Author: Jason Goroncy

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

The upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion includes a review by Diane Bell (University of Adelaide) of the book Aboriginal Religions in Australia: An Anthology of Recent Writings, edited by Max Charlesworth, Francoise Dussart, and Howard Morphy (Ashgate, 2005).

Bell notes that the contributors to this volumes are ‘predominantly non-Indigenous anthropologists and well-established ones at that’. However, not a few new strands in the study of Aboriginal religion are unrepresented in the book. Bell states that she ‘would like to see more about the intertwining of new age beliefs and practices, eco-tourism, new religious movements, and the emergence of distinctive Aboriginal theologies—some of which have a strong social justice core and others of a decidedly evangelical nature’.

Bell identifies Fiona Magowan’s essay ‘Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity’ (pp. 279–295) as ‘an excellent account of the Yolngu from Galiwin’ku in northeast Arnhem Land, and Ian McIntosh’s ‘Islam and Australia’s Aborigines’ (pp. 297–318), also on the Yolgnu, as ‘a fine example of how outside influences can be absorbed’, but she says we also need to hear from people in rural and urban settings. Bell, who lives in the Ngarrindjeri territory in the southeast of Australia, would have liked to see more teasing out of how Aboriginal religion practiced in the inner cities,’ in the more densely settled south’. ‘What role, for instance, do mainstream churches, evangelical, and fundamentalist religions play in the lives of disaffected youth?’

No anthology – by definition – can possibly traverse any given field fully. Bell criticises this anthology with being ‘too vast’. She concludes: ‘Choices must be made. In my view, the choices made regarding the“recent writings” for this anthology give priority to old concerns. There is much that is new and challenging for scholars of religion, much that is relevant as to how we live our lives in the twenty-first century. The potential audiences for writing on religion are wide ranging. This anthology was an opportunity to address readers beyond the academy. Instead the editors have stayed very much within the lines’.

You can read the whole review here.

Forsyth and Barth on Judgement

In the current of my work on my ‘christology chapter’ for my thesis, I have been struck afresh just how much Forsyth anticipates some of Barth’s best moments, and how both of them have an important word to speak into the renewed debate on penal substitution. Of course, many of Barth’s greatest words are in the small print. This, of course, ought be no suprise: it is the small print that makes up the bulk of his Dogmatics it seems. (On that, is someone able to confirm, or otherwise, for me that Barth once said that the reason that he wrote so much was in order to ‘get the Enlightenent out of my system’?).

One thing (among many) that I love in both Forsyth and Barth is their relentless insistence that neither the divine-human reconciliation, nor its attendent judgement is the work of a third party. The issue here is the primacy and triumph of God’s grace – God’s grace. All satisfaction of the Father flows from God’s grace and love; it does not procure it. As Forsyth insisted, ‘Procured grace is a contradiction in terms. The atonement did not procure grace, it flowed from grace’. Forsyth contends that the judgement work of the Cross is not the work of a ‘pardon-broker’ – God does not hire someone else to do his dirty work! – but is the summit work of the gracious God whose grace is ‘unbought and unpurchaseable’. Here’s the same tune in Barth’s wee print. It just grips my heart and sends me a singing:

Jesus Christ, in His solidarity with “human nature which has sinned could pay the penalty of sin” (Heid. Catech. Qu. 16), and at the same time, in the power of His divinity, could “bear the burden of the wrath of God in His humanity” (17). Without any diminution of His divine majesty, in the exercise of the divine majesty of His love He could enter into this “likeness of sinful flesh” to bear, in the same majesty, the judgment of divine wrath without annihilation, to be and to reveal Himself supremely as divine majesty even in His humiliation, to rise from the dead as conqueror of the judgment to which He had subjected Himself, the first fruits of all who were to follow in His steps. He could drink the cup which had to be drunk. Because He was God Himself, He could subject Himself to the severity of God. And because He was God Himself He did not have to succumb to the severity of God. God had to be severe to be true to Himself in His encounter with man, and thus to be true also to man. God’s wrath had to be revealed against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. But only God could carry through this necessary revelation of His righteousness without involving an end of all things. Only God Himself could bear the wrath of God. Only God’s mercy was capable of bearing the pain to which the creature existing in opposition to Him is subject. Only God’s mercy could so feel this pain as to take it into the very heart of His being. And only God’s mercy was strong enough not to be annihilated by this pain. And this that could happen only by the divine mercy is just what did happen on the cross of Golgotha: that double proof of omnipotence in which God did not abate the demands of His righteousness but showed Himself equal to His own wrath; on the one hand by submitting to it and on the other by not being consumed by it. In virtue of this omnipotence God’s mercy could be at one and the same time the deepest and sincerest pity and inflexible and impassible divine strength. He could yield to His own inexorable righteousness and by this very surrender maintain Himself as God. He could reveal Himself at once as the One who as the servant of all bore the punishment of death which we had deserved, and the One who as the Lord of all took from death its power and for ever vanquished and destroyed it. In this twofold sense God’s righteousness triumphed in the death of Jesus Christ. (Church Dogmatics II/1, 400)

Review: Peter Baylies, The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook

I’ve just finished reading Peter Baylies’ The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook. Like every book on fathering, this one’s fairly hit and miss in terms of what I found most useful.

Baylies largely treats fathering as a ‘career move’, and the book is shaped to that end – that is, helping fathers enjoy their ‘new career’. While it’s not the way that I like to think of fathering, there are strengths in this (that will no doubt appeal to other personality types), such as helping new father’s approach their responsibilities thoughtfully, purposely and seriously. Adversely, although the book is clearly set out, and somewhat ‘practical’ (including a somewhat useful appendix of resources), it often lacks the personal warmth, and focus on the parent-child relationship, of many parenting books.

Whether it is just cultural or personality or values (and I suspect it’s all three and more), I found Baylies’ book just too basic. Although much of the ground that he covers is useful (the section on playgroups and networking with others for example), it is difficult to believe that most fathers have not thought through most, if not all, of the issues he raises. If you’re after a ‘Fathering 101’ handbook, this one may well be what you are looking for, though it wouldn’t be my first choice. If you feel that you could skip ‘Fathering 101′ and move up a grade or two, you would be better served to look elsewhere.

One of the strengths of the book, however, is that Baylies has clearly spent much time listening to other fathers. Although at times I was left wondering if he has spent too much time doing this – as the inclusion of copious fathering stories betrays – it does give the book a sort of common-sense, communal wisdom (or ignorance?) feel. Of course, it’s easy enough to navigate your way around the material and jump to the next section if you want.

In talking to at-home dads over the last ten years, Baylies has asked dads what they have changed for themselves that made for a more stress-free family. Here are ten useful things that he lists (pp. 152-3) that one can do to make the household a more pleasant environment:

1. Talk to them and listen to them. When your kids know you are listening to them, it makes them realize their input matters, and gives them a feeling of control and self-worth.

2. Treat them with respect. When you respect them, they will respect you back.

3. Give a lot of hugs and kisses. A feeling of being loved gives your kids a feeling of self-confidence.

4. Show you love your spouse in front of your kids. Seeing Mum and Dad show affection toward each other gives them two role models.

5. Allow kids to be self-reliant. Let them try things for themselves, no matter how foolish it may seem to you (provided it’s safe). For example, my kids liked to do experiments by mixing water with several objects and putting it in the freezer to see what happens. They couldn’t wait to see what it would look like the following day. After a while, when we trusted them with the toaster, we encouraged them to make toast. (My oldest son is twelve and is making a pretty good ham and cheese omelet now.)

6. Communicate with your spouse and agree on parenting styles. To avoid a public argument and mixed messages, make sure you and your wife agree on your children’s behavior.

7. Get to know your kids’ friends. As your children get older and a few neighborhood kids start to visit, listen to them and learn what they are like and how mature they are. This will give you better judgment when they start asking to do more outside the house.

8. Don’t expect too much, but don’t be a pushover. Pick your battles: some disagreements may not be worth the argument. For example, if your children want to walk to school without a raincoat, let them do it, and see if the consequences will help
them make a better decision next time. But if you have a serious issue, stand by it.

9. Avoid yelling at them at all costs. Always discipline with reason, not fear. When you don’t like a decision or action your children are making, calmly ask them why they are making the decision. Have them explain what might happen; sometimes they will see why you might be right.

10. Create as much adventure as possible for your kids. Creating adventure, although it may not be a popular pastime for the mums, is one way that many at-home dads deal with burnout. This does not mean taking the kids skydiving or white water rafting. It is amazing what adventures you can find within a few blocks of your house. In fact, many dads find that every time they take their children out of the house it can be an adventure.

Expository Preaching: A Wee Note

Eugene Peterson, in Eat This Book, reminds us that Scripture is for feeding on. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolised into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son. It is for this reason (though not this reason alone) that we ought to be committed to expository preaching. It is the faithful exposition of Scripture – week by week, year by year – that is the God-ordained means of feeding the Father’s family. Of course, preaching does not automatically metabolise us into acts of love, but as the proper exposition of Scripture repeatedly points to the Bible’s own source, end and exegete – Jesus Christ – we are given every reason for why the truth must come home to us and others in acts of love, missions, healing, evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name.

This is part of the reason that PT Forsyth, who could never be accused of not preaching Jesus Christ as the centre of all things, once urged a group of budding preachers to restrain themselves in the ‘fanciful use of texts at the cost of the historic revelation which the whole context gives’. These practices, he contended, have a show of honouring the Bible, but they really treat it with the disrespect that is always there when we presume people to mean another thing than they say. If we feel, on a particular occasion, that we must treat a text differently than the context allows, we ought to make it clear that we are taking a liberty in doing so. ‘Preach more expository sermons’, Forsyth said. ‘Take long passages for texts. Perhaps you have no idea how eager people are to have the Bible expounded, and how much they prefer you to unriddle what the Bible says, with its large utterance, than to confuse them with what you can make it say by some ingenuity. It is thus you will get real preaching in the sense of preaching from the real situation of the Bible to the real situation of the time. It is thus you make history preach to history, the past to the present, and not merely a text to a soul’.

Peter Adam offers us a helpful list of 15 arguments for Expository Preaching (read the full article here):

(1) Preaching through the books of the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, respects and reflects God’s authorship. God did not gives us a book of quotable quotes, nor a dictionary of useful texts, nor an anthology of inspiring ideas. When God caused the Scriptures to be written the medium that he used was that of books of the Bible. If that was good enough for the author it should be good enough for the preacher.

(2) Expository Preaching reflects God’s respect for human authors. One of the most beautiful features of the Bible is the way in which God causes his truth to be written and yet does not over-ride the individual writer, but respects their place in history, their vocabulary, their spoken and literary style. If God is so careful to respect the human authors of the Scriptures we should endeavour to do the same by reading, studying, preaching and teaching their books in the order in the way in they wrote them.

(3) Expository Preaching respects the historical context of each part of the Bible. The Bible is not a set of timeless truths removed from historical context, but each book of the Bible is firmly rooted in history, and the perspective of its human author. We do most justice to this historical context when we preach texts in their context, that is in the writing in which they occur.

(4) Expository Preaching respects the context of salvation history. The unfolding drama of salvation is brought to us within salvation history; and each text, verse, chapter and book has its place within that salvation history. The best way to preach these books is to link them to their place in salvation history, not to extract from them trans-historical, theological, pastoral or devotional themes.

(5) Expository Preaching should help us to unfold the deep Biblical Theology of the Bible, the content and message of God’s unfolding revelation, and seeing every part of the Bible in the light of the gospel of Christ, and the message of the whole Bible.

(6) Expository Preaching preserves Biblical shape and balance. It gives the same focus and concentration that God gives in the Bible. Other people’s topical preaching inevitably misses this balance. It is more difficult to see the same imbalance in our own topical preaching!

(7) Expository Preaching ensures that we preach on difficult topics, verses and books. I would not choose to preach from the text ‘I hate divorce’ unless forced to do so by a sermon series on Malachi. I would not choose to preach on Romans 9-11, but preaching my way right through Romans forces me to do so. Lectionaries are no help, because modern lectionaries seem to go out of their way to avoid difficult topics, even cutting poems and stories in half to avoid embarrassment. Expository Preaching will at least make us preach on the difficult parts of the Bible.

(8) Expository Preaching saves time in preparation and presentation. Preachers need to do a lot of work in preparing their sermons and finding the historical context, and need to convey the context of verses in which they preach in the sermon as well. If we move from text to text as we move from sermon to sermon, or if we move from text to text within sermons, we will be less and less inclined to give the context of those texts and more and more inclined to take them out of context. [Of course ‘the text’ is actually the whole book: only preachers think of ’the text’ as a short extract!]

(9) Expository Preaching provides a good model of exegesis. We ought to preach and teach the Bible in a way in which we hope people will read it. People should pick up good models of using the Scripture from us. We do not want to encourage people to flip through the Bible, picking out verses that look encouraging or inviting. If we want people to read the Bible as it is written, that’s the way we should preach it.

(10) In Expository Preaching each sermon forms part of a divine sequence. The sequence is that of the writer of the book of the Bible. Following this sequence means that our teaching and their learning is cumulative as each sermon prepares the way for the next, and each sermon summarises the message of the last and shows its sequence in biblical thought.

(11) Expository Preaching makes sense! Even the most convinced post-modernists among us still read books from beginning to end. This is because it’s a remarkably sensible way of reading a book. Why would we adopt a different model in our reading and teaching of the Scriptures?

(12) Expository Preaching teaches people the Bible. Its assumption is that the Bible is relevant and effective as it comes from the mouth of God. It assumes that the information in the Bible is important for us; that these things were ‘written for our learning’.

(13) Expository Preaching provides an accessible, useable and safe model of Bible teaching and preaching. If one of our tasks is to encourage lay people in ministry, then the best thing to do is to provide them with a model of teaching which they can use at any level. It is not good to encourage people to flip through the Bible, taking their favourite verses out of context. It is a good work to show the people a model of Bible teaching that they can use to their benefit and the benefit of those who learn from them.

(14) Expository Preaching helps people to avoid repeating their ten favourite themes. Every preacher has ten sermons. The difficulty comes for the preacher and the congregation when they are repeated for the tenth time. Of course, no method can stop the determined preacher from mounting a hobby horse and riding it to death!

(15) Expository Preaching follows God’s syllabus for us. One helpful way of viewing the Bible is to see it as God’s syllabus. In it God lays out the way of salvation and what human beings need to learn in order to turn to Jesus Christ in faith and obedience. The Bible is the syllabus that God has provided – why would we replace it with another of our own invention?

Across All Worlds

C. Baxter Kruger’s writings have always been a real blessing to me. His latest offering, Across All Worlds, is no different. The book is written in honour of his PhD supervisor, Professor James Torrance, and is a tribute with which JB would be pleased. Here’s a poem from the book’s opening:


Across all worlds
He came for us
With Father’s passion burning

With strength unknown
In Spirit’s fire
He fought for our undoing

What love, what care
What fearless joy
Has found us in the night

That we may know
As he has known
The everlasting light

Awake, My child
Your fear lay down
There’s hope for which you long

The night is day
The Son has come
The Father’s heart is strong

Living Out Scripture Meme

Andy Goodliff has invited me to ‘post that verse or story of scripture which is important to you, which you find yourself re-visiting time after time’.

I must say that I find this to be a most difficult task. On Andy’s criteria, Exodus 19:3–6; Psalms 32; 88; 89; Ezekiel 16; Daniel 9:9; Jonah 3:1; Hosea 11; Matthew 20:1–16; 27:1–10; Mark 5:21–43; 7:24–30; John 1:14, 29; John 17; 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:5; 2 Corinthians 5:11–21; Ephesians 1; Hebrews 9–10; 1 John 4:7–12 and Revelation 5 all loom large. (Andy did say, ‘you can make it two or even three, if you can’t reduce it to one!’)

If I just had to choose one passage, I’d say 2 Corinthians 5:16–21,

‘So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’.

If they haven’t already been tagged, I’ll tag the following:

Michael Bird
Dan Goldfinch
Michael Jensen
Lawrence
Jon Mackenzie
Frank Rees
Byron Smith
Chris Tilling – Psalm 27:4
Michael Westmoreland-White
Paul Whiting – Genesis 1-50

Experience and Evangelical Succession

‘What Christ has done for me has become possible only by what He did even more powerfully for others whose faith and experience have been deeper and richer than mine, but who reflect my experience all the same, even while they diversify and enlarge it mightily. Standing over my experience is the experience of the whole evangelical succession. And standing over that is the historic fact of Christ’s own person, and His consciousness of Himself (“All things are delivered to me of the Father”) as Lord of the world, Lord of nature in miracle, of the soul in redemption, and of the future in judgment. When I meet Him in my inmost soul I meet one whose own inmost soul felt itself to be all that, and who has convinced the moral flower of the race, in the whole historic Church, that He is what He knew Himself to be. And in that conviction the Church has become the finest product of Humanity, and the mightiest power that ever entered and changed the course of history from its moral centre’. – Peter T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 204-5.

Does contemporary theology require a postfoundationalist way of knowing?

The latest issue of SJT includes an essay by a good mate of mine – Kevin Diller. The article, which offers a response to Shults’ call for a postfoundational epistemological approach, seeks to answer the question, ‘Does contemporary theology require a postfoundationalist way of knowing?’ Here’s the blurb:

In his The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology, F. LeRon Shults recommends postfoundationalism as a via media between modernist foundationalism and postmodernist antifoundationalism. He advocates postfoundationalism as an epistemological approach which avoids the pitfalls on either side and provides the best way forward for constructive theological work. In this article I attempt to assess how well Shults’s proposal treats Christian theological knowing. I begin by entertaining a Barthian theological concern which might be employed as soft criteria for an assessment of any proposed theological epistemology. This concern stipulates that an epistemology in the service of Christian theology must respect a commitment to the objective reality of God who, as Word become flesh, makes himself known through the human experience of reality to his church, while recognising the fallibility of human knowing, presupposing a knowledge of God accessible through experience always only by the prevenient, self-giving action of God. I then turn to a brief analysis of the Shults–van Huyssteen case against foundationalism and nonfoundationalism, focusing particularly on the postfoundationalist critiques of foundationalism and fideism in dialogue with Barth. The article concludes with an appraisal of the postfoundationalist recommendation. I argue that Shults’s approach maps well to the theological concern for critical realism and a recognition of the social embeddedness of human knowing. Postfoundationalism’s underlying commitments, however, leave it closed to an external source of warrant, and as a consequence repudiate a from above view of theological knowing. I suggest instead that only a theofoundationalist epistemology avoids the pitfalls sketched by Shults in a way that maintains proper epistemic humility without entering the ghettos of fideism or scepticism.

SBJT, Substitutionary Atonement, and Metaphors of the Cross

The latest volume of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology is out. And … surprise surprise … it’s dedicated to the crucial (pun intended) topic of substitutionary atonement. I suspect that there may be a wee run of journals dedicating an issue or two to this all important topic. For that I would be grateful. I do hope, however, that the attention on the substitutionary nature of the atonement would not be at the expense of the many other equally important realities of Christ’s atoning work.

One of the reasons that I love Forsyth so much is that he harnesses a broad range of metaphors – both biblical and extra-biblical – to talk about the work of Christ. Warfare, redemption, judicial and sacrificial dialects are all employed – as are dialects of poetry and the social and hard sciences – with the conviction that although no one group of metaphors can exhaust the atonement’s meaning, it is through metaphor that the Church has been able to say anything at all about the Cross. Moreover, Forsyth is concerned that no metaphor can translate the reality of the atonement. Christ did not die for a metaphor. The dominance of any metaphor risks distorting the reality which, like conversion itself, carries a totality in it, an eternal crisis, to which nothing in the world is comparable and all metaphor inadequate. Little wonder that Forsyth (like the Apostle Paul) wrestled for days on end to invent or discover ways – torturing language itself – of expressing what happened in the Crucified.

That said, I don’t normally read SBJT (nor do I have access to it) but I will be trying to chase down one or two of these articles:



Editorial: Stephen J. Wellum
“Articulating, Defending, and Proclaiming Christ our Substitute”
4
 Gregg Allison
“A History of the Doctrine of the Atonement”
20
 Peter J. Gentry
“The Atonement in Isaiah’s Fourth Servant Song” (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)
48
 Derek Tidball
“Songs of the Crucified One: The Psalms and the Crucifixion”
64
 Simon Gathercole
“The Cross and Substitutionary Atonement”
74
 Barry C. Joslin
“Christ Bore the Sins of Many: Substitution and the Atonement in Hebrews”
104
 The SBJT Forum
“The Atonement under Fire”

HT: Justin for pointing this out.

Great Drudges

‘There are not greater drudges in the world than those who are slaves to mere wordly pursuits. And what comes of it? They find themselves disappointed of it, and disappointed in it; they will own it is worse than vanity, it is vexation of spirit. By staining and sinking earthly glory, God manifests and magnifies his own glory, and fills the earth with the knowledge of it, as plentifully as waters cover the sea, which are deep, and spread far and wide’. – Matthew Henry, on Habakkuk 2:14.

A Call to Amend the ETS’s Doctrinal Basis

Denny Burk and Ray Van Neste are proposing an amendment to the ETS’s doctrinal basis along the lines of the UK’s Tyndale Fellowship which agrees with the statement of belief used by the UK’s Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF). There are no surprises in the proposed list, which suggests a shift from the current two-part statement to an eleven-part statement. You can read more about it here.

Unsurprisingly, so far under the ‘Categories’ in the sidebar, there are 4 articles on ‘Amendment’ and 8 on ‘Evangelicals and Catholics’.

Forsyth on the gift of Jesus Christ

It’s been a while since I posted a quotation from Forsyth and this one reminds me again why his voice is both so unique and needed today to combat the heresy of (merely) incarnational theology:

‘… all Christ’s teachings about the Kingdom were only facets of His act of the Cross, which founded it where nothing can be shaken—on the holiness of God and what that holiness both required and gave. Roused, melted, or crushed by His words, we need more than a present God for a help in time of trouble; we need a God doing eternal and historic justice to what is the most perfect and real thing in the universe, and our own last interest there—to the holiness of His own love, which we have so deeply wronged. The effect on us of the mere spectacle of Christ carries us beyond spectacle. We need there an act of judgement and not merely of exhibition, of reparation and not mere confession. We need a confession so full and perfect as to be reparation—the full confession of the Holy by the Holy amid the conditions of universal sin. For the purposes of the Kingdom Christ preached. We need more than a God made mortal flesh; and what we are offered in Christ is God made sin for us’. – PT Forsyth, The Preaching of Jesus and the Gospel of Christ, 88.

‘A True Father’, by Steve Biddulph

A ‘true’ father is much more than your child’s friend. Your love, commitment to and involvement in your daughter’s life is unshakeable. Whatever happens, you will be there for her, as long as you live. So, you have to be kinder, and more forgiving, than any friend would possibly be. Also, to do your job, you have to sometimes be tougher than any friend would risk being.

There will be times when your daughter will not like what you say, or what you do or what you insist she does. A true father expects and teaches his daughter to be a cooperative member of the family, who keeps her agreements, treats others with respect, is thoughtful in any situation and pulls her weight regardless of the circumstances.

Toughness, however, is not the same as meanness. Your daughter will be impressed by your quiet strength more than by your attempts to intimidate her. She will respond to your good-humored suggestions more readily than by caustic verbal criticisms. It is, ideally, a mutually respectful relationship, but not, for many years, an equal one.

What do children, especially teenagers, need from their parents? The security that comes from knowing that Mom and Dad stand on a firm foundation and can’t be manipulated. By pushing against this firm family foundation, teenagers learn invaluable lessons about ethics and values, about compromise and standing fast.

One day, and sometimes at a surprisingly young age, your daughter will argue with you – and win! And, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find yourself thinking, ‘I guess she’s right!’ At this point, you can choose to feel put out, or you can choose to feel proud that you have empowered her so effectively. (I once heard a father at a barbecue say to his teenage daughter, when a discussion became heated, ‘l don’t agree with you, but I think you’re making a great argument!’ Both father and daughter were aware of other people around them listening in, and she glowed with pride.)

So much of fatherhood is in the little things: like driving her to volleyball practice and watching from the sidelines, to comfort or cheer or both; knowing her friends and meeting their parents; helping her find a good photo of Kakadu National Park on the lnternet at 10:30 at night while she frantically writes out her assignment due the next morning.

If you can work with her cooperatively and good-naturedly on a project (assembling a piece of furniture, for example) without getting tense and angry, then you are laying down the foundations for how she will do this kind of thing with her partner when she grows up. More importantly, you will be setting the standard for the kind of partner she will choose. If you are a remote or indecisive or uninvolved dad, she may choose partners who are distant or indecisive or non-participatory. These are pretty good reasons to work at being an actively good role model for your daughter.

Of course, you will have conflicts. But whatever time you spend in conflict with her needs to be done really well. If you are able to say ‘no’ to your daughter, kindly but firmly, with good reasons and no arbitrary rejections, she will not only learn how to hear ‘no’ reasonably, she will in turn learn how to say ‘no’ reasonably to others when she needs to. You can be much more effective in setting limits and getting cooperation if you avoid using hostility or fear tactics. A father doesn’t bully, shout or intimidate.

Many women reading these pages will remember how their fathers launched humiliating tirades at them: ‘While you are under my roof, young lady.. .’ (as if we have a choice); ‘You are a selfish, rude, inconsiderate, useless …’ (maybe, but do you have to point it out at the cost of my vulnerable self-esteem?). As men, we often seem to forget (or are careless about remembering) the fact that we are bigger, louder and stronger than our little girls and that physically and emotionally we hold all the cards. Our daughters long for our love, respect, admiration and praise. Which means every cut from a father goes very deep. The true dad is clear and firm, but he isn’t aggressive. His underlying tone is warm, even when he is setting clear, firm boundaries. He takes his time, and listens to his daughter’s side of the story.

Of course, this isn’t always easy. It takes a lifetime of learning. But every inch of progress is worthwhile. Imagine how it might be to really get this right. Our daughters, our little women in the making, will respect and love us, and will want to earn our respect and love and never, ever have reason to be afraid of us.

Taken from Gisela Preuschoff’s Raising Girls, 173-6. See my review here.

Anderson on the Kenotic Community

‘The kenotic community as an imperative which the Incarnation demands permits no distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian which resides intrinsically in the Christian (or the church) as such. When one ‘defines’ the church or the Christian, then, the distinctive must be solely in the ‘difference’ which has its source in the historical transcendence of God. The ‘difference’ is Christ, not that redemption is set over against creation, but so that man is liberated to participate in Christ’s ek-static fulfillment of all creaturehood through the life of the Spirit. The ‘difference’ is the centre (Christ) and not in distinctions drawn between men, or between the church and the world as entities’. – Ray S. Anderson, ‘Living in the World’, in Ray S. Anderson (ed.), Theological Foundations for Ministry: Selected Readings for a Theology of the Church in Ministry (Edinburgh/Grand Rapids: T. & T. Clark/Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), 591.