The great 20th century Prime Minister, Clement Attlee said that he believed “in the ethics of Christianity but not the mumbo jumbo”. One of the questions for the 21st century is whether the ethics have a sustainable foundation without what Attlee describes as the “mumbo jumbo”.
Professor Wolterstorff of Yale argues in a recent book [2008] Justice Rights and Wrongs that it is not possible. Inalienable and equitable rights were not possible within the accepted moral framework of the ancient world. Full and equal rights in democratic Athens for examples were confined to adult, male, free born citizens. The decision of the Christian ecclesia from the beginning to enrol women, slaves and children in the new Israel was seen as deeply subversive.
This is not to argue for a “Bible-says-it-all-politics” which has been out of fashion since our disastrous flirtation with it 350 years ago. It is simply to recognise that all politics rest on assumptions; myths if you like, properly understood not as fairy tales but as archetypal stories about the human condition. Both our economic activity and our political life must have ground beneath them. Human beings are not just blind globs of idling protoplasm but we are creatures with a name who live in a world of symbols and of dreams and not merely matter.
An excellent excerpt. I think all Christians in the 21st century are going to have think like this: no more complaining about how we used to have a shared Western Worldview which undergirded our political, moral and economic life, but rather a vigorous reasserting (thanks, Kendall, for the emphasis on this word!) what a Christian worldview really is and how it makes sense the liberal democratic ideals that most in the West seem to take for granted.
Yes, there is a fair amount of good stuff here. For example:
[blockquote] “In the beginning according to the Bible, “God created man in his own image”. It is this idea which has done more than any other to provide a foundation for human dignity and equality and it is no accident that the cultures which have developed these notions have grown out of Judaeo-Christian soil and a biblical world view.” [/blockquote]
However, I would sound a note of caution on one point made by +Chartres:
[blockquote] “Much nonsense has been talked about the alleged incomprehensibility of the AV. The tens of thousands who listened to Martin Luther King’s speech at the great civil rights march in Washington did not find that his rhetoric, derived from the prophet Isaiah in the King James Version, jarred – it was neither obscure nor lacking in contemporary resonance.” [/blockquote]
The AV is not incomprehensible, but neither is it “nonsense” to have concerns about the limitations of its language. The English language has changed substantially since Jacobean times, and since much of the AV is really Tyndale’s work, it is actually pre-Jacobean language. Not only are many words incomprehensible (i.e. not used at all) by people today, but some words now have a diamterically opposite meaning to what they had then.
That doesn’t mean that the AV is no longer useful, but we have to bear in mind that the New Testament scriptures were written in a language which was contemporary – whilst it goes too far to call it “the language of the street” in all cases, nevertheless everyone in the street could understand the words without scratching their heads or gaining the wrong impression. The AV is still a useful translation, but its not the only one, nor the last word. There is a place for other translations also, and it does no harm to +Chartres’ central message to acknowledge that.
Bravo to +Chartres! I think he is spot on on every point.