De Haeriticorum Comburendo Is Still In Force Where It Counts

Last post, I described this blog as fulfilling two functions. First, I intend it to serve as a place for my theological ruminations. Frankly, I don't care if no one reads them. But even more than that, I certainly don't mind if people do. My friends are welcome. So are my enemies (if I have them). Strangers, of course, are especially welcome, for my spiritual ancestors were strangers in Egypt. But I write here rather than elsewhere because thinking about God makes people worry for my sanity, especially thinking about God on the computer. But I do get up from the computer occasionally. And I am very excited to take my place in an entirely new Christian community. Yet my station in life now pushes affairs divine beyond common incarnate conversation. I used to not have to go far for God talk. And by far, I mean fifty feet. In my current situation, I must go further afield. And this is beginning to distract me from the primary vocation to which I am called. Moreover, I now realize that I have led a somewhat public life for the last four years, which allowed me to distract myself from some very worrisome elements of my moral life. I hope this blog will be a focus for my rather disordered soul.

Second, I want to use this blog to document the meta-narrative of the Anglican blogosphere qua blogosphere or whatever else it may be. I wrote yesterday about finding it hard to deal with being saved with other people. Other people might get saved, but I still have a little trouble with the idea that their salvation might force me to interact with them. Demi the Jersey Devil refers to her blogroll as "More Pilgrims Blogging Their Way to the Celestial City." And that doesn't just limit my kinship to Anglicans. I may be singing Gloria with a more affiliationally diverse chorus. But I limit myself to the Anglican blogosphere per se , because Anglicans are my people. Nudge me the right way and there's a bit of every member church ready to emerge. But let's not pursue that theme too far.

The purposes of this blog as you can see are not mutually exclusive. From my preaching work I remember that the week during one writes a sermon is disorienting. It resembles schizophrenia. The suffusion of the Logos throughout the world shines more brightly. Everything seems more connected. I have learned much more about the inner workings of the souls of others during those days and weeks than any other time in life. Believers emerge from the woodwork. Life imitates Gospel. Hence, I cannot exclude the possibility that the meta-narrative of the blogosphere might draw me toward deep theology. I already know it is. The bishop of Lincoln and three blogs already keep telling me to push certain thoughts of mine. And yet I don't want to. I want to know whether I strive with God or myself. I'll tell you if my hip is hurting (heh, heh).

Grand Theological Project Numerum Primum

Recently, the bishop of Lincoln (Rt. Rev John Saxbee) noted the existence of traditional Christian rituals in which two people were made sworn friends. +Saxbee complained that the church was not able to use these rituals for fear they would be seen encouraging homosexuality, instead of promoting what Saxbee sees as a Biblical ideal of friendship. In other news, Father Tobias Haller began the project of constructing a theology of gay marriage in part . Anglican Scotist has suggested the outlines of such a theology. Moreover, Christopher of "Bending the Rule" tells us that continued heterosexual bickering about his marriage and the ordering of familial life among those of his orientation may drive them out of the Christian religion, because we, heterosexual Christians, bring them no good news. Christianity, he accuses, may not be catholic.

Now, I have been told that theologies of same-sex relationships exist. But since, in my humble opinion, the liberal bishops of the Episcopal Church seem to have abandoned their obligation to instruct the faithful about the propriety of these theologies, I can't seem to find them. So I felt directed to make my own. Over the years, I have read and thought much about these issues. I even have read a few books. And I think I am fairly close to a good working theology of what I call adelphia . In Greek, the word adelphos means brother and the word adelphe means sister. The nomenclature derives from Greek rituals for "the making of brothers" or adelphopoesis . Hence, those "sworn friendships" that Saxbee discusses represent to me a latent catholic tradition of the very things he seems to think they were not. I will warn you that the clinching point of this working theology is not quite firm in my mind. Worse yet, my mental gyrations in that generation set the old heresy alarms going. Since I have a narrower definition of heresy than most, this was worrisome. Hence, we shall take this project one day at a time. Maybe, I will agree with Christopher's pessimism. Maybe, I will find hope.

Part I: The Communion of Saints and the Problem of the Phaedrus

Hermeneutics. The word always looks to me like "the science of knowing mystical things." The actual definition is a little different. Check your dictionary. It's the business of interpreting stuff, especially the Bible. Before I do difficult and controversial theology, it would be best for me to have one.

The first hermeneutical principle for an Anglican ought to be based on Richard Hooker somehow, but I find his Three-Legged Stool a vain invention (by other people). He notes, however, in the vicinity of the famous passage a common catholic standard in matters of doctrine, "this, we hold, this the Prophets and Evangelists have declared, this the Apostles have delivered, this Martyrs have sealed with their blood, and confessed in the midst of torments, to this we cleave as to the anchor of the souls, against this, though an Angel from Heaven should preach against it" (Laws, V.8.2). Axios! For indeed, Hooker quotes the Great Hierarch Basil. Hence, the Tradition in matters of doctrine is not just the rulings by eccelsiastical authority but the Scriptures themselves, God-breathed into the bodies of the Prophets and Evangelists, the Acts of the Apostles and Martyrs, and implicitly, what has been held by the Doctors of the Church like Basil, who confirm the doctrine-making acts in a chain of faith and credit that stretches between them and the Triune God. "Though an angel preach against it" seems fair basis for the Anglican doctrine of sufficiency. Since the Holy Scriptures contain "all things necessary to salvation," no doctrine should be considered reliable that requires additional supernatural revelation.

But where is reason in this game? In matters of faith and ceremonies, Hooker puts it after "the plain meaning of Scripture." But he says nothing of it in matters of doctrine. Should we ignore it? Well, no. Think on the everyday activities of your life, especially your intellectual ones. Can you really say why you do one thing or another? Can you say why you can read? Why is ghous not really the same as goose or more certainly not less? The linguists and the psychologists continue to argue whether certain behavior is learned or inborn, but it is clear that much knowledge is inborn in the animals. But really, none of that matters. You know that there are certain things you do that are automatic and require no conscious use of reason, though they are there. You feel led by a deep language of the intellect, whether inborn or learned. Can you read the plain meaning of the Scriptures without even this deep language of the intellect?

Well in the lovely Middle Platonic doctrine neatly mirrored with Christ by John the Evangelist, the relationship between creating Triune God and cosmos is analogous to the exercise of the intellect in man. God the Father yearns or wills, God the Son plans, and God the Holy Spirit acts, "The Word was with God and the Word was God." Surely, John the Evangelist wouldn't have problematized God in the same way as the Middle Platonists if he didn't believe they were in some sense right. Paul, too, proclaimed the name of the unknown god on the Areopagus of Athens. The choice of place was not coincidental.

We hear, "The Word was in the world, but the world did not know it." Christ established the deep reason of the universe, "through Him all things were made and without Him nothing was made." The Logos made flesh fulfilled the Law and opened the Scriptures so men might see Himself revealed. Right reason, the ancient philosophers and the Fathers of the Church generally agree, is the key to discerning natural law in the world and preceptual divine law in the Scriptures. I claim this is so because the beginng of reason is the planning and salvation of the world through Christ and the end of reason is worship of the Lamb and cleansing through his blood. Thus, our reason rightly directed will seek the Christ unknown in the deep grammar of the cosmos and the Christ known as the hermeneutical key to the Scriptures. Thus through Christ, what we call revelation and reason are harmonized. They are not the antagonists they are so often portrayed to be. For the philosophers of the Enlightenment threw out the divinity of Christ and their detractors did not see Christ in the world around them (and so made a new one.) And of course, He who plans knows the loopholes. Thus, nature or reason may have a place in our hermenutic if they find expression in Christ or have found a sufficient place in the Fathers.

But how are we to judge the Fathers? Can we rightly judge their reason? Must we see the world as they did? Or is it rather imperative that we seek to problematize the world as they did? I think the latter. The experience of the church has taught us in certain cases that the authority of the Fathers has led the ecclesiastical authority or other persons to assume the mantle of the Creator, si muove (ut Deus vult) . But how are we to see this generally? It is profitable to refer to Galileo or changes in teachings about usury, slavery, (and in some churches) divorce? I would prefer to look for more general principles.

It would seem that it is best not to change at all. The popularity of the Vincentian Canon these days argues against contradicting past doctrine rather strenuously, "Let us hold whatever things have been believed always, everywhere, and by all." While surely it is a most brilliant and excellent thing that slavery is mostly abolished, the Christian role in its abolition does not have to be seen as a change in doctrine. Instead, we might see its abolition as a recognition of human sin. The Church realized that no one acted competently like Christ to their slaves, so slaveholding became sinful. Or...Paul gave the commands regarding slavery in anticipation of the Day of the Lord, but that Day is a long time coming, so it is worth dispensing with institutions of dubious morality rather than trying to perfect them through the Gospel of Christ as Paul clearly was trying to do. In other words, slavery per se never was commanded by doctrine and its present condemnation honors the existing doctrine (which set strict standards) or makes new doctrine that contradicts nothing before.

And despite my realization that much of my current status in life is built on usury, I'm not sure it was very Christian to stop condemning it. Looking at modern economic life, "In God We Trust, all others pay cash" doesn't seem just funny but often like sound doctrine. Teaching on divorce and remarriage, excepting the grounds given by the Lord, also seems problematically modified, though I am willing to admit other grounds that acknowledge grave iniquity of one party against the other.

But I don't think an Anglican can adhere to the Vincentian Canon faithfully. For one of those perpetually catholic objects the Vincentian Canon apparently comprehends is the supremacy of the faith handed down to the Romans (Or the Byzantines or the Babylonians) by Peter. Or... the supremacy of the church that rightfully claim Peter as its founder and her bishop as his successor. If the chief representative of the Johannine Church (Polycarp) acknowledged this in the 2nd century, it is hard for me to say it is not perpetually catholic by the Vincentian standard. A majority or at least a plurality of Christians hold it. And the Roman church has faithful in nearly every corner of the Earth. I don't think it matters how much any one Roman Catholic believes it, I doubt St. Vincent of Lerins cared about the interior matters of faith to that degree. What matters is that strong participation in the outward signs of Roman Catholic faith clearly regard the Bishop of Rome as superior to this degree. The Vincentian Canon contradicts semper reformanda , which seems to say that the Church doesn't get it right the first time. Many arguments might be cited against me, but I honestly think that the desire for perpetual catholic doctrine only can have its end in the authority of the Bishop of Rome. The Reformation required true doctrinal innovation, some of it ill.

So where we might find more flexible general principles? Hooker tells us, "All things cannot be of ancient continuance, which are expedient and needful of the ordering of spiritual affairs: but the Church being a body which dieth not hath always power...no less to ordain that which never was than to ratify what hath been before." Again, he speaks of matters indifferent, not doctrine. But I find some profit in unpacking this statement. Why cannot all things be of ancient continuance? For we are told, "the Church [is] a body which dieth not." It seems that when we are presented with what some call Holy Tradition or others the Great Tradition, there is some great obstacle placed between us and the Fathers (and Mothers...). We are handed the faith by our spiritual ancestors, the faith handed down to the saints (Jude 3). What prevents us from sharing the same faith? Sorry, Mr. Jack Chick, the answer isn't Satan. I think Christian troubles with tradition were sufficiently problematized in that great dialogue of Plato with Phaedrus, generally called Phaedrus . This work is highly influential in secular academia, but I think theologians really should consider its ideas in the light of Christian truth.

But here I face another objection posed by Tertullian, "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem, the Academy with the Church?" I have explained above that I think the Apostles realized the God of pagan philosophy was dark reflection of the God revealed to them in Jesus Christ. Moreover, Paul tells us of both sacred and secular writings, I think, "Whatever was written aforetime was written for our understanding" (Romans 15:4). To put this in another shape, I once was told by a friend that a friend of his had apostasized from the faith. She was an Episcopalian, but sadly she was not known to me. For I was told that she had apostasized after reading the Greek tragedies. How could this be? I thought back to my first exposure to these works a few years earlier. Not long after, at a performance of Antigone , I experienced a moment of theophany in the Paian. I wondered to myself how this was possible. Was it not Dionysius who was praised and not Christ? It occurred to me that where the words said Creon, Antigone, Iacchus, or Haimon, I saw Christ. Sophocles in his yearning for good drama was trying to tell the story of Christ.

When I read Aristotle's Poetics , I realized that his yearning for a rationally constructed and effectual drama was perfected in Christ. It seems strange. I certainly do not have many theophanic moments while watching secular drama, but as a Christian, I could not interpret it any other way. The best yearnings of the human creature before and after Christ were for Christ. Myth was perfected in Christ and the dualism between mythos and logos transcended. I am told that the idea of Christ as perfection of myth was the blooming seed of faith in C.S. Lewis, who famously wrote in Surprised by Joy , "When we set out [to the zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did." I unfortunately only have read eleven of Lewis' books, none of them his hard Christian books, but I still owe this idea of Christ Myth Fulfiller to him, I suspect. I still remember realizing the awful plagiarism of Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , thanks to clever maternal catechesis (heh, heh).

So with all of that said, I think it's fair to say that since the Phaedrus discusses the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation, something relevant to the problem of reading tradition that is capable by being perfected by the insight of the faith is present therein.

From here on in, I would recommend an edition of Phaedrus with notes that will tell you why this dialogue is so strange and talk about "the middle doctrine of the Forms." But here's a link to a Jowett translation that reminded me of key points. First, early on, Socrates notes that Phaedrus has a manuscript of Lysias' speech and thus observes, "you have Lysias himself there." Thus, Lysias apparently becomes incarnate through his words. There is much here of outside relevance, but the problem of the Phaedrus we are discussing is not fully taken up until the story of the invention of letters by Thoth (Theuth) near the end. The plain idea of this story is that writing things down will make people lazy enough not to use their memories. But the point is deeper and less assailable. What Socrates is claiming at the end of the Phaedrus is that written works are an essentially inferior method of transmission to direct instruction not just because they encourage the infirmity of memory as habit but because the very nature of learning through the written word will produce habits of a worse quality in the soul than direct instruction. Written words are intrinsically inferior to the words written by instruction in the soul of a man.

Plato's ideas in this regard have some support in tradition. One aetiology of apostolic succession claims that it developed not because there was some sort of grand chain of Holy Spirit running from Christ to the Apostles and then to their successors (which I imagined as a little boy, but I had weird ideas about the episcopate generally...). Instead, the chain of being was that of direct instruction. The Gnostic leaders couldn't claim to have secret knowledge from Christ, because if there was secret knowledge, wouldn't the Apostles have it? Thus the continuity of catholic teaching and apostolic succession are inextricably linked. The emphasis on catechesis in Christian pedagogy likewise resonates well with Socrates' statement of the problem of transmitting knowledge between generation and generation.

Yet Plato's problem apparently contradicts the experience of Israel. "No one has seen God," we are told in John 1:18. But Moses saw enough him for the Revelation of the Law. Of course, we hear of the Oral Torah, discussed by people with catechetical leanings though inclined to more reasoning and innovation. But there is likewise a written one, read aloud by Ezra before the lamentations of the people. Could a contract governing the conduct of a people be effectively transmitted through writing? God thought so. The Ten Commandments are on tablets. But wait! God also imagined the Law written on physical objects and on the heart as well. But there are signs that the written Law was insufficient. Is it not written, "I will put my Law within them...No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, 'Know the Lord' for they will know the Lord, the least of them and the greatest" (Jeremiah 31: 32-34 passim ).

And yet what does Augustine emphasize about the Triune God in contrast with the gods of the pagans, whether philosophical or of the state, or of the Gnostic heretics. He emphasizes in City of God that the doctrines are read aloud in the churches for anyone to hear. The continuity of the Church, undying She may be, depends on the written word. The openness of her doctrine and its universality depends on its efficient transmission among the nations, bolstered by the incarnate presence of her members. But yet St. John Chrysostom cannot be present to a Christian if needful in the flesh of this life. Nor can the diocesan bishop always and everywhere be incarnate. Direct instruction written into the soul of the man, which Socrates says is impossible by written works, is impossible as a pure ideal in the Church.

But again Socrates says, "And now the play is played out; and of rhetoric enough. Go and tell Lysias that to the fountain and school of the Nymphs we went down, and were bidden by them to convey a message to him and to other composers of speeches-to Homer and other writers of poems, whether set to music or not; and to Solon and others who have composed writings in the form of political discourses which they would term laws-to all of them we are to say that if their compositions are based on knowledge of the truth, and they can defend or prove them, when they are put to the test, by spoken arguments, which leave their writings poor in comparison of them, then they are to be called, not only poets, orators, legislators, but are worthy of a higher name, befitting the serious pursuit of their life."

In other words, spoken dialectic is established by the Phaedrus as the means to highest science, but it is unable to retain its quality in the written word, unlike the raving artists (politicians etc.) who do not comprehend being in their speeches but make writings so full of art as to be as substantive as their "true" oratory. Thus, if we accept the argument (and it's worth following since it depends on the individuality of the soul in a way we must affirm partially but repudiate generally), how can we trust any part of Holy Tradition in its essentials? The first attack we must make is against the argument itself. Human souls are indeed individual, so a problem arises if written works cannot be questioned by the individual yearnings of that soul for knowledge of the truth. And yet all human souls have the same need and the same end in salvation through Jesus Christ. Thus, if Holy Tradition is directed to the achievement of that end, it will be able to speak to the soul generally as God to George Fox, "There is one who can speak to thy condition, even Christ Jesus."

Next, knowledge is best transmitted through dialectical reasoning. Thus, we should seek to receive the dialectical structures of the saints as the substance of their faith and not their conclusions. The transmission of reasoning rather than conclusions is the guarantor of the proper transmission of truth. The moderns, of course, will have a field day with this, but I think the medievalists sensed the truth of this. Otherwise, they would not have placed so much emphasis on disputation and the proper posing of controversies but rather would have abandoned themselves up to authority with many sighs. And yes, I understand that this idea is vulnerable to abuse, but I find much of the reasoning of the Fathers to be very good even if their premises are bad. There will be much Aquinas in the argument to come, for instance.

But still we depend on writing. Why can we have faith in the integrity of a faith so bound up in words written, even those of God? Indeed, we have faith because of those words of God. The Church never dies, though all of its believers on this earth might die the first death. For Jesus said, "That the dead rise again, Moses showed at the burning bush, calling the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live in Him" (Luke 20:37-38). Through the Holy Spirit, we are connected with a great cloud of witnesses, alive and hovering even over their written words, and so capable of answering our questions through dialectic by that same Spirit. Let us then receive the reasoning of their teaching and put questions to the communion of saints in the light of the Holy Scriptures.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may live abundantly with Christ Jesus in the communion of His Saints.