noearthlycity

vignettes from the great clear out (6)

2010-07-03T22:06:00.002+01:00

several people have helped us today SO much, I can't quite believe what they accomplished between them! Praise the Lord for Christian friends who willingly gave up their time and energy on this very hot day.

Two gardens readied for our departure (from pretty parlous states), cupboards emptied and cleaned, things taken to charity shops, shipping cartons constructed and a lawnmower cord severed by exciteable mowing!

Also came across a little note from when I was reading The Shack. On p.90 we come across God (Father) listening to funk. Which reminded me of The Mighty Boosh - a couple of stellar episodes about jazz, exploring our ignorant prejudices about it as well as mocking its producers and enthusiasts.

Wasn't quite so convinced by some of the theological speculations in The Shack, it has to be said. For example, Young suggests that "fathering" was most lacking when creation was broken and that's why God appears as "Father" (p.94). But don't the eternal relationships within the Trinity shed some light the other way - towards our meagre understanding of what father-son means? Of course, I mused, that formulation seems to leave "woman" out of the picture, which is not good. James Jordan's provocative thoughts on hair and glory may give us some pointers here... [PART 1] and [PART 2] of his "liturgical man / liturgical woman" essay, another collection of not-wholly-convincing speculations slightly more to my taste!

this just in

2010-06-16T08:01:00.003+01:00

from my sister-in-law's sister-in-law.

The first 10 seconds had me quite bemused and it was a sweet click when it came (must be getting old)!

UCCF is not dull

2010-06-08T09:02:00.002+01:00

A very amusing tribute to theologian Wayne Grudem, in the style of Grease...

http://thebluefish.org/2008/02/my-karaoke-heroes-aka-south-west-relay.html

Some delightful book plugs inspired by various TV memes and bods buzzing around in 2008...

http://www.uccf.org.uk/media/top-10-books.htm

vignettes from the great clear out (5)

2010-06-08T08:51:00.003+01:00

Versions 1 and 2 of a Film/TV Music quiz.

The earlier one is on faded old manuscript paper in my childish hand, and was performed by me and Ad on piano and euphonium at the Widcombe Baptist Church New Year's Eve party and talent show in 1992 (or maybe 1993). One of our finest collaborations. Completing Halo on the X-Box a couple of years ago is not far behind, especially given my incompetence at such games.

The later version was longer (32 themes!) and for piano solo, and was put on while people had some drinks and nibbles at our friends' wedding in December 2006 (or thereabouts). One team got 100%, which was impressive - and scary, because some of the themes were obscure and, I thought, only in my head... It is written in my slightly maturer hand without the use of musical notation, in the back of the old account book.

Ahh, nostalgia, followed by disposal. Definitely the way to go...

last concert with Jane

2010-06-08T08:42:00.003+01:00

...and the penultimate one in Cambridge for quite some time, if all goes according to plan with our shift eastwards. I was under the influence of man-flu, ibuprofen and paracetemol so my emotions were suppressed in the service of finger art, but it was still exhilarating and moving (for the performers, at least, though the audience seemed quite happy, too!) It was nice to end with Brahms 3, which has long been a goal, and very gracious of Jane to indulge me by learning my Fantasy in G minor, which has been performed once before, in Cricklade College, Andover, by another great violinist, Daphne Moody - also a pupil of Grinke in the 70s... small world! There were quite a few kids in the audience last Wednesday at the URC, and they all said they liked my piece the best - so take that, Mozart & Brahms.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sonata No.18 in F major
Andante cantabile
Allegro
Andante con variazione

Written in 1788, this was Mozart’s final violin sonata, though by no means his most dramatic. There is an almost serene gentleness to the outer movements, with touches of cheeky humour, and only the central Allegro (in sonata form) betrays any agitation. As was customary for the classical period, the piano takes centre stage and most of the good melodies.

Johannes Brahms
Sonata No.3 in D minor, Op.108
Allegro
Adagio
Un poco presto e con sentimento
Presto agitato

Brahms’ last violin sonata is a much darker, brooding work. Mystery, and a sense of circling round something unpleasant characterises the opening movement. There is tremendous stasis in the harmony—the whole development section is worked out over a dominant pedal, like an insistent drum beat, a menace that is only finally put to rest in the coda over a tonic pedal. The slow movement brings much needed warmth before an ambiguous scherzo and brutal finale.
In this last movements the composer completely upsets the pulse and the expected rhythms, pushing his idiom and his interpreters to their limits.

yours truly
Fantasy in G minor (1998)

This Fantasy is a teenage pastiche of all that I loved about romantic virtuoso music. Taking in Verdi’s Requiem, Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Peer Gynt Suite, James Bond and a Rachmaninov prelude (plus a few others) I weave together three themes—one martial, two reflective—in various minor keys, before the triumphant conclusion in the tonic major. There are a lot of notes—I apologise for that… what can I say? I was young and foolish.

vignettes from the great clear out (4)

2010-06-07T08:33:00.002+01:00

My old account book from Downing days. Fiscal rectitude was drummed into me by the folks, and I kept (almost) comprehensive accounts up to the Christmas of my second undergraduate year. Weekly expenditure seems to have fluctuated somewhat: £231 in w/b 18th March 1999 down to £6.76 for October 18th-24th 1999 (though mostly around £70 p/w). Wonderful to see how I was sustained by gifts from Grandma and Auntie Celia, complaint to the railways that netted me various vouchers, and the odd psychology experiment.

I was quite pleased with owning several credit cards and being generally a liberal sort of chap, so there are numerous receipts from the Eraina Taverna and the Ghandi for hundreds of pounds, which I used to pay on behalf of whatever party I was with, and then recoup. If I'd have been smart I'd have charged a fee for that service of course!!

A Star Wars game in an envelope. I designed and made some sort of board game (back in 1996?) based on those rather fun novels by Timothy Zahn that are set in the years after Return of the Jedi. Some of the biro artwork is quite neat, though I say so myself, but I think it's value as a game is probably rather limited!

the heart of Romans 10

2010-06-07T07:43:00.005+01:00

Last week at Hope, we heard a great sermon, passionately and warmly delivered, from Robin Whaley, who works for Eden Baptist. The text was Romans 10:5-15, part of our long series on Romans that should come to an end in August. RW took a 'trad' line on imputation of Christ's righteousness, which is perhaps a slight puzzle (search for "imputation" on David Field's old blog to see just a small amount of the theological musings it has generated...) and not actually in Romans 10 itself, so that didn't really distract from what was an excellent exhortation.

The question is, who can be saved? Relevant for believers and nonbelievers...

The simple answer is, you need to be "righteous", in a right standing with God

Two ways to get righteous - one that doesn't work (trying to clean yourself up and keep the law 100%) and one that does (verses 6-8). This is righteousness by faith, that is given by God.

This was always God's plan A, saving faith in Jesus. We don't, can't and never could do God a favour! (tragic illustrations of the Hindu holy man rolling across India, and Robin's own pre-Christian misconception of what would improve him) Instead, He draws near to us.

God does use people in His world, however, not least in sharing this good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The call to "preach" - see verses 14-15 - is not for a select few extroverts, but for all of us. Let's get passionate about it (alongside our other worthy passions).

This message is huge in importance (the Torah pointed to it; it is the centre of history), in scale (v.12 tells of a vast new community) and in power (able to bring sinners to God).

Meditate on it and get excited!

vignettes from the great clear out (3)

2010-06-03T17:57:00.002+01:00

Very neatly organised in swanky plastic wallets, the old notes from a Pilgrim Homes conference on elderly people in the church, whih a team from Rock went to a few years back. Brought back memories of a care home close to my heart, Bridgemead, in Bath, set up by Christians about 20 years ago - one was our family GP, another was a local businessman and chess player who was a good friend to me when I was in my teens. I used to go in and play the piano for Sunday afternoon church services, taking a stroll down leafy Cleveland Walk from our bungalow near Sydney Gardens. Now that my Mum works for another care home in Bath (doing a heroic job in a place where her employer simply does not put in the resources necessary) I have yet more reason to consider Bridgemead the only really decent place I have come across for elderly people who are not able to live on their own. Sounds like Pilgrim Homes have a tremendous reputation, too, though, so let's hope that more such places are opened.

An old L'Abri cassette catalogue - listing all sorts of interesting letures I shall not have time for! The ones of various bits of classical music looked partiularly interesting. Nevertheless, it went the way of all flesh... I am surprisingly cheerful about offloading all these old (and some new) bits and pieces, so praise the Lord for that. Hopefully a good sign that my treasure is in heaven.

profitable insomia

2010-05-30T05:18:00.005+01:00

Came across this fascinating link when thinking about musical opportunities in years ahead...

http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/ethnodoxology.php

I particularly enjoyed what various peoples had to say about the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah: like a jet engine, "crying music" or “not steady.” This last group "wondered how a song with so many high and low pitches and loud and soft volumes could be considered fine art". Ouch.

Also managed to rip 18 more albums to the back-up drive. Don't want to take all 600 CDs to the othe side of the world when they can sit in the attic and something the size of a large filofax can do the business.

Which is not to say that doing without most of my sleep tonight will be pain free in the hours to come. Perhaps the possible collapse of the old laptop has been preying on my mind rather too much. There are a LOT of files on there (not backed up since about Christmas, alas) I would be very sad to lose! And almost all of our projects for the next 6 weeks will be up the creek... Back to praying not preying.

vignettes from the great clear out (2)

2010-05-29T14:37:00.003+01:00

Old music is getting the once-over at the moment. A few sad volumes have decayed so much (or are missing the solo parts) and have had to be junked, which feels very wrong. One simply shouldn't throw books away, especially not sheet music!

Came across some compositions by me. A work claiming to be the solo piano arrangement of the finale of a concerto in A major (entered into a "perform your own composition" class at the Mid-Somerset Festival in 1996?), which never actually existed in any other form except for several drafts of the first 20 bars of so full score. There are a great many drafts of the most recent classical piece I tried to compose - sometimes for clarinet, sometimes viola, sometimes euphonium, and with various attempts at writing out the piano part. A sad end to what could have become quite a nice pastiche work if on;y I'd had the time!

Also came across equivalent material from the 60s in the form of Gordon F's sketchbooks. More completed compositions than I managed - lots of short works for intermediate piano, and the drafts for his excellent Prelude & Fugue, which I've performed a few times.

Plus the copies of pieces I was asked to record for my sister to sing a few years back when she was well enough to be going to the Welsh College of Music and Drama for woodwind and voice on Saturdays. And a lovely handwritten note (her writing is a perfect feminine version of Ad's!)

...
If I didn't have man flu and thus no strength to spare I'd be bawling me eyes out at all these dusty home-made pieces of culture and history.

vignettes from the great clear-out (1)

2010-05-29T10:39:00.004+01:00

Some old sheets of glossy local authority propaganda, on that back of which Nick had written out the chords for some jazz standards so that I could provide the lower part of some 4-hands jazz a few years ago when he visited us in TG. He does have a wonderfully florid hand!

Nostalgia at every turn, as our house has spilled its guts all over the floors.

just watched School of Rock

2010-05-16T22:32:00.001+01:00

It rocks.

Kirk on resurrection in Christianity Today

2010-04-06T08:23:00.002+01:00

A splendid article I need to mull on later, and work out how to pass on all its good points when people ask me tricky questions, which happens from time to time!

maybe Orthodoxy is everything... ;-)

2010-03-31T09:03:00.002+01:00

Searching online for David Thomas' discussion of the dating of Paul of Antioch's Letter to a Muslim Friend (as you do), I stumbled upon this blog, which opened a window onto modern Orthodox Christian experience.

Most interesting indeed, and one to return to when I have two-and-a-half hours spare (possibly in July) is this lecture by a real scholar, Roman Catholic professor Sidney Griffith. His breadth of learning and ability to synthesize and interpret the complexity of Middle Eastern Christian history in its fragmentary and repeatedly politicized context is outstanding. I've read most of his publications, and if I had time I'd read them all!

Geography is everything

2010-03-12T14:50:00.003Z

...as a teacher at my school used to say, and as my brother, who now teaches it at a posh and overachieving school (even more than the one we went to!) is fond of reminding me.

Well, here's a fascinating Christian geographer's blog. It's not all maps and colouring in, you know.

So interesting that I'm putting it in the sidebar too, if I can remember how to do that...

no Psalm 8 without Hebrews

2010-03-12T09:05:00.003Z

Jesus Christ is the one who makes most sense of that Psalm and indeed of everything.

And while we're on the subject of nostalgia, Hebrews and Psalm 8 were right there at the start of this blog (eke and mild and Hebrews 13). Glad to know I haven't moved on from what is important, but, rather, I ought to have moved further into it. Like the fractals, I hope to be going round and round, not in circles of emptiness, but in spirals of ever-increasing richness. That's what growing up is about, and thus what growing up into Christ all the more so. And, of course, it can't be done without Christian brothers and sisters, so praise the Lord for the church, too.

nostalgia and productive chat

2010-03-12T08:37:00.005Z

We had Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian in Cambridge last week to speak at Great St Mary's the Corn Exchange for "Passion for Life". Saturday (which I didn't hear) was the Reason for God; Sunday (which I did) was Counterfeit Gods. Each evening was loosely based on key ideas from his two best-selling books. By all accounts the Sunday one was better - I certainly found it stimulating, and it contributed greatly to the conversation started between Dave and Dave months ago, which I joined in the Panton Arms shortly before we wandered up to hear Keller.

What a great chat that was - stimulating and intimate, the history of philosophy, the perspective of faith, music, searching, questioning, formulating, reformulating, just what our brains were made for. Looking forward to continuing. Probably have to read some Schopenhauer, now...

It really took me back to the panelled rooms of Downing College at the end ofthe last century, staying up all night with green tea and my agnostic best friend and best man, whiling away the hours on everything - not to mention back to the studying itself, a historical whip-round political thought and ethics from Plato to Nietzsche (in amongst more prosaic [and poetic for that matter] stuff on medieval social history or Renaissance literature).

And that got me thinking about another friend who stayed up all night patiently trying to explain chemistry to me (in those days I was still under the impression that A-level chemistry was "true" and was pleased with myself for having done some science as well as all the arty-farty business), while writing beautiful fractals on the computer. We managed to discuss Reformed theology and the Christian life quite a bit, too, and it was great to see him again at my 30th in the summer after a gap of many years.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful experiences, and for keeping me following him since then. What a wonderful world, what wonderful creatures, what a wonderful Creator.

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [c]
and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:

all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Economist and the earthly city

2010-03-10T07:51:00.000Z

I am 5 days behind on The Economist (i.e. last Friday’s has not yet been opened). Either my bowels are moving more quickly than usual (the magazines are generally stored in the bathroom), or else it’s been a productive week in other areas of endeavour. Anyhow, as I finished off last week’s edition this morning, I was taken with the style of the obituary, as often happens. The page on Alexander Haig (American General, White House Chief of Staff under Nixon, head of NATO, foreign policy spokesman for Reagan, etc, etc) closed with a sweet metaphor from the General’s book Caveat, riffed by the journalist…

“The [Reagan] White House was as mysterious as a ghost ship; you heard the creak of the rigging and the groan of the timbers and sometimes even glimpsed the crew on deck. But which of the crew had the helm? …It was impossible to know…

If someone evidently had the helm, General Haig saluted. If not, rather than let drift and uncertainty give any comfort to America’s enemies, he had acquired the habit of seizing the wheel himself.”

Grand sentiments, steely nerves, national business – all in a day’s work for the rich and powerful, I suppose. Even the little people like me can get dewy-eyed about this sort of stirring stuff, actual or fictional (as happened when I re-watched the ludicrous yet strangely charming cornfest that is Independence Day over lunch on Tuesday). But let’s be aware of the mythic and ideological guises of the state, the nation, human hierarchies, construals of enemies, and so forth. Let’s remember what really lasts, where the city with foundations comes from, who it comes from, and what really counts...

the mini-series has concluded

2010-02-26T13:57:00.004Z

Jane and I have loved the Grieg-Beethoven combo over the past year or so, and audiences seem to have got into the swing of things, too. Wednesday witnessed a very swashbuckling performance of Beethoven 3 and Grieg 3, and we hope to repeat it with less swash for the University of the Third Age (what a good idea that is) next week.

Ludvig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Violin Sonata No.3 in E flat, Op.12, No.3

I Allegro con spirito

II Adagio con molt’ espresione

III Rondo (Allegro molto)

Beethoven’s first three violin sonatas were dedicated to his teacher, Salieri (an Italian composer who didn’t poison Mozart). They display clear adherence to classical forms and were designated sonatas ‘for piano and violin’, with the emphasis definitely on the piano. In these early works Beethoven was writing music for the concert platform and music to pay the bills, not music driven by a need to express deep inner passions. There is a certain foursquare-ness to the design of this sonata. Nevertheless, more than its fellows in Op.12, this third work looks forwards. The opening Allegro sticks to the letter of classical sonata form, but is busting with dark, wayward harmonies and crams in far more notes than one might expect from such a stately opening. The Adagio’s extended coda gives space for plenty of jolts and surprises, characteristic of the composer’s maturity. In the final Rondo Beethoven employs his skills in counterpoint to good effect, along with a gift for folksy melody that one normally associates with Dvořák or Grieg.

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Violin Sonata No.3 in C minor, Op.45

I Allegro molto e appassionato – Presto

II Allegretto espressivo alla Romanza – Allegro molto – Tempo I

III Allegro animato – Prestissimo

Twenty years separate Grieg’s second and third violin sonatas. The earlier work was carefree, experimental in form and infused with Scandinavian folk music. This sonata – and particularly the first movement – is angry, extremely simple in structure and more sparing in its melodic inspiration. The opening theme rushes around before collapsing into the more lilting second subject. The development offers mystical cascades and a violent bass, ending up in a flurry of gruff diminished chords that fade away into a quiet false recapitulation. The real recap is impossible to miss! And see if you can spot Grieg’s jazz moment just before the coda. Norway seems to exercise more influence over the sweeter second movement, a simple ABA of melodies that do the hard work and various patterns of accompaniment that don’t. In the C minor third movement, a binary AB/A’B’, we are subjected to constant buzzing and foot-stomping (A) alternating with pure romantic indulgence (B). The insistent coda may be in C major, but was Grieg protesting too much in this, his final chamber work?

bring back the Luddites!

2010-02-19T21:47:00.003Z

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I used to think I could understand most modern English prose. I also used to think that the University of Cambridge was immune to the excesses of garbled postmodern opacity. Alas, not. Here is the abstract of a paper delivered to the Literary Theory Seminar yesterday evening. My provisional verdict on it is "complete twaddle". It's not just a pointless piece of abstract musing or antiquarian interest (I found plenty of examples of those as a student, and might even have been responsible for some), it's truly, madly, deeply incomprehensible.

This essay explores how to find a way of being in the world at a time when
common meanings become scarcer and the gauntness of unmediated objective
existence starker. A recent study of the poetics of place in modern French
writing (by Steven Winspur) stresses the irreducibility of ontic presence
as itself revelatory. I argue that the way humans encounter objects and
places is more problematic, not because "absolute contingency" (Curry 1999)
is not a given but because the "way" along which it is given offers a
threshold of relation which is hyperbolic. The conditions for
re-enchantment do exist, but as part of a poverty of dependent response
making itself "less" in order to "greet" the object as sacrally given, but
in a way which does not disperse the enigmatic commonality of that
givenness.

The mute presence of the non-modernist spear-grass in Wordsworth's Ruined
Cottage is at once chastened and in excess of the naturalistic. What
exceeds the naturalistic is a givenness not reducible to the conditions of
description of the object. Here a plenitude of existence is already
diminished but retains its role as gift amid the scarcity of its own
reception. This section involves some debate with Paul H Fry's radically
ontic reading of Wordsworth's poetics.

The second part of the essay reflects on some fragmentary remarks in
Merleau Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, Jean Luc Marion's notion of
the "adonné" and the themes of call and response in Jean Louis Chretien,
before adducing William Desmond's sense of the "between" further developed
in John Milbank's writing on diagonals. The between is not a mediation but
the sheerly disjunctive porosity of being, whereby nothingness is itself
open to divine invitation.

Any ethics of responsiveness (Wheeler, 2008) should include a response to
the inaffordance of origin, not as a negative idealism, but as the apex of
what it is to live in relation to existence under the radical poverty of
gift. My argument concludes that the scarcity of origin finds itself rooted
in the hyperbolic, ie in an earth offered sacral horizons, not just
frugally from within but as an active (festive) poverty before, which
generates ritual and art.

I then began to read the paper itself, just in case it got any clearer...

creeping out of the Luddite era

2010-02-19T21:32:00.002Z

Yukie kindly uploaded our recent concert onto youtube in various slices.

Mozart: Sonata for Keyboard Duet in C, KV.521

(1st mvt)
(2nd mvt)
(3rd mvt)

Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Schumann, Op.23
(part 1)
(part 2)

Satie: La Belle Excentrique - serious fantasy
four odd movements

more letters

2010-02-17T18:35:00.004Z

While I was away in a mobile phone blackspot last week my post was opened and a message left on my mobile (which I could just about pick up if I held the thing upside down while standing next to the external kitchen door of the Harby Centre, so long as I didn't move my head at any point!) by the lovely post-opener to the effect that I had passed a music exam with distinction.

I was quite chuffed, as it was the Associated Board's LRSM, the second-highest diploma one can get round here, and I'd had to wait about 7 nervy weeks to hear the result. In fact, I was awarded a distinction, which was extremely pleasing, since when I took the exam in the heady summer of 1998 (the last time I did anything exam-like on the piano) I failed!

I don't think I've got all that much better over the last 12 years, but I am sure that the ABRSM's diplomas have got a lot easier. Just compare the syllabus pre- and post-2005. Back in the good old days there was a 3-hour essay-based repertoire paper and a long listening test that included fiendish 4-part dictation... before you could get anywhere near the recital! This time it was just a long programme note and viva that was required in addition to the keyboar-based stuff.

So, chuffed indeed, but well aware that the value of the piece of paper has been roughly in keeping with the value of sterling over the past decade!

more recent Orthodox missiology

2010-02-04T07:11:00.004Z

Well-meaning attempts at proclamation-in-power, or less well-meaning cynical manipulation of religion for secular political ends has dogged the Roman Catholic Church more than any other, but the Protestant churches have been by no means free from such taint, nor have the Orthodox.

Recent missiological writings from the mainstream and historic denominations have tended to shy away from exclusivist positions and from what evangelicals would recognise as direct proclamation of the gospel. The wording of many WCC documents, and the thoughts of today's Orthodox spokespeople on mission is often rather mealy. Alternately uplifting and hand-waving, these writings express an ambivalent view of cultural power.

On the one hand, we read of the great importance of "inculturation" (granted) which 'occurs when Christians express their faith in the symbols and images of their respective culture. The best way to stimulate the process of inculturation is to participate in the struggle of the less privileged for their liberation.'

Lovely, but why is Vladimir of Kiev still celebrated (nay, revered) by the Orthodox? A brute who was impressed by a showy Byzantine liturgical celebration (aimed straight at the elites of its day) and who forced his people to be baptized in a river, thereby 'accepting the Christian faith' on behalf of the Rus, and perpetuating in a new place a 'gospel' of power and a church so violently implicated in the workings of the earthly city that its integrity as a church has often been obscured...

[The quotation is from a 1982 WCC document, Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation, recorded with approval by Ion Bria, a leading Orthodox missiologist and academic, in his Go forth in peace: Orthodox perspectives on mission (Geneva: WCC, 1986), pp.80-81.]

January 28th at URC

2010-02-02T20:54:00.005Z

With a proper pianist playing the secondo part for Mozart and Brahms, and then a swop for the final number...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata in C major, K521

Allegro

Andante

Allegretto

This is the most beefy of Mozart’s sonatas for 4 hands, and also the final one. It was written in 1787 and dedicated to Babette and Nanette Nortrop, daughters of a wealthy Viennese merchant and pupils of the composer. Mozart considered it “rather difficult”, and since he was one of the most accomplished keyboard players in history we find no reason to quibble with that verdict. Difficult for the pianists, but easy for the audience. From the bold double-dotted main theme, the gentle second subject (which the other performer keeps trying to spice up) through various brilliant episodes and flourishes, the first movement is instantly appealing. Even the tender slow movement has its virtuoso passages, particularly the central, minor section. A deceptively simple, almost twee theme sets the tone for the rondo. The pianists keep interrupting each other, sometimes to change the mood, sometimes to amplify it, and sometimes as if to say ‘I can do better than that’. The coda is robust, and some silky chromaticism slides the music to its jubilant conclusion.

Johannes Brahms, Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op.23

With a slow-moving theme built of falling scales and a date of composition just a few years after Schumann’s death, we have a recipe for a very moving work. The first three variations grow in their complexity and figuration before a dirge in E flat minor (redolent of the Horn Trio’s Adagio) almost brings everything to a halt. After that Brahms takes in a graceful Viennese waltz, a rambunctious pub ditty, a meandering study in thirds, a sinister scherzo, and a dark, angry outburst before the final variation. This is a slow march, celebratory yet tinged with sadness – not the sadness of a funeral but of warm memories of a chapter now closed.
.

Erik Satie, “La belle Excentrique”, a serious ballet

1. Grand Ritournelle

2. Marche Franco-Lumière

3. Valse du “mysteriex baiser dans l’oeil”

4. Cancan grand-mondain

This little suite is utterly ridiculous from start to finish – both in its musical ideas and in the challenges set for the performers, who keep jumping in each other’s way, reaching over and even crashing into each other. Originally an orchestral ballet score for the famous French dancer Madame Caryathis, Satie penned it in 1920 and 1921, before making the arrangement for two pianists in 1922. Enigmatic as ever, he commented on the work, “My music likes an atmosphere: a woman calling to mind more a zebra than a doe”. The Marche contains hints of the theme to Spiderman (particularly in its incarnation as ‘Spider Pig’ in The Simpsons Movie). The waltz “concerning mysterious kisses on the eye” (!?) is the only dark corner of the suite, but it pokes fun at various dance styles along the way before the final romp, a “very smart Can-can”.

incomes in Britain

2010-01-30T18:21:00.002Z

Found a fascinating article in the FT a few weeks ago that turned up again in this afternoon's tidy-up. All about the distribution of incomes in the UK.

"Middle class workers richer than they think", Tues 5th Jan 2010.

Based on 2007-08 prices, and also based on all people with incomes (whether pensioners, those on benefits, full-time and part-time workers).

Mean (average) weekly income per individual, £487 [=£25,342pa]
Median (central figure if you line them all up) weekly income per individual, £393 [=£20,436pa]
Mode (most common) weekly income per individual, c.£260 [=c.£13,520pa]

Other interesting facts:

A childless couple making £25,000 each are in the 87th percentile - i.e. only 13% of the population earn more. That means that most yuppie couples in Cambridge are unquestionably "rich" (especially given the rest of the world...)

Having a child means you need an extra 20% on your income to maintain a
similar standard of living.

47,500 people (the top 0.1%) make more than £350,000 per year!

More stats are available at www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin, the people who did the hard work.

a rather sadder chapter

2010-01-15T07:31:00.003Z

The shocking conduct of Greek clergy among the Alans, including extortion rackets, observed by Bishop Theodore in 1233 (sent three centuries after the nation had been baptised) was part and parcel of the general neglect and intolerance of non-Byzantine believers or seekers. The Bishop of Cherson even objected to Theodore’s ultimately vain attempts to properly preach to and disciple the Alans, crying,

‘“The Devil take the godless Alans who are even worse than the Scythians [Mongols]!” … In the eighteenth century, when Russia was conquering the Northern Caucasus, General Eropkin found in the Baxan village of Kabarda a decrepit codex of the Gospels in Greek. The locals explained that they knew only one way to apply it: they used to put it on a sick man’s head. This is an ironic epitaph to Byzantine missionary efforts in the Alania.’

Sergey A. Ivanov, ‘Mission Impossible: Ups and Downs in Byzantine Missionary Activity from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century’, in Jonathan Shepherd, ed., The Expansion of Orthodox Europe: Byzantium, the Balkans and Russia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp.251-66 (p.261).

Of course, whether or not one believes that the application of a book to the forehead is 'a good thing' does depend on one's perspective. In the hagiography of one Iakovos, a Greek shepherd who was killed by the Turks in 1520, we read of a local Muslim woman of high renown who was cured of a nasty illness by having copy of the gospels held above her head.

N.M. Vaporis, Witnesses for Christ: Orthodox Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period 1437-1860 (Crestwood, NJ: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000)., p.58.

So, if you're a critical modern historian (or me) you might be tempted to sneer at such practices, but if you're an 18th century priest collecting uplifting stories of Orthodox life under oppression (or even if you're simply republishing them in the 20th century) then such things can apparently form part of a rounded approach to Christian witness...

Orthodox missiology

2010-01-14T08:19:00.004Z

The lure of proclamation-in-power is so strong, particularly in churches with a lot of direct investment in material culture (i.e. the ones with a lot of expensive buildings and gold-coated gubbins). This has long been true of what we might call the historic (ossified?!) churches of Christendom. Even some of their modern writers are happy that evangelism-by-impressing should be considered an important part of mission work.

If I am slightly negative about this approach, don't think I am altogether happy with revivalist tent meetings, either, or that I am an expert evangelist myself. Horses for courses, one might say. But cultures change, and some churches are not really keeping up...

Alexander Veronis (Missionaries, Monks, and Martyrs: Making Disciples of All Nations [Minneapolis, 1994]) comments on Stephen of Perm (1340-1396), a godly and successful evangelist among pagan peoples in what shortly became central Russia. Veronis is quite happy that the celebration of the liturgy as an alien event and the impact of impressive buildings should be considered an important part of mission work. This courageous priest went outside Russian territory, lived among the pagans and spent many hours teaching, arguing, debating as well as working alongside them.

Stephen’s method of preaching was not always so aggressive. His most successful means of converting the Zyrians came through the power of the Divine Liturgy and the majesty of various church structures. Throughout Orthodox history, the beauty of the divine services and church buildings have played an important role in the witness of the church… Stephen had adorned the church with beautiful icons and ornaments because he knew the power such a sight could have on the native population. He only had to recall the powerful influence that a beautiful church and liturgy had on the conversion of Prince Vladimir and the Russian people. (p.61)

Zyrians came to see the church building, not yet for prayer, but desiring to see the beauty of the church, adorned as a beautiful bride (p.62). These visits enabled him to preach the truth to many more than he debates with local religious leaders did.

Fair enough, but such an approach simply did not work (and does not work?) among Muslims. There were plenty of impressive structures and other-worldly liturgical celebrations going on in the former Byzantine empire in the middle ages and early modern period. But putting one's trust in the impressiveness of physical structures is not going to work in the long run: such things decline. And as they did, so did any hope that that sort of ‘mission’ would bear fruit among the conquerors of eastern Christendom...

Musicology

2010-01-12T07:31:00.004Z

I never really got into that, which is perhaps a bit odd for a musician with academic leanings. Anyway, a little certainly goes a long way; there is no doubt that my appreciation for music was boosted by music A-levels in 1997 (at the time, poorly understood, if I'm honest), a diploma in musicology (AMusTCL) in 1998 and by occasionally dipping in to academic works since then. But listening to Charles Hazlewood's programme Discovering Music on BBC Radio 3 has been about as helpful as all that study - I can't recommend it more strongly!

Anyway, before Christmas I had to knock up something a little more high powered than my usual chatty programme notes, and this is what came out...

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Sonata No. 62 in E flat major, Hob. XVI/52

I Allegro

II Adagio

III FINALE – Presto

Haydn’s last and grandest sonata was written in 1794 during a visit to England. Along with Sonata No. 60 in C major, it was composed for and dedicated to Therese Jansen, a rising star of keyboard performance.[1] The thick opening chords and dramatic gestures of the first movement almost prefigure the changes Beethoven was to bring to the keyboard, and to musical taste in general. At every opportunity Haydn surprises the listener in this Allegro, whether in the frequent harmonic shifts, often unprepared, or in the radical contrast between the grand opening theme and some of the other material. James Taggart points out the humour introduced with the ‘laughing notes’ in the tune at bars 27-9, very redolent of the opening bars of Sonata No. 60.[2] Haydn totally disregards convention when he jumps into E major at the close of the development section – a development section very short on the dominant but bursting with other keys. That leap prepares us for the unusual choice of E major/minor in the Adagio. This is in ternary form, but is essentially monothematic. All the melodic material is generated from the rhythmic organisation and relative pitches of the first three notes. Although slow, there are many flamboyant touches and often a feeling of improvisation. The final movement is in a more conventional sonata form, much more tightly constructed than the Allegro and taking in fewer surprising key-centres, though still highly chromatic in places. Haydn scattered pauses liberally throughout the Presto, adding to a sense of tension and urgency created by the insistent repetition within the main theme and the very early use of the supertonic minor to re-state that theme.

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924)

Nocturne No. 4 in E flat, Op. 36

The interval of a falling fourth characterises this elegant, deceptively simple work. The structure is loosely ternary, but since the middle section has two quite distinct melodic ideas (albeit in the same key and bracketed by the same semiquaver figuration) perhaps ‘ABCA’ would be more accurate. Each section is essentially a double statement of its main melodic idea, the second iteration more elaborately accompanied than the first. In each case this double statement of the tune is followed by a transitional passage. There are thematic links between ‘A’ and ‘B’ and ‘A’ and ‘C’ in particular. The falling fourths with which the main theme opens find their place in the second section – bell-like semibreves head each bar, appearing in pairs a compound fourth apart. Section ‘C’, which contains the climax of the work, employs material from the tail-end of the main theme of ‘A’ – a falling fifth preceded by rising triplet figure. A coda in the style of ‘B’ over a tonic pedal ushers in the calm conclusion. Musicologists delight in finding parallels between Impressionist art and the sound world of French music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: ‘For Fauré, as much as for Debussy and Ravel, evocations of bells are a recurring colour, standing out rather in the manner of Van Gogh’s characteristic crimson splashes’.[3] It is not hard to find sources in the composer’s life for this love of bell-like sonorities. He grew up under the sound of church bells and his career began in the Catholic church. Between 1866 and 1892 Fauré worked as organist or choirmaster for churches in Rennes and Paris.[4] To take just one other example from his large output for piano, the monumental Thème et Variations closes with a fortissimo peal of bells on a long descending scale.[5] It is intriguing that Fauré chose to set that peal against a slower-moving rising scale in the lower register, and that his long falling scale moves from right hand to left, just like at the climax of this less ambitious but no less beautiful Nocturne.

Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)

Prelude and Fugue in E minor, Op. 35, No. 1

As Fauré owed a great debt to Chopin for much of his piano writing, so Mendelssohn drank deeply from the wells of past great musicians. Fellow Lutheran J.S. Bach was undeniably an important influence, and the extent of that dependence has long been the subject of great debate among musicologists. This negatively affected Mendelssohn’s reputation for more than a century.[6] However, the six Preludes and Fugues are more Romantic than neo-Baroque, more innovative than conservative.

The most striking feature of the un-Bachian prelude is Mendelssohn’s skilful employment of the “three-hand technique” of virtuoso Sigismond Thalberg (1812-71), in which an inner tune is decorated on either side with florid figuration.[7] But there is much more to this restless work than first meets the ear. Although a midget in comparison to the weighty fugue the prelude has great structural integrity in its own right – almost a miniature sonata form. After the main melody is stated in the tonic minor it is repeated with a modulation to the dominant (minor) via an upward leap of a seventh. New thematic material made up of alternating rising and falling note-pairs (like a second subject) builds to a climax. A chromatic fantasia rippling downwards from the dominant opens the ‘development’ section in which the main theme with diminution (the leap of a sixth becomes a tritone, anticipating the crucial interval of the fugue theme to come) is heard twice, abortively. A fleeting passage relying on major harmonies gives way to a diminished seventh that slides into the dominant seventh which introduces the ‘recapitulation’ back in E minor (a single statement of the main melody with slightly altered accompaniment). The ‘second subject’ is then heard in the tonic before an extended coda over a tonic pedal. Mendelssohn could hardly have made his E minor more emphatic here – despite the taunting intrusions of E major harmony (which serves to prepare for outbursts of the modified first subject in the subdominant) the heavily chromatic contrary-motion scales pull the music relentlessly back to the minor, and the simple arpeggios of the final bars underline that harmony in no uncertain terms.

E minor and a mostly dark, dissonant mood dominate the double fugue. The chromatic principal subject comprises rising tritones and falling, sighing scales. Mendelssohn frequently shrinks the subject’s opening interval of a minor third to a tone or a semitone, giving him great flexibility in the direction the music will then take. Major harmonies begin to predominate from the fifth entry of the principal subject, in the tenor part, and the music is firmly established in the warm relative major by the time the tenor again has the tune. This is a false dawn, however, for after the cadence the music begins to fragment. Falling away from G major the voices enunciate dyadic gestures as they fade, at first overlapping and then breaking apart into separate, halting breaths. The return of the principal subject in the bass brings unity to the voices and a long accelerando begins along with greater dynamic range. The acceleration continues through the first dynamic climax and the introduction of a second fugue subject (an inversion of the principal subject, now featuring staccato articulation) right up to the emphatic return of the principal subject in the tonic minor – first in the highest voice (bar 73) and then in bass octaves (bar 77). At the climax of this radical fugue, the left hand octaves produce an effect reminiscent of organ pedals going at full blast. When the right hand enters again Mendelssohn gives it not the fugue subject but a glorious E major chorale of five stately lines. The last of these is instantly recognisable as the second line of Ein feste Burg ist Unser Gott. Tempo 1 is reaffirmed in the coda, which gently explores the principal fugue subject in a calm tonic major. Since the fugue was written as a response to the death of Mendelssohn’s friend August Hanstein, it is not too fanciful to accept R. Larry Todd’s suggestion that its dissonant path represents the course of Hanstein’s fatal disease while ‘the culminating chorale… distinguished by smooth stepwise motion, [depicts] his release through death and spiritual redemption’.[8]

Achille-Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Étude V (pour les Octaves)

The programme closes with a second up-beat, highly chromatic work by a composer nearing the end of a glittering career whose contribution to the piano repertoire was as important as his influence on the development of musical language was far-reaching. Unlike the Haydn Sonata, however, this piece is very short. Written in 1915, it betrays little of the well-known anxiety and depression that Debussy experienced as a result of the First World War, though several other Études from the set of twelve seem to have the shadow of conflict over them: III – pour les Quartes, IX – pour les Notes répétées or the brutal XII – pour les Accords, for example. If there is anything unsettled here then it is in the slightly sinister central section. The form is loosely ternary, and each main section is further subdivided.

The opening section is expansive and bravura, elaborating in turn on significant elements of the first ‘paragraph’ (bars 1-4). Thus from bar 11, the falling triple semiquaver motif and the off-beat melodic phrases are developed, while from bar 23 Debussy returns again and again to the rising, overlapping flourish that traverses almost the entire keyboard. This flourish has been the cause of some confusion among pianists, since Debussy reportedly said that the penultimate (left-hand) pair of notes was printed an octave too high in the first edition. Unfortunately, he apparently did not comment on the final (right-hand) pair, which is thereby potentially left out on a limb above its fellows, but perhaps ought also to be brought down an octave.[9] Given this ambiguity, I have decided to retain the first edition’s notation for my performance. This permits the flourish to expand dramatically in pitch as it rises, as if the rate of change was itself changing, which seems in keeping with the mood and virtuosity of the work.

The central section’s extended diminished whispering eventually gives way to a pentatonic romp. Instead of being shared out between the pianist’s two hands, in different registers, which had produced a rather unsettled effect, the three-note groups of melodic material are now united, without accidentals, in four bars of Strepitoso double-octave passage work. This leads to a reprise of the opening material in E major (the tonic). Debussy avoids the slip down into E flat major that he had employed in the first section, and provides a dreamy episode in the upper register of the piano, based on the fortissimo passage from bar 11. As he heads back to the tonic, for six bars the elements of the first bar – bass octave, central chord, high triple semiquaver motif – are taken apart and put back together in a slightly different order, then insistently squeezed and sharpened. There is a final chromatic rush before the jubilant conclusion.

[1] Tom Beghin, ‘Thoughts on performing Haydn’s keyboard sonatas’, in Caryl Clark, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Haydn (Cambridge: CUP, 2005), pp. 203-25 [p. 14].

[2] Franz Joseph Haydn’s keyboard sonatas: an untapped gold mine (Lewiston: Edwin Mellon, 1988), pp. 60-61.

[3] Roy Howat, The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009), p. 15.

[4] Biographical information about Fauré is taken from the notes to the Naxos recording of Nocturnes 1-6, online at http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.550794&catNum=550794&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English# (accessed 19/12/09).

[5] Howat, French Piano Music, p. 15.

[6] For a balanced and contextualized approach, see James Garratt, ‘Mendelssohn and the rise of musical historicism’, in Peter Mercer-Taylor, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), pp. 55-70.

[7] Steve Lindeman, ‘The works for solo instrument(s) and orchestra’, in ibid., pp. 112-29 [p. 124].

[8] ‘On Mendelssohn’s sacred music, real and imagined’, in ibid., pp. 167-88 [p. 180].

[9] Howat, French Piano Music, p. 235.

Back at the King of Hearts in Norwich

2010-01-12T07:28:00.005Z

Jane and I headed back there in November to do another recital, and thoroughly enjoyed the whole place. My Grandma came down from Lincolnshire and has waxed lyrical about it ever since. I hope we will return - we are plotting another Beethoven-Grieg combo, which seems to be what comes up when we go to Norwich!

Beethoven, Violin Sonata No.7 in C minor, Op.30, No.2

I Allegro con brio

II Adagio cantablie

III Scherzo & Trio (Allegro)

IV Finale (Allegro)

This is pure Stürm und Drang Beethoven. From the dramatic first subject of the Allegro con brio (a declaration of war?) to the insane coda of the Finale, the Sonata is dark, brooding, angry and full of passionate outbursts. The second subject of the Allegro con brio may be in a major key, but it sounds like an army on the march, and the buzzing semiquavers of the tonic minor are never far away. This driving busyness underpins even the lyrical passage at the start of the development section, and after 16 bars the violin gives up, reasoning, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”. The main subject of the Finale (a rondo) is even more bold, swelling to a tremendous crash that announces each new section. The momvement is peppered with counterpoint, false starts and more notes than you can shake a stick at. Thankfully the middle movements provide some much needed respite. The vast Adagio cantabile contains one of the most beautiful and yearning melodies ever penned, with aching dissonances on the third beat of each phrase that cry out for resolution. In the various episodes of this slow movement Beethoven strays a long way from the warm key of A flat major (the same key as the slow movement of the famous Pathétique Sonata, also in C minor) and spices up the pacific mood. The miniature Scherzo and Trio are in C major; the former light and spiky, the latter like a rustic dance, whose innocent fun is soon to be shattered by the arrival of the Finale.

Grieg, Violin Sonata No.2 in G major, Op.13

I Lento doloroso – Allegro vivace

II Allegretto tranquillo

III Allegro animato

Written 65 years later, in 1867, the optimism of this work is in complete contrast to the Beethoven. And yet the opening Lento (a slow introduction in the manner of the classical symphony) is a lament in G minor that only gradually finds its way to sunnier keys. The rest of the movement is a lively rondo, built from elements of Norwegian folk tunes. Shortly before the end it seems as though the spirit of Elgar is hovering over the music, as one of the dance themes is slowed right down, and harmonised richly in a very noble, ‘English’ fashion! The E minor slow movement is in a straightforward ABA form, in which A starts gently but ends up as dramatic and angry as Beethoven and B is a distant pastoral song in a bright major key. In the last movement Grieg returns to the “springtans”, a Norwegian dance. The tranquil middle section, whose melody returns more grandly before the final flourish, is redolent of the slow movement, and in fact all the themes of the sonata are re-used and developed as the work progresses. See if you can spot the famous ‘Grieg’ theme from the opening of his Piano Concerto. Grieg wrote this sonata in just three weeks, while on his honeymoon, and his feelings are pretty clear!

Nikolai Miaskovsky (1882-1950)

2010-01-10T10:17:00.001Z

Fabulous Crimble pressie from the parents – Miaskovsky’s complete symphonies, on 16 CDs with several filler pieces, too (overtures, string suites, etc), making each disc at least 75 minutes long. AMAZING value! Notable symphonies so far would be two of the shortest; No.19 for brass band – the first movement recalls Candide’s sweeping melody, and the slow movement starts like the Skye boatman’s song – and No.8 in a very bumptious C major. There are many moments redolent of 20th century English string writing, and so far few dichordant or revolutionary elements. How Miaskovsky can have been denounced as formalist (in 1948, just 2 years before his death) is beyond me, though perhaps his final works did display more ‘modern’ features. That notwithstanding, the spitefulness of state censors (nor, tempting though it may be, the irrational behaviour of awkward people like me) is hardly something I should expect or particularly wish to understand.

musical synasthesia?

2010-01-10T09:35:00.003Z

I recently sent this email to someone who asked me about my experience of this phenomenon/condition, along with sub-queries on a particular (though theoretical) key and 'sadness' in music.

...

My synasthesia is not very strong. I don't usually see colours when I hear single notes, but more when I get harmonic impressions. Sometimes I might get a weak colour sensation from a single note, and it will tend to be the colour of that note's major key.

It's definitely the case that people with synasthesia experience colours differently - I read about Scriabin's very pronounced condition and many of the colours were different to mine.

"G sharp major" does not really exist for me, since I would hear it as A flat major. That is a dull, but rich red with hints of purple. (I'm not sure what I would see in the almost inconceivable case that someone was in B major and then modulated through sharp keys all the way to G sharp major!)

"Sad keys" are partly determined by musical context. All the minor keys are potentially sad. Perhaps I could say that E flat minor and B minor are particularly "sad", while G major, A major and E major are particularly "happy" (I omit D major from that list because it seems richer than "happy", but this is leaving the question of colours somewhat). Here's a non-systematic and incomplete list of impressions...

Greens come from E, E flat, G and G flat
Yellows come from B and D
Reds come from A, A flat and F sharp minor (F sharp major is like arainbow, with orange emphasis)
F minor is ivory and purple, sometimes pink
C minor is black, dark brown, also gun metal, and other things hard toput into words (C major is like a shiny version of that, or sometimes can be matt, like peat)
B flat is almost white; the minor is grey
D flat is almost colourless, but also sometimes off-white
C sharp minor is impossible to put into words! But I love it.

Romans 5

2010-01-10T09:27:00.003Z

Something interesting came up when I was studying Romans 5 the other week in preparation for a sermon in our series at Hope (... then click on "Media").

In verses 12-21 a vast chiasmus opened up before my very eyes...

A B C D E D' C' B' A'

Note in particular the two ways [C and D] in which the gift of Christ affects fallen man, and how the content of A is developed through E and A'. Our attention is also drawn, in this difficult passage, to the central claim, which repays long meditation.

[A protasis (interrupted)]
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—

[B what law does and did]
for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.

[C transformative]
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

[D forensic]
Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.

[E alternate summary of protasis-apodosis]
For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

[D' forensic]
Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.

[C' transformative]
For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

[B' what law does]
The law was added so that the trespass might increase.

[A' protasis (complete) and apodosis]
But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

NYT editorial on public science

2010-01-10T09:15:00.000Z

Science not so impartial, whatever either of those two words mean!

A really interesting article to help bring some enlightenment to the crazed devotees of mythical 'Science' anyhow. As they say about guns, science doesn't tell the truth, people do (or don't). And it's a lot more complicated than a machine you can point and click.

In Bruges

2010-01-09T09:52:00.005Z

Same preposition, same rudeness. Less creative in its insults, but more intensive. Somehow a virtue is (almost) made out of the storm of words. In this case it's the cute Irish accent saying various swear words rather than the Scots, but there is a distinct Celtic slant to them both. We Anglo-Americans are such vouyeurs of the peripheries...

A surprisingly old-fashioned film, with a very surprising turn by Ralph Fiennes as London crime boss. There are big issues, big principles, and no nudity.

Notice the simple/straightforward "morality" of the characters (though Brendan Gleason's Ken has a greater maturity there, scoring 0.00002 instead of 0.00001): rudeness, violence and killing are fine, but not killing children. The film’s morality is slightly wider than that of the characters. After all, those who live by the sword die by it, and no one else does.

Once again, however, I have reservations about enjoying something so rude and violent. To the pure all things are pure, but whatever is noble, whatever is good...

In the Loop

2010-01-09T09:48:00.001Z

Armando Iannucci’s acclaimed political satire. Three stars out of five, I think.

But ten out of ten for rudeness – it might have scored higher than any Tarantino for swearing and truly offensive insults…

Although it’s the right length In the Loop is less a feature film and more an expensive exercise in astonishment. Desperately sad, like The Office; every cell in my body cringes at how dreadful the characters are, and yet how true and real they are. Frightening as well as compelling, but not one to watch again.

Performances were pretty good, in that faux documentary way, but unfortunately all the drama ebbed away towards the end. Minister for International Development, Peter Forrester, was too much of a caricature by that point for us to care about his resignation or about the ‘clever’ plan of the odious spin doctor to have him fired instead. Even the prospect of war was not very compelling. Jaded viewer or poor drama? Maybe both...

The Law (Torah)

2010-01-09T08:52:00.001Z

I was mulling on this again, as I preached on Romans 7 recently. Some very helpful chat with Mrs L…

What is the Law to us Christians? (And what do we even mean when we say, ‘the Law’? – that’s a big question that turns on some technical points and also on the big sweep of redemptive history.)

Are we bound by its commandments?
No

Is it a spur to holiness?
Not profitably so

Is it a measure or guide?
Perhaps

So can we read it with profit, and if so, what profit?
Good question!

Think about Galatians 5, on the fruit of the Spirit (the good life, as it were). “Against such things there is no law”. In other words, what does the Law have to do with our ethics now? It has nothing to do with measuring or defining the good, Spirit-filled life. As Colossians 2 says of the Torah (or what sounds like at least part of Torah), “such things have the appearance of wisdom… but are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh”.

But can we only say ‘we don’t need the Law for our ethics now, thanks’ because it has already had such a tremendous influence, direct and indirect, on Western culture for hundreds of years? Is it indeed the case that the Law is OK as a guide to secular national life, but not for Christian ethics?

Of course, since New Testament ethics is hardly radically opposed to Torah in many areas we will find an amazing similarity between the Spirit-filled life and the Law. But is that because both come, as it were, independently from the same source, rather than one being a development or part-adoption of the other.

Hey, I almost sound like a Lutheran or Dispensationalist in those musings!

Weed Killers of Three Million AD

2010-01-09T08:46:00.003Z

A short story I wrote at the age of ten. Well, I say wrote, but in fact (in eerie foreshadowing of my maturer struggles with finishing projects and love of peripherals) what I actually wrote was…

the contents page

Chapter 1 – The Exam Day

— “— 2 – The Kidnapping

—“— 3 – Weedkillers

—“— 4 – Design & Making

—“— 5 – The Last Stand of Base 2?

the opening page of chapter 1

THE EXAM DAY!

Chapter 1.

Saturday is the worst day of the week and this one was really bad. It was the day of my entrance exam to King Edwards School. I was eating my breakfast and reading a comic and I needed some more milk. “Pass the milk Dad,” I said with my mouth full. He put his paper down to pass the milk and it was then that I saw the Headlines….

the back-cover blurb, on the back cover of the little notebook I had commandeered…

A boy goes to an exam and is taken 3,000,000yrs into the future. The humans want him to design a weapon to destroy plants which have evolved into Giants.

Can he do it before they make a mazzive raid on the Base?

Will his weedkiller weapons work?

FIND! OUT! BY! READING! THIS! BOOK!!!

UK - £1.50

NZ - $5.50

Notice the happy acceptance of evolution! Must have been in my unreflective phase before I went to that seminar by creationists ;-)

Notice also the dodgy punctuation inside the speech marks! How I dislike that now.

Chuckle-a-mungus

2009-12-21T20:05:00.003Z

Thanks to no.2 brother (the only one with the real job) for this!

Since 1983 Admiral Ackbar has apparently been working elsewhere than the bridge of a rebel Corellian cruiser.

another partner in musical crime

2009-12-01T08:23:00.003Z

These days I am giving lots of recitals with Jane, tanking through the violin repertoire, so anything other than that deserves a special mention! The month of January will see the first of two duo recitals with an excellent Japanese pianist, Yukie Smith (whose website is here). Mozart, Brahms and Satie for the first one: we'll try to blend sublime and ridiculous, established masterpieces and hidden gems. And for some reason this combination of musicians lends itself more readily to humour than any other, except maybe Hoffnung's garden hose + orchestra... ;-)

another stepchild?

2009-12-01T08:02:00.003Z

What I didn't make clear just then is that I loved Verduin's book! On of those works I havn't stopped talking about since I read it, and I'm still working through and chewing over the implications for me personally.

As a friend said, "history with teeth". Very compelling, and enough to push anyone in a pacifist direction. For all thinking Christians with an interest in history and patience to get through some dated (but fairly elegant) prose, this is a must-read.

Shame it's so expensive. But if you see one in a second-hand bookshop snap it up.

The Reformers and their Stepchildren

2009-12-01T07:26:00.003Z

storming title for a book, eh? And someone got there first, in 1964, in fact...

Review of Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and

their Stepchildren (Exeter: Paternoster, 1964)

Verduin aims to rehabilitate the so-called ‘Radical Reformers’ by examining more critically than most historians the charges hurled at them by their opponents both Catholic and Protestant. He calls these ‘radicals’ the men and women of the ‘Second Front’, or the ‘Stepchildren’ of the magisterial Reformers, with whom they shared much in common in doctrine but less in ecclesiology and vision of society.

Their main bone of contention was with ‘medieval sacralism’, a social order designed to ensure homogeneity in religion, ritual, political thought and many strands of culture. Verduin goes so far as to say that this sacralism was ‘monist’. He is fighting fire with fire, since the Stepchildren are often labelled ‘dualists’, which is unfair

unless it be dualism to insist that the rule-right that comes to expression in the State (which is a creature of common grace) and the rule-right that comes to expression in the Church (which is a creature of common grace) are discrete. (p.99)

Finding that the social world envisaged by the New Testament is plural – for there are always two groups in a society, the believers and the unbelievers – Verduin argues that the sacralism challenged by the Stepchildren was unbiblical and inherited from the Roman Empire. The Reformers, because of their concern for a certain kind of peace and order, and because they imagined that their reforming efforts would be more likely to succeed with the backing of the sword, courted secular powers. The Stepchildren ignored secular powers, defied them, or in some cases tried to seize the sword directly in the name of the peasants or an apocalyptic ‘prophet’.

Verduin returns to the bone of sacralism in each chapter, reasoning that it lay behind the insults made, whether apparently theological or not. “Donatisten” (Donatists) is the first and most fundamental charge, since its object struck directly at a monistic sacral order by claiming that another, purer church could (and should) exist alongside the mainstream one. The Stepchildren were also callsed “Stäbler” (Staff-bearers) since they did not want a sword in their hands, “Catharer” (Pure Ones) since they emphasised holiness, “Sacramentschwärmer” (Sacramentarians) since they opposed the Catholic teaching and practice of sacraments, “Winkler” (Corner-gatherers) because they wanted to meet in homes to study the Bible, “Wiedertäufer” (Anabaptists) because they wanted a church for believers with entry by believers’ baptism, “Kommunisten” (Communists; perhaps the most easy to refute) because they allegedly abolished private property, and “Rottengeiester” (Sectarians) because they split off from mainstream society and the church insofar as they refused to take the oath of allegiance. Verduin also tries to trace similar ideas – peaceful resistance to sacralism, greater biblical knowledge and concern for holiness, and a certain amount of dissembling before the authorities – through European history, in the sporadic records of heretic trials or passing comments in mainstream catholic writers. He has some success in this, as he is slightly more measured than Broadbent’s The Pilgrim Church, though adopting a similar position. By implication, the (wilful?) misunderstandings shown by the 16^th century opponents of the Stepchildren were shared by at least some earlier medieval heresy-hunters.

Verduin is very direct: he wears both his analysis and his heart on his sleeve. This is refreshing in an age of fudge, but did make me a little suspicious that he was over-stating his position. For example, when he says that it was not concern for the salvation of infants that drove ‘the medieval paedobaptist’, so much as its potential for promoting sacralism and the magistrate’s interests (see pp.192-5), I would hestiate to be quite so sweeping about the motives of the average parish priest or monk, though the point is taken. He is briefly carried away by his passion when discussing the burning of Servetus. It is enough to argue that the sacral order that executed heretics was wrong to do so, and that Calvin was wrong to acquiesce in the case of Servetus. It is not necessary to (falsely) argue in addition that Servetus’ false teaching wasn’t really all that bad or wrong (p.52). The case against sacralism and its co-opting of the sword stands or falls regardless of the heresy in question.[1] Verduin usually realises this, but he does sometimes find (or widen) orthodoxy where it isn’t really present.[2]

The extensive use of primary sources is a real srength; surprisingly, Verduin assumes that his readers know Latin, German, French and Early Modern Dutch so he doesn’t always translate the quotations from those languages! Where translated, it is wonderful to read the Stepchildren in their own words, and rather less wonderful to read some very telling comments by the famous Reformers that reveal how deeply they were steeped in sacralism. Sadly Luther’s famous quote about siting back with his beer and letting the word do its work sounds rather hollow: ‘I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion…’ (Reeves, p.75) feels to me like a half truth, given what the Lutherans did to the Anabaptists.

Having argued the case well that (most of?) the Stepchildren were not dangerous in the way they have often been portrayed, it would have been helpful to have some more detailed sociological analysis of their various groups/movements and a careful assessment of the numbers of pacifists versus the number of violent revolutionaries. Verduin’s marshalling of sources tells us a lot about quality, but not so much about quantity. I am trying to resist being carried away uncritically by Verduin’s enthusiasm, given Reeves’ pages on the Anabaptists theological weaknesses (pp.82-85), but since Reeves does not quote the sources I will need to delve for myself…

The Reformers and their Stepchildren has pulled me up sharp in my general ignorance of the Anabaptists and encouraged me to read some of their writings, and some Yoder for a modern take. I have found myself telling people all about the book in conversation, partly in the excitement of new learning, and partly as an encouragement. Despite the persecutions The Reformers and their Stepchildren recounted there was evidence of plenty of spiritual life in Europe in times and places we might not have realised. Insofar as Verduin is right about the social-political attitudes of the Stepchildren then there is a lot to be said for the idea that they are major contributers to the modern idea of a religiously plural and tolerant state. The question that remains open, however, is how much their beliefs link directly to John Locke and others who argued for religious freedom over a century later. So, it has stimulated my political thinking again, which is helpful in advance of a possible swan song Cambridge paper on eschatology and politics.

[1] Here, Verduin has the edge on two recent popular evangelical histories of the Reformation, Kirsten Birkett’s The Essence of the Reformation (1998) and Michael Reeves’, The Unquenchable Flame (2009), which are great, but rather light on the Anabaptists. Both Birkett and Reeves try to defend Calvin on the Servetus issue as a man of his time (Birkett, pp.55-57; Reeves, pp.106-7). This argument fails because the Stepchildren had been around for several decades preaching and practising non-violent ways of dealing with heresy, and, as Reeves points out, (p.82), suffering horribly for it.

[2] He is reassuringly cautious about endorsing possible docetism among the Stepchildren (pp.258-59; compare Reeves, p.84), and an over-eagerness to be martyred (pp.252-56).

Fail blog

2009-11-27T17:58:00.003Z

Oh dear. this really is a good website. Well, not exactly good, but the creative and ungrammatical (or should that be unsyntactical?) use of the word 'fail' all over the shop is only the icing sugar on the icing on the cake of amusement.

Just one to whet the appetite...

what's in a name?

2009-11-27T17:48:00.003Z

Well, if the name is PET-CESSORIES, then an unfortunate allusion to something you might put somewhere you might not want to think about.

And yet, remarkably, that is the name of some pet equipment shops in and around Cambridge (and maybe elsewhere for all I know). It's not clever really, is it? Now, Axcessories, a hardware shop, that would be a good name. Maybe someone's thought of it, but Pet-cessories? Please...

On the M1 from Sheffield to Leicester this afternoon we did, however, see a very good company name on the back of a white van:

PYROTECT

that is actually quite good for a fire-retaring services firm. Well done to them. But Pet-cessories...?

Iconoclastic Controversies!

2009-11-27T16:47:00.004Z

Discussing what seminar papers we were going to write for today's NTI moot on 'Idolatry', and running through 'Are sin and idolatry synonymous?', 'Review Tim Keller's book Counterfeit Gods', 'Why does 1 John end the way it does?'we came across 'Assess the contemporary relevance of the iconoclastic controversies in the Orthodox church of the first millennium'. And of course that's the one I chose.

Better still, it's the perfect name for a Christian Rock band, n'est-ce pas? And the best track on their debut album would surely be 'Fallen into the eisegetical pits' (co-incidentally, a chapter from Greg Beale's meaty We become what we worship: a biblical theology of idolatry [2008]).

All comedy on this post courtesy of JR from Cornerstone.

a draw, a palpable draw!

2009-11-03T07:59:00.003Z

At long last I have achieved more than 0 in a correspondence game of chess with Charles! It's only half a point, but it's a start. And what a fun game it was. The swashbuckling King's Gambit was whipped out, and pieces were sacrificed all over the shop. If I had castled long and kept my King out of danger that piece sacrifice might even have netted me more (but, then, I always think that, and history is against me!)

1. e4 e5

2. f4 exf4

3. Nc3 Nc6

4. Nf3 Bb4

5. Bc4 g5

6. h4 g4

7. Ng5 Ne5

8. Nxf7 Nxf7

9. Bxf7+ Kxf7

10. Qxg4 Bxc3

11. Qh5+ Kf8

12. bxc3 Nf6

13. Ba3+ d6

14. Qh6+ Kg8

15. 0-0?! Ng4

16. Qxf4 Be6 (the doubled pawn charge is rather neat...)

17. c4 Qxh4

18. c5 dxc5

19. Bxc5 h5

20. Qxc7 Rh7

21. Qd6 Rf7 (the dance of the rooks, and I was very pleased with the next move, which saves the game...)

22. Rf3! Rd8

23. Qxe6 Qh2+

24. Kf1 Qh1+

25. Bg1 Nh2+

26. Ke2 Nxf3

27. Qg6+ (draw by perpetual)

Phew!

part of a Frame

2009-10-20T07:49:00.002+01:00

A Review of John Frame, The Doctrine of God (P&R, 2002)

Under the wider umbrella of a ‘Theology of Lordship’, Frame sets out his doctrine of God. This work is a sequel to The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987), or perhaps that work was merely the introduction to this one. Major books on the Word of God (in progress) and the Christian Life (P&R, 2008) also come under this umbrella, and are part of the multi-perspectival approach to doctrine advocated by Frame and Vern Poythress. So in fact it is inappropriate to speak of any work as ultimately ‘prior’ to the others, whatever the heuristic or pedagogical value in starting with the volume on epistempology, for example.

So Frame says of metaphysics, ethics and epistemology that each presupposes and even determines the other two, and thus none is prior to the others (pp.196, and passim). Thus there is great validity in approaching a subject from various directions, each of which is admitted to be incomplete

The Doctrine of God (DG) is a mere 806 pages, including Frame’s helpful appendices, which review contemporary discussions of theology proper and respond to some incompetent attacks on his earlier works. This review pertains only to the first 18 of the 29 chapters, since I have not yet got through the rest of the book. This is simply a question of time, not any weakness in the presentation of DG – Frame’s writing is lucid and a real pleasure to engage with. It is hard to imagine how one might communicate the subtleties of his discussion any more helpfully for the educated layman.

Frame has already presented a detailed outline of the work (xi-xx) so I won’t summarise here. Basically, I agree with everything I have read so far. DG is steeped in Scripture, extremely reasonable and careful in tone, confident in all the right places and generally amazing. Regarding reasonableness, the section on 6-day creation (pp.302-12) is a prime example of Frame’s humility and alertness to the variety of positions that are permitted by the text of Scripture, while still making clear which position he tends towards. His overall confident approach, the theology of lordship, beginning with analysis of how the OT in particular presents God as Lord/LORD is a useful fresh take on the subject. When he speaks of covenant lordship he does not use the adjective as a banner as some might, but he actually discusses what that means, such as the aspect of ‘covenant presence’ – God is near/here to bless/judge (pp.95-101). Rather than enthuse too much more, I will spend the rest of this review on interesting questions thrown up by DG and on a few places where Frame has been slightly less careful than usual.

Natural Reason.

In his (probably correct) critique of Aquinas on natural reason (as prior to revelation; pp.224-5) Frame almost ends up as an unwitting critic of his own position (as expressed in his discussion of ethics, pp.195-6) that that situational (sensory, factual) knowledge is necessary for us to be able to hold normative (Scriptural) knowledge. For Frame, these different types of knowledge are arranged in an equal triad, but sometimes he comes close to saying that ‘situational knowledge’ is mere fodder. This undermines the internal equality of the triad’s perspectives.

Transcendence.

Frame convincingly argues that transcendence/immanence language in Scripture is not primarily spatial, but is about lordship and authority. But this does not in itself remove the ‘problem’ of how to conceive of ‘spatial’ transcendence/immanence. A footnote (p.105, fn.4) refers the reader on to chapters 24 and 25 so maybe my question will be answered there…!

Theodicy.

DG contains a superb account of the greater-good defence of a sovereign God in the face of evil. Frame disagrees with the privation theory of evil because it posits degrees of being (unwarranted from Scripture, and tending towards pantheism) and because it doesn’t actually absolve God, since in the universe posited by the privation theory an omnipotent God is still responsible for ‘non-being’ as much as for ‘being’. Of course, Frame’s second point there does not tell us whether or not the privation theory is true, only that it is insufficient to defend God. To me, there does seem to be something more real about the triune God than anything in his creation, and thus something is left of the privation theory if used as a support to the greater-good defence. I was pleased to see that a little later on Frame agrees (p.180, fn.41)! But he is not completely consistent in his formulations. The main text continues to maintain equivalence between God’s being and our being (e.g. p.217, ‘there are no degrees of reality… God is real, and we are real’) while also saying that there is a difference, too – ‘ours at its very best, even perfected by grace, is the goodness of creatures’(p.218). He notes a distinction between uncreated being and created being, and thus implies that evil as a species of the latter may indeed be ontologically different from the (uncreated) goodness of God. There’s hope for modified privation after all.

He briefly returns to theodicy in a neat discussion of concurrence (pp.287-88). All good, but driven by his (plausible) rejection of any ‘laws of nature’ and the corresponding definiton of a miracle as simply an unusual event brought about by God for various purposes (see esp. pp.258-61) Frame is reluctant to identify any events that have ‘no secondary cause at all’ beyond Creation, Incarnation and the regeneration of the believer. What about the return of Christ!? And I’m sure we could think of some miracles that involved the addition of matter to the universe at a particular point in history after the 6 days of creation…

Guidance.

On the question of the drawing of lots Frame is rather hesitant (p.52) but this is because he has moemntarily forgotten to be careful over the use of the phrase ‘God’s will’. Sure, we never use lots to decipher God’s moral will (it is revealed in Scripture), but why not to reveal or precipitate (as it were) his permisive will for our particular futures? On questions where there is no right or wrong choice, that is. Of course there is plenty of biblical precedent for a thorough scripturalist like Frame to take more comfort in flipping a coin over his choice of burger relish or house purchase, or whatever.

Gender.

A great many authors and speakers intimate, imply or even state that individual believers are the bride(s) of Christ. But I am surprised that Frame is one of them! ‘It is important for both male and female Christians to know, and to meditate deeply on the fact, that in relation to God they are female – wives called to submit in love to their gracious husband’. (p.385) Notice the plural wives there. I’m really sure about this. I think God relates to each believer as Father, Brother, Helper (and much more besides) but not as husband. That is his relationship to the church/Israel.

Simplicity.

Frame on the ‘simplicity’ of God (pp.225-30) brings to mind the Islamic discussion of the attributes of Allah, and early medieval Christian critique of said discussions as compromising Allah’s supposed unity. There is more to think about here when my head is clearer!

More please!

Sometimes Frame refers to controversial issues only in passing. This is not necessarily a problem – in a book on the doctrine of God, a paragraph and a list of useful secondary literature are adequate for the subject of human gender relations – but there were a couple of places where the brevity was more unfortunate. First, soteric pluralism gets only a couple of biblical quotes without any interaction with the exegesis of those passages by proper pluralists or woolly liberal Anglicans (pp.92-3). This ought to be a significant topic in the context of a theology based around revelation, covenant, etc. Second, Frame twice speaks of ‘the rejection of Israel’ without grounding his discussion. Once it’s a passing reference (p.86, fn.10) concerning the faith of the centurion, whose faith – greater than any Jesus had seen in Israel – is ‘a sign of the Gentiles election and Israel’s rejection’. The other occasion is in the midst of a discussion of election without the full benefits of salvation. Frame gives two examples – Judas, an individal, so raising no conceptual problems, ‘and national Israel, which, because of unbelief, lost its special status as God’s elect nation’ (p.49, fn.3). I’d want more clarity here. Maybe en masse they were “elected without the full benefits”, but if so, in what sense does particular “rejection” need to follow, if the election was never unto full (numerical or depth across the board) salvation anyway? After all, we already know of plenty of apostate and judged Jews in the OT. Hmm.

baldy!

2009-10-19T22:33:00.004+01:00

There's a seriously amusing picture of me on the Hope website, thanks to Dave's excellent media skills (in fact almost all the website is down to him). I'm the one holding forth on the left. Of course, it is important for any visitors to the site to know that not everyone is as shiny as me, hence the full heads of hair in evidence in all the other pictures.

double whammy

2009-10-19T08:09:00.003+01:00

A site that gently pokes fun at Germany and America at the same time?

How could I refuse such a recommendation!? (Thanks to CW, a German cineaste friend, for the heads up)

The consequent enjoyment has delayed my breakfast this morning - that's how witty it is; the Asda Shreddies are still in the bowl.

Also, I'm still recovering from man-flu and not that hungry... but nonetheless well able to chuckle.

a warm feeling

2009-10-14T08:14:00.003+01:00

Someone sent me a very nice comment in response to some publicity about my chamber concerts this term.

I love your selections. I know they will be 'human' - and also challenge me to take some more steps in musical appreciation.

Job done!

I notice they didn't mention the quality of the playing ;-)

What have I been doing?

2009-10-14T08:06:00.004+01:00

Good question. Poor blog has not got a look in lately, although there are plenty of things in the wings when I get my act together.

The last 6 weeks have been fairly full - seminar on music at the UCCF Forum (covered in red mud), church plant a little busier on account of paternity leave on the leadership team (praise God!), extra publicity and time input for the old people's cafe we run, and helping with organising the real workers to put up nice blackout roller blinds in the old chapel we are using in Teversham, became an elder at the mothership, which has brought its burdens and sorrows, some very enjoyable diploma accompanying for a couple of cellists, new term of NTI, piano students returning from holiday, more cooking, as Mrs L was full-time at work till last week, lots of people-time, including long deep chats trying to get head round various misunderstandings/arguments and help people move forwards, action-packed badminton on Monday nights, a nice visit from the mother-in-law, planning to move abroad, buying a house...

Recent film watching

2009-09-01T08:23:00.002+01:00

The cinemas have done reasonably well out of me and various mates this summer. As have the manufacturers of Minstrels, that essential film companion. Alas I have not done all that well out of the cinemas...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2/5 Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieber's rivalry was reasonable and there were some god set-pieces (and I suppose it helped make some sense of some of the other X-men films, though why that should matter, since the tangled web of comic books they are based on doesn't need to make much sense...) but most of the rest of the film was a wasted opportunity - a naff Gambit, a load of teenage mutants doing not a lot, silly effects, you name it.

Star Trek

3/5 Central plot twist so ludicrous that they pulled it off, and scenes set on the large Romulan ship were all over the place in terms of continuity and plausibility of movement (maybe no worse than Shakespeare in that regard?!), but excellent performances and good humour.

Terminator Salvation

1/5 Even the normally reliable Christian Bale was going through the motions here. The whole second half was pants, despite coming close to being heart-warming in the central robot-man (who am I?) plotline. Poor Helena Bonham Carter.

Red Cliff

3/5 A big canvas with a lot of paint, sometimes in unusual colours, shall we say. Chinese folk history and myth meets Hollywood, sort-of, in an epic swashbuckling thing. Lovely to look at, if rather stagey in execution. I think we Western Europeans have different dramatic expectations to the Chinese!

Sunshine Cleaning

4/5 At last something decent! Surely the smallest budget of the lot by a factor or 10, and certainly the best. Heart-warming without being cloying, funny without being silly, tender without being toooo sentimental, and perfmormed very well by all and sundry. Two sisters attempt to set up a crime-scene cleanup business while one comes to terms with being a grown-up and the other struggles to raise a child alone... Alan Arkin is their dad. Just see it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2/5 The performances were great, compared to the earlier Potter films, and despite its length I wasn't bored, but structurally the film was a disaster. Very much a 'middle' section, with no shape or direction, not to mention a very anticlimactic final twist.

culture you can't argue with

2009-08-28T21:45:00.003+01:00

While I languished on the sofa this evening, trying to shake off man-flu and skimming the internet, Mrs L was engaged in some serious and worthwhile fun - finishing off a sewing project that has converted an old jumper (shrunk in the washing machine) into a shoulder bag. Nice lining, nice button, good original material. If weren't decades behind the technological times I'd post y'all a picture of it.

'Horror in other forms', or 'Modern Pastimes'

2009-08-28T21:40:00.002+01:00

THQ and Games Workshop's Dawn of War. Is this one big waste of human potential!? My feelings on computer games are very mixed. Half of this is a general critique and half of it is directed at me and my particular weaknesses.

First, the facts. I have spent many hours of my life playing computer games. Most of those hours were in my teenage years, but twice since then I have picked up the cudgels, so to speak, on the flickering screen (aside from the obligatory Wii-ing when round friends’ houses, getting crushed by small children at that Mario racing game and spraining various joints in the bizarre dance of Wii Tennis). In the spring of 2007 I had a burst of activity on Dawn of War, and since New Year this year I have played on a few console games with Ad and Phil (co-op military/mercenary shoot-em-ups) and have rekindled Dawn of War in the shape of the expansion pack Soulstorm.

A note on the silly names. Like the imitators of Tom Clancy or C-movie action flicks (Ultimate Force, Zero Tolerance, Death Kiss, Colateral Damage, Colateral War, War Kiss, Death War, Death Force…) the names just get sillier and sillier, and are often unrelated to the content of the game. Some of them are (unintentionally?) poetic – I particularly like Gears of War, in which one apparently descends to the earth’s core in a team of muscle-bound troopers and attempts to riddle various odd creatures with bullets. Gears? Mundane, but oddly wholesome in tone.

It should also be admitted that I have also wasted hours on computer-hosted more traditional pursuits – playing chess and shogi… So much so, that a few years ago I threw away my copy of Chessmaster7000 since it was the only way to keep me from gratuitous use. (That painful decision sprang from the maxim “know your limits”!) I have also uninstalled the Japanese shogi programme and that has now ceased to be any sort of temptation to indolence, thankfully. It’s not that chess/shogi/gaming in itself is bad. There is value in intellectal activity and game-playing as mental exercise and exploration. Furthermore, playing against human opponents over the board is a very sociable activity, so that should not be considered a waste. Admittedly, at the moment I am reduced to correspondence chess which largely lacks that personal interaction, and is more of a luxury intellectual tussle.

What of the ‘violence’ in computer games? Dawn of War and Call of Duty are, if you look closely, pretty red in tooth and claw. However, neither of them dwell on the gore, or are driven by gore. There are games that revel in graphic shots of entrails or mutant human forms served up to be chopped up. These seem to me to be more disturbing than those whose premise is war and whose cash value is in tactics, strategy and a developing storyline. Of course, the nasty games can often claim those things, too, but why all the nastiness? Why dwell on it? I must admit, however, to being fearful of wielding the WWJD sword here since Dawn of War would not have been in Jesus’ repertoire, no matter how tame it might seem in comparison to some games.

I guess the conclusion has to be – everything in moderation, unless it’s a genuine stumbling block. And just as the most gory games are a stumbling block (to all of us, or ought to be), so is (to some of us) the very idea of computer gaming, and the problem there is idleness rather than love (or misplaced tolerance) of violence. In either case, sin is sin.

horrific interlude

2009-08-28T20:06:00.003+01:00

From a blog I just stumbled upon by the swashbuckling Dan Philips, of pyromaniac fame. When people can write and have a good eye it's a joy to spend time grazing.

Among many great pieces, here are some useful throughts from DP and from his comment-adders on the question of horror as a genre.

Funny how none of them seems to like Frank Peretti. I really do like him, but perhaps because I read his books as a teenager, insulated then from any charismatic or noe-pentecostal connotations which might be irking these hard reformed types. I also have a cassette version of This Present Darkness read by the author, and I think it's great! He didn't simply tack some cod theology onto the end of a Stephen King imitation there, let me tell you.

more sadness

2009-08-28T18:31:00.004+01:00

Aslam weaves together throughts and ideas, some of them inside his characters' heads, some outside, and sometimes you can't tell. The chilling hold of superstition over the lives of Russian Christians intrudes into Lara's mind, pp.307-08...

A blue rectangle of the ceiling stands revealed wherever a book is missing above her. They look like openings onto the afternoon sky. It was to prevent a haunting that in certain parts of Russia a dead body was carried to the church through an open window, or even through a specially cut hole in the roof. The idea was to confuse the dead person's spirit, making it more difficult for the ghost to find its way back home.

Earlier David had received a call to say that the Jalalabad police have found the head of Bihzad at last, flung into a drainage ditch in the bombing. The young man who thought he was on his way to paradise. To commemorate the baptism of Christ in the River Jordan, the Tsar - accompanied by the entire court and the leading churchmen - would emerge from the Hermitage on 6 January every year, descend the steps of the Jordan Staircase, and walk out onto the frozen Neva. A whole would have been cut through the ice, and Tsar and Metropolitan would bless the water. Children were then baptised in the icy river. What amazed the visitors from other lands was the reaction of the parents if ever a child slipped from the numbed hands of the holy men, never to be seen again. They refused to grieve because the child had gone to heaven.

This suggests a belief system packed with half truths, leaving me rueing once again the many blind alleys and false turns made by the church over the centuries.

On another note, the links implied here between the political theology, thanatology and popular practice of Christendom (in its 'Third Rome' incarnation in Moscow) and those of Islam is suggestive. Reminds me of Leithart's stimulating "Mirror of Christendom" essay.

a novel sadness

2009-08-28T18:25:00.001+01:00

The Wasted Vigil, by Nadeem Aslam (2008). All about Afghanistan since the time of the Soviet invasion. After 30 pages I had to stop reading. Whether it was anger, or sorrow, or both, or a heart-bursting despair, I don’t know. Page 8, as we learn a little about why Lara, a Russian, has arrived at the secluded lakeside house and perfume factory of an elderly English convert to Islam…

From the various plants in the garden he derived an ointment for the deeply bruised base of her neck, the skin of their almost black about the right shoulder, as though some of the world's darkness had attempted to enter her there. He wished pomegranates were in season as their liquid is a great antiseptic. When the bus broke down during the journey, she said, all passengers had disembarked and she had found herself falling asleep on a verge. There then came three blows to her body with a tire iron in quick succession, the disbelief and pain making her cry out. She was lying down with her feet pointed towards the west, towards the adored city of Mecca a thousand miles away, a disrespect she was unaware of, and one of the passengers had taken it upon himself to correct and punish her.
Her real mistake was to have chosen to travel swaddled up like the women from this country, thinking it would be safer. Perhaps if her face had been somewhat exposed, the colour of her hair visible, she would have been forgiven as a foreigner. Everyone, on the other hand, had the right to make an example of an unwise Afghan woman, even a boy young enough to be her son.

What religion is so weak as to require propping up by this kind of oppression? How can such careless violence be nurtured? Who can seriously imagine that God cares about which way your feet point, and that he has appointed you to sort out the feet of others?

By the time we started to hear about the petty jealousies of local characters and the truly inhuman brutality of the Russian soldiers in the 1980s it was all too much.

eschatological expectation

2009-08-21T08:20:00.001+01:00

Is a fancy way of talking about looking forward to the end of the world. Rather too many Christians are rather too preoccupied with this, either wasting hours on numerology or so-called ‘interpretation’ of biblical prophecy, or peppering conversations and e-mails with dark hints as to imminent turmoil (as if there hadn’t been enough and wasn’t enough already) and apocalyptic upheaval across the globe. The fact that people have been confidently predicting all sorts of things concerning the return of Christ for centuries and have always been wrong so far does not seem to provide any sort of deterrent! Today’s rant was sparked off by this one from the 18th century, not usually considered a time of millennial fervour.

In a letter (c.1755) to William Perronet from his father Vincent, a leading Methodist, we read…

The season is by no means healthy: your B. Briggs has been ill at Canterbury; poor Charles, at the foundry; and poor Jacky at Shoreham. It is no wonder that individuals are in disorder; when all nature seems to be in confusion. Indeed we are only at the begninng of alarming providences; a few years will produce still greater events. Happy would it be for a sinking world if they could see that the end of all things is at hand; and would therefore grow sober to watch unto prayer!

I don’t remember the years 1745-1755 being particularly doom-laden, but, then, I am getting on a bit, I suppose…

[Quoted in Kenneth G.C. Newport, ‘Methodists and the Millennium: Eschatological Expectation and the Interpretation of Biblical Prophecy in Early British Methodism’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78:1 (1996), 103-22 (107). There are many other 18th- and early 19th-century examples given in the article, ranging from the more careful and scholarly to the more wacky and wide-eyed.]

Any number of similar portentious statements (sounding eerily like the stuff of seaside palm-readers) can be found on the Internet today. All rather cartoonish and silly in comparison to the excitement that real biblical eschatology should bring us. Of course there have been and are many millions of godly Christians inspired to zealous preaching and faithful living by the thought of imminent armageddon, but there are ways of thinking about what the Bible does say about the future that avoid wasting time on over-confident predictions and messing around with Daniel and Revelation. Less worrying about trying to interpret historical events and more focus on being with Christ and how that transforms us now would help.

Concert again

2009-08-20T08:27:00.001+01:00

Back to Brahms’ G major Violin Sonata yesterday, which I first learned to play for a concert in Downing College in 2000 with an errant NatSci-turned-English-student. Those were the days when I didn’t have to practise quite so much… Or maybe those were the days when I didn’t have to do much else so the practice just seemed to slip by…! Anyway, Jane and I prefixed a few other works to that great, pacific Sonata, and wore exceedingly colourful clothes. My crazy waistcoat even sported plastic buttons in the shape of elephants. At my age I really should know better.

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949)
Variaciones Clasicas

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Sospiri, Op.70
Salut d’Amour, Op.12

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Sonata No.1 in G major, Op.78
Vivace ma non troppo – Adagio – Allegro molto moderato

With every work in this recital we step back a little further in time. Turina’s Variaciones were published in 1932, the year after he became professor of composition at the Madrid Conservatoire. The Western world was then gripped by a recession even more damaging even than the one we are struggling in today. Perhaps the uncertainty and anger that characterise the theme sprung partly from that source and from the political turmoil that engulfed Spain in the 30s. The four variations (plus vigourous finale) that develop the theme are generally more upbeat. The first shares the A minor tonality of the theme, but moves like a dance; variation two is a gentle waltz; variation three a foot-stamping blaze of B major and variation four begins with a shout of triumph and dissolves into mystical wanderings on the black notes.

In Sospiri (“Sighs”), published in 1914, we hear an Edwardian elegance full of regret – regret for a glory that was fading fast, and indeed that was about to be rudely shattered by the onset of the Great War. Deceptively simple, it is full of aching melancholy as well as the nobility that one expects from Elgar. In a totally different mood from a more optimistic era comes Salut d’Amour, one of the early pieces that made the composer famous. It was completed in July 1888 just a few weeks before Elgar’s engagement to its dedicatee – a most fitting “Love’s Greeting”.

Travelling further back is Brahms’ sun-soaked Sonata, finished off in the summer of 1879 on the tranquil shores of the Wörther Sea in Austria. Buoyed by the success of his Violin Concerto (1878) Brahms took up the instrument again to produce one of the greatest works in the repertoire. The opening movement is in a complex sonata form. The first few notes of the first subject are the seeds of the whole work. There are lilting cross rhythms introduced by the second subject, a slower, darker development section, and an ecstatic coda. The warm central Adagio bears a nobility worthy of Elgar, and in its funeral-march episodes hint at the tragic death of Felix Schumann, son of Robert and Clara Schumann, in February 1879. Brahms had in fact written out a portion of the main theme of this slow movement and sent it as a decorative gift to Clara and her son only days before his death, adding “Dear Clara, if you play the material overleaf very slowly it will say to you more clearly than I otherwise could how affectionately I think of you and Felix – even his violin , which I believe to be silent”. The third movement, in G minor, driven along by the sound of rain (its main theme is a quotation from the composer’s Regenleider of 1873) refuses to give way to despair. Brahms weaves a quiet, poignant triumph out of familiar threads, the magical return of the Adagio and the final discovery of the tonic major.

Church unity

2009-08-05T07:50:00.001+01:00

These are some musings not on universal unity or the question of denominations, but on what unites believers in a local congregation.

Is it perhaps class?
In many Western societies, alas, class plays a large role. A friend of mine was a pastor in Canada for some years, and the first church he served was a very wealthy congregation. The members were rich white people and rich Chinese people, who were known as “banana Chinese” – yellow on the outside, white on the inside – a nickname they apparently enjoyed. Today in the UK many conservate churches – particularly the commuter churches in southern cities – are very middle class, with roots or aspirations to the upper middle class.

Maybe it’s politics?
In Northern Ireland we see a common language, and more social mixing between people of different income and ‘class’, but politics divides. If Catholics find a living relationship with Christ and join local evangelical protestant churches it is also frequently assumed that they will exchange their Republican political views for something more supportive of the Orange Order.

Is it ethnicity?
A local congregation to where we live has recently begun to collect together believers of different social standing (professionals and low-skilled workers) and different denominational background (conservative Fundamentalist baptists and pentecostals). The thing is, they are all from one ethnic group. The trouble is that most of them are leaving “British” churches in order to commit to believers who are like them in culture, nationality and language. Ah, language, a powerful uniting force - and perhaps a necessary one!? Unfortunately the language card is undercut by the presence of a few Brits in the group who don’t speak the national language (husbands or boyfriends) and so much of what they do publicly as a church happens in English… which makes the casual observer wonder what the point was exactly…

In each case some barriers have been overcome by the gospel – but others have not. It always pains me that the radical UNITY that the New Testament speaks of is being undone in practice by the ‘natural’ (but anti-Christian) drift towards homogeneity.

For mission purposes there can be no doubt that the Homogeneous Unit Principle (make your groups mono- anything and they will grow faster and be more attractive to people from that group) has a lot going for it. But for how long does it work? For what part of the lifecycle of a congregation? And what if the congregation is merely homogeneous out of preference and does not have a vision for mission to their, e.g., language group?

Maybe it should only ever be on a question of language?
Language is a necessary ‘divider’; one can always claim that to worship and hear the Bible in English/Spanish/Arabic/Vietnamese/whatever is not easy, and that one’s heart cries out for hearing and praying and singing in one’s first language.

OK, but when we are talking about peacetime migration, a fluid coming and going of peoples who make temporary homes on economic grounds (so without the special sympathy that arises in the difficult cases of being a persecuted minority or persecuted for their faith back home) questions quickly arise as to the desirable level of integration into the host culture and its existing churches. The question does not just confront the migrants, of course – more important for the hosts is the question of why their churches seem to be so much “of” their surounding culture that economic migrants wish to set up groups for themselves. The responsibility for welcome and flexibility and inclusion lies more than 50% with the (relatively) powerful and established.

Iced tea

2009-08-05T07:38:00.002+01:00

Not something we in the UK or in this household know a lot about.

I first encountered it on a school trip to the Mösel valley in 1993, which was notable for a lot of firsts, including wine, acceptance by a group of my peers who were fairly "cool", continuous Lord of the Rings reading from the front seat of the minibus…

But we’ve tried to whip some up recently – pineapple juice was the best additive so far, and it lasts at least 36 hours.

perceptive question?

2009-08-05T07:33:00.003+01:00

"Is Darwin your king?"

asked a Saudi student at Central Language School last week.

Whether that tells us more about the educational provision in Saudi Arabia or about the cultured propaganada plastered around Cambridge at the moment is anyone's guess.

Levtzion on the expansion of Islam

2009-08-05T07:24:00.002+01:00

A wonderful summary of this is found in Nehemia Levtzion, ‘Towards a comparative study of Islamization’, in Levtzion, ed., Conversion to Islam (New York: Holmes & Maier, 1979), pp.1-23, reprinted as chapter I of the volume of Levtzion’s essays edited by Michael Abitol and Amos Nadan in 2007, four years after his death, and published by Ashgate under the title Islam in Africa and the Middle East: Studies on Conversion and Renewal.

Source Material on Conversion to Islam
From Muslim perspectives there are usually no written sources until a couple of centuries after Islam was established – historiography developed only after a class of litterati had emerged. The works are largely of legal import, which makes distinguishing fact from fiction tricky. (2) In areas where a written culture already thrived the arrival of Islam impoverished the region’s literary resources – as in Java in the 14th-16th centuries or among the Christian communities of the Middle East from the 7th century onwards. (3)

Travellers’ accounts (Muslim and Christian) provide some indications of Islam’s spread, but ew also need to look at name changes in places and populations, tax registers (3-4), and even at how the various Islamic legal schools influenced new areas of Muslim expansion (4-5). Accounts of dream-inspired conversions and oral tales of family histories may be a fruitful area of new research.

The Militant Expansion of Islam: The Role of the Nomads
Conversion as immediate reslut of conquest or political submission was limited to the Bedouins of Arabia and the Berbers of Maghrib, and a few minor cases. The political secession of the Arab tribes after the death of Muhammed was interpreted also as religious apostasy (ridda). The Berbers apostasized 12 times according to Muslim traditions, rebelling fiercely and compelling the Arab to withdraw from N. Africa several times. In other words, they were initially taken as submitting to Islam as religion as well as political force, such were the harsh measures used to ensure their complete submission [islam]. (6)

However, military conquest did not usually lead to immediate Islamization of populations. It did open the door to two factors that encouraged conversion in the longer term: colonization of lands by nomads, and the evolution of distintively Muslim government and institutions (7). The settling of Arab nomads in the Fertile Crescent took place after the establishment of Islamic government; the settling of Turkic nomads in Anatolia preceded centralised Muslim rule in that area and was therefore more violent and overall more thorough. In the Fertile Crescent conversion accelerated once non-Muslims were attracted to work in the Arab garrison towns (previously segregation and non-conversion were encouraged to preserve Arab-Muslim purity along with the tax base). The Balkans are an interesting blend – conquered by the Ottoman state with restricted nomad influx, they retained even more of their Christian character than the Middle East. (8)

Conversion under Muslim Rule
By no means enforced by the new rulers, but increasingly promoted by them. In Iran, the military elite converted immediately in order to retain their status; the bureaocracy converted after 150-200 years in order to keep their jobs. By the 11th century 80% of the population was Muslim. Many conversions were clearly motivated by economic and social pressures. ‘The process was aided further by the fact that once conversion to Islam took place, there was no backsliding.’ (9) [This is the particularly sinister move. Is it unique among religions to enshrine such a thing in law or to claim it to be an essential part of the faith?]

Initial liberal policies towards non-Mulism subjects, so as to use their skills in administration and scholarship, gave way to less and less tolerance as the proportion of Muslims increased and as the ulama gained more leverage over the governments. They exploited the Muslim masses’ resentment towards rich/influential non-Muslims and in times of crisis (war or famine) were able to capitalise on massacres and other persecuting measures to reduce the standing of the non-Muslims or to force them to convert (10).

Truly forced conversions were not as widespread as Christian sources claim, but more common than Muslims admit (11). Under the Seljuks, under the Mamluks, under the Ottomans (especially the devshirme system), under some Mughals (notably Aurangzib, 1658-1707) there were forced conversions (10). In general, the creation of the total environment that fostered the supremacy of Islam was the route that Muslim rulers generally took. (11)

The Encounter with Other Religions
‘In all cases of conversion from Christianity, Muslims had a political superiority, achieved by military conquest. The same was true in the case of Iran and parts of India. But in other aresa, in the further lands of Islam, Muslims were considered to be superior because of their literacy, magical and healing efficacy, and their wealth’ (11).

In Africa and Indonesia, Muslims infiltrated the syncretistic religions, while denouncing elements of their latitudinarianism, thereby gradually Islamizing the state and the society. (12) But in China, with neither military nor cultural superiority, the Muslims had to battle to survive – choosing to be Muslim in private but Sinicized in public.

In India there were conversions from all levels of society Islam did not particularly appeal to the dalits, instead it confirmed the power/status of the Brahmans, whether or not they converted. (13) In Iran, Richard Buillet argues, the lower classes tended to be attracted to sectarian Islam (or Zoroastrian revivals) since they had a lot to gain from overturning the status quo: the upper classes fought to preserve the orthodoxy that guaranteed their position, gaining increasing strength against the Arab dynasties and eventually able to reassert a Persian ruling dynasty. (13-14)

In West Africa being a chief and being a Muslim were not usually compatible, since conversion carried overtones of ‘clergy’ that struck at the chiefs’ self-esteem, even when large proportions of the populations had become Muslim.

Traders as Carriers of Islam
Beyond the nomads’ military reach the merchants took the message of Islam. The early garrison towns of the Middle East were a focus for trade as well as religion. ‘In Islam, migration to the town is considered meritorious because it is in the urban milieu that one can fully practice the Muslim way of life’ (15). Thus urbanization increased the rate of conversion to Islam. Interestingly, as Muslim traders moved around (with a very good reputation among other peoples), sustaining Islamic cultural links and joining up various Islamic groups, some chose to settle on the land, in the process becoming de-Islamicized as they were cut off from trade routes and urban centres (in Africa and China at least). (16)

Saints and Sufis as Agents of Islamization
Indigenous accounts of conversion to Islam hardly ever mention the traders so beloved of historians’ explanations. They focus instead on wandering saints who accompanied the traders (16). ‘The frontiers of Islam were extended not through the work of the learned urban ulama, but by the efforts of the rural rustic divines, many of whom were mystics and often also members of institutionalized sufi orders’ (17). They drew many non-Muslims who had not been able to get healing, etc., through their traditional religions. On Hausa Muslim says “without non-Muslims, Muslim scholars would starve”! (17)

Before the 10th century, conversion to Islam took place only in the lands ruled by Muslims. Growing trade in Central Asia initially spread Nestorianism and Manichaeism for only heterodox sects (Kharjis, Shi‘is and Isma‘ilis) propogated without state support. But once the sufi movement grew, from the 10th century, so Islam spread outside the borders of Muslim political control. The sufis also worked hard to Islamize populations newly conquered, such as in Anatolia, India and Sudan (17).

In Anatolia (conquest), Bengal (conquest) and Java (peaceful penetration) ‘Islamization was not so muh a process of individual conversion, but what might be described as a religious transmutation of the society, in which nearly the entire population became Muslim, or was assumed to be Muslim’ (18). [Which puts any given individual in a tight spot when it comes to declaring another religious faith. What is not assumed is not accepted...]

Communal and Individual Conversion
In Northwest India and East Africa conversion was more individual and piecemeal, since the local Muslims (Turks and Afghans; Swahili) retained a strong and proud ethnic-cultural difference from the non-Muslims. Conversion required the adopting of a whole new identity. Anatolia, Bengal, Java and West Africa were far more gradual and communal. (19)

The initial communal conversion of the Arabs and the Berbers required very strong measures to maintain, when the converts decided they weren’t really converts but had only offered temporary political submission! The Syrians and others in the Fertile Crescent tended to convert more slowly and individually, renouncing their former identity and kin completely upon conversion.

Reform or the Perfection of the Initial Adhesion to Islam
A.D. Nock differentiates “conversion” from “adhesion”. Islam, as a great prophetic religion requires “conversion”, but, ironically, its growth has depended on processes much closer to Nock’s “adhesion” (21). The exclusiveness was often toned down, demands on new converts were toned down, and only after Islam had gained a foothold did it ramp up the exclusivity and the prophetic critique of laxity. Groups convert to Islam over long periods, tending towards greater orthodoxy as reformist movements arise to purify the people’s faith. (21)

While accommodation to local cultures helps Islam to survive, espeically in the early centuries in a new area, reformist movements generally try to purge Islam of the syncretism, stirring up hostility from existing soft ulama (as in Senegal or Java, where many Muslims view their syncretism as a true Islam). (22) Reformist zeal is often accompanied by military will, however, and in West Africa as a result of the jihads of the 18th and 19th centuries new states were formed on the basis of their adherence to reformist Islam, challenging and replacing those Muslim kingdoms that were still engaged with the pre-Islamic heritage. Shari‘a became the law, and observance became the norm. (22)

Dawkins again

2009-07-31T08:18:00.003+01:00

Wandering through Jesus College Chapel (a very odd building) a few weeks ago, we came across a little booklet by the Rev'd Dr Timothy Jenkins, Dean of Chapel, called "Closer to Dan Brown than to Gregor Mendel: on Dawkins' The God Delusion", which is a very elegant discussion of how TGD is a kind of popular theodicy, and Dawkins a sort of populariser of quasi-scientific bits and pieces.

Fascinating, erudite, well-written, occasionally pulling its punches (perhaps out of politeness) but an effective and oblique demolition nonetheless. Say what you like about those liberal Anglicans, they know a bit about why atheism is pants and are (sometimes) not afraid to say so.

Busoni again, Bach and birthday

2009-07-31T07:42:00.004+01:00

Great pianist that he was, he could not resist the lure of transforming works for other instruments, most famously the Chaconne from Bach's Sonata in D minor for solo violin, BVW1004. This is already a masterpiece that one can soak up again and again without ever exhausting it.

I have a splendid portrait, I guess you'd call it, of the violin score framed on the wall, bigger than A2 size, all flowing curves, which Mrs L got me as a birthday present a couple of years ago, and it never fails to interest passers-by!

Busoni said this in defence of his piano arrangment (probably made in 1891/2): I start from the impression that Bach's conception of the work goes far beyond the limits and means of the violin, so that the instrument he specifies for performance is not adequate [for its realization]. This begs the question of the separation of a 'work' from its performance and possibly undervalues the lyrical qualities of the violin, but I can't escape the nagging feeling that such a sentiment is true of a lot of Bach, which often seems to exceed its instrumentation.

The Busoni arrangement has a special place in my heart, as I first heard it on honeymoon. I next heard it on a lovely walking holiday in the Cotswolds when I bought a CD of Busoni himself playing it (via an 88-fingered piano-roll reader seated on a modern Steinway) from the most fascinating museum in the world (measured in terms of value per square metre), Keith Harding's World of Mechanical Music. This truly is a place worth walking to see, wherever you're starting from.

And now it has a birthday connection, since one of my piano students has a very generous mum, who gave me the score of Busoni's arrangement despite a blanket ban on birthday presents this year! I won't say I've been doing nothing but play it since I turned 30, but...

A great birthday it was, thanks jointly to Mrs L's organising and hosting-gliding on the day and to the great numbers of friends who made the trek (some hundreds of miles) to Cambridge to celebrate with me. The only down-side was that I couldn't spend more time with everyone! There were some Cambridge friends I hadn't seen for 5 years or more. It took a day to recover!

they're not all like Dawkins

2009-07-23T08:10:00.002+01:00

As a recent book argues, God is indeed back. And one of the authors is an atheist! If I had the time, I think I'd enjoy reading this. Mark Greene seems to like it, and provides a neat summary here.

Check out the negative 'reviews' on amazon.com, though - one hasn't read it, one doesn't review the book but simply splurges briefly (mercifully) against religion, and one directs us to this further interesting site, worldvaluessurvey.org...

Pyromaniac picture

2009-07-04T08:55:00.002+01:00

Of how the emerging church conducts itself.

Of course it's a gross caricature (the mini version is on their blog for July, always worth a look in its own right, pictures or no, though they do do a fine picture...), and could be applied loosely to a great many traditions within the church, but that doesn't stop it being funny!

Art and the artiness of being

2009-07-03T15:38:00.004+01:00

was the subject of a little email conversation I had recently with a distinguished evangelical pastor ;-) in South Leicestershire, no less... ;-)

After our NTI seminar on aesthetics back in April, he asked...

I also wanted to (if you have time) continue a little conversation about art that you began on Friday when you asked the question "on what grounds should we judge art?"

I think you asked it when I was madly defending Shrek 2 for its cinematic purpose, and you rightly asked "well, if you're defending Shrek 2, how can\ we judge something as bad art?"

Here's what Rookmaaker says:

"Some people feel we ought to define the principle of art solely by the aesthetic. Is this not the core of art? Is not this its true meaning? ...Personally I have many doubts about this...The strange thing is that artists, almost without exception, do strive to express something in their art, and only rarely are happy with the aesthetic element alone. To me, this is one of the proofs that any theory that goes too much in this direction is out of touch with real artistic practice... Another question often raised is this. Should art be criticized on two levels, one aesthetic, the other moral? I think not. First, the term 'moral' is too narrow. It is better to speak of content, or expression, or portrayal of reality..."

Of course his argument goes deeper than this, but I was wondering what you thought were the right grounds on which to judge art.

And I replied in a not-terribly-theorized fashion, along the lines of...

On the question of art, I like Rookmaaker's point there, and think that
we should have (at least?) two ways of judging art simultaneously, the
aesthetic and the moral. On aesthetic grounds there's lots of argument
to be had over what the right standards are to use, of course! And on
moral grounds, I like what HR says about not merely attending to
'content' or 'morality', but on a broader spectrum of things. I wonder [and only the Lord knows what I intended to write here - I unaccountably broke off this sentence!]

Another question worth thinking about is how the art is used, and how it
can be used. It seems to me that we need to look at this because from
the viewer/listener's point of view that is he prime consideration. We
can discuss the morality of art in the abstrct all we like, and talk
about, e.g., camera angles, cinematography, etc, but is it possible to
watch 'Hostel' (to pick a random example) in any other way than either
relish or prurience towards its goriness? If not, then in neither case
is the attitude worth having, and I'm not sure that any amount of 'good'
film-making can justify it being used as art.

So, I think I'm advocating a full-orbed hermeneutic of art - descriptive
(moral check on content), structuralist (the aesthetic, what the work
is), and reader-response (how it is used). Maybe with a combination of
all three measures we can arrive at a total score for each work of art!?
However, it must score above/below a certain threshold on each one to be
worth it.

What do you think? Perhaps we need some more examples...

And then I tried out this approach on Serenity.

FIlms at L'Abri

2009-07-01T08:22:00.004+01:00

Two years ago we went to this film festival at L'Abri in Hampshire. PG kindly drove us there and back in his teeny old car and we had a whale of a time listening to Lionel Richie (an education for me).

The films were...

Breaking and Entering
East of Eden
The Story of the Weeping Camel
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Little Miss Sunshine
The Seventh Seal

The conversations were great (I stayed up for hours chatting with a Danish graphic designer working in Japan - just like being an undergrad at Cambridge all over again, except slightly less pretentious), the food was great, and although Ellis Potter's contention that "art = purposeful human activity" was slightly irritating, albeit nicely delivered, a good time was had by all.

We missed last year - just too busy - but this October we will be heading down to the Manor House again. The menu is...

Gran Torino

Mon Oncle

Persopolis

Kitchen Stories

Three Colours Blue

Tsotsi

Man on Wire

And although I have seen two of those already, I shall cope!

A Christian Evaluation of Serenity (2005)

2009-07-01T08:02:00.005+01:00

Having posted before on this great film, I thought I'd share the extended version, which I recently wrote up for NTI...

Background

Serenity is a feature film developed from a cult sci-fi series called Firefly, broadcast by Fox in 2002. Disappointed at the axing of the series after only 14 episodes, fans and the scriptwriter-director (Joss Wheedon, of Buffy and Angel fame) lobbied the industry for funding to a least get a film made, if not more episodes of Firefly. The New York Times verdict on the original series was, ‘A very funny, very hip, very terrific sci-fi show’, which is about right, and in my opinion the film is even better. Serenity works perfectly well as a stand-alone story, though it is enriched if you are familiar with Firefly, so I shall confine my analysis to the film, with occasional reference to the world described and explored in more detail by the earlier series. This world exists hundreds of years in the future, when ‘Earth that was’ has been abandoned by the voracious and fecund human race, who have colonised many other worlds. Their galactic culture is a neat blend of American and Chinese – the more rural settings often look like the Wild West, as do some of the weapons and costumes, and the dialect English they speak is redolent of 19th century America; however, the urban settings are like the seedier parts of Hong Kong and the characters usually swear in Chinese! The writing is all in letters and pictograms. There are no aliens!

Plot Summary
This is the 100-word version: for a fuller summary see the Appendix. Better still, stop reading this and watch the film so you can enjoy the unfolding story as it was intended!

Lead by charismatic rogue Captain Mal Reynolds the crew of Serenity, a smuggling ship, stumble across a massive state cover-up concerning population pacification technology, the murder of millions, and the creation of human monsters. The key to the mystery is locked away in the memory of a traumatised teenage girl (a fugitive, with her brother, on Serenity) who has been psychologically conditioned to turn her into a weapon with the right trigger. Pursued by a sinister and ruthless Parliamentary Operative, after various adventures, battles and tragedies, the crew overcome self-interest and succeed in broadcasting the information at great personal cost.

Aesthetic
The script is successful at a macro level, with the plot developing through tension and resolution, propelled by various contingent and necessary motors. The challenge of introducing those who have never seen Firefly is overcome nicely. Occasionally there are clunky moments are a lot of information is shared with us through a conversation (e.g. 6 minutes in when the Operative discusses Simon and River with the doctor responsible for her conditioning) but in most cases we learn what background we need through odd phrases and through action. A fairly conventional meta-story (a rag-tag bunch uncover a conspiracy and through adversity being largely thrust upon them discover the courage to sacrifice for a greater good) with several stock characters (muscle-for-brains, repressed rich boy, cool British villain) is enlivened through cinematic and directorial splicing techniques on display from the start. Serenity opens with a narrator over documentary footage explaining human history since the exodus from ‘Earth that was’, which is revealed to be the voice of a teacher in a gazebo-like garden classroom of 12-year-olds, which is shown to be a flashback-dream in the mind of crazed River, strapped into a sinister lab chair just before she is rescued, a dramatic sequence which itself turns out to be a holographic recording of said rescue as viewed by the Operative on their tail. Russian dolls eat your heart out!

The script is even more successful at the micro level, as Wheedon manages to bring out his characters with their flaws and their humour through a convincing dialect version of English. The language has enough grace and charm to conjure up centuries past where eloquence was valued more highly, while still being comprehensible to modern viewers. Combined with effective set design and sparing use of quality CGI Wheedon projects a world that grabs the audience. Nothing is too grand or too clean. Making a virtue out of the necessity of budgetary constraints, there is general celebration of parvus pulcher est, which is also an important theme within the world of the film.

The cast perform extremely well. Each of the characters is rendered consistently and the actors are completely believable while more than coping with a demanding script that ranges from flippant to deep grief and is peppered with cod-Chinese curses. I was engaged by their relationships and moved by their struggles and tragedies. The stock characters are given their own flavour through great facial expressions, quirkiness and costume idiosyncrasies.

Serenity pays homage to a great many other films from a variety of genres, notably Westerns and spacebound science fiction. Labouring the intertextual links would be wearing so I’ll mention just a handful. The use of the Universal Studios logo in the first scene recalls Waterworld, another futuristic human survival story (considerably more expensive and less successful!) River and Simon’s escape through a lift shaft into the belly of a spaceship honours Star Wars (episodes IV and V). Mal Reynolds is Han Solo, only better (“Heresy!” I hear you cry). The climactic and claustrophobic desperate rearguard battle with its high attrition is both Zulu and Aliens and more… This film is an artistic gem and a lovely example of how to work within a tradition but with originality.

Moral
A great many themes are picked up by Serenity in passing, many of which can be celebrated by Christians (in modified form), several of which cannot. Eccentricity and individuality in community is a major concern of the film. The crew have to deal with their differences and learn to recognise that fellowship is more important than ego or point-scoring, something they are not always successful at. Heroism expressed in sacrifice, not for the sake of glory but for the sake of others, is a clear theme; the crew, particularly Mal, learns that self-interest or feigned amorality as regards politics will not suffice in a fallen world if justice is to be done, even in a limited historical sense.

There is a right suspicion of empire and human power, which chimes in with the Bible’s perspective, as does the recognition that people are in no way perfect. An optimistic/utopian belief in human ability to engineer goodness actually drives the plot. The explicit clash between this belief and the liberalism of the ‘Independents’ (neither blind obedience to the state nor chemicals can solve the human condition) occurs in a powerful piece of dialogue before the final act. Against a background of the slaughter of the innocents, Mal confronts the Operative on video phone about their respective motivations…

O: You should have taken my offer, or did you think that none of this was your fault?
M: I don’t murder children.
O: I do – if I have to.
M: Why? Do you even know why they send you?’
O: It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
M: So me and mine gotta lay down so you can live in your better world?
O: I’m not going to live there. There’s no place for me there any more than there is for you. Malcolm, I’m a monster. What I do is evil, I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

As Mal stirs the crew to embark on a probably suicidal mission to broadcast the suppressed data he says of the state,

They will try again… [t]hey’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people better. And I don’t hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.

What Serenity lacks, however, is any answer as to how people are to be made better – by implication a celebration of diversity and resistance will be OK, but this is a serious aporia in the worldview.

In its opposition to tyranny, Serenity also displays abhorrence of cover-up. The crew struggle, as we all would, with the cost to them of exposing the truth, but there is no doubt as to the morality of what they settle on. Mr Universe’s motto, ‘they can’t stop the signal’ displays a faith in exposure and in final justice, the idea that someone, somewhere is watching crimes and that the truth will out. CCTV and other technology along with independent-minded vigilance provide the all-seeing eye here, but Christians know that someone more reliable will provide ultimate justice.

Several of the undercurrents or explicit messages of the film are less susceptible of a Christian embrace. While we can be grateful for a film in which the ‘Christian’ characters are neither pushovers nor hypocrites, the Christian faith of this galaxy is pretty bland, and the crew are happy to exploit this religiosity, carrying out their payroll heist during ‘Sunday worship’. The character of the Shepherd, representative of a deeper religious commitment, is ultimately called upon by Wheedon to be the mouthpiece for a kind of content-less will to transcend the self – as he urges Mal, with his dying breath, to fight on, he says ‘I don’t care what you believe, just believe it’. The clash between the Operative, ‘the kind of man who believes hard’ and Mal is ultimately a clash between the adherents of political philosophies who prove willing to die for their beliefs. But which belief is right? And is the morality of belief really to be reduced to the strength of feeling in the believing subject? Serenity appears to suggest this at the emotional climax, while of course undermining it in the case of the Operative and his beliefs.

To put it another way, the gospel according to Serenity is that salvation can be had through cunning, decency and fighting for freedom with a strong dose of ‘belief’. Salvation is needed because people are not perfect but especially because big governments are tyrannical. The ‘fall’ was the formation of the central planetary Alliance at some point in the past. The moment of regeneration, as it were, comes with the enlightenment of knowledge – so long as we have unmediated access to information about everything (‘the signal’) we can deal with the evil. The major idols of the film are personal liberty and self-determination.

Furthermore, while it may seem a little moralistic to bring it up, the crew are a bunch of crooks! Our heroes make their living from crime, and to argue that their hearts of gold make up for this is to veer towards Gnosticism on the one hand ('what you do doesn’t matter, it’s who you are'; as if such things could be separated) or anarchism on the other (power is bad, authority is bound to be worse than independence). Serenity thankfully does not endorse a revenge ethic – the one moment where revenge briefly captures the grieving Zoë, she becomes reckless and endangers her companions – but, rather, a libertarian and pro-prole approach to society. Petty crime and prostitution are OK, so long as it’s only the rich that are made to pay.

To conclude this section I want to consider Serenity’s take on two old chestnuts, sex and violence. The film stands in an ambivalent relationship to the interplay of these most misunderstood of human activities. Final answers on whether certain levels of violence in a film are gratuitous or whether particular costumes/scenes constitute soft porn (or a prelude to it) are not easy to settle on. In a general sense as regards film I am not entirely happy with my current stance of feeling slightly uncomfortable while trying not to be puritannical, but neither general flight nor general embrace are satisfactory.

There is a lot of violence in Serenity, but with two exceptions our heroes only use it defensively. Their spaceship is not armed. Male strongman stereotypes are in some ways upset: although physically brave Mal is in fact an expert at getting beaten up; hard-case Jayne is knocked out twice by River; the Operative is a martial arts expert but clearly of a very cool Oriental variety in contrast to the generally less effective and more blustery ‘Western’ style fighting. Across gender lines, the upsetting occurs in a surprisingly conventional way. Ex-military Zoë is an Amazon figure (something of a trope in science fiction) who is in fact happily married and demurely dressed; River, effectively invincible in combat, conjures up Artemis – a (teenage) warrior maiden who really is a maiden. But better than Artemis, she is clothed and not the object of anyone’s desire. The action scenes featuring River in fact cast a shadow on efficient martial arts even as we marvel at the physical skill of the ‘dance’. The first time she uses violence it is on a room full of innocent people – a dark parody of the typical cinematic bar-room brawl. Serenity thus just manages not to revel in violence and furthermore succeeds in dissociating its violence from sexuality – no mean feat amid the genre expectations of ensemble sci-fi/fantasy not designed for kids. There are relatively reasonable standards of modesty in female dress, and only occasional lewd jokes. Prostitution is treated as a fact of life in the film, and barely mentioned – whereas in the original series it was seen as somehow a noble career choice (perhaps one reason why Fox axed Firefly was its willingness to discuss the hypocrisies surrounding prostitution in modern society without condemning the prostitute).

Use value
An important measure of whether or not a work of art is “good” is what it can be used for. An aesthetic (structuralist or technical) analysis is only part of the picture of assessing artistic value. A moral analysis adds more but the morality of the art does not exist in a static or abstract fashion – it is blended by the artist(s) and is appropriated by the audience. So we need a third approach to the artwork in order to answer the question of its value.

Serenity can be used as entertainment. There is nothing wrong with diversion and entertainment in themselves (although in fact there is no such thing as entertainment-in-itself, we are always entertained in and by something), and along with the quality of the story what Wheedon asks us to enjoy is largely positive – heroism, sacrifice, humour, mocking the proud, valuing eccentricity, anger at oppression, and so on.

Serenity can also be used as a way in for analysing culture and commending the gospel. I would suggest that the following questions could be asked of non-Christian co-viewers who are interested in exploring the film more deeply.

(1) What is meaningful “faith”? Can it simply be, or must it be in something or someone?

(2) Is there any hope for the future (personal and species) other than quick wits and whatever resistance we can muster to oppression?

(3) Is the centralized state really our biggest problem? Is the Operative right to suggest that sin is the problem? Given the flaws in his solution,

(4) How then shall we be made “better”?

(5) What is “the signal” in the real world (e.g. supposedly unmediated access to information, or divine revelation)? Can anything stop the signal? Do we need the signal?

(Religious) history is written by the victors

2009-07-01T07:50:00.002+01:00

This is not merely a question of what words appear on the pages of textbooks out there somewhere. Everyday popular sentiments and prejudices are fuelled by this, too. The feelings and ‘truths’ of the victors operate at the level of conversations and reflex attitudes.

Consider the Caucasus: for centuries a hotbed of competition, oppression, violence, looming empires, local struggles, etc. For the last 300 years Russian domination of the region has led to injustice on a large and small scale, whether perpetrated by the Imperial, the Soviet or the present quasi-fascist Moscow government and its local puppets.

So far in this post, you might say, there is not too much evidence of the history of the victors being dominant – given that I am able to make historical claims that attack the ‘victors’ in the Caucasus, claims backed up in the more sober scholarly sources.

Perhaps this can be partly brought under the main heading? As a Westerner I am one of history’s victors, with a global perspective to match the spread of Western culture, a perspective derived largely from Western historiography and journalism which is not particularly sympathetic to (among other ‘others’) Russia.

The other side of this view of the Caucasus is of course the downtrodden, mainly Muslim people who live there. But who are they and how did they become Muslim? Ironically, their conversion to Islam, certainly to anyting approaching an ‘orthodox’ Sunni Islam, was facilitated by the Russian march southwards…

The militancy of the Khalidiyya [the brotherhood of Khalid] found expression in the Caucasus. In parts of Chechnya and Dagestan, Islam, as brought by the Tatars of Crimea, had been accepted only by the representatives of the upper classes, while the masses remained untouched by Islam until the eighteenth century, maintaining their ancestral rites and beliefs. The preaching of Imam Mansur, who led a jihad in the years 1785-91, addressed the peasants in simple and direct language. His most durable work was the Islamization of the population of the north-west Caucasus, preparing the way for the Naqshabandi [a sufi brotherhood that emphasized the shari‘a] preachers and the jihad of Imam Shamil.
Followers of Khalid [an influential Sufi leader, hajji in 1805] spread the tariqa [method of reaching divine reality] in Dagestan and Chechnya in the early years of the nineteenth century. Shaykh Isma‘il al-Kurdemiri, a follower of Khalid, was active in Shirwan in the 1810s. With the progress of the Russian occupation, many of the local rulers submitted to Russian rule, so that the traditional political establishment was increasingly discredited. In this context, the message of the renewalist Naqshabandiyya tariqa had strong popular appeal, and the movement grew under the leadership of Muhammed al-Yaraghi, a student of Shaykh Isma‘il. Al-Yaraghi’s first concern was to establish respect for and adherence to Islamic law and to reform local practice.
Hamid Algar asserts that the directives of Mawlana Khalid [who, after 1820, because of various splits and disagreements, was actually in Iraq and Syria, not the Caucasus] consistently guided the political activities of the Khalidi Naqshabandi shayks in Dagestan and Chechnya, and it was there that the Khalidiyya survived in its purest and most integral form. The jihad of Imam Shamil from 1832 to 1859, had an important internal dimension. He created a territory where the shari‘a was supreme, and eradicated various local dynasties that had been associated with practicing the local customary law.

[Nehemia Levtzion, ‘The Role of Shari‘a-Oriented Sufi Turuq in the Reform Movements of the 18th and 19th Centuries’, in Islam in Africa and the Middle East: Studies in Coversion and Renewal (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ch.XV, p.12.]

The end of the second paragraph sounds quite anodyne, but when we discover in the third paragraph that reform meant the eradication of those (in power, at least) who thought differently it makes me wonder what establishing respect for shari‘a involved!

Although these charismatic Muslim leaders – and for all their other-worldly and ‘spiritual’ reputation notice how involved the Sufis were in politics and political violence in the Caucasus (not to mention in Anatolia and India, though that’s a story for another day) – gained much legitimacy from the advancing Russian colonial machine, their greatest successes came in internal reform. The suppression of alternative practice and the imposition of Islamic law, a vital part of shaping the Caucasian Muslim consciousness today. What happened to those who demurred? We are not told. Where are the protests against the imposition of shari‘a in the 19th century? Where are the protests (by hand-wringing Western liberals or by conscientious Muslims) against the long term cultural changes, namely Islamization and destruction of traditional cultural elements, that came in the wake of Shamil’s jihad, crushed though it was in the end by the Russians? Nowhere.

(Religious) history is written by the victors.

In this chapter we have traced the history of the manifestations of Muslim resistance to colonial expansion back to an earlier stage of renewal and reform within Sufi turuq, which occurred almost simultaneously in all parts of the Muslim world in the eighteenth century. This was the culmination and crystallization of undercurrents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that reinforced the shari‘a orientation of Sufi turuq.
…
If the nineteenth century saw the rise of militant movements, and the eigtheenth century experienced the restructuring of shari‘a-oriented Sufi turuq, it was in the seventeenth century that Muslim scholars had begun to break out of the combination of legal taqlid and mystical pantheism. Sirhindi in India and al-Qushani in Medina, followed by Ibrahim al-Kurani, advanced the merging of Hadith and tasawwu [esoteric learning and practice], which became a prescription for shari‘a-oriented turuq. Indian scholars were important in the Haramayn as a result of the growth of the pilgrimage, during which they encountered Sufis and muhaddithun from North Africa, Egypt and Kurdistan. Pilgrims from the farthest lands of Islam – Indonesia, Africa and China – were initiated in the Haramayn into new turuq, and carried back to their homelands new ideas and the nuclei for more cohesive and structurally ognized Sufi organisations. It was in those countreis at the periphery of the Muslim world that the evolutionary process of Islamization reached a stage that called for a radical departure from past traitions, which could be achieved only through revolution.

[ibid., pp.26-7.]

A fascinating thesis by an expert on Isalmization, whose work is full of insight into Sufis and reformist Islam, particularly in Africa. I wonder why the murderous jihadi efforts of Shamil and others is not called colonial, though?

Perhaps history is written by the…

Last Friday - Justification!

2009-07-01T07:27:00.004+01:00

It was a tired and grumpy J that attended the NTI seminar on justification. Which was inappropriate, given the glorious truth of justification by faith alone, whether that is taken in the N.T. Wright sense or the mainstream traditional Reformed sense, as expounded by John Piper in recent debate with the aforementioned Bishop of Durham. (Thanks to Tim Chester for that useful link!)

I was confused about how to express my thoughts on imputed righteousness and had a headache, largely through exhaustion after a tiring three weeks of being drained by various pastoral situations at church in the hot weather, and partly through staying up past midnight liberating the Pacific and Europe from the Axis powers in Call of Duty: World at War with Phil. Amazing how a man almost thirty can be so captivated by such (well-executed) silliness! I think I'm a bad influence on Phil - he claims not to play WaW unless I'm there overnight...

Since the seminar I have read both Piper's The Future of Justification and Wright's Justification, and actually things seem a lot clearer now. The way that Wright ties in the covenant, eschatology, participation in Christ and much besides is very stimulating, and actually echoes a lot of the Sydney Anglican stuff (ironically) on biblical theology (Goldsworthy, Dumbrell et al) that has been feeding its way into the UK for a few decades. Abraham not Moses. One big story. New creation. That sort of thing.

Of course, Piper makes a lot of good points, too, but there's no doubting the narrowness of the picture he paints by comparison. I can feel a lifetime of wrestling with this and trying to teach it and live it coming upon me!

This Friday - justification!

2009-06-25T08:11:00.002+01:00

This Friday at the NTI seminar we are looking at "justification". Can't wait to get to Sheffield via my gracious hosts in Leicester!

I wrote a very garbled "essay" on the imputation of Christ's righteousness, which I fear I may have to take an hour to explain (not that I really can, as my head has been spinning with the subtleties) before we can really get our teeth into the subject...

Also on the menu are some sterling contributions from everyone else:

An Exegesis of Romans 3

Justification and Ecclesiology

Evaluation of Tom Wright on Justification

What are we to make of Old Testament declarations of innocence?

Merit or Maturity?

2009-06-25T08:10:00.000+01:00

Ken Bailey’s exposition of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), which he more accurately titles “The Two Lost Sons”, contains some great criticisms of merit theology.

The younger son off in the far country does not repent (in Jesus’ definition of repentance) when he decides to return – he espouses a merit theology that plans to earn enough money (set me up as a skilled craftsman) to pay back to his father what he has squandered then he thinks he can restore the relationship. Of course when he meets his father, the old man has already forgiven him, humiliated himself, run the gauntlet on his behalf, and is offering full restoration! He is a son, not an employee…

The older son, angry when he hears why the party is being thrown, refuses to come in, and complains to his father (who, once again, humuliates himself publicly on behalf of one of his sons – the neighbours would have expected severe discipline if not disinheritance for the firstborn’s rudeness here) that he has always “served” him. This is the word for what a slave does. He conceives of the relationship to his father as master-slave, a relationship where the currency is merit. But Jesus wants us to see God in a relationship of love to his children, not distance from his employees…

The Woman at the Well

2009-06-25T08:04:00.001+01:00

Ken Bailey’s lectures on Jesus Interprets His Own Cross brushed past John 4 and he made some great observations that got me thinking about social practice and typology…

The woman is clearly a loose woman. She comes alone, in the middle of the day and when she sees Jesus at the well she does not wait for him to get up and stand aside, as etiquette demanded, but comes close enough (possibly even climbing on the stones herself) that Jesus can say to her, “Give me a drink”.

She doesn’t come to the well at midday (when it’s far too hot to be working outside and the water is not as nice) because if she went at dawn the respectable women would shoo her away – yes – but also because she would be more likely to find men there and be able to ply her trade uninterrupted.

Jesus asks for water from the defiled bucket of a despised Samaritan, something a first century Jew would never do. He also cuts across Rabininc tradition and conservative social mores by speaking to a woman in public. That’s one in the eye for Islamic (and any extreme Christian) practices of gender segregation. Meeting a member of the opposite sex one-to-one in private is usually unwise, sure, but the public realm does not need fencing and hedging in order to wrap women up and mute them. Jesus ignores unhelpfully restrictive social constructions of space, privacy, ‘ownership’ of women, etc.

And here we see Israel’s King put in a position of temptation by a foreign woman. Just as Bathsheba (presumably a Hittite like her husband) bathed on the roof knowing full well that David would see her, so the Samaritan woman approaches Jesus as a potential client. And while David folded without much resistance, grasped and murdered, leading to great sorrow and more death, David’s greater Son refuses to play the game. He offers life, demonstrating costly love for a fallen human being, that leads to transformation and joy.

Motivations

2009-06-21T21:25:00.003+01:00

Of course, I still recognise that McCall Smith makes many interesting observations along the way in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series. On the question of apparently unambitious men he says this (Tea Time, p.150):

‘You only thnk so, Mma? Have you not asked him?’
Mma Tafa sighed. ‘Not all men know what they want to do, Mma. Many of them say they are quite happy doing what they are doing, and do not know what they really want to do… underneath. You know what I mean, Mma?
‘I think I do’, said Mma Ramotswe.
‘So it is the job of women – and that means you and me, Mma – to find out what husbands really want to do, and then to tell them about it. That is our job, I think, Mma.’

I have been reflecting on motivation and decision-making rather a lot in the last few weeks. It's a complex business the more one thinks on this. House-buying, moving overseas, you name it, discerning God's will in all this (what a loaded phrase).

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

2009-06-21T21:19:00.001+01:00

I think I understand why these No.1 Ladies Detective Agency books are so padded – it’s because they are written for serialisation. Almost every chapter contains either a mini-summary of the last chapter or else a synopsis of the entire plot to that point! Perfect for weekly or daily radio programmes, but painful if you are trying to read them in one or two sittings. Has Alexander McCall Smith received a fee from the radio dramatisation people to do most of their work for him!?

I’m not quite sure whether to give the books a bad review, or applaud them for being accessible to people who might not otherwise do a lot of reading.

Actually, this latest one (Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, an entirely irrelevant title to anything in the novel, other than the rather tired joke about the heroine’s weight) was wittier and more interesting than the last few, certainly in the first 200 pages or so. But then McCall Smith ran out of space, and the plot threads were either sewn up in a couple of paragraphs, or quietly dropped.

These are certainly very well marketed works, though that does not inspire much faith in human nature, given the cloying quality to the blurb on TT’s dust jacket… “and, as wise and warm hearted as his heroine, Alexander McCall Smith reminds us that we must dig deep to uncover the great goodness of the human heart”. Not only a dubious sentiment but also not a fair representation of the book in question!

And yet, despite my extremely mixed feelings about them (see here for a day when I was better disposed!), I continue to read them. Like being addicted to really watery hot chocolate made with UHT milk. You can’t really blame the drink or the one who made it, but the one who keeps asking for it…

Armenian burgers on June 19th

2009-06-21T21:01:00.000+01:00

More of a splat than a collection of burgers, actually. But very tasty with bacon and garden lettuce. Came from a birthday recipe book from L&A; Mrs L adapted the instructions and came up with something delightful. I wonder what made them Armenian, though…

Busoni

2009-06-21T20:51:00.001+01:00

A storming pianist [I remember one supervisor at Downing showing off his vinyls of Busoni at the piano and telling me how the Italian was the greatest pianist who had ever lived]. And a great composer. Am currently enjoying his Violin Sonata No.1 in E minor (can’t yet understand the second sonata so well), brimming with energy, deceptively simply, and possibly something I could even play in the coming year.

The best moment comes 4’50” into the opening movement [on the recording by Per Enoksson and Kathryn Stott]. This is a spine-tingling, heart-surging, blurry-eyed moment for me… After the extended counterpoint, a jagged and almost bitter section, Busoni gives us a series of 4-3 suspensions/appogiaturas beginning on a deeply underwritten Vb chord – we can’t decide whether this passage is major or minor, we can’t decide if this is triumph rising above the darkness and unsettled counterpoint, and we move on again before we have a chance to reflect. Wow!

The power of the 4-3 was never better employed, except possibly in the closing bars of Scriabin’s Piano Concerto in F# minor (probably written around the same time as the Busoni) where the plagal cadence – in itself an unusual ending for a concerto work – is drawn out by the B of B major staying in the F#sus4 chord that precedes the final arrival of the tonic major. Made all the more effective by big arching horn lines and the pianist bouncing up and down, producing swelling and receding waves that are slightly out of sync with the orchestral harmony.

Just thinking about it is exciting.

Which shows what a vivid imagination some people have!

the ugley vicar and Protestant unity

2009-06-11T21:51:00.003+01:00

Forthright and entertaining, not to mention sharp-minded. A great blog to follow for those interested in Anglicanism and generally incisive observations/thoughts.

His recent posts on church unity (esp. how disuinity is the curse of Protestantism) have been very thought-provoking. I wish my brain were more alert right now so that I could process it all and regurgitate it in my own words - but his will have to do (very nicely of course)...

Unity, schism and private judgement

If not private judgement, then what?

Unity, the church and denominations

Overcoming schism, the nettle Protestantism must grasp

comprehensive education

2009-06-05T11:36:00.005+01:00

This concept has reached new heights/depths in Japan. The poop museum has to be seen to be believed. Actually, although the register of the language may be a little coarse (and is that just the blogger's fault?), one can't complain about an increase in human knowledge and intellectual curiosity among the young! [Thanks to Dionysius for this link]

And speaking of human knowledge and intellectual cuiriosity - why not peruse an introduction to some great lines over the years by James Earl Jones, all bundled up and delivered by his most memorable role, Darth Vader. Here's one, and here's another. Warning, you may cry with laughter... [Cheers to PG for those!]

Piano Recital (slightly messy)

2009-05-29T12:07:00.003+01:00

After 5 days away from the piano touring round the north of the country visiting relatives and friends, we returned more weary than when we'd begun the "holiday". That didn't stop me attempting a piano recital at Ely Cathedral on Thursday lunchtime.

Debussy, Préludes (Book I)
I. Danse des Delphes: Lent et grave

Haydn, Sonata No. 29 in E flat major
Moderato
Andante
Allegro molto

Debussy, Préludes (Book I)
II. Voiles: Modéré
VIII. La fille aux chevaux de lin: Très calme et doucement expressif

Haydn, Sonata No. 62 in E flat major
Allegro
Adagio
Presto

Debussy, Préludes (Book I)
XII. Minstrels: Modéré

The music of Claude Achille Debussy (1862-1918) is some of the most revolutionary in the history of Western music. His significant output for the piano is no exception, exploring new sound effects, extended pedalling, whole tone scales and other disruptions to the world of classical harmony. The first prelude (“Dancers of Delphi”) was inspired by an ancient Greek sculpture of three women that Debussy came across in the Louvre. It is a slow sarabande (a Baroque dance), showing his fondness for pre-classical forms. The second prelude (“Sails”) depicts the wind in the sails of boats at sea, and is almost entirely constructed out of whole tone intervals rather than the key-based scales that all sudents of music are drilled in. The eighth prelude (“The girl with the flaxen hair”) needs no introduction, as one of Debussy’s most famous works, while the ninth (“Minstrels”) is a composite impression of the composer’s many visits to Parisian cabarets to watch African and African-American performers in cabarets full of slapstick, song, tap dance, somersaults, drumming and general high spirits.

By contrast, Josef Haydn (1732-1809), whose double centenary is currently being celebrated across British and European TV and radio was a master of given forms, perfecting the classical sonata, string quartet and symphony. He was also an astute businessman, turning out hundreds of popular arrangements, folk tunes, choral extravaganzas and music for the rising middle classes to play in their homes. The 29th sonata dates from 1766 and mostly displays the restraint and poise typical of Haydn. All three movements are in sonata form, with the first two prepared to roam more widely in harmonic terms and the third to explore considerably more keys at high speed, not to mention testing the soundness of the piano’s mechanism in sets of repeated notes! Of course Haydn was never a slave to tradition (indeed with his large and surprisingly varied output he in many ways set the boundaries for that classical tradition) and in his final piano sonata, from 1794, he began to strain at the shackles that Beethoven would shatter just a few years later. In its grandness, its virtuosity and its unusual modulations this sonata competes with anything that Beethoven wrote, yet still retains the lightness and elegance of Haydn at his best. It is brimming with both deep emotion, especially in the slow movement, and humour – enjoy the bizarre pauses in the outer movements and the sudden explosions of joy.

where I would be sure to be well fed

2009-05-08T15:42:00.002+01:00

challenged, offended and generally encouraged. But Moscow, Idaho is just a little too far away and a little too pricey to get to. Shame really - one day it would be nice to do a grand tour of the US, get the flavour of the various states, revel in the scenery and the people and the diversityand the metropolises and the many great believers there.

where I would like to visit

2009-05-08T15:08:00.003+01:00

If I was around in the area on a Sunday.

As the astute blog reader will know, I am torn between the post-theonomic-high-Reformed-literary analysis-covenant children-postmillennial appraoch, and the low-church-anabaptist-emerging-missional-anticlerical-household movement. It would be interesting and edifying to visit some of the former not just read about them!

Both schools, as it were, have an inclusive policy towards children and young people in the main worship meetings of their congregations and both favour alcohol in the Lord's Supper (neither of which things are generally features of mainstream evangelicalism in this country). I expect there are other similarities, too ;-)

what I would be doing

2009-05-08T15:00:00.003+01:00

If I were still in the ocean of academia, as opposed to merely an interested observer who sits on the beach enjoying the view, occasionally paddling, but mostly staying on dry ground where it's possible to play the piano (and teach it, and idle around, and study theology and plant a church and do the washing up and the laundry whenever I should be doing something more important).

Prof Andrew Basden is a great bloke, judging from his writings and his beard. Perhaps I'll even get to meet him one day before the New Creation!

Religious dialogue

2009-05-06T08:37:00.002+01:00

In a fascinating book edited by N. Vaporis [Orthodox Christians and Muslims, (Brookline: Holy Cross, 1986)] the papers from a 1985 symposium held in the USA are presented. The twelve main papers, on various historical and theological topics, are all interesting. I expect to blog on one or two in weeks to come...

The foreword from Archbishop Iakonos makes a plea for ‘common understanding as to the role religion can play in a terribly turbulent society’ in which ‘men and women everywhere are looking for peace, security and humanitarian coexistence’ (p.2). He suggests that (presumably) in the 1970s and 80s at least ‘Christians are seeking unity, while Muslims are witnessing a worldwide resurgence’ (p.1) and this means there is a great need for each to approach the other. All very nice and well put, and as it’s only a brief welcome message it seems a shame to be picky, but there is a fundamental asymmetry in the relationship that needs to be flagged up. Both officially and unofficially, any attempt by a Christian to ‘convert’ (however construed) a Muslim, or any perceived criticism of Muhammed (etc) is a pretext for hostility – not merely intellectual but also physical. Let alone what happens to Muslims who do choose to leave Islam. When the very structure of the faith is set up to suppress discussion at particular points and to employ coercion to the point of death against those who demur, then ‘dialogue’ and ‘common understanding’ are severely hampered.

We should also note that the blasphemy and apostasy laws of Islam, whether or not the state happens to endorse them in various territories, cut the aggrieved moral high ground out from under those Muslims who wish to complain about proselytism, or who wish to demonstrate or assert openness to dialogue now or in some mythical glorious Islamic past. If the threat of death or ostracism against any who wish to identify with a different religion remains in the formal and popular teaching of Islam, we can dispense with the high horses and be honest about what the situation is. The nations of the earth rage against the LORD and his annointed one. Sometimes they pretend not to, but they do. This is not really a complaint about persecution, horrible and damaging though that is (and after all, many countries and systems now and in the past have persecuted Muslims), but a plea for honesty about the full-orbed nature of religio-political communities. For as long as peaceful Christian (or other) evangelism among Muslims is considered an affront and worthy of harsh response the potential gains for dialogue will come at the cost of half-truths, turning blind eyes and certain types of intelletual dishonesty – and the benefits will largely be felt by the academic and politial elites anyway.

Another day I’ll make the same complaint about the supposed ‘tolerance’ of secular pluralism

Flame-loving fans of Spurgeon

2009-05-05T08:26:00.002+01:00

No mention of the Prince of Preachers could go past without a pointer to these SUPERB bloggers on pyromaniacs. Clear thinking and writing, always provocative and full of passion.

Spurgeon's significance today

2009-05-05T08:19:00.003+01:00

The contemporary significance of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1843-1892)

‘Spurgeon towered among nonconformists’ (1). He provides today’s evangelicals with proof that fidelity to Scripture and unfashionably strong evangelistic preaching need not produce an irrelevant or disengaged Christian church. His public stand for conservative evangelicalism inspired fellow Baptists – and also many from other denominations – to greater zeal and piety and a more active witness. Given the many differences between the 1850s and the 2000s, perhaps his greatest significance, if only we had the will and courage to grasp it, is in his character, showing us who a Christian leader needs to be.

“Prince of Preachers” is how he is generally remembered. Certainly his preaching was exceptionally powerful, in substance and in manner. He loved the doctrines of grace, clearly urged repentance and faith on all his hearers, and was a great orator. But, aware of the dangers of preaching anything more than Christ, and alert to the power of rhetoric and mannerism, he toned down this last aspect of his preaching in his later years, certainly from 1875 (2). There was no diminution in numbers who came to hear him, in invitations to preach elsewhere, nor in conversions. His ability to communicate with people from all walks of life is a rare gift, and one worth cultivating today, even if his commanding pulpit style is no longer be appropriate to our broader culture and most subcultures.

By Spurgeon’s example many other Baptists were inspired to be much more evangelistic in their sermons and church life, including some whose hypercalvinism or unnecessarily strict approach to fellowship and “the world” had stymied their outreach. His training of new preachers, evangelists and leaders was tireless – starting small, giving lectures in his home and chapel, this work grew to a college from which hundreds graduated to go and revitalize urban and village ministries and to plant new congregations. He was greatly moved by the suffering of the poor, undertaking many visits to the sick during various epidemics of Victorian London, at great personal cost. He established almshouses for widows and a large orphanage for boys, consisting of a street of houses rather than the factory-like buildings of many other such efforts (to which one for girls was later added, modelled on a quadrangle). Often these mercy ministries ran short of funds and Spurgeon poured his own money into them. Many children were saved through the Christian ethos and teaching of the orphanages, and some went into preaching and teaching ministries themselves when they grew up. Spurgeon spent much of his “spare” time there and was loved by all the kids. This example of personal involvement, entrepreneurship and organisational leadership, is key – along the lines of what some in the emerging church have suggested about missional church, though one difference now is that in this state-dominated age there is perhaps slightly less room for charities of immediate relief attached to churches in the UK (3).

In 1887 Spurgeon ‘propelled Baptists into the Down-grade controversy, the most notorious of a series of general scares about the way evangelical doctrines were going’ (4). By standing firm in the face of creeping decay of liberal teaching he provided a beacon to alert many who were indifferent, and a bulwark of evangelicalism against the encroachments of false teaching. For reasons of conscience he (and the Metropolitan Tabernacle) left the Baptist Union, and some other churches followed suit. Although Spurgeon did not doubt the faith of most in the Union he could not countenance fellowship with a wider body that included many who denied essential Christian doctrine (5). This had the knock-on effect of drawing many Baptists away from the Congregationalists who were the mainstream Nonconformists of the later 19th century (6). Today most Congregationalists have joined the URC, a denomination in decline and not known for its commitment to evangelicalism. Baptists en masse are not exactly thriving, but one legacy of Spurgeon’s controversies is plenty of independent baptistic churches that continue to embrace biblical Christianity.

Spurgeon could be imperious or offhand, and he took the virtue of hard work and self-denial to dangerous extremes, but there is much worth copying in his character. Though they are out of fashion in the world and in parts of the evangelical church today, dilligence, love of learning, perseverance, generosity, and commitment to prayer will never go out of business. Dallimore’s rather quaint biography is brimming with vignettes about Spurgeon’s daily activities, habits and character. He worked very hard at his schooling and immersed himself in the Bible and works of great Christian leaders such that he could quote at will from Scripture and many Puritans. He endured tremendous opposition in the press, Christian and secular, much of it based on falsehoods and exaggeration, and he either held his tongue/pen or responded with truth without personal rancour. His health was not good for the second half of his life and he was in agony with incurable gout for decades, yet he did not give up his pastoral responsibilities. That kind of patience in the face of various types of suffering is a powerful example to today’s budding leaders, who, if they’re anything like me, might be tempted to idle hours in front of a computer or moan about minor ailments rather than apply themselves to hard work and finding joy in the Lord even in the midst of real distress. He took no salary from the Metropolitan Tabernacle, but provided for himself and his family only by the income from his books and sermons; one-off gifts to him personally he usually passed straight on to the work of the training college or orphanage. He made no plans for retirement! He was not given to long periods of prayer, but would readily pray about anything and anyone that crossed his path, and the prayers he spoke to lead groups were apparently more inspiring than his sermons.

Finally, in the exploitative and war-torn world of 2008, Spurgeon’s strong criticism of slavery and of political violence are a challenge to contemporary evangelicals the world over. Despite the financial losses he suffered as a result he was open in his hatred of slavery in the USA and wrote against it, earning much hostility in the Southern States (7). He was a lover of peace. Preaching to 20,000 people at Crystal Palace in 1857 he attacked militarism and the British violence in India on the grounds that the gospel should make wars cease to the ends of the earth. In 1870 his anti-war preaching was no less strong (8). He won grudging respect from unbelievers who had initially scorned him because of his personal integrity. A true witness to the transforming power of the gospel in every area of his life.

NOTES

(1) Clyde Binfield, So Down To Prayers: Studies in English Nonconformity, 1780-1920 (London: J.M. Dent, 1977), p.26.
(2) Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985 [1984]), pp.163-64.
(3) For example, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church (Peabody: Hendrikson, 2003), pp.135-37. They make many good suggestions concerning and observations of missional church activities, but, oddly, direct mercy ministries are not among them.
(4) Binfield, So Down To Prayers, p.6.
(5) Dallimore, Spurgeon, pp.204-10, gives detail on this process of withdrawal, the restrained manner of Spurgeon and the unjust criticism he received when he was too much of a gentleman to use confidential letters to vindicate himself.
(6) Binfield, So down to Prayers, p.26.
(7) Dallimore, Spurgeon, pp.96-7.
(8) David W. Smith, ‘A Victorian prophet without honour: Edward Miall and the critique of nineteenth-century British Christianity’, in Tales of Two Cities: Christianity and Politics, ed. Stephen Clark (Leicester: IVP, 2005), pp.152-83 (p.162, fn.21).

Cambridge Competitive Music Festival

2009-05-05T08:09:00.005+01:00

Crumbled a few years ago through lack of interest, entrants, will, whatever... :-(

But some enterprising veterans organised it afresh this year, and hundreds of people entered! A couple of my students won their piano classes, which was nice, considering the quality of the opposition, and I was hired to be the accompanist for difficult pieces (Rach cello sonata, Brahms C minor Scherzo, etc) at the prizewinners' concert last Wednesday. Which was a great honour. There were some truly delightful performances, lots of young talent, and a real sense of fun and enjoyment about the evening. Even though it went on for three and a half hours!

Several performances made my spine tingle: Shostakovich Piano Trio (1st mvt) by a group of VI formers; Bohm's virtuosic Introduction and Polonaise by a very young violinist; Swavesey Village College St Cecilia Choir in an arrangement of Danny Boy... but all 31 items were satisfying.

It is very encouraging for the state of classical/folk/stage music in the UK to see something like this. And from the front row, too!

sent over by the mater

2009-04-27T22:35:00.001+01:00

1. Teaching Maths In 1970

A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the selling price.
What is his profit?

2. Teaching Maths In 1980

A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the selling price, or £800.
What is his profit?

3. Teaching Maths In 1990
A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is £800.
Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Maths In 2000

A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is £800 and his profit is £200.
Your assignment: Underline the number 200.

5. Teaching Maths In 2008

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is totally selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands.
He does this so he can make a profit of £200. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers. If you are upset about the plight of the animals in question counselling will be available)

6. Teaching Maths 2018

أ المسجل تبيع حموله ش حنة من الخشب من دولار. صاحب تكلفة الانتاج من> الثمن. ما هو الربح له؟

Culture and the Christian Faith

2009-04-25T21:42:00.002+01:00

In an interview in Australia, Michael Horton had some very interesting things to say.

His call throughout for Christians to get back into the world, relating to unbelievers, doing their jobs well, being involved in cultural activities, etc is well put and surely completely correct. What was intriguing to me was that in his final paragraphs his views of ecclesial practice were shown to be rather myopic. He could only conceive of a modern magisterial reformed view...

Bible teaching and catechesis, and word and sacrament ministry. Then we could stop all this mid-week stuff and let Christians have those six days back that you find in the Ten Commandments...

or a modern evangelical subculture view (which he quite rightly criticises):

But now, we have an alternative culture going on so that a Christian can actually be involved in the Christian ghetto 24 hours a day, listening to Christian radio and Christian music, going to Christian functions, taking the kids to Christians sports to the point where they don't actually know a non-Christian. And no-one at their work would know that they're Christians because they don't have any deep relationships with any of their co-workers. They're so busy with other Christians all the time.

What about the idea that 'church' invades the week, that the subculture is open to non-Christians, that gospel conversation (not corny, but contextualized) saturates everything? Has Dr H not heard of the best of the missional/emerging church?

Prince Caspian (making of)

2009-04-25T21:36:00.002+01:00

The recent Prince Caspian film has come in for a lot of stick – “Ben Barnes’ accent is tosh”, “the children are annoying”, “the Telmarine army is too small”, etc. I watched it again the other day and actually thought it was quite good. Most criticisms probably occasionaed by jealousy at the rather good performances by the younger actors and their obvious enjoyment of the project.

The book is perhaps the weakest of the Narnia series, consisting of long flashbacks, and with quite compressed action (not that any of this prevents the imagination from having a great time with the material, of course) which the film expands on, even adding a long extra plot element, the attack on Miraz’ castle. Although ‘inauthentic’, that sequence is exciting, and effective in underlining the early gung ho hubris of Peter and is well done on screen. Even better is the conjuring of the White Witch – fabulous cameo from Tilda swinton and very effectively done.

Not surprisingly the filmmakers didn’t know what to do with the almost surreal bacchic revelry that occurs at Lucy’s encounter with Aslan towards the end of the book, so they ommitted it altogether. For me the loss of this section and the generally scanty appearances of Aslan were the disappointments. Maybe they couldn’t take Lewis’ Christianization of classical cultural themes and figures? They prefer a Disneyfication instead.

The documentaries on the DVD certainly show that many in the production team do not understand Narnia, whether willfully or because of ignorance.

The message of Narnia is that ‘we’re all one’
No it isn’t. That’s the “message” of Disney.
At the end of the movie, the day is saved by nature
Well kind of… The next comment does spot who’s behind that…
it’s Aslan
OK…
and Aslan, really, is an animal
D’oh.
CS Lewis is showing us that we can learn from animals and that we can learn from nature
But ripped from its context of dominion, gody rule, as found in Genesis 1 and 2 (which the script even recognised – “Narnia was never right unless a son of Adam was on the throne”, they rightly retained from the book) this is mere tree hugging.

The endless pre-menu adverts were also advertising a (straight to TV) film set in a corny pseudo-Indian setting with elephants, white marble and petals, plus a bronzed girl band… “The Cheetah Girls: One World”, on the Disney channel… Hurrah for vacuous universalism – that’ll save us, yeah

Messiah with a twist for Easter

2009-04-12T21:28:00.001+01:00

In 1992 a large group of African-American musicians (including some I’ve even heard of in my white British and Western European art music bubble) got together and produced one of my favourite bits of music – Handel’s Messiah: a Soulful Celebration. Sixteen numbers from the 18th century masterpiece have been, for want of a better word, ‘jazzed up’, to create something I like even more than the original (as a classical musician, am I allowed to say that?) I give it a clear 9.5 out of 10 and the oscar for best adaptation. Mervyn Warren seems to have worked hardest on the artistic side of the project, and what a result!

Having enjoyed the album for the last 10 years, I’m now really getting into it.

The ‘Overture’ is now a partial history of Black music, from African forest drums to Hip-Hop and House, using all Handel’s themes, given new poignancy in the Negro Spiritual section and new fire in the Jazz Fusion passage. ‘Every valley’ starts in proper baroque vein, hilariously interrupted by brassy synth and drums before the rapper starts up. ‘Why do the nations?’ is a big band jazz scat whirlwind, and so on…

Best of all (and guaranteed to make me cry) is ‘But who may abide the day of his coming?’ The drama of this track is incredible. Patti Austin sings it better than any bloke ever could (pace Handel), the choral snippets and hints at polyphony in ‘gospel’ style are exceedingly fitting, somehow the electronic instruments just work perfectly on the baroque figures and harmonies. The tension mounts with repetitions, questions, quasi-improv, interjections in that way that only Black religious music can, and when it is almost unbearable (for he is like a refiner’s fire… tell me, won’t ya’ who’s gonna stand, for you got to stand, stand…), after the instrumental a la Handel, the confidence of the singing voice comes to rest in a glorious major chord not found in the original, decorating a theologically welcome addition, ‘I know, I know, I know, I will abide’.

Whoa. Tears in my eyes just thinking about this. For who can abide the day of his coming? Only those who trust in the Messiah’s sacrifice on their behalf. They will be refined by the fire of judgement, not consumed, and they can know that they will abide. Who else but Christ can give such a hope? Who else has the words of eternal life? Who else is risen from the dead?

The tomb is empty – Jesus is alive! Hallelujah!

April Fool's Concert

2009-04-01T22:03:00.002+01:00

The fool in question is me, this morning attempting the impossible piano part of the Franck Violin Sonata (which I have been longing to play for about 15 years). I slipped in Fazil Say's Jazz Fantasy on Mozart's Turkish Rondo as a mid-concert encore (or as a quasi-finale for the 2-movement sonata) which got a few laughs.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Sonata in E minor, K304

Allegro
Tempo di menuetto

In 1778 the piano was in charge of duo sonatas and got most of the best tunes, occasionally allowing the violin to double up on them. At the recapitulation of the first movement’s main theme the violin gets its one chance to play a melody without it being first introduced by the piano. Unfortunately the jazzy chords being played on the keyboard rather steal the glory at that point! The spare, almost skeletal texture keeps the sonata from being one-sided, however, and Mozart lets the string player sing out as well as accompany the pianist. This is the fourth of Mozart’s nineteen violin sonatas, and probably the darkest. The shimmering brightness of the second movement’s trio section is the only extended passage in a major key. For a few moments the music takes on a hymn-like quality before returning to the wistful minuet, one of Mozart’s most winning melodies. Despite the relative lightness of this second movement the sonata’s dark mood dominates the final bars of the work and gentleness gives way to something much more defiant.

César Franck (1822-1890)

Sonata in A major

Allegretto ben moderato
Allegro – quasi Lento – Tempo I – quasi Presto
Recitativo-Fantasia (ben moderato)
Allegretto poco mosso

In the story of this German-Belgian organist a blow is struck against the cult of youth and shininess everywhere. As a precocious child virtuoso Franck had ‘produced a quantity of flashy, quite worthless display pieces’ (Max Harrison), which even his reverential disciple Vincent d’Indy thought monotonous. He did not pursue the career his pushy father had planned for him, that of an international pianist. Instead, he plunged into hard-working semi-obscurity in the organ loft of St Clotilde’s in Paris for four decades, composing almost nothing. How many musicians flower in their fifties? How many composers manage to produce such original and sublime masterpieces in spare evenings and in retirement? This sonata dates from 1886 and has established itself as perhaps the pinnacle of the repertoire. It displays Franck’s skill as an improviser, sliding effortlessly between keys and sections, alongside his tight control of cyclic form, in which he used and re-used themes and motifs within and between movements. The opening movement is graceful and rarely darkened. The second is very busy, alternating between driving, flowing passages and angry declamations. A pensive, almost mystical mood infuses the third movement, some of the themes of which re-appear in the finale, woven into the extended canon (imitation) of the infectiously lyrical melody.

Duchamp, Dutch Calvinists, crime fiction

2009-03-31T16:11:00.005+01:00

In his crime novel The Brutal Art, Jesse Kellerman (son of thriller-writing duo Jonathan and Faye) gives us this intriguing passage (among many).

Watching him [an expert draughts player] I felt a thrill similar to what I felt the first time I saw Victor's drawings. That might sound strange, so let me explain. Genius takes many forms, and in our century we have (slowly) come to appreciate that the transcendence given by Picasso is potentially found in other, less obvious places. It was that old reliable provocateur, Marcel Duchamp, who showed this when he abandoned object-making, moved to Buenos Aires, and took up chess full-time. The game, he remarked, 'has all the beauty of art, and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer.' At first glance Duchamp seems to be lamenting the corrupting power of money. Really, though, he's being much more subversive than that. He is in fact destroying the conventional boundaries of art, arguing that all forms of expression - all of them - are potentially equal. Painting is the same as chess, which is the same as rollerskating, which is the same as standing at your kitchen stove, making soup. In fact, any one of those plain old everyday activities is better than conventional art, better than painting, because it is done without the sanctimony of anointing oneself 'an artist'. There is no surer route to mediocrity; as Borges wrote, the desire to be a genius is 'the basest of art's temptations'. (pp.280-1)

So, Duchamp was only a couple of centuries behind the Calvinists, and only 1850 years behind the apostle Paul.

Still, can't expect even a decent crime novelist to know everything about intellectual history!

What he then says about genius is less true, in my opinion, because I don't accept the ethic of the pure act, but it gets one thinking...

According to this understanding, then , true genius has no self-awareness. A genius must by definition be someone who does not stop to consider what he is doing, how it will be received, or how it will affect him and his future; he simply acts. He pursues his activity with a single-mindedness that is inherently unhealthy and frequently self-destructive. (p.281)

That is probably, sadly, historically accurate for many people, but genius doesn't have to be like that...

NT "NT" Wright

2009-03-30T19:46:00.003+01:00

If you've ever read any Wright, you'll love this. A spoof of the great man exegeting Humpty Dumpty.

Try reading it out loud in an arch voice. Guaranteed hilarity for the whole household.

Thanks to Stuart at NTI for pointing this out.

condition and covenant

2009-03-26T08:40:00.005Z

How we describe the biblical covenants is of great theological significance. What we mean by ‘conditional’ and ‘unconditional’ and to which element of the covenants we apply those adjectives is very important.

How we conceive of God’s action in history and in us is also bound up in the use of words like ‘unconditional’. There are pastoral contexts in which we speak more of God’s ‘unconditional’ grace (to a tender conscience or someone struggling with assurance) and contexts in which we speak more of scriptural warnings and exhortations and on the role played by obedience in our relationship with God (in cases of indifference or flagrant sin).

Precisely what ‘unconditional’ means and for precisely whom it means that lies at the heart of Christian Zionist and Dispensationalist interpretations of the Old Testament land promises.

What about the texts before we look too much at the details of the theologies above? Are there any conditions, implicit or explicit, in the texts themselves? I’ll post some detailed observations on this at some point, but for now, some gleanings from commentators on the Abrahamic covenant. Notice how the texts do rather seem to contain various kinds of conditions at various stages...

Genesis 17:9

When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly." ...And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. ...And God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ... Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

“Whereas inaugurating the covenant was entirely the result of divine initiative, confirming it involves a human response, summed up in v 1 by ‘walk in my presence and be blameless’ and spelled out in the demand to circumcise every male.”

[Gordon Wenham, Genesis 16-50, WBC 2 (Dallas, 1994), p.20]

“Although in chapter 15 Abraham was a passive partner to whom God unconditionally committed himself, this supplement calls Abraham into active partnership. Just as Noah lived righteously and was rewarded with the Noahic covenant by the Lord, Abraham must “walk before” the Lord (living in fellowship with him and being taughtby him) and be blameless (living with integrity) in order to enjoy the covenant blessings. In fact, only after Abraham shows his total commitment to the Lord by his willingness to offer up Isaac as sacrifice does God take an oach to fulfill this covenant (22:15-18). From henceforth the covenant supplement is unconditional. Nevertheless, the formulation suggests that for Abraham’s descendants to increase and be a blessing they too must walk before God and be blameless. The suggestion becomes explicit in the blessings and curses in the Mosaic covenant (Lev. 26; Deut. 28).”
[Bruce Waltke, Genesis: a Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), p.263.]

Genesis 22:18

And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, "By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice."

“A promise which was previously grounded solely in the will and purpose of Yahweh is transformed so that it is now grounded both in the will of Yahweh and in the obedience of Abraham”
[R.W.L. Moberly, ‘The Earliest Commentary on the Akedah’, VT 38 (1988), 320]

ouch

2009-03-25T08:33:00.000Z

Tuesday was painful enough, but why does it all ache more on Wednesday!?

No badminton next Monday or my concert on April Fool's day will not be a wise time ;-)

Badminton!

2009-03-24T22:56:00.003Z

At long last I have got round to joining the badminton club down the road. And boy does it hurt. After 2 hours of dancing around the court with players of all ages and most abilities above my own (yes, several pensioners who were clearly better than me) I am wondering whether or not itwas worth it.

Of course it was, even though on the way home the unnescessarily long laces on my trainers got caught in my pedals and I fell off my bike, causing the chain to fall off (my heart was free), leading to my hands getting covered in oil, so no gloves possible, so freezing extremities by the time I got home.

There's a saga-in-waiting there.

Meanwhile, badminton will entertain me for many a Monday to come, I hope. And it will be a great way to chat to more local people who I don't yet know.

Psalm 145

2009-03-19T11:33:00.004Z

Number 2 brother came up with an excellent insight into the structure of Psalm 145 when we studied it in homegroup on Tuesday night.

(1-2) Preamble, announcing the praising

(3-6) high level, general discussion of YHWH's greatness

(7-9) high level, general discussion of YHWH's compassion

(10-13) detail of YHWH's greatness (kingdom)

(14-20) detail of YHWH's compassion (love, closeness, provision)

(21) Conclusion, announcing the Psalmist's praise again

Study in Psalm 110

2009-03-19T11:13:00.003Z

Outline the 4-part structure

(1) YHWH makes ‘my Lord’ a triumphant ruler

(2-3) YHWH extends his rule, and he has a great army of volunteers

(4) YHWH makes ‘my Lord’ a priest after Melchizedek

(5-7) ‘my Lord’ will shatter kings, bring judgement, and be refreshed and vindicated.

Draw pictures of…
verse 1
verses 2-3
verses 5-7

Notice who is doing the speaking, who is addressed in each scene, where they are in relation to each other, what action is going on. This should bring up all sorts of questions and discussion about detail in the text. Notice particularly how the addressee changes in vv.5-7; the ‘you’ there is YHWH, as the Psalmist directly speaks to God about this ‘Lord’. Thus in the last picture the figures are sitting/standing in the same way as in the first]

What are the jobs of “my Lord” through the Psalm?

So who is this Lord?

for Melchizedek, read Genesis 14 and Hebrews 5:1-10 & Hebrews 7, noting that Melchizedek was king of {Jeru}Salem long before David…

Jesus confronts the authorities with Psalm 110 in Mark 12. Confrontation and legitimacy of rule are key points in the crescendo of clashes in the Temple courts – these are the very themes of the Psalm. By the time we get to Jesus’ use of Psalm 110 he has batted away the attacks and is going on the offensive himself

Re-tell the 4-part story outline of the Psalm to help you learn it.

Where are we in the Psalm?
Hopefully the volunteers of verse 3. This is a spiritual battle, Ephesians 6.