Living Wittily

Donald Mackinnon, Julian of Norwich and the seriousness of sin

One of the most terrifying two hours of my life was in 1986 when I delivered a paper to the Aberdeenshire Theological Club (the oldest such club in Scotland!). The paper was on Julian of Norwich, her view of Divine Love and human sin and whether in her theology these are adequately reconciled. The subject matter is intimidating enough, but sitting in the audience was Professor Donald MacKinnon. He was a large man - broad, tall, a craggy alp with a face that could be just as forbidding as any such North Face. He was also a large presence who when he laughed his shoulders resembled a kind of mirthful earthquake, and I found him to be a warm appreciative listener mainly, except when he gruffed out a 'yes' which was reassuring, or a harrumph which was worrying. The photo of a younger Mackinnon does no justice to the venerable, restless polymath ambling through Old Aberdeen with his brown leather message bag books and papers protruding, and stuffed with who knows what metaphysical speculations, and happy to stop and engage in conversation which could be gossip or gospel, metaphysics or meal times, German Romanticism or the state of the Harris Tweed industry.

I made quite a bit about Julians doctrine of sin appearing reductionist, and at times sitting light to the seriousness of sin as a radical negation of being, a pervasive and invasive power of evil that insinuates itself into the very structures of created being, so that only a redemption which reached into such profound depths of reality (the Cross of Christ as the Love of God ) could adequately negate that negation. The loud gravelly 'Yes', exploding into the sedate company, and the forward thrust of a leonine head were enough to keep me going forward with my paper, while hoping there would be nothing ahead that might provoke an equally strong 'No!'

At the end there were questions, observations, critique, appreciation and a feeling that the paper had, however marginally, passed. Then Professor Mackinnon came up, said kind things and said he would send me a book. He didn't - I think he meant he would send me a suggested book which he did. I bought it in the days before amazon the quick book getter existed. It was The Word of Reconciliation by H H Farmer,(London: Nisbet, 1966) a far too easily overlooked theologian whose philosophical theology remains worth our time and attention. I'll come back to HH Farmer. But in his book are these words, which capture in such lucid theological writing, the psychology and ontology of sin:

A great many people's concern about their sinful shortcomings springs in large measure from a disguised and subtle egotism and pride. They are, perhaps, particularly if they have had a Christian upbringing and take their Christian profession seriously, formed an image of themselves as displaying an exalted Christian character, and when they find, as they inevitably do, that they persistently fall short of this 'ego-ideal', they are cast down and depressed and harassed with guilt feelings. This they mistake for a true and deep repentance but it may be little more than a feeling of injured pride and self-esteem.

...

On the lips of the deeply penitent religious man therefore, the cry against thee, thee only, have I sinned', might almost seem to be an exactly and literally true statement. Some such awareness as this, however expressed, or perhaps not expressed or even expressible in terms at all, but only felt, some sense that because of one's sin the very foundation of one's being and life has been shaken (for what is God if not the very foundation of one's being and life?0, some consciousness that sin holds one suspended not over the shallows of time but over the abyss of eternity, the abyss of God, is an element in sincere and true penitence towards God; it is in fact this consciousness which in part constitutes it towards God.

Pages 65 and 67

Benedict XVI in Scotland - a mass celebration of the Mass, and an occasion of public witness

It isn't often that 70,000 people gather together in a public park to affirm their faith, to share in community and to celebrate the Christian Gospel story in praise and a public act of worship. The exuberance and festive atmosphere, tempered by a cold wind in bright sunshine, bore witness to the place of Christian faith and experience in the lives of many thousands of Scottish Roman Catholics.

Earlier yesterday morning I listened to a discussion on Radio Scotland about the persecution and discrimination against the Scottish Catholic community in the earlier years of the 20th Century. Scottish historian, Tom Devine, put such discrimination in its context, and it wasn't a context Scottish folk, or the Church of Scotland, should be proud of. Then we moved inevitably to what is now referred to as Scotland's enduring shame, the sectarian undercurrent that remains a dangerous and toxic undertow in Scottish life.

Before writing more, let me tell you a story of a young Lanarkshire Baptist, who around 1970 was at night school doing O level English, in an evening class. The class was made up of him, and five nuns from the Sisters of Charity Convent. He had never encountered a nun in person before. Eighteen months previously he hadn't even been in a church before! I remember still, trying to explain my conversion, and that I was a Baptist, and wanted to be a minister - and the smiles and nodding heads. All I ever received from those Sisters was affirmation, welcome, encouragement and the quiet gentleness of those who lived up to the name of their order. I received charity - that old fashioned word for love that combines goodwill and conferred worth, supportive friendship, laughter and a common struggle with Shakespeare, Keats, and practical criticism. I don't remember specific conversations - I do remember looking forward to being there, and very early on discovering that loving and serving Jesus is a substantial enough foundation for fellowship across Christian traditions - habit wearing nuns and me with a denim jacket, very long hair, jeans and yes, high heeled boots! These five sisters encouraged and supported me through a hard year and never once called in question the reality and importance of my personal Christian experience. I wish I'd kept in touch with them, and if they are still around I wish them all blessing.

That is only one, though a deeply significant encounter, that has taught me always to assume friendship, to embrace rather than exclude, to respect difference and look for common ground with other people of faith. And to look with critical eye on the limited horizons, spiritual deficits, and theological distinctives of my own tradition as a Baptist. So the whole sectarian thing, with its latent hatred, chronic prejudice and acid-like social corrosiveness, I find a profound offense to the Gospel of Jesus, and to my own spirituality.

So an occasion when 70,000 Scottish Catholic people celebrate Mass in the presence of the Pope, and singing the praise of God in Christ in the power of the Spirit, I see as an historic act of witness in a culture where mass crowds are usually drawn together for events of far lesser import for human flourishing.

So when a 106 year old Catholic woman from Rutherglen speaks of the humbling privilege of being there with her great grandson; or two cowboy hat wearing women call themselves come-back Catholics and act as if that was actually a good and a life changing thing; or several children are blessed by an 83 year old man whose gentle hand proffered blessing expresses the Church's genuine attitude to its children; or when newly composed music is learned, practised and sung in worship in the open air of our largest city; or when the Gospel is read in public and Benedict speaks with carefully balanced encouragement and warning about the moral, intellectual and economic tendencies of British society, and urges a revitalising of faith and lived Christian values; when all that happens, and more, then the significance of yesterday's Bellahouston event is best understood on several levels.

As a social event it enabled a broad strand of Scottish religious tradition to give public voice to the core values of Roman Catholic faith. In doing so we witnessed freedom of religious expression, an affirmation that such faith and freedom are essential to a healthy society.

As a spiritual occasion, a large number of Roman Catholic people were strengthened in their faith, affirmed in their shared understanding of the Gospel, and given an opportunity to make pilgrimage together in shared worship and celebration.

As an ecumenical occasion, my own view is quite straightforward. Such a gathering indicates there are deep wells of devotion that still hold reserves of refreshing water in Scottish Catholic experience. And as Christianity in Western Europe, and in Scotland, is increasingly marginalised by the "aggressive secularism" that so concerns Pope Benedict XVI, there are important rapprochements and conversations that should be taking place across the traditions of the Christian church. Not an ecumenicity of institutional merger, or theological convergence - true ecumenism is not about dissolving diversity into uniformity. But a recognition that in building the economy (oekumene) of the Kingdom of God, co-operative fellowship, mutual supportiveness, respectful listening, humble learning, confident witnessing, arise not out of organisational fusion, but from a shared loyalty to God in Christ. Benedict talked of the importance of freedom and tolerance in any society which contains diverse faith communities. Equally necessary is freedom and tolerance between faith communities, and where possible co-operative friendship and mutual supportiveness.

I know. Maybe you need to be an 18 year old red hot freshly minted evangelical Baptist, encountering five Sisters of Charity whose patience and tolerance and love for Jesus were so unarguably obvious and so unsectarian in spirit, to write this kind of stuff decades later. Maybe so. In which case I gladly pay tribute to five sisters who, along with many others since, within and beyond Catholic and Baptist circles, have taught me much of what I know of generosity of mind, hospitality of heart and receptiveness of spirit. Through such experiential lenses I watched the Bellahouston celebration, and rejoiced that Christ was proclaimed.  

Celtic myths, Gaelic blessings, and "Deep Peace" nevertheless!

My friend Donald Meek, retired Professor of Celtic Studies, has a healthy and quite sharp scepticism about what is often stated and overstated about Celtic Christianity. Not so much the reality and existence of such a tradition but its romanticisation, its overblown eco-friendliness, its surprisingly comforting resonance in a culture looking for nostalgic comfort. His book on Celtic Christianity feels like a bucket of icy peat-tinted water drawn from a Highland river in full spate and thrown over the heated imaginations and ahistorical enthusiasms of those who confuse feelgood vagueness with the realities of the darker ages on these islands.

All of which said, there is a rich tradition of poetry, story and oral liturgy that does indeed still convey a devotional and historically valid form of spirituality. There are rhythms of language that survive translation so long as the translator resists the urge to 'improve' or 'adapt' the words to contemporary taste. Translation of a historical text isn't about pleasing the contemporary consumer - it's an act of communication that works hard to make an original voice heard and read in all its integrity and oddity.

Over Christmas I bought a compilation of music on which Lesley Garrett sings a Gaelic blessing. I've come to love this piece of music, words sung out in compassionate benediction, and the words themselves capable of stirring restlessness as longing for peace and rest in a world that is so often hard-edged, demanding, selfish and lacking - well compassionate benediction.

Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the Son of peace to you, forever,
       (Early Scottish)
 The photo is from imagestar here. 

T F Torrance on incarantion and atonement II

When T F Torrance writes about theological science, and such complexities as the relations between space, time and divine and contingent order, you simply have to adopt the disposition of student trying hard not to get lost in the maze of erudition and the labyrinth of specialist discourse woven by a professor at ease in unfamiliar intellectual territory.

But when Torrance writes about such central doctrines of Christian faith as the trinitarian understanding of God, christology understood as incarnation, atonement and the resurrection reality of Jesus Christ ascended and coming, then we listen to a theologian preach, and encounter preaching that is soaked in the great doctrines of the faith, and these doctrines as the mere articulation of what it means to experience the reality of the living God, encountered in Jesus Christ.

So here's the next paragraph of Torrance, getting to the heart of the Gospel by a deep theological reading of Scripture. I repeat the last sentence of yesterday's extract. And as a wee forethought before reading it, hHowever new fangled we think theological exegesis is, Torrance was doing it 50 years ago in Edinburgh.

"And so the cross with all its incredible meekness and patience and compassion is no deed of passive and beautiful heroism simply, but the most potent and aggressive deed that heaven and earth have ever known: the attack of God's holy love upon the inhumanity of man and the tyrranny of evil, upon all the piled up contradiction of sin.

To see how that is so, watch what happened when Jesus was arraigned before Pilate and the Jewish nation. Jesus had never lifted a violent finger against anyone, and yet he became the centre of a violent disturbance that has shaken the world to its foundations. The incredible thing is this: the meeker and milder Jesus is, the more violent the crowd become in their resentment against him. The more like a lamb he is, the more like ravening wolves they become. By his very passion and suffering, by his meekness and grace and truth, Jesus imparted passion to his contemporaries and called forth violence from them until at last they laid violent hands upon him and dragged him off to the cross.

Jesus is the embodiment of the still small voice of God: he is the Word made flesh, the Word that is able to divide soul and spirit asunder. That voice, that Word of God in jesus penetrated as never before into the secrets of humanity and exposed them. The more he stood them, the more the power of God broke its way into the citadel of the human soul. Before the weakness and mercy of Jesus, before this compassion, all barriers are broken down, all the thoughts and intents of the heart are revealed. What wind and earthquake and fire could not do, Jesus did: he penetrated into the proud heart of man and laid it bare, and in so doing he produced the most violent reaction that culminated in his crucifixion. "

T F Torrance, Incarnation. The Person and Life of Christ (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), p. 150-1.

T F Torrance on incarnation and atonement (I)

The theological legacy of T F Torrance has long been acknowledged as one of the intellectual treasures of Scottish theology. Some of his writing can be dense and hard to get on with; but much of it is theology that is deeply engaged with the living faith of the man who wrote it, and is written by a theologian who has thought downward into the depths of the grace and mercy of divine love. Torrance's best writing is a shining example of theology personally appropriated in the experience of the theologian and expressed in language unembarrassed by the commitment of faith. Below is a passage which to my mind expresses a very Scottish theology of the cross - I hear echoes of James Denney, P T Forsyth and Torrance's own teacher, H. R. Mackintosh, each of whom wrote out of the same reservoir of theological passion.

"In the incarnate life of Jesus, and above all in his death, God does not execute his judgment on evil dimply by smiting it violently away by a stroke of his hand, but by entering into it from within, into the very heart of the blackest evil, and making its sorrow and guilt and suffering his own. And it is because it is God himself who enters in, in order to let the whole of human evil go over him, that his intervention in meekness has violent and explosive force. It is the very power of God. And so the cross with all its incredible meekness and patience and compassion is no deed of passive and beautiful heroism simply, but the most potent and aggressive deed that heaven and earth have ever known: the attack of God's holy love upon the inhumanity of man and the tyrranny of evil, upon all the piled up contradiction of sin."

                                       T F Torrance, Incarnation. The Person and Life of Christ (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), p. 150.

The Sisters of Sinai and Professor William Robertson Smith

Sheila's reading Sisters of Sinai by Janet Soskice. More about her in an earlier post I did here. Part of the story of these two remarkable women brings them into contact with Professor William Robertson Smith, a young professor of biblical studies at the Free Church College, Aberdeen, in the 1870's. His critical approach to biblical studies (rejection of Moses' authoriship of Deuteronomy for example), led to his deposition in 1881 from his professorship, a tragedy that ranks high on the list of religious own goals in Scotland.

Smith eventually moved to Cambridge where he encountered these two sisters, pioneers in the discovery and transcription of important ancient biblical and extra-biblical manuscripts. Robertson Smith died relatively young (48 years) of tuberculosis. Once or twice I've visited his grave in the little graveyard in Keig, Aberdeenshire, a peaceful, shaded incline facing out across the shire. During his trial before the church courts he made a now famous affirmation of what he believed to be the nature and authority of Scripture. It didn't satisfy his examiners' and critics' much more conservative convictions on the nature and authority of the Bible, though what he says is deeply indebted to the Reformers' theology of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit as the sine qua non of biblical interpretation. But his defence remains one of the most eloquent and sincere statements of believing criticism in which faith and thought are held in a legitimate tension of spiritual integrity and intellectual honesty.

"If I am asked why I receive Scripture as the Word of God and the only perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant Church, because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God, because in the Bible alone I find God drawing near to men in Christ Jesus and declaring to us in Him His will for our salvation. And this record I know to be true by the witness of His Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none other than God Himself is able to speak such words to my soul."

Smith, W. R., Answer to the Form of Libel now before the Free Church Presbytery of Aberdeen (Edinburgh, 1878).

...............................................

You can find out more about Smith on this website devoted to him. It contains the full text of a recent Aberdeen PhD which was supervised by Prof. William Johnstone one of our leading authorities on Robertson Smith and editor of a fine collection of essays about him.

Heaven does not laugh loud but it laughs last....(P T Forsyth)

My thanks to Jason who brought this quotation to my attention - it provides more than enough thought for the day.

Heaven does not laugh loud but it laughs last - when all the world will laugh in its light. It is a smile more immeasurable than the ocean and more deep; it is an irony gentler and more patient than the bending skies, the irony of a long love and the play of its sure mastery; it is the smile of the holy in its silent omnipotence of mercy.
(P T Forsyth, The Justification of God, page 206)

Alexander Whyte - truth as its own witness

Alexander Whyte was a saint - I know- those here in Scotland who trace their theology to the Reformation get edgy and nervous when someone is called a saint, their memory honoured, their written or spoken words cherished, their example held up as an inspiration. And anyway, Alexander Whyte would have denied the charge. His congregation loved him, but there were often complaints that he hammered on and on about sin, his own sins and theirs. Whatever he thought about himself was usually framed in a black border of sorrow for his own failings.

He lived in an age of convulsive social and intellectual change, in the nation, on the world stage, within the churches. His mind was generously open to truth wherever it could be found, but well enough anchored in convictions both evangelical and catholic to be both appreciative and critical. At key times in his life, and in the controversies of his Church, he exemplified what Paul calls 'this ministry of reconciliation'. No surprise then to come across words like those quoted below. Like an eminent consultant in moral and spiritual diagnosis, he knows the importance of preventive measures when it comes to controversy, difference the cause and toxic consequences of conflict. Truth is not a battle - but the basis on which peace is to be built - or to put it in Whyte's own words, characterised as usual by impassioned rhetoric verging on overstatement:

Oh the unmitigated curse of controversy! Oh the detestable passions that corrections and contradictions kindle up to fury in the proud heart of man! Eschew controversy, my brethren, as you would eschew the entrance to hell itself! Let them have it their own way. Let them talk, let them write, let them correct you, let them traduce you. Let them judge and condemn you, let them slay you. Rather let the truth of God itself suffer than that love suffer. You have not enough of the Divine nature in you to be a controversialist

For Whyte, the truth of God as revealed in Christ isn't only discovered in ideas and words, but in the extent to which those same ideas and words are embodied in a life truly reflecting the love of God in Christ. For a Christian, to defend truth unlovingly is a failure of discipleship, an invalid dislocation of priorities. Does anyone still read Paul Tournier, the Swiss psychologist much in vogue in the 1950's and into the 1970's? He once said there is a wrongness in those who are always right; that there are wrong ways of being right.

Whyte, according to those who knew and revered him, largely lived up to his non-controversialism as a theological peacemaker. For him truth if lived in obedience to God and held in love will be its own witness - and if it isn't held in love it is neither obedient to God nor, in the deepest moral sense, truth. You have to be a saint to believe that - and live it. 

Choosing Scotland's Future?

Today I'm at a theological colloquium on Scotland's Future. A wide range of people interested in theological reflection on issues raised by nationalism, devolution, independence and indeed the theological significance of those political processes which underlie forms of government, and such concepts as self-determination, freedom and national and cultural identity. The National Conversation and The Calman Report, and a response from a working group from ACTS (the Scottish ecumenical body), have created opportunity and context for such theological reflection.

No idea how it will go, what will come out of it. But Christians should have some informed and responsible sense of how political processes of change impinge on the wider community life - and should have a view of what that will mean for Christians looking to follow faithfully after Christ in a less than straightforward world.

Might report on it eventually - but not over the next couple of days - Advent itself has rather much to say about power, politics, identity and our human future. Would be interesting if today's colloquium kicked off with a robust reading of the Magnificat, eh?

Archbishop Robert Leighton (1611-1684) - a God-sent eirenicon for a violent age

One of the most attractive figures in the history of the Scottish Church was Archbishop Robert Leighton. In an age of theological extremes, inter-communal violence and intransigent "Christian" hostilities, he was a man of peace, a conciliatory spirit, to his opponents a man of compromise, to his admirers a God-sent eirenicon. The life and work of Leighton, and in particular the contrasting pieties of such as Leighton and Rutherford, the eirenic spirit of the former and the passion for Gospel purity of the latter, suggest fundamental differences in faith that were ultimately irreconcilable. Both men embodied in such a collision of contrasts, something of the tragedy of recalcitrant religion, when personal spiritual experience and its doctrinal confession are of such intensity that they can neither be questioned by others nor left unspoken, whatever the cost. Even if that cost is bloody conflict.

In the history of Scottish Christian piety, doctrinal collisions, spiritual suspicion, political conflict, ecclesiatical self-interest, are all the stuff of tradition formation - like tectonic plates grating against each other, now and then colliding and recoiling, only coming to an accommodation when the contrary energies are absorbed by impact, so theological traditions are shaped. And people like Leighton are far too often overlooked when the time comes to identify 'the movers and the shakers', and 'the significant players', the ones later history writers place centre stage.

Leighton, and his student Henry Scougal, are two men of moderate spirit, whose spirituality of peaceableness remains one of the glories of the Scottish Episcopal tradition. Here is Leighton, relegating historical research to its proper place:

But when all is said and done there is one only blessed story, wherein our souls must dwell and take up their rest: for amongst all the rest we shall not read...come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest: and never any yet that tried Him, but found him as good as his word.

The Works of Robert Leighton, with life by J. Aikman (1860), xvi.

Scotland has produced many important biblical commentaries over the centuries, and some of those now called 'pre-critical', remain as important historical and theological depositories illustrating how texts were received, interpreted and brought to bear on life. Amongst the most celebrated was Leighton's 1 Peter, almost continually in print for over three centuries. As devotional commentaries go, and as an example of Puritan exposition, it remains a milestone of practical divinity spelt out in exhaustive detail by one whose gentleness of spirit made all his writing pastoral before polemical.