Two eighteenth century parsons

Over the summer I have been reading the biography of John Newton by Jonathan Aitken, and rereading John Beresford’s edition of James Woodforde’s diaries:

It is fascinating to compare the lives of the contemporaries who lived in almost parallel worlds.

James Woodforde (1740-1803) was the epitome of the eighteenth century country parson. He came from a clerical family, was educated at Oxford and but for a family dispute would have succeeded to the living formerly held by his father. He spent the latter half of his life in a rural parish near Norfolk, although when his health allowed, spent plenty of time away staying with family in Somerset. There is throughout his writings a sense of gratitude to God for small mercies, but there is no obvious point of conversion or period during which his faith deepens. His focus is on the small details – what he eats each day, the company he keeps, the small sums won and lost playing at cards. He is an ardent supporter of the monarchy and makes sure to use the forms of prayers sent round for use on special occasions. On preaching he is less keen. When the Bishop of Norwich asks him to preach in the cathedral his response (24 Oct 1783) is to reason with him not to be asked to carry out this duty. When on one of his visits to Somerset (July 20 1782) he is asked to preach he declines as he has not brought a sermon with him. Parson Woodforde is a product of his age, benignly overseeing his parish, collecting the tithe each year, and carrying out such duties as are asked of him.

By contrast John Newton (1725-1803) had anything but a conventional route to ordination. He was a wild profligate young man who endured much hardship, and even once converted he still took command of a slave ship until eventually made redundant. He was self-educated and his calling to ministry came over many years while working as the Surveyor of Tides in Liverpool. Even then it remained unclear for quite some time in which denomination he would be ordained, and only the intervention of a wealthy patron finally secured ordination after much opposition from the establishment. He did not necessarily seek after fame, but his account of his dramatic conversion and the spiritual wisdom that he imparted in his writings and his hymns brought him a wide audience and led to a preaching ministry across the country. He also began to understand the incompatibility of his slave trading past with his faith, and so became an agent for social change and religious renewal. All the way through there is a sense of the unwarranted and overwhelming nature of God’s grace. His final words are reported to be: “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Saviour” (p.347)

It is hard not to be struck by the immense contrast between these two lives. Parson Woodforde described in minute detail the status quo and in so doing unintentionally created a wonderful landscape of 18th century life. It is easy to criticise his apparently superficial faith, but he was certainly no worse, and probably a lot better, than many of his contemporaries. He clearly was devoted to the people he served.

John Newton by contrast came from the margins of society to bring reform and renewal and was mightily used as God’s agent in a time when so much of the church had declined into nominalism. His life was preserved just long enough to see his protege William Wilberforce get a bill passed in parliament for the abolition of slavery  (a subject that seems to appear nowhere at all in Parson Woodforde’s diaries) and he prepared the way for much of the evangelical revival of the nineteenth century.

The prodigal prophet

I have long been fascinated with the prophet Jonah, and seen many resonances between his call to Nineveh and ministry today in the inner-city. Jonah 3:3 describes Nineveh as, literally, an important city to God although most translations use the phrase “a very great city”. And to me this verse has always been a reminder that my ministry is not to pray for God to become Lord over the area in which I minister, but for the people I meet to recognise that God is already Lord over them.

But who exactly is the Lord that I should serve Him? And what exactly should be my calling to the city? This excellent work by Tim Keller answers those questions in a thoughtful and practical exposition that has certainly deepened my appreciation of the work. He sees the book as a revelation of God’s grace first and foremost to Jonah himself, and for God’s strange work in Jonah’s life as the means of Jonah learning to understand that grace more deeply for himself. He also examines how the sailors in chapter 1 have a greater understanding of God than Jonah himself, and probes how exactly the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah’s message in chapter 3. As Jonah sees the people of Nineveh turn away from their evil ways, so his own idols are exposed and challenged, leading to the final confrontation between God and Jonah in chapter 4 which Tim Keller sees as the climax of the book.

All the way through Tim Keller relates this book of the Bible to pastoral experience today, and he includes a final chapter outlining the practical application, as he exhorts us to consider the relationship between grace, mission and justice. There is so much wisdom from this experienced minister who is passionate about reaching the city with the gospel, and he has certainly made me consider my calling in a new light. So much of this book is quotable, but it is these words on pages 92-93 that will stick me for a long time:

We seldom see ministries that are equally committed to preaching the Word fearlessly and to justice and care for the poor, yet these are theologically inseparable.

In my own small way that has been my commitment over the past seventeen years, and it is good to have a book that affirms the essential link between ministry of word and service in the world. That is why I would unhesitatingly recommend this book to anyone who wants to grow as minister, or indeed to anyone who wants to take their discipleship further. Well worth the read!

Glorify God in your Body

Over the past fifty years or so there has been a marked shift across society in attitudes towards sexuality and marriage. Most couples cohabit now before marriage; marriage between two people of the same sex is now widely accepted and gender is seen as a human construct, constructed by the self. This change in attitudes is being supported by the highest levels of government, and the new relationship material being made compulsory for schools from 2020 will ensure the next generation will be expected to adopt this new permissive view, whatever the long-term consequences may be.

How should the church respond to this shift? Broadly there are those who have to a lesser or greater extent accommodated to the change of societal values, and who are pushing for established denominations to accept the change. Then there are those who hold to the traditional view of Scripture and the witness of 2000 years of church history, and see the church standing firm against these changes, whatever the cost may be. I subscribe to the latter view.

The situation in the Church of England is coming to a head. In various parts of the Anglican Communion the blessing of same-sex relationships has been accepted, for example in the United States and in Scotland, and the Church of England remains in communion with these Anglican churches, rather than those who have sought to remain faithful to the traditional understanding of sexuality. This is one reason behind the emergence of GAFCON, the worldwide fellowship of confessing Anglicans which is providing an alternative communion of Anglican churches across the world, united by their commitment to the Jerusalem declaration.

In time for the Lambeth conference for 2020, the Church of England hopes to complete its Living in Love and Faith (LLF) project. As the official website states: The Living in Love and Faith project is propelled by the Church’s desire to learn how relationships, marriage and sexuality fit within the bigger picture of a humanity that is liberated by Jesus Christ and infused by the Spirit to reflect the image of God in which we are created. There is a fear among traditionalists, however, that the outcome of the project will be to officially sanction a change in the church’s position of human identity, marriage and sexuality. This fear has been reinforced by the publication of a service which takes the affirmation of baptism faith and reinterprets it as an opportunity to some who has transitioned to a new gender to affirm their new identity.

In response to the ongoing LLF process, the theologian Martin Davie was commissioned by the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) to write a book setting out a Biblical understanding of the issues involved. It is a clear, readable work that looks at each topic with clarity and with perception. It sets the whole doctrine of marriage against the context of the coming new creation. It tackles issues such as singleness, premarital sex, gender fluidity, divorce in a readable way. There are three questions at the end of each chapter which are designed to help the reader sum up the points raised by each issue, and a conclusion which by using a question and answer format serve as a very helpful summary of the work.

I would thoroughly recommend this book for anyone who wishes to be faithful to the Bible as the revealed word of God and wants to engage seriously with the deep and very personal issues involved. I have a few minor quibbles:

First of all, it is all very well affirming the importance of marriage but a major pastoral challenge I often face is making marriage accessible and affordable to those who have very little, especially in an area where by and large this institution has disappeared and there are few role models to follow.

I accept the arguments that divorce should be permitted when there has been adultery or desertion by an unbeliever. I also believe divorce should be granted where there is a real history of physical, sexual or emotional abuse, as such abuse runs contrary to complimentary view of marriage envisioned in Genesis 2.

Also the final chapter on birth control and infertility is all too brief and touches on ethical issues that can only be explored in full well beyond the remit of this particular book.

But having said all this, nothing should detract from the very clear and very practical guidance this book gives. Not everyone will agree with every position, but the presentation of every issue and the depth of research behind every argument shows this is a work that needs to be taken seriously, and it is a valuable contribution for a time such as this.

 

A thought provoking trilogy

These three books are thrillers which explore the tensions between Islam and the secular west, from the perspective of someone uniquely qualified to comment. Canon John Hall is a retired interfaith adviser with a doctorate in race and racism. The trilogy starts with a naive student in his gap year deciding to cycle from his home in North London to Iraq, and how he ends up being kidnapped by IS. His aunt is a vicar running a drop-in project for refugees, and the book raises deeply important questions about the limits of hospitality. She inadvertantly offers shelter to an IS operative who gets involved with the life of the a young woman who is the daughter of a local pentecostal preacher. Both the ethical issues and the real human dilemmas are written with pace and precision, and although the ending is perhaps rather implausible, the reader is drawn in to find out more in the second volume.

The second volume, Istanbul, reassembles many of the main characters in that city. This book very much explores West meeting East. By now the naive student, Adam Taylor, is a victim of PTSD and has an Omani girlfriend. The ethical questions of this relationship are never really explored, they are simply a given, and this is book is more about secular liberalism encountering Islam, rather than Christianity. Nonetheless the plot develops with pace, leading a tragic denouement which leaves one seeing the futility of IS, and the importance of developing links with moderate Islam.

The third volume, Harry’s England, to me seemed the least satisfactory of the three. For a start, there is far less personal involvement in the terrorist acts that take place. We read of an explosion and a shooting leading to many deaths, but unlike in the first two books, the central characters aren’t directly affected in any physical sense by the action. Secondly, the shadowy right-wing international organisation masterminding the plot seemed rather hard to believe in, and thirdly, as a member of the Green Army, the description of how the local football club was run jarred badly. Rather the political speeches and the reflections on events seemed to take away from the flow of the action. It may be that the imagined rise of right-wing extremism will turn out to be prophetic, but I found it harder to engage with the narrative of this book.

Nonetheless all three books are well worth reading, and the questions for discussion deserve to be pondered further.

A peculiar glory

I found this book rather bizarrely in the bookshop of Buckfast Abbey – amid all the Roman Catholic theology there.  I have tried reading John Piper before without much success, but the theme of this book appealed to me. It is a very personal and yet also very thoughtfully argued apology for the uniqueness of Scripture. It starts with an autobiographical sketch of how the author first encountered the Scriptures, and how he transitioned from academic theology to pastoral ministry. Then it moves into a discussion of the Scriptures that make up the canon,  and how Jesus acts as the centre of that canon.

Piper’s argument is that what makes Scripture unique is its revelation of the glory of God, and that it is the window through which we gain insight into the  divine majesty. Drawing heavily on the work of Jonathan Edwards, he shows how the revelation of God’s glory authenticates the claims of Scripture about itself through the work of the Holy Spirit. He then shows how this glory is made manifest through the creation, the person and the miracles of Jesus Christ and the church.

There is then a final chapter which sits rather ill at ease with the rest of the book engaging with the place of historical reasoning. This is a subject that the rest of the book hasn’t really covered, and could be dealt with in far more depth elsewhere.

Piper’s style can on occasions be rather repetitive and he takes time to develop his points, but it is a useful book to read to inspire a fresh confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture, and a new wonder at the God who chooses to communicate so fully of himself in such a way. It seems less suitable to be used as apologetic material in itself, but would certainly be helpful tool in preparing for a debate on the nature of Scripture. And as churches increasingly fracture and divide over issues of primary importance, the more writings that inspire us to hold on to the scriptures as we have received them, the better. We will all need to prepare ourselves for the challenges that lie ahead.

 

A tale of the ordinary

It’s very rare that I read fiction more than once, but I have always loved these books since reading them twenty years ago. The Avenue tells the story of a number of families growing up in suburban Surrey from the aftermath of World War One until the demolition of part of the avenue in 1947. It is full of small details, using the lens of apparently ordinary people to cast light on world events.

Delderfield’s thesis is that history is not made in the lives of the famous, but through the attitudes and decisions of those far away from the news headlines. In a sense, his attitude to history is quite resonant to modern approaches today. The success of the series Who do you think are and Going back in time for dinner shows the appeal of the micro-narrative to understand the signs of the times.

These books were written nearly fifty years ago, and while some of the dialogue may appear a little dated, they are beautifully written, and show a great understanding of how people mature and develop. There is a warmth and empathy with the characters that draws us in. My only quibble is – what happened to the Avenue, after the houses and the surrounding woodland were demolished? Maybe that’s a narrative that falls to someone else to write.

Book review: Martin Luther, Renegade and Prophet

I found this book by chance in Waterstones a few weeks ago and was immediately gripped by it, as someone who knew something of Martin Luther already. As an undergraduate I had studied some of his writings and his influence on the German language. I was also aware of his hymn writing and the musical legacy that still shapes our choral work today. And I knew a little too about the Lutheran church and its declining influence across Northern Europe.

This book however puts the pieces of Luther’s extraordinary life together in a way that makes the whole very accessible. It is a scholarly work with over a hundred pages of footnotes and references, yet never does the book feel dry and technical. It tells of Luther’s background and sees much of Luther’s theology and struggles as being shaped by his relationship with his father – a psychological approach that is difficult to evaluate. It explains in accessible language how a monk came to understand justification by faith and why the reforms followed at such a rapid pace. Almost overnight Luther challenged at the deepest level many of the assumptions of medieval Christendom – the selling of indulgences, the monastic vows of poverty and celibacy, the celebration of private masses, and above all the Aristotelian schools of theology  that sought to interpret the Bible through the philosophy of the ancient Greeks.

And yet the book also highlights some of the intrinsic contradictions in Luther’s personality. Luther could write so powerfully about his faith, but at the same time also attacked his opponents in the crudest way possible, and the chapter on his hatreds makes for very uncomfortable reading. He attacked the foundations of Roman Catholicism yet himself retained some kind of belief in the real presence in the bread and the wine, leading to some of the schisms that have bedevilled Christendom ever since. He sought to overthrow the established order yet devised a theology of two kingdoms that made the church subordinate to the state. This may have ensured the survival of the Reformation but led to an uneasy relationship that is still problematic even today, as the book makes clear. And although he empowered the laity, he ended up very much as part of a clerical dynasty overseeing the birth of a new denomination.

The portrait Lyndal Roper paints of Martin Luther deserves to be studied. She has also a way of making the issues that he faced real and relevant to us today. There are, however, some points which I would have loved to explored further. There is relatively little in this book about his musical output, for example. At another point I was intrigued by Luther’s fairly underdeveloped eschatology and I am not sure that the reason for this was fully explained. But these are relatively minor quibbles, and I would thoroughly recommend buying this book for yourself or as a present. The celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation reminds us that what happened in Wittenberg all those years still matters, and it is important for all of us to be clear why.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Many years ago yours truly did a piece of part-time research into the original Hebrew text of Zephaniah. My thesis was based on the premise that the canonical form of the book represents the original words of the prophet at the end of the seventh century BC. This might not sound original, but the prevailing assumption of most scholarship based on historical and form criticism is that the text represents a composite of different material compiled over a number of centuries. My very amateur research aimed to provide the evidence that such assumptions could and should be robustly challenged.

By contrast, this book is a masterly piece of scholarly research by Richard Bauckham which overturns many of the assumptions behind most critical approaches to the gospels and is worth reading thoroughly and slowly. I note that by now there is a second edition which is even longer and seeks to answer some of the challenges made to Bauckham’s groundbreaking study.

In essence it is often assumed that the gospels were written by a process of oral transmission and that the content of each gospel was determined by the needs of the particular church community to which it was written. Scholarship has therefore focused on three things: first, to detect the differing layers of tradition and so try and work out which parts of the gospel represent the oldest and most authentic sayings of Jesus; secondly, to recreate the church community to which gospel was written, and thirdly, to search for the historical Jesus behind the text.

If Richard Bauckham’s analysis is correct – and he makes for a very persuasive case – then so much of this scholarship is rendered null and void. He points out that in the ancient world the most reliable source of history was considered to be eyewitness testimony written down within living memory and that this eyewitness testimony was carefully preserved and passed on. He backs up his contention with the writings of the earliest church fathers who recognised the gospels precisely as this kind of testimony.

Bauckham supports his testimony by looking carefully at the structure of each gospel. He argues that Mark’s gospel is an inclusio of Petrine testimony and John’s gospel is an inclusio of an otherwise unknown disciple called John the Elder. He highlights the importance of the Twelve as the guarantors of the story that is being told, and also makes the telling suggestion that the personal names of the characters in the gospels represent the names of believers who also authenticated the narratives being recorded. These narratives were then passed on within local Christian communities by recognised teachers who had received their traditions either directly or through a handful of authorised intermediaries.

To those who claim the gospels represent a later development of original traditions, Richard Bauckham makes other significant observations. He demonstrates the gospel writers were able to distinguish the past of Jesus from their own time, so, for example, there is a consistency in the titles applied to Jesus before the crucifixion which are different from those applied after his resurrection and ascension. He uses the distribution of names in the gospels to show they reflect an authentic spread of Jewish Palestinian names in Jesus’ era and so do not reflect later invention. He shows that so much scholarship relies on anachronistic models of oral transmission from other cultures which bears little relation to the way the gospels were recorded.

All in all, this work is an important contribution in helping to appreciate the gospels for what they are. In the final sentence of his work (at least the first edition!) Richard Bauckham writes:

It is in the Jesus of testimony that history and theology meet.

In other words, whenever we read or hear the gospels, we can say with confidence, “This is the word of the Lord”, preserved and written down as the disclosure of God to us. To have that confidence, it seems to me, is of vital importance as we ourselves witness to the world around us, and that is why this work, I believe, is quite so valuable.

For further reviews of the work, check out the following links:

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/reviews/jesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/inebriateme/2014/09/book-review-richard-bauckham-jesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/

 

A humbling read

I was given this book for my birthday a few weeks ago and since then I have read a few pages every night. It has been an invaluable and humbling experience. We are at the moment in the middle of our commemorations of the Great War. This book brings together the experience of a wide range of people who lived through the war, from an aristocratic socialite, to a country parson, to someone who used to work in a brush factory. Their own words are woven together with minimal commentary in a way that makes you realise afresh the impact of the war and the social changes those four dark years brought about. A compelling read, and one that I would thoroughly recommend.

The Church in Hard Places

When I arrived in my current post fourteen years ago, I made a conscious decision I would not spend my time chasing grant applications and running social projects. Rather I perceived my calling was to preach and teach the word of God, and build up the church through faithful, persistent gospel ministry. Whether I have been successful in my aim is not for me to judge.

But I have learnt so much along the way, often through hard experience, and one of the real benefits of this book is that it both confirms and challenges me in my calling. As an inner-city vicar it is often expected that I should be involved more in social action and practical acts of service (which does happen). This book borne of real-life urban ministry confirms what I have long believed to be true that the primary mission of God is to use the local church to preach the good news, and that doctrine matters for salvation, sanctification and evangelism.

It also confirms what I have long suspected that to be truly effective we need to learn to be part of the local culture, and speak in a way that others can truly understand. So many of our models of church, and so many ways in which the church is structured simply do not relate to ordinary “working-class” people.

This book however is also profoundly challenging. The authors, Mez McConnell and Mike McKinley, pull no punches about the gospel, and the need to talk straight with those on the margins. They are clear about the limits of membership and of church discipline. It would be very easy to say that they are not writing from an Anglican context, but this dodges the question of how far and how thoroughly I want to be an agent of God’s transforming power and the consequences for my daily ministry.

Altogether a superb book which deserves to be read widely and discussed by church leaders, whatever their background.