Phill Sacre

Category: Christian

Anything I write about the Christian faith.

  • Why is the church obsessed with sex?

    It’s a legitimate question: if you’re an outsider, it looks like the church wants to talk about nothing else at the moment. One obvious answer to the question is that sex is the area of our culture which rubs up most obviously against the traditional Christian understanding – hence the clashes. In previous years there have been others, this is just the most obvious one for our society.

    But why, to continue the question, is the church so obsessed with its traditional view of sex and sexuality? In other words, why can’t the church just get with the programme? Why can’t the church just change its mind? One of the commenters on a previous blog post here asked me why I couldn’t just shut up about sexuality. Why is it such a big issue?

    The answer to that is essentially this: the debate about sex and sexuality within the church is a debate about the nature of God. It has massive implications. That might seem strange, but allow me to try and explain.

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  • Don’t rely on one Bible translation!

    Illustration: Bible

    Quick bit of obvious advice today: Don’t rely on a single translation of the Bible when you’re doing some serious Bible study. Today I was preparing a sermon on John 1:19-34. And, because I’ve been learning New Testament Greek over the last couple of years, I feel like I needed to get my money’s worth by looking at the passage in Greek first.

    Anyway, as I was looking at the text and reading the commentaries I noticed that I actually preferred the NIV reading of the text over the ESV. This may not sound like much, but the ESV is often held up as a good example of a ‘literal’ translation for serious study as opposed to the NIV (which is a ‘dynamic equivalence’ translation – i.e. it’s less ‘literal’ but is designed more to convey the sense of the original language). I think many people who move in evangelical circles in the UK hold up the ESV as an example of a good, faithful translation – while the NIV seems to have moved a little bit out of favour.

    But I think there are a couple of examples where the NIV gets it right over the ESV in this passage. Firstly, v24 is treated differently in both translations. The ESV translates it as a paranthetical remark, whereas the NIV links it more explictly with the clause in v25. What’s interesting is that in his commentary, Carson goes for a translation more like the NIV’s – and I think I agree with him. It does seem to make more sense to me: the Greek grammar is a bit unusual here but I think the NIV translation is probably preferable.

    Secondly, the ESV – again, bearing in mind that its major selling point is that it is a literal translation – makes an unusual translation decision between v19 and v34. Here, two Greek words (μαρτυρία and μεμαρτύρηκα) which stem from the same root martyr- (where we get the English word from, and meaning something like ‘testify’ or ‘witness’) are translated differently. v19 has ‘testimony’ and v34 ‘borne witness’. I think that’s an interesting decision: although conceptually the link is there, verbally it has been obscured a little. This is significant because I think the whole passage is talking about testimony, using several different words, and it seems those two words form the bookends around a little section in John. The NIV goes for ‘testimony’ and ‘testify’, which I think maintains the verbal link better as well as the conceptual.

    So, as I said: don’t think one translation is always right. If you’re leading a home group or preparing a sermon or generally trying to understand a Bible passage, it’s always worth at least checking in a few translations to see if it brings something out you might not have spotted otherwise.

  • Secularism: What does it mean to you?

    Secularism: What does it mean to you?

    The title of this blog post is taken from an article I read yesterday. The Guardian basically asked a few different people what secularism meant to them, and published their responses. To be honest, the article doesn’t encompass a huge range of beliefs (most of the people there seem to be atheist / humanist in outlook), but I think it’s an interesting window into a what a cross-section of people think ‘secularism’ actually is. Especially when the most visible thing about secularism recently is the National Secular Society’s campaigns, most lately against the Church of England’s role at the Cenotaph on remembrance day.

    Anyway, I’d just like to pick up on a few comments from the article because I think they’re worth dealing with. In particular, I think many people seem to be confusing secularism with being ‘secularist’: to be secularist means the systematic eradication of any religious influence on public life; whereas secularism as I understand it is about a level playing field between competing views. (See my previous post about secular law for more thoughts on this – in particular I believe a secularist society is a tyrannous society).

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  • Crossroads for the CofE

    Recently, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey warned that the Church of England was in danger of dying out within a generation. (Synod has responded by “voting to set up a committee” – oh, how Anglican… at the same time, positive that the church is actively looking towards evangelism.)

    It seems to me that with this along with the Pilling Report shortly to be published as well as the move towards women bishops, the Church of England stands at something of a crossroads. The church faces the question: what is it that the Church of England is all about?

    This is a quote from the article I mentioned above:

    Archbishop Sentamu told the Synod: “Compared with evangelism everything else is like rearranging furniture when the house is on fire.

    “Tragically too often that is what we are doing – reorganising the structures, arguing over words and phrases, while the people of England are left floundering amid meaningless anxiety and despair.”

    I think he’s hit the nail bang on the head. “Rearranging furniture when the house is on fire” – exactly what I think is going on with the Pilling Report and, to a lesser extent, women bishops (see my previous post on last year’s women bishops vote for some more thoughts on that matter).

    I believe there are two competing narratives at play here. One is saying, “We’re losing numbers. Quick! – let’s get with the times. Culture is changing, let’s change with it. Let’s bring in women bishops, let’s bring in gay marriage – that will halt the decline and reverse the trend. People will flood back into church if it’s relevant to them.” That’s one narrative, a narrative which the Episcopal Church USA seems to have adopted.

    The other narrative is more like this: “We’re losing numbers. Quick! – we need to get back to what the church is all about, preaching the gospel. Offering salvation to sinners: Evangelism and the ministry of God’s word to his world – that’s the only thing which can halt the decline and bring people back into church”. In other words, basically what Archbishop John Sentamu said to General Synod.

    Judging by what’s happening to the Episcopal Church, it’s pretty clear that the first route will lead to the Church of England’s ultimate demise. That doesn’t bode well.

    But I prefer to see this more positively. I think this is a time for the Church of England to take stock: what is it we’re here for? What is the Church’s mission? The church has Five marks of mission, the first of which is: “To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.” I hope and pray that the Church of England will rediscover its identity as an organisation which proclaims the good news of the Kingdom, and any furniture rearranging in the future can take a back seat.

  • Freedom and Order: History, Politics and the English Bible

    I’ve just finished reading Freedom and Order by Nick Spencer, who is research director at Theos Think Tank. Some of their output recently on secularism has been excellent, and I also went to hear Nick Spencer do a talk about English politics and the Bible at Westminster Abbey a couple of years ago (about when the book was released – strangely enough I don’t think I blogged about it at the time).

    Anyway, I very much enjoyed reading the book. I’d simply never understood before just how big an influence Christianity and the Bible has had on English politics. In short: it’s massive. One story I liked was hearing about one MP who was told by one of his constituents that he wasn’t in parliament to preach – apparently this particular MP had been talking about the Bible too much! Another interesting fact – apparently William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury 1942-44) came up with the phrase ‘Welfare State’. The number of political groups who have not only been influenced by but explicitly grounded in the Christian message and scripture is staggering.

    As someone who isn’t very ‘political’, if that’s the right word, some of the book went into a bit more detail than I really cared for – it’s not a light bedtime read – although I’m sure if you’re into politics and history you would enjoy it much more. I would recommend the book to anyone who had an interest in English political history and religion, I think Nick Spencer has done an excellent job detailing just how British political life has been affected by it.

    We seem to be living in an age where people want to cast off the religious roots of the UK, and I believe books like this are important to help us understand why that would not be a good idea – or at least, to ensure that we do it with our eyes open. So much of what we take for granted today has been hard won and fought for by people in the past, often using explicitly Christian arguments.

    At the start of the book, Spencer quotes John Locke, which I think sums it up:

    He that travels the roads now, applauds his own strength and legs that have carried him so far in such a scantling of time; and ascribes all to his own vigour; little considering how much he owes to their pains, who cleared the woods, drained the bogs, built the bridges, and made the ways possible.

    – John Locke, “The Reasonableness of Christianity”

  • The Story of the Jews

    One of the things which interests me about modern-day Judaism is how different it is from my understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures (i.e. the Jewish Bible or the Christian Old Testament). Given that Christians and Jews have so much shared Scripture (most of the Bible – 75% or thereabouts – is the Hebrew Scriptures) – how have they ended up in such different places? In particular, modern-day Jews do not offer sacrifices and there seems to be no atonement for sin – the focus seems to be rather on the observance of the law. So I was interested to see that Simon Schama has created a new documentary called “The Story of the Jews” recently (Sunday evenings on BBC2 – at the time of writing there are another couple of episodes remaining in the series). Mrs Phil and I have been watching it, and it’s fascinating. What’s particularly interesting to me is how Judaism has changed and adapted over the years.

    It’s fascinating to see how Simon Schama – and others – interpret the parts of the Scriptures which I am familiar with, and yet put a slant on them which I would be quite unfamiliar with. Present-day Jews have much more history to look back on, and have much more to explain. In a particularly poignant moment at the end of the last programme, for example, Simon Schama talked about the building anti-Semitism in Europe at the end of the 19th century before finishing up at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. (more…)

  • Welcome to the New Orthodoxy…

    Christian Martyrs being burned at the stake… but, to borrow from The Who, it’s not the same as the old orthodoxy. I’ve just read a very interesting article called “The Unhappy Fate of Optional Orthodoxy” (only the top half of the page is the article in question; the rest is a collation of shorter pieces. H/T John Richardson via Facebook for the link).

    I think it sheds some light on the comments I’ve received here recently about my posts on sexuality and marriage. It seems that anything about sexuality from a traditional Christian perspective has the ability to get people’s backs up like nothing else at the moment (with the exception of women bishops, perhaps – although I haven’t blogged about that much so I haven’t experienced commenter wrath on that one…)

    Anyway, I’d like to quote from the article because I think it hits the nail on the head. This is a fairly lengthy quote but I think it’s worth it. I’ve highlighted in bold the quotes I think are particularly insightful. (more…)

  • Biblical Ethics and Sexuality

    A couple of times lately I mentioned to people that I’d try to write something vaguely coherent about the Bible and sexuality – in particular about homosexual relationships. Were the Bible writers simply writing within their culture? Now that attitudes to sexuality are changing, can Christian attitudes change with it?

    I’ve been putting off writing this because, to be honest, it’s a massive topic and it’s one in which there’s plenty of scope for hurt and disagreement. In order to do full justice to all the Biblical verses on homosexuality you’d need to write a book (such as this one, which someone has kindly already written…) What I’m going to do in this post is try and do a very brief, bird’s-eye-view of the Bible’s view on sexuality without going into too much detail.

    Please note that I’m not trying to offer here a pastoral response to dealing with homosexuality or same-sex attraction. I’m not in any way condoning homophobic behaviour. This is simply examining the issue of what the Bible says about sexuality, not how to respond to it in a practical situation.

    First things first: creation. All Christians are ‘creationist’, in the sense that all Christians believe that God created the world. Genesis 1-2 tells the story.[1] In particular, if you read Genesis 2 you see that Adam (the name literally means ‘mankind’) is lonely and God creates a suitable ‘helper’ for him – a woman. (The translation ‘helper’ may be a bit inadequate, but let’s leave that aside for this post). It culminates in v24, where the narrator says “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”  (more…)

  • Modern Worship Songs

    A thought struck me the other day: it seems that there are a lot more decent modern worship songs out there at the moment than there were around ten years ago. I’ve not always been a fan of modern Christian music, but it does seem that the game has been kicked up a notch of late. (Check out the We Are Worship website for some examples).

    One reason I think different is because my opinion on worship songs has changed a bit: in the past I would have preferred hymns or songs which were theologically ‘rich’: “if it doesn’t go through a chapter of Grudem’s Systematic Theology I don’t want to know”! But one of the things I’ve realised over the past couple of years is that it’s OK for songs to be simple sometimes. If a congregation sung three or four EMU or Sovereign Grace style songs in a row, it would be exhausting!

    This may be a tad controversial at my theological college (ahem), but I believe sometimes what is needed is something more emotionally-driven, something which allows an individual to express an honest feeling to God, as well as times to declare truths about God to each other. In short, I think I’d say the important thing is balance here – trying to sing songs which are theologically rich as well as lighter songs which allow people to express themselves.

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  • Hate Speech

    A few days ago, I tweeted a link to an article on the Spectator: “Revd Dr Alan Clifford’s ‘homophobic’ comments referred to the CPS” (it might be worthwhile reading the article for some background), and I noted that it had worrying implications for free speech.

    Anyway, someone replied to me on Twitter this morning and – because I didn’t condemn Dr Clifford’s behaviour – accused me of (1) believing that gay people were subhuman; (2) believing that gay people were ‘targets’ (of what, I don’t know); (3) that I would allow people to propagate hate (or hateful) speech.

    All of this worries me. I absolutely do NOT believe gay people are subhuman, and I don’t understand what they meant about believing gay people are ‘targets’ (but I’m pretty sure I’m not that either). I hold what I believe to be an orthodox Christian doctrine of sex – that is to say, I believe its proper context is within a lifelong, monogamous heterosexual relationship – and that anything which falls outside of that is by definition immoral.

    The worrying question for me is: is that opinion ‘hate speech’? I appreciate that it’s not a popular opinion in society, but … hate speech?

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