Archive for the 'Theology' Category

The Message for the Broken

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bcg
on 22 February 2010
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Jesus' teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsider Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can mean only one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think.

Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, p.16

Thanks to Custard for the great quotation.  I suppose this question has haunted me for quite a long time.  We are quite convinced that our preaching is faithful, that we are saying the right things, encouraging the right things, but the churches I have known have almost universally been precisely not irreligious.

Is it that we don't know how to encourage the right kind of practice?  Or is it more that there is a tendency to want to think the 'correct' things, rather than go out of our way to do the hard, un-selfish, loving and caring things?

I love things to be in order, to be just so, but that is precisely not how Jesus operated, and it can so easily lead to the kind of situation Tim Keller describes.  I find Keller's words hugely challenging.  They seem to me to be to be vital for the church's mission, yet at the same time almost impossible to put into practice.

Because, to me, I want a church for the broken, not a church for the religious.  I feel like a broken man, not a religious man, and somehow that means I don't feel like I belong in the church – the very place I should belong, in the arms of God.

Communities of Grace

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bcg
on 30 April 2009
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Over the years I have frequently thought about the relationship between the uncompromising ethical stance of much of the New Testament (not least the Sermon on the Mount), and salvation as the free gift of God, through the cross, while we were still God's enemies.

With the help of various theologians (John Calvin, Karl Barth etc), as well as sustained reflection on the Bible (not just the New Testament) I have come to think of it in terms of a response.  We are given a free gift of live, salvation through Jesus Christ, which we must live out.  We must live a life worthy of the calling we have received.

But of course the context of that life is always that it is a free gift.  We didn't earn it in the first place, and we can't mess up so badly that there is no way back.  We can't lose our salvation in Christ through our failure to live it out.  There is nothing we can do that is so bad God won't forgive us—if we repent.

And right there is the crux of the issue.  We can stuff things up terribly, but if we repent and turn back to God, he will forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  Although our sin cuts us off from God, there is always a way back, through the cross, if we repent.

Unrepentance I think comes in two guises: first, refusing to repent of what we know is sinful behaviour (this is the most obvious kind); second (more subtly perhaps), failing to acknowledge that we are simul iustus et peccatore, at once justified and sinner, and that we do mess things up.

The first is perhaps more common in our individual lives, the second much more common in our communities.  In many (evangelical) churches I have been privileged to be a part of, there has been an unspoken culture / expectation that actually things are all right for everyone.  Maybe that's my perception, I don't know, but that's how I've felt.

When the culture is like that, it is very difficult for individuals to acknowledge serious failures.  Yeah we can all say a confession, I haven't put God first, that kind of stuff, but when there is a serious problem, the sense of failure is so strong that it is difficult to tell anyone, because you are worried they will judge you for not being a good enough Christian (or whatever).

I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that.  Often in churches it can feel as if we are expected to be perfect, so when things aren't it is very difficult to talk to anyone about it.  Somehow we need to create an atmosphere in which failure (privately and publicly), while not accepted as 'right', is not condemned or judged, but accepted as 'real' and worked through, drawing on God's grace and power.

We need to create communities of grace (I'm sure I've not made that phrase up, but I don't know where it's come from), which accept sinners, but challenge sin and encourage an atmosphere of repentance and forgiveness.

We need not to expect people to be perfect, or even close, but to be real about the messed-up world we live in, that things don't always work out, that people get things wrong, that we all do, just some of us more obviously than others.  People need to be aware of all that, so they feel comfortable and able to be real and honest, to share where they are really at, so that sin can be dealt with in God's way (by repentance and forgiveness) rather than being allowed to fester within our congregations.

Unscientific Questions

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bcg
on 17 April 2009
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I watched an excellent programme on BBC One last night, called the Narnia Code.

One of the points of the documentary was that CS Lewis preferred a medieval understanding of the universe to the modern scientific one, which he claimed made things cold and mechanical.

A couple of the interviewees (which included John Polkinghorne) made this point: science is very good at answering its own questions (how does this work, what happens if we do this, etc).

But there are two important questions that science can't answer:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why is nature ordered and comprehensible?

I'm sure there are others, but these two are a good start.  This is from The Voyage of the Dawntreader:

"In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."

"Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of."

We need to ask both kinds of questions, I think – and use science and theology together to enrich our understanding of the universe.

Incorporation ‘in Christ’ and Justification

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bcg
on 17 February 2009
in Bible, Reviews and Theology
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I am currently reading Tom Wright's latest book, 'Justification: God's plan and Paul's vision'.  I am about a fifth of the way through, and so far it is typical Wright: engaging, well-written and thought-provoking.

The back cover quotes someone as saying that he 'out-Reforms' the popular 'neo-Reformed' writers in America.  Wright's starting position is that we should not privilege tradition over Scripture – even the Reformed tradition.  He critiques contemporary evangelicalism for failing to be critical enough of its own tradition in the light of Scripture.

One of the areas he highlights as particularly lacking, is that of 'incorporation'.  This is one of Paul's main themes (just count how many times he uses the phrase 'in Christ', let alone the number of times he relies on the concept) yet it is one of the least developed in contemporary evangelical theology (argues Wright).

I would agree with him whole-heartedly.  He says that incorporation (among others) is one of the main themes, of which the evangelical definition of justification is a part.  His book is therefore making explicit his position, attempting to look at what Paul actually said, rather than what the Reformed tradition says he said.

This is a bold move, but if there is anyone who can pull it off, it's Tom Wright.  Methodologically, he's spot on.  It has been one of my constant frustrations that there is an implicit 'correct' and 'sound' interpretation and understanding of the New Testament, far beyond the basic and fundamental non-negotiables of the Christian faith (e.g. Jesus' resurrection) – especially when this 'correct' interpretation (in my view) ignores the Old Testament, or treats it simply as the backdrop, rather than as the way of understanding what Paul is really talking about.

I am looking forward to reading the rest of Wright's book – and will no doubt post a full review when I'm done.

Assurance

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bcg
on 18 April 2008
in Bible, Church and Theology
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I had a long conversation last night with a good friend about various theological topics.  Some of them will find their way on here, in time.  The first of them is the doctrine of assurance.  How can we be confident that we are saved?  Is such confidence possible?

For Methodists, 'assurance' historically refers to a feeling of peace and joy that our sins are forgiven.  An example might be John Wesley's famous line, 'I felt my heart strangely warmed.'  He goes on to say:

I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation. And an
assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and
saved me from the law of sin and death.

Assurance of God's love

On this understanding, assurance is the feeling that accompanies faith in God's promises.

The difficulty is of course that feelings can mislead us.  It is entirely possible for someone to feel 'assured' of their salvation, without having the accompanying faith.

It is therefore perhaps more helpful to talk about assurance in terms of faith.  God has promised that those who believe in him will have eternal life, that if we believe in the salvation won for us by Jesus on the cross, we will be saved:

It is not possible for someone to be genuinely broken by sin, genuinely
to believe that Christ is the only way to salvation and genuinely to
have asked God for salvation, and yet still to be unsaved.

Assurance and Election

This is the most we can say: God has promised certain things in Scripture.  Therefore if God is true to his Word, then what God has promised will happen.  At the end of the day we can never be 100% certain that God exists, or we would not have faith, we would simply know.

However we can be almost 100% certain that he does, and therefore almost 100% certain that we will be saved if we trust in his promises.

Common Worship Ordination

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bcg
on 9 April 2008
in Church, Life and Theology
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I have to confess that there are many parts of the Church of England's new Common Worship services that I don't like.  The Baptism service, for example, is hugely long, overly complicated and (I think) theologically wrong.  (For more on that you might want to read my essay on baptism.)  The pattern of daily prayer changes every day, and there are so many options that it is difficult to see what is 'Common' about the new services.

Despite all this, my wife and I spent the day in Durham Cathedral yesterday – where we will be ordained in June – going through the ordination service, both practically and theologically.  As the last part of Common Worship to be published, there has been a lot of time and effort put into the service, and I think it has paid off.  The prayers are good, there is a focus on the call to preach and to serve, and even on the importance of the Bible!

The ordination itself, where the Bishop lays his hands on each candidate, takes place within the context of the main prayers in the service.  From the service booklet we were given yesterday (all forty pages of it!) it really does seem like the transition between prayers – ordination – prayers is seemless.

The centrality of prayer in the service caught me by surprise, but actually I think is absolutely right.  It means that our life as ordained ministers begins firmly within the context of family, friends and the wider church praying for us, and it means that we ourselves begin on our knees.  This all acknowledges just how important it is that God enables us to perform our various ministries (ordained and non-ordained), that we can't do any of it in our own strength.

I was looking forward to the service before – now I can't wait!

Resurrection Life

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bcg
on 25 March 2008
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On Sunday I preached on the final day of the college mission to Larkhall, Bath.  The text of the sermon can be found here.

Rather than preach directly from a passage, I preached on the meaning of Jesus' bodily resurrection, both for life in the future, and life here and now.

Since working at A Rocha two years ago, I have become more and more aware of how important it is that a) Jesus was incarnated, b) he spent three years preaching and healing the sick, c) he was raised bodily from the dead.

All these things amount to a wholehearted affirmation of God's good creation.  Many evangelicals seem to be drifting to an almost gnostic position, hugely prioritising the 'spiritual' over the 'physical'.

We must remember that when God's kingdom comes, we will not be living in a vacuum, floating on clouds in the sky, but on this earth, transformed.  Heaven comes down to earth, not the other way round.

A further thing I have often wondered is if we should translate 'spiritual' in the New Testament as 'Spiritual', i.e., of the Holy Spirit.  I'm sure someone has thought this before!