Stuart Blanch Lecture
24 Noveember 1999
The walls of the diocese of Liverpool still echo with the voice of Stuart Blanch. Although it is now a quarter of a century since he and Brenda set out for York, stories of his ministry here are still told and with great affection. He said more than once that the vocation of the future for our young people would be the media. I never knew Stuart and can only guess that he realised that we were creating a culture where the media almost as much as God make the world in which we all live and move and have our being. If Christians are to be salt and light in an age of information technology and digital broadcasting they need to be producers and scriptwriters, actors and agents, editors and broadcasters. But although the church can and does affirm the vocations of doctors and teachers, nurses and social workers (and even chartered accountants!) it is still coy about calling a career in the media a vocation from God.Malcolm Muggeridge, a contemporary of Stuart's, was writing at the same time. In spite of making a career out of television he doubted the medium's integrity. In his book 'Christ in the Media' he imagines the fourth temptation of Christ in the wilderness. Lucius Gradus IV, MD of Imperial Television, is holidaying on the shores of Galilee when he stumbles across an itinerant preacher with great media potential. He offers him an hour's prime time on Imperial TV together with a new robe, a beard trim, the choir from the Temple of Aphrodite and a panel of philosophers from Athens to give the programme balance! How could the man refuse? But he resists this along with the three other temptations because, Muggeridge says, religion is to do with truth and reality and the media with illusion and fantasy! Muggeridge's thesis is all the more remarkable because it was he who single-handedly catapulted from obscurity and into international stardom the craggy-faced Mother Theresa.
Yet Muggeridge was identifying long before the coining of the term 'spin-doctor' that there was always and necessarily a gap between reality and image. A news bulletin cannot for example replay every politician's speech in its entirety. The process of editing is the assembling of an impression that approximates as closely as possible to the essence of what was said. But the distance between the image and the reality offers scope for manipulation and distortion, or to use the really pejorative word 'spin'.
Contrary to Muggeridge I suspect that the Carpenter from Nazareth would not have refused all media requests but would have insisted on only live interviews! Although it has to be admitted - and this does say something to a world and a church obsessed with having to control absolutely everything - that he never protected himself or his teaching by writing it down and, instead, trusted others to represent his message.
Never was truth so much at stake. Yet not only did he yield himself up bodily into the hands of others , he committed the truth about himself into the hands of others who could have crucified him with the pen as well as with nails
Inherent in all communication there is an element of risk. You cannot guarantee that what you said will be heard or that what you intended will be understood. Coding and decoding messages is a risky business. An aspect of the incarnation is the recognition that by clothing himself with such vulnerability God committed Truth to the flawed human processes of communication.
When it comes to describing God, to formulating a theology, to discerning Truth we do not have the language of Heaven. We have only human languages and symbols. I say we do not have the language of Heaven but I recognise that there is a spiritual gift of ecstatic utterance (known as 'tongues') in which people communicate with God in sounds that transcend intellectual understanding. St Paul anticipates a time when one day we shall see God 'face to face', and know God as surely as we are known. For now, however, 'we see through a glass darkly'. Here is the acknowledgement that when it comes to the communication of divine mysteries our processes are partial and opaque as well as flawed. What St Paul says in this famous treatise on love to the Corinthian church is however even more interesting than any of the translations admit. There is no 'darkly' in the Greek text. That famous adverb actually translates a phrase, in Greek .........., meaning 'in a riddle' or 'in an enigma' or even 'enigmatically'. In other words, Paul is saying that when it comes to seeing God, discerning Truth, all we have are riddles, enigmas, similes, metaphors, allegories and parables.
It will not escape the most casual reader of the gospels that this is exactly the way Jesus communicated. St Paul too. For, although many of his major theological expositions are received in our day as almost impenetrable abstract concepts, in his culture such themes as redemption and justification were powerful concrete images hewn from experiences of the slave markets and law courts.
Jesus evidently knew the power of the story but also recognised its partial nature. In the same Johannine passage in which he promises that the 'spirit of truth . will guide you into all truth' (16:13) he recognises the limitations of the enigmatic approach and, like Paul, contrasts it with the time when there will be no such contstraints. 'These things I have spoken in proverbs but the time will come when I shall no longer speak in proverbs and tell you plainly of the Father (25).'
Jesus uses parables as a Rabbi. That has been the received wisdom of New testament scholarship. He tells stories to cajole people into the Kingdom. These mini-sagas are full of humour with larger than life characters in ridiculous situations - a man owing five times the country's total tax revenue or a man searching for a speck in another man's eye while a large plank is jutting out of his own; before the surgery he would have knocked the man out! They were characters and plots that the audience could laugh at and identify with. The stories often took an unusual turn. I remember hearing Donald English, twice President of the Methodist conference, say that if you want to get to the bottom of a parable's meaning tell it until you get to that point when you could say 'surprise, surprise'!
In the time of Jesus Shepherds were disreputable characters. Jeremias tells us they were ranked alongside tax collectors and prostitutes and often excommunicated from the synagogue. They had a bad name for taking their masters sheep off, selling a few and then blaming the night-time wolves. Such was their poor reputation that Jesus never calls himself 'The shepherd'. He always qualifies it by saying 'I am the Good Shepherd'. For it could not be taken for granted that a shepherd was necessarily a good person. In fact they had about as much kudos as a used-car salesman! (In particular, it is all the more remarkable that Luke should begin his gospel with the announcement by the angels to shepherds. For one anxious to convince his audience of 'the reliability' of the gospel narrative it would have been a strange invention!. Shepherds weren't allowed to give testimony in a court of law. Why would he add it, if it hadn't happened?)
It was therefore surprising to hear Jesus tell a story of a shepherd who went in search of a sheep that was lost. Surprise, surprise. The parable of the Father with two sons (wrongly named 'the Prodigal Son') is equally surprising. In Bedouin culture there were similar stories of a son asking for his inheritance before his father had died. In the one, the Father beats his son black and blue for such impertinence. In the other, the Father is dead within the week for his son has, in effect, cursed him by such a request. To ask for his inheritance was to say to his father, 'I wish you were dead'. Therefore, it is surprising that the father in Jesus' story having been so mortally cursed should wait and wait for his son to return. Interestingly and movingly it's not the son but the father who does the running, the embracing and the kissing.
These elements of surprise point up the extra-ordinary nature of God's love, compassion and grace. What the story does is to allow the listener to lose themselves in it and then to see themselves. The famous Old Testament example of this is the story that Nathan tells David after he's engineered the death of Uriah the Hittite following David's adultery with his wife Bathsheba. Nathan's story about a rich man exploiting a poor farmer thoroughly absorbs and engages and enrages David. When he furiously demands to know the man's name David the hypocrite is convicted by Nathan 'You're the man'. The penitent prayer by David, Psalm 51, is one of the most poignant confessions in the Bible.
What this episode shows is that the parables were used not just by Rabbis but the Prophets too. There is evidence that Jesus and the evangelists saw his use of parables as much in the prophetic tradition as in the rabbinic. Indeed this I venture to say is the only way that we can make sense of that extraordinary quotation from Isaiah in Mark 4 when he says
To those outside (the Kingdom of God )
All things are in parables
So that seeing they may see and not perceive
And hearing they may hear and not understand (12)
This pulls the rug from beneath the rabbinic model! What Jesus is saying is that those who refuse to yield to the reign of God over their lives and place themselves outside his Kingdom will never get beyond the story to the point of turning and finding forgiveness. The prophet's story will confirm and confound them in their rebellion. The prophet's parable comes as a word of judgement.
This is exactly what happens, for example, in Matthew 21 when Jesus engages in the Temple with a hostile group of chief Priests and elders who try to question his own authority. He tells them a couple of stories including the parable of the vineyard to make the biblical point that the corner stone would be rejected by God's own people and given by God to others. The audience certainly got the message which did nothing to soften their hearts towards repentance. Rather it confirmed and confounded them in their antagonism towards Jesus. So much so they sought to arrest him and to do away with him. Matthew tells us that they held back for two inter-related reasons. Firstly, the feared the reaction of the crowd. Secondly, the crowd owned Jesus as not a rabbi but 'A PROPHET'. 'But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude because they took him for a prophet.'
There was a subversive and even an anarchic element to the prophet's use of stories. They challenged the prevailing wisdom, they upset the settled order of things. They questioned even seditiously those who set themselves up above God. That is why those who wish to control have no appetite for their humour and a predilection towards censorship!
But the very enigmatic quality of the story makes it a slippery bar of soap to those who want to get their hands on dissenters.
The prophet's story goads and teases. For those who are denied the freedom to speak out plainly the riddle, the story, the allegory become the food that the oppressed feed upon. Stories of dissent are the sustenance of the oppressed who look forward to a day of vindication when they will be free to speak truthfully of what they know. There is more than a hint of this in Jesus' own attitude.
When in John 16 he states that he's been speaking with them in allegories he envisages a day when he will be able to tell them about the Father 'plainly'. The Greek word that John uses is pregnant with meaning. It is a word that is used in the Acts of the Apostles and is often translated 'boldly' e.g. Peter preached boldly or with boldness. But '.......' has a history attached to it. It is a word from classical Greek which means 'freedom of speech'. When in the New Testament the disciples in Jerusalem defied the threats and orders not to preach in the name of Jesus they claimed their God-given right and preached 'boldly' 'with freedom of speech'. The word speaks of unfettered openness and is the opposite of those who have to speak cryptically. Thus I believe John saw Jesus as having to code his message in parables and images that were not plain to the eye and ear and needed subtle interpretation not least by the Spirit. Jesus was subverting the old order with his parables, signs and images.
All effective communication both arises out of the imagination and appeals to the imagination. Sadly the imagination has not fared well in Christian theology. The Authorised Version in which I delight sadly takes a wholly negative view. The word 'imagination' is always used in a less than positive way. In Genesis 6:5 we read 'neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.'; Proverbs 6:18 'An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations'; Luke 1:51 'he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.'; Romans 1: 21 'but became vain in their imagination, and their foolish heart was darkened.'; 2 Corinthians 10: 5 'Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God.'
All use the word 'imagination' in a pejorative sense. Calvin damned the powers of the imagination. "God rejects without exception all shapes and pictures and other symbols by which the superstitious imagine they can bring God near them. These imagines defile and insult the majesty of God."
In his book 'Faith Theology and the Imagination' John McIntyre identifies the three stages of Iconolatry, Iconoclasm and Iconophobia. Calvin and the reformers castigated an iconolatrous church for seeking to manipulate the transcendent and so identifying God with images that it led to their blasphemous veneration. The iconoclastic reaction of the reformers led to the destruction of religious symbols, images and rituals. The positive outcome of this reform was a realisation that there was to be found a beauty in simplicity in worship. The negative result was that it created a culture of iconophobia which shunned all representation and contributed to a western and protestant theological tradition that eschewed concrete images in favour of abstract concepts.
A classic example of this comes in a passage from John Mcquarrie's 'In search of deity' (page 23)
"Although the concrete imagery of kingship, fatherhood and so on cannot be superseded in the actual life of religion, in prayer and liturgy for instance (who ever addressed a prayer to necessary being?), and although the strongly personalist and even anthropomorphic language serves to keep before the worshipper that sense of affinity with the divine being which we have seen to be essential to belief in God and which it is the business of religion to encourage and enhance, reflective members of the religious community have looked for ways of expressing theism that would be more satisfying intellectually. In general, they have tried to move away from images to concepts and to express theism as a philosophical doctrine."
Image and imaginative writing is not what characterises western theology in the English language. A popular example of the abstract concept is the truth 'God is love' but this statement occurs in the Bible only twice. Never in the Old Testament, never on the lips of Jesus and only in the Letters of John. The Scriptures are full of stories of how God loves us and sometimes in the most surprising ways. When it comes to expressing divine love the Bible favours stories and parables to propositions and concepts.
Although image and imagination do not characterise our theology they surely belong to our understanding of God. Is it too fanciful to imagine God being possessed of an imagination? Does not the poetic account of creation in Genesis not suggest that the image preceded the reality? 'God said "Let there be . and there was".' God imagined the idea of the created order as a prelude to the act of creation. McIntyre goes even further and argues that the imagination of God came into play not only as a preface to creation but also as a prelude to the incarnation. God was and is so able to imagine the scale of our dis-ease and distress that he is moved with compassion. "For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin". The perfect, holy and sinless God connects first with a sinful world through his own faculty to imagine our trauma. His second connection is through the physical engagement of the incarnation whereby he acts in the material world to rescue us from the forces of destruction.
I am aware that I have not defined the imagination. In her book 'Imagination' Mary Warnock writes: "Imagination is our means of interpreting the world, and it is also our means of forming images in the mind." It is the faculty of making present in the mind what is absent in either space or time. It is both a divine and human quality. The cultivation of the imagination lies at the heart of compassion.
It is only when you can place yourself imaginatively in the shoes of the asylum seeker, the refugee, the least, the last and the lost that the will is ignited into action. That is why the arts are vital to society for they are the means of stimulating the imagination. A society starved of the imagination becomes care-less, cruel and deprived of compassion. An ancient Chinese fable tells the tale of an elderly and barren couple being offered two wishes by a Genie. They chose first to have a child and second that this their first and only born should feel no pain. Inspite of the Genie's protestations against the second wish, both are granted. The elderly couple fortunately do not live long enough to see their coveted child grow up to become the greatest tyrant the land had ever seen. Not to be able to feel and imagine your own pain and that of others closes off the channels of empathy and sympathy which are the very rivers that irrigate a compassionate civilisation.
Christian theology is founded upon both a belief in and an experience of a God who communicates. Although much is made of the human activities of enquiry, search, investigation, discovery and journey there is a primary emphasis in Christian theology on divine disclosure and on the initiative that God himself takes to reveal the truth about himself. Discovery is not Revelation. Revelation is not discovery. They are not mutually exclusive. Yet, there is a divine initiative. In the one letter that declares the abstract concept 'God is love' we read: 1 John 4:10 "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins' and 1 John 4:19 "We love because he first loved us'. That initiative evokes a response. God's love issues in the communication of that love. There is an inextricable link between the love of God and the revelation of God. As John Baillie in 'The Idea of Revelation' makes clear: "God does not simply give us information about himself .. Supremely he gives himself in communion." Here is the litmus paper test of all communication. What it is that marks and measures all the processes of communication, be they human or divine. Nothing less than communion. It is the entering of the communicator into the world of the receptor and the establishing of a relationship between the two so that communion is effected that is the essence of communication. Communion is the prize of all communication. The letter of John opens with this theme:
"We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the world of life.
This life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us
We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ."
The declaration is to lead to fellowship between writer and reader and to fellowship between them both and the Father with his Son Jesus Christ. The communication of the gospel is to lead to communion with God. Any communication that does not lead to communion is flawed, inadequate and defective.
But if communion is the goal of communication we have to recognise that in two respects at least what passes for communication in today's world must be challenged by Christian theology.
Sociologists of the media have coined the phrase 'the binary meaning of television'. This describes the way the medium polarises every issue into extreme opposites, e.g. left/right, wet/dry, black/white, Europe and Anti-Europe, Manager/Workers etc. Producers and editors fill their programmes with people that take opposite views not least because the conflict makes for more dramatic programmes. This is not just a feature of Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey but can be seen in News and Current Affairs.
Because Television both creates the world in which we live and interprets that world to us we are immersed in a world-view that accentuates conflict and division and eschews consensus and conciliation. This creates a climate that is inimical to the Gospel. There are many reasons which are not the subject of this lecture for the impenetrability of the Christian faith into our culture but one of them must surely be that the media conforms the mind of the world to see and evaluate everything in the contrast of extremes. Since the gospel is in the end about reconciling opposites, about breaking down the wall of hostility between us and God and between ourselves we find that this very dynamic of reconciliation is resisted by a media dominated culture that reinforces the hostilities and barriers and polarises every issue. If ever there were a text that told a different story it is Ephesians 2 "Remember you were without Christ aliens and strangers, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ you have been brought near . for he is our peace . he has broken down the dividing wall, the hostility between us "(Ephesians 2:12-14)
Whereas the world of the media divides, the Gospel reconciles; where the media polarises the Gospel unites. The soil in which the seed of truth is sown is in many places still shallow and full of rocks and thistles.
The other respect in which Christian theology challenges the conformity of the media is the direction we are being taken towards virtual reality. We must avoid the danger of being luddites. We must also be careful of not becoming false prophets. Media pundits seriously misjudged and wrongly prophesised the demise of the cinema. With the advent of TV, Colour TV and then video there was speculation each time that this signalled the end of the cinema. People overlooked the truism that watching something on your own was an essentially different experience from watching it in a group. The film industry is flourishing. Yet what cannot be ignored is the convergence of two social factors. Along with the breakdown of the family and the individualisation of society there comes a media technology that allows people to create and enter a private world of virtual reality. Real relationships open to the senses of touch, sight and sound give way to virtual relationships where relatedness is mediated through a screen. This falls short of the incarnation in which truth takes flesh and becomes not only visible and audible but also tangible. God connects with his world flesh to flesh. The communion is total, spiritual and physical.
If the world of virtual reality gathers momentum allowing people to bank, to shop, to play, to relate without moving from their screen it offers an opportunity - a unique one - for the church. If there is a social instinct in everyone where will this be satisfied in a world of broken relationships and virtual reality? The need to belong, to love and to be loved, is the song of the church. Here on Merseyside we are the capital region of the Call Centre - BT at Warrington , Littlewoods and Granada in Liverpool . QVC Shopping Channel in Knowsley. I have visited them all. The Gospel for our region and for the world is that there is a life beyond the digital network - both transcendent and immanent, eternal and immediate. I use that last word deliberately and advisedly. "Immediate" means without media, without mediation. Although, as you know, I am committed to taking opportunities in the media to communicate the Christian faith, I am in no doubt that the priority must be the immediate face to face relationships of our local communities and churches. It is in the face to face, flesh to flesh encounters that the truest communication and communion happens - person to God and person to person. That is why the famous image of Stuart Blanch cycling around the city is so compelling. Even though he knew the importance of the media and encouraged the young to see it as a vocation it was in the personal encounter with God and with others that he set such an inspiring example. By his bicycle he literally pedalled the Word on the Street. Like Augustine: a Bishop and an Archbishop for us and a Christian with us. Like Christ, giving not just information about God but his very self in communion.
These are sure steps towards a theology of communication.