131 – Sacrifice

The Divine Feminine In his intriguing essay (‘Hail, Full of Grace’ in Sofia 130) Dominic Kirkham suggested that women in the Ancient Near East ruled equally alongside men until the rise of civilisation, particular literacy, in the Bronze Age. Dominic wrote that in the second millennium BCE, ‘the patriarchal societies of male domination and aggression’ led to the ‘denigration of femininity’ and the emergence of belief in a ‘supreme and solitary male god’. I would like to make two points: 1. Key to Dominic’s argument is the suggestion that archaeological finds dating from the ninth century BCE show that some Israelites saw Asherah as a consort of Yahweh. This interpretation of the inscriptions on pottery found at Kuntillet Arud is not shared by everyone – see John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, (Sheffield Academic Press 2002) p.49. Even if Asherah was Yahweh’s consort this does not mean that she was seen as his equal. 2. The first nine chapters of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs (probably dating from the second century BCE) describe Wisdom as female and as having been with Yahweh from the beginning of time – it is difficult to match this with Dominic’s view of men of this period as claiming wisdom and literacy to be exclusively their own.

Having said all that, I really enjoyed the essay.

— James Priestman, London

London Rejoice in Natural Grace ‘The greatest [grace]... is love. A shortfall in love... matters most. Just because we fail to get there and may feel we cannot do so without supernatural aid, that does not mean there is any supernatural aid available. I don't think there is. There remains natural grace, intermittent and perishable as it may be... Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it and is a powerful incentive not to give up. When it comes, it feels like a gift and a joy.’ Precisely! And that potential for grace is why despite the self-centred proclivity programmed into us by aeons of the struggle for survival we can rise above our lower nature and in some measure transform our lives – why ‘... we can find/ In serving others’ needs/ A glow of hope and peace of mind/ Not drawn from ancient creeds.’ And surely transcendence does not presuppose a supernatural power, for clearly grace is an inner voice capable of persuading us that it is better in the long run to give than to receive.

Cannot the artificial strictures of rhyme and meter imposed by an hymnodic form occasionally be found in poetry (poiema, creation)? Does the rhymed verse in the Blake work cited or that of George Herbert in ‘Teach Me, My God and King’ render them poor poetry? Be that as it may, I am grateful for Dinah’s article Grace, and for the insight to which it pointed me – and for the serious and genuine re-evaluation it urged upon a rather conservative minister with whom I shared the concept of non-supernatural grace.

— Tom Hall, USA

Peace (and grace), Tom Hall USA The Chris2an Middle Way I’m grateful for the generally supportive tone of David Lambourn’s letter (130, Dec 2018) in response to Ben Whitney’s review (128, June 2018) of my book The Christian Middle Way. If readers engage with the book in the way that David Sofia welcomes comment and debate. Please send your letters to:

Sofia Editor:

Dinah Livingstone, 10 St Martin’s Close, London NW1 0HR editor@sofn.org.uk letters recommends – namely, as a stimulus for nudging them into asking new questions about previously settled beliefs – I will be well content. I’m also grateful to Ben for engaging with the book in his original review. Although the review had some sympathy with what I was trying to do in the book, there were also two fairly serious misunderstandings.

The first of these occurs where Ben writes ‘His admitted lack of interest in the historical accuracy of the gospel records worries me. He treats them all as giving us the same insight into what Jesus actually said (even John).’ The second sentence here is a complete misrepresentation of the book and what I say in it. I try to make it quite clear that I am not interested in what Jesus ‘actually’ said at all. I do treat all the gospels as offering potential sources for understanding the archetypal construction that has emerged in the accepted stories of the Christian tradition. The figure of Jesus is significant for us, not because of what he did or did not ‘actually’ do, but because of the practical importance of the stories told about him as a source of archetypal inspiration or as a practical model.

Unfortunately, Ben is not the only reviewer of the book who failed to get this, though I don’t see how I could have stated it more plainly. For example, in my introduction I state very clearly that ‘there are no arguments from the authority of scripture, or from the authority of historical events, in this book’ (p.6).

The other misunderstanding involves a failure to recognise the very basic distinction between atheism and agnosticism – again, despite this having been discussed very carefully in the book. Ben gives no justification for his belief that ‘it is not equally possible that God may or may not exist’. This can only be based on a failure to understand the Middle Way and what it involves – namely the avoidance of negative absolute positions as much as positive ones.

I was hoping for a bit more openness to less familiar kinds of arguments in SOF than I have actually encountered here. I’m happy to put this down to the difficulty in engaging with what is proposed, which I really wish was less new than it actually seems to be. Perhaps it is a lot to ask to request people to engage with an unfamiliar approach more carefully until they actually understand it – but nevertheless I’m afraid I can ask no less.

— Robert M. Ellis