Bond Thwarts the Bad Guy's plans for Global Domination...

So it seems that Devil May Care, the new James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks, was officially launched yesterday at the expense of the British taxpayer, much to the frustration of the Daily Mail.

Tuuli Shipster, the model whose shapely form adorns the book's cover, brought seven copies of the book from the printers in a samsonite case, carrying the case down the Thames in a Pacific 24, a Rigid Inflatable-hulled speedboat, escorted by a couple of Lynx helicopters. Rendezvousing with the HMS Exeter at the Pool of London, she carried on down the Thames aboard the Exeter, still escorted by the Lynx helicopters, finally brought ashore, and then escorted to Waterstone's Piccadilly by a cavalcade of Bentleys.

Bond supposedly served as an intelligence officer on some incarnation of the HMS Exeter, so I suppose it must have seemed fitting to someone that such a crucial role in this publicity stunt should have been played by the current HMS Exeter, a Type 42 destroyer that served in the Falklands War and which must surely be due for decommissioning any day now, considering that most British ships have a service span of twenty-five years or so.

The Mail is up in arms because, of course, they say that this was at taxpayers' expense, though I'm sure the publishers must have coughed up something. Still, though, you have to wonder whether the Royal Navy might have better things to be doing with its time. Mind, it is recruiting season, isn't it . . .

My favourite part of this whole charade, though, is the bit where the Mail reports that 'The book, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bond creator Ian Fleming, is published today and the details of the plot have been kept secret. All that has been revealed is that the story is set in 1967 during the Cold War and sees 007 travelling to London, Paris and the Middle East.'

The plot has been kept secret? A 007 plot has been kept secret? Why? In case people might guess what it's about, and have their fun spoiled? They're all the same!

Years ago, in UCD, I was amused to see how Filmsoc had advertised their 'Bond Week'. Beneath every film's title was a summary of the plot, and all the plots were identical: 'Bond thwarts the bad guy's plans for global domination and shags loads of chicks.' Well, almost all. Goldeneye tried to present a more sensitive take on Her Majesty's pet thug, and so was described with the rather disappointing 'Bond thwarts the bad guy's plans for global domination, and shags just one chick.'

Mind, it was Izabella Scorupco . . .

Separated by a Common Language

Are you going to vote 'no'?' asked an English friend of mine yesterday, seemingly out of the blue. 'Please vote 'no'. If you don't vote 'no' then we might never get a chance.'
'What are you talking about?' I asked, and then ventured a weary 'Lisbon?'
'The European Constitreaty.'
'Why do you call it that?'
'Because it's the Constitution, with a few of the words changed, and the mandatory flag -- though they still fly the flag and sing the anthem anyway!'
'It was never a Constitution,' I retorted, 'and should never have been called one. Doing so was a pretentious and absurd attempt to glorify it. It was only ever another treaty, and a far less dramatic one than the Treaty on European Union.'

'Well, the point is that every UK party promised we'd get a vote on it, and only one of them made any attempt to deliver on that promise.'
'They didn't, actually. Blair was forced into a corner by Rupert Murdoch, who said that he'd withdraw support for Labour if Labour didn't promise a vote on the version of the Treaty that had all the Constitutional stuff in. That version failed, following the French and Dutch votes. A new treaty based on that had to be renegotiated. No promises were made about this one.'
'Technicality.'
'That's not a technicality! It's a different thing!'
'It is different, but it's 95 per cent identical, according to virtually every European leader who signed it.'
'So what? You're 98 per cent identical with a chimp, but you're not one.'
'Me being 98 per cent similar to a chimp wasn't due to some overpaid bureaucrat signing a piece of paper.'
'You mean your Prime Minister?'
'In a darkened room. On his own.'

'I'm actually far happier with this than I was with the previous version. I'd been unhappy with the old preamble, and am glad it's been ditched. But why do you think you should have a vote on this?'
'Why do you have one?'
'Because I come from a modern country with a written constitution that demands that any possible adjustment to our constitution must be put to the people.'
'So it is a constitutional treaty.'
'In the sense that it might perhaps effect Ireland's own constitution, yes, maybe,' I conceded, 'but no more than Rome, the Single European Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam, or Nice. Rather less than Rome and Maastricht, in fact. Much, much less. But since the Supreme Court's Crotty Judgment in 1987, all European treaties have to go to a referendum in Ireland. It's a singularly bad way of ratifying treaties, in fact, since the vast majority of people won't read the things and wouldn't understand if they did!'
'Probably. But the fact is there was a cross-party pledge and two out of three have broken it.'
'Well, no, again, because it's a different treaty!'
'Ours is more identical because of the red lines.'
'What do you mean "more identical"? Everybody signs the same treaty.'
'The red lines. Exceptions. . . I think.'
'Those exceptions are part of the treaty. They have to be approved by other people. We have to approve your 'red lines' just as you have to approve ours.'

'For what it's worth, and this may interest you,' I continued, 'the Irish system of default ratification by referendum is in fact quite questionable. The Crotty judgment said that it'd be fine to ratify treaties by statute rather than by referendum provided that 'such amendments do not alter the essential scope or objectives' of the EU, and it's certainly arguable that the Lisbon changes don't alter what the EU is about. In fact, really all they do is hopefully clear up some of the clutter that makes it hard to do its job. However, the people have grown fiercely attached to their right to have their say on these treaties they haven't read, and any party that attempted to reverse the default position would be wiped out. In other words, the only real political rationale for us having a referendum on this matter is to prevent a backlash against the government. Curiously, though, the government parties are not allowed to enlist the resources of the state to campaign for the treaty.'
'Well, obviously. Or are your parties state-funded?'
'Not obviously at all. Until about ten years ago they could do so, and indeed doing so was really just a matter of political leadership. As things stand, the parties cannot enlist the resources of the state in any referendums.'
'It is political campaigning, though.'

'Do you have any idea of the sort of things we've had referendums on?'
'Probably really trivial matters that need resolution.'
'Ratification of European Treaties and of Irish acquiesence to the International Criminal Court, removing the constitutional ban on divorce, defining the status of the right to life of an unborn child relative to that of its mother, the right to Irish citizenship, the voting age, and the possibility of replacing our PR-STV system of voting with a 'first past the post' system, just as examples.'
'Those arent constitutional. Except the first two . . . and the last two . . . and the other three.'
'Now are you really saying that it should be impossible for a government minister to be interviewed by the national broadcaster about one of these things, backed fully by the government and the majority of members of our parliament as voted for by the people, without the national broadcaster having to go and find somebody to interview to put an opposing view?'

'Well the national broadcaster is another thing . . .'
'It's an arm of the state. It can't take sides, and can't be used to put forward the case of the government, without a counterbalancing view being put forward too.'
'It should be representative of the full spectrum of opinion.'
'Why?'
'Because otherwise it would be Pravda, the propaganda arm of the state. In many ways the BBC already is . . .'
'Too obvious an answer. And wrong too. Look, you say a full spectrum of opinion --'
'I said "representative".'
'So -- what -- someone from the extreme left, someone from the extreme right, someone in the middle?'
'No. Representing the views of the people, respecting people's understanding.'
'And how do you establish what the views of the people are?'
'Well it's not exactly numerical analysis. Use rules of thumb and opinion polls.'
'So if a referendum looks set to be passed by 95% of voters, with the remaining 5% being, shall we say, BNP types, do you go, well, they're the opposition on this issue, and give them a platform on the national broadcaster?'
'5% of the time. You don't choose your opponents in matters like that. All it does is encourage them, drives them underground.'
'Even so, do you give them a platform?'
'Depends how they conduct themselves on it doesnt it? Richard Barnbrook was given virtually no platform and he still made his way onto the London Assembly, yet now he has a platform he has shown himself for the rude, obnoxious lout he really is. Ultimately it is an argument against state broadcasting altogether, which as an argument I would fully endorse.'
'Well, oddly, I'm sure the European Commission would too, though I'd disagree.'

'Look, do you have any idea who the campaigners against European treaties are in Ireland?' I asked, 'For what it's worth, they always about 20% of the vote. Our opposition to EU treaties always comes from the same people, who reel off the same nonsense every single time. The few remaining socialists and communists in the land oppose them, Sinn Fein and other hardline nationalists oppose them, holier-than-thou Catholics oppose them, and a chunk of the Green Party -- the chunk that overlaps with the socialists and communists -- does so. Together they can yell and shout and roar emotive nonsense that while incorrect and usually contradictory nonetheless serves to get people to vote against the treaties, convinced that we'll lose our supposed neutrality, or our tax laws, or be forced to start butchering babies tomorrow.'
'So that's an argument against political debate then.'
'No, it's not, actually. And those people don't know the meaning of debate. Lying isn't debating. I'm just trying to see why you'd want this, that's all. It's a pain in the hole here, trying to make yourself heard over that hysterical shower of gobshites.'
'If they lie then it's the presenter's responsibility to challenge them on it. Of course not every presenter is as talented as Andrew Neil, sadly.'
'Posters. Leaflets. Newspaper articles. TV adverts. No presenters there. Look, let's put this simply: despite your claims about promises and such, at bottom you want a referendum on this so you can vote against it. That's certainly what you intend to do, yes? So why? Why would you vote against it?'
'Largely because I want this country to have the opportunity to make a de facto rejection of what the European Union has become: an expensive burden on the legal framework of the United Kingdom, and an affront to its sovereignty, instead of the trade bloc it was meant to be.'

'It was never meant to be a trade bloc -- why do you say that?'
'Well, that's what we entered into. The notion of a European President and Foreign Secretary is also horrifying -- particularly if Blair gets it.'
'No you didn't -- let's stay with the first point for a minute -- you signed the Treaty of Rome, same as the rest of us. I realise that the term 'perfidious Albion' is proverbial around the world, but why are you so keen to pretend you signed up to less than what the Treaty established?'
'The Treaty of Rome was a blank document encapsulated between a frontsheet and a signature page.'
'Rubbish. Not by the time Britain signed it. What does the first line of it say? The very first line? "Determined to establish the foundations of an ever closer union"! That's what you guys signed up to, same as us. Ever closer!
'In 1953. Mainly by people who aren't alive any more.'
'Signed up to by the British and the Irish in the early seventies, which is the relevant date from your viewpoint. And you've still got the same head of state! You signed up for ever closer union. The Common Market was only ever meant to be the first part of that. Everyone knew that.'
'Well, that's about the only function it's served remotely well as, and I'm not particularly sure it's serving the UK well any more.'
'Would you rather withdraw, then? That'd be okay, you know. It's not as if you're particularly constructive members of it. You're basically a fat kid sitting on the sidelines, saying you want to be on the team, but only if the team plays your way.'
'I dunno. But that's something I'd rather see decided at the parliamentary level, rather than at the EEC level.'
'So you'd trust your parliament with the decision to withdraw, but not with the decision to make things more efficient? A it happens, the Treaty provides you with a mechanism to withdraw.'

'It's not just about efficiency though is it? There's more in that treaty than efficiency measures.'
'It basically is, actually. There's not much more, really. It's ultimately a streamlining exercise. The current structures aren't designed for 27 countries and 450 million people.'
'It's not reasonable to use one policy to let a load of other ones through.'
'It tidies the commission, it makes the council more accountable, it makes the parliament more democratic, it gives the national parliaments an opportunity to vet proposed legislation in advance rather than being faced with facts on the ground. As for the Presidency and the Foreign Minsitry position, the second one really does little more than to merge two positions, while the Presidency effectively exists already and has done for years. All it does is replace the current six-monthly rotation system with a more stable two-and-a-half year system, which should obviate the need for things to stall with a new learning curve every few months . . . so what's bad about it?'
'I can't remember. I've mainly given up hope on it. I've just generally been very much anti-Europe since I learnt how much money they take away from us and waste, and how much of that "waste" is actually politicians taking it for themselves. And the loss of our sovereignty in general.'
'I'm pretty sure you gain far more from the EU than you lose. Besides, it's not as if you have a huge amount of faith in your own government's fiscal prudence, is it?'
'I seem to recall seeing a chart that had us second from bottom in terms of EU value for money. Oddly enough, Ireland was at the top.'
'Probably because we play the game, really. The Euro is a big factor too.'

'The thing about my government's fiscal prudence is that in two years I will be able to completely get rid of them, whereas getting rid of the EU government would involve a huge political coalition across the whole of Europe at the same time, and given that it's made up of coalitions of dozens of smaller parties. . . there's no real way to do it.'
'I'm not sure you can be so certain. They were elected with a huge majority last time despite getting just a third of the vote last time. They might get beaten by another party that will have only a third of the vote. Your system is a travesty of democracy, I'm afraid.'
'Tories are currently hovering above 40 per cent. They took Crewe and Nantwich four days ago, the 126th safest Labour seat.'
'Great, so you'll get a landslide despite being opposed by almost six out of every ten voters. Wonderful.'
'That's not exactly how the system works. We have the constituency link so everybody is in some way represented, even if it doesn't reflect 100 per cent on their viewpoints.'
'Meaning what?'
'Meaning that if the government wanted to turn Coventry into a reservoir, there's someone in the House of Commons who will fight to prevent that from happening.'
'Er, we have constituencies too, so I don't see why this is special.'
'The alternative is minority governments and coalitions which spent half their time in government in deadlock, meaning that no decisions get made, which can be seen across half of eastern Europe, or PR which means that you get wholly unaccountable politicians.'
'We haven't had a majority government since 1985 or so, and we certainly don't have deadlock. And who says they're unaccountable? In what sense? Well? I'm curious . . . I'm just saying, I've lived under and voted in two systems, and I think the British one is a joke. Complaints about Brussels being undemocratic always strike me as hilariously hollow when they come from a country where most voters are effectively disenfranchised.'
'I don't think it's perfect. It's far from perfect. But it's the best system there is.'

'No government has had a popular majority since 1931.'
'But there have been several changes in government -- popular by what definition anyway?'
'In the sense of you count the votes and see if anyone got more than half. In terms of votes, they've all been minority governments, with more people having voted for 'losers' than 'winners'. 64 per cent of voters didn't vote for Labour in 2005, 59 per cent didn't vote for them in 2001, and 56 per cent didn't in 1997. 58 per cent of voters didn't vote for the Tories in 1992, just as 57 per cent didn't in 1987 and in 1983, and 56 per cent didn't in 1979. It goes on . . .'

Exploring 'Christianity Explored'

Over the past year I've heard good things about Christianity Explored, an evangelical course that supposedly 'complements' the Alpha Course, but looks rather to have been designed back in 2001 as a corrective to it, having rather more to say about sin that Alpha and markedly less to say about the Holy Spirit. If it were to be pigeonholed, it'd probably be best described as a mainstream Evangelical course, unlike Alpha, which is rather more charismatic.

A couple of friends of mine in Manchester were thinking of doing 'Christianity Explored' a while back, but were unsure, having tried and been decidedly unimpressed by the Alpha Course not long before, finding it fluffy and lightweight. I spoke to another friend, who'd done both courses a while earlier, and she said that just speaking for herself, she had found 'Christianity Explored' more worthwhile and more substantial than Alpha, grounded as it was in Mark's Gospel. Another friend, currently training for the Anglican ministry, said something similar to me when I stayed with him a few months ago.

In Manchester last month I came across a copy of 'Christianity Explored' by Rico Tice and Barry Cooper, the founders of the course, going for 50p in a secondhand shop. Curious, I picked it up, but only got round to reading it last night; I've been insanely busy over the last while.

It's interesting. I don't think the book's intended to integrate into the course, though it seems to follow the same structure and presumably rests on the same points. Rather it appears to be intended for people who can't do the course, for whatever reason, but might be interested in exploring this anyway.


Augustus Caesar, Divi genus . . .
So yes, it's interesting, and it's very strong in some areas. It's exceptionally clear, for starters, both in how it's written and how it's structured, and is particularly good on explaining sin and Grace, though its emphasis on the atonement doesn't make a lot of sense without some discussion of the relationship between Father and Son in the Trinity. Without discussing how the Father and the Son are One, it's hard to present the atonement as anything other than a form of cosmic child abuse. This isn't helped by statements such as 'Jesus was willing to be adandoned. He has taken God's anger on our behalf so that we can be accepted.'

Part of the problem -- and perhaps the course deals with this by being, of its nature, rather more interactive than a book which must be followed -- is that the real issue of Jesus' identity is skimmed over. The first chapter, entitled 'Who Was Jesus?', considers his authority in all sorts of remarkable ways, but in terms of what this means it largely dismisses it in a paragraph.

Was he a great moral teacher? A compassionate miracle-worker? A misunderstood revolutionary? Mark's verdict goes far beyond any of these, as you can see from the very first sentence in his book:

'The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.'

Noel Coward was once asked, 'What do you think about God?', to which he replied, 'We've never been properly introduced.' Well, that's exactly what Mark wants to do for us here. And he is determined that we see Jesus as a figure with divine authority: 'the Son of God'. Or, to put it another way, God in human form.

It's a bit of a leap, isn't it? I mean, leaving aside the fact that one of the earliest manuscripts we have -- the Codex Sinaiticus, if you're interested -- doesn't include this phrase, it's certainly not a self-evident interpretation. The term 'son of God' pops up pretty often in the Jewish scriptures, and certainly never implies any identification with God himself. And of course the early Christians lived in the Roman Empire, in a world replete with gods and demi-gods and sons of gods. The Emperor Augustus is styled 'son of a god' in the Aeneid, but it wasn't until after he had died that he was officially deified. In other words, we shouldn't automatically assume that Mark believed Jesus was God purely because he describes him as 'the Son of God'.

The funny thing, though, is that having announced that Jesus' divine sonship implied a divine identification, Tice and Cooper go on to treat of the atonement as though God and Jesus are absolutely distinct. There's no trace here of any attempt to discuss the mysteries of the Trinity or the Incarnation, no hint of the Nicene formula of the Son being of one substance with the Father of the Chalcedonian formula of Jesus having both a human and a divine nature.

I suppose it could be argued - rightly, in a sense -- that these mysteries are highly complex things, and a bit advanced for people just starting to explore Christianity, but without them you're left with Jesus being born solely so he can be abandoned by God and killed by men in order to satisfy God's anger against the sins of men. I know that's a caricature, but that's kind of how this comes across.


If a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key
What's more, if the reason for avoiding this issue is because to do otherwise would complicate things - if this is, in short, a tool for basic evangelisation - then I think other questions need to be asked.

The preface to the book is based round a straightforward problem. 'Is it really possible,' it asks, 'for a sane person to reach the conclusion that the Bible is indeed God's way of speaking directly to human beings? On what grounds?'

Well, in the first place the authors assert that 'any book that makes all the claims that the Bible makes about itself deserves some examination at least. . . even if there is only the tiniest, tiniest possibility that these claims might be true, the Bible deserves our attention.' It's a fair point, though I'm pretty sure the same thing should likewise be said of the sacred books of other religions too. What's more, the authors claim, the Bible looks like God's word, which rather presupposes that God exists -- something that isn't a given for any curious but convinced atheists -- and that we'd know what His word looks like! But how do we know it looks like His word? Well . . .

Approximately forty authors wrote in three different languages over a period of one thousand five hundred years. Some of the authors were young, some were old, some were soldiers, others were fishermen, farmers, civil servants or kings. They wrote during different periods of history, in different geographic locations, to different groups of people. It wasn't like a relay race, with one author handing on the baton to another. Often, they were writing centuries apart. But despite this amazing variation - which alone makes it a unique book - the Bible has one theme running through it like rings in the trunk of a tree. There is one striking message, one striking person at its centre. That person is the subject of Christianity Explored. Given the diversity of its origin, the long period of time over which the Bible was written, and the even longer period of history that it deals with, this single-minded purpose is quite staggering.

This bothers me tremendously. Firstly, the reason the Bible is so diverse is that it's not -- strictly speaking -- a book. It's a library! But perhaps more importantly, it doesn't really work to say that it has one theme running through it, that being the person of Christ. I believe this is the case, of course, but it's not prima facie true; certainly no Jew would ever accept that their scriptures are really about Jesus, and many early Christians had difficulty in seeing Jesus in those Jewish scriptures!

Tice and Cooper go on then to say that the Bible contains hundred of fulfilled predictions, which may well be true, but then declare that the Bible's authority was not seriously questioned for fifteen hundred years. What does this mean? It wasn't questioned until fifteen centuries had passed since Moses took up his pen - assuming you accept the Jewish tradition that he was the author of the Pentateuch -- or until fifteen centuries had passed since John had put down his? Or fifteen centuries since the Synod of Hippo approved as canonical the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and fourty-six books of the Septuagint? Or fifteen centuries since Martin Luther had seven of those Septuagint books excised from the Bible? That'd give us dates of roughly 100AD, 1600AD, 1893AD, and, um, sometime about a millennium from now.

I'm not even sure by what it means by 'seriously questioned'. Certainly, the Jews that met at Jamnia towards the end of the first century AD questioned and denied the authority of several books of the Septuagint and all the Christian scriptures. Some Christians, notably those led by Marcion, disputed the authority of all the Jewish scriptures, and other Christians wondered about the authority of such New Testament writings as Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. And of course, the pagans of the Roman empire simply didn't accept the authority of any of the Bible's books!

And then there's the claim that as we'd expect from a book so grounded in historical realities, 'archaeological evidence has repeatedly confirmed the unwavering accuracy of Biblical history . . . the Bible gives us real historical facts -- such as the amazing deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt -- that demonstrate the fact that God is powerful . . . if you want to know whether or not there is any substance to the Bible, one way of doing it is to see if there is any substance to its historical claims.'

Fair enough, but the thing is that the jury's definitely out on this very example. Archaeologists simply haven't found any evidence whatsoever that confirms a Jewish presence and exodus from Egypt at any stage. They just don't know.

A mistake? Sure, and a well-meaning one, surely, but a worrying one for all that. It's not the only one either. Only a few pages later, for example, the authors quote Morpheus from The Matrix and Thom Yorke from Radiohead, and then go on to say:

What Morpheus and Thom Yorke describe is nothing new. Augustine, writing in the sixth century, suggested a reason for this sense of 'wrongness' in our lives: 'O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.'

All very well, and indeed profound, except that this wasn't written in the sixth century. Rather, you'll find this line at the very start of St Augustine's Confessions, written in 397AD. Yes, that'd be the fourth century rather than the sixth. Just a casual mistake, a slip of the pen? Maybe, but I doubt it. See, while this line comes from St Augustine of Hippo, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, there was another Augustine, St Augustine of Canterbury, who was sent as a missionary to the English and who lived in the sixth and seventh centuries. It rather looks as though the authors just grabbed at the quote and assumed it came from the apostle to the English, without even making the most cursory attempt to find out its context!

That might seem to be quibbling, but I don't think it is. Rather, there seems to be a tendency here to simply accept easy answers, and not to question things. After all, if this course is intended for curious atheists just as much as for Christians looking to deepen their faith, why doesn't it raise the obvious questions of how the Bible came about, and indeed who Mark was? That last point seems crucial to me, in fact, given that the course is focused on his Gospel. The Gospel was actually written anonymously, after all, though it was certainly ascribed to Mark - who had served as Peter's interpreter -- at least by the second century.


When you are old, you will stretch out your hands . . .
The Petrine connection is important, especially given how in a chapter entitled 'What is a Christian?' the authors don't shirk when it comes into making Peter out to be some kind of buffoon.

They zoom in on the bit where Jesus asks his disciples who do they say he is, and rightly highlight Peter's response that Jesus is the Christ. 'But it's not enough simply to know Jesus' true identity,' they say. 'You see, Peter gets the question of Jesus' identity absolutely right here. But when it comes to the question of what Jesus came to do, Peter gets it horribly wrong.'

Impressive, eh? And on they go, telling the story of how Jesus explained his mission -- notably how he had to be executed but would rise again -- and how Peter rebukes him. And they elaborate at some length about what Peter supposedly said, although Mark says nothing of the nature of his rebuke and Matthew merely records an impetuous outburst that this must not happen!

Jesus, we're told, rebukes Peter in turn, telling that he does not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men. And the author -- it's not clear which one -- says that 'in a way' he doesn't blame Peter for having misunderstood. In a way? Presumably, then, in a way he does. Presumably, unlike any of the apostles, he'd have known better . . .

There's something quite sinister and underhand going on here, if you're paying attention, as the authors then shift to say that Jesus responds to those who have in mind 'the things of men' by describing the scene from Matthew's gospel that details how in Gethsemane one of the disciples -- John's gospel identifies him as Peter -- lashed out with a sword, cutting the ear from one of the temple guards. The authors then relate how Jesus again rebuked Peter for not understanding how the Scriptures must be fulfilled. 'Even here,' they say, 'as he pulls a sword to keep Jesus from being arrested, Peter has in mind "the things of men." He is still looking at the situation from a human perspective.'

So what? Well, a few pages earlier the authors had described the story of Thomas' disbelief after the Resurrection, and his response when faced with the living Christ in the flesh.

Thomas then makes one of the greatest statements of belief in the Bible: 'My Lord and my God!' Thirty years later, this stubborn, rational, incredulous man was to die a martyr's death testifying to what he had seen.

You'd never know from this that the evidence of Thomas' martyrdom is decidedly shaky, would you? If it happened, nobody is even remotely sure of where it happened, when it happened, or how it happened. It's a damn sight flimsier than the evidence of Peter's martyrdom, which is pretty much universally accepted as having happened during the Neronian Persecution, roughly thirty years after the Resurrection.

In fact, the authors give no sign of Peter ever having learned to keep in mind the things of God, rather than the things of man. They ignore his clear preeminence among the apostles, they gloss over his eventual martyrdom, and astoundingly -- considering that the core text for their course is Mark's Gospel -- they make no mention of how Mark had apparently been Peter's interpreter!

What's going on here? Well, it rather looks as though the authors are succumbing to that unfortunate tendency among some Protestants to hold that Catholics aren't really Christians.


Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?
It's obviously wrongheaded nonsense to set one apostle up against another, but I think it's fair to say that ever since Luther's day the Protestant churches have seen themselves as largely Pauline in inspiration, whereas Catholics have always stressed their Petrine connection. Some Protestants have scorned Catholics as latter-day Pharisees, giving primacy to man-made laws rather than true worship. Painting Peter as someone who stresses the 'things of man' rather than the 'things of God' is a rather clear way of suggesting that this tendency has been in Catholicism from the start.

This isn't the only subtle dig at Catholicism -- or liturgical Christianity in general -- in the book. I don't know if references to 'slightly spooky people in strange garments hanging about in dank halls' is intended as a jab at Catholicism or High Church Anglicanism, but take, for example, the casual description at the end of James and Jude as 'Jesus' own brothers'. Sure, the Bible uses that term for them, but it may well not have meant 'brothers' in the strict sense of siblings -- Aramaic was a flexible language, and the term rendered in Greek as 'brothers' may just as easily have meant half-brothers, cousins, or pretty much any male relation. Still, by ignoring the fact that this is a contentious point, the authors are casually able to imply that there was no way that Jesus's mother remained a virgin after his death, putting paid to any temptations to honour her. Or look at this:

There were a couple of blokes in my rugby team who lived their lives without reference to God, but who nevertheless used to 'cross' themselves as they ran on to the field. It was a little self-help formula they used: a quick, superstitious prayer to get them in the right frame of mind. But that's not what Christian prayer is about.

Again, the author might be right, but leaving aside how it's hardly for us to judge anyone else's relationship with God, study that tone of contempt towards making the sign of the cross. Why the inverted commas, for starters? It's worth bearing in mind that making the sign of the cross like this, although a custom in most Christian churches from at least the second century, is almost wholly alien to Evangelical Protestants. It's seen as a 'Catholic' thing, an extra-biblical charm of no spiritual value.

It's striking too that the entire section which asks what it is to be a Christian juxtaposes Peter's supposed failure to understand what Jesus was about with a section which describes how Jesus, having rebuked Peter, summons the crowd and tells them what it really means to follow him. It's curious, really, that it doesn't consider the account of the episode in Matthew's gospel -- and since occasionally the authors skip away from Mark, as they do when describing the Gethsemane incident for instance, they'd surely do so if they wished. Matthew's gospel has Jesus responding to Peter's confession of faith in words that Catholics tend to reel off perhaps too readily while Protestants tend to pretend aren't in the Bible:

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Look, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with an Evangelical book taking an Evangelical line; it'd be ridiculous for it to do otherwise. But I get uncomfortable when books and courses are marketed to people saying that they represent the essence or the central truths of Christianity when in truth they just reflect one small variant of Christianity, a variant that seems to be at odds in some important ways with the faith held by the majority of Christians over the eras, gong back to the disciples of the disciples.

But then, as the authors of Christianity Explored seem to imply when they say that 'in a way' they don't blame Peter for his failure, they clearly think they know better.