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.
9 comments:
Congratulations, Caelius. A great moment, I'm sure - passing your exams, I mean.
Still reading the rest and will probably comment again later?
(Finished now. This was great, Caelius - particularly the section on Paul.
I like how you jam Martian dust devils and soteriology together in one post, BTW. Good job!)
Hmmm...
First, congratulations again.
Second, if you need a place to stay, let us know...we've a guest bedroom now. Which parish might I ask...
Third, I recommend Francis Watson's "Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith" (C's birthday gift this year), perhaps one of the best works on Paul I've ever read because it keeps him Jewish and argues for his being within a complex of controversy around Torah in his revisioning. Be forewarned, it isn't cheap and it is not an easy read. I might add that there are a considerable number of rabbis who do not interpret Leviticus in toto in the way you've proposed...
Fourth, Luther is not Reformed in a technical sense of that term (rather reformed), and the Reformation is Paul as understood through Augustine (mostly).
Fifth, as James Alison notes in his latest article, it is perhaps those of us who are queer who are presenting the Church with an opportunity to again understand Paul "the outsider" in a way we haven't since the opening up to the Gentiles. It is after all the outsider who "gets" the Cross in Paul's sense. It reminds me of justifying St. Aquinas' views rather than his method, so to speak...it seems many do the same with Paul when he would probably point us to the underlying point of it all.
Sixth, see point 3. Watson takes Paul a step further than you in an intra-Jewish framework of argument, that Paul is not simply assuming that before Christ the Law meant what it did, but that in the beginning was Christ...here you're with Paul in Watson's opinion.
Seventh, there is little we can do to "save" anything as Communion is from God and it seems most are determined to refashion matters in such a way that we think it is from us. But I do see an Anglican via media in the likes of ++Ndugane (even when I would challenge certain assumptions). There is more than two sides, or even liberal, centrist, conservative...
I suspect that beyond the Net in many places, most are of the show up on Sunday to Eucharist side, and that our bishops across the world have exacerbated much into crisis, and crisis is never a place from which to make long-term, God-oriented decisions. Much fear, power-mongering, anxiety, and anger is at work.
The problem is that our allowing space for agreeing to disagree has indeed broken down (and as you note some think this of the level of dogma) and many are in search of the "true" Anglicanism/centrism/sexual teaching/tradition/justice in a way that is both non-pastoral to those of us who take the brunt of this controversy (for the actual controversy runs far deeper than same-sex sexual acts to the salvation of any of us). Our "truth" has become our greatest enemy, whatever that "truth" may be. In other words, what we are losing is humility, and with that, a sense of that broad community known as Anglicanism.
On your seventh point, *Christopher, I wonder if you aren't putting a bit more of a gap between The Communion and the institutions and structures which make up the Communion. You're position seems to somewhat parallel something I've seen among ultra-conservative Anglo-Catholics (they're so conservative they oppose women's ordination). They set up the Catholic Church as this thing to which they can appeal when they think a church is going astray, but it only connects with the structure of, for example, TEC in the form of those bishops who agree with their position.
I don't mean to imply that you're twisting things around to get your way or anything like that (although the conservatives I mentioned might be accused of that), but it seems to make the rahter human structures seem beside the point and maybe even a waste of money. The upshot is that I wonder if this disjunction is entirely appropriate.
Jon
Jon,
First it wouldn't be surprising to find some similarities between myself and ultra-conservative Anglo-catholics. But I don't that is one of them at least in terms of participation in structures (I do so even though I often have found myself on the outside). As a good Benedictine, I recognize the importance of structures and institutions as those means that foster our relationships together--our participation in Communion.
I think you have misunderstood my point and come up with a reading that was not my point at all, in that I was not first speaking of the Anglican Communion. I'm speaking first of Communion in the theological sense, which is always gift from God, Whose Being is Communion. This is not an unusual way to consider Communion, especially as we Anglicans have always recognized that our "incarnation(s)" of this amongst ourselves in structures and institutions remain under judgement and fallible and tentative. I begin here because I think it the best way to remember our humility, and is important as a reminder to all of us that we are betwixt and between, on pilgrimage, and more so for those of us who often experience the institutions and structures as hostile to our simple existence. In other words no matter how great, we cannot conflate the Anglican Communion in it structures and institutions with God. Rather these participate, to a greater or lesser degree, in God, and are liable to criticism, correction, etc. That I think is the chief difference I have with some Anglo-Catholics and many Roman Catholics, that God cannot be reduced to or conflated with particular structures and institutions, not that we don't need structures and institutions.
The Anglican Communion arises from our participation in this primordial Communion most especially in Eucharist, and participates in this Communion through its relationships fostered by our structures and institutions. But if we think we in and of ourselves can save it by focusing on institutional structures alone, it will fail us, and I fear that in our fear and anger and angst we aren't pausing to face our passions in such a way that God can work through the structures and lead us forward beyond our present self-focus. I think the primary way forward is through regular Eucharist which of course requires structures of some sort.
Mostly though, I think if you were looking for some solution in my counsel of comfort to Caelius amidst these difficulties, it just illustrates my point about everyone gadding about for essays, thoughts, etc. on the Net or in the media about how we will be saved rather than fostering our relations in our parish or with those we know on the Net, etc., which do in fact contribute to the actual life of the Church. It is this relational approach that holds out promise and hope, an approach that our structures and institutions have long fostered. Note, too that I am criticizing a multiplicity of bishops on several sides for having fostered a peace that works to cover up disagreement, foster outright nastiness, etc., rather than controversy in the classic Anglican sense which Caelius alludes to.
As I pointed out, I think most of us within the structures, and we all are, are go to the Eucharist on Sunday side, that is my observation of most Episcopalians I know at any rate. It is here where my contribtuion to the parish, yes through money and time and talent, that the Body is present fostered by our structures and institutions. I think that polarization through the Net and yes through the antics of bishops (and some priests) has made this worse than it needed to be, has made it so that folks on several sides are wary of contributing to the life of the Church, and in that the bishops have failed their primary calling.
Again, in rereading your comment, I'm left confused, as I don't know how you got from my point seven to your own observations.
As for twisting it to get my way...we're all doing that at the moment whether we're Network, centrist, liberals, whatever...just read around the blogosphere, read the essays, many based in fantasies and illusions about what the Anglican Communion is or often should be so that we can feel comfortable...hence, my return to God as Communion as primary starting point.
What you say about the theological understanding of Communion is all true; my concern is that in emphasizing the theological side the incarnational side starts getting hidden. As the old saying says, out of sight out of mind. That's part of the dynamic which is problematic in the conservative circles.
Theologically all the solutions are God's business; incarnationally they will depend on those who have been given authority by the various structures. I doubt either of us belongs in either category, but at least in our reflections we might be able to mind the gap between theory and incarnation.
Jon
Jon,
I think that some gap is necessary as a way of maintaining some sense of humility. For me some eschatological even apocalyptic tension is necessary to maintain as it's a matter of survival within a structure that and among authorities who at best are mostly neutral and at worst hostile and are perfectly willing to set up "communion" in ways that do harm. So it's important to not conflate authorities and institutions with Christ to such a degree that there isn't room for me to also participate in the "incarnating" of Christ as a member of the Body. In that sense, I resonate with Black Theology and some Liberation Theology in maintaining that tension. It's not simply that the authorities incarnate that Communion, but each of us does, and sometimes that incarnation is a challenge to those in authority or the way common life has been structured through scapegoating or shaming or putting down, a challenge that reminds there is One Shepherd and you authorities are in danger of scattering some of His sheep.
I agree that the gap is unavoidable, but I get worried when it starts to look unbridgable or unimportant to bridge. That is to say the theory and the incarnation need to have a connection in spite of their differences with reflection on one leading to and encouraging reflection on the other.
Jon
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