Atonement and The New Perspective: a review

I've loved getting this book into my hands (well, more accurately, onto my screen). It is addressing a missing piece in current thinking about Israel and Christian continuity and discontinuity -and a logical next step. It is written particularly with Evangelical concerns about atonement in mind and is well aware of the history of the doctrine before and into the Reformation and beyond into the Evangelical movements. It is undertaken with critical sympathy and there is a really helpful outline of both the new perspective on Paul and on the main points at issue in the Evangelical conversation about penal substitutionary atonement. This book then brings these things together and explores the implications of NPP for PSA -yes, eventually you do have to get used to those acronyms otherwise it would become tiresome since they are used frequently enough to need shortening.

What I enjoyed was having a tour of the NPP introducing some important voices and basic differentiations of position. There was a helpful laying-out of atonement theories with a very useful reframing of it in relation to biblical evidence. It is approached with sympathy for the Reformed position and offers an alternative approach which actually is related strongly to Reformed core theology.

It was good too that there was discussion of the issue of supercessionism in relation to atonement in a way that takes seriously Evangelical concerns -and explicitly so. It doesn't dodge the difficulties but does a nice job of reframing the debate with extensive examination of the religious background of Paul and reminding us of the inaccuracies of our lazy contemporary readings of first century Jewish and Christian religion. I think that the way that Burnhope plots to take things forward is likely to be productive and helpful. For some who are wedded to PSA, however, it is going to be challenging to have to take seriously that it probably doesn't make sense to hold onto that. A good case is made, however, for a mixed economy and plurality of ways of thinking about the cross, but the covenant-making motif offered here is probably about right by the evidence and by the systematics.

I'm likely to be thinking about this and integrating its insights into my reflection and preaching for some time to come.

(99+) New Title from Stephen Burnhope: Atonement and The New Perspective: The God of Israel, Covenant, and the Cross | Dr Steve Burnhope - Academia.edu:

By way of disclaimer. I received and e-copy of this book for review purposes. In doing so I was in no way obliged to review favourably (or otherwise) simply to review within a reasonable period of receiving a copy.

Link-Love for this Review

Atonement and the New Perspective on Amazon
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Childhood's End -in relation to computing

Just came across this, which says, more-or-less, something I've noted as a result of thinking about corporisations.

These new hybrid organizations, although built upon digital computers, are operating as analog computers on a vast, global scale, processing information as continuous functions and treating streams of bits the way vacuum tubes treat streams of electrons, or the way neurons treat information in a brain. Large hybrid analog/digital computer networks, in the form of economies, have existed for a long time, but for most of history the information circulated at the speed of gold and silver and only recently at the speed of light.

It's from an article by George Dyson (not to be confused with James) Childhood's End | Edge.org. I think the important thing he is saying in this article is that we imagine that humans are controlling these systems but in fact we aren't. That seems to harmonise with the corporisations insight from scripture -resting in the ancient world's view of things -only with the electronic and algorithmic integrated into the thinking.

Cory and The Seventh Story -a review

This is a lovely book. I love that in reading it with children, many adults would be given pause for thought. The illustrations are lovely, making the book a desirable artefact in itself. The story is simple yet with a profound point about the way that the stories we tell ourselves justify and shape the way we respond to others and enable or disable good relating to other people in our society. The overall story has a parabolic feel but without being too didactic. This has the potential to be one of those fables that gets re-told and becomes a reference-point for conversations. If it helps lots of people to gain a vocabulary to speak about the kinds of stories we tell and to make better choices as a result, it will have achieved much and I hope it does.



I liked also that it doesn't have a 'happily ever after' ending but rather a 'where are we/you in the story' sort of ending which invites reflection and response. I do hope that this book gets a wide readership before the inevitable take down by the foxes and the badgers gets underway.



In terms of my less positive comments, I think I was slightly disappointed that the implicitly-critiqued stories in the book didn't really include the redemptive violence trope (though it does show up by implication). I was rather hoping that this would have been more directly challenged, but I see that the aim of this book wasn't quite consistent with that, so I do not fault it for not being the book I thought it might be. On the other hand, this does point to the need for us maybe to find ways to demythologise also the myth of redemptive violence for children and young people. I hope that more progressive writers will attempt to produce good stuff for children (and those who read to them, of course). This is a model of what could be possible.



Children's Book — The Seventh Story

Cory & the Seventh Story Website
Brian McLaren’s Website
Gareth Higgins’ Website
The Porch Magazine Website
Ireland Retreats Website
Movies & Meaning Website
The New Story Festival Website

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I received and e-copy of this book for review purposes. I doing so I am under no obligation to write a favourable review, merely to review it within 30 days of receiving it.

I've been noticing signs of this a bit lately with some of the people I work among.

It would seem that younger males especially are being bombarded with hyper-idealised images of not only what females “should” look like, but also how they themselves “should” look. By watching those fit, hairless (but presumably sexually successful) specimens on television programmes or on social media, it’s as if the famed “male gaze” is being savagely and pitilessly turned back on themselves.

It's not the first time I've remarked on it. but I do think maybe there's another question to ask that could potentially help in understanding this. It's rooted in my own pre-adolescent experience and reflecting on how that played into growing up subsequently. As I wrote there;

As an 8-year old boy I can distinctly remember two interacting issues being a part of my life. One was reading comics of the superhero genre; especially Spider-Man. The other issue was that I was very thin (mostly as a result of having thin bones). The problem I had with these two things together was that I was taking in images on a regular basis of male bodies which were well muscled, though not body-builder beefy, and graceful (lovingly drawn?) This male body shape filled my imaginative space and what I take to be my mimetic instinct drew me towards a desire to be something like that image. 

What I'm now reflecting further on is what stood in the way of myself and, presumably, my peers following through in the way that many young men do in the studies the linked article report? Clearly the incipient pressures were present -and the Charles Atlas body-building adverts in our comics and the 'Boy's Own' articles for training regimes were trading off (literally) some concerns that pre-pubescent boys had but what made the difference so that we largely followed a trajectory which didn't involve such body modding and extreme body-image issues? (And while I'm asking that question, I'm wondering what was the experience of my female peers at that time?).

I know for myself that part of what helped was seeing pop-stars who were slim or even thin and not fulfilling the film-star 'good looks' paradigm. In doing that, I was able to begin to re-calibrate my sense of what counted as beautiful (or at least okay) and to critique the given images. I think I began to think that a set of norms that excluded so many of us were suspect.

It's worth thinking about some more. My question remains, how to help other and many more young people to be weaned off toxic imagery and norms.

From the Inside Out -review

This is a nicely written book about mission. It's nicely written in that it's based in personal experience which is well-narrated and gives a good understanding of why the author has grown and evolved in their understanding of mission. It's nicely written too because it's just the right amount of challenging!

I helps us to understand what mission is and, more importantly, helps us to decolonise our thinking about mission. One of the main objectives of the book seems to be to help us to understand the way that mission by western churches for a long time has tended to mirror the imperialism of our host /sending cultures. And, given the writer is USAmerican, 'imperial' in this context includes the USA.

One of the big themes that emerges is one that is really important for us to understand: that when we conceive and execute mission as a delivery of a package of care, aid or message to passive recipients, we get it wrong. Now Kuja is very kind and gives more than due concern for the cultural-cognitive disabilities of those who end up doing 'imperialist mission' (my words not his). This means that people are charitably assumed to be operating according to their lights and the best motives are assumed. In this he is a model of civility in argument that Christians (and others) in our times would do well to note and emulate.

'Imperialist mission' gets it wrong because it assumes that mission is one-way. Kuja challenges us to see that it is two-way; there is mutuality (something we see Paul wrestling with in the first chapter of Romans imho); we have something to bring and to receive. God has things for us to learn whether as recipients or donors, missioners or en-missioned. We might do well to recall the sending of the 12 and the 72 in Luke's gospel: there we see the apostles instructed to receive the hospitality and the "peace" of those among whom they are sent. Enforced mutuality; reversed power dynamics.

I'm certainly considering recommending this book to my students who are being trained in mission. It might well appear on next year's book list. I might even recommend a chapter as an inter-session reading.

By way of disclaimer. I received and e-copy of this book for review purposes. In doing so I was in no way obliged to review favourably (or otherwise) simply to review within a reasonable period of receiving a copy.

From the Inside Out on Amazon
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Ryan Kuja

background music | Church effects?

I've been involved, am involved, in curating worship which involves multi-media elements and often self-directed interactions with materials, prompts and stations. One of the things that regularly accompanies worship like this is background music. We generally try to pick stuff we think is calm, supportive of the activities and with the right sort of ethos. So, it's interesting to read that background music has become something of an industry and that there has been quite a bit of consumer research given over to it.

Music, even when you are barely aware of it, can be surprisingly powerful. Over recent decades, researchers have found that it can affect how much time we think has passed while waiting in a queue, how co-operative shoppers are with sales staff, and even how sweet or bitter food tastes. One study found that shoppers’ preference for French or German wine shifted according to which of the respective countries’ traditional music was playing from a nearby set of
speakers.

I want to be able to find some of this research at some point because I'd be interested to know if it contains clues that would help us to choose background music for worship occasions or even to be generally present in church spaces that experience visitors. Quite a lot of church buildings like cathedrals seem now to have background music being played. Sometimes it is live because the organist and/or choir are practising. Sometimes it is 'piped' music and usually that is sacred music -choral, instrumental etc. I don't think I've heard music in a church building in those kinds of circumstances which is, for example, ambient electronica, for example. I find myself wondering how that might be 'received'.

In effect playing 'sacred music' (dislike the term: other music can be God-disclosing, and 'sacred' music can be theofugic in effect sometimes) is a branding decision, in terms of the article -whether deliberate or unconscious. But what if we did the sonic branding in ways that deliberately and carefully didn't play to stereotypes? Perhaps there are cathedrals or other open-to-the-public church spaces that don't just play 'sacred music'? (I'm aware that there are some that also play contemporary Christian music -which is usually MOR folk-rock, by and large).

But there's some interesting stuff by Moby and others that could be thought about. Some 'new age' and meditation music ... ?

Inside the booming business of background music | News | The Guardian:

Naming the Unnameable by Dr. Matthew Fox | Homebound Publications

I got hold of this book because I often find Matthew Fox's writings intriguing and stimulating. I read them not expecting to agree with everything but because I think he points his finger on things that we need to pay attention to. The challenge for me is to work out, sometimes, why I'm not at ease with some of the things he says and to work out how to deal with the issue he raises in a way that I find consistent with my own starting points.

This book is no exception.

I love the project of thinking about our namings of God. Not least because I think it is something that the Lord's prayer implicitly calls us to do -'hallowing the name' implies identifying what kinds of ways we might find to attempt to name God. That point also brings us to the matter of the difficulties with the project of naming God anyway -which the start of the book helpfully outlines, so at that level it is a useful and brief primer in the spiritual help and danger of naming God, noting the limits of language and human imagination faced with an infinite and very different being.

This book has a similar effect on me. I want to affirm some things but one thing bugs me. What I find I can't quite embrace is where some of the namings seem to equate God to creation in some way. The first point I ran into this was in the naming of God as the "planetary mind field". I find this difficult because of my own work on corporisations (principalities, powers, angels, dominions etc): these I identify as emergent 'properties' ("entities" might be better) of human and other communities under certain conditions. What Fox seems to be naming, in this case, is actually potentially a corporisation. This is very much a being of creation. It may be a being which could be a residing place for God's nearer presence (much like an angel in the Hebrew scriptures) but it is not itself God.

I have similar issues with naming God as evolution and the mind of the universe. I sense that there is potential in this to honour the panentheistic intent and also the transcendent dimension, but that work seems not to have been done and leaves open the potential for evolution to be deified with the kind of difficulties CS Lewis dramatises in that conceptualisation in That Hideous Strength -where identifying evolution with deity ends up justifying eugenics. I think some kind of wrestling with issues of providence needs to be undertaken in this respect to give an account of immanence which doesn't drift into eugenics, in effect. While I agree that so much of evolution needs to be understood with a symbiotic and synergistic content, yet there are theodicy issues. This bit of the book tends to come over a bit too simplistic-'new-age' in feel.

It is one of the difficulties for me that I keep bumping into when I read Fox. I applaud the desire to honour and recognise the immanent God, I warm to a panentheistic perspective but I do wish that he could find a way to conceptualise these things that doesn't keep falling over into identifying God with created things. Or at least that's how it keeps coming over to me: panentheism tips over into pantheism which is a very different thing and has a set of problematics all of its own.

I hope this comes over as 'friendly' criticism. I really do warm to much of Fox's project, but I also quite understand why some people have a real problem with it, and because they don't 'get' the heart of the project, they bluster off at it. For the record I think Fox is right in affirming the joyous, loving, justice-making delight in creation and Spirit and the life-affirming fundamental stance which resonates with the best of the early Charismatic movement and of, for example, Hasidic Jewish spirituality. I think he is right in wanting to strengthen spirituality to support us in struggle against ecocidal trajectories, policies and lifestyles.

I was interested to note that Deepak Chopra is quoted several times, in a way that seems to take him as authoritative. I guess I'm not necessarily convinced of that. I think I'd have liked to have seen some of these namings argued rather than having Chopra and medieval Christians quoted as if beyond questioning. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy to learn from Aquinas, Eckhart and others and I will be happy to find that Deepak Chopra may have a way of saying something that is helpful and productive of insight -but I don't take their word for it; particularly when the conceptualising of the relationship between God and creation seems hazy and perhaps even unhelpfully blurred.

So I'd say that there were some bits of this that I found helpful and inspiringly put. There were other bits that didn't work so well and might even be cause for concern.


I should say, I got an e-copy of this book as part of a review package which asked that I read the book and post a review on my blog in exchange for a free copy. There is no obligation or pressure for me to publish a review which is anything other than my own response and evaluation.

Naming the Unnameable on Amazon
Naming the Unnameable Website
Matthew Fox Website
Fox Institute of Creation Spirituality Website

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Naming the Unnameable by Dr. Matthew Fox | Homebound Publications