gregoryjenks

Tag: Bible

  • Preaching the Old Testament

    A sermon by Dr Anthony Rees for the ‘Debate the Preacher’ series at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane on Sunday, 9 February 2014. Published here at Anthony’s request.

    Last week we commenced on a four week series—Why Bother with the Old Testament?  My colleague, Rev Dr Greg Jenks gave a fascinating reflection on this, inviting us to imagine a bible without the law, a bible without the prophets, a bible without the poems.  What sort of bible would that leave us with?  A narrow one, a lighter one—and not only in size.  Greg’s position was that we should bother with the Old Testament.  For the sake of the series, I considered proposing an alternative view.  But I need you to understand something.  I am writing my second book on the book of Numbers.  To be clear, if there is a book we have not bothered with, it is Numbers.  So if word got out that I had claimed that we need not bother with the OT, that would have been very bad for me.

    Greg began by playing a little with this title—Why Bother with the Old Testament?  Is this a question, or a statement?  If it is a question, how should we inflect it?  I want to suggest that the question itself assumes that we should bother with the Old Testament.  Even if we ultimately come to a point of rejection, we can only get there through a process of bothering.  But ‘bother’ itself is ambiguous.  To bother can mean to pay attention to, to attempt to understand.  In this sense it has a positive meaning.  But I say to my son, stop bothering your sister, by which I mean agitate, disturb, and it is generally not said positively.  Can we agitate the Old Testament—can we mess with it, can we play with it, can we bother it.  If we do, is it positive or negative?  Plenty of things I read, and write, suggest that we can—but that is for another time.

    What I want to do tonight is to pick up on something that came out of the discussion which followed Greg’s sermon.  If we affirm that we should bother with the OT, how should that manifest itself in our worshipping community?  The simple answer was that we should devote preaching to it—a recognition that much, if not all of our preaching tends to focus in on the NT readings.  For a long time, that meant Paul, and the reinforcement of doctrine.  But in more recent decades, as we have understood that our lives are a narrative, not a series of propositional statements, the gospel narrative has become a more potent source for preaching.  I have to make clear that this focus on NT preaching is not universal.  Indeed, I suspect it is a western phenomenon.  In the rural areas of Fiji, you might be lucky to hear one NT sermon a month.  The same is true of Africa.  I preached a sermon from John in Kenya a few years ago, and I think the local minister was very surprised.

    So I am going to preach from an OT text—but I want to do so as a way of demonstrating what I think is another compelling reason for us to hold onto the OT.  That is, that the OT gives us an emotional vocabulary to express our human experience, that is far richer than what we find in the NT.  Much of this is lost, due to the tragically sterilising work of the lectionary compilers.  But if we were in a sense, to reclaim our scriptures, we might be surprised at what we find.  Actually, my experience is that people are always surprised at what they find.

    PSALM 22

    For centuries, one figure dominated our interpretation of the psalms; David, the charismatic, god fearing, heroic King of biblical Israel, whose story we read in the books of Solomon, Kings and Chronicles.  This king, warrior, singer and song writer was thought to be the writer of many of the psalms we have collected in this book.  The superscriptions made it clear.  A psalm of David.  It was thought that at least some of these psalms could be traced to particular events in the story of David’s life as we read it in the historical books.  For example, psalm 51 has been thought to be written as a response to David’s actions with Bathsheba; in some sense, a display of contrition in light of his moral failing.  The psalms inspired readers, being, as Ellen Davis puts it, the spontaneous outpourings of a pious King’s heart.

    The twentieth century fractured that romantic view.  No longer are these psalms valued for their insight into David’s life, which is now considered to be essentially unknowable, but instead for the way in which their more generalized language and forms have made them accessible to generations of worshippers.  These songs belong not to David, but to all those who worship the God of Israel.  As Davis says again, they are intensely personal, and yet, not private.  Their response of faith to human experience ensures that they serve as the single most important resource for both Jewish and Christian prayer.

    So it is with psalm 22, a lament, perhaps the supreme example of lament in the psalms.  The psalm divides into two major sections. Vss 1-21 are what we might generally refer to as the lament, vss 22-31 being a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance.  The distinction between the two sections is so sharp that some scholars have suggested that these two fragments may have come from separate authors, or at least represent two independent compositions.  If we were interested in looking for an author, this may well be a clue to us.  However, if we approach the psalm with a view to reading it as a liturgical work, what we see instead is not discontinuity, but rather, a liturgical process; the lamenting prayer makes way for the praise and thanksgiving which follows the assurance of God’s gracious response.

    My, God, My God, why have you forsaken me?  The opening question leads to another—why are you so far from helping, from the words of my roaring?  And a further complaint—I cry, day and night, but find no rest, by which he means not peace, but rather, no reason to stop crying, God’s abandonment is still real to our psalmist.  This is an interesting problem.  The psalter is full of assertions that God does not abandon his people (see Psalms 9, 27, 37, 38, 71), and yet what we have in this psalm is a writer in despair, complaining bitterly at God’s abandonment.  Despite his bitterness, the writer is still some way from turning away from God.  His cry reveals his desperation, twice calling ‘my God’, what Calvin notes as a distinct profession of faith, the cry of a believer.

    The shift in vs 3 highlights the gravity of the psalmist’s theological problem.  The essence of Israelite covenant faith is that trust in God leads to deliverance.    This is the story of ‘our’ ancestors, those who cried out, trusted and found deliverance.  This story is the praise upon which Yhwh is enthroned!  The use of ‘our’ is instructive also.  There is an understanding that personal distress can be held together with a common history.  The prayer for personal deliverance is spoken in the midst of others.  This idea reiterates Davis’ comment; it is personal, but not private.

    At vs 6 the tone changes again.  The psalmist reveals something of his circumstances.  He is a worm—an object of derision, of insignificance.  People around him taunt him—all who see me, he says.  The taunts reveal to us the nature of the psalmist’s mental turmoil; God’s apparent inaction justifies the taunts of the mockers.  Their taunts have a tinge of truth to them; ‘let Yhwh deliver —let him deliver the one in whom he delights’—their taunt echoes the historical recollection of the ancestors who were ‘delivered’ in vs 4.  The irony is cutting.  God’s abandonment seems evident to the onlookers, their jibes are internalised by the psalmist.

    Again the focus shifts at verse 9.  A pattern has emerged: vs 3 commences with the words, ‘But you’, verse six, ‘But I’, and at verse nine, ‘But you’, though this time a little more emphatically.  The psalmist again looks at God’s action in the past, though this time not with Israel, but with himself.  God is imaged as a midwife, taking him from the womb and placing him on the mother’s breast.  God, the gentle, caring, compassionate midwife is tenderly concerned for the well being of this new life.  God has been intimately involved in the development of our psalmist, so much so that he proclaims, ‘since my mother bore me, you have been my god’, forming an inclusio with the opening cry of the psalm—my god, my god—god who has always been my god, why have you forsaken me?  The opening section concludes with a plea which affords us a glimpse of what lies ahead—do not be far, trouble is all around, there is no one to help.

    Vss 12-18 reveal an ever deepening despair and unravelling of the psalmist.  The language is metaphorical, the imagery powerful.  His enemies are described as wild animals; bulls, lions and dogs.  The animals are symbols of non human strength.  They are animals that represent a threat to human existence.  In the ancient world they could also represent demonic forces, an image which dramatically heightens the picture of fear that is being painted.  They surround him, stalk him and appear ready to pounce on their prey.  They seem to be ever closing—vivid contrast to God’s supposed distance.  The psalmist’s physical state is disastrous—his energy is consumed, his body battered, his heart melts, his mouth is dried out—he is fatigued and thirsty beyond the ability to speak, death is assured.  So certain are the enemies of his demise that they cast lots for his clothing—this man is beyond hope.  In fact, in the midst of this litany of disaster, God does appear, but only to lay the victim in the dust, symbolising the apparent certainty of death.

    Vs 19—But you, and here the psalmist names God Yhwh for the first time, and prays not for closeness, but for deliverance, for help.  Vss 20-21 are remarkable; ‘deliver my soul from the sword, my life (my only one) from the power of the dog; save me from the mouth of the lion’, and then, remarkably, ‘from the horn of the wild ox you have rescued me!’—the perfect tense immediately changes the tenor of the text.  No longer is this a psalm of petition, of imploring god to be close, of crying out for divine help.  This is now a prayer of assurance, you have rescued me!

    The praise that follows unfolds in sharp distinction to the lament from which it proceeds.  The lament is marked by a sense of entrapment, of an ever tightening circle of danger.  The praise and thanksgiving section however, moves ever outward in its expression, moving from brothers and sisters, to the congregation, to the offspring of Jacob, to the ends of the earth—all the families of nations, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.  All of humanity is caught up in the psalmists vision of praise to the almighty god of his deliverance.  It hints at Isaiah’s vision—that the whole of the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, though its scope is even wider.

    While the universal vision that this portion of the psalm presents is breathtaking, these verses contain other significant statements that we mustn’t ignore.  Vs 22 places the psalmist in the presence of friends, in opposition to the enemies that have surrounded him to this point.  That he is in the midst of the congregation also tells us that what is being described is a liturgical, religious event.  This is extended in vss 25-26, where having offered his vows in recognition of God’s action, the psalmist joins in a thanksgiving meal.  This is a symbol both of a reconciled community and fellowship with God.  The psalmist, who had previously approached death exclaims to those with whom he shares ‘may your hearts live forever’.

    The language of verse 26 is particularly significant.  The poor (the afflicted, the lowly) shall eat and be satisfied, those who ‘seek’ will praise the Lord.  James Luther Mays sees here a clear redefining of who Israel is.  It is not the trouble he has faced which has made the psalmist lowly or afflicted.  This suffering has happened to him  ‘as’ one of the lowly, and God’s response shows that he is the God of the lowly, of the afflicted, not in circumstance, but in being.  This too reaches back to vs 24 and is a realisation that God’s apparent absence was an illusion.  So the psalmist answers his own complaint—he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried.  The meal then is not just a meal of physical nourishment, but also represents a spiritual fill for those who continue to be ‘lowly’.

    In response to God’s actions on behalf of the psalmist, the nations are called to praise god.  This is an unusual move, as the nations are often pictured as god’s enemies (Ps 2).  Even more peculiar is that they are said to ‘remember’, and ‘turn’, verbs which are commonly implored of Israel.  And then they will worship, or ‘bow low’.  Interestingly, Israel is frequently warned against becoming like the nations.  Here, the nations are to become ‘like Israel’, the clear implication being that Yhwh rules the nations.

    The ever widening circle even encompasses those who have died or have not yet lived.  This lends the psalm an eschatological character, particularly with the future tense verbs of vss 27 onwards.  Death comes to all, but the delivering acts of God will be told from generation to generation; he has done it.

    The sufferer of the psalm experiences the terror of human mortality, acutely aware of god’s absence and the presence of enemies.  The prayer of the psalmist offers us a paradigm for expressing our own suffering—to use it is to set one’s self within the paradigm.  For Christians, this psalm has taken on special significance, since Jesus’ appropriation of the psalm joins him with the countless others—the company of the afflicted, and he becomes one with them in the midst of suffering.  Jesus’ use of the psalm invites us to pray with him in the midst of our own turmoil.

    But this psalm, in the end, is not about suffering.  It is, finishing with the words of Ellen Davis, about the possibility, efficacy and necessity of giving praise to god’.  He has done it.

  • Why bother with the Old Testament

    A sermon for the ‘Debate the Preacher’ series at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane on Sunday, 2 February 2014.

    It has fallen to me to begin this new series of ‘Debate the Preacher’ as we explore the significance of the ‘Old Testament’ for us today. Over the four Sundays of February we shall have an opportunity to hear different scholars from St Francis Theological College offer perspectives on the contributions that this part of the Bible makes to our lives today.

    Speaking of perspectives, what are we to make of the title for this series? How do we imagine the title to be punctuated? To put it another way, is our topic a question or an argument?

    Have you come here this evening expecting to be told why you should actually bother with the OT? Or have you come to hear someone tell you it is OK not to bother with that part of the Bible? Those are very different perspectives and we can signal the difference by the way we punctuate the sentence. 

    So whether you have come to seek release from the challenge of reading the OT, or seeking to be persuaded that this is actually something you should do, we have each come with some assumptions. We also come from particular contexts and life experiences. All of this will shape our perspectives, and meaning is largely constructed through the perspective of the interpreter. You may find what I say confronting or challenging, traditional or revisionist, helpful or a waste of time. What I will have said will be the same, but your perspective will largely determine what you make of my words.

    And then to the debate after the service ends …

    Defining our terms

    One of the first challenges we may face when thinking about the OT is which set of books is  intended, and what is the best way to name them these days. We can start with the latter issue since that opens the way for the deeper issue of which texts comprise the OT.

    It is common these days to find Christian people seeking to avoid the term, ‘Old Testament’. In its place we typically find terms such as ‘Hebrew Bible’, or ‘Jewish Scriptures’. There are good reasons for doing that, as well as even stronger reasons—in my mind—not to do so.

    The positive reasons for dropping the label ‘Old Testament’ begin with the unfortunate perception that ‘Old’ implies ‘no longer of value’. In a consumer culture obsessed by the quest for the latest new thing, clearly a ‘New’ Testament is better than an ‘Old’ Testament. Quite apart from the age profile of the average Anglican congregation, one might expect such an argument to have little appeal in Anglican circles. We value tradition and do not chase after the latest new thing.

    More insidiously, ‘Old Testament’ can suggest a supersessionist attitude towards Jews and their religion, and reinforce latent Christian anti-Semitism. The traditional name for these books within the Bible that we share with Jews does tend to imply that the religion centred around those books is an earlier and less-developed version of the latest ‘religious operating system’ that we enjoy as Christians.

    On this side of the Holocaust, Christians are rightly sensitive to anything that smacks of supersessionism or excludes Jews as the despised other. For many people, calling these books the ‘Hebrew Bible’ or the ‘Jewish Scriptures’ is an overdue recognition of our debt to Judaism and of the historical reality that two-thirds of the Christian Bible belongs first of all to the Jews.

    However, despite my sympathy with all these arguments, I do not accept the fashion of re-badging two-thirds of our Bible in this way. In my view the Christian scriptures known as the ‘Old Testament’ are related to the Jewish scriptures, perhaps better described as the Tanakh, but are not to be confused with them.

    The reason for this is very simple, and it is connected with the fact that there is no such thing as ‘the Christian Bible’, but rather a great many different variants of the Christian Bible. The collection of biblical writings that passes as ‘the Bible’ for most Westeners these days is not the ancient Bible of Christianity, but a novel form of the Bible created at the time of the European Reformation for the use of Protestant faith communities in NW Europe.

    Up until the Reformation—and therefore for more than one thousand years—the normative form of the Christian Bible was an enlarged version of the Old Testament together with the commonly-accepted books of the New Testament. The Christian OT derived from the ancient Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures, and included a dozen or so additional writings not included in the normative Hebrew version of the Jewish Bible. These were parallel and competing versions of the Jewish Bible, until the Protestants decided to adopt the Jewish set of books for their Old Testament as part of their protest against Rome. In the East, of course, there were none of these internal debates over the contents and form of the Bible, and the ancient Greek Bible with its larger OT continues to be the canonical text of the Orthodox religious communities.

    When the Protestant Reformers took upon themselves to reshape the OT within the Christian Bible they only half completed the job. They deleted the books found only in the Greek version, but kept the remaining books in the same sequence as found in the Septuagint Greek and the Latin Vulgate versions. The end result was a Protestant OT that contained only the books found in the Tanakh, but arranged them in the traditional Christian order that differs significantly from the Jewish arrangement.

    That was not simply a sloppy job. It actually created a third form of the OT, even if it is one that most Western people mistake for the original Bible. We now have a Jewish set of Scriptures with 22 books arranged in three sections, a Catholic/Orthodox Old Testament with around 52 books arranged in five sections, and a Protestant Old Testament with 39 books also arranged in the same five sections. These are not the only variations, but they are the major ones and suffice for our purposes this evening.

    Except when I am intending to refer to the Jewish Scriptures (in which case I use the term, Tanakh), I therefore insist on using ‘Old Testament’ for the first two-thirds of my Christian Bible. There is an ancient and obvious link between the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh, but they are not the same document. What I am speaking about this evening is not the role of the Tanakh in the life of the Christian community, but the role of Old Testament.

    In doing that I am conscious that my OT may not be the same as yours. That is most likely because I am using the ancient Christian Old Testament while you may be using a Protestant edition of the OT that deliberately choose to exclude a dozen or writings that had been part of the biblical inheritance of Christians since the first century. Those so-called ‘apocryphal’ books continue to form part of the Bible for Anglicans, Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

    As an aside, let me just add that this diversity in the forms of the Bible does not faze me. In fact, I appreciate that diversity and I claim it as part of my biblical authority to hold opinions that someone else may not approve. If the Great Church cannot even agree on what books constitute the Bible, then I think I can cut myself a bit of slack on a number of other disputed beliefs and practices as well.

    Why is the place of the OT in Christianity up for debate?

    Given the historical aspects of the Old Testament as ancient part of the biblical legacy of Christianity, why are we beginning this conversation over a month of Sundays? The reason is, of course, that all of us feel some degree of discomfort when engaging with these ancient Jewish texts that now form two-thirds of our Bible.

    Let me absolutely plain here: these are Jewish texts. They constitute the largest part of the Christian Bible, but they are not Christian texts. They are canonical texts for Christians, but in accepting them in that way we are adopting into our context documents that come from another very different context.

    Out of our desire to acknowledge and respect the Jewishness of these texts we may feel that there is something awkward about even using them these days as Christians. Just as we would no longer consider it appropriate (I hope) for a group of Christians to celebrate a Passover Seder during Holy Week, should we stop using their Scriptures and just make do with our own? For reasons that will be covered later, this is not my view; but it is one with which I have some sympathy.

    We sometimes hear it said that we are a ‘NT church’ and therefore should not pay as much attention to the Old Testament. Indeed a colleague said exactly that at Clergy Summer School last month. It is almost as if a biblical passage from the OT only has relevance for us if we can find a NT text to affirm it or modify it in some way. This is a view with which I have almost no sympathy, and it drives me to affirm that we are a ‘biblical church’, rather than a NT church. Not a ‘Bible Church’, mind you; but a biblical church! There is a difference even if we cannot parse it out this evening.

    Part of the reason for this series that we are beginning tonight is that we do sense some profound differences between OT and NT. This is right to do, and far better than reading the OT so thoroughly through our Christian perspectives that these ancient Jewish texts only speak with a Christian accent. But a growing awareness of those differences, and the need to redress almost 2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism, can cause us to lose our nerve when it comes to reading these texts.

    The ‘problem’ of the Old Testament

    There are a great many complexities and challenges about reading the OT as Christians, just as there are when Jewish people seek to read the same texts as Jews. I have rehearsed some of these in other places, so I will not recite them again here.

    Suffice to say that the length and complexity of the OT, and its cultural distance from our time and place—as well as its uncritical acceptance of violence, patriarchy, gender discrimination—all combine to make these texts problematic for Christians in the twenty-first century. This is compounded by issues around literal readings of these ancient pre-modern texts, and perceived conflicts with history and science.

    The power of the Old Testament

    Rather than focus on the things that make it tricky for us to use the OT, I want to sketch some of the positive reasons why we should make the best use we can of these ancient Jewish texts that constitute such a large proportion of our Christian Bibles.

    First of all, the OT provides historical depth to our tradition. Even when the events themselves are not historical, these are ancient stories and ancient songs that derive from the historical experience of our ancestors in the faith. Their contexts were different from ours, and their beliefs about God are not the same as ours, but they represent the mountain spring from which the river of faith flows. The faith that matters to us did not begin with Jesus and was certainly not created in the last few hundred years. It has ancient roots deep behind historical memory. Some of us are privileged to visit the biblical lands and dig up the past with our own hands, but for most of us the OT is our birth certificate as people of faith.

    Secondly, the OT simply covers a larger sample of life and holiness than NT offers. Most likely we can account for the creation of all of the NT writings within about 100 years of Easter. Some would argue that much less time is needed, but I prefer this is more modest claim. During that one hundred years and across the limited range of texts gathered into the NT, there is a much smaller sample of life and faith than we find in the OT. Many issues are just not addressed directly in the NT, but we find texts within the OT that do so—and they invite us into an engagement with Scripture (and with the Spirit of Christ).

    A third reason for bothering with these ancient Jewish texts in the Christian Bible is that these are the formative texts of the Western religious tradition. In saying that I am conscious that these are actually ‘Eastern’  texts, even though they have shaped the Western tradition so deeply. If we want to understand our own cultural tradition we simply have to engage with the writings of the Old Testament.

    Far more than a cultural legacy is involved at this point. These are challenging spiritual texts: the Law, the Prophets, the Poems. The Law invites us to imagine ourselves in a covenant with God, and it is a communal covenant rather than simply a private quest for salvation. The Prophets challenge us to be authentic about living out the implications of that covenant, and to focus on the things that really matter: mercy, justice, humility. And the Poems of Israel provide us with a songsheet for the human soul as we pass through times of success and times of tragedy.

    The danger of a Christianity without the Old Testament

    The idea of ceasing to bother with the Old Testament is not a new one. It was a very real option for Christians in the middle of the second century. By that time a majority of Christians were not of Jewish descent, and some Christians considered too close an association with Judaism to be a negative element following successive Jewish revolts against Roman rule. Indeed, some Jews were also eager to dissociate themselves from Christianity and sharpen the divide between the two religions.

    Marcion (ca. 85–160 CE) was a Christian leader from what today we could call northern Turkey. He was something of a lightning rod for those Christians seeking to discard the Jewish aspects of Christianity, and get rid of the Old Testament. While often represented as a heretic and trouble-maker, Marcion may actually have been a traditionalist who argued for a view that was contested in his own time. However that may have been, the debate that Marcion brought to focus with his publication of the very first edition of the New Testament, led ultimately to the NT as we know it today—and to the affirmation that the OT is an essential part of the Christian Bible.

    We owe Marcion a deep debt, and especially for his unintended consequence of making us claim our Jewish heritage as an essential element of Christianity.

    To discard the OT from our Bibles—or even just from our lectionaries—would be to suffer a loss of access to these profoundly spiritual texts. Can we really contemplate a Bible without the Law? A Bible without the Prophets of Israel? A Bible without Job or the Psalms?

    Such a truncated Bible would mean we could never understand either Jesus or Paul. They were both Jews, of course. Their Bible was the Tanakh, or—in Paul’s case—the Septuagint.

    Worse still, if we are not willing to ‘bother’ with the OT we shall end up with an excessively spiritualised and individualised Christianity. ‘Me and Jesus’ too often substitutes for the biblical faith that calls us to participate in intentional covenantal communities of faithfulness. The OT is absolutely essential for a Christianity that offers more than fire insurance or get-out-of-jail cards for isolated individuals.

    Finally, and most importantly, a Christianity without the OT will lead us back to Auschwitz. Christian anti-Semitism is fed by self-serving Christian rejection of the Jews and their Bible. A Christianity without the OT is not Christianity at all, but a Jesus cult that promotes a toxic religious message that is bad for everyone, and fatal for the Jews.

    So, yes, I think we should bother with the Old Testament!

  • Motion 16

    At the next session of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane in a few weeks time, the following motion is listed for debate:

    That this Synod:

     a)    Acknowledges the request, in the book The Once and Future Scriptures, for dialogue concerning the approach to interpreting the Bible.

    b)    Encourages further reflection on the theological content of the book, in light of the statements of faith contained in the Book of Common Prayer (and AAPB and APBA), Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church of Australia.

    c)     Welcomes open and thoughtful dialogue, however, expresses concern that aspects of the book appear to contradict the teachings found in the Book of Common Prayer (and AAPB and APBA), Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church of Australia.

    d)    Reaffirms its commitment to the authority of Holy Scriptures as expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles, Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church of Australia.

    This blog addresses that motion more directly, and builds on more general comments that I published a week ago in response to published comments by my colleague, Ralph Bowles.

    The following comments originated as a Facebook post, but may be helpful re-posted in this way as people prepare for Synod.

    (1) Neither I nor any of the other contributors believe that the book is contrary to the formularies of the Anglican Church of Australia, although parts of the book will doubtless be viewed that way according to some interpretations of those formularies. I actually address that very point in the final section of chapter one, where I reflect on the way that the Bible is built into the formularies of our church.

    (2) As the Archbishop and Primate not only contributed a Foreword but also launched the book at the Cathedral, I assume he shares my assessment that the book is an exploration of the role of the Bible in the contemporary church (as per the sub-title), is not in breach of the formularies, and makes a serious contribution to a much-needed conversation about the Bible.

    (3) Several of the chapters in the book were presented as papers to the SFC Research Seminar series during 2012.

    (4) A study guide for the book is being prepared by the MEC, and will be available free of charge to any person or parish wishing to use the book for serious discussion.

    (5) The Synod motion builds on the unsuccessful attempt at last year’s Synod to have a theological inquiry into the beliefs of the people teaching at SFC. There is a clear “Sydney” agenda here, and we need to keep reminding all participants that Sydney Diocese and its “New Cranmer” surrogates are not representative of Evangelical Anglicanism.

    (6) The motion is unlikely to pass in its present form and will most likely be amended into a more acceptable form.

    (7) The best way to encourage dialogue and discussion is not by Synod motions, but by the deep engagement of people who hold different views with one another yet enter into serious conversation to discern what they can learn from the other person. 

    (8) I note that the BIBLE360 project is both a fruit of the kind of scholarship gathered up in the book under attack, as well as a fine example of cooperation and dialogue that goes beyond church factions, theological opinions, etc.

    (9) The really important question at the heart of all this is what kind of church we wish to be at this time and and in this place. The formularies fashioned for the most part in the 16C and 17C, or (in the case of the Constitution of our church) drafted in the 20C to preserve the earlier doctrinal positions are simply not capable of serving the church well in the third millennium. This is a uniquely Australian Anglican problem, rather than a global Anglican problem, as most other provinces have not tied themselves to the Articles and the BCP in the same way.

    (10) As a reformed catholic church, the Anglican Church of Australia needs to be able to reform and reshape its own life as the Spirit guides and in faithful conversation with Scripture. This surely means that the Bible can be read in ways that may not always conform to the religio-political compromises of the UK in the 16C and 17C? Otherwise we shall have domesticated the Bible and limited the truth of God revealed through the Scriptures to statements of faith that were already contested and provisional beliefs more than 300 years ago.

  • Progressive Anglicans

    It is surely ironic that the same weekend as I published a set of lectionary notes in which I call for religious leaders to disband the theological thought-police, one of my colleagues in ministry issued a call for people who hold progressive theological ideas to be expelled from the church.

    In my notes for the Second Sunday after Pentecost I reflected as follows on Paul’s words in Galatians 1 where he demands that anyone with a different gospel than his own be accursed:

    These are harsh words, and they are spoken from a position of privilege and power. Paul will have better moments in his career as a religious essayist, but he has many admirers in today’s church. The theological thought police are quick to confront deviations from approved forms of liturgy or theology. What the world needs now is more religious communities with some capacity to live with ambiguity. We need fewer fatwas and no more church edicts that divide, exclude and control the faithful. What might the world be like if the followers of Jesus were famous for our gentleness towards others, and especially those with whom we disagreed?

    Quite independently (and indeed a day or so before my post was published), my colleague and friend—Ralph Bowles—completed his three-part review of a book written by two other friends and colleagues: Living the Questions. The wisdom of progressive Christianity, edited by David M. Felton and Jeff Proctor-Murphy.

    While some of my friends who identify as progressive Christians find such a critique a cause for celebration, I remain concerned at the bleak assessment of the place of progressive thinking within the Anglican Church of Australia. If all of the concerns voiced by Ralph were authentic and valid, I would share at least some of his evident anxiety in response to this particular set of ‘fresh expressions’ within the life of our church.

    However, I think Ralph is unnecessarily concerned about the negative impact of progressive Christianity within Anglicanism and in some cases quite mistaken.

    In drafting this preliminary response to Ralph’s recent blog, I do want to stress my respect for Ralph and my appreciation for his friendship. Our offices at St Francis Theological College are just a few meters apart, and we have much in common—including a passion for churches that become places of transformation and hope. We come from different theological perspectives within the life of our national church, and this is not the first time we have corresponded with each other about these matters. Until now those conversations have not been in the public domain.

    In particular, during 2012 we collaborated with others (from a range of theological viewpoints) in the development of a diocesan program to deepen the engagement of Brisbane Anglicans with the Bible. The BIBLE360 program is precisely the kind of project that brings together conservative and progressive members of our church, and it is characterized by teamwork and training.

    Before responding to Ralph’s specific criticisms, a comment on the context in the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane may be in order. A group of conservative Evangelicals, for whom such a description is a badge of honor rather than a polemical label, have organized themselves as the New Cranmer Lobby. They tend to promote traditional and conservative forms of Anglicanism, more typical of the Diocese of Sydney than the Diocese of Brisbane. They have given notice of a motion for the June 2013 session of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane that expresses concern at a recent book that I have edited, and to which several senior clergy of the Diocese of Brisbane have contributed essays. Indeed, the Archbishop of Brisbane and Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, contributed a Foreword to that volume and welcomed its publication as a contribution to the necessary debate within the church about the Bible. The complete motion reads as follows:

    That this Synod:

     a)    Acknowledges the request, in the book The Once and Future Scriptures, for dialogue concerning the approach to interpreting the Bible.

    b)    Encourages further reflection on the theological content of the book, in light of the statements of faith contained in the Book of Common Prayer (and AAPB and APBA), Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church of Australia.

    c)     Welcomes open and thoughtful dialogue, however, expresses concern that aspects of the book appear to contradict the teachings found in the Book of Common Prayer (and AAPB and APBA), Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church of Australia.

    d)    Reaffirms its commitment to the authority of Holy Scriptures as expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles, Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church of Australia.

    It seems unlikely that the blog published by Ralph Bowles is entirely unrelated to this notice of motion for Synod next month, even if he has no formal association with the New Cranmer Lobby and has played no part in the drafting of the motion. Ralph is welcome to participate in such a lobby group if he chooses, and as a member of Synod he can certainly contribute to debate in a variety of ways. This may include the publication of material that can be used to inform members of Synod prior to the debate, as well as assisting speakers in the debate to prepare their ideas and their speaking points.

    Indeed, my response to Ralph also has one eye on the members of Synod, and is intended as much to assist speakers wishing to debate the motion as it is to dissuade Ralph of any ideas that I consider mistaken. Given my absence from Brisbane on Study Leave during the period when Synod meets, this response may be one way I can contribute to the debate that so many people are seeking.

    Ralph indicates that he will provide “five reasons why Progressive Christianity is problematic for our Church,” although he actually has six numbered arguments as well as several other arguments that are not numbered. I will address each of the five (six) reasons. For the sake of brevity, I will not address directly each of the additional points that are not recognized by Ralph as separate reasons.

    In very broad terms, my response to the arguments offered by Ralph is to suggest that only the first is really a serious issue. It is both the presenting issues and the substantive issue, with the others being very minor concerns if not entirely irrelevant.

    I will paraphrase each of the reasons briefly, and then address them in turn.

    1. Such theological views are contrary to the ‘definitional boundaries’ of the Anglican Church of Australia, as expressed in the Constitution of our Church and its formularies such as The Book of Common Prayer and The Articles of Religion.
    2. It is not possible to hold together views that are as divergent as progressive Christianity and the traditional orthodoxy of the Anglican Church as expressed in its Constitution and formularies.
    3. Progressive theological views are incompatible with the mission of the church and undermine any prospect for church growth.
    4. Progressive Christianity has at its heart a ‘spirituality’ that is not compatible with either ‘historic Christianity’ or with the New Testament.
    5. The theological differences between progressives and traditionalists are so profound that this undermines any realistic prospect of them working together or sharing in training for mission/ministry.
    6. Proponents of progressive theology are set on a path that can only result in schism.

    I hope these simplified paraphrases do justice to the argument proposed by Ralph, as I have no desire to misrepresent his views and I sincerely wish to understand his concerns. For now, I shall assume that I have been reasonably successful in describing his key arguments.

    In responding to these concerns I propose to address them in reverse order, as I consider them to have a descending order of relevance and significance. I will conclude by addressing the first of the reasons offered by Ralph, as I consider it to be the core issue and also one of substantial significance.

    Schismatic tendencies

    The suggestion that progressive Christians are prone to schism is unfounded. Schism has been a dimension of Christian experience since New Testament times, and is certainly attested in the Johannine literature. Many groups of Christians have found that schism (separation) has been the most viable pathway for them in light of theological and other differences. In recent years we have seen schismatic Anglo-Catholic traditionalists, while the Evangelical enthusiasm for church planting in other ecclesiastical jurisdictions is a well-known contemporary expression of schismatic actions. Indeed factions and schisms are especially associated with Protestant and Pentecostal expressions of Christianity because of the relatively low value given to unity and the high value given to doctrinal purity. To accuse progressive Christians of schismatic tendencies when they have chosen to remain within the fellowship of church communities whose core concepts, liturgical practices, and missional priorities offer so little to encourage us to feel ‘at home’ is unrealistic and unfair. This ‘reason’ can be set aside as not worthy of further attention.

    No basis for common mission or formation for ministry

    This reason (#5) also has little substantial basis as responsibility for such lack of collaboration as may occur perhaps rests as much with the traditionalists (of various ilks) as with the progressives. The Anglican Church of Australia has a long tradition of tribalism, with many dioceses largely expressing (and promoting) one form or another of the competing schools of thought. With increased communication between the members of the church in various dioceses, this legacy of isolation has been addressed in some constructive ways. However, it remains the case that our church has very weak national institutions precisely because of the reluctance of certain ‘parties’ and their distinctive dioceses to collaborate. This is seen in fields as diverse as liturgical revision, theological education, missionary agencies, media relations, and welfare service delivery. Despite the longstanding practice of Evangelical members of our diocese sending theological students to colleges interstate or to local colleges operated by non-Anglican (but Evangelical) bodies, we have some recent examples of significant cooperation between progressives and traditionalists. The Natural Church Development project in which Ralph works is itself one example of such collaboration, while the BIBLE360 program is an impressive example of exactly the kind of teamwork and shared discipleship training that Ralph declares to be impossible. Rather than despair of the possibility of working together, perhaps our differences could motivate us to work harder to find, create and support such shared projects?

    A spirituality that is incompatible with ‘historic Christianity’ and the New Testament.

    The fourth reason from Ralph’s original list seems to be a grab-bag of concerns, few of which can stand up to examination. For starters, it is very unclear just what ‘historic Christianity’ means and what beliefs or practices it includes. Most likely Ralph means Western European and especially Protestant expressions of Christianity, and excludes the remarkable diversity found in Christian churches beyond our Western cultural sphere. Even within that sphere, Western Christians have fought one another in lengthy wars, tortured their opponents to extract confessions, and even killed one another over minor liturgical and theological differences. The term ‘historic Christianity’ seems to be an Evangelical neologism created to hide the lack of agreement between conservative expressions of Christianity: Roman, Protestant, Pentecostal, etc. In any case, such historic expressions of Christian faith and practice include beliefs and customs many Evangelicals find abhorrent precisely because of their perceived lack of fit with the teachings of the New Testament. It certainly cannot be assumed that ‘historic [Western] Christianity’ is consistent with the New Testament, and the Reformation was in part about that very point. The Councils and Creeds of the ancient churches have an ambiguous status in the churches of the twenty-first century, where no ruler can impose theological conformity on their subjects. We may simply have to face the fact that ancient rules have to be renegotiated in the new situation where we find ourselves as people of faith. One problem, of course, is that none of us anticipate easy agreement on these matters. All parties pretend to embrace the ancient creeds and confessions, ignoring those parts we find unattractive and promoting the bits we like. Uniformity was a value of the Medieval and Reformation churches, but is not a value much appreciated by people in our time and place. For the sake of the mission of God in the world, perhaps we need to stop hankering after a lost world of black and white tones, and embrace the diversity of our rainbow lives.

    Incompatibility with the mission of the church.

    The final lines of the previous section already indicate my view on the missional imperative of engaging constructively with the actual (diverse and multi-faith) world in which we live, which God has created, and in which her mission is coming to birth. A shorthand form of this criticism has been around for a long time: “It does not preach!” This was the charge leveled at liberals in earlier decades, and it is often thrown at progressives in our own time. In fact—as my own experience tells me repeatedly—it does preach, and it preaches so well that many traditional Christians find it discomforting and wish to stop their ears. They have ears but cannot hear, and eyes but cannot see, as the Bible suggests. A progressive theology that calls people to respond to God’s compassion and justice in their everyday lives in this world, rather than offering personal piety programs that mature only in the next life, is both prophetic and biblical. Empowering people to read their everyday lives in light of the Scriptures, and to explore together how best to act on what they discern the Spirit saying to the churches, is surely at the heart of the mission of the church. People of power and influence may not like such an expression of Christianity, but those kinds of people had no time for Jesus either. The current evidence suggests that such progressive theology does grow churches, and not just numerically. Unlike the old liberals, progressives are passionate about our faith and ways in which we might exercise it in everyday life. As the R&D department of the Anglican Church of Australia we may make lots of mistakes, but at least we are seeking to generate new expressions of Church that are faithful to Jesus and responsive to God in the world. This third reason proposed by Ralph simply will not fly.

    The diversity is too great for genuine unity to be sustained.

    This is a counsel of despair, and really just a re-statement of item five. The experience of the Anglican Church, in particular, is that we do hold together in creative tension diverse perspectives on faith and mission. In the past people who held these different views have persecuted and killed one another. We do not need to import the culture wars of our secular city into the life of the church. The disciples chosen by Jesus included collaborators and rebels. God calls us to unity, not to uniformity. I think the doctrine of the Trinity has something to say to us about that.

    Conflict with the ‘definitional boundaries’ of the Anglican Church of Australia.

    As indicated previously, I consider this to be the only substantive argument proposed by Ralph. It is one that I think requires more careful consideration than is possible in a Synod debate or an exchange of blog posts. Still, this online dialogue may be one useful contribution to the dialogue that is already long overdue. If gay and straight Anglicans can be invited into a listening process, perhaps the same is true of progressive and traditional Anglicans?

    The essence of this argument proposed by Ralph seems to be that the Anglican Church of Australia is a voluntary religious association and as such it has the legal right to define the terms of its membership. If particular beliefs and behaviors are required under the Constitution and Canons of this church then any failure to adhere to those beliefs or follow those practices could place the membership of such ‘offenders’ in jeopardy. Such an argument has a certain logic and may one day be tested in ecclesiastical or secular courts, or in both.

    I am not qualified to advise on the validity of such an argument, but I can recognize its theological implications. Should such a view of the church be upheld then its character will have been determined as a legal framework for enforcing uniformity and distributing certain benefits. Its character as a sacred mystery and a community of transformation will have been lost.

    While some groups and dioceses within the national church may see things in this way, I am not sure it is a valid interpretation of the Constitution and Canons of the Anglican Church of Australia. That will be for others to determine, but a church that seeks to discipline its progressive constituency in such a heavy-handed manner will surely face the judgment of history, not to mention God.

    It also strikes me as significant that those who appeal to such legal and constitutional frameworks are not seeking to engage with different theological views. Rather than enter a dialogue in a quest for new and deeper truth, they appeal to the rules to exclude the other point view from the life of the church. I hope we can avoid that cul de sac, and explore the broad via media together.

    In previous private communications I have suggested to Ralph that to define the church and its doctrines in such a way as he is proposing would be to domesticate the Bible and reduce the capacity of the Scriptures to serve as a vehicle for fresh and continuing revelation. If the meaning of the Bible can never result in a change to the beliefs and practices of the church as determined in Late Antiquity, during the Middle Ages or at the Reformation, then the letter will indeed have triumphed over the Spirit. That would be a radical betrayal of the Reformation legacy indeed.

    It is a dangerous thing to fall into the hands of the Living God, and she will not be constrained by either the Scriptures of the ecumenical church nor the Constitution and Canons of the Anglican Church of Australia. The canon lawyers and the Senior Counsels may yet determine that the corporate entity we have created to facilitate our common life as Anglicans in Australia is a legal straitjacket rather than an instrument of grace. I hope that will not prove to be the case, but I shall not be surprised if it does.

    In the meantime, I choose to live with hope and with a considerable dose of ambiguity. I do not have the answers to life’s questions, but I am blessed to be part of a religious community that seeks to shape lives that are holy and true. For me that is sufficient.

    © 2013 Gregory C. Jenks

    29 May 2013