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I have changed my settings to allow people to leave comments anonymously. This means that you don't have to set up an account with Blogspot first. It's doesn't necessarily mean you have to be strictly anonymous. It would make me happy if we could get some discussion going.

Can mercy be institutionalised?

This was a question which came up in a recent discussion with a friend about the criminal justice system and the relative merits of imprisonment and capital punishment. I have recently had several conversations on similar themes. The nature and purpose of punishment has been much debated over the past 200 years, with retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation, amongst other things, each being proposed either as a purpose amongst others or as the primary purpose of punishment. This is an interesting discussion where I don't have definite answers as yet. Here is a fascinating article debating such issues in response to George Ryan, Governor of Illinois, commuting the sentences of all death row inmates:

Stephen P. Garvey - 'Is it Wrong to Commute Death Row? Retribution, Atonement and Mercy'

How we understand justice, punishment and mercy in general underlies some of the current debate in the Christian world about such matters as what happened when Jesus died on the cross and the nature of hell. Here we must allow the biblical data to guide us rather than emotional reactions conditioned by trends in our society and culture. In relation to the criminal justice system, we need to discuss these things with compassion, since for many these questions are not academic but of direct personal relevance. In relation to God's mercy and God's justice, these questions are of immediate and immense personal significance for each one of us, since we are all in desperate need of God's mercy, but God's character is such that he can only show us mercy if in doing so he satisfies his own justice. It is at the cross that God's justice is satisfied so that God's mercy can be freely offered to all who come with the open hands of faith. In the words of the Apostle Paul:

"God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
(Romans 3:25-26)

Ticking things off the list

Well, in almost exactly 36 hours time I will be graduating from this august institution. This still seems strange to consider. It's a more pleasant kind of hanging around than waiting for exam results. I will try to quickly summarise the last few days, during which I've been busy, along with fellow graduands, trying to tick off some of the remaining items on the list of things to do whilst a Cambridge undergraduate.

Monday. CICCU leavers' event: After lunch on Christ's Pieces and presentations on behalf of CGS and UCCF, we had a talk from Ian Hamilton, minister of Cambridge Presbyterian Church, entitled 'Stand Firm in the Faith'. Based on the book of Daniel, the suggestions for effective Christian living were unsurprising, but nonetheless true and well-presented: prayer, the word of God, the church of God. I might have added dependence on the Spirit of God, who indwells and empowers believers, but it could be said that this was implicit in the belief that it is only through God's grace that we can persevere to the end. I know in UCCF circles there's often a sense that we should avoid "secondary" issues to maintain harmony, but I like the way Ian Hamilton puts his cards on the table. I particularly appreciated his stress on the importance of the church and on the corporate nature of the people of God under the new as well as the old covenant. This is a truth often neglected by contemporary evangelicals, but which has been better preserved in the confessionally Reformed circles Ian Hamilton belongs to. A more amusing manifestation of Mr Hamilton's Reformed credentials was his reassurance that we need not read Calvin and the Puritans in order to be saved, but that if we were wise, we would do so. He also mentioned that he has recently participated in a programme for BBC Radio 4 on the subject of spiritual experience - they had a shamanist and a Rastafarian and wanted a Calvinist to balance things out. In the evening I was at Teri Aki again, but with different company: Alex Norman, Peter and Mark.

By the way, the idea of primary and secondary issues has tied me in knots at times and I like the suggestion of Cameron Drury, our college CU houseparty speaker last September, that we should speak instead of "essential" truth and "significant" truth, to avoid the suggestion that issues such as baptism, election, or spiritual gifts are unimportant. I also like the assertion of (I think) one of the Jesus CU students: "The doctrine of primary and secondary issues is at best tertiary in importance".

Tuesday was quite a busy day on the social front. In the morning I went punting with Peter, Mark and Alex. Alex was co-opted as the most expert punter. We generally meandered leisurely up and down the Cam. The headline news is that I punted for the first time. After my initial anxiety about my sense of balance I got the general hang of things. I managed to approximate a straight line, travel under two (high) bridges and avoid falling in. "Not bad for a humanities student," as Alex commented. I suppose this is a new skill to put on my CV.

In the afternoon I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum, along with Dominic and Julie. Since this is free, it's worth doing, and it was the first proper visit for all three of us. The architecture and decoration of the building itself is worth the visit - the building is imposingly neoclassical, though we couldn't identify the pillars. The museum contains both artefacts such as pottery and coins from world civilisations and artworks from across Europe, some by eminent painters such as Brueghel, Constable and Picasso.

The evening was the HT leavers' barbecue. Rupert Charkham (the vicar) spoke briefly on Chariots of Fire (incidentally, my grandfather was taught Bible class by Eric Liddell in China) and the Bible verse quoted in the film, "Those who honour me I will honour" (1 Samuel 2:30). Barbecue outside was followed by strawberries and dessert inside, followed by coffee and tea and general high-spiritedness. On the way back from the barbecue I got caught in a thunderstorm - see my previous post.

Today, not much happened until mid-afternoon apart from laundry and suchlike. I then went to a careers event at the Garden House Hotel. This event involved the big graduate companies who still have vacancies left publicising themselves to graduands who don't yet have jobs. My feeling is that I don't do careers and this event didn't do much to dispel my feeling. This might seem a hopelessly impractical outlook, but I haven't hit a dead end quite yet. This is not to sound overly dismissive - the Cambridge careers service provides great resources and good advice for people looking for jobs. It's just that typical graduate career paths don't tend to excite me that much. I did get a free ice cream out of it, so it was worth sticking my head in. On returning to college I bumped into Mark on the way to King's evensong. As I had nothing else planned, I went along with him. I can now tick off another box on the list of "Cambridge" things to do. This evening Dominic, Mark, Peter, Alex and myself went to Caffé Uno, an Italian restaurant.

Tomorrow, I ought to get up in reasonable time, and begin the final packing up of my room. I would prefer to spread this over the day and allow time to see people rather than to let it be a frantic demoralised rush. Thus I ought to go to bed soon and set my alarm. I also get to pick up my robes for graduation tomorrow. It might start to sink in then.

What the thunder(storm) did

Have just returned from a barbecue through an impressive thunderstorm. I've had a fun couple of days since I last posted, but I thought I'd just capture the present moment right now and perhaps summarise some summer fun tomorrow.

Although there were some rumbles in the sky while we were in the garden, we were inside before the rain started. Having stepped into the street, near Newnham, I realised that this was proper rain. The rain was accompanied by sheet lightning engulfing the sky and growls of thunder strikingly loud and often startlingly close. The trees on Sidgwick Avenue apparently offered some shelter, but this was in relative terms, and I was unsure whether stopping to rest under a tree where one would get wetter for longer but more slowly was a more sensible option than moving on quickly to shorten one's time in the rain. After a while, you become resigned to the meteorological circumstances. Once the rain had soaked through my fleece and shirt, as well as through my trousers and socks, the question of degrees of wetness seemed somewhat insignificant.

Having got back to my room, I took the tissues out of my trouser pockets and wrang the water out of them. I also discovered the notes in my wallet stuck together by water. Fortunately, they could be prised apart without disintegrating.

I have a recording of the Canadian theologian Don Carson complaining that our "anaemic" English thunderstorms (amongst other places in the world, Carson has spent periods of his life in Cambridge) fail to capture the awe-inspiring power of the storm imagery which often accompanies biblical theophanies (appearances of God), e.g. Psalm 29. Tonight did a good enough job for me, short of me being in fear of my life.

C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

I finished reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis the other week. (Tip: if you want some classic CSL quotes, skip to the bottom of this post.) This is so far the only book I've managed to read all the way through since exams, and is a not particularly long book. It's an interesting work, consisting of three lectures Lewis gave in the 1940s about the crisis of values in modern culture. According to the blurb on the back of the book:

"In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society. Both astonishing and prophetic, this book is one of the most debated of Lewis's extraordinary works."

(And yes, I was reading an American edition, the 2001 HarperSanFrancisco edition to be precise, hence "honor". Thankfully English spelling is retained in the text itself.)

I'm not sure I follow all of Lewis's points, and if I did I'm not sure if I would agree with them all, but the overall effect is quite thought-provoking. The three lectures together form an interesting and bold trajectory. In the first, Lewis starts by attacking subjectivism in the teaching of English in schools (i.e. a poem is good only because I think it's good), going on to criticise the modern dominance of functional or "utilitarian" values over broader and richer human values. I have a friend who currently works for the DfES and is frustrated by what he sees as a "skills" culture which neglects more "transcendent" notions of value and of educating the whole person rather than an economic commodity. (In my exam on the "English moralists" I managed to quote DfES documents on citizenship teaching in contrast to Plato's view in Protagoras that good citizenship cannot be taught.)

In the second chapter, C.S. Lewis outlines the system of ethical value he believes to be under attack. He claims that this system is universal and finds embodiment in every major culture. Confusingly, he refers to this as the Tao, which I think he chose as a non-Western and therefore "neutral" term, but this concept is often referred to in Western thought as the Natural Law. The appendix to the book provides a series of ethical statements from world civilisations which illustrates the component parts of this system, including acting benevolently towards others, respecting elders and caring for the young and vulnerable. He also finds sterner values such as justice and courage in war in this system of value which he commends. This code of conduct bears strong resemblances to what Alisdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum would call the "heroic" code, found, for example, in Homer's epics, though Lewis also finds more altruistic strands, such as universal benevolence, in this universal ethical code.

Having bewailed the supplanting of this deep-rooted system of value with an attenuated modern system of ethics based on "rational" self-interest, Lewis considers in his final chapter where he believes this sinister trajectory is headed - towards the denial of all objective value and the treatment of humanity simply as raw material to be conditioned. Lewis makes the point that for "man" to have power over "human destiny" is in actual fact for some humans to have power over other humans, and extends this in an interesting way by saying that each generation seeks to exert power over future generations and to resist the influence of past generations. Lewis suggests that if one generation's power over future generations were to become total, though eugenics and similar means, humanity would be reduced to raw material and thus what makes humans human would be destroyed. In a similar way, it can be useful to explain one set of values in relation to another, but to try to find a perspective beyond objective value by which to explain objective value is desperately counterproductive, since it leads to the destruction of all value. This would be "the abolition of man".

"I am a man rather prone to think of remote futurity - a man who can read Mr Olaf Stapledon with delight", says Lewis. My knowledge of Olaf Stapledon is almost entirely limited to the several references in CSL, though it's a great name for a writer. The "remote futurity" envisaged by Lewis seems, if I may say so, rather a mid 20th century conception of the future, similar to that found in H.G. Wells and George Orwell (and presumably Stapledon). My reading of science fiction is fairly scant, but Lewis envisages a dystopian dominance of technology over humanity. In fact, it is more the technological mindset than technology itself that becomes oppressive, the treating of all things as a means to an end. As CSL is at pains to point out, he is not against science itself, but against a reductionistic, so-called "scientific" mindset, which wants to explain away and control everything, even human nature itself. Though, on further reflection, I guess the information revolution exemplified by the Internet has extended and modified, rather than removed, this fear of "the abolition of man" by technocracy (witness The Matrix - IMDB entry; official trilogy site). Today, I would suggest, it is the disintegration of a stable value system rather than the tyranny of misused science which forms the more pertinent part of Lewis's warning.

If you've found this hard going, take heart - Lewis's prose is better and so easier to follow than mine. Here are some quotes:

"To disagree with This is pretty if those words simply described the lady's feelings, would be absurd: if she had said I feel sick Coleridge would hardly have replied No; I feel quite well." (p.15)

"Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey 'people'. People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence?" (pp.35-6)

"Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it." (pp.80-1)

Is it just me, or is most of this entry about food?

On Friday evening, I had agreed to meet up for a picnic with Kevin (Hong Kong). When I got to the rendezvous outside Sainsbury's, there were three main problems - first, it was raining heavily; secondly, only myself, Karunashur (India) and Kevin had turned up; thirdly, the whole enterprise suffered from male organisation. Annie (King's) is a real star - she came out to rescue us and invited us back to her place to eat. Jonathan (Emma) also came round to join the party. We (i.e. Annie and Karunashur) cooked pasta with tomato and onion, though I had somehow managed to get even this wrong in shopping, since I bought Sainsbury's value peeled tomatoes instead of Sainsbury's value chopped tomatoes. After being pleased with my exam results, it was good to be reminded of some of my deficiencies. We managed to talk about some deep stuff over food. Thanks, Annie, if you're out there!

For lunch on Saturday I was invited to Teri-Aki, a Japanese restaurant by Madgalene Bridge, along with a group of Asian students mainly from Christ's. I had a Teri-Aki Bento meal, which consisted of stir-fried beef, chicken and seafood with rice, salad, and miso soup. I can manage stuck together rice with chopsticks; salad is a bit more tricky. For dessert all those of us left ate yukimi daifuku, ice cream in dough balls.

Later in the afternoon, Rashmi, Peter, Mark and myself went to see Episode III of Star Wars. Having little knowledge of popular culture (and not much of Star Wars), a fact which I should perhaps address, I am not best qualified to give an informed review. I found the film mildly engrossing if a little gruesome in places. I was able to detect some connections with Eastern pantheism, which can be shown to be deficient on a number of points by analysing the internal logic of the film. Afterwards, we went to Pizza Hut near Parker's Piece - an interesting experience in a variety of ways. We didn't leave a tip.

Sunday morning church - Cat Bennett-Rees on Jesus' return and the need for us to be ready for it. For lunch we went to Tom's room (St John's), where we had successively carrot sticks and bread with dips, potato, rice, chicken, and swiss roll. A good concoction, all told. A piece of advice - if you want to try Endorphin Rush sauce, take the tiniest amount you can - it lives up to its label as "beyond hot" sauce. Present were a variety of surviving HT students and people pretending still to be students. By the way, according to a recent study, June 24th was the happiest day of the year. I'm not sure if the fact that the research was commissioned by Walls ice cream inspires my confidence or not.

This evening was graduation dinner, for graduands (people about to graduate). Here is the menu:

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MENU

Smoked Salmon Nicoise Salad
V: Nicoise Salad with Flaked Parmesan

Saddle of Lamb en Croûte
V: Cornucopia of Beans with Poached Duck Egg

Panna-cotta with Summer Berries

Coffee and Mints

Wines:
White Wine: Sauvignon Blanc, 2003, Baron Philippe de Rothschild
Red Wine: Cabernet Sauvignon, 2003, Baron Philippe de Rothschild
Port: Christ’s College Port

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I got there late so wasn't really with people I knew for a lot of it. I sat next to two fourth years, who I got on OK with. Over coffee I got to talk to Julie (history), who I haven't seen so much of this year, as well as Rashmi, Mark and Peter. There was a nice parallelism, in that I sat near Mark, Peter and Julie (not sure about Rashmi) at matriculation dinner when we arrived three years ago (well, not quite three years ago). Amongst other topics, we discussed the ethics of surreptitious photography. My caffeine intake today has been higher than usual. It's an occupational hazard of Sunday sociability.

I have a bit of a hole to fill in my summer - I have nothing planned for August or September. If anyone wants to make me an offer, I'll consider it.

Results

Well, I got my results today. I got what I wanted, which I am really happy about. If you know me, you're likely to know what that was. I think all the Christ's third year English students were happy with what they got, which was really nice. We had a gathering in Dan Wakelin's room (Dan is one of the English fellows in Christ's and has just become Part II DOS) and each got a glass of champagne from Dan and a hug from Katrin (Katrin is another of the English fellows, originally from Germany). I have a few more people to phone, so will say goodbye for now.

Abiding in Christ

I sent these two passages to friends during exam period, but thought they deserve a wider audience. The first is from Andrew Murray's book Abide in Christ, the second is from Deuteronomy. Andrew Murray was a preacher in South Africa who lived from 1828 to 1917 and wrote various books on the Christian life. Some of his books can be accessed online at CCEL. Abiding in Christ is an area I really need to learn more about, probably more in my own experience, under the authority of Scripture, than from books, but, having not read all of Murray's book (31 meditations on John 15:1-12), it seems that at least some of it may be helpful. Anyway, here goes:

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The thought of living moment by moment is of such central importance - looking at the abiding in Christ from our side - that we want once more to speak of it. And to all who desire to learn the blessed art of living only a moment at a time, we want to say: The way to learn it is to exercise yourself in living in the present moment. Each time your attention is free to occupy itself with the thought of Jesus - whether it be with time to think and pray, or only for a few passing seconds - let your first thought be to say: Now, at this moment, I do abide in Jesus. Use such time, not in vain regrets that you have not been abiding fully, or still more hurtful fears that you will not be able to abide, but just at once take the position the Father has given you: "I am in Christ; this is the place God has given me. I accept it; here I rest; I do now abide in Jesus." This is the way to learn to abide continually. You may be yet so feeble as to fear to say of each day, "I am abiding in Jesus"; but the feeblest can, each single moment, say, as he consents to occupy his place as a branch in the vine, "Yes, I do abide in Christ." It is not a matter of feeling - it is not a question of growth or strength in the Christian life - it is the simple question whether the will at the present moment desires and consents to recognise the place you have in your Lord, and to accept it. If you are a believer, you are in Christ. If you are in Christ, and wish to stay there, it is your duty to say, though it be but for a moment, "Blessed Saviour, I abide in Thee now; Thou keepest me now."

(Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ (London: Lakeland, 1968 ed.), pp.87-8)

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Then I said to you, "Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place."

(Deuteronomy 1:29-31)

yet more may week

So, to catch up (for anyone who takes an interest):

The ball was fun. I foolishly failed to make contact with the Christ's students in my year going to the Jesus ball, so ended up queuing by myself. Having got in, however, I was rescued by Benjy, Jo and Bella, with whom I spent most of the rest of the night. Dora and her boyfriend (Tim? Tom?) also joined our party for a lot of the time. Highlights - bouncy castle, ceilidh - I didn't do too badly waltzing.

Tuesday - CU barbecue - Jesus Green(!). Then Globe garden party - Globe is a bit like Harry's, but is run for international undergraduates in Cambridge University. This garden party was held at the 'Darwin shrine' in Christ's. This location is, depending on your choice of phrase, "out of the way" or "a well kept secret". The site consists of a bust of Darwin, a water feature, and enough space on the grass to put down a few rugs. Some had remarked on the ironies of this choice of venue, and Richard gestured towards Darwin looking on in his talk, but it actually suited the gathering quite well, because the surroundings didn't swamp the number of people who came. Richard spoke on 'True Success' and was again great. Passages used were Luke 9:18-27 and 1 Peter 2:21-25 with particular focus on the statements "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (Luke 9:24) and "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" (1 Peter 2:24). Food was plentiful - I ended up taking home some poppadoms and a bottle of lemonade - and conversation eminently pleasant.

Tuesday evening I ate an African meal in the house of a couple from my church with some workers from Wycliffe Bible Translators and others interested in their work. It probably isn't appropriate to post all the detail here, but I've been really inspired by these events. What is especially exciting is Vision 2025, Wycliffe's vision, working with others, to see a translation project started in every language without the Bible by the year 2025 - Wycliffe research suggests there are more than 2,700 such languages in the world, so this will take both multipled workers and "serious outside the box thinking", along with plenty of prayer. To get an idea of the breadth of what Wycliffe does and its mode of operation, spend some minutes browsing their excellent main website. (There is a UK website, but I linked to the US/international one because it has more info.)

Yesterday was a visit from my sister Lizzy up from London. The main thing we did together was to go and see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in Emma fellows' garden. This has had good reviews in the student press, and deservedly so. One of the most fun things is that on the journey to and from Narnia the audience is invited to travel physically through through the set from one location to another. We did feel that the actors might be suffering somewhat in fur coats in the sweltering heat, but I guess this was the artistic price to pay for representing Narnian winter in Cambridge summer. We were glad of shade. After the play we walked through King's and then by the river a bit. I then treated her to the culinary delights of Christ's upper hall (basically canteen food) the last night it was open, before walking her to the station to catch the train back to King's Cross. By the way, a film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is in production (official site; IMDB entry). We'll have to wait and see, but from what I've heard it sounds promising.

Today was the day I should have got my exam results. I went down to the Senate House initially at 10:30ish. The Senate House is the building from which the university is governed and outside which exam results are posted (they used to be published in The Times as well). After going back to college until 12, I returned to the Senate House to see if the class lists had been posted in the meantime (they can be posted any time from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm). There I hung around a while with Susan Allister (also an English student, at Fitz) and other people I more or less knew, not all of whose names I can remember. These were not all English students, and not all picking up results - some came along for the ride, which was fair enough. Kyle very kindly provided us with ice cream and it turned into quite a sociable occasion. After we had hung around quite a while, some girl none of us had ever seen before came and spoke to us through the railings, identifying us as English students and telling us that she'd heard the English results were delayed until tomorrow. Having been joined by David Pfeiffer, we went to Christ's Pieces to eat lunch, which we bought from Peppercorns. I had a jumbo granary chicken, bacon and egg sandwich and a lime and apple drink. We then returned to Senate House for a final wander around before going our various ways.

This afternoon was the college quincentenary garden party. To be honest, there wasn't overly much to distinguish it from the general run of garden parties (although the portable laser quest tent was a novel idea) but it was reasonably pleasant in atmosphere and it was good to see people. This evening, certain eating establishments were offering discounts for those at the garden party, and so Rashmi, Mark and Peter and I ended up at La Tosca, along with around 50 other Christ's students on different tables. I shared a chicken paella with Peter, and we also had various tapas (smaller dishes) between us. Having got back to college I sat outside on the balcony with my neighbours. Very Mediterrean.

I'm finding it quite strange being in limbo - this is a metaphorical limbo, you understand - theologically I find a real limbo rather dubious. I seem to be drifting through my days quite amicably but without getting much done. I partly need to learn how to relax and not feel pressured to "achieve" all the time, but I am also aware that there are things I need to do which are not getting done very quickly. It also doesn't seem at all real that I only have a week left in Cambridge. I need to find the right combination of focus and serenity and need to be able to motivate myself without driving myself into the ground. That could sound exceedingly mushy, so I'll give you another post which gives more biblical content to this quest.

Monsoons and morons - post-exam culture

At the moment, I am hanging around getting ready to go to the Jesus May Ball. For those who know what a May ball is, this won't need explaining. For those who don't, it's a bit tricky to explain. Basically a May ball is a big, posh and expensive party (some bigger, posher and more expensive than others) where students get to dress up, and having paid an extortionate price to get in, have "free" food, drink, rides, bands and other entertainment throughout the night until the morning, when a "survivors' photo" is taken. Hopefully, that doesn't sound too cynical - they can be really great. The theme for the Jesus ball is Xanadu (from a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Jesuan), which should be interesting.

Yesterday was church x 2, with the afternoon spent on Jesus Green for Life Sunday. This was HT's alternative to Suicide Sunday (a day when lots of students get to release post-exam tension in confined spaces along with lots of alcohol), and involved a barbecue and a bouncy castle. There was also a big Eden contingent, as there often is on Jesus Green on a Sunday afternoon, along with assorted brothers and sisters from other churches - I spotted some from StAG (St Andrew the Great), and I suspect other churches were represented. It's really great to be able to enjoy the company of other believers without politics creeping in.

I thought I ought to mention two cultural events in which I participated last week and which I forgot to mention at the time. One was the Christ's Films free film, preceded by strawberries and champagne. The film was Monsoon Wedding, an Indian film about a wedding in monsoon season and the complicated family relationships which surround it. This is a really interesting film, though probably not if your idea of interest is non-stop action. It's not exactly Bollywood, but I get the impression that it gives quite an accurate picture of Indian culture at its most attractive and colourful, though sometimes exaggerating for comic effect, whilst exploring some of the tensions of that culture, both within itself and in relation to the influence of Western culture. The meeting of cultures is partly expressed by the return of numerous relatives for the wedding who form part of the Indian diaspora in the West. It's also really interesting how the characters switch between local Indian languages and English, often within one sentence. I think this is what linguists call "code-switching", and it seems to be an accurate representation of how communication takes place along the cultural boundaries of global society. India itself is a nation which contains varied cultures which have been in dialogue with one another for millennia.

My other main cultural event of last week was to receive a copy of Much doa about nothing, the latest CD from moron, aka Bob Brown. Bob Brown is a friend of mine in the USA. For his day job, he is a maths professor in Baltimore, Maryland. In his spare time he records lo-fi music under the name moron (a one man band). He then gives his music away for free (though appreciates a small contribution towards postage and packing). The band's name comes from the assertion of the Apostle Paul that "the foolishness [Greek - moron] of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength" (1 Corinthians 1:25). I haven't got round to listening to the whole CD yet, but, if it lives up to the rest of the moron collection, it should be intriguing and quirky, and perhaps at times fun or inspiring (though this is subject to some debate on the part of listeners).

So then, time to go to the ball ...

Grace, Goodness and the Grammar of Galatians

Following Richard's excellent sermon last night on Galatians 5, here is an extract from G. Walter Hansen's commentary on Galatians in The IVP New Testament Commentary Series published by IVP USA. These commentaries can be accessed online for free through the Bible Gateway site - just look up a New Testament passage and click "View commentary related to this passage".

"All these major themes of slavery, freedom and the liberating work of Christ are now summed up in the ringing affirmation of 5:1: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. That indicative is followed by an imperative, Stand firm, then. This may sound like a dull lesson in grammar, but it is actually central in Pauline ethics. What we must do (the imperative) is always based upon what God has already done (the indicative). Or to put it another way, what God has done gives us the opportunity and power to do what we must do. This indicative-imperative structure is seen here in verse 1 and also in verses 13 and 25. So it provides the structure for the whole chapter: God's gift of freedom must be defended (v. 1); God's gift of freedom must not be abused but must be used to serve (v. 13); God's gift of life by the Spirit must be expressed through the Spirit (v. 25)."

(To go straight to this bit of the commentary, click here.)

The dynamic Hansen is picking up is one we find throughout Scripture. So, in the Old Testament, God's covenant precedes his commands. This is why the Ten Commandments begin with "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" (Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 5:6). God's saving activity precedes his giving of a pattern of life for the redeemed people of God to follow.

The tension between the Law as bringing life (as in Deuteronomy 30:11-20) and the Law as bringing death (as in Galatians 5:1-15) is one that Richard mentioned in his talk. The relationship between these functions of the Law is one I haven't quite figured out yet (and neither have the theologians, as evidenced by this book), but where I've got to so far is to see the Law as the pattern of life appropriate for God's covenant people, which thereby condemns those who are outside the covenant and marks out those within the covenant, although the covenant is entered by grace through faith and is continued in by grace through faith and not by observing "the works of the Law"! I'm not quite sure exactly how this is affected by the switch from OT to NT (but I'm in good company there).

Although I think we need to guard against the mentality many Christians seem to have that God saves us and then it's up to us by ourselves to do things in return for God (the biblical assertion being rather "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" - Philippians 2:13), I still think there is much value in this epigrammatic summary:

"The essence of biblical doctrine is grace; the essence of biblical ethics is gratitude."

Welcome to May Week!

Hello again,

We are now officially in May Week, the week in June(!) where Cambridge students have fun, having finished work for the year. I began May Week yesterday with two garden parties. The first was the Harry's garden party in St John's scholars' garden. The day was swelteringly hot, giving us the weather we prayed for. The garden party consisted of food, croquet, a talk from Rachel (with a mouldy jamjar/dishwasher) and a testimony from Yumi, all of which went down well. By the way, for the benefit of non-English speakers, croquet differs quite significantly from cricket (though both are gentle upper class summer games). Cricket involves hitting balls thrown at you and then running, whereas croquet involves hitting balls through hoops with a wooden mallet. I also finally got my hands on the newspaper picture of me meeting Prince Philip (thanks to Yumi). I discovered that it's easier to take surreptitious pictures (my speciality) using a digital camera. When I've managed to upload the pictures, they'll be put up on the Harry's website.

After this I went to the English/History/MML (Modern and medieval languages) garden party in college. Here we had the classic Cambridge strawberries and cream with champagne. The turnout of second and third year English students was quite poor, but it was nice to be able to chat to the fellows in a more relaxed setting. I caught the end of normal Harry's after this, and afterwards some of us went to (surprise surprise) Jesus Green for a picnic. There were eight of us in a circle, of 7 different nationalities - we were from Hong Kong, India, Japan, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland and England (x2).

Today my parents came to see me and helped me to sort out a few loose ends and pack up a bit. I ate in the café at the Fitzwilliam Museum with my mum and had a very nice chicken and chorizo sandwich. I failed to go and see the May bumps (a very strange Cambridge sport which involves trying to crash your boat into the boat in front) for yet another year. Hopefully I'll make it next year (if I'm here). Apparently one of the college women's teams got blades (i.e. they successfully crashed into ("bumped") lots of people). If there are any female Christ's boaties out there, congratulations!

This evening we had the Joined-up Worship service, which is designed to bring Christians in college together. The theme was freedom and I had managed to book my friend Richard to speak. As expected, he did a great job, distinguishing between the false freedom offered by the world (freedom to do what I want and to serve myself) and the freedom that we have in Christ (to be righteous and to serve God and others). Galatians 5:1-15 - great stuff. Didn't focus too much on verse 12, though ;-). We also got to "handcuff" ourselves with symbolic paper manacles. Afterwards we retired to the chaplain's room to have food - pizza and dessert wines among other things. What Cambridge is all about ...

Post-exam highlights

For any readers who actually want to know something about my life not just inside my head but outside it, feel free to skip the previous post. Especially for you, I will try to summarise some of what I've done since exams. I have sometimes been afflicted over the past week or so by a feeling that I haven't really accomplished much since I finished exams. Apart from the fact that I need some recovery time and am allowed just to rest, I realised, looking back over the past couple of weeks, that I've actually had an interesting and eventful time in a variety of ways.

Here are a few highlights:

Last week the Queen visited my college to mark its quincentenary - see the college website or the university website for further details of her trip to Cambridge. She also "opened" the salmon-coloured English faculty building which has been one of my homes for the past year. She was accompanied to Christ's by her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and Chancellor of the University, who stopped to have a brief chat with me and two friends of mine. There isn't anything particularly salacious to sell to the press, since it was a fairly run of the mill enquiry about what we were doing with ourselves now exams were over. You can see me in this photo, third from the right, though not especially distinctly. Apparently we are also in the Cambridge Crier, the free Cambridge newspaper, but I haven't yet seen this.

Last week we had a picnic on Jesus Green (which I am seeing a lot of at the moment) to see goodbye to Chris Rice, the student pastor at Holy Trinity. This was a good occasion, which hit the balance of silliness and sincerity which characterises Chris really. I had some moments of vicarious nostalgia, reading the scrapbook so wonderfully put together by Xanthe (or looking at the pictures), and feeling emotional about things that happened when I wasn't even at HT. One day I might inflict some Chris Rice humour on you, but that might be a sign that I am running short of inspiration. You would have thought with a leaving party and all that, we would have paid him off to leave Cambridge ;-), but, as for so many, the Cambridge bubble is retaining its grip on him for one year more (at least). Anyway, the boy's done a good job (and took me out for coffee on Thursday).

Last Friday, I took Martin and Jingjing (both from China) round King's. It's nice to be able to enjoy the special atmosphere of Cambridge without the pressure of work. We also had a picnic on Jesus Green after Harry's, where I led a Bible study on John 20. There's more I could say about how I've spent my time, but I ought to go to bed now since I have a busy day tomorrow. (Two garden parties - oh the effort :-).)

On Providence, Polyphony and Pretentiousness

Hello everyone,

For those who don't know me (and for those who do), I am a student of English Literature at Christ's College, Cambridge University and come from Sleaford, Lincolnshire. I am a committed Christian, and attend Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge and Sleaford New Life Church when at home. I enjoy reading, thinking about and discussing theology, philosophy and pretty much everything else there is to know. I spend a lot of my time with international students, helping them to settle into the UK and Cambridge and helping them to discover more about Jesus. This is particularly through helping to run Harry's, a free coffee bar for international students in Cambridge. I expect all of these themes will come through in my posts, perhaps some more than others. I have recently finished my exams and so decided I would have a go at starting this blog while I have some time on my hands. I make absolutely no promises about keeping it up, and have been duly warned by friends that blogs tend to start well and then tail off.

I have sneaking suspicions that the whole blogging enterprise can be pretty pretentious and self-indulgent. However, it also seems like a lot of fun (fun and pretentiousness not necessarily being mutually exclusive). From my point of view, it seems like a good way of getting my half-formed thoughts in some kind of shape that I'm not going to be held to in a court of law. It also seems a more productive way of spending time in front of a computer screen than endless trawling through the internet, chasing links from one site to another reading stuff I'm not particularly interested in - though I suspect blogging can be just as much a temptation to frittering time frivolously as general web-surfing. Basically, if people want to spend their time reading my ramblings, that's their problem rather than mine. To get started, I thought I might try to explain my blog title, which might seem to back up an impression of the potential of blogs for pretentiousness. However, whether this is so or not, providence and polyphony can be both be helpful concepts when rightfully used.

First of all, providence. The concept of providence is nuanced slightly differently by Reformed and Arminian theologians (if you don't understand those labels, don't let it bother you), but the basic idea, which the Bible clearly teaches, is that God is in charge and is working through absolutely everything that happens in the universe to bring about his ultimate purpose. Or, if you want a more technical definition, providence "may be defined as that work of God in which He preserves all His creatures, is active in all that happens in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end. It includes three elements, of which the first pertains primarily to the being, the second to the activity, and the third to the purpose of all things." (1) The Bible teaches this in many places, but one of the most encouraging verses on providence for me is Romans 8:28:

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

For those who trust in God and his promises in Christ, whatever circumstances we face, good or bad, and whatever disappointments we may experience in life, "we know", the Apostle Paul tells us, not just think or hope, but know, that God is working all these things to our good. Without meaning to sound harsh, this is a promise to God's people, the people who have chosen God by their love for him because he has chosen them through his saving call. There are other passages in the Bible which say that God loves all those he has created and hates nothing that he has made, but the promise that everything will turn out for the best is given only to believers.

One of the hundreds of books I intend to read (I haven't counted but that might not be an exaggeration) is one by Thomas Watson, originally published in 1663 as A Divine Cordial and reissued by the Banner of Truth as All Things for Good, a book which expounds Romans 8:28 (i.e. teaches what this verse means in lots of detail). Thomas Watson studied at Emmanuel College, and is one of a multitude of Puritan leaders associated with Cambridge in the 16th and 17th centuries. The book was written the year after Watson, along with around 2,000 other ministers, lost his living in the Church of England because of his biblical convictions. Watson begins his book by telling the reader that "There are two things, which I have always looked upon as difficult. The one is, to make the wicked sad; the other is, to make the godly joyful." (2) Watson does the second by exploring the implications of Romans 8:28. His first three chapters are entitled 'The best things work for good to the godly', 'The worst things work for good to the godly' and 'Why all things work for good to the godly'. You get the point after a while, even by reading the contents page. The book can also be found at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL), a fantastic site which contains hundreds of public domain (out of copyright) Christian books.

Secondly, polyphony. This is a word I have come across in my university course in English literature. It refers to the state of being "many-voiced", which means, roughly speaking, that a variety of different perspectives on a story or a theme are put together within one text. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms explains, "Thus a polyphonic novel is one in which several different voices or points of view interact on more or less equal terms" (3). The term "polyphony" was popularised in literary theory by the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin - for some bizarre reason, most of the theoreticians that you learn about in studying English literature are of nationalities other than English, and frequently wrote in languages other than English as well. The term "polyphony" has some similarity in meaning to "heteroglossia", another word used by Bakhtin which refers to many "tongues" (i.e. voices, languages, perspectives, "discourses") being used in a single context, which can be a context as big as a national language or as small as a particular conversation. However, I chose "polyphony" because it sounds better, and alliterates better with "providential".

Though "providence" and "polyphony" are terms which come from my two major areas of study, my "official" subject of English literature, and my "amateur" interest in Christian theology, I have put them together. This is to suggest that polyphony, which embodies the plurality and variety of human perspectives, can be taken up into God's providential design. Our varied perspectives and multiple voices, which can be confused and discordant, will finally be worked into a beautiful harmony. To mix my metaphors (and to borrow an image used by Edith Schaeffer and bishop Handley Moule, among others): God, by his grace, is weaving together out of the tangled threads of our understanding and experience, with all their perplexities and problems along with much fun and feelings of fulfilment, a wonderful tapestry of life and of love which will be to the praise of his glory.

My hope and prayer, is that whether this blog is long-lived or whether it naturally fizzles in a fortnight's time, it will, in its tangled threads, give a glimpse of God's beautiful tapestry and bring glory to his name. (And to anyone else who reads this, I hope you enjoy the ride.)

(1) Louis Berkhof, A Summary of Christian Doctrine (Eerdmans, 1938), p.55. Italics in original.
(Footnoting blogs is probably even more pretentious than usual, but since I would find it useful in reading what other people have written, I thought I would try to reference quotations wherever I can easily do so.)

(2) Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial (1663), republished as All Things for Good (Banner of Truth, 1986), p.8.

(3) Chris Baldick (ed.), Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms (OUP, 1990, 2001), p.199.