Day Conference on Lament (London)

What a marvelous poster for what promises to be a really good conference.

No Escape

image by Ron Reed

Evangelical Universalist (2nd. ed.) now available in North America

The second edition of The Evangelical Universalist in now available in North America on the Cascade Books website. It will appear on amazon.com within the next few weeks.



The UK edition will be out in a few weeks. I do not yet know the precise date.

There will also be a kindle edition in North America and Europe (well, everywhere actually).

This new edition contains the following new material





1. a foreword by Oliver Crisp
2. a preface explaining how the book came about and the reaction to it.
3. a new appendix on Rob Bell's take on universalism
4. A new appendix responding to some of my critics
5. a new appendix on the biblical theology of election
6. a new appendix on what appears to me to be a paradox (contradiction?) at the heart of Calvinist spirituality
7. a study guide
8. a Scripture index

So it is quite a lot longer than the first edition

New Testament for readers

I am currently reading through te New Testament, but in an unusual new edition.

It is the "Book of the Bible" New Testament from Biblica (only available direct from them). Check out the link for more info and samples.

The basic idea is to present the New Testament (NIV) as a conventional book to make the reading experience less intimidating.

No chapters and verses

No subtitles (though there are gaps between paragraphs at key places in the flow of the text).

A single-column typesetting.


All that does make it an interesting reading experience.

But the best thing about it is the reordering of the books.

The NT is arranged into four sections, each of which begins with a Gospel. Each Gospel is followed by other NT books that have some kind of link with it.

Thus the book opens with Luke and is immediately followed by Acts. I love that! Luke-Acts presented together as a single, two-part work!

Then we have all Paul's epistles, because of the traditional link between Paul and the author of Luke-Acts (and because the epistles of Paul link to the narrative of Acts just read).

But the Pauline epistles are presented in (our best guess at) their chronological order. Obviously there are contested aspects of this but, on the whole, it works well and adds a different dimension to the reading experience.

John's Gospel also heads a section that sensibly includes the Johannine epistles and Revelation. So that's another good move.

The other two groupings are a bit less compelling — Mark linked to Petrine epistles (because of the traditional Mark-Peter association) and Matthew linked to James and Hebrews, etc (because they are aimed at Jewish Christ-believers). Nevertheless, there is merit to this order.

I really do like the difference that this re-ordering brings to the way that texts are read alongside each other.

There are also surprisingly well-written introductions to each section and book.

All in all . . . me likes this. It is not intended for study but for reading and it genuinely has something new to add on that score.

The Books of the Bible | Biblica

The Books of the Bible | Biblica

Melito on the Crucifixion

He who hung the earth in its place is hanged, he who fixed the heavens is fixed upon the cross, he who made all things fast is made fast upon the tree, the Master has been insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been slain by an Israelitish hand. Of strange murder, strange crime! The Master has been treated in unseemly wise, with his body naked, and has not even been deemed worthy of a covering, that he might not be seen. For this reason the lights of heaven turned away, and the day darkened, that it might hide him who was stripped upon the cross, shrouding not the body of the Lord, but the eyes of men.

Melito (second cent AD), Homily on the Passion

George Sarris on Perfect Being Theology

Here is a comment I just found on facebook from George Sarris. I like it. So here, with George's permission, it is:

One of the most common responses I receive from those who hear that I believe in Ultimate Restoration is, “I wish that were true, but . . ."

Although they would never admit it, what they are actually saying is, “Deep down inside, I wish God were different. I wish He were more loving or more powerful than He is, but . . ."

When I was in seminary, one of my professors shared Anselm’s definition for God. He defined God as “that Being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The God I worship truly fits that definition. Deep down inside, I don’t wish He were different. I am very glad that I don’t have to add any “buts” when I tell others about who He is!

Absolutely!

Is Classical Theism a Greek Import? A Wee Comment

I often hear people lamenting the corruption of Christian theology brought about by the import of Greek philosophical concepts. The God of classical theism (i.e., the God that is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, timeless, spaceless, impassible, etc.) is, we are told, not the God of the Bible, not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is, rather, an alien import that was the intellectual equivalent of the Fall from Paradise. We need to get "back to the Bible."

Here is my wee thought: weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Here is another: That is much too simplistic.

First of all, the nice and neat division between "Hebrew thought" (in the Bible) and "Greek thought" is artificial. As any New Testament scholar will tell you, the Judaism at the time of Jesus bore many imprints of Hellenistic thought. It was not "Hebrew as opposed to Greek" but a variety of complex mixes. For instance, read the wonderful Wisdom of Solomon (a book that influenced some NT writers like Paul). Hebrew? Yes. Greek? Yes.

Second, as John Peter Kenny writes:

classical theism [was] a conceptual construct [that] can be seen to develop with increasing clarity in late antiquity, due to the efforts of thinkers such as Augustine, Boethius, and John Philoponus. It was finalized by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scholastics in the High Middle Ages. But classical theism was not classical, for it was never clearly and fully articulated in the philosophical theology prior to the late third or fourth century A.D. Neither was it an indigenous product of the Greco-Roman tradition. Many of its prominent features, especially the concept of creation, were the result of prolonged reflection on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and ultimately the Koran by theologians schooled in Greco-Roman philosophy.
Mystical Monotheism: A Study in Ancient Platonic Theology (1991. Reprint. Eugene, RO: Wipf and Stock, 2010): 43.

Indeed. Classical theism was not taken off the peg by Christian theologians; it was crafted by them as a response to the teachings they found in the Bible.

Of course, it was a task undertaken using philosophical concepts employed at the time. But Christian theologians never uncritically adopted pagan philosophical notions. What they did was draw selectively on a range of pagan philosophers in order to appropriate ideas that they found helpful in elucidating biblical faith. But they were more than happy to modify or to drop ideas that did not fit biblical faith. In the end, the gospel called the shots (at least, that was what the aspiration).

And what is so wrong with appropriating ideas from paganism and radically recontextualizing them? OT writers themselves did this all the time as any comparison of the faith of Israel with other ancient Near Eastern texts would show. NT authors did this too. Is it bad? Who would be willing to call the author of John's Gospel, for instance, to account for drawing on Logos theology? The prologue of John brilliantly draws on a (variously deployed) notion from Hellenistic theology (the Logos) precisely because it connects with and illuminates a biblical tradition about the word of YHWH and the wisdom of YHWH. I say, "Good one, mate!"

So, the simple fact that classical Christian theology draws on notions from Greek philosophy is no problem at all so long as it is subservient to the gospel. A little intellectual plundering of the Egyptians is fine by me. Let's be open to wisdom from God in surprising places.

Classical theism is most certainly not above criticism or revision but it was a hard-won prize that should not be surrendered lightly.

VIDEO: Conor Cunningham Lecture on Darwin's Pious Idea

http://fsmevents.com/ianramseycentre/cunningham/index.html.

Here is Conor giving a lecture at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion in 2011.

Darwin's Pious Idea

I have recently finished reading Conor Cunningham's book Darwin's Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong (Eerdmans, 2010).

It is very long (564 pages) and very good.

The book displays a deeply impressive breadth and depth of knowledge in the fields of biology, philosophy (both ancient and modern, continental and analytic), and theology. The result is a critique of Dawkins and Dennett et al. like few (any?) others available.

Ultra-Darwinism (the view that makes Darwinism into a theory of everything) is hauled across the coals for being intellectually vacuous and as self-defeating. It is, argues Cunningham, out of touch with the latest work in biology and is philosophically crazy! If per impossible it is true then we can wave goodbye to religion (which is the basic goal of ultra-Darwinism) but also to persons (that's right, "you" do not exist), ethics, art, reason, and science itself (including Darwinism). So ultra-Darwinism is either false (in which case it is irrational to believe it) or, if it is true, irrational to believe (because if it is true we cannot trust our reason to give us true beliefs). Either way it is irrational to believe. (You'll have to read the book to see the argumentation behind this bold claim.)

And, of course, if (impossibly) this view is correct and there are no persons and no right and wrong (which Cunningham argues that this view entails) then if people come to believe it and to live consistently in the light of the belief then that is very bad news indeed.

But Cunningham is no anti-evolutionist. On the contrary, his constant complaint against Dawkins et al. is that they do not take evolution seriously enough. Cunningham thinks that evolutionism is a problem (he has no time for "selfish genes", "memes", or for the attempt to make science into first philosophy) but he is convinced that human beings are evolved creatures.

Creationists get less attention but are taken to task for verging on heresy and atheism (!!!) — a modern aberration on the landscape of Christianity. Cunningham's own theology of creation seeks to root itself in the patristic interpretation of Genesis (a radical christo-centric reading). The urge to interpret Genesis 1–3 as literal history is both silly, out of synch with the tradition (he claims), and theologically misleading.

What we are offered is a Radical Orthodox perspective on an issue of current debate that is perhaps the most intellectually rigorous engagement with the New Atheists that I have yet encountered. All the more interesting for its sympathy with Christian Platonism and Thomas Aquinas.

I was not persuaded by everything but this book just sizzles with stimulating material. You cannot read it and ignore it. Not least because Cunningham's writing style is polemical and funny — he is a master of put-downs — but also because he has a very strong case against philosophical materialism and ultra-Darwinism.

I recently read an ignorant editorial in a British newspaper that made the comment that what Bishops in the Church of England have failed to realize is that all the intellectual arguments are with the atheists. This book absolutely blows that claim out of the water. The ball is now very much in the New Atheists' camp. Until they have some good answers to these penetrating criticisms (most of which I have not even mentioned in this brief comment) then they cannot claim to represent the voice of reason or of science. And I must confess that I find it very hard to imagine that they can defuse the intellectual hand grenade that Cunningham has lobbed into their trench.

In brief: a demanding read but well worth the effort.

George W. Sarris on patristic universalism

You've got to aim for the moon to hit the mountain top

Thomas Aquinas and Science

I have just read a great little booklet published by the Catholic Truth Society. It is called Creation and Science: Has Science Eliminated God? by William E. Carroll. Its author is the Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science at Blackfriars, Oxford.

In a few short pages Carroll introduces non-specialist readers to some of the contemporary "problems" in science and theology and then shows how most of them are based on a basic misunderstanding of what it means to say that the universe is created by God. A few basic clarifications from Thomas Aquinas and "BAM" — a whole host of pseudo-problems disappear in a flash.

The book opens and closes with Stephen Hawkins' recent claims that we don't need God to explain how the universe started. Carroll shows that the doctrine of creation is not a claim about how things began but a claim that the universe absolutely depends for its existence upon God. But, as Aquinas showed a long time ago, this claim is completely compatible with even the claim that the universe has always existed (if such a claim is coherent). Let's suppose that there has always been a universe and that it never "began" — even then it could only exist at any moment in time because God is causing it to. If God had never willed the universe it would never have existed and it exists for whatever duration (short, long, or everlasting) God wills.

The book also introduces the very basic but oft-forgotten distinction between primary causation and secondary causation. Many atheists and believers alike make the wrong assumption that if we speak of divine action we must be thinking of God as simply one cause among many in the universe. Thus scientific explanations are set in competition with divine explanations. But this is a confusion. Divine causation works at a completely different level from secondary causation and science only examines the latter (metaphysics falls outside the boundaries of science). There simply ain't any conflict, says Carroll.

A little look at the issues of evolution and contemporary physics and the origins of the universe serve to show how theology and science work perfectly well together non-confrontationally. Problems only arise when people try to expand the ability of science to explain things into a theory of everything (which it is not and when we try to make it such we end up buggering up a lot of stuff, including science) or when people confuse theological explanations as pseudo-scientific statements (which they are not and when we take them as such we end up creating a lot of confusion and fearing science).

Anyway, it is only a little booklet aimed at non-specialists but it is by far the most helpful little booklet on science and religion I have come across.

UK covers for "The Evangelical Universalist" (old and new)

As you can see, the new SPCK cover is the same ... yet not the same


something old ...

something new

New US Cover for Second Edition of "The Evangelical Universalist"

Here it is: as with the new SPCK cover (for the UK edition) it embodies both continuity and discontinuity with the previous cover.


Something old ...

something new

Environmental Crisis and the burden of proof

!
Hear! Hear!

This has long been my view.

What really "gets my goat" is when people who know next to nothing about the science involved declare with such confidence that they don't believe in global warming.

Why not?

Well, they read a booklet or saw a TV program that expressed scepticism on the issue
. . . and they were persuaded.

Do they think it worth checking out responses by mainstream scientists to the evidence against the claim that humans play a role in global warming?

No.

Do they even consider agnosticism on the subject given that they seem to believe that the evidence is ambiguous and they presumably know that they themselves are clearly ill-placed to assess it one way or the other?

No. Instead they become convinced sceptics.

Why?

It is hard to resist the conclusion that the reason is simply that the sceptical view allows us to live the lifestyle we have always lived and to avoid potentially painful sacrifices. It is a convenient view and the sceptical arguments offered provide us with a justification for what we want to do anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I am NOT claiming that I am a scientist who is able to assess the evidence. I too must depend on a basic grasp of the science and a trust in scientists.

I am also not claiming that the majority view must be right. Perhaps the sceptics are right.

All I am saying is that Mitchell is spot on:

(1) currently the VAST majority of people in a position to understand and assess the evidence do think that humans make a significant contribution to global warming.

(2) given the catastrophic nature of the problem the rational and ethical course is to act to minimize it, even if we are not certain that it is a problem.

Rant over.

John Updike, "Seven Stanzas at Easter."

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Can I Imagine a World Without God?

Today someone asked me whether I could imagine a world without God. They were not asking whether I had any doubts about God's existence but whether I thought it even possible that God not exist.

It sounds like a simple question. Like, "can you imagine a world in which your cat Monty did not exist?" That's easy, right?

Actually, it is a far more difficult question for me to answer than you might think.

What exactly am I being asked to imagine?

To me God is, among other things, the one who gives being to creation.
So a world without God is a world that is not given being (i.e., absolutely nothing).
But that is not "a world without God." That is . . . nothing.

Or perhaps I am to imagine that the world gives itself being.
Can I imagine that?
Not easily; perhaps not at all. I could if the cosmos was the kind of thing the essence and existence of which were identical but . . . surely it is not that kind of thing. I'd have to ponder that but I think that this suggestion would be riddled with problems.

Or perhaps I am to imagine a world that has being for no reason whatsoever. It did not have to exist but it does — it just is and that is all we can say.
Is that possible?
I have no idea. Maybe. Maybe not. It is certainly a bold claim! But perhaps it is possible. I just don't know. It may actually be impossible. (And it is certainly unsatisfactory when there is a better alternative, that the world has its being from God. And God's being is not a brute fact but is self-explanatory in a way that the being of the world seems not to be — God's existence and essence are identical)

My friend could not understand my dithering. Obviously we can imagine a world without God! After all, there are lots of people who see the world precisely like this.

But do they?

Do atheists really imagine a world without God? Perhaps, but I'm not sure.

Suppose, for arguments sake, that the sober metaphysical truth is that the only possible world without God is . . . absolutely nothing (and this may be true even if we cannot know whether or not it is). Then when atheists imagine this world in which we live as being "without God" they are simply confused. What they are imagining is actually a world with God (because it has being) but they are failing to recognize God's role in it. The real "world without God" is the world without being (i.e., no world at all).

This post is hopelessly bumbling around in terms of offering clear arguments but I have a gut instinct that I am on the right lines here.

So can I imagine a universe in which God does not exist?

Hmmmmmmmmmm. Not sure.

Perhaps not a universe. Perhaps just NOTHING.

An Outstanding Book

I have just received a copy of Michael Reeves' new book The Good God: Enjoying Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Paternoster, 2012). It is a wonderful introduction to trinitarian theology for ordinary people. Here is what I wrote on the back cover:

"This amazing little book dances like a butterfly and stings like a bee. With lightness of touch, a great sense of humour, and real theological wisdom, Mike Reeves opens our eyes to the sheer wonder and beauty of the Holy Trinity! This book is OUTSTANDING!"

I was not lying. READ this book. Then get the people in your church to read it.

If you are in the USA it will be coming out with IVP under a different title.

Christian Hamartiology Explained: Discuss

This thought-provoking image is from the Hellbound movie blog.

Discuss