Why do they hate Aslan so? Polly Toynbee on the repugnancy of the atonement
The columnist Polly Toynbee wrote an article in The Guardian on 5th December 2005 with the rather acerbic title “Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion.”
I will spare you the full extent of her invective against the Christian imagery found in C.S. Lewis' children's stories. But among her numerous thorny remarks the following stood out:
Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?
Perhaps the most obvious thing to say by way of explanation about her choice of adjective, is that it is indicative of a heart wedded to the wisdom of this passing age. It is as straightforward a statement of aversion and distaste at the very notion of a substitutionary atonement as one could wish to find. And yet, to those who hold to the presuppositions laid out by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:8, it hardly comes as much of a surprise.
It stands in marked contrast to the expression of the regenerate heart that sees in the cross both the wisdom and power of God. Of all the great confessions of faith perhaps it is the Belgic Confession (Q. 26) that best verbalizes the sentiments of the regenerate mind:
If, then, we should seek for another mediator who would be favorably inclined toward us, whom could we find who loved us more than He who laid down His life for us, even while we were His enemies? And if we seek for one who has power and majesty, who is there that has so much of both as He who sits at the right hand of God and to whom hath been given all authority in heaven and on earth?
And what should we make of her question? Of course we did not ask Christ to die for us. None of us wanted him to.
This is a point underlined, as it were in thick marker pen, time and again on the pages of the Bible. From Isaiah's description of Christ as despised and rejected by men (Isaiah 53:3) all the way to Paul's retrospective description of Christian believers as being ungodly and enemies toward God (Romans 5:6, 10).
In the book of Judges there is the pattern of apostasy, oppression from enemies, and cries to God for relief from this misery. In his grace God raises up judges who save the people of God from the hands of their oppressors. Judges 13 seemingly opens with this same pattern. Israel has turned from God to their evil ways, and God has handed them over to the Philistines. But the pattern ends there. Just when we expect to hear a cry to God for relief and rescue there is nothing but silence.
When the Angel of the Lord announces the birth of Samson, who will begin to save Israel from the Philistines, it is therefore clear that this is an act of sheer grace on God's part. God sent them a Savior, even though they did not ask him to. The span of time between the book of Judges and that column in The Guardian may have spread over several millenia, but chronology cannot cover up the similarities that exist.
The very glory of the atonement is that Christ died for his enemies. We were not seeking after a Saviour from heaven, but running and hiding from the God who is really there. As Paul reminded the Colossians, it was for those who were hostile in their minds toward God that Christ hung on the cross. It was by that death that he made peace and effected reconciliation with God (Colossians 1:19-22).
Like Polly Toynbee, I never asked him to do this. That he did it at all is all to the praise of his glorious grace.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Babette's Feast in Our Digital Age
December 10, 2010
The Trinity Forum-Update
Hospitality in a Digital Age
This weekend is reportedly the high-water mark for the holiday party season. Many friends are juggling multiple soirees in the course of an evening, in the attempt to see and connect with friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. Most of these same revelers (including yours truly) hold accounts with and spend time on social networking sites—so it’s worth reflecting on why we still make such efforts to gather together, to prepare homes and meals and music rather than just posting a quick and cheerful holiday greeting on our social network profiles.
Our newest Trinity Forum Reading, Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen, may actually speak even more profoundly in our digital age than when it first appeared in 1950. Martine and Philippa, the elderly and ascetic protagonists of the tale, live a form of precursor to our disembodied online life. They have “renounced the pleasures of this world” and physically withdrawn from much of the life of their village to better focus on what they believe to be “the true reality” of the New Jerusalem.
Consider now the half-billion people who use Facebook. The site reports that its average user has 130 “friends” and can “interact” with over 900 million “objects”—pages, groups, and events—generating more than 30 billion pieces of content each month. Those of us who use the site encounter an unending stream of information about people from every stage of our lives.
But while online communities can impart a great deal of information about us, they cannot provide the space for us to be known. A person is far more than a persona; an individual cannot be known only through words and images. It is little wonder that many people find that even several hundred online “friends” do not ease their profound sense of isolation. This is one reason many services are now working hard to connect themselves with real “places,” even by attaching GPS coordinates to people’s postings.
But even as our tools become more sophisticated, we will still find that our virtual communities can only flourish when they help us form and deepen real-world relationships, when they take seriously our embodied human nature. This is why hospitality of the most tangible kind is foremost among the practices worth cultivating in a digital age. In our story, it is only when Martine and Philippa open their home to the refugee Babette that they make possible her further act of hospitality that opens them to grace and connection, and helps to transform their small community.
Like most meaningful things in life, hospitality comes with a cost, requiring the sacrifice of money, time, and attention. Inviting people into our homes is of a different order than inviting their friendship online. The practice of hospitality can be inconvenient and disruptive, just as Babette’s extensive preparations detailed in our story upset the routine of the household, as we shift our focus from our own needs to those of our guests. How can we best welcome them? What food and drink would they like? Who would they enjoy meeting?
When someone is at our table, there is no convenient link to click to terminate a conversation or a friendship. We must be open to this person, their presence, and their conversation. Practiced properly, hospitality forces us to recognize the other as someone to be known, loved, welcomed, celebrated, and served—and so as someone who can begin to know us in turn.
Sincerely,
Cherie Harder
President
The Trinity Forum-Update
Hospitality in a Digital Age
This weekend is reportedly the high-water mark for the holiday party season. Many friends are juggling multiple soirees in the course of an evening, in the attempt to see and connect with friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. Most of these same revelers (including yours truly) hold accounts with and spend time on social networking sites—so it’s worth reflecting on why we still make such efforts to gather together, to prepare homes and meals and music rather than just posting a quick and cheerful holiday greeting on our social network profiles.
Our newest Trinity Forum Reading, Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen, may actually speak even more profoundly in our digital age than when it first appeared in 1950. Martine and Philippa, the elderly and ascetic protagonists of the tale, live a form of precursor to our disembodied online life. They have “renounced the pleasures of this world” and physically withdrawn from much of the life of their village to better focus on what they believe to be “the true reality” of the New Jerusalem.
Consider now the half-billion people who use Facebook. The site reports that its average user has 130 “friends” and can “interact” with over 900 million “objects”—pages, groups, and events—generating more than 30 billion pieces of content each month. Those of us who use the site encounter an unending stream of information about people from every stage of our lives.
But while online communities can impart a great deal of information about us, they cannot provide the space for us to be known. A person is far more than a persona; an individual cannot be known only through words and images. It is little wonder that many people find that even several hundred online “friends” do not ease their profound sense of isolation. This is one reason many services are now working hard to connect themselves with real “places,” even by attaching GPS coordinates to people’s postings.
But even as our tools become more sophisticated, we will still find that our virtual communities can only flourish when they help us form and deepen real-world relationships, when they take seriously our embodied human nature. This is why hospitality of the most tangible kind is foremost among the practices worth cultivating in a digital age. In our story, it is only when Martine and Philippa open their home to the refugee Babette that they make possible her further act of hospitality that opens them to grace and connection, and helps to transform their small community.
Like most meaningful things in life, hospitality comes with a cost, requiring the sacrifice of money, time, and attention. Inviting people into our homes is of a different order than inviting their friendship online. The practice of hospitality can be inconvenient and disruptive, just as Babette’s extensive preparations detailed in our story upset the routine of the household, as we shift our focus from our own needs to those of our guests. How can we best welcome them? What food and drink would they like? Who would they enjoy meeting?
When someone is at our table, there is no convenient link to click to terminate a conversation or a friendship. We must be open to this person, their presence, and their conversation. Practiced properly, hospitality forces us to recognize the other as someone to be known, loved, welcomed, celebrated, and served—and so as someone who can begin to know us in turn.
Sincerely,
Cherie Harder
President
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Cardus - We Are the Public
Cardus - We Are the Public
POINT OF VIEW
We Are the Public
December 3, 2010 - Ray Pennings
It's time to reclaim the word "public."
I don't mean to sound like a nerdy grammatical purist, as if etymological arguments are a trumping corrective to everyday conversation. In this case, discussing the development of the Greek polis might be illuminating, but current examples provide enough fodder to make my case.
My concern is quite straightforward. Notions of inclusiveness and common good that were once understood as part of the term "public" have been lost. In its common usage today, the word has morphed to mean state-funded or endorsed and devoid of any religious claim—a positive antidote to the badness of things "private."
But words are important as the conveyors of meaning, and so losing this word impairs our ability to flourish in this pluralistic environment.
Let me clarify my concerns with a few specific examples. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) is on a campaign, investigating universities that require faculty to sign a statement of faith. That fact alone (goes the charge) is a denial of academic freedom.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a panel on this subject, and while preparing my remarks I realized how easy it was to lose the argument by conceding to the other side the word "public." My first draft included the term "public universities," which I meant as a shorthand for universities that were funded by the state. Although this language was convenient and would have accurately communicated to my audience the universities to which I referred, it would force me to use a word other than "public" for the non-public funded universities.
But public funding had nothing to do with the question we were debating. We were discussing whether the explicit commitment to certain presuppositions or first principles in academic work was fatal to academic freedom. Was scholarship that took place in one type of academy, in which these presuppositions were explicit, of a different nature than the scholarship that took place in a different kind of institution, where the scholars might hold the same convictions but were not asked to make them explicit? I wanted to make the case that scholars in both settings were carrying out a public vocation—namely, that of the academy. The academy is called to add to the body of knowledge on which our society relies and to share it with the next generation. We do not support scholarship so that academics have the space to study and reflect on the questions their curiosities create. Rather, we support scholarship to enable them to make a contribution to the public so that we can all share and benefit from their insights.
Although this is a challenge to those who hold convictions like those of CAUT (and I use this example simply to illustrate—similar things are happening in various social spheres), I suspect it is equally a challenge to those who work in faith-based universities. Sometimes it is easier to retreat from the broader academy and focus more narrowly on the students and context of your own university, as if your responsibilities were purely local (or, to use the terminology preferred by some, private.)
But to give in to this language is to concede that religion is really a private matter, and this concession has consequences for both who can participate and how they participate in society. Even the Supreme Court of Canada noted in a 2002 decision that an understanding of secularism which implied religion had no place in the public square was misguided. Secularism, properly understood, is a pluralist principle. It does not divide society into two groups: one holding a privileged non-theistic framework that gets to dominate the public square, and another with theistic beliefs who can participate only if they keep quiet about their deeply-held convictions. The public includes both theistic and non-theistic believers.
That challenges what has become conventional thinking on the part of many: the idea that only non-theistic belief can be objective. Recently, I was before a foundation-granting committee with a proposed project that involved engagement with a multi-faith group of stakeholders. My questioner was puzzled how an organization like Cardus, which has clear statements regarding its Christian convictions on its website, might be qualified to lead such a process. "We don't do religion," he reminded me, convinced, I am sure, that he had the public interest at heart. It seemed to puzzle him that a person with faith commitments could properly engage a broader community.
I tried to answer his query by pointing out that it was precisely because of my faith commitments that I could respect the beliefs of others and support democratic pluralism. But what was lost in this, and so many other conversations like it, is the implicit view of the "public" that the question presupposes. If people of faith are disqualified from engaging and leading a multi-faith dialogue because their personal faith biases them, then the only ones left to do it are those who do not have theistic faith. But non-theistic faith also has its presuppositions. We are left with a truncated view of the public square.
In using these examples, I do not mean to suggest naively that there are not valid concerns and historic abuses that have provided impetus to this changing notion of what is public. There are settings in which academic freedom is stifled in the name of religion (and those who remember Copernicus will know this is not a problem of recent invention). There are studies—although, these days, this seems more prevalent among non-theists than theistic believers—in which professional standards are compromised and supposedly public square processes are used to proselytize, rather than engage in dialogue.
But let's not allow certain abuses of the term "public" to change the meaning of the word. A civil plural society cannot survive if we marginalize the public contribution of faith. This is a challenge to those who would engage in campaigns to marginalize faith. It is also a challenge to many people of faith who are content to retreat from the public square and reduce their religion to a "God and me" arrangement that is no one else's business. Faith is personal, but it is never private. Our core beliefs shape who we are, how we live, and what we pursue. They define who we consider to be our neighbour and what it is that we owe them.
There are many dimensions to this complex issue but if the conversation is to continue, we need words that communicate what we mean. Reclaiming the appropriate use of the word "public" is important in that process. After all, we are the public.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
POINT OF VIEW
We Are the Public
December 3, 2010 - Ray Pennings
It's time to reclaim the word "public."
I don't mean to sound like a nerdy grammatical purist, as if etymological arguments are a trumping corrective to everyday conversation. In this case, discussing the development of the Greek polis might be illuminating, but current examples provide enough fodder to make my case.
My concern is quite straightforward. Notions of inclusiveness and common good that were once understood as part of the term "public" have been lost. In its common usage today, the word has morphed to mean state-funded or endorsed and devoid of any religious claim—a positive antidote to the badness of things "private."
But words are important as the conveyors of meaning, and so losing this word impairs our ability to flourish in this pluralistic environment.
Let me clarify my concerns with a few specific examples. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) is on a campaign, investigating universities that require faculty to sign a statement of faith. That fact alone (goes the charge) is a denial of academic freedom.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a panel on this subject, and while preparing my remarks I realized how easy it was to lose the argument by conceding to the other side the word "public." My first draft included the term "public universities," which I meant as a shorthand for universities that were funded by the state. Although this language was convenient and would have accurately communicated to my audience the universities to which I referred, it would force me to use a word other than "public" for the non-public funded universities.
But public funding had nothing to do with the question we were debating. We were discussing whether the explicit commitment to certain presuppositions or first principles in academic work was fatal to academic freedom. Was scholarship that took place in one type of academy, in which these presuppositions were explicit, of a different nature than the scholarship that took place in a different kind of institution, where the scholars might hold the same convictions but were not asked to make them explicit? I wanted to make the case that scholars in both settings were carrying out a public vocation—namely, that of the academy. The academy is called to add to the body of knowledge on which our society relies and to share it with the next generation. We do not support scholarship so that academics have the space to study and reflect on the questions their curiosities create. Rather, we support scholarship to enable them to make a contribution to the public so that we can all share and benefit from their insights.
Although this is a challenge to those who hold convictions like those of CAUT (and I use this example simply to illustrate—similar things are happening in various social spheres), I suspect it is equally a challenge to those who work in faith-based universities. Sometimes it is easier to retreat from the broader academy and focus more narrowly on the students and context of your own university, as if your responsibilities were purely local (or, to use the terminology preferred by some, private.)
But to give in to this language is to concede that religion is really a private matter, and this concession has consequences for both who can participate and how they participate in society. Even the Supreme Court of Canada noted in a 2002 decision that an understanding of secularism which implied religion had no place in the public square was misguided. Secularism, properly understood, is a pluralist principle. It does not divide society into two groups: one holding a privileged non-theistic framework that gets to dominate the public square, and another with theistic beliefs who can participate only if they keep quiet about their deeply-held convictions. The public includes both theistic and non-theistic believers.
That challenges what has become conventional thinking on the part of many: the idea that only non-theistic belief can be objective. Recently, I was before a foundation-granting committee with a proposed project that involved engagement with a multi-faith group of stakeholders. My questioner was puzzled how an organization like Cardus, which has clear statements regarding its Christian convictions on its website, might be qualified to lead such a process. "We don't do religion," he reminded me, convinced, I am sure, that he had the public interest at heart. It seemed to puzzle him that a person with faith commitments could properly engage a broader community.
I tried to answer his query by pointing out that it was precisely because of my faith commitments that I could respect the beliefs of others and support democratic pluralism. But what was lost in this, and so many other conversations like it, is the implicit view of the "public" that the question presupposes. If people of faith are disqualified from engaging and leading a multi-faith dialogue because their personal faith biases them, then the only ones left to do it are those who do not have theistic faith. But non-theistic faith also has its presuppositions. We are left with a truncated view of the public square.
In using these examples, I do not mean to suggest naively that there are not valid concerns and historic abuses that have provided impetus to this changing notion of what is public. There are settings in which academic freedom is stifled in the name of religion (and those who remember Copernicus will know this is not a problem of recent invention). There are studies—although, these days, this seems more prevalent among non-theists than theistic believers—in which professional standards are compromised and supposedly public square processes are used to proselytize, rather than engage in dialogue.
But let's not allow certain abuses of the term "public" to change the meaning of the word. A civil plural society cannot survive if we marginalize the public contribution of faith. This is a challenge to those who would engage in campaigns to marginalize faith. It is also a challenge to many people of faith who are content to retreat from the public square and reduce their religion to a "God and me" arrangement that is no one else's business. Faith is personal, but it is never private. Our core beliefs shape who we are, how we live, and what we pursue. They define who we consider to be our neighbour and what it is that we owe them.
There are many dimensions to this complex issue but if the conversation is to continue, we need words that communicate what we mean. Reclaiming the appropriate use of the word "public" is important in that process. After all, we are the public.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
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