Centre for Public Christianity (June 2024)

Among other items, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a ‘Life and Faith’ interview (here) with Elizabeth Oldfield on her book, Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times.

‘In this interview with Life & Faith, Elizabeth talks about “steadiness of soul” in an increasingly chaotic world and what it means to live in a small, intentional community or “micro monastery” that can fit 18 people around the dinner table. The conversation also covers how Elizabeth has managed to cultivate a space for profound chats across social divides in the podcast The Sacred, and what it meant for Elizabeth to flout careerist dogma and quit her stable, secure job to rest and lean into a different way of life.’

Theos Report on the Church and Social Cohesion

A new report from Theos has recently been published:

Madeleine Pennington, The Church and Social Cohesion: Connecting Communities and Serving People (London: Theos, 2020).

Here are some paragraphs from the Theos website:

‘The Church and Social Cohesion: Connecting Communities and Serving People is the concluding report of an 18–month project which seeks to understand the impact of churches on the cohesiveness of our communities across England. It was commissioned by the Free Churches Group, and authored by Dr Madeleine Pennington, Theos’ Head of Research […]

‘The report begins with a brief overview of recent cohesion policy, particularly noting how it has often been directed in response to crisis rather than a sustainable consideration of community assets. It then notes that Christians have distinctive theological motivations for engaging with their communities, before considering churches’ community assets in turn. It notes six assets as particularly common features of effective church-based community engagement: buildings, networks, leadership, convening power, volunteers and vision. Finally, it assesses how effectively churches work with a range of other community stakeholders in pursuit of cohesion aims, through a more targeted consideration of churches’ working relationships with other faith groups, other churches, and local authorities.’

A pdf of the full report is available here.

Resolved #3: To Fulfil the Law of Christ

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:1-2

Popular wisdom suggests that fresh resolves – at new year or any other time – often fall prey to the fatal flaw of ‘going it alone’. They focus on individual self-improvement to the neglect of relationships through which support might be given and accountability expressed.

Likewise, it’s possible to mistake the fruitful Christian life for private Christian experience. For sure, we walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16, 25), but we do not cultivate his fruit alone. We need each other in order to exercise patience, kindness and gentleness. The change we aspire to is a communal process – at the heart of which is love.

Paul has already made this clear. Those who have been freed from the law now become ‘slaves’ of one another through love (5:13). Those who walk in step with the Spirit are empowered by the Spirit to live a life of love (5:22). Such love – far from doing away with the old covenant law – actually sums up the law (5:14). In fact, the law attains its primary reason for existence in churches of Christ when its members become loving servants of one another.

Paul’s concrete example is love expressed in restoration. Even those who have been set free and who seek to walk in the Spirit are still caught out by sin in unanticipated ways. Here, however, is an opportunity for people of the Spirit to display the fruit of the Spirit in gentleness, enabling correction without arrogance or anger – where the goal is restoration. And we do so, Paul reminds us, fully realising our own proneness to stumbling, and our own dependence on others. I who help to restore you one week may need your gentleness the following week.

So it is that we carry each other’s burdens. Beyond suffering the consequences of a specific failing, burdens might be physical, emotional, practical, financial... What, then, might we be able to do for someone this week – a visit, a conversation, a meal, a hand with the children, a cup of cold water? Whatever the case, shouldering a load with someone requires distributing the weight between us, lightening the load of the other in the process, demonstrating love in action.

Thus it is that we follow the example of Jesus, the supreme burden-bearer. Thus it is that we fulfil the law of Christ.

Romans 12: God’s New People #8 – What Love Looks Like

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practise hospitality.

Romans 12:9-13

Paul will come on to how we live with outsiders to the Christian faith – and those of us who are mission-minded might be eager for him to do so – but he doesn’t rush there. He insists we hear first that central to our life in Christ is how we love one another in the body of Christ.

That’s where he begins this section – ‘love must be sincere’. What that love looks like is then unpacked in one long sentence.

Grammar aficionados might be interested to know that Paul uses participles where most English versions translate with commands. Here’s an approximation of how it might have sounded to the first hearers: ‘Love is genuine, hating the evil, clinging to the good, devoted to one another in love, outdoing one another in showing honour, not lacking in zeal, being fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, being patient in affliction, persevering in prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practising hospitality.’ To be sure, Paul wants Christians to do those things, but they’re expressed in a way which describes a character to be cultivated not merely commands to be carried out.

As elsewhere in Romans 12, hearing what Paul says through the ears of those in first-century Rome brings home the radical implications of belonging to the new humanity God has brought together in Christ. To take just one example, in a culture where giving and receiving honour was a central driver, a master honouring a slave above himself would be a strong signal that a completely different set of values was at work in this community. The principle remains just as powerful today. In a world where race, gender, age, wealth, and status often either bring privilege or deny access, Christians model a different way of living.

Not that it’s easy to do so! But Paul is realistic in his assumptions about what the Christian community will look like. Yes, we will find it difficult to outdo one another in showing honour; yes, suffering will come; yes, there will be needs to be met. But it will still be possible to serve the Lord, to rejoice, to be patient, and to persevere in prayer.

In doing so, we will display to each other – and perhaps to a watching world – that what God has begun to do in the church stands at the heart of his reconciling work which will one day be extended to all things.

Centre for Public Christianity (February 2015)

Among other items, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a video interview with Hugh Mackay on ‘The Art of Belonging’, discussing his new book about the appeal of ‘village’ living, and how to cultivate real community wherever we live.

Also posted is a video interview with Mark Bilton on ‘Monday Matters’, exploring the role of faith in the workplace.

Guy Brandon on the Big Society

Guy Brandon, The Big Society in Context: A Means to What End? (Cambridge: Jubilee Centre, 2011).

This report is freely available here from the Jubilee Centre.

‘Research by the Jubilee Centre reveals how the Big Society is ultimately intended to be the solution to the social problems of what Conservatives were describing before the 2010 general election as “Broken Britain”, but this has not been well publicised. In reality it is highly unlikely that any Big Society ambitions can succeed without the help of faith groups. Motivated by a love of neighbour, Christians will want to take any new opportunities that arise to play a greater role in their communities, including starting social enterprises and bringing biblical principles and social transformation agendas to business. The church must also be prepared, however, to defend its own autonomy and help promote religious freedoms.’

Aspects of Theological Interpretation 6

[This is the sixth of twelve posts outlining a number of streams in the current interest in theological interpretation, paying particular attention to recent treatments. For earlier introductions to theological interpretation, see here, here, and here.]

#1 – Its uneasy relationship with historical criticism

#2 – Its disputed overlap with biblical theology

#3 – Its natural affinity with precritical interpretation

#4 – Its noteworthy exemplar in Karl Barth

#5 – Its relative comfort with multiple interpretations

#6. Its significant emphasis on the role of the community of faith

One of the features of theological interpretation is that interpretation of Scripture is most appropriately carried out by, and in the context of, the church.

[S.A. Cummins, ‘The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recent Contributions by Stephen E. Fowl, Christopher R. Seitz and Francis Watson’, Currents in Biblical Research 2, 2 (2004), 179-96, esp. 191-93; Joel B. Green, Seized by Truth: Reading the Bible as Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 66-79, 85-88; Daniel J. Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), 79-100; Charles M. Wood, The Formation of Christian Understanding: Theological Hermeneutics, 2nd edn. (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1993), 20-29; David S. Yeago, ‘The Bible: The Spirit, the Church, and the Scriptures: Biblical Inspiration and Interpretation Revisited’, in James J. Buckley and David S. Yeago (eds.), Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 49-93. In addition, see (drawing on Paul Ricoeur) Lewis S. Mudge, Rethinking the Beloved Community: Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, Social Theory (Lanham: University Press of America, 2001), esp. 143-87, and Simone Sinn, The Church as Participatory Community: On the Interrelationship of Hermeneutics, Ecclesiology and Ethics, Studies in Ecumenism, Reconciliation and Peace (Dublin: Columba, 2002).]

This is a particularly prominent feature in the work of Stephen Fowl, for whom what counts as a reading of Scripture has to be ‘communal judgments about whether such interpretations will issue forth in faithful life and worship that both retain Christians’ continuity with the faith and practice of previous generations and extend that faith into the very specific contexts in which contemporary Christians find themselves’ (Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation, Challenges in Contemporary Theology [Oxford: Blackwell, 1998], 26).

[Cf. Stephen E. Fowl, ‘Introduction’, in Stephen E. Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), xii-xxx, at xix: ‘By defining a theological interpretation of Scripture as a reading aimed at shaping and being shaped by a community’s faith and practice, I have at the same time indicated a location where such reading will be most at home. That is, theological interpretation of Scripture will take place primarily within the context of the church and synagogue, those communities that seek to order their common life in accord with their interpretation of Scripture.’]

Interpretation of Scripture ‘should shape and be shaped by the convictions, practices, and concerns of Christian communities as part of their ongoing struggle to live and worship faithfully before God’ (Fowl, Engaging Scripture, 62).

[Cf. also Stephen E. Fowl and L. Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life, Biblical Foundations in Theology (London: SPCK, 1991), in which the authors deal with readers as part of embodied Christian communities who read ‘ethically’, and listen to outsiders charitably. Demonstrating that particular understandings of ‘church’ shape one’s interpretation of Scripture, Matthew Levering (‘Ecclesial Exegesis and Ecclesial Authority: Childs, Fowl, and Aquinas’, The Thomist 69, 3 [2005], 407-67) seeks to augment the accounts of Childs and Fowl with reference to the theological exegesis of Aquinas, showing how Aquinas illumines the approaches of Childs and Fowl to ecclesial interpretation.]

Fowl has re-emphasised the point in a more recent essay:

‘The argument in a nutshell is that theology and ecclesiology should drive scriptural hermeneutics, not the other way around.’

[Stephen E. Fowl, ‘The Importance of a Multivoiced Literal Sense of Scripture: The Example of Thomas Aquinas’, in in A.K.M. Adam, Stephen E. Fowl, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Francis Watson, Reading Scripture with the Church: Toward a Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 35-50, here 37.]

A similar sentiment is expressed by Murray Rae:

‘Whatever else may be done outside the ecclesia with the various texts that comprise the Christian Bible, the reading of the Bible, as such, is essentially an ecclesial practice.’

[Murray A. Rae, History and Hermeneutics (London: T&T Clark, 2005) 131, his italics, and see 131-52.]

One of the entailments of this, according to Fowl is that interpretation by the community of faith may read Scripture in different ways at different times, recognising a ‘plurality of interpretive practices and results without necessarily granting epistemological priority to any one of these’ (Engaging Scripture, 10).

A.K.M. Adam likewise holds that the way forward will be along a path which allows for a plurality – though not a limitless number – of readings of a text, where ‘the legitimacy of an interpretation is determined by the body of readers evaluating it’ (Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006], 60). It is clear, however, that not just any reading will do:

‘The constraints upon textual interpretation do not derive from the nature of understanding, or of texts, or of language, or of communicative intent, or of truth, or of speech acts, but always only from the sundry collocations of circumstances within which we formulate interpretations and judgments… Communities of interpreters approve or discountenance proposed interpretations according to criteria that constitute the community.’

[Adam, Faithful Interpretation, 59, 129-30. See the discussion in 57-65 (‘Twisting to Destruction: A Memorandum on the Ethics of Interpretation’), and 81-103 (‘Integral and Differential Hermeneutics: The Significance of Interpretive Difference’), and 14-16. Adam illustrates these concerns with a discussion of alleged anti-semitism in Matthew (67-79, ‘Postmodern Criticism Applied: Matthew’s Readers, Power, and Ideology’), and he illustrates his differential hermeneutics (which allows for different interpretive outcomes rather than assuming a single, correct meaning) with an examination of the sign of Jonah logion in the gospels (125-39, ‘The Sign of Jonah: A Fish-Eye View’), where the history of interpretation does not show ‘a gradual progress toward the single meaning of the sign, but only the waxing and waning of interpretive trends’ (137).]

On such a view, we are to see interpretation as an exercise which takes place within a community of readers with different interests.

[Adam, Faithful Interpretation, 129-30, and see 59: ‘We approve or reject interpretations not on the basis of immutable laws, but on the basis of criteria that we share with particular groups of readers to whom we are accountable.’ Cf. also Rae, History and Hermeneutics, 140: ‘Good reading takes place… in humble recognition that one belongs within and is answerable to a community of readers extended through space and time.’]

Fowl’s position has been nuanced by others.

[See, e.g., Brian Brock, Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 23-34; Jason Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine, Radical Traditions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 29-33; Cummins, ‘Theological Interpretation’, 191-93; Levering, ‘Ecclesial Exegesis’, 440-48; Daniel J. Treier, Virtue and the Voice of God: Toward Theology as Wisdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 106-13, 123-27; Introducing Theological Interpretation, 85-92; Donald Wood, ‘The Place of Theology in Theological Hermeneutics’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 4, 2 (2002), 156-71, esp. 162-65.]

Vanhoozer, for instance, is concerned that ecclesiology trumps canon, leaving little room for the church to be critiqued by the voice of God speaking in Scripture. Authority lies not in the interpretive practices of the community, but in the communicative practices of the canon.

[Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Leicester: Apollos, 2002), 275-308 (‘Body Piercing, the Natural Sense and the Task of Theological Interpretation: A Hermeneutical Homily on John 19:34’).]

Treier (Virtue, 126) also seeks to give more space to a normative role for Scripture in the community, that Scripture must stand in a place where it might, if necessary, critique the teaching and practice of the church.

Indeed, we may be grateful for the emphasis on readers and reading communities, but what standing, if any, do the texts have – beyond the standing granted to them by particular readers with particular interests? This is especially the case when those texts are understood as, in some way, the voice of God addressing the church, or understood as part of the canon of Scripture.

Others, too, are unhappy that Fowl underplays authorial intention, subordinating it to the authority of interpretive communities.

[E.g., Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 117, n. 20; Cummins, ‘Theological Interpretation’, 184.]

John Webster cautions against making Scripture captive to ‘the relatively self-enclosed worlds of readerly psyches and habit-forming communities’ (Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001], 45).

Along similar lines, Brevard S. Childs (‘Toward Recovering Theological Exegesis’, Pro Ecclesia 6, 1 [1997], 16-26) notes that ‘traditional Christian exegesis understood its theological reflection to be responding to the coercion or pressure of the biblical text itself. It was not merely an exercise in seeking self-identity, or in bending an inherited authority to support a sectarian theological agenda’ (17).

It should be noted that Fowl does have criteria for ‘the character of Christian practical reasoning’: interpretations must not follow a consumerist model, must not be authoritarian, must operate with the goal of speaking to all Christians, and must be ecumenical in healing divisions among Christians (see Engaging Scripture, 196-206; cf. 62-96).

Leaving aside the validity and usefulness of these criteria (and the question of who gets to formulate them), Levering notes that ‘perhaps the key question… is from where, for Fowl, the ecclesial authority derives its authority’ (‘Ecclesial Exegesis’, 443). For his part, Levering is concerned that Fowl does not ‘give sufficient weight to the embeddedness of Scripture historically within particular sacramental modes of ecclesial authority’ and that his proposal ‘may not fully account for the cruciformity, and thus obedient receptivity, required for the Christian freedom of believers, a particular cruciform freedom that should characterize all Christian biblical interpretation’ (‘Ecclesial Exegesis’, 444).

Such authority, for Fowl, arises out of relationships and friendships, whereby Christians ‘grant to one another interpretive authority’ (Engaging Scripture, 157). Fowl’s subsequent work on Philippians has explored more fully this notion of friendship (Philippians, Two Horizons New Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005]).

Levering counters, however, that ‘far from it being the state or the community of believers… who grants the Church interpretive authority, it is Christ who establishes the Church in human history’ (‘Ecclesial Exegesis’, 448).

Furthermore, the identity of the ‘community’ remains problematic. Is it the local church, or a collection of churches, or the ‘universal’ church? (Cf. Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 58).

Of course, opposition between ‘text’ and ‘community’ may finally be false, since both are shaped by God and part of the economy of salvation (cf. Levering, ‘Ecclesial Exegesis’, 451). Fowl has reflected on the differences between himself and Vanhoozer on this issue, as has Vanhoozer – although the latter remains concerned about what he sees as the dangers of pragmatism in Adam and Fowl.

[Stephen E. Fowl, ‘Further Thoughts on Theological Interpretation’, and Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Four Theological Faces of Biblical Interpretation’, in Adam et al., Reading Scripture, 125-30 and 131-42.]

Some rapprochement between Vanhoozer and Fowl may be necessary in order to hold on to what they each affirm. Along such lines, a recent full-length study sets Fowl and Vanhoozer in dialogue, suggesting a more holistic conception of ‘meaning’, seeking to allow both for the necessity of authorial intention and the practices of the reading community.

[See D. Christopher Spinks, The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning: Debates on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (London: T&T Clark, 2007).]

Despite differences of nuance, all involved in the wider discussion are concerned to promote interpretation as a communal practice that is related to virtue, with virtue becoming a way to think how the character of the interpreter influences reading of Scripture, paying special attention to the role of the church and the formation of its members (Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation, 92-96). It should come as no surprise, then, that those who are interested in theological interpretation of Scripture appeal to the language of wisdom and virtue.

[Esp. David F. Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Treier, Virtue. Wisdom is also the key motif in David F. Ford and Graham Stanton (eds.), Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom: Scripture and Theology (London: SCM, 2003).]

Theological interpretation aids in the cultivation of virtue which, in turn, aids in the practice of theological interpretation. There is an inevitable circularity here, as Fowl notes: ‘Christians will find that interpretations of scripture have already shaped convictions, practices, and dispositions which have, in turn, shaped the ways in which scripture is interpreted. Not only is it impossible to undo this process, it is not clear how one would ever know that one had done so’ (Engaging Scripture, 7).

Adam (Faithful Interpretation, 155-63 [‘Epilogue: Signifying Theology’], and ‘Poaching on Zion’) uses the notion of ‘signifying practices’ to describe what he thinks should be the concerns of theological interpretation and a biblical theology oriented to theological concerns. Signifying practices is a way of ‘understanding the relation of disciplined technical interpretation to theological, ethical, liturgical, and pastoral practice’, and reminds us that ‘all our interpretive discourses involve matters of practice’ (Faithful Interpretation, 18, 159).