Theology – Page 7 – All Things Considered

06 Oct

A tricky one for Welby

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, (aka Willie Wonga of the Payday Loans Factory) has cancelled or postponed the 2018 Lambeth Conference. This is no small beer. It’s as if the prime minister should cancel budget day.

First held in 1867 at Lambeth Palace, the Conferences have gathered the bishops of the Anglican Communion every ten years to discuss the common issues facing the whole church. The conferences were postponed only twice. The 1918 gathering was postponed until 1920 owing to the First World War, and that of 1940 was postponed until 1948 because of WW II.

News of the cancellation was made public by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA, the terrifically radical, talkative and bossy feminist, the Most Rev. Katharine Schori. She informed a meeting of the House of Bishops gathered in Taipei, Taiwan, that she had been told by Archbishop Welby that Lambeth 2018 had been cancelled.

According to a report of the exchange printed by the Episcopal News Service, the Presiding Bishop said Archbishop Welby “…had been very clear that he is not going to call a Lambeth until he is reasonably certain that the vast majority of bishops would attend. It needs to be preceded by a primates meeting at which a vast majority of primates are present.”

She further stated that “as he continues his visits around the communion to those primates it’s unlikely that he will call such a meeting at all until at least a year from now or probably 18 months from now. Therefore I think we are looking at 2019, more likely 2020, before a Lambeth Conference.”

The decision to postpone Lambeth because of internal dissention is unprecedented. Highly controversial doctrinal issues – about the nature of Holy Orders and the authority of Scripture – have been a prominent part of earlier agendas.

So why cancel this time? It’s sex again – specifically the long argument about homosexuality. in 1998 the Conference restated the church’s formal view that homosexual activity is immoral and this occasioned the largest boycott in the conference’s history. At the centre of the debacle was the then Archbishop of Canterbury’s decision to invite the American, Canadian and Central American bishops who consecrated the Bishop of New Hampshire, the openly “Gay” Gene Robinson to Lambeth. This was the reason given by 214 traditionalist bishops for absenting themselves from the Conference of 2008.

It’s understandable that Welby wants to avoid a repetition of such an embarrassing shambles. But it goes further than that. What if this time the traditionalist bishops decide to turn up and tell the Arch of Cant and the rest of the “liberal” episcopal elite who run the church that they are being unfaithful to biblical teaching on sexual morality? It is well known that since 2008 pressure from this radical elite in favour of the acceptance of homosexual behaviour as normal has intensified. In his last sermon before he retired, the former Archbishop Rowan Williams declared, “The church has a lot of catching up to do with secular mores.”

To which the traditionalists – that is the Christians who uphold the teaching of the Bible and the church universal over 2000 years – would reply, “Whatever happened to the New Testament’s commandment ‘Be ye not conformed to this world’?”

Since the formation of the great missionary societies in the 18th and 19th centuries, the usual way of things has been that European Christians would go out into Africa, Asia, South America and the whole world and make of all men Christ’s disciples. But now the disciples are promising to return and chastise the faithless heirs and successors of those who first preached to their ancestors.

And the faithless heirs and successors don’t like it one bit.

05 Oct

The Most Gentle Atheism

This morning’s Sunday Programme on Radio Four offered a rare treat. That nice, matey, Justin Welby, Arch-community Songster of Canterbury, came on to tell us that he says the Creed and believes it – “without having to cross my fingers.”

But should we believe him? In a manner of speaking. Or, as Welby himself might say, in a very real sense. Along with most of the rest of the bishops, he believes in a sense, in a manner of speaking. I can best explain this nuance by asking you to compare the sorts of things you would hear in sermons of fifty years ago and what we get today.

As Larkin said of sex, we might say the same about the secularisation of the church: it began in 1963, “Before the end of the Chatterley ban and The Beatles’ first LP.”

In a typical 1950s sermon on the creation of the world, the priest would tell us that God certainly did create the world. Only after making this plain, might he conclude that therefore humankind has a duty to look after the world. In other words, the ethical consequences for humans was derived from the miraculous action of God who really did make the world. Nowadays, preachers give us the Green dogmas, using the language of creation, but regarding creation only as a myth from which to derive the propaganda about low energy light-bulbs, carbon footprint and global warming.

Again, in a 1950s sermon about the Incarnation, the preacher would first declare his real belief in Our Lord’s birth of a Virgin. Only then would he elaborate, saying that, as demonstrated by the unique manner of his birth, Jesus was a very special person. Nowadays, they don’t believe that Jesus was actually born of a Virgin. They are far too advanced and progressed in their thinking to believe something as “primitive” as that. They regard the story of the Virgin Birth as just that: a made up tale meant to tell us that Jesus was “special.”

The same goes for the resurrection. They used to preach it, truly believing that Christ in his body rose from the tomb. Again they would proceed to say that because of the resurrection we can now experience new life. Today’s preacher does not believe in Christ’s physical resurrection from the dead. He/she thinks that the resurrection is something that happened in the psychology of the first disciples: their subjective experience of new life.

And so on throughout all the fundamental Christian doctrines. Today’s bishops and clergy – in Professor Rudolf Bultmann’s phrase – “demythologise” the doctrines. They do not believe the doctrines fundamentally. Indeed, they would be offended and mortified to be regarded as fundamentalists. That would be a real blow to their self-esteem.

If you like jargon, the technical word for this process is “reductionism.” It is only the Positivistic, Materialistic philosophy applied to theology. It is the same sort of thing as that which claims that mental experiences are “nothing but” physical events in the brain. The modern bishops and clergy have simply swallowed whole the (actually very unbelievable) superstitions of that crass materialistic science. Crass because it can be disproved in one go:

If the world and humankind were only material things, there could be no way of knowing this: because the act of knowing is not itself a material phenomenon.

Bishops are meant to be shepherds. But if the shepherds are hirelings… What can we say of Welby and the rest of the episcopal gang?

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” – Revelation 3: 15-16

PS And yes, that is the way the real Bible spells “spue.” Look it up for yourself.

04 Oct

Feeding the 5000 in Dumbo-speak

And the BOSS was, like, “Like, where shall we buy bread to feed this lot then?” And Phil was like, “There’s a guy here with five chocolate croissants and two sludge trays of sushi, but that’s norra lorra nosh, like.”

“So like the BOSS was like, ‘Get them to park their arses. know what I mean?’”

Now there was a lot of grass out there – and some of the guys were smoking it. And the BOSS sort of like passed round the choccie croissants and the disgusting sushi. Honest, he did. So everybody was so like ‘Yuk!’ and they weren’t having any, know what I mean?

So the BOSS said like we should think about the environment and not, like, leave all that yukky stuff lying around, right? And Andy was like, ‘Take a butchers at these twelve supermarket trolleys and, like fill ‘em up with the yuk.’

And we were all like ‘‘OMG!’’

18 Sep

The non-existent Archbishop

Justin Welby, Arch of Cant, says, “I sometimes wonder whether God exists.” He added, ”There are moments when you think, ‘Is there a God? Where is God?’” He – Welby, I mean, not God – gives us a brief autobiographical sketch, a vignette from his fascinating life which he wishes – as modern churchmen love to say – to share with us: “The other day i was praying as I was running and I ended up saying to God, ‘Look, this is all very well, but isn’t it time you did something – if you’re there?’”

I imagine God out on his morning run – just a gentle million parsecs jog around the Andromeda galaxy – and thinking to himself, “Well, Welby, this is all very well, but isn’t time you did something about the parlous state of the Church of England?”

Welby looks at the suffering and tribulation in the world and wonders if there is a God. I look at the condition of the Church of England and wonder if there is an Archbishop of Canterbury. Surely an Archbishop who had good intentions would not allow the church, under his stewardship, to degenerate into such a dung heap? But degenerate it has, and that’s what makes me wonder whether the Archbishop really exists.

I’m afraid it’s the old story: Archbishop knows no theology; Archbishop fails to read the Bible. He’s worried about the so called problem of evil and human suffering and so, with an arrogance bordering on the Luciferian, he thinks to try to justify the ways of God to man. Wrong from the start: it is we who are under the judgement of God and not God who must conform to our ideas about what is good and what is evil and from whence these concepts originate.

If the Arch of Cant had ever bothered to read the Bible – only the first few chapters mind, I’m not requiring him to make a greater intellectual effort than to get past Genesis III – he would learn that the Bible says clearly and firmly near its very beginning that evil is a mystery into which we are commanded not to pry – on pain of death:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

However, since Adam took Eve’s apple and lost the paradisal look, God has not left us clueless as to this forbidden mystery. For alongside the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the Tree of Life. And the Tree of Life is the Cross of Christ. Whatever else all this might mean, it declares firmly that in the matter of suffering God does not exempt himself. The Creator, in his Son, by whom the worlds were made, suffers alongside His impudent creatures. The Enlightenment philosopher would say that, given such a shocking case, it had been better for God never to have brought the universe into being in the first place. But what does he know?

We are not left entirely in the dark about evil. St Augustine tells us that, for all its terrible appearances, evil is finally insubstantial – in Augustine’s phrase it is privation boni, the mere absence of good. As St Thomas Aquinas said, evil is banal and a mere parody of good – as Satan is the uncreative Ape of God.

To presume in that Humean playground to give an explanation of evil necessarily involves us in the even greater presumption of being able to explain God. If the word “God” is allowed to mean anything beyond what is weighed in the false balances of the Enlightenment philosophers, the very concept is absurd. For the origin of evil lies in the unsearchable counsels of God, and it is as inexplicable as the being of God himself. We cannot go beyond Augustine’s privatio boni, for the fruit of this tree we are not allowed to eat. All we know, according to St Augustine, is that despite the appearances, love is the only reality; and evil and suffering, along with death, are among those things which shall be swallowed up in victory.

The final absurdity of the Enlightenment project is in its rejection of absolute moral values while persisting in the folly of continuing to ask absolute moral questions.

Welby should be careful he isn’t overdoing it and he reminds me of the American President Gerald Ford who, it was claimed, could not walk and chew gum at the same time.

Don’t try to pray when you’re jogging, Justin: it clearly puts too much strain on your mental faculties.

07 Sep

Just war Justin?

On an aeroplane returning from Korea, the Pope was asked if he thought it right for the western allies to bomb Islamic State in Iraq. “Yes,” he said. The Archbishop of Canterbury was today asked the same question by Edward Stourton on The Sunday Programme. He answered in the usual Lambeth style: tread water and waffle. To begin with, he declared that the situation is very complex…”…military issues…socio-political issues..” and so on. Then he said something truly odd: “We don’t want to empty the Middle East of Christians.” You don’t have to, Justin. Islamic State are doing this already. Stourton pressed him but he still wouldn’t give a straight answer and excused himself with the cop out, “I’m not qualified…”

No, and you’re not qualified in economics either Archbishop – but that doesn’t stop you spouting endless advice to the government, to the nasty bankers, to the loan sharks. Not qualified? Funny things qualifications. Now I’ve never heard the Archbishop say anything substantial about theology. Is this because he lacks qualifications there too?

20 Jul

Truth by head-count

The BBC are advertising a new series in which they will ask one of those nebulous questions they delight in. This time it’s “Is Britain still a Christian country?” The blurb adds another question, presumably dependent on how you answer the first: “Should Christianity still play a role in public life?” This is predicated on the statement that there are fewer people calling themselves Christians in this country than there used to be. In other words, the truth value of Christianity is not to be measured by attention to scripture, to historical investigations or theological and philosophical reasoning, but by counting heads. It’s that shibboleth “democracy” again, the prevailing fantasy of our age.

They will not ask the one question that matters: Is it true? because to the modern mind there is no such thing as truth, only opinion. And every opinion is adjudged to be as good as every other, no matter how idiotic, incoherent and uneducated. In these conditions the only recourse left is to count heads and frame your policies on what the larger part of the mob…I was going to say “thinks,” but the blundering mob doesn’t think: it only feels, emotes and reacts.

As a matter of fact there are coherent philosophical and theological arguments for the truth of Christianity. The new programme will not even mention these. There is strong historical evidence for the reliability of the gospels. This will not be gone into. They will only ask petulantly what “right” have Christians got to a say in the public realm in this wonderfully progressed and superbly diverse society of ours.

Furthermore, the truth of Christianity is not a theoretical truth, but an existential, moral and eschatological truth. Specifically, we are all going to die and after death comes the judgement. It is vital that we prepare for this properly. Whosoever will be saved, it is necessary above all things that he hold the catholic faith. And the catholic faith is this: that God is Trinity in Unity; men are fallen, sinners, Christ died to save us; he rose again and ascended into heaven where he is even now preparing a place for us.

Tell you what though: the BBC would never dream of trying to establish the truth-value of the theory of evolution by counting heads. Just a thought.

19 Jul

The religion of peace and love–part three

Muslim propagandists – ironically described as “scholars” – often put it about that the word Islam means “peace.” It doesn’t. It means “submit.” This is being interpreted very literally in Mosul in northern Iraq where those exceptional Islamic devotees in ISIS have ordered local Christians to convert to Islam. Like good representatives of peace and love, they have not left the Christians without options. If, for whatever perverseness of intellect and spirit, Christians decline this kind invitation to give up their faith in Jesus Christ and instead espouse barbarism, they must pay the ancient tax on infidels known as the jiziya. ISIS’ generosity of spirit knows no bounds. Those Christians who elect not to pay to this protection racket must give up their homes and all their possessions and leave. If they persist in their obtuse rejection of all these generous options, they will be put to death. ISIS’ official proclamation ends, “…or else nothing awaits you but the sword.”

Before the loving Muslims in ISIS took over in Mosul, there were 3000 Christians in the city. Most have now fled. All the churches as well as the shops belonging to Christians have been destroyed.

Truly, God is great!

14 Jul

Saint Matthew 24:15

This at last is the day when the Church of England will decide to consecrate women as bishops. A great day for equality. A marvel of emancipation. A triumph for democracy. The very paradigm of diversity. What it all means is that the church is content to order its theology and ecclesiology according to secular principles. There really is no difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury and David Cameron. Both are agreed on the superior righteousness of secular enlightenment and all things progressive. It is truly a wondrous thing to see the Church of England being brought up to date at last.

But consider for a moment, over your fit of enlightened rejoicing at this brave new dawn. that theology might still reserve to itself some vestige of meaning. What if the arrangement of divine orders in the church of God is not a secular matter? What if there are fundamentals which, if they were to be shaken, would bring down the whole and presage disastrous consequences for the church, for society, for humanity, for our sanity?

Despite what the modernising pigmies such as the faultlessly-plausible PR man Welby would say, there are things here which matter. And they are theological things. That is to say they are not about diversity and getting the balance right. It is to say that these matters are about God and his frequently-declared intentions for humankind

God has set his pattern before us in a wonderful order. Male and female created he them. Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride. Women priests and bishops invert this whole order of things. This order has prevailed for the last 2000 years. Use you imagination: can you really – and leave the religion, leave human psychology unchanged – have a woman standing in sacerdotal robes at the altar and speaking for the masculine Christ “outos estin ten soma mou” – this is my body? You may wish to have things otherwise than Christian tradition allows. And after today’s vote, you will get them otherwise under the glib, grinning monkey face of Justin Welby, with all his clever fixes, compromises and done deals

When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place…

01 Jul

God is (still) love

I am coming in for some flak after my yesterday’s outrageously callous declaration that God loves us. What, I hear the strangled cry, has Mr Nastiman, the fascist reactionary Mullen, finally gone soft? What are these semblances of the milk of human kindness which, so late in the day, seem to seep out from his putrescent and malevolent soul? What has become of his accustomed misanthropy?

For the record, I have never believed in the vengeful God and my reasoning is plain and simple: for I have so often been the recipient of God’s mercy. I know with utter certainty, from entirely undeserved experience, what the love of God feels like. I know I am a justified and forgiven sinner. And there’s an end on’t.

Thus, I am unable, quite, to psyche myself up into the foaming, fulminating apparition of the apoplectic caricature of the Old Testament prophet: that blazing-eyed, stormy-cheeked delirious rabble-rouser, that Elmer Gantry, that Bible-whacking preacher come to tell us the good news of our damnation. I’m sorry, but I’m just not up for it. The whole gospel speaks to me of a God whose property is always to have mercy. God hates sin but he is in love with us sinners.

We may yet go to hell, but we go there by our own devices and desires when these are at odds with the pattern which God has set out for us. God does not and, I would even say by his nature, cannot consign his creatures to hell. He hateth nothing that he hath made. Aquinas, when asked, replied that there is certainly a hell: “But there’s no one in it.”

Anyway, we have enough hell on earth without need of further torture.

One of the more amusing reports from the 19th century is of the acquittal of the editors of Essays and Reviews (1860) for their alleged heresy in denying the reality of eternal punishment: “The Lord Chancellor dismissed hell with costs and took away from orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting damnation.”

There is such a thing as the wrath of God – his orge – for those with the smattering of Greek. But the wrath of God is distinct from the will of God and the love of God. The wrath of God is the natural consequence of our disobedience and sin. (For connoisseurs there is an explanation of this in C.H. Dodd’s commentary on Romans)

From our first and perpetual disobedience, sin and death, God has redeemed us in Jesus Christ. Rejoice. Alleluia. Bloody well cheer up!

Or what’s a gospel for?

30 Jun

God Is Love

I am getting pretty fed up with some common articulations of theology – particularly the notion that God does or will punish us. God does not and will not punish us. He is not the sadistic schoolmaster or the punitive Beak. The image of God as retributive judge is the entirely understandable existential, anthropomorphic fiction of an over-enthusiastic Old Testament prophet. Of course in a sense the prophet was right. We do suffer and might even feel we are damned. But the truth is that we go to hell in the handcarts of our own making. That is to say, we suffer when we go against the will God expresses for us and which is exemplified in his laws.

All this is relatively simple. But – next question – why are things so ordered as to be peculiarly difficult for us? The answer is in God’s omniscience: because his way of ordering things is the best way and all other ways he considered and rejected

Why do you not believe that God loves you? That not one hair of your head perishes without his noticing? He has told you so many times that he loves you. What more do you want him to do – to die for you? Well, let’s not get into that…

We fallible creatures know something of what love is. It is what we prize above all. Do you think God’s love is weaker than yours? We can only love because God first loved us. All our human love – ecstatic and deep as it can be – is but a pale copy of God’s love for us. We could not even think these things outside of God’s love.

God is love and nothing else

As the Collect for Ash Wednesday has it, he hateth nothing that he hath made. If you will overlook the romantic flourish, do you think for a minute that God would condemn what he has fashioned by his own beautiful and holy hands? Consider the heavens, the works of his fingers, the moon and the stars which he hath made. Man is and God is mindful of him. That’s us.

But nasty things happen. Yes. So what? The loving Creator knows what he is about. It doesn’t matter. Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore or whether we die, we are the Lord’s

For God’s sake, Peter, cheer up!

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

Category Archives: Theology