I'm writing an essay about revelation and I want to say that revelation is not just about knowledge but the transformation of one's life.
To do that I'd love to say something pithy like 'revelation is both noetic and zoetic' but unfortunately 'zoetic' is not a word. I think it should be.
zoetic a. & n. 1 Of or pertaining to real life. 2 The branch of knowledge that deals with real life.
The Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said:
I am sorry that Tony Blair feels he could not talk about his faith in case people thought he was a nutter.
A Christian vision underlies all that is important about Britain: its laws, institutions and values.
If Blair had been able to relate this vision to his policies, we would have had more constructive social policy at home and principled policies abroad.
Blair 'nutter' fear angers bishop
This is a fascinating question. In America there is a strict separation between Church and State, yet politicians freely talk about their faith – indeed, it is rare to succeed to the highest levels of government without such (Christian) faith. In the UK we have an established Church, yet our politics has little or no religion in it. At any whiff of 'the God thing' there there comes the cry of fundamentalism.
I think that Bishop Michael is unfairly criticizing Tony Blair. I always admired the fact that Blair was up front and honest about his Christian convictions. I was sometimes disappointed at his government's policies, but I recognized that 1) he was leader of a party, the majority of whose members are probably not Christians, and 2) he was the Prime Minister of a country the majority of whose citizens are not Christians.
The fact that Blair felt he would be ridiculed in the press if he made more of his faith in his leadership is not his fault, but an accurate reading of the British press (so, for example, the treatment of George Bush when he made the unfortunate comment about the 'crusade' against terror, etc). Bishop Michael should instead be angered at the intolerance shown in the media towards religion, especially Christianity.
Somehow this century the Church of England has become something to be patronised, little more than the caretaker of flower shows and most of the country's oldest buildings, a kind of National Trust with weekly meetings. There is little or no sense that religion affects the way we live our lives. Ironically, one of the contributions of Richard Dawkins et al is the realisation that religion does affect the way we live – it cannot be dismissed simply as ineffective.
The question therefore is, what is its effect, and do we want it as a society?
Ministers under fire over records
On Tuesday the chancellor told MPs how the entire child benefit database was sent by a junior official from HMRC in Washington, Tyne and Wear, to the audit office in London through courier TNT on 18 October. The information was contained on two CDs.
The chancellor said the official had broken the rules by downloading the data to disc and sending it by unrecorded delivery, and UNENCRYPTED.
But he reassured those affected that police had no reason to believe the discs had found their way into the wrong hands, nor did they have any evidence of it being used for "fraudulent purposes or criminal activity."
Bosses at the Revenue were not told about what had happened until 8 November and Mr Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown learned about the situation on 10 November.
I sincerely hope the chancellor is correct, but the whole incident strikes me as bizarre. A 'junior official' should never have access to the entire child benefit database, not only in terms of data protection, but also child protection.
I can't think of any reasons why anyone would download the entire database and send it elsewhere by unrecorded post, other than incompetence or malice.
Not only that, but they waited two days before informing the chancellor and the Prime Minister. 'The officials involved waited before informing their superiors in the hope that the discs would be found.' This is outrageous – not only do they make an almighty cock-up, but they wait a couple of days before telling the Prime Minister. For a loss of some data perhaps this would be acceptable – but 25m records of the most confidential information..!
God is not just one single being. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: he is Trinity, he is community. And so therefore God is mutual love.
Graham Tomlin, The Praise of Creation, Holy Trinity Brompton, Sunday 29 October 2006
I have a couple of sermon podcasts on my iPod and I was listening to this one on the train home yesterday afternoon. This sentence hit me square between the eyes.
The question is, how far should we reduce and simplify doctrine in our preaching? I think quite a lot – but not so what we say is misleading (at best) or wrong (at worst). The example above is a case in point. 'God is not just one single being' is an extremely misleading statement. What I think he means is this: to say God is 'one' is not all we can say about God. Because, God actually is a 'single being'. We do not believe in three gods, Christians are not tritheists. It is language like the sentences above that makes people think we are.
In our language about the Trinity I think we need to make three things clear: 1) God is one, 2) God is one-in-three and three-in-one, 3) God's unity is primary. Point (3) is the traditional way of Christian theology, and of course it has its dangers – which Moltmann emphasises – but it safeguards the divinity of Father, Son and Spirit, and the unity of their work in Creation. Given the clear demarcation in the New Testament between Father and Son especially, theologically the unity needs to be our starting point, and needs to be stressed. 'Community' is simply too weak a concept for the unity of God. This is one of Moltmann's biggest problems – if you stress the threeness of God first, how can you explain the unity of God in strong enough terms?
Graham Tomlin's point is that God did not need to create us because he needed someone to love him, to glorify him. In Godself, God is perfect love, because the one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To that, I say, absolutely. I have no problem with that. However, you do not need to say 'God is not just one single being' in order to be able to say 'God is mutual love'.
It is here that the question I raised initially is important: how far should we reduce and simplify doctrine in our preaching? How can we explain that God is mutual love in Godself, in a couple of sentences? Sometimes we may only be able to say what God is not, to define boundaries, beyond which language fails miserably. Here's my attempt.
The Bible tells us that God is one, that there is no other God besides him. But the Bible also tells us that God reveals himself as Father, Son and Spirit. The Father did not need to create the world to be loved, because from all eternity he loves and is loved by the Son, who shares that love with the Spirit. The one God is perfect, mutual love.
I know it isn't perfect, and it is perhaps more complicated, but it does seek to emphasise both the oneness and threeness of God together.
At the sermon I heard on Sunday the preacher told a story which effectively made two points:
After the service I reflected that the reason we often allow other people's judgements to 'stick' to us, is because we actually deserve judgement. It is of course God's judgement that we deserve, however, not other people's – we have no right to judge each other simply because we all equally deserve judgement ourselves. In judging others we demonstrate our hypocrisy.
I would argue that the place of 'accountability', close friends/family telling you where you are going wrong, is not the same as 'passing judgement', because 'accountability' is only that if it works both ways. Passing judgement is a one-way street from one person to another.
That leaves two reasons why other people's judgements shouldn't stick to us:
So, given that, is it ever right for humans to pass judgement on other humans? Well, yes actually, in two situations I think:
But when we judge others in these situations, it should always be done with humility, acknowledging that the authority to judge comes only from God, and that ultimately we all deserve judgement. These two situations are God exercising his authority through us – which, again, calls for humility.
design © bcg mmviii
Recent Comments