Living Wittily

Two Books: A Theological Duet.

Halfway through two books that could hardly be more different. Except both are about how we think of God, both challenge our personal (and limited) images of Jesus, and both argue with persuasive passion why all of this matters.

Chine writes as a journalist, a black woman, and as a Christian critical of a church too reluctant to move quickly on racism, and too attached to a white Jesus as the dominant image in the theological and devotional imagination of white Christians. 

McCormack writes as one of the premier theologians of our generation, at the end of a long intellectual pilgrimage through the Christian dogmatic tradition. On his way he critiques the Chalcedonian definition and the early exponents of Kenotic Christology before revisiting the New Testament construal of the God Man, Jesus Christ, with special reference to Philippians 2.5-11.

More on both books anon - for now there is a rich and enriching oscillation of disciplines, experience and examined concepts. Thank God for books.  

 

Don't silence and bypass the wonder of life's unseen because unlooked for gifts.

Sunday evening's wood walk - no photos. Instead we came into a blue sky clearing and the red kite was circling just above the trees. The red and cream feathers caught the late September sun in one of the finest sightings we've ever watched. We stood for a minute or two gazing up, slowly turning and weaving to follow its flight, then walked on. A minute or two later the persistent tapping of a woodpecker, which we saw briefly, but only as a silhouette putting distance between us.

 

My point? A 40 minute walk in a wood and two encounters with the locals felt like gift moments that can't be organised or predicted. And if I'd had my camera I would have missed the pleasure of enjoying the sight for its own sake. There is an anxiety attached to 'getting the photo' that often gets in the way of attending to what is seen. I doubt I'll forget the grace of effortless movement and reflected glory in that performance of blue sky ballet.

 

That anxiety to possess, to make an experience permanent, to have something to show to others either to impress them or for the straightforward pleasure of giving vicarious pleasure to someone else - such motivations are commonplace. But they can also get in the way of simply being present to what presents itself to us. 

 

Contemplative thought, unhurried reflection, allowing the heart as well as the mind to process experience, training ourselves in attention, but also in alertness of response to experiences that live with us, and go on reverberating inside - these are habits of heart and mind that don't easily accommodate to the immediacy of our digital and social media saturated culture. 

 

Indeed it may be that prayer, contemplative and meditative, patient and sustained in quietness, offers a much richer alternative to nurture and nourish the inner life. Which is another way of saying that we can be so intent on capturing more experiences that we miss the significant experience of being present to who we are and who the other is. And so un knowingly we silence and bypass the wonder of life's unseen, because unlooked for, gifts. 

 

As an example. A week ago we visited the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park. The wolves, the snow leopards and the Scottish wildcats were all I expected of spectacular beauty, constrained for their own good and for the preservation of their species. But it's hard not to feel the mixture of exhilaration in their wildness, and sadness that their existence is so limited and their created potential for life fenced in.

 

I have photos of these animals, but the one I choose to show is of something altogether more mundane, till you have a context. The robin is sitting on a pole within a yard or two of several wildcats. But it knows it's safe, because it is free and the cats are not. There's no need to expound any parable in this. It was a moment of insight, captured on camera, when the juxtaposition of bird and cat caught my imagination. What does it mean? I've no idea. It remains a moment of wonder. Though only after I looked at the photo did I see the cruciform shape of the fence.

"trying to make sense of where we are and where God might be calling us into the future...."

Maybe we all have our go to texts when we are searching the scriptures for wisdom, guidance, a word from the Lord, a nudge in the right direction. I often turn to Paul’s prayers. The reason is simple, I think! Paul’s prayers are always for the churches as they face all the ups and downs, tensions and ructions, blessings and demands, of small community life.

Many of us have begun to think about how we now move forward as a church, as a small community of Jesus’ disciples in a world very different from the one we had gotten used to. I too, have been thinking, and praying, and listening for that word, trying to be alert to that nudge, waiting for that guidance that helps make sense of where we are and where God might be calling us into the future. 

So I turned to Colossians 1.9-11, what some scholars call one of Paul’s wish prayers. No, not wishful thinking, but Paul’s wish list of blessings for the Christian house groups in Colossae. It’s worth taking time to read the gist of it:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

Follow Paul’s line of thought. Paul asks for knowledge of God’s will, all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives so that…. two things – so that they might live a life worthy of the Lord AND so that they may have great endurance and patience. Now there’s a surprise. Yes we would expect to ask God for knowledge, wisdom and understanding when we are seeking to know God’s will. But patience? A willingness to wait often requires more faith than the rush to action or the exciting risks of new ideas and rapid change.

Paul prays that these small communities under pressure will receive from God wisdom, understanding, and patience. Imagine praying for the power of God to be patient! But there is a lot of wisdom, and a lot of faith in Paul’s praying for the communities of Christ to have patience. Read his words again: “being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience.”

Here’s why I think Paul’s prayer for patience helps us where we are right now. The long, slow, and stuttering emergence from Covid-19 lockdown and restrictions will require of us courage, risk-taking, and a huge amount of goodwill and understanding. To think and pray, to share ideas but listen to each other’s fears, to begin to rebuild differently but also to discern what should change and what we should keep and enhance, - that’s a process that works best when we have been empowered with patience.

So perhaps the prayer, “God give us patience” is the prayer for a time like this. I sense and fully understand the urgency, intensity and yes, even impatience, to get started, to get doing, to get the show back on the road. Except the church is not a show, it is a community of the Spirit, a fellowship of believers, and a local expression of the Body of Christ. Together we are the real presence of Jesus, his risen life flowing through and amongst us as together we seek to serve Him in the power of the Spirit, whose fruit is patience.

Paul’s prayer comes from one who knows the wisdom of the gardener who waits for growth, the builder who gets the foundations right, the doctor who doesn’t rush to a diagnosis, and the shepherd who guides but does not chase the sheep. Patience and endurance are very similar words in Paul’s vocabulary. Together they describe the ability to work things out and work things through.

And note this, it’s important. Patience isn’t the product of our own strength, holding ourselves in check with gritted teeth. Patience is God’s empowering presence, the resilience of the risen Christ strengthening his people. So as we begin to think and plan, pray and seek God’s will together, it will put all our decisions and plans on a much surer footing if first we ask for patience.

A closing thought from Isaiah, another of God’s prophets:

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40.31)

Ten Books That Are Keepers: 2. The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen.

Early in the 1980's I read The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. It's a book that defies description and category. It's a travel book about a journey into Himalayan Nepal in search of the snow leopard. Then again the book reads like a novel with a gripping plot, kept taut by the tension of whether or not he will eventually see the near mythical snow leopard, and with memorable characters. It is undoubtedly autobiographic, and Matthiessen is a wise and self-aware observer of his own inner climate, his hopes and failures, and his way of looking at the world. Throughout the book Matthiessen comments on Zen Buddhism, by then a philosophy that held a deep appeal to someone in quest not only of experience, but of the meaning of Being itself.

At the time I first read The Snow Leopard, there were relatively few films or photographs of the animal available. The snow leopard is elusive, shy, lives in remote and inaccessible locations high in the mountains, and in order to see them in the 1970's the traveller had to endure terrain, weather and deprivations only the most hardened and resourceful could achieve. There are near things with avalanches and crevasses, changes in sherpa personnel, conflict and co-operation amongst the team, fascinating descriptions of the food in the remote villages and the customs of people strange and hard to interpret to western eyes. 

On that first reading I came to the end of the book with a profound sense of gratitude that in our world, rapidly being absorbed by human consumption, development of domination, there was still space for such a magnificent, graceful and mysterious animal. That has all changed. The snow leopard faces the very real threat of extinction in the wild. Even in the 1970's Matthiessen had anticipated the increasing dangers of decreasing habitat, the invasion of sightseers and tourists, the massive profits for poachers and the insatiable greed and arrogance of those who glory in trophies and accessories made at the cost of not just one snow leopard; those who kill a male snow leaopard weaken the entire population, and if they kill a female they destroy the possibility of future families in an environment where natural survival is already precarious.

So it was with excitement and a thin sliver of anxiety that I found myself at the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park. The car tour was slow, interesting and simply acted as a warm up act for me. Then we climbed the modest brae to the snow leopard enclosure, and the anxiety that the animals may not co-operate with yet more gawping tourists and decide to hide in the long grass. 

There are moments in all our lives when we know we are seeing something that changes our way of viewing the world, that shifts around and rearranges the inner furniture of past experiences real and imagined. My first view was more a sigh of recognition, the fulfilment of a longing to see, just to see, and be grateful for the existence of these animals. I have a modest and ageing camera, and hadn't come to photograph and capture, but to wonder, and enjoy. No photographic image can substitute for those moments of grace and power when Animesh moved out of the grass and across her cliff top, and I exhaled something between a sigh, a smile and a prayer of gratitude.

All those years ago I had read about Matthiessen's quest, and had been drawn into the story of these magnificent cats. In the intervening time David Attenborough made a full documentary aided by the advent of digital technology and the full resources of the BBC. But this was different. Here was a snow leopard, kept safe in Scotland, the wire fences an ambiguous barrier that contains an animal made to roam for endless miles, but which protects her, allows her to breed, and so ensure some kind of future for her species. And here I was, with a ten year old camera, privileged to see her, and to take in the marvel of wildness and a creature often called the ghost of the mountains.

As a theologian I read a lot of theology. But theology has to find a firm footing in the realities of our world, its politics, economics, ethics and our human impact on God's creation. Theology has to be brought into conversation with what is happening to our environment and climate, and as counter-voice to our insatiable lust for economic power and dominance. Theology is not concerned about concepts and metaphysics, ideas and arguments as ends in themselves. Theology is a means to an end, a way of understanding God, the world and ourselves in ways that enable us to see what we are doing, and learn what we need to do, to be stewards of God's creation, harbingers of God's kingdom, responsible and responsive human beings whose privileged place in the world is a gift not a right, and is for the good purposes of God not the proud self-assertion of human dominance. 

Matthiessen's book, The Snow Leopard, is a masterpiece of literature. For all the reasons previously mentioned, and for one more. For over 40 years I have carried inside me the image of the snow leopard, imagined from the pages of this book. It takes remarkable writing to create the longing and fascination this book embedded in my imagination. No photos or film clips since, have erased my long held desire to see this creature, and to gaze with inner wonder at such a gift to our world. No wonder this animal became a symbol of the World Wildlife Fund. One of the most treasured birthday gifts our daughter Aileen gave me, was a year's sponsorship of a snow leopard. Our visit to the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park was part of that same nexus of love, memory and gift.       

Scotland's Highland Wildlife Park 1: Thoughts About Loving Our Animal Neighbours.

On Tuesday we spent the day at the Highland Wildlife Park, an extension of Edinburgh Zoo, set in the spectacular Landscape between Kingussie and Aviemore. From as far back as I remember I was around animals on various farms in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. I know, cows and sheep, pigs and hens, horses and dogs and cats - they're hardly the most exciting beasts on the earth. Yes, but.

In those first fifteen years of life I was around animals, and learned to respect and care for each creature that shares our space, and has as much right to life, food and shelter as we have. I remember my first visit to Edinburgh Zoo with the school. I was probably about 8 or 9. We went on a bus and were led in singing songs about animals by Mrs Proudfoot, the music teacher and Headmaster's wife - in 1959 that was the designation.

Elephants, lions, tigers, buffalo, giraffes, penguins, polar bears, monkeys. Here's where age becomes a giveaway. I was seeing in colour and real life, animals I had only seen in black and white on our first TV. A very young David Attenborough on Zoo Quest, and Armand and Machaela Denis On Safari, and various other documentaries made book pictures come alive. 

I've never lost my fascination with animals, and have never had to be persuaded of animal rights. Later as a Christian I came to think much more deeply about the issues of animal welfare, care of creation, and where my inbuilt resistance and opposition to all forms of animal cruelty originated. This has nothing to do with ideology. Two reasons will suffice, one a story, the other a theological conviction.

The story first. I was alongside my dad as a boy of 8 when I was shocked at the way the farmer's son (a young man by then) used a stick to hit the cows to get them to go into the byre quickly. Dad never, ever, used a stick on 'the beasts' as he called them. He confronted the farmer (who was actually a kindly man himself) and demanded that nobody used a stick on cows that were part of the herd he was responsible for looking after, and keeping healthy. The farmer didn't see it that way, and with no hesitation my father told him, either the sticks went or he did. The farmer tried to reason, that sometimes you had to, and his son didn't mean anything by it.

The result was my father gave in his notice and started to look for another job. That kind of stubborn, obstinate, some might even say unreasonable opposition to inflicting hurt on animals, has never left me. It's a conviction born out of witnessing my father using the only lever he had to prevent what was then an acceptable level of pain to force animal compliance. I'm proud of dad for all kinds of reasons - but I still remember his principled outrage to his employer, and his refusal to compromise or negotiate on the use of a stick on a cow.  

The theological conviction that now entwines with such life experiences, came later. Care for creation and all its creatures has grown and strengthened with every decade of my time on a planet rapidly reaching critical depletion. My understanding of God the Creator, and of this natural world as entrusted gift, is enough to fund both compassion for animals and resistance to both animal cruelty and the uncontrolled laying waste of the earth for commercial gain and economic power. So wherever there are those who are working to conserve and care, to protect and preserve, the beauty and diversity of our natural world, my sympathies align with little need to argue the case.

So, back to the Highland Wildlife Park. It doesn't have a huge range of projects, but as a place to watch and wonder at the marvel that is an animal, it is both fascinating and poignant. Pride of place goes to the pair of snow leopards, who recently gave birth to two cubs. But the snow leopards will be for another post. They have a special place in my worldview! The Amur tiger is magnificent, awesome, and one of a disappearing species.

He wasn't for coming out of his den since it was near feeding time, so the photo does no justice to the size and power of this dangerous endangered masterpiece of muscle and size. The photo was taken through three separate steel fences, so I guess that confused the zoom. But for all that, the elusive and hard to get photo of this vanishing tiger is an image that speaks of the terrible consequences of human greed and fear, and of that strange hostility to whatever is greater and more powerful than ourselves.

We control a beast like this with steel fences, and constrain the movements of a body made for jungles and trees, and destroy the freedom to roam and survive on its own. And for good measure, we have virtually erased her habitat so that the future of the Amur tiger is at best precarious and at worst already closed. 

 

An Old Shed and the Usefulness of Seasoned Timber.

A walk in the woods in the Highlands at dusk. There is a poignant beauty in a dilapidated structure that has lasted the seasons, that once was someone's pride and joy, that has given shelter, and to God's smaller creatures may do still, and whose purpose now is to keep standing, and leave the occasional traveller wondering what it was once used for.

But whatever its previous use, the sight of a building on its last legs touches into something deep in us, our need for shelter, the protection of a place, the comfort that is given not only function, but by familiarity. This small shed sits in a forest in the hills, and through decades of winters its wood has weathered as season's timber,  wind, rain and snow each year taking their toll as the wood warps, nails rust, and roof and walls bear increasing weight with less resilience year on year.

Yes the obvious parallel with human ageing, and yes, with my own growing old. For all the bland optimism and feel good memes about 70 being the new 50, and you're only as old as you feel, and age being only number, and the assumptions that we can stay ahead of this the ultimate numbers game, for all that, this shed shows more realism, and seems content with its own mortality, and its place in time. 

There's something about Qoheleth in an image like this, its mixed messages of decay and defiance, a place of shelter still despite the ravages of time, the hopes and purposes of human building which affirms the future and gives meaning to the present. I'm content to have seen this chapel where the prayers were in the building of it, and its value persists beyond usefulness. And for now, that's not a bad way of thinking of ourselves growing old! 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I first read that promise of God, "Even to grey hairs I will carry you..." And those climactic verses of the greatest poem of God's protective intimacy, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life...." And all of this brought on by a walk in a Highland dusk, and an epiphany from a shoogly shed silently singing, "I'm still standing..."!

 

Bultmann Through the Eyes of Schmithals

Why it's always a good idea to call in to the Oxfam Bookshop.  I discovered a critical study of one of the giants in mid 20th Century New Testament scholarship, written by a former student himself a major voice in late 20th Century German New Testament scholarship. And for the price of a cappuccino.....come on £2.99.

 

Oh, and Schmithals tells of how as a student he accidentally walked into one of Bultmann's lectures, and stayed. He became a signed up student for Bultmann's courses, took part in seminars and wrote his thesis supervised by Bultmann. The thesis was on Gnosticism in Corinth, and though not agreeing with all the details, Bultmann awarded a magna cum laude and acknowledged that Schmithal's had changed his mind on key points.

 

They became friends and colleagues, and on several occasions following Bultmann's death, Schmithals, the accidental student of all those years ago, spoke warmly of his teacher. In 2002 the city Council of Oldenburg commissioned a bust of Bultmann to be placed in the local school which Bultmann attended in his youth.

 

It was agreed on condition that the bust was to "represent the personality of one in whose essence it lay to wish to be paid no public honour of any kind. The bust "had to be appropriate to the personal modesty of the honoree, and his unassuming personal demeanour."

 

Walter Schmithals delivered the address, "Faith and Understanding. Rudolf Bultmann and the World of Modern Life."

 

Such are the fine threads of biography and human friendships, of history and accidentally walking through a door that opens life up in a new direction. And I'm delighted to have a book that links these two awesome scholars.

 

By the way, I seldom use the word awesome. So when I do, I mean it in the most precise semantic sense - I'm in awe of such prodigious achievements in scholarship, and humbled by the humility of Bultmann.

"Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God": Three New Romans Commentaries.

Within the next six months or so three new commentaries will be published on Paul's Letter to the Romans. One of the indulgences of semi retirement (am I allowed to use that word 'indulgence' when writing about Paul's diplomatic letter that precipitated the theological crisis of the Reformation and gave birth to the slogan 'justification by faith?) - in any case, having the freedom and time to read mostly what interests me, I now regularly read biblical commentaries. So three new commentaries on Romans is a bit of a cumulative event. (September 2021, IVP, 544 pp)

The forthcoming Tyndale commentary on Romans is by David Garland. He has already produced a number of highly rated commentaries, most of which I've used, and one, on Second Corinthians, I have read through. The new Tyndale will replace the compact, sensible and loved commentary by F F Bruce. I look forward to working through this replacement, which will be twice the length of its predecessor. (September 2021, IVP, 544pp)

Frederick Dale Bruner's commentary style is very different from the standard approaches of academic historical-critical, rhetorical and literary commentary. His two previous commentaries, on Matthew and John, are each a massive vade mecum of history of interpretation, exposition, exegetical reflection and pastoral comment. His commentary on Romans is similar in style and very different in scale. The Gospel of John came in at 1270 pages, and Matthew in 2 volumes totals 1470; Romans will be 232 pages. That will make it much more manageable, and it will be interesting to find out who his main conversation partners have been from the Romans commentary hall of fame. I have my own favourites, but will enjoy someone else's selection of significant voices. Given the ferment and flux in Pauline studies in the past 40 years, this must have been a master class in distillation. (Oct 2021, Eerdmans, 232pp))

In the Spring, and before Easter, Michael Gorman's theological and pastoral commentary on Romans will be published. Gorman is one of the leading contemporary Pauline scholars whose work over 20 years has increasingly focused on "participation and transformation, cruciformity and new life, peace and justice, community and mission." (text from publisher's advance notice)

It would be fair to say many of us have longed for work like this from Professor Gorman. Amongst other things, this commentary must have compelled Gorman to re-examine and consolidate much of his work to date in the light of a definitive text that is redolent with the very themes on which he has spent his academic career. If similar treatments of 2 Corinthians and Philippians were forthcoming, that would certainly sort out future birthday and Christmas gifts - as we say in Scotland, "If I'm spared!"   (March 2022, Eerdmans, 352ppp))

As it is, I look forward to diving in at the deep end of the pool that is Romans, a kind of baptism into the text, to emerge the better of the swim.  

 

     

Ten Books That Are Keepers: 1. The Prophets, A J Heschel

A long time ago now, I came across references to A J Heschel in the early writings of Walter Brueggemann. For 40 years I have read both these men, each in their different ways virtuosi in their interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Brueggemann is for another post. For now I want to say something about Heschel's classic volume on The Prophets. 

I used to have a battered paperback copy, and one day I found this robust hardback copy in a used bookshop. The price was reasonable, but I would probably have bought it even if the price was unreasonable. I was reading some of it again today. It confirmed what I've thought for some time; Rabbi Heschel's own writing is informed by the poetic and prophetic, and is fuelled by pathos and passion.

Inside the front board is an ex libris label, with the name Stanley Gevirtz. I decided to go chasing this previous owner and this is what I found. He first studied drama and literature and became an expert in Semitic poetry, its syntax and style. He was "an outstanding classroom teacher and captivating public lecturer, whose public delivery bordered on the poetic."

That description can equally apply to Heschel, and I find it a poignant connection between these two remarkable teachers that they crafted sentences by using words the way a jeweller creates a setting and selects and positions the stones to their most startling effect. 

The Prophets is a rich book, quite unlike other treatments of the Hebrew prophetic consciousness. For example, Gerhard Von Rad's volume, The Message of the Prophets, has its own deserved reputation, but as an historical critical study that seeks to do justice to the theology and rhetorical traditions of the Hebrew prophets. It remains essential reading.

But Heschel is something else altogether. The most famous chapter in the book became set reading in many Protestant seminaries in the mid 1960's - 'The Theology of Pathos'. Years before Moltmann's The Crucified God, and the revived interest in post-Holocaust theology of in divine suffering as a serious and essential corrective to an exaggerated theology of divine impassibility, Heschel wrestled like Jacob with the theological nexus of tragedy, suffering, covenant faithfulness, steadfast love, and the witness of the Hebrew prophets to the passion and pathos of God.

Coincidentally I recently read an essay on the covenant between God and Israel, and how covenant theology is an essential dimension of Christian atonement theology. Amongst the insights pressed by the author was the relational basis of covenant, and in investment of faithful loyalty on both sides to ensure the integrity and durability of that relationship. Heschel's treatment of divine pathos takes with utmost seriousness the nature of divine love, mercy, judgement and wrath. God suffers when the covenant relationship is broken, and divine faithfulness is exploited, and trusting love becomes divine heartbreak. 

Here are the last words of Heschel's astonishing chapter:

"The divine pathos is the unity of the eternal and the temporal, of meaning and mystery, of the metaphysical and the historical. It is the real basis of the relation between God and man, of the correlation of Creator and creation, of the dialogue between the Holy One of Israel and His people. The characteristic of the prophets is not foreknowledge of the future, but insight into the present pathos of God."  (The Prophets, page 231) 

The bibliophile in me treasures the footprints of those who have gone before me in the journey through a book like this. That wee label inside the front board, tells me where the book was bought; and the Ex Libris tells me who bought it. Stanley Gervitz I have no doubt curated this book with respectful care. This scholar of Hebrew poetry, handled the magnum opus of the Rabbi who walked to Selma with MLK, who was frequently caught up in protesting the Vietnam War, and who wrote the classic work that expounds not only the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible, but also the aching, hopeful heart of the Holy One of Israel.