Monday, October 15, 2018

"I’ve been sensing for some time that sacred speech and spiritual conversation are in decline."

Jonathan Merritt makes a case here that I think could be readily transported across the Pacific Ocean, downwards.

What do you think?

I think that where sacred speech and spiritual conversation are in decline the language we use to share the gospel needs translating ....

30 comments:

Jean said...

I thought that once when a friend who had no Christian background became a christian and so I gave them a copy of the Message Bible thinking they would more easily understand it than say an NIV translation - not so, I don’t think it ever got read 😂 but the tiniest of NT travel Bibles did. It is harder to engage either non-Christians or people without any religion in a spiritual conversation though and admittedly sin is a particularly hard word to introduce. Thankfully 🤔 in kiwiland we have little need of concern about over-politicised religion, or is that over-religiousised politics, as a stumbling block.

Have you notice how much of the Bible or christian terminology is plagiarised into multiple other contexts? Buy a Hezekiah Bath Towel https://www.bedbathandbeyond.co.nz/bathroom/towels/design-republique-hezekiah-bath-towel-tr0068i (seriously!), and you have baptism of fire, biblical proportions and other phrases regularly popping up on television, and I haven’t even got to book titles yet with no Christian content such as... “Salvation of a Saint” “Salvation Jane” etc etc, one might even come across children named Isaiah - make room Peter, Paul, Luke and John...

Unknown said...

Hmmmm.... When and among whom do we remember sacred speech and spiritual conversation that were robust?

BW

Unknown said...

In my early twenties, I was very young, but heard a lot of preaching from amiable preachers. It seemed that those who trusted God talked about God, those who believed in God talked about the liturgy or the Bible, and the others talked about themselves or church politics.

BW

Unknown said...

We are the camels trying to squeeze through the Eye of the Needle. Amid mass prosperity, allegiance (*pistis*) to Christ does entail a stringent personal morality, but moralism is not spirituality, not least because it is so easily coopted by other allegiances. Where the gospel believed is simply that you will go to heaven if you live a clean life, there is still not enough salt and usually too little light to illumine "spiritual conversation."

BW

Unknown said...

Just as there is no release from the power of evil without morality, so there is no life in the power of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead without spirituality. We too often hesitate to say so because we fear that work at sanctification is as mistaken and futile as work at justification. And it sometimes is. But a wise virgin can ready her lamp for the Bridegroom, and may have a "spiritual conversation" with others about lamps, oil, etc.

BW

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Bowman
All well and good etc but I think the author is putting his finger on a phenomenon in the 21sr century secular societies, such as Canada, which I have just recently visited, and NZ ... someone, I am not sure whom, though it is quoted in a book by a Kiwi writer in Gospel matters, Ron Hay, talks about forgetting that we have forgotten about God.
That is, a simple reminder to remember God has no cut through because people cannnot fill the word "God" (or sin or salvation or ...) with content they once knew. (Or if they can it is about a motivating force for terrorists etc).
So the gospel task of testifying to Jesus is that much harder ...

Unknown said...

Babies are being born as we read. All will be marked by the first years that God gives to them. But some will usually look back to their early influences, thinking their souls as immutable as boats launched down a river. Others will mostly look to future experiences, thinking of their own souls as rivers with many tributaries.

Nearly all can love the Son in their way. But some of the former will selfishly love the Father and fear the Spirit who raised the Son, and some of the latter will do just the opposite. In "spiritual conversation" the Holy Spirit corrects faults like these by raising the Son again in their hearts.

BW

Unknown said...

Yes, Peter, we are due for another iteration of *Death of God Theology*. This one will presumably benefit from more mature conversations about the gospel's relation to science, psychology, secularization, fundamentalism, and-- surprisingly-- the scriptures. But works of the first iteration, including those of a young Robert W Jenson, are still "relevant."

BW

Unknown said...

The Body has twice acted to shore up unraveling imperium-- once for Roman emperors, and again for early modern kings. The resulting societies had somewhat Christian cultures that allowed churchmen to use common notions of God etc for catechesis and preaching. Today, this is gone, as the first iteration of DOGT pointed out half a century ago. Imperium is hardly in any danger. We live instead in Charles Taylor's Secular Age.

For me, this is not a problem. While it was not wrong to rescue Caesar, it has never been the Body's mission in time.

BW

Anonymous said...

So is secularization a scripture-driven problem for anyone? Or, in the terms of the cited essay, where, if anywhere, do the canonical authors lead us to expect that *sacred speech* and *spiritual conversation* will flourish by the Body's efforts in any merely civil society in their future? They seem to have expected sporadic persecution until the Return put an end to it.

I ask this, not to throw out a conversation-stopper, but to forfend a certain log-eyed mote-picking that prompts fights in the Body over matters as diverse as statistics, visuality, laicism, worship, sexual ethics, social justice, polity, theology, and say, Islam. On each of these topics there have been proposals urgently advanced, but not always explained, as a way to keep uncatechised civilians in churches. When others answer that a received way is well-adapted to the actual mission of the Body, and that what is not broken (and in practice flexible) need not be fixed, the proponents get more impatient but not usually more persuasive.

The proponents-- who include both conservatives and liberals-- just KNOW that that congregations are failing if their membership is dropping. Ask how they know this and they will sputter something about the evangelism that they are not proposing and not doing. Their true motivation often seems to be preconscious and inarticulate even to themselves. I think that they fear-- no, panic about-- being a social minority, selling buildings, downsizing staff. Understandable, not missional.

The sceptics-- who also include both conservatives and liberals-- expect uncatechized people to stop attending churches when there is no longer a social or business advantage to attending them, and they doubt that any new gimmick will change their deep predispositions. Instead of fretting about their failure to control the zeitgeist, they measure progress by the number of congregations in a locale that are actually either catechizing their members to a more integral standard, or else attracting and catechizing converts to the faith, or (remarkably) doing both at the same time. They cannot stop drift, but they can nurture convert-led growth.

Since the latter have a few innovations of their own to suggest, we could contrast two visions of change-- whilst proponents want change to slow departures and maintain social acceptability, sceptics want change that makes conversion deeper and growth more real. As it happens, those drifting out the door detest much that really helps converts, and vice versa. So these positive agendas conflict, and the advocates for each drive advocates for the other crazy. Just watch Father Ron and Bryden Black.

Moreover, as a conflict about the future of the Body in a given place, this tension pits the majority-power of tomorrow's clear minority against the minority-creativity of tomorrow's only possible majority. In yet another way, this turns the flatly majoritarian logic of representative polities upside down. And for an ordinary Ordinary, this poses a terrifying diocesan variant on Clayton Christensen's scary Innovator's Dilemma.

https://tinyurl.com/yawsyyzy

To be fair, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Although the landscape is littered with church-salvage schemes that failed, there will be some times when wise sceptics should discern merit or possibility in what proponents demand. After all, the children of converts will eventually struggle with Evangelical Disenchantment.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300140675/evangelical-disenchantment

BW

Anonymous said...

Postscript--

Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. When a new way is destined to replace an incumbent one, an organisation successful with-- indeed dependent on-- the status quo faces a painful choice: either lead that transition thereby sacrificing its advantage, or else cede its niche to an upstart organisation with less to lose and everything to gain by taking the lead. When we view dioceses in this framework, the roles of bishops and parishes are very interesting indeed.

Hempton's Evangelical Disenchantment. Evangelicalism changed from its roots in the C17 through a substantial revision in the C19. As a consequence, some with evangelical childhoods-- eg George Eliot, Vincent Van Gogh, John Henry Newman-- became creative as they worked through their religious disenchantment in new settings. It is important to pair David Hempton's suggestive study of disenchantment with the usual readings on convert-led growth.

BW

Father Ron said...

Dear Peter, on this subject. on which you seem to have received very little serious conversation amongst very few people; perhaps the answer is not much much about the number of words we say about God, as any real evidence of the God we worship (those of us who bother to do so). I seem to remember a Gospel saying of Jesus: "By their fruits you shall know them" - not so much by their conversation. As far as Kiwiland goes, there's quitre a bit of 'doing' going on - see, for instance; the work of Christchurch City Mission. It may be that one good deed is worth a thousand words. Also, how many of our parish Churches are meeting around Christ each day in the Eucharist to get their spiritual refreshment?

Unknown said...

Martin Luther and other reformers after him discovered that, under certain conditions, preaching can be sacramental. So, Father Ron, I think Peter's concern may be that the preached Word seems less and less effective as a sacramental sign.

He suspects that the flaw is in the received language for the gospel. Right message, open ears, unintelligible words, translation needed.

But I agree with Charles Taylor that the gospel now has formidable competition, and that even avid churchgoers are partial to it. Sacraments, however, only work fully where an allegiance (*pistis*) to Christ is unconditional. Pretty good message, closed ears, intelligible words, translation unhelpful.

Only "pretty good?" Yes, I agree with N.T. Wright and David Bentley Hart among others that the gospel with which the uncatechised are familiar is itself a faulty translation of the apostolic one known from the scriptures. When people abandon that faulty translation, they may be rejecting God, or they may have become more receptive to the untranslated truth. Confusing message, open ears, adequate words, new text.

BW


Jean said...

Bowman you keep on giving my brain a workout! I agree with the essence of what you say - I think! I have encountered a lot of people who have a misunderstanding about church or Christianity but when I really consider it not too many people who have ever had a difficulty comprehending the language used if adequate explaination is given - albeit scriptural language not theological, even I have difficulty with the latter. Many are reticent to consider it as relevant to them, however, this is all part of the spiritual battle? If anything I find where language gets in the way it is what I call loaded words - scriptural words, verses or understandings which are often misused or overused creating incorrect connotations in peoples minds or else carrying a sense of being patronised.

My grandparents generation seemed to see faith and caught not taught; I very rarely remember scriptural conversations growing up. It wasn’t until his late eighties that I had a conversation about scripture with my grandfather.

Father Ron, obviously the celebration of Holy Communion builds you up spiritually. While I appreciate the partaking of it also, I think there are many ways people feed on the Word of God. For me this is often words. for others I know music helps them to do this.... It seems God knows and speaks to us in the language closest to our hearts.

Unknown said...

Jean, imagine that you are a pagan in C2-3, say, Ephesus. Your world of myriad divinities and unseen forces makes sense of your life as it is. But you know a Jew whose life is better, and you want what she has. She urges you to come with her to a meeting, so you do.

Not until you have been several times do you realize that the meetings are a kind of temple worship without a temple. And although you are catching something from them, it is mainly a discontent with your life as it is. Your friend tells you that, if you will let her God change you, your life will be better in several practical ways.

You know that she is right, so on an impulse one day, you buy an amulet with a Jesus-spell on it from a magician who sells all kinds of amulets, herbs, etc. This is a big step to you, so you show it to the first Jew you meet in the market. She is perplexed. Finally she says, "Jews do not buy amulets."

You take the rejected amulet to your friend. She too has a few such amulets, and so she understands your enthusiasm. She is excited herself, but says that buying an amulet is not the way to devote yourself to her God. Suddenly, you remember that men get circumcised and wonder how all the women you've met did it.

Your friend leads you through the winding streets to the house of the bishop, a man you have heard mentioned often but have seen only twice. He reads the spell on the amulet and says, "This one is not so bad, but to belong to God you must give your whole life to God." You shudder-- these strange Jews talk an awful lot about blood and death-- but figure that what your friend did you too can do. He advises you to start attending a daily morning meeting of persons preparing to be sacrificed to God. How long does that take? "A few years," he replies.

He adds, "It is not easy to unlearn the patterns of thinking and feeling of a lifetime. You must break alliances with evil that you do not know that you have-- and the evil will fight back. Meanwhile, the dust of life's road must be brushed off. Even three years is not enough time to do all this, but it is usually time enough to train a soul to seek and trust God's help."

BW

Unknown said...

So your friend, now formally your sponsor, leads you again through narrow streets to the house where catechumens meet daily.

The class begins with morning prayers loosely based on the Psalms. Then the presiding elder prays over the catechumens and commands the resident demons in each to depart in the sacred name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You hear your own name in the words of exorcism, see compassion in the eyes of the anointing eldress, and feel cool cross-marks of oil on your forehead, lips, chest, hands, feet.

Then the lesson begins. An elder with a codex reads a few words from it and comments on them. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..."

You have heard stories about gods all your life, of course, and know a few about where the world came from. But the elder speaks of *heavens* in a way unfamiliar to you.

You ask him to explain, and hear a classmate gasp. A Jewish woman, she is startled-- but pleased-- that you ask about Torah and that the elder answers you. Seeing that there will be a conversation, another woman asks, "Isn't it forbidden to read this portion aloud?" Yes, the elder acknowledges, "most Jews will not read publicly either Moses's account of the Beginning or Ezekiel's description of the Chariot. But Jews who worship Jesus teach from both, as you will see." His eyes twinkle.

BW

Unknown said...

Jean, I hope that you have enjoyed a bit of time travel.

Writings from the ancient world show us that early Christians learned their faith. If one comes of age in a non-Christian culture, one cannot simply catch faith in the way that one might conceivably do if one grows up in a place where most people attend good enough churches. That was obviously true in pagan antiquity, and it is probably true now.

Must this be difficult? Yes and no. Any healing discourse is demanding. But good catechesis can lighten the *cognitive* work.

Absent that, one can spend half a century getting clarity about what really matters and what God has revealed about it. Some will offer simpler ways, of course, but some of those ways will turn out to be amulets.

BW

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Bowman and Jean
What I am missing in the above exchange goes like this ...
Yes, the content of the Christian gospel and way of discipleship is tough, demanding and requires grounding, teaching, formation etc, much as Bowman expounds above. And this is so for every generation.
Yes, that means that there is a particular work of "translation" which is consuming of time, demanding of patience and calls for faithfulness, both on the part of teacher and disciple/catechumen.
But here is the thing: the early church did not, as far as I am aware, work out an extensive case for translating the gospel and its demands from Aramaic to Greek. It just did it because it wanted the gospel to spread in the Greek-speaking world, the larger more populous world surrounding Palestine.
Nor did it spend much time, as far as I can tell, hand wringing over translating key concepts, say "kingdom of God" to "eternal life", or, when writing a letter to Colossae or Corinth, directly engaging with the challenges of translating the gospel into "philosophical" terms, albeit robustly challenging the presuppositions of the philosophers while doing so.
That is what I am raising here, more than the process of discipling and catechumenal formation: what language do we use today to speak the gospel and win a hearing? Are we stuck with (churched) Aramaic when we should be speaking (unchurched) Greek?

Bryden Black said...

Time to join the conversation, having originally seen what triggered it all independently anyway.

In another life, I coauthored an elementary evangelism training tool called Sharing Your Faith, A personal introduction to the evangelistic task. It was built around the thing we called the gospel triangle, derived from the story in Acts about Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch: God at the apex, self down one corner, neighbour at the other corner. Each has a story to tell;
and the trick is to see the lines being joined up, as each relates to the other. At first they are of course dashes which then over time become solid, as the relationships mature.

Now, EVERYTHING depends upon one’s own appreciation and concrete experience and understanding of the God-self line. And frankly, it was at this point that we learned our most important lessons as we ran this six week course in many parishes. Run of the mill Anglicans by and large simply do not have the language with which to articulate their story-with-God’s-story. And the power of the course became their getting just such a handle ... I too could tell many stories like Bowman’s of folk coming to the realisation that the grace of God in Jesus has made a difference in their lives and how he continues to do so.

Frankly, words are indispensable in this mutual story telling. That’s one reason for the very existence of the Scriptures! The other is to appreciate our incorporation into the very Story of God - the Whole Christ, as Augustine and now Jenson would say. Just so, our present culture’s penchant for ‘the story’ line helps - even if its reduction to mere ‘beads on a string’ with no available sense of any Grand Narrative is a serious weakness. (The necklace of beads tends to disintegrate without any string!!)

So; lastly, words are inevitable. The very Second Person of the Godhead is so called! Any due encounter with the One True God issues in speech of one kind or another. For he speaks with us! It was not fortuitous that CS Lewis’s favourite psalm was 19. The key problem would seem to be the wax in our ears and our stony hearts. Although another problem would be as ex Abp Bill Burnett of Cape Town diagnosed: “The problem with Anglicanism is that we have superimposed a sacramental structure upon an unevangelised people.” And coming from his particular Province, his point is powerful.

Unknown said...

Yes, Peter, we preach Aramaic to bilingual hearers-- and make them read Bryden's book-- until they start talking about their life in Christ in Greek to whoever the Holy Spirit chooses. More snakes and ladders than translation. St Paul is our exemplar.

Yes, Bryden, Bill Burnett is right.

BW

Jean said...

Sorry Bowman I think I might have led your story-telling astray not that seeing your ability as a wordsmith isn’t worth it. I perhaps gave the wrong impression when I mentioned I grew up with a caught not taught environment; albeit the truth I am unconvinced it is in and of itself an effective way to pass on the faith especially when society at large is mostly secular.

Peter your question of what is Greek today is harder to answer! Perhaps it is talking in broader terms like light and darkness; good and evil; justice and mercy ... familiar to most people when looking at today’s world and stepping stones in the wider scope or narrative of the Scriptures Bryden expounds....

Unknown said...

But I think Peter is asking for a way to preach at the beach where people are happy with the rather sybaritic culture they have, and hopes that something that they already know can become the referent for a presentation of the gospel.

For example, Thomas Merton, as a poet who knew his Baudelaire, eventually refashioned the latter's account of the artist's necessary alienation from modern society into a way of talking about being led in Christ from a false social self to one's true *imago Dei*. The translation is not perfect, but it has worked for two generations of converting Catholics.

But which comes first-- the Body or the translated gospel? Should we preach on the beach or build a campfire there? While the Holy Spirit can surprise us, he usually builds the campfire first, and only then tasks those around it with making translations.

For, as in the time travel above, the first referent for nascent faith is usually the Body itself, not what it says. Hospitality > Experience > Reflection > Catechesis.

This was true of Merton himself. Amid his somewhat desperate search for an intellectual home, Mark van Doren at Columbia in New York introduced him to Thomism, Catholicism, and the *vita contemplativa*. In Peter's terms, that was still pure Aramaic, but it led Merton into a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Once warming at that campfire, he then began to search for the Greek he needed to explain his journey to the writers of his generation.

Peter's -- every bishop's -- challenge is that evangelism in new circumstances requires a fresh cell of the Body as well as a fresh signal. "A sower went out to sow some seeds..."

It is easier to see this from a Lutheran (Cyrillian) christology than from a Reformed (Nestorian) one. This is why Jens is at every step careful to stress that the Word is always embodied, and that Body is, not a general-purpose vessel, but a new wineskin for new wine. But if this is true, then the Body is always shedding old cells and forming new ones, and no church institution is immune from this cycle of death and rebirth. How then does the Body maintain a recognized identity through time? For that purpose, the free Spirit makes one college of free bishops throughout space and time.

BW



Father Ron said...

BW here speaks of 'Beach Evangelism'. I remember the time in England - during the period when the Church was advocating a more regular appreciation of worship through the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

The actual experience of Evangelism worked most effectively when morning beachgoers were confronted with a Celebration of Eucharist at the local beach, where parishioners were encouraged to join the priest missioner in a less formal presentation of the liturgy. This 'action' supported by the scripture readings seemed to court more attention than the efforts of a lone preacher. People actually came to look and to ask about what was taking place - in the mode of "Come and see!"

Bryden Black said...

What a delicious irony Bowman! For my wife and I are presently taking a long w/e after a medical conference in Oz guess where: upon that classic embodiment of Aussie culture - the beach! And as usual, it is stunning! True to form, I’ve come away w a goodly text to ruminate upon as well: Jens’ Can These Bones Live?, which is as you know his final Theology in Outline, albeit edited and transcribed for him. The sheer size of the book fits sweetly into a pocket what’s more! But its contents demand multiple readings ... and long digestion time ...

All this to say, that he begins with a description of the Church Community which I sense refuses to prioritise either way. It IS quite simply that Body with its own singular Message. Neither Message nor Body has the upper hand; they MUST surely implicate each other, through and through. Just so, camp fires and camp singing intermingle, while necessary stories are exchanged. And all the while, waves and tides irresistibly caress the sand, offering even kids (who had a teacher free day y’day and were out in their hordes, boogey boards and all!) the opportunity to explore the microcosms of life among the rock pools.

But who’s going to answer their excited questions as they see the wonders of those pools? That’s the crunch, as we both know all too well. For Can these Western ecclesial bones revive?! Ezekiel’s vision was surely answered by YHWH’s own Spirit upon that unique Israelite, Jesus. And if the same Spirit is to blow as the wind did last Sunday with a massively classic tropical thunderstorm tens of miles in diameter, then there will be as much destruction as new birth upon our churches these coming days (Isa 40 is likewise double-edged). We’ve flirted with the world’s adulterous ways long enough just as Ezekiel’s people had - and paid for it in spades (ch.16 in Hebrew; most EVV are too timid ...). What goes around, comes around: kyrie eleison! There’s not much else to say ...

Unknown said...

Peter, when I ask myself the question that you pose, I usually answer that our gospelling will be heard if it relieves suffering and enables healing in its hearers by inaugurating *metanoia* in Christ. I am not confident that the Word is heard in preaching that invites the hearer to admire a *view from nowhere* from outside the soul in Christ (eg Beza's diagram of the elect and the lost).

Particular election remains mysterious, of course. But gospel preaching is less informative than regenerative.

BW

Unknown said...

Bryden, the core of the gospel is in Romans 5-8. Given that, our challenge will be offering useful discernment and counsel to those open to regeneration in Christ. The East always has; Anglicans need a new mindset and many practical changes to do likewise. Hardest of these may be getting used to the thought that one can have a rich relationship with God without trying to run a society.

BW

Bryden Black said...

Information. Formation. Transformation. Conformation. Four words which have governed my attempts at preaching. All four necessarily involve both words and a set of practices. A suitable parallel to Lewis’s Four Loves. Enjoy Bowman!

As for you last sentence: spoken like an American of the 18th C!

Anonymous said...

"Hardest of these may be getting used to the thought that one can have a rich relationship with God without trying to run a society."

Yes indeed. Shut up, little Christian, and check your faith at the door as you enter the polling station (not that we care whether you vote or not, we'll see it won't make any difference). How DARE anyone challenge Facebook/Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Hollywood/Big Pharma/Chase Manhattan etc from their rightful ownership of the earth?!

William

Unknown said...

"Trust not in princes and sons of men in whom there is no salvation."

BW

Unknown said...

Earthly power is too equivocal and dialectical to be the content of sacred speech and spiritual conversation.

Here up yonder, we have begun to elect a new lower house of the Congress. Only one side will win, but both are advancing their objectives. I know serious Christians working for each side.

BW