Theology and Ministry 8 (2022)

The latest issue of Theology and Ministry, an open-access journal from Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham – and containing the below articles – is available from here.

Samuel Tranter and Nicholas J. Moore

Editorial

Sebastian Rab

Christ and Church as Temple in John 14.2–3: And Implications for Eschatology and Funeral Ministry

Temple is a key biblical-theological theme, especially in the Fourth Gospel. A case is made that the farewell discourse employs this theme at its outset to introduce its key priorities. If the ‘Father’s house’ is the body of Jesus and its ‘many dwelling-places’ are the disciples, then John 14.2–3 uses the theme of temple to speak to the relational nature of both being a disciple of Jesus and the reconciliation of all things to God in Christ. This has implications for our eschatology, which are related particularly to funerals, where this scriptural reading is enduringly popular.

Paul J. Wilson

Rethinking Refujesus: Biblical Perspectives on a Popular Icon

The claim that ‘Jesus was a refugee’ or that Christians follow a ‘migrant messiah’ has become a shibboleth among those who advocate a more benevolent response to migrants. This manner of identifying Jesus has gained traction in the past decade, even being promoted by politicians and pop stars. In response, ‘Refujesus’ has been criticized by those who view migration as a threat. Proponents on all sides of this debate refer to the ‘escape to Egypt’ (Matt. 2.13–23), but are often more concerned with reading contemporary questions about migration into the text, rather than the text itself. This paper will argue that while describing Jesus as a refugee does have exegetical merit, the New Testament has more to offer ethical responses to migration by offering a fundamental shift in perspective though a migration-informed exegesis.

Anthony Bash

Remorse, Emotions, and Moral Transformation

Despite popular thought, repentance and remorse are not synonyms. Repentance is both affect and action, whereas remorse is always only ever affect, though remorse can lead to repentance. Surprisingly, there is no word that obviously means ‘remorse’ in the Bible, though people were evidently remorseful, especially towards God for sin. Remorse is different from regret, though it includes elements of regret in its meaning. In 2 Corinthians 7, Paul lays the linguistic and theological foundation for what later became known as ‘remorse’. Remorse is an affective disposition, and we consider how the New Testament approaches the way dispositions can be transformed from being sinful to godly.

Robert Russell

From Enmity to Reconciliation: Reflections on the Theology of Vernon White and Forgiveness Research of Marina Cantacuzino

The journey leading from enmity to reconciliation is beset with complex challenges for parishioners en route and for pastors offering guidance. Concepts and principles are selected from the theology of Vernon White, the forgiveness research of Marina Cantacuzino, and theologies of other authors, which may prove helpful. Two major issues are considered here: 1) reconciling with each other, involving offering and receiving forgiveness, and 2) reconciling with God. These are examined theologically and practically to include differences and connections between forgiveness and reconciliation, theodicy (particularly instrumentalism), freewill, strategies for counseling, and common parishioner concerns with possible pastoral responses to them.

Oliver Blease

This is My Body: A Qualitative Study into Sociological and Theological Experiences in Local Parish Eucharistic Worship

The theology and praxis of the Eucharist is often discussed by academics and theologians, yet most people engaged in the act of celebrating the sacrament rarely have a published or widely heard ‘voice’ with which to share their experience of these Holy Mysteries. This article investigates the direct experience of communicant members of the Church of England across a wide range of theological traditions. Idiographic qualitative data yielded from semi-structured interviews is analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). These results are reflected upon using the Theological Action Research model to generate relevant and practical outcomes from the data. Three key themes emerge from the participants’ experiences: the significance of the gathered community; a pre-existing and dynamic reflective praxis amongst communicants; and a diverse but prevalent focus on ‘mission’ particularly relating to the unique nature of the rite.

Reviews

Crucible 11, 1 (March 2020)

The latest issue of Crucible, published by the Australian Evangelical Alliance, is now available online here, with the below articles (abstracts included, where available).

The Cauldron: peer reviewed articles

Peter A. Frith

Hitting the wall: Clergy Encountering the Emotional System in their First Parish

This paper summarises a research project which explored the lived experiences of Anglican clergy as they encountered their church’s emotional system in their first incumbency. Eleven vicars from three Australian dioceses were asked, in a phenomenological study, to describe the main challenges they faced as they led a congregation for the first time. All the participants identified the uncooperative and uncivil behaviour of influential church members as their chief concern. They also disclosed their own stress responses to the behaviour they encountered. These were distilled into five core themes: shock, inadequacy, alienation, relinquishment and hopelessness. Insights from Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory were introduced in the analysis phase in order to extract the emotional and systemic dimensions of the data. The study concluded that more highly differentiated clergy achieved lasting, systemic change even though they encountered the most intense conflict. Moderately differentiated clergy achieved temporary change while lower differentiated clergy, who faced the least intense conflict, were changed by the system. The findings in this study are applicable to church authorities, theological training institutions, clergy formation curricula, and aspirants to the pastorate in that they confirm that the emotional system constitutes a major challenge faced by modern church leaders.

Abraham Wu

Eating out in the Open: The Centrifugal, Missional Significance of the Eucharist

Throughout Scripture, and in the history of the Church, the Eucharist has been strongly associated with the Kingdom of God and the Missio Dei. This seems to be in stark contrast to how the Eucharist is often, in modern, Western Christianity, associated with rigid institutionalism, ecclesial division, and theological question – such as those around the nature of Christ’s presence. While these are important questions and issues for the Church, this paper argues that they fail to capture the inherent meaning of the Eucharist, which acts as the sign and sacrament of the Kingdom. Indeed, this paper explores how the Eucharist is not merely centripetal but also a centrifugal force that holds the key to the Church’s missional renewal. By exploring how the Eucharist reveals the Church’s identity as a missional community, how it initiates and challenges the Church’s mission of hospitality, and how it catalyses a sacramental approach to creation care and stewardship, this paper seeks to offer an integrative, sacramental approach to the Church’s mission that reclaims the Eucharist’s central place in ecclesiology and missiology.

Paul Kolawole Oladotun

God Will Supply All Your Needs According to His Glorious Riches: The Problem of Extreme Materialism among Nigerian Pastors

Over the years, the church in Nigeria has been God’s agent, turning the heart of a people to God. But recent activities in the church today betray the expected role of this agency in different parts of the world; to the point that many see Christianity as the root cause of major problems in society. In the past, churches in Nigeria stood up against immorality, corruption in moral defiance of societal norms. The reverse is the case today. Contemporary pastors in Nigeria are aids for committing modern-day fraud because of extreme materialism. Some ministers of God in Nigeria today have turned the church to money making venture. It is disheartening that in the recent time, many pastors’ measure success in the ministry by the size of congregations, numbers of houses as well as cars owned, and many more. The Nigerian pastorate has replaced the goal of faithfulness in the work of God with material, temporal things. In Nigeria, the church is seen as a means of filling one’s own pockets using various illegal and unbiblical means. As a result, this paper engages the vice ravaging Nigeria pastorate via the biblical lens of I Corinthians 9:13. In view of this, material things are not bad in themselves but ‘extreme materialism’ and the ‘lust’ attitude which has enslaved the contemporary Nigeria pastorate must be addressed through a correct re-definition of Call to ministry as well as a deeper level of faith on the path of the so called ‘pastors’.

The Test-tube: ministry resources

Barbara Kathleen Welch

Existential Shame: A Liturgical Approach to Soul Care of the Victims of Child abuse

This article offers suggested ways to help create safer worship environments for those who have been wounded in mind, body and spirit from child abuse. Most often Existential Shame distorts his/her faith; and his/her basic trust has been distorted or even aborted through child abuse. Pastors may offer safer worship opportunities through safer liturgies and rituals. Sensory liturgies may contribute to the healing process of the Limbic System/the emotional brain through the process of neuroplasticity because positive worship experiences help to create new neural pathways and connections in the Limbic System.

Ben Chenoweth

Doing Biblical Exegesis by Distance Well

This article suggests how theological educators may improve student learning in the area of biblical exegesis in on-line mode. It suggests a way forward would be to encourage student-to-student interaction on the biblical text itself, utilising exegetical worksheets to focus the discussion, while at the same time providing students with sample exegesis material. In that way the educator would be modelling what is expected. Assessment, too, should be focused on the real-world uses of biblical exegesis.

Foundations 68 (Spring 2015)

Issue 68 of Foundations: An International Journal of Evangelical Theology, published by Affinity, is now available (here in its entirety as a pdf). This issue looks at the Lord’s Supper from several perspectives within evangelicalism, with the following contributions:

Ralph Cunnington

Editorial

William B. Evans

Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper and its Relevance for Today

Calvin’s approach to the Lord’s Supper, which sought to mediate between the local-presence theologies of Rome and Luther on the one hand and Zwinglian memorialism on the other, is closely connected with his soteriology, eschatology, and ecclesiology. In the Supper, the incarnate humanity of Christ is objectively offered and subjectively received by faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and through this union with Christ’s “flesh” both the power of his deity and the forensic benefits of salvation are received. However, subsequent developments in Reformed theology rendered Calvin’s formulations implausible to some, such that by the nineteenth century outright opposition to Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper was being expressed by Reformed luminaries such as Charles Hodge, William Cunningham, and R.L. Dabney. Others, such as J.W. Nevin and J.B. Adger, vigorously supported Calvin’s intentions. Nevertheless, Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper is rooted in Scripture and in the great tradition of the church, and it offers important resources for the renewal of Reformed and Evangelical theology and practice.

John Stevens

Not Reformed Enough: Critiquing Contemporary Practice of the Lord’s Supper

The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is central to the life and worship of most evangelical churches. However contemporary practice of the Lord’s Supper is far removed from that described in the New Testament. Whilst the magisterial reformers overturned the theology of the Roman Catholic Mass they retained its essential shape and failed to introduce a truly biblical pattern to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The contention of this article is that we need to recover the New Testament practice of the Lord’s Supper as a community celebration meal of the New Covenant, eaten in the presence of the Lord Jesus as he dwells with his people by his Spirit in the new temple that is his church. A carefully reading of the key New Testament texts demands a reform that goes beyond resolving the well-trodden differences between a Calvinist and Zwinglian understanding of the Lord’s Supper to a practice that embeds the identity-shaping, assurance-building and community-forming functions of the Lord’s Supper.

Richard Wardman

The Lord’s Supper in England: Then and Now – A Look at How Thomas Cranmer’s Eucharistic Theology Compares with Today

What happens in the Lord’s Supper? To answer that question this article critically explores the mature Eucharistic theology of Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer’s theology is then used as a point of reference for discussing the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in contemporary English Evangelicalism. The relevant scriptural passages are also explored when discussing both Cranmer and contemporary Evangelicalism. The conclusion seeks to offer comparative remarks and also provide a basis for further discussion.

Ian Hugh Clary

Throwing Away the Guns: Andrew Fuller, William Ward and the Communion Controversy in the Baptist Missionary Fellowship

Since the Baptists first emerged in seventeenth-century England the question of open vs. closed communion has been strongly debated. The majority of Baptists in history were closed communion, believing that only those who have been baptised by immersion on profession of faith should be admitted to the table. This debate had the potential to ruin the Baptist Missionary Society in the eighteenth century. Were it not for the friendship of men like Andrew Fuller and William Ward, who were on opposing ends of the controversy, and their shared sense of mission, the society may have been derailed. This essay traces the history of the debate in early Baptist history and pays particular attention to the BMS. It concludes with brief thoughts on how differences over important doctrines can be handled in the church today.

Oliver Gross

Review Article: Messy Church Theology (ed. George Lings)

Martin Salter

Book Review: Sanctification: Explorations in Theology and Practice (ed. Kelly M. Kapic)