Answering the Contemplative Call -a review

The subtitle of this book is "First steps on the Mystical Path". And that's about where it is pitched -so; does what it says on the tin. In the bumph I got through about it, it was also described as "Open-source mysticism. For everyone". Which is certainly intriguing to someone like me who is with the program on open-source! I think that this latter description is reaching for the sense that the book seems to be trying, in a way, to demystify mysticism. Which I like. And certainly there's been a lot of enjoyment by some of the cachet of the mystical, so it's good to 'open-source' it.

It's very easy to read this book. The chapters are a good length: not too long but long enough for some good stuff to be passed on. The style is accessible; some story, some helpful explanation. I'd be very confident in this book to put it into the hands of someone just starting to look at the Christian traditions of mystical prayer. It gives some basic perspectives in a helpful way and offers a way in to some of the most helpful writings. It also gives really helpful  explanations of some of the more enduring ideas and approaches that have shown up in the history of Christian mystical traditions. There's even some mind-blowing philosophical theology wrapped up in an accessible way. The style is sane with some gentle humour and a pastoral concern for healthy habits and proper support and self-care shines through.

So all in all, if it is possible to have open-source mysticism, this book is probably as good an introduction as we'll get.

For me one of the personal 'likes' is that the discussion about God's 'existence' (and the problems with attributing existence to God as if God were on a par with created things) helped me to make a connection with the ontological argument which I'd never really found plausible before. So not only does it give good, sensible, down-to-earth wholesome and intriguing but it's not lightweight; there's food for thought on several levels. Worth getting, worth giving to people beginning to explore prayer and spirituality more deeply.

  Answering The Contemplative Call: First Steps on the Mystical Path

Rants to Revelations: a review

I hadn't taken in when I got this for review, that it is written by a 'Unity' minister; a term I was not familiar with. The Author Ogun Holder, we discover through reading the chapters of the book, was brought up a fairly traditional conservative Christian in the Carribean and later moved to the USA and following something of a crisis of faith (though not the kind that typically goes under that label) found himself in a Unity church. As we read the book, those who haven't ever encountered 'Unity' churches or people discover that it is a New Thought movement expression, so an essentially monist philosophy with a penchant for the actualisation of thought into reality -which is a way of thinking that tends to inform Prosperity teaching, and indeed one of the chapters deals with that facet of the teaching.

However, it would be very unfair to let you think that Prosperity teaching and monism as usually understood in Christian circles characterises well the writing in this book. I have had some of my preconceptions disarmed and have come to an appreciation through Ogun's writing that many 'put downs' of this kind of thought are just too simplistic: there are people who inhabit this kind of thought-world who do so with nuance, understanding of the hard realities and pastoral grace. In addition, it seems to me that in nuancing and grappling with hard realities, Ogun shows that sometimes we come closer to one another's ways of thinking than the set-piece standard positioning might have us think.

I enjoyed the style this is written in. It's down to earth and conversational and a kind of theological reflection on aspects of life. So there's an often-witty telling of an incident and then an unpacking of what this might mean and the implications and 'theology' that might help understand it helpfully. You almost don't notice that there's some really good quality thinking going on at the back of it all! Each chapter is a different incident, so rather than being a long argument, this is a series of cameos which makes it easy to read in short chunks.

Two things were particularly interesting, for me. One was the prosperity thing and the other was the personhood of God in a monistic view. The chapter on the manifesting of ones desire which is also called in the Unity Movement 'prosperity' is written with some very interesting caveats about how we are embedded in a larger reality than just ourselves; this is no solipsist text and so there is a useful nuance about responsible and 'realistic' desire in this respect. I still felt that the really hard issue about people in regions of starvation didn't get a helping hand from the reflection, though I thought that what was said was potentially amenable to some kind of parallel reflection to that which I give in a chapter in Praying the Pattern where I note that a lot of prosperity gospellers don't really take account of the faithfulness of those in famine areas who pray for food and don't get it and they forget that the planet is only so big and that consumption at USAmerican levels would require about five Earths. I get the sense that Ogun could deal with that.

I was interested to note the philosophical way that he deals with the issue of personhood, and while still maintaining an ultimate non-personal reality (I think) he manages to deal with the immanence of the Divine in such a way as to make personhood more 'necessary' than monism usually does, although I suspect it probably still comes down to a necessary human-interface in some way. That said, I would also have to note that in Christian theology, God transcends personhood as well, so it's not a clear-blue-water division.

This is a book I wouldn't have chosen to read were it not for reviewing it: I would have shied away from the New Thought basis. However, I'm happy to have read it and to have had some preconceptions challenged and to have food for thought.

  Rants to Revelations: Unabashedly Honest Reflections on Life, Spirituality, and the Meaning of God

God's gay agenda

 This is the next wave: an Evangelical pastor who is partnered with someone of her own gender making a case as a somewhat Pentecostal Evangelical not only for acceptance of gay people in covenanted partnerships within the church and the ordained ministry of the church, but more than that: for a special purpose for gay people within God's purposes.

This book looks at the so-called 'clobber' texts and does so in a way that will commend itself to those who do theology as Evangelicals. These texts are successfully 'disposed' of in the sense that it is shown that for the most part, what they are about is either inhospitality or idolatrous religion.

it is often said that Jesus never said anything about what we call homosexuality, Sandra Turnbull challenges that. One of the 'new' things this book does is to look at the word 'eunuch' firstly in Jesus' teaching and to make the case that part of the semantic field of the term in the gospel and in the history and culture around it, is to refer to those who are constitutionally unable to make a heterosexual marriage even though they may be genitally intact -notably what we call homosexuality. This makes it considerably more plausible to see a potential affirmation by Jesus of 'gay' people, including couples and also in the early church.

I was very skeptical about this but I'm, if not convinced, at least now considering this. Sometimes I think that Sandra overstates her case and once or twice I think the argument looks a bit contradictory, but I think that the main direction of the argument is not unduly affected by those.

It will be very interesting to see Evangelicals in the Charismatic and Pentecostal traditions wrestle with this book.
God's Gay Agenda

Samsung: finally respond after we contact sponsees

Finally, after contacting Chelsea FC and cc'ing Samsung. I notice too that they routed it through the appropriate regional office (in Gateshead) ...

Dear Customer,


Thank you for getting in touch and raising an important issue regarding
sourcing in Indonesia.

We take all of these matters very seriously and have been engaging with
Friends of the Earth and the broader electronics industry on this issue for
some time. We are also undertaking a thorough investigation of our supply
chain in the region to better understand what is happening, and what part we
play. While we do not have a direct relationship with tin suppliers from
Bangka Island, we do know that some of the tin that we use for manufacturing
our products does originate from this area, which sources much of the
electronics industry.

We believe that our work on this issue should be collaborative, and as a
responsible business we are contacting suppliers, industry bodies and
governments to better understand the issues that you raise and work together
to find solutions. We will communicate with you again as we learn more about
this matter.

Thank you again for your interest in Samsung Electronics.


Kind Regards,

Alan
Samsung Customer Support Centre

Reviewing Evolutions Purpose

 Steve MacIntosh has done us a service in writing this book. It's not a Christian book but it is a book that Christians interested in the philosophical implications of the theory of evolution should read. The author aims to write a book that might be helpful to people of many life-stances, spiritualities and religious outlook.

The subtitle helps us to understand what he's up to in this book: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins
All of those words are important: 'Scientific Story' recognises that the theoretical interpretation of the emergence of life -indeed of the emergence of stuff, suns, planets and the rest- tells a story. The interesting thing, of course, is that 'story' implies an audience, and that is part of what the book explores too. Part of what Steve is doing is to try to make a case for seeing evolution as purposeful. Those readers who are aware of the scientific debates will realise that this counters the idea of what Dawkins has famously analogised as 'the blind watchmaker' -precisely that evolution has no teleology it is simply the next adaptation after the last fitness-selection followed by the next survival and the next reproduction.

'An integral interpretation' seems to have two referents: one is (it seems to me) a nod towards the turn to wholism and hospitality to monistic philosophy; the other is working philosophically with emergence. It is the latter that has most prominence and importance, the fact that it can play nicely with the former is interesting but not core to the argument.

A big part of Steve's argument revolves around observing that there is an inherant 'local' teleology in the world when emergence is considered: at each new level, the purpose of the constituent antecedants for the emerged level has also developed. I think that this means that molecules give purpose to subatomic particles and atoms and so on 'up' through the levels. The other part of the argument is that meaning is not either transcendant or immanent but actually dialogical (and emergent?) or rather dialectical. The latter is the term that Steve uses and does indeed hark back to Hegel, Marx and the like and recognises that meaning-making is something that arises from the inter-relating of things.

I was reminded of a good and under-known theological book Ross Thompson's Holy Ground - the spirituality of matter. where the creational characteristic of dialogical/dialectical process is recognised and developed under the term diousia which I think is probably a word Steve MacIntosh would have employed had he known it.

What these things do in Steve's argument is lay the foundations for viewing reality as we know it as modestly purposeful as opposed to 'blind' and for a progressive interpretation of evolution where evolution is understood broadly to include the whole development of the universe and including human cultural development. Sometimes this feels a bit Marxian but isn't because materialism is eclipsed by integral philosophy, sometimes it feels a bit Newagey but it is actually more careful and hardheaded and indeed modest than many New Age philosophies though sharing something of their optimism.

I'm not entirely convinced that Steve has pulled the rabbit out of the hat in terms of grounding teleology in the scientifically-accessible universe, but I do think that (along with Ross Thompson as mentiond above) this is a way of thinking that deserves more consideration and discussion and could be helpful.

Evolution's Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins

Marriage, sexuality and the CofE

Mark Vernon has written a very helpful piece responding to the new CofE report on marriage (engendered by the recent debates around marriage equality). The piece is here: Where's the good news? - Philosophy and Life:
In it Dr Vernon outlines the main thesis and critques it ...

...that marriage is a 'creation ordinance', defined as between a man and a woman, as apparently implied in Genesis. This is either making the norm the rule or reducing the rich myths of Genesis to a formula. If it's the former, it's simply a category error. If it's the latter, it's an appallingly reductive reading of scripture that strips it of life.  ...  The idea that Genesis sanctions the nuclear family is, actually, a modern idea: I believe it can be traced to John Locke's 1690 Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government. Then, a legal definition of marriage was required because before, committed relationships had gained their social sanction by being made before God. Also, before then, families rarely looked like Adam and Eve under the fig tree because people died too often: hodgepodge families seem far more likely to have been the norm.

The first point in the quote above is what I too recently came to understand: that the 'traditional' Evangelical scriptural argument is a category error -making the norm a rule (as I try to say here and note that Steve Chalke realised).

It's important to be reminded that this argument is essentially a modern one, though I think that we should note that marriage liturgies for a long time have referenced Adam and Eve. It is important however to note the variation that has constituted marriages historically. Such accepted variation makes it hard to sustain an argument that traditional marriage is being defended: whose 'tradition' and why is it defended? We should also note that the Bible is replete with counter-examples to the Genesis ideal as latterly interpreted. If we avoid making the norm the rule, then scripture seems to 'sanction' a wide variety of patterns.

Individual donation drops in groups

I reckon that this may be partly what the Church of England has been hamstrung by in the past in relation to giving: there would be a vicious cycle of low donation which discourages others to give (and in any case 'trust money' had been sufficient to keep things going) because evading responsibility in a group is easier. By contrast it probably helps understand why events such as Comic Relief tend to help -they overcome the negative group effect by creating a new and different group dynamic in relation to giving.

A University of Missouri anthropologist recently found that even when multiple individuals can contribute to a common cause, the presence of others reduces an individual's likelihood of helping
Individual donation amounts drop when givers are in groups 

They're still investigating and hypothesing why. The front-runner idea is this:

perhaps potential givers did not want to be 'suckers,' who gave up their money while someone else got away with giving nothing. Selfish behavior in others may have given individuals an opportunity to escape any moral obligation to share that they might have felt

The article links to the bystander effect, and I think that's probably right. What I'm interested in though is how this plays into thinking about corporisations. Part of the matter is perhaps a study in how attitudes are aggregated and how less social attitudes tend to be easier to foster.

"The pro-socials caved to the pro-selfs," said Panchanathan. "Generally, people who started off refusing to give anything would not budge. If one person gave nothing, their partner would tend to reduce the amount they gave, even if that partner had originally argued for giving a larger sum."

So that would be an indication of how fallenness 'infects' corporatised entities: tendencies are amplified, yes; pro-social attitudes can be amplified but so can counter-social attitudes and behaviours. And, of course. sometimes we want to encourage counter-social behaviours: if the corporisation is doing wrong, then having people opting out or minimising their involvement could work for the good. It would be a good thing if donations to terrorist organisations could be cut, for example.

Cross as forgiving: Tim Keller agrees

Looks like I'm not the only one trying to recast the Cross as a forgiving event, Tim Keller seems to be making the same sort of move:
The (True?) Story of the Cross | Musings on Science and Theology:

Forgiveness always requires sacrifice. When we forgive we bear the consequence, the suffering, ourselves rather than demanding retribution. No one “just forgives” any grievous wrong. How much more then for God? God did not, then, inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself. This was not just an example, but an ultimate act of forgiveness.

So maybe I'm not saying something too off the wall -perhaps even an idea whose time has come?

Outragelicals

Yes you read it right: "outragelicals". Great word; describes well something I've noted before about how there are many Evangelicals who enjoy trying to find things to be offended by, even better if it can give apparent support to the idea that Christians are being persecuted or treated less civilly than others. Come to think of it, the Daily Mail seems to assume its readers have a lot of outragelicals among their number.

Why Google’s “War on Easter” is offensively Christlike - Red Letter Christians:

Retelling Atonement Forgiveness-centred (8)

Eikonic forgiveness explored further

In my last posting I outlined a way of thinking about the Cross of Christ as an eikon of forgiveness. In this one I'm hoping to begin exploring whether a well-connected and more widely plausible account is possible sufficient to make this a usable model.

Incarnation and atonement are integral

In a sense what the Eikonic approach is suggesting is that the atonement is part of incarnation and not a mere precursor: it is the incarnation of God's forgiveness -or more accurately of God's paying the price for forgiveness. Now, when I write 'paying the price' this needs to be heard not in the way that substitutionary theories tend to use the phrase but rather in an analogous way to when in the language of sports or professional training we might talk about paying the price for excellence or paying the price for peak performance which is a way of metaphoring the effort, endurance, determination, pain and self-discipline as a cost -the price- for the prize of achievement of goals. 

In this way 'paying the price for/of forgiveness' is saying that a forgiver can't pardon without it requiring effort, determination, endurance of pain and self-discipline on their part. It is then saying that for God to forgive those things are also part of what it entails and that where that 'paying' goes on and can be seen and accessed is precisely in the Cross of Christ.


There is a related precedent idea in Karl Barth's thought - see historicisation of God's being (a previous posting which very briefly outlines the current series of posts). In that article we're reminded that Karl Barth wrote:

in the resurrection of Jesus Christ we have to do with a movement and action which took place not merely in human history but first and foremost in God Himself, a movement and action in which Jesus Christ as the Son of God . . . [is] a pure object and recipient of God [the Father's] . . . free and pure grace which as such can only be received, and the historical fulfilment of which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I'm suggesting that this applies also to the Cross: it takes place not only in human affairs but in God's own being: God's will to forgive is graciously expressed in the Christ's free acceptance of passion and death. More: God's willingness to bear the cost of forgiving, to refuse counter-mimesis, to deny the recirculation of detriment into human affairs, is given effective, operational, expression in the life or rather end-of-life of Jesus.

Resurrection is also integral

One of the criticisms of PSA theory is that it needs no resurrection; its internal logic is entirely about the Cross. And I think that this is a significant issue because any theory of the Atonement needs to integrate the Resurrection very firmly since it is clearly the central matter of the Easter event. 
Kim Fabricius reminds us (emphasis mine):

Karl Barth called the resurrection “a paraphrase of the word ‘God’”. The resurrection defines who God is: God is the God who raised Jesus from the dead. And in raising Jesus God identifies himself with Jesus and vindicates the cause that got Jesus killed – championing the poor and the shafted, challenging the rich and the powerful, rejecting the way of violence of good guys and bad guys alike.

Thus, if we understand the Cross to be about the enfleshment of God's forgiveness, then vindicating the 'cause that got Jesus killed' would translate to affirming the genuineness of the forgiveness and the demonstrating that the possibility of personal relating is still open beyond the forstalling of counter-mimesis. The Resurrection is the handshake offered once the pardoner has decided for forgiveness and bearing the cost of it.

'Rejecting the violence' is at the heart of the refusal to perpetuate the recirculation of detriments into human affairs. So, the Resurrection shows God to be the God who creates life beyond the death-dealing of recirculating detriment and beyond human personal (willed, agentive) wrong.
Previous post. 

Posts in the series:

Posting 9 Analogy: human to divine and back again
Posting 8 Eikonic forgiveness explored further

posting 7 The Eikon of forgiveness

posting 6 The cost of forgiving

posting 5 Counter mimesis

posting 4 Reacting to being wronged

posting 3 To know all is to forgive all?

posting 2 Forgiveness in human life

posting 1 Love and Anger