The blogging year…

So, here we are. The last day of 2023. It’s been a year of 21 blog posts not counting this one. And although I confess it is a bit indulgent, this seems like a good time to review them. They cover an eclectic bunch of topics, as you might expect from the summary that follows this blog’s title: “Not quite a science blog, not quite a Bible blog, not quite a politics or family blog. Just a box into which almost anything might be thrown.” If you’ve read much of it, you can decide for yourself whether it’s been “worth a rummage in”.

Back in February (was it really only ten months ago?) I was sitting on a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh when I heard that Nicola Sturgeon had resigned. If you’re not a Scot, or don’t live in Scotland (or if you hail from almost anywhere in the US) you probably won’t understand why for many us this was a “Kennedy” moment. Of course, not only my train has moved on. Since then Nicola has been investigated and arrested (although not charged) over financial irregularities in her party, leading to undisguised glee in unionist circles, and a bit of hand-wringing amongst the nationalists in my homeland (although probably not as much as there should have been). She was of course replaced by Scotland's first Muslim “First Minister”, after an interesting SNP leadership campaign. It was interesting because it revealed once again that it is acceptable to be almost anything in politics other than a Christian who takes their faith seriously, and that for the modern UK media Christianity is rather poorly understood (see "Tolerance and the public square"). Despite religion in general playing an ever more important role in most of the world, in the UK media we still don’t “do God” very well.

We do of course do politics. We had a lot of it in 2022, but we’ve only had one Prime Minister for the whole of 2023! By and large there’s been less turmoil, which is just as well given the scale of the problems that the politicians have had to grapple with. The war in Ukraine compounded the economic shocks of the pandemic (remember that?) leading to real hardship for many families. Government did a bit (not enough for many, not the right things for others), but at the end of 2023 finds itself facing a crushing defeat in the polls in 2024. The only question appears to be how crushing? I do have the occasional twinge of sympathy for our current PM (Rishi Sunak), but then he goes and trails some potty policy to see off a threat (real or imagined) from the right wing of his party or even the right wing of the right wing. Meanwhile the Labour Party has become at least worthy of consideration as an alternative government because it has dealt with its crazy left wing. For some in Labour this about betrayal and backstabbing and the claim is that if their current leader Keir Starmer stands for anything, nobody knows what it is. But this is always the accusation laid at the door of the opposition (even by some on the same side). The time to judge will come perhaps as early as Spring 2024 when the two main parties set out their stalls. But what will perhaps be more interesting will the tone as much as the substance of the next UK general election. We like a good argument, and there are always accusations of lies and media bias. But these are usually peripheral rather than central. Argument had, election over, we get on with life. Whoever wins the election, we probably won’t have any nonsense about it being stolen, with everyone running to the courts. We are likely to be spared at least that fate.

On this side of the Atlantic our constitution, unwritten as it is, has always been about more than politics (just as well you might mutter under your breath). We officially obtained a new head of state in 2023, thanks to the coronation of King Charles III. Despite various fictitious versions of both royal history (courtesy of Netflix) and more recent royal shenanigans (courtesy of Charles’ youngest son), the reality has been steady and, as far as one can tell from the far distance, fairly sure. The coronation certainly got things off to an impressive start. And unlike our media, and most of our politicians, Charles is a profoundly religiously literate man. Given the recent apparent surge in both antisemitic and anti-Islamic crimes (the out-working on British streets of events in Israel and Gaza), having a head of state who is broadly respected by different communities can be no bad thing. Of course, even if Charles possessed the wisdom of Solomon, he would be taxed to breaking point by developments in the church of which he is the “Supreme Governor” – the Church of England. Its leadership has decided to make a fairly startling break with what it is signed up to protect and teach, changing their basic doctrine while denying that they are doing any such thing. While usually what happens is that the very heterogenous theological views that comprise the C of E find some way of remaining in a more-or-less working relationship, perhaps not this time. More will be revealed in the year ahead.

At the heart of that particular tussle is theology (for once), which is of course now “my thing”. I attended my first theological conference at the start of 2023, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not that theology, at least in its academic form, is uniformly impressive (as I discussed back in July). But I’ve really enjoyed two years of study with Union School of Theology, completing my Masters dissertation (which you can read here if you're so inclined) back in September. Graduation next summer will, I hope, be a highlight of 2024. But the study doesn’t stop. One of my Christmas presents was the Greek New Testament. So 2024 will be full of declensions and tenses as I work to get the point where I can begin to read the New Testament’s human authors in their original language. Of course, God’s word is not bound by language, and you can hear what the Divine Author has to say just as well in English translation.

And what of my former “thing” science? Well, as an institution it’s been struggling a bit as I blogged in September and November. Some of this is the cumulative impact of a culture that has long maintained that there is no such thing as truth, perhaps combined with the impact of the post-modern view that the claim that there is a truth with demands everyone's assent is an illegitimate power game. So we now live surrounded by a morass of relativism and conspiracy, when even something as basic as the sexual dimorphism of humanity is flatly denied. In this atmosphere, when scientists make mistakes, or perpetrate outright fraud (which still happens relatively rarely), this is jumped on to show that, like every other human activity, science is flawed. The difficulty is that this is of course true, to the extent that science is a human activity with all that this implies. And yet it remains the best way, bar none, for answering certain kinds of questions – questions about what “is”. For questions about what “ought to be”, well for that we have theology (other humanities disciplines are available).

So there you have it. That’s the 22^nd and final blog post of 2023. Now, what will take my fancy next year?

A Bible fit for a King…...

When I was young I confess I was fairly cynical. But cynicism is easy when you’re young. Life is simple, and you have all the answers. And even if you don’t, you’re fairly sure that there are answers within easy reach. The fact that you have experienced nothing (or at least very little) of life’s complexities doesn’t give you pause. Now I am older. I have learned that even the simple things in life come with their complexities, so I try not to be cynical. Where others are concerned, whom I might have rushed to criticise in the past, I have learned that their motives and inner workings are closed to me. I can observe their behaviour and infer motives from that. But I am as likely to be wrong as I am to be right. Given that my own deepest motives are often opaque even to me, and given the common human capacity for self-deception, even when someone actually articulates their motives it is only prudent to treat them with a degree of respect and scepticism.

I also have to confess that as well as being a cynic, I was also a bit of an iconoclast, taking great delight in criticising cherished beliefs and institutions, particularity those of others. The institutions that I happened to like or admire (there are always some) were somehow immune to criticism. But when you have nothing invested in a particular institution (because of a lack of age or interest), one to which you have contributed nothing, why not throw few (metaphorical) rocks at it? What then was one to make of the events of today, Saturday 6th May, 2023 – the coronation of King Charles III?

First of all, it was a dramatic reminder that, for all its pretensions, the United Kingdom is not constituted as a secular state. A recent Guardian editorial fairly pointed out that “….modern Britain is not a holy nation. Nor is it even a largely Protestant one. Britain instead is increasingly secular….”. And yet this ceremony, the formal public recognition of our head of state as our head of state and King, and of his wife as our Queen, was a religious, indeed specifically a Christian, service. Hymns and anthems were sung, there were Bible readings, prayers were offered and there was a (short) sermon. At the heart of proceedings, the King was anointed with oil in a ritual lifted deliberately and knowingly from the Old Testament, and communion was celebrated. Less than half of the population may now identify as Christian, but apparently the state both thinks in such terms (if the “state” thinks), and wants to be seen in such terms. This presumably reflected the desires of the King, but it involved many other state actors. The Prime Minster, no less, a practising and for all I know an entirely sincere Hindu, read from Colossians 1:9-17.

But there is a problem. The Prime Minister does not believe that the words that he read are true. And it gets worse, for things were not entirely as they seem. Many other participants either explicitly or implicitly don’t believe much of what was read and sung either. Consider the Bible that was presented to the King. It was accompanied by the following words: “Receive this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God. More valuable than the gold about to be placed on his head is the word of God which shows us our failings and leads us to Christ.” The Christ in question is the one who, in the words read by the PM “is the image of the invisible God”. Such truth is now so hedged about with caveats and redefinitions by many of the clerical participants in today’s proceedings, that it has been emptied of much of its truth. As for Him being the “..firstborn from among the dead..” or the one in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell”, this has become so mangled as to be meaningless. To have the current Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London recommend the Bible as the Word of God to the King added a certain irony to the proceedings, given how they are now viewed by the overwhelming majority (up to 85%) of the world Anglican communion. And at the centre of the debate within the Anglican communion is precisely the authority of the same book presented to the King.

Even the particular Bible presented by the Archbishop appears to be more about the look and ritual than substance. It turns out to be a specially commissioned copy of the edition prepared in 2011 for the 400^th anniversary of the production of the King James version of the Bible. But this rather goes out of its way to preserve not just the mistranslations inherent in the KJV, but about 350 misprints that were produced in the 1611 original. Of course, if the Bible is just a book, then none of this really matters. The misprints kind of take on a charm of their own. On cold nights in a draughty Royal palace, one can imagine “spot the misprint” becoming an entertaining diversion. But if the Bible is authoritative Scripture, indeed in the form of the autographs the very words of God, then accurate translation becomes an important issue. If not quite a matter of life or death (because God’s truth will out), perhaps not far off that. Fortunately, His Majesty has both the means and the intelligence to lay his hands on an improved translation should he wish to do so.

It is at this point that it would be fairly easy for my former cynicism and iconoclasm to manifest themselves. Except that much of what was said (and sung) in today’s ceremony was actually true, even although it is barely recognised as such. And to hear it at the centre of this national occasion is at least faintly heart-warming. It is in the Bible (as was said) that we learn that the King of Kings really did come to serve rather be served, and that this is a model for those in authority. If our King (and our politicians) were to take this to heart, this would be a major turning point for this nation. And the book the King was given is all that he was told it is. And more. For it has a power not confined by the inadequacies of those who were reading it publicly today. For all that we have had a couple of centuries of naive belief in the inevitability of human progress, and the development of multiple human philosophies that have sought to displace Bible truth and the God and Saviour it reveals, actual Truth was at the centre of today’s proceedings. 

Contained in a Bible that is fit for a King. And not just for the King.