Review: A Better Atonement

A Better Atonement Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin     
Tony Jones

When, half a lifetime ago, I started as a student, some of my peers were studying theology, and I was wide-eyed at the concept that they had a whole prelims paper on the Atonement [that link tells me that this is no longer the case...interesting].  I couldn't quite believe that there was enough to say, or, indeed, enough dispute to get a good argument from.  How naive I was!

I've always found the academic end of theology rather challenging - perhaps because I am not trained in the humanities or even the social sciences.  This book isn't high-blown academic theology (well, I don't think it is; how could you tell?), but it's not an easy popular read, either.  That's not to say that it's hard to read: indeed, Jones puts his easy, accessible writing to good effect here as elsewhere.  It's just that the whole theological venture seems, well, arbitrary.  The book is well-written, though it would have benefited from the attentions of an editor (a peril of self-publishing, I guess).

Many of the ideas previously appeared on Tony Jones' blog, so you can find some of it there.  I enjoy Tony's blog, so buying a 'book' with a collection of articles from there didn't seem like a bad idea.  [Aside.  It's ironic that the spell-check on this web-based blog client I'm using doesn't recognise 'blog' as a word, suggesting instead glob, bog, log, slob,...]

In the first part of the book, Jones explores the doctrine of original sin, rejecting it (in the sense that sin is somehow transmitted by semen) in place of an observation that we each sin for ourselves.

In other words, we don’t only lose our immortality because of Adam’s sin, but each of us stands guilty before God because of his sin.

I see the distinction, and yet it seems a bit like splitting hairs.  In the understanding I have received, the stress is much more on the "all have sinned" part; saying with the Psalmist "surely I was sinful from birth" rather than seeing this as particularly strongly tied to an inherited sinful state.  Perhaps I just blanked the semen bit.

But Jones sees the distinction as crucial to going on to understand the Atonement.  As an interlude, he explores his belief that Jesus really rose from being really dead.  He finds Jesus' miracles and his resurrection crucial to how these things are to be understood.

The second part explores various ways in which people have understood the Atonement.  The central idea for Evangelicals (and some others too) is Penal Substitutionary Atonement.  Jones shows a host of reasons for thinking that holding this a central pre-eminent doctrine is a mistake.  I'd have to agree there.  I've tried to avoid it in preaching and in leading worship, these last several years.  It's downright difficult - our patterns of thought, and our hymnology are suffused with it.  And yet it's unsatisfactory - particularly as a central idea, even if it makes for a good analogy and an angle to explore from time to time.

Having batted aside this and several other ideas - whilst seeing a measure of merit in most - he ends with a more constructive idea, trying to live up to the title of the book.  In this he draws upon Moltmann, but manages to confuse me so that I really cannot summarise or paraphrase what he is saying.  This paragraph seems valuable:

Our call is to identify with Christ’s suffering and death, much as he has identified with us. In his death, we are united with his suffering. And in identifying with his resurrection, we are raised to new life.

Evidently, I need to learn more about theological methodology.  Or perhaps there is no spoon.

forked tongue

Protopresbyter is a new one on me.



But he does have a point. Does it make sense to pray for guidance and wisdom for all in Synod, and then repudiate the result? Just another reason why we need a new theology of prayer.

saying what we want to be true

Aside from great sadness for all my Anglican friends who have prayed for - or feared - the consecration of women as bishops in the Church of England, and are now consigned to continue their prayers - or fears - for more years to come, I'm a little surprised by the tone of the debate.

The news reporting (especially, but not, I think solely, in the main news media) seems to have focussed primarily on the equality issues, and then on words from St Paul about women staying silent in church and not holding authority.  Not one that I have seen has talked of Apostolic Succession: maybe they were all being briefed by very reformed Evangelicals.  It's not my churchmanship, but the arguments are surely diminished without that piece - certainly the eventual sticking point about the nature of the arrangements for conscientious objectors.

But many of the arguments against simply seem disingenuous.  There has been a constant refrain that this is not about equality - and certainly not about employment equality.  Bishops, we are reminded, are servants of the church: leaders, yes, but by no means part of a power hierarchy.  This is a convenient story.  It may have a good spiritual pedigree.  We may wish it to be true.  But it is manifestly not true. The very characteristics which are said have marked Justin Welby as a good candidate for Archbishop are strikingly similar to those required of those aspiring to high office in a variety of other professions - albeit with a degree of winsomeness too often lacking in many corporate boardrooms.

Although the Church maintains a fiction that it does not employ its Priests (they are employed, apparently, by God, and he is not amenable to being summoned to appear before employment tribunals), to all intents and purposes that is exactly what it does.  And it most plainly runs something that looks exactly like a career structure, with a variety of promotions to more senior posts for those who demonstrate relevant expertise (or gifts).  Pretending otherwise really does no one any favours.

Viewed in that light, for the Church - the Church established by law, with a variety of ancient privileges - looks very poor if it seeks exemption from the Equality Act.  A martyrdom of principle would be honourable, but to retain special treatment from the state whilst not taking on board the state's norms looks really quite unprincipled.  Many -apparently most, in fact - in the Church of England share something like this view, of course.

Christians seem to have a track record of treating things as true which they'd like to be true, even when they are not - and everyone else can see it.  That can be embarrassing sometimes.  When it's used to defend the indefensible, it's even worse.

honesty

Vaughan Roberts is one of my neighbours - not that I could claim to know him.  He's also the Rector of St. Ebbe's church in Oxford, which I think you'd have to say is close to the extreme end of the Evangelical party in the Church of England.  He's a council member of Reform, and that entails giving annual assent to a whole raft of fairly hard-line propositions.

So, his recent interview in which he describes his own same-sex attraction - he seems to be happy to identify it as a 'battle' - is noteworthy.  I don't at all agree with most of his approach or conclusions, but I must respect him for speaking up in this way.

Review: When God Talks Back

When God Talks Back:
Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God 

T. M. Luhrmann 

I read this book soon after the last one I reviewed - The Bible Made Impossible.  Bible and Prayer are truly central parts of the Christian story - so these two together represent something of a rationalist onslaught against traditional approaches to faith.

That's not to say that Luhrmann has set out to undermine faith as such.  I'd say that the book could be read without blushes by both thinking Evangelicals and atheists alike. This is no small achievement.  That's not to say that her analysis is not quite close to the bone: the dispassionate observation of the behaviour of believers is striking in its precision, and in a sense devastating because it strips away much of the mystical component often associated with prayer and hearing God's voice.

The author is an anthropologist and psychologist.  Her approach to her topic was, I guess the classic technique modelled by countless researchers: just as some will embed themselves with remote jungle tribes in order better to understand them, she joined herself to Vineyard Fellowships over a period of several years.  She worshipped and socialized with her subjects, attending study groups, retreats and courses as well as the main public services and gatherings.  She describes - without side or any sense of disparaging - the way that believers are taught and practice their prayer life, and how they describe what they have heard and done.

The work is scholarly and well-footnoted. It manages detachment without becoming impersonal: we hear the voices of the subjects under study, and the author's own reactions and reflections, too.  She began the process as an agnostic [or that is the impression I formed - I can't find a reference for this], but in a note in the last chapter describes her own journey to a form of faith: not to the point of calling herself a Christian, but certainly to understanding God in much the same way as those she has worshipped amongst. This may detract from the objectiveness of the narrative sustained throughout - but is some testimony to the strength of the common life she experienced among the Vineyard folks.

The core of the book is a narrative of her Vineyard experiences, and reflection upon them.  But it is leavened with well-researched histories of relevant topics, and considerations of other spiritualities - within Christianity and beyond - and how they may be compared with the material she is documenting first-hand.

The conclusion?  I suppose the over-arching conclusion would be that there is much learned behaviour, and that genuinely altered states of consciousness are achieved through classical spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation.  She even undertakes an experiment where participants are given different spiritual exercises to follow for an extended period - and document their spiritual responses and experiences. She observes along the way that her subjects are not idiots - well aware of the scepticism of those around them about their interactions with an invisible being whom they believe has a real impact on their lives.  Nor, she says with professional judgement, are they suffering from mental illness or showing any classical signs of psychosis.  Mental disorder, she notes, is almost always troubling and disturbing; prayer is at worst neutral and more commonly  positive experience for the participants.

There is much more to the book.  I do not claim to have summarised the results, nor even necessarily detailed the most important observations - just some of those that struck me.  I have argued elsewhere that the Christian community needs a new theology of prayer for the 21st Century.  T. M. Luhrmann's analysis robs prayer of none of its depth, yet strips away a lot of the overlaid and (to my mind) unwanted narrative: it's a big step in the right direction.

review: The Bible Made Impossible

The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture
Christian Smith


The main title is quite attention-grabbing, perhaps, but the subtitle is a much more accurate description of the book.  Smith sets out first to show that an approach to biblical interpretation which he calls biblicism is commonplace among [American] Evangelicals, and beyond, and then to show why it necessarily completely lacks coherence - that it is an impossible position.

This 'biblicism' is a collection of beliefs surrounding the bible, relating to how to read, understand, and use it.  Smith lists ten characteristics which he says are commonplace but not universal characteristics; they include

• democratic perspicuity: any reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible in his or her own language and correctly understand the plain meaning of the text;
• solo sciptura: the significance of any given biblical text can be understood without reliance on creeds, confessions, historical church traditions, or other forms of larger theological hermeneutical frameworks, such that theological formulations can be built up directly out of the Bible from scratch;
• inductive method: all matters of Christian belief and practice can be learned by sitting down with the Bible and piecing together through careful study the clear "biblical" truths that it teaches

and so on.  Though seldom stated in this way, the list is unexceptionable - Christians in the broad sweep of Evangelical churches, and some way beyond, would read the list and nod at most of them.  Smith backs up the latter point by reference to literature - scholarly and popular - which explicitly embraces one or more of these ideas. Some of this evidence looks a little over-the-top, but the complete effect is really unarguable.  

And then the punch: the problem of interpretive pluralism.  In short, the fact that many diligent readers of the Bible, whilst praying for inspiration from the Holy Spirit, reach seemingly diametrically opposed conclusions about a whole range of important matters.  These of course range from the nature of Christ's work on the cross, through the meaning and understanding of the sacraments, eschatology, predestination, how the church is to be ordered, and much more.  In short, they touch upon most of the major themes of personal and corporate Christian life.  How, then, can the Bible be treated as a handbook for living, if its readers do not agree about what it says?  

He anticipates a number of counter-arguments - but all tend to strengthen his argument.  How can Bible reading alone be sufficient to understand God's will for us, if we disagree about what it means?   We might attribute that disagreement to sin and fallenness on the part of the interpreters: but that rather nullifies the idea that we who are sinners can learn all we need to from the Bible, under the Holy Spirit's guidance.  We might imagine that many Christians manage to appraise a part of the truth - but that the whole council of God is much larger and will not be grasped this side of eternity (this could be expanded into a whole argument about postmodern readings): but this seems to say that God has not performed his goal of self-revelation very well, and that none of us can know the truth.

All of this (and more) is in chapters 1 and 2. The argument is carefully articulated, from a number of angles and perspectives, and with lots of evidence: the very idea of biblicism is impossible because it doesn't give rise to the outcome it intends; it is self-defeating. Chapters 3 and 4 develop the theme a little further, and present a range of subsidiary points.  The remainder of the book tries to be constructive, instead of leaving the reader in a nihilistic place.  It's much less convincing - the author himself admits that the first part of the book is the most important - but seems a reasonable thing to do.  

The book's purpose is narrow - to take issue with biblicism - and deliberately avoids discussions of inerrancy and other ideas on infallibility.  Indeed, Smith claims that nothing he says is at odds with an inerrantist view: that seems a stretch to me; as if to say that the bible can be regarded as inerrant as long as you don't take it literally.  But I take his general point - one can receive the Bible as the inspired word of God without buying into a biblicist position which is, in any case, rather a recent (if now pervasive) position.  

Though I think it declines in quality as it progresses (save for the last chapter, which reverses the trend), I like the book a lot.  It is thoughtful, careful, and winsome:  a narrow thesis is advanced and demonstrated.  No over-bold claims are made, and there doesn't seem to be much of an attempt to shock.  That said, the implications of his argument are far-reaching indeed.  Far from being simply an intellectual game, this stuff makes a difference.  Protestantism is divided into almost countless denominations, each of which believes it has received a slightly purer truth than its neighbours.  And not just big denominations: several small, more-or-less independent churches meet within a mile or so of the church I belong to, each separated from the others not just by its sense of mission and what's important, but also on aspects of belief and practice.  Jesus prayed for believers to have unity - but our approach to truth drives us in completely the opposite direction.  It's both intellectually untenable, as Smith demonstrates, and also profoundly damaging in practice.

I commend the book to you, dear reader!

 

perspective

I liked this article in Patrol Magazine, responding to a widely-cited column from the weekend's New York Times.  The latter talked of decline - specifically in the American Episcopal church - reflected in falling congregations.  Fitzgerald - editor at Patrol - argues

But the bottom line is, though it may seem self-evident that declining church attendance is evidence of something gone wrong, would we rather see churches that accommodate society’s ills grow? Isn’t it more likely that a faith that asks more than we can naturally give, that compels us to believe in things we can’t see, and calls us to live in ways that are counter to our own self interests, would find itself at odds with the prevailing culture?

And that seems very much in line with what I blogged about  a few months back, motivated by a quote from Rick Warren asserting almost the opposite - that the churches of which Fitzgerald speaks are 'in decline' precisely because they have embraced the prevailing culture. Which perspective makes more sense?