Responding to Guyer’s Theses on Anglicanism Part 5

I recently came across Guyer's Weblog and wish to respond to his Theses on Anglicanism all  42 of them 1 by one.

V. The Anglican conception of itself as a via media must be historicized, for it has had different connotations in different contexts.  It cannot be reified as an ahistorical type which asserts its own validity by always already assuming that the history of Anglican theology has been nothing but the outcome of an overriding desire to avoid theological extremes, regardless as to what these supposed extremes may or may not have been.

At one level I must agree with this also, one of the biggest issues in Anglican theology in the present is that the extremes of theology are now far greater than ever before and so things which would not have been considered by any church during the reformation are now finding themselves part of the discussion as via media. This is why I believe the via media should be subjected to something. Maybe it needs to be historicized, I personally though believe that if it was subjected to the Book of Common Prayer 1662 that all things that within the confineds of the theology set out in that book can be the via media and that things beyond it are indeed beyond the via media. This I admit is a frorm of historicization.

Responding to Guyer’s Theses on Anglicanism Part 4

I recently came across Guyer's Weblog and wish to respond to his Theses on Anglicanism all  42 of them 1 by one.

IV. To ignore the theology of monarchy is to ignore the theology of law and the importance of both to Anglican history.  Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was a defense of both monarchy and law.  Because we have not yet conceived of ourselves as post-monarchical, we have not yet begun to consider the meaning of law for our post-monarchical church.

This is very interesting, I'm at one level not sure what to make of this, I know from my exprience of working at St.Peter's Cathedral that here in Adelaide there is a great following of St.Edward the confessor due to his theology of law and they had a strong belief that it made alot of sense. They of course were all monarchists as well. This though is not looking towards a post-monarchical church which extends beyond the realms of the British Commonwealth. Does Anglicanism need to seek a certan legal system? And if so what legal system or what does it need to look like?

Responding to Guyer’s Theses on Anglicanism Part 3

I recently came across Guyer's Weblog and wish to respond to his Theses on Anglicanism all  42 of them 1 by one.

III. Anglicanism must re-conceive itself as a portion of the catholic Church that was once monarchical, but is now post-monarchical.  Anglicanism has yet to conceive of itself as post-monarchical, and it cannot do this until it understands what it meant for it to have once been monarchical.

At one level I must agree with this, the Anglican Communion needs to understand more deeply its history in order to conceive its future. However, I do not think that the Roman Catholic Church nor the Orthodox Church is post-monarchical. I also wonder if this in turn would challenge the role of Bishops in the church?

I think the Anglican Communion very much like the British Commonwealth need to work out what holds it together now that several generations have past since Colonisation the similarities between the mother and the daughters are now different as the daughters are now defining themselves. It means that though the mother is still honoured it has to move from a position of superiority to being one amongst equals. I think this also means for Anglicanism we need to see that each Diocese is indeed the base unit and each is equal with the other.

Responding to Guyer’s Theses on Anglicanism Part 2

I recently came across Guyer's Weblog and wish to respond to his Theses on Anglicanism all  42 of them 1 by one.

II. The Anglican reformation was not, as is commonly claimed, primarily political and only secondarily theological.  The enthronement of the monarch as the “supreme head” of the Church of England was as much a theological development as it was a political development.  Thus, Anglican history and theology cannot be understood without paying close attention to the history and theology of monarchy.

This is I agree central to understanding alot of the development of Anglican theology from early on, the belief in One God, One Country, One King, One Faith that defined the people and unified them. I wonder though if this is actually when Anglicanism now struggles because we no longer have "One Country or One King" though we could at least argue we have one King in Jesus. I wonder with the division of One country or at least one motherland if it hasn't also caused a divionsion in the understanding of our belief in One God and One faith.

Sermon: You say may we see Jesus, Jesus says may you See God’s Glory (John 12:20-33)

Many of you will know this nursery rhyme:

 Pussy cat, Pussy cat where have you been? I've been to London to see the Queen.

Pussy cat, pussy Cat what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

All the way to London, but instead of seeing the Queen in all her royal regalia, this poor cat sees only a mouse. Basically, this feline missed what it went to London to see.
Now I’m sure we’ve all gone to the shop to pick up some milk and when we’ve got home we’ve done a whole heap of shopping but we still do not have any milk to put in the fridge. It is one of the things that it is so natural for us to do as human beings to get distracted from the task at hand to fail to remember or see our task.
So for us, one of the things our Gospel invites us to do is ask ourselves when it comes to looking at Jesus, what do we see? Do we see a teacher, do we see a miracle working, do we see an example of how to live our life, do we see our Saviour the one who gives us eternal life, or maybe we see him as all these and more?
But, how does Jesus want us to see him? Our story begins, by some Greeks, meaning some people who were not Jewish but who spoken the trade language of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire namely Greek, who come to Philip and request to see Jesus. I am certain that in our own Christian Journey’s we’ve at some staged prayed, or asked someone to show us Jesus and we’ve probably been asked by others in one way or another to show them Jesus.
These Greek’s approach Philip from Galilee, a person with a Greek name from a fairly strong Greek speaking area with their request, Philip though is unsure what to do so he goes and tells Andrew before they all go to Jesus. However, the response that Andrew, Philip and these Greek’s get from Jesus is probably not what any of them expected.
Jesus responded by saying that the hour has come, early in John’s Gospel we are told several times that Jesus was not arrested because his hour had not yet come. So the mysterious hour of John’s Gospel finally has come and Jesus declares that it is the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified. We so often have a trouble understanding what Glory is, we sing hymns about it and we know it is something that belongs to God but it is a hard concept.
The Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, speaks about God’s glory:

God’s Glory is “God’s overflowing, generous, creative love - God’s concern, if you like, for the flourishing and well-being of everything else. Of course, this too will redound to God’s glory because God, as the creator, is glorified when creation is flourishing and able to praise him gladly and freely. .... That is the sort of God he is, and ‘God’s righteousness’ is a way of saying, Yes, and God will be true to that character…It isn’t that God basically wants to condemn and then finds a way to rescue some from that disaster. It is that God longs to bless, to bless lavishly, and so to rescue and bless those in danger of tragedy - and therefore must curse everything that thwarts and destroys the blessing of his world and his people. [1]

So we see that for Jesus to be speaking of being Glorified is about God’s overflowing, generous, creative love for God’s creation.
So perhaps because God’s Glory is found in God’s love for creation, that Jesus starts to speak about something that is simple in creation, a seed. That unless the seed is buried and dies, that it will stay by itself, this is something we all know, we’ve all planted a seed of some form and seen it grow.
Then Jesus goes on talking about loving and hating one’s life. What does that mean and how does it fit in with Jesus' glory? The person who is fond of their life, the person who wants to live for themself, always getting their way and advantage, this person will destroy it.
Why is that? Because there is no way that you and I are smart enough; can look at all the factors and ensure that we are the winner in life. We only have to go ask some of the great super fund managers and those who were on top of the world’s markets, they have discovered all too well that what one has built for themselves can so easily be lost in a twinkling of an eye. So Jesus here is challenging directly, those who believe they can make it for themselves, in fact Jesus Challenges even the concept that there are winners in life.
If this is the case, though, then to understand the glory of Jesus, we shall have to see it in his dying. There in the cross we see his glory. He is dying to give many life. He is being lifted up on the cross, so that we can live.
That seems altogether strange, that the only way to give life is to die.
However, we need to remember that what destroys our life as well as our truly living is sin in our lives. There is no one here that can say, "I have lived my life until this moment and have done nothing wrong.” Evil in the world has affected all of us both in what we have done and the things done to us. We sometimes blame our own wrongs on those that have done wrong to us or sometimes we dismiss it as not wrong or not harming anyone, but, as God points out, life becomes a lie, and truth has left its place in us.
It is on the Cross that Jesus takes on Sin and death and it is only in his dying that we are able to see him overcome Sin and Death on Easter day.
It is there on the cross that we see Jesus' glory. He is about giving life to us, who without him are dead in sin. Jesus reveals his true nature and God’s nature of Glory, not a condemning God, but a God who has compassion beyond anything you and I have ever felt. The cross is God's great act of love towards us.
God moves toward us in the only way God can, by removing what will kill us, by removing sin from us. God removes sin through the cross, the suffering and death of Jesus. Jesus is asking his Father, to glorify his name. Jesus knows his Father has sent him, to die on the cross. Jesus does not want to be saved from the cross, a thought that totally transcends our way of behaviour.
We would escape all suffering, all blame, all taking of others burdens, if we could.
Jesus wants to show us the nature of the heart of God that is forgiving, carrying the burdens of others, giving others life.
Jesus' cross attracts all people and either it is accepted as God's glory because of the resurrection or dismissed as a worthless myth because the reality is too much to accept.
Today as we Journey through Lent towards the Cross we are called again to see Jesus as he truly is; more than we can imagine; For in Jesus, we see God’s Glory, the Glory that we are called into, all we have to do is Look, See and Follow.
 May we do that. Amen.

---

[1] Wright, N.T., Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, 2009, pg. 51

Responding to Guyer’s Theses on Anglicanism Part 1

I recently came across Guyer's Weblog and wish to respond to his Theses on Anglicanism all  42 of them 1 by one.

I. Anglican history comprises two distinct ecclesiological streams.  The first is that of monarchical Anglicanism, which began with Henry VIII; this was the dominant stream for more than 300 years.  The second is that of the Anglican Communion, which began with the first Lambeth Conference; this is now the dominant stream at both the international and national (i.e., provincial) levels.  The Anglican Communion is a non-monarchical church (ekklesia) that depends first and foremost upon the apostolic succession of bishops as a guarantee of its historic, catholic nature.

I agree with the division of Anglican history and its two distint ecclesiological streams though I do not think they are exclusive of each other. I also think that the "Anglican Communion" stream is dependent upon more than just the apostolic succession of bishops, it is also dependent upon the Instruments of Communion, the Book of Common Prayer (1662) as a standard of theology and potentially soon also the Anglican Covenant. I do agree though that what holds the Anglican Commuion together is not the Monarch as the defender of the faith, this of course has to be the case when the Anglican Church stretches beyond the realm of her Majesty.  

The Church must stop trivialising Easter Christians must keep their nerve: the Resurrection isn’t a metaphor, it’s a physical fact

  This is a fantastic piece of work from N.T.Wright, her is the original source but I've reposted it here as well.

The Church must stop trivialising Easter

Christians must keep their nerve: the Resurrection isn’t a metaphor, it’s a physical fact

 

Private Eye ran a cartoon some years ago of St Peter standing in front of Jesus's Cross and saying to the other Disciples: “It's time to put this behind us now and move on.” It was a satire not on Christian belief, but on politicians and counsellors, and their trivialising mantras. It depended on Jesus's death being not just an odd, forgettable event - and that it was His Resurrection, rather than a shoulder- shrugging desire to “move on”, that got the early Christians going.
Easter was the pilot project. What God did for Jesus that explosive morning is what He intends to do for the whole creation. We who live in the interval between Jesus's Resurrection and the final rescue and transformation of the whole world are called to be new-creation people here and now. That is the hidden meaning of the greatest festival Christians have.
This true meaning has remained hidden because the Church has trivialised it and the world has rubbished it. The Church has turned Jesus's Resurrection into a “happy ending” after the dark and messy story of Good Friday, often scaling it down so that “resurrection” becomes a fancy way of saying “He went to Heaven”. Easter then means: “There really is life after death”. The world shrugs its shoulders. We may or may not believe in life after death, but we reach that conclusion independently of Jesus, of odd stories about risen bodies and empty tombs.
But “resurrection” to 1st-century Jews wasn't about “going to Heaven”: it was about the physically dead being physically alive again. Some Jews (not all) believed that God would do this for all people in the end. Nobody, including Jesus's followers, was expecting one person to be bodily raised from the dead in the middle of history. The stories of the Resurrection are certainly not “wish-fulfilments” or the result of what dodgy social science calls “cognitive dissonance”. First-century Jews who followed would-be messiahs knew that if your leader got killed by the authorities, it meant you had backed the wrong man. You then had a choice: give up the revolution or get yourself a new leader. Going around saying that he'd been raised from the dead wasn't an option.
Unless he had been. Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn't have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he's still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he's gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve.
The historian must explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite His execution (He hadn't defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape that it did. The only explanation that will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians insisted upon - He really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just reanimated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.
Let's be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn't mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God's life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect - and in the whole world.
Now, suddenly, the real meaning of Easter comes into view, as well as the real reason why it has been trivialised and sidelined. Easter is about a new creation that has already begun. God is remaking His world, challenging all the other powers that think that is their job. The rich, wise order of creation and its glorious, abundant beauty are reaffirmed on the other side of the thing that always threatens justice and beauty - death. Christianity's critics have always sneered that nothing has changed. But everything has. The world is a different place.
Easter has been sidelined because this message doesn't fit our prevailing world view. For at least 200 years the West has lived on the dream that we can bring justice and beauty to the world all by ourselves.
The split between God and the “real” world has produced a public life that lurches between anarchy and tyranny, and an aesthetic that swings dramatically between sentimentalism and brutalism. But we still want to do things our own way, even though we laugh at politicians who claim to be saving the world, and artists who claim “inspiration” when they put cows in formaldehyde.
The world wants to hush up the real meaning of Easter. Death is the final weapon of the tyrant or, for that matter, the anarchist, and resurrection indicates that this weapon doesn't have the last word. When the Church begins to work with Easter energy on the twin tasks of justice and beauty, we may find that it can face down the sneers of sceptics, and speak once more of Jesus in a way that will be heard.
The Right Rev Dr Tom Wright is Bishop of Durham

 

Key Doctrines

In a recent post by Rev. Dr. Warren Huffa called creedal Ideology?
he suggest that there are four key doctrines for us to read the Scriptures through, Incarnation, Trinity, Transcendence and Grace.

I tend to agree with him that reading the Scriptures through those lenses makes alot of sense. However, I believe that if you only use those four lenses you will still fall short of what Orthodox and Primitative Christianity is. For, I believe that is not placing  the Resurrection of Jesus high enough. I have found that having read N.T.Wright's Suprised by Hope that understanding that the Resurrection does not mean simply we go to Heaven when we die. That it actually means that one day we all will be Resurrected with the creation itself and that Jesus is the sign of that, suddenly Scripture makes sense, it becomes clearer than ever before.

That might sound strange for me to say that it makes Scripture clearer, however, I believe that Scripture is a faith document written by people of faith and for us to fully engage with it and understand it we actually need to hold the same faith. The early church believed in the Resurrection of the Dead, have a look at the Creeds it is there in black and white, it is not code it is what it says, Resurrection of the Dead. Yes, we go to Heaven when we die, but that is not it nor is that what the Creeds nor the Scriptures get really excited about.

Jesus is Lord or Jesus is God?

An interesting comment I came across Creeds: Arius

In studying doctrinal development, the one thing that I have noticed in the creeds, contrary to the Apostles and the Apostolic Fathers, such as Ignatius, is that Christ is not wholly called God, but Lord.

This is actually a significant thing, to think if you only call  Jesus "Lord" which is a fitting title you are not giving him equality with God. It is very subtle in these creeds but it is significant.

I wonder if I went to the Diocese of Syndey if I would hear sermons that gave Jesus the position of "Lord" or would they see him as God from God?

Something I should ponder in my own Preaching too, "Am I, diministing Christ in my preaching by preaching even if subtly that he is only Lord and not God?"

An Anglican Covenant - The Third (Ridley Cambridge) Draft

I  recently spent some time reading the An Anglican Covenant - The Third (Ridley Cambridge) Draft and I found myself greatly impressed. When I began reading it I originally thought 'this has no teeth', however, as I read I started to see that it was in the detail that the strength of it appears.

I can already see this as being a better alternative than the GAFCON movement as a way forward, though those that would gain out of GAFCON would not support it and nor will those that would gain out of no changes occuring. I believe it will result in some churches being left behind and it says nothing of what ministry could or should be undertaken in places where the Church has no presence or where the church that is in a place has broken the covenant. This is perhaps its biggest oversight, however, apart from that oversight which to many would be threatening if there was detail it is fantastic.

Seperation of Church and State in Australia

I came across this really fascinating articleWhen there is no separation of church and state by Max Wallace

It is worth a read in itself, but it got me thinking what does it mean that there is actually no seperation of Church and State in Australia? What does it mean that their just isn't an Established religion?

Does it mean simply that all religions can be arms of the State as long as they are obeying the Law?

Does this actually mean that religion is subservient to the State and that is all? That  we have the perfect Secular State that is able to control all beliefs by allowing all beliefs?

It is perhaps more of a worry to us that that all we have is the non Establishment of a religion so that religion is not afforded a political influence in our society rather than Seperation of Church and State where they are seen as seperate realms of influence.

Sermon: The return of the Presence of God

In life there are moments that just change the way we see everything in our world. Sometimes these events are personal, such as getting, our drivers licence, our first job, or getting married. And then other times these events are more communal such as a major Olympic record being broken, people walking on the moon, or something horrible such as September 11. These moments in our lives change the way we view everything else, such as getting our first job suddenly means we have money to spend and we feel independent and empowered, an event such as people walking on the moon left a generation of people dreaming what might be possible and knowing that those dreams could become a reality.  We can all probably name very quickly 3 or 4 events from within our life time and probably before our life time which have influenced the way we see the entire world.

          Our Gospel for today is just one of those events that change the perspective of view and on so many levels.  In fact we can see three levels straight away, the first is for Jesus himself, who in his experience of baptism finds himself confirmed as God’s son, the second is for the people of Israel at the time in that this is the moment that John the Baptist had been calling them to prepare for and the third is for us today it is in Jesus baptism that through our own baptism we find ourselves identified with Christ and Christ’s whole ministry.

          However, this morning I want to speak about the significance of Jesus’ baptism theologically from the perspective of the first century Jew and what it meant so that we have a deeper understanding of what it means to us today.

          The Jewish people of Jesus’ day were a people conquered, their nation had fallen to the Babylonians and though they had returned to their land they were continuously conquered and subjected to rule from outside from Assyrians through to the Romans of the first century. What made it worse though was that when they had been conquered their own God had sent them into exile. This was not any exile though this exile was the reverse of how they came into the land, having been lead out of Egypt by smoke and fire by God and then by the Ark of the Covenant through the wilderness into the promised land, the Ark being the very place where God’s Glory resided and connected the people in worship of God and which was then brought into Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem allowing the people to worship God there. This exile was the undoing of this connection with God’s presence, not only were the people lead away and the temple in which they worshipped destroyed but as we can read Ezekiel chapter 10 the presence of God which had resided in the temple had lifted up and left on the cherubim. The people had been abandoned by the very presence of God.

          This is what influenced the view of the first century Jew and alongside this was a promise and this promise was that God that YHWH would return to them.  Yet, God had not yet returned, they had returned to the land, they had rebuilt the temple, yet no one had seen God’s presence return and the fact that they were still under the rule of an oppressor demonstrated to them in a practical way that God had not returned to them.

          Yet, along came John the Baptist proclaiming to them

“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In some ways I wonder if John even knew what he was proclaiming, but he was calling the people to prepare and for them to be baptised in the Jordan. This baptism in the Jordan was more than just seeking forgiveness of Sins, for the people it was if they were joining their ancestors in crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land as if they were coming out of Egypt themselves. And it was to this situation that Jesus came, now I do not think we can really know what Jesus thought he was doing but he obviously felt compelled to be baptised and join with the people.  In doing this though Jesus was starting his ministry. What then becomes more significant, is that in Jesus’ baptism he is declared to be God’s son and thus actually God’s presence on earth. This baptism becomes the return of God, the return of YHWH to the people of God. It becomes Jesus the Son of God leading the people into the Promised Land once more.

Now, you are all probably thinking this is all well and good but where does this leave us today in 2009. And that is a fantastic thought! Today is the first Sunday in Lent and as we journey through Lent it is a Journey with Jesus to the Cross and to the Resurrection, today though our Gospel is taking us to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry and his journey. It is his journey which changed the world that we need to recall today, it is his journey as the very Son of God bringing God’s presence again to God’s people Israel but also opening up the door forever for every single person to enter into relationship with God; To know not only Jesus, but to know God the father and to know in us the presence of the Holy Spirit in which John said that Jesus would baptise us in. In a way which cannot be broken by the mistakes and sins of human beings; for as we journey to the Cross this Lent we journey to the Resurrection where death and sin are overcome in the very Person of Jesus who not only has brought the presence of God to us in his ministry on earth, but whom has called us into his relationship with God the father. So that we are drawn into the reality and view that God loves each one of us so deeply and so perfectly.

So today, as the first Sunday in Lent we are on a journey to know deeper the presence of God, that has been declared by Jesus’ ministry and declared in his very baptism. We may find that this journey takes us into the wilderness like Jesus after his baptism as we wrestle with what it means that God loves us so much that he became one of us that he became incarnate and dwelt with us. We also may find that deep joy that comes from knowing that Love and find ourselves radiating that. Either way, I pray that each one of you as we journey towards the Cross and the Resurrection that you find yourself knowing God deeper. Amen

Question 5 to N.T.Wright by Ben Witherington

Original interview by Ben Witherington

QUESTION FIVE

In a recent book on a Christian view of work, David Jensen says that we are not co-laborers with God, building the Kingdom on earth, but merely engaging in grateful responsive labor to the purely divine work. This seems to be an attempt to avoid suggesting that our deeds have something to do with our own salvation whether present or future or the coming of the Kingdom whether present or future.

From the last section of your book Surprised by Hope, it seems clear that you think Jensen is saying too little, and indeed is wrong. Help us connect the dots between our future hope in Kingdom come, and our present work. Is it a mere foreshadowing of Kingdom come, or an actual foretaste, and so part of that work? Does what we do now, get perfected when Jesus and the Kingdom come in full? What does it mean to be co-laborers with Christ and why should that give us hope in the present as well as for the future?



ANSWER

5. We are not building the kingdom by our own efforts, no. The Kingdom remains God's gift, new creation, sheer grace. But, as part of that grace already poured out in Jesus Christ and by the Spirit, we are building FOR the kingdom. I use the image of the eleventh-century stonemason, probably illiterate, working away on one or two blocks of stone according to the orders given to him. He isn't building the Cathedral; he is building FOR the Cathedral. When the master mason/architect gathers up all the small pieces of stone at which people have been working away, he will put them into the great edifice which he's had in mind all along and which he alone can build -- but FOR WHICH we can and must build in the present time. Note 1 Corinthians 3, the Temple-building picture, and the way it relates directly to 1 Cor 15.58: what you do in the Lord is NOT IN VAIN, because of the resurrection.

I have absolutely no idea how it might be that a great symphony or painting, or the small act of love and gentleness shown to an elderly patient dying in hospital, or Wilberforce campaigning to end the slave trade, or the sudden generosity which makes a street beggar happy all day -- how any or all of those find a place in God's eventual kingdom. He's the architect, not me. He has given us instructions on the little bits of stone we are meant to be carving. How he puts them together is his business.

Question 4 to N.T.Wright by Ben Witherington

Original interview by Ben Witherington

QUESTION FOUR

Joel Green and other NT scholars have been conferencing with neuroscientists and writing a good deal about how the mind is simply the software of the brain, and without the physical body, the whole person simply ceases to exist. In other words, they are advocates of some sort of monism in the form of the equation 'no body=no person'.

I take it from many things you say in 'Surprised by Hope' that you believe in a limited dualism between body and soul, or body and personality, such that the person survives death and goes to be with the Lord, but that ultimately that dualism will be resolved when the resurrection of the body happens, and those in Christ are made like him once and for all.

How would you answer the monists, who insist they have mind/brain science on their side?


ANSWER

4. I do think -- and at this point Aquinas, and the Greek Orthodox theologians, and the early fathers, agree with me -- that humans are incomplete without a body.

However, I agree with theologians Jewish and Christian, ancient and modern, that if there is to be a resurrection that presupposes some kind of continuity between the embodied person now and the embodied person then. One way of 'solving' this might be to suggest that at death we are 'fast-tracked' straight to the eschaton; I don't buy that because the new world will be made out of the old one, not created de novo, and that clearly hasn't happened yet.

Another way of 'solving' it is to say that God 'remembers' us, not just with a kind of nostalgic looking back at the person we once were but are no longer, but that he somehow holds us in life (as the Psalmist says) within his own being. Hence Polkinghorne's image: God will download our software onto his hardware until the time when he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves. For me the telling points are Jesus' words to the brigand: TODAY you will be with me in Paradise -- though Jesus won't be raised for another three days; and Paul's in Philippians, 'My desire is to depart and be with Christ which is far better'. I don't think Paul could have said that if he'd believed it would be a non-existent state prior to the resurrection. Wisdom 3 of course uses the language of 'souls in the hand of God', which may be a way of saying pretty much the same thing.

I don't like thinking of this as 'dualism', but rather as a temporary duality, a kind of half-existence with God obviously taking the complete initiative to hold in being the true identity etc of persons who once had full bodily identity and will again...

Question 3 to N.T.Wright by Ben Witherington

Original interview by Ben Witherington

QUESTION THREE

Question 3--- About half way through your book you make clear that Purgatory is not a Biblical doctrine, and that of course salvation is not a reward earned by good works.

There does however seem to be both in early Jewish traditions and the teachings of Jesus and Paul a connection between good works and some sort of reward when the Kingdom comes on earth (not, it would appear, rewards of varying status in heaven, or years off of purgatory).

What do you make of this, and passages like 2 Cor. 5.10 which speak of all Christians being accountable at the bema seat judgment of Christ for the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad?

If salvation is by grace through faith, what do these rewards amount to? And is there no correlation between behavior in this life and getting into the eschatological Kingdom on earth later, as Gal. 5 would seem to suggest?



ANSWER

3. Rewards etc. As C. S. Lewis pointed out a long time ago, there is a big difference between a child (a) passing a French exam and being given a bicycle as a 'reward' and the same child (b) being given, instead, a month in Paris now that she is able to enjoy and profit from it.

Not a totally accurate example but it helps: if the final state to which we look forward is that of complete humanness, fully reflecting God's image into the world, and if our faith, hope, love, fruits of the Spirit, meekness, patience, etc etc in the present are genuine anticipations of that, then the final state will be from that point of view the reward (b) will be ontologically connected with the preceding activity.

Both Jesus' basic ethics and Paul's are eschatological, that is, they are based on the fact that the kingdom is already inaugurated as an act of sheer grace and looking forward to the fact that the kingdom will one day be consummated, also as an act of sheer grace, and celebrating the fact that what grace does is to enable failed, sinful human beings to be caught up in God's restorative justice so that, by that same grace active through the Spirit in their lives, and by their Spirit-enabled thinking through of what it's all about (Romans 12.2, etc etc), they are anticipating in the present some aspects at least of the full humanity which will be theirs at the last. Again, much more could be said, not least on how to retrieve the notion of 'virtue' from a fully biblical point of view.

Question 2 to N.T.Wright by Ben Witherington

 Original Interview Ben Witherington

QUESTION TWO

Question 2--- There seem to have been at least two persons who saw the risen Jesus on or after Easter who were not amongst his disciples at the time---- James his brother and Saul on Damascus Road. One of these surely took place during the initial period of appearances, the other after those 40 or so days, which is to say after the Ascension. Yet they both claimed equally to have seen the risen Lord.

In your view was either of these appearances to non-disciples visionary in character, and does it make any difference to your case that resurrection always meant something that happened to a body after death and the initial afterlife?



ANSWER
2. James, Paul and 'visions'. The difficulty here is that in our culture a 'vision' is thought of as a 'purely subjective' thing, so that when people say 'so-and-so had a vision' they assume there is no correlated phenomena in our own space-time-matter world. The whole NT is predicated on a different view: that heaven and earth are twin parts of God's good creation, and that they overlap and interlock in a variety of surprising ways, so that sometimes people really do see right into God's dimension and sometimes aspects of God's dimension -- in this case, the risen body of Jesus -- are visible from within our dimension.

That is of course what I think was happening when Paul saw Jesus, as I have explained in the relevant chapter of The Resurrection of the Son of God. Such moments are genuine anticipations of the final day when heaven and earth will come together as one glorious reality, when 'the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea'. Our culture is built on the denial that such a thing is possible, let alone desirable, so things fall apart into either 'ordinary seeing' or 'vision', the first being 'objective' and the latter 'subjective'. To unravel this further would need a few paragraphs on epistemology...

Question 1 to N.T.Wright by Ben Witherington

 Original Interview Ben Witherington

QUESTION ONE

Since both Europe and America are rapidly becoming more multi-cultural and emphasizing the goodness of religious diversity, it is natural to expect an increasing diversity of afterlife views even in the West. In light of this fact, how would you approach taking your message of hope to the streets, how would you do evangelism on this important topic in this post-modern post-Christian setting and era?




ANSWER
1. Diversity of afterlife views. Yes, indeed, we are becoming more diverse (though not hugely so I think in the UK -- there tends to be an assumption that Christians believe in heaven and hell, some other religions believe in reincarnation, and most people are either agnostic or think death is final). There aren't actually too many options, really, in either the ancient or the modern world; just variations on well-known themes.

I don't see the full Christian eschatology as the primary thing to talk about in evangelism. The primary thing is Jesus himself, and the vision of the loving, rescuing creator God we get when we focus on him. However, the vision of new heavens and new earth, and of God's project, already begun in Jesus, to flood the whole creation with his restorative justice, does indeed generate a powerful evangelistic message: not just 'you're sinful, here's how to escape the consequences', but 'your sinful life means you're failing to be a genuine human being, contributing to God's project of justice and beauty -- here's how the project got back on track, and here's how you can be part of it, both in your own life being set right and made 'something beautiful for God' and in what you do THROUGH your life, bringing justice, hope, joy and beauty to God's world as we look forward to the final day'... I'd better not go further or you'll get the whole sermon?

Credo: 'Faith is the defeat of probability by possibility' You don’t have to be religious to have a sense of awe at the sheer improbability of things

From timesonline

Credo: 'Faith is the defeat of probability by possibility'

You don’t have to be religious to have a sense of awe at the sheer improbability of things

Jonathan Sacks

We owe a debt to the British Humanist Association for its advert on buses: “There’s probably no God.” It is thought-provoking in a helpful way, because it invites us to reflect not only on God but also on probability.
One of the discoveries of modern science is the sheer improbability of the Universe. It is shaped by six fundamental forces which, had they varied by an infinitesimal amount, the Universe would have expanded or imploded in such a way as to preclude the formation of stars. Unless we assume the existence of a million or trillion other universes (itself a large leap of faith), the fact that there is a universe at all is massively improbable.
So is the existence of life. Among the hundred billion galaxies, each with billions of stars, only one planet known to us, Earth, seems finely tuned for the emergence of life. And by what intermediate stages did non-life become life?
It’s a puzzle so improbable that Francis Crick was forced to argue that life was born somewhere else, Mars perhaps, and came here via meteorite, so making the mystery yet more mysterious.
How did life become sentient? And how did sentience grow to become self-consciousness, that strange gift, known only to Homo sapiens. So many improbabilities, Stephen J. Gould concluded, that if the process of evolution were run again from the beginning it is doubtful whether Homo sapiens would ever have been born.
You don’t have to be religious to have a sense of awe at the sheer improbability of things. A few weeks ago James le Fanu published a book Why Us?. In it he argues that we are about to undergo a paradigm shift in scientific understanding. The complexities of the genome, the emergence of the first multicellular life forms, the origins of Homo sapiens and our prodigiously enlarged brain: all these and more are too subtle to be accounted for on reductive, materialist, Darwinian science.
A week later Michael Brooks brought out 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, the most important being human free will. The more science we learn, the more we understand how little we understand. The improbabilities keep multiplying, as does our cause for wonder.
And that’s just at the level of science. What about history? How probable is it that one man who performed no miracles and wielded no power, Abraham, would become the most influential figure who ever lived, with more than half of the six billion people alive today tracing their spiritual descent to him?
How probable is it that a tiny people, the children of Israel, known today as Jews, numbering less than a fifth of a per cent of the population of the world, would outlive every empire that sought its destruction? Or that a small, persecuted sect known as the Christians would one day become the largest movement of any kind in the world?
How probable is it that slavery would be abolished, that tyrannies would fall, that apartheid would end and that an African-American would be elected President of the US? Everything interesting in life, the Universe and the whole shebang is improbable, as Nicholas Taleb reminds us in The Black Swan, subtitled “The Impact of the Highly Improbable”. The book’s title is drawn from the fact that people were convinced that, since no one had ever seen a black swan, they did not exist — until someone discovered Australia.
One interesting improbability is that the man who invented probability theory, a brilliant young mathematician called Blaise Pascal, decided at the age of 30 to give up mathematics and science and devote the rest of his life to the exploration of religious faith.
Faith is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility. The prophets dreamt the improbable and by doing so helped to bring it about. All the great human achievements, in art and science as well as the life of the spirit, came through people who ignored the probable and had faith in the possible.
So the bus advertisement would be improved by a small amendment. Instead of saying “There’s probably no God”, it should read: “Improbably, there is a God”.
Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

Totally Shocked

I was going to save somethign special for my Easter day post but I came across this article and found myself very greived by the situation. The chapel without a crucifix

In my personal view this type of thing is totally not on, I am convinced that this type of behaviour does not come from other religious leaders but from the Secularist came. As Christians we must be most careful of Secularists that want to sideline Christianity so as to get rid of all presence of it, making it only a personal thing and thus stopping it from being a communal thing. Our faith is not just our own but the faith of the whole Christian community and part of the way we share that is through Symbols.

I would love to hear what others think on this..

Week 7 Saturday

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. 

- Mark 16:15

To proclaim the good news to the whole creation, what does this mean? Are we to tell every bit of creation the good news or just human beings? Or is it to do with the way we live? And so by the way we live we tell the good news not only to human being but to the whole creation?


I would like to thank those who have journey with me with this study, some of the material has been hard work to reflect on and parts have been fantastic. I feel that with what I put on this blog has only scrapped the surface of what any of these passages have been about but it has been a helpful disipline for me during this period of lent to do along side the bigger study.

Week 7 Friday

But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.

- Mark 16:11

We shouldn't be very suprised that no one believed her when she said she had seen the risen Lord, peope who are dead stay  dead. And yet, her story is in the end believed because it is proved to be true. For us today, we must continue to tell the story and to begin with to most people it will sound like craziness. However, the Holy Spirit does lead people into truth and thus believing that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead.

Week 7Thursday

Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.- Mark 16:9

In the longer ending of Marks Gospel we read this as its opening. In many ways it is putting Mary Magdalene in her place being a women who had seven demons. And, yet, at the same time she is the person to have seen the risen Lord first. It is worth thinking about what this says about God's Kingdom.

Week 7: Wednesday

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” - Mark 16:7

Return to Galilee, this is the key to understanding all of Marks Gospel in the light of the resurrection now we are to reread mark's gospel now understanding what Jesus was going on about. That the Son of Man must die but would be raised after three days, suddenly all the miracles make sense and all his parables.

Week 7: Tuesday

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.- Mark 16:5-6

What an exprience, to have been there, to walk into Jesus' tomb and be confronted by this young man. Who then tells you that Jesus has been raised. Do you laugh or do you cry when you are told this. Is it of Joy or of greater distress? Today, we need to also ask ourselves what is our response to Jesus being raised from the Dead being made judge of all humanity, to being the first born of the new creation which we are all called to be part of?

Week 7: Monday

mk 16.1

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.- Mark 16.1

These three women have prepared themselves for he ritual to give Jesus a proper burial. Each of them had their own reasons to go but they had been united in his Death and now they were about to be united in something even more significant.

The Thomistic Telescope

. . . Balthasar's understanding of how truth is aesthetically established in the desire for goodness--the desire to give--blends very well with the Thomistic telescope that newly stresses how truth as realized eidos is also truth as anticipation, truth as made, truth as continued event, truth as interpreting signs, truth as receptivity of new aspects. Together these perspectives suggest that truth is that which opens us to contemplation of the infinite just insofar as it is also that which prepares us for a more harmonious human and cosmic future. Beyond contradiction and non-contradiction, truth begins to disclose to us an infinite integral identity only insofar as it also begins to realize in our finitude the measured exchanges of hope and love which ceaselessly and incomprehensibly blend the same with the different. Truth as disclosure is also troth, the bond of being.

--John Milbank, "The Thomistic Telescope: Truth and Identity," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80 (2006), 226.

Week 6 Saturday

Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”- Mark 15:39

"Truly this man was God's Son!" or "Truly this man was God's Son?"  while I was at college both of these were put to me as valid translations. The significance is really that they both cause us as the reader/listener to be asked the question "Was this God's Son?" it is the question the whole Gospel has been leading us to and now we are asked for our response.

Week 6: Friday

Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  - Mark 15:37-38

The temple curtain was torn in two, that which divided the Holiest place and the world is destroyed. Jesus opens a new way  for us to have a relationship with God the Father.

Week 6 Thursday

At three o”clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” - Mark 15.34

How do you think Jesus would feel having had such a close relationship with God the Father that in this moment that is being torn from him as he dies their full of the  burden of our sin. Would we even in a little bit of pain or frustration cry out "God" of course Jesus would cry out to God in complete desperation.

Week 6: Wednesday

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. - Mark 15:33

The cosmos as a whole responds to what is happening and darkness came over the whole land. Does darkness not also come over us when we reject God?