All posts by Michael O'Neil

About Michael O'Neil

Hi, thanks for stopping by! A couple of months ago a student gave me a cap embroidered with the words "Theology Matters." And so it does. I fervently believe that theology must not be an arcane academic pursuit reserved only for a few super-nerdy types. Rather, theology exists for the sake of the church and its mission. It exists to assist ordinary believers read and enact Scripture in authentic ways, together, and in their own locale, as a local body of faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. I love the way reading and studying Scripture and theology has deepened my faith, broadened my vision, enriched my ministry and changed my life. I hope that what you find here might help you along a similar path. A bit about me: I have been married to Monica for over thirty years now and we have served in various pastoral, teaching, missions and leadership roles for the whole of our lives together. We have three incredible adult children who with their partners, are the delight of our lives. For the last few years I have taught theology and overseen the research degrees programme at Vose Seminary in Perth, Western Australia. I also assist Monica in a new church planting endeavour in our city. In 2013 my first book was published: Church as Moral Community: Karl Barth’s Vision of Christian Life, 1915-1922 (Milton Keynes: Paternoster). I can say that without a doubt, it is the very best book I have ever written and well worth a read!

Let’s Get Growing (2) – in the Gospel

Spirituality, ,

(This brief article was published in the Advocate in June 2021 (page 13), the second in a series of articles on spiritual growth. The Advocate is published by the Baptist Churches of Western Australia.)

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Don’t be conformed to this world but be transformed” (Rom. 12:2). To the Corinthians he said, “We are being transformed into the image of Christ!” (2 Cor. 3:18). Yet it seems that this ‘transformation’ comes ever so slowly, especially in my own life!

Can our lives really be changed?
Can our lives be really changed?

Significant growth in a Christian’s life comes through a range of experiences, some unique to each person, others necessary for any Christian who wants to grow. All Christian growth is a result of the work of the Holy Spirit and involves a deepening engagement with Scripture and our response in prayer and thanksgiving. Trials, suffering, service, and ministry are also common catalysts of growth.

At the root of all Christian growth, however, is a fresh encounter with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus is the gospel (Mark 1:1), and includes the story of his birth and baptism, his preaching and teaching, his healings and miracles, his parables and promises, his compassion and companionship, and supremely, his suffering, death, and resurrection. By returning again and again to the Gospels—prayerfully, studiously, hopefully, and in conversation with others—we open our lives to a transforming encounter with the gospel.

These stories speak to us, challenge, call, and commission us. They summon us to repentance and faith, to believe impossible things—and to hope for their reality, to a vision of the kingdom of God, to a life of companionship with Jesus, and to a participation in his mission.

So let’s get growing by reading, meditating, and pondering their message. And let’s do this in conversation with others in our small groups and at church. And with those who have written commentaries, and with the great preachers and theologians of the church. Let’s deepen our engagement with the gospel so that its message might penetrate the deepest corners of our minds, spark our imagination with new visions of life, and guide our decision-making and will in those directions.

But I want to say more.

If engagement with the gospel is the root of transformation, at the heart of the gospel is a message of grace. At the heart of the gospel is the story of God who has loved us, and turned to us, come to us, and suffered for us and in our place. God stoops to gather us up, even in our sinfulness and alienation, even in our opposition to him.

But this is a disruptive grace by which God not only forgives our sins but also claims us as his own. By this grace, he calls us out of the life we have independently constructed, and into a new life of friendship and obedience. To be touched by grace is to know that we are profoundly loved—and confronted. When Peter saw Jesus’ majestic power and authority, he also saw himself with fresh eyes and cried out, “depart from me O Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). That Jesus did not depart is pure grace. That he called Peter into a life of discipleship and service—this too is the same grace, and the two cannot be separated.

At the heart of the gospel—and therefore at the beginning of all Christian growth and transformation—is God’s gracious gift of the forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47), and of friendship with God (John 15:13). But only real sinners need apply! It seems that it is only as we face up honestly to our own willfulness, brokenness, and sinfulness that this grace captures our hearts with its transforming power. Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds (Rom. 5:20)—and begins its healing work.

How might we experience this transforming and liberating grace? By turning again and again to Jesus, the Friend of Sinners (Matt. 11:19), coming clean with him, and with those we have wronged, and letting grace do its work. And by participating in communities of grace where the gospel of this grace is practiced and exemplified. We’ll talk about that next time.

Calvin, on the Theologian’s Pastoral Task

Theology, ,

I came across this note as I read a little of Calvin this evening. I was in the Institutes I:14:iv on the doctrine of creation where Calvin is beginning his discussion of the angels. He writes to head off the kind of teaching that indulges in endless curiosity and speculation not tethered to Scripture. His words are still apt today:

Let us remember here, as in all religious doctrine, that we ought to hold to one rule of modesty and sobriety: not to speak, or guess, or even to seek to know, concerning obscure matters anything except what has been imparted to us by God’s Word. Furthermore, in the reading of Scripture we ought ceaselessly to endeavor to seek out and meditate upon those things which make for edification. Let us not indulge in curiosity or in the investigation of unprofitable things. And because the Lord willed to instruct us, not in fruitless questions, but in sound godliness, in the fear of his name, in true trust, and in the duties of holiness, let us be satisfied with this knowledge . . . 

The theologian’s task is not to divert the ears with chatter, but to strengthen consciences by teaching things true, sure, and profitable.
(See: Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Library of Christian Classics. Editor: John T. McNeill; Trans. Ford L. Battles, volume 1:164.)

Calvin reminds us of the limits our knowledge and so counsels epistemological humility. It is evident that he views Scripture as an inspired and authoritative source of theological knowledge, and that what is given us in Scripture might be profitably taught, learned, and believed. But not everything we might want to know is given us in Scripture. Standing behind this admonition is Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”

Of course, not all questions are fruitless. Many questions are necessary if we are to understand Scripture in both its parts and as a whole. Many more are necessary if we are to understand its significance and relevance to our everyday lives. Calvin certainly understands this as his own work testifies. But he is against the kind of mystical or merely academic approaches to Scripture and theology that neglect what he considers basic: the pastoral purposes for which Scripture is given – something also found in Deuteronomy 29:29.

The pastoral orientation of Calvin’s theological work is clear. In this, he differs not at all from Luther–see my discussion of Luther’s pastoral theology. In the citation given above, Calvin provides a framework for discerning that which is pastorally useful: that which edifies and strengthens the conscience; that which nurtures godliness and the fear of the Lord, true trust, and holiness. We might want to add to the kinds of pastoral outcomes we seek to nurture in the lives of God’s people: engagement in community and mission, the pursuit of just relationships, concern for the poor, etc. Nevertheless, Calvin’s concern for trust, holiness and a good conscience before God is also warranted.

I found this a salutary reminder that theological enquiry is never an end in itself but a means of being drawn more deeply into a life of faithfulness before God, and a participation in his creational and redemptive purposes – as revealed in Scripture.

Let’s Get Growing (1)

Spirituality 
(This brief article was published in the Advocate in April 2021 (page 4), the first in a series of articles on spiritual growth. The Advocate is published by the Baptist Churches of Western Australia.)

One joy in life for Monica and me at the moment is watching our grandsons grow from little babies to little boys. Each so beautiful. So energetic. So curious. So full of life and learning. So unique.

Some things are predictable, other things not so much. How exciting when they take their first steps. When they speak their first words. Their first tooth. Their first lost tooth! The eldest of our five recently typed in and sent me his first text message. They’re growing up!

But there was also the first surgery. Little worries about speech or sleep or habits we don’t want to see develop. We long for our children to thrive, to grow, to be well-adjusted, healthy, and to become mature. We teach and train them, slowly and (mostly!) patiently. Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back. But then something wonderful and wholly unexpected emerges, and we can only express wonder and gratitude at the incredible gifts God has given.

No wonder the apostles Peter and Paul could speak of Christian development in terms of growth from infancy to maturity (e.g. 1 Peter 2:1-3; Ephesians 4:13-15). Spiritual growth can also be messy and unpredictable. It doesn’t happen according to a fixed timeline or schedule. It does not follow a nicely ordered path through a predictable series of steps or phases. Sometimes we progress in spits and spurts, sometimes two steps forward, one step back.

In the case of a child, it is possible to grow old but not really ‘grow up,’ not really become a mature person, responsible and respectful, accomplished and active. The same is true spiritually: it requires a strong intention to become mature, as well as some understanding of what spiritual maturity looks like, and how a Christian might take steps in that direction. And if someone does become mature it is not merely the result of human effort; surely a miracle of grace has also taken place! Only by the work of the Holy Spirit can someone become spiritually mature.

And yet the Bible consistently calls believers ‘to grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Peter 3:18). It is clearly God’s intention that his children grow up!

Over the next few issues of the Advocate we will explore some of the patterns and dynamics of Christian growth and maturity. Some things are predictable, even in the midst of all the messy unpredictability. We can mature as hearers of God’s Word, mature in prayer or in service, in virtuous character, in Christian concern for all people, in knowledge or in hope. We hope you will join us as we learn together what it means to become mature in Christ.

Vale, Charlie

Culture

The first Rolling Stones song I ever heard was on a record my older brother bought home when I was eight years old – “Top of the Pops 1969”. The album had great classics like I Heard it through the Grapevine (Marvin Gaye), Something in the Air (Thunderclap Newman), Bad Moon Rising (CCR), Where Do You Go To? (Peter Sarstedt), and Honky Tonk Women (The Stones). It also had the Beatles (Ob-La-Di), Elvis (In the Ghetto), Bobby Gentry (I’ll Never Fall in Love Again), Zager and Evans (In the Year 2525) and fillers like Sugar, Sugar (the Archies). I was way too young to understand what the song was about, but what caught my attention was Charlie’s cowbell and drum roll intro. I still think Honky Tonk Women has one of the best guitar-driven rhythms and licks in the rock and roll era. And now I get the lyrics.

The first album I ever bought was on my fifteenth birthday (1976) – Get Yer Ya-Yas Out – The Stones live from Madison Square Gardens at the end of their 1969 US tour, and just before the infamous and tragic Altamont festival. There was Charlie on the front cover with an ‘interesting’ T-Shirt. It was years before I ‘got’ the shirt and the title, even though I was a teenage boy. Slow, I guess. During the concert Charlie was doing a few drum rolls at the end of a song and Mick said, “Charlie’s good tonight, innt ‘e?” before launching into their brand new single – Honky Tonk Women.

I was a Stones fanatic when I was young, and still enjoy their music. Charlie was eclipsed, of course, by Mick and Keith, but interestingly, at their concerts it seems he gets the biggest cheer of all when the band is introduced. The quiet type.

The Stones are touring the US again in the Fall and Charlie was already going to miss it, recovering from surgery. He’s still going to miss it. I guess the tour will likely go ahead, but with a memorial to Charlie included. The Stones website, though, doesn’t yet have an update. They won’t be the same without Charlie.

I am saddened, which is interesting to me. I never met him or knew him and yet somehow, he has been a part of my life’s story. Goodbye Charlie, and thanks.

Neder: On Teaching & Learning Theology (Part 3)

Books, Theology

Teaching and learning theology is dangerous: so says Neder in his fourth chapter. Of course, teaching spaces should be ‘safe spaces’ in the sense that students are not demeaned, coerced, or manipulated. Unless students have confidence that teachers and classmates take their questions and ideas seriously they are unlikely to learn much.

But it’s also true that if students feel only affirmed in our classes, if our classes never disturb, unsettle, or expose them, if they never find themselves fighting for their lives, then they probably aren’t going to learn much in that kind of environment either (85).

The atmosphere of our classes ought to cohere as much as possible with the reality we are attempting to describe. And since Christian theology occurs as an encounter with the living God, a confrontation that tears us away from patterns of life that obscure or contradict the truth, at least something of the spirit of that struggle ought to be reflected in our classrooms (86).

Neder takes Isaiah’s visionary call as paradigmatic (Isaiah 6), though this is something that occurs in the divine-human encounter, something that can never be manufactured and should never be coerced. It is the subject matter—God!—who confronts the student with a call to decision, not the teacher. Nevertheless, seeking to know God or to teach in such a way that God might be known is risky. When God confronts us, we are stripped of our defences and called to decision—here and now! Christ disturbs and disrupts. He calls us ‘out’ of our own lives and into his life; he is unpredictable. Indeed, “following Jesus hurts” (98). Jesus wounds, in order to heal (95).

Conversations with Jesus rarely unfold according to plan. Jesus continually shocks and astonishes people, rattles their cages, upends their expectations, eludes their traps, and zeroes in on their deepest motivations. This makes for exhilarating reading, but the more you reflect on it, the more unsettling it becomes. . . . You begin to realize that being near him requires courage (96).

This is not to suggest that teachers should set out to disrupt or deconstruct their students’ supposedly naïve faith—such an approach is confused and contemptible. Teaching theology is an act of love; teachers are to help students perceive and respond to the truth, not scandalise or provoke them (99-100). Indeed, teachers cannot reliably discern precisely what is occurring in the hearts and lives of their students. “If students hate your classes,” Neder says wryly, “it’s probably your fault” (89). But that they enjoy your classes and are attentive and engaged does not mean that they have been engaged by the ‘subject matter.’ “Can you think of anything more inane than a Christian theologian who thinks his or her classes are successful just because everyone likes them and no one feels uncomfortable?” (89)

Students can seek theological certainty rather than God; or theological speculation or endless deliberation. They may consider doctrinal or historical exploration or clarification as sufficient in themselves. If students think like this, it may be that they have learnt it from their instructors.

We instruct students not only by what we say about God but also by how we speak about him. . . . If our way of talking about God leaves students unaware of the threat he poses to our lives, perhaps that is because we no longer perceive the threat he poses to our lives (101).

Yet the knowledge of God requires decision and commitment, and students themselves must embrace this risk. Christianity simply cannot be reduced to doctrines (or history or morality or a hundred other things we might substitute for it). Rather,

Christian existence conditions the plausibility of Christian speech . . . either our teaching . . . will suggest God’s urgent uncontrollable presence with us, his ‘terrifying nearness’ as Bonhoeffer put it, or our teaching will mislead students. There are no exceptions to this rule (103).

“Real theological education is a process of continual confrontation with God. To receive it, students have to fight for it themselves” (108).

It is clear in this chapter that Neder believes true theological education occurs when students are confronted with the reality of God—and called to decision. It also seems clear that this is not the work of the theological educator. The best they can do is hope that God is at work in their teaching, pray for it, engage in authentic theological existence in their own lives, and continually bear witness to God in their teaching.

The final chapter (“Conversation”) describes the process of teaching and learning theology: “teaching Christian theology is largely a matter of training students to have good theological conversations” (118).

Christian theology is a historically extended conversation about the meaning and implications of the gospel. It is thinking and speaking that seeks to respond in disciplined, faithful, and creative ways to God’s own self-communication (118).

The primary—fundamental and essential—conversation is with Holy Scripture itself, seeking ever and again to hear and respond to the testimony of the prophets and apostles. But this conversation requires a secondary conversation with other readers and interpreters past and present—a conversation conducted for the sake of the primary conversation. Neder insists that good teachers train students to read with sympathetic attention rather than the habits of suspicion and scepticism which characterises contemporary study in the humanities (121-122).

Despite its hegemony, there are strong theological (and non-theological) reasons to be suspicious of ubiquitous suspicion—not least of which is that suspicious readers don’t generate conversations as interesting and fruitful as do readers who befriend the texts they interpret (123).

The book closes with a brief section on cultivating classroom conversations. “Conversations reveal commitments that require closer examination, beliefs that need to be sharpened or discarded, assumptions that cannot withstand sustained scrutiny” (132). Neder finds a model for theological reflection in the kinds of questions Jesus posed to his interlocutors: questions that probe and personalise theological reflection, that penetrate to the heart of students’ deepest concerns (136-137). Good conversations occur in classrooms that are genuine learning communities—where teachers also expect to learn from their companions in the conversation. Such conversations require deep, patient, and careful listening to one another in an atmosphere of critical inquiry, grace, respect, and courtesy. They require honest discussion of one’s own ideas, an openness to new or other ideas, profound personal questions, and a stimulating breadth of opinion.

But conversation is not an end in itself:

Its purpose is to help students encounter the truth, discover their lives in Christ, and follow him into the world he loves. If the conversations that take place in our classes have the opposite effect  on students, if students acquire the habit of talking about God objectively and dispassionately, if they come to believe that the truth can be known without being lived, learned without being appropriated, and if the accumulation of theological ideas results not in existential transformation and faithful witness but in endless talking and permanent postponement of decision and action, then our teaching works against the work of the Holy Spirit (143).

“Positive Christianity”

Culture, ,

On February 24, 1920, at a public meeting in Munich the German Workers’ Party proclaimed a 25-point programme, drawn up originally by Gottfried Feder (1882-1941),[1] with a variety of social, economic, and political aspirations appealing to everyone except the Jews and the communists. It was intended as an instrument to draw popular support, especially amongst the lower middle classes threatened both by big business and by leftist elements such as the labour movement. It sought also to appeal to Christians—the twenty-fourth article concerned the church:

We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations in the state so long as they do not endanger it and do not oppose the moral feelings of the German race. The Party as such stands for positive Christianity, without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the principle: The general interest before self-interest (Stackelberg & Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook, 65).

Like the rest of the Party’s platform, this article is carefully worded to appeal to as broad a constituency as possible, here amongst the religious population. The Party ‘demands’—will allow—religious freedom without favouritism for each of the Christian denominations in Germany: Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and United, covering most of the population across all geographical regions in the country. It will not bind itself to one or another of the Confessions, nor play them off against one another. Each will be free to maintain their own tradition and practice. The party stands for positive Christianity, speaking against ‘the materialistic spirit within and around us,’ and standing for an ‘inner’—spiritual—renewal of the nation, the common interest rather than ‘self-interest.’ Christianity will have a legitimate and respected place within the society.

Yet it is also the case that positive Christianity is a circumscribed entity, and that the promised freedom is freedom only within strictly defined limits. First, it is clear that freedom of religion does not include freedom for the Jewish faith—the anti-Semitism of the document as a whole is explicit even in this clause as it contrasts the inner spiritual dynamic of the Christian religions against the supposedly materialistic and self-interested character of the Jews.

More significantly, positive Christianity is a Christianity assimilated to the aims of the state and culture, ‘the moral feelings of the German race.’ It is a racialised and nationalist form of Christianity, legitimate ‘so long as’ they do not endanger the state or oppose these aims and feelings. The German Workers’ Party clearly intends to co-opt the church to serve its nationalist, racist, and political vision; anything that does not conform to Nazi ideology will be deemed ‘negative’ (Stroud, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow, 7). The tragedy is that much of the Protestant church, especially, was complicit with this agenda.

The problem here is not primarily political but theological. The challenge is not so much that the church was being manipulated to serve a racist and nationalist agenda—which is bad enough, and a betrayal of its calling. Rather, the political problem and its devastating consequences were a symptom of a deeper and more subtle malaise. It was the church being placed within an overarching narrative alien to its true identity and being: the idea that the church’s primary service is to the state and culture rather than to the kingdom of God. It was the idea that the priorities of the kingdom of God could be identified with those of the culture. It was the idea that the church’s freedom derived from the permission of the state and that it was, therefore, a functionary or organ of the state and that, therefore, the state was its lord.

As it happened, freedom so long as, was not freedom at all, but servitude and betrayal. Hitler’s ‘so long as’ introduced an alien principle which determined the being and practice of the church. The church, accepting this circumscribed freedom, lost its true liberty in Christ. Where it gladly accepted the prohibition to oppose the ‘moral feelings of the German race’ it was unable to discern or affirm its distinctive calling as the people of God. Positive Christianity was, in fact, a misnomer: it was not Christianity at all, but an aberration. “It was, one might deduce, Christianity with no God, no Christ, and no content. It was the ‘politically correct’ version of an empty gospel” (Stroud, Preaching, 8). It was salt that had lost its flavour, fit only to be thrown out and trodden underfoot. 

To its great credit the Synod of the Confessing Church that met in Barmen in 1934 recognised this truth with great clarity:

Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in holy scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.

We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.     
(Barmen Declaration, Thesis 1).

[1] Roderick Stackelberg and Sally A. Winkle, ed., The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts (London: Routledge, 2002), 63. Note, however, Mary Solberg’s contention that Hitler wrote the programme in Mary M. Solberg, ed., A Church Undone: Documents from the German Christian Faith Movement 1932-1940 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015). Hitler certainly approved the programme and refused to change it.

Neder: On Teaching & Learning Theology (Part 2)

Books, Theology

(See the first part of this reflection here.)

The second chapter of Neder’s book considers ‘Knowledge.’ Neder argues that true knowledge of God is possible, but it also involves existential participation in the life of God—faith and obedience. Theological educators therefore have a responsibility to think with their students, assisting them to ‘engage in the art of theological imagination’ (50), so they can envision and explore the existential implications of what they are learning. Their responsibility is to think with the students and not for them; they must not confuse indoctrination with education (52)! The aim is to help students think for themselves under the lordship of Christ and within the communion of saints. Neder suggests that teachers’ attempts to side-step the existential implications of doctrine—the pastoral task of theological education—may disguise moral and intellectual cowardice.

Again, the knowledge of God is possible, though only in Jesus Christ who is the epistemological foundation and criterion of all our knowledge of God. Neder approves Barth’s recognition that Feuerbach had in fact given the church a great gift: much Christian teaching falls prey to Feuerbach’s critique, though ‘the only way beyond Feuerbach is through him’ (57).

For the church to avoid the mistake of confusing theology with anthropology, confusing talk about God with talk about ourselves, its thinking must be governed at every point by God’s own self-revelation in Christ. . . . To the extent that Christian theology loses sight of him, or submits itself to some other criterion, it wanders into the dark. . . . Learning Christian theology is a process of learning to read reality in the light of Christ—learning to ‘take every thought captive to obey Christ’ (57-58).

Thus, the knowledge of God involves decision and choice: one simply may not remain undecided in light of the reality revealed in Jesus Christ:

In a pluralistic context, committing oneself passionately to one option among many may seem arbitrary, irrational, and absurd, but the inevitable alternative is to drift along in the current of contemporary society and thus away from a life of integrity and coherence (51).

The chapter includes an excursus on the development of academic theology. Neder notes that prior to the medieval age even the most sophisticated theologians shared an essentially pastoral aim: to guide the church into the truth of the gospel and to equip Christians to live more faithfully and intelligently as disciples of Jesus Christ (45).

But the movement into the context of the medieval university does mark an important phase in a gradual parting of the ways between academic theological scholarship and the life of the church—a division that would in the modern period harden into estrangement. . . . If Christian theology wanted to be accepted as a responsible form of intellectual inquiry, it would have to submit itself to a supposedly universal and objective standard of rationality, one that floats above any specific context or tradition, even when doing so precludes primary Christian affirmations (47-48).

The third chapter, entitled ‘Ethos,’ argues that who the theological educator is communicates and authenticates their teaching—in the perspective of the hearers—or undermines it. A theological educator is a witness rather than a detached observer or commentator. Only one seized by the ‘subject matter’ [= God] of theology can communicate it. The plausibility of our teaching depends on this.

No matter how objectively true our claims about God happen to be, we cannot escape the fact that we are the ones making those claims, and the movement of our lives, whether toward or away from the truth, affects how plausible those claims will sound to students. . . . If our lives do not somehow witness to the truth, somehow reflect and attest the truth in our own limited ways, students will not find us credible… (72-73).

Good credible teachers sound like—themselves (77), though they direct attention away from themselves to another. They are aware of the limits of their knowledge, vision, and authority.  There is a coherence between their teaching and their life. But there are also significant threats to be avoided in theological education. Neder speaks of a lack of theological existence, a failure to live in and toward the truth. He speaks of vanity, an excessive concern for one’s own reputation and advancement, and of a deadening professional familiarity in which our teaching somehow becomes disconnected ‘from its living center in God himself’ (76). These dangers undermine the credibility of our teaching. Worse, they hinder the living truth from impacting the lives of students.

Just Arrived

Books, ,

This could be the biography we have been waiting for: Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict by Christiane Tietz. Karl Barth died in 1968 and until now we have not had a full and critical biography. Many books contain a brief overview of his life, and most of these draw on Eberhard Busch’s 1976 Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts.

The work by Busch, Barth’s last assistant, is justly regarded as a classic and is in itself an immensely important resource. Despite its quality and wealth of biographical data, however, it is not a critical biography. Hopefully Tietz’ volume will fill this lacuna.

I came across the German edition in Dresden in 2019 and didn’t know it existed. It was published in 2018. I bought it as a reading goal for when my German has been recovered sufficiently. To have it in English, though, is a blessing. (On a side note, I owe an incalculable debt to translators of theological works, especially G.W. Bromiley – and Bible translators, of course! May their tribe increase.)

Christiane Tietz is Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Zurich. Before that she was Professor of Systematic Theology and Social Ethics at the University of Mainz. The book has been translated by Victoria J. Barnett, one of the general editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition.

The book has gone to the top of my reading list for the winter break. At 488 pages it may be the only book I read over the break! But, it comes with pictures.

Neder: On Teaching & Learning Theology (Part 1)

Books, Theology, ,

Adam Neder, Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), pp. 158.
ISBN: 978-0-8010-9878-9

Adam Neder has written Theology as a Way of Life to provide a theological account of teaching theology so that the teacher’s activity is not out of step with their subject matter. His approach presupposes a Christological anthropology informed by Kierkegaard, Barth, and Bonhoeffer, and is offered as an alternative to another prominent model of Christian education, championed especially by James KA Smith. Smith’s model, considered appreciably by Neder, ‘conceives Christian education as largely a process of socialization in which students are habituated into the Christian life through repetitive practices that lead to virtue’ (5), itself a reaction to the idea that Christian education is often based on the faulty idea that all Christians need as essentially thinking creatures is new information that adds up to a Christian worldview. Against Smith’s contention that ‘we are what we love,’ Neder argues that ‘we are who we are because Jesus is who he is’ (6). That is, Jesus Christ establishes the truth of human identity in his life, death, and resurrection.

Good teachers give their students freedom. They offer students space to make up their own minds, to find their own ways forward. Aware of their fallibility, the limitations of their perspective, and the difference between their knowledge of God and God’s knowledge of himself, good teachers don’t seek to reproduce themselves in students. Of course they want to be persuasive . . . but . . . their goal is not to create loyal soldiers who repeat and defend the master, but to train students to listen to God’s Word, discover their own voices, and respond to Jesus Christ’s  call in their own ways (13).

In the first chapter on ‘Identity’ Neder unpacks several anthropological and pedagogical presuppositions. First, reconciliation with God is an accomplished and objective reality for all humanity; this is our true being in Christ, the essence of who and what we are. Every person is loved, reconciled, and called by God—including all our students. Christian existence, then, is a matter of becoming who we are so that our existence corresponds ever more closely with our essence. This, however, remains a process of becoming as the Spirit grants us grace time and again to entrust ourselves to him. The corollary of this is that to turn away from Christ is to turn away from one’s own true being. Our persistent tendency, however, is to refuse to receive our lives from Christ. ‘We enter into conflict with him and thus into conflict with ourselves’ (30). Neder is arguing for a life of faith, not in place of virtue but as the means by which the Spirit enables our lives to ‘become transparent to the life of Christ’ (29). This is not so much the habituation that enables one to live virtuously (in their own power?), but a cruciform life in faith in which his power is made perfect in our weakness.

Second, since only God can reveal God, we remain always and utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit if our students are to know Christ. Only the Spirit can open their ears, eyes, and hearts to the love of God. And therefore, before and above all else, the theological educator must pray. For Neder, this is the essential pedagogical task of the theological educator.

Our lives are ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3) in order to be received and embraced. That subjective response is how we become (in ourselves) who we already are (in Christ). . . . The summons to discipleship is a summons to live with the grain of one’s identity in Christ rather than against it. As this happens we become images of the image of God. Our existence, the shape of our individual lives, coheres with our essence in him (26; original emphasis).

Conceiving of the human self as a process, as both gift and task, implies that we are not simply ourselves in a straightforward way, nor do we become ourselves all at once. At best we are on the way toward becoming ourselves. At most our existence is in process of becoming aligned with our essence. But this is a constant struggle. . . . To be clear, our identity in Christ is stable and unchanging, but the existential shape of life together with him is not (27-28).

Scripture on Sunday – Ezekiel 23

Scripture, ,

It has been quite some years since I last read Ezekiel, and at that time I found myself asking, “Will this book ever end?” One of the benefits of intentionally reading through the whole Bible is that you will read even those bits you may have avoided! This time around, I find Ezekiel captivating, absorbing. The book has not changed; I must have!

This morning I read chapter 23, the story of Oholah and Oholibah, two infamous sisters representing Samaria and Jerusalem, respectively. The prophecy is of brutal judgement on Jerusalem, similar to what occurred in Samaria. The allegory portrays the two kingdoms as wanton, prostituting themselves for favours and pleasure, but ultimately despised, mis-treated, and even killed by their lovers. Yahweh handed the Northern Kingdom of Israel over to the Assyrians. He will abandon Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonians.

The language and imagery of the prophecy is sexually explicit, violent, and female. The two cities are portrayed as licentious women whose adulteries signify their alliances with foreign powers, and their participation in the nations’ idolatries. They lust after the ‘big swinging dicks’ of Assyria and Egypt—I read the chapter in the Jerusalem Bible where the translation of verses 19-20 is particularly vivid:

She began whoring worse than ever, remembering her girlhood, when she had played the whore in the land of Egypt, when she had been infatuated by profligates big-membered as donkeys, ejaculating as violently as stallions.

But the behaviour of these sisters is intended to disgust:

They have been adulteresses, their hands are dripping with blood, they have committed adultery with their idols. As for the children they had borne me, they have made them pass through the fire to be consumed. And here is something else they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary and have profaned my sabbaths. The same day as sacrificing their children to the idols, they have been to my sanctuary and profaned it. Yes, this is what they have done in my own house (vv. 37-39).

Thus, Yahweh calls for the sisters to be judged, violently shamed, and destroyed. They will be stoned, and hacked with the sword. They will be robbed, stripped, and left naked, their noses and ears cut off, their children slaughtered, their houses set on fire.

What are we to make of this language and imagery, of this kind of passage in the Holy Bible? I have not read any commentaries or studies on Ezekiel, nor any feminist interpretation or criticism of the passage. In light of the ongoing problem of violence against women in Australian society, I imagine that some will find this text distressing or offensive. Others will be at a loss; some, perhaps, will move on quickly to less disturbing, more amenable readings. How do we make sense of a passage like this?

Although I am a novice with respect to Ezekiel, I can offer some reflections. First, we must remember that the passage is an allegory and is speaking not of women per se, but of nations—the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and their capital cities, Samaria and Jerusalem. The imagery is metaphorical, and the (truly terrible) judgement is directed toward the nations not toward women in particular, although, the horror will fall on the female as well as the male members of these communities.

Second, the use of sexual language to portray covenantal faithfulness and faithlessness is not uncommon in the prophets (see, for example, Jeremiah 2-5; 31; Hosea 1-3; Ezekiel 16; cf. Song of Solomon). The covenantal relation between God and Israel is understood in terms of a marriage, with fidelity and betrayal understood spiritually rather than literally. Israel’s ‘adultery’ is its idolatry, its giving itself to another lord other than Yahweh. Ezekiel has laboured this point continually in his earlier chapters.

Nevertheless, that such explicit language and imagery is used in this passage suggests that rampant sexual immorality was also an issue in Judah, accompanying the practice of idolatry and the fruits of prosperity. Further, that Ezekiel intends to indict the women of Judah for their immorality is suggested in verse 48: “I mean to purge the land of debauchery; all the women will thus be warned, and ape your debauchery no more,” though I acknowledge that this reference to other ‘women’ could also be a reference to nations.

But why would Ezekiel target women with this criticism? Shouldn’t he more appropriately aim this criticism at men? Actually he does, in chapter 22:

Where there are people who eat on the mountains [= idolatry] and couple promiscuously [note the link between idolatry and sexual promiscuity]; where men uncover their father’s nakedness; where they force women in their unclean condition; where one man engages in filthy practices with his neighbour’s wife, another defiles himself with his daughter-in-law, another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter… (vv. 9-11).

The men, too, are condemned for their sexual activity, using language that suggests that they have abused their power, at times violating and forcing themselves on women. It is a truism that it ‘takes two to tango,’ but in some of these cases it was not the tango but rape. Nevertheless, sometimes and perhaps often, women were equal or willing participants in the activity, and Ezekiel has condemned both men and women for their immoral conduct, though admittedly, his language in the twenty-third chapter is more lurid.

This leads to a third observation: the prurient language used in this chapter might lead some to picture this predominantly as a female sin. This, of course, is nonsense and misrepresents the nature of the issue (it takes two…). Nevertheless, Christian history—and not merely Christian history—has repeatedly left the impression that female sexuality is dangerous, that women are wanton, wickedly seductive, and thus in need of corralling, suppression, and harsh treatment if they are caught acting ‘inappropriately’—however a particular culture will define that. This is problematic and has often led to the suppression of women per se, and not merely the ‘inappropriate’ activity concerned. Further, this perspective can used to legitimise the use of violence against women in the interests of deterrence, of redeeming the group from shame, of preserving or restoring one’s affronted honour, and so forth.

Here we arrive at the nub of the problem I raised earlier: the imagery used portrays God using retributive violence against the sisters which seems to legitimise such violence against women. And here, I can only note that (i) he is speaking of nations, not of women; (ii) that this is a prophecy of divine judgement which is a divine prerogative—and here we must consider the divine abhorrence of the kinds of sins clearly delineated in Ezekiel; (iii) that the text is clearly allegorical and imaginative, not meant to be taken with a wooden literalness; and (iv) that other texts, especially Malachi 2:17, declare God’s hatred with respect to male-on-female violence. I might also note that in Ezekiel’s culture, it is the male who acts publicly, who wields power. By identifying the nation as a degenerate woman, the prophet is mocking and shaming the men. These observations only serve to place this problem in a larger setting, and do not fully mitigate the issue. Unfortunately, those bent on abusing their power will likely seek any justification they can for their actions, and fail to heed any interpretation that challenges their assumption.

Finally, as we think of the implications of this passage for contemporary application, the analogy is properly applied to the church rather than a modern nation-state, for it is the church who are God’s covenanted people. The church, therefore, is warned against throwing herself at the world, seeking its favours and pleasures, selling its soul and body for its approval. God’s terrible judgement was directed against his people—something we dare not forget.

 Photo Credit:
 Elena Maximova in Carmen (Royal Opera House), October 2015
 Photo by Catherine Ashmore; Posted by Opera Montajes