The moral dilemma of Wikileaks

Not infrequently a letter arrives at our house which is intended for a neighbour. What should be one’s first instinct when that happens: to deliver it to the right address, or to open it first to see whether it contains anything of interest?

I would hope that your own answer is the former. I would take it as a sign of ‘good neighbourliness’. Indeed, I would go further, and say it is a necessary quality for a strong social order.

Trustworthiness when we are unobserved is, in short, a virtue. It is not one that we all possess, and certainly not one we all possess all the time. But that is because we are not entirely virtuous, not because trustworthiness is optional.

Imagine, though, that your neighbour is a local councillor. Imagine, furthermore, that the letter is marked ‘Confidential’. Add to that, there have been rumours about irregularities in the recent business of the Council and, furthermore, that these have directly affected you and your welfare.

Now are you so keen to take the letter next door?

Or what if another of your neighbours came to you with the same letter having opened it already, and says, “Here, I don’t understand these things myself, but perhaps you’d like to have a look through this to see if it sheds any light on what the Council’s been up to?”

What will you do now?

Philosophers love to construct such dilemmas, not least to show the fragility of our moral absolutes. What if your neighbour were a known drug dealer? What if you thought they were a spy? — and so on, and so on.

The tendency of such arguments (indeed, often the deliberate intention) is to weaken our reliance on traditional ‘rule based’ systems. And if you are a Christian, there is something to be said for that.

But the fundamental question, familiar to moral philosophers but often overlooked in debate, is not whether we can come up with a workable ‘rule’ (often we can’t), but what is the kind of thing that would be done by the kind of person we ought to be.

In short, what would a virtuous person do in any given circumstance?

This, however, may itself be the subject of some debate, and I am therefore inclined to turn the question round and ask, ‘What would a wicked person do?’ Suddenly (for some strange reason) the answer is generally clear.

If I were a wicked person, for example, I would certainly open any letter that I thought might contain anything to my advantage or offer an opportunity for causing harm to another. The greater my wickedness, the less compunction I would feel in doing so. And if my other neighbour brought me such a letter I would ask whether there were any more from the same source (all the time making sure that as little harm as possible could come to me as a result).

Of course, this still does not translate into a ‘rule’ system. It is not that the wicked person operates by ‘wicked rules’ (though we may be sure such have been devised). Rather, it is that the virtuous person and the wicked person approach a moral dilemma very differently.

Faced with the so-called ‘trolley problem’ — shall I divert a runaway train to a siding where it will kill one unfortunate individual, or leave it on its current track where it will kill five who have been tied to the rails by a mad philosopher — it is easy to know what a wicked person would do. (Indeed, the whole problem is posited on the somewhat-politically-incorrect presumption that madness produces wicked acts, such as setting out to kill people or to tax the morally virtuous with difficult choices!)

But if we may thus be sure that the wicked person would have scant regard for an accidental breach of confidence, we may equally deduce that the virtuous person will, on the contrary, seek to minimize the consequences of such a circumstance.

This still does not push us into the realm of ‘absolute rules’. What if one’s neighbour were indeed a suspected drug dealer? What if the envelope were already open, the letter fell out and one could not help noticing it described plans for an act of terrorism?

The theoretician can always come up with tantalizing situations. The fundamental answers, however, must be couched in terms of what a virtuous person would do, which can itself often be assessed in terms of what would be done by a person lacking in virtue.

Now this brings me to the subject of Wikileaks — its rationale, but also its social impact. What is the significance of such a website becoming part of our cultural ‘fabric’, and of media outlets participating in the process, particularly when they are favoured recipients of the material Wikileaks has obtained?

The reaction of many (including the editors of certain newspapers) is that such a phenomenon is vitally important, exposing, as it does, that governments are corrupt and that they have acted corruptly.

But that leads me to ask, what do we expect of governments? Or do we rather expect that they should be virtuous, and if that is the case, where will we find the men and women of virtue, and by what process will we produce them?

We seem to have forgotten that society can only work with the individuals who actually make up that society. We cannot therefore expect to produce incorruptible police officers, self-sacrificing captains of industry and honest politicians from a population of morally indifferent individuals. Virtue begins in the individual, not in theoretical ‘values’ a society demands, but fails to apply at the personal level.

Let me pose another dilemma. You find the lap-top belonging to an MP. As a virtuous person, is your first duty to open it and see what you can find? Or is it to return the lost lap-top intact to its owner as soon as possible?

What a wicked person would do is surely self-evident.

But why would a person of virtue presume that there might be damaging material on the lap-top. And why would they want to know? Surely the virtuous person would first presume virtue in the other? And the virtuous person would equally regard the keeping of a confidence and the preservation of trust as their first priority.

The problem with the Wikileaks phenomenon is that the values by which it operates either presume a lack of trustworthiness or rely on such untrustworthiness in others. There is something about it of the ‘wiki-sneak’, and a true danger of it undermining our necessary social fabric.

By all means let whistles be blown. But let them never be blown by those who love ‘whistle-blowing’ for its own sake, and let us never become people who long for the next ‘revelation’ of wrongdoing. The difference between the reader of the Guardian and the reader of the News of the World is not as great, in this regard, as the former might like to imagine.

John Richardson
30 November 2010

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Alister McGrath on the meaning of Justification

As this blog seems to have followed a line of discussion into 'New Perspective' issues and associated subject matter, I thought I'd post a paragraph from a book I read (or half-read!) almost eighteen years ago: Alister McGrath's Iustitia Dei. Be warned, though - the edition I have contains vast tracts of entirely untranslated Latin! At least with Google Translate, I now have the chance to go back over all the bits I previously had to skip.

I found his analysis of the origins of the terms used in biblical translation and Christian theology immensely helpful, especially the transition from ancient Hebrew to koine Greek to Vulgate Latin. I couldn't quite get all the transliteration he uses to work in HTML, but I've copied out a couple of paragraphs below in the hope they might be thought-provoking and useful.

Note especially his insistence that 'righteousness' must be understood within the framework of personal covenantal relationship. The bit that has consistently stuck with me, I have put in bold.

The oldest meaning of s^edāqâ, as judged by its use in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5.1-31), appears to be ‘victory’. [...] In this early passage ... God is understood to have demonstrated his ‘righteousness’ by defending Israel when her existence was threatened by an outside agency. Underlying this understanding of iustitia Dei is the conceptual framework of the covenant: when God and Israel mutually fulfil their covenant obligations to one another, a state of righteousness can be said to exist – i.e., things are saddîq, ‘as they should be’. Thus Israel’s triumphant victories over her enemies were seen as proofs of the sidqôt ’^adonay, the iustitiae Dei of the Vulgate. [...]

It is to the genius of [H] Cremer [Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre im Zusammenhang ihrer geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen (Guttersloh, 1899)] that we owe the fundamental insight that s^edāqâ, in its basic sense, refers to an actual relationship between two persons, and implies behaviour which corresponds to, or is consistent with, whatever claims may arise from or concerning either party to the relationship. The relationship in question is that presupposed by the covenant between God and Israel, which must be considered as the ultimate norm to which s^edāqâ must be referred. The Hebrew concept of s^edāqâ stands in a class of its own – a class which Cremer brilliantly characterised as iustitia salutifera [‘salvation righteousness’, as distinct from iustitia distributiva, ‘distributive righteousness/justice’, according to ‘dues’ or ‘merits’].

Alister E McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A history of the Christian doctrine of Justification, Vol 1, (Cambridge: University Press, 1986) 7-8

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A Clarification from Tom Wright

Tom Wright has sent the following, which he wanted to post as a comment, but which is too long. I commend it for people who have been following the debate here (Baffled by Wright - or maybe not!) and here (Clarifying Wright - maybe! - and can I just add I'm entirely with him on anonymous posting, please see the comments policy which appears at the bottom of every article here and still gets ignored!):

I'm glad to see that some clarification is coming. The confusion around the blessed word 'basis' is instructive. The word itself, of course, is not biblical. None the worse for that; as you say, the word 'Trinity' isn't, either, and I agree with those who say it's a fine and solid summary of things that are firmly there in scripture. That's not my problem. The problem is that words like 'basis' -- and other terms such as the 'heart' or 'centre' of Pauline theology, and so on -- can be far more slippery than they sound. I notice, John, that in your own original posting you say that I said something which meant that 'this transformation will be the basis of a 'final verdict' on their lives' -- whereas I had done my best to keep the word 'basis' out of it for the moment! It creeps back in. You likewise say in a later post something about present justification 'on the basis of faith' -- on which see below. Now I don't think that's a bad thing. The trouble is that clearly for some in the neo- or hyper-Reformed camp (I'm not sure how strictly Reformed they all are) the word carries far more freight than it has ever done, in my experience, for most English Reformed Christians. The strict (Piperesque?) interpretation seems to use it to mean 'the sole foundation upon which everything rests'. But that's tricky, isn't it? After all, even Paul could use 'foundation' in 1 Cor 3 to refer to Jesus Christ himself and in Eph 2 to refer to the apostles and prophets -- with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone holding them together. Why not shift metaphors if it helps? But there has crept in a kind of word-concept fallacy about slippery terms like 'basis' where it can only mean one thing. (One of your correspondents, trying to put me right, suggests that Piper and I are saying the same thing in different words. That is sometimes true -- and I have said so myself, quoting Newman about the difference between words and things-- and sometimes it is clearly, manifestly, not the case, for instance in the imputation question.)

When I used the word 'basis' (as I obviously did -- when I was preparing for the conference I was surrounded by unopened boxes and all the stuff of moving house, so couldn't check; and I knew I hadn't taken the theological position that the Piperites were accusing me of), I was not meaning it in that strict and narrow sense. I was using it in the way people speak of being justified in the present 'on the basis of faith'--which a lot of people do say without intending any heresy!, but which we know is shorthand for 'on the basis of God's action in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, and by the work of the Spirit through the proclamation of the gospel which leads to . . . faith'. Phew! In other words, I wasn't meaning 'this and only this, without reference to Jesus and the Spirit'. I was meaning -- as I make abundantly clear in several passages -- that Paul insists in Romans 2 and elsewhere that 'to those who by patience in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life'. Again and again over decades I have stressed to students, readers, and anyone else who will listen, that this isn't a proposal for a Pelagian-style self-effort moralistic auto-justification, such as everyone from Augustine to Luther and beyond declared to be off limits. It's a way of saying -- which Paul then elaborates as the letter goes on -- that when the Spirit works in someone's life the transformation which is effected will show up in a changed direction, a different tenor of life, which, even though not perfect (Philippians 3.12-16), nevertheless indicates the work of the Spirit.

Part of the problem is that the debate has regularly been conducted at one or two removes from exegesis, and people have a truncated view of what Paul said as a result. Paul's exposition of justification in Romans doesn't stop with chapter 4 (still less with 3.28 as you might think from some!). Romans 8.31-39 is all about justification -- but you only get that glorious conclusion as a result of working through 8.1-30, with the bracing imperatives of 8.12-16 in particular: if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live! Pretty clear stuff, that. And it doesn't mean a smuggling in of 'works' by the back door; nor does it mean a diminution of the solid assurance given in justification by faith, as some have absurdly charged me with implying.

One of the great problems is that many on both sides of the Atlantic who have been taught 'justification by faith' in a simple (simplistic?) format have never spotted that in the NT there are three tenses of justification. I have highlighted present and future, and there is a major difference between them (present, as in Romans 3.21-26; future, as in Romans 2.1-16). Part of Paul's whole argument in Rom 1-8 hinges on the apparent tension between these, and how Paul resolves it so splendidly in 8.1, running on to 8.31-39. That is the arena in which debate should be held -- discussion of what Paul really meant -- rather than discussing whether this or that view is 'more properly reformed'.(By the way, you seem at one point in your post to identify 'Reformed' with Luther, which is surely precisely the wrong point -- Luther had a negative view of the Law, Calvin a positive one.) If you want to know my position on the Reformed doctrine, I think I agree with most of it (though I try to put it in a more biblical and less mediaeval framework) except 'imputed righteousness', which as I've argued in great detail is trying to do an important job but is doing it in a strictly less-then-fully-biblical way. But, as I said in Atlanta in the meeting which started all this (well, it didn't exactly start it, but in that loose sense it was ... shall we say, the 'basis' for it ...), this is a debate about scripture and tradition. Evangelicals have always said we must assess all traditions, including our own, in the light of scripture. That was Luther's and Calvin's principle, and it has been mine ever since I was old enough to understand these things.

I don't think, by the way, the parable of the sower is germane to this. It's about the way the Kingdom works... Nor is 1 Cor 3 strictly relevant, since it isn't about everybody's final judgment but about church leaders/teachers/apostles who are building on the foundation. Still, it could be thought to apply obliquely I suppose.

I was particularly struck (as in, surprised) by your formulation of 'salvation (how we are saved) and justification (that we are saved)'. At first I wondered whether you'd deliberately said that the wrong way round to see who was awake at the back of the class... Surely if we are to have a serious discussion one must be a bit more nuanced and sharp than that? Salvation means 'rescue', which in Paul means rescue from sin and death (as opposed to the Gnostics for whom it meant rescue from the material world/body). It therefore connotes resurrection, the new immortal body which will be incapable of both sin and death (and pain etc). Justification means 'the verdict "in the right" which is the precondition for that salvation. God utters that verdict "in the right" whenever someone believes that God raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 4.24f., 10.9-19). But that verdict, issued firmly and irrevocably in the present, will be reaffirmed in the future . . . when, however, the Spirit who (through the proclamation of the gospel) inspired that faith in the first place continues his work to produce the fruits of which Paul speaks again and again from Rom 2.25-9 through Rom 6 and 8 to Rom 12-15. And what will the Spirit actually do at that point? Why, raise us from the dead. So, in terms of final justification, the actual event in question will be the same event resurrection into the life of God's new world) as 'salvation', but the two will connote quite different thing. I agree with you, by the way, that baptism is the public event, corresponding to faith as the private event, which marks out God's people in the present. But, on final justification, as I said on someone else's blog, I wonder why nobody has mentioned Galatians 5.5f., where it's future justification on the basis of . . . whoops, I mean of course in accordance with ... 'faith working through love'. Has Paul thereby gone back on the great 'faith-alone' statements of Gal 2, 3 and 4? Of course not. They are about the present justification; this is about the future. The same Spirit who inspired faith will inspire such 'working through love' as will be the sign for the future.

I hope all this is reasonably clear. I didn't know whether to be amused or insulted by the chap on your blog who said I must be unclear because I'd never been a parish priest. (I suppose being Dean of a cathedral doesn't count either.) I would like to show him the files and files of letters, postcards, emails and so on from the Old Mrs Joneses of this world who have thanked me heartily for explaining things, in sermons and books, in a way they can understand and in a way that their own vicar had never made clear . . . But maybe he doesn't realise (some don't) that the NT Wright of the academic books is also the Tom Wright of the Everyone series...

I was also struck by the attempt by Ro Mody to systematize a Wright-says-this and Reformed-says-that view. It really doesn't work like that though I haven't got the time to explain why. But please be it noted: I have always, always, stressed penal substitution as being right at the heart of things, both for Jesus and for Paul. I do that in preaching and teaching as well as writing. It is one of the saddest slurs I encounter when people suggest I don't really believe or teach this. It's a way of saying 'we don't understand Tom Wright and he's saying things we didn't hear in Sunday School so he's probably a wicked liberal, and since wicked liberals don't believe in penal substitution he probably doesn't either.' In fact, chapter 12 of Jesus and the Victory of God is, I think I'm right in saying, the longest ever modern justification of seeing Isaiah 53 at the very centre of Jesus' own self-understanding -- which is at the very heart of everything else about the meaning of the cross. That is not to say, of course, that I agree with every way in which penal substitution is expressed. Like all doctrines, it's possible to state it in less than fully biblical ways, which then introduce their own new distortions. Put it back in its biblical context -- which includes Jesus' message about the kingdom of God, though you'd never know it from some evangelical writing -- and it makes glorious sense. Gospel sense.

Enough for now. Perhaps it's no bad thing for casual bloggers, slagging someone off cheerfully as some of your folks do, to know that the person concerned may actually read what they say from time to time... but then if they hide behind anonymous alias identities I suppose that makes it all right ...?

Greetings and good wishes, not least for Advent Sunday which is almost upon us,
reminding us of the great future in which all our past and present is finally resolved.

Tom Wright

N T Wright, St Andrews

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Clarifying Wright - maybe!

Further to my blog post about understanding Tom Wright, someone sent me a link to this clarification by Justin Taylor of What N.T. Wright Really Said. I think this is worth reading in full for those who are trying to get a handle on Wright, and especially the last section which I reproduce below.

What I would note is that it is not just conservatives who seem to think that Wright has said what he roundly asserts he is not saying, ie that what we do contributes, per se, to whether we are saved 'on the basis of good works'. I have certainly got the impression from others who thought they were 'following Wright' that this is what they understood him to be saying.

Furthermore, Wright has indeed used the 'B' word ('basis') in reference to final judgement:

And we now discover that this declaration, this vindication, occurs twice. It occurs in the future, as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit — that is, it occurs on the basis of “works” in Paul’s redefined sense. And near the heart of Paul’s theology, it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the “call” of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. (N. T. Wright, “New Perspective on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006): 260)

It is the use of basis which seems to be at the heart of the confusion, not only amongst Wright's critics at this point, but some of his supporters. Works are the 'basis' of final justification (the declaration that one is a member of God's people) in the same way, we might say, that having a passport is the 'basis' on which one is allowed into the country of one's birth. And this, I would suggest, is no different from the classical Reformed position expressed in Article XII: "[Good works] do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit."

Here, then, is the final paragraph of the article in full.

4. What is the meaning and significance of Wright’s assertion at ETS that final justification is “in accordance with” and not “on the basis of” works?

We return now to our original question: has Wright changed his view by denying that final justification is “on the basis of” works?  In short, the answer is no. Nothing that he said indicated that he has changed his understanding of the meaning of “righteousness” language in Paul’s writings. Nothing that he said indicated that he has changed his understanding of the trial to which justification stands as a verdict. On the contrary, he reasserted his position on both of these points.

What then did the denial of “basis” as an appropriate way to talk about the relationship between final justification and Spirit-inspired works mean?  The most responsible reading of this statement is that Wright is denying the interpretation of his writings that insists that he equates the believer’s righteousness in final justification with Spirit-inspired works. I think that everyone in the room who has read his works carefully was probably stunned to hear him say that he did not remember using the language of “basis” in this way, but I think that his lapse in memory on this point demonstrates that the language of “basis” is so inessential to what Wright has always meant that he can dismiss it without realizing how frequently he has used it in the past. Basically, Wright’s shift in language simply means that he is using new wording to express what he has always been saying, but in a way that is less apt to be misunderstood than his previous statements. He still holds that Spirit-inspired works serve as the evidence that one is truly a member of God’s covenant people in final justification, and this corresponds to his understanding of the function of faith in present justification. He has not changed his view at all, but he has finally offered the clarification for which Piper hoped by denying that he understands works to be the “basis” of final justification in the way that Piper understands Christ’s righteousness to be the “basis” of final justification. One might wish that he had made this clarification clearer in his book-length reply to Piper (Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision), but we may all be grateful that he is now speaking in a way that perhaps fewer people will misunderstand. Also, perhaps the debate can now shift from this red-herring to the real points of disagreement: Wright’s understanding of the meaning of “righteousness” language and his construal of the question under consideration in the divine courtroom. On these points, Wright should be engaged and evaluated with an open mind, an open heart, and, not least, an open Bible. The discussion at ETS was a fine example of such engagement, and we should all be thankful to the panelists for modeling a charitable dialogue on this issue focused on the exegetical details from which the differences arise. May God give us wisdom as we continue to consider His Word together.

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Death , Liberalism and ‘Resting in Peace’

I couldn’t help noticing, following the announcement of the death of the Very Reverend Colin Slee, the former Dean of Southwark Cathedral, that a number of people greeted this news with the comment, “May he rest in peace and rise in glory.”

Even the Southwark Cathedral website had the same line, following the initial notice of the Dean’s death.

Some, at least, of these individuals would be of the same Liberal persuasion held, without any embarrassment to call it such, by Colin Slee himself. But I can’t help finding this somewhat curious.

I don’t think it is wrong to describe the sentiment it expresses as a prayer for the dead. Not wishing to misunderstand or misrepresent what it means, I did a quick trawl around the internet (as one does), where I found the Wikipedia website giving the following explanation:

“Rest in peace” (Latin: Requiescat in pace) is a short epitaph or idiomatic expression wishing eternal rest and peace to someone who has died. ... The phrase or acronym [RIP] is ... derived from the burial service of the Roman Catholic church, in which the following prayer was said at the commencement and conclusion:

“Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per Dei misericordiam requiescant in pace.”

In English, it is rendered as

“May his soul and the souls of all the departed faithful by God’s mercy rest in peace.”

Fair enough. And I also found the phrase in full on a website referring to how the Guild of All Souls was founded on 15 March 1873,

to provide furniture for Burial according to the use of the Catholic Church so as to set forth the two great doctrines of the Communion of Saints and the Resurrection of the Body; and Intercessory prayer for the Dying and for the repose of the souls of the deceased members and all the faithful departed.

The founders of the Guild were members of the Church of England, but clearly the doctrines they sought to reinstate were not those current in that Church at that time.

Now, of course, one cannot raise such issues without touching on the difficulties currently facing the Church of England in general and the Anglo-Catholic movement within it in particular. Nevertheless, it is surely beyond dispute that at the Reformation the Church of England officially repudiated precisely the understanding of death and the hereafter that the phrase “May he rest in peace” presumes.

Here is the Homily on Prayer (with the spelling tidied up):

Now to entreat of that question, whether we ought to pray for them that are departed out of this world, or no. Wherein, if we will cleave only unto the word of GOD, then must we needs grant, that we have no commandment so to do. For the Scripture doth acknowledge but two places after this life. The one proper to the elect and blessed of GOD; the other to the reprobate and damned souls ...

And if this might seem to leave a loophole (on the ground that there is perhaps no commandment of Scripture not to pray for the dead), the Homily continues, after giving some biblical examples to the contrary,

... neither let us dream any more, that the souls of the dead are any thing at all holpen by our prayers: But as the Scripture teacheth us, let us think that the soul of man passing out of the body, goeth straight ways either to heaven, or else to hell, whereof the one needeth no prayer, and the other is without redemption.

The point, however, is not simply that the dead cannot be helped by our prayers, but that, as regards those who have died in Christ, they need no help from from our prayers. Opposition to prayers for the dead stems not from a mean-spirited desire to withhold possible aid from those who need it, but from a sure and certain confidence in the gospel. As the homily puts it, in typically vigorous terms:

He that cannot be saved by faith in Christ’s blood, how shall he look to be delivered by man’s intercessions? Hath GOD more respect to man on earth, then he hath to Christ in heaven? If any man sin (saith Saint John) we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2.1).

Amen, I say, to that! But this is where I find the Liberal predilection for “May he rest in peace” so odd.

Historically, it is (to say the least) in tension with the formal Anglican position, expressed not only in the Homilies but in the Thirty-nine Articles (specifically, Article XXII, ‘Of Purgatory’).

Yet this style of prayer often accompanies a very ‘high’ view of ministry and sacrament which makes the Protestant Evangelical Anglican heritage seem positively ‘rationalist’ in its application of Christian doctrine to present living.

At the same time, moreover, it seems to lean ‘Romeward’ in its understanding of faith and doctrine at a time when Rome is hardly the doctrinal and moral ‘flavour of the month’ amongst liberals with a small ‘l’.

Most curiously though, it seems to presume that the dead in Christ still need our help — which would suggest, therefore, some uncertainty either in their standing with God, or (indeed) with God’s attitude towards them.

Perhaps I am wrong in assuming that Liberals (with a capital ‘L’) reject the notion that God does not welcome one and all after their decease. Do they, after all, believe that there is “no peace unto the wicked”? Or is there some other factor of which I am unaware to take into consideration?

However, as an Evangelical (and indeed, an Evangelical of precisely the stripe Colin Slee himself disliked so much), I would rather pray concerning the dead with the words we find in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer Order for Holy Communion:

And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom ...

Of course, regarding the individual there may be room for circumspection. The 1662 Order for the Burial of the Dead certainly leaves some leeway when it prays,

We meekly beseech thee, O Father, to raise us from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness; that, when we shall depart this life, we may rest in him, as our hope is this our brother doth ...

On the one hand, ‘hope’ here is undoubtedly meant as the ‘sure and certain hope’ of the resurrection expressed at the committal. On the other hand, there have equally undoubtedly been ‘brothers’ about whom these words were said where the audience would have reason to see this as a generous presumption, to say the least.

Nevertheless, the one thing these words leave no room for is doubt that the dead in Christ actually do rest in him — no ‘ifs, buts or maybes’.

May he rest in peace? He either does not, or he does. Let us be bold enough, whether for Dean Slee or anyone else, to trust the gospel!

John Richardson
27 November 2010

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Baffled by Wright - or maybe not!

Can anyone unpack this sentence by Tom Wright for me, which he posted as a ‘clarification’ in a blog discussion (adding that he doesn’t usually read or respond to blog posts)?

The point … is that by the Spirit those who are already justified by faith have their lives transformed, and the final verdict will be in accordance with that transformation, imperfect though it remains.

As it stands, Wright says that justification is, quite simply, “by faith”, that those who are so justified have their lives transformed by the Spirit, and that this transformation will be the basis of a “final verdict” on their lives.

Now I know that Wright wants to distinguish salvation (how we are saved) from justification (that we are saved). Nevertheless, he does not add a ‘plus’ to his statement about ‘justification by faith’, and I therefore take it he means justification is ‘by faith alone, through grace alone’. I may be wrong, but that is a legitimate inference from the sentence as it stands.

Allowing for the nuances between ‘salvation’ and ‘justification’, I cannot see how this differs from the classical Reformed position, even though Wright says this is based on a misunderstanding of Paul.

As to the ‘final verdict’, if one is justified (ie, in Wright’s terms, a member of the people of God), the content of this verdict can presumably only be with respect to how well, or badly, one has done in regard to living out one’s ‘calling’ into God’s people.

As Jesus taught in the parable of the sower, some will bear fruit thirty fold, some sixty fold and some a hundred fold. Or as Paul remarks in 1 Corinthians,

If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Cor 3:12-15)

According to this, then, the final verdict is on the quality of one’s Spirit-transformed life as a ‘justified’ member of the household of God.

Once again, however, I cannot see any tension between this and the classical Reformed position.

Is it just, then, that Wright and Luther reach the same position by (what Wright thinks ought to be) a different route?

I have a feeling I am missing something, but if Wright’s statement above is a summary of his actual position, I cannot work out what it is!

John Richardson
25 November 2010

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E-mail today, Daily Mail tomorrow

I have a personal saying, "Never put in an e-mail today what you wouldn't want to see in the Daily Mail tomorrow."

Cue Bishop Pete Broadbent, with a reminder that leaving your Facebook Wall open to the public may not be a good idea either.

We live and learn.

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Sex before marriage is wrong - take part in the poll

Just realized I'm not really finding out what I want to know simply by posting an open-ended question, so I've designed a poll, which is at the top of the blog. There is a statement "Sex before marriage is wrong", followed by a number of options. If none of them suit you, I'm sorry about that, but I'm not trying to discover every possible nuanced position. Hopefully you can tick one of the boxes (and you can only tick one). Please resist the temptation (should it occur to you) to fill it in twice!

Anyone can view the results (I think) - you just need to slide the 'slider'.

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Sex before marriage

We still think it's wrong, right?

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The Covenant (good God y'all) what is it good for? Absolutely something ...

Up until a week ago, I was of the view that the Anglican Covenant was a complete waste of time and effort. What had started as a promised way of bringing some kind of doctrinal order and discipline to a fracturing Communion had been delayed past its sell-by date and watered down to homeopathic dilutions.

Well, it seems I was wrong.

There is now an international coalition against the covenant, led by bloggers, no less! And we have a ‘No to the Covenant’ logo turning up all over the place.

Why? Because apparently the Covenant would destroy everything it means to be an Anglican and propel us back into a theological ‘dark age’. (If you think I’m exaggerating, have a look at comments on the topic on the Thinking Anglicans website.)

What this tells me personally, however, is that the Covenant is clearly better than I thought. Of course it will not bring about what the ‘No to the Covenant’ coalition suggests. Their alarmism is, I suspect, just that, and deliberately so. And neither will it achieve what was hoped when it was first put forward, back in the days when there was still some hope of heading off the present crisis.

But it is not the ‘paper tiger’ I’d begun to assume. After all, anything that the typical ‘Thinking Anglican’ thinks must be stopped cannot be all bad.

So let’s bring on the Covenant — not in the expectation that all our problems will thereby disappear, but certainly because it must be good for something.

John Richardson
11 November 2010

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Glyn Harrison at the CDEA - talks online

The official version of the talks Glyn Harrison gave at the Chelmsford Diocesan Evangelical Association on scientific research and same sex attraction are now online. There is a direct link to them here.

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Large Cardinals shake the world of mathematics

No, I can't understand it either, but I love this stuff:

[...] For more than 100 years, mathematicians have known that there are different kinds, and sizes, of infinity. This was first shown by the 19th-century genius Georg Cantor. Cantor's discovery was that it makes sense to say that one infinite collection can be bigger than another. Infinity resembles a ladder, with the lowest rung corresponding to the most familiar level of infinity, that of the ordinary whole numbers: 1,2,3… On the next rung lives the collection of all possible infinite decimal strings, a larger uncountably infinite collection, and so on, forever.

This astonishing breakthrough raised new questions. For instance, are there even higher levels which can never be reached this way? Such enigmatic entities are known as "large cardinals". The trouble is that whether or not they exist is a question beyond the principles of mathematics. It is equally consistent that large cardinals exist and that they do not.

At least, so we thought. But, like gods descending to earth to walk among mortals, we now realise their effect can be felt among the ordinary finite numbers. In particular, the existence of large cardinals is the condition needed to tame Friedman's unprovable theorems. If their existence is assumed as an additional axiom, then it can indeed be proven that his numerical patterns must always appear when they should. But without large cardinals, no such proof is possible. Mathematicians of earlier eras would have been amazed by this invasion of arithmetic by infinite giants. Read more

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Habemus episcopum? Who will replace the departing bishops?

The departure from the Church of England of the current bishop for the London Scheme and two out of the three serving Provincial Episcopal visitors does more than resolve a tension that has been around for some months. Importantly, it creates some significant vacancies which ought to be filled.

Some may argue this is unnecessary. The advent of women bishops will also see the abolition of the present arrangements for those who have petitioned for episcopal provision under the Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod 1993. Why bother appointing people to posts which are about to disappear?

But no one can be absolutely sure — especially not since the change in the makeup of General Synod — exactly when that will take place. It is certainly not for two years, given that the matter will be debated by diocesan synods throughout 2011 before returning to the General Synod, after which Parliament will also have to approve any Measure that is finally presented. Meanwhile ‘Resolution C’ parishes are still in need of episcopal ministry.

Step forward ... well, who, exactly?

When the Act of Synod was introduced, it envisaged a ‘three tier’ level of provision. The first tier was local, diocesan, arrangements (which in those days could have included the diocesan bishop himself). The second was regional arrangements by neighbouring dioceses. The PEVs were only a third option. But as time went on, the other forms of provision largely (though not entirely) fell into desuetude, and ‘flying bishops’ became the preferred option for most ‘C’ parishes.

Moreover, the system worked quite well, and thus commended itself even further, not least by creating a sense of solidarity amongst parishes which otherwise were in danger of isolation.

If the PEVs are not to be replaced, then in the Province of Canterbury at least, it will be necessary to create numerous local ‘schemes’ of an untried nature and unknown duration. Moreover, the non-replacement of the PEVs would itself be a presumption of the outcome of the ongoing debates — something which one would doubt the present Archbishop of Canterbury would be willing to undertake.

So we are back to the question as to who could be appointed.

To begin with, they must be people committed to the Church of England. One of the effects of the Ordinariate is that it will no longer be possible to live as an Anglo-Catholic within the Church of England and, simultaneously, ‘flirt’ with Rome. The wholeheartedly Roman must, henceforth, choose one of the two options available in that direction. Those who remain, no matter how doctrinally Catholic they may be, must also be clearly ‘Anglo’, not Roman, in their expression of this.

And this could raise at least some questions about the liturgical options available to the constituency, and therefore open to (or perhaps required of!) the new bishops.

At the same time, they should be people who would have the confidence of the remaining constituency and, if the appointing bishops are wise (and I have no doubt in this regard that they are - update, see here), they will be people who can simultaneously address the hurts of that constituency and help it develop its own understanding of its future place within Anglicanism.

Naturally, they will also need all the gifts proper to their episcopal office, added to which, given the opprobrium likely to come their way in the wake of what has just happened with their predecessors (see the blogosphere passim), they will also need to be emotionally as tough as nails.

Such men may well exist, and it may be that names are already under consideration.

There is, however, a thought I’d would like to put forward, just on the off-chance it might be taken seriously, which is that at least one of those finally appointed ought to be an Evangelical. It is quite clear that Evangelicals now have an identical interest in the episcopal outcomes of the present debates as have had the Anglo-Catholics. And it is also arguable that the movement of some Anglo-Catholics into the Ordinariate will create a greater opportunity for dialogue, and perhaps even rapprochement, between Evangelicals and those — shall we call them Catholic Anglicans?* — who remain.

It would, moreover, provide a clear signal from the ‘powers that be’ that a constituency which has seen just a single episcopal appointment from its ranks in seventeen years is still recognized as having an abiding place within the wider denomination.

We continue to live in interesting times.

John Richardson
8 November 2010

* Probably not.

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OFFICIAL: 5 Anglican bishops to join Ordinariate

As official as it's going to get, I think.

[...] Bishop Alan Hopes, Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop in the Westminster Diocese, said: "We welcome the decision of bishops Andrew Burnham, Keith Newton, John Broadhurst, Edwin Barnes and David Silk to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church through the ordinariate for England and Wales, which will be established under the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

"At our plenary meeting next week, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales will be exploring the establishment of the ordinariate and the warm welcome we will be extending to those who seek to be part of it.

"Further information will be made known after the meeting." Read here

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A 'random act of culture' stills the tills

If you enjoyed that bit in The Shawshank Redemption where all the convicts stand listening as Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) locks himself in the warden's office and plays opera over the prison loudspeakers, you'll probably enjoy this real-life version.



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From the Independent: The sad beauty of Autumn

An interesting article from one of our most avowedly secular broadsheet newspapers:

[...] for anyone in the slightest way alive to the rhythms of the natural world and its sights and sounds and smells, autumn has a peculiar personality of its own which is powerfully attractive. Most obviously, the world rebeautifies itself: the autumn foliage becomes resplendent. I've never heard anyone remark on quite how curious this phenomenon is, in biological terms, given everything negative we know about ageing.

The leaves of trees are welcome and wonderful in their green iridescence when they burst out in April, but by June their bloom is gone, and by August they're plain dull. With most life forms, that would be it. We could expect no more. Instead, by a pure accident of organic chemistry, leaves are reborn, as they start to die, in an astonishing range of colours that puts their spring birth to shame.

It's as if they have another spring in another palette, the second one even more vibrant than the first: terracotta, russet, bronze, purple, gold. Even that subtlest of shades, old gold – gold with a burnished look, gold with a tiny hint of red, almost the quintessential autumn colour (look at Stourhead in Wiltshire, pictured opposite).

And this is decay. This is the winding-down of everything, towards death. Yet the great gift of autumn is that the beginning of the end doesn't feel like decay, at least on the surface, it doesn't feel like a crumbling and a rottening and a collapse from within; it feels like the arrival of a world of new sensations. Read more

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Blog rankings - how they stack up (or not)

I was interested to see a ranking of 20 religious blogs on the Church Mouse blog, based on the new Wikio ‘Religion Blogs’ rankings.

However, there are other blog rankings, based on different measures, which give (in some cases radically) different results. Wikio apparently relies particularly on ‘weighted’ links in and tries to give an estimate of a blog's notional ‘influence’, rather than simply its traffic, as measured by Alexa.

Below, therefore, are the same blogs as the Church Mouse lists, based on Alexa Traffic Rank (and the Alexa GB rank where known). The figure in brackets is the Wikio (Church Mouse) ranking. Two blogs in the Wikio list have no Alexa data, presumably because they are not registered with Alexa.

Let those of us who take our rankings seriously (mea culpa) beware!

1. (19) Will and Testament — 46, GB: 6
2. (8) eChurchWebsites Blog — 174,356, GB: 7,008.
3. (4) The Freethinker — 210,969, GB: none.
4. (2) Islam in Europe — 313,591, GB: none.
5. (18) Apologetics 315 — 356,711, GB: none.
6. (6) Thinking Anglicans — 381,122, GB: 22,312.
7. (9) Anglican Mainstream — 393,134, GB: 21,996.
8. (5) The hermeneutic of continuity — 415,730, GB: none.
9. (1) The Church Mouse Blog — 507,076, GB: 20,113.
10. (10) The Cartoon Blog — 507,569, GB: none.
11. (12) The Ugley Vicar — 731,992, GB: 32,395
12. (7) Bishop Alan’s Blog — 763,081, GB: 29,374
13. (3) Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion — 861,372, GB: none.
14. (11) Nick Baines’s Blog — 925,056, GB: 37,058
15. (14) Lesley’s Blog — 1,480,849, GB: 43,604
16. (16) An exercise in the fundamentals of orthodoxy — 1,513,398, GB: 66,268.
17. (20) The Changing Attitude Blog — 1,880,772, GB: none.
18. (15) Catholic and Loving it! — 2,002,886, GB: none.

(13) Epiphenom — no Alexa data
(17) Adrian Warnock — no Alexa data

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Why we are here (maybe)

Yesterday I posted a rather open-ended question as to why we are here, in which I admitted to my own ‘necessitarian’ view on creation and my relief on finding someone else who thought the same way.

I suspect, however, that both I and Norman Kretzmann are using this term in a somewhat specialized way. Neither of us, for example, is saying the world had to be the way it is. (This, I gather, is the more general understanding of ‘necessitarianism’.) In the passage I quoted, Kretzmann specifically repudiates this, insisting that God has freedom with regard to the ‘facts’ of how the world is.

Indeed, one could go as far as to say there is no feature of this world which is precisely ‘necessary’ in the form it takes, because there is nothing which could compel God to make it so, and nothing within God which requires that it be so.

Moreover, the ‘necessity’ here does not require that God lacks anything, for which he therefore needs to create something. This, I understand, was Aquinas’s objection to the whole concept, and it is one with which I (and Kretzmann) entirely agree. The same point is made tellingly in Paul’s speech to the Athenian Council:

God he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. (Acts 17:25, NIV)

The suggestion arises, however, when we consider, as much as we can, how God is within himself, and this takes us into the difficult question of time and eternity.

Augustine of Hippo was quite right when he identified time as a created ‘thing’ (see his Confessions). That being the case, however, we cannot conceive of God as existing in or experiencing any ‘temporal’ framework. As Augustine put it, God does not experience days coming towards him, or receding away from him, as we do. Rather, there is simply a ‘now’ — which is, of course, completely impossible for us really to comprehend.

To put it simply, God is unchanging in the sense that ‘change’ corresponds to a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. Time allows (or forces) us to experience God as if he were ‘stretched out’ along a time-line. So we can read in Scripture of God saying one thing, then ‘repenting’ and doing another. But we must no more read this as a change in God’s inward character than we should read references to his ‘face’ as indicating he has a head with a front and a back.

That being the case, however, ‘creating’ is not something which God one day ‘decided to do’. And yet God clearly has created (we are here!). Therefore God is a creator-God.

Kretzmann, if I have understood him correctly, attributes this to God’s goodness, and argues further that Aquinas should have allowed himself to reach the same conclusion. Creation is ‘of necessity’, not because God has to do it, but because God is ‘that sort of God’.

My own route was rather more simple, premised on the notion that God does not change and yet (self-evidently) creates. However, I would again agree with Kretzmann (and Aquinas in principle) that it is God’s goodness which is the source of his being the Creator.

But I would want to go on to say (and have said in my booklet The Eternal Cross) that God is also, therefore, a saviour-God, not as a result of a decision to create and then a realization of the need to save, but because the two — creation and salvation — go together.

Where this is leading, however, and where I found myself reading Aquinas and then Kretzmann, is to the idea that there is, in Creation and Salvation, an exitus et reditus — a ‘going out from’ and a ‘returning’ to. Or to put it another way, there is diversification from the Unity of God, and (re)union between God and that which is created by God. The phrase is attributed to Platonism, but the idea is there in Aquinas and — I want to argue — is also firmly there in a Christological reading of Genesis 2.

It’s a mouthful, I’ll admit. But I have to stop at this point (a meeting beckons) and will hopefully resume another time.

John Richardson
4 November 2010

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Why are we here?

“... what motivates God to choose not the world consisting solely of himself, the absolutely perfect being, but, instead, a world consisting of the absolutely perfect being accompanied by a universe swarming with countless other beings, none of which — not even any that is perfect of its kind — is or could be absolutely perfect?”* [222]

I’m trying to do some work on Genesis 1-3, and find myself constantly drawn to what I now discover is a position known as ‘necessitarianism’, which apparently Thomas Aquinas denied, but which the author of the question above says actually his logic ought to have affirmed.

Thus I find myself agreeing with the following (in fact it was quite a relief to find someone else taking this line):

Goodness does require something other than itself as a manifestation of itself. God therefore necessarily (though with the freedom associated with with counterfactual choice) wills the being of something other than himself. [...] God’s will is necessitated as regards whether to create, but fully free as regards what to create. [225]

And what that has to do with women bishops, I’ll explain later.

By the way, I discovered this brilliant quote about the author on Wikipedia. It is referenced, so I trust it is true!

When his friends and colleagues wept because they knew he was dying, he consoled them by saying, "You are not a philosopher or a Christian if you are not ready to welcome death." When a colleague commented that he was treating his illness very philosophically, he replied "of course - I have a PhD in that subject."

John Richardson
3 November 2010

* Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997)

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