Only What is Said Kindly is True

Here are some evocative observations from Karl Barth in a letter to a man in Switzerland shortly before Barth’s death:

Basel, 26 November 1968

You very kindly sent me your writing along with an accompanying letter. I thank you for this but also have to admit quite openly that I took no pleasure in reading it.

As opposed to what you learned from the other side, I have to say that precisely “in essentials” I am not at one with you and that I do not expect this publication of yours to have any salutary effect.

Why not? Because I do not detect in your work the slightest trace of what is called in holy scripture the peace of God that passes all understanding.

You say many correct things. But what is correct is not always true. Only what is said kindly is true. You do not speak kindly in a single line.

You utter a powerful No on all sides. It is indeed necessary to say No too. But the right No can only be one which derives from and is upheld by an even more powerful Yes. I hear you say only No.

You accuse. That, too, has to be done. But, again, if this is Christian accusation, it has to be enclosed in the promise, in the glad tidings of God’s grace. In you it is naked accusation.

You demand that others repent. Sometimes one must dare to do this. But only he may do so who himself repents and lives in repentance. You preach down from your high horse, righteous among the unrighteous, pure among the impure.

Dear Mr. N. N., I am in my eighty-third year, I am ahead of you by many years along with their experience of life, and I can only say: It cannot be done as you are trying to do it in your book. A Christian should not speak as you do either to his fellow-Christians or to his fellow-men nor should the church speak to the world.

. . . I concede you mean well. But in my serious opinion you must mean well in a better way.

(Karl Barth Letters, 1963-1968, p. 328-329)

This has me wondering (and I do not have the philosophical or theological background to do more than wonder). I wonder: If God is love (1 John 4:8)  and love is kind (1 Corinthians 13:4), might we say with Barth that mere facts, however correct, do not fully participate in the Truth unless they are expressed with kindness and toward loving ends? And unless we are able to do so, can we claim to know what we are talking about? How might the answers to these questions inform our speech to and about one another and, for that matter, the rest of creation?

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16)

God is the interesting thing about religion

Over the last couple of years I have rediscovered Evelyn Underhill and have found her consistently edifying. Here is a letter she wrote to the Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang of Canterbury. Much that is in the letter is just as relevant now as it was when she wrote it. The highlighting is mine.

 

A letter from Evelyn Underhill

to Archbishop Lang of Canterbury

MAY it please your Grace:

I desire very humbly to suggest with bishops assembled at Lambeth that the greatest and most necessary work they could do at the present time for the spiritual renewal of the Anglican Church would be to call the clergy as a whole, solemnly and insistently to a greater interiority and cultivation of the personal life of prayer. This was the original aim of the founders of the Jerusalem Chamber Fellowship, of whom I am one. We were convinced that the real failures, difficulties and weaknesses of the Church are spiritual and can only be remedied by spiritual effort and sacrifice, and that her deepest need is a renewal, first in the clergy and through them in the laity; of the great Christian tradition of the inner life. The Church wants not more consecrated philanthropists, but a disciplined priesthood of theocentric souls who shall be tools and channels of the Spirit of God: and this she cannot have until Communion with God is recognized as the first duty of the priest. But under modern conditions this is so difficult that unless our fathers in God solemnly require it of us, the necessary efforts and readjustments will not be made. With the development of that which is now called "The Way of Renewal" more and more emphasis has been placed on the nurture and improvement of the intellect, less and less, on that of the soul. I do not underrate the importance of the intellectual side of religion. But all who do personal religious work know that the real hunger among the laity is not for halting attempts to reconcile theology and physical science, but for the deep things of the Spirit.

We look to the Church to give us an experience of God, mystery, holiness and prayer which, though it may not solve the antinomies of the natural world, shall lift us to contact with the supernatural world and minister eternal life. We look to the clergy to help and direct our spiritual growth. We are seldom satisfied because with a few noble exceptions they are so lacking in spiritual realism, so ignorant of the laws and experiences of the life of prayer. Their Christianity as a whole is humanitarian rather than theocentric. So their dealings with souls are often vague and amateurish. Those needing spiritual help may find much kindliness, but seldom that firm touch of firsthand knowledge of interior ways which comes only from a disciplined personal life of prayer. In public worship they often fail to evoke the spirit of adoration because they do not possess it themselves. Hence the dreary character of many church services and the result in the increasing alienation of the laity from institutional forms.

God is the interesting thing about religion, and people are hungry for God. But only a priest whose life is soaked in prayer, sacrifice, and love can, by his own spirit of adoring worship, help us to apprehend Him. We ask the bishops . . . to declare to the Church and especially its ministers, that the future of organized Christianity hinges not on the triumph of this or that type of churchman's theology or doctrine, but on the interior spirit of poverty, chastity and obedience of the ordained. However difficult and apparently unrewarding, care for the interior spirit is the first duty of every priest. Divine renewal can only come through those whose roots are in the world of prayer.

THE TWO things that the laity want from the priesthood are spiritual realism and genuine love of souls. It is by these that all Christian successes have been won in the past and it is to these that men always respond. We instantly recognize those services and sermons that are the outward expression of the priest's interior adherence to God and the selfless love of souls. These always give us a religious experience. On the other hand, every perfunctory service, every cold and slovenly celebration (for these are more frequent than the bishops realize because when they are present, everything is at its best), is a lost opportunity which discredits corporate worship and again reflects back to the poor and shallow quality of the Priest's inner life... It is perhaps worthwhile to recall the humbling fact that recent notable secessions to the Roman Catholic communion have been caused by declaration by a felt need of the supernatural which the Church of England failed to satisfy, while the astonishing success of the Oxford Group Movement among young people of the educated class witnesses to the widespread desire for an experience of God unmet by the ordinary ministrations of the Church. History shows that these quasi-mystical movements among the laity do not flourish where the invisible side of institutional religion is vigorously maintained.

I know that recovering the ordered interior life of prayer and meditation will be very difficult for clergy immersed increasingly in routine work. It will mean for many a complete rearrangement of values and a reduction of social activities. They will not do it unless they are made to feel its crucial importance. This will not be achieved through "schools of prayer" which stimulate the mind rather than the spirit. But the solemn voice of the united episcopate, recalling the Church to that personal, realistic contact with the Supernatural which has been since Pentecost the one source of her power, will give authoritative support to those who already feel the need of a deeper spirituality and will remind the others that the renewal of a spiritual society must depend on giving absolute priority to the spiritual life.

I venture to put before the conference the following practical recommendations: (1) Education of Ordinands--- That the bishops shall emphasize the need and importance of a far more thorough, varied, interesting and expert devotional training in our theological colleges which, with a few striking exceptions, seem to me to give insufficient attention to this vital part of their work. (2) The Clergy--- That they should call upon every ordained clergyman, as an essential part of his pastoral duty and not merely for his own sake: (a) To adopt a rule of life which shall include a fixed daily period of prayer and reading of a type that feeds, pacifies and expands his soul, and deepens his communion with God; b) To make an annual retreat; (c) To use every endeavour to make his church into a real home of prayer and teach his people, both by exhortation and example so to use it.

N.T. Wright's Justification

My review of Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision
by N. T. Wright:

For too long we have read Scripture with 19th-century eyes and 16th-century questions. It’s time to get back to reading with first first-century eyes and 21st-century questions. So says, N. T. Wright in his introduction (p. 37).

Wright is convinced that we have been asking the Scriptures— particularly the Pauline corpus — some wrong questions and are thus stuck with some wrong answers. In many ways, Wright’s book is about getting the questions right which, among other things, means getting clear just what questions are being asked and answered in particular biblical passages. “Scripture”, he writes, “does not exist to give authoritative answers to questions other than those it addresses” (p. 40).

In particular, this book engages what he understands to be mistaken questions and answers from certain elements of the Reformed tradition. It is, in fact, an apologetical (and at times polemical) response to challenges to what he has written before coming from representatives of the Reformed tradition, most especially John Piper.

Wright argues that Piper and much of the tradition he represents have simply not paid careful enough attention to what Paul actually wrote, let alone the questions that lay behind what he wrote. Some key elements of Paul’s thinking that he thinks get short shrift are “Abraham and the promises God made to him, incorporation into Christ, resurrection and new creation, the coming together of Jews and Gentiles, eschatology in the sense of God’s purpose-driven plan through history, and, not least, the Holy Spirit and the formation of Christian character” (p. 31). They have missed these elements because they have supposed Paul to be answering the questions they have inherited from the Reformation, for instance: How does one find relief from the burden of guilt under the law and enter into God’s grace? Wright points out that there was no apparent sense in first-century Judaism that the Law was a burden, but rather it was understood to be a gift from God. Wright is convinced that Paul was addressing other questions, for instance: How do the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus fit into God’s continuing faithfulness to the promises he made to Abraham to bless all people and all creation through his seed?

Neglecting or marginalizing these ideas leads to a conception of justification that is too narrowly focused on the fate of the individual and which ones will go to heaven when they die. Is the whole of Christian truth all about me and my salvation? Wright sees this as the equivalent of supposing the sun goes round the earth (p.23). Or is it, as Wright argues, about the continuous narrative of God’s redemption of the whole of creation beginning with the promises to Abraham, through the election of Israel and the covenant, “reaching its climax in Jesus the Messiah and subsequently developing in fresh ways which God the creator, the Lord of history, had always intended” (p. 34)? If the latter, it is no longer all about personal salvation. There is still “saving grace accomplishing redemption in the once-for-all death of the Messiah,” and there is the formation of the Church as “the proleptic unity of all mankind in Christ as the sign of God’s coming reign over the whole world” (p. 44). For Wright, one cannot talk about justification without talking about transformation and mission.

Wright lays out his case for this understanding in the first half of the book, marked especially by this provocative question Wright asks, “Suppose we came to Ephesians first with Colossians close behind [and read] Romans and Galatians in light of them instead of the other way round?” (p. 43). In the second half of the book he offers a summary exegetical exploration of the Pauline letters. This latter half by itself is a wonderful resource.

As a response to critics, the book at times feels like listening in on one half of an argument. This might especially be the case for those unfamiliar with the Reformed side of the argument. But, that does not really get in the way of a fascinating and provocative exploration of some foundational questions about what Christians believe God is up to in the redeeming all of creation, including human beings.

Karl Barth & Dorothy Sayers

Last month I attended a  fascinating lecture by David McNutt at the Marion E. Wade Center on “"A Surprising Correspondence: Dorothy L. Sayers and Karl Barth on Artistic Creativity." You can listen to the lecture here.

Sometime in the late 1930’s, one of Karl Barth’s English theology students gave him a collection of essays by Dorothy Sayers. It turns out Barth was already familiar with Sayers having learned English partly through reading her detective novels. But, he liked the essays enough to write her an appreciative letter which led to a brief exchange of letters between the two in 1939 just as WW II was breaking out.

Given Barth’s strict Reformed theology and Sayers’ Anglo-Catholicism, it seems an unlikely correspondence. As one might imagine, while Barth was mostly appreciative of Sayers’ articulation of the Christian vision, he was not wholly uncritical. For example, he suggests she has a (very Anglican) tendency toward semi-Pelagianism. Still, he appreciated her work enough to translate into German and publish in 1959 – two years after her death – two of her essays on Christianity. In the introduction to those essays, he wrote:

She vigorously made the message of the gospel her own in breathless astonishment about its central content and in a way that was open to the world but undaunted and quick-witted without any hint of apology – but above all: joyfully and in a way bringing joy, she produced stimulating work, and regardless of what one might think of its individual statements, we may be thankful.

One can only pray that God will raise up Christians in our day, lay and ordained, about whom something similar can be said.

In one of her letters to Barth in 1939, Sayers wrote of her own work:

All I try to do is tell people that the creeds are not arbitrary formulae; that they were intended to mean something, and do still mean something.”

Again, one might pray for reclamation of such confidence among preachers and teachers of the Church.

John Calvin on the Motherly Love of God

'Like a woman in labor'. By this metaphor [God] expresses astonishing warmth of love and tenderness of affection; for he compares himself to a mother who singularly loves her child, though she brought him forth with extreme pain. It may be thought that these things are not applicable to God; but in no other way than by such figures of speech can his ardent love towards us be expressed. He must therefore borrow comparisons from known objects, in order to enable us to understand those which are unknown to us; for God loves very differently from men, that is, more fully and perfectly, and, although he surpasses all human affections, yet nothing that is disorderly belongs to him."
– John Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah 42:14