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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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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What is 'the whole church'?

Yesterday I was at a meeting of the Church of England Evangelical Council which was addressed by, amongst others, two self-confessed evangelical bishops. Part of the purpose of the meeting was to seek better understanding over the rôle of bishops and to increase confidence between the evangelical constituency and the bishops themselves. What follows, therefore, is written in the spirit of trying to clarify and elucidate, rather than to ‘knock’.

In addressing the meeting, one of the bishops took pains to say early on that it had to be understood that he was a bishop to “the whole church”. This phrase is, I notice, also being used with reference to selecting and training candidates for the ordained ministry — it is emphasised that they have to see themselves as, and be equipped to be, ministers to the ‘whole church’.

It has to be said, however, that the hearts of many evangelicals sink precisely at this point, and that is because the concept of the ‘whole church’ can be understood in two quite different ways.

The phrase can simply mean ‘the church as it is, without favouritism’. And in this sense, it is fairly unexceptionable. The evangelical tradition clearly does embrace the ‘whole’ Church of England, and a bishop cannot, therefore, simply focus on evangelicals, even if he is one himself.

However, there is second sense in which the phrase may be used, which shades into the first, but which actually entails quite a different, and far more problematic, set of assumptions. And this is when it means ‘the church as it is, without distinction’.

In the first case, the Church of England is understood inclusively, embracing people of different styles, practices and even understandings, who are recognized as both Anglicans and Christians, despite their differences. However, that is not necessarily the same thing as may be implied in the second case, which could refer to the Church of England indiscriminately, as embracing people whatever their styles, practices and understandings.

As I have said, the two meanings are not entirely distinct. Nevertheless, behind them lie two quite different core assumptions about the meanings not only of the word ‘whole’ but the word ‘church’.

What, then, should we mean by ‘church’? Today there seems to be a lot of support for the idea that the ‘church’ is simply ‘the community of the baptized’ and that, furthermore, it is to be identified by people gathering together at the Lord’s Table. This is often described in terms of being ‘inclusive’, but I would want to argue that it is better described as being ‘indiscriminate’ — and that in the dictionary sense of being ‘without careful judgement’.

It is here, however, that the Thirty-nine Articles come to our aid, for they in fact give us a definition of the ‘visible church’ — the church with which we actually have to deal, rather than any abstract or idealized ‘true’ church of ‘genuine’ believers. Article XIX defines the church as follows:

The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.

Notice, however, that although this deals with the ‘visible’, actual, church, it does not ignore the question of individual faith. On the contrary, the “visible Church” is “a congregation of faithful men”, or in Latin “coetus fidelium”.

Now it has rightly been observed (by Paul Avis amongst others) that coetus refers to something wider than the local, ‘parochial’, congregation. However, it would be quite wrong to limit its sense to the diocese, which Avis attempts to argue is the true ‘local church’. Rather, we should take it as meaning a ‘community’, in the biblical sense of the ‘congregation of Israel’ (cf Ex 16:10, Vulgate).

An equally suitable translation of the phrase would then be “a community of the faithful”. However, this also means that the visible Church is not simply a gathering of the baptized. If that were so, we could (theoretically) go round our parishes gathering together a selection of those who were baptized as infants and have never darkened the doorstep of the church since, and say, “See, here is the visible church.”

The clear implication of Article XIX, however, is that the church is visible where there is something to see — and this is brought out further by the references to “the pure Word of God” and to “the sacraments ... duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance”. And this visibility is indeed manifested in the local (parochial) congregation, for that (rather than in diocesan or larger gatherings) is actually where people assemble and where the word is preached and where the sacraments are administered. But although no church (in either sense) is perfect, and many churches are quite imperfect, we may conclude that the church is increasingly visible to the extent that these conditions are met: that the sacraments are duly ministered, that the pure Word of God is preached and that we find a community of the faithful.

When a bishop refers to ministering to “the whole church”, then, this ought to take into account the faithfulness of the community, the quality of the preaching, and the manner of the administration of baptism and holy communion (as those sacraments “ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel”, Article XXV, whose ministering can therefore be “according to Christ’s ordinance”, Article XIX).

To the extent that faith, preaching and the proper ministration of the sacraments are missing, to that extent we can rightly say that there is no visible church — and perhaps no church at all — even if the building may be full, the choir outstanding and the clergy busy.

This is further underlined by Article XXVI, which notes that,

... in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometime the evil have chief authority in the ministration of the word and sacraments ...

On the one hand, this recognizes precisely the point acknowledged above, that the ‘visible’ church is not the ‘perfect’ church, for that is both unattainable and unknowable in this world. However, it also affirms a point sometimes scarcely acknowledged when modern Anglicans consider the nature of the church, namely that the church is not just a mixture of styles and outlooks but of the good and the evil, which therefore calls for action.

Thus when a bishop speaks of ‘the whole church’, he must not only look for the visible signs of the church, but he must also, as an expression of his episcopal office, look to encourage the good and redress the evil, so that the church becomes progressively more visible.

None of this is to overlook or deny what Article XXVII says about baptism:

Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christian men are discerned from other that be not christened, but is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the Church ...

Baptism must be regarded as ‘instrumental’, in the sense of conferring what it speaks about of the promises and grace of God, otherwise it is merely an empty gesture. But baptism is ‘rightly’ received only by those who (if necessary, when they come of age), “renounce the devil and all his works, and constantly believe God's holy Word, and obediently keep his commandments”. In other words, baptism grafts into the ‘community of the faithful’ only those who receive by faith what baptism confers.

If it could be agreed between evangelical bishops and the evangelical constituency that ‘the whole church’ was a reference to a community where we could expect to see faithfulness in manner of life and in the preaching of God’s pure Word, then there would undoubtedly be greater confidence between the constituency and those from their number who are now on the episcopal bench.

John Richardson
9 June 2010

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The future of Anglican ministry: liberty or inhibition?

Yesterday I posted about the new expectations apparently emerging for Anglican clergy. As I said then, there are potentially good aspects to this as well as bad. The real question, as far as I am concerned, is whether the existing administration of the Church of England can deliver on the good, rather than simply multiply the bad —and I think readers will know which I suspect is the case.

Roland Allen’s ‘three selfs’
Amongst the potentially good things are the possibilities for allowing local clergy to become real team leaders, especially in recruiting, training, authorising and deploying people in local ministry. If clergy really were given the independence, authority and financial clout this required it would undoubtedly be to the long term good of the gospel. It all goes back to the principles advocated by Roland Allen, the great missionary writer of the early twentieth century, that indigenous churches should be ‘self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating’.

When I first came across Allen’s work, I found it truly inspiring, not for what it said about overseas mission —those days were long past, and indeed most of Allen’s had, of necessity, been applied insofar as former ‘missionary’ churches are now running themselves.

What really struck me was the exciting possibilities for mission at home. Substitute ‘the vicar’ for Allen’s missionary, ‘the vicarage’ for the mission station, and ‘the diocese’ for the sending and supporting missionary agency, and it seemed to me then (and now) that much of what was inhibiting overseas mission in Allen’s time is inhibiting church growth in England today.

The diocese as financial inhibitor
Let us begin with the second point. Allen believed that, in order to grow, mission churches had to become self-funding. This, however, was not because he believed that the locals should pay more towards ‘mission’. Rather, he believed that the existing financial arrangement inhibited mission by creating a dependency culture, based on a fixed and rigid approach to mission funding.

On the one hand, the ‘sending’ missionary organization insisted on certain ‘standards’ for its (white, western) missionaries —a standard far higher than could be afforded by the ‘natives’. On the other hand, the local Christians knew that ‘mission’ was something paid for by the notionally rich home-country of the missionaries. Mission was thereby inhibited, but in a way it suited everyone! The locals remained in reliance on the mission society and the mission society remained in control.

Compare that with the arrangement pertaining in most dioceses in England, and the picture is depressingly familiar. Most churches are used to having clergy ‘provided’ by the diocese, which, rather than making the parish fund the ministry, ‘tops up’ what the parish ‘can’t afford’ from sources which remain a practical mystery to most parishioners. On the other hand, there is a refusal to allow parishes which could afford it to fund their local ministry because all sorts of dire consequences would follow leading ultimately, it is often alleged, to ‘congregationalism’.

Sometimes it seems diocesan management would rather do without money than lose control. Thus in our own context, where our vicarage could do with upgrading before the arrival of the new vicar, the diocese have actually refused to allow us to pay for the work, but told us that the work cannot be done.

In short, the present financial arrangements between dioceses and parishes are mission inhibitors, just as much as the arrangements between mission societies and indigenous churches were in the nineteenth century.

The episcopate as ministry inhibitor
But if the diocese is an inhibiting mechanism, so, often, is the bishop. Allen complained about the way that the lack of ordained clergy (usually white and therefore expensive to maintain) meant that many of the local Christian communities established by missionary organizations were only ‘half churches’, lacking a sacramental ministry of baptism and holy communion.

Compare that with what is increasingly the case in English rural ministry. I have written before about the minister I met from Norfolk to whom I jokingly remarked that in her diocese you weren’t pulling your weight if you didn’t look after fifteen parishes. “How many have you got?” I asked her. “Fifteen,” she replied.

In our Benefice, we have four morning congregations, and if they all wanted communion every week it would be impossible. But of course it is not just a matter of the sacraments. Ministry needs to be exercised at many levels and in many areas. The local ‘team leader’ minister of the future therefore needs to be able to identify and authorise people to carry out these ministries. And the last thing he or she needs is ‘diocesan central’ re-allocating these people, once they have been picked and equipped.

The reality is that the erstwhile ‘vicar’ is increasingly exercising an ‘episcopal’ role. But that being the case, the vicar needs episcopal authority. In short, we need to get back to something nearer what is generally acknowledged by scholars (and was recognized by the English Reformers), namely seeing the local presbyter as also the local bishop.

Indeed, if the need is for more ministers and ministry, why shouldn’t there be more bishops? I would guess that a typical rural dean today probably overseas a population as large as that of some medieval bishops. Why not go the whole way and make them into bishops who can ordain local ministers accordingly? In that way, the first and last of Allen’s criteria — self-governing and self-propagating —would also have some chance of being fulfilled.

The answer, I suspect is twofold. First, there would be a fear of the unknown. But the second would be jealousy of the office. I well remember Colin Buchanan, in his own pre-episcopal days, saying that one of the reasons bishops were regarded as so important was their rarity value. In other words, if there were more of them, people would regard them with rather less awe.

But which is more important —the reverence in which an office is held or the needs of the gospel? True, they might become ‘as common as muck’, but they might also become as effective as muck does when it is properly spread around.

Conclusion
Undoubtedly there are changes ahead, and undoubtedly there is a need for change. However, there is also the opportunity for radical new thinking. The worst thing would be to try to fit new models of ministry into the ‘old wineskins’ of the past and present. Sadly, though, I suspect this is still what will be attempted.

Revd John P Richardson
26 January 2010

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Christian Community —the right question about Church?

For some months now, the Benefice where I work has been in an interregnum, following the departure of my old friend and colleague, Dick Farr, for pastures new. My role since July has thus been supervisory but intense, involving, amongst other things, overseeing the drawing up of the parish profile and currently chairing three PCCs as well as trying to ensure nothing goes obviously wrong. (Please don’t e-mail your ‘three PCCs —luxury!’ anecdotes. Anything above two is, I agree, a challenge.)

Although I haven’t applied for the incumbent’s post myself, the experience of the last few months has inevitably made me ask ‘incumbent-type’ questions about the strategy we should be following. This is particularly so since we are earmarked as an area for substantial new housing —anything from 500 to 3,000 dwellings.

Just the other day, therefore, I was musing on what this would mean for our strategic planning and on what it would look like if the church were successful in its outreach to new arrivals. “What,” I asked myself, “Would a whole community look like if it were significantly influenced by the presence of the local churches?”

And then I found myself asking if this were actually the question we ought to ask about church itself. A lot of our own time and energy is put into working out what we should do —specifically, what kinds of programmes we should run, whether that be applied to youth work, Bible studies or ‘Sunday church’ itself.

Recently I have received a complimentary book (as yet unread) which seems to be suggesting that our focus should rather be on individual people. But would a more useful starting point be to ask ourselves what a Christian community should look like, and then to seek to apply this to the church and, through the church, to the wider community within which it is set?

To some people, this might seem an obvious question with straightforward answers. Surely, they will reply, all our efforts within the church are aimed at building a Christian community, and surely such a community will be, first and foremost, one of Christ-like love and acceptance? Those are the Christian ‘trademark’ qualities, and the only problem is in seeing them developed and applied.

But in fact I do not think the answers are anything like that straightforward. For a start, ‘love and acceptance’ are surely not uniquely, or even specifically, Christian qualities. It is like the person who sums up Jesus’ teaching as ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. All well and good —but as most readers of this blog will know, the sentiment is from the Old Testament, quoted, but by no means invented, by Jesus.

In fact, working out a Christian ethic is quite a challenge! Obviously it must, in some way, engage with the ethical framework of the Old Testament. Yet, as the Sermon on the Mount shows, it consists neither in slavishly following, nor outrightly rejecting, the Law. Nor does the life of Jesus provide a Christian ‘sunnah’, to be learned and applied by his followers, like Muslims following the example of Mohammed. The question, “What Would Jesus Do?” is hardly helpful if the answer is, “Walk on the water,” or “Raise the dead man to life.”

A Christian ethic is not a regurgitated Old Testament ethic, nor is it a blanket adoption of Jesus’ ‘example’. Rather, I suspect, it derives from engaging with who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us. And this would produce rather radically different answers from those usually offered when we think of the life of the ‘community’, particularly when it comes to the influence of the church within the wider, mixed, community.

One of the most crucial —and least explored in my view —points of Christian uniqueness is the relationship of Christian ethics with the law. Almost the entire assumption of social thinking is that the law is fundamental to community life. By contrast, the New Testament is quite clear that the law, far from being central, is a practical irrelevance. The ‘law’ to which it refers is, of course, the law of Moses, but as is increasingly recognized, this cannot be simply and arbitrarily divided into ‘moral’ and ‘ceremonial’ aspects and then partitioned between the bits we keep and the bits we don’t.

When Paul writes in Romans 7 of the law to which we have died and from which we are therefore freed, he uses as his example, the tenth commandment against covetousness. Now this is clearly a moral, not a ‘ceremonial’ command. The Christian is clearly not thereby entitled to covet. But equally the Christian is not under the ‘law’ against covetousness. Time and space preclude elaborating this further, but my conclusion would be that a Christian community would be marked by a minimalist resort to law. (It would also, incidentally, be one where suing one another was almost entirely unknown —1 Cor 6.)

This abrogation of the law as an instrument of personal control is precisely one of those ‘community consequences’ which I would argue flows from the ‘person and work’ of Christ, who fulfilled the law and is the ‘end of the law’ (Romans 10:4) for those who have faith.

However, there must surely be much more. In a Christian community, for example, divorce would also be unknown. But what about care for others? How and why is a failure to care for one’s relatives a ‘denial of the faith’ (1 Tim 5:8), and what are the communal consequences?

One of the challenges to the church is that it is very difficult to live as a Christian community —much easier just to ‘go to church’ on Sundays and to keep your distance from one another the rest of the time. Yet it is also difficult to know what a Christian ‘community’ means. I’m therefore inviting readers of this blog to contribute their own suggestions and comments. Remember, though, if you have ideas about community you need to show why they are specifically Christian.

Revd John P Richardson
20 January 2010

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Unity, schism and private judgement

I’ve not touched the blog for the past couple of weeks as, between other commitments, I’ve been preparing a paper for the Oak Hill School of Theology, which this year was on the subject of ‘Truth, Unity and Schism’.

My brief was to look at some of the practical issues from a ‘grass-roots’ level. What I presented in the end was an attempt to look at the issue of unity and schism from an ecclesiological perspective. How we live the life of the Church, I suggested, affects fundamentally how we handle and, if possible prevent, division.

My starting point, however, was an acknowledgement of the divided nature of Protestantism, observed by my old friend Robbie Low in an article he wrote for New Directions, back in 2004. “The curse of Protestantism,” he declared then, “is division.” And this is because, according to him,

The very nature of [Protestantism’s] origins, self-understanding and approach to the Word of God are inherently schismatic.

And this he blamed on Protestantism’s problem with authority:

In rejecting the authority of the Pope the Western reformers did not abolish autocracy but rather set in train a process the logical end of which is that every man is a pope in his own parish or in his own front room.

The chaos resulting from this is familiar to many:

The upshot is hundreds of ‘churches’, most of them with their own bizarre subdivisions (low, strict and particular, Southern, open etc, etc). In addition, there are thousands upon thousands of one-man band conventicles brought about by the falling out of Brother Smith with Pastor Jones. Pastor Smith, as he has now appointed himself, has the ‘real’ truth and hopes shortly to be needing to rent a bigger Scout Hut than the gravely misled Pastor Jones, his former guru.

Robbie blamed this on the principle of ‘sola scriptura’ —the Bible alone as the Church’s authority. I’m sure this is one reason why he and his wife Sara have now become Roman Catholics. Whilst his criticisms are fair, however, I find myself disagreeing with this part of his analysis. I am sure the problem has to do with our understanding of the truth. However, I find myself rather more drawn at this point to the critique of another Anglican turned Roman, namely John Henry Newman.

In 1849 Newman had published a collection of Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (‘mixed’, in this context, meaning ‘made up of Catholics and Protestants’). In one of these, ‘Faith and Private Judgement’, he made this stark assessment:

Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word ... and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt or change.

But, as Newman observed, people (or at least Protestants) undoubtedly do change their beliefs, and this he attributed directly to the combination of Scripture and private judgement:

Since men now-a-days deduce from Scripture, instead of believing a teacher, you may expect to see them waver about; they will feel the force of their own deductions more strongly at one time than at another, they will change their minds about them, or perhaps deny them altogether; whereas this cannot be, while a man has faith, that is, belief that what a preacher says to him comes from God.

Once again, the criticism seems fair enough —and not least when it comes to evangelical Protestants, who fancy themselves to be completely committed to the ‘authority’ of Scripture, but who seem to be rather prone to change their minds about what Scripture ‘authoritatively’ says. Now it teaches penal substitution, now it doesn’t. Now it is anti-homosexuality, now it isn’t, and so on.

By contrast, according to Newman, the primitive Apostolic preaching called for obedient faith:

Immediate, implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgement.

Compare this, Newman argues, with the person who goes by their own estimation of the Bible:

Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two states or acts of mind quite distinct from each other; —to believe simply what a living authority tells you, and to take a book such as Scripture, and to use it as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself the master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to admit just what you choose to see in it, and nothing more?

Is this not exactly what we see in many Protestant churches and amongst many evangelical individuals? Previously ‘received truths’ about what Scripture says have been in overturned as a person has ‘seen the (new) light’ and decides they can no longer believe as they once did.

There is much about Newman’s approach which may be criticized, but there is something in it, and particularly in what he wrote about the attitude of new converts and the rôle of the Church in relation to them:

... when they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them.

This is not, frankly, an attitude much in evidence today. Instead, we have taken as our guiding principle that advocated by J C Ryle, writing at almost the same time as Newman:

Reader, this is private judgment. This is the right you are to exercise if you love your soul. You are not to believe things in religion merely because they are said by Popes or Cardinals, —by Bishops or Priests, —by Presbyters or Deacons, —by Churches, Councils, or Synods, —by Fathers, Puritans, or Reformers. You are not to argue, “Such and such things must be true, because these men say so.” You are not to do so. You are to prove all things by the Word of God.

Now I am much more a fan (and a reader) of Ryle than Newman, but I think Ryle is mistaken. It is true that we mustn’t believe something just because someone ‘in authority’ says so —the Apostle Paul gives the same caution in Galatians 1. And it is also true that we must “prove all things by the Word of God.” But we cannot always and invariably look, finally, to our own private judgement for a verdict.

On the contrary, as Gerald Bray has recently written,

What is easy to overlook in the history of Christian doctrine, though it becomes clear once it is pointed out, is that no individual has ever been given the authority to determine what orthodoxy is.

That being the case, we must surely check our private judgement against the authority of the wider Church, rather than the other way round.

Our problem, in other words, is not that we give too much credence to the Bible, nor is it (as Newman and Low both suggest) that we don’t give enough to the Pope. It is rather that we give too much to our own opinions. After all, if not just those naughty popes and cardinals, but bishops, priests, presbyters, deacons, churches, councils, synods, the Fathers, the Puritans and the Reformers all come down one way, and I come down another, where does the balance of probability lie?

I hope to post later on what I went on to say this means in practice.

John Richardson
21 May 2009

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Federal Vision and Baptism: insights or deja vu?

It seems I have spent the last 24 hours familiarizing myself with the views of the Federal Vision movement, and so far I have come to two conclusions.

The first is that I am not a ‘Federal Visionist’ (I think that is probably a better term than ‘Federal Visionary’).

The second is that I agree with several things that the Federal Vision movement stands for, according to the ‘Joint Federal Vision Statement’ signed by some of its lead thinkers.

In particular, I have a lot of sympathy with their views on baptism, though once again I do not agree entirely. However, I was especially struck by the fact that so much of it represented ideas that I, and many others, took on board in the 1970s under the tutelage of the Revd Colin Buchanan, then lecturer at St John’s Theological College, Nottingham, and later Bishop of Woolwich.

In the 70’s Buchanan wrote, and published as Grove Booklets, a number of seminal works on baptism, in particular A Case for Infant Baptism and, jointly with David Pawson, Infant Baptism under Cross-Examination.

Unfortunately, I have mislaid my copies of these, but I still have his booklet no. 61, One Baptism Once (Grove Books: Bramcote, Nottingham, 1978), which builds on the ideas in the other booklets and considers their implications for Evangelical pastoral practice.

A summary of this booklet will hopefully give an idea why I find much of what Federal Vision is saying about baptism to be unexceptionable.

In One Baptism Once, Buchanan addressed first the question of baptismal efficacy, observing that “In the New Testament baptism is (usually) treated as effecting what it signifies.” (4). He notes, however, that whilst this is a comfortable idea for ‘Catholics’, it has raised distinct problems. First, regeneration cannot be regarded as present where there is simply no evidence for this in the life of the believer. Secondly, “if faith brings justification, then logically baptism tout simple does not,” (for which we may see also the Anglican Catechism). Thirdly (which may be an extension of the first point), a person cannot be regarded as grafted into the living body of Christ if there is no life in the person (5).

However, though these might be valid objections, Buchanan felt that Evangelicals have adopted a number of unhelpful ‘strategies’:

1. Not wanting to know what scripture says.

2. Arguing that only baptism which actually includes the inward gift of regeneration and justification is ‘true’ baptism.

3. Interpreting the baptism references as applying to ‘Spirit’ baptism.

4. Denying the efficacy of infant baptism

5. Viewing baptism as a mere ‘token’ of conversion.

These strategies, he said, have impacted on Evangelical practice in a number of negative ways:

1. We feel we cannot know when a baptism is a ‘true’ baptism if it must (but may not) be accompanied by regeneration.

2. We may omit baptism if there are other ways in which it may be witnessed that we are converted.

3. We value baptism primarily for the experience it provides, and judge it by the strength of that experience.

Over against this, Buchanan insisted that we must distinguish between ‘efficacy’ and ‘validity’ (9), and whilst it might not be possible to say that a baptism was efficacious, it was always possible to say it was valid, provided that it involved “the administration of water on a person, with sufficient wording to establish that Christian baptism is intended’ (10). To this, Buchanan added only that we must take into account the context when we consider the administration.

A baptism would thus be valid, for example, irregardless of the state of the person being baptized. Otherwise, it would only be invalid in very limited circumstances, such as being administered by an heretical sect.

We should, furthermore, take full account of the biblical assumption that baptism is the norm for believers. Baptism in the New Testament, “is a constituent part of the gospel” and “is universally practised among Christians,” whereas “the New Testament knows nothing of the unbaptized Christian,” but rather “Baptism identifies people as Christians.”

The Christian church, he concluded, “has only one message for [the unbaptized], and it is this: ‘Here is water —repent and be baptized.’”

What, then, were the pastoral consequences? Buchanan was a keen advocate of a ‘baptismal discipline’ which would restrict baptism to the children of practising churchgoers. This is a suggestion, it must be noted, which the Church of England has strenuously resisted. We must also, he argued, firmly resist any requests for ‘rebaptism’ by those who have previously received a valid baptism. But he also noted the New Testament approach on preaching to the baptized:

We have to steer between the Scylla of assuring congregations that all is well because they have been baptized, and the Charybdis of denouncing the baptized on the grounds that their baptism will have deceived them into thinking all is well! It looks as though the Pauline method was to use the fact of his hearers having been baptized to gain leverage to procure their growth. In effect he said ‘You have been baptized into Jesus as Lord —now live for Jesus as your Lord’. It will be seen that this sort of approach neither offers false assurance, nor unnecessarily denounces baptism. It treats it positively, as the starting-point of the Christian life, and as the permanent reminder to the believer of what the Christian life implies. (23)

In a footnote, he added,

The point here is that the preacher should rarely be saying ‘You have been baptized, and much good it has done you’ ... If the nature of the faith-relationship with Jesus Christ, the incorporation into his body the church, and his expectations and call to a life of holiness, are all built upon the meaning of baptism (and they are all there in the New Testament passages on baptism), then not only is the leverage of the word most operative (because it is treating the fulcrum of baptism as secure), but also any who are converted this way will not be denouncing their baptism as having misled them, but rather rejoicing that it has now come to fruition.

This, it seems to me, is similar to, but rather more positive than, the ‘glass half-empty’ approach of Federal Visionism, which focuses more on the notion that the baptized* who do not practice their faith are ‘apostates’ (an expression with unfortunate resonances, given the present problems with conversion from Islam being defined as ‘apostasy’).

I am sure I am right in saying that, on the basis of his views on baptism, Buchanan was also an advocate of paedo-communion. (I hope someone will put me right if this is not the case.) Certainly that is a view I have long taken myself. This is thus another part of the Federal Vision viewpoint with which I find myself in broad agreement.

This analysis also raises, I believe, serious questions about our own ‘programmes’ of evangelism. Why is it that, when we reach the point of calling for commitment, no-one asks us, as the Ethiopian eunuch did of Philip, “Here is water, what is to prevent me from being baptized?” If people do not ask the same question, then we cannot be making the same presentation. And that surely means we must be doing something wrong.

Thus, although I do not share the Federal Vision view that the result of baptism is entry into the Covenant, I do share their ‘high’ view of baptism, and their criticism of some Evangelical attitudes, including those amongst Evangelical Anglicans.

But this leaves me even more confused as to why Federal Visionism is apparently such a touchy subject. I’m left wondering if part of the problem is simply that it has been made into a package — a ‘movement’ instead of a discussion about a number of diverse points.

Revd John P Richardson
4 March 2009

PS: I'm sorry about the title, but I had to come up with something quick.

* I had erroneously typed 'unbaptized' here in the first version.

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ABp Jensen on women bishops: 4-3 majority is "a shaky start to an innovation"

See also my post here GRASed Up: the betrayal of a commitment.

[...] Within the Anglican Church of Australia we now have the situation that in some dioceses there may be women bishops. You know that I am opposed to this innovation on scriptural grounds, believing as I do in the equality of men and women in Christ, but our complementarity in church and home. I believe that the way that God has ordered our relationships is demonstrably for the best.

I am disappointed about the way in which this innovation came into existence, through the Appellate Tribunal of our Church, rather than the Synod. The nature of the ministry is a key point of fellowship between Christians. A change of this significance should have been the consequence of mutual agreement in General Synod rather than legal fiat.

The fact that two-thirds of the Synod was needed to pass such legislation is a proper indication of the seriousness with which a novelty such as this should be viewed. It is a high, but not impossible bar. I am aware that many were frustrated by the fact that the numbers were never enough in the General Synod and almost certainly would not have been enough this time. But that is the nature of the rules of fellowship. A legal decision resting on a 4-3 majority is scarcely a sound basis for a change of this magnitude. It is a shaky start to an innovation. Read more
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Mission: why the future determines the present

One of the great truths of church life is this: missiology follows eschatology.

Missiology refers to the mission of the church — what the church does, or aims to do, in the world in the present. Eschatology is the doctrine of the ‘last things’ — where the church thinks the world is heading and what the future holds.

And the important thing to recognize is that the church’s understanding of the future absolutely dictates the church’s mission and ministry in the present.

However, it is also important to recognise that the church often approaches mission without any clear or coherent view of the future. How, then, (someone might ask) can this dictate the church’s mission? The answer is simply that if there is a lack of clarity about the future, there will be a lack of clarity about the present. A missiology without a clear eschatology will lack focus and coherence.

Nevertheless, just as Abraham Lincoln once said we cannot escape history, so we cannot escape eschatology either. The end of all things is heading towards us at the pace of sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour.

Leaving aside any theological considerations, and barring other occurrences, the Earth is going to be destroyed in some 5 billion years time when the Sun becomes a ‘red giant’. This will be global warming on a grand scale — in fact the Sun will expand in size to embrace the Earth’s orbit. It may, however, have become uninhabitable before then, not because of the ‘global warming’ about which we currently exercise ourselves but because of things like the fact that the Moon is moving away from us and eventually our tides will cease and our planet will be free to tilt on its axis to the extent that we don’t have any seasons either.

These are just raw, inescapable, scientific facts, and if anyone thinks they’re a long way off, I used to think being 57 was a long way of as well, but here I am! Time will take care of everything eventually.

Others may dismiss this as an irrelevance. What matters, they will say, is the problems we are facing now: ecological disasters, HIV, poverty, injustice, starvation — indeed all the things and more that are covered by the Millennium Development Goals. But the problem here is that, to a greater or lesser extent, we in the West have already achieved six of these goals: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combatting HIV, malaria and other diseases. Yet no one is seriously suggesting that the church’s work is done or that we have in some sense ‘arrived’.

To define our eschatology, therefore, we have to go beyond these issues and ask, “Even assuming these goals could be met, what happens next?”

The reality, one suspects, is that no one is really asking that question at all, because no one really thinks it is going to happen. Our tacit assumption (unspoken, but widely assumed) is that the poor will indeed always be with us, and that surmounting one set of problems will merely reveal another set — like Western obesity, for example.

Under these circumstances, we may expect the church to focus on achieving short term goals of ‘improvement’, but not to be looking too far into the future — in fact, this is precisely what we do find in many situations.

At the same time, however, the church will generally couch its mission in biblical terms, primary amongst which is the notion of the Kingdom of God. The problem is, of course, what we mean by this expression, and here we find a wide divergence.

For many in the church, this ‘Kingdom’ is coterminous with achieving the Millennium Development Goals and whatever will succeed them as the next set of problems reveal themselves.

Biblically, however, it is something else. In biblical terms, we see three exemplars of the Kingdom. The first is the idealised situation in Eden: mankind in harmony with God, with themselves and with nature. The second is the geo-political nation of Israel: every man dwelling under his vine and under his figtree all the days of king Solomon. The third is the person of Jesus: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.

Yet there is still a future Kingdom, quite distinct from, though foreshadowed by, these particular instances. Moreover, the biblical witness shows that each of these other instances is inadequate as expressions of the coming Kingdom. The Garden of Eden is lost through the Fall, the kingdom of Solomon is lost through idolatry. The incarnate ministry of Jesus is terminated by the powers of this world. If the Kingdom is to arrive, rather than always be a future hope, something must change.

This also means that the church must not mistake the present manifestations of the Kingdom, which share the character of these earlier manifestations, with the Kingdom itself. Eden is lost. The kingdom of Solomon proved unsatisfactory. The ministry of Jesus is a foretaste. We may plant our gardens, we may fight in the political arena, we may heal the sick and bring good news to the poor. But the Kingdom is still to come.

And the other aspect of this future Kingdom, in biblical terms, is that between us and it lies individual judgement and divine wrath.

It should be obvious, then, that if this is our eschatology, it will give a particular shape to our missiology. On the one hand, we ought to be concerned with how we can live the life of the Kingdom in the present, just as Jesus did. On the other hand, we ought to be concerned, just as Jesus was, with how people, including ourselves, can be saved from the coming wrath.

A ministry which treats the present as an irrelevance in terms of our engagement with life is failing to understand what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom in the present. A ministry which treats the future as an irrelevance in terms of judgement, wrath and salvation is failing to understand what it will mean to be a citizen of the Kingdom in the future.

How we understand these things will then shape how we proclaim Christ. If our understanding of the future is hazy about judgement and dismissive of wrath, we will focus on those aspects of Christ which relate to life in the present. In short, we will downplay the cross, despite our emphasis on the life of Jesus. The justification for evangelism will become the benefit to the individual, in terms of a life made fuller, and to society in terms of a world made better. We will want to see people converted, but the unanswered question will be, “What happens to those who are not?”

It is, however, possible to forget that Jesus’ own ministry shows that the life of the future Kingdom is to be lived in the present. And when this happens the church’s ministry is again distorted. Then we find there is no real difference between the believer and the unbeliever — except that the believer believes that they are saved! And this, we must recognise, is just as much a false gospel, and just as serious a threat to salvation, as ignoring future salvation entirely.

It is much to be doubted whether the church currently has a good grasp of these issues. Some of us live as though there were no judgement in the future. Others live as if there were no purpose in the present. The answer, however, is not to ‘get the balance right’. It is to get the right perspective. Christ is coming again, but when he comes, will he find faith on earth (Lk 18:8)? Getting that right should be enough to keep any of us occupied until he returns.

Revd John P Richardson
26 June 2007