Tag: <span>00 Alison_James</span>

Tag: 00 Alison_James

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Letter of response to friends in the aftermath of the Vatican Instruction of 29 November 2005 (Alison, 2005)

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Now here is the crucial point: it is from this premise of the free-standing second teaching concerning the objective disorder of what you and I call being gay that everything else in this document flows. And yet that teaching is here presented in the most muted form I have seen it in a recent Roman document. It is almost as if some of the many higher authorities which have reviewed this document before allowing this particular dicastery to publish it might be saying something rather like this:

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Good-faith learning and the fear of God (Alison, 2005)

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The virtue of fear of God is little mentioned nowadays [1], but I would like to bring it back into our discourse. I invoke it because typically those who enter into some sort of moral discussion imagine that we are starting off from the standpoint of the good guys. Those who are moved by fear of God fear lest our own irresponsibility, our own hardness of heart and defect of vision perhaps be carrying us down a route that is too easy, one that is ever more free of voices which question and challenge us. So fear of God obliges us to a certain athletic tension with respect to our own way, lest it lead us into disaster.

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Collapsing the closet in the house of God: opening the door on gay/straight issues (Alison, 2005)

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I’m going to look at a rather odd phrase of St Paul’s in his Epistle to the Galatians. It comes at Galatians 3:10: For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.”

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Deliver us from evil (Alison, 2005)

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I would like to offer as a resource for our discussion here what I hope will turn out to be a straightforward presentation of what one might call the old-fashioned or traditional view typical of Christian theology. Namely that what we call evil is a non-thing, something which is properly speaking uncaused and inexplicable, incomprehensibly parasitic on reality. I am not only going to attempt to present this, but will also try and defend it, since it is the theological approach to this matter which I believe to be true, and I think that the psychological consequences flowing from it, and the psychological consequences of ignoring it are very weighty indeed.

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Those with eyes to see (Alison, 2005)

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The best analogy I know for Transubstantiation – the conversion, after consecration, of the substance of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ – is the phenomenon of “Magic Eye” images. These are glossy, colourful, two-dimensional pictures of what appear to be a series of wavy lines or patterns. For the viewer to get the “magic” effect, they should gaze upon the picture for some time, allowing the eyes to relax. At first there is a moment of dizziness as the stereoscopic functions of the brain kick in, trying to make sense of the two-dimensional surface, then, sometimes helped by the viewer moving the picture towards, or away from, the eyes, suddenly a three dimensional image is apparent. It has no necessary relationship at all to the content of the wavy lines or patterns. Indeed the wavy patterns simply yield and become the contours of, for instance, three dolphins leaping out of the water.

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Aboard the Disco Boat Queen (Alison, 2005)

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I’d like to know your reaction to what happened last year to Jeffrey John. As you know, he was appointed Anglican bishop of Reading, but because he is gay (though evidently celibate), there was a huge reaction from evangelicals, and he was forced to decline.
JA: I think that what the evangelicals got right and the liberals didn’t understand is that the appointment of Jeffrey John, an openly gay man, as a bishop was a de facto change of doctrine. I think it was desirable, but still, a de facto change of doctrine was sprung on people as though it were simply a matter of increased honesty.

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Staggered Vision (Alison, 2005)

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Staggered Vision. It’s what we get today in the gospel. In order to begin to make sense of what must be one of the most mysterious passages of writing anywhere, I’d like to try and fill in some of the background context. The background context is best known as Holy Saturday, one of my favourite days of the year. We had it yesterday. I think it’s my favourite day of the year because I’m essentially lazy, and it’s the day when God rests. All the readings and psalms are about God resting. And the reason why God rests is because on Good Friday he accomplished everything, he finished creation. He entered into death and made it untoxic. So on Holy Saturday a great quietness is over the earth, because of course, no-one else knows about this yet. It’s the great quietness of creation having been completed, of death no longer being the enemy of the creatures, but something that can be lived through and in, as part of being a creature. It’s death occupied by God. It’s where he fulfils what he says in Isaiah 25, which we get to hear echoes of in today’s gospel. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever. (Is 25:7)

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Show Us the Father (Alison, 2005)

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God’s not out to get you. He’s not trying to dragoon you into shape. He wants to enjoy you, to dwell with you. So he’s got many mansions, many dwelling places. He’s going to turn you into those dwelling places. Relax. Don’t be paranoid. And don’t think he’s out to get you. I’m going to show you that, by inhabiting death. You see, whenever in John’s gospel Jesus says: “I must go”; or “Where I am going”, this is Johanine code for: “I am going to death. I am going to inhabit death in such a way that it will be an empty trophy, and you will start to see the love, the generosity, the self-giving that went into making that available, so that you need no longer to be frightened of it. That’s because I’m not here to do a magic trick. I’m not here to wave a magic wand so as to “save” you. I’m here because the Father, the Creator, wants to get through to you to involve you in being part of creation from within. He knows that you’re so frightened of dying that you are refusing to take part. So actually, by my inhabiting death for you, the possibility is going to be opened up for you no longer to be frightened; and because of that, to dare to start to create things, and to do even greater works than the ones I have done, because the Creator will be able to work through you, opening up new things that none of you have been able to imagine yet. Many mansions that we don’t know about.”

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Wrestling with God and Men (Alison, 2004)

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One of the many treasures of this book, one of the reasons why I am convinced that this will be a bestseller as well amongst Christian lay people, is that it deals with issues that we don’t normally deal with and that actually, irrespective of whether we are religious or not, we don’t have the language to deal with, in both a very beautiful and a very rich way. And I think that one of the brilliant points here is the way you deal with abomination. You actually make a positive case for the use of the language of abomination, which I think is marvellous because it is only if people have something to latch revulsion, fear, anger onto, that they are going to be able to move on without thinking that someone is pulling a fast one.

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Befriending a Vengeful God (Alison, 2004)

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My real concern as a man of faith and as a theologian, it’s really about the linking of vengeance to God, the linking of violence to God, that God is a vengeful person whose vengeance needs satisfying in some way. And of course I think that that does have catastrophic results, enabling a whole lot of our behaviour to be somehow canonised by God rather than us undergoing the process of having our images of God pruned from our own violence so as to be able to appreciate someone who is entirely without violence, entirely unambiguous and entirely loving of us. My concern is not to go back into letting God be a function of our violent social life, rather trying to understand the way in which God, who is in no way violent at all, is trying to enable us to undo from within our own violence and come and live in a way that is peaceful.