An Update

For those wondering where I've been, I just thought I'd confirm that I've not been infected with swine flu, abducted by aliens, or swiftly despatched by a New World Order marksman. I've simply been too busy to blog over the past couple of months. The good (?) news is that I will be submitting my PhD within the next two weeks, if all goes to plan. After that, updates should be more regular, though whether the content will be any good is anyone's guess. One thing I will be posting is a seminar paper on "Doctor Who and Derrida" that I'll be working on post-submission.

In the mean time, everybody should read Steve Holmes' thoughtful analysis of what it means to be Reformed in a theological world dominated by the Piper's and Driscoll's. Steve, as usual, articulates things in a far better way than I could ever hope to.

St. Augustine on Superstition

Happy Friday 13th! Here's what Augustine has to say on superstition:

To these we may add thousands of the most frivolous practices, that are to be observed if any part of the body should jump, or if, when friends are walking arm-in-arm, a stone, or a dog, or a boy, should come between them. And the kicking of a stone, as if it were a divider of friends, does less harm than to cuff an innocent boy if he happens to run between men who are walking side by side. But it is delightful that the boys are sometimes avenged by the dogs; for frequently men are so superstitious as to venture upon striking a dog who has run between them,--not with impunity however, for instead of a superstitious remedy, the dog sometimes makes his assailant run in hot haste for a real surgeon. To this class, too, belong the following rules: To tread upon the threshold when you go out in front of the house; to go back to bed if any one should sneeze when you are putting on your slippers; to return home if you stumble when going to a place; when your clothes are eaten by mice, to be more frightened at the prospect of coming misfortune than grieved by your present loss. Whence that witty saying of Cato, who, when consulted by a man who told him that the mice had eaten his boots, replied, "That is not strange, but it would have been very strange indeed if the boots had eaten the mice." - De Doctrina, 2.20.31

I'd add more commentary, but somebody sneezed when I was putting on my slippers this morning. I'll let you know when I'm out of bed.

The Apocalyptic Tone

Whilst writing up my PhD stops me from writing anything insightful here (no change there then!), the recent doom and gloom predictions regarding the economy which are floating around at the moment had me in mind of the following Derrida quote, taken from his article, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone recently adopted in Philosophy". It seems to encapsulate the current media fixation quite nicely:

"Haven’t all the differences taken the form of a going-one-better in eschatological eloquence, each newcomer, more lucid than the other, more vigilant and more prodigal too than the other, coming to add more to it: I tell you this in truth; this is not only the end of this here but also the first of that there, the end of history, the end of class struggle, the end of philosophy, the death of God…the end of man, the end of the West, the end of Oedipus, the end of the earth, Apocalypse now, I tell youn, in cataclysm, the fire, the blood, the fundamental earthquake, the napalm descending from the sky by helicopters, like prostitutes, the nuclear thunder and the great whoring… the end of the university, the end of phallocentrism and pallogocentrism, and I don’t know what else? And whoever would come to refine, to tell the extreme of the extreme, namely the end of the end… that person would, whether wanting to or not, participate in the concert”

Just when you thought you'd seen it all...

For those who, like me, find pleasure in the absurd, Japan seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Without any further ado I present the following piece of sushi art, the very ludicrousness of which brought a huge smile to my face:

George Herbert, "Denial"

George Herbert is pretty much my favourite seventeenth-century poet. While I have a lot of time for Donne, and even more for Marvell (who, after all, references the "conversion of the Jews", slipping in some eschatology under the radar), neither of them approaches the broad devotion and frankness which I find in Herbert's work.

My current favourite is his "Denial", a meditation on those times when God's face is like flint and hidden from us. I love the comparison Herbert makes in the poem: both mind and verse are disconsolate until God's intervention in the final stanza. There's therefore a lovely rhyming scheme which is consistently frustrated up until the final couplet, when God "mends my rime". Partly, however, I find Herbert's poem describes exactly how I currently feel in my walk with God. I'm not sure whether this is as a result of over work, or a symptom of something more serious, with the following becoming something of a prayer for me. Hopefully the cloud will break in the desert soon. Anyway, on to Herbert:

When my devotions could not pierce Thy silent ears; Then was my heart broken, as was my verse: My breast was full of fears And disorder: My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, Did fly asunder: Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, Some to the wars and thunder Of alarms. As good go any where, they say, As to benumb Both knees and heart, in crying night and day, Come, come, my God, O come, But no hearing. O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee, And then not hear it crying! all day long My heart was in my knee, But no hearing. Therefore my soul lay out of sight, Untuned, unstrung: My feeble spirit, unable to look right, Like a nipped blossom, hung Discontented. O cheer and tune my heartless breast, Defer no time; That so thy favors granting my request, They and my mind may chime, And mend my rime.

Christian Buses: The death of constructive dialogue

I quite like George Hargreaves. I once sat next to him at church, and discussed the finer points of song writing and tunings for acoustic guitars. Little did I realise that he had previously penned chart busting gay anthem “So Macho”, while I had only penned four chord comedy songs about chavs fighting on public transport. He gave me his card and a handshake, and I thought little more of it. This was, of course, before he burst into wider public consciousness in the wearying Channel Four concept show “Make Me a Christian”. The idea (and you can be forgiven for blotting this from your minds) was that a hardcore team of clergy would help unlikely converts (Lesbians! Bikers! Sexaholics!) live a life of faith for a month or so. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t really work – but then, as Calvin would have been the first to tell you, we can’t “make” anybody a Christian anyway.

The Rev. Hargreaves is back in the news today, as he leads the fight back against Richard Dawkins’ Atheist bus scheme. I’ve dealt with why this scheme was slightly ridiculous in a post last year (and Steve Holmes has done so much more thoroughly here), and I had hoped, truth be told, that the entire sorry saga would be forgotten about soon. Unfortunately, we (and by that, I mean Christians) have decided to respond in kind. As Mark Sweney details in today’s Guardian, Hargreaves is at the forefront of a number of new atheist baiting arguments. “There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life!” is his slogan of choice, and one which I fear will fall foul of Advertising Standards Agency rules. After all, the Atheists had to run with “There’s probably no God” due to the fact they couldn’t conclusively prove that God didn’t actually exist. I imagine the same rules apply to any claim that there definitely is a God. The Russian Orthodox Church’s slogan “There IS a God. BELIEVE. Don’t worry and enjoy your life” will probably fall into the same problem. Which leaves us with our old friends at the Trinitarian Bible Society. Obviously keen not to offend, they’ve decided to run with Psalm 53:1: “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God”. The drawbacks to this approach are obvious. It is somewhat akin to the Humanist Society plastering Dawkin’s assertion that “Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus” on the side of buses. The context of scripture, the fact that the word “fool” usually refers to moral failings, the principles of evangelism are forgotten, as the Society try to make their point with a pithy quote.

I believe that we risk destroying our credibility, as evangelicals, as a church (in a broad sense) by responding in kind to these attacks upon us. Dialogue is lost. Argument and intellectual vitality is undermined and subsumed in a mass of sound bites and proof texts. The academy, the debating hall, the reasoned argument is abandoned in favour of a slogan which captures the party line; the pithy phrase which ridicules the other side and returns us to our own camp with a self indulgent glow. A glance at the “comments” section on this story at the Guardian website reduces me to despair. There is no civility to the debate. No acceptance that, while we may approach the question from different intellectual horizons, that we might each bring something to the table. Christians are “lunatics” or “idiots”, while Atheists are “unfeeling” or “stupid”. This is no surprise, of course. The “comments” threads on news sites usually act like a black hole, sucking up any passing junk and preserving it, frozen for eternity, as a monument to ignorance and stupidity. But these comments are symptomatic of a debate conducted through Dawkin’s rhetoric. The idea that faith has ever contributed anything positive is immediately dismissed and discarded, theology (as a discipline) is discarded as worthless and outmoded. If Dawkins took time to engage with the numerous modes of discourse available in the theological tradition, then perhaps a constructive dialogue could be built.

But are we any better ourselves? As Evangelicals, do we take the high ground? The ridiculous polemic of Mark Driscoll and co. suggests to me that we don’t. “No compromise” is often recast “as no common sense” and dialogue gets lost in demonization of the other side. Maybe there will be a movement within the evangelical base which shifts away from this, and seeks constructive dialogue with other Christian traditions, and even with those we oppose. Sadly, though, I anticipate that many Evangelicals would see this as selling out, preferring to adopt a hardline us and them dichotomy and culture war approach. Maybe I’m wrong, but I fear that we will be doomed to trade insults across buses for all eternity.

New Michael Jensen blog

Michael Jensen is always an insightful and entertaining read (see his post on Calvin's hermeneutics last week for evidence). His new blog, with the rather tongue-in-cheek title "Defence Against the Dark Arts", is now online at Sydney Anglicans. Focusing on the "busy intersection of Theology, Culture, Ethics and Politics", it should produce some interesting work over the coming months. I look forward to some good commentary on one of my favourite themes, from one of my favourite bloggers. Do check it out!