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Book Review: The Barth Lectures

Colin Gunton, The Barth Lectures, ed. by Paul Brazier (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 285pp. (with thanks to T & T Clark for a review copy)

Colin Gunton over many years lectured on Barth, giving undergraduates, and also many postgraduates, an introduction to the great 20th century theologian. Gunton held Barth's theology in high regard, although he would not have liked the description 'barthian' and became increasingly more critical of Barth's theology in his later life. This book was one in which Colin had long been planning and hoped to eventually complete in his retirement. Had Colin written his Barth book it would have probably been very different to the one Paul Brazier has edited for us.

The Barth Lectures are transcripts based on Gunton's version of the lectures between 1999-2001. What Brazier has given us is Gunton lecturing in the classroom and so we find in various chapters Gunton answering questions from those who we there. The book has the feel and the language of what we expect from a Gunton book, but it also retains the feel of Gunton the teacher. In addition to the questions, there are the passing remarks and the recommendations for this book or that theologian. This all makes the book a great read, although it also leaves us wondering how Colin would have shaped the lectures into a book. (I think there might have been a different order and some topics getting more treatment.)

The book demonstrates the amazing grasp that Gunton had of Barth's theology and also his ability to explain it to both the undergraduate (like myself who heard the lectures in 2001-02) for whom theology and especially Barth was still new, and the postgraduate who was looking to go deeper into Barth's theology.  The book is about Barth's theology, beginning with the background, then moving on to the famous commentary on Romans, before looking at various parts of the Church Dogmatics.

The Barth Lectures are mostly an exposition of the great man and the critical engagement is made more in passing than in sustained reflection. A more critical look at Barth can be found in other places. However, Gunton's main criticism of Barth - not enough of a doctrine of the Spirit - comes across and the suspicion (in agreement with Jenson) that Barth would have struggled to write the proposed Church Dogmatics V.

If you've never read Barth, Gunton's book, alongside Webster's short introduction and Cambridge Companion, is a great place to start. If you've never read Gunton, The Barth Lectures are also a great place to start, because they show him engaging with the theologian that most shaped his theology. Alongside the lectures are two fantastic introductions by Christoph Schwoebel and Stephen Holmes, which give you a sense of Colin the theologian and Colin the lecturer. These introductions added to the tribute also by Christoph Schwoebel in The Person of Christ (eds. Rae and Holmes) and the introductions also by Stephen Holmes in Father, Son & Spirit (2003) and Theologian as Preacher (2007), continue to show us what a loss Colin is to theology, whose best work was perhaps still to come. The Barth Lectures show us why he is a theologian worth reading.

The State of the University

This morning I gave Stanley Hauerwas' new book The State of the University a quick read. Plenty to think about, as you would expect from a Hauerwas book, and lots to re-read another time. Coming to the surface occasionally through the book, as it wrestles with the place of the theology in the university amongst other things, are the questions what are universities for? and who do they serve?  Two questions that Hauerwas believes its difficult to ask because we don't know the answer or like the answer.

Anyway, here is one quote I enjoyed, which is typical Hauerwas:

'We Methodists are heart people. Baptists have no heart at all. Instead Baptists have the Bible which they use a club to beat one another into submission' (p.132)

Luke Bretherton preaches at Duke and other stuff

Earlier in July Luke Bretherton preached on discipleship in a broken world at Duke Chapel.

John Webster is giving the Kantzer Lectures on Perfection and Presence: God with Us According to the Christian Confession

The Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability, Aberdeen has some great stuff available on its website:

- religion and autism project - this is something Hannah and I have been talking about on a number of occasions - how do you include autistic people in the life of the church?
- new books forthcoming Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader and Living Gently in a Violent World: Why the Church needs L'Arche
- papers on the theology of disability
- audio recordings from Stan Hauerwas and Jean Vanier 2006 conference: jean vanier, stan hauerwas, jean vanier and stan hauerwas in conversation

Bits and Bobs

I've add a new librarything widget to my right-hand sidebar. You can see some of the books I have on my shelves.

I've got a few book reviews which are forthcoming soon (Brian Brock's Singing the Ethos of God and Colin Gunton's The Barth Lectures)

I'm away over the next week at Lemmings and my brother's wedding (so where the book reviews will get slightly delayed)

I retired from teaching today and did my final LOUNGE (bunyan youthwork) last night. A long, hopefully not too busy summer, before I start at Regent's in September.

My post on bible study and reading scripture as generated responses from Jason, AKMA and Maggi.

Scripture is ... something to be sung

'Scripture is, in its essence, something to be sung, which means to be read in the mode of praise by the church. Robert Jenson concurs:

The first and foremost doctrine de scriptura is therefore not a proposition about scripture at all. It is rather liturgical and devotional instruction: Let the Scripture be sung, at every opportunity and with care for its actual address to hearers even if these are only the singer. The churches most faithful to Scripture are not those that legislate the most honorific propositions about Scripture but those that most often and thoughtfully sing and listen to it.

Such singing cannot be confined to the collective worship of the church; but if it is truly sung, it is embodied in the continuing praise of the church as it scatters to its daily pursuits throughout the week'

(Brian Brock, Singing the Ethos of God, Eerdmans, 2007, 273-274)

I'm in the processing of reading this very good book. Review will follow at some point in near future.

Bible Study and Reading Scripture

It's time to get rid of the Bible study that is the staple of the evangelical diet.  I'm bored of all the bible studying. I'm not interested in reading the bible as if it were a text book or an instruction manual. Let's stop pretending we all know how to read the bible. The bible is not a book to be studied. The bible is not a book that can be mastered. The great tragedy of the bible study is it has made the bible dull and boring. The great worry of the bible study is we've turned the bible into a weapon against those who interpret it differently. The bible study has created as many infallible popes as there are Christians, all who believe that they are right because their bible says this or that. The bible is a book to be wrestled with. The bible is a dangerous, world-changing, life-altering text that is out to transform the reader. The bible wants to shape our imagination to the tune of Christ.  We might set out to read the bible but it ends up reading us. We need to create regular space for the bible to breathe, for it to live among us, before us, within us. The bible story is not a story to study but to indwell.  When reading the bible we need to open ears and close mouths. The bible is always fresh and never stale. The bible does not put God or truth into neat statements. The bible is not God's prison. The bible is God's Word always breaking into our world.  The bible is God's gift to the church; not to the individual Christian. I loved the dissonant bible blog (which alas no longer exists) which sets out to recover the bible's dissonance - the bible's refusal 'to fit the streamlined, systematic theologies so beloved of many conservative evangelicals' and recognise how 'the bible sounds discordant to our ears, at odds with what we believe to be right, just, and humane'. Mark wrote

'I'm continually disconcerted by how we reduce its richness, its complexity, its sheer strangeness into something comfortable, simplistic and bland. I'm worried about my own tendencies, let alone anyone else's, to allow my eye to skip worrying details in the text, to encourage my mind to swerve away from troubling questions, to refuse to hear the bible's dissonance.'

(originally posted 23rd june 2006)

It's time to get rid of the Bible study that is the staple of the evangelical diet.  I'm bored of all the bible studying. I'm not interested in reading the bible as if it were a text book or an instruction manual. Let's stop pretending we all know how to read the bible. The bible is not a book to be studied. The bible is not a book that can be mastered. The great tragedy of the bible study is it has made the bible dull and boring. The great worry of the bible study is we've turned the bible into a weapon against those who interpret it differently. The bible study has created as many infallible popes as there are Christians, all who believe that they are right because their bible says this or that. The bible is a book to be wrestled with. The bible is a dangerous, world-changing, life-altering text that is out to transform the reader. The bible wants to shape our imagination to the tune of Christ.  We might set out to read the bible but it ends up reading us. We need to create regular space for the bible to breathe, for it to live among us, before us, within us. The bible story is not a story to study but to indwell.  When reading the bible we need to open ears and close mouths. The bible is always fresh and never stale. The bible does not put God or truth into neat statements. The bible is not God's prison. The bible is God's Word always breaking into our world.  The bible is God's gift to the church; not to the individual Christian. I loved the dissonant bible blog (which alas no longer exists) which sets out to recover the bible's dissonance - the bible's refusal 'to fit the streamlined, systematic theologies so beloved of many conservative evangelicals' and recognise how 'the bible sounds discordant to our ears, at odds with what we believe to be right, just, and humane'. Mark wrote

'I'm continually disconcerted by how we reduce its richness, its complexity, its sheer strangeness into something comfortable, simplistic and bland. I'm worried about my own tendencies, let alone anyone else's, to allow my eye to skip worrying details in the text, to encourage my mind to swerve away from troubling questions, to refuse to hear the bible's dissonance.'

(originally posted 23rd june 2006)

David Brown moving to St. Andrew's

Francis Watson moves from Aberdeen to Durham, and now David Brown moves from Durham to St. Andrew's to become Professor of Theology, Asethetics and Culture. David Brown has been Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham since 1990 (taking over from Dan Hardy) and before that was teaching at Oxford.

He is the author of The Divine Trinity (1985), Tradition and Imagination (1999), Discipleship and Imagination (2000) and more recently God and Enchantment of Place (2004) and God and Grace of Body (2007).

Education for the 21st Century

As the Government unveils its new curriculum and as I enter my final week as a teacher (for the forseeable future), it got me thinking what kind of curriculum do I think young people need today. It goes to questions of what is the purpose of education and that takes me back to David Ford's suggestion that education is for gaining wisdom. Our hope must be that young people's education enables them to become wise, which is not the same as gaining knowledge. Julian Stern says if we are asked to value each subject, what value would we give it? If all subjects in school were worth 1,000 units, how much would each subject be worth and why? (Teaching Religious Education, 2006, 89). What I find interesting about the government's proposals are that lots of the new additions such as financial capability and cooking were once (in my view) the task of parents. It seems increasingly that schools are having to become more parental and teachers are expecting to be able to fulfil numerous roles for which time and ability is often lacking. It also reflects how schools are becoming, or they are being asked to become, centres of the community, which raises interesting questions for the place of the church.

Reading the government's proposals as they have been reported, many of them sounds sensible and quite exciting. The idea of moving away from traditional subjects to topics, I think is worth exploring, but schools and teachers need to have time to prepare in order for it to be beneficial. Too many new ideas are given to teachers  without any time to make them worthwhile and so become merely a paper-filling exercise. If I think about my own subject RE, this has many links to history, geography, english, science, art (and others) that go unexplored. I like the idea of shorter lessons. I  have some classes for whom 1 hour is too long and if they had two 25-30 minutes lessons, a lot more would learning would get done.

Young people need a curriculum that enables them recognise they are both global and local citizens (I use the word 'citizens', but believe it is often an ambiguous word). Too many young are unaware of what is going on in the world or has happened in the world.

Young people need a curriculum where a subject brings its knowledge and skills to bear on everyday and future life. (Admittedly in some subjects I think they are already trying to do this) So a study of the holocaust is not a history exercise, but an exercise that explores moral, ethical, philosophical and theological questions - what is evil? what does it mean to be human? where was God? how to we cope with difference? Or an art lesson becomes as much about drawing and painting, as about how do we read and understand this piece of art - what does it say about the painter? what does it say about us? does it have a point? does it need one?

Young people need a curriculum that is not about keeping young people's options open as long as possible or givng them too many choices. As ultimately some subjects end up getting devalued. Or young people make their choices and then find the school can't fit them into the timetable and have to do something else. I think young people should begin to become subject specialists earlier on.

Young people need a curriculum where teachers have more say in what is taught and where they don't end up teach the same topic year after year. Teachers need to continue to study in the their specialism, to bring new knowledge and reading into the classroom.

Young people need a curriculum where religion, philosophy and ethics is included in every subject, just as teachers have to tick the ICT and literacy boxes. Although hopefully it wouldn't be a tick boxes exercise. A curriculum that has its centre in religious, philosophical and ethical questions is a curriculum interested in wisdom.

Young people need a curriculum where homework is thought about, where its not about the quantity set, but about the quality. Too many homeworks young people are asked to do are (in my opinion) basically pointless.

Young people need a curriculum where they have to think. Too many lessons in too many subjects don't stretch young people to actually think.

Young people need a curriculum where out of school visits are encouraged and part of the norm. Reading about Sikhism in a textbook is a poor substitute to visiting a gurdwara and listening to a Sikh talk about their beliefs and life. Reading a Shakespeare play in class is a poor substitute to seeing it done (well) on a stage. A visit somewhere can have much more impact than any number of lessons on a topic.

Young people need a curriculum which puts ICT in its place.

Forthcoming Films ...

Lots of new trailers out for autumn films. These are five I'm looking forward to:

1. The Golden Compass - the first part of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials 

2. Margot at the Wedding - the new Noah Baumbach film (he previously wrote and directed the excellent 'The Squid and the Whale') starring Nicole Kidman, Jennifier Jason Leigh and Jack Black

3. Lions for Lambs - the new Robert Redford film which looks like a political thriller with Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford

4. August Rush

5. Invasion - Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in alien thriller

Can marriage mend a broken society?

Stuart blogs about marriage and family in response to the Conservative's Social Justice Policy Group report called Breakthrough Britain. First of all I like the way that Iain Duncan Smith has set up the Centre for Social Justice to explore these issues, although I'm not sure I agree with all the conclusions the Report reaches. Get married for a better tax breaks seems to be not the best reason for getting married. I think the intention, or I hope it is, is to value marriage, I'm not sure tax breaks are the way to do that. Stuart says he is pro-marriage. pro-family and pro-children. This seems to me to be right, although I'm wondering whether I would want to be pro-church before anything else. I think the response of the church to marriage, family and children is witness: to demonstrate the possibility of marriage until death do us part, of being family, of having children. Marriage often gets the short straw in public. Hauerwas says marriage is a deeply subversive act. I don't think we present it as such. Sam Wells say this about marriage (which I think is the message the church should bring):

Marriage is the great proclamation of abundance. All is focused on a single other - but the truth is that, far from not being enough, that one person is more than enough. Here is the mystery of another person - another mind, another imagination, another myriad of experiences and energies and enthusiasms and enjoyments. Could one ever exhaust that person? ...

Marriage is not zero-sum game, where one person sacrifices their career, or their friends, or their creativity, or their deepest needs, so that other can be the hero, or be the star, of never have to lose the argument. It is an adventure, in which the new body can be together what neither of them could have been apart, and the only thing that might stop them would be any sense that they could somehow get their on their own. One other person is always more than enough, when you believe that that person will listen to you until you run out of things to say, when you trust that that person will wait as long as it takes for you to understand why you are the way you are, when you realize that that person will always impute the best of motives to your actions however clumsy you feel inside.

(God's Companions, 2006, 96)