In the Beginning was the Blog

Love, Joy and Peace

August 19th, 2010

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. – Galatians 5.22-26

On the topic of bile and intolerance amongst members of a religion that professes to be in communion with a God who’s very being is the definition of love, I have a personal note to relate today as well as a summary of some reading. First the reading.

In Concepts of Christian Unity, Dr Michael Kinnamon talks about the witness of church unity. He argues that the integrity of the church immediately comes into question when outsiders see us divided each into our own little denomination where we claim to have the real truth of Christianity, the true authentic expression of Christ etc… Looking in from the outside it is obvious that someone is wrong and someone is right but it is not clear who and just maybe the fact that the church is divided is all the evidence one needs to see that the claims of Christians are a joke and that God, if he/she/it exists, doesn’t dwell amongst them.

I was inspired by Kinnamon’s comments that ecumenism doesn’t have a goal of achieving tolerance but is the difficult task of debating and relating with full respect and the genuine intention of understanding one another in order to arrive at agreements on some things and restore the integrity of the church. Whether this is possible given human nature remains to be seen but if Christianity has any truth to it at all, we should be able to make some progress.

After reading this and examining my own superior attitudes and intolerance of other Christians, I reflected on Christians I’ve met from other denominations including pentecostal and evangelical churches (I am mostly liberal in my thinking) who seemed to have a simple loving faith. Some Christians may belong to churches that preach the stoning of gays or the crucifixion of abortion advocates but in their daily lives, they might never reflect those official views or even truly believe in them. As Paul says in Galations, you can tell authentic Christianity because you will see the “fruits of the Spirit” (I recall Jesus also saying that you can know a tree by it’s fruit and a father by his sons)

So I was very disappointed this week when we invited our local Sydney Anglican priest over for a cup of tea to talk about church and the community and received several mini-sermons on how the pentecostals rely too much on feelings and the high-churchers are engaging in idolatry. He also managed to slip in some commentary on how I need to be the leader of the household (I being in possession of the biggest penis under this roof) and that friendship is an illusion that is best avoided and that I certainly can’t expect Christians to offer it to me because we are all fallen sinners.

So how am I to now progress, having been inspired by Kinnamon to reach out and strive for Christian unity but at the same time realising that to attend my local church would be experienced as an hour of grinding my teeth?

Kinnamon, M. “Concepts of Christian Unity”, in Living Ecumenism: Christian Unity for a New Millennium, ed. D. C. Sullivan, JBCE: Melbourne, 1995, pp. 55-73

Galatians 5.22-26 in Oremus Bible Browser

Tags: church, ecclesiology, ecumenism | Comment: What are your thoughts?

How to Read Like a Pro

August 16th, 2010

Things have been quiet on the blog, mainly because every spare moment I get I’ve been trying to catch up and keep up with the readings for my two courses. In week 1, I got behind because of work commitments and then I just couldn’t get through the material fast enough and started falling further and further behind. A couple of weeks ago, I resolved to adopt a strategy that would see me catch up and I’ve at least achieved that in time to start my first assignment.

The key for me was some advice given by my scholarly friend Catriona who blogs at http://circulatinglibrary.net/ and happens to be a literary scholar with a PhD so she knows a thing or two about academic pursuits. Anyway, her advice in a nutshell was to take notes while reading and attack each reading as one task rather than trying to batch process them in one long sitting.

The note taking keeps me focussed and allows me to keep track of the overall direction of the article whilst being able to process the distinct paragraphs and allow a bit of processing without having to keep the whole thing in my head at once.

Tackling each reading as a distinct task helps me to pace myself and allow some breathing space for the content of the article to sink in before starting the next one.

The other skill I had to learn was to skim a paragraph and skip over material that I already know about. The nature of the Introductory New Testament subject specifically is that we’re covering just a tonne of “brain dump” material which is not so much ideas as just background and context. Much of this stuff I’ve seen before and don’t need to read but I needed to get good at sifting through the 80 pages or so of the chapters to be read and picking out new material without getting bogged down. Ideally, I would like to have the time to read every word and contemplate at the end of each paragraph but such is the nature of academic study. When I’ve finished the set readings I can sit back and sift through my own ideas at my leisure.

Because of the nature of the material I’ve covered so far, I don’t have much to say about it. If you’ve grown up as a Christian, you’d be familiar with the books of the New Testament. If you’ve studied ancient history then you’re familiar with various descriptions of the culture and society of that time. It’s too much information to do any justice to here unless I focus in on just one specific detail and really because I’ve been playing catch up nothing has jumped out at me as a big revelation. That’s not to say I haven’t learnt anything, there’ve been hundreds of little details and ah-huh! moments as I’ve read through the material and I’m sure I’ll be posting some of those in future blog posts as we get into more detail later in the semester and with the assignments.

The stuff I’ve been reading for the Church subject has been challenging for me personally as I knew it would be and I hope to write more about that in a later post.

Tags: study tips | Comment: What are your thoughts?

Funerals

July 28th, 2010

As some friends of mine have recently had a death in the family (a pet guinea pig but a family member none the less), I thought I’d share an assignment I wrote about funeral liturgies when I studied liturgy in 2008.

The assignment task was to compare two different traditions approaches to a liturgy. I decided to compare Anglican and Catholic funeral rites as I figured most people only go to church a few times in their lives and funerals would be some of those times. Also we are likely to attend funerals in different denominations so I was curious as to what differences there might be and why. The comparison style assignment question was a good way to draw out the issues at play.

The two main issues I focussed on in the assignment were first trying to get a balance between being pastoral whilst also offering the hope of the Gospel. Too much focus on the Gospel and you can get hostility, yet people are looking for some theological assurance as part of the service. I also noted how focussing more on pastoral issues allows theological differences to be glossed over when members of different denominations are present, specifically the two broad approaches to atonement (substitutional vs representative).

Secondly, there is an issue of prayers for the dead. After the reformation, Anglicans and protestant congregations strongly rejected ideas of purgatory or that God’s judgement could be swayed after someone died. But at the same time, people still wanted to pray for their deceased loved ones so prayers for the wellbeing of the dead continued despite the theological position of the church leaders. Makers of modern funeral liturgies recognise that these prayers are an important way for the mourners to express their feelings.

Some similarities I noted were the procession, placing of symbols on the coffin and allusion to baptism as symbol of death and resurrection.

It was interesting to look at the way funeral rites have evolved through history. Prior to the medieval period, the rites were quite hopeful (Ordo Defunctorum) but during the middle ages, they gradually became more focussed on hell and damnation for sinners. After the reformation, the Anglicans and protestants returned to the more hopeful style of funeral but the Catholic church continued to be gothic until Vatican II.

Some differences were in the way the eulogy is read with the Catholics usually having the eulogy read by the priest rather than a family member (this hearkens back to a time when the priest would have usually known the deceased personally as a parish member which is rarely the case now). The Anglican form avoids certain prayers that might suggest the salvation of the deceased could be at stake. The Anglican form has a more optional inclusion of Holy Communion where as the Catholic church has a greater emphasis on the Eucharist, especially post Vatican II.

You can read the whole thing here: Funerals Assignment PDF

Tags: assignments, funerals, liturgy | Comment: What are your thoughts?

Why Church?

July 24th, 2010

I’ve been reading for my two theology subjects pretty steadily this week after a week away for work which was timed so that I’ve immediately fallen behind in my study.

Tonights reading (George Tavard) looked at questions of how the church justifies its own existence. Interestingly, the church can’t look to New Testament scripture because it actually came before the scripture. Remember that most of the New Testament consists of documents that were composed for the church so it’s bit hard to then argue that these same documents were the basis for forming the church (unless we account for time travel). So we have to look further back for an origin of church as a concept and where we end up is a really long way back. Looking in the Old Testament, and basing our idea of church on the idea of God’s chosen people, we end up tracing a line back through all the ups and downs of the jewish nation, back across the desert into egypt, back to Abraham and then we can keep looking back to Noah and even Adam and Eve. The early Christians even speculated about a pre-existing community of angels before creation.

Tavard goes on to argue the case for seeing the church in terms of the thing that happens through the process of salvation rather than an end in itself: it’s the by product of coming into communion with God (think Trinity).

Reference:
Tavard, G.H. Antecedents in The church, community of salvation: an ecumenical ecclesiology, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1992 Link in google books

Tags: church, ecclesiology, trinity | Comment: What are your thoughts?

The Changing Landscape of Theology in Australia

July 23rd, 2010

Encounter ran a program last week on theological education in Australia which was a great listen. It started with a run down of the history of theological education in Australia starting with the rejection of theology by mainstream universities necessitating the creation of independent training colleges run by churches through to recent developments where universities are bringing theological colleges under their umbrella so they can offer theological degrees.

There was some discussion on the nature of theological study in general and how it compares to studying arts and then some discussion of the future of Australian theological education and how being included back into mainstream universities might change things.

I really liked John McDowell’s comments at the end. My understanding of his point is that having theological education marginalised by mainstream universities has bread a certain anti-intellectualism in our churches. This anti intellectualism can lead to intolerance and religious violence in extreme cases. Bringing theological education back into mainstream universities will encourage wider exposure of theological study which should hopefully lead to more educated Christians with an understanding of pluralism, less extreme expressions of faith and hopefully deeper religious engagement.

Encounter: God Questions: Theological Education and the University Transcript and audio download.

Tags: education, encounter | Comment: What are your thoughts?

Church and Other Catastrophes

July 11th, 2010

I’m reading Sanks, T.H. ‘From Kingdom of God to City of God: Jesus to Augustine’ for my Being Church subject. It opens with a quote from Alfred Loisy : “Jesus preached the kingdom, but what came was the church”. It traces the development of the church from loosely related groups of people (mostly Jews) who dug Jesus’ teaching to an institutionalised hierarchical organisation embedded within the Roman empire.

Jesus didn’t say too much about church, he mentioned “the kingdom” a lot but it’s a bit fuzzy what he meant by that: was he talking about the church or heaven, the future or some kind of platonic ideal church? After Easter, the Christians started to appear with liturgical practices of the eucharist and baptism based on Jesus’ teachings but still with a connection to Judaism.

As with so many things in theology, no-one really thought about church until conflicts about its identity arose. The first step was separating from Judaism: As Christianity grew and became a strong force, it was inevitable that it would threaten established Judaism and be pushed away and forced to stand on its own.

As the church grew and dispersed, various conflicts on how it should work arose and the apostles dealt with these on an ad-hoc basis. We see in Paul’s letters arguments on whether you need to be circumcised or whether it’s ok to eat meat from pagan rituals. We also start to see a hierarchy evolve with Paul’s advice on selecting leaders using the analogy of a family that needs a strong father. Paul also describes the church in relation to Jesus as a bride and groom.

Further conflicts for the church sprang up around gnosticism: was there a secret knowledge required for salvation? Irenaeus came onto the scene and argued for a view of the church in terms a bit like a franchise: it’s the same no matter where you find it in the world, no-one has some special extra deal, we all have the tradition handed down to us from the teachings of the apostles.

Then came the persecutions which in themselves would have caused feelings of solidarity for Christians but when these times ended there were questions about how to deal with Christians who hadn’t remained pure. Part of the what the Romans did to break the Christians was require them to sacrifice and pray to the Roman gods. This had to be witnessed and documented. After the persecution, how could these Christians be allowed back into the church? What about the bishops who had succumbed?

Cyprian’s response to the questions was to further emphasise the place of bishops in the church. As the bishops had been established by the apostles and then these positions handed on, he argued that they had the power to forgive.

In the time of Augustine, again the question of purity in the church had come up with the Donatists refusing to accept a bishop because he had allowed the Romans to get a copy of his scriptures. The Donatists saw the church as being tainted by this Bishop and so set up their own Bishop which caused confusion. Augustine resolved this issue by appealing again to the Christian “franchise” and again pushing the idea of apostolic succession as being the underlying support structure of the church.

By the time Roman acceptance of Christianity came, it was pretty easy to superimpose the structure of Bishops priests and deacons onto the Roman imperial model with the Bishop in Rome naturally acquiring central power further reinforced by appealing to Jesus’ words to Peter in Matthew’s Gospel: “On this rock I shall build my church”.

Full reference of the Sanks reading: Sanks, T.H. ‘From Kingdom of God to City of God: Jesus to Augustine’ in Salt, Leaven, and Light: The Community Called Church. Crossroad: New York, 1997, pp. 39-64

T. Howland Sanks’ page at Jesuit School of Theology

Tags: church, early church history, ecclesiology | Comment: What are your thoughts?

Reading the New Testament

July 10th, 2010

I’ve started doing some of my reading for the New Testament subject I’m doing this semester. The introductory chapter talks about the significance of the New Testament in three ways: as literature, history and religious text.

As literature the NT forms part of the background to most literature and art in Christian countries which means the western world.

As history, the NT both directly records historical events (or at least claims to) and alludes to a historical context. These aspects are referred to as the history in the text and the history behind the text. And then there’s the way the NT becomes history itself by being canonised and it’s affect as part of Christianity on the western world.

As a religious text, the NT provides accounts of the life of Jesus including words he actually spoke* and early influential Christians theology and interpretation of the Old Testament / Hebrew Scriptures.

Two of those aspects of NT study are non-religious: they are as much of interest to non-Christian scholars as they are to Christian. Even the religious aspects of the NT are of interest to non-Christian scholars attempting to critique modern Christianity and theology as it continues to play a part in politics and culture in many countries. Less so in Australia and Europe but importantly in The USA and parts of Africa.

However, I would guess that the most attention paid to the NT is by Christians interpreting it in their own religious context. I imagine that my study this semester will also be focussed on the religious interpretation but as the opening chapter notes, it is dangerous to read this text with a narrow agenda. In the past the New Testament has been interpreted in ways to justify war, slavery, homophobia, racism and sexism. In the hands of fundamentalists it is used as a powerful authority to back any number of atrocious ideologies.

So as Christians reading this text, it’s important not to discard the literary and historical aspects or let its message be lost in translation. While some Christians would rather not “pull it apart” or “water it down” and may accuse theologians of doing just that, if we want to take the NT seriously must have the courage to read it thoughtfully, to critique it, to question it and in turn let it question us.

*Let’s be aware and agree that pretty much all claims made by any text including the Bible are open to debate. I’m going to get really tired if I have to keep writing “claims that” in front of every sentence.

Tags: biblical interpretation, fundamentalism, new testament | Comment: What are your thoughts?

New Beginning

June 30th, 2010

I just opened the box in which arrived my New Testament studies textbook. This semester (session 2) is to be that and Being the Church. The New Testament stuff will be a deeper look at what I’ve already done in Introduction to Scriptures and Being the Church is related to the first assignment I did for theology which was on what it means to see church as communion.

I’m expecting the New Testament subject to involve a bit of discussion of different literary forms, a bit of historical context and a brief look at different types of critical analysis. I enjoy the critical analysis methods because of the way they churn up lots of questions and break your assumptions about the text. When I did the introductory subject, I wrote an assignment that delved into the story of the woman caught in adultery found in John’s gospel – there were lots of interesting angles to be considered in the story including interpretations of the scriptures that Jesus referred to in his reply to the pharisees that I hadn’t previously been aware of. There were also questions about the authenticity of the text seeing as it wasn’t included in earlier copies and how it used different language to the rest of the book.

As for Being the Church, I might have too much baggage to be able to engage with this subject objectively. On the other hand, perhaps my critical abilities will be fully brought to bear. The content looks to be first a review of biblical and theological theory of church followed by some discussion of what the church actually does and should be doing and finally looking at the problems the church faces in the contemporary context.

Now all I have to do is scrape together some fees and find time to actually do the study.

Tags: church, new testament | 2 Comments »

Re-enrolled

June 1st, 2010

So after many months of not doing anything scholarly, I concluded that I do indeed need to enroll in a degree if I’m ever going to learn anything ever again. So I’ve re-enrolled in theology, this time through CSU as an external student.

I have quite a few anxieties about this decision: Will I have the time? Will I miss the money (being a pay upfront student due to earning too much dosh in my engineering career)? Will I be able to sustain an interest in this given that over the last couple of years, my interest in church and actual practice of religion has fallen to subzero temperatures?

Despite that last statement, I still find myself thinking about God a lot and I still find theology fascinating so I’m hoping that will be enough.

Tags: meta | Comment: What are your thoughts?

The Future of the Beginning

November 13th, 2009

Since moving house and therefore closing the door on chapter of my life where I dallied with the idea of returning to St Francis’ Theological College at some point to continue my Jedi training, I’ve been thinking about the future of this blog. I haven’t had the time to write about theology let alone read about it or even think about it yet I have enjoyed so much the way it has provided a launching pad for a broad range of learning.

At this stage I still intend to continue to attempt to read theology and blog about it just because i’d feel sad to walk away from it completely and because I feel the need to keep my brain active on things that aren’t so procedural as computer programming and maths. At this stage I’m not able to be more specific than that but I’d like any suggestions in the comments on ways to continue a scholarly style of learning without tutorials and assessments as motivators. Also I’d like any suggestions of introductory books to start building a library with: e.g. Good theological dictionaries and references. I’m thinking of getting McGrath’s Theology Reader and The Modern Theologians as well as an early church history text to continue that topic.

Tags: meta | 1 Comment »