Tuesday 15 October 2013

The Death of Christian Britain 1800-2000

Callum Brown published this provocative book in 2001 and a second edition came out in 2009. His thesis is that Christian Britain died in 1963 - more or less. At that point, or at least after 1960, people stopped going to church. The Christian 'bulge' of about 1947-60 stopped dramatically and everything seemed to be up for grabs.

(Interestingly, a recent programme about the early 1960s satire programme TW3 backed this up when it was said that content that would have been unthinkable 'just a year ago' was suddenly OK on TV. Something happened very suddenly in the early 1960s).

But it was not at all just about people stopping going to church. What Brown calls 'discursive Christianity' wained dramatically and Britain stopped being a Christian culture. Christianity lost its guiding role; conformity to its morality, its rituals and its values was not only questioned as never before but abandoned.

Brown's more arguable point is that the main factor was the change in the role of women. When they stopped being 'Christian', then society stopped being Christian. Cause and effect are difficult to disentangle here. It seems to me there were other deeper causative factors at work of which 'women's lib' was only one consequence.

Of course Brown, being a sociologist, cannot allow (and gives no hint of believing in anyway) spiritual influences or the possibility of God's providence overruling all. But the study is a thought-provoking one. One interesting feature is the attention he draws to the fact that up to about 1800 piety was predominantly 'masculine' - the man was the typical saint, women followed or at worst were temptresses. During the 19th century, particularly in the influential popular fiction of the era, piety was feminised. The woman became virtuous, vice was male. The home was the place where the female angel ruled ( paintings of angels became predominantly female, he says, in this century - up to that time they had been male or androgynous). Men went to church now, if at all, out of convention or hypocrisy, struggling against the demons that were more natural to them.

Well, it is all arguable, but it is interesting how commonly the Christian virtues are looked upon as rather feminine and, to men, rather boring; vice is far more exciting.

What happened in Victorian England was it seems a reduction in the sense of the seriousness of sin. Vice and virtue were measured behaviourally and superficially - as what men do (drunkenness, gambling, sex etc ) and what what women do (look after children, suffer patiently, look after the home, be kind etc) respectively.

A more radical view of sin avoids these caricatures. Sin is in the woman as much as in the man. Vice is first in our attitude to God; virtue is first in our returning to him.

Monday 14 October 2013

Stephen Fry: Out There

I have just been watching the first of Stephen Fry's programmes on homosexuality around the world. Or, rather, his determination to expose what he sees as prejudice and ill treatment of gays around the world.

I feel rather sick after it. I think it is in part a reaction to the exhibitions of physical homosexual affection (nothing graphic fortunately) but more than that it is the sheer perversion of truth that the whole thing involves. One does not agree with the death penalty which is proposed in Uganda, or sympathise with all the arguments of the Ugandan pastor and government minister who argue for it; but Fry's propaganda technique is depressingly reminiscent of Richard Dawkins - assert your case without rational argument, throw in loads of sentiment and talk about love ( even tears at a civil partnership ceremony), make fun of those who oppose you or patronise them, and find a few of the most extreme and objectionable examples of the opponents' argument to knock down. This is what debate by television has come to these days; media power is used unhesitatingly as a propaganda machine. The BBC even advertises a helpline for anyone who has been bullied because they are gay.

The programme raises issues for Christians. Where do we go when we are so much, and rather suddenly it seems, on the back foot? We must hold our nerve; we must teach patiently and persistently the truth; we must examine our hearts to ensure we are not bearing hatred of these people; we must remember that whether straight or gay, sinners need a saviour; and we must realise, too, that we are not going to win this argument on a merely moral basis. The whole thing goes right back to creation. God made us male and female, to have companionship man with woman, to marry and multiply and fill the earth. The battle is really for a Christian theistic worldview and a case for human identity and destiny. The biblical theist cannot see homosexuality as anything other than a perversion, and rebellion against God, but that does not give us the right to stand in personal or self-righteous judgement over, or live in hatred of, them. But Romans 1 is increasingly becoming the most relevant text to describe our society. If that is the case, we can be thankful that Romans 3 is still the solution.

Alec Motyer: Preaching? Simple Teaching on Simply Preaching

Alec Motyer is a great Bible teacher, a fine scholar particularly in Old Testament studies and an attractive writer. Countless Christians and ministers in particular will have appreciated his preaching and writing over the last fifty years or so. And he is still going strong.

His latest book is on preaching (title as above, Christian Focus, 2013).In fourteen short chapters he covers the task of producing and preaching a sermon. There is a helpful chapter on 'spirituality' to remind us of the prior need of feeding ourselves with the Word and prayer. Finally, ten appendices give us a series of devotional studies in six or seven parts on various themes or passages of Scripture. I can see these being turned into sermons or sermon series in many pulpits.

It is a refreshing read. He is concerned to help preachers not to preach 'muddled' sermons. He begins with a reminder of the wonderful Word we have and the power of the Holy Spirit given to the church at Pentecost. Preaching is our great task. Another chapter looks at some of the words used for 'communicating' the gospel in the New Testament (he reckons 97).

The bulk of the book looks at six stages of sermon preparation: examination, analysis, orientation, harvesting, presentation and application. For me the most challenging was the chapter on 'examination', the simple message being: work hard at exegesis.

A revitalising book for preachers at any stage. Three reservations may be worth mentioning:

1. He commends, occasionally though not as a rule, what he calls 'concordance' preaching - word studies. Well, maybe occasionally. But perhaps this betrays Motyer's early Brethren influences! This may lead to an interesting Bible study, but too often it is likely to lead to Biblical antiquarianism or sentimentalism (though, I am sure, not when Motyer himself does it).

This does lead to the reflection that few books on preaching discuss the importance of theology, especially systematic theology, in preaching. The best preacher will be the one who has a good systematic theology, especially if it is not allowed to obtrude too obviously. Books on preaching major (not unnaturally) on dealing with the text, and very necessarily so and helpfully so (for the most part). But what about the importance of the preacher's grasp of the message and doctrine of Scripture as a whole and his ability to analyse his text in the light of that theology? Insight into the individual text comes from that more, one might say, than from concordance studies.

2. He is obviously very nervous about usurping the role of the Holy Spirit in promoting a response to the preaching. He reminds us that of 97 words for communicating the Word, 56 are declarative and the main task for the preacher is to make the truth plain. He almost gives the impression that, that done, response will take care of itself under the operation of the Spirit. He allows that there are words such as appeal, plead, encourage, persuade, convince. He does not give them anything like the same weight though as words for proclamation, teaching and speaking. The impression is given of little affective pressing of the message home to people's consciences. He is no doubt right to say this can be abused and overdone, but Motyer's danger one feels is underdoing it. Is it his Anglican background influencing him here?

3. His view of evangelism appears to be that it is a gift that some have and others don't and that he, as one of the 'don't haves', cannot be expected to preach an evangelistic sermon, but rather 'take those passages of the Bible where the evangelistic message is particularly plain and expound them and let them "run out" into whatever ending, including the evangelistic appeal, they demand'. This, with respect, is a cop-out and closely related to the problem mentioned above of not seeing the Bible as a whole as a message of salvation with a coherent theology and every text needing to be seen in the light of that message. The present generation is blighted with younger preachers who simply think that to 'teach the Bible' is to take the text in its immediate setting and if it is evangelistic, then fine - take people to Christ - but if it is not, then it is a kind of imposition on the text to preach evangelistically from it. This is a myopic view of Scripture, closely related to the 'biblical theology' movement.

One hopes that this book, good as it is in many ways, will not have too great an impact in these particular areas.







Thursday 10 October 2013

Murray Walkerisms...

Classics from the doyen of motor sports commentators:

"Unless I am very much mistaken.... I AM very much mistaken!"

"Mansell is slowing down, taking it easy. Oh no he isn't IT'S A LAP RECORD."

"This is an interesting circuit, because it has inclines. And not just up, but down as well."

"The lead car is absolutely unique, except for the one behind it which is identical."

"The most important part of the car is the nut that holds the wheel."

"I know it's an old cliche, but you can cut the atmosphere with a cricket stump."

"Tambay's hopes, which were nil before, are absolutely zero now."

"And there's no damage to the car. Except to the car itself."

"That's the first time he had started from the front row in a Grand Prix, having done so in Canada earlier this year."

"Here in Malaysia, it doesn't rain here by the bucketful, it rains by the ocean."

"How you can crash into a wall without it being there in the first place is beyond me!"

"Excuse me while I interrupt myself"

"And the first five places are filled by five different cars."

"And Damon Hill is following Damon Hill."

"Michael Schumacher is leading Michael Schumacher."

"Jean Alesi is 4th and 5th."

"Villeneuve is now twelve seconds ahead of Villeneuve."

"Frentzen is taking, er, reducing that gap between himself and Frentzen."

"This has been a great season for Nelson Piquet, as he is now known, and always has been."

"It's lap 26 of 58, which unless I'm very much mistaken is half way."

"I'm ready to stop my start watch."

"Only a few more laps to go and then the action will begin. Unless this is the action, which it is!"

"I can't imagine what kind of problem Senna has. I imagine it must be some sort of grip problem."

"He's obviously gone in for a pit stop. I say obviously, because I cannot see anything."

"And the first three cars are all Escorts, which isn't surprising as this is an all Escort race."

"He is exactly 10 seconds ahead, or more approximately, 9.86 seconds."

"Look up there! That's the sky!"

"There's nothing wrong with his car except that it's on fire."

"I don't want to tempt fate but Damon Hill is now only half a lap from his first Grand Prix win and… and HE'S SLOWING DOWN, DAMON HILL IS SLOWING DOWN… HE'S... HE'S STOPPED!"

"As you look at the first four, the significant thing is that Alboreto is fifth."

"He's the only man on the track, except for his car."

"You might think that's not cricket, and it's not. It's motor racing."

"And Michael Schumacher is actually in a very good position. He is in last place."

"One light, two lights, three lights, four laps, five lights, go, go, go!"

"That's history. I say history because it happened in the past."

"There are a lot of IFs in Formula One, in fact IF is Formula One backwards!"

"Anything happens in Grand Prix racing, and it usually does."

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Bruce Ware on 'The Man Christ Jesus'

The Man Christ Jesus:
Theological Reflections on the Humanity of Christ
Bruce A. Ware
Crossway 2013
ISBN 978-1-4335-1305-3

As a boy, Bruce Ware thought it unreasonable that in 1 Peter 2:21-23 we sinners are taught to ‘follow [Christ’s] steps’, the steps of one who was God and ‘who did no sin’. In later years he came to the passage with new questions, principally, ‘Could it be that even though Jesus was fully God, he lived his life fundamentally as a man? Could the command to follow in his steps be legitimate because he lived a human life in obedience to his Father as we also are called to do?’ One wonders why he does not similarly reflect on Peter’s earlier exhortation, citing Lev.11:44, ‘ ”You shall be holy, for I am holy”’ (1 Pet 1:16), and Paul’s ‘Be imitators of God therefore...’ (Eph 5:1) and the Lord’s ‘…be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt 5:48). How are these injunctions to be rendered ‘legitimate’? In any event, is there not enough of a gap between my sinful humanity and the Lord’s sinless humanity to make me despair quite apart from his deity? Is not this mode of trying to understand these commandments misconceived?

Ware also believes that evangelicals generally understand Christ’s deity better than his humanity and he wants to redress the balance. He is not presenting a ‘complete’ Christology, he tells us, but longs for Jesus to be ‘honored through reflections upon his humanity’. So, for example, the assertion that Jesus ‘lived his life fundamentally as a man’ appears repeatedly. But what does that mean? That Jesus lived as a man at a deeper level than as God? That his life reflected more humanity than deity?

As one would expect of a theologian of Ware’s calibre there is much that is helpful in the book and it is winsomely written. His chapters cover the incarnation, Christ’s ‘empowerment by the Spirit’, his growth in wisdom (Luke 2:40,52) and faith (Heb 5:7-9), his temptations, death, resurrection, reign and return, and seek to expound the importance of his humanity in each case. There is also a helpful chapter on why Christ had to be a man rather than a woman. Each chapter ends with applications, and questions for discussion.

There are, however, problems. Although Ware makes enough statements to show that he is an orthodox Chalcedonian in his christology, his mode of expressing himself is often puzzling, not to say misleading. This is no doubt because of the agenda he has set himself – to establish that Christ lived fundamentally as a man (and this agenda is further, as his applications often indicate, to make it more feasible for us to claim the resources Christ in his humanity relied upon and to obey his commandments). The main weakness is a repeated tendency to divide the natures and obscure the unity of the person in his attempt to do justice, as he sees it, to Christ’s humanity. For example:

1. He concedes that there ‘are a few times when we will examine some aspects of the deity of Christ simply because these must be seen to understand aspects of his humanity’ (p 13). The assumption seems to be that for the most part we can understand Christ’s humanity without reference to his deity.

2. He says that while the eternal Son obeyed the Father prior to the incarnation, ‘it was only the God-man, the human Jesus, who could obey in this way [i.e obedience to death, in Phil. 2:5-9]’ (p 26). Why not leave it at the ‘God man’, or perhaps ‘God-as-man’? This is one of a number of places where ‘the human Jesus’ is insisted upon almost in contradistinction to the divine nature or the divine person of the Son. Who is the subject of obedience throughout Christ’s life? ‘’In the whole sweep of mediatorial history, from pre-existence through humiliation to exaltation, the person acting and affected is the same. This means that whenever we look at the life of Christ and ask Who did this? Who suffered this? Who said this? the answer is always the same: ‘The Son of God!’ We can never say ‘The divine nature said this!’ or ‘The human nature did this!’ We must say, ‘He did this: he, the Son of God!’ (Macleod, The Person of Christ p189).

3. Ware deals with the anointing of Christ by the Spirit as something virtually exclusively to give Jesus the power to function as a human. He quotes Peter in Acts 10:38, ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth…’ Yes, but this verse says that the person of Christ is anointed, not his human nature, and it is not only for the purpose of empowering Jesus, it is a declaration of who the Messiah is. Elsewhere also Ware seems to equate the Messiah with the ‘human’ Jesus e.g ‘…the Christ of the Great Commission is the human Jesus, the Messiah, who has won the right to reign over the nations’ (p139). In arguing, quite rightly, that Christ was really human, Ware seems to overbalance into saying that he was more human, or more fundamentally human, than divine.

4. In dealing with Jesus’ miracles, Ware says in a footnote, ‘Certainly some of Jesus’ miracles may have been done out of the divine nature. Indeed it seems in John’s gospel, in particular, this may well be the case. But here [Matt 12:28, where Jesus says ‘it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons’] Christ states specifically that the miracle performed was done in the power of the Spirit, and so we should accept this for what it says… So it seems reasonable to conclude that the norm for accounting for the miracles that Jesus did is not through an appeal to his divine nature, per se, but rather by an appeal to the power of the Holy Spirit who indwelt him’ (p 37). Yet in Matt 12:28, Jesus says ‘if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons…’ It is the divine person, not the human nature, who performs the miracles. Moreover, if, as Ware rightly says, these miracles are ‘confirmatory’ (p 43), they must ‘confirm’ and indeed reveal, something of his deity (see eg Mark 4:41; John 2:11), so is it not confusing to try to examine them solely in relation to the humanity of Jesus? What could they reveal if they are simply the works of a man empowered by the Spirit? Examining the work of the Spirit in the life of Christ is not new (see e.g. chapter 3, ‘The Spirit of Christ’ in Sinclair Ferguson’s The Holy Spirit) but if it is divorced from his deity it is misleading. Charismatics have argued ‘if Christ was a man empowered by the Spirit, we can do the same miracles he did’. Ware’s argument points in the same direction. ‘The resources given to Christ for his obedience are given to us’ he writes (p 45). Then why not to perform miracles?

5. The temptations of Christ are discussed without mention of their unique nature and role in Jesus’ ministry as God-man and Messiah. There is certainly much help to be gained in my struggle against temptation from Christ’s example, but that is not the heart of what is happening in the wilderness. ‘If you are the Son of God…’ is the issue – Jesus is tempted to use his divine prerogatives to overcome the struggles he must face as God-man, as Geerhardus Vos says, ‘how can Messiahship and submission to the ethical obligations of common human conduct go together?’ (Biblical Theology p 335). The force of this, so important in asserting the union of Christ’s natures and the integrity of his personality, is entirely lost in Ware’s treatment which majors on Christ being unable to sin because he was God, but actually not sinning because as a Spirit-empowered man he resisted to the end. This is helpful so far as it goes but the emphasis on the ‘Spirit empowered man’ obscures the fact that it is the God-man who acts in all of Christ’s life, not one nature or the other. Ware’s application and discussion focus on the resources Christ used being available for me. But even if I consider only his humanity, does it help sinful me to know a sinless Saviour resisted? Did he not have the Spirit ‘without measure’ (John 3:34). Is his empowerment really the same as mine?

6. Ware’s treatment of Christ as the second Adam tends to equate it with Christ’s humanity (‘Although sent by the Father, and although possessing the divine nature, he nonetheless carries out his work in the power of the Spirit and does so as the man, the second Adam, whom God made him to be’ p. 137). But ‘Last Adam, Second Man’, is to do with his Person, not his human nature; it is to proclaim him head of a new humanity, not simply to describe him as coming in human weakness, even sinlessly.

7. In his discussion of Christ’s death, Ware says ‘We can rightly say (a) the human nature of Jesus bore our sin and died on the cross, or (b) Jesus the God-man bore our sin and died on the cross. But we would err were we to say (c) the divine nature of Jesus bore our sin and died on the cross’ (p 125). Option (b) is surely correct but can (a) be right ? Can a nature bear the load of guilt as a penal substitute? Can sin be imputed to a nature? Why divide the natures? It is surely wisdom to say that whatever Christ did in his earthly life, whether raising Lazarus, eating bread at the last supper or dying on the cross, he did as God-man. ‘The more we study the gospels, the less inclined we are to say that our Lord did any particular action by virtue of his being God, or another by virtue of his being man. We do not see him sometimes as God, and at other times as man. What strikes us is the unity of his person. Before long we can only think of him for what he is – the God-Man, who acted in all things as a single person’. (Olyott, Jesus is both Man and God, p130).

Bruce Ware has written a book that is in many ways helpful. He does not avoid however the pitfalls in such an enterprise, of dividing the natures. This is not because he is not orthodox in his views – he makes enough statements to make that clear. But his agenda and his mode of expression (not helped by the fact that he does not make even a passing reference to Chalcedon, which Warfield called ‘a very perfect synthesis of the biblical data’) open the door for error, even if he doesn’t himself step through it. One review I have read charges the book with having a ‘Nestorian flavour’ – separating the natures, suggesting two persons in Christ. I can understand why, even though Ware is not a Nestorian. He disclaims the attempt to write a complete christology; the trouble is he has given us an incomplete christology and a rather imbalanced one.


I am grateful to Martin Wells of Welcome Hall Evangelical Church, Bromsgrove, for sight of his critique of Ware’s book but responsibility for what is written here is entirely mine.