Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Rowan Williams: Christ the Heart of Creation.

Out on the 6^th September 2018 (UK) or 13^th November 2018 (US) is a new book from Rowan Williams: Christ the Heart of Creation.

“In this wide-ranging book, Rowan Williams argues that what we say about Jesus Christ is key to understanding what Christian belief says about creator and creation overall. Through detailed discussion of texts from the earliest centuries to the present day, we are shown some of the various and subtle ways in which Christians have discovered in their reflections on Christ the possibility of a deeply affirmative approach to creation, and a set of radical insights in ethics and politics as well.

Throughout his life, Rowan Williams has been deeply influenced by thinkers of the Eastern Christian tradition as well as Catholic and Anglican writers. This book draws on insights from Eastern Christianity, from the Western Middle Ages and from Reformed thinkers, from Calvin to Bonhoeffer – as well as considering theological insights sparked by philosophers like Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. Christ the Heart of Creation concerns fundamental issues for Christian belief and Williams tackles them head-on: he writes with clarity and shows his gift for putting across what are inevitably complex ideas to a wide audience.”

You can pre-order the book via Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.com. There’s not a lot of information out yet about the book, but I’m assuming it’s the published form of his 2016 Hulsean Lectures delivered under the title 'Christ and the Logic of Creation.' 

If you read Rowan Williams, you might have some interest in this 2012 essay: Christ and Contemplation: Doctrine and Spirituality in the Theology of Rowan Williams (PDF), published in the Anglican Theological Review, and written by Dustin Resch. I read it a few months back. You might also be interested in his 2002 Trinity College, University of Melbourne lecture titled: Living Sacramentally (PDF). I don’t recall having previously mentioned either of these papers on this blog.

The Monk's Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966

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The Monk's Record Player (HC / Eerdmans, 14^th March 2018) by Robert Hudson records “the story of a monk, a minstrel, and the music that brought them together.”

“In 1965 writer-activist-monk Thomas Merton fulfilled a twenty-four-year dream and went to live as a hermit beyond the walls of his Trappist monastery. Seven months later, after a secret romance with a woman half his age, he was in danger of losing it all. Yet on the very day that his abbot uncovered the affair, Merton found solace in an unlikely place—the songs of Bob Dylan, who, as fate would have it, was experiencing his own personal and creative crises during the summer of 1966. 

In this striking parallel biography of two countercultural icons, Robert Hudson plumbs the depths of Dylan’s surprising influence on Merton’s life and writing, recounts each man’s interactions with the woman who linked them together—Joan Baez—and shows how each transcended his immediate troubles and went on to new heights of spiritual and artistic genius. Readers will discover here a riveting story of creativity and crisis, burnout and redemption, in the tumultuous era of 1960s America.”

Rowan Williams commends this book with these words:

“A warm and vivid picture of two very different but unexpectedly related countercultural icons in that extraordinary mid-sixties moment of hope and imaginative enlargement. This book enables us to see some of the deep currents of that era and to reacquaint ourselves with two great, unclassifiable figures.”

Rowan Williams wrote a fascinating little book on Merton back in 2011, It was titled A Silent Action: Engagements with Thomas Merton. I recommend it.

Jesus in the Theology of Rowan Williams

First published in 2016 (expensive hardcover) Jesus in the Theology of Rowan Williams will be released later this year in paperback. Originally Brett Gray’s PhD, it is a technical academic book, but I’m looking forward to getting a copy later in the year and reading it. Williams has been important for me theologically, and while some find him obtuse, I’ve always gotten a lot out of listening and reading him, even if I haven’t always understood everything he says.

“Brett Gray traces the portrayal of Christ that emerges throughout Williams' diverse writings, including in his engagements with literature and philosophy. What emerges is a vision of Jesus that grows from the roots of the Christian tradition, but is pronounced in a contemporary idiom and sensitive to modern concerns.

Although attentive to the broad sweep of the Christian tradition, Williams' Christology is also seen in this book to be a particular British artefact, shaped in dialogue with thinkers such as Donald MacKinnon and Gillian Rose.

What is ultimately brought to the surface in this work is the profoundly hopeful, if frequently under-pronounced, eschatology underlying Williams' Christology. Jesus is the “last word”, changing creation's possibilities and summoning it into an endless and vivifying journey.

Table of contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Difference of God

Chapter 2: A Christological Presentation 

Chapter 3: Parodies 

Chapter 4: A Christ Complexly Unfallen

Chapter 5: The Complexities of Mediation

Chapter 6: Tragedy

Chapter 7: An Endless End

Conclusions 

Bibliography
Index

There’s a review in the journal Reviews in Religion & Theology (here), but access required.

Holy Living by Rowan Williams

Newly published, Rowan Williams’ latest – Holy Living: The Christian Tradition for Today (pub. 21 Sept. 2017 / 240 pp. Hardcover and softcover options).

“Apart from being a scholar and theologian, Rowan Williams has also demonstrated a rare gift for speaking and writing plainly and clearly about essentials of the Christian faith. In the chapters of this book he writes with profound perception about the life of holiness to which we are called. The range of Williams' frame of reference is astonishing – he brings poets and theologians to his aid, he writes about the Rule of St Benedict, the Bible, Icons, contemplation, St Teresa of Avila and even R. D. Laing. He concludes with two chapters on the injunction 'Know Thyself' in a Christian context. Throughout, Williams points out that holiness is a state of being – it is he writes 'completely undemonstrative and lacking any system of expertise. It can never be dissected and analysed.'”

One gets the sense this is largely a collection of previously published talks etc. (many of which will have been available on his Archbishop of Canterbury website, archived here), but it’s not clear, and I don't yet have a copy to check. For example, looking at the "contents" page, I'm sure one of them will be his brilliant 2003 address (read more than once by me) delivered at the 'Shaping Holy Lives', a Conference on Benedictine Spirituality, Tuesday 29th April 2003 at Trinity Wall Street, New York. Even if that is the case, I always find it useful to have as many of his talks as possible in one location – in a book in this case, or  his books more generally, a number of which are collections of essays and talks. Otherwise I have spiral bound copies of his essays around the place, but they not as easy to find as a shelved book.

You can look inside the book here.

Rowan Williams: Contemplation

“…Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter. “  

Rowan Williams (exact source unknown)

Rowan Williams in Conversation About Prayer

I was wondering when the lads from Nomad would do a second conversation with Rowan Williams, and I see they recently have. Here’s the promotion material for the episode (Episode 129 / 24^th May 2017)

“What actually is prayer? What happens when we do it? What difference can it make, if any, to the events and circumstances we find ourselves in? Should we expect to sense God in prayer, or perhaps even hear him communicate to us? And if so, why do so few of us ever seem to have these sorts of experiences.

For many of us, these questions, and others like them, have led us to a place of disillusionment and prayerlessness. And yet we still yearn for the deep, rooted, holistic connectedness that prayer promises.

So we brought these questions, and others, to Dr. Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalen College, Cambridge, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and expert in the history of Christian spirituality. He’s known as a man of great wisdom and deep spirituality. And he didn’t disappoint!”

You’ll find the downloadable conversation here. It’s a long podcast 1h 28m.

Rowan Williams: The Gift of Christmas: Learning How to be Gratefully Dependent.

Some useful insights from Rowan Williams in a little piece titled: The Gift of Christmas: Learning How to be Gratefully Dependent. Here are a couple of excerpts

“…One of the worst effects of this culture of impatience and pride is what it does to those who are most obviously dependent - the elderly, those with physical or psychological challenges and disabilities, and, of course, children. We send out the message that if you're not standing on your own two feet and if you need regular support, you're an anomaly. We'll look after you (with a bit of a sigh), but frankly it's not ideal.

And in the case of children, we shall do our level best to turn you into active little consumers and performers as soon as we can. We shall test you relentlessly in schools, we shall bombard you with advertising, often highly sexualised advertising, we shall worry you about your prospects and skills from the word go; we shall do all we can to make childhood a brief and rather regrettable stage on the way to the real thing - which is independence, turning you into a useful cog in the social machine that won't need too much maintenance.

Can we as a society accept and even celebrate the fact that there is a place for proper and mature dependence - that human beings need to receive and learn: not so that they can get to the point where they stop receiving and learning, but so that they can acquire the habits of receiving and learning in ever-new settings? Can we help children enjoy their dependency so that they don't just leave it behind but get to manage it with freedom and imagination as they grow older?”

You’ll find the whole short reflection online here.

Rowan Williams: A Miscellany

Today, something light, but of interest to those of you with an appreciation for the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It’s less about topical issues, and more about him as a person, an excerpt from which follows:

"...I’m happiest when I’m at the Pembrokeshire coast on family holidays.

Augustine has probably been the greatest theological influence above all, but also Vladimir Lossky, who was the focus of my doctoral research; Barth, Bonhoeffer, Austin Farrer, Donald MacKinnon, James Alison. I don’t know if Simone Weil is allowed to count as a theologian; I don’t always agree with her by any means, but she was a huge influence at several points. Among specific books, I remember Bonhoeffer’s prison letters; Charles Williams’s He Came Down From Heaven; Herbert McCabe, Law, Love and Language; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Elucidations.

The greatest influences in my life have been the parish priest in my teenage years; the Benedictine monk who was my spiritual director; and Jane and the children.

I pray most for patience, freedom to forgive and let go of hurt — for myself and for the whole Church and human family — and for the rescue of the vulnerable: the abused, hungry, terrified, wherever they are..."

If I had to choose a companion to be locked in a church with for a few hours, I’d toss up between St Augustine, T. S. Eliot, and Bonhoeffer, from the past. In the present — family apart — Salley Vickers, Michael Symmons Roberts, or Kathleen Norris.

You can read the complete interview here.

Rowan Williams – The Tragic Imagination

New from Rowan Williams in September 2016 - The Tragic Imagination: The Literary Agenda. Published by Oxford University Press (OUP). 192 pages. Can be pre-ordered.

Description:

“The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading.

This short but thought-provoking volume asks the question 'What is it that tragedy makes us know?'. The focus is on tragedy as a mode of representing the experience of radical suffering, pain, or loss, a mode of narrative through which we come to know certain things about ourselves and our world―about its fragility and ours. Through a mixture of historical discussion and close reading of a number of dramatic texts―from Sophocles to Sarah Kane―the book addresses a wide range of debates: how tragedy is defined, whether there is such a thing as 'absolute tragedy', various modern attempts to rework the classical heritage and the relation of comedy to tragedy. There is also a fresh discussion of whether religious―particularly Christian―discourse is inimical to the tragic, and of the necessary tension between tragic narrative and certain kinds of political as well as religious rhetoric. Rowan Williams argues that tragic drama both articulates failure and frailty and, in affirming the possibility of narrating the story of traumatic loss, refuses to settle for passivity, resignation, or despair. In this sense, it still shows the trace of its ritual and religious roots. And in challenging two-dimensional models of society, power, humanity and human knowing, it remains an intrinsic part of any fully humanist culture.”

See also this interview with Williams where he talks about poetry and literature.

The Original Jesus

I was asked the other day to talk a little about the significance of Easter: What was Good Friday? What is it that we celebrate on Easter Sunday and why? Where is Jesus?

I reflected that its interesting that when you’re steeped in a tradition, it’s oftentimes the so-called “simple” questions that become the most challenging to answer when the questioner comes from a place that has had very very little to do with Christianity. How do you meaningfully talk about Jesus’ death and his rising, alive, on the third day from his death? How do you meaningfully talk about the resurrection, or the ascension…?

When you have to write a response to those questions it allows you time to reflect and nuance a response; time to think about the right words etc. But, when you’re asked, I reflected its not so straight forward to answer the “basics”. Books having to do with the basics oftentimes get pushed to the back of the bookshelf, replaced by more technical theological, historical and philosophical book.

One of the best introductory books I’ve read on Jesus, and one I’m now going to re-read, having located it on my bookshelves, is Tom Wright’s The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary (originally published by Lion Publishing plc in 1996). The book originated as the expanded text of a series of BBC programmes screened on Jesus and fronted by Wright. Wright's intention was to "speak as simply and directly as [he] could, in non-technical language..."; an intention very much in evidence in this book. 

Wright has gone on to right a whole range of books, from the introductory to complex theological. In the Original Jesus he succinctly summarises in 150 pages (with illustrations) what he expands on in numerous other “big” books. For example: Jesus and the Victory of God (pub. 1996 / 662 pages plus bibliography etc) and The Resurrection of the Son of God (pub. 2003 / 738 pages plus bibliography etc).

Published in 1999 by Intervarsity Press was his The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is. While not as accessible as The Original Jesus it is nonetheless an introductory text aimed at a general, but relatively theologically literate audience. It comes in at 197 pages. Other authors who engage more popularly with the Jesus stories are Marcus J. Borg (d. 21^st January 2015). See his Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time) and John Dominic Crossan, both of whom differ from each other and Wright in some interesting ways. All three serve or have served as conversation partners for the other. See, for example: The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions co-written by N.T. “Tom” Wright and Marcus Borg. Or, The Resurrection of Jesus, which is an edited collection of essays by scholars who distill key features of the dialogue between John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright. Crossan provides the closing appendix and the Wright / Crossan dialogue is contained in Chapter 1.