My Problem with "Rev"

This week saw the last-ever episode of the TV series Rev, about the vicar of a “failing” church in London. I've watched a fair bit of it, and all of the last series, but I always found it made me profoundly uncomfortable. This is why.

It wasn't because God hardly shows up, though he doesn't much. It wasn't because it's subtly hostile to the church, though it is, particularly in its depiction of all other clergy other than Adam as nasty pieces of work. It was because I found it all-too believable, and it made me face up to one of the fundamental problems faced by the Church of England. When I can do something about problems (or when it's my job to), I think it's important to face them and deal with them, but problems like this I'd rather bury my head in the sand and ignore. In some senses, it's none of my business, but it breaks my heart.

The Church of England has long been built on a foundation of fudge. We aren't really a denomination – we're a national Church which is a variously dysfunctional association of congregations bound together by a shared history which we disagree about, an often-distant episcopacy, a rough agreement that the Creeds are on the whole a good thing, an immensely flexible liturgy that can be indistinguishable from either Rome or Vineyard, and a slightly grudging agreement to work together for the common good. One of the problems with this is that there are some fairly fundamental things that we really don't agree on but never discuss, in particular the nature of ordained ministry.

As far as I can tell, there are two main ideas about the nature of ordained ministry in the Church of England – the ontological and the functional, or in less technical language “being a priest” versus “leading the church”. I'll explain what I mean.

Two Views of Ordained Ministry

The ontological view of ministry is probably the more widely-held view. It's certainly the closest thing to an official view in the C of E. It says that when someone is ordained priest, they become a priest – that is who they are, and it doesn't go away (unless someone does something really bad, and the bishop goes a stage beyond sacking them). Priests are allowed to preside at communion, pronounce official blessing and absolution on people, and so on. Non-priests aren't, but a priest is a priest is a priest, whether they are a vicar, an army chaplain or a retired social worker who helps out in the local church and got ordained so they can help out with communion services.

The C of E selects people for ordination on the basis of this idea. Their criteria are roughly as follows:

• do they live out some kind of spirituality, and can they articulate why they feel called to be a priest in the C of E?
  
• are they moderately well-adjusted as a person – are they aware of their strengths and weaknesses, wanting to grow, willing to serve and to lead, possessing integrity?
  
• do they have a decent understanding of the Christian faith, including the importance of reaching outsiders?

This isn't the view which comes naturally to me, but I've come to see some of its strengths. It's great to be able to appoint people like that as official ambassadors for the church. On the various occasions when Adam had a crisis of calling through the series, it was aspects of this call – the call to be a priest – which he kept coming back to.

The other view of ordained ministry is the functional view. It says that there is clearly a call to be different, but that call applies to all Christians. The distinctive call is a call to lead churches – to do something. On this view, a retired vicar is the same as any other member of the congregation, albeit with some skills and wisdom they might like to share.

The key texts for this view are the Pastoral Epistles – letters written by Paul to church leaders in the 60s AD, along with a few other bits like Acts 20 and 1 Peter 5. These distinguish several different levels of leadership in a church, from people who are involved in running practical areas of the church's life (e.g. Stephen) to people who are involved in appointing church leaders across a wider area (e.g. Titus). The criteria these passages give for someone to be involved in a senior leadership position in a church are:

• Character: good reputation in the community, above reproach, free from addictions, self-controlled, not argumentative, gentle, dignified, sensible, hospitable, not someone who runs after money.
  
• Domestic situation: either celibate or faithfully married, looks after own household well, spouse and children (under 12-ish) believe.
  
• Faith / skills: not a new believer, doctrinally sound, secure faith, good at teaching the Bible

The Problem

The problem is that these don't quite match, but the C of E pretends they do. I don't have a problem with people being called to be priests, but the call to be a church leader is different. Just because someone is called to be a priest, doesn't mean they're called to lead a church, but the C of E assumes it as the norm.

The result is people like Adam Smallbone in Rev. He's a nice guy; he's clearly got some kind of call on his life. But according to that list, he isn't called to lead a church, and the tension in the series comes from fact that no-one quite grasps that he may well be called to be a priest by the C of E's understanding, but he isn't called to lead a church by the Bible's understanding.

We see the problems shining through in the series. Adam isn't a good preacher; as a result his congregation don't have transforming encounters with God's word and so don't change. We see that painfully clearly when it comes to welcoming a repentant paedophile into the church. Adam understands grace, but he hasn't communicated that understanding to the rest of the church, so they reject him. Adam's wife isn't properly on board with him being a vicar – she clearly resents it and it causes all kinds of problems for her faith, and for his leadership. I know both from personal experience and from that of friends that if a vicar's spouse isn't keen on them following the calling to lead a church, it won't work.

The tragedy is that Adam has been badly let down by the C of E in its confusion between the calling to be a priest and the calling to lead a church. As a result, everyone loses – Adam, the local church, the wider church.

That's what breaks my heart. There are people with a real heart for serving God who have been misled into thinking it should be by leading a church, and end up being chewed up and spat out. There are churches where people aren't growing in their faith because they're being led by people who can't preach properly. And all because we confuse two different things – the calling to be a priest and the calling to lead a church.

Rule of Life?

For a long time I have mistrusted the idea of a “rule of life”. It all sounded terribly... legalistic – the kind of thing that was externally imposed on someone as yet more man-made rules they had to keep before a church which had grossly misunderstood God would allow them into heaven, or something like that.

But over the last year or so, something like the idea of a “rule of life” has come at me from several angles. Here's Martyn Lloyd-Jones, for example.

... the question of discipline is thrown right back on the [preacher] himself. Nobody can tell him what to do. What controls everything is his realisation that if he is to be what he should be, if he is to be a true preacher, a spiritually minded man who is concerned about ministering to the glory of God and the edification and salvation of souls, he must do this. That should compel him to exercise this discipline. If he has the right motive and the right objective, if he is truly called, he will be so anxious to do all he has to do in the most effective manner that he will take the trouble to find out how best to order and organise himself and his day.
Preaching and Preachers, ch 9 (sic)

Or here's James Emery White:

This is what a “rule” is – a collected, organized set of practices we determine to follow in order to tend to our spirits and shepherd our souls. We need structure and discipline for our spiritual lives every bit as much as we do for every other area of life.

Whatever our “rule” may be, it can, and should, be natural to our personality and developed in light of our season of life – but it must be created. If we know that we would be profoundly served by reading, praying, and spending time with a soul friend, then we must work toward establishing the patterns of life that allow it.

Several times, the phrase “rule of life” has come up in that sort of context and in the longer and better ones (e.g. Finding a Personal Rule of Life by Harold Millar) they tend to explain it roughly as follows:

“Rule” is a translation of the Latin “regula”, which has the sense of a standard or a pattern as well as a rule – regularity rather than regulations (both come from the same Latin word). So a “rule of life” is not something external and imposed on us – it is a pattern of life that we decide to stick to because it is good for us and enables us to live at our best.
(wording my own)

My response to that is simple. If that's what you mean by the phrase “rule of life”, then wouldn't it be better to call it a “pattern for living”? That also has the nice ambiguity that it's a pattern by which I decide to live which then enables me to really live.

And with that overly-pedantic improvement made, it sounds important to do, great to put into practice and I've written one!

(that's me "really living"...)

Richard Baxter - The Reformed Pastor

I recently finished reading the classic book The Reformed Pastor by the great Puritan Richard Baxter. It's basically a book length plea for clergy to work hard rather than slacking off, and to devote their time especially to visiting for the purposes of evangelism and discipleship, specifically by teaching the catechism (and Baxter didn't really mind which catechism...)

It's the kind of book that ought to be a must-read for clergy, and I can well see why it was so heavily recommended at college. But last time I mentioned it in a gathering of clergy, no-one there had read it. Here's a sample quote:

For my part, I study to speak as plainly and movingly as I can, (and next to my study to speak truly, these are my chief studies,) and yet I frequently meet with those who have been my hearers eight or ten years, who know not whether Christ be God or man, and wonder when I tell them the history of his birth and life and death, as if they had never heard it before... I have found by experience, that some ignorant persons, who have been so long unprofitable hearers, have got more knowledge and remorse of conscience in half an hour's close discourse than they did from ten years' public preaching.
p.196

David, Saul, Goliath and God

I'm taking the day off exams today, and I've finished exams on the Bible, so here are some thoughts I had this morning.

Saul was chosen as king of Israel because he was the sort of king they wanted.

They ran and brought him out, and as he stood among the people he was a head taller than any of the others.Samuel said to all the people, "Do you see the man the LORD has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people."
Then the people shouted, "Long live the king!"

1 Samuel 10:23-24, NIV

His quality as king was marked out by his tallness. Of course, we also know he's an incompetent donkey-herd (1 Samuel 9:4), a coward (he doesn't attack the Philistine outpost in Gibeah like he's meant to), not devout (he needs his servant to tell him that Samuel even exists, 1 Samuel 9:6) and a proud man who would even sacrifice his heroic son for his own pride (1 Samuel 14). Saul wasn't at the gathering to choose a king because he was hiding in the luggage.

So it it hardly a surprise that when Israel under Saul comes up against Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, that he doesn't know what to do. His best attribute was his height - he was a head taller than anyone else in Israel. But Goliath was 9 feet tall.

David, by contrast, was everything that Saul was not. He was a good shepherd, brave, devout, only a boy and quite willing to admit it, but with an unshakeable confidence in God. We wasn't at the gathering to choose him king because he'd been overlooked and was keeping an eye on the sheep. And he's the one God uses to kill Goliath.

So why do we care about the kind of image that our leaders have? Saul was the one expert on image. Man looks on outward appearance, but God looks on the heart, and that's what matters.

Why does ministerial training teach us presentation skills, but not personal prayer life and spiritual disciplines? Why do we learn to talk about God, but not to love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength?

[ETA - That's not just a Wycliffe-specific comment. I know people at lots of the theological colleges, evangelical, catholic, whatever, and one quite a few of the courses. And none of them seem to prioritise helping their people be men and women after God's own heart...]

The Clerical Role of "Answer Man"

An interesting quote here which raises interesting questions about theological education. For what it's worth, I certainly know quite a bit more than I did when I started my theology degree, but I don't think I'm much better at coming to an opinion on a new topic than I was as a "proper" layperson. So on topics I have studied at university, I think I'm better informed than I was, but that doesn't mean I was wrong or incapable of refuting bad theology before. On topics I haven't really studied much, I don't see why my opinion now is worth more than it was two years ago.

To perpetuate the clerical role of answer man, the layman when inside the church building must act as if he has only half a brain, while outside, in the world, he is expected to be an ambassador for Christ, a lay transmitter of faith. Outside, he is to be informed and vocal; inside, he must appear ignorant and mute as a sheep. Christians have within them many questions--questions that are at once elementary and profound, questions that would ripple the water were they raised. However, because a Christian is supposed to have "answers," life's important questions are not discussed outside the church building; and, because the pastor is the educated, spiritual authority, they are not discussed inside either.
Paul G. Johnson (b.1931), Buried Alive [1968]

False Teachers, Misguided Ministers, etc

My last post raised a question that I was thinking about last night. ds asked a variant of it in the comments, and it turns out that Calvin addressed it a few weeks later in his preaching (can you guess one of the books I'm reading at the moment?).

Roughly put, the question is this: Given that most false teachers mean well, how can you tell the difference between a misguided minister (like Apollos was in my Acts 18 quote, and like I am sometimes too), a false teacher (boo, hiss), and a good minister?

The good minister / misguided minister distinction is the hardest, because people don't tend to be infallible, which means that many ministers may well be misguided in some respect. But the misguided / false distinction is easier to spot.

If we desire to be Christians, let us honour the Son of God by continuing to listen to his Word and obey it, even when we do not like what it says and when our natures find it unpalatable. Thus, when anyone comes to a sermon, above all else he should be ready to be rebuked when necessary, and he should realise that if he is not comforted by it, then it is to his profit... Let us all be willing to have our wounds scratched, as it were, and to be condemned, and to hear the opposite of what we would like to hear. This is how we should prepare ourselves to be good scholars under the Son of God, and to attribute to him his rightful mastry over us. We must work all the harder at this if we see that our natures are pushing us to do the opposite, for we are often blinded by self-love.

John Calvin, Sermon on Galatians 1:8-10

In other words, I think the observable difference is that a false teacher will carry on teaching stuff, even when confronted with the fact that Scripture teaches otherwise. A true minister, when misguided (as Apollos was) will be open to correction from Scripture, when done lovingly and appropriately.

The key difference then is whether they seek to follow what the Bible says, in which case they're ok, but they might be horribly misguided and / or not gifted for the job they are meant to be doing, or whether they seek to teach their own opinions, in which case they're a false teacher, even if their own opinions are fairly close to what I think the Bible says.

Calvin - Minsterial Selection

It's always nice to have one's own opinions reinforced, especially when it's by someone who really knows what they're talking about...

Above all, men should not arrogantly exalt themselves; they should be raised up and sent by God. He has this right as supreme Majesty. However, as I have already said, there must be sufficient evidence of a man's calling. We are to exercise discernment and not blindly accept it without due thought or consideration; for Satan's agents may constantly boast of their calling, whilst disguising their true characters, and thus deceitfully infiltrate the church. It is our duty to test all such, to see whether or not God has called them.

...

How can we know whether such people [bishops or prelates] are, indeed, pleasing to him? Well, firstly they need to have been appointed in a lawful way, accompanied by calling upon the name of God. Then, they need to have been selected because they possess the necessary gifts to exercise that office.... Therefore, those who wish to be known as bishops and prelates simply must teach. If they are nothing more than idols, or dumb dogs, we are obliged to reject and despise them, inasmuch as they shamefully mock God's name and profane his greatness.

John Calvin, Sermon on Galatians 1:1-2

I suspect I disagree with Calvin on the psychology of false ministers and teachers though. I know quite a few of them, and I genuinely think most of them mean well, which changes how we are to relate to them. I guess some of it is how Priscilla and Aquila dealt with Apollos in Acts 18:

Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.
Acts 18:24-26, NIV

I love that!

What if Oxford stopped teaching Theology?

[ETA - this is entirely my own opinion and in no way represents the opinions of any institutions or organisations with which I may be affiliated or associated]

An idea that some people in Oxford have been batting around recently is the idea of stopping teaching theology at the university.

On one level, it would mark an important stage in the development of the university. Oxford was the first university in the English-speaking world (if you can call England English-speaking in the 1100s), and it was founded to teach theology. Theology led to the other subjects, to revolution via the Reformation, and then eventually the university dropped theology. Some would say it would mark a coming of age. Some would say it marked the beginning of the end. The highest knowledge that we can have is the knowledge of God.

On another level, I think there's a very good argument for dropping theology. The way that subjects are studied now is via investigation, via the power of the mind. On a fundamental level, theology should not be like that because we cannot put ourselves over God to investigate him, though that doesn't stop a lot of people trying.

On yet another level, I think it would be enormously beneficial. If funding for academics studying theology was cut, theology would be done mainly by the Church, and I think that's right. It also tends to get better results when theologians actually believe what they are investigating. There are exceptions (MacCulloch for one), but I expect bits would get absorbed into History, Philosophy, Literature, etc.

Selfishly, as I'm doing a theology degree at Oxford, it would be a pity. On the other hand, it is generally the tutors who are paid either by churches or to study history who are the best at what they do, and I don't suppose I'd cry much if people who have devoted their lives to trying to argue that Jesus never existed suddenly lost their funding. But Jesus loves them anyway, so I suppose I should.

So abolish theology as an academic subject at secular universities, and leave studying theology to the Church? Yeah - why not?

Early Christians and the Bible

Lots of Christians view the Bible in lots of different ways. I think it is very useful to think about how the early Church viewed it.

The reason for that is because of the apostles. It was the apostles (plus a few of their friends) who wrote what is now the New Testament. It was the apostles who had been personally commissioned by Jesus to tell people about him. It was the apostles (equipped and strengthened by the Holy Spirit) who founded the church. I'd therefore want to make two assertions:

• Jesus and the apostles were right in their view of the Bible
• If we want to know their view of the Bible, a good place to look is the early church

For example, I think that Polycarp of Smyrna and Papias, who grew up in a church led by John and went on to lead churches of their own, would be in a fair good position to tell us what John meant and how he meant his writings to be understood.

Authority

The first thing that is worth noting is that they all regard what we'd now call the Bible as authoritative. Actually, the Bible didn't exist in its present form then. What they had was the Old Testament, a collection of four gospels, various collections of letters and assorted other stuff. But for the early Church, if the Old Testament taught something, or if the apostles taught it, that settled the issue.

Tradition

Early on, especially while the so-called Apostolic Fathers (people like Polycarp, Papias, Ignatius, who had known the apostles) were alive, they didn't draw much distinction between what they had written down by the apostles and what they remembered the apostles saying. They saw the two sources as basically saying the same thing.

By the late 100s AD, all the Apostolic Fathers were dead, and there were people suggesting (mostly weird) new ways of understanding the Bible. The response of church leaders like Irenaeus and Tertullian was that the Old Testament and the writings of the apostles should be understood as they had been understood by the church before - that they should take the traditional understanding, because the tradition went back to Jesus and the apostles.

By the mid 400s AD, Vincent of Lerins summarised it well. He said that Scripture was "sufficient, and more than sufficient", and that it should be understood in the same way as it had been understood "always, everywhere and by everyone". If that wasn't clear, it we should go with the opinions of whole church councils, and if there was still doubt, we should follow the opinions of Christians who lived holy lives.

This of course raises an interesting question - should we understand the Bible in the "traditional way"? Should Luther have understood the Bible in the same way as the rest of the church? The answer is that it wasn't how the church had always understood the Bible. Over the 1500-odd years between the apostles and Luther, there had been a significant drift. Luther based a lot of his opinions (as did Cranmer, as did Calvin) on going back and reading early Christians. In fact, they saw that they needed to show that at least bits of the early Church agreed with them.

If quite a few Christians wrote on a topic between AD100 and AD350, and all of them say essentially the same thing about it, I think that's the right way to interpret the Bible. But not between 1200 and 1450, because that doesn't have the same guarantee of apostolicity at one end.

Christ and the Old Testament

One area where the opinion of early Christians is pretty much unanimous, and disagreeing from many modern Christians is about the Old Testament. Early Christians thought it was all about Jesus (Jesus is recorded as thinking that too).

Justin Martyr put it well in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (2nd century).

The Scriptures [OT] are much more ours than yours. For we lt ourselves be persuaded by them, while you read them without grasping their true import.

The normal way of interpreting the Old Testament is what we now call typology. John Chrysostom defined typology as "prophecy in terms of things" - what happened to on person or group of people acts as a picture for what happens to another. Where Platonic philosophy had a lot of influence on the Church, this sometimes tended to spill over into uncontrolled allegorising. But Christians in Antioch, especially Diodore of Tarsus and Theodoret, drew up some helpful guidelines for using typology with historical passages in the Old Testament, which they described as Theoria. I'm going to use my sermon on Psalm 21 as an example, because this is the approach I used there.

• Keep the literal sense of the text. It is still true, it still matters.
• There must be a correspondence between the historical figure and the spiritual one. For example, David and Jesus were both God's anointed king over his people, and were both called "Messiah".
• The two figures need to be apprehended together, though differently. So in Psalm 21, David praises God because he is victorious over physical enemies. In my application of it to Jesus, Jesus praises God because he is victorious over spiritual enemies.

Summary

So, to summarise. Early Christians saw the Bible as authoritative. They saw that it should be interpreted in line with the way it had always been interpreted, and they saw the Old Testament as being about Jesus.

I wish that more of the church agreed with them!

Selecting Leaders

What do the following Biblical characters have in common?

• Mirian and Aaron in Numbers 12
• Abimelech in Judges 9
• Ish-bosheth in 2 Samuel 2
• Absalom in 2 Samuel 14-18
• Adonijah in 1 Kings 1
• Jereboam son of Nebat in 1 Kings 12
• Zimri in 1 Kings 16
• Omri in 1 Kings 16
• Athaliah in 2 Kings 11
• Shallum in 2 Kings 15
• Menahem in 2 Kings 15
• Herod
• Diotrophes in 3 John

There may be others, but those are the ones I can think of quickly.

Answer - they are the people I can think of who put themselves forwards as leaders over God's people. All of them persuaded others it would be a good idea. And all of them are judged for it.

Now how do we go about getting leaders for churches?

I hadn't thought this through as clearly when I was going through selection for ordination in the C of E. But I knew I didn't want to put myself forwards. On the other hand, however, the vicar at my church was fairly new and hadn't got round to setting up a group or anything to ask people if they would think about ordination, and it was pretty clear he wasn't going to ask anyone to think about it just yet. It took me ages to get to the point where I felt compelled to ask him if he thought I would be suitable, and even then I felt horribly guilty for asking, but it felt like I had to do it.

This post arose out of a conversation I had a few days ago with a leader at a local church. He said he got people involved if they volunteered rather than asking them. I think that's the wrong approach.

Leaders should not volunteer. They should be selected.

Of course, there is still plenty of scope for "we need 5 people to help out at this event" or conversations along the lines of "Have you thought about getting involved with any groups in the church?" // "I'd really like to help out with the children's work" // "Oh - that's great."

Advice for New Theology Students

A friend pointed me today to this article by John Frame (originally a booklet). It's pretty good advice for people starting theological college, especially in a directly Reformed context.

I've got to give advice to the new first years here. I'll probably tell them to spend as much time praying as they possibly can, to make their top priority learning to preach and to read Provan, Longman and Long's A Biblical History of Israel before going near any university stuff on the Old Testament.

Multiple Integrities

How do I as a Christian act towards other Christians who disagree with me? There's still a disagreement rumbling on in the evangelical bit of the C of E about women leading churches, and whether it should happen or not. Years ago, when they changed the rules so that women were allowed to lead churches, some people thought it was a bad idea - basically this was because they thought that men and women were different but equal and that the Bible said that the differences should be reflected in the jobs that men and women do in churches. The C of E then introduced the idea of two integrities, which meant that people could believe either that women should be allowed to lead churches, or that they shouldn't, and that we'd all try not to offend the other lot.

That's a great idea, and actually it comes out of being humble when we try to understand the Bible. I know that I'm not omniscient, even if I can use long words. I know that I don't understand things perfectly and that other people might have a better idea. And so I try to believe what I think the Bible teaches, and I let what other people think and have thought it teaches affect what I think, but if someone else who is doing the same disagrees with me, we talk about it and I try to understand where they are coming from, and then maybe one of us changes our mind or maybe we agree that the other person's position makes sense but we agree to disagree.

But that doesn't mean it's acceptable for people to believe whatever they want. For example, the Bible is very clear that Jesus is God, in a way that I am not. To my mind, the distinction comes either when people get to the point of saying “well, the Bible might say that, but I disagree with it”, or if they go dramatically against what the Church has always thought if it's an area where the Church right through history has agreed on something.

What seems to be happening in some circles in what passes for evangelicalism now is that some people seem to be rejecting other people's ability to conclude stuff they disagree with from a passage. So, for example, some people say that Christians shouldn't be allowed to believe that the differences between men and women should affect which jobs they can do in a church, whatever the Bible teaches.

To my mind, if someone can say “Believe me, rather than what you think the Bible says” then they're not being an evangelical Christian.

Working Hard

Well, they certainly know how to get me working here!

Most of the time so far has been spent quite usefully - we had three days of getting to know each other and the college, then a week of being introduced to the course and the idea of training for ministry.

We've had a series of Bible readings on the Pastoral Epistles, talks on topics such as "Essay Writing", "Academic Theology and Personal Faith" and an excellent Bible Overview. I've been to voice training sessions (apparently mine is "frighteningly loud" when I want it to be) and fellowship groups and random pub trips.

This week so far has been more academic - the "real" undergrads are around now and I've done 5½ hours of (fairly intensive) Greek classes over the last two days. I've also got my first essay title (and am doing a silly amount of reading for it).

Oh, and my laptop power cable has ceased to function, so I'm having to get a new one. All good fun, and more reason to trust God.

My biggest concerns at the moment are that I would spend more time in prayer and that the relationships I'm building here would be genuinely supportive ones. In a meeting early on, I identified the fact that while I hoped relationships would be deep and supportive, I didn't expect them to be so.

One really good point - my studies are a really useful way in to talking to people about Jesus. Pray that I'd be sharing my faith lovingly, boldly and clearly.