Sparrow Gardens R.I.P.

For those who are familiar with the Briercrest campus, today marked the beginning of the end of what fondly was known as Sparrow Gardens (a.k.a. the hockey rink). This building was built circa 1942 and was originally an air hangar on the Caron air base and has served as the center of hockey action at Caronport ever since Briercrest took possession of the airbase in 1945.

I walked past the old rink this morning about 6:30 am and everything was still intact, but these pictures taken about 6:00 pm this evening tell you what a demolition crew can do in a day!

Sparrow Gardens from North West

Sparrow Gardens from North East

Thanks for the memories and the faithful service, Sparrow Gardens!

Advice for Young Pastors – Willimon

I came across a lengthy, but superb, post over at Per Crucem ad Lucem. It is a series of reflections by Bishop William Willimon on Advice for Young Pastors. (Ok, I know I said in my last post that Andrew Purves is one of my favourite pastoral theologians–and he is. But Willimon is right up there, too!)

I won’t comment much on it here, but I especially appreciated point #7 under the section entitled, “The Church’s World” giving a bit of rationale on why seminaries make you read so much when you are preparing for ministry. I quote that section here to whet your appetite.

7. I pray that you studied hard in seminary, read widely, thought deeply because you are going to need all of that if you are going to stay long as a leader of the church. Your life would be infinitely easier and less complicated if God had called you to be an accountant or a seminary professor. Most of the stuff that you read in seminary will only prepare you really to grow and to develop after you leave seminary. Think of your tough transition into the parish as the beginning, not the end, of your adventure into real growth as a minister. Theology tends to be wasted on the young. It’s only when you run into a complete dead end in the parish, when you are aging and tired and fed up with the people of God (and maybe even God too) that you need to know where to go to have a good conversation with some saint in order to make it through the night. Believe it or not, it’s much easier to beg in in the ministry, even considering the tough transition between seminary and the parish, than it is to continue in ministry. A winning smile, a pleasing personality, a winsome way with people, none of these are enough to keep you working with Jesus, preaching the Word, nurturing the flock, looking for the lost. Only God can do that and a major way God does that is through the prayerful, intense reading, study and reflection that you can only begin in three or four years of seminary.

Crucifying Ministries

One of my favourite pastoral theologians (other than Karl Barth–who is very much a pastoral theologian, thank you very much!) is Andrew Purves of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I have been assigning his book Reconstructing Pastoral Theology: A Christological Foundation (amongst others) in one of my seminary classes on pastoral theology. He has now come out with what you could call “Reconstructing-Lite,” entitled, The Crucifixion of Ministry. He essentially abridges the main points of Reconstructing for a more popular audience, but extends some of his arguments as well. Central to his argument are what he calls the “two forgotten doctrines” in ministry today: 1) the vicarious humanity and ministry of Christ (i.e., Christ is the one who accomplishes ministry to God on our behalf), and 2) our union with Christ in the Holy Spirit (i.e., our ministry is effective only because of our being united spiritually with Christ’s body through the Holy Spirit). At any rate, I highly recommend both of these books to pastors. But if you are really busy, then at least read Crucifixion of Ministry.

But to give a snippet, here are some great paragraphs from the opening of chapter 3. It will give you a sense of the “flavour” of pastoral theology Purves is offering.

We do not mediate Jesus Christ. We do not make him effective, relevant or practical. Neither is it up to us to raise the dead, heal the sick or forgive the sinners. Faithful ministry is just not that grandiose.

When we think that the ministry of the gospel is for us to do, that we carry Jesus around with us in our pastoral and homiletical tool bags, dispensing him here and there as we deem fit, we are in the way and have become a hindrance to the ministry of the gospel. As ministers of the gospel we are not ecclesiastical conjurors with magic hands, pulling Jesus out of our hats.

To repeat, here is the issue: Our ministries are not redemptive. Only Christ’s ministry is redemptive. If we stand in the way, focusing on our ministries, we have to shoved out of the way. When we have a severe preoccupation with ‘my ministry,’ that ministry has to be crucified. (73)

I love the first lines of the first and third paragraph. We are not mediators of Jesus, and our ministries are not redemptive. This aligns nicely with why I have been consistently opposed in past years to speaking about “incarnational” ministry, because such ways of speaking are constantly in danger of confusing or conflating the role of the Church and the role of Christ. We (the church) are not the incarnation of Jesus on earth; we are not the only Jesus some people will see. Jesus can show himself to people with or without us, thank you very much. Yes, we are his body, united to him, the Head, by the Holy Spirit. But we never have and never will replace Jesus. Keep that straight and you will save yourself a lot of pressure in ministry. You don’t have to be Jesus; all you have to do is let Jesus be Jesus, and enjoy the ride!

And furthermore, our ministries are not redemptive. We aren’t the ones doin’ the redeemin’! Again, if that doesn’t take pressure off of you in your ministry, I’m not sure what will! Rather, ministry becomes full of hope because we no longer need to worry about what will happen if–I mean, when–we fail. Not that we go around looking for ways to fail. But we can rest assured that when we fail, Jesus’ redemptive ministry goes on. Whew! What a relief!

Purves’ pastoral theology is at once startling and yet vitally refreshing. He takes Galatians 2:20 as paradigmatic for understanding ministry, and for setting it in contrast to many popular understandings of the task of ministry. For it is in Gal 2:20 that we read, “I yet not I but Christ…” As Purves paraphrases it, “I [Jesus], not you, do the ministry that saves and heals, that gives hope and blesses, that forgives and promises life.” (74) This is in stark contrast to the models of ministry that look at Jesus as some kind of “model” for ministry, someone whom we can emulate and imitate in our own ministries (i.e., WWJD applied to ministry–which, by the way, Purves critiques quite nicely on p. 51!) But frankly, the WWJD model of ministry is paralyzing, for who–really, who?–can live up to the exemplar by way of ministry? This isn’t to say that Jesus is not an example worth following. Paul thinks he is! (Cf.  1 Cor 11:1). But taken on its own, the exemplar model of ministry is simply inadequate to the task.

These issues of ministry are really close to my mind and heart these days, especially because it was publicly announced here at Briercrest today that I have been “reappointed” as Dean of the Seminary, and elected/appointed anew as Chair of the Christian Ministries division in the College–a dual role which has “ministry” at its heart. (I begin both these roles officially on August 1). And as I think about the tasks at hand, I am excited and full of trepidation–yet with Purves’ words ringing in my mind, full of hope!

But I ask you, my friends and colleagues, to pray for me that I would, from the start, crucify my ministry, and be ready and willing to ask, “Jesus, how can I get on board with the heart of your ministry here at Briercrest College and Seminary?” And not only that, I ask that you would pray that I would be able to bring that challenge also to my co-labouring faculty here at Briercrest as well–that we would refuse to build our ministry, but would constantly ask Jesus, “What do you want to do here amongst us and amongst our students?”

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Gal 2:20

Theologians in court

So in the past weeks, at least two Canadian theologians have had their day in court. No, they weren’t fighting an unjust traffic ticket, but were serving as expert witnesses in some fairly high profile civil suits.

First, Prof. John Stackhouse, Jr., of Regent College (Vancouver, BC) has been called as an expert witness before the BC Supreme Court on the matter of a property dispute within the Anglican diocese of New Westminster. The complainants are members of four congregations, including three priests, who left the Anglican communion in protest of the local bishop’s blessing of same-sex marriage. They are arguing that they have the right to retain the property of the churches.

Interestingly, Stackhouse was called as a “neutral expert witness.” But according to the reporting at the Dicoese of New Westminster’s website, his testimony was called into question:

[T]he diocese’s lawyer however questioned [Stackhouse's] objectivity by introducing a web blog that Stackhouse agreed he had written. It stated that Bishop Michael Ingham, bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster, was “heretic and schismatic” and wrote about “churches that resist Ingham’s crypto-Hinduism.”

On the stand the professor said that he had written the blog but only used “strictly descriptive terms.”

[This comment about John's blog shows something pretty important about how "public" this blogging practice really is. It makes me realize just how careful I need to be about what I write here at Theommentary. Who knows...something I write today could come back and bite me tomorrow or two decades from now.]

The Diocese trial is scheduled to last until June 12. You can also see some of Stackhouse’s preliminary comments about it on his own blog.

A second theologian called before the Quebec Superior Court is Prof. Douglas Farrow of McGill University. (Readers will recall that Farrow is my own Doktorvater). Farrow has testified as an expert witness on behalf of Loyola High School, a private Catholic boys’ school, which has asked to be exempted from the Quebec province’s new required ethics and religious culture course. As the Loyola website asks, “Can the ‘pursuit of the common good’ and the ‘recognition of others’ be taught from a Catholic perspective or does it have to be secular?” To answer their own question, Loyola and the vast majority of the parents of Loyola students see the course as running counter to their own Catholic worldview. A Montreal Gazette article reports Farrow as saying,

“Should a Catholic institution . . . be forced to change the way it does things to fit someone else’s world view?” he asked. “In the Catholic world view, it’s not possible to be Catholic for 22 hours a day, then hold another world view for the other two hours.”

I happen to be heartened and encouraged that theologians like Stackhouse and Farrow have agreed to serve in this very public way as theologians. But I wonder what you think? Do you think that theologians like Stackhouse and Farrow are getting mixed up in matters that they ought not to? Does their service in this way “taint” them as theologians? Or is their service a natural and vital extension of their calling as theologians?

Big theology works Meme

I saw this great quotation from Martyn-Lloyd Jones over at Per Crucem ad Lucem on the importance of reading for the preacher:

Time must be found for reading, and we turn now to the more intellectual type of reading. The first is theology. There is no greater mistake than to think that you finish with theology when you leave a seminary. The preacher should continue to read theology as long as he is alive. The more he reads the better and there are any authors and systems to be studied. I have known men in the ministry, and men in various other works of life who stop reading when they finish their training. They think they have acquired all they need; they have their lecture notes, and nothing further is necessary. The result is that they vegetate and become quite useless. Keep on reading; and read the big works’.

-Martyn Lloyd-Jones Preaching and Preachers (Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), 177.  (Underline mine)

Read the big works, he says.

Which caused me to ask, “Which ones?”

For a bit of fun, here is my own  ”big theology works meme.” The list below represents 10 of the bigger theological works (mostly multi-volume works, but with some exceptions) I think everyone in ministry should tackle sometime in their lifetime. I’ve split the list into two: Pre-20th century and 20th century.

Pre-20th Century

1. Irenaeus’ Against Heresies. (I’ve read through this one for my doctoral comps, and it was in the old Ante-Nicene Father’s translation–which is fine (and available free online!), but uses somewhat archaic English. There are better translations, I understand. You need to press through the first three books of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies. Books 4 and 5 are the most profound and important.)
2. Augustine’s City of God Against the Pagans. (I’ve read through the Cambridge edition three times. It’s a great translation. Very readable. As with Irenaeus, you may struggle through the first three or four books, but press on. It gets better the further you go!)
3. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. (The whole Summa is available online here, but I doubt I could make it through any of these “big books” online. I need a book in my hands! Unfortunately, this is one of the “big works” that I haven’t read through–yet. Hopefully some day. By the way, Amazon.ca seems to have a good deal on for the full five volume set here).
4. John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. (The two volume McNeil edition is best. It’s actually easier reading that you might think.)
   
5. Friederich Schleiermacher’s The Christian Faith. (I’ve read large chunks of Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre, but have never read through cover-to-cover. I gotta get to this one sometime. I think Schleiermacher is vitally important for getting a handle on where modern theology has gone in the 19th and 20th centuries. Evangelicals especially need to read Schleiermacher…they may be shocked that he sounds more us than we realize at points!)

   Twentieth Century

6. Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. (You shouldn’t be surprised hearing this from me. But really–reading the Church Dogmatics continues to be a joy for me. I rarely read a section without thinking, “Now why didn’t I think of that??” And remember: If you need a primer on reading the Church Dogmatics, you can find my own introduction here. And now there is a new paperback edition of the CD in 31 volumes, as well as a searchable CD-Rom version from Logos)
   
7. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic  Theology. (I’ve often said that reading Pannenberg’s 3 volume systematic theology is a theological education in itself. Pannenberg is still, in my opinion, one of the most important living systematic theologians. His importance is in how he tries to do theology in light of the modern disciplines of science and humanities.)
8. Thomas Oden, Systematic Theology in 3 volumes: The Living God, The Word of Life, and Life in the Spirit. (I had the privilege of meeting and working together briefly with Thomas Oden at a WEA Theological consultation a few summers ago. He is a delightful and humble man. His systematic “paleo-orthodoxy” is designed to help us to see what Christians have “everywhere and always believed.”)
9. Donald Bloesch’s Christian Foundations series in 7 volumes: Theology of Word and Spirit, Holy Scripture, God Almighty, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Church, and The Last Things. (Bloesch is an evangelical who is sympathetic to Barth, but is also willing to critique him where he feels necessary. Bloesch’s genius is being able to summarize diverse theological viewpoints in a well-worded phrase or sentence, while setting his own position against that backdrop. He takes some getting used to reading, but I continue to use his works as introductory texts in my seminary theology classes.)
10. N.T. Wright’s Christian Origins and the Question of God series. This includes: The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God. (Wright, of course, is probably one of the most important living biblical theologians. I must confess that I have not paid as much attention to these as I should (I’ve spent most of my time in the third volume on Resurrection), but these are undisputably important works for any pastor to be aware of these days.)

There you have it. I’m guessing that the above 10 “big theology works” represent somewhere in the range of 25,000 pages. Let’s see… at 10 pages a day, this will only take about 7 years to finish. What are you waiting for?

So what do you think? Have I missed anything much more important?

Wacky weather

I just checked the national forecast for tomorrow. Regina’s forecast is a low of 5 Celsius and a high of 8. Yay. (That was a sarcastic “yay” in case you didn’t quite catch it). I was out for a walk this morning and wished I had worn gloves! It’s about 5 degrees out as I type…

But here’s the amazing thing: Tomorrow’s forecast (June 8/09) for Whitehorse, Yukon is projected to have a low of 12 and a high of 22–two degrees warmer than what is projected for Vancouver (20), and one degree warmer than Halifax (21)!!

So much for our Sunday School picnic outside today!

Thinking about Miracles and Faith

When it comes to miracles, Karl Barth insists that we have one of two options: Either we believe them, or reject them; just don’t try to explain them. In his discussion of the Virgin Birth in the Göttingen Dogmatics, he says:

Concerning the miracle of the conception of the Spirit and the virgin birth, we must also say above all that no matter what stance we adopt we must accept it as a miracle. One can, of course, reject it, as one can reject miracles in general. This is in order. A miracle is an event that one can only reject, only declare to be impossible and absurd, or only believe. Anything that softens or removes this either/or disrupts the concept of miracle. Thus to make the conception by the Spirit plausible by referring to instances of parthogenesis in the lower plant and animal kingdoms makes no more sense than to defend the resurrection with the help of occultism and spiritism. These are nonclassical, second-rate, impure enterprises, as we should see even if we are resolved on rejection instead of belief. Why not come out plainly with rejection instead of engaging in apologetics? An explained miracle is obviously a miracle no longer. It is no longer exposed to rejection. It no longer has to be believed. Those who explain a miracle, even if they do so in a more sophisticated way than we usually find among rationalists, are simply showing thereby that they do not want to have to decide between rejection and belief.
-Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 161. (Underline mine)

Is Barth right about this? Are miracles simply believed or rejected? Or let me ask the question in a slightly different way: Is a “rejected” miracle still a miracle? In other words, does a “divine event” which we have traditionally called a “miracle” have an independent ontology–an existence of sorts–regardless of whether or not there is belief?

Let me suggest that it might be good to think about this question similarly to how we might think about the nature of a “sacrament”: Just as the giving of the elements of the sacrament must be coupled with faith in order for it to be properly “sacramental,” so a divine event to be classified as a “miracle” must have “faith” as a co-requisite. It is only a “miracle” when a divine event is recognized as such by faith. Here I want to explore whether this might be a fruitful way to think of miracles in such a way that we get away from two equally inadequate views of the relationship between miracle and faith.

One inadequate view of the relation of faith and miracle  sets up a “cause/effect” relationship between faith and miracles, especially in some of the “word of faith” movement’s teachings on miracles, which practically makes faith the cause of a miracle. I’m dubious about this whole movement’s emphasis, but to its credit, this view at the very least recognizes how regularly faith is associated with the miraculous in the Bible, especially in the Gospels. However, the connection between the two in this view is too close, such that the “miracle” becomes so tied to faith that the miracle actually becomes  an “anthropological event” where the faith of the human individual is a more significant factor than God’s own sovereign free act.

On the other hand, another inadequate view so disconnects faith from the miraculous that miracles are viewed as events which can be independently verified apart the exercise of faith. The “evidence that demands a verdict” kind of apologetic might fit here. “Miracles are miracles are miracles!” these proponents might argue, whether or not one has faith. E.g., Jesus’ resurrection can be so proven to have taken place that one must, in the face of empirical evidence, accept it as a “miracle.”

But perhaps there is a third way–a way signalled (but perhaps not yet understood?) by Barth in the passage above. That signal comes in the underlined statement: “An explained miracle is obviously a miracle no longer. It is no longer exposed to rejection. It no longer has to be believed.” I might paraphrase and expand it as follows:  

An event that is explained as coming from any source other than the divine is obviously by definition no miracle. While the event may be explained through other means, it ceases to be a miracle precisely because it is not accompanied by faith. Just as the reception of bread and wine may stand as an event, it is not by definition a sacrament if there is no faith (either of the one giving, or of the one receiving, or both) present.

Thus, in order to find a third way between the alternatives as presented, we need to add a “third term” to the discussion. Rather than simply speaking of the relationship of “miracle” to “faith,” I want to suggest 1) a divinely enacted event, along with 2) human faith, results in 3) a miracle.  So the equation becomes: Divine Act + Faith = Miracle. Let me expand a bit on this. 

You will recall the story of Jesus being at his home town of Nazareth (Mark 6:1ff). There we read that the people there took offense at Jesus (Mk 6:3) and consequently, the Evangelist says, “[Jesus] could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (Mk 6:5). It is noteworthy that here the emphasis is the reverse of what we might expect. It is not that 1) a miracle occurs, and then 2) the people have subsequently to decide to reject or accept the miracle as such. Rather, it is that the people of Nazareth have already taken offense at Jesus–have disbelieved him–and so he is constrained not to do any miracles (except a few) on account of the people’s lack of faith.

So how might Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’ “constraint of miracles” be understood? Why does Mark say that Jesus “could not do [ουκ εδυνατο] any miracles”? One could (as some do) say that Jesus was literally unable to do miracles because there was no faith, that he was bound not to do miracles in the absence of faith. That is a possible reading, though Matthew’s account (cf. Matt 13:58) gives a bit of different rendition when he simply says that Jesus “did not do [ουκ εποιησεν] miracles,” giving the picture that this was Jesus’ own choice. At any rate, this reading places far too much weight upon human faith as the main factor behind a miracle, and Jesus becomes captive to human whim and belief.

So rather than thinking of faith and miracles in this “cause/effect” relationship (i.e., “If faith, then miracle”), I wonder if we might understand Mark’s way of putting it this way: Where there is no faith in the divine act, there can be, by definition, no miracle. For in order for there to be truly a miracle, divine act AND faith must be both present. Mark is not saying that Jesus can’t display some divine power or work: if that were true, his authority would be called entirely into question and the lack of the faith of the people would be the mitigating factor that prevents Jesus from acting. On the contrary, the lack of faith in Jesus by the occupants of Nazareth  meant that any divine action Jesus could or might do would fail to be recognized as a miracle. And miracles, in the biblical frame, are always enacted by God as a witness to his own glory. So in this passage, Mark is wanting to say that Jesus knew that the exercise of that spiritual power in Nazareth would take place in a faith vacuum. Consequently, even if Jesus did a divine act, without faith there would be no “miracle” per se–there would be no recognition by the people of Nazareth that THIS divine act is a sign and witness to God’s glory through Jesus.  Another way of putting it is that if “miracle” is understood as an divinely enacted “Word of God,” “Jesus could not do miracles” in Nazareth, not because he lacked ability, but because he knew that such acts would return return to him void–as an unheard, unbelieved word, rather than the  Word of God which does not return void and empty (cf. Isa 55:11).

So I think we should neither set up a cause/effect relationship between faith and miracle, nor so disconnect faith from miracle so as to make the miracle having an independent ontology unrelated to faith. Rather, we need clearly to acknowledge that biblically there is a clear correlation between faith and the miracles everywhere evident in the Gospels (and, indeed, throughout the Bible). Faith is not the cause of a miracle; yet there is, in very real sense, no “miracle without faith.” For to disbelieve a divine act as a sign of God’s glory is to receive it as something other than God’s Word. It reduces the understanding of the “divine act” to a “secular event.” A divine act with no faith means no miracle. There is no miracle without faith–no sign of God’s glory with the believing eyes to see it as such. Whereas for those with faith a divine act is seen as a miracle, for unbelieving others, the divine event is perceived as nothing more than a secular event with some other explanation. This differentiation between a divine act being recognized as a miracle vs. a phenomenon begging another explanation corresponds to what Barth later (in the Church Dogmatics) called the problem of the “the wall of secularity” in his discussion of mystery:

Mystery is the concealment of God in which He meets us precisely when He unveils Himself to us, because He will not and cannot unveil Himself except by veiling Himself. …

The speech of God is and remains the mystery of God supremely in its secularity. When God speaks to man, this event never demarcates itself from other events in such a way that it might not be interpreted at once as part of these other events….

Even the biblical miracles do not break through this wall of secularity. From the moment they took place they were interpreted otherwise than as proofs of God’s Word, and obviously they can always be interpreted in a very different way. The veil is thick. We do not have the Word of God otherwise than in the mystery of its secularity.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1, 165.

So I wonder whether it would be good to think of a miracle not as something caused by faith (i.e., “miracles happen when you have faith”), nor even something that causes faith (i.e., “miracles help to build faith.”) Rather, a biblical miracle is a divine act of God which is recognized as such only in and through faith. This does not negate the real occurence or “ontology” of an act of God apart from faith, but it does indicate that faith is the only sufficient instrument by which the divine occurence can be recognized as a “miracle” per se. In sacramental terms:  a miracle is the recognition of a divine act as a divine act in conjunction with human faith.  The implication is that even a divine act like the resurrection of Jesus is not an event that can be spoken of as a “miracle” independently of faith, but only as an event which, when recognized by faith as the ultimate act of God and the Spirit in raising Jesus from the dead, becomes a miracle–a sign of God’s glory–that enlivens and illumines the person with eyes to see it.

An analogy that might help to illustrate what I mean has to do with the composition of water. A water molecule, you will recall, is the combination of two hydrogen atoms together with one oxygen atom. Now as a long as we are thinking only in two terms (hydrogen and oxygen), it is difficult to define the “before” and “after” relationship of the H atoms and the O atoms. It is clearly not the case that the hydrogen causes the oxygen, nor vice versa. Nor can we said that hydrogen or oxygen are independent causes of water. Rather, water (H20) is the conjunction of H and O.  Water (analogous here to “miracle”) is the conjunction of Hydrogen (divine act) and Oxygen (faith). There is no need to deny that divine acts (cf. hydrogen) are able to “exist” independently of faith (cf. oxygen) or even vice versa. But it is only in the conjunction of divine act and faith  that a “miracle” has its reality. The equation is not: Faith causes Miracles, nor is is, Miracles cause Faith. Rather, Divine Act +  Faith = Miracle.

Of course, there is one more important qualifier that is needed, a qualifier I think the Barth of the Church Dogmatics saw more clearly than the Barth of the Göttingen Dogmatics. This is that Jesus Christ is himself the “object” of faith who gives himself as “subject” to us. It is not that the people of Nazareth lacked an abstract faith–some kind of “faith in faith.” Rather, it was Jesus himself who appeared in their midst who was cause for their stumbling. It was their failure to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the prophet come from God which meant that the co-requisite faith needed to become witnesses of the miraculous was absent. In other words, Jesus could not do miracles in Nazareth not only because they lacked some inward compulsion to believe in something, but because they refused to believe the Someone who stood in their midst.

He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

Novelists and theologians

For the Flannery O’Connor fans in our midst, there is a new online article about her over at The Atlantic. It’s worth checking out, especially the last half.

I loved O’Connor’s observation about the challenge a Christian novelist faces: 

[T]he novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural.

In other words, sin and brokenness will only be seen as such when pushed to the limits of their inherent absurdity. After all, sin and brokeness are essentially irrational and ugly, going against the grain of God’s rational and beautiful creation of shalom. In this regard, O’Connor’s genius is found in her ability to portray sin, which is so “normal” to us, in ways that we see it in all its ugliness, irrationality and abnormality. (By the way, I think this is also what makes The Simpsons, at least the earlier seasons, work so well–the show managed to unveil the truth about many of our modern day sacred and secular ideological cows for what they were–silly, absurd, and irrational…but I digress!)

Furthermore, O’Neill, the author of the article, suggests that what made O’Connor “so wickedly good” was her ability to help readers see sin and brokenness as absurd against the presence and reality of God’s involvement in the world. But this aptitude was due precisely to what I would call O’Connor’s “mystagogical realism.” As O’Neill puts it,

O’Connor declared her-self a realist, albeit one pushing “toward the limits of mystery.” Mystery, in her mind, was concerned with “the ultimate reaches of reality,” which is to say, the agency of the divine in human affairs.  

In some respects, the theologian has a similar problem to the novelist, though he faces it in the inverse. For a theologian, contrary to the O’Connorian type of novelist, has the task of being a “mystagogue” (i.e., a purveyor of mystery) who pushes divine mystery toward the limits of rationality. That is to say, the theologian must be constantly aware that there is no true mystery which finally leaves rationality behind. As GK Chesterton so ably, aptly and astutely explained it,

Whenever you hear much of things being unutterable and indefinable and impalpable and unnamable and subtly indescribable, then elevate your aristocratic nose towards heaven and snuff up the smell of decay. It is perfectly true that there is something in all good things that is beyond all speech or figure of speech. But it is also true that there is in all good things a perpetual desire for expression and concrete embodiment; and though the attempt to embody it is always inadequate, the attempt is always made. If the idea does not seek to be the word, the chances are that it is an evil idea. If the word is not made flesh it is a bad word.  [From GKC's article entitled, Mystagogue]

 So, taking a cue from O’Connor’s observation’s about the challenges for the Christian novelist, I suggest the challenge for the theologian is this:

The theologian with worldly concerns will find in God’s self-revelation perfections which are self-evidently captivating to him, and his problem will be to make these divine perfections appear concretely captivating and real to an audience which is used to seeing them as utterly abstract, unnatural, and unreal.

In other words, conversely to the O’Connorian novelist who is compelled to witness to the mystery present in the outer reaches of reality, the Christian theologian is compelled to witness to the reality of the inward reach of mystery–the mystery which is none other than the wholly other God made real flesh to us in Jesus Christ.

A Problem solving Seminary?

Philosopher of religion and chair of the department of religion at Columbia University, Mark C. Taylor, has written a provocative op-ed artice entitled, “End the University as we Know it.” (Thanks to my colleague Rhoda Cairns for pointing this out.)

Some highlights:

• “As [academic] departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less.”
• “The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.”
•  ”Young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.”

Taylor goes on to speak about six steps that will be needed “to make higher learning more agile, adaptive and imaginative” (which I won’t recount here) by making higher education centred on a “problem solving approach.” For example, he suggests, “A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture.” I like this idea. 

Some years ago I attended a lecture by process theologian John Cobb, Jr. who suggested a similar approach to education centered around problem solving. It might be interesting whether our modern day seminaries could begin to structure, at least partially, in this way. Indeed, I have begun to realize how important our “Ministry Related Research Project” (affectionately known as the “MRRP” (pronounced, “Merp”)) here at Briercrest Seminary really is because it is already somewhat directed toward a problem solving approach.  But what might be very interesting is to think about a cohort of graduating students would all work together on a single MRRP focused on a practical ministry problem, but bringing in the expertise of each of the disciplines (leadership, pastoral ministry, theology, biblical studies, counselling, etc.) to bear on the topic. 

For example, imagine what would happen if, for example, we addressed the problem of “biblical literacy” as an interdisciplinary problem to solve. It would be fascinating to get a group of final year seminary students from all the programs sitting together in a room and brainstorming on how to address this problem from the perspective of their discipline. The final outcome would be fascinating, especially when trying to integrate the insights into a coherent document! But I think it could be fruitful and an exciting learning venture.

What do you think?

Rev. Ole and Pastor Sven

 Rev. Ole was the pastor of the local Norwegian Lutheran Church, and Pastor Sven was the minister of the Swedish Covenant Church across the road. 

One day they were both standing by the road, pounding a sign into the ground, which read:

“Da End iss Near! Turn Yourself Aroundt Now Before It’s Too Late!”

As a car sped past them, the driver leaned out his window and yelled, “Leave us alone, you religious nuts!”

A few moment later, there was the sound of screeching tires and a big splash.

Rev. Ole turns to Pastor Sven and asks, 

“Do ya tink maybe da sign should yust say ‘Bridge Out’?”