In search of the perfect Bible

Stumbling briefly last night through the mirky recesses of Facebook, I noticed that for some reason many Sydney Anglicans currently seem obsessed (once again) with the question of the merits of various English translations of Holy Scripture. Some are saying "I follow Paul", others "I follow Apollos", and yet others "I follow Christ". Extravagant claims are made for one version or another, one opening the eyes of the blind, a second making the lame to walk while a third comes with a free set of steak knives.

Removing tongue from cheek, there are indeed relevant differences between the various options and such discussion is not empty of benefit, but all the major and well-known translations are generally very good and the benefits of one over another are relatively slight. Yet the marketers are not content with this, seeking to create artificial scarcity to generate an economy of fear and desire (and sell more units), and so claims are made that cannot possibly be true of any one translation.

The question of which translation is the "best" is context-dependent. It depends who is reading and for what purpose (and sometimes even the passage in question). The ideal study version for a scholar is going to be different to the ideal version for children and those still learning English. The merits of different approaches shine in different contexts.

And this is how it ought to be. The search for the perfect English Bible is a chasing after the wind. The Scriptures may be venerated, but not worshipped. The are holy, but not themselves divine. We are happy to translate them because their value ultimately lies not in the words, but in the word they communicate, that is, in their message, the good news about Jesus. The words are our access to this word, and it is our delight to pay close attention to them (and for some to work hard at the difficult and imperfectible task of translation), but in the end we pay attention because they point to the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the one who is the true Word.

But don't take my word for it, read this excellent piece by a translator of Holy Scripture with years of experience in the craft.

Or better still, follow the simple advice that transformed the life of Saint Augustine: take and read.

Why Christians must grieve (and fear, rejoice and desire)

Or, why tranquility is overrated (for now)

"And so a rightly directed will is love in a good sense and a perverted will is love in a bad sense. Therefore a love which strains after the possession of the loved object is desire; and the love which possess and enjoys that object is joy. The love that shuns what opposes it is fear, while the love that feels that opposition when it happens is grief."

- Augustine, City of God (trans. Henry Bettenson), XIV.7.

The four basic passions (or loves) fall out on a simple grid: future or present, attraction or repulsion. Attraction in the present is joy, in the future is desire. Repulsion in the future is fear and in the present, grief. In each case, Augustine argues that there can be good or bad versions, depending on whether the love in question is rightly directed or perverted. This put him in opposition to Stoicism, which saw these four as emotional disturbance of the mind and as the origin of all moral failings.

Augustine goes on to show how the Stoics (Cicero in particular) argue that for three of these emotions there is a corresponding disposition "in the mind of a wise man". Desire, joy and fear are each disorders, Cicero argued, and need to be replaced by will, gladness and caution respectively. The difference between the positive and negative term in each case was for Cicero whether they could be held without variation. For example, caution differs from fear in being always present in the mind of the wise and thus not dependent upon changing circumstances, unlike fear, which comes and goes in the presence or absence of a threat. Mental vacillation arising from responding to changing circumstances was thus the cause of all moral fault. The highest virtue is apatheia, impassibility.

While desire, fear and joy each have a positive (since unchanging) Stoic counterpart, Cicero has no place for any disposition corresponding to grief. This is a significant omission, since it reveals a crucial difference between Cicero and Augustine, or between Stoicism and Christianity, namely the place of suffering. For the Stoic, it is impossible for the wise to suffer, since wisdom provides a stability of mind that is the opposite of the perturbations of suffering. Only a fool suffers the fickleness of the passions (desire, joy, fear, grief). If one is wise, then the steady dispositions of will, gladness and caution are unchanging in all circumstances.

The difference in the Christian mindset is eschatology: that the world is open to God's coming future, revealing the present brokenness of all things. This opens the possibility of suffering not always being purely negative. Suffering that yearns towards the future is ever pierced by the failures of the present ("the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present"). The restlessness of Christian desire ("our heart is restless until it rests in you") is not a failure of wisdom or stability, but the proper expression of creation's present fragmentation. Augustine is clear that these disturbing passions are proper to us in this present age. The impassibility so cherished by the Stoics is for Augustine a future hope, but currently an inhuman impossibility "while we are in this place of misery". It is inhuman because to not feel anything means you're not paying attention. It is impossible because no one has so lost touch with their natural feelings as to be entirely impervious to the vicissitudes of life as we presently experience it.

And so grief is as crucial to a healthy heart as desire, joy or fear because the world is not as it should be. Augustine locates the expression of this present fragmentation in the experience of disordered desire, that is, in sin. Grief is therefore primarily grief over sin, as the apostle Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 7.8-11. The possibility of grief arises from the tension between what God has promised and our present experience of failure. And it is not just grief, but all the emotions that depend on this dynamic. We rightly fear sinning more than any physical pain or loss. We rejoice over the repentance of our neighbour. We desire God's promises to reach fruition. And we grieve when we find ourselves once again at fault.

These emotions can be expressions of our disordered hearts, where we fear or desire, rejoice or grieve over the wrong things, or in the wrong way. But Augustine is adamant that the faithful Christian life (and therefore, the truly human life) includes each of these emotions in their proper place.

"Among us Christians, on the other hand, the citizens of the Holy City of God, as they live by God's standards in the pilgrimage of this present life, feel fear and desire, pain and gladness in conformity with the holy Scriptures and sound doctrine; and because their love is right, all these feelings are right in them."

- Augustine, City of God, XIV.9.

Augustine on the hope of the Sabbath

"Give us peace, Lord God, for you have given us all else; give us the peace that is repose, the peace of the Sabbath, and the peace that knows no evening. The whole order of exceedingly good things, intensely beautiful as it is, will pass away when it has served its purpose: these things too will have their morning and their evening.

"But the seventh day has no evening and sinks toward no sunset, for you sanctified it that it might abide for ever. After completing your exceedingly good works you rested on the seventh day, though you achieved them in repose; and you willed your book to tell us this as a promise that when our works are finished (works exceedingly good inasmuch as they are your gift to us) we too may rest in you, in the Sabbath of eternal life.

"And then you will rest in us, as now you work in us, and your rest will be rest through us as now those works of yours are wrought through us."

- Augustine, Confessions

Holy Saturday falls upon a Sabbath. The work of the Son of Man is complete and he rests from his labours.

But this Sabbath, like all those before it, has a sunset and an evening.

Are we to believe in the Antipodes?

Whether We are to Believe in the Antipodes
But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled. For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and it is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man. Wherefore let us seek if we can find the city of God that sojourns on earth among those human races who are catalogued as having been divided into seventy-two nations and as many languages. For it continued down to the deluge and the ark, and is proved to have existed still among the sons of Noah by their blessings, and chiefly in the eldest son Shem; for Japheth received this blessing, that he should dwell in the tents of Shem.

- Augustine of Hippo, City of God XVI.9.

In Augustine's day, it was widely known and accepted (at least among the educated) that the earth was round. However, this raised a problem. Since it was also known that the equatorial regions are impassable (think Sahara) and the necessary ocean voyage too lengthy to be feasible, then how could there be humans on the far side of the globe? It would only be possible if these hypothetical Antipodeans were not historically connected to the human civilisations which Augustine knew and to which Christ had come. For Augustine, although he had never been there, for the Antipodes to be inhabited would mean an unacceptable bifurcation in humanity - unacceptable because without the possibility of travel they were also without the possibility of hearing the good news. Given the impossibility of contact, to believe in life on the far side raised a series of problematic questions. Had God created two human races? Were there then also two Christs? Or were the others left without the gospel?

This may all seem fantastically speculative in today's globalised society, but the question of God's witness to those historically disconnected from the spread of the Christian message is a genuine theological and ethical issue. Is the chance to be saved a historical cultural lottery?

One attempt to answer that question is found the new preamble the Uniting Church in Australia has proposed to add to its constitution. Ben Myers is posting excerpts from a paper he is writing reflecting critically on that preamble.

UPDATE: Ben has just posted the conclusion to his paper.

Myers on Augustine on desire and beauty

Ben Myers has written a wonderful short post which consists of an anecdote leading into a one paragraph explanation of the heart of Augustine's take on human desire.

Good books: a meme

I've been memed again. This time Matthew Moffitt from Hebel has tagged me and given me a list of theological book categories. The instructions tell me to:

i. List the most helpful book you've read in this category;
ii. Describe why you found it helpful; and
iii. Tag five more friends and spread the meme love.

I am going to break the rules immediately and amend the first point to read "List the most a helpful book you've read in this category". Here are the categories and my answers:

1. Theology
• Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine
I take it that since "God" is listed (rather dubiously) at #3, this category is for books on the "method" or "how to" of theology. This wouldn't be the top book out of this list of 11, but it was one I enjoyed. I have reviewed it at length here.
Summary: All the world's a stage.

2. Biblical Theology
• Augustine, City of God
The first biblical theology. And the best. I received this as a 21st present from a far-sighted friend (thanks Ben!), who didn't realise that it would help send me to the other side of the world.
Summary: A tale of two cities.

3. God
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1
I never promised this would be an easy list. But if you want to get into glories of God, then there are few more profound guides than uncle Karl. Read this quote and then decide if you want to dive into the depths and discover that God is there too.
Summary: God is with us.

4. Jesus
• Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God
Although incomplete (and what account of Jesus isn't? Even John recognised as much), this book will push you to really think about what Jesus means for our understanding of God. ‘When the crucified Jesus is called the ‘image of the invisible God’, the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this. God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity.’ (205)
Summary: God looks like this.

5. Old Testament
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall
A short little book based on lecture notes from students who listened to lectures Bonhoeffer gave on Genesis 1-3. In many ways, these lectures are a model of creative faithfulness to the text, theological exegesis that asks after God and humanity, not just about me or about historical debates or contemporary fads.
Summary: They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way.

6. New Testament
• N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (or for the attentionally challenged, The Challenge of Jesus)
The book that took all the fragments of Sunday School stories and sermon pieces into which the Gospels had shattered and pieced together a picture of a human saviour who wins God's victory for Israel and the world. It took me almost two years to read (in a group), but I am a different person for it.
Summary: God wins.

7. Morals
• Oliver O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order
How could I resist? Not an easy book, but one to chew over and digest slowly and repeatedly. It will nourish you for a long time if you are patient with it.
Summary: Ethics is good news and the resurrection is God's affirmation of creation and humanity.

8. (Church) History
• Meredith Lake, Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord
So I thought I'd pick something a little more contemporary, since this is the (church) history section. Meredith (known to many though her wonderful, though now somewhat neglected blog Faith and Place. If you read the current post, you'll understand why; her love for it has run into some competition) put together a history of the first 75 years of the Sydney University Evangelical Union. Since this was the context in which I cut my theological, pastoral, ministry and leadership teeth, I found the book fascinating. Perhaps a little less riveting for those not from Sydney, but it will really help you understand where many Sydney University Christians (like myself) are coming from.
Summary: And now these three remain: object one, object two, object three...

9. Biography
• Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo.
I must say that I am not much into biographies for some reason, even though I know many people love them. I have enjoyed nearly all the ones I have read, but they have been few and far between. However, this is one that stands out for me because it is almost impossible to walk past Augustine for historical importance and Brown's biography is the definitive one against which others are judged. I read this book in fourth year while writing a thesis on Augustine in order to get some more context for his thought and found it fascinating. In particular, the evocation of the late Roman empire I found quite moving. Augustine lived in the dying days of the West and he knew it (and his greatest work, The City of God was written to address the issue). The image of Augustine dying as Hippo was under seige by barbarians and of his fellow monks smuggling his works out to save them from the destruction when the city fell will stay with me for a long time. In fact, it was a large part of the impetus behind my PhD project (outline coming soon).
Summary: Lord, make me pure, but not yet!

10. Evangelism
• John Dickson, Promoting the Gospel
Dickson combines deep historical knowledge, biblical deftness and theological nous with apparently effortless communication skills. This book will liberate you from the straightjacket of guilt that prevents you from promoting the gospel by showing you all the ways you are already involved in this great privilege. Shunned by some for rejecting the idea that every Christian is an evangelist, that is precisely why I recommend it since that is how the Bible pictures the church, in which each part does its work.
Summary: Not everyone is a mouth.

11. Prayer
• Rowan Williams, Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another
Perhaps a surprising book to recommend on prayer, since it primarily addresses those familiar with meditative prayer. However, it is not limited to this audience, since its foundational message - that we discover Christ through loving our neighbour and prayer is what helps us pay attention - is universally applicable. Perhaps it sounds trite as I explain it there, but this little book is anything but.
Summary: "Everything begins with this vision and hope: to put the neighbour in touch with God in Christ."

I would provide links to each of these books at their various publishers, but I'm lazy. You have fingers. Google hasn't crashed. Do it yourself. I tag the first five people to read this post (which probably means you, unless the comments are filled with people saying that they have completed the task).

Augustine on worship and love

"To this God we owe our service - what in Greek is called latreia - whether in the various sacraments or in our selves. For we are his temple, collectively, and as individuals. For he condescends to dwell in the union of all and in each person. He is as great in the individual as he is in the whole body of his worshippers, for he cannot be in creased in bulk or diminished by partition. When we lift up our hearts to him, our heart is his altar. We propitiate him by our priest, his only-begotten Son. We sacrifice blood-stained victims to him when we fight for truth 'as far as shedding our blood'. We burn the sweetest incense for him, when we are in his sight on fire with devout and holy love. We vow to him and offer to him the gifts he has given us, and the gift of ourselves. And we have annual festivals and fixed days appointed and consecrated for the remembrance of his benefits, lest ingratitude and forgetfulness should creep in as the years roll by. We offer to him, on the altar of the heart, the sacrifice of humility and praise, and the flame on the altar is the burning fire of charity. To see him as he can be seen and to cleave to him, we purify ourselves from every stain of sin and evil desire and we consecrate ourselves in his name. For he himself is the source of our bliss, he himself the goal of all our striving. By our election of his as our goal - or rather by our re-election (for we had lost him by our neglect); by our re-election (and we are told that the word 'religion' comes from relegere 'to re-elect'), we direct our course towards him with love (dilectio), so that in reaching him we may find our rest, and attain our happiness because we have achieved our fulfilment in him. For our Good, that Final Good about which the philosophers dispute, is nothing else but to cleave to him whose spiritual embrace, if one may so express it, fills the intellectual soul and makes it fertile with true virtues.

"We are commanded to love this Good with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength; and to this Good we must be led by those who love us, and to it we must lead those whom we love. Thus are fulfilled those two commands on which 'all the Law and the prophets depend': 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind', and, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' For in order that a man may know how to love himself an end has been established for him to which he is to refer all his action, so that he may attain to bliss. For if a man loves himself, his one wish is to achieve blessedness. Now this end is 'to cling to God'. Thus, if a man knows how to love himself, the commandment to love his neighbour bids him to do all he can to bring his neighbour to love God. This is the worship of God; this is true religion; this is the right kind of devotion; this is the service which is owed to God alone."

- Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, X.3.

This passage is critical for all kinds of reasons. Notice how Augustine takes the regular elements associated with worship in the ancient world and shows how they are transformed in Christian worship. The temple is our body and the body politic of the Christian community. The altar is our heart. The sacrifice is humility. And so on. This is not, as is sometimes thought, merely a "spiritualisation" of outward religion, in which meaningless rituals are replaced with right motives. The difference between ancient religions and Christianity is not merely captured by the opposition between "outward" and "inward" piety. True worship is always both. The key difference for Augustine is captured better by the concept of "wholeheartedness". True worship is the wholehearted turning of the self to God, without reservation or any hedging of bets. It is to turn our entire orientation, to re-turn, to a God-ward direction in our life story.

And this is why, Augustine explains, true worship is so closely tied to love in the biblical tradition. For wholehearted love is a motion of the entire life towards the object of our love. If we are to worship God, we must love him wholeheartedly.

And the command to love our neighbour must be understood, not in competition with this primary love, but as its horizontal expression. We love God by loving our neighbour. Yet this also means we love our neighbour by loving God, and inviting them to share that same passionate commitment to the origin of our bliss and goal of our striving.

Notice also that while the love of God is the source and destination of our love of neighbour, it is only through being loved that we learn how to love. Only as we are loved by our neighbour do we learn that God loves us, and only in the light of God's love are we able to love God and others for God's sake.

Finally, a word on Augustine's metaphors. Love is both resting in, and striving after; both choosing of a goal, and finding fulfilment; it is both active and passive. It is an embrace, where I am both taken and held, and also warmly grasp in return. But this is not merely the embrace of a friend, a comfort hug, a warm greeting or a fond farewell. It is the fertile cleaving of lovers, whose embrace produces the gift of new life.

Augustine on the emotions

Scripture places the mind under the governance of God for his direction and assistance, and places the passions under the governance of the mind for their restraint and control so that they may be turned into the instruments of justice. In fact, in our discipline, the question is not whether the devout soul is angry, but why; not whethuer it is sad, but what causes its sadness; not whether it is afraid, but what is the object of its fear. To be indignant with the sinner with a view to his correction, to feel sorrow for the afflicted with a view to his release from suffering, to be afraid for one in danger so as to prevent his death - those are emotions which, as far as I can see, no sane judgement could reprove.

Augustine of Hippo, City of God, IX.5.

Augustine is sometimes criticised for being too Platonic, too quick to dismiss the emotions and the bodily in favour of the rational soul. But here, he shows quite a dramatic break with the classical tradition regarding the emotions.

Augustine claims that despite their differences, the various ancient schools of thought all basically agree that the wise man will suppress his emotions as much as possible, that the affective life is sub-human and to be transcended through reason. Earlier, he lampoons an example in Stoic teaching of a philosopher who is embarrassed that his face turns pale and his knees shake when he is on a boat threatened with shipwreck. For the Stoic, these unwanted expressions of fear don't belong in a life ruled by reason. The philosopher is to tell himself that the shipwreck can do no harm to his virtue, which is all that really matters and so is to be calm and composed.

Augustine contrasts this with the Christian view, in which the emotions not only have their proper place, but their own rationality. They can be investigated and understood, appreciated and even turned into "the instruments of justice". That is, he thinks that a healthy emotional life is possible in which my feelings are neither forcefully suppressed as irrational manifestations of my bodily nature, nor allowed to rule and make me their victim. The philosopher in the wind-tossed boat, far from aiming at a Stoic detachment from the crisis, ought to be rightly concerned for the lives of those on board and that emotion ought to lead him to do all he can to save them from the danger.

It is indeed possible to love God with all your heart, as well as all your mind.

Augustine on xenophobia

...the diversity of tongues now divides man from man. For if two men, each ignorant of the other's language, meet, and are compelled by some necessity not to pass on but to remain with one another, it is easier for dumb animals, even of different kinds, to associate together than these men, even though both are human beings. For when men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, they are completely unable to associate with one another despite the similarity of their natures; and this is imply because of the diversity of tongues. So true is this that a man would more readily hold a conversation with his dog than with another man who is a foreigner.

- Augustine, City of God, XIX.7.

It is passages like this that make reading Augustine such a joy. I am amazed at how many of the postgraduate students in Edinburgh are working in English as a second (or third or fourth or fifth) language. I guess they forgot to bring their dogs with them.

Individualism and Christianity

"When they [pagan philosophers] wish to say that the wise man’s life is a social one, we agree, and we say it much more clearly than they do."

- Augustine, City of God 19.5.

A Christianity that simply mirrors the individualist assumptions of contemporary western culture - my salvation, my faith, my "values" - poses little threat to the powers that be.* The idols of self, family, security, success and money can all be comfortably worshipped alongside (or as) Christ. Membership in a Christian community is seen as an optional extra, a useful tool for my spiritual growth, a place to express my spirituality, a shop at which I "purchase" those items of tradition that suit my taste and opt out of those that are too difficult, or which I don't understand. Once I am made too uncomfortable, I move on to find a more suitable mix at another church down the road (or just at home). Beliefs are transformed into values, and what is important is that they are mine, not whether they are true. My own experience is sacrosanct and perfectly transparent to my understanding (or so fascinatingly opaque as to justify endless introspection). I find myself without reference to others (if this doesn't sound like a recipe for being lost, I don't know what does) and only then need to interact with those with whom I choose. I live on a gated island of my own making, to which others visit only with permission.

Does any of this sound familiar?
*See this post by Dan for further analysis of the alliance between individualism and the dehumanizing powers at work in modern society. He argues that individualism is not directly a worshipping of the self, but a hidden worship of other gods.

Williams on Augustine's Confessions

"The Confessions provide a unique testimony to the fact that it is God and God alone who can give shape and meaning to a human life. The struggles of men and women to make their own lives and build their own securities end in despair, and this is equally true for the believer and the unbeliever. Conversion does not signify an end to the chaos of human experience, it does not make self-understanding easy or guarantee an ordered or intelligible life. What is changed in conversion is the set of determinants within which the spirit moves; and there may be as inaccessible to the mind as they were before. Thus the confidence of the believer never rests upon either his intellectual grasp or his intellectual control of his experience, but on the fidelity of the heart's longing to what has been revealed as the only satisfying object of its desire."

- Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to Saint John of the Cross, 84.

This is an important point that Williams highlights in Augustine. Christians can often give the (false) impression that the good life of obedience and trust to which we are called is an easier, simpler one, as though the painful ambiguities and frustrations of life could be exchanged for uncomplicated simplicity. The evangelist then appears as a shonky car dealer offering an unbelievable product at discount prices. The desperate are taken in; the discerning, suspicious.

But the desire to build our own securities - whether we pursue it in a militant atheism safely unruffled by rumours of God, in an isolated individualism sheltered from the demands of real relationship or in a shallow Christianity that thinks all the answers are written down in the back of the book - will "end in despair". Life is not safe. There is no escape from this fact either in God or in flight from him.

The eager expectation associated with Christian belief does not come from discovering an exhaustive explanation of life's mysteries, a satiating of desire in ultimate answers, but from an encounter that deepens, affirms and subverts our desires.
For those confused, concerned or cross at reports of comments made by Williams about sharia law in the UK, check out Faith and Theology for some intelligent comment and discussion.

Ethics test

I just took this ethics test. H/T Frank.

1. Aquinas (100%)
2. St. Augustine (95%)
3. Aristotle (73%)
4. Plato (63%)
5. Ockham (62%)
6. Spinoza (55%)
7. Ayn Rand (52%)
8. Cynics (45%)
9. Epicureans (44%)
10. John Stuart Mill (42%)
11. Jeremy Bentham (39%)
12. Jean-Paul Sartre (36%)
13. Nietzsche (35%)
14. Stoics (34%)
15. David Hume (32%)
16. Kant (30%)
17. Thomas Hobbes (22%)
18. Nel Noddings (16%)
19. Prescriptivism (13%)

The irony which this selector failed to note: the assumption that ethics is about the selection of personal preferences or the expression of personal values would not score highly in my understanding of how to live. This belief, that ethics is based on what I choose or prefer, is known as voluntarism and is briefly critiqued by O'Donovan here.

Augustine and Barth on humility

"I was not humble enough to conceive of the humble Jesus Christ as my God."

- Augustine, Confessions VII.18

This quote reminded me of this great Barth quote, and also of this one:

What marks out God above all false gods is that they are not capable and ready for this [humility]. In their otherworldliness and supernaturalness and otherness, etc., the gods are a reflection of the human pride which will not unbend, which will not stoop to that which is beneath it. God is not proud. In His high majesty He is humble.

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 159.

We can become unwitting idolaters by thinking God is in our box, just another version of the best (or worst) in ourselves. Yet we can also worship a false god if we think God is so distant and different as to be entirely unknowable, or simply too important for the likes of us.
Twelve points for the Sydney location in the picture.

O'Donovan on wakefulness IIb: Admiring

Admiring (cont)
This is a summary of the second half of Oliver O'Donovan's second lecture in the 2007 New College Lectures Morally Awake? Admiration and resolving in the light of Christian faith. This second lecture is on Admiring.

-----

The feeling of dread arises when we reach the limits of our knowledge. We fear the unknown. This is most clearly seen in children, who, in order to praise one thing as good, often need to demonise alternatives. We treat our dreads as though they were as real as our loves. We can love evil by refusing the adopt the self-reflective position, becoming curved in upon ourselves, according to Luther's definition of sin: incurvatus in se. We then divide the world in two: good and evil. This creates a negative sense of "world" to go alongside the positive use assumed throughout these lectures so far. This negative world is a world our self-enclosure pitched in opposition to the real world.*
*Perhaps I missed a crucial step in this paragraph. This is one section I'd like to revisit when the recordings and full text of the lectures appears on the New College website.

Repentence is thus the progress from unreflective knowledge to reflective knowledge. In coming to know ourselves we come to know (reflectively) our unreflectiveness. Conversion is the beginning of the perfection of love, which casts out dread, according to St John (1 John 4.8). Augustine spoke of learning to love the self, by this he meant that the love of God and neighbour is a self-aware love; we do not come to love God and neighbour absent-mindedly. These loves are not in competition. We do not love ourselves as much as we love God, for we are to love him with our whole being, and there is nothing left over after this love. Self-love is not self-interest or protectiveness, yet nor can we rule the self out of perfect love. Reflective self-love is the opposite of unreflective self-absorption in which we are left at the centre of our own universe without a purchase on the reality of others.

Love must be ordered. There are many good things in the world; how can we love a pluriform world? We need an ordered set of relations as we participate in the moral order. Our admiration has to be structured, rather than simply saying "wow" to each new thing. We must learn to value most what is most valuable. Our love must learn nuances, similarities, contrasts, causes and effects. An ordered knowledge of an ordered world will lead to an ordered knowledge of self. We come to learn about our eyes as we use them to observe the world. We discover that there are others like myself, who see and love. The neighbour is always the self's companion; indeed, it is through the neighbour that we come to awareness of the self: I am other people's other people - vulnerable, capable of disappearing to them as they are to me.

Returning (once again) to Augustine (a frequent touchstone throughout this lecture), in his De Doctrina Christiana he distinguishes between loving and using in order to create a hierarchy in which God is the supreme good to be loved. The first lecture spoke of wakefulness to the world, the self and to time, but why not to God? Why isn't God a fourth thing alongside the others? Each of the other three are not fully grasped except in relation to God. God is the source and end of our awakening. Yet God is not the direct object of our attention, except through the incarnation and prophetic utterance of the Spirit. How can God be the source of our admiration?

To answer this question, let us focus on the experience of gratitude. I admit that what is good, is good for me. I belong to this world and am indebted to its goodness. Gratefulness makes our knowledge of the world come alive. Yet it has also seen that good is a communication: it is for me, but from whom? Who is the source? Once we have caught ourselves being grateful, we are driven to address the supreme good. It is possible to enjoy this or that good without thinking of the source in the supreme good, though it is not possible to do so throughtfully. We can only grasp God's goodness is relation to created (and redeemed) goods. Love thus follows a path from the world through the self and neighbour to God.

Goodness for me is an event, a history. It occurs in time. This doesn't mean that change is all that matters. The goodness of God is not simply something past and achieved, it is also a promise. In admiring, we learn to anticipate God's future goodness. It is as we are placed before a given good that is open to perfection that we begin to hope. Hope holds before us a future that is our good. Opens a space in which we may act. Our ultimate hope, extended to an absolute future means we can intend to our immediate future.*
*Again, I wasn't sure I followed this section, but I think O'Donovan was making a similar point to Barth's comment about little and big hopes. He included a quote from Augustine and extending and intending, which I missed. There is more on hope in the third lecture.

Virtue is a form of goodness realised in others around us, a glimpse of what human action is given to be. Virtue is in the first place in the third person and visible, rather than internal. It is not a law, ideal or command. The virtues are not to be imitated, but to be loved. They are the evidence or seal on God's promise for our lives, communicating a promise of the perfection we lack. Virtue is a kind of goodness, not rightness.

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Question time included queries about the Word of God (O'Donovan spoke with great care of Christ, the Scriptures and Christian proclamation), more on his closing comments about virtues, the reality of evil (O'Donovan repeated the view of the fathers that Satan is perfectly good insofar as he exists. The problem with Satan is not what is there, but what is not there: love. There is a hole at the centre of Satan. Living from fear is living out Satanic emptiness [making interesting links with Voldemort]. When we confront the Other, do we highlight what is not known and centre on that? Satan asks us to worship a lack. A further question asked then if evil only existed in the mind, to which he replied that evil is an event, a doing, rather than a being. Satan's evil is not in his being, but in his rebellion. In our sin we assert ourselves against reality), the difficulty of portraying goodness in art due to our cynicism (a protective mechanism, which believers can dispense with in order to be expert admirers), and on eschatology. This final question took a few attempts to articulate, until finally the questioner came right out and asked "Are you pre-, post- or amillennialist? What is your eschatology?". There was an audible dropping of the collective penny and we turned to hear O'Donovan's reply. "I have no eschatology," he said, "apart from that of the New Testament." He refused to systematise or sequentialise the scriptural images of what he called "the absolute future", though confessed his orthodox belief in the return of Christ, the judgement of God and the resurrection of the dead.

All three nights were well attended and had excellent, albeit fairly brief, question times. Everyone I spoke with agreed that this second lecture was the hardest to follow. As I heard someone say on the third night, "I followed him down all the streets, but I missed some of the corners." And I think my note-taking reflects that: I got many/most of his assertions, but didn't always grasp the logical links and moves between them. If these summaries feel jerky, that is why.
Ten points for providing a link to a very similar photo on this blog, taken just a few metres further back.
Series: I; IIa; IIb; IIIa; IIIb.

O'Donovan on wakefulness IIa: Admiring

Admiring
I will need to be briefer today as I have less time. Last night was also more difficult than Tuesday.

The second lecture was called Admiring and in it, O'Donovan spoke of the human echo to the divine 'behold, it was good'. Moral deliberation begins with observation and ends with obligation. It begins by admiring the goodness of the world and ends by resolving on the rightness of an act. In each case, this lecture sought to address the former, leaving the latter for the third and final address.

In the world are goods to be known and loved. Indeed 'admiration' admirably captures this affective cognition, or cognitive affection, this combination of knowledge and love. Admiring is not an act, it is a resting; the goods which we admire are objective (it would have been interesting to have heard someone press him on cultural construction of goods, but there were enough other interesting things in the lecture that no one did) and so morality is not a way of expressing ourselves or an act of will. Ockham's ontological miserliness needs to be countered by generosity if we are to receive anything in return. That is, whether something is 'good' or not is not an additional property added on later by human will, as though we get to decide and attribute 'values' to things.

Indeed, what we know, we know as good. What we do not know as good, we do not know. Morality doesn't begin after knowledge. Love is there with knowledge from the start. In this, O'Donovan was affirming Augustine's view of evil as privation, as a lack of good (just as darkness is a lack of light and coldness is a lack of heat), rather than as anything 'positive' in its own right. Indeed, O'Donovan's Augustinianism came through very powerfully throughout this talk.

But what about 'bare facts'? Don't we sometimes know things that are themselves value-neutral? Yes, though these are not instances of pure knowledge, purgued of subjective confusion, but of incomplete knowledge, aspects of reality that we do not yet know how to know. Like jigsaw pieces, we can describe their shape, colour and size, but until we know where they fit, we don't know them as something; we don't yet know them for what they are. Such 'objective' knowledge is only knowledge of the surface, ignoring the depth, and can only be sustained for so long.

So moral knowledge is not knowledge of bare facts, because knowledge of bare facts is not real knowledge at all. Neither does the observer disappear in self-forgetful fascination. No, moral knowledge is reflective knowledge that includes knowledge of the self as loving: "love implies love of one's own love" as Augustine said (somewhere).

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I've run out of time and need to head off, even though I haven't yet got to the most interesting material on dread, repentence, conversion, the ordering of loves, gratitude and hope. I'll have to come back to this later.
Fifteen points for correctly naming this natural speleological feature.
Series: I; IIa; IIb; IIIa; IIIb.

Books

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

- Paul Valery (1871 - 1945)

Read any good books recently? Two have captured my interest of late. The first is The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to Saint John of the Cross by Rowan Williams. Williams is a senstive reader of and an excellent guide to a variety of patristic and medieval thinkers. It's been a refreshing tour of some Christian tradition too often ignored in Protestant circles. It can be easy to get the impression sometimes that after Paul, the next great thinker was Luther or Calvin (with perhaps a passing reference to Augustine or Athanasius). Speaking of Augustine, Williams' chapter on the bishop of Hippo was a real highlight.

The second book is a piece of popular history called Tamberlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, a portrait of a Turkic-Mongol warlord in the late 14thC (and early 15thC) variously known as Timur/Temur/Tamberlaine/Tamerlane, who conquered central Asia from the borders of China and northern India to Turkey and Egypt. Along the way, he killed somewhere in the region of 15 million people and probably inadvertently saved Europe from becoming part of the Ottoman empire.

Augustine on embarrassing Christians

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

- Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.19.39
(translated by J.H. Taylor; Newman Press, 1982). H/T CraigS.

This issue has been around a long time.

Out of the closet meme

Started (as all good memes are these days) by Ben Myers,* this new meme should probably be called 'into the closet', since the idea is to make confessions about one's theology. Ben has collected many examples of the meme spreading if you want to get some idea of what I'm talking about.

I confess that I find the idea of blog confession more than a little odd (who will pronounce absolution?).

I confess that I think this meme is often just a chance to showcase one's theological credentials in the form of admitting embarrassing influences, or an opportunity to attack one's opponents through disclosing feelings of frustration.

I confess that I find both those activities more attractive than I should.

I confess that Augustine's Confessions is the real start of this meme.

I confess that to criticise a meme intended for a minute's amusement is probably small-minded.
*Though it was originally inspired by this post by Peter Leithart, it was Ben who turned it into a meme. I was then tagged by Rob, who is out of hospital again - excellent news!
I confess that I entered this cathedral with no intention of paying the (recently introduced and quite hefty) entrance fee, but just wanted a brief (free) sticky-beak - and so I walked in, asked the price (which I already knew), declined, snapped the shot, and walked out. I also confess I'll give twelve points to the first correct guess of which cathedral it is.

Ever feel like this?

I myself was exceedingly astonished as I anxiously reflected how long a time had elapsed since the nineteenth year of my life, when I began to burn with a zeal for wisdom, planning that when I had found it I would abandon all the empty hopes and lying follies of hollow ambitions. And here I was already thirty, and still mucking about in the same mire in a state of indecision, avid to enjoy present fugitive delights which were dispersing my concentration, while I was saying: 'Tomorrow I shall find it; see, it will become perfectly clear, and I shall have no more doubts.'

- Augustine, Confessions VI.xi.18.

Moltmann vs Augustine on loving God

What do I love when I love God?

Augustine writes: ‘But what do I love when I love you? Not the beauty of any body or the rhythm of time in its movement; not the radiance of light, so dear to our eyes; not the sweet melodies in the world of manifold sounds; not the perfume of flowers, ointments and spices; not manna and not honey; not the limbs so delightful to the body’s embrace: it is none of these things that I love when I love my God. And yet when I love my God I do indeed love a light and a sound and a perfume and a food and an embrace – a light and sound and perfume and food and embrace in my inward self. There my soul is flooded with a radiance which no space can contain; there a music sounds which time never bears away; there I smell a perfume which no wind disperses; there I taste a food that no surfeit embitters; there is an embrace which no satiety severs. It is this that I love when I love my God.’ (Confessions X.6.8)

Answer: When I love God I love the beauty of bodies, the rhythm of movements, the shining of eyes, the embraces, the feelings, the scents, the sounds of all this protean creation. When I love you, my God, I want to embrace it all, for I love you with all my sense in the creation of your love. In all the things that encounter me, you are waiting for me.
      For a long time I looked for you within myself, and crept into the shell of my soul, protecting myself with an armour of unapproachability. But you were outside – outside myself – and enticed me out of the narrowness of my heart into the broad place of love for life. So I came out of myself and found my soul in my senses, and my own self in others.
      The experience of God deepens the experiences of life. It does not reduce them, for it awakens the unconditional Yes to life. The more I love God the more gladly I exist. The more immediately and wholly I exist, the more I sense the living God, the inexhaustible well of life, and life’s eternity.

-Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation
(trans. Margaret Kohl, Fortress: 2001), 98.

What do you love when you love God? Do you side with Augustine or Moltmann? Why?

And where does Jesus fit in?