Bruce Winter on 1 Peter

Seek the Welfare of the City - And the Enigma of the First Christians – with Special Reference to I Peter by Bruce W. Winter

Abstract

"The first Christians were an absolute enigma to their compatriots because of what was called by a Christian in the ancient letter to Diognetus ‘the amazing and admittedly paradoxical nature of their own politeia’. That term in Greek did not mean ‘politics’ but rather the first century’s definition of life in the city outside of one’s own household.

1 Peter required the Christians not to have ‘binocular’ vision looking only at their heavenly home but to have ‘monocular’ vision with its two foci, one of which was on the permanent inheritance in heaven and the other on the welfare of the city with the doing of good to others in all the spheres of life. The Christian will ‘sweep the snow off this neighour’s roof’ first before he ‘sweeps his own path’.

While social historians of early Christians and those studying them using recent models of sociology conclude that Christians withdrew from society, a careful analysis of 1 Peter in its social and theological context shows the exact opposite was the case. Christians were commanded to seek the welfare of the city in which they lived and to pray for its peace in the same way the Jewish resident aliens in Babylon had been commanded by Jeremiah to do exactly the opposite. This means that Christians today are meant to be good citizens in seeking by the doing of good the welfare of their city. It is the opposite to the ancient saying ‘If one does not seek his own welfare, then he will be destroyed by heaven and earth’. "

10 points if you can name the city the picture is from.

Rowan Williams on Church

Here are some quotes Doctor Williams I stumbled across by on Church,...enjoy.

"The Church claims to be the most comprehensive human society there is - the new human race in embryo. And it claims this because of its belief that it is established not by any human process grounded in and limited by events, cultures and so on, but by God's activity."- Rowan Williams

"Where Jesus is, there is the Church; the Church is the event of Jesus’ presence with its effect of gathering people around him and making them see one another differently as they see him." - Rowan Williams



5 points if you can name the website that launched the bear.

Synod V

Well, I don't really know how to comment on last night. It was a very draining, with Synod running over time. I think we managed to get a lot of work done, and yet we also wasted a lot of time discussing amendments to motions for up to 20 minutes, only to see those amendemnts more than convincingly defeated.

we ehard of the amazing work God is doing in Uganda, Nigeria and South East Asia, and were addressed by the Archbishop of Singapore. The Indigenous Representation motion and Nomiantion motion passed as ordinance's, and we apporved the Regions amendment motion.

Of most interest last night was PeterJensen's address about the future of the Anglican Communion and Sydney's role in that. Peter said that basically the communion would never be the same again, and has already devolved into a loose federation of churches.

"I have always said that it is more likely that we will see its devolution into a looser federation of churches, networking across old lines in new ways. Indeed, I think that this has now begun to occur," and "As a consequence, I do not think that the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury while, of course, very important, will regain its old place."

Following this, we apporved two motions last night, one which encouraged the diocese to partner with other like-minded dioceses, and the other motion, which read:

"Synod notes with regret the discord within the Anglican Communion, commits itself to prayer for the unity of the Anglican Communion under God, commends the Primates of the Global South for their forthright stand in upholding biblical truth, expresses its support and encouragement for all within the Anglican Communion who are seeking to uphold biblical principles and prays for the Archbishop of Canterbury in his difficult role."

On a lighter side, i was accused by a certain regional bishop of reading science fiction during synod...the fact that it was G.B. Caird and the book was my dinner companion is beside the point. Oh well, bring on tonight's media circus.

O'Donovan on Authority

All authority is from God - Oliver O'Donovan

'“All authority is from God.” Authority commands a response of freedom; it is a sufficient reason for acting presented to us by the world in which we act, comprehensible on its own terms, yet liable to be incomplete. Political authority is in some ways like the authority of wisdom, in other ways like the authority of a parent. Its “ungrounded” character poses a peculiar puzzle. It is immediately dependent on divine providence. It is inexplicable simply in terms of inter-human relations. Yet it is conferred by God upon humans to exercise over one another.


'The paper then examines the paradox of political authority: does it lie in the power to dispose of subjects’ lives? No, it lies in the state’s right. As a claim of right, the claim of authority must be publicly intelligible; yet it is irrespective of whether we approve it. The paradox defies attempts to resolve it on purely humanistic premises.

'Political authority can only be exercised when God gives it in fact. God gives this authority as an expression of his will to preserve particular communities. He preserves particular communities through the mutual service of their members. Political authority serves the “common good”, which takes concrete form in a state of law. God allows political authority to serve the state of law by giving judgment. However, political authority must be the last instance in resolving dispute and controversies. God sets all political authority before the horizon of his own coming judgment, the Kingdom of God.'

(Excerpt from here).

A Guest Post

Hebel's first guest post is by Michael Wells, of St. Hilda's Katoomba, and Lord willing a 2007 first year Moore student. It's a post from sydneyanglicans.net and you'll find the original context here (basically a debate, some how spinning out of discussion on the New Capital Works project, on whether or not liturgy still has a role in church). "As a 20's person, I want to bolster the case for liturgy, if it is owned and believed by the congregation. To a certain extent I think we have been sucked in to the secular idea that 'church' only exists on Sundays. So we try and do everything on Sunday, proclaim the word, worship together and try and make meaningful contact and fellowship. We rightly see that the church has a vertical relationship to God and horizontal relationship to others, and an outward one to those in the community. But do we have to cram all these into our Sunday meeting? I wonder whether by making all (almost) Sunday services informal, we miss out on the rich majesty of our God and the biblical significance of our meeting together, whether we swap true fellowship for a 15 minute chat over coffee and whether we are left with much to invite our friends and neighbors to. Traditional liturgy made the whole church service proclamation, in which the whole congregation participated, and my worry is that we slide into a position where only the precher proclaims. Perhaps we need to encourage young people to be creating not bland informality, but their own symbolically rich (yet biblically sound as a pound!) corporate expression and proclamation." - Michael Wells 10 points if you can name the Cathedral.

Gunton on Scripture and Systematic Theology

Find the original article here.
"Systematic theology is the rational dimension of the conversation that is initiated by God at the creation and continued in the history of God's dealings with the world. The Bible's authority is that it represents the heart of that conversation, both its initiation and the particular human response that is Israel, Jesus, and the church. It sets the boundaries for the conversation, or the space within which human parrhesia is to make its response. But that response, too, is part of the work of God, for it is enabled to take place as the Spirit enables the earthen vessels of human language to become articulations in time both of the Word of God and of the human response to that Word. The conversation is incarnational and pneurnatological. As witness to the incarnation, Scripture is also witness both to the capacity of words to embody theological and other meaning and to a boundedness of content. With this word, theology is able to be Christian; without it, it ceases to be so. As sharing in the Spirit's constitution of a community of worship, life, and thought, theology is witness to the human imagination and reason's capacity to transform language so that it may by anticipation represent something of the truth that belongs to the end."

- Using and Being Used: Scripture and Systematic Theology by Colin Gunton

A Greek distraction

Some of you might find this interesting (if that doesn't work go here). It's a critical history of the Greek Orthodox Church, particuarly on how the Byzanitne Church developed under Ottoman occupation, leading up to the Greek Revolution in the 1820's, and today. It is written by my NT Greek Lecturer, Vrasidas Karalis, who formrly taught at the Greek Theological College in Sydney - that is, until they excommunicated him. (Yes, this is written after they excommunicated him).

If you would prefer the word document, just let me know and I'll email it to you. You can also listen to a talk he gave on Cornelius Castoriadis here.

Oliver O'Donovan: Scripture and Obedience

"Professor Oliver O'Donovan FBA is Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh. He took up this post on 1 August 2006 and formerly was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford and a Canon of Christ Church." (He also shared an office with Tom Wright for a while). Michael Jensen has been working on his PhD with Prof. O'Donovan.

You can download his latest sermon, of the fulcrum website here.

PS Oliver O'Donovan will be the author the Ashfield Summer bookclub will be reading.

Kierkegaard

"Christian scholarship is the human race's prodigious invention to defend itself against the New Testament, to enusre that one can continue to be a Christian without letting the New Testament come too close." (Kierkegaard 1975: 270)

May this never be said of this blog.

Jesus' family

Here is an interesting article by Richard Bauckham on the history of Jesus' brothers, sisters and cousins that Vras put me on to.

Lonely Protestantism

Today's prophetic jewel comes from Katay in Theology Through History, talking about the hardening of protestant scholasticism (I can't spell) in the 17th century, and the rise of pluralism. Katay talked about what makes Roman Catholicism attractive for evangelicals is that we above all protestants like our guru's, and the "Romans" have the guru of all guru's, the vicar of Christ, and from him ex cathedra the ultimate source of biblical authority, whilst for protestants, it is just us, our conscience and our bibles (plus a few external, social influences). To be a protestant is to be very lonely. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.

Katay also talked about the three stages of leadership that we see in the New Testament that we see in the bible; first Jesus and his authoritative teaching, actions, and achievement, secondly the apostles and their authoritative announcement of Jesus, and thirdly the the apostles good deposit, and the "apostolic descendants", which continues down till today (and where we no longer have apostles to tell us what's what). In in response to a question about the ill's of pluralism and lack of authority, Katay said, and I quote:

"Our problem isn't so much denominationalsim, our problem is a lack of apostolic authority."

Comments? Thoughts?