Cruciformity

College missions are always like this: crazy and very fruitful. It was great to be dragged away from the books and reminded of the bigger picture - God’s purposes in mission. One of my jobs was to sit on a panel at a men’s discussion night on the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins and the like. Without knowing anything about the region we went to I presumed Atheism was a common issue for the people living there and so I put some effort into looking into the topic.

We went to Merrylands, near Parramatta, the geographical centre of Sydney, home to Lebanese, Sudanese, Chinese, Indian, Croatian, Russian, Kuwaiti, just to name a few of the cultural backgrounds represented there. My doorknocking opportunities told me what you would suspect - most people there believe in a god. Given the Hindu population, if you did the stats, you’d probably find that the average was more than one god per household.

Now, this isn’t to say that the minister didn’t have his finger on the pulse, though - he was just measuring a different pulse. Atheism remains an issue for most of the Anglo population and - I discovered - it’s an issue that many from the younger generation were picking up from school, uni and the workplace. The New Atheism has caused shockwaves in some areas, and it got no response in other areas.

In any case, Atheism was an issue for me as I grew up and this gave me the opportunity to flick through some recent material on the topic and I found some average stuff and some great stuff. On the one hand, Richard Dawkin’s The Greatest Show on Earth preserves his boiling rage against Christians from his previous book, though he now seems to hold out some respect for some Christians. Is he coming to realise how ridiculous some of his claims are?

On the other end of the spectrum is great book, David Bentley Hart’s book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. I thought that Milbank’s endorsement on the back was funny but I didn’t know that it truly is a demolition job:

Surely Dawkins, Hitchens, et al would never have dared put pen to paper had they known of the existence of David Bentley Hart. After his demolition job all that is left for them to do is repent and rejoice at the discreditation of their erstwhile selves.

If you’ve been stung by the claims of the New Atheists, then I definitely recommend it. He steps through misquote after misconception after non-sequitor and straightens out the story behind much of Atheism’s banter. He’s eloquent and well read, he makes thoughtful responses and maintains a confidence that allows him speak honestly about the shadows and mystery of the Christian faith.

My only criticism of Hart is that he also exudes an elitism that I find difficult to swallow. It quashes the blazing rhetoric of his opponents (and I must say that this is very satifisfying!), but it leaves me feeling like it misrepresents me a little bit as a Christian.

This is probably the most important thing I learned that week. The Apostle Paul boasted in his weaknesses and embodied his message, centred squarely on Christ crucified. If we’re to follow Jesus, then our response to our enemy can’t be alike, it must be love.

My friend Nick put me onto this free online short film by Spike Jonze. If you’ve seen his recent movie, Where the Wild Things Are, you’ll know that he portrays everyday people really well. This is really very beautiful.  Check it out: imheremovie.com.

I’ve been slowly sifting through old posts in my RSS feeder and came across a great post on the reliability of the Gospels over at Ben Myer’s blog by Prof. George Hunsinger. Click here for a great read.

I particularly like his closing paragraphs:

It is finally not we who read the NT, but the NT that reads us. It calls us and our detached role as would-be authoritative, evidence-weighing spectators radically into question. That is why it is so dangerous. Many of those original “unreliable” witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, like Peter and Paul, went to their brutal deaths as martyrs. “When Christ calls a man,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.”

No one who is not willing to take this risk should venture to read the NT. But many of those who have turned to it spiritually have found, throughout the centuries, that they end up saying with Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68). I suggest that you might want to read the opening chapters in The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Don’t know if you’ve heard of them but the Dodos have quickly become my new favourites.

I’m right into their 2007 album Visiter which is a great guitar/percussion combo. I love that they major on cool natural beats and combine it with syncopated guitar, sweet melodie and down to earth lyrics. It’s beautifully textured and a refreshingly upbeat sound, salvaging what’s left of a great long  Summer.Definitely worth a listen or five. I also love the fact that they’ve played gigs at schools, having heaps of fun with the kids, and the artwork for Visiter actually came from one of them. So cool.

Since Visiter, they’ve produced another album that I haven’t had a chance to hear yet, but it includes another chap on the Vibrophone. Don’t know much about it but I’m looking forward to it.

Check out some reviews of the band here, here, and here. See also their myspace page here.

Check out the first two tracks of their debut album, Visiter. Yes, do it now!

I’ve been reading through Tom Wright’s Hebrews for Everyone and have been really loving it. He writes so well, succint, pastoral and he includes some great anecdotes. I was reminded today of his reference to a prayer by Francis Drake that he says is still in frequent use in churches today - I’d love to know where it’s been preserved. It came to mind as I strive to publish a blog regularly. But Wright more appropriately relates this to the Christian life and our need to persevere.

O Lord God, when thou givest to thy servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same, until it be thoroughly finished, which yieldeth the true glory; through him who for the finishing of thy work laid down his life for us, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

As a teenager I remember engaging with friends in long, long discussions about those questions. Could God produce a rock too heavy to lift? Could God microwave a burrito so hot that even he couldn’t eat it? More often than not, these were questions asked because they niggled. Occasionally, though, someone would suggest that it proved God couldn’t exist.

In any case, I’ve become accustomed to side-stepping these by highlighting the importance of understanding God as he is towards us. Often the philosophical questions result in discussions of an abstract god or a caricature of God. God’s identity is removed from his self-revelation in Scripture, and is reduced to a series of categories - omnipotency, omnipresence, impassibility, aseity, etc. I’ve found that a more meaningful discussion of God draws from God’s revelation of himself. I can still hear my doctrine lecturer, Robert Doyle repeating the phrase, “God is who he is towards us!”

Of course, Robert was channelling Karl Barth, who was channelling Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, often called the Father of Existentialism, keenly opposed systems of thought and particularly those proposed by his predecessors Kant and Hegel. Barth continued this method in his theology, mostly ignoring categories of Systematic Theology and preferring to understand God by his (mostly) excellent exegesis of Scripture. It’s a result of such emphases that here at Moore College Biblical Studies rightly holds a place of priority among the subjects we study. God is as he is as he is towards us: He has revealed himself most clearly in his son Jesus, whose life and work reconciled humanity with himself, and issued in hope of new creation, which is brought into being by God’s Spirit. This is the triune God as revealed in Scripture, the one that Christians believe and worship.

I don’t mean to dismiss any value in discussing God’s attributes; this discussion could venture into a number of interesting areas from here. But the question that I’ve got going relates to the work of Oliver Crisp. I was introduced to Crisp at last year’s School of Theology on John Calvin. More recently, I’ve been reading Crisp’s 2007 work, Divinity and Humanity, a series of essays that relate to the Chalcedonian Definition, both challenging it and reinforcing it. To my surprise, Crisp has embraced these philosophical categories, used them to critique people like Barth and Gunton, and yet doesn’t even mention this key difference in methodology.

In one particular chapter, I’m left almost completely unconvinced by Crisp’s rebuttal of Edward Irving’s, Gunton’s and Barth’s view that Christ had a fallen nature. Granted, it was a short essay. But it really could have engaged more in the long and sustained arguments of any of these thinkers who work closer to the biblical texts and not philosophical categories like God’s omnipotence.

Oliver Crisp is a man much smarter than I am and I certainly don’t want to disrespect him. I also don’t want to say that there is NO value in using these philosophical categories, I guess I’m just confused. Haven’t we realised the limits of these categories?

This weekend I’ll be playing guitar at church for the first time. At least the first time with my dear family at CBTB.

For those who already do this kind of thing or are thinking of doing it down the track, my friend Cedric pointed me to this masterclass video that is definitely worth checking out. It’s by a guy in the UK called Dave Clifton - a guy with chops and a great vision for what church music is trying to achieve. I had no idea that the guitar was so versatile!

I came back down to Canberra on Monday after mission to catch up with my family and a few friends.

I always find it hard coming back because there just isn’t time to see all the people I want to see. This usually results in the type of paralysis that leaves me seeing no one at all, or at least very few people. It’s a real shame.

But today I found it extra hard. I spent some time wandering around the Uni campus and I bumped into a number of kids that I led in youth group years ago - not kids anymore, all grown up. Or at least pretending to be grown up.

I spoke to few, and heard about a few others and it seems that many of them aren’t going so well in their walks with Jesus and it’s breaking my heart.

“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.”

Then Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

(Mark 4:3-9 NIV)

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of my friends jokingly said that this was their favourite blog. I haven’t posted in months and haven’t said anything thoughtful for much longer. So I’ve decided that it’s time.

Here are five things that I’ve learned about blogs as I’ve had mixed experiences in reading other people’s blogs and as I’ve failed at contributing to my own. Let me enumerate.

1. Thinking is just plain hard work. What this means is that blogging is easier when it expresses the thoughts you’ve had during the week and it’s harder when it’s a special project.

2. I like a good-looking website. It often doesn’t matter at all as people use RSS feeds, but when it comes to scoping out a website in its natural habitat, I unashamedly judge a book by its cover.

3. Shorter is better. It’s quicker to write. It’s quicker to read. It makes you get to the point. NOTE - this doesn’t mean that it can’t be interesting, funny and even poetic. It just means that someone might care to read it.

4. Keep it regular. I habitually visit the same sites each day expected my next snack. When there’s nothing to take I might not come back for a little while. Impulsive? Sure. Feed me.

5. Give me Meat. While underlining the need to keep things punchy, I want something meaningful, or funny, or informative or at least well written. Drivel drives me insane.

This has been more for my benefit than yours. I guess what this means is that I’ll be back again soon with something a little shorter (maybe also more thoughtful… and better looking…. )

I’ve just finished writing an essay outlining the shape of Karl Barth’s ethic, key to which is the concept of Divine Command. To prevent his account sounding like a divine tyrant or a voluntaristic thunderstrike like other Divine Command Theories, he provides the following great quote from CD II/2, p 587:

It is true, of course, that this command also says: Do this and do not do that. But in the mouth of God this means something different.  Do this—not because an outer or inner voice now requires this of you, not because it must be so in virtue of any necessity rooted in the nature and structure of the cosmos or of man, but: Do this, because in so doing you make it true that your rejection has been rejected in the death of Jesus on the cross, that for His sake your sin has been forgiven.  Do this, because in Jesus Christ you have been born anew in the image of God.  Do it in the freedom to which you have been chosen and called, because in this freedom you may do this, and can do only this.  For this, and not for any other reason, do this.  You may do it.  And: Do not do this—not because you hear an inner or outer voice which seeks to make it doubtful or dreadful for you, not because there is any power in heaven or on earth to prevent or spoil or for some reason forbid it.  No, but: Do not do this, because it would be a continuation of the fall of Adam, because it would not correspond to the grace addressed to you but contradict it, because you would have to do it as the captive which you certainly are not, because you, the free person, are exempted from the necessity of doing it—really exempted by the fact that you have been made righteous and glorious in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that you have actually been cut off by Him from this very possibility.  This is how the command of God speaks.