Pentecost and the Grand Design of Humanity

Franz Kafka wrote stories about political and social control. Grand projects of uniformity, with those who fail to fit persecuted. The Tower of Babel is the great myth of the Bible that tells us that this is part of the human predicament from which we must be saved. It is seen throughout history wherever uniformity becomes the foundation upon which human arrogance attempts to build an everlasting testament to itself. History is strewn with these grand projects, from the macro level of empires down to the micro level of families. But God is kind to humankind and destroys the tower, and separates people into language groups so that there can never be a successful grand design. Human diversity and variety will always bring down the grand project, at least eventually.

The destruction of Babel and the disunity of humankind is not God's final response, though. God's vision for humanity is not Babel, but it is unity. Pentecost is the Biblical 'answer' to Babel and all attempts to mimic Babel. Notice that in the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 language is not a barrier to unity. But not the uniformity of a single language, for everyone hears in their own tongue. And what do they hear? The good news about Jesus. This is not to be confused with some grand design rolling out over the top of human difference, for it is not founded on uniformity (symbolized in Babel by a single, universal language) and is achieved through the death and resurrection of Jesus, a victim of the Roman Babel. Moreover, in addition to the universal message communicated in each tongue, the Jesus 'project' is directed toward God, and is not a monument to human arrogance. The message of Jesus is communicated through the art of a living discipleship and persuasive proclamation, and the result is a humanity oriented toward God.

A few points to finish:

• The Spirit of Jesus received at Pentecost will always lead the baptised to oppose the grand designs of humanity, whether at the macro or the micro level.
  
• The unity of the church is not an authoritarian based uniformity, but a genuine unity respectful of differences. Even the differences that usually pull us apart.
  

Receiving the Spirit

What does it mean to receive the Spirit? Pentecost Sunday is the celebration of the Spirit, when we remember and celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit.[1] There is some confusion as to the fundamental meaning of ‘receiving the Spirit’. Some in the Pentecostal movement have twisted it to become a means of excluding those unlike them[2], while the charismatic movement (rightly) focuses on spiritual gifts[3], but this focus has the tendency to obscure the fundamental meaning (and experience) of the Spirit. The Christian tradition affirms over and over that the Spirit enables us to join in the relationship Jesus enjoys with God. In traditional language, the Holy Spirit is the personal bond of love between the Father and Son, and through the gift of the Spirit we are ‘adopted’ as children of God, enjoying the same loving intimacy with God as Jesus the beloved Son.[4] This puts the Christian experience of the Spirit in a little more perspective and retrieves ‘receiving the Holy Spirit’ from some of the excesses of Pentecostalism.

First, it means that there is something going on in us as people of faith that is more important and deeper than we usually realise. Jesus is God in the flesh, the co-equal Son of God, enjoying the closest possible intimacy with God the Father; an intimacy of complete union. We share in that intimacy through receiving the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. This is an intimacy beyond what is natural to our humanity. Through Christ and the Spirit we actually enter the very life of God, the love of the Father and the Son.

Second, this intimacy is not individual, as though it were just about each of us individually and God. We share an unimaginable intimacy with God that will be completely realised eternally, but we enjoy this intimacy together. The Father and the Son share their love (the Spirit) to enable us to join them in their community/communion of love. Intimacy is not individual.

Third, a primary sign of the presence of the Spirit in our lives is Christian community echoing the communion/community of the Father, Son and Spirit. This is Paul’s point in 1Corinthians 12, especially verses 1, 4-7, 27. All other manifestations and gifts of the Spirit do not contradict this first principle.

Fourth, when bad things occur this bond of love with the Father and Son through the Spirit remains. Even when it feels like we are deserted. Even Jesus experienced this[5], but the bond of love remained, and bridged the godforsakenness of the cross[6] and even hell itself.[7]

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[1] See Acts 2:1-11; 10:44-48; John 20:19-23.

[2] They love Mark 16:17 and these signs become a proof of faith. See note 3 for Paul’s own rejoinder to their misreading of Mark 16:17. Also 1Cor 14:1-19.

[3] See 1Cor 12:4-13. Note also 1Cor 12:27-31, where the answer to the rhetorical questions is ‘No’, not all receive the same gifts. And the still more excellent way he mentions is love. (1Cor 13:1-13).

[4] For example, Jn 14:18-21; Rom 8:14-17; Ephes 2:17-18. For Jesus the beloved, see Matt 3:17.

[5] Matt 26:36-46

[6] Matt 27:46

[7] 1Pet 3:18-20

God, Salvation and Materiality

We take bodiliness and materiality very seriously. The 'stuff' of creation is not evil, but good. Nor is it something to escape from. We are our bodies in the sense that there isn't some real me hidden inside my body. Which is why, of course, we recite belief in the resurrection of the body in the Creed. Salvation in the Christian schema is not 'spiritual', if we mean by that immaterial. God had to become part of creation (and remain God) for creation to be saved. Reflect on that and the world, and our mission within it, becomes more Christlike, more real, and more comprehensive.

There is a tight nexus between creation, Incarnation, sacraments and the resurrection of the body. Start with any one of them and you end up with all the others; unpick any one of them, and the whole lot will, eventually, disappear. There is a consistency here in the way in which God relates to the 'stuff' of creation. Intimately, and without antagonism. Indeed, exactly the opposite to antagonism. While there is no direct proportionality between God and creation, creation is made to find its home in God. If it were not so, and if salvation were just a matter of escape from our materiality, why did God become human? Surely a meditational technique would have sufficed! Or if something a bit more were needed than just a meditational technique, maybe the appearance of an avatar to proclaim some secret knowledge for the initiated and those to be saved. (Sounds like some forms of 'Christianity' doesn't it!) But God becomes human for the salvation of the good creation, and this salvation is the union of creation with God . We call it resurrection, and it is not the destruction of our materiality, but the transformation of our materiality into its final form. Which is why we have sacraments. The Eucharist can truly communicate God. (Remember, the non-competitive God of true transcendence can be 'in' the sacrament without compromising or diminishing the integrity of the 'stuff' of the sacrament.) The final form of bread as a complete and holistic nourishment of the human body and soul is anticipated in the bread of the Eucharist. And it does this precisely as bread.

The Ascended Lord Who Suffered and Died

That resurrection has nail holes in it is important. That the crucified-risen Jesus is bodily ascended into heaven reinforces the point. I remember one of my first major pastoral failures. At the hospital bed with an elderly woman sweating blood about dying in a forthcoming operation. In a nutshell, she wanted to live and sought assurance from me that she would. I gave that assurance. Cheaply. And she died. Christ sweated blood at Gethsemane, and there was no cheap (worthless) grace. God does not necessarily save us from suffering, does not necessarily heal us, and we all have to die. (Isn't there a book title, 'Everyone Wants To Go To Heaven but Nobody Wants To Die'? Or words to that effect.) That God in the flesh suffered and brought salvation, is resurrected and still has nail holes, and is then bodily resurrected (that is, Jesus' personal history of suffering is taken into heaven, is part of the sacred story of his fulfillment as a human person) suggests to me that we should not immediately seek only to avoid suffering and death. Of course we seek healing, but a deeper response leaves open the possibility of Gethsemane. Death and suffering might not be part of God's plan, but God uses suffering and death, often inscrutably, for God's purposes. The good news is that the resurrection and ascension tells us that all shall be well, eventually anyway! God shows us in Jesus how God can rework sin, suffering and death for salvation and completion.

The Ascension of Jesus

The Ascension of Jesus, for all the theological problems it raises (e.g."where" did Jesus go!), seems quite important to me, for at least two reasons.

The first reason concerns the significance and universality of the Word made flesh. Jesus ascends (and remembering anonymous' caution regarding the metaphorical nature of our language, and Phillip's comment, quoting Baron, that God is not so much somewhere else but somehow else) to God signifying the universality of the crucified-risen Jesus, the Word made flesh. Jesus is with God, and from here the Father sends the Spirit of God over all the world, now impressed by the crucified-risen Christ. Moreover, this means that the full humanity of Jesus, including his crucifixion and resurrection, is also of eternal significance. Matter is found 'in' the eternal life of God the Holy Trinity, within the eternal, heavenly dwelling of God. (Lots of metaphor here.) The Ascension of Jesus points again to the goal of all creation: union with God in God's own life (through hypostatic union with the Son).

Second, the story of the ascension in Acts 1:6-11 has the disciples looking up into the heavens, even though Jesus has gone from their sight. And then two men question the disciples, the result of which leads them back into the world, back to Jerusalem to receive the Holy Spirit and complete their task as witnesses 'to the ends of the earth.' (1:8) They will witness to the universal Christ, who, in the particularity of his life, death and resurrection, brings universal salvation to all. (Rom 5:18-21) Following the ascended, universal Christ is first about mission.

For all its problems, the Ascension is a beautiful piece of theology.

Art and Science in Ministry Development

The science aspect is easy to see: statistics, research, data, with advice and often detailed steps or procedures, with a subject matter that is on paper or a computer. The art aspect can be overlooked, involving rhythm and timing, inspiration, discernemtn and intuition, and the subject is people. We need both, and in an integrated fashion. To ignore the science would be to refuse to learn from the experience of others, and to eschew basic human insights available to us through statistics, etc. Ignoring the art of ministry development would be to treat people as ‘things’, and fall into the trap of thinking ministry development is the result of manipulation and the application of unbending rules. Ministry development, on the contrary, is the creative liaison of the whole of human research and knowledge, both material and spiritual. It follows no unbending rules, for the Spirit blows where it will. However, the freedom of the Spirit does not mean that research and experience cannot be the means to opening ourselves to that Spirit. It is art and science, spirit and matter.

It would be true to say that the more progressive side of the Diocese of Adelaide has been slow to take up this holistic approach. I can still remember viewing leadership and management techniques and knowledge with deep suspicion. Partly, the misuse of the science by some in the church gave ministry development and its ‘science’ a poor image. We must recognise the danger, inherent in the ‘science’ of ministry development, towards superficiality, as if applying this technique will bring growth, but ignoring the question of real and lived personal and corporate faith. But this should not blind us to its benefits. And we must practice the art of ministry, engaging with real people and bringing the science to bear for the benefit of the kingdom.

Cautions Regarding Transcendence and Incarnation

The transcendence of God (and God understood as non-competitive) enables us to understand traditional Christology. Because God is truly transcendent, the fullness of God is not inversely related to our being and presence. God and creation can be proportionally related, that is, God can be fully present to us without in any way compromising our own integrity.(Indeed, just the opposite is the case; personal integrity is enhanced in relationship with God.) There is not a competition between us for 'space' (if we and God were related competitively it would be an either/or between us and God.) This is to say, proximity to God does not diminish us, neither does it obliterate and replace. Proximity to God brings our fulfillment. Thus Jesus, as the incarnation of God, is not an incoherence, but the fullest epiphany of this general Christian theological insight into the God-world relationship. Humanity and divinity are united in Jesus without diminishment of either. (Two natures, one person)

A few cautions pulled from K. Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity. A brief Systematic Theology, pp. 6-7.

• Incarnation can't be deduced from the general principle of transcendence understood in terms of a non-competitive God. it is only in the light of the revelation of Christ that the general has become visible.
  
  
• The doctrine of the Incarnation is not merely an extrapolation of the general principle of transcendence.
  
  
• Christology is not about the general principle of transcendence. Christology is about Jesus and salvation through him.

... the case of Christ has its own irreducible distinctiveness. It is not an instance of a general relationship found everywhere; it is not the highest point on a continuous grade of relationships between God and the world. While what happens in Christ may be the center of a theological account of the universe from its beginning to its end, it is not such by being simply repeated elsewhere. (Tanner, Jesus, p. 7.)

Scripture, Inspiration and Tradition

I suggest that a theory of scripture, biblical inspiration and canon should take into account the following six points:

1. The Christian movement predates the Bible. Christians had to write our NT documents, and and‘the church’ chooses the documents to be included in the Scriptures.
   
   
2. Key doctrines communicated to through the ecumenical councils are integral to the Christian reading of Scripture. The heretics used Scripture, and apparently quite successfully. And in the christological debates, a key term that separated orthodoxy from heterodoxy was 'homoousios' (same being, in relation to the Father and the Son), which is not a word used in Scripture in that context.
   
   
3. We receive the Bible from those previously in the faith, and it does not come fresh to us but accompanied by interpretive clues, rules, teaching, etc.
   
   
4. We interpret Scripture, and we encourage translations (and all translations are in some way interpretive), and consider Jesus to be the Word.
   
   
5. Without the Bible the faith would have been lost long ago.
   
   
6. Without the continuing inspiration of the Spirit the faith is lost. (Even if we still had the Bible. The Scriptures are, in this respect, insufficient.)

Some key issues arising from these six points are:

• The relationship between inspired community (Church) and inspired text. And I mean this pre- and post-Bible.
  
  
• The relationship between Scripture, Creeds, and Church.
  
  
• The crucial place of the Bible in the transmission of the faith.
  
  
• The relationship between the 'Word of God' and 'God's word written'.
  
  
• The sufficiency and insufficiency of the Bible.

Living Tradition

A Sydney (Anglican) trained evangelical (now a bishop) said, in response to me talking about 'the tradition', "How can you believe in something that changes?" I took it to mean he was contrasting scripture with 'the tradition' minus the scriptures. A couple of clarifying points:

• Without the tradition it is impossible to correctly understand the Scriptures. Tradition came before Scripture. (St Paul hands on to the Corinthians what he himself was taught. See 1Cor 11.) Remember, heretics were/are always adept at scriptural 'proofs'.
  
• The Scriptures are only one strand (utterly unique, authoritative and irreplaceable) of the rope that maintains apostolic succession. (More on this later.)
• The tradition changes so that the tradition lives for each age. Traditions that don't change die out. The hard part is being faithful to the tradition without betraying it; but when we do we are part of the living Christian tradition.
  

A good quote on tradition from Yoder to be found at Inhabitatio Dei.

The Resurrection of Jesus as Future Event

If tonight you heard the newsreader announce that peace reigned throughout the world you would be sceptical. If the newsreader said there was a new conflict in such-a-such country, perhaps not suspicious at all. Why? Because of precedent, or expectation based on experience. This is part of the reason why people struggle to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Their experience suggests that the resurrection of Jesus is unlikely. It does not fit their view of the world, and is without a validating precedent. (Which is also why some wish to discover precursors to the church's proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus in other religions of antiquity. A precedent is then provided, although not for the resurrection. Rather, these 'precedents' are then used as evidence to deny the uniqueness and truth of the resurrection of Jesus.)

The gospel says that the resurrection of Jesus is a unique event, without precedent in history. The resurrection of Jesus is not to be justified by historical precedent, as though it (the resurrection) needs to be ordered to the past to gain credibility. Rather, it is the other way round. In the Christian scheme of things history is to be ordered to the resurrected Jesus. (This is part of the theological meaning of "Jesus as judge".) The reason is that the resurrection of Jesus is not a past historical event to be judged by the canons of historical research. (The life and death of Jesus, and the preaching by the church of the resurrected Jesus can be so investigated, but the resurrection itself is opaque to the usual processes of historical analysis.) The resurrection of Jesus is the future (come to meet us), not one event among many stuck in the past. The resurrection of Jesus is God's action in breaking us out of the cul-de-sac of history as we have come to experience it. Which is exactly why faith in the resurrected Christ is liberating.

The Coherence of Christian Belief

God does not give on the same plane of being and activity as creatures, as one among others and therefore God is not in potential competition (or co-operation) with them. Non-competitiveness among creatures - their co-operation on the same plane of causality - always brings with it the potential for competition: Since I perform part of what needs to be done and you perform the rest, to the extent I act, you need not; and the more I act, the less you need to. Even when we co-operate, therefore, our actions involve a kind of competitive either/or of scope and extent. Unlike this co-operation among creatures, relations with God are utterly non-competitive because God, from beyond this plane of created reality, brings about the whole plane of creaturely being and activity in its goodness. (Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, pp. 3-4.)

God is not one (super) being among others. God is not defined as God over against us. (I am not you, and that is part of what makes me me. But not so with God and me.) God is not even just beyond us, not merely incomprehensible, if we conceive of these terms to mean that God is on the same background as us. (As Phillip said to me recently. Actually, yesterday!). Contrary to this, God is transcendent. This means that, as Phillip says, God is not in competition with us (or in cooperation with us for that matter). This is one facet (perhaps the central one) of the uniquely Christian doctrine of God and is a reason why the Genesis creation stories are not to be considered as merely one more example of the generic creation myth of antiquity. The transcendence of God means that God can providentially undergird all that is without in any way compromising creation's own being. God can become fully human in Jesus and remain God without the diminution of either humanity or divinity. God's grace operates and saves us entirely without any contribution from us, yet this in no way diminishes the importance of our response. The sacraments of the church convey an inward grace without diminishing in any way the nature of the 'stuff' of the sacrament. Which is all to say that God is love, and free to love us, without compulsion or need, or due to any kind of mutual self-definition-through-difference, but does this as a total act of absolute love.

It is this fundamental theological insight that prevents Christian belief from spiralling off into incoherence.

Unless the Christian sense of the divine is differentiated from anything and everything in the being of the world, unless the Chrsitian God is differentiated from what philosophers have called the whole, all the Christian mysteries cease to be mysteries. Either they become impossibilities, or they become accommodated to natural necessities, or they are made to compete with what is natural … The Christian distinction between God and the world allows the formulations of the other mysteries to say something and prevents them from shattering as statements. (Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology, p. 38)

Further Thoughts on Transcendence

A guest post from the Revd Dr Phillip Tolliday, lecturer in historical and systematic theology at Flinders University SA and St Barnabas College.

I want to explore further the connection Warren made earlier between transcendence and immanence. There is little doubt that to use a phrase first coined by the post liberal theologian William Placher, we have been witnessing the ‘domestication of transcendence.’ Since at least the 1960s the motif of divine transcendence has been steadily eroding. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which has been the suspicion that a transcendent god is not only a god who is removed and distant from us, but more worryingly, a God whose disposition toward the world is necessarily one of tyranny. The way of overcoming this alleged divine tyranny is to ensure that divine transcendence is subverted by divine immanence.

The problem is alleged to be that divine transcendence necessarily leads to belief in a domineering supreme being. Not surprisingly, as Craig Baron, among others, has pointed out, this leads people to wonder how the existence of such a supreme being is reconcilable with human flourishing. God and humanity appear locked in a competitive death struggle. In attempts to dissolve the dilemma various ‘solutions’ have been proposed, ranging from Deism through to the outright atheism of Feuerbach. It is against this background that we should interpret Sartre’s aphorism that we cannot be fully free as long as God exists. According to this competitive construction of divine transcendence a key project of modernity has consisted of the solving of the problem of this competitive supreme being, either through its marginalization or its elimination.

In our scenario the two protagonists circle each other constantly; one the supreme being and the other the supreme ego. As in the best westerns there isn’t room in town for both of them! One has to die. And the story of modernity may be characterized as the progressive erosion of the supreme being in favour of the equally progressive exultation of the supreme ego. Commencing with Descartes’ Cogito the supreme ego eventually morphs into ‘the self-grounding and self-justifying ego’ that seeks to master its world. However, our less than perfect world is eloquent and manifest testimony to the limitations of the supreme ego. The supreme ego, it seems, is no less tyrannical than the supreme being was alleged to be.

Could it be that competition is the problem here? Might it not be possible to speak of divine transcendence in a way that is non-contrastive (Kathryn Tanner) and thus non-competitive? This is precisely what Craig Baron attempts in his exploration of Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts about God. He notes that competition demands that there be a shared background for both the supreme being and the supreme ego. It doesn’t matter whether that background is the metaphysical equivalent of the boxing ring or the OK Corral – it simply matters that there is one. And the background that has been commonly assumed to be shared by both God and the world is being.

But it is this very notion of a shared background between God and the world, or between a supreme being and a supreme ego that Aquinas calls into question. Aquinas claims that ‘God is not a species or an individual, nor is there any difference in him; nor can he be defined, since every definition is in terms of genus and species.’ Let us not miss the significance of what he is saying here. Everything in the world can be classified in precisely those terms that Aquinas says are not able to be predicated of God. In other words Aquinas is claiming that God is incomparable. God is not another in the world but transcendent to the world, where this transcendence is understood in a non-competitive and non-contrastive way. As Baron puts it, ‘God is not so much somewhere else as somehow else…the non-competitiveness of this differentiation appears when we realize that there is no common frame of reference for God and the world, no field that they share, no ground for which they are fighting, no genus in which they are both contained.’

Ironically our uncritical disdain for divine transcendence has had the unforeseen and presumably unintended consequence of aggregating the tyranny which we had feared from the supreme being and placing it at the feet of the supreme ego. Doubtless this is where it belongs but the domestication of transcendence has meant that the supreme ego must now fix the world - a task requiring, dare I say it, transcendence.

Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity

There are three levels of theological knowledge. The first is the level of simplicity where a person possesses a certain basic level of knowledge. This is not to be derided, for it can be a good, solid understanding of some core theology. However, there is often a lack of critical awareness and an ignorance of the breadth of the Christian tradition.

The second level of theological knowledge is the level of complexity. This begins when people begin some serious study, often at a university degree level. At this level a critical awareness is fostered where the old certainties are questioned and the rich resources of the Christian tradition are encountered. Specific bundles of knowledge on particular topics of theology are acquired, but the person does not see in the complexity the unifying patterns and, ultimately, the beauty of the whole, a whole to which all individual bundles of knowledge must yield. Some people lose heart at this stage, nostalgically remembering the old certainties, but lacking the knowledge and perseverance to push through the sheer busyness and complexity of this stage to the third level of theological knowledge.

The third level of theological knowledge is a deep simplicity that is informed by the complexity of the Christian tradition and its challenges while maintaining a critical awareness. In and through the complexity and the questions that arise people are able to recognise and intuitively grasp the overall structure and meaning of the Christian faith. This does not mean that they know everything, but have learned to recognise the patterns of the Christian faith that make up the beauty of the whole. They are then able to use this intuitive grasp of the whole to explore new questions and apply the profound insights of the Christian faith to life.

The tradition from which I come (Anglican, in the middle, but on the catholic side) is good at all three levels. Despite the Anglican-turned-fundamentalist jibe that says while Anglican they learned nothing and knew nothing, and had to join the fundamentalists to become Christian, Anglicans are generally well grounded in a simple faith that carries them through life and beyond. And we are certainly good at the complexity stage, and have plenty of examples of those who have attained the third level of deep simplicity. Where we have failed is communicating the complexity, and most especially, the deep simplicity in a popular way and at the popular level. The fundamentalists are excellent at this popular level, although they don't have to worry about translating complexity or deep simplicity into a popular level! (What they have is simplistic, but they are very good at communicating it at a popular level.) We need to embrace the popular and communicate both the complexity and especially the deep simplicity, and encourage and develop people who can do so.

The Difference Going to Church Makes in My Life Part 1: Praying

Not being a great pray-er, going to church helps me because:

I actually pray at church. Even if the rest of the week I don’t, I do at church.

And when I pray at church I use a variety of kinds of prayer; indeed, more variety than I use elsewhere. For example, at Holy Communion I confess my failure and hear the words of absolution pronounced. I give thanks to God for all sorts of stuff, and in particular, through the action of taking, blessing, breaking and eating bread (and wine) at Communion. Without the sacramental life of the church my personal prayer life would be narrowed and exclude praying through the ‘stuff’ of the sacraments. (Like bread and wine.)

And when I pray at church I use language that I do not use elsewhere. Words expressing feelings and thoughts, thanksgiving and petitions that I myself would not think of if left to my own devices. The language provided in the liturgy is deeper than my own, and leads me to a deeper place.

When I pray at church there is less self-focus. The problem for most of us when we pray at home is that it too easily becomes self-focused. If not on our own problems and possible suggestions to God to fix them, then the issues that we think are important (and they might be important, but they remain our version of reality alone. When I go to church most of the prayer is first directed to God through Christ and the Spirit in themselves, and only secondarily is my particular focus on life picked up in this great prayer.

And I pray with others. The problem with personal prayer is that it too often remains individual, indeed, even encouraging an assumption of my 'personal relationship' with God. Not that there is anything wrong with this, that is until our 'personal relationship' is no longer subsumed under our primary relationship with God as members of the people of God. The Bible thinks of God's relation to individuals as part of a people, and finally part of the whole created order. Praying with others brings different perspectives, and a background presence of the wholeness of God's salvation, intended for all creation.

Decline is Not Inevitable

In an address to the London Press Club last year the Archbishop of York mocked the illogical use of statistics by those who say the Church of England will disappear in the medium term by paralleling newspaper readership and church attendance. Apparently, according to recent statistics, decline in readership of newspapers in Britain due to the internet can be extrapolated to point to the extinction of printed news by 2043. It is a false extrapolation of the statistics, ignoring the likely response newspapers will make to the decline. Furthermore, the extremely high readership of newspapers of a few years ago might always have indicated a ‘correction’ would occur at some time. As he said, “Such doomsday statistics, as I believe they are, highlight that tendency to extrapolate the worst case scenario from the most celebratory of times.”

And so it is with those who look at the statistics of decline in the Anglican Church of Australia. Extrapolations from the halcyon days of the 1950s to our extinction in 40 years time from now ignore the range of responses churches are making to the decline, and forget that the 1950s was always going to result in decline at some point as the demographics of our church shifted against the demographics of society. (That is, we aged quicker than society in general.)

The important point is that continuing decline is not inevitable. Indeed, for those churches willing to face the facts and respond with trust and courage splashed with a little intelligence, there is a good prognosis for a flourishing life of faith. Now you won’t get that from The Advertiser with its penchant for headlines and simplistic analysis. But let us not be distracted by the lack of sensible analysis in the popular media. We have a real opportunity because there are many people who want Christian faith, and a Christian faith that has depth and a sense of reality and proportion about it. And that is our (middle-Anglican) natural ground. Moreover, there are many people around us who know virtually nothing about Christian faith, and who would respond to the gospel if given a chance.

Morality and the Art of Sacramentality (or Donatists, Donatists Everywhere)

A Church which insisted that its members - or even its clergy - had to be spotless would be an empty Church, or else a dishonest Church." B. Quash, in Quash and Ward, eds, Heresies and How to Avoid Them. See pp. 81-90.

In his book Grace and Necessity Rowan Williams makes the point (from Maritain) that artists who might be considered immoral make good art, breaking any perceived absolute nexus between the morality of the artist and the work of art itself. This is not to make art amoral, because the 'immoral' artist is in the "precarious" (p. 39) position where their self-focus spills over into their art, rendering it unattractive. The judgement here is whether the art is good art, and is not about the morality of the artist.

There is a parallel here with the sacraments of the church and its ministers who administer them. I'm thinking here of the modern day donatists. Unfortunately, donatism is alive and well in the Anglican Church. Donatism was a schismatic movement that cut the church in North Africa, and remained alive and well until the rise ond military victories of Islam. It was a movement of moralists (compounded by politics and economics). The Donatists were hard-liners, expecting a high level of discipline among its members, especially its clergy. They refused the sacraments of the catholic church, and went so far as not recognising the ordination of clergy ordained by bishops who were morally suspect. (In this case the immorality in particular was failure to stand up to persecution and receive martyrdom.) Ben Quash says that a key passage in the dispute between the schismatics and the catholics was the interpretation of the parable of the wheat and weeds. (Matt 13:30) In the Donatist schema the field is the world, for the catholics the field is the church. For the Donatists good and bad co-exist in he world, but not in the church. For the catholics good and bad co-exist in the church. (Anyway, notice that in the parable it is God who does the judging - that's the point of the parable. Rene Girard is good on this.) The catholic tradition, particularly through Augustine, is the tradition which 'won', although donatism was never entirely purged. The result of the catholic victory is what we recognise as authentically the gospel of grace and redemption: God is good to us, sending the rain and sun on the good and bad alike. The efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the personal holiness of the minister. What is important is the goodness of God toward us. The minister acts as a member of the whole people of God, graced by the presence of Christ, who is, after all, the chief minister of the church's sacraments.

This is not to make sacramentality utterly amoral. I think Maritain's observation about the artist and art is helpful here. The self-focussed priest can be the minister of an efficacious sacrament. But that priest is in a precarious position. The danger is that while minimally efficacious, the sacramental expression will be unattractive, even tending toward repellent. Efficacious or not, this kind of sacramental practice will be less effective in the world because no one will come!

I recognise the orders of Sydney evangelicals and the hard catholic right of our church. It appears that some of them struggle to do so to other canonically ordained ministers within our church on the basis of personal morality of the priest or their ordaining bishop. I recognise the orders of Sydney evangelicals who hold to the bizarre heresy that while in being the Father and Son are equal, the Son is subordinate personally to the Father. (My summary of that bizarre 'doctrine commission (?)' report from the Diocese of Sydney a few years ago.) Too bad the donatists can't reciprocate.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving seems to be a natural response in most of us. Of course, we can take things for granted, and thanksgiving dribbles away to virtually nothing. And sometimes despair can overwhelm our sense of thanksgiving and gratitude for the good things in our lives and our future. And some are turned away from thanksgiving through the ideology of scientism - the ideology that universalizes the scientific method into a philosophy of everything - and whatever does not fit this universal method of knowing, well, it is deemed not to exist or doesn't matter. Under this ideology thanksgiving makes no sense. Because if we give thanks we are giving thanks to something/someone. And scientism can't accept this.

Thanksgiving, because it points to something/someone beyond ourselves and tells us that we are not the centre of the universe, is humbling. We are not the source of the goodness for which we give thanks. The sourceof the goodness lies beyond us. This humbling of human egoism is spiritually necessary, and thanksgiving is the easiest and least painful method of stepping off the stage of human hubris.

Thanksgiving also moves us out of ourselves, in response to the who or what we are acknowledging (no matter how inchoately). a residue of the Trinity.

Christianity believes that Jesus is the human face of this something/someone, and that we have a genuine and true encounter with this something/someone in Jesus and the Spirit. This someone/something is not ultimately a meaningless void upon which we apply a thin veneer of human meaning. It is not a random or arbitrary fortune, and is not utterly opaque to human scrutiny. The crucified-risen Jesus is a true revelation of this someone or something. Indeed, Jesus does more than just reveal the true nature of this someone or something, but gives us the opportunity to be included into its goodness in the deepest and most profound way.

Transcendence Enables Intimacy

It is common amongst those who have studied theology in a more progressive theological institution to be deeply suspicious of or even reject the transcendence of God. They do so believing that by rejecting transcendence intimacy takes its rightful place in Christian theology unimpeded by the distant God of cold, bossy and controlling religion. Now, it is of course true that the distant and cold god is presented to the faithful in terms of transcendence. A god of a great gap between himself and us, and who is the heavenly image of an unemotionally involved father. And it is true that this betrays Jesus and the one he named 'Abba', and the specifically Christian doctrine of God (the Trinity). The god of coldness and control (predicated on distance) is not Christian, and let us affirm our atheism in respect to that god. But this is nothing more than a pale imitation of real transcendence when applied to God. It is precisely because God is transcendent that the deepest intimacy with God is possible. Transcendence and intimacy are correlates not enemies. This God is free because of God's transcendence to be vulnerable and to mould our response into God's own life.

The ontological chasm between us and God (wrong language actually because it makes it sound like God is just ontologically different from us, but still a 'something' like us, but anyway ...) is the ground upon which intimacy stands, rather than a philosophical affirmation we wheel out occasionally. It is this insight that was the subtext of the christological and trinitarian debates of the early church. I would not be overstating the case by much if I said that the God-world relationship is the most important theological doctrine to get right: everything else will be conditioned by it.

I can't resist putting in one final paragraph. It is because transcendence and intimacy are correlates that the dual nature of Christ is not a nonsense: human and divine in Christ are not competitiors because of the transcendence of God. (This is why many of those from progressive theological colleges reject the doctrine of the Incarnation: they don't have a truly transcendent God.) Correctly understood, the transcendence of God (that is, God is not just a more transcendent version of us) is also the underlying theological principle of grace. It is because of the transcendence of God that human action adds nothing to what God does for us on our behalf. However, it is also because of God's transcendence that there can be a synergy between human and divine, and why, when correctly understood, it is possible to talk about us as co-creators with God.

The Road to Emmaus

Some points on Lk 24:13-35:

1. The Two disciples are leaving Jerusalem, reversing the determined journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and his death and glorification. (9:51) Their retreat from jerusalem is a symbol of their lack of understanding of the events that have just occurred and the unravelling of their discipleship of the crucified-risen Jesus.
   
   
2. They are disappointed, for they had thought that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel (24:21). Jesus has not met their expectations and hopes. A crucified messiah, in their minds, is not the messiah. (See 1Cor 1:18-25)
   
   
3. They can recite the events of the past few days to the stranger in an almost creed like fashion. (Compare Acts 2:22-24; 10:38) Creed like knowledge of the events is not faith.
   
   
4. And they even know about the resurrection of Jesus. But a crucified-risen messiah does not fit their expectations, and so they are going home.
   
   
5. Jesus' response is twofold. First he teaches them the necessity of his death and glorification, and provides them with a christological reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. (24:26-27) This is more than proof-texting, but a new way of reading and understanding the mission and hope of Israel in the light of the crucified-risen Lord.
   
   
6. The two disciples show the stranger hospitality. In this they follow the example of Jesus, who was hospitable around the table. (7:36-50; 9:12-17)
   
   
7. And then Jesus makes his second response to their misunderstanding of who he is and his mission by breaking the bread. They remember the hospitable Jesus who gave the breaking of the bread added meaning with the words 'This is my body.' (See 22:14-23) Imbued with new meaning, the breaking of the bread proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus and the sure arrival of the kingdom.
   
   
8. After having their eyes opened to the Scriptures and practicing the hospitality of Jesus, and then witnessing the breaking of the bread symbolic of his death and the coming of God's kingdom, they finally understand. Word and sacrament come together, mutually reinforcing one another. (After witnessing the breaking of the bread and Jesus vanishes, they say, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" [24:32])
   
   
9. They return to Jerusalem, retracing their steps and the way of Jesus himself on his way to his death and resurrection. Arriving in jerusalem they hear the proclamation, once again, of the resurrection of Jesus. And this time, knowing the nature of his messiahship, they join by relating how they have come to recognise the crucified-risen Jesus. (24:35)
   
   

What the Trinity Is

• The Trinity is, at its heart, a love story. When you read the words 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit' this is their simple meaning.
• We are included in this story of love by sheer grace. That is, God does not need us, but loves us.
• To be included in this love story is to be included into the very life of God because God is love. That is, to be loved by God is to receive God because God is love. God is not a shadowy figure behind God's love; God is love.

• The Trinity is revelation and salvation.

• The Trinity reorders our self-understanding and vision. (E.g. personhood, society, church, and salvation)
• The different areas of theology (e.g. sacraments, Christology, grace, etc.) are just different ways of talking about the Trinity.

• The Trinity is sensitive to contemporary interest in ecology, intimacy, justice, freedom, and respect for 'the other', etc.

However abstract trinitarian theology may have become in its doctrinal mode, there is, at its heart, the simplicity and complexity of a love-story. It tells of how God, out of love, gave what is most intimate to himself, his Son and Spirit, to be involved with this human world as saviour and redeemer. (Tony Kelly)