Barth on non-Scriptural language

To continue from my post on using non-Scriptural language to describe the Trinity, Karl Barth raises the point that to object against using non-scriptural terminology per se would also mean we must object to all preaching of the Bible that went further than a simple reading of it:

Already in the early Church the doctrine of the Trinity was attacked on the ground that it is not biblical, that in the form in which it was formulated by the Church’s theology it cannot be read anywhere in the Bible. This is especially true of the crucial terms “essence” and “person” which theology used. But it is also true of the word “Trinity” itself. Now this objection can be raised against every dogma and against theology in general and as such. It would also have to be raised against proclamation, which does not stop at the mere reading of Scripture but goes on to explain it too. Now explanation means repeating in different words what has been said already…”
(CD 1/1 §8 – p.308; emphasis mine.)

Gunton on the Image of God and the Environment

Phil Jackson left a great comment on my Environmentalism post earlier this month:

 I want Christianity to be sustainable without need for extra biblical imperatives, to contain within itself such self-limiting principles as would moderate population, carbon, water, energy by it own understanding of ecology, economy and ecclesiology…

I was reminded of that when reading Colin Gunton’s essay on “The Human Creation” in his The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991). In dealing with the “image of God” in humanity he takes a ‘personal’ reading, building on the Christian understanding of God as Trinity, and argues that the image of God in humanity is not to be thought of as rationality or anything belonging only to the interior mental world, and touches upon the implication of this for human relation to the nonpersonal creation. It’s fairly involved, but worth it:

The merit of the approach to anthropology by means of the concept of person is that it relativizes so many inherited dualisms. Relations are of the whole person, not of minds or bodies alone, so that from all those created in the image of God there is something to be received, and to them something to be given. When the image is located in reason, or for that matter in any internal qualification like consciousness, problems like those of ‘other minds’ are unavoidable. The person as a being in relation is one whose materiality is in no way ontologically problematic, whatever problems derive from the way in which we relate in actual fact to others.
The contention that our realising of the image of God embraces our embodiedness as much as our intellect and our ’spirituality’ leads into the further point that we are not human apart from our relation with the non-personal world. Much current misuse of the creation, with its attendant ecological disasters, derives from a lack of realisation of human community with the world. It is not the same kind of community, that of equals, as that with which we were concerned when speaking of the community of persons. But it is a fact that we receive much of what we are from the world in which we are set and from whose dust we come. It is the context within which we become persons, and it too, is in a kind of community with us, being promised a share in the final reconciliation of all things. Although it is not itself personal, the non-human creation is bound up with that of the human, and depends upon us for its destiny. It is not something which we stand over against in the sense that it is at our arbitrary disposal, as ‘technocracy’ assumes. It is rather, to use Polanyi’s metaphor, the reality which we indwell bodily, intellectually and spiritually. Here, being in the image of God has something to do with the human responsibility to offer the creation, perfected, back to its creator as a perfect sacrifice of praise. It is here that are to be found the elements of truth in the claims that the image of God is to be found in the human stewardship of the creation. (pp.117-118)

I think that a lot of this is helpful in looking for the grounds of a Christian involvement in and attitude to the rest of creation. The planet, the plants, animals, seas, rivers, clouds, mountains and valleys matter and are in a kind of relationship with us. This isn’t to personalise creation in a Gaia-theory kind of way, but rather to recognise our relatedness to the rest of creation and our responsibility to care for it. We indwell creation and depend upon it, just as it depends upon us and is bound up with humanity and our personal relating to the personal, trinitarian God. There is an asymmetry to this relationship as the environment is not personal, but there is not such a sharp dividing line between humanity and the non-personal creation as we sometimes imagine.

Find me a postgraduate course!

I’m looking at doing a Masters’ degree in Theology with the aim of then going on to a doctorate, probably in something New Testament-y. Yesterday I visited the postgraduate open day at the University of Aberdeen – currently top of the rankings for UK research in theology, or something like that. I was particularly interested in the MTh in Biblical Theology that they offer – it differs from the courses at some other universities in that the course is self-consciously Biblical Theology rather than Biblical Studies; that is, it looks at the Bible not only as literature, but also as something to be read theologically. There’s even a compulsory module in “The Use of the Bible in Theology” which looks at the way(s) the Church has used and been shaped by Scripture. It’s also fairly well-regarded by other universities, particularly for New Testament, which would be helpful for Doctoral degree applications. There are also some studentships available via the AHRC for taught Masters’ programmes, though these are competitive. I’d really need to get a studentship to be able to afford to do a postgraduate degree, so this was good news! They’re allocated on academic merit, so hopefully if I get a first that’ll help my application.

Other universities I’m considering are Nottingham (natch!) and Durham (visiting in December).

I think this photo captures the weather...

The campus itself is quite nice, and I blagged my way into the library to see how it compares to Nottingham… the actual building is smaller and (oddly) a bit dark inside, but they do seem to have more books for (Christian) Theology, especially Systematic and Biblical stuff. Which is what you need, really. There’s also a specific Divinity library, which is mainly for Undergraduates, but looked pretty good.

The city also seemed quite nice – King’s campus is located a short way out of the city centre but I went in to have a look around anyway. Aberdeen did seem a bit more expensive than Nottingham, so I’ll need to bear that in mind. It’s also a long way from home! As the cabbie at the airport helpfully pointed out, it’s at the “very edge of the empire”. I flew, which was fast, and not too expensive from Birmingham (to go from Nottingham East Midlands Airport would have been a joke amount of money though…) but to drive or take the train would take most of a day.

I realised on the plane home that I’d also unintentionally come home with £15 in Scottish banknotes. A quick Google search reveals that nobody is obliged by law to accept them in England (they’re not, contrary to popular belief, ”legal tender”) but I’m hoping that I can find somewhere that’ll take them. If not, I know what my sister (at Southampton Uni) will be getting inside her Christmas card…

Lunchbar: Why trust the Bible?

Lunchbar last Friday at Nottingham University Christian Union was on the question “Why trust the Bible?” As our speaker pointed out, this is not only an academic question, but one of huge personal significance, and a really important question for anyone exploring or trying to understand the Christian faith.

What our speaker wanted to put forward was the contention that the Bible is what it says it is - that is, that the biblical writers were not mistaken when they said things like:

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”
2Timothy 3:16

“Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
2Peter 1:20-21

The Bible itself claims to be divine revelation and not human ideas about religion. But this is very different to the common perception of the Bible as irrelevant, contradictory and full of fairy tales. Is this correct?

In 1999, over 60 million Bibles, 90 million New Testaments and 1.5 billion parts of the Bible were printed – in 1999 it was the world’s most printed book. Apparently, in one year in the previous decade, this was not the case for the first time ever – and the IKEA catalogue actually had more copies printed. But few people would turn up to a talk and question and answer session on “Can we trust the IKEA catalogue?” – certainly not as many as came to the talk on the Bible, because the Bible is also important because of its content and the scope of its claims. It makes claims about the very nature of reality itself, and about the world we live in, and about how to know God, and about the future. So the question of what we do with the Bible is not an abstract one, but something really important. If the Bible isn’t trustworthy, we shouldn’t believe it – and if it is trustworthy, we should not only assent to its truth but also stake our whole lives on it being true. It’s that important.

So we’ve seen that the Bible itself claims to be divine revelation and trustworthy. But are there any other reasons that might help us trust that it is what it says it is?

• There’s the whole scale of the Bible – written over many centuries by over 40 authors, but with a coherent storyline and a likeness and affinity between the individual books that make up the Bible. Individual books are distinct, but yet they have a wholeness and closeness to each other that you wouldn’t get, for example, by going to the “Philosophy” or “Religion” section in a bookstore and picking the first 66 books you found there.
• There’s the historical rootedness and reliability of much of the Bible. A lot of the Bible is narrative, about people and events that are found in history – many of which can be known about from nonbiblical sources. These accounts are not like fairy stories at all, but check out historically.
• There’s the matter of fulfilled prophecies – for example, the Old Testament prophecies which are undeniably more ancient than their fulfillment – many of these concern events in the life of Jesus.
• There’s the huge influence the Bible and its message have – transforming people, societies and whole nations.
• There’s the realisticness of the Bible. It doesn’t present a wholly flattering picture of its characters – even the ones it praises. The biblical writers are honest about the failures of even people said to be close to God: Jacob is the father of Israel, but Israelite writers call him a deceiver; David was Israel’s greatest King, but his adultery and conspiracy to murder are recorded; Jesus’ disciples stand behind the New Testament gospels which show them to be dull-witted and faithless, abandoning Jesus as he is arrested and killed. The Bible’s claim about human nature and sinfulness is also realistic. It tells us about a world that is true to life and readily recognizable.
• The textual transmission of the Bible is reliable – that is, we can be confident that what we have now is essentially what was originally written. For the New Testament, particularly, the manuscript evidence enables us to be very confident. For the Old Testament Hebrew text, we know that the ancient scribal copying processes were rigorous and accurate, as witnessed to by the surprisingly small amount of difference between the Hebrew text as found in a modern critical edition and the Hebrew texts of Old Testament documents found among the “Dead Sea Scrolls” at Qumran.

This is a kind of “balance-of-evidence” argument, and none of these are knock-down arguments proving the Bible is the reliable and trustworthy word of God. But they are enough to convince many millions of people that the Bible is trustworthy. And perhaps they are enough to convince us to take it seriously and take its message about Jesus seriously.

These kinds of evidence don’t, however, prove our main contention: that the Bible is what it says it is. This is a circular argument – but then so too are all epistemologies (“Reason is the ultimate arbiter because it seems reasonable to me for it to be so”; “There is no ultimate authority because I do not know of any”) – so it is not “special pleading” but rather a case of which claim to authority we accept. The Christian’s claim that the Bible is authoritative revelation of God is, however, one that works – though that can perhaps only be seen by people who try it out.

Environmentalism – a religion?

An ex-employee at an Oxfordshire-based firm is planning to take his former employer to a tribunal because he feels he was unfairly dismissed from his job because of his views on climate change, which a judge has ruled comes under the category of “religion, religious belief or philosophical belief”. (BBC report here)

Surprising, isn’t it? I’m not sure that many climate change campaigners would be entirely happy to have their views described as a religion. I’m not entirely convinced myself that it is a religious or philosophical belief, though I think there are several points of similarity.

Michael Crichton gave a speech a few years ago where he addressed the question of whether (some) environmentalism was religious in character:

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

There’s also the apocalypticism (using the word loosely!) of much climate change rhetoric. Jesus’ words in Luke 21 could, with slight modification, easily be used in an Al Gore video: ”there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven … There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken“

"The sky is falling!"

So there are a couple of similarities. Some environmentalism is obviously religious – I’m thinking of the James Lovelock Gaia-theory-esque stuff here. But I don’t think all of it necessarily is. Christians can obviously be involved in exercising responsible stewardship of the earth’s natural resources without thereby becoming syncretistic. But it does at least invite the question… how easy is it for Christians to be (unwittingly) syncretistic with the new religion of environmentalism when they make statements about climate change? Do we need to outline our theological position (God made the creation; humanity is to exercise stewardship; God is sovereign and is in control of whether and when and how the world will end… for a start) a bit more clearly so as to differentiate between Christian takes on climate change and ecology and competing religious positions?

Lunchbar: What would Jesus say about the recession?

Lunchbar today at Nottingham was on the topic of the current economic situation. For many of us, as our speaker observed, this is not just an academic question but one in which we have a personal stake. Most students are finding it harder to afford things, many of them have parents or relatives who are in difficult circumstances, some students have had to leave university as their parents cannot afford to support them. In addition, it is harder for graduates to find jobs when they leave university. So it’s a big issue.

It’s also hard to guess what God would actually say about the recession in particular, so we have to be careful. But there are some things that the Bible does say about God that might help us see what might be going on. God is completely in control of the economic situation, and has a purpose in it. Isaiah 45:7 reads:

I form the light and create darkness,
       I bring prosperity and create disaster;
       I, the LORD, do all these things.

So the recession isn’t somehow beyond God’s control – but what might God be trying to bring out of it? Without wanting to claim to have the definitive answer to that question, we can perhaps suggest three things that the recession can teach us.

First, the recession opens our eyes to the situation that many people in the world live in all the time. In the West, recessions tend to come and go, and we perhaps have got used to the idea that things tend to improve over the long run, allowing for the occasional blip. But in many parts of the world this just isn’t the case, and there is massive poverty. Compare Britain with Zimbabwe – the British unemployment rate is about 7%; in Zimbabwe it is more like 94%. The average Zimbabwean earns just $0.30 a month, several thousand times less than the average Briton. So perhaps the recession can show us a little bit of what it is like to be poor – as the majority of the people in the world are.

Second, the economic crisis shows us something of what sin is. We see it quite easily in those who are responsible for the economic crisis – those in banking and finance whose greed has led to the current crisis. We rightly feel aggrieved at this, and can see how wrong a lot of the exploitation that has gone on in the financial world is.

 

But as we recognise the sinfulness of the greed and exploitation that has gone on in the financial sector, so we too should take the opportunity afforded us by the recession to recognise that the same disease afflicts us too. Isn’t the reason that we haven’t done exactly what the bankers have done more to do with the fact that we haven’t had the power and opportunity to exploit, rather than us being morally superior? If we’re honest, we can see the potential within ourselves for exploiting others for financial gain, given the chance. So the recession also shows our own sinfulness to us and helps us to realise that we need God to create a clean heart in us and cleanse us from our corruption.

Finally, the recession can teach us that money is not everything, and is a fickle friend. The recession has shown that even those who are wealthy can easily lose their wealth; that money is an insecure source of security. People talk a lot of the comparitive risks of every investment, but even the relatively safe investments can become devalued; and in any case are no insurance against the inevitability of death. If money is not a good source of our ultimate security, then what is? Ultimately, the Christian gospel claims, it can only be found in Christ and in his Kingdom. So the recession could function to turn us to God by showing up the transience and insecurity of what we have been trusting in.

Come, see how he dies…

I think we don’t talk enough about the resurrection. I’m not talking about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, circa 30 AD – though the more we talk about that, the better. I mean we don’t talk enough about the one that’s going to happen – your resurrection and mine. The Nicene Creed has “I believe in the resurrection of the dead”, and we don’t explicitly deny this, but we much prefer to talk about “going to heaven when we die”. The problem is, most people hear that and think of the immortality of the soul. Pictures of people in heaven floating around playing harps on clouds doesn’t help.

Bad theology

We forget that the Bible doesn’t offer the solution to death of the immortality of the soul, but offers instead the resurrection of the body – at the return of Christ and the renewing of all creation. Daniel 12:1-4 gives voice to this:

But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Paul says the same thing in 1Corinthians 15:

the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

This is so different to the idea of the immortality of the soul. Christians should resist the sharp dualism offered by the idea of an immortal soul being released from a mortal body – that’s Platonism, not Christianity!

This affects our view of death, as well. Oscar Cullmann famously presented the difference between the Greek view of death and the immortality of the soul and the Christian view of death and the resurrection of the body by comparing the deaths of Socrates and Jesus.
(Oscar Cullmann, “Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament” in Krister Stendahl (ed.), Immortality and Resurrection, Death and Resurrection (New York: Macmillan, 1965))

Socrates faces death calmly. For him, it is insignificant because the soul is essentially deathless. Drinking the hemlock only sets him, the real Socrates, free from the prison-house of his body. Death liberates his soul, and he returns to eternity. “The destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed”.

By contrast, come, see how Jesus dies. In Gethsemane he struggles with his impending fate. He knows that his life can be entrusted to his Father’s faithfulness and love, but death is an all-too-real experience. He is in agony anticipating it. Death means being forsaken by God and being taken away from real, full-blooded existence, at least for a while. Jesus knows he is an embodied being, and that whatever existence there is in the grave, it is radically reduced from the fullness of life God intends for humanity. Death is a horror and a terror, beyond which we can only have hope because of God’s promised recreation: resurrection of the body.

Cullmann’s point should stop us from being careless in the way we express the Christian hope. It is not enough to say “I will go to heaven when I die” – death must be undone and the dead must be raised in new, perfect, incorruptible bodies. Death is ambiguous at best – an enemy which cannot ultimately harm us; inevitable, but not the final word. It will be undone – until then, we can recognize with our Saviour its horror and unnaturalness; in hope because God has promised to resurrect the dead, and God keeps his promises.

Relativism: A “flawed philosophy”

Just spotted this from Friday’s Times. Antonia Senior writes:

It’s impossible to be a cultural relativist when faced with daily examples of other cultures getting it wrong. There is no validity in any view of right or wrong expressed by the Taleban. There is no truth in any cultural creed that treats women as inferior, let alone those that mutilate them. There is no cultural excuse for child abuse disguised as exorcism.

Relativism is in retreat, but there is no coherent moral framework taking its place. It helped us move from the certainties of the imperial age into a more tolerant era, but it’s almost impossible to work out what comes next.

I’m in complete agreement that moral relativism is both a) flawed and b) responsible for stifling public debate over moral questions by privatising them. Relativism is, if not ubiquitous, still extremely common as a position among university students and the middle class. But what do we put in place of it? Ms Senior suggests that on (her) atheist presuppositions it’s actually quite hard to test moral propositions and decide what’s right and wrong. She’s on to something here – moral and ethical debate is completely shaped by our wider philosophical and theological presuppositions. Relativism perhaps represents the best of the failed attempts to get around this fact and allow holders of incompatible theologies to share a morality. The fact is that moral truth-claims really hang upon theological truth-claims and any attempt to discuss morality needs to recognise this. Does this mean that morality is even more radically privatised? Not necessarily – rather it means that we must allow the theological dimension to moral discussion to be mentioned (and examined) in public moral debate, and not written off from the start as irrelevant.

Lunchbar: Aren’t all Christians hypocrites?

Last Friday’s lunchbar was on the title “Aren’t all Christians hypocrites?”

Sadly it’s not unusual to hear the sentiment expressed, that the behaviour of Jesus’ followers makes it impossible to believe in him. They talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. We all know times when Christians have publicly fallen into the kind of sin they claim to disapprove of.

Our speaker made several points in response to this objection. Crucially, it is important to recognise up front that Christians historically, and all Christians from time to time, fail to live up to the standards they profess to believe in. The Bible says that looking at someone lustfully is mental adultery; that Christians shouldn’t get drunk; that they should turn the other cheek rather than return insult for insult… and even the most casual of friendships with Christians will show you that Christians often fail to live up to these standards. We don’t want to deny that.

But, a lot of the discussion depends on our definition of hypocrisy. If we define hypocrisy as pretending to be perfect when we’re not – well, no Christian should claim to be perfect this side of heaven. Perhaps we can define it as failing to live up to the standards we espouse. On this definition though, everyone who has ever lived and who ever will live is a hypocrite – we all fail to live up to our own standards of right and wrong – let alone God’s standards. In this sense, Christians are as much hypocrites as anyone else. No Christian should deny that he or she is a sinner and in need of God’s forgiveness.

But Christianity offers a solution to the problem posed by our hypocrisy: Jesus Christ. Those who admit their failure and accept his forgiveness and rule over their lives are counted as being right with God, and will be made perfect when he returns to bring all things into submission to God. Not only this, but Jesus Christ himself was no hypocrite. He challenged a hostile crowd to convict him of sin and they were unable to (John 8:46). If someone wants to know what Christianity is about, far better for them to look at Jesus Christ than at his followers’ imperfect and faltering attempts to imitate him. While Christians are called to become like Christ, they can only offer a poor and caricatured image this side of the resurrection. However, we can show Christ to others; commend him and show his hypocrisy-free life in the four gospels. While Christians fail to live up to the standards of morality taught by the Bible, Jesus kept them perfectly on our behalf. It is not enough to reject Christianity on the grounds of the failure of Jesus’ followers to live up to his standards – we must look at Jesus, and at the solution he offers for our hypocrisy: forgiveness, restoration to a right standing before God, guidance and help to become more like him in this life, and the promise of being raised from the dead perfected when Christ returns.

In praise of FlashForward…

I’ve got a new favourite TV drama… at least until Spooks Season 8 comes out some time in November. FlashForward has been showing on Five on Monday nights, and watched by me whenever I have 45 minutes online. Fortunately, it’s only just started airing in the USA as well, so I’m not getting massive spoilers all over the internet like I do for House and CSI. FlashForward’s based on a book by Robert J Sawyer, which I haven’t read, but which is apparently quite a lot different to the TV series. In the book, apparently CERN is to blame for what happens (at least, according to one of the weirder things in this week’s Times). In the TV version, the entire population of the world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds… except they don’t black out, but have visions, apparently of their futures 6 months from now. Obviously mass mayhem from unconscious drivers, pilots, tightrope-walkers etc. ensues (a bit like in the Left Behind series, but slightly more likely to actually happen!) but the real interest lies in how the characters react to having seen their futures.

Seeing the future is a good thing for some of the characters – they see something good and embrace it. Bryce, a doctor, was about to commit suicide when the visions happened – but seeing a normal life six months ahead helped him rediscover a purpose and meaning in his life. One of his patients sees himself as much more confident in the future, giving him confidence to be himself. For these people, knowing the future is good gives them hope. As Bryce puts it, “the future saved me”.

However, for some, the visions are disturbing. Bryce’s colleague Olivia sees herself in an affair with a man who is not her husband; her husband Mark, who works for the FBI, is being hunted by assassins; and his partner Demetri does not have a vision at all – which we learn means he will be dead in 6 months’ time. These characters have varying, but negative reactions to knowing the future. Olivia tries to ignore the visions and suppress them; Demetri becomes depressed and angry, taking a fatalist view; Mark puts his energy into investigating the visions, hoping that by seeing the future he can change the future. In fact, the characters’ beliefs as to whether the future is changeable seems to correlate with whether they liked what they saw in their visions. Mark gives voice to this, comforting his young daughter who seems to have had a disturbing vision, saying that only the good visions are going to come true. It’s a pat, transparent lie, and we see that Mark himself doesn’t entirely believe it.

So far, we haven’t seen whether the future actually can be changed in the Flashforward universe, or not – whether people can alter their futures from what they’ve seen. But the question of predeterminacy is an interesting one with a lot of potential and I’ll be interested to see how they handle it. My guess from some of the things that have happened so far is that it is possible to change the future in the Flashforward universe, but also that a lot of the visions are going to turn out to be self-fulfilling prophecies: In Mark’s vision he is disturbed to find himself drinking again after having previously given up alcohol. He keeps this secret from his wife, but it obviously concerns him and may well give him enough stress to turn to drink again.

It’s also interesting that nobody is any less “free” in a volitional sense for having seen the future. People carry on making choices and decisions (and indeed living relatively normal lives!) without being conscious of any kind of compulsion. If there is predeterminism in the Flashforward universe, then it certainly doesn’t rule out “free will”. There is a both-and relationship going on; much as in the Reformed understanding of the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. I’m hesitating to draw any more parallels or distinctions just yet, because we haven’t seen how the series develops – and I don’t want to use it as an illustration only to have it backfire on me and make me look like an Open Theist or something! Still, there’s a fair bit of theological content in this series, which is often a good thing.

As for the detail… some of the actual dialogue is on the cringe-worthy side, but I can live with that. I also have to suspend disbelief a little at how quickly people get on with things despite a global catastophe that should properly mess up everything (it’s like they’re all British!). However, the concept of the “flash-forward”s and some of the (theological) issues raised mean I’m hooked and also make it one of the better sci-fi dramas I’ve seen lately. The actual thought-experiment of “what if we saw the future?” is clever and engaging enough to make up for some of the more saccharine moments in the actual execution of the drama. So far… maybe it gets better or worse as the series goes on…

Anyway, it gets a reccommendation from me.