BOOK REVIEW: THE BREEZE OF THE CENTURIES

The Breeze of the Centuries: Introducing great theologians from the Apostolic Fathers to Aquinas, by Michael Reeves

The longer I continue in Christian ministry, the more convinced I become of the vital importance of having a grasp of church history. Perhaps this is partly a consequence of age, but more than that, church history is incredibly useful both in terms of instructing us about important matters we might otherwise struggle to grasp, and in warning us not to repeat the mistakes that others have made.

Getting into church history, however, can feel intimidating – where is one supposed to start? One good starting place is Greg Allison’s Historical Theology, which is a brilliant systematic theology, written through the grid of historical theology. That is quite a big book though, and so still might be quite intimidating. And that is where The Breeze of the Centuries comes into its own. In just 150 pages Reeves gives an overview of the life and thought of the Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas; and does so with wit and panache.

As well as outlining the big theological issues of the ages, Reeves is good at slipping in those aspects of human interest that make history interesting – such as the Letter to Diognetus only being discovered in 1436, being used to wrap fish in Constantinople, and Aquinas’ family trying to tempt him away from his spiritual calling with a scantily clad seductress. But the big theological issues are big – and still very relevant today. Questions of the deity and humanity of Christ, the nature of eternal life, and the rationality of faith are hardly novel to our age, and the battles of the past prove fertile ground in which to work out how to respond and what to believe.

Viewing theology through the lens of history is also helpful to us in working out where the battle lines should be drawn in defence of the truth. We live in a time when there is both an incredible level of rancour amongst people who all claim to be followers of Jesus, but also a general cultural assumption of ‘tolerance’ that means many Christians find it difficult to ever say, “that is wrong.” Where the likes of Polycarp and Athanasius draw these lines is deeply instructive.

As Reeves points out, the theologians discussed here offer a broad range of personalities and beliefs, and some are more attractive than others. For example, I find Athanasius and Augustine far more convincing than Anselm and Aquinas, yet each repays study – if only for the shaping influence they have had on later cultures and theology.

This is an excellent little book – get hold of it if you can!

50 YEARS OF WOMENS LIB & THIS IS WHERE WE GET TO?

Generally, pop music isn’t worth commenting on. It is so ubiquitous, and generally so ephemeral that it doesn’t warrant much response. Yet sometimes it is wise to give some attention to it, if only because of its ubiquity. It is easy to uncritically allow pop to be the sound track of our lives, without adequate reflection on what it is telling us about our lives, and our world.

One song that recently caught my attention (I happened to be in the gym of a hotel, and – as is invariably the case in gyms – MTV was on) is Lana Del Ray’s Video Games. The first thing that caught my attention was the melodic beauty of the song – the tolling bell and harp that open the track set this apart from the normal plastic pop. But my next reaction was a fairly visceral reaction to the lyrics.

At one level Video Games is simply a retelling of boy meets girl – the classic tale of falling in love. I’ve nothing against that! And I’ve certainly got nothing against faithful, serving love. But some of the underlying messages in the song make my skin itchy.

It's you, it's you, it's all for you

Everything I do

I tell you all the time

Heaven is a place on earth with you

Tell me all the things you want to do

I heard that you like the bad girls

Honey, is that true?

It's better than I ever even knew

They say that the world was built for two

Only worth living if somebody is loving you

Baby now you do

The major problem here is the way it locates personal identity in romantic relationship. Romantic relationships are important, and most of us desire them and enter into them, but to define ourselves by them is to sell ourselves short. Key to personal identity should be an understanding that we are made in the image of God, and that (if we have responded in faith to Christ) we shall one day be like God. That is a far more compelling message, and a much better place to get a sense of who you are, than, “I’m nothing without a boyfriend.”

A subsidiary problem is that the object of the song is a typical slacker male, sitting around drinking beer, wasting his time playing video games and leering after the bad girls. This is not the kind of man I would encourage any woman to devote herself to. She would do much better to find a man who works hard, doesn’t look at porn or fantasize about pole dancers (and expect her to act out these fantasies), and is faithfully committed to serving her, rather than having her run around after him.

Young women should have higher ambitions – and higher standards – than this. I wouldn’t want my daughters singing songs like this. After decades of campaigning for women’s rights we should be able to do better than this.

BABYLON OR HEAVEN?

Looking back over my preaching of the past 12 months or so it is clear that the themes I have been returning to again and again are the implications of the Christian’s union with Christ and the certain hope of resurrection life. It is what I’m planning to preach again this Sunday morning at Godfirst, Rosebank. 

I have been trying to emphasize – repeatedly – the solidity of the Christian hope – that actually we are the most grounded of all people because we of all people will for all time be possessors of all the earth. This is a very different vision from common notions of “heaven.” And it has all kinds of very practical implications.

In choosing a couple of books to bring with me to South Africa I picked up a volume of short stories by HC Bosman. Bosman was a South African author, who wrote in the middle of the last century, and his short stories are brilliant – somehow spacious and rambling yet incredibly pithy and punchy and poignant at the same time. He tells tales based around a collection of rural Afrikaners, living near the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) border, and I love them.

As these are Afrikaner stories, set a century ago, the Dutch Reformed Church often features – usually in a somewhat ironic (Bosman is great at irony) and not exactly flattering light. While reading the story “On to Freedom,” this passage caught my eye:

“As you all know,” Wynand Oosthuizen said, “my farm is situated right up against the Limpopo, and I live there alone. Consequently, I have much time in which to think. And I have thought about this question of the predikant (Afrikaans for ‘pastor’) and the young men and diamond diggings. Yes, I have given it much thought. And I perceive that there is only one way in which the predikant will be able to get people to stay away from the diamond fields: he must say that the diamond fields are a lot like heaven.”

We looked at Wynand Oosthuizen, wondering. It seemed to do queer things to a man, living alone like that beside the Limpopo.

Because we made no answer, Wynand Oosthuizen thought, apparently, that we hadn’t understood what he was saying.

“You see,” he went on, “after every Nagmaal (Communion) I have observed that there is a big rush to the diamond diggings. That is because the predikant talks so much about the wickedness of the life on the diggings; how the diamond fields are like Babylon, and how vice and evil flourish there, and how people make money there and then forget all about their duty to the church. Now, if the predikant were to say that the diggings are exactly like the Kingdom of Heaven, nobody would want to go. No, nobody at all.”

Bosman here skewers exactly the problem of so much Christian teaching and theology. A Christianity that teaches mere moralism is attractive only to those who like to live as moralistic legalists. For the rest, well Babylon looks far more attractive. Moralistic legalism only serves to drive people towards the very things it warns against, rather than drawing them towards the riches that are ours in Christ.

If we were to actually understand the implications of the Christian’s union with Christ and the certain hope of resurrection life, then no one would go rushing off “to the diggings.” So it is this that I intend to keep preaching – it is the message that we need to hear.

7 BILLION IS A BIG NUMBER

According to this fun statistical calculator, when I was born I was the 3,693,152,001^st person alive on planet earth. (It’s quite nice to be an ‘and first’ – makes me feel special!) This week the total number of people alive on planet earth is thought to have nearly doubled that number, and now stands at 7 billion. (Although there is a significant margin of error in the calculation.) 

A rapidly rising population does not depress or worry me as it seems to many people. I have enough confidence in God’s covenant with the earth (Genesis 9:9-17) and in the ingenuity of man, to believe that the potential is there to feed every mouth and clothe every back, without resultant planetary catastrophe. I don’t believe we have resource problems – just sin problems. In a number of developed countries the more likely problem is now actually insufficient population growth, as fertility rates (the number of children a woman has) drop below replacement rates (the number of births required to maintain a stable population) and an ageing population becomes increasingly dependent on a shrinking number of economically active younger people.

The UK population is growing still, though this is largely driven by immigration (as our own fertility rates – Hosiers excepted – are below the replacement rate). But one of the interesting things about being in South Africa is seeing the incredible pace of development. Here the fertility rate still outpaces the replacement rate and this coupled with the need to improve the living conditions of the majority population means vast swathes of land which were previously empty are now covered in housing.

Parts of the Cape and Johannesburg look more like Dubai now than the South Africa of old. Yet the inequalities and needs of millions of people are still painfully obvious – flying into Cape Town or Johannesburg the visitor will be struck by the scale of the townships surrounding the city. On Sunday I drove through a township outside Cape Town, which was a very desperate place. This is where not only poor South Africans but many refugees and economic migrants from other African nations first land when they reach the Cape. Many of them subsequently escape though, making the economic journey from leaking shack to solidly built hut to – perhaps, one day – what you and I might recognize as proper housing.

In the end what most of the worlds 7 billion people want is simply a decent roof over their heads, and enough food to eat and clothes to wear.

This desire is reflected at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus told his disciples that he was going ahead of them to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house (John 14:1-4); and the end of the story tells of the day when a numberless crowd will stand in worship before Jesus (Rev 7:9-10). On that day maybe there will be even more than 7 billion people standing on this earth (it will be this earth, and I hope there are more than 7 billion people) and not one of them will be naked, or homeless or hungry.

That’s the Christian message – an expectation that we have been given sufficient resources to lift people out of poverty now, and a great hope for an eternity in which there is no poverty.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.