The Manchester Passion

I have just discovered that a video of the whole of this is online. It was broadcast live Good Friday 2006, a modern-day passion play set amongst the streets of Manchester, and using music from the city’s club scene to convey the story. Even for a live outside broadcast, the sound was sometimes not great, and the decision to do some vox pops interviews was regrettable, but the whole remains still the single best piece of religious broadcasting I have seen – imaginative and thought-provoking. Odd bits of the setting are powerful (Jesus, arrested, is dressed in the orange jump-suit of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner) or funny (check out the kebab van owner at the last supper reading the Da Vinci Code!), but it is the surprising and powerful selection of music that makes it. Beginning in the Upper Room and at Gethsemene, Jesus sings to the disciples ‘Love will tear us apart’ (Joy Division) and James’s ‘Sit down’ (‘Those who fear the breath of sadness – sit down next to me; those who find they’re touched by madness – sit down next to me; those who find themselves ridiculous – sit down next to me – in love, in fear, in hate, in tears, in love, in fear, in hate, in tears – sit down…’) Judas (played by Tim Booth of James) throws his thirty pieces of silver into a busker’s pot as he sings ‘Heaven knows I’m miserable now’ (The Smiths); the Virgin Mary (Primal Scream’s Denise Johnson) sings a series of linking songs – Oasis’s ‘Cast no shadow’ (‘Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say, Chained to all the places that he never wished to stay … As they took his soul, they stole his pride…’); M People’s ‘Search for the Hero’; Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’) expressing her feelings about her Son as He travels to His death. There are a couple of stunning duets – Jesus and Judas throw New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ back and forth: ‘And I still find it so hard, to say what I need to say, but I’m quite sure that you’ll tell me, just how I should feel today…Tell me how does it feel, when your heart grows cold…’ And Jesus and Pilate share, improbably but brilliantly, in Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’, singing at each other in unison lines like ‘I don’t think anybody feels the way I do about you now…Just maybe, you’re going to be the one who saves me…’ The effect is no doubt much more powerful if the Manchester lyrics are somewhere in the soundtrack of your childhood and adolescence, as they are for me, but even without, this was a powerful and thought-provoking translation of the gospel narrative into a contemporary setting. The end is astonishingly moving, even watching it again, knowing what’s coming (probably if you know the Stone Roses’ back catalogue better than I do you would have guessed in advance, but…) It’s an hour. It’s worth it:...

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How new is the ‘new perspective’?

I am no expert on the ‘new perspective on Paul’. I’ve read the obvious things – Sanders, Dunn, Wright, &c., although not Doug Campbell’s new book yet – and routinely use commentaries that presume or argue for the position; I’ve even preached and taught in ways that  broadly assumed the correctness of the NPP;  but I’ve never given the arguments the time or attention they no doubt deserve. I have long harboured a suspicion, however, that at least a part of what is going on under the headline is a comprehensive and massive exercise in deconstructing a straw man. From Sanders down to Campbell, the NPP writers have had in their sights an account of pauline soteriology (‘justification theory’) claimed to be dominant in the West from Luther down to today, which needs to be overthrown. Now, it is obvious that this involves a historical claim – that a certain characterisation of soteriology has been normative – alongside an exegetical claim – that this characterisation is inadequate. The first claim is a proper subject for someone who is interested in historical theology and, to the extent that I understand what is being said, I find it profoundly implausible. It was reading Francis Watson’s review of Doug Campbell’s book that emboldened me to go public on this suspicion. Francis starts with an overview of the new perspective: ‘[d]issatisfied with the traditional Protestant privileging of the so-called “doctrine of justification by faith”, a number of scholars have subordinated justification to participation or union with Christ…’ That was roughly what I had thought was going on, but I trust Francis’s judgement much more than my own on this issue, and so I will proceed on the basis that this is an adequate summary of one part of the argument. For the historical theologian, this statement invites the question, what is the ‘traditional Protestant’ position on soteriology? Does it privilege justification by faith, at the expense of participation/union with Christ? Let me quote Heinrich Heppe for a rapid demonstration. I choose Heppe for two reasons. First, he claims to be offering a synopsis of the major writers of Reformed dogmatics from Calvin to Schleiermacher – I could point to places where I think he twists the tradition (rarely) or over-systematises a fairly diverse witness (more common), but basically, this is a good witness to a broad swathe of Reformed tradition. Second, Heppe originally published his manual in 1861, so this is not new scholarship or a revisionist account; this is, simply, the tradition as it was received and understood. What, then, does he have to say about soteriology? He orders his account of soteriology under the classical ordo salutis taken from Rom. 8:30 – justification is consequent and dependent upon vocation, which itself follows predestination. I will pick the story up at vocation, or ‘calling’. ‘According to its real nature the calling of the elect is thus an insitio in Christum or a unio cum Christo, a real, wholesale, spiritual and indissoluble union of the person of the elect with the divine-human person of the Redeemer … At the root of the whole doctrine of the appropriation of salvation lies the doctrine of insitio or insertio in Christum … so the dogmaticians discuss it with special emphasis.’ References to Boquin, Zanchi, Olevian, Witsius, and van Mastricht follow, but he could have cited almost any of the standard manuals of Reformed dogmatics (at least of those I have read) – certainly the point is made abundantly clearly by Calvin, as scholarship has long recognised (Wendel, writing in 1950, assumes the point is standard). Justification is consequent upon union with Christ. That is the foundational claim of all traditional Reformed soteriology. Sanders, and those who have followed, certainly offered a new perspective on Palestinian Judaism, and (for me, at least – I understand that it had already been essayed elsewhere), a new way of understanding the structure of Romans, and the argument of Galatians; but the idea that traditional Protestant soteriology ought to be replaced with an account that ‘subordinate[s] justification to participation or union with Christ’? Sorry, but that just is traditional Protestant soteriology, at least in its Reformed expression (Lutheranism has not traditionally had this arrangement of union with Christ as the basis of justification). Why might this matter? Well, it is precisely the claim that the NPP calls for an overthrow or replacement of the Reformation teaching on justification by faith that has led to such vitriol and hostility from traditionalists; most recently and visibly, John Piper’s denunciations of Tom Wright. If I am right – and I repeat that I claim no expertise in understanding what...

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The BUGB affirmation of the ministry of women 2: practicality

The BUGB Council decision was not to walk apart from those who cannot accept the ministry of women; rather it was to be more intentional about affirming the Union’s support of the ministry of women. If this does not mean exclusion, the question has rightly been asked, what does it mean? What difference can this make on the ground? One way of thinking about this, it seems to me, is in terms of a hierarchy of doctrinal truths. We might distinguish between four levels in which a doctrine might fall: A. If you do not believe this, you are not adequately Christian; B. If you do not believe this, you are not adequately Baptist; C. If you do not believe this, your position is eccentric within the Baptist community; D. You can believe any way you like about this. Now, it is important to realise that we will have different estimations of what belongs where (a point that, being missed, often leads to simple incomprehension in ecumenical discussion). Let me offer for example, though, Trinity and Christology as class-A doctrines, and believers’ baptism and congregational government as class-B. The interesting distinctions come further down. There are matters of indifference denominationally: I have no idea how many Baptists are premillennial in their eschatology these days, for instance, or how many would hold to a six-day creation position. These are issues, however, on which the Union has no mind and no particular interest – class-D doctrines in my schema above. Perhaps where one stands on charismatic issues is also like this now: some of our churches are very comfortable with overt manifestations of spiritual gifts; some very uncomfortable; but neither position is more authentically Baptist than the other, at present. Forty years ago, that was not true. To be involved in the charismatic movement then did not exclude you from being Baptist, but set you apart as unusual, eccentric, within the Union. The mind of the Union was not there. A pressure group was created to change the mind of the Union, to make charismatic worship ‘Mainstream’. It worked, but back then someone committed to charismatic renewal who had a position on a denominational body would know that her opinions were odd, and she probably should have conscientiously set them to one side when acting as a representative of the denomination. This is a class-C doctrine, in my terms. Today there are others: a sacramental understanding of ministry (although this is perhaps shifting – see Paul Goodliff’s new book) or a ‘peace-church’ position. It seems to me that the effect of the Council’s decision, if followed through (as I hope it will be) is to move belief in the equality of female and male ministry from being class-D to being class-C within the denomination. If I am getting this right, Council is, in effect, saying, ‘if you believe that Scripture restricts the ministry to men only, you are welcome to walk with us still, but you must realise that on this issue you are walking out of step; we will not be making accommodation for your views within our structures; if you act on our behalf, on this issue you should be aware that you do not and cannot represent us.’ Such a stance, if followed through conscientiously, could have far-reaching and significant practical effects. Such as? Well, let me offer one, for me very personal, example: I concluded some years ago that I could not belong to a local church that did not affirm the ministry of women and men equally (I asked the question before we moved to St Andrews; the church meeting here has affirmed its commitment to the ministry of men and women equally; had it not, Heather and I would be in membership elsewhere). I have many friends whom I like and respect who think differently, and I have no wish to ‘un-church’ any of them, but for me, a male-only ministry is like infant baptism or belonging to a state church: it is not a denial of the gospel, but it is a significant enough distortion of gospel values that, in good conscience, I want to walk separately from those who believe in such things. I will share with them in mission energetically and cheerfully, but will continue to believe that they have made a grave error in their understanding of Scripture, letting cultural mores trump the plain meaning of the sacred text. My point here is one inevitable consequence of this position: if I were to ever seek settlement within a BUGB church again, I would be asking that my profile not be sent to churches that did not...

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Local churches, not the local church?

‘The local church is the hope of the world’ – so Bill Hybels, on any number of occasions. Hybels represents (to borrow a phrase from Rob Warner) the ‘entrepreneurial’ wing of the Evangelical movement, and others from a similar perspective could be found claiming the same thing – Rick Warren, perhaps. The point is surprisingly general amongst high-profile American Evangelical leaders, however – whether in the focus on authentic community found in the vision of Rob Bell or Brian McLaren, or the commitment to constructing a Biblical model of the local fellowship and its leadership in John Piper, Mike Horton, or Mark Dever. UK examples are less high-profile, but no more difficult to find. Of course, there’s lots to like about this as a broad principle (whatever one thinks of the way it is worked out in one or another of these writers). I’m a Baptist. We believe in the primary place of the local congregation; we got rabid about it in the States a couple of times, with the ‘anti-missions movement’ insisting that the only legitimate Christian organisation was the local congregation; parachurch groups, and even organised ministries within the local church, were unBiblical and to be opposed. Less rabid, but more powerful, consider John Smyth, at the beginnings of the movement: ‘is not the visible church of the New Testament with all the ordinances thereof the chief and principal part of the Gospel?’ You can’t get a higher vision of the primacy of the local congregation than that! But… Several snapshots, all from my own experience (none from St Andrews, I should perhaps say): A local church is developing a vision statement. It speaks of ‘being the witness to Jesus Christ in the town of …’ Someone asks, hesitantly, ‘does that mean that [other local church] is not the witness to Jesus Christ?’ A locum pastor of a fellowship a few miles from one of the famous, and big, US congregations (you’d know the name…), ‘Yes, they’re successful – but there is a blasted hinterland of fifty miles radius with no credible Christian witness in it because of their success.’ A debate over youthwork in an English fellowship ‘We want to start a club to disciple Christian teenagers!’ ‘But all the Christian teenagers in town go to the youth ministry run by [other local church] – are we really putting effort into replicating, and damaging, what they are doing?’ A pastor of a large city church in Scotland, over lunch in a Pizza restaurant: ‘I know that half my congregation drive out of the towns they live in and often enough past another church [of the same denomination] to get here; it’s because we can offer something the other churches can’t – but what is it doing to Christian witness in those towns?’ I could go on. And on. And on… I am a Baptist. I believe that local churches are the only hope for the world. This does not lead me to conclude, however, that my local church – wonderful as it is – is itself, alone, the hope of the world. When we dream our dreams and seek our visions, we need to weave into the stories we tell the other local fellowships that God has been pleased to raise in our community, and to find our distinctive calling that does not replicate or damage their...

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A call for conceptual clarity about conceptual clarity

(A title of which Doyeweerd would have been proud…) The collection Analytic Theology (OUP, 2009; ed. by Oliver Crisp and Mike Rea) contains several excellent and entertaining pieces, clustered around a claim that theologians ought to be attentive to the turn to explication of core Christian doctrines by analytic philosophers of religion. The claim seems to me a necessary one; as Thomas McCall puts it elsewhere ‘[s]ome theologians are surprised to learn that theological issues are under consideration at all in the analytic community, while other theologians are skeptical – to say that they are dubious that any good could come out of Notre Dame is to put it mildly.’ (Whose Trinity? Which Monotheism? (Eerdmans, 2010; p.1). For me, ever since interacting with Paul Helm – and indeed Oliver Crisp – when I was a doctoral student, the use and attraction of analytic tools has been obvious. It is simply a given, as far as I can see, that all intellectual work benefits from conceptual clarity, that analytic tools are finely honed precision instruments for the clarifying of concepts, and that contemporary theology has (famous and influential) exemplars whose lack of conceptual clarity is astonishing (see Randy Rauser’s entertaining and sharp application of Harry Frankfurt’s category of ‘bullshit’ to the writings of certain contemporary theologians in Analytic Theology). That said, the pursuit of conceptual clarity using analytic tools has certain limitations, which we need to be clear about. The most purely ‘analytic’ thinker in the Christian tradition is, I think, Eunomius, the primary heresiarch of the fourth century (far more so than Arius). Eunomius worked with a philosophy of language (probably derived via Porphyry from Plato’s Cratylus) in which words, properly used, corresponded to things in a one-one mapping. The proper name of God, naming that which is essential to be divine, is ‘unbegotten’; therefore the Son is not God. The Cappadocian logic which opposed this insisted on a doctrine of ‘analogy’ (to use an anachronistic word – their word was epinoia – have a look just how central this term is to the arguments of Basil and Gregory Nyssan’s books contra Eunomius) – the way words refer to the divine, in particular, is profoundly complex and irreducibly hesitant. There are no words (no, not ‘person’ or ‘relation’, regardless of  modern fashions) that do more than gesture mutely and almost ineffectually towards divine reality. For many contemporary theologians some realisation of this problem of language leads to a neglect of analytic philosophy. If contemporary philosophy is to be mined, veins of gold will be sought in Ricouer or (for the intellectually serious) Heidegger, not in the giants of the analytic tradition. This seems to me to be a mistake; as St Thomas (more than any other) shows, it is precisely because our language has such limited purchase when referring to God that we need to pursue conceptual clarity about the precise locations of the limits of our language. However, I confess to not seeing much of this sort of analysis in contemporary analytics. Rather too often, it seems to me, the analytic philosopher lines up a set of well-defined concepts which are either assumed to correspond in an uncomplicated way to reality, or perhaps which have no direct correspondence to reality. To borrow the terms of a different philosophical discourse, clarity about the proper relations of the signifiers is too often achieved at the expense of clarity about how the signifiers might relate to the signified, making the exercise, for the theologian, largely irrelevant. (I do not think I have read an analytic treatment of trinitarian doctrine – a favourite theme – which does not fall foul of this to some extent; I’d be very happy to be pointed to one.) So – yes, yes, and thrice yes, to the attempt to bring the finely-honed tools of analytics into theological discourse, to call theologians to use words with precision and responsibility, and to refuse, ever, to substitute rhetoric for argument – certainly to refuse the temptation to descend into Frankfurtian bull-sessions. But can we say more about the limits of our analysis? Can we be clear and precise about the places where our concepts necessarily lack full clarity and precision? Can we own and never forget that there are some realities that our, unquestionably excellent, dissecting tools cannot pare apart and expose in fine anatomical detail? Only if we can, will we be able to speak more clearly, more analytically, of the ineffable and incomprehensible One who has graciously met us in Jesus...

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