Polanus on interpreting Scripture

‘The interpretation of H. Scripture is the exposition (explicatio) of its true sense and use, arranged in clear words (verbis perspicuis instituta), to the glory of God and the edification of the church.’ Even in my inelegant translation, that’s not a bad opening gambit. The (long…) section ends with a paragraph ‘on the use of H. Scripture for consolation’: ‘…therefore however grave the evil, so great and certain is the good set against it, that it is an effective remedy for sorrow. A most beautiful example (exemplum pulcherrinendum) is Isa. 41:26 ff. …’

The words are from Amandus Polanus’s Syntagma Theologiae Christianae; it was never going to be a big seller, even in theological terms. The edition in our library, published in Geneva in 1617, runs to something over 700 pages in folio, with two columns of (I estimate) six point Latin text on each. Oh, and the printer’s Greek font is all-but-illegible, at least to my eyes. If that wasn’t bad enough, the ‘Synopsis’ at the start of the book is a masterpiece of Ramist bifurcations (I counted six levels of subdivision on the definition of theology alone), and the text itself is in classical scholastic quaestiones form. What was it Barth said of Heppe? ‘Dry and dusty as a table of logarithms …’

I pulled it out the library to check a reference. I suspect I am its first reader in living memory; it is not yet on our electronic catalogue (most of our best books aren’t…), and was apparently misplaced in the stacks, so the librarian took a while to find it. Her perseverance seemed to demand some from me; and in between the anti-Roman polemic, and the fading and tiny Latin print, I found my heart strangely warmed.

Emergent Puritan…

…sounds like it ought to be a blog title.

There is considerable grass-roots interest in the Puritans amongst a certain slice of current Christianity. This is, of course, a good thing–any interest in church history is a good thing, and the Puritans represented a practical and doctrinally serious model of living the faith that deserves and repays reflection. I’ve had the privilege of being involved in some attempts to renew popular and scholarly interest in the Puritans, and applaud some others.

However… I observe that most of those interested in the Puritans fall into the ‘golden age’ trap. Ignoring all that was wrong with the movement (and there was plenty), and even all the diversity in the movement (and there was even more), the Puritans become a cipher for an idealised vision of uncompromisingly Calvinist and astonishingly reactionary Christianity that never, in fact, existed. ‘Puritan’ becomes some sort of Platonic ideal, or Jungian archetype: Calvinist, presbyterian, separatist, committed to certain ethical stances and certain patterns of worship, it is held out as a well-defined and uniform challenge and ideal to which we are called to aspire.

In scholarly use, ‘Puritan’ is astonishingly difficult to define: the movement was just far too diverse. Its centre of gravity was certainly Calvinistic, but there are recognisably Puritan pastors and authors who are Amyrauldian (including Richard Baxter, hardly a minor figure in the movement!) and even Arminian; to a lesser extent, the centre is presbyterian, but the movement includes many congregationalists, some of them Baptist, and not a few episcopalians. Some Puritans (Baxter again) were astonishingly ecumenically-minded for their day; on most controverted ethical issues, they could be found on every side (John Milton offered a defence of divorce; William Perkins–again, not a minor figure–wrote books of casuistry that rival anything the Jesuits produced).

The point struck me forcibly last week in two ways; I stumbled across a book in the library whilst looking for something else which rejoiced in the title Liberal Puritanism and Other Essays (A.W. Harrison; pub. 1935); in the epynonymous essay, Harrison makes a convincing case for a tradition of socially liberal thought stretching from the Puritans down. Second, when dipping into a collection of Puritan quotations, published by Banner of Truth, I read some fine words, and saw underneath the name of Ralph Cudworth. Now, Cudworth’s Intellectual System of the Universe is an excellent book, representing (alongside John Scotus Eriugena and Coleridge’s unpublished Opus Maximum) the fullest flowering of a persistent British tradition of mystical Christian Platonism. But Puritan it is not!

If I had to define ‘Puritan’ in a useful way, I think I would offer four points. First, the great and uniting rallying cry of the movement was ‘Reformation without tarrying for any!’ Puritanism was a restless and urgent reform movement. They might not agree on what a pure church would look like, but they were utterly at one on the pressing and immediate need to create one. Careful, political steps designed to bring the mass of the populace–or even the mass of the congregation–along with you were not appropriate; what God’s Word said was to be done, and done now.

Second, the movement was radically ‘congregationalist,’ not in the sense of a system of church government, although some of them did hold to congregationalism as well, but in the sense of a focus on the local congregation as the place where reformation must be applied, where pastoral care would be focused, and where evangelisation would happen. God’s basic tool, and perhaps God’s biggest idea, was the local church fellowship. A few of the great Puritans held offices other than local pastor, of course (John Owen, to continue the list of the greats who do not fit the stereotype…), but they still witness to the local church, where the Word is preached, the sacraments celebrated, and discipline and discipleship practiced, as the beating heart of God’s mission in the world.

Third, and already hinted at, the Puritan vision of the Christian life was an astonishingly high one. Jim Packer entitled his book recommending the Puritans A Passion for Holiness; Kelly and Randall, in the one I contributed to, went for The Devoted Life. Both point to this same instinct, that at the heart of the Puritan vision was a pastoral theology that sought and expected to create a congregation of visible saints. Again, what visible sainthood might look like was somewhat controversial amongst them, but nonetheless, a seriousness in Christian practice, an utter commitment to living the truths of Scripture, was what Puritan pastors expected from themselves and their congregations.

Finally, the Puritans were Biblicist, but in a rather particular way. They were constantly innovative in their readings of Scripture, typically rejecting tags and traditions, wanting to test and re-test everything by direct appeal to the Word. Their primary hermeneutic was the sermon; texts yielded doctrines which demanded applications, and if a text challenged received practice, the application demanded an urgent revision of practice. The notion, so common amongst those who are noisiest about the Puritans today, that there is a settled and agreed account of Biblical truth which needs defending rather than discovering, would be utterly foreign to them.

Restless, endlessly reforming, united by the urgency of pursuing a vision, rather than by the vision they were pursuing, focused on new and high visions of Christian community, committed to living Scripture, but impatient of inherited readings of Scripture that merely justified the status quo, always radical and never conservative–I think there is an argument for finding the true heir of the spirit of Puritanism not in Reformed and conservative circles, but in the restless radicals of every age, for all their failings and faults. Darby and Irving in the 1830s; Keswick in the 1890s; the new charismatic churches in the 1960s–

–and in the emerging church movement of today!

I’m at least half-serious about this; go on, shoot me down…

Great theologians (2)

How about this, from Erasmus of Rotterdam?

‘To me he is truly a theologian who teaches not by skill with intricate syllogisms but by a disposition of mind, by the very expression and eyes …

‘In his kind of philosophy, located as it is more truly in the disposition of the mind than in syllogisms, life means more than debate, inspiration is preferable to erudition, transformation is a more important matter than intellectual comprehension.

‘Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians.’

(HT The Conventicle)

‘Infallibility’?

I am preparing a lecture on differing Evangelical views of Scripture, particularly in trans-Atlantic perspective, which I will post up here when it is done. I stumble over the word ‘infallible’: in normal English usage, it means ‘will not fail’, and so demands a qualifier (‘will not fail’ to do what?); thus confessing the Bible to be infallible without any indication as to its purpose is precisely meaningless in logical terms.

The standard claim, which I can trace back no further than Packer’s God has Spoken, although it then crops up in the Chicago Statement, the Westminster Handbook, and various other reference works, seems to be that ‘infallibility’ means ‘the quality of neither deceiving nor being deceived’ (Packer, p.111). This is generally defended etymologically: Latin in + fallo, which primarily means ‘to deceive’.

OK, but: 1. Warfield and Hodge used ‘infallibility’ to mean ‘inerrancy’ in 1881: not ‘not deceiving’ but ‘not erring’; 2. fallo does not primarily mean ‘to deceive’ when applied to inanimate objects; there it basically means ‘to fail’; 3. infallibilis is used (admittedly fairly rarely) in medieval and early modern Latin, first by Augustine I think, always with the sense of ‘not failing’ (Augustine uses it of the certainty of the divine decree of election); 4. ‘infallibility’ is never used with the sense Packer et al. want to give it in English (so the OED); 5. as far as I can presently tell, no Reformation or post-Reformation writer or confession used infallibilis of Scripture in any sense, with the sole exception of the Latin translation of Westminster, where it was a back-translation of the English ‘infallible’, and so must be assumed to have the natural sense of that word (Schleiermacher cites the ‘conf. March.’ as describing Scripture as infallible, but I have no idea what the ‘conf. March.’ is!) ; 6. the most common use of infallibilis in theology is in debates over the status of the Pope, where the word always means ‘unable to err’ (in particular circumstances, of course).

So, whence Packer’s supposed meaning of ‘unable to deceive’? Can anyone enlighten me before I have to give this lecture (Tue 26th!)?

Being with pastors

Over the past month I have traveled more than I should have, probably; there was a day when, feeling rather overwhelmed by life, I looked for a reason, and realised that I was about to sleep in my sixth different bed in six nights…

The traveling included some great times, though. I spent three days at continuing education events for pastors, one with the Free Church of Scotland, and two with the Scottish Baptists. Days like these remind me of several things: my own vocation; the purpose of theology; and the goodness of God.

I am called and vowed to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. It may be, at present it looks likely, that for the remainder of my life my salary will be paid by institutions of higher education, but vocation is not about employment; the day I stop believing that I can adequately fulfill my ordination vows in the academy will be the day my resignation goes in. This is not the same for every theologian, of course: I have good friends who have courageously held on to a vocation to lay theology, when ordination was offered by ecclesial authorities and looked an easy route to academic employment one way or another.

I am convinced, however, that theology is the church’s science. We do what we do to serve the people of God, the bride of Christ. Being Baptist, I am further convinced that theology is the churches’ science: we do what we do to serve not some idealised ecclesial entity, but messy and difficult local fellowships which gather Sunday by Sunday around Word and bread and wine. For me, this means that those occasions when I have the privilege of being with pastors are moments of testing and, by the grace of God, always thus far, of validation: have I got something to offer these brothers and sisters, that will feed, aid, and sustain their ministries? Not, of course, that everything done in the study or seminar must be immediately translatable to the pulpit or pastoral visit, but that the time spent in study and seminar has produced some fruit that is now ripe for the picking. I believe the Pope claims as one of his titles servum servorum Dei, ‘the servant of the servants of God’; perhaps the title is his pre-eminently, if his role in the determination of doctrine is as it is claimed to be, but for all of us who are called to wrestle with the teaching of the church, the implications of the gospel, this title offers an aspiration–to serve God’s ministers.

And the goodness of God. An old friend, with whom I have since lost touch, trained for Anglican priesthood as I trained for Baptist ministry; Moira’s wisdom and insight was remarkable, and talking to her enabled me more than once to name my own experiences. She said once of Wycliffe Hall, where she trained, ‘I have never been anywhere where people laughed so much.’ That’s it. That’s what being with pastors means to me. I came away, particularly from the Baptist meeting, with a sense of having been immersed in something remarkable–wholeness? wholesomeness? holiness? All of those and more–Moira would have known what to call it.

The events end, of course, with fulsome expressions of gratitude, a generous gift, and I depart, unable to articulate the truth that I received far, far more than I gave, or ever could give.

But it is ever thus in God’s economy of grace.

Mike Higton on Dawkins

Over nearly twenty years (I’m feeling old…), my friend Mike Higton has taught me, by precept and example, more about how to do theology than all but two, perhaps three, others. One of the lessons I regret never having quite learned from him, despite seeing it modeled repeatedly in his life, writing and conversation, is a truly respectful and patient listening to those with whom I disagree profoundly. On his blog, Mike has been giving just such respectful and patient listening to Richard Dawkins’s God Delusion. Does the book deserve such attention? Perhaps not, but an ethic of loving our enemies might demand that we give such a book that which it does not deserve. And Mike’s generosity is amply repaid with an endlessly fascinating series of reflections, which wander across almost every issue in Christian doctrine.

There are times in my life, I think when I am simply exhausted, when I find it very easy to envy the abilities of others. Sometimes I live better, and exercise with gratitude the particular abilities, such as they are, that God has been pleased to grant to me. Someone like Mike is very easy to envy, though…

Stop the Traffik

Stop the Traffik isn’t clever. It isn’t funny. It is just vital.

Slavery was wrong 200 years ago, when William Wilberforce finally piloted a partial and inadequate abolition bill through the British parliament. It is wrong now.

Most of us know that the sex industry relies largely on people-traffiking, or ’slavery’ to give it an older, and less gentle, name.

We should know that the chocolate industry relies largely on people-traffiking, or ’slavery’ to give it an older, and less gentle, name.

The main chocolate manufacturers know this. They have known it for five or more years. They have done nothing because they think they can use slaves–mostly children–without too many of their customers caring.

I hope they are wrong. Click here if you care.

On aphorisms

My first serious theological study was on Coleridge, who delved deeply into the idea of the ‘aphorism’ as a mode of instruction. He says, in his Aids to Reflection, that ‘[t]his twofold act of circumscribing, and detaching, when it is exerted by the mind on subjects of reflection and reason, is to aphorise…’ (footnote to ‘Introductory Aphorism XXV’); he goes on to say this: ‘[e]xclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms…’ (‘Introductory Aphorism XXVII’). I’m not sure about that; but the intellectual work he commends, of attempting to boil down an insight into its tersest form, to state the whole essence of the matter with no development or padding, is one that occasionally attracts me. Hence aphorisms.

An aphorism on prayer

‘Prayer is a gift God gives, not a duty God demands.’

The pastor’s library (1)

Extracts from a letter to a pastor…

You were the second person this week to ask me for recommendations on how to spend money on books, which seemed odd to me-I’ve never had a problem doing this… Anyway, you got me thinking about what good advice for a pastor’s library might look like, so I’m afraid you get an essay rather than a shopping list-teach you to ask a theologian!

It is only in the last two or three years that I have taken to buying books because I wanted to read them; this is because we have both more money and more space than ever before in our lives. Before that I worked with a key distinction that I commend to you, between books I wanted to read and books I wanted to own. The latter I bought; the former I borrowed, unless I found them available very cheaply. (Spurgeon commends ‘a little judicious borrowing’ to his students somewhere, following it up with the sorts of dire imprecations about the morality of not returning books that can only come from long and painful experience.) There are a lot of books worth reading once; far fewer that you will want to return to again and again.

Whence to borrow? Well, my shelves are yours, to misquote the Bedouin, and you know some of our more established local pastors well enough to presume the same of them. Beyond that, you presently have the advantage of living in a university town with, perhaps, the fifth best theological collection in Britain-get the church to pay your fees as an occasional student each year, and that is a rich source, particularly of the formidably expensive commentaries and reference works. Further afield, the Evangelical Library in London offers a loan by mail service at a modest cost, and is worth knowing about. The National Library in Edinburgh won’t lend you books, but it is a copyright library and so has virtually everything-a half-day there browsing commentaries when planning a new sermon series, to determine which of them you might want to buy, will be time well-spent.

Which books might you want to buy? Let me suggest two reasons for buying books that should apply to a pastor: first, you will buy books to use repeatedly; second, you will buy books so that you can lend them to others. The first group consists of the standard reference works, commentaries, liturgical resources and the like; also of the particular pastoral manuals and theological and spiritual works that inform and sustain your life and ministry, and that you want to own so that you can read and re-read them regularly. The second consists of the sorts of books (and CDs and DVDs) that will benefit the people you are called to serve, and that you want to be able to place in their hands. (I think I am on my fifth copy of Fee & Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All it’s Worth, a book I repeatedly lend to people, and occasionally receive back.)