Quote of the Day

"I have encountered a form of church that does not offend me."

From here.

And isn't that ultimately the problem with Liberal Christianity?

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Another bad astronomy story

This follows the 'bad astronomy' story in the Telegraph last week, that Betelgeuse could explode any moment now (ie in the next million years or so).

The Daily Mail has this wonderful headline:

Asteroid the size of the Titanic caused giant crater on Jupiter spotted by amateur astrologer

All together now, "An astronomer studies the stars, an astrologer ... well, doesn't."


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Possibly the worst bit of reporting this year

The Sunday Telegraph today contains what has to be in line for ‘Worst Reporting of the Year’ award.

Under the headline “Second Sun on its Way” (which rather caught my eye), it reports, “The Earth could find itself with a 'second sun' for a period of weeks later this year when one of the night sky’s most luminous stars explodes, scientists have claimed.”

“Fantastic!” thinks I. But to my knowledge, no-one has yet been able to predict a supernova explosion, so what’s happened?

Read on:

Betelgeuse, which is part of the Orion constellation 640 light years away from Earth, is a red supergiant, meaning that it is nearing the end of its life and is due to explode.

When it does do, it will burn so brightly that the earth will appear to have two suns in the sky, the Daily Mail reported.

So far, so familiar to astronomy fans, but then comes the key phrase:

What is less certain is when it will explode.

And so,

Brad Carter, senior lecturer of physics at the University of southern Queensland in Australia, said the explosion could take place before the end of the year – or indeed at any point over the next million years.

Hm. Not worth waiting up for, then. And in any case, astronomy being what it is on these shores, it is bound to be cloudy.

(As a PS, Betelgeuse is the slightly red-looking top left star in the constellation of Orion, the one with the 'belt' of three stars close together. It is so big that if it replaced our Sun, we would actually be orbitting inside it!)

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How we got same-sex marriage without a proper debate

What the Cornwall B & B case, and the judge’s remarks in his decision, seem to show is that the Civil Partnership Bill effectively gave us ‘same-sex’ marriage without a proper debate in the legislature. As Judge Rutherford put it, “There is no material difference (for the purpose of this regulation) between marriage and a civil partnership.”

Yet the words of the Bishop of Chelmsford from the debate on the Civil Partnership Bill in the House of Lord’s, 17^th November 2004 would suggest this was not supposed to happen and that the government was giving the impression that there was no danger of it happening:

The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford: Perhaps I may say to the Minister that it would be good to have on record that the public understanding of marriage held in the law of this country is not affected by this Bill.

The later words of the Bishop of Chester, however, now seem prescient:

The Lord Bishop of Chester: My Lords, perhaps I may briefly make another penultimate speech in your Lordships’ House. I am grateful for the assurances of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford that the Bill before us does not introduce same-sex marriage. I am grateful for the assurances of the Government at earlier stages. But the difficulty is that the details of the Bill as it stands so closely parallel the arrangements for marriage that there is a real danger of a de facto introduction of same-sex marriage by that process.

The history of social legislation in this country is often that the consequences are not quite those that are stated as intended. One sees that in all sorts of areas, including divorce and abortion in family law. In some ways, that makes it difficult to accept the amendment before us. The range of relationships that ought to be dealt with under a Bill, as has been stated so eloquently, not least by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, is very persuasive.

However, if the Bill is left standing alone, without any other measures being introduced at some point, paralleling so closely the provisions for marriage, de facto we will have a perception of same-sex marriage.

How mistaken was the Bishop of Chelmsford, and how far-sighted was the Bishop of Chester?

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The Cornwall B&B case: a funeral oration for Christian Britain

Back in ad 2000, Callum Brown wrote a book called The Death of Christian Britain. Yesterday, Judge Andrew Rutherford delivered the funeral oration. It begins with these telling, and I think remarkable, words:

In 1882 Her Majesty Queen Victoria opened a new court building. It is in the Strand just at the entrance to the City of London. It was built to house the superior courts of this land with the exception of the House of Lords. No one who enters can fail to be struck by the similarity of the Great Hall with the interior of those gothic cathedrals with which this kingdom is so richly endowed. But if, before entering, you gaze upon the façade of the building you will notice 4 statues.

There you will find King Alfred who made such a notable contribution to Saxon England by codifying the laws of his day. You will find Moses to whom was given the ten commandments and to whom, by tradition, is ascribed authorship of the first 5 books of the Bible in which you will find in great detail the laws governing the children of Israel. Also there on the façade is King Solomon whose wisdom has become a legend and who displayed outstanding qualities as a judge when sitting in the Family Division in the only reported case of which we have details. And the 4th statue is that of Jesus Christ who, I imagine, needs no introduction to those involved in this case.

Why are those statues there? Perhaps there were many reasons for them but I venture to suggest that one was to emphasise the Judaeo-Christian roots from which the common law of England was derived.

A great deal has however happened since King Alfred and his Saxon laws, and even more has changed since Moses, King Solomon and Jesus Christ walked upon this earth. Those Judaeo-Christian principles, standards and beliefs which were accepted as normal in times past are no longer so accepted.

We live in interesting times.

Incidentally, his comment about Solomon and ‘the Family Division’ may be a better joke than he intended, but the fact that he knew the reference, and assumed his readers and hearers might actually ‘get it’, simply shows, as he acknowledges, how much things have changed in his lifetime. I have no doubt that almost no one under the age of fifty would know what he meant without looking it up.

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A house divided against itself

The other day I was approached by my Archdeacon, who informed me that she was “on the case” regarding the impact of the new clergy ‘terms of service’ regulations on my own particular situation of employment. Not having been aware that there was a ‘case’ to be on, and having something of an allergy for paperwork, I was glad someone was watching out for me in this instance.

However, I cannot help reflecting, after the events of the past week, on the way that the Church of England is so assiduous about rules and regulations in one area and so slack in another.

It has been said that it must sometimes seem as if the Church cares more about how its clergy behave than what they believe. I would put it slightly different: the Church is more careful about applying the set standards in the first area than it is in the second.

This week, I have come across two instances where ‘official’ Church events have simply ridden roughshod over the Thirty-nine Articles. The first (actually where the Archdeacon spoke with me) disregarded a significant part of Article XX ‘Of the Authority of the Church’ and the second largely ignored Article XVIII ‘Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ’.

Now my point here is not whether those Articles — or any of the Articles — are right in what they affirm (though I happen to think they mostly are).

Rather, it is whether, as Walter Sobchak puts it in The Big Lebowski, “Smokey, this is not ‘Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.”

What would have happened had I said to the Archdeacon, “That’s very nice for you, and I’m glad you take that view, but some of us see things differently. Though as our speaker has just observed, that does not mean we ought not to be in communion with one another”?

Someone may observe, “But there are legal consequences, you can’t ignore the law”, to which I would reply, “Why should there not be consequences — not necessarily in law, but in practice — for a departure from the parameters laid down for Anglican doctrine? What matters more in the long term, the housing I occupy or the ideas I preach?”

Someone else may say, “You cannot just ‘do it your way’. What would happen if we all did our own thing? The point of these regulations is to introduce consistency across the Church,” to which I would reply, “Quite so.”

John Richardson
16 January 2011

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Questions in Genesis, answers in Jesus?

I posted this earlier, but deleted it as I wasn’t happy with it going up. I wanted to repost it, though in a slightly modified form, as I still think the point is worth making, and it is this:

Supposing you were the evangelist Philip in Acts 8, going up to the Ethiopian Eunuch’s chariot, and supposing you asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” and supposing he still said, “How can I, unless someone explains it to me.”

So far, so good. I reckon most readers of this blog could cope with applying Isaiah 53 to Jesus. But suppose the scroll he was reading from was not Isaiah but Genesis — specifically Genesis 1 onwards. Would you still be able to do (or even try to do) what Philip did in Acts 8:35:

Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

Now you might object that Genesis 1 is not about Jesus in the same way Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, but isn’t all the Old Testament ultimately ‘about Jesus’? Doesn’t Luke tell us of the disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus that,

... beginning with Moses ... he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

And isn’t ‘Moses’ here a reference to the Pentateuch, and doesn’t that begin with Genesis 1, and doesn’t that begin with the same words as John’s gospel: “In the beginning ...”?

My suspicion, however, is that very few of us would think, if we were approached by someone with questions about Genesis, that we should start solving them by explaining about Jesus. So is Genesis exempt (at least until you get to 3:15)? Or is there something useful we can say?

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"I want it all, and I want it now" - cultural decline and the demand for gratfication

A couple of days ago, I posted a piece on the differences one woman identified between Chinese and ‘Western’ approaches to parenting. I didn’t realize at the time that the woman concerned had just written a book on the entire subject, nor did I know that there is a phenomenon called the Tiger Mother.

“How did I miss this?” you may ask. The answer is that the original article caught my eye because of a number of other concerns.

The first, and most pressing, is a conviction that the hegemony of the West is over. Europe and North America, in particular, have had their day and by the end of this century will simply be ‘bit players’ on a very different global stage.

That, I think, is an unremarkable suggestion, but the reason for it I myself would advance is that the ‘NATO’ culture is exhausted. The book to read is Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence, where one can see how the astonishingly vibrant culture of medieval Europe finally gave way to dullness and indifference somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century. We have reached almost the end of a long trail, and are witnessing the passing of the old culture and the advent of the new.

That is life — cultures come and cultures go. But my second concern lies with the influences on, and from, this exhaustion. What human qualities are fed by, and feed into, our present Western culture? And that is where parenting comes into the picture.

One of the great challenges of being human is the delay of gratification. That is to say, we set aside an immediate pleasure (whether it be of doing one thing or stopping doing another) for the sake of a future pleasure, either of enjoying the same thing later or of enjoying something else even more.

Indeed, I would suggest that a conscious delay of gratification is one of the defining qualities of being human. Experiments with animals show that the greater the reward, the more strongly reinforced tends to be the behaviour that elicits that reward. (Combine this with frequent but irregular supply of the reward and the behaviour can become compulsive.)

Because we have an animal nature, the same is also broadly true of us. Why else does sex have such a powerful effect on the way we behave, especially when we are younger? However, human beings can also, by nature, step back from the action-gratification cycle. We can reflect on it, and rationalize about it, and therefore we can actually make choices as to how and, importantly, when we are gratified.

Thus an adult may choose not to eat sweets (delaying the gratifying experience) in order to achieve, later on, the pleasure of weight-loss. Or they may choose not to buy something they would quite like now in order to save up for something else they really want in the future.

Such observations are commonplace, but the underlying attitude depends on two fundamental considerations. The first is a conviction that there will be a future point at which such delayed gratification can finally be enjoyed. The second is that the future gratification will be, in some way, greater than the immediately available gratification.

To the extent to which these considerations are weakened, however, delayed gratification will tend to give way to immediate gratification. If I knew that I would die tomorrow, I would certainly not be abstaining from chocolate today.

This is the presumption behind the ‘Bucket List’ phenomenon. There are things to do ‘before you die’ precisely because you are going to die and then you will not be able to do them. The same, however, can be applied within our individual lifespan. There are things you can do when you are young which you will not be able to do when you are old, and so on.

Of course there is a balance to be struck between delay and gratification. Without eventual gratification, there would be nothing to provide motivation for the delay. On the other hand, if the possibility of gratification seems too remote, or if the immediate gratification seems too desirable, then again delay will lose its attraction.

The point, though, is that the interplay between gratification and delay is both influenced by, and has influence on, a given cultural group, whether that be, to give just a few examples, a family, a tribe, a community, a team or a nation.

Thus Amy Chua’s ‘Tiger Mother’ approaches the question of music practice or homework on the principle, first of all, that not doing these things is itself a ‘gratification’ which must be delayed. Why she thinks this doubtless has much to do with her own enculturation — how she was brought up and what she learned about motherhood — but the effect is obvious: her children now excel at these things which required so much effort and, indeed, caused so many tears.

The contrast with a family where the immediate gratification of not doing homework or music practice takes priority will be obvious. The children will, doubtless, be happy with their immediate lot, but in general they will not advance academically or artistically as far as the children of the ‘Tiger Mother’ household.

Which, then, is better? The answer depends on your views on a number of issues. The most obvious would be parental discipline, the application of which is itself a form of delayed gratification. Who wants to spend hours making children do their homework when we could all sit and watch the TV?

Another obvious issue would be one’s view of later attainment in life. If you want academic or artistic success, the foundations are best laid in childhood. But is this worth the actual price at the time? Who really cares whether you get good piano grades? What does it matter in the final analysis?

But there is also the basic question of what it means to be human. Is, for example, the person who enjoys — who indeed can play — Mozart a better human being than one who cannot share that enjoyment, someone whose musical development goes no further than, say, the ‘top twenty’? If the answer is ‘yes’, then delayed gratification is not just a means to material ends but a key to human development.

And if we find these examples from academia or the arts too culturally biased in themselves, consider the area of sport, where again great achievement demands great sacrifice. This is masked, of course, by the fact that sport, especially in its early stages, involves ‘play’. Nevertheless, to progress is intensely demanding.

Indeed, it is worth asking, again, whether a culture which emphasizes practice and discipline at an early stage will not produce more able athletes than one which relies on self-motivation and the emergence of the odd ‘genius’.

There is no doubt in my mind that a culture of delayed gratification is not only conducive towards, but essential for, developing both greatness in our achievements and fullness in our humanity.*

What has happened in the West, however, is the shrinking of our perspective regarding the extent to which gratification can and should be delayed. Not least, of course, this is affected by the decline of religious faith. In one sense delayed gratification is of the essence of faith — especially (though not exclusively) the Christian faith. Thus the believer is willing to delay gratification even of sexual desires if this is seen as conducive to a greater gratification that lies beyond this world.

But there are other ‘horizons’ which have contracted, whilst the immediate ‘moment’ has extended its demands.

To give one example, I remember reading the complaint of a football coach that the skills of young players were defective because the emphasis on Saturday mornings in the park was all on winning. What he pointed out was that to be able to improve some skills you had to try something you couldn’t do. Thus you had to accept ‘suffering’ your own incompetence at kicking with your weak foot if you were to emerge on the other side as a different kind of player. The ethos of the football-playing culture, however, meant that neither coaches nor players were prepared to live with short-term deprivation of success and admiration for the sake of the long-term future of either the player or the game.

Above all, there is the overarching question of what a culture as a whole sees as its collective ‘rationale’. And here is a key question for the West: “Why are we here? What is our purpose in handing on the gift of life itself from one generation to another, and how should we encourage our children to live in the short-term in order to achieve these longer-term goals?”

These are surely fundamental questions. And I am not saying that the ‘Tiger Mother’ has a good answer. On the contrary, I have no doubt that many such parents living in the West are simply running on the momentum of their cultural inheritance, without yet realizing the tank is dry. But we who are more embedded in Western culture are confronted with the questions more starkly precisely because we are no longer able to maintain the trajectory generated by that faith in the future or sense of duty towards family and country which motivated our grandparents.

If, in the end, there is really nothing much for the individual to look forward to, then the delay of gratification will become increasingly pointless. The result will be an unwillingness to struggle or strive in the present. Instead, carpe diem will come to mean ‘seize the pleasures of the day’. As Queen put it, “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.” Or as it says in the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures, “Let us eat and drink ... for tomorrow we die.”

John P Richardson
13 January 2011

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* "Carol Dweck from Stanford University in the US, has demonstrated that students who understand intelligence is malleable rather than fixed are much more intellectually ambitious and successful.

The same dynamic applies to talent. This explains why today's top runners, swimmers, bicyclists, chess players, violinists and on and on, are so much more skilful than in previous generations.

All of these abilities are dependent on a slow, incremental process which various micro-cultures have figured out how to improve." See here.

Discount on Revelation Unwrapped for UK customers

I note that the UK publishers of Revelation Unwrapped, my introductory commentary to the book of Revelation, are doing a deal on it, at £3 instead of the usual £4 cover price.

If you’d be interested, check it out here.

You can also read a couple of customer reviews here (you have to click the 'more' button to see all six reviews).

And just as a taster, here’s my take on Armageddon from the appendix of the last UK edition:

In the English language the word ‘Armageddon’ is now synonymous with battle. Everybody ‘knows’ that it is where the great conflict will take place which ushers in the end of the world. And, as I have acknowledged in the main text, it is often identified with Megiddo, celebrated in the triumphal Song of Deborah (Jdg 5:19) and the place where king Josiah was mortally wounded fighting Pharaoh Neco (2 Chron 35:22).

Revelation 16:16 itself says, “they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon”. The problem is that if the Greek armagedon is made to correspond to the Hebrew har megido we should be talking about a Mountain (Hebrew, Har) of Megiddo, whereas Megiddo itself is a plain.

Drawing on earlier work by C C Torrey, however, Meredith Kline argues that armagedon is much more likely to be a transliteration of har mo’ed, the Hebrew for the Mount of Assembly or Gathering. (See ‘Har Magedon: The End of the Millennium’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, June 1996, 207-222.) The Hebrew glottal sound was often turned into a Greek ‘g’, and in Hebrew the ending ‘-on’ was sometimes attached to place names, hence ‘Har Mo-g-ed-on’ would give us ‘Armageddon’. This also fits well with the action described in the context: “they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called ‘The Mount of Gathering’”.

This in itself seems quite a satisfying solution to the identity of ‘Armageddon’. Kline goes on to argue, however, that this has more than passing significance, for in Isaiah 14:13 the Mount of Assembly is identified with God’s “sacred mountain”. (The phrase yarkete zaphon can also mean “far north”, but as Kline points out, the contrast here is between the heights of v 14 and the depths of v 15.) In Isaiah, moreover, it is the king of Babylon (14:4), and behind him, doubtless, the original Tempter himself (v 12), who aspires to God’s throne. The Mount of Assembly is thus the focus of rebellion and is to be identified with the Sacred Mountain of God.

Going on from this, Kline makes a further connection with the figure of Gog in the book of Ezekiel. As Psalm 48 makes clear, the earthly equivalent of God’s Sacred Mountain is Zion. However, in Ezekiel 38-39 we find the phrase yarkete zaphon, this time translated “far north” in the NIV, used for the location from which Gog, the archenemy of God’s people, will come. Just as the foreign kings gather against God’s Holy Mountain in Psalm 48, so Gog’s hoards gather at their own yarkete zaphon (Ezek 38:6, 15; 39:2) to advance against the “mountains of Israel” (38:8; 39:2).

Kline thus finds a link not only (as is undeniably the case) between Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation 19-20, but also between Gog and the battle of ‘Armageddon’, or rather the ‘Mount of Gathering’, in Revelation 16:16. In both cases, the enemies of God’s people assemble at a mountain. In the first instance (Rev 16:16) they assemble at a rebellious ‘Mount of Gathering’, corresponding to Gog’s yarkete zaphon, or “far north” in Ezekiel 38-39. In the second (Rev 20:9) they surround “the camp of God’s people, the city he loves”, namely Mount Zion, which is God’s yarkete zaphon of Psalm 48.

Hence Kline argues, as I have on other grounds, that the gathering at Armageddon in Revelation 16:16 is the same event as the gathering against Mount Zion in Revelation 20. And therefore there is no ‘millennial’ thousand-year interval between an initial rebellion of Satan and his final rebellion. Rather, John presents us with one event from two different perspectives.

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Stupidity and murder - where's the justice?

I have no embarrassment in declaring myself one of those who thinks that our judicial system exacerbates many of our social problems by being ‘soft’ on criminals. (I seem to remember, incidentally, that CS Lewis once wrote an essay, which must have been about sixty years ago, lamenting the same thing after some boys were apprehended for vandalizing his shed.)

You might think, then, I would be rejoicing that Edward Woollard, the 18-year old student who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof of 30 Millbank during the tuition fees protests last year, had received a jail sentence of two years and eight months.

On the contrary, I think it simply illustrates (and exacerbates) the problem. For in the same edition of the Daily Mail in which we can read about Woollard’s situation, we also see that Learco Chindamo, the man convicted of murdering headteacher Philip Lawrence, may have to serve an extra two years in jail over an alleged mugging he committed shortly after his release.

Now of course Chindamo may be entirely innocent in this instance. That is not the point that concerns me and will doubtless concern others. Rather it is the difficulty many of us outside the system have in making sense of the policy involved in such sentencing.

To begin with, Chindamo, was given what was described as a “life sentence” for a murder which the judge at the time described as “futile and un- provoked”. (Readers may recall that Lawrence stepped in to protect another boy being attacked by Chindamo and others.)

The first difficulty, then, is with this term “life sentence”. This is not simply a false expression, it is disingenuous, for it gives the impression of doing something that is not the case. ‘Life’ for a teenager does not consist of ‘the next fourteen years’ — indeed that doesn’t really begin to apply until you hit your sixties, and yet ‘life’ sentences continue to be given out to people considerably younger than myself.

Indeed, I suspect some research would show that the term “life sentence” is a hangover from the debate about abolishing the death penalty, when it was used as a justifying argument in favour of abolition: those who previously would have been executed would instead receive a “life sentence”. Now we know this is not true, we should surely drop the pretence.

Secondly, however, one cannot help comparing 14 years for murder with almost 3 years for throwing a fire extinguisher off a roof.

And here I would want to come to Mr Woollard’s defence. Of course what he did was wrong — and not just the throwing of the fire extinguisher, but the invasion of the building in the first place. However, it would appear to have been an act of monumental stupidity, not viciousness. Yes, people could have been killed, but they were not. Had they been, it would have been different, but that is surely to the point.

Most importantly of all, however, I would refer to the words of the judge who handed out the sentence:

... the courts have a duty to provide the community with such protection from violence as they can and this means sending out a very clear message to anyone minded to behave in this way that an offence of this seriousness will not be tolerated.

I could not agree more with the first part of this sentence. But I cannot see that a stupid act which might have killed someone equates mathematically to one fifth of the culpability of killing one person in the process of carrying out a gang attack on another — which is roughly the proportionality of the sentences in these two cases.

As a layman in these matters, I nevertheless feel that either Mr Chindamo has been treated too leniently or Mr Woollard too harshly. Either way, my confidence in the judicial system to remedy the problems of our society remains low.

John R Richardson
12 January 2011

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Will parenting decide the ascent of China and the decline of the West?

Back in October 2009, I posted some speculative concerns about the decline of the West and the corresponding ascent of Eastern cultures in general and China in particular. Amongst other things, I wrote,

My real worry is that the Western world will be surpassed by the East not only economically but culturally. And the danger here, I believe, would come from an intellectual decline of the West, manifesting itself through a decline in cultural vitality and scientific endeavour.

I was therefore interested to come across a provocative article in the Wall Street Journal, titled, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.

Here is a sample (though you need to read the whole if you are to get the true picture):

Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough. That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)

Now I’m certainly not saying I agree with every word. Indeed, I think many children know what it is to be forced to study or practice something not only that they dislike but which never results in any sense of achievement — just of relief when they’re allowed to stop!

It is also reasonable to ask whether achieving top grades or practical excellence is worth the angst the article admits that this involves. Nevertheless, the underlying premise is that this is not about what the child wants, but rather what the adults know is best:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences.

And I cannot help thinking that a culture which approaches the nurture of its young on that basis will rapidly overtake one where what the child wants, and the limits the child sets, are key determinants of what the child is able to achieve.

In short, those who give up when things get difficult are surely liable to be overtaken at every level by those who persevere despite the desire to give up. It is, of course, much more pleasant to take things easy. The question, though, is whether we can afford to.

John Richardson
10 January 2011

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Review: The Archer and the Arrow

Many years ago, I remember attending a service at All Soul’s, Langham Place, where the preacher was Richard Bewes. I had been ordained about six years at the time, had heard many sermons and had preached even more. But I was aware that evening of being on the receiving end of something special.

“I don’t how he is achieving what he is doing,” I thought to myself, “but that’s how I want to do it.”

Those who have heard the preaching of Phillip Jensen may have felt the same, and will therefore be instinctively interested in this attempt by another preacher, Paul Grimmond, to explain how Phillip does what he does so well, namely the exposition of Scripture.

As soon as you put it like that, however, you can appreciate the difficulty of the task. I would find it hard enough to explain to others how I do something. How much more challenging for someone else to explain it!

Those who have heard Phillip preach and teach, moreover, will appreciate that this is not just a matter of picking up a few hints and tips about techniques of presentation and preparation. Indeed, Grimmond’s own introduction cautions against the idea that the book might contain “five simple steps to preaching like Phillip.”

It is best, therefore, to approach this book simply as a ‘primer on preaching’ — which happens to have Phillip Jensen’s name on the cover and some of his input in the contents. If you are new to preaching, however, or even if you have been preaching for some time, you will undoubtedly come away the better for having read it. Its focus is on the basics, but those basics are also the fundamentals, and like piano scales or times-tables, they are things we need to get right if we are to move on constructively, and they are things we may need to revisit if we have become rusty or lazy.

The book takes its title, and its structure, from an analogy: comparing the sermon to an arrow. The word of the gospel is the arrowhead, the exegesis of Scripture forms the shaft, which carries the head to the target, and the feathers represent the whole of our theology which guides our preaching and its application.

The analogy is helpful, but it is important also to understand what the authors mean by these ‘parts’ and how they see them contributing to the overall task of preaching.

The ‘gospel’ arrowhead, for example, is not simply the repetition of the point that Christ died on the cross for our sins and we need to repent and get right with God. Indeed, one of the most helpful parts of the book, in my view, was the explanation that the gospel is every aspect of revelation when it is understood and presented in relation to Jesus. Every sermon, therefore, ought to be a ‘gospel’ sermon, from whatever part of the Bible the preacher’s material is drawn.

It is encouraging, also, to see so much emphasis on theology — something which English evangelicals have for a long time treated as if it were almost a dirty word. (The same might be said, incidentally, of ‘good works’!)

Many of those who so admired Phillip on his first visits to these shores overlooked the fact that Sydney clergy were required to spend not just three but four years in full-time theological education before being ordained, and that these years were spent in the library and the study, not in ‘student ministry’ on the nearby university campus. One reason for the paucity of English evangelical preaching in the second half of the twentieth century is undoubtedly that so few preachers had an undergirding theology, or even much grasp of the biblical languages.

But the book is equally emphatic that preaching is no mere academic exercise. Rather, it is part of our spiritual struggle, and the primary quality it calls for from the preacher is not a love of study or exposition, but the love of God and of those whom God has called the preacher to serve through his preaching.

The Archer and the Arrow is not the last word on preaching. But it will benefit anyone who is just embarking on a preaching ministry and many who have been preaching for years. If this is you, then buy it or borrow it, and make sure that you apply it.

John Richardson
9 January 2011

The Archer and the Arrow: Preaching the Very Words of God, by Phillip D Jensen and Paul Grimmond (Kingsford: St Matthias Media, 2010), pb, 148 pp, no index

Purchase here.

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