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• May 15, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  Church of the Barefoot Runner

  

  (Not my foot)

  In the past few weeks, in lieu of any theological heavy-lifting, I’ve been reading a lot about barefoot running. As with most things, I’m more theorist than practitioner – it’s so much more fun to read about running than actually to run. But I’ve noticed some interesting parallels between barefoot running and the church.

  The barefoot running community is full of barefoot evangelists, eager to show and tell the benefits of a barefoot lifestyle.

  There are barefoot churches, where people in a particular neighbourhood assemble once a week to experience the joy of running together unshod.

  There are (many) credobaptist barefoot runners, who all have their own personal barefoot testimony, which all sound…remarkably alike. “Once I ran in shoes and suffered from plantar fasciitis, anterior shin splints, patella tendonitis. Then I read Born to Run and accepted barefoot running into my heart. Now I run 60 miles a week injury-free.”

  Then there are the paedobaptist barefoot runners, who emphasize that they were born without shoes, already members of the barefoot covenant community, and who sincerely hope their children will never know a day apart from being barefoot.

  There’s jargon that’s impenetrable to the outsider but much loved by the insiders (cadence, loading rate, impact transient). Better yet, some of it is Latin technical vocabulary that people have been using since the days when people actually knew what Latin words meant (plantar fascia,  patella tendonitis, anterior, posterior).

  There are barefoot fanatics, who habitually use extreme hyperbole – shoes as foot coffins, anyone? – and treat people who disagree with them as idiots.

  There are the liberal barefoot runners, who claim the name barefoot but own and wear any number of $150 “barefoot” running shoes.

  Then there are the mainliners, who prefer the adjective “minimalist”, and emphasise that the issue isn’t running barefoot per se, but barefoot running style, and any kind of shoe is fine if it works for you.

  In contrast, some barefooters are culture warriors, faithful Davids fighting the demonically inspired conspiracy of Nike, with its evil cultural influence and billions of dollars.

  There’s the barefoot Bible. (Have you read Born to Run?)…

  …and barefoot conferences, like the NYC Barefoot Run, where runners can meet and learn from barefoot celebrity teachers like Christopher McDougall, Dr. Phil Maffetone, and Barefoot Ken Bob Saxton …

  …and barefoot blogs (with plenty of pointless arguments in the comments), podcasts, how-to books. Though so far no-one seems to have tried a multi-site video-linked barefoot event.

  There are even a few barefoot pastor-theologians, who are MDs and runners, and who shepherd their local barefoot community and research and write for a wider barefoot audience.

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason

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• February 15, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  As Comprehensive as the Scriptures

  Jaroslav Pelikan’s comments on Augustine’s method in dealing with law and grace highlights the problem with some contemporary accounts: they emphasise one aspect of Scripture’s teaching while ignoring or downplaying other aspects. I believe in systematicity in theology, but I’m increasingly suspicious of a rush to system; and I think that, for commendable pastoral and homiletical reasons, that can be a besetting problem for pastors and preachers.

  Augustine managed to hold together what Augustinians have often tended to separate. In his piety and preaching, if not always in his theology, the paradox of grace as sovereign, as necessary, and as mediated transcended the alternatives inherent in it. And so he could write: “By the law is the knowledge of sin, by faith the acquisition of grace against sin, by grace the healing of the soul from the fault of sin, by the health of the soul the freedom of the will, by free will the love of righteousness, by love of righteousness the accomplishment of the law. Thus as the law is not made void but established through faith, since faith obtains the grace by which the law is fulfilled; so free will is not made void but established through grace, since grace cures the will, by which righteousness is loved freely.”

  These disparate elements could be held together because “all the stages which I have here connected together in their successive links have severally their proper voices in the sacred Scriptures,” and Augustine sought to be as comprehensive as the Scriptures themselves. He acknowledged the limitations of theology as an expression of this comprehensiveness.

  (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 306-307, quoting Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, 30.52. Paragraph break and emphasis mine.)

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason | Theological Method | grace

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• February 14, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  I want him as my patron saint

  Sometimes one can’t help warming to someone.

  He was a small shrunken vivid man, bald-headed, with a long red beard and red eyebrows like Athanasius, wrinkled, nearly always in pain, haggard with vigils and fastings….He feared no one. He had an uruly humor. He is the only man who is known to have dared to laugh at Basil. He was quick-tempered, sullen, unhappy in the company of most people, strangely remote from the world. Appointed to the Patriarchate of Constantinople against his will, he found it Arian and in a few swift months converted it to the orthodox faith. He was the first Christian poet, and wrote prose so angelically, and throughout his life gloried in the Greek poet Pindar, who celebrated athletes and spoke only of human glory. He loved God, and then the art of letters, and then men – in that order.
  (Robert Payne on of Gregory Nazianzus, quoted in Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, IVP, 1998, p. 65.)

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason | patristics

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• January 31, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  The Game of Temptation, Maturation, and the Obedience of Christ

  This isn’t the most refined illustration; it popped into my mind as I was teaching a lesson on the person of Christ this morning, but I think it works (though it needs room for an already-not yet eschatology and the gift of the Spirit). For its full effect, however, it relies on the British version of the game of Chutes and Ladders—Snakes and Ladders.

  God’s goal in creation was always that humanity, in dependence on his grace and obedience to his word, should advance, with all creation, from square 1 (immaturity) to square 100 (maturity, glory)—”Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion”. However (and here’s why our version of the game matters!), the snake got Adam, and he slid, not just back to square one, but off the board completely (and here’s where the illustration stretches, or maybe breaks!).

  The Word became flesh, as the Last Adam, not to put us back to square one. Salvation doesn’t take us back to Eden. The end is better than the beginning. Jesus’ obedience and death does get us back on the board, but because of his resurrection, not at square one, but at 100, the goal of the game. He fulfilled Adam’s role and atoned for Adam’s sin advance us to full, glorified, mature humanity.

  Categories: Biblical Theology | Christology | General | Matthew Mason

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• January 30, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  The Don on the Church in the UK

  One of the things I’ve learned in 2+ years in DC is that it takes a long time to understand a different culture in any meaningful way, particularly when the cultural gap seems, in many ways, so small. It takes a similarly long time to begin to understand the church situation in a new country. I’m all too aware that US culture is far from monochrome, and my understanding of the church in the USA is mediated by my experience in DC, which is peculiar in any number of ways. I doubt I’m even close to “getting” the church in the rural south, for example. In fact, I’m not even close to getting the African American church scene in my own city. I suspect, given the shape of the religious landscape in England, that I have more of a sense of conditions in the urban areas of New England, though even then the lack of an established church makes significant differences.

  I have opinions (of course!) about the church in the US as compared to the church in the UK. But I still don’t feel competent to comment too strongly or broadly; two weeks ago I was at a conference for Anglicans in my denomination, and was struck how different the conference and its attenders felt compared with similar events in England. This was in part cultural. But in significant part it was also due to the different histories, influences, and cultural locations of the Church of England compared with the Episcopal church and continuing Anglican denominations, and of evangelicals within those different denominations.

  All this is to say, I really appreciated Don Carson’s comments on the church in the UK, not least because they come from a seasoned Christian leader who has a lot of experience of what he speaks, and a broad knowledge of the church in many parts of the world. His experience enables him to speak thoughtfully, charitably, and wisely, and encouragingly about the great gospel needs across the pond and also the signs of God’s great grace to us.

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason

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• January 13, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  The Great Value of Christian Scholarship

  The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament. (Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations)

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason | Pastor-theologian | biblical studies

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• January 9, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  Protecting the Bride in the Garden

  In Genesis 2, God gave Adam the priestly task of guarding and serving the Garden. By implication, that included guarding and serving everything in the Garden, including his bride. But when the serpent entered the garden and attacked the bride with a food test, Adam stood by, using his wife as a shield to protect his own life by seeing if eating the forbidden fruit really would lead to death.

  In John 13:26-28, Judas fails a food test and satan enters him. Then, in John 18, in the person of Judas, satan enters a garden again, this time with an army.  Jesus steps forward and identifies himself, commanding the soldiers to let his disciples go. The new Adam protects the bride in the garden, and so goes to his death.

  Categories: General | John's Gospel | Matthew Mason

  3 Comments

• January 6, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  The BFG

  Now for something a little different, inspired by my older daughter’s latest literary craze, because reading is for pleasure and wannabe theologians need to learn how to write.

  The Giant picked up the trembling Sophie with one hand and carried her across the cave and put her on the table.

  Now he really is going to eat me, Sophie thought.

  The Giant sat down and stared hard at Sophie. He had truly enormous ears. Each one was as big as the wheel of a truck and he seemed to be able to move them inwards and outwards from his head as he wished.

  “I is hungry!” the Giant boomed. He grinned, showing massive square teeth. The teeth were very white and very square and they sat in his mouth like huge slices of white bread.

  “P…please don’t eat me,” Sophie stammered.

  The Giant let out a bellow of laughter. “Just because I is a giant, you think I is a man-gobbling cannybull!” he shouted. “You is about right! Giants is all cannybully and murderful! And they does gobble up human beans! We is in Giant Country now! Giants is everywhere around! Out there us has the famous Bonecrunching Giant! Bonecrunching Giant crunches up two wopsey whiffling human beans for supper every night! Noise is earbursting! Noise of crunching bones goes crackety-crack for miles around!”

  “Owch!” Sophie said.

  “Bonecrunching Giant only gobbles human beans from Turkey,” the Giant said. “Every night Bonecruncher is galloping off to Turkey to gobble Turks.”

  Sophie’s sense of patriotism was suddenly so bruised by this remark that she became quite angry. “Why Turks?” she blurted out. “What’s wrong with the English?”

  “Bonecrunching Giant says Turks is tasting oh ever so much juicier and more scrumdiddlyumptious! Boncruncher says Turkish human beans has a glamourly flavour. He says Turks from Turkey is tasting of turkey.”

  “I suppose they would,” Sophie said.

  “Of course they would!” the Giant shouted. “Every human bean is diddly and different. Some is scrumdiddlyumptious and some is uckyslush. Greeks is all full of uckyslush. No giant is eating Greeks, ever.”

  “Why not?” Sophie asked.

  “Greeks from Greece is all tasting greasy,” the Giant said.

  “I imagine that’s possible too,” Sophie said. She was wondering with a bit of a tremble what all this talking about eating people was leading up to. Whatever happened, she simply must play along with this peculiar giant and smile at his jokes.

  But were they jokes? Perhaps the great brute was just working up an appetite by talking about food.

  “As I am saying,” the Giant went on, “all human beans is having different flavours. Human beans from Panama is tasting very strong of hats.”

  “Why hats?” Sophie said.

  “You is not very clever,” the Giant said, moving his great ears in and out. “I thought all human beans is full of brains, but your head is emptier than a bundongle.”

  “Do you like vegetables?” Sophie asked, hoping to steer the conversation towards a slightly less dangerous kind of food.

  “You is trying to change the subject,” the Giant said sternly. “We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.”

  “Oh, but the bean is a vegetable,” Sophie said.

  “Not the human bean,” the Giant said. “The human bean has two legs and a vegetable has no legs at all.”

  Sophie didn’t argue any more. The last thing she wanted to do was to make the Giant cross.

  “The human bean,” the Giant went on, “is coming in dillions of different flavours. For instance, human beans from Wales is tasting very whooshey of fish. There is something very fishy about Wales.”

  “You means whales,” Sophie said. “Wales is something quite different.”

  “Wales is whales,” the Giant said. “Don’t gobblefunk around with words. I will now give you another example. Human beans from Jersey has a most disgustable woolly tickle on the tongue,” the Giant said. “Human beans from Jersey is tasting of cardigans.”

  “You mean jerseys,” Sophie said.

  “You are once again gobblefunking!” the Giant shouted. “Don’t do it! This is a serious and snitching subject. May I continue?”

  “Please do,” Sophie said.

  “Danes from Denmark is tasting ever so much of dogs,” the Giant went on.

  “Of course, “Sophie said. “They tast of great danes.”

  “Wrong!” cried the Giant, slapping his thigh. “Danes from Denmark is tasting doggy because they is tasting of labradors!”

  “Then what do the people of Labrador taste of?” Sophie asked.

  “Danes,” the Giant cried, triumphantly. “Great danes!”

  “Aren’t you getting a bit mixed up?” Sophie said.

  “I is a very mixed up Giant,” the Giant said. “But I does do my best. And I is not nearly as mixed up as the other giants. I know one who gallops all the way to Wellington for his supper.”

  “Wellington?” Sophie said. “Where is Wellington?”

  “You head is full of squashed flies,” the Giant said, “Wellington is in New Zealand. The human beans in Wellington has an especially scrumdiddlyumptious taste, so says the Welly-eating Giant.”

  “What do the people of Wellington taste of? Sophie asked.

  “Boots,” said the Giant.

  “Of course,” Sophie said. “I should have known.

  Sophie decided that this conversation had now gone on long enough. If she was going to be eaten, she’d rather get it over and done with right away than be kept hanging around any more. “What sort of human beings to you eat?” she asked, trembling.

  “Me!” shouted the Giant, his mighty voice making the glass jars rattle on the shelves. “Me gobbling up human beans! This I never! The others, yes! All the others is gobbling them up every night, but not me! I is a freaky Giant! I is a nice and jumbly Giant! I is the only nice and jumbly Giant in Giant Country! I is THE BIG FRIENDLY GIANT! I is the BFG. What is your name.”

  “My name is Sophie,” Sophie said, hardly daring to believe the good news she had just heard.

  (From The BFG by Roald Dahl.)

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason | writing

  1 Comment

• December 20, 2011 by Matthew Mason

  Kantzer Lectures Online

  In September, Prof. Bruce McCormack delivered the third series of Kantzer lectures: “The God who graciously elects: seven lectures on the doctrine of God.” I was sorry to miss them, being in the wrong city and unable to watch the live streams. Happily, the audio and video are now available online. McCormack is undeniably brilliant but also, shall we say, provocative, both as an interpreter of Barth and in his own constructive dogmatic work. Judging from what I’ve read of his, and from the reports I’ve heard of the lectures, he’s also something of a theological pugilist. I suspect I’m going to enjoy the lectures, learn from them, and disagree in something like equal measure.

  Categories: Doctrine of God | General | Matthew Mason | Systematic Theology

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• December 12, 2011 by Matthew Mason

  drawn into the text

  Like many of my generation, I received a solid grounding in the historical approach to the Scriptures. I studied the biblical languages, became familiar with the best lexicons and concordances, mastered the literary techniques used in biblical studies – after taking my Ph.D. in patristics I went to Germany for a year primarily to study form criticism – did the historical work to understand the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world, studied Jewish exegesis, read many modern scholarly studies. Historical criticism is part of my intellectual makeup and I have no desire to jettison the results of modern biblical scholarship.

  But it was only as I took seriously the exegesis of the church fathers (which was uncommon when I was trained in patristics) and read their biblical commentaries that I began to enter deeply into the language and idiom of the Bible. Paradoxically it was only as I immersed myself in the old that I find myself discovering the new – things I never imagined would be there. And much to my delight I could say with Augustine, “In my needy life, Lord, my heart is much exercised by the pounding of the words of your holy Scripture.” (R. L. Wilken, ‘Interpreting the Bible as Bible’, JTI 4.1 (2010): 12f.)

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason | biblical studies | patristics

  2 Comments