Breakfast with Jesus: Walking the Camino

Well we have finally reached the end of our long, long journey on the Camino (though we are adding an epilogue of four days walking to the sea - Fisterra by the Atlantic). 779kms and 36 days of walking across all kinds of terrain, weather and meeting lots of people on different kinds of journey. It was actually quite emotional to walk into the huge square of Santiago and give each other a hug and shed a few tears of joy - and relief!

This interview, hosted by Leisa Aitken, is part of our series, ‘Women as thought leaders in theology.’ It is with the brilliant and deeply pastoral Oxford based clinical psychologist, Anglican priest and theologian Reverend Dr Joanna Collicutt McGrath. We discuss her recent book, So Longeth my soul: A reader in Christian spirituality. Joanna wrote it for those needing an accessible introduction to reading the primary sources of spiritual writings through history, with excerpts from a range of profound Christian writers from 2nd to 19th century. Joanna’s interdisciplinary thinking and knowledge of church history is rich and insightful. During this interview we explore a range of topics, including the universal themes of loss and longing, constraints that female spiritual writers in history experienced, and the topic of her second PhD; the role of the visual arts and visual imagery in understanding the scriptures. We hope you are inspired to read this superb book and so find fellowship with Christians through the ages whose souls, like ours, have longed for God.

This is our second Breakfast with Jesus on our Camino walk - now over 600kms into it! This chat was recorded after we had climbed into the Galicia mountains and saw the awe-inspiring views from the high point of the ancient village of O Cebreiro. So it was fitting that we discussed Psalm 8 in this context - the succinct mandate for a human centred cosmos! Our first chat covered creation-as-providence in Psalm 145 - but Psalm 8 takes this providential view of creation one huge step further and charts the role of humanity in this created order. And it is a breathtaking calling as mini-gods - or a ‘little lower than gods’ - crowned with glory and honour. Of course this leads to the epic second chapter of Hebrews which takes this Psalm as the vision for the high calling of what it means to be a human being. A vision that is only fulfilled in Jesus. We want to capture the exploratory way we discuss the Scripture so this chat, like the last one, is unscripted and it wanders like our conversations. We pose questions - and explore possibilities. But it is all anchored around a text. And we use a theologian we like to stimulate and guide our thinking, although we don’t slavishly follow their thinking. I think this is how the Spirit wants us to work with Scripture: not as excavating the ‘right’ meaning, but rather as interpreting it into our lives and thoughts today. Hope you enjoy it.

Inspiration and Scripture is a two way process - it includes our reading of scripture not just its delivery through authors. That is the fascinating perspective that Ben Myers offers in this thought provoking interview I did with him recently. It builds on Mark Strom’s recent talk on his journey through a widening perspective on what ‘Scripture’ means. Ben begins with the opening of Erich Auerbach’s famous book on Western Literature, Mimesis. Auerbach contrasts Homer and Moses - in particular the story of Abraham in Genesis 22. He says that Moses’ narrative is deep and mysterious, in contrast to Homer which is shallower and eloquent. For Ben (and Auerbach) this suggests the unique way that Scripture works - as in invitation to the reader to enter the text and start a conversation with God about what is going on. The picture that emerges from Ben’s ideas is really important for us today. It defies the view that Scripture is a flat text with clear and precise meaning which we are called to excavate. Rather the scripture is like a deep ocean with the surface visible but the depths hidden and attractive. So in this view our ‘reading’ is part of the inspiration process. Enjoy this talk. Between Mark and Ben, they offer rich depth to the idea of what ‘scripture’ and ‘inspiration’ mean.

This is a talk by our beloved colleague Leisa Aitken. You will be familiar with her work on hope from previous talks. Here is her introduction to the talk. This Talk is adapted from a paper entitled, “Responding to a crisis of hope- Gregory of Nyssa in dialogue with contemporary psychology” presented at the John Behr conference at Alphacrucis College last year. Ben Myers and I co-wrote the original paper, and I am grateful for Ben’s theological input. This version also reflects some of my further reading and thinking. I offer it as an example in my life of the ‘So What’ question we are exploring this year in Gospel Conversations. How might the more expansive theological landscapes of the Church fathers and mothers reshape not only our understanding of God himself, but our intellectual and professional life? As a Clinical Psychologist with an academic interest in the psychology of hope, I have been reflecting on how patristic theology intersects with my own work. The content is therefore quite ‘niche’ but hopefully illustrates the ‘So What’ exercise. As Ben more eloquently puts it (as always), it is an exercise in ressourcement – returning to ancient texts to illuminate contemporary questions. An important personal caveat is that, until recently, I have spent my Christian intellectual life in the undulating lowlands of the reformed evangelical world. It has only been in the last few years, through Tony’s encouragement via Gospel Conversations, that I began reading the towering figures of patristic theologians. I have read many of Gregory of Nyssa’s books and writings, but I am by no means an expert on his grand theological vision, which has its own assumptions, internal coherence and historical situatedness. In drawing on those aspects of Gregory’s fourth century thought that connect to my own, I know I do not yet fully inhabit his intellectual and theological landscape. I haven’t done the full pilgrimage - it feels like I’ve been flown in to hike the last few kilometres of Everest! I may not have done the full ascent from basecamp, but I can still glimpse some of the rewards of the final view. His mountaintop concepts- epektasis, apokatastasis, the mystery of God - have provided a rich new vantage point to view my theological and psychological homelands. I understand, for example that for many universalist theologians like Gregory (and more recently Bulgakov and Bentley Hart), the reconciling of all things in Christ is the natural consequence of other ‘basecamp’ foundational understandings of scripture and cannot be simply be ‘an option’, as I present my own position in this talk. Like many GC listeners, I am still working out which hermeneutic makes the best sense to me and how new thinking integrates with my existing frameworks. That pilgrimage itself involves quite steep and rocky terrain and will take time. I am thankful that relationship with Jesus himself doesn’t require theological acumen or certainty on such matters, and only that I come to him as his child. On this challenging and exciting journey, I rest in that.