Look it could be a very long blogpost if I tried to answer the question in the subject line with appropriate comprehensiveness and scholarly depth, so let's offer as succinct a partial answer as possible!
First, this three word question arguably lies at the heart of Pope Francis' papacy and he tried to answer the question affirmatively. He wanted the church to change and he knew that ecclesiastical change occurs as individuals change. Although his proposals for change had doctrinal implications, he never changed (i.e. never presided over change of) any doctrine; but he was keen on a church changed its self-understanding. For example, less concerned with doctrine, more concerned with practice; less focused on outward dress, more attention to inward demeanour. All, of course, in pursuit of the body of Christ looking like the gentle, merciful Jesus of the gospels. As a Jesuit he was schooled in the conviction that drawing close to Jesus, allowing the gaze of Jesus on one's life, bringing the whole of one's life before Jesus in "examination" was crucial to transformation of life (cf. Ignatian "Spiritual Exercises).
If nothing else, and with acknowledgement that most of the current voting cardinals have been appointed by Francis, the selection of the new Pope will tell us something about the extent of change he has wrought across the whole Roman church.
Incidentally, there are many things being said about Francis' papacy and one starting point is to head to First Things where various assessments can be found and perhaps the best and fairest of them is by Robert Barron (and mentioned already in comments to my previous post).
For a Kiwi comment or two on the funeral mass itself and what will be looked for in a new pope, see what Cardinal John Dew, and our Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, have to say, via RNZ News.
Secondly, and still in Rome, our three word question relates to President Trump himself. Perhaps the most extraordinary photo of the day of the funeral mass - when amazing photos have been taken, not least of the vast congregation gathered - is the photo of Presidents Trump and Zelensky in earnest, peace seeking conversation seated in St. Peter's itself. (Photo from here, which acknowledges Associated Press.)
"I rejected Catholicism while still at school, but this wasn’t a casual schoolboy rebellion. I struggled with the contradictions, as I saw them, inside my faith. God is omniscient and omnipotent. He created the universe, from the laws of physics and the architecture of the big bang all the way through to my DNA that formed the instant I came into existence."From that moment until now everything that has happened to me has been a product of His creation and my response to that creation. And the atoms and laws of the universe that constitute my being exist only as a result of His actions. Given his omniscience, the path of my life, and afterlife, was known at the instant that He brought the cosmos into being.Given this; how could the Christian Brothers, the denomination responsible for my education, maintain that I possessed free will? Everything that you are in this instant is a product of everything that has happened to you and how you have previously reacted to that stimulus, right back to the involuntary actions from the moment of conception.If God is as defined by Catholicism you have as much free will as a crystal vase tossed from a moving car on a trajectory towards the asphalt. There were other issues but I entered adulthood free from the moral restraints imposed, and demanded, by a belief in the teaching of Christ."
On this logic, people may change if there is freewill and no God! Nevertheless, I think that Grant simplifies the mystery of predestination and freewill (if you are a Christian) or of determinism and freewill (if you are a philosopher).
Nevertheless Grant later in the column affirms the good role faith has played in changing people:
"Yet the longer it has existed, the better it has become. Christianity has changed those who believed but has also been changed and the fragmentation of Christianity has contributed to modern religious intuitions reflecting the values of the communities."
Grant concludes his reflections with this thoughtful question (my bold):
"We are increasingly disengaged from the religious foundations that are responsible for the best aspects of our civilisation. Pope Francis was alive to this issue and often spoke about a spiritual desertification that has come about as “…the result of attempt by some societies to build without God, or to eliminate their Christian roots.” He concluded that the Christian world was becoming sterile, depleting itself like overexploited ground where the soils once deep Christianity was being denuded.
The solution proposed by Francis is a return to faith but for many that is intellectually impossible. So we must confront the great dilemma of our age; How do you prevent a secular society degenerating into a Nihilist one when we have relied upon religion to provide the moral basis of our civilisation?"
Can people change?
Answer: I hope so. Change is desperately needed!
52 comments:
If Damien Grant wonders how or whether he has free will, perhaps he wasn't paying attention too closely in his Christian Doctrine classes (which is understandable in a boy of 13 or 14). Or maybe the Christian Brothers never seriously tried to teach him substance ontology - which would also be understandable because the subject is complex beyond words.
Grant appears to have a materialist and reductionist understanding of the nature of human beings - which is certainly how modern biology and a lot of modern psychology function. (Ian McGilchrist is an interesting exception today.) However, Catholic teaching has always been that human beings are a two-substance union of an immaterial soul (anima) united to a material body, the body being created by our parents, while God either directly (creationist) or indirectly (traducionist) creates our souls at conception.
Modern secularists deny this, of course, holding that humans are nothing other than material animals and our thoughts, wills and desires are nothing other than the epiphenomena of brain activity. Some atheist philosophers of mind (e.g. the ironically named Churchlands) go so far as to deny that consciousness actually exists. (Or at least, they think that they don't think - I think.) A good place to start would be J. P. Moreland's books on the soul, or Edward Feser's 'Philosophy of Mind'.
If one subscribed to a materialist view of human beings AND Newtonian mechanics, I suppose there would be no room for freedom of any kind (although quantum uncertainty lurks everywhere). But against that rigidly deterministic view of human beings, at least two objections appear. First, it certainly *seems* to me that I can choose (in some degree) my actions and that subjective sense never leaves me. Is this self-deception or an instance of what Alvin Plantinga called "properly basic beliefs" - things I know directly (such as my own existence) without external justification? Second, the whole concept of morality and legality that we function with presupposes that human beings are not cattle but rational beings able to choose their actions and thus liable to punishment/blame or reward/praise accordingly. Again, is this deception or truth? Kant, of course, famously struggled with this question in his 'Antinomies' in his contemplation of "the starry heavens above me [operating on Newtonian mechanics] and the moral law within me [with its pressing force]" (Critique of Pure Reason). Pascal also pondered these two realities, but I don't think Kant ever read Pascal, and probably not Dante either, who taught that the same Love "che move il sole e l'altre stelle' also moves the human heart to respond in freedom and joy.
Grant concludes by wondering/worrying if a society that rejects its religious foundations will become 'Nihilist'. It doesn't have to: it is much more likely to become Totalitarian: worshipping the Party (China), the Tribe (racial politics) or Public Safety ('wear your mask and stay indoors!') and destroying human freedom in the process.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Yes, people *can* change. We know this.
Can they change for the *better*.... Yes!
Perhaps the bigger question is, can WE change for the better?
The sooner the Church leads in love, truth, justice and humility, the sooner society is likely to change for the better. Those responsible for choosing church leaders need to take Christ-like character far more seriously in their selection.
A few responses:
1. Is it not deeply offensive to ethical non-believers, as well as offensive to reality, to say that without religion providing “a moral basis” a society or civilization devolves into nihilism? If the point of religion was to lead more ethical lives, it has been a terrible failure! We don’t need religion to behave well.
2. Superficially, we change everyday. Our body is constantly renewing its cells. Trump gets up in the morning not-knowing what he’s going to say or do. That’s what makes him so disruptive and, to others, attractive. But I suppose the change Peter is asking us to consider is deeper than that. Because, in another sense, everything Trump does is true to character. Is deep, characterological change possible? Can we change at a deeper existential level – in the old language, away from sin and to salvation; in newer language, from being centred on a “separate self-sense” (ego) to being centred deeply within God (our true self)? My answer after 47 years, 20 of them working as a psychotherapist, is: no, generally not, such change is very, very difficult, very slow and fragile (and impossible on our own). Sure, we can have moments (peak experiences, New Year’s resolutions, conversion experiences etc), but sooner or later we run out of steam and return to type. To sustain this sort of deep transformative change – that the old language called sanctification or theosis – is very difficult *without committing to a regular practice or rhythm of spiritual life*, including participation in a supportive community, and, perhaps most importantly, participation in the Spirit (the two don’t always go together).
“The people had the scriptures in their possession but they had not turned to the spirit that would let them see where they came from, the spirit of God itself, which is the key to open them.” (George Fox).
“Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:7-10)
3. It does sound that Damien Grant was taught a theology in which God is conceived of as a static, changeless being and ‘prime mover’ in a fairly mechanical universe where everything is known and predetermined. As Thomas Keating has said, “this is useful information as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough!” Certainly, it’s a long way from the radical vulnerability of the crucified God and of a life born out of a Spirit or life-breath that blows wherever it pleases.
Mark
www.tumblingages.co.nz
I doubt Damian Grant was taught much philosophical theology in a Christian Brothers' school, and more's the pity because the adolescent mind forms clear opinions quickly. Scientism is a simple and persuasive philosophy to acquire because it deals in things we can see and touch, and boys are impressed by powerful artefacts like cars and guns. Are teenage boys moved by "the radical vulnerability of the crucified God"? Well, that certainly isn't Catholic doctrine. It's a creation of Jùrgen Moltmann's Hegelianism, not the God of the Scriptures. Thomas Weinandy's book on divine impassibility restates the orthodox doctrine and sharply critiques the philosophy behind Moltmann's tritheism.
The teenager on a spiritual search is more likely to seek out a Pentecostal church where prolonged rock-influenced singing and pasionate preaching are more likely to connect with the young mind and spirit. Teenagers hunger after their own relationship with Christ, and the pastor who can connect with this longing is a rare jewel. The attrition rate from Catholic education is very high, indicating that lessons haven't been learned.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Who indeed can fathom the teenage mind!
But the message of a God who is in solidarity with us - alongside us in our struggles - and who understands suffering because God suffers too (unless that was a virtual Jesus on the cross) is good news for many of us, and, to use a young person's term, more "relatable" than the Prime Mover.
Moltmamn isn't a Hegelian (he's just German). The crucified God is a quote from Martin Luther, but it is really Moltmann's response to the horror of the Holocaust. A God who suffers is now widely accepted and embraced in modern Catholic and process theologies
"Who indeed can fathom the teenage mind!"
Exactly. I saw your comment Mark just after re-reading a description by one of the worst beaten of Smyth's victims, Andy Morse, of his experience as a teenager (Winchester College and then university) with Smyth. He attempted to commit suicide because Smyth had promised him a "special beating" for his 21st birthday (and he was already subject to extremely brutal beatings).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/05/john-smyth-school-predator-beat-five-years/
"Teenagers hunger after their own relationship with Christ, and the pastor who can connect with this longing is a rare jewel."
True William however great care must be taken by other responsible adults to *also* look after them; too many young people have been harmed by such a "jewel".
Was Smyth a sadist or a psychopath? That is so so cruel.
Mark, recently I found the original CH4 'Ungodly Crime' feature when CH4 first broke the Smyth story. Near the beginning there's a tiny segment I've never seen elsewhere (starts 4:05). It's a Winchester College housemaster who got suspicious about Smyth and summoned him for a talk. He confronted Smyth about associating with the good-looking boys. He says as he talked, that Smyth curled himself into the foetal position. Which sounds quite odd - as I listened I wondered what you'd make of it, if anything. The housemaster was very struck by that memory. He says that looking back on it, he probably should've gone straight to the headmaster and said "this man is dangerous".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-tZVXQM-8Q [4:05]
No, Moltmann is certainly Hegelian in his attempt to demonstrate the Trinity from the Cross (I see too many echoes of Hegel's Weltgeist realising itself in the contradictions of the historical process), and his denial of the Chalcedonian understanding of Christ and his two natures. Process Theology is of course a Hegelian creation and no bona fide Catholic (or evangelical) teacher ever espouses it. Weinandy ('Does God Suffer?') further shows at great length how Moltmann seriously misunderstands and caricatures the patristic doctrine of the unity, immutability and impassibility of God, in a way that has disastrous consequences for theology. It's a long time since I read (a large part of) 'The Crucified God' but I remember thinking, 'This guy is trying to build a whole theology on a single, misunderstood verse - while ignoring the rest of the New Testament.' The polemics against divine impassibility only showed me that Moltmann didn't really understand the patristic doctrine of divine simplicity and perfection, that all God's attributes are one, and that God's blessedness admits of no change. The expression 'the crucified God' may come from Luther but the theology does not.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Creatures constantly change...
William and Mark's comments got me curious enough to try and learn a bit.. I found in an article by Thomas G. Weinandy (2001):
"Aquinas brought new depth both to this patristic understanding of God and to our understanding of why He is immutable and impassible. Creatures constantly change because they continually actualize their potential either for good, and so become more perfect, or for evil, and so become less perfect. God is not in this act/potency scheme of self-actualization. God, Aquinas argued, is “being itself” or “pure act” and so cannot undergo self-constituting change by which He would become more perfect. Two pertinent points flow from this."
This one paragraph leapt out at me for its relevance to +Peter's question, and for the comparison between us who are always in a process of change - and God who is not.
When I've time, I'll try and understand more of the article, because William's/Mark's discussion interests me!
https://firstthings.com/does-god-suffer/
Can the Catholic Church truly change? Or, perhaps better, why does it cover over that it changes many of its teachings all the time? Is there such a thing as a progressive Catholic cardinal?
https://www.tumblingages.co.nz/blog-2/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-progressive-catholic-cardinal
Sorry, William, this is an interesting debate but I have a million reports to write! Perhaps we can come back to Chalcedon. A thought for now: Jesus suffered throughout his life. Tired. Hungry. Grieving. Jesus wept. Guts moving in compassion. Angry.Whipped. Tortured. Not just at the end. Was that all just his human nature, while his divine nature was absolutely, hermetically sealed off? If so, I don't want that God. He was hanged at Auschwitz with the others.
Yes, a fascinating issue, Liz: does God suffer? Does the Ground of Being suffer and change? What about the Spirit and the Christ? One of those many religious areas where you feel the best our human minds - theology - can do is hold the tension between the two, very genuinely, and live out the Mystery of the tension of the opposites. William won't like that Jungian language, but it seems to describe our actual faith situation well to me. It seems that any attempt to "resolve" this one way or or other results in missing or cutting out something vital to the faith/orthodox faith. "Orthodoxy is speaking about our faith is ways that keeps open the pilgrimage towards the mystery." (Timothy Radcliffe).
Hi William/Mark/All,
I understand that theologians have worked out this and that, and councils have agreed this way and that way, re two natures, passibility and impassability, and thus creeds, doctrines, dogma.
But some of that is not clearly revealed in Scripture (e.g. Scripture never talks specifically about the two natures of Christ) even if it is a logical outcome of (sometimes) centuries of reflection, debate, dispute, imperial interventions in church synods and so on.
Thus there is a mystery "yet" about what happened on the cross as the Son of God hung and suffered there, cried out both My God why have you forsaken me and It is finished, and a question or three about whether God not only suffered on the cross but also died ... for another scholar, by the way, in the Lutheran tradition, see Eberhard Jungel and God as the Mystery of the World.
Peter, the road to Chalcedon, and Leo's famous Tome, was about avoiding docetism, modalism, adoptionism, tritheism and Arianism. - and a dash of Nestorianism and monophysitism. The hypostatic union of two natures, divine and human, in one person is how we speak of Jesus on the one hand suffering and on the other hand performing miracles or forgiving sins. These are all the acts of the *one person* but the different acts stem from his two natures perfectly united in one hypostasis (Leo's famous four adjectives).. The danger comes when we switch from talking about Jesus in particular to God 'in toto' - and then patripassianism appears, and the problem of the identity of the Holy Spirit. It is because of the hypostatic union that we may rightly call the Virgin Mary the Theotokos - although the title can easily cause Jews and Muslims conniptions. Christology is certainly a minefield and I do not blame good and thoughtful folk for sometines losing the path. But the consequences can be serious.
In the foreword to a little book, Norman Anderson once raised the question of whether talk of God's suffering should be understood as belonging to the order of God's will (but not the order of his being). Scripture speaks of God's sorrow and anger at sin, and both sorrow and anger can be seen as a kind of suffering freely embraced by God for the good of his errant creation. If this way of framing things is correct, it is a reminder that morality is personal (not karma) and that God is working all things to their appointed end.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Far and away the best piece on Francis I'm heard or read so far, in replying to conservative criteria comes of him as "lacking clarity in teaching"..
https://youtu.be/ixJ7vHzzk_E?si=omcyVBUQ77AIiUwI
and which made me reflect again and rewrite the ending to my last blog piece!
Thanks for your reply at 2:49 Mark. Well said. After I'd done my comment I'd looked further online and at that point realised how controversial the topic is. The video link you've just shared looks great! (I've just seen a bit at the beginning, will come back to it tomorrow).
Thank you for your comment above, Peter. I've heard of Jungel though never read - or truly meditated - on what he puts before us, that you bring here to this discussion now. Did God die on the cross? Why have I never thought this before? It's so obvious, and we can't really have the harrowing of hell, the release of the dead, without this being so. But my mind is scooting ahead.
Thanks Liz. Pope Francis is someone who perhaps held the (huge) opposites (of faith and of the Catholic Church) together all his life, especially the tension between tradition and presence - true presence that listens to and receives the other yet responds in often surprising ways. Many hated this. It made them nervous. They wanted a clearer, stabler figure for the "Petrine ministry". They wanted a rock to ground the church. Francis's defence was always that he was a follower of Jesus Christ first, the man who actually encountered people, and often left others gasping around him too. But Jesus didn't - in his eyes at least, some others would completely disagree with this - tear apart tradition either.
How do we hold the opposites together? Here's one response from Francis, from his encyclical letter (available free online) *Delexit Nos* or "On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ":
"Many people feel safer constructing their systems of thought in the more readily controllable domain of intelligence and will. The failure to make room for the heart, as distinct from our human powers and passions viewed in isolation from one another, has resulted in a stunting of the idea of a personal centre, in which love, in the end, is the one reality that can unify all the others. "
Oh that's an excellent "heart" quote Mark... thanks heaps!
P.S. re "viewed in isolation from one another"
Churches/Christians can come across as awfully disconnected from reality. I've just read this story...
...about a little girl in evangelical Sunday School who'd been called on to participate in a simple object lesson about trust and obedience - but responded in a completely unexpected way. Unknown to that pastor, she'd been molested 5 months earlier by another male leader.
"The God presented to me in Sunday school object lessons and shallow examples was not big enough for my new reality. At least, that was the conclusion I reached during my next six years in the church. God had something to say about little things like white lies and fights with siblings, but never about big problems like abuse or death or infidelity. Those big things were part of my life, but we didn’t talk about them in church — and because they were taboo, they started to feel bigger than God."
Later as a teen....
"Every time I took a step of vulnerability with my friends outside of church, I was met with warmth and encouragement. But when I shared the same vulnerable questions with my closest church friends, they starkly responded, “You know this means you are going to hell, right?” The world was waiting with open arms while the church kept theirs crossed." [...]
"When we give voice to the gnarly reality of the now-and-not-yet that is our broken world with the hope of Christ, we say to others, “You are seen, not just by us, but also by your Creator.”"
https://theologyintheraw.com/why-abused-voices-and-taboo-questions-belong-in-the-church/
Pope Francis was indeed courageous in reaching out to listen and engage with those in very different situations despite the increased risk of him 'mis-speaking' and offending pious detractors. Makes me think of Jesus's ministry, right?
Hope everyone is safe and dry!
Another good video from the Jesuit "America" team - the unfinished projects of Francis's papacy. Liz, you might be especially interested in the responding to sexual abuse part. And at the end interesting comments for Anglicans in Francis and ecumenism - Francis said no Christian unity without synodality...
https://youtu.be/EfbSeWGazoE?si=2nreXQPSnIydmR1E
Absolutely!
Mark, I've watched your video from April 30 8:54PM, it's great! I also followed on to an article they mentioned, and I found it included helpful writing on truth. Here's a Francis quote taken from my favourite paragraph: "Truth, according to Christian faith, is the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. Truth is a relationship."
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/04/28/francis-clarity-mercy-teacher-albertson-blakely-250509
Child abuse in the western world takes many forms, some of them politically acceptable and even highly lauded. It includes:
- aborting about a quarter of pregnancies;
- renting a womb (very expensive when the lawyers' and geneticists' fees etc are totted up, so only for rich folks) to create babies to be intentionally brought up without mothers (Pete Buttigieg and Chasten have been talking about this on American TV); and
- giving troubled children puberty blockers (as the NZ Greens advocate).
This last procedure has now been condemned by the United States DHSS (under RFK Jnr) as dangerous and harmful. Because RFK Jnr is a Trump appointee and a traitor to the Kennedy Legacy (such good Catholics they were), this is clearly an act of hate and bigotry etc.
The backlash against trans-mania gathers force in the world: first the Cass Report in Britain, then the UK Supreme Court states the bleedin' obvious, now the FA decrees that blokes can't play in women's football in England. This is bad news for Manchester United's hopes of winning a title. Bad news as well for NZ weightlifting.
.... Seriously, as the secular world wakes up to scientific reality (AKA natural law), how long before the Protestant and Anglican churches do the same? Has it been forgotten that Justin Welby himself supported the trans-craze in Church of England primary schools in England and Stephen Cottrell promoted the "educational" work of the "charity" Mermaids in C of E schools in the diocese of Chelmsford?
How long before people realise that the contemporary craze of prescribing puberty blockers to emotionally troubled children was as bad as the 1950s craze of lobotomies for the mentally unwell? I grew up in Dunedin and even went to George St Normal School, where, many years earlier Janet Frame had a distressing time as a young teacher. Reading in her autobiography of a planned lobotomony (prevented by the decision of a wise psychiatrist) was chilling reading.
Child abusers are not just cassocked clergy. Many more are sharp-suited lawyers and brisk medical folk in clean white coats.
Keep dry in the City of the Plains!
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
That is a lot of “whataboutery” William which does not in any way, shape or form engage with the issue of abuse in the churches.
Having known quite a few trans people by now, or parents of people who are trans, I do think that genuinely transsexual people have enough problems to deal with in life without being masticated daily by media and politicians.
I'm not in favour of abortion, puberty blockers, or any of the underlying social problems that lead to these 'easy' solutions - poverty, social inequality, lack of affordable housing, hopelessness and isolation disconnection with bodily life, repressive, inflexible notions of masculinity and femininty, mental health epidemics that continue to get worse and go systemically unaddressed. If only people like Trump and the current Kennedy offered better solutions to these underlying issues.
The approach I feel most comfortable with, politically, on the trans issue, is the sort of liberal, messy, adjudicating between competing rights (feminists vs trans community), case by case sort of decision making that Rory Stewart articulates here:
https://youtube.com/shorts/iwfuLapguqo?si=fBJ38iPeUnRQezIn
Of course, such an approach runs the risk of pleasing no one. Anglicans may understand this!
I am going back to the original post : ) …
While I think nihilism is perhaps too strong a word, most people believe or hold to some values or beliefs faith or no faith, I think Damien’s comments regarding ‘building without God’ is a pertinent one for our western societies today in terms of being somewhat ‘lost’ in a melae of what is right, wrong, acceptable and not acceptable, ethical or prejudice etc etc…. I think only of last night and seeing one of Trumps filmed session of Cabinet in the news and to be honest it was horrifying …. Everyone sitting around the table saying how wonderful what he was doing was and while we know that means they keep their jobs the lack of character or moral fortitude if you like of the individuals there to be true to more than keeping their jobs and Trump himself spoke of emptiness and meaninglessness.
Earlier in the piece +Peter quoted he said when he left Catholicism he escaped the “moral restraints imposed and demanded.” This I have found over the years to be a common take on Christianity, that the moral underpinnings are a restraint or stop people enjoying life or doing what they wish to do. I have known several people who did not feel they could go to church (ie: were convicted of their current situations of living) and did not do so again until those situations were no longer so : ) …. Along my journeying I realise the plural we at times have a skewed perspective on the moral underpinnings of Christianity. Jesus’s teachings about what is good and right are based yes on doing good and right, however, the reason is because they are good for us NOT a form of punishment and restriction from on high. Hence while divorce is permitted God also hates divorce, divorce is painful - it hurts and causes harm to people. And here-in I think lies the work of the spirit you mentioned earlier Mark, it is the Spirit that shows us that helps us to finally realise that God desires these things for us, for us to act in these ways for our good and the good of others.
As for building without God I think it does result in confusion, in a longing for us as people and a society to have a rock on which to rely, a cornerstone so we have guidance about who to believe and what to believe and the assurance that we aren’t only having our living determined by fickle human nature. When humans self-refer - eg. Only have themselves as a reference point in the formation of values and actions things can go rely awry. If I only did what I thought best I can but start to imagine the resulting mess.
More pondering a to come… later … : )
Peter, my comment was not "whataboutery", it was placing the great stew in English Anglicanism about John Smyth and his historic (semi-consensual?) beatings of dozens of teenagers in England and Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s in contemporary context. Horrible and inexcusable but hardly representative of the Church of England, even in England in the 1970s when corporal punishment was still relatively common in schools (as it was New Zealand). I cannot avoid the impression that some of the discomfort and outrage arises from the fact that the Iwerne movement in England catered to boys from privileged public school backgrounds. The class-&-private education
system still permeates the Church of England (as it does American Episcopalianism). Contrast this with the TOTAL SILENCE in all the churches in Britain on the greatest scandal in child welfare in that country: the sexual abuse and gang rape on an industrial scale of about 250,000 "poor white trash" girls, very many of them in care, across a slew of towns, from Oxford to Bradford and beyond. The police and politicians failed enormously and culpably and nobody in the British Labour Government wants to investigate this because of the constituency responsible for these enormous crimes, men of Pakistani heritage. But I cannot avoid the impression that nobody cares about "poor white trash" girls. We have a comparable problem in New Zealand: the shocking levels of domestic abuse and violence toward children. We know where this is mainly happening but it is politically dangerous to speak the truth
(And by the way, Jean's comments above are correct. No young man - Damian Grant or whoever - likes being told it's a mortal sin to have sex outside marriage or to get your girlfriend an abortion or to get wasted on the weekend or smoke weed or whatever the wowsers have hangups about. It's easier to declare religion a con than to study Augustine and Aquinas.)
My comments about (inter alia) Cottrell's and Welby's unretracted acquiescence in the trans craze even in Church of England primary schools are true and easily documented. So I don't think my remarks are diversionary 'whataboutery', but more an instance of drawing attention to motes and beams.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Going back to the original title of the blog, Can People Change? I have read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series of novels, (Gilead, Home, Lila, Jack), which explores that theme round the character of Jack, whose ongoing story is told in the last one.
He appears in all four as someone who is not a believer and doesn’t seem able to believe. Yet, Lila in one of the novels states categorically, ‘Everyone can change!’ Jack is an engaging person but is also in many ways a light-fingered layabout who is never able to overcome his habit (?) of rifling people’s pockets if given the chance!
The novel of his name introduces a lovely young woman who seems to enable Jack to settle into ‘normal’ life, but sadly, circumstances and his personality destroy the several chances he has to make a definite change.
I think Marilynne ends that novel with something like Mark’s opinion in his early post:
“To sustain this sort of deep transformative change – that the old language called sanctification or theosis – is very difficult *without committing to a regular practice or rhythm of spiritual life*, including participation in a supportive community, and, perhaps most importantly, participation in the Spirit (the two don’t always go together).”
I found the novel very sad… but maybe true?
Can people change. I think so. I have known the odd person who has had a spiritual encounter in the way of St Paul which has resulted in dramatic changes in themselves and their lives. Jackie Pullinger ‘s book Chasing The Dragon is also a good witness to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives. There are also many people who ‘work’ for lack of a better word in different areas of their lives to change unhealthy habits and patterns, slow, incremental and hard won.
It does appear that often change occurs with a catalyst - say something people are confronted with or by that initiates the desire to change, an encounter such as with the Holy Spirit, or an insight or realisation. One counselling workshop I attended many years ago said people change when the motivation to change is higher than the motivation to stay the same.
I am not thinking of change here as changing personalities - who a person is created to be - but those aspects of our character and actions that are less than beneficial and take away from who we were created to be. Your comments Mark about being open to the Holy Spirit and part of a community of faith I think are important.
I recall a night a few decades ago when I was wrestling with God over someone’s actions towards me and I was listing off all the things I had been through, all they had said and done wrong etc…. And it wasn’t until I had being going all night in an internal tirade, literally, that the Holy Spirit spoke one thing, one way I could have treated this person better and it silenced me completely. I realised God was far more interested in me focusing on growing my own character, being formed into a better vessel, than in what this other person had or had not done.
Free will and predestination I can hold as non-contradictory. God’s creation is founded on free will but He knows what we will choose.
Jesus death on the cross - being both divine and human. Perhaps part of God died on the cross, the part of the God-head that is God the Son died albeit only for three days for death could not hold Him? Does God suffer well God so loved the world He was willing to watch Jesus go through what He did in order that we could be saved. Surely anyone who watches one they love in pain suffers? Maybe the difference is God chose to suffer, perhaps He didn’t have to? However, I but throw around ideas about a mystery too great for my comprehension.
We need to be clear William that Smyth's abuse was at a completely different level than school "corporal punishment" (even though some of that was itself cruel and terrible). Smyth's abuse was at a different level again - in regularity, brutality, and perverted sanctity - leading to desparate despair in some victims.
Hi Mark, I see you've removed it now but I did read quite carefully what you shared about persuasion as a driver of other things, including coercion. I was thinking about the CofE and what might be persuasive in what's termed the 'Old Boy' or 'Old School' culture. There's so many things, but I'm thinking along the lines of secrecy and loyalty in particular, and also of strong boundaries of responsibility - you don't go meddling in what your colleague is doing because church law says it's outside your responsibility therefore like Pilate you may wash your hands of this dirty business (even child abuse) because, actually, it wasn't your responsibility - which was essentially the argument of Bishop Sentamu about his inaction on the Ineson case when he was ++Sentamu. He wouldn't accept the investigation's criticism of this view, so Bishop H-A withdrew his PtO. I think it was only about a year later the Archbishops (Welby/Cottrell) attempted to coerce Bishop H-A to relent but Bp Sentamu was still unrepentant so she resisted. The victim (Ineson) was furious the Archbishops tried to pressure Bishop H-A "behind my back" - his views on the matter evidently hadn't been sought (he'd previously been a CofE vicar so fully understood how the CofE works). These ways of working are why we keep on hearing again and again that the church culture has to change i.e. church culture is very persuasive.. for good, or for evil.
Hi Liz, yes I shared two because didn't think the first one made it. Wiped the first for that reason. I'll send the second again (better) because it is a useful distinction between coercive and persuasive power. Useful in life - just tried to persuade and persuade my kids not to fight and to apologize to each other rather than "make them" (which would be an insincere apology too. We hope archbishops, bishops etc are persuaded by the powerful witness and stories of abuse victims to change. But it's a useful distinction too in thinking of God, and getting better language and ideas, I think, for the Christian God who is non coercive love - ridiculous phrasing as love isn't coercive. I'll send it again.
Power is topical for the church right now, as in abuse of it (see William's post).
This morning, I was watching a media clip on the cardinals eligible to vote. It was a rolling reel of all voting cardinals with their faces and key stats. Seeing it this way brought home something so commonplace it's almost hard to be shocked by now. This morning I accessed some healthy shock: they're all men.
Imagine a government or a department store or a university (or even an Anglican Church!) where the only people allowed in leadership are men. Then imagine them saying: we only do this because Jesus was a man. We'd be like: that's horrific and insanely dumb. What other incidentals about Jesus affect hiring here: only Jewish people? Tradies? Only hiring bearded Jewish men. We'd be like: is this a serious organization, concerned with the inner life, or a pantomime fixated on outward appearance. Why would my male chromosomes make me more of a bearer of the image of Christ than my loving, guileless, extremely hardworking wife? Why are we so afraid to be ourselves?
William is right: there are other forms of abuse we regularly accept and fail to protest. And that have grave downstream impacts. People who commit child and sexual abuse are overwhelmingly men.
But I really wanted to share this process theology tasted from the great halls of Wikipedia:
"....process theology makes several important distinctions between different kinds of power. The first distinction is between "coercive" power and "persuasive" power.[28] Coercive power is the kind that is exerted by one physical body over another, such as one billiard ball hitting another, or one arm twisting another. Lifeless bodies (such as the billiard balls) cannot resist such applications of physical force at all, and even living bodies (like arms) can only resist so far, and can be coercively overpowered. While finite, physical creatures can exert coercive power over one another in this way, God—lacking a physical body—cannot (not merely will not) exert coercive control over the world.[29]
But process theologians argue that coercive power is actually a secondary or derivative form of power, while persuasion is the primary form.[28] Even the act of self-motion (of an arm, for instance) is an instance of persuasive power. The arm may not perform in the way a person wishes it to—it may be broken, or asleep, or otherwise unable to perform the desired action. It is only after the persuasive act of self-motion is successful that an entity can even begin to exercise coercive control over other finite physical bodies. But no amount of coercive control can alter the free decisions of other entities; only persuasion can do so.[30]
For example, a child is told by his parent that he must go to bed. The child, as a self-conscious, decision-making individual, can always make the decision to not go to bed. The parent may then respond by picking up the child bodily and carrying him to his room, but nothing can force the child to alter his decision to resist the parent's directive. It is only the body of the child that can be coercively controlled by the body of the physically stronger parent; the child's free will remains intact. While process theologians argue that God does not have coercive power, they also argue that God has supreme persuasive power, that God is always influencing/persuading us to choose the good."
Sorry, second big chunk, but it's very on point to our discussion here as well as current state of the world:
"Process theologians thus stress that God’s power is relational; rather than being unaffected and unchanged by the world, God is the being most affected by every other being in the universe.[35] As process theologian C. Robert Mesle puts it:
Relational power takes great strength. In stark contrast to unilateral power, the radical manifestations of relational power are found in people like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus. It requires the willingness to endure tremendous suffering while refusing to hate. It demands that we keep our hearts open to those who wish to slam them shut. It means offering to open up a relationship with people who hate us, despise us, and wish to destroy us.[32]
In summation, then, process theologians argue that their conception of God’s power does not diminish God, but just the opposite. Rather than see God as one who unilaterally coerces other beings, judges and punishes them, and is completely unaffected by the joys and sorrows of others, process theologians see God as the one who persuades the universe to love and peace, is supremely affected by even the tiniest of joys and the smallest of sorrows, and is able to love all beings despite the most heinous acts they may commit. God is, as Whitehead says, "the fellow sufferer who understands."
Jesus was as angry with his disciples' disbelief of the women who'd testified to his resurrection as he was with the religious leaders who condemned him for healing on the sabbath. I don't understand how to relate this "process theology" to the current state of the world or the church - and I don't see how it helps to make the current situation better. What am I missing? I mean Jesus called out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders in no uncertain terms and although he stated he didn't come into the world to condemn the world, he also warned of coming judgement for those who don't repent in the here-and-now. So I'm feeling confused about process theology and I'll be interested to read other responses!
Hi Liz,
I don't think we need process theology - or any systematic theology - to experience God and the life and message of Jesus. That can happen through any number of ways. But if we want to reflect more systemically on the Gospel message, process theologians have useful ideas to consider.
Here's a few:
1. I find the early theological language which was used to understand Christ, God, and the Spirit - "homoiousios", "filioque", "hypostasis" - rather abstract, static, bloodless, and removed from the dynamism of the Gospel in which Jesus uses natural, dynamic metaphors - mustard seeds, yeast and bread, bubbling springs - to talk about the kingdom etc. Emphasizing relationship, event, and becoming (as process thought does), may bring us closer the to Biblical, Gospel world in many ways.
2. Jesus reveals a God who is love. Love isn't abstract or distant or entirely self-sufficient. Love affects the world around it, and is affected by the world. Love, God, Christ, suffers for the sake of others. Process theology supports our minds to embrace this much more readily than the older philosophical language and models which often centred around God's "aseity" (self-sufficiency, independence, autonomy).
3. Many people wanted a Messiah who would politically and physically liberate Israel from the Romans - who would triumph through "coercive power". Jesus renounced that way entirely. He instructs Peter to put his sword back into his sheath. His way - God's way - is persuading others into repentance/conversion/metanoia, mainly through loving action and presence, sometimes using words, while bearing the world's resistance, persecution, and hate through suffering and without returning hate with hate. "Love gathers into love" (George Fox).
That's just a few.
I've discussed 'church as process' on my blog, though that was a response to an experience in silent prayer, not really to process theology. Moya has added some interesting reflections below the main post, if you're interested.
https://www.tumblingages.co.nz/blog-2/postscript-what-is-church
I have had experience of the ‘process theology’ work of God. Circumstances and my life experience took me to the foot of a very high wall, (like Alice in Wonderland!), and the Lord provided a very small door at the bottom that I went through into freedom. Fear of God’s judgement was part of the process and it did take more time to bring healing to that area, but that change is the bedrock of my salvation.
'homoousios', not 'homoiousios', you Arian! I know you think it doesn't make an iota of difference, but it does!
This year marks the 1600th Anniversary of the Council of Nicea. A good subject for a sermon series, methinks. That Athanasius could pack a punch. I will have to dig out my copy of De Verbi Incarnatione (whose Greek is no more difficult that NT koine - and C. S. Lewis wrote a famous preface to a modern translation by an Anglican nun).
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
1700th!
Arrrgh! Humbled by a maths graduate ...
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Socrates of Constantinople gave the opening date of the Council as 20 May 325 (although I don't know if that is by the Julian or Gregorian calendar), continuing until August. I will have to think of an appropriate way to mark the occasion, but not like St Nicholas - I always try to be kind to Jehovah's Witnesses and other Arians.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
To celebrate 1700 (!) years of the Nicene Creed, I'd like to suggest we give it a holiday. Not a permanent break, just a well deserved rest. It's fine some heavy lifting for us and now has very tired arms. And you can always find it hanging out in those well thumbed sections at the back of prayer books. In its place, for a while, I suggest parishes read the Beatitudes instead - not only the words of Jesus (which Nicea was not), but also closer to the human heart.
Terrifying, living, transformative process!
It isn't tired at all but it is frequently forgotten and neglected, like those beautiful cookbooks people have on their shelves while the junk food cartons pile up in their bin and they wonder why they feel bloated and undernourished. In its short history, New Zealand Christianity has always emphasised "practical religion' while the tall poppy syndrome in the culture at large has tended to disparage anything remotely "philosophical" or reflective (being focused on the immediate tasks of top dressing that paddock or fixing that engine). In addition to historical and classical ignorance and physical remoteness from the Mediterranean world, it has become chic in recent years to privilege some sanitised elements of East Polynesian polytheism and mythology, which no rational person actually believes in, on the shallow grounds that this is "spirituality". This is doubly strange because New Zealand was actually constitued as one nation (rather than 500 small and mutually antagonistic tribes) through the work of English missionaries and their Maori co-workers who spread the Gospel of peace among the tribes. They repudiated East Polynesian polytheism snd its glorification of war and utu in favour of peaceful religion, law and order, the Bible and literacy. Most people today have no idea of the genocidal Musket Wars or what it was like to be a Maori child or woman or slave in the 1830s or to have a life expectancy of 35 years..
Now the majority of New Zealanders, including the majority of Maoris, profess no religion at all, while a vague mix of "human rights" (where did they come from?), ecologism and pseudo-reverence toward misunderstood Maori rituals and superstitions seeks to take its place in the public square.
The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) is about true knowledge of the Trinity and the Incarnate Son who took on human nature to achieve our salvation. It is time to repudiate the national intellectual laziness and tall poppy syndrome and do some real orthodox theology. Read Athanasius' "On the Incarnation of the Word" and you'll start to understand the perennial issues.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Oh William, by all means keep reading and studying the creeds. They are rich historical documents. Let us not take them out of circulation entirely. Offer workshops on them for general churchgoers: I'm sure +Peter would welcome such in our diocese here to coincide with the 1700 year anniversary. I'm just suggesting for common worship purposes we try Jesus's own words and his own summary of his teachings - the Beatitudes, or anything drawn from the Sermon on the Mount. Whether that is anti-intellectual seems less the point as it is faithful and, weirdly, a little fresh.
I know a parish (not here) where the leadership did just that - had the Beatitudes instead of the Creed! It caused quite a bit of grumbling as some of the congregation wanted to declare what they believed, not recite how they were to live. (But you can’t please everyone!)
“in recent years to privilege some sanitised elements of East Polynesian polytheism and mythology, which no rational person actually believes”.
Ohh the irony yet again! William you are an atheist in terms of Polynesian spirituality…perhaps you need to take one more step when you consider fantastical stories of people walking on water, rising from the dead, and turning water into wine.
The Polynesian creation stories are actually consistent. On the other hand, in terms of Christianity, each Gospel author just makes
Jesus say or do whatever they want. They change the story as it suits them and neglect to mention they did so and craft literary artifices and symbolic narratives routinely. They rewrite classical and biblical stories and just insert Jesus into them...the authors of the Gospels clearly had no interest in any actual historical data….so that’s puts both belief systems in the the same realm!
Regards Thomas
Love it!
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