a deeper love
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
A couple of times recently I’ve been reminded of the distinction made between God’s love and God’s justice; typically emphasised in some theories of the atonement. These are often presented as if they are two almost-contradictory parts of God’s character. It struck me today that perhaps the reason for this presentation is that our concept of love is really too shallow to cope. We tend to think of justice as a strong unequivocal thing and love as wishy-washy and ‘nice’. Love simply being somthing that comes in and softens the blow of justice. But is love really like that? Despite our attempts to go beyond love-as-fuzzy-feeling, perhaps we don’t get far enough in a deep robust picture of what love is.
Maybe as a first step, we need to start by think in less individualistic & abstract terms. How about this picture: if I find one of my children attacking another and I take action, is my motivation love or justice? Surely it is both? Or perhaps, even, the ‘justice’ side is simply an expression of love.
If mankind continually harms creation and one another, does God act out of love or justice? Or are the two different aspects of the same thing? If Jesus acts to solve the problem, is that love-overcoming-justice? Or a wider & deeper expression of the love that was motivating all along?
Maybe what we need to do is take the Bible seriously when it says ‘God is love’ and allow that to deepen, enrich and refine our picture of love, rather than attempt to ‘balance’ it by emphasising justice as a contradictory characteristic? (Or even to attempt to make love some secondary characteristic after justice.)
For me this connects to the critique of neo-Calvanism that Jeremy Begbie makes in Voicing Creation’s Praise (referred to in an earlier post):
… the tendency is for God’s love to be treated as little more than a potential quality or attitude which operates only among the chosen and fortunate few. This is thrown into sharp relief in the Calivinists’ adoption of the … distinction between the covenant of works … and the covenant of grace … The covenant of works … [guaranteed] eternal life for all humanity on condition that he obeyed the laws of nature (the laws of God). When this covenant was broken, a new covenant of grace was rendered necessary. This manifests in the love of God and is restricted to the elect. It finds its climax in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. … [This] seriously undermines the unity of God’s purposes, the oneness of the divine covenant of grace. … The net effect … is to construe God’s essential attribute as justice, and his love towards creation (and humankind) as something that he exercises only if he so wills.
[Credits: Some of this post goes back to an old half-conversation with Mark.]
Carter Bridge
Posted by Paul | Filed under photos
Some more photos, released from their little plastic box by the new scanner, are now at www.paulnorridge.co.uk/bridge. These are all of the Carter Cycle Bridge in Cambridge (UK), an integral part of my daily routine…
Tags: photos
sensus divinitatis
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
A number of thoughts/speculations collided for me on the way to work the other day. It’s probably interesting to pick up the shards here. Well, maybe…
It started with reading about Calvin’s concept of sensus divinitatis. That is
That there exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead…
Alternatively described by Alvin Plantinga as
a disposition or set of dispositions to form theistic beliefs in various circumstances, in response to the sorts of conditions or stimuli that trigger the working of this sense of divinity.
(Both quotes taken from Naming the Elephant by James W. Sire.)
How about we push this in a slightly different direction? What if we put forward, not an intellectual/conceptual sensus divinitatis, but a relational and perceptual one? So, some sort of sixth sense (‘I perceive divine people’ 
. We could suggest that we have an in-built sense of God, but that this is deadened in our fallen state. So, to some degree or other, we have inclinations towards theistic beliefs, as Plantinga puts it. But, these inclinations are due to an underlying sense that almost-but-not-quite functions. In this view Calvin’s & Plantinga’s sensus is a secondary effect — the intellectual derviative of the underlying (fuzzy) perception.
This fits interestingly with Tom Wright’s analogy for Jesus’ quality of relationship with his Father. Wright suggests that Jesus is like someone who has perfect pitch surrounded by tone-deaf people. Or could we say that, for Jesus, the sense is in working order?
Perhaps this also gives us a link to the apologetic issue ‘Why doesn’t God make himself more obvious?’ Maybe we can say that the fault is with us. The lack of obviousness isn’t due to God hiding, but due to us having degraded senses. Not a very good apologetic answer, perhaps.
Anyway, speculative post ends here… Normal service will be resumed shortly (when we’ve figure out what that is
incarnation again…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
A spin-off thought from the previous post. Well more of an embryonic thought,really. I wonder if incarnation is a key concept for our point in history. The neo-Calvanist focus on creation, with the emphasis on creation ordinances, etc. makes good connections in a world dominated by modernism. Perhaps emphasising incarnation can take us on in the right direction to go beyond modernism (I know, I’ve said something like this before…)
A number of things prompt me in this direction: Michael Ramsden gives an ever-facinating quote from Derrida (or Foucault? I forget): ‘Our only hope is if the word became flesh and lived among us.’
The Reason (in many senses) behind the universe arrives and becomes part of it. As I said before, how can that not change everything?
Also, for a post-modern world, the idea that the author of everything might enter his story and submit to to his characters has many resonances — the meta-narrative does something totally unexpected and unambiguously non-oppressive.
And finally, it seems to me that incarnation starts to blur the line between objectivity and subjectivity in a way that can make sense in a beyond-modernism worldview.
I don’t know. Only a hunch, but I have a feeling that something might fit here…
Tags: culture, provocations, worldview
Not forgetting the incarnation…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I’ve had a question floating around in the back of my mind and reading Voicing Creation’s Praise by Jeremy Begbie a while ago caused it to crystalise. I’ve been meaning to write about it every since. It is this…
When considering how Christianity should impact all areas of life (art, science, technology, etc, etc, etc) does the fact that Jesus has come really make a difference to our discussions? Not should it — does it really? Does it make a deep difference to our view when we look at thinking christianly ? Obviously as I am writing this, I have a suspicion that the difference may be pretty small. Of course, this is mainly my problem, but given that I have read a number of books on this area I don’t think it is just me.
Discussions of the christian worldview generally focus on Creation – Fall – Redemption (and sometimes ‘glorification’). I’m not saying that we miss the importance of redemption completely, but that many of our cultural analyses wouldn’t change significantly if Jesus didn’t exist. As an example, I was flicking through ‘Discipleship of the Mind’ by James Sire earlier. (Don’t take any of the following as criticism of Sire or the book, I have a lot of respect for both.) He includes a discussion of technology from a Christian perspective. (To emphasise my respect: how many books get anywhere near that?) The entire discussion is based on Genesis 1, with hints of the fall. All good things — stewardship, serving, aesthetic norms, justice, etc. — but there appears to be no significant use of the ‘redemption’ component of the worldview in the discussion. It seems often that creation and fall are the primary drivers for cultural analysis, with redemption treated as an add on that just fixes us personally.
In Begbie’s book he discusses the Dutch Neo-Calvanists (i.e Kuyper and co.) and their approach to cultural analysis. He questions a number of distinctions they implicitly set up, but primarily a ‘dualism’ between creation and redemption, as if these come from separate (almost contradictory) parts of God’s character. So, we have such distinctions as ‘common grace’ and ‘special grace’; the first mainly related to creation, the second to redemption. Given that most of the good cultural analysis seems to be based on aneo-Calvanist approach this came as a real eye-opener for me. If in the roots of our worldview we separate creation and redemption too firmly, then we are going to find it hard to bring the two equally into our cultural analysis. Consequently, we end up discussing God’s norms for creation, culture, etc. and assume that redemption adds little further light on the matter. Hence, my nagging thoughts…
Begbie also widened my conception of the problem — not only is redemption under-emphasised, but incarnation is hardly there to begin with. If Jesus is the one ‘through whom and for whom all things were created’, if Jesus is God’s ultimate self-revelation then surely the incarnation should change everything about the way we view the world/life/culture? We can’t just base things on Creation and Fall; Incarnation and Redemption should be allowed to completely re-fashion the way we look at things. The fact that they take send place in our discussions suggest they haven’t. (And, consider the often-used term ‘Judeo-Christian worldview’; is it really the case that the incarnation does so little that the pre- and post- perspectives are interchangable?)
Here’s an interesting test: a while ago I came across an article called Technology As If the Incarnation Actually Happened. For me the title provoked a ‘does not compute’ feeling. Now I wonder if that response just exemplifies the problem.
No answers, I’m afraid, just a provocation to think this through further. (Maybe when I’ve finished Begbie’s book… Perhaps we will conclude that (for example) the incarnation should impact our view of technology, but we should consider why…
Having listened to Tom Wright talking about New Creation today, I have to add one further comment: surely that also should impact our cultural engagement significantly, too? If we are agents of the new creation, then to stick to Creation-Fall-and-maybe-Redemption as our guidelines could lead to us do all the wrong things. Couldn’t it?
Tags: books, culture, provocations, Voicing Creation\'s Praise, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...