Three of the best articles I've read about the women bishops vote:
It's worth saying right from the start – I'm not on Synod. Had I been able to vote yesterday, I would probably have voted “yes”. But I grew up in the conservative evangelical camp, and I know a good proportion of the 44 clergy who voted “no” yesterday.
I think it's important to debunk a few myths.
First, this isn't about equality. I know to outsiders it looks like it is, but it isn't. It's actually about identicality, and there's an important difference. Everyone (I hope) on synod agrees that men and women are equal in status and in the sight of God. Everyone agrees that men and women are not identical on a purely biological level. The question is to what extent men and women's differences work out as differences in the roles they play within church.
Secondly, this isn't about rights. No-one has the right to become a bishop. It isn't a “promotion”. It's a horrible job where you can't be part of a normal church fellowship and work far too many hours with far too many people who expect you to have all the answers. Jemima Thackray wrote a great piece in the Telegraph this morning where she argues that the real question should be whether women can have the opportunity to serve in this job. In some ways the even more important question is “Is God calling women to serve in this way?”. Women who say they should have the right to become bishop shouldn't have it, because they don't understand what they say they want.
Third, this isn't about traditionalists in the house of laity spoiling everyone's party. Yes, this time it was voted down because people thought it didn't cater well enough for those who would rather not have a woman bishop. Personally, I'd have voted for the motion because I think it does cater well enough for conservative evangelicals, even though conservative evangelical friends say it doesn't. But last time, 2 years ago, the archbishops proposed a motion which would have catered well enough for them. It was overwhelmingly passed in the houses of clergy and laity, but voted down by modernists in the house of clergy. If those clergy had passed it then, we'd have women bishops by now.
So what is this actually about? It's about how we handle profound disagreements. The Church of England as a whole has been rightly trying to keep people on board, and be as accommodating as possible to those who have good reasons for disagreeing with women bishops, while still trying to move ahead with them. The problem is that the Church's structures are somewhat Byzantine, and sometimes working at counter-purposes and it therefore moves very slowly indeed.
What we haven't done enough of, I think, is actually discussing the reasons for disagreement rather than stating them. For example, a lot of the opposition hinges around one paragraph in Paul's first letter to Timothy. I have listened to a fair bit of the debate, and I've only heard that paragraph discussed by those against women bishops. Now I can see several ways to argue that the paragraph doesn't apply to women bishops today, but I don't really see that argument being engaged with at a national level. Of course, all that discussion should have happened decades ago, but as far as I can tell it just hasn't been done.
The C of E will get there in the end, but in the meantime we need to be patient, we need to be loving, and we need to keep listening to each other, and not just letting it wash over us, but engaging with what the other person is saying. Then, maybe, we'll be able to move on from this and work together for God's glory.
Puritans have a very bad name in most of the Church, apart from a small section of it where they have a very good name. That small section mostly owes its existence to some conferences started by Lloyd-Jones and J.I. Packer in the 1950s. This book brings together Lloyd-Jones's closing addresses from those conferences from 1959 to 1978, on diverse topics such as:
Lloyd-Jones roughly sees the Puritans as starting with Tyndale, reaching full flowering from Knox and ending in 1662. The key to Puritanism seems to be discontent with the C of E, and of course Lloyd-Jones pushes quite strongly that the logical consequence of Puritanism is leaving the C of E. I'd love to have seen him address why the energy of the movement and so much of the good they did just vanished within just a generation of them leaving in 1662.
I don't agree with the Puritans on everything, and I'd love to see some day a sensitive treatment of how so many of them ended up so wrong on culture, etc. I don't agree with Lloyd-Jones on everything - it's telling that when he draws the distinctions between Knox and Hooper who started out very similar but diverged, I agree with Hooper and I'm pretty sure Lloyd-Jones agreed with Knox.
Having said that, I really enjoyed this book. Lots of food for thought - lots to agree with, and lots of reasons to be all the more surprised that those who most love the Puritans today in the UK tend to be strongly opposed to some elements of Puritan theology which I quite like...
People who cannot see this subjective element in Calvinism seem to me never to have understood Calvinism. Calvinism of necessity leads to an emphasis upon the action and the activity of God the Holy Spirit. The whole emphasis is upon what God does to us: not what man does but what God does to us; not our hold of Him, but 'His strong grasp of us'. So Calvinism of necessity leads to experiences, and to great emphasis upon experience; and these men, and all these older Calvinists were constantly talking about 'visitations', how the Lord had appeared to them, how the Lord had spoken to them...
p.210
Here are some of the best online resources for daily Bible reading...
I don't use any of those. Personally, I find internet-enabled devices too much of a distraction when trying to read the Bible. But I know some people might find them helpful...
Vaughan Roberts has done a superb interview with Julian Hardyman, in which he (Vaughan) speaks honestly about his struggle with same-sex attraction.
It's a really good read - I've got a huge amount of respect for Vaughan anyway, and that just went up another notch or two. Someone needed to say what he has said, and I'm glad it was him.
There's a lot of chatter going round the internet about a bit of ancient paper which mentions Jesus having a wife. Most if it is the usual bad journalism - here's a proper scholar's take on it.
And a nice article here points us back to the fact that Jesus might not have a wife, but he is engaged - to us.
I bought this book on the basis on one quote on the cover. It says this
"...a marvellous handbook to the Psalms. If I were teaching a course on the Psalms, this would be my textbook." Dale Ralph Davis
As so often, I find that I agree with Davis. At theological college, I read quite a few books on the Psalms; this has better scholarship than any of them. He mentions the trendy theological theories, but stands back and evaluates them sensibly. He mentions form criticism (for example), shows some of the value of it, and critiques it too. It's the best treatment I've read of the academic issues, including Psalm ordering and the formation of the Psalter.
But it's also written as a Christian who doesn't feel he has to tick the boxes of the non-Christian academic world. He writes things like "To understand the Psalms Biblically is, of course, ultimately to understand them in terms of Christ." (p.280) There are whole chapters on Christological and Christocentric interpretation of the Psalms, which was somewhat taboo (and wrongly so) at theological college.
There were a couple of omissions - I don't recall any discussion of the history of composite Psalms (e.g. 89), and the Proc Trust hermenteutic of Jesus as the perfect singer of Psalms only got a small look-in, but they're only fairly minor.
Overall - brilliant. Pastorally warm, encouraging, academic but not dry, well-informed but not in thrall to scholarship.
It seems that Tom Wright had three purposes in mind in writing this book. It is a book about how Christians should seek to act in the light of their faith. It is also a book showing how the ancient philosophical idea of virtue is reinterpreted in the New Testament, and again it seeks to show how many of the alternative models of Christian living (e.g. legalism) are flawed.
The UK title is a characteristic Wright pun. It is about the rebirth of virtue as an idea in modern ethics, about the fact that virtue as classically understood is not enough – we need to be reborn, and about how the fruits of that rebirth can be well explained using the language of virtue. In the US, it's called "After you believe". I don't know if that's because SPCK think Americans are stupid.
There are a lot of good things about this book. It's the first time I've seen Wright rebuff one of the common misinterpretations of his work – the idea that “Christian living in the present consists of anticipating the final kingdom-on-earth by working and campaigning for justice, peace, and the alleviation of poverty and distress.” Instead, Wright's basic scheme is this:
1. The goal is the new heaven and new earth, with human beings raised from the dead to be the renewed world's rulers and priests.
2. This goal is achieved through the kingdom-establishing work of Jesus and the Spirit, which we grasp by faith, participate in by baptism, and live out in love.
3. Christian living in the present consists of anticipating this ultimate reality through the Spirit-led, habit-forming, truly human practice of faith, hope, and love, sustaining Christians in their calling to worship God and reflect his glory into the world. (p.59-60)
Virtue Reborn is just about the best book I have ever read on how difficult obedience leads to habits, which leads to formation of character, which leads to transformed desires. It is brilliant on the importance of thinking through actions and views in the light of the gospel.
The more genuinely spiritual you are,... the more clearly and accurately and carefully you will think, particularly about what the completed goal of your Christian journey will be, and hence what steps you should be taking, what habits you should be acquiring, as part of the journey toward that goal, right now. (p.137)
There is a popular view that when we believe in Jesus, God transforms our hearts so dramatically by his Spirit that afterwards we just need to do “whatever comes naturally”. Wright commendably takes a very strong stand against this. However, as often with Wright, there is a real danger that he throws the baby out with the bathwater. So he asserts that Luther held that view (p.52) and does not even mention the idea of “sanctification” in Reformed theology – it is as if evangelicalism has uniformly taught that view since the Reformation, and therefore the choice is either Wright's understanding or an easy-believism. In his bibliography (p.246), he does recognise that his depiction view on Luther is not wholly “balanced and rounded”, but he doesn't even mention the long and faithful heritage of those Protestants who taught and believed that we need to work out our salvation.
The other danger Wright faces in opposing easy-believism is that he downplays the work of the Spirit. He does not mention the possibility, for example, that the Spirit transforms our hearts and minds apart from the slow work of Christian obedience or that he creates in us new desires to do what pleases God. In reality, of course, it is both/and. We should work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Phil 2:12-13).
Overall then, a good book, a helpful and important book. But Wright again seems to make his characteristic error of over-reacting against those whom he disagrees with.
Here's my response to the government consultation on same-sex marriage:
The essence of marriage is that it is two different people committing themselves to be together for life. The experience of having to live with, and committing yourself to love, someone who is fundamentally different from yourself, is one of the key drivers for personal growth. It is within the context of two people committed to love the other "for better for worse" that children are best raised, because the couple have learned to accept each other. That is the best societal basis for tolerance.
The most fundamental distinction between people is gender, as recognised on passports and just about everywhere else. Marriage unites two people of opposite gender, who are thus very different and so as they learn to accept each other, so they learn to accept people who are fundamentally different from themselves. The same is not true of "same-sex marriage". It would be a union of two people who are the same at the fundamental level of gender (and of orientation). It therefore is a very different thing from marriage, and hence a different word should be used. It does not provide the same basis for transformation, or for growth in tolerance and acceptance of the other.
As mentioned above, Collins identifies four features of how “great” organisations are led which enables them to thrive in times of great uncertainty. They are:
A little explanation of each will help.
Fanatical discipline is the idea that companies should aim to achieve the same level of progress regardless of the outside environment. That both prevents them from overstretching themselves when times are good and from giving up or cutting core services when times are bad. The classic example he cites is that of Intel, whose corporate strategy was focused on upholding Moore's Law – doubling the complexity of components per integrated circuit every 18-24 months. This meant that they continued to invest in R&D, even through recessions. Perhaps the best example of this, though is from the Scott & Amundsen example. Scott's team would push hard on a day with good weather, but stay in their tents on a day with bad weather. Amundsen aimed to do 15-20 miles per day, regardless of the weather, refusing to do more even when the South Pole was within reach. As a result, they did not tire as much in good weather and stayed more motivated in bad, as well as having a higher average overall speed.
Empirical creativity was an idea that surprised Collins and Hansen. They expected that in an uncertain environment, it would be the more innovative companies that thrived. But instead they found that there seemed to be a minimum threshold for innovation – if companies did not innovate a certain amount, they declined and died. But above that limit, it was not the companies who innovated most who prospered, but the ones who tested their innovations before rolling them out on a large scale or even who just saw what was working elsewhere, and followed that. Hence the idea of firing bullets then cannonballs – one fires a large number of “bullets” to find out what works, and then follows the ones that work well up with a “cannonball”, which costs more and involves a greater commitment.
Productive Paranoia was another surprising idea. They had been expecting to find a sense of confidence, and quick decision making among the leaders of these “great” companies. Instead, they found that the leaders kept far larger cash reserves than in the comparison companies – 3 to 10x as much – that they kept a close watch out for things that could damage their position, and worked hard at finding solutions. Surprisingly, they also found that they took fewer risks than their competitors, especially “death line” risks, which could destroy the company, and “asymmetric risks”, where the potential loss was much greater than the potential profit. They also managed “time based risks” well – when a decision was urgent, they took as much of the time they had available as they could before the risk increased to make the best decision they could.
SMaC Recipes are a set of corporate practices which are specific, measurable and consistent. The “great” companies examined made sure theirs worked and were clear, concrete and replicable, and then held to them rigidly, only changing them rarely and when conditions needed it and only in accordance with productive paranoia or empirical creativity. That enables dramatic change and strong consistency at the same time. One example is Intel's policy, which Collins & Hansen list as 10 points. In 1985, Intel decided to change the entire focus of their business from memory chips to microprocessors because of strong and cheap mass-produced competition. But in doing so they only changed one point in their “SMaC recipe”, and they already had a thriving microprocessor arm as a side business. That enabled them to in some ways reinvent themselves without changing their corporate culture. What especially distinguished the “great” companies from their competitors was that the “great” companies stuck to their policies with greater discipline, and changed them less. They even found one example of two companies with nearidentical recipes, which were similarly successful until one decided to try to change to copy a bigger rival and went into decline. One example of a SMaC principle was Southwest Airways' decision only to fly Boeing 737s, because that meant that any pilot could fly any plane, any engineer could fix any plane and logistics for spares was much easier.
These behaviours, taken as advice for how to cope with turbulent situations, do not seem to suffer from the same kind of problems that Collins' ideas of “greatness” and “choice” do. This is possibly because they are based on research rather than worldly assumptions or hubristic misuse of data.
Indeed, some limited theological parallels could be drawn. For example, the idea of 20 mile marching could be compared to the business environment of Old Testament Israel, where due to the prohibition on interest, it was much harder for individuals to overextend their businesses in good times. The notion of empiricism also stems from a Christian worldview, specifically the doctrine of original sin and the way it has corrupted our understanding so that we do not always make accurate decisions about the world without testing it.
Of course, that does not make them Christian. There is nothing there about the importance of trusting God and finding him to be your Rock. There is nothing there about the need to go deeper into God to find your roots more securely in the work of Jesus on the cross. There is nothing there about prayer or the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They are clearly not sufficient as advice for Christian leaders. But it is possible to take them as potentially wise advice for leading a church through turbulent times.
