Living Wittily

Two Women Writing Systematic Theology - The Refreshing of the Streams

Amongst the major and to be welcomed changes in theological scholarship during my own years as a theologian has been the increasing presence of women in the discussions. In particular systematic theology has been dominated by male and western voices, some of them massively powerful and projecting a dominant model of theology as intellectually conceptualised, structurally coherent, often enough abstract and theoretic, speculative or dogmatically constrained. From Barth to Brunner to Jungel to Pannenberg, Otto Weber to Hendrikus Berkhof, Jenson to Moltmann, Rahner to Von Balthasar, McClendon to D J Hall, Oden to MacQuarrie, Karkkainen to Schwarz, I've spent decades wading, swimming and sometimes drowning in those vast pools of thought.

Now two series of Systematic Theology written by women are launched, offering quite different perspectives and expressing with freshness and confidence, approaches to theology that hold much promise to take us beyond the accepted and at times tired paths of everything else on offer. It isn't that women haven't been present in the discussions until now. Names like Catherine Lacugna, Elizabeth Johnson, Kathryn Tanner, Ellen Charry, Frances Young and Dorothee Soelle have been gifts to the church for years. But to my knowledge Sarah Coakley, and now Katherine Sonderegger, are the first women theologians to attempt multi-volume projects of sytematic theology.

Coakley's first volume, God, Sexuality and the Self. An Essay on the Trinity, is an exploration of human desire for wholeness, intimacy, completion and love. Augustine's cry of the heart, "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee", is a recognition that human longing, desire and ache for union with others reflects the same attraction and longing for God. Now of course her account is more sophisticated and developed than that shorthand, but what I find intriguing is a theologian unafraid to do theology not only with the cognitive but also with the affective ways of knowing that are part of a whole human experience of understanding and wisdom.

This is theology forged, self-consciously and intentionally, in contemplation, prayer and lectio divina, and shaped against the realities and intricacies and ambiguities of our very human experience. Part of my question arises from the hunch that this is one of the gains when theology is written by a woman who has undoubted intellectual credentials, but who uses them in conjunction with other valid and viable ways of knowing God and reflecting on life experience in the light of God's revelation in Christ. 

In May this year, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, Katherine Sonderegger will publish the first volume of her systematic theology, also on the doctrine of God. Having heard her yesterday she will provide an account of God as creator, redeemer and as love in the eternal relations of Father, Son and Spirit. I sense in her whole style of doing theology another step back from the monumental intellectual constructions of Barth, Pannenberg, Jenson and the rest of the theological pantheon that often illumines and sometimes obscures the landscape of modern theology.

There is more of this to come on the blog here; for now I am contentedly excited at the thought of engaging with these two works in progress.        

Professor Katherine Sonderegger - The Theological Highlight of My Year So Far.

I've spent the last few days at the Eternal God - Eternal Life conference at the University of Aberdeen. Various scholarly papers ranging from analytic philosophy to bio-ethics and technology to systematic theology, were the primary forms of delivery and discussion. The quality and accessibility was likewise varied and I guess we all have our preferences, personal interests, prevailing presuppositions and particular expectations. But it was the standout paper which set my interest alight. I've heard many a lecture in my time and a very few of them have made a permanent place in the memory as perspective changing and truly transformative of a subject area. This lecture was one of these.

This morning Professor Katherine Sonderegger from Virginia Theological Seminary spoke "Toward a Theology of Resurrection". From the first sentences of reflection on Hopkins' poem God's Grandeur we were in the hands of a theologian whose roots go deep down into the soil and compost of the Christian tradition, and produces food for thought that is edible, assimilable, nourishing and plentiful. This was a magnificent lecture on creation, human life and longing, and the good God who has set eternity in human hearts, and created a hunger for God and righteousness that makes the heart restless and incomplete. Indeed the idea that heaven may be a place of comprehensive fulfilment, completed perfection, speaks of a stasis and fixity that does no justice to our creatureliness, or to the Creator's overflowing purposefulness, and would lead to a creation that would become a "finished futility", my words taken from P T Forsyth.

For a large part of the paper Sonderegger explored the nature of love and longing, of relatedness and connection, and of our lived experience on earth of broken connection, relations gone wrong, a view of the world, people and other creatures as functional and utilitarian that is ultimately reductionist of what it means to be God's creature with eternity in our hearts. The coming of God in Christ, and the forward thrust of reconciliation and redemption through cross and resurrection, point us towards a different kind of ressurected reality when what will be fulfilled will be our capacity for relatedness, a completion that is organic and dynamic, in which growth is part of the completeness of the creature, eternally frowing into the life and fellowship with all that is which we might call eternal life.

It is very difficult to convey the passionate thoughtfulness, biblical erudition, theological confidence rooted in intellectual humility, all of which informed and shaped this paper. At some stage this paper will be published, and when it is I will make it known here. Meantime I am grateful for the privilege of having heard a theologian articulate and enrich the Christian understanding of the new thing that God is and will do in Jesus Christ. Eschatology is too often esoteric in conceptuality, speculative in exposition and analytic in its preoccupation with metaphysics, epistemology and over-rationalised curiosities. This was a lesson in theology that is dogmatically constructive, imaginative and visionary, biblical in parameters and pastoral in orientation. I can easily take much of what she was saying and build deep gospel responses to those who are bereaved, dying, or suffering the deep sense of bewildered anxieties generated by our self-contained culture with its limited and limiting worldview.

The Tragedy of the Mediterranean Migrants and the Erosion of Moral Boundaries in Election Campaigns.

The tragedy of the Mediterranean migrants became a political character attack yesterday. Whether because the Labour party mischievously released a press statement knowing Ed Miliband would say something more nuanced and less specific in its criticism; or because it was an honest statement which Conservatives mischievously misinterpreted and misrepresented in order to accuse Ed Miliband of gross distaste akin to, but even worse than UKIP. Or just because the pursuit of power in this country has become a dirty, corrupting, frantic ego-fest, driven by the greed of vested interests, divisive fear-mongering about the SNP, and the dissolution of public trust in any of the political parties because that same dissolution is caused by disillusion. 

As a follower of Jesus Christ I couldn't be less interested in the shoddy shenanigans of politicians, media and spin. They can argue all they like about who was going to say what, who said what, and what the public should think about who said what. There's something tragic and morally indefensible about the focus and energy being on blame and finger pointing for poltical advantage, when every day desperate people are fleeing from the danger and misery of their home country and risking a 50% chance of death or enforced return, by paying traffickers to bring them to Europe.

I am troubled by the varied use of the words to describe this misery. Are these people migrants or refugees? Are they seeking a change of economic opportunity or refuge? Are they driven by economic aspiration or despair? What drives whole families to risk death on the sea or utter misery if they survive and are returned? These are questions I ask because my worldview is theological as well as economic, geographic, ethical and social.There is all the difference in the world, a world of difference, in the words we use, because human beings are dying of desperation. And as a wise Jewish philosopher said that every time a human being dies, a world dies.

Theologically that is intolerable. Every human being is created in the image of God and has inherent worth, to be respected, cared for and given the chance for life. God incarnate in Jesus Christ confers on God's creation and on human destiny a dignity and hope that is carried into the heart of the Creator and Redeemer God. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, making peace by the blood of the Cross, and to put it in evangelical terms, every human being is one for whom Christ died. As followers of the crucified and risen Lord I am for life, and part of that is the welcome to the stranger, compassion for the suffering, justice for the oppressed, and mercy to those who otherwise have no further hope.

I am haunted by those words of Christ when the nations gather for Judgement: "For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me." I am haunted because this parable is about the nations; it is a wanring to the intenrational community as well as a caution to every individual person in their ways of treating others.

So I am ashamed of our politicians. Doubly ashamed that in the 21st Century this election campaign has up till now largely ignored Foreign Policy as a matter for serious political debate, until this nasty piece of rhetorical posturing exploded into toxic personal attack. Miliband and Cameron are not the news that matters here. The mess in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Pakistan Border and the relentless inhumanity of ISIS are the issues. Refugees fleeing danger, death and the mayhem of tribal warfare is nothing new - but the scale of it in the modern era is undoubtedly a problem stretching beyond the apparent scope of the national, economic and moral imaginations of the international community.

Do I have practical answers? A few, but they would be based on my own limited perceptions, ignorance of the intricacies of international law, a passion for human rights being upheld as a universal obligation, and a lack of practical power to make things happen. What I do have is a high view of the value of each human being, and a sense of political resposibility to vote for those who demonstrate a will, capacity and conscience to resist the self interested economic and political pressures to ignore our responsibilities to those who are refugees with nowhere else to go. So far I've heard very little fro any party about such a moral vision for the world beyond these increasingly self-absorbed, reactionary and in recent years isolationist shores.    

John Wesley - A Celebration of the Father of Methodism

"It were well you should be thoroughly sensible of this, -- 'the heaven of heavens is love.'

There is nothing higher in religion; there is, in effect, nothing else; if you look for anything but more love, you are looking wide of the mark, you are getting out of the royal way...

Settle it then in your heart, that from the moment God has saved you from all sin, you are to aim at nothing more, but more of that love described in the thirteenth of the Corinthians.You can go no higher than this, till you are carried into Abraham's bosom."

(John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Section 25. Question 33)

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The plate is a mid-Victorian cockle plate, a gift from Sheila, the mug was bought at Gwennap Pit, and the Oxford Critical Edition of the Hymns is one of my most treasured and used possessions.

Sanitation and Sanctification

Trust the Quakers to take every opportunity to remind us of the basic needs of human life for others.

The photo was taken in the Gents, in the Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham,  strategically placed so you can't miss it!

This also is the Micah principle, acting justly and loving mercy. Hygiene, disease control, conferring dignity and safety, are life-saving ways of loving our neighbours.

Sometimes in our devotions it's better to thank God for blessings basic and necessary, than the highly spiritualised blessings we often associate with prayer.

For millions sanitation is as much a blessing as sanctification.

 

 

Gethsemane and Our IPhones.

Gethsemane was the dark night of Jesus' soul. Fear and anxiety distilled into dread. "He who knew no sin became sin that we might become in him the righteousness of God."

So why use a cartoon to illustrate an incident so dripping with anguish? Because sometimes the superficial and trivial helps us finally 'get it'. Jesus needed faithful companionship, unselfish attentiveness, comfort and reassurance that he wasn't alone.

The iphone and tablet are becoming the equivalent of self-concerned complacency. The gift of a person's presence is spurned for a digital screen, its glow preferred to the face of a friend.

Immigration and Friendship: Words that Redescribe the World.

Immigration is a central issue in the UK elections. This is a scandal, a stumbling block to the building of community in with otherness is welcomed. To use our fear of the other, and provoke our selfishness and hostility, as a way to win power is to subvert democracy by the tactics of hate.

The book I was reading outside this morning, has a different, life-affirming and generous perspective, encouraging "the unanxious engagement with the other who is indeed threat, but also gift, possibility and resource." Thank God for Walter Brueggemann, and a Word that redescribes the world!

(Walter Brueggemann, The Word that Redescribes the World. The Bible and Discipleship ( Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) page 186. 

The All Enfolding Love of God.

"He also showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. It seemed to me as round as a ball.

I gazed at it and thought, ‘What can this be?’

The answer came, ‘It is everything that is made.’

I marveled how this could be, for it was so small it seemed it might fall suddenly into nothingness.

Then I heard the answer, ‘It lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. All things have their being in this way by the grace of God.’"

The brilliant theologian, Julian of Norwich.

A Divisive Prime Minister in a United Kingdom.

On a long run to Fort William I stopped north of Loch Lomond to enjoy the beauty of the country where I live. I am not a nationalist, but I am Scottish, I love this country, and want its people to flourish.

The Prime Minister's political rhetoric about Scotland betrays an attitude that is dismissive, non-inclusive and frankly ignorant. Ignorant of our history, our culture and the contribution Scotland has made to the story of these islands.

In the pursuit of power, politicians become visually impaired, unseeing of the people, disinterested in history and culturally selective at their peril. 

One Hundred Word Posts; An Exercise in Brevity from Now to Pentecost

At different times in my ministry I've had to work within the limitations other people set. For some years in Paisley in the 1980's I maintained a telephone ministry which had a 2 minute sermon, every day. Actually it was 1 minute 47 seconds of speaking time. That became a daily discipline, sitting at the phone with a script recording no more than 100 seconds of voice time. But many people phoned every day to hear some words that might encourage, comfort, re-energise, help them reconfigure their day, maybe even reflect on the life they want, the person they are. And did so listening to words about God's love in Jesus. Sometimes there was feedback, often not. But like the sower who went out to sow, each day 100 seconds of scattered hope-filled words.

For years now I've written in the Aberdeen Press and Journal, the item they still quaintly and defiantly called the Saturday Sermon, now recently just 'Sermon'. It started as 500 words, then 400 words, and now 275 words. Like some chocolate manufacturers who charge the same price but slowly, unannounced, reduce the weight and size of the product; and sometimes fill the pack with air to make it feel fuller than it is. It occurs to me that some sermons are also made to sound fuller than they are by the same subterfuge...

Combining these two, 100 seconds and 275 words I've decided till Pentecost to limit posts here to saying something in 100 words. It can be less but not more. This is an entirely arbitrary form of personal training in the necessary skill of multum in parvo. After all The Lord's Prayer is only 55 words in its Anglican form minus the doxology. It will mean that for a few weeks a 100 word post will have to be exactly one third the length of this one!