MetaCatholic

My copy of Ἄρειος Ποτὴρ καὶ ἡ τοῦ φιλοσόφου λίθος actually comes with a bookmark sewn into the binding, a refinement possessed neither by Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, nor even Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis . When an English story gets this kind of treatment (think Winnie Ille Pu) you know you have left the normal canons of criticism crumbling in the dust. In trying to say anything at all about the series for John Hobbins’ children’s book blogathon, I am dealing with a phenomenon.

I note a couple of revealing autobiographical snippets by way of declaring my commitments. Standing in line outside our local WH Smith’s for the midnight release of Half-Blood Prince, I was behind a group of university students. One asked another: “Are you going for the children’s or adult edition?”. The answer was “The children’s. What’s the point in pretending?” Two years later, as I was queuing in the same place for Deathly Hallows, a man tottered along, barely able to stay on his feet. He’d heard the supposed leak that Harry died in this book. and, despite the fact that he barely seemed to know where he was, he not only took in the queue, but clearly realised what it was for. He slurred a shout: “e diesh in thish one”. A nine year old stepped out of the queue and raised a wand, no doubt neither made of holly, nor having a phoenix feather core. He squeaked “Expelliamus” and the crowd cheered. Although there was no flash of red light, the drunk tottered off, disarmed. It is quite possible that Expelliamus has surpassed Abracadabra as the most used magic word.

What do I like about them myself? Despite some of the criticisms, I find them largely well written. I do not see vast complexity, or purple passages and overuse of words that need a dictionary as things having merit in themselves. Some of the earlier critics seem to. Rowling’s prose is rarely flashy, but always clear. She has, as becomes apparent particularly in the earlier stories with their greater lightness, an obvious and playful joy in words. This may be the cod Latin of some spells, or the name of places like Knockturn Alley, where the spelling takes you one way, and the pronunciation another, while ending up in the same horrid place. Yes, there are (particularly in some of the later books) places where one more edit might have been worth it, but overall I think she maintains a level sufficient both to draw 11 year-olds in and challenge them, while never appearing over-simple to adults. Whatever else anyone may say about the books they got children reading who normally would not, and what those children read is a type of English that they and we would do well to aim for: clear, expressive and communicative.

Again some have claimed that her characters are two-dimensional. Peripheral characters certainly lack full delineation, but I suspect the slow revelation of the stories of the central characters, the trio of heroes, Dumbledore and Snape would surprise some of those who levelled that criticism at the earlier books. Rowling is actually a master of the quickly drawn character sketch, and gives the reader enough to picture the character and flesh it out in imagination. The books are not so much character driven narratives anyway, and too much attention to character would probably slow them down. What they are, it seems to me, is plot-driven narratives in which the characters of Harry especially, but also Ron and Hermione, are shaped by the adventures and experiences of growing up in a time of crisis.

The leitmotif is in some ways revealed in the second story, when Dumbledore says to Harry: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” This theme, focussed particularly on the question of power, and how we use it, comes to dominate until it becomes explicit in the question of who is fit to master the powerful magical objects of the Deathly Hallows. It is, however, there from the beginning, threateningly obvious in the figure of Voldemort, but more subtly (and often comically) complemented in the mundane bullying of the Dursleys at home, and Malfoy at school. By the end, Harry both sees the remarkable similarity of himself, Voldemort and Snape, lonely and isolated children finding their real home in Hogwarts, and makes the choices that will leave his future very different. In the process he has to come to terms with the fallibility of his hero Dumbledore, and the moral ambiguity of Snape. As a backdrop (occasionally exploding into prominence) the machinations of those who hold bureaucratic power in the Ministry of Magic demonstrate the ways in which systems as well as individual choices can corrupt.

Looking back on the series, one of the most impressive features is the way the books grow up with their central characters. It is not just that the books become darker (a point observed repetitively by commentators to the point of tedium) but that the young people’s behaviour, emotions and ideas broaden and deepen in range. This is not fully realistic, for example, in the way that sexual encounter is confined to intensive snogging, but in terms of a balancing act of growing with older readers and still attracting those freshly coming to the books from eight or nine onwards, it is remarkably deft. In that light it is significant that where others seek to excuse Dumbledore for dreaming of power and glory with (the later to become dark wizard) Grindelwald, Harry remains clear that saying “well he was only young” is no excuse.

These are deeply moral books that don’t preach. By writing a plot- rather than character-driven story, Rowling creates a narrative in which the reader can put something of their own flesh on the characters, and also locate themselves within the story. “How would I fare? What would I choose?” are implicit questions for all who engage imaginatively with Harry in his world. That they are full of creative detail, delightfully engaging, genuinely funny, and powerfully page-turning as well makes them as complete an example of good literature for children as anyone could be fortunate to come across.

They are, quite simply, magic.

I’ve been reading Richard Burridge’s Imitating Jesus (Eerdemans 2007 ISBN 978-0-8028-4458-3), a book subtitled “An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics.” This is a book that has, at its heart, a very simple argument, worked out in detail in a number of quite densely argued chapters. The key proposal is that both the gospels, belonging to the genre of Graeco-Roman biography, and Paul, with a narrative substructure, testify to an interest in Jesus that is about deeds and not just sayings. Therefore a Christian ethics that pays attention to the New Testament (and the key gospel genre of biography) will be about imitating Jesus’ actions and not simply following his teaching.

Burridge works his way through the material beginning with the historical Jesus. He is aware of the problems involved in doing this, but because he is only offering a partial picture for limited purposes, avoids many of the pitfalls. He focuses on the double picture of a Jesus who welcomed “sinners” and at the same time summoned people to holy living in what Harvey called “Strenuous Commands”. This is a broad enough outline for even, say, Crossan and Wright to agree as a core historical picture. At the level of more detail it begins to lose consensus. For the definition of “sinners”, for example, Burridge steers a middle course between Jeremias’ “people of the land” and Sanders “notorious and unrepentant covenant breakers.” (I lean more in Sanders’ direction myself.) This doesn’t, I think, raise significant problems for the overall thesis, but it does affect some aspects. For Burridge (and for the majority outside the Jesus Seminar circles) eschatology is key to Jesus’ vision of discipleship and behaviour. He also notes that in calling people to follow him, Jesus also puts himself in a significant place in his ministry. Both these themes of eschatology and christology (as it becomes) then become a major part of how he focuses subsequent chapters of the book, together with a treatment in each section of the major ethical material under consideration (which, despite the church’s current obsession, is rarely sexual ethics).

In his section on Paul, he both places himself on the side of those who argue for Paul having more interest in Jesus than is often suggested, and alongside Hays, Wright and others who argue for implicit narratives providing a substructure to Pauline thought. Just as, focussing on Jesus, he held together the acceptance of the sinner with the demand for holiness, so he notes the same tension in Paul’s ministry. The members of Paul’s communities exhibit, shall we say, fairly varied forms of behaviour, regularly not those which Paul encourages them to change to (often using the language of imitation whether of Jesus, God or himself). Paul, he suggests, is follows Jesus in his balancing of inclusion and demand. In fact, I think the imitation of Christ is a far more important and pervasive theme for Paul than even Burridge does, and far too easily overlooked, but that this imitation includes both mutual welcome of those who are different, and the call to righteousness is something I fully agree with.

In the following four chapters Burridge moves through the gospels in an order congenial to the Farrer theory, though Burridge retains Q as his working hypothesis. Here his attention to his earlier work on the gospels as biography moves into a much sharper focus, as he explores each in turn. For each, despite their distinctive emphases, he believes they retain an interest in the balance between the inclusive following of Jesus in his community, and the demand for righteousness. In each the picture is modified both by their christological emphases, and their particular eschatological framework (not least where they stand in relation to delayed expectations). He argues (in my view quite rightly and effectively) that the genre of biography carries the cultural expectation that the life portrayed is worth imitating, and that mimesis is a key to an ethical reading.

The place of discipleship in Mark, and Luke’s particular attentiveness to the inclusion of the sinner and the marginal makes, I think, his examination of those gospels by far the most persuasive. He also makes a fair case for Matthew upholding a similar view, although perhaps with a higher stress on Jesus as teacher, and less emphasis on inclusion. He does, however, rightly insist that we need to read Matthew holistically, and not reduce Jesus’ ethics in Matthew to the Sermon on the Mount. In particular it needs balancing with its bookend, the eschatological discourse which occupies a similar place near the end of Jesus’ ministry, and is a similar length.

When he comes to John, however, I begin to find myself admiring the argument more than I am persuaded by it. Yes, Jesus does command his disciples to imitate him, but he is far more their transcendent leader than their immanent exemplar. Yes, Jesus does appear to reach out inclusively to the Samaritan woman, and possibly the Greeks of chapter 12, but I cannot help but be more struck by the regular sectarian notes. It is, after all, one another rather than the neighbour or the enemy, whom the Johannine Jesus commands us to love. Perhaps, as with John’s incarnational christology, there is an inconsistency here. His words tell us that Jesus is fully human (and therefore to be imitated). His narrative portrays Jesus as almost entirely divine (and way beyond our imitation). Nor can I let Burridge get away with sneaking the pericope adulterae in here as a balance (which he tries somewhat diffidently on the basis of long hallowed tradition).

However, notwithstanding my serious reservations about the argument extending to John, I think he does show that as biography the Synoptics at least are relatively consistent (despite their different emphases) in presenting Jesus for their readers’ imitation. They are likewise consistent in portraying Jesus as both open in his welcome, and demanding in his teaching, a teaching that itself calls to imitation in taking up the cross and following. This picture in turn coheres with the pattern of Pauline pastoral practice. (Obviously it also coheres with the historical Jesus, as Burridge constructs his picture from these three gospels, along with most everyone else. The fact that I broadly agree with him doesn’t stop the argument being circular.) Even if Burridge is wrong about John (and his brief mention of, e.g. 1 Peter) the Synoptics and Paul are a pretty hefty chunk of the New Testament, and more than enough to invite the church to consider biography, act and imitation as essential parts of its own ethical thinking, and to move away from focusing exclusively on teaching. The teaching, as Burridge shows, is only half of the picture.

In the final section of the book, Burridge presents a very interesting and helpful reflection on the ethical use of Scripture. He takes as his test case the arguments for and against apartheid in South Africa. It is within most people’s living memory (unlike slavery in the US) and just far enough in the past for everyone to pretty much agree that the pro-apartheid readings of scripture were wrong, including many (most?) of those who argued for them passionately and with full belief in being biblical. In this section he looks at several ways of using Scripture (obeying rules, looking for principles, following examples, and developing an overall symbolic worldview). He finds that while each have some place, all are limited and in the end inadequate. Equally, he clearly demonstrates the perils of claiming the word “biblical” for one’s own side of the argument. He puts forward the idea that, picking up what he has argued for, reading together in an inclusive community which is defined by seeking to follow Jesus, may not offer a perfect answer, but (often drawing on one or more of the other approaches) offers a better way forward. In many ways it was the separate communities of South Africa’s church which vitiated their readings, because they were not able to read together and inclusively.

As Burridge acknowledges at the end, debates over women’s ordination and homosexuality, the hot button topics of too much Christian discourse, are the elephant in the room. He seems to suggest that here too, more attention to imitating Jesus practice of inclusion would contextualise corporate readings of Jesus’ strenuous teaching in new ways. (He also notes how little of the New Testament’s ethical material deals with the questions the church is asking, but says a great deal about many of the questions the church often avoids.) Although he clearly admires his work, he has Richard Hays’ ethical work in his sights on this point as on others as inadequate in its attention to christology, or even just the person of Jesus.

I have some niggles.Burridge has unquestionably read very widely, but he does seem to need to tell us so. There is far too much referencing and quotation in the main body of the text, sometimes in a tiresomely “he said, but she said, and then X Y and Z said” form. In fact, in the passages where he writes in his own voice with limited quotation, he is both much more readable, and often more insightful and stimulating. (He also manages with monotonous regularity to tell us when someone has built on the argument he has previously made for the gospel as biography. It may be unkind of me to say so, but I doubt there is anyone who has built on Richard’s work who he does not refer to in this book as explicitly having done so.) There is also, and perhaps this is purely personal taste, an awful lot of the academic “we”. In an age when popes and monarchs have dropped the royal we, I wish scholars would begin to do so also.

These are minor quibbles that made the book harder reading than it need have been, and will, I think, limit its readership, when its theme and argument deserve a wider hearing. Yes, I have some major questions, such as my failure to be convinced by the argument about John’s gospel. And surely, in a book arguing for the imitation of Jesus, there might have been a far more extensive and penetrating discussion of virtue ethics, and how they might look if framed christologically. But the overall thesis is both clear and well argued for. I doubt it will be a panacea for the church’s contemporary ethical struggles, but it does offer an important contribution to the ethical use of the New Testament, and one that could have a tremendously positive effect. This is a book well worth reading and pondering on.

I have been reading Darwin’s Angel by John Cornwell.(ISBN 978 1 84668 048 9). Unlike a great many responses to Dawkins, and especially to The God Delusion, this is not a blunderbuss of a logical argument, but a series of ripostes and questions. Cornwell assembles them all under the conceit of writing as Darwin’s guardian angel, now assigned to Dawkins. This conceit allows him both to address Richard Dawkins directly, and by a device so at odds with Dawkins’ rigourous scientism, leave a sense of gentle teasing permanently in the background.

Sometimes this background whimsy spills over into more overt teasing – “You quote yourself (who else?)” (p113). Or after quoting one of Dawkins’ anecdotes about receiving a round of applause for suggesting a religious upbringing is worse than child abuse:

You should not be carried away by the effect of your own charisma and eloquence. A Dublin audience will clap enthusiastically in an effort to bring the most delightful evening to an end so as to make it to the bar before closing time. (p100)

In this spirit his put-downs are also gentle, but nonetheless devastating: “Your book is as innocent of heavy scholarship as it is free of false modesty.” (p29) But, together with a number of more penetrating criticisms of Dawkins on questions of good, evil and ethical behaviour, these wry observations also move in the direction of suggesting Dawkins is actually rather naive, and innocent of any real acquaintance with what suffering and misery are like. The picture of the comfortable ivory-tower academic more at home in a word of ideas than reality is only sketched in lightly, but is there nonetheless.

This almost satirical style does not get in the way of some quite rigorously logical probings at specific ideas in Dawkins’ writing. He is particularly forceful on philosophy, and imagination and the arts (picking Dawkins’ uses of Dostoevsky and Yeats apart) as well as having a more than sufficient grasp of the science to interact both positively and negatively with the arguments. Above all, he hammers home Dawkins’ misconstruction of the purposes and nature of religious discourse, and is absolutely clear that God is not another existent being, but the underlying reason for any and all existent being.  Many of his chapters cover the same ground as other answers to Dawkins, but here they are put as short sharp points, questions to ponder rather than knock-down arguments, and elegantly expressed. This style, of overt respect for Dawkins’ achievements and sincerity, combined with subtle undermining of his logic, is more devastating than the more weighty tomes.

One area of his critique that was new to me has just become more topical, the idea that Dawkins lays himself open to charges of anti-Semitism. Quite a few people have already picked up on this quotation from the Guardian:

When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.

This probably shows a certain political naivety about the “Jewish world conspiracy” stuff more than any defined anti-Semitism, but there’s just enough to be worrying. As Cornwall points out, in dismissing the whole of the Bible, Dawkins relies on a single article, and takes him to task for this dependence on a single source.

If you had set an essay on, say, the independent evolution of eyes, and a student had turned in an essay based on a single source, claiming that the theory of the independent evolution of eyes was wrong, [NB this is a common so-called Intelligent Design trope] would you not be astonished? Would you not send the student back to the library to make a wider survey of the literature? (p78)

But the problem comes from the source of this single article, John Hartung’s essay “Love thy neighbour.”

The Bible is a blueprint of in-group morality, complete with instructions for genocide, enslavement of out-groups, and world domination. But the Bible is not evil by virtue of its objectives or even its glorification of murder, cruelty, and rape. Many ancient works do that-The Iliad, the Icelandic Sagas, the tales of the ancient Syrians and the inscriptions of the ancient Mayans, for example. But no one is selling the Iliad as a foundation for morality. Therein lies the problem. The Bible is sold, and bought, as a guide to how people should live their lives. And it is, by far, the world’s all-time best seller. [my emphasis]

One might be wary just from the setting of this article on this website which seems committed to a scientific rationale for perpetuating racial distinctions in political life, and calling it free-thinking. In another essay review on the same site Hartung argues that anti-Semitism is an inevitable response to Jewish competitiveness for power. Cornwell, as a former journalist, actually investigates sources, and Dawkins’ source (and its anti-Semitism) should be enough to disturb him, so Cornwell writes

I find it strange that you should have been so reliant on this single source for what forms such an important charge against Judaism and Christianity in your book. (p84)

In connection with this Cornwell at his most serious also points out the potential historical analogy between Dawkins’ regular descriptions of religion as a virus and the rhetoric of Nazi blood-purity. The problem with the language of viral infection is that it entails language of quarantine and eradication programmes. Again, addressing Dawkins directly, he says:

I am not suggesting that you would have anything but contempt and loathing for the “bio-political” ideas that arose in Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; but I want to impress on you the far-reaching potential consequences of likening believers, or any group of people in society, to disease carriers. (p143)

The point is well-taken, and I hope it convinces Dawkins, not necessarily to change his mind, but to moderate his rhetoric. But this may be a serious problem for Dawkins: if you believe all religion equally bad, how do you deal with a race whose identity is rooted in a religious and scriptural story, without also being racist? The Oxford professor seems strangely naive about the company he is keeping, and strangely out of touch with the real world implications and effects of ideas, despite the fact that he lambasts the ideas of believers for inflicting every kind of evil on the world. Cornwell’s examples indeed suggest that you can do worse things in life than bring children up in their parents’ religion.

All in all this book brings something new to the over-full table of Dawkins and his antagonists, and should be welcomed as a delightful read, and a penetrating riposte.

No, not a comment on Shakespeare or patriotism, but a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I said I’d wait a few days after I finished it, and I have. Now, be warned, everything below the picture is full of spoilers and gives the ending away. Read on at your own risk.

These books have grown up with many of their readers, while still remaining accessible to new younger fans. In this book (with the wizarding coming-of-age set at 17) the heroes enter the adult world most fully, while still finishing their growing up. That in itself is an achievement: compared to the Narnia books where children who grew up were excluded from the magical world, here the world grows up with the children.

And what a growing up it has been, for their world has become much darker with each succeeding volume, and this book plunges us right in to the world-domination of Voldemort. The darkness looms over every page: although Rowling still finds room for the humour, it is an increasing rarity. Yet whereas in the first book Voldemort was a shadowy and almost pantomime figure of pure evil, the sixth book took us on a journey of plotting Voldemort’s descent into evil in ways that almost drew Harry’s sympathy. That understanding is acknowledged here, in Harry’s perception of Hogwarts as the first real home for three lonely boys, himself, Snape and Voldemort.

Other figures who do evil show different shades: from book five onwards the corrupting evil of ambition and power structures is demonstrated in Fudge, then Scrimgeour, But above all it shows its face in Dolores Umbridge, whose cruelty returns in full force in scenes in this book. Fudge found a kind of truth in humiliation at the end of book five and the beginning of book six. Scrimgeour seems to redeem himself in meeting his death courageously. Umbridge remains unredeemed, and sunk into a Nazi style bureaucracy which brings all the worst of her flaws to the fore. Percy Weasley, who appeared to be sinking into this corrupting and bureaucratic ambition, finds himself and returns to his family.

On the other side of things is the moral complexity and capacity for evil in good people, mostly focussed on the character of Dumbledore. Dark secrets of his past emerge, and he is no longer simply the embodiment of goodness and wisdom, but a man who, though both good and wise, is also shown to have been tempted by power and ambition from his teenage years. The burnt and scarred hand he received in his quest for the horcruxes (magical objects with a piece of Voldemort’s soul in them) is revealed now not as the result of a noble struggle to destroy the horcrux, but greed for a powerful magical object which temporarily overcame him. Good and evil alike are far less absolute than they were, and human beings much more morally ambiguous.

The story moves between bouts of action and inaction. Largely the action shows Harry, Ron and Hermione at their best, and the inaction at their worst. The size of the task, and their own inadequacies before it lead to bickering, and hopelessness . Even their friendship is tested to breaking point, not by Voldemort, but by themselves. Yet by a mix of luck, courage, persistence and various unexpected help, they keep winning through.

The outcome appears to be heading in one direction only: one that many fans had expected, Harry’s death in combat with Voldemort. Amidst a ferocious last battle at Hogwarts, he comes to believe that this is indeed the last task. Snape’s memories, bequeathed to him in death, and siphoned into the pensieve, reveal it to him. From love of Lily Potter, and endless remorse at her death, Snape has indeed been Dunbledore’s double-agent. In death he makes it known to Harry that Voldemort accidentally imprisoned part of his soul in Harry the night he gave him his scar.

Harry now knows that letting Voldemort kill him will be the only way of destroying this horcrux. Leaving Neville to destroy the other remaining horcrux, Voldemort’s snake, Harry goes to meet Voldemort in the full expectation that by allowing himself to be killed, Voldemort’s power will be broken. Death is the last enemy: for Voldemort it is the one that must be defeated, for Harry the one that must be converted from enemy to friend by embracing it. And so, for the second time in his life, but this time willingly, Harry becomes the victim of Voldemort’s killing spell.

He find himself instead in a ghostly Kings Cross. Dumbledore’s spiritual body explains the final pieces of the puzzle. The curse has in one sense killed Harry as he was conjoined with Voldemort, but it has also ripped that piece of Voldemort’s soul from him. Harry himself was protected from death by the presence of his charmed blood in Voldemort’s reconstituted body, and has the option of returning to finish Voldemort. He does so, but not without trying to save him by urging him to feel remorse for what he has done. Then protected by his own newly acquired power and knowledge, the fruits of his willing sacrifice, he defeats Voldemort whose final attempt at killing simply rebounds upon himself. Rowling brings her saga to a triumphant ending.

Now on the one hand, as I’ve said before, I don’t want to claim Harry Potter for Christianity. The books should be read for what they are and enjoyed as they are. Good stories are pregnant with many meanings, and should not be reduced to expositions. At the same time, in the face of inane comments like this something must be said.

In choosing Rowling as the reigning dreamer of our era, we have chosen a writer who dreams of a secular, bureaucratized, all-too-human sorcery, in which psychology and technology have superseded the sacred

Some people want things to be too obvious. I don’t recall God getting a mention in Lord of the Rings, either, but nobody has ever slammed it for secularism. And one of the problems for me in Philip Pullman’s otherwise enjoyable trilogy is the hammer-on-the-head lack of subtlety in his portrayal of the Authority and the Church. Rowling’s work is, I think, open to different interpretations. But not only are the themes of self-sacrifice (illustrated by Lily and Harry above all) and redemption (Snape, Kreacher, Percy) by both love and remorse at the heart of the book’s portrayal of the defeat of evil, in this last book Rowling includes some more interestingly specific references.

Most interesting of all is the attention given to the headstones in the churchyard at Godric’s Hollow. On the Dumbledore family tomb is inscribed: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21). This serves in so many ways as a comment not only on Dumbledore’s situation, but in some way defines a major theme of the books. On the Potter family tomb is the quotation (already mentioned above) “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:26). Again, this is a theme that re-emerges in several ways. The ensuing discussion between Harry and Hermione underscores this. In one sense it is exactly what Voldemort has always thought as he sought to master death. In another it is the willingness to enter into a life beyond death, and therefore to prepared to lay down one’s own life for another, making death not an enemy but a friend, to accept that it cannot be mastered, and that fear of death can destroy life. Finally, on that note, is it just a happy coincidence that the chapter where Harry stands between life and death is called “Kings Cross”?

Those Christian resonances are just that: resonances. The power of the book is in the storytelling, the creation of a whole fascinating world, characters one cares about, and the provision of a place in which to discover oneself imaginatively in the contest between good and evil, and what it means to grow wise in a morally complex world. Rowling provides that in spades.

Despite great temptation, I’m not going to write a review yet. But as Ron might say, “Bloody brilliant.” The themes of redemption, human fallibility, and the victory of love are all intermingled with excitement, great drama and even in the grimmest moments, still a hint of humour. Interestingly, though quoted as words on gravestones in the churchyard in Godric’s Hollow, these two verses might well stand as the theme of the book as much as the quotation from Aeschylus (!) at the front.

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (The Dumbledore family tomb)

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death (The Potter family tomb)

I can’t say more without laying down too many spoilers: read it!

Update 18:00. Judging by the searches that have found this post, it seems people are hunting the source of the quotations. A reminder to me that even “well-known” scripture verses aren’t.

Update 24 July: The full review is now here.

When I first read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (I’m one of those sad enough to clear my diary for publication day!) I found it the least satisfactory of the books. Puzzling over why this was, I decided that it was because the larger story arc of the series had actually taken over from the particular story arc in the book. That in Phoenix was not strong enough to hold its own in tension with the greater plot. To a large extent I find the film more satisfying as a self-contained story, even though the greater story now looms dominant around the individual episode.

The “set pieces” of the book are all there and vividly brought to the screen, even if the story line is (as always) stripped down with some details altered. But one of the reasons the film feels more complete than the book is the vividly and imaginatively rendered battle of magic in the Ministry. Though considerably simplified from the book, the main ingredients are all brought to life, and despite being special effect heavy, the actors aren’t dramatically overwhelmed. Indeed the death of Sirius is more powerfully rendered in the film, as Potter and Black fight for a moment side by side, with Sirius for a moment calling Harry by his father’s name, just before he is killed and passes through the veil. The visual power of the whole denouement, matched by the emotional power of the bereavement, and the visual strength of the final internal struggle of Voldemort with Harry, is followed by only a short tidying up of the plot-line, and means that effectively the film ends with a dramatically satisfying climax.

The second reason the film has a more complete story-line is that the question of Harry Potter being taken over by Voldemort comes more to the foreground than it does in the book. First, because the dialogue about Harry being possessed is altered and now between Harry and Sirius and not Harry and Ginny, and carries more emotional power. Second, because the film makes much more of Voldemort attempting to possess Harry at the end (coming quick on the heels of a an effective presentation of Harry using an Unforgivable Curse). Rather than a quick moment of narrative, followed by exposition by Dumbledore, it becomes a major visual focus enhanced by special effects, and a good performance from Radcliffe. The inner drama of Harry’s battle is well presented, and brings a number of disparate strands of the film together. Harry’s inner torment, and the threat of Voldemort, together with the problems of aloneness and alienation from his friends, reach a unified resolution.

The other great strength of the film (which here is very faithful to the book) is the magnificent performance of Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, who well demonstrates that “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” In one sense, her performance almost shows the weakness of having narratives with characters of pure evil, like Voldemort. Her saccharinely menacing pink fluffiness, and her pursuit of cruelty in the name of protection, offers a picture of evil that is far more complex than that of those who actively pursue and embody it. This picture of goodness corrupted offers an interesting counterpoint to Harry’s own fear about whether he will be corrupted. It is perhaps a shame that more was not made in the film of the bullying antics of James Potter to Severus Snape, which in the book were disturbing to Harry who could no longer hero-worship his father in quite the same way as before.

In sum, this is not only a greatly enjoyable film, but, for the first time, by its making some of the themes of the book more explicit, it is, I think, not only a good (and faithful) interpretation of the novel, but actually a better and more complete narrative.

I have been reading Ed Husain’s The Islamist, whose rather lengthy subtitle is “Why I joined radical Islam in Britain, what I saw inside and why I left.” It is a testimony to first a conversion to ever-deepening circles of politicized Islam, and away from the traditional spiritual faith of his parents, and then, another conversion, as he moves much more slowly back to both a spiritual Muslim faith, and a wide ranging grasp of both historical and political realities, and the benefits and problems of a political and cultural democracy.

I approached the book with a certain amount of caution. Testimony from someone you do not know and have not met is quite a tricky thing to assess. I know next to nothing about the world in which Husain moved, the world from which his testimony comes. I have little to measure his veracity against. At the same time, it is doubtful if there is any other way of entering this world except through testimony. The first-hand experience reveals things that the best exterior journalism cannot. The book’s matter-of-factness and the lack of self-aggrandizing persuade me of its overall trustworthiness. It fits what little I know from the media and very limited first-hand experience.

The picture he paints is a very disturbing one. On the one hand it highlights the problems the Muslim community face in being both British and Muslim in the face of an aggressive, well-funded and profoundly politicized sectarian interpretation of Islam. On the other it highlights both the inadequacies of the British response to this, and the ways in which strongly left-wing socialists and would be well-meaning liberal critics of Bush and Blair have become dangerously like fellow-travellers of a profoundly destructive politicized religion. The alien political nature of modern Islam for traditional Muslims is well illustrated in what Husain’s father says to him in his teenage years: “If you’re interested in politics, join the Labour party!”

The techniques he describes radical Islam using are a strange cross between those of the Trotskyite entrists to the Labour party, and those of rabid Christian fundamentalist. I had not appreciated how alien to traditional Islam the appeal direct from the Koran to the present world, unmediated by the living traditions of teachers, holy men and mystics actually was – and how reminiscent of Protestant fundamentalism in its reaction to modernity.

As he describes it the biggest trigger of Islamic radicalization on the campuses and in the streets of Britain was neither Israel/Palestine, nor the Gulf War, but Bosnia, and miserable failure of the UN and British and other governments to address it. Even then, radical Islam is less the consequence of British foreign policy, than of domestic policy, allowing revolutionary sectarians, who have substituted political narrow-mindedness for spiritual vision, who have been banned in their own countries for sedition and the preaching of violence, to bring that message of subversion to the mosques of Britain. In this endeavour the liberal intelligentsia, with their failure to understand religion, and the asleep-at-the-wheel security services have been effectively colluding in work designed to bring their cherished society and its values crashing down as rubble around them.

Bush’s ”War on Terror” may have made things worse, but radical Islam was well ensconced in Britain ten years before 9/11, and getting steadily stronger, despite its naturally fissiparous tendencies rooted in sectarian and political divisions between Egyptian and Saudi, Wahhabi and other political (Marxist and Hegelian) forms of Islam. Not only has Saudi money helped promote an aggressive Wahhabi evangelism that has infiltrated nearly every Muslim community, but it has major influence in the main representative bodies for British Islam like the Muslim Council of Britain. Despite appearances, Husain is very clear that this speaks for neither the majority of Muslims in Britain, nor for the mainstream of Muslim tradition. The voices we usually hear in the media are the “acceptable face” of Islamic extremism, not mainstream Islam. Knighting Iqbal Sacranie for services to the Muslim community was not just a lie, but appeasement.

The close parallels of Trotskyite entryism with the patterns of Islamic extremists infiltrating mosques find an ironic marriage in the forming of Galloway’s Respect party. The mobilization of racism, ethnic protectionism and Islamic anti-Western and anti-semitic sentiment become the backbone of this party, and the means by which it pursues electoral victory. It is radical Islam disguised as an ego-trip.

Husain hopes to find a better way, a new political engagement with democracy and liberal tolerance, and a renewal of the spiritual aspects of Islam freed from a simple clinging to the ways of first and second generation immigrants. But he is not sanguine about achieving it. This book should act as both a clarion call to politicians to take their heads out of the sand, and a powerful rebuke to all those well-meaning souls who blame everything on Israel and British-American foreign policy. If you care about the future of our society, this is a book well worth reading.

(This is the last post of a series on Michael Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God. The first post can be found here, and the second here.)

I got my comments on the excellent chapter six out of the way in my first post. And I only have one brief comment on the interesting seventh chapter before I come back to chapter five. I’m still digesting the arguments Bird makes in chapter seven, which stress the works of obedience which need to go hand in hand with justification. So Bird proposes a Christian reading of Romans 2, whereby “Paul is speaking of Gentile Christians who fulfil the Torah through faith in Christ and life in the Spirit” (p166). I’m not persuaded this fully belongs to the rhetorical logic of the opening sections of Romans, though I’ve certainly been given food for thought and encourage to rethink this section of Romans. I found myself wishing Bird had taken time to interact with Stowers’ rhetorical analysis¹ which offers a very different view based on the rhetorical device of speech-in-character (προσωποποιία).² Although I strongly disagree with Stowers’ overall conclusions, I do find his arguments on this particular point quite illuminating. In the end, I can’t help but feel that Bird’s reading may be influenced by the way in which alternatives are more problematic for his Reformed tradition. He himself notes that this view finds its support mainly among “reformed and neo-orthodox interpreters.” (p166)

I return to chapter five, one of the places where the origin of much of the book in previous essays is apparent, for it seems odd to get a sketch outline of the NPP halfway through, even though the placement of this piece makes a lot of sense. He outlines first the areas where the NPP has been particularly criticized by the Reformed tradition, and then proceeds to areas where he sees concurrence. This is a useful discussion, although I think the strength of the Reformed critique is overstated (I would, wouldn’t I?). In particular (and he shares this with Carson’s introduction and conclusion to Justification and Variegated Nomism)³ he overlooks the what I see as the widespread nature of something at least resembling covenantal nomism in Second Temple literature, and puts more stress on the exceptions. Assuming Paul, by his own word, to have more in common with the Pharisees, as I do, (and taking Paul seriously as a witness to reconstructing historical Pharisaism) it would seem that the principal documents for reconstructing the mainstream of the Judaism Paul knew will be Mishnah and apocalyptic writings. It is not immediately apparent that (beyond demonstrating the bounds of diversity) 4QMMT is representative of the – probably mainstream – Judaism which the pre-conversion Paul knew, loved and was educated in.

While I think that Bird handles this debate with his customary eirenicism, and wherever possible seeks not compromises, but mutually informed views, this is his most negative chapter in relation to the NPP. As in all discussions around these topics I found myself with two particular questions. Do we take Paul too much at his own word in these reconstructions? And what of “faith in Christ / the faithfulness of Christ” which is in danger of being the elephant in the room?

By taking Paul too much at his own word, I mean that I think we assume too readily that the way in which Paul characterized his opponents’ or interlocutors’ theology and arguments was the same way in which they characterized their own. In particular, and in historical context, “justification by the works of the Law” is not an exact polar opposite to ”justification by the faith of Christ.” For those who do not believe Jesus to be Messiah, there has been no resurrection and no inauguration of the eschaton, so that the most “works of the Law” can do is testify to the hope (even expectation) of vindication, and perhaps “remind” God to bring it about. By contrast, for Paul the vindication has a present as well as future aspect, for God has vindicated Messiah in the resurrection, and the Law’s testimony to the hope of God’s vindication is supplanted by Messiah’s testimony to the present happening of God’s vindication. These contrasts, which Paul pulls into theological opposition, are unequally yoked. Failing to give due weight to this temporal inequality will pull any reconstruction about what Paul’s Jewish opponents believed out of skew. Correspondingly part of what Paul is doing in argument about Christian Judaizers in Galatia is demonstrating the wrongness of applying pre-resurrection faithfulness to a post-resurrection Messianic situation. To adapt Sanders pithy viewpoint: “This is what Paul finds wrong with Torah: it is not Christ.”⁴

Then there is the question of the faith of Christ – πίστις χριστοῦ – which phrase, despite all the arguments about it, is given little enough attention by Bird. Does it signify the “faithfulness of Christ” or “faith in Christ”? In a passing footnote (p147 n113) he says that he sees the genitive as deliberately ambiguous. Granted that the phrase is ambivalent (which I think it is) I am not convinced (as I noted in the previous post) that language actually works like this. Phrases, like words, are not discrete containers of meaning, but bring one or other aspect of their semantic field to the fore, depending on the syntax and discourse within which they are embedded. It may carry one meaning as a connotation while primarily denoting the other, but I am not persuaded that it can carry two different denotative meanings at the same time. Admittedly each of those denotations can, and I think in Paul’s thought does, logically entail the other, but I see “ambiguity” as a cop out here.

If, as I think we should, we privilege the subjective genitive “the faithfulness of Christ”, then part (and only part) of the contrast between it and “works of the law” is about the pattern of faithfulness by which God’s people are called to live. The faithfulness of Christ looks backward to the cross and resurrection as sharing God’s vindication of that faithfulness, the works of the Law look forward to a hope of vindication. God has chosen to vindicate Christ’s pattern of faithfulness, and not that of the works of the Law. Therefore putting our trust in that faithfulness as God’s way of life is the only pattern by which we can experience present, and hope for future, vindication. The argument between old and new perspectives then falls into a different configuration, in which, I think, the NPP has the better of the argument.

Despite these cavils, I want to commend this book to my students and friends. Those who like me come from outside the reformed tradition may occasionally wonder what some of the fuss is about. Bird explicates the arguments generously and charitably. He also makes us pause to re-think positively the strength of the Reformed interpretation: his re-reading of Romans and Galatians in chapter 6 is particularly forceful in that regard. But I would also want to encourage those of my friends who are suspicious of the NPP to read and ponder this book. It is offered, and I hope it will be received, as one to make us bear with one another and pursue the things that make for peace.⁵

1. Stanley K Stowers A Rereading of Romans Yale 1994 [↩]
2. Ibid p17, p101ff [↩]
3. D Carson, P T O’Brien, M Seifrid eds. Vols 1 & 2 combined, Baker 2004 – many of the contributors to Vol 1 on Second Temple Judaism find something more like Sanders’ pattern of religion than Carson admits. Garlington’s comment in his review article (available here (PDF) from the excellent Paul Page) is fair: “Carson’s summaries and conclusions are conspicuously at odds with the majority of the essayists enlisted by him.” p6 [↩]
4. Sanders says: “In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity.” – Paul and Palestinian Judaism Fortress Press 1977 – p552 [↩]
5. see p5 [↩]

(This is the second post of a series on Michael Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God. The first post can be found here)

Chapter 2 of Bird’s book focuses on the meaning of righteousness, a topic on which much has been, is being and will be written, now and possibly unto the age to come. It is perhaps in this chapter that I felt Reformed dogmatics were coming closest to pulling Paul out of shape. In particular, I see the whole debate about imputed and imparted righteousness as an interesting historical argument, which may have had its own proper context, and been perfectly appropriate in its day, but which has (I think) nothing to do with the historical Paul. I’m with Wright when he observes that judges do not hand their righteousness over when passing judgement.¹ Bird himself doesn’t think this should be a major issue, and is inclined to leave imputation primarily to the systematic sphere.

On other debates he is, I think broadly right to see that relational and norming concepts of righteousness cannot be split apart (pp10-12). I am less sure about his view that forensic and transformative understandings are “linked logically rather than conceptually” (p18), though I think he is right to see, and work with the linkage that does indeed exist. I think in part that we disagree about how language works. Bird does seem to me to operate more with the idea that “words” have” meanings” whereas I work more with the idea that lexical units have semantic fields. Consequently, I think that the denotative meaning of a lexical unit is the least it brings to the sentence party, while its connotative meanings come along as expansive family and friends. The denotation thus shifts around, depending on context, and one or other connotation in one context may come to the foreground as denotation in another. One result of this is that I find greater fluidity and less need for fixedness in determining how different meanings interplay. It is, however, more a difference of emphasis, because Bird remains very attentive to context.

The main section of the second chapter is a whistle stop tour of interpretations around the idea of righteousness as covenant participation. Like him, I do not see apocalyptic eschatology and covenant theology as in opposition, though instead of finding links only in Paul’s underlying narrative world (p31 – a very Wright-ian theme that I’m not fully persuaded of) I would tend to see apocalyptic as providing a myth, and a language with the aid of which Paul thinks through his covenant theology and narrative. Bird is convincing (and I hope convincing to others) on holding the personal and the corporate together, the salvific and the ecclesiological. What I personally would have liked to see more about here is the undercurrent of theodicy that also runs through Paul’s argument, that this is to prove God is righteous (Rom 3:25-26).

I’m not going to say much about his third chapter, except that his emphasis on the importance of resurrection for justification is, in my view, vital and well-argued, nor much about chapter four except these brief remarks Unfortunately, imputed righteousness returns to the fray, although Bird does usefully show a range of views amongst the earlier Reformed tradition. That said, he actually argues for what he calls “incorporated righteousness.” As far as I know² this is his basic term, and he argues for it from a number of passages. I found this a very helpful way of looking at Paul’s argument, one that does justice to a number of themes, and one that offers a meeting ground for the old and new perspectives. My only qualification — and this is an idea I’m slowly working towards, is that there is, I think, also something that might be called mimetic righteousness. Incorporation into Christ by the Spirit actually invites faithful participation in his faithfulness, by which means his righteousness becomes mine.

What this section of the book shows is that working with the disagreements and tensions between different views can be done creatively and not polemically, and it is part of what makes a sometimes dense argument quite refreshing.

1. N.T. Wright What St Paul Really Said Lion 1997, p98. As an aside I note that I stopped using Wright’s book as an introductory text for a course for lay people precisely because he too gets bogged down in the ins and outs of this argument. What surprised me was that even those from evangelical churches had only a hazy grasp of the Reformation doctrine, and getting into those issues only got – in my view – in the way of getting into Paul. Apparently there are a number of evangelical churches where musical style is the article by which the church stands or falls. [↩]
2. and p70 n46 also suggests this [↩]

I’ve been reading, with some profit, and occasional bafflement, Michael Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God ¹ and am stimulated to interact with it. This book attempts to carve out something of a mediating position between ongoing Reformed interpretations of Paul, and the range of views associated with the so-called New Perspective on Paul (henceforward NPP).

Just as Bird begins the book with an autobiographical context, placing himself in the Reformed camp, but open to considering the arguments of NPP on their individual merit (though describing himself as innoculated “from catching the NPP bug in any serious way” – p2) so I likewise begin with a personal note. In my first year of coming (back) to an adult faith, I occasionally heard “justification by faith” elaborated as the theme of sermons, or talked about by friends in the Christian Union. Unfortunately it was often (I would now say) both poorly understood and badly expressed by them. While broadly in the Reformed tradition, it was put forward in ways that invited the caricatures of “legal fiction” or “faith as the one work pleasing to God.” It was not long before I read a short but engaging exposition of the doctrine: Tom Wright’s essay in the then newly published The Great Acquittal²

My first proper encounter with the doctrine was with its NPP form, although it was going to be another couple of years before the term was coined. I was well aware that the other essays in the book didn’t seem to mean the same thing as Wright when they spoke of justification, and I found Wright both more engaging, more pastorally relevant (surrounded as I was by many student Christian groups all claiming to be “the real thing”) and making more sense of the Bible. So I got on with adult Christian life, effectively, as an NPP neophyte Christian, although I wasn’t aware there was any such thing, and without any emotional or intellectual attachment to an old perspective. That means, effectively, that I come at Paul from a history diametrically opposed to Bird’s, which made reading the book a particularly interesting exercise.

I will begin here with a couple of general observations, then go on in a second post to look at some specifics, before finishing up with some general questions in the final post.

First, I have found the way in which Bird engages with the perspectives of both sides of the argument helpful, engaging, careful and eirenic. This book provides a much needed interaction that is not simply concerned to score points and win arguments. Wright can’t see a view he disagrees with without taking out a sledgehammer, and some of his opponents have returned the compliment with knobs on. Bird is never less than thoughtful and courteous, which makes it much easier to engage with the substance of his position, and consider his case. As I result, I have found myself far more disposed to assess (some) Reformed interpretations positively.

Second, as is perhaps inevitable with a book most of whose component parts are largely drawn from previously published essays, there is some degree of repetition, but generally the pieces fit together well enough. The initial chapters tackle a number of issues, the meaning of righteousness (2), the relationship of justification and resurrection (3), different ways of conceiving righteousness (4), and an overview of contended issues between the perspectives (5). In my view chapter 6 provides the heart of the book as a detailed narrative exposition of justification in Galatians and Romans, which shows that Bird’s reading is, at the very least, historically and contextually plausible, and rhetorically and theologically coherent in the way it fits the different pieces together. This kind of exercise, which accounts for both details and the whole, is one in which Wright is often at his strongest (even where cavalier and wrong), and often (in my view) some of his opponents are at their weakest (even when roundhead and right). It is good and very thought-provoking to have a different, thought-provoking and coherent reading of this type. Almost, he does persuade me …

The final substantive chapter (7) tries to deal with assessing the argument of Romans 2 in the light of this overall scheme. Then comes a kind of epilogue (8) which is, in the light of the preceding arguments, a plea for peace to break out among evangelicals. In particular he highlights the irony of the way in which some strongly Reformed people are treating (dis)agreement with Tom Wright as a boundary marker of who belongs to the true reformed people of God (p192). (I must say that some of the attitudes he reports here were not only new to me, but quite astonishing.) In the same place he also notes that he has “learnt to be wary of Anglicans bearing gifts.” I don’t know whether, should he stumble across this post — and if he does I hope he will correct any mischaracterizations — he ought to be wary of this catholic Anglican’s take on his work, but I intend to press on.³

1. Paternoster 2007, ISBN978-1-84227-465-1 [↩]
2. Gavin Reid (ed.) Collins 1980 [↩]
3. (As a postscript, I hope Bird encourages his publisher to fire their proof-reader. There were far too many irritating little linguistic errors in the type-setting, which I found generally distracting from the text, of which the most egregious is “Our forefather’s in the faith new the value …” – p191 n29) [↩]