Still lugging the life-raft

As I mentioned yesterday, I am currently reading the book Pierced for our Trangressions, in the lead-up to our church weekend away called “Nothing But the Blood”. In this book there are brief references to CH Dodd and his interpretation of “propitiation”. Until a few years ago I had never heard of CH Dodd, which I consider was no very great loss to my understanding.

Anyway, in September 2004 (I think it was 2004) I went to visit some friends of mine who were both working at New Norcia, Australia’s only privately owned monastic town, in WA, a few hours North-West of Perth. It is a fascinating little place that was established in 1846 by Benedictine Monks from Spain. You can read more about it here. And my friends are very interesting, and very intelligent, people. Bes (who I blogged about here – and there you can see some photos of New Norcia) was a Rhodes finalist who went off to London to study spiritual education, and her fiancé at the time (they are now married), Bernard, was a lawyer in the Airforce who got out to go on to bigger and better things. I had a fabulous holiday at New Norcia. There are 20,000 acres of countryside, supposedly reminiscent of the south of France, to wander around in, there’re the oldest olive trees in Australia, together with a very old olive press, there’s a wood-fired oven in which they make the most amazing panforte, the buildings themselves are really quite astonishing (in the middle of the West Australian bush), and the history of the town, from when it was a mission to the local Aborigines and beyond is all fascinating. Then there is the daily routine of the monks that you can participate in, and various other activities, such as accompanying school tours and attending lectures on various topics (I attended one on Hildegard of Bingen and the symbolism of her artwork etc), all of which were interesting. And my friends are great friends and were very generous and hospitable hosts.

However, unfortunately (from my perspective anyway) my friends and I have diverged in theology in recent years, and I have seen this become more apparent during their time at New Norcia. Everywhere I went I just begged to differ with a very good portion of what I heard, for a variety of reasons. From what I can gather, New Norcia is essentially in alignment with the prevailing theology of south-west WA, where they are known as “Spong disciples” (I believe - I am no expert on that, so others can feel free to enlighten me). I had a good many long and involved “debates” about all manner of subjects (and if I’d been a blogger at the time I might remember more of the content of them). They were all done in friendship and respect but were at times rather taxing all the same, because my friends were challenging opponents, and when I wasn’t talking to my friends, there were other conversations. For example, at the Sunday service, during which there literally was incense swinging and all manner of ancient Catholic customs, Bernard introduced me to a fellow who was married to (so she was female) an Anglican Priest, and said “this is Ali, she’s from Jensen-heartland” and left me there to work my way out of that one ...

It wasn’t till I got back to “Jensen-heartland” (which was quite a relief in some ways) and did the Moore Theological College evening lecture subject on Romans, in which the ideas of CH Dodd on the atonement were mentioned, merely as an aside, that things began to fall in to place. I then remembered hearing that the Abbot of New Norcia was a big follower of his, and that these are the books that he had given Bernard to read to further his theological knowledge. And then I realised that underpinning all those things I had begged to differ with was the theology of CH Dodd and a fundamentally different understanding of sin, the cross and the atonement. I’m not going to post about Dodd or Spong (and no doubt expose my own ignorance anyway, because my knowledge of them is only a scratch on the surface) but I will give you an example of how this manifested itself. Seven times a day the monks went to prayers. Here they chanted the psalms, in Gregorian chant, and sometimes accompanied by the pipe organ, and it was just beautiful. However, this was the qualifier written at the entrance to the chapel:

"You may be distressed by some negative and destructive things said in our psalms and other scriptures. We have trouble with them too, but we keep using them, because: they show us the very slow progress made by Jewish and Christian people in the past in understanding themselves and the world in relation to God; they make us think more deeply about the things that are wrong now in our world, in our country, and in our own hearts; and they help us to purify our idea of God. The God we worship is total goodness, offering love and peace to the whole human race."

And that is the gist of what they believe at New Norcia: that the writers of the Old, and the New, Testament were just not so enlightened as we are today, about the character of God and what he requires of us (though I am not so sure, then, how the Psalms would help purify our idea of God). The analogy was put to me, in subsequent conversation, and quoting somebody else I can’t remember, that at various points in your life you might come to a lake or a river that you need to cross, and so you build or find a life-raft to carry you over, but just because it saved or aided you then it doesn’t mean you then need to carry the life-raft with you wherever you go. The implication was that some doctrines are old-school, and have served their purpose, and we just don’t need to lug them about with us anymore. And at this point I will just recommend that everyone read the book I started with, to see why I believe that is such a tragic idea ...