Personal Saviour or Tribal decision?

In the 'west' and particularly in the USA among all churchmanships there seems to be a common language talking about Jesus as our 'personal Saviour'. Friends from Europe in Africa were talking to someone from a tribe that knew nothing of Jesus. He went away talked with his family and tribe and the whole tribe came back and said 'We've decided to follow Jesus'. 'Wait a minute… it doesn't work like that… you need to individually follow Jesus.'

Personal Saviour and Lord Jesus? Unbiblical?

One of the authors on the Patheos website argues that the concept of a personal Saviour and Lord is unbiblical.

Personal Jesus. Is he? Is Jesus your personal savior and Lord? Do you think that the Bible teaches we should think of Jesus in that way, and proclaim him to be that over our lives? Such is the claim belonging to an overwhelming majority of American Christian Bible readers professing to understand what the authors of Scripture wrote and meant to convey. But what if I told you that such a claim is ridiculous because 21st century U.S. Bible readers are culturally alien to the early followers of Jesus and their audiences?

The author is not from a fundamentalist Evangelical background…but does vociferously attack what many might perceive as such:

And what happens whenever we Americans open up our Bibles or hear the Liturgy of the Word?—I’m looking at you, fellow U.S. Catholics! Just as with our Netflix and Disney+ viewing, so too do we bring to these readings all our cultural expectations. Whether it be Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, or Mary Magdalene, it’s just as with Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and Daenerys Targaryen—these figures must always be understood individualistically and psychologically. Outlandish? Yes. Common? Just as much. Disrespectful? Definitely!

The author argues two things: Firstly that the very personal Saviour attitude is at variance with the cultural context, both then and now of what he calls Mediterranean collectivist culture. Secondly, he argues from the Scriptures that this is what the Bible teaches.

Mediterranean Culture

I have lived for the last 23 years on a Mediterranean island and have travelled and worked extensively in the Middle East and North Africa. I was born in western Europe, in the UK, and have also lived in the USA. I stand in the gap between all these cultures. And I must admit, to a large extent, what he says resonates with my experience and with my reading of Scripture.

But at the same time the article made me uncomfortable. In part this was because the article seemed to be confrontational in its style, but also due to something that he missed about the Mediterranean culture, that most things are not black or white, but shades of grey. It is not either personal or collectivist but both personal and collectivist.

Bible readers today should recognize that ancient Mediterranean believers had zero comprehension of individualism. Therefore, neither Jesus nor any character or author of Scripture should ever be imagined as individualistic or personal the ways we are. 

No ancient disciple or Christian would understand Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. Neither first century nor fourth century Mediterraneans would see that because they simply could not do so. While typically Americans do experience a personal, individualistiic, self-concerned focus in human life, first century Mediterraneans were unaware of anything like that. Moreover, if anyone behaved like Americans do in the villages Jesus preached and healed in, they would be labeled extreme social deviants and dangerous. Such dysfunctional people would be an existential threat to group survival.

It is most certainly true that ancient and modern Mediterranean people see the community as central, and in the case of Cyprus the Greek Orthodox Church as central, within the context of family and extended family. This is similarly true within Islam in the Middle East and North Africa: Islam emphasises community and indeed the worship is extremely collectivist, with everyone doing the same and saying the same at the same time. Mediterraneans and Middle Easterners do indeed emphasis the community over the individual.

But that doesn't mean we have zero comprehension of individualism, more that it is balanced within the context of community.

The Parable of the Wedding Banquet

One parable that always confused me growing up was the parable of the Wedding Banquet. It is found in two places in Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14 and Luke 14:15-24. Almost inevitably people in western Europe and the USA speak from the Luke version of the story not the Matthew one or stop at verse 10 in the Matthew version.

The story is of a king throwing a wedding banquet for his son. When it was the time for the banquet, and remember this was before individual watches or clocks, the king sent his servants out to tell the guests the time was right and they should come. But they didn't. So the king said that since the feast was ready and those invited declined to come so his servants should go out into the streets and find people… good and bad it didn't matter… and bring them into the feast.

And that's where people stop. We the good and bad who are not part of the 'chosen people' are invited, individually and personally to the feast which is heaven.

But the story doesn't stop there. The king comes down to greet his guests and finds one of the guests not wearing wedding clothes. The king is annoyed, to put it mildly, and to tie him up and throw him outside into the darkness! And it ends on another phrase people use 'for many are invited but few are chosen' suggesting that this is again about individualism.

Well… I was sitting in a café on the bank of the river Nile in Egypt and mentioned this to a friend of mine from Egypt. He explained that what we didn't know as westerners was that at that time it was customary for wedding guests to be provided with wedding clothes as a gift by the person throwing the feast. So the person not in wedding clothes was not being unfairly put upon, as I had thought, since he'd been grabbed off the street, but had decided to reject the free gift of the king!

This story exactly demonstrates the mix of community and individualism understood in the Mediterranean and Middle East. From the community the VIPs are invited as individuals. They reject it so the wider community is invited as a community, not individuals, but within that context everyone is expected to accept the free gift as part of that community. If, as an individual, they reject it then they too are rejected as an individual.

Abnormality?

The author of the article suggests something different:

Let’s contrast how differently Americans and ancient Mediterraneans explain some adult whom they judge as being abnormal. Immediately the U.S. person uses psychology—we explore his or her childhood experiences to link these to the kind of personality he or she exhibits. We scour the personal past of the abnormal person, looking for some watershed event that psychologically shaped the adult we study… 

And how does this compare to ordinary Mediterranean persons, whether past or present? These people, in contrast, are not at all psychologically minded and, indeed, are anti-introspective! Ancient Mediterranean elites believed that a human being’s basic personality derived mostly from ethnic characteristics taken from the native air, water, and soil of the ethnic group’s home land…

For that to be true in this story told by Jesus, as a Mediterranean Middle Easterner, then something about the person thrown out should demonstrate he or she was not a native of that region. But specifically Jesus does not either point to something psychological or to something foreign but just lets it stand as someone from the community not accepting the gift the rest of the community had accepted. When something is offered to the community it is expected that the community, or family, as a whole accept or reject that offer.

The author confirms his belief that it is geographic rather than psychological with a reference to the book of Titus:

Note how the inspired author of Titus writes—“Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). There is nothing psychological there! 

So whereas U.S. biographies are descriptions of psychological development, ancient Mediterranean biographies describe someone who fulfilled stereotypical roles. 

This would, however, seem at variance to Jesus telling the story of the Samaritan man who didn't fulfil the stereotypical role when caring for the person attacked by robbers on the road. (Luke 10:25-37)

Our Relationships

Although the author points to some things I disagree with his interpretation of, there are some which I think he hits right on the nail from my experience. 

(St) Paul considers abnormality not a problem within a person but rather something amiss outside a person. In other words, the ancient abnormal person is deemed abnormal because the web of relations into which he is embedded is abnormal!

The web of relations within the Mediterranean and Middle East is critical. I remember another occasion sitting with a friend in Cairo at 3AM and something came up that only his brother would know the answer to. It was quite normal to phone his brother at that time in the morning when he was in bed and wake him up to ask him that question. Try doing that in the west and it's a quick way to lose friends! (Or even lose a relationship with a brother!)

Function has taken over from relationships in the west.

Scripture - reading and understanding

One of the key issues is our reading and understanding of Scripture. Years ago I was giving the talk in a service on Bible Sunday. One of the key points I was trying to communicate is that we need to get to know the author and the subject of the books more than just the text of the books. The example I gave was if someone wrote a biography about my wife, the type of character painted by the author of the book would be affected by the author. Because I know my wife the book could tell as much about the author as it did about my wife! So it is with the Bible. With a relationship to God we do learn a lot through the Bible but we also learn about the authors' relationships with God through the Bible.

Now here's the point… in a modernist world we like to do all sorts of analysis on the text. Yes, that's helpful but there are two more poignant questions: What was the thought the author was trying to communicate? What was the thought God was trying to communicate through the author? In other words we need to think thought for thought as much as word for word.

Does that mean the words are irrelevant? Not at all! Words help us understand the thoughts of the author, though sometimes they obfuscate too. Understanding etymology, context and culture are frequently more useful than a dictionary.

Added to which, and this is where I disagree with the original author, simple answers to complex issues are usually the wrong ones. So when he says

Bible readers today should recognize that ancient Mediterranean believers had zero comprehension of individualism.

Complex not simple

He has simplified a complex issue and in the process creates an equally inaccurate answer. Having lived in the UK, USA and Cyprus the cultures are radically different, but when asked to quantify what those differences are it is difficult to do so. It is absolutely true that we have a greater emphasis on community and the web of relationships we have, but does that mean we don't experience any individualism? Not at all. It is indeed complex and not simple.

There are boundaries to the individualism and boundaries to collectivism within the Mediterranean communities as there are too in the Anglo and northern European world.

When I was thinking about this I was thinking about the rise of populism within different cultures. In some ways populism is the ultimate collectivist expression. Except it is not. It can be, but recent populist movements are expressions of manipulation of people longing for a collectivist culture but without the true community to experience it. True collectivist cultures are open and welcoming, as can be experienced by the immense emphasis on hospitality among them. Populism breeds pseudo collectivist cultures which are the inverse of that; putting up boundaries and excluding rather than inviting.

'Undifferentiated Ethnic Ego Mass'

The author asserts that:

Mediterraneans like the anonymous Psalmist define themselves exclusively in terms of their ingroups (i.e. those groups, in which they are embedded). Because of this, it is group embeddedness on which their total self-awareness depends. Thus Biblical people like the Psalmist (and Jesus and Paul!) are so immersed in their ingroups that they share an “undifferentiated ethnic ego mass.” 

Hmmm… yes… sort of… I would prefer he had said:

Mediterraneans like the anonymous Psalmist define themselves primarily in terms of their ingroups (i.e. those groups, in which they are embedded). Because of this, it is group embeddedness on which their dominant self-awareness depends. Thus Biblical people like the Psalmist (and Jesus and Paul!) are so immersed in their ingroups that they share an “undifferentiated ethnic ego mass.”

It's not exclusive but is dominant, so he is primarily correct but not completely. As I say, it's complex, not simple!

One of the things that he totally misses is that both in ancient times and today there is a huge amount of movement of people around the Mediterranean region. I live in Larnaca and I have friends living here in Larnaca from Cyprus, Greece, Armenia, Germany, France, UK, USA, Estonia, Syria and yesterday I met a Latvian. Yes, there are closed Cypriot family communities that I am not part of, but the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culture is very welcoming and so long as you wish to fit in with the collectivist community embracing too.

Just read the Acts of the Apostles chapter 2 and you see that in the ancient world it was much the same!

'how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.'

Collectivism and Communism

Now I can almost feel steam coming out of the ears of some of my American and northern European friends with the use of the word collectivist, which they hear as close to communist, which is considered anti-Christian by them since culturally they have embraced capitalism.

I'm going to say it again… it's complex, not simple!

When we read in chapter 4 of the Acts of the Apostles:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. 

That sounds an awful like theoretical communism! When I say theoretical communism that is to separate it from the Marxism/Leninism today labeled as communism.

People write off the Amish as an out of date fringe group in their expression of collectivism. But I have Mennonite friends in downtown Chicago who practice exactly what we read about in Acts chapter 4.

Almost nowhere in the Mediterranean and Middle East will one find a truly collectivist community. But at the same time it's frequently a lot more fluid with people helping people and not allowing the abject poverty one can see in some American cities. Though sadly that is changing.

In summary…

So in summary, it is true that not only were the early believers and today's Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures very different to northern European and North American culture, but to see this a binary is to miss the reality of it. That we, as followers of the Messiah, should embrace a more Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culture, wherever we live, is certainly something I believe God is calling us to. And that closed culture populism is the antitheses of this.

What does it mean to be Anglican?

Anglican – From ulta-reformed dispensationalist to charismatic – from evangelical to liberal. Is it all things to all people or is there something about being Anglican?

Richard Hooker is an interesting person who wrote a series of books which have influenced Anglican thinking down through the ages, yet is infrequently quoted or studied outside those studying theology. I've read extracts of what he wrote and commentary from others about him and my intention now is to read more of his works. This will be a seven-part mini-series blog of my journey into Richard Hooker.

It's important to see things in context and seeing Richard Hooker in the context historically and theologically is an important part to understanding where on the journey he fits in.

We know why it started – because King Henry VIII wanted to divorce (read that have the marriage annulled) Catherine of Aragon and the Pope refused so he separated the Church in England from the Church of Rome.

Thomas Cranmer was as much a liturgist as a theologian and pretty much a 'yes man' to King Henry. He did establish an English (as opposed to Latin) liturgy creating the now famous Book of Common Prayer. Though it might seem archaic today, it was certainly revolutionary in it's day. Of course, that wasn't the end of it, because Mary, a devout Catholic, became queen and Cranmer was executed as traitor and heretic.

But that is only part of the story. At roughly the same time as all this was happening in the UK, on the continent there was another separation from the Roman Catholic Church in what we call the Reformation. Cranmer made accommodations to many of the reformation changes, which were however rolled back when Mary came to the throne but swung back again when Elisabeth became queen. It was into this mix of theological separations taking place on the continent and in the UK that a person called Richard Hooker, who is described by some as the 'Prophet of Anglicanism', wrote and formed what is, by many, considered 'Anglican theology'.

This blog entry is an introduction, then I will write three entries based upon what I so far have gathered before reading him more extensively and deeply and will then write three more based upon what I read.

Why threes?

As I currently understand it Richard Hooker was looking for a 'via media' or middle way between the Roman Catholic Church and the new Reformed Church on the continent. That there was no discussion about the Orthodox Church (Russian, Greek or Coptic) demonstrates how Western Europe was already separated from Eastern Europe (the Great Schism 1054). 

In this 'middle way' there were, assuming I've read him right, and we will see in the coming weeks and months, three basic principles upon which he believed the Church of England stands: the Bible, Reason and Tradition.

For those that accuse the Anglican Church of being 'liberal' that the first principle is the Bible might well be a surprise, but it was the first and foremost thing that he started from. How he understood the Bible might be at variance to some in the Fundamentalist Evangelical church and to some in the 'liberal' church, though defining what the 'liberal' church is might take some doing since for Fundamentalist Evangelicals it's binary – all those who are not Fundamentalist Evangelicals!

When I read the third principle being tradition I get an earworm of Tevye singing the song Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof. The story of that musical is really one of seeing tradition within the battle between tradition and progression… the unstoppable march of time! But that is to miss what I see as the core context of that issue, being that of community, and tradition merely an attribute of community.

My biases

Seeing Hooker in context includes seeing my own biases. So I will start there, with my initial biased response to his three basic principles of the Bible, Reason and Tradition.

Born and raised Anglican with some time attending a Vineyard Fellowship and some time a Community Church this journey into Anglican theology will be interesting to see to what extent Hooker convinces or dissuades me.

Coming from a Charismatic Evangelical background my initial reaction to the Bible being a core principle is one of a pleasant surprise. But then the 6th and 7th of the 39 Articles of Religion established in 1801 lock in the Bible as…

'containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation'

Reason

That Hooker saw Reason as a core principle is both encouraging and worrying to me in my biases. I've seen too many people throw out reason as being the antithesis of faith. The whole 7 day creation vs guided (creation) evolution being one such argument. If we were created in the image of God then to deny reason a part in faith is to deny God is a God of reason.
So why is it worrying? Man's reason is imperfect…

we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Nevertheless I do find reason is being useful in redressing the balance which has tended towards irrationality in faith.

Tradition

What we have lost in the late 20th and early 21st century in much of Europe and the west is community. Community has been replaced with alienating cities and, as we move forward, both community and tradition are increasingly irrelevant to most people. This leaves a void. Filling that void with historic tradition may help some but will certainly not satisfy the majority. However, I would argue that finding some way of building community within the 21st century is essential if society is to continue. And building that community is part of the prophetic role of the church and in this case the Anglican church.

So if I'm rewriting Hooker I see the three principles as Bible, Reason and Community.  But that is the start of my journey. The next step is to unpack his ideas as I see them now in the next three blog posts, starting with what I understand to be Hooker's approach to the Bible. Then read more deeply and see how my perception of each has changed.

POSTCRIPT

I scan-read Hooker and realised that the more I saw the more uncomfortable I became. Not because of his theology, but because of his meta-theology. He was not taking a proactive approach, but rather a reactive approach. He didn't want to throw Rome (Catholicism) out with the bathwater but also didn't want to fully embrace Geneva, so created this via media.

Whereas there is some validity in this middle way, I was left feeling he didn't bring anything helpful to the table because he was too comfortable in his ecclesiastic structure. He was reading Scripture through the tinted glasses of centuries of the structural church having a position of importance in society. 

Maybe what he said was good, but it carried way too much historic baggage to make me feel that this was authentic to the way of Christ. Maybe in his time it was. But not in 21st century Europe.

So what does it mean to be Anglican? Many things. But for me the lifespring is not in the past tradition but in the Fresh Expressions movement. 'Fresh Expressions is a growing movement of everyday people forming new, vibrant Christian communities in every ordinary nook and cranny of life.' 

It's not about finding a middle way to hold back the new to the old, but about embracing the new, because as sojourners in this journey we call life, to quote John Bunyan in Pilgrims progress 'Do you not still carry some of the baggage from the place you escaped?' We do indeed, 'but against my will'. 

A game of chess?

It’s easy to see history as a game of chess, a battle between good and evil, between God and Satan. The story ends with God winning and good triumphing over evil. We are the pawns, castles, bishops, kings and queens in this giant game of chess; God and Satan the players. The Shannon number tells us there are 69,352,859,712,417 possible games of chess that could have been played. In history it’s a lot larger than that!

Because people believe they are on the winning side they hold on to phrases like ‘Do not be afraid, all things are in God’s hands’ or ‘Everything will work out. You don’t need to know how, you just need to trust God and believe that it will.’ But in the grand game of chess though there is winner and loser even the victor sacrifices many pieces to win the game.

This widely held way of looking at life has always concerned me. If you hold on to this way of thinking, to see it in the big picture of good against evil is easy, when it comes down to the mundane — should I eat cornflakes or frosties for breakfast — people are then mere automata; puppets controlled by the puppet masters or players in the game. This is broadly similar to the perception of the behaviour of the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. People are seen as the sacrificial pawns in this game of good versus evil. 

But if the game only applies to the eternal tournament and lesser things are not included, where do you draw the line?

However, this isn’t a game, nor are human beings mere pieces on the board. And when damaged they hurt or die. If it were a game with the result predetermined then the damage to those players is cruel in the extreme! 

This overlooks stories in history that put the rest into context. About 5,000 years ago there were cities on the side of evil that were so depraved the game player on the side of good decided not merely to remove the pieces from the game board but destroy them entirely. 

A man named Abraham, seen as the father of the Jews and of other religions, interceded for the righteous living in those cities. Starting at 50, he argued God down to not destroying the cities if there were only 10 upright people in them. The story goes that there were not even 10, though Abraham’s relative Lot and his family survived, save for Lot’s wife who perished.

The context of that story is that God had promised to bless all people on this sphere we call earth through him. These are not the actions of a puppeteer and marionette. Indeed through history we read of Abraham being described as a ‘friend of God’. This is not just for special people because Jesus announced ‘No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.’

The other flaw with the metaphor of a game or even a war between good and evil is it leaves unanswered the real question: ‘What happens after the game is over?’ Argued about by theologians using phrases like ‘pre-tribulation’, ‘postmillennialism’ and others the focus has been on the end of the game rather than  ‘What happens after the game is over?’

Assuming one believes in life after death (to make that a valid question) then the question splits two ways: Firstly, what happens to the good guys and secondly what happens to the bad guys?

The latter of those two questions has divided Christian thinkers down through the centuries. Some citing the Bible claim they will endure conscious punishment for eternity, others, also citing the Bible say they will be annihilated, and yet others, also citing the Bible that all people good and bad alike will eventually come to know and love God. The vitriol of debate about those options is such that one might not guess those deliberating all claim to be on the same side!

But it’s the first of those two questions that is clearer: Though some religions claim a sort of permissive paradise allowing activities not even considered acceptable by them in this life, returning to Abraham gives a better answer.  Abraham was described as a ‘friend of God’ and this is what God desired to be spread throughout the world — friendship with Him! The endgame therefore is about an eternal relationship mutually enjoying company with God, sharing food, interdependence and kinship with others also enjoying a relationship with God.

Thus to see history or life as a grand game of chess is to completely and dangerously misunderstand God and His-story. Platitudes and oversimplifications trivialise and hurt those suffering. Though the concept of a game played out between good and evil has been around for millenia, it is modernity than has trapped mankind into missing a relationship with God as a 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans'. It would be better to see it as a symphony conducted by God looking for harmony in the orchestra. The orchestral players then are God's friends.