Determinism = Nihilism (Quote)

Here is a great quote from David Bentley Hart I copied from Theology Forum.

[...] there is a point at which an explanation becomes so comprehensive that it ceases to explain anything at all, because it has become a mere tautology. In the case of a pure determinism, this is always so. To assert that every finite contingency is solely and unambiguously the effect of a single will working all things – without any deeper mystery of created freedom – is to assert nothing but that the world is what it is, for any meaningful distinction between the will of God and the simple totality of cosmic eventuality has collapsed. [...] Even if the purpose of such a world is to prepare creatures to know the majesty and justice of its God, that majesty and justice are, in a very real sense, fictions of his will, impressed upon creatures by means both good and evil, merciful and cruel, radiant and monstrous – some are created for eternal bliss and others for eternal torment, and all for the sake of the divine drama of perfect and irresistible might. Such a God, at the end of the day, is nothing but will, and so nothing but an infinite brute event; and the only adoration that such a God can evoke is an almost perfect coincidence of faith and nihilism. (Doors of the Sea, pp. 29-30)

Telepaganism Hinn Style

Far out. You have to listen to this.

All Things Necessary For Salvation

Following on from the last post about Sola Scriptura, I like the the way Anglican formularies speak of Scripture as containing all things necessary for salvation. Of course the faith in Christ can be found in other writings, and should be used for our spiritual sustenance. The Church put Scripture together not as the sole repository of faith, but the canon or rule, the touchstone and norm for all doctrine and faith. While this doesn't solve the culture wars within the church by supplying the means for a legalistic solution to the variety within Christianity, it is not relativizing Scripture either. It is just being honest about the historical process that formed Scripture and the necessity for interpreting Scripture.

Sola Scriptura

If Sola Scriptura is taken to mean that only the Bible is used in theology and is the only authority in life, then it just doesn't make sense. As Ben Witherington III points out in a guest post at Theology Forum, the New Testament itself does not provide a full justification of the New Testament! So, for example, there is no list of the books of the New Testament in the New Testament; it was the church that decided which books would be included, and to which books Sola Scriptura would be applied. That doesn't make sense according to a rigid Sola Scriptura schema. And another excellent example he cites is the Council of Nicea and the Creed it produced. The New Testament as we have it had not been set at this point in Christian history. However, those assembled felt perfectly able to set down the normative faith on the basis of the apostolic witness, which included the books of our New Testament, as well as other writings.

Joy and Peace, and More

The presence of Jesus brings joy and peace to those who experience it. But it never brings comfort without also bringing a gift that we cannot bear as it is so shattering to our pride, and without also bringing a costly demand upon our minds and actions. Jesus being with us where we are means our being with him where he is. If Jesus is with you, what is he demanding of you - urgently - in your actions about poverty, or peace, or race, or your neighbour? If Jesus is with you, he will not let you wear blinkers about your relations with your fellows. If Jesus is with you, your life may be turned inside out. (Michael Ramsay)

Not Without the Flesh

Only in the flesh, not in the spirit, can destiny and history come into being. (Romano Guardini)

More Than Scaffolding

In yesterday's post I said that the usual identity markers of relationship, career, possessions, etc are not our true self, but should be considered as scaffolding around the true self, and that at some point we have to jump from the scaffolding onto the actual edifice of the true self. It is still a useful metaphor. If you do the inner work one day you can wake up and think, 'I don't need to use XX as the explanation of who I am.' It is possible to find a sense of self that is not dependent on the quantifiable. However, the metaphor breaks down if pushed too far. The scaffolding is sacramental and therefore our encounter with God that brings to light the true self is through and within these quantifiable and external markers of identity. (Although not exclusively so.) But both (scaffolding and sacrament) are entirely different from deriving a sense of self from these quantifiable markers alone.

Who Are You?

When we strip away the external markers of identity, what is quantifiable, what is left?

A woman in a coma was dying. She suddenly had a feeling that she was taken up to heaven and stood before the Judgement Seat.

Who are you?" a voice said to her.
"I'm the wife of the mayor," she replied.
"I didn't ask you whose wife you are but who you are."
"I'm the mother of four children."
"I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are."
"I'm a schoolteacher."
"I did not ask you what your profession is but who you are."

And so it went. No matter what she replied, she did not seem to give a satisfactory answer to the question, "Who are you?"

"I'm a Christian."
"I did not ask you what your religion is but who you are."
"I'm the one who went to church every day and always helped the poor and needy."
"I did not ask you what you did but who you are."

She evidently failed the examination for she was sent back to earth. When she recovered from her illness she determined to find out who she was. And that made all the difference.

(From Anthony de Mello, The Prayer of the Frog, vol 1, pp. 191-192.)

When we are stripped of our external identities we struggle to answer the question of who we are. The irony here is that what is 'inside', the centre, is more important than any of these externals, yet we struggle to know this centre. And even more ironically, when someone loses one of these externals (e.g. employment) we notice, but we hardly notice if someone has lost their soul.

This inner life is the realm of faith, religion, and God. The externals are too, of course, but in the same way 'having' and 'doing' is related to 'being'. There is something more pivotal in 'being' and not just 'doing', about who we are rather than justifying ourselves through quantifiable external markers. The quantifiable, external markers are not bad in themselves. But the pursuit of them as proxies of the true self lets us down. In relation to the development and sense of self these external markers are more like scaffolding around the real person each of us is. climbing them does give us a sense of height, and of the proportion of the self, but at some point we have to jump off the scaffolding and grab hold. Done rightly, some of those externals can lead us to the point where we can jump off into space and land on the other side. Jesus is deeply suspicious of the external markers, or should I say, how we use them and use them against others. Those who don't have the right markers, in the right quantity, are excluded or persecuted.

If we are looking for the true self we will find it in our search for God. Jesus' sense of self was not a self-enclosed confidence grounded in himself. It was entirely grounded in his relation to the the one he called 'Father'. It is a striking feature of the Gospels that Jesus' prime relationship is with God without excluding relationship with others, but the latter do not serve as quantifiable markers to make himself feel OK or attack others.

Happiness (Quotes)

Check out this page for some quotes on happiness. Here are a couple of examples:

"Joy is not a constant condition. Most people manage a settled cheerfulness, but this, no matter how admirable, has nothing to do with joy, which flashes suddenly on our darkness. Like the light in an El Greco painting, joy does not merely illuminate the landscape. It transforms it." Sr Wendy Beckett

"If what most people take for granted were really true?if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have been a very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until now?What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear." Thomas Merton

How To Hold Onto It (By Michael Leunig)

Life, the planet, yourself, family and friends, body and soul, food, ... anything important really.

Not Just a Favoured Few...

A guest post from the Revd Ron Keynes. (Pentecost 23, Year B: Ruth 3:1-5; 4:3-17; Mark 12:38-44)

There is often a fairly strong reason why Christians are often charged with being ‘against the world’ and somewhat troglodytic. I have mentioned elsewhere something of the struggle even with my children, as they tend to belong to a later generation, not quite up to X. However, there has been some rethink by younger people as the World Financial Crisis has done its job in bringing some factors back to balance, and Global Warming perhaps adding to the rethink.

If there is one aspect of life that tends to be reflected in almost all cultures and countries, it is the determination of the powerful ones to advertise both their power and wealth and demanding all the best that the country has to give. Even some religious people fall victim (or demand the position) and become very much a part of the problem. As the Gospel reminds us, in Jesus’ day the practice was rampant. Today’s world tends to have it in terms of salaries and perks of CEOs, where the matter is totally beyond reality.

Contrast that, if you will, with the story of Ruth and Naomi, a beautiful and moving tale of tragedy and ill fortune, made remarkably more touching by the commitment of daughter-in-law (of a different race!) to a mother of her late husband. There is a story of quite lovely proportion, of self-giving quite beyond the norm. It was a most moving moment when, at our youngest daughter’s wedding, this passage was chosen as one of the readings. ‘There was hardly a dry eye in the house.’

I wonder whether the rich and powerful ever stop to ponder what is important in life, and what is marginal. I have to say that my experience of ‘pretty people’ is that such a title is a misnomer of the first order, and selfishness and refusal of ordinary human responses is obligatory. On the other hand, ordinary little people seem to have a far more balanced perception of what is important and what is not. And are not the basics of life really quite simple and uncomplicated? Or am I fooling myself?

The reason that Christians tend to be so against today’s life-style of self-aggrandizement is that it leaves almost every other person right out of the equation. Bugger you Jack, I am all right. And it does not need to be the ‘high and holy ones’ who have such a blind stare. Do you not meet, constantly, even little people who demand their priority with great rudeness and pomposity?

Life’s reality does have a habit of blowing down our proud houses of cards every now and again. And it all comes back to the business of what is true and just, for those capacities have a habit of returning from the dead. It is not all that long ago that the film ‘Greed’ was greeted with yells of delight. And it did not take long for the outcome of that pattern to blow up in everyone’s faces.

Life is for everyone, not just a favoured few. Faith is for everyone too, though there seem to be rather fewer takers, for some reason. Peace and even prosperity is far more likely to ensue when the gentler path is chosen by all. And there can be little fight against that!

Idolatry Instead of Faithful Discipleship

Kyle Strobel, over at Theology Forum has an excellent post on being a healthy church movement. His criticism below should not be directed at evangelicalism exclusively. See here for the full post.

"I have been thinking, as of late, about the various strategies in evangelicalism to navigate the marketplace of ideas. It seems to me that the typical evangelical strategy to “win” (sorry, I don’t mean this to be polemical (yet) but I can’t think of another word which is accurate), is simply to create something of a boys club. In other words, we surround ourselves with people who both agree with every word that comes our of our mouth and who won’t actually attack our views in any significant way. This is enough, in itself, to be idolatry, but it rarely stops there. The next step is to start a movement. A movement, in these terms, is nothing more than simply organizing leadership and adopting worldly strategies for kingdom building. Once teaching, leadership and dogma can be disseminated, there is a twofold turn outwards: First, a turn outwards to evangelize – not Christ as much as the movement itself - and, second, a turn outwards to attack anyone who thinks differently. The latter turn stems from the inherent fundamentalism in evangelicalism which equates difference with danger."

Getting Rid of the Dead Wood

I can't help thinking that the Pope's latest stab at church union by allowing dissident Anglicans to recognise his authority and cross the Tiber will, in reality, get rid of some of our dead wood. I know I shouldn't, but ...

Here is a very funny video (linked from Inhabitatio Dei) from a satirical US Show. It's very funny, and the points he makes are good. Like, how much sense it makes for the Pope to welcome into the Roman Church those who have trouble with their current authority structures. Someone is going to be in for a shock, either the ex-Anglicans (most likely) or the Pope (he'll just get annoyed and boot 'em out). Stay with the video even when the goosey Episcopalian priest comes on. The interviewer keeps on making the point.

And also from the same blog I picked up this comment by Hans Kung on Benedict's latest strategy for church union. Hans is not amused.

Friends of God

At a recent chapel cycle at St John's I made three points about friendship.

First, I used a picture (side) to remind us that Jesus was actually betrayed by a close friend. The pain Jesus must have felt by this betrayal is easily overlooked from our position of hindsight. The pain of betrayal by a friend is because we give something of ourselves to our friends. So I asked the question: how you going respecting that piece your friends have given you?

Second, I pointed out that Jesus was known as a friend of those everyone else hated (sinners and tax collectors). The usual practice is to befriend those similar to us or we like, or who might benefit us. Not Jesus. I spelt the implication out in chapel.

Third, to be a friend of Jesus is to be a friend of God. and remember, friends give something of themselves to those they befriend. So when God becomes our friend through Christ, God gives something of Godself to us. (Doctrinally, this is the same as saying that in the Incarnation and the giving of the Spirit God communicates Godself to us.)

See here for a great sandart video about friendship.

I Am the Resurrection and the Life (John 11)

The story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11) reveals the the humanity of Jesus in a narrative form that is of a piece with the deepest theology of the Gospel of John. (E.g. John 1:1-5, 14) Here we see a vulnerable, human Jesus, full of love, and therefore overcome by grief at the death of his friend Lazarus. This is the same Jesus who, in, for example, the Farewell Discourses of Chapters 13-17, will reveal (admittedly in more structured prose) the heart of God. But even so, John 11 can't be matched for the sheer vulnerable humanity of Jesus.

Lazarus is the friend of Jesus. (11:11; also 11:36) We will wait until 15:14-15 before we hear Jesus call his disciples friends. There is something special in the relationship between Lazarus and Jesus. Yet, Lazarus is strangely absent in the Gospels. We meet Mary and Martha in Luke, but not Lazarus. And in John Mary and Martha speak to Jesus, but Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, says nothing. He is resuscitated, and in John 12 the chief priests decide that Lazarus must die as well as Jesus. (John 12:9-11; see 11:45-57) Jean Vanier says that Lazarus seems to be a "nobody" in comparison to the rest of the characters in the story. Like the disabled people Vanier has lived with in L'Arche. In John 11 Lazarus is sick. The Greek word is asthenes, and Jean Vanier says that this can mean not just sick, but disabled. This supposition on the part of Vanier would explain why Mary and Martha are still at home with Lazarus, and why Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, seems absent in the text. He was, as Vanier says, a "nobody".

People wonder why Jesus did not leave immediately to heal Lazarus when he discovered that he was sick. (11:6) The flow of the text gives the answer. The death of Lazarus will allow Jesus to work another "sign" (John 2:11; 4:54), signaling who Jesus is ("I am ..." John 11:25-26) , and the overcoming of death that awaits those loved by Jesus. (As is all Christology, this story is about soteriology, not just speaking of the status of Jesus.)

Jesus arrives and after some dialogue with Mary and Martha is directed to the tomb of Lazarus. Here we see the raw and intense emotion of Jesus, shuddering and disturbed in his own grief at the death of his friend, and deeply moved by the grief of those weeping for Lazarus. (11:33-35, 38) Jesus wept. He does not avoid his grief; resurrection does not make human emotion and the loss of death empty. Jesus here touches the horror of death, and its sheer deadliness, feeling and expressing the anguish and pain we feel when stung by death and its forces. Vanier says

"Here he (Jesus) weeps in front of death; he touches the horror of death, the void created in hearts when someone who is loved dies... This is the only place in the gospel where Jesus reveals his deep, human emotions. when he met the Samaritan women (sic) he was tired, but here something is broken in him." (Jean Vanier, Drawn Into the Mystery of Jesus Through the Gospel of John, p.199)

But more than this, Jesus here confronts his own mortality. (Yes, mortality, the point of the picture above, with a dead Jesus, gangrene spreading in his tomb.) He is human, and he will die. The blackness of death awaits him, and the horror of death encompassing a loved one awaits the mother and friends of Jesus. Christian hope in the resurrection of Jesus is not an avoidance of death. I will die, you will die, those we love will die. There is no immortal 'bit' in us that avoids death. There is only hope in the God of Jesus who brings resurrection. Indeed, without entering the full horror of death and the cross there is no resurrection. This is not one more example of the spiritual principle of death and rebirth. This is the brokenness, failure, and absolute end that is the prerequisite for grace, the tomb of resurrection.