What is a university for?

On Saturday I am giving a talk in Sydney on this question at the annual Write conference organised by the Simeon Network of Christian academics. The talk is based on a paper that will appear in June in the journal IFES Word and World.

Two papers that are helpful were written by Professor David Ford of Cambridge.
They are here and  here.

What does Jesus death on the cross achieve?

Tonight at the theology reading group we are discussing ``The Nature and Basis of Salvation,'' chapter 11 of Christian Theology: An Introduction, by Alister McGrath.
The chapter explores different perspectives through history on what the death of Jesus on the cross achieved and what is the meaning and nature of the salvation that is linked to his death and resurrection.

McGrath helpfully points out that it is hard to separate the question of ``What did Jesus achieve?" from the questions of ``Who is Jesus?" and ``What is the nature of humans and what do they need?''



Some view the cross of Christ as only exemplary and subjective, i.e. it provides an example and inspiration for humans to be willing to suffer, particularly for a greater good beyond themselves. In contrast, an objective ontological view is that the cross achieves something objective (makes salvation possible); it actually changes reality.

There are different models and metaphors for the cross and what it achieves including that it is a sacrifice for sin, a victory over sin and evil, a provider of forgiveness, and a demonstration of God's love. Most of the writers McGrath that engages with seem to exclusively favour just one of these over the others. I find this a little strange; why can't they all be true? There are many dimensions to what the cross achieves. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. This seems to be similar to the view taken by John Stott in his classic book, The Cross of Christ. The challenge, as always in theology, is to find a balance in emphasis between the different dimensions. Furthermore, the cross represents a profound mystery and so any ``model'' will be limited by human language and concepts.

There is also a range of views about what is the nature of the salvation that Jesus offers: reconciliation with God, reconciliation with others, deification (being made divine, particularly favoured in Eastern Orthodox theology), imputed righteousness, personal holiness (Wesley), authentic human existence (Tillich), spiritual freedom, and political liberation (Boff, Gutierrez).
Finally, when it comes to the appropriation of salvation, what is the balance between an extremely Western individualistic conception of personal faith and a communal and institutional conception, as extremely embodied in the Roman Catholic church. Again, the challenge is to find a balance in emphasis between the different perspectives.

One thing in the chapter that was completely new and intriguing for me was the views of Rene Girard, an anthropologist, who claimed that desire, violence, and scapegoats were integral to humanity, to religion, and the sacred. Girard states "Mine is a search for the anthropology of the Cross, which turns out to rehabilitate orthodox theology". For the context and extensive bibliography see here.

It is arguable whether this chapter would be better after chapter 14, which concerns human nature and sin. Most of those who deny the saving power of the cross (particularly Enlightenment writers) do so because they don't think people need to be saved (i.e. they are basically good) and deny that human reason is not corrupted.

This leads to a broader issue that is discussed by McGrath: the influence of historical and cultural context on people's theology. Living in contexts as wide-ranging as Hellenistic philosophical debates, a military dictatorship in Latin America, upper middle-class North America today,  or Catholic Germany at the time of Luther, do have an influence, for better or for worse, on the theological emphases and formulations that they produce.

Most importantly, the chapter would be more helpful if there was a deeper engagement with key Bible passages, particularly those that are hard to reconcile with some of the narrow views advocated by some of the writers reviewed. This is where Stott's book is helpful.

Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece. Karl Barth wrote most of his Church Dogmatics, with a reproduction of this in view.

A theology of weakness

Today I am giving a talk, A Theology of Weakness, at Theology on Tap in Brisbane.
The slides are here.

I refer to a helpful journal article Wisdom and Weakness by Francis Young. I thank Vinoth Ramachandra for bringing it to my attention.

Reconciliation: one personal encounter at a time

On saturday night my wife and I went to see The Green Book. Today I heard that it got Academy Award for best film!
 I thought it was excellent and would highly recommend it. It is the heart-warming story of a very unlikely friendship, that between a coarse Italian American nightclub bouncer and a refined African-American pianist. As they travel through the Deep South of the USA in the 1960s they encounter blatant racism, harassment, and discrimination. This provides the backdrop for them to bond, learn from each other, change and adapt.

The movie has many lessons about human nature and aspirations. We all yearn for close personal relationships, for identity, for justice, and for righteousness. Yet we are capable of incredible cruelty and violence, particularly when we encounter those different to us, and/or those who threaten our power and lifestyle. We ourselves are also sometimes the obstacle to our aspirations.


One of the criticisms/controversies about the movie is the claim that it is in the white saviour genre trope, where a white person saves a black person/community. There are certainly too many movies in this genre, such as one I recently saw. However, I would not characterise Green Book that way. In contrast, the two characters have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Some of this is discussed in an article in Variety, Is Green Book woke enough? by Owen Gleiberman.

Those who are woke claim, through their very wokeness, to have allegiance to one thing: the transcendent morality of their cause. Yet woke culture, as practiced in America in 2018, also carries an undercurrent of competition. As in: How woke are you? Not as woke as me! I’ll see you one courageous, self-lacerating woke insight and raise you two! In this atmosphere of a never-ending contest of righteous one-upmanship fought out on Twitter, the middlebrow Hollywood liberal attitudes on display in “Green Book” can look like something from a vanished world of movies that pretend to liberate but really just pander. “Green Book” has been condemned, in certain circles, as if it were a racially stodgy and unenlightened embarrassment — the “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” of 2018 awards bait. It has been called a white-savior movie — though, in fact, it is not. (The two characters save one another, which is a very different thing.) 

Again we see the yearning for justice and righteousness.

Start with emphathy

When I encounter new ideas and new social movements my first reaction is analysis and critique. This probably stems from being an intellectual, being male, and being a reflective personality. When I was newly married I went out for lunch with an older married friend and he gave me one piece of advice about relating to my wife, ``sympathy before solutions".  This eventually became a catch cry in our family. However, I think this idea has much broader implications, particularly in living as a Christian.

For all their faults, it is striking and challenging that Job's friends actually sat and wept with him for days before they presented their "solutions" to the suffering of Job. They entered his pain.
When Jesus saw the crowds, "he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless.'' He did not immediately lecture them about their "poor life choices" or their "wrong theology". There are countless scriptural examples from the Old Testament prophets to the letter of James that rebuke God's people for not listening to the cries of the oppressed.

Everyone has a story. Everyone's life has produced a rich raft of experiences, with a diverse mix of joy, pain, disappointment, struggle, ... These experiences shape their world view and response to their circumstances.
Many of my experiences are probably quite different. In particular, although my life has not been devoid of pain or struggles, I have had a privileged existence as a wealthy white male living in one of the most privileged countries in the world. I really don't know what it is like to be a Dalit, to live in a slum, to be an African-American living in the southern USA, to be a refugee, to live under military dictatorship in a poor Latin American country, to be a Muslim in Australia, to be a woman who has been sexually assaulted, ...

So when I encounter issues such as liberation theology, #metoo, economic inequality, racism, immigration, ... a challenging starting point is to listen and try and put myself in the shoes of those who cry out. What is their experience? What is their pain? How does that affect their perspective?
That does not mean I have to agree with absolutely every single detail of their agenda, their perspective, their claims, their politics, their theology, their methods, ....

In discussing the idea of "double listening" John Stott says

For the voices of our contemporaries may take the form of shrill and strident protest. They are now querulous, now appealing, now aggressive in tone. They are also the anguished cries of those who are suffering, and the pain, doubt, anger, alienation and even despair of those who are estranged from God. I am not suggesting that we should listen to God and to our fellow human beings in the same way or with the same degree of deference. We listen to the Word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolved to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand it too, and resolved not necessarily to believe and obey it, but to sympathise with it and to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it. . . .

The Contemporary Christian: An urgent plea for double listening, page  28.

Who is Jesus Christ?

The Christian doctrine of the person of Christ sets out to explore why the church believes that the little piece of human history called "Jesus of Nazareth" holds the key to the nature of God and of human destiny. This area of theology, often referred to as ``Christology'', sets out to locate Jesus of Nazareth on a conceptual map. It attempts to place him along the coordinates of time and eternity, humanity and divinity, particularity and universality, and answer the question of how an event which took place at a specific time and place can be relevant for all people and all times.

This is the beginning of a chapter in Christian Theology: An Introduction, by Alister McGrath. It is the subject of the theology reading group will be looking at this month.

I found the chapter particularly interesting and stimulating. It highlights the many different dimensions and richness to Christology. Human language and concepts are inadequate to simply give a definitive description of such a great mystery, inevitably leading to debates, controversies, and divisions. History also shows how certain ideas and debates keep resurfacing. I think some of the issue with such a complex subject is that different people want to emphasize different perspectives. The question is how does one find balance.

A few of the things I found particularly interesting in the chapter are the following.

It is debatable to what extent one can separate ideas about Christ, about salvation, and about human nature (Christology, soteriology, and anthropology). Charles Gore said, ``Inadequate conceptions of Christ's person go hand in hand with inadequate conceptions of what human nature wants... The Nestorian Christ is the fitting saviour of the Pelagian man.''
[This is an allusion to Nestorius who emphasised the humanity of Christ and saw Christ as largely a human example. Pelagius  considered humans capable of doing good without any divine help.]



A second insight concerns how Adolf von Harnack raised questions about whether the desire of the patristic writers (early church fathers) to interpret the Gospel in terms of Greek thought was helpful or not. In particular, he considered that the concern with abstractions, particularly in fine debates about the meaning of the incarnation, distorted the "simple" practical message of salvation and living that Jesus presented. I would agree that Harnack ultimately took this in unhelpful and extreme directions but it is an important question to consider.

Another helpful insight is to consider the diversity of terms/names used in the New Testament to describe Jesus: Messiah, Lord, Christ, Son of Man, Son of God, God, Word, ....
I would add Suffering Servant, Redeemer, and Rabbi.
Each adds a different dimension and perspective, highlighting the problem of a narrow reductionist or one-dimensional perspective that too many seemed to have advocated over the centuries.

Slow living in black and white

My wife and I watched (endured?) the movie Roma, which chronicles the life of a maid living with an upper-middle-class family in Mexico City in the 1970s. It is hard to know what to say. On the one hand, the photography (in black and white) is amazing. It encourages the viewer to slow down and engage with the moment, whether water going down a drain or the pain of betrayal. On the other hand, it is very slow! There is a social justice dimension but this was not as strong as I hoped. There is a certainly a message about how women cannot depend on men!
Perhaps for me, the most interesting thing was learning about the Corpus Christi Massacre; a black operations army group (trained in the USA) killed more than 100 student protesters. This was part of Mexico's "Dirty war".