Yes, Folks, There's Going To Be A Rant

With this great cloud of witnesses around us, therefore we, too, must throw off every encumbrance, and the sin that all too readily restricts us, and run with resolution the race which lies ahead of us, our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. (Hebrews 12)

Why Am I Here?

It's been a rough week. I've been driven to some very dark places spiritually. I have deprived myself of a lot of sleep in both labor and anxiety. One person in particular probably might think I am a jerk. It's no surprise to me that I fall short of the glory of God, but do I have to be so far? But today, there is much reason for me to be hopeful in the short term. I love what I do too much not to fight to continue to do it.

But sometimes, I wonder why I am here. I mean here the small version of the question. My existence stems from a Yearning of a perfect being to create and be in relationship with His Creation and the continuing participation of many in that action. Before me were countless generations unnumbered who honored love and the call of nature to create life in the context of relationship. And in my own time, I see the little love that made me in the love my parents have for me, a little flickering in the fire of the unconditional love of God.

The question I continually pose is why I am here in Pasadena, CA in this year. As to my own flourishing, I imagine myself in State College, PA or Providence, RI just as easily. But I do not belong to myself. And every time I desire not to be here, I feel driven by the Spirit of God to remain here. It is a terrible thing to be in the hands of the Living God. And yet there is a leap of faith I make when I say things like this, "Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there" (Radiohead).

But that's neither here nor there. The purpose of God will be revealed in the fullness of time. And maybe in ten years, I will look back in pleasure at the remembrance of even these things. (By the way, I keep listening over and over again to BBC Choral Evensong this week. It's been very appropriate for the week, especially the Epistle.)

The Board Is Set, the Pieces are Moving

I do not know if you, gentle readers, have been following the amazing turn of events in the Anglican Communion over the last 24 hours. I do not think it hyperbole to suggest that the schism we have feared is beginning to shine its light. But it is not my business to analyze these events. You can read Scotist or Preludium.

Choose This Day

A video by this name has appeared on the Internet, sickening Father Jake. I watched it and learned that I played a very small role in its production. The circumstances of this are known to God, me, Rev. Dr. Canon Kendall Harmon+, and any enterprising reader of Titusonenine and this blog. I am ashamed to have participated in any way in the production of this. My small role was an act driven by charity and the desire for verity. My love has turned to a cup of bitterness in my mouth. This may not make anyone feel better, but the Every Voice Network will be sending a lovely video around the church sometime soon that will serve partly as a counterweight to the pernicious tone of the video. Frankly, I don't agree with the general content of either video, but I am glad to say that the Every Voice Network video at least avoids praise band music in the soundtrack.

Itisthelesbigays

Nelson Mandela in his excellent autobiography tells a few stories about the chaplains who visited him and his fellows in prison on Robbens Island. Of course, these chaplains were heavily vetted by the authorities and usually were clergy of the Dutch Reformed Church, who has since repented of its Erastian heterodoxy in support of groot apartheid . Mandela recalls one chaplain who said in a sermon that whenever something went wrong in the lives of Blacks, they said a phrase in Xhosa that means, "It is the whites." He actually slurred it a bit. Mandela and his fellows laughed at the pronunciation and objected to the critique. But Mandela did appreciate the sentiment, noting that it was good to point out that we have to take responsibility for the direction of things and not blame other people for the troubles you have caused for yourself.

Watching "Choose This Day," it occurred to me that part of its critique was valid. I usually lay off my own present community in this blog, but I made up a suitable euphemism for it some time ago. And honestly, I need to speak truth somewhere before I speak truth to power. *Christopher knows well that there have been canonical deficiencies in the principal Eucharists at ILEOS (it's a Latin acronym). (They even do Rite I deficiently and don't renounce Satan at Baptism). What I didn't explain was that I joined the church in the summer when the problems were small and the gist of innovation seemed to be a restoration of tradition. (They even said the Creed with anthropopesantein Since the Rector returned, we have not said the Nicene Creed, the Confession of Sin, and had more than two readings from any of the Holy Scriptures outside of the Gospels. During the summer, we omitted the Old Testament lesson one Sunday. It was a certain passage from Isaiah concerning eunuchs. Do you know how much I would have loved to preach a sermon on that passage to a congregation full of wounded men and women and proclaim liberty to the captives (and not in the God in the little itty bitty box I made in woodshop sense in Reverend Ref)? I forget what the sermon was about that day.

My sources also tell me that the Rector has been expressing a desire to rewrite the Creeds to the new member classes. What justifies this? What do we know about God now that contradicts the Creeds? Surely, he is not appealing to science. I read today an excerpt from something written by Father George Coyne S.J., the head of the Vatican Observatory, who has more right than most to opine on the relation between religion and science,

"If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly."


"God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity," he wrote. "He is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves."

This is the language of Neoplatonism and even the Holy Scriptures. I wish to confuse no one. Neoplatonism is not Christianity. But Neoplatonism is a language of interface between sacred doctrine and "secular" truth. Neoplatonism is the finest way I think Christians have found to deal with the world of ideas outside the Body and use it to discern the verity of the Body. And the Creeds are strongly infused by Neoplatonism. It is very hard to go outside Neoplatonism and convincingly proclaim, "All truth is God's truth," because Neoplatonism is the basis of our notions of absolute truth. Richard Kew recently writes of the nihilism of postmodernism and deconstruction. And he is right. We slowly are building the western mind on a foundation as sure as the village of St. John Vianney in Quebec. Verily, I tell you that nothing remains of that village. It was built on sand and it was swallowed in sand during the space of one night. But I do think the end of Neoplatonism will be what the rabbis of the Kabbalah longed for and the alchemists worked toward: the reconciliation of God with wisdom. This is not the entire reconciling work of Christ, but I believe it is a big part. (And, yes, I still am trying to figure out what the Rabbis meant... Maybe, Hugo Schwyzer can tell me...)

So when "Choose This Day" tells me that words like salvation, grace, and redemption have changed their meanings in ECUSA, I can tell you in all honesty that I see what they mean. ILEOS proclaims the radically inclusive love of Christ, but I believe that God loves us far too much to let us shoot ourselves in the foot spiritually. If you criticize the present powers of this world and then are unwilling to repent before God of your own complicity in their wickedness, what use is that? If you invite all to eat and drink "the bread and wine made holy" but do not proclaim the story and the relationships made incarnate in that action through the Nicene Creed, what use is that? If you preach about what Jesus would have thought about X and Y, it is very hard to agree with you without looking at the rest of the text that points to Him.

A Reiteration of the Literary Theology

Plato in Book II of Republic argues that myths of gods coming to Earth is false. His prime objection is ontological. What is high and uplifted in the intelligibles will not mix with what is base. We know this to be false. It happened in the Incarnation in the deepest reversal of the ontology possible. The Greeks knew arete , but it took them some time to understand kenosis.

I tell this story because it is the key to my understanding of the Incarnation and the entire work of God in creation as the fulfillment of deep aesthetic yearnings. (C.S. Lewis discovered the same thing somewhere in the vicinity of a zoo.) Because we are from God and will return to Him, the very essence of our nature longs to return into the River, the water flowing from the side of the Temple, the Precious Blood of Jesus, the divine love life of the Trinity. The deepest essence of our being seeks the story that makes this possible. And this story is of Him who was before all worlds, but came among us in the fullness of our nature, was crucified, died, and was buried, rising again to life and victory that will come to fullness when God is all in all and time is closed in unceasing praise to the Yearner whose Yearning is complete and knows a wholeness beyond all wholeness comprehensible that was not possible before the worlds came to be. We and all things are the issue of the love of God. The last words of Christ are, "It is finished" or as Jack Miles posits, "Done."

"Choose This Day" tells us that the Bible is God's masterpiece. But I say to you that the Bible merely describes God's masterpiece, which is all things moving in space and time to the ends desired by the will of God. Thus, the literary theologian reads this story in the light of Aristotle's Poetics in which the work of God is an action complete in itself that organizes the sensible in the relationships of the intelligibles for all to see. Plato cannot imagine the Forms crashing into the world. They do so and do so continually. I refer to the Big Story as the chief action. But every big action is made up of little actions in which we, too, participate. And so, the literary theologian recognizes something very important, the content of the chief action is universal in scope and accessibility. The yearning for God is possesed by all creation, who praise God in their obedience to natural law, "All you winds and waters, praise the Lord." But the Bible views the chief action in terms appropriate for the Near East, for Hellenes and Hellenized Jews. Plato in Phaedrus posits speeches designed for the particular souls of the hearers. Thus, the Old Testament is written for the Jewish soul and the New Testament for the Greek soul. But a Greek soul is a human soul, after all. We are not so very apart. So if you want to learn your Bible, you might want some Aristotle and the Greek poets...

The literary theologian, however, realizes the world is fallen. The physicists talk about broken symmetries: quantities once conserved and relationships that once existed. The literary theologian sees broken symmetries in two major cases. First, one is biased by the method to see the Fall as breaking the symmetry between morals and aesthetics. In the beginning, to look good was literally to be good. And to take shame in your appearance was the first sign of sin. In God's eyes, the distinction doesn't matter. The Scriptures tell us that we see outward appearances and God sees the heart. We look good to God when we are good. He still loves us, though, even if we are hideous. And yet the literary theologian sees many distinctions we make as false: symmetries we have broken. We divide mind from matter, order from substance, the intelligibles from the sensibles. And when we do so, we say this to all things as John Milbank says, "God shall not have this." Many dualisms divide the world into God and not God. But all things participate in God by virtue of their being. Yet I should note that some distinctions are not false because they imply relationships. But a dualism that does not imply relationship is likely false.

And as God acts, we, too, are called to act. And some of these actions were ordained by Christ or by Tradition. We call these Sacraments, wherein God brings a greater fullness of the order of the intelligibles to the substance of the sensibles, not to change sensible to intelligible but to make the sensibles and the intelligibles more and inexorably one until they are unity and God is all in all. In my more lucid moments, I often refer to the telos of this, the process that achieves it, and the fundamental symmetry that underlies it as "the Hypostasis of the world." And when we act in concert with God in this way, we are not forcing God's hand or manipulating the universe, as the alchemists thought, but merely continuing and joining in the work God would do if we were not faithful. Our cooperation with God is but a bonus to his joy and delight in what He has made. Such joy cannot be diminished but only accentuated. Thus, when the literary theologian looks at morals especially in the context of human sexuality, he wants to know the relation of our sexuality and the non-sexual dimensions of intimate relationship to the work of God. This particular literary theologian has found it a better approach than focusing on what conduct will please or displease God. Because honestly, such questions lead one to ask what conduct will not displease God. And in my limited experience, that is a bad question. We always should seek the approbation of God and seek in our inadequacy to do Him good. God ought to be treated by the Golden Rule, not the Silver, for God is analogous to our neighbor.

Fratrimony and the Work of God

The Apostle tells us in Ephesians (KJV)

"5:1 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

5:3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

5:4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.

5:5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

5:7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.

5:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now [are ye] light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

5:9 (For the fruit of the Spirit [is] in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

5:10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.

5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove [them].

5:12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

5:13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.

5:14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

5:15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

5:16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

5:17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord [is].

5:18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

5:19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;

5:20 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

5:21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

5:22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

5:24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in every thing.

5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

5:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

5:27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

5:28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

5:29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

5:30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

5:33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife [see] that she reverence [her] husband "

I give the chapter in full, but the key part is 22ff. The Apostle poses matrimony as somehow analogous to the relationship between Christ and the Church. This is the traditional explanation for the sacramental quality of matrimony. Now, I understand that many find the view of matrimony expressed here as difficult. But there's nothing wrong with matrimony that can't be fixed by Christ-like love of husband for wife and Church (at its best)-like love of wife for husband. Nor does the Apostle pull the analogy out of thin air. Jesus often poses the Kingdom of God in terms of a wedding feast. Thus, matrimony by pointing to the mystical union of Christ and the Church that shall be fulfilled in the fullness of time is a living example in the sensible world of the deep order of the intelligibles. Marriage can be a little Creation. Marriage can be a little Crucifixion and Resurrection. Marriage even can be a little Eschaton, as Paul suggests. Marriage is a little flicker in the chief action. Marriage really can be a way to incarnate Christ more fully in the world. I'm fairly sure that I will know whom to marry when I find someone as enthusiastic for that view of matrimony as I am. But I don't meet many women like that.

Fratrimony and sororimony are very difficult to understand. Scotist has trouble. I have trouble. *Christopher, I suspect, sees some small glimmers of what he is doing once in a while. I'm not surprised that Kendall Harmon+ has trouble. As best as I can understand it, matrimony points to the union of one form of broken symmetry, that between God (in Christ) and us. Thus, it is a union of heterogenous people, forms, and substances. With fratrimony and sororimony, I have that that Isaiah passage, Jesus' talk about eunuchs, and the farewell addresses in the Gospel of John, point me toward saying that fratrimony and sororimony point to the mystical union of the Body itself. Both are a union of homogenous entities in some sense if God and man are the dualism, but it's more complicated. The unity of the Body is not possible through the flesh. The unity between Christ and the Church is related to us dying with Christ and being raised with Him, making the union easy to see from a carnal perspective. But honestly, the unity between the members of the Church is highly debatable even today. Thus, fratrimony and sororimony is difficult to talk about. There is a strange relation between debates about eccesiology and same-sex unions. I didn't understand why the issues were so closely connected and why this issue might break the visible unity of the church until I started thinking about the theology behind adelphopoesis. The controversies are symmetric in the intelligibles. Because I understand the unity of the Body in terms of joint participation in bath and meal (as *Christopher puts the ordinances in the most basic terms) that tends toward theosis, it's fairly simple for me to imagine a form of union that is according to the spirit rather than the flesh. If you have a different ecclesiological model, you might have more trouble.

And when I say "according to the spirit rather than the flesh," I suspect that people get very confused. The Apostle helps us in Ephesians 5 by seeing the unity of the church in terms of mutual submission of one to another. We are further told that the saints are to avoid scandal and gossip. He says other things... But the last two points are important. The unity of the church requires mutual kenosis that produces a unity of will that tends toward the mind of Christ. Thus, if fratrimony and sororimony point to the unity of the Church, the union has to be one of equals. In the ancient understanding of the sexes that is constantly striving with Christian considerations in Paul's work, men and women are not equals. Thus, unity according to the spirit implies the mystical unity of the Church that is only fully expressed in kenosis . The talk about scandal has resonance in some of the adelphopoesis ceremonies. Some read this part of the liturgy as talking about the sex. But I don't think that's the entire meaning or the primary one. Such a prayer really says, "Be the Church." Can one be the Church sexually? It has taken me a long time to get to this point, but it's fairly clear that if I am part of the Body through Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist, I am joined in the Body with all who communicate (note the usage...). Thus, homosexual intimacy can be understood Eucharistically just as heterosexual intimacy can be understood Eucharistically and eschatologically. The two models don't contradict one another.

*Christopher points us to the icon of Sergius and Bacchus in which Christ is seen as a head between two saints. The Passion of these saints explains fratrimony beautifully in many ways but this most of all. Their persecutors see Sergius and Bacchus as effeminate because of their Christianity and potentially because of their relationship, dressing them as women to humiliate them. Yet in fratrimony at least, men become a woman. And yet Sergius and Bacchus suffer manfully (if I can use that term) for the faith. They prove themselves to be their persecutors' ideal or stereotype of manhood by the suffering they endure. Christ is their Head, for they embody the Church, a strong and powerful woman worthy to be called Beloved.

Finally, fratrimony and sororimony seem to point to the unity of the Trinity as well. Marilyn McCord Adams has written on this to the distress of many conservatives. But I do think the idea is fairly ancient. If the relevant parts of John mean what I think they do, there is something Trinitarian going on. I do not pretend to understand it. I will need to continue thinking. Again, so much of the talk about same-sex unions gets confused with debates about the Trinity and the Incarnation. I believe that this is another symmetry in the intelligibles. It's not obvious. The Rector is heterodox and so is the Dean of TESM (Pontificator makes a good case), yet they stand on opposite sides of the same-sex union debate. So that's what I have to say on that. Maybe, the Scotist can contribute further.

A Table in the Wilderness

*Christopher rightly notes that not all of the old liturgies for adelphopoesis place it in the context of Holy Eucharist. It seems wrong in my mind to separate imitatio from the means of what is imitated in an action. But *Christopher is right to point out that the altar is fenced to queerkind in San Joaquin. What is to be done? Part of me has visions of France in 1300. Imagine two men finding each other and saying quiet vows to one another, then attending Mass together. An astute observer would know what was happening, but it wouldn't be obvious. (I only use this example because there are more obvious examples in the same place and era).

But not everyone can be in the closet and most everyone should not be in the closet. Everything hidden shall be revealed says the Scriptures and Venantius Honorius Fortunatus says, "No one will remain unpunished." How does one live in the light when the visible Church rejects you?

Now normally I would not be a promoter of lay presidency, because I see the liturgy of the Church as a continuation of the Temple worship. Thus, I see the clerical priesthood as a continuation of the Priests and Levites. They have been set apart to continue in that Temple worship in concert with Christ. But I also recall what the author of Hebrews says concerning Melchizedek and Christ. Melchizedek has no mother, no father, and exists outside of time as King of proto-Jerusalem, as king of Salem (Peace), as priest of God Most High, the one among the baalim of the Canaanites who was true and very God. For indeed God Most High only could have been the One who we worship, the father of lights and spirits. And the Book of Genesis tells us that Melchizedek was first to offer unbloody sacrifice of "food and wine" in the valley of Sheveh now called Kedron and gave benediction to him.

The Book of Hebrews tells us that the priesthood of Melchizedek was an eternal priesthood just like that of Christ, who as the preacher of Hebrews points out, was sprung from Judah not Levi. Moreover, the Church long has seen the Eucharistic feast as pointed to by the shewbread offering mandated in the Law. Thus, the next time anyone tells you it's not all right to take Communion more than once a month, point them to the shewbread on which frankincense was sprinkled like the body of the dead anointed to be an offering and fragrant sacrifice to God Most High. Indeed, the sacrifice of Melchizedek was the ritual and likely historical forerunner of the shewbread. And we are told that it was changed every Sabbath and the priests ate of it, the most holy of holy gifts (Leviticus 24).

Thus, Melchizedek outside of the sanctuary of the proto-Temple instituted one more action brought to completeness in Christ Jesus. And he did so in the Valley of Kedron. Now the burden of Scriptural interpretation and Holy Tradition says that Christ was crucified on the other side of Jerusalem, perhaps in the vicinity of Moriah, where Abraham offered Isaac. The arguments rage as to the exact location. But we also know something happened in an upper room closer to the Kedron side of Jerusalem. "The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” And on the very same night, he went into Gethsemane in the Valley of Kedron and offered Himself into the hands of the powers and principalities of this world.

So I am asked again: Can God set a table in the wilderness? Can God be present in his Body and Blood in the presence of those merely priests of Melchizedek? Is it right for lay people to perform the Eucharist without a priest? I think you will understand now why I believe in the communion of the baptized, not open communion not closed communion but a communion of all those washed in the Flood flowing outside of the Temple that is the Blood of the Lamb and the laving of the Spirit. For in baptism, we are made priests of Melchizedek. We share in that eternal priesthood. In recognition of the perfection of the bloody sacrifice in Christ Jesus, we retain spiritual sons of Aaron among us to continue the Temple worship among us and add further coherence to the story the Church is. But in extremis , I tell you that it does not matter whether you worship on Zion or Gerizim. Melchizedek offered in spirit and in truth. Jesus offered Himself in spirit and in truth. But again, I tell you it all is founded on living not in the closet but in the wilderness outside the camp, whether in Israel or elsewhere. The stones are rejected by the builders and thus they must renew the fundaments of all things upon the chief cornerstone. The original action of Christ's Sacrifice was an exceptional thing. Unbloody sacrifice in the wilderness is likewise exceptional.

YAAA (Yet Another Anglican Acronym)

Derek of haligweorc has indicated the desire to found some sort of organization. I suspect he's joking. But honestly, the schism is here and the controversies that really brought it have not been settled. There has to be some sort of renewal in ECUSA. Now I lean to the Neoplatonist Benedictine spirituality side of renewal. And I suspect there are like-minded folks around who do, too. Unfortunately, I have very little time, bound as I am to my lab bench. But I see a need to make conspiratorial memos about fun and Christ-serving things, "We will petition the Minister of the parish of which we are a member for the recitation of the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday." Bwahaha!

Choose This Day

"See I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity. I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day; I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life- if you and your offspring would live." (Deuteronomy 30).

"But if it does not please you to serve the Lord, choose here and now whom you will serve: the gods whom your forefathers served beyond the Euphrates or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my family will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15).

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray for the benediction of God Most High upon the Church entire in the fullness of space and time and give their blessing and thanksgiving to God Most High, who has redeemed them from the hands of their enemy, sin, through the offering of His Son Jesus Christ. .