How sympathetic can Christians be to "the call of the minaret", to the Islamic call to worship and to prayer? Many years ago I read the famous account of a deeply Christian and deeply sympathetic encounter with Islam - a classic of its kind - written by Kenneth Cragg and titled The Call of the Minaret. In the light of recent events, I must re-read it.
But recently my attention has been drawn to another, more recent account of a sympathetic encounter with Islam, written by Mark Sijlander, A Deadly Misunderstanding: Quest to Bridge the Muslim/Christian Divide. Here Sijlander works hard, is pressed hard within himself by a series of insights, to find significant tracts of common ground between Christianity and Islam. More common ground than I thought possible. Perhaps too much common ground for many Christians?
These are not idle matters. Since I wrote my first post in this series (the length of which I know not), we have had the atrocities in Sri Lanka in which innocent people, including innocent Christians going about their Pascha worship, were targeted for death and destruction, by extremists claiming the cause of Islam as motivation and seemingly spurred to sacrifice their own lives by an Islamic understanding of martyrdom and paradise.
There is, of course, no common ground, no bridge to be built from a Cragg-Sijlander approach to Islam in general to the particularly murderous machinations of the Sri Lankan bombers. But where the Cragg-Sijlander approach is vital is for our relationships with 99.9999% of Muslims who have no thought of violence in the cause of their faith and only desire to live in peace with their neighbours. [Following a comment, see below, with my reply, I need to nuance that last sentence! Clearly, if we take account of all violence across the Islamic world (e.g. Muslims fighting Muslims) and across the world, then a much larger percentage of Muslims are prepared to take up weapons in the struggle for their faith, either in reality (e.g. Hamas v Israel) or in a theoretical stance (e.g. fighting back against, say, American (perceived as "Christian") troops invading an Islamic country). My focus here is on the willingness to indiscriminately bomb or shoot non-Muslims: by my reckoning, a very small percentage of Muslims are willing to do that; by far the overwhelming majority wish to live in peace with their neighbours, whether in Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Britain, France, etc.]
If we are not to read the violence of the 0.0001% into the lives of the Muslims we encounter at work, at school, in the supermarket, on the bus, we need an approach which looks for common ground, for the bridges between us.
I have only started reading Sijlander's book. I am looking forward to finishing it!
Monday, April 29, 2019
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Resurrection Week 2019
The following was posted by me a few years back, though here it is expanded and edited slightly from that original post.
This is the season once again to reflect on the sacred mysteries of Holy Week and Pascha.
I suggest we work backwards from the Resurrection. If Jesus had died on the cross and that was the end of his life, what would his legacy have been? Not much, I suggest. A paragraph, perhaps, in the history of impact-making rabbis of Israel under the Romans, mentioning some notable healings and memorable insights into the rule of God in the world. Maybe today scholars of Judaism would produce a monograph or two on ancient magicians among the rabbis, notably Jeshua ben Joseph. Perhaps there would be a brief headline-making news item that the Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran had been identified by an unusually radical scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls as that same Jeshua ben Joseph.
It is the resurrection which makes the difference here, which sets the Jesus movement on a trajectory which will see Christianity separate from Judaism and which drives the leaders of that movement to see in Jesus things which were not obvious to them when they walked the dusty roads of Palestine with him. We read the gospels historically forwards from Jesus' beginnings to his end because that is the way the narrative is told, but theologically we should begin with the resurrection and read backwards. What was it about the resurrection which led to the telling of the story of Jesus in the way that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and, also, Paul told it?
That is why, to offer a first reflection this Resurrection Week first week of Eastertide), the question of the witness to the resurrection is vital to Christianity. Deny the resurrection and everything about our claims to truth falls over. Personally I find the variations between the gospels, 1 Corinthians 15 and, say, Acts 10:34-43 puzzling. Why isn't the account of that collective written witness, bound in the one New Testament, more consistent?
Modern skeptics have driven a horse and cart full of doubts through the lack of consistency (even, some might say, "actual inconsistency if not downright contradiction"). Yet closer inspection yields more consistency than some are prepared to allow. At the bedrock of each gospel narrative is the empty tomb. They are consistent on the fact that the crucified body of Jesus was placed in the tomb, on the third day the tomb was empty, and thereafter the risen (i.e. raised up from the tomb) Jesus appeared to people.
This, further, is consistent with two accounts which do not explicitly mention the emptiness of the tomb, Acts 10:34-43 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. What is 'raised on the third day' phrasing in these passages about but an act of raising from the dead, a raising of the physical body of Jesus which leaves the tomb empty. (I suggest we can talk in this way and still have a debate about what kind of "body" the earthly body of Jesus was transformed to, in the act of resurrection, noting that the resurrection accounts attest to a new body of Jesus which is different to the former body, e.g. appearing at will in an otherwise locked room).
Acts 10:40 beautifully distinguishes between the raising and the subsequent appearances, 'God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear.'
So also 1 Corinthians 15:4-5, 'he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve'. If the tomb was not empty why mention the act of raising from the dead and not proceed straight to the accounts of the appearances of Jesus?
Running these accounts together, with all their variations, I suggest we can account for the variations in a couple of ways.
First and foremost, Jesus appeared on a number of occasions to a range of witnesses. Between the four gospel writers and Paul's 'tradition' account in 1 Corinthians 15 we receive a set of accounts with heavy selection at work. Paul's tradition is focused on the appearances to the leadership of the Jesus movement, with the exception of the appearance to 'more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time'. The four gospels uniformly emphasise the immediate witnesses to the resurrection, women. Matthew, Mark and Luke (distinct from Acts 1) move quickly from the immediate experience of the risen Jesus to his departure (albeit somewhat implicitly in Mark). Only Acts 1 and John 21 imply a period of more than a few days or weeks in which Jesus remained with his disciples. Together these witnesses to the variety of Jesus' appearances do not provide anything like a coherent account of the history of Jesus between resurrection and ascension. That, perhaps, leads us to a second reason for the variations between accounts.
Secondly, the gospel writers in their gospels are focused on providing for their readers an account of the ordinary human life of Jesus, prior to death. The continuing presence of the risen Jesus in his ongoing movement, via the Holy Spirit, perhaps made unnecessary a prolonged account of the period between resurrection and ascension. (Luke, in his 'sequel' to the life of Jesus unveils in Acts many ways in which the risen Jesus post-ascension continues to engage with the movement). What their accounts needed was a wrap up and what we find is that the accounts of the resurrection are overlaid with conclusions to the gospels as a whole (or, in the case of Mark 16:1-8, we might say, denuded of a conclusion via intentional abruptness in the closing of the account - a kind of anti-conclusion).
Thus Matthew draws us rapidly to the Great Commission and Luke does so similarly, but in a challenging manner because in Luke 24 he almost conveys the impression that a long day (of about 25 hours?) elapses from raising to commissioning-and-ascending whereas Acts 1 is explicit that the period was 40 days. (Luke also manages the most flagrant rewriting of gospel tradition when he converts Mark's "you will see him in Galilee" into "as he said in Galilee", Mark 16:7//Luke 24:6, in the cause of emphasising the resurrected Jesus in Jerusalem and its immediate environs).
John works in a different manner, having proposed through his gospel that everything is going on all at once ("my hour"): death and departure, cross and glory, descent and ascent. Thus his Pentecost occurs on the day of Resurrection but there is a epilogue or two as a week elapses before the appearance to Thomas and further time before the appearance to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. But, like his evangelical colleagues, John is always wrapping up his gospel through the last chapter of the narrative (20) and through the epilogue to the main narrative (21): so there is a closing word to skeptics among the believers via the encounter with Thomas, then there is a word, via John 21, to Christian groups divided over leadership of the church as the first century comes to a close.
In the end, then, I am arguing that the accounts of the resurrection, between the gospels, Acts and 1 Corinthians have a coherency when we dig beneath the varied ways of wrapping up the narratives of Jesus' earthly life, acknowledge the basic facts which are shared (principally the emptiness of the tomb and the sheer multiplicity of appearances), and allow that different things mattered to different writers.
We need not doubt that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. That is the witness of the apostles. But what was the impact of the resurrection on understanding who Jesus was prior to death and who Jesus is after resurrection? Jesus rising from the dead in the midst of ancient Judaism in Israel in the first century AD was like a fox in a chicken coop. A certain theological mayhem ensued. The epistles effectively tell us about the mayhem and that it was a good kind of mayhem!
My own Epilogue to this post: I am fascinated by what - after many years of study - still strikes me afresh from familiar scriptures. In this case, preparing to preach from John 20:1-18, the three occasions in which Mary fixes on the explanation for the empty tomb that the body of Jesus has been removed by a group of people (20:2, 13, 15). I had not previously noticed that this is a threefold "fixation" of Mary.
On the one hand Mary is being reasonable: if the tomb Jesus was buried in was one found at short notice, then it likely was temporary, and thus some expectation of him being moved to a permanent tomb.
On the other hand, through repetition, John the narrator shows that he is aware that there are various explanations for a tomb devoid of the body which was placed in it. (Matthew 28 provides another one: that the body has been stolen, rather than intentionally placed elsewhere by those who care for Jesus). Thus the narration John provides is an assertion of a contrary possibility: the tomb was empty, the grave clothes were found folded in a certain manner, because the "impossible" had happened, Jesus' body was raised to new, resurrection life.
But theologically John is also making another point: the resurrection is about what we see and are prepared to believe. Mary keeps seeing the empty tomb and believing the explanation is quite humanly ordinary: the body has been moved to another tomb. Even when she sees Jesus, she does not see him but believes she is seeing the gardener; and the gardener, surely, knows what has happened to the body. Jesus both invites and provokes Mary to see differently and thus to believe differently. With one word, her name, he alters her perception. She sees Jesus, not the gardener. She believes he has been raised from the dead. And critical to the transformation of her sight and her belief is the intervention of Jesus: he creates belief in her.
Implicitly, John is saying to his readers, perhaps some six to seven decades after the death of Jesus: you do not need to have experienced the physical or "physical" Jesus for yourself: even if you had, you might not have recognised Jesus. Mary did not. What you need is to be brought to faith in Jesus as risen and eternally alive to God and to you. And this gift of faith comes from the risen Jesus himself and is available to all whom he calls by name.
Explicitly this is also brought out in the encounter with "doubting" Thomas: Blessed are those who have not seen me, yet believe in me (20:29).
Of course this is not so good for "apologetics" to the extent that apologetics works hard to prove that Jesus was raised from the dead as an historical fact and thus we ought to believe in Jesus as the one who is vindicated by God through resurrection as the Son of God, as the Saviour of the world. This is much more "existential" and a bit tautological: I believe Jesus was raised from the dead because the living (raised) Jesus has met me and called me to him self.
Apologetics is important! So is a lively regard for existential encounter with the risen Christ!
An Epilogue to an epilogue ...
Partly prompted by this Psephizo post on the resurrection narratives, I have done some more thinking about the five accounts of the resurrection (Matthew to John, 1 Corinthians 15).
1. Whatever we make of common historical threads running through the five accounts, we have to take account of literary freedoms being exercised.
2. A starting point for recognising such literary freedoms is Luke 24:6 where Luke manipulates Mark 16:7, from the angel's direction to head to Galilee and there to meet the risen Jesus (so, also, Matthew 28:7), to "Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee ...". Why does Luke make free with Mark? Luke could be the more accurate historian and think Mark is wrong (i.e. Mark has received and passed on wrong information) but Luke does seem intent in his gospel on making Jerusalem the "centre" of God's great work through the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. By altering Mark's account, he offers a coherent account of the empty tomb (in Jerusalem) and appearances of the risen Jesus (in Jerusalem, or nearby, at Emmaus) on the same day as the empty tomb is discovered.
3. By contrast, Matthew offers an incoherent account in Matthew 28:7-10. In verse 7 (as noted above), Matthew follows Mark: head to Galilee to see the risen Jesus. But in verses 9 and 10, the risen Jesus meets the women on their way home from the empty tomb. Matthew, like Luke and John, knows of at least one Jerusalem-based appearance of the risen Jesus and it occurs before the disciples encounter the risen Jesus in Galilee (28:16-20).
4. But is Matthew himself being literarily creative when he offers an account of a dramatic earthquake leading to multiple resurrections of the dead (27:51-53)? No other resurrection account includes this story, yet it must have been a significant impact on the situation in Jerusalem.
5. Then we might note that despite Matthew, Luke, and John offering commissioning scenes with Jesus and the disciples, not one of the scenes matches another in respect of location or words said by Jesus. (Various explanations can be brought to bear on these discrepancies, so we can accept them as less than "contradicting" each other; but they are discrepancies which Christian apologists - in my view - are liable to skirt over. As I often do myself!)
6. What about John in his accounts in chapters 20 and 21? Apart from a few features such as at least one woman going to the tomb and discovering it was empty, Jesus appearing unexpectedly in the presence of the disciples and greeting them with "Peace ...," and chapter 21's encounter being located in Galilee, not one aspect of his accounts tallies directly with the other three gospels or with 1 Corinthians 15. How much of these chapters is "history" and how much is "literature"?
7. Nevertheless, the combined testimony of all the accounts (including Mark 16:9-20) is to the conviction that God raised Jesus from the dead and that the raising was not a resuscitation but a raising to victorious, new and everlasting life, exalted/ascended to the presence of God the heavenly Father of Jesus.
This is the season once again to reflect on the sacred mysteries of Holy Week and Pascha.
I suggest we work backwards from the Resurrection. If Jesus had died on the cross and that was the end of his life, what would his legacy have been? Not much, I suggest. A paragraph, perhaps, in the history of impact-making rabbis of Israel under the Romans, mentioning some notable healings and memorable insights into the rule of God in the world. Maybe today scholars of Judaism would produce a monograph or two on ancient magicians among the rabbis, notably Jeshua ben Joseph. Perhaps there would be a brief headline-making news item that the Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran had been identified by an unusually radical scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls as that same Jeshua ben Joseph.
It is the resurrection which makes the difference here, which sets the Jesus movement on a trajectory which will see Christianity separate from Judaism and which drives the leaders of that movement to see in Jesus things which were not obvious to them when they walked the dusty roads of Palestine with him. We read the gospels historically forwards from Jesus' beginnings to his end because that is the way the narrative is told, but theologically we should begin with the resurrection and read backwards. What was it about the resurrection which led to the telling of the story of Jesus in the way that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and, also, Paul told it?
That is why, to offer a first reflection this Resurrection Week first week of Eastertide), the question of the witness to the resurrection is vital to Christianity. Deny the resurrection and everything about our claims to truth falls over. Personally I find the variations between the gospels, 1 Corinthians 15 and, say, Acts 10:34-43 puzzling. Why isn't the account of that collective written witness, bound in the one New Testament, more consistent?
Modern skeptics have driven a horse and cart full of doubts through the lack of consistency (even, some might say, "actual inconsistency if not downright contradiction"). Yet closer inspection yields more consistency than some are prepared to allow. At the bedrock of each gospel narrative is the empty tomb. They are consistent on the fact that the crucified body of Jesus was placed in the tomb, on the third day the tomb was empty, and thereafter the risen (i.e. raised up from the tomb) Jesus appeared to people.
This, further, is consistent with two accounts which do not explicitly mention the emptiness of the tomb, Acts 10:34-43 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. What is 'raised on the third day' phrasing in these passages about but an act of raising from the dead, a raising of the physical body of Jesus which leaves the tomb empty. (I suggest we can talk in this way and still have a debate about what kind of "body" the earthly body of Jesus was transformed to, in the act of resurrection, noting that the resurrection accounts attest to a new body of Jesus which is different to the former body, e.g. appearing at will in an otherwise locked room).
Acts 10:40 beautifully distinguishes between the raising and the subsequent appearances, 'God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear.'
So also 1 Corinthians 15:4-5, 'he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve'. If the tomb was not empty why mention the act of raising from the dead and not proceed straight to the accounts of the appearances of Jesus?
Running these accounts together, with all their variations, I suggest we can account for the variations in a couple of ways.
First and foremost, Jesus appeared on a number of occasions to a range of witnesses. Between the four gospel writers and Paul's 'tradition' account in 1 Corinthians 15 we receive a set of accounts with heavy selection at work. Paul's tradition is focused on the appearances to the leadership of the Jesus movement, with the exception of the appearance to 'more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time'. The four gospels uniformly emphasise the immediate witnesses to the resurrection, women. Matthew, Mark and Luke (distinct from Acts 1) move quickly from the immediate experience of the risen Jesus to his departure (albeit somewhat implicitly in Mark). Only Acts 1 and John 21 imply a period of more than a few days or weeks in which Jesus remained with his disciples. Together these witnesses to the variety of Jesus' appearances do not provide anything like a coherent account of the history of Jesus between resurrection and ascension. That, perhaps, leads us to a second reason for the variations between accounts.
Secondly, the gospel writers in their gospels are focused on providing for their readers an account of the ordinary human life of Jesus, prior to death. The continuing presence of the risen Jesus in his ongoing movement, via the Holy Spirit, perhaps made unnecessary a prolonged account of the period between resurrection and ascension. (Luke, in his 'sequel' to the life of Jesus unveils in Acts many ways in which the risen Jesus post-ascension continues to engage with the movement). What their accounts needed was a wrap up and what we find is that the accounts of the resurrection are overlaid with conclusions to the gospels as a whole (or, in the case of Mark 16:1-8, we might say, denuded of a conclusion via intentional abruptness in the closing of the account - a kind of anti-conclusion).
Thus Matthew draws us rapidly to the Great Commission and Luke does so similarly, but in a challenging manner because in Luke 24 he almost conveys the impression that a long day (of about 25 hours?) elapses from raising to commissioning-and-ascending whereas Acts 1 is explicit that the period was 40 days. (Luke also manages the most flagrant rewriting of gospel tradition when he converts Mark's "you will see him in Galilee" into "as he said in Galilee", Mark 16:7//Luke 24:6, in the cause of emphasising the resurrected Jesus in Jerusalem and its immediate environs).
John works in a different manner, having proposed through his gospel that everything is going on all at once ("my hour"): death and departure, cross and glory, descent and ascent. Thus his Pentecost occurs on the day of Resurrection but there is a epilogue or two as a week elapses before the appearance to Thomas and further time before the appearance to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. But, like his evangelical colleagues, John is always wrapping up his gospel through the last chapter of the narrative (20) and through the epilogue to the main narrative (21): so there is a closing word to skeptics among the believers via the encounter with Thomas, then there is a word, via John 21, to Christian groups divided over leadership of the church as the first century comes to a close.
In the end, then, I am arguing that the accounts of the resurrection, between the gospels, Acts and 1 Corinthians have a coherency when we dig beneath the varied ways of wrapping up the narratives of Jesus' earthly life, acknowledge the basic facts which are shared (principally the emptiness of the tomb and the sheer multiplicity of appearances), and allow that different things mattered to different writers.
We need not doubt that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. That is the witness of the apostles. But what was the impact of the resurrection on understanding who Jesus was prior to death and who Jesus is after resurrection? Jesus rising from the dead in the midst of ancient Judaism in Israel in the first century AD was like a fox in a chicken coop. A certain theological mayhem ensued. The epistles effectively tell us about the mayhem and that it was a good kind of mayhem!
My own Epilogue to this post: I am fascinated by what - after many years of study - still strikes me afresh from familiar scriptures. In this case, preparing to preach from John 20:1-18, the three occasions in which Mary fixes on the explanation for the empty tomb that the body of Jesus has been removed by a group of people (20:2, 13, 15). I had not previously noticed that this is a threefold "fixation" of Mary.
On the one hand Mary is being reasonable: if the tomb Jesus was buried in was one found at short notice, then it likely was temporary, and thus some expectation of him being moved to a permanent tomb.
On the other hand, through repetition, John the narrator shows that he is aware that there are various explanations for a tomb devoid of the body which was placed in it. (Matthew 28 provides another one: that the body has been stolen, rather than intentionally placed elsewhere by those who care for Jesus). Thus the narration John provides is an assertion of a contrary possibility: the tomb was empty, the grave clothes were found folded in a certain manner, because the "impossible" had happened, Jesus' body was raised to new, resurrection life.
But theologically John is also making another point: the resurrection is about what we see and are prepared to believe. Mary keeps seeing the empty tomb and believing the explanation is quite humanly ordinary: the body has been moved to another tomb. Even when she sees Jesus, she does not see him but believes she is seeing the gardener; and the gardener, surely, knows what has happened to the body. Jesus both invites and provokes Mary to see differently and thus to believe differently. With one word, her name, he alters her perception. She sees Jesus, not the gardener. She believes he has been raised from the dead. And critical to the transformation of her sight and her belief is the intervention of Jesus: he creates belief in her.
Implicitly, John is saying to his readers, perhaps some six to seven decades after the death of Jesus: you do not need to have experienced the physical or "physical" Jesus for yourself: even if you had, you might not have recognised Jesus. Mary did not. What you need is to be brought to faith in Jesus as risen and eternally alive to God and to you. And this gift of faith comes from the risen Jesus himself and is available to all whom he calls by name.
Explicitly this is also brought out in the encounter with "doubting" Thomas: Blessed are those who have not seen me, yet believe in me (20:29).
Of course this is not so good for "apologetics" to the extent that apologetics works hard to prove that Jesus was raised from the dead as an historical fact and thus we ought to believe in Jesus as the one who is vindicated by God through resurrection as the Son of God, as the Saviour of the world. This is much more "existential" and a bit tautological: I believe Jesus was raised from the dead because the living (raised) Jesus has met me and called me to him self.
Apologetics is important! So is a lively regard for existential encounter with the risen Christ!
An Epilogue to an epilogue ...
Partly prompted by this Psephizo post on the resurrection narratives, I have done some more thinking about the five accounts of the resurrection (Matthew to John, 1 Corinthians 15).
1. Whatever we make of common historical threads running through the five accounts, we have to take account of literary freedoms being exercised.
2. A starting point for recognising such literary freedoms is Luke 24:6 where Luke manipulates Mark 16:7, from the angel's direction to head to Galilee and there to meet the risen Jesus (so, also, Matthew 28:7), to "Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee ...". Why does Luke make free with Mark? Luke could be the more accurate historian and think Mark is wrong (i.e. Mark has received and passed on wrong information) but Luke does seem intent in his gospel on making Jerusalem the "centre" of God's great work through the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. By altering Mark's account, he offers a coherent account of the empty tomb (in Jerusalem) and appearances of the risen Jesus (in Jerusalem, or nearby, at Emmaus) on the same day as the empty tomb is discovered.
3. By contrast, Matthew offers an incoherent account in Matthew 28:7-10. In verse 7 (as noted above), Matthew follows Mark: head to Galilee to see the risen Jesus. But in verses 9 and 10, the risen Jesus meets the women on their way home from the empty tomb. Matthew, like Luke and John, knows of at least one Jerusalem-based appearance of the risen Jesus and it occurs before the disciples encounter the risen Jesus in Galilee (28:16-20).
4. But is Matthew himself being literarily creative when he offers an account of a dramatic earthquake leading to multiple resurrections of the dead (27:51-53)? No other resurrection account includes this story, yet it must have been a significant impact on the situation in Jerusalem.
5. Then we might note that despite Matthew, Luke, and John offering commissioning scenes with Jesus and the disciples, not one of the scenes matches another in respect of location or words said by Jesus. (Various explanations can be brought to bear on these discrepancies, so we can accept them as less than "contradicting" each other; but they are discrepancies which Christian apologists - in my view - are liable to skirt over. As I often do myself!)
6. What about John in his accounts in chapters 20 and 21? Apart from a few features such as at least one woman going to the tomb and discovering it was empty, Jesus appearing unexpectedly in the presence of the disciples and greeting them with "Peace ...," and chapter 21's encounter being located in Galilee, not one aspect of his accounts tallies directly with the other three gospels or with 1 Corinthians 15. How much of these chapters is "history" and how much is "literature"?
7. Nevertheless, the combined testimony of all the accounts (including Mark 16:9-20) is to the conviction that God raised Jesus from the dead and that the raising was not a resuscitation but a raising to victorious, new and everlasting life, exalted/ascended to the presence of God the heavenly Father of Jesus.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Holy Week 2019
I need to be realistic. I am not going to get a second post in a proposed series on Islam out this week. Possibly not next week either, but I will have time to do some reading next week in preparation for post number 2, perhaps on Monday 29 April.
Meantime, it is Holy Week, and, very sadly, as I write, there is news of Notre Dame, Paris, on fire - and a huge fire at that. An amazing cathedral and one I was privileged to visit in 2015. But there is also a sense in which the world of religion is on fire this week.
Particularly Down Under where Israel Folau, gifted and prodigious Australian rugby player, has just been sacked by Rugby Australia. Their grounds for sacking focuses on a breach of code of conduct in respect of social media postings (and, on the face of it, having given Folau a huge break a year ago when he cause significant controversy, they are right to sack him on these grounds because he has defied RA as his employer). But what he Tweeted - about various kinds of sinners, including homosexuals, going to hell - has caused offence and brought on widespread condemnation across Australian and New Zealand mainstream and social media, while simultaneously raising further debate about free speech versus hate speech. For different Christian responses, from significant Australian Christian voices, read David Ould and Brian Houston. I think it reasonable to say that whatever Israel Folau thought he was doing, he didn't think deeply enough about what helps the whole Christian cause Down Under in respect of preaching the gospel of grace.
Here in Aotearoa NZ, many Christians, arguably even over 90% of Christians, are on fire because of a bill bearing down upon us which would legalise euthanasia. Except the bill is messy and ambiguous and seems to offer some kind of "on a wing and a prayer" approach to future termination of life. Our parliament has done wonderfully well, with great efficiency, in passing a gun control bill in record time. It must do good and not bad on this matter of euthanasia!
OK need to close. I am due to meet the President of Religious Affairs, Turkey, this morning. Interestingly, according to some preparation material, this state department produces a sermon each week for reading out across thousands of mosques in Turkey. Now that is a thought for a Diocese ... :)
Finally, social media is no place to debate the intricacies of religion is my "conclusion of the week." It is a bear pit in which speech becomes a form of shouting, all too quickly. But yesterday I came across a wonderful thread which summarises the theology of Origen, including his extraordinary vision for the universality of divine love. The thread is not only wonderful for its summarising power, but also for its recognition of how Origen's theology necessarily must engage with Augustine's.
Here is a selection to ponder during this week of holy devotion to Jesus:
Meantime, it is Holy Week, and, very sadly, as I write, there is news of Notre Dame, Paris, on fire - and a huge fire at that. An amazing cathedral and one I was privileged to visit in 2015. But there is also a sense in which the world of religion is on fire this week.
Particularly Down Under where Israel Folau, gifted and prodigious Australian rugby player, has just been sacked by Rugby Australia. Their grounds for sacking focuses on a breach of code of conduct in respect of social media postings (and, on the face of it, having given Folau a huge break a year ago when he cause significant controversy, they are right to sack him on these grounds because he has defied RA as his employer). But what he Tweeted - about various kinds of sinners, including homosexuals, going to hell - has caused offence and brought on widespread condemnation across Australian and New Zealand mainstream and social media, while simultaneously raising further debate about free speech versus hate speech. For different Christian responses, from significant Australian Christian voices, read David Ould and Brian Houston. I think it reasonable to say that whatever Israel Folau thought he was doing, he didn't think deeply enough about what helps the whole Christian cause Down Under in respect of preaching the gospel of grace.
Here in Aotearoa NZ, many Christians, arguably even over 90% of Christians, are on fire because of a bill bearing down upon us which would legalise euthanasia. Except the bill is messy and ambiguous and seems to offer some kind of "on a wing and a prayer" approach to future termination of life. Our parliament has done wonderfully well, with great efficiency, in passing a gun control bill in record time. It must do good and not bad on this matter of euthanasia!
OK need to close. I am due to meet the President of Religious Affairs, Turkey, this morning. Interestingly, according to some preparation material, this state department produces a sermon each week for reading out across thousands of mosques in Turkey. Now that is a thought for a Diocese ... :)
Finally, social media is no place to debate the intricacies of religion is my "conclusion of the week." It is a bear pit in which speech becomes a form of shouting, all too quickly. But yesterday I came across a wonderful thread which summarises the theology of Origen, including his extraordinary vision for the universality of divine love. The thread is not only wonderful for its summarising power, but also for its recognition of how Origen's theology necessarily must engage with Augustine's.
Here is a selection to ponder during this week of holy devotion to Jesus:
Monday, April 8, 2019
Thoughts on Islam (1)
Following up some requests here and there for basic information etc re Islam, following the terrible events of 15 March 2019, it seems practicable, at least regards time, for me to devote a few weekly posts to Islam and my understanding of it.
Post number 1, today, proceeds from a question about "God" according to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Is it the same God?
(I guess this is pretty much the same question as whether Christians can call God, "Allah" or not.)
This is a fraught question because whether we answer Yes or No, there are ramifications!
"Yes, it is the same God" feeds the great and attractive myth of modern, Western secularism, that all religions are the same, and why can we not all get along, e.g. making cathedrals into inter faith venues.
"No, it is not the same 'God'" feeds - potentially tragically - into the clash of religions, if not civilizations, nations and races, because it fosters difference in society, especially in societies in which there is not a settled state of respect and reconciliation between races, religions, nations. The kind of difference, now experienced sadly in Christchurch, wherein a "white supremacist" feels emboldened to massacre Muslims.
The fact of the matter is that there is no easy, straightforward answer.
Consider the following aspects of the matter:
1. Yes, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are "Abrahamic religions," each affirming the significance of Abraham as an ancient patriarch of the respective faiths, and thus each affirming the God of Abraham is the God whom their adherents worship. (In this sense God = Jehovah, Allah, Theos.)
2. Yes, all three faiths are monotheistic, affirming that there is only one God, that God is one (indivisible), and that the one God is God of everything (the whole universe, or, if you will, multiverse). That is, not only do the three faiths deny that other gods exist, they also deny that the God they worship is in any sense merely nationalistic (God of Israel) or tribal (God of the Arabs ... or of Englishmen).
3. Yes, on the particular matter of the use of the word "Allah" for "God", Arab Christians use this term as do Arab Muslims. (It is a bit trickier in Malaysia where there is a ban on the use of the word "Allah" in Christian Scriptures published there.)
4. No, the three faiths do not agree on what they believe about the God of Abraham. In particular, neither Judaism nor Islam accepts the Christian claim that the fullest revelation of God is found in Jesus Christ, that consequentially God is believed to be One-yet-Three, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. That is, when we move beyond the bare name, "God", beyond the bare claim, that God is One (without rival, indivisible), into description of God, our understanding of "who" God is, which is also a claim about "how" God relates to us and us to God, then there are significant differences between the three Abrahamic faiths.
That is, the answer to the question at the beginning of the post is, "Yes and No."
But could we also say the "Yes" is very important? When we emphasise the "Yes" we are open to finding what we have in common, to seeing the points of respective theologies which we can unite around, and generally to appreciating what each faith might teach the others about the Godness of God.
Post number 1, today, proceeds from a question about "God" according to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Is it the same God?
(I guess this is pretty much the same question as whether Christians can call God, "Allah" or not.)
This is a fraught question because whether we answer Yes or No, there are ramifications!
"Yes, it is the same God" feeds the great and attractive myth of modern, Western secularism, that all religions are the same, and why can we not all get along, e.g. making cathedrals into inter faith venues.
"No, it is not the same 'God'" feeds - potentially tragically - into the clash of religions, if not civilizations, nations and races, because it fosters difference in society, especially in societies in which there is not a settled state of respect and reconciliation between races, religions, nations. The kind of difference, now experienced sadly in Christchurch, wherein a "white supremacist" feels emboldened to massacre Muslims.
The fact of the matter is that there is no easy, straightforward answer.
Consider the following aspects of the matter:
1. Yes, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are "Abrahamic religions," each affirming the significance of Abraham as an ancient patriarch of the respective faiths, and thus each affirming the God of Abraham is the God whom their adherents worship. (In this sense God = Jehovah, Allah, Theos.)
2. Yes, all three faiths are monotheistic, affirming that there is only one God, that God is one (indivisible), and that the one God is God of everything (the whole universe, or, if you will, multiverse). That is, not only do the three faiths deny that other gods exist, they also deny that the God they worship is in any sense merely nationalistic (God of Israel) or tribal (God of the Arabs ... or of Englishmen).
3. Yes, on the particular matter of the use of the word "Allah" for "God", Arab Christians use this term as do Arab Muslims. (It is a bit trickier in Malaysia where there is a ban on the use of the word "Allah" in Christian Scriptures published there.)
4. No, the three faiths do not agree on what they believe about the God of Abraham. In particular, neither Judaism nor Islam accepts the Christian claim that the fullest revelation of God is found in Jesus Christ, that consequentially God is believed to be One-yet-Three, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. That is, when we move beyond the bare name, "God", beyond the bare claim, that God is One (without rival, indivisible), into description of God, our understanding of "who" God is, which is also a claim about "how" God relates to us and us to God, then there are significant differences between the three Abrahamic faiths.
That is, the answer to the question at the beginning of the post is, "Yes and No."
But could we also say the "Yes" is very important? When we emphasise the "Yes" we are open to finding what we have in common, to seeing the points of respective theologies which we can unite around, and generally to appreciating what each faith might teach the others about the Godness of God.
Monday, April 1, 2019
Islamophilia or Islamophobia?
Is Islam to be loved or feared?
Answers on a postcard, otherwise you will need to write a very long book to give a full, comprehensive answer to this challenging question. (The postcard, of course, might have the word "both" on it.)
I would love to say heaps here on the blog but time runneth out faster than the sand in an hourglass, but perhaps I could offer two observations:
- since 15 March 2019, every contact I have had with a Muslim in Christchurch has been a connection with a person full of love, compassion, and genuine commitment to peace, unity and community well-being.
- last week, not that far from NZ, in global terms, the Sultan of Brunei instituted the death penalty for homosexuals and adulterers, as an expression of his commitment to instituting Sharia, the somewhat tough edge of Islamic law.
Is Islam to be loved or feared?
The least we can say and do is to love Muslims!
Answers on a postcard, otherwise you will need to write a very long book to give a full, comprehensive answer to this challenging question. (The postcard, of course, might have the word "both" on it.)
I would love to say heaps here on the blog but time runneth out faster than the sand in an hourglass, but perhaps I could offer two observations:
- since 15 March 2019, every contact I have had with a Muslim in Christchurch has been a connection with a person full of love, compassion, and genuine commitment to peace, unity and community well-being.
- last week, not that far from NZ, in global terms, the Sultan of Brunei instituted the death penalty for homosexuals and adulterers, as an expression of his commitment to instituting Sharia, the somewhat tough edge of Islamic law.
Is Islam to be loved or feared?
The least we can say and do is to love Muslims!
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