Well, it's the night before term begins, a time for all teachers to dread, but at least it's a student free day and my old mate Gerard from itcpublications.com.au is coming to school to improve our pedagogy. I've been hoping for this for some time, so fingers crossed it all goes well. It'll be good to see GPA again anyway.
On Anglican matters, I finally got a chance today to listen again to a sermon I heard a couple of months ago from Bishop Tom Frame. He was kind of plugging his latest book which is called Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia (or something like that), but expanded it to include comments on what we can do about it. It was one of the most motivational sermons I've heard in quite a while, really inspiring! Shame I don't think I'd be allowed to post it somewhere, but then again I guess I've given him a plug now...
In other related matters, I read a book recently called I Found God in Bermuda: Faith for the 21st Century by Rev. Steven Ogden, currently Principal of St Francis Theological College. It was good reading for the most part, though it suggests what seems close to a non-supernatural proposal for Christianity in the future. Now, this is not big news for people who've heard of John Robinson, Don Cupitt, John Shelby Spong etc, but I guess it may ruffle a few feathers. The interesting thing about the Ogden book is his focus on God's presence and, importantly, God's absence when suffering occurs (and by golly there's been a lot of that in the Asia-Pacific of late - typhoons in Philippines / Taiwan; floods in India; tsunamis in Samoa, etc). His idea is that we stop thinking of an interventionist, supernatural God and recognise God as existing in the web of human relationships. He deals pretty briefly with the resurrection, except to say "something happened" and that it has to be understood symbolically. It seems weird, but I hadn't really looked into the resurrection much before, so I googled it and went from there.
There are an astounding list of arguments for and against a literal interpretation of the recurrection, and I won't run through them all here. After reading a list of the pro-literal, I felt strong in that belief. Then I read a list of the responses from atheists, and changed my mind. After reading Ogden again and Spong's book about saving the Bible from fundamentalists, I think I am now somewhere in the middle, still trying to sort it out. I agree with Spong and others that the gospel accounts are very hard to reconcile. I was particularly disturbed by the verses in late Matthew, suggesting that zombies were seen walking around etc! I'd forgotten about those.
I was also disturbed by a quote from Phillip Yancey, where he says he finds the account of the Ascension to be a serious problem in terms of believing the accounts of the resurrection, and I know what he means. I'll need to read more about these things, but I felt heartened by John Spong, I must say. The meaning of the resurrection continues to be essential, he says, but we need to find a way of adjusting the Christian mindset to handle the non-literal interpretations and this is crucial. More about this to come.
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