SEARCH Journal

Autumn 2018

Editorial

THE ATONEMENT has long been a contested area in Christian doctrine – if only because the Church has never decreed any single teaching on exactly HOW Christ’s work of salvation is to be understood. But the way we understand it has important implications for the way we think of God and for how that affects our spirituality, our emotions and our personal behaviour. In this issue Andrew Campbell and Rob Clements present a dialogue exploring recent ideas of ‘nonviolent atonement’ which, while it seeks to correct ideas of a vengeful God, may risk accepting a world indifferent to injustice. Still confronting atonement issues, mindful of 1918 and the first Armistice Day, Peter Rutherford follows with a reflection on the ‘false picture of God’ which chaplains such as Woodbine Willie (Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy) found had alienated soldiers from Christian faith, and which he passionately denounced in his poetry.

Further good things in this issue are of particular ecumenical interest: Maurice Elliott writes of his recent experience of the Global Christian Forum meeting in Colombia, noting that this is the broadest inter-church body we have, and the most prayerful, with membership including the full spectrum of the universal Church, from Orthodox and Roman Catholic through to Pentecostals. There follows an introduction by its co-chair Archbishop David Moxon to ARCIC III’s recently completed statement advocating closer alignment between our Churches in the areas of ecclesiology and ethics; then a reflection on the ongoing work of the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur by Steve Brunn. John Rutter then shares some thoughts on the little known life and work of Peter Martyr Vermigli, a close associate of Thomas Cranmer.Pope Francis’ visit of August attracted interest, participation, and perhaps also a degree of indifference in the C of I. Archbishop Jackson took part in certain key occasions; Greg Fromholz was in the thick of it; and Stephen Farrell pondered it from a distance. Both the latter share their thoughts in this issue, as does Brian Grogan SJ, who provided a much needed point of stillness at the RDS congress.This issue closes with a Liturgica column from an English professor of theology, Thomas O’Loughlin, which is followed by a wide selection of book reviews – historical, theological, ecclesial and liturgical. ENJOY!

Contents

Perspectives on the Atonement: seeking an agreed way forward

KNOWLEDGE is furthered by disagreement; but how that disagreement is expressed is crucial. Both ordained for the province of Armagh in 2012, but with contrasting perspectives, two Church of Ireland clerics engage with one another below on one of the most hotly debated topics in the Church today: that regarding nonviolent and cross- centered theories of atonement. Andrew Campbell: WHEN we look across the spectrum of western theological discourse over the early years of this century we see that the nature of atonement is a dominant subject for debate. Behind much of this debate is rejection of violence (namely the cross) as a means by which atonement is won. Over the last years of the 20th century and the early 21st century thinkers such as Rebecca Ann Parker, Rita Brock, Rosemary Radford Ruether and J. Denney Weaver have highlighted their problems with cross-centred atonement theologies. (By ‘cross-centred’ I refer to any view of the atonement in which the death of Christ is divinely ordained.) These nonviolent theorists reject the idea that atonement was achieved through a violent act perpetrated against Christ, leading to the now infamous claim that “divine child-abuse is paraded as salvific.”1 This has given rise to nonviolent atonement theologies that deny that the death of Christ was divinely ordained.

Group
Andrew Campbell and Rob Clements
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A God of Love, not of Power: the passion of ‘Woodbine Willie’

WITH THE centenary of 1918 and the end of The Great War, it is perhaps timely to remember the contribution military chaplains made in that conflict. Their engagement with the armed forces challenged them to rethink much of the theology, liturgy and church thinking of their day. Many of them found that the churches were hopelessly out of touch with their wider flocks. One of those chaplains, very much steeped in the background of the Church of Ireland, has given us a powerful legacy: Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, later to become famous as ‘Woodbine Willie’. In the year 1996, as I engaged with staff and officer cadets at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, to prepare another volunteer group for Baptism/Confirmation, I felt content to be using, once again, my own Confirmation Course, developed some years earlier. Content, that is, until after discussion of the person of Christ, the question came: “But, Padre, what difference does he make?” I explained that in the person of Christ we do not merely have an example to follow, but somehow his life, death and resurrection, have fundamentally altered the relation between God and humanity. I offered no substitutionary atonement theory, as I questioned the implications of such thinking for the nature of who God is. I tried to express some idea of Christ and the love of God as made known in him, and especially his self-giving humility, as the key to what it is to be truly human: but by then I felt I’d somehow lost them! I knew what I did not want to say, but what I was saying didn’t ‘add up’! It was later, in the writings of ‘Woodbine Willie’, that I found someone who articulated my belief, that, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we see God for us, not as a God of Power, but as a God of Love.

Peter Rutherford
Peter Rutherford
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The Global Christian Forum: a fresh impetus in ecumenical endeavour

FROM 24-27 April 2018 I had the privilege of attending the Global Christian Forum (hereafter GCF) as a member of the seven-strong Anglican Communion delegation. The meeting, under the title, “Let mutual love continue” (Heb. 13:1) was held in Bogota, Columbia. In itself this venue provided contextual interest, given the embryonic and somewhat faltering national peace process, informed extensively by the model of the Good Friday Agreement and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland. The GCF represents a relatively new and genuinely ambitious initiative in receptive ecumenism,1 and it enjoys support from an impressively broad spectrum of Christian denominations and other agencies. This article offers a brief overview of the genesis of the GCF, a distillation of the proceedings of the third global gathering focussing particularly on certain themes, and an assessment of its relevance to the life and work of the Church of Ireland. The origins and ethos of the GCF History records that the modern ecumenical movement was birthed out of the International Missionary Conference, convened in Edinburgh in 1910.2 To begin with, this resulted in two separate organisations, known respectively as the “Life and Work Movement” and the “Faith and Order Movement”. When these two streams met in 1937, a plan was hatched to form a single Council, and eventually, after the devastating interruption of the Second World War, this was realised in 1948 at the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), “a fellowship of churches which accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour according to the Scriptures”. In its promotion of the Johannine imperative to seek after unity (John 17:11), the WCC has enjoyed considerable success over the years in bringing historic and separated Christian communities into closer fellowship and dialogue, with various notable achievements, locally and globally.4 Nevertheless, there remains another sense in which Christian people must constantly seek to be open to how God may be leading his church, and, in that vein of discernment, approximately two decades ago, Dr Konrad Raiser, the former General Secretary of the WCC, courageously recognised the need for a new space and for shared conversations to reach beyond the existing constituency of the World Council. He drew attention to the ecclesial reality that many new groupings had emerged across the totality of the life of the Church since the inception of the WCC, and especially to the growth of the new evangelical and Pentecostal church communities. At that time these were not connected to either the WCC network or its attendant processes.

maurice elliott
Maurice Elliott
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ARCIC churches ‘walking together’ in friendship and mutual respect

ALREADY described as “this fresh and ground-breaking document”, the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commisssion’s “Walking Together on The Way: Learning to be the Church, Local, Regional and Universal” will be published at the end of the year and is already available on line.1 Its conception goes back to 2011, when the Commission’s third phase, ARCIC III, began its meetings at the ecumenically orientated Monastery at Bose in northern Italy. The mandate given by Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was to address the theme of the Church local and universal, and how the Church comes to discern right ethical teaching. When we look closely into these two themes of ethics and ecclesiology, we find that they reveal precisely the areas of major concern we both share within and between our two communions at this time. The central prospect arising from the document is that as the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches learn to listen repectfully to one another’s concerns, with a certain humility and willingness to re- imagine their own pastoral and administrative practice in the light of the experience of both communions, we will eventually break down the barriers which still divide us, and achieve full organic unity. We experience both tension and opportunity within our own Church structures when we seek to hold a measure of unity globally, with a measure of diversity locally. Christian ethics in this contestable field is also a very complex and challenging area, as we all know and witness. To name but two examples: Anglican experience with discussions and pastoral practice in the area of sexual orientation has been conflicted and challenging, as has the Roman Catholic discussion and pastoral practice in the area of divorce and communion.

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David Moxon
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Finding our place in the missio Dei in Chota Nagpur

ON THE 12th September 2018 an historic event took place in the life of the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur. Ten officials, led by Bishop Basil Baskey, arrived in Dublin for their first official visit in our one hundred and thirty-five year relationship. For many of a certain age within the Church of Ireland the DU Mission to Chota Nagpur is very familiar, St Columba’s Hospital in Hazaribagh being a well-known name; yet for a new generation this historic mission, rooted in Trinity College and the Church of Ireland, seems to be long forgotten. It is surely time to shine light on its amazing past, consider what is happening now, and provide a platform for its future mission initiatives. The Past “Once upon a time in the year 1890, two wishes were shot into the air, one in India and the other in Ireland. They came down at about the same time by extraordinary coincidence at S.P.G Headquarters in London. One was found to be the answer to the other and so the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur began.” So wrote Canon Brian Harvey, DUMCN head of mission in the 1960s. Based at Trinity college five clergymen and one female nurse, Miss Hassard, they formed the original DUMCN. The six missionaries landed in India in January 1892, their two stipulations to USPG being that they would live in community and keep a strong connection with Trinity College Dublin. This was gladly granted and they started their work in the remote town of Hazaribagh. The main thrust of the mission then, as it is now, was education and healing. The Revd Kenneth Kennedy was a medical doctor as well as a priest and was highly influential in St Columba’s hospital in Hazaribagh. Reading the missionaries’ first report back to Dublin in 1893 we can quickly ascertain the huge task that was before them, especially as all of them were learning Hindi as well as local dialects to communicate with the local people.

Steve Brunn|steven-brunn
Steve Brunn
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Peter Martyr Vermigli, the quiet outsider (1499 - 1562)

MANY YEARS ago an Italian friend handed me a book as I left Milan, Italy, to return to the U.K. It happened to be the PhD thesis of an Italian academic, Dr Philip McNair, who had taught me at university. The subject was: Peter Martyr Vermigli, monk and priest of the early 1500s.1 He was the son of one Stefano Vermigli, of a family well- respected in Florence, who named him after Peter Martyr of Milan who had died at the hand of the Arians in the 13th century. The book describes the course of his life as a young man, entering a monastery aged 15, being priested in 1526, and then teaching the Bible as a member of the Congregatio Lateranense, a reforming movement under Pope Paul III. It ends with Vermigli’s flight from Italy, as his teaching matured into that of a reformer whose conscience would not sit easily with his loyalty to the Roman establishment. I left the book on the shelf for years, assuming it would be of little interest. I picked it up during my sabbatical in the autumn of 2016, and wished I had pursued an interest in Vermigli many years ago when I lived and worshipped in an Italian Reformed church. This article is the fruit of a first reading of Vermigli’s story, and focuses more on the man than on his teaching. I found his story heart-warming as I reflected on the path of my own life. To my surprise Vermigli was well known to all the leading lights of the Reformation and respected as a teacher, as an authority on the Early Church Fathers, and as a skilful debater on crucial matters of doctrine. Through his own discovery of salvation by grace through faith he upset the Italian Church of his day no less than Luther did in Germany. He was not alone in finding joy and peace through the Epistle to the Romans, but he encountered the pressure of the establishment of his day. He reached a point where he was forced, in his own view, to leave Italy while he still could, and accept that he had become an outlaw from the Church of Rome.

John Rutter|jecrutter
John Rutter
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After the Papal Visit: a new covenant between Church and State?

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s speech at Dublin Castle during the Papal visit was widely praised as being courageous, honest and direct. He called on Pope Francis to use the Office of the Papacy to ensure that victims of clerical sexual abuse receive justice, truth and healing. What received less attention was the call in his speech for a “new covenant between Church and State... a new covenant for the 21st century... a new chapter in the relationship between Ireland and the Catholic Church”. In unpacking his vision for what this new covenant might be, Dr. Varadkar spoke of a society where “religion is no longer at the centre... but in which it still has an important place”. In such a society there would be “greater diversity and choice when it comes to patronage of our schools – and where publicly-funded hospitals are imbued with a civic and scientific ethos”. The Taoiseach asked the Pope for his prayers “as we start that journey together”. It would seem that the Taoiseach only envisages a new covenant between the Roman Catholic Church and the State. He may have been trying to avoid including others in the abuse and failures outlined elsewhere in his speech, or he may simply have been guided by a realism which recognises that the other faiths and denominations combined are smaller in number than those professing to have no religion. That said, in an ever more pluralist society any new covenant between Church and State must be cast wider, to include the voices and insights of minority denominations and faiths as well as the voice of the majority. The Archbishop of Dublin recognised the challenge the Taoiseach’s words present to the Church of Ireland, telling the British Irish Association meeting in Oxford in September 2018 that it would be a massive task for the Church of Ireland, given its small proportion of the population, and the fact that it has all but disappeared from any dynamic contribution to public life, to engage meaningfully in a proposed covenant between Church and State.

Stephen Farrell
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Artistic Ecumenism in Action

THE MOMENT was not lost on me. It was 6am in the Phoenix Park and I was standing behind the handcrafted altar that Pope Francis would be celebrating mass from. The artist’s hands had crafted in meticulous beauty a table that was as purposeful as the one crafted 2 millennia ago. The difference would be in that one could seat 13, the other 130,000. The day before I had spoken with the carpenter who had spent days filling the smallest hole, so small that neither the mass of humanity’s eyes, nor the multiple lenses of cameras would spot it - yet the joy of the artist was to make beauty in its smallest forms for the grandest of events. I stood there for ages, watching the weather, watching the field soon to be filled, watching the anticipation and expectations build from the first volunteer to the thousand voice choir. And . . . I prayed. I prayed for Ireland, I prayed for the survivors of abuse and the forgotten mothers and children. I prayed for unity. I prayed for the churches in Ireland, all the non-Catholic ones and the non-Protestant ones. I prayed for this day of broken hallelujahs1. I prayed for the artists’ voices and craft to be seen and heard. But mostly I prayed for courage and hope and change. We needed repentance, restorative action and we needed trust restoration. I then heard a hoover behind me switch off. It was one of the “Henry” red ones with the smiling face on it. The stage manger for the event was tidying up. He said, with the face of Henry, “It suits you, Greg”. Did I mention I’m a Protestant? Did I mention that I’m an Anglican? Did I mention that I have worked and continue to work as an artist? (Among many other things, as artists must do.) Did I mention that I have worked ecumenically for nearly three decades here in Ireland? I don’t believe I did, as I don’t really see it as that radical anymore. Sure, 25 years ago working on the Falls or Shankill roads in Belfast, it was, some say, risky being ecumenical. But surely we’ve gone beyond that. Surely, we’ve gone beyond thinking the other is at least ‘misguided’ or at most ‘evil’. Surely, we are now of those who understand the wide reach of the arms of the body of Christ? Right?

Greg Fromholz
Greg Fromholz
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Moments of Grace at the World Meeting of Families

OVER the days of the WMOF in August in the RDS I spent most of my time inviting people to spend a few minutes, silent and alone, in a little Beehive Cell. This allowed me only a worm’s-eye view of the whole event, but I can pick two moments of grace that came my way over the days and have nourished me since. Sometimes when relaxing after a task you become aware that something important has happened - that something good had been going on, which at the time you had been too preoccupied to savour. Thomas Merton says: “Every moment and every event in every person’s life plants seeds of spiritual vitality in their souls.” This assertion certainly spreads wide the net of possibility! While I miss most such seeds, I am grateful to notice one coming my way and to give it a home. One such was my vigil at The Beehive Meditation Cell. Sculptor Imogen Stuart spent 10 years creating it, inspired by the stone cells built by hardy monks on Skellig Micheal, which they inhabited between the 6th and the 13th century. So this Cell is steeped in a rich tradition. The Cell is made of red cedar-wood, six foot six in diameter and eight feet high, with a tiny table and chair; its sliding door lets you close off the world for a few moments to experience solitude and peace.

Brian Grogan|brian-grogan-sj
Brian Grogan SJ
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Liturgica: We stand to pray

SOME RITUALS are so simple that they pass us by! A case is point is that we should stand together when we take part in the Prayers of the People. These are not just a string of petitions, but an acknowledgement that we are a community before the Father and our needs become one with the prayer of Christ Jesus. It is the prayer of Body of Christ. It is part of the task of the People of God to voice its needs and those of humanity before God. Voicing our needs is not giving God information nor is it equivalent to bothering God in the hope that more and more noise might move God to action! Voicing our needs is an acknowledgement of where we are as needy creatures, a declaration of our dependence on God, and a statement that the answer to the world’s problems is greater than the creation. The curious thing is that, when we exhibit our neediness we should not grovel, nor kneel, but stand. In this we are following an ancient bit of ritual practice. Jesus’ first followers stood in in the synagogue when praying (Mt 6:5). A generation or two later, when they gathered they still stood to pray because Mark (11:25) puts this into the mouth of Jesus: “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” And a generation later again, another teacher wishes “that ... intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone ... and that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands” (1 Tim 2:1 and 8).

Thomas O'Loughlin
Thomas O’Loughlin
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