Heroes of the Faith: Charles Simeon

The Chapel at Ridley Hall has as an West window some stained glass commemorating Charles Simeon (Pictured Left) and I, as a student there would oft find myself sitting beneath it and it was because of this that I decided that I'd best find out a little more about the bloke.

Charles Simeon (1759-1836) was, for some fifty-three years, the senior minister at Holy Trinity Church and a fellow of King’s College for fifty-four! He is truly an man of the Word and his life's work was dedicated to making the Bible more accessible and understood - so no better place for him to appear on a window than in his beloved Cambridge and on the window of a place dedicated to educating would-be ministers of the Gospel in their craft. Would that those who came out of the Vicar factory there were has as able a preacher and teacher as this man!

I have to admit that along with my desire to have Barth's Church Dogmatics (fulfilled) on my shelves is that of having a copy of Simeon's Horae Homileticae (his preaching notes) and the time to read them.

From this man's inspired teaching and lifestyle many were to leave Cambridge to take the word of God out into the world; and it should be no surprise to learn that he also had a hand in the creation of many societies concerned with spreading the Gospel. I love the fact that he regarded those he trained as brothers rather than the 'curates' or 'my vicars' as some with paucity of character might do - for he welcomed and supported all who worked with him in the vineyard as brothers!

He was instrumental in founding the following

Church Missionary Society (1797)

Religious Tract Society (1799) - merged and became Lutterworth Press

British and Foreign Bible Society (1804)

Church's Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ)
(1809 was the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews)

Here we have a man who took a lot of stick during his life because he was an evangelical. A man who was influential as a man of the Word and has continued in his influence through the many bodies he formed, and caused to be formed through his ministry and life, and still touches life through the many churches he endowed (and still supports through the Simeon's Trust).

Ladies and Gentlemen - I give to you Charles Simeon

A hero, and a brother, of mine

Charles Simeon - A man to celebrate

And a man to emulate too!

This morning the Church of England remembers, and gives thanks for, the life and ministry of   Charles Simeon. A man whose ministry centred in and around Cambridge and its university and yet his ministry brought many benefits to the Church across the globe with the ministries he brought into being and the societies and organisations that trace their roots to him and the legacy of his ministry.

He was a Evangelical at a time when being such was not popular (not like now at all then!) and a man whose expository preaching style has become perhaps the gold standard for those of us who seek to emulate him.

Simeon reached the student population of Cambridge with the Gospel and brought not just attendance (the desire of so many) but discipleship (the professed desire)  and this discipleship saw many take up holy orders and put off careers in the world to travel the globe and preach the Gospel. It is said that it was Simeon who influenced Wilberforce regarding slavery and Christian living and caused Henry Martyn to take up his missionary endeavours. I am always chastened by the account he gave of Cambridge and the fact that in some three years he had not encountered a single believer - and yet he came to faith and lived true to it until he died in 1836.

I first became aware of Simeon by sitting near the stained glass window with his likeness in the chapel at Ridley and as I became more informed about him realised that this was a man whose footsteps would surely lead me to find Christ ahead of him on the road to the cross and to making Him known.

Would that those of us in church leadership would indeed 'inspire our people in service and mission':

Eternal God,
who raised up Charles Simeon
to preach the good news of Jesus Christ
and inspire your people in service and mission:
grant that we with all your Church may worship the Saviour,
turn in sorrow from our sins and walk in the way of holiness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Annihilation?

I consider myself to be an Evangelical (of the open variety), which for me means that I believe in a triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and see the only way to relationship with the father as being won for me by the Son and that this is enabled by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is central to my life and belief and I uphold the orthodox, that is ‘traditional’ teachings and practice of the Church within the parameters of Scripture, tradition and reason (perhaps adding experience to have a quadrilateral)!

There are a number of areas that I struggle with and increasingly I find someone or other proclaiming that they are an ‘evangelical nnn’ (when nnn is usually something I struggle with accepting. So it was with a bit of surprise that I first encountered annihilationist thinking in an evangelical context from the late John Stott*. When he did there was much mumbling and accounts of great fallings out over it with certain well-known Christian figures. I struggled with it because I had always been taught that there were two parallel tracks:

Heaven – where God and His people were

Hell – Where those who were separate from God, were separate from God for eternity.

Not for me the eternal damnation and accordion playing that many think of when considering hell! Hell is merely eternal separation from God, and that is enough in itself to be terrible. In fact I abhor those who paint a picture of the terrors of hell in an attempt to peddle a ticket away from it. I seek to help people find true life with God through Christ not bring them into the boat because of fear!
But within the issue of hell are many pastoral, practical and theological issues. What if just as some thought the world to be flat the thinking on hell is totally skewed and there is doubt as to who is going to a ‘better place”? If the party never ends and the stores never close, what difference would an absence of God really make? Then again, if the accordion playing never stops and there are no Apple computers – could even the presence of God make such a place desirable?

I guess my thinking has been shaped not only by those who taught me but also by Keith Green’s ‘Sheep and Goats’:

In as much as you've not done it unto the least of My brethren, You've not done it unto Me.
In as much as you've not done it unto the least of My brethren, You've not done it unto Me.
Depart from Me.
And these shall go away into everlasting fire. But the righteous into eternal life!
And my friends, the only difference between the sheep and the goats, according to this scripture,
is what they did, and didn't do!!

So here we have, in music, Matthew twenty-five’s telling that some will go into ‘eternal punishment’ while others will go into ‘eternal life’. Of course if there are two sides of the coin and one is eternal life then it is fair to assume the complementary state that is eternal death. But my problem immediately comes to the fore because the Bible doesn’t say that. What it tells me is that what awaits some is eternal punishment and this doesn’t fit the idea of some unconscious state. If one is annihilated it would be as it they have never been (one of the hallmarks of the Shoah) and so the person sins and then reaping their reward vanishes such that all they had was all there was for them and the humanist viewpoint is found to be valid.

In discussion I find some who claim that all will get a new body and come before the throne on the day of judgment and then, those who are condemned will be zapped and be no more. Sounds a bit like a story of a bloke on death row who spent many years battling cancer. When eventually the doctors gave him a clean bill of health and pronounced him fit the state executed him. Sound pretty cruel to me I don’t see God as cruel. Mind you, others tell me this is compassion and justice combined.

Some tell me that we will all have new bodies and those who are set for eternal life will live for eternity whilst them others will go to a place where God is not and the ravages of age, ill-health and whatever will come upon them (just like now) and then they will cease to be. Not just wacky but doesn’t sound eternal (how’s about having your liver eaten every day – might be fun?).

The problem comes in that nasty word ‘eternal’ being coupled with an even nastier one ‘punishment’ and is exacerbated by my need to have some Biblical and theologically joined up bits.
I am told that a God of love wouldn’t keep people in eternal punishment but would remove them from being rather than have them suffer. This is why a kind God would favour annihilation. A cruel God would keep them in a matchbox and shake it ever now and then.

Just the first volley in this topic - hope it stimulates and challenges and is seen as an invitation to dialogue.

Pax

Pentecost - Speaking Boldly

I have always been struck by the transformation of the wibbly-wobbly followers, hiding behind closed doors, into bold and courageous people of faith who proclaimed the truth regarding Jesus.

Today as we come to this I find myself challenged by people who seem to have lost the plot in that they regard the Christian faith as something that can evolve and deliver new ways forward and still be 'orthodox' Christians (that is, in-line with the tenets, practices and beliefs of the Christian Church as it has been for a couple of thousand years!). They look at the always counter-cultural Judeo-Christian faith that we have and as if it were some weird sociological entity and seek to change the very tenets of it whilst assuming that others will regard this new creation as one and the same faith! How [insert word or words here]!

I tire of those who seek to continue using 'evangelical' when it is obvious that 'evangelical' they most surely are not (whatever it is that we consider'evangelical' to mean but that's perhaps another discussion for another day). Seems to me that universalist and evangelical is an oxymoron and that to have 'evangelicals' who wish to see us accept (when they really mean promote) people who act contrary to the teachings of the Church is another misuse of the word and a departure from 'orthodoxy', 'evangelcial' or otherwise!

In dialogue with someone who considers themselves 'evangelical' I soon realised that they had in fact (in their own words) "Grown out of the evangelical bit with its rules and oppositions and oppressions." This would, I assume make them merely 'post-evangelical'. To assume that the 'evangelicals' have had their day and to proclaim a glasnost that embraces and accepts differing lifestyles, attitudes and behaviours surely makes them no longer 'evangelical', for the evangelical is not a sociological term which, much like modernism, leads us to a 'post' period of it but a term that refers to personal sin, accountability, responsibility and grace ('grace' is not translated as "Turning a blind eye towards," is it?).

Perhaps those who wish to use the term 'evangelical' with something that clearly isn't, no matter how 'open' one wishes to be, would be more honest if they dropped the 'evangelical' label completely and told is as it is. They are liberal or revisionist or libertarian or whatever they want to call themselves but surely once one removes the responsibility for personal sin and the opportunity, no command, to refrain from it there has to be a question mark over whether is it even Christian at all. For just as Mormons, Christian Scientists or Quakers and many others are not Christian perhaps it is time to accept that using the words 'Jesus', 'God' or 'Christian' does not make what you believe 'Christian'. You've moved on and if that's true then I am happy for you to pursue your own NEW faith, but stop billing it as Christian, for it barely is (as I understand it in terms of teaching and practice that is).

As an open evangelical I am appalled at many of those who see themselves as 'fundamentalist evangelicals' and struggle with many who call themselves 'reformed evangelcials' for this seems to give permission to be wicked, cruel, harsh and bitter. My Christian faith means that I will continue to embrace those with whom I disagree, but how I wish they would be honest and tell it as it is and call themselves 'post evangelical' or whatever it is that they are (for some post-Christian fits the bill even better it seems for the faith they peddle has little similarity to the traditional 'orthodox' faith and is merely modern society in a building with a pointy bit!) and let us dialogue and work together from a place of honesty.

Let us not put aside the boldness of the early believers and the fidelity to God's word that the Christian faith has called us to for generation - let us not put off addressing personal sin for the popularity of this world, for when we look like the world, what point is there coming into a body that offers nothing and is no different from that they have outside it?

Pax

ps I also struggle with the fact that we have to have labels, but that's another issue!

Ecumenical Aspirations

In dialogue with a couple of 'Ecumenical Officers' this week, one of them remarked that ecumenical aspirations were noble and to be applauded, but usually totally unrealistic.

We are in the long dark ecumenical teatime of the soul. Wherever one looks moves to be one were all running aground and some were choosing to remain but to no longer engage with members of other Christian groups. It is now better to be working in multi-faith groups than multiple denominational, but it is predominantly the ecumenical areas that foster the polite presence approach.

Apparently it is not polite to ask other Christians what they believe and even worse if, upon discovering a heresy within their make-up, to challenge them or ask them to explain their position and the way they have reached their opinion. "It's better to be together and avoid the areas of difference," said one person, "That way we present a positive image to those outside looking in."

This leads me to question what Jesus' words at the end of John where He prays that we would be one as He and the Father are one. Being one Church, as in denomination, is how some approach this. A Catholic friend tells me that all would be well if we 'just' all returned to the 'True Church' (which is of course, for them 'Rome'). An Orthodox friend says that all would be well if everybody, including Rome (who he considers to be the splitters), returned to the 'True Church' which is of course Orthodox!

My Pentecostal friends tell me that everyone should leave Rome and become 'proper Christians'! Interestingly they have no view on the Orthodox because they know nothing of them other than they're Greek (Aren't they? We saw them on holiday with their big hats and beards!!).

My Methodist friends (I have a few, can't be helped!) are basically of the opinion that everyone out there is far to concerned with the Bible and rules and doing the right thing and should just get down and engage in the social stuff around them.

Scratch a Christian, of any complexion, and you'll find a difference. Scratch some and you'll find stuff that others consider make them barely Christian (or ven non-Christian)! Scratch others and you'll find that they appear to assume that they are the only 'real Christians'.

Find someone who is a Baptist but joined from a C of E setting and ask them whether they moved because they had a change ion their thinking over baptism and then ask someone who was baptist but is now Anglican the same question. The answer I always get is that they moved because of the worship, the dogcollar and a host of other, non-theological, reasons.

Ask A Pentecostalist whether they are evangelical and they will most likely answer in the affirmative but ask an evangelical if Pentecostalists are evo's and they will probably answer with a negative.

Ask a Catholics what they believe and nine times out of ten they will tell you that they pray to Mary and that the Pope is the head of the 'true Church' and probably tell you all about Henry VIII and a failed divorce!

How can we expect to be together and find areas of common faith, to celebrate the image of Christ in each other and to dialogue when we don't even know who we are or what we believe? As the bloke said this week, "People love the idea of being one but don't understand what it means. It is more than sticking everyone in a room and shouting, 'look unity!', it is an engagement which comes out of being sure of who we are so that we are afraid of others taking that away!"

So here's a question for me, but you can play too, do I know who and am and what being an Anglican says about my Christianity?

One of the colleges I have attended, Ridley, had an exceptionally good summary of what being an open evangelical is all about. It is:

"Roots down - walls down!"

We grow in our own denominational and faith, putting down roots so that we are securely based and, having removed the things that separate us, let our branches reach out to touch, and be touched by, others around us.

I think this is the beginning of ecumenical aspiration!

Pax