Introduction to Theme for 2009

The first meeting aims to introduce our theme for the year for our discussions thatr will be ‘Discipleship and world building’: a theme prompted by Tom Wright’s recent book, Surprised by Hope (London, SPCK 2007) and in particular Chapter 13: ‘Building for the kingdom’. Our aim for the year will be to explore what ‘building for the kingdom’ means in the context of the various occupational contexts represented by the various members of our group (education, industrial relations, environmental and sustainability policy, music education, creative writing, engineering, medicine, public service, farming, architecture, financial services etc).

In our first session on Monday 23/2, Ian Barns will discuss Wright’s concept of ‘building for the kingdom’, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of Wright’s resurrection/new creation approach in helping us to be more faithful and creative kingdom people in our work and/or every day life circumstances.

The last chapter of Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, (‘The Light of the World’) covers many of the themes discussed in the chapter on ‘Building the Kingdom’.

Download a copy of Wright's chapter from 'The Challenge of Jesus' (Word document)

Download a copy of Wright's chapter from 'Building the Kingdom' (Word document)

Download a copy of Ian's notes for the discusssion (Word document)

Note: This meeting starts at 7.30pm and is at 8 Kirby Way, Samson 6163.  Tel 9314 2784

Background Information

Over the past 5 years, our Reading Group has been discussing how to respond to the challenge posed by Lesslie Newbigin to re-discover the gospel as public truth in our late modern western culture.

In 2005, against the background of the rise of the religious right in American politics, we focussed on the question of what the gospel of the kingdom meant for our understanding of and involvement in the world of ‘politics’. Our focus was on some key texts of a group of writers that shared the same theo-political vision as Newbigin: Yoder, Hauerwas, O’Donovan, Wright and Cavanaugh.

We saw that in their reading of the gospel, Newbigin et al challenged the division between Christian faith and politics. This did not mean trying to show the relevance of ‘religion’ to ‘politics’, but instead recovering the politics that is integral to the inbreaking of God’s kingdom in the world. Thus they told the story of the gospel in terms of the coming of God’s eschatological kingdom in the life, death, resurrection of Jesus, an event which
- brought to a climax the covenant calling of Israel to be the people of God,
- overcame the principalities and powers and their material manifestations, and
- through the outpouring of the Spirit, brought into being the new inclusive people of God, a new humanity which overcame the divisions between Jews and Greeks etc.

In this vision, the inauguration of Christ’s kingdom now frames all of human history as an era of mission, in which the tension between the already of the kingdom and the not yet of the ‘creation groaning in travail’ is a context for all to hear and respond to the gospel and to be baptised into a worldwide community of disciples
* As well as recovering a ‘kingdom’ reading of the gospel, Newbigin et al were also particularly aware of the need to address the legacy of the 1500 years of Christendom in which the logic of Christ’s victory for the nature of political authority was worked out in a creative, contingent and flawed way. They recognised that although we seem to live ‘after Christendom’ in a increasingly secular, post-enlightenment society, nevertheless the legacy of Christendom deeply influences our understanding of the gospel, of the nature of the church and of our supposedly secular society.

However, we also saw that there were significant differences between these theologians – though in the end these differences are complementary rather than reflecting basic contradictions.
- On the one hand, Yoder, Hauerwas and Cavanaugh developed a more negative view of the ‘Constantinian’ character of Christendom. In their accounts, the conversion of Constantine and the progressive cultural and political dominance of ‘Christianity’ in western societies resulted in a fundamental distortion of the gospel and the practices of the church. The eschatological tension was lost, the gospel was diluted and distorted as a form of legitimation, sacralising political orders (Holy Roman Empire) and the church was reduced to a specialised ‘spiritual’ domain of Christian society. They argued that the Constantinian compromise has been maintained even with the progressive secularisation of society and the disestablishment of the church, such that Christianity continues to legitimise the ‘Christian’ nature of the powers that be and the partial transference of the politics of Christian community to the wider society. So for Hauerwas and Cavanaugh, like Milbank, the primary task was to deconstruct the theological illegitimacy of the post-Christendom nation state and ‘secular’ society and to recover the distinctive evangelical politics of Christian community – the church.
- On the other hand, O’Donovan, Newbigin and Wright, whilst recognising the negative aspects of the era of ‘Constantinianism’ Christendom, believed that there was also a positive legacy. O’Donovan in particular was much more positive about the way in which the era of Christendom had had enabled the authentic implications of Christ’s victory for secular politics to be developed. O’Donovan claimed that its mature, positive fruit was the legal constitutionalism of early modern liberalism in which the ‘state’ was constituted under the reign of Christ with limited authority in the exercise of judgement expressed in terms of the ‘rule of law’, something that was being lost in late modern liberalism and which opened up the way for new forms of ‘the anti- christ’.

Despite these differences, Newbigin et al are united in their view that the primary focus of a Christian engagement in politics should be in the life and practice of the church (Hauerwas: the church best serves the world by being the church). Whilst Hauerwas et al provide little clear guidance and motivation for Christian engagement in secular politics (industrial relations, welfare reform, human rights issues), O’Donovan et al make clear the importance of preserving the ‘Christian secularity’ of liberal political institutions (rule of law, limited state, democratic accountability) and also emphasise the crucial importance of maintaining a space for mission, for non-coercive public argument about the claims of Christ.

However, despite the richness of this theo-political vision, our readings didn’t seem take us very far in terms of what the gospel meant for our practical engagement in ‘politics’. In particular, we were left with the question of how an emphasis on the church as the primary locus for Christian ethics and a distinctive Christian politics, provides a guide or motivation for Christian involvement in the politics of our wider world: issues of war, justice, inequality and so forth.
In 2006, our aim is to explore this question further. Our readings will focus on the various practices that are central to the life of any community that seeks to be faithful to the gospel. Following the model of John Yoder in his book Body Politics: Five Practises of Christian Community before the watching world, we will explore the ways in which such practices shape our most basic understanding and experience of politics, train us in the political virtues of the kingdom and equip us to live out more faithfully and creatively the politics of Jesus within the worlds in which we are situated.

2007

In 2007 we discussed the work of NT Wright including 6 sessions on NTW, who he is, his background, his main project, particular themes etc; a session on his ‘narrative’ approach to exegesis and Scriptural interpretation; then 4 sessions which broadly correspond to our 4 ‘practical’ concerns. We focussed our reading for the year on NT Wright, particularly on some of his writings that are particularly relevant to the Newbigin agenda. In developing the topics and choosing the readings for discussion we also wanted to ‘foreground’ some of the more practical goals or projects that we want to pursue. These are:

(a) Global warming: articulating the gospel in the context of the challenge of climate change;
(b) The shape of church: how to foster the development of church life that equips people to better engage in kingdom mission;
(c) Gospel and work: helping Christians to develop and apply a theology of work
(d) Gospel and politics:  develop and apply a theological basis for Christian engagement in politics, particularly in the context of the Federal election campaign expected later in the year;