Category: theology

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Fletcher-Louis on the image of God 2

Genesis 1 is a polemic, in fact, against the polytheistic creation-accounts of other cultures in Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt. Where the Babylonians and Assyrians celebrated the gods’ creation of the universe through the slaying of the sea monster Tiamat, Genesis sets ‘the great sea monsters’ in the fifth day of creation (1.21). They are God’s playthings, not pre-existent enemies. Similarly, many of those beings who would usually make up the council are reduced in Genesis 1 to the ranks of creatures, if not objects: the sun is a ‘greater light’, and the moon a ‘lesser light’.

But if the divine council has been disbanded, it has not had all its assets seized, and its members continue in new and surprising ways. The heavenly bodies may no longer be gods but they are thoroughly personal nonetheless, ‘ruling over’ the day and the night as local administrators within the cosmic kingdom.

This personal, conscious aspect of creation is also assumed in Genesis 1.11, 20 & 24, where three times God commands one part of creation to produce another. For example, he says: ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And so, says the author, it did.

Creation itself participates in the creative process. This brings us to a dramatically new understanding of verse 26. When God says, ‘Let us make humankind,’ he is speaking to the rest of his creation – to heaven and earth and all its adornment. Thus, when he proposes that humankind be made ‘in our image and according to our likeness’ there is present the claim that men and women are made in the image and likeness both of God and of the cosmos.

This is not, it should be said, a new idea – it is familiar to Jewish mysticism. Indeed, a pre-Christian tradition spread throughout medieval Europe which held that Adam was created as a microcosm of the universe, his physiology and essential faculties each corresponding to an aspect of the created order.

We frequently hear now the complaint that (Western) Christianity and modern secular culture cuts humankind off from the natural world. On the one hand, this has allowed us free rein in plundering creation. On the other, it has given rise to an increasing sense of isolation, for both modern man and 20th-century Christianity.

Genesis 1.26 calls humankind to be both a unique bearer of God’s image and presence and a priestly representative of the material world of vegetation, animals, sun, moon and stars.

Here, too, Man is unique, for ‘in him all things are to hold together’ (Colossians 1.17). The whole created world is to be gathered up in the true man and woman. And, because humankind is God’s image, it is ultimately through us that earth, sea, sky and all that is in them are to be taken up into God’s own life.

Crispin Fletcher-Louis at Third Way Genesis 1.26 & Ephesians 1.22

Try Greg Beale The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Temple for an accessible summary of Israel’s theological cosmology.

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The mystical unity of Scripture and the Church

In the disintegration of Western thought the Church has been treated as sociological entity; its human, visible aspects have become separated in idea from its mystical and divine aspects. This dichotomy lies at the root of all our Western divisions, and this appears to be reproduced in them all. Thus the conception of a single divine-human organism reaching from heaven to earth tends to be broken up into compartments between which a great gulf is fixed. In the result the proportions of truth suffer and every element of the whole gets out of focus. Whether the earthly, visible part is thought of in ‘Catholic’ or ‘Protestant’ terms the result is grievous impoverishment. Moreover ‘piety’ and ‘mysticism’ become individual and isolated, instead to being the salt of the common life which is both divine and human because it is rooted in Christ.

There is a sense in which the mystical unity of Scripture correspond to the mystical unity of the Church. These two forms of mystical unity are complementary; each is necessary presupposition for the right understanding of the other. Each embodies God’s self-communication to man in Christ; each attains its true unity only in Christ. There is an indwelling of Christ both in the people and in the Book. A return to the sources of illumination in him is inevitably a return both to the message of Scripture about the Church and to the life of the Church as set forth in Scripture. Such a return is necessarily a permanent task of the whole Church, to which each of us contributes no more than a minute fragment.

L. S. Thornton The Common Life in the Body of Christ (1941)

Yes, we do have an Anglican communion ecclesiology, and in this work by a member of the Community of the Resurrection it is in the form of a biblical theology,

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How to be a bishop – TEAC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer

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Christian Worship

wainwright

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

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

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

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

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

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Oliver O'Donovan on Rowan Williams

o'donovan archbishop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Teaching Christians – TEAC takes the initiative

Anglican compass rose

Theological Education for the Anglican Communion (TEAC) has just published a set of outlines of training in Christian life. Each outline lists the Christian competencies we can hope to learn and the teaching in discipleship that will promote these competencies.

The outline for the ‘laity’ distinguishes four categories of Christian:

candidates in baptismal catechesis (and Godparents or sponsors)

those recently baptized – and in post-baptismal nurture

adult Christians – for growth in faith

Anglican Christians – for renewal and mature life

Then it distinguishes five areas of the Christian life: commitment, discipleship and mission, biblical knowledge and doctrinal understanding, spiritual growth, worship. The following competencies are (mostly) from the ‘adult Christian’ column:

* All should understand that Christian commitment may be costly in terms of a person’s integrity, relationships and witness.

* All should be aware that Christian commitment may involve going against what others perceive to be the truth.

* All should know that commitment to Christ is sacrificial, life-long and lived out in daily life.

* All should be prepared for commitment of life in obedience to God’s will, and be open to accepting new revelation which may require changes in that commitment.

* All are taught key Bible stories: Creation, the Patriarchs, Moses and the Law, key players in Israel’s story; the life and teachings of Jesus; key incidents from Acts, and other New Testament writings.

* All are encouraged and helped to explore further basic Christian doctrines at an appropriate level (eg. Apostles’ Creed, Commandments and Lord’s Prayer).

* All should be encouraged and helped to develop a rule of life which includes a sustainable pattern of praying and listening to God daily; and also to learn to pray through reading the Bible.

* All seek to grow into the likeness of Christ

* All should be formed in a pattern of regular worship, self-examination and participation in the sacraments of the church.

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION FOR THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION – LAITY ‘TARGET GROUP’

It seems to me the best reply to this is:

Amen. Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law.

Well done, TEAC working party, that is not a bad little start.

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Truth in its wholeness

The doctrine of the life shared in Christ is brought into relation to the doctrine of the Body of Christ. The life shared is embodied. The Church is related to Christ as his mystical complement in the one organism of the new creation.

Today men desire the integration of life upon a new basis. But the rival solutions offered cancel one another out; for none of them represents the whole which corresponds to human nature as God individualism it. More serious, however, is the fact that this situation is the counterpart of disunity amongst Christians and is closely connected with that disunity. Moreover our present dilemma is one which would seem to involve us in a vicious circle. Truth in its wholeness can be rightly apprehended only within a common order of life…the principle signifies that the broken mirror of Christendom cannot without grave distortion reflect the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

L. S. Thornton The Common Life in the Body of Christ (1941)

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Witnesses

You can’t make sense of Christian ethics apart from Christian life. You can’t make sense of Christian ‘principles’ apart from the Christian community or apart from the practicalities that are the outworking of the love that holds that community together and makes it a public body that witnesses to God.

The discipline laid on Christians is not meant for other people. You may have heard the Christians talking about how to lead the Christian life, but that was meant for them to hear, not for you – unless you want to become one of them.

Christian ethics is not a sub-division of ethics: its first loyalty is to the whole Christian faith, life and people. The Christian ethic serves the unity and integrity of the Christian people. The Christian people are witnesses of God for the world. They are God’s first bystanders, to fill in all those who will become bystanders in the future on the action that they have missed. They are the community taught the skills of witness to God, and taught by God: ‘witness skills’ are not very different from ‘leadership skills’.

The Christian community is being taught the witness of God in order to lead the world out of its own self-preoccupation and to point towards the preoccupation of God with, and love of God for, the world. They are made demonstrators of the love and service of God to man. They are on display to the world, their job to be embarrassed and humiliated publicly before the world by their Lord, as an illustration of his compassionate condescension. They are something special, even unique. Of course much of the time the special thing is that they are misrepresenting God, a picture of the misery of man without God. But they are also the demonstration of the readiness of God to hear that man.

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Liturgy is an action of the whole Christ 2

1144 ‘In the celebration of the sacraments it is thus the whole assembly that is leitourgos, each according to his function, but in the ‘unity of the Spirit’ who acts in all.

1154 The liturgy of the Word is an integral part of the sacramental celebrations.

1155 The liturgical word and action are inseparable both insofar as they are signs, and instruction insofar as they accomplish what they signify.

1187 The Liturgy is the work of the whole Christ, head and body. our high priest celebrates it unceasingly in the heavenly liturgy, with the Mother of God, the apostles, all the saints and the multitude of so who have already entered the kingdom.

1188 In a liturgical celebration the whole assume is ‘leitourgois’ each member according to his own function. The baptismal priesthood is that of the whole Body of Christ. but some of the faithful are ordained through the sacrament of Holy Orders to represent Christ as head of the Body.

1195 By keeping the memorials of the saints – first of all the holy Mother of God, then the apostles, the martyrs and other saints – on fixed days of the liturgical year, the Church on earth shows that she is united with the liturgy of heaven. She gives glory to Christ for having accomplished his salvation in his glorified members; their example encourages her on her way to the Father.

1196 The faithful who celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours are united to Christ our high priest, by the prayer of the psalms, meditation on the Word of God, and canticles and blessings, in order to be joined with his unceasing and universal prayer that gives glory to the Father and implores the gift of the Holy Spirit on the whole world.

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

Keep The Catechism close to hand. All theological discussion improves when it refers explicitly to the documents produced by Church bodies. We can all learn from this document. We can use in discussions with Roman Catholics and it will enable us to make our disagreement with some of their positions clearer. To give the whole Church a document as strong as this is a truly charitable act.

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Liturgy is an action of the whole Christ

Catholic Catechism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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