Signposts 02

Karl Barth – a survey of his Theology

Greg the explorer — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:19:36 +0000

I have participated in the turning of this blog into a bit of a one trick pony and I think that it is time we moved on from the gay/sin/hell/liberal/reformed debates and turned instead to a look at the modern day theologians who have shaped the churches thinking on any number of issues. I propose to do a series on these theologians and offer as my first post a survey on the theology of Karl Barth. I have lifted this article from Theopedia here

In this article the following abbreviations are used

CD - Church Dogmatics
GD - Gottingen Dogmatics

Barth’s ontology

“The doctrine of the Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian, and therefore what already distinguishes the Christian concept of revelation as Christian, in contrast to all other possible doctrines of God or concepts of revelation.” ^[1]

“It can fairly be said that the chief ecumenical enterprise of current theology is rediscovery and development of the doctrine of the Trinity. It can also fairly be said that Barth initiated the enterprise” ^[2]Robert Jenson’s quote must be seen in the context of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who placed the Trinity at the end of his systematic work, The Christian Faith (1821, rev. 1830). Barth purposefully placed the Trinity at the beginning of his Church Dogmatics, signifying its importance and centrality to the exposition and proclamation of theology. Since Barth, Protestant theologians have found a renewed interest in the Trinity, and contemporary theology has seen it return to the forefront of dogmatics and theological method.

Threefold Word of God

Barth held to what is known as the threefold Word of God. In other words, preaching (or proclamation), scripture, and revelation are considered to be three different, yet unified forms of the Word of God. Barth’s analogy was the Trinity (see CD I/1, 121). Futhermore,

There is no distinction of degree or value between these three forms. For to the extent that proclamation really rests on recollection of the revelation attested in the Bible and is thus obedient repitition of the biblical witness, it is no less the Word of God than the Bible. And to the extent that the Bible really attests revelation it is no less the Word of God than revelation itself. As the Bible and proclamation become God’s Word in virtue of the actuality of revelation, they are God’s Word: the one Word of God within which there can be neither a more nor a less. Nor should we ever try to understand the three forms of God’s Word in isolation. The first, revelation, is the form that underlies the other two (CD I/1, 120–121). Bruce McCormack notes that what Barth is after is a “unity-in-differentiation.” ^[3] Each form is distinct from one another (as the persons of the Trinity are), yet are unified with each other (cf. CD I/2, 463).

Preaching

“Real proclamation, then, means the Word of God preached and the Word of God preached means… man’s talk about God on the basis of God’s own direction, which fundamentally transcends all human causation, which cannot, then, be put on a human basis, but which simply takes place, and has to be acknowledged, as a fact” (CD I/1, 90). Barth’s point is that preaching may become the Word of God not because of something we do, but according to God’s direction. Thus, God’s Word is free and not something controlled or possessed by the church.

Scripture

One of the most influential and controversial features of Barth’s Church Dogmatics was his doctrine of election (see CD II/2). One thread of the Reformed tradition, following the interpretation of its most influential thinker,John Calvin, argued for the so-called double predestination: God chose some humans for salvation through Christ and others for damnation. These groups were sometimes called the “elect” and “reprobate.” This choice (or election) was made by God and was the result of His “absolute decree,” a mysterious and fundamentally inscrutable decision which, though it was a decision of ultimate consequence for the individual human, was fundamentally inaccessible and unknowable to him or her. God chose each person to be saved or damned based on the divine will, and it was impossible to know why God chose some and not others or whether God had elected or rejected oneself.

Barth’s doctrine of election involves a firm rejection of the notion of an absolute decree. In keeping with his Christo-centric methodology, Barth argues that to ascribe the salvation or damnation of humanity to an abstract and absolute decree is to make some part of God more final and definitive than God’s saving act in Jesus Christ. God’s absolute decree, if one may speak of such a thing, is God’s gracious decision to be “for” humanity in the person of Jesus Christ (Barth calls this God’s “Yes”). With the earlier Reformed tradition, Barth retains the notion of double predestination, but he makes Jesus simultaneously the object and subject of both divine election and reprobation: Jesus embodies God’s election of humanity and God’s rejection of human sin. He is the electing God and the elect man. As the electing God, Jesus elects all of humanity in himself. And thus, as the elected man, all who are “in Christ” are elect in him. Non-believers, it is said, have simply not realized or recognized their election in Christ.

While some regard this revision of the doctrine of election as an improvement on the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination, critics have charged that Barth’s view amounts to an implicit universalism.

Universalism?

Barth has also been criticized for his alleged belief in universalism, however, Barth himself noted that insistence on necessary universal salvation impinged on God’s freedom and suggested it was beyond the church’s duty to speculate on the subject (Church Dogmatics 2.2, 417). “For Barth, the grace of God is characterised by freedom. On the one hand, this means that we can never impose limits on the scope of grace; and on the other hand, it means that we can never impose a universalist ‘system’ on grace. In either case, we would be compromising the freedom of grace – we would be presuming that we can define the exact scope of God’s liberality. So Barth’s theology of grace includes a dialectical protest: Barth protests both against a system of universalism and against a denial of universalism! The crucial point is that God’s grace is free grace: it is nothing other than God himself acting in freedom. And if God acts in freedom, then we can neither deny nor affirm the possibility of universal salvation.” ^[4]

Barth says that,

“The proclamation of the Church must make allowance for this freedom of grace. Apokatastasis Panton? No, for a grace which automatically would ultimately have to embrace each and every one would certainly not be free grace. It surely would not be God’s grace. But would it be God’s free grace if we could absolutely deny that it could do that? Has Christ been sacrificed only for our sins? Has he not … been sacrificed for the whole world? … [Thus] the freedom of grace is preserved on both these sides.” ^[5] For Barth, then, we can neither affirm nor deny the possibility that all will be saved. So what can we do? Barth’s answer is clear: we can hope(see CD IV/3, pp. 477–78). ^[6]

Apologetics

Barth’s theology denies the necessity of apologetics. He states in The Epistle to the Romans:

The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question-mark against all truths. The Gospel is not the door but the hinge. The man who apprehends its meaning is removed from all strife, because he is engaged in a strife with the whole, even with existence itself. Anxiety concerning the victory of the Gospel—that is, Christian Apologetics—is meaningless, because the Gospel is the victory by which the world is overcome. … It [the Gospel] does not require representatives with a sense of responsibility, for it is as responsible for those who proclaim it as it is for those to whom it is proclaimed. It is the advocate of both. … God does not need us. Indeed, if He were not God, He would be ashamed of us. We, at any rate, cannot be ashamed of Him. ^[7] ## Notes

↑Church Dogmatics I/1, p. 301.
↑ Robert Jenson, “Karl Barth” in The Modern Theologians 2nd ed., p. 47.
↑ Bruce McCormack, “The Being of Scripture is in Becoming”, in Evangelicals & Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics, eds. Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguelez, and Dennis L. Okholm (InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 59.
↑Why I am not a Universalist, by Ben Meyers
↑ Barth, God Here and Now, pp. 41–42.
↑Why I am not a Universalist, by Ben Meyers
↑ p. 35

External links

The Barth Renaissance in America: An Opinion, by Bruce McCormack
Karl Barth (Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Modern Western Theology)
The Doctrine of Sanctification in the Theology of Karl Barth, by Daniel B. Spross
Analogy and the Spirit in the Theology of Karl Barth (PDF), by Hans Frei
Barth, The Trinity, and Human Freedom, by Colin Gunton
The Strange Word Creating Its Own Familiarity: A Response to Rodney Holder on Barth on Natural Theology, by John C. McDowell
Karl Barth the Preacher (PDF), by Charles M. Cameron. The Evangelical Quarterly 66:2 (1994): 99–106.
The Covenant of Grace Fulfilled in Christ as the Foundation of the Indissoluble Solidarity of the Church with Israel: Barth´s Position on the Jews During the Hitler Era (PDF), by Eberhard Busch

Scripture

Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Inspiration (PDF), by G.W. Bromiley
The God of Promise: Christian Scripture as Covenantal Revelation, by David Gibson (discusses Barth’s view of Scripture)

Bibliographies

Books and Articles On Karl Barth at Regent Carey Library (provides a helpful list of works on Karl Barth)

C3 Oxford Falls recognised by community

signpostsfree — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:57:43 +0000

From the Manly Daily, a great report of a local church’s contribution to the community being recognised in a unique way.

Something really good and fruitful must be happening at C3 Oxford Falls!

WARRINGAH Council’s top citizenship awards this year were all awarded to members of the C3 Church in Oxford Falls.

Church members scooped all of the council’s major awards including the Citizen of the Year, Young Citizen of the Year and Community Event of the Year.

The exceptions were the 10 people who got outstanding community service awards, including the late South Narrabeen surf lifesaver Nicholas Brice and champion surfer Layne Beachley.

Josie Parata-Halo, a single mother of four, was awarded the council’s highest honour – Citizen of the Year.

Ms Parata-Halo runs the SMS Lighthouse program, which assists single mums. On SMS’s website she is described as a Christian attending C3 Church.

In a release announcing the award, Warringah Mayor Michael Regan described Ms Parato-Halo as an “inspirational character” and said her volunteer work had greatly benefited the community.

Fellow C3 member Tristian Scifo was named Young Citizen of the Year.

The 23-year-old North Manly resident has run a bi-annual leadership camp for high school students and leads a weekly support group.

The Community Event of the Year was awarded to C3-run Beyond Megafest, in recognition of the “positive education and support provided to Warringah youth”.

Well done all!

The Prosperity Gospel and the GFC

wazza2 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:13:10 +0000

David Van Biema wrote in Time in 2008:

Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”

Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘If you give this offering, God will give you a house.’ And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.” If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.

Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are “worthy of having more and doing more and being more.” In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.

But Walton suggests that a decade’s worth of ever easier credit acted like a drug in Prosperity’s bloodstream. “The economic boom ’90s and financial overextensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the Prosperity message,” he wrote recently on his personal blog as well as on the website Religion Dispatches. And not positively. “Narratives of how ‘God blessed me with my first house despite my credit’ were common. Sermons declaring ‘It’s your season to overflow’ supplanted messages of economic sobriety,” and “little attention was paid to … the dangers of using one’s home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations.”

With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that Prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and they are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants’ fortunes. Says Walton: “You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology.” But he predicts they will persevere, since God’s earthly largesse is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.

A recent publicly posted testimony by a congregant at the Brownsville Assembly of God, near Pensacola, Fla., seems to confirm his intuition. Brownsville is not even a classic Prosperity congregation — it relies more on the anointing of its pastors than on Scriptural promises of God. But the believer’s note to his minister illustrates how magical thinking can prevail even after the mortgage blade has dropped. “Last Sunday,” it read, “You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1,020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace.”

And pray that the credit market doesn’t tighten any further.

Another longer and very detailed article on the subject appeared in the Atlantic “Did Christianity cause the Crash?”: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/did-christianity-cause-the-crash/7764/3/

– wazza2

Missions Feature: Tearfund in Haiti

signpostsfree — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:04:01 +0000

The Church is active globally reaching people in places many of us can’t. This is a new kind of post featuring Christian charities which are touching lives through the freewill giving of people who care.

When is abortion ever safe?

signpostsfree — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:39:34 +0000

Medical science uses interesting terminology when it comes to abortion statistics.

The following article, from the British Medical Journal, refers to two kinds of abortion; one that is merely categorised as abortion, and the other called unsafe abortion, which gives the impression that the former is safe abortion without actually saying it.

Global abortion rate stalls while proportion of unsafe abortions rises

The global abortion rate, which declined substantially between 1995 and 2003, has now levelled out while the proportion of all abortions that are unsafe continues to increase.

The worldwide abortion rate per 1000 women aged between 15 and 44 dropped from 35 in 1995 to 29 in 2003. A new study by the Guttmacher Institute in New York and the World Health Organization has found that in 2008 the global abortion rate was 28 per 1000 women.

The study, published online in the Lancet (doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61786-8), also found that the proportion of abortions categorised as unsafe rose from 44% in 1995 to 49% in 2008.⇓

Nearly all unsafe abortions (98 %) occur in developing countries. In the developing world, 56% of all abortions are unsafe, compared with 6% in the developed world. Since 2003 the number of abortions fell by 600 000 in the developed world but increased by 2.8 million in the developing world.

One has to wonder who the abortion is safe for.

Is it the mother who is considered safe, or the child? Or perhaps the clinics are deemed safe if they are legally set up and organised. So who is at risk when it comes to unsafe abortion?

Of course the mother is being referred to, and no one would disagree with this, unless they were really hard-core, but it is amazing to note how the child has been completely ignored, because surely there is no safe place for an embryo when abortion is deemed to be the cure.

And isn’t it incredible that the main issue being raised here is the rise in unsafe abortions compared to abortions, not the figures which give us 2.8% of women between 15 and 44 having an abortion? That’s almost three in every hundred.

This was a drop from 1995, when 3.5% had an abortion. It’s good that there is a drop in the rate, but it is still astonishingly high when you consider the global population is approaching seven billion.

Remember, these are global figures, which means a staggering number of women go through the abortion process every year. I add that this article isn’t about judging the mother’s motives, because some women go through terrible experiences, and society has developed a disposable human culture, particularly since the 1960′s.

It is surely the ease with which abortions are obtained and the seeming flippant attitude towards the unborn child which makes these figures distressing.

The Altar of Rejection

It also confirms that abortion is a major industry. We are, in effect, sacrificing children at the altar of rejection at an alarming rate of 29 in every 1000 women worldwide, and this is amongst the so-called safe abortion clinics.

Feminists now use the provocative and erroneous argument that men should keep out of the discussion on the morality of abortion because it must only be the woman who makes the decision. But there must be a level of accountability when it comes to making the decision about terminating the life of an individual who has no choice in the outcome. There must be an allowance for representation of those innocents in the womb, at whatever gestation stage they may be.

In the UK today, an unborn child who is the casualty of assault on his mother who later dies in the womb is not said to have been murdered or the victim of manslaughter. He is said to have been ‘destroyed in the womb’, a clear indication of the controversy which could ensue if the anti-abortion lobby could challenge abortion if child destruction were termed murder or manslaughter.

Yet there is legal jurisdiction for trained professionals to destroy children in the womb and not be accountable for their actions in the same way as a person who assaults a pregnant woman resulting in the death of the infant.

Is rejection of a healthy child in a healthy mother’s womb a valid reason to abort?

We tragically count abortions in the millions. One has to wonder who God will hold accountable for this excessive loss of life.

Medical science should be about saving lives and improving health. All procedures should be considered safe. When the mother is at risk then we have to make the call whether the mother or child should be saved, but when neither is at risk, who are we to make it unsafe for one to save the lifestyle of the other?

Lifestyle of giving shown to be beneficial

signpostsfree — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:46:18 +0000

An intriguing article on the benefits of generosity and giving from The Pulse, an ABC online magazine:

THE GIFT OF GIVING REAPS HEALTHY REWARDS

It’s now clear that doing good for others without any expectation of reward – known as behaving altruistically – can give you better physical and mental health and even help you live longer.

As US-based altruism and health researcher Stephen G. Post puts it: “A remarkable fact is that giving, even in later years, can delay death. The impact of giving is just as significant as not smoking and avoiding obesity.”

Indeed one study of 2025 older residents of California found those who volunteered for two or more organisations had a 44 per cent reduction in mortality over five years, even after accounting for factors like differences in prior health status.

And yes, even giving in a more material sense can boost your wellbeing – although not as much as “hands on”, face-to-face helping.

Sydney positive psychology expert Dr Tony Grant says most of the studies have focused on behaviours like volunteering or practising acts of kindness, but some have looked at spending. These have shown those who spent money on others or on a charity are happier than those who spent on themselves. “Part of the problem is that [at Christmas], we get sucked into commercial rituals that have become completely divorced from any sort of intrinsic meaning,” says Grant, director of coaching psychology at the University of Sydney.

“But if you focus on why you’re giving – to make another person happy – it really can make you feel better and there are physical changes that underpin that.”

Give and thou shalt receive

Exactly how giving boosts health is not fully understood, but reduced exposure to stress hormones such as cortisol may be one factor.

Knowing we’ve done something to improve the life of others not only boosts our self esteem and gives us a sense of purpose, it also shifts our attention away from our own stresses and worries, Grant says.

“Your attention is placed on making other people feel better, not on worrying about yourself.”

Giving also “integrates you more solidly and cohesively into your supportive social networks”, making it more likely you’ll have helping behaviour returned to you when you need it – such as when you suffer illness or a loss in your own life.

“Twenty year follow-up studies at Harvard [University] have mapped thousands of people and shown those who pay attention to others tend to move towards the centre of their social network, whereas those who don’t get pushed further and further to the edges as the network changes over time. This is very important. Shared social support is one of the things that would probably play quite a major role in longevity.”

Some of the other changes that happen when we give have even been observed in brain scans. Studies involving functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans have shown donating money to charity triggers the same pleasure and reward systems in the brain as food and sex.

How much is enough?

Wonder how much you need to do for others before you get the rewards yourself? About two hours a week, it seems.

A 2002 study of 4860 elderly people found strong positive effects from a combination of volunteering and paid work up to about 100 hours a year, with no extra boost to wellbeing for those who did more than 100 hours.

While the study couldn’t separate the effects of volunteer work alone, and there will always be variations from one person to the next, “it seems as if we don’t have to put too much time in each week to receive benefits”, Grant says.

“And even volunteering on a random one-off basis will have immediate effects on our wellbeing.”

But overdoing altruistic acts can be harmful if you don’t have enough support or respite.

Just be kind

If you don’t have time to commit to regular volunteer works, you can experience the benefits of altruism simply by practising acts of kindness, Grant says.

In one of the most famous studies, students asked to practise five random acts of kindness a week for six weeks experienced a more than 40 per cent increase in self-reported happiness levels, measured on a type of standardised questionnaire widely used in psychological research.

Examples of acts of kindness you could try include:

Helping out a soup kitchen or homeless shelter
Phoning or visit a housebound person
Collecting goods for a charity
Letting someone in front of you in the traffic or in a queue
Surprising a colleague at work with a snack, drink or coffee
Donating blood
Doing something for someone that requires time and effort

But there’s a hitch. If you volunteer, or do kind things, specifically to make yourself feel better, you might end up feeling worse or at least not as good as you’d hoped.

You might for instance feel resentful that others don’t appreciate what you’ve done, Grant says.

So it’s important that your primary motive is to enhance someone else’s wellbeing.

“It can be really small gestures, but the hallmark is that you do it genuinely as an act of giving. “When we feel good because we’ve made someone else feel good, that’s the secondary glow we can savour.”

From an article by Cathy Johnson

The Church of St Groupthink

wazza2 — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:26:47 +0000

In 2008 Mike Gugglielmucci dropped a bombshell in Pentecostal and Evangelical circles by admitting that he had faked cancer for at least 2 years. His song “You’re my Healer” was on the latest Hillsong CD release, and he his story of bravely facing up to his illness and believing for victory had inspired many. Now his story and his reputation was in tatters and the image of Pentecostal Christianity had also taken a hit.

I’m not concerned here with Mike’s motivations – he may have been suffering from Munchausen’s syndrome – but rather would like to consider how a whole Pentecostal movement, leadership and laity, got taken in by the lie for several years.

In retrospect his story just didnt add up. He supposedly had 33 broken bones, including his back being broken in 8 places, yet he was still able to perform his songs and preach overseas. He said he was in an advanced state of cancer with only nine months to live, yet as others have commented he looked as healthy as a lumberjack. He certainly was not wasting away.

Brian Houston commented after the news broke :

”I just didn’t have any reason to doubt his story. There were one or two things that were hard to work out such as how anyone could function with multiple broken bones (I was in agony with one broken elbow, but I just thought I must have been a wimp). I saw Michael as an unbelievably gutsy and courageous man who was refusing to just lie down and accept his diagnosis.”

These comments on a Christian fan blog show that for the most part, Christians accepted his story without question.

How did this occur, how could so many people have been fooled for so long? As Christians we are used to looking for the answer in some deviation from orthodox Biblical doctrine, or in some Sin or Moral failing. Another way of approaching this question is to use a secular concept – Groupthink.

The term Groupthink was coined after the disasterous “Bay of Pigs” invasion in which the US trained and funded a group of Cuban counter-revolutionaries to attack the Castro regime. In retrospect it was never going to work – they were hopelessly outnumbered and it was apparent that Castro had the support of most of the population. However two successive US administrations, composed of very experienced and intelligent people, continued with the plan which was disasterous for the participants and for the reputation of the US.

Although the term Groupthink is now used loosly as part of popular culture, it was a serious model devised by Irving Janis from Yale University. Janis studied both the Bay of Pigs and the Pearl Harbor attack and showed how groupthink contributed to the poor decisions and ignoring of facts and warnings in both cases. Since then groupthink has been seriously put forward as a reason for the failure of intelligence services to predict 9/11 and for the failure of the financial authorities to foresee the GFC.

Are churches, particularly hierarchically-structured churches susceptible to groupthink? Janis described three antecedent conditions for groupthink:

High group cohesiveness
Structural faults:
- insulation of the group
- lack of impartial leadership
- lack of norms requiring methodological procedures
- homogeneity of members’ social backgrounds and ideology
Situational context:
- highly stressful external threats
- recent failures
- excessive difficulties on the decision-making task
- moral dilemmas

Not all three have to be present for Groupthink to occur. Many churches encourage high group-cohesiveness through large gatherings, music and light-shows in which deindividuation can occur. They do not encourage an impartial leadership – often promoting those with “possibility thinking”, those likely to hold dissenting or contrarian views to the prevailing group narrative do not usually ascend to leadership positions – or if they do they do not last very long. While there may be varying social backgrounds in a church, there is often a singular ideology, and many churches feel under threat from secular media or forces.

Interestingly, Janis described Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information. I have observed people taking up this “Mind Guard” role many times in Christian circles, often by demonising or questioning the morals of the dissenter.

Janis suggested seven ways to prevent Groupthink:

Leaders should assign each member the role of “critical evaluator”. This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.
Higher-ups should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.
The organization should set up several independent groups, working on the same problem.
All effective alternatives should be examined.
Each member should discuss the group’s ideas with trusted people outside of the group.
The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should be allowed to discuss with and question the outside experts.
At least one group member should be assigned the role of Devil’s advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.

In the case of the Kennedy administration, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco they put in place many of these techniques in order to encourage a variety of views and better decision making in the future. Could these seven techniques be used in the contemporary Church context? Can the contemporary church learn from the mistakes of its past? Is there a role for the Devil’s advocate in church?

Margaret Court attacked for expressing opinion on gay marriage

signpostsfree — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:10:39 +0000

An extraordinary attack on tennis legend Margaret Court by lesbian activist Kerryn Phelps underlines the Christophobia of some gay lobbyists.

Court is also the Senior Pastor of a megachurch in Perth, Western Australia, holds traditional views of marriage, and is opposed to the controversial proposals being put forward by the left of the Labour Party in Australia for gay marriage to be recognised as true marriage.

All homosexuals and lesbians must be aware of traditional Biblical understanding of marriage, and also of the opposition to homosexual and lesbian acts as interpreted by a large section of the world-wide Church, despite the liberal theology which is growing in acceptance even amongst Christians.

Liberal theologians tend to support the notion of reinterpreting scripture to be inclusive of gay relationships and marriage. This is still strongly disputed by many Christians, but the lobbyists seem to be getting through to those who are younger, and nominal Christians, who have been subjected to education and a concerted push which promotes the idea of what is now being termed ‘equal marriage’.

Margaret Court, obviously wearing her Pastor hat and not her tennis cap, has openly rejected the idea of gay marriage, saying it is not in keeping with accepted Biblical principles, and that gay marriage reforms would ‘legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices’.

Professor Phelps, former President of the AMA, has strongly condemned Court and called for protests at the Margaret Court Arena, named after the tennis great in recognition of her exploits in winning 24 grand slam singles titles amongst other doubles slams.

In so doing, Phelps has taken Court’s religious convictions and brought them into the sporting arena, where Court gained her reputation as one of the greatest sportswomen of all time. Now Phelps wants the arena to be renamed and Court’s name removed.

She has made political mileage out of a Christian theological position held by a person who is highly successful in both the sporting and ecclesiastical realms by using the sporting honour deservedly bestowed on Court as a weapon to attack Court’s Christian perspective on marriage.

But Court’s view should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially a lesbian activist like Phelps, who is purely taking advantage of Court’s sporting fame to promote her cause in the public arena, just as the Australian Open, which Court has said she’ll attend regardless of a proposed gay demonstration against her views, is about to get under way.

Phelps said, ‘Her views on homosexuality are so extreme that they really almost defy comment”, but, of course, there are any number of Christians who hold the same view, and who are opposed to gay marriage for exactly the same reasons Court has given.

In fact, as a Pastor and Christian leader, Court would be expected to both have a Biblical view and to express it publicly, especially from the pulpit, just as Phelps, as a lesbian activist, would be expected to have the opposing view and express it.

But would Phelps be required to lose her professorship, or medical qualifications for having an opposing view? That would be preposterous and unkind, since she earned her credentials and has been recognised for her organisational ability with high office in the medical profession.

Court’s views are neither extreme nor unusual for a Christian leader. This extraordinary attack on Court is an attack on all believers with a traditional understanding of scripture, on the Bible and on the freedom of each individual to have and express a point of view in a free country.

It is expected that some gay and lesbian activists will demonstrate during the Open in the Margaret Court Arena by waving rainbow flags, traditionally, for Christians, a symbol of peace, but hijacked by gay activists as their symbol.

Hopefully both sides can view the rainbow as their own and not allow prejudice to interfere with the recognition of the talent of one Australia’s sporting icons.

An Evangelical Rethink on Divorce

wazza2 — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:41:51 +0000

David Van Biema writes in Time magazine in 2007:

On questions relating to the Bible’s treatment of family and morals, one might expect assurance, if not rigidity, from Evangelical Christianity. So, it may surprise many to learn how “live” the topic of divorce remains in Evangelical circles. Last month, the cover story of the monthly Christianity Today was titled “When to Separate What God has Joined: A Closer Reading on the Bible on Divorce.” The heated controversy provoked by the story showed how Biblically flexible some Evangelicals can be — especially when God’s word seems at odds not just with modern American behavior, but also with simple human kindness.

As the article’s author, the British Evangelical scholar David Instone-Brewer, points out, for most of 2,000 years Christians have viewed divorce through two scriptural citations. In Matthew, the pharisees ask Christ, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” Jesus refers to the Old Testament and then replies, “Whoever divorces a wife, except for sexual indecency, commits adultery.” The apostle Paul adds in the book First Corinthians that a Christian is “not bound” to a non-Christian spouse who abandons him. Simple, right?

Instone-Brewer radically reinterprets the first passage using, of all things, quotation marks. The Greek of the New Testament didn’t always contain them, and scholars agree that sometimes they must be added in to make sense of it. Instone-Brewer, an expert in Jewish thought during Jesus’s era, writes that Christ’s interlocutors were not asking him whether there was any cause at all for divorce, but whether he supported something called “any-cause” divorce, a term a little bit like “no-fault” that allowed husbands to divorce wives for any reason at all. Instone-Brewer claims Jesus’s “no” was a response to this idea, and that his “except for sexual indecency” condition was not a statement of the sole exemption from God’s blanket prohibition, but merely Christ’s reiteration of one of several divorce permissions in the Old Testament — one he felt the “any-time” advocates had exaggerated. Finally, Instone-Brewer tallies four grounds for divorce he finds affirmed in both Old and New Testaments: adultery, emotional and sexual neglect, abandonment (by anyone) and abuse.

Christianity Today has written previously on divorce, often bemoaning how easy it is in today’s America. However, the Instone-Brewer essay appeared to be its editors’ attempt to offer Evangelicals an escape from a classic dilemma. The “plain sense” of Jesus’s words without quotes seems clear enough, but also inhumane: how could a loving God forbid divorce, even by omission, in cases of wife-beating, or of abandonment by a Christian spouse?

Each branch of Christianity deals with divorce in its own way: Catholicism grants some annulments but does not otherwise recognize divorce; those who divorce and remarry are expected to deny themselves the Eucharist. But many divorced people who remarry nonetheless find that their conscience permits them to take Communion.

Liberal Protestantism accepted divorce some decades ago without much engagement of the scriptural issue. Evangelicals define themselves as being tightly bound by scripture. But besides the humanitarian problem, there are some uncomfortable facts on the ground: The divorce rate among Evangelicals, which first became news after polls released by the Barna Research Group in 2001, has been as high or higher than the national average.

The Evangelical movement has actually made tremendous accommodations given the strictures it lives under. Ministries for the newly divorced are common at megachurches; and on the historically less-rigid Pentecostal side of the spectrum, celebrity preachers Juanita Bynum and Paula White both recently announced their intention to divorce. Most experts interviewed for this story attested that whereas 30 years ago, a pastor might well order a battered woman home to return her husband, that is rare today.

More conservative Evangelicals remain uneasy about divorce. If a split itself is inescapable, notes Christianity Today editor Andy Crouch, “remarriage is where the rubber meets the road,” and many remarried couples find themselves denied church membership. Says Russel Moore, dean of the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention’s influential Southern Seminary, “We teach our future pastors that marriage is a lifelong, one-flesh union.” Any woman in an abusive marriage should “leave that situation,” he acknowledges, and a “majority” probably accept remarriage. Asked if he does, Moore demurred: “Let me think about that for a little bit. I could answer in a way that would be very easily misunderstood.”

Evangelical conflict on the topic was obvious in reader response to the Instone-Brewer essay. Initially the mail was heavily negative. The most stinging broadside sas a column by John Piper, a respected theological conservative, that called the essay not just weak but “tragic.” The magazine’s editor in chief, David Neff, felt the need to explain online that “Instone-Brewer’s article did not… give people carte blanche on divorce.” The mail eventually leveled off at 60% negative to 40% positive.

Still, the controversy suggests that even the country’s most rule-bound Christians will search for a fresh understanding of scripture when it seems unjust to them. The implications? Flexibility on divorce may mean that evangelicals could also rethink their position on such things as gay marriage, as a generation of Christians far more accepting of homosexuality begins to move into power. (The ever-active Barna folks have found that 57% of “born-again” Christians age 16-29 criticize their own church for being “anti-homosexual.”) It could also give heart to a certain twice-divorced former New York mayor who is running for President and seeking the conservative vote. But that may be pushing things a bit.

The original version of this article misstated the Catholic position on divorce. The Roman Catholic Church does not ban divorce. It simply does not recognize it, so that those who remarry without an annulment are expected to forego the Eucharist.

Jesus confirms Genesis definition of marriage

signpostsfree — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:32:09 +0000

The answer to the discussion on marriage must surely come from Jesus, who is the bridge between the Old and New Testaments. Here, in Mark, he gives the basic construct of marriage, with reference to the first prophecy in Genesis, given by Adam.

The Pharisees came and asked Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” testing Him. And He answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Mark 10:2-10

You notice how the Pharisees used this question to test Jesus, knowing, even in that era, that it was a tricky question, one which they might use to attempt to stumble Jesus or force him into an area of discussion which would make him look insensitive to the needs of others, or overly judgemental.

Today, Christians are being tested in a similar way by liberal thought as it backs the homosexual lobby, which is seriously pressing for what they term ‘equal marriage’, as if marriage in itself isn’t at this stage equal, being defined as between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. Pressing for ‘equal marriage’, however, is a clever, well orchestrated ploy, and one which appeals to those who are not as devout in their conviction as those who hold to the tenets of the faith as handed down in the canon of scripture, what we might term fundamental believers, also considered conservative Christians.

Being conservative, or holding fundamental beliefs is, in the current political climate, considered extreme in some quarters, yet the Word declares itself to be unchanging, eternal and fixed, which indicates that God has not changed his mind. As confirmation, he demonstrates his singleness of purpose in this when he says he is ‘Yahweh Who Changes Not’. So he doesn’t change, but there may be some things which we need to change to match his design and purpose for us.

It could be said then that God has fundamental views and is conservative, and his ways reflect this, as do his thoughts. Why should he have to change? He is God. Does God make mistakes he has to rectify? No, it is we who need to change to meet his consistency of purpose and design. This reveals him to be uniform, organised, ordered and decisive rather than out of touch or in need of constant change to follow the trends, fashions and whims of the world. He leads. He does not follow.

So how do we know which things change and which do not, since it is evident that God introduced a better covenant based on better promises when we entered the New Testament? Well, surely by confirmation in the New Testament of what God spoke in the Old.

So, here in Mark chapter 10, Jesus reminds us that God’s intentions for marriage were revealed way back in Genesis, when Moses wrote that God made us male and female, and Adam announced that ‘a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’.

Here then is the God-revealed intention for marriage, ratified clearly and concisely by Jesus who refers to Genesis to bring us up to date. In other words, God has not changed his mind on marriage from his original statements – that he made us male and female, and we would be joined as one flesh.

Even divorce was added through the lawyers because of the hardness of their hearts. It was never God’s intention to permit divorce. He said no one should divide husband and wife, not even to separate themselves because of their own issues or reluctance to work out their marriage, but to submit themselves to one another in love and humility under the mighty hand of God, who would surely bring healing to any struggling relationship provided the participants were willing to submit to his will and his instruction.

So now we have a push for a change in the basic constitution of marriage to accommodate what God never intended at any time, either Biblically under either covenant, or practically, through the creation, or socially. For the hardness of the hearts of self-proclaimed progressives this change will probably be instituted and enshrined in law, but it will never be ratified by God.

He has not and will not change his mind. He will not be in that false marriage as he is in the marriage between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. That arrangement cannot be considered ‘equal marriage’ in the sight of God. The equality of marriage can only be God’s intended union between a man and a woman.

Jesus goes on to remind us that a person who divorces and remarries commits adultery. This doesn’t sound like a ratification of the Pharisaic or Mosaic decision to grant divorce to me. These divorces became separations of convenience by men with false intent. Some forms of compromise lead to diminishing of purpose. For a Christian divorce should be avoided unless they are unequally yoked to an unbeliever, or to an adulterer, which is the same thing, since no adulterer could be considered a disciple of Christ.

There is no precedent for homosexual or lesbian marriage. It is an oxymoron. It is unbiblical. Marriage is and can only be what it is – the union of a man and a woman as one flesh.

It could be said that any change in law to redefine marriage to include same-sex partners is, in a way, coming between the man and the woman in marriage. ‘What God has joined together let no man separate’. God has joined together male and female. The push for other gender equations is a pulling apart of God’s original plan for marriage between a husband and his wife.

He makes them one flesh. He joins them together. He ratifies and confirms their marriage in the wedding bed, which is, in a male and female marriage, undefiled. Woe to the person who comes between this arrangement by any means.

Marriage as it is must be guarded and kept. It is precious and holy, not only to Christians and the other Abrahamic belief systems, but to God himself, as confirmed by Jesus.

Signposts 02

Karl Barth – a survey of his Theology

Barth’s ontology

Threefold Word of God

Preaching

Scripture

Universalism?

Apologetics

Further reading

Introductions

Various studies

Development of thought

Barth and Evangelicalism

Scripture

Exegesis

Trinity

See also

External links

Scripture

Bibliographies

C3 Oxford Falls recognised by community

The Prosperity Gospel and the GFC

Missions Feature: Tearfund in Haiti

When is abortion ever safe?

Lifestyle of giving shown to be beneficial

Give and thou shalt receive

How much is enough?

Just be kind

The Church of St Groupthink

Margaret Court attacked for expressing opinion on gay marriage

An Evangelical Rethink on Divorce

Jesus confirms Genesis definition of marriage