Behind the Scenes…

All has fallen quiet since Christmas, but fear not! I am working on a serve upgrade that will see this blog develop a new and exciting lease of life. More soon.

Most Rev Roger Cardinal Etchegaray

Readers will almost certainly be aware of the security breach during the Pope’s celebration of midnight Mass.

The Pope recovered from his fall and continued to pontificate at Mass.

Roger Cardinal Etchegaray was also felled by this woman, and he is undergoing tests in hospital. Cardinal Etchegaray is the vice-dean of the College of Cardinals and Cardinal Bishop of Porto-Santo Rufina. He is aged 87, has served 30 years as a Cardinal, 40 years as a Bishop and 62 years a priest.

This incident was no doubt very shocking for all involved – please pray for both the Holy Father and Cardinal Etchegaray, as well as for those who have the task of keeping the pontiff safe.

Edward Schillebeeckx OP

The Rev’d Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx OP, a son of the Dominican Order of Preachers, has died aged 96.

Last December saw the death of the Most Rev. Avery Cardinal Dulles SJ. These two men, together with Benedict XVI, were the greatest of Catholic theologians of their day, exerting considerable influence over the Second Vatican Council and its post-concilliar interpretation.

I will try to construct a more comprehensive obituary in the next few days.

Making theology sing and dance…

Last Saturday I made the long and wintery journey from my post in Scotland to my family home in Stafford, north of Birmingham in England. For all that I have grown to love St Andrews, and indeed Fife and Scotland more generally, the return home always takes me “back to basics”: it is here that I made my first steps into the nursing profession (I worked at both the town’s hospitals as a pre-nursing student and also at a local nursing home for several years as a care assistant) and where I later cut my teeth in the pastoral setting of my home parish, where I was introduced to the joy of visiting the sick and dying, serving as a chaplain to prisoners and indeed was privileged to belong, for the first time in my life, to a thriving parish community.

Wandering around the town’s streets I encounter many people, places and things that still hold deep memories – some good; some bad. Today I wandered past my primary school, another school where I served as a pastoral assistant, the nursing home where I first had the honour of accompanying a dying person, the hospital where I first encountered the mentally ill and suicidal, the prison where I met with those convicted of serious and heinous crimes, and the Church where I received the sacrament of Baptism and Confirmation.

It’s nice to take time to see how far I have come and to realise how I have been blessed with so many experiences that have formed me into the person I am today. As I come home and sit at my laptop, I bring with me these experiences that form part of my own ‘theology’. The return home – invariably accompanied by the seeing, touching, tasting of old memories – reminds me of the reasons that led me to realise my call to train as a theologian – I rediscover the passion that I have deep inside me (and which I am convinced is of no human origin) for God, for His Church and for His people.

My theology comes alive here – I don’t subscribe to the stereotype of the “dusty tomes” of academia: it is paradoxical that in the gritty pastoral settings in which many moderns would claim theology to have little relevance, use or application, that I find theology to be so helpful. For it is when theology encounters the real and gritty “joys and hopes; fears and anxieties” (GS §1) of modern mankind, that theology finds it purpose, and comes alive.

ARCIC III

Pope Benedict XVI with Archbishop Rowan Williams

When, during the recent visit of Archbishop Rowan Williams to Pope Benedict XVI, a third phase of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), I wondered whether there was any point – it all seemed like a very costly exercise that has, historically, achieved little. Despite two rounds of ARCIC, the Churches have continued to drift apart. Indeed, the lines of division between Anglicans and Roman Catholics are now entrenched, and if the secular media is to be believed, the divisions concern such matters as the ordination of women and ethical teachings on human sexuality. I wondered, as many did, if the third phase of ARCIC was merely designed to placate the Archbishop of Canterbury (and the Anglican Communion as a whole) after the public relations disaster that was the release of the Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum cœtibus, and the subsequent (thinly veiled) rage of Archbishop Rowan Williams.

Very often, the temptation amongst ecumenists seems to be to focus on the teachings of symbolic documents (for example the 39-Articles of the Anglicans and the Council of Trent for the Catholics) and attempt to find points of agreement, points of misunderstanding, and points of potential reconciliation. The result is that the “cracks” between the theological positions of the various communions are “plastered over” in the hope that they will remain hidden. A favourite tool of the ecumenists has been to claim “terminological divergence”: masterfully deployed in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification to claim that Lutherans and Catholics utilize the same terms to refer to different theological realities, thereby affirming that the respective condemnations of the reformation era do not anathematize the theological positions of each communion.

Whilst the fruits of such an approach are undoubted – and there is certainly truth in identifying terminological divergence (the Lutheran and Catholic understandings of ‘justification’ as event and process respectively is a notable example) – this approach has left the impression that ecumenical dialogue deals with the branches of theology without tackling the roots, and the health of the vine itself.

It was with some surprise – and considerable pleasure – that I noticed, courtesy of Fr Hunwicke, that the third phase of ARCIC is scheduled to discuss “fundamental questions concerning the Church”, including the relationship between the local Church and the universal Church, and its role – local and universal – in discerning “just moral teachings”. (See the Vatican Bolletino, 28th November 2009).

Firstly, ARCIC is therefore billed to discuss something deeply relevant to the modern Church and not a sixteenth century division that is of historical interest only. An evaluation of the Church’s role in the production of ethical teaching, is a matter of fundamental theology – that is, it questions the very start of the theology: the “how we do theology” – the sources and methods and the role of the Church.  It is clear that there are profound differences in Anglican and Catholic ecclesiology that touch on matters such as the Church’s authority as an authentic custodian of truth, and the understanding of the Church as a communion characterized by union and communion. It is these issues of divergence that are most pressing, as they drive much of the theological disagreement about matters of faith and practice. Indeed, it is the Catholic fundamental theology that must be embraced by Anglican converts to Catholicism, not merely the liturgical life and the ethical teaching.

Secondly, ARCIC implicitly acknowledges that this fundamental theology has implications for “just moral teachings”. In short, the discussion of fundamental theology relates directly to the points of divergence between the two communions, and by extension, to the divisions within the Anglican Church (matters such as homosexuality, marriage and family life, contraception, etc). I think “just moral teachings” could also be extended to a consideration of the role of women in ordained ministry, especially given that so many see the Catholic Church as “depriving” women of that opportunity – I suspect, however, that the ordination of women will not be on the agenda, lest the divide between Anglicanism and Catholicism be reduced to the lowest common denominator.

So, in short, my pessimism about ARCIC has been proven incorrect – and I am thrilled. That’s not to say I think ARCIC-III is going to bring about reunification of the Church of England and the Roman Church – nor do I anticipate there to be any immediate implications for believers of either communion. But perhaps the lines of division will be more clearly defined: it would be a great achievement if ARCIC-III explicitly narrated the fact that the division is a deep one, and not one that can simply be attributed (as it is so conveniently, by members of the mainstream press) to the “ordination of women”. This observation, perhaps, would have implications for the formation of those men who were formerly Anglican Clergy who now put themselves forward for service as diocesan priests in the Catholic Church. Indeed, from an ecumenical point of view, the identification of the fundamental theological roots of the divergence will lead to the birth and genesis of a more targeted and proactive theological ecumenism.

Formatting Changes

A few people have reported difficulties viewing the new blog – I have opted to use a different theme. Please let me know if this resolves the problem.

Resumption of Blogging!

Pressures and demands on my time have been considerably alleviated by the ending of the semester, and I have decided to resume blogging. The reasons for this decision are three-fold:

Firstly, whilst I have not been blogging I have not been away from the blogospher. Increasingly, Catholic blogs are becoming ‘partisan’ – the vast majority of popular Catholic blogs are Conservative in tone and focus on matters of the liturgy and aesthetics. Whilst I consider myself to be ‘conservative’ theologically, and perhaps even liturgically (although I’m a big fan of the Novus Ordo: I believe it to be just as beautiful as the Usus Antiquior, when it is celebrated well), I think the Catholic blogosphere benefits from a more moderate blogs, even if they are as small and insignificant as this one. As one embedded in the ecumenical environment of the University Divinity School, it is my hope that I will bring some of the richness of the intellectual heritage that surrounds me into this blog, and that I will focus on the role of the Church in bearing the liberating message of truth, looking outwards and lovingly at the world with her message of hope, rather than focusing on internal struggles and differences. So I hope this blog will be ecclesial, and will be characterised by unity and communion.

Secondly, I believe this blog helps me in my ministry of study. The theologian’s task is never simply to learn things for themselves, but to learn things in order to pass them on, to be charitable. The great Dominican school, as typified by St Thomas Aquinas OP, of “contemplare et contemplata aliis tradetur” – contemplating and passing on the fruits of contemplation to others, has always felt like a deeply natural outworking of my theological studies. There is a sense in which this blog enables me to keep my theology linked to the world and to pass on the fruits of my endeavours to others.

Thirdly, I enjoy writing this blog. Blogging has never been a hardship for me, but something I have embraced. At times, I have had to examine my conscience regarding the things I have written here. One of the burdens of anonymity is that it allows one to place things in a very public sphere necessarily having to account for what has been written. It is my hope that the enjoyable character of blogging will remain and that this will become a place for communion, for prayer and for unity.

Goodbye

For various reasons, I will no longer be posting on this blog.

For the last two years blogging here (and on this blog when it was part of the “Blogspot” site) has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience that has provided me with somewhere to air my thoughts – sometimes theological and oftentimes dark – and to encounter and engage with people from many different continents and countries.

To all who have visited – whether regulars or one-time passers by – I thank you.

Update

I arrived safely in St Andrews earlier this morning and will now commence the business of getting my life sorted!

Blogging will likely recommence apace on Wednesday or Thursday, possible before.

Future Directions

It has become customary to post at the beginning of each new semester (in September, February and May) identifying those areas that are currently of particular interest to me in terms of research and academic study. So many of the posts here are taken from things that emerge during my studies that this allows you to see where this blog will be developing over the next few months.

In the last four months I’ve focussed heavily on Genesis, a general overview of Paul, 1/2 Samuel and studies relating to the exile and the return from the exile particularly the thrashing out of Jewish identity in Ezra/Nehemiah. Some more philosophical work on the influence of philosophy on Biblical Hermeneutics with particular emphasis on existentialism was thoroughly enjoyable and resulted in a number of posts here.

From a biblical point of view, I hope the next few months will allow me to develop my general study of Paul into a more focussed study of 1 Corinthians (which is among my favourite books of the canon). In addition I want to drill into the issue of Israel and the contemporary debate within evangelicalism.

The last four months saw my theological focus rest mainly with contemporary theology, Patristics and aesthetics. Regular readers will note my deep interest in theological anthropology and Christian ethics, and this will be developed further in the next few months along with new interests in Christian symbolics and pastoral theology, particularly the Dominican school of spirituality.

St Paul in Dialogue

Someboy – MeeboGuest85512 – left me a number of meebo messages (thank you!) in which they observed that in my recent posts on St Paul I’ve repeated claimed that he’s more of a pastor than a theologian, have suggested Justification by Faith is not central to his thought, and emphasised the sitz-im-leben of his works, whilst still maintaining that Paul’s vocation was that of a preacher – so the question arises: what on earth was he preaching! What was it the lay at the heart of his writings and various activities, if it were not a theological conviction?

There is clearly evidence for interaction between the historical immediacy that Paul’s writings address and a convictional base. Dunn develops Beker and Schweitzer’s emphasis on Paul’s Jewishness, regarding Paul’s theology as a “dialogue” between his inherited convictions, his Christian conversion on the Damascus Road, and the immediate historical crisis he seeks to address.[1] For Dunn, Paul does not stand alone as a monadic theologian, but theologizes for the present in continuity with his past – his concerns are rooted in his national identity as a Second Temple Jew (with which his Pharisaism interacts) with its developed theology of covenant and Torah, its ritual and liturgy, interpreted through his Damascus road experience and the convictions it left him with.

Dunn nuances Beker’s model of the coherent element of Paul’s theological writings: Paul’s theological activity is thus best understood not as a set ‘theology’ but as the fluid activity of ‘theologizing’.[2] The dialogue is continuous and interactive, involving backwards-and-forwards of interaction, response and reaction. Dunn emphasises that Paul does not depend upon, nor work towards, creedal formulations but from a host of convictions and ‘baggage’ with which he reacts to the crises in his communities.[3] Beker certainly understood Paul’s convictional base as being fluid, but Dunn’s emphasis on Paul’s theology as a process of coming to understand allows for development to be traced through the Pauline corpus. Indeed, Dunn centralises the Jewishness of Paul’s analytical methodology, anthropological understanding and typology as undergirding the entirety of Paul’s theological activity.[4] The theological statements of the Paul’s epistles are therefore rooted not only in the immediate crisis Paul seeks to address, but in Paul’s Jewish metanarrative.

---

[1] Barr GK. Scalometry and the Pauline Epistles. (Leicester: Continuum, 2004): 127.

[2] Wedderburn AJM. “Pauline Pneumatology and Pauline Theology”. In: Dunn JDG, Stanton G, Longenecker BW, Barton S. Holy Spirit and Christian Origins. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004): 144.

[3] Dunn JDG. ‘Postlegomena to the theology of Paul.’ In: Dunn JDG (Ed). The Theology of Paul the Apostle. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1998): 713-737.

[4] Ibid, p734.

St Paul: Theology becomes Incarnate

In an earlier post I wrote that St Paul was primarily a pastor rather than a theologian, and then I wrote another post defending this claim against the allegation that Romans was a Pauline Systematic theology.

Whilst Paul’s works are theological and practical responses to the issues of his day, it seems that Paul sees them as being underpinned by a ‘gospel’ of Christian thought. Theologians have debated for centuries what the ‘gospel’ that lies at the heart of the Pauline confession is, with Reformation hermeneutics identifying it as justification by faith alone.[1] The new perspective has challenged this traditional view, and scholars such as Schweitzer have demonstrated a distinctively Jewish core to Paul’s theologizing as an eschatological mystic deeply influenced by Rabbinic-juridical thought.[2]

The search for a ‘core’ element of Paul’s theologizing is problematic because it is reminiscent of the demythologizing of Rudolph Bultmann[3] – the discarding of the ‘husk’ to reach the true meaning of the ‘core’. Paul’s theologizing is so historically conditioned that it cannot be detached from its historical setting, and must be treated as an organic whole. This view is supported by Beker, who saw Paul primarily as an interpreter whose hermeneutic was a series of interactions between the stable and consistent convictional base and the variety of social and psychological arenas within which he operated.[4] The former, the coherent aspect, is unchanging and is visible in the concrete episodes of his theologizing, which are contingent upon his deeper coherent convictional base and the situations within which his theologizes.

Paul is therefore a skilled hermeneutician whose interpretative activity mirrors the dialectic between unity (of the Church) and particularity (of the individual churches and local theologies) that is visible within his writings.[5] Beker’s coherency-contingency model is particularly useful because it allows Paul’s coherent thought to be a flexible and fluid set of propositions rather than a concrete list of cognitive propositions.

Furthermore, it allows for Paul’s distinctively apocalyptic Jewish thought to be acknowledged as the grammatical base for his theologizing. For Beker, therefore, the theological statements of Paul’s letters are contingent expressions, or ‘incarnations,’ of Paul’s coherent thought[6] – they are not merely theological and cannot be divorced from their own contingent sitz-im-leben and literary context.

---

[1] Westerholm S. Perspectives Old and New on Paul. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2004): 407.

[2] Sanders EP. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977): 434.

[3] Jasper AE. The Shining Garment of the Text. (Leicester: Continuum, 1998): 113.

[4] Beker JC. ‘Recasting Pauline theology: The Coherency Contingency scheme as interpretative model.’ In: Bassler JM. (ed). Pauline Theology. (Volume 1). (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991): 15-24.

[5] Beker JC. Op Cit. (1987): 33.

[6] Ibid.

Conrad Black finds Serenity in Catholicism

The Catholic Herald is carrying news that disgraced Peer of the Realm and Papal Knight, Conrad Black, is finding that his Catholic faith brings him great serenity during his incarceration in the Coleman Federal Correction Facility in California, USA.

The article contains something of an extended spiritual autoboiography, which in places is fascinating. Black candidly discusses his fall from agnosticism into the arms of faith:

I had discovered by my early 30s that I no longer had any confidence in the non-existence of God. It was more of an intellectual and a psychological strain not to believe in God than to believe, and not from the impulse of hopefulness; from the impossibility of shutting out spirituality, abandoning curiosity about getting to grips with the infinite, before the beginning and after the end of time, and beyond the outer limits of space. Logically, there is some sort of organising principle abroad, [i.e. God!!] or at least something unexplained, partially defining, and at least slightly accessible. [Hmmm... then what is this spirituality he writes of it is not an effort to access the transcendent. Christian faith professes that which is both immediate and transcendent, in my view] Whether it was Bismarck speaking of “listening for God’s footfall and touching the hem of His garment as He passes”, or Britain’s late Cardinal Hume saying it was “like a screen. You can detect something behind it but can’t make out clearly what it is,” simply dismissing religious belief is not like dismissing astrology or chiropracting, or eschewing mushrooms. This is the only possible route to some insights beyond the normally discernible.

Along with this awakening seems to have come the realisation that the claims of the enlightenment are in reality untenable, and that human reason did not demand the abandonment of faith:

The exaggerated claims of the scientists were not much more persuasive than the similarly overblown liberties of the miraculists and creationists. At some point, science and revelation intersect, and faith is no natural enemy of scholarship.

There was then a gradual awakening the possibility of the miraculous, which precedes a deep acceptance of doctrine. Interestingly, in my own spiritual journey the accepting of the modern miracle came after the precedent acceptance of the miracle of doctrine:

To exercise and explore my faith, I would have to chin myself on Catholic dogma [if only more Catholics did], at least up to a threshold I had not approached before. I was satisfied, from my reading, and from my visits to Lourdes and Fatima, that miracles do sometimes occur. Therefore, logically, any miracle could occur, even the most apparently challenging, such as the Virgin Birth and the physical Ascension of Christ.

Finally Lord Black writes of his prison faith. A number of features stand out – firstly his link between “active participation” and “intellectual stimulation” and the centrality of the liturgy to the overall Christian experience:

The Catholic life in the prison where I write is active and intellectually stimulating. Confidence that there is at least some sort of an organising principle in the world, [I wonder why he speaks of this organising principle rather than of God. But note that now this principle is "in" the world and not entirely inaccesible.] the experience that worship sometimes produces – which can enhance an understanding of travails and observations – and some metaphysical background, do provide a hinterland for perceptions, and with it, relative serenity and proportionality, even, and perhaps especially, in times of extreme tension, poignancy, and adversity. And there have been some. [Oremus pro invicem.]

An interesting article, and well worth a read!

Summorum Pontificum – 2nd Anniversary

The feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross – which occurs on Monday – is the second anniversary of the implementation of the decrees contained in the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, issued motu proprio by our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.

The document has been among the most significant of the documents issued by the Holy Father during his pontificate and provided an overhaul of the regulations governing the celebration of the liturgy according to the Missal of John XXIII promulgated in 1962 (formerly known as the “Tridentine Rite” and now known as the Extraordinary Form of the single Roman Rite, of which the post-Vatican II Mass is the Ordinary Form). The Motu Proprio is intended to make the Extraordinary form more readily available for those people who wish for it, and for those priests who wish to celebrate it in private.

The document proved to be the source of much opining both on the Catholic blogosphere and in the back of our Churches. Those attached to the Extraordinary form celebrated a perceived victory and those opposed to the extraordinary form mourned a backwards step. Those celebrating and those mourning ranged from the people in the pews to the highest echelons on the episcopacy. Some Bishops have notably provided commentaries on the implementation of the document in their own dioceses. Some commentators have interpreted this as attempts to avoid its implementation… for my part, I don’t know if they were motivated by genuine pastoral concern or by fear.

Maybe this anniversary is an opportunity to express, in a most profound way, our communion with the Holy Father by attending a celebration of Mass in the form that we do not personally prefer. For me, this will mean attending a celebration of the Extraordinary Form. For other this will mean attending a Novus Ordo Mass. By so-doing I will express my communion with all who hold and teach the Catholic faith which comes to us from the Apostles: I will confess our One Lord and Saviour and unify myself to Christ’s body in the Barque of St Peter under the authority of his successor Benedict XVI. It is a deep means of attempting to think with the mind of the Church, casting aside my own prejudice, an identifying and repenting of my own tendency to use the liturgy as a point of division within the ecclesial Body of Christ.

At the elevation of the Sacred Body and the Precious Blood, it will be the same Christ who greets me and who I greet with the prayer of doubting St Thomas: “My Lord and my God”.

Paul’s Vocation as a Preacher

The first reading of Monday’s Mass was taken from St Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:23-2:4), and demonstrates Paul’s wonderfully rich Ecclesiology as well as a profound exposition of his own vocation:

It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church. I became the servant of the Church when God made me responsible for delivering God’s message to you, [the theologian and preacher is a servant of the Church and must "think with the Church" if he is to fulfill his vocation] the message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and has now been revealed to his saints. [the subject and object of theology and preaching is divine revelation] It was God’s purpose to reveal it to them and to show all the rich glory of this mystery to pagans. The mystery is Christ among you, your hope of glory: this is the Christ we proclaim, this is the wisdom in which we thoroughly train everyone and instruct everyone, to make them all perfect in Christ. It is for this I struggle wearily on, helped only by his power driving me irresistibly. [prayer is essential to theology]

Yes, I want you to know that I do have to struggle hard for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for so many others who have never seen me face to face. It is all to bind you together in love and to stir your minds, so that your understanding may come to full development, until you really know God’s secret in which all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

I have penned a few observations in red, but I think this passage speaks for itself.