You know your problem? You live in a culture which does not take ideas seriously. It does not believe that anyone lives or dies or kills themselves for an idea. But people do. A vision inspires them. Their imagination drives them. Whether the revolution they are looking for is going to bring about the Post-Carbon future or a universal Caliphate, it is this vision and their imagination that moves them. They hold out against the dominant but dismal idea that what we want is determined by what our bodies need, or by what our gender or class or ethnicity demands. Islamicists and all other Utopians are driven by their imagination. They assume that ideas and freedom are more important than our stomachs. You Westerners believe that we are propelled only by our material interests, and that every idea is cloak for the truth of the base appetites beneath. We live in a very pessimistic society, a lot of Gnostic and Manichean stuff undiagnosed out there. We live in a culture that does not believe in culture. Which is why it despises Christians. A notice on the door of St Mary Aldermanbury advertises a talk entitled ‘Why are Christians Strange?’ How deeply we Christians have internalised other people’s perplexities and resentments. But is it really good for them that we should do so? ‘Why don’t Christians fall into line?’, ‘Why don’t they think like the rest of us, ‘Why don’t we make them behave like the rest of us.’ Put that monastic home-spun on again, you Christians, and practise your hymns, for your time will soon be here.

Niall Ferguson talked to audience of merchant bankers in St Paul’s Cathedral last night, one of the many launches of his biog of Siegmund Warburg. The title he gave himself was ‘Men, Morality and Money.’ Ferguson’s line was that when a boy, Warburg’s Mama made him pray every night, and before doing so, examine himself to find the errors and omissions of the day. Warburg thus remained a very moral man, the very model of ‘relationships banking’ rather than ‘transactions banking’. Go and do likewise, was Ferguson’s understated message to the assembled bankers. One reason that we have a financial crisis he said is that financiers don't read history, even financial history, so never imagine (again, imagination) that their actions have consequences which may rebound on them, and that from time to time in human affairs things get rough. Warburg was a responsible banker because he, almost alone, escaped the political consequences of the economic collapse of Weimar to epitomise the old-fashioned banking of the City of London pre-the big bang. Today’s bankers are too young to remember even the 27% inflation and power-cuts of the Nineteen-Seventies. Something to look forward to.

Though Ferguson is a performer, the echo created by the architecture of that vast building meant that his voice cancelled itself out, making him scarcely audible. That building does not allow you to understate and remain subtle. You cannot offer morality ironically there. You have to give judgment, intoning slowly. Ferguson and the bankers and I were all under the judgment seat of Christ, sitting in the great cross which is the transept. Ferguson, or any one of us, can simply ask 'Have we all done something very foolish? Have we done something that endangers our economy and our society? Have we made it more likely that the next generation will have less opportunity to live in an open economy and society than we have had? What resources does the Gospel give us to weigh these questions?'

You make no cultural contribution by talking about culture or history or morality. You have to begin with judgment. You can talk about the judgment of our successors on us, and indeed our own likely judgment when in twenty years’ time we look back on our present selves. And you can talk about the judgment of God. If you want to make a contribution, begin with the Christian faith and stay with it. Only by saying what the gospel is are we able to secure our hold on any of the cultural by-products – the political liberty that enables the free market – enjoyed by the majority who wish to remain Christianity's cultural free-riders. You like freedom, freedom to trade? Be a Christian. Be a Jew. Someone asked Ferguson about Islamic finance, and after saying something affirming, he said that Islam was the greatest single threat to freedom and civilisation. If the assembled financiers were tired of freedom and civilisation they should simply carry on as they are and events will do the rest…

States are not founded on social contracts, protection of the individual, or any such idiocy handed down from Hobbes; they are founded upon congregations, as Augustine explained in the City of God. It is not common interest but common love that defines states. We do not have a â??selfâ?? interest as such; our â??selfâ?? belongs to our ancestors and our children, unless, of course, we are contemporary Europeans, who despise our ancestors and have no children, and hope to pass into extinction with the minimum of bother.

From Jerusalem came the most persuasive promise humankind had ever heard, namely the promise of eternal lifeâ??not the fragile immortality of the pagan gods, whose doom already was sealed by fate in the myths of all the peoples, but life with God past the dissolution of the physical world. The world will wear out and God will discard it like a cloak, Psalm 102 sings, but the Lord will establish his servants forever.

The history of Israel is the history of the world, said Franz Rosenzweig, for as soon as the peoples learned that the God of the Jews had promised them eternal life, they considered how they, too, might become part of this covenant. The Christians emulate us and the Muslims parody us. I use the word â??emulationâ?? with respect: as Jacob Neusner observes (and Benedict XVI quotes him), when Jesus declares himself to be Lord of the Sabbath in Matthew, he in effect proposes to make Temple and Sabbath accessible to non-Jews. The truth of this proposition or its ultimate efficacy is another matter, but there is no doubt in my mind that orthodox Christians seek the loving Creator God of the Jews. Islam is a different issue: it maintains outward forms similar to Judaism which enclose an inner pagan content.

The passions that rage over Jerusalem reveal the desire for immortality that underlies all of politics. Humankind does not want safety, security, sustenance as much as it wants to cheat death. Islamâ??s claim to credibility is that it represents the final prophecy, which has corrected falsified and distorted Scriptures prepared by those sneaky Jews and Christians. It does not want to appropriate the Bible, but rather loot it and leave the discredited shell behind.

David Goldman Eternal Jerusalem

Rusty Reno on an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsement in Marriage, Morality and Culture

The controversial question of same-sex marriage marks decisive new phase in our cultural drive toward an every deeper freedom to live as one pleases. Freedom from censure is no longer sufficient. Today, we see an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsementâ?¦ Our present and widespread social censure of moral censure inculcates and reinforces a non-judgmental ethos. Now we are embarking on a much more aggressive program. Everybody should have access to the cultural symbols of affirmation. â?¦ But we cannot turn culture into the equivalent of a public access channel. As Aristotle explained in his account of moral formation and human flourishing, culture humanizes us by demanding our obedience. Happiness does not come from living according to your desires. It comes from desiring to live according to demanding and disciplining social norms that transcend individual desires....It is sociologically incoherent to imagine that we can both radically redefine marriage and transfer its â??transcendent, cultural, and social significanceâ?? to same-sex couples, as if the former does not alter and undermine the later.

Empedocles at A Pox on Both Your Houses is on the same theme with Social historical kinds and Marriage

The question we must ask is not what is the definition of marriage, but what is its function. The function of marriage is to provide an environment for he successful raising of children. This is the only explanation that accords with its historical origins (although the forms it has taken through the centuries has differed). And as I mentioned, for each function there will be attendant virtues. Love is the primary virtue of marriage; it is what allows a marriage to perform its function of providing an environment that is safe, stable, healthy, and nurturing for children to be born into. There are other virtues in addition to love that allow a marriage to perform its function: having the means to support the child...

and Multicultural elitism

Multiculturalism would say that it is the majority that must give up their cultural practice and adopt the practice of the minority group, that unless the majority accommodates the cultural practice of the minority, some moral evil has occurred. Thus we see all these ridiculous efforts in the western world to appease other cultures by abandoning their own cultural practice and accepting practices and demands that they would normally notâ?¦. Multiculturalism, thus requires that everyone else remain monocultural while we good multiculturalists float above all cultures, enjoying all the various cultural production of the Earth. And so multiculturalism requires a two-tiered system: a foundation of monocultures, and an upper-crust of those multiculturalists who do the celebrating of diversity....despite multiculturalismâ??s egalitarian rhetoric, it is in fact an elitist ideology, requiring two separate systems in order to exist.

This blog is a fan of Amazon reviewer Jackson Eskew. His Guides and Lists are full of wonders, many discoveries, others just long forgotten. My favourite list is Mustapha Mond is now President

America has elected Mustapha Mond as its President. It isn't surprising; the breakdown has long since prepared the way for this catastrophe. No, this man didn't have to stage a coup. He was actually elected. Applauded. Embraced. Tears flowed. For Mond is the apotheosis of Hope (one of the three theological virtues, note well) for a godless world. Yes, he's hailed as a kind of neopagan messiah. He accordingly promises bread and circuses - and much death (haven't heard of FOCA yet? You will). And this is applauded.

Mustapha Mond is the World Controller in Huxley's Brave New World

Here is Jackson reviewing Amazon’s own Kindle device:

While its novelty is undeniably dazzling, novelty is neither a necessary nor a sufficient ground for embracing a thing. Our consumerist age has, alas, largely forgotten this, just as it's forgotten that convenience isn't always rightly a supreme criterion of value. In spite of Jeff Bezos's crusade to annihilate physical books, along with the thick vapor of chronological snobbery in which this crusade breathes its lifeblood, they'll likely be around for some time to come, though possibly with a radically reduced readership. This is because many people, like me, still refuse to run with the herd. We decline, for example, to brand ourselves with tattoos, we'll never become obedient subjects of today's dictatorship of relativism, and we definitely prefer the materiality of actual books. Why? Because we sense today's renunciation of the incarnational that increased digitization represents as the antiseptic stench of this age's dread spirit. Fundamentally, we see it as yet another form of this dead age's rejection of the Logos; that is, as yet another mutiny against the very ground of our being.

My word is my bond? Rebuilding trust - the G20 and beyond

St Paul's Cathedral Tuesday 31st March, 2009, 11am - 12.30pm

On the eve of the G20, St Paul's is hosting a high level debate about the moral questions raised by the dramatically changing world we find ourselves in. Can opportunities for society's good come from the economic crisis? Has there been a disconnection between morality, policy-making and practice? What are the prospects for remaking the global order, rebuilding financial systems and re-establishing trust? How will a new global order actively include development goals and address climate change?

Sorry, a blog pause appeared there. A sign that some work is underway I always think. I am following Rod Dreher, like everybody else. But if you are desperate for something to read you could have a look at my latest work-in-progress dump at at Scribd. The theological discussion of economics is presently masquerading as Lent talks - skip the first one, which just sets the scene.

These cases are not aberrations. They are the outcome of a process that has been going on for the past three decades and more, in which the fundamental values of civilised society have been systematically trashed and up-ended. They are the result of the doctrine that all lifestyles must be considered equal and that no one has right to pass judgment on anyone else. Thus, women had a God-given right to bear babies out of wedlock. Stigma and shame were considered an affront to individual rights; disapproval of adultery or elective lone parenthood were dismissed as ‘Old Testament fundamentalism’. Government policy, egged on by activist judges who deliberately voided family law of ‘moral judgments’ on the basis that there was no right or wrong in family life because it was always just too complicated to untangle, accordingly penalised marriage, rewarded adultery, further incentivised lone parenthood and systematically normalised irregular relationships. The outcome is a shattered social landscape of lost and abandoned children, raised in households of gross emotional chaos and physical and moral squalor. Ignoring the fact that this underclass has become detached from the most basic values of civilised life, the so-called progressive intelligentsia declares that its only problem is ‘poverty’. Accordingly, it has supplied lone mothers with benefits on the basis that they were most in need. The result has been financial incentives for unmarried women to have multiple children - whose primary need was to have a committed father and stable family life, the very need government policy ensured would never be met.

Melanie Phillips The barbarism of ideologues

I had a great ten days in the US. It started with the SBL at Boston, bumping into the usual serendity of people – Tom Wright, Neil MacDonald, Doug Campbell, Alan Garrow, Mark Elliott, caught up with Murray Rae, roomed with Luke Tallon and Dan Driver and met some of their talented St Andrews mates. Lots of theological exegesis going on: I was impressed by Edith Humphrey and then by Peter Leithart on typological exegesis of the Book of Ruth. Ephraim Radner was there but gave me the slip.

Then on to Justyn Terry at Trinity Evangelical School for Ministry at Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. The college was quiet so didn't get to meet local heroes Bill Witt or Leander Harding, but I’m hoping they will invite me back. We went to service for Pittsburgh’s 250 year anniversary at the Cathedral Church with Bishop Bob Duncan, apparently not ‘deposed’ so no unseemly fight between bishops for the throne. From Justyn’s account both sides of the Episcopalian ruck seem to understand the Church as a corporation, with Presiding Bishop as CEO, bishops as the branch managers that can be sacked – so the churches, that is, actual Christians, would then be employees perhaps, or consumers? A properly ‘episcopalian’ church would understand that a bishop is king in his own diocese, his relationship with the people of the church in his city indissoluble, so that any other jurisdiction such as province or national church is not higher but simply honorary. Anyway, a wonderful time with the Terry family, while writing my piece for Princeton

Then Princeton and the new Institute for Theological Inquiry which had set us the task of talking about Covenant and the Human Future. Supper and (Episcopalian) Church with the Jensons. I was crushed to find that Jean Bethke Elshtain had withdrawn: her vast output anticipates most of my proposal. I want to produce my theological economics book along with new stuff, on the long-term political-and-demographic result of the dissolution of marriage, which Allan Carlson of the Howard Center is doing, as is Elshtain. A very mixed but also quite elderly company, Darlene Weaver and Gerald McDermott the exceptions, and one of the rabbis one was certainly impressive, but it is not easy to see what will emerge from this. Saw a lot of Rusty Reno, who was being extra-irenic and refused to reveal the identity of Spengler, my new hero, and on to a Madison symposium chaired by Robert George on Eric Cohen’s In the Shadow of Progress

Why are the wealthiest people in human history the least likely to want children? What kind of civilization will we become if we seek cures for the sick by destroying human embryos?

Also found Ben Myers, who has been working away on the Jenson book after all, I was very relieved to find. All in the US were very relaxed about political and economic developments, but here it feels as though we are about to disappear into the maelstrom, so not at all relaxed, but dithering between continuing the effort to interest London diocese clergy in their faith while working towards a marriage institute, and running away to Scottish island monastery.

The times dictate that we strive all the more diligently to emphasize the unchanging teachings of the creeds and the longstanding moral consensus of the church on matters under demonic seige these days: nothing less than the abolition of man seems underway, though we know that that project ultimately is doomed.

We also know that Christians around the world are being persecuted and that we must stand in solidarity with them. Whether persecution reaches those who do not expect it or not remains to be seen. We can only be ready.

It is all too apparent that a long sea change in culture - primarily in the concept of "family" broadly understood (i.e., sex, marriage, procreation, child-rearing, education, etc) - has rendered much (not all) of the church's witness in the West anemic and hardly fruitful, because so many have gone along with much of it by slow degrees over many decades. What is the real difference between a typical Christian and a comfortable secularist American? And beyond this, in some cases the witness in some "churches" has really become anti-christ, apostate.

Mere Comments

The Institute for Theological Inquiry (ITI) is an ongoing theological enterprise that is a division of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Efrat. Its American partner is the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey. The Institutes objective is to engage world-class theologians to break new theological ground on focused research projects in areas critical to Judaism, Christianity and world culture. Through its research, ITIs aims to develop rich new foundations for cooperative Jewish-Christian understanding, as well as spiritual and moral values that will bear on global religious, cultural and political life in the 21st century.

The Americans have met the enemy, and it is them. America has coasted on a quarter-century wave of power and prosperity since president Reagan won the Cold War and restarted the economy. America in the 1980s was the only model to be emulated, and a magnet for global capital flows. So compelling were American capital markets that by the late 1990s, almost all the free savings of the world sought an American home. In 2007 a trillion dollars of overseas capital poured into American markets.

Americans no longer had to save; the rest of the world saved for them and lent them money at the lowest interest rates in half a century. Americans no longer had to study; engineers from India to Argentina programmed their computers. And Americans no longer had to face a strategic challenge; after the death of the Soviet Union, so Washington believed, America need only export its self-image. Of all the great illusions of the post-Cold War era, this has turned out to be the most pernicious.

Like emerging Asia in the mid-1990s, Americans used cheap foreign capital to make real-estate speculation into a national pastime. And like Asia in 1997, there is no remedy but to let the sickening slide of asset prices take its course, until the grasshoppers learn to work and save like ants.

Scores of millions who were wealthy on paper a year ago will be penniless by the end of 2008. In the American states where home prices rose the fastest - California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada - prices fell by almost a third during the year to September 30. American equity prices already have fallen by 10% since last October. Both residential and equity values are likely to fall much further before the bloodletting is over.

Americans engaged in a collective delusion according to which infinite wealth would be created on the Internet through shopping and salacious entertainment. Perhaps if someone had perfected virtual-reality sex, the stock price bubble might have continued, but the disappointment attendant on the end of the illusion cut the value of American equities by half.

The world learned that it was dangerous to buy risky American assets and chose instead to buy safe ones. The trouble was that as a whole, the American public was engaged in extremely risky behavior, that is, bidding up home prices with cheap credit. The banks and credit rating agencies declared that a basket of very risky assets could be turned into a very safe asset, by selling off the part of the risk to speculators. This exercise turned out to fall somewhere between the delusional and the fraudulent.

Spengler Putin for President...of the United States All this was equally true of the UK of course.

Scripture and Liturgy in the Theology of Benedict XVI at the Catholic Chaplaincy, Oxford, Saturday 1 November 2008

Scott Hahn Aidan Nichols Michael Waldstein Adrian Walker and our very own Stratford Caldecott - details are here

And Scott Hahn is in London on Friday 31 October.

Now wait a minute, I had a little paper on Benedict on the liturgy somewhere, oh yes, here it is.

Two pieces of sturdy and intelligent common sense from two contemporary apostles:

Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life

Oliver O'Donovan Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion - first published as Fulcrum web sermons. My review of them is here.

The welcome candor of Cardinal Kasper's remarks at Lambeth can easily be captured in a series of quotations.

* "In our dialogue we have jointly affirmed that the decisions of a local or regional church must not only foster communion in the present context, but must also be in agreement with the church of the past, and in a particular way with the apostolic church as witnessed in the Scriptures, the early councils and the patristic tradition."

* "It also seems to us [the Catholic Church] that the Anglican commitment to being 'episcopally led and synodically governed' has not always functioned in such a way as to maintain the apostolicity of the faith and that synodical government misunderstood as a kind of parliamentary process has at times blocked the sort of episcopal leadership envisaged by Cyprian [St. Cyprian, cited earlier]…."

* "He [Pope John Paul II in settling the question of the ordination of women] concluded, 'I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church’s faithful.' This formulation clearly shows that this is not only a disciplinary position but an expression of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church finds herself bound by the will of Jesus Christ and does not feel free to establish a new tradition alien to the tradition of the church of all ages."

Catholic Culture

The UK tax system is unusual in that it takes virtually no account of either marriage or family responsibilities. Most other countries’ systems explicitly recognise both. Tax credits do, of course, take account of the financial needs of children of one parent, but in the case of two-parent families they ignore the needs of the second parent. This is one of the reasons why the Government has failed to meet its child poverty targets.

Care reports Couple Penalty and Taxation of married families

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI is a pastor. He preaches and teaches around the Church year, his homily at every feast telling us something about Christ and something about us. Through his Easter and Corpus Christi homilies in particular he teaches us how to relate the passion, crucifixion, resurrection, the eucharist and body of Christ.

His very impressive little book on Jesus of Nazareth takes us through the ministry up to the transfiguration. We come to it in the knowledge that there is second book dealing with the passion and resurrection to follow. But a work of Christian teaching theology would not put incarnation and ministry in one book, which would then look very like a work of biblical studies, and the resurrection in another, and the Church and eucharist in a third. That would attempt to divide the indivisible, Jesus in one book, Christ in a second, and so divide Christ from his people, take away his anointing, until ‘Christ’ becomes the corpse over which the dogs of biblical studies have fought these many years. So it is a joy to find that the passion, resurrection and worship and eucharist are everywhere in this volume.

Pope Benedict on Jesus and Sacrifice

The desacralization of man, who no longer knows himself made in the image and likeness of God, advances in tandem with inflated reverence for culture. But we were warned. Half a century ago, Romano Guardini reflected on modernityâ??s faith in culture, which â??took its stance opposite God and His Revelationâ?? and recognized no measure beyond itself. Louis Bouyer, writing in 1982, looked on the dilation of culture and recognized it as a symptom of deep degeneration, the herald of a â??monstrous civilizationâ?? emptied of meaning. He referred to museums as little more than â??cultural refrigeratorsâ?? where â??apparent life is actually preserved in a state of death.â?? More recently, Louis Dupré expanded on Guardiniâ??s theme: â??Culture itself has become the real religion of our time, absorbing traditional religion as a subordinate part of itself.â??

When UNESCO declared Vatican City a World Heritage Site in 1984, it blessed St. Peterâ??s Basilica as â??the fruit of the combined genius of Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Maderna.â?? The witness of Peter did not apply. If it is true, as the historian David Lowenthal asserts, that society restores and preserves what it has ceased to resent, then the Williamsburging of Christianity is no compliment. Worse, it flatters Christians into believing that the blame for a de-Christianized West lies outside themselves. The Museum of Biblical Art is premised on the assumption that our predicament results from a failure of education; continuing ed, buttressed by museum stature, is the cure. Père Bouyer was not so readily seduced. He understood the Westâ??s descent into post-Christian culture in terms of the adage corruptio optima pessima: â??It is not ignorance of Christianity among those who were never evangelized, nor its negation by those who were never able to accept it, but rather by the betrayal of Christianity by those who received the Gospel and were brought up as Christians.â?? It is not necessary to document the corruption of the best in our own decade and close to home. It is enough to stay mindful that every genuflection by the Church to secular idolsâ??under the pretext of promoting the gospelâ??ends as Vigo Demant foresaw: a proclamation of secularism â??in a Christian idiom.â?? The Paraclete does not need our museums.

Maureen Mullarkey Faith behind Glass

In order to mark this Second Reading of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the House of Commons on Monday 12th May we will be holding a prayer vigil together with other groups.

PLEASE COME to our prayer vigil outside Parliament, invite members of your church, Christian groups, family and friends. We will gather at 2pm on 12th May in Old Palace Yard, opposite St Stephen’s Entrance to the House of Lords, Westminster.

At Second Reading, MPs vote on the ‘principle’ of the whole Bill. This is usually a formality and then the Bill goes through to its Committee Stages, Report and Third Reading where MPs can vote on specific amendments.

With faith and humility we must come together to pray for a great miracle. Monday, 12th May is the day after Pentecost and exactly 2 years since the miraculous defeat at Second Reading of the Joffe Bill which would have legalised euthanasia in this country. We would like Christians everywhere to come in their hundreds and stand outside Parliament and pray for this miracle; pray that MPs will vote against the principle of the Bill.

Christian Concern for our Nation

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros â?? named Islamâ??s â??Public Enemy #1â?? by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid â?? has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries â?? mostly Muslim converts â?? he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., â??Life TVâ??). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance â?? free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botrosâ??s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egyptâ??s Copts â?? members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East â?? have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of â??dhimmitudeâ?? (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam â??ten demandsâ?? whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islamâ??s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

Typically, Botrosâ??s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open â?? and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on â??al-dalil we al-burhan,â?? â?? â??evidence and proof,â?? one of his frequent refrains â?? not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence â?? which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers.

Raymond Ibrahim on Father Zakaria Botros

Der Gottesbeweis: Warum wir, wenn es Gott nicht gibt, überhaupt nichts denken können

Solange Vergangenes erinnert wird, ist es nicht schwer, die Frage nach seiner Seinsart zu beantworten. Es hat seine Wirklichkeit eben im Erinnertwerden. Aber die Erinnerung hört irgendwann auf, und irgendwann wird es keine Menschen mehr auf der Erde geben. Schließlich wird die Erde selbst verschwinden. Da zur Vergangenheit immer eine Gegenwart gehört, deren Vergangenheit sie ist, müßten wir also sagen: mit der bewußten Gegenwart - und Gegenwart ist immer nur als bewußte - verschwindet auch die Vergangenheit, und das Futurum exactum verliert seinen Sinn. Aber genau dies können wir nicht denken. Der Satz: "In ferner Zukunft wird es nicht mehr wahr sein, daß wir heute abend hier zusammen waren" ist Unsinn. Er läßt sich nicht denken. Wenn wir einmal nicht mehr hier gewesen sein werden, dann sind wir tatsächlich auch jetzt nicht wirklich hier, wie es der Buddhismus denn auch konsequenterweise behauptet. Wenn gegenwärtige Wirklichkeit einmal nicht mehr gewesen sein wird, dann ist sie gar nicht wirklich. Wer das Futurum exactum beseitigt, beseitigt das Präsens.

Aber noch einmal: Von welcher Art ist diese Wirklichkeit des Vergangenen, das ewige Wahrsein jeder Wahrheit? Die einzige Antwort kann lauten: Wir müssen ein Bewußtsein denken, in dem alles, was geschieht, aufgehoben ist, ein absolutes Bewußtsein. Kein Wort wird einmal ungesprochen sein, kein Schmerz unerlitten, keine Freude unerlebt. Geschehenes kann verziehen, es kann nicht ungeschehen gemacht werden. Wenn es Wirklichkeit gibt, dann ist das Futurum exactum unausweichlich, und mit ihm das Postulat des wirklichen Gottes.

And that, my friends, is an eschatological ontology.

Der letzte Gottesbeweis

All the stars will be out in Nottingham for

The Pope and 'Jesus of Nazareth' conference 19-20 June Archbishop Javier Martínez (Granada): â??Christ of history, Jesus of Faithâ?? Questions and Discussion (chaired by Prof. John Milbank) Prof. Walter Moberly (Durham): â??The Use of the Old Testament in Jesus of Nazarethâ?? Prof. Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford): â??Lessons learned from Reading Scripture with Pope Benedictâ?? Dr Roland Deines (Nottingham): â??Can the â??Realâ?? Jesus be Identified with the Historical Jesus?â?? Prof. Henri-Jérôme Gagey (Paris): â??Between Theology and History: A Question of Epistemologyâ?? Olivier-Thomas Venard OP (Jerusalem): â??Does the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels reallysay nothing different from the Prologue of John?â?? Dr Simon Oliver (Lampeter): â??Jesus and Eucharistic Exchange: Reflections on Cudworth and Ratzingerâ?? Dr Angus Paddison (Nottingham), â??Following Jesus with Pope Benedictâ?? Dr Richard H. Bell (Nottingham): â??On the Transfigurationâ?? Dr Douglas Knight (London): â??Benedict on the Whole Christâ?? Dr Jane Heath (Aberdeen): â??Burckhardtâ??s Greeks and Ratzingerâ??s Jesusâ?? Dr James Crossley (Sheffield): â??Historical Criticism and the Construction of Judaism in Ratzingerâ??s Jesus of Nazarethâ?? Luke Tallon (St. Andrews), â??The Evangelical Dialogic of Joseph Ratzingerâ??s Own, Personal Jesusbildâ?? Martin BauspieÃ? (Tübingen), â??Event and Testimonyâ?? William Daniel (Nottingham), â??Whose Jesus? Which Christology?â?? Prof. Geza Vermes FBA (Oxford): â??A Historianâ??s Perspective on the Popeâ??s Jesusâ?? Prof. Mona Siddiqui (Glasgow): â??Seeing the Face of the Lord â?? Hope or Heresy?â?? Fr Fergus Kerr OP (Edinburgh): â??Reckoning with the Originality of Jesus: Where Did Christology Come from?â??

Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth. He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm. God is king over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted. Psalm 47

The ascension in Luke and Acts summarises and rounds off the resurrection appearances of Jesus. They tell us that the resurrection is the truth of the incarnation. But the ascension is the thumbprint view of the whole narrative of God with man, and therefore the whole plot of the bible. Man is called and destined for communion with God, and in that communion, fellowship with all other creatures of God. Man in Christ now sits at the right hand of the Father and with us will fill all creation .

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon began talks yesterday in Berne (Switzerland) with key development agencies on how to tackle the crisis provoked by soaring food and fuel prices and put an estimated 100 million of the world's poorest people on the brink of starvation. The prices of staple foods like rice, grain, oil and sugar are all at least 50 per cent higher than they were this time last year.

Asia News UN’s emergency plan against world food crisis

What is extraordinary about the current situation is that it echoes in so many respects an earlier world food crisis: that of 1973-74

Paul Rogers at Open Democracy The world’s food insecurity

By its nature, pornography encourages an expression of human sexuality which is not only deformed but also severely limited and patently false. The use of pornography by young people prevents an understanding of human sexuality integrated with the self-expression and intimacy that is the full expression of the human person. Instead of growing to an appreciation of the sacredness of the person, young people caught in the web of pornography begin to relate to others and themselves as objects.

Self-mastery is an essential element to emotional security. Without the self-mastery that comes from controlling and, when necessary, struggling with one's destructive behaviors, including pornography, maturing young persons find themselves in the fearful condition of being unable to control either the world or themselves. A young person who has abandoned the hope of self-control is also unable to control what he does to others.

* * *

This ability "to see" spiritually has implications for the moral life: it enables us to see according to God, to accept others as 'neighbors'; it lets us perceive the human body - ours and our neighbor's - as a temple of the Holy Spirit, a manifestation of divine beauty (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2519) .

Our sight, more than just a physical ability, also serves as an important means for understanding faith, heaven and salvation. Indeed, its proper end and fulfillment is the vision of God Himself. Man's final purpose is caught up with his ability to see. With this profound truth in mind, we can better appreciate the grave threat pornography presents to the human soul, to the family and to society.

Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington Bought with a price

I like Pastoral Letters. Here is Bishop Philip Tartaglia's Communications Sunday Pastoral Letter

The Pope warns that the mass media can be used for ideological purposes, and â??can tend to legitimise or impose distorted models of personal, family or social lifeâ??. As Scottish Catholics, we know only too well how true this is, and we are keenly aware of how rarely our own media represents us as people of faith in a fair or balanced manner.

Today, mass communications can fairly be charged with losing the ethical underpinning that once existed. It is a sad reality that those involved in the production and dissemination of much of our media content do not themselves share the religious or moral perspectives of their audience. There has occurred a fundamental disconnection between the provider and the consumer. While the last national census showed that over two thirds of Scots described themselves as Christians, few of those who work in radio, television and the press share this identity.

So the Scots have one faith, while their Media has another quite different faith. Ah well, as long as we know, I suppose. I wasn't aware that 'Communications Sunday' was a feast of the Church, but why not? Let's have a day for everything, only let the Scots Catholics lead so we English Anglicans can trail along behind. I'll go back to the Scottish Catholic Media Office

Lewis Ayres has been appointed to the newly established Bede Chair of Catholic Theology at Durham.

Ayres, an English lay Catholic theologian, currently teaching at Emory is a world-regarded, leading expert in patristic theology (particularly Christology and Trinity) with a strong constructive/contemporary dimension to his work, with a very well developed understanding of what it means to live between academy and church, and with a strong vision and passion for the further development of Catholic theology and the Centre for Catholic Studies within the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University.

Hope springs eternal.

Still, it is always nice to see an Englishman come home, which makes me wonder why we don’t invite Paul Griffiths to do to same. His title for the ‘Catholic Theology and the Public Academy’ conference? ‘Why Theology Should Find the Public Academy Inhospitable’. Ah, there’s one that knows.

A propos Spaemann’s line about becoming what you see, did you read Jason Byassee ?

As theologian Sarah Coakley has so brilliantly said, ancient Christian reflection on desire shows that Freud is exactly wrong: Talk about God is not repressed talk about sexuality; talk about sex is, in fact, repressed talk about God. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, porn users are not to be rebuked for desiring too much but for desiring too little.

and

Christians have resources with which to aid this recovery of genuine eros, though they’re a bit dusty at present. I think here that Orthodox iconography, when done right, is beautiful beyond words. It had better be: Worship bears the Church up to heaven into the presence of God. Liturgy is a drawing out of our true selves, our best selves, in union with God in reflection of God’s union with us in Christ through the Theotokos.

If you don’t have a First Things subscription, listen to Jason Eskew

This is the paper I read to the Cheyneygates 'Work-in-Progress' seminar at Westminster on 24th April 2008.

When the congregation of my Church is gathered in worship we say that Christ is with us, although, without faith, no evidence of him imposes itself on us. The degree to which we find one another unattractive and not very Christ-like comes from this dark and incomprehensible way in which Christ presents himself, crucifying our expectations as he comes. In each of these unlovely people at the altar rail Christ says, ‘Do you see me, do you love me’?

All human beings give themselves away – we cannot help ourselves. If we do not give ourselves to Christ and to all his body, we give ourselves away in some other way, and to some other power. Either we love and adore God and give ourselves to him, which is to say give ourselves back to him, or we direct all that love and adoration to other objects, thereby making idols of them. I just cannot hold my adoration in. I too readily give myself to the darlings and delights of the media, but so grudgingly give myself to the people of the church. All our whole consumer culture is a vast displacement activity for this true love.

To denigrate the Church is to fail to recognise Christ. When I declare that the Church is too full of old people, demand that it demonstrate its relevance, and search for a fresh emergent and more real Church consisting of separate congregations for young people, I reveal my disdain for the body of Christ. I need you to help me overcome this desire to distance myself from this body. When I decide that the Christians around me are too exclusivist, traditionalist and fundamentalist, or otherwise just too muddleheaded, you have to tell me that they have had fewer educational opportunities than I have, and that if they are the weak, we who are the strong have to wait for them. For if we go ahead ‘without waiting for anyone else’, we fail to ‘recognise the body of the Lord’, and so eat and drink division on the Church and judgment on ourselves. You have to name my disparagement of the rules and habits of the Church for the antinominianism and Gnosticism it is. We have to fast and abstain together at the appropriate point in the calendar and learn all the practices of self-control that make each of us more than just our own bodies. Until we keep the fast, and wait for each other, the joy of the feast will elude us.

The Whole Christ and the Eucharist

Brazos Press has a wonderful manifesto

The onset of the twenty-first century finds the Western world in the midst of transition at a seismic level: from Christendom to post-Christendom, from industrialism to post-industrialism, from modernity to postmodernity, from colonial hegemony to multicultural pluralism, and so forth. It is at the same time a period of the rediscovery and reaffirmation of classical, creedal and confessional Christianity. Some find the current ferment chaotic and threatening. While recognizing the gravity of the ongoing "culture wars," Brazos Press responds constructively in a setting of monumental flux and transition.

Brazos Press seeks as authors scholars and thinkers capitalizing on and promoting the rediscovery and reaffirmation of classical Christianity. Our books encourage Christians to speak as Christians in and to the public square and to extend the vital roots of the ancient Christian tradition into the twenty-first century.

* * *

By unapologetic theology, we mean a theology that is distinctly, particularly, and unashamedly Christian and considers no other narrative or tradition more basic to its identity than the Christian narrative and tradition.

So wonderful, that I am tempted to plagiarise it. I will certainly send them a manuscript.

I have been reading Mary Ann Glendon at First Things, to which I will be renewing my subscription.

Although awareness of this impending demographic storm is beginning to sink in, policymakers in Europe and the United States tend to frame it only as a â??welfare crisis.â?? The falling birth rates that are fueling the welfare crisis, however, are symptomatic of a deeper crisis in beliefs and attitudesâ??a crisis involving changes in the meanings and values that people attribute to aging and mortality, sex and procreation, marriage, gender, parenthood, relations among the generations, and life itself.

Principled Immigration

With widespread acceptance of the notion that behavior in the highly personal areas of sex and marriage is of no concern to anyone other than the "consenting adults" involved, it has been easy to overlook what should have been obvious from the beginning: individual actions in the aggregate exert a profound influence on what kind of society we are bringing into being. Eventually, when large numbers of individuals act primarily with regard to self-fulfillment, the entire culture is transformed. The evidence is now overwhelming that affluent Western nations have been engaged in a massive social experimentâ??an experiment that brought new opportunities and liberties to adults but has put children and other dependents at considerable risk.

Discovering Our Dependence (2004)

So, where to begin? â??What, in heavenâ??s name,â?? muses the Stranger, â??should be the first law our legislator will establish?â?? Without waiting to hear what Kleinias and Megillos have to say, he answers his own question: â??Surely the first subject he will turn to in his regulations will be the very first step that leads to the birth of children in the state: the union of two people in the partnership of marriage.â?? Kleinias readily agrees that marriage must be regulated first because it is crucial to the nurture and education of future citizens.

But not everything that pertains to the seedbeds of character and competence needs to be regulated. Unwritten customs, according to the Stranger, â??are the bonds of the entire social framework.â?? When soundly established and habitually observed, they â??shield and protectâ?? the written law. â??But if they go wrong,â?? says the Athenian from bitter experience, â??well, you know what happens when carpenterâ??s props buckle in a house: They bring the whole building crashing down.

Plato as Statesman

and there's more

Because politics, in the vision of the Church, deals with the good of people, individually and collectively, the primary subject of the political system is the human person. As a result, there are matters and issues that arise which the Church considers fundamentally related to the dignity of the human person.

These matters are life, the family, education, religious belief, justice and protection for those most in need in society. The Church’s approach to such issues is based above all in the very nature of the human person as created in the image and likeness of God. Consequently, you can certainly understand why the Church takes such an interest in these questions. It does so, not in an attempt to impose its views or doctrines on society, and even less on any legislative body, but rather it does so in a spirit of service to the common good and the nature of the human person, realities which transcend institutions, but which must rely on the good intentions of institutions to be protected and safeguarded. In that context it is even foreseen that at times the Church can offer its own expertise on these universal questions in collaboration with public authorities while always respecting the distinct competencies that each has.

Obviously, I am very much aware of the challenges facing you as lawmakers, in a pluralistic society, which has so many voices and different points of view about a whole range of issues. Yet, a convergence can be found in keeping in mind those principles whose goal you have as legislators in a spirit of service to your country: to promote the common good and to respect the nature and dignity of the human person.

Address of Apostolic Nuncio His Excellency Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz to the Scottish Parliament

That is how to do it. Always praise politicians for being public servants, talk up this vocation and thank them for taking on such an onerous responsibility.

Chris made me blog this too:

A number of Catholic lay people have joined with some local religious communities to plan a welcome that evening. The event will combine prayer, evangelization and singing, which organizers hope Pope Benedict will hear.

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, the Knights of Columbus, the Sisters of Life, Communion and Liberation, the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, the Daughters of St. Paul and other Catholic groups are organizing what they are calling a â??massive street evangelization eventâ?? at three locations in Manhattan. Their idea is to stand outside churches and invite people on the street to â??encounter the Lord in Eucharistic Adoration and Mass.â??

After Mass, those at each church will process to the 72nd Street residence of Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vaticanâ??s permanent observer to the United Nations, where Pope Benedict will be staying, and join together for a candlelight vigil and singing.

Evangelization is scheduled for two and a half hours, culminating with Eucharistic adoration at 7:00. Priests will be available for confessions. Mass begins at 8:30.

Notice the prevalence of relatively new orders and movements. Notice that the focus is on sharing the love of Christ and worshipping the Lord, rather than making sure the Pope is aware of and appreciates our diversity, very unique speciallness, and Extremely Urgent Needs and Concerns.

See, I told you. The future is processions. This is from Amy Welborn. She's a darling.

In addition to reshaping the dialogue between Catholicism and Islam, Benedict XVI has made significant changes in the Vatican's intellectual approach to these volatile issues. Catholic veterans of the interreligious dialogue who did not press issues like religious freedom and reciprocity between the faiths have been replaced by scholars who believe that facing the hard questions helps support those Muslim reformers who are trying to find an authentic Islamic path to civility, tolerance and pluralism. Thus Benedict XVI has quietly put his pontificate behind the forces of Islamic reform--and may have found a crucial ally with a Saudi king who is wrestling with Wahhabi extremism in his own domain.

The pope is thinking in centuries here: a reformed Islam capable of living with religious and political pluralism could be an ally in the struggle against what Benedict once called the "dictatorship of relativism." In any event, an Islam recognizing religious freedom and affirming the separation of religious and political authority would be good for Muslims who want to live in peace with their neighbors, and good for the rest of the world.

George Weigel How Benedict XVI Will Make History

The premier example of this was his Regensburg lecture of September 2006 in Germany, widely criticized at the time as offensive to Islamic sensibilities. That lecture, in fact, has shifted both the course of inter-religious dialogue and the internal dynamics of the intra-Islamic debate, precisely as I believe Benedict XVI intended it to do. It has shifted the course of the dialogue by setting in motion a process that has now led to the formation of a Catholic-Muslim forum that will meet twice a year, once in Amman, Jordan, once in Rome, and that will focus its attention on the issues that Benedict XVI has put on the agenda – namely, religious freedom as the first of human rights and a right that can be known by reason, and secondly, the imperative of separating spiritual and political authority in a justly governed state.

There have been attempts from parts of the Islamic world to deflect the conversation off of these two issues, which Benedict regards as at the very heart of inter-religious dialogue, and indeed the Islamic encounter with the modern world, and he refuses to budge. He very calmly and quietly brings the conversation back to these two points, which obviously have a great resonance here in the United States.

In terms of shifting the dialogue, I would also point to the recent initiative by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who proposes to gather in his country a new forum of dialogue among the monotheistic religions, and the Vatican’s reported negotiations, about which John might have some more to say later, with the Saudi government over the unthinkable, or the hitherto unthinkable, namely the building of a Catholic church in Saudi Arabia.

* * *

On the pope and the church in the United States and on American society and culture, very briefly. As you read the works of Joseph Ratzinger, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years as he has become more and more concerned with the corrosive impacts of an aggressive secularism in Europe, you have to be struck by the fact that he comes on several occasions in his writing to the point that it was in the United States that the problem of church and state was first resolved. And when he says problem of church and state, he doesn’t simply mean institutional relationships, questions of establishment and non-establishment, legal relationships; he means more broadly the problem of religion and modernity.

George Weigel The Pope comes to America

Craig Hovey To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today's Church

"Craig Hovey challenges Christians to be worth persecuting, but he does so without romanticizing suffering or the church. Every church is called to be a martyr-church, not to glorify death, but to declare that death means nothing in the light of what God has done in Christ. In taut prose, Hovey unpacks the logic of Mark's Gospel and helps the church discern what God is doing in history, both in Mark's day and in our own. This book is lean, penetrating, and wise. Every page rewards the reader with fresh insight."

William T. Cavanaugh, associate professor of theology, University of St. Thomas

"Truly an extraordinary book. Some will not be convinced by all of Hovey's exegetical or systematic theses. But before worrying about such things, readers should simply delight in the sudden insights and revelatory turns of thought that appear on every page."

Robert Jenson, professor emeritus of religion, St. Olaf College

The blurbs are at Brazos

Not quite as bold as 'The man who sued God', but it is manifestly a David and Goliath battle which is to be admired, for the outcome has considerable implications for Christians in the areas of equality and freedom of expression.

The Christian Institute simply wanted to pay Google so that when the word ‘abortion’ was typed into the search engine, a link to a web page on its views popped up on the right hand side of the screen. It is a perfectly legal transaction, concerned simply with matters of trade in services.

But it transpires that Google does not allow adverts for websites which contain ‘abortion and religious-related content’, and so it has blocked this pro-life advertisement for the Institute's website - christian.org.uk - because it is a ‘religious’ site. Apparently 'religion is not "factual" on abortion'.

Setting aside that Google now presumes to judge on epistemological matters (are all its links filtered and censored for 'factual' accuracy?), it is curious indeed that it is only when abortion is presented via a religious site that the material is banned: Google permits abortion-related advertisements from the secularists, atheists, irreligious, non-religious and the mentally depraved (if some of these terms are not mutually inclusive). Needless to say, the perspectives of these are overwhelmingly ‘pro-choice’, and all must be considered by Google to be 'factual'.

Cranmer Christians who sued Google

Bishop Tom Wright and Andrew Goddard spoke at today's Fulcrum conference

The debates we face in the Anglican Communion resonate closely with similar debates in the larger worldwide community, within western society and our own nation.

and

'Mission-shaped church' doesn't mean you can reduce ecclesiology to functional categories. Ephesians offers a deep ecclesial ontology which is, to be frank, what we're going to need in the next generation. I suspect, actually, that this is the main reason why much liberal Protestantism has rejected the Pauline authorship of Ephesians, and why much conservative Protestantism, while accepting Pauline authorship for quite other reasons, has done its best to avoid the head-on challenge of its super-high ecclesiology, preferring to do with Ephesians what it does with the gospels, namely, dismember it in search of verses which can provide footnotes to a truncated reading of Romans and Galatians...

Conflict and Covenant in the Bible

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Conflict and Covenant in the Communion

_

Talks promptly posted

Augustine's Expositions of the Psalms are a lifetime investment. There are five volumes (translated by Boulding, edited by Ramsey, Fiedrowicz) which might set you back $140. Sell some of the books you bought last year, then with the money you have got left over, buy

Jason Byassee Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms With Augustine, of which a fair amount is available at Google Book

and

Brian Brock Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture of which a certain amount is also available at Google Book

The only name in whose powers the Christian can hope is Christ, and that hope excludes any hope for the outcome of history other than the triumph of that name. the essential point for Christian ethics is that it must serve this church., the community waiting in hope for God's action. The church must thus remain clear about its true threat, says Augustine: the turning away of God's face.

An older edition of Augustine Expositions on the Psalms is online

The Temple Church talk series continues. Remember the Archbishop Sharia furore in February? That was one in this series. I hope they can repeat their success.

Coming up

Law and Religion 14 April

Islam in English Law 19 May & 9 July

Law and Politics 7th July

I am also going to these

Wednesday 16th April - Edmund Adamus The Genesis of Humanae Vitae – Memory & Healing

Wednesday 23rd April - Fr Richard Aladics Building the Civilisation of Love in a Media-Driven World

at St Patrick's Soho. See you there.

Off to the Society for the Study of Theology conference, at Durham, with my half-finished short paper 'The Whole Christ and the High Priest' which, as usual, attempts to summarise what I have learned from everyone in the last 12 months. I'll post it when I get back, and those Holy Week pieces too.

One clue about the significance of Robert Spaemann is that Oliver O'Donovan translated his Persons: The Difference between 'Someone' and 'Something'.

Now have you seen

Das unsterbliche Gerücht. Die Frage nach Gott und die Täuschung der Moderne and at Amazon.de ?

Das unsterbliche Gerücht Gottesbeweise nach Nietzsche Deszendenz und Intelligent Design Christentum und Philosophie der Neuzeit Funktionale Religionsbegründung und Religion Religiöse Identität Sollten universalistische Religionen auf Mission verzichten? Religion und ›Tatsachenwahrheit‹ Über einige Schwierigkeiten mit der Erbsündenlehre Die christliche Sicht des Leidens Über die gegenwärtige Lage des Christentums

And there is also Grenzen: Zur ethischen Dimension des Handelns (Klett-Cotta 2001) and Der letzte Gottesbeweis (Pattlock 2007)

And his Begotten nor Made? (PDF). There are more articles by Spaemann at Das Portal zur katholischen Geisteswelt. You can see a video of the man himself. The interviewer asks Spaemann to comment on his own father's (Heinrich Spaemann) saying that 'We drift towards what we see and become what we look at'. Robert Spaemann responds by quoting from the Eucharist, 'Looking up, Jesus gave thanks'.

Learn more about him at de.wikipedia.org

(For something between the gist and gibberish, paste the words "Robert Spaemanns Vater, Heinrich Spaemann" into Google and click on 'Translate this page') Spaemann is not hard to read either. Other great Germans for PhD purposes? Try Oswald Bayer, Ingolf Dalferth or Hans Ulrich

At this time as well as thinking of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we are asked to consider again what I have described as the â??essential aspect of a Christian vocation â?? namely to be a missionary peopleâ??. I think that there is a greater need than ever before for each and every Christian to be aware of that call at this present time.

I think that a fundamental concern of all of our people at this present time and one which we ourselves as Christians must take very seriously is that concerning the future of human life itself. The beliefs which we have previously held, and the standards by which we have lived throughout our lives and by which Christians have lived for the last 2000 years are being challenged at this present time in ways in which they have never been challenged before!

The norm has always been that children have been born as the result of the love of man and woman in the unity of a marriage. That belief has of course long been challenged. However I believe that a greater challenge than that even faces us â?? the possibility now facing our country is that animal â?? human embryos be produced with the excuse that perhaps certain diseases might find a cure from these resulting embryos.

What I am speaking of is the process whereby scientists create an embryo containing a mixture of animal and human genetic material. If I were preaching this homily in France, Germany, Italy, Canada or Australia I would be commending the government for rightly banning such grotesque procedures. However here in Great Britain I am forced to condemn our government for not only permitting but encouraging such hideous practices.

Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has given the Governmentâ??s support to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular Bill.

With full might of government endorsement, Gordon Brown is promoting a Bill that will allow the creation of animal â?? human hybrid embryos. He is promoting a Bill which will add to the 2.2 million human embryos already destroyed or experimented upon. He is promoting a Bill allowing scientists to create babies whose sole purpose will be to provide, without consent of anyone, parts of their organs or tissues. He is promoting a Bill which will sanction the raiding of dead peoples tissue to manufacture yet more embryos for experimentation. He is promoting a Bill which denies that a child has a biological father, allows tampering with birth certificates, removing biological parents, and inserting someone altogether different. And this Bill will indeed be used to further extend the abortion laws.

This Bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life. In some other European countries one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal. I can say that the government has no mandate for these changes: they were not in any election manifesto, nor do they enjoy widespread public support. The opposite has indeed taken place â?? the time allowed for debate in Parliament and indeed in the country at large has been shockingly short. One might say that in our country we are about to have a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion â?? without many people really being aware of what is going on.

Today as we celebrate in the resurrection the triumph of life over death I urge you to ensure that life continues to triumph over these deathly proposals. Being a Christian and acting as a Christian must be one and the same thing. Gathered here on this Easter Day we realise that we are indeed followers of Jesus Christ and with that comes responsibilities. May God indeed help us all to be missionary at this present time and to hand on the saving message of Jesus Christ in a world which does not seem prepared to receive it

Cardinal Keith O'Brien bishop of Edinburgh and St Andrew's

Another bishop without his own website, who has only the Daily Record by which to communicate with his flock. But, this time, in Scotland, the whole sermon is faithfully reproduced.

***

Finally - a website. Marvellous.

Good Friday

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

Why did Jesus quote these specific lines during his suffering, â??unless he was somehow trying to catch our attention, to make us understand, â??this psalm was written about me?â?? (Exp 2.3 of Ps 21). Augustine draws the attention of his congregation to Christâ??s utterance of these verses to explicate the meaning of their Good Friday service, a service designed to make present what took place in time past, and in this way it moves us as if we were actually watching our Lord hanging on the cross, but watching as believers, not mockers (exp 2.1 of ps. 21 (ie. Psalm 22). Christ prayer on the cross continues today in the commemoration of the church. He emphasises that the world and his congregation both stand before that cross, either as mockers or as those who groan with the sufferings of Christ. â??The chaff on his threshing floor mocks him and the wheat groans to hear its Lord deridedâ?? (exp 2.1 of Ps 21).

Augustine is unpacking for his congregation what it means to sing this psalm, as Christâ??s body, part of the Totus Christus). Christ was praying the prayer of his church, presenting their fear and trial as he carried their sin, and quoting the very words that they too sing today as a memorial of his passion.

Brian Brock on Augustine in Singing the Ethos of God

And from Matthew Baker

God created man in the year 33, on a hill in Palestine called Golgotha. On the sixth day of the week â?? on Holy Friday â?? the true man in the image of God is heralded by Pontius Pilate, as he brings forth the thorny-crowned, purple-robed Christ and announces â??Behold the man!â?? .

MPs prepare to vote on abortion for the first time in 18 years

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, currently before the House of Commons, provides an opportunity for MPs to vote on amendments to the abortion law. With your active participation we can change the law, save unborn lives and create a society where women with an unplanned pregnancy are offered real alternatives to abortion.

The Alive and Kicking Alliance strongly supports the following amendments that will help to substantially reduce the number of abortions in the UK:

1. A substantial lowering of the 24-week abortion upper limit. Public, parliamentary and medical opinion supports a reduction of the abortion time limit. This is a direct result of 4D ultrasound, improved neonatal survival and live births following late abortion.

2. An end to discriminatory abortion of disabled babies up to birth, whilst a 24-week upper limit is in place for babies without disability. This constitutes discrimination against those with special needs.

3. A charter of informed consent for women seeking abortion. Women contemplating abortion require the information, support and space necessary to make a fully informed decision.

Alive and Kicking are running a petition (for those in the UK)

Bede Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Durham

The Department of Theology & Religion seeks to appoint a Roman Catholic scholar of international standing who is engaged in the critical-constructive analysis of issues of contemporary significance in Catholic thought and practice, evidenced through extensive publication at the highest academic level. This is a newly established post, permanently endowed by a number of Catholic donors. As a theological advisor to the Bishop of Hexham & Newcastle, the postholder must be in full and active communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

Critical-constructive, but I hope also receptive, analysis of the documents of the Roman Catholic church, than which there is no finer body of theological texts, and none more neglected in the United Kingdom

Back now from an extraordinary and wonderful weekend in Bucharest for the ‘Christian Faith and Metaphysical Reason’ Colloquium hosted by Mihail Neamtu at the New Europe College.

David Bradshaw and Russell Reno were the hired hands, both impressive and delightful, curious about everything and everyone they met. There was a fair cast of young local talent mostly from the Philosophy faculty of Bucharest University. In the evenings as we were being feasted there was lots of conversation about Church and State, about relations between the Orthodox and other much smaller churches in Romania. We agreed that there was a certain schizophrenia of public secular and private Christian intellectual lives - always easier to identify in other people of course.

Most wonderful was walking through the hectic streets of Bucharest, with other delegates after the conference, past the first floor flat of the twentieth century Father of the Romanian Church Dimitru Staniloae (and video) and then on to the streets on which a thousand people died in the last days of 1989 – nearly twenty years ago already.

But best, and beyond my ability to describe it, was Vespers and Liturgy at Stavropoleus. Here is the interior and iconostasis from the Stauropoleus Flickr group. The liturgy came down from heaven. The Stavropoleus site may give you some idea.

The trip was an extraordinary privilege: there is a very great deal to learn about the Christian life from these folk, obviously, particularly the habits of that long-term discipleship which has carried them through the hard years. You have got to know your psalms off by heart. I am looking forward to going back.

As instructed, I gave a paper on Oliver O'Donovan - who was in London last week (here's a picture). Christoph Schneider and I wondered about the possibility of setting up a conference on Maximus at the Cambridge Orthodox Institute and getting David Bradshaw (Aristotle East and West) over to the UK.

Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, archbishop of Ranchi, after a visit to the stricken zones, described what he had seen to the agency "Asia News" in this way:

"An expanse of ashes is what remains in the areas stricken by anti-Christian violence at Christmas in Orissa. It was diabolical; churches desecrated and houses burned. The villages upon which the extremist Hindu violence fell are today a vast cremation ground."

Raphael Cheenath, the archbishop of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, the diocese hardest hit, in an assessment of the attacks released at the end of January numbered the victims at 6 dead and 5,000 homeless, and the destruction at 70 churches, 600 houses, 6 convents, and 3 seminaries. The Indian bishops' conference gave the same report in a memorandum delivered to the national commission for human rights.

In his report, archbishop Cheenath points the finger at those whom he maintains are the promoters of aggression against Christians: the ideologues of intolerant Hinduism, ensconced in the group Vishva Hindu Parishad, and the members of the high castes, who are unfavorable toward the social advancement of the Dalits, the poorest, the outcast and "impure," many of whom are converts to Christianity.

Sandro Magister India's Two Plagues: The "Missing Women" and Violence Against Christians

Peter Rippon (editor of the World at One, which broadcast an interview the Archbishop before his lecture) forgets to mention (or completely misses) the following facts:

1. The story was trailed at the top of the news programme with the headline: The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the adoption of Sharia Law in some parts of Britain is inevitable. (No he didnâ??t, or not in the way that your headline was inevitably going to make people think.)

2. The BBC was running an article before it broadcast the interview under the heading: Sharia law in UK is â??unavoidableâ??, with the first paragraph: The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is â??unavoidableâ??. (ditto)

3. The BBC website is a key source of news for ALL the media, and has 13 million unique visitors per week.

4. Reactions from bloggers to the headlines were coming in before the 9 minute interview had even finished .

So it turns out that the Beeb was reporting inaccurate statements about â??ABC says Sharia is inevitableâ?? even before the interview was broadcast. Rowan (and a well-tempered debate) never had a chance.

Matt Wardman Archbishop Rowan Firestorm was started by the BBC

The fundamental issue [Archbishop Rowan] was addressing is the relation between the law of the land and the religious conscience of the citizen. For 200 years it has been assumed that these operated in separate spheres: the law regulates my public life, faith or religion operate in private. This was always a dangerous half-truth, since many of the great world faiths, including Christianity itself, actually claim that all of life is included within religious obedience. As some of us used to be taught, if Jesus is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all. In recent years various governments, including our own, have pushed the other way, to suggest that the secular state is itself master of all of life, including religious conviction. That’s why we’ve seen an airline worker sacked for wearing a cross, while in France the government has tried similarly to ban Muslim women from wearing their traditional head-covering. Because we haven’t had to address these issues before, our society has tended to slide round them by emphasizing words like ‘multiculturalism’, which often doesn’t actually mean that we celebrate our different cultures but rather that we subordinate them all to whatever the secular state wants. That is as much a problem for Catholic adoption agencies, as we saw last year, as it is for Muslims who want to follow their traditional teaching about (for instance) the prohibition of interest on loans while living within a society where the mortgage system is endemic. +Rowan was going to the roots of these problems and coming up not only with fresh analysis but fresh solutions, particularly what he calls ‘interactive pluralism’. The question of how we live together as a civil and wise society while cherishing different faiths is a deep and serious one and can’t be pushed away just because people take fright at certain misunderstandings. His point was precisely that neither the secular state nor any particular religion can ‘monopolise’.

Bishop Tom Wright Letter to Durham clergy on Religion and Public Life

Despite everything you’ve heard and read, the most striking thing about Rowan Williams’ lecture is that he mounts a serious and impassioned defence of ‘Enlightenment values’.

That is, he balances on the one hand a defence of one of the key achievements of the Enlightenment, freedom of religion, with on the other hand a strong call for public accountability in the ways that religions contribute to our public life. And my judgment is that it is the latter that is the stronger note in what he says.

Mike Higton on Rowan Williams

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a woman who works in an advocacy role for Muslim women in an area that, quite independently of the Bishop of Rochester, she described as a 'no-go area' for non-Muslims. Her clients were women in the process of being sectioned into mental health units in the NHS. This woman, who for obvious reasons begged not to be identified, told me: 'The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing western clothes.There can be many reasons. The women are sent for asssessment to a hospital. The GP referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned. She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?'

Ruth Gledhill

One of Britainâ??s leading theologians has broken ranks with the ecumenical establishment by calling for Catholics to convert non-Catholics. Fr Aidan Nichols, the English theologian most closely associated with the thinking of Benedict XVI, has appealed for England to be â??re-madeâ?? as a Catholic country.

He set out his radical and comprehensive programme for Catholic renewal in a new book entitled The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England, published by Family Publications.

In his preface he says that Catholic Christianity should be put forward â??not as an occupation for individuals in their solitude but as a form for the public life of society in its overall integrityâ??. He admits that the conversion of England is â??an absolutely colossal agendaâ??, adding: â??It can only be brought into being, so far as it depends on us to do so, by a coordinated strategy for recreating a full-blooded catholicity with the power to... transform a culture in all its principal dimensions.

Fr Aidan Nichols's plan for renewal:

Firmer doctrine in our teaching and preaching Re-enchant the liturgy Recover the insights of metaphysics Renew Christian political thought Revive family life Resacralise art and architecture Put a new emphasis on monastic life Strengthen pro-life rhetoric Recover a Catholic reading of the Bible

Catholic Herald Convert England to Catholicism

On the articles page at Anglican Use, see Nichols 'Anglican Uniatism' (largePDF)

Damian Thompson’s readers’ choice for Cardinal after Cormac Murphy-O’Connor?

It’s Aidan Nichols, the UK's most published theologian, presently at Blackfriars Oxford

It is time someone took the Christendom Awake website in hand, by the way.

Groups like Catholic Charities do accept government funds, which they then pass through to the needy. In fact, one of the main reasons governments use nonprofits like Catholic Charities is because theyâ??re cost-effective. As a result, government gets much more for its dollar by working through Catholic Charities to reach the poor. But administering the support personnel, ministries and distribution of funds does cost money, and a portion of government money is retained to help pay expenses, including in some cases salaries. This is necessary. Itâ??s also fair and reasonable.

What I hope Catholics and the wider community clearly understand about HB 1080 is this: Catholic organizations like Catholic Charities are glad to partner with the government and eager to work cooperatively with anyone of good will. But not at the cost of their religious identity. Government certainly has the right and the power to develop its own delivery system for human services. But if groups like Catholic Charities carry part of societyâ??s weight, then itâ??s only reasonable and just that they be allowed to be truly â??Catholicâ?? â?? or they cannot serve. And that has cost implications that the public might prudently consider in reflecting on HB 1080.

Finally and quite candidly, one of the Catholic communityâ??s deepest concerns in regard to HB 1080 is the billâ??s source. Iâ??ve heard from quite a few Catholics over the past week; Catholics who find HB 1080 offensive, implicitly bigoted, and designed to bully religious groups out of the public square.

Archbishop Chaput How to write a really bad bill

Orthodoxwiki tells us about Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and Primate of Greece who died this week.

Wikipedia gives plenty of detail on the public impact Christodoulos made.

Christodoulos opposed the decision to remove the ‘Religion’ field from national ID cards, seeing as part of a wider plan to marginalise the Church from Greek public life and stating that the decision was "put forward by neo-intellectuals who want to attack us like rabid dogs and tear at our flesh"

In 2004 the Archbishop criticized globalisation as a "bulldozer that is out to demolish everything, on account of those who want to rule the world without resistance or obstacles" adding that Greeks live in a paradise compared to other Europeans, because "they have a strong faith, they build churches, follow traditions, and resist globalisation".

On another occasion he stated that "the forces of Darkness cannot stand it [that Greece is a predominantly Orthodox country], and for this reason they want to decapitate it and flatten everything, by means of globalisation, the novel deity

Give us another like Christodoulos.

Long since the Moscow Patriarchate defrocked Father Gleb Yakunin, a Moscow priest who, as an elected deputy in 1990, had privileged access to the KGB archives and discovered that the collaboration between some bishops and the state security agencies had been worse than even he had imagined. The Church has never properly investigated this, clearly because so many of the bishops, not least the Patriarch, rose to power with the say-so of state authority.

Sometimes it is the local bishop who acts as an agent of secular power. Father Sergei Taratukhin was imprisoned in the 1980s as a Soviet-era dissident. In prison he became a believer, trained for the priesthood and became chaplain in Penal Colony No10, near Chita in eastern Siberia. He served there seven years, befriending an inmate, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, condemned by a Moscow court in 2005 for financial misdemeanours in a trial widely seen as politically motivated.

Taratukhin became convinced that Khodorkovsky was a political prisoner and campaigned for him. Bishop Yevstafy, his diocesan, intervened and removed him to a remote parish. Taratukhin objected, so his bishop defrocked him. Now the priest has appeared abjectly contrite on TV, in a scene reminiscent of clergy who recanted their anti-Soviet activities in former days. The bishop has offered him forgiveness and partial reinstatement - he now organises rubbish collection and shovels snow from the paths around Chita's new cathedral.

Michael Bourdeaux Putin and the Patriarchs

No immersion in the waters of the Jordan River this year for Orthodox believers who gathered on its shores to celebrate the Feast Day of the Baptism of Jesus. They were prevented by Israeli security forces.

Several thousands of pilgrims were able never the less to take part in a prayer service celebrated by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilus III at the Qasr el-Yahud Monastery dedicated to St John the Baptist on the west bank of the river, a site which the Israelis closed at the start of the second Intifada in 2000 and have generally kept off limits ever since. Even on this exceptional occasion Israeli soldiers were all over the place.

At the end of the ceremony the faithful walked in procession to the river bank where according to tradition Jesus was baptised.

Asia News

Professor Janet E. Smith Sacred Heart Major Seminary

Contraception: Why Not?

__Thursday 6th March Westminster Cathedral Hall London 7-9pm.

Congratulations to Dr Mihail Neamtu, whose 'The Nicene Christ and Desert Eschatology' has been accepted by the University of London for the degree of PhD.

Already a fellow of New Europe College in Bucharest, Mihail will soon be visiting fellow at the University of Notre Dame. And did you know that he has his own wikipedia entry? He organises some good conferences too.

I hope I achieve all this before I reach thirty.

The Providence conference at Aberdeen was just as wonderful as anticipated. Though there were seventeen speakers, it was a comparatively small affair, and thanks to Francesca Murphy’s amazing powers of organisation and hospitality it was all most relaxed and convivial. Champions of wildly contrasting approaches chuntered happily away at every interval and supper.

Trouble is, I suppose, that it was wonderful because it was small, and it was small because so few folk from other British universities appeared, presumably because they had decided that Aberdeen was too far to go. But as Stephen Webb pointed out, only Brits would think that the journey to Aberdeen was long: Americans would consider that just a local journey .

Of the speakers, I was impressed by Charles Matthews, Stephen Webb and Philip Ziegler for extremely articulate accounts of the doctrine of providence in public theology. I particularly enjoyed talking to Matthew Levering, Hans Reinders, David Hart, Don Wood, Andy McGowan, Scott Prather, James Merrick and as ever Brian Brock.

I got drafted in to do a paper at the last minute. Here it is.

Chair in Theology, Ministry and Education at King's College London

The Dept of Education and Professional Studies (DEPS) invites applications from scholars to join one of its most successful and expanding research cohorts - the Centre for Theology Religion and Culture. (CTRC).

Founded by Professor Andrew Walker in 1995 CTRC is a research and teaching centre dedicated to excellence in the fields of Theological Education, Professional Development in Church ministry and Religious Education in schools. The Centre is committed to a multi-disciplinary approach to religion and culture with particular emphasis on Christian theology, social science, and philosophy. The Centre continues to oversee a large and successful MPhil/PhD programme.

Each version of the modern day Santa Claus derives in fact from the same historic person: the Bishop Nicholas from the city of Myra (an ancient city of modern day Turkey), who lived in Asia Minor between the III and IV century, during the Emperor Constantineâ??s reign who is said to have regularly given gifts to the poor.

Now it seems that the Saint, who distinguishes himself from the others by his generosity, justice, and capacity to intervene decisively and fairly, has performed a â??miracleâ??. With great joy and satisfaction on behalf of the entire Orthodox church, the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew I, after five years of patience and insisting determination towards the authorities of Ankara has now been granted permission to celebrate the Eucharistic liturgy in the church of the Saint.

The meeting last year in Ankara between the patriarch and the new Minster of Culture was the turning point. The Minister said, â??I earnestly want every citizen in this country to be able to freely celebrate their own religion in the place seen as most important for worship.â?? And the proof that he did not want to go back on his word was that not only did he allow the mass to be celebrated in Saint Nicholas in Demre, but he also gave forty-thousand Turkish Lira (twenty-five thousand euros) for the completion of the basilicaâ??s makeover. Especially in the winter and in the spring, the basilica is submerged under rain water because it is three meters under the street level damaging the mosaics and the frescos found in the crypt of the sarcophagus of the Bishop Nicholas.

A mass for Saint Nicholas

How does this dual psychology – of victimhood, but also the desire for domination – come to infect so many young Muslims in Britain? In the late 1980s, the situation had changed radically. The change occurred because successive governments were unaware that the numerous mosques being established across the length and breadth of this country were being staffed, more and more, with clerics who belonged to various fundamentalist movements.

Finally, there are the grievances. Some of these are genuine enough, but the complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene where Muslims are victims (as in Bosnia or Kosovo), and always wrong when they may be the oppressors or terrorists (as with the Taliban or in Iraq), even when their victims are also mainly Muslims.

Given the world view that has given rise to such grievances, there can never be sufficient appeasement, and new demands will continue to be made. It is clear, therefore, that the multiculturalism beloved of our political and civic bureaucracies has not only failed to deliver peace, but is the partial cause of the present alienation of so many Muslim young people from the society in which they were born, where they have been educated and where they have lived most of their lives.

Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester Multiculturalism and young Muslims

The Church -- the communion of faith and love (as St. Ignatius of Antioch defined it: henosis agapis kai pisteos), the community of saints who are Christ's own very "members" as his body and bride - is essential to our human being and life. We cannot be human beings - still less, Christians and saints - by ourselves. We need God and his wise and faithful servants. We need God's commandments and living examples of their fulfillment. We need the Church's scriptures, sacraments, services and saints. And we need one another. As Tertullian said centuries ago, "One Christian is no Christian." And as the Russian proverb puts it, "The only thing that a person can do alone is perish." Like it or not, we are "members of one another" in God. If we like it, it is life and paradise. If we reject it, it is death and hell.

If we have become convinced of anything at all as Orthodox Christians, we are convinced that human beings are not autonomous. The proclamation and defense of human autonomy is the most insidious lie of our day, especially here in North America, and in the Western and Westernized worlds generally. Humans beings are by nature heteronomous. Another law (heteros nomos) is always working in our minds and members.

This "other law" is either the law of God, the law of Christ, the law of the Holy Spirit, the law of liberty and life that can only be recognized, received and realized by holy humility, or it is the law of sin and death. (cf. Romans 7-8) When the law within us is God's law, then we are who we really are, and we are sane and free. But when that law is the law of sin and death, then we are not ourselves, and we are insane, enslaved and sold to sin.

I am convinced that what C.S. Lewis foresaw has happened, and is still happening with ever more catastrophic consequences, in our Western and Westernized worlds. It happens that men and women who once were human are simply no longer so. They have become nothing but minds and matter, brains and bodies, computers and consumers, calculators and copulators, constructers and cloners who believe that they are free and powerful but who are in fact being destroyed by the very "Nature" that they wish to conquer as they are enslaved to an oligarchy of "Conditioners" who are themselves enslaved and destroyed by their insane strivings to define, design, manage and manipulate a world and a humanity bereft of the God who boundlessly loves them.

Father Thomas Hopko St Vladimir Seminary Commencement address

It was in this classical tradition of the Early Church that Karl Barth took his position early in his theological career. His road into it was through his struggle, begun in his Swiss parish, over the nature and content of divine Revelation, as he sought to expound the Scriptures and proclaim the Word of God. He soon realised that his own struggle was very much like that of both the Nicene Fathers and the Reformers, over the identity and primacy of God's Revelation in Jesus Christ. In the fourth century the question at issue was the supreme truth of the Deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, for if they were divided in being and act from God the Father, the Gospel would be empty of any divine content, and there would be no substance to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

In the sixteenth century the very same issue arose in another form over the doctrine of Grace, for if the gift of God were not identical with the Giver, then there could be no real Self-giving of God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, and the Word of the Gospel would be empty of any divine reality. Here too the doctrine of the Trinity was at stake, and with it the very foundation of Christian theology. Thus Karl Barth found himself compelled to contend once again for the truth of the Nicene Creed that the incarnate Son is of one and the same being as God the Father and that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and the Giver of life. This was the essential import of the homoousion which gave dogmatic expression to the indivisible oneness in being and agency between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and thus to the fact that precisely by believing in divine Revelation the Church believes in God himself. As Barth liked to express it: ‘God reveals himself as Lord’, ‘God is the content of his Revelation.’

Thomas Forsyth Torrance 'Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy' Scottish Journal of Theology 39 (1986)

Damian Thompson believes English Catholic bishops are resisting Benedict's recent measure to allow the mass to be celebrated in Latin here in England. Here he is on 'the shabby attempts by various English bishops to block the Pope’s liturgical reforms'

He urges us to complain about the English bishops’ 'disastrous attempts to block the reform'

You do not have to be a fan of the Tridentine liturgy in order to make a protest. What is at issue here is obedience to the Pope – and truthfulness.

Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum gives parishes the right to choose the ancient liturgy, now known as the Extraordinary Form (EF). Yet English bishops, including the Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Leeds, are behaving as if power to grant permission for the EF is still in their hands.

Their unhelpful attitude (to put it mildly) is sowing confusion among the faithful and causing great distress. Moreover, there are reports that the English bishops have consulted their own canon lawyer to see how they can get round the Pope’s ruling. That’s disgraceful.

The Coming Spiritual Tsunami Three Advent Lectures by The Bishop of London at St Stephen Walbrook

On Dover Beach Tuesday 4 December at 1pm

The Hurricane Gathers Strength Tuesday 11 December at 1pm

In Swept House Tuesday 18 December at 1pm

Saturday 27th October 2007 is the 40th anniversary of the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act.

Time for Change brings together churches, professional bodies and pro-life organisations to mark this anniversary.

There will be a rally in Old Palace Yard outside Parliament on Saturday 27th October followed by a march and a service of remembrance, repentance and healing at Westminster Cathedral.

In the tenth volume in its Liturgical Studies series, A New Song for an Old World, Musical Thought in the Early Church, Calvin Stapert discusses the relationship between the emerging church and the musical culture of the late-antique Mediterranean world. Believing that Christian ideas about music have been â??truncated and twistedâ?? by naturalistic thought since the Enlightenment, Stapert seeks to persuade contemporary evangelicals to embrace the patristic heritage of liturgical music based up the Psalms. This volume is Stapertâ??s brief for a reformation of evangelical worship.

Certainly Stapertâ??s volume is timely. Itâ??s hardly news to Christians living in China and Pakistan that they live in a culture largely opposed to their fundamental beliefs, but for many Western Christians itâ??s a relatively new sensation. While the aggressive secularism and growing atheism of our culture certainly was not a characteristic of Roman antiquity, our contemporary emphasis upon â??diversity,â?? distaste for dogmatic pronouncements, and hedonism was. Romans sometimes condemned Christians as â??haters of mankind.â?? As that charge is again made today, it might benefit Western Christians to see how the Fathers urged believers to order their lives in the face of such a broad societal malediction. With music apparently an important part of the ancient world, what role did the ancient church believe music should play in private piety and public worship?

In chapters dealing with song in the New Testament, the relationship between the church and pagan society, and writings referencing music by Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Augustine, Stapert surveys the sources. Although he makes it clear that he is not an expert in this material, Stapert is skillful in assembling and referencing the work of other writers (and he is generous in his quotations of both primary and secondary sources). His chapter on Augustine is particularly well done and his observation that music for Augustine was a form of rhetoric (and a thus a subcategory of the trivium instead of its own branch in the quadrivium) is insightful and illuminative.

Stapert concludes that â??the early Christians can inspire and encourage us by their courageous and unwavering posture against the corrupt and very popular culture of their day. They can teach us that we need to draw a line, and they can encourage us to stand bravely behind that line.â?? The line for Stapert means that the â??whole Psalter with its full-orbed expressionâ?? should be the central element of Christian music, that the essential stance of the church should be countercultural, and that the Neoplatonic idea (by way of Boethius) of a musica mundana (or divine music of the spheres) should be the foundation of Christian aesthetics.

Lurking in the shadows of Stapertâ??s book is the contemporary evangelical praise service, with its â??seeker friendlyâ?? popular aesthetic, scriptural amnesia, and manipulative stagecraft. His text is a useful indictment of the genus, at least from the viewpoint of the Church Fathers.

Michael Linton A New Song from the Old World

‘Modern’ theologians do not regard biblical theology, that sets out the narrative logic of Scripture, as a respectable form of discourse. Their apologies and caution betray their fear that the hard men of critical historical biblical studies will burst in on them and pour scorn on their proceedings. But the Scriptural exegetes are genuinely not interested in what biblical theologians are saying. They have created for themselves a parallel universe that discusses the same territory in such a different idiom as to make it effectively a separate discourse. The biblical theology and Christian doctrine people have been brought up to whisper in case the neighbours bang on the wall. But they can shout all they like and will never be heard in the neighbouring department. A peace line has been built just where the first and most essential conversation should be taking place, between the Scriptures and the Church, on one side theologians without exegesis, on the other exegetes without theology. Once the particular contribution of systematic theologians was to comment on the work of the theological exegetes, but modern theology can only be a commentary on a work that never takes place. The theologians have been re-trained to give all their effort to providing reasons why theological exegesis is no longer possible, why the Scriptures and the Church, and Church and university, must never be allowed to hear from each other.

The three previous thinkers (Pannenberg, Jüngel and Moltmann) find strategies of accommodating to the Weberian-inspired ‘fact-value split’ of the modern academy, in which reason is seen as instrumental while the final purpose of life is deemed to be wholly subjective. Via accommodation, they also ‘Weberianize’ the Church in the process. In a Weberian mode, mainline Protestantism tends to manage bureaucratically the confessional diversity that it fosters. When it seeks a ‘public’ voice, it does so under conditions of modernity, transforming the promise into ethics, feeling or theory.

… In contrast, Jenson wholly disavows this split.

Mark C. Mattes The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology p.120

14th November - Rev Dr Graham Tomlin, St Paul’s Theological Centre

27th February - Rev Dr Steven Croft, Fresh Expressions

21st May - Rev Dr Steve Griffiths, Ridley Hall’s Director of Youth Work Training

deepchurch.org.uk

The sanctified disciplines of the Church represent a far more sophisticated hermeneutics than is available to our secular colleagues. The Church is the communion sanctified by the Spirit for the world, and the saints and teachers are sanctified for the church, and so dedicated to the task of keeping the church distinct from the world – for the world’s sake. The Church must hear its own sanctified teachers, and it must teach what it receives from them. The Church is the mediation, spiritually discerned and received, that the Spirit provides by which we can be brought to Christ. The teaching of Church, its saints and teachers, must be taught for its own sake. It must also be offered to the public arena, and examined and tested there. On occasion the Church can learn some lesson from the world in the gospel that it had neglected. The church needs the university to test its teaching, and the university needs the huge ambition of the Christian doctrine of man in order to raise the ambition of the humanities.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit – Colin Gunton and the doctrine of God

The Christians present in the United Arab Emirates represent about 35 percent of the population, for a total of more than a million faithful, a majority of them Catholic.

They are all immigrant workers, and many of them, because they live on the outskirts and don't have easy transportation access to the city, cannot regularly attend the official places of worship. This is the situation of the thousands of Indians who work on the construction sites in Dubai and are housed in the largest village-dormitory in Asia. According to unofficial estimates, this houses a population of about thirty thousand workers. Or there are the immigrants who work in the oil industry, who are cut off in isolated desert villages.

Another case is that of the Filipina housemaids who, because they don't have enough free time or enough money for transportation, remain bound to the places where they work. In consequence, small prayer groups - which are organized according to language and place of origin and meet in private settings like apartments, dormitories, and storage sheds - have become a very important and widespread form of religious expression for the Catholic communities. These are necessary moments of encounter, but they are also risky because of the rules imposed by the local authorities, who grant freedom of worship only in officially recognized places like the territory's parishes. In this context, the Charismatic groups from India or the Philippines take on an important role in spearheading initiatives in support of immigrants living in the most difficult conditions. These are often not limited to religious initiatives, but also include services of practical assistance, as in the case of the Legion of Mary mentioned above.

reprinted by Sandro Magister

If the Catholic community is engaged on these issues, working closely with evangelical Christians, observant Jews, and people of goodwill and sound moral judgment of other faiths and even of no particular religious faith, grave injustices and the erosion of central moral principles will be, to a significant extent, averted. Indeed, with respect to both marriage and the sanctity of human life, earlier reverses may themselves be reversed. If, on the other hand, the Catholic community compromises itself, abdicates its responsibilities, and sits on the sidelines, the already deeply wounded institution of marriage will collapse and the brave new world of biotechnology will transform procreation into manufacture, and nascent human life into mere disposable â??research material.â?? An alert and engaged Catholic community would recognize that these issues are in our hands. We cannot do it by ourselves; but our allies cannot win without us, nor can they lose with us. Our activity in the political sphere and in other dimensions of the culture will make the critical difference. I believe that Catholics need to be told so by the leaders of the Church in no uncertain terms. We faithful need to be challenged to make the difference we can makeâ??by the example we set in our own lives and by carrying out our duties as citizens of a democratic republic. God, in his wonderful and mysterious providence, has set before us an opportunity for a special kind of greatness, the greatness that comes only in times of the most profound danger.

This is no time for Catholics to be looking inward, gazing at our navels, too embarrassed (or desirous of the approval of cultural elites or fearful of their disapproval) to speak to the moral crisis of the culture. On the contrary, now is the time to bring our Christian witness, the very practical and effective love of Christ, unabashedly to the culture. Bishops need to lead on this, but not by becoming politicians; the primary responsibility to work in the political sphere falls to the laity. But bishops and clergy do their part when they challenge those of us in the laity to fulfill that great responsibility. Their role is to encourage, exhort, and even cajole us to do the right thing. Moreover, they should never hesitate to reprove us when we fail in our obligations to defend human life, marriage, and the common good, as far too many Catholics, including Catholics prominent in public life, have done and, alas, are doing.

Robert George Danger and Opportunity

The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God is a book about Christian theology proper, that is, about the economy of God. In six chapters, Knight discusses the realms of being and becoming from the perspective of the scriptures, historical theology, systematic theology, and philosophy, and suggests a direction in which the Trinitarian doctrine of God defines the world and human existence.

Fundamental to this task is a theory of persons in relationship that unfolds to a series of new analogies for God’s work in creation, the human being, the church, and the modern world. Knight argues that the modern world is based on a truncated economy of nature that is unable to establish its identity. Thus, he offers a manifesto for theological discussion and religious language that places the economy of the one God at the center of the modern understanding of life.

As a result, Knight defines the responsibilities of contemporary theology as restating and reformulating the public and political purpose of the doctrine of God. This challenging book is an ambitious project that engages the powers of the theological discipline by changing the terminology of the discussion and bringing into conversation an almost unmanageable variety of voices and aspects.

The persistent reader is rewarded with a plethora of new ideas that will challenge the modern debate on questions of the continuing significance of theological inquiry, the responsibility of the church, and the understanding of God’s work driven by an eschatological vision of the end, the hope that God has for humanity.

Wolfgang Vondey Regent University Religious Studies Review 33.1 (2007): 42.

Two generations later, new winds of change are blowing through Catholic higher education in America: the bracing winds of dynamic orthodoxy. Some elite Catholic schools are, sadly, lost â?? and quite likely lost for good. Yet others have made significant comebacks in recent years, thanks to generational change in theology departments, courageous presidential and board leadership, students who demand authentic Catholicism from schools that market themselves as â??Catholic,â?? and the work of alert alumni. Moreover, several smaller Catholic liberal arts colleges, in virtually every part of the country, are giving fresh life to Msgr. Ellisâ??s vision of revitalized classical learning in a Catholic context â?? and proving once again that that kind of learning is a better preparation for a professional future that the intellectual disarray that still reigns supreme on some campuses with stratospheric U.S. News & World Report ratings.

These new-wave Catholic schools consider their linkage to the Church an integral part of their lives. In doing so, they remind us that doctrine is liberating, even in institutions dedicated to critical thought.

George Weigel on how catholic colleges are becoming Catholic again

The answer to the â??worship warsâ?? is in the back of the pew in front of you. There, languishing between the storied suffering of Job and the royal wisdom of Proverbs, lies the Book of Psalms â?? one hundred and fifty of the greatest praise and worship songs ever.

How many churches squabbling over music have sung even one, first verse to last? How many have even considered it?

Christians these days are rethinking what they sing. Not all thatâ??s old is good. Not all thatâ??s new is bad. But the Psalms and biblical canticles are the measure of both. Any congregation that rallied around that point would eventually find its musical taste transformed. The best would drive out the pretty good, regardless of age. Almost miraculously, water would be displaced by wine.

Our songs shape our piety. More than most preaching, theyâ??re the things that stick with us after weâ??ve exited the pew and passed through the back door. If we wallow in schlock and schmaltz, our devotion grows schlocky and schmaltzy. Our faith becomes long on sentiment, short on substance.

It is one thing to sing a line such as â??now I am happy all the day,â?? to quote a traditional old hymn with a lie in its refrain; it is another to sing, with the author of Psalm 119, â??It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.â?? We can (and should) outgrow ditties and bad hymns. We cannot outgrow the Psalms. Psalms mature us.

Paul Buckley Sing psalms

Colin E. Gunton's The Barth Lectures, edited by Paul Brazier, and introduced by Stephen Holmes, is just out from T & T Clark.

Alan Spence's The Promise of Peace: A Unified Theory of Atonement appeared last year. Now he has produced Incarnation and Inspiration: John Owen and the Coherence of Christology. There are rumours of a John Owen conference in the UK next year. Another Owen fan is Kelly Kapic, whose Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen, also started as a London PhD. Its first chapter is online at Baker Academic (PDF).

Andy Goodliff keeps a good list of theology books - here is his notice of The Rhythm of Liturgy, the latest from the increasingly impressive John Colwell, a baptist with an Anglican ecclesiology, who with Alan Spence, is one of those rare birds, a dogmatic theologian in London.

Whereâ??s Al, they have all been asking.

So what a relief to find Al Kimel's Pontifications again. Pontifications was the place where all theological blogs met, and we all learned a wider churchmanship. I owe him a colossal debt. But clearly it is tough-going â?? â??in some way the sorrows have intensifiedâ??. Now heâ??s in dark new format, with some archives but without any links. (Hint - amend links)

Here he is on Renewing the renewed liturgy

What is the way forward? By all means, let us reread and reappropriate Sacrosanctum Concilium, and in light of this document let us critically evaluate the liturgical experimentations of the past forty years. And let us also learn from the liturgical experience and practice of the Byzantine Churches.

Here are my concrete proposals:

(1) Abandon the versus populum, immediately! Let priest and people face God together. The single most destructive feature of the â??renewed liturgyâ?? is its anthropocentric orientation. The people of God are sanctified by worshipping God, not by celebrating each other. (2) Restore the chanted liturgy. Prayers are to be sung according to the ancient forms. (3) Ban the musical compositions of Marty Haugen and David Haas and anything similar. Gregorian chant must be restored as the primary music of the Latin rite. Given the magnitude of the problem, it is probably best to simply ban all music composed after 1960. Perhaps one day the good music that has been composed during the past forty years can be retrieved, but that day is not now. Catholic priests and musicians today do not know what sacred music is. (4) Restore the use of incense. (5) Eradicate ritual informality. (6) Drastically reduce electronic amplification. (7) Encourage eucharistic adoration both within and outside the Mass. Let the people prostrate themselves before Christ Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. A bow of the head is not sufficient!

All the Anglicans say Amen.

Petition to BMA on Abortion

6.7 million abortions have been performed by doctors in Britain since the implementation of the 1967 Abortion Act and 2006 figures just published show a further rise in the annual number of abortion

There is growing public unrest about the growing number of abortions and specifically about: 1. The 24 week upper age limit for abortions – many feel this should be reduced 2. The fact that abortions for handicap are available up until birth 3. Doctors being placed under pressure to be involved in abortion 4. The increasing evidence that abortion has adverse consequences for mental health 5. The inadequacy of counselling currently available for women seeking abortion

Despite this the British Medical Association (BMA) Ethics Committee is pressing for further liberalisation of the abortion law to allow abortion on request up until twelve weeks.

Sign the petition (if you a UK citizen) or learn more from the Christian Medical Fellowship

The Christian Medical Fellowship and the Lawyers Christian Fellowship are evangelical outfits, presently campaigning on abortion and the sexual orientation regulations respectively. But you will find no mention of them or these campaigns at (the evangelical) Christian Today UK online news service.

The problem is not just that evangelicals cannot hear what Catholics are saying, but they cannot hear each other either. Public Christianity, ha, ha.

Pope Benedict has, in his Wednesday General Audiences, been giving brief addresses on the leadership of early Christianity. He began last year with the Apostles. Such things naturally lend themselves to be collected in book form, and a couple of months ago, OSV obtained rights to publish an edition of Apostles in the US (a British version has already been published).

As the editor was working his way through the text (cleaning up footnotes, clarifying puzzling translations, etc), it occurred to me that this would lend itself to the needs of an adult religious ed program. It's short, the chapters are relatively brief, and of course, it's Pope Benedict writing, so the content is rich and clearly presented, with at least one thought-provoking, made-for-reflection sentence on every page.

So, I opened my big mouth, and here I am with one more project to do before the end of the month.

Anyone who does religious ed in a parish setting - consider this. There will be twelve sessions, each with questions for study and questions for reflection, as well as opening and closing prayers.

I really believe in what Pope Benedict is doing - he is a master catechist, he understands the problems and challenges of the way of discipleship, of the way of simply being human, and he brings all of that into what he writes.

Amy Welborn

And here are those Wednesday General Audiences - (backwards from June) on Athanasius, Eusebius, Cyprian, Tertullian, Origen, Irenaeus...

Christianity is politics done slowly. It is politics with memory and imagination, that understands the past as resource from which a future may perhaps come into being constructed. It is the politics of the promise of God.

It is a deep-seated assumption of the tradition as we have inherited it that the past is gone and has no further impact on us. But the past does not disappear. It is still entirely with us. It is just that we have no awareness of it. This is the nominalism (we are entirely to free to make up names for things, after which they will be what we have named them), or the voluntarism (things are what we will them to be) or antinomianism (there is no law or tradition or givens for us to come to terms with) of the Western tradition. We do not see it as a tradition, that is as somthing passed to us, or see it as one tradition, but instead see it simply as everything, our field of view being filled by it.

The Western tradition is a kind of forgetfulness. We are not at in charge of the machine we have inherited. The machine wants to give us the impression that we are entirely in charge: it does not even tell us that we are astride a machine. It wants us to believe that we are entirely free agents, able to choose what to do just as impulsively and unconstrainedly as children. We are up on the bridge of an ocean liner, throwing the wheel this way and that, unaware that the ship is only able to react very slowly, so each of our instructions cancels out the previous one, while the great ship of the Western intellectual tradition ploughs on.

But Christianity allows us to see that the Western intellectual tradition – ‘modernity’ – is one tradition, because Christianity is another tradition. Christianity is a distinct tradition because the world is unable to absorb the church so that the distinction between disappears.

The Western tradition think it knows Christianity and has seen through it. But Christianity is preserved as a tradition, and as an alternative to the Western tradition, by the freedom of God. It is God who keeps Christianity out of our reach, this unknown, ungraspable mystery, which alone secures for us the possibility of a future.

Scott Prather at Swords to Plowshares introduces the Aberdeen theology faculty. They look like a good team, young fresh and energetic, all publishing, with the emphasis on dogmatics, which I think makes this department unique in the UK.

My first question:

What sort of ecclesiology does all this evangelical dogmatics result in? It looks to me as though ecclesiology is regarded as the concern of just one member of this faculty. Evangelicals do have an ecclesiology, don't they? Since there is a fair input from the German theological scene, I hope that there is at least a nodding relationship with Lutheran ecclesiology, by which I mean Luther, not Bonhoeffer. I appreciate that the Anglican/Episcopalian church is not in particularly good shape in Scotland, but then this is where a faculty like this could make a difference, isn't it?

Second question:

How can we replicate this faculty a little further south in the UK? You have heard of church plants - how about a faculty plant? I know another city a little further down that North Sea coast that could do with some dogmatic theology, and London is its name.

At the very least, then, the Lambeth Conference is like a council in that its purpose from the beginning has been to confront divisive issues with both truth and charity, engaged through the work of the Holy Spirit, and so nourishing and preserving unity in the midst of division. Thus, to insist that agreement be present before meeting - and despite previous meetings! - is simply to void the purpose of the meeting in the first place. Further, to separate precipitously from a body that no longer resembles Christian truth and practice as one understands them, or that seems incapable to upholding them, is to foreclose on the pneumatic promises of providence that call us into council in the first place.

The above points do not entail the conclusion that discipline cannot or should not be imposed on those who persist in an alien way or who scandalize by their behavior. I, like many others, believe such discipline is in fact required. Still, such alien and scandalous life should be confronted rather than avoided by absenting oneself from an encounter in the Lord and refusing the obligation to hold to account in the power of the Lord. The primary point behind all this is that Christians have been given a divine narrative and vocation that insists upon engaged suffering as a means of witness, rather than upon departure and beginning anew as a means of protest and self-protection. Thus, the prophets (eg Jeremiah) and Christ suffer among their people. They do not leave them to form another people.

Ephraim Radner Lambeth Can Be What It Wants To Be

Asia News Iraqi Christians 'facing extinction'

â??Without Sunday, without the Eucharist the Christians in Iraq cannot surviveâ??: that was how Fr Ragheed spoke of his communityâ??s hope, a community that was used to facing death on a daily basis, that same death that yesterday afternoon faced him, on his way home from saying mass. After having fed his faithful with the Body and Blood of Christ, he gave his own blood, his own life for Iraq, for the future of his Church. This young priest had willingly, knowingly chosen to remain by the side of his parishioners from Holy Spirit parish in Mosul, judged the most dangerous, after Baghdad. His reasoning was simple: without him, without its pastor, his flock would have been lost. In 2003 on finishing his studies in Rome, he decided to return to his country â??that is where I belong, that is my placeâ??.

Asia News

Reporting on religion in the mainstream British press is not only sometimes dreadful, it's dangerous, and something needs to be done about it.

Making such a statement does not come easy. Journalists are notoriously reluctant to criticize the work of colleagues, and not just because it's a great way to make enemies. We know the agonies of fact-checking and finding balance, especially facing ever-tighter deadlines. Since I occasionally write for the British press and give interviews in the U.K., I understand that religion reporting is up against a ferociously competitive media market and a highly secular audience, where some over-simplification and even exaggeration is the price of doing business.

This is not merely irritating, but dangerous.

John Allen Irresponsible reporting on religion is dangerous

The Deep Church ecclesiology seminars at Notre Dame’s London Centre will continue to explore the resources of the whole Christian tradition for contemporary church worship and life.

Friday 11 May 3-5pm David Hilborn – ‘Why should evangelicals be Anglican?’ David is Director of Studies and acting Principal of the North Thames Ministerial Training Course. Previously he was the Evangelical Alliance’s Theologian, convenor of the Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals, and editor of ‘Evangelicalism and the Orthodox Church’.

These seminars are open to anyone in Christian ministry or theological study in London. If you would like to come to any one of these please email, using the address in 'About Us'

The Book of the Series – There will be a book launch for Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep Church, the papers from the last Deep Church series, edited by Luke Bretherton and Andrew Walker, on June 6th at Kings College London, Strand. Evening prayers in the King's Chapel at 6.00 are followed by a reception in the Council Room at 6.30.

The bishop who is president of Iraqâ??s Council of Catholic Churchesâ?? Committee for inter religious dialogue , signed a declaration regarding the â??tragic situation of Baghdadis Christiansâ??, denouncing militant groups which under the threat of armed violence ask Christians to convert immediately to Islam or to consign their property and leave the country. The same thing happens in Mosul, but with a different â??choiceâ??: pay a monetary tribute to the Jihad if they want to avoid their death.

However in the current situation Christians are targeted as chief conspirators to be exploited or eliminated. They cannot openly profess their faith, the veil is imposed on the women and the crosses are taken down from their churches, threats of kidnappings and extortion weigh heavily over all of them. Msgr Sako lists the violence to which they are submitted on a daily basis: â??now a days Christians are suffering in certain areas and cities in Iraq from forced evacuation, rape, kidnap, blackmail, scarring and killing. This unfamiliar behaviour contradicts the Iraqi humanitarian and Islamic morals. Let everybody realize that emptying Iraq of Christians will be disastrous not only for the Christians but for all Iraqis!... Forcing Christians to leave their homes indicates deterioration in the concept of conviviality and furthermore it destroys the cultural, civil and religious mosaic of which Iraq is considered to be the very cradleâ??.

The appeal signed by Msgr. Sako urges all of the political, religious and cultural communities of Iraq to remain united, because â??there is no salvation without our unity. Let the outsider whoever is he, leave and stay away so that the danger of death and the risk of division disappear and vanish and thus permitting life to return to what it once was; a river which flowed in harmony, a river of brotherhood and close unityâ??.

Asia News

Vigen Guroian The Fragrance of God Reflections on Finding God through the Beauty and Glory of the Natural World 10 May 2007 7.30pm Dr. Vigen Guroian is Professor of Theology at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland and a Senior Fellow of the Center on Law and Religion at Emory University. In the past he served as the Academic Director of St. Nersess Armenian Seminary. With many articles on theology, ethics, politics, and literature, he is the author of nine books including Ethics after Christendom, Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination, Rallying the Really Human Things: The Moral Imagination in Politics , Literature and Everyday Life, and Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening. An avid gardener himself, Dr. Guroian has recently spoken on the US public radio programme "Speaking of Faith" giving a talk entitled "Restoring the Senses: Life, Gardening and an Orthodox Easter." Dr. Guroian will be present to discuss his book, read from it, and autograph copies.

The book launch is hosted by the Armenian Institute with Darton Longman and Todd Armenian House, 25 Cheniston Gardens, London W8

FAITH & PUBLIC POLICY FORUM

WEDNESDAY 2 MAY 07

'Religion, Citizenship and Liberal Pluralism'

Lord Raymond Plant, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Philosophy, King's College London

All seminars are held between 5.30pm and 7.00pm in room 3c, Old Committee Room, Strand, London

A church, in fact, when it’s working, when it’s alive and healthy, is a place that tells you the world is too small. That may sound a rather odd way of putting it, but the church should be a place that tells you that the world is too small. That is, the world of rational calculation, the world of profit and negotiation, the world where we know exactly how to measure success and failure, and the world which teaches us ways of successfully managing the uncomfortable edgy feelings at both extremes so that we don’t have to pay too much attention to them. A church says that that’s not enough, the world is too small. You need bigger words than the world will allow; you need a bigger heart than the world would allow because you need words for gratitude and ecstasy just as you need words for terror and pain and misery. And the world is not going to give you that space. And the church is, because the church celebrates a hospitable God in whose embrace is room enough for the whole of you.

Archbishop of Canterbury at the CTE Forum in Swanwick 2003

Next Friday evening (27 April 07) Archbishop Rowan Williams is speaking on discipleshipship at Fulcrum in London. See you there?

"Get rid of the cross or we will burn your Churchesâ??. This is the threat aimed at the Chaldean Church of Sts Peter and Paul, located in the ancient Christian quarter of Baghdad, Dora.

The Islamic group active in Dora seems to have delivered an ultimatum to the Christian community there: convert to Islam or die; moreover reports say that they have delivered a Fatwa forbidding Christians to wear the cross or make any religious gesture. It also permits the confiscation of goods and properties belonging to the Christian families who find themselves forced to flee their homes for safety at short notice.

Baghdadâ??s **Christian community**â??s worries have been added to by the US militaryâ??s decision to forcibly occupy Babel College, property of the Chaldean Church. The Babel, the only faculty of theology in the country, houses on of the most ancient religious libraries in the region, full of priceless manuscripts. Because of the increased insecurity in the city and continual abductions of religious the faculty had transferred to Ankawa, in Kurdistan January last, leaving the building empty.

Asia news Threats to the Church in Iraq

Anglican Mainstream's article On the cross gives a handy summary of the debate on penal substitution - and see Mike Ovey's new Pierced for my Transgressions - evidence that there is just a little theology going on in London.

Like so many other horrific accounts of Christian persecution in Iraq, this story went unnoticed in the West...

Since the invasion of Iraq, militants have bombed 28 churches and murdered hundreds of Christians.

The latest report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that two million Iraqis have fled since the invasion, and almost a third of these are Assyrian – who are down from 1.4 million in Saddam’s Iraq to fewer than 500,000 today.

Now, while one of the world’s oldest Christian nations faces extinction at the hands of Islamic extremists, the West does nothing.

Ed West We must not let this ancient Church slide into oblivion.

Christians of Iraq includes the Minority Right Group Report Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s minority communities since 2003 (PDF)

The communities covered in this report make up about 10 per cent of the Iraqi population. They include Armenians, Bahá’ís, Chaldo-Assyrians, Faili Kurds, Jews, Mandaeans, Palestinians, Shabaks, Turkomans and Yazidis. Many of these groups have lived in Iraq for two millennia or more. Though they have survived a long history of persecution that goes back far beyond Saddam Hussein’s rule, there is a real risk that they might not survive the current conflict. Because they are caught up in violence between the majority Sunni Arab, Shia Arab and Sunni Kurdish groups, and are also specifically targeted for atrocities, assimilation or mass displacement and exodus, some may now be facing total eradication from this ancient land. These communities are invisible in the eyes of the world.

We are near the end of term at last. We have all had some virus which has slowed things right down.

I was about to give up on Wednesday’s paper for Heythrop, but in the last twenty-four hours managed to write something on Williams and O'Donovan on secularism which seemed to go all right. A reasonably-sized group, most in their fifties, their questions expressing the apparently unchanged English Catholic assumption that the ‘Church’ is a vast oppressive institution. I forget how surprised people are when you talk about the Church as the act of God and act of love, or indeed about society as created by love. I have not managed to write anything on Benedict on secularity, secularism and reason, which was what I first intended that paper to be.

I got the ‘Theology of John Zizioulas’ proofs back to Ashgate with index and Liviu’s bibliography; its cover uses the one reasonable photo of the man I got last year and all in all it looks OK.

So, this weekend, intercessions, evensong and sermon. My cough is going to make us all wish we had changed the rota. Then a short paper on Zizioulas on bishop and ecumenism for the STT, then the Spaemann review and we have another go at setting this Deep Church seminar on its feet. Then the Eschatology paper. Then Easter and new baby. Then the Dogmatics lectures. Those are the edited highlights from me. I am catching up on email now, I promise.

So you Londoners, I hope you will come to the next Deep Church session, and that you will book your place at the big theology-in-London event of the year, the Colin Gunton day conference in September

Journal of Theological Interpretation

Critical biblical scholarship as developed and defined since the mid-eighteenth century has played a significant and welcome role in pressing us to take biblical texts seriously on their own terms and diverse contexts. With the postmodern turn, additional questions have surfaced—including the theological and ecclesial location of biblical interpretation, the significance of canon and creed for biblical hermeneutics, the historical reception of biblical texts, and other more pointedly theological interests. How might we engage interpretively with the Christian Scriptures so as to hear and attend to God's voice? The Journal of Theological Interpretation aims to serve these agendas.

1.1 (Spring 2007)

Richard B. Hays Can Narrative Criticism Recover the Unity of Scripture?

Murray Rae Texts in Context: Scripture and the Divine Economy

Michael A. Rynkiewich Mission, Hermeneutics, and the Local Church

R.W.L. Moberly Christ in All the Scriptures? The Challenge of Reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture

Michael J. Gorman "A Seamless Garment": Approach to Biblical Interpretation?

There is still a fair flow of publications from those who studied under Colin Gunton at Kings College London. I have been meaning to introduce each of these to you properly, but the months slip by, so here is a short list.

Justyn Terry's The Justifying Judgement of God: A Reassessment of the Place of Judgement in the Saving Work of Christ, in which Karl Barth plays a fair role, has just appeared from Paternoster.

Peter S. Oh's Karl Barth's Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Karl Barth's Analogical Use of the Trinitarian Relation examines Barth on analogy, and suggests that another look at Kierkegaard, from whom Barth learned his antipathy to analogy, would show that analogy is intrinsic to a theology of persons, and then goes on to develop this insight into a whole ecclesiology. It has an introduction by Christoph Schwöbel. Tough conceptual stuff, but the theological gain is real enough.

Then coming from T&T Clark in May 2007 is Iain Taylor's Pannenberg on the Triune God.

Colin Gunton's own The Barth Lectures edited by Paul Brazier, and also introduced by Christoph Schwöbel, is out from T&TClark in July, as is Alan Spence's Incarnation and Inspiration: John Owen and the Coherence of Christology.

(Have you Gunton readers seen Hans Schaeffer Createdness and Ethics: The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Ethics in the Theology of Colin E. Gunton and Oswald Bayer ?)

Then two very important books from two friends of mine who studied Christian Ethics under Michael Banner

Brian Brock's Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics is now out from Eerdmanns. Christian Scripture and the Christian community are in some kind of constitutive relationship (yes, apparently this is still news for the ethics crowd) then comes a good review of the best of recent theological-hermeneutical literature (Webster, Watson...), then finally Augustine, Luther and Brian Brock himself guide us the psalms, and in the hands of these masters our education really begins. Theology comes from worship and serves worship.

Very soon we will see Christopher Roberts' Creation & Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in and for the Moral Theology of Marriage. I used to wonder why Chris was so concerned to show that marriage unites two people of different gender. Well I now I see why. In the last week in the UK I have heard just one or two Roman Catholic spokesmen quietly inform the British government and people that marriage - this man-woman covenant thing - is not a creation of the state, and may not be be re-defined on the whim of a government. Marriage - the union of two people of different gender is not only the foundation of all human society (and therefore of the state) but is the very premise of human being as such.

Brock and Roberts. I have been pilfering ideas from these two for years. For instance, I had no idea about the totus Christus until Brian pointed it out to me in Augustine. Nothing has been the same since.

And Michael Banner himself (now Dean of Chapel at Trinity, Cambridge) is one of the best kept secrets of British theological ethics. His Brief History of Ethics, unlikely to be brief, and might just be major, is out from Blackwells in the autumn.

The secular phalanx, rather like religious fundamentalists, is blinded by a certainty which conceals anxiety. The process of modernisation in the rest of the world is not following the pattern established in NW Europe. We are the exception and we are beginning to understand for example how the ecological challenge we face is a function of a way of being in the world which is arrogant and lacks reverence and awareness; and which arises from a false estimate of ourselves as masters and possessors of the earth rather than its stewards.

Yet there is no cause for religious people to be triumphalistic and try to outdo the God-deniers in shrillness. Suddenly it has also become urgent to distinguish in our country between healthful and lethal religion and to find the way to initiate the young into the former rather than the latter.

Lethal religion is one version of the idolatry which the prophets spend so much time denouncing. It is the manufacture of gods out of our own rage and impotence. A bruised ego finds a surreptitious way to re-ascend by making a god in its own image. This is a problem for all religions. When we are so sure that we have the right idea about God and want to clone or condemn all the others, then we are like the god deniers almost certainly on the wrong track. As the poet said of God, â??You have such a quiet manner of existence that those who name you with a loud insistence show that theyâ??ve forgotten your proximity.â??

Richard Charters, Bishop of London Induction of the Revd Nicholas Papadopulos

* * * Evensong at Westminster Abbey You are invited to attend Evensong in the presence of His All-Holiness Bartholomew I Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch and of His Grace Dr Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon to celebrate the publication of:

The Church of the Triune God, the Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglicanâ??Orthodox Theological Dialogue, 1989â??2006.

30 January 2007, Tuesday 5 p.m. at Westminster Abbey, London

All are welcome

You must be wondering why I don't just do a re-direct from this blog to the Vatican. The reason I want to hear from Benedict again and again is that he tirelessly sets out this gospel for us. I have to have the words of the gospel dinned into me, and the power of the gospel got into me, direct via eucharistic transfusion. These two go together: preaching – the laying out of this gospel – is essential to the eucharist, for the eucharist is not an act without words.

Benedict never speaks over the head of the church, addressing just city and world (urbe et orbi). First and last he speaks to the church, teaching it about its Lord, and therefore about its own identity, and about its calling and its luck.

Now I want to receive this eucharist-and-gospel with my own people here in my own church, and in an English accent please. I want this combined dose for head and body, dispensed to me and the people I pray with here in London. I know I stand no chance as a merely individual Christian, receiving my nourishment via the library or internet, intellectually – words, unaccompanied, are not enough. I want to be a member of a church happy to be under the authority of Christ, led by clergy who dispense that full words-and-power eucharist with the generosity and authority of Christ, and who are therefore able to exercise discipline and tell us not to go snacking from any other worldly sources. My salvation depends on this church and clergy.

So this gospel laid out by Pope Benedict (and Archbishop Rowan, and Patriarch Bartholomew) is what I want to receive also from bishops Richard (of London) and Stephen (of Stepney, my part of London) and from my priest. I want my church, and these clergy, to feast on this gospel-and-eucharist and then to pass it on to us, all of it. If it is Benedict laying out the feast, that’s fine, isn't it? We are Anglicans, so surely not too proud to snatch food from Christ’s table even if it is chiefly Benedict who is bringing it out of the kitchen at the moment, right? I want the full gospel, some of which always has to be imported, and I want it served up here for us in England.

So for the clergy and people of Stepney and London I am pointing to Benedict. When they and I have learned everything there is to be learned from Benedict, we will look elsewhere. Of course the clergy of London are the last to read and receive any of this. Which leaves the rest of you with a little intercessory job to do.

Sorry. What with the grind of term and the excitement of events this autumn I never got around to doing any actual blogging. I haven’t posted anything of my own since August. It takes me much longer to post something I have written that to post a couple of paragraphs, already polished and published, by someone else. There is no limit to the number of times I can change what I have written, and a day later it will still look like gibberish to me – to you too probably. I wasn’t born to blog, being neither spontaneous nor self-controlled enough.

But I have enjoyed everything I have posted here, in particular that Regensberg moment, but also all the rest of Pope Benedict’s wonderful teaching that the secular or public sphere depends on the church, and reason and the possibility of truthful discourse depends on the gospel. I was amazed that the British media, and British evangelicals, failed to see what was at stake here. So once again:

Fellow members of the British public square: Benedict is arguing for the public testing of ideas and all the other good practices required for rationality and society.

Fellow evangelicals, Benedict is a Christian. It may be that this Christian is being hammered by the media because the world sometimes opposes the gospel; the extent of the world’s opposition may even be indication of the depth of the gospel he is holding out to it. When the mob is giving some Christian a kicking, joining that mob may endanger your salvation.

You phenomenologists, Benedict is intellectually far more rewarding than all of the the epigones of Heidegger put together.

Benedict produces wonderful, insightful evangelical teaching. His output, written and apparently off the cuff is extraordinary. I enjoyed his visit to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Constantinople for a brief reprise of the ‘two lungs’ of the Church. The unity of the Church is all the evidence of his power and love that God offers the world. No part of the church catholic will grow without finding the humility to examine the teaching and perhaps even accept the discipline of the rest of the Church.

There have also been a good number of pieces from Archbishop Rowan Williams, on the church, public sphere, university and Christian calling, and from Oliver O'Donovan at Fulcrum on how to we may learn the skills of judgment, and so learn how to make decisions on the vexed questions of church order and sexuality, and how to live together within those decisions. I am staggered by how slow we are in the UK to take up the material provided by Williams, O'Donovan, and even more provided by the Church's own councils. About the discussions of the future of the Anglican church and covenant, I refer you to the Windsor process and covenant discussion documents. I find it extraordinary that there is no theological discussion of these thoroughly theological documents in any academic theological setting, in London or the UK. Let me know if you hear of any.

There is a mountain of work in front of me, almost none of it paid, but I am going to enjoy it anyway. There are books on their way, and still more rumours of books, that will delight readers of Colin Gunton and of John Zizioulas. It is good to see the emergence of some serious scholarship on the theological revolution represented by Zizioulas’ eschatological ontology. Of course, since this is a theological revolution, is also just a recovery of what we should never have forgotten. So get yourself a copy of Communion and Otherness for a happy new year. Meanwhile brother webmaster is building a content management system for a renewed ‘Resources’ website, with new buttons to click on, but one that I will be able to work this time, he thinks. When that is done, I will mend broken links to Zizioulas’ work.

I have created some new links –

to Sandro Magister at Chiesa for intelligent theological commentary from the Vatican. For more gossipy Vatican news stories see John Allen.

to Janet E. Smith, Professor of Moral Theology at Sacred Heart Detroit and a superb commentator on Evangelium Vitae and much else - see her ‘Articles’

to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America for a serendipity

and to the Pope Benedict XVI fanclub – see their ‘Links’

Knight went to the AAR. He was briefly allowed to leave his desk, London, and the whole UK for the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Washington DC.

Highlights were:

Volf Krötke (Berlin) at the Barth Society, ably introduced by Philip Zeigler.

Luke Bretherton (KCL – English, one of ours) awed the Systematic Theology seminar, but then so did David Haddorff (Saint John's NY).

The Ecclesiological Investigations 's impressive discussion of the Porto Alegre 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) document Called to be the One Church. It was good to find fellow-Zizioulas readers Fr Paul McPartlan and Paul Collins making an impact. I think that the ecclesiology of Metropolitan Zizioulas would be an ideal subject for a session of this seminar next year.

The Christian Theology and the Bible seminar (Webster, Telford Work and many others), though I managed to miss all sessions of Theological Hermeneutics of Christian Scripture Group, which had an equally strong cast.

It was great to importune publishers, particularly at the swanky Eerdmans reception, to be wowed by Brazos’s Theological Theological Commentary on the Bible series, and to meet Amazon reviewer Halden Doerge .

But above all it was wonderful to catch up with the old Kings College London crowd – those pictured above (Left to right Paul Janz, Oliver Crisp, Luke Bretherton, Chris Roberts, Eric Flett, Randall Rauser and Ryan Murphy), but also and in particular Justyn Terry, Paul Metzger and George Ille.

I am very grateful to Chris Roberts and to Lincoln Harvey. I understand that neither of them want to room with me ever again so I shall be sleeping on the beach at San Diego in 2007.

Up until a couple of years ago I was keeping a bibliography which had reached about a thousand items, representing the trails into non-theological territory which I hoped to follow once I had got The Eschatological Economy out of the way. This bibliography was in MS Access on my overworked laptop – the laptop that blew a gasket one morning when someone, who shall be nameless, switched her hairdryer on and off in the next room. In the cold fear of having lost the book I was working on, I just got the man in the repair shop to recover my Word files and forgot all about the bibliography, which was the only file held in any other application. And so it was gone, and I haven't really kept a single bibliography since. I hope you take more care of your data than I do.

Anyway I have been trying out what looks like a wonderful online bibliography service – LibraryThing. It offers a variety of ways to present your book list, including with library shelf mark/Library of Congress call mark. I haven't found a Sort function yet - I think it all has to be done with tags. And there is a fair amount of crossover of function with Amazon, though you can find people who are reading, or at least own, one particular book, so it is an online book-club too.

Seventy Church of Engand and Roman Catholic bishops were urged today to intervene to help thousands of Christian students at British universities from having the organisations representing them banned.

Among those asked to take action to save Christian Union societies were the Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster.

The rise of secularism in the UK is among the issues being debated today and tomorrow at the first ever joint meeting of the Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales in Leeds.

Dr Rowan Williams and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor were to issue a joint statement later today on the importance of working together and how to surmount the differences that remain between the two churches.

The 40 Anglican and 30 Catholic bishops began their unprecedented two-day meeting at Hinsley Hall at lunchtime. The bishops prayed and worshipped together and discussed how to heal the historic rift between them.

But Christian Union leaders urged them to move away from the usual "bland platitudes" associated with ecumenical gatherings to help the beleaguered Christian student societies under threat of bans.

Ruth Gledhill The Times

(left)

Alan Spence is the author of The Promise of Peace: A Unified Theory of Atonement

The Promise of Peace offers a defence of a mediatorial interpretation of the atonement, that is one in which Christ is held to have become as we are, so that he might on our behalf make peace with God. It is argued that such an interpretation is not one of a number of valid descriptions of Christ's saving work, but the normative redemptive account. The erosion of this classic view of the atonement can be explained partly by a number of developments that have taken place in theological thought during the past two hundred years. These include the emergence of a christology in which Christ's divinity is linked to his saving ministry; a new interpretation of Pauline theology in which issues of justification are held to be secondary to those of participation; a return to the more dualistic world-view of the Church Fathers; difficulties with the concept of divine judgement; and a culture of relativism in which a unified or coherent account of the atonement not only no longer seems possible, but is generally not even considered desirable. The book achieves its purpose by engaging critically with these various theological ideas. It is as much a clearing of the undergrowth from the foundations of soteriology as it is the construction of a coherent account of Christ Jesus as the one mediator between us and God. It goes on to consider the relation of such an account to the proclamation of the gospel and the response required of its hearers.

The Promise of Peace has won some powerful endorsements:

'Seasoned by years on the front lines of ministry, both in missions and human rights work, the author's profound insights into the logic of redemption bear a sense of urgency and pastoral depth. The Promise of Peace is not simply another summary of Christian doctrine; it is a judicious and passionate - at times even polemical - defense of the heart of the gospel for our time. This is the clarity and wisdom that the church desperately needs in our day if we would turn from fads to faith in the promise-maker of peace.' Professor Michael Horton, Westminster Theological Seminary, California.

'Alan Spence's new book is a very welcome addition to the literature on the doctrine of atonement. Dr Spence has read widely and deeply, and engages seriously and sympathetically with many others in developing his own distinctive proposal. More than that, however, any book so well written will gain a heart-felt welcome from scholars so used to wading through impenetrable prose. With the style and urgency of a true preacher, and the knowledge and insight of a true scholar, Dr Spence offers us a book of genuine interest and worth. I am very happy to commend it.' Dr Steve Holmes, St Andrews.

'Alan Spence advocates and practises a non-nonsense approach to Christian theology: clear, accessible, passionate, not afraid of controversy, but always pastoral, and, above all, eager to be faithful to the Christian Gospel. Even those who do not agree with his conclusions will enjoy engaging in conversation with him.' Professor Christoph Schwöbel, Tübingen.

Alan taught theology in Zimbabwe, was Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa and is now minister of the United Reformed Church in Ealing in London.

Alan is the most incisive, passionate and pastoral teacher of Christian doctrine I know, and invariably galvanises every seminar he turns up at. He has been coaching postgraduates who find him through his work on England's great puritan theologian John Owen. Alan's book on Owen appears from T & T Clark next year. He is powerful proof that you can still find Christian theology in London.

You know what London really needs is a seminar in which ministers and worship leaders can re-discover the worship resources of the whole historic Church and discover a thicker, or deeper, exegesis of Scripture.

We did have such a seminar briefly a couple of years ago. It was called Deep Church. It was looking for ways to recover the practices of preaching, prayer, proper emphasis on communion and baptism, and to improving our catechism and theological teaching. I wonder what happened to it?

It produced a book The Gospel-Driven Church: Retrieving Classical Ministries for Contemporary Revivalism, billed as the first of a Deep Church Series.

New Deep Church lectures I see that Andrew Walker is giving a series of lectures at the brand new Westminster Theological Centre, under the same Deep Church title. I wonder if these two deep churches are related? Professor Walker is a charismatic evangelical member of the Russian Orthodox Church (worth going along just to ask) and well known for his work on C.S. Lewis and the Inklings.

Yet we do have our very own one-man ‘Deep Church’, right here in London, at Lambeth, and Williams is his name. The Sermons and Speeches page of the website of the Archbishop of Canterbury is a trough deep with Christian resources. You want to know more about what he says without actually reading them yourself? Shame on you. All right. Let me see what I can do.

Two of the seminars Calvin is offering next summer look interesting. They are not conferences, since they run over several weeks.

Liturgical Identities: Global, National, Ecclesial Michael L. Budde and D. Stephen Long June 25-July 20, 2007

Liturgies form identities. They set forth what is important, focus our attention, shape our bodies through particular practices, and bear communal memory in ways that form who we are, whose we are, and what matters most in life.

Liturgical practices bear in themselves an intentionality about how to live. This is true not only for the church, but other associations such as the nation-state and economic entities. The nation-state, for example, has its own hymns, ritual practices, saints and martyrs, and sacred calendar. Corporations increasingly construct â??liturgiesâ?? that create brand loyalty and allegiance, and shape the affections, dispositions and desires of people.

This seminar will draw upon traditional patterns of Christian worship in order to highlight similarities and difference, points of convergence and conflict, among formative communities â?? ecclesial and secular. It will provide participants the opportunity to explore how Christian ecclesiologies and forms of worship interact with other powerful practices that shape allegiances, identities and loyalties in our world.

Biblical Studies Across the Curriculum: Discerning Scripture for the Disciplines James K.A. Smith and J. Richard Middleton

July 9-27, 2007

Over the past decade, a vision of integral Christian scholarship across the disciplines has flourished. But curiously absent from much of this discussion is any robust role for Scripture. While Christian scholars across the disciplines mine the resources of the Christian theological tradition for constructive work in their field, they often donâ??t dig down to the level of first-hand, rigorous engagement with the Bible. Or when Christian scholars do invoke Scripture, too often it is in the mode of â??proof-texting,â?? drawing on a less-than-sufficient acquaintance with the Bible that tends to de-contextualize Scripture, wresting passages from their canonical and historical context, or simply reducing them to propositions for logical operations.

The paucity of biblical engagement in Christian scholarship stems from a lack of opportunity for faculty development in this area. (In fact, it first stems from a certain failure of churches to provide solid formation in biblical interpretation.) Scholars are formed in ways that donâ??t provide opportunities to learn how to read Scripture well, and how to read it as scholarsâ??and along with scholars in biblical studies. The goal of this proposed summer seminar is to provide a faculty development opportunity that will rectify this situation. We aim to bring together a team of 12 scholars from across the disciplines who are eager to acquaint themselves with the best of critical, confessional scholarship on Scripture with a view to its impact for thinking across the curriculum. As such, we believe the seminar will have both scholarly and pedagogical impact.

It is by means of this thinking â?? and not without irony â?? that we arrive at secularism and the concept of the secular public square. The word â??secularâ??, originally from a Latin word meaning â??generationâ?? or â??ageâ?? was adopted in early Christian writings to mean â??this ageâ?? or, more precisely, â??confined to this present age that is passing awayâ??. The secular was Christianityâ??s gift to the world, denoting a public space in which authorities should be respected but could legitimately be challenged and could never accord to themselves absolute or ultimate significance.

This was something the early Church understood well. In Peterâ??s letter to Christians scattered around the eastern Mediterranean, he told them they were â??a people belonging to Godâ??, but that didnâ??t mean they owed nothing to the earthly rulers under whom they lived. On the contrary, they were to â??submit â?¦ to every authority instituted among men: whether â?¦ king â?¦ or â?¦ governors, who â?¦ punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.â?? (1 Peter 2.13-14) But this, in turn, does not mean that such kings and governors are, by definition, right, and Peter proceeds to advise his readers what they should do when injustice is done. Similarly, the anonymous second-century writer of the Letter to Diognetus, explains to his reader: Though [Christians] are residents at home in their own countries, their behaviour there is more like that of transients; they take their full part as citizens, but they also submit to anything and everything as if they were aliens â?¦ their days are passed on earth, but their citizenship is above in the heavens. They obey the prescribed laws, but in their own private lives they transcend the laws. The Old Testamentâ??s nervousness about a single individual mediating Godâ??s rule for the people crystalises into the Christian denial that any particular political order is sacred, and, in doing so, produces the concept of a secular public square of which we are inheritors.

But we are only inheritors of it, as Rowan Williams has argued, because we are inheritors of the Judaeo-Christian intellectual foundations on which it is built. A belief in the provisionality and impermanence of political power, which forms the basis of political liberalism, is Christendomâ??s legacy to the modern world. Accordingly:

Western modernity and liberalism are at risk when they refuse to recognise that they are the way they are because of the presence in their midst of that partner and critic which speaks of â??alternative citizenshipâ?? â?? the Christian community â?¦ the distinctively European style of political argument and debate is made possible by the Churchâ??s persistent witness to the fact that states do not have ultimate religious claims on their citizens. Societies that forget this seminal Christian vision of â??dual citizenshipâ?? stumble towards absolutism, (Archbishop Rowan Williams)

either in the form of religious theocracy or state totalitarianism, in such a way as dehumanises its own people. This is an error into which theophobic secularism can fall.

God and Caesar

When the Church is regarded as an enemy to be overcome or a private body that must be resolutely excluded from public debate, liberal modernity turns itself into a fixed and absolute thing, another pseudo-religion, in fact â?¦

Unless the liberal state is engaged in a continuing dialogue with the religious community, it loses its essential liberalism. It becomes simply dogmatically secularâ?¦ (Archbishop Rowan Williams)

By concluding in this way we have consciously moved from a negative argument â?? defending Christianity against the largely baseless accusation that it is an inherently private phenomenon â?? towards a positive one â?? that the secular public square, properly understood, is a Christian legacy and one that requires an ongoing Christian presence to remain true to itself**.**

Theos - Doing God: A Future for Faith in the Public Square

Mihail and Emanuela will be married on 5 November 2006 in the Orthodox Cathedral of Arad, Romania

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friends who attend the bridegroom wait and listen for him, and are full of joy when they hear the bridegroom's voice. That joy is ours and it is now complete.

My tireless webmaster James Knight has put the whole content of Resources for Christian Theology into Wordpress. It doesn't look pretty, but at least it is all available again. One day we will find a better website management system - suggestions are very welcome.

I have added more links to this blog – to the Ecumenical Patriarch, two Barth sites, Generous Orthodoxy, and Alan Brown’s new Glaswegian Orthodoxy.

Meanwhile in London, a rare event of public theology:

Canon Andrew Walker Professor in Theology and Education at Kings College London is giving

The Deep Church Lectures: Series 1 Every Thursday evening

2nd November – 7th December 2006 7.15 – 9.30pm

I was scooting through 1 Corinthians for a group of students last week, and assumed that I knew what I want to say about chapter 15 on the resurrection of the body, but somehow I made rather a mess of it. What I wanted to say was that the resurrection of each Christian and the resurrection of the body of the whole church is one resurrection. I needed to find some patristic commentary on 1 Corinthians, but what New Testament commentary provides that? Since I have remembered Thomas Oden’s Ancient Christian Commentary of Scripture series.

Gerald Bray has edited the volume on 1 & 2 Corinthians Here’s the blurb:

Paul's letters to the Corinthian church have left a mark on Christian Scripture in a way that could never have been predicted. Here the pastoral issues of a first-century Christian community in what Chrysostom identified as "still the first city in Greece" stand out in bold relief. How was a community shaped by the cross to find its expression in a city that Chrysostom knew to be "full of orators and philosophers" and that "prided itself . . . above all on its great wealth"? How was church unity to be maintained in a setting where prominent believers, bending truth and morality to their own advantage, divided the body of Christ? Here lay the challenge for the apostle Paul. And as the apostle writes, the fathers lean over his shoulder, marveling and commenting on his pastoral wisdom.

Best known among these patristic commentators is Chrysostom, whose seventy-seven homilies on the two Corinthian epistles are a treasury of exposition and application. The fragmentary works of Didymus the Blind and Severian of Gabala give us samples of Greek exegesis from the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools. The partial work of Theodore of Mopsuestia, a commentator of great skill and insight, was long valued in the church. And the comments of Theodoret of Cyrus are notable for their sensitivity to the intertextuality of Scripture. Then there are Origen and Pelagius, whose names resonate with notable error, to the needless obscuring of their brilliant insights into Scripture. But pride of place goes to the unknown fourth-century commentator long mistaken for Ambrose and now dubbed "Ambrosiaster." His excellent commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians has been unavailable in English translation, and for that reason it is excerpted more generously in this volume.

This Ancient Christian Commentary on 1-2 Corinthians opens a whole new way of reading these New Testament texts. The pastoral and theological interpretation of the fathers offers spiritual and intellectual sustenance to those who would read Paul again with open minds and hearts. Here we find the Pauline wisdom of the cross generating an effective heritage of Christian interpretation.

Bet you there is not a single copy in any theological library in London. Never mind. The tide is going to turn in this city. I'll put it on my Amazon wish-list.

First the DK blog slowed to a crawl. Then it disappeared entirely.

The beginning of term always means a pile of work. I am teaching a couple of courses on Scripture, which means becoming rapidly re-acquainted with the bible. At the same time various friends arrived with dissertations. It is a joy to read a good piece of systematic theology, and in recent months I have read parts and wholes of some cracking PhD theses on Pannenberg, Barth, Jüngel, Gunton and Jenson, and on the doctrines of creation and mediation. All vital for my education, but I have fallen behind, particularly with correspondence. But:

Congratulations Dr Marion Gray - 'Time and Eternity in the Theology of Robert Jenson and Wolfhart Pannenberg' London PhD 2006

Then the DK blog disappeared entirely for some days. I admit I felt as much relief as grief. But after a night-long struggle it was restored by valiant webmaster James Knight. JK is the real power behind this blog and I am always very grateful to him.

All this means that I am behind on the series I promised you. So coming up on the DK blog:

'Catholicity’ (four posts still to come)

'Our Giant - Oliver O'Donovan'

'Theology in London'

'Evangelical'

and something on atonement and penal substitution.

As my hope of becoming an intellectual slips away I have begun to hope - much more ambitiously - that I could one day become a disciple.

So I don't know why those who leave comments on this site believe that their comments have to be so fantastically learned. This isnâ??t Pontifications you know. If I can post statements of the blooming obvious on this blog, so can you.

But I have got to show you two comments which seem to hope that intellect yet may serve discipleship.

From Brian Hamilton:

Could it be, I wonder, that the while Christian community is rightfully and graciously ordered, it never be ordered in a way that is structurally final except to reflect the dependence of all on the guiding presence of Christ? The church is ordered and re-ordered in each moment, always participating in Godâ??s work through the lives of all its members, but with the profound knowledge that this as often throws us on back on the lives of our children as it does on our trained theologians and pastors. It is the mark of our humility that there are no â??professionalâ?? or â??expertâ?? disciples, only all of us together pilgrims on a journey. And yet this does not imply a naive and disembodied â??equality,â?? or else it would also imply a rejection a rejection that the Spirit gives gifts of authority to all its members. And so it does not imply the rejection of a regular order that the church must rely on for regular guidance and strength. It only refuses to institutionalize and absolutize a particular order that God may at any moment interrupt, since all Godâ??s people are charged with the task of leading the faithful through in those moments for which they have been prepared. And this cannot be only an abstract point, since it is also an ecclesiological one about the multiplicity of the gifts of the Spirit.

Iâ??m not sure if this way of putting it quite works; Iâ??m aware of the tension in the trajectories Iâ??m trying to hold together. That may well be, however, a good picture of the (Anabaptist-Mennonite) tradition Iâ??m trying to represent, who at the same time rejects the absolute and untouchable ordering of a church that is fundamentally hierarchical, and still wants to speak in deep appreciation of the necessity of shepherds for guiding the church through the world. Or to illustrate the same thing in a different way: mine is a tradition that has at once maintained that all Godâ??s faithful are saints in the truest sense of the word, yet has insisted on telling stories of the memorably faithful. I find it an incredibly pressing project to articulate an ecclesiology that does not forsake the sort of ordering you are insisting on, but neither absolutizes particular structures of particular people that prohibit structurally the churchâ??s right dependence on, for example, its newly baptized.

And A. Steward says:

I appreciate your comment that,

â??Christianity stands for that order and reason that, by Godâ??s grace, will make us happy to share one anotherâ??s experience without wanting it exclusively for ourselves, and to participate in one another without trying to absorb or replace one another.â??

It might be the case that poor listening skills are predicated by this sort of failure to recognize the uniqueness of other people. We assume that anotherâ??s experience of life fits with our idea of â??timeless truthâ?? as we have experienced it, and so we end up hearing not them, but ourselves. I think your ideas here are particularly relevant to our American racial myth of the â??melting pot.â?? Perhaps Lutherâ??s doctrine of the Word might be helpful for redressing this, particularly where he talks about the need for the Word to be spoken, and this not by our own mouth, but by another, addressed to us. I always liked Bonhoefferâ??s line, â??The Word of God is always stronger in the mouth of our brother.â??

Yes, the Word of God is stronger in the mouth of our brother. Could it be that you are that brother? And all Godâ??s people are charged with the task of leading the faithful through in those moments for which they have been prepared. So speak up and say it plainly. Perhaps some aspect of our education in this faith is in your hands.

If your college allows you to pay your academic fees in instalments, bring each payment with you to the theology seminar, lay it on the table in a big envelop.

But before you do this, go to the cathedral, stand inside the door and as people emerge from the morning eucharist ask them for a pound each to pay for your theological education. Tell them that you will come back to tell them what you have learned. And do so. Better still, ask the bishop, publicly and every time you see him, what his Cathedral theology school is teaching today, this week, this term.

Write the name of your church, or your several sponsors, on the envelop, and enclose letters from these congregations on their headed notepaper.

Mark the envelop ‘For the doctrine of God …. as taught by Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Owen, Edwards, Newman, Barth, Congar, John Paul II …. '

Always ask your teacher which Father or doctor of the church you should read on the matter under consideration. Whenever you ask your professor a question (do this often) preface it with ‘What shall I tell the people of St Mary's, Stoke Newington (or whatever your church is called) when they ask me … ’ then put your question to them. This will help focus the group and open the conversation up, and your teacher may very well find it helpful.

It may sound strange, but the pope's main point is that the most pressing problem we face in the world is not the nature of faith, but the nature of reason. How could he say this? Isn't the problem today simply religious fanaticism and the intolerance associated with it? The pope certainly thinks these things are problems; he's not a stupid man.

Yet in the course of his very brief treatment of Islam, he points to another dimension of the issue: How do we understand the relationship of reason to the divine?

The quotation that caused all the furor involves a 14th-century dialogue between a Byzantine emperor and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The pope quotes the emperor, who says: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by sword the faith he preached." Fighting words to be sure, but the pope does not quote them favorably. Rather, Benedict uses the quote to illustrate his deeper point. For Christians, it is always wrong to spread the faith through violence, precisely because of what the Christian faith claims about God. The pope says that "violence is incompatible with the nature of God" because acting against reason is contrary to God's nature. God is reasonable, not willful or arbitrary.

This may seem like an abstract theological point, but much of our common life hangs on it. By analogy, what if the people who ruled our country were willful and arbitrary? What if they said they were above reason or even acted contrary to it? If they made no pretension to being reasonable, there would be no reason for them to shirk away from threats and violence.

By contrast, we demand reasons from our fellow citizens, and especially from people in charge, when they act in the public sphere. In turn, we (hopefully) respect our fellow citizens' intelligence and good will enough to give them reasons when they ask us to justify our own actions.

When we do this, we are making a large statement about the way things are: Human beings share in reason, and we need to justify the decisions that govern our common life by appealing to reason so that we can persuade rather than manipulate. Manipulation and violence are wrong because they violate who we are most deeply as human beings.

The pope's point is partly that religious people believe God is the fundamental ground of reality. If we think that what is most real is willful and arbitrary, we can justify all sorts of irrational domination and violence. He is urging us to rethink the essential connection between God and reason.

Thomas W. Smith Pope's focus: Reason

I have to say I am stunned by the way some sectors of the European left appear to be reacting. I had heard they were rallying to Benedict's defense, which may be true generally, but not in two stories from The Guardian. Both are bitter, bitter attacks on Benedict, who they say is the bigot in profound need of repentance.

Never mind that they quite obviously haven't understood the speech, that Catholics aren't blowing up mosques this week or burning anybody in effigy, and that Benedict's remarks were mild compared to the anti-Christian and anti-Jewish stuff that is routine amongst Muslims.

I am really shocked. I would have thought that the defense of Benedict - at least along the lines that free debate is necessary & isn't helped by violent temper tantrums when somebody critiques you, and that the spread of Islam by violence is a legitimate talking point - was a no-brainer for liberals, but apparently not.

I hope what I'm reading isn't a general trend. Perhaps I've been naive, but it frightens me about European Enlightenment rationality; what I think we see here are pundits who are more interested in venting pre-existing anti-Catholic prejudice than in taking the case on its merits, and that worries me about their intellectual capacity for the work that needs to be done in the next few decades.

Chris Roberts

The Person of Christ is a product of King's College London - before the glory departed. Here is what T & T Clark says about it:

Understanding the Person of Christ affects our understanding of all Christian theology. All ten contributors to this volume share a commitment to the orthodox theological tradition in Christology as expressed in the creedal heritage of the Christian church, and seek to explicate the continuing coherence and importance of that theological tradition. The book's ten essays cover such topics as prolegomena to Christology, the incarnation, the person and nature of Christ, the communicatio idiomatum, the baptism of Christ, the redemptive work of Christ, the ascended Christ, and New Testament Christology, and offers critical engagements with such diverse theologians as John Calvin, Charles Williams and John Zizioulas. The contributors, all leading academics, include: John Webster, Richard Burridge, Robert Jenson, Stephen Holmes, Douglas Farrow, Brian Horne, Murray, Douglas Knight, Sandra Fach, Christoph Schwoebel.

More great work from Kings is appearing in November and spring of next year, five volumes that I know of, among them Colin Gunton's Lectures on Karl Barth, so the old place is enjoying a great afterlife. Friends will find advance notice of Alan Spence's The Promise of Peace: A Unified Theory of Atonement at T & T Clark, but for the rest of you I am saving Alan for my 'theology in London' series (for which I'd welcome suggestions for candidates).

Richard Neuhaus at First Things (On the Square 18th September) offers a variety of views on what Pope Benedict said last week at Regensburg. Neuhaus himself says this:

â??Pope Benedict â?¦ is a man of great gentleness and deliberation and extremely careful to say what he means. What he said at Regensburg he has said many times before. Contrary to many reports, he has not apologized or retracted his argument. He has indicated sincere regret that many Muslims have reacted to his statement as they have. The response of those who are properly called jihadists is, â??If you donâ??t stop saying weâ??re violent, weâ??re going to bomb more churches, kill more nuns and priests, and get the pope too.â?? In short, the reaction has powerfully confirmed the problem to which Benedict called our attention.â??

The very reverse of inflammatory or careless, Benedict appeals with very great courtesy and encouragement to beleaguered moderate Muslim, anxious to help them win the argument against extremists. There is no great difference between Benedict and John Paul II here.

And here is part of a longer excerpt from Benedict himself speaking to Muslims:

It is in this spirit that I turn to you, dear and esteemed Muslim friends, to share my hopes with you and to let you know of my concerns at these particularly difficult times in our history. I know that many of you have firmly rejected, also publicly, in particular any connection between your faith and terrorism and have condemned it. I am grateful to you for this, for it contributes to the climate of trust that we need. Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, plunging people into grief and despair. Those who instigate and plan these attacks evidently wish to poison our relations and destroy trust, making use of all means, including religion, to oppose every attempt to build a peaceful and serene life together.

Dear friends, I am profoundly convinced that we must not yield to the negative pressures in our midst, but must affirm the values of mutual respect, solidarity and peace. The life of every human being is sacred, both for Christians and for Muslims. There is plenty of scope for us to act together in the service of fundamental moral values.

You, my esteemed friends, represent some Muslim communities from this Country where I was born, where I studied and where I lived for a good part of my life. That is why I wanted to meet you. You guide Muslim believers and train them in the Islamic faith.

Teaching is the vehicle through which ideas and convictions are transmitted. Words are highly influential in the education of the mind. You, therefore, have a great responsibility for the formation of the younger generation. I learn with gratitude of the spirit in which you assume responsibility.

Christians and Muslims, we must face together the many challenges of our time. There is no room for apathy and disengagement, and even less for partiality and sectarianism. We must not yield to fear or pessimism. Rather, we must cultivate optimism and hope.

I donâ??t see how you can get more gracious or encouraging than that. "I learn with gratitude of the spirit in which you assume responsibility." That is certainly how I feel about Benedict, and only wish he could say it to me and my lot.

For more good sense on this issue, see Amy Welborn and Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post.

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

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.

Your correspondent is just back just back from the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics annual conference in Oxford. This is usually a sleepy English affair, but this year the SSCE held a joint conference with the Europe-wide Societas Ethica on 'Political Ethics and International Order'.

But, oh dear, what happened to Christian ethics, Christian theological ethics? I heard studies on international affairs, and calls for more studies of international affairs.

But what we want is surely not more studies in the sense of more information, for there is already a vast mud-slide of scholarship from the international relations departments of universities. We want to learn how to judge all this scholarship of international political relations, don't we? We want to learn our own (Christian) tradition well enough to be able to comment intelligently – theologically – on all this information, so we can offer more than a crock of platitudes on international political affairs.

Christian ethics seems to me to be a great righteous clucking that occurs whenever nice people get together to be enraged because other people are not nice.

What can save Christian ethics from Pelagianism is gratitude to God, expressed in worship of God (theology as doxology) and discussion of the cost to the Christian community of saying, and in its own community life showing, what is the cost of the peace and justice we commend, nationally and internationally.

So I was hoping to learn something about the distinctive voice of the Christian community and its witness to the great geo-political circus, by pointing towards an alternative, counter-cultural, way of life. I wanted to hear a little about the cost of this witness, because this witness is not always popular, and some times and places it is even opposed. I think the best way to talk about international politics is to talk about how churches exchange information and practices across continents and cultures. By this exchange the churches, and their discourse on justice and forgiveness, sustain and support the rule of law, pioneering the way for other international institutions, legal frameworks, courts of justice and commissions of peace and reconciliation. In this way churches support any institution anywhere (not just states) which wants to provide justice and security for their citizens.

Christians can point out the social and environmental costs of fossil fuel industries in places where the state is too weak to protect its own citizens from the multinationals intent on serving my demand for cheap fuel. They can point out where a severe labour discipline imposed by some regimes on their workers in order to satisfy my demand for cheap goods. They can even drawn attention to the violence that some states mete out on those Christian leaders that become too articulate on such subjects. And they can remember those Christian leaders in their prayer and vigils. They can point out the temptations for states (and not only other people's states) to become kleptocracies, robber-gangs (I was listening to Michael Northcott and Luke Bretherton at this point. You see, I do pay attention).

I wanted to hear how the Christian community can explain to our (Western) societies how to receive the challenge and rebuke of international legal bodies. Are we are aiding the illegal detention of suspects without trial, the import of war material into conflict zones, supporting Israel’s occupation of territory that is not its own, in defiance of UN resolutions? (I wish the Church in the UK was more in touch with the Church in the Middle East – Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel-Palestine. I have been meaning to find links from this blog to churches in Lebanon.) You see, I don't want to hear about what other people should do, without learning the cost to ourselves of our political-ethical prescriptions, and understanding that the Christians bear these costs gladly - because they know that they are really borne by their Lord. That is how Christian politics begins.

Bonhoeffer got a regular mention, but there was no interaction with the very considerable Catholic and Papal contribution to thinking on international relations, all of it very accessible and better than any of the papers I heard at this conference.

But the company was good and Oxford, in the sunshine, is still beguiling…

In the Oxford University Press Economics catalogue I found Avner Offer's The Challenge of Affluence. His opening sentence: ‘Affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines well-being.’ Offer 'critiques' the 'assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being.' Here is OUP's blurb for the book:

Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining trust.

Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty. His approach draws on economics and social science, makes use of the latest cognitive research, and provides a detailed and reasoned critique of modern consumer society, especially the assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being.

Consistent choices are difficult to achieve, eh? Freedom of choice does not maximise individual and social well-being, eh? The entire conceptual basis of the last two hundred years of this 'science' of economics turns out to be faulty, eh?

Economics is a blessed naivety. It is as though Aquinas and a long tradition of Christian political and ethical thought had never been, as though before utilitarianism and the marginal revolution there was... just nothing at all. Social scientists are people without memory or historical awareness. I thought I would share my amazement with you.

I am so sure that Offer's The Challenge of Affluence is well worth a read that I have put it on my Amazon wish list. (But remember, this is just a wish list, and the self control that keeps my wishes just wishes makes me at least as happy as acquisition of these titles).

Alban Books are Erdmanns' UK and European distributors. We have made friends already - our first date is to be the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics (SSCE) conference in Oxford 23-27th of August. See you at the book stall.

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.

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.

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.

My picture shows the Orthodox are doing all the talking and the Anglicans all the listening.

Let me remind you of the theologians whose work I have been posting (find them in the ‘Contemporaries’ section) –

Christopher Seitz, Ephraim Radner, Oliver O'Donovan, Augustine DiNoia, R.R. Reno, Reinhard Hütter, Douglas Farrow, Oswald Bayer, Gavin D’Costa, Stephen Long, TF Torrance, along with the others whose books are displayed in the ads on this blog – Robert Wilken, Robert Jenson and John Webster.

People always ask about books to read, and in the case of diploma students and undergraduates just starting out on this subject I don't know what to suggest. I have make lists of books for students and lost them again. You can see my latest efforts to compile book lists on my Amazon page – please make suggestions, or alternative lists. Anybody can get an Amazon page, by the way, just by posting a book review.

But after teaching Anglican ordinands – always the most lost on the subject of the Christian faith – it occurred to me that there are no good introductions to Christian theology. So I have decided to write one – it is called The Apprenticeship. I did promise you that I would post pieces for this as I went along, and I really must make more effort on this.

Coming up on the DK blog:

Servais Pinckaers, George Weigel, Benedict XVI and the whole mountain of John Paul II’s papal teaching – Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, Ut Unum Sint. And we should have a look at the Catechism and Compendium. You are not Catholic? Neither am I, but when your neighbour comes up with a good idea, don't you ‘borrow’ it?

More on the issues of Christology, sacrifice, atonement, Israel and the Old Testament, supersessionism, history and modernity – and on why I wrote The Eschatological Economy.

Colin Gunton

Matthew Baker on reasonable worship and Christ our great high priest (Matthew has very kindly started to take my education in hand. Solly and Alan Brown will be relieved).

And there will be more from the Anglicans, particular from Ephraim Radner and the Anglican Communion Institute.

James Merrik provides much more intelligent comment on the Anglican crisis than I can, while the Anglican Communion website formally and Kendall Harmon at Titus 1.9 conveniently channels the torrent of statements that issue from all parts of the Communion.

Dear Paul

Your Luther chapter is wonderful. It is particularly wonderful when you get out of the secondary lit and into John and the Catechism. What a star Luther is. I think there is more you could quickly pick up from Jenson on Luther speech-act approach to the theology of the Word - Jenson ST2 295 'According to Luther the soul becomes what it hearkens to. Luther : 'Do not be surprised that I said we must become the Word.' The old notion was that the mind is formed by what it sees. Luther makes the mind to be formed instead by what it hears.'

But there is something much more important to say at this juncture. You are nearly out of time. If you do not submit in time those years you spent with us in London and in Germany, and the hope and effort of Colin will have been for nothing. You may not feel this as a act of judgment – and of self-harm – now, but in the long term you will. You cant help anybody outside the immediate parish without this doctorate, so if you don't make a great lunge for it right now, you will be confining yourself to the parish for the next thirty years, unable to help the rest of us.

You have no time for anything new. So don't bother with a final Gunton chapter. Gunton is probably everywhere in this thesis. You must now very speedily and drastically hack everything down into a smooth product. It is great to have a sense of your authorial voice, but not your talking voice – don't be chatty, get more terse. You must understand that you now have to produce a thesis-lite. You are writing for just two people who will give it a rushed reading on the train to your viva, have a bad conscience about it, and who only want to be confident that you are competent (not be troubled by having to judge whether you are brilliant or wayward). Safety first. Throw away everything that you cannot instantly clarify. None of it will be lost and whatever you throw away now can be re-included and developed later. You must finish this by kissing your summer goodbye, closing the door on the church and the family and accelerating away to the end of this thesis. You are good at winging it. Do so now. You should email every chapter at the end of every week between now and September – to Lincoln or Chris or me or anyone – just to give yourself the sense of urgency and progress you need. Don't feel detached from the rest of us – we all feel this urgency in a much more hostile environment, and not having you around doesn't make it any easier. I hope you will send me frequent new instalments, starting with conclusion and introduction.

Your server has bounced this mail back six times now, so I'll post it here and hope you find it.

Good luck

DK

Given the diverse spiritual needs of people, focusing on but one aspect of saving power really amounts to confusion regarding atonement. By contrast, if there is no confidence regarding the proclamation of saving power in Jesus Christ at all, then ministry and mission live under a cloud of gloom. The heart may yearn for the proclamation of the power of the cross, but the will to do so is absent. Much of the lack of clarity and loss of nerve stems from the fear that atonement is the weak point in the Christian message because there is but one theory (namely, penal substitution) and it is flawed. Whether one openly subscribes to such a view, or quietly fears that it is true, in either case the drive to proclaim the cross is undercut. This paralysis regarding the cross, however, leads to a general shutdown of all systems: If one cannot find a way to confess the saving power of the cross, then Jesus becomes irrelevant and the church has no good news. The situation is not improved, as we shall see, by substituting the threefold outline of Gustaf Aulén. While he appears to recognize three theories rather than one, in the end the three are reduced to only one acceptable theory, i.e., Christus Victor. Against the imperialism of those who argue that atonement is but one general theory or that everything can be squeezed into three theories, this study shall present ten distinct theories, thereby demonstrating the breadth of Christian witness to the fullness of Christ.

The ten theories gathered under these four headings are:

I. Christ Died for Us: Sacrifice II. Christ Died for Us: Justification by Grace III. Christ Died for Us: Penal Substitution IV. Liberation from Sin, Death, and Demonic Powers V. The Purposes of God: The Renewal of the Creation VI. The Purposes of God: The Restoration of the Creation VII. The Purposes of God: Christ the Goal of the Creation VIII. Reconciliation: Christ the Way to the Knowledge of God IX. Reconciliation: Christ the Reconciler X. Reconciliation: The Wondrous Love of God

Peter Schmiechen Saving Power: Theories of Atonement and Forms of the Church. Read Peter Schmiechen's Introduction

Amazon offers a bewildering range of ways of plugging a book. You can write reviews, compile lists and run blogs pushing your friends and their books. Now you only have to post a review of a book, or make a list of favourite books and you are rewarded with your own Amazon homepage. It is a formidable way of taking people who are looking at one book by the elbow and conducting them towards another one.

Most academics have better things to do than thinking out book lists for Amazon, but I don't, and I found Al Kimel (Pontifications) and David Yeago (Pro Ecclesia luminary) offering very useful lists of recommendations for students there. Al Kimel is a Jenson and Torrance fan, though he keeps Pontifications readers on a diet of J H Newman. David Yeago offers Readings in the Christian Theological Tradition and Personal Enthusiasms in 20 Century Theology.

Telford Work is also very good at book lists. His site is a model of what can be done to help students find the right titles and learn what is expected of them. His pep talks to students about reading, learning, writing essays and plagiarism are so good I would copy them without qualm, were it not that I know he would catch me.

But I am encouraging poor habits in you. Get back to your books. Whether late at night or first thing in the morning, it is for reading the bible, not skimming the internet.

I had a wonderful day last Wednesday teaching a day-long course on ‘Church, Society and Sociology’ to students at OASIS (a new outfit for me). I inherited some content from whoever gave the course in previous years, but bulked it up a bit with a strong narrative and did the whole thing with pictures via PowerPoint. We started with the sociologists Weber and Durkheim, saw that these gentlemen expressed many of the things that we think are unique to our own contemporary crisis, thereby revealing that the things we think are true only for our own society being said a century and more ago. I said that it is not just a matter of these thinkers' ideas but also of how knowledge and science are divided and arranged, and how they were understood as solutions to what was taken to be the inevitable problem of conflict in society. I said Weber and Durkheim may be better understood through Kant and with Tom Paine, Robespierre, the American Founding Fathers as part of the impulse to found society afresh on new ground – and so, devious as ever, Knight got the conversation around to Plato and the Republic, so we could have straight compare-and-contrast exercise - Plato (noblest of the pagans) on one hand, Christian gospel on the other.

We looked at Augustine’ claim to have found the wisdom Plato was searching for, and that, in the Christian case it comes with means of forming that wisdom in persons by means of a long training that Augustine termed discipleship. Augustine said that there were two ways of life, under two jurisdictions (cities) each with its own account of human being, so we have two competing accounts of who we are and two competing histories. We decided to tell keep these histories distinct but in parallel. One, the Christian version, took us from Augustine to Benedict to Aquinas to Luther and on. The other took us a non-Christian route, from Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Rousseau, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Hegel, Marx to the sociologists and positivists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, all the way to Benjamin and Adorno.

It was very simple a tour of the great history of ideas, showing two opposing stories, the Christian and the non-Christian. I haven't enjoyed myself so much for ages, and the students didn't seem to suffer too much. I found pictures from Google Images and Wikipedia. It was easy to follow, students made all the right interjections and enjoyed the magic lantern show, so I will do it again. Everybody likes a picture show, but I'm stating the blooming obvious again.

I ended with MacIntyre, pointing out that we need a new Benedict, Milbank and his return to Augustine against the pagans of ‘social theory’, and Benedict XVI who obviously also believes that we need to recover the disciplines of discipleship of Saint Benedict, and thus the Christians out-narrate the sociologists. Obvious, really.

The Eschatological Economy is now in stock at Eerdmanns and can be bought direct from them.

Apparently it will take some weeks to get the book’s details up on Amazon, since this is not done book by book but in large batches. They seem so relaxed about getting anything about their titles onto Amazon it is clear that - bizarrely, worryingly - they do not see Amazon as a crucial means of marketing. So I will delay posting anything about ‘Why I wrote this book’ and some of the other wonderful, mostly Catholic, material I have discovered on Christian formation. We are thinking about a launch in London in September in the hope that some copies will have made it to the UK by that time.

Didaskalex writes reviews of theology titles on Amazon. He has very wide tastes and is a fast worker, born to blog. I have just been admiring his summary of Patristic Teaching on Salvation - not least because I wish I could produce such sound-bites. What do you make of this? -

Patristic Teaching on Salvation:

a. Church Fathers do not limit salvation to Justification. b. Church Fathers include the Trinity in atonement, the salvific work of Christ. c. Church Fathers do not limit salvation to Jesus sacrifice on the cross. d. Church Fathers consider salvation as renewal of human and universe. e. Church Fathers never exclude cooperation of the faithful: Synergy. f. Church Fathers teach that salvation is a continuous dynamic process, starting at spiritual birth, progressing from kenosis to theosis.

Salvation: Augustine to Anselm:

Augustine view of predestination contrasted with Pelagius freedom of choice, got more entangled with the doctrine of original sin. Although Pelagius was condemned in Ephesus, synergism that man has to cooperate with God in his salvation, was the predominant position in the East, termed semi-pelagianism. Anselm pushed the legalistic nature of salvation, into a forensic dogma, while Aquinas maintained that God wills that some, not all men be saved!

Salvation from Anselm to Vatican II:

Catholic scholastics starting with Anselm and Aquinas applied dialectics to theology reducing patristic metaphors to abstract concepts, western theology ended in sterility and provoked derision from humanists. Vatican II recovered the traditional meaning of salvation as restoration of the entire universe. Liberation and feminist theologies pressed the Roman church to admit that salvation should include transforming oppressive social conditions.

Salvation in Evangelical theology:

Protestants and reformed inherited medieval dogmas of the Western Church, even after various revisions, the legal ransom payment on the cross stayed central. Evangelicals teach that individual's legal status must be changed from guilty to not guilty through justification by adoption, to restore favor with God. The positive desire to live righteously is termed regeneration or new birth, while sanctification or making holy comes to completion in the life beyond death, echoing the inherited Roman purgatory.

See Didaskalex

The 'Sons' post (below) received two comments. I'll call them A and B. Here they are again:

(A) "The academic community needs to be more sensitive to language use. Instead of sons why not use gender-neutral terms ‘children’ or ‘heirs’ or ‘beloved ones’? By insisting on using sons it subtly reinforces the superiority of the male gender in religious arguments. Unless you make the above argument explicit at the beginning of every book or journal article the use of male language reinforces negative gender stereotypes. There are many women in the religious academic world and church community who feel that they are ‘not good enough’ to study, research, preach and teach because they have encountered years of bias. I am a female systematic theologian and know of countless women who feel inferior as a result of hearing and reading male dominated religious discourse throughout their lives."

(B) "The reason why we should not (in general) use gender-neutral terms is that such terms just don’t say the same thing as ’sons’. Our adoption in Christ is our taking on the sonship of the Son who is the Son of the Father. It is not a matter of bias here. To speak of ‘children’ INSTEAD of ’sons’ is to de-Trinitarianize the meaning of the language and evacuate it of its essential reference to our incorporation into the Second Person of the Trinity. (Such language-replacement is theologically comparable to replacing language of ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ with ‘Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier’.)

I think two things are important:

(1) The term ’son’ when used of our incorporation into Christ does not signify a sexually-divided mode of existence. In fact, it signifies quite the opposite - a mode of existence which transcends sexual opposition, in which there is neither ‘male nor female’. So a person who takes the language to be ’sexist’ is misunderstanding it. And a person who denies it is possible to use ’son’ in this Christian way denies the Gospel.

(2) It is quite possible that, given contemporary forms of language-use and the pressure exerted upon people to conform to ‘gender-neutrality’ language which does not respect the difference between the sexes (equality doesn’t mean identity, &c) - in this situation it is quite possible that people will misunderstand Christian language about sonship. In that case, we must explain what the language means, not stop using it because someone has misunderstood it. We must be faithful to our own language."

The first 'Sons' post is here.

Help! We are already into the second half of April. In January I wanted to get straight into the doctrine book, provisionally entitled The Apprenticeship, but the other books have got in the way. The first and second books, The Eschatological Economy and the collection on Zizioulas, have demanded so much time, that I have scarcely given ‘The Apprenticeship’ a week since January.

The Eschatological Economy, out at the end of April, has now got some great endorsements. I am particularly grateful to John Webster and Rusty Reno, who have produced wonderful blurbs for the back of the book, though they really didn't owe me any favours. And Antony Solomon, who has a real knack for extracting what is most crucial, is patiently and insightfully reviewing the book section by section over at Solly Gratia.

Meanwhile I am still sorting out the second book, the collection of essays on John Zizioulas, Personhood and the Church. This is now in the Ashgate catalogue, with an October publication date. I will shortly have to email Ashgate again to explain why they still haven’t received the manuscript. The reason is that I have only just received the twelfth and last contribution, from Alan Brown. From a long labour a wonderful paper has emerged in which Alan sets out the context of Zizioulas’ theology and explains the hostility it has met. The reason for the hostility is really simple – John Zizioulas is an evangelical theologian: he gives reasons for the faith. Alan’s paper amounts to a comprehensive refutation of that, Anglican-influenced, Patristics scholarship which is determined not to allow the thought of the Fathers of the Church to teach and refresh the contemporary Church. Alan is familiar not only with contemporary Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox theology but with the hermeneutics they operate with, and he picks apart the presuppositions of Zizioulas’ critics to show that they amount to a privatisation of religion that holds the gospel captive. This massive paper, at 22,000 words three times longer than any other contribution, will make a fair splash. I will post a couple of paragraphs from it to whet your appetite. The whole volume is very much better than it was this time last year and I am really very chuffed about it.

Anyway, this means that I still haven't really started on this year’s work, the doctrine book – let alone on the more general work of encouragement that this blog is intended for. Here for example is an email:

I am desperate for my theological thought to be challenged and stretched. Please could you contact me with advice on how to proceed and I welcome contact with any other serious Christian thinkers.

Me too. Any ideas anyone?

"Rocket fuel"

Read more hype here

Surely it cannot be all that difficult to understand what Norman Kember is about. The man is a witness. ‘Witness’ is a Christian technical term of very long standing (Greek: martyr). The witness simply goes, watches and speaks out about what he sees. He is a witness when he observes the brutal grind of life in much of the world, for example, at the Israeli checkpoints that blight life in the West Bank, and then comes home after a couple of months to tell us about them. He is a witness when in Iraq he hears about people’s experiences, and is seized and held hostage, and afterwards is able to come home to tell us about it. And he is a witness when he is seized and put to death, as one of Kember’s colleagues was.

The witness just takes the knocks he is given. He witnesses to his master’s victory by not being frightened of violence and death, or of the incomprehension and derision of the on-looking media.

In terms of family and of his own career as a doctor Norman Kember had made his contribution already. In the UK, if you are over seventy years of age it is thought that you can have nothing more to contribute, and can only hope not to become a burden. But a man with grandchildren might well decide that is something that he can do for his grandchildren’s generation. He can point towards an alternative form of politics, of truth and peace, by witnessing the violence in Iraq. At the same time Kember’s was also an act of witness against the our attitudes towards older people.

Obviously the media do not understand how there could ever be anything worth dying for. But I think we owe it them to explain, and we could do this in terms of peace, truth and justice. Or, to baffle them completely, let us tell them that Christ compels us.

Christian Peacemakers

I have just discovered Katherine Sonderegger That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Karl Barth's ‘Doctrine of Israel’ (Penn State 1992). I don’t know why it has taken me so long to get my hands on this book, since I was dimly aware of the title. It might save Solly and me a lot of work on the Christ and Israel issue. You can read sections of it on Google Book Search. You probably knew all this already - I am often the last to find out about these things. But did you know that Katherine Sonderegger will be in the UK, at the Society for the Study of Theology conference at Leeds 4-6 April 2006?

It dares the thought that, if Barth is right, the Bible understood the Enlightenment better than it understood the Bible, and, indeed, better than the Enlightenment understood itself: according to its own canons of inquiry it ought not to have lost faith with the Bible in the way that it did.

This is the blurb for Neil Macdonald Karl Barth and the Strange New World Within the Bible: Barth, Wittgenstein, and the Metadilemmas of the Enlightenment

You know what a shirker I am when it comes to prayer. But thanks to the persistence of mates who tell me to pray - and to give thanks - I think I am beginning to get it. After all, we always have to ask people for whatever we want, and ask them many times. I pester people for things. And so it is with those God has set over us. We have to ask them for what we want, and we have to persist, and not to change our minds. Our leaders need that constant drip, drip of our requests for more of everything – and most of all, for more Christ. We have to nag them to teach us and to act like they are responsible for us.

I get nagged too, though I am not set over anybody. Wai Luen sends me his papers to read, and once a month he emails me a single line, saying something like, ‘Well, you lazy Englishman, have you read my paper yet and are you going to respond to it at last?’ Wai Luen is smart. He gave us a little yellow blanket, very soft, that lines Michael’s buggy. I look at that blanket every time I take Michael out for a walk so I think of Wai Luen three times daily. That blanket is a kind of intercessory flag, that intercedes for its giver and it accuses me to God for my neglect of Wai Luen, and oh, well, a list of others, who came to London to study but who have been abandoned here without teaching, supervision or support. All their voices go to God. Will the English and the deaf theology departments of their irresponsible universities crack under this pressure?

I have that weird feeling you get when you put yourselves in the hands of a doctor or barber and are then under their control, not your own. I have got an interpreter and I am being interpreted to within an inch of my life. Solly is reading The Eschatological Economy and giving a running commentary on his blog, Solly Gratia. He summarises what I am saying, find labels for the positions I take, and puts everything that I say in the context of our evangelical hopes and hang-ups - and he has made me remember how I got started on the great adventure of Christian theology. As a reader he is fast, he has stamina, and above all he has insight. I went to university to do a PhD, and paid a lot of fees, for the sort of feedback and criticism I am getting from Solly. But I am getting real analysis now, into Chapter two already, and I am taking notes on Solly’s notes.

Here is how it happened. I offered a PDF of The Eschatological Economy to whoever asked. Solly asked. If you would like to see a PDF of The Eschatological Economy, just ask in the comment box here or in ‘Pages’. Your email will appear to me (though it will not appear with your comment) and I will send The Eschatological Economy for you to read – and then you can comment on Solly, and tell him he is too charitable a reader.

Solly at Solly Gratia is reading a really tough book at the moment. He is riffing on its opening lines, just saying what occurs to him as he goes along and thereby asking all the hard questions about the context and audience, not only of this theology book, but of theology. Who is it for, and how can they hear it? I'm hoping Solly doesn't give up - because it is for him, and not for him only but for anyone who asks.

I am very grateful to Ben Myers of Faith and Theology for an extraordinarily energetic and creative blog, full of competitive but informative lists, links, news and bits from Barth and Jüngel – the perfect blog really. It is only hard to see why he has made my much duller effort his ‘blog of the week’.

I think Arni over at Annall is spot on about the two of us – Ég rakst á tvö áhugaverð guðfræðiblogg um daginn, öðru er haldið úti af Douglas Knight, sem er breskur guðfræðingur. Hann kennir við háskólann í Leeds ef ég man rétt. Hitt sér Benjamin Myers um. Hann kennir við háskólann í Queensland. Báðir eru systematíkerar og hugsa upphátt um eitt og annað sem er áhugavert.

Ben and Arni have both taken advantage of my offer to send an e-copy of The Eschatological Economy to anyone who asks (see ‘Eschatological Economy’ in ‘Pages’). I just hope they are still as polite when they have read it.

The lucky few in London next week could pop along to the F.D. Maurice lectures. Maurice was one of the great teachers of the Victorian Anglican Church, who was punished by being sacked by the college which now hosts these lectures in Christian theology. The subject this year is The Bible in the Postmodern World, given by some New Testament bloke, apparently. Anyone heard of NT Wright?

All the Glitterati were out at the reception given by the Brethertons last night to launch Luke’s new book Hospitality as Holiness – Christian Witness among Moral diversity.

Synopsis We live amid increasing ethical plurality and fragmentation while at the same time more and more questions of moral gravity confront us. Some of these questions are new, such as those around human cloning and genetics. Other questions that were previously settled have re-emerged, such as those around the place of religion in politics. Responses to such questions are diverse, numerous and often vehemently contested. Hospitality as Holiness seeks to address the underlying question facing the church within contemporary moral debates: how should Christians relate to their neighbours when ethical disputes arise? The problems the book examines centre on what the nature and basis of Christian moral thought and action is, and in the contemporary context, whether moral disputes may be resolved with those who do not share the same framework as Christians. Bretherton establishes a model - that of hospitality - for how Christians and non-Christians can relate to each other amid moral diversity. This book will appeal to those interested in the broad question of the relationship between reason, tradition, natural law and revelation in theology, and more specifically to those engaged with questions about plurality, tolerance and ethical conflict in Christian ethics and medical ethics.

Demetrios said he received a great reception when he went back to Hagia Sophia. His old parishioners stood in a line to greet him one by one, with a kiss on the hand. - What does the congregation make of the new priest? - Well, he doesn't speak any English (Oops. Three quarters of this particular Greek congregation in London are second generation and don't speak Greek). - But the new priest is much holier than I am, says Demetrios. Of course, he is a monk who has spent many years on Athos. (Demetrios is married, with fourth child on the way, therefore not nearly so holy – obviously).

You are wondering where this blog is going. You are not alone. The thing is that I have been tinkering with all three books, with the result that none of them has moved forward very fast. The Eschatological Economy proofs arrived last weeks, with the instruction that I had to get them back within three weeks, and do the index. After a day, and thanks to the ‘Find’ function on a PDF file, the index no longer looked such an impossible task. I have quite enjoyed showing the links between chapters to emphasise the book’s unity. I have entries for ‘agency’, ‘analogy’, ‘being’, ‘becoming’, ‘blood’… The hassle is that a number of footnotes don't work and I want to delete them, but cannot do so now without pages changing. If pages change I will have to re-do the index. I also have been trying to re-write the Introduction to the Zizioulas book, and hope that Demetrios will offer some critical comment on it when he appears tonight. Because they are fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, these are the days I invite tall bearded Greeks round. I hope to be shot of books 1 and 2 in a month, and then can get going on the doctrine again, and try to take an interest in where we are in the church year.

I know what I would like this blog to be like. Pontifications. Now that is a blog. There isn’t another one like it. The first great thing about this was that it was anonymous, which gave it are a sort of seriousness. The second thing was that the man behind it, Alvin Kimel, really worked at it, posting a phenomenal amount, and of top quality stuff from all parts of the Christian tradition. He has taste, and I have to admit that he has broadened my taste. He posted lots of C.S. Lewis, Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Newman. I read his extracts from these writers who I had assumed i knew all about without ever actually having read them. I read, and I was impressed and thrilled. I scoff no more. Kimel quoted passages which sounded as though they were written this morning, absolutely fresh, to the point and accurate about our present predicament. Of course we always think our predicament is unprecedented. You can still see these wonderful extracts.

I can't compete with Kimel’s Pontifications but imitation is flattery, and all that. He wrote, still writes, pieces about the struggle for the Episcopal church in the US, so it had a hard news feel to it, which this blog wont have. His blog showed him agonising about whether to stick with the Episcopal Church, which seemed to understand nothing about Christian obedience. Kimel gave up on it, which was a bit of a bombshell, and joined the Roman Catholics in the autumn of 2005. Though Pontifications is no longer his sole work, you should go and have a look, and explore his archives, for the wonders that are there.

So it is time to get this blog up. It is going to be a disrupted beginning. Today I have been left in charge of the bouncing babe all morning, for the first time. This is only possible because he is now taking a bit of rice in milk. He is not at all keen on the bottle but he will have to get keener. So circumstances – the yelling in the background – will mean that this blog stays fairly spontaneous for a bit.

Here are my thoughts. I will do say three entries a week, one will be me chuntering on, two will be paragraphs culled from a classic and a contemporary piece of theology. I want to show you who is worth reading, talk about the movements I think are worth learning from and pursuing, and try out my own work on you.

So I am going to recommend some authors and books to you. Nothing controversial there. Of course the book I really want to put in front of you is my own – but I can at least talk through some of the exploring that went on in the course of writing it. More of that later.

And I think it would be easiest to let the church year serve as our agenda. I want to talk a little about the Sunday service, its three readings from Scripture – and that will give us the opportunity to talk through some real Christology – who Jesus Christ is and what difference he makes.