yrieithydd

So my resolve to blog each week, managed to founder on week 2. But if I write two posts today I can get back on track. Partly this was because last week I went back to mum's for a few days bubbling before my cousin's funeral last Tuesday, so I lost thinking time.

( Theodicy )

So after a FB friend mentioned it I've signed up for an online theology course with Sarum College on Developments in Modern Theology.

I've not paid the extra to do the essays (it was £80 for the course and the same again for essays) but I thought I'd try and blog about each subject for the purpose of making me process my thoughts.

So week 1 was "The Quest for the Historical Jesus". This was the topic I was least interested in.

My impression is that this was a 20th century liberal project which rather lost its way. Indeed, the lecturer (+Dagmar Winter Biship of Huntingdon) quoted a criticism of the First Quest being that they looked down a well and saw themselves looking back.

I found the principle of dissimilarity weird and pointless. Things are authentically Jesus if they differ from Judaism before Jesus and the practice of the Early Church. Given that Jesus was Jewish and the Early Church was trying to follow him, this seems problematic and based too much in what we in the west think are the issues with the early church.

The main thing that the lecture highlighted for me was that this is an area in which there is a massive gulf between the academy and the church. My sense is that the academy perhaps wants to throw too much out while the church is insufficiently critical and does a disservice to the "ordinary Christian" by not exploring biblical criticism and questions of differences between the Gospels. So you end up with "enlightened theologians" looking down on stupid believers and evangelicals thinking everyone involved in academic theology as godless liberals and if they want to do a theology degree and/or train for ordination they have to keep their heads down and not engage much or they'll lose their faith. (and this reflects things I heard as an undergraduate and later).

I do not want to disregard the Gospels as a source of historical information about Jesus, but I also want to be able to explore sensibly what the fact that there are two very different birth narratives in Matthew and Luke (how ever much we have harmonised them in the Nativity plays), and does it matter if actually we conclude that they are more theological than historical in content?

They both feel like they are trying to answer how "Jesus of Nazareth" can be the Messiah when the Messiah should come from Nazareth.

Matthew solves this by having Mary and Joseph, presumably long time residents of Bethlehem, though it's not quite clear, have their baby after an angel tells Joseph that his betrothed will have a special child and then after the Magi have brought their baby to Herod's attention, flee to Egypt to escape the massacre of the Innocents and then return to Israel but settle in Nazareth as Bethlehem is still under Herod's son and doesn't seem safe.

Luke OTOH has them as being residents of Nazareth who have to return to Bethlehem for a census for tax purposes. The guestroom is full so the baby is laid in the manger. They are seen by the shepherds, they do the purification stuff and go home to Nazareth and the baby grows up there.

Mark and John just start later - or possibly earlier in John's case (with the Divine Logos) and don't address the question and all Paul says is "Jesus was born of a woman".

The incarnation and the fulfilment of earlier promises is what's important.

My question which didn't entirely get answered, was what difference does the Quest make for us living our lives in the world today, with reference to Trumpism. I also asked about how to bridge the gap between those Christians who vote for Trump and those who ask questions like this and again I wasn't entirely satisfied with the answer. She was keen on the Quest for enabling dialogue, but in some ways intrachristian dialogue is not there in it, because some branches see even asking the questions as godless heresy and others sneer at those less enlightened.

I'm aware I'm treating this as a Liberal Evangelical dichotomy and this is something I got frustrated by as an undergrad, because I'm neither Liberal nor Evangelical, but I want to both think and reason about the Bible and faith in general and give weight to the Bible (and Christian tradition).

But equally, doing academic theology isn't necessary for everyone who seeks to follow Jesus in today's world. However, as someone who can't stop thinking, it needs to be a part of what I do.

Well I've now managed to finish reading LLF.

On the whole, I think it could be a good resource for the church to have the conversations she needs to have. However, I'm not convinced the conversations will happen.

It feels a bit basic to me in places, but that's because I'm someone who has read and thought and prayed about this stuff a lot over the last 20 years or so. It does a good job of setting out different perspectives fairly even handedly, although there are couple of places at least where they seem to be setting out something I expected I was going to agree with and then they'd go off at a different angle or in one case completely miss the point.

( Imago Dei and Gender and Disability Theology )

I've been doing the Difference Course for the last few weeks and tonight we briefly touched on Brexit and reasons why someone might hold one side or the other and how we felt in hearing those reasons.

The suggested reason from being pro-Brexit was that we would have more freedom outside the EU. And I found myself tensing up and getting really angry, because Brexit is taking away my freedom (to live and work anywhere in the EU)

Reflecting on it since, I think the reason I get so angry about it is that the underlying reason for Brexit is that rich tax avoiders do not like the fact that the EU has the potential to tackle tax avoiding and is less susceptible to the narrative of the owners of certain newspapers and they have been able to manipulate people who feel disenfranchised from Westminster politics and who are often not well off into voting for Brexit even though it will not actually solve the very real issues they do face. It's based on lies and will make some of the rich richer and the rest of us poorer.

When I got back from my first On Fire Mission conference around three years ago, I drafted a post about being Charismatic and Catholic and what Charismatic didn't mean and then never edited it or posted it to anyone but me.

Before I went first, I told a friend about it and they were somewhat confused as in their experience, charismatics were evangelical and anglo-catholics were very very different. And they're not the only with that experience.

But what I vaguely saw before I went and what I have experienced through the last 4 conferences.

The spirit is at work in the sacraments and in giving gifts and growing fruit.

The liturgy gives structure to avoid excesses, the charismatic gives enthusiasm and emotion to stop it being dull ritual.

I love being in a space where there is an expectation that we will use our bodies and our emotions as we worship and that God will be active. People will cross themselves, bow, raise their hands and even (especially during Benedection) kneel or lie prostrate on the floor. During the prayer ministry after the services some may fall prone to the ground - resting the spirit. I'm still not entirely sure what I feel about this, but it can be easy to contemplate stuff horizontal than vertical.

I also love the inclusiveness of the space. The celebrants and preachers are using balanced gender wise and this year there was a clear statement in the conference booklet on inclusivity. There is no presumption that the only thing a disabled person wants is to be healed of that disability.

There is a bar and much fellowship happens there, until the small hours. Some people find it slightly peculiar at midnight when we burst into the Regina Coeli but we do try and explain afterwards.

When I first went I already knew several people (mainly via Twitter) but the first evening has a welcome reception for new people when more is explained about the conference and there is a chance to chat to the committee and others who've been invited along to be friendly. I went as a newby in my first year and the last two years I've been invited to be friendly. My plan not to talk to people I already knew was slightly modified this year as I realised the correct rule is people I don't already know at or via the conference as the two people I talked to when I arrived late were people I knew from elsewhere.

I feel massively refreshed from having been there. God was definitely at work in me (including dragging me out of bed after too few hours of sleep because I needed to be at morning prayer).

Between getting in from church/work and Call the Midwife* I watched a bit of of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

( Why small changes can spoil bigger things )