Unity at the feet of Bernadette - Canon Robin Ward

This article, by the Principal, appeared in the Church Times on 3rd October 2008:

When Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher visited Pope John XXIII in 1960, the first visit of its kind since the Reformation, he was apparently astonished when the Pope’s initial remarks included a warm com­mendation for the revival of the shrine at Walsingham.

Fisher was no Anglo-Catholic, but even where the Oxford Movement had made more progress than it had in his headmasterly mind, anything other than the most subdued Marian devotion has generally been seen by most Anglicans as impossibly exotic and potentially superstitious.

Of course, the culture of Marian devotion in the Roman Catholic Church appeared to lend justification to this suspicion: apparently detached from any firm scriptural moorings, it built binding dogma on tradition defined by papal decree, and then surrounded the ensuing theological superstructure with a visionary, often apocalyptic piety. Not for nothing has the ARCIC process struggled most to find consensus in the area of Mariology.

So, when Dr Fisher’s successor, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, agreed to join the pilgrimage or­ganised by the Society of Mary and the Shrine of Our Lady of Wal­singham to Lourdes in this 150th-anniversary year of the Marian apparitions there, he was committing himself to a bold ecumenical act; for Lourdes is not a sanctuary that can be taken moderately: it is pre-eminently the shrine at which Mary is honoured as the Immaculate Conception, the title by which Our Lady revealed herself to the peasant girl Bernadette at the rubbish dump of a small Pyrenean town in 1858, only four years after Pope Pius IX had defined Mary’s freedom from Original Sin as part of the deposit of faith. Indeed, the pen with which he carried out this act of magisterial machismo is preserved in the treasury of the shrine.

There is, of course, just enough An­glican theological straw with which to make bricks here: Thomas Ken writes of Mary as “cleansed from congenial, kept from mortal guilt”; and Jane Shaw has shown us more recently how the miraculous was more prominent than we once thought in post-Reformation Eng­land.

But this pilgrimage led by the Archbishop, and in which eight bishops, 70 priests, and 500 laity took part, was not looking to be tentative. It was coming to the place where, pre-eminently, for millions of souls over the past 150 years prayer has been valid, and to bring our own penitence and intercession to the grotto of the apparitions, which has been called the “ear” of the Catholic Church.

The boldness of this gesture was matched by the generosity of the welcome we received. The Arch­bishop’s banner flew over the shrine grounds for the duration of the pilgrimage. At the great International Mass at the heart of the pilgrimage, 20,000 people heard the Archbishop preach, while one of our deacons read the Gospel in English, and our ordinands served.

In his homily, the Archbishop compared Bernadette’s encounter with Mary to that of Elizabeth in the Gospel of Luke, where Mary comes as a missionary of the Christ she bears in her womb, passing on this joy­ful truth not by “the commu­nication of rational information from one speaker to another, but a prim­itive current of spiritual electricity”.

At Lourdes, Mary calls to Bernadette as one unlettered virgin peasant girl to another, and the message which she brings is what the Archbishop called “our ‘Elizabeth’ moments — when life stirs inside, her­­ald­ing some future with Christ that we can’t yet get our minds around.”

The Archbishop developed this theme subsequently in the ecumen­ical colloquium that took place with Cardinal Kasper: the physicality of Mary’s God-bearing elucidates both the grounding of the gospel in history and the way in which that history finds its continuation in the sacra­mental life of the Body of Christ.

What did the pilgrimage achieve? Cardinal Kasper described it as a little miracle of ecumenism, and there were many powerful, moving images to bear this out: the Guar­dians of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham taking part in the torchlight pro­cession; the Arch­bishop walking bare-headed behind the Blessed Sacrament as the desperately sick were blessed; his meditation and prayer in the grotto of the apparitions.

For us, as individual pilgrims, there was the opportunity to fulfil our own intentions: to receive reconciliation and forgiveness for our sins, and for the sick to pray for healing of body and soul.

The success of the pilgrimage as an ecumenical event owed everything to the willingness of inspired indi­viduals to transcend old differences: the perseverance of Fr Graeme Rowlands, who for 30 years has been bringing Anglicans to Lourdes, and the willingness of the Archbishop to express through pilgrimage the eirenic search for common ground which has been the inspiration of the ARCIC process.

As Anglicans committed to the Catholic character of our inheritance we were left with a hard question: what justifies our continued separa­tion from those with whom we share so much?

Was Jesus God? - Fr Andrew Davison

This book review by the Fr Andrew Davison, Tutor in Christian Doctrine, appeared in the Church Times :

Was Jesus God? Richard Swinburne

During a career in academic writing, Richard Swinburne has pro­duced the definitive exploration of Christian doctrine from the perspective of analytic philosophy: three volumes on theism in general, then four on assorted Christian doctrines. Now he has returned to this material with a popular reader­ship in mind — first, in 1996, with Is There a God? and now with Was Jesus God?

Well, is Jesus God? Those familiar with Swinburne’s approach will guess his answer: very probably. This book and its predecessor are Swinburne’s forays into apologetics. They aim to reassure the suspicious contemporary rationalist that Chris­tian belief and thought are sensible.

His method in this book is, first, to establish that we can know how a rational God would behave (which must mean that he would behave like an educated human being), and then to show that this is exactly the way things have turned out in his­tory. Consequently, at the end comes Swinburne’s great flourish: the figure of Jesus lines up so per­fect­ly with how a sagacious God would act that it must be more than 25 per cent probable that God exists (the book’s working hypothesis), after all.

Structurally, the first half of the book is a commentary on the Nicene Creed, although not without quirks. To give a few examples, he passes over the general resurrection, largely ignores grace, and casts salvation as God’s reward of a happy afterlife for people who have behaved well — there is no hint of adoption or deifi­cation.

This goes to show that the book is more the work of a philosopher than a theologian. Consequently, it jars theological nerves. Whether one admires Swinburne’s project or despairs of it, it is disconcerting that he has so little sense of how out­land­ish the entire exercise must seem from a theological perspective. Theological traditions (as diverse as Thomism or Calvinism, for in­stance) have held that we can know that God exists by reason, but have agreed that what God is (the Tri­n­ity) and how he acts freely towards the world (incarnation, redemption) must burst upon us in Christ as a divine surprise.

Swinburne will have none of this; and there is nothing about God which he will not lay bare to ab­stract speculation. In short, Swin­burne gives us philosophical theo­logy oblivious of the 20th century’s most significant theologian, Karl Barth, and Barth’s cry that we must measure our notion of God against Christ, not the other way around.

In this easy-to-read book, and in the life’s work of which it is a summary, Richard Swinburne has turned his considerable intellect to the task of understanding God, but the God he describes lacks grandeur. He is a decent English-gentleman figure, doing the best he can in the circumstances; or else he is a little sinister, imposing “bad things” on us to “deepen” our responsibilities (but he is then “obliged” to share a human life of suffering).

All the time, in the background, we might hear the echo of St Augustine of Hippo: si comprehendis, non est Deus — anything you can understand cannot be God.

Holding Together - Fr Edward Dowler

This book review by the Vice-Principal appears in the Church Times this week:

Holding Together: Gospel, Church and Spirit—the essentials of Christian identity
Christopher Cocksworth.

Polarisation is not the neces­sary and healthy disagreement and debate that should exist at all times within the Church, but something more sinister. It is, as Nicholas Lash describes it, “the dramatised simpli­fi­cation of disagreement to the point where there appear to be, for all practical purposes, two and only two approaches or opinions possible (and these two locked in mutual incomprehension and distaste).”

Christopher Cocksworth’s book, written near the beginning of his episcopate, comes as a timely and hopeful contribution to an increas­ingly polarised Church. Surveying a wide range of subjects, including salvation, the Church, liturgy, euchar­ist, mission, and Mary, Cocks­worth argues that a “catholic form of evangelicalism in the Spirit”, “gospel-driven, church-based and Spirit-led”, provides the best hope for reconciliation within the Church, and mission to those out­side it.

The author’s ability to bring to­gether seemingly divergent tradi­tions impressively testifies to the gift that Anglicanism might make to the wider Church; but it also holds out a challenge at a time when ecclesi­ology is not a fashionable subject.

Far from being an infinitely malleable agent of delivering on the ground whatever seems to be neces­sary, the Church bears the import­ant task of handing on inherited wisdom and apostolic authenticity, albeit that these must be continually reinterpreted. He regards the ques­tion of a Syrian Orthodox friend, “Which Apostle founded your Church?” — an uncomfortable one for Anglicans — not as a piece of antiquarian whimsy, but as an im­portant one for us to try to answer.

Cocksworth’s account of where the Church should be is thoroughly and unashamedly theological. The Church should be where Christ is, and should go where the gospel leads. In the words of John Webster, whom he quotes with approval, “the gospel precedes and the Church follows.”

In his constant reworking of the triad in the title of the book, gospel, Church, and Spirit, Cocksworth looks particularly to three sub-groupings of Anglicanism to pro­vide the resources that can get it there: Evangelicals, Catholics, and Charismatics. These triads are dif­ferent from the ones many of us have grown up with, and imply that Cocksworth is not happy with view­ing “reason” as a source of authority in its own right; and that he does not think that the Erastian liberal­ism that, in practice, is so much a feature of life in the Church of England has a particularly helpful contribution to make.

The holding together of tradi­tions that Cocksworth advocates is not the armed truce that is some­times covered by platitudes such as “being secure in your own tradition, but respectful of others”. So far as he is concerned, the mutual inter­action of these traditions must open their adherents to learning from one another, and thus to reformation and change.

For example, in response to Evangelical insights, he believes that Catholic ecclesiology should tone down de Lubac’s claim that “what­ever is true of [Christ] is also true of His Bride the Church,” just as some Evangelicals and Charismatics will have to stop thinking that any sort of adherence to the Church’s liturgy and lectionary always inhibits free­dom and mission.

He is far from naïve about the extent to which the three traditions have sometimes been constructed in deliberate opposition to one an­other, and thus to the sacrifices that will be required if they are truly to hold together.

Some minor quibbles might in­clude Cocksworth’s sometimes ex­cessive caution about setting the Catholic cat among Evangelical pigeons. He hastens to assure us that Aquinas’s sacramental theology is, contrary to appearances, “full of the gospel”; or to warn us that the Wesleys’ high eucharistic theology can “sail very close to the wind”.

It is also often possible to spot, below the surface of the text, the three-point sermons of the Evan­gelical preacher, intensified by the fiercely bulleted, PowerPoint-friendly style of the theological college lecturer. In one example of alliterative overdrive, the Wesleys understand Christ as praying for the world, pleading his Passion, and presenting his people to the Father, so that their evangelical experience of the presence and purpose of the ascended Christ gives rise to a tradition that takes seriously the practice of the Church, and so on (all Cocksworth’s italics, not mine). All this can make the experience of reading refractory and rebarbative.

But these are comparatively minor quibbles about a scholarly and inspiring book that delineates a coherent and compelling vision for a new type of Anglican life, in which our differences are, as the Arch­bishop of Canterbury has expressed it, a mutual gift rather than a mutual threat.

The strongly polarising pressures evident in recent months make it difficult to be optimistic that it will come to fruition; but Bishop Cocks­worth has shown us that God gives us good reason to be hopeful none the less.

Trinity 21 - Fr Edward Dowler

In the Danish film Babette’s feast, set in the 19th century, a Frenchwoman Babette becomes the cook for some sisters who live an austere and puritanical existence in Jutland, Denmark. The sisters and the small congregation that meets in their house have many good things about them. They are kind, hospitable and, in their way, generous, but they are also extraordinarily frugal and austere, suspicious of all types of pleasure and luxury. After giving them fourteen years of faithful service, Babette unexpectedly comes into some money, and so she decides to order from France and serve to the community the most glorious meal: sea turtle, quail, fine wines and many other delicacies. The sumptuous banquet has a transforming effect on the community. It fires the spirits of its members, brings reconciliation, heals old wounds, and puts an end to superstitions. Ultimately they discover that Babette has spent all of her money on this one meal.

Today’s Old Testament and gospel readings also speak of sumptuous banquets. In Isaiah a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wine, God wiping away the tears from his people’s eyes, taking away their disgrace. And again, Jesus’s parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew’s gospel speaks of invitations to a fine banquet with oxen and fat calves; invitations extended first to a group of ungrateful recipients and then to everyone in the streets. Both readings speak of a God who is unstinting, who gives plentifully and abundantly, of an important New Testament word: pleroma, a word that speaks of fullness, completeness, superabundance, generosity. It points us to a Lord whose ministry is marked by feasting, who promises life in all its fullness, who tells his disciples that ‘a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap’. But do we always remember God’s abundant provision? I would say not.

One example comes when we think about subjects such as care for the environment, or global poverty. Often the question that seems natural for people to ask is about how we are to make do, how we are to survive with limited resources; how we can share things out as carefully as possible out from a finite and ever-depleting pool. But that surely isn’t for Christians, the right question to ask, for our starting point is that of a God who gives with extraordinary generosity and superabundance; who always provides his people with very much more than enough. Of course the abundance of what God gives can be abused, and of course what he has richly given can be distributed with grotesque injustice. But the fact remains that our starting point for thinking about these questions is not scarcity, but plenty; not how to parcel out scanty resources, but how best to celebrate the generosity of an abundant giver, and do so in a way that honours rather than exploits the generosity of his gift and seeks to reflect that generosity.

Another, entirely different example of the way in which we assume that there is scarcity when in fact there is plenty, concerns the tortured question of the way in which we use God’s word in scripture to reflect on moral questions. And, again, the assumption often is that it’s all very difficult, that God somehow hasn’t given quite enough for us really to work out how we ought to live. In the words of one writer on this matter, if you’re going to derive any moral insight from the Bible, you need ‘a high degree of knowledge, discernment, theological acumen, understanding of human nature and society’, otherwise you’re likely to go badly wrong. But in the Pentateuch, the writings of the prophets, in the psalms, the Song of Songs, the Sermon on the Mount, in all these places and many more, quite the opposite is the case. God has given an embarrassment of riches, an extraordinarily rich and vivid canvas against which we live our lives in the world as moral beings. And, again, this is not to say that everything is easy, for of course there are difficult issues, uncertainties, problems of interpretation. But the problem is not that God has given too little, but again, how we should rightly respond to his having given so much.

As it appears that we are moving into a period of economic slowdown the passages of scripture that speak of generosity, excess, superabundance will become ever-more important. And it may be that one of the main tasks of the church in the next few years will be to bear faithful witness to a God who is not stingy, but gives abundance of gifts, abundance of life, abundance of love and grace; and to help people to live lives rooted in wonder and joy, rather than envy and fear.

But the theme of abundance also makes me slightly cautious. It’s the same feeling that I get when I read the many parish mission statements that say, as they so often seem to, that such and such a parish wants to show everyone ‘God’s unconditional love’. My problem is that God’s generosity isn’t just thrown at us. And that’s why this great biblical theme of abundance and generosity needs, it seems to me, a little bit of sharpening at the edges. For, receiving the abundance that God gives comes with cost and with responsibilities. In one of my favourite books, the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out forcefully to his fellow Lutherans that, while God may give his gifts and his grace freely and abundantly, he does not give them cheaply. He does not simply immerse us in them, and not bother about whether or not we respond.

So, we are taught in the New Testament that the measure that we receive is the measure that must give out; that from those to whom much is given much will be expected. And this, I think, relates to the fate of the man at the somewhat surprising end of Jesus’s parable in today’s gospel; the man who comes to the wedding banquet but won’t wear a wedding garment. He’s someone, it seems, who will come and take what is on offer, but who signifies by his refusal to wear the wedding robe that he won’t truly enter into what is happening; that he won’t commit himself to participating fully and actively in the generosity of the host; that he won’t allow himself to become caught up in the great movement of God’s generosity. And that being so, he is bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness. It is a parable about abundance, but one with a very sharp and uncomfortable edge.

And where is the place in which we most clearly see this abundance and generosity; because it is not just anywhere and everywhere but very specifically in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s here that we see God’s generosity most clearly focused: Christ’s emptying of himself in the incarnation, his life overflowing into the resurrection; the Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost. But as for Babette who, by participating in that great movement of generosity and abundance ends up losing all she has, for us to share in the banquet of Christ means that we’ll also share in the overflowing cup of his suffering. The chalice that we will receive today is not only the overflowing cup of Christ’s abundant life, but also the overflowing cup of his suffering; and those two elements are inextricable from one another this side of the Kingdom. ‘Are you able,’ he asks his disciples, ‘to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘we are able’. Let us hope that we may be able to say that also.

Arguing for Christ today

This year's Summer Apologetics Course at St Stephen’s House, Oxford will be from 17th–19th June as is open to the general public.

Topics to include: Science, Religion and the ‘New Atheists’, Apologetics and Contemporary Culture, The Good News of Christian Ethics, the History and Theory of Apologetics, Addressing Common Objections to Christian Faith, Ecumenical Perspectives, Finding and Making Opportunities

Speakers: The Revd Professor Alister McGrath (University of Oxford), The Revd Professor Graham Ward (University of Manchester), The Revd Dr Richard Conrad OP (Blackfriars, Oxford), The Revd Canon Dr Robin Ward (University of Oxford), The Revd Dr Andrew Davison (University of Oxford), Mrs Lucy Gardner (University of Oxford), The Revd Dr Matthew Bullimore (Domestic Chaplain to the Bishop of Wakefield), The Revd Dr John Hughes (Diocese of Exeter)

Timing: the course will run from 9:30 am on Tuesday 17 June until after lunch on Thursday 19 June. There will be four sessions per day (two on Thursday), with an optional further session after dinner.

Course Fee: £100 including lunch; £5 for dinner on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Accommodation: a limited number of rooms are available. £120 full-board from Tuesday morning to Thursday lunch; additional £35 for a room on Monday night and breakfast on Tuesday morning.

Contact: Fr Andrew Davison, Tutor in Christian Doctrine, St Stephen’s House (Tel: 01865 432300)

Understanding Islam

Understanding Islam is an introductory course for Christians led by the Revd Dr David Marshall at St Stephen’s House, Oxford.

This is a course for those who want to learn more about Islam and reflect on Islam as Christians. It aims to provide an understanding of Islam as Muslims understand it, and to address questions of Christian response to Islam and Christian co-existence with Muslims. No prior knowledge of Islam will be assumed. There will be input from Christian and Muslim speakers, and visits to Muslim institutions. Topics to be covered include: the life of Muhammad; the Qur’an; Islamic belief and practice; Islam and society; recent developments in Islam; Islam in Britain; Christian-Muslim relations.

Outline Timetable
Meals will be served during the course at 8:30am, 1:00pm and 6:00pm

Sunday 8 June
5.00pm Registration
7.00pm Introductory Session

Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 June
9.15am Session 1
11.30am Session 2
Afternoon Excursion
7.45pm Session 3

Wednesday 11 June
9.15am Session 1
11.30am Session 2

David Marshall has studied Islam at the University of Oxford and at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Birmingham University. His doctorate, on the Qur’an, was published as God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers. He trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and has worked in parishes in Leeds and Cambridgeshire, in university chaplaincy, and in theological education both in England and abroad. From 2000-2005, David was Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a post involving substantial work in interfaith relations, particularly in a number of Christian-Muslim initiatives. Since then he has been teaching in a range of contexts, including St Stephen’s House, the Cambridge Theological Federation, the London School of Theology and the London campus of Notre Dame University. He lives in Croydon, where his wife, Helen, is a parish priest.

Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, writes:
I am delighted that St Stephen’s House is offering this course on Understanding Islam. David Marshall has valuable experience in teaching Islamic Studies and in the practicalities of Christian-Muslim relations. I hope many will take part in this course, which I am confident will deepen their knowledge of the Islamic tradition and equip them for effective dialogue and intelligent Christian witness.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, writes:
Many Christians today are conscious of the need to grow in their understanding both of Islam and of the issues raised in Christian- Muslim dialogue. David Marshall has worked extensively in this field, both as a scholar and in a number of significant practical initiatives within the Church of England and across the Anglican Communion. The course that he will be leading at St Stephen’s House offers a valuable opportunity which I hope many will take up. I commend it warmly.

For more information, please contact:
The College Secretary, St Stephen’s House, 16 Marston Street, OXFORD, OX4 1JX, UK. +44 (0)1865 247 874. Further information from this online flyer (.pdf)

Leavers' Sunday 2008

Today marked the end of their time at St Stephen's House for eleven of our number who left following our Sung Mass and Leavers' BBQ on the lawn (see here). We wish them all the very best for the future and send them off with assurance of our prayers.

Please pray for those from St Stephen's House who are going forward for ordination to the diaconate this Petertide - Ben Archibald; Paul Armstead; Nicholas Buxton; Max Diaz; Andy Hughes; Mary Kent; Elizabeth Kesteven; Simon Morris; Helen O'Sullivan; David Stevenson; Bryce Wandrey.

And for those who trained here and will be ordained priest - Fr Paul Hambling; Fr James Hill; Fr Robert Lane; Fr Charles Miller.