Sad to reflect on the death of Canon
John Fenton (Times obit). His gentle presence and sharp thinking sparkled, provoked, healed and stimulated on every level and with every kind of person. I only knew him near the end of his ministry, well after his short back and sides days, but remember vividly two occasions in the nineties on which he cheerfully turfed out from Oxford to the far end of the diocese to have lunch with an improbable bunch of bored and slightly stroppy vicars in our deanery chapter.
Wind him up and off he went.
We splashed about and played in the text of Mark’s gospel which John knew backwards and inside out (to the level of word counts). John showed how
Scripture as is, with all its order and disorder, compexity and subtlety, is far more engaging than attempts to stitch it up into a compendium of proof texts can ever make it. Paranoia drives people to pull out soundbites to buttress their ideas about God, neatly packaged out of the messy text. These are then used as the weapons of zealotry. John showed what you miss when you do that — the glory of the text itself.
Gregory of Nyssa said “
Concepts create idols — Only wonder understands!” That’s what I learnt from John Fenton, and I feel poorer in a world without him, and look forward with more anticipation to the life of the world to come, in which we all get to splash and play in the fulness of God’s wisdom; the day on which we all step outside time, but I shall still, I think, have a few questions to ask John...
Sad to reflect on the death of Canon John Fenton (Times obit). His gentle presence and sharp thinking sparkled, provoked, healed and stimulated on every level and with every kind of person. I only knew him near the end of his ministry, well after his short back and sides days, but remember vividly two occasions in the nineties on which he cheerfully turfed out from Oxford to the far end of the diocese to have lunch with an improbable bunch of bored and slightly stroppy vicars in our deanery chapter.
Wind him up and off he went. We splashed about and played in the text of Mark’s gospel which John knew backwards and inside out (to the level of word counts). John showed how Scripture as is, with all its order and disorder, compexity and subtlety, is far more engaging than attempts to stitch it up into a compendium of proof texts can ever make it. Paranoia drives people to pull out soundbites to buttress their ideas about God, neatly packaged out of the messy text. These are then used as the weapons of zealotry. John showed what you miss when you do that — the glory of the text itself.
Gregory of Nyssa said “Concepts create idols — Only wonder understands!” That’s what I learnt from John Fenton, and I feel poorer in a world without him, and look forward with more anticipation to the life of the world to come, in which we all get to splash and play in the fulness of God’s wisdom; the day on which we all step outside time, but I shall still, I think, have a few questions to ask John...
