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1983
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Mystery or Mystification?
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Liturgy & Change
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Argues that liturgy can have a dark ideological side but can be a genuine apprehension
of mystery.
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Mar 1984
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Male and Female in Christ's Priestly Dance
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Theology
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An early argument for the ordination of women rejecting the notion that it takes
a male to represent Christ.
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Jan 1987
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A Strategy for Engagement
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Theology
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A response to Tiller's strategy for the future Church arguing that it is not
the spiritual resources of the Church that need to be centralised but rather the
practical administrative matters.
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Apr 1989
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What kind of Relativism?
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New Blackfriars
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Draws a vital distinction between three kinds of relativism: ontological (different
societies create different worlds - can't be true!); semantic (words have different
connotations for different people- true but trivial); and epistemological (societies
have different ways of coming to know the one world, revealing different aspects
of it.) I argue that the latter is true and important, but too often blurred
into the other kinds of relativism, so that we either trivialise it or soak up the
sweeping error-laden confusions of some kinds of postmodernism.
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Jan 1992
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Immanence Unknown: Graham Ward and the neo-Pagans
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Theology
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Argues that Graham Ward is too hard on the 'New Age', whose attraction to
immanent mystery is not necessarily opposed to transcendence. God is in everything,
but we do not know how; it is the second part of this formulation that the 'neo-pagans'
miss out on, perhaps.
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Oct 1992
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Scientific and Religious Understanding
The Way
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Quite a difficult paper - not sure I understand it all now! - but it seems to be
comparing the scientific search in its rigorous skepticism with the iconoclasm involved
in the apophatic way of the mystics. Both require a capacity for 'groundless
wisdom' - the 'wayless way' of Ruysbroeck, or the mathematician Polya's
'looking to the unknown'. Probably requires a reading of
Holy Ground for full understanding.
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Mar 1994
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Christian Initiation as a Trinitarian Process
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Theology
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Argues for Confirmation or Chrismation as an essential part of Christian Initiation,
and for an open baptism policy. Based on an Orthodox distinction between baptism,
which immerses us in the Paschal mystery of humanity transformed in Christ, and
chrismation, the Pentecostal equipping of the individual with the Spirit for mission
-themes explored in SCM Studyguide
to the Sacraments.
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May, 2002
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Postmodernism and the Trinity– how to be postmodern and post-Barthian too.
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New Blackfriars
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The Radical orthodox, and Don Cupitt, for all their differences, share in the end
a failure to grasp the embodiment of God in Christ. Both end up with rhetorical
abstractions as the way to salvation, rather than the living Christ of Barth.
But even Barth was a little pre-Barthian, at least until his late recognition of
the humanity of Christ. A Trinitarian, foundationless model of salvation is
presented, whereby we respond to salvation not as those who know the right ideology,
but as artists responding to the world as ineluctable gift.
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July 2002
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From Illumination to Polyphony – beyond the paradigm of central light
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A Paper presented at the 'Radical Orthodox' conference, Illumination: reason,
revelation and science. Argues for sound, and in particular polyphony,
as a better paradigm for knowledge than the Platonic image of light which has so
dominated Western civilisation. This unpublished paper can be downloaded by
clicking here.
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July/Aug 2004
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Academic Learning and Ministerial Formation: toward a contemplative approach
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Theology |
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Written from my experience teaching at a theological college integrated into a theological
department, exploring the conflicting demands of ministerial formation and academic
rigor. Argues that the need to train ministers in a combination of practical
skills, spiritual discernment and academic integrity can be reconciled with the
secular university if the latter can be approached in a contemplative way, in which
skepticism and critical iconoclasm are fused with attentiveness to and delight in
reality. But wonder if such a contemplative approach, familiar as it once
was in the teaching of both humanities and sciences, can be squared with the commodification
of knowledge in the contemporary market state.
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