Sophia

What the Pope actually said

2006-09-18T16:26:00.000Z

What did the Pope say?

What follows is a much abbreviated text of the Pope’s lecture at Regensburg University. You will see that the topic the Pope addresses is the importance of using reason to combat the limitations of scientific secularism, and also in order to promote a dialogue between cultures and religions. The words which, quoted out of context, gave much offence to the Muslim world are a quotation from a mediaeval Emperor of Byzantium, and afterwards the Pope emphasised that they do not represent his own view of Islam.

The whole point of the address is that violence and forced conversion have no place in Christianity, and hopefully not in other faiths too, and cannot be the basis for dialogue between cultures and faiths – which in fact is what he earnestly desires to see.

Theo Simpson

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections

Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn.
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The university [Bonn]was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

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In the seventh conversation… the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably
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The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.
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In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in [Christian] theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos [“word”, “reason”] and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos.
…

The scientific ethos, moreover, is… the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology… The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Rev Prof Amjad-Ali on the Cartoon Controversy

2006-05-11T09:22:00.000Z

The Revd Charles Amjad-Ali, Ph.D., Th.D.
The Martin Luther King Jr., Prof. of Justice and Christian Community
Prof. of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations Luther Seminary, St. Paul Minnesota, USA
Visiting Priest with the Anglican Diocese of Johannesburg and resident at St. Michael’s Parish
Senior Research Fellow Ditshwanelo CARAS, Johannesburg, South Africa

Over the past few months a major controversy has erupted over some cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in Denmark. This controversy has escalated, causing loss of life and  destruction of property around the world. We are horrified by the rioting and are deeply grieved by the dozens of deaths that have occurred in Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, India and elsewhere. Our sense of decency causes us to find all this very appalling and to condemn these acts. However, it is not enough to react only to these images and news; we must fully understand what    sequence of events led to this. This is difficult because the same media which is giving us such gruesome images is failing to give us a full picture of the underlying causes behind this violence.

On 30th September, 2005, Jyllands-Posten, a right-wing newspaper, published 12 cartoons that vilified the Prophet Mohammed, portraying him as a terrorist, and an encourager of suicide bombers, etc. The paper and many       Europeans have justified the cartoons’ publication on the high moral ground of protecting free speech. This self-righteousness is galling and needs to be challenged. The rights of free speech and expression are always limited by necessary corresponding responsibilities, including the need to take cognizance of, and safeguarding, the rights of others. These responsibilities are recognized in Sections 266b and 140 of Denmark’s own penal code; in     Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and in Article 10 of the European Charter on Human Rights. In South Africa, Article 16 of the Constitution contains similar and clear limitations. In all these cases, clauses guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression are quickly    followed by limitations stating that such rights do not extend to infringing upon the rights of others, nor to hate speech, or to vilifying others. Those hiding behind freedom of speech are either ignorant of these caveats, or they are conveniently overlooking them, out of the combination of Islamophobia, racism and xenophobia that is   becoming apparent in Europe today.

It is clear the paper published these images in order to inflame Islamophobia in its readers, and to incite the sensibilities of Muslims. Just three years earlier the same paper, rightly I might add, refused to publish blasphemous cartoons of Jesus, stating that they would offend readers and create an outcry. So they were aware that such cartoons are highly offensive. Thus, the publication of the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed was clearly meant as a hate speech to offend Muslims through consciously vilifying and maligning them, and the newspaper knew the effect such cartoons would have. Therefore this should be treated as a criminal act and prosecuted by the Danish state, precisely in order to protect the sacredness and efficaciousness of the rights of free speech and expression: exactly because these rights are sacred, the cartoon controversy must be seen as a violation of free expression and not as a protection of it.

To use this controversy as an example of Samuel Huntington’s banal treatise about an inevitable “clash of civilizations” is simply to reinforce the existing prevalence of xenophobic, racist and anti-Islamic prejudices in Europe, and by extension, in other parts of the world. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, just as the cartoon controversy is. If you show the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, you know in advance Muslims of deep conviction and with a strong commitment to their faith will find that portrayal or any portrayal of the Prophet, to be offensive and blasphemous and they will react. Just think of how we as Christians would react to a cartoon depicting Christ as a prison guard violating Geneva Conventions in           Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib? Or to a cartoon showing Jesus wearing a crown of nuclear bombs instead of thorns, representing the so-called “Christian World” and its immense destructive power? Christians would be correct to see the intent as clearly mala fide and that the issue at stake is not freedom of speech but conscious vilification. And if some Christians responded with angry actions, we would understand this. Jyllands-Posten refused the earlier cartoons of Jesus, and knowingly solicited blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, precisely to elicit just the kind of response that has come to pass. To paraphrase the American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., “first they cut off my limbs and then they call me handicapped.” In that instance the reference was to the US systems which kept African Americans deprived, and then used their low socio-economic status to “prove” their inferiority. Such inversion of causality is not only illogical but highly immoral and must be condemned vociferously.

Since 2001 Denmark has become increasingly xenophobic and racist, with the political right scapegoating the small Muslim population in order to gain politically. A case in point is the rise of the Dansk Fokeparti. Formed in 1995 as an anti-immigration party, in 2001 it became the third largest party and joined the center-right governing coalition which within six months adopted anti-immigration policies. This is a growing trend in Europe and hence there is an increasing need to speak out against it now.

Precisely because we hold the freedom of speech and expression as sacred rights, to be protected, upheld and       practiced in all societies, we must condemn the publication of these blasphemous and hurtful cartoons and ask the state of     Denmark, as well as other European countries, to treat this and other such acts of hate speech, of vilifying neighbors, and propagating anti-immigrant xenophobia and racism, as crimes that must be prosecuted. Those hiding behind the freedom of speech and expression, while consciously perpetuating an offensive hate speech, are      demanding that we trump all other rights by these freedoms. Therefore while fully affirming the sacrality of the freedom of speech and expression, we must also state categorically that they are but a few of the many rights we uphold as sacred; and that the rights of freedom of speech and     expression must not be allowed to trump the other sacred rights enshrined in international and national laws, regimes, and protocols.

This article is reproduced by courtesy of St. Michael’s Church Bryanston, South Africa

Building Bridges

2006-04-07T07:19:00.000Z

Building Bridges – Christian Muslim Dialogue
On April 7 2006 the Church Times reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury had attended a “Building Bridges” seminar in Washington the previous week and said that both faiths should be working towards a world where "different societies recognised the credibility, the justice, and the legitimacy in each other".
Dr Williams said that Islam did not have to adopt a “Western Model” secular humans rights framework. In fact, Islam also had a tradition in which human rights were recognised: "It is sometimes assumed that there is one discourse of human rights, that is, a Western and secular one, which is being marketed in an uncritical and insensitive way to the rest of the world."
We had to acknowledge that while faith communities had genuine differences which were not going to go away, such communities had to work together and trust each other because no religion or nation could solve the world’s problems alone.
It was a tragic setback to this kind of collaborative working – indeed it was outrageous - when there were threats against the lives of Christian converts from Islam like the Afghan, Abdul Kahman.
The Building Bridges seminar was attended by about 30 Christian and Muslim scholars from around the world.

Tutu urges apartheid

2005-12-16T14:14:00.000Z

Tutu urges apartheid prosecutions

Archbishop Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

South Africa should have prosecuted the perpetrators of apartheid-era atrocities who did not seek amnesty, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said.
The archbishop was interviewed on South African radio to mark the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The TRC, chaired by Archbishop Tutu, was set up to probe human rights violations under apartheid.
Perpetrators had the opportunity to ask for amnesty in return for confessing.
"We have probably not done as well in regard to... those who thumbed their noses at the truth commission," the archibishop said.
"We probably should have done what the legislation requires and really prosecuted people," he told SABC radio.
Out of 7,112 perpetrators who applied, 849 were granted amnesty.
Compensation
He also said victims did not receive adequate compensation, particularly since those who testified before the TRC surrendered their right to seek damages in court.
"I think that we as a nation have been less than generous in the money reparations that we have offered to the victims," Archbishop Tutu said.
The government did not begin paying compensation to victims until December 2003, more than five years after the TRC had presented its findings.
A fund of 660m rand ($100m) was set aside to make one-off payments of 30,000 rand to 22,000 victims - considerably less than the 3bn rand fund recommended by the TRC.

Bishop Tutu’s position was repudiated by Patrick Lawrence, quoting John Daniel, in the Johannesburg Star for Tuesday January 3rd.

Patrick Lawrence, the editor of Focus, the journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation, quotes John Daniel, of the Human Science Research Council, and a former TRC research official, as saying that it is now too late to pursued this plan. Two reasons are given:

The evidence and witnesses required for a successful prosecution are probably no longer available.

The political costs of disrupting the de facto amnesty since the TRC’s 1998 would be too high.

On the other hand, it is possible to make a strong moral case for prosecuting known offenders who did not seek amnesty from the TRC on the grounds that forgiveness (at least as Christians understand it), always requires a clear recognition of guilt and a purpose of amendment as well as repentance in a more general sense.

Certainly the moral tone of South Africa today would have been much strengthened by the conviction of ‘unrepentant’ offenders against human rights from all parties, ANC as well as former Nationalists, members of the IFP etc. Only in this way would it have been possible to ensure that the new beginning and the move to a ‘rainbow nation’ were not sullied by the presence of a large body of people ‘in denial’ about what had actually been happening.

What do you think?

For a fuller discussion of the Christian understanding of repentance, see www.theologon.org.uk, ‘a God of new beginnings’.

African Church Leaders

2005-12-03T09:36:00.001Z

African Church Leaders, homosexuality and racism

On Nov. 25, 2005 the U. K. Church Times published a letter from a certain Bob Cranmore of Lancing in the U.K. in which he drew parallels between the behaviour of the Anglican church leaders in Africa and African political leaders. It seemed to me that Mr. Cranmore’s assumptions were implicitly racist, and I wrote to the Church Times as follows:

Sir
Bob Cranmore (letters Church Times 25/11/2005) links the behaviour of “Anglican leaders in Africa” with the behaviour of African politicians, who “have had notoriously little self-discipline over their quest for and retention of personal power and wealth, and have been prepared to destroy institutions and infrastructure laboriously built up — and to hell with the people they should be looking after.”
This kind of stereotyping of African leaders is, to say the least, intemperate and ill-informed. As it happens, on the same day (25/11/2005) the Johannesburg Star published an article by a Distinguished Research Fellow of the (South African) Human Sciences Research Council which pointed out, inter alia, that while only 8 African Presidents retired voluntarily and one stood down after loosing an election between 1960 and 1989, the corresponding figures were 17 and 15 between 1990 and 2004. This is a rather different picture than that painted by Bob Cranmore.
I am not in the least sympathetic to either the views or the actions of the Archbishop of Nigeria, but it should be noted that Nigeria is one country in a large continent, and our own Archbishop of Cape Town, for example, is a very different kind of person and holds quite different views. He is not alone in this.
At a time when many of us are desperately anxious that nothing should hinder the Archbishop of Canterbury’s efforts to hold the Communion together, it is rather surprising to find the Church Times offering room to a letter which has something of a hint of racism in the opinions expressed. Such views can only serve to inflame an already difficult situation.

Of course, I am obliged to the Church Times for publishing my letter, which obviously they had no obligation to do, but I was surprised to find that the sections in bold italics in the version of the letter above were omitted by the Editor.
The effect of this is to remove from my letter the suggestion that Mr. Cranmore’s letter reflects a racial stereotyping of African leaders. Most of us, would feel that a suggestion, for example, that European church leaders cannot be trusted because their political leaders commit crimes such as the torture, imprisonment and slaughter of Jews to be a biased and terribly over-simplified account of things.
Am I wrong in thinking that the Church Times itself betrays an inadequate grasp of the issue of racism when it is prepared to publish a letter like Mr. Cranmore’s without comment, and then to delete from my reply the points I made about the racist assumptions underlying his letter?
Please email your views to me at theos@theos.co.za so that I can publish them on this site.
A reflection on the central importance of maintaining the unity of the visible church across all cultural and racial boundaries will be found at http://www.theologon.org.uk/ on the page, “a God who re-creates human community”.

Born again George

2005-11-17T17:47:00.000Z

How born-again George became a man on a mission Julian Borger in WashingtonFriday October 7, 2005The Guardian
George Bush was born again as an evangelical Christian in 1985 with the help of Billy Graham. But the veteran preacher had a warning for the future president: "Never play God".
As Mr Bush went on from that pivotal moment to be elected Texas governor and win the presidency, fears have occasionally been raised that he has forgotten Mr Graham's admonition.
An account by Palestinian leaders of a 2003 meeting, broadcast by the BBC, reinforces a deepening impression that Mr Bush really does believe himself to be a man of destiny, on "a mission from God".
2003 book, The Faith of George W Bush, by a religious author, Stephen Mansfield, recounts several anecdotes about Mr Bush's sense of divine guidance. While he was still weighing up whether to run for the presidency, he apparently confided in a Texan evangelist, James Robinson, that he had a premonition of national tragedy. "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen," Mr Bush said. "I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
His personal story of redemption from hard drinking and hell raising was very much part of his 2000 campaign. Asked during a debate to name his favourite "philosopher-thinker", Mr Bush replied: "Christ, because he changed my heart."
Since taking office, Mr Bush has steered away from claims of being a vehicle for divine power, but there have been lapses. Last year, he reportedly told an Amish group in Pennsylvania: "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job."
Soon after the September 11 attacks, Mr Bush spoke of a "crusade" against the country's enemies. The word was quickly expunged from the presidential vocabulary, but it appeared to echo a religious sense of mission in Mr Bush's mind. In his state of the union address two years later, he suggested that his pre-emptive foreign policy doctrine was also divinely inspired.
"This call of history has come to the right country," he said. "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.'
The comments drew widespread attention. Since the nation's founding, American politicians have used far more extensive religious vocabulary and imagery than is customary in Europe. In the US, it is not so much tolerated as required.
However, Mr Bush has arguably gone further in both word and deed than any modern president, and his critics have accused him of deliberately blurring the constitutional separation between church and state. Former White House officials have recounted how staff were expected to attend daily prayer meetings. Billions of dollars have been set aside for "faith-based" groups, which President Bush believes to be more effective for social assistance than government programmes.
Suspicions of a creeping evangelical agenda ignited into outrage with the comments of a US general, William Boykin, responsible for leading the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The war on terror, Lieut Gen Boykin told Christian groups in 2003, was a war against satan. Of the president, the general asked: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."
After a brief investigation, the general was not only exonerated for improper remarks, he was promoted to deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence.
[See http://www.theologon.org.uk and go to page, ‘a God who lays claim to the lost’ for some reflections on baptism and being ‘born again’]

Hanks, Lincoln Cathedral and the "da Vinci Code"

2005-10-31T08:51:00.000Z

Tom Hanks faces protestors on way to Lincoln Cathedral to film scenes from the da Vinci Code

Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks was faced by protestors including nuns, as he began filming scenes for the upcoming film adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code in Lincoln yesterday.
The demonstration took place outside Lincoln Cathedral, which is doubling for Westminster Abbey. The Cathedral staff at Lincoln only agreed to allow filming after the movie's producers made a GBP100,000 donation.
Hanks, who will only be in Lincoln for two days, was chauffeur-driven the short distance from his five star hotel to the historic location - and he briefly waved at a small gathering of fans, who vied with demonstrators for his attention, before disappearing inside.
The cathedral's Dean, The Very Rev. Alec Knight, has dismissed Brown's 20 million-selling book as "a load of old tosh", but he was unable to turn down the offer which gives priceless publicity to his spiritual home.
However, demonstrators outside the cathedral have taken exception to Brown's questioning of their religious beliefs, and were led in a 12 hour prayer vigil by Catholic nun Sister Mary Michael.
The 61-year-old says, "I just don't think it is right that they are filming this story here. I know the Bishop and Dean argue that it is fiction - and it might even be brilliant fiction - but it is against the very essence of what we believe."
(For further comments see http://www.theologon.org.uk/ and select one-page documents “a God who trusts us to tell the truth” and “a God who is part of the human story”: much more is available elsewhere on the web)

Rev Prof Amjad-Ali on the Cartoon Controversy

2005-10-26T08:57:00.000Z

The “da Vinci Code” and Mary Magdalene
The Independent Foreign Service syndicated an article – yet another article – headed, “More grist to the ‘Da Vinci Code’ mill’, by Peter Popham, which was reprinted in The Star, Johannesburg, on Mon Oct. 17.
The headline is revealing: Dan Brown’s novel, “The da Vinci Code” has become an international best-seller. But more that that – it has spawned a whole industry of debate, discussion and refutation.
Why is this so?

Dan Brown abandons the normal conventions of the historical novel. Normally, in a historical novel, there is reference to a number of public facts – that is events which are generally accepted as historically verifiable. These facts provide the framework within which the novelist constructs the story. In his Introduction, Dan Brown actually says that he is following this tried and tested approach: he claims that all the facts to which he refers are historically verifiable. But this is not the case. On the contrary, he presents as fact a great many happenings that are either not part of the historical record, or are simply contrary to it (for some details, see www.theologon.org.uk and select one-page document  “a God who trusts us to tell the truth”: much more is available elsewhere on the web).
Peter Popham’s article mentioned above demonstrates the cavalier treatment of historical truth which characterises Dan Brown and his admirers. The article contrasts a sensual and provocative picture of Mary Magdalene which has recently gone of show at Ancona in Northern Italy, with Leonardo’s chaste and enigmatic Mona Lisa. Now the plot thickens. The Magdalene is normally attributed to Giampietrino, a pupil of Leonardo. But Popham quotes a certain Carlo Pedretti, who we is a “Leonardo expert”, who thinks that the figure normally regarded as John the Baptist is Leonardo’s Last Supper is actually a portrait of Mary Magdalene. Dan Brown and Carlo Pedretti are just about the only people who actually think this may be true. Pedretti thinks that there is a strong case for ascribing the Magdalene portrait to Leonardo himself. Peter Popham piles further speculation on to this by saying that it would be no surprise if Leonardo, who carried round with him the Mona Lisa because he was so fond of it, also took along the Magdalene, with its “shame-free eroticism”. Really? Hardly anybody is willing to state that Leonardo actually painted the Magdalene – even Giampetrino only floats it as an idea worthy of further investigation. Popham has built onto this the speculation that Leonardo actually carried it with him everywhere! He concludes with a speculative question, “Did Leonardo depict Mary Magdalene in the act of seducing Jesus?”
Why should anyone find this kind of nonsense even remotely plausible – and why is it worth space in Newspapers all over the world?
What Dan Brown has succeeded in doing is to give a platform to all those post-Christians in the West who harbour a grudge against the church, and who find that the rise of feminism provides them with a convenient stick with which to beat the church. Brown angles his attack with some cunning: ostensively it is on the Roman Catholic Church and the Opus Day order which are targets of his attack. Protestants appear to get an easier ride. However, his fanciful rewriting of the story of Mary Magdalene is also a re-writing of the story of Jesus, and one that is completely destructive of any kind of Christian faith. I say this not because Jesus could not have married, or that if he had it would have somehow disproved his divine status (see www.theologon.org.uk and select one-page document  “a God who is part of the human story and shares our human experience”). But the Jesus of the gospels is the Jesus whom God raised from the dead. The story of the resurrection and the account of commissioning of his followers to reach out to all humankind and to include all within his new community of love and peace are central to the New Testament as a whole, and to the four gospels in particular. This is totally incompatible with a story about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and secretly establishing a dynasty. It is the very bedrock of Christianity which is at stake here.
It might seem odd that after nearly 200 years of critical study of the Bible, and the exploration and rejection of all sorts of fanciful reconstructions of Christian origins which attempt to displace the resurrection and the church from the central role in Christianity attributed to them by the New Testament, an even wilder suggestion should gain a hearing across the western world. The difference is that earlier speculations were intended to be taken seriously, and studied seriously. Brown is offering us a sort of joke – one can easily imagine him saying, “But isn’t it amusing to tell this sort of story about Jesus, and to give the old fogies who will be shocked a bit of a fright?” And then, if we attempt a serious response, no doubt we will be told, “It’s only a novel, it’s only a bit of fun”.
It may be a bit of fun, but if so it is a joke in very bad taste. Just now, it may seem acceptable because of the immense power of the feminist lobby in western culture, and the growth of post-Christian new age thinking which is in reaction against the perceived patriarchalism of traditional Christianity. This is a rather sleazy kind of joke. Let us hope it is quickly forgotten.
Theo Simpson
See also www.theologon.org.uk and select one-page document  “a God who trusts us to tell the truth” and
www.theologon.org.uk and one-page document  “a God who is part of the human story and shares our human experience”)

Bush warned of environmental disaster of "biblical proportions"

2005-10-18T09:37:00.000Z

American evangelical leader warns Bush of an environmental crisis “of Biblical proportions”

Polluters will have to answer to God, not just government, says Richard Cizik. Vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, Cizik is a pro-Bush Bible-brandishing reverend zealously opposed to abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem-cell research. He is also on a mission to convert tens of millions of Americans to the cause of conservation, using a right-to-life framework. Cizik has been crisscrossing the United States in recent months, spreading the doctrine of "creation care" to evangelical Christians.
Citing the Bible, Cizik says "it is sinfully wrong -- it is a tragedy of enormous proportions -- to destroy, degrade, or despoil the earth." And he maintains that subscribing to the "creation care" agenda does not mean people "have to become liberal weirdoes." With his leadership, NAE, one of the most politically powerful religious advocacy groups in America, released a manifesto last year urging its members to adopt eco-friendly living habits and exhorting the government to lighten America's environmental footprint. Next month, the organization will begin circulating a charter calling on its member network and top-level Beltway allies to fight global warming.
Cizik spoke recently from his hotel in New York City, where he was preparing to appear at a religious rally and wax evangelical on climate change -- a crisis, he says, of "biblical proportions." He talked about collaborating with left-wing enviro groups, the clash between evangelical beliefs and science -- and motivating 30 million constituents to provoke change in Bush's widely denounced environmental policies.
Have you endured criticism from other evangelicals over your environmental advocacy?
There are those who are concerned that by going down this road of creation care we are saying that plants and animals are superior to people. Again, much of the challenge is reframing the environmental issue for the evangelical community as a people issue. We have to say, for instance, that addressing climate change is a way of saying we care about the millions of people worldwide that might have to endure tremendous suffering and displacement from the drought, hurricanes, and flooding associated with global warming. Certainly the human trauma caused by Katrina has brought this issue home.
What is your opinion on the Bush administration's environmental track record?
I am a pro-Bush conservative, but I believe this isn't a conservative issue, a liberal issue, a Republican issue, a Democrat issue, a red issue, a blue issue, or a green issue. Has the Bush administration done what I think it should do in terms of reducing pollution and resource consumption? No. But I am modestly optimistic that there has been some momentum in the discussion in Washington and the public at large. I am confident that the administration can change its direction, and we can help them do that.
How much influence do you think you have on the direction of the Republican Party?
Our membership is 30 million strong, with 45,000 churches, 7,000 megachurches, some with billion-dollar budgets. We represent 40 percent of the Republican Party. There is a saying that "as evangelicals go, so goes the West" -- meaning our community sets trends. Is everybody in our community ready to support a creation-care agenda? Certainly not. But conservation is conservative at its roots, and they can be regrown.
Did you have a conversion moment of sorts on this issue?
Well, I grew up on a farm in the Pacific Northwest, and you know how they say: You can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy. I've always had a love for nature. I've often joked that I learned growing up that climate can seriously impact a farm family's income. There were a few rainstorms that came along and destroyed our cherry crops. We learned the hard way that you can't subdue Mother Nature.
Later in life I had a conversion experience on the climate issue not unlike my conversion to Christ. I was at a conference in Oxford where Sir John Houghton, an evangelical scientist, was presenting evidence of shrinking ice caps, temperatures tracked for millennia through ice-core data, increasing hurricane intensity, drought patterns, and so on. I realized all at once, with sudden awe, that climate change is a phenomenon of truly biblical proportions.

Richard Cizik was interviewed by Amanda Griscom Little, a columnist for Grist Magazine, where the full text of this article will be found.

FOR A ONE-PAGE CHRISTIAN REFLECTION ON THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, go to…www.theologon.org.uk and select one-page document “God of all creation”

Tsunami

2005-10-18T07:42:00.000Z

The Archbishop's comments on the Tsunami disaster, made available by courtesy of Archdeacon Ronald Jonathan---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12 January 2005
‘Archbishop, where is God in this tragedy?’ I have been asked many times since the earthquake and tsunamis.
My first answer is this.We have a God who weeps with us, wherever there is suffering and pain.
Again and again, the Christian gospel assures us that God is not an absent deity, cold-hearted and distant from our sufferings.Rather, in Jesus Christ – fully God and fully human – he shares in all the joys and pains of life.More than that, on the cross Jesus shares in mortality and death.His resurrection, rising from the grave on Easter Sunday to a new and fuller life, shows that he has broken the power of death, and so for us who trust in him, death is not the end, not the ultimate enemy who overcomes us all.
These truths are not changed by the tsunami – rather, the tsunami shows how deeply we need God’s love in life, and God’s reassurance that he is indeed greater than death.
The next question that people often ask is, ‘If God really is all-loving and all-powerful, surely he would not allow this to happen?’
Philosophers have wrestled with this over the centuries – and never reached a satisfactory answer.There is a good reason for this.Faith is not an intellectual exercise – reducing God to something our finite minds can grasp, or only being prepared to believe in the sort of God who behaves in ways we can understand.God is too big for us.And faith is about having a living relationship with the God of love who promises to be with us in all circumstances – if we are ready to accept him.
This is why Christianity has withstood the tests of time.
Repeatedly, those who face tragedy tell how they were sustained through it by – and often, only by – God’s presence with them, his love, his comfort, his strength, and his encouragement to pick up the pieces and go forward.Many of us know this in our own lives – it was my experience both on Robben Island, and later when my first wife died suddenly.When you have experienced him like this, you cannot doubt his love, and his power to transform lives.
Another question I have been asked is whether this is an ‘act of God’ or just an accident of geology.God has created an awe-inspiring universe, in which our tiny planet, through processes like this earthquake, has produced conditions which sustain life.Indeed, scientists say there was such a tiny possibility of this happening as to be almost beyond coincidence.So it is not helpful to call earthquakes ‘acts of God,’ unless we say the same of other wonders of nature, from the awesome power of the Niagara Falls, to the marvel of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
There is also a human dimension, if not to the earthquake, then to its consequences.Scientists tell us that the cause of the earthquake was beyond human control.But they have also pointed out that the effects of the tsunami in many areas were worsened because of our destruction of mangroves and climatically insensitive building developments.
The Bible tells us that we should be responsible stewards of God’s creation.In this case it means that we must heed the call by the World Wide Fund for Nature and others, to ensure that reconstruction is ecologically appropriate and sustainable.We must also accept that the consequences of global warming, such as rising sea levels, are our fault, and must act to rectify matters.All of us must bear our responsibilities for this, wherever we live on this planet.
It would be wrong to think that God allowed the earthquake to punish humanity in some sort of simplistic and vindictive way – sweeping good and bad together into the sea.But at the same time, we must never forget that each one of us is accountable to him for our actions.We are not puppets – God gives us choice in how we live.
It is more helpful to see this as a ‘wake-up call’ to use our choices wisely – especially in how we share the resources of the world.Richer countries have early warning systems; Japan and San Francisco can afford buildings that withstand earthquakes.Poverty, rooted in unjust economic systems, means natural disasters always seem to hit the poorest hardest.It is also a wake-up call to recognise the ultimate realities of life – that we cannot understand and control everything, and must rely on God to direct us, and to forgive us when we fail to be the people we ought.
Whenever tragedy strikes – whether on a huge scale, like the tsunamis, or in individual lives and families, we must always remember that God never turns his back on us.‘I am with you always, to the end of time’ Jesus promised his disciples.
God also shows his love in inspiring countless loving human actions.Alongside the disaster there have been numerous stories of people risking, even forfeiting, their lives to save others; local people, devastated by their own losses, opening their homes to foreigners; and the outpouring of aid from individuals.
‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ taught Jesus.One lesson of this tragedy is that the whole human family are our neighbours.We each share the responsibility to live generously towards the entire human race, not just those affected by the earthquake.We must also remember those like the 40 million people on our planet who live with HIV/AIDS, of whom 3 million will die this year.So will another 2 million from TB, and another million from malaria.Both of these are easily curable – and we can easily afford it, if we choose to do so.
‘In all things God works for good’ says a famous Bible verse.My final answer to those who ask these questions would be that the God who overcame death on the cross can and does bring hope and new beginnings even in the darkest tragedy – it is up to us to let him touch us.

FOR A ONE-PAGE CHRISTIAN REFLECTION ON THE PROBLEM OF RECONCILING GOD’S GOODNESS AND LOVE WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF MISFORTUNE AND CALAMITY, go to…

http://www.theologon.org.uk/ and select one-page document God, calamity and disaster