Living Wittily

Karl Barth and the Cure for Desultoriness of Spirit

Earlier today I was desultorying. There's much to be thought about just now, life taking new turnings, decisions that involve both risk and trust, and I was looking around for a conversation partner, someone to take me out of self-pre-occupation for a while. In the corner is a tall narrow bookcase which houses Barth's Church Dogmatics, and sundry other Barthian writing, along with a number of the key monographs on Barth's theology from McCormack to Hunsinger, and Busch to Webster. I took down the Romans commentary - that angry, passionate, turbo-charged bulldozer of a book that didn't only disturb the scholars in their playground, but proceeded to demolish their school.

Barth is one of a few theologians who provide (for me at any rate) a theological and spiritual antidote to the debilitating condition of desultorying. Loss of impetus, boredom with transcendence, spiritual attention deficit, emotional reductionism, theological complacency, - there are plenty of phrases and they describe some forms of desultorying. Nearer where I am just now is something different - experience overload, much happening at once and the need to have time, space and energy to work through what it means, how it feels, and how best live with and through life as it is. In her wonderful Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton wrote something I adopted as a spiritual principle. She spoke of the depletion that comes from 'unassimilated  experience' - she meant those times when life is too stridently demanding, expectations of ourselves are unrealistic, too much happens before previous experience is reflected upon, learned from, made peace with.

One way of interrupting the flow of information, experience and circumstance is to change the subject away from  yourself to that which is beyond, more than, extrinsic to, our own inner world with its worries, problem solving, calculation and self- centred attention. Open a volume of Barth, and I find myself interrupted! Romans 8 belongs in the Alpine range of Paul's theology, and Barth on Romans 8 in his commentary provides a stunning viewpoint to take in the vast vista and far away horizons of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Is it an exegesis of Romans 8? Absolutely not, more like a conductor inspiring an entire orchestra to improvise with passionate responsiveness to the composer's musical vision, and therefore to treat the script with such massive respect that it is not slavishly followed but teleologically fulfilled. The result is an artistic triumph, a virtuoso performance that is unique and arises out of the specific coincidence of musicians, conductor, musical score and historical moment.

Barth's Romans is like that. I spent a while reading him on Romans 8.28, that massive granite rock of a verse that you either stand on because it will never move, or that falls and flattens you if you try to duck beneath it! Here is what I read, the cure for today's desultoriness:

The Love of God stands where there is disclosed,...the pre-eminent affirmation - Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and the Life. Blessed discovery! God stands in light inaccessible. Blessed discovery! All flesh is grass and all the glory of men is as the flower of the field. When in Spirit and in Truth, one of these discoveries is made, the other is involved in it, for both are in fact operations of the One God, whose universal majesty is the 'Yes' in the 'No'. The Love of God dares to see everywhere on this side and on that side, not a 'Here' and a 'There', but wholly and altogether beyond all tension and duality, the revelation of the one Truth, proclaiming that the free and righteous, blessed and living God, knows us, prisoners and sinners and condemned and dead, to be His own. And so in our apprehension which is not-knowing,  and in our not-knowing which is our apprehension, there is shown forth the final and primal unity of visibility and invisibility,  of earth and heaven,  of man and God...Thus God rewards those who love Him. 

Flannery O'connor loved Barth because he 'threw the furniture around'. He did, and he does. But here is an even earthier description that comes from one of those comments at the door after preaching, made by a farmer in the North East, that he was "glad to get a good kick up the backside". Not sure that was the aim of the sermon, but for him it did seem to be the outcome. And his phrase aptly describes Barth's theological impact on a desultory spirit!

The photo is across the Mearns at early sunrise into a liquid sky.

Following Jesus as the Theological Imperative of Hans Kung

Hans Kung recently decided to retire from public life. He is now 84. I first came across the writing and thought of Kung when as a young Baptist minister in my first church I was given a copy of On Being a Christian. It is a huge book - in size, in word count, but more than that, in the scope of its vision of what it means to be a Christian. Reading it was like working out with a personal intellectual trainer. You recognise that the book isn't there to indulge you, but to push you; you don't need to like it, just engage with it; the benefits are not immediate, but they are lasting. 

That book was an eye opener. And my eyes have stayed open. Hans Kung in that book, and in subsequent writing has given to the Church a body of theological and philosophical work that is disruptive, questioning, and demanding. Disruptive in the positive sense of not being content with received wisdom or institutionalised answers; questioning because he is an ardent and patient seeker for truth who is impatient with those who try to obstruct that quest; demanding because he is a bull in the ecclesial china shop, a non-conformist in the most internally conformist tradition of Christian faith; a voice that refuses to be silenced by any authority, (ecclesial or academic) which is hostile to question, enquiry and the reform that discovered and rediscovered truth must inevitably provoke.

Yes he is a pain in the mitre of Pope and Curia; and yes his theology veers in directions some of us think are wrong directions; and maybe he does come over at times as arrogant, self-assured and unwilling to listen and negotiate towards views that others can own. But on the other side his range of knowledge and depth of thought, the combination of rigour and passion in argument, the note of faithfulness to the truth of Jesus as the sub-stratum of theological and philosophical exposition, and all this in a mind both questioning and generous, replete with learning and alert to the urgency of his own priestly vocation; such characteristics make him a complex and necessary voice in contemporary Christian reflection and apologetic

These sentences below sum up the spirituality and loneliness of Kung, his voice not always loved, but always faithful:

Following the cross does not mean copying the suffering of Jesus, it is not the reconstruction of his cross. That would be presumptuous. But it certainly means enduring the suffering which befalls me in my inexchangeable situation - in conformity with the suffering of Christ. Anyone who wants to go with Jesus must deny their self and take upon their self not the cross of Jesus, but their cross, their own cross, then they must follow Jesus. (On Being a Christian, p. 777)

A Theological Reflection on Three Mornings of Problematic Commuting!

On the way to College each morning this week I've been delayed.

Monday it was the lolipop man stopping the traffic with a high waving lolipop, stopping the traffic for one adult to cross the road and no children in sight. That got a few irate horn blasts for lolipop abuse.

Tuesday I was a witness to a motor cyclist who came off his bike because a dog on an extension  lead (not the electrical kind) had run across the road and created a tripwire. The biker wasn't too badly hurt but was rightly mad - I've no idea what the insurance issues will be.

Wednesday it was the huge articulated European transport Lorry which stopped within inches of the Nitshill Bridge and blocked the traffic both ways. No way to reverse because backed in by the Traffic queue - no way forward because, well because of the bridge.

Not the best start to the working day - not talking about me, but the lolipop man who thought he was being helpful, the motorcyclist who probably has no comeback for the damage, and the lorry driver who stopped on time but had nowhere to go, and surrounded by impatient to hostile commuters!

Hard to go in after such encounters of commuting life and sit down with a cup of tea and pick up where I left off in my reading of the more abstract realities of contested ecclesiologies, patristic Trinitarianism and contemporary approaches to mission for faith communities on the cusp of a culture fuelled by disruptive innovation and recessional panic!

But such is the life of a theologian - and seriously, the social and civic attitudes that underlie anger at a car having to stop for a walking human being does indeed provide food for theological critique of the values we live by;

and the questions raised by the unforeseen accident, the injury to others we intend or don't intend, and how to resolve situations that have gone wrong between people, there is an entire theological and ethical agenda for the church;

and to ask ourselves what resources we have to deal with those situations where we are stuck at a low bridge with no easy way forward or back, and all around us people just wanting to get on with their own lives.

I guess that embarrassed lorry driver mirrors the experience of so many folk trying to work out how to make their lives work and be able to move forward from the mistake they have made.

And I'm pondering the parable of the church as articulated lorry, confronted by a low bridge, trapped by the traffic, nowhere obvious to go, the driver frantically directing traffic around a vehicle made for movement but stuck by its own shape and wrong turnings.......

The image of the Eagle Nebulae always reminds me of the context within which all the strangeness of the ordinary is held, 'In the beginning was the Word...and the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us'. And whatever the future of the church, that truth is the intellectual, spiritual and and moral directive for how the Church as the Body of Christ is to live in the creative energy of resurrection, and with trust in the God who in Christ is reconciling the world into the life of the Triune God.

 

Karl Barth on One of His Salutary Rants!

I enjoy a good rant. whether it's mine opr someone else's. Strong feelings, passionate convictions, intellectual energy, just the right degree of unreasonableness, unshakeable confidence in the rightness of the cause and in the analysis of the problem, all of this harnessed to verbal facility with a strong rhetorical accent, these are the active ingredients of the effective rant.

Karl Barth's writings are full of them - they are amongst his most enjoyable paragraphs. They can feel like a loud shout from someone who crept up behind you while you were minding your own business journeying purposefully through some well meaning theological reflection

"Theology is...a function in the Liturgy of the church. One had better take ca\ution what he does, when he neglects theology, or takes it less seriously and thereby practically eliminates it, because it has only this one function. Of all the functions of the Church's liturgy none is to be dispensed with if the Church is to be kept totally intect.

And it is quite in order to say very emphatically today, that it is precisely this function, that of theology, this critical self-examination of the Church regarding its reason for existence and its origin, is not to be eliminated.

Try to carry on your practice without a theory!

Go on, praise "life" at the expense of intellectual work, knowledge or creed.

Worship "reality" and despise truth!

It will quickly become evident that the practical things are not all there is to it; it is only human endeavour, and yet, in  its own autonomous nature it is not a worthy human endeavour. Where such a path leads can be illustrated today before our very eyes, and concerning which the Churches of all countries have every reason to fundamentally rethink themselves.

A Church without an orderly theology must sooner or later become a pagan church.!"

That's what Flannery O'Connor meant when she said Barth throws the furniture around. When Barth takes on the role of exasperated Headmaster he can be fun, but if we laugh we tend to do it discreetly, and nervously, because underneath the impatience is the passion of someone who wants the best and sees it thrreatened by complacency, carelessness or self indulgent minds seeking amusement rather than wisdom. The quote is from God in Action, Edinburgh, 1936, page 49-50 

 

The Triune God of Love According to Rublev, Augustine, Wesley and Brian Wren

“It is not easy to find a name that will suitably express so great an excellence, unless it is better to speak in this way: the Trinity, one God, of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things.

Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and each of these by Himself, is God, and at the same time they are all one God; and each of them by Himself is a complete substance, and yet they are all one substance....

To all three belong the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the same majesty, the same power. In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit the harmony of unity and equality.

And these three attributes are all one because of the Father, all equal because of the Son, and all harmonious because of the Holy Spirit.”

–Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine, I.V.5.

 

Hail, co-essential Three,
In mystic Unity!
Father, Son, and Spirit, hail!
God by Heaven and earth adored,
God incomprehensible;
One supreme, almighty Lord,
One supreme, almighty Lord.

Thou sittest on the throne,
Plurality in One;
Saints behold Thine open face,
Bright, insufferably bright;
Angels tremble as they gaze,
Sink into a sea of light,
Sink into a sea of light.

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

How wonderful the Three-in-One,

 whose energies of dancing light

are undivided, pure and good,

communing love in shared delight.

 

Before the flow of dawn and dark,

Creation's Lover dreamed of earth,

and with a caring deep and wise,

all things conceived and brought to birth.

 

The Lover's own Belov'd, in time,

between a cradle and a cross,

at home in flesh, gave love and life

to heal our brokenness and loss.

 

Their Equal Friend all life sustains

with greening power and loving care,

and calls us, born again by grace,

in Love's communing life to share.

 

How wonderful the Living God:

Divine Beloved, Empow'ring Friend,

Eternal Lover, Three-in-One,

 our hope's beginning, way and end.

 

 

 

 

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

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

The Love of God

And the Communion of the Holy Spirit

be with us all, Amen.

The Theology and Practice of Reconciliation

Over the summer part of my work will be preparing a course on Reconciliation: Theology and Practice. There are few areas of human experience, cultural challenge and Christian theology that touch on so many of the fundamentals of human existence. Conflict and peace, prejudice and inclusion, grievance and forgiveness, fear and trust, hatred and love, alienation and belonging, despair and hope, violence and non-violent peacemaking, vicious circles and healing cycles, tears of rage and tears of compassion, the face of implacability and the face of compassion, the way of death and the way of life - that list has no logical completion, and will never become a comprehensive catalogue of human alternatives.

But whatever reconciliation is about, it is about real alternatives, moral choices, theological possibilities, options for life, investments in the human community that are costly yet creative, troublesome but transformative, realistic but visionary. Because reconciliation lies at the very core of the Christian story. That it has not been the beating heart and moral imagination and spiritual commitment and intellectual grandeur of the Church's way of living out the Gospel is, for me at least, one of the scandalous questions that is still looking for an adequate answser - and perhaps even before that, an adequate asking of the question.

Few issues lie more obviously before the world than how human beings learn to live together. In exploring the theology and practice of reconciliation we will encounter some of those depths of Christian thought and practice when we hear what James Denney called 'the plunge of lead in fathomless waters'.

For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself..... and he has given us this ministry of reconciliation...

Reconciling all things to Himself, making peace by the blood of the cross....blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God...

A Philosophical Theology of Prayer.

I don't enjoy many books about prayer. That doesn't mean there aren't any good ones, just that I'm not sure one ever helped me to pray more, or better. I'd rather have a book of prayers that have been composed, written and prayed in language rich with those human experiences out of which prayer erupts, or is dragged, or writes itself in word and emotion that is the human heart seeking encounter with the heart of God.

When a renowned philosopher whose works on Theism are mind stretchingly challenging decides to explore the basis of Christian prayer, then I don't expect another how to manual, nor another here's my experience, it was great and I'd like you to have it too bestseller. Which is good - because this book is quite different. Owen is unafraid of the theological and philosophical questions raised by our praying - telling God what God already knows, asking for what is in our own interests, establishing any causal connection between our praying and whatever happens that we perceive as an answer to prayer. The main thrust of the book is that prayer is best, perhaps only, understood, in the light of our doctrine of God and our theological conception of what a human being is, and what the relations between God and humanity are, should be and perhaps must be.

I learned so much from this book - The Basis of Christian Prayer, H P Owen (Regent College Pubblishing). Not about how to pray but about what prayer is, about the One to whom prayer is offered, and about the relational interchange that takes place between God and those who dare, and who desire, to address the God who first addresses us. "Prayer validates a personal, as against a non personal view of God. In prayer we address God as Thou." A page later (p.111) Owen quotes a most moving prayer of Anselm, from the Proslogion:

O God, I pray, let me know and love you

so that I may rejoice in you.

And if I cannot in this life fully,

let me advance day by day

until the point of fullness comes.

Let knowledge of you progress in me here,

and be made full there.

Let love for you grow in me here,

and be made full there,

so that here my joy may be great with expectancy

while there being full in realisation.

If there is such a thing as an eschatological spirituality, Then Anselm has gifted to the church a prayer that holds the Christian heart in that creative tension between now and then, here and there, Thou - and I.

Durer's Praying Hands (above) suffers from over-exposure on Christian kitsch products fro m wall plaques to plastic models. But in the original etching the artist combines beauty with beseeching, peace with tension, surrender and expectancy - and few images are more evocative of our humanity than our hands, with which we make and caress, hold and relinquish, clench and open, embrace or exclude. To lift up holy hands in prayer, is therefore no straightforward spiritual exercise.

The use of the adverb Trinitarianly

Was teaching the doctrine of the Trinity yesterday, and we had an interesting session on Trinity and Community. Starting from love that is purposeful, outgoing and creative and which is self giving and combines both trust and risk, we moved back and forward between the inner relations of the Triune God to the outward expression of that life in the economy of creation, redemption and consummation.

It would be misleading and unnecessary to say we all understood what we were talking about! But a lot of learning took place in exploring the realities of human relationships as we work out in our personal lives, the lives of the communities we inhabit, and the life of the world which is a community of communities living with tensions at times creative and at times destructive. Ecclesiology, missiology, spirituality, worship, pastoral care and compassion, ethics and justice, are significant areas of Christian existence and reflection which are profoundly influenced by the way we think of God. And for Christian theology that means thinking of God Trinitarianly. I know, it's not the most elegant of words, but it is a modifying adverb that should be used frequently in our thinking about those key areas of Christian reflection and practice. It's pushing it to talk of a Trinitarian lifestyle, or living Trinitarianly - but to see ourselves as drawn into the life of God, and immersed in the Love that is purposeful, creative, outgoing trusting and risk-taking, and to ask what that might look like in practice, would be to at least make a start on living Trinitarianly.

PT Forsyth, a Japanese Translation and an Unforgettable memory of Professor Donald Mackinnon

I  opened a parcel yesterday and found in it the recently published collection of essays on P T Forsyth, published in Japan, and in Japanese. I have a chapter in it which is a reprint of the piece on Forsyth from Evangelical Spirituality - never thought I'd be published in Japanese though!

The volume is a translation of Justice the True and Only Mercy, the collection of essays edited by Trevor Hart after the Forsyth Colloquium held in Aberdeen in 1995. That they wanted to add my chapter as a concluding essay is humbling and at the same time makes me feel a wee bit chuffed!

One memory of that colloquium stamped deeply in my affections was the paper delivered with Shakespearean power by Donald Mackinnon. It was a characteristic combination of lucid perplexity and integrated disjointedness! You have to envisage Professor Mackinnon's large presence, big arms waving and hands grasping and ungrasping as he threw out  grappling hooks, seeking anchor points on which to hang a virtuoso account of Forsyth, tragedy, German philosophy and high culture, atonement theology, kenotic christology and much else delivered with passion and in a voice modulating between gruff assertion and poignant questioning. It was as memorable a performance of theology as I've ever seen.

The essay in the book, revised and tidied up for publication, is a pale reflection of that encounter between Forsyth, Mackinnon and a bemused audience. Those of us who were there were both puzzled and moved, taught from deep wells and frustrated by an intellect ablaze, witnessing one of the great minds in 20th Century philosophical theology, like Samson wrestling with huge pillars of thought and threatening to bring it all crashing down on our heads. I exaggerate - a little! But it is the exaggeration of an affectionate admirer who gladly witnessed one of the genuine polymaths, performing an intellectual mini-concert, and displaying genius that eschewed pedagogic techniques that might make his thought more accessible to his audience. We weren't there to hear, but to overhear the theological soliloquy of a mind independent, fierce and passionately religious.

What kind of God is the Christian God?

 
What kind of God is the Christian God? The early apologist who wrote the Epistle to Diognetus was utterly convinced of the decisive nature of Christ for any understanding of God that claims to be Christian:

"Why did God send the Son? To rule as a tyrant, to inspire terror and astonishment? No, he did not. No, he sent him in gentleness and mildness. To be sure, as a king sending his royal son, he sent him as God. But he sent him as to men, as saving and persuading them, and not as exercising force. For force is no attribute of God.

On this passage the Arthur McGill in his book Suffering. A Test of Theological Method, gives this comment, one of the countless fugitive affirmations of kenosis as the self-giving love that is the disposition of God:

"Force is no attribute of God". - that is the basic principle for Trinitarian theologians. God's divinity does not consist in his ability to push things around, to make and break, to impose his will from the security of some heavenly remoteness, and to sit in grandeur while all the world does his bidding. Far from staying above the world he sends his own glory into it. Far from imposing  he invites and persuades. Far from demanding service from men and women in order to enhance himself, he gives his life in service to them for their enhancement. But God acts toward the world in this way because whithin himself he is a life of self-giving.

(The photo was taken in Aberdeen Botanic Gardens - the random design of a cottage border seems to fit with a piece on the generously extravagant, self giving love of the God who does abundance!)