Copernicus

In a recent issue of the e-newsletter of cbeinternational a comment was made about the church opposing Copernicus' ideas about the solar system.

I sent this note in reply:

It is easy to think that because the church opposed some scientific advances in the early modern period that it did so as 'the church'; that is, informed by the Bible. In fact the opposition was purely cultural. People like Copernicus did not so much 'rub the Bible up the wrong way' as they challenged the prevailing aristotelian philosphy that had been taken into the church (and is still within it). The irony is that the rise of modern science relied upon Christian believers who took the Bible at face value; today they would be called 'fundamentalists'. But perjoratives aside, it is the realism of the scriptures and the realist ontology they promote that has lead to modern science, rather than the pagan aristotelianism with its ontology that steps outside any revelation and is based on pure speculation.

Then the editor wrote back and asked that I simplify the language!!

And thus:

"The church is often misunderstood as opposing science in the early days of modern science. But this is not totally true. What happened is that the church followed the beliefs of the day which were based on ancient Greek (pagan) views of the natural world: we know today that these pagan views were wrong.

When original thinkers, with their views based on the Bible, looked at the world with fresh eyes, they often ended up in disagreement with the pagan based common beliefs. So, while they looked like they opposed the church, they were really opposing paganism, which the church authorities had swallowed too.

The irony is that modern science arose because of thinkers who took the Bible at face value and were able to look at the material world without the blinkers of paganism. This is because the Bible introduces us to a world that is created by God and is given to us to examine and understand. Some would argue that Adam naming the animals is the first record of us examining and understanding the world.

The notion that women and men have different 'roles' in the church is, I think a similar example of the church having absorbed the world and not reading the Bible for its radical confrontation with human pretences.

BTW, check the news of next year's conference.

Becoming a minister

A recent post on Andy Goodliff's blog on starting in ministry attracted a comment from me. I've re-posted the comment below.

The blog was on how seminary study does not equip one for the real world of 'ministry'.

My comment, a little edited:

Being a 'minister' in organised church terms is very much a craft, which suggests that becoming a minister should be by an apprenticeship. That is, fresh out of theol. college, you are not a minister (although you might have the title), but have a body of knowledge and a level of intellectual understanding (but not necessarily wisdom or applied love) that will assist you be a minister, but not make you one. I don't think that it's even a precondition.

Step one would be to serve in a church under the guidance of its elders; later you might become an elder too, if the Spirit so provides.

However, a highly trained person might make a great teacher: different from the omnibus role we have today of professional minister (I note the unbiblical game was given away by the term 'laity', incidentally).

It would be great, I think if all Christians underwent some form of formal Christian education: some may do short courses, others might do PhDs (and then not advertise the fact out of properly placed humility :-) ); some would then go on to be Sunday School teachers, convene youth or adult study and prayer groups, others would assist with the formal weekly gatherings (aka services) as moderator, reader, speaker, teacher, prayer, etc.

This would tend to create ministering communities, rather than one-man shows, and one would hope, such communities that could organically support their ministry needs, without 'flying in' experts who are not part of the community to get rapidly grafted on, with many attendant problems (but some benefits, too, I agree).

It is the professionalisation of Christian ministry that is a problem. Once people are denied a valid voice in their Christian group, because they must defer to an expert (how does one become an expert in Christian life, or living in a loving manner against the challenges of every day?) they are told, implicitly, that they have no voice that's worthwhile for evangelism, or any other spiritual purpose; which is Not Good!

Grace

C. S. Lewis is reputed to have once remarked that the distinguishing feature of Christianity against other religions was that Christianity was based on the idea of grace: God's grace to us in Christ, to be specific.

But I think that God's grace goes much further, and marks all his interactions with us; including the very first.

Grace suggests generosity, the unlimited deployment of Godly resources where ours or other resources are simply incapable.

God's creation as recorded in Genesis 1 is an example of, and I think, consistent with his graciousness.

The alternatives, or the popular alternative of theistic evolution is, to my mind, most ungracious, and unlike God. God is not, as I read the scriptures, in the habit of requiring secondary causes to mediate his will. Well, I specifically think of grace setting aside our works, but wonder if grace also sets aside the possibility of God making a creation as a god-free machine that goes on to make itself. This seems to fly in the face of the generosity and thoroughness of God's grace, and his not relying on second causes to bring his covenental results: Christ saves, directly, without our works; God creates, as he said, without the works of a creation as a kind of demi-urge that removes God from his creation and obscures the marks of his loving grace towards us.

The church's mission

A quick count reveals that over my many decades of Christian experience I've been a member of about 17 churches, mainly in Sydney. There are also another 7 or 8 churches in Cambridge, London, Wellington, Melbourne, New York, Rochester (Minn), Chicago (south) and country New South Wales that I've visited, spoken to people in, and gotten as much involved with as my time in those places allowed.

The denominations include Anglican (ranging from evangelical to so-called 'high' and anglo-catholic), Presbyterian, Baptist, Churches/Disciples of Christ, Lutheren and Bretheren (the open, not the closed variety).

In many of these churches I've had wonderful experiences, had warm and encouraging fellowship with my Christian brothers and sisters and through their variety, been introduced to aspects of Christian community that I would not have known if I'd stayed in the Presbyterian church of my early childhood: from the liturgical dance of the Chicago University Presbyterian Church to the gigantism of the Garden Grove Community Church (I think it was the name prior to the Crystal Cathedral being built), to the direct biblicalism of St. Helen's at Bishopsgate in London and the wonderful accepting fellowship of some Baptist and Bretheren churches.

I've found the warmest community in a Presbyterian Church in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, the most accepting, an anglo-catholic parish in Sydney, the most open, the Presbyterian Church in South Chicago, the most friendly, a couple of Baptist churches, in Sydney and country NSW. The most spiritually frank doesn't really get a mention above (it should, perhaps): an Assemblies of God church meeting in an inner Sydney suburb, tied with an Anglican curate in a nearby suburb's church. I've enjoyed friendly and accepting bible study groups in a Disciples of Christ church in New York city, Cambridge Baptist church and All Souls London. I've experienced the opposite in my very own city!

Many of these churches have mottos; many mottos are of the style "Proclaiming Christ and making disciples". Very biblical.

Oddly, none take as their motto anything like "living out the love we are called to show" or "helping harvest the fruit of the Spirit in each others' lives" (see Galatians 5:22). But the whole point of Christian witness is to change lives. If ours aren't the first to change, then what is the point?

I say this having some more recent church experiences that would seem to belie the results that faith is supposed to have. Plenty of 'good teaching'; but one wonders, when it is supported by a dearth of 'good living'!

Chiasm

A couple of years ago I read a series of blogs treating the topic of literary devices being deployed in Genesis 1 to the effect of contradicting its possible historicity. Now, I can't recall if chiasm was one such device, but at the St Philip's Bible talk last week Justin included an example of chiasmus in the spoken words reported of Jesus. Jesus used the chiasm to emphasise what he was saying, and doubtless, to increase its memorability. In short, Jesus was speaking truth, not using a device to mask it.

Hengel on Genesis

Since his recent death, the Hengel industry has been in 'drive', with his passing noted on a number of theology and culture websites and blogs.

This lead me to re-read an article by him published in Christianity Today in 2001 (v. 45, n. 8, p. 78), entitled The Genesis of Our Woes.

Hengel makes a number of wonderful statements in this article, notwithstanding his entertainment of the contradiction between biblical 'creation' and contemporary materailist conceptualisations.

I'll quote the introduction.

"The most realistic and hopeful prophecies for our era come not from Daniel or Revelation but from the opening chapters of the Bible.

The breathtaking progress of the natural sciences and new technology has created modern prophets. On the one hand, these prophets dream up new human paradises that include the hope for never-ending life. On the other hand, they predict apocalyptic diasters. Some promise to conquer the aging process or incurabe diseases; others predict self-destruction of humanity by nuclear conflict or biological warfare.

Of course, they are not inspired by the Spirit of God but by the spirit of our time. Their hopes and fears are their utopias and their nightmares. They do not preach from public square or ecclesiastical pulpits. Their stage is the media, from newspapers and magazines to television and the World Wide Web. Sometimes they reflect a pretentious sort of intellectual moneymaking entertaining or high-brow showbiz, which have overtaken the role of the former revival preachers, expecially for upper-class society.

We Christians of the new millennium do not need such modern, sensationalistic prophesies and messages. We have no need of their predictions of abundant well-being or of universal mischief, because we live with the promises of God. In the first pages of the Bible, in fact, we possess prophesies that help us understand our exciting but overbearing world and thus point implicitly to God's promises for his church."

Darwin in Forbes

Interesting application of Darwinian thinking to management in this Forbes Magazine article by Ron Heifetz and others.

The only trouble is, if they were truly Darwinian, managers would try just anything, knowing that their false starts would be eliminated by selection: they'd be selected out to bankruptcy, just like Lehman Bros! Not Good. In fact, good management requires creativity (purposefully) and intelligent design!

That's because reality is not Darwinian, it includes purpose, will and intelligence!

Check here for other opinion pieces on Darwin.

Dissenter touches on allied issues.

Collins on Leadership

Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great" and other books regarded by Phil Rosensweig as "a mix of The Little Engine that Could and The Da Vinci Code", but still well worth a read to my mind, stated this about my bete noire, 'leadership' [at least in its uncritcal and semi-digested Christian version] (Collins calls himself a "leadership sceptic"):

"

Business corporations are the special case in society. It's unlike almost every other type of social system -- it's a concentrated executive power. If you look in government and social systems there's a more diffuse power model where no one person has the concentrated power of a CEO. What we see then is an interesting asymmetry and a sobering one. No single leader can make a great company, but the wrong [leader] invested with power can do a lot of damage

"

Now, substitute for the value 'leader' the value 'christian minister' and you'll see how corrupt and unbiblical is the common reflexive and ill considered application of that concept in church circles.

"concentrated executive power": in the church? I don't think so! At least not amongst praying and serving communities.

"power model": power? Where does this concept gain any ground in the church; a society of cooperation, mutual support and loving commitment, self-sacrificial loving commitment (opps, I don't see that too much in churches I've known...although I have seen it, I must say, in churches in less well off areas)? Unfortunately it does, to the detriment of the church and the poor fellow who is usually looked to (without much practical or effective discouragement in many cases) as "the leader".

The most pointed observation for churches that find the 'one person leader' model (even if couched in that oxymoronic 'servant-leader' term) applicable to themselves is the final observation: "no single leader can make a great [church?], but the wrong [one] can do a lot of damage."

I think most Christians will have seen that in spades.

When I was young I was much interested in anarchic politics, particularly as described by Murray Bookchin; the use of consensual decision and planning models, where power, if it existed was diffused appealed to me.

Now, I think that anarchism is probably unworkable and impractical, but ironically, it is just the model that I would think that a praying community, dependent upon the Spirit of God, would most readily fall to. Not a power structure, but a serving/ministering structure. No leaders, just ministers of various gifts.

Leading: tips

Aspects of ‘leadership’

Notwithstanding that I’m a bit of a sceptic about ‘leadership’ (see this post), and prefer Henry Minzberg’s ‘community-ship’ as a better descriptor of the community of effort in a church, below are some quotes that pertain to ‘leadership’ for those misguided souls who think that it is a better concept than ‘ministry’ in churches where people mutually serve, encourage and share with one another.

Jack Welsh: (ex CEO of General Electric)

Make people feel good about themselves. Make them better, fuller, richer. Tell people where they stand, and what they can grow up to become. Talk about mistakes.

Be real, not stiff. Motivate face to face. You can only rally a team by being with them and having them feel that you know them and care about them.

You want to get everyone to feel free to create and contribute their own ideas. Harness the best ideas, share them, and apply them across functions. Show clear vision. Be decisive. Care deeply.

The central idea at GE was to build great people

When you get it wrong, treat people fairly and move on.

Convey a passion to your people to be great in everything they choose to be and do. A leader can't build trust without transparency, and a team without trust won't win.

Colin Powell (ex US Army Chief of Staff)

Once I examine all the rough edges and make a decision as to what we will do, then we all move in that direction and stick with it, with coherence and consistency—until it's proven that we should move in a different direction.

Tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

The people in the field are closest to the problem, closest to the situation; therefore, that is where real wisdom is.

The day that people stop bringing you their problems is the day you stop leading them. They either lose confidence that you can help them or conclude that you do not care. Either case is failure of leadership.

The leader sets an example. Other people take their cue from the leader —not so much from what the leader says, but from what the leader does

Michael Porter (Harvard University, Grad. Schl. of Business)

A leader also ensures that everyone understands the strategy. Strategy is not some mystical vision that only the people at the top understand. Strategy informs all of the things that get done every day, and aligns those things in the same direction.

Deciding which customers and needs to serve requires discipline, the ability to set limits, and forthright communication. Clearly, strategy and leadership are linked.

Rudy Giuliani, (former mayor of New York)

You can't accomplish anything of great worth without other people. If you're in charge of anything, ask yourself: "What are my weaknesses?" If you can balance your weaknesses with the strengths of others, you can create a great team. Build your team with people who have strengths in your area of weakness. Tell people why you do what you do. If you can't communicate what you know or expect, you can't lead people. Leaders are rarely doers. They rely on other people. They are teachers, motivators, and coaches.

From 10 mistakes that leaders make, (ones that I’ve seen from time to time in paid Christians (ministers)) (Harvard Business Review, June 09, p. 18)

Have poor judgment
They make decisions that colleagues and subordinates consider to be not in the organization’s best interests.

Don’t collaborate
They avoid peers, act independently, and view other leaders as competitors. As a result, they are set adrift by the very people whose insights and support they need.

Resist new ideas
They reject suggestions from subordinates and peers. Good ideas aren’t implemented, and the organization gets stuck.

Don’t learn from mistakes
They may make no more mistakes than their peers, but they fail to use setbacks as opportunities for improvement, hiding their errors and brooding about them instead.

Lack interpersonal skills
They make sins of both commission (they’re abrasive and bullying) and omission (they’re aloof, unavailable, and reluctant to praise).

Fail to develop others
They focus on themselves to the exclusion of developing subordinates, causing individuals and teams to disengage.

But all said and done, if the 'system' the community, or cultural configuration that you attempt to 'lead' within is flawed, then all you are doing is polishing fish before putting them back in dirty water. See here on 'leadership' and systems.

Because, really, its about community: the life of the body, not of one part!

Barth: Natural Knowledge of God

An apposite (I hope) blog conference is on at Faith and Theology:

Barth and the natural knowledge of God.

How far?

At Phil's on the Hill (St Philip's York St, Sydney) recent lunch time Bible discussion, we touched on Romans 5:18: condemnation via one man.

Thinking about my earlier posts on death, I couldn't help but wonder at a connection at this point. If condemnation came to Adam by his sin in a world that already bore marks of condemnation (Paul tells us that the creation: an entirety, a unity in its suffering,'groans' in Roms 8:22); I wonder how Adam could have felt his state of non-condemnation if he was surrounded by the marks of a creation that we see today as having resulted from a rupture between maker and creature? He would have been in a state of condemnation, in effect, but prior to his sin, again, given the unity of creation and the necessary ontological connection between a being in the creation upon which it depends for its life, and that life sustaining creation itself.

That would not, of course, make sense. If condemnation came by Adam to all (men), then it is surely this condemnation that also brought the effects in Roms 8:22. It would seem hard to understand, otherwise, how a discontinuity could exist between a creation from God's hand, reflecting God's authorship and therefore his love and it showing signs of the absence of or denial of God, which would be consistent with the rejection that resulted in condemnation and its alienation from life.

Just as an addendum, Mark Thompson in his post (see my link above) on the last enemy, claimed the Bible had no interest in animal death. Sparrows sprang to mind.

Phoebe

On the Evangelion blog there was a post linking to this article on Phoebe at the Society of Biblical Literature.

How culture can influence translation!

Bendigo Art Gallery

I noted this down years ago in my notbook, and came across it recently while tidying up:

The curatorial note to a painting by Herbert Schmalz 1856-1935 "Too Late", 1886:

"Late Victorian England saw itself as the inheritor of both Christian and classical traditions..."both world views". They also defined their age as one of transition"

The painting does not remain in my memory, however, the comment is interesting when seen as a remark on the culture that produced Darwin and his ideas. In Darwin's idea of evolution there is much more of Victorian preoccupations than there is of science; as Stephen Gould was apt to remind his readers from time to time.

Let them die!

Recently I was discussing medical matters with a friend. The friend is a successful small businessman, a decent fellow and well regarded all round. Both his wife and mine have medical backgrounds and the conversation turned to my recent experience of returning from Westmead Children's Hosptial when overtaken by a rapidly moving NETS ambulance (I think 'Neo-natal Emergency Transport Service').

We discussed the increase in disabled people brought, to some extent, by increasing success in sustaining premature and disabled babies. My friend made the remark "I believe in natural selection; I think its best all round". Meaning, of course, that death should be allowed to those who can't survive without medical assistance.

Interesting how the idea of natural selection appears to produce this sentiment in an 'ordinary' bloke. It seems incongruous to hold that God could have adopted 'evolution' as a creative mechanism when one of its drivers is a servant of death, that falls to hand in arguments against the inconveniences of life. Hitler had a similar view of disabled people, I understand.

It is hardly credible then that God, who is the source of life, not death, would use something that courts death to produce life. This is not a theological paradox, because it has no biblical support, it is simply an inversion of God's revelation of his nature and the creation as it left his hand.

Seen at Koorong

I was over at Koorong books recently, haven't been there for months, if not years and saddened to see a section on 'leadership'.

This is a disease that has really gotten into the church, making of the church an organisation, rather than a family. Even the Sunday School at my church has 'leaders' for our little ones. Leaders! I want them to teach, not lead. Even parents don't lead, but educate and guide! Proverbs 22:6 for instance.

Leadership in any spiritual context reeks of cultishness to my mind.

What grieved me most was that the idea of 'leadership' is anti-community. It is not about family, growing together or even sharing. It is a denial of service at the definitional level as it is about self, not others, it seeks to take people somewhere, but assumes knowledge that we in fact do not have. It is the Spirit who leads. Christ is our head (our life source), not the minister, teacher, coordinator, convenor, facilitator, or other type of serving that properly goes on at church.

See also my earlier posts on this here and here.

Oh for a section at Koorong on 'ministry' instead!

Creation: Hayden's

Apart from being more reflective of God's glory, 'creation' produces better art than 'evolution'.

I commend to you the ABC's recent Keys to Music programs on the oratorio The Creation by Hayden.

The basic question

On an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) TV show about advertising (ABC2, “The Gruen Transfer”, 1 April 2009), Todd Sampson, one of the advertising panellists, made this remark about advertisements for bottled water based on images of the water’s source:

“…but origin is a really good strategy: so it’s more about the perception of what the origin is rather than the actual origin and they are often very different. I mean, I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that Mt. Franklin [bottled water] doesn’t come from Mt. Franklin, and my favourite one is Everest water from Texas [USA presumably, rather than Texas, Qld in Australia]. These water companies use glaciers and snow mountains and lots of beautiful blue and crystal images; that’s their strategy to communicate their symbols…”

The question of origins is a basic question; the answer orientates us fundamentally. It structures our view of self and world, and provides the context against which we understand everything, whether people believe an image presented to them, or the truth, the outcome is the same: the answer delineates our limits and sets what is basic in our relationships. Our origin is comprehensively definitional of who we are, why we are and what we are.

Needless to say, most people probably have a sub-articulated view of origins, with vague beliefs or understanding of the origin of the life and the cosmos, let alone humanity and its connections.

Others have a clear view: our origin is in the will of God and is brought by his word; we are created to enjoy life and our relationships (with God and each other). In this frame, personhood is basic, and love the mode of relationship. Life in this setting is far more than an outworking of material processes (this reflects how most of us live).

Still others reject this and believe our origin is material, where the basic modality of life is material: the molecules and energy we are made of represented in the collection of processes that in and of themselves imply nothing beyond their mechanical routines and interactions. Needless to say, this view is the orthodox and culturally dominant view today.

For these people, life, if it has any explanation, can only be purely physical, and material is primary, all else is dependent upon it. Truth, if there is any such thing, is merely the report of what is, materially, and to the extent that any belief is a result of material interactions in the brain, presumably, then it is true to the extent that it is a report of the material state at a moment. Of course, there is no ‘value’ in this framing of life, life just is. No oughts can flow from that (which is not how most of us live).

Death's hand

Whenever one reads statements such as “the Bible is not concerned with…” one should, I think, be immediately suspicious of a perhaps not very hidden agenda (see also my previous blog on this).

So, while the Bible may not have an interest in the death of dinosaurs, specifically (although some people seem to see the link!), does it have an interest in animal death, per se? To think that the Bible has no comment to make on animal death, or that animal death is not relevant to the Bible’s picture of the world as fallen, is, I think, inaccurate; moreover, it is an inaccuracy that hobbles a proper understanding of the Bible’s message. Taken to its full extent, it seems to suggest that there is an independent 'nature' separate to the world of the Bible and one that has different rules, different frames of reference, if not a whole different coordinate system from that described in the Bible. So two worlds, one derived from God, as per the creation, the other from who knows where, that is separated in reality from our God??

But perhaps the author is not interested in the question because to admit it would unseat this artificial division the author needs between salvation history and creation history to avoid challenging the prevailing world concept that has as its starting point that there is no God; and like all pagan world concepts needs huge spans of time (during which animals must have died, obviously, and before Adam brought death: 1 Cor 15:21 )
to permit the indulgence that what is not credibly possible in a short period becomes possible (likely, even) given long periods; where objective events are lost in the mists of time and where human imagination and myth-making can exercise their options independently of God.

Now, the implication of deferring to myth over historical objectivity (i.e. what actually occurred) is that the myth-makers’ and users’ preoccupations shift to mankind and away from God, pretending a breach in the chain of cause and effect that joins us and God (thereby asserting humanities’ forlorn desire for independence of its creator). Taking the story of our past and the setting it gives our human exchanges and relationships from our imagination dislocates the historical stream which in the Bible resolutely makes our connection with God objective, real and traceable in the terms that make sense in the setting which we share with God: he as creator, we as creature.

Myth lets imagination take our focus and erects a setting that denies God and his real involvement with the creation as a totality. If we deny that the Bible is other than myth, then we run the risk of presenting God as being a result of human invention, and his ‘creation’ being a comforting story that transfers our origin from this world to another world that has escaped from the objective flow of history. So there must be multiple worlds for myth to be entertained as having any substantial connection with anything, most of which must be fictional and without points of reference in this world that would permit it to be objectively and independently communicated to unify word and reality (thus ‘myth’, of course)

And this leads to my next point: creation is a totality.

Separating animal death from human death must, I think, deny the ontological unity of creation. Creation then ceases to have a single mode of connection with God, but multiple modes and therefore must have multiple ontological coordinates (to borrow from physics) that only connect in God. But the creation account does not read as though this is or could even be the case; nor is it a possibility theologically, I think, given the obvious relationship between humanity and creation and humanity and God with mankind as the steward of the creation on God’s behalf ( Genesis 1:26 .;)

The unity is indicated by the dependent sequence in the six days (each successive day relying in a physical manner on the acts of the preceding days, man being set over the creation, and in relationship with God, and God making living creatures, a translation of nephesh chayah, also used of man!

To think that God, in who is life, also has in him, at the same time, death, which is the absence of life, and by extension, absence of God, is simply impossible. To think that anti-life can occur for some living creatures (animals) but not others (man), when all come from the will of the one who is love and only provides for the best within the scope of relationship of dependence (which was rejected by A&E), and who is life ( John 1:4 is plainly nonsensical.

One of the grand under-themes of Genesis 1 is its anti-idealism (as though God predicted the without-hope-ness of western philosophy from Plato to Hegel), thus its realism: that what is real is circumscribed by the scope of creation: the entities and relationships they are in as defined by God. The great breakdown is brought in divorce from God through sin, so the antithesis of God enters as he is rejected. Life is pushed out and its reverse, death, that which is not in Christ, enters. But only through one man!

Splitting the scope of death between different living creatures excludes part of creation from the Bible’s message. But it is a critical element of the Bible’s message that it has in view the whole of creation and none of it is outside of the Bible’s historical flow, and no part of it has a reference outside the creation account. The chief theme of the Bible is the cause culmination and conclusion of salvation; salvation history, but it is all set in the realist structure that is given by, totally, the creation, the physical cosmos and our place in it. The fall we are clearly told devastated the whole of creation, and not just our relationship with God, but all relationships. Indeed, we can go no further than what is told to us of the new creation to see it as a complete undoing of sin and death, the final enemy (if an enemy, how a part of the creation pre-fall, from the one who is life?)

To think that we can separate one type of death from another is a duplicitous theological evasion of the confrontation of the word of God with the rejection of God. It accepts a definition of the world that does not derive from the revelation of God, but, as part of paganism’s long history of mythical origins that remove God from man, springs from the modern deism of Hutton who thought that we needed long ages for the earth to take its present form. This denies what we are told of the flood, as Peter warned us (2 Pt 2:5). Peter clearly saw the need for theological connection between the creation and the saviour!

Death and its place

Flip over to the theologians theologian for this piece on death.

Mark says in this post:

There may still be unanswered questions, of course. For instance, just what can we imply from the fossils of dinosaurs so many million years ago? And yet the Bible is not the slightest bit interested in such things. Its concern is the death of human beings in the light of God's own nature and his purpose borne out in creation.

I can't agree with him in putting a limit on the scope of the biblical opposition to death that the Bible itself does not apply. The creation, of which mankind is part, is one in its relation to and rejection of God. Man as 'federal head' has brought the whole creation crashing down, and so the death that marks our separation, the creation's separtion, from the life-giver must echo throughout the creation the discord that it brings. To hope that it is only human death that is a concern (and it indeed is) is to ignore God's intention in the new creation. For instance Isaiah 65:25 and Romans 8. References could be multiplied to show that God does not forget his creation in total, because it is the creation in total that bears the marks of dissolution, not only mankind.

Mark's acceptance of the notion of deep ages showing death presumably before humanity is troubling. Would death, the mark of alienation from God, could death, being such, pre-exist the rupture between God and man? It seems hardly likely and seems to me to misunderstand the reason that death came at the point at which the rupture was made. It is no good to say that the Bible is silent on the pre-existance of death, rather to concentrate on the Bible's positive statements on the matter. The introduction of death would seem logically to exclude it being a phenomenon prior to the change of state between God and his creation.

I've covered some of this ground in 'Death's line'

Right for the wrong reasons

The sermon at church last Sunday morning dealt with the Colossians passage that we studied last week in our home group.

Its conclusions were right, basically, but for all the wrong reasons...or, to be fair, for some of the wrong reasons.

We got off to a bad start with a reference to the common misunderstanding of the 'give way at a roundabout rule' as an illustration of the operation of rules. The speaker told us that we had to give way to traffic on our right. Not so! The rule is give way to traffic in the roundabout.

The sermon then followed the tenor of this slight misunderstanding, to slightly misunderstand scripture, in my view.

The obvious connection was made with Genesis 3, and the curse undoing harmony in relationships, and it was well made, with the further point being that Col. 3:18-4:1 gave us a set of rules for family life (slaves included in the household, as they often were then).

For all its good, I don't think that Paul is giving rules here, but is rather showing how life in Christ undoes the mores of life in the world. Each of Paul's calls for behavioural change is not so much a rule (albeit a rule that reverses the outcomes of the fall for relationships), but a reversal of the power and exploitation that exists, or could easily and acceptably exist in the relationships mentioned at that time, particularly. The way of Christ is not the way of the world. Our relationships are to be different because of him who called us.

Unsurprisingly the 'role' of the husband as the 'head' of the wife was mentioned. Given the spotlight, in fact, for part of the talk. However, the Biblical relationship identified in the connection of 'head' between man and woman, (and between God and Christ, Christ and man and Christ and the church) was by a slight of hand made in to the office of 'headship'. I don't and can't see an 'office' in these relationships. It is alien to the whole tenor of the Kingdom of God, and it is certainly alien to the tenor of human relationships (although a reference was made to Eph 5:22 as illustrating what 'head' meant, and that itself was fair enough). But the central reference by Paul to these relationships has got to be Galatians 3:28, where distinction is tossed out altogether, in Christ, which is where we are. Everything must be read in this light, I would think.

The idea of an office of 'headship' also brings with it ideas of power needed to overcome opposition. The idea is simply at odds with not only the life of the Kindgom of God, but of the relationships in the godhead itself. See this short blog on 'head'. The sermon talked about an 'established order' but there is no such thing, in the terms presented in the sermon (that is, 'headship' being about some sort of authority order) just the distorted dis-order of the fall, which we go against as we head to the new creation, where the strictures of the world and its confining 'established order' are rejected. Sure, one could say that a new order replaces the old, but my concern is that mainstream readings of this and related passages of scripture see order at the forefront, and not relationships of mutual submission, love and service (as elusive as they might be).

Paul is not about rules, per se, but about the reconfiguration of the concept of self from independent to Christ-centred.

The last comment that horrified me was the local favourite 'servant-leadership' with reference to husbands and wives. This is another concept (along with 'headship') which does not exist in the Bible. Servant, yes. 'Leader' no. A leader knows where they are going and where to take followers. But we follow Christ, and his Spirit is the one who knows where to take us. We are all for each other but servants along the way. This 'servant-leader' oxymoron is a dreadful intrusion of worldly thinking into the church and it cannot fall out of favour soon enough for me. Matthew deals with this (oh, and I know 'leader' pops up in Hebrews too, but I doubt it can be recontextualised to how the term is conceived in contemporary life when it must be read against the full biblical background).

Now the sermon did say agreeable things about the actual relationships, but unfortunately not for always biblical reasons. Cultural reasons intruded.