The great spiritual struggle for me right now is probably the same as it is for a lot of us in the Anglican Communion. I can easily find myself feeling anxiety, dismay over the shrill voices on the extreme ends of the current debates, and frustration that judicious argument seems powerless against misrepresentations and rhetorical sleight-of-hand. I worry that there is no middle ground between those who think that everything is essential to the faith and those who think that nothing is. What’s so insidious in all this is the diabolical urge to seek out such anxiety by spending too much time reading the blogs and news reports.
Monday, December 18, 2006
The Postulant Writes To His Bishop
This paragraph particularly resonated with me:
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Christmas Meme
*Christopher was good enough to tag me, so rather than letting Derek or Simon Sarmiento tell me what I missed ecclesiastically this week, I'll first lighten things up.
1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Hot chocolate. It keeps me warm and happy. I used to hate the taste of egg nog, until I reached the age when one could add rum. Now egg nog tastes better, but I shouldn't have too much of it.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
At my parents' house, Santa doesn't wrap. At my grandmother's, Santa does wrap. I wonder if you just check a box on the Santa registration form.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White. The word for other colors is "tacky."
4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No. Actually, my high school hung mistletoe in the front hall every year. One then was faced with the awkward situation of never walking accompanied under the mistletoe. The custom was much honored in the breach.
5. When do you put your decorations up?
Roughly December 17...or at least that's the way it will be in my future household.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish?
Linguini with clam sauce (I'm a quarter Italian, so seafood and Christmas are strongly associated.)
7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child?
Listening to Handel's Messiah while decorating the tree.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
Various cultural clues. I had inklings from Calvin and Hobbes. My Jewish classmates argued against Santa for years. Finally, when I was in 3rd grade or so, my mother bought one of my Christmas presents in front of me.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Not usually, but in my mother's famiily, it's traditional to do so after the First Mass of Christmas. So when I spend Christmas Eve with my grandmother, we do so occasionally.
10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
First, my father and I argue with my mother about getting a Christmas tree. My father and I lose the argument and trudge out to get one. Then my mother generally feels ill and leaves my father, me, and my little brother to decorate the tree.
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
I still love snow, despite having shoveled out from a multiple foot snowstorm or two. But I think I would change my mind if I had to drive in it.
12. Can you ice skate?
Yes. I used to be fairly good, too. Now, I suspect it would take a few hours to get me back into shape.
13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Sega Genesis (6th grade). Between Nelson Mandela's autobiography, a popular history of the early American republuc, and Sonic the Hedgehog , I survived several days in bed with the chicken pox. I actually still have it somewhere, though I suspect it's non-functional.
14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Seeing family, especially those I only see once a year.
15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
One of my aunts makes this frozen chocolate pie that has almost no ingredient that obeys the order of nature. Technically, it's made of plastic. However, it's incredibly good, and you can eat fairly large amounts of it without worrying about your waistline.
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Duck pins bowling. It's a great way to entertain my little cousins.
17. What tops your tree?
A star of some sort. I can't remember its provenance.
18.Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
All theological objections notwithstanding: giving.
19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
I very much dislike most of the Christmas hymnology. I became soured on it by repetition. And what I wasn't soured on, I have heard butchered too many times. Thus, my favorite Christmas song is "Of the Father's Love Begotten." I am, of course, half-kidding. Though frankly I do wish we could bring back some of the Carolingian Christmas hymns.
20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
Yuck, definitely yuck.
1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Hot chocolate. It keeps me warm and happy. I used to hate the taste of egg nog, until I reached the age when one could add rum. Now egg nog tastes better, but I shouldn't have too much of it.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
At my parents' house, Santa doesn't wrap. At my grandmother's, Santa does wrap. I wonder if you just check a box on the Santa registration form.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White. The word for other colors is "tacky."
4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No. Actually, my high school hung mistletoe in the front hall every year. One then was faced with the awkward situation of never walking accompanied under the mistletoe. The custom was much honored in the breach.
5. When do you put your decorations up?
Roughly December 17...or at least that's the way it will be in my future household.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish?
Linguini with clam sauce (I'm a quarter Italian, so seafood and Christmas are strongly associated.)
7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child?
Listening to Handel's Messiah while decorating the tree.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
Various cultural clues. I had inklings from Calvin and Hobbes. My Jewish classmates argued against Santa for years. Finally, when I was in 3rd grade or so, my mother bought one of my Christmas presents in front of me.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Not usually, but in my mother's famiily, it's traditional to do so after the First Mass of Christmas. So when I spend Christmas Eve with my grandmother, we do so occasionally.
10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
First, my father and I argue with my mother about getting a Christmas tree. My father and I lose the argument and trudge out to get one. Then my mother generally feels ill and leaves my father, me, and my little brother to decorate the tree.
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
I still love snow, despite having shoveled out from a multiple foot snowstorm or two. But I think I would change my mind if I had to drive in it.
12. Can you ice skate?
Yes. I used to be fairly good, too. Now, I suspect it would take a few hours to get me back into shape.
13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Sega Genesis (6th grade). Between Nelson Mandela's autobiography, a popular history of the early American republuc, and Sonic the Hedgehog , I survived several days in bed with the chicken pox. I actually still have it somewhere, though I suspect it's non-functional.
14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Seeing family, especially those I only see once a year.
15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
One of my aunts makes this frozen chocolate pie that has almost no ingredient that obeys the order of nature. Technically, it's made of plastic. However, it's incredibly good, and you can eat fairly large amounts of it without worrying about your waistline.
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Duck pins bowling. It's a great way to entertain my little cousins.
17. What tops your tree?
A star of some sort. I can't remember its provenance.
18.Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
All theological objections notwithstanding: giving.
19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
I very much dislike most of the Christmas hymnology. I became soured on it by repetition. And what I wasn't soured on, I have heard butchered too many times. Thus, my favorite Christmas song is "Of the Father's Love Begotten." I am, of course, half-kidding. Though frankly I do wish we could bring back some of the Carolingian Christmas hymns.
20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
Yuck, definitely yuck.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Four Last Things: Death
Fairly recently, I was listening to a friend talk about the many ways the Four Sundays of Advent are themed. His personal favorite marks this Sunday as Hope Sunday, a choice matched by my very positive parish. I, however, am intrigued by the theming of the weeks of Advent with the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven. MadPriest has a slightly different list, which replaces Judgment with some weird UK reference. Bosch paints on the Four Last Things, suggesting that the theme at least dates to the Reformation. How it became associated with Advent is a puzzle I'll let my more expert readers fill in. Yet I think the theme fits quite well with the penitential and apocalyptic emphasis of the season, which I am trying in some small manner to reclaim this year. So there will be some reflections during the next few weeks here, and I welcome anyone else who's interested to join in.
Death
Death and I are not particularly intimate. The very few funerals I remember attending have been for nearly complete strangers for reasons that seem appropriate at the time. But this week very much is associated for me with death. It was this week a few years ago that saw my mother's father fall asleep. And in the very same week, a relatively new student at my college (R.) and fellow communicant perished in one of the most mysterious misadventures I've ever encountered.
My grandfather and R. may have died the same week, but the circumstances of their deaths were very different. One died very much as Shakespeare describes in the Seven Ages of Man in As You Like It sans everything it seemed but joy. It wasn't what I thought would be the last thing. But when my grandfather saw the small baby (my senior cousin by order of primogeniture, quite my junior by age) who carried his name and the names of his ancestors, he verily beamed. Everything had been stripped away from a very hearty man and a very hard one, who should have died a thousand deaths during the previous few years. But joy remained of a kind that I had not seen before, even when his beloved daughters wedded or when he received an important award for his long years as a soccer coach. Something else had been there. Something else had held him back. If I should die so slowly, I only hope that joy will be left at the end.
R. died early and quickly. No one knows why. If I remain in academia, I suspect the list of puzzling deaths of promising youths will grow longer. It already has.
There's a song from that irreverent Broadway musical Avenue Q called "For Now" in which memento mori and timor mortis conturbat me are pretty much turned on their heads and the vanitas vanitatum of Solomon seems all too familiar. A character complains that his life is without purpose and his erstwhile beloved replies in concert with the Chorus, "that except for death and paying taxes, everything is only for now." Both the good and bad of life are temporary and have a final end. The chief ancient response to this situation would be to emphasize some form of secular immortality in the name of one's family, the fame of one's deeds, or the endurance of one's poetry. The first of these consumes the Old Testament, in which hope of a world to come continually grew even as God still promised the immortality of lineage to the righteous. The latter response of some Jewish and most Christian thinkers was to posit that the dead would live again in a world reformed and restored, though the exact details and the nature of the new world varied. Avenue Q embraces neither Christian nor pagan hope. Death is merely the end of a stream of variably convenient accidents.
When I was very little, I remember feeling quite uninvested in life. When I was about three, I remember distinctly wondering if I really was in my body and whether I really had to live life, whether I could stop its inexorable progress through the events that would shape my identity as it had shaped the lunching men and women sitting on the stools and behind the counter where I, too, was sitting. I can say with great enthusiasm that I no longer indulge in that type of detachment. But it does suggest the question of whither the timor mortis really arises. At the age of three, the argument between being and non-being or activity and potentiality (depending on whether one is Aristotelian or not) becomes surprisingly odd when many of the high-faluting aspects of being are completely or nearly foreign to one's experience. I'm not arguing for infanticide here, indeed quite against it, because irrespective of whether the infant etc. or anyone else ever should be able to choose non-being over being, it seems especially horrible to kill a fellow who has little way to judge whether life is anything in particular. What I sensed when I was three was that being had something to it because it had the potential of progress, not in the necessarily positive sense, just the one of growth and change to something different from before. Death, in my limited understanding, was the end to that. Death too is an end to routine as well, ending order and discipline as it ends the person. This is one of the many local expressions of entropy.
Of endings, the Apostle says, "Love shall never end, but where there are prophecies, they shall lose effect, and where there are tongues, they shall cease, and where there is knowledge, it shall become useless." (I Corinthians 13:8). Love is not just only for now. Paul is putting forth his usual teaching on spiritual gifts, but the basis of his argument is that there is a path to immortality which the grave cannot touch, founded on agape that joins this life to the next.
Death
Death and I are not particularly intimate. The very few funerals I remember attending have been for nearly complete strangers for reasons that seem appropriate at the time. But this week very much is associated for me with death. It was this week a few years ago that saw my mother's father fall asleep. And in the very same week, a relatively new student at my college (R.) and fellow communicant perished in one of the most mysterious misadventures I've ever encountered.
My grandfather and R. may have died the same week, but the circumstances of their deaths were very different. One died very much as Shakespeare describes in the Seven Ages of Man in As You Like It sans everything it seemed but joy. It wasn't what I thought would be the last thing. But when my grandfather saw the small baby (my senior cousin by order of primogeniture, quite my junior by age) who carried his name and the names of his ancestors, he verily beamed. Everything had been stripped away from a very hearty man and a very hard one, who should have died a thousand deaths during the previous few years. But joy remained of a kind that I had not seen before, even when his beloved daughters wedded or when he received an important award for his long years as a soccer coach. Something else had been there. Something else had held him back. If I should die so slowly, I only hope that joy will be left at the end.
R. died early and quickly. No one knows why. If I remain in academia, I suspect the list of puzzling deaths of promising youths will grow longer. It already has.
There's a song from that irreverent Broadway musical Avenue Q called "For Now" in which memento mori and timor mortis conturbat me are pretty much turned on their heads and the vanitas vanitatum of Solomon seems all too familiar. A character complains that his life is without purpose and his erstwhile beloved replies in concert with the Chorus, "that except for death and paying taxes, everything is only for now." Both the good and bad of life are temporary and have a final end. The chief ancient response to this situation would be to emphasize some form of secular immortality in the name of one's family, the fame of one's deeds, or the endurance of one's poetry. The first of these consumes the Old Testament, in which hope of a world to come continually grew even as God still promised the immortality of lineage to the righteous. The latter response of some Jewish and most Christian thinkers was to posit that the dead would live again in a world reformed and restored, though the exact details and the nature of the new world varied. Avenue Q embraces neither Christian nor pagan hope. Death is merely the end of a stream of variably convenient accidents.
When I was very little, I remember feeling quite uninvested in life. When I was about three, I remember distinctly wondering if I really was in my body and whether I really had to live life, whether I could stop its inexorable progress through the events that would shape my identity as it had shaped the lunching men and women sitting on the stools and behind the counter where I, too, was sitting. I can say with great enthusiasm that I no longer indulge in that type of detachment. But it does suggest the question of whither the timor mortis really arises. At the age of three, the argument between being and non-being or activity and potentiality (depending on whether one is Aristotelian or not) becomes surprisingly odd when many of the high-faluting aspects of being are completely or nearly foreign to one's experience. I'm not arguing for infanticide here, indeed quite against it, because irrespective of whether the infant etc. or anyone else ever should be able to choose non-being over being, it seems especially horrible to kill a fellow who has little way to judge whether life is anything in particular. What I sensed when I was three was that being had something to it because it had the potential of progress, not in the necessarily positive sense, just the one of growth and change to something different from before. Death, in my limited understanding, was the end to that. Death too is an end to routine as well, ending order and discipline as it ends the person. This is one of the many local expressions of entropy.
Of endings, the Apostle says, "Love shall never end, but where there are prophecies, they shall lose effect, and where there are tongues, they shall cease, and where there is knowledge, it shall become useless." (I Corinthians 13:8). Love is not just only for now. Paul is putting forth his usual teaching on spiritual gifts, but the basis of his argument is that there is a path to immortality which the grave cannot touch, founded on agape that joins this life to the next.
Monday, December 04, 2006
With the Holy Spirit and With Power: A Fable
I recently brought the attention of the latest posts by Father Baumann to the Prior, who thought the tenor of them quite judicious, but continues to be struck by the brawling that consumes the Church in Asia Minor. He has his own sides in this dispute from a doctrinal standpoint, but when I pointed out my impatience with the conservatives, he said, Peace, my son. The same Spirit blows through Asia Minor that blows through these halls. The same River washes us clean. The same Fire from heaven consumes our sacrifices. Even good doctrine should be tested, and frankly, I am not impressed by the cogency of those partisans you hang about with sometimes. You should be watching your own soul. You are overly wrothful, and not just at other members of the Body. Why were you so angry this afternoon?
I assured him that that particular vexation indeed had been treated too hastily and that I was going to show more restraint.
"Ah, Brother Prior, I said, does the story really end with a joke?" "It does the way I tell it." "But is it true? Is the Church of God sustained in the way the Justice said?" The Church of God fortunately is sustained by more wonderful things than these, indeed, the fullness of the Triune God. It is not as if those of whom the Justice speaks are like the righteous ones in Jewish lore who keep this world in being. If the story is true, and I do not know whether it is true or not, it suggests that the Holy Spirit may not always speak in such a way that those who receive are certain of the One they hear. It re-asserts the ancient teachings to be skeptical of prophets and those who claim spiritual certainty of the will of God. But most importantly, it is a warning to listen carefully to everyone and to cultivate what little measure of holiness we have in this life through the merits of Our Savior in hopes of hearing what He wishes us to do. It's a lesson, my son, you should consider very well, especially when you feel the need to scream at the Fathers.
I assured him that that particular vexation indeed had been treated too hastily and that I was going to show more restraint.
'Well, I certainly hope so. Nothing is worth hating one's fellows. But Father Baumann's reflections remind me of an old story. It is very ancient, dating to the foundation of this World. It concerns the first Archbishop of the See, who became convinced that there must be charismatic gifts in high abundance within his jurisdiction. His reasoning was that every time he wrote to a vestry asking for their nominations to a living, he always received an answer to the effect of, 'The Holy Spirit was very clear in suggesting N to us.' And reading the Apostle, the Archbishop supposed that gifts were provided according to the need of the Body. And thus he wondered why his See was so abundantly gifted with discernment, when he knew that there was a great deficiency of Sunday School teachers and a need for the relief of arthritis in many aged persons etc. And, of course, he always wanted to have someone to pray in tongues with him, because he believed that tongues were non-human languages and he could then learn by osmosis as it were. And so he asked the priests in charge of each parish to survey their communicants and ask such persons with spiritual gifts to present themselves to the Archbishop. Well, he was greatly disappointed. No one appeared except a man who handled venomous snakes, but the cathedral verger apparently chased the man away, and he appeared not to be a member of the Established Church anyway.
All was looking fairly grim until the Rector of Sancta Maria Victoria Nostra prope Palatinum dragged a man kicking and screaming into the cathedral. The man's gens would be known to you, but it's not as important to the story as the fact that he was a man of praetorian rank, who is protected by civil law from having hands laid him in this manner with quite stern penalties. The Archbishop was duly shocked. But the Rector said, 'He's been holding out on us, your Grace. He once mentioned something to me outside the Sacrament...' The Archbishop asked the Rector to leave off and help himself to tea in the Archepiscopal Cottage. The Archbishop then sat the retired Justice down, for such he was in civil life and asked him what this was all about.
'Well, your Grace. I was born on Terra as you know...in England and was baptized in a little parish church in the Westcountry. When I was little, the vicar used to invite the children of the parish to gather around when he baptized an infant. And during the prayers over the Font, I always felt a little queer...and queerer still when he actually baptized the child, as if my whole body was feeling the Holy Spirit come down and wash the sins away or seal the child in Christ. As I grew older, I noticed that the same queer feeling seemed associated with the Eucharist, especially with the Words of Institution and the epiclesis, as if there were static electricity drawn into the room at that moment onto the Holy Gifts. Oh, it all sounds very silly, but I developed a great reverence for the Sacrament then, which has continued all my days. And indeed, at my own Confirmation, some years later, I felt the same jolt in great measure as the Bishop laid his hands on me, and when he laid his hands on my fellow confirmands. As I grew older, this feeling drew me to the service of the altar as an acolyte and to the reading of the Word as a lector. Oh, how I feared being a Lector, but I felt as if the Holy Spirit were with me. Once, I had read the Old Testament for that day, some fiery words from Ezekiel, and afterwards, a local headmistress took me aside and informed me that she had seen a flame of fire on my shoulder as I read. O, how that filled me with fear...
'And from those days until now, I have felt so close to God in the rites of the Church through this queer feeling. It is a glorious blessing granted to so wretched a sinner as I, but it's not something I really like to talk about.'
The Archbishop asked, 'Why not? It testifies to the power and existence of God. It must have its uses. And it's greatly uncommon these days. I couldn't find anyone except a snakehandler on the entire planet.'
'Well, that's just it, your Grace. There are so many problems associated with it. First, there is the question of faith. I believe that I sense the Holy Spirit, but aren't we supposed to believe rather than see? I've always feared what would happen if it stopped. It often feels dimmer or even absent when I am not in a properly holy frame of mind. What if it were to stop altogether? Would I still believe in God? I should, shouldn't I? Second, there is the question of other experiences. My encounters with the Holy Spirit did not stop at the gates of the Church of England or this Church. The Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and the Lutherans all seem to be gifted with it to the same extent. I've seen glimpses in non-Christian religions, too. And can you explain why the Holy Spirit seems to be associated with Mexican women making hot chocolate? This is why it's so silly. I don't have any charismatic gifts of this sort. It's endorphins or something. Third, what do you do if you go to a church and don't encounter the Holy Spirit in the ordinances. What's that supposed to mean? Do you tell them? There are some Protestants who would say that I have been associating with an unclean spirit that confuses the catholic churches from the Word of God.
'Well, my son, I guess you must have faith like anyone else. You must trust that you encounter the Holy Ghost without any certainty. But again, I say it must have its uses. Such gifts are meant to build up the Church. Why did you hide your light under a bushel?'
'Your Grace, the England of my youth was a tempestuous place ecclesially. The Church of England was rent with controversies about women priests, sexuality, and the role of non-Christian religions in national identity etc. Frankly, if I had said to anyone that I initially founded my belief that women were valid matter for ordination on my spiritual gifts, I would have been entering inadmissible evidence into the debate. Such things cannot be verified. Some would believe I was consorting with the Evil One. Others would want to use my gift for their own purposes. My gift also became rather problematic in the sexuality debates. It's a sort of ana-Donatism to believe that a gay priest must be all right with God if he celebrates validly, isn't it?'
'I suppose so. But surely there must be some use to it. The Apostle assures us that these gifts aren't given in vain, and indeed the Lord warns most strongly in the Parable of the Talents that all that we are should be used. God gave you ability to interpret the civil law and execute equity. Why did you use one gift rather than another. Because one gave you profit?'
'Most Reverend Father, surely you don't think I've done nothing? I have tried to use my gift as best I could, not as baking soda to drive others to rashness but as a way to be leaven to the Church. I have seen my gift as a spur not to fall asleep but to re-examine issues that I normally would let others opine on, and as a way to see that some questions do not have easy answers. It's why I am so happy to be a catechist here, because I am allowed to proclaim the kerygma clearly here but also can look at secondary issues and adiaphora from both sides without confusing the catechumens. In England, it would have been nearly impossible to do so with the way the controversies were so mixed together that you were convinced that everyone who was liberal on sexuality thought the Cross was utterly without power or everyone who was conservative on women's ordination believed that women were utterly barred from being Lectors or serving at the Holy Table.'
'But the gift is so uncommon. It needs to be spread through the Church. Or the very few individuals who have it must tell us about it.'
'I don't think it's as uncommon as you think. Some of the Fathers make arguments and use images that seem very familiar to me, and I can't but think that some of the intense devotion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages might have been an occasionally narcotic response. That should warn us that the gifts of the Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit ought to map onto one another. I don't think it's rare today either. That headmistress likely had it. That's two in one small Devon parish, isn't it? But isn't it better that we be quiet about it? Would you rather be tossed about on every wind of doctrine or fooled by some charlatan? Wouldn't you rather have a few irenic or occasionally strident people spurred to look again in the Scriptures, to examine if the tradition we received is what it always was, and strive for Holy Wisdom? So won't you let us be, your Grace?"
The Archbishop replied dejectedly, 'I suppose so. But promise me one thing. Will you figure out some way to discern good Sunday School teachers?'"
"Ah, Brother Prior, I said, does the story really end with a joke?" "It does the way I tell it." "But is it true? Is the Church of God sustained in the way the Justice said?" The Church of God fortunately is sustained by more wonderful things than these, indeed, the fullness of the Triune God. It is not as if those of whom the Justice speaks are like the righteous ones in Jewish lore who keep this world in being. If the story is true, and I do not know whether it is true or not, it suggests that the Holy Spirit may not always speak in such a way that those who receive are certain of the One they hear. It re-asserts the ancient teachings to be skeptical of prophets and those who claim spiritual certainty of the will of God. But most importantly, it is a warning to listen carefully to everyone and to cultivate what little measure of holiness we have in this life through the merits of Our Savior in hopes of hearing what He wishes us to do. It's a lesson, my son, you should consider very well, especially when you feel the need to scream at the Fathers.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Another Addition
Confessions of A Carioca is a blog from a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin somewhere to the north of Laodicea. Considering what's going on lately, I figured I might as well have a look inside.
Fun tidbits:
1. "The Elizabethan Settlement was inherently unstable, sort of like the early versions of Windows. Now we're into a system crash, XP doesn't seem to have the answer, and Vista hasn't been released yet."
2. "[The liberals] are simultaneously correct and clueless. (If I knew how to say that in Latin, I surely would!)"
3. (On Mark Lawrence, Bishop Coadjutor-Elect of South Carolina) "We will miss him in San Joaquin, be he will take his place in the councils of the church in a powerful and effective way, and be a salubrious influence on the emerging re-invented Anglicanism."
4. "Then there was the short-lived Book of Daniel, which was overtly Episcopalian, and I actually kind of enjoyed. But it was also bizarrely Episcopalian, an exaggerated caricature of every weird thing the Episcopal Church is currently into, which is no mean feat, since the Episcopal Church is currently into some very bizarre and weird things."
5. It's All About Ecclesiology, Stupid
6. Anecdotal Taxonomy
I occupy the crack between the third and fourth category apparently...
7. "I am particularly troubled by the [Presiding] Bishop's assent to the interviewer's characterization of her position that other religions are "parallel" routes to God for those of "another culture and language." This is not only a theological train wreck (the Church being "catholic"--i.e. universal--and all), it's elitist and racist. What language or cultural vocabulary does one have to be fluent in in order to qualify to be a Christian?"
8. "Consequently, my life as an Episcopalian--working on three-and-half decades--has alway been marked by constant chagrin over the public policy resolutions passed by General Convention. It's not only that I disagree with the vast majority of them on the basis of their actual content, which I do. It's that I am opposed to any public policy resolutions as a matter of principle." (It's OK. He's talking about the praegustatory nature of the Church...)
9. On the Due Observance of Sunday
Oh, it's all good. I disagree with some of it, of course. But it's well-written and usually well-considered. It's a good thing to read if you've just read the latest salvo from his Ordinary.
Fun tidbits:
1. "The Elizabethan Settlement was inherently unstable, sort of like the early versions of Windows. Now we're into a system crash, XP doesn't seem to have the answer, and Vista hasn't been released yet."
2. "[The liberals] are simultaneously correct and clueless. (If I knew how to say that in Latin, I surely would!)"
3. (On Mark Lawrence, Bishop Coadjutor-Elect of South Carolina) "We will miss him in San Joaquin, be he will take his place in the councils of the church in a powerful and effective way, and be a salubrious influence on the emerging re-invented Anglicanism."
4. "Then there was the short-lived Book of Daniel, which was overtly Episcopalian, and I actually kind of enjoyed. But it was also bizarrely Episcopalian, an exaggerated caricature of every weird thing the Episcopal Church is currently into, which is no mean feat, since the Episcopal Church is currently into some very bizarre and weird things."
5. It's All About Ecclesiology, Stupid
6. Anecdotal Taxonomy
I occupy the crack between the third and fourth category apparently...
7. "I am particularly troubled by the [Presiding] Bishop's assent to the interviewer's characterization of her position that other religions are "parallel" routes to God for those of "another culture and language." This is not only a theological train wreck (the Church being "catholic"--i.e. universal--and all), it's elitist and racist. What language or cultural vocabulary does one have to be fluent in in order to qualify to be a Christian?"
8. "Consequently, my life as an Episcopalian--working on three-and-half decades--has alway been marked by constant chagrin over the public policy resolutions passed by General Convention. It's not only that I disagree with the vast majority of them on the basis of their actual content, which I do. It's that I am opposed to any public policy resolutions as a matter of principle." (It's OK. He's talking about the praegustatory nature of the Church...)
9. On the Due Observance of Sunday
Oh, it's all good. I disagree with some of it, of course. But it's well-written and usually well-considered. It's a good thing to read if you've just read the latest salvo from his Ordinary.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Cleaning Up the Sidebar
Out with the old, in with the new. Today is St. Andrew's Day, and I therefore decided that my Advent Fast would begin today. This was decided as I was staring at sausage pizza.
The beginning of the liturgical year also is an opportunity to clean up a few matters in the sidebar.
First, Kinesis is no more. Rev. Deacon Karen wisely decided to scatter her blog to the winds before entering her first call.
I now have the correct address of Dean Kniseley's fine Entangled States. It is a good mixture of science and sermons.
A couple of new blogs enter the fray. One comes from an Anglo-Catholic priest, who claims his parish is the most traditional and orthodox parish in the Diocese of Los Angeles. But they're staying! Yay! The hike to the OC would be a bit much, but I do like Father David's blog, and I think most of you would, too. He apparently also shares one of my hobbies, writing science fiction. I had been meaning to mention the blog for a while now, but I was spurred to action by a kind promotional e-mail in my Inbox from one of Father David's parishioners.
The other is Father Tony Clavier's self-titled blog, though I think "West Virginia Parson" is a much better title. Father Clavier is fighting cancer while having some quite interesting (and convicting) thoughts about mission and the Episcopal Church. I am still working on a response to his thoughts on Anglicanism.
All right, that's it. Go read the Postulant or something. But if you do read the Postulant's entry about a Network bishop etc. etc., please know that the rumor in question is a very old one and is related to his quite enthusiastic support of a "discreet" ex-gay ministry in his cathedral city and his unmarried state. Please... Hasn't anyone ever heard of the eunouchion pneumatike ?
The beginning of the liturgical year also is an opportunity to clean up a few matters in the sidebar.
First, Kinesis is no more. Rev. Deacon Karen wisely decided to scatter her blog to the winds before entering her first call.
I now have the correct address of Dean Kniseley's fine Entangled States. It is a good mixture of science and sermons.
A couple of new blogs enter the fray. One comes from an Anglo-Catholic priest, who claims his parish is the most traditional and orthodox parish in the Diocese of Los Angeles. But they're staying! Yay! The hike to the OC would be a bit much, but I do like Father David's blog, and I think most of you would, too. He apparently also shares one of my hobbies, writing science fiction. I had been meaning to mention the blog for a while now, but I was spurred to action by a kind promotional e-mail in my Inbox from one of Father David's parishioners.
The other is Father Tony Clavier's self-titled blog, though I think "West Virginia Parson" is a much better title. Father Clavier is fighting cancer while having some quite interesting (and convicting) thoughts about mission and the Episcopal Church. I am still working on a response to his thoughts on Anglicanism.
All right, that's it. Go read the Postulant or something. But if you do read the Postulant's entry about a Network bishop etc. etc., please know that the rumor in question is a very old one and is related to his quite enthusiastic support of a "discreet" ex-gay ministry in his cathedral city and his unmarried state. Please... Hasn't anyone ever heard of the eunouchion pneumatike ?
Friday, November 24, 2006
Father Clavier Discusses Anglicanism
Link to the original post , and I'll respond item by item.
1. Let us not forget from where our tradition of local expression, territorial basis, and community commitment comes. Someone, perhaps Thomas Cromwell, had the bright idea during the presenting dispute of the Henrician Reformation that there was just something about being emperor. It was not a particularly illogical idea. The Pantheon in Rome was not converted to Christian worship until the early 7th century, because temples were regarded as property of the Emperor, and it was not until the 7th century that the Popes felt sufficiently independent of the Emperor to subvert his jurisdiction. In Cromwell's time, Henry's nephew-in-law was the Emperor and was using his imperium in the form of an army to compel a decision in favor of the legitimacy of his aunt's marriage. If Henry became emperor in England, Ireland, Scotland, and France, the latter two realms being conceits of his, Cromwell theorized that Henry by virtue of his crown imperial (can you tell that I'm listening to Sir William Walton at the moment?) would have similar jurisdiction as the "Roman" Emperor over spiritual matters. (It's entirely possible that this theory pre-dates Cromwell, considering that Henry was anointed like a bishop at his Coronation contrary to papal legislation), and the Coronation crown was referred to as "Imperiall.") But the Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) leaves no doubt as to a fundamental belief that England was an Empire and therefore entitled to a certain parallelism between temporal and spiritual jurisdiction,
The founding values of popular sovereignty and religious disestablishment (less ubiquitous but of the same antiquity) likewise have shaped American Episcopalians, in theology, outlook, and polity. The reconciliation of the schism over Secession would not have been so easy without the instinct to do things spiritually as it were temporally, asking only for conformity and accession to the equivalent to Constitution and Laws of the church. If Lincoln had evaded his assassin, the civil arrangements might have been nearly as amicable. As beautiful as the 1865 General Convention sounds, one only needs to read Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk and the records of South Carolina's wartime Diocesan Conventions to realize that brotherly reconciliation should have been mixed with some frank discussions. The same sins of the polity with respect to racism were visited on the church, time and time again.
It goes without saying that the influence of Anglicanism in many parts of the world including the United States can be traced to the strong association of the Church of England's missionary work with British colonization.
But there is something more to the local adaptation of Anglicanism than the spectre of Erastianism. For instance, wherefore the Episcopal Church of Scotland? The existence of such a church should have ceased after 1689 if Anglicanism simply was locally adapted to the temporalities. Anglicanism also bears the character of catholic Intramontanism. While the Pope was resisted by Henry, because Henry considered himself Supreme Head, his bishops generally held a limited view of papal power, something that surely would apply to the Ecumenical Patriarch or the Pope of Alexandria: the Church Catholic decentralized but united somehow. And it is in this odd, much-controverted, and wholly unresolved quality of "catholicity" that allows the Episcopal Church of Scotland to exist among Established Presbyterianism or the head of the Anglican Center at Rome to confirm or receive native Italians. And indeed the latter is so odd that some sort of Anglican distinctiveness must be invoked or else it must be asserted that Anglican adaptation is not merely local or territorial but catholic in the looser sense that is not solely credal or conciliar or episcopolitical or sacramental etc. but one that embraces the fullness of affairs in the name and in service of Christ as present locally. Many Anglicans don't seem to want that.
But Father Clavier is right to point out Anglicanism is not a sect etc. The definition of a sect really must be the assertion of nulla salus extra nos as opposed to nulla salus extra ecclesiam or nulla salus extra Christum. There is salvation outside of Anglicanism.
2. "It follows that we do not own our ecclesial reality..." Indeed, the Body of Christ is wider than Anglicans. Moreover, we do not construct an ecclesial reality owned only by us. Anglicans generally recognize the orders of some non-Anglicans, though limits vary. But what is important is that our concerns about the orders of others stem from concerns about apostolic succession and sacramental character and not truth games of about such things that really boil down to issues of authority. I fear that Rome's greatest objection to our scattered reception of women being valid matter for Holy Orders has little to do with the nature of the controversy (which often brings both sides close to heresy) but they really do believe our orders are valid, fear they might be wrong about women's ordination, and fear that those with certain spiritual gifts might realize this, thus weakening their authority.
"Neither our claims to be the Church, our formularies (doctrine, discipline and worship), nor our sacramental rites and ceremonies are self-generated: we didn't invent them."
And if there should be sort of re-alignment in Anglicanism, it would behoove liberals to consider these words carefully. And I would further warn that our reception process should be critical.
"Anglicanism rejects the sectarian ideal that churches are for like-minded 'saints' who agree about each others' virtue, or election, or enlightenment, or on an agenda other than the Catholic Faith as described in the Liturgy and other documents, and in the living voice of scripture, the living experience of the Tradition and the living application of sanctified reason."
It is this demand that Scripture, Tradition, and Reason be alive that is particularly interesting. Whenever someone asserts something other than a view of Scripture enthroned among the cherubim on the grounds of a trilateral or quadrilateral understanding, the common rhetorical tack becomes that Hooker or Wesley (or whoever) intended Scripture to be the final and unquestioned authority, no matter what. Let us be clear. The obsession with authorial intent is a fully modern concept, which if explained in its full sense and implications likely would dismay many of our fathers and mothers in the faith. It is closely akin to taking everything in its plain and grammatical sense as understood by English Protestants and believing that absolution by the Pope from reading something otherwise was still utterly damnable.
3. This item is a fun item. Father Clavier describes the just society grounded in Christian truth and Jesus' sovereignty. Ruth Gledhill has a story in the Times of London today about a study showing that the most irreligious democracies (i.e., those most fallen from Christian practice) have lower abortion and teen pregnancy rates, lower sexually transmitted disease rates, lower rates of juvenile and young adult mortality (like this week...), and lower homicide rates than the "religious" democracy, i.e., the US. Mayhap, it sounds that those in power honor the words of the Gospel but do not respect its power. The irreligious democracies, however, have lower birthrates...
But these points are not exactly germane, because the Lord instructs us that it will always be a losing battle. The Empire always strikes back, even if it means that the Christians become the Empire. The world will end in a big fiery cock-up, no matter what we do. I do not say this as a encouragement to inaction but because I fear what would happen if the religious left ever became the kind of political force the religious right is. The lust for mastery consumes us all. Father Clavier reminds us that Christians are the Disloyal Opposition to the Powers That Be and Emissaries of the Servant Emperor. Most Anglicans really feel drawn toward one role rather than the other. The Episcopal Church is leaning toward Disloyal Opposition, while its discontents yell that we aren't being Emissaries. The balance is slightly better in Africa, where even the Church of Nigeria's Pastoral Letters have fairly equal measures Great Commandment and Great Commission. But we're in a bad state when conservatives demean "Reign of God" as a liberal buzzword in the Presiding Bishop's correspondence to the Primate of All Nigeria.
Anglicanism as a whole might be better off reflecting how the Gospel might come with the Holy Spirit and with power in a world facing a variety of problems that will require greater cooperation among many kingdoms, peoples, and nation, not as something confused with particular national identities. We are the salt of the Earth, not the food, the leaven, not the bread. The Body of Christ is a network for good and for God. Too bad about those bonds of affection, no?
4. The Church Year is a discipline. It's a discipline we share with much of the rest of the Body. However, I do understand that is not shared with everyone. Easter and Christmas are universal (though strict Calvinists might not celebrate the latter), but the idea of season and of commemorations still strikes many originally non-Anglican evangelicals oddly in their bones.
5. One of the major tests facing Anglicanism is how corporate is corporate and to whom are we really accountable. Is it the local parish? Is it the clergy who set the corporate bar? Is it the lay leadership? Is it the diocese? The Province? The Primates? Lambeth? Father Clavier perhaps takes the approach I would take, in which the rule of belief is founded on the liturgy. It is an idea that Anglicans intuit fairly easily. But as Father AKMA points out, the divergent eucharistic liturgy of the Church is making the corporate level increasingly congregational. And Father AKMA is merely assuming that the authorized liturgies are followed. What happens when the General Confession and the Nicene Creed are no longer heard? The best question being asked by the re-asserters is "How much must 'my orthodoxy' be purged in order to fit into the corporate liturgical life of the Church?" It's not as shaggy a dog as they make it sound. Will the new arrangements of the Network mean the 1662 BCP? Will you purge those who believe in Real Presence thereby?
6. This item seems to relate the foundation of corporate practice on the Scriptures with the Triunity of God. I would add to this item that Anglicanism is really built on a careful tension between three Books: the Book of Life, the Holy Scriptures, and the Book of Nature (in that order, too). This is a concern of both Hooker and Donne, but it's not one that is really getting too much attention these days. I would argue that the natural sciences have a special status as a mediator of ecclesial discernment within our tradition, though not to the subjection of the Scriptures. This is why I have spent the last few years trying (and failing) to cultivate that sanctified mind of which Father Clavier speaks. "Caeli ennarrant..."
7. I'm not really sure what some of this item means. The basic model of Anglican clergy training is to ground the postulant for orders in the liberal arts and then treat divinity as a higher science requiring the skills developed within the septivium, but which is ideally done in combination with pastoral training. There was always a bit of tension between the Universities and the facere of the Church with this one. But I always appreciated how so many of the great bishops of the early American church received their training like apprentices with a master workman. Bishop White trained Muhlenberg and others in this way. It very much agrees with St. Hilda of Whitby's approach to theological education with its emphasis on a balance between study and pastoral work or with Benedictine ideas about balance. It also was a training in prayer as well. Muhlenberg began his training by saying Morning and Evening Prayer in St. Peter's Church. Later, he was allowed to preach under the old man's supervision. Yet he also followed White all over the place, shadowing him like an intern or a resident. Perhaps, clergy training needs to return to this model, which really did tend toward an Apostolic College. See my past comments about apostolic succession being more than laying on of hands.
8. We're still fairly new at the canonization game yet... But our tendency to speak of the laity as a particular order (rather than a general order) of ministry is suggestive of something. The fact that I can consider being a layman as my vocation for now, and the tradition of being "a churchman" is also suggestive. Is this pan-Anglican? Oh, wait, the Mother's Union is a byword in Africa...
9. This item is troublesome territory, because churches that are inclusive of the community they serve will be inward-looking. It's hard to maintain a catholic church this way. Only by citing Dominical authority does Father Clavier provide any way forward. He really should clarify what kind of inclusion he thinks the Reformers were performing, though I suspect he means something about making the Bible and the liturgy more accessible to the masses, which is now uncontroversially the kind of reform with which the Lord would agree, "The word is very near to you..." suffuses the readings for the Feast of St. Andrew. But the disagreements that consume the community presently concern the will of the Lord. My radical priests believe they have Dominical authority on their side and probably could quote copious Scripture on that score if forced to it. What keeps Anglicanism vital is the ability to listen and the ability to critique and be critiqued, to be drawn by one another toward Dominical authority. That is the only way to build an inclusive community under "the servant Emperor." A community of like-minded "right-thinking" people does not listen to dissent and does not know how to critique it, nor to accept critique.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may not stay up all night musing about divinity because that just makes it ever so much harder to awake for Lauds
1. Let us not forget from where our tradition of local expression, territorial basis, and community commitment comes. Someone, perhaps Thomas Cromwell, had the bright idea during the presenting dispute of the Henrician Reformation that there was just something about being emperor. It was not a particularly illogical idea. The Pantheon in Rome was not converted to Christian worship until the early 7th century, because temples were regarded as property of the Emperor, and it was not until the 7th century that the Popes felt sufficiently independent of the Emperor to subvert his jurisdiction. In Cromwell's time, Henry's nephew-in-law was the Emperor and was using his imperium in the form of an army to compel a decision in favor of the legitimacy of his aunt's marriage. If Henry became emperor in England, Ireland, Scotland, and France, the latter two realms being conceits of his, Cromwell theorized that Henry by virtue of his crown imperial (can you tell that I'm listening to Sir William Walton at the moment?) would have similar jurisdiction as the "Roman" Emperor over spiritual matters. (It's entirely possible that this theory pre-dates Cromwell, considering that Henry was anointed like a bishop at his Coronation contrary to papal legislation), and the Coronation crown was referred to as "Imperiall.") But the Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) leaves no doubt as to a fundamental belief that England was an Empire and therefore entitled to a certain parallelism between temporal and spiritual jurisdiction,
"This realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same."
The founding values of popular sovereignty and religious disestablishment (less ubiquitous but of the same antiquity) likewise have shaped American Episcopalians, in theology, outlook, and polity. The reconciliation of the schism over Secession would not have been so easy without the instinct to do things spiritually as it were temporally, asking only for conformity and accession to the equivalent to Constitution and Laws of the church. If Lincoln had evaded his assassin, the civil arrangements might have been nearly as amicable. As beautiful as the 1865 General Convention sounds, one only needs to read Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk and the records of South Carolina's wartime Diocesan Conventions to realize that brotherly reconciliation should have been mixed with some frank discussions. The same sins of the polity with respect to racism were visited on the church, time and time again.
It goes without saying that the influence of Anglicanism in many parts of the world including the United States can be traced to the strong association of the Church of England's missionary work with British colonization.
But there is something more to the local adaptation of Anglicanism than the spectre of Erastianism. For instance, wherefore the Episcopal Church of Scotland? The existence of such a church should have ceased after 1689 if Anglicanism simply was locally adapted to the temporalities. Anglicanism also bears the character of catholic Intramontanism. While the Pope was resisted by Henry, because Henry considered himself Supreme Head, his bishops generally held a limited view of papal power, something that surely would apply to the Ecumenical Patriarch or the Pope of Alexandria: the Church Catholic decentralized but united somehow. And it is in this odd, much-controverted, and wholly unresolved quality of "catholicity" that allows the Episcopal Church of Scotland to exist among Established Presbyterianism or the head of the Anglican Center at Rome to confirm or receive native Italians. And indeed the latter is so odd that some sort of Anglican distinctiveness must be invoked or else it must be asserted that Anglican adaptation is not merely local or territorial but catholic in the looser sense that is not solely credal or conciliar or episcopolitical or sacramental etc. but one that embraces the fullness of affairs in the name and in service of Christ as present locally. Many Anglicans don't seem to want that.
But Father Clavier is right to point out Anglicanism is not a sect etc. The definition of a sect really must be the assertion of nulla salus extra nos as opposed to nulla salus extra ecclesiam or nulla salus extra Christum. There is salvation outside of Anglicanism.
2. "It follows that we do not own our ecclesial reality..." Indeed, the Body of Christ is wider than Anglicans. Moreover, we do not construct an ecclesial reality owned only by us. Anglicans generally recognize the orders of some non-Anglicans, though limits vary. But what is important is that our concerns about the orders of others stem from concerns about apostolic succession and sacramental character and not truth games of about such things that really boil down to issues of authority. I fear that Rome's greatest objection to our scattered reception of women being valid matter for Holy Orders has little to do with the nature of the controversy (which often brings both sides close to heresy) but they really do believe our orders are valid, fear they might be wrong about women's ordination, and fear that those with certain spiritual gifts might realize this, thus weakening their authority.
"Neither our claims to be the Church, our formularies (doctrine, discipline and worship), nor our sacramental rites and ceremonies are self-generated: we didn't invent them."
And if there should be sort of re-alignment in Anglicanism, it would behoove liberals to consider these words carefully. And I would further warn that our reception process should be critical.
"Anglicanism rejects the sectarian ideal that churches are for like-minded 'saints' who agree about each others' virtue, or election, or enlightenment, or on an agenda other than the Catholic Faith as described in the Liturgy and other documents, and in the living voice of scripture, the living experience of the Tradition and the living application of sanctified reason."
It is this demand that Scripture, Tradition, and Reason be alive that is particularly interesting. Whenever someone asserts something other than a view of Scripture enthroned among the cherubim on the grounds of a trilateral or quadrilateral understanding, the common rhetorical tack becomes that Hooker or Wesley (or whoever) intended Scripture to be the final and unquestioned authority, no matter what. Let us be clear. The obsession with authorial intent is a fully modern concept, which if explained in its full sense and implications likely would dismay many of our fathers and mothers in the faith. It is closely akin to taking everything in its plain and grammatical sense as understood by English Protestants and believing that absolution by the Pope from reading something otherwise was still utterly damnable.
3. This item is a fun item. Father Clavier describes the just society grounded in Christian truth and Jesus' sovereignty. Ruth Gledhill has a story in the Times of London today about a study showing that the most irreligious democracies (i.e., those most fallen from Christian practice) have lower abortion and teen pregnancy rates, lower sexually transmitted disease rates, lower rates of juvenile and young adult mortality (like this week...), and lower homicide rates than the "religious" democracy, i.e., the US. Mayhap, it sounds that those in power honor the words of the Gospel but do not respect its power. The irreligious democracies, however, have lower birthrates...
But these points are not exactly germane, because the Lord instructs us that it will always be a losing battle. The Empire always strikes back, even if it means that the Christians become the Empire. The world will end in a big fiery cock-up, no matter what we do. I do not say this as a encouragement to inaction but because I fear what would happen if the religious left ever became the kind of political force the religious right is. The lust for mastery consumes us all. Father Clavier reminds us that Christians are the Disloyal Opposition to the Powers That Be and Emissaries of the Servant Emperor. Most Anglicans really feel drawn toward one role rather than the other. The Episcopal Church is leaning toward Disloyal Opposition, while its discontents yell that we aren't being Emissaries. The balance is slightly better in Africa, where even the Church of Nigeria's Pastoral Letters have fairly equal measures Great Commandment and Great Commission. But we're in a bad state when conservatives demean "Reign of God" as a liberal buzzword in the Presiding Bishop's correspondence to the Primate of All Nigeria.
Anglicanism as a whole might be better off reflecting how the Gospel might come with the Holy Spirit and with power in a world facing a variety of problems that will require greater cooperation among many kingdoms, peoples, and nation, not as something confused with particular national identities. We are the salt of the Earth, not the food, the leaven, not the bread. The Body of Christ is a network for good and for God. Too bad about those bonds of affection, no?
4. The Church Year is a discipline. It's a discipline we share with much of the rest of the Body. However, I do understand that is not shared with everyone. Easter and Christmas are universal (though strict Calvinists might not celebrate the latter), but the idea of season and of commemorations still strikes many originally non-Anglican evangelicals oddly in their bones.
5. One of the major tests facing Anglicanism is how corporate is corporate and to whom are we really accountable. Is it the local parish? Is it the clergy who set the corporate bar? Is it the lay leadership? Is it the diocese? The Province? The Primates? Lambeth? Father Clavier perhaps takes the approach I would take, in which the rule of belief is founded on the liturgy. It is an idea that Anglicans intuit fairly easily. But as Father AKMA points out, the divergent eucharistic liturgy of the Church is making the corporate level increasingly congregational. And Father AKMA is merely assuming that the authorized liturgies are followed. What happens when the General Confession and the Nicene Creed are no longer heard? The best question being asked by the re-asserters is "How much must 'my orthodoxy' be purged in order to fit into the corporate liturgical life of the Church?" It's not as shaggy a dog as they make it sound. Will the new arrangements of the Network mean the 1662 BCP? Will you purge those who believe in Real Presence thereby?
6. This item seems to relate the foundation of corporate practice on the Scriptures with the Triunity of God. I would add to this item that Anglicanism is really built on a careful tension between three Books: the Book of Life, the Holy Scriptures, and the Book of Nature (in that order, too). This is a concern of both Hooker and Donne, but it's not one that is really getting too much attention these days. I would argue that the natural sciences have a special status as a mediator of ecclesial discernment within our tradition, though not to the subjection of the Scriptures. This is why I have spent the last few years trying (and failing) to cultivate that sanctified mind of which Father Clavier speaks. "Caeli ennarrant..."
7. I'm not really sure what some of this item means. The basic model of Anglican clergy training is to ground the postulant for orders in the liberal arts and then treat divinity as a higher science requiring the skills developed within the septivium, but which is ideally done in combination with pastoral training. There was always a bit of tension between the Universities and the facere of the Church with this one. But I always appreciated how so many of the great bishops of the early American church received their training like apprentices with a master workman. Bishop White trained Muhlenberg and others in this way. It very much agrees with St. Hilda of Whitby's approach to theological education with its emphasis on a balance between study and pastoral work or with Benedictine ideas about balance. It also was a training in prayer as well. Muhlenberg began his training by saying Morning and Evening Prayer in St. Peter's Church. Later, he was allowed to preach under the old man's supervision. Yet he also followed White all over the place, shadowing him like an intern or a resident. Perhaps, clergy training needs to return to this model, which really did tend toward an Apostolic College. See my past comments about apostolic succession being more than laying on of hands.
8. We're still fairly new at the canonization game yet... But our tendency to speak of the laity as a particular order (rather than a general order) of ministry is suggestive of something. The fact that I can consider being a layman as my vocation for now, and the tradition of being "a churchman" is also suggestive. Is this pan-Anglican? Oh, wait, the Mother's Union is a byword in Africa...
9. This item is troublesome territory, because churches that are inclusive of the community they serve will be inward-looking. It's hard to maintain a catholic church this way. Only by citing Dominical authority does Father Clavier provide any way forward. He really should clarify what kind of inclusion he thinks the Reformers were performing, though I suspect he means something about making the Bible and the liturgy more accessible to the masses, which is now uncontroversially the kind of reform with which the Lord would agree, "The word is very near to you..." suffuses the readings for the Feast of St. Andrew. But the disagreements that consume the community presently concern the will of the Lord. My radical priests believe they have Dominical authority on their side and probably could quote copious Scripture on that score if forced to it. What keeps Anglicanism vital is the ability to listen and the ability to critique and be critiqued, to be drawn by one another toward Dominical authority. That is the only way to build an inclusive community under "the servant Emperor." A community of like-minded "right-thinking" people does not listen to dissent and does not know how to critique it, nor to accept critique.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may not stay up all night musing about divinity because that just makes it ever so much harder to awake for Lauds
Correction
Upon further review, MadPriest dislikes evangelicals because in his experience, they coddle the well-off, corrupt youth, and don't pay their diocesan assessments. His objection to the CUs is thus founded on the corrupting the youth bit. This must be a UK thing. Most of the evangelicals I know were "corrupted" long before college.
Events Across the Pond
MadPriest is on the warpath against Evangelicals, and frankly, he's becoming rather nasty about it. The casus Insanisacerdotalis indignantiae is the dispute in England and Scotland about university Student Unions disaffiliating Christian Unions (CUs), organizations nationally associated with the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) on the grounds that their by-laws discriminate against non-Christians and "active" homosexuals (note that I did not use "non-celibate," "partnered" etc., because I am not clear whether the CUs are merely opposed to homosexual intimacy and intercourse or self-identification).
Five issues seem to have become entrained together by the intense convection of this dispute.
1. Whether there should be criteria for membership or leadership in a particular organization besides that they be registered students in good standing of the University. (My alma mater actually forbids student organizations to have such criteria in their by-laws with respect to membership, but not leadership if I remember correctly.)
2. Whether Christian organizations on a campus should be permitted to discuss controversial aspects of Christianity and teach with authority on the matter.
3. Since universities in the UK are generally publicly funded, there is some concern that the by-laws of the Christian Unions violate non-discrimination laws of some sort.
4. Some Christians seem incensed about the Doctrinal Statement that must be affirmed upon membership:
The main stumbling block (my own, too) is the assertion of the infallibility of Scripture, which is a novelty introduced by the Westminster Confession of Faith. There also might be objections to Word being capitalized in the same clause, but I note that though the Articles of Religion assert Jesus Christ to be the Word of God (lit. the Word of the Father), the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral assert that the Holy Scriptures are (apparently adopting another Westminster novelty). Thus, I would agree that the Scriptures are the Word of God, provided that this is meant in some different and lower sense than Jesus Christ being the Word of God. Otherwise, the statement appears to agree with the Articles and the catholic Creeds.
5. Campus Muslim organizations are discriminatory, too. Some have asked why they get a free pass from the SUs.
-------------------------------------------
Having recently been graduated from a university with student organizations occupying political positions in a spectrum from revolutionary Catholic monarchism to revolutionary international socialism and religious organizations just as varied, I will be the first to say that a campus with a wide diversity of ideas and opinions is far more educational and fun than one in which uniformity of thought is encouraged. Once you decide that universities ought to be fair marketplaces of ideas, which is the cornerstone of academic freedom, delisting student organizations with unpopular positions is no more justified than firing professors with unpopular research. At my present institution, a controversial professor with tenure was sacked sneakily. That sneaky trick has hamstrung the institution's work in his field to the present day. But perhaps you can endure a Holocaust denier in the Political Science Department (you would hope there would be grounds for removal for misconduct in such a case), but you could not endure a student organization that promoted Holocaust denial. Well then, bring back in loco parentis . You only can make a distinction between student and professorial liberty on grounds of order or parental supervision.
But the major problem seems to arise from the public funding issue. Should the UK Government be involved with funding organizations that hold to a Cliffs' Notes version of the Westminster Confession of Faith and have discriminatory leadership requirements. In the United States, the answer would be simple. No public funding for the Christian organizations of any kind, no funding for the Muslim organizations either. In the United Kingdom, the situation becomes far more complicated, since the government funds educational foundations of the non-Established Churches (funding Catholic Schools in Scotlnd, for instance). For a Student Union to claim that the Christian Union cannot be supported on account of non-discrimination legislation is suspect in England and farcical in Scotland, where the Kirk is Established and the Catholic schools are regulated in such a way to ensure their Romanity. The Student Unions would be far better off waiting for the more obvious constitutional issues of the church-state conflict before going off on their own.
MadPriest's ire really seems to be focused on the opposition of the CUs to homosexual intimacy (see "I would like to marry gay people."). I share with him the sentiment but not the ire. Punishing or slandering someone solely or principally on account of their objections to homosexual intimacy is merely reciprocation. Mix that with the lust for mastery and you become the Empire ( qua idea) in the present age. The situation would be much different if the CUs were going seeking to replace the SUs so that organizations would be funded only if they subscribed to the Cliffs' notes version of the Westminster Confession.
Five issues seem to have become entrained together by the intense convection of this dispute.
1. Whether there should be criteria for membership or leadership in a particular organization besides that they be registered students in good standing of the University. (My alma mater actually forbids student organizations to have such criteria in their by-laws with respect to membership, but not leadership if I remember correctly.)
2. Whether Christian organizations on a campus should be permitted to discuss controversial aspects of Christianity and teach with authority on the matter.
3. Since universities in the UK are generally publicly funded, there is some concern that the by-laws of the Christian Unions violate non-discrimination laws of some sort.
4. Some Christians seem incensed about the Doctrinal Statement that must be affirmed upon membership:
( Courtesy of the University of York Christian Union ).
There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgement.
The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God's wrath and condemnation.
The Lord Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.
Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God's sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God's act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.
The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.
The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God's just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.
The main stumbling block (my own, too) is the assertion of the infallibility of Scripture, which is a novelty introduced by the Westminster Confession of Faith. There also might be objections to Word being capitalized in the same clause, but I note that though the Articles of Religion assert Jesus Christ to be the Word of God (lit. the Word of the Father), the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral assert that the Holy Scriptures are (apparently adopting another Westminster novelty). Thus, I would agree that the Scriptures are the Word of God, provided that this is meant in some different and lower sense than Jesus Christ being the Word of God. Otherwise, the statement appears to agree with the Articles and the catholic Creeds.
5. Campus Muslim organizations are discriminatory, too. Some have asked why they get a free pass from the SUs.
-------------------------------------------
Having recently been graduated from a university with student organizations occupying political positions in a spectrum from revolutionary Catholic monarchism to revolutionary international socialism and religious organizations just as varied, I will be the first to say that a campus with a wide diversity of ideas and opinions is far more educational and fun than one in which uniformity of thought is encouraged. Once you decide that universities ought to be fair marketplaces of ideas, which is the cornerstone of academic freedom, delisting student organizations with unpopular positions is no more justified than firing professors with unpopular research. At my present institution, a controversial professor with tenure was sacked sneakily. That sneaky trick has hamstrung the institution's work in his field to the present day. But perhaps you can endure a Holocaust denier in the Political Science Department (you would hope there would be grounds for removal for misconduct in such a case), but you could not endure a student organization that promoted Holocaust denial. Well then, bring back in loco parentis . You only can make a distinction between student and professorial liberty on grounds of order or parental supervision.
But the major problem seems to arise from the public funding issue. Should the UK Government be involved with funding organizations that hold to a Cliffs' Notes version of the Westminster Confession of Faith and have discriminatory leadership requirements. In the United States, the answer would be simple. No public funding for the Christian organizations of any kind, no funding for the Muslim organizations either. In the United Kingdom, the situation becomes far more complicated, since the government funds educational foundations of the non-Established Churches (funding Catholic Schools in Scotlnd, for instance). For a Student Union to claim that the Christian Union cannot be supported on account of non-discrimination legislation is suspect in England and farcical in Scotland, where the Kirk is Established and the Catholic schools are regulated in such a way to ensure their Romanity. The Student Unions would be far better off waiting for the more obvious constitutional issues of the church-state conflict before going off on their own.
MadPriest's ire really seems to be focused on the opposition of the CUs to homosexual intimacy (see "I would like to marry gay people."). I share with him the sentiment but not the ire. Punishing or slandering someone solely or principally on account of their objections to homosexual intimacy is merely reciprocation. Mix that with the lust for mastery and you become the Empire ( qua idea) in the present age. The situation would be much different if the CUs were going seeking to replace the SUs so that organizations would be funded only if they subscribed to the Cliffs' notes version of the Westminster Confession.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
XV. Of Christ alone without sin
Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which he was clearly void, both in his flesh, and in his spirit
It is a sad comment on the state of Anglican Christianity in this country (a common lede these days) that there is a Bishop in this Church who described the Lord Jesus in the diocesan newspaper as sinful. It still boggles my mind what utility such a position could have for theology. C. Fitzsimons Alison argues that Bennison sees the Crucifixion and Resurrection as God's obligatory rescue from an evil world that is evil on God's account, not ours. I should note that Alison's critique misreads Jack Miles' Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God , or else Alison does not recognize that Miles' position, though somewhat revolutionary, is not entirely subversive. Miles can be read to suggest that Jesus came to minister to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (i.e., all of them), bear their unrighteous vengeance for feeling betrayed by God (see the Gospels' account of mockery on the Cross), and bring a more universal vision of the just Kingdom of God. But since I do not have Miles' book with me, I can't confirm my reading. But frankly, Alison's critique has at its root the interminable discourse of penal substitution. And thus if you don't follow the formula to the letter, Alison thinks you're a heretic. Going too far down this course makes the other Alison (James) a heretic, Jerome a heretic, and puts Augustine in Hell (hyperbole...).
But one could have a variety of other soteriological hypotheses and still rely on Christ's sinlessness:
Christus Victor: How could one victorious over sin be implicated in it?
Christus Advocatus (my combination of Job and Hebrews): Lawyers generally should not be felons.
Christus Exemplar: Why imitate someone sinful?
And about anything involving putting on Christ or joining the Body of Christ to escape the wrath to come falls by the wayside, too.
Th difference between penal substitution and all other soteriological hypotheses is that in the first, God is a not free author of Grace, He compels Himself to offer Grace, suggesting disharmony between the Persons (heretical...) or a passionate desire for death and pain (also heretical...God neither has such a passion nor delight in the death of sinners). He also desires that they turn from their ways and live. But let us consider the alternative, why cannot God offer Grace freely to all? Well, I believe God can and has made that offer. But He constantly complains in the parables that we never accept it. Thus, whatever the exact means of salvation (too high a mystery), Jesus Christ is the means through which we accept that Grace. Perhaps, His one, perfect offering, sacrifice, and oblation is to be interpreted as satisfaction for sin alone. Or perhaps it shows the way for us to offer ourselves with Him in thanksgiving for Grace, because we cannot possibly repay Him. But anyone who denies Christ's sinlessness must explain why Christ is an effective conduit for Grace more than any other. Scripture and Tradition often answer that question by pointing out His sinlessness.
Getting back to the words of the Article itself, the phrase "in flesh and spirit" are ironically dualistic to me. But the Articulators mean as Christ did that we sin in "thought" as much as "word and deed." The Lord Jesus was sinless in every respect, including by the definitions of his own teaching.
He came to be the Lamb without spot, who by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world; and sin (as St. John saith) was not in him.
The Lamb without spot is the sacrificial victim of Passover, which is an odd choice for an offering of satisfaction for sin. It is a sacrifice of identity, liberation, and covenant. However, the Articulators speak of a sacrifice of himself once made, presumably referring to Hebrews 9, in which we are told that Christ's sacrifice was once for all. I have written elsewhere on Christ fulfilling the entirety of the sacrificial system, but I want to make it clear that the Articulators did not see Christ as the Passover victim alone.
But all we the rest, although baptized, and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things, and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
One of my instructors in college began to describe the views of Augustine of Hippo thus, "We sin constantly," to which a friend of mine snidely replied, "We're doing it right now." Perhaps, the less snide reply to the final section of this Article is to consider the tension between individual sin of the members and the corporate sinlessness traditionally associated with the Body of Christ. The issue is difficult, and I have no particularly clever solution to it. However, I think we must again look at the sinlessness of Christ to see the root of the idea. The sinlessness of the Body is founded on Christ and his acts and his continual intercession, which overwhelm in the eyes of God the sins of the individual members presumably justified by faith, "regard not our sins but the faith of your Church." The mistake is for us to say that X must be or must have been right, because the Church makes no mistakes, or we will not apologize for that, because the Body is sinless. But when we do so, we implicate Christ in X, because the sinlessness of the Body is founded on Christ. Do we really want to implicate Christ in X? Or are we sure Christ really is implicated in X? The Articulators warn us not to use Christ's sinlessness as justification for our own, so let us instead confess our sins and be cleansed from all unrighteousness on account of Christ's sinlessness and obedience.
It is a sad comment on the state of Anglican Christianity in this country (a common lede these days) that there is a Bishop in this Church who described the Lord Jesus in the diocesan newspaper as sinful. It still boggles my mind what utility such a position could have for theology. C. Fitzsimons Alison argues that Bennison sees the Crucifixion and Resurrection as God's obligatory rescue from an evil world that is evil on God's account, not ours. I should note that Alison's critique misreads Jack Miles' Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God , or else Alison does not recognize that Miles' position, though somewhat revolutionary, is not entirely subversive. Miles can be read to suggest that Jesus came to minister to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (i.e., all of them), bear their unrighteous vengeance for feeling betrayed by God (see the Gospels' account of mockery on the Cross), and bring a more universal vision of the just Kingdom of God. But since I do not have Miles' book with me, I can't confirm my reading. But frankly, Alison's critique has at its root the interminable discourse of penal substitution. And thus if you don't follow the formula to the letter, Alison thinks you're a heretic. Going too far down this course makes the other Alison (James) a heretic, Jerome a heretic, and puts Augustine in Hell (hyperbole...).
But one could have a variety of other soteriological hypotheses and still rely on Christ's sinlessness:
Christus Victor: How could one victorious over sin be implicated in it?
Christus Advocatus (my combination of Job and Hebrews): Lawyers generally should not be felons.
Christus Exemplar: Why imitate someone sinful?
And about anything involving putting on Christ or joining the Body of Christ to escape the wrath to come falls by the wayside, too.
Th difference between penal substitution and all other soteriological hypotheses is that in the first, God is a not free author of Grace, He compels Himself to offer Grace, suggesting disharmony between the Persons (heretical...) or a passionate desire for death and pain (also heretical...God neither has such a passion nor delight in the death of sinners). He also desires that they turn from their ways and live. But let us consider the alternative, why cannot God offer Grace freely to all? Well, I believe God can and has made that offer. But He constantly complains in the parables that we never accept it. Thus, whatever the exact means of salvation (too high a mystery), Jesus Christ is the means through which we accept that Grace. Perhaps, His one, perfect offering, sacrifice, and oblation is to be interpreted as satisfaction for sin alone. Or perhaps it shows the way for us to offer ourselves with Him in thanksgiving for Grace, because we cannot possibly repay Him. But anyone who denies Christ's sinlessness must explain why Christ is an effective conduit for Grace more than any other. Scripture and Tradition often answer that question by pointing out His sinlessness.
Getting back to the words of the Article itself, the phrase "in flesh and spirit" are ironically dualistic to me. But the Articulators mean as Christ did that we sin in "thought" as much as "word and deed." The Lord Jesus was sinless in every respect, including by the definitions of his own teaching.
He came to be the Lamb without spot, who by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world; and sin (as St. John saith) was not in him.
The Lamb without spot is the sacrificial victim of Passover, which is an odd choice for an offering of satisfaction for sin. It is a sacrifice of identity, liberation, and covenant. However, the Articulators speak of a sacrifice of himself once made, presumably referring to Hebrews 9, in which we are told that Christ's sacrifice was once for all. I have written elsewhere on Christ fulfilling the entirety of the sacrificial system, but I want to make it clear that the Articulators did not see Christ as the Passover victim alone.
But all we the rest, although baptized, and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things, and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
One of my instructors in college began to describe the views of Augustine of Hippo thus, "We sin constantly," to which a friend of mine snidely replied, "We're doing it right now." Perhaps, the less snide reply to the final section of this Article is to consider the tension between individual sin of the members and the corporate sinlessness traditionally associated with the Body of Christ. The issue is difficult, and I have no particularly clever solution to it. However, I think we must again look at the sinlessness of Christ to see the root of the idea. The sinlessness of the Body is founded on Christ and his acts and his continual intercession, which overwhelm in the eyes of God the sins of the individual members presumably justified by faith, "regard not our sins but the faith of your Church." The mistake is for us to say that X must be or must have been right, because the Church makes no mistakes, or we will not apologize for that, because the Body is sinless. But when we do so, we implicate Christ in X, because the sinlessness of the Body is founded on Christ. Do we really want to implicate Christ in X? Or are we sure Christ really is implicated in X? The Articulators warn us not to use Christ's sinlessness as justification for our own, so let us instead confess our sins and be cleansed from all unrighteousness on account of Christ's sinlessness and obedience.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Things I've Done (Thanks to Lutherpunk Again)
01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain --how high exactly?
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise.
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg – does the entire frozen Arctic Ocean count?
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne -tipsy
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run (not in baseball...)
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking -many times
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day -entire day?
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk.
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country -I wish
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe.
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow -gave a few pulls
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke -One of my favorite activities
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient site – Pompeii, Herculaneum etc.
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married - not seriously...
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest -possibly
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River -tubed the Guadalupe
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date -though I don't think it counts for this question
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently well enough to have a decent conversation -The conversation was in Latin. Cool, eh? The other interlocutor was rather drunk, but his Latin was good and scurillimus .
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised (raising) children (child)
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart-unsure
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery -I was under for five hours, is that enough?
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about - but not by intellectual debate
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey and the Aeneid
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions -So far
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain --how high exactly?
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise.
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg – does the entire frozen Arctic Ocean count?
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne -tipsy
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run (not in baseball...)
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking -many times
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day -entire day?
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk.
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country -I wish
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe.
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow -gave a few pulls
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke -One of my favorite activities
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient site – Pompeii, Herculaneum etc.
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married - not seriously...
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest -possibly
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River -tubed the Guadalupe
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date -though I don't think it counts for this question
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently well enough to have a decent conversation -The conversation was in Latin. Cool, eh? The other interlocutor was rather drunk, but his Latin was good and scurillimus .
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised (raising) children (child)
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart-unsure
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery -I was under for five hours, is that enough?
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about - but not by intellectual debate
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey and the Aeneid
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions -So far
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life
20 Books (Courtesy of Lutherpunk)
Not in any particular order.
0. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (especially, Psalms, Job, John, the Letter to the Hebrews, Revelation).
1. The Book of Common Prayer . (1979 usually, but the "Historical Documents" section especially).
2. The Hymnal 1982
3. Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
4. Plato, Phaedrus
5. Dionysius Areopagites, On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology
6. Madeline L'Engle, An Acceptable Time
7. John Chrysostom, Peri hierosynes (On the Priesthood)
8. Joseph Priestley, Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion
9. Joseph Butler, Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Nature...
10. The Passion of SS. Sergius and Bacchus
11. Francis Wayland, Elements of Moral Science
12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
13. Bede the Venerable, A History of the English Church and People
14. The Mishnaic tractate Pesahim
15. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Ainurdale
16. Phillip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy
17. The Proceedings of the First Seven Ecumenical Councils
18. Augustine, City of God
19. Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis
20. C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy
0. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (especially, Psalms, Job, John, the Letter to the Hebrews, Revelation).
1. The Book of Common Prayer . (1979 usually, but the "Historical Documents" section especially).
2. The Hymnal 1982
3. Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
4. Plato, Phaedrus
5. Dionysius Areopagites, On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology
6. Madeline L'Engle, An Acceptable Time
7. John Chrysostom, Peri hierosynes (On the Priesthood)
8. Joseph Priestley, Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion
9. Joseph Butler, Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Nature...
10. The Passion of SS. Sergius and Bacchus
11. Francis Wayland, Elements of Moral Science
12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
13. Bede the Venerable, A History of the English Church and People
14. The Mishnaic tractate Pesahim
15. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Ainurdale
16. Phillip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy
17. The Proceedings of the First Seven Ecumenical Councils
18. Augustine, City of God
19. Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis
20. C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Odd Collects
In a continued attempt to lighten the atmosphere around the Monastery, I thought I would start collecting unusual collects. Please submit yours in the comments.
Here's an example from Wandering on Molehill Mountain that probably should be credited to someone at Nashotah House:
Blessed Lord, who has caused all good liturgical practice to be recorded for our edification, grant that we might read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Parson's Handbook, for such is true and godly English museum worship,through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Here's an example from Wandering on Molehill Mountain that probably should be credited to someone at Nashotah House:
Blessed Lord, who has caused all good liturgical practice to be recorded for our edification, grant that we might read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Parson's Handbook, for such is true and godly English museum worship,through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Go Read the Postulant
Despite the fact that he is significantly older and can play keyboard instruments far better than I can, I sometimes swear that we were switched at birth. And because we were switched at birth, I know that plenus, -a, -um typically takes the genitive. He, of course, writes better.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
I Am Of Little Faith
I need to do some writing tonight, so I might as well start here.
Item the First: I passed my qualifying exams. When I was little, my parents used to joke that birthdays and Christmases tended to last several days as you continued to meet friends and relatives who had yet to give you presents. At this point, the congratulations are almost fully attenuated, but they're still worming their way around.
I'm not sure what to say about the exam. The format is fairly simple: you introduce yourself and then give a talk on one of two research projects you've completed during your first year of graduate study. Some of you are interested in what I do for a living. Well, one of things I do is to use a numerical Martian atmospheric model and observations of dust devils from spacecraft instruments to test various ideas about why dust devils form. The first project was about that. Then after you give your talk and your examiners are sure they can read all of the slides, they start asking you questions that are supposed to have something to do with your project. This goes on for about 70 minutes. Then we take a break. I then gave another talk about how long-term variability in North Pacific fish populations is related to physical oceanographic conditions and how these relations change in different climate regimes. The questions resumed. Then they send you out of the room, and you wait for the verdict. "May God send you a good deliverance..."
What can I say? The exam was a rough rollercoaster of emotions. I felt extremely foolish most of the time. Rumor has it that the committee was unusually rough on me. Whatever the case, the exam has been over for a couple of weeks, and I received a little bit of good advice about my strengths and weaknesses as a scientist. Best of all, I now get to stay in Laodicea for another four years or so. Now I need to find a thesis topic. This is not so Gnostic as Dr. Cham makes it appear here.
Item the Second: Business takes me to San Francisco in December. Exact arrangements are TBA, but I might try to make the 6 PM Eucharist at a certain local parish, since it's an easy ride on the BART.
Item the Third and Principal: A few weeks ago (before my exam), I was reading one of the basic texts of my theology (the others include this , this , and this ). It struck me how elitist Galileo is and how inaccessible he perceives his hermeneutic to be to any but a few aristocrats and natural philosophers.
A few months ago, a commenter on Bending the Rule pointed out that he thought *Christopher's justification of same-sex unions was overly complex and excessive idealization of something that probably only was going to exist among a relatively small proportion of the species.
So let us break down the arguments once more and see what is the nature of the controversy.
The crux of the radical traditionalist argument is Romans 1, in which homosexuality is posed as abominable inversion of the natural order of things intentionally resonant with both the creation narrative of Genesis and the Levitical code's apparent description of male-male intercourse as toevah , straying from the way ordained by God to Adam, to Noah, and to Moses as later commentators inferred. This crux passage also conditions our understanding of Paul's understanding of the Old Covenant in light of the New and the decision of the Council of Jerusalem reported in Acts. In other words, all fornication (including homosexual acts) is posed as proceeding from idolatry (that within a human being making him or her unclean as the Lord says), following the rubric of Jerusalem which prohibited: idol-worship, fornication, things strangled (sacrificial victim?), and blood (sacrificial victim implication combined with the presumption that Noah and thus all the nations had been commanded to follow this law). If this line of argument is considered consistent, it strengthens its own foundations, for if Pauline aetiology is correct, then the prooftext of Leviticus has a definite interpretation to which both the Rabbis and the Fathers consent (as justifieth the Pontificator) in which the abomination is intercourse in se as opposed to adultery with a man, "you shall not introduce a man into your conjugal bed." The resonance with Genesis and the Noachide genealogy of the prohibition that may underlie much of Pauline thought continues to rear its head in these times with Archbishop Akinola's assertions about cows and sheep and the utter novelty of regularized same-sex unions in the history of the human race. Father Chukwu ordered the world thus.
But the other current of this argument is the reliability of Pauline thought. If the communion of saints is a great cloud of witnesses, then Paul is the star. Much theology claims his mantle. Through both Luther and Calvin, Reformed theology owes its fervor to Paul's views on church government, the relations between the sexes, and the thorny issues of soteriology. Imagine how soteriological thought or sacramental thought might look without Paul. Whither the Reformation? And yet the Roman claims partially rest on Peter and Paul as colleagues and fellow martyrs. But at the same time, I am not one to propagate the Black Legend of Paul. Paul is not (as some commentators on the Koran I once read think) the accomodator of pure Abrahamic religion to corrupted Greco-Roman mores. Nor is Paul some secret Pharisaic plot to pollute the pure teachings of the Lord Jesus. He is far more interesting than that, because he comes to Christ as the outsider who longs to be on the inside. As a citizen of Tarsus, Paul holds Roman citizenship by especial honor to his city, but he was too far from Rome to be a member of that political community in the active sense. Reading Acts over the last few days suggests to me that Paul appealed to the emperor because he always wanted to see Rome and the great corridors of power. As a citizen of a Hellenistic city, Paul should have an intimate political community of his own. Yet he is Jewish, and so he never can participate in the political life of his city in full because of the all-too-common synthesis of civil and pagan religious functions in the magistracies. Paul is a Jew, trained as a rabbi in the Pharisaic tradition, but he goes to Jerusalem and ends up being hired as a henchman for the machinations of the high priest and his circle. The prejudice against the executioner is an ancient one in human society, and Paul is an executioner, a spy, and an informer who arranges floggings and stonings. His life reminds me very much of the case of the young Tarkheena in C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy , who finds herself attacked by a lion as justice for a beating of a maidservant that she engineered. The injustice of the authorities is Paul's justice and done for the sake of Christ, it is grace.
Christ gives Paul his dream. Eventually, he learns to look at the rest of the world as the outsiders. "Do you know that we shall judge angels?," I'm sure Paul dreamed of an earthly magistracy first. The heavenly city of Augustine begins in Paul's struggle to find a political community where he belongs. But like the apocalyptic communities of both the Essenes and the Pharisees, someone must be excluded. Paul's innovation is to see the world as it is: that no one in themselves has a portion in the world to come, though he seems uncertain about the case of his own people, finally concluding that their portion comes like that of the Gentiles: through Christ alone. So basic is the vision of the Cross as the founding action of the political community and baptism as the sympathetic means of admission that Christianity probably cannot exist without it. And so if there is any challenge to Paul's reading of the world or to his adherence to certain traditions, we touch the deepest fear of Christian orthodoxy: that the cross has no power.
And what is the response we should make to this? Of course, our first step must be assert the power of the cross, not just as the Naturalization Act of the New Jerusalem but as the re-creation of the world and its divine legal framework through a human being unstained with sin. Paul's problematic assumption was that the Old Testament meant what it did before Christ. The Lord Jesus tells us that He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Think about the Old Testament. We read much of it Christologically, even though by the same rules that underlie OT reading from the radical traditionalist perspective, such readings have no contextual relation to Christ. At times, the Lord Jesus utterly re-prioritizes the commandments. Is it possible to say that the OT c. 0 AD had some absolute meaning completely different than what it meant afterwards? Is this why John the Evangelist begins his Gospel by re-imagining Genesis? And is it possible that all of the OT must be re-read Christologically, not just in those places where the meaning is not plain? (I now have become a case study for Derek's thoughts on deceptive hermeneutical terminology.) What would this mean?
Item the Fourth: The title of this post comes from the feeling that the Anglican order is passing away, cut to bits on both sides. If I had faith, the Gospels assure me that I could do something about it. But I feel helpless. Nearly every week in the parish fora, some questioner will contradict the conventional wisdom. Usually, it occurs at the end of the forum, so the leader can smile and nod and move everyone quickly to the exits. If it happens in the middle, the leader just smiles and nods and tries to assure the questioner that they have a valid opinion, but let's just move on. Well, the parish forum is very much the Communion in miniature. People talk about there being some sort of Anglican controversy. But let's be honest here. There isn't a controversy here. What we have is each side preaching to its partisans about the rightness of their cause and either passing over or demonizing the opposition. Controversy potentially would involve the asking of clarifying questions, possibly some sort of attempt of each side to understand the other argument or explain why they are unconvinced. Remember that the only alternative to controversy is the sword. Let us not go there.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may read, learn, and inwardly digest the opinions of your brothers and sisters with the same respect you give give the Word of the Lord.
Item the First: I passed my qualifying exams. When I was little, my parents used to joke that birthdays and Christmases tended to last several days as you continued to meet friends and relatives who had yet to give you presents. At this point, the congratulations are almost fully attenuated, but they're still worming their way around.
I'm not sure what to say about the exam. The format is fairly simple: you introduce yourself and then give a talk on one of two research projects you've completed during your first year of graduate study. Some of you are interested in what I do for a living. Well, one of things I do is to use a numerical Martian atmospheric model and observations of dust devils from spacecraft instruments to test various ideas about why dust devils form. The first project was about that. Then after you give your talk and your examiners are sure they can read all of the slides, they start asking you questions that are supposed to have something to do with your project. This goes on for about 70 minutes. Then we take a break. I then gave another talk about how long-term variability in North Pacific fish populations is related to physical oceanographic conditions and how these relations change in different climate regimes. The questions resumed. Then they send you out of the room, and you wait for the verdict. "May God send you a good deliverance..."
What can I say? The exam was a rough rollercoaster of emotions. I felt extremely foolish most of the time. Rumor has it that the committee was unusually rough on me. Whatever the case, the exam has been over for a couple of weeks, and I received a little bit of good advice about my strengths and weaknesses as a scientist. Best of all, I now get to stay in Laodicea for another four years or so. Now I need to find a thesis topic. This is not so Gnostic as Dr. Cham makes it appear here.
Item the Second: Business takes me to San Francisco in December. Exact arrangements are TBA, but I might try to make the 6 PM Eucharist at a certain local parish, since it's an easy ride on the BART.
Item the Third and Principal: A few weeks ago (before my exam), I was reading one of the basic texts of my theology (the others include this , this , and this ). It struck me how elitist Galileo is and how inaccessible he perceives his hermeneutic to be to any but a few aristocrats and natural philosophers.
A few months ago, a commenter on Bending the Rule pointed out that he thought *Christopher's justification of same-sex unions was overly complex and excessive idealization of something that probably only was going to exist among a relatively small proportion of the species.
So let us break down the arguments once more and see what is the nature of the controversy.
The crux of the radical traditionalist argument is Romans 1, in which homosexuality is posed as abominable inversion of the natural order of things intentionally resonant with both the creation narrative of Genesis and the Levitical code's apparent description of male-male intercourse as toevah , straying from the way ordained by God to Adam, to Noah, and to Moses as later commentators inferred. This crux passage also conditions our understanding of Paul's understanding of the Old Covenant in light of the New and the decision of the Council of Jerusalem reported in Acts. In other words, all fornication (including homosexual acts) is posed as proceeding from idolatry (that within a human being making him or her unclean as the Lord says), following the rubric of Jerusalem which prohibited: idol-worship, fornication, things strangled (sacrificial victim?), and blood (sacrificial victim implication combined with the presumption that Noah and thus all the nations had been commanded to follow this law). If this line of argument is considered consistent, it strengthens its own foundations, for if Pauline aetiology is correct, then the prooftext of Leviticus has a definite interpretation to which both the Rabbis and the Fathers consent (as justifieth the Pontificator) in which the abomination is intercourse in se as opposed to adultery with a man, "you shall not introduce a man into your conjugal bed." The resonance with Genesis and the Noachide genealogy of the prohibition that may underlie much of Pauline thought continues to rear its head in these times with Archbishop Akinola's assertions about cows and sheep and the utter novelty of regularized same-sex unions in the history of the human race. Father Chukwu ordered the world thus.
But the other current of this argument is the reliability of Pauline thought. If the communion of saints is a great cloud of witnesses, then Paul is the star. Much theology claims his mantle. Through both Luther and Calvin, Reformed theology owes its fervor to Paul's views on church government, the relations between the sexes, and the thorny issues of soteriology. Imagine how soteriological thought or sacramental thought might look without Paul. Whither the Reformation? And yet the Roman claims partially rest on Peter and Paul as colleagues and fellow martyrs. But at the same time, I am not one to propagate the Black Legend of Paul. Paul is not (as some commentators on the Koran I once read think) the accomodator of pure Abrahamic religion to corrupted Greco-Roman mores. Nor is Paul some secret Pharisaic plot to pollute the pure teachings of the Lord Jesus. He is far more interesting than that, because he comes to Christ as the outsider who longs to be on the inside. As a citizen of Tarsus, Paul holds Roman citizenship by especial honor to his city, but he was too far from Rome to be a member of that political community in the active sense. Reading Acts over the last few days suggests to me that Paul appealed to the emperor because he always wanted to see Rome and the great corridors of power. As a citizen of a Hellenistic city, Paul should have an intimate political community of his own. Yet he is Jewish, and so he never can participate in the political life of his city in full because of the all-too-common synthesis of civil and pagan religious functions in the magistracies. Paul is a Jew, trained as a rabbi in the Pharisaic tradition, but he goes to Jerusalem and ends up being hired as a henchman for the machinations of the high priest and his circle. The prejudice against the executioner is an ancient one in human society, and Paul is an executioner, a spy, and an informer who arranges floggings and stonings. His life reminds me very much of the case of the young Tarkheena in C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy , who finds herself attacked by a lion as justice for a beating of a maidservant that she engineered. The injustice of the authorities is Paul's justice and done for the sake of Christ, it is grace.
Christ gives Paul his dream. Eventually, he learns to look at the rest of the world as the outsiders. "Do you know that we shall judge angels?," I'm sure Paul dreamed of an earthly magistracy first. The heavenly city of Augustine begins in Paul's struggle to find a political community where he belongs. But like the apocalyptic communities of both the Essenes and the Pharisees, someone must be excluded. Paul's innovation is to see the world as it is: that no one in themselves has a portion in the world to come, though he seems uncertain about the case of his own people, finally concluding that their portion comes like that of the Gentiles: through Christ alone. So basic is the vision of the Cross as the founding action of the political community and baptism as the sympathetic means of admission that Christianity probably cannot exist without it. And so if there is any challenge to Paul's reading of the world or to his adherence to certain traditions, we touch the deepest fear of Christian orthodoxy: that the cross has no power.
And what is the response we should make to this? Of course, our first step must be assert the power of the cross, not just as the Naturalization Act of the New Jerusalem but as the re-creation of the world and its divine legal framework through a human being unstained with sin. Paul's problematic assumption was that the Old Testament meant what it did before Christ. The Lord Jesus tells us that He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Think about the Old Testament. We read much of it Christologically, even though by the same rules that underlie OT reading from the radical traditionalist perspective, such readings have no contextual relation to Christ. At times, the Lord Jesus utterly re-prioritizes the commandments. Is it possible to say that the OT c. 0 AD had some absolute meaning completely different than what it meant afterwards? Is this why John the Evangelist begins his Gospel by re-imagining Genesis? And is it possible that all of the OT must be re-read Christologically, not just in those places where the meaning is not plain? (I now have become a case study for Derek's thoughts on deceptive hermeneutical terminology.) What would this mean?
Item the Fourth: The title of this post comes from the feeling that the Anglican order is passing away, cut to bits on both sides. If I had faith, the Gospels assure me that I could do something about it. But I feel helpless. Nearly every week in the parish fora, some questioner will contradict the conventional wisdom. Usually, it occurs at the end of the forum, so the leader can smile and nod and move everyone quickly to the exits. If it happens in the middle, the leader just smiles and nods and tries to assure the questioner that they have a valid opinion, but let's just move on. Well, the parish forum is very much the Communion in miniature. People talk about there being some sort of Anglican controversy. But let's be honest here. There isn't a controversy here. What we have is each side preaching to its partisans about the rightness of their cause and either passing over or demonizing the opposition. Controversy potentially would involve the asking of clarifying questions, possibly some sort of attempt of each side to understand the other argument or explain why they are unconvinced. Remember that the only alternative to controversy is the sword. Let us not go there.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may read, learn, and inwardly digest the opinions of your brothers and sisters with the same respect you give give the Word of the Lord.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Tidbits
So That's What You Do With A Yale Education
I was at dinner this evening with some Israelis. We were in a room that is decorated with the coats of arms of many universities and learned societies. One of them noticed the arms of Yale, which has Hebrew on the book. I explained that these were the arms of Yale, and they said that the Hebrew said, "Light and mercy." I suggested this was an attempt to render the Latin motto into Hebrew, "Light and truth." Then they said that they thought the Yalies were trying to write something that means, "Light and integrity," which they said referred to the breastplate of the High Priest. And indeed, they were exactly right. The Hebrew motto is "Urim Thummim," referring to the minerals used by the ancient Israelites to discern the will of God. But apparently, the Yalies are writing it wrong.
Yes, Virginia, Scientists Hear God, Too.
Last night, I was talking about a prominent Jesuit astronomer with some older colleagues. They all thought he was a priest, but I had looked at his biography when he became prominent in the news by opposing attempts to adopt intelligent design as the Vatican's line on evolution. He never mentioned being in orders. So I asked him this evening the story. He confirmed that he was a layman and indicated that this was what God called him to be, even though most Jesuits these days are priests. On the other hand, all of his colleagues are priests, so it's fairly easy to find Mass in the morning. But it was so refreshing in an age in which people look at their lives as a set of milestones established by custom to hear someone who felt free enough to defy the usual milestones because he and God came to an understanding.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may be what God ordered you to be, even if all of your friends are taking Holy Orders.
I was at dinner this evening with some Israelis. We were in a room that is decorated with the coats of arms of many universities and learned societies. One of them noticed the arms of Yale, which has Hebrew on the book. I explained that these were the arms of Yale, and they said that the Hebrew said, "Light and mercy." I suggested this was an attempt to render the Latin motto into Hebrew, "Light and truth." Then they said that they thought the Yalies were trying to write something that means, "Light and integrity," which they said referred to the breastplate of the High Priest. And indeed, they were exactly right. The Hebrew motto is "Urim Thummim," referring to the minerals used by the ancient Israelites to discern the will of God. But apparently, the Yalies are writing it wrong.
Yes, Virginia, Scientists Hear God, Too.
Last night, I was talking about a prominent Jesuit astronomer with some older colleagues. They all thought he was a priest, but I had looked at his biography when he became prominent in the news by opposing attempts to adopt intelligent design as the Vatican's line on evolution. He never mentioned being in orders. So I asked him this evening the story. He confirmed that he was a layman and indicated that this was what God called him to be, even though most Jesuits these days are priests. On the other hand, all of his colleagues are priests, so it's fairly easy to find Mass in the morning. But it was so refreshing in an age in which people look at their lives as a set of milestones established by custom to hear someone who felt free enough to defy the usual milestones because he and God came to an understanding.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may be what God ordered you to be, even if all of your friends are taking Holy Orders.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
More on the IRS Going After ILEOS
I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. As you make your requests, plead for God's mercy upon them, and give thanks. Pray this way for kings and all others who are in authority, so that we can live in peace and quietness, in godliness and dignity. (1 Timothy 2:1-2)
Obey the government, for God is the one who put it there. All governments have been placed in power by God. So those who refuse to obey the laws of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow. (Romans 13:1-3)
The authorities are established by God for that very purpose, to punish those who do wrong. So you must obey the government for two reasons: to keep from being punished and to keep a clear conscience. (Romans 13:4-5)
For the Lord's sake, accept all authority — the king as head of state, and the officials he has appointed. For the king has sent them to punish all who do wrong and to honor those who do right. (1 Peter 2:13-14)
I'm in the midst of the whirl that marks the build-up to my qualifying exams. So I've been doing a lot of writing and Powerpoint making. The good news is that I should have a paper to submit to One of Two Big Journals in Field next month or so. The bad news is that I have to pass my qualifying exams, go to a conference, and keep up with a couple of classes at the same time during the next month, too.
But I did want to update you on matters with ILEOS, since some of the readers of this blog have been following the story. Basically, the IRS was utterly non-responsive for a while, after the hullaboo they started around the Feast of All Saints last. ILEOS made a careful response to the initial IRS requests for information with the help of a Washington, D.C. tax firm (apparently staffed with former IRS lawyers).
Then in July, the IRS asked for a laundry list of documents about everything from the compensation of the Rector Emeritus (the preacher of the sermon in question) to a catalog of all mentions of elected officials in any church service. (The President is mentioned in the Prayers of the People more often than the pulpit...). The church and her lawyers replied by challenging the requests and asking for the request to be in the form of a summons to an administrative hearing.
A few days ago, the laundry list was renewed and the Rector was summoned to an administrative hearing on Friday.
At the moment, the church has two options:
(1) Comply with the requests
(2) Or fail to comply and attempt to force the IRS into Federal District Court for a full judicial action on the administrative interpretations of the Internal Revenue Code at issue.
Having a fair knowledge of both ecclesiastical history and Roman law, I really don't know if there's any direct precedent in tradition for choosing one option over the other.
A few points are clear: the Church is obligated to respect the law as far as her mission is not compromised by it. This is a rather rash summary of the Scriptural witness, but the gist of it is that rulers derive their power from God, whether they are monarchs or elected representatives. Though they are obligated to serve justly. Indeed, the Psalmist compares temporal rulers to minor and fallible deities (Psalm 82). Christianity is not a license for violating community standards. If the law were to forbid the use of high emission vehicles, church van conversion could not be delayed on account of evangelical necessity. This is an odd case, but most other cases involve things Christians believe to be sinful. Perhaps, forbidding the eating of meat is a better example. At the same time, it is also recognized by Scripture that the laws of God supersede the laws of man. If the government allows something that is forbidden to Christians or forbids something that is essential to the faith, Christians should not do what the law permits and do what the law condemns.
Tradition also gives one excellent example of behavior to be avoided in civil actions: The case of St. Columba shows us that it is not pleasing to God to start a war to avenge a judgment against you, no matter how corrupt the judge is.
Otherwise, Christians are restricted to following general principles. In this case, I think option (2) is the right one. ILEOS' position is that they will not endorse a political candidate. ILEOS is very political for an Episcopal church, but you hear nothing about the ordination of Barbara Boxer by God or the godliness of Al Gore. One is told it is a sin not to vote, not that it is a sin to vote for a Republican. Until this IRS case arose, it was generally understood by churches and tax lawyers that the law forebade direct endorsement or campaigning on behalf of a political candidate and nothing else. So ILEOS complies with the law as far as it understands it.
Second, the implication of the materials requested by the IRS is that it is potentially a violation of the law to criticize a politician around Election Day or other times of the year. Even forgetting the great repugnance of such an idea to the common understandings of our constitutional liberty in speech and religion, tradition is clear on this matter. We revere saints such as Holy John Chrysostom, whose criticisms of the Empress Eudoxia for her excesses and self-idolatrous tendencies led to his exile. The example of Nazi Germany is still very near to us, in which one set of German Christians nearly apostasized by supporting the Nazis and the other set witnessed to the essence of the Gospel at risk of their lives. The principle at stake is important, even if the political situation has not yet reached that kind of clarity.
And in the United States, it is important to remember that the common welfare of the people is the king and from their will derives all authority. By upholding the liberties of the people, we uphold the government that the Apostle claims is ordained by God.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that heathens and tax collectors may be near to you, so that you may share with them the wonders of the Gospel.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
The Noonday Sacrifice
Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice. [Ps. 55:17]
Yes, it's me. I'm sorry I haven't been keeping pace with all of the wonderful things you all have been writing. Though bls wrote about my favorite Psalm recently, and I obtained some weird track of it being sung to the proto-Tonus Peregrinus. Are you surprised that the First Song of Moses (Miriam) is my favorite Canticle.
I've been trying to prepare for the high stakes exam looming not very far into my future. Something else has popped up rather suddenly, which might take up most of my leisure time that isn't used for prayer. Or might not. But I did want to write about something that popped into my head over the last few days.
On August 15, we had the Feast of the Dormition or Assumption or something. My usual kalendar just said it was the Feast of the Virgin Mary. And James Kiefer's piece had a link to womenpriests.org and various articles on the idea of Mary Priest, which *Christopher brought up some time ago. What was amazing to me that the basic idea of Mary Priest or Mary Protopriest is of incredible antiquity but was discarded by Rome less than a century ago. The implication of the admittedly highly biased source was that it was discarded for fear that it might be used as an argument for women's ordination, which was coming to be controversial in the Protestant churches. But the basic merits of the case seems impossible to spin. As late as 1908, an indulgence was granted for saying a prayer that referred to Mary Priest, but a very few years later, the doctrine was repudiated. Does anyone know why or was it simply by fiat?
Being unbound by decisions of the Roman Pontiff, I considered the ancient sources on the issue. One of them noted that Mary had "offered Christ" at both the morning and evening sacrifice, i.e., at the Dedication and the Cross. As I was walking to the office this evening, it occurred to me, "But what about the noonday sacrifice?" The sacrifices of the Temple and of synagogue prayers are performed thrice a day (at the third, sixth, and ninth hours). Our BCP preserves this in the noon devotions, and the custom of the Angelus among the Roman Catholics seems related. And then it occurred to me: at Cana, Mary literally offered Jesus (before the beginning of his ministry) to the servants at the wedding, despite Jesus' objections. Note that the language of time enters here: "my hour has not come," i.e., the full and complete evening sacrifice of Himself on the Cross by which he is revealed fully as the Christ at the evening sacrifice of the Sabbath per tradition. But she pays no attention, having dedicated him to God when He could not speak for Himself. Of course, He has to cooperate. But I would wager that the Theotokos didn't enjoy the third sacrifice as much as He did. The third was His will.
But what's most odd to me is that the role of Mary seems more like that of deacon than priest. She defines her ministry as that of a servant through the entire Birth Narrative. And in the proto-Eucharistic narrative of Cana, she does nothing but point to him as she is always said to point to her Son (the first literally and the second philosophically). She reminds me strongly of the Orthodox deacon, "Master, give the blessing..." She does not act herself but reminds her Son of what he ought to do. And in the evening, as she stands at the foot of the Cross, she knows the secret and proclaims silently as the Deacon does in some liturgies those words of the Baptist (her kinsman and fellow pointer), "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." and "Happy are they who are called to his wedding banquet."
But whether Mary Deacon or Mary Priest, it is clear to me that these ideas are very deeply interwoven into the fabric of the chief action. Mary is indeed the second Eve, whose obedience crushes the head of the adder and gives her place beyond the dignity of women to the post-Fall world. What those who are against the ordination of women have missed is that the Patristic protestations about Mary as special case are greatly problematic. I believe that she restored the dignity of all women, making them fit for the altar. But this is problematic to many of those who support women's ordination, who cannot imagine that there was a time when women justly could be considered inferior or unworthy in any way. I find this sad. The story of the Theotokos, especially with respect to her diaconal and sacerdotal actions, is a powerful reminder of the reconciling work of Christ and His restoration of the primal order in which both men and women were created in the image of God to govern as equals. But to want to deny there was a time when women had a different status seems to diminish the wonder of this Mystery. Perhaps, we might consider that superior-inferior relations can reflect poorly on both superior and inferior and that a male priesthood was not a sign so much of male dignity etc. but of the brokenness of relations between men, women, and God.
Our understanding of restoration in Christ is just beginning...
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may find strength in the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who offered herself to God as a living sacrifice that the fruit of her womb might be God, man, and a living sacrifice without equal.
Yes, it's me. I'm sorry I haven't been keeping pace with all of the wonderful things you all have been writing. Though bls wrote about my favorite Psalm recently, and I obtained some weird track of it being sung to the proto-Tonus Peregrinus. Are you surprised that the First Song of Moses (Miriam) is my favorite Canticle.
I've been trying to prepare for the high stakes exam looming not very far into my future. Something else has popped up rather suddenly, which might take up most of my leisure time that isn't used for prayer. Or might not. But I did want to write about something that popped into my head over the last few days.
On August 15, we had the Feast of the Dormition or Assumption or something. My usual kalendar just said it was the Feast of the Virgin Mary. And James Kiefer's piece had a link to womenpriests.org and various articles on the idea of Mary Priest, which *Christopher brought up some time ago. What was amazing to me that the basic idea of Mary Priest or Mary Protopriest is of incredible antiquity but was discarded by Rome less than a century ago. The implication of the admittedly highly biased source was that it was discarded for fear that it might be used as an argument for women's ordination, which was coming to be controversial in the Protestant churches. But the basic merits of the case seems impossible to spin. As late as 1908, an indulgence was granted for saying a prayer that referred to Mary Priest, but a very few years later, the doctrine was repudiated. Does anyone know why or was it simply by fiat?
Being unbound by decisions of the Roman Pontiff, I considered the ancient sources on the issue. One of them noted that Mary had "offered Christ" at both the morning and evening sacrifice, i.e., at the Dedication and the Cross. As I was walking to the office this evening, it occurred to me, "But what about the noonday sacrifice?" The sacrifices of the Temple and of synagogue prayers are performed thrice a day (at the third, sixth, and ninth hours). Our BCP preserves this in the noon devotions, and the custom of the Angelus among the Roman Catholics seems related. And then it occurred to me: at Cana, Mary literally offered Jesus (before the beginning of his ministry) to the servants at the wedding, despite Jesus' objections. Note that the language of time enters here: "my hour has not come," i.e., the full and complete evening sacrifice of Himself on the Cross by which he is revealed fully as the Christ at the evening sacrifice of the Sabbath per tradition. But she pays no attention, having dedicated him to God when He could not speak for Himself. Of course, He has to cooperate. But I would wager that the Theotokos didn't enjoy the third sacrifice as much as He did. The third was His will.
But what's most odd to me is that the role of Mary seems more like that of deacon than priest. She defines her ministry as that of a servant through the entire Birth Narrative. And in the proto-Eucharistic narrative of Cana, she does nothing but point to him as she is always said to point to her Son (the first literally and the second philosophically). She reminds me strongly of the Orthodox deacon, "Master, give the blessing..." She does not act herself but reminds her Son of what he ought to do. And in the evening, as she stands at the foot of the Cross, she knows the secret and proclaims silently as the Deacon does in some liturgies those words of the Baptist (her kinsman and fellow pointer), "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." and "Happy are they who are called to his wedding banquet."
But whether Mary Deacon or Mary Priest, it is clear to me that these ideas are very deeply interwoven into the fabric of the chief action. Mary is indeed the second Eve, whose obedience crushes the head of the adder and gives her place beyond the dignity of women to the post-Fall world. What those who are against the ordination of women have missed is that the Patristic protestations about Mary as special case are greatly problematic. I believe that she restored the dignity of all women, making them fit for the altar. But this is problematic to many of those who support women's ordination, who cannot imagine that there was a time when women justly could be considered inferior or unworthy in any way. I find this sad. The story of the Theotokos, especially with respect to her diaconal and sacerdotal actions, is a powerful reminder of the reconciling work of Christ and His restoration of the primal order in which both men and women were created in the image of God to govern as equals. But to want to deny there was a time when women had a different status seems to diminish the wonder of this Mystery. Perhaps, we might consider that superior-inferior relations can reflect poorly on both superior and inferior and that a male priesthood was not a sign so much of male dignity etc. but of the brokenness of relations between men, women, and God.
Our understanding of restoration in Christ is just beginning...
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may find strength in the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who offered herself to God as a living sacrifice that the fruit of her womb might be God, man, and a living sacrifice without equal.
Friday, August 04, 2006
You Backed Up the Order of Service, Right?
This item isn't necessarily funny, but it's one of the only C of E items on the BBC I've seen that hasn't been about the Unpleasantness.
I actually ran into a similar problem last week when Oremus had some sort of error on 31 July. Fortunately, there was back-up in the form of a little red book with gold lettering and a big cross on the cover.
I actually ran into a similar problem last week when Oremus had some sort of error on 31 July. Fortunately, there was back-up in the form of a little red book with gold lettering and a big cross on the cover.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Eucharist Was Lovely Yesterday
The hymns were good and appropriately gender inclusive, "The God of Abraham/Sarah Praise," "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" etc. The guest preacher was excellent, taking a rather Ignatian approach to the Feeding of the Five Thousand in light of the Parable of the Talents. The Nicene Creed was said with the inclusive and slightly more accurate translation. I didn't recognize the source of the Eucharistic Prayer, but I gushed over it. There was a slight bump when we started chanting a Taize Veni Sancte Spiritus from the Epiclesis until the Great Amen, because the Great Amen was missed by almost everyone, which Randall and Archdeacon Ed taught me might affect regularity. But I notice such things because I am anal. It indeed felt like "Reasonable Service" or "Spiritual Worship," the Body and Blood overflowing in return for our thanksgiving to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the perfect plenitude of praise. After church, I spent eighty minutes lecturing on oceanography, saw an awful movie, and purchased cleaning supplies. I live in a comfortable and self-satisfied corner of the world in a relatively comfortable age (still very miserable for most of the world), but the Eucharist can be no less praegustatory of heaven than it was in former and more wretched ages. And for that, I thank God heartily.
This is Getting Loco, Ese, and It's Gotta Stop
A colleague of mine opined yesterday that we are most political about the works of our own hands (brat of our brains etc.). This might be called the Ouaididocratic Principle, since it tends toward the rule of those who give a damn ( ouai didein ). Thus, having no stake in the liberal and conservative organizations that have been striving to realign the church for their particular ends for the last three decades, I can't really get particularly worked up now that the denouement of these struggles is coming. I go through stages in dealing with every apparent outrage: (1) I briefly wish to find some way to restore De Haeritico Comburendo ; (2) I then desire more moderate canonical penalties; (3) then I want to yell a lot; (4) and finally I just want to laugh and hug the outrageous person. If the Dean of St. Vincent's wants to accuse General Convention and me by implication of departing from the apostolic faith, I hold him casually in derision. His diocese is alternately pomo and byzantine at this point. And that's just the first vexation I had since I returned from Canada.
At this point, I can understand why almost no one in Gen Y outside of their parents' power wants anything to do with TEC at this point or Anglicanism in general. If you find yourself in the wrong circumstances, you may find (these are real life examples):
(1) yourself driven out of your church because your priest at college is gay (Father Heidt, that is what I call Donatism.)
(2) unable to worship in your eucharistic community because you are sickened spiritually by conflict within it. The Holy Spirit defend such as these!
(3) unable to worship at college for fear of (1)
(4) unable to worship anywhere because you live in the same place all year and have insufficient ideological purity of one sort or another for your home diocese
(5) Unable to worship because those Episcopalians your age you know who take any of it seriously become total nutcases eventually, and you already feel too much like a nutcase as it is.
Add to this the problem of inadequate catechesis and arrogant priests and bishops (of one sort or another). The Holy Spirit forfend arrogance in deacons!
And since Christianity is finally voluntary in much of the US, most of my generation will shake off the dust from their feet. If they are conservative, they will go elsewhere. If they are liberal, they will leave and might raise their children as conservative Unitarians or something (like some Gen Xers I know).
I feel as if I've been oppressed by some outrageous sarcosic phronemation since the Octave of Christian Unity in 2003 and I want some deliverance, some "kairos moment": a day of salvation. But all I seem to find is the Lord Jesus still descending from heaven into this broken world in bread and wine and water. It will have to do.
So to the cloaks, the daggers, the malicious chatterers, the rebel chancellors, the false teachers of every stripe, and the naughty candles that dimly enlighten this world, I warn you that the Lord is coming with terrible recompense to call you to account for your management of nature and rational souls (and indeed your own). But until then, I love you. How about some Articles?
This is Getting Loco, Ese, and It's Gotta Stop
A colleague of mine opined yesterday that we are most political about the works of our own hands (brat of our brains etc.). This might be called the Ouaididocratic Principle, since it tends toward the rule of those who give a damn ( ouai didein ). Thus, having no stake in the liberal and conservative organizations that have been striving to realign the church for their particular ends for the last three decades, I can't really get particularly worked up now that the denouement of these struggles is coming. I go through stages in dealing with every apparent outrage: (1) I briefly wish to find some way to restore De Haeritico Comburendo ; (2) I then desire more moderate canonical penalties; (3) then I want to yell a lot; (4) and finally I just want to laugh and hug the outrageous person. If the Dean of St. Vincent's wants to accuse General Convention and me by implication of departing from the apostolic faith, I hold him casually in derision. His diocese is alternately pomo and byzantine at this point. And that's just the first vexation I had since I returned from Canada.
At this point, I can understand why almost no one in Gen Y outside of their parents' power wants anything to do with TEC at this point or Anglicanism in general. If you find yourself in the wrong circumstances, you may find (these are real life examples):
(1) yourself driven out of your church because your priest at college is gay (Father Heidt, that is what I call Donatism.)
(2) unable to worship in your eucharistic community because you are sickened spiritually by conflict within it. The Holy Spirit defend such as these!
(3) unable to worship at college for fear of (1)
(4) unable to worship anywhere because you live in the same place all year and have insufficient ideological purity of one sort or another for your home diocese
(5) Unable to worship because those Episcopalians your age you know who take any of it seriously become total nutcases eventually, and you already feel too much like a nutcase as it is.
Add to this the problem of inadequate catechesis and arrogant priests and bishops (of one sort or another). The Holy Spirit forfend arrogance in deacons!
And since Christianity is finally voluntary in much of the US, most of my generation will shake off the dust from their feet. If they are conservative, they will go elsewhere. If they are liberal, they will leave and might raise their children as conservative Unitarians or something (like some Gen Xers I know).
I feel as if I've been oppressed by some outrageous sarcosic phronemation since the Octave of Christian Unity in 2003 and I want some deliverance, some "kairos moment": a day of salvation. But all I seem to find is the Lord Jesus still descending from heaven into this broken world in bread and wine and water. It will have to do.
So to the cloaks, the daggers, the malicious chatterers, the rebel chancellors, the false teachers of every stripe, and the naughty candles that dimly enlighten this world, I warn you that the Lord is coming with terrible recompense to call you to account for your management of nature and rational souls (and indeed your own). But until then, I love you. How about some Articles?
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Seen in Canada
"St. ----: The Thinking Person's Church"
"St. ---------'s Anglican Church (Episcopal)"
"St. ---------'s Anglican Church (Episcopal)"
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Credo in Uno Deo Meliore cum Mathematicis quam ego
I was at a party this evening, talking to someone about my work. In my business, cocktail party conversation from those outside the field usually begins, "Do you think there's life on Mars?" I answer, "We'll know in a hundred years." Softballs. Then I hear, "Do you believe God made the planets?" Very briefly surprised because of the setting, I reply, "Yeah, but really far back, about fourteen billion years ago, but I honestly don't understand how. I'm not good enough at math to understand the physics. I deal with simpler stuff."
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another. Although they have no words or language, and their voices are not heard, their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world. : Ps. 19:1-4.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another. Although they have no words or language, and their voices are not heard, their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world. : Ps. 19:1-4.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Utligacity and the Centrist Ascendancy
There is an odd word you find in the Latin sources of early English law about the time of the Norman conquest (but my memory is not good enough to remember which side), and this word is distinctive in that it is unintentionally onomatopoetic. The word is utliga or "outlaw," surely the creation of a Saxon clerk who knew not of interdiction from fire and water, nor perhaps much else, but had enough Latin for law and some creativity to boot. For an outlaw is a strange hybrid of things, not of German and Latin roots, but simultaneously a claimant of conformity to the law without actually conforming. There is, of course, a bit of the outlaw in the Christian, for our kingdom is not of this world, nor our citizenship exclusively of this city. We are simul iustus et peccator , expecting justification and vindication from our sin from "a great high priest who has passed through the heavens."
But the outlaw simple refuses at appear at any tribunal and so my forebears seized his goods and forbade him from civil life. Contrary to popular belief, his human rights never were terminated. It was still unlawful to murder, rape, and otherwise commit common law offenses against the outlaw. Indeed, the Crown had no especial rights besides the seizure of his goods and body in order to compel him to law. Thus, the outlaw had no especial dignity but the unwillingness to be accountable, either to admit his transgression, prove his innocence, or make appeal against the law itself as against the liberty of an Englishman. In some cases, the outlaw had the reasonable excuse of expecting an unfair trial. In other cases, outlaws were disrespectful or merely negligent concerning the law. There is a case in the reign of James I of a knight elected to Parliament, whose election is argued void on the grounds of outlawry. And indeed one can be an outlaw in court, too, as men like Milosevic, Hussein, and Moussaoui have shown, mainly by seeking to call others to trial or disdaining the law. Most of all, the outlaw is "a law unto himself." And thus the outlaw is also known in our time as the scofflaw, one who is indifferent to the operations of the law against him. Scofflaws are mostly petty offenders, because their strongest argument these days is that their offense is minor and harmless.
Outlawry suffuses certain parts of this Church. It is found in the priest who neglects the custom (as the rubric saith) of mixing a little water in the wine and pays little attention to the titterings of his congregation about it, though they whisper of Him "out of whose side flowed both water and blood." It is found in the parish that decides to institute Communion Without Baptism and fails to warn the parish of the canonical violation until a key element of the parish's common life becomes fodder for schism. I would say it was found in the priest who performed same-sex blessings except that it is unclear whether to me whether it was ever wrong to do so as long as it never was called "marriage" and the bishop approved. It is found in the bishops who allow errant priests to be shuttled from parish to parish where they wound the sheep etc.
One of these examples certainly is petty. And there may be some justification for some but not all of others, And in some cases, the outlaws might further justify themselves by transparency. The clear evidence of the Standing Committee being outlaws is if the membership of the Standing Committee has been kept secret from all who did not attend Diocesan Convention, for instance. The outlaw rarely tells anyone he is an outlaw, or his true identity. And remember, too, that outlawry is popular and almost institutional in America, where the local seeks to be the laboratory for the national. But there, too, there is always the goal of reception.
All of this talk of outlaws does have a point. The centrists are ascendant, because they can endure outlawry no longer. Some work was done to try to goad them, of course. The centrists were taking a wait and see attitude about LGBT inclusion. So the liberals attacked with talk of boundary crossing, church theft, and efforts to kick TEC out of the Anglican Communion. On the Communion level, we hear of lay presidency quietly in Sydney and somewhere in the vicinity of Wimbledon. The conservatives countered with Windsor and Lambeth as law or Communion Without Baptism or liturgical abuses or liberal bishops hushing up child abuse. The two sides figured that their negative attacks might galvanize the centrists in one direction or another, for they figured quite correctly that the centrists do not like outlaws.
Ah, but quam res conversa est (Cicero), General Convention came and went and the burden of outlawry fell more on one side than the other. The centrists were offended by the breaking of the Eucharistic community, the UTO incident, the rumors of conservative bishops alternately electing +Kathryn and denouncing her, and the attempts of both sides to pollute the work of the Convention. But they were most offended by AlPO, for this was outlawry par excellence, maintaining that one's actions were in agreement with the Constitution and Canons (only in that no canon in particular is transgressed) while seeking metropolitical authority other than that of General Convention. And already we hear rumors of great doings in the AlPO dioceses, where liberals and moderates are coming together in order to stop one set of outlaws from their ecclesial banditry. Already we hear that one bishop is soon to be brought to law. You can read Father Jake for the details.
The centrists are finding their voice on the Anglosphere, too. One can read Father Nick and his fellow Father Andrew of the Diocese of Bethlehem. Or you can read Father Jones or at least a half a dozen others. And already the critiques are coming. Canon Harmon cited Robert Gagnon against his fellow Presbyterians. *Christopher has explained rather clearly today that he doesn't care whether someone is liberal, centrist, or conservative but only that they are honest about how they are going to treat him as a faithful partnered gay man. That seems fair to me.
But what of me? Am I an Anglican centrist? I'm not sure. I usually describe myself as a Radical Anglo-Catholic, which suggests that I can reconcile Maurice and Newman somehow (right...). But it's true that I have great angst about outlawry, especially in my present context. And I think this might be the chief mark of the centrists, not a theological bent per se but a commitment to constitutional process and order generally, or a willingness to act in the wilderness rather than stirring up further confusion in the camp. For in doing these things with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I do believe that I will hand over to each his or her own and live justly. But recall also that the Lord Jesus was a centrist in this way, too, for he rejected all parties and turned over the tables of the moneychangers, but when he could have stirred up all Jerusalem against the authorities and become king over Israel, He decided against this in favor of a painful death and the transformation of the entire order of the world. Being a centrist might mean living sacrificially, too.
And so I'm not going to critique the centrists. I'm going to wait and see what the fruits of their ascendancy may be and pray that God sustain us all in accountability to all the holy people of God who shall judge the world with Jesus Christ.
But the outlaw simple refuses at appear at any tribunal and so my forebears seized his goods and forbade him from civil life. Contrary to popular belief, his human rights never were terminated. It was still unlawful to murder, rape, and otherwise commit common law offenses against the outlaw. Indeed, the Crown had no especial rights besides the seizure of his goods and body in order to compel him to law. Thus, the outlaw had no especial dignity but the unwillingness to be accountable, either to admit his transgression, prove his innocence, or make appeal against the law itself as against the liberty of an Englishman. In some cases, the outlaw had the reasonable excuse of expecting an unfair trial. In other cases, outlaws were disrespectful or merely negligent concerning the law. There is a case in the reign of James I of a knight elected to Parliament, whose election is argued void on the grounds of outlawry. And indeed one can be an outlaw in court, too, as men like Milosevic, Hussein, and Moussaoui have shown, mainly by seeking to call others to trial or disdaining the law. Most of all, the outlaw is "a law unto himself." And thus the outlaw is also known in our time as the scofflaw, one who is indifferent to the operations of the law against him. Scofflaws are mostly petty offenders, because their strongest argument these days is that their offense is minor and harmless.
Outlawry suffuses certain parts of this Church. It is found in the priest who neglects the custom (as the rubric saith) of mixing a little water in the wine and pays little attention to the titterings of his congregation about it, though they whisper of Him "out of whose side flowed both water and blood." It is found in the parish that decides to institute Communion Without Baptism and fails to warn the parish of the canonical violation until a key element of the parish's common life becomes fodder for schism. I would say it was found in the priest who performed same-sex blessings except that it is unclear whether to me whether it was ever wrong to do so as long as it never was called "marriage" and the bishop approved. It is found in the bishops who allow errant priests to be shuttled from parish to parish where they wound the sheep etc.
One of these examples certainly is petty. And there may be some justification for some but not all of others, And in some cases, the outlaws might further justify themselves by transparency. The clear evidence of the Standing Committee being outlaws is if the membership of the Standing Committee has been kept secret from all who did not attend Diocesan Convention, for instance. The outlaw rarely tells anyone he is an outlaw, or his true identity. And remember, too, that outlawry is popular and almost institutional in America, where the local seeks to be the laboratory for the national. But there, too, there is always the goal of reception.
All of this talk of outlaws does have a point. The centrists are ascendant, because they can endure outlawry no longer. Some work was done to try to goad them, of course. The centrists were taking a wait and see attitude about LGBT inclusion. So the liberals attacked with talk of boundary crossing, church theft, and efforts to kick TEC out of the Anglican Communion. On the Communion level, we hear of lay presidency quietly in Sydney and somewhere in the vicinity of Wimbledon. The conservatives countered with Windsor and Lambeth as law or Communion Without Baptism or liturgical abuses or liberal bishops hushing up child abuse. The two sides figured that their negative attacks might galvanize the centrists in one direction or another, for they figured quite correctly that the centrists do not like outlaws.
Ah, but quam res conversa est (Cicero), General Convention came and went and the burden of outlawry fell more on one side than the other. The centrists were offended by the breaking of the Eucharistic community, the UTO incident, the rumors of conservative bishops alternately electing +Kathryn and denouncing her, and the attempts of both sides to pollute the work of the Convention. But they were most offended by AlPO, for this was outlawry par excellence, maintaining that one's actions were in agreement with the Constitution and Canons (only in that no canon in particular is transgressed) while seeking metropolitical authority other than that of General Convention. And already we hear rumors of great doings in the AlPO dioceses, where liberals and moderates are coming together in order to stop one set of outlaws from their ecclesial banditry. Already we hear that one bishop is soon to be brought to law. You can read Father Jake for the details.
The centrists are finding their voice on the Anglosphere, too. One can read Father Nick and his fellow Father Andrew of the Diocese of Bethlehem. Or you can read Father Jones or at least a half a dozen others. And already the critiques are coming. Canon Harmon cited Robert Gagnon against his fellow Presbyterians. *Christopher has explained rather clearly today that he doesn't care whether someone is liberal, centrist, or conservative but only that they are honest about how they are going to treat him as a faithful partnered gay man. That seems fair to me.
But what of me? Am I an Anglican centrist? I'm not sure. I usually describe myself as a Radical Anglo-Catholic, which suggests that I can reconcile Maurice and Newman somehow (right...). But it's true that I have great angst about outlawry, especially in my present context. And I think this might be the chief mark of the centrists, not a theological bent per se but a commitment to constitutional process and order generally, or a willingness to act in the wilderness rather than stirring up further confusion in the camp. For in doing these things with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I do believe that I will hand over to each his or her own and live justly. But recall also that the Lord Jesus was a centrist in this way, too, for he rejected all parties and turned over the tables of the moneychangers, but when he could have stirred up all Jerusalem against the authorities and become king over Israel, He decided against this in favor of a painful death and the transformation of the entire order of the world. Being a centrist might mean living sacrificially, too.
And so I'm not going to critique the centrists. I'm going to wait and see what the fruits of their ascendancy may be and pray that God sustain us all in accountability to all the holy people of God who shall judge the world with Jesus Christ.
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