Parish Matters

Geography and Creation

At heart, the decline of the parish system is a neo-Platonic view of the world that has shadowed Christianity for two millennia. The modernist project of reducing humans to their mind and reason jettisoned Christianity’s anthropological conviction that we are embodied creatures, leaving in its wake a church with nothing to say about the emotions, about beauty, and about place. This is part of what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor refers to as the excarnation; a disembodied Christianity that seperated the "physical" from the "spiritual".

Admittedly there are mitigating circumstances for this development. The transitions of cities from the original space you could move around by foot to suburbia, not only allowed for the sprawl of mountains beyond mountains of suburbs with no end in sight, but also gave people for the first time freedom to chose where they work, live and play. At the same time as the 20^th century saw the construction of countless miles of freeways, customary geographical loyalties began to breakdown. No more were you bound to buy bread from the shop around the corner. No more were you bound to play sport for the team of your local area, let alone support them. I grew up supporting the Balmain Tigers in Rugby League, without ever living within traditional Tiger territory.

Churches adjusted to this commuter consumption, competing against each other to have the better preaching, the better children’s ministry, the better whatever itch I want scratched. And in the process they frequently severed the connections with the local community, drawing upon an ever expanding area to draw members from. One consequence of this was the emergence of homogenous congregations based around age, culture, or occupation. 

The result was that at a time in Western history when the church was becoming increasingly marginalised from society, individual churches sat in an uneasy relationship with their local community. And whether intentionally or unintentionally, what this mode of church communicated was a disinterest in space, in place, in locality. As if life in the Christian community and mission could be conducted without any reference to these three things. It exhibits a staggeringly unreflective attitude towards matter, having more to do with a disembodied dualism that one would struggle to find in Scripture: the Christian is focused upon the God who is named as the maker of all things, the same God who took on flesh and blood, becoming incarnate when his creation was placed in bondage. This same God triumphed over his enemies that had sought to oppress and destroy his good creation, rising from the grave and sending his church out into all the world, making disciples of all gentiles. And the Christian hope is firmly fixed on the day when God will come and dwell amongst his people and creation is set free from sin, death and evil once and for all. Thus New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham can describe the Christian narrative as driven towards the universal realization of God's kingdom in all creation.

“God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Israel and Jesus in order to be the God of all people and the Lord of all things. Moreover, in the narrative world of the Bible the people of God is also given its identity in this movement from the particular to the universal, an identity whose God-given dynamic we commonly sum up in the word 'mission'. God, God's people and God's world are related to each other primarily in a narrative that mediates constantly the particular and the universal."

The often heard objection to the parish system is that locality is irrelevant. The argument is made that in today’s mobile and transaction world, people are more closely tied to social and professional networks beyond their local neighbourhood. However this is a highly contested assertion amongst sociologists and demographers; researchers have found that in contemporary western societies social networks are still significantly embedded in local places.^[1] Geography is a massively important feature of people's experience of life (cf. Bauckham). The local neighbourhood remains a central space for community. 

The Parish and Creation

Stanley Hauerwas has recently stated that “The parish is the ecclesial form that has tied the church to place.” The assumption behind the parish system was the belief that “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!’” Working from this assumption, the whole world was organised into dioceses and parishes. The purpose behind this was not territorialism or factionalism; that was be a disaster. Christ's victory includes a victory of the principalities and powers, the elementary forces of the world that divide and enthral humans. The parish system was neither about dividing up the world for the sake of drawing boundaries on a map. The intent of the parish system was that in every part of the world, there would be a church responsible for proclaiming the gospel in that area and ministering to local the community – the cure of souls as it was once described. 

There have many problems with the parish system over the years. This has been particularly true when (the sometimes arbitrary) lines on a map are treated as sacrosanct for all time, like the law of the Medes. But even then, this problem is symptomatic of the failure of churches to trust one another and work together. Nevertheless, the parish system was a design intended to point the church outwards to the world. It has stood as a reminder that churches do not exist for themselves, but are a part of God’s mission to bring all things under the lordship of Christ. It is a design that reminds us that salvation is for all people; that, at least in the Anglican context in which I come from, we are not attempting to reach only the rich, the poor, the cool, the young, the old, the professional, the tradie, the culturally homogenous etc. The diversity of any particular parish church would reflect the diversity of the church universal, and in doing so reflect the unity of both the universal and local church that confesses on Lord and one God. Reflecting on the Sydney Diocese's Connect09 campaign, Andrew Nixon had this to say:

"I know the parish system (or more accurately parochialism) presents many difficulties for our diocese. Whenever you form people into tribes and draw lines on maps you just know that sin will be crouching at the door. Yes, there are problems. But I pray that we can address and overcome them together...What is wonderful about the parish structure is that it is suited to local mission; it covers everyone. It says that together, we will take responsibility for every soul in our area, every square inch of our city. Even the hard places."

Surprisingly, the word parish has its origins in Koine Greek. The word as we have it today is first attested to in the thirteenth century, derived from medieval French paroisse, which in turn from Latin, paroecia. But there is good evidence that parish was first introduced into England during the late 600’s by eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus. Theodore referred to Anglo-Saxon towns as paroikia, a term which comes directly from the Septuagint and the New Testament (πάροικος – adjective; Acts 7:6, 29; Ephesians 2:19; 1 Peter 2:11. παροικία – noun; Acts 13:17; 1 Peter 1:17). In the New Testament πάροικος and παροικία are both used by the Apostle Peter to describe the identity of Christians. They are aliens and strangers to those they live alongside, living as exiles in the world. This transient nature of Christian living feels as far removed from the sense to parish as you could get. Yet πάροικος carries with it a sense of permanence about it too. It is the word used in Acts to describe Israel's 400 year stay in sojourn in Egypt before entering the promised land. Likewise Peter’s description is not of temporary aliens; the Christians he writes too are long-term sojourners in a foreign land. That is how the term was used in early Christian literature, such as 1 Clement: 

“From the παροικοῦσα of the Church of God at Rome, to the παροικούσῃ of the Church of God as Corinth…”

The early Christians saw themselves as colonies (that is the word used for παροικοῦσα in the Stamforth translation) of heaven, living in the world in anticipation of the new creation. 

In fact, this is at the heart of classic Anglican missiology. Although unmentioned by the Articles of Religion and The Ordinal, and generally assumed by the Book of Common Prayer, the parish system remains the Anglican missiology – seeking to serve all people. This is part of Paul Barnett’s “Ten Elements of Historic Anglicanism”, namely that "‘historic Anglicanism’ affirms both creation and society. It is concerned with the common good, for the ‘welfare of the city,’ to use Jeremiah’s words.” The parish system grounds the church’s mission in the creation that is groaning, awaiting the unveiling of the children of God. It stands as a reminder that churches do not exist for themselves, but are a part of God’s mission to bring all things under the lordship of Christ.

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^[1] cf. Oldenburg (1999), The great good place: cafes, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of the community. On this point I am indebted to conversations with Alison Moffitt.

The Elizabethan Divines

This is just a theory of mine, but it feels like this second Elizabethan reign has been a golden age for British theology. Not that a British Institutes or Church Dogmatics has been written during this time - don't would be totally un-British. But over the past few decades, they has been an amazing group of theologians lecturing, publishing and serving the church in the UK and around the world. They are all theologians born during or in the period immediately after WWII: Rowan Williams, NT Wright, Oliver O'Donovan, Richard Bauckham, Colin Gunton, John Webster, Jeremy Begbie, Alister McGrath and so on. Building on the work of the like of Moule, Caird, Torrance and Chadwick, they've all contributed to the growth of the church in their own unique way.

As they start to retire, it will be interesting to see who replaces them in the church and the academy.

Advent: A Haiku

This haiku was written by Richard Bauckham to complement an Advent Calendar. The sequence is that of the twenty-four biblical books in the Hebrew Bible. These verses are haiku in form (5-7-5 syllables), but not content.

Day 1 - Genesis
After paradise
not even Lot's wife looks back.
Memory turns round.

Day 2 - Exodus
The bones of Joseph
in their gilt sarcophagus
travel night and day.

Day 3 - Leviticus
If she is too poor
to afford a sheep, she may
offer two pigeons.

Day 4 - Numbers
Dawn in my distance,
the wise watchers will see him,
star of their searching.

Day 5 - Deuteronomy
Moses from Pisgah
overviews all. It is not
space but time he lacks.

Day 6 - Joshua
Going over Jordan
Joshua above all sees
that the ark goes first.

Day 7 - Judges
Said the trees to the
bramble, 'Come, be our ruler!'
'Wait!' said the mustard.

Day 8 - Samuel
Hannah, drunk as an
apostle at Pentecost,
magnifies the Lord.

Day 9 - Kings
She came with riddles.
His more than answers more than
took her breath away.

Day 10 - Isaiah
In the wilderness
a voice cries for centuries
seeking an echo.

Day 11 - Jeremiah
Rachel refuses
to be comforted - even
when we turn the page.

Day 12 - Ezekiel
In the end it is
all in the name of the city:
The Lord is there.
Day 13 - The Twelve Prophets
Then, as before, will
Bethlehem bear the shepherd
of the scattered sheep.

Day 14 - Psalms
If there were glory
only, praise like the last psalms,
would that be the end?
Day 15 - Proverbs
Too clever by half
are the foolish. The wise know
the folly of God

Day 16 - Job
God answered Job but
not his question. Maybe he
will do that again.

Day 17 - Song of Solomon
Yes, he will haste like
a gazelle. Nothing is more
impatient than love.

Day 18 - Ruth
Tough old Naomi
bounces a child on her knee -
her wild hope come home.

Day 19 - Lamentations
Jerusalem hurls
her desperate hopes against
God's forgetfulness.

Day 20 - Ecclesiastes
Whatever God does
and whoever else may be
who knows? The wise wait.

Day 21 - Esther
Probability
counts for nothing when Esther's
G-d is in the plot.

Day 22 - Daniel
Nebuchadnezzar
dreams of the doom of despots
and the wide world wakes.

Day 23 - Ezra-Nehemiah
After the exile
returnees did not look back
more than could be helped.

Day 24 - Chronicles
Adam, Seth, Enoch,
Noah, Abraham, David,
Zerubbabel ...

At the Margins of Morality

"The Church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief."
- Hauerwas & Willimon, Resident Aliens, 1989, p. 49.

"The church in the West may have to get used to the idea that its own centre in God, from which it goes out to others in proclamation and compassion, is actually a position of social and cultural marginality. This may improve its witness to the Christ who was himself usually also found at the margins." - Bauckham, Mission as Hermeneutic, 2010, p. 7.

Chris recently blogged about Christianity being at the margins of society. As western society continues to sojourn further and further away from Christendom, the Church is decreasingly at the centre of society. The Church's social and political powerless position not only mirrors the first three centuries of Christian history; it also may help the Church be faithful to it's life and mission.

This is not an easy process for the Church. Not that it should be - we do follow a crucified Messiah. But of interest to me recently has been the way public perception has shifted when it comes to the Church and morality. Whereas once the Church was seen as a moral guardian of society (and it's members were mock for being wowsers and holy), it is now seen as an immoral, corrupting force on society. The Church - and Christians more generally - are seen to have started wars, indoctrinated children, thwarted intellectual progress and destroyed cultures the world over. The Church has constantly been on the back foot for at least the past 50 years over issues of sexuality; in debates in Australia and around the world, it is the Christians are portrayed as immoral and out of touch.

For the early church it was their refusal to observe their civic duties that landed them in hot water (sometimes literally). Like our brothers and sisters 2000 years ago, we find ourselves at the margins of morality. And like them, we are disciples of the same crucified and resurrected Lord. But what will it look like for us to cling to him in our own position of "social and cultural marginality"?

Photo: Alison Moffitt

Bauckham - The Canonicity of the Four Gospels

I just read a cracker of an article by Richard Bauckham on "The Canonicity of the Four Gospels" (and the lack there-of for the 'gnostic gospels). Here is part of what Bauckham has to say:

"What we have in the four Gospels, in my view, is good access to the apostolic testimony about Jesus. I stress the term testimony. The eyewitnesses from whom these Gospels derive were not disinterested observers. They were involved participants in the events they later recalled and narrated. They were committed believers in the Jesus whose story they told. They and the Gospel writers were thoughtful interpreters of the significance of that story for human salvation. As we have noticed, all too briefly, they interpreted that significance very differently from the way the Gnostic Gospels do. But let me make two important points about this form of history – what I’m calling apostolic testimony. First, as we have seen, history matters to this testimony, as it does not for the Gnostic Gospels. It matters for the apostolic testimony that Jesus was a real participant in real history, and therefore it matters that the accounts are well based on the way the eyewitnesses told the story. The history is interpreted, of course, but it is history that it is interpreted. Secondly, the testimony of the eyewitnesses was in fact the kind of testimony that was valued by ancient historians – that of involved participants, people who could convey something of the reality of the events from the inside. It’s the kind of testimony we need if we are to grasp anything of the meaning of events as exceptional as those of which the four Gospels tell. We cannot and don’t have to polarize fact and meaning. The four Gospels give us at the same time both the most reliable access we have to what happened in the history of Jesus and also the meaning that those who were closest to Jesus and the events perceived in them when they found them to be life-changing revelation of God.

This inseparable combination of fact and meaning, history and interpretation that we have in the four Gospels qualifies them for the authority that these Gospels came to have for the mainstream church of the second and later centuries. Appropriately they came to be regarded as both the best access we have to the history of Jesus and the normative understanding of the significance of that history for Christian faith."

I love the way Bauckham concludes this paper:

"I guess the question comes down to: is there a real Jesus, a Jesus who lived in first-century Palestine as well as being alive and accessible to believers today, and does it matter what sort of God this Jesus revealed? If the answers are yes, then I think we have to face the same unavoidable decision that the early church had to make between the Jesus of the four Gospels and his God, and the very different Jesus of the Gnostic Gospels and his god." - The Canonicity of the Four Gospels

Now to use this for my AnCon seminar.

Good Books: The Answers

OK, here are my answers to the Good Books Meme. In case you've forgotten, here are the rules:

i. List a helpful book you've read in this category;

ii. Describe why you found it helpful; and

iii. Tag five more friends and spread the meme love.

Here goes:

1. Theology
I was introduced to theology when I was 15 years old by reading a compendium by Alistar McGrath. And I've loved theology ever since. The book I'm placing here is Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline. These were the first theological lectures given in Germany after WWII, with the text based off notes a student took as Barth was pretty much speaking off the top of his head. Despite the brevity of DIO, it has an urgency and compassion that has a powerful impact. It also taught me the phrase toho mobohu.

2. Biblical Theology
I won't hold back here - Climax of the Covenant by N.T. Wright is awesome. Focused on some key Pauline passages, Wright really bring to life God's plan to redeem his creation from evil through Israel and Jesus. I already had a framework for this through Goldsworthy and Dumbrell, but Wright's explanation of the narrative of scripture is par excellence.

3. God
Many Christians have profited over the past 50+ years from reading T.C. Hammond's In Understanding Be Men. But I found Colin Gunton's Act and Being to be really helpful in thinking through who God is and what language we should use to describe him. It particularly awoke me to all the Greek philosophical ideas that had creeped into Christianity.

4. Jesus
I loved Bauckham's God Crucified, and I'm tremendously excited about reading Jesus and the God of Israel. But, I'll have to go with N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. This is a book that every evangelical Christian should read. This book fits together the picture the gospels present of Jesus and help us understand him and what he was all about. I'm not sure that any other book besides holy scripture has so thoroughly changed me and shaped me. If you haven't read it already, read this book.

5. Old Testament
Besides a whole heap of commentaries, I found Dumbrell's Faith of Israel helpful reading in understanding the whole Old Testament. Like Chris, Barry Webb's Five Festal Garments was another handy little book for me. As was David Peterson's Christ and his people in the book of Isaiah.

6. New Testament
I guess I can't use N.T. Wright again, so I'll go with Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I haven't finished it yet, but Bauckham has a depth of of knowledge and wisdom, and this comes to the fore in this wonderful book. And guess what - the gospels are actually based of eyewitness accounts, not just the ramblings from this different apostolic communities.

7. Ethics
Surprise, surprise...I'm going with Oliver O'Donovan's Resurrection and Moral Order. Tremendously helpful book in understanding that the starting point for evangelical ethics is the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But I'm going with this book because I found it incredibly hard. OOD is dense, and especially in Resurrection and Moral Order. But this book is filled with treasurer for those who have the patience to sift through and find it. The moral of this story is, keep reading hard books, even if you only take in half of it (or less).

8. (Church) History
I've read a bit of church history, and really appreciate the writing from people like MacCulloch, Noll, Bebbington, Norris, but I'm going to pick Rowan Williams short book Why Study the Past. Williams argument is that Christians have more reason than anyone else to do history well, because often it's a. our own history we are dealing with, and b. we're often engaging with our brothers and sisters in Christ down through the centuries. He also offers some helpful analysis of key historical moments, like the the reformation and the early church. An honourable mention goes to Philip Jenkins 'The Lost History of Christianity'.

9. Biography
I wish I read more biographies than I do. J.C. Ryle has some great little biographies on the leaders in the great awakening in England. But a biography I love and cherish is Diarmaid MacCulloch's Thomas Cranmer: A Life. This is probably the definitive history on England's reformer, and offers great insight not just into this tumultuous period of history, but also into this great man of faith.

10. Evangelism
One of the best books going here is John Dickson's Promoting the Gospel. But I'm going to pick John Chapman's Know and Tell the Gospel because it really is a quite simple book to read, and for the sake of sentimentality (this was the first Christian book I owned). Chapman has been greatly gifted as an evangelist, and has some wonderful insights. The only thing is that it might be quite dated now (the book is over 20 years old and Chapman himself was born in 1930) so for something more relevant to today read Dickson's book.

11. Prayer
This might sound weird, but as a kid in church, I found An Australian Prayer Book and the whole tradition behind (i.e. the BCP) really helpful for my prayers. (Reading the preface to both of these books helped too). It's Trinitarian and Chistological depth shouldn't be underestimated. Although being full of set, formal, liturgical prayers, I know how to pray to the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit because of it. It modeled prayer for me, and gave me a vocabulary to use in prayer.

Whoa, what an exercise. That took longer than I expected. I've already tagged my five, and well done to Byron, Chris, Steve, Duncan and Michael who've completed the meme (also Sam, Joe and Paul). Looking at this list makes we want to read more books by dead people. I might go do that.

Bauckham on the Biblical Narritive

Richard Bauckham's first point aspect of Biblical Narrative is that it is temporal.

"The temporal movement of the biblical narrative runs all the way from creation to the eschatological future. It runs from the old to then new, constantly reconstructing the past in memory and constructing the future in expectation. Within this movement mission is movement into the new future of God. It is the movement of the people of God whose identity is found in the narrative of the past but also in their being turned by that narrative towards the coming of God's kingdom in the future. The possibilities the narrative opens up for them, when they find themselves in it, are those God gives as they live towards God's future. Temporally, then, mission is movement into the ever-new future." Bible and Mission - Christian Witness in a Postmodern World.

Bauckahm argues that from Genesis 12 to Revelation the narrative is in transition from 'a particular past' towards the universal future. This is seen definitively in the gospel - the life death and resurrection of Jesus, the coming of God's kingdom and the opening up of the future for God's creation. For Bauckham then, "Mission is the movement that takes place between Jesus' own sending by his Father and the future coming of Jesus in the kingdom of his Father."

A while between drinks

It has been a while since I posted. Since my last post, I've:

• survived CMS Summer School.
• got married (and picked up Church Dogmatics vol 1.1 and 1.2 as wedding presents!).
• been to Fiji and witnessed poverty, third world Christians, South Pacific Apartheid and survived a tropical cyclone.

I've also read a great book by Richard Bauckham. It is a small book entitled "Bible and Mission - Christian Witness in a Postmodern World". Bauckham's aim in the book isn't so much to provide another rational on why the church should do mission. Instead Bauckham sets out to provide a hermeneutic for the type of mission he thinks the church should be doing in a post-modern, post "911" world. I am very excited by the book. Bauckham talks about meta-narratives, the post modern suspicion of them, the dominate meta-narratives of today (which he labels as Islamism and Western Globalism) and what the Christian response should be. It has been a joy to read a book like this that is written by such a renowned New Testament scholar and theologian as Bauckham is. So I thought I'd post some quotes from the book:

"This book's proposal of a hermeneutic for the kingdom of God involves...a focus on one prominent aspect of the narrative shape of the biblical story: its movement from the particular to the universal. As I have also briefly suggested, this direction of the biblical story corresponds to the biblical God, who is the God of the one people Israel and the one human being Jesus Christ, and is also the Creator and LORD of all things. We can better appreciate this universality and particularity of God himself when we recognize that this biblical God's own identity is itself a narrative identity. It is a particular identity God gives himself in the particular story of Israel and Jesus, and it is an identity which itself drives the narrative towards the universal realization of God's kingdom in all creation. God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Israel and Jesus in order to be the God of all people and the Lord of all things. Moreover, in the narrative world of the Bible the people of God is also given its identity in this movement from the particular to the universal, an identity whose God-given dynamic we commonly sum up in the word 'mission'. God, God's people and God's world are related to each other primarily in a narrative that mediates constantly the particular and the universal."

- Bauckham, Bible and Mission, pp. 12-13, italics original.

Bauckham then proceeds to outline three aspects in the biblical narrative of the movement from the particular to the universal. But I will outline these in the next post. But it was great for me to really understand this particular and universal (the one, the three, and many) concept that kept popping up in books I was reading last year.

It is great to think that: "God, God's people and God's world are related to each other primarily in a narrative that mediates constantly the particular and the universal" is evidenced now in the unity and diversity (to found amongst the church around the world (I first stumbled across the idea of 'unity and diversity' by reading papers written for the SUEU by Andrew Errington). Stay tuned for more.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

An exciting new Richard Bauckham book is about to hit the shelves: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses - The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. It could have a big impact on New Testament academia and shcolarship, and has already received these reviews:

N. T. Wright

— Bishop of Durham
“The question of whether the Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts has long been controversial. Now Richard Bauckham, in a characteristic tour de force, draws on his unparalleled knowledge of the world of the first Christians to argue not only that the Gospels do indeed contain eyewitness testimony but that their first readers would certainly have recognized them as such. This book is a remarkable piece of detective work, resulting in a fresh and vivid approach to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of well-known problems and passages.”

Graham Stanton
— University of Cambridge
“Richard Bauckham’s latest book shakes the foundations of a century of scholarly study of the Gospels. There are surprises on every page. A wealth of new insights will provoke lively discussion for a long time to come. Readers at all levels will be grateful for detective work that uncovers clues missed by so many.”

James D. G. Dunn
— University of Durham
“Another blockbuster from the productive pen of Richard Bauckham. Stimulated particularly by Samuel Byrskog’s Story as History — History as Story, Bauckham builds an impressive case for recognition of the controlling influence of eyewitness testimony on the formulation and use of the Jesus tradition, which resulted in the Evangelists’ ‘Jesus of testimony.’ Not to be missed!”

Martin Hengel
— University of Tübingen
“A fascinating book! I have not read such a stimulating monograph about Jesus research in a long time. With its high scholarly standards and astute arguments, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses shows new insights and ways of investigation. It will therefore become a pioneer work refuting old and new errors. This book ought to be read by all theologians and historians working in the field of early Christianity. Further, Bauckham’s convincing historical method and broad learning will also help pastors and students to overcome widespread modern Jesus-fantasies.”

Chris Tilling at Chrisendom has interviewed Bauckham about the book, and you can find the first two posts here and here.

Jesus' family

Here is an interesting article by Richard Bauckham on the history of Jesus' brothers, sisters and cousins that Vras put me on to.