The variety of information Amazon makes available for each book title grows each month. The Amazon ‘See Inside’ function takes you to the Amazon Online Reader (their equivalent to Google Book Search).

The ‘See Inside’ function now works for The Eschatological Economy : it opens the Amazon Online Reader, which allows you to select 'Excerpt' which shows you the beginning of Chapter One.

I now realise that The Eschatological Economy starts with a very steep climb, because the opening of Chapter One is quite dense. I wish the Online Reader showed the Introduction instead, where I set out as simply as I could what this book is about, and briefly what each chapter contains.

But the ‘Search’ function of the Amazon Online Reader is a wonder.

So far I have used it on The Eschatological Economy to search on ‘death of Christ’, and ‘resurrection of Christ’ (and have realised that the ‘of’ complicates matters) and ‘atonement’. Best of all, ‘Holy Spirit’, referred to on 35 pages of The Eschatological Economy. Not bad, eh?

Then you get a list of three-line excerpts in which the search word appears, just enough context to know which references are worth pursuing. Then a click brings up the relevant page.

Though The Eschatological Economy is all about the atonement, I don't use that word all that much. Nonetheless ‘atonement’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘salvation’ all take you to the relevant discussions in the book. Here are some search results for ‘Atonement’ as they appear in the Amazon Online reader:

6. on Page 142: "... tradition, Karl Barth decided against employing sacrifice as a model for his discussion of the work of Christ. Though the atonement could be presented in sacrificial and priestly terms, Barth believes that these are now antiquated and so presents his account ..."

8. on Page 82: "... God has broken through to sweep all sins finally away. Whether hilasterion means the event or the site of atonement, the sins of Israel were all dealt with together on that one day in the year. The atonement of the ..."

9. on Page 84: "... talk of representation and substitution is alien to Israelite sacrifice, I suggest that we should see Old Testament talk of atonement of place as a solution, not a problem. If we make a hard distinction between individuals and persons defined by ..."

10. on Page 119: "... Israel and the character of Israel's God." Comprehension and appropriation of these practices are not secondary to the rituals of atonement themselves, for the rituals are responsible for the formation of Israel's new mind. According to Milgrom, all Israel's sacrifice is ..."

28. on Page 237: "... itself. The economy of modernity, and all the human and social sciences that support it, is a massive effort of atonement that constitutes this secular so- ciety. It is led by the discipline of economics, itself an ethic masquerading as a ..."

29. on Page 244: "... will be justice, both for us and for those who have been denied justice by us. Critics of the forensic atonement ask by what right God brings us to court to try us as sinners. We exercise this right against each ..."

‘Modernity’ brings up 70 pages. ‘God’ brings up ten pages of results, because the word appears on 261 pages of the book, ‘man’ on 63 pages. At least we know what The Eschatological Economy is about now.

If in a few years time we are looking seriously at the practical possibility of women ordained as bishops – what will the ecumenical cost be? We know it will in many ways be heavy and serious. But granted that, what will be the ground on which we pursue ecumenical conversation and relationship from that point on. I would like to say that the ARCIC documents do give us a theology which we need to return to and try to make sense of in that long-term view, because we do there have a remarkably rich deposit of reflection on the ordained ministry, agreed between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches over the last thirty years…

Archbishop of Canterbury Speech given during a debate in the Church of England's General Synod on Women in the Episcopate

We have claimed to be Catholic, to have a ministry that is capable of being universally recognised (even where in practice it does not have that recognition) because of its theological and institutional continuity; to hold a faith that is not locally determined but shared through time and space with the fellowship of the baptised; to celebrate sacraments that express the reality of a community which is more than the people present at any one moment with any one set of concerns. So at the very least we must recognise that Anglicanism as we have experienced it has never been just a loose grouping of people who care to describe themselves as Anglicans but enjoy unconfined local liberties…

My commitment and conviction are given to the ideal of the Church Catholic. I know that its embodiment in Anglicanism has always been debated, yet I believe that the vision of Catholic sacramental unity without centralisation or coercion is one that we have witnessed to at our best and still need to work at.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's Address to the General Synod of the Church of England

Al Kimel of Pontifications has set out the theological issues around ordination and Church unity with his usual clarity and patience.

In a recent post he takes a look at the response of the Anglican bishops of Durham and Salisbury, Tom Wright and David Stancliffe to Roman Catholic Cardinal Kasper, and explains what is at stake in this issue of who may be a bishop. In his address to the bishops of the Church of England (June 2006) Cardinal Kasper pointed out that the leaders any part of the Church chooses are leaders of the whole Church, and have to represent that wholeness of the Church, and the wholeness of its teaching. Its choice of leaders therefore demonstrates the degree to which the Anglican church understands, or does not understand, that it is its wholeness and indivisibility that makes Church's distinctive witness to the world. The Church is one, and holy, because God is one, and holy.

The context is the desire of Anglican and Episcopalian parts of the Church to operate in isolation from the Church as a whole, and to choose leaders who do not represent the wholeness and distinctiveness of the Church. But the whole Church must insist that such parts do not operate unilaterally, and so it must give these (Anglican and Episcopalian) churches and their leaders a refresher course in ecclesiology and theology, to remind them of the distinct identity of the Christian people and the extraordinary privilege it is to be that people, for the world's sake.

Here is Al Kimel:

'Bishops Wright and Stancliffe are convinced that Scripture authorizes the ordination of women to priestly orders, but they disagree with each other on whether Scripture authorizes the blessing of same-sex unions. Bishop Wright was a member of the committee that drew up the Windsor Report, a report which rebukes the American and Canadian churches for breaking from the received moral tradition before the creation of a new consensus within the Anglican Communion. But should not the same reasoning be applied to the question of women’s ordination? Should not the Anglican Communion be rebuked for moving ahead on women’s ordination before the creation of wider catholic consensus. Why, in this age of ecumenism, does the opinions of only Anglicans count? Does it not matter to Anglicans that by embracing the ordination of women to the presbyterate and episcopate they are effectively negating the possibility of ecclesial reunion with the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church?'

Pontifications The death of Anglican/Catholic ecumenism?

'The Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology is appointed to lecture and give instruction in Moral and Pastoral Theology, in the duties of the Pastoral Office, and in such subjects as Christian Ethics, both Social and Individual, Ascetic and Mystical Theology, and the study of the various types of Christian Experience. The formal duties are set out below. The appointee will be a scholar of distinction who will exercise leadership in research and develop graduate studies in his or her area of specialisation. He or she will also be expected to take a leading part in developing the work of the Faculty of Theology generally.'

(i) Candidates should either be ordained in Priest’s Orders in the Church of England or in an Episcopal Church in communion with the Church of England or eligible for and prepared to accept ordination. A canonry at Christ Church is annexed to the professorship.

(ii) An outstanding research and publications record in the broad field of Moral and Pastoral Theology, which will contribute to and enhance the profile of Moral and Pastoral Theology and the Faculty of Theology.

(iii) The ability and readiness to lead and inspire academic colleagues, and in particular to take responsibility for Moral and Pastoral Theology and its courses, undergraduate and graduate, and for the scholarly direction of the subject at Oxford.

It will be interesting to see whether Oxford University's appointments panel will appoint somebody who can do this job (Nigel Biggar, Michael Banner, Bernd Wannenwetsch,.. ) or will continue to make appointments without regard to the selection criteria contained in the job description they have published.

Bishops Wright and Stancliffe have responded to Cardinal Walter Kasper's request for no unilateral Anglican decisions about ordaining women bishops until a Church-wide consensus develops. But their response is not quite as rigorous as they hope:

'One of the most important points at which Cardinal Kasper seems to us to misrepresent the Anglican situation comes at the point where he indicates that he and others look to the Church of England as holding a place of decisive significance within Anglicanism, so that despite the fact that there are already women bishops in some Provinces of the Anglican Communion the decision of the Church of England would somehow be key or crucial. That may be an accurate indication of how we are perceived, but the Church of England does not occupy the place in the Communion that the Vatican does in our sister church. Indeed, that imperial model - Ecclesia Anglicana telling the colonies how to behave - is precisely what we have done our best to avoid for several generations. As set out in the Windsor Report, we have a modus operandi according to which a potentially contentious issue can come to the Lambeth Conference, to the Anglican Consultative Council, and to the Primates' Meeting. To put it simply, if the Lambeth Conference gives a green light to a proposal, it is then up to an individual province to decide whether to adopt any new development for itself. We must not for a moment collude with the impression that the Church of England occupies a position analogous to the Vatican and that the Lambeth Conference is merely an expensive piece of window-dressing. This tells heavily against the argument, sometimes advanced from within Anglicanism itself, that the decision we now face in the Church of England is the real defining moment. The Lambeth Conference has already given the green light to ordaining women to the episcopate; all we are being asked now is whether we, in our Province, want to adopt for ourselves something to which worldwide Anglicanism has already given approval, and which can therefore not be seen within our own inter-provincial polity as communion-breaking.'

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, and David Stancliffe, Bishop of Salisbury Women Bishops:A Response to Cardinal Kasper

My understanding of catholicity is that it involves every part of the church in subordination to every other in love, and therefore also in obedience and truth. This does involve us in waiting for one another, and so it always has a cost: it is in fact Christian suffering. None of us can just do what we want; we are not servants or priests or bishops by right: we cannot make ourselves leaders of the church; we cannot unilaterally make decisions for 'our' part of the church. We have to wait for the rest of the Church to see in us those gifts the Lord has given to us. The rest of the Church really is in authority over us. Those outside the Church might call this 'imperialism', but catholicity is what we call it.

Collegiality always requires a single authority, which involves an central office, an institution with a budget - a magisterium. This is what Canterbury (in my case) represents - despite Canterbury's own denials - and beyond Canterbury it is all the other Archbishops and Patriarchs, gathered in mutual deference and love, around some single Patriarch, which, out of habit or tradition if for no other reason, means in effect Benedict in Rome. We Anglicans should try to keep up with Benedict - and of course gently and constantly offer our Reformed and evangelical correction to the Roman curia. There is no either-or about Canterbury and the rest-of-the-Church-conveniently-represented-by Rome. Rome does not threaten our Anglican identity - it only threatens our endless readiness to endanger the catholicity of the whole Church by our pursuit of every worldly agenda.

This Christianity lark is not easy: all this controversy is part of the suffering that comes as we are formed together in Christ. Let us be thankful for one another and for all on the other side in each of these struggles for the identity of the people of Jesus Christ.

46. It is not too much to claim that the development of a good part of modern philosophy has seen it move further and further away from Christian Revelation, to the point of setting itself quite explicitly in opposition. This process reached its apogee in the last century. Some representatives of idealism sought in various ways to transform faith and its contents, even the mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, into dialectical structures which could be grasped by reason. Opposed to this kind of thinking were various forms of atheistic humanism, expressed in philosophical terms, which regarded faith as alienating and damaging to the development of a full rationality. They did not hesitate to present themselves as new religions serving as a basis for projects which, on the political and social plane, gave rise to totalitarian systems which have been disastrous for humanity.

As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what has appeared finally is ‘nihilism’. As a philosophy of nothingness, it has a certain attraction for people of our time. Its adherents claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral has pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which claims that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything is fleeting and provisional.

47. It should also be borne in mind that the role of philosophy itself has changed in modern culture. From universal wisdom and learning, it has been gradually reduced to one of the many fields of human knowing; indeed in some ways it has been consigned to a wholly marginal role. Other forms of rationality have acquired an ever higher profile, making philosophical learning appear all the more peripheral. These forms of rationality are directed not towards the contemplation of truth and the search for the ultimate goal and meaning of life; but instead, as ‘instrumental reason’, they are directed, actually or potentially, towards the promotion of utilitarian ends, enjoyment or power.

In the wake of these cultural shifts, some philosophers have abandoned the search for truth in itself and made their sole aim the attainment of a subjective certainty or a pragmatic sense of utility. This in turn has obscured the true dignity of reason, which is no longer equipped to know the truth and to seek the absolute.

48. The link between faith and reason needs to be carefully examined, because each without the other is impoverished and enfeebled. Deprived of what Revelation offers, reason has taken side-tracks which expose it to the danger of losing sight of its final goal. Deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience, and so run the risk of no longer being a universal proposition. It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition. By the same token, reason which is unrelated to an adult faith is not prompted to turn its gaze to the newness and radicality of being.

This is why I make this appeal that faith and philosophy recover the profound unity which allows them to stand in harmony with their nature without compromising their mutual autonomy. The ‘parrhesia’ of faith must be matched by the boldness of reason.

John Paul II Fides et Ratio - On the Relationship between Faith and Reason

We modern ethicists like to make out that we stand above all traditions and religions equally. We find each religion a sorry falling away from the truth of ‘religion as such’, which we call ethics, and by which we mean being ‘reasonable’ – you know, like us.

The greater part of our product, ‘ethics’, consists in identifying the particular practices that mark out some particular community, and belittling it, marginalising it, making the majority indifferent to it or resentful of it, until we can get rid of it by legislation. Our project – ethics – means standardisation or homogenization. But our levelling programme has no level at which it decides that it has been successful and switches itself off. It is a neurotic tic, a witch-hunt, in which those who pointed fingers will one day be under accusation themselves.

s. 1136 Liturgy is an action of the whole Christ (Christus totus). Those who now celebrate it without signs are already in the heavenly liturgy, where celebration is wholly communion and feast.

1137 The book of Revelation of St John read in the Church’s liturgy, first reveals to us ‘A throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne’: ‘the Lord God’. it then shows the Lamb, ‘standing as though it had been slain’: Christ crucified and risen, the one high priest of the sanctuary, the same one ‘who offers and is offered, who gives and is given’.

1138 ‘Recapitulated in Christ’ these are the ones who take part in the service of the praise of God and the fulfilment of his plan: the heavenly powers, all creation (the four living beings), the servants of the Old and New Covenant (the twenty-four elders), the new People of God (the one hundred and forty-four thousand), especially the martyrs ‘slain for the word of God’, and the all holy Mother of God (the Woman), the Bride of the Lamb, and finally ‘a great multitude which no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues’.

1139 It is in this eternal liturgy that the Spirit and the Church enable us to participate whenever we celebrate the mystery of salvation in the sacraments.

1141 This ‘common priesthood’ is that of Christ the sole priest, in which all his members participate.

1142 The ordained minister is at it were an ‘icon’ of Christ the priest.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church - Part Two, Section One, Chapter One online at the Vatican and at Amazon

The Church looks conservative only because the Church is the only public place in which the issues of what is worth doing, and so of truth and goodness – which previous generations used to talk freely about – get a public hearing. Because the Church is not in as much of a panic about time as the world is, the Church has the patience to host discussion of how to be human. No particular moment seems the right moment to get into a long discussion. It is always more convenient to carry on assuming that we all already know what is worth doing, how to live well, and that we don’t need to talk it all through again.

The Christians re-enter this discussion every Sunday when they line up behind the Son of Man, who is God’s own definition of life lived well, and they sing along with him back to God.

So it is the Church which knows how to be properly worldly. It has a better idea of what the world is to be than this world does. The Church tells the world how best to be worldly – by asking its maker if it may join his conversation on this subject.

The best thing the Church can do for the world is be distinct from it, and so remind the world that it has not yet arrived. The world is not yet all in all. So the Church must hold out hope to the world – and point out that this time is not yet the fullness of time, but it is the time to live well and to talk life through in good company.

If early-modern and mid-modern liberal societies were successful in securing their members' cooperation and participation - and it is hard to deny them a measure of success - this was due to the moment of self-abdication instilled by their monotheistic faith. Through that religious moment they directed their members to become critical moral intelligences, taught them to see themselves as answerable directly to God. Thus they envisaged themselves as open to authoritative criticism and correction, and this lay at the heart of the reconciliation they effected between individual and social identities. In the face of conflicting expectations and hopes, a liberal society could make itself accountable before the throne of God's justice. This opened up a variety of self-understandings for the dissenter, who could assume the role of critic, prophet, even martyr - all roles that could be socially learned and socially respected. It could even move a dissenting member to respond to it not merely with revolt but with compassion.

In abandoning their deference to transcendence, late-liberal societies have followed a perilous course. Losing the conciliatory strength of religious humility, they have gambled on majority support for a narrowly materialist and sensual sphere of public communications, inculcating by all means at their disposal the purely material expectations that conform to them. This strategy of moral under-education presumes as impoverished a view of human nature as classic liberalism presumed a rather exalted one. …The discontent that any human being can feel at being underestimated can, and surely must, undermine this a-moral majority, generating high waves of inarticulate dissatisfaction. …But the warning that needs hearing is even more solemn than that: liberal society, proceeding on its present course, may deserve a reaction, simply because it is incapable of taking the spiritual capacities of its members seriously.

Oliver O'Donovan Freedom and its Loss The Westminster Abbey Gore lecture 2002

Dear I.B.Tauris publishers

You have sent me your catalogue, offering amongst many things, ‘A Modern Introduction to Theology: New Questions for Old Beliefs’. Your blurb says:

Most existing undergraduate textbooks begin from basically traditional positions on the bible, doctrine, authority, interpretation, and God. It is very difficult to find a satisfactory survey of what theology is about, and how it has developed historically, unless one shares the assumption that these traditional positions are normative. It is hardly surprising that people many people from outside the theological guild, or the Church, dismiss theology as anachronistic and self-absorbed discipline of little relevance to modern life. What makes this book singularly important and uniquely different is that it has a completely new starting point. The author contends that traditional Christian theology must extensively overhaul many of its theses because of a multitude of modern social, historical, and intellectual revolutions. … A Modern Introduction to Theology moves a tired and increasing incoherent discipline in genuinely fresh and exciting directions.

Incoherent? There is certainly something incoherent here, most obviously your surprise that theology textbooks talk about God. Your blurb is surprised that ‘most existing undergraduate textbooks begin from basically traditional positions on the bible, doctrine, authority, interpretation, and God.’ If textbooks begin from basically new positions, they simply cannot be textbooks. If you find theology ‘anachronistic’ – we hear your hostility – do not read it or publish it. Publish something else that you do enjoy instead.

These traditional positions are normative - Thanks be to God. That means that they are binding on us, so you and I cannot change them. That is what is meant by dogma, the summaries of the teaching of the Church, repeated in the creeds. To be surprised that traditional positions are normative is as vain at protesting that we are 'still' playing football according to the old dogma of two teams, two goals, one football.

If you find it unacceptable that Christian dogma does not change, you are free to give up your interest in Christianity. Why not find another religion? Can’t find one to your taste? Make one up. But when you do, don’t call it Christianity.

It is all the more important to appreciate the liberal insight at this juncture of our civilisation, when our appreciation is inevitably tinged with a sense of loss. A de-natured late-liberalism, shaping itself ideologically even to the point of religious persecution, and indistinguishable in some ways from the Marxism it once combatted, parts company from classical liberalism precisely here. The liberal tradition used to defer to a point of transcendence within the individual, something which social identity could not account for, something which gave the individual an independent view upon society. This was not in fact a view "from nowhere"; it was precisely a view from "the conscience". By instructing the individual that conscience had precedence over every social demand, the liberal tradition did not throw him back upon the chances of an untutored imagination. It presumed that conscience had a source beyond both society and individual, that it was more than an echo of social claims, more than a projection of individual dreams. It presumed this because of its monotheistic faith, which lay at the heart of its logic. Until the early years of the twentieth century Augustine's now controversial thesis, that there can be no "right" in a society which does not acknowledge the right of God, appeared to be the uncontrovertible bedrock of a liberal society. A polytheistic society negotiates multiple claims with no cohesion but what it imposes on them, so that, in effect, it enforces its own sovereignty. Late-liberalism, one may say, in taking up the banner of "pluralism", has made itself self-consciously polytheistic again.

Oliver O'Donovan Freedom and its Loss The Westminster Abbey Gore lecture 2002

St. Cyril explicitly rejects the Apollinarian thesis, and stresses the complete humanity assumed by Christ into a real 'physical' or 'hypostatic' unity with the Word. Cyril associates Christ's High-priesthood with specifically with His humanity, and makes frequent reference to the Epistle to the Hebrews in his discussion of the human soul of Christ. Against Nestorius, he writes: Christ carried up the mind of believers into the one nature of the Godhead. Cyril describes Christian worship as 'rational', and constantly speaks of Christ as the 'High Priest of our souls'. For Cyril, Christ fulfills His priesthood both as one who receives and as one who offers prayer. Since Christ is not two but indissolubly one, our rational worship is offered to Him as well as through and in union with Him, and by Him to God the Father. In his third epistle against Nestorius, Cyril affirms clearly the vicarious and high priestly character of Christ's humanity: Christ 'offers Himself for us and us through and in himself to the Father'. He worships for he has assumed the nature that pays worship. Although the host above and the holy spirits worship him, Cyril writes, when he became as we are, he worshipped with us as a man offering as fragrant incense, himself on our behalf, and us through himself and in himself to God the Father.

Matthew Baker Logiki Latreia and the Mind of Christ

It is an odd thing not to ordain women, but it is precisely this sort of odd decision that is intrinsic to the Christian form of life. But it is not unfair. It is not unfair because the whole Church is given by an act of love, and makes possible love, which is to say, subordinating ourselves and deferring to others. Since the whole community of God is premised on an act of love, we cannot say that any particular station in it is unfair - it is all for free in the first place. The whole Church is made up of beggars who are surprised and relieved to find themselves in it at all. No one has to be in the Church, and if you really want to get on in the world, dont hang around in the Church, get out there in the world.

It is no more unfair on women that they are not ordained than it is unfair that, in the UK at least, women make up the majority in many congregations. If the Christians all wore a ribbon in their hair or stood on one leg, that would be just another of those odd things, like meeting on Sunday morning or eating fish on Fridays, that marks Christians out and makes them identifiable to the rest of the world. The Christian faith and life is full of things that seem odd at first. It takes long Christian life to discover the reason behind some of them, but that reason usually becomes plain when the Christian community really comes under pressure.

What is the reason for this odd ruling about who is ordained? The church has understood that Christ is our husband and we are his bride, and that this is played out publicly in every church service. Each gathering is a microcosm of the relationship of Christ and his Church, the groom at the head the bride before him. We are that bride. He is the male in this analogy, we the female. If you put a female at the front of the congregation that analogy and microcosm is lost, and with it a large part of the Christian teaching that the Lord is groom to our bride - which you can find summarized in Ephesians 5.

A great part of the Christian gospel is communicated tacitly by the arrangement in which the Christian people stand when they are in church together. In every church service the very form in which each congregation assembles is a big corporate analogy, a microcosm. The arrangement of the congregation of one standing before the many is the public playing out of a microcosm of the relationship of God to his creation, and to his people.

Jesus Christ is the husband of this crowd, the provider and protector of this people. The congregation plays the provided for and the protected - his bride. This analogy works if you have a male at the front and regard the rest of the congregation as his bride. Putting a male at the front says that this particular person, Jesus Christ, who became one of the two sexes for us, is our provider and protector. We are those he protects and provides for. This microcosm played out by the whole congregation is an act of anticipation (prolepsis). It is not yet the reality, but it is the beginning and in-breaking of the reality. If you put a female at the head of the congregation this long-running analogy disappears. Of course all this depends on the news that Christ is our husband is actually being preached and taught, and that the congregation is converted and baptised into this event, that Jesus Christ is the husband of the Church.

But it is not simply an equation of husband with male (for lots of males never become husbands), but of husband with an act of unlooked for love. Being a husband is an act of love, even of compassion. It is entirely God's act of compassion, and all our acts of being husbands, parents, neighbours... are extensions of God's act of love. It is an extension of being a generous neighbour to anyone who is without a neighbour, and who needs you to be generous to them. Your ability to be that neighbour is given to you, just so you have something to give to others, by God. God is their neighbour, and he makes you participate in this office, so you become their neighbour, and in this act, become God-like to them and for them. In the same way somebody, one person, in the congregation, is required to play out publicly the role of Christ as groom so the whole congregation can more easily understand itself as God' s bride. It is neither unfair nor fair, but it is God's love, unlooked for, but given anyway.

Well, I am not utterly convinced by all this myself, but at least I have had a go at putting it in writing.

Here at at last is the first notice from the publishers Continuum - T & T Clark of the second volume (or third, if you count Eucharist, Bishop, Church, translated into English forty years after its first publcation in Greek) from Professor John Zizoulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon (Jean de Pergame). Here is the blurb from T & T Clark

Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church

‘Communion and otherness: how can these be reconciled?’ In this wide-ranging study, the distinguished Orthodox theologian, Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon, seeks to answer that question. In his celebrated book, Being as Communion (1985), he emphasised the importance of communion for life and for unity. In this important companion volume he now explores the complementary fact that communion is the basis for true otherness and identity.

With a constant awareness of the deepest existential questions of today, Metropolitan John probes the Christian tradition and highlights the existential concerns that already underlay the writings of the Greek fathers and the definitions of the early ecumenical councils. In a vigorous and challenging way, he defends the freedom to be other as an intrinsic characteristic of personhood, fulfilled only in communion.

After a major opening chapter on the ontology of otherness, written specially for this volume, the theme is systematically developed with reference to the Trinity, Christology, anthropology and ecclesiology. Another new chapter defends the idea that the Father is cause of the Trinity, as taught by the Cappadocian fathers, and replies to criticisms of this view. The final chapter responds to the customary separation of ecclesiology from mysticism and strongly favours a mystical understanding of the body of Christ as a whole. Other papers, previously published but some not easily obtainable, are all revised for their inclusion here.

This is a further contribution to dialogue on some of the most vital issues for theology and the Church from one of the leading figures in modern ecumenism.

A draft of its contents page fell into my hands a while back:

Introduction: 'Communion and Otherness', St Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly 38(1994), pp.347-61.

1. On Being Other: Towards an Ontology of Otherness (New)

2. On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood (In Christoph Schwöbel & Colin E Gunton (eds.), Persons, Divine and Human (T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1991), pp.33-46.)

3. The Trinity and Personhood: Appreciating the Cappadocian Contribution (In Colin E Gunton (ed.), Trinitarian Theology Today (T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1995), pp.44-60.)

4. The Father as Cause: Personhood Generating Otherness (New)

5. Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person: A Commentary on the Second Ecumenical Council (Credo in Spiritum Sanctum (1983), vol.1, pp.29-54.)

6. 'Created' and 'Uncreated': The Existential Significance of Chalcedonian Christology (Contacts 36(1984), pp.154-172; 37(1985), pp.60-72; correspondence with Philip Sherrard.)

7. Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood (Scottish Journal of Theology 28(1975), pp.401-448.)

8. The Spirit and Christ's Human Nature: In Search of Authentic Humanity (Unpublished (1995)).

9. Christ, The Spirit and the Church: Two Types of Pneumatology and their Ecclesiological Significance (Communio Sanctorum (1981), pp.141-154.

10. The Church as the 'Mystical' Body of Christ:Towards an Ecclesial Mysticism (Unpublished (1985))

Apparently there's some other book on the Metropolitan on the way. I hope Ashgate will promote the book as readily as they have promoted its editor.

When I look at you I see people I am not inclined to like. In the same way I did not think much of Christ. I thought Christ was irrelevant, impotent, a matter for others. I did not recognise him for who he is.

Just as I did not recognise Christ, so I do not recognise you. I thought you were incompetent and so I avoided you. But now I understand that you are given to me and set before me by Christ. You are the people he has chosen, for me now. In order to receive him I have to receive you and I cannot have him without taking you – you are him to me. There is no way to Christ for me except through the people I want to avoid. Now, teeth still gritted, I have to open up to you, pass on to you the things given to me, love and trust you, even though I know that that trust will be betrayed many times before it is vindicated. But for the first time you are becoming visible to me as you will be.

This love also obliges me to tell you what a way you have to go. If I love you, I have to correct you, and I have to put with the dislike, bafflement and hurt that that brings, understanding that this is the very opprobrium that Christ carries for me. So let us no longer look at the Church and see only a corrupt, despicable institution, or a hierarchy, separable from Jesus. When we do not see that is our sin, made visible there on the cross, it remains our sin. When we do see that it is our sin that he is carrying there, then it is no longer our sin, for he has really taken it away from us. Jesus is Christ – anointed – with his whole people, among them the people in church and classroom whom we may no longer regard as inadequate, but in reconciliation and union with whom we are being made perfect.

Collegiality was not understood simply in terms of an ultimately non-binding collegial frame of mind; collegiality is rather a reality ontologically grounded in the sacrament of episcopal consecration, the shared participation in the one episcopal office… This collegiality is of course not limited to the horizontal and synchronic relationship with contemporary episcopal colleagues; since the Church is one and the same in all centuries, the present-day church must also maintain diachronic consensus with the episcopate of the centuries before us, and above all with the testimony of the apostles. This is the more profound significance of the apostolic succession in episcopal office.

The episcopal office is thus an office of unity in a two-fold sense. Bishops are the sign and the instrument of unity within the individual local church, just as they are between both the contemporary local churches and those of all times within the universal Church.

Should we not therefore also be in a position to say together: the decision for the ordination of women to the episcopal office can only be made with an overwhelming consensus, and must not in any way involve a conflict between the majority and the minority. It would be desirable that this decision would be made with the consensus of the ancient churches of the East and West. If on the contrary the consecration of a bishop becomes the cause of a schism or blocks the way to full unity, then what occurs is something intrinsically contradictory. It should then not take place, or should be postponed until a broader consensus can be reached.

‘ Grex unus, qui unianima consensione pascitur’, that is the aim of ecumenical dialogue; it can only succeed if the unianima consensio of every single one of the separated churches is preserved and is then constituted step by step between those separated ecclesial bodies. May this, in spite of all the difficulties and resistance, be granted to us one day by the grace of God.

Cardinal Walter Kasper An address given to the Church of England Bishops’ Meeting (5 June 2006)

I Jeremiah 11 & Romans 13

Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them…

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities…Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect….Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another… First Jeremiah: The Lord said to me: Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them.

God has spoken to Israel. But Israel has not replied. Or rather Israel has replied to every god of every one of the surrounding foreign powers. Israel likes to give itself away to every conceivable nonsense. Israel sells itself very cheap – changes gods with the season, always rolling out an improved model, a tragic fashion victim – that’s what we heard from Jeremiah last week. Who knows perhaps the people of Israel are secretly convinced that, once they had thoroughly wasted themselves and one another, the real God will still be there to come home to.

Jeremiah is God's pray-er for Israel and to Israel, who has to point out that if we don't talk to God we address our petitions, hopes and prayers to the latest re-launched updated contemporary God-image. Now the Lord makes Jeremiah tease and provoke Israel into reclaiming its pride and joy in being God's beloved, in returning respect for respect and love for love. If we peek ahead to next week we find Jeremiah admitting that he cant not pray ‘If I say ‘I will not mention him or speak his name any more in his name, his word is in my heart like a fire, too strong I cant hold it in…..’.

Well, I cant think that that is like our society at all. We’d never do that. We wouldn’t waste the inheritance given to us, or wouldn’t exchange the love of God for us, and the truth of this love, for a series of lesser products just because we told that these other divinities are more exciting or contemporary.

But it was for us that this was written, Saint Paul tells us. Israel went through all distress this so we can see how huge and demanding is the life with God in order to make us want this life and ask for it. It is for us that Israel is different, has suffered all these indignities, recorded them and passed this record to us – out of love.

And it is for the world that we are different. We are the pray-ers and intercessors, and witnesses of God for this society of ours. We gather here to receive the love and truth of the God who let Jeremiah go through the mill for our sake, who sent us gentiles Paul the apostle, who taught the English to pray to the right God, who heard the prayers of the church that wrote the collects in this Prayer Book and built and re-built this building.

II Spirituality in the City

I have been asked to say something about Spirituality in the City - the book the theological discussion group has been reading, and to set out some questions. Let me just remind you of what is in the book, so two broad questions to kick off:

What do we mean by spirituality and what do we mean by city? Spirituality first. In his chapter Rowan Williams tells us that:

1. ‘We need to rescue spirituality from some of the ways in which it has been domesticated,. …. It becomes only a code for techniques of making people feel a bit better about themselves… where the Spirit makes people ‘uncomfortable about themselves and their environment, critical and creative. (p. 24)

When the New Testament speaks of the life of ‘spirit’ it speaks about the virtues gifts of life together. It assumes that to grow in the spiritual life is to become free to give others what has been given to you

Spirituality cannot be treated as a separate issue, it is about the life with Christ and so discipleship as whole. No spirituality without the Spirit of the Son sent into our hearts whereby we call God Father. And the Spirit is engaged in the business of making us human, which of course means being in relationship with God.

2. The Church might open a way to the story of that city whose founder is God, and to citizenship in that community,… ready to explore their own ‘citizenship of heaven’ and to open it up to others in such a way as to transform the citizenship and the cities of this earth. (p.26)

The archbishop says what several contributors say –

3. The church is obliged just to be there speaking a certain language, telling a certain story, witnessing to certain non-negotiable things about humanity.

The contributors point out that spirituality does not mean escaping our grotty urban reality, and that even when polite society has given up and left it, the church does not leave the bad bits of town. Archbishop Williams is concerned by the poverty of imagination of the generation growing up in front of Play Station. He wants a Church to know it has something distinct from the surrounding culture of consumerism and endless re-validated ‘choice’. To be this distinct thing, in which other criteria, those of discipleship, operate. Then we have something distinct to offer this society.

The chapter I chose was ‘Spirituality in Everyday Life, by Andrew Davey. He tells us:

4. ‘The call to enter the new Jerusalem is one to participate in its maintenance, and to practise human formation in the presence of God… it enables us to celebrate and engage with, the life of the city in our quest for the ‘new ordering of God’ on earth as it is in heaven.’ (p. 106)

I think ‘practise human formation in the presence of God’ means that God's presence, here amongst us in the worship, forms us human beings, on God's definition, and that in all our worship and life together we practice being human together. Is that right?

What do we mean by City? Every contributor to this book refers to London then points out the inadequacy of this definition of city, for by city we also mean our Society. Our identity is not given only by our location in London, but also by the calendar..

According to Andrew Davey the calendar of the Church year gives us an alternative identity. We are located by the Scripture set out through the church year. Each reading, of Old testament, psalm, epistle and gospel, adds something and by a process of triangulation the sermon tells the result of all these readings of Scripture for who we are, where we are, which way we are facing and what is coming up.

5. Through the offering of the Eucharist, the offices, prayer and the sharing of Scriptures, Christians have a collection of tactics through which they can begin to reimagine and reshape the communities and context of which they are a part.

6. Liturgy in the city becomes a counter-cultural activity … the means through which Christians stake their interest in a place by creating events, new histories – concrete, historicized acts that proclaim God's new order’.

7. In realising an urban spirituality those strategies come together as the Christian community becomes more aware of a memory that heals, redeems and transforms, of a narrative that, when told and prayed in community, allows the integrating principle to take root. (p. 111).

Finally Andrew Davey quotes Stephen Sykes:

8. ‘Would it not be consistent with the Anglican tradition to see our churches offering praise on behalf of a specific part of the world which God loves, the praise of which it has forgotten to express.'

In other words we have to pray for those who cannot pray for themselves. That is what we doing here. So when Andrew Davey talk about spirituality in everyday life, he says that this is about Christians worshipping God together in public. He says they speak for the whole city when they do.

A couple of questions – fair and unfair – about the book as a whole. Its editor Andrew Walker ‘is developing The London Centre for Spirituality at St Edmund the King’. Now wait a minute, we must say, this is the London Centre for Spirituality, here and now where we confess God, when humbled we ask almighty God if we may approach him with our petitions, meekly on our knees. This happens here and in the Sunday morning eucharist when we are all gathered together in one congregation. Just as that eucharistic loaf is lifted up high, so we are lifted up by the Son and just so in our prayers we lift up the whole world to God.

Isn’t St Mary’s Stoke Newington is the London centre for petitioning God, since it is God who petitions us? We do this when the whole congregation is present – made up as it is of all the unlikely and most contrary elements, the young, old, this and that class and ethnicity, this and that churchmanship, gathered and animated by the Spirit we pray and call on God and so become members of his Son. When the whole congregation is present we are the Spirit-filled, catholic people. Spirituality is not an add-on: it is our main and only business.

So there is plenty for us to extract from Spirituality in the City. But I think the best response to it comes from another little book. Actually it is the most immodest little book. It is the St Mary's Church order of service for Eucharist and Holy Baptism. To read just one snippet:

‘For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Spirit, art most High in the Glory of God the Father…’

You sing this without flinching. I am just amazed that the ideology police haven't impounded this little book of ours, or don't come running down the aisles blowing whistles and announcing that we can no longer make such claims in public. The most exciting book, the most controversial, is the very book we sing from, and it should be our next choice as book for the theology discussion group. We sing it – what do we mean by it? A Church that gave good answers to this would be doing its city a big favour.

III A catholic people

The most significant statement in this book is the quote from Sykes: We pray for those who do not pray for themselves. In two senses – we pray to God on their behalf. And we ask the leaders of society for what they should ask for themselves – chiefly some hope, aspiration and leadership.

‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities.’ This doesn’t just mean civil authorities. We are here under authority of Christ, who has given us the more gentle practices of his people the Church, of its worship, which we sing on behalf of London, but also to make London curious and envious. If do not follow this liturgy we will by default follow the liturgy of the many other counterfeit gods of the global marketplace and media.

‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities.’ The authority of Christ is made available to the whole Christian church, and the authority of the whole church is made available to us in the approachable figure of our own church leaders. They authority is good – let us tell them so until they become more convinced of it themselves. They authority is given by God for us, and it is good for us, and bad for us if we don't receive it. Our priests and bishops are under the authority of the whole Christian church and tradition, the experience of many centuries. We must pray for them and encourage them to dispense that largesse to us. It is not only teaching, but it is discipline. By our praying to God for them and making requests to them we have to so change the climate that it is possible for the clergy to lead and give us the correction we need. But by the insistence of our prayers and petitions for them and to them, we have to give them the authority to speak to us in a new way.

I think we should illustrate the catholicity of the church in the eucharist is the hope of this city of ours. I have three suggestions:

1. We have to show that our congregation is not autonomous - not the whole Church - even in stoke Newington. So how would it be if we sent some (pre-sanctified) bread to every other little shop-front church in Hackney, and ask them to give us some word of encouragement, and perhaps even send us some bread back?

2. The economy of London is not autonomous, and the Church in London is not autonomous. So why don’t we send some (pre-sanctified) bread to one or two other cities in the world and ask them to give us some word of encouragement, and even send us some bread back that we can break in our eucharist? We are not a self-sufficient people: for example, in other cities all over the world people sew the clothes we wear in London, and I doubt we in London pay enough for them. How would it be if we sent bread, and whatever other tokens of encouragement we can think of, to whatever churches we can contact in one or two of those cities in the Philippines or South China where our clothes come from?

3. It is the job of this church to pray. I think the intercessions in the Sunday eucharist are one of the great things about this congregation. Here perhaps we could really hope to teach others. We should collect our intercessions and package them so we produce our own Lent course and discussion books in the hope that we can offer something distinct to our diocese and this city.

Every congregation worldwide and through out history is united by God with every other, and each prays for its part of the world, and speaks back to God in thankfulness. St Mary’s is the city on the hill, placed here so the rest of London can see our life together and say this is the people we want to become. This congregation is a city, a new society, inaugurated here. It speaks for those who do not know how to speak for themselves, and the poor and the voiceless can come and find their voice here. It does this because it itself is the product of the love and labour of the Holy Spirit who has placed us here before the world, gathered around Christ, in earshot of the Father so we can pray Lord hear us, Lord graciously hear us.

In the name of Father the Son and Holy Spirit Amen

The question briefly put it this: in what sense is there or ought there to be communion between Christians whose beliefs seem to differ profoundly on a number of significant topics, from scriptural interpretation to creedal exposition to moral teaching to the church’s political orderings? Does it make sense to speak of communion at all within such circumstances? Any right answer to this question cannot escape the historical reality that the Church’s story must embody the story of a divine union whose only possibility lay in the suffering of its divine inappropriateness. The hopelessness given in ecclesial contention and division is overcome only by the divine victory givenness the body of Christ: it is act coincident with the life of the Church, however, and thus its historical form for the Church can be observed only within the scriptural realm of ecclesial conformity itself – truth and unity joined in the divine suffering of the body’s fractured life itself.

Certainly, unity and truth have struck many Christians as potentially incompatible characteristics at a given time, ranged against one another in a zero-sum game made necessary by the travails of the moment: sometimes unity at the cost of truth, or sometimes truth at the cost of unity…

But while we can note this long history of attempts to play off unity and truth against each other or to relate them to same form of resolved tension… We do not tend to see gentleness and patience as ever being in tension; we do not ever place kindness and self-control over and against each other as two elements whose individual consummation may require their subordination to one another in time…

On the matter of unity, then, we can conclude that if the church is one, its unity will involve a participation in the historical form of the Father’s sending of his Son in time, an act synonymous with the incarnation’s narrative.

Ephraim Radner ‘The Figure of Truth and Unity’ in Hope Among the Fragments: The Broken Church and its Engagement of Scripture

It has been one of the distinguishing marks of Western culture, from the nominalists of the late Middle Ages onward, that 'mystery' and 'reason' are continually held apart, even seen as opposed. In particular, in the development from the skepticism of the radical Enlightenment to 20th century positivism, the idea of rationality has taken on an increasingly narrowed definition, one which excludes, and is even pit against, notions of revelation, transcendence, and tradition. Yet the faith of the Apostles and Fathers is otherwise. The substance of this faith is that 'the mystery hidden for ages in God' and now revealed in Jesus Christ, is none other than the Logos, the infinite and uncreated Reason and Word of God. It is that this Logos assumed full humanity in the womb of the Virgin, uniting to Himself a human mind, with all its structures of created rationality, redeeming and sanctifying them, so that we might be transformed in the renewal of our minds (Rom. 12:2).

A positive and balanced understanding of the role of reason in the redemptive work of Christ and the life of the Church is reflected in the Pauline notion of logiki latreia, 'rational worship',which is to be found in the Orthodox liturgies themselves and in the writings of the Fathers. In Romans 12:1-2, St. Paul writes: I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your rational worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed in the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul's discussion of rational worship and the transformation of the mind comes in a context in which the role of body is given place as well. This is indicative of the wholistic anthropology of St. Paul, in continuity with the Old Testament, in which body and mind are distinguished but held together in essential unity. This holistic anthropology is important for the theology of worship as it will also become important for the Fathers' defense of the full humanity of Christ against the Apollinarian denial of a human mind to the Incarnate Savior. There seems little doubt that in its original context of Romans 12, Paul's concept of logiki latreia refers not to the Church's liturgy in the narrow sense of the term, but rather to the entire 'liturgy' of the Christian life, lived as an offering of worship to God.

Matthew Baker Logiki Latreia and the Mind of Christ

Unless you think that social and legal considerations should be allowed to resolve religious disputes which is a highly risky assumption if you also believe in real freedom of opinion in a diverse society there has to be a recognition that religious bodies have to deal with the question in their own terms. Arguments have to be drawn up on the common basis of Bible and historic teaching. And, to make clear something that can get very much obscured in the rhetoric about ‘inclusion’, this is not and should never be a question about the contribution of gay and lesbian people as such to the Church of God and its ministry, about the dignity and value of gay and lesbian people. Instead it is a question, agonisingly difficult for many, as to what kinds of behaviour a Church that seeks to be loyal to the Bible can bless, and what kinds of behaviour it must warn against and so it is a question about how we make decisions corporately with other Christians, looking together for the mind of Christ as we share the study of the Scriptures.

Archbishop Rowan William Reflections on the Anglican Communion