The kind of academic I want to be

I’m doing a PhD at the moment and my ambition, when (God willing) I finish, is to then pursue a career in academia as a researcher and lecturer.  I really believe that God has placed this desire in me, so either he wants me to carry it out or else he wants me to want to carry it out for some other reason.

But I don’t just want to be an academic.  It’s not even that I want to be a successful academic (although that would be nice).  I want to be

The idealized academic: respected researcher; experienced supervisor; reasonable; balances guidance with license and specific support with spoonfeeding.
– G. Rugg and M. Petre, The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research (OUP, 2010)

OK, that passage only describes in what way an academic is idealized with respect to supervising PhD students.  With respect to other academic qualities, this is the kind of academic I would like to be:

He is genuinely searching for the truth, and treats other researchers as people in it together with him in this pursuit.  He takes questions and criticisms seriously and admits when he isn’t sure about something with an honest estimate as to the degree of uncertainty.  He takes the time to understand his opponents’ views and theories and does his best to be precise about exactly what the real differences are between those and his own.  He has time for people who want to learn from him, whether they are leading lights in the field or brand new research students who don’t know anything.

This is the kind of academic I would not like to be:

For him, academic life is all-out war between us (or me) and them.  People who do not share his assumptions or theoretical positions are the forces of darkness.  The very credibility or even existence of the discipline is in danger if you don’t agree with him.  Questions at conferences can safely be interrupted and interlocutors’ work dismissed as worthless.  He is totally unapproachable, unless you are someone who can do something for him.

At this point I remember William Lane Craig’s Advice to Christian Academics.  I may make another post about that later on.

Another warning

In the same one of the Screwtape Letters containing the passage that I quoted in my last post, the following is written:

Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the ‘Cause’ is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal.  Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s [God’s] own purposes, this remains true.  We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique.

I take this as a warning to myself, one which I’ve referred to in another previous post.

A warning

According to C.S. Lewis, this is a piece of advice from a senior demon about how to cause a man to lose his faith in Christ:

Whichever he adopts, your task will be the same.  Let him begin by treating [cause A] or [cause B] as a part of his religion.  Then let him […] come to regard it as the most important part.  Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause’, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of [cause A] or [cause B].  The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience.  Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

When I hear some of the things that come out of the mouths of professing Christians, I am often reminded of this passage.  Those baffling statements are very often explained by the speaker thinking that Christianity is ‘all about’ something other than Christ; even, especially perhaps, when what it is supposed to be ‘all about’ is something that Christians should in fact be doing.  If you think that Christianity is ‘all about’ including the marginalised, or bringing justice to the earth, or care and compassion, or giving society cohesion, or providing a moral framework, then you are badly on the wrong track.  Those are all good things, but neither individually nor collectively are they an end to which faith is a means.

Book review: The Justification Reader by Thomas Oden

Oden, Thomas C. (2002) The Justification Reader (Cambridge: Eerdmans)

‘Justification’ is impossible to define without controversy, which is one reason why this book is needed.  It has to do with how God saves people and it has to do with righteousness; the thing is, once you start adding any more detail onto that sketch you are bound to show your theological colours.  In The Justification Reader, Thomas Oden argues that there is an early Christian consensus on justification, from which Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox believers can learn and use in efforts towards interdenominational reconciliation.

However, Oden’s modus operandi is not really exegetical.  We are not, for example, presented with this or that passage of an early Christian thinker’s work and then given an explanation of how this fits into current issues concerning justification.  Rather, what we get is a point-by-point explanation of what Oden takes (and I take) the doctrine of justification to be, supported at every stage by reference to those early Christian thinkers.  That point-by-point explanation is bound to be controversial for the reasons already alluded to. 

In what follows I am going to follow Oden’s method by mentioning four claims about justification that at least appear to be distinctively Evangelical, and then quoting early Christian thinkers in support of them.  I provide page references to The Justification Reader and, where possible, links to where the content can be found online.  In some cases I have quoted longer passages than Oden does.

Justification is is the declaration of our righteous status before God that comes solely from Christ’s righteousness imputed to us

p65:

He himself gave up his own Son as a ransom for us—the holy one for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, the righteous one for the unrighteous, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal.  For what else could cover our sins except his righteousness?  In whom could we, lawless and impious as we were, be made righteous except in the Son of God alone? O sweetest exchange! O unfathomable work of God! O blessings beyond all expectation! The sinfulness of many is hidden in the Righteous One, while the righteousness of the One justifies the many that are sinners.
Epistle to Diognetus (link)

The means of our justification is that, on the cross, Christ bore the penalty for our sins in our place

p 59:

Ought ye not in justice to be reconciled for this one thing only that He hath done to you now?’ And what hath He done? “Him that knew no sin He made to be sin, for you.” [2 Corinthians 5:21] For had He achieved nothing but done only this, think how great a thing it were to give His Son for those that had outraged Him. But now He hath both well achieved mighty things, and besides, hath suffered Him that did no wrong to be punished for those who had done wrong. But he did not say this: but mentioned that which is far greater than this. What then is this? “Him that knew no sin,” he says, Him that was righteousness itself, “He made sin,” that is suffered as a sinner to be condemned, as one cursed to die. […]

one that was himself a king, beholding a robber and malefactor under punishment, gave his well-beloved son, his only-begotten and true, to be slain; and transferred the death and the guilt as well, from him to his son, (who was himself of no such character,) that he might both save the condemned man and clear him from his evil reputation
Chrysostom (c. 347 – 407), Homilies on The Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians (link)

Justification is received by faith alone, not faith plus something else

p 44:

All we bring to grace is our faith.  But even in this faith, divine grace itself has become our enabler.  For [Paul] adds, ‘And this is not of yourselves but it is a gift of God; not of works, lest anyone should boast (Eph 2:8-9)’.  It is not of our own accord that we have believed, but we have come to belief after having been called; and even when we had come to believe, He did not require of us purity of life, but approving mere faith, God bestowed on us forgiveness of sins.
Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c. 393 – c. 457), Interpretation of the Fourteen Epistles of Paul

p 45:

he [Paul] had countered that the the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ is for all who believe, that there is no distinction, but all have sinned, both Jews and Greeks, and lack the glory of God and are justified through the grace and redemption which is in Christ Jesus.  He himself is the propitiatory through faith, and all who are of faith are justified by him.  In this current passage, the Apostle, as if establishing the conclusion of his previous arguments, now says, “Where then is you boasting?  It is excluded.  Through what law?  That of works?  No, but through the law of faith.  For we hold that a man is justified through faith without works of law” [Romans 3:27-28].  He is saying that the justification of faith alone suffices, so that the one who only believes is justified, even if he has not accomplished a single work. […]

The very same God justifies members of both peoples who believe, and this is based not upon the privilege of circumcision or uncircumcision but in consideration of faith alone.
Origen (c. 184 – c. 253), Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans (link p 226, 230)

p 48:

Where there is true belief through true faith, true salvation certainly accompanies it.
Fulgentius (c. 467 – c. 533), On The Incarnation

p 62:

the Lord Christ is both God and the mercy seat, both the priest and the lamb, and he performed the work of our salvation by his blood, demanding only faith from us
Theodoret, Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans

So also is the declaring of His righteousness not only that He is Himself righteous, but that He doth also make them that are filled with the putrefying sores of sin suddenly righteous. And it is to explain this, viz. what is “declaring,” that he has added, “That He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” Doubt not then: for it is not of works, but of faith: and shun not the righteousness of God, for it is a blessing in two ways; because it is easy, and also open to all men.
Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans (link)

p 63:

God gave what he promised in order to be revealed as righteous.  For he had promised that he would justify those who believe in Christ, as he says in Habakkuk: ‘The Righteous will live by faith in me’ [Habakkuk 2:4].  Whoever has faith in God and Christ is righteous.
Ambrosiaster (late 4th century), Commentary on Paul’s Epistles

p 66:

For since it is possible to be saved, yet not without shame (as many are saved of those, who by the royal humanity are released from punishment), that no one may suspect this upon hearing of safety, he adds also righteousness; and righteousness, not thine own, but that of God; hinting also the abundance of it and the facility. For you do not achieve it by toilings and labors, but you receive it by a gift from above, contributing one thing only from your own store, “believing.”
Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans (link)

p 77:

Not only sufficient but superabundant indeed is the righteousness that comes from faith.  This salvation is freely given by the grace of God through the knowledge of Christ.  It can hardly be said to be a gift of the law.  For to know rightly the mystery of his incarnation and passion and resurrection is the perfection of life and the treasure of wisdom.
Theodoret, Epistle to the Philippians

Justification has always been by faith alone, even before the incarnation

p 45:

We, therefore, who have been called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, neither by our wisdom or understanding or piety, nor by the works we have wrought in holiness of heart, but by the faith by which almighty God has justified all men from the beginning, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Clement of Rome (late 1st century), Letter to the Corinthians

p 146:

Paul revealed that Abraham had glory before God not because he was circumcised nor because he abstained from evil, but because he believed in God.  For that reason he was justified, and he would receive the reward of praise in the future.
Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Paul’s Epistles

Despite being very conciliatory in tone, then, the book is inevitably somewhat polemical in nature.  But only somewhat, since Oden goes further than would be required for a simple Evangelical polemic on this issue. The Evangelical position is not that every early Christian thinker understood the doctrine of justification fully without ever making a mistake.  The claim is, rather, that the doctrine of justification expounded by the magisterial reformers is what the Bible teaches, and that (under God) the Bible has the final word on this and every matter of doctrine and practice.  This does not require that there was an early consensus on the doctrine that was decisively in favour of evangelicalism.

However, it is often claimed, especially by Roman Catholics, that this understanding of the doctrine appeared de novo in the sixteenth century, which would be strange if it were indeed what the Bible teaches.  The quotations above show that this claim is simply baseless.  Thus the Theology Network website correctly appraises the book as being

Good all round, but especially for seeing that justification by faith alone is not a Reformation invention.

Does the book go further than this, as Oden aims, and show that there was a consensus on the doctrine of justification?  There was certainly a great deal of agreement.  But then, there is a great deal of agreement now.  What differences there are are important, however, and the reader is left suspecting that it was ever thus.

Post count update

Could this become an annual tradition?

There has been a slight improvement in the posting rate over the last 12 months.  It’s so slight that to see it you have to zoom in on the bottom corner:

Anyway the news is that I won’t be giving up on the blog just yet, as I warned that I might this time last year.

Pharisees!

Towards the end of a longish evening together with three friends last Sunday, the topic of conversation arose: how did the Pharisees depicted in the gospels go wrong?  The answers a-d were offered by the four of us.

1. Hypocrisy
   The Pharisees held other people to standards that they did not themselves even attempt to live by; often, these standards were of their own invention.
2. Self-righteousness
   The Pharisees thought that they could earn right standing with God by keeping his commandments, to the extent that by keeping the Law, they were putting God in their debt.
3. Legalism
   The Pharisees overloaded people with requirements and restrictions that could not be justified from what God had said, and they promoted these even to greater importance than what God actually had said.
4. Religiosity
   The Pharisees relied on religious form, such as ritual observance, rather than the presence of God; they overemphasised superficial conformity rather than genuine faith.

I think I’ve discovered a theological Rorschach test, because those present were:

1. A Roman Catholic
   and three Evangelicals:
2. A Baptist,
3. A Free Church charismatic and
4. An Anglican not-quite-so-charismatic.

See if you can match the theory of Pharisaism a-d with the theological position 1-4.

Evidently, there is some overlap between all four of these theories, which is the direction that the conversation took subsequently.  But their divergence nevertheless should make us wary of projecting our own theological bugbears and preoccupations onto the world of the New Testament.

How do you think that the Pharisees went wrong?

More culture war reflections

In my last post I reflected on the question of whether or not the UK is now entering as culture war (as Fraser Nelson thinks), precipitated by the issue of same-sex ‘marriage’.  I noted that

Very many people who carry political weight no longer even pretend that they would rather persuade their opponents than simply write them off as basically evil.

This is in tune with how Nelson defines a culture war:

The practice of […] dividing a nation into warring tribes and then exploiting that division

As a window on this hardening of attitudes and rhetoric, the following snippets of Times editorials are instructive.  Just under six years ago I reported an editorial in which the newspaper wondered aloud about

the best way to change the attitudes of those few who remain convinced that the practice of homosexuality is a sin

Fast forward to this year, and the tone of voice has changed markedly.  ‘Those few who remain’ are now regarded as being engaged in

a demeaning, unconscionable and ultimately futile defence of injustice

I confess that my gut reaction to this kind of remark, the likes of which I read or hear nearly every day in the media or in person, is to want to blast back twice as hard.  That would be the sinful nature talking, though.

And when his [Jesus’] disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. (Luke 9:54-55)

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. (Romans 12:14)

Somehow, politically, we orthodox Christians in this country have to find a way to audibly dissent from (what appears to be) the prevailing cultural mindset on this kind of issue without repaying aggression for aggression.  While in some ways it seems like it would be comforting to have a culture war in this country of the kind that Nelson describes as existing in the USA – because at least then it would feel like I was part of a side in a battle rather than a member of a beleaguered group being stepped on – there are many reasons to want to avoid it.  Here are a few, based on what I perceive happening across the Atlantic.  American readers are are invited to contest, discuss and/or confirm my impressions.  After certain points I make a caveat in <chevrons>.

• It seems that often, Christians are led to unreflectively take a particular stance on political issues simply because that’s what ‘our side’ does, and the ‘other side’ is opposed to it.  Should Christians automatically be in favour of a maximally free market?  The death penalty?  Legal firearms?  Krish Kandiah makes this point repeatedly in his review of Wayne Grudem’s Politics According to the Bible (and Grudem is a theologian whom I admire a great deal).
  <Of course, this works both ways, and to an extent exists in this country too. Mehdi Hassan, much to his own chagrin, has had to take great pains to explain how it’s possible to be both a socialist and pro-life (as if those two things are incompatible).>
• Relatedly, just because someone’s on the right side in the culture war doesn’t mean that they’re a genuine Christian.  No wise pastor would make that mistake, of course, but I still feel the need to highlight the issue because it seems that the culture war phenomenon has a tendency to cause political and theological views to become conflated.
  <In this country, this was probably more of an issue fifty years ago than it is now.  You can’t read C.S. Lewis without the impression that very often his target audience is the upstanding Church of England person who is nominally Christian but in reality utterly unsaved.  According to the latest census figures, nominal Christianity in this country is plummeting (which may well be a good thing).>
• Without wanting to take sides here on the extremely thorny issue(s) of predestination, it’s wrong to regard anyone as beyond the reach of God’s saving power.  Behind my instinct to blast back at the secular ideologues is an impulse to write them off as hopeless cases.  But there are no living hopeless cases, at least as far as we can know.  We certainly have political opponents; however, our enemies are not flesh and blood but principalities and powers.

This last issue reaches inside the church, too.  You only have to read Vaughan Roberts’ recent moving interview with Evangelicals Now to realise that the pastoral implications of the way we talk about political issues are potentially huge.

The problem is largely caused by the fact that most of our comments on homosexuality are prompted, not primarily by a pastoral concern for struggling Christians, but by political debates in the world and the church. We do need to engage in these debates, but it’s vital that we’re alert to the messages that some of our brothers and sisters may be hearing.

As a concluding thought, I want to repeat a point that I’ve made before.  The present cultural and intellectual climate in this country is not forever.  In the light of eternity it’s puny, of course, but even in the light of recorded history it’s really not that impressive.  Yes, secular liberalism seems like an overwhelming force now, and may well remain dominant in Europe for the rest of my lifetime.  But that’s not really that long of a time, all things considered.