BEYOND BELIEF

'WHAT MATTERS ABOUT JESUS'

We hear a lot about spirituality these days, whether with faith or without, whether ‘modern spirituality’ or traditional religious spirituality.  Even Sam Harris, arch-atheist as he is supposed to be, is searching for spirituality without religion. And the RSA, with its strapline ‘21^st Century Enlightenment’, has just published a report entitled ‘Spiritualise: revitalising spirituality to address 21st century challenges’.  It quotes a 2013 survey by the think-tank Theos suggesting that 59% of people believe in 'some kind of spiritual being or essence'.  

SPIRITUAL, NOT RELIGIOUS

And why not?  When we discussed this at Wychwood Circle someone suggested that to be ‘spiritual’ is just to be serious about life, the world and humanity.  And that means thinking about how we live and what values we live by.  Madeleine Bunting, panellist at the Beyond Belief: Taking Spirituality Seriously events at the RSA, said that the conversation was about 'what is our human nature, what are we as human beings?'

At Wychwood Circle we have been clear from the beginning that we wanted to discuss not just 'what we believe' but 'what we believe in' and for our first few months in 2012 we took Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life apart chapter by chapter.  We encountered religion and philosophy, politics and psychology, ethics and justice – but one thing which united our contrasting approaches was that we all agreed that we believed in Compassion. 

WHAT MATTERS IS NOT THE LENS BUT SEEING THROUGH THE LENS

Borg, good liberal scholar that he is*, seems to endorse in the final chapter of our current book a view which we also came across with John Caputo (On Religion, 2001), namely that it’s not so much what you believe as how you live that matters.  Borg is big on metaphors (his own, and the many biblical ones he writes about) and he says here, referring particularly to some of his students’ more conservative views:  

Thinking of the Christian life as being primarily about believing in God, the Bible, and Jesus is thus a modern mistake, with profound consequences. …  What matters is hearing the voice that speaks to us through the tradition, not believing in the tradition.  

His favourite metaphor in this book is the more visual one of seeing ‘the Bible, Jesus, and central postbiblical traditions’ as ‘a lens through which we see God and our relationship with God. What matters it not the lens but seeing through the lens.’ 

ALTERNATIVE VISIONS

So, if you’re not a Christian, or ‘religious’ – but maybe ‘spiritual’, who knows? – is there anything for you in this ‘vision of the Christian life’?  The Church of England, with its classic habit of speaking only to itself, has called a crucial and very relevant recent report Developing Discipleship.   In modern English that off-putting word ‘discipleship’ means (as Borg uses it) 'following after Jesus', in other words, taking seriously what Jesus took seriously.

NT Wright in his parallel chapter on Christian living developed the theme in terms of four areas of ‘Christian experience’: Spirituality, Theology, Politics and Healing.  Borg answers the question of what about Jesus we should follow in terms of 5 inter-connected characteristics which he thinks are ‘most central’:

a life centred in the Spirit, lived by an alternative wisdom, marked by compassion, concerned about justice, and lived within the alternative community of Jesus. 

MORAL CLAPTRAP

The key words ‘alternative’, ‘compassion’, ‘justice’ and ‘community’ demand – particularly in an election year in the UK – an essay to themselves.  The Archbishop of York has just published a book which apparently criticises governments for creating ‘a tale of two cities’ and contemporary society for being dominated by consumerism and selfishness.  The Archbishop of Canterbury meanwhile preached this week in New York about ‘a society in which the weak are excluded’ and where religion is reduced to morality.  The life of Jesus, he said, 'challenges every assumption'.  More on this in a later post. 

SEEING DIFFERENTLY:  WISDOM, COMPASSION AND JUSTICE

What cannot be ducked is this insistence on things spiritual.  This is what Borg has in mind:

Spirituality is one of the major focal points of the Christian life. … It typically involves regular prayer, whether verbal or non-verbal, and perhaps other traditional spiritual practices.  It also happens through worship that manifestly mediates the Spirit, whether the charismatic worship of Pentecostals, the silent gathering of Quakers, or the sacramental worship of more liturgical traditions.

This in turn allows us 'to see everybody and everything' differently; it leads us to see common categorisations of people and behaviour (eg as good or bad) as 'very often simply based on deeply ingrained cultural convention'; it 'awakens not only compassion but also a passion for justice'.

William Bloom, author of The Power of Modern Spirituality (2011), began his career with a doctorate in political psychology at the LSE before going on to work with people with special needs and deliver training in the NHS and elsewhere.  The word ‘God’ doesn’t feature in his book but he is clear that spirituality is all about Connection, Reflection and Service.  He begins his penultimate chapter thus:

It is empowering to be clear about our values and to live our lives in accordance with them and to be of service to those around us through acts of sharing, generosity, care, courage and compassion.  Yet in spirituality there is also another dimension to service that is more subtle, invisible and metaphysical.

INTEGRATION

Co-author Tom Wright’s approach to the Christian life starts from a more conservative view and he is keen to integrate ‘the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith’ as well as the different facets of Christian experience. With a lifetime of experience as academic, churchman and communicator, Wright's conclusion is to ‘focus both history and faith on Jesus of Nazareth’ as he has described him, which may lead us to

find that creation, sacraments, human life, politics, history, and faith come rushing together in new integrations for which as yet we have no language but worship.

For upcoming Wychwood Circle events, starting with the discussion anticipated above which takes place on Sunday February 1st, see the previous post.  

*Sadly, Marcus J. Borg died earlier this month and so references here in the present tense are to his words of 1999.  His most recent book (2014) was his own memoir, Convictions:  How I Learned What Matters Most, which could well form the basis of a future Wychwood Circle event.

  

COMING SOON ON THIS PAGE:  Reflections on Archbishop Sentamu’s new book On Rock or Sand (maybe also a future book for discussion in election year), which brings together contributions by Andrew Sentance, Julia Unwin and Ruth Fox (and others) on topics in which they are experts, such as economics, poverty and democracy. 

NAIVETY, BIOLOGY AND GOD

A NEW PIECE IN THE PUZZLE OF LIFE?

Brian Cox, rockstar turned scientist, is on record as saying that he doesn't think about God until he is asked to do so. But then he says:

'Philosophers would rightly point out that physicists making bland and sweeping statements is naive.  There is naivety in just saying there's no God; it's b-----s. People have thought about this.  People like Leibniz and Kant. They're not idiots. So you've got to at least address that.'

Elsewhere in the same interview he also says of 'inflationary cosmology' and the possible existence of an infinite number of universes: 

'These things have not been discussed widely; they need novelists and artists and philosophers and theologians and physicists to discuss them.'

Research from YouGov last September found that almost half of British biologists are atheists, compared with less than one in five of the general population, with a smaller proportion being found among physicists. But the theory of evolution is apparently far from settled. Dr Mark Vernon, celebrated agnostic and writer, recently drew attention to growing 'unease about neo-Darwinian orthodoxy, the version of Darwin's theory championed by Professor Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene'.  The failure of the sequencing of the human genome in 2003 'to deliver on its promise to account for human diseases and behaviours through genetic mechanisms' has led to 'the mainstreaming of the new science of epigenetics'. This new science, says Vernon:

'undermines the idea that inheritance happens only via DNA, and that evolution is built solely on random mutations. To put it simply, life is far more complicated and responsive than "selfish-geneism" allows.'

Professor of Palaeobiology at Cambridge Dr Simon Conway Morris speculated at a recent conference that we should pay more attention to the co-discoverer of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace. Vernon again:

'Right from the start, Wallace argued that human consciousness was far more sophisticated than would be needed merely to afford human beings survival advantages.  We don't use language just to warn our fellows of danger but to compose sublime, searching poems.  We don't use sound just to attract a mate but to nurture the ecstasy and insights of music.'

The Reverend Richard Coles, another former pop musician, now broadcaster and vicar, was on a panel with Robin Ince at the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2013.  He made a not dissimilar point to Brian Cox's about naivety and religion. "Most people stopped thinking about religion when they were 8," he lamented, implying that the popular view of religion was formed in the nursery and has barely escaped the land of Narnia. Spurred by that provocative comment, we have invited him to come and speak to the Wychwood Circle on March 8th at Milton under Wychwood village hall on the theme, "Christianity for grown-ups." 


On February 1st we hold our first open discussion of 2015 with a further look at the book by very different biblical scholars, Marcus Borg and N T Wright, which was our springboard in December, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. Our theme this time will be their contrasting visions of Jesus and The Christian Life - the subject of the final two chapters in the book forming Part VIII (about 40 pages). As always, anyone is welcome as long as they have read the relevant piece for discussion. Wychwood Library, 7pm. 

On March 8th we welcome the Reverend Richard Coles, ex-Communard and vicar of Finedon, who is well-known to listeners of Radio 4's Saturday Live. His topic will be CHRISTIANITY FOR GROWN-UPS. 

April 12th sees our second speaker of the year, former comedy magician and actor Geoffrey Durham, who is now better known as an author, creative consultant and outspoken Quaker.  He has appeared on Radio 4's Thought for the Day and has written two introductions to Quakerism, Being a Quaker and The Spirit of the Quakers. 

A VISION OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

COME AGAIN? THE FUTURE OF JESUS

Parts I and V of The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions provided us (in just 24 pages and 23 pages respectively) with an eye-opening introduction to just how differently two reputable New Testament scholars can regard the significant person of Jesus of Nazareth. Wright concludes in Part V (Was Jesus God?) that: 

If you start with the God of the Exodus, of Isaiah, of creation and covenant, and of the psalms, and ask what God might look like were he to become human, you will find that he might look very much like Jesus of Nazareth, and perhaps never more so than when he dies on a Roman cross. 

Borg on the other hand says that many of the pronouncements about Jesus in the gospels should be taken as metaphors, 'as exclamations, not doctrines', while nevertheless agreeing that the New Testament contains a usefully 'compact christological crystallization': "Jesus is the image of the invisible God."  He goes on: 

Jesus as icon and image of God not only shows us what God is like but also mediates the sacred.

There is more, much more, to be gleaned from these two authors and in the new year we will return to them.  We might, for example, focus on Part VII which tentatively discusses the so-called 'Second Coming' or on the final and substantial Part VIII (47 pages) on 'Jesus and the Christian Life'. Wherever we are coming from - or for that matter heading for - there should be much to chew over in these final chapters. (It is recommended that anyone coming to the book for the first time should at least skim chapters 1 and 2 (Part I) to get an idea of the authors' respective takes on biblical interpretation.)


Dates for early 2015 are not yet set.  Depending on the availability of speakers this next discussion may take place in February or March. In January we take a break to gather ourselves. 
On April 12th we shall be delighted to welcome Geoffrey Durham, once better known as a magician but now promoting the cause of Quakerism. 

UNITED FOR PEACE

BELIEVING IN DIALOGUE

The great thing about religious people is that they believe in something. Which isn't to say that the community-minded people in Oxfordshire who run the foodbanks and campaign against the iniquities of (so-called) welfare reform either are or are not religious, nor that they don't believe in what they do. There's a lively new county councillor in Witney who believes in working for the people she represents and as a result, as she told me, she finds herself attending far too many meetings in churches given that she thinks of herself as an atheist. I told her that what she has in common with the church people is that, like them, she believes in something (or if you prefer, doing good things) and shouldn't feel uncomfortable. At Wychwood Circle we meet to discuss what we believe and what we believe in, and one thing we all believe in is dialogue. 

Monawar Hussain certainly believes in something and as a result founded the Oxford Foundation which exists to deepen understanding between people of different faiths and cultures with a particular focus on young people. 
He also bothered to come all the way to Milton under Wychwood to address our discussion group and was rewarded with an audience of 30 who barely squeezed into the library. We felt privileged to be the first to set eyes on a new print-run of an Open Letter to the leader and 'the fighters and followers of the self-declared 'Islamic State' (also known as IS, ISIS and ISIL), a box-full of which he brought with him. Monawar was one of 126 Islamic scholars and others around the world who signed it. 

The Open Letter, dated 19th September 2014, begins with an Executive Summary with a list of 24 points, including the following (my selection): 

• It is forbidden in Islam to issue fatwas without all the necessary learning requirements. 
• It is forbidden in Islam to ignore the reality of contemporary times when deriving legal rulings. 
• It is forbidden in Islam to kill the innocent.
• It is forbidden in Islam to kill emissaries, ambassadors, and diplomats: hence it is forbidden to kill journalists and aid workers.
• It is forbidden in Islam to deny women their rights.
• It is forbidden in Islam to torture people. 

Imam Monawar Hussain practises what he preaches, with an array of projects and interfaith educational programmes such as OMPEP, and on Sunday (Nov 30th) the Oxford Foundation is promoting United for Peace - Oxford's Communities United against Extremism, a multi-faith service at Oxford Spires Academy. Of OMPEP, Rabbi Julia Neuberger has commented:

"Imam Monawar Hussain's toolkit for schools is enlightening, encouraging, informative, and easy to use. What I love about it particularly is that it is designed both to impart information and to improve understanding and relationships, and, as far as I can see, it succeeds in doing just that."

We could say the same of Monawar who both educated us in the basics - and the variety - of Muslim beliefs and inspired us with his warmth and example. It may be said that he also reminded us of the origins of some of the Middle East's turmoil and sense of powerlessness in the face of Western colonialism and 'civilisation'. 

On December 7th we switch our attention to another Middle Eastern rebel of a very different kind in the shape of Jesus of Nazareth. He too didn't think much of occupying powers or for that matter the native religious leaders of his day. But he seems to have had a revolutionary, but peaceful, way of dealing with them.  Just how much we can really know about him - and whether he is or was, or even claimed to be, God - is amply discussed in our study-text for the day, The Meaning of Jesus - Two Visions (see earlier posts).

'WE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE BIBLE'

Thank God for diversity? 

We have the honour in Oxfordshire this year of hosting the Westminster Faith Debates on “The Future of the Church of England”. On Thursday at the University Church in Oxford the 4^th of 5 debates took place on the theme of Diversity.  Much was said by a fairly diverse panel and some brave and thoughtful contributions emerged from the floor.  One such was the hope expressed that newly-empowered women priests (and bishops) should find it hard not to be sympathetic to the demands by gay people for equality within the church.  Another came a good two-thirds of the way through the debate when someone stood up and implied that we might have been skirting the real issue, which is that “we have a problem with the Bible”.

Of course some people don’t have a problem with the Bible – in fact it serves them rather well: just look at the size of their congregations, pointed out the representative of Anglican Mainstream, alluding to the throngs of students at St Aldate’s and St Ebbe’s in Oxford.  But a more striking comment came from someone from US (formerly USPG, a missionary society) who said that if we take the Bible seriously then we must realise that it contains so many theologies that the Church cannot but be diverse.  (He might have added that, with the Bible self-evidently a library of 60 or even 90 books of all shapes and sizes and voices and styles,  it’s tempting to say that, if this is 'the word of God', one might wish he would make up his mind…)

Symon Hill, associate director of the Ekklesia think tank, wrote in a commentary on a gospel passage about Pharisees and teachers of the law who were asking for a sign:

“God wants us to think for ourselves. This is scary.  I have been to plenty of churches that are not comfortable with it, and do their best to ensure that their congregations are all taught the ‘right’ interpretation of the Bible.  In contrast, Jesus told parables but rarely explained them. It seems that he wanted his listeners to think through the meanings, whether individually or in discussion with others.”

We shall be doing exactly that on December 7^th at Wychwood Library as we respond in our different ways to “The Meaning of Jesus –Two Visions” by Marcus Borg (a leading liberal) and Tom Wright (a leading conservative), both important and respected scholars, well versed in the ‘Historical Jesus’ debate.  As the publishers take care to point out on the cover, both have written books which show their commitment to explaining their faith:  Borg wrote The Heart of Christianity and Wright Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.  As usual at Wychwood Circle we will do our best to make sense of what we believe – and indeed of what others believe.

We meet at 7pm on Sunday December 7^th at Wychwood Library in the High Street, Milton under Wychwood, OX7 6LD, ending not later than 9pm.  We will focus on Parts 1 (How do we know about Jesus?) and 5 (Was Jesus God?).  The book is available in different editions, including second-hand.  Originally published in 1999, it came out as HarperCollins paperback in 2007. 

WAS JESUS GOD?

THE MEANING OF JESUS - TWO VISIONS

This is the title of our December book by Marcus J. Borg (author of The Heart of Christianity) and N.T. Wright (author of Simply Christian). The cover of the book describes it thus: 

The leading liberal and conservative Jesus scholars present the heart of the Historical Jesus debate.

There are eight sections to the book and in each the two authors are given a chapter each to present their fascinatingly contrasting visions. Thus Part I sets out the very basics of historical theology and asks How do we know about Jesus? with chapter 1 by Marcus Borg (Seeing Jesus: Sources, Lenses, and Method) and chapter 2 by Tom Wright (Knowing Jesus: Faith and History). 

It's unlikely that we will be able to do the book justice in one week's discussion and so for this first meeting on December 7th we will focus on those first two chapters and then go on to see how the two authors interpret the subject of Part V: Was Jesus God? There is a clue to their differing approaches in the title of their respective chapters:  Borg (ch 9) calls his Jesus and God, Wright (ch 10) sets out his stall in The Divinity of Jesus. 

Maybe in the month of December and a time of celebration (in theory) of the nativity we should have opted for Part VI The Birth of Jesus, but there will be many more occasions to tackle other topics in the book, not least Part IV which gets quotation marks for its title - presumably to keep everyone happy: "God raised Jesus from the dead".  More anon, I imagine. 

One review described the book as a "thorough and accessible scholarly exchange" and another as "a refreshingly respectful exchange". No doubt our discussion at Wychwood Library will be, as always, respectful if not particularly scholarly! 



Was Jesus God? The discussion at Wychwood Library on December 7th, from 7pm to 9pm (latest), will be based on the book by Marcus Borg and N T Wright The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, published by HarperOne (1999), focussing on Parts 1 and 5. As always, anyone is welcome to attend and contribute their own views and comments on the book. 

ISLAM: MAINSTREAM OR EXTREME?

Monawar Hussain changed the title of his talk to us on November 16th and gave his own response to the events of the Middle East: in his own words, 'a mainstream Islamic response to modern day terrorism'.  He was a signatory to the Open Letter to IS and as such had much to tell us. 

This commentary on the letter might also be of interest for those who want to know more. For more on Monawar's Oxford Foundation and their splendid interfaith work visit their website.