How might love shape scholarship?

The Global Faculty Initiative is a wonderful enterprise to stimulate the interaction of university scholarship with theology. They employ the following methodology.

"Theology Brief: a longer essay by a leading theologian on a key theme in Christian theology

Disciplinary Briefs & Disciplinary Notes: short essays by research scholars that explore connections between their scholarly specialty and a Theology Brief"

The most recent Theology Brief is by Oliver O'Donovan, The Sovereignty of Love.

Here is my response, a Disciplinary Brief, 

The Radicalness of Love—for the Natural Sciences and the Research University.

The link above gives a PDF of my full article.  It is also available on the GFI website.

Here is the beginning.

Love should be primary for a Christian scholar

I was both surprised and challenged by O’Donovan’s argument that love should be primary for a Christian scholar. My prior perspective was that universities are primarily about thinking. Integrity, both intellectual and moral, should be the main characteristic of Christian scholars. This includes integrating disciplinary knowledge with theology. However, I now see that love should subsume integrity, just a Jesus challenged us.

O’Donovan states: “Those for whom specialised knowledge constitutes their sphere of work thus face a challenging question: how may they love that one aspect of the world which they know very well, while focussing their love finally upon God and their neighbours?” This challenge of a dual focus must be related to the question: how does one resist the temptation to worship the creation not the Creator (Romans 1:18-25)? As I discuss below, modern physics is truly amazing and beautiful. This has led some theoretical physicists (for example, authors of popular books such as Sean Carroll, Paul Davies, and Frank Wilczek) to follow the example of Albert Einstein and be in awe of nature and our ability to understand it. Unfortunately, they either deny the existence of God or at least his personal nature.

Love for others is particularly challenging as it includes love for enemies. A scholar may encounter many enemies (both real and perceived): colleagues who oppose their ideas, anonymous reviewers who make unjustified criticisms, bureaucrats who frustrate, impede, and burden with dubious administrative requirements, and increasingly members of the public or politicians who make ill-informed criticisms of their work, its value, or its applications.  

The concern for love enlivened a liturgy (from Every Moment Holy) that I often pray before commencing work. Here are a few lines 

“May I learn to love learning, O Lord,

for the world is yours,

and all things in it speak

-each in their way – of you:

of your mind,

your designs,

your artistry,

your power,

your unfolding purpose.

All knowledge is your knowledge.

All wisdom your wisdom….

Let me be in this school, even is small ways,

a bearer of love and light and reconciliation;

which is to say, let me in humility be your child…” 

Counter-cultural dimensions to love in the academy

The love commands of Jesus were counter-cultural in the first century. His followers were largely from the lower echelons of society and faced opposition from both Roman imperial and Jewish religious leaders. Obedience could come at a high cost. The commands are also radically counter-cultural in universities today, as they are dominated by four values: money, marketing, management, and metrics. The social and institutional pressure to conform is immense. In his Disciplinary Brief, responding to O’Donovan, Ian Hutchinson suggests “humility seems the most difficult value in the academy.” Peter Harrison recently discussed how, following the characterisations of Max Weber, secularisation has led to disenchantment, diminishment of virtue, and being trapped in the “iron cage” of bureaucracy. 

Tom McLeish argued that Christian natural scientists need to adopt a contemplative stance in their work.  He argued that the book of Job

“urges us not to look on the natural world for signs of God, nor through it as a window onto some dim divine image, but to learn to look on nature with God’s eyes, aligning our servant gaze with, not at, the divine. The same searching look of creative power and insight, of love, with which God participates in his created nature is to be the direction, if only in image, of our participation also.”

This resonates with O’Donovan’s definition of love as “affective and directive attention to a good.”

A heartfelt reckoning with Australia's history of colonialism, racism, and Whiteness

Life experiences shape us, for better or for worse. They can be rich, meaningful, and beautiful. They can be awful and scar us for life. Much of our experience is shaped/determined by the family, culture, and moment we were born into. 

Both Stan Grant and I were born in Australia in the early 1960s and went to high school in the Canberra suburb of Belconnen. Besides, living many years outside Australia, perhaps that is the sum total of our common life experience. He has been successful as a journalist, both internationally and in Australia.

Stan Grant is a Wiradjuri man. His grandparents' home was bulldozed by the Police with the authority of the British crown. His family was dirt poor, always lived on the fringes of towns, and moved continually as his father sought itinerant work. He never stayed in one school for more than a year. No one in his family finished high school, let alone attended university. He says his family was characterised by love. His grandfather fought for Australia in World War II, but when he returned, he was not allowed to go to the local pub to share a drink with his mates. Other returned soldiers were entitled to housing. His grandfather was not. Family members were often harassed by the police. One was put in prison for speaking his native language. Until his family moved to Canberra when he was a teenager, most of his peers were indigenous.

In contrast, I spent the first 22 years of my middle-class life in the same house, my father had the same job that whole time,  both my parents had a Ph.D., and the schools I attended were "lily white".

Literature can be powerful because it can create empathy. It can help us see and feel the world through the eyes and experiences of another person. Incidentally, this is one argument for the importance of the humanities and a liberal arts education. 

Grant is a gifted writer, and his book, The Queen is Dead gave me a glimpse into a world so different to my own, even though it is spatially close and overlapping. The emotions I experienced included sadness, confusion, shock, anger, embarrassment, powerlessness, despair, frustration, and guilt. I guess that my emotional responses are tame and transient compared to the raw emotions that Grant lives with, day in and day out.

Most chapters begin with the refrain. "The White Queen is dead."  The book is prompted by the death of the British monarch in 2023. It is not about her as a person. "The White Queen is a metaphor". (page 9). The book is a personal reckoning with the legacy of colonialism and racism in Australia.

"How do we live with the weight of history? How do we not fall prey to soul-destroying vengeance and resentment, yet never relent in our righteous demand for justice?" (page 5).

Reflecting on his and others' response to the death of the White Queen, he states:

"And in my anger I am confronted again by the two consuming questions of my life: what is Whiteness? And what is it to live with catastrophe?" (page 54)

While in primary school, a white student asked Stan, "Why are you so Black?" (page 84). This incident has tormented him his whole life, and he keeps coming back to it in the book.

Grant reflects painfully on public events over the past quarter of a century that have attracted media attention and have a racist dimension. This includes the significance of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 for Australian identity, Cathy Freeman's gold medal in the 400 metres at that Olympics, the abuse of footballer Adam Goodes, the sponsorship of the Australian women's netball team by Hancock Prospecting, Hawthorn Football Club's treatment of indigenous players, and  Grant's experience working for and eventual departure from the public broadcaster ABC News. He helped me see these events in a raw and painful way.

Grant provides a helpful critique of modernity and the Enlightenment. White men "invented modernity as a place of endless possibility." (page 19). The freedom promised often degenerated into tyranny. Modernity provided an intellectual framework and justification for racism and colonialism. 

"Identities can nourish us. They can give us community. Identities can give us voice. That notion of identity is a conceit of the West - identity as freedom. But identity can also - and far more often than not, in fact - be a pathway to tyranny." (page 23).

"Modernity has supplanted god with its own faith in progress and reason. The liberalism that emerged out of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Enlightenment imagines that we can wash ourselves clean of the past. But there can be no redemption without atonement." (page 214)

We discussed the book this month in the theology reading group. At first glance, the book might not appear to have much theology, particularly if you read the publisher's blurb

Grant dedicates the book :

To Baiame, my creator

To Jesus Christ, my saviour

To Yindyamarra, the Spirit

"Vindicate me, O God. And plead my cause against an ungodly nation" (Psalm 43:1)"

Theological allusions are scattered through the book. Two short sections (pages 207-211 and 272-278) focus on theology. He engages with Simone Weil, the mystic who had a strong solidarity with the oppressed, and Miroslav Volf.

The first section reflects on his experience of church while growing up. A similar reflection is in a beautiful and powerful article, “This is the way healing begins”: Recovering the language of lament in a disenchanted age 

"For me, Easter is not a time of resurrection. I don’t rush to Easter Sunday but dwell in the darkness of Holy Saturday — the day after the crucifixion, when those closest to the crucified Christ shivered in fear. On that day there is no promise of tomorrow. There is no hope. It is the day when faith itself feels destitute.

It was the darkness of Holy Saturday that I felt — deep in my bones — when I was a little boy. I felt it in the church on the mission on the outskirts of Griffith in New South Wales that was a home, spiritually and physically, to my family. It could have been any of the missions scattered across our country. The places to which we were banished, and yet managed to find refuge.

There was a tiny wooden church on the mission. I remember cramming into the pews, with my best Sunday clothes on and my hair spit down.

My uncle was the pastor. He was an old-time fire-and-brimstone preacher. Not long into his sermon, his white shirt would be stained with sweat. He would constantly mop his brow with a handkerchief. He clutched a tattered black leather-bound copy of the King James Bible under one arm, yet never needed to read from it. He could recite the scripture from memory. With his other arm he would point. Each word landing — and I felt always landing on me.

My head would ache in that church. I would twitch and look out the window. I felt a heavy weight in that church. I have felt it in other black churches, places where our people come to worship. We pray differently. We sing differently. Our hymns are songs of sorrow...

Ours, you see, was the church of the forsaken.

Why, you may be wondering, am I talking about God, about the church, about Christianity? Is that not the religion of empire? Isn’t Christianity the legacy of colonisation? Certainly since the time of the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine, Christianity has been wielded as the divine right of kings. It has interwoven itself with power and tyranny.

Yes, those proclaiming the word of God came to this land with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. The doctrine of discovery, of terra nullius, was itself a sort of decree — that any land not belonging to a Christian monarch was free for the taking.

Yes, God sat astride empire. But that was not our God. That is Christendom, not Christianity. God did not arrive here with the first fleet. We knew God. We walked in God’s creation, in the land that God had given us. We told stories to God. We painted God on our rocks and on our bodies. We had our word for God: Baiame.

When we heard the stories of Jesus, we heard the story of a dark-skinned man in a land of empire. Oppressed and colonised. A tribal man. We heard the story of someone speaking back to power. We heard the words of an ancestor. And in the crucifixion. We felt the wounds. We felt the shame. We felt the abandonment."

This is how theology should be done: personal and contextual, rather than impersonal and abstract. 

Stan Grant writes some wonderful columns every fortnight for The Saturday Paper. There is also a beautiful episode, "Disenchanted Age" of the Undeceptions podcast, where he is interviewed by John Dickson.

The character and disposition of an evangelical theologian

Reading my previous post about Evangelical Theology: An Introduction by Karl Barth may leave the impression that Barth mostly discusses academic theology as an academic discipline in which the theologian strives for objectivity and distances themselves from the object of study. However, the emphasis and perspective of the book is quite different. Much of the book is about the personal character and disposition that an evangelical theologian must have. Theology is personal and practical. It is subjective in that the object of study [the triune God that was revealed in history and recorded in Scripture] places the theologian in "crisis". The theologian is judged, critiqued, and loved by the living Word.

The Table of Contents illustrates how much of the book is about the life of an evangelical theologian.

• Commentary
• I. The Place of Theology
  • The Word
  • The Witnesses
  • The Community
  • The Spirit
• II. Theological Existence
  • Wonder
  • Concern
  • Commitment
  • Faith
• III. The Threat to Theology
  • Solitude
  • Doubt
  • Temptation
  • Hope
• IV. Theological Work
• Prayer
• Study
• Service
• Love

The importance of humility recurs throughout the book. An evangelical theologian must be humble. They cannot operate with presuppositions, dismiss tradition, and or place themself above historical witnesses to God's self-revelation.

"The position of theology,... , can in no wise be exalted above that of the biblical witnesses. The post-Biblical theologian may, no doubt, possess a better astronomy, geography, zoology, psychology, physiology, and so on than these biblical witnesses possessed; but as for the Word of God, he is not justified in comporting himself in relationship to those witnesses as though he knew more about the Word than they. 

 

He is neither a president of a seminary, nor the Chairman of the Board of some Christian Institute of Advanced Theological Studies, who might claim some authority over the prophets and apostles. He cannot grant or refuse them a hearing as though they were colleagues on the faculty. Still less is he a high-school teacher authorized to look over their shoulder benevolently or crossly, to correct their notebooks, or to give them good, average, or bad marks. 

 

Even the smallest, strangest, simplest, or obscurest among the biblical witnesses has an incomparable advantage over even the most pious, scholarly, and sagacious latter-day theologian." (page 31)

Evangelical theology is critical in the sense of being self-critical. All ideas are provisional approximations to the truth and must continually be critiqued and open to revision or discarding. This critical element is quite distinct from the "criticisms" that were fashionable in Barth's time such as historical criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism,... They were methods that tended to become presuppositions and placed the theologian above the text.

Humility for an evangelical theological means that their theology is all about God, not themself or their theology (system, method, content). The last chapter of the book, entitled "Love", contrasts agape love to eros love.

Love as Eros, is, in general terms, the primordially powerful desire, urge, impulse, and endeavor by which a created being seeks his own self-assertion, satisfaction, realization, and fulfillment in his relation to something else. He strives to draw near to this other person or thing, to win it for himself, to take it to himself, and to make it his own as clearly and definitively as possible. And in a special sense, love, as scientific Eros, is the same desire in its intellectual form.

.....Scientific, theological Eros has perpetually oscillated concerning the object which it should present to man for the sake of his self-assertion and self-fulfillment. That is to say, theological Eros can be directed either predominantly (and perhaps even exclusively) toward God or predominantly (and, once again, perhaps even exclusively) toward man. (page 197-8)

 

A narcissist cannot be an evangelical theologian.

The book challenges readers to reflect on their character and disposition if they aspire to be an evangelical theologian. At the beginning of the book, Barth discusses how everyone is a theologian, regardless of whether they identify themselves as such. 

The main weakness of the book is that it does not engage in a concrete and substantive way with the life or teachings of Jesus, such as his parables and the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps this is because Barth was embedded in the Reformed theological tradition. The book would have a sharper edge if it engaged with Anabaptist tradition. On the other hand, the book provides a wonderful framework, motivation, and invitation to dive into a fresh reading of the Gospels and let the living Word speak to the reader/theologian through the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Course on Church, Community, and Conversations

At our church, my wife Robin and I recently helped to facilitate a course entitled The Gift and Challenge of Church, Community, and Conversations.

Central to the course was having participants in small groups at tables. Several times each session they would have some discussion questions. Every week there was one Bible passage that they read together and discussed. After the formal end of each session most people stayed at their tables continuing their discussion. I don't know how long they stayed because we went home. After all, it was past my bedtime. 💤😁

The course ran for five weeks, for two hours, on a weeknight. Below I put copies of the handouts/worksheets and of the PowerPoint slides. But I stress that they only give a flavour of the course it does not capture the table discussions or what was explained about the content in the slides.

Week 1 - The gift of Church 

Handout,  Slides

Week 2 - The gift of diversity

Handout, Slides

Week 3 - The gift of welcoming

Handout, Slides

Week 4 - The gift of communities

Handout, Slides

Week 5 - The gift of conversations

Handout, Slides

The content and pedagogy of this course were enriched by what I have learnt from the IFES Logos and Cosmos Initiative about the global church, culture, context, working in diverse teams, listening, mental health and above all, relating God's Word and God's world. 

Personally, I was stimulated and challenged by the material we discussed together. Living in a community, unity in diversity, welcoming strangers, and listening to others seem appealing. However, actually doing them is a challenge! Engaging in meaningful conversations with those very different from me is not easy.

A celebration of God's superabundant love

Too often theology, philosophy, academia, church, and the Bible can feel dry, boring, abstract, irrelevant, dour, and a chore.

But this should seem strange because the Bible is full of celebration: feasts, parties, songs, and poems. They are celebrations of love, thanksgiving, and wonder; celebrations of the superabundant generous gifts of God to humanity.

It is refreshing to encounter an academic book that addresses theology, philosophy, and the Bible in a manner that is a celebration.

I have read most of Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture by Christopher Watkin.

There are many elements to the celebration. Here is one beautiful passage that reflects on the gift of creation and of the Cross of Christ.

The cross lifts Christianity out of the iron logic of necessity, of unbreakable cause and effect, up into a logic of superabundance...

...philosophy... could not receive theology's gift of a superabundance in the midst of life. There is no ultimate explanation of God's love, no rational justification for it, no way to bring it under the logic of necessity and equivalence. The love of God expressed in creation and in the cross is a reality with which the two-speed gearbox of chance and necessity can never come to terms. Divine superabundance is the raging bull that storms through the staid china shop of demure philosophical concepts, shattering every symmetrical plate and dashing every systematic bowl to the ground in a way that leaves not a trail of destruction but a grander, richer, and more open imaginary than ever before.

        (pages 420-1)

Celebrating God's generous gifts to us: existence, meaning, and love

“This paradigm of the gift places us in the posture of recipients. We receive existence, we receive meaning, and we receive love. To be sure we are creative recipients,... and receiving the gift of the universe certainly does not make us passive. But the fact remains that we are recipients nonetheless. The one thing we should not do with a gift is pretend we bought or made it ourselves. The giver is usually thanked, so our fundamental orientation to existence in the paradigm of the figure of gratuity is one of praise and thanksgiving.”

        (page 60)

Engagement with the world, in all its limitations, can still be a celebration

To live in God’s city here and now is to enjoy God’s limitless peace, love, and creativity; it is also to live a subversive, revolutionary life in this world as we repeatedly scratch the surface of the earthly city to reveal God’s goodness, truth, and beauty under its makeshift palimpsest.

Celebrating the gift of human language

Watkin writes as a gifted wordsmith, delighting in turns of phrase; not just his own, but also that of masters including C.S. Lewis, David Bentley Hart, G.K. Chesterton, and of course, the Biblical authors.

A spirituality of strengths

Humans are incredibly diverse. We are all very different. There is a diversity of personalities and backgrounds. No two people on the planet look exactly alike. No two people have exactly the same DNA. This concept of uniqueness and diversity plays a central role in the theology of the church. Different people have different gifts and different callings. Yet, all are to work together for the good of the church and for the glory of God.

As part of a team working for IFES, I recently took a test called the Gallup strengths finder. The aim is to identify your particular strengths particularly ones that are relevant to working on projects. These strengths are not just what you are good at doing, but also what sorts of activities energise you rather than drain you. There are 34 different strengths. My top five are Learner, Intellection, Input, Strategic, and Responsibility. It is almost embarrassing to read the description of each of these strengths because they so clearly capture who I am.

So what might be a Christian perspective on an exercise such as this? 

A good place to start may be in Romans chapter 12,

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. 

This leads me to several questions. 

How should I think about myself?

I should be humble and thankful. I should humbly accept who God made me. Psalm 139 tells me that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I should not wish that I had different strengths. I should not wish that I was someone else. Unfortunately, I have spent too much of my life doing this, at least on a subconscious level. I should also be humble about any achievement, as it will flow out of my strengths; they were given to me at birth.

How should I act?

Name it. Claim it. Aim it.

I should develop and use my strengths. Again, too much of my life I have spent trying to imitate others who have very different strengths from me.

I should particularly use them for the good of others. Their ultimate purpose is not to increase my social status, my wealth, or my power. As I enjoy using my strengths and gain energy from their use I should not be self-indulgent. For example, my top strength is Learner, which means just learning is a joy and can be an end in itself. However, this can get carried away and I may do it just for the benefit of myself and not for the benefit of others. Things I may learn in researching background for a project may not be of interest or value to others.

I need to be willing to take on tasks that involve my weaknesses. God's power is made perfect through weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9). Just because I don't have certain strengths doesn't mean that God can't use my weaknesses. I may be asked to or required to do things that I'm not good at and that drain me. (But, I also need to be realistic; if that is all I'm doing may not be sustainable).

How do I relate to others? Particularly if we are working together on a common project.

I should be patient with others. I should learn about other people's strengths and encourage them to develop them. I need to realise and accept that specific tasks may seem easy and fulfilling for me, but these tasks may be difficult and frustrating for others (and vice versa). What may seem obvious to me may not be for other people (and vice versa). The best teamwork will be where there is synergy and energy because we are each working with our strengths and appreciating those of others. Ideally, job descriptions should be designed around strengths.

 I would say that this exercise can be and should be a deeply spiritual exercise. It requires humility before God and before others, a servant heart, listening well, and the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, and self control)! 
 

A Christian response to the coronavirus

I thought this short talk from Krish Kandiah was particularly helpful, engaging, challenging, and stimulating.

A great irony of church history

Jesus is the model servant leader. Even though he knew his power, he gave it up. He washed the feet of his disciples.

 ...the third temptation of Jesus was...  the temptation of power. “I will give you all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor,” the demon said to Jesus. ....

One of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power—political power, military power, economic power, or moral and spiritual power—even though they continued to speak in the name of Jesus, who did not cling to his divine power but emptied himself and became as we are [Philippians 2:5-11]. 

The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel is the greatest of all. We keep hearing from others, as well as saying to ourselves, that having power—provided it is used in the service of God and your fellow human beings—is a good thing. With this rationalization, crusades took place; inquisitions were organized; Indians were enslaved; positions of great influence were desired; episcopal palaces, splendid cathedrals, and opulent seminaries were built; and much moral manipulation of conscience was engaged in. Every time we see a major crisis in the history of the Church such as the Great Schism of the eleventh century, the Reformation of the sixteenth century, or the immense secularization of the twentieth century, we always see that a major cause of rupture is the power exercised by those who claim to be followers of the poor and powerless Jesus.

         What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to won life than to love life. Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” We ask, “Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?” (Matthew 20:21). Ever since the snake said, “The day you eat of this tree your eyes will be open and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil” (Genesis 3:5), we have been tempted to replace love with power. Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross. 

The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints. One thing is clear to me: the temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love. 

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, pages 57-60

Who do you love to hate?

Republicans or Democrats, Atheists or Christians, young earth creationists or evolutionary biologists, Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton, Calvinists or Arminians, Muslims or Hindus, supporters or opponents of same-sex marriage, liberals or conservatives, Sydney Anglicans or the Uniting Church, Greens or One Nation, complementarians or egalitarians, Stockbrokers or social workers, pro-life or pro-choice, blacks or whites, capitalists or socialists, …?

Over the last decade, I think there has been a significant decrease in civil debate, both in public and private. Those with different views or from different social groups are disparaged or “demonised”. Sometimes this is blatant; other times it is more subtle.
Some groups seem to get their identity from who they “not” or what they are opposed to.

What is causing this contempt for the “other”?
I see several contributing factors.

Social media. 
This leads to people congregating in groups of “friends” who have similar views, values, and “identity” to their own. Highly specialised and like-minded groups (Calvinist Chelsea fans who also like cheese…)  can congregate. They don’t have to engage seriously with alternative views. They are in a “content bubble”. Communication is impersonal and terse. People say things online that they would be much less likely to say face to face to another. Extremist and impulsive views that were once said personally to a small group of people can now unfiltered reach thousands and even millions. Specialised and extremist talk radio and cable TV hosts play a similar role.

Politics.
 In a wide range of countries some candidates and parties have been able to successfully exploit “identity” politics and fear of and contempt for the “other” to get elected. The last USA Presidential election is an example.

“Post-truth.” 
I feel my view is true and yours is wrong and so it does not matter what evidence there is for a different view.

I should stress that none of us is immune to these tendencies. We are all prone to pride, prejudice, and self-righteousness.
I also stress that on my random list above there are some views or people I strongly disagree with. Some I find extremely troubling and even dangerous.
Not all views are equally valid. But, that does not give me the right to “hate” them.

Why should everyone be concerned about this?
Democracy, peace, and community depend on reasonable and diverse debate.

Why should Christians be concerned?
Our identity comes solely from being a follower of Jesus and knowing we are loved by God.
It transcends nation, denomination, ethnicity, and any particular theological or political views. And, everyone is made in the image of God, regardless of their views or behaviour, and is loved by God. Thus, they are to be respected and valued as a person.
Humility and gentleness need to replace self-righteous anger.
Consider the way that Jesus interacted with tax collectors and prostitutes.
He also harshly confronted the Pharisees for their pride and self-righteousness.

Science: what has love got to do with it?!

Science raises theological questions.
An important example is:
Why does science work?
This is not a question that science can answer. All it can say is that science works; and very well, often.

This week I realised there is another interesting question.
Why do scientists love what they do?
 It goes far beyond the joy of a successful businessman or plumber. There is sometimes something "religious" and "mystical" about scientists devotion and pleasure in their work. Furthermore, many young scientists are willing to work long hours, often with less financial reward and job security compared to other options available to them. Why do they do it?
Again, this is not a question that science can answer. But, theology does address.

Three different recent events brought this question to mind.

First, the atheist scientist Sean Carroll has just published a book The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. He advocates a "religion" called poetic naturalism. A good critique of the book is by another atheist scientist Peter Woit. The relevant point here is that it highlights how even for atheist scientists there is something deeply religious about science.

Second, last week I saw the excellent movie, The Man Who Knew Infinity which nicely illustrates some of the joy and mystery of discovery in mathematics.

Finally, and most importantly I am finishing reading the wonderful book Faith and Wisdom in Science by Tom McLeish. He has a whole section entitled "Love" in the chapter, "A Theology of Science".
By "love" he means "the super-rational .... emotionally engaged delight in, and action to sustain the well being of another."
Love, pain, and perseverance cannot be separated.
"Above all it is a love that seeks to understand."
New scientific theories "need to loved into being".
He gives the example of the novel (and for long controversial) concept of reptation in polymers.

A great satire on Australian upper middle class pretensions

My family is really enjoying watching the Australian TV series Upper Middle Bogan. It is very funny, being quite the satire on upper middle class Australia and its pretensions and anxieties.
Much is sometimes made of the egalitarian nature of Australian society. Although, it is certainly much more egalitarian than most societies, both Western and Eastern, it still exhibits class distinctions. Furthermore, there are distinct sub-cultural differences, even within caucasians. The series highlights the clash of sub-cultures.

The importance and value of families, with all their faults, is nicely portrayed.

What draws people to or away from the church?

'More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world. And more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christians than by all the doubts in the world.'

William Barclay

Connecting to nature and to each other

My family watched The Tree of Life. It is definitely the strangest and slowest movie I have watched in a while. It is just a bit too creative and clever for its own good. Furthermore, at times it is hard to follow and some of the symbolism gets lost, until you read a guide, such as the Wikipedia page.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend it because it features some spectacular cinematography and touches on and ties together such profound themes: creation, grace versus law, family, hope, parenting, death, tragedy, grief, natural history, boyhood, marriage, ...
Some of this is through a Christian filter but some, such as heaven, is just typical Hollywood schmaltz...
I also love the use of the Smetana's Moldau, one of my favourite pieces of music.

Putting scientific and philosophical questions in perspective

Why is the sky blue?
Why are the laws of physics the way they are?
Why did God make the universe this way?
Why does God allow children to suffer?

What does love have to do with physics?

This is a powerful video about a dynamic physics teacher with a handicapped son.
He puts the "why" questions in perspective?

O.K.

Those are the powerful last words of the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
I think it is a truly weird movie.
However, the final dialogue (below) redeems the movie.



This is quite the contrast to the average idolatrous Hollywood romance where the message is you have to find that special someone who will make you complete and fulfil you.

Communicating love to children

My wife and I have found one of the most helpful parenting books is How to Really love your child by Ross Campbell. I was asked to review it at church on sunday. Here is the executive summary which I used.

Previously I mentioned Campbell's  latest book, Help your Twentysomething get a life and get it now! It raises some important questions about how our western affluence combined with our desire to take care of our [adult] children is actually hurting them (and us). My wife and I thought it was so helpful we have bought multiple copies so we can are give them to our peers.

Agape science

Following up on my previous post Scientific Theological Eros, it is interesting that in his discussion of the difference between "Eros" and "Agape" love as driving forces in theology, Barth gives the profound throw away line:

At this point the question may remain undecided whether it would not also be beneficial for the other sciences if the ruling motive of their procedure was Agape rather than Eros.

For theological work the dominant position of love is a vital and unalterable necessity. Indeed, theological work also displays that interest of the perceiving human subject and that sweeping movement in which it allows itself to be borne and hurried toward the object to be known. These elements of Eros will not be simply suppressed or eliminated in it. For theological work, however, Eros can only be the serving, not the ruling, motive. The erotic wish and desire to gain possession of the object can have in theological work only the significance of a first and inevitable beginning in the direction toward its object.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology, pages 201-202

As a practising scientist myself, I think Barth's insight is profound. To me, much science appears to be driven by the scientists rush to exalt himself, to control, to possess, and to tame. The object of "desire" is both nature and funding, status, .... Thus, it can be classified as "Eros" science.

In contrast, "Agape" science would be humbler and gentler. The focus is not on the scientist and not on control but on understanding and on server others (society, students, colleagues, ....). Ultimately, it is more effective because it is more objective, since the ego of the scientist does not blind him/her to the way things are rather than the way we want them to be.

Scientific theological eros!

I thought I would never see those three words strung together!

Yesterday I was reading the famous 1 Corinthians 13 passage on love and I remembered that in Karl Barth's An Introduction to Evangelical Theology had an interesting last chapter on the role of love in theology.

Here are a few extracts, emphasizing the difference between eros and agape love.

Eros so highly praised in Plato's teaching.... Love as Eros, is, in general terms, the primordially powerful desire, urge, impulse, and endeavor by which a created being seeks his own self-assertion, satisfaction, realization, and fulfillment in his relation to something else. He strives to draw near to this other person or thing, to win it for himself, to take it to himself, and to make it his own as clearly and definitively as possible. And in a special sense, love, as scientific Eros, is the same desire in its intellectual form. It is the soaring movement by which human knowledge lets itself be borne toward its objects and hurries toward them in order to unite them with itself and itself with them, to bring them into its possession and power, and to enjoy them in this way.

.....Scientific, theological Eros has perpetually oscillated concerning the object which it should present to man for the sake of his self-assertion and self-fulfillment. That is to say, theological Eros can be directed either predominantly (and perhaps even exclusively) toward God or predominantly (and, once again, perhaps even exclusively) toward man.

When scientific Eros evolves in the field of theology, it characteristically and continually confuses and exchanges the object of theology with other objects. So far as Eros is the motive of theological work, God will not be loved and known for God's sake, nor man for man's sake. This situation can only be explained by the nature of Eros: every attempt to love and know God and man is made in the quite conscious and deepest interests of the theologian himself, in the self-love of the one who produces this theology.

It is undoubtedly no mere accident that the substantive "Eros" and its corresponding verb do not appear at all in ... the New Testament. The word for "love" in the New Testament is Agape. And from every context in which it appears the conclusion is obvious that it signifies a movement which runs almost exactly in the opposite direction from that of Eros. Love in the sense of Agape is admittedly also the total seeking of another, and this is the one thing that it has in common with love as Eros.

In Agape, however, the one who loves never understands the origin of his search as a demand inherent within himself, but always as an entirely new freedom for the other one, a freedom which was simply bestowed on him and consequently was originally alien to him. On his own, he never should or would have loved this other one at all. But he may do this, and since he may do it, he does do it. Because he is free for this other, he loves him. In this way he loves concentratedly, not haphazardly, ramblingly, or distractedly. And because he is free for him, he does not seek him as though he needed him for himself as a means to his self-assertion and self-fulfillment. The one who loves, seeks the other only for his own sake. He does not want to win and possess him for himself in order to enjoy him and his own power over him. He never trespasses on the freedom of the other, but by respecting the other's freedom, he simply remains quite free for him. He loves him gratis. That is to say, he desires nothing from him, and he does not wish to be rewarded by him. All he desires is to exist for him, to offer himself to him, and finally to give himself to him. He desires to be permitted to love him simply in the way that this ability has been granted to himself.

If love, in the sense of Agape, is no doubt also a seeking, it is nevertheless not an interested, but a sovereign seeking of the other one. ...This seeking is sovereign precisely because it is directed and oriented not to the sovereignty of the one who loves but to the sovereignty of the beloved one. To speak once more with Paul, love in the sense of Agape is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on its own way. It rejoices in the truth, bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. Agape is related to Eros, as Mozart to Beethoven. How could they possibly be confused? Agape is an altogether positive striving toward the other, quite distinct from all self-righteousness and intellectual superiority, as well as from all strife.