Monthly Archives: May 2020

Richard Rohr’s Falling Upwards (2)

Books, Spirituality, ,

In my earlier post on Richard Rohr’s Falling Upwards I endeavoured to set forth sufficiently and sympathetically, the central tenets of his spiritual vision. It is a vision of ageing gracefully by finding a way—being led—to personal and spiritual maturity. The measures of this maturity are indicators such as being freed from the narrowness of self-serving ego needs, and of dualistic and exclusivist patterns of thought. The mature person has learnt to accept reality, and others, as they are, and have become more self-critical than critical of others. They have learnt that the secret of internal freedom and happiness is to ‘receive and return the loving gaze of God every day’ (159).

The book sets forth a range of perceptive insights and warnings that we do well to reflect upon. For example, Rohr insists that change and growth, movement and direction are integral aspects of a mature spirituality. Similarly, he warns that sin repressed or denied will surely break-out elsewhere. He wisely admonishes his readers toward practices of solitude and friendship, and reminds us that there is a connection between personal and spiritual maturity, and that we cannot ignore the one in the pursuit of the other. He speaks of the place of Jesus and of the church in his spiritual vision: ‘I quote Jesus because I still consider him to be the spiritual authority of the Western world, whether we follow him or not. . . . Jesus for me always clinches the deal, and I sometimes wonder why I did not listen to him in the first place’ (81).[1] The church he regards as ‘both my greatest intellectual and moral problem and my most consoling home’ (80). The church functions like a cauldron:

A crucible as you know, is a vessel that holds molten metal in one place long enough to be purified and clarified. Church membership requirements, church doctrine, and church morality force almost all issues to an inner boiling point, where you are forced to face important issues at a much deeper level to survive as a Catholic or a Christian, or even as a human. I think this is probably true of any religious community, if it is doing its job. Before the truth ‘sets you free,’ it tends to make you miserable (74).

At the heart of his spiritual vision lies what he calls an ‘incarnational mysticism,’ a two-sided spirituality deeply grounded and engaged in the world and in ‘mystical union’ with God (75-78). It is incarnational as it is open to, inclusive of, and embracing the world in all its diversity, suffering, and beauty; mystical in its desire for immediacy, to abide in, as we have already noted, the loving gaze of God.

Despite the various strengths and claims of the book, I find I remain ambivalent toward this vision. Behind every exposition of spirituality lies a theological or philosophical vision of God and reality that in turn shapes the distinguishing features of the spirituality being proposed. As I understand it, Rohr’s theological vision is the product of a pluralist understanding of divine operations and revelation, and of human encounter with and participation in the divine. The spiritual quest is a universal impulse and Christianity is just one expression among many religious and non-religious quests for the truth. It is one expression of the primary spiritual insights which are found also in the writings of other religious leaders, poets, myth-makers, mystics, psychologists, and so on.

The portrayal of God in this book is remarkably thin and one-sided:

There is not one clear theology of God, Jesus or history presented, despite our attempt to pretend there is. The only consistent pattern I can find is that all the books of the Bible seem to agree that somehow God is with us and we are not alone. God and Jesus’ only job description is one of constant renewals of bad deals. The tragic sense of life is ironically not tragic at all, at least in the Big Picture. . . . Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it (62-63).

The tactic applied here is not uncommon; find and emphasise the diversity of witness in the biblical documents and then use the fact of this diversity to discredit the reliability of the whole. This is lazy theology, though very convenient, for then one can introduce one’s own ‘reading’ as the explanation, or the meaning, or the key. In this case the knowledge we might have of God is stripped back almost to an empty abstraction. Is the gospel as vague and as bland as presented here—somehow God is with us and we are not alone? Is this really the extent of that for which we might hope? Is it the case that this ‘god’ exists merely to clean up our mess—and that we are those who will change the real? Somewhat ironically, just two pages earlier Rohr had complained that ‘organised religion has not been known for its inclusiveness or for being very comfortable with diversity’ (60). Although social diversity is an imperative, diversity in Scripture renders it questionable.

Rohr’s reading of Scripture and of the gospel thus appears somewhat reductionist, as he selects and emphasises only some aspects of the biblical-gospel narrative at the expense of other elements. His reading of the atonement, for example, is exemplarist and Girardian, and discounts the testimony and imagery of Paul, Peter, John, and Hebrews with respect to Jesus’ saving death on the cross (68-69). He interprets God’s forgiveness as a sign that ‘God is saying that God’s own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us’ (56-57). It seems to me, however, that this is precisely the opposite of what the New Testament declares, that the very act of forgiveness, together with its necessity, presupposes that the ‘rules’ matter a great deal. In this respect Rohr’s position not only diminishes the New Testament portrayal of the cross of Jesus, but also treats the idea of sin—which surely includes the inhumanity and abuse of some towards others—as something negligible or easily dismissed. The Bible, on the other hand, approaches all kinds of sin with great seriousness.

Rohr argues for a spirituality based in ‘Big Picture incarnational mysticism.’ The Big Picture is a mechanism for side-stepping the particularities and details of a biblical vision in favour of a few generic universal principles. The image of the incarnation is employed with a dual purpose. On the one hand it affirms a spirituality of service amid the harsh realities of life in the world—something I also affirm. On the other hand, however, Rohr also uses it to affirm Western cultural priorities as though these are a religious obligation. This is cultural Christianity, something he otherwise rejects when it differs from his own cultural preference. Mystic desire or experience grounds the spirituality as a religious phenomenon without tying the adherent to any particular portrayal of God beyond the notion of God as absolute and unconditional love.

In the end Rohr’s spirituality appears as related variety of the ‘moralistic therapeutic deism’ that Christian Smith argued has become a major religious faith in North America. To me, this is not so much an exposition of Christian spirituality (and certainly not a biblical spirituality), as an exposition of a generic ‘spirituality’ suited perhaps for those who might claim to be ‘spiritual but not religious.’ This is a spirituality amenable for those who consider themselves ‘progressive’ whether religiously inclined or not. Richard Rohr himself is, of course, religious—he has been a Roman Catholic priest for most of his life, and finds his ‘most consoling home’ in the church. But he also admits that this is not a necessity per se. Other religious communities could just as easily assist and guide a person on their spiritual journey. I suspect, however, that some of his followers will not have the same degree of attachment to the church that he has, and may be led by this account of spirituality away from the God and the Jesus portrayed in Scripture, and into a spirituality and form of life of their own devising. Christians, whether Roman Catholics, Protestants, or disaffected evangelicals can do better much than this.

[1] It would be of interest, however, to assess Rohr’s understanding of Jesus in light of his more recent The Universal Christ (2019) in which he aims, according to one reviewer, to distinguish between Jesus and ‘Christ,’ with Jesus understood as limited, particular, and earthbound, while ‘Christ’ is unlimited, universal, and cosmic. I suspect that this move would allow him to displace the particularity of what Jesus actually says and does as recorded in the gospels, with an idiosyncratic content predicated upon his vision the universal Christ.

More Reflections on COVID-19

Theology

This remarkable image from an unknown artist is used in volume 2 of the COVID-19 reflections in Stimulus: A New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice. All three parts of the present issue have now been published, and there are some very good articles among them, including an article by Rev Dr Steve Taylor, Principal, Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, New Zealand, reflecting on the image above.

I have read a couple of articles from part one, quite a few from part two, and none yet from part three which was published only yesterday. I look forward to reading some more. Of what I have read so far, I have enjoyed most the articles by

  • Steve Taylor, ‘A Covid Christology’
  • Myk Habets, ‘The Proof is in the Providence’
  • Bill Loader, ‘Corona on the Side of the Road’

There is more to read and I am sure, more gems to find. The editors put out a call for papers in late March or early April and within a couple of weeks received over sixty responses. Instead of producing their normal volume of four essays, they have gone for a bumper approach. After peer review about forty papers were deemed to fall within the parameters and standards of the journal, and they have published them all in the three part-volumes.

If you are interested, my own paper ‘A Gift of Friendship’ is in part three.

 

Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward

Books, ,

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward:
A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
(San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2011), xxxvii + 199.
ISBN: 978-0-470-90775-7

Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of our physical life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling can largely be experienced as falling upward and onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness, is finally connected to the whole, and lives inside the Big Picture (153).

This citation gives, I think, a brief definition of what Rohr means by the title of his book. Life may be considered in two ‘halves,’ though this is a conceptual rather than temporal division. Some people, perhaps even most people, never get to the ‘second half.’ The entry to the second half of life is conveyed by the sense of falling. One falls, perhaps on hard times, or perhaps ‘from grace,’ or perhaps from a high estate or a good reputation. Usually the fall is unsought, unheralded, and unwanted but occurs anyway. But such a fall can become the entry into a new broader and deeper world, where one’s soul is rediscovered, and one’s ethos, direction, and desire are fundamentally re-ordered. To fall upward is to discover our True Self, our inner connection to all things and all people, and to live, as Rohr says, inside the Big Picture of God’s love. The great purpose of life is to ‘grow’ our unique God-given self and return or offer it in love and service to God and the world. It is to be the me I was created to be.

The first half of life is concerned with what Rohr calls ‘ego needs’: identity, security, boundaries, order, safety, relationships, affirmation, and some experience of ‘success.’ In his view we all need our ‘narcissistic fix’ and without it, we will continue in and through life carrying a woundedness that often if not usually leaves us seeking to fulfil these needs in some other way. Somewhat paradoxically, these needs are fulfilled best when one is raised in a more traditional or conservative environment with an emphasis on law and tradition, loyalty, respect, and responsibility. Such an environment disciplines the ego so that it does not become an all-consuming drive. Becoming mature requires learning to live within the creative tensions of law and freedom, and so one must ‘learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly’ (citing the Dalai Lama, xxviii). The purpose of the first half of life is to ‘write the script’ or ‘build the container’ that we will, in the second half of life, enact or fill.

Yet despite the obvious strengths of these characteristics, there is more to life than identity, security, boundaries, order, affirmation, success, and so on. Somehow we carry an innate memory of ‘home,’ a deep-seated longing that can be assuaged only as our true self rests in union with God. Such a longing might call us to leave the security of our first-phase-of-life home in search of this true home. And so we begin a journey beyond the journey of the first phase of life. Or perhaps tragedy or suffering befalls us, a crisis by which our first-phase-of-life is up-ended and we are thrust out of our life, as it were, and into a further journey. Typically, suggests Rohr, we are led into the second half of life by an experience of loss, failure or brokenness we did not want, foresee, or choose, and which we cannot handle with the resources we presently have.

Nor does one arrive suddenly at the second half of life but grows into it, a process that continues through the rest of one’s life. Whereas the first half of life is characterised by ego-goals, the second half is concerned with ‘soul goals.’ In the second half of life one has ceased from self-defining, from the endless fighting and doing to make one’s way prevail. This person rests in God and simply is—being. They have become self-critical, though not self-loathing. They engage in ‘shadow-boxing,’ confronting the shadow-side that previously they kept well-hidden from others. They acknowledge and accept the truth about themselves, leaving go of pretence or subterfuge. They are able to live this way because they have found a friend or a Friend by whom they are ‘mirrored.’ They find that they are known deeply and fully yet loved and accepted anyway. And so a deep integrity ensues in which what one is, now is what is done. One enters what Rohr refers to as a ‘second simplicity,’ an innocence, a willingness to accept mystery, doubt, etc., and relinquishes the need for certainty or control because they trust in the overarching ‘coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction’ of the universe. That is, they have a sense of underlying meaning, a Big Truth that satisfies the soul, even in the midst of continuing trouble, heartache or suffering. The gift they have now to offer is themselves.

*****

In this post I have provided a synopsis of Rohr’s book.
In a later post I will offer my reflections on what I have read.

Reflections on COVID-19 – Stimulus Journal

Theology

At the end of March, the editorial team of Stimulus (a New Zealand journal published by Laidlaw College) met and discussed putting together a special edition of Stimulus based around the COVID-19 event. They were aware that the church of God (like all people) had been thrust into something unprecedented and were grappling with what it all means. They wanted to hear the voices of thinking Christians during the time of lock-down. They also wanted them to come from that time and be read while everyone was still facing the challenge.

Their initial call for papers on April 1 resulted in over sixty submissions. Each piece was sent to blind peer review, and over forty contributions fit the journal’s criteria. Given that the usual issue of the journal has only four major essays, the editors were confronted with a happy dilemma. In the end they decided to release this special issue in three ‘volumes,’ the first of which is now published and available here. The next volumes will be released in coming weeks.

Enjoy!

24 Hours with Charles Spurgeon

Uncategorized

I am part of a unique event this weekend, together with several other Baptist colleagues from Perth.

This Friday – Saturday, Spurgeon’s College in London is hosting a global, twenty-four hour series of readings and reflections from the works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The readings, presented in half-hour segments, will be taken from a variety of Spurgeon’s writings, including sermons, letters, and other materials.

The Perth contingent will lead off at 11am on Saturday morning with Revd Karen Siggins of Lesmurdie Baptist Church, followed by myself, Monica O’Neil, Brian Harris, and David Cohen, from Vose Seminary. My reading, beginning at 11:30am Perth time (4:30am in London), is taken from volume 44(!) of Spurgeon’s sermons, and is titled ‘A Far-Reaching Promise.’

Spurgeon was the most popular preacher in nineteenth-century London, drawing thousands of listeners to his weekly services. His popularity has continued down to the present through his devotional books, lectures, and printed sermons.

The event is part of a College fund-raising campaign initiated due to the financial impact of COVID-19. For more information, go to the College website. Or if you would like to donate to the cause, you can do so here.

Pierre Maury Sermon ~ The Ultimate Decision

Books, Theology, ,

Simon Hattrell’s recent book Election, Barth, and the French Connection (Second edition) contains two lectures and a sermon from Pierre Maury, the French Reformed pastor-theologian whose 1936 lecture in Geneva so influenced Karl Barth’s reconstruction of the doctrine of election. This sermon was preached in Lent 1937, in the Reformed Church of Passy, Paris. Maury gave a series of six talks of which this was one.

Maury begins with John 14:6 and asserts that Jesus is the (only) way, and as such, the only revelation of God. This is something requiring one’s commitment, something people often struggle to give for they continually seek to establish their own way. This they—we!—must cease to do, abandoning our efforts and accepting Jesus Christ himself as our (only) way.

The Christian life, from its beginning to its end, is decision, that is to say, unreserved commitment. . . . For, Jesus Christ wants to be objective in the sense that He claims to be an unreserved commitment of God on our behalf, and on the other hand He demands that we become unreservedly committed to Him. It is this double aspect of His existence that we are now going to examine (53).

To ‘choose’ or to commit to Christ is not analogous to other human choices between a range of options, or the self-commitment of one to an imagined absolute or cause. Jesus Christ himself is the Absolute who demands our unconditional submission in the obedience of faith; that is, a free submission. This commitment, suggests Maury, comes not by means of rational argument concerning the legitimacy of Christian claims. Rather, one is engaged in relational encounter with Jesus the Word, engaged in dialogue, hearing and speaking. One is to ‘hear’ Jesus Christ—his whole life and eternal existence is a ‘word’ addressed to us. Maury recalls an experience related by Pascal in Les Pensées to make his point:

As soon as faith is fixed on this person of past history, it is quite naturally brought to discover in him a personal intention—an interaction has begun. . . . Just as long as, like all the heroes of history, He remains for us an object of reflection, of admiration or curiosity, we do not know Him; He is not Him; he is only that which He wants to be (54).

When God speaks to us in Christ it is not in order to display a truth, but to reveal to us our situation before Him, and the attitude that He adopts before us (55).

As such, Jesus Christ is decisive. He is decisive in the sense that in him all are included and contained. Our existence is, eternally and in eternity, contained, enfolded, enclosed and included in his existence. It seems that for Maury, this is the content of proclamation: a divine decision has been made; humanity is the object of divine love—all of us, and each of us.

Jesus Christ is a decision of God, therefore without any recourse, as far as we are concerned, a decision of someone other than ourselves and of which we are the object; and that is to say, in the second place, that Jesus Christ calls for a decision on our part, a final (permanent) decision. . . . It is from all eternity, in eternity, that between Jesus Christ and us a relationship is established (56).

Again:

Marvelous revelation of an unfathomable mystery! When this child is born in a manger, when this man dies on the cross and rises again the third day, the eve of the Sabbath, it is our whole life that is swept up in this commitment, it is for our whole life that something happens. He is the one by whom—for whom also—we have been created, who is there. He is there, simple and immense, simple as the simplest of the sons of men, immense because the dimensions of His existence contain us all; He is the beginning and the end of our life. In Him everything is enclosed, kept, protected. When He cries out, ‘Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden’ (Matthew 11:28), it is all our destinies that He is calling, because they belong to Him. When He stretches out His arms upon the cross, He says that it is ‘to draw all to Himself’ (John 12:32) because no one has existed without Him and outside of Him. When He rises and is exalted to the right hand of God, it is in order to present to God—eternally, and in eternity—those who—from all eternity, in eternity—have always been, are and will always be His. I have said, I have repeated: all (57).

Jesus Christ is thus decisive in the decision that has been taken by God concerning us, our entire existence. He is decisive, too, because in his incarnation and life we are encountered by the coming and work of God.

The real mystery of the action of Jesus Christ is that ‘he does nothing by himself’ (John 5:19). That which He does for us, and that which He does in coming to us, in giving Himself to us, in choosing us, is what no person can do: it is an act of God! . . . Such is the true relationship that Jesus Christ has with those who believe in Him: a relationship where God Himself legally binds Himself to us (60, 61).

This activity, the activity of his love—his coming to us, giving himself to and for us, and in so doing, choosing us—is election, and it must be understood as the testimony of his love in its most positive sense, and not at all negatively, as a sign of partiality (60).

Not only is Jesus Christ decisive, he is also ultimate. The divine decision concerning us is ultimate, not merely as divine but because it concerns the last—the ultimate—judgement. Yet the Judge is Jesus Christ—he who has come, given himself, and chosen us! In view of all this, Jesus Christ is ultimate also for he demands our decision, an ultimate decision in which we give ourselves wholly and without reserve to him. He comes to us indeed, though in his coming he is always Lord and Master.

We need to insist on the uncompromising nature of the essence of Christian decision. … If we choose Him, it’s because He has chosen us first; if we take Him up, it is because He has seized us. Such is the seriousness of His coming into our life that it dispossesses us completely. He only comes as Master. He is the Lord Jesus. . . . The intolerable, demanding nature of faith is the mark of grace which is ours in faith (64).

Although he does not use the language of ‘irresistible grace’ it is clear that Maury holds such a concept. Jesus Christ seeks us out, confronts us, and in so doing reaches our ‘true centre’ where our destiny is at stake, laying hold of our lives ‘where all possibilities of escape are closed except this one, this obligation to say yes or no, and never ‘perhaps’ . . . ‘If we do not give our consent, it’s because we haven’t been found’ (64).

The decision required of us is the response of faith, rather than correct knowledge or full understanding. The real question confronting us is not intellectual but existential. ‘We have to come to Him with our life, because it is with His life that He has come to us’ (66). To respond to Jesus Christ in faith is to give ourselves to him as he did to us—in complete simplicity, immediately, and without reservation (65).

Maury concludes his sermon by directing his listeners to the only place where they might look for and find Jesus Christ as their ultimate decision: to the Bible. ‘It is through the Bible alone that Jesus Christ is made our contemporary. If Scripture is holy, it is because it offers us the possibility of knowing the ultimate decision of our life with no looking back’ (67).

But one can also, from the beginning to the end of the Bible, hear the living Word of God, hear God speaking of Jesus Christ, and in Jesus Christ, and, having heard Him, one can—no, one must—decide for or against Him. . . . Whoever looks in these pages for Jesus Christ as their Lord, sooner or later, slowly or all of a sudden, will find what they are looking for (67).

That this happens is, in the final analysis, the work of the Holy Spirit, for in every case the human decision is grounded in and enabled by the grace of the divine decision made concerning us.

*****

The sermon is prefaced, in the book, with a record of a brief correspondence between Barth and Maury, and a longer note from Charlotte von Kirschbaum who translated the Frenchman’s sermon in German, translating it three times before she was (somewhat!) happy with it. Hattrell has given us the first translation of the sermon into English. My citations and pagination here are based on the first edition of the volume.