Matthew's Journal

I still have a wedding write-up to do, but I wanted to scribble this down before I forgot too much of it.

( Selwyn lunchtime discussion )

An interesting and stimulating hour or so, even if it did have another one of those moments.

Over the last couple of tuesday lunchtimes, we've been dealing with the word catholic[1]. Joe used something he'd used for a previous parish quiet day as the basis for discussion. He'd found 5 definitions of "catholic", and we looked in them in turn.

1. "Catholic Christianity believes that God is at work in the whole Church. For this reason, it is a restless and generous form of Christianity always eager to learn from other Christians". This was quite attractive to us woolly-minded liberals - it's a suitable humble approach, and acknowledges the lesson of ecumenism that we have much to learn from Christians from other traditions.


2. "Catholics are those who are in possession of the true religion, of which all others fall short". It was, I think, intentional that this follows after number 1. It's all very well to say we have things to learn from other Christians, but don't we in the end have to assert that we believe our church to be better than the others in some way (otherwise, why aren't you a methodist rather than an anglican?). Also, an excess in point 1) can lead on to relativism, and the failure to assert any truth at all, and surely Christianity is about truth in the end? We talked about these first two quite a lot, and I think it's fair to say our conclusion, such as it was, was that we have a core set of beliefs, that we assert are central to being a Christian. Outwith those, we are willing to engage with and learn from other Christians. Whilst anglicanism might be the most right church overall, there are expected to be points on which other churches can teach us. Arrogance is clearly bad, too.


3. "Catholic Christianity believes that God is at work int he whole world. For this reason, it displays radical openness to all truth and to every value." This is like 1) but with even more relativism, so didn't attract much support. Christianity has a distinctive truth to share with a fallen world.


4. "For Catholics, the sacraments are the place where God is present to us and changes us.". This is how the World Council of Churches uses "Catholic", as distinct from "Protestant" (rather than "Catholic" in the sense the creed uses it); Protestants say the Bible is important instead. I argued quite strongly that this is a false dichotomy[2], and that authentic Christianity emphasis both Scripture and the Sacraments. Someone suggested that you could view the Bible as a sacramental thing. We talked about the Salvation Army in this context, too.


5. "Catholics are those who maintain communion with their bishop." In some sense, this was the original use of the word - heterodox people wouldn't keep communion with their bishop. By this definition, parishes who have a flying bishop are no longer Catholic, which is something to think about.

The last point brought us onto a discussion of what counted as a communion-breaking issue - clearly there are issues which we as a church have to say are important enough that if you don't agree with us on them, then you aren't a Christian (e.g. the divinity of Christ); in tension with this is the fact that we all disagree on some points, and that's part of being authentic Christians. Perhaps inevitably, we started talking about homosexuality. Part of the problem is that many people holding forth on the subject are less hung up about who is shagging who, but more see this as a rallying point for a bigger issue - how we interpret scripture, and the authority of scripture. Maybe *that* is a communion-breaking issue, and non-Christians would probably respect us much more for debating *that*, rather than seeming obsessed with the bedroom.

The St Lukes anecdote (which I'm sure I've related here before) was also brought up, as a reminder that other Christians aren't necessarily what we think of them as.

There was a StAG person along this week, which was interesting, particularly the brief discussion at the end about transubstantiation.

[1]not as an abbreviation for Roman Catholic.
[2]In case you don't know (and some present on tuesday didn't), this is a rhetorical device similar to saying "well, do you like chocolate, or do you like cheese?": people might like either, but many like both, and a few none, so trying to split people into two on these grounds is bogus.

[Yes, I know there's still a load of outstanding updates. Maybe this evening]

After the house inspection, I faffed a bit, and then went to Selwyn for the lunchtime discussion. Joe had to leave early, so Jim lead the discussion. We talked about why Christmas is so popular (small child, family scene, so quite "unthreatening"), and Easter is less so, because the resurrection is such a challenging event. Even the gospels don't say much about it; we talked a bit about narrative structure at this point, and how the earlier parts of the gospel narrative are able to look back at the Old Testament, after the resurrection we are challenged to look forward.

There were a couple of side-discussions - one about a certain Easter Sunday sermon on the ordination of women, and another on how the resurrection wasn't a re-winding of the passion - Christ still bears his wounds, and so on. It was also noted how we spend a lot of time going to church just before Easter, but then go back to work on Easter Monday. Is the resurrection the happy end to a sad story? The disciples didn't think so at first...

We talked a little about the relative importances of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. There seem to be a couple of extreme positions - you can over-emphasise the Resurrection and so miss the trivial argument that the Incarnation is a necessary pre-requisite or the more interesting one that it's in the Incarnation that God actually becomes human; conversely, you can over-emphasise the Incarnation, say that's how God sanctifies creation, and ignore the Resurrection entirely. Some balance is necessary.

On another note, work is going too slowly - I'm an utter lack of motivation, and things are just drifting currently. This is Not Good.

I note I woefully missed the booking deadline for a BBSRC-organised careers event. Bother. Never mind, I'll have to do some work instead!

Interesting lunchtime discussion at Selwyn (they always are, although the timetabling means they often end up feeling unreasonably short. The topic was salvation, and how Christ's death and resurrection achieved this.

We dashed through a few models, starting with the patristic idea of Christ's defeat of devils, and covering Anselm's rather feudal idea of us owing God a great debt that Christ pays for us, as well as Calvin's idea that we have broken the law, and that Christ somehow is able to take our punishment for us.

In each case, we discussed the model a little, and found that although there is scriptural backing for each idea, they all have some flaws (the last, Calvinist one perhaps the most serious flaws). Some other theories will have to wait until next week now.

Afterwards, Annie, Joe and I didn't quite manage to leave. Joe was saying that each of these ideas about salvation gives us an image of how salvation works, and that you shouldn't get too hung up on the fact they all have flaws; they're approximations of a mystery and as long as you don't get too caught up in one and try to insist you have the only answer it's OK.

My counter-concern was that if all the available images of salvation have serious flaws, then where are we left? My analogy is the apple falling from the tree - in a scientific world, this is quite an important thing to explain, and if you imagine a situation where gravity was proven to have serious holes in it, you'd be a bit stuck. Annie's idea "what's wrong with saying God made it fall?" was an interesting one. We talked a bit about how science assumes there's a simple "right" answer to things, that can be reasoned from evidence with logic, and how this approach doesn't necessarily apply to theological questions: the eucharistic prayer has within it "Great is the mystery of faith".

As a scientist, this sort of argument is quite difficult to accept; the idea that one should have faith that because God has said (through Scripture) that salvation is effected through Christs death and resurrection, it is, and that it may be too difficult to be expressed in a clearly reasoned simple idea. I'll wave away the Invisible Pink Unicorn argument with "experience of God" at this point, because having that debate right now isn't what I'm interested in. I gather arts types are rather happier with there not being one "right" answer to things...

Clearly it's a problem for apologetics, which is why CICCU's hard-line Calvinist stance makes a certain amount of sense - if you can try and claim that this is the simple answer, it makes it much easier to sell to people than a "trust in God" approach to how salvation might or might not work.

I'm still not sure I'm happy with the idea, but I wanted to write down my meanderings on the subject, and doubtless we'll talk about it more next week.