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Ad fontes of Christian humanism

On By Gareth Gilbert-HughesIn Uncategorized6 Comments

I’ve recently updated my What page, so I thought I would also copy it here as a post for comment.

GarshuniAd fontes is a Latin phrase meaning ‘to the sources’, a favourite motto of Renaissance humanism. I am particularly thinking of Erasmus of Rotterdam with this phrase, recalling his invaluable biblical scholarship. Renaissance humanism both laid the groundwork for the Reformation and re-engaged with the writers of the early church.

The term ‘humanism’ is only applied retrospectively to this movement. The Oxford English Dictionary dates its earliest meaningful occurrence in the French humanisme of 1765, with the meaning of ‘love of humanity’, with a German reference to Humanismus from 1808 being used to describe the classical syllabus of the gelehrten Schulen (‘learned schools’, grammar schools). Our universities’ humanities divisions and faculties are named after this understanding of humanism. It didn’t take long for the term to acquire two more widely applied senses: the intellectual movement of the Renaissance and a philosophy oriented toward the human. There are a few sparse uses of the term ‘humanism’ to refer to a doctrine that Jesus Christ has a merely human nature (adoptionism, ebionitism and perhaps unitarianism), and Schiller used the term as a name for pragmatism; these are not my doctrines, nor my intended meaning. Continue reading “Ad fontes of Christian humanism” →

Creationism eats itself, while theology seeks understanding

On By Gareth Gilbert-HughesIn Uncategorized2 Comments

In the same way that aliens from outer space always choose to invade the United States, creationists also find themselves a happy home there. And, in the same way that now South Africa has its own blockbuster alien invasion (albeit with a quantum leap in social analysis beyond the unknowingly self-parodying Independence Day), the ID UFOs are coming for the rest of us.

The first line in Europe’s defence has unfortunately fallen to Prof. Ellen van Wolde, chair of Old Testament exegesis at Radboud University Nijmegen. The Torygraph went for the headline “God is not the Creator, claims academic: The notion of God as the Creator is wrong, claims a top academic, who believes the Bible has been wrongly translated for thousands of years”, which certainly talks up her research. Continue reading “Creationism eats itself, while theology seeks understanding” →

The Anglican Communion as imagined community

On By Gareth Gilbert-HughesIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Frank Turner, Professor of History at Yale, has a wonderfully insightful article on the Anglican Communion at Episcopal Café. His thesis is that a group of Anglicans, mainly bishops, have sought to shape the various independent Anglican provinces into a global ecclesiastical community over the past two decades.

Turner calls Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities into play here. The bare bones of Anderson’s theory is that a nation is a socially constructed community based on various presumptions of shared attributes: language, religion, skin colour, culture &c. The question it raises is why do I cheer on an athlete, whom I have never met and with whom I have little in common, at the Olympics just because her uniform says she is British? The question it raises is why it is considered a high ideal to die for ‘queen and country’.

Of course, social constructs are not unreal, but they are perceived realities: nationality is no absolute thing. It is fascinating seeing a ‘nation’ being built over the last score of years, but understanding the Anglican Communion as imagined community does much to help us understand the pressures it is under at this time.

Continue reading “The Anglican Communion as imagined community” →