Scripture and the Church

Johann Albrecht Bengel in 1742:

Scripture is the foundation of the Church: the Church is the guardian of Scripture. When the Church is strong in health, the light of Scripture shines bright; when the Church is sick, Scripture is corroded by neglect; and thus it happens, that the outward form of Scripture and that of the Church, usually seem to exhibit simultaneously either health or else sickness; and as a rule the way in which Scripture is being treated is in exact correspondence with the condition of the Church.

Gnomon of the New Testament, volume 1, page 7

Benedict XVI in 2011, offering a Marian interpretation of Psalm 119:

The Psalmist’s faithfulness stems from listening to the word, from pondering on it in his inmost self, meditating on it and cherishing it, just as did Mary, who “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart”, the words that had been addressed to her and the marvelous events in which God revealed himself, asking her for the assent of her faith (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). And if the first verses of our Psalm begin by proclaiming “blessed” those “who walk in the law of the Lord” (v. 1b), and “who keep his testimonies” (v. 2a). It is once again the Virgin Mary who brings to completion the perfect figure of the believer, described by the Psalmist. It is she, in fact, who is the true “blessed”, proclaimed such by Elizabeth because “she... believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (Lk 1:45). Moreover it was to her and to her faith that Jesus himself bore witness when he answered the woman who had cried: “Blessed is the womb that bore you”, with “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Lk 11:27-28). Of course, Mary is blessed because she carried the Saviour in her womb, but especially because she accepted God’s announcement and because she was an attentive and loving custodian of his Word.  

General Audience (9 November 2011)

Holy Scripture and the Church in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England:

VI. Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation ... 

VI. The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man ... 

XVII. ...  Furthermore,  we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God. 

XX. The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

To Love is to Live

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

To love YHWH is to live.

To love is to choose life over death.

To love is the supreme commandment.

To love is to cherish His ways of doing things.

To love is to cherish every little thing about His ways of doing things.

To love is to flourish.

Turning away from Love,

Paying no attention to Him

Leads away – not into freedom – and means

Turning away from life.

Valentine

“Legend has it that Valentine’s Day originates with a Roman man named Valentine who was imprisoned and eventually martyred for his Christian faith. He died on 14 February in the third century, leaving a farewell note for the jailer's daughter who had befriended him, signing it 'From Your Valentine'.

Whether or not their friendship had a romantic element is unknown, but we do know that she was inspired by his faith to express her own Christian love and that this moved her to action.” (CUF email)

Because of whom was Valentine in prison? 

Who kept him there – in more than one sense of the word?

Who was therefore his jailor?

His Name is Love.

Valentine had been captured by Christ and for Christ’s sake lost his live 

and gained it again and the jailer’s daughter became the Jailer’s sister.

Matthew 5:21-37

Outward obedience to God’s commandments is not life. To live is to love. Stopping short of murder and adultery is not yet to love. Not breaking a marriage or an oath is not yet to express loyal love. The law must be written on the heart (see Jer. 31:31–34, cf. Deut. 6:5; 10:16; 30:6). The heart is the seat of our motivations, the place from which our words and actions proceed (see Matt. 15:18–20).

If I stop loving my brother or sister – little by little,

I will cease to love God – little by little.

Turning away from love, I am on the road to perdition.

Collect

Almighty God,

who alone can bring order

to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity:

give your people grace

so to love what you command

and to desire what you promise,

that, among the many changes of this world,

our hearts may surely there be fixed

where true joys are to be found;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Children and Conversion

Excerpt from Sam Donoghue's How do children become Christians? reflecting on comments by Revd Andrew Smith, the Bishop's Director for Interfaith Relations in the Diocese of Birmingham, at a Children in Urban Situations conference.

1. You've grown up with it, now make it yours

For those of us who work in churches this is an especially valuable thought. It is my hope that the children who grow up in our church communities will never remember a time when God wasn't a significant part of their life and our job is to nurture that and allow it to deepen.
This means that as the child gets older and their thinking develops they are able to choose to carry on in the faith they grew up in rather than slightly bizarrely repent from it. This may come in a moment of decision but is likely to be a slow process that John Westerhoff would characterise as the movement from 'affiliative faith' to 'owned faith' through a time where faith is described as 'searching'.

2. Continue doing what you're doing but welcome Jesus into it.

This is a model that Andrew suggested had great value when working with people coming from other faiths. It acknowledges the good in their current practice and seeks to place Jesus in the heart of it. So don't repent of praying five times a day but instead pray in the name of Jesus and the power of the spirit.

3. Stop doing what you're doing and follow Jesus

This is the model that Andrew reflected is applied to children the most but may well be the least appropriate. I'd agree with him; please hear that I'm not saying children don't need to decide to follow Jesus but we need to be careful about how we present this. The danger is that no matter how well we explain to a child that God loves them all they will hear is that they have done things that make God so angry that he can't be their friend until they say sorry. For some children they won't hear about grace because they won't get past that first image of an angry and judgemental God who is actually pretty scary.

Not By Texts Alone: David Runcorn

The Pilling Report offers disagreements about whether it is legitimate for Christians to fight in a war as an analogy for handling disagreements about appropriate sexual activity. This is discussed in the previous post.

David Runcorn's contribution “Evangelicals, Scripture and same sex relationships – an ‘Including Evangelical’ perspective” (Appendix 4 in the Report) refers to a few more possible analogies.

David Runcorn identifies himself as an "including evangelical" which refers to someone for whom "obedient submission to the Scriptures in personal discipleship and in the life and practice of the Church is primary and non-negotiable" and who has "come to believe that there is a place for faithful same sex relationships in the Church."[1] This he contrasts with "conserving evangelicals" who, affirming the same stance of obedient submission to the Scriptures, continue to uphold the traditional ethical teaching.

David Runcorn lists "slavery, apartheid, usury, divorce and remarriage, contraception and women in society and the Church" as "important social and ethical issues" which reveal that evangelicals have been able "to revise, reverse or adopt ‘including’ positions" having resisted to do so initially. (The use of ‘including’ with reference to the first two issues presumably relates to the effect of more inclusive communities; as far as actual practices, attitudes and behaviour patterns are concerned the move was  towards exclusion which puts them in a different category from the following.)

He observes "that the unsettling process of reading, re-interpreting and revising even long unquestioned biblical convictions under the compelling of the Spirit is not a task this conserving tradition is unfamiliar with or unwilling to undertake."  This much hardly needs stating. As David Runcorn himself adds, "its own understanding of Scripture requires it."

So what is it that "conserving evangelicals" may be overlooking to which David Runcorn wants to draw our attention? Maybe the nub of the issue is to be found in this statement:

Christian history warns of the hazards of using texts alone to establish the biblical teaching on any issue.

This is a necessary warning against proof-texting. But it is potentially more than that. Observing that "the Christian Church today believes slavery to be evil and wrong on the basis of biblical teaching and ethics," David Runcorn adds the rhetorical question,  "But on what scriptural basis?"

We would of course expect both Christian slave-holders and Christian abolitionists to appeal to biblical warrant. The fact that both sides on this or any number of issues appeal to Scripture is hardly surprising, given the place of the Bible in Christian faith and practice. What is unsettling is that this appeal to Scripture was not entirely superficial. The book I want to read on this is Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (The University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

When we look back to how the Bible was read during the civil war in the United States, or in apartheid South Africa, do we shudder at how easily sin can blind us to "what Scripture really says"? Do we need to go further, as David Runcorn seems to suggest, and acknowledge that the pro-slavery and pro-apartheid argument is exegetically as sound as the argument on the other side?

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[1] The phrase "faithful same sex relationships" apparently refers to sexually active partnerships analogous to marriage, as committed friendships between members of the same sex are not controversial.

War in the Pilling Report

The Church of England struggles to come to a common mind on the question what sexual behaviour is and is not appropriate for Christians. In November 2013, a working group published a discussion document for the House of Bishops, the Pilling Report. It offers one analogy by way of an ethical issue on which Christians strongly disagree without, by and large, breaking fellowship.

305. Anglicans have not always sought the final resolution of issues where the process of conversation and dialogue does not result in easy consensus. An example is the question of war – there remains within Anglicanism a strong and well-developed pacifist position and another (traditionally more influential) which emphasizes theories of the just war. Both positions are presented as scriptural and reasonable and both have long histories within the life of the church. The dialogue continues. On many issues, there is scope for profound ethical disagreement between Anglicans. But when the different ethical stances represent people and traditions and not just theories, disagreement can call into question the very identity and belonging of the protagonists.

There are some obvious parallels. The key issue is an activity (waging war) which for a group of people (soldiers) is an important, for some maybe even essential, aspect of their identity. Some Christians want to bless (the people involved in) this activity in certain, carefully circumscribed circumstances ("just war"); others believe that the church cannot invoke God's blessing on this activity under any circumstances. The more "inclusive" position is in line with the majority of the population and the demands of the state, albeit not completely so, as the (futile) opposition to Tony Blair's Iraq war demonstrated.

There are also significant differences. As with a number of other issues, to some of which David Runcorn's contribution makes reference, there is Biblical precedence for the activity alongside strictures against it, so that the challenge is how to read God's Word as a coherent whole, doing justice to the different statements, principles and examples offered across the canon.

The Pilling Report arguably understates the extent to which what they term the "traditionally more influential" position is the default position in the Church of England. Article 37 of the Thirty-Nine Articles states

It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars.

Reasoning to support this position can be found, e.g., in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2.2 question 40, first article (the second article argues that it is nevertheless unlawful for clerics). 

There is room for conscientious objectors within the Church of England and space to argue for a pacifist position. Pacifist priests may be able to avoid some of the most difficult liturgical situations but there is little doubt that they are operating in a non-pacifist environment which does not give the space for promoting pacifism with true consistency, as a Mennonite church would.

The opposite scenario, a pacifist church which allows for the blessing of soldiers before they go to war, is harder to imagine. Agreeing to disagree is easier in cases where the dominant position is the more inclusive one. A church that sanctions actions such as waging war cannot truly promote an ethic which disapproves of that action; it can at best tolerate people who seek to live by such an ethic.

If the supporters of the Pilling Report hope that we can arrive at a situation where we "agree to disagree" on the appropriateness of sexual acts outside marriage as traditionally understood in ways similar to how we live with our disagreements on war, it is not clear how one would move to this place from where we are now.

Life and Death

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; 

for this is the end of everyone, and the living will lay it to heart. (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

Funerals invite us to reflect on the meaning of life and death. They do so in different ways, depending on, e.g., whether the death was tragic or brought relief from suffering. Some funerals give us little reason to complain.

Abraham breathed his last and died in good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

And Job died, an old man and full of days.

Some people, struck down by a stroke, live for a few more years beyond the time we might have allotted to them, years in which they are no longer truly "with us". What might be the meaning of such extra years?

Those who are no longer able to communicate with us, who seem to be already "dead to the world", cannot tell us what is going on for them. Do those who seem to be inattentive to the present moment, showing us no sign of recognition, live in memory and hope? Are they in the past and the future more than the present? We do not know but it would be hasty to conclude that there is no attentiveness at all based on the observation that they do not attend to us or that there is no communication at all based on the observation that they do not communicate with us.

What might be the meaning of such extra years to God? Why does he continue to give breath, functioning lungs and a beating heart to someone even though we, who sit at their bedside, no longer get anything much out of this life and cannot be confident that the sick person does?

Is it maybe a sign that human life is precious in God’s sight? He does not discard us, once we are no longer useful to him.(In truth, God does not need our words and actions, even if he makes gracious use of them.)

Sustaining the life of someone who no longer speaks, no longer accomplishes anything, seems wasteful.

And yet we see such "wastefulness" everywhere in creation and take it as a sign of God’s lavish generosity. His giving is not circumscribed by our ideas of what we want and need.

What might such years of silence mean to us who are looking in from the outside? They may remind us of our limits, our helplessness; we feel useless, wondering whether our presence with someone who shows no sign of recognition makes any difference. We may be challenged to show love even when there is no hope of getting anything back for ourselves and not even a sign that the love is appreciated. The bedside can become a place of desolation and with it a place to practice selflessness.

For those of us who live a much fuller life - and by and large enjoy it - surely it is also a safeguard against taking for granted what is ours only by gift and so a stimulus for gratitude. To paraphrase the Selkirk grace:

Some have life but no appetite for it.

Some still hungry for life die.

We have life and appetite for it,

so let us praise God on high.

We have reason to praise God for the breath he gives us every day, for zest for life, for being able to relate to others. But as Christians we have reason to praise God also when our mortal life ebbs away because our life in Christ does not, and when our human relationships fade because God's relationship with us does not.

I am convinced that neither death, nor life … 

will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.