Journal of European Baptist Studies

Unity and Diversity in Torah Practices

2023-12-11T08:59:40+01:00

Against the grain of much Johannine scholarship, this article offers a sustained argument against the notion that John’s Jesus replaces sacred Jewish institutions and practices such as ritual purification, the temple, the Sabbath, and the Jewish festivals. Instead, I argue that John promotes a deeply appreciative and contextually sensitive vision of the Mosaic torah in which significant torah practices and institutions are retained, whilst also being reinterpreted, diversified, and sometimes relativised. This vision, in turn, has beneficial implications for Jewish-Christian dialogues and can provide wisdom in contemporary debates about the role of Jewish institutions and practices in Christian communities.

The Performative Preaching of John Chrysostom

2023-12-11T09:06:53+01:00

This article offers a critical review on John Chrysostom’s Homilies Against the Jews,1 first preached in Antioch in 386 CE. They are the supreme example of anti-Judaic writing among the patristic Fathers, and arise out of this author’s work on the history of interpretation of anti-Jewish texts in Matthew’s Gospel. Other scholars have undertaken to provide an account of John Chrysostom’s preaching,2 but here I offer my own analysis of his homilies for those who may be only vaguely aware of his antisemitic convictions. The importance of keeping this material in the public eye is to sensitise ourselves to antisemitic currents in Christian history, to be cognisant of the contribution Christians have made to the terrible atrocities perpetrated against the Jews throughout history. Reviewing the sermons of John Chrysostom against the Jews is also to be reminded of the power of the pulpit, and the responsibility of all who preach to perform words that contribute to the peace of God’s kingdom, to be ambassadors of reconciliation.

Moral Discernment in the Abraham and Sarah Narrative

2023-12-11T09:14:01+01:00

For many Christians, Abraham and Sarah are exemplary characters, whose lives provide spiritual and moral guidance for us on our own journeys of faith. Adopting a literary approach, this paper explores the narrative, draws insights from reception history, and asks what it can teach us with regard to moral discernment in the contemporary church. It suggests that while Abraham and Sarah live lives of faith and hope, they are flawed characters, hampered by personal weakness and cultural influences. Reception history of the story challenges us to be discerning readers — aware of our own flaws and constraints, unafraid to examine our traditional understandings, and open to learning from voices from traditions other than our own.

Midlife Decisions

2023-12-11T09:19:30+01:00

This article explores the issue of discernment through tracing the author’s experience wrestling with personal midlife decisions. The article begins by describing my sense of turmoil and enquires whether Baptist resources are available to support the decision-making process. ‘Communal discernment’ in its traditional form is examined but dismissed as ill-suited to my task, while the Baptist principle of ‘soul competency’ seems to offer a viable starting point. Similarly, searching the Scriptures offers insights but fails to resolve my dilemmas, although engagement with Catholic spirituality through the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius proves fruitful. I go on to consider whether small group discernment within Baptist settings might provide an effective blend of intimacy and community, discussing both a home-grown experiment and a published case study. In reporting the outcomes of the process, namely attaining a sense of peace despite continuing uncertainty, I conclude that discernment is deep spiritual work that cannot be rushed.

Can the Eucharist be Celebrated in an Online Gathering?

2023-12-11T09:27:29+01:00

Can an online celebration of the Eucharist through means of video-conferencing software be permitted? The Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 made the question urgent for many churches; for persecuted or geographically scattered churches it is perennial. This article offers definitions to clarify the question asked, and then two arguments, one based on an extension of currently accepted practices, and one based on the ecumenical doctrine outlined in the Lima text, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, to propose an affirmative answer to the question.

Traumatic Experiences and the Role of Friendship in Healing

2023-12-11T09:31:25+01:00

In this study of trauma and friendship, focused around Brian Keenan’s An Evil Cradling, I investigate the friendship between Brian Keenan and John McCarthy, who were imprisoned together as hostages in the late 1980s during the Lebanese Civil War, as described and celebrated within the text. Three recurring motifs of friendship — solidarity, prayer, and community — are used to identify the theological underpinnings of friendship. Drawing from the literature of trauma studies, particularly Shelly Rambo on ‘witnessing’ and ‘remaining’, I explore whether friendship as an embodied spiritual practice is a fitting response to trauma, itself an embodied experience. This, by extension, has important ramifications for communities of care like the church, especially when the Johannine Christ implores his disciples to ‘remain’ with each other, and invites Thomas to touch his bodily wounds. By acknowledging and ‘touching’ trauma, I find that close, interdependent friendship that avoids erasing wounds is paradoxically most able to help restore the wounded.

‘Probably the Best Kenoticism in the World’

2023-12-11T09:34:06+01:00

The aim of this article is to come to a definition of divine power as kenosis that theologically helps explain the wide spectrum of experience Christian believers have of divine power or lack thereof, ranging from divine hiddenness to signs and wonders. To this end, Paul Fiddes’ kenosis as suffering love theology is delineated, analysed, and critiqued. Certain weaknesses in the account are identified at which point Hans Lassen Martensen is introduced as an interlocutor and his kenotic theology explained and applied as a potential enhancer of Fiddes’ definition of kenosis. By situating the exploration in a kenotic definition of omnipotence within a context of spiritual conflict and evil, this nuanced account of the nature and scope of kenosis offers a very plausible articulation of divine omnipotence congruent with the current now-and-not-yet age of tension and the promised future of an eschaton free of all evil and suffering.

Negotiating Questions of Spiritual and Moral Integrity

2023-12-11T09:38:44+01:00

This article uses autoethnography and theological reflection to explore how the palliative care chaplain might pastorally and spiritually care for a person requesting death by assisted dying, when that choice is contra to the chaplain’s personal beliefs as to its moral permissibility. In present day Scotland (May 2023) this is a current issue, as debates about the legality of assisted dying loom in view of a proposed parliamentary bill. Reflecting on the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the theme of kenosis, the article concludes that God’s self-emptying, kenotic ‘neighbour’ love offers this chaplain a model of kenotic pastoral care through which they can remain present, whilst maintaining spiritual and moral integrity. The self-emptying of kenotic pastoral care, which includes the setting aside of our own egos, invites and allows room for God in the pastoral encounter and keeps the relationship open for invited dialogue with the patient.

Keeping Faith

2023-12-11T10:06:32+01:00

Contemporary Scottish school chaplaincy has been struggling to find a theology fit for purpose in the twenty-first century context of the increasingly secular realm of education. A theology rooted in an ambassadorial motif, which can itself be connected to biblical themes, may provide a robust framework and understanding. Such a motif provides a helpful pastoral and diplomatic tone for two highly contested areas increasingly encountered by school chaplains: gender ideologies and polices, and challenges to freedom of belief and speech.

The Parousia and Work

2023-12-11T10:09:34+01:00

Eschatologies of work are almost as rare as discussion around Christ’s parousia at the present time. This article will show that the second appearance of Jesus necessarily informs an eschatology of work. More specifically, two Matthean parables of eschatological discourse will be shown to insist upon ‘watchful patience’ and ‘necessary expansion’ as shaping contours to an eschatology of work which has Christ’s parousia in mind.

Editorial

2023-12-08T14:40:58+01:00

Book Reviews

2023-12-11T10:13:39+01:00

Brian Froese, California Mennonites (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 334 pages. ISBN: 9781421415123.

John Maiden, Age of the Spirit: Charismatic Renewal, the Anglo-World, and Global Christianity, 1945-1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 288 pages. ISBN: 9780198847496.

Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, 2nd edn (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018), 272 pages. ISBN: 9781532617973

Frances Mackenney-Jeffs, Reconceptualising Disability for the Contemporary Church (London: SCM Press, 2021), 214 pages. ISBN: 9780334059162.

Graham Kings, Nourishing Mission: Theological Settings, Theology and Mission in World Christianity series (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 250 pages. ISBN: 9789004469419.

Fernando Enns, Nina Schroeder-van ‘t Schip and Andrés Pacheco-Lozano (eds), A Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace: Global Mennonite Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Nonviolence (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2023), 450 pages. ISBN: 9781666713817.

Karen E. Smith, Following on the Way: The Acts of the Apostles as A Guide to Spiritual Formation (Macon: Smith & Helwys Publishing, 2023), 277 pages. ISBN: 9781641733946.

Teun van der Leer, Henk Bakker, Steven R. Harmon, Elizabeth Newman (eds), Seeds of the Church: Towards an Ecumenical Baptist Ecclesiology, Free Church, Catholic Tradition (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022), 166 pages. ISBN: 9781666718379.

John Baxter-Brown (ed.), Call to Mission and Perceptions of Proselytism: a Reader for a Global Conversation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2022), 363 pages. ISBN: 9781532658778.

Sally Nash, Shame and the Church: Exploring and Transforming Practice (London: SCM Press, 2020), 193 pages. ISBN: 9780334058847.

Narry F. Santos and Xenia Ling-Yee Chan (eds), The Present and Future of Evangelical Mission: Academy, Agency, Assembly, and Agora Perspectives from Canada (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2022), 182 pages. ISBN: 9781666730968.

Robert Edmund Cotter, John Cennick (1718–1755): Methodism, Moravianism and the Rise of Evangelicalism (New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), 177 pages. ISBN: 9781032128962.