Contents
Editorial
- Act of God?
Articles
- Acts of God, Stephen Mitchell
- The Great Flood, Dominic Kirkham
- Pie in the Sky when you Die, Patti Whaley
- This is Going to Hurt, Bobbie Stephens-Wright
Poetry
- Vespers, Christopher Truman
- Keeping Faith, Dinah Livingstone
Reviews
- Dominic Kirkham reviews Dominion by Tom Holland
- Danielle Hope reviews Afterwardness by Mimi Khalvati
- Francis McDonagh reviews The Lost Art of Scripture by Karen Armstrong
- Simon Mapp reviews Not for Nothing by Peter Armstrong
Regulars and Occasionals
- Letters to the Editor
- Revisiting: Kathleen McPhilemy revisits Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
- As I Please: The Toon Army, John Pearson
Editorial: Act of God?
A recent survey found that more people are praying during the lockdown, especially those in the 18-34 year old age group. Do they think a real, personal almighty God exists who can stop the corona virus plague? Do they think he caused it? Do they really believe in ‘acts of God’?
In Old Testament stories God causes plagues, floods and other suffering. They are literally ‘acts of God’. In Genesis, God throws Eve and Adam out of Eden. In the story of Noah, God is angry at human wickedness and sends a great flood. In the story of the ‘Passover’, God sends ten plagues on Egypt. In these stories God is a mass killer. It is essential that we should know that this God is not real. The mass killing in Britain and the rest of the world at the moment is not caused by a supernatural being but by the corona virus. Plagues and floods have natural causes. I think now is the time for churches to recognise and say that.
As well as hardship and disaster, there is so much good in the world, tremendous beauty, tremendous love and courage. It is right to praise all this, but let us praise it for itself, not some supernatural God for it. (In Paul’s great hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13, the word ‘God’ does not occur.)
Stevie Smith’s poem ‘Was He Married?’ proceeds in the form of a dialogue, perhaps the poet’s argument with herself. The questioner asks about Jesus and whether choosing a god of love is ‘a little move then?’ She answers: ‘Yes it is. A larger one will be when men / Love love and hate hate but do not deify them?’
Nevertheless, imagination is vital to us as human beings. We need poetry and stories but also need to know when they are fictions. Stories of a supernatural realm are imaginary and part of our common treasury and tradition. They offer great richness and often contain wisdom. But we must learn how to sift them and read them for what they are, perhaps ‘translate’ them.
In our first article Stephen Mitchell does some of that translating and also urges that it is important to keep the stories. He reminds us that St Teresa of Avila said: ‘Christ has no body now on Earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours.’ In our second article, ‘The Great Flood’, Dominic Kirkham recalls that before the corona virus the dominant ‘act of God’ was the flooding in Britain and elsewhere. He suggests: ‘Our present predicament is perhaps nudging us to a renewed appreciation of our beginnings.’ He looks back on the Babylonian story of the Great Flood and the adventures of Gilgamesh. Patti Whaley introduces her article, ‘Pie in the Sky when you Die’, by saying: ‘This article is more of a bottom-up approach – what do our chance remarks, popular songs, stories, and images tell us about what we want from the afterlife, why do we want it, and does understanding this help us to live better lives?’ In our fourth article, ‘This is Going to Hurt’, Bobbie Stephens-Wright gives an entertaining and brave account of how she has coped with a long-term debilitating illness.
Serious illness has often been, in the past, and still is sometimes, interpreted as an ‘act of God’ or God’s punishment. Again, it is very important to reject that idea. In the story of the man born blind in John’s gospel (9: 2-3) his disciples ask Jesus: ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus replies: ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned.’ The illness was not an ‘act of God’. There is no supernatural God to inflict disease or handicap. It has natural causes, which have to be dealt with and combatted as best we can.
I am pleased to say this issue of Sofia has a good number of letters to the Editor. Please keep these coming. There are also the usual Revisiting column, reviews and John Pearson’s inimitable As I Please.
Dinah Livingstone
Letters to the Editor
Sofia 135
Reading through Sofia 135 I definitely agree with John Pearson about the value of having a printed magazine like Sofia. It really is very well produced and attractive in its presentation making it a treat to read. It is a credit to the SOF Network that it can produce something of this quality that one can return to time and again.
Dominic Kirkham, Manchester
Firstly, may I compliment the contributors and Editor on the most recent edition of Sofia (135), a veritable artistic tour de force. I counted at least 18 quotations taken from at least 10 separate authors. For those of us who appreciate offerings of poetry and the poetic it was a feast. Thank you all. Notwithstanding the above, I do have one or two ‘buts’. Tony Windross sets out, excellently I feel, just what the Network is all about, both for him and I guess for many of us who are members and have been since its early days. I must take issue however, as one of those awkward Yorkshiremen such as he refers to, when he says that ‘what matters … is not what goes on in people’s heads, but what goes on in their hearts.’ He then suggests ethics reside in the heart but theology in the head. I subscribe to the recent writings of Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants), in his description of the human heart: ‘a wondrous organ… fully deserving of our praise… but it is not invested even slightly in our emotional well-being.’ For me it is obvious that from the first flows the second, and I was sad that such a realistic critique of traditional doctrine should give way, in places, to such sentimental notions.
John Pearson, Yorkshireman (adopted)
Having found the March 2020 issue of Sofia particularly insightful and stimulating, I am perhaps being unfair – as well as grammatically and logically paradoxical – in declaring two articles to be primus inter pares. Surely Dom Kirkham must be thanked for exposing the virus of Platonic dualism that early on contaminated Christianity’s understanding of Jesus by transforming his call for universal love into a salvation cult. And equally important was Martin Spence’s corollary rejection of dialectic. I applaud his advocacy of what I have long taken to be the point of The Leaven (according to Jesus Seminar scholars the most authentic of Jesus’ parables): that by using immanent and transcendent, secular and sacred, as antonyms we have too long stultified the human potential for spiritual awareness and commitment. Thanks for a wonderful issue.
Tom Hall, Foster, RI, USA
Martin Spence’s concise reflections on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Sofia 135) gave me a sense of that ‘modern martyr’ and his theology. Bonhoeffer’s ‘costly discipleship’, that worked with the poor and challenged injustice, has led Martin to conclude that, ‘the true source of human meaning lies in our concern for each other’. That is a challenging statement. I suspect that whilst every human being finds some meaning for their life by helping and caring for others, there are very few who have realised and accepted that concern as the only true source of meaning. Sources of meaning that may exist alongside caring for others are a level of wealth, offspring, status within a job, friendships and intimacy. Finding that sense of self and wider purpose is something religion helps us with – the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is testament to that.
James Dunstone, London