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Do we choose God?

Published by bcg on 1 February 2008 in Bible and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

This is by way of an extension of a previous post on this topic.

A friend at college used to sing 'I have decided to follow Jesus', emphasizing the 'I' to annoy any Calvinists he might come across.  And from John 6.37 & 40 he would seem to be right:

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who
looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I
will raise him up on the last day.  (ESV)

Those verses suggest a personal responsibility on behalf of 'those who come', the 'everyone who looks' to look and come to Jesus.  But that is not the end of the story – John 6.44:

44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.  (ESV)

As I quoted Charles Simeon, we must find the truth in both statements: we choose God, but no-one can choose God unless the Father draws him (or her).

Why gravity

Published by bcg on 30 January 2008 in Sci & Tech and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I saw the end of a programme last night called Horizon, which was looking at the theory of gravity.  The bit I saw was the tail-end of the explanation of Einstein's theory, which moved into the theory of quantum gravity (or the quantum theory of gravity..?).

It was all very interesting – I used to read New Scientist so I'd read a lot of it before – but the closing moments of the programme really made me sit up.  The presenter was summing up his conclusions, saying that a full understanding of gravity won't come from looking at the stars and galaxies, but from the smallest particles.  He said that this would help us to explain what happened at the Big Bang, and – here it comes – why we exist.

Now, I have no doubt he has great credentials as a scientist, but it was my understanding that science looks into the question 'how it is' that we exist, not 'why'.  I suppose that may be a technical distinction, but it is an important one, because it goes some way to showing how science and faith can go together: science looks empirically at the world to find out how it works; faith listens with gratitude to the Creator of the world to find out why it exists.

I'm sure that discovering how gravity works will be a huge step forward for modern science.  But it will not help us one bit in discovering why gravity works, or who made it work.  That is why we need both science and faith, why scientists can have faith, why scientists should be careful not to make grander claims for science than are warranted (for example, Professor Dawkins), and why theologians should be careful not to make sweeping scientific statements based on theological reasoning (for example, young-earth creationists).

Predestination and responsibility

Published by bcg on 24 January 2008 in Bible, Quotations and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Matthew 18.7 says this:

[Jesus says,] “Woe
to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that
temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!"

We have here an example of how difficult it can be to understand the Bible.  I don't mean that the meaning of this verse is difficult to understand, I mean that the implications of this verse are difficult to understand.

The Bible affirms two seemingly contradictory things: the predestination of things by God, and our personal responsibility for what we do.  God gives us grace and faith to believe in him (search for 'chose you' in the Bible and see how many times it says 'God chose you'), and we have to respond to him (the prophets continually call the people to follow the Law, in the New Testament people are told 'repent and believe').

These two things are both affirmed by the Bible, and if we believe the Bible is internally consistent then we have to say they are both true.

The danger lies in extrapolating further from these truths, asking the question 'how' it can be that these things are both true.  Almost every time this has been attempted, one has been emphasised to the detriment of the other.

Charles Simeon said:

Truth does not lie at either extreme taken on its own, nor yet midway between them: truth lies in both extremes held together in tension.

See here.

In so much of theology this is true, including this area.  It is why dialectical theology is so important: the Bible usually affirms two seemingly paradoxical positions.  It is our job not to synthesise the two, as Hegel would have us believe, but hold them together in tension, faithfully following the Bible.

If the Holy Spirit wanted it written like that, who are we to disagree?

Clarity and understanding

Published by bcg on 22 January 2008 in Random and Theology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

I am currently trying to learn how to use XSL for my website.  XSL stands for eXtensible Stylesheet Language, and allows an XML file to be displayed in a friendly format.

XML files look like HTML, and they are commonly used for holding data.  While slower than a database, they are much easier to read with the naked eye.  Because of this, they are very useful for sharing data across different systems.  For example, try opening a *.doc file in a text editor.  It is a load of gobbledegook.  Now find a *.docx file, change the extension to .zip, extract the files, and view them in a text editor.  You can read it with the naked eye.

However, all of that isn't my point.  A friend recently wrote a blog post complaining about overly complex language when explaining one's ideas.  It is of course not limited to academic circles, but all over the place.  I have been reading online guides to understanding XSL, and many of them are absolutely useless.  They use jargon.  They explain things using other concepts they haven't explained.  They use single sentences to describe complex things.  And so on.

I think that at the root of all this is a lack of understanding.  The path to clarity is nothing less than understanding.  If people do not understand fully what they are saying, then they will regurgitate complex language in an attempt to sound clever, to sound like they really understand what they are talking about.

After all, I should know: I did this at university.  When writing essays I 'copied' the language of the books I was reading, in order to sound clever, because I didn't really understand.  One of my first essays is a wonderfully dense description of 'nothingness', using language heavily derived from Moltmann's own dense analysis.  When you really do understand something, it is painfully obvious when people are doing this.

My plea is this: please don't write an instruction manual, or something explaining a concept, unless you understand at least most of it, if not all of it!

Paul’s gnosticism

Published by bcg on 18 January 2008 in Bible, Church and Theology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

I am currently reading through Romans with a friend at college, and we are up to Romans 7.  One of the things we mentioned was how easy it is to mis-read Paul and interpret what he says as gnostic.

For example:

7.5 For while we were
living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at
work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But
now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us
captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the
old way of the written code.

Not only does Paul set up a radical distinction between 'the new way of the Spirit' and 'the old way of the written code', he also locates sin at work in 'the flesh', 'our members'.  Equally, in the previous chapter Paul writes:

6.12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.

His emphasis is so strongly on our sinful bodies, on sin which works in our 'mortal body', that it is not a big step to gnostic theology, where the spirit is holy, the flesh evil.

It is also not a big step to the neo-dualism of contemporary evangelicalism.  Now there's a sentence and a half!  When I worked for A Rocha in London, one of the things I did was go around churches giving talks about the biblical basis for creation care.  A regular comment that many of us encountered (and no doubt they still do) was that God is more interested in saving souls than restoring creation.

There is undoubtedly some truth in that statement.  God has a special love for humans, made in his image to worship, glorify and love him.  However it is no different to the gnosticism that was denounced as heresy, and completely fails to understand the Old Testament, and much of the new.

When Paul locates sin at work in mortal flesh, he is not saying that God will do away with physical bodies.  He is not saying that all material things are evil and that what is important is our soul.  What he is saying, is that God needs to transform our mortal bodies if we are to obey him.  The very next verse in Romans 6 is this:

6.13 Do not present your
members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present
yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life,
and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

God wants us to use our bodies, our minds, our strength, our souls – all of ourselves – to serve him.  He is not interested in disembodied children, but children in his image as he made them, bodies and all.  The 'newness of life' that Paul talks about earlier in Romans 6 is the basis on which we are able to 'present' our 'members to God as instruments for righteousness'.

6.4 We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk
in newness of life.

Just as our baptism is a physical event, and just as Jesus' resurrection was a physical event, so also our newness of life is a physical event.  So, coming back to Romans 7, serving God in the 'new way of the Spirit' is correctly interpreted and capitalised by the ESV as the 'new way of the Holy Spirit': i.e. the new bodied life in the power of the Holy Spirit, not a new life somehow disconnected from our bodies, and purely 'spirit'.  The true meaning of the word 'spiritual' is not 'the life of a spirit', 'but life in the power of the Spirit', mind, body, soul and strength.

I am sure that no self-respecting and thoughtful evangelical would disagree with what I have just argued.  Why is it then that the focus of 'gospel ministry' is so often proclamation on its own, without the accompanying care for people's 'fleshy' side?  I myself have been guilty of this mistake, but hopefully no longer.

Wearing my A Rocha hat (A Rocha is a Christian environmental charity, seeking to transform communities and ecosystems in Jesus' name and power) I would go further still, and say that God's concern is for the whole of creation, not just humans.  After all, Revelation teaches us that heaven comes down to earth, not the other way around.  The whole world will be transformed by God, not just those people who call on Jesus' name.  (For more on this, please look in the Sermons section, or search for 'creation care' or 'hope for the planet'.)

When we pray 'your kingdom come', what we are praying for is the full and complete kingdom, which includes the transformation of the world, as well as the transformation of the people within the world.  The latter concern for people's physical well-being is being rediscovered by the church, but we are still lacking the former concern for the world.

The challenge is this: have we sold out to a gnostic dualism between spirit and flesh?  Have we in practice (if not in theology) ignored the fleshy side of life in favour of the spirit side of life?  If we have, we need to do both to be doing full and proper 'gospel ministry'.

Atheist carol-singing

Published by bcg on 23 December 2007 in Culture, Current Affairs and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I was preparing to blog on an article I read in The Times the other day, and this morning discovered a friend had done just that! His blog post is here, the original article is here and some letters sent to the editor in response are here.

Apparently Richard Dawkins, outspoken and well-known atheist, enjoys singing carols at Christmas. Libby Purves writes:

How can his famous, well-modulated voice choke out the word 'adore', apropos a God he calls a 'misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully'?

diagacht argues that one can appreciate the 'culturally significant pieces of music' without making any statement of belief by singing them. I'm not sure that is the case. I think there is a difference between observing (e.g. appreciating some Bach at a music concert) and participating (e.g. singing Christian carols at Christmas).

Given the strength of Dawkins' antipathy towards God and religion in general (particularly the bit Libby Purves quotes above), I do find it amusing that he enjoys singing carols so much.

The Perfect Christmas

Published by bcg on 19 December 2007 in Culture, Current Affairs and Theology. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

This evening we watched Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Christmas on BBC2. Normally I love watching Heston – the 'culinary alchemist' – with his very male cooking; it's all gadgets, industrial equipment, perfectionism, and lots of lovely rich butter. And he gets to use liquid nitrogen!!

However this evening's episode left a bitter aftertaste. One of his first comments was about his starter – apparently there are three vital elements to a nativity play: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We heard all about the 'three kings' travelling through Oman where they probably picked up their frankincense. And who were they for? 'The newborn baby' – not once in the whole programme did I hear the name 'Jesus'.

Now, I know that it isn't a Christian programme – Heston's comments about his perfect Christmas, which involves roaring fires, the smell of Christmas trees, roast goose and so on, reveal the total secularisation of Christmas into something sentimental, an excuse for the family to eat a slap-up meal in front of a roaring fire – but to talk about Christmas, including the nativity story, without mentioning Jesus' name, is quite something.

But that wasn't the worst part. He managed to come up with something tasteless at best, at worst extremely offensive. He served communion wafers dipped in something that smelled of babies. I have a high tolerance level – I am not offended by The Life of Brian, for example – but that really jarred with me. Using communion wafers in a Christmas meal is crass and, I think, offensive.

Of course, if anyone complains, the media will probably make them out to be fundamentalists who can't take a good joke. However, taking one of the central acts of the Christian faith and turning it into a starter for your Christmas meal, is not a good joke.

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