Polaristion = f(Area)

I went to an Episcopal church this morning - where ‘absolute faith is not a requirement - but an open heart is.’ It struck me that the degree of polarisation between opposing liberal & conservative standpoints is a function of the area of the country. In Wales, everyone rubs along well enough. In England the battle lines are more firmly set out. Here (USA), it seems that anyone who’s not a liberal has given up and gone elsewhere.

I’ll try and write down some equations that describe it. Once I’ve worked out how to quantify liberalism. Maybe how many words in the creed you mumble.

Tom Wright and the symmetry of error

Its been very interesting gauging people’s reaction to Tom Wright’s university sermon, and his criticism of evangelicalism. Many people say something along the lines of ‘Yes, he’s got a point, but the mistakes that evangelicals make aren’t as serious as the errors liberals make, I mean, evangelicals still get saved. I don’t like the way he suggests their errors are equal and opposite to ours.’

That’s an overstatement of it. But not too much. But I think that NTW knows exactly what he’s doing. He is a man who has grown up in the evangelical camp, and has moved away without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I heard of a prominant liberal who was asked ‘Everyone knows liberal churches die out. Where are you going to get your next generation of liberals from?’ to which he replied ‘Oh that’s easy. We get them from the evangelicals.’

If we allow ourselves to get complacent that gospel reductionism is fine, and that as long as we maintain our distinctives we’ll be fine, we’re going to make people who are dissatisfied with evangelicalism, and ARE in real danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not every frustrated evangelical is as brainy as Tom Wright, and so when liberalism offers a more intellectually stimulating and satisfying prospect, they are likely to fall for it hook, line and sinker. Essentially, our errors make frustrated evangelicals who turn liberal. And that is why our errors are just as deadly as the liberal errors. They are equal and opposite.

Bird in St. Anne’s Hall

This evening a pigeon flew into the dining hall of St. Anne’s college, flew around a bit, flew into 3 windows, perched on a chair at high table, before the assistant dean cleverly got it to stand on his finger, before escorting it to a window a fellow had opened, and it flapped away.

Pity - was looking forward to some game at hall.

Tom Wright at the University Church

I was at about 5 mins of Tom Wright’s university sermon yesterday. The man is a legend.

Mr. Newman has summarised at http://danielnewman.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven/

I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of the transcript of it on http://www.university-church.ox.ac.uk/sermons/sermons-uni.htm.

It was fabulous: he was right on the button identifying faults and failings of evangelicals: which crowd-pleased wonderfully: many grins on the faces of those visible from my vantage point in the balcony.

For the first 5 mins or so I thought he may have been choosing his university sermon as his opportunity to declare his out-and-out liberalism - Evangelicals took a pounding. And every single one hurt because it was true. He is a man who knows the evangelical world intimately well and can phrase elegantly all the niggles that I have with it.

But from what I heard from Mr. Newman, liberalism took heavy hit after heavy hit - the inadaquecy of a merely social gospel, and the denial of the bodily resurrection of Christ as Liberals removing the theological, ontological and epistomological foundation of their own movement. Splendid stuff.

I’m a big fan: Tom Wright offers us genuine Christianity with its brain switched on. It seems to me that at the centre of Wright’s criticism is our gospel reductionism - we so often make the gospel JUST the unit of personal salvation.  Its quite like Richard Dawkins and his selfish genes, really.

A worthy successor to Lightfoot on the Bishop’s throne in Durham Cathedral.

Infant Damnation

debate rages about baptism on Mr. Blanche’s blog, www.danielblanche.blogspot.com

For some light relief, here’s some fun stuff from Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis…

Jim’s father was a medical practitioner in an adjoining village. He was a plump, bearded, bookish, merry man, very proud of his atheism. It was he who had trained Jim in the faith and in his choice of liquor; he had sent Jim to this denominational party college because it tickled his humour to watch his son stir up the fretful complacency of the saints. He dropped in and found Elmer and Jim agitatedly awaiting the arrival of Eddie.

‘Eddie said’ wailed Elmer, ‘he said he was coming up to see me, and he’ll haul out some of these proofs that I’m going straight to hell. Gosh, doctor, I don’t know what’s got into me. You better examine me. I must have anæmics or something. Why, one time, if Eddie Fislinger had smiled at me, damn him, think of him daring to smile at me! – if he’d said he was coming to my room, I’d told of him “Like hell you will!” and I’d of kicked him in the shins.’

Dr. Lefferts purred in his beard. His eyes were bright.

‘I’ll give your friend Fislinger a run for his money. And for the inconsequential sake of the non-existent Heaven, Jim, try not to look surprised when you find your respectable father being pious.’

When Eddie arrived, he was introduced to a silkily cordial Dr. Lefferts, who shook his hand with that lengthiness and painfulness common to politicians, salesmen, and the godly. The doctor rejoiced:

‘Brother Fislinger, my boy here and Elmer tell me that you’ve been trying to help then see the true Bible religion.’

‘I’ve been seeking to.’

‘It warms my soul to hear you say that, Brother Fislinger! You can’t know what a grief it is to an old man tottering to the grave, to one whose only solace now is prayer and Bible reading’ –  (Dr. Lefferts had sat up till 4 a.m., three nights ago, playing poker and discussing biology with his cronies, the probate judge and the English stock breeder – ‘what a grief it is to him that his only son, James Blaine Lefferts, is not a believer. But perhaps you can do more that I can, Brother Fislinger. They think I’m a fanatical old fogy. Now let me see – you’re a real Bible believer?’

‘Oh yes!’ Eddie looked triumphantly at Jim, who was leaning against the table, his hands in his pockets, as expressionless as wood. Elmer was curiously hunched up in the Morris chair, his hands over his mouth.

The doctor said approvingly:

‘That’s splendid. You believe every word of it, I hope, cover to cover?

‘Oh yes. What I always say is, “It’s better to have the whole Bible than a Bible full of holes.”’

‘Why, that’s a real thought, Brother Fislinger. I must remember that, to tell any of these alleged higher critics, if I ever meet any! “Bible whole, not Bible full of holes.” Oh, that’s a fine thought, and cleverly expressed. You made it up?’

‘Well, not exactly.’

‘I see, I see. Well, that’s splendid. Now of course you believe in the premillennial coming – I mean the real, authentic, genuwine, immediate, bodily, premillenial coming of Jesus Christ?’

‘Oh, yes, sure.’

‘And the virgin birth?’

‘Oh, you bet.’

‘That’s splendid! Of course, there are doctors who question whether the virgin birth is quite in accordance with their obstetrics, but I tell these fellows, “Look here! How do I know it’s true? Because it says so in the Bible, and if it weren’t true, do you suppose it would say so in the Bible?” That certainly shuts them up! They have precious little to say after that!’

By this time a really beautiful, bounteous friendship was flowing between Eddie and the doctor, and they were looking with pity on the embarrassed faces of the two heretics left out in the cold. Dr Lefferts tickled his beard and crooned:

‘And of course, Brother Fislinger, you believe in infant damnation.’

Eddie explained, ‘No; that’s not a Baptist doctrine.’

‘You – you’ The good doctor choked, tugged at his collar, panted and wailed: ‘It’s not a Baptist doctrine? You don’t believe in infant damnation?’

‘W-Why, no…’

‘Then God help the Baptist church and the Baptist doctrine! God help us all, in these unregenerate days, that we should be contaminated by such infidelity!’ Eddie sweated, while the doctor patted his plump hands and agonised: ‘Look you here, my brother! It’s very simple. Are we not saved by being washed in the blood of the Lamb, and by that alone, by his blessed sacrifice alone?’

‘W-why yes, but…’

 ‘Then either we are washed white, and saved, or else we are not washed, and we are not saved! That’s the simple truth, and all weakenings and explanations and hemming and hawing about this clear and beautiful truth and simply of the devil, brother! And at what moment does a human being, in all his inevitable sinfulness, become subject to baptism and salvation? At two months? At nine years? At sixteen? At forty-seven? At ninety-nine? No! The moment he is born! And so if he be not baptised, then he must burn in hell forever. What does it say in the Good Book? “For there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” It may seem a little hard of God to fry beautiful little babies, but then think of the beautiful women whom he loves to roast there for the edification of the saints! Oh brother, brother, now I understand why Jimmy here, and poor Elmer, are lost to the faith! It’s because professed Christians like you give them this emasculated religion! Why, it’s fellows like you who break down the dyke of true belief, and open a channel for higher criticism and sabellianism and nymphomania and agnosticism and heresy and Catholicism and Seventh-day Adventism and all those horrible German inventions! Once you begin to doubt, the wicked work is done! Oh, Jim, Elmer, I told you to listen to our friend here, but now that I find him practically a free-thinker!

Barth & Scripture: First Thoughts

I’ve been starting out in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (CD). In between all sorts of chat about dogmatics as a function of the church, dogmatics as an enquiry, the church’s self-examination of its characteristic utterance about God, and all sorts of impenetrable stuff. Within that, there is an occasional comprehensible gem, which would suggest to me that the rest of the stuff ain’t too bad either.

Barth defines dogmatics as:

“…the self-examination of the Christian Church in respect of the content of its distinctive talk about God.” CD Vol. I, Pt. I, pg 11.

Barth gets a bad press from, the more reformed end of evangelicalism. He gets particularly slated in Charles Caldwell Ryrie’s Neo-orthodoxy: An Evangelical Evaluation of Barthianism which charitably concludes that neo-orthodoxy is a ‘hoax.’

But we would do well to listen to J.I.Packer. In his article in the New Dictionary of Theology (NDT), he writes:

“Liberalism dominated in European Protestantism until…the First World War shattered its optimism and the lead passed to the existentialist Biblicism of the neo-orthodox genius of Karl Barth.” NDT, p. 385

The hoax, to me, is that Barth’s view of Scripture is reported to be weak compared with the shibboleth of reformed orthodoxy. Maybe he won’t talk about all the properties and attributes of Scripture that might be desired: maybe he will, I haven’t got past the first chapter yet, I’ll keep you posted. But for now, an example of his seemingly high view of Scripture:

“Exegetical theology investigates biblical teaching as the basis of our talk about God. Dogmatics, too, must constantly keep it in view. But only in God and not in us is the true basis of Christian utterance identical with its true content. Hence dogmatics as such does not ask what the apostles and prophets said but what we must say on the basis of the apostles and prophets. This task is not taken from us because it is first necessary that we know the biblical basis. Although exegesis and dogmatics are constantly interwoven in his work, for Calvin too, Institutio religionis christianae means the direction of Christian thought and speech to its own contemporary responsibility. 

As the Church accepts from Scripture, and with divine authority from Scripture alone, the attestation of its own being as the measure of its utterance, it finds itself challenged to know itself, and therefore even and precisely in the face of this foundation of all Christian utterance to ask, with all the seriousness of one who does not yet know, what Christian utterance should say today.” CD Vol. I. Pt. I., p. 16.

I think that here he is basically saying this: what we say as the church should be based upon Scripture.

Barth reportedly noted that his congregation came, not to hear his view on a passage, but a message from God. In a time when many young Christians seek an experiential event, often through an emotional high through U2-esque music, we biblical Christians have something better to offer. Paul instructs the Corinthian church to eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially prophecy (1 Cor 14:1). We may rightly dismiss the future predictive, individual specific prophecy of some, but we must ensure that we do not do so at the expense of true prophecy: God speaking to us through the words of Scripture. Perhaps, it is often us, and not Barth that have too low a view of Scripture.

Why I now use WordPress

I’ve moved to wordpress for several reasons.

 1. I want to be like Daniel Newman

2. Blogger has been really frustrating on just about every computer I’ve used.

3. It looks prettier.

(One of those may not be serious)