Living Wittily

As in a mirror - Calvin and Barth

'gloat' - to dwell on with smugness or exultation.

'admire' - to regard with esteem, respect, approval or pleased surprise.

'covet' - to wish, long or crave for

'bibliophile' - to admire a book, then covet a book, and then gloat over its acquisition at a fraction of the cover price.

'Confession' - the act of telling people on this blog that today, this bibliophile has moved from coveting and admiring to gloating.

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The picture is a detail from the Issenheim Altarpiece, and shows John the Baptist pointing to the cross and to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. A reproduction of this detail hung on Barth's study for years, reminding him that as a theologian all he could ever do was point towards the revealed mystery of Christ crucified. What fascinates me about this magnificent volume is the approach, which takes two of the most influential and 'epochal theological figures' and expounds their understanding of our knowledge of God, but without making them cancel each other out, and without feeling compelled to affirm one at the expense of the other. Like a two panel diptych, the theological portrait of each is displayed, and the hinge which joins them is the equally towering figure of Immanuel Kant. Calvin's theology was hammered out against the background of Renaissance humanism, reformation tumult and pre-modern culture; Barth's theology was a response to 'post-Kantian culture inclined to agnosticism', and to those forms of liberal theology that had declined to acknowledge the transcendent otherness of the Eternal Word; - and between them one of the stellar figures of the Enlightenment, whose own views of how we know, what we know, and how we know what we know, have shaped western philosophy for centuries.

Some books you don't read till you have time not only to do it justice, but to let it do justice to that part of us which recognises that, sometimes, the deepest and most satisfying truths are not to be had piecemeal. They demand, and repay, the costly labour of prayerful attention; they invite us into a conversation where we need all our wits about us; they satisfy, if only for a while, that hunger to know more about what it means to know God.

Recent acquisitions

No surprise that since I was over at Glasgow University Library in the diligent pursuit of knowledge, and since I was in the immediate vicinity, I found time to engage in some extreme used book searching at Voltaire and Rousseau's. I say extreme because venturing between the stacked aisles of books in that shop isn't all that different from walking through the threatening unstable landscapes of middle earth. I came away unscathed though, and with three purchases -

one of Heiko Oberman's earlier books, Masters of the Reformation.The emergence of a new intellectual climate in Europe (Cambridge, 1981) - a clean, hardback copy of a hard to get book. Oberman was one of the finest Reformation scholars whose detailed research and at times hard to read essays nevertheless provided a much more nuanced picture of the interface between medieval and Renaissance culture and the events and historical contexts of the European Reformations.

John Todd's careful study of John Wesley and the Catholic Church, a book I've read before but am glad to have. There's still alot of important and unexploited insight in some of the earlier work on the Wesleys. This book, along with others like Wesley and the Church of England, and Wesley and the Puritans highlights the range and variety of Wesley's theological taste - he has been called a 'devout eclectic', a classic case of pick'n mix theology long before pick 'n mix was made a cliche for post-modern consumer led choices!

And then it's always good to find a book by a friend - David Smith, Mission After Christendom, a nice fresh copy to replace the one of mine that went the way of most lent out books! What I enjoyed about buying David's book (at a ridiculously good price), was that it was shelved in the esoteric section, sandwiched between - wait for it - Buddhism Without Beliefs, a kind of western new age take on Mahayana Buddhism, and on the other side Awake at 3a.m. a study of the spiritual psychology (whatever that is) of insomnia!

As I looked at this book on mission, pressed on both sides by quite different and alien worldviews, I couldn't help thinking - for a book intended to open up new frontiers for witness in a globalised world, placing it amongst the esoterica seemed like an unintentional but highly symbolic prophetic act, indicating the plight of the church trying to do mission after Christendom!

Odd Enthusiasms

I have a tie that I like, but it is so time specific, and is now so dated, that even a tie-wearing radical like me probably won't wear it again. A tie- wearing radical is anyone who now turns up at conferences, committee meetings or to other occasions of social posing where a tie is not strictly necessary. So I'm wondering, just where now is a tie strictly necessary. I've recently been at funerals, weddings, ordinations where several of the key players didn't wear a tie. This doesn't make anyone a bad person - it just signals a social shift, and leaves me feeling that the few people who were cool and independent thinking because they dispensed with a tie, are now in the majority and it's those of us who still wear a tie who are becoming cooler. Or is my logic flawed yet again?

Anyway, the tie in question is a Wallace and Gromit tie, and against a navy blue background it is covered in sheep, only one of which is wearing green wellies. Now you see why I don't wear it now - and wonder with flabbergasted amazement why I ever wore it in the first place. But each to his / her taste. When I first wore it a friend who risked becoming an ex-friend suggested the sheep with the wellies was the pastor, who was just like the other sheep but wasn't prepared to walk unshod in the farmyard manure of life. Whatever, I doubt if there are many of this particular tie now in existence, and if anyone will ever risk wearing it again. But I still like the tie, and don't need the affirmation of other fashion officionados to justify my odd enthusiasm for it.

Which brings me to some of my other odd enthusiasms, of the literary kind. I've recently re-read several of books that I'm not sure many other people would get all that worked up about. Let me know if you've heard of / read / think much of:

The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen

A Dresser of Sycamore Trees, Garret Keizer

Walking a Literary Labyrinth, Nancy Malone

Wind, Sand and Stars, Atoine de Saint Exupery

Life and Letters of H R L Sheppard

The Dean's Watch, Elizabeth Goudge

Confessions of a Bibliophile. A long awaited new book

Now and again you get tired of superlatives, you begin to suffer from overstatement fatigue. Whether it's the latest, coolest, fastest, cheapest, most reliable, healthiest, longest lasting, exclusive, superb, benchmark, unrivalled, bestest, very bestest, very bestest ever, really very bestest ever...see what I mean. Tediously repeated superlatives are like a dimmer switch attached to the brain; they're as annoying as the monotonous musically vacuous bass beats of sound systems in passing cars; meant to communicate more or less justified enthusiasm, superlatives end up being a turn-off.

So what do I say about The Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, the latest (note the only remaining superlative in this review) dictionary published by IVP? It's a revision and expansion of a previous volume called A Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters, which has served well as a reference book on the history of biblical interpretation. The new edition enhances that usefulness by widening the scope of the contents and bringing the entire volume up to date. It is plain fact to say there isn't another volume that covers this ground, and this much ground, in such a comprehensive and representative scale. (1100+ pages). There are five chronological chapters adding up to over 100 double column pages, providing an overview of historical context, key personalities and important developments in scholarly examination of the Bible.

At a time when serious attention is being paid to the history of biblical interpretation, and the history of text reception within the community of faith is being given significant hermeneutical weight, such a reference book offers substantive discussion of key personalities, and opens up a diverse and crucial field of study. Most articles about the biblical interpreters selected explore four areas of their respective subject - the context, the life and work of the person, main interpretive principles, and continuing significance.

The selection has sought to be representative and inclusive, incorporating Catholic and Protestant, conservative and progressive, ancient and modern, men and (far too few) women, hugely weighted towards Europe and America, and spanning two thousand years. Intentionally, nearly all those included are dead - so living scholars either wait a later edition!, or another book is needed looking at contemporary practising interpreters. This editorial decision goes some way to explaining the Euro-American male dominance of entries, without excusing the history that underlies it. But Phyllis Trible and Schussler Fiorenza are there, and thankfully are still here - a wise editorial act of positive discrimination and inclusion.

However the Dictionary can only include those who are indeed the significant players in the history of interpretation, and this it does under the overall editorship of Donald McKim, an experienced and reliable editor who is himself a contributor to the academic discussions arising from biblical interpretation. As an indication of the range of interpreters treated here is a list of ten, chosen on a quick skim back and forwards through the book:

Hugh of St Victor, Gerhard von Rad, E Schussler Fiorenza, Pilgram Marpeck, John Owen, Paul Ricouer, Erasmus, Didymus the Blind, C K Barrett, C I Scofield.

As a Scot I am delighted that A B Bruce, James Moffatt and James Denney (pictured) are included - by the way, has any other church ever been more privileged in the New Testament expertise of its ministers than Broughty Ferry East Free Church which had these three influential Scottish scholars within the space of around forty years?

Then there are the premier league scholars of the 20th Century; from Europe Barth, Von Rad, Bultmann, Cullmann, Eichrodt, Kasemann, Lohmeyer; and from Britain C F D Moule, Vincent Taylor, G B Caird, C K Barrett, C H Dodd, T W Manson; from America H J Cadbury, Brevard Childs, Bruce Metzger, Walter Brueggemann (another thankfully still with us inclusion) G Eldon Ladd, Raymond E Brown; from the tradition of great commentators Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Matthew Henry, J A Bengel, J P Lange, H A W Meyer, Keil and Delitzsch. And so on. And the dictionary short changes none of them. No half column digests of facts - each a substantial article, and all articles supported by generous up to date bibliography.

For biblical interpreters, aspiring or established, who want to understand how we came to be where we are in the scholarly study of the Bible; and for those fascinated by the immense labour and human devotion that has gone into the faithful study of the biblical text; and for those like myself who are both captivated by the story of how the church has listened, learned and interpreted Christian scripture, this is a superlative book!

And in these days of required transparency and declared interests, I have to inform you that the article on James Denney was written by me, and the volume is much the better for it - not because I wrote it, but because Denney was a superlative interpreter of Scripture!

Hidden graces and glimpsed generosities....

'The most complete novel I know in the English language is....' Now that's a sentence that has an almost ulimited number of possible endings, depending on who is saying it. Some would say Middlemarch, by George Eliot. No doubt whatsoever, Middlemarch is a sumptuously long, intricately contrived, precisely plotted novel richly populated with characters whose inner lives are narrated and monitored by a knowing narrator. Others may stake a claim for Henry James, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and we could all compile our listmania recommendations.

But the person who said to me, 'The most complete novel in the English language is....' was referring not to the great tradition, but to a novelist long out of fashion, and to a novel not recognised as her greatest. Yet The Dean's Watch, by Elizabeth Goudge was passionately advocated by my friend while she was in hospital, and during a conversation ranging from Wordsworth to Ruskin ( we were both reading the latest biographies, she of Wordsworth, me of Ruskin), from Dickens to Manley Hopkins. So I read it, and I haven't read enough novels to make the same exclusive claim that it is the most complete novel in the English language; but it is one of the most satisfyingly resolved novels I've ever read.

It is gentle but sharply observed, sentimental in a way that affirms emotion as an essential barometer of humanity, it avoids the unlikely coincidences that drive Charles Dickens, the fateful providences of Thomas Hardy, the mature and serious playfulness of George Eliot. Instead it draws you into a story where the characters are people, but also a city, and a cathedral, and a community that like a finely calibrated clock runs reliably until something jumps out of synchronic movement, and then needs repairing.

I've read it four times - and would have read it again this December but instead have leant it to a very good friend who will be the richer over Advent for reading it. The story revolves around the last months of a year leading up to Christmas, the plot centres around the Dean, his watch, the clockmaker, the apprentice, and the cathedral and city. And it does indeed, meander and twist and move towards completion until the entire story is resolved. Goudge constructs characters who are uncomplicated, lacking the ambiguity and complexity of  the modern 'literary novel'. But her aim is to tell a story, to create place, people, circumstance within a providence that is merely hinted.

Eliot's Middlemarch it is not. But a woman whose father, H L Goudge, was known for carrying the bags of local tramps up the hill to the vicarage and offering them a bath, or sitting on the pavement talking to travelling people, is someone who understands the hidden graces and glimpsed generosities of ordinary human lives. The Dean's Watch is a tale of redemption, told within the ordinary, where sin is sin, and grace is grace, but grace abounds, people change, where life is told as a story framed in the goodness of and mystery of a Love both pervasive and elusive.

By the way that last sentence could stand as a good description of Advent... " a tale of redemption, told within the ordinary, where sin is sin, and grace is grace, but grace abounds, people change, where life is told as a story framed in the goodness of and mystery of a Love both pervasive and elusive". I am at Inverness with the good people of Hilton Church - some of whom regularly call by here. So I'll return the compliment and go visit to share an Advent weekend.

The simple pleasures of big learned books!

As promised here are some Haiku verses I wrote to celebrate the beautiful, critical commentaries publishes as the Hermeneia series. They are also a tribute to Sean Winter who shares my enthusiasm for the aesthetics of book production, who like me gloats without conscience in the visual and tactile pleasure of handling and reading a beautiful book in which the knowledge it contains and the form that contains it are equally important. And near the end a three line tribute to a three volume masterpiece, Luz on Matthew.

Hermeneia  Haiku

Hermeneia, is

An ancient Greek speaking word

For hermeneutics.

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Hermeneutics, the

Modern term for biblical

Interpretation.

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Sumptuous volumes,

Book-buying extravagance

So hard to resist.

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A thing of beauty,

Aesthetics and scholarship

A joy forever.

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Luz’ magnum opus,

Winter’s desideratum

Matthean triptych.

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Haiku PS

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Lesser mortals ask

‘What is wirkungsgeschichte?’

Is it important?

These books cost twice as much as my first car, and will last longer!

Caution - long sentence looming. When someone spends more than half their life studying one of the Gospels, and takes over twenty years to write a three volume commentary of 1750 pages on Matthew, and remains an enthusiastic learner and teachable interpreter of all things Matthean, and writes out of a deep faith commitment and a familiarity with the vast range of previous Christian scholarship on the text, and the books themselves are the last word in sumptuous, crafted, book production....well then, it's hard not to gloat without guilt, to handle each volume with exaggerated care, to imagine that the weight of knowledge must at least be equivalent to the heft of the book, to make space on the desk to lay it down, but carefully,to open it and do what you always ought to do with a good book and a piece of refined art, read it, contemplate it, enjoy it, let its truth soak into whatever part of you is thirsty.

So I did!

And so I have since these volumes thudded onto my desk a couple of months ago. Ulrich Luz has gifted to the church one of the greatest commentaries ever written on a Gospel. For years I've used his commentary on chapters 1-7 of Matthew. But now it's been revised and expanded and along with the two other volumes completes the Hermeneia commentary on Matthew. The liturgical year 2007-8 focuses on the Gospel of Matthew - it will be serious fun and intellectual joy exploring the lectionary readings on Matthew, with Luz as guide.

A couple of months ago I played around with a few Haiku verses on the Hermeneia commentaries and posted them on Sean the Baptist's blog, cos Sean is just as much of a bibliophile as I am, just as much of a Luz fan, and just as fond of the aesthetic pleasures of handling, reading and affectionately caring for beautifully produced books. Later this week I'll post my Hermeneia Haiku as a celebration of these volumes, magnificent in content as in form. And come Advent I'll take time to learn from Luz, about genealogies, annunciations, the baby called Jesus and three magi whose GPS Sat-Nav went on the blink and they found themselves in Bethlehem.

Sean's meme - I have read enough .......

Here's my attempt to respond to Sean's meme here.

I have read enough.....

1. I have read enough Thomas Merton to know that silence and solitude are not self indulgent pursuits of the ultra-spiritual, but the necessary disciplines to self giving love, that make it possible to have a self worth giving.
2. I have read enough Kathleen Norris and Esther De Waal to know that the Rule of St Benedict  provides a framework of spirituality that takes the ordinary routines of life and integrates them into a spirituality that values stability founded upon, and community centred upon, the Word of God read and lived together.
3. I have read enough Chaim Potok, Elie Wiesel and Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the apostle Paul, to know that my own Christian faith is deeply indebted to, genetically connected to, the life and thought of God's ancient people Israel as they emerged from their encounter with God.
4. I have read enough George Herbert to know that words used with pastoral precision and poetic craft, in the 17th century as the 21st, become sacraments of truth and gifts of grace.
5. I have read enough James Denney to know that 'the last reality of the universe is eternal love, bearing sin'.
6. I have read enough novels by Anne Tyler, Gail Godwin and Carol Shields to know that when it comes to understanding what goes on inside us, what drives our deepest family relationships, what is the meaning of forgiveness and of love as costly self-expense, what to make of disappointment, how to hold on to friendship faithfully but not possessively, how to creatively use or destructively express anger, how to live through broken trust and learn to trust again, just how to make something of that whole fankled emotional liability we call the human heart, then these women novelists are far more perceptive guides than most pastoral theology I've read - much of it still written by men!
7. I have read enough Jurgen Moltmann to know that he isn't the last word in systematic theology, and that I don't always agree with him, but his is a passionately written theology of the Passion, drawn from a conception of the Triune God defined by intra-Trinitarian love that is kenotic, passionate and redemptive - and therefore liberating.
8. I have read enough Karl Barth to know that I'll probably never be able to read all of Karl barth, but it won't be because I've stopped trying.
9. I have read enough of Rick Warren.
10. I have read enough of Julian of Norwich to know that her Revelations of Divine Love constitutes one of the high points of medieval theology, one of the masterpieces of Christian mysticism, one of the most profound reflections on the cross ever written, and is the first major theological writing by a woman in English.

Karl Barth, book collecting, and the meaning of life

Ben Myers posts a timely reminder to all of us who like collecting books! It's from the fly leaf of one of Karl Barth's books, which he wrote for one of his friends.

Meaning of life?
Collecting books? No, read them!
Reading them? No, think about!
Thinking about? No, do something for God and for your neighbour!
—Karl Barth, Basle, 2.11.1954

Entertaining angels unawares

Last week I posted on my first spiritual and pastoral mentor, Charlie Simpson. I mentioned his habit of reading reference books and announced my intention to remember this good man by reading a reference book, The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. So far I've read amongst other things, about Peter Abelard, Abortion, Abraham, Adam and Allegory. And just read the article on Angels. Some of our hymns assume the reality and activity of these messengers from God - Wesley tells us to Hark! the herald angels sing; in Newman's 'Praise to the Holiest in the Height', it's the angels who are left gobsmacked (my word, Newman one of the finest prose stylists in the English language would eschew such slovenly syntax) - left gobsmacked at the coming of the second Adam to the fight and to the rescue. And Wesley again is the earth's cheerleader, celebrating the mercy of God, 'Let earth adore', and then he advises angel minds to enquire no more.

The article clarified for me the status of angels, something I hadn't thought much about -

the angels are not divine, but fellow servants of God with humanity, integral even if invisible elements of the cosmos, mightily influencing, for good and ill, according to their primordial option, the stage upon which the  history of salvation unfolds.

In the Bible angels appear and act at key moments in the story - the three guests of Abraham turn out to be the angels unawares (and are immortalised in Rublev's magnificent icon of the Holy Trinity); Jacob's wrestling partner at the brook Jabbok is an angel who leaves jacob with the blessing of a limp(which triggered one of Charles Wesley's greatest productions). They are protectors of God's people and proclaimers of God's purposes. Isaiah six gives a stunningly image-rich portrayal of the heavenly courts busy with the synchronised traffic of adoring praise at the speed of light. The Annunciation and the Nativity stories make sense only because God's messengers interrupt the long slow history of human longing, with the ultimate news bulletin. And in the wilderness, and Gethsemane Jesus is strengthened, accompanied, supported, but then they withdraw and we are left to ponder the loneliness of the Son of God.

The article finishes:

'The angels serve God and humanity, and especially Christ, God incarnate, the sole mediator. They labour invisibly, throughout the cosmos, to further the final unity of all things, in heaven and on earth, in Him.

I'm not sure how carefully I've considered a theology of angels before; I'm well impressed that Karl Barth and Karl Rahner both made significant space to expound the ministry and mystery of God's messengers. And maybe now and again, when the good things happen, we should be more alert to the presence and action of God's gophers.