Lucy Winkett The Observer Hands off our Christmas, Tommy Robinson
Peter Adams Talking Peace If the far right have parked their tanks on our front lawn, we need to get out and start the conversation!
Jonathan Clatworthy The point of it all Carol services and misleading bible readings
Andrew Anthony The Observer Sarah Mullally, archbishop of Canterbury
Ian Gomersall A Retired Rector’s Reflections Are LGBT people really welcome in the C of E?
Jonathan Clatworthy’s article seems to be intentionally provocative and completely ignores Paul’s epistle to the Romans.
The only part I have sympathy with is his denunciation of ‘mild, obedient’.
That the young Jesus was mild and obedient to his parents is fairly explicitly stated in Luke 2:51
There are other passages which indicate quite the opposite. I see Luke 2:51 indicates obedient, but I don’t see the word mild.
To be fait, my complaint is with ‘meek and mild’, not with ‘obedient’.
Once in royal David’s city uses the words ‘mild, obedient, good as he’ which I regard as a gross distortion. Shaking off the ‘goody goody’ image is a struggle.
How do you understand the Biblical description of Jesus as one who is ‘praos’?
Meek? Gentle? Humble? There is, I think to scriptural warrant for attributing mildness to Jesus, as one dimension of his multi- faceted character.
Yes, one dimension, but there is also his anger, I don’t see his throwing out of the temple as being mild. He must have had much authority to give the Sermon on the mount.
Mildness is often used as symbolising weakness. It can also be used to accept the status quo.
I think I am stating the obvious to this audience.
Classic case of the English translation not really getting to the heart of the original Greek meaning. Meekness is about being open to God’s will as opposed to being stubborn and self-asserting. Nothing to do with weakness or being a doormat.
According to Liddle & Scott:-
‘mild, soft’ : of persons ‘meek, gentle’ : of animals ‘tame’ : of sound ‘gentle, low, soft’.
No reference to any kind of deity there at all, William.
This is what I got:
This difficult to translate root (pra-) means more than ‘meek’. Biblical meekness is not weakness but rather refers to exercising God’s strength under his control – ie. demonstrating power without undue harshness.
Don’t you think this is what Our Lord would have meant by meekness?
And where did you get that?
Bauer gives:-
‘gentle, humble, considerate, meek’
If the Bible is God-inspired why would God stop when it is written down for the first time? Wouldn’t He continue inspiring translations? So maybe the English versions are what God intends us to have even if they are subtly different to the original?
mmmm, not sure about that
Classic, rather poor and simplistic, rational for the “ revisionist “ brigade. Yes indeed, why don’t we keep re-editing the word of God until it fits our chosen lifestyles!!
she must deal with the deep-seated tensions between conservative evangelists and Anglo-Catholics, on one side, and progressive liberals and the evangelical tendency on the other.
Does The Observer not have a religious matters editor?
I believe they are called the “religion doesn’t matter” editor.
Glad to see Jonathan Clatworthy thinks he’s discovered it all again, like a 1960s Bible scholar who believes the ancient apostolic tradition of the Church has no merit and he knows much better in 2025. Thanks, but no thanks.
And the twenty twenties’ young fogeys know far better than the nineteen sixties’ Bible scholars of course.
Twenty-twenties young fogies may have the benefit of having read post-1960s scholarship. Clatworthy could do with an up-to-date reading list.
I mean yes, we didn’t empty the churches.
You are filling them up now, are you?
According to Acts 2, the disciples devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, and to fellowship, to fasting and prayer, and it was the Lord who added to the number who were being saved. So filling churches seems to involve the Lord and faithful disciples.
I would dissent from Jonathan C to quite an extent. The Eden/Serpent narrative isn’t all that emphatically monotheistic, since the Serpent is a supernatural force and personality critical of God – in Gilgamesh the serpent is merely an animal who steals some food, which actually is the flower of immortality, so he sheds his skin and becomes young again. In Genesis he is the sly precursor of all who say that God’s words must be examined critically. We may not believe all the grim Augustinian stuff about the Fall but there is no doubt that Adam’s contretemps led to a… Read more »
I want to give Jonathan Clatworthy a bit of support. One can disagree with his particular interpretation of certain texts, but still agree that the traditional set of texts for the lessons and carols service are problematic and could do with updating.
And in the mesopotamian parallels to the eden experience, the sexual act is seen as a growth into human self consciousness, a positive act, not a fall.
Which might place the serpent as Prometheus.
‘Problematic’ in what way? I’ve not heard criticism of the Lessons from anyone I know, so I’m interested.
Perhaps I should have said the traditional set of texts “can be problematic”, and problematic for certain audiences. What many are well served with what we have now, there might also be many irregular church attenders who would be better served by other readings which lead them through the story in a more accessible way, or by other translations than the KJV. But I have often been told we cannot alter the format, not because the old way is best, but because it is “tradition”, and people dare not alter tradition. Going with tradition should be an active choice based… Read more »
In my part of the world it’s decades since I’ve heard a Nine Lessons and Carols service that uses the King James Version. Indeed, in the last couple of years before I retired we made a point of reading the lessons in as many different languages as possible – as many as the readers we could find in the congregation. I think the last one we did before I retired we had English, French, Russian, Swahili, Inuktitut, and NT Greek.
Was your congregation fluent in Koine Greek?
And if not, why not? If koine was good enough for Paulos, it’s good enough for me.
No, nor Russian, but in accordance with the instructions in 1 Corinthians 14.28, we had an ‘interpreter’ in the pews – a pew Bible for people to follow along with!
Would it not have just been simpler, and less virtue signalling, just to have the readings in a language everyone should be able to understand i.e. the vernacular?
First, I don’t understand why you accuse a total stranger of ‘virtue-signalling’ (whatever that means – showing off? Doing your acts of righteousness as performing art?). How do you know we didn’t just make the decision to do it for the joy of it?
Second, how do you understand the combination of the gift of tongues and interpretation in 1 Corinthians 14? Wouldn’t it be simpler for God simply to use prophecy? For that matter, why all the languages on the Day of Pentecost, when everyone there had at least one language in common?
“Virtue signalling” is far-right slang for “thing I hate but can’t make even a semi-coherent argument against”.
We don’t always agree, but I can only say that I’m shocked by the shameful responses you have received from this end on this topic.
Thanks Rowland. A happy new year to you.
Common Worship (in the Times and Seasons volume) provides other sequences of readings, with fewer readings, as well as alternative opening prayers. My own experience is that seven readings is usually ample. And that there is no need at all to read from the Authorized Version.
Yes it’s far far too much for people to hear about the whole of salvation history in a beautiful and weighty translation of the Bible.
Thank you Simon, that is a helpful bit of advice about Common Worship alternatives I did not know before.
But the obstacles locally were not the availability of suitable alternative readings, but a strong lobby saying that the only acceptable choice was tradition for tradition’s sake.
I went to a Carol Service in Croydon Minster about ten years ago and they did vary the readings.
The Vicar of the church I attended when I was growing up said he found the 9 lessons and carols long and tedious. I think his objection was mainly to the number of lessons. My current church had a reading from Job in place of the Genesis passage ( the bit at the end when God tells Job how clever he is, which I find very difficult). The firm where I trained as a solicitor held a carol service with Isaiah 9 as the first lesson of 6 or 7. If the Milner- White bidding prayer is used, the words… Read more »
We had the usual 9 readings in the Authorised version (as usual) this year. Contra Common Worship, I reinstated v. 15 of Genesis 3 as stopping at v. 14 makes a nonsense of the redemptive-historical narrative. I think some people want to turn Lessons & Carols into an exercise in patronising the semi-faithful, imagining that it’s an opportunity to teach them what they ought to believe. I’m perfectly content to let people enjoy the atmosphere and simply to pray that the Holy Spirit will do the work of leading them into greater faith. Not everything has to be explained to… Read more »
Was that because the Senior Partner was uncomfortable with the idea that assistant solicitors might have had their own Days of Disobedience? The solicitors I know are paragons of rectitude. I hadn’t considered it before but can imagine a Senior Partner not being keen on that phrase. Thank you for the story. Merry Christmas.
Martin Hughes. I question your second sentence. The serpent in Genesis is explicitely named as a creature – the most cunning of all – but a creature. Not the devil or a supernatural force. A different kind of story is being told than the surrounding myths. God has no rivals in this story. I readvit that the serpent is there to provoke the questions – but because it is a creature the focus is on the human couple and their choices.
He has supernatural abilities surely. I don’t think we’re meant to pursue the question of how he got them, why God permits the existence of an animal who can quite intelligently question him. You surely can’t say that God puts the critical words into his forked tongue – and then goes on, morally appallingly, to curse him roundly. A being with supernatural powers capable of resisting God’s plans is a theos of a kind. I would accept that allegorically Adam and Eve are not just primeval people losing childlike innocence about sex but people of simple faith encountering the problems… Read more »
Whatever a historical-critical hermeneutic may imply for exegesis of Genesis, might a canonical hermeneutic link it with Rev 20.2?
‘He has supernatural abilities surely’. The story does not say so. You appear to be assuming a literal talking snake with divine powers? But you do not find here a literal, historical human couple? I read this as an ancient wisdom parable. It is the story teller, not God, who puts critical words in his mouth.
David,
You may read Genesis 3 as “an ancient wisdom parable” (about what exactly?) But Paul in 2 Timothy treats the tempting of Adsm and Eve as a resl event involving reql people. Who is correct?
If you literalise myth, it is like looking down the wrong end of a telescope: you make everything look smaller, rather than larger. Myth is meant to be felt, and to be received in wonder. It isn’t fact. It is designed to open people’s minds. With regard to 1 Timothy 2:14, Paul’s justification for the submission of women to men’s authority is based on the example of Eve being the first to be deceived in Eden. Was Paul treating that as a ‘story’ rather than event? Then his justification might just have persuasion. But just as possible is that, perhaps… Read more »
I said nothing about my own beliefs. I was asking about what St Paul believed. It seems clear to me from Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15.45-47 and 1 Tim 2 that Paul believed in the historical existence of Adam and Eve. One can of course treat Gen 1-3 as ‘creation myth’; and one can just as easily do the same with the New Testament.
Are we supposed to answer ‘Saint Paul obviously, because he was a saint’?
Matthew, you are supposed to answer according to the light you have.
You will not agree I am sure, but I do not think Paul does actually, but the lessons are the same.
So you don’t think that Paul actually believed that Eve was tempted? I do not think any biblical scholar (regardless of their personal beliefs) thinks that is correct.
It is very clearly a story about temptation. I do not think we are required to believe it is a factual, verbatum record of a conversation between the first woman and a talking snake in an ancient near eastern pleasure garden,
David,
The question isn’t what *we are “required to believe”, it is, What did *Paul believe happened? I do not think any scholar can really say ‘Paul didn’t believe this really happened, he was just using a legend’ – even if you think it is a (non-historical) legend, Paul didn’t.
Personally I do treat it as literal but I think your position is totally valid. When on Earth, Jesus taught in parables so it seems perfectly reasonable to me that someone might see Genesis as a parable which a message of morality rather than a true story.
Paul doesn’t explicitly regard it as a real event. He uses it to reinforce his teaching to the church, which was in accord with the cultural norms of the society of the day. He makes the Garden of Eden no more or less a picture of creation and the creation ordinance.
No, he does regard it as a real event. It isn’t up to us to insert words like ‘explicitly’ or ‘no more or less a picture’ just because moderns don’t accept that Adam and Eve were real people. There are plenty of other cases in Paul (Romans 5; 1 Corinthians 15) where Paul explicitly refers to Adam as a real individual – just as believed in the historical existence of Abraham, Isaac, Moses etc and the stories in the Pentateuch that many modern folk think are legendary. We cannot with integrity make Paul say what we *want him to say,… Read more »
James, I understand that you simply want people to acknowledge that Paul himself believed in a historical Adam and Eve, because you believe that he did. It’s an interesting question of some consequence. However, I wondered if you might explain why you think this issue is significant. Personally I don’t know whether Paul believed the Genesis events literally (I’m slightly inclined to think he did) or whether he was treating the Genesis narrative like myth/story and just using the material to back up his own teaching and new covenant theology. In short, is there a point to your question, which… Read more »
Thank you for the clarity I failed to convey!
I’m a bit lost. Do you consider Adam and Eve were real people, and we all come from them?
I replied but the editor didn’t publish my reply.
The CofE needs a worked-through social doctrine. Currently it has lots of slogans but no actionable costed policy recommendations, as if it was the ecclesiastical wing of the Liberal Democrats. Its approach to refugees should balance the particular closeness of Jesus to the poor, and marginalised from around the world with his closeness to the poor and marginalised of Britain, whole lives are worsened by the addition of large numbers of new people to their communities without any planning for the increased infrastructure needed. Without that planning, the CofE is simply disadvantaging one set of people to benefit another, and… Read more »
i couldn’t agree more. I even read out your post to my wife, who sees these issues every day in her work, and she agreed.
A lot is about the message – if Christians are perceived to welcome open doors, all they will get is ridicule, rightfully.
In a nation that spends many multiples of its support for the needs of the poor on defense and war, surely there is room for more of those poor.
I’d check your maths on that – social security spending (alone) in the UK is £350bn per year. Defence is about £60bn per year. Add in anything else that be plausibly bracketed as ‘the needs of the poor’ (eg bits of health) and even when you stick in non-defence related financial support to eg Ukraine I find it difficult to arrive at a scenario where the UK isn’t spending many multiples of its spending on defence and war on its support for the needs of the poor.
And that’s just state spending.
Thank you. Yes. The view from those large rectories and vicarages must be lovely without the need to worry about wage suppression, scarce resource competition and pension evaporation.
What large rectories and vicarages? Most have been sold. And anyway, try paying to furnish and heat one of the few that are left if you have any family at all to feed.
I completely agree: the mixed blessings and splendour of Georgian rectories etc are long gone but I meant the current (still huge) rectories/ vicarages with security of tenure which lasts longer than a year, and I’d love to have their pension scheme. There are tough aspects to clergy life, but redundancy, recessions and undercut wages are not usually amongst them.
Rerum Novarum’s final sentence criticises lazy Xty: living standards are falling and the Church’s response is not realistic.
And the proper response would be?
Disappointing to see Christians repeat the Mammonite claims of the wealthy attempting to pit the poor of different national origins against each other. “Wage suppression” isn’t a natural phenomenon, it’s a choice made by the capitalist class to not pay people the value of their labour.
Well, in a market economy, labour doesn’t have an intrinsic value, does it? It’s one of the many things that can be bought and sold at a negotiated price. And the price lowers if there are more people available and willing to work – informally or otherwise – at lower prices than the rest of the workforce. I think this is what is meant by wage suppression. Which is perhaps why the mammonite wealthy of the capitalist class are more comfortable about large scale immigration than the working class.
Thank you, Citizen Smith, for your “disappointment”. It is the rational consequence of a rapidly increased labour supply, no matter where it comes from.
Reframing immoral theft of the value of labour as “rational” is just a more polite way of saying “the love of money is good, actually”.
Which is the point I’m making. The present (lack of) system means that wages, opportunities and physical infrastructure available to poorer British people are reduced by large scale migration. Of course that suits the wealthy, which is perhaps why very large scale migration was seen under a Conservative government that claimed to oppose it. The ways around that are to much more rapidly increase infrastructure (houses, hospitals, sports centres) in economically disadvantaged areas experiencing rapid population growth; or to substantially limit migration; or to tell poor people to shut up and accept the situation. The CofE seems to have adopted… Read more »
There are very few “economically disadvantaged areas experiencing rapid population growth”. Growth is happening predominantly in economically active areas, because that’s where vacancies are. It’s interesting you frame support for the far right as coming predominantly from “poor people”. I suppose that’s convenient, but I’m not sure it’s true. It comes mostly from the same place as tory support – the wealthy, pensioners, and people who run small businesses and imagine themselves as a cut above ordinary workers. Also, is the CofE not in favour of building new schools, hospitals, GP surgeries and so on where they’re needed? I’m surprised… Read more »
Did you see any of the TV coverage of the Tommy Robinson march in September? Did that look like a Countryside Alliance Rally?
Have you heard any of the Bishops say that migration should be limited to the rate at which schools, hospitals and GP surgeries can be built? I certainly haven’t.
And are many refugees buying up properties in Belgravia? Of course not, they’re living in poorer parts of the country because initially they don’t have the resources to afford anywhere else.
You said “large scale migration”. Refugees are a tiny fraction of immigrants. Most immigrants are here on work visas in high paid occupations or specific shortage areas. Mostly in (drumroll please) health and social care. Why do you keep jumping from refugees to immigration as if they’re the same thing? Housing being built without appropriate infrastructure is a chronic problem, and happens in overwhelmingly multi-generation British areas too. Do you want to see how much harder it is to get a doctor’s appointment or how much longer you have to wait for hospital treatment or a care package without staff… Read more »
Sorry… but you have no idea about the reality of how many clergy live. Does ice form on the inside of your bedroom windows? Too cold to sleep? Do your belongings, furniture included, go mouldy? I had all those experiences…
Blessed Christmas to you, nevertheless…
Well it might be cold by some peoples standards, but I live in a five bedroom house which I’d never be able to afford in the real world, and I don’t even have to pay council tax, so I consider myself very fortunate!
Does your parish pays its own way? Are you a net giver or receiver?
Inside ice is cold by any standard…. and not nice in any way! 😎
I spoke too soon. Damn boiler’s just broken down.
True, but you have managed to have your own front door for most of your clerical career? And live in your home for longer than a year with the space (and some cash) to have a family if wanted? How often are your rent reviews? Indeed. You are right. I don’t. Some aspects of clergy life seem lovely but there are others which are truly appalling, but you don’t want pity and I am not offering it. As you rightly say, a blessed Christmas to you and yours. Thanks for your prayer: I am grateful. You and yours, Ian, are… Read more »
I’m not blaming CofE vicars – they are regularly put in the position of having to either say nothing about world events, or spend ages trying to figure out lucid Christian viewpoints on extremely complex subjects. Catholics have loads of social policy research centres, whereas we have much less. That would be OK if the CofE admitted their opinions about political issues should not be given much weight But perhaps as a result of pronouncing those opinions in large cathedrals, our leaders seem to want them to be taken very seriously. It might be no bad thing for a few… Read more »
You are right in so many ways. Thank you for making me laugh. I hope 2026 brings you only good things.
I find the common British attitude to newcomers from ‘abroad’ hypocritical in the extreme. Who precisely was it that colonised North America (where I live), did its best to wipe out the many and various indigenous cultures (see ‘residential schools’), imposed its own laws and customs on indigenous peoples, and told them it was for their own good, because they were uncivilised savages? In the days of empire we Brits went all over the world and stole everyone else’s land. Wow, guess what: the rest of the world is now returning the compliment! See what happens when you look at… Read more »
Two wrongs may not make a right. If we must be fettered with the unforgiveable and unexpungeable sin of colonialism, should we not want to spare our invaders a future taint which our history means we eternally endure?
So far your invaders haven’t committed genocide against you, made your religion illegal, forbidden you from practising your culture, imposed their laws on your citizens etc. etc. The two wrongs are a long, long way from being equal. I live on Treaty Six territory (google it). The Treaty gives the legal basis for my ownership of the plot of land my house stands on. But it’s common in my neck of the woods to hear right-wingers advocating the abolition of the treaties (“It’s time to move on,” they say). They don’t seem to realise that if the treaties are abolished,… Read more »
So far…
Not to mention the fact that the current ‘indigenous’ Brits are mainly descendants of German and French invaders who drove out the older Celtic population, and were then themselves invaded and massively infiltrated by Scandinavians! My wife, who is of Welsh descent, likes to joke about land claims negotiations with the English foreigners…
And the Celts themselves were invaders and conquerors just a few centuries earlier.
That is a very old and increasingly discredited interpretation of what happened. There is loads of ‘Celtic’ genetics in the average English person, reflective of a scenario where the majority were assimilated rather than displaced. Of course, unhelpfully (to some in the Celtic fringe) that gives England a decent claim to status as a Celtic country and introduces unhelpful taint of ‘blood and soil’ racial purity as to why they are not considered one…
And which tribe (‘First Nation’) occupied the land before French and British settlers? And how did they occupy it? By killing and driving off the previous occupying tribe, First Nation alpha. Who killed and drove off First Nation aleph. And so on all the way back to the last ice age (ok, that still may be going on in Canada) because that is how “possession ” of lands in the Americas was decided (and in pre-modern Europe, Africa and everywhere else) – by conflict, genocide, enslavement and absorption, until civilisation ( = agriculture and permanent cities), literacy and laws became… Read more »
In Europe this view of history and immigration can be seen as far back as the move of Homo sapiens into regions occupied by Homo neanderthalensis.
Which was thousands of years ago. But in the Americas ALL their history, up to the 19th century in the Great Plains, was about one Indian people conquering and displacing another – and in Mexico and Peru, the empires in question (Aztec. Mayan, Incan) were very bloody and practised human sacrifice on an industrial scale. And so it continued until they met in the Europeans peoples too strong for them to beat.
I thought that before the evil colonialists arrived in various parts of the wold people sat around singing kumbaya? Particularly in India?
Curious to know where you live, James, and whether you know any of these indigenous people you seem to know so much about?
I will simply point out that most histories of pre-colonial north America are written by descendants of the colonists. As a young person, I absorbed the wild west version of indigenous history, but I’ve discovered that when you ask actual indigenous elders about pre-conquest life, you get a somewhat different story. Violence, yes – but no more so than so-called ‘civilised’ Christendom Europe. And should n ot a purportedly ‘Christian’ empire have a different standard for itself?
Tim, everyone knows there was violence in medieval Europe, but my point was that Europe, as the successor of the Roman Empire, was organised into settled states with towns and cities, and the Church was engaged in the centuries long process of turning barbarian tribes into something more peaceful and productive. This is what the ‘Truce of God’, the chivalric movement (turning murderous knights into Christian champions) and the monastic movements were all about. Civilisation first of all means living in cities (civitates) where science, literacy and the arts of government can flourish, as a consequence of settled life in… Read more »
They aren’t ‘Indians’, James; the very fact that you use that misguided name exemplifies your contempt for their cultures (note the plural) and their self-understanding. To give just one example of your complete lack of connection with reality: it may well be true that in some indigenous cultures women lived a hellish life, but other cultures were matriarchal and the women exercised a huge amount of power. I have myself witnessed a young intoxicated man who was threatening someone with violence being led away from the scene like a child by an elderly woman who he obeyed without question. From… Read more »
There is no “contempt” in my use of “Indian”, it is a legal term used in the 1982 Constitution and the Indian Act. Terms for indigenous peoples keep changing as fashions come and go – and in the US ‘American Indian’ is back in favour as a collective term. Plus ca change … Where do you place the Metis in all this? If you want to say ‘First Nations’ (and ‘Second Nation’ for Metis, ‘Third Nation’ for Quebeckers, ‘Fourth’ for British etc) that is fine. But let me assure you, I have read through the 84 plus pages on “mass… Read more »
As I said earlier, I’m curious to know where you live, James, and whether you know any of these indigenous people you seem to know so much about? So far all your information seems to have come from websites and online content. I’ve seen no evidence, for instance, that you’ve sat with residential school survivors and heard their stories. My good friend Archdeacon Travis Enright, a well-known indigenous priest in our diocese, once explained to me that if you’re giving a talk or speech to a group of Cree (Nehiyaw) people to whom you are a stranger, it is considered… Read more »
Tim, please keep an open mind in relation to your last sentence. Don’t let your experience with one individual sour your relationship with others who welcome and richly value your contributions. Very best wishes for 2026.
Thank you.
Thanks for this Tim, and for all your very patient existentially informed comments on this issue. I think they can be very helpful to folks in the UK and elsewhere who may be genuinely interested in understanding the issues involved. Personally, I don’t see much point in engaging with denialism—but it is important to correct its misinformation. For example UK readers should know that here in Canada we have had to contend with narrative that unmarked graves is a hoax. That narrative is false and has been debunked. Ever hopeful, I’ve attached a couple of links about the debunking of… Read more »
James, reading your stream of consciousness takes me back to studying the texts written by colonial explorers a century ago or more. A text based more on prejudice than on scholarship. The message is that we Christian Europeans are civilised, and indigenous foreigners, especially those who are not Christian, cannot be more civilised, and therefore must be more like savages than we are. Thankfully there’s quite a lot of scholarship and research to counterbalance your views.. You said “scalping and genocide of other villages were commonplace in the life and death struggle for resources.”. This is correct. But in the… Read more »
I find your comment a smorgasbord of whataboutisms, non-sequiturs, confusions between consequences and underlying causes, including confusion between systemic violence and random acts of aggression. You might try and get your terminology straight. By “mass graves” in the ‘rural schools’, I assume you means the discovery of potentially thousands of unmarked graves on the sites of former Indian Residential Schools –as the schools were then historically designated by Canadian government policy. I could send you resource after resource after resource on the issues involved i.e. colonialism/post-colonialism, sexual and physical abuse by the churches which staffed and operated the schools, information… Read more »
There were NO unmarked graves. It was all a lie, propagated by journalists and people ready to believe the worst. Many churches were burned.No one has apologised for this terrible slander.
I have now read through the entire Wikipedia article on the so-called “mass graves” in the Infian residential schools. It goes on for pages and pages and the results are ….. nothing. Nobody has the courage or honesty to say, “I was wrong. I was duped. I believed a fashionable lie. I am sorry.”
Well given a choice between someone speaking out of a lifetime’s varied ministry and local knowledge in Canada and an article on Wikepedia – it’s just a no brainer isn’t it James?
David – it’s a VERY LONG Wikipedia article, reviewing dozens of investigations all over Canada, written from a very liberal point of view, searching for any evidence of ‘mass graves’ – and it couldn’t find any, although it dearly wanted to. Read it yourself. I don’t imagine Tim has been using “ground-penetrating radar” on fields in Newfoundland or British Columbia. I have followed this story for about three years now – and nothing substantial has been found, despite immense efforts. But don’t take it from me: read all the footnotes to the article and then tell me what we should… Read more »
Agreed. It is important to hear Tim Chesterton’s voice on these matters. He has served in the Canadian Church where there are Indigenous Anglicans, including the The Church in the North, and I think he learned an indigenous language. He knows what he is talking about. Additionally, this must be noted: “The existence of unmarked burials of missing and disappeared Indigenous children is a well-established reality in Canada. In volume 4 of the TRC’s Final Report, entitled Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, the TRC began the important work of recording and analyzing the number of deaths of children at Indian… Read more »
Ruairidh, Concerning your last paragraph, you are right that the visits by both Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin to Canada in 2022 to apologise to the first nations peoples for the sins of the RC and Anglican churches is virtually unknown and undiscussed in the UK. https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/speaking-writing/speeches/read-archbishop-justins-apology-indigenous-peoples-canada https://www.papalvisit.ca/ In this context I have found Derek Scally’s discussion of shame in his book “the Best Catholics in the World” to be incredibly helpful. Scally explores the Irish church safeguarding scandals, and describes how a huge number of people don’t want to engage with the issue. He put this partly down to… Read more »
Thanks Simon. About forty plus years ago there was a public corruption scandal involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I recall, as a young priest, chatting with a local member of the RCMP who remarked, “Every one of our members in uniform has to wear that [the scandal] in public.” I think shame and denialism can both be at play when a large number of people are caught up in the failings and betrayals of the institutions they have belonged to, served, cherished. However, I will have to look for the letter from the MPs you mention. I have not… Read more »
Agreed, Rod. And yes, I had a rough working knowledge of Inuinaktun, though I was far from fluent. Good enough to know that you can’t use a conjunctive verb in the future tense in Inuinaktun – which tells you what Inuit thought of the certainty of the future!
David, I don’t know how the editor responds to comments made, but I answered you in detail hours ago but it hasn’t been published (yet).
I replied but the editor has not published my reply.
My reply was not an invitation to debate. Your comments suggest that you don’t yet have enough background for that to be mutually worthwhile. My including the link to the suite of materials from The Centre for Truth and Reconciliation here in Canada was in the hope it may encourage you to test your undifferentiated tangle of assertions against careful and exhaustive research. Peace and friendship, whoever you are and wherever you are, James, from here in Mi’kma’ki.
–Ruairidh, aka The Rev. Canon Roderick Gillis (ret’d) Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
You too should read the very long Wikipedia article – but better, follow up its many footnotes and references – and then tell me exactly how many Indian children were secretly buried in mass graves across Canada in residential schools. Tell me if the journalist’s story was true or sensationalist supposition without factual basis. Your comment doesn’t suggest that you have enough facts about this yet, but I would be glad to learn of your factual discoveries.
‘secretly buried in mass graves across Canada in residential schools’ James, I am certainly not claiming that. What is incontrovertible is that children who had been taken far from home without the consent of their parents, and had been forced into a foreign boarding school system, sometimes died there from communicable diseases. As far as I know they were not buried in mass graves, but their graves were often unmarked, and with the passage of time all outward indicators of their presence disappeared. Sometimes the parents were notified of their children’s deaths; often, they were not, or they were notified… Read more »
Roderick,
I have looked through the link you sent, especially the 84+ pages of residential schools – lots and lots of maps and photographs – and not a single ‘mass grave’ uncovered. That was my point, Thank you for helping me make it.
I have replied to Rod but my comment has not been published. Nothing in the stuff Rod sent me supports the “mass children’s graves ” story thst inflamed Canadians.
I have replied at length but the editor has not published my reply. I read all 84 plus pages on ‘residential schools’ – nothing found at all. Where is the apology?
Roderick, Besides the links you sent, I have read up to date extensive essays and very recent reports from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, inter alia. The latest information I have confirms what I understood some months ago, namely: 1.No graves have been found in the Kamloops IRS, despite the many very serious allegations made there by the Kamloops Indian Band and others that ‘215 children were in unmarked graves’ in an orchard. Kamloops IRS was run by nuns of the Order of St Anne who had great love for the children they taught, and the… Read more »
The allegation that a false narrative about ‘mass unmarked graves’ was created by a journalist or journalists was carefully examined two years ago by two researchers at the University of Manitoba (Sean Carleton and Reid Gerbrandt) and they wrote up their findings here. Their key conclusion, after analysing hundreds of news articles: the wording ‘mass graves’ was very rarely used in the mainstream media. I note Chief Rosanne Casimir’s statement: “this is not a mass grave, but rather unmarked burial sites that are, to our knowledge, also undocumented.” The Carleton/Gerbrandt article should be read in full before any further discussion… Read more »
That is definitely not what the Kamloops Indian Band was saying four years ago. And it is not what Rosanne Casimir said to CBC reporters on 28 May 2021, when she claimed 215 children were buried in the orchard. Not a single grave has been found and I haven’t seen the name of one “missing child”. If this is the beginning of a walkback, there is still a long way to go. But admitting errors is something politicians don’t do.
James: This is going to be my last comment on this issue as I appear to be wasting my time. You have narrowed the discussion down to the recent alleged discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites, and particularly in Kamloops. But my original comment was much broader. Originally, I pointed out the irony of British people protesting about the arrival of large numbers of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, when for over three centuries millions of people from the UK went all over the world, helped themselves to other people’s lands, eradicated their cultures and languages, abolished… Read more »
Tim, 1.Cultures constantly change and there is nothing we can do about that. As I have frequently pointed out, the native peoples of North America were not ‘noble savages’ in the myth of Rousseau that is enjoying a revival, but human beings like the rest of us. It is just that they were confronted with going through 3000-4000 years of cultural development to become like modern Europeans in the space of less than three generations – and nobody can go through that degree of ultra-rapid change without a lot of cultural shock. The same things happened in sub-Saharan Africa and… Read more »
As far as I can see – living in a part of the country with a high rate of immigration – there is no evidence of the violently seizing of land and resources, the destruction of cultures and the enslavement or genocide of native populations which often characterised western European colonialism, so I do not see where the ‘taint’ might come from
Give it a century on current demographic trajectories and let’s see where we are.
To the extent that people maintain any level of religious practice we shall certainly be a much more Muslim country. Islam, unlike Christianity, has rarely been spread by military conquest and violence, and it wont have established itself in the UK by those means a century from now.
You plainly haven’t lived in North Africa, the Middle East or India. What have you done to bring Christianity to Muslims in Britain?
I have lived in Pakistan.
The early history of Islam, indeed the history up to the 15th century, does seem to indicate considerable expansion by military conquest. Al Andalus hardly became Muslim by persuasion, or even by peaceful migration, and neither did Anatolia or Constantinople. Both Islam and Christianity have a decidedly mixed history regarding the use of violence.
Al Andalus embraced Islam rather more happily than it had Christianity forced back on it several centuries later.
“Islam, unlike Christianity, has rarely been spread by military conquest and violence”. You jest, surely?
Consider the places where the majority of the world’s Muslims are : Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. There is no evidence of any great military conquest in the Indus valley, the Ganges delta or the south east Asian archipelago. In all cases Islam appears to have been brought initially by traders and then by Sufi preachers. Christianity was established in sub Saharan Africa through European colonial conquest, yet half of the population of sub Saharan Africa is Muslim without there being any equivalent Islamic colonisation. The early Islamisation of North Africa and Spain has not left much archaeological evidence of… Read more »
Unless we have some VERY young posters on TA, I presume that in a century we’ll all have “gone on to our reward.”
In the mean time, “Your Father in heaven knows, lilies, fields”, yada yada?
You are ignoring the technological and cultural differences between the indigenous and the incomer. But there is a basic rule of human settlement: Either they become like you or you become like them. I imagine you don’t live in Tower Hamlets or send children to school in Bradford, Or Batley. If you did, you would understand the issues.
Well, my daughter lives in Millwoods which is the most multicultural part of Edmonton (Alberta). There are thriving churches, some mosques, and a large Sikh Gudwara just down the road from her house. My grandsons go to school with people of many different races. I won’t say there are no troubles at all, but the various ethnic and cultural groups seem to rub along beside each other quite well. In Alberta there is a long history of Ukrainian settlement going back to the late 1800s; there’s a little Italy and a thriving Chinatown in the centre of Edmonton, and large… Read more »
I hsve replied but the editor has not (yet) published it.
I replied at length but the editor has not published my reply.
The editors do have lives to live and sometimes those lives take priority over approving comments.
Thank you Simon and your fellow editors for your graciouds forebearance, without which TA would not be available as a forum for such a range of experience and opinion Wishing you all a happy and blessed time ahead. God ‘elp us all.
That might be a rule in societies with limited communication and movement, where the only people you interact with are your immediate neighbours. I rather doubt it, though – what tends to happen is that together you and they become something a bit like both but also not quite like either. So white British culture isn’t Roman or Celtic or Saxon or Norse or French, but something that combines aspects of all and some features of its own, in different proportions by location (a bit more Celtic in the west, a bit more Norse in the north, say). It’s certainly… Read more »
Your examples are all within the European Christian model: the Iridh boy marries the Italian girl. We face a very different scenario today. And it is the case that state education, law and custom will enforce a measure of assimilation as well as self-censorship for fear of retaliation. Few people in Britain today talk openly about the history of Islamic conquest or the person or life of Muhammad- including his wives and wars and against the Jews and against other Arabs, which we openly did in my schooldays. Freedom of speech has taken an enormous hit in the past few… Read more »
You must live in a very strange bubble if you are constantly wanting to talk about events 1400 years ago but can’t because of putative “fear of retaliation”. Those events only matter to present day Britain if you’re seeking to insinuate something about British Muslims on the basis of those events. Is that what you’re seeking to do? The Batley case is unfortunate. The teacher did something completely unnecessary and was subject to a disproportionate and wholly unwarranted and unacceptable reaction. I would, however, invite you to imagine the reaction to showing an equivalent caricature of Jesus in, say, Lewis,… Read more »
The Batley case is “Unfortunate”? Yes, unfortunate like Auschwitz. And the suggestion that a Christian mob would besiege a school and drive a Jewish teacher into hiding for fear of his life is utterly ludicrous. The name of our Lord is blasphemed every night on British TV. Christians just sadly shrug their shoulders.
I do not know what you know about British schools. I taught for years in them and I can tell you the truth about Muhammad’s life, his wives, wars and actual teachings – what Muslims themselves acknowledge- is NEVER discussed. The subject is altogether too incendiary.
“Auschwitz”? That’s a disgusting comparison. And yes, I can well imagine the Wee Frees and Wee Wee Frees doing exactly that. You don’t have much experience of conservative Calvinism, do you? As for British schools I taught in them for 15 years, in England and Scotland, including two Islamic schools (the college I worked for provided their A-Level teaching). I don’t recall ever discussing the history of Islam in detail but then I never discussed the history of any religion in detail what with teaching maths and physics. R(M)E lessons tend to focus on what Muslims believe and practice, not… Read more »
You have answered your own question. I taught RE and know a great deal about the early history of Islam and the life of Muhammad and how it is constitutive of Islamic identity today, covering marriage, jihad, attitudes to non-Muslims etc.
Nobody was playing ‘gotcha’. The British for the most part are deeply ignorant of Islam in a way that Hindus and Sikhs definitely are not. You were wise to stick to maths and physics.
See, I base my knowledge of Muslim attitudes to non-Muslims on my interactions with Muslims. Those I taught were generally respectful and courteous, and happy to discuss differences and similarities in religious practices. One asked me to pray for them, because they are taught that the prayers of a teacher are particularly valuable. Do I agree with all their moral and ethical positions? No, but then I don’t agree with all of yours, either, but don’t feel the need to paint you as a threatening “other”. And these were pretty committed Muslims, studying to be Imams or memorising the Qur’an… Read more »
You are a far greater beneficiary of the empire than I am, Tim, as you presently live in a country with a land-mass per person one hundred times greater than England. And as you feel your presence in Canada disadvantages the indigenous population, it’s worth asking why you haven’t chosen to return to Britain rather continuing to benefit from life in Canada at the expense of the indigenous minority. Also, your reverse directionality concept has some strange corollaries. Reversing the directionality once more, Tommy Robinson would be viewed as a nationalist freedom fighter in the same mould as Ghandi, Nehru,… Read more »
Because my children and grandchildren all live here. And also, quite frankly, because very few indigenous Canadians have asked it of me. What they have asked is that I read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the 94 calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Oh, and by the way, an enormous amount of that land mass is in largely uninhabitable regions.
Jonathan Clatworthy on his website states the following: “I’m objecting not to the texts themselves but to the way they are being taken out of context to support a very different – and false – picture of what Jesus was about.” In his article he states that Jesus “ saw what was wrong and started a movement to put it right”. It seems that he believes and teaches that there is no need for a saviour, and no need for repentance from sin. But then I am a bear of little brain, just fluff.
Did Jesus teach that there is a need of a ‘saviour’?
The clue is in the name. ‘Jeshua’ means ‘Yahweh saves.’ His very identity is that of the saviour, as the angelic messenger declared at his conception: ‘he will save his people from their sins.’
You should ask your local vicar these questions.
I am my local vicar. I’m asking you, and I know that you have no answer otherwise you would have given me it!
Evan, you do know that Jesus was a very very common name in our Lord’s day, don’t you? Bob says that Jesus taught that we need a saviour. I’d like to know where he, not the archangel Gabriel, did that.
‘The son of man came to seek and to save the lost’.
Indeed there were many Jeshuas and our Lord was the one foreshadowed by them all: the Joshua to end all Joshuas, as it were. I’m not convinced one needs to say a thing explicitly to be doing that thing. The one who led God’s people out of their wandering in the wilderness into the Promised Land was a type of Christ and if that’s not ‘saving’, I’m not sure what is. But I suspect I won’t be convincing you either of the need of a saviour or of God’s ultimate ability to save. Thankfully, most of us under the age… Read more »
Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that dissing “moral exemplar views of Jesus” means “I’ve found Jesus’s morals uncomfortable so I refuse to live by them”? Not judging, turning the other cheek, feeding/healing sinners and foreigners, healing the Roman centurion’s beloved (even if said centurion be sleeping with the man)? It’s all just too icky, isn’t it…
A fantastic comment, thank you.
So often in today’s world we are offered a binary choice. Either this or that – but not both.
Jesus is God and saviour, and therefore the alternative, Jesus as moral exemplar, is somehow devalued.
So often the value is in the conjunction. It’s Both/And, not Either/Or.
I am 64 and a half, and I haven’t.
I know you’re your own vicar, I was being ironic. And I know the answer to your question. What I don’t know is how you can be so sceptical about Christian basics and hold a salaried post in the Church of England. Full disclosure: I have been a C of E priest for most of my life.
What is the answer then? Where did Jesus say that we need a saviour?
As our only source for ‘what Jesus said’ is actually ‘what the Gospel-writers and apostles said Jesus said’ we might as well be willing to include what they said about him as being of equal authority. Otherwise, we’re just arbitrarily according authority to one part of a unified text. Trying to extricate ‘the real words of Jesus’ is a fools errand.
It’s everywhere in John’s Gospel – if you believe that it faithfully represents the teaching of Christ. If you don’t, I can’t help you. I’m not into Bultmann et al and their rationalistic scepticism, and I know plenty of commentators (you probably do, too) who repudiate that scepticism and historical outlook. But as I said, I don’t know how one can (with integrity) take the money, house and status of an official teacher of doctrine that one seriously doubts.
I will only believe that you are a priest, as you claim to be, if you have the courage to emerge from behind the curtain of anonymity. For my part, I don’t know how one can (with integrity) take a priest’s stipend if one does not say the daily office and offer a daily mass. Most clergy I know don’t even know how to unfold a corporal correctly.
I’m not out to convince you, Matthew. But don’t worry about my daily prayers. Consider instead how you, Matthew, can say the Anglican communion service with its very strong affirmation of atonement theology (‘one oblation of himself once offered’) and not actually believe it.
I understand that actors every day say words they don’t actually believe, and that is absolutely fine.
But priests are actually meant to believe the words they pray.
Mk 10:45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Lk 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Mt 11:27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him Jn 11:25-26 I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though… Read more »
Please read my statement again. “Jonathan Clatworthy on his website states the following: “I’m objecting not to the texts themselves but to the way they are being taken out of context to support a very different – and false – picture of what Jesus was about.” In his article he states that Jesus “ saw what was wrong and started a movement to put it right”. It seems that he believes and teaches that there is no need for a saviour, and no need for repentance from sin. But then I am a bear of little brain, just fluff.” You… Read more »
His name means Saviour.
And the name Adrian derives (allegedly) from a word meaning “water”. Is that why you were given that name and does it define your destiny? Perhaps Jesus of Nazareth received that name because his parents just liked it.
An angel told Joseph to call him that. I don’t really know why we should vex ourselves over the term ‘saviour’ attributed to Jesus. None of us can raise ourselves from the dead. Without help, we will be dust without consciousness for the remaining billions of years in this universe. We need God’s help and in that sense, surely God is our Saviour. If we need that help – and surely we do just to get through each day with less selfishness – then it does not seem incongruent to me that when Jesus showed His love for us… in… Read more »
Yes, that seems fair enough.
I think the point I was contesting was (to summarize) that Jesus is a saviour because his name means ‘saviour’, and he was called ‘saviour’ because one or more angels told his mother (according to Luke 1.31) and/or his father (according to Matthew 1.21) to call him that. I guess I am rather more sceptical about this argument — and indeed about the infancy narratives which I would see more as theological narratives than necessarily historical fact.
Thanks Simon. I agree that if people believe that Jesus is saviour, then what he did is more significant than what he was called. His actions may be more indicative than his name which was common to others. On the birth narratives, I am generally very sympathetic to what I take to be your de-construction approach, by which I mean, looking beneath the surface words of the writer to the key truths at the heart of what the author was trying to make sense of. I accept that Bible narratives are efforts to make sense of encounters with God, but… Read more »
Luke 1 31 is a clue.
People have all sorts of reasons for naming their children. You won’t, I suspect, be surprised that I incline to the view that the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke are more theological prologues than historical and that Luke 1.31 (and Matthew 1.21) are more likely theological reflection after the fact. Yeshua was a reasonably common name in Second Temple Judah, so historically a plausible name to be given to baby boy — and a gift to those who first set down the Christmas story.
I have come to set the captives free.
And how was that quotation received and by whom? Jesus was speaking those who were captive to the Jewish religion which he had rejected (and which rejected him).
No shit, Sherlock. So does the name Salvador.
Ian Gomersall’s article makes for depressing reading, but underlines why the Church of England is taking fewer and fewer funerals. Walk into any undertakers and, unless you request the local vicar, you’ll be offered a civil celebrant first. Why? Because we are seen as out of touch and judgemental by those with little or no expereince of our ministry. Fast-track to extinction, but we earned it.
Oh well, at least people are trying hard to listen to, learn from and identify with the Yaxley-Lennon experience of rejection by the judgmental leaders of the church, and we’re winning some other notable celebrity Christian converts like Russell Brand. This should restore respect and bring a fair few apolitical and biblically sound occasional offices back to the CofE.
“At the CofE, we don’t care if you’re a Nazi or a rapist, as long as you’re not gay, or worse, trans!” Oh joy…
There was a big C of E initiative about weddings some years back ( I’m not sure whether it bore much fruit.) At the time someone suggested there should be something similar with funerals. The rise of the Civil Celebrant has has an enormous effect . As for gay funerals I was asked once by the Gay Bereavement Project to do a difficult funeral ( the deceased had died in an industrial accident) where the local vicar had refused to deal with the partner until the chaps sister( as the next of kin) intervened. The vicar paid a visit to… Read more »
I often get called upon to take funerals for neighbouring parishes because I have a good relationship with my local undertakers. I can understand that people are busy, but the idea of only taking “church funerals” is to miss out on mission and pastoral care that is important. It is experiences like the one you’ve shared that people remember, and why it only takes one colleague to turn people off having a minister take a funeral service. Our loss……
The Church of England’s Wedding Project was part of a wider ‘Life Events’ programme, aimed at renewing and refreshing the Church of England’s engagement with occasional offices. I attended a couple of training sessions on funerals that were offered as part of that project.
However, the plug was pulled on the whole programme a couple of years ago. Perhaps the New Model Church of England doesn’t feel the need for occasional offices now.
Yes, although Sandra Millar, who led the Life Events work is now a member of the Liturgical Commission, so some of the work that she started continues in some guise.
Which is perhaps one of the reasons for decline. I have always been puzzled by those who juxtapose mission and pastoral care. When I was in full time ministry most of my mission came through pastoral engagement.
And without being meaning to be rude – That was the approach for most in full-time ministry, and we were experiencing unchecked decline. Only being buoyed up at all by those churches that followed a different method (Sunday gatherings that people were wanting and encouraged to invite their friends to & Alpha)
If the local undertaker pairs you up with a civil celebrant he or she knows who you are getting. If the undertaker phones the parish office; it might be the Vicar but then it might be someone altogether different who is assigned to the task. When the officiant simply had to follow a set liturgy with a few personal details included then the it might not have mattered so much. Nowadays families expect a carefully crafted and highly personalised funeral service. Some clergy and Readers are not as sensitive to those expectations as others.
Which is why it is important for the Vicar to have a good relationship with their local undertakers. I have always invested that time and energy, and it has made a difference, but I think overall we are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the nation we are called to serve sadly.
When I, as an authorised lay person,conduct funerals, usually at the Crem, I always visit the family and get details of the deceased life which I incorporate in my ‘address’. With no longer than a 30 minute slot in most places, this works and the family are relieved. If someone else is doing the eulogy, I ask for a written copy so that I can continue in case they break down as quite often happens. I had one funeral where a relative did the eulogy and I had to find a way of ‘shutting him up’! I was then left… Read more »
Spot on.
I’m sure you do a fine job John but sadly not all ministers are prepared to officiate for an LGBTQI+ persons funeral, as Ian Gomersall has outlined. Before I retired I was summoned from one side of the deanery to the other to take the funeral of a gay man whose love life could daintily be described as ‘complicated’ – if he’d been straight it would have been referred to as a blended family. After a funeral visit that took all afternoon, amidst gales of laughter, we jointly came up with a eulogy that was honest and yet appropriate for… Read more »
I have been to a number of funerals taken by a civil celebrant, and parts of it have been very depressing. The “script” they use is identical, and I wonder if there is a humanist liturgy book. It is so uninspiring, and has not even any cadences of the Book of Common Prayer. It reminds me of the early attempts of Series 2 and Series 3, which got some things right, and some so wrong, in losing poetry. There should be an emotional beat in any funeral service, solemn but also part of a shared experience of humanity, and our… Read more »
Since he has supernatural abilities for a beast of the field he is indeed a supernatural force in the literal story, though allegorically of course he is a certain kind of person with a certain kind of critical intelligence.
He has supernatural powers which he uses independently of God. You can’t make God do the morally shocking thing of putting the words on to the creature’s forked tongue and then cursing him so roundly
Regarding the Genesis reading, I came across this recently: He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” Genesis 3:14-15 “These words are a part of the gospel preached in paradise, or the first promise of grace and life made to mankind, now fallen and dead in sin. As God was cursing the serpent, he draws out this comfort to our first parents, who were confounded with the sense of sin and their defection from God. Satan’s condemnation is our salvation. He did the first mischief, therefore the crushing of his head gives hope of our deliverance out… Read more »
Thank you. Way back in the 1970’s, I remember Jonathan Fletcher gave a sermon at the Round Church on that verse. I also remember he said Luther regarded it as the most blessed verse in the Bible – although I may be mistaken about Luther’s view.
https://www.christthetruth.net/2010/08/25/luther-on-scripture-3-the-meaning-is-christ/
I remember it very well as I took my father to the service – he was more of an Anglo Catholic – and he was a bit sceptical about the statement that it was the most blessed verse in the Bible.
.
This is beautifully written but I think it makes the familiar, but seriously mistaken assumption, that the serpent is Satan – this despite the story clearly saying the serpent was a creature. This has led to unhelpful understandings about the nature and cause of human sin. The kind of confusion that arises in claiming the serpent is Satan incarnate is clear in medieval art where the serpent was often painted with a woman’s face. Michaelangelo went even further and painted the serpent as a woman from the waist up. Eve, woman, became the devil incarnate.
David,
The serpent was a creature – as is the Devil.
Peter
The reindeer are creatures in the story of Santa Claus. So is the Tooth Fairy. Does this help us understand human sin and dentistry? It’s very funny what mythical stories preoccupy some Thinking Anglicans!
Indeed, preoccupations that go well beyond the bounds of TA. Note the comments below the article linked. lol. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2015/04/day398028 “The serpent in the Garden of Eden is popularly equated with the Devil. However, modern scholars agree that this was a later identification and not the original meaning, but there is no consensus as to what the original background of the serpent was. This brief article critiques a number of the proposals that have been made and suggests a possible background for the serpent. More generally it also discusses other questions of interpretation that have arisen in connection with the serpent… Read more »
Quite what sort of being the devil is is another question. Here I am disputing that the serpent and satan are one and the same being.
What do you make of Revelation 12 and 20? Or Ezekiel 28?
Interesting comment. You sent me looking. Notice this re: Michelangelo. This is from an article by Lily Cruse, Michelangelo’s Temptation–Debunking The Biblical Myth. “In searching for a literary origin of the story Michelangelo illustrates in his Temptation and Expulsion, it is in the Zohar that we find the most likely source. This interpretation of Michelangelo’s fresco, as a rendition of the medieval kabbalistic text as opposed to the Biblical telling, is supported by a visual reading of the image. Firstly, it is the embodiment of the serpent, and not just that Michelangelo has given it a body, but he has made the serpent a… Read more »
my bad; Lily Kruse
Michelangelo paints his women with male bodies with breasts added on. Make of that what we will. The striking exception is the face of Wisdom in The Creation of Adam as she gazes out at Adam from the crook of God’s arm with sharp anticipation.
Epstein’s (Jacob, not Geoffrey) statue of Lucifer in Birmingham has a female head on a male body.
I found your comment interesting, but in deciding what to make of it, I’m pondering your conclusion over and against the view of Lily Kruse. You conclude: “Michelangelo went even further and painted the serpent as a woman from the waist up. Eve, woman, became the devil incarnate.” Kruse suggests: “Both Adam and the female personification of the serpent (Lilith) have blonde hair, both faces physically are quite similar, are shown in profile and mirror each other almost exactly, and their poses are reciprocal models of one another, both inadvertently pointing in the other’s direction (Fig. 5). With these physical… Read more »
last bit should read, Is it really ” strikingly exceptional”.
Thanks David, I agree about Michaelangelo, but I’m afraid I can’t agree with you that it is a “seriously mistaken assumption” that the serpent is Satan. I think Revelation 12:9 is definitive.
Thanks for engaging. When you say Rev 12 is ‘definitive’ do you mean the meaning of ‘serpent’ there (assuming there is agreeement on that) must be the meaning of the word whenever and wherever else it appears in the bible? So, to take an example, when Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness (Num 21) he was lifting up Satan? And when Jesus associates his own lifting up on the cross in John 3 woth that story, he is identifying himself with Satan? The first task of faithful interpretation of words found in different textual contexts across thousands of… Read more »
“…that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” (ἀρχαῖος, i.e. belonging to the beginning.) Thanks David. What I meant by definitive is not that ‘serpent’ always means Satan, but that the identification in this case is unavoidable. Genesis 3 provides the only account in Scripture of a serpent from the beginning deceiving humanity, and in Revelation 12:9 that serpent is explicitly identified as Satan. Revelation is therefore interpreting Genesis. Surely this is precisely the sort of case where Cranmer’s hermeneutic applies: “Although many things in the Scripture be spoken in obscure mysteries, yet there… Read more »
Yes, that’s pretty much what I said elsewhere, but not in 16th centurie Englishe. It’s the basic catholic and evangelical principle that Scripture interprets Scripture – which is exactly what our Lord taught his disciples.
Brilliant. And Jilly Cooper interprets Jilly Cooper.
“Scripture interprets scripture” is nonsense. People interpret scripture. The church, acting collectively and through its bishops, interprets scripture. Guided, we hope and pray, by the Holy Spirit. Other parts of scripture can inform interpretation, but they don’t of themselves interpret anything. “Scripture interprets scripture” is a dogma used by evangelicals to hide their manipulation of scripture to support their theological priors.
You may think it is ‘nonsense’ and ‘manipulation’ but that is simply a succinct statement of the hermeneutical principles underlying Articles 6, 7 and 20 on Scripture in the Thirty-Nine Articles, that the Old Testament doesn’t contradict the New (Art. 7) and the Church can only decree and teach what Holy Writ teaches (Art. 20). So yes, I agree with Cranmer, as he did with St Augustine who declared that the clear passages illuminate the dark, and NT Scripture interprets OT Scripture (as our Lord constantly did, explaining the meaning of Tanak): ‘Novum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet’… Read more »
“Genesis 3 provides the only account in Scripture of a serpent from the beginning deceiving humanity”
This common description of the serpent as being deceiving confuses me. What does it say that’s untrue? On the plainest reading, it is God who deceives the humans about the consequences of eating the fruit, not the serpent.
Hi brcw2, the serpent said to Eve, “you shall not surely die”, yet Adam did die, with his age at death recorded in Genesis 5:5. What the serpent said was therefore false, and what God warned would happen did happen. As for “in the day…”, Adam and Eve were barred from the tree of life on the day they broke the command (Gen 3:22–24). Augustine therefore explains Genesis 2:17 as: “…they began to die in the day when they received the law of death, because they kept verging towards old age.” The phrase “you shall surely die” translates the Hebrew… Read more »
The identification of the serpent with the devil is not mistaken, it is one that the Bible makes in Revelation 12 and Revelation 20, and possibly also in Ezekiel 28.13.
Satan is also one of God’s creatures (and not God’s equal). Liberal theology still under the shadow of Bultmann struggles with the idea of angels and demons and tends to explain them away psychologically (understandably at times, given some excesses).
James and Sam. I accept what the serpent represents elsewhere in scripture. But I see no sign the serpent is identified with Satan in Gen 2 – nor does the unfolding drama of the fall ever suggest that – including God’s cursing of the serpent there. The serpent does not mean the same thing everywhere it occurs in the Bible. In Gen 2 it is part of a different drama than in Rev 12 or 20 (or John 3.14).
You mean Genesis 3, not 2. Why should all of theology be contained within a single text? The identification with Satan becomes explicit later – just as the Trinity is revealed in the NT but is implicit in many ways in the OT. And our Lord found even evidence of the resurrection of the dead in the words ‘I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ If God is the author of all Scripture and we believe in the sensus plenior of Scripture, with the fuller meaning being disclosed across time (as the Church Fathers taught and as Catholic… Read more »
On that point, interesting observation by John Day, which begins his article, available via link in my response to Fr.David H. “For Adam and Eve the serpent in the Garden of Eden represented the voice of temptation but it needs to be noted that for the original writer, the Yahwist (or J) source, the serpent was not equated with Satan (the Devil). The concept of Satan developed only later (first attested as a personal name c. 300 B.C.E. in 1 Chron 21:1[1]), and we find him first equated with the Eden serpent in the apocryphal book of Wisdom (Wis 2:24,… Read more »
That’s funny, my edition of J is a bit different from that – but so is my edition of Q.
Every Christmas in our house, we sing Mascall’s little poem which begins ‘Hark the herald angels sing, Bultmann shot them on the wing.’
Nobody reads Bultmann today, except ex-Christians.
It seems we can’t enter into a great season of the Church without an Anglican commentator deciding to have a go at our traditional forms of worship in these times (although not that traditional, as the nine lessons and carols is a fairly recent Cornish invention but had provided a blueprint for services up and down the country thanks to King’s and their hegemony on prime time broadcasts). This year it is Jonathan Clatworthy’s turn and at least he doesn’t have a pop at the music and choir, just the lessons. He seems to have decided to pick a fight… Read more »
I think I got lost somewhere along the line within Jonathan’s article itself. Being very firmly schooled in the ‘medieval’ theology he questions, I’m convinced that (a) we need to be redeemed, (b) only a divine saviour could die for us and rise again and (c) that saviour had to be both fully mortal and fully divine – and therefore born by miraculous conception with no male human involvement. Whether or not there was a literal ‘fall’ from a perfect creation is beyond anyone’s ability to definitively answer, surely; what is certain is that before any of us ‘born of… Read more »
The prodigal son needed no saviour. He just returned to his father. Isn’t the purpose of the parable to teach us that all that is needed to restore our relationship with God is our turning back, i.e. our repentance?
The divine self-humiliation of embracing the cross is expressed in the father’s self-shaming act of running towards the son. Kenneth Bailey – the cross and the prodigal.
I think that was a rather desperate attempt by Bailey to recover some interpretation of the traditional view of the atonement from the parable in answer to Dr Rashdall. Usual exercise of hammering the square pegs of theory into the round holes of scripture.
Helmut Thielicke said something similarly desperate many years ago in ‘The Waiting Father’, IIRC. Pegs are not as square and holes are not as round as you may imagine. First century Judaism was a lot more diverse than some people know.
Totally agree re ‘desperate attempt’ of eisegesis. You’d think if the reason Jesus lived was in order to die for our salvation he might have mentioned it at some point.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
“… for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Yes, you’d think he might have said something like, ‘… this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ or ‘the Son of man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’
There is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood. There is no forgiveness unless the debt we owe has been paid. There is no forgiveness without being set free. We cannot save ourselves no matter how much we repent. That’s what the giving of a ring, killing of the fatted calf and restoration to sonship is all about. Only the father could save and the elder brother resented him for it.
“There is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood. There is no forgiveness unless the debt we owe has been paid.” That’s one interpretation of the atonement. And that’s one way of reading one’s view of the atonement back into some of Jesus’s parables. But there are other interpretations of the atonement and the parables. In another passage in the gospels, Jesus told his disciples to pray for forgiveness “as we forgive those who sin against us” (or “those who are in debt to us”). One might reasonably conclude that the price of forgiveness is … forgiving others. And one… Read more »
Conclusions are only as good as the totality of the evidence requires. Is it ‘reasonable’ to expect all theological truth to be disclosed in a single text? – especially when the point of that text is primarily to change attitudes toward the am-ha’aretz?
The best response to the question, ‘which theory of atonement is correct?’ is ‘all of them and none of them without the others.’
Hastings Rashdall based his famous restatement of the Abelardian theory on the Prodigal Son parable. The father requires no payment whatsoever from the errant son. All the nonsense about him running out of the house in his underpants and making himself the laughingstock of his neighbours put forward as a way of suggesting that the reconciliation cost him some amount of pain is a rather desperate invention to refute the plainly obvious. The plainly obvious is what is taught in Islam. God forgives because he is forgiving. If the parable was to illustrate the substitutionary theory of atonement, then the… Read more »
Yes I tried to cover all the bases, if you don’t like the blood sacrifices. ‘ forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors ‘ will do. The price of forgiveness is the debt paid by God for our sin. We cannot forgive ourselves, that’s the point God does the forgiving, not ourselves.
“The price of forgiveness is the debt paid by God for our sin” — as I said, that’s one interpretation of th atonement, but not the only one. Another is that the price we pay for our forgiveness is … forgiving others. This is the example that Christ set us. It’s also an interpretation that has the benefit of actually making sense without requiring complex theology and ancient and mediaeval (and feudal) theories of honour and sacrifice, theories which are both outdated and verging on the immoral (if not actually immoral).
I believe that the concept of sacrifice is central to Christian calling. In the Old Testament, we see creatures being sacrificed as ‘devotions’ to God. It’s clear in the New Testament that that is not the sacrifice that God actually needs. Rather, God desires that we offer our lives – the lives we live, and are willing to sacrifice – as ‘devotions’ of ourselves to God. That involves dying to self, and opening to God and God’s Love. That is, Jesus suggests ‘the baptism both he and we must undergo’. It is the way of the Cross. In Jesus, God… Read more »
Thanks hidden sister. As I read your words, that seems to me to be desribing a metaphorical sacrifice rather than a literal one. My understanding of substitutionary atonement is that it requires Jesus’s death to be a sacrifice in rather more literal sense.
Thank you, Simon. I confess I can’t really get my head round ‘substitutionary atonement’. It just sounds like a theological term that some people use, which is their prerogative, but my handle on it ends with those words. It doesn’t get through to me. I don’t think Christ was appeasing God. To me, what Jesus did – in his life ministry and his death – is offer and give Himself in compassionate love. He showed a way, and the lengths it might take to live out true devotion, and offer ourselves back to the love of God. I mean, I… Read more »
Not if God is paying the sacrifice, the debt, doing the freeing. Yes God can kill. He can give and take away. Sorry if that impacts on your sensibilities. The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life.
As I have said — that is one view of the atonement. It is not the only one. There are other models which are deeply rooted in scripture and tradition.
God forgives. Yes. But why does he need to be paid for forgiving us?
And why do you think we cannot forgive ourselves? Surely people do that all the time.
What a ludicrous proposition. I don’t require the shedding of blood in order to forgive someone.
But what does your local vicar teach about this?
My local vicar subscribes to the Rashdallian view.
Next question?
so your local Vicar has apostasised and doesn’t believe Jesus died for our sins? I suggest they should resign their orders.
We can assert that Jesus died for our sins without taking literally the equivalence with an animal sacrifice upon which the substitutionary model is based. To “die for our sins” means to move us from a place of guilt to a place of innocence. That can just as well be understood as showing us how we need to live (loving God, loving neighbour, forgiving others etc) and demonstrating that this way of life always leads to life and glory, even when it kills you. So Jesus’ teaching, life, death and resurrection is inspirational for all who follow him (lit. he… Read more »
In my day, as a conservative evangelical, we were not taught to dismiss all other religions, nor that non-believers were doomed.
Norman Anderson’s books were the suggested reading in my Christian Union. haven’t read it for many decades, but I recollect it had a fairly open, albeit evangelical, message.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Dalrymple_Anderson
Maybe not a professional theologian, but not stupid.
My searches for the writings of Anderson led me to this, and then the discovery of Newbigin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesslie_Newbigin
https://www.churchsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Cman_097_1_Newbigin.pdf
Further googling led me to this:
https://gracetruth.blog/ethics/proper-confidence-in-the-gospel-the-theology-of-lesslie-newbigin/
from which i quote:
This deep confidence is in contrast to the brittle form of confidence shown by fundamentalism or the reductionism of liberal theology.
which seems to be apposite to many TA discussions.
This comment thread brings to mind Msgr Knox’s ‘Modernist’s Prayer’:
O God, forasmuch as without thee,
we are not able to doubt thee,
help us all by thy grace,
to teach the whole race,
we know nothing whatever about thee.
Or Niebuhr’s take on liberal protestantism. “A God without wrath, brought men without sin, into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
I understand that Knox was being witty . . . but there is a unconscious kernel of truth in his humorous diatribe: it’s all grace. The grace of Love, of care. If we miss that, we’ve lost the entire plot.
[Speaking of unconscious humor: I read Waugh’s biography of Knox, where he quotes Knox’s apologia for his (then-Anglican) celibacy. About such Anglicans, to paraphrase a spiritual director (monk) I once had, if Knox had “thrown on a feather boa and started singing ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’, it couldn’t have been more obvious!” LOL ]
Why do you ask this? Is it not acceptable for there to be independent thought? Or diversity of teaching?
People may think what they like. But they can’t pretend that it is the doctrine of the Church. Facts are stubborn – and they don’t care about our feelings.
“But they can’t pretend that it is the doctrine of the Church.”
Thank you, Pope James.
I’m sorry but Jesus, his apostles and the teaching off the church disagree with you “Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, and then took his seat at the right hand of God, where he now waits until his enemies are made his footstool. Therefore, by a single offering he has made perfect forever those who are being sanctified.” Hebrews 10:12-14
Did Jesus write the letter to the Hebrews?
Did Jesus teach the apostles and disciples?
I am sure you would be the first to agree that we don’t have any record of Jesus writing anything, in the literal sense.
So where did the contents of the gospels comes from? “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us…who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus. Luke 1. Others did the writing.
An interesting choice of text. It is Luke who, in his use of Mark as a source, removes all reference to the cross as an atoning sacrifice. Likewise, the sermons in Acts do not teach the cross as an atonement for sin.
There was a process near miracle of constructing a believable narrative in the chaotic and politically fraught world after Year 70, full of damaged information and conflicting theological ideas, particularly about why God had permitted the destruction of his holiest place. Was it because the great prophet Jesus had been rejected? I think that there is hardly a verse of the New Testament that isn’t aware of this dispute and of the problem of whether Christians were Jews. But agreed factual information was very hard to come by. There is no agreement about whether Jesus died on the day of… Read more »
Yes, by the Holy Spirit. Next question?
All scripture is written for our learning but not dictated by the Spirit whose nature has to be to work through human imperfection
Who exactly is this “Jesus” who seems to float invisibly above the testimony to him?
Why did he bother to call apostles to bear witness to him after his death, through the power of the Holy Spirit?
Rather, he is somehow available to us by other means.
Pure gnosticism.
Yes, we know that that’s what some Christians believe, Adrian.
It is also much closer to what the Church of England officially teaches, than what Rashdall and Abelard taught: Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which he was clearly void, both in his flesh, and in his spirit. He came to be the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world; and sin (as Saint John saith) was not in him. [Article 15, “Of Christ Alone without Sin.”] The Offering of Christ once made in that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the… Read more »
Yes, but in what did that sacrifice consist? His bloody death on the cross, or his moral life offered to God? What is the sacrifice that God truly requires?
This is mainstream evangelical theological teaching. I haven’t a clue what liberal teaching is only that it seems to follow secular society. Much of liberal theology was abandoned in the late 70’s when Missio Demi became the dominant biblical narrative and still is.
Adrian – and anyone else interested. A forthcoming book on Evangelical theology and faith includes a chapter on the Atonement. It notes that evangelicals ‘often speak as if there is only one doctrine of the atonement in the New Testament’. In fact, ‘the New Testament writers use a variety of images to tell us what the cross achieves … allowing a series of different images and metaphors to jostle next to each other’. These are variously drawn from Jewish faith (eg sacrifice) and Roman life (eg criminal law, commerce, adoption and slavery). Atonement is thus portrayed more through different dramas than… Read more »
Missio Dei
Maybe the atoning sacrifice of Jesus was necessary to create conditions in which repentance would be effective
The parables of the Prodigal Son and the Pharisee and the Publican present a paradigm of effective repentance without reference to any atoning sacrifice.
Maybe. It’s your take on them. Others disagree. I disagree. But what is obvious, incontrovertible, is that whatever they say, they say it in the much fuller context that will give rise to words you as a priest say at Mass, “one oblation of himself once offered.” That language doesn’t arise from cherry picking a story here and there and claiming it contravenes everything else the NT says and empties them of any spiritual force and life-giving truth. Comments like the Father running out in his underpants simply display a sort of puerile scorn, like unto the prodigal himself in… Read more »
I am mystified by the condescension towards James in relation to his posts on the issue of Canadian residential schools.
His argument is that a journalist has propagated a false narrative in relation to the history of those residential schools. He may be right or wrong, but he is adopting a perfectly legitimate historiographic stance.
He also makes some wider general comments about Canadian history which could be contested, but he says nothing that could reasonably be described as outside the range of fair comment.
Please – Rod, Tim, Simon – play the ball and not the man.
Peter I discovered a great quote recently. Which rings so many bells with me.
“I’ve come to view Jesus the way I’ve come to view Elvis. I love the guy, but some of the fan clubs terrify me. “
I’m afraid some of the fan clubs that are represented here terrify me. And of course it can be hard to separate the clubs from the members. But as Sting once said, ‘men go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one.
Hi Andrew,
I am inclined to agree with you.
My general experience is that the worst behaviour arises from people with whom I am most in sympathy in regards to theology.
It does at least bless me with a deepening faith in Christ alone.
Peter
‘His argument is that a journalist has propagated a false narrative in relation to the history of those residential schools.’ No – his argument is that a journalist has propagated a false narrative in relation to the existence of what James refers to as ‘mass unmarked graves’. This allegation was carefully examined two years ago by two researchers at the University of Manitoba (Sean Carleton and Reid Gerbrandt) and they wrote up their findings here. Their key conclusion, after analysing hundreds of news articles: the wording ‘mass graves’ was very rarely used in the mainstream media. I note Chief Rosanne… Read more »
Peter, I’m not bothered by the condescension or the ad hominems; my only concern here is whether the very serious allegations against the church-run IRS’s had any substance. These criminal allegations included nothing short of the murder of children, grievous mistreatment and concealment of deaths, including 215 children secretly buried in an orchard in the Kamloops IRS – ‘disappearing’ in contemporary political language. These allegations were not just from one journalist but were repeated all over Canada, and were not based on actual evidence but allegations that ;ground penetrating radar’ had located 215 secret graves. Rosanne Casimir repeated this claim… Read more »
Peter, Thanks for your comment, but I would argue that the issue is not the specific fine detail of what is or isn’t a “mass grave”, but the underlying reasons why this specific issue has become important. There is also the much larger question of the actions committed by a colonial British government against indigenous populations not just in Canada but right across the Colonial system, and also by the US government against their own indigenous peoples. This has been widely documented all over the world, but the Canadian government deserves praise for the way it has faced up to… Read more »
Simon, thanks for your very detailed comments. It’s good that someone on the ‘other side of the pond’ has put time into researching Frist Nations issues. From where I am, the issue over unmarked graves is more than semantics. What is being advanced here by one commentator is a regurgitation of a false narrative we have been familiar with here in Canada for some time. The language uses, for example, is very similar to that used by right wing outlets here. There has been a reference to that ‘fantabulous window on the world’ i.e. Wikipedia. While not a fan, I… Read more »
Thanks for your post Ruairidh. I have tried to be sensitive in my own posts on this issue, being very aware that I’m commenting from this side of the Atlantic and don’t have the deep personal experience of Canadian society that you and Tim have. I also want to be sensitive to Peter’s original plea of “play the man and not the ball“. That is normally excellent advice. But these denialism mechanisms are universal, and having worked on LGBT issues for a decade or two I have learnt it is best to address such elephants in the room, rather than… Read more »
Thanks Simon. Denialist narratives, on whatever issue, present a challenge that can be answered; but to what extent to respond presents a dilemma, at least for me. As for Peter’s “play the man not the ball comment”, Peter has used that at least once before on TA. In this instance I find its deployment fussy. Better to be concerned about the large scale ad hominem attacks on First Nations peoples that false narratives create. Sports analogies have limits. As I replied many threads ago to that same comment, in martial arts, both you and your opponent are the ball. lol!
Just show us the graves, Roderick – forget all this mummery which is so much chaff. Whether the residential schools were good, bad or indifferent (I think they were all three, in different times and places) is not the issue. Did the horrible crimes that Kevin Annett alleged really happen? Where are the actual bones? Names? If not, let us have an apology for grievous slander against the nuns and priests of the Order of St Anne. Do you know anything about Carl Beech in England? I am sure you know a good deal about Salem c. 1690! People’s ‘memories’… Read more »
“That is how Putin and the CCP operate.” Yes, like very good Anglican priest I check under the bed every night for communists, right after Compline. I even have have my own revisionist text: “Tread under foot our Marxist foe, that no pollution we may know.” LOL! I wondered how long it would take to come to this kind of thing. Roderick, over and out!
“Like very good Anglican priest” — meaning what exactly?
It is a typo on my part. That line should read ” Yes, like every good Anglican priest I check under the bed…” I’m an Anglican priest. My comment is intended to be sardonic. It has absolutely nothing to do with you ‘Anglican priest’, if that is what you are asking. Thanks for picking up on that. I neglected to post a correction–something I often do frequently when I make typos. Auto correct. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Roderick: those who advocate Censorship of Unapproved Ideas and Imprisonment of the Disobedient have lost the argument with truth. Canada really does need a US-style First Amendment, so does the UK. ‘You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.’ Happy New Year!
Oh yes, because allowing incitement of racial hatred is working *so well* in the US. And I’m sure people opposing the genocide in Gaza or criticising Charlie Kirk really feel those first amendment protections working well for them. Seriously, the US needs to reinstate the rule of law before it starts trying to recommend anyone else adopt its mess.
Thank you, Simon.
It is my pleasure, Tim But I apologise for leaving out one sentence in my post. Not only does the Canadian government deserve credit for the way it has faced up to these post-colonial issues, the Canadian church deserves credit as well. Despite these issues of colonial abuse, many First Nations people are Christian. That must raise all sorts of issues for the churches in Canada that would make our own LLF problems fade into insignificance. Yet you seem to have found a way through. There is so much we could learn from such post-colonial churches if we could get… Read more »
Fascinating that introspective threads like this arouse so much fervour.
The moral certitude & almost visceral dismissal of views that are deemed insufficiently ‘on message’ is striking. I have sailed on ships with Parsees, Moslems (Sunni & Shia), Buddhists, Sikhs, & Hindus, and experienced far far more goodwill & mutual understanding than on display here by Christians at Christmas time.
Francis I have come late to the party and found it very difficult to understand how this thread had passed 200 and still climbing . The memo about peace and goodwill to all men has clearly been lost in transit .The atonement argument started me thinking about Revelation 12 ‘but they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony’, but my mind rapidly scrolled back to ‘And there was was in heaven ‘ but started changing it to ‘in the C of E ‘ and looking for who represents Michael and all his… Read more »
Because these sort of threads are like academic discussions: after Wallace Sayre (and his “Sayre’s Law”): “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics because the stakes are so low.”
Of course, some commenters here would insist Our Very Salvation Is At Stake! [Also, in America now under the current Regime, academics are losing their jobs because they have the “wrong” views on, for example, the late Charlie Kirk.]
Just agreeing with you Francis James. I have writen thanking Simon and his colleagues for providing such opportunity through TA for this range of voicings. Who was it spoke of ‘disagreeing agreeably’- some jolly good chap? A bishop? Is there a supportive / proof biblical text or two? Now passing 300 comments. Happy New Year to one and all 😉
A Number of jigs and reels on the thread re mythology in Genesis. Below is a link to a talk on the subject at the Oxford Interfaith Forum by John Day, Old Testament prof. ( now emeritus) at Oxford. Very accessible. Short biography 2nd link. Likely known to many of you, he is the author of one of the articles with comments which I linked previously.
https://youtu.be/Gj0stM8z9PM
Professor John Day | Faculty of Theology and Religion
Thanks for the YouTube link. That was a an hour of my time well spent. It was good to hear a respected professor discussing how these Genesis stories should be treated almost as “parables” rather than history. But I was a bit disappointed by the prosaic nature of his examples. When he talked about the lessons to be learnt from Genesis 2 (minute 41.30) I was expecting all sorts of deep insights about transcendence, the dawning of human self-awareness, our relationship to God, and the coming of death. But it seems that the story is there to teach us about… Read more »
That bit reminded me of something I think John Dominic Crossan, if memory serves, said about the Road to Emmaus story i.e. read it as a parable. I think the strongest, and for me the most interesting, part of his talk is the section dealing with archeology and other stories from neighbouring areas/cultures.
Ruairidh. I have always thought that the link between early Genesis and various Mesopotamian narratives was so obvious as to not need stating. But it seems that it does. I would also argue that a study of these original Mesopotamian stories might point us towards more helpful Christian interpretations, especially if we are searching for interpretations with a more positive view of sex and gender than the problematic legacy left to us by Augustine But these are not new discussions to Thinking Anglicans. https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/opinion-15-june-2019/#comments Personally I see Genesis 2 is a narrative about the dawning of human self-awareness. But self-awareness… Read more »
“….Prometheus figure. Not a full God, but more than human…” I like Day’s repeated use of the word ‘story’. Springboarding, I wonder how the serpent might be understood if the story were told from certain indigenous perspectives? Could the serpent be a trickster? I like that characterization. If so, what is the trickster up to here? Can it be all bad? Trickster | The Canadian Encyclopedia The legacy of Augustine is an issue. I’m sympathetic to the view of Jonathan Clatworthy whose article at the top here I’ve only given a quick read so far. However, I wish, as well.… Read more »
“However, I wish, as well. that we could move the Genesis stories out from underneath the shadow of Darwin” Thanks for this, my thought exactly. There are scientific, theological, and moral reasons for doing so. I stopped letting Darwin teach me how to read the Bible some time ago, here are some reasons why: “But in the past decade, without much notice by general audiences, a more wide-ranging debate has arisen from different areas of biology as well as from history and philosophy of science, about whether and in which ways evolutionary theory is affected, challenged or changed by the… Read more »
The article on standard evolutionary biology from the Royal Society looks interesting. It’s not my field. I have a friend who is a professional research biologist. I may have opportunity to have a chat with him about it. I am emailing him the link. Right in his drop zone. Thanks so much. When I express the view that I wish we could get Genesis out from under the shadow of Darwin, my longing there is for conversations without what seems like the inevitable dragging back in of the myth’s relationship or not to science, evolution, was there an Adam and… Read more »
“Springboarding, I wonder how the serpent might be understood if the story were told from certain indigenous perspectives? Could the serpent be a trickster?” I would argue you are closer than you think. There is a very strong correlation of ideas between Genesis and your First Nation ideas. For me it’s all about this idea of “biarchy” – the thesis that pre-patriarchal cultures contained great gender equality, and the linked thesis that such biarchal cultures existed in the Middle East a few thousand years ago until slowly suppressed, but lasted up till the late 19th-century in your neck of the… Read more »
Simon, thank you for the Anthro articles. I look forward to reading them. I welcome your many offerings in recent research along this line. The only thing I would add is that it presents a ‘temptation’ to pun on one of the themes here. lol. I’m currently reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book, Lower Than the Angels. At the same time I was also reading Andrew Harvey’s, The Essential Gay Mystics. As a result of that reading I took time out to borrow and read an author Harvey recommends, Willa Cather, her classic, Death Comes for the Archbishop. So many authors, so… Read more »
Ruairidh, Sorry about bombarding you with a plethora of ideas and texts, it is just that not being attached to a university faculty, TA is my academic common room and seminar room. A place to be inspired, to share insights, and test out ideas. And over the years it has been you as much as anyone that has fired up the neurons in my brain. Your trickster comment did just that.
But I will leave this conversation in peace now. I have four episodes of Stranger Things to catch up with.
Best wishes
Happy New year Simon! Now like any self respecting Nova Scotia Scot, I’m off to ring in the new year. lol. Thanks for all your engagement the past year.
The idea of a non-patriarchal era was developed powerfully, almost compellingly, by James Fraser and Robert Graves. We should look at it quite critically
Thanks for engaging Martin. I think you are totally right. Fraser and Graves did mention the possibility of these pre-patriarchal women led cultures, but their suggestions are outdated and do not match current evidence. The person I follow most closely in this is Angela Saini (her book “the Patriarchs” is excellent). She argues that whilst this first phase of matriarchal scholarship is no longer valid there is however a second phase of research and scholarship arguing for a different pre-patriarchal pattern, which some scholars call biarchy. This is much more communitarian and egalitarian. Rather than a single woman or man… Read more »
It doesn’t concern the evolution of human from animal mode of awareness, something whose occurrence it excludes. We can’t get away from Darwin in that it is now clear that the separate creation of biological species by the direct act and intervention of God did not happen, though it may still be that the whole mighty process is an expression of God’s will, may even be that the appearance of an immortal soul, which biology cannot detect, was the result of a divine intervention in the fullness of time. It does concern the evolution of adult from childlike consciousness, with… Read more »
‘Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens’
I think that’s how Crossan puts it.
I don’t agree, but it’s a powerful epigram.
‘Eden never happened. Eden always happens’?
His book ‘From Creation to Babel’ is good stuff. He thinks that the original form of the Creation story is in Psalm 104 and that the Serpent is not the rogue angel that he later became
Very worthwhile stuff indeed. I will try and carve out the time to take in some of the talks from others from the same event. I note this opinion of Day’s from the article he wrote (linked previously) in the comments section, responding to a comment by a Martin Hughes co-incidentally enough, ” The story of the Garden is clearly a myth (which is not the same as saying it has no religious value for us).” A concise insight with a wide application for hermeneutics.
James,
Nigel Biggar has published a book on the tyranny of imaginary guilt which included material on the Canadian Residential Schools narrative.
He clearly shares your sense of skepticism regarding the claims of atrocity.
Biggar is a former professor of moral theology at Oxford, so I am sure Rod and Tim will be glad to learn from his scholarship.
Peter,
I am quite familiar with Lord Biggar’s work; I have read several of his books and know of the rather hysterical campaign to cancel him at Oxford. He’s really quite a balanced historian and pastoral theologian and I think he’s pretty fair-minded in his judgments about the pluses and minuses of colonialism. I remember sitting next to him at a conference many years ago, before he went to Oxford.