Living Wittily

Thomas Erskine and Rabbi Duncan; different, but the same

God is the only real centre, and separation from Him the only real schism.
Thomas Erskine

I desire to know more and more the importance of learning Christ, rather than Christianity; the living, loving, almighty Lord of our spirits, rather than the logic about him.
Thomas Erskine

We make far too little of the Incarnation; the Fathers knew much more of the incarnate God. Some of them were oftener at Bethlehem than at Calvary; they had too little of Calvary, but they knew Bethlehem well. They took up the Holy Babe in their arms; they loved Immanuel, God with us. We are not too often at the cross, but we are too seldom at the cradle; and we know too little of the Word made flesh, of the Holy Child Jesus.
Rev John Duncan (Rabbi Duncan)

Two 19th Century Scottish Christians who couldn't be more different in theological style and substance - except their Christ-centredness which tends to make all the other differences sound a wee bit relative. Erskine was an adventurous and speculative theologian who pushed at the frontiers of the orthodoxy of his day arguing for a universal gospel. Duncan, one of the most gifted linguists and biblical scholars of the Free Kirk, a man of granite loyalty to the Calvinism of the Westminster Confession. And both, part of our Scottish Christian heritage, at times tense and suspicious of diversity and thrawn and independent in spirit. But the passionate loyalty to Christ is unmistakable.

Samuel Rutherford and devotional rapture

Came across this remarkable extract of Samuel Rutherford in full flow about the loveliness of Christ. In his book on Trinitarian Spirituality and John Owen Brian Kay points out that 'the loveliness of Christ' is a Puritan cliche - and certainly Rutherford reckoned exaggeration was impossible in eulogising the 'Altogether Lovely One':

I dare say that angels' pens, angel's tongues, nay, as many worlds of angels as there are drops of water in all the seas and fountains, and rivers of the earth cannot paint Him out to you. I think His sweetness has swelled upon me to the greatness of two heavens. O for a soul as wide as the utmost circle of the highest heaven to contain His love! And yet I could hold but little of it. O what a sight, to be up in heaven, in that fair orchard of the New Paradise, and to see, and smell, and touch, and kiss that fair field-flower, that evergreen tree of life! His bare shadow would be enough for me; a sight of Him would be the guarantee of heaven to me."If there were ten thousand thousand millions of worlds, and as many heavens, full of men and angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants, and to fill us all. Christ is a well of life; but who knows how deep it is to the bottom? Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises, like the Garden of Eden, in one; put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colours, all tastes, all joys, all loveliness, all sweetness in one. O what a fair and excellent thing would that be? And yet it would be less to that fair and dearest well-beloved Christ than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths.

Just now and then it's good to be ambushed by unadulterated spiritual fervour, to encounter an ardent soul in full rapturous flow. The contrast between such spiritually triggered rhetoric and our own contemporary uncertainty about religious affections and emotional experience can be a telling critique of modern forms of Christian spirituality, focused more on personal fulfilment than that praise of Christ that takes us out of ourselves. Rutherford was a man of extremes - ferociously polemical and pastorally intense; a man of contrasts in an age of conflict, whose inner tensions of spiritual theology and political vision remained unreconciled. It is from such flawed human  personality that some of the best Christian writing has been distilled - Rutherford, Richard Rolle, Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, Kierkegaard.

Honey from the lion's belly.......?

Honey is one of my favourite foods. There are those who are connoiseurs, who distinguish flavours, regions, species of bee, thickness and texture. And though i wouldn't call myself a connoiseur quite, I do know what I like. And I like honey - most kinds. I haven't tasted one yet that I don't like. I've never left a jar unfinished. Whether it's the runny honey that can make eating toast a form of extreme risk sport if you wear a shirt and tie, or the solid light brown stuff that bends the knife as you hack it out and spread it on the scone, or the honey on the comb which gives you hoeny in the raw, with some of the wax, I love them all. Greek Mountain honey that has a tang of liquorice; acacia honey that requires pouring over hot pancakes; Australian eucalyptus which unmistakably conjures images of koala bears; and Scottish Heather honey, none of your blended cheap stuff, the real rich natural coloured honey that was (I'm sure) in the mind of the biblical writers who dreamed of a land flowing with it, and called it the promised land.

Obviously I love sweetness. Syrup and honey - yes and condensed milk, maple syrup, Scottish tablet.  I don't just have a sweet tooth, I have a mouth full of them. Maybe because I grew up in a home where my mother baked often, and there was always a Tate and Lyle syrup tin in the house. Those who remember the green and gold tin with the black print, and the small oval panel with a picture of a dead lion, and underneath the biblical riddle, 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness', will now share in a moment's nostalgia.

The connection between syrup and honey, between Greenock (the town where sugar was a major product in Scotland's recent industrial story) and Timnah (the village where Samson killed a lion and later found bees making a hive in the carcass), is the relation of sweetness to power. The riddle Samson told was a taunt to the Philistines; the sugar industry in this country was founded on slavery across the Atlantic. Makes it interesting that in ancient times when refined honey was greatly valued, it could be used as a form of diplomatic gift. The connections between honey and politics, between the sweetness of power and the bitterness of oppression, isn't as fanciful as it first sounds.

Makes it interesting that Doug Gay entitles the lecture he will give in Paisley "Honey from the Lion's Belly.' The biblical allusion is impossible to ignore - but what does it mean? Come along and spend the evening with Doug, and take time to explore together the implications of nationalism as a feature of contemporary Scottish life that could do with some serious theological reflection. Honey from the lion's belly is an allusion that could point discussion in several directions. The reason we've invited Doug to come is to enable us to think carefully and responsibly, about nationalism and national identity, about cultural distinctives and theological perspectives, and to do this from a Christian standpoint. Doug is a practical theologian, and that means he is committed to connecting theology with our lived experience, in our nation and communities. If you are interested and free, it'll be a good night, and an important discussion. Details are on the Scottish Baptist College blog - click on the name on my sidebar of blogs I regularly visit!

Rev Professor David F Wright, 1937-2008

Jason picked up from the New College website the sad news that the Rev Professor David F Wright has died. In leaving a comment on Jason's blog, I found myself writing an appreciation of this good, wise and humbly faithful man, whose intellectual gifts were consecrated to the service of Christ and His church. I simply repeat here what I wrote there.

David Wright was one of Scottish Evangelicalism's leading lights. Professor Wright was a remarkably gifted church historian and theologian, whose expertise in Patristics as in Reformation studies was encyclopedic in scope and profound in the depth of his thought. Few scholars successfully become a recognised authority in two major periods of Church History - but David did this while also ranging throughout the wider disciplines of Christian scholarship with a most enviable facility.

But as with a number of his generation it was his scholarly humility, his generous encouragement of others, his lifelong commitment to theological education as itself both spiritual discipline and intellectual vocation, his genuine enthusiasm for learning, that made him such a respected and loved teacher. He was one of a cluster of luminaries which included the late Tom Torrance, Alec Cheyne, John McIntyre - each of them scholar pastors whose learning was devoted to the service of Christ.

Like Jason, I value the Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology - there isn't a book like it, and it is only one of the legacies David leaves. British Evangelicalism in general, and the Scottish church in particular, have lost the presence and gifts of a Christian thinker steeped in the traditions of our faith, a man of measured, generous judgement, and an example to those of us who aspire to be scholars in the school of Christ.

May the peace of Christ enfold him, and Anne-Marie and his family, while we in mourning his loss, give thanks for his life - and the way that life enriched ours.

"...the hospitable hearted, spiritually exercised Evangelical..."

'Get yourselves into a relation of indebtedness to some of the great writers of the present and the past.....' The advice of Principal Alexander Whyte to New College Students, in a lecture on Thomas Goodwin, a Premier League Puritan, later published in Thirteen Appreciations. I am an admirer of Alexander Whyte for many reasons, though well aware he may be too Victorian for some tastes; psychological moralism, occasions when sentiment and scolding get in the way of persuasive insight, and all the time his fascination, in almost equal terms, with both sin and grace.

But at his best Whyte has the dazzling, glimmering presence of Scheihallion, (his favourite Scottish mountain) covered in snow. In his sentimentality there isn't a whiff of insincerity, and in his scolding there is the unmistakable solidarity of pastor with people, of scolder with scolded. And one of the main reasons I admire this Victorian Free Kirk preacher, is because he explains why I have long valued the writings of the most famous 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. And if you think a Free Kirk minister, who was Moderator of his church, who was Principal of its most influential College, and who for decades filled the pulpit of the Free Church's most influential Edinburgh church, might raise a hoary eyebrow at a Baptist minister who is also Principal of a Denominational College claiming his support for such a reason - you'd be wrong and you'd be surprised.

In the volume referred to Alexander Whyte wrote appreciations of thirteen Christian writers. As a Scottish Presbyterian Calvinist you'd expect Samuel Rutherford and William Guthrie the Fenwick Covenanter, and the New England Puritan Thomas Sheppard, to be 'appreciated'. And Thomas Goodwin the Puritan was Whyte's theological and spiritual mentor-in print - he read Goodwin so much the books had to be rebound in leather to withstand the wear and tear of a reader who lugged such tomes around with him while on holiday in the Highlands. But Whyte's appreciation reached much further afield - he wrote one of the most penetrating reviews of the sermons of Cardinal John Henry Newman, and as a younger man visited this celebrated Roman Catholic Convert at the oratory in Birmingham. His appreciation of Teresa of Avila was reviewed in The Tablet and read in religious communities as the lunchtime sacred reading. His review of father John of Kronstadt took him into the Russian Orthodox tradition where he sensed the importance of bowing to mystery, gazing on the beauty of holiness and lifting the heart in passionate and unembarrassed devotion to God.

So what's the connection between Alexander Whyte and my appreciation of Thomas Merton? Quite simple - Whyte urged those who would preach and pastor others to be a "true Catholic...a well read, open-minded, hospitable hearted, spiritually exercised Evangelical", and to be "in a relation of indebtedness" to those who on the journey with God are further down the road than I will ever be. At many important turns in my own journey, Merton has been one of those who knew the road better than me. As a guide he has helped me map some of my own inner geography, that changing landscape of the soul where psychology, spirituality and the reality of God provide the raw material of my own humanity in Christ. Over many years few writers have taught me better than Merton, the importance of knowing myself known, loved and called by God, to serve Him open of mind and heart to the truth and the presence of God in all of life.

Whyte understood as few others in his age did, the damage done to the Gospel of Jesus, the mission of the church, and our personal spiritual development, by misguided and exclusive loyalty to the one narrow strand of the Christian tradition to which any of us happens to belong. Evangelicalism has been a tradition that, perhaps as a defensive buffer zone, developed strands of intolerance, its own list of no go theological areas and traditions, its in-built hermeneutic of suspicion that simply does not trust other traditions to be as 'sound', as 'biblical', in their understanding, interpretation and living of the truth of Christ. My own heart has never settled for such exclusiveness. Instead, like Alexander Whyte, A W Tozer, Thomas Goodwin, John Wesley, Richard Baxter and many, many others who stand either in Evangelicalism, or in the earlier traditions from which it emerged, I have put myself 'in a relation of indebtedness' to great souls of the Christian tradition, and been taught so much by those guests I have made welcome companions on my own journey.

This Baptist then, has learned a lot I needed to know about loving God without pretence, from Merton the Trappist. But I've also learned how not to limit the range and depth of the love of God in Christ from the medieval Julian of Norwich and the Methodist Charles Wesley. The studied devotional precision of Anglican George Herbert, the astringent but healthy questioning of the Welsh priest R S Thomas, the verbal virtuosity in service of spiritual certainty and uncertainty of the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, continue to teach me the importance of words in conversation about God, more especially in conversation with God. But these are other stories, for other times.

For now, over Christmas, I'm re-reading The Seven Storey Mountain, surely one of the 20th Century's genuine spiritual classics. Not least because it is a frank, flawed and distilled account of spiritual emptiness and hunger, and of the remorseless mercy that pursues us with gracious and loving intent.

Leadership - and all too human forms of community

When a group of people who would (probably!) be considered 'leaders' amongst Scottish Baptists, meet together to discuss the nature of 'leadership', based on previously prepared papers, and with a whole day to expose areas and expressions of difference, disagreement, consensus, temperament, personal baggage, - it becomes clear that 'leadership' can have as many expressions as there are people, contexts, leaders! That's what I was doing yesterday, along with five others, up in early autumn Pitlochry.

So it was interesting to move throughout the day (guided by praying the daily offices of the Northumbria Community), to levels of agreement on some underlying principles, theological and pastoral assumptions - and also to be just as clear where there were quite fundamental differences in other key areas. I'm neither phased nor surprised at that. I think uniformity of model when discussing and exploring the nature of leadership within a Christian community would do violence to specific contextual realities. It would also overwrite individual giftedness and temperament, and would simply be one person / group's construct, even if they claimed it was 'biblical' - 'even THE biblical view'. All of which would ignore the variety and provisionality of the New Testament evidence, and the interpretations of such texts, and their translation into existing models of Church leadership. Diversity of practice so underlies our own Baptist traditions that it takes considerable care to identify what are the changing continuities of that tradition.

My own paper was a further stage in my thinking about the community theologian(s), and in particular that person or more likely, group of people's role in calling the community to faithful obedience to Christ. In fulfilling such a role I further developed two key ideas - kenosis (self-emptying as the notion is used in Phil. 2.1-15; and paracletos with its cognate paraclesis (with their core meaning of encouragement and accompaniment).

The one sentence I'll quote is the one that was affectionately but loudly mocked for its rhetorical flourish - och they were just jealous anyway!

"Community theologians heighten awareness of divine activity amongst us, in our all too human forms of community - and do so by reminding us, with the gentle persistence of Scottish drizzle on a June day in the Trossachs, of the graceful kenosis and non-grasping love of God in Christ."

Now what's wrong with that as a piece of tartan theology? Eh?

Scotland, religion and education

Two books came today. Expensive, hefty, sturdily bound by the Edinburgh academic publisher, John Donald. They are two volumes in a 14 volume set on Scottish Ethnology. They deal with Religion (vol. 12) and Education (11).

The volume on religion covers the arrival of Christianity and brings the cultural story up to the 21st century. It is by far and away the most comprehensive and authoritative account of religion in Scotland, and it includes chapters dealing with the pluralistic and multicultural context of modern Scotland, and its inevitable and enriching consequence of religious diversity. This looks like one of the big books I'll slowly work through as a course in culture, Christianity, religious diversity, folk theology, and the entwined relationship between social development, religious history and the contemporary cultural landscape. In a world fractured and fragile, where religion can be cause or cure of human suffering and conflict, it is a responsibility to understand our own religious heritage, context and peculiarities. Because in a diverse world, and in a pluralist Scottish society, for many, many people, Christians are 'the other'; and more than ever we need the gift to see ourselves, as others see us, and to see the others, as part of who we are.

The volume on Education is similarly comprehensive - tracing historical development, cultural influences and consequences on Scottish Education. Interesting chapters for me include the account of Special Education provision, Scottish Universities, 'approved schools' for troubled and troublesome children, Catholic education and women in education. Ever since I read and was converted by George Davie's magnificent and wonderfully partisan account of the role and value of Scottish University education, in The Democratic Intellect, I have been passionate about education as more than preparing people for employability. As an expression of my own vocation in theological education, I am vocationally committed to education as formative, humanising and driven by aims significantly higher than market demands and other functional goals. These are arguably necessary to make education socially and economically viable; but the pursuit of learning and the search for knowledge have deeper goals in the human character, mind and will. Varieties of information when integrated bring knowledge; knowledge when assimilated into character and applied to life, brings wisdom - and we desperately need graduates in wisdom, and post-graduates in the science of living well.

The strange strife of thy peace....

My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;

I think thy answers make me what I am.

Like weary waves thought follows upon thought,

But the still depth beneath is all thine own,

And there thou mov'st in paths to us unknown.

Out of strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought;

If the lion in us pray - thou answerest the lamb.

George MacDonald, 1880.

George MacDonald is one of Scotland's negelcted treasures. His Scottish novels are written in dialect, often rooted in rural village life. But he was also a Christian of refined and sensitive theological perception. It was his imaginative writings that captured the imagination of C S Lewis. Indeed he was one of several Scottish preacher theologians in process of rediscovering the imagination as an important route for the leading of the Spirit of God. (A B Bruce and Alexander Whyte for example). Macdonald's Unspoken Sermons, his Diary of an Old Soul, and Collected Poems were important expressions of that growing uneasiness with Westminster Calvinism that seeped through the hardened walls of 19th century Scottish theology. Indeed his resistance to what he saw as hard edged Calvinism eventually led him to 'the wider hope', that generous understanding of the Gospel that is often dubbed 'universalism'. That of course, got him into trouble with the deacons at the church he served in Arundel - they reduced his salary to persuade him to leave!

The prayer quoted above is an important corrective to that self-confident blurting out of what we want God to do. Macdonald recognises the ambiguities of our asking, the mixed motivation in spiritual search, and the subterranean movements, even collisions, of self concern and divine grace.

Providence, the Edinburgh Subway and St Bride

Earlier this week went to Edinburgh to meet up with several folk. Met with Professor David Fergusson, a friend and theological mentor and we tried to put the theological world right, but with only limited success. David will deliver the Gifford lectures in Glasgow next year - I'll post the dates nearer the time. He has been working for some time on the doctrine of Providence which will be the theological focus of his lectures.

Talking of Providence, walking down towards Princes St I was accosted by three excited American tourists who wanted to know where the nearest subway was. In my good humoured, smiling, best enunciated Scottish accent english, I explained that Glasgow, not Edinburgh had a subway, but Edinburgh did have a very good bus service. 'No Sir, we want the nearest Subway' she explained in her good humoured, smiling and best enunciated American accent English. And it dawned on me' Oh, that kind of Subway'. The great big torpedo sized sandwich with shovels of filling type of subway. Since I wasn't THAT sure, I suggested Rose St which has most of the eating places. Nearest Subway - come 5,000 miles across the Atlantic to Edinburgh, and need to find a.....Subway? Excuse the gender specific language but,'man shall not live by bread alone....it needs to be subway bread and with the familiar range of fillings etc'. Providence huh?

Then I met with Aileen and we had lunch - which was very fine - a celebration of the new job which starts soon. Later we went to Harvey Nicholls for coffee and sinfully indulgent pancakes, chocolate sauce and ice-cream - well, we were celebrating the job, and Providence is occasionally about more than calorific minimalism - remember, 'not by bread alone', need the pancakes'n stuff now and then. Providence is also about celebration, fun and the important people in our lives.

We also spent some time in the National Gallery doin our art critic and cultural browsing bit. There are a lot of magnificent pieces of art that don't quite do it for me - I recognise their genius, their right to be considered masterpieces, but they don't reach down into 'that deep place we call the soul' (Bono's words). But some do - and one that always does it for me, is St Bride, by John Duncan.

Professor Donald Meek is deeply sceptical about the historical accuracy of Scottish Celtic Christianity as popularly promoted. Fair enough, and Donald's own book on the subject is by far the most authoritative. But Duncan's painting isn't about historical specifics; it is about the deep mysteries of faith expressed through art which is deeply indebted to Celtic culture but which resonates with contemporary spiritual longings. When I come back from holiday I'll post a bit more on this painting. So not much happenning on this blog for a week.

For now - enjoy and be exhilarated by the sheer glory of this painting. And if you can, go to the Scottish section and see it in all its 'look at me' splendour.

   

T F Torrance's intellectual debts - in Haiku!

Hard to argue with the dominant presence of Tom Torrance on the Scottish theological landscape for over 60 years. He is a mountainous presence, admired worldwide for his contribution to the study of Barth and Calvin, the relations of Christian faith to scientific ways of knowing, the development of a viable theological rapprochement on the Trinity between the East and the West, and all these informed by deep long reading in patristic, reformed and ecumentical theology.

But he doesn't only gather, reconstruct and recycle the theological products of others, he is also a creative and cosntructive theologian in his own right. It is that combination of creative assimilation and constructive initiative that makes this book on the Christian doctrine of God such rich, hard, rewarding reading.

In a more playful mood last night I drafted some Haiku in celebration of Torrance and his theological heroes. As always, I use the 5x7x5 haiku structure, the trinitarian structure indicating what Jonathan Edwards might have called 'the shadow of divine things'!

Torrance Haiku

...

Athanasius,
Lucid apologist for
‘The Incarnation’

...

Homoousios,
One substance with the Father,
Torrance-structured truth.

...

Calvin’s Institutes,
Reformed fons et origo,
Torrance’s benchmark.

...

Barth’s Church Dogmatics,
Everest meets Niagaran
Grammar of The Word.

...

Scottish Dogmatics
Displaying Reformed barcodes,
Geneva and Basle.