McLaren is always worth listening to even if (like McKnight) you find him to have gone too far down the path of heresy. His intelligence and humanity mingled with a deep faith have been for many of us the means by which faith might live on beyond the religious straight jackets that we have gratefully shed. He has been a pioneer into new and deeper understandings, and these people are always seen by the establishment as heretics. Just read the comments under the video clip.
Graham sent us a copy of the recording of our talk about making small missional communities at Calvary Christian Fellowship near Preston.
We were invited to take a road trip to describe something of our experiences with Aoradh, and we structured the discussion into three main sections ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘up’ with me talking about some of the background and theory (such as it is!) behind what we do, and Michaela describing our activities in a bit more detail. We tried to be really honest about the difficult bits as well as all the great stuff.
I have uploaded it as a series of podcasts, partly because other folk in Aoradh might be interested to know what we said about them, and also because the issue of how we make and sustain community in these fluid postmodern times seems to be pretty important, so others might like to hear something of our story.
You should be able to download the different sections on these links, but I am told that ‘ourmedia’ sometimes takes a little while to make uploads ‘live’, so you may need to come back a little later…
Thanks to the kindness of Aileen, one of our local ministers, we were given permission to use the beautiful Inverchaolain Chapel– out along Loch Striven. It is a small simple stone building, cupped in the bowl of the hills next to the Loch.
Audrey led us through a liturgy, using some ideas borrowed from Tabled– which is a fantastic collection of creative ideas for communion. We used two objects- one was a crown of thorns suspended with little baskets containing frozen cubes of wine, which dripped down onto a silver tray and a white cloth. The other was a loaf of bread into which we asked people to push nails. The images were powerful and Audrey’s words complimented them wonderfully.
(By the way- if you try the frozen wine thing, bear in mind that wine does not freeze very well- better to use water with some food colouring.)
Afterwards we went back to Andy and Angela’s as the planned picnic was rather rained off. No matter though, we took with us something precious that brought a deeper sense of the death of Jesus, and his resurrection then, and through us, now.
Within churches across the western world, many of us will be singing this line today- from the modern hymn by Stuart Townend, ‘In Christ alone’. The whole verse goes something like this;
In Christ alone! who took on flesh
Fulness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones he came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied –
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.
It is a great hymn, deeply emotional and soaring in its melody. However I increasingly find the one dimensional nature of it’s theology really difficult. It is this one line about the wrath of God. It conjures up the idea of some kind of unstoppable force of holy hate and destruction in the universe that was narrowly averted only by the torture and death of Jesus.
This is another one of those underpinning assumptions of Evangelicalism that most of us accepted as unassailable truth- Jesus died the horrible death on the cross that was rightfully ours and because of this, God was able to undertake some kind of divine conjuring trick for some of us. This was the only way to overcome the natural forces of justice in the universe. It was the only way to deal with the wrath of God.
For non theologians like me, the fact that this kind of understanding of the atonement of the cross is not the ONLY way of understanding the central drama of the Christian faith might come as a surprise. Recently of course, a number of hugely controversial books have emerged taking a new look at the issue. The authors of these books (Rob Bell, Steve Chalke, Brian McLaren) have often been subjected to the outrage of the faithful.
So, on this Good Friday, I thought that it might be worth examining some of the other understandings of atonement- the other ways that followers of Jesus have attempted to come to terms with the enormity of a God who would come to earth to die such a death.
The name given to the theory of atonement outlined above is ‘Substitutionary atonement’ or sometimes ‘Penal Substitution’. However rather than talk more about I think it would be useful to take a journey through atonement in church history.
Firstly, there is a summary of some of the ideas in this clip by Tony Jones, along with some of his own hard hitting alternatives;
There are other theories of atonement, but here is a quick summary of the dominant ones again;
Moral influence
In this view the core of Christianity is positive moral change, and the purpose of everything Jesus did was to lead humans toward that moral change. He is understood to have accomplished this variously through his teachings, example, founding of the Church, and the inspiring power of his death and resurrection.
This was the atonement theory dominant in the early church in the second and third centuries and was taught by the Church Fathers. It was also popular into the middle ages and beyond.
Ransom theory
Jesus liberates mankind from slavery to Satan and thus death by giving his own life as a ransom. Victory over Satan consists of swapping the life of the perfect (Jesus), for the lives of the imperfect (mankind).
Christus victor
Here Jesus is not used as a ransom but rather defeated Satan in a spiritual battle and thus frees enslaved mankind by defeating the captor. This theory continued to influence Christian theology for a thousand years.
Satisfaction
This theory grew from the work of the 11th century theologian Anselm. Mankind owes a debt not to Satan, but to sovereign God himself. A sovereign may well be able to forgive an insult or an injury in his private capacity, but because he is a sovereign he cannot if the state has been dishonoured. Anselm argued that the insult given to God is so great that only a perfect sacrifice could satisfy and Jesus, being both God and man, was this perfect sacrifice. Here we see the influence of earthly politics projected onto the heavens.
Penal substitution
The Protestant reformers developed Anselm’s theory. Instead of considering sin as an affront to God’s honour, rather sin is regarded as the breaking of God’s moral law. Placing a particular emphasis on Romans 6:23 (the wages of sin is death), penal substitution sees sinful man as being rightfully deserving God’s wrath with the essence of Jesus’ saving work being his substitution in the sinner’s place, bearing the curse in the place of man (Galatians 3:13).
A variation that also falls within this metaphor is Hugo Grotius’ “governmental theory“, which sees Jesus receiving a punishment as a public example of the lengths to which God will go to uphold the moral order.
Some would argue that all these theories contain part of the truth, and (in the absence of certainty) I think I would agree with this.
Apart from this thing that we call ‘the wrath of God’.
I would contend that our theological projections of God are always partial, always incomplete and always emerging from our cultural perspective. So it was natural for the children of the modern enlightenment to see God as embodying a force of logical, highly technical justice. It seemed like the elevation of mankind towards democratic freedom mediated by the purity of the law was a process ordained by God, and so this must also be the character of God himself.
God the judge- stern, inflexible, bound by the fine detail of the law, but able to save a narrow few through a technicality.
But today we remember the death of a man Jesus.
The scandal of the cross.
The unreasonableness of the cross.
The injustice of the the cross.
The laying down of all power and majesty, the ultimate vulnerability of the cross.
We humans are so contradictory. Sometimes we are driven to destroy anyone or anything in our pursuit of personal gain. At other times we are capable of such incredible self sacrifice in pure service of the other. Always we hope that life is more than mere bio mechanics- it has to mean something.
For men in particular, this contradiction often creates some kind of deep void that we spend a lifetime’s journey trying to fill. We believe that the only good life is a life a success. And ultimately success has to be measurable against the failure of others- against the poverty of others, the lack of creativity in others, the lack of godliness in others, even the lack of love in others.
The problem is that success is so fickle- life moves the goalposts constantly and so we feel constantly diminished.
The void remains.
I read this today;
It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your ‘I’ is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary ‘I.’ No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever.
Richard Rohr
It seemed to me that there was a deep spiritual significance in this. What is this thing that we are becoming as we seek to live deeper, more meaningful, more loving lives? Is it really to be bigger, or is it more about recognising that we are small?
Small that is, like a beloved child, whose achievements might be indeed be celebrated, but in no way make us any more (or any less) beloved.
If only it was so simple.
But then again, I am still immature. I have a lot of growing to do yet.
Thanks to Graham for this- it hits at the heart of the ‘Christian Nation’ nonsense, at a time when the worlds only superpower is starting to decline…
America stands in a long line of previous Empires who employ Jesus as a military-industrial figurehead to justify all sorts of things that are simply incompatible with any understanding of what Jesus died for. From Constantine to Queen Victoria.
Did any of you read this story in the weekend Guardian a couple of weeks ago? Bizarre was the first word to come to mind…
It concerns the recent decision by the Insane Clown Posse to come out as ‘Christians’-
Foul mouthed, misogynist, violent and aggressive Christians perhaps- but apparently this image was really all an act to get on the wavelength of their audience, so they can hit them with the ‘message’.
If you are not familiar with ICP (and I confess they are not on my MP3 player) here is a sample of their new Christian output-
(Warning! Sweary words abound…)
The Guardian article reveals the two members of ICP as somewhat troubled and confused, so I am not going to have a go. I hope they find something of meaning in spite of all the baggage they seem to be carrying with them.
What is interesting is the clash of cultural world views.
On the one hand, you have gangsta rap, celebrating the stabbing of whores, violent threats and the carrying of weapons.
On the other hand you have conservative Christianity, with it’s distrust of science, and it’s desire to find evidence for God in nature.
All wrapped up in a shallow manipulative image- behind which real people have lost themselves.
For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For tenyears, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.
And later-
As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.
Check out her facebook page– it has literally thousands of responses- mostly supportive, but some predictably angry-
I read Rice’s comments, and find myself in full agreement. In the circles I move in, these are not controversial. There seems to be an increasing number of Christians who can no longer cope with Christianity- or rather what we have made of it.
The challenge for organised religious Christianity is to find a way to engage with us again. Some will return later- we will have our times of rebellion, but then come home. Others will never come back- it is too hard to return to an environment that may have been perceived as abusive and manipulative.
Many more are looking for a way to re-engage and network with a different kind of Christianity- even though we are not quite sure what this looks like. We know what it is NOT, but lack certainty as to what it could be.
But it is certainly about a return to Jesus- to a radical, counter cultural faith that turns over the tables in the temple- that takes another look at all this baggage we have accumulated.
And it will happen. It is happening.
Here is another status update from Anne Rice-
My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.
Today is ‘Bible Sunday‘- a celebration co-ordinated by the Bible Society, with the title ‘Living in the certainty of God’s Word’.
We are pointed in the direction of that wonderful passage in Isaiah 55– which begins ‘Come all who are thirsty…‘
I very much agree that the Bible is something to celebrate, so I have been reading some of the information about Bible Sunday. However, I find myself in a familiar uncomfortable place. I have posted before about some of these issues- here and here for example.
Some of it might relate to the language used in this celebration- the assumptions and presumptions inherent. The very title- ‘Living in the certainty of God’s word’- what this means for many is a closing down of debate, a final understanding of Truth– the Bible says it, I believe it, end of story. We are encouraged to approach the Bible as we would a mathematical formula- to engage with the different elements, order them correctly and so arrive at the only logical reasonable outcome.
But I have become increasingly aware that in doing this, we diminish the words. Indeed, we are in danger of recreating God in our own image.
The Bible is full of truth, wisdom, poetry, history, prophecy and mystery. We humans are logical orderly creatures, who are made to look for patterns. However, we look through at things through a perspective formed by presumptions- it is much easier that way, and it is very hard (if not impossible) to approach any issue afresh without the influence of time and place and heritage. Most of the time this stands us in very good stead. It allows us to be what we are. It allows us to build logical portable and replicatable blocks of truth. It allows us to find commonality and build Church.
But then there are those elusive dots.
We can try to ignore them, but they keep popping up- like those passages in the Bible that just do not fit very well… Or others who have understood a passage in a different way, and God seems to be blessing them. Or the realisation that what we have regarded as fixed and absolute, is suddenly- shifting…
We can regard them as irrelevant and but then they still irritate. Or we can outlaw them, suggest that they are heretical distractions- but then we find that they are increasingly difficult to ignore.
But my humble experience of the Bible suggests that they will always be there. Because the Word of God can not be contained in a book. Neither can God be reduced to a formula. God will simply not be contained.
Does this diminish the Bible for Christians? Perhaps for some, it does. For these folk, the theological blocks hewn from the huge quarry of Scripture are so rigid, that to suggest a different perspective is to bring the whole edifice crashing down. In this, we are in danger of worshiping an idol of our own construction.
But for many others, the Bible is a cherished gift- one that shines light, but also contains many shadows cast by our lack of understanding, and the assumptions made by previous generations.
So I am going to celebrate Bible Sunday by reading the passage from Isaiah 55, and reminding myself that this wonderful poetry points us not at the words, but at the word giver.
Isaiah 55
1 “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
6 Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the LORD’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
which will not be destroyed.”
The good German- an extraordinary man in extraordinary times. Whose incisive faith saw through the evil that had overcome his people like a cancer, and allowed him to stand alone- a candle in darkness, a voice in the wilderness.
I sort of knew this. But I have read very little of his writings.
Michaela is persevering with ‘Life together‘ although it is not an easy read- this is partly because of the style.
The surprise to most of us is that Bonhoeffer was executed not for passive peaceful resistance of Hitler’s regime, but rather for plotting with Canaris and von Stauffenberg to overcome Hitler with a Coup- which included the assassination of Hitler- the famous bomb plot.
The great pacifist theologian, who had visited Ghandi in the 1930s in order to understand non-violent resistance had turned to violence and political power games. He became a double agent.
Did the potential ends justify the means? It is scarcely possible to conceive of a regime that is more evil within our modern experience. What else could a good man do, but seek to overcome by any means possible? Christians fighting against Hitler have long seen this as a ‘just war‘. I think I might have agreed with them had I been a child of Bonhoeffers age.
But history has a way of allowing us time to consider, and weigh the weight of the matter- and for us, the Spirit of the thing, the theology of the thing- this becomes important.
Other Christians resisted. I visited a prison in Berlin years ago where dozens of pastors were hanged much earlier in the war than Bonhoeffer for criticising Hitler. Leaders like Karl Barth and Martin Niemoller formed the Confessing church in protest against the Nazi appropriation of the Church as part of the State machinery.
What did Bonhoeffer acheive with his part in the plot against Hitler? Probably very little. The plot failed, and by that time the war had been raging for years, and millions of Jews, Gypsy’s, homosexuals and ‘Untermensch‘ had already died and been processed through industrial ovens in Eastern Europe. History records the plot as too little, too late.
Would peaceful protests have achieved more? It seems that death would have come to him either way.
Bonhoeffers feelings about his chosen path appear to have been mixed. He had no doubt that what he was doing was a moral choice that he may well need to answer for before God. He refused to allow prayers for him by the Confessing church whilst he was in prison, as he suggested prayer should be for Christians imprisoned as martyrs, not through acts of direct resistance such as his.
So- what choices are we followers of Jesus to make in the face of war and violence and oppression? His words seem clear enough. But his followers have always found the reality more complex. Jesus seemed to be more than willing to mix with Roman Soldiers, and Peter carried a sword at least once in his company.
For me, violence is something to be resisted in itself- particularly when it is perpetrated by one state on another. Particularly when Christians appear to support this violence and claim that God is on their side. The American/British appetite for war post 911 is a case in point. But Bonhoeffer- his times were very different.
Perhaps circumstances will always demand of us- choices. Extreme circumstances demand the more black and white ones. For the rest of us, we have theory, and theology. Bonhoeffer had enough of theology that was not anchored to practical activity in the service of the oppressed.
But I still wonder if he got it wrong…
There are a few films out about his life- usually American. Bonhoeffer seems to be able to be appropriated as a Saint by the conservatives and the liberals. There are a few clips of You Tube if you are interested-
this fragile tent 