Gender, Authority & Sexuality.

Excellent talk this morning at church on Gender, Authority and Sexuality. Check out www.shmedia.org.uk for free mp3 downloads. Or try iphone: http://goo.gl/G5Y2C or Android: http://goo/Owl2Bl or search for "St Helen's" on Apple App or on Google Play.

NIALL FERGUSON, THE PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC AND THE RING OF TRUTH . Last night on Channel 4 we had the final part of historian Niall Ferguson's analysis of "Civilization: Is the West History?" Over the preceding weeks he has pointed to several (what he calls) 'killer apps' which enabled the West to progress in a way that other cultures could not; these included Competition, Science, Medicine and Democracy. Last night we had "the Protestant Work Ethic". I believe that Niall Ferguson is correct in saying that part of the West, that is Europe, has learnt to despise the work ethic while other cultures have embraced it. Do we live to work or work to live? I believe we live to be active and creative. Furthermore he is correct in his observations that the Chinese have more Christians than the whole of Europe! As a European Christian I think that is wonderful! Truly wonderful and a remarkable testimony to the work of the Holy Spirit despite decades of persecution the church there has prospered! Christianity can no longer be perceived as a western phenomena - and quite rightly so - because it never was! In contrast to the USA Europe has sold its share of the Christian heritage for a mess of pottage. As a Christian from Europe I can see the consequences of such a dereliction. Niall Ferguson is perceptive in parts; he alludes to a loss of faith within European society which now requires the affirmation of all beliefs, no matter how crackpot, on the basis that no belief is any better than any other. He has hit the nail on the head there. But his solution is not however a reaffirmation of Protestant Christianity but a renewal of faith in ourselves.... hmmm. The problem there is that Europe has already been engaged in an experiment of substituting faith in God for faith in humanity. At that point, you will realise, that Niall Ferguson has lost the plot of his own argument. There has never been a loss of faith in ourselves! Indeed that faith has always been humankinds fundamental problem. The reality is once one abolishes God one also abolishes Man! What do I mean by that? I will argue that the intellectual environment cultivated by Protestant Christianity (which is shorthand for genuine, biblical, apostolic Christianity) has had a number of positive consequences for society and that when we abolish God and substitute Man in his place negative consequences follow. I will follow up this train of thought in the next couple of months by looking at 'Democracy & the Rule of Law' and 'Science' as attributes of a Christian worldview under a series called 'The Ring of Truth'. But for now I will confine myself to the 'Protestant Work Ethic'. I will add one caveat; Capitalism is not the ultimate goal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! From his description I do not believe Niall Ferguson really understood the work ethic. Properly understood it is not about living driven lives under the whip hand of God. It is actually about realising that a believer can glorify God in whatever sphere of life they find themselves in. One does not have to become a priest, monk or nun in order to serve God, one can do so whatever one's circumstances if one's attitude is right. The split between the sacred and secular was broken down and different sets of spiritual and moral standards no longer applied... all are equally called. This is what was meant by the Protestant/Biblical concept of "the priesthood of all believers"; which is also a democratising influence but I'll leave that for another day! Why is it particularly a 'Protestant' work ethic? The priesthood of all believers implies a degree of activism, involvment and personal engagement which will be absent in societies which defer to a special priestly caste. I recall a commentator once saying that the difference between north and south America was that in the south the settlers came to find paradise and in the north they came to build it! That has more than a ring of truth about it. Critics of 'religion' will point out that it reduces the believer to helpless passivity. Well, there may be more than a ring of truth to that too. But I will argue that Protestant/Biblical Christianity is the exception which proves the rule. The work ethic founded on the Creation mandate of Genesis is hardly a call to inaction!

ORIGINAL SIN & THE "BIBLE'S BURIED SECRETS". In the final episode of Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou's TV series she seeks to locate The Garden of Eden. Her conclusion is that the Adam & Eve story and the account of their subsequent Fall can be traced back to the Temple, Judah's king and the Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian Empire in 586bc. I consider myself fairly clued up on Biblical literature and have some familiarity with opposing positions, but I cannot say I have ever heard of this hypothesis before. Of course that doesn't mean it is wrong, just that it is almost certainly wrong. It is very important to say that the drive in academic circles is always to innovate; if you want to make a reputation for yourself in academia you have to find a novel angle. That impetus is not always conducive to conserving what is good. If you want to make a name for yourself some public exposure, controversy and novelty are the name of the game. She said the concept of original sin has had a "devastating" effect on human affairs because it implicated everyone but if the real story relates to one particular king's hubris then humanity can say, as she did, "we are off the hook!" Humanity is innocent of evil. The link between the Garden of Eden and Solomon's Temple seems tenuous - it is just as likely that the garden decoration in the Temple is symbolic of something earlier. But even if one concluded that the Bible we have was largely constructed during the Babylonian exile that does not negate the message. If it is strikingly different from the original source all the more reason to ask 'why?' What are the writers of the Bible getting at? It strikes me that the questions raised by the TV programme always stop short; in so far as the Bible has buried secrets why not dig deeper? I can't help but conclude that the series has an agenda, it isn't difficult to perceive what it is. Smear words like "devastating" when attached to concepts like 'original sin' imply that she has a humanist outlook. Her 'straw man' argument about Eve as the cause of evil imply she has a Feminist agenda. But the real feature of this TV series is Post-Modernism; from Dr Stavrakopoulou's point of view it does not matter what the evidence actually is, it is sufficient that this is true for her. A Post-Modernist does not believe in objective reality and that is dangerous for a historian (as for a scientist!) because then the focus shifts from the external realities to the internal and subjective encounter of how 'I' see it and what it means for 'me' as if somehow our present day self-serving worldview is what this history is primarily about. Given this; it is no wonder that the presenter inserts present day priorities into her historical interpretation. Clearly Dr Stavrakopolou is hostile to the concept of 'original sin' and that informs her historical reconstruction. It is not unreasonable to ask if the Bible has got it so wrong regarding evil what is the correct view? She does not answer that. If evil is something which does not touch us all then who does it touch? It is very easy to 'otherise' human evil by identifying a convenient outgroup who can be demonised while we claim to be totally innocent ourselves. Humanists, Atheists, Feminists and Post-Moderns all have their favoured outgroups - in fact that sort of moral fingerpointing is a major feature of human nature... and 'original sin'! The Christian position, drawn from the Eden story, is unique in that it recognises our own culpability. In the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn from 'The Gulag Archipelago' "If only there were evil people some where insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."