Essentials

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Written by: Tony Nichols

“Child, Arise – A Spiritual Handbook For Survivors Of Sexual Abuse”
by Jane N Dowling, David Lovell Publishing, Melbourne, 2015.
(awarded the National Christian Book Award by SPCKA/Sparklit)

“Child Arise” by Jane Dowling is a Christian “Handbook for Survivors of Sexual Abuse”,  especially abuse by clergy. The book is a gentle, almost tremulous, series of personal reflections on Biblical passages, whose genesis lies in her fearful preparations to appear before the Royal Commission for Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is a book by a victim for other victims by one who has spent countless hours meditating on the Scriptures and applying them to her own situation.

Evangelical Christians might be surprised that a Roman Catholic author can so powerfully apply Bible passages to the painful journey of survival, without ignoring the original context of the texts chosen, and their place in the unfolding scheme of Divine revelation. “Child, Arise” helps the reader feel the pain, shame and paralysis of victims of sexual abuse, but provides inspiration, encouragement and hope from prayerful reflection on the words of God.
 
A.H (Tony) Nichols.

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Written by: Thom Bull

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:32.) Mary’s words to Jesus when he finally arrives in Bethany, three days later than requested and four days after Lazarus has been put in the tomb, carry all the pain and disappointment of one who feels that the Lord has completely let her down. Martha manages to retain some hope in Jesus’ ability to do something for her brother, though she doesn’t seem to know what, exactly (11:21-24); Mary, though, voices no such hope: We called you, you didn’t turn up, and now it’s too late.

What Mary and Martha don’t know, however, is why Jesus didn’t come earlier, as soon as they sent word to him of Lazarus’s illness. It wasn’t, as they might imagine, due to distraction, or procrastination, or laziness; it was in fact, paradoxically, due to love: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” (11:5-6.) Notice carefully what is being said there – it’s not despite the fact that Jesus loved them that he waited (though some translations, most notably the NRSV, render it this way); it’s specifically because he loved them that he waited. Out of his love for this family, Jesus didn’t come immediately, arriving in time to heal Lazarus’s sickness. Rather, he hung back longer where he was, on the other side of the Jordan, so as to allow Lazarus to die.

And this raises the obvious question of how that could possibly have been the more loving course to take. Surely the more compassionate response would have been to act immediately on Mary and Martha’s message, spare them from grief and spare Lazarus from death. What kind of love would stand back and allow this horrible thing to take place? The answer is given to us by Jesus himself: it is a love that intends to display a greater glory. When he is informed of Lazarus’s illness, right before John tells us that love motivated his delay, Jesus says “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (11:4). Jesus will love Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, not by keeping them from such a painful event, but by letting it come, because he deems that they will more clearly see who he is as he rescues them from the midst of the mess, than if he keeps the mess from overwhelming them in the first place. And giving them a clearer view of who he is – that is the most loving thing he can do for them, or for anyone.

Of course, as Jesus arrives in Bethany, all this is hidden from Mary. Jesus doesn’t explain his purposes to her. She doesn’t see someone acting out of love towards her and her family, she only sees a Lord who apparently shelved her request, neglected to show up when he was needed, and failed her brother. But in a few moments she will accompany him to the tomb, and as he calls the dead man out, she will see the fuller glory of the one whose word can not only heal the sick, but can give life to the dead – the word of the one who has life in himself (5:25-26).  

Now at this point, it would be tempting to draw a simplistic theodicy from all of this – to see tragedy as something purposed by God in a straightforward way for his glory, and therefore as something which, while we might not recognise it at the time, is essentially good. We ought to resist that temptation. The fact that Jesus weeps and feels rage in the face of death (11:33, 35) shows that death remains in itself an unqualified evil, even as Jesus uses it as the occasion of his glory. Rather, as Jesus allows Lazarus to die and then raises him, that death comes to magnify the Son’s glory, not as we might – as a willing and obedient servant with a positive place in the Father’s purposes – but rather as, in those purposes, it is entirely trampled down. It is only in its defeat and negation that death serves the glory of the Son. And indeed, the defeat which begins beside the tomb of Lazarus will be concluded in several chapter’s time, after the Father has glorified his Son in his death, and he himself emerges from the tomb – this time with the bands of death left behind (cp. 11:44; 20:6-7), and its power definitively broken.

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Written by: Martin Bleby

Martin Bleby

Marriage, in the words of the marriage service, ‘is an honourable state of life, instituted from the beginning by God himself, signifying to us the spiritual union that is between Christ and his Church’

Is the linking of our marriages to the relationship of Jesus Christ with his people just a nice idea, an interesting likeness, a helpful symbol? Or is there more to it than that? Could the relationship between Christ and his Church be a key to understanding what marriage is really all about, especially in these days of contesting uncertainty as to the true nature and value of marriage?

Might it take us further—even to the heart of the purpose for which all things exist?

Christ and his Church

In the Bible, God’s purpose for his creation culminates in the marriage of Christ with his Church. In the new heaven and new earth, God’s people are depicted as ‘a bride adorned for her husband’, and we hear that ‘the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready’.

Paul the apostle links marriage in this age with that ultimate marriage of Christ with his people in Ephesians 5:31–32. First he quotes God’s institution of marriage in Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”. From the context, we would expect him to say that he is applying this text to the marriage of a man and a woman. But he goes on to say: ‘This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church’.

Paul is saying that when God in the beginning instituted marriage between a man and a woman, what God had in view was the relationship that would come to be in the end between Christ and his people. It’s as if God was thinking: ‘What can I do, to give these human creatures of mine a taste of how much I love them? I’ll make them male and female, and bring them together in a fruitful, devoted and life-long union.’

American theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) came to this conclusion:

The end of the creation of God was to provide a spouse for his Son Jesus Christ, that might enjoy him and on whom he might pour forth his love. . . . heaven and earth were created that the Son of God might be complete in a spouse . . . There was, [as] it were, an eternal society or family in the Godhead, in the Trinity of persons. It seems to be God’s design to admit the church into the divine family as his son’s wife.

Geoffrey Bromiley sees this union with Christ as ‘the prototype of the marital union’, not the other way round, since God ‘made marriage in the image of his own eternal marriage with his people’:

In creating man—male and female—in his own image, and joining them together so that they become one flesh, God makes us copies both of himself in his trinitarian unity and distinction as one God and three persons and of himself in relation to the people of his gracious election.

Hence ‘We know the true reality of marriage from God’s way of dealing with us and the inward and eternal fellowship that he establishes’.   Every marriage is intended to be a reflection of, and can be a participation in, this great reality that will culminate in the union, in Christ, of God with his people.

Christian Marriage

What are the implications of this for marriage as it has taken shape in Christian understanding and practice?

Marriage is ‘the legal union of a man with a woman for life’. The word is also used for ‘the legal or religious ceremony that sanctions or formalises the decision of a man and a woman to live as husband and wife’.  Elements that make it a marriage, as distinct from other forms of union or relationship, are that it is between a man and a woman, by the consent and decision of both parties; it is recognised and affirmed by the wider community according to the law of the land, and it is witnessed to in a formal ceremony. These elements are common to humanity across most cultures.

Marriage, according to law in Australia, is ‘the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life’.  This understanding of marriage largely accords with Christian belief and practice. Since the New Testament trains husbands to love their wives, and wives to love their husbands,  a Christian definition could be expanded to be ‘the union in mutual love of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life’.

Pressure from expressions of marriage as practiced or desired by diverse cultural and interest groups raises questions as to why marriage should be this way. Can same-sex unions be regarded as marriage? Why not polygamy (a number of wives—as found in the Old Testament), or polyandry (a number of husbands), or a mixture of both? What about arranged, or under-age marriages? Does marriage need to be permanent? Why bother to get married at all—why not just cohabitation?

In this context, Christians who want to support and commend the Christian understanding and experience of marriage need to be clear as to its basis. Is it all about the sexual relationship? Is it just a private arrangement for mutual convenience? Is it mainly for reproduction and the raising of offspring? Is it a communal construct for the better ordering of society? Is it primarily a legal contract regarding the sharing of property? Is companionship its main emphasis? Marriage based solely on any or each of these views will take on a particular character, and will have its own cut-off points. But what if marriage, more deeply than all of these, is grounded in the intentional purpose of our Creator for humanity? In particular, if the basis of marriage is the relationship between Christ and his Church, what is it about this relationship that makes marriage what Christians now know it to be?

the union

Christ became one flesh with us, and in our flesh took the condemnation due to our sin, in his suffering and death—you can’t get closer to anyone than that.  So marriage is the honouring of the other person ‘with all that I am and all that I have’.

in mutual love

God’s saving action in relationship with us comes about entirely by God’s love—‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son’. ‘Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . he nourishes and tenderly cares for it’ as his own body. In turn, we are to ‘have an undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ’.  Hence a husband and wife are ‘to love and to cherish’ one another.

of a man and a woman

The creation of human persons as male and female, differentiated and yet of the same substance, is linked in the Scriptures with us being in the image of God, and with the differentiation-in-unity within God between the Father and the Son. The coming-together of man and woman in marriage is also linked with the relationship of God in Christ with his people—markedly distinct, yet with an amazing affinity.  In reflection of this, marriage, in scripture, is between a man and a woman, not between a woman and a woman, or a man and a man.

to the exclusion of all others

Christ, the ‘Faithful and True’, is single-hearted and undistracted in his saving love for his people. By the same token, we are to have ‘a sincere and pure devotion to Christ’.  So marriage has the character of ‘close your heart to every love but mine’, and ‘forsaking all others’.

voluntarily entered into
God is not obliged to relate with human beings, ‘as though he needed anything’—he chooses to do so out of love.  In that, God has made us to ‘feel after him and find him’.  Christ of his own freewill engaged in carrying out God’s purpose, and we come into true freedom as we relate with him.  Before the vows are made in a marriage service, the couple are asked the preliminary question, ‘will you [are you willing to] take this woman/this man . . . ?’—of your own freewill, without compulsion.

for life

Jesus, ‘having loved his own . . . loved them to the end’.  So marriage is ‘till death us do part’, for ‘as long as we both shall live’.

We see then that marriage as Christians have come to understand and practice it derives from and is shaped by our knowledge and experience of Christ’s relationship with us. And God’s relationship with us in Christ lies at the heart of God’s purpose for this world.

Marriage and the Purpose of God

God purpose for the world is perhaps best expressed in Ephesians 1:3–6:

the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

• Note three particular elements here:
• ‘adoption as his children’—the forming of a family.
• ‘holy and blameless before him’—positive moral purity.
• ‘in love’—issuing from God’s love, resulting in us loving.

Interestingly, these correspond to the purposes given in Christian marriage services for which God instituted marriage—having families and bringing them up, sexual purity and faithfulness, and loving companionship:

• ‘it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name’.  As expressed in a more recent form of the marriage service: ‘In marriage a new family is established in accordance with God’s purpose, so that children may be born and nurtured in secure and loving care, for their well-being and instruction, and for the good order of society, to the glory of God’.
• ‘it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication’.  Modern marriage services say it less directly, yet positively, as ‘the proper expression of natural instincts and affections’ with which God has endowed us, or living ‘a chaste and holy life, as befits members of Christ’s body’.
• ‘it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity’.  ‘In the joys and sorrows of life, in prosperity and adversity, they share their companionship, faithfulness and strength’.

These three ‘purposes’, derived from the New Testament Scriptures, were commonplaces of mediaeval scholastic theology, and were expounded at length in early Calvinistic services. They were introduced into the English prayer book in 1549, and so were included in the Book of Common Prayer of 1662.  From there they have made their way, in various forms, into later marriage services. Here they are given in the original order: family, sexual purity, and loving companionship. More recent services have reversed this order, giving priority to loving companionship and the sexual relationship, with family issuing from that. Either way, they clearly correspond to the greater purpose of God for humanity, as expressed in Ephesians 1:3–6.

The Struggle for Marriage

Given this correspondence, it is not difficult to see why marriage should come under attack, consciously or unconsciously, from those who at present are not aligned with the purpose of God, since it represents in practice that from which they are alienated, or against which they are opposed. A friend who works in human services heard a colleague once say, ‘I hate Jesus, and I hate marriage!’ Interesting that she put those two together. She went on to ask my friend, ‘You’re not one of those Jesus freaks, are you?’ and my friend replied, ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am’.

How should we engage in this struggle? In favour of retaining marriage as it is, it can be well argued that ‘a kid should have a mum and a dad’, and that marriage is a ‘central structure of human nature . . . which has underpinned the wellbeing of society’.  There is a place for participating in the public discourse at that level. But there is much more that we can say—and are we not called upon to do so? Why are we hesitant to speak of God in this context? Can we not say that marriage is a sacred bond, instituted by our Creator in making us male and female in the first place; that it is a living sign in our midst of our intended union with God, now and into eternity; and that to change or extend marriage to include other relationships is ultimately to undermine and discard true marriage, and all that it stands for, to our great harm?

Even better, should we not be doing all we can to bring more people through faith and repentance into that relationship with Christ, so that marriage in our community may continue to take its shape from him, and from his relationship with us?

The Secret of the Universe

Is all this just fanciful, out of touch, and irrelevant to where people are in their lives today? A story to finish:

A number of years ago in January we were staying at Victor Harbor, a seaside resort on South Australia’s southern coast. One afternoon we went for a walk to Granite Island across the causeway. At that time there was a chairlift from the end of the causeway to the highest point on the island. Our youngest son wanted a ride on the chairlift, so we put him and his mate on the chairlift, to go up to the top of the hill and down again, and we stayed chatting with the chairlift operator, who seemed to want to talk with us. A very interesting fellow. He was sitting there, getting rather bored, but watching the people come across the causeway, and thinking deeply. Called himself quite a spiritual person, and told us of one or two experiences that made him think this was so. Told us how he had been in and out of churches, but how he believed in God. I had not identified myself as a Christian or a minister—he just came out with all this. He ended up telling us about his marriage. How, when he met his wife, this was one relationship that did not chill off after a while, like all the others had, but remained and grew, and drew him out of himself into the life of another person. And he said, ‘Do you know why I think we get married? It’s not just to have children and raise a family. It is to discover the secret of the universe. I really mean, of God.’

We need to trust that the Holy Spirit is out there, bringing God’s truth to bear in the lives of people—including this chairlift operator!

Martin Bleby, ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church, has served in country, outback and metropolitan South Australia, in the cross-denominational New Creation Teaching Ministry, and as a Chairman of CMS Australia. Now ‘retired’, he remains active in preaching and teaching. He has authored a number of books, including ‘Marriage and the Good News of God’, now out of print but able to be downloaded in pdf format for free from:
 http://www.newcreationlibrary.net/books/covers/423.htm
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Written by: Richard Condie

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans – Australia

FCA Australia is part of a world-wide fellowship of Anglicans who “confess” the Jerusalem Declaration as a contemporary statement of orthodox Anglican faith. It was born out of the first Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) which was held in Jerusalem in 2008. FCA/GAFCON is a movement within the Anglican communion to continue to reform the Anglican church by the biblical gospel.

FCA has two main aims. The first aim is to promote orthodox Anglican faith and practice. We believe this orthodoxy is summed up in the Jerusalem Declaration, and is also upheld in a plain reading of the Fundamental Declarations of the Constitution of the Anglican Church in Australia. FCA-Australia intend to meet this aim through conferences, papers and lectures where we try and contribute to educating people in this faith. We believe doing this will help heal, reform and revitalise our mission in the world.

Our second aim is to provide fellowship for orthodox Anglicans who find themselves in a minority position in their own Dioceses due to actions of others who depart from orthodox faith and practice.

Read more: The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans – Australia

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Written by: Chris Appleby

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse continues its work in Newcastle as this issue of Essentials is being prepared. All dioceses of Australia have been affected by the Commission and its requests for information and its public hearings.  It is painful to hear how the Lord’s sheep have been so badly abused and mistreated. As well some feel as though it has “sucked the oxygen out” of the leadership of the church.

There is a strong motivation to retreat from it all. Not to hear any more reports. To retreat to whatever spiritual comfort zone we prefer and get on with an un-engagement with the bad world out there.

Child abuse is not the only stress point for us. The ongoing debates about marriage, sexuality and, more so now, gender add further motivation to keep our heads down. What seemed to be a simple matter of redefining marriage turns out to be part of a much larger social reconstruction of identity and human relationships. Where did this come from some of us ask? And what do we do with it?

In this issue we have some helpful examples of how to apply the scriptures to these issues. It is encouraging that applying the scriptures is still a good idea. More than a good idea. We should expect that the Creator who has revealed himself in word and deed, and spoken by his Son, should have provided sufficient revelation for us to be able understand how to respond to these changes.

But it is apparent that applying the scriptures is not always a simple matter. This is partly because often “the issue is not the issue”. That is why thoughtful analyses of the issues, such as we have in this Issue of Essentials, needs to go hand in hand with applying the scriptures.

Although it feels that we are reacting in these debates, they are also exposing open doors for the gospel as they reveal how some people are thinking. It may look a lot like Romans 1 but Romans 3 still describes what God can do. And wants to do. And is doing. Through disciples who have the scriptures and the Spirit.

Dale Appleby

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Written by: Daniel Patterson

A Brief History of Gender and its Significance

Daniel Patterson

Dan Patterson is an Australian writing a PhD on gender at the University of Aberdeen School of Divinity, History and Philosophy. He co-ordinates www.embraceidentity.org

Introduction

The topic of gender has recently captured the public’s attention. One reason for this is the radical attempt by some organisations and theorists to “queer” gender. What follows describes, albeit in brief, the historical and theoretical backstory that has lead to the development and use of queer theory to achieve this end. Evangelical responses to this issue will be greatly enriched by better understanding the history that has brought us to this point. This article is not an attempt to engage the debate, but is focussed on the more modest task of explaining the historical and theoretical parameters of the debate. 

A Very Brief History

Questioning gender norms in the past has catalysed significant changes to culturally embedded gender norms. Following is a brief recount of how gender has been under question for over 100 years, and how each new wave of questioning of gender norms can be characterised by distinct emphases falling under the broad banner called feminism. The historical questioning of gender norms can be divided broadly into three feminist waves, each offering a depth of social analysis the previous wave did not achieve. 
It is not accurate to say that queer theory is feminism or even a kind of feminism, but one is able to identify queer theorisation as having emerged from and in response to perceived inadequacies of a particular formulation of feminism of the 1980s.¹  

Read more: A brief history of gender