, his mania, in going to foreign cities to persecute the Christians. Before Paul ever became a Missionary seeking to make Christians, he was an anti-Christian counter-Missionary travelling around to destroy believers. Paul would say, “I was out of my mind, but Jesus has brought he to my sense.” “My craziness was trying to fight against Jesus, not my believing in him”.

Perhaps Luke wants us to raise a smile at the whole scene in these chapters. It’s described in chapter 25v23 as King Agrippa and his sister Bernice come in with great pomp and enter the audience room with the high ranking officers and leading men of the city.

But its all a bit silly, really, isn’t it? The Governor has already shown himself too weak to do the right thing and release Paul, although he knows there’s no case to answer. Paul’s innocence is stressed at the beginning and end of our reading And Paul has already appealed to Caesar.

Some commentators call this chapter a show trial. It’s a bit of an entertainment and a spectacle. But its not a real proper full trial at all. This is all a bit of a farce.

The point of this is that the Governor Festus wants to have something to write to the Emperor about Paul. He doesn’t want to look silly by sending Paul off to the Emperor saying, “Your Majesty, I’m sending you this innocent man because I’m incompetent and wanted to keep the locals happy and it all got a bit out of hand!”.

And for all his pomp, we have to remember that King Agrippa is very much in the grip of Rome. He gets to be called King because its convenient for the Emperor. Agrippa is King only as long as he’s useful to Nero. He doesn’t have the real power here.

If we’ve been reading Acts, we might remember another King Herod Agrippa, the father of the one we read about today. At the end of Acts chapter 12, we read about him in Caesarea wearing his royal robes and sat on his throne, but struck down, eaten by worms and killed because he failed to give praise to God, while the word of God continued to grow and spread. The latest King Herod Agrippa hasn’t obviously learnt the lessons of his father’s gruesome death.

And it might just be worth mentioning that there were rumours about Agrippa and the nature of his relationship with his sister, Bernice.

Paul seems pleased to be able to make his case to someone who knows about Jewish affairs, but Agrippa isn’t everything one might hope for in a judge, either in terms of power or, probably, in terms of personal morality. Paul, of course, looks to Jesus as the true Judge and King. It’s the high court of heaven that really matters to him. Despite his serious predicament, I expect Paul managed a smile at Festus and Agrippa.

So, Festus and Agrippa are trying to come up with something to write to the Emperor about Paul. But Paul certainly knows what to say about the charges against him and about his mission.

This hearing allows Paul to gain a hearing for the gospel. He makes the most of this opportunity not only to defend himself but to proclaim Jesus.

There’s a repeated word in chapter 26, which we could use to structure our consideration of what Paul says. In v6 he says, I stand before you on trial, or being judged, and in v22 he says I stand before you bearing witness, or testifying about Christ.

Paul’s trial is an opportunity for testimony.

 We could sum up his defence and message then in two points:

 (1)   V6: I stand before you on trial because of the hope of Israel and the promises of God which are fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus.

 And (2) v22: I stand before you to testify to the fulfilment of the Scriptures in Christ’s suffering, death, resurrection and proclaiming light to the nations.

Paul saw the light on the road to Damascus (v13) and Jesus has sent him to proclaim light to those in darkness (v18). He’s seen the Light and he shares the light.  V23: Jesus is proclaiming light to his own people and to the Gentiles.

Jesus is the Servant of the Lord from the book of Isaiah who would bring light to the nations, and Paul is joining in this ministry.

Paul is like one of the prophets of old, like Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, authorised and commissioned by God. This is really God’s message and mission, not Paul’s.

The theme of reversal is here again: Paul was blinded on the road to Damascus and then God opened his eyes. Paul was blind but now he sees. And now, v18, Jesus sends Paul to open the eyes of others.

Friday, June 11, 2021

Platonism(s) to Postmodernism

 Craig Carter draws on Lloyd Gerson's account of Platonisms broadly conceived (From Plato to Platonism), giving five characteristics of Platonism that he also sees as foundational for Christian Platonism which is rejected in modernity or post-modernity, which he views as a kind of hyper-modernism:

Platonisms ("Ur-Platonism") were: 

antimaterialsit

antinominalist

antimechanist

antiskepticist

and antirelativist. 

(Contemplating God with the Great Tradition, p290-294)

Steven J. Duby, God in Himself

 

Steven J. Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture (IVP Academic, 2019) 334pp

 

Many of the concerns of this book are methodological (what should theology proper be, what are its sources, methods and aims etc.). But this book is not just prolegomena. There is plenty of God, his revelation, the Christian tradition and indeed of Christ here, sometimes in mind-stretching and heart-warming ways. The learning and scope here are impressive. Sometimes the treatment is pretty technical and the footnotes sometimes risk taking over the body of the page, but no less worthwhile and interesting for that.

 

Chapters cover theology (God in himself) and the economy (God’s action and revelation), natural theology, the role of Christology and the incarnation in theology, theology and metaphysics and analogy in theology (similarity and difference between Creator and creation and in our language about God).

 

Duby argues that, by God’s gracious self-revelation and in limited ways, it is possible for pilgrim theologians this side of glory to know God in himself, not merely as he appears to us in the incarnation or in his other external works. Our knowledge of God is true if not complete.

 

Natural knowledge of God plays a positive role in this, as special revelation shows. It need not be seen as epistemological Pelagianism. It “provides traction for the reception of supernatural revelation, but its insufficiency and suppression by sinners underscores the need for it to be corrected and augmented by the gospel.” (p293)  

 

Christ is the centre and climax of divine revelation but our access to him is mediated by Holy Scripture. God’s revelation and not just the incarnation is the starting point and formal authority of theology.

 

There are wrong forms of curiosity or metaphysical speculation, but these should not paralyse us. Strictly historically speaking, it is best to see metaphysics as the study of created being. It is not therefore part of theology proper as such, but some metaphysical concepts can be usefully deployed as we speak of God.  

 

Some of us need to get over some aspects of Barth! He “can be an insightful and thought-provoking dialogue partner without being allowed to dictate the conditions under which theology proper must be done today. Protestants can and should be catholic and avail themselves of the work of Athanasius, Augustine, Boethius, John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and many other pre-Reformation theologians” as well as the Reformed and Post-Reformation Scholastics (p295).

 

That theology "is not immediately practical and certainly not oriented to questions of technique and efficiency is in fact one of its salutary aspects. Contemporary preoccupation ... with "mission statements," "measurable outcomes," and the like needs to be relativized by the joy of knowing the triune God. It needs to be relativized by a strong sense of the fact that the greatest thing a minister of the gospel ... can do for others is to communicate faithfully about the rich wisdom and goodness and holiness and love of the triune God - and their free and gracious exercise in the economy." (p295)

Even if you don’t want to get into every footnote, this book is well worth a look and the content of each chapter is well signposted if you find yourself inclined to a bit of skimming.

 


Friday, June 04, 2021

Mystery in Theology

There can sometimes be a hasty appeal to mystery in Christian theology. “Oh, it’s a mystery!” can be an excuse for intellectual laziness.

 

Or the appeal to mystery can be misplaced. It can be used as a cover for faulty logic. A real contradiction in theology would be a problem. We cannot say that X and not X in the same sense. This would not be a mystery but a nonsense.

 

But mystery is inevitable if we are to speak of the true and living God. Theological mystery is a feature not a bug. A God who could be comprehended by my intellect would not be a God worth worshipping.

 

Duby puts it nicely when he says that the twin realities of divine transcendence and divine communication mean that our talk of God must and can navigate between triumphalism and agnosticism[1].

 

God is not a concept to be analysed but a personal being to be known. We aim not merely to know about God but, by his grace, to know him. We must not only speak of God but to God. All God-talk should become prayer and praise. Theology is for doxology and praxis. We speak of God and to God and walk with him. Paul prays for the “knowledge… spiritual understanding and wisdom” of the Colossians “in order that [they] may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way” (1:9-10).

 

Drawing on the work of Gabriel Marcel and Jacques Maritain, Thomas Weinandy argues that God is not a problem to be solved (as in the sciences) “coldly dissected and systematically analyzed so as to produce complete and comprehensive knowledge.”[2] Rather, the mystery is to be discerned and clarified. As for Moses who has the divine name revealed to him at the Burning Bush, “knowing God more fully, God has become an even greater mystery.”[3] Similarly, Pope John Paul II said: “In short, the knowledge proper to faith does not destroy the mystery; it only reveals it more, showing how necessary it is for people’s lives.”[4]

 

Which is not to say that all is merely mysterious ignorance.

 

The apophatic tradition in theology (the way of negation, saying what God is not) is important. God is not created, nor bodily, nor mutable, nor limited by time or space. To say these things is to advance our knowledge. God is not lacking any perfection proper to him. But, ah, we have introduced a positive notion: perfections. In fact, Thomas claims that: “the idea of negation is always based on an affirmation: as evinced by the fact that every negative proposition is proved by an affirmative: wherefore unless the human mind knew something positively about God, it would be unable to deny anything about him.”[5]

 

Negations can define the mystery. They clarify the mystery making it more precise. And they deepen it. The mystery of God could not be more profound.

 

But God’s clear and sufficient revelation gives us true (though not exhaustive) knowledge of him. All that the Bible affirms of God is true, but such knowledge is accommodated to us and must be interpreted.

 

Calvin famously wrote that when the Word of God ascribes “mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet”, “God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children[.] Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his proper height.”[6]

 

We must believe the Bible but we must do more than merely repeat it. We must explain and integrate and apply it. We want to show what it means and implies. The Westminster Confession of Faith is right that: “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (WCF 1.6, emphasis added).

 

On the basis of special revelation we can confidently affirm that God is good and holy and love and wise and powerful and so on. He is Father, Son and Spirit. He is one.

 

Craig Carter encourages the contemplation of “revelation in order to gain knowledge of the nature of God. One is studying God, not to master or control God by knowing his essence, but rather in a humble and contemplative way by being present to him and reverently focusing our attention on him. Understood in this way, theology is very close to worship.”[7]

 

And yet we must always remember we are on holy ground when we speak of God. His goodness and love are not just human goodness and love writ large. God is not just the most powerful being we can imagine.

 

Arguably all language is analogical (rather than univocal). The word is not the thing. And my marks on a page or screen or soundwaves and the chemical reactions in our brains and our concepts of those things are not a straightforward one to one identity. There is always similarity and difference.

 

As James Robson has said: “In reality there is always in the use of a word a component of “like” and a component of “unlike.” “Univocal” and “equivocal” are labels describing ends of an axis, rather than inhabited locations. Usage of words is always analogical, since no two understandings, no two situations are identical. There is, within analogical usage, a spectrum from more nearly univocal to more nearly equivocal.”[8]

 

In a sense all creaturely knowledge is limited and mysterious because to know something fully would be to know it in relation to all things, which would be to be omniscient.

 

Yet it is particularly important to remember that all talk of God is analogical[9]. Language is creaturely and does not exhaust the Creator. God is not a creature or even a being in the universe like other creatures. He is the unique uncreated creator. He is Spirit, without body or parts (he is simple, not compounded). All God’s attributes are of his essence. He exists necessarily and from himself. He is timelessly eternal and unchangeable. Clearly to predicate anything of God is different from attributing the same thing to a creature, who can only ever have goodness or power or whatever attribute in a limited and creaturely way.

 

“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in the closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:18)

 



[1] God in Himself, p233

[2] Does God Suffer? p31

[3] p32f

[4] Fides et Ratio, quoted in Does God Suffer? p36

[5] https://isidore.co/aquinas/QDdePotentia7.htm#7:5. See further the discussion in Duby, God In Himself, p51f

[6] Institutes 1.13.1

[7] Contemplating God with the Great Tradition p233

[8] J.E. Robson, 'Forgotten Dimensions of Holiness' Horizons in Biblical Theology 33 (2011) 121-146 pp128-9

[9] A classic treatment of this is to be found in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, q. 13, arts. 1-12 esp. art. 10. For further discussion and bibliography on theology and analogy see Duby, God in Himself, chapter 5.