Living Wittily

Our hope in God and God;s hope for us.

Hope is lived, and it comes alive, when we go outside of ourselves, and, in joy and pain take part in the lives of others. It becomes concrete in open community with others. (Jurgen Moltmann, The Open Church, 1978, page 35)

I wonder if discipleship today should best be measured by the hopefulness of our living, and thinking, and praying?

The true basis of the soul's hope of God is God's hope of the soul. His confident intention precedes and inspires ours, and gives all its significance to our life. (Evelyn Underhill.)

That old terminology is still important, prevenient grace, the Grace that was there before we ever were, that goes ahead of us, that knows us deeply, truly and unerringly. God has great hopes for each of us - I can live with that thought, and actually without that thought much of what I might call living is deprived of its most sustaining source of energy, hope.

So Paul's prayer speaks directly into the life of those of us, at times overhwelmed by the conveyor belt of evil, suffering and awfulness that is the news just now:

'The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.' I like that word, overflow - it speaks of excess, generosity, extra space, more than enough.

The photo was taken on Sunday, a visitor to our garden, a fragile beauty and harbinger of transformation.

Luther's anti-Jewish theology, German Theologians and the Holocaust.

Looking for background reading for something I'm writing on Bonhoeffer I discovered the recently published Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther's Theology, edited by R. Kolb, I. Dingel and L. Batka, (OUP: 2013). Of the 47 essays a number of them are to do with the reception of Luther's theology, and its legacy in different historical periods. Essay 41 is on the reception in the Nineteenth Century; chapter 42 then jumps forward to Marxist reception. There is no chapter on the reception and use of Luther in Germany in the first half of the 20th Century. There is a chapter on 'Luther's Views of Jews and Turks' (chapter 30).

I did a Google search for Holocaust and there is one occurrence of the term in the entire 688 pages - in chapter 30 on the Jews and Turks. I did a further search for Susannah Heschel whose book on The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany is a watershed in scholarship and research into the role of many Christian theologians and of significant sections of the German Lutheran church in the construction of an anti-Semitic mindset. Her name does not occur once.

It would be very unfair to make a critical judgement of this volume solely on such slight evidence as a Google search. But it's the omission of a chapter that spooked me, that jump of a hundred years missing out mid 20th century central Europe. I came away perturbed at such a lacuna in an authoritative academic Oxford Handbook on the subject of Luther's theology and its reception. There is only an introductory glance in chapter 30 referring to the Holocaust, and that is the one reference found by Google. The catastrophic impact of Luther's anti-Semitic writings and the direct role of a significant number of 1930s German theologians, academic and clerical, in giving such lethal prejudice the oxygen of scholarly credibility, is surely significant enough to have required an essay in its own right?

The same trawl on Amazon led to Before Auschwitz. What Christian Theologians Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism, by Peter Hinlicky. Susannah Heschel's name comes up with 21 hits. The relation between a number of German Christian theologians and the fate of the Jewish people in Europe from 1930 to 1945 is fully explored in this book.

Back to Bonhoeffer. I've been exploring the context of his writing in the 1930's and the increasingly dangerous call to follow Jesus through the minefield of National Socialist anti Semitic policies, and the crossfire between Church politics oscillating between collaboration and compromise, with significant numbers of Christians driven by conscience to stand firm in confession of Christ over and against sworn allegiance to Fuhrer or Fatherland. Bonhoeffer of course was a Lutheran, as was Martin Niemoller and Helmut Thielicke, so while Luther's anti Jewish writings were exploited in the interests of National Socialists by a number of leading academic theologians, there was no inevitable or essential connection between Luther's anti-Jewish writing, Lutheran theology and ideological anti-Semitism as political goal seeking religious justification. Many, many German Christians were not so easily taken in by such religious opportunism collaborating with political cynicism, with vast lethal consequence.

It is this complexity of motive and manoeuvre, the difficulties in establishing blame or innocence, culpability or naivete, and even culpable naivete, that gives rise to the moral perplexity and theological embarrassment evoked for subsequent generations of Christians, by Luther's anti-Jewish writings, and their reception culminating in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. These issues remain far too important, and that period of political and ecclesial history an episode of too recent tragic memory, for it to be subsumed into minor references and a page or two here and there, in what is a recognised academic reference work published by a highly respected University publisher, on the reception, legacy and content of the theology of Martin Luther.

I was so perturbed by this that I wrote a personal email to Professor Robert Kolb, one of the editors, and had a courteous and thoughtful reply, seeking to address my concerns from the standpoint of the editorial team and its decisions. I can see the Editors' point, that the issues of hard editorial choices meant that other important perspectives were also omitted; and that German reception of Luther in 1930's Germany competes with other important areas of interest for inclusion in full essay treatment; but editorial choices are inevitably powerful interpretive tools in the survey of a subject field, defining the relative importance of what is in and what is not.

I am glad too that my concerns are at least alluded to in several other essays in the collection, with pointers to further resources. But I remain perturbed - because the Holocaust is a permanent defining watershed in Jewish-Christian relations, requiring a disposition of Christian openness, repentance, self-critique and continuing reflection. Added to this, the active collaboration of prominent German Christian theologians using Luther's writings, baleful tendentious biblical eisegesis, and a theological overlay of public respectability, to give comfort, distorted credence and ideological validity to the anti-Semitic policies of National Socialism, was of critical importance in creating a zeitgeist in which the Holocaust was thinkable and made possible of implementation.

Such vast tragic evil makes an essay on Luther's theology, early 20th Century Germany, and the road to the Holocaust and beyond, self-choosing in the list of essential contents in a volume on Luther's Theology. The absence of such a treatment remains for me, a matter of deep regret, in an otherwise richly resourced compendium of current scholarly perspective on Luther's theology.

The Importance of Not Explaining Away the Hard Texts

All my life I've wrestled with hard texts in the Bible, those texts that upset, that make no sense, that tell me things about God, or me, I'd rather not know. I've tried not to be satisfied by 'solving' them, 'explaining' them, or ever thinking I could give the definitive answer. Nor would I want to. Reading sacred text is not like a literary sodoku, nor an exercise in literary comprehension and criticism, nor a way of practising that intellectual dominance we sometimes call understanding. Hard texts are reminders of our limited horizons, question marks over our concepts and constructs, speed bumps on the road of discipleship to slow down the comfortable cruiser.

In 37 years of ministry I've preached on the 'sin against the Holy Spirit which cannot be forgiven' several times. No, not the same sermon; and no, not with the same exegetical conclusions or sermon applications. Hard texts refuse to be tamed; they are theologically untidy; they are spiritual speed traps that catch out our complacent even carelessly quick rush to the truth of our own conclusions. And the text in Mark 3.29 lies like a granite boulder in the homiletical fast lane!

So here's yet another attempt at discerning the meaning of a text fraught with danger, and flashing with warning. In 1995, at ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nobel Prize-winning writer Elie Wiesel offered the following prayer: “God of forgiveness, do not forgive those who created this place. God of mercy, have no mercy on those who killed here Jewish children.” How can one of the greatest human beings alive, ask God not to forgive? How can an unforgiving man be a great man, a wonderful human being?

One of the speakers at Wiesel’s award ceremony was Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard. Here is what he said: “There are many excellent reasons for recognizing Professor Wiesel. But none is more important than his role in teaching survivors and their children how to respond in constructive peace and justice to a worldwide conspiracy of genocide, the components of which included mass killing, mass silence and mass indifference. Professor Wiesel has devoted his life to teaching the survivors of a conspiracy which excluded so few to re-enter and adjust in peace to an alien world that deserved little forgiveness.”

Weisel has always argued that authentic forgiveness is a two way transaction. It is a gift of grace, to be received with joy; it is a gesture of newness that challenges old hurts; it is a dismantling of defences that risks further offence. Perhaps, in the end the unforgivable sin is the refusal of forgiveness. If I do not forgive my brother and sister as God has forgiven me, how can I claim to know, to understand, to experience, to live – a forgiven life. And if I refuse to accept forgiveness, because I do not think I am wrong, or I don’t care about the hurt I caused, then my heart is closed to the grace which defines true forgiveness. How can an unforgiving heart, a heart closed to others, be open to the God whose heart is open to all?

Jesus said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable. What can that possibly mean? It is to see the good gift of forgiveness, and call it evil, to encounter mercy and resent it, to witness the renewal of human life as destructive power is expelled and the human spirit set free, and to make it a matter of principle to oppose it. It is to call blessing a curse, to fix the mind so firmly against the truth that in the end we are persuaded that wrong is right and evil is good. Such corrupt speaking, such debased thinking and emotional poison, is to speak against the Holy Spirit, and to place the heart beyond the reach of the God who demands obedient love, faithful living and truthful repentance.

The sin against the Holy Spirit is the exact opposite of Elie Wiesel’s life project – his whole life has been a demand that those who killed his people should seek forgiveness, name their evil, confront the truth, and thereby make possible a response from his people. To offer forgiveness when it is not asked, nor wanted, nor felt necessary, would deny the reality of evil and the immensity of the suffering it brings. Forgiveness is a moral disinfectant which can only be effective when it comes into contact with the contaminant. Only when hearts open to each other, only then can the gracious circle of forgiveness be completed, and the vicious circle of hatred be broken. There is a lasting and final reality in closing the heart to grace and mercy, and it is an eternal judgment that gives what we ask – freedom to make our hatreds and exclusions, our blindness and deafness, our chosen future. That is to sin against the Holy Spirit, and make forgiveness impossible – not because God won’t, but because we won’t, and therefore though it breaks God’s heart, God can’t.

If that's anywhere near the meaning of Jesus words it is indeed a hard text.

The Boston Marathon and an Alternative to the Futility of Violence

I haven't been in many American cities, but I have been in Boston three times. My good friends Bob and Becky live in New England, and as their guests we have enjoyed the hospitality, warm love for all things Scottish, and the intellectual and cultural experiences of New England people. And from a blugerass concert to Shaker heritage, to Boston and its important place in the history of Baptist thought and practice, even visiting the Quaker assembly which Elton trueblood attended.

I guess not many now know the name Elton Trueblood. Philosopher and cultural critic, radical Christian practitioner and intellectually generous follower of Jesus, a man whose wisdom and deep love for God illumines much of what he wrote, lived and said. His sermons The Yoke of Christ, his numerous books on Christian engagement with society in the 1950's and 60's, and his reputation as a thinker deeply plunged in the contemplative foundations of Christian theology and prayer, made that brief glimpse of the place where this man lived out his later life a kind of low key pilgrimage. I owe much to Trueblood's thought.

His book Alternative to Futility was born in class discussions about war and peace, violence and dialogue, conflict and reconciliation. In the 50's the Cold War was fuelled by runaway fear and suspicion, and the futility of a world divided along lines of terror, hostility and the idolatry of explosive power. The idolatry of explosive power from bullets to missiles, smart bombs to IED's, and yes nuclear weapons and drone delivered death, is now an established and largely unchallenged recourse to the explosion of energy for the damage of other human beings.

And I guess my overwhelming response to the explosions at the Boston marathan, immediate and so far largely unreflective as it is, is one of deep sadness at the futility of such acts of violence and hatred of other human beings. The death of an 8 year old boy, there to celebrate his father's finishing the race is, well futile. The reduction of human life to fuel for publicity of any cause or none fulfils no meaningful purpose I can discern. Trueblood's thesis still requires adequate refutation - whatever the motives for the use of explosive power to the damage of another human being, it will always be invalidated in any hieracrchy of values that sees human hurt and human killing as a means to an immensely lesser end. I realise more can be said. And on reflection I may wish I'd said more, or less. But the sense of sadness, and the refusal to give in to the temptations of despair and cynicism that grow out of a sense of futility, will not make me want to be less hopeful, more committed to an alternative view of the world, more thoughtful in my prayers for a world like ours.

One of the great visions of the Hebrew Bible is children making the noise of play and excitement in city streets. Whatever else the death of that young boy means, it is a reminder of what I hope for in human fulfilment, and what I pray against in the actions and thinking of those who settle for futility.

Kyrie Eleison

Christe Eleison

Kyrie Elieson

The God who is (mercifully) not have-able.

One of the most articulate and thoughtful books on the Cross is The Cross in Our Context, Douglas John Hall, (Fortress, 2003). I am drawn back to this book quite often when I need someone to remind me why I'm a Christian theologian, and a theological educator, and the responsibility to truth and intellectual integrity such a calling imposes. The book is a distillation of Hall's 3 volume Systematic Theology which doesn't find its way onto many reading lists, but ranks with Thomas C Oden's theology of the ecumenical consensus as a theology that, when taken togehter, gives due importance to past tradition and contemporary context.

Here is why I think Hall is worth reading, at least in this shorter version of his large scale theology:

"The theology of the cross cannot be a wholly satisfactory, wholly integrated statement about our human brokenness in relation to God; it can only be a broken statement about our brokenness - and about God's eschatological healing of our brokenness...The drive to mastery is perhaps never so great as when we try to master theology. Christian theology, particularly Christology, is perhaps a peculiar and poignant instantization of the original temptation: the temptation to have instead of continuing to live vis a vis this Thou who is not have-able"

(The photo is copyright, - it was taken at The Bield, in Perth, during a retreat in August) 

Reconciliation - the Epicentre of the Christian Gospel

I haven't posted on commentaries for a while but find myself this summer immersing myself in several biblical texts which will inform and underpin the new module I'm teaching, "Reconciliation: Theology and Practice". Already I think the title might be improved by adding just one letter so that it's a module about the theololgy and practices of reconciliation. We'll see - in any case a theology of reconciliation, like all genuinely academic and lived theology, will seek to explore and explain as the first step towards appropriating, applying and acting on the theology we say we believe, living out in the body and in communal activity, the convictions we hold in mind and heart.

So when it comes to commentaries, I'm looking for information to shape into knowledge; guidance as that knowledge is then organised into coherence, and used to interpret my experience and deepen insight on the way towards understanding; then and only then can the text be allowed to be the text, and the words taken seriously as a lens through which we hear the voice of the living Christ and, interpreted and clarified in our thinking and praying by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the Exegete of God. Information, knowledge, understanding, and thence the growth in wisdom. And wisdom in the Bible is always about life pratice and lived practices. 

Reconciliation lies at the epicentre of the Christian Gospel, the Christian worldview, and the Christian understanding of the Triune God. Spreading out from that dynamic core of Divine creativity and love, are the realities that give each human life its deepest meaning and highest purposes. For if we are created in the image of God, who is an eternal communion of self-giving and outward flowing love, then that which is unreconciled, which is fragmented, fractured, mutually excluding, sinful in the profound sense of separated from God and consequently committed to self-empowerment over and against all perceived others, then that which is inimical to the union and communion of God, is self-alienating from God and self-perpetuating in the human tragedy by every persistence in unreconciledness.  Perhaps the most destructive of human dispositions is to take that ugly ungrammatical term one stage further to define enmity as willed unreconcilability.

No wonder Paul in 2 Cornithians 5 believes that reconciliation is inextricably linked with sin a three letter word that contains in condensed form, an entire lexicon of inner predispositions and lived practices, habitual, predictable, ingenious and toxic. The great themes of the good news of Jesus Christ are brought to bear on the intractable contradiction that a world created by God the Eternal communion of mutal self-giving and other regarding love, has broken free of that love and creative purpose. 

The link between the drive for autonomy and the will to power is, for those made in the image of God, an ontological and existential contradiction. Reconciliation contains the moral requirement of that image made new, and with it the promise and enablement of new creation, and the enacted tragedy of He who knew no sin, becoming sin so that the inherent unreconciledness and willed unreconcilability of humanity might be overcome by a deeper, because costlier act of God in Christ - 'for God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not c ounting their tresspasses against them'.

This post has several long sentences. Sometimes I get a row for that from friendly critics. But sometimes complexity and multiplication of clauses is more than lazy writing - it is a long search for words adequate to mystery, a gesture of surrender to that which is beyond our conceptual and semantic control, an attempt to explain which is compelled by love but in the full knowledge that such truth remains inexplicable, and therefore the long sentence becomes a catena of words, arranged with as much precision as time allows, and offered not as theology but as doxology. And there I've done it again. Long sentence.....

Refusing to confer ultimacy on evil

Funny how sometimes several scattered moments of cognition can be drawn together by one of those rare migrating coincidences of thought, when against all odds, we are made attentive to something precious and important to capture,which otherwise would disappear in the fast flowing stream of consciousness which passes for thought in an overstimulated world.

It started when I read a novel last week by David Silva, The Rembrandt Affair. It's the story of a lost Rembrandt masterpiece, an SS Officer who combined an obscene courtesy to those he robbed with indifference to the plight of those same Jewish victims, a Jewish painting restorer who works for Israeli intelligence, and a little girl who, like Anne Frank was hidden by neighbours. A key moment in the story is when against all warnings, she crept out into the snow one moonlit night to play and dance. She was seen by the neighbours, reported, and the family were transported, except her, whose freedom was bought with the painting. Like so much of the literature of the Holocaust, there is the tragic irony of guilt clinging to the soul of the victims, who have done nothing wrong - other than exist.

Then I listened to Sheila Hancock's audio version of her autobiography Just Me. One chapter describes her visit to Hungary, and her discovery of the 600,000 Jewish people who were there before the War, and the tiny remnant who survived. Her sorrow and anger, her utter bewilderment at such organised human cruelty, combined with her rage that this could happen while she was betwen the ages of 8 and 13, in her lifetime, is one of the most telling pieces of soliloquy she has ever uttered, including Shakespeare.

I then watched the programme on Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, a pre-olympic docu-drama that filled out the stories of these two remarkable human beings. Both of their later lives overshadowed by war, and the cost and consequences of ideologies that reduce human beings as means to ends, rather than privilege every human being as ends in themselves.

By now, inside a few days, one of the 20th Century's most systematic forms of madness had insinuated itself back into that conscious reflective place in the mind, where prayer, ethical judgement, moral energy, critical thought and human wondering mix together in the search for meaning. As if the discovery of meaning could lessen the evil, reduce the guilt, redeem the suffering, restore hope or render the Shoah as something less than the mystery of iniquity it is. Because at the same time it arose in an historical nexus of events imagined, initiated and implemented by human beings, morally accountable, made in the image of God, and utterly capable of denying to others the humanity they claimed for themselves, thereby raising by their actions, in the tragic irony that accompanies moral suicide, a more potent question mark over their own humanity.

And then I came across this - and I realised again the spiritual genius of God's people, the miracle of human hopefulness and goodness, the capacity of that of God in us to look Hell in the face and refuse it ultimacy.

O Lord, remember not only the men and women of goodwill but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us.

Remember the fruits we bought, thanks to the suffering; our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this.

And when they come to judgement, let all the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.  (Prayer of a condemned Jew in Belson)

I'm glad I was in my study on my own when I read this, and I am glad for two reasons. First, because together with the clues and intimations above, I was ready to hear words that in their truth and hope and love, slice through the dark tangle of hate and anger, sorrow and shame, despair and distress that grips the heart when we are confronted by intolerable but unalterable truth. Secondly because I cried, confronted by the distilled essence of goodness and mercy.