Two questions: why is it so cold in here and why are we singing African-American spirituals seeing that everyone is English?

The following was my evening here in Oxford, an interesting combination of things you may or may not find on the other side of the pond.

1. Riding a bike in the rain - in Oxford no one really drives anywhere because pertol (gas) is too expensive even if the cars are the size of my shoe. Instead we ride bikes everywhere. This is quite a bizarre experience because I have never used a bike in any conditions which require multiple layers of clothing and winter gloves. Bike riding up until Oxford had been a summer occassion on a nice day and such. Here is is the main mode of transportation. This is especially fun and exciting when it is raining, which it does quite a lot here. Here's a picture of my bike:

So tonight I went to visit the church I am preaching at next week to scope out the surroundings and see what the congregation looked like. This meant a twenty minute bike ride in the dark in the rain, which was pretty cool to be honest. I haven't ridden much in the rain yet so it was new, but I imagine the novelty wears off and it becomes pretty wrecthed at some point. Hats off to the Wycliffe ordinands who do this every morning, I feel like I should make you guys a cup of tea or something.

2. Old English Parish Church - after ridding in the rain I had a nice cold and remote parish church to look forward to. It is always weird worshipping in a building that is older than the United States of America, but it seems to be holding together quite nicely. These old churches are great because apparently people in the 1600's had straight backs which fit quite nicely in these pews. And who said we don't have any signs of macro-evolution? So when the priest said "I want everyone to get comfortable" there was a restrained British laugh from the congregation. The service was really nice though, looked a lot like an American Episcopal Church with most of the congregation (about 25 people) a little over 25, shall we say. I felt pretty much at home there, especially when I heard the theme: Freedom. Here's a picture of the church. Imagine it dark and Englandy (how did that blue sky get in there?).

3. African-American Spirituals in an English Church? - so the theme of the service was Freedom and the music was mostly selected from African-American spirituals. Awesome! "Nobody knows the trouble's I've seen", and such. One slight problem though: the congregation is all older and British. Interesting. Spirituals take on a whole new meaning when "r's" are added to the end of words ending in "a" and when no one can sing lower than tenor. Imagine a chain gang breaking for a cup of tea and a biscuit and you just about have it. These people were born to sing Southern Gospel:

I shouldn't make a fuss about it though since I am sure it is just as weird to hear my Northern American accent pronounce the Old English of the Book of Common Prayer. I love the Old English but I am sure my friends here are doing everything they can to keep from putting their hands over their ears as I mutilate various english words, like "inestimable." Seriously, you try and pronounce it. It almost needs an English accent.

So it was an interesting experience, and after a nice windy bike ride back I settled down to the only way an American in England can finish the day: a Twix bar with a cup of tea.

Is Nicea more important than Jerusalem?

In a way, yes it is. Or at least that is the thrust of Colin Gunton (in The One, The Three, and The Many) as well as David Bentley Hart (in The Beauty of the Infinite). Gunton's book is infinitely more readable than Hart's although Hart's is probably more impressive. So what's so great about Nicea? Simple: The Trinity

Gunton spends most of the book working out a theology of creation through the Trinity which will answer all of modernism's and postmodernism's questions of meaning. His thesis is quite simple: since Irenaeus we have lost a focus of the Trinity and so have either fallen into the fallacy of the one or the mistake of the many. Let's hash this out.

The one vs. the many is a ancient debate between Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraclitus said the root of everything is flux and motion - you can't step in the same river twice. Everything is different. Nietzsche is the Heraclitus of the modern period, although much stronger. Parmenides is the opposite, everything is composed of the One. This is pre-Plotinus, but you get the idea. The root of everything is unity in Parmenides whereas the root of everything is many in Heraclitus. But Christianity is the way between with a radical concept of ontology which neither of these systems stands a chance against: the Trinity. For in the Trinity we have difference and unity, we have relationality. Tri-unity: the concept that makes sense of the universals of reality but at the same time respects the particulars in creation. Christianity destroys both these previous systems and paves a way for real thought and relationship - in Gunton's words: reason, ethics, and aesthetics. All are expressly accounted for in a dynamic way by the doctrine of the Trinity and the Trinitarian creation of the world. Creator and creature enter into a relational dance since the basis of all reality is relational unity.

So what happened?

"My contention is that the distinctive failures of our era derive of due relatedness to God, the one, the focus of the unity of all things. That is the pathos of modernity."

"Modern relativism and scepticism are, then, in part the outcome of the failure of a doctrine of God, and particularly of a doctrine of God as creator.... In the process, the Parmenidean God of Christendom is replaced by the dispersed Heraclitean deity of individual human judgment."

What is the Parmenidean God of Christendom? It is the result of the fact that we went with Augustine on creation instead of Ireneaus. Ireneaus had a robust Trinitarian doctrine of creation, that all things were created with Christ and the Spirit acting, that each particular was important and related to the Trinity. All of creation is in participation (but not process or equality with) the God-head because he creates out of the free gift of his love. It is a particular and substantial creation, one grounded in the relational aspects of the Trinity. Man and Woman are made for relation, not just to themselves, but to each other and especially to the rest of the created order. There is a beautiful harmony of all things in God participating with each other because the essense of existence and being is the tri-unity of God: both unitive in purpose and love but dynamic in difference and relation. Irenaeus' creation is God breathed and sustained, upheld in the particulars because every part of it is important in realtion. We are not alone in life, all creation is involved in relation to everything else, and that is not a by product but rather the necessary component of creation - because it reflects the Creator who is dynamic and Trinity. Relatedness and relationship is what it means to be.

But this all changed when Augustine moved in the Platonic route, following his Manichean roots. The creation was no longer particular, but rather a reflection of the central ideas of God, a modified forms. Creation is no longer whole and substative in itself as participation, rather it is reflection of divine attributes. God is no longer creating out of relationality, but now because of a unitive will. "The root of the modern disarray is accordingly to be located in the divorce of the willing of creation from the historical economy of salvation." With Augustine we get 'eternal archetypes' and Platonic universals. "Not the particularlizing will of God, but general conceptual forms come into the centre." The move to Parmenides is on its way, no longer is God acting relationally and particularly in creating everything, rather he is setting down universal creational forms which creation can correspond too. Do you see where this is going?

Then we get a quick tour through modernity with Kant and the boys. Once God is displaced from the center as relational being (for in true Trinitarian theology nothing can exist outside their relation to him and his relation to them) we are making the way for autonomy and individuality. So Kant altogether displaces God from any involvement with creation and sets the mind in its spot. Now the subject is in control of all things, but this only makes sense once participation and relationality is lost. Once God is removed from his space as Creator, he will start looking more like creation (Ockham and Scotus) until finally he can be removed and his will is replaced by the rootless Kantian will. The human mind is now the One that Parmenides was looking for. But here is the problem: you can't stop there. Once immanentism is accepted (no transcendentals outside the mind - thank you Kant) then there is no reason to stop the disappearance of the will entirely. Instead of one unitive will called God (in Augustinian terms) we now have an infinite amount of individual wills called man. Isn't it interesting how Parmenides ends up at Heraclitus in the end? For with Kant and Niezsche who finishes the job we have a total fragmentation. Modernism tried to find a universal but in doing so ended up destroying the idea of anything universal. Without a gounded and participatory will Radical Orthodoxy is right: all you have is nihilism. The self grounded in itself is nothing at all.

The 'other' which was once related to creation and the Creator in meaning and participation and relationship is now something to be seen as outside, unwanted, redundant. This is modernism and hyper-modernism: individuality in the face of oppressive others. "Whereas modernism tried to come to terms with the 'other' by excluding it, postmodernism simply seeks to render it irrelevant. The underlying fear of it continues unabated. both forms of modern culture are unable to deal happily with the particular in its relation to other particulars."

So what to do? Get back to the Trinity. What does this give us?

1. Community - if creation is relation by nature, by definition, than we can actually learn to appreciate and relate to the other rather than running from them (i-pods?) or finding them irrelevant. We are not made individuals! We are made to be in participation with God, with humans, and with the created order. To not be so means we are not fully ourselves. "The human creation is what it is as a being in relationship." This is not some reflection of the divinity in some monist sense or Platonic forms sense, it is strictly participationist. We are related with others and creation, to hide ourselves is like chopping off limbs!

2. Particularity - because of the Irenean doctrine of creation, we are important as individuals in relation. We are not some reflection of the absolute mind of God, nor are we some fragmented and meaningless parts - we are important in difference and distinction, yet relationally. Again the Trinity is the model. It is a co-equality of being, but a seperateness of being. The hypostatic union is not about ontological subordiniation, but rather role subordination. There is an asymmetry involved in certain relationships - the Son is begotten and is under the Father while the Spirit is proceeding (from both?) and life breathing. Each has specific roles but they are only who they are in relationship. The Father is not the Father without the Son and the Spirit, same goes for all three. Their relationships bring the meaning and substance to their being. We in the same way. We are different from animals and rocks, there is a subordination but we are deamonic if we forget which side of the Creator/creature distiniction we are on. But subordination does not exclude equality, rather it gives meaning and fulfills being. Does this help with gender role issues at all? Maybe.

3. Church - to tie in with what I have been previously writing on, the Church is the supreme being of creation in this sense. The Church is the true relatedness of the whole cosmos to God, it is the presentation by Christ through the Spirit of the created order back to God the Father. "Social being, of the kind embodied in a true ecclesia, is the deepest expression of human reality." The Church as body is the only right participation in creation for humanity and the rest of the world. The Church is the rightly ordered society for community, the rightly ordered place of human being. One can not be fully human outside the Church because one is not related in the right way to God, humans, and creation. Since relationships are ontological and not simply phenomenological, define true reality and are not just another aspect of it, being related in the wrong way is to be less than human. Of course fallenness needs to be taken into account of all of this, but the fact that relations ground being means we need to take the community of the Church as a serious part of being creations.

Trinitarian thought and being is what makes us most distinctly different and Christian in this world, not just as cognitive concept but as participatory reality. Why have we let it slip? We need to reinvest our thoughts and life to the Trinity and re-evaluate how we relate to God, humans, and the world. Is Nicea more important than Jerusalem? It is a stupid question in a sense because Jerusalem is caught up in Nicea. The cross and atonement can make no sense outside of the Trinitarian life of God and his relationship with creation.

Maybe St. Cyprian didn't go far enough. Forget the idea of salvation outside the Church, there is no humanity outside the Church!