136
terms of the holistic, systems-based approach
scientific problems. This approach argues that -an
effect cannot always be explained in terms of a
specific context of causal relations, but every event in
a system is conditioned immediately by the totality of
the system in an often unpredictable way.2 Applying
this insight to the relation of the divine to the human
we may say that religious truth does not give us
ethical principles which can then be made to yield
practical maxims which can then be put into effect,
but rather that our religious intuitions have an
immediate and unconditional bearing on the whole of
our relation to life. The theological task of tracing the
ways in which religious belief can be ’cashed’ in
factual terms will, therefore, be an eternally stimula-
ting but (in principle) incompletable task.
For Jeremiah it is clear that the ultimate horizon or
boundary of his existence is a place of meeting with, a
place of listening to, a God who is in turn attentive to
human needs and human well-being. For his con-
temporaries there is no such ultimate boundary, no
place of meeting, no other, only the endless self-
projection of the ego, individual or collective: nihilis-
tic violence is the appropriate expression of such a
desolated world-view. Jeremiah’s experience of the
boundary as a place of mutual concern, however,
means that he knows that ’basic trust’ which enables
him to go the gentle way.
There is, of course, one point in which Jeremiah’s
situation is quite different from our own, a point
directly relevant to the matter of hope beyond the
void. Jeremiah could hold together the thought of an
inevitable collective disaster and the thought of a new
order emerging ’the day after’. Our problem is
compounded by the fact that we can envisage a
disaster of such magnitude that there will be no day
after. The only strategy for survival is to prevent
disaster from ever occurring. But Jeremiah can still
speak to us, even at this point, if we accept that there
is a sense in which the catastrophe is even now upon
us and the moment of the void is in our midst.
Whether or not war actually happens we are prisoners
of the nihilistic war mentality. In the face of this the
hope which Jeremiah so eloquently describes can
become for us too a source of profound ontological
confidence, enabling us to take the gentle way, to
bring about the green revolution, ’to plant gardens ...
to build houses and settle down ... to marry and have
children ... to increase and not decrease’.
Interwoven into the fabric of Jeremiah’s book is
the theme of the alternation of creation and destruc-
tion. The prophet sees this as fundamental to God’s
way of acting (31:28) and he himself is empowered
by God ’to uproot and to pull down’ ( 1:10). He shares
the insight of Qoheleth that the way of God is to set
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to the for birth and the time for death,
time
the for planting and the time for pulling up,
time
the for killing and the time for healing,
time
the for tearing down and the time for building
time ...
He sets the time for love and the time for hate,
the time for war and the time for peace.
(Eccles 3:2-3,8)
Those who interpret the Judaeo-Christian view of
history in narrowly linear terms may well be of-
fended at such ‘wisdom’. Yet the notion that all that is
is held together in a fundamental order within which
everything has its limit and its time is profoundly
biblical, and is known by the prophet as well as by the
wise man. Can we believe that the moment of the
void also has its limit, and may it be that we are now
called to act as if it were the time for peace?
1
All biblical references are, unless otherwise indicated,
from the book of Jeremiah. I have used the Good News
translation.
2 cf. Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point (London [1983]),
pp. 75ff.
A Horrid
Passage in Luke
Explained (Lk 19:27)
BY PROFESSOR J. DUNCAN M. DERRETT,
BLOCKLEY. GLOUCESTERSHIRE
THE parable of the minas (pounds) is expressly about
the interim period between Jesus’s going from the
disciples and his coming again. The stress of the
parable is on the unacceptable behaviour of the last
servant mentioned, and the master’s reasoning as to
his delinquency. But as we compare this with the
Matthaean parable of the Talents we see that Luke
has deliberately added a new theme, for his ’master’
is a man who had to go abroad to obtain a kingdom -
and some of his fellow-citizens hated him and sent
after him with the message, ’We are unwilling that
this man should reign over us’. Having eventually
disposed of the inadequate servant who neither
intended to work with the master nor did so (cf. Lk
12:47), the returned master, now a king, says, ’And
as for those enemies of mine who were not
willing
that I should reign over them, bring them hither and
slaughter them in my presence’. From the behaviour
of the king we are evidently to understand what will
be the attitude of Christ at the Second Coming. All
the teaching about righteous behaviour, and about
rewards and punishments, has a bearing on our
present life, and perhaps it is right to say that

righteousness itself is salvation (heaven is not a
perpetual dinner in another world).’ However that
may be, a gospel of peace and reconciliation hardly
does well to end a magnificent parable with such a
grisly threat, and I was for long unhappy about it.
Alert scholars have already pointed to 1 Sam
10:27; 11:12, though, at that time, the theory that
gospel parables were to be expounded by preachers
with the aid of Old Testament material was not as
securely accepted as it had been in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. If we consult the 1
Samuel passages we find that Saul, who was a
Messiah manqué, exercised vengeance on those who
did not, instinctively, fall in with Yahweh’s plans for
the Children of Israel. But is it really adequate to
’document’ the Second Coming with an analogy from
the story of Saul, a most unsatisfactory character,
superseded in every sense of the word by David? An
allusion to the unsavoury episode at 1 Sam 15:33 is
even less edifying. What I now have to say is that by
itself the 1 Samuel text will not serve to support, or
excuse, Luke. There is something better, and when
we have grasped this we shall find that there is wholly
new information available to us about the parable of
the Pounds, conceivably also about that of the
Talents. At the very least we shall know why Luke
intruded the theme of the man who went to be made
king into the great parable.
The idea of slaughtering helpless prisoners before
the victorious king is very repulsive to us, recalling
episodes within living memory, associated with a low
level of civilization which we realize is only beneath
the surface everywhere. The intriguing of Asian and
African politicians is no stranger to our breakfast-
table, not to speak of events nearer home. But there
is a biblical pattern which makes the violence
respectable. Of the many ’types’ with the aid of which
Jesus was preached to Jews a very prominent one was
Joshua. Joshua’s slaughter of the Five Kings, and his
destruction of the covetous Achan, were two steps
absolutely required to enable the Israelites to
occupy, or at any rate conquer, the Land. This is to be
taken allegorically, as it was. Hos 2:14-18 explains
that the rooting out of Achanism is required for the
redemption and divine marriage of the messianic
age.2 The Five Kings, who lie behind Lk 19:27, are
neatly alluded to after the parable because the last
servant is none other than Achan himself reborn, as it
were. Let us deal with him first. The story of Achan
was of great interest to Luke as it is quietly alluded to
at Acts 5:1-10 (as pointed out in Peake’s Commen-
tan, by Lampe).
Achan suffered from a whole list of temptations,
and succumbed to them (Josh 7:1, 11, 21). He kept a
bar of gold and 200 silver shekels, and a fine piece of
cloth, and buried them in the earth. These were
subject to a ban by Yahweh, and therefore the
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137
temptation was fatal (Josh 6:18). The rest of the story
is not important, except that the utter elimination of
Achan, his family and goods was required to appease
Yahweh. Things went well with the host thereafter.
But it was discovered, more or less by trial and error,
that while the Five Kings (the storyteller would
connect them with the Five Kings of Sodom, etc.,
with whom Abraham had limited dealings (Gen
14:23-24)) were bottled up in their cave (Josh
10: 16-18) the host was exceptionally successful and
completely free from complaints (Josh 10:21).
The host returned and the helpless captives were
taken out of their cave. The host were told to place
their feet on their necks. Joshua said, ’Do not be
afraid or dismayed; be strong and of good courage;
for thus the Lord will do to all your enemies against
whom you fight’. Why was courage needed? The
Kings were helpless. The point is that the whole was
an allegory from the start. The Five Kings were the
five senses which must be subject to the mind (cf. the
Parable of the Virgins, which to a limited extent
contrasts a disciplined group of five and an undisci-
plined group). As long as they are compressed, if
not suppressed, all goes well. Joshua, anticipating St
Paul, crucifies the Kings, who are hung on individual
trees and taken down at sunset, to be interred in that
cave and stoppered-in again (Josh 10:26-27).
Whether they were killed first or hung up alive is
neither here nor there, for the point made at Gal
5:24; 6:14, is equally valid in either case. The
identification of Joshua’s five victims with the five
senses is made by Origen in several places and by
Jerome. It was recognized long before by a Jewish
author whose text survives, with a Cynic gloss, in ps.
Palladius, Vita Bragmanorum.
We may safely return now to Luke. The condem-
nation of the servant who buried what belonged to
his master (God) in the earth, envying the latter any
profit, intending to keep it (if by chance he might) for
himself, is fitting, for the case of Achan proves it. The
rest of the ’host’ are strengthened by the elimination
of this traitor. Yet their own rebellious appetites and
propensities to be tempted remain. In so far as these
rebel against the master they have no hope: he will,
whether at his Coming, or (I suspect) as a matter of
his disciplinary procedure generally, see to it that
those that nominally ’serve’ him are all bona fide
members of the ’host’ (cf. Mt 22:11-12), and to
achieve this end all those elements which deny his
sovereignty must be ruthlessly exterminated. In a
way I suspect that the evangelists wanted as much to
up-date and ’legitimate’ strange passages in scripture
as they desired to document Jesus from the Old
Testament:3 and here, in a very bold stroke, Luke has
attempted to make the image in Joshua respectable.
Thus there is nothing to be alarmed at in Lk 19:27.
In order that the church which Luke knew might be
138
successful until the Lord’s Coming it must do its best
with what was entrusted to it, material as well as
spiritual. One commences by admitting God’s
sovereignty. Only the evil spirits, agents of Satan,
demur at that. Once such traitors have been
detected, and envy and covetousness truly elimin-
ated, the citizens of the kingdom can expect a
propitious existence. It is highly to their advantage
that the evil inclination should be suppressed, and
that any element in them which resists the rule of God
should, in their own interests, be cleared off the face
of his earth.
The original idea can well have been Jesus’s, with
its sharp, ’black’ humour. There is no reference to
heretics, to the Jews, to those who would obstruct the
Messiah’s role, or any allusion to historical persons or
classes. Jesus seems to have used a very human
situation, known to biblical students and to lovers of
folktales, to reassure people that God has the
greatest possible interest in encouraging faith and
obedience, while removing stumbling-blocks from the
path of the would-be righteous. Meanwhile Luke is
certain that Jesus was on a kingly campaign (Lk
19:11, 28, 38), and it is characteristic of Luke’s
teaching that wealth should be employed without
reserve for the .joint benefit of all.
’
J. Löberg. Spiritual Value or Human Value (Lund
[1982]), 170.
2 L. Goppelt, Typos. The Typological Interpretation of the
Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, Michigan
[1982]). 39.
3
A similar viewpoint is approved by M. D. Hooker, New
Wine in Old Bottles: A discussion of Continuity and
Discontinuity in Relation to Judaism and the Gospel
(Ethel M. Wood Trust Lecture, University of London
[1984]).
Towards a Theology of Leadership
BY THE RT REVEREND PETER NOTT, M.A.,
BISHOP OF NORWICH
IT is often said that we are in an age in which authority
has been undermined. Whatever the complex truth of
that generalization, problems of authority are never
dissociated from problems of leadership. It is upon
leadership that popular attention tends naturally to
be focused, because it is more tangible than concepts
of authority which are difficult to analyse with pre-
cision. Because leadership involves people it is cap-
able of general debate based on personal experience:
there are many who would find it difficult to define
what they mean by authority who nevertheless have
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clear ideas about what they believe constitutes good
and bad leadership. To discuss leadership apart from
ideas about the nature of authority obviously begs
certam important questions: nevertheless it can prove
a significant, if indirect, contribution to an under-
standing of authority. It may also provide a solution
to some of its problems, for it is the point at which
many of those problems are centred. It is often true
that difficulties concerning authority relate not so
much to the ideas, institutions and traditions which
are its source, as to the transmission of authority by
inappropriate or ineffective leadership.
In what follows it will be obvious that my stand-
point is a particular one both as an Anglican and as
one who exercises episcopal leadership. Despite
these limitations my intention is to reflect upon the
nature of leadership generally in every part of the
Christian church and upon its exercise by clergy and
laity, by individuals and by groups. Moreover I
believe, with most of my bretheren, that episcope is
not the exclusive prerogative of bishops.
Leadership may be defined as the means by which
authority is made effective. Methods and styles will
vary according to the nature of the particular auth-
ority and the context in which it is applied. But
because leadership is usually exercised in the setting
of communities of various kinds, common problems
arise (for example concerning consultation) which
suggests that certain generalizations may reasonably
be made, and light shed by one context upon another.
The inter-relatedness of leadership stypes has
been a background to the church’s approach to the
subject for generations. Church leadership in Europe
and North America has been, and still is, closely
related to and largely dependent upon models exem-
plified in judicial, military, social, educational and,
more recently, management spheres. In the corporate
leadership of the church through synodical govern-
ment we have developed methods and structures
which bear more than a passing resemblance to those
of parliamentary democracy. In other areas of the
world there is a similar interdependence where in
parts of Africa, for example, church leadership is
often closely related to tribal styles. The objectives
and problems faced by the church and by secular
organizations and communities often seem analogous.
Hence mission may be understood in the terms of a
military campaign, ministry as management, and the
community of the church in the language of social
psychology. The attraction of such models for the
church is enhanced because the development of
secular leadership has often been influnced by
Christian insights, for example in the treatment of
ideals of service, caring for individuals, and the
importance of corporate identity. Moreover these
models are usually thoroughly researched (particu-
larly management studies) and clearly presented in