The Jeffrey John Fiasco
I know that just about the world and his dog has been commenting on this recently, and I’m late to the party anyway, but I just wanted to add my two cents. I heard last week that Jeffrey John was reported to be thinking of suing the Church for discrimination.
Now this was galling to me last week, but what pushed me to actually blog about it (I know, BLOGGING about it, can you believe!) was a lecture we had today on 1 Timothy 3.
Let me try and explain: it’s nothing to do with Jeffrey John’s sexuality, or at least – it’s only indirectly related.
The point is that he is wanting to sue the church for discrimination in not making him a bishop. Two things need to be said:
- Bringing lawsuits against believers in this manner is, I believe, prohibited by 1 Corinthians 6. What message does it send out to the world, let alone to the church?
- It seems to me that Dr John, by (contemplating) bringing this lawsuit, is denying the fact that there are people in the church who would be at all opposed to his appointment. In other words, hang the unity of the body of Christ – I want to be appointed a bishop. This leads onto the third thing.
- What’s the big deal about not being appointed a Bishop? Can one not serve God by being a dean? (To be honest I don’t really like the fact that he’s even a Dean but that’s another matter). The point is, he seems to be displaying a level of ambition which would make me question his motive for becoming a bishop. This is where 1 Timothy 3 comes in: apparently the word translated ‘sets his heart’ in the NIV in v1 has the meaning of over-ambition. The question is, does Jeffrey John want the office of Bishop, or the service?
On that last point, the lecturer this morning quoted John Chrysostom. I can’t find the exact quote, but this seems relevant:
That we may have glory with men, we lose ourselves with God. What profit in such honor? How self-evident its nothingness is! When you covet the episcopal rank, put in the other scale, the account to be rendered after this life. Weigh against it, the happiness of a life free from toil, take into account the different measure of the punishment. I mean, that even if you have sinned, but in your own person merely, you will have no such great punishment, nothing like it: but if you have sinned as bishop, you are lost. (Source)
It seems to me that anyone who desires the post of a Bishop that much, to the point of suing the church about it, is not really Bishop material.
Inerrancy, Augustine and UCCF
One of the problems with blogging is that of history. What do you do if you blog about something, then a while later change your mind on that subject? I’m contemplating such a problem right now. You see, in the past I’ve blogged about the UCCF Doctrinal Basis. Specifically, I didn’t like one of the points relating to Biblical infallibility. Well, I think the majority of the problems I had at the time have been resolved, and I’d like to share why I now think differently. [I did toy with just deleting the blog post, but I think that would be a bit dishonest.]
So, first of all, a couple of terms: Inerrancy - this is the belief that something is functionally without error. So, for example, I could say the statement “2 + 2 = 4″ is inerrant. Infallibility, however, is different. It means that something is without the possibility of error. So it’s actually stronger than saying something is inerrant. The ‘infallible’ claim is one which UCCF applied to the Bible in their Doctrinal Basis.
Before going any further, just a quick point on the ‘as originally given’ clause: obviously we don’t have the original copy of the Bible. That said, what with the number of manuscripts and so on we can be pretty sure what we’re reading is close to the original. This is in line with The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, an interdenominational evangelical document produced in the 70s.
So, that said, there was something I found particularly helpful in my understanding of inerrancy. I think the main problem I’d had before was that I didn’t understand the concept properly: I thought of inerrancy in a pretty wooden kind of way, e.g. if you believed in inerrancy you had to believe that every single word of the gospels was literally true, and verbatim. In other words, if Jesus is reported to have said two different things in two different gospels, this would mean one gospel was in error – and thus inerrancy fails.
Now what I’ve found particularly helpful on this is studying Augustine. In our church history module at college we’ve been looking at a variety of early church writings, and last week we were looking at some of their writings on Scripture (i.e. what their view of Scripture was). I found Augustine very helpful when thinking about this topic of inerrancy. Here’s a quote from Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels, II. xii. 29 (he’s talking about the difference between what John the Baptist said in Matthew 3:11 and John 1:27)
But further, if, when he spoke of the shoes of the Lord, John meant nothing more than to convey the idea of His supremacy and his own lowliness, then, whichever of the two sayings may have actually been uttered by him, whether that regarding the unloosing of the latchet of the shoes, or that respecting the bearing of the shoes, the self-same sense is still correctly preserved by any writer who, while making mention of the shoes in words of his own, has expressed at the same time the same idea of lowliness, and thus has not made any departure from the real mind [of the person of whom he writes]. It is therefore a useful principle, and one particularly worthy of being borne in mind, when we are speaking of the concord of the evangelists, that there is no divergence [to be supposed] from truth, even when they introduce some saying different from what was actually uttered by the person concerning whom the narrative is given, provided that, notwithstanding this, they set forth as his mind precisely what is also so conveyed by that one among them who reproduces the words as they were literally spoken. For thus we learn the salutary lesson, that our aim should be nothing else than to ascertain what is the mind and intention of the person who speaks.
I’m sorry if that’s a bit hard to digest! – basically Augustine is saying what is important is the last bit – the mind and intention of the person who speaks. Essentially this is the way we are to understand inerrancy: not in the sense of ‘every word ascribed to Jesus must have been verbatim spoken by him’ but we can affirm what is said is nonetheless truth.
Our lecturer made the point that human communication doesn’t work in that over-literal way, and that inerrancy works within that framework of human communication.
I found this a very helpful way of looking at inerrancy, particularly when it comes to the gospels. I admit that the real issue here was what I was understanding inerrancy to be, so perhaps this will help someone else!
Creation / Evolution 5 – Ground Rules for interpretation
This is part five in my (not-so-mini) series on “Creation, Evolution and Evangelicalism”. I’ve talked in previous posts (see that post for all the links) about why I think that so-called “Creationism”, more properly known as Young Earth Creationism or YEC for short, is not a sufficient explanation to account for both the Biblical and scientific data. Well, I’ve now done my assignment and the relevant reading for it and I think I’m in a position to at least move on slightly!
In my previous post I looked at Genesis 1 and how we might understand that from an old-earth and, I believe, a Biblical perspective. We now come to looking at the rest of the Bible, specifically, what do we do with the question of Adam and Eve? What do we do with the fall? Now I should say at the outset that anything I say here is not going to be anything other than tentative. The long and the short of it is, at the end of the day we just don’t know exactly what happened.
That said, I think there are a few points which we need to agree on before moving towards any kind of resolution.
Sermon: Matthew 3:13-4:11 – “A New Israel and a New Adam”
Tonight I preached a sermon at my placement church on Matthew 3:13-4:11. I don’t know whether it was recorded, I don’t know whether they have the facility to record there, so I’ve decided to upload the sermon as a PDF: you can download it here (PDF, 408K). That’s an approximation of what I said, by the way – I decided to preach from notes rather than a full script this time. (It seems to be working as well, my memory seems to be improving in that respect. It seems that you actually have to practice to improve your communication skills, who’d have thought it…)
I had some positive comments on it after the service, so that was positive. I felt a bit more nervous about preaching there than I have done previously, probably because I didn’t really know people so well. When I was preaching at Fordham I did at least know most of the people in the congregation. Still, preaching to a group of people who I don’t know is something I will need to get used to, so it’s not bad to have some experience in that respect.
Next week I’m preaching in chapel – it’s only a “Monday Meditation” (where basically the goal is to do as little talking as possible and get everyone to meditate while saying ‘Ommmm…’) but it’s still a pretty daunting prospect preaching to a bunch of people who are all studying theology and training to work in Christian ministry. People who have, for the most part, probably got more experience and learning under their belt than I have. Still, hey ho, experience is experience.
Hope you enjoy the sermon, if you read it. Let me know what you think.
2011: The Review
So, 2011: what about it, eh? *makes dismissive noise and rolls eyes* It’s been a bit of a year. Well, inspired by my friend Alex’s review of the year, I’ve decided to do something similar – though not in as much depth.
Here are a few things I’ve seen this year (films, books, TV etc… wherever the mood takes me. That’s the crazy kind of guy I am) which I think are worth watching. Note that not all of them came out this year, but this year is when I saw them:
Films
I will be honest: we haven’t been to the cinema since we went to see The King’s Speech ages ago. We rent DVDs from easyCinema (or LoveFilm, I think they’re basically the same) – hence not all of these are 2011 releases. Handily, you have a feature where you can rate a film after seeing it – so I’m going to post up a selection of the films I rated 4-5/5.
- Speed Racer – saw this on Alex’s recommendation earlier this year, and immediately ordered the DVD. (Well, Blu-Ray, but for brevity I’ll stick with DVD). Great family film, made by the Wachowski brothers around the time that they made the original Matrix.
- Beyond the Pole - interesting film, starring Stephen Mangan. Started out as a comedy but ended up slightly tragic, still with funny moments though. Worth watching.
- The Social Network - fantastic work. Someone told me that the writer of this film writes dialogue like poetry. I’m not entirely sure that’s exactly right but I thought it was very insightful, well paced, well scripted and well acted.
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - original Swedish version. Lots of Saabs and Volvos being driven around
This was really good – I don’t know what the new version is like, but this one is very thought-provoking. I like the ‘message’ as well, that the protagonist (the girl) does seem to change and find some kind of redemption. - The Ghost - good psychological thriller, very cleverly written.
- Submarine – excellent film, written and directed by newcomer Richard Ayoade (‘Moss’ from The IT Crowd). Side splittingly funny in places but with some really tender moments – kind of like ‘Beyond the Pole’ in terms of being a comedy/drama, but probably funnier.
- Things We Lost in the Fire - great story about a family shocked by the death of the father and them learning to be a family again – I’ve probably not sold it well but this one is actually quite heart-warming in the end.
- Tangled – a film we watched on Alex’s recommendation. Great kids film (and for adults too) – it left me with a smile on my face at least!
- Good Will Hunting - an old film I know, but if you haven’t seen it’s definitely worth watching. Ben Affleck plays his usual character, but Matt Damon is pretty good. And even Robin Williams isn’t annoying!
Once again plagiarising taking inspiration from Alex, one or two films I thought were absolutely awful:
- Knight and Day - I remember seeing Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz advertising this on Top Gear a while back. I thought, “Hmm, looks pretty good, I’ll check it out.” I shouldn’t have bothered … it’s awful. Couldn’t really follow the plot, it wasn’t really funny… overall, not the best film ever
- The Other Guys - this film showed some promise, I do like Will Ferrell – but just couldn’t quite deliver. I just didn’t find it funny, it seemed to follow too much in the vein of those so-called “jokeless comedies“.
- Four Lions - in some ways I didn’t want to put this in because it was pretty good, but at the end of the day I just found it didn’t really deliver. There were a few genius comedy moments, but apart from that it was a bit sad and left me feeling … well, a bit empty. (Kind of like 500 Days of Summer last year – although Four Lions was definitely funnier.)
Other Stuff
I don’t really read much in terms of novels (most of my novel reading has been in the form of free books on the Kindle, mainly Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories). I don’t want to start recommending Christian books on here at the moment, I might do that in a separate post.
We also don’t really watch that much TV, but here are a few bits of TV which come to mind:
- Doctor Who - really enjoyed this year’s season. Matt Smith and Stephen Moffat at their best I think.
- Frozen Planet – amazing TV. The BBC have excelled themselves once again.
- Rev – despite my somewhat negative review, it’s well worth watching!
- Death in Paradise - great fun, somewhat mindless but comic fun starring Ben Miller. Feel-good TV that hits the right notes for me.
- Outnumbered - I was a tad disappointed with the most recent series, it just felt like the kids were getting a bit too old. Part of the charm of the series was their innocence, and I think that has been somewhat lost now.
I think that’s enough from me rambling on anyway. I will now stop pretending I know anything about films or TV and move on…
Rev: The Rev-iew
Rev-iew. Rev review. Did you see what I did there? Hahahaha!
*ahem* Sorry.
The BBC series ‘Rev’ finished its second series on Tuesday with a Christmas special (although, as the character Nigel pointed out in the show, technically it’s not Christmas until Christmas day: it’s ‘Advent’ until then…) The series as a whole was well written, witty, and very moving in places. It also had some real moments of warmth between the characters – they were believable and I felt myself rooting for them. Essentially, the show was everything I think a sitcom ought to be.
But… but… there was something about the series which annoyed me. It irked me. It got under my skin and made me feel somewhat uncomfortable watching it. That element was there in the last series (see my review of series one on Crossring), but seems to have developed in this series. I’m not entirely sure why that is – possibly because I now am actually training to basically do Adam Smallbone’s [the vicar in Rev] job, it puts what Adam does into sharper focus. I’ve been thinking a lot about what my ministry would look like in the future, and comparing it with Adam’s it seems there are things missing from his ministry which I would like there to be in mine.
Last week, I attended an ordinand’s evening put on by Chelmsford Diocese (an ordinand is someone who is training to be ordained but isn’t yet). I got into a discussion with the Archdeacon of Southend about Rev – I said that I thought it was clear that the show was written by someone who didn’t really believe, because I didn’t feel like God was really working. The Archdeacon very much disagreed. His view was that Adam being there at the end, still pressing on as a vicar, meant that God was working: I think the Archdeacon saw a lot of churches like those in Rev, and basically Rev was much more of a documentary than a comedy! I’ve been reflecting on this over the past week, and I think my thoughts are now a little bit more clear.
I’m not entirely sure I can put into words exactly what I feel, but I think it boils down to the fact that neither Adam’s life or his ministry are characterised by the gospel. Let me try to explain what I mean by that.
Firstly, Adam’s life: I think the writer took so much trouble to paint a picture of Adam as an ordinary person that he just comes across as someone who is no different at all from ‘the world’, in Biblical language. The Bible often makes a distinction between those who follow Christ and ‘the world’ – see, for example, John 17 (e.g. v14 ‘I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.’)
Adam, on the other hand, smokes, drinks, and has outbursts like the one he has at church in the Christmas episode. I just feel a bit uncomfortable with that – although vicars are Christians like everyone else, sinners like everyone else, I would have just liked to see his life a bit more characterised by the gospel. As Paul puts it ‘… I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received’ (Ephesians 4:1). I’m not entirely sure I saw the holiness in Adam which I would like to see in any Christian, and particularly a minister of religion.
I do recognise, by the way, that vicars are people and have flaws, a characteristic of being human. I suppose the problem is at no point does he really seem to acknowledge that and confess that it is only by God’s grace that he can continue.
Any kind of Christian ministry is hard, and being a vicar especially can be tough, but his life just doesn’t seem to be characterised by the joy that comes of knowing God’s grace.
Which brings me to the second point – the fact that his ministry is not characterised by the gospel. He seems to have very little idea of what he is actually there for – what his role is all about. He says in Episode 5 “What is charity? … that’s giving alms, but I feel like I’m called upon to do more.” The thing is, I believe the ‘more’ he is called upon to do is to bring people into contact with the living God.
He just seems to have a very vague, generalised picture of his ministry as doing things which are basically Christian – such as visiting the sick, conducting church services, helping people practically – without anything which would give those things some weight. For example, in Episode 3 his friend Joan – an elderly lady – asks him if God will forgive her for some of the bad things she’s done. All he says is, “I think God will forgive you.” Sure, but on what basis? Why does God forgive? Is there anything that Joan needs to do?! I want him to answer those questions too!
In Episode 4 he is asked the question by one of the school children, “Do Muslims go to heaven?” And he says, “Yes, if they follow the five pillars of Islam.” Now I don’t want to get into the question of what happens to people who are from other religions, but I don’t know whether that would be an acceptable answer. If he honestly believes that people from other religions all go to their heaven, what is he doing there as a vicar? What is his role? It just seems that being a vicar in a Christian church demands we take the claims of Christ’s uniqueness seriously (e.g. John 14:6, “no one comes to the Father except through me”). If anyone goes to heaven it is because of God’s grace displayed in Christ Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Essentially Adam’s work becomes reduced to going around trying to be a helpful person and offering a few platitudes here and there to do with God when people are feeling down. But they’re OK really – everyone will be saved in the end, except for perhaps a few really nasty people who don’t deserve it. I wouldn’t say that Adam was a universalist (i.e. believes that everyone will be saved) but practically speaking he seems to have no real motivation for evangelism.
Now the problem with all this is that I do realise there are different ways of looking at ‘Rev’ (see, for example, Grace and Truth in Rev – thanks @simonlucas). And, of course, it is ‘only a sitcom’… but it is apparently more based on real life than I imagined – viz my conversation with the Archdeacon.
The key thing is that when I look round the world and see people like those portrayed in Rev – ordinary people, ordinary lives – it seems to me (from my reading of Scripture) that their greatest needs are not physical but spiritual: they need to be brought into the Kingdom of God, and have their lives touched by the gospel. This is what I will strive for in any future ministry I will be involved with. And I just don’t see that happening in Rev: Adam Smallbone doesn’t have any good news.
Christmas Carols
I was originally intending to write a little light-hearted ‘review’ of some Christmas Carol lyrics here, but somewhat ran out of steam. Instead, I just wanted to post one or two thoughts about the Christmas Carols which many people (in this country at least) sing year on year. We’ve been to a carol service this evening at Christ Church, Cockfosters which was absolutely packed out – I think this goes to show that the popularity of the carol service is enduring and isn’t going to go away any time soon!
I was struck as we sang ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ – not a carol I’m a massive fan of (it goes on a bit…) – but one of the verses is:
Not in that poor lowly stable,
with the oxen standing round,
we shall see him; but in heaven,
set at God’s right hand on high;
when like stars his children crowned,
all in white shall wait around.
What struck me anew1 was the last line, the clear allusion to Revelation 7: “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands … These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
As Richard James (vicar of Christ Church) said in his talk this evening, the Cross hangs over the stable: you can’t have one without the other. It just struck me in a new way that Christ’s incarnation is the most wondrous thing that’s ever happened – the fact that he came down, incarnate as ‘flesh’ – as a man – but that in dying and rising again he defeated death, and in the words of Te Deum ’opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers’.
I think, particularly in evangelical circles, we’re too keen to brush over the sheer wonder of it all. At Christmas we rightly sing and praise God for the fact that he came as an ordinary human baby, and yet – in the words of ‘Hark the Herald Ages Sing’ ‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see’: Christ Jesus – the image of the invisible God, by whom and for whom all things were created – there as a baby, helpless in his mother’s arms. I think perhaps in theological circles it’s easy to say those words without ever stepping back and thinking … “wow. this is absolutely mind-blowing.” And yet, this man died on a cross for us and for our salvation.
This Christmas I’ve been struck by Emmanuel ‘God With Us’ – this is something I’m going to be reflecting on over the next few days and weeks. How amazing it is that God was incarnate among us. How incredible it is that he died for us, and how awesome that one day those who trust in him will be with him, washed in the blood of the lamb, singing ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’. Soli deo gloria.
1 I think the reason it struck me anew was that the verse is different in Mission Praise, looks like it’s been altered from the original.
Creation / Evolution 4 – Genesis 1
This is the fourth instalment of my mini-series “Creation, Evolution, and Evangelicalism”. Note that the series is still technically on hold, I just wanted to expand on a couple of things I mentioned in previous posts, namely to do with Genesis chapter 1. All clear? Good!
But first, a clarification: I mentioned in a previous post that I had problems with ‘creationism’. I probably should have been clearer in this post but the particular version of creationism which I have a problem with is ‘young earth creationism’ (which for brevity I shall refer to as YEC from now on): obviously, all Christians are “Creationists” in the sense that we believe God created the world and “the fulness thereof” (a phrase which Mike Ovey is particularly fond of, from the King James version of Psalm 24:1). However, what I am arguing for is that being a ‘creationist’ does not conflict with being an ‘evolutionist’, in the sense that one can believe both in the creative acts of God and the biological process of evolution.
The second thing I’d like to clarify is that I’m not necessarily arguing for evolution in the sense that “I’m a scientist and I believe this to be true”. I think my point is more general, that I believe science and Christianity should never be in conflict: that we can accept what science to be saying, provided that it doesn’t come loaded with any metaphysical connotations (i.e. I don’t believe evolutionism is required by science, despite what people like Dawkins would have you believe. Evolution is a scientific model / biological process, it has no concerns with God.) In other words, if scientists come up with a better theory than evolution (or a more refined version) in the future, I’d be happy to go with that.
That turned out to be a slightly longer clarification than I intended, sorry! – but anyway, what I’d like to talk about in this post is something which is contested by the aforementioned Creationists. I touched on this in my previous post on creationism but I’d like to expand on it now: how are Christians to read Genesis 1?
Coding and Lyric Display
Well, it’s that time of year again. I’ve started a little coding project, this time to do with Lyric Display. In Java. *sigh* Why do I do this to myself?!
To be fair, I started it last year – I’ve just picked it up again and refactored it a fair bit. I checked my Google Code repository, and according to the Subversion logs I first started on the project in October 2010. The interesting thing is, I’ve started a new project every single October for about the past four years (since I’ve had my Google Code repository):
- 2008: A short-lived project using ExtJS to basically create a Javascript / PHP version of an Outlook-style email client;
- 2009: jMonopoly – a short-lived Java version of a Monopoly game.
- 2010: This short-lived lyric display project…
Spot a bit of a pattern going on there? I tend to work on them for a few weeks and then give up. (Probably getting into the Christmas rush at that time, also losing interest…)
Interspersed with all these things is a Java desktop app I wrote to upload sermons to the Fordham website (a script I blogged about when it was merely a Python script) – although to be fair I only imported that to Subversion in the summer so I don’t know exactly when that was started.
I don’t know what it is about this time of year which drives me to the keyboard… I wonder whether (in the past) it’s been to do with the post-summer slump at work, or something like that. I think this year it was more because the chapel computer at Oak Hill broke down and we currently have no lyric projection software, which made me think of what I’d done last year. If it gets anywhere I might release it as Open Source, because there aren’t enough open source lyric projection packages knocking around already… (to be fair, I don’t think there are any in Java).
Anyway, I thought this might give you an insight into my mind. Or not. Either way, I’m not sure I like it, and I’m not sure I really want to post it on my blog… *clicks ‘Publish’*
Nearly Christmas…
… and already we’re two weeks into the new term at Oak Hill. (Don’t ask about the term dates… it’s apparently all the fault of the Church of England, or something.)
Anyway, in the past couple of weeks we’ve also had a couple of trips back to Colchester, once two weeks ago to see Anne-Marie and Sarah, and then yesterday to go to Tom and Clif’s Christmas party. Have to say I feel slightly the worse for wear today, mainly because I think staying up late last night wasn’t great for fighting off the cold I’ve been battling the past week or so. I’m definitely not feeling 100% today.
Anyway, we have one more week of term (which is a reading week), and then we’re into the Christmas break. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a good thing to have a reading week so soon into the new term, I don’t really know what I should be reading just yet! – but it will be a good opportunity to consolidate a little, I feel.
Either way, just wanted to post up to let you all know that I’m still alive, just in case you were wondering!
