Month: September 2006

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Representation and participation

EE

In The Eschatological Economy I wanted to show that one unfortunate consequence of reading the Scriptures without the doctrine of election of the people of God – first Israel, then also the Church – is that the Christian tradition has under-played the process of formation and transformation, and has little comprehension that a community is being changed, because it is being brought up by its God.

We have to learn the proper interrelations of Christian doctrine, or we will be putting together elements that don’t belong together. When too many scriptural notions are simply superimposed, rather than introduced only at the proper place in a narrative, we confuse what should be distinct accounts of the work of Christ.

The most obvious of these confusions is penal substitution, where sacrifice looks like the frankly pagan propitiation of a needy tyrant. To sum up what I have said so far: sacrifice does not belong with atonement; it is about the transformation of a people, so it belongs with sanctification.

The central Christian confession that ‘Christ died for us according to the Scriptures’ demands that we explain how one person can be for another. The concept of representation is crucial to the doctrine of the atonement. Here we must meet the important philosophical challenge of Kant to representation and atonement. Kant declared that one person cannot stand in for another.

So how is Christ for us ? How does he represent, substitute, intercede, supply what we lack and do what we cannot do for ourselves? The answer must take the form of a narrative of Christ that shows his action as public action, that takes place before the world, before his own people, before the Gentiles and in contest with them – and before God who approves his work.

I have been trying to set out these different audiences of Christ’s work, and to show that these atonement models also make sense in terms of a general purpose anthropology. For others do in fact speak up for us, stand in for us, invest in us – or at least we complain when they don’t.

If we go further and understand that we not merely are, but that we also we have a share in making one another the people we are, we could even call these models of atonement ‘social ontologies’.

A patient interest in Christian doctrine brings us to a concept of participation, which used to be called ‘corporate personality’. We a concept of participation to explain what we mean by the term ‘In Christ’.

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

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Catholicity 1

Chris keeps nudging me towards saying something reckless about catholicity and ‘full communion with Rome’. His gambit is ‘Catholicism with a small “c” is incoherent without Catholicism with a big “C.”.’ I have resisted for months, for surely a real friend would not ask me to do anything so foolish. But now for your entertainment (ready with that outrage?) I am going to take a couple of posts to caricature and contrast two different ways of thinking about the church. Here goes:

The Western church begins its ecclesiology with consideration of the priest, the people and either the eucharistic host (or bible, depending on which is your side of the Reformation divide). It sees the eucharistic bread as one single wafer, broken for each individual communicant (or, the bible immediately open and comprehensible to the individual believer). Its ecclesiology begins with the church hierarchy, with the individual priest at the local level, and the pope at the worldwide level. The priest consecrates the bread and the people are formed by its reception. The pope holds the church together, making all these people and congregations one church. The logic here is that, though the authority of the priest is given by the pope and validated by him, priest and pope are individuals, but the pope is more so, his greater universal individuality sourcing and validating the individuality of each church in each locality (Yes, it is caricature, but I am trying not to take too long a run-up to what I want to say – this is only a blog).

On this logic the people are the church because the priest, or the pope, ministers to them. His ministry makes them who they are: he is not only the source of their unity but of their existence as church. The Western church makes this basic assumption of the singleness of the priest, and of the pope, and assumes that the manyness of the Christian people derive from it. Unity occurs at the expense of diversity.

The Protestant Reformers insisted that the people are made the people of God by baptism, the direct action of God, not by the ministry of the hierarchy. The laity do not depend on the hierarchy for their existence as the people of God. But despite its proper stress on the people of God, there was some part of the gospel that the Reformers did not adequately recover. They did not manage to show that the people of God are not only the recipients of the gospel, but also the form of the gospel. The manyness of the people of God is caused by the gospel because the gospel is Christ united with his people. He is never without them and they are never without him. They are never known without him, and he is never known without them. The gospel is the manyness of Christ’s people.

In the Western half of the church we have this basic and very deep assumption of a oneness or unity that occurs at the expense of diversity. Although the diversity is expressed, Western theology does not make clear that the diversity is not subordinate to the unity. It does not tell us clearly enough that plurality and unity are equally fundamental. To put it at its very bluntest, the Western church fails to tell us that the people, and included with them the leadership of the church (and not the leadership of the church without the people) who make the unity of the church. This is to say that Christ-united-with-his-people, never one without the other, who are the church. Instead we are left with the impression that the pope makes the church but the church does not make the pope, and the Reformers did not succeed in getting rid of this assumption from the deepest level of the logic of ecclesiology. This is implicit assumption, an aspect of the logic of the Western church – for no part of the Western church teaches this explicitly. But this logic holds good not only for the pope but it is also the logic of the position of every minister and pastor before every congregation. As such it is denial of the gospel embedded in the form and structure of the church.

So next I have to show that the Eastern Orthodox are the guardians of some part of the gospel, and of the logic, of the gospel, embodied in the public form of the church, that we Westerners have yet to learn. I will call this ‘catholicity’. [cont.]

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How to be a bishop – TEAC

Theological Education for the Anglican Communion (TEAC) has just published a set of outlines of what Christians and Christian leaders – clergy and bishops – can expect, what help they can ask for, and what is expected of them.

The outline for bishops presents a nuanced set of expectations for bishops-elect, bishops in their first year, and over the long haul.

It asks about the vocation of the bishop, clarity about the nature of ministry, about the bishop’s spirituality and faith, about leadership and collaboration, and considers the bishop as guardian of the faith and of the mind of Christ. It gives us an idea of the sort of pressures our leaders are under.

The candidate will have a thorough knowledge and understanding of the apostolic tradition that is to be guarded, passed on, and communicated, and ability to teach it effectively with grace (1 Timothy 3. 1-7; Titus 1; Irenaeus; Tertullian)

The bishop regularly and rigorously reviews the vocation of chief pastor, re-assessing how well clergy and people have been enabled, resourced and empowered, and the role of representative of the diocese in public life and for laity assessing how effective this has been

The elected candidate’s spirituality is grounded in Anglican liturgy and in classics of devotion

The incoming bishop will become an example of holiness of life appropriate to a more sensitive and exposed role in the public arena

Holiness in word and life, love for God’s people, humility and lack of self-promotion will be seen.
The candidate will be secure enough to avoid becoming defensive or authoritarian

The bishop-designate or incoming bishop will devise safeguards against any temptation to self-aggrandisement or conversely to undue feelings of inadequacy

The bishop’s personal integrity has not become sacrificed to a multiplicity of expectations or role-performances

The candidate has shown ability to share responsibility, and praise or blame with co-workers; humility to share decisions with others; and also confidence to take initiatives and to lead from the front when required.
The candidate practises courageous servant-leadership.

The incoming bishop will study and reflect on the meaning of ‘apostolicity’ in the New Testament, and the growth of Patristic, Reformation and particularly Anglican views of the chief roles of bishops.

The bishop will reflect on how to hold together unity and order with diversity but within acceptable limits. It will mean also critically discerning, in collaboration with trans-provincial and other colleagues, what these acceptable limits are.

The bishop continues to follow and to live out the example of Jesus as chief pastor, servant, intercessor, friend and example, when necessary accepting shame and suffering

Many glib remarks occur, but I just don’t seem to be able to put them in writing. But I suppose we could say this:

Lord, give the bishops of the Church of Christ Jesus all the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit to perform and fulfill their tasks.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer

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Scripture and doctrine reunited

HH

History and Hermeneutics is the latest volume from the ever-excellent Murray Rae. In it Murray shows how unnecessary the divorce of the bible from the church was; each stage of the separation was intellectually corrupt, but how when the gospel is allowed to shape our understanding of history, Christian doctrine retrieves its proper apostolic role in teaching the Church how to see and hear Scripture as God’s gracious witness to the church and the world. Here is T & T Clark’s description of his latest book:

History and Hermeneutics addresses the relation between historiography and hermeneutics during the past three hundred years of western thought, traces its genealogy from classical Greek thought, and argues that the practice of contemporary biblical hermeneutics has been radically impaired by a widespread allegiance to a series of problematic assumptions about history. The book offers a theological account of what history is, centred on the categories of creation and divine promise, and proposes that it is within this theological conception of history that the Bible may be understood on its own terms.

The book is both critical and constructive, identifying problems in hermeneutics and proposing a way forward. The ecclesial reading of Scripture and the value of tradition are rehabilitated and an account is given of how we may properly ask the question, ‘what really happened?’

1. History and History Writing;
2. Creation and Promise;
3. Resurrection – The Centre and End of History;
4. Seeing What Really Happened;
5. Hearing What Really Happened;
6. The Ecclesial Reading of Scripture;
7. Re-Reading the Text.

This is Murray’s version of the famous ‘Reason and Revelation’ course at Kings College London, which was handed down, father to son, from Gunton to Schwöbel to Torrance to Rae, some of which became The Practice of Theology (which is also due a sequel). Rumour says that Murray was intending to introduce a new course on theological hermeneutics – which impertinently suggested that the Christian church has a claim on the bible, and thus that the bible is not solely a cat litter tray for academics. Now back in NZ, Murray is part of the team launching the Journal for Theological Interpretation

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An Orthodox view of Rome and Christian Unity

Father Thomas Hopko has produced a very significant statement of what is outstanding between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. I have plucked four paragraphs from a nine-page document.

The pope would also make it clear that Christ’s crucifixion was not a payment of the debt of punishment that humans allegedly owe to God for their sins. He would rather teach that Christ’s self-offering to his Father was the saving, atoning and redeeming payment of the perfect love, trust, obedience, gratitude and glory that humans owe to God, which is all that God desires of them for their salvation.

WOW

â??The pope would also assure all Christians that the bishop of Rome will never do or teach anything on his own authority, “from himself and not from the consensus of the church (ex sese et non ex consensu ecclesiae).” He would promise to serve in his presidency solely as the spokesperson for all the bishops in apostolic succession who govern communities of believers who have chosen them to serve, and whose validity and legitimacy as bishops depend solely on their fidelity to the Gospel in communion with their predecessors in the episcopal office, and with each other.â??

RIGHT

â??The bishop of Rome would be chosen by the church of Rome. His election, because of his church’s unique position among the churches, and his position in the world, may have to be affirmed in some way by the patriarchs and the primates of autocephalous (i.e. self-governing) archbishoprics and metropolias throughout the world. But like the election of all Christian bishops, the pope’s selection and installation would be the canonical action of the community that he oversees. A “college of cardinals” appointed by the pope and having nominal ministries in Rome would no longer exist.â??

TOUGH, BUT RIGHT

â??The pope would not select and appoint bishops in any churches. He would, however, affirm them in their ministries, and may even do so in some formal manner, as every bishop is called to affirm his brothers with whom he holds the one episcopate in solidumâ?¦â??

RIGHT AGAIN, THOUGH STILL TOUGH

This new and more modest Rome might change everything for the Protestant mainline denominations. If so many historic Protestant objections to Rome are removed perhaps we would see an ecumenical avalanche. Perhaps the Protestant churches would be unable to stay away from the ongoing ecumenical council that would be the new (or restored) form of the worldwide church. Or, perhaps, without a Catholic Church centralized on a strong Rome we will see anarchy â?? but that would be a faithless fear.

Enormous goodwill, energy and time would be necessary to refashion the papacy so that the Pope of Rome might be Christianity’s world leader as the bishop whose church “presides in love” among all the churches of orthodox faith and catholic tradition. And, as recent popes have insisted, radical repentance would be also be required, beginning with the Roman church itself whose calling, as first among Christian churches, is to show the way to all others.

The Orthodox churches would surely have to undergo many humbling changes in attitude, structure and behavior to be in sacramental communion with the Roman church and to recognize its presidency among the churches in the person of its pope. The Orthodox would certainly have to overcome their own inner struggles over ecclesiastical power and privilege. They would have to candidly admit their sinful contributions to Christian division and disunity, and to repent of them sincerely. They would also have to forego all desires or demands for other churches to repent publicly of their past errors and sins, being willing to allow God to consign everything of the past to oblivion for the sake of bringing about the reconciliation and reunion of Christians at the present time.

In a word, the Orthodox would have to sacrifice everything, excepting only the faith itself, for the sake of building a common future together with Christians who are willing and able to do so with them. Like Roman Catholics and Protestants, they would have to be willing to die with Christ to themselves and their personal, cultural and ecclesiastical interests for the sake of being in full unity with all who desire to be saved by the crucified Lord in the one holy church “which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1.23), that is “the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” (1Tim 3.15)

Fr. Thomas Hopko Roman Presidency and Christian Unity in our Time

With thanks, as ever, to Pontifications

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Knight out of his depth

The lovely people at Fulcum seem to have put me onto their leadership team. Fulcum â?? â??Renewing the Evangelical Centreâ?? â?? aims to â??represent the centre ground of evangelical Anglicanism in the church and in wider societyâ??. It has an annual conference, and a huge website which offers a news and comment service, publishes essays and articles, and has a very lively forum in which people talk about what it is to be evangelical and Anglican, and a host of more general theological issues. You can read about Fulcrumâ??s founding and where it fits in the English Evangelical scene. You should go and have a look.

I donâ??t think the management at Fulcrum appreciate how slow a writer I am, and how long readers of this blog have to wait for each new, though well-worn, observation to appear from the tired brain of Knight.

It will be a big treat me to be in the evangelical centre. I don’t think I have ever got into the centre before, and I am looking forward to it. I am not sure the centre is the only place to be, though. Might not the edge, or even right outside, be the proper place for me?

Being an evangelical means you are in a good company. But sometimes the evangelical, a disciple, is on their own, pitched not only against the world, but against other Christians, even sometimes against â??the Evangelicals.â?? Sometimes the centre becomes vanishingly small and the Christian has no place to stand. Then you may experience some discomfort, as they say.

Readers of this blog will know that Christ is never without his people, and that christology therefore always involves us in ecclesiology, and vice versa, so that evangelical implies catholic, and catholic implies evangelical. Since you lot know all this, I will try out one or two things here, just between ourselves, before displaying them there on Fulcrum for all the world to see. Better I get into trouble with you than with them because the English are a bit â?¦ well, you know.

And I hope to achieve a little synergy by also talking about the recent work of the greatest living British theologian. Iâ??ll tell you who that is â?? very shortly.

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Christian Worship

wainwright

The Oxford History of Christian Worship is 860 pages of wonderfully perceptive and accessible historical scholarship in the service of Christian theology. The book is sympathetic to every strand of Christian worship: there is nothing dry or patronizing here. The masterly Introduction by Geoffrey Wainwright is not only theological, it is positively evangelical: if we do not worship the true God we worship false ones.

The book starts with the apostolic tradition, the ancient oriental churches, and goes on to Orthodoxy. I was most impressed by Alexander Rentel’s fifty pages on Eastern Orthodoxy, by André Haquin on changes in Catholic worship in the twentieth century, and by Karen Westfield Tucker’s forty page chapter on North America. Other chapters deal with different ecclesiologies (Mennonite, Charismatic), territories (Africa, Asia) and themes (Music, the Spatial Setting, Women), and there are seven chapters on church and worship in the global south. The chapters lay out the theological logic of each form of worship: the content and structures of worship services are discussed, with some information laid out in boxes, and lots of illustrations.

Several chapters discuss the twentieth century, in which worship underwent rapid changes in every church. The Roman Catholic recovery of the idea that whole church is the people of God, communion ecclesiology (an unnoticed reformation?), meant that Vatican II was not simply the Catholic church ‘catching up’ with change outside it; it has also been the impetus to liturgical revision in every other (Protestant) denomination. Revision of lectionaries, service books and hymn books shows an increasing Evangelical understanding of the role of the lectionary in cementing the unity of the Church, and thus a growing Protestant realisation of the catholicity of Church. There is an intelligent discussion of Pentecostal and charismatic worship and a tentative look forward, perhaps to a church led by the charismatic churchmanship of the global south. The Oxford History of Christian Worship is a compelling read, and I was gripped even by subjects that I thought I had no interest in. It
is the best purchase I have made this year.

See The Oxford History of Christian Worship at Knight’s Amazon Store

Geoffrey Wainwright, an English Methodist, has been master of this field since the appearance of his systematic theology of Christian worship, ‘Doxology’. As one Amazon reviewer said – “After reading Wainwright’s book, you will want to look for another one just like it – only it doesn’t exist.” Though it has been universally admired, ‘Doxology’ has not had enough of an impact, so much theology is still studied as though it had nothing to do with the public worship and confession of the Christian community. See Wainwright at Wikipedia and at Duke.

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Finding theology in London

There is plenty of good Christian theology going on in London. It is true that theology was driven out of the one place in London that could claim to offer academic Christian teaching at an international level, the theology department of Kings College London. But it is still going just going on informally outside the university. I’ll give you some examples of good Christian theologians at work in London.

My first example is Crispin Fletcher-Louis.

Crispin

Crispin Fletcher-Louis is a New Testament scholar. He has made it his task to show that Israel understood that man is the representative of God in creation, the living breathing icon of God, who sums up all creation and is able to articulate and return all creation’s praise to God. This colossal definition of man as the creature, officer and right-hand man of God was made visible in the Jerusalem temple, and in particular in the figure of the high priest. Fletcher-Louis sees this priestly imago dei theology not just where you would expect to find it, in the Book of Hebrews, but in every book of the New Testament. Watching Fletcher-Louis opening up a passage of Scripture is as exhilarating as your first encounters with Tom Wright were. That’s right, the theological ambition of Fletcher-Louis’ project is comparable with Tom Wright’s.

Fletcher-Louis has been constructing this thesis with considerable patience through a large number of articles and Luke-Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology. He should be in a large theology department with a team of postgraduate students around him, and getting on with this project by writing some big books.

But these are funny times.

So instead Crispin has been setting up the Westminster Theological Centre, which intends to bring the training of Anglican clergy back to London. The Westminster Theological Centre has been set up in-house by St Mary’s Bryanston Square, and it is not the only large charismatic evangelical Anglican flagship to start a new theological college. Who else but the charismatic evangelicals have the energy? Theological training has to come back to the churches, and this is a start. Of course it raises all sorts of questions, but we can look at these another day.

* * * *

Anyway, just to give you an idea of the Fletcher-Louis product I’ll give you a paragraph from one of three brief and very accessible little studies he did for Third Way:

“We can now explain why ‘idolatry’ is forbidden: the only physical reality that embodies the divine presence is (ideal) humankind. Idolatry, according to the Old Testament, may thus be defined as giving to some thing else not only the worth and respect that belong to God but also those that are due to us, because it is humankind that represents and bears God’s presence… Humankind is called to be an ecstatic embodiment of divine creativity, filling the world with the presence of God’s glory and thereby providing the order and stability that God’s own authority naturally entails. … This interpretation may sound like an arrogation of divine rights which only adds to centuries of human claims for independence from God, but it is quite the reverse. This image-of-God theology disallows any identity that does not glorify the one true God. True humanity lives for the other, for the Creator it represents.”

Crispin Fletcher-Louis Genesis 1.26 & Ephesians 1.22

Here is an article on Jesus and the High Priest (in scruffy PDF) that nicely summarises the Fletcher-Louis project. Next time, another theologian in working London.

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Oliver O'Donovan on Rowan Williams

o'donovan archbishop

Fulcrum has published two papers by Oliver O’Donovan. The first shows that contemporary theological liberalism is bankrupt: ‘The Failure of the Liberal Paradigm’ is its obituary. But O’Donovan does so the more effectively because he shows that liberalism wasn’t always bankrupt, and is not bankrupt by necessity.

Contemporary liberalism shows a violent disdain for the past. ‘The present state of liberal Anglican thought [which] appears to be in deep denial: denial about the record of the past ….’. Contemporary liberalism pitches itself against any existing, time-tested formulation of the Christian faith. This is self-contradicting and so self-refuting.

O’Donovan’s faint but real praise of the liberalism of previous generations, shows the more effectively that contemporary liberalism has to be entirely cleared away before a positive way can be set out.

Old-fashioned liberalism once provided the glue that held the different theological emphases of Anglicanism together. It showed a ‘.. respectful attentiveness to the world as it is…’ .

At its best real (old-fashioned) liberalism meant – and here O’Donovan quotes Rowan Williams – ‘cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly’.

O’Donovan’s response for this insight, and for Williams himself is …. ‘For what we have received may the Lord make us truly thankful’.

In other words, O’Donovan fears we may not be thankful enough for our Archbishop. He may be a much greater gift than we appreciate, and whether he is or not, depends on us. This takes us into O’Donovan’s second paper, ‘The Care of the Churches’.

Our appreciation of Archbishop Williams will increase the extent he is able to lead us well through the present crisis. If we allow him to lead us well, the church will positively grow and flourish, not despite the present crisis, but because of it, and he will turn out to have been a great Christian leader. Williams’s old-fashioned liberalism is itself a gift to the Church. Williams never was just a liberal: he is far more complex than that, because he is deeply formed by the whole Christian tradition. liberal, catholic, evangelical instincts are all part of his make-up – as they must be of any Christian leader.

But it is a good thing that we have a liberal at the helm because this liberal is able to make this public turn to the unity of the church, its discipline and its doctrine. The unity that Williams is turning to church to is unity with truth, through discipleship. Then the truth of the gospel is not only not sacrificed, but is the basis on which the more costly unity of the church is won. Alternatively, if we stick with O’Donovan’s generous definition, Williams is restoring something of the liberalism with church discipline that once provided Anglican unity.

O’Donovan’s very under-stated line on Williams is – that Williams is a real disciple. You know that real disciples are rare as … well, they dont come by too often, you can take it from me. So the obedience of the church and its survival through the present church-dividing crises, does not depend just on Williams. It depends on the extent to which every part of the Anglican church is able to see that this Archbishop is a real disciple, and loses its heart again to Christ – and follows him. We have am unusual Christian leader before us. O’Donovan’s question is then – will we follow him and find that more costly unity that comes with truth and discipline?