Tom Wright on reason

Keith Sewell @ Bristol

The audio for Keith Sewell's excellent talk at St Mike's, Stoke Gifford, Bristol is available here to listen to for a short time.

It can be downloaded from here.

Keith took a very broad brush view of church history and placed evangelical Christianity within a wider context. He emphasised the importance of history - it shapes and moulds us whether we realise it or not - it is better to be historically wise than ignorant!

There is a very large gap between where we are now and the first Christians. He then looked at some of the reasons for that. We have undergone three big shifts: Hellenistic infiltration into the early church; the Christianisation of the Roman Empire; and the collapse of the Roman Empire.

He posed a fascinating question: how has Islam shaped medieval-Christian culture?

The Reformation went a long way to bring Christianity in line with the scriptures, but it didn't go far enough.
Evangelicalism started with Count von Zinzendorf. 'The Count' was so opposed to arid intellectualism that he said, forget the head, go for the heart. Christianity is a religion of the heart but its never anti-head. The Count has given us a legacy of the heart - but under emphasised clear Christian thinking about everything- law, politics, the state, learning, science , medicine, art ...

Jesus never says follow me in private but the public is irrelevant, follow me in the emotional but not intellectual. it is not right to abridge or limit the claims to discipleship.

Privileging the heart over the head has underestimated the religious importance of human culture, art, literature, the way we dress, style, how we relate.

We have inherited a Bible-believing Christianity that does not read the Bible.

Christianity has become too much churchianity. No one can see what obedient participation in culture is about. What about a Christian Voters Association? How do we pursue justice? It is important to seek justice for those that are different to us. This is not deserting evangelism - it is evangelism; it is communicating the evangel.

We have a choice: a Christianity that is shaped by the world or a Christianity that is world shaping.

Music for a Sunday Morning

Martin Wasilewski trio

All of life redeemed is now on Facebook

Why not become a fan?

Cardus: worldview course pack

Available here.

WinReligion

I thought this was amusing:

Lennox and Dawkins debate audio

The audio of Richard Dawkins' third encounter with John Lennox can be downloaded here.
It took place on 21st October 2008 at Oxford university Museum.

Odds and sods

William Dembski's new book The End of Christianity has been announced - it is his response to Ditchens et al.
An interesting chart on Galatians [HT Scot McKnight]
John Walton's new book: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate - should promote much debate.
John Frame has some useful questions to ask when watching a film [HT Between two worlds]

Calvinist farming by Sietze Buning

'Calvinist Farming' in Purpaleanie and other Permutations, Sietze Buning (Stanley Wiersma), (Middleburg Press, 1978) ISBN: 0-931940-00-1











Calvinist Farming

Our Calvinist fathers wore neckties with their bib-overalls
and straw hats, a touch of glory with their humility. They rode
their horse-drawn corn planters like chariots, planting the corn
in straight rows, each hill of three stalks three feet from each hill
around it, up and over the rises. A field-length wire with a metal knot
every three feet ran through the planter and clicked off three kernels
at each knot. Planted in rows east-west, the rows also ran north-
south for cross-cultivating. Each field was a checkerboard even
to the diagonals. No Calvinist followed the land's contours.

Contour farmers in surrounding counties
improvised their rows against the slope
of the land. There was no right way.
Before our fathers planted a field,
they knew where each hill of corn
would be. Be ye perfect, God said,
and the trouble with contour farmers
was that, no matter how hard they worked
at getting a perfect contour, they could
never know for sure it was perfect -- and
the didn't even care. At best they
were Arminian, or Lutheran, or Catholic,
or at worst secular. Though they wore bib-
overalls, they wore no neckties, humility
without glory.
Contour field resulted
from free will, nary a conrnstalk pre-
determined. The God contour farmers
trusted, if any, was as capricious
as their cornfields. Calvinists knew
the distance between God and people was
even greater than the distance between people
and corn kernels. If we were corn kernels in God's
corn planter, would we want him to plant us at random?
Contour farmers were frivolous about the doctrine of election
simply by being contour farmers.
Contour farmers didn't control
weeds because the couldn't cross-cultivate. Weed control was laid
on farmers by God's curse. Contour farmers tried to escape God's curse.
Sooner or later you could tell it on their children: condoning weeds
they condoned movies and square-skipping. And they wasted land,
for planting around the rises, they left more place between
the rows than if they'd checked it. It was all indecent.

We could drive a horse cultivator -- it was harder
with a tractor cultivator -- through our checked rows
without uprooting any corn at all, but contour farmers
could never quite recapture the arbitrary angle, cultivating,
that they used, planting. They uprooted corn and killed it. All
of it was indecent and untidy.
We youngsters pointed out that the tops
of our rises were turning clay-brown, that bushels of black dirt
washed into creeks and ditches every time it rained, and that
in the non-Calvinist counties the tops of the rises were
black. We were told we were arguing by results, not
by principles. Why, God could replenish the black
dirt overnight. The tops of the rises were God's
business.
Our business was to farm on Biblical principles.
Like, Let everything be done decently and in good order; that is
keep weeds down, plant every square inch, do not waste crops, and be tidy.
Contour farmers were unkingly because they were untidy. They could not be
prophetic, could not explain from the Bible how to farm. Being neither kings
nor prophets, they could not be proper priests; their humilty lacked defi-
nition. They prayed for crops privately. Our whole county prayed
for crops the second Wednesday of every March.
God's cosmic planter
has planted thirty year's worth of people since then,
all checked and on the diagonal if we could see
as God sees. All third-generation Calvinists
now plant corn on the contour. They have the word
from the State College of Agriculture. And so the clay-
brown has stopped spreading farther down the rises
and life has not turned secular, but broken.
For
God still plants people on the predetermined check
even though Calvinists plant corn on the contour. God's
check doesn't mean a kernel in the Calvinist's cornfield.
There's no easy way to tell the difference between Calvinists
and non-Calvinists: now all plant on the contour; all tolerate
weeds; between rows, all waste space; all uproot corn, cultivating;
all consider erosion their own business, not God's; all wear
overalls without ties; all their children go to the same
movies and dances; the county's prayer meetings
in March are badly attended; and I am improvising
this poem on the contour, no checking it in rhyme.

Glad for the new freedom, I miss the old freedom of choice
between Calvinist and non-Calvinist farming. Only in religion
are Calvinist and non-Calvinist distinguishable now. When different
ideas of God produced different methods of farming, God mattered more.
Was the old freedom worth giving up for the new? Did stopping the old
erosion of earth start a new erosion of the spirit? Was stopping old
eroision worth the pain of the new brokenness? The old Calvinists
insisted that the only hope for unbrokenness between the ways
of God and the ways of farmers is God.
A priest, God wears
infinite humility; a king, he wears infinite glory. He is even
less influenced by his upward-mobile children's notions of what not
to wear with what than our Calvinist fathers were in neckties with bib-
overalls. Moreover, a prophet, he wears the infinite truth our Calvinist
fathers hankered after to vindicate themselves, not only their farming.
Just wait, some dark night God will ride over the rises on his chariot-
corn planter. It will be too dark to tell his crown from a straw hat,
to dark to tell his apocalyptic horses from our buckskin horses or
from unicorns. No matter, just so the wheels of that chariot-corn
planter, dropping fatness, churn up all those clay-brown rises
and turn them all black, just as the old Calvinists predicted.

Lord Jesus, come quickly.


From here transcribed by Loren Harsma

Music for a Sunday morning

Tord Gustavsen trio

Steve Fuller: Modes of enchantment and disenchantment in science

Roger Trigg: Reality at risk

Jitse Van der Meer on Distinguishing, parts, wholes and levels of organization

[HT Paul Robinson]

Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living - a review

Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living
Nick Spencer and Robert White
SPCK, 2007
pbk, ISBN 978-0-281-05833-4
x+245 pp
£9.99

This book was 'conceived and nurtured' by the Jubilee Centre and the John Ray Institute. Nick Spencer was a researcher for the Jubilee Centre until 2007 and is now Director of studies at Theos, and Bob White, a geophysicist, is director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

The book split into three parts: the nature of the problem, the biblical perspective and the Christian response.

The first takes a look at global warming (ch 1) and sustainability and well-being (ch2). Here we have the science of climate change this is explained in an accessible way and contains abundant figures and charts. Unfortunately, the issue of 'climate scepticism' isn't addressed: 'The take home message is that global warming is real and unequivocal, and is caused by humans' (p. 25).

Climate change is the result of unsustainable development and so the issue of sustainability is examined in the next chapter. As they put it: 'The way we use energy at home, the way we travel and the manner in which we consume lie at the heart of climate change. Unless they change it won't' (p. 72).

Part 2 poses the question should Christians care about the environment? (Ch 3) Their answer an emphatic Yes! - they then look at what a Christian response might look like (Ch 4-5). In response to Why care? They respond:

• because God does
• because it is part of what it means to be human
• to obey the command to love 'our neighbours'
• because of our hope for the future

Chapter 4 looks at the biblical vision of sustainable living here they draw heavily on Isaiah 40-66 as 'it offers the fullest biblical vision the Bible has to offer of sustainable living', an example of how life on earth should be lived. Next drawing upon the Jubilee theme, in chapter 5, they look at the biblical practice of sustainable living.

The final part looks at the vision (ch 6) and practice of sustainable living (ch 7). In chapter 6 they outline eight helpful - the 'shoulds' notwithstanding - principles for sustainable living:

1. We should value and protect creation, seeing that as a joy rather than a burden
2. We should reflect the close bond between society and environment in our decisions
3. We should pursue justice for the vulnerable and marginalized
4. We should not confuse wealth and value: our goal should be relational health rather than money or personal freedom
5. We should favour regulated, market-based solutions that take account of natural, human and social capital
6. We should express commitment to our immediate environment and favour local solutions
7. We should aim to offer just and equitable access to natural resout=rces
8. We should respond seriously and with hope.

Chapter 7 looks at what we can do as individuals, as part of a community, nationally and internationally.

The brief final chapter looks at the new creation. God has not given up on his creation but will re-create it.

There are 16 pages of notes, a 3-page index of biblical references and a 6-page subject index. Sadly there is no bibliography, but a list of organisations such as the Jubilee Centre, The Faraday Institute, The John Ray Institute, Tearfund and WorldVision all judging by the logos on the back cover have supported the book.

The authors close this book with the comment that 'Christians are in a unique position to live and promote such "responsible and collaborative behaviour". We need to do so now.' This book doesn't provide all the answers or solutions but it is certainly a great place to start so that we can become more responsible and informed stewards of God's good earth.

Jubilee Centre has a number of Bible studies to accompany the book here.

Available in the UK from:
SPCK
amazon
eden
book depository

Other reviews:
Celsias
Geoff Stratford
Ethel White

Extracts
Times OnLine

Odds and sods

Unmasking the new age Jesus by Doug Groothuis

Piers Paul Read reviews Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith and Revolution in The Observer:

The book stems from lectures he gave at Yale in 2008 and the jokes transfer well from the auditorium to the page. It is essentially a contra-Dawkins and contra-Hitchens polemic: he conflates the two angry atheists as "Ditchkins" and successfully shreds what they say in their books. "This straw-targeting of Christianity is now drearily commonplace among academics and intellectuals - that is to say, among those who would not allow a first-year student to get away with the vulgar caricatures in which they themselves indulge with such insouciance."

Mike Wittmer reviews Blomberg's A Case for Historic Premillennialism

John Loftus claims that atheism isn't a religion: 'It's not even a worldview'.

Gideon Strauss has been interviewing the borad of the Center for Public Justice; including:

• Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen
• Terry Woodnorth
• Timothy Sherratt
• Harold Heie

Twitter 1930s style

[HT Makeuseof.com]

Cherishing the earth - a review

Cherishing the Earth: How to Care for God's Creation
Martin J. Hodson and Margot R. Hodson
Monarch Books, 2008
ISBN 978-1-85424-841
978-0-8254-6275-7 pbk
254 pp £8.99

US edition: 978 0 8254 6275 7

Books on the environment from a Christian perspective are a bit like buses. You can wait for ages for one to come along and then along come several all at once. This is one of them. The others published in late 2007 and 2008 include: Serve God Save the Planet by J. Mathew Sleeth, Planetwise by Dave Bookless, Christianity, Climate and Sustainability by Nick Spencer and Robert White, Saving Planet Earth by Colin Russell and Living with the Planet by Catherine Von Ruhland. All of them are written at a popular level.

This is a very British book, a gentle book that is irenic in style. It is very Anglican - and in this lies its strengths and weaknesses. Even when controversial issues are broached it is done in a sane way. For example, they are old earth - but of the opinion that the age of the earth is irrelevant in whether or not we care for it; they are theistic evolutionists, but are quick to point out that 'all Christians, whatever their views on origins will concede that our Earth originates with God and is rightfully his' (p. 92). On nuclear power: 'I do not feel comfortable with nuclear power, but I have a strong suspicion that we may need it.'

Occasionally the dualistic language grates: 'I hope to answer some of the spiritual questions that Christians might bring' p. 14,and they write of the '... supernatural effects of the fall in creation' p. 56. It's not a great start when the authors seem to adopt an independence view of science and religion and fail to see that all of life is spiritual - not just the theological bits. However, the message of the book is an important one: we urgently need to know how to care for God's creation.

It is a good introductory book, but they do skirt over some of the tricky biblical issues. For example, the two words translated as subdue (kabash) and rule (radah) in Genesis 1 are strong words - they don't seem to convey the connotation of care. Kabash is elsewhere translated as rape (Esther 7:8) and Westermann has translated radah as "to tread out the wine press" and von Rad as "trample". This can not simply be dismissed by describing it as 'a command to interact with nature and aid its fruitfulness' (p. 29) without further understanding of context and linguistics.

Sometimes the book reads like a patchwork quilt, the scientific and the biblical patchworks are attempted to be tied mosaic-like together. Sometimes this works at other times it jars. Often it gives the impression that 'spirituality' is an icing on the cake rather than the leaven for the whole cake.

'Climate scepticism' is briefly dealt with by reference to N Oreskes's Science 306 article. They are convinced that 'human induced climate change is real, and needs our urgent attention at all levels...' p. 61.

Chapter 5 looks at the 'seeds of history', this is a broad-brush overview of green Christian history and it inevitably oversimplifies. They rightly maintain that individuals can make a difference (ch 6) and highlight some things that can be done. One inspiring example is a Green semi in Oxford (see here for details). Transport and food are also examined in this chapter.

Chapter 7 looks at 'Caring communities' and what can be done through community involvement. Again a number of helpful case studies are included. In Chapter 8 on leadership - Job is used as an example of farming; Joseph as an example of climate care and Moses as a leader of change. Here they examine what effective leadership can do as well as take a look at energy and transport issues. Chapter 9 turns from local into global issues including debt, climate change and development. In chapter 10 'Dreams and visons' GM foods and international environmental agreements and reports are examined. Christian initiatives such as the impact of the Climate Forum 2002 which involved the Hodgsons and its effect on Richard Cizik are discussed. It was this forum that was instrumental in Cizik's 'conversion experience' to green issues. Cizik was vice-president of the National Association of Evangelicals in the States and has been instrumental in 'climate care'.

The final chapter looks briefly at the fate of the earth - a crucial issue for Christians - they conclude that it will be renewed not destroyed. But even if God does destroy it, this does not mean we should not protect what we presently have' (p. 202).

The strength of the book is that both authors write from complementary perspectives and we are provided a binocular vision of a number of important issues - they are strong on individual and group involvement at the grassroots level. However, there is little encouragement for Christians to get involved with politics - no sense that we can serve God in doing politics. Many of the issues require political change as well as the need for a grassroots movement.

The authors are obviously passionate about the environment; but unfortunately, it's not often that that passion comes through in the pages of the book. They are pragmatist rather than idealists - but perhaps that is not such a bad thing.

For me the highlight of the book was a brief discussion of rest - part of the jubilee and sabbath legislation. Environmental degredation means a loss of rest for many. Deforestation means that women and children have to go much further to find fuel for their fires - this results in a loss of rest. Sabbath should mean a rest for all not merely rest for the powerful at the expense of the poor (pp158-160): 'We need to act to implement Sabbath as a justice principle for our global community' (p. 160). As far as I'm concerned this section is worth the price of the book alone.

There are 24 pages of notes, 4 pages of useful websites and a 7 page index, but unfortunately, no bibliography.

It provides a useful introduction to light green thinking for Christians and one that could, because of its gentle tones, usefully be given to your local green-sceptic vicar.

Available in the UK from:
Amazon
Book depository
Eden

The book has an accompanying website.
Publisher's website

Music for a Sunday morning

Why we disagree about climate change

Mike Hulme - looks at this question on the Guardian's Science Weekly podcast: here

Mike is the fonder of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research. The centre is named after John Tyndall who was one of the first scientists to recognise the earth's greenhouse effect in 1859. There is a New Scientist article on Tyndall here.

Mike is the author of Why We Disagree about Climate Change.

Climate stewards