andygoodliff

Chris Cocksworth on John Colwell's Promise and Presence

Chris Cocksworth, former principal of Ridley Hall and now Bishop of Coventry reviews John Colwell's Promise and Presence in the latest edition of Ecclesiology 5 (2009). Here is some of what he says:

'Often books full of promise do not deliver. This one does. The reader is taken into the presence of a theological mind grappling at a fundamental level with the nature and activity of God and, moreover, into the presence of Christian person, with deep evangelical convictions, writing honestly and movingly about his experience of the promised presence of God mediated through the creaturely means of Church and sacraments ...

... [Promise and Presence] shows that it is possible to work from the basis of Nicene orthodoxy to a robust sacramental theology which takes seriously catholic principles about the real action of God through the life of the Church, evangelical emphases on the graciousness of the gospel and the freedom of the God of the gospel, and pentecostal experience of the dynamic of the Spirit's power in the world. It deserves to be read carefully and discussed fully.'

New Books for 2009 from Paternoster

The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical and Theological Studies. Edited by Michael F. Bird and Preston M. Sprinkle (April '09)

The Faith of Jesus Christ represents an attempt to grapple with one of the most
perplexing problems in Pauline studies, namely that of the phrase pistis christou. Issues
of considerable theological import hinge on how we interpret it (does it mean ‘faith in
Christ’ or ‘the faithfulness of Christ’?). The topic is now well rehearsed in contemporary
scholarship and this volume sheds new light on the question by presenting rigorous
exegetical studies from both sides of the debate. It also brings creative new proposals to
bear on the problem, and orients the discussion in the wider spectrum of historical, biblical
and systematic theology. The Faith of Jesus Christ represents the most penetrating and comprehensive attempt to date to grapple with the significance of Jesus’ faithfulness and obedience for Christian
salvation and the extent to which it is represented in key biblical texts.
Contributors include Francis Watson, Douglas Campbell, Stanley Porter, David DeSilva,
Paul Foster, Richard Bell, Joel Willitts, Mark Seifrid, Barry Matlock, Michael Bird, Andrew
Pitts, Mark Elliott, Ardel Caneday, Peter Bolt, Bruce Lowe, Bill Salier, Debbie Hunn, Ben
Myers, and Preston Sprinkle. Foreword by James D.G. Dunn.

Chaos and Control: Authority in Crisis in Church and State by Timothy Bradshaw (Jun '09)

Creation at Worship: Ecology, Creation and Christian Worship by Christopher J. Voke (May '09)

God, Order and Chaos: Rene Girard and the Apocalypse by Stephen Finamore (Jan '09)

Pulpit and People: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Baptist Life edited by John H. Y. Briggs (Mar '09)

The European Baptist Federation 1950-2006 by Keith Jones (May '09)

Resourcing worship from Wild Goose Worship

Wild Goose Worship, the worship arm of the Iona community have over the years published some fantastic worship resources for ministers and others who lead worship. I think every minister or worship leader should have access to them all.

1. A Wee Worship Book - now in its 4th incarnation, although earlier incarnations continue some great prayers that unfortunately don't appear in later version.

2.Cloth for Cradle: Worship resources and readings for Advent, Christmas & Epiphany

3. Present on Earth: Worship resources on the life of Jesus

4. Stages on the Way: Worship resources for Lent, Holy Week & Easter

5. Candles and Conifers: Resources for All Saints' and Advent

6. Hay and Stardust: Resources for Christmas to Candlemas

7. Eggs and Ashes: Practical and Liturgical resources for Lent and Holy Week

8. Fire and Bread: Resources from Easter Day to Trinity Sunday

9. Friends and Enemies: A book of short prayers & some ways to write your own

10. Jesus and Peter: off-the-record conversations

a good weekend in stevenage

We've just had a fantastic weekend back in stevenage, catching up with friends and then tonight I was speaking at revive, bunyan's evening service. It was great to be there and see it flourishing. I was part of its beginnings when it started in september 2007. I chose tonight to share some thoughts on how as christians we should respond to the new atheism. I was greatly helped by tina beattie's fabulous book The New Atheists and Kim Fabricius' post on pullman. This is something of what I said:

The last few years have witnessed a huge onslaught from a group some have called the New Atheists who have ‘preached’ that God does not exist. Philip Pullman the excellent children’s author wrote a trilogy, His Dark Materials that includes the death of god and has one character saying that Christianity is a powerful mistake. Richard Dawkins, a professor of science at Oxford published in 2006 The God Delusion, which swiftly became an international bestseller. This has been followed by contributions by Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great and Sam Harris The End of Faith. Also the novelist Ian McEwan, who wrote Atonement is another atheist author. The latest venture is adverts on buses that proclaim 'There is Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Life.'

What are we to make of all this? How as Christians do we respond? There are I think three responses we could make. Firstly we could follow the example of the ostrich, stick our head in the sand and pretend nothing is going on – Christians are actually quite good at this, we disengage from talking about faith in public – we don’t do politics or ethics – and act as if faith was a private issue. Secondly we could go to the other extreme and aggressively assert and push Christian values on the nation. I have in mind here the work of Christian Voice who took legal action against the BBC for blasphemy. If you’ve seen Stephen Green, its director on TV, hopefully you will agree what an awful witness for Christianity he is. Thirdly we could see this new public face of atheism as an opportunity to engage, an opportunity to explore faith, an opportunity for mission.  One group of Christians (Theos) has donated £50 to the atheist bus campaign because they saw it as a brilliant way of getting people to think and talk about God. Tina Beattie in her book The New Atheists says a debt of gratitude is owed to Richard Dawkins for reawakening public interest in God more effectively than any preacher could.

God is a delusion, if you’re talking about the god of Pullman, Dawkins and co. The god they describe is not I find in to be the one the church has historically confessed. As Kim Fabricius says 'The death of this god would actually do the church a great service, because he bears so little relation to the God Jesus called Abba.' Interestingly, the end of Pullman’s story actually has a strong Christian feel to it and I wonder if Jesus might say to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’

Having said that, some of what Pullman, Dawkins and co attack religion and the church for is a fair criticism. Christianity is not to be excluded, it has at times been repressive and controlling.  'Christians should own up to the truth, especially when it hurts, and do that most counter-cultural thing, publicly repent; point out where the atheists have got it wrong, and, above all, proclaim the word of the cross with the power of weakness'. (Fabricius)

As Christians, as the church, we need to know our church history – warts and all. We need to know God, to seek deeper understanding … we have fed for too long on a fat-free theology, we’ve avoided wrestling with who God is … we’ve ended up talking about god in the language of Pullman and Dawkins and I think it is helpful they are trying to killing this god off.  As Christians, do we ever allow ourselves to ask, why do I believe? Who is the God I believe in? I’ve found that believing, having faith, is both something that is entirely rational, but at the same time a leap into mystery.

The big issue in the Bible is never atheism, the writer of the psalms says it is only the foolish person who says there is no God.  The issue in the Bible is always idolatry, the worship of false gods – from the garden of Eden to the early church in the empire of Rome. The Bible acknowledges there are other gods, but ultimately calls them illusions and delusions, because they cannot give life. Let us read from prophet Jeremiah (10.1-16).

Unlike the idols, God is unique, the true God, the living God, the everlasting King, the one who creates, the one who speaks – God is alive. While idols are made by humans, God is the Maker of the universe and everything in it. Idolatry is always the problem for humans – when Moses climbs the mountain of God, finding ever increasing mystery, at the bottom of the mountain the rest of the Israelites are making God into a thing, a golden calf … we can never fully grasp God – God is both knowable and unknowable, God is both close and beyond us.  The new Atheists make science into an idol, into a god … they preach that science can bring salvation, that one day we will be able to cure all disease and illness, they preach that a commitment to science and the end of religion will bring the end of violence (somehow forgetting that it is science that develops these weapons of mass destruction!) … but there is something empty and hollow about these beliefs … it doesn’t inspire me to patience, to love, to joy, to self-control, to kindness and generosity … I think science is a wonderful gift, a gift of God, but it is not something to be ‘worshipped’, instead, it should cause us to be inspired to worship.

How do we respond to the New Atheism? – we need to listen to their critique of religion, we need to not be anti-science, we need to push dialogue forward, to seek a more faithful confession of God, one that is centred on Jesus – perhaps not surprisingly absent from Pullman and McEwan’s novels, we need to speak out against religious fundamentalism, especially Christian fundamentalism … we need to pay more attention to the God who is both present and absent, the God who is both here and coming, the God who is both crucified and alive.  Tina Beattie says we need to pay more attention to the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The new atheists celebrate Good Friday, the death of God,  most Christians like to get as quickly as possible to Sunday and celebrate the joy and hope of resurrection.  Saturday is about mystery, its about faith and doubt, its about the space between life and death …. it’s the place I think most of us live a lot of the time. Even when we get to Easter Sunday, we find the resurrected Jesus appears and disappears, is present and absence … faith is a journey into that presence and absence, a journey into mystery, it is a faith seeking understanding, a faith that recognizes we only see in part …

I ended with this prayer:

Loving God in the face of horrific violence
We pray for the peace that comes only from you and passes all human understanding

Living God in the face of claims that you do not exist
We pray for your church that seeks to witness truthfully and humbly that in you we live and move and have our being

Creator God in the face of advances in science
We give thanks for the wonders of your creation and the gift of investigation and curiosity

Faithful God in the face of doubt and disbelief
We pray for the gift of trust and hope that in your absence you will soon be present

Gracious God in the face of a history where the church has oppressed and forced belief
We say sorry and pray that our lives might bear the fruit of gentleness, generosity and love

On this Sunday evening
We pray for new measures of passion
For fresh waves of perseverance
For courage, energy, and freedom to be true selves
Waiting in confidence
And while waiting, acting our life towards you
In your ways of forgiving generosity
We pray in the name of Jesus who trusted fully, and
Who is himself fully worth of our trust
Amen.

McGrath to Deliver Gifford Lectures in February

In you're in and about Aberdeen between 10-26 February you will find Alister McGrath delivering his Gifford Lectures on A Fine Tuned Universe : Science, Theology and the Quest for Meaning. More here.

IJST, January 2009

A very interesting set of articles in this edition of IJST. It was ten years ago it began and it began then with an article by Colin Gunton on systematic theology. The topic is again picked up here.

Concept, Image and Story in Systematic Theology - Paul S. Fiddes

What is Systematic Theology? - Nicholas M. Healy

What is Systematic Theology? - A. N. Williams

Principles of Systematic Theology - John Webster

Ignoring God Triune? The Doctrine of the Trinity in Dutch Theology - GIJSBERT VAN DEN BRINK AND STEPHAN VAN ERP

Reviews include Wrestling with Angels by Rowan Williams, The Barth Lectures by Colin Gunton, Persons: The Difference between 'Someone' and 'Something' by Robert Spaemann.

Robert Jenson on Ezekiel

Jenson's commentary on Ezekiel, part of the Brazos/SCM Theological Commentary Series is due in May 2009.

Regent's Park College's Tim Bradshaw's book on Pannenberg, part of the T & T Clark Guide for the Perplexed series is due in June 2009.

Zizioulas has another book called Remembering the Future: An Eschatological Ontology due in May 2009.

Book Review: Revelation and Reason

Colin Gunton, Revelation and Reason: Prolegomena to Systematic Theology. Edited by Paul Brazier (T & T Clark, 2008) 226pp (with thanks to T & T Clark for a review copy)

Colin Gunton was a great theologian and this latest book again reminds us of the loss to theology and to the church his death was. Like The Barth Lectures, this new posthumous book is based on recordings of Gunton's annual King's College London MA lecture seminar series on revelation and reason, which he had be teaching for over twenty years.  Paul Brazier, like with The Barth Lectures, has again given us an example of Gunton the theological teacher in action. The book also contains another helpful introduction from Gunton's former student and colleague Stephen Holmes (this is now his fourth introduction/ foreword to a Gunton book), which examines some of the book's major themes and his former teacher's contribution.

As the title suggests the book explores the relationship between revelation and reason. With Kant, we find reason is all and there is little room for revelation, this generally continues until Barth's return to revelation as primary. Brazier in his foreword suggests the book be seen as a companion to The Barth Lectures. I think it should also be seen as the background to Gunton's 1993 Warfield Lectures A Brief Theology of Revelation, his systematic account of the doctrine of revelation. And it can also be seen as a history of Western philosophy and theology: there are sections on Locke, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Kant, Descartes, Torrance, Barth, Aquinas, Anselm, Pannenberg, amongst others. As Holmes suggests, whether you agreed with Gunton or not, he had read, taught and knew well the different philosophers.

The book has been creatively put together by Brazier, divided into three parts, each beginning with a lecture, and then sections on different theologians and philosophers based around the seminar presentations students gave. The book should not then be seen as Gunton's mature statement on a theologian or subject, but Gunton helping students, as he says, 'by Christmas to think theologically' (p.12). This makes the book both exciting and frustrating. Exciting because we feel Gunton's excitement about doing theology, frustrating because the book is dependent on the questions asked to which Gunton responds - we are left wanting more. 

I found the book helpful in getting to grips with the different theologians and philosophers it discusses. Brazier helpfully has footnoted in numerous places for those not familiar with a theologian or philosopher or a particular work. For this reason, I think the book does help the reader think theologically, to consider the problems, the issues and the relationship between revelation and reason.

I also found the book interesting in its discussion of various topics. For example regarding foundationalism and non-foundationalism, which Gunton has written about in both The One, the Three and the Many and A Brief Theology of Revelation, it is discussed in Revelation and Reason (pp.32-47) what I found to be more helpful ways. As I said above it is a useful background to other Gunton works.

Both Revelation and Reason and The Barth Lectures are interesting because they are books that would have looked very different if Gunton had written them. I think they need to be viewed seperately from Gunton's other published works, but they are valuable in providing us with an example of how to do theology, of how to think theologically. I did not know Professor Gunton well, apart from the few lectures he gave, when I was an undergrad. I emailed him in January 2003, when I was in my final year, asking whether I might attend the postgraduate research seminar where he was presenting the first draft of the first volume of his projected dogmatics. He replied with warm encouragement and I remember sitting in, in what turned out be his final months, as he read to us his written chapters.I remember the lively way Colin loved to talk theology because he believed it mattered. This is appartent in page after page of Revelation and Reason.

BWA response to 'A Common Word'

The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) have published their response to A Common Word, the open letter by Muslim religious leaders and scholars to the Christian churches. You can read it here. It was largely written under the auspices of Paul Fiddes, who is currently the Chair of the Commission on Doctrine and Inter-
Church Cooperation of the Baptist World Alliance.

The Word Leaps The Gap: essays in Honour of Richard B. Hays

There are not many New Testament scholars who could boast over 30 different top-notch contributers to their 6oth birthday festschrift. Richard Hays is one such person. This festschrift edited by former students includes essays from Stanley Hauerwas, N. T. Wright, J. D. G. Dunn, John Barclay, E. P. Sanders, Francis Watson, Douglas A. Campbell, Joel Green, Joel Marcus, Walter Moberly, Marianne Meye Thompson, Luke Timothy Johnson, C. Kavin Rowe, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Markus Bockmuehl, Ellen Davis and Leander Keck - a who's who of biblical scholarship. This is my major post-christmas purchase.

Richard Hays is a biblical scholar who has contributed three major books to New Testament studies. The first, a version of his doctoral dissertation: The Faith of Jesus Christ (1983, 2nd ed. 2002), which emphasised the narrative dimension of Paul's theology; the second, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989), which emphasise Paul's careful use of the Old Testament in his letters; the third, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (1996), is a widely praised New Testament ethics. Not many scholars have published three books which have changed the landscape in biblcal study.  A collection of his essays was published in 2005 under the title The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's scripture, this collected a number of previously published essays together, and is a companion to Echoes of Scripture. Hays has also written commentaries on 1 Corinthians (1997) and Galatians (2000), and edited collections on The Art of Reading Scripture (2003) and Seeking the Identity of Jesus (2008). He is currently working on a book on the gospels that attempts to listen for the some of the Old Testament echoes.