A little bit of history

Silas Marner is not, I think, generally considered to be of the same calibre as Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss or Daniel Deronda - Elliot's "great" works. But I retain a soft spot for it, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it was one of my GCSE English Literature texts.

In some respects Silas Marner is like a short story. The plot line is simple and uncluttered and there is a fairly small cast of characters. But the action takes place over some 30 years and the characters are observed with such exquisite detail that the book is quite substantial, though by no means as long as the other works mentioned above. For a more detailed synopsis of the novel see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silas_Marner

If you are unfamiliar with classic Victorian novels Silas Marner would be a superb place to start. Marner, a weaver and the character around whom the whole novel revolves, is a believable hero who evokes pity and admiration. Elliot describes the merits and faults of both the working people of Ravelow (the fictional home of Marner and the other characters) and the minor gentry who make up the higher echelons of village life without favour or sentimentality. The novel is also an excellent insight into some of the practicalities of C19th life.

But the most fascinating thing for me, returning to this novel after at least 10 years since I last read it, is the pervasive influence of both social class and Christianity in the Victorian era. Class is still a huge issue for English people (as obseved by Kate Fox in her excellent book Watching the English which I must blog on some time…). But it is now displayed, generally, in a much subtler way than the overt sense of superiority on display, without any sense of inappropriate self-consciousness, in Victorian Ravelow.

The underpinning of almost every aspect of life by a broadly Christian world view, however, has almost completely disappeared now. This is, perhaps, particularly apparent in some of the speeches of the uneducated working people of the village. Although many of Eliot's characters struggle to understand the meanings of the prayer book services and certainly are meant to be illiterate, a sense of God's providence and care nevertheless underpins all their lives. Obviously this is partly a projection of Eliot's own understanding. Nevertheless it is hard to imagine any modern author, even one recreating the Victorian period in a novel, writing a passage like this, the words spoken by Marner's friend, Mrs Winthrop:

"...isn't there Them as was at the making of us and knows better and has a better will? And that's all as ever I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think on it. … there's trouble in this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on. And all as we've got to do is trustern, Master Marner - to do the right thing as far as we know and to trustern. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know - I feel it I' my own inside as it must be so."

Perhaps those of us, like me, who assume that because we are educated we ought to know everything, would find lives much more peaceful and reliant on Jesus if we took a page from Mrs Winthrop's book.

Cross Words

I wish I had read this book before preaching on 1 Corinthians 1-4 a few years back! Ho hum. The form of The Cross and Christian Ministry is five expositions from chapters 1-4 and 9 of Paul's letter to the church in Corinth.

Carson's purpose is not to give a fully rounded doctrine of the cross but, specifically, to show how the truths of the cross ought to shape the way in which Christians, and especially Christian leaders, live and work.

It is, I think, an outstanding book. I am not sure whether this is simply because of Carson's lucid exposition or because the times in which we live in western europe seem to bear such resemblance to 1st century Corinth - no doubt the two things are closely related.

What I have found most helpful is the way in which looking at these chapters is useful for thinking both about the state of the church (in general and in my own local church) and for understanding the situation of the world.

Having just read The God Delusion it was incredibly helpful to read Carson's words (written 13 years before Dawkins' book) that: "not a few contemporary intellectuals work very hard at conveying the impression that all Christians are fools or knaves or both."

It is also striking how 1 Corinthians 1 sets up a very clear answer to one of Dawkins' main points. In The God Delusion much is made of the fact that not many Nobel prize winners are fervent Christian people. The "god" that Dawkins believes in is one of the elite intellectuals of the west and, as Carson astutely observes: "The gods of the rich are not gentle with those the rich dismiss as poor; the gods of the wise are not kind to those the wise reject as stupid; the gods of the social elite are not patient with outcasts."

All of these groups of people (whether found amongst the philosophical or religious classes (Jews or Greeks)) "treat God as if we have the right to approve him, to examine his credentials." Christians must never be anti-intellectual or obscurantist, after all Paul himself was no slouch in the intellectual department, but it seems to me that this exactly understands Dawkins and many of his secular atheist friends. The God they would be willing to believe in is one who will submit to their testing, analysis and experience. In other words, the only god they would even consider isn't a god at all.

But these chapters of 1 Corinthians are not just a key to understanding the world around us. They are designed by Paul to be an antidote to fawning after the world and yearning to adopt its values. For, as much as many Christians are happy to attack people like Daniel Dennett, they are also more than happy to look enviously at the success and popularity authors like Dennett and Dawkins achieve. Carson shows us how the nature of a truly Christian church will almost always be its human inadequacy and attraction of a group of people who are, generally, neither noble, wealthy or wise. This is God's deliberate purpose - to demonstrate, by the composition of the church "the message of the cross: salvation is God's free gift."

Concerning the proclamation of this cross-centred message Carson proves to have been as discerning in his insights about the direction of "evangelical" churches as he has been about the surrounding culture. His words about the future direction of evangelical leadership are particularly poignant in the light of the recent extensive discussion surrounding the books Pierced for our Transgressions and The lost message of Jesus:

"a few [evangelical leaders] are in danger of distancing themselves from major components of the cross, while still operating within the context of evangelicalism. It is at least possible that we are the generation of believers who will destroy much of historic Christianity from within"

These are wise words and, I feel, a real challenge to me to return to the cross as the shaping centre not just of my theology of salvation but also as the model of my life and work. This book will move me to prayer - because a cross shaped life, as 1 Corinthians 2 points out, is only achieved by the gracious work of God's Holy Spirit in the lives of Christian people.

The most important people in the world?

That's what Ikea would have us believe children are - though an interesting piece in the Telegraph the other day suggests that the astonishing national interest in Madeline McCann is actually a symptom of our lack of care for children.

Anyway I've just read, and talked with some good friends who are also Dads, about Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp - a great book for all Christian parents. here ar emy thoghts on it...

It's not easy being a Dad. That's not a cry for sympathy (I'm not saying it's easy being a mum or, indeed, not being a parent at all), just my feelings about the job. I suppose actually I should rephrase that. It's not easy being a good Dad. After all being a Dad is, in a sense, just biological. Being a good Dad is a whole lot more than that.

How do you raise a child who can think for herself but not enter into the cynical and destructive postmodern mindset of always questioning everything? How do you discipline a child so that they understand it is important for them to obey you but only because, and in so far as, you have to obey God? How do you teach children that God must punish moral evil but that God's world, and hence Christian families, should be places where grace is exercised above justice?

Lots of secular books will teach good techniques on, for example, discipline - we have seen several. But this is the only book I have ever read that attempts to think about the question of how parents can seek, under God, to shape the inclination of a child's heart. That might sound a bit scary to some - like a kind of manipulation. But it isn't as long as we realise that a) the God who asks us to shape the hearts of the young is a good God and b) children's hearts will otherwise not be neutral but shaped by their friends, television and all sorts of other people and influences who love our children much less than we do.

Tedd Tripp helps us to think about what are good goals for bringing up children and to reject goals like good behaviour, a professed conversion to Christian faith and the development of lots of special talents (eg in sport and music) as inadequate. The goal of mankind is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. So that must be our goal for our children, recognising that although its achievement depends, finally, not on our efforts but on their choices and God's grace, parents still have an important part to play in creating a home where faith is a lived out reality not an intellectual discussion topic.

Along the way Tripp challenges some favourite middle class ideas (including piano lessons and sticker charts!) as insufficient tools for child rearing. And he insists that we must embrace communication as a principal tool for shaping children's lives. This must be more than rules, correction and discipline but include encouragement, correction, rebuke, entreaty, instruction, warning, teaching and prayer. Tripp helpfully delineates the kind of situations where each of these might be useful and encourages parents to think about their use of each of them.

My major quibble is Tripp's insistence on "the rod" - that, in his words, the "timely, measured and controlled use of physical punishment" is a method that must be embraced by parents. Apart from the lack of empirical evidence for its effectiveness I have some questions on biblical grounds about his assertions. Tripp says that the bible requires Christian parents to discipline in this way. He bases his case on the exhortations in the book of Proverbs: "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him." Tripp (one supposes) does not use an actual rod with which to punish his children - so he does not take this verse in a woodenly literal sense. Once that much is conceded it becomes easy to understand that the principle of the verse is that it is the "discipline" itself, not that particular manner of carrying out that discipline, that drives folly from a child's heart. It seems to me that physical punishment (by a parent - no one else has this responsibility) is a legitimate but not the only legitimate means of exercising such discipline. Anecdotally my observation is that in thoughtful Christian families all the children I have seen are well disciplined (because they are much loved) and that there is an approximately 50/50 split between those who will smack their children and those who will not. I discern no observable variation in results. Likewise in families with inconsistent discipline children are regularly badly behaved whether the inconsistent discipline includes smacking or not. My anecdotal oberservations seem to concur with those of more rigorous surveys (for more on this see Evangelicals Now, June 2007).

This quibble aside I thoroughly recommend Shepherding a Child's Heart as auseful book for any parent.

Really human

Most Christian's responses to Richard Dawkins The God Delusion have focussed on his inadequate understanding of philosophy, his selective reading of the facts of history and his "evangelical" anti-religious fervour.

Critiques like Alistair McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion (link below) are enormously helpful in this regard. But if you would like to approach the issue from a different perspective Mere Humanity is a book for you. Donald Williams surveys the writings of three great twentieth century writers - G K Chesterton, C S Lewis and J R R Tolkein - for their understanding of human nature and the human condition.

In doing so he opens up for us the compelling nature of the arguments for seeing human life as meaningful and the human mind as something irreducible to merely physical and material components. This is useful as Christians try and counter the Dawkinsian view of life because it means that:

"science itself can only be a valid path to truth… if it does not try to be the only valid path, if, in other words, it depends on something it cannot itself dissect."

Science depends for its validity on a whole set of propositions (the existence of truth, the rationality and orderliness of nature and the adequacy of our senses to truly know the external world) that are themselves unprovable by scientific method and make most sens within a theistic (and Christian) world-view.

Williams opens up for us in successive chapters the way that a Christian doctrine of humanity informs some of the most famous works of literature of the twentieth century - the Narnia Chronicles, the Simarillion, the Space Trilogy and the Lord of the Rings.

Along the way he shows how these books demonstrate the tendency of atheism to trample on human rights (because the collective becomes more important than the individual). He quotes Gordon Lewis: "Postmodern thinkers cannot on Monday destroy belief in the universality and necessity of the laws of logic and morality and expect us to protect their human rights on Tuesday."

This book equips Christians to take on the inadequate and false worldviews of both neo-Darwinistic modernism and its postmodern progeny and also enhances our reading, enjoyment and understanding of some great works of fiction. What more could you ask?

Real Life

There have been many classic treatments of the evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Most of them you will find referenced in this volume. But popular level books tend to date reasonably quickly so there is a constant need for the fresh expression of old truths. And Dead or Alive is an admirable successor to books like Who moved the stone?

Dan Clark weaves together his main argument with a series of real life testimonies (all interesting and some very moving) from people to whom the resurrection of Jesus is a personal experience as well as an historical truth.

The main part of his book works through three sections. In part 1 he invites is to suppose that the resurrection is true and see that, if so, it offers profound hope in finding answers to questions like the existence of God, the problem of pain, the possibility of life after death and the validity of other religions.

In part 2 Clark presents us with the reliability of the Bible testimony to Jesus' resurrection, the different alternative explanations for the events of the first Easter and the compelling nature of the orthodox Christian claim. This part is the outstanding highlight of the book - a model of clear logical thinking.

Finally part 3 explores the implications of the resurrection and the necessity of a response from us to the living Jesus.

All this is done in an eminently readable style with entertaining cartoons interspersed. The points are well illustrated and there is plenty here to capture the interest of Christian, enquirer and hardened sceptic alike.

Occasionally the illustrations obscure a point rather than illuminating it. So when Paul talks about Jesus being the "image of the invisible God" it isn't really like having the fingerprints of the person who burgled your house left behind as Clark suggests - rather it is like the burglar coming and introducing himself to you personally! And once or twice I felt that the confidence in the genuine harmony of the gospel testimony to Jesus' resurrection was not quite as firm as I would like to see. But these are minor blemishes on an otherwise excellent book. Buy it, read it and give it to your friends!

Deluded

Everybody else in the world seems to have had their say about Richard Dawkin's most recent book. So, having now read it, I'm going to have my tuppence worth. If you want a more detailed and systematic review of it from a Christian perspective (but including scathing critiques from many atheists as well) read Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion.

The book is, in many ways, a collection of ideas arranged for polemic affect rather than a single continuous argument. I am not going to attempt a comprehensive summary but rather lick up a few things that seemed to me particularly problematic.

Dawkins starts, and ends, with a conviction that the majesty of the scientific view of the universe is more inspiring and awesome than the religious view:

He quotes approvingly from Carl Sagan: "A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."
Apart from the obvious complaint that it's not really reasonable to expect an old religion to display an understanding of the contemporary scientific view of the scale of the universe it appears that Dawkins is ignorant of Psalm 19, where the writer of 3,000 years ago specifically explores the vastness of the universe and the smallness, physically speaking, of humankind's place in it. It's also worth noting that as one walks around secular nations like Britain with its vast majority of irreligious people they are characterised not by reverence and awe for the universe. Instead the preoccupations of a society in which matter and this life are all that count are reality TV, mobile telephones and more and better homes, care and electronic gadgets. Dawkins' is badly mistaken about the practical results of secular materialism.

Dawkins frequently verges on the apoplectic about the special protection he sees as being given to religion and religious views. I agree with him that sometimes religious people and their beliefs are wrongly privileged. But for him to suggest that his vilification by some because you're "not allowed to say these things" about religion is a mark of the oppressiveness of religion itself as an idea is, frankly, ridiculous. No doubt some, even many, religious people enforce their religious laws to the point of questioning anybody's freedom to believe differently. But almost every atheist state that has arisen has also been profoundly intolerant of people expressing religious views. How is this any different?

Dawkins makes much of a treaty that states that "the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." and the fact that, at the time, in 1797 it caused no dissent. One can't help wondering how many of the population of the United States were actually aware in 1797 of the wording of a treaty with Tripoli! That aside Dawkins never stops to ask the question whether, historically, and whatever the founding fathers may have thought, the constitution of the USA would have been possible without the influence of Christian thinkers. One suspects not. Finally since Dawkins insists that he is guided only by evidence, in the narrow scientific sense, it would make no difference to his acceptance of the Christian faith if everybody else in the world believed it. So why should it make any difference in the other direction whether the founding fathers were, or were not, Christians, theists, deists, agnostics or atheists?

Overall perhaps the worst aspect of The God Delusion is Dawkins' blindness towards his own motivations (his perception of himself as a sort of neutral observer of the evidence rather than someone with an agenda - something he castigates the gospel writers for being) and his lack of charity (which, presumably, as an atheist Dawkins doesn't believe in anyway) towards the motivations of other people. Anyone who professes religious beliefs but not in a blood thirsty way is dishonest or inconsistent. Scientists who think there may be limits to the questions that can be asked by the scientific method are spineless or throwing sops to the religious. Poor Stephen Jay Gould, now dead, did not, we are told, actually mean most of the things he wrote in one of his most significant works on science and religion. One is not sure how Dawkins knows this - perhaps he has acquired divine powers?

When it comes to the evidence for religion Dawkins, rightly, heaps ridicule on the Templeton Foundation's "scientific" experiment to see whether prayer for the sick works. But he approves the general idea - that such things ought to be testable in a double blind type trial. But what if it is precisely something about the process of eliminating personality and relationship from the equation that is significant in the results? The understanding of most people of most faiths is that prayer is something that occurs in the context of a series of relationships with family, friends and members of a religious community as well as with their god. Dawkins is blinded to these important aspects precisely because of his demand that "proof" of religion conform to his methodology.

Dawkins is scathing of people who claim things to be true without evidence. But he himself does this all the time. To take just one example he extrapolates from the fact that we have now found 170 planets in the universe that, given the vast number that must be undiscovered, "there are very probably alien civilisations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine." Apart from the fact that he offers no statistical evidence to back this up there is the problem that Christian theologians believe God to be eternal, infinite, all powerful, personal and all knowing - so it's hard to see how aliens, however sophisticated, could really exceed that. It's just another example of Dawkins consistent language to big up (some) scientists (basically him and those who agree with him) and belittle everyone else.

One cannot help wondering whether Dawkins is deliberately or accidentally ignorant about some things. He tells us that "If there is a logical argument linking the existence of great art to the existence of God, it is not spelled out by its proponents." Clearly he has never read G K Chesterton or C S Lewis on this topic; or he finds it inconvenient to deal with what they have written or he considers it so ridiculous as to be not worth bothering with - which would be strange as Dawkins appears to have made a habit of collecting all the most ridiculous things religious people have ever said and presenting them as normative and mainstream. That's not to deny that there are a lot of silly religious people out there. But there are a lot of silly atheists too!

Dawkins also attempts to undermine C S Lewis' trilemma (that Jesus was mad, bad or God) by telling us that there is a fourth possibility - that Jesus was honestly mistaken. This makes one wonder if Dawkins has actually done C S Lewis the courtesy of reading his formulation of the trilemma before arguing with it! The idea that Jesus was "honestly mistaken" is precisely Lewis' "mad" argument. To be honestly mistaken that you are the king of Israel, the one with unique relationship with the God of the universe, the one with power to forgive sin and the final judge of the world IS to be mad!

From the evidence, or not, for the existence of God Dawkins moves on to questions of morality. He says that "modern morality, wherever else it comes from, does not come from the Bible." He then tries to show that the God of the Old Testament is nasty and vindictive. Unfortunately, of the Old Testament quotations that Dawkins looks at (about, for example rape, murder and incest), precisely the point of most of them is that God views these actions as wicked and worthy of punishment. Christians, along with Dawkins, would want to say that not every incident recorded in the Bible is meant to be an ethical model for us. But that does not entail the false conclusion that he draws that modern morality does not come at all from the Bible - unless Dawkins wishes to deny that, for example, our cultural and/or legal taboos against murder, rape, adultery and the idea of treating others as you would treat yourself are not significantly influenced by the heritage of the Bible in our culture.

He quotes with approval the idea that, with or without religion you would still have "good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things". But he never articulates on what basis does Dawkins believe that there are, basically, "good" or "evil" people? And his use of Pascal's quote: "men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" shows a profound ignorance of the history of 20th century atheism.

Dawkins tells us that religion is the means by which labels are attached to people in order to justify persecuting them or making them suffer in particular ways. Whilst he says he will not "guarantee" that this is always the case he pretty much hints that it usually is. But what about, for example, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda and Burundi? Or the Catholic French and the Catholic Italians in World War II? Or the Iranians and the Iraqis? Surely Dawkins cannot be ignorant of these conflicts? I suspect that they are conveniently laid aside because they do not neatly fit his hypothesis.

There are some, limited, attempts, to set out what ethics without God might look like. However in quoting Peter Singer as a most "eloquent advocate of the view that we should move on to a post-speciesist condition in which humane treatment is meted out to all species that have the brain-power to appreciate it." Dawkins omits to mention that Singer includes disabled newborn human babies amongst those who do not have the brain power to appreciate humane treatment and can thus legitimately be killed. Perhaps Dawkins did not think that promoting these views would add to the perceived moral integrity of atheists.

Dawkins wants us to be clear that it is Marxism rather than atheism that led Stalin to his wickedness: "Individual atheists may do evil things but they don't do evil thing in the name of Atheism." He never mentions that the whole materialist Marxist project was an exercise in practical atheism and that the terrible suffering of individuals that Stalin brought about was made possible by a evolutionary world view that said that the good of the collective nation, race and species was what mattered rather than the individual person with dignity as a bearer of God's image.

On the 9/11 bombings Dawkins quotes with approval those who blame "religion itself" for the attacks. But this is to fall into exactly the same trap that he goes to such lengths to avoid doing with Stalin and atheism.

Just because some religious people do wicked things doesn't make "religion" evil any more than the fact that some atheists do evil things makes atheism evil. This is particularly so because "religion" is, in most respects, a much broader category than atheist embracing all sorts of cultures, ideas and behaviours.

Dawkins asks how the 9/11 bombers can be perverting the "true" faith of Islam (as moderate Islamic leaders claim) when "faith, lacking objective justification, doesn't have any demonstrable standard to pervert?" This is another example of Dawkins prioritising his "demonstrable standard" over any others. It is arguable whether or not the Koran does, in fact, encourage martyrdoms and murders like the 9/11 attacks. But there is a standard, the teaching of the Koran, to which justification can be made; it just happens not to be a "scientific" standard on Dawkin's terms.

Exactly the same criticism can be levelled at Dawkins' own views on moral issues. What is the "demonstrable standard" of ethics for the atheist? This is particularly pertinent given that just a few pages earlier in the book Dawkins has listed someone's personal 10 commandments and then added a few suggestions of his own for improvement/alteration. But, as Dawkins himself hints, who is to decide to privilege one personal 10 commandments over another?

Towards the end of his book Dawkins is scathing about teaching the idea of hell to children and describes this as mental abuse. To be sure some of the things he describes religious people as doing to explain the idea of hell are very unpleasant and I wouldn't want to condone them. But is one to presume that Dawkins is against telling children that when they die that's it? That death is the end of life and individuality and they are no more? It seems not from the way he eulogises the bracing consolation of "facing straight into the strong, keen wind of understanding" - that is, in other words "when you die you rot." I recall as a child and teenager being profoundly disturbed and frightened by the thought of death and extinction as a person. Was it, therefore, mental abuse for the people who taught me that to do so? I suspect, though I cannot prove it, that Dawkins would say it was not. Why not? Because, again I speculate, it is true. Which returns Dawkins to the same place as the Christian; it is fine to teach children about frightening things like war, murder, death and hell - if they are true. So it is truth not, as Dawkins says, fear inducing qualities, that must be the arbiter.

In conclusion Dawkins finishes by talking about the beauty of the universe in its simple existence. The sharp eyes will noticed how, to enhance the beauty of the picture, the possibility of it being commonplace on many planets (emphasised earlier in the book when it suited his purposes in attacking the anthropic principle) is played down: "On one planet, and possibly only one planet in the entire universe, molecules.. Gather themselves together into… matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of… falling in love with yet other chunks of complex matter."

The sentence sums up the book. It selectively ignores what has been said before and it is, ultimately, vacuous - why should any of this be amazing if it is, in the end, nothing other than the product of a universe whose laws and basis are nothing other than blind, random, pitiless indifference?

Evangelicalism Divided by Iain Murray

This book, by one of Britain's best evangelical church historians, is about key events in the evangelical church in the UK and US in the period 1950-2000.

Murray argues that one of the most important backgrounds to C20th evangelicalism is the ecumenical movement - an ever increasing desire for structural unity of Christians (some sort of universal denomination) whatever their theological commitments. This was particularly evident in the Anglican and Methodist churches.

The origins of this movement, Murray argues, were the same as the origins of theological liberalism itself - the thought and teaching of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Schleiermacher contended that Christianity is a matter of the feelings and is thus independent of creeds and tests. The Bible was simply "the original interpretation of Christian feeling." What is needed for salvation is pious and devout sentiments towards Christ. This opened the way, first in Germany and then throughout the English speaking world, for the idea that belief is no essential part of being a Christian - a massively common thought even today!

Until the 1950s evangelicals were a largely ignored and despised minority in denominational churches, especially Anglicanism. The key to changing this was, in many ways, the Billy Graham crusades of the mid 1950s. These were so visibly successful that all sorts of non-evangelical churches, desperate to stem the tide of emptying pews, joined in. No distinction was then made by the organisers of the crusades as to whether the churches people were being referred back to were evangelical or not.

This width continued to grow over the next years and Murray spends a considerable time talking about the increasing alignment between Billy Graham and Roman Catholics - something curiously paralleled by the Alpha movement today. He highlights the objections about this policy made by Lloyd-Jones and also by Schaeffer, who asked: "What is the use of evangelicalism seeming to get larger and larger if sufficient numbers of those under the name evangelical no longer hold to that which makes evangelicalism evangelical?"

Murray also looks at the shifting views of J I Packer on evangelical cooperation with ecumenical projects - especially with Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics. He is concerned to emphasise that the postmodern spirit in which discussions in the Church of England were constructed was always going to be fatal for evangelicals. If they refused to enter into dialogue they were marginalised and excluded - and therefore were in no position to reclaim the denomination. If they did enter into dialogue they were only permitted to do so on the basis that they affirmed all the other participants were Christian and that the evangelical perspective was just one amongst many - which undermined the very objective they were supposed to be achieving.

It was the failure to ask the basic question "what is a Christian?" before entering into discussion and cooperation with different groups that, Murray argues, Martin Lloyd-Jones was speaking against in his now infamous address at the Evangelical Alliance conference of 1966. He says that Lloyd-Jones was not calling on Anglican evangelicals to leave the Church of England but to recognise that their primary loyalty must lie with evangelicalism not the denomination and that there were some partnerships that would inevitably compromise this. Ecumenical people, Lloyd Jones said, put fellowship before doctrine. Evangelicals put doctrine before fellowship.

By contrast, Murray argues, in the 16th century reformation and the 18th century revivals the key leaders always asked the question "what is a Christian?" first and would only work in evangelism with those who gave the same answer that they believed the Scripture taught.

For Murray another key problem has been the determination of evangelicals to be intellectually respectable. This is particular important for those in mainstream denominations (especially Anglicanism) where progress in reaching positions of influence is often directly related to academic qualifications from "secular" universities. Murray is particularly critical of the approach of Mark Noll, Alister McGracth, F F Bruce and R T France which he felt, tended to set the human authorship of scripture over the divine authorship - so that these scholars reach conservative conclusions using "liberal" methods. This too is particularly relevant in our day as this approach is seen in the writings of N T Wright. His rejection of systematic theology as a category in favour of narrative theology only seems strongly related to taking the historical and cultural backgrounds of the human authors of scripture as a more significant interpretive tool than the verbal inspiration of the whole Bible by the Spirit of God.

He includes in this section a brilliant quotation for anyone wanting to be involved in theological education: "the recovery of the reading of the Bible as scripture, not as a piece of near Eastern literature and not as a text for scientific study, must have priority in the seminary… The Bible must be taught in seminaries so that students come under the power of the Holy Spirit as God's Word to each Christian believer and to each Christian community. Professors cannot do the work of the Holy Spirit, but they ought not to create difficulties for the Holy Spirit, much less a defiance of the holy Spirit."

I was slightly disappointed at the relatively narrow focus of the book as the title had led me to expect something broader that might have included, for example, the divisions that have centred around the charismatic movement both in the creation of house churches and within the larger denominations through things like New Wine. It was slightly frustrating too that the debate within the Church of England about women's ordination is referred to only in the context of the impact it had on relationships with the Roman Catholic church and not in its wider impact.

Overall though this is a fascinating and well researched history of one aspect of this period, although for a balanced view it should probably be read in conjunction with Tim Dudley-Smith's 2 volume biography of John Stott and Alister McGrath's biography of J I Packer.

Christians and Work

Mike Gilbart-Smith has written some excellent material for Christians wanting to think in a God-centred way about work. Check out his blog here.

Real darkness

I'm writing this on my first day of a week of study leave - a glorious 5 days sitting in a library reading books. Bring it on!

Unfortunately my week has commenced by reading one of the very worst books that I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. The Dark Side of Christian History by Helen Ellerbe. Still, if, by reviewing it here, I can prevent anyone from buying or, worse, reading it then my time will not have been entirely wasted!

According to the blurb "The Dark Side of Christian History reveals in painstaking detail the tragedies, sorrows and injustices inflicted upon humanity by the Church." In fact this book is a highly selective collection of insults, insinuations and ignorance that attempts to mock Christianity in all its forms.

The first thing to say, of course, is that people claiming to be Christians, and some who genuinely were Christians, have done some terrible things in the name of Christ and the church. This, of course, is precisely what one would expect if Christian teaching about the fallen and wicked nature of humanity is true! Ellerbe seems to believe that human nature is fundamentally good - which leaves one wondering how she explains all the manifest wickedness she describes in her book!

To some specifics though. Ellerbe tells us that the council of Nicea proclaimed that "Jesus was not considered to be mortal; he was an aspect of God." what she says is entirely correct - orthodox Christians have always considered Christ to be immortal. What Ellerbe does though is subtly shift the definitions. She goes on to imply that Christians have not regarded Jesus as human; whereas Christians have always believed Jesus to be human - though not mortal! Ironically she then spends much time praising the gnostics; who really did not consider Christ to be human!

Next she tells us how the church (apparantly reluctantly) allowed the worship of Mary. This is total nonsense - no orthodox Christian church has ever allowed the worship of anybody other than the persons of the Trinity, however much it might sometimes appear that they do to the casual observer. This whole section is really a reprise of the "sacred feminine" arguments put forward in "The Da Vinci Code".

As we progress through the book we find fundamental misunderstandings of the purpose of Augustine's City of God (p41), the blaming of the church for the collapse of the economies of Europe in the period 500-1000AD (no doubt if space were allowed the blame for rampant capitalism and its consequent transformation of Europe and North America into wealthy but soulless continents would also lie with the church).

When we come to the Protestant Reformation (chapter 7) we suddenly discover all sorts of positive things about the Catholic church that went unmentioned before. Curiously they are the very things (eg the tolerance of superstition) that Protestantism opposed. Thus both sides of the Reformation can be equally condemned by Ellerbe for different things! It is one thing to recognise that wicked deeds were done by Protestants and Catholics but Ellerbe is simply cheap here.

Lastly it seems that Christianity is responsible for Darwinism, atheism and the misuse of antibiotics!

As well as all this there are some frankly inexcusably sloppy uses of quotations, references and remarks about language. One quotation from a book published in 1978 is made to sound like it was a contemporary criticism in the middle ages. All the quotations from Luther, Calvin and other reformers are culled from secondary sources despite the facts that their works are readily available in English both in print and on the internet. And the change from a feminine Hebrew word (ruah) to a neuter Greek work (pneumos) is portrayed as some sort of deliberate rejection of femininity when, in fact, the framers of Christian doctrine were simply operating in the (non-Christian!) lingua franca of the day.

If you want mindless, shoddy critique of the beliefs of billions of people in the world read this book. But if, instead, you want a thoughtful, incisive, sometimes brutal but generally fair critique of monotheism, coupled with its best points, read Rodney Stark's For the Glory of God instead.