CKB on. Being a Christian and a Minister– Part One

Last updated on: March 9, 2024 at 1:25 am by Ben Witherington

CKB on. Being a Christian and a Minister– Part One 2024-02-19T09:01:21-05:00 Ben Witherington

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I am not satisfied. Perhaps it is your fault! You asked for a continuation of the Conference of 1983, and that is something I wished to pursue. It was this very theme I started in 1983. I now borrow Hans Kung’s title On Being a Christian but his line of thinking. I urged you to look at his great book, but have delayed rereading it. The intellectual is not the only aspect of being a Christian. I will treat the question as a personal one, so you must put up with some autobiography. If had a strange career as a Methodist minister– unexpected and unwanted. Just 40 years ago asked to apply for a lectureship at Durham. I would try it out. And remained, finding I could do all I was called to do. There are ways in which this has made me to reflect (other than direct (deep) reflection; this may come later).

Part I: Teaching theology is (I hope) ministerial; but university teaching is another job, and I have had to pursue both, seeing especially the circuit for both ideas. The faculty of divinity at Durham has been a profoundly Christian body– which is its strength. But of course this is not true of the University. Yet unsuspected Christians who turn up at the church on the outside. They interest me. They do not regular go to church. I can understand this, for example professional philosophers who know Christian doctrine well. What can he make of the average sermon? It is not the preacher’s fault. The philosopher who is a Christian ought to go, but I can understand why not. Then there are Methodists who go to church but never to the sacrament. I can understand this too, for only the one believing in transubstantiation has a good reason for going. Must one have one’s babies baptized to please wives and grandparents? Not all, some at least. What is the difference between 2 and 3, and 1 when I baptized? I can see the point–a lot of points, not least the question of time. Scholarship is always time consuming. [I BW3 interject a little story here. When Ann and I were caretakers at Elvet Methodist Church, one week day I was in the church and the phone rang. I picked it up and this very proper English lady asked ‘Do you do Christenings?’ I answered ‘Yes mam we do baptisms’. She then said: ‘Oh nothing so elaborate as baptism, you know just a little water on the babies forehead!’]. I have practiced religion at a Saturday afternoon and evening for Sunday.

The thing I want to point out, however, is the existence of a real,solid, absolute, genuine Christian focused life which has lacked many of the circumstances, inward and outward, that we traditionally associate with it. The existence of such good people prompts me to examine myself and to recognize something similar there, a sort of imperceptibility of experience. This is the sort of word, or use of words I am talking about. Here is a difference between me and Hans Kung. He is accused of heresy. I am an orthodox Methodist in thought and action. My questioning lies elsewhere.

In A Group Speaks p. 14 we find this question: “Is the full rich evangelical experience God’s purpose for everyone?” Is this true, and what exactly is the full rich evangelical experience? It is this that I want to analyze. You may say I am an academic, but I have said that Christianity is not a philosophy but rather a person and a life. Perhaps the university comes in here in a different way. The theme of the Conference in 1983 was What Do We Make of this Person Jesus? Someone then spoke of experiencing the Trinity saying I cannot experience just one of them.

In regard to the historical study of the Gospels, one has to face the radical question What do we know for certain? What? How? Are the Gospel intended to introduce us to a person? Does the NT encourage Jesus mysticism? Bultmann focused on ‘in Christo’ the eschatological and ecclesial rather than the mystical. What of those NT words ‘eikon’, ‘logos’ ‘he emptied himself’. Does there have to be a choice between mysticism and objective orthodoxy? Between ‘warm, sweet, tender experience’ and ‘out of the depths, now I have found’? But when the young people ask– How do you know? What can I say but– I believe?

Part II. I have been raising questions and I mainly mean that I hope someone will help me to find better answers than I have. I now direct my questions and make some observations, first as public ecclesiastical persons and then later in relation to our private lives. There are two closely related lines– our ministerial roles and then what we may offer and expect from our people. I return to autobiography.

My life has made me ask– what is a minister? And am I one? Not that I am having a crisis of identity! Our own church is a bit puzzled. Are we permitted to seek and serve external organizations? There was once a questionaire– How does being a minister help your work? I had to answer— Not at all! I had lay colleagues who did all that I did (apart from the sacraments and I would have been quite willing that they did these as well). Perhaps even (Anglican) ordinands were more ready to accept advice. Wherein have I differed from a lay person? Like Luther I do not believe in indelibility, and presumably the Methodist Church does not either. Yet Methodist regard me as a minister. Why? Of course I was a candidate, faced the tests, did the training but that was 40 years ago. I am allowed to service the sacraments but a) why not the local preacher, and b) do I want to? This leads to another set of questions– Is it fair to justify unbelieving baptism? Do we observe the Supper in the right way? What justifies us for making this a purely symbolic liturgy? [This lecture continues in the next post]

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