The Lord God said to Adam ‘Come with me into the world I am making and I will show you how to look after it.’ Adam went along, and watched what his Lord was doing, and began to learn the skills of cultivating the world. But after a bit he stopped working, and just watched. But after just watching he grew first bored and lazy and tired until he was overtaken by sleep. So the Lord called again. Out from the sleeping body of Adam stepped Israel. Israel answered the Lord, ‘I will learn how to work with you’. Israel went back to work in the garden. The Lord taught him how to garden, and he was content. But after a while Israel thought ‘I am the favourite son of the Lord, this work is beneath me.’ But though Israel stopped working, others didn’t, and as these others cultivated, they grew stronger. Because he hadn’t worked or grown, Israel he became afraid of the other workers, who were by now bigger than he was. Rather than leading them, they led him. He did what they were doing, and was ashamed. The others made Israel join in their games of ‘who is top dog’. Israel paid their forfeits and carried their bags and burdens. Unwilling to admit this, even to himself, Israel was increasingly unwilling to keep in touch with the Lord. With embarrassment grew estrangement, while others filled the gap, effectively becoming Israel’s masters. Finally the Lord called, but Israel did not come. But from where Israel was hiding stepped one single Israelite, Jesus. And the Lord said to Jesus, ‘You have been here with me since the beginning of the day, for you were in Adam, and when all of Adam gave up and there was nothing of him left but Israel, you were in Israel, and now there is no one here from Israel except you. All day we have sown and planted and watered, and now the harvest is here. Let us go out again to harvest.’ And the Son went out with the Lord and harvested. And what he had sowed produced a crop, so as the result of his labour he has enough for the world, and so the whole world has become his world.
In this account the Son worked and the result was that the world became his, or he became lord. This is a Christology from below, adoptionist even. We need it in order to show that something changed, something happened. Between God and man an event occurred, and man was finally a real actor in that event. Man was joined to God and not afterward abandoned. Any christological account that starts from above, must show that having defeated sin, the Son does not simply return where he came from, divinity returning to God, humanity returning to us. They must show that the Son stays with us, and the incarnation is ongoing, so everything is different now. They must show that Jesus Christ brings into being what did not exist before him, and he holds in being, without limit. We must show the Son of God becomes real man and remains with us. Jesus Christ is the first man, the real man, the future criterion of man-who-is-with-God. The Son endured discipline and by perseverance and without protest, demonstrated that he was a true son of his Father. No hired hand, he regarded the work he was given not as someone else’s work, but as his Father’s, and therefore also as his. Although he was the Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.
Mihail on theology and religious studies
Dear Mihail, Thanks for your news and photos – I envy you that snow, no sign of a real winter here. We are still in London as before. N is back at work part-time while I alternate between book and baby. That was a great paper and a good read too.
You say that Christian theologians do not read enough religious studies and that this makes them poor conversation partners in the university. But I think that Christian theologians should engage, not with religious studies, but with all studies. Religious studies has no greater claim on our attention than any other discipline. I think that the university is most basically a conversation between Plato and Christ, so Christian theologians should therefore engage with Plato – and through him with the whole wonderful array of sciences and human sciences. In my view, the discipline we have most to do with is politics (and its history). Religious studies is just a form of politics that denies it is political.
I think we should cut Kant out and speak straight to Plato, the master. Why? Because Kant is not honest: he wants to have two roles at once. He wants to be our interlocutor, which is the same status that we and everybody else has round the table, and a member of the university, the round table of knowledge. But he also wants to be chairman and referee, so he can blow his little whistle and rule certain speeches and certain discourse out. So one question we have to ask Kant is: are you in this discourse and dialogue, or are you above it? Do you concede the discipline of this discourse, with the rest of us, or are you certain that you have nothing to learn, that your knowledge is uniquely from some source of your own, so that you are above us? Kant believes that he has no need to submit himself to the university, in which theology is one among many disciplines. He denies that his views are a tradition, one tradition amongst others, that they have a history, which might have been, and could still be, different.
You don’t query what Kant has done, Mihail. He has disguised from us that these are all decisions that someone (the political philosophical tradition) has taken for us, and they are political (ie open to our revision and change), not religious (above challenge). ‘Religion’ can only be politics that is not honest about being political. ‘Religion’ is just that politics which the elite has decided is stupid and unacceptable. Kant, Hobbes, Spinoza and company are trying to get the proles to shut up, by ruling out all their rights to participate in the discussion of what is true and good.
So I think that the real ‘other’ and dialogue partner of Christianity is not the ‘religion’ of some ethnicity from some other continent (Asia or Africa), but our very own secular-worldly tradition, which we must examine through its pagan, Greek, Roman history. It is we whom the Christian tradition is addressing, us with all our Greco-Roman baggage. You have not queried the secular-sacred distinction at all. The Christian gospel is addressing our total, and that means our everyday and secular, being. Christianity does not observe the sacred-secular distinction on which religious studies is premised: it refuses this secular distinction, because it claims the world and this present age (saeculum) as every other age.
But you are right. Theologians don’t read widely enough, and so are poor conversation-partners in the university. But theologians shouldn’t just read Eliade and disciplines ancillary to religious studies (anthropology, psychology), but politics and economics, and history and literature – all your own favourites. But that is small beer beside the real criticism which must be made of us, that we are Scripturally-illiterate, hard of hearing and ourselves hardly receive the gospel we have to pass on. Anyway a great paper. Send us another.
Epiphany
Epiphany means appearance (See, I told you this is about stating the obvious). Epiphany means revelation and the mystery (secret) now revealed. That God’s appearing, his arrival, here, with us. He, the Lord, has come to us, man. So we can call him Immanuel, God with us. He said he would, his coming and arrival has been forecast and looked forward to for weeks, the weeks of Advent (=coming). So we could regard the Feast of Christ, Christmas, as the first part of Epiphany. Epiphany is a matter of stages. Who God is for us, in Jesus, is revealed to us bit by bit, week by week as it were.
So we are in the season of Epiphany. Last week was the naming and circumcision of Christ – the first stage.
This week, Epiphany itself, all the kings of the earth come to worship Jesus as king of Israel, and as their own king. Even these gentiles come, while the present puppet king of Israel, Herod, does not recognise or worship him. So this week we had Isaiah 60: 1-6
Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away… They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.
Then we had Psalm 72.
Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.
We replied with: ALL KINGS BOW DOWN BEFORE HIM; NATIONS ALL ADORE
Then we had Ephesians 3: 1-12 spelling out this epiphany-appearance. What is appearing now is what (though long trailed and previewed to Israel) was quite unknown to the world, a secret the existence of which the world never suspected.
The mystery was made known by revelation.. In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel… to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (In other words, it is not so much that we bring him gold and gifts, but that he represents the wealth of God that is now to be given to us).
Then the gospel is read. Matthew 2: 1-12.
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage… When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
These are the readings set down by the Lectionary which, together with Common Worship, determines the course of each service in our Church.
So you see, in the next few weeks, through demonstrations (miracles) and instruction, we are taught who Jesus is, and we thereby learn who God is, and we are taught this by God, through these specific Scriptures and the rest of the service. More anon.
Zizioulas on Church and eucharist
In order to find the deeper roots of this coincidence between Church and Eucharist we must again go back to the question of the relation between Christology and Pneumatology. All the biblical accounts of Christology seem to speak of Christ as being constituted by the Holy Spirit and in this sense as a corporate personality, the Servant of God or the Son of Man. The Person of Christ is automatically linked with the Holy Spirit, which means with a community. This community is the eschatological company of the Saints who surround Christ in this kingdom. This Church is part of the definition of Christ. The body of Christ is not first the body of the individual Christ and then a community of ‘many’, but simultaneously both together. Thus you cannot have the body of the individual Christ (the One) without having simultaneously the community of the Church (The Many). The Eucharist is the only occasion in history when these two coincide. In the Eucharist the expression ‘body of Christ’ means simultaneously the body of Jesus and the body of the Church.
[John Zizioulas The ecclesiological presuppositions of the holy Eucharist]
Catholic is not liberal
Catholic does not mean liberal. Catholic means comprehensive and universal, but this universality is the promise of God, which Christians look forward to (that is, it is an eschatological concept). But meanwhile Christians must say that this is not yet the world they anticipate. They live by faith and in hope, and look forward to what they don’t yet have. This present world is full of false totalities which cut people out. It is not true and not kind to say that everybody is already in, or that all are saved and included. The liberal creed is that there is no ‘in’ and no ‘out’, and no distinction between Christians and non-Christians, and that it is rude to suggest that there is. It is the law of the liberals church that there may be no preaching, and that we should not try to teach anyone anything or impose our views on others. The liberal creed is that that it is rude, wrong, unacceptable to suggest that the gospel converts. Indeed the liberal creed denies that there is anything we can learn from listening to any part of the Christian or Western tradition, and thus that there is any point in studying that tradition – so no point in exploring the lives and thoughts of previous generations. There is nothing new for us to hear or learn.Philip Turner puts this better than me.
Many, if not most, of the classical themes associated with pastoral care can find no place within a theology dominated by the notion of radical inclusion. The atoning power of Christ’s death, faith, justification, repentance, and holiness of life, to mention but a few, appear at best as an antique vocabulary to be either out grown or reinterpreted. So also does the notion that the church is a community elected and called out by God from the peoples of the earth for a particular purpose. That purpose is to bear witness to the saving event of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and to call people to believe, repent, and live in an entirely different manner. It is this witness that defines what many call “the great tradition”, but a theology of radical inclusion must at best trim such robust belief. To be true to itself it can find room for only one sort of witness, namely, inclusion of the previously excluded. Indeed, the connection of the existence of the Church to a saving purpose makes little sense because salvation is not an issue for a theology of radical inclusion. God has already included everybody, and now we ought to do the same. Within a theology of ‘radical inclusion’, Christianity is no longer presented as a religion of salvation. Salvation, which normally refers to the restoration of a right relation between God and his creation, cannot rightly be the theme of Christian witness because God has accepted us all already (save perhaps those guilty of exclusionary practice).
Philip Turner on the ‘theology’ of the Episcopal Church in the United States
But the liberal view is wrong. One opinion is not just as good as any other. Not all views are equally valid. It is not sheer conceit that makes me think I can tell you somthing you don’t know, and vice versa. I dont know everything already, so I really should go and get find someone who knows better than me when, say, my computer is playing up. I should listen to that expert and be guided by him – it is not demeaning for me to do so, for he really does have knowledge that I don’t, he has the relevant craft skill, that corresponds to the reality of the functioning of my computer.
Of course this liberal creed is self-contradicting, for prohibits teaching, while it is itself a teaching. And it is contradicted by real life. You know that you don’t know how to fix your broken computer. Only someone who has undergone the training to receive the knowledge that you don’t have, can help you. You want him to instruct you on this, you pay him and demand that he gives his verdict. In just the same way, surely, you concede that there is a lot about life that I don’t know about, but I want to know about it, and I am prepared to listen and even to undergo the discipline and training that makes me more competent, whether with my computer – or at life.
It costs effort to refute every day the liberal untruth, the falsehood of the view that all views are equally valid. it is tiresome, and Christians are doubtless tiresome when they talk about truth, and insist that truth is worth talking about and worth the unpleasantness of these daily little disagreements.
paying my respects
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.
One, holy, catholic, apostolic
The church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. In fact I just want to think through these four marks of the church with you. There are others, of course – evangelical and charismatic are two I want to talk about too some time. But meanwhile, these four, because they are from the creed (see, nothing is too obvious to be said) and because we say the creed. That is once a week, the congregation of which I am a member (I’ll tell you about it later) say these words – out loud. If we say them we own them, so we cannot just shrug when asked what we mean by them.
I hope to talk about these four marks of the Church – one, holy, catholic, apostolic. Really I am amazed to find myself saying this sort of thing, me, the evangelical Christian. To use this proud title, evangelical, demands that you confess, that is say out loud, this creed, with these four words, one, holy, catholic, apostolic, every week. Shall I make this plainer? You cannot be evangelical without saying this creed, and saying these four words, which are four vital promises and instructions to us. A service that does not include three lessons from Scripture, one of which is from the Old Testament, and this creed (and much else that we shall come to), is not an evangelical service. The Christians in that service, that is not shaped and governed by these four marks of the church, are not receiving the sustenance by which they can grow: they are being sold short.
But in St Mary’s I don’t remember ever hearing these four words – one, holy, catholic, apostolic) expounded. Really, I wonder why we have a sermon.
Beginning
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.
Spiritual gifts and orders in the Church
Another characteristic of the eschatological community which the Eucharist as the body of the Risen and corporate, spiritual Christ must portray, is its charismatic nature. All the members of the Church possess the Holy Spirit through Baptism and Chrismation (or Confirmation), and being a charismatic means in the final analysis being a member of the Church. Ordination is a bestowal of a particular charisma on certain people and as such it does not raise the ordained person above or outside the community, but assigns him to a particular position, an ordo. The Eucharist includes not only the laymen but also other charismata and orders. Its proper performance therefore must include a variety of orders and not simply what we call the laymen or the clergy.
John Zizioulas The ecclesiological presuppositions of the holy Eucharist
being obvious
I want to use this blog to say some things that should be obvious. Why? Because they don’t appear to be known by the very people to whom they should be best obvious. Every Sunday morning I listen to a clergy person who either has learned these really obvious things, or has decided that they have found something more important to say, something from some other source. What should be most obvious is that we have to hear from him or her what the Scripture readings that we have just heard, say. The job of the minister, teacher, clergy, whoever, is to say again what the Scripture readings say, to open the Scripture to us. It is not sufficient to refer to a line or two of one of the New Testament readings in passing. Opening the Scripture means talking us through all three readings please. Their job description, to which they gave their promise at their ordination, is to serve the Word of God, and to serve us by serving that whole Word up to us. They simply have to repeat what we have heard, using other words so that we hear it again, and clearer, in all its strangeness and directness. So, this blog is just a response to the sermon I heard and the service I took part in part in on Sunday. For this reason it is full of things that are really obvious to most of you. It is my questions about what was and wasn’t said in that sermon, and my questions about what we heard and said and sung in that service and it is my ‘thank you’ and my ‘Amen’.
