Loshon Hora

Idle gossip, which may be true enough, but which has no concern for the wider good of the party being discussed, is rightly warned against by Torah-observant Jews. They call it Loshon Hora. That the ancient rabbis derived the prohibition from Lev. 19:16, a passage which directly precedes the love command - 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself' - of Lev. 19:18 makes it doubly interesting. I have little doubt that the love command was taken by ancient Jews - and early Christians - to lie in a significant way in the avoidance of Loshon Hora. St. Paul's excursus on love in 1 Cor. 13 is surely informed by his own awareness of this link: indeed, the following verses seem a pointed recognition of it...

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1. Cor. 13:4-7).

The good Christian knows that Loshon Hora is unacceptable. He may learn from his Jewish friends to give it its name, to espy opposition to it being worked out in his scriptures - written as they were by Jews - and to acknowledge the point of overlap between the two traditions, both of which seek to uphold the command to love which both regard as the highpoint of the law. Avoidance of unnecessarily speaking evil about others is essential to the keeping of the commandment to love. Jews and Christians agree on this point.

Irenaeus on the Fall

I was interested to read a passage in book III (23,6) of Irenaeus' Against All Heresies this evening. Irenaeus in this passage ties in a very attractive reading of the story of Adam and Eve with an interpretation of the meaning of human life and death through history. Death, I understand him to be saying, is God's way of mercifully intervening to save us from ourselves in our naturally transgressive lives: it shows us that he sets a fixed limit to our sufferings and views the bringing of death as a 'good' act on God's part. Evil is shown to have an end; not that life itself is inherently evil, but that human behaviour seems within the context of life inescapably to tend in an 'evil' direction. This, for Irenaeus, is what the Garden of Eden shows us. Deliverance from evil, of course, is the last petition in the Lord's prayer. The final conquest of evil is what we all await. This happens throughout our lives and is God's ongoing project. It will one day be complete, but for now the fact that all human lives have a finite span - so that suffering cannot ever truly win the day - attests in some degree to the reality of God's saving and nourishing activity.

Here's the passage:

'God acted out of compassion [when driving Adam and Eve out of paradise] so that human beings might not remain transgressors forever, that the sin with which they found themselves burdened might not be immortal, that the evil should not be without end and therefore without remedy. God therefore halted them in their transgression by interposing death...by setting them a term through the dissolution of flesh which would take place in the earth, in order that human beings, by 'dying to sin' (Rom. 6:2), should begin one day to 'live to God''.

Biblical Hermeneutics: A brief comment

This brief post is written in response to a request from a friend for an outline of the basics of my position on biblical hermeneutics - which is to say, the interpretative strategy/ies I adopt when I engage with the Bible. My sole intention here is to sketch out a few fundamentals which I regard to be pretty basic to my view of Biblical interpretation. It's not an attempt to be 'systematic' or 'scientific', nor is it an attempt to be uncontroversial. But it addresses what, for many people in the contemporary church, has seemed a particularly important set of issues - and, I suppose, here, if I am honest I am no exception.

The most basic thing I can say is that I do not adopt any kind of position which insists upon the use of the words 'inerrant', 'infallible', and 'without error' in relation to the Biblical text. To me, the use of these words in respect of the Bible is both naive and unhelpful. The Biblical text is not God and it is not appropriate to use these words in respect of it. (The same, by the way, goes for the church and the pope...more on that, perhaps, in another post). But if the text is not these things, it is still held (at least by me) in high regard, for a number of reasons.

a. As historical evidence/testimony, both of physical events and of theological outlooks.

b. As evidence of multivalence and variety in Jewish and Christian tradition, when it comes to talking about, thinking about and experiencing God...a variety which demands humility from modern day interpreters.

c. As evidence of unity in a number of essentials, such as the focus on the Mosaic covenant, the foundation stories of Israel and the important position of the Temple.

d. As a vital source of inspiration for the devotional lives of subsequent people, both in private and public contexts.

e. As an adaptable vessel through which life in God can be communicated, in conjunction with the activity of the spirit through the church.

The Biblical text admits of different interpretations by different believers. That this is so is well demonstrated by the differences which have characterised outlooks on passages and themes within it down the centuries. Certainly, there is a need to recognise that certain outlooks and passages in the Bible stand in marked opposition to ways of thinking we hold dear today. But does the Bible demand that we align ourselves more directly with all its ideological outlooks, rather than those it seems to us to have right at the heart of its tradition - a tradition which continues in the form of the church today? No one, surely, would argue this. We are all pickers and choosers when we come to the Bible and its interpretation, whether we are fundamentalists or not. And this is the odd thing about the Richard Dawkins criticism that 'fundamentalists' are being 'truer' to the Bible than non-fundamentalists.

The 'rules' of interpretation, insofar as these can be formulated, are in actual fact indecipherable from 'rules' about the integrity of a Christian life, lived as a whole - in dialogue with the Bible, certainly, but also in dialogue with subsequent written tradition and church life, and with fellow believers and non-believers and in prayer. All of these serve to shape the religious life - and Biblical interpretation has to take on a valid form in reference to each. This may mean that we interpret differently in different contexts. But why not aim for a more catholicising style of interpretation, which attempts to draw all people into the question of the textual interpretation of the Bible, and the question of living with integrity. This, as I see it, is the function of the truly lived and truly loving human life - rather than the narrowly sectarian one which refuses to shift beyond the realms of its own self encoded comfort zone.

Biblical interpretation is not a 'science', at least not in any popularly understood sense of the word which has been left untouched by the recent assaults of the philosophers of science of the late twentieth century: the biblical interpreter has no recourse to a reliable empirical vacuum in which he can conduct his research. His is rather a contextual task, which admits of different appropriations of the same truth in different circumstances: as the community, in totum, moves forward through time, it is certainly to be hoped that agreement will be more fully felt about how to read the Bible and about what the Bible is, both within and without the church. But the attempt to present the Biblical texts as self evidently revelatory of higher truths, in particular and already established ways to people, is to miss profoundly the point that the text only attests to the life of God insofar as it possesses the power to illuminate and lead in NEW ways we had not previously thought to be possible precisely through those people. And it is through service to people that the text can become alive to us in new ways too.

A Sermon I gave [4]

If we accept that to be human is, whether we like it or not, to have ‘gods’ – whether they are microscopes or electrons or chromosomes, as in the case of the scientistic fundamentalists I have been describing – or football players, popstars or film actors, as in the case of many of the rest of us, it’s worth entering seriously into the business of thinking about the kind of God or gods we in our heart of hearts really want to have. And here, I think, the Christian Gospel offers us some vital insights. Crucially, it insists that the thing about most so-called gods is that they are dead. Not dead in some bare physical sense: David Beckham is very much alive and well, of course, as are many of the other gods of stage and screen whose lives we are tempted to mould ours around, both in terms of the money we apportion to them and in terms of our efforts to look and be more like them. But they are certainly dead nonetheless, and it is important to appreciate how this is so. They are dead, I think, because what they offer to their devotees is so often offered only in exchange for some reward: it is a form of pay packet, in other words, or some other form of gratification for an ailing sense of self esteem.

The radical thing about the Christian God is that he is not motivated by these things – he doesn’t need a paypacket and his self-esteem does not need to be bolstered. And gods who need paypackets or bolstered self esteem aren’t, I would suggest, in spite of appearances, particularly powerful or even interesting gods. It’s not that such gods are wholly bad or evil or conceited: that’s not it. It’s just that what they really are is human, all too human, just like us: which, to be clear, is not to say wholly bad or evil or conceited but just enough of each to make worshipping them a morally dubious activity, curiously similar in character, I would wager, to worshipping oneself or one’s own sense of ‘Reasoning’. And even if these ‘human’ gods can be very good at singing a song or bending a football over a wall, they’re still not – in the big scheme of things – worth climbing trees to see.

For they would let you look at them for a while but sooner or later would demand a pay packet or some words of eulogy to enhance their deficient senses of self esteem. They might, it is true, tell you that you’re worth a million dollars and that you ought to think more of yourself – even deserve to do so – just like they think they do; I’m thinking here of the Gok Wans and Trinny and Susannahs of this world – people who despite the best assurances and their brash and confident public exteriors nonetheless exude – at least in the eyes of the more perceptive media commentators – a real and nagging lack of self esteem. If some of us find ourselves being taken on board by the message of self fulfilment and self realisation of a Gok or a Trinny, do we really find the gospel they offer, upon reflection, a satisfactory one?

Would Trinny advise us to hold off on the expensive hand bags and necklaces and embrace us in a new light for having sold half our goods to the poor, as Jesus does in the story of Zacchaeus? Would Gok advise us to seek out the needy – as opposed to the local John Lewis – in our search for a renewed sense of life’s meaning?

Even if Gok and Trinny profess to care about the decisions we might make in the absence of their involvement (and here, I think, we can reasonably doubt their sincerity), there is no reason to suppose that the decision to do things such as these – which play no discernible part in their self improving teachings – would be regarded as anything other than at best strange, at worst stupid. For Trinny and Gok, giving your money and attention to them and to designer shoemakers and store managers, rather than to the poor, the outcast, the sick and the spiritually weak and vulnerable is how best to reach a satisfactory sense of self love.

The gospel these celebrity gods most usually preach is the Gospel of the cultivation of self, without reference to or emphasis on the importance of the cultivation of others. That this gospel stands in ideological contradistinction to the Christian gospel is so obvious as to be hardly worth saying. But it can nonetheless never be said enough that the Christian gospel’s leading idea is that the most pressing concern of humans is the love of God and the love of neighbour. And the love of self, insofar as it is important, is important only insofar as these other loves are in view. The kind of self love, then, which separates itself off from the business of loving God and of loving one’s neighbour on this view radically misses the mark. As, for that matter, does the kind of neighbour love which separates itself off from the business of loving God. For it is only through attempting to love our neighbours and attempting to love God at the same time in our innermost being that we can experience the love of God for us.

The God of Jesus Christ exemplifies this divine love, which takes the form of the gift of salvation to those who don’t have it. This gift is not an empty one: it is above all a gift of freedom from dead gods and an introduction to life with a living one through his forgiveness and our repentance, and the interchange of these in the life of the church. God’s gift is an invitation to experience and participate in a creative energy which works remorselessly and creatively in and through people – not for its own gain, but gratuitously, for their sake. It can be a guide as we proceed in the difficult, challenging and uncomfortable directions it leads us in, directions which defy even our most earnest attempts to impose regimes of ‘order’ on what is going on. And in the context of the gratuitous relationships which it opens up, we begin to discover that we are known and loved in ways we previously had not thought to know and love ourselves. For God comes to our houses while we are tax collectors and sinners, before we have begun to understand what his love is really like and before we have begun our attempts to exemplify it in our lives.

And as the third chapter of the book of Revelation, my other text this evening, asserts in the plainest possible terms, when he comes to our houses, God says: ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me’. As for dead gods, they don’t knock. They are themselves, like us, the unwilling subjects of this true God’s saving action: for like us, they are unwilling to open the door to let in true love, as opposed to the merely self gratifying and misguided love which they can find already inside their houses. The tragic pedicament of these gods is that they and their followers have not yet found outside the love and life which Zacchaeus, the tax collector who wanted to see and know the truth and who climbed his tree and opened his door, found there.
Amen.

A Sermon I gave [3]

Continued again...
Above all, I would suggest, we see Zacchaeus going through a number of the motions which characterise much of the devotional activity which goes on across the whole spectrum of cultural activity in human societies, both in the world of Luke’s Gospel and in our own. In the story, one person – Jesus – becomes an object of interest to another, Zacchaeus, whose eagerness to see Jesus has him make special provisions to do so. At the risk of offering a mundane comparison, an obvious parallel in the contemporary world are those who show up early and queue at celebrity book signing events. Forward planning is essential: the competition to meet the interesting and famous person concerned is always strong. Another aspect of the Zacchaeus story which is worth emphasising is that he wants above all to see Jesus – to have a good view of him – and it is in order to achieve this aim that he makes his special provisions. Again, one understands his inclinations. Seeing interesting and famous people is one of the best ways of enhancing one’s experience of their interest or fame. And fame fascinates; it captures the imagination. Live appearances are invariably more exciting than ones which are experienced second hand through the medium of another person’s account. Seeing for oneself is more satisfying. And when it comes to seeing interesting people, box office seats are often preferable, whether at football games, comedy shows, the theatre, the opera, or even the visit of a prophet, as in the case of Zacchaeus: they give you a better view, even if, perhaps, you have to sacrifice something in terms of atmosphere when you sit in them.

Finally in my list of generic characteristics of Zacchaeus’ behaviour, there’s his actual encounter with Jesus: in the encounter, Zacchaeus ends up doing what he knows will be pleasing to Jesus. He acts in a radically morally upstanding way, which not only justifies Jesus’ singling him out for visitation in spite of his past misdeeds and in spite of the criticism Jesus receives for doing so. Zacchaeus also ends up exemplifying something of Jesus’ own character by exhibiting a special concern for the plight of the poor. In the latter case, what we clearly have is, at least on one level, classic fanlike adoration. Emulation of one’s heroes is just a standard feature of our behaviour as humans. As creatures of habit and imitation, the desire to emulate comes naturally to us – and the people we find to be the most impressive, attractive and interesting, or, from a more sinister perspective, the most powerful, are the ones we often do our best to emulate. This desire – whether it is consciously felt or expressed or not – motivates us as we go about our daily lives; it serves to shape how we think and behave in a wide variety of ways, from how we have our hair cut to how we pronounce our words and how we think about our personal relationships, and the ideological stances we adopt in the context of those relationships and in the context of the world at large.

Even if it seems uncomfortable for some people to admit it, we all have our heroes, whether we acknowledge them as such or not. Even for the person who adamantly maintains that they have no heroes, certain ideas and people nonetheless end up playing privileged and pivotal roles in shaping their lives. The fact is unavoidable. The determined individualist may be absolutely his own authority in his own mind but he is still implicitly paying homage to the philosophical and cultural currents which made his very individual viewpoint intellectually conceivable and/or respectable. Whether he acknowledges them or not, then, he has his heroes, in the sense of the creative forces which have served to shape his being. And the point can be extended in the context of discussions with atheists and agnostics: one can say simply ‘you have your gods, whether you acknowledge them or not. We all do’. And for most of us, having our gods means taking an interest in certain other people, such that we wish to see and hear about them in order to shape ourselves around who they are and what they are like. It’s an inescapable fact of our human situation.

Now the dyed in the wool atheist may recognise all this. And it is true that none of it may faze him. Yes, he will say, I have my gods – although I in my detached rationalism know better than to think of them in reference to this strange and defunct word, ‘god’ which you mistakenly use – and I prefer them to yours. Well, one might answer, this may be so for you and for others with such an anodyne sense of effortless wisdom. But isn’t it rather disturbing, I would continue, that many who would invoke the respectability of your view seem to have such a hard time abandoning this language of divinity, and the habits of worship which usually accompany it – whether in the context of how they think about beautiful or impressive people, or of those that do a particularly good job at beating others in sporting competitions. Is it obvious, after all, that a regime of thinking which has given rise to forms of worship which are markedly similar to the long abandoned Graeco-Roman and celtic polytheisms of our ancestors – with their exotic and unpredictable gods, and their locally oriented mythologies and folktales – represents a step forward into a new and rational post-Christian age? I can envisage the kinds of protest which such a question might engender. But I would counter them by maintaining that the sort of inane and naive mysticism of the scientistic rationalist who expects everyone to appreciate the beauty of the universe through the lens of a microscope or telescope and who eschews the idea of corporate worship stands too far removed from the visceral world of social reality to be itself worthy of serious consideration. The debate is between the different forms of corporate worship which society allows to exist – not, at least so far as I can see, with the possibility that we might one day be rid of this awkward beast, ‘religion’, altogether. For corporate worship will continue to happen in churches or in stadiums, in shops or in nightclubs.

A Sermon I gave [2]

Continued...
Growing up in Southampton, it was standard practice where I lived for the hero of the local football team at the time, Matt Le Tissier – a one club man who stayed at Southampton throughout his entire career – to be referred to as ‘Le God’. Not only was Le Tissier a brilliant football player who enabled the local team to flourish in matches against rival teams from across the country; he was also loyal to the people who had paid his wages from the time of his first arrival at the club in his early teens; he visited schools and hospitals; he opened bars and restaurants and promoted local businesses; and he repeatedly refused to leave Southampton for more lucrative deals in, dare I say it, more fashionable parts of the country; he really seemed to have a genuine affection for the people of Southampton and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity: as far as I know, he still lives there today.

In view of his perceived virtues, the name ‘Le God’ has seemed an entirely appropriate and uncontroversial one for the people of Southampton when they refer to Matt Le Tiss. And this was the case even when he took a walk on the proverbial wild side and left his wife and young family to begin an extra-marital relationship with an actress from that dreadful Aussie soap Neighbours who was passing through town with the pantomime. No doubt his personal situation had its complexities. And I do not want to give the impression of speaking glibly here about the broken home of a man who had two young children at the time. What I do want to dwell upon, however, is the fact that as far as Matt the hero, Matt ‘Le God’, was concerned – not much had changed at all, even in spite of his domestic difficulties. Just as they had always done, Southampton supporters continued to make bowing gestures to him when he went across to take his trademark corners. The stadium announcers still used messianic language to describe his achievement in ‘saving’ Southampton FC from relegation from the Premier League, year after year. Matt Le Tissier never once stopped enjoying what cliché obsessed football commentators call a ‘cult’ following among Southampton supporters: and he was and still is referred to as the ‘Messiah’ of the south coast. And while the metaphors begin to mix when he is referred to as Saint Matt, that too is no less appropriate a name for him at a football club whose nickname is ‘the saints’ and whose club crest features, amongst other things, a halo.

If what I have said so far seems as though it’s merely setting the scene for a wide-ranging polemical critique of what I, seeing things from a blithely Christian perspective, see to be some of the unfortunately ‘paganistic’ tendencies of the essentially misguided devotional lives of many living in the developed world of the present day, I want to state unequivocally now that this is not the simple message I have it in mind to preach to you in this sermon. For simple it is not. The dissection, and still less the dismissal, of major currents of talking and thinking in the contemporary world around us is, if conducted with due attention, inevitably a complex business. But the chief thought I have had over the past week, as I have been preparing to speak about the story of Zacchaeus in chapter 19 of Luke’s Gospel, has been of the difference between misguided devotion in this world of ours and the kind of devotion a Christian would think of as being guided by God. For what Luke’s account of Zacchaeus purports to offer its readers is a clear case of divinely guided and divinely oriented devotion. And it is a challenge to the reader of Luke’s account to enter into the risky and precarious task of defining what seems misguided about other kinds of devotion, both in Luke’s world and our own, if he or she is to make sense of the special qualities of Zacchaeus’.

The Gospel accounts, after all, are elsewhere more explicit about the distinction between guided and misguided devotion: indeed, a positive and apparently absolute distinction is offered. ‘You cannot’, we are told, ‘serve both God and Mammon’ – Mammon being the name of the false god of riches and wealth. And perhaps the most salient feature of the story of Zacchaeus is that we have the case of a man who had previously served Mammon coming full circle to serve God. Or, at least, that’s the subtext. But it is possible to draw out more from the story, I think, than just the idea of the absolute incompatibility of serving both God and Mammon.

A Sermon I gave [1]

I post here, in case anyone wants to read it, the text of a sermon I recently gave in my college chapel. It's rather long, but I hope not too rambling, and was a joy but also a challenge to write. I have split it up into 4 posts.

Revelation 3:1-6, 14-end; Luke 19:1-10
May I speak to you tonight in the name of the Father, the son and of the holy spirit. Please have a seat.

A fact which often escapes the notice of those who bemoan the celebrity obsessed culture which we 21st century westerners live in today is that people have always had their icons, their heroes, their gods; fellow human beings whom we can look upon, compare ourselves to, admire and venerate. A recently published book argues not altogether unconvincingly that what we now call celebrity culture was a very familiar theme a very long time ago in the ancient Graeco-Roman world – one of the few significant differences between the mental landscape of their world and ours being that we today are perhaps a little more particular about the dividing line between human and divine than they were back then. David and Victoria Beckham may look or seem divine to some of us today, just as Alexander the Great and the emperor Augustus seemed to many back then, but in our wisdom we know better to think of David and Victoria as gods in any serious sense of the word. That seems about right. They aren’t immortal or omniscient or anything else we customarily ascribe to divinity. But even if we’re hesitant to invoke the language of divinity too readily when we refer to the likes of the Beckhams, it is nonetheless certainly true that for many of us they play the role of objects of intrigue: beautiful (perhaps), fascinating (to some), removed (on occasion); glamorous (in the eyes of many), stylish (to a degree), even mysterious (when they aren’t talking). Something about them, at any rate, captivates rather a lot of us. And yet we know better – or so we think – than seriously to think of David and Victoria as ‘gods’. If pushed, we might remark that they’re far too fraught, human, unintelligent and even boring truly to deserve the label. And that we know this is evidence, I think, of at least some idea on our part of what we think – and perhaps implicitly understand – God is really like: not so fraught, not so human, not so unintelligent, and not so boring.

And yet. In other ways, it seems to me that the ways in which we talk about the Beckhams and other celebrity figures whom our culture produces, celebrates and critiques is less obviously suggestive of sophisticated theological awareness. For it’s not uncommon, after all, to hear people bandying about phrases like ‘he or she is a god’, or ‘he’s my god’ or ‘he’s God’s gift’ or – more popularly still – ‘he’s a legend’ when talking of such people or even in respect of lesser lights still in these blasphemous days of ours. Certainly one accepts that when people use these phrases, they are not meaning to subscribe to their full and complete sense: when we talk of ‘playing God’, for example, a pejorative meaning is still possible. But our intellectual alarm bells might nonetheless ring when we hear this language: since it’s certainly the case that the boundary between the words we use to express ourselves and the thoughts we think and the feelings we feel is not in every context an obvious and altogether secure one. By speaking in a certain way, that is to say, we may open up a space for ourselves to think and feel in precisely that way. And in the concrete example I have mentioned, that may mean that if I say to myself and others every Saturday afternoon that David Beckham or some other human is a God or a legend, it may be that I am opening a space in which such propositions become in a sense true both for myself and for others around me. And this would be at the very least ironic, and at the most tragic, if at heart I know better than to subscribe to such a crude idea of divinity.

The Story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19)

For anyone interested in reading my sermon, which follows in the next post, it will be useful to read in conjunction with it the following text, drawn from Luke's Gospel, which tells the story of Jesus' involvement with Zacchaeus, a tax collector, in Jericho.

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.' "But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount". Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

Prayer: Some Collected Thoughts [2]

‘In praying, do not heap up empty phrases’ – Gospel of Matthew 6:7.

‘Prayer of the kind I have been trying to describe is precisely what resists the urge of religious language to claim a total perspective: by articulating its own incompleteness before God, it turns away from any claim to human completeness. By ‘conversing’ with God, it preserves conversation between human speakers’ – Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology 13.

‘Prayer of petition is a form of self-exploration and at the same time self-realization. If we are honest enough to admit to our shabby infantile desires, then the grace of God will grow in us; it will slowly be revealed to us, precisely in the course of our prayer, that there are more important things that we truly do want. But this will not be some abstract recognition that we ought to want these things; we will really discover a desire for them in ourselves. But we must start where we are’ – Hebert McCabe, God Still Matters 74.

‘God’s directing creativity is the answer to the question of the meaning of prayer, especially prayers of supplication and prayers of intercession. Neither type of prayer can mean that God is expected to acquiesce in interfering with existential conditions. Both mean that God is asked to direct the given situation toward fulfilment. The prayers are an element in this situation, a most powerful factor if they are true prayers.’ – Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology I: 267.

‘Prayer only makes sense within a certain type of universe. The mechanical world of Laplace’s calculator, where both past and future are inexorably contained within the dynamical circumstances of the present, would be too rigid a world to have prayer (or humanity, for that matter) within it...it is also not the world of modern science. Prayer also only makes sense with a certain kind of God. A God totally above the temporal process, with the future as clearly present to him as the past, would be a suspect collaborator in the encounter of prayer...The cross provides the only framework in which we shall begin to make sense of the Christian experience of prayer’ – John Polkinghorne, Science and Providence 72, 76.

Prayer: Some Collected Thoughts [1]

The pun of the title is intentional. This is the second post in succession which merely rehearses the views of others. But I feel there's value in linking together the thoughts of fellow believers in this way. They certainly inform and shape my own views. And precisely this method was favoured by the great De Lubac himself as well as in the excellent recent work by Olivier Clement on the Roots of Christian Mysticism. To draw together the wisdom of the past and to forge it into a glorious harmonious symphony of praise is all the theologian can do. And if the moral ambition of the historian of Christianity is to make the living faith speak in places and times where it cannot at present do so, then the method is acceptable to him too. For the effort to regain meaning and context in particular past circumstances cannot be justified if it is made at the expense of a much greater loss. If the following passages represent merely a synthesis of my own reading and thinking on the question of prayer, I trust they are no worse for it. Their intention, however, is to capture the essence of prayer in others' lives - in the present and past - and to represent something of what the Gospel has had to say on the matter.

‘The fear of prayer: is it fear of illusion, or fear of truth? Fear of psychological complications or fear of God? And is it not at the same time fear of finding one’s self and fear of losing one’s self?’ – Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith, 191.

‘One who strives after pure prayer will hear noises and uproar, voices and insults. But he will not be dismayed nor lose his composure if he says to God, ‘Thou art with me, I fear no evil’ – Evagrius of Pontus, On Prayer, 97.

‘They asked Abba Macarius, ‘How should one pray?’ The old man replied, ‘There is no need to lose oneself in words. It is enough to spread out the hands and to say, “Lord, as you will and as you know best, have mercy”. If the battle is fierce, say “Help!” He knows what is suitable for you and he will take pity on you’ – Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Macarius 19.

‘Prayer is continuous when the spirit clings to God with deep emotion and great longing, and remains forever attached to him by faith and hope in all the actions and events of destiny’ – Maximus Confessor, Asceticism 25.

‘When the spirit dwells in a person, from the moment in which that person has become prayer, he never leaves him. For the Spirit himself never ceases to pray in him. Whether the person is asleep or awake, prayer never from then on departs from his soul’ – Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetic Treatises 85.

Beautiful words from Henri De Lubac

‘Among philosophers there are some who do not want to see the problems of existence: witness a whole genealogical tree of rationalists. There are some who simply declare such problems to be already solved; such is the whole spiritual family that has a so-called ‘mystical’ tendency. Then there are some who do not want to have any solutions for them; such are many agnostics and also numerous existentialists who make this decision as a matter of principle. There are some who want to solve these problems only with the tools of reason. And there are some who, out of sheer despair of reason, blithely impute to it what they take to be faith. Finally, there are some who see and admit that what is involved here is more than just great problems. With them reason can do its proper work; but from the bottom of their hearts the cry always explodes: ‘I stretch out my arms to my deliverer’.

I don't think he wrote anything which strikes home as truly as this passage from his Paradoxes of Faith. The sense of stretching one's arms out to one's deliverer from the bottom of one's heart is the sense which, for me above all, captures the essence of the Christian yearning for God which needs to be seen at the root of - and in spite of - all attempts at philosophical or anti-theological 'systematizing'.

Praying like an Evangelical

I realised last night that I really can't pray like an evangelical. Not that I often attempt to - but when in the company of evangelical Christians, it's nice to show you're willing to fit in in ways that seem ok. But small group prayers in which different subjects are picked out and God is asked this way or that? It's not a team sport and God is not a lord of the manner who needs to be persuaded this way or that. Thus, the exercise has its limitations.

My stumbling and mumbling prayers which I offer in silence, and which are complemented by the bold liturgical prayers of church services and by the Lord's Prayer, offer what is for me the most comfortable point of reference. Persuasion doesn't come into it: humility and the chance to profit from centuries of wisdom and tradition does. Which is not to say that other kinds of praying are necessarily bad or wrong. Just that when it comes to praying like an evangelical, something feels wrong, skindeep, out of order - merely touching the surface - or, at worst, profoundly missing the depth of the possibilities of prayer. This is not to disavow the wonderful possibilities of charismatic worship or experience. But it is to warn against its potential to misconstrue a relationship with God.

Change, Barack Obama and Sam Cooke

Since this is a blog about 'History and Spirit', and since I have not written anything here for a while now, it makes sense on the day of Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential election to break my silence. Throughout the election, Obama made full use of the slogan of 'change' - deliberately, I think, evoking the language of one of the most searing songs of the prematurely deceased soul singer Sam Cooke: A Change is Gonna Come. Now that he's won the 'change', perhaps, has come. A 75% electoral turn-out ensured that the US elected its first black president. Mention, of course, should be made of John McCain - an honourable man and war-hero who would have made a far superior president to George W. Bush. But Obama was always going to win if the electorate showed up at the polls in force, and that is precisely what they did. Change, and the chance to elect an inspiring young leader with anti-war and left wing social policy inclinations, was always going to prove an attraction.

For now, the substance of the 'change' Obama has promised remains unseen. But his has been a message many have felt themselves capable of believing and it is to be hoped that he will not leave them feeling underwhelmed by what he manages to deliver. More, in short, needs to be done - both in the US and elsewhere - to spread the benefits of civilisation, medicine and technology to those who currently have no access to them. If Obama can take steps to achieve this - perhaps, for example, by confronting the barons who hold the US pharmaceutical companies in their grip - then the change he has promised will indeed correspond to the change which Sam Cooke predicted decades ago.