Kipling and Women's Ministry

I love Rudyard Kipling, really don't know why he gets such a serve for being colonial: he was! and observed it brilliantly yet he satired it shrewdly.

Enjoy this poem on why women are not given positions of authority. he he.

The Female of the Species --1917
WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Kipling, Rudyard. Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1885-1932. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933.

TF Torrance reckons 'in christ' was the beating heart of Calvin's theology

Thomas F. Torrance, Conflict and Agreement in the Church (Wipf & Stock, 1996): 1.91-3:

“All Calvin’s teaching and preaching have to do with salvation through union with Christ in His death and resurrection. That is very clear in the Institutes in which the central message is worked out more and more clearly and fully from book to book, and is given most magnificent form in book four. In the history of theology Calvin represents the movement to bring the doctrine of the Person of Christ into the centre. In that he stood consciously in the tradition of Augustine and Bernard (the two fathers he cites more frequently than any others) in their emphasis upon personal Christological truth, but in Calvin it is more biblical, more dynamic and eschatological, than mystical – and certainly much less individualistic that it was in Bernard. Calvin, for example, would have nothing to do with Bernard’s notion that the individual soul is the Bride of Christ. It is of the whole Church that we must speak in this way, and union with Christ is essentially the corporate union between Christ and the Church as His Body.

“It is around this doctrine of union with Christ, then, that Calvin builds his doctrine of faith, of the Church as the living Body of Christ, and his doctrines of the Christian life, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Apart from union with Christ, Calvin says, all that Christ did for us in His Incarnation, death, and resurrection, would be unavailing. An examination of the structure of the Institutes makes it clear that this forms the main substance of his theology, and that the idea of predestination is not given a central place. Predestination or election is important, but Calvin speaks about it as a rule in connection with certain controversies (notably with Castellio and Pighius) but never as a basic doctrine in itself – except in so far as Christ is Himself the Beloved Son and the mirror of our election. And so right in the heart of his Christology Calvin devotes a small chapter to that fact, the really central point of election…Rather, then, does Calvin give predestination a place on the circumference of his theology, where it acted like a protecting wall for the central emphases of grace and adoption or sonship in Christ…

“Nothing has done more harm to Calvinism than the invention and perpetuation of the myth that Calvin’s theology was a severely logical structure. That notion grew up on French soil and was perpetuated by the great succession of Calvinist Schoolmen on the Continent, eminently in Holland. Modern research, however, makes it indubitably clear that Calvin’s whole theology was formulated in a very definite reaction against the arid logical schematisms into which the doctrines of the Church had been thrust by “the frigid doctors of the Sorbonne”, as he called them, and that again and again he was content to leave the ends of his theological thinking loose for the precise reason that theology runs out always to the point of wonder where we can only clap our hands on our mouth and remember that we are humble creatures. The whole inner substance of Calvin’s teaching…enshrines mystery and resists rationalistic schematization – so that it is a great disservice to interpret him as above all a logician.

“That is not to say that his theology is not amazingly consistent; as it is. It is consistency, however, that derives not from formal logic but from the thoroughness with which he stated his theology in terms of the analogy of Christ. In his prefatory letter to the King of France, in the 1559 edition of the Institutes, Calvin pointed out that, following the Apostle Paul, Christian theology must operate with the analogy of faith, and that when doctrine is tested by this its victory is secure. By the analogy of faith Calvin meant both that all doctrine must be based upon the exegetical study of Holy Scripture in which Scriptural passages are interpreted in terms of each other, and more basically, that all doctrines are to be thought out thoroughly in terms of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus, for example, in regard to repentance, which was such an important issue at the Reformation, while the Roman Schoolmen divided repentance into three parts, contrition, confession, and satisfaction, Calvin, following the analogy of faith in Jesus Christ, showed that repentance has two essential parts, mortification and vivification, corresponding to the death and resurrection of Christ. It was in carrying that Christological analogy through all the doctrines of the faith that Calvin achieved such an astonishing consistency, but it is consistency determined not by logical relation or by some kind of Calvinist philosophy (so-called), but by the principle of Christological analogy – i.e. Christology applied to the whole of our life and work and thought.”

Are we even able to imagine another world anymore? or, Why on earth do we pester missiologists about contextualization and synchretism?

‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and
rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for
yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes
and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your
whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your
whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is dark-
ness, how great is the darkness!
No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one
and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and wealth.’ (Matt. 6.19–24)


"God and wealth are set in competition for time, in terms of ‘storing
up treasure’, for attention, in terms of the health of the eye, and for
devotion, in terms of service. Our evaluations are not primarily
expressed by what we say, nor simply by what we do, but by how we
pray: the determination of our time, attention and devotion. This is
where the power of money is to be sought: not simply in the worship or
accumulation of wealth for its own sake, but in the way that the social
institution of money demands and shapes time, attention and devotion.
All religions, in essence, direct and distribute time, attention and
devotion. Religions are patterns of life through which it is claimed that
life is enriched. If there is an opposition between God and money, then
fundamentally it comes down to this: wealth contains its own principles
according to which time, attention and devotion are allocated. In a
society organized primarily for the pursuit of wealth, nothing could
seem more evident and unquestionable than that time, attention and
devotion should be allocated to the pursuit of wealth. It is the very obli-
gation to do so that constitutes the spiritual power of money. It is the
very obligation to do so that is the object of a theology of money."

Phillip Goodchild
'The Theology of Money'


I can't remember who it was that said if you are orthodox on everything you speak about, but avoid speaking about the most important heresy of the time, you are a heretic. I think it was Athanasius or Luther.
Money, in my humble opinion, is the giant gleaming idol in every one of our homes, churches and theological colleges.
So I'm looking forward to reading Goodchild's book.

Which comes first, the nation or the church

Central to the arguments of both Yoder and Williams is the claim that the church is relationally and semantically prior to the world, with its domineering leadership and its tribalitic claims.

"the relation of human beings in the Body of Christ, relations dependent simply on shared commitment to and promise to be with the risen Jesus, provide the context and the critique for other systems, the irritant that can prevent the human world from simply setlling down with mutually exclusive and competing tribalisms" Williams- On Christian Theology 237

The role of the church in constructing true humans (by and with the grace of God) is the criteria by which state and family are assessed. How well does this or that particular corporate identity, or system of relationships, contribute to its members growing into Christ-likeness, how much does it value its own survival as primary or alternately, how much does it value Jesus claim to be Lord (and possibly Saviour) of those outside its boundaries.

This is open to the response that the church itself is part of a family (Abraham's
), and has some relationship to a nation (Israel). This is worth remembering. But it is also worth remembering that our particular family is not Abraham's and our nation is not Israel. Not only that, both these suffered the judgment of God, and so cannot be held up in principle as automatic 'goods'.

On what basis will humans ever be able have worldwide community?

" The Church's good news is that human community is possible; the Church's challenge is in its insistence that this possibility is realized only in that giving away of power in order to nurture authority in others that is learned in the giving away of God in Jesus, and its further insistence that the relations constituting Christ's body neither compete with nor vindicate others, but simply stand in their own right as the context which relativizes all others....

The Church's primitive and angular seperateness, the Church as envisaged in the gospels and as it existed in many areas of the early Christian world, is meant to be a protest on behalf of a unified world, the world that holds together in and because of Jesus Christ"

Williams On Christian Theology 233

A new chorus for church perhaps? Bow down before the one you serve

god money i'll do anything for you.
god money just tell me what you want me to.
god money nail me up against the wall.
god money don't want everything he wants it all.
no you can't take it
no you can't take it
no you can't take that away from me
no you can't take it
no you can't take it
no you can't take that away from me
head like a hole.
black as your soul.
i'd rather die than give you control.
head like a hole.
black as your soul.
i'd rather die than give you control.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
god money's not looking for the cure.
god money's not concerned with the sick among the pure.
god money let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised.
god money's not one to choose
no you can't take it
no you can't take it
no you can't take that away from me
no you can't take it
no you can't take it
no you can't take that away from me
head like a hole.
black as your soul.
i'd rather die than give you control.
head like a hole.
black as your soul.
i'd rather die than give you control.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
head like a hole.
black as your soul.
i'd rather die than give you control.
head like a hole.
black as your soul.
i'd rather die than give you control.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
bow down before the one you serve.
you're going to get what you deserve.
you know who you are.

Church is not a rival institution to family or state, it is a whole new world

"The systems of the world cannot contain or control the rival 'world' established by Christ in which the fundamental form of relation is the mutual construction of persons in the likeness of Jesus...By presenting itself as a new world, Christianity finds itself in its early years often in sharp conflict with family, synagogue and kingdom; but not as another society competing for a position alongside them....The Church claims to show the human world as such what is possible for it in relation to God- not through the adding of ecclesiastical activities to others, and not through the sacralizing of existing communal forms, but by witnessing to the possibility of a common life sustained by God's creative breaking of existing frontiers and showing that creative authority in the pattern of relation already described, the building up of Christ like persons"

Williams 'On Christian Theology 232-233

Michael Gorman on Cruciformity

“Cruciformity”—from “cruciform” (cross-shaped) and “conformity”—means conformity to the cross, to Christ crucified. Cruciformity is the ethical dimension of the theology of the cross found throughout the NT and the Christian tradition. Paradoxically, because the living Christ remains the crucified one, cruciformity is Spirit-enabled conformity to the indwelling crucified and resurrected Christ. It is the ministry of the living Christ, who re-shapes all relationships and responsibilities to express the self-giving, life-giving love of God that was displayed on the cross. Although cruciformity often includes suffering, at its heart cruciformity—like the cross—is about faithfulness and love."
Michael Gorman

Authority and the church

"There is a quite proper circularity to the ethics of the Christian community: I am called to use the authority given me by Christ (by Christ's giving away of power conceived as control and security) so as to nurture that authority in others, so that they may give it away in turn- to me and to others. So in John 13 what Jesus gives (service) is to be the currency of exchange between beleivers: to grow into Jesus' 'Lordship' (his freedom from all other powers) is to become able to wash one another's feet, that is, to welcome them as a guest at the same table."

Rowan Williams 'Incarnation and the Renewal of community' in On Christian Theology , 232

This whole day belongs to Jesus

Reading through the 1662 Book of Common Prayer recently. Two things have struck me. Firstly, the prayers are about everyday things, rain, harvests, safety, holiness, that show and encourage a genuine dependence on God. It seems with all our modern technology, the only thing we really need God for is providing the heaven tickets. The second is the way in which prayer and the scriptures marked the day and the year. Each day was shaped by the rhythm of morning and evening prayer, not simply for the recluse monastic, but for everybody (or at the very least the minister). When did we give this up as a communal reality? When did we allow economics to dominate our time?

As an Anglican, I've been engaging some Anabaptists like these guys. over the last few months with guilty pleasure, as though tasting some forbidden ecclesiological fruit. But the more I think about it, the more the ideas of sustainability and rhythms of prayer and communal living appear to be part of the Anglican tradition we have foolishly ignored.

And what do you wish for...... world peace

Will you end wars by asking men to trust men who evidently cannot be trusted? No. Teach them to love and trust God; then they will be able to love the men they cannot trust, and will dare to make peace with them, not trusting in them but in God.
For only love - which means humility - can cast out the fear which is the root of all war.

If men really wanted peace they would ask God and He would give it to them. But why should He give the world a peace which it does not really desire? For the peace the world seems to desire is really no peace at all.
To some men peace means merely the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob one another without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.
Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was "peace" and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war.
So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war.

- Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (London: 1949), 72-73.

H/T Byron

Yoder- Is Jesus Lord over me, or the whole world?

“It is remarkable how the meaning of Christ’s lordship has been reversed in modern ecumenical discussion. In New Testament times the lordship of Christ meant that even that which is pagan, the state, was under God’s rule. Today exactly the same expression means that Christians have been sent into all areas of public life, including every political position, and that there as Christians they are to do their duties according to the rules of the state – in other words, the opposite of the meaning in the New Testament” (pp. 62-63).

Discipleship As Political Responsibility (Herald Press, 2003)

Yoder- Living as signs of another world

“The church can be a foretaste of the peace for which the world was made. It is the function of minority communities to remember and to create utopian visions. There is no hope for society without an awareness of transcendence. Transcendence is kept alive not on the grounds of logical proof to the effect that there is a cosmos with a hereafter, but by the vitality of communities in which a different way of being keeps breaking in here and now. That we can really be led on a different way is real proof of the transcendent power which offers hope of peace to the world as well. Nonconformity is the warrant for the promise of another world. Although immersed in this world, the church by her way of being represents the promise of another world, which is not somewhere else but which is to come here. That promissory quality of the church’s present distinctiveness is the making of peace, as the refusal to make war is her indispensable negative transcendence.”

– John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 94.

H/T Halden

I like this gear from Yoder, but has anyone found anything in Yoder about church discipline? If the church is to be a sacrament of peace for the rest of the world, how do we deal with the evil among us?

It's just war

If a nation that was manifestly more righteous than ours wished to execute God's wrath and take over our nation by force, how would you feel about that? NSW seems to have quite a corruption problem at the moment, would it be ok for Queensland to use force to bring justice here? Given our recent discussions, what if a nation came to the aid (a couple of hundred years late) of the indigenous population of Australia and executed justice on us? Sure, there would be some casualties, as there are in any war, but would the war be kosher, because it aimed at justice? What would you say to your christian brothers and sisters in the invading force? Bravo? And if you saw the invasion as unjust, or even, partially unjust, what would you do? Would you pick up arms and fight back? At what point would you stop recognising one authority as that 'ordered by God' and recognise the new one as 'ordered by God'?

Giving to the poor is a good investment

In the latest Compassion magazine, the Paul Moede tells of how he found an investment advisor in Uganda

"I am re-evaluating the scope of my investments thanks to my new advisor. She’s an elementary school student in Uganda.


I first noticed her sitting on the steps of a Compassion child development center during lunch at a church outside of Kampala. Sometimes it’s hard to tell how old children are in the developing world. They can be smaller and slight for their age, but I guessed her to be about 8.



I also noticed her by the massive portion of food on her plate. I am always amazed at the amounts of food Compassion staff serves up to these little children - and how clean and empty their plates come back.

But unlike her peers, this little girl wasn’t eating everything she was served. As she started her lunch, she purposefully unwadded a small piece of black plastic and smoothed it out on the step next to her. Then she used her plate as a buffet: a thick slice of juicy pineapple, a piece of sweet potato, a scoop of matooke, and several spoonfuls of beans. She took some of each and mounded them in the middle of the plastic, drew up the corners and carefully twisted it into a hand-fashioned bag. With her package secured, she held it in her left hand and went to work on the food remaining on her plate. She never put the bag down.

I knew what she was doing. This was “carry-out” for a brother or sister at home, or maybe for a mom or guardian.

I was wrong.

This little girl was the only child left at home. Her parents were able to provide food. This was a meal, a church worker told me, destined for a friend who lived next door.

That’s the moment she became my advisor on investments, teaching me two key lessons on giving and the poor.

First, this little girl taught me that sharing means giving the best right off the top - not giving what’s left or passing along what I don’t want.

Would anybody have faulted her if she had leaned against the wall in the warm Ugandan sun and savored each slice of fresh pineapple? Or who would have thought twice if she ate eighty percent of her lunch and scraped the rest onto the plastic?

But that would be sharing as an afterthought, and this little girl approached life differently. She purposed to share first, took the best off the top of her plate, and set it aside for a friend. She began her meal by dividing it, not by devouring it.

There’s a second lesson that she taught on the steps of this little Ugandan church. She proved that when we share with the poor, we aren’t sharing with consumers. We are sharing with sharers. We are giving to givers. And we are investing in generous spirits.

I know the adage that says “give a man a fish and he eats for today - teach him how to fish and he can eat tomorrow.” It makes its point. But thanks to this Ugandan 8-year-old, I could fashion a new one. “Feed a child today, and you will give her lunch. Feed a child enough, and she will probably share it.”

When the poor have needs, parents, guardians and caregivers do whatever they can to bring home food. They are up early, walk long distances, and work hard to obtain what God tells us to pray for - daily bread. And after working hard for what sometimes is not all that much, you’d think the natural reaction would be to horde what they have. I am sure there are many who do.

But there are also mothers and fathers, aunts and brothers who take the same “share first, share much” approach to life of this little Ugandan. Our gifts have not reached the end of the line when they are received by people like her. They are multiplied by their generosity to others who have even less. And that’s what makes mercy and compassion such rock solid investments.

On this same trip, I captured a quote from a Ugandan who said, “When we give, we don’t give because of what we have. We give because we love.”

This little girl proved the quote to be true and became my advisor without saying a word."


"I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings" Luke 16:9

Paul and Judaism

For those of you in 3rd year MTC, or anyone else that's interested, papers are available from an international conference on Paul and Judaism here

The Worship wrangle

There is a long history of wrangling over the word 'worship' in Sydney Anglican circles. Based on the New Testament's use of worship language to describe all-of-life ethical living before the Lord, some want to squeeze 'worship' out of our vocabulary for our meetings.
Many have questioned this dichotomy, and what it does for the church gathering.(most notably David Peterson). I'm interested to see what it has done for the ethics of the people who go to 'no worship' church meetings.
There are elements of a corporate meeting such as the de-centering adoration of God, the specific attention to the presence and story of God, the recognition of the work of God in others, the declaring of our identity in Christ, which have important ethical consequences.
My hunch is that as we have devalued worship on Sundays, we have also devalued our life as worship. That is, instead of saying to Christians, 'you are the temple of the living God', we have simply noted the destruction of the physical Temple. Instead of saying 'the whole of life should reflect this gathering', we have settled for, 'this gathering should reflect the rest of our lives'. So we have church services where we don't bother reading much scripture because, hey, we don't read it in the rest of the week either. We have church services where the Lords supper is entirely horizontal and communal, because we don't remember Jesus death or acknowledge his presence any other time we eat during the week.
My hunch also is that if we have kick-ass Sundays, it will reshape our congregations desires and perception of the world and God's mission in it, it will change people's lives to give glory to God in the rest of the week.

I may no longer whinge about church

Many of you know that I've been whinging about contemporary church services, their emptiness, and the lack of resources for putting them together for quite some time.
But now, I may whinge no more!
I finally got to bettergatherings and may I just say it is GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! for Australia.
Finally a resource that clearly and simply explains what was going on in traditional services, yet gives room for flexibility and creativity.

Here is their vision and aim

"Our vision: Christian gatherings in which not only the sermon, but the whole service is a powerful proclamation of the gospel. Each element of the service combines to take us on a journey in which God makes himself present among us by his word, and we encounter him together. In this shared experience we are filled with repentance, trust and praise as we feel again the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our aim: To equip service leaders to craft meetings that by their shape, their contents and their tone proclaim the gospel of Christ, build his body in the unity of the Spirit, and bring honour and glory to God."

Yoder- do we need to twist the Bible to make it political?

“That story is about a people, a civil reordering in their very existence, not only potentially or by implication. No ‘bridge’ or ‘translation’ is needed to make the Bible a book about politics. The new order, the new humanity, does not replace or destroy the old, but that does not make the new order apolitical. Its very existence is subversive at the points the old order is repressive, and creative where the old is without vision. The transcendence of the new consists not in its escaping the realm where the old order rules, but in its subverting and transforming that realm.”

~ John Howard Yoder, For the Nations, 84.

Yoder- Is God doing something in the world through the church ir not?

“What then should be the path of the church in our time? We muse first of all confess — if we believe it — that the meaning of history lies not in the acquisition and defence of the culture and freedoms of the West, not in the aggrandizement of material comforts and political sovereignty, but in the calling together ‘for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation,’ a ‘ people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.’ The basic theological issue is not between Bultmann and Barth, not between the sacramental and the prophetic emphases, nor between the Hebraic and Greek mentalities, but between those for whom the church is a reality and those for whom it is the institutional reaction of the good and bad conscience, of the insights, the self-encouragement — in short, of the religion of society.”

– John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 61-62.