Signposts on the Way: Theological Reflections on the Practice of Ministry

By Graeme Ferguson

This book invites clergy and lay people engaged in Christian mission and parish ministry today to take time out to think about what we can learn from our recent past.

You will be encouraged by Ferguson’s uplifting, inspiring and pragmatic insights gained from 50 years of ministry.

He shows how local ministry is informed by sustained theological reflection. He has worked on the frontiers between the church and the secular city in Wellington, Auckland and Sydney. Ferguson has shared many ecumenical initiatives including the Inner City Ministry, the formation of the Uniting Church in Australia and setting up the Sydney College of Divinity.

He has worked cross-culturally with the Greek and the Korean communities. Each fresh initiative has raised new theological questions.

To help you engage with the text, the book is well indexed, has many footnotes and has a comprehensive table of contents.

There are also many pull quotes sprinkled throughout the book which highlight the author’s insights. For example:
* “...its ministers must decide whether they are going to allow themselves to be manipulated by the power elites, to serve them in the furtherance of their policies.”
* “The task of the Church is to discern the places in the life of the city where Christ is about his saving work and set out to join him there.”
* “Giving people the freedom to exercise their creativity in practical ways that reach achievable goals is exhilarating.”
* “The Scriptures are infuriating. They are rarely lucid or clear.”
* “Our capacity for innovative response is restricted only by the limit of our vision.”
* “I wanted people going into ministry to love the Church, understand it well and serve it selflessly and wholeheartedly.”
* “People have a great ability to set limits to their understanding. They are not prepared to go deeper into faith.”
* “Where the Church insists on a higher authority or a set of truth claims that cannot be questioned or examined, the Church is in trouble.”
* “One of the tasks in the local congregation is to discern the range of gifts present in its life and to ensure that these are recognized, celebrated and used effectively.”

Praise for Signposts on the Way:

“Signposts on the Way is a sincere and deeply thoughtful insight into the place of Christian faith in a half century in which it has been subject to doubts, critical analysis, outright rejection and downright abuse. Ferguson makes a strong case for the consistency, insight and value for humanity of the Christian story.” Rev Prof William Emilsen, Research Professor Charles Sturt University, Sydney

“This is good stuff. I needed to read this at a time when so much around us is dark and troublesome.” Ven Dr John Chryssavgis. Theological consultant to the Patriarch of Constantinople

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Garside
• Release date: Nov 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781988572222

Graeme Ferguson

After under-graduate work at Auckland and Otago, Dr Ferguson completed his doctorate on Calvin at Cambridge. In 1965 he was called to be minister of Kent Terrace Presbyterian Church, Wellington, where he shared in forming the Inner City Ministry, a model of ecumenical cooperation in the city. In 1975, he was invited to become the inaugural Principal of United Theological College, Sydney, an ecumenical college that prepared people for ministry in the soon to be formed Uniting Church in Australia. He helped establish the Sydney College of Divinity. In 1988 he became senior minister of St David's Church, Auckland. He served the Assembly as convener of the International Relations and the Doctrine Committees. Dr Ferguson retired in 2000.

Book preview

Signposts on the Way

Theological Reflections on the Practice of Ministry

Graeme Ferguson

Copyright © 2019 Graeme Ferguson

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Email Graeme at

[e-mail]

ePub edition 2019

ISBN 978-1-98-857222-2

Philip Garside Publishing Ltd

PO Box 17160

Wellington 6147

New Zealand

[e-mail] — www.pgpl.co.nz

Print editions also available

Front cover photograph – Ian Ferguson:

On the Routeburn Track near the Routeburn Falls Hut, with the Humboldt mountains behind.

Table of Contents

Title and Copyright

Preface

Introduction: A discussion on method

Chapter 1 — Auckland and Dunedin: Germinating Ideas

Beginnings

First Creative Moments

Theological Education in the Classical Tradition

Chapter 2 — Cambridge: The Classical Tradition

Researching the ‘Body of Christ’

Chapter 3 — Kent Terrace Church, Wellington: Gift of the City

The Process of Secularization

The Gift of the City

Forms of Presence

The lifestyle of the local congregation

The Church for Others

Forming the Inner City Ministry: from Tradition to Mission47

Ministry in the ICM

Chapter 4 — Creative Theological Departures: 1965–1975

Handing on the Tradition

Interpreting the Faith to its Cultured Despisers: The Resurrection

Liberation and the New Exodus

Life in the Spirit

Festivity and Joy

Chapter 5 — Sydney: United Theological College, A Learning Community

Creating a New Institution

The Call to Sydney

Qualities needed in a Principal

Early Days: Building Community

Major Developments

Inclusive Community

An intentional, educational community

Maturing in a committed community of faith and worship

Ministerial formation

Doing Theology in Context

The formation of the Uniting Church in Australia

Distinctive Markers in the Australian Experience

Chapter 6 — The local congregation in mission

Institution and community

The Church as agent of mission: The five marks of the missionary congregation

The People of God

The Fellowship of the Spirit

The Body of Christ

The Household of Faith

The Temple of the Spirit

Chapter 7 — Doing Theology in Australia

The Land

The Exilic Experience

A multi-cultural society

A journey into freedom

An urban society

Root Metaphors

Chapter 8 — The Interpretative Task

Chapter 9 — Forming the Uniting Church in Australia

United Theological College as a model of ecumenical cooperation

Forming the Uniting Church in Australia

Forming the Centre for Ministry

Chapter 10 — Baptism, the Sacrament of Initiation

Chapter 11 — Auckland: St David’s Tradition and Mission

What we found when we arrived

The socio-political context

Individualism

Anonymity

Autonomy

Urbanisation

Changing attitudes to the Church

Questions for the Church at Mission

Sent into the City

Proclamation and Witness

Celebrating the mysteries of faith

The Sacrament of Baptism

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper

The Rites of the Church

Weddings

Funerals

Civic Occasions

The Search for an Inclusive Church

The Revolution in Human Relationships and Sexuality

Creating a sustainable future

Chapter 12 — Recapitulation: On being an incarnational community

The dynamics of servanthood

Embodied humanity

Costly service

Friendship

An inclusive community

A community of faith, hope and love

Faith

Hope

Love

The Church between the ages

Christ humbled and exalted

Notes

Index

About the Author and this Book

Rev Dr Graeme Ferguson

About this book

Praise for Signposts on the Way

Preface

When I retired from active ministry in November 2000, members of the Presbytery of Auckland spoke of the way I always sought to place any situation in the Church within its theological context and provide a theological rationale for my stance. This study sets out to show how that approach to the ways I exercised ministry, developed over 50 years.

It is not a biographical study, so much as a sustained theological reflection on the issues the Church faced in those years. Because it is written as contextual theology, it has been necessary to sketch the range of situations within which I have been thinking. These set the scene and provide the dynamics for ongoing reflection.

The study concludes theologically in 2000. Since then my participation has necessarily been more restricted and my reading has been episodic, as I have explored new ideas that caught my imagination. These days I am more of a bemused observer as the Church struggles to find its role in a secular culture.

I realize that my commitment to the fulness of the catholic, reformed tradition of faith and practice has a long and committed, personal history behind it. My great, great grandfather, James Hamlin, joined the Church Missionary Society mission in the Bay of Islands in 1826 as an artisan lay missionary. Both my father and grandfather were faithful ministers of the Presbyterian Church as were many of their wider relations. My mother was a daughter of the Manse as is my wife. My elder son ministers in a vibrantly creative congregation of the Uniting Church in Australia. Another daughter is an elder in a strong multi-cultural congregation in Auckland. For better or worse, we are steeped in the tradition.

This study is dedicated to Mairi, my wife who has shared the journey from our time in Dunedin as I completed my initial theological studies at Knox College, through our adventures overseas, to creating homes in Wellington, Sydney and Auckland. Mairi is a teacher of grace and recognized capacity. Her gifts of hospitality are legendary. Her wisdom is practical and encouraging and her commitment to just dealings is strong. Together we have brought up a family of five who are all strong and creative people. Their humanity lies behind this story. I know that living as the family of the Manse has broadened and enriched them. When asked, they said that they enjoyed most the wide variety of people who shared our hospitality from all over the world. However, their stories are their own to tell and are not part of this reflection.

I value my friends who have encouraged me to see this study through to publication. The Venerable Dr John Chryssavgis and I have been friends since establishing St Andrews Greek Orthodox College in Sydney. My niece, Dr Alison Clarke from her wide experience of writing and researching New Zealand social history, was kind enough to pass a critical eye over gender inclusive language among other things. The Rev Bob Scott realized that he needed to look over the sections on the formation of the Inner City Ministry among other matters. Old friends like Rev Peter Wedde and Rev Ross Miller have been curious about the project and critically supportive. Rev Margaret Anne Low ensured that the breadth of the St David’s story was honoured. Valued colleagues in theological education like Rev Professor William Emilsen, Rev Canon Professor Dorothy Lee and Rev Dr William H Ives have each made pointed responses. Where I have not accepted their suggestions, the responsibility remains mine.

The dialogue continues.

My grateful thanks are due to Philip Garside who has brought his editorial skill and professional expertise to bear on a text of one-handed typing to transform it into a printed book fit for purpose and a pleasure to handle.

Introduction: A discussion on method

This study is a sustained, theological reflection on the practice of ministry between 1953, when I went up to Auckland University College, and 2000, when I retired as senior minister of St David’s Church, Auckland.

What do we mean by reflecting on the way of discipleship? The Christian life is the activity of living humanly before God, following in the way of Jesus. It is lived in community. When we start to reflect on the way we live, we try to encapsulate the elusive, always changing persona that is the unique I of our humanity.

We are always active in the way we live. We are interactive persons who are involved in the situations of each day. Some situations challenge us, making demands that we need to rise to meet. Others we shape and influence to meet our own interests. Some things we can change but others we can do nothing about. In those situations, we react rather than initiate. In all situations however, we are people who respond to the challenges of our lives.

The rhythm of life weaves its way between these patterns of challenge and response. To act responsibly is to embrace our human capacity to respond to the situations in which we live. We do so as creatively and realistically as we can. We deal with the facts of the situation and respond in terms of what is humanly possible. As Richard Niebuhr¹ pointed out, we have a regard to the consequences of our actions. We are accountable for what we do. We are not isolated individuals. We always act in solidarity with other people, as persons-in-relation. At its centre, we accept responsibility for who we are and how we act.

When we begin to reflect, it is on where we have been and what we have done. We stand back from the ongoing rush of human activity, in order to gain some perspective. Reflection is a matter of imaging. We try to capture a moment in a continuous process in order to stand back and observe what has been going on.

This process of reflecting is a crucial part of responsible action. On the one hand, it gives one understanding of what is going forward. It also points the way ahead to enable action to become more effectively responsive and not simply reactive. Once we have drawn back to stand aside, we become free to re-engage with better understanding. We can own what we are doing.

Reflection is an intentional, directed activity, rather than a passive allowing of ideas to float up in an uncontrolled sort of way. The process raises basic questions, not easily formulated. It allows us to ask what has been going on, and what is required in order to be able to go further. It is often not clear how matters may be resolved. One learns to live with questions hanging in the air. However, when the question can be posed in a way that enables a response, a breakthrough into fresh understanding takes place.

One may live with unresolved questions for a long time. They will not go away. A dogmatic assertion will not resolve the existential angst. An intellectual response that something must be so, is no answer. The response, when it comes, will address the life situation in an unexpected and creative manner, which will free one to re-engage. Reflection is a specific stage in an ongoing process of active decision-making.

Even while reflecting, one continues in the way of discipleship. All reflection is done ‘on the run’ unless specific times of retreat give space to evaluate, then to re-engage at a later stage. A rhythm of engagement and dis-engagement is deeply valuable but is an acquired discipline. Most people reflect amid ongoing busyness.

All reflection is done ‘on the run’ unless specific times of retreat give space to evaluate, then to re-engage at a later stage.

The first questions simply deal with what is happening. These address the realities of the situation, not what might be or ought to be, the case.

One then has to focus these questions to begin to discern the real issues. Things are not to be taken at face value. One has to deal with distortions, corruptions, self-justifying explanations and a host of perfectly good reasons, which might prevent one getting through to the basic life-changing questions. One becomes ‘suspicious’ of initial responses. There is always more than we first thought.

One asks how these issues have been addressed in the past. This is done with cautious care. Our questions are different from those that have gone before. Our circumstances have changed. Our situations are new because our historical context is unique. No response from the past will be sufficient to deal with the present.

Nevertheless, the tradition will do two things for us. It will remind us that wise responses made in the past may illuminate our present situation. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. We do not expect past questions to be able to encompass new contexts. The tradition may also pose questions to us that we in our turn would rather not hear. They may have dealt with situations more courageously, than we are ready to bring to our own situation.

We live in tension with our past. The way by which we have come is a fascinating tapestry of responses not to be ignored, but also not to be slavishly imitated or repeated. We respond in our own context making our own responsible decisions.

Some issues in the past were not formulated in ways that meet our present needs. New questions demand fresh responses that break fresh ground. They indicate new lines of action that require new initiatives and fresh courage.

Some questions will remain unresolved. We may not have been able to formulate them sufficiently clearly or we may not yet be clear as to the real issue. The ways we should act are not evident. Those questions simply hang in the air. We learn to live with them. We wait on another time. We do not rush to judgement on matters that remain unclear.

The process of reflecting gives us the opportunity to gain perspective on the way we are going. In seeking a sharper focus by our questioning, we are gaining clarification of what we are about. We do so in order to be able to make good decisions, with enough light to move ahead.

The end of our way is to become free to respond creatively in the emerging new situation in which we find ourselves. We put things together in new ways. We integrate things more effectively by seeing fresh aspects of our situations. Essentially, we are looking for ways that will push the boundaries and allow us to re-engage and move forward into a new place.

The act of reflecting has its own rewards. We take time to allow things to come together. We draw fragmented pieces into a momentary pattern that has some coherence to it. Reflecting brings us to a point of stillness, not unlike the reflection in a deep, still pool. We are at peace in the moment, waiting on a fresh insight of discernment. A sense of excitement is in the air. An essentially creative work is in progress.

Elizabeth O’Connor² called this aspect of the rhythm of discipleship, the journey inwards. The journey outwards is the movement into mission in the world. The interior journey allows us to enter deeply into the resources of faith so that we can live at risk in the world. The journey inwards has its own risks. Not only is there the danger of needing to live with the confusion of unanswered questions, but there is also the journey into darkness before any light may come. The darkness may be embracing but can also be frightening. This is all part of the process of coming to understand the way of faith.

Reflection is peculiarly a gift given in the aging process.³ One needs confidence that the process of questioning the way by which one has come is worthwhile. One needs experience of being on the way, to be able to live with the awkward questions that insist on getting in the way. One also needs a modicum of wisdom in order to be able to reflect wisely. Such wisdom may come, if at all, only with age. Nevertheless, one engages in the reflective process with a sense of curiosity and a delight that new things will constantly come to light for the way. The prayer of the reflective practitioner⁴ is, Lord be a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.⁵

Chapter 1 — Auckland and Dunedin: Germinating Ideas

Beginnings

The Student Christian Movement in Auckland University College, in the early 1950s, was a vibrant community where Christian discipleship in the university, was lived out with passion and commitment. It was there that I first learnt to think theologically. Our life together⁶ was centred in Saturday night study groups, meeting in homes across the city. We built community around the Word of God.

Biblical theology was central. How could this ancient, alien word shed light on our life today? These writers lived in different worlds and yet made sense to us. We were seeking to interpret the biblical witness in our university setting.

Theological study was done in community. Our questions arose out of engagement with each other in our university context. The cost of discipleship⁷ was not only the name of a challenging new book. It also made us aware that theology dealt with life questions to which we needed to give answer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had lived with audacious courage: he practised the presence of God⁸ in the secret discipline of his discipleship and studied with the urbane sophistication of a German intellectual. He modelled sacrificial discipleship at the cost of his life, dying in concentration camp. We tried to witness in the university by the quality of our common life, the integrity of our thinking and the level of concern we had for members of the university community.

Ideas from Bonhoeffer spoke to our situation. To live before God in the world, as if God were not there, made sense. Speaking of grace as costly and demanding before the Cross, was a struggle that we identified with, even in our secure part of the world. Niebuhr’s trenchant remark about a Gospel without love, in a life without the Cross, leading to a death without sacrifice, challenged any easy approach to discipleship.

He said that a Christian is one who seeks to follow Jesus.

I asked my father-in-law, a wise leader in the Church,⁹ what he thought being a Christian was. He said that a Christian is one who seeks to follow Jesus. That is a succinct summary of the way of discipleship. We are called to follow Jesus, walking after him on the true and living way into life¹⁰ that he opens for us. Following Jesus lasts a life-time. We travel by different paths, some hard and rocky, sometimes alone, but most often in company with others. We look for signposts on the way to guide us. We look for sufficient resources to take the next step in faith. We are not granted a full-orbed theology or a final corpus of truth. We are people of the Way, on the way. We often must travel light in order to be able to keep going. Resources change as we travel on. Symbols of faith that have fed us may die on us. Sometimes we share a rich diet but at other times, we may have little to sustain us. But we carry on. We have our eyes set on the eternal city and the vision of the kingdom,¹¹ moving deeper into faith. As Jesus set his face steadfastly¹² to go up to Jerusalem, we follow in his way with resolve, determined to see the journey through.

First Creative Moments

At university, I studied philosophy and English. While doing a paper on epistemology, I read Brand Blanshard’s The Nature of Thought.¹³ Even though the dominant model for ‘knowing’ was a correspondence theory of truth, Blanshard also developed a coherence theory of truth, where truth emerged out of the internal relationships between things. This sparked my interest in the nature of relations, against the wider scepticism among our teachers.

The theological text that fascinated us was Martin Buber’s I and Thou.¹⁴ He helped us deal with the range of relationships for life in God. In observing objects in the world, we see them as things ‘over against’ us. Buber called this the I – It relation. The thing observed is objective, extrinsic and measurable. It is a relationship proper to the scientific quest. (The fact that the observer could be an intrinsic part of the observation affecting its experimental outcome, for us, came later as a complicating factor for scientific objectivity.) The more significant relation was the I – Thou relationship where two subjects inter-related. It is a relationship of inter-subjectivity where each finds him or herself in the other and both are together one new being-in-relation. Both partners found themselves in a new place in their being-in-each-other. This relation was internal, intrinsic and creative of being.

As Gregor Smith says, I and Thou is a poem before it is a seminal philosophical work but even in its elusive imagery, it spoke to us of the uniqueness of personal relating and the creative power present in such relations. We valued insights like these, which helped us experience how people could live graciously with each other.

Two issues remain from that reflection: the question of inter-subjectivity and the distinctive way of speaking when we relate to another person. This reappears when we want to speak about God as eternal Subject who is under no circumstances, an observable object among objects. We also recognize the role of internal relations in structuring existence. Buber is clear that a new person is created in the relationship when both parties are fully present to each other. Each person is transformed in the relation and becomes a new being – a being-in-relation.

The department of Philosophy trained students in the classical tradition of intellectual ideas. Two elements persisted for me. I read Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant in my final year. Aristotle’s Metaphysics has stayed with me ever since as an antidote to the idealism of a Platonic worldview that imbues much Christian theology. Aristotle dealt in a tough-minded way with basic questions of ontology – why is there anything at all rather than nothing? What are the essential structures of being? Aristotle, as a scientific realist, was perfectly aware of the particularity of things that are in the world. They all participate in being and share a range of qualities that give them their distinctiveness. But, how do they come to be? What is it that they share essentially? Aristotle formulated his distinction between proto ousia and deutero ousia, between primary being and secondary being.

This distinction takes many forms throughout the history of ideas. For our purposes, we find it in the phrase, the God beyond God. It relates to that essential ground of being in which everything inheres and without which nothing in the world could exist.

Centuries later, Tillich picks up the tradition, which came down through people like Jakob Boehme, of ‘the ground of being’ as a way of describing the essential nature of the relation between God and the world. He replaces height and transcendence with depth and immanence. The dynamic power of the divine activity is at the centre of existence rather than on the circumferences. We live, move and have our being in God.¹⁵ Essentially, he affirms the centrality of ontology in the teeth of the objections of linguistic philosophers who wanted to argue that such modes of thought were linguistically flawed. Without the primary question of being as Aristotle formulated it, none of the rest is possible. One may not move through the world assuming that everything is in flux, or all is linguistic creation; that there is no reality against which one may stub one’s toe and no mystery at the heart of things which draws one into silence.

Aquinas gave me two things. As we studied the tight arguments of the Summa contra gentiles, we appreciated the way in which the argument progressed within its own universe of discourse. It is possible to value Aquinas’ arguments for God’s existence once one realizes that he thinks within a hierarchy of being, so that for him there is no leap from the particularities of the everyday world through to the realms of supra-natural existence. One realm is not juxtaposed against another. Instead, there is a logical progression within a sacramental universe. For Aquinas, the analogy of being with which he operates, is reasonable.

God cannot be reduced to being an object among objects, but remains intellectually elusive.

His arguments from creation and contingency and from design have fascinated people through the centuries. They are bewildered to find that these are not proofs for God’s existence even though they may be assurances for faith and confirmations of experience. For a student, however, the need to face the developing argument and seeing that proving God no longer can be sustained, is a major moment of growth in intellectual awareness. One will always live thereafter with the knowledge that God is beyond the grasp of intellectual argument. Later one comes to value the tradition of the unknowability of God, where God is a darkness hidden in mystery, unable to be mastered or controlled. God cannot be reduced to being an object among objects, but remains intellectually elusive. The elements are gradually coming together to allow one to live with this. God is not the conclusion of an academic argument Kant¹⁶ established the logical flaws in the argument about God’s existence. Aquinas had a strict continuity from one order of being to the next, each analogically related to the next. Kant accepted neither the sacramental nature of the universe nor the validity of analogical arguing. His concern was with the discontinuity between physical causation and final cause or initiating causes; between the particularity of physical existence and what lies behind. Kant was aware of the range of ontological questions derived from the reality of being (ens realissimum) and the perfection of being. His concern was how it was possible to get from one realm to the other and how to deal with questions of ultimate reality. Can being be spoken of in terms of proto ousia at all? If being is essentially different from things that are with their qualities and particularities, can there be a discussion of being?

The last undergraduate word lies with Paul Tillich. He countered the received academic tradition. I was introduced to him in the middle of a SCM mission to the university. J G Matheson had been presenting the classical Christian tradition with limpid clarity and compelling grace. He was a liberating influence both for his inclusive humanity and for his intellectual strength, but it was Tillich, the existentialist and continental theological who spoke to me. Tillich held together the courage to be, with the courage to decide and the courage to accept acceptance.¹⁷ He spoke about the nature of anxiety – something we knew well – and facing the threat of being overwhelmed by non-being. Tillich was writing out of an experience of breakdown in which he had faced the darkness. He had discovered that in the experience of falling into the abyss, he was caught and held by a gracious presence, that restored to him the courage to accept acceptance. Although I was not in an extreme situation like this at all, the categories that differentiated participation, individuation and transcendence as existential possibilities were attractive. Tillich’s understanding of God as the ground of being and our ultimate concern, rapidly became part of our theological vocabulary. Here was someone who related ontology to the dynamics of existentialism with a sophisticated cultural awareness.

Theological Education in the Classical Tradition

Theological education at Knox College in the late 1950s was very much in the classical tradition of theological studies. There were essentially four areas of discipline, Old and New Testament studies (with their languages), Theology and Church History. There was no consistent study in the practice of ministry or pastoral theology. It was assumed that a student would be ecclesially formed in his¹⁸ local parish where he would also grow in the life of Christian discipleship. The Hall had a very limited understanding of the role of community in theological formation.¹⁹

This classical theological formation was comprehensive and thorough. We were made aware of the breadth and richness of the Biblical tradition. Dr Allan’s lectures on New Testament Theology formed a superb overview. In Church History, Professor Rex’s comprehensive sweep meant that every student had a fine grasp of the development of the tradition. Theology was not well taught in the Hall, but it was comprehensive and at least in the area of human anthropology was creative. No student could leave and not know the shape of the tradition.²⁰

Several themes and germs of ideas emerged during this period. Professor George Knight’s opening lecture on the God who acts²¹ initiated a dramatic change in my understanding of the Old Testament. To grasp that God was active presence engaged in human history was an antidote to more abstract ways of thinking about God. The God celebrated in the story of the people of God is initiating, liberating presence.

I valued the range of emphases on our common humanity. Professor Helmut Rex was concerned that we grasped what the journey into maturity entailed and so read with students, Fritz Kunkel’s, The Search for Maturity. Professor John Henderson began systematic theology with his theological anthropology, focusing on the dignity of our humanity as made in the divine image.²² This carried through into a kenotic Christology. A few years later, Barth called this the humanity of God.²³ The way in which human life shared in the life of God and the ways in which God comes to share human life continued to fascinate me.

Dr John Allan, the Principal, developed the Pauline idea of life in Christ. This relationship was corporate and internal. It did not depend on human initiative but was wrought in grace, by God’s action. It had both corporate and ontological dimensions, which give it a life of its own. It was sacramental, initiated in baptism and sustained in the life of the eucharist. Both existential decision and structural grace were part of this operation. This later became part of my theological research.

The professors used to claim that they chose the topics each student had to write for their three exit dissertations, to encourage the students to go further in areas of theological understanding in which they may be deficient. I wrote an Old Testament paper on the natural divine attributes. It taught me that the Old Testament did not think in terms of absolute categories of eternity, power or presence, but has a more utilitarian way of speaking of the divine. God has those qualities, sufficient to do what God wants. God is not the absolute creator creating everything from nothing, nearly so much as One with enough creative power to create all there is. Similarly, God as eternal is the One who is before time was and will be still present when time ends. It is not that God extends into an infinity of time eternally, but that God is behind and before, beyond and within, present to us at all times and at all stages of our existence. This study into the all-sufficiency of God was a valuable balance against the foolishness of abstract questions about power and eternity.

This study into the all-sufficiency of God was a valuable balance against the foolishness of abstract questions about power and eternity.

The question posed by a study of Colossians 1:15-29 on the Cosmic Christ fascinated me. Principalities and powers is a great cluster of images. I was glad years later when Walter Wink wrote his great studies on this question. Ever since I first saw the Graham Sutherland tapestry of the Cosmic Christ, over the high altar, in Coventry Cathedral, I have considered that image to be the pictorial representation of what I was trying to grasp. Christ has ascended to fill all things: he is lifted high to embrace the world in his victory.

In theology, I wrote on the theology of grace. In reading John Oman’s, Grace and Personality I was confronted by the limitations of personalism as a way of speaking of the Christian life. Although Oman taught in the English church, his influence as a personalist philosopher was great. Buber had shown that the ontological nature of the bonds creating inter-personal relations was much deeper than the interaction between individuals. Existentialists were also raising significant questions about the nature of isolated personhood and the anxiety in relating. The issues were far more complex than comfortable, pre-war philosophers ever envisaged. Here was a range of questions that would need to be taken further. Just as the cosmic Christ transcended human relating, divine grace goes much further in recreating and redeeming the world, than simply calling people to live in faith and live well.

Chapter 2 — Cambridge: The Classical Tradition

My friends were astonished when I was awarded the Gordon Watson Scholarship of the University of New Zealand,²⁴ to study at Cambridge. Cambridge in 1961, retained a privileged and leisured approach to study. One could lean over the bridges and watch the punts glide up towards the weir, then on out to Grantchester. In the evening the proctors in cap and gown, marched past followed by their ‘bulldogs,’ keeping order on the streets. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, one could stumble on the academic procession crossing over from the Senate House to Great St Mary’s, escorting the Vice-Chancellor with the university preacher, on his way to deliver the afternoon sermon. Students rushed past on their bicycles, cluttering the narrow lanes. Undergraduates wore short gowns; scholars were in decorated ones and research students wore masters’ gowns with long sleeves but no ribbons.

Even for married research students living in flats, odd regulations were observed. Students under the age of 24 were required to have their spouse sign each week that the student in the house was home by curfew.

Cambridge developed a lifestyle to match the oppressively damp weather of the fens. People studied hard each morning, went to lectures when these were stimulating or helpful and read papers to their tutors. After a full cooked