The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self - Carl Trueman

 notes and quotes

1. Reimagining the Self

Charles Taylor, Canadian philosopher. Coined term 'social imaginary'

I want to speak of 'social imaginary' here, rather than social theory, because there are important difference between the two. There are, in fact, several differences. I speak of 'imaginary' (i) because I'm talking about the ordinary people 'imagine' their social surroundings, and this is often not expressed in theoretical terms, it is carried in images, stories, legends, etc. But it is also the case that (ii) theory is often the possession of a small minority, whereas what is interesting in the social imaginary is that is is shared by large groups of people, if not the whole society. Which leads to a third difference: (iii) the social imaginary is that common understanding which makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.

Taylor says that the social imaginary... refers to the myriad beliefs, practise, normative expectations, and even implicit assumptions that members of a society share and that shape their daily lives. It is not so much a conscious philosophy of life as a set of intuitions and practices. 

Philip Reif. Late Professor of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania:

Wrote a book in 1966 entitled 'The Triumph of the Therapeutic'. He says that cultures are primarily defined by what they forbid.

A culture survives principally... by the power of its institutions to bind and loose men in the conduct of their affairs with reasons which sink so deep into the self that they become commonly and implicitly understood.

A second important aspect for Rieff is the idea that culture, at least historically, directs the individual outward. It is in communal activities that individuals find their true selves; the true self in traditional cultures is therefore something that is given and learned, not something that the individual creates for himself. 

historical moments.

Rieff argues that the way a society constructed its members to think changes over time and that broadly speaking the different moments and social identities can be labelled as follows:

Political man. From the sort of ideas put forth by Plato and Aristotle. In contrast to the idiotic man (literally, the private man), the political man is the one who finds his identity in the activities in which he engages in the public life of the city.

Religious man. eventually political man gave way to the man of the Middle Ages, the man who found his primary sense of self in his involvement in religious activities: attending mass, celebrating feast days, taking part in religious processions, going on pilgrimages. This can also be seen in the way medieval society was structured - from the dominance of the church buildings to the liturgical calendar that marked time itself. Religion was the key to culture during this time.

Economic man. Economic man is the individual who finds his sense of self in his economic activity: trade, production, the making of money. Rieff himself saw economic man as an unstable and temporary category. Economic man gave way (owing to the continuously revolutionising nature of capitalisms impact on production) to...

Psychological man. Defined not by outward things but by the inward quest for personal psychological happiness. Rieff says that psychological categories and an inward focus are the hallmarks of being a modern person. This is what Charles Taylor refers to as 'expressive individualism'.

Expressive individualism: the idea that each of us finds our meaning by giving expression to our own feelings and desires. for Taylor, this kind of self exists in what he describes as a culture of authenticity. He defines this culture of authenticity in the following way:

The understanding of life which emerges with the Romantic expressivism of the late eighteenth century, that each of us has his/her own way of realising our humanity and that it is important to find and live out one's own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority.

This shift to psychological man and expressive individualism is far reaching in its implications. 

Trueman uses the following example to illustrate:

My grandfather left school at fifteen and spent the rest of his working life as a sheet metal worker in a factory in Birmingham, the industrial heartland of England. If he had been asked if he found satisfaction in his work, there is a distinct possibility he would not even have understood the question, given that it really reflects the concerns of psychological man's world, to which he did not belong. But if he did understand, he would probably have answered in terms of whether his work gave him the money to put food on his family's table and shoes on his children's feet. If it did so, then yes he would have affirmed that his job satisfied him. His needs were those of his family, and in enabling him to meet them, his work gave him satisfaction... If I am asked the same question, my instinct is to talk about the pleasure that teaching gives me, about the sense of personal fulfillment I feel when a student learns a new idea of becomes excited about some concept as a result of my classes. The difference is stark: for my grandfather, job satisfaction was empirical, outwardly directed, and unrelated to his psychological states; for members of mine and subsequent generations, the issue of feeling is central.

Chapter 4. The unacknowledged legislators

Bad ages produce bad poets and have their decadence and moral decline reinforced thereby. Virtuous ages produce virtuous poets and have their greatness and moral superiority strengthened thereby. And in this turn means that the poet is someone of great political significance: both a sign of the moral strength of the times and a means for maintaining the same.

/PART 4 - triumphs of the revolution

8 triumph of the erotic

Surrealism. The name given to a school of artistic expression that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century... there were many aspects to the surrealist project but the nature of the self and of identity was central... the foundation for surrealist though was Freud. The artistic philosophy that it espoused sought to give concrete artistic expressionto the unconscious, following Freu'd idea that everything there - evertyhing - is significant. 

Dream. Dreams were important to surrealism since in dreams the dreamer is able to be whoever or whatever she wanst to be in whatever kind of world she chooses to envisage. .. and that points to the basic contention that it is the unconscious that is thr realbedrock of the indivifusl identity, the thing about the person that is most real.  

Building on Rouseau: tge nisr authentic self is the self that is totally detached from and uninhibated by any of the conditions of material life. 

The message of surrealist thought is clear enough: The unconscious is the guide to truth. For the surrealists, it was key to individual authenticity... that which has always been assumed to be obvious [material/social realities say] is to be regarded as inauthentic or problematic.

Later Truman says: the purpose of surrealism was profoundaly and aggresively political: to overthrow Christianity and its corollariers - families and moral codes governing secial behaviour)

Surrealisms legacy... what it did was a play a part in the general and radical eroticization of modernity. It did not simply make sexual images more widely available under cover of intellectual responsibly; it actually served to help the process by which society's judgment of the cultural value of pornogrpahy changed frm seomthign bad and detrimental to something good and healthy.

The pornification of Mainstream Culture:

By the time of his death aged 91 in 2017 Hugh Hefner was a classic exampe of a hero of the anticulture... his life had bee dedicated to overthrowing the sexual codes of earlier generations and his career proved thr truth of the old adage 'sex sells'.

But consider how tame the extreme Play Boy of the 60s looks compared to casual viewing on Netflix. Gail Dines professor of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College says: Today there is almost no soft-core porn on the internet, because more of it has migrated into pop culture. 

Interesting observation of the changes:

Commenting on American women's magazines in 1946 George Orwell made the following observation:

Someone has sent me a copy of an American fashion magazine which shall remain nameless. It consists of 325 large quarto pages of which no fewer than 15 are given up to articles on world politics, literature, etc. The rest consists entirely of picture with a littler letterpress creeping round their edges: picture of ball dresses, mink coats, step-ins, panties, brassieres, silk stockings, slippers, perfumes, lipsticks, nail varnish - and of course f the women wearing unrelievedly beautiful who wear them or make use of them... 

One striking thing when one looks at these pictures is the overbred, exhausted, even decadent style of beauty that now seems to be striven after. Nearly all of these women are immensely elongated... A fairly didilgent search through the magazine reveals two discreet allusions to grey hair, but if there is anywhere a direct mention of fatness or middle-age i have not found it. Birth and death are not mentioned either: nor is work, except a few recipes for breakfast dishes are given.

Truman says:

The desctription speaks eloquently of the American preoccupation with physical beauty, but what is really interesting about Orwell's commentary is how unsexy it is. there is a matter-of-fact nonerotic aspect to the mannger in which he describes the few articles the magazine contains and even the representation of the female form.

Comparing this to today Cosmopolitan magazine he says: the cult of beauty has become the cult of sexuality.

The Triumph of the T: 

Where a sense of psycholigcal well-being is the purpose of life, therapy supplants morality - or perhaps better, therapy is morality - ad anything that achieves that sense of well-being is good. 

Being a woman is now somethign that can be produced by a technique - literally prescribed by a doctor. The pain, the struggle, and the history of oppression that shape what it means to be a woman in society are thus trivilised and rendered irrelevant. 

Jenner's 2015 cover for Vanity Fair and the accompanying photo shoot all operated within the aesthetic norms of standard American cover girls.

Germaine Greer:

No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-overies transplant; if uterus-and-overies transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight.

Concluding Prologue:

What should the church do?

1) The church should reflect long and hard on the connection between aesthetics and her core beliefs and practice. 

The highest form of authority in an age of expressive individualism is - personal testimony. This concern for personal testimonies reflect the power of sympathy and empathy in shaping morality. 

Mario Vargas Llosa writes: Today images have primacy over ideas. For that reason, cinema, television and now the internet have left books to one side.

The role of aesthetics through images created by camera angles and plotlines in movies, sitcoms and sopa operas is powerful. 

The biblical narrative rests on (and only makes sense in light of) a deeper metaphysical reality: the being of God and his act of creation.

2) The church must be a community. Hegel's basic insight so compellingly elaborated by Taylor, that selves are socially constructed and only come to full self-consciousness in dialogue with other self-consciousnesses if of great importance. Each of us is in a snese, the sum total of the network of relationships we have with others and with our environment. 

The task of the church in cultivating a different understanding of the self is, humanly speaking, likely to provoke despair. Yet there is hope: the world in which we live is now witness to commmunities in flux. The nation-stae no longer provides identity as the globalised world makes it seem impotaent and decades of being told in the West that patriotism is bad have taken thteir toll... Many cities are anonymous places and suburbs function as giant commuter motels. 

3) Protestants need to recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body. It is unlikely that an individual pastor is going to be able to shape a Supreme Court ruling on abortion (though he should certainly try if he is able), but he is very likely to be confronted with congregants asking questions about matters from surrogacy to transgenderism. And in such circumstances, a good grasp of the biblical position on natural law and the order of the created world will prove invaluable. 

One last comment.

Hisotrical precedent. 

We can't look to a high point in R. Caholic or Protestant history for help. But if there is histrocail precedent it is earlier: the second entury.

In the second century the church was a marginal sect within a dominant pluralist society... the second century world is in a sense our world where Christianity is a choice - and a choice likely at some point to run afoul of the authorities. 

It was the Second century world of course that alid doen the foundations for the later successes of the third and fourth centuries. Annd she did it by what means? By existing as a close-knit doctrinally bounded community that required her members to act consistently with their faith and to be good citizens of the earthly city as far as good citizenship was compatible with faithfulness to Christ. 

The Battle for Christian Britain: Callum Brown

Chapter 1: 

Overview and of note. The regulation of public morality was taken very seriously by civic and religious bodies. Notable was the amount of local community agencies and groups who met to help regulate the morality of the arts but also the amount of clergy involved in the licensing and regulating. 

Key names: George Tomlinson a full time secretary of the Public Morality Council (PMC). He was a Methodist preacher but he was also a man 'with a strong command of the law, both in statute and in precedent'. He wrote weekly in newspapers answering questions and explaining the reasoning behind his thinking on censorship.

Of note: it's also interesting to note the early discussions of infertility treatment. there was a widespread condemnation of Artificial Human Insemination owing to the fact that for the man it required masturbation (which was a sin) and for the woman it constituted adultery. What I find of note is the theological invocation of the medical professionals. "Even an expert on male infertility condemned the 'unsavoury subject of masturbation'" this reminds me of Tom Holland's comment that 'science is a mirror that lets you see whatever you want.' In this case and at this time in Britain's history (1948) science was informed much more by the morals of traditional Christian teaching. 

The PMC  had a large budget and concerned itself with the morality of the nation. Quote:

"In the 1930s, driven by its moralistically conservative membership, it investigated the sale of contraceptives, carrying out surveillance on shops, garages and barbers selling them"

This is fascinating to me, knowing only the licentious libertarianism of my age.

Interestingly:

There seems little doubt that the sexualisation of the entertainment industry was intense and widespread in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Sex was everywhere the topic of conversation and despair amongst conservative Christians. But there is an important paradox to be confronted. The sexualisation rarely delivered. A culture of titillation, innuendo and enticement by capitalist enterprise did not, in the main, deliver what clients might anticipate. It was based on what became the hallmark of British fifties' culture: casual and illicit sex was in the air, but few people got it. Indeed, os few go the sex tat this was a period of high sexual fidelity, low illegitimacy and a repressive culture. It was all a fraud. 

The shows and films had risqué titles but almost no nudity or sex.

Chapter 2:

Reviews the different cultures and moral vigilance in London and Blackpool. Whilst London grew increasingly animated about protecting Christian Britain's morality, with an alliance of (3 things) boards such as the Public Morality Council backed up by the church leaderships of the Anglicans, Catholics and Free Church Board, agencies of public moral censorship such as the  the London County Council, the Lord Chamberlin's department and the BBFC, but also with the support of the political will of leading politicians who were often driven by personal religious commitment to moral rectitude and the censorship of popular culture. Blackpool on the other hand was a town of approx. 170k people and a summer time tourist culture that attracted between 5-7 million people each year. This meant that a) there weren't the large governing bodies like there was in London and b) everyone in the town relied on the swelling tourist trade for their income and economy. This led to a greater level of permissiveness and a much reduced ability and appetite to police things.

A lot of attention was given in London to the display of sex or nudity on stage or screen, occupying a lot of time and reports and resulting in the banning of many shows and films. By contrast Blackpool was a largely unregulated (or enforced) town with postcards of women in bikinis, 'freak shows' and stripteases along the Golden Mile. 

Information on churchgoing:

In 1851 church attendance amounted for 21.4% of the population of England. In 1902-03 London;s Sunday attendances at church was reckoned to be 18.6% of the population. In 1979 in London it stood at 9.1%. In the 1950s was the first time that Greater Londoners reported to being 'never attenders' at church: 26% in 1960 but ballooning to 62% in 1981. London's church attendance was lower than that of Blackpool's. 

Interestingly: From 1905 there developed in England and Wales a policy of reducing the numbers of pubs and improving them -making them 'civilised' by connecting them to other leisure pursuits, and by the encouragement of women and also children under 14yrs to form a health atmosphere. This 'civilising' strategy sought to reduce the adverse impact of drink upon the rest of public culture and health raning from sexualised entertainment to drink-fuelled indecency... The English pub fostered community togetherness, with the piano, singing and a degree of cross-class shared space making it the quintessence of beneficent English culture - as seen in film representations of the pub during the Second World War."

This wasn't true in Scotland, who until the 1970s, employed an opposite strategy of keeping the pubs 'cut off' from the rest of leisure.

Also of note:

• Cinemas and entertainment venues had to obtain licenses to open on Sundays and needed to give a percentage of their takings to charity. 
• Young people congregated in coffee bars where there emerged a problem with 'coin-activated gramophone players' (jukeboxes) owing to the young peopel dancing together. This resulted in the banning of dancing in coffee bars which led to the invention of the jukebox jive of hand movement on table tops whilst seated.
• Local authorities were charged with regulating STIs and monitored the sale of condoms.
• 'Banned in Blackpool' became a title of commercial value referring to postcards deemed too raunchy even for Blackpool.
• It seems that morality boards were much more animated over the censorship of sex than they were about the other abuses and displays of immorality common in art and Blackpool's tourism. 
• It was believed/taught that 'atheism led to communism' or was an expression of it.
• Sexual censorship was considered extremely important since it was believed to lead to 'irreligion'.

By 1963 the 'swinging sixties' was starting to surface, quickly its headquarters in London. But what historians have not really engaged with was that, immediately, those same swinging sixties were rooted in Blackpool.

Chapter 3:

A further case study of three different towns: Sheffield, Glasgow and Isle of Lewis.

Of note is the stats of church attendance in each place:

Sheffield: the figure for total adult church going in the wider South Yorkshire 7% in 1979, the second lowest county figure after Humberside (6.6%) and considerably lower than the English average at the time: 10.5% Meanwhile, Anglican church attenders in Sheffield diocese fell to 2.4% of population in 1956, 2.1% in 1961 and 1.7% in 1985.  "Sheffield is likely to have been a city in the 1945-80 period with amongst the lowest church attendance in all of the UK and with a CofE in a parlous state.

A man of note for Sheffield: Ted Wickham was the CofE industrial chaplain to Sheffield who was sent on a mission to bring more workers within the orbit of the church. He concluded in the 1950s that churches had not lost the working classes because they had never had them in the first place. 

Glasgow: 44.8% of the population attended church in 1851, 19.3% in 1876, 17.7% in 1959 and 19% in 1984. Estimates for the 1950s range between 14-20%.

Isle of Lewis: in 1984 the Isle of Lewis weekly adult church attendance stood at 54%; this dropped to 39% in 1994 but stayed the same in 2002. For comparison the next highest churchgoing area in the UK was in the adjacent Highland region with, in 1984, a 'mere' 18% weekly churchgoing. Accompanying the high religious practise in Lewis has been an official public culture of extreme conservatism in doctrine, moral attitudes and, in the Protestant areas, strict Sabbath-keeping. this has been the only part of Britain in which Calvinist dissenting Presbyterians were in the majority during most of the twentieth century.

Sheffield. Ted Wickham's comments on the state of church engagement among the workers is helpful. He puts their irreligiosity down to a long term alienation of the workers by the middle classes and says: "The  churches condemnation of the workers for their 'personal morality' produced an over-zealous mission against vicd, drink, and lack of Sunday observance, generating... moral crusades on which the social aspect of the questions was lost in the passionate warfare with sins and with sinners."

Sheffield by the 40s ad 50s was dominated by a churchless popular culture harassed by teetotalism and Sabbatarianism in which evangelism was failing convert. 

Sheffield was one of the earliest local authorities to accept powers granted in 1934 to give out contraceptive advice and, from 1937, contraceptives to mothers for whom a further pregnancy might be dangerous.

In 1946British cinema in the UK was at its peak popularity with 1.6b cinema admissions.

In 1947 the battle fo Sunday observance was dealt a significant blow by the vote in Sheffield  by 64% of electors to open cinemas which reinforced Ted Wickham's view that the city's working classes were ecclesiastically alienated. 

Nevertheless Ted Wickham remained optimistic when in 1961 he said "England, os largely unchurched, refuses to go anti-Christian.' nevertheless in debates with prominent British Humanist Margaret Knight Oxford Union famously voted in favour of her statement that 'this house does not believe in the Christian God.'

On the threshold of 1965 fundamental challenges to Christian culture were multiplying in Sheffield.

Glasgow. Simialr in many ways to Sheffield Glasgow was more religiously conservative and yet seemed to fight its battles not around sex but around alcohol. the pubs, as mentioned in a previous chapter, were not places for families (women being banned from most of them, and barmaids too) but were out of view with darkened windows structly regulated. 

Billy Graham met a good reception in Glasgow: In 1955 1.5 million people cae over a six week period to hear Billy Graham at nightly gatherings of 10,000 people in the Kelvin Hall, as well as others via the first use of 'relay' broadcasts nationwide and at special meetings in the football stadia... where on Easter Sunday he addressed an estimated 120,000 people.

Whether his popularity is viewed as the final outing for Protestant evangelisation before the secular surge, the result of his clever repackaging of popular fears about nuclear war and family breakdown or, as one academic put it, because he 'looks like a film-star , speaks with the accents of a film-star, [and] has a wife as pretty as a film-star', this Christian preacher from the states was able to turn Glasgow upside down for six weeks.

Lewis: is tantalising for the historian and anthropologist of morality, custom and community.

On the revival: In the atmosphere at war's end, a short period ensued of intense 'religious revival' amongst teenagers and young people, marked by some earlier indicative trends with accounts in lowland newspapers in 1938 of 'swooning' by women in much-disputed symptoms of religious experience. But it was in the post-war revival of 1949-53 based on the west coast of Lewis at the township of Barvas that young people at a dance were shocked into a sense of seriousness and conversion One young man recalled later being the MC that night, and being converted after a young girl sand a psalm. Under the inspiration of a charismatic preacher, Duncan Campbell, young people were drawn in such large numbers from neighbouring communities that impromptu services in the large church became packed to overflowing.

Chapter 5: Battle at the Beeb part 1

A fascinating chapter on the origins of the BBC it's alliance with British and Christian values as well as its concerted effort to make and keep the BBC as a channel for promoting exclusively Christianity among religions and religious viewpoints.

Underneath this alliance was the understandable fear over the nation's stability and the rising concern that communism presented. Communism was understood to be the social face of atheism and was perhaps another major part of the BBC's defence of preference for Christianity over Humanism and atheism. An officer for the MI5 even held an office at the BBC concerned as they were to watch out for any communist ideas.

The church held a lot of power still in the defining and shaping of British morality and values. Churches were therefore united in the common purpose of ensuring that Christianity was the only faith to be preached on the airwaves. This was to be a policy that remained vigorously defended in the 1950s.

The BBC had a committee the Central Religious Advisory Committee (CRAC) which operated in the same way that the PMC did and held power to determine what shows should and shouldn't be shown. The CRAC set up a board of approved churches allowed to broadcast their worship services, these churches were thus deemed to be 'mainstream christianity'

This enforcement of Christianity on air reached new heights during the 1940s when the BBC grew into the British establishment acting as an arm of the state. As the war progressed, religion was even as vital to the national and military morale at the a very difficult time, notably in 1940-42, and on air this led to an increase in the volume of religious worship per week and a proportionate reduction in discussion or debate programmes on religious themes. Religious doubt was being quelled. 

Despite battles to keep humanists promoting humanism and atheism off the air, nevertheless interest in religious shows dropped from attracting 56% of audience in 1946 to 8% in 1970. There was also concern from Christians that the shows weren't helping them engage with actual doubt and scepticism since they were so one sided. The BBC showed the Billy Graham crusades but were critics by CRAC members and the council of Free Churches since it was thought that Billy Graham undermined the efforts of local churches to evangelise and there was even concern that his crusades affected Sunday service attendance. This seems to be a moment where the BBC began losing its sympathy for the church's cause. 

Interestingly, as a reflection of public morality. In 1962 a series of Reith Lectures were shown on sex education, in them (and despite being carefully groomed) the presenter G. M. Carstairs saying: surely charity is more important than chastity' and also that pre-marital sex was a good thing. Of note was that the public reaction was enormous, both at home and abroad, with two thirds being hostile.

Whenever non-christians were allowed to discuss religion with Christians the rules were quite clearly stipulated: A humanist could only speak about religion when a Christian interlocutor was present and the Christian was always given the responsibility to summarise at the end of the broadcast for the Christian case.

In 1946 Francis Hodge was appointed as the new director of religious broadcasting. He proposed three rules of broadcasting: 1. God is 2. God rules. 3. God cares. No one was allowed to suggest anything that didn't fit within these rules he laid down. 

In the late 1940s and 50s there was concern among the Humanists of a deeply Christian 'revival' led by intellectuals - T.S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy Sayers and Malcolm Muggeridge the later becoming the most common face of Christianity on British TV during the 60s and much of the 70s. 

In the mid 60s there were 30hr a week of religious programming and yet 'not one hour, not even ten minutes, is assigned in an average week to the presentation of the views of serious thinkers who explicitly reject Christian theology.'

But things were shifting. By the late 1940s atheists constituted the backbone of intellectual programming on the BBC talks shows, radio and television. On both media they made up more than half of the brains on the Brains Trust show and were in growing demand into the 1960s. But also the media was changing as talk shows were dying fast as audiences didn't want them.

Chapter 6: The Privatisation of Moral Vigilance

As the established institutions began to close or adapt individuals took it upon themselves to try and keep the tight regulating and censorship going. This was owing in part to changes of leadership at the institutions but also the sheer weight of material being produced that required regulation. The organisations simply couldn't keep up.

The level of anti-religious satire rose a notch with the Beyong the Fringe revue which contained, amongst other things, Alan Bennett's parody of an Anglican sermon, presaging a plethora of similar material from television comics in various sixties shows.

By 1963 the PMC's lack of agility was to have major consequences as religion itself became a target for ridicule. In late 1961 one of the most popular TV shows on the BBC pilloried clergy, ridiculed scripture reading and parodied the hymn To Be A Pilgrim. 

A month later, a discussion programme on BBC television had two speakers, both in favour of premarital sex and thus silencing the conservative voice, with the brunt of argument being the promotion of contraceptive teaching in schools - something the PMC announced was 'crazy'.

Despite the challenges the PMC was not slow in trying to keep its work going. George Tomlinson appeared on television and radio programmes explaining the work of the Council, and he was interviewed at the Home Office over proposals to regulate proliferating theatre clubs. The campaign bore some fruit as at least one club (The Geisha Club) was found to contain complete nudity in its show and was consequently reported, raided by the police, prosecuted and fined.

As a result if this and other raids theatre owners supposedly appointed a full-time inspector whose duty it was to see that the clubs kept on the right side of the law - the industry policing itself. In addition, the association had appointed the Revd Vernon Mitchell, the vicar of St Phillip's Church Norbury, as chaplain 'to prevent any unethical conduct in the clubs'.

Mitchell, however, was not a Christian conservative, but rather the reverse - being cited in 1965 as bringing a 'shapely' model in tights and sweater beneath his pulpit where she 'wiggled provocatively' during worship.

In 1965 te PMC's monitoring of moral issues ended.

The liberalising of society was gathering pace resulting in the 'liberal hour' in British politics. This was heralded by the passing of the Suicide Act in 1961 (which, as well as overturning the 1,100 year old felony of suicide and imprisonable offence of attempted suicide, also finally undermined the lingering Anglican Church's withholding of Christian burial and other shaming of suicides and their families).

Michale Ramsey came to lead the PMC in 1961 and brought with him a fresh approach, addressing the Congress meeting in subdued tones: 'In matters of morality the only way of being protective is to be creative, and morality needs to be presented not as a fragile thing to be defended, but as a creative thing powerful to demolish evils and to use for its good and glorious ends things which might have evil uses.'

One key issue he reflected on was the rise of television as a power in the public life of the people:

The coming into existence of television has brought with it a whole new set of data for the moralist. They now see far more things than it used to see; most citizens live in a visual world bigger, more complex and more rapid. We need at this stage not dogmatism about the effects of this, but scientific enquiry. there is an immense field here for the scientific sociologists to investigate, and this Congress can point the way to some of the matters to be investigated.

He said that he: 'considered that too much was said about the facts of life and too little about the divine purpose of life.' This led the Daily Express to contrast Godfrey's straight talking against sex education with a picture of Ramsey captioned 'He was bland'.

Ramsey's 'blandness' was based on the theological development of a distinction between private and public morality. 

Until 1966, moral vigilance had been part of the British establishment, led by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury ad Bishop of London with, at their side the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, the leader of the Free Churches Council and the chief rabbi... The vigilantes were the epitome of respectability, led by titled aristocracy, and with contacts deep in central and local government, in the entertainment industry, and had been attended by huge success over decades. The end of the PMB was a milestone, signalling the end of organised moral vigilante work by the British religious establishment to combat the liberalisation of sexual representation in the arts, cinema, television and public life. 

Between 1964 and 1965 there was a changing of the guard of British moral vigilance. the new guard were outsiders to the establishment, disconnected from the main churches, with little insider knowledge or care for working the licensing system. They were bold, brash and populist, given to impatience and openly righteous indignation. They harassed the powers that be with letters, phone calls, petitions and marches, and became accustomed to placing lurid stories of sexual panic in the popular press.

The rise of Mary Whitehouse, the Clean Up TV campaign in 1964 and the foundation of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, is normally attributed merely to the growing liberalisation of values in broadcasting organisations and notably at the BBC on television to which Whitehouse directed the bulk of her ire during the 60s and 70s... the key reason for Whitehouse's intervention was her identification - correctly - of the crumpling of ecclesiastical moral vigilance in the form of the collapse of the PMC. The work of the PMC was passing to private moral campaigning organisations.

One particularly militant privatised group was the MRA - the Moral Rearmament Association. formed in 1921 it held to an emphasis on a scheme to transform the world by re-moralisation, led by the Holy Spirit. Its teachings centred on four absolutes: Absolute Unselfishness, Absolute Purity, Absolute Honesty and Absolute Love. Hotly contested by church hierarchy, it was nonetheless a hugely influential group whose members and sympathisers consisted of many public figures. Another group was the National Festival of Light. Four individuals came to represent the face of the NFL: Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge, Frank Pakenham and Cliff Richard. 

Muggeridge argued in 1968 that levels of divorce and mental sickness were higher in areas where contraception was readily available, adding that the idea that sex is needed for a valid marriage is almost 'blasphemy'. some Christian bishops accused prominent atheists of being occasioned by 'sexual lust'. Evidently, some conservative Christians strongly associated premarital sex and contraception with atheism and immorality. But unlike the the old ecclesiastical vigilante campaigners who enjoyed charmed protection from much public ridicule in the 1950s, by the end of the 1960s there was less hesitation about criticising people like Muggeridge, with newspaper letters in 1968 mocking his 'obsessive remarks on sex' and for being 'marginally more arrogant than God'. Outright atheism was still rare in discourse but the new morality signalled a declining influence of normative conservative church morality. (p175).

Chapter 7: The Sixties Liberalisation of Licensing

Change in the Air.

The lax and liberal regime of moral regulation Britain inhabits in the 2010s was, in ites essentials, formed in the 1960s and 1970s.

The mid 60s witnessed the confluence of 5 key changes in British culture. 

1) after almost 20yrs of Christian austerity's relative strength, stability and cultural dominance, steep secularisation commenced: rates of church membership, churchgoing, proportion of marriages religiously solemnised, confirmations in CofE, youth recruitment through Sunday schools and a number of other metrics of religious behaviour and belief sharply declined from 1962-63.

2) a sexual revolution developed comprising a comprehensive liberalisation - of views and practices towards premarital heterosexual intercourse, homosexual relations, the nature of sexual practises, sexual knowledge and fertility control, accompanied by declining guilt, shame and fear of social ostracism over sex.

3) Fuelled by consumer prosperity, youth culture took a huge stride in development, composed of an expressive revolution in generational independence through an admixture of music, dress, comportment, political protest in both old and new causes and access to higher education, and was marked by recreational drug use.

4) A singular and very enduring element of the decade's change was reinvigoration of feminism and the rise in demand for women's autonomy, marked by the declining salience of domestic ideology - te notion that a woman's ideal should be early marriage and motherhood. In its place quickly came demands for gender equality in total personhood - in pay and opportunity in work, education, leisure, sport and power. 

5) and much overlooked by the religious historian, there was demographic revolution fuelled by women, taking form in: the advent of ultra-low fertility (at below population replacement); diminishing and later marriage; and strong connection between declining religiosity and increased female participation in the labour market.

These five overarching trends each pronounced and persistent...

The churches - as well as the state, the press and older generations - stumbled in the face of the sixties. 

The liberal hour (between 1961-68) saw:

- the full decriminalisation of: off-course betting, suicide, medical abortion, male homosexual acts in private, 1967 saw the state approval of contraceptive advice and contraception to unmarried women and in 1968 the abolition of theatre censorship.

Surveys of notable pop culture shifts in various cities: Blackpool, London, Glasgow follows. By 1974 comment was made in the press after Billy Connelly's show 'Crucifixion':

It's such a permissive age that people are Godless and Christless, and they prefer to listen to toilet talk like Connolly's who we call manure mouth.

Brown concludes the chapter:

In Britain as a whole, the will to personal autonomy, widespread loss of personal faith and increased migration drove a vibrant nexus of popular music, drink, drugs and sexual revolution.

Chapter 8: The Humanist Challenge

 A thought provoking chapter that focuses on the deliberate efforts of Humanist and Atheist organisations and individuals to change public policy and attitudes on issues of moral and sexual importance. The chapter focuses on three issues: abortion, sexual conversation and moral reform before concluding with comments about the divided church on the issues that led to further watering down of their authority and lessening of their voice and reach in society.

--

In 1958 the Lambeth Conference finally gave its blessing - rather begrudgingly, one Humanist thought - to the idea of birth control.

--

Humanists were at the heart of the sixties' reform, leading progressive pressure groups and lobbying in parliament and elsewhere for the causes they espoused. 

--

The so called liberal hour largely started on the election of the second Labour government of 1966.

--

The work of progressive reform was constituted of a network or individuals characterised by Humanist, atheist or avowed agnostic positions. they congregated in a series of four types of organisation:

1) the small but influential intellectual organisation promoting social reform across a broad agenda - the Progressive League which had a tremendous influence amongst an elite intellectual group consisting of lawyers, scientists, philosophers and public intellectuals. 

2) non-belief sector bodies, principally the ethical societies that became the British Humanist Association in 1963. 

3) Professional bodies within which members of the network struggled to gain influence for reform ideas; such organisations included the British Medical Association, teachers' organisations and representative schools' associations. 

4) Pressure groups dedicated generally to one cause lobbying in parliament and elsewhere for legislation and favourable government policies on that cause.

The Long Silence

 The Long Silence, an anonymous vision published in Phil Moore's book : Job

At the end of time, billions of people were seated on a great plain before God's throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly, not cringing with shame - but with belligerence. "Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?", snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from the Nazi concentration camp. "We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!" In another group, a Negro boy lowered his collar. "What about this?" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. "Lynched, for no crime but being black!" In another crowd there was a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes: "Why should I suffer?" she murmured. "It wasn't my fault." Far out across the plain were hundred of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he had permitted in his world. how lucky God was to live in Heaven, where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, not hunger or hatred. what did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said. So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, a negro, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the vast plain, they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever.

Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth as a man. Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die so there can be doubt he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it. As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up fro the throng of people assembled. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered a word. No one moved.

For suddenly, all knew that God had already served his sentence. 

Finally Alive: Piper

Finally Alive:

Chapter 2: You are still you, but new

‘we are not dealing with something marginal or optional or cosmetic in the Christian life.’

‘The new birth is not like the make-up that morticians use to try to make corpses look more like they are alive. The new birth is the creation of spiritual life, not the imitation of life.’

The new life is ‘something above the natural life of our physical hearts and brains.’

‘flesh gives rise to one kind of life. The Spirit gives rise to another kind of life. If we don’t have this second kind, we will not see the kingdom of God.’

“The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself.” John Calvin

‘What happens in the new birth is the creation of a new human nature – a nature that is really you, forgiven and cleansed; and a nature that is really new, being formed in you by the indwelling Spirit of God.’

‘born of water’ is not a reference to baptism:

here’s why:

-      if baptism was the means by which and through which people were born again you’d expect the theme of baptism to play a more predominant part of Jesus’ teaching. Especially in this chapter where Jesus is explaining being ‘born again’ to Nicodemus. It seems that believe is emphasised more than baptism.

-      Jesus said in reference to being born again that the wind blows wherever it pleases. His point was that you cannot predict or control where the Spirit moves and who he selects for the new birth. If water baptism was a prerequisite for being born again how would this statement about the Spirit remain true since we could control it through baptism.

-      Nicodemus is rebuked for not knowing what the statement of Jesus’ meant. Jesus expected Nic as the teacher of Israel to know the old testament scriptures. Christian baptism would come later and so isn’t in the OT scriptures. Jesus is not rebuking him for a lack of prophetic understanding of the things to come!

‘Water’ refers to Ezekial 36

‘I shall sprinkle you with water and you shall be clean from all your uncleanesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.’

‘the ones who will enter the kingdom are those who have a newness that involves a cleansing of the old and a creation of the new.’

I am still the same morally accountable human being that I was before the new birth occurred. The old Jez has been washed clean by water. My guilt has been washed away, my shame has been washed away. I am the same person but my sin has been washed off of me.

However, a clean version of the old me isn’t enough, my sin is deeply rooted and is a result of my heart of stone. My old heart could respond with passion and desire to lots of things but it was a stone toward the spiritual truth and beauty of Jesus Christ and the glory of God.

Chapter 3: We are spiritually dead

John Calvin: Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

‘no one knows the extent of his sinfulness. It is deeper than anyone can fathom.’

God loved us even when we were dead. Even when we were a corpse.

‘if we don’t know that we were dead, we will not know the fullness of the love of God.’

What does this deadness mean? The NT gives us ten statements:

1)   Apart from the new birth we are dead in our trespasses:

-      not physically or morally: but spiritually

-      we are dead in the sense we cannot see or savour the glory of Christ.

2)   Apart from the new birth we are by nature objects of wrath:

-      our problem is not just in what we do but in what we are. I am my problem.

-      ‘Apart from my new birth, I am my main problem. You are not my main problem. My parents are not my main problem. My enemies are not my main problem. I am my main problem. Not my deeds, and not my circumstances, and not the people in my life, but my nature is my deepest personal problem.’

3)   Apart from the new birth we love darkness and hate the light.

-      ‘We are not neutral when spiritual light approaches. We resist it. And we are not neutral when spiritual darkness envelops us. We embrace it. Love and hate are active in the unregenerate heart.’

4)   Apart from the new birth our hearts are hard like stone.

-      ‘Ignorance is not our biggest problem. Hardness and resistance are.’

5)   Apart from the new birth we are unable to submit to God or please God.

6)   Apart from the new birth, we are unable to accept the gospel.

-      The unregenerate person cannot because he will not. His preferences for sin are so strong that he cannot choose good. It is a real and terrible bondage. But it is not an innocent bondage.

7)   Apart from the new birth we are unable to come to Christ or embrace him as Lord.

-      ‘It is morally impossible for the dead, dark, hard, resistant heart to celebrate the Lordship of Jesus over his life without being born again.’

Chapter 4:

Unless we are born again we cannot say with Paul ‘I count everything as loss compared to the surpassing joy of knowing Christ my lord.’

“We will not sing with authentic amazement the words ‘amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,’ unless we know the wretchedness of our heart. John Newton knew his heart, that’s why he wrote the song.”

Our condition apart from the new birth:

8) We are slaves to sin

9) We are slaves to Satan: The unregenerate may scoff at the very idea of a devil. And of course, nothing is more in line with the father of lies than the denial that he exists.

10) Apart from the new birth, nothing good dwells in us. In one sense we have good things: creation, eyes, ears, the soul, government, marriage, family. However we’re told that all these things exists for his glory, for the pleasure and acknowledgement of the one who made them all. Thus: ‘Where people use all that God has made without relying on his grace and without aiming to show his worth they prostitute God’s creation.’

This is our tenfold condition. Without the new birth we are hopeless, we cannot fix ourselves or improve ourselves. ‘Dead men do not do better.’

Without the new birth we won’t:

-         ‘see the kingdom of heaven’ is what Jesus says. We won’t be able to see God’s kingdom, be with him in heaven. Instead we’ll be separated from him suffering in hell for all eternity.

-         We won’t:

o   Having saving faith

o   We’ll be condemned

o   We won’t be children of God, but children of the Devil

o   We won’t bear the fruit of love but our actions will result in death

o   We’ll have eternal misery and suffering at the hands of the devil

-         Opposite to this, with the new birth we will:

o   We’ll be given saving faith: 1 John 5:1

o   We’ll be justified, and imputed with Christ’s righteousness: Romans 5:1

o   We’ll be adopted into God’s family. Born by the will of God. John 1:12

o   We have the Spirit of God in us, the spirit of love, who causes us to produce good fruit with our lives. 1 John 3:14

o   We have heaven to look forward to, the pinnacle of our joy being intimacy with our creator.

This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, ‘you MUST be born again!’

Chapter 5: Faith, justification, adoption, purification, glorification

Why was the incarnation necessary? The incarnation is directly linked to our regeneration. With all of the great things listed in the previous chapter: saving faith, being justified, being given the Spirit, with heaven to look forward to… why did Jesus need to come for those things to happen? If that is the new-birth why couldn’t God have affected it without the incarnation, death, burial and resurrection of Christ?

In 1 John 3:5 we’re told that Jesus appeared to take away our sins and then in v8 we’re told that he came to destroy the works of the Devil. Our sin and the devil’s work are what prevent us from being born again. For this reason Jesus appeared.

We have new life by being united to Christ, the incarnate one. Jesus said ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.’ Jesus’ life was such that we are super-charged, made alive and given real life simply by being with him. We connect to him and receive his life. Without his life, we would have no one or nothing to be united with.

1 John 3:3 ‘everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself…’

By hoping in him, his life, his death, his resurrection we purify ourselves. A mark of our new birth is our desire to be pure as he is pure.

‘The perfection we do not have, Jesus provided. The judgement we do not want, Jesus bore.’

What keeps your life alive? Natural life is sustained by the pumping of blood around the body, spiritual life is sustained by the life of Jesus flowing through us. We do not have a spiritual life of our own but only one that exists because it’s connected to him.

Part 3: How does the new birth come about?

Chapter 6: Ransomed, raised and called.

‘One of the most unsettling things about the new birth, which Jesus said we all must experience if we’re to see the kingdom of God, is that we don’t control it.’

We don’t decide to make it happen any more than dead men decide to make themselves alive or babies decide to make themselves become conceived and then make themselves leave the womb.

Before the new birth we treasure sin and self-exaltation so much that we cannot treasure Christ.

Faith and the new birth are inseparable. You cannot have fire without heat so you cannot have the new birth without faith.

From God’s side and our side, what is the new birth? Are we involved? In John 11 Jesus called Lazarus to life and told him to ‘come out’, Lazarus walked out. Jesus raised him, Lazarus did the rising. God regenerates us by 3 ways:

1)   Christ’s ransom on the cross.

2)   Christ’s resurrection

3)   God’s effective call

Quoting Piper:

‘ He ransomed us from the sin and wrath by the blood of Christ and paid the debt for sinners to have eternal lie. 2) He raised Jesus from the dead so that union with Jesus gives eternal life that never fades away. 3) He called us from the darkness to light and from death to life through the gospel and gave us eyes to see and ears to hear.

I’m alive because he’s alive! I’m alive because he died! I’m alive because he called me!

Chapter 7: Through the washing of regeneration

‘Washing’ here again is used in conjunction with our new birth. We last saw this in John 3 when Jesus said to nicodemus born of water and the spirit.

As with the John passage so with here, washing is another way of referring to the rebirth since our rebirth is a cleansing in the same sense that the spirit cleanses us as he gives us a new heart.

The word ‘regeneration’ used in Titus 3:1-8 is used only one other place in the NT. Matthew 19:28 where Jesus talks about the new creation, the regenerated creation. Our new birth really is the first instalment of the new creation. That is why we MUSt be born again to see the new creation. The new creation will be a regenerated Earth and only regenerated people can live there. Regernerated trees, and seas and plants and people. Presently we see that God has cursed all of creation as a visible display of the horrors of sin.

‘God’s purpose is that the entire creation be born again.’

He has started this process with us. He makes us aliuve by the cleansing and washing of the word and spirit(!) and he does it by his kindness.

If you are born again it is owing to the kindness of God.

The loving kindness of God – in greek the ‘philanthropia’ of God. The philanthropy It occurs only here in the NT. Paul says that God is the ultimate philanthropist. God is inclined to bless humanity!

1 John research notes

Overview:

John Stott:

Even a superficial reading of the gospel of John and the first letter reveals a striking similarity between the two both in subject-matter and syntax... love of opposites set in stark contrast to one another - light and darkness, life and death, love and hate, truth and falsehood.

Those who have been born of God, God's children are variously described in relation to God, to Christ, to the truth, to each other, and to the world. They are 'of God' and have come to 'know' God, the true God through Jesus Christ. It may even be said that they have 'seen' God... Christians are not only of God but of the truth as well. The truth is also 'in' them and they 'do' it or 'live by' i, for the Spirit given to them is 'the Spirit of truth'

Occasion:

His first concern is not to confound the false teachers, whose activities form the background of the letters, but to protect his readers, his beloved 'children', and to establish them in their Christian faith and life. He defines his own reason for writing as being 'to make our joy complete', 'so that yu will not sin', and 'so that you may know that you have eternal life'

He is also concerned about: those who would lead you astray and deceive you.

The deniers of the divine-human person of Jesus are called: false prophets, deceivers, antichrists.

"Once they passed as loyal members of the church, but now they have seceded and 'gone out into the world' to spread their pernicious lies."

The heretical teaching is either a denial that 'Jesus Christ has come in the flesh' or a denial of Jesus as 'Christ come in the flesh.'

The denial of the incarnation took two forms: one who denied Jesus' humanity, one that denied his divinity. 

The three 'if we claim' sentences of 1:6-10 are a denial either that sin exists in our nature, or that it has erupted in our behaviour, or that it interferes with our fellowship with God.

'whoever claims' to live in Christ ought to give evidence of it by walking as Christ walked. And what do the commands of God and the walk of Christ involve? In a word, love.

Of the liars: they cannot claim to 'be' righteous unless they actually 'do' righteousness.

Sin and lovelessness are as much at variance with the mission of Christ as they are with the nature of God.

Gnosticism summary: the impurity of matter and the supremacy of knowledge.

Certainty about Christ.

Perhaps realigning the gnostics emphasis on knowledge John says: we know... that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. 

But how do we know these things? Three stages.

1) The historical event, Christ's being 'sent' 

2) The apostolic witness. The even did not pass unnoticed. The one who came in the flesh was seen, heard and touched, so that those who say could testify from their own first hand experience.

3) The anointing of the Holy Spirit, by whom we are taught and therefore know.

We are not to lead the congregation into novel doctrines, but to recall them to what they have heard 'from the beginning'.

Certainty about eternal life.

To be a Christian, in the language of John is to have been born of God, to know God, to live in him, and to enjoy that intimate, personal communion with him which is eternal life.

The three 'cardinal tests' by which we may know whether we possess eternal life or not:

1) theological, whether we believe that Jesus is 'the son of God' 3:23

2) moral, whether we are practising righteousness and keeping the commands of God. Sin is wholly incompatible with the nature of God.

3) social, whether we love one another. 

The three tests belong to each other because faith, love and holiness are all the works of the HS. It is only if God has given us his Spirit that we are able to believe, to love and to obey.

To fail to pass these tests is to stand self-exposed. 

A fresh certainty about Christ and about eternal life, based upon the grounds which John gives, can still lead Christian people into that boldness of approach to God and of testimony to the world which is as sorely needed as it is sadly missing in the church today.

David Jackman:

1 John is a cicular letter. It was probably sent from Ephesus to the congregations of Asia Minor. 

These letters may well be the last of the canonical scriptures to be written, probably during the decade AD 85-95

The first letter is directed to a specific situation in the churches, where false prophets have separated themselves and their followers from the main body of believer and so divided the church.

Their reasons for this action seem to have centred on their claim to a special 'anointing' of the HS, by which they had been given true knowledge of God. This knowledge became the centre of their distinctive beliefs and lifestyle. 

John's concern, as we shall see, is to emphasise and define what is a true knowledge of God: 'we know' is one of his favourite recurring assertions.

Among the many strands of gnostic belief, we can note two major ones which are vital to our understanding of John's context. The first is the exaltation of the mind, and therefore of this speculative knowledge, over faith and behaviour. The second is the conviction that matter is essentially evil because the physical world is the product of an evil power.

Three times he describes them as 'liars'.

To the gnostics to describe the eternal Son as having flesh and blood was unthinkable; to John it was the heart of our salvation. His body given for us, his blood shed for us were the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world and the supreme demonstration and guarantee of the love of God for mankind.

False teaching always leads to false living, and the ethical implications of gnosticism are equally John's concern throughout the letters... Such an attitude led them to separate themselves from the churches as a new moral and spiritual elite.

On: 'my dear children' Lenski comments: this is the voice of a father.

When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3

John has no doubt as to the answer. Doubtless aware of the special personal relationship he had had with the real, historical Jesus in his incarnation.

Belief and behaviour are inseparable. Mind and heart belong together. True light leads to real love. 

'The gospel and...' is at the root of many errors. 

In every generation the church is challenged by the world, either to confront or to absorb its culture, to 'be squeezed into its mould', or to 'let God re-mould your minds from within'.

John does not attempt a detailed analysis or critique of error; he has no need to do so. He proclaims the truth in the characteristic apostolic confidence that where the truth is declared and believed, error will be undermined and will ultimately collapse. 

Chapter 1:

Phil Moore:

- example of William Pit making a return visit to the House of Lords as an old man to implore them concerning a decision over France. He died during his speech.

John as an old man (80-90) addresses his church to reassure and strengthen their confidence in the gospel.

'True Knowledge' Phil says is it what 1 John is about.

The Fixer - he says that John is keen to lend whatever help he can to fixing the church and ensuring her nets are capable of catching fish. 

First: John fixes their view of the Christian message. He emphasise 'eternal life' meaning both undying in the face of persecution but also the power of the life in the gospel: 'the life of the eternal age;

"We are meant to feast so fully on the delights of the coming age that we are able to bring down its power to people living in this age that is passing away. If the church remembers this, its powerful preaching will never fail to catch a crowd of eager converts, but it never will if its nets are broken through forgetfulness."

Second: He fixes our view of Christian calling. Koinonia = partnership. We are called to partner with one another and with God. 

Third: He fixes our view of Christian experience. we are meant to be marked by joy. 

John Stott:

The word of life is not a title for the Son but an expression for the gospel, the message of life... the particular emphasis of which concerns that which was from the beginning which we have heard, seen and touched... what the apostle stresses in his proclamation of the gospel is the historical manifestation of the eternal.

The preface's sweep is: from eternity to eternity, from that which was from the beginning to the fullness of joy.

The eternal pre-existence:

The author is announcing, he says, 'what has always (from the beginning) been true about the word of life.'

The historical manifestation:

The four relative clauses proceed 'from the most abstract to the most material aspect of divine revelation'. To have heard was not enough; people 'heard' God's voice in the OT. To have seen was more compelling. But to have touched was the conclusive proof of material reality, that the word 'became flesh, and lived for a while among us'. 

The word 'pselaphan' is to grope or feel after in order to find... it may also mean 'to examine closely.' Although this is the climax of the sentence the emphasis is on seeing. Two verbs are sued for sight: see and behold. 

It is impossible to distinguish between Jesus and the Christ, the historical and the eternal. They are the same person, who is both God and man.

The authoritative proclamation:

He must be a witness before he is competent to bear witness.

It is for this reason that the verbs to 'see' and to 'testify' are so commonly associated with each other in the NT, as they are in v2.

Our author insists that he possesses these credentials. Possessing them he is very bold. Having heard, seen and touched the Lord Jesus, he now testifies to him... For the Christian message is neither a philosophical speculation, nor a tentative suggestion, nor a modest contribution to religious thought, but a confident affirmation by those whose experience and commission have qualified them to make it.

The communal fellowship

The proclamation was not an end in itself; its purpose immediate and ultimate is now defined. The immediate fellowship and the ultimate joy. Westcott: 'the last of the apostles points to the unbroken succession fo the heritage of faith.'

'Fellowship' is a specifically Christian word and denotes that common participation in the grace of God, the salvation of Christ and the indwelling Spirit which is the spiritual birthright of all believers... our fellowship with one another arises from, and dpends on, our fellowship with God.

This statement of the apostolic objective in the proclamation of the gospel, namely a human fellowship arising spontaneously from a divine fellowship, is a rebuke to much of our modern evangelism and church life. We cannot be content with an evangelism which does not lead to the drawing of converts into the church, nor with a church life whose principle of cohesion is a superficial social camaraderie instead of a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

The completed joy

The substance of the apostolic proclamation was the historical manifestation of the eternal; its purpose was and is a fellowship with one another, which is based on fellowship with the Father and the Son and which issues in fullness of joy.

David Jackman

The phrase (from the beginning) echoes the start of the gospel of John... Go back as far as you will in your imagination, says Genesis, before anything that exists came into being, and you will find God, the eternal Being. 

The phrase pros ton patera (with the Father) indicates the closest sort of face-to-face fellowship, existing in the eternal mystery of the Godhead. 

Jesus himself asserted: I am the life.

Paul could say, "We preach Christ" showing that the message and the person are ultimately identical. 

Every clause of this introduction has its own edge.

Everyday experiences

Some of the strongest rebukes and warnings of the NT are reserved for such double-mindedness, which is at root hypocrisy. 

Faith is the door to fellowship.

The word fellowship (koinonia) is an interesting one. Used in classical Greek as a favourite expression for the marriage relationship, the most intimate bond between human beings, it is particularly appropriate to describe the Christian's personal relationship with God and with his fellow believers as here.

In our desire for visible unity among Christians, however, we must not forget that it is fellowship with God that comes first; fellowship with one another is derived from that.

The conscious possession of eternal life, the daily enrichment of personal fellowship with the living God, the deepening awareness of oneness with all God's people everywhere - could there be any comparable recipe for fullness of joy? 

As a spiritual song from a bygone generation put it: happiness happens; but joy abides.