Spring has always come before.
So that doesn’t mean it will
this time.
But since it has each year
till now
I dream of green.
I dream of green all winter.
Hope
1
Author Archives: doradueck
The pieces we’re missing
A news article in the latest MB Herald, with the headline “MB seminary professor apologizes for remarks,” reveals that B.C. conference minister Steve Berg sent an email to the MB seminary (MBBS) board in November expressing “his concerns” that “Mark Baker states that penal substitutionary atonement is unbiblical.” The email also said, “In what is already a very challenging time for MBBS, we are concerned that there is a disconnect underway between BCMB churches and MBBS, and the atonement debate is accelerating the process.”
The article describes and quotes Baker’s response to the B.C. executive and pastors. Baker sounds gracious and thorough in explaining what he believes and what he wishes he’d communicated more clearly, what he wishes he had not written. The content of it sounds very much like what he stated at the MB study conference in Saskatoon in October — the same affirmations, clarifications, attempts at nuance — though he goes further to address a number of his responses at the conference itself. At that event, he stated his first book will be revised. He also clearly affirmed the MB Confession of Faith, Article 5 on Salvation, and does so again in his letter. I attended and reported — here — on the Saskatoon conference. I don’t recall “‘unbiblical’ rhetoric.” I do know that Baker felt himself rather on the block, so to speak, which is never an easy place to be, and I do recollect that he responded carefully and with integrity to the challenges raised to him.
My opinion on whether an apology is necessary is beside the point, however. He made it, and it needs to be received.
But, will it be received? Has it been? Maybe that’s what’s bothering me about this article. It’s not what’s here, but the pieces we’re missing. The back story. And what happened next.
Re. the back story, I’m wondering why Berg sent this email to the seminary board after the October conference, when Baker’s views had been clearly indicated there. Berg himself led the session in which Baker presented. Is there other pressure coming to the B.C. executive? From the two people Baker says he wishes he had responded to more affirmingly? From those who did not attend? What’s going on? Berg notes an accelerating debate, but it’s hard to believe that Baker is responsible. And, to be honest, I’m queasy, fearing he’s being made the fall person.
MBBS president Lynn Jost is also quoted in the article. He thanks the B.C. executive for communicating their concerns directly with the seminary, and reminds of the seminary’s commitment “to biblical authority and to interpreting the Bible in a way consistent with the MB Confession of Faith.” This commitment, truly said and truly meant, is also not new. Has it been heard and truly received? I can’t help recalling Jost’s words at the MB Forum recently, about “the difficult position that a culture of suspicion raises for the Seminary.”
Yesterday, I happened to be sorting through a pile of papers and came upon the candid words of a young B.C. pastor to the recommendation on women in ministry at Calgary some years ago. He intended to support the motion, he said, even though it hadn’t gone as far for full and equal participation as he wished. Because of that, it would require his own “self-control and respect of people who believe very differently.” He went on to say, “It will also require some of you to stop labeling me and others who believe similarly, as heretics or on a slippery slope to liberalism, or as being soft on ethics, or whatever other label you might use to write off people who hold a reasoned opinion that disagrees with your own.”
His words felt oddly familiar within this new context. There’s been labelling, baiting, mollifying of behaviors that foster a culture of suspicion, withdrawing of financial support. (The latter has always struck me as the most pernicious, and I’d even say ungodly, strategy individuals or churches can use to exert pressure, because it’s so powerful and puts others into danger not just economically but spiritually.)
The letter has now been reported. But is there more we should know? And will there be other, good, responses to come?
“Dusting myself off”
Last evening, the “Take and Read” book discussion group wound up its four-book season with Acedia & me by Kathleen Norris. (See previous post.) Since this book fits the form of spiritual autobiography, our host/leader Paul Doerksen followed suit by being somewhat confessional in his introduction. His extended family has just faced some close calls with death and disease and it’s like “a face-off with my own mortality,” he said. He’s been reading the late David Foster Wallace, and Soren Kierkegaard, one of the writers Norris also references. And, there’s been some sense of personal spiritual malaise. “I read almost hungrily,” he admitted.
It’s significant that Norris differentiates acedia from depression and that she calls it a vice, Doerksen went on, because the cures she proposes depend on it. Acedia is related to bad thoughts, to sin, to “demon” activity, all of them spiritual categories. Since it’s a spiritual condition, it must be resisted on spiritual terms. That, at least, is the thrust of Norris’ book. We must become more aware of what’s going on with us soulishly, get beneath the surface of things, perhaps re-visit early Christian theology, and embrace repetition and routine — whether they be daily tasks or disciplines like prayer.
Although I’m not sure that acedia is more of a problem now than in other eras, I was struck by a couple of relevant examples that came up. One is the search for novelty that has church folks going from one conference or seminar to the next, seeking the latest, newest speaker or trend. Another is the inability to give the right weight to things, exacerbated, as Doerksen put it, because these “perfect vehicles have emerged” in the media to flatten everything, yet overwhelm us with their bids for our attention.
Some of us, me included, had particularly enjoyed the personal narratives of the book. Paul Doerksen felt some ambivalence about the “level of self-referential material,” however, wondering to what extent Norris was “poaching her own life” and how much he was “being played as a reader.” Ambivalence, in fact, may be the best word to sum up the group’s general reaction to the book. A doctor in the group felt that, in spite of Norris’s statements otherwise, her opening descriptors sounded very much like someone dealing with lifelong depression.
As for what we would take away from the book, perhaps the best summary was one participant’s words that it’s about “getting up and dusting myself off.” In other words, falling but getting up again and again and going on.
It being the last of the series, Doerksen wrapped up by noting some of the common threads or themes we’d encountered. The books we read were The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart, Original Sin by Alan Jacobs, and the Norris book.
And the threads? 1. The Bible is a powerful text. 2. Humanity (remember that moving passage by Hart on Peter’s tears?). 3. Sin, original or otherwise. 4. Take monasticism more seriously.
It sounds as if “Take and Read” will run again next year, for any in the Winnipeg area who may be interested. I know I’ll be watching to see what’s on tap. It’s been good to be stretched, and to read together with others.
P.S. Congratulations to Paul Doerksen, whose book Beyond Suspicion: Post-Christendom Protestant Political Theology in John Howard Yoder and Oliver O’Donovan (Wipf & Stock) was launched tonight, at McNally’s.
