Church History RPG?

Either because of my recent blogenrollments at Bending the Rule and haligweorc or because he's been googling himself (it's quite OK, Rev. Professor Adam if you do so, I google myself all the time), AKMA has found this blog. This is a good and joyful thing. He asked a very good question in the comments to the Article II post, which I think is worth at least an entry to think about:

"The heady theological discussion is exciting, but don’t lose track of the “game” idea. I’m a very firm believer in the value of games for learning, but have been frustrated by the paucity of resources that neither trivialize nor run the risk of romanticizing heresy.

"An ideal theological-educational game would not issue in “beating other players” but negotiating multi-variable conflicts and circumstances, and drawing on historic resources. . . .

"In your copious free time, you’re encouraged to participate in this exercise in game design. Yes, I know about the Council of Niucaea [sic] game, though I haven't been able to get hold of a copy."

What I think AKMA should consider is an RPG (role playing game). Now I know that some of you out there played Dungeons and Dragons etc. during adolescence. If Jack Chick's view of the world is correct, this would put you in definite risk of hellfire. I am sure I will burn eternally because of the activities of Giolty macHeimhin (a character I once played), despite the fact that he was a generally virtuous fellow who avoided local brothels unlike other members of his party. :) . That said, RPGs do not have to be all swords and unBiblical sorcery. In fact, they have become more sophisticated over time. You will find alternate history RPGs, science fiction RPGs, and even Christian RPGs. Google "Christia" and be afraid, be very afraid. Apparently, a Christian RPG is just like D+D except God and Satan are fighting for control. This reminds me of my "favorite" Christian critique of violent video games, which I can't find but effectively boils down to "the problem with secular video games is the killing is done as if there is no God." It is apparently fine to kill anything that moves funny in the name of God.

That aside, AD+D style RPGs (with the players incarnate with another in actual reality instead of being connected to each other by virtual reality) might be the first step in thinking about a game that fits AKMA's criteria.

Who Would Be the Players or Market for the Game?: I would assume that SWTS students might be a possible testbed for any idea that comes to fruition. But I think we should plan a game that can be made accessible to a youth group on a lock-in as much as to seminary students who are playing it as an occasional course exercise. (I played Diplomacy in high school for European history.) An incarnate RPG can be so flexible because it is based on a series of relationships. Of course, we should be conscious of the time limits in the game.

What Are These Relationships?: The first key relationship is between the leader and the players. In AD+D the leader (DM or Dungeonmaster) is like God. This is somewhat problematic in the game we are considering. But AD+D works because it provides a large range of materials to DMs that provide algorithms or memes that smooth gameplay by incorporating chance and outside ideas into the imagination of the DM. The leader of our game might consider himself or herself an expression of divine will rather than God Himself. It's OK to do those things which you can imagine God doing (however you think God works through history), but the leader always should remember that they stand in for God and are not God. This might be a surprisingly humbling experience. The other important relationship is between the players. The players support one another, share with one another, sacrifice for one another, and really ought to be oriented in the same rough geographical directions. They feed on one another's imaginations, ingenuity, and intellects. It is important for the players to foster among another an air of mutual respect. It's hard to say more without knowing the exact context of the game.

The leader thus mediates the world for the players and often serves as a mediator between the players, so that they do not go off on tangents that are not germane to the scenario, fail to follow the rules, or are too authentic. (It's not appropriate to speak actual Greek during a RPG unless that degree of authenticity is possible or called for in the rules.)

Another set of personalities can be introduced in the game in the form of NPCs or non-playing characters. At a seminary, you can imagine a few hour scenario in which professors and older students play NPCs of important folks whose lives and works they know well. NPCs ideally should respond always as their character would do to the best of their ability. I can imagine an RPG with a bit of walking around with the NPCs acting as extensions of the leader, assigning points, skills, other character variables etc. in line with what is necessary to gameplay.

What About Conflicts?: All RPGs, of course, will involve conflicts. One way of not romanticizing heresy is to make all of the playing characters in a basic mold in which their motivation is to promote and develop the orthodox faith. But they need to accumulate skills, knowledge, and resources to defend the position they consider orthodox and convince those who disagree. Some of those conflicts will involve mediation by NPCs or the leader by using quantitative measures (statistics etc.) connected to algorithms. Other times conflicts might be resolved more subjectively. The NPCs and leaders must be careful to weigh responses to situations both practical and intellectual. You may be allowed to fall into the company of the Arians, but there will be consequences if you do so and are caught at it. Of course, conflict should allow working together. If skillsets are different enough, two visitors to Arius or two letters to Arius are better than one.

Wow, This Sounds Really Big!: Yes, it does. But I know that with the right materials and relatively simple gameplay principles, the chief work is development. AD+D is a big industry of its kind, but it's not too hard once you have some books to work with. It often comes down to who is playing. Since church people would be playing it, it might be interesting to try some sort of open source development of scenarios, gameplay, and pre-made characters.

Making Characters: Depending on the context of the game, this process could vary widely. Ideally, character development could proceed from the beginning with a catechumen quest in which X is baptized in a particular church and chooses his or her future path. Character-making will be problematic for women (women can play men if necessary, but I think women characters are important in Church History. We should understand the limitations of women in the church throughout history but also their strengths.

So what does each character need to start out? (Each character will be carrying a piece of paper with their "stats" around). Let's Make An Example (he would normally be an NPC).

Name: Augustine of Hippo

Nationality: Afro-Roman (this probably should be omitted, but it's equivalent to the Race category in AD+D).

Class: Clergy (I see the Lay Class of Roman officials and a class of consecrated women as possibilities...)

Level: Bishop-8 [See how this would go, though the number of minor orders varied from place to place]

Experience Points: X

Diocese: Hippo [Bonuses could be assigned based on diocese, some have more honor than others...]



Money: X sesterces; Income: X sesterces Expenses: X sesterces [All possibilities, you don't really need to include it]

Strength: X ; Constitution: X Intelligence: X [All of these could be assigned randomly]

[But here's a better idea.]

Why can't the statistics also be based on virtues and vices?: (0-100 scale)

Prudence: 61
Temperance: 38
Courage: 74
Justice: 81
Charity: 60 [0 during the catechumenate]
Hope: 91 [Likewise]
Faith: 87 [Likewise]

Vices: Pride, Envy, Lust etc.

And of course, there would be skills. Latin speakers could pick up Greek or Syriac. Lay folks could have knowledge of various secular matters and clergy could be expert in various books of the Scriptures or philosophy. In fact, it would be possible for clergy or laity to cross-train but there would be realistic limitations on being permitted to use those skills and how effective they would be.

Artifacts: I always say that St. Columba is the earliest known copyright infringer (or at least the defendant in the oldest known court case). The book in question was an edition of the Psalms from Rome. Before the invention of the printing press, works generally circulated in a small number of copies and thus possession of a book or manuscript almost became like possessing a part of the author's spirit. Texts became media of spiritual power. (A surprisingly good look at this idea can be found in Johannes Trithemius's In Praise of Scribes , which contains several instructive examples.) Thus books might be useful artifacts. Relics, of course, might be important.

Is Roleplaying of Any Educational Value?: To treat this question philosophically would require settling whether roleplaying is mimesis or whether mimesis has educational value. But having done historical roleplaying in other contexts, I can tell you that roleplaying can make dry records, apparently irrelevant texts, and dead discussions come to life. Roleplaying the past at its best can draw us out of our context, out of ourselves, and out of the foundational assumptions of modernity and post-modernity. It is the easiest way to think on the past in the past rather than judging the past from the present. The key is to design scenarios that have the right balance between pedagogy and imagination.

Best of all, a Church History RPG done well might be useful for Christians of many different traditions. People not only could explore the ancient church but the origins of their own particular tradition. Today, Christian RPGs are mainly about fighting evil and kicking demonic ass. Wouldn't it be cool to have an RPG about the real substance of faith?

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that the Word may be near to you, in your mouth and in your heart that you may preach and do it, even if you get an unfavorable d100 role and are elected Bishop of some small city in Hither Spain .

III. Of the going down of Christ into Hell

III. Of the going down of Christ into Hell

As Christ died for us, and was buried; so it is also to be believed, that he went down into Hell.

It's Short, So We're Going to Have Fun

This Article and the doctrine it professes are very important to me and to this blog for one reason: I actually wanted to write a novel three years ago in which the doctrine played a central role. And actually, both my nom de blog and the name of the Prior of the Monastery were characters in it. I won't get into the plot, but one important idea was: What if the universe and Christianity were around thousands of years in the future and played a great role in the life of a great empire. Imagine Late Antiquity Europe in space! Also imagine that the dominant school of theology could be called "Literary," so that they see God as the Great Author of all things and the Christian story as the chief chapter in the great epic of the universe. But after a while, they re-examine the fragmentary records of their past and discover that the Christian story doesn't look so universal anymore. It seems to be filled with the devices of Greco-Roman literature. Thus ancient doctrine becomes challenged. Was this idea due to God or man?

Hence, the first look at Article III will be Katabasis: Christ's Descent to the Dead As Greco-Roman literary device . For our second stab, we'll trace the origin of the doctrine in Tradition and try to put forth an aetiology. For our third stab, we'll look at what aetiology for the doctrine we can find in the Scriptures. Sound like fun?

Facilis Descensus Averno

Talibus orabat dictis arasque tenebat,
cum sic orsa loqui uates: 'sate sanguine diuum,
Tros Anchisiade, facilis descensus Auerno:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed reuocare gradum superasque euadere ad auras,
hoc opus, hic labor est. pauci, quos aequus amauit
Iuppiter aut ardens euexit ad aethera uirtus,
dis geniti potuere...

With such words she prayed and held herself fast to the altar
And thus she arose to speak, "Offspring of divine blood,
Trojan man, Anchises' son, it is an easy descent to Avernus
The door of Dark Dis swings wide open the fullness of the day and night
But to retrace one's steps and depart into the air open to heaven
This is effort, this is work. Few have been able to do so.
And those [who have] moderate Jupiter has loved
Or fiery courage has lifted to the stars...
These were begotten of the gods... (Vergil, Aeneid, VI, 124-130

Was Vergil a prophet? Who knows? I think the tradition about the Second Eclogue is weak, but the prophets often are talking about many things at once. The Cumaean Sibyl, however, was regarded as a prophetess (by Augustine, I think). But I think the merits of her case like the Oracle at Delphi were on historical records not poetry. The Sibylline Books were much imitated but never equalled. One of my favorite parts of City of God could be called, "What they're saying about us (and the Lord)", like a column in one of the Alabama newspapers. Augustine quotes the oracles about Jesus. Some are prophetically inspired. Some are possessed by demons. But all of the Augustine's quoted sources are like the prophets and demons of the New Testament, they're fairly sure Jesus is important. Hence, the doctrine of "The Descent Into Hell" or katabasis , as we shall call it, seems prefigured in the Aeneid . Is there more to this?

Last winter, I attended an intimate talk by Margaret Mitchell of the University of Chicago Divinity School on the genre of the Gospel of Mark. She had some interesting things to say, which I'm sure will figure in a future publication. The tack of the Literary Theologian (LT) would be to see the Gospels as the perfection of all extant and appropriate genres rather than simply as a borrowing from one or more extant genres or an intentional innovation of a completely new genre (two of Mitchell's ideas). One possible way to do this is to see the story of Christ as epic ( Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained make this reading). The Gospels and the Scriptures as a whole become the justification of the Christian way of life.

But I think tragedy is an even more compelling way to look at the Life of Jesus as genre. We have the disguised noble hero, who is revealed slowly as the Incarnate Son of God but is killed as a traitor. His fatal flaw: obedience to God and love of human souls. But yet He becomes his own deus ex machina , rising to new life and transforming something which could evoke fear and pity into a story of joy, hope, and challenge. The best tragedies are more than Aristotle made them out to be. They are also stories of challenge but somehow incomplete. Traditional sympathies are reversed. But the Gospels always seem better executed to me. Thus, the Passion remains a powerful theme for drama, no matter what we think of its presentation. And the broader story remains likewise influential in The Matrix Trilogy , even if the heart of the story seems absent. The Literary Theologian would say that the power and influence of the story, its resonance with stories in other traditions, and its constant mimesis in the secular arts all confirm its divine origin.

And the story of the Harrowing of Hell, though less influential in modern times, must have been a strong draw in the medieval world. It was acted during Holy Week when the emotions of the believers already were strained to the breakingpoint. The Lord, Pie Iesu, was humiliated. Throughout the Christian world, these days were especially feared by the Jews, who often found themselves transformed from fellow human beings to emotional outlets to scapegoats. The Lord be merciful unto our fathers and mothers and heal all of the children of Abraham. The Harrowing of Hell was another form of release. Jesus was not dead but victorious, being witty and authoritative and sometimes literally beating Satan under His feet. And poor Adam and Eve then were restored to their primal innocence.

But an older literary tradition is perfected in that story. The Harrowing is a Katabasis a descent to the dead of an epic hero in search of knowledge about the order of the cosmos and his own destiny. It appears in the Odyssey , the Aeneid , and other less-known works (Plato's Republic etc.). In the Middle Ages, Dante centered an entire epic on the journey through the realm of spiritual death through the realm of purification into the ineffable Presence of God Most High and Triune, "The Love that moved the Sun, the stars." So influential was katabasis in ancient times that Petronius' Satyricon describes the protagonists journeying through the infernal warrens of Trimalchio's house while making allusions to katabases in epics past. But understanding Article III as Katabasis doesn't help us very much. What did Christ need to do among the dead? What of the universe and his destiny did He not know?

Katabasis in the Tradition

The doctrine of Katabasis first seems to appear in the evolving text we know as the Apostles' Creed. It is perhaps too much to say, but I'll say it anyway. The Niceno-Constantipolitan Creed etc. seems to be a product of the Eastern Church (deliberative assembly in the East under imperial auspices that is deeply invested in Hellenistic philosophical discourse), while the Apostles' Creed seems to be a product of the Western Church (starting from Roman baptismal creeds known to Tertullian and Hippolytus). But there seems to be enough cross-pollination of ideas that we simply could be deceived by our sources. What is amazing about this phenomenon is how two creedal statements apparently forged in the crucible of one or the other part of the ancient world were rather gladly adopted in the other. The Eastern Orthodox rightfully complain about the filioque , but do they do so because of the unilateral innovation of the West or because they believe modifications of the Nicene Creed belong to the East. Perhaps, true catholic doctrine lies in that which arises out of the local discourses throughout the Church Universal which each local church offers as a gift to the entire Body. If received as doctrine, it is most surely catholic. And if there is heresy, it arises out of the jealousy of Cain...

But whatever way we pose the Apostle's Creed, some mention of katabasis is found in Arian creeds in the 360s and it then spreads. See a useful footnote . Its presence in Arian creeds may explain why it does not appear in the Ecumenical formulations, for those who might have desired it in the East either were personae non gratae or fearful of being called Arians. But it is known in other Greek creeds later, perhaps due to adoption from the West from more reliable persons.

Schaff has a lot of thoughts on usage. I would take one and run, but it's hard. Some versions emphasize descent to the shades of the dead, inferos in Latin or katotata in Greek. Unfortunately, I know it's rather common and poetic to join the physical abode of the dead with the shades of the dead themselves. Throwing Sheol and its translations as opposed to Gehenna and its translations into the mix further confuses the issue. So let's play another game. The earliest place we find katabasis in Latin creeds is 390 A.D (possibly later) in Aquileia (at the head of the Adriatic in Italy, I didn't remember myself and originally placed it in Gaul), as given by Rufinus in his commentary on the Creed. Considering that Rufinus had the dubious distinction of being Origen's Latin translator, I'm betting he would write very carefully. Hence, it is unlikely he introduced anything to the creed, since he claims it as the baptismal creed of his own church. He also traveled widely in the East, where he was harassed by Arians. He also was an ecclesiastical historian of some importance. Everything suggests to me that the Creed he reports may have been the one he spoke at baptism (he probably would have mentioned a change in his lifetime). Thus, between Hippolytus c. 215 and the baptism of Rufinus c. 374, the doctrine of the descent to the dead was introduced into Italy. We know that it was accepted by the Arians around this time but was not a strongly disputed object in the East.

But where does that leave us? I've played pattyfingers in historical logic, especially as I apply it to the study of late antiquity. I've done so in order to get a date range. The idea of doing so is in order to apply the shopworn trope that Creeds are answers to error. To some extent this is true but we must be careful. It's one thing to say "I believe in God the Father" to contradict the general atheism of "the world" about the Creator, but it's another to say in the Nicene Creed, "begotten, not made..." Some parts of the Creed establish a faith that you could not imagine anyone but a Christian would want to believe. Or they establish a faith that you couldn't imagine someone who called themselves a Christian not believing [Bishop Spong notwithstanding ;) ]. The others argue directly against errors which you could imagine faithful followers of Christ believing until they were catechized otherwise. I think the descent to the dead is specific enough of a doctrine that it falls in the latter category. It speaks to an error rather than framing basic faith.

We know why the Arians went for the katabasis. If Christ were a creature, he, of course, would have followed the fate of all rational creatures. And thus I suspect this formulation entered the Creed because of some ana-Arian heresy in the West that asserted Jesus was a spirit, not human, or had a human body and a divine spirit. Whatever it spoke against, the Creed maintains that Jesus experienced death as fully as any man and entered what Phillip K. Pullman has called (but distorted) "The Prison Camp," the Grief of Asphodel, or the gritty underworld of Gilgamesh. But still we are left to ask: whatever did he do there?

Katabasis in Scripture

Deep controversy at the time of the Reformation concerns the Scriptural basis of the doctrine. The strongest objection is, of course, Jesus' words to the Repentant Thief, "Today, you shall be with me in Paradise" (Luke 12:43). Further support is John 16:16 ff., in which Jesus suggests the Disciples will not see him because, "I am going to the Father." Matthew 22:44, if taken as relevant, would suggest the subjugation of death and Satan happening as Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. It also could be eschatological.

The proof-text of the opposite position is 1 Peter 3:18 ff, "Christ too suffered for our sins once and for all, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, put to death in the body, he was brought to life in the spirit. In the spirit also he went and made his proclamation to the imprisoned spirits, those who had refused to obey in the past, while God waited patiently in the days when Noah was building the ark; in it a few people, eight in all, were brought to safety in the water. This water symbolized baptism, through which you are now brought to safety...and it brings salvation through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is now at the right hand of God, having entered heaven and received the submission of angels, authorities, and powers."

One can imagine an Italian bishop looking at this treasure attributed to Peter (even if it's not his) and affirming it as pure Petrine doctrine, which was a maxim of Ecumenical Councils and nearly unanswerable in the West. But it's tricky. "Put to death in the body...brought to life in the spirit." Mind-body dualism aargh! But sometimes it's best to credit folks with subtlety. We know Christ was raised in the flesh. Thomas touched his wounds. He ate and drank. He rebuilt, as the expression goes, the temple of his body through the animating power of the breath of God. The Scriptures are insistent through the proclamations of the Apostles that God raised Jesus of Nazareth even before they exactly were confident on the nature of His divinity. Again, Christ the Second Adam is the happy analogy. Christ's raising is a new creation of man through extraordinary means. We are promised remaking by the remaking of the man who is also God. Christ is thus raised in the spirit first so that as the Psalmist says "the body you have broken may rejoice."

Peter then tells us that Christ as a spirit preached to the "imprisoned spirits," the Generation of the Flood. The Mishnah says, "The Generation of the Flood and the Generation of the Wilderness have no portion in the world to come." In the latter case, the text seems to be Psalm 95, "so I vowed in my anger, they shall never enter my rest." But as Hebrews 3:7 ff. quotes it, "Today if you hear his voice, do not grow stubborn as in the rebellion at the time of testing in the desert." Whatever be the anger of God, it is assuaged by Jesus. Those who had passed through the waters of the Flood and the waters of the Red Sea as symbols of baptism (but had died in the waters or in the coincidentally named Wilderness of Sin) now had access to the Gospel for a time in the person of Christ. (The Mormons have made too much of this, perhaps.) They could choose not to be stubborn anymore. Jesus suggests no one who comes from the dead will convince anyone to obey the Law, but what about someone coming to the dead? 1 Peter opens the question. And it opens the question of everybody else who might be imprisoned. The Generation of the Flood, for instance, really had no Covenant with God. It also opens up something important about the abiding-place of righteous Israelites. But it only opens these questions. But it does suggest "whatever going to the Father" was involved with the Triduum either came after the katabasis (it is described after the proposed activities aming the dead) or is somehow simultaneous. One does not obviously exclude the other. The idea is repeated later in the letter, perhaps further boosting the idea of more general preaching, "That was why the gospel was preached even to the dead; in order that, although in the body they were condemned to die as everyone dies, yet in the spirit they might live as God lives." The first fruits of them that sleep likely bore much fruit among the sleepers.

Other passages cited in support of katabasis include God's prophecy concerning enmity between serpents and the descendants of Eve, which often is interpreted Christologically, "They will strike at your head and you will strike at their heel," but exegeting this as referring to katabasis is highly forced. Psalm 139:6-7 says, "Where then can I go from your Spirit or flee from your Presence. I go up to Heaven, you are there. If I go down to hell, you are there as well." I've preached this passage as primarily metaphorical, referring to places and people in which the Psalmist does or does not expect to experience God, but it does make an interesting prophecy of Christ. Job 38:17 suggests God has at least seen the gates of Hell. Psalm 68:18 says, "When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train." Matthew 12:38 ff. is cited as well, but it seems to refer to a body at unity with the "heart of the earth" or the dust (though incorruptible). Seeing what we have elsewhere (and there's more), 1 Peter is the most coherent and obvious Scriptural basis of the doctrine.

But What Does It All Mean?

I think I've said quite a bit about what it all means, but it's worth seeing it as Article III. Article III essentially makes no further exposition beyond that of the Apostle's Creed. It seems apologetic, "it is to be believed." Conscious of maintaining the integrity of the catholic faith, I suspect the English reformers dared not touch it, though it seemed doubtful. Its history in the Protestant churches has been colorful.

But is it worth being apologetic? I would say no. The story of katabasis is a treasure bestowed on us by 1 Peter. It is a story of ultimate kenosis, for Christ did descend to the dead. It is a story of triumph, for Christ was raised to life among the dead. It is a story of love, reconciliation, and redemption, for Christ, it is believed, preached the Kingdom to those who were told they were excluded eternally from its promises. God through Christ put away his anger from the two most evil generations of man. Finally, it is a story of hope, for if even the dead received the Gospel and came as captives in the triumphal train of Christ, death cannot end what faithful word endures in us. And that's why I love The Katabasis of Our Lord, despite its dubiousness.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that the cleansing waters of Baptism working within you shall not just wash away the impurities of the flesh but produce in you the pure and contrite heart which is the great sacrifice to God.

II. Of the Word or Son of God, which was made very Man

AKMA has been making wonderful Theology cards in order to impart basic knowledge about early church history and theology. You must collect them all! Well, as much as I would like to design a collectible card game around these cards. "Well, I tap my Patriarchate of Alexandria to summon 'Ornery Monophysites' ", I have been impressed greatly by the short excerpts from the works of these figures AKMA has chosen to give some personality to these giants of the ancient church.

I especially like this quote from Gregory of Nyssa's "On the Deity of the Son"

"The whole city is full of it, the squares, the marketplaces, the crossroads, the alleyways; rag dealers, money-changers, food-sellers, they are all busy arguing. If you ask someone to give you change, he philosophizes about the Begotten and the Unbegotten; if you inquire about the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Father is greater and the Son inferior; if you ask, "Is my bath ready?" the attendant answers that the Son was made out of nothing."

Two ideas immediately jump at me from this passage. First, one of the great defects in our understanding of the post-Nicene Church is that we have little idea of the faith of the laity. Looking at the penitentials, one imagines that they really had to keep in line. But I still see the Byzantine man as the carnal man. Justinian legislated his pieties, but he also married his mistress. Augustine at the time of that strange business in 410 known as the Great Sack says in one of his sermons (and I paraphrase), "I know what you say, why won't [Augustine] shut up about Rome?" These are our ancestors in faith as much as those we call Fathers.

What interest did the laity really have in doctrinal matters? Well, I think they took doctrinal matters very seriously. First, doctrinal controversy directly affected civil peace. The question of who was in and who was out of government and the network of socioeconomic relations of patron and client was closely connected with one's outlook on the questions and answers which confronted Gregory of Nyssa in the activities of ordinary life. Second, Byzantium and other Greco-Roman cities had a public culture in which the ordinary man might be more easily exposed to ideas in their highest manifestations. The Byzantine man liked a good chariot race. He also liked a good speech in the law courts or a sermon at church. Even if he were illiterate, the rudiments of a classical education beat the shores of his ears in the rumble of the marketplace. Well, the working class man of the city had such an experience. The man of the countryside lived a much less rich cultural life. Since the time of Marx, the great social divide has been seen as one of class. The older distinction between city and country has sat at the back of discourse, though I still think it carries some weight especially in the era of the suburb. Thus, I can believe Holy Gregory may have seen theological presentations given by the man on the street.

The other striking thing about this passage and the mileu which it describes is the general intellectual richness of Christological discourse between the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451. It was certainly rich in the centuries prior to Nicaea. And it retained some vitality for a century or two after Chalcedon, but it is not until the first stirrings of the Enlightenment that the Christological consensus faced serious challenge. From the 7th century to the 12th century, Christ was not a disputable object except in the hearts of those who stayed on the wrong side of catholic doctrine. Between the 12th century and the Reformation, we see some stirrings. Gnosticism returns in the West, but it is hard to say what its Christology was. We also see anti-authoritarianism or antinomianism among the non-clerical classes. In some cases, it took enthusiastic forms, "Jesus came to me and told me that the Church was bad." In other cases, we feel the contractions of the Reformation. Is there meant to be a large institutional church? Is the Pope etc. living anything like Jesus and the Apostles? The personal Jesus so common in the evangelical piety of our day is but the heritor of the longing for the imitation of Christ of St. Francis, Thomas a Kempis, and late medieval pietism generally. Despite the great controversies of the God-Man, the Christ of the Dark Ages was posed far more as God than Man. As the Middle Ages closed, the orthodox doctrine was now more fully lived out in the general worldview of the Church.

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that the Roman Catholic obsession with the Passion in all of its carnality may be another expression of the restoration of the doctrine of Christ's humanity in the context of the Christian life. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, for instance, originated in the 17th century. Theological controversies about the Precious Blood date to the fifteenth century. The idea of hypostatic union settled to some extent at Chalcedon seems to have been important in such debates. Bodily fluids became instruments of grace, thus reinforcing sacramental theology. Taken in moderation, the tendency of the Reformers toward the imitation of Christ in daily life and the tendency of the Counter-Reformers toward apotheosizing the carnality of Christ were all to the good. These days, even the descendants of the Reformers talk about "the powerful blood name of Jesus."

It would be easy to overstate this. But whatever exactly happened, Christ was a little more Man by 1600. The questions of WWJD would be alien to the 10th century man, the Reformers would have seen some merit in it. Christology thereafter has become as messy as in the time of Gregory. As the world gradually was disenchanted (Anglican Scotist has a good discussion of Adorno on disenchantment), Christ generally was disenchanted. In ancient times, only the Roman elite could see Jesus purely as a natural person (and not forever). The details of Christ's supernaturality were in dispute. Today, supernaturality itself is now controverted. And the spirit of the age presents new problems of epistemology. The ancients had their favorite Gospels. They all thought they knew the true story. It always was possible to find out who Jesus was and what he taught with the right texts and the right instruction. Even the Roman elite had their true story about Jesus. Today, the Gospels often are discussed as distortions. We may name searches for the Real Jesus as Gnosticism but the problem is deeper. We may have disenchanted Jesus and his followers so fully that there is no Real Jesus for us to find behind the page. Article II is prior to this disenchantment.

II. Of the Word or Son of God, which was made very Man

The Son, which is the Word of the Father...

Jesus is the Son. This is a title of relational/familial significance and Messianic significance. Yet one of my favorite moments in the Gospels is John 10:34. Jesus quotes Psalm 82 not to justify his own Sonship but the potential sonship of us all. These abstract Trinitarian notions of Father, Son, Word, cosmic order etc. become very real. John 10:35 says, "It is those to whom God's word came who are called gods -- and scripture cannot be set aside." Now, Psalm 82 from an abstract and objective view is talking about the Canaanite gods and human rulers as gods. But Jesus participates in the text in whatever way it is most true. The abstract and the objective view is mere surface to him. On one hand, he is saying that although he is the unique Word of God, the Word he brings in a variety of ways through himself is a means to divinity for those who receive it. We all could be children of the Most High. On the other hand, He is predicting his chief action, for the next verse after the Psalm he quotes is this, "Nevertheless you shall die like mortals and fall like any human prince." Frankly, I think some of the folks in Solomon's portico thought they were being threatened, when Jesus is only really threatening himself.

begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God

"Divinity is heritable but not transferable" is the basic idea. Christ is very God and co-eternal because he is begotten (not made) and everlasting. Again, redundancy communicates Trinitarian truth.

...and of one substance with the Father...

The Christological consensus might be summarized in this way, "The Church knows no Savior and no Bridegroom but Christ, wants no Savior or Bridegroom less than God, and therefore believes in a Christ no less than God. Co-substantiality is necessary to such a belief.

...took Man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin...

I will emphasize here that the Nicene Creed says Jesus was made anthropos (general human being) not aner (manly man). So the Article by Man's nature means human nature and if they meant otherwise deserves anathema. One of my great pet peeves is the belief that it was necessary for Christ to be incarnate as a manly man. I really worry that this is heresy. So don't talk to me about Jesus perfecting manhood. Jesus perfected human nature, for there is in Christ Jesus neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female.

...of her substance...

Some biologically-minded folks have speculated that since the Theotokos provided Jesus' human substance, Jesus only had XX chromosomes and therefore technically was a woman. This is one of those arguments that really strikes me as worth discussion at an Ecumenical Council. But I'm afraid that Jesus was generally considered male by his contemporaries. How did this work? Well, I think this is one of those doctrinal problems to offer up in prayer. I would learn toward the view of Jesus as the Second Adam as being helpful here. Perhaps, Jesus was equivalent to the common gender androgyne often proposed as the human being first created by God according to the first account in Genesis. This creature certainly could be called Adam (or Eve in some sense) and was fully human. Yes, I think prayer is the answer.

...so that the two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man...

The Christological consensus is a bit like a theorem statement involving if and only if in mathematics. I summarized the divine part of the consensus above. The other side of the Consensus has two points. Christ somehow gets right what Adam got wrong, thus allowing liberty from the consequences of Adam's wrongdoing. Thus Christ can be no more than Adam, otherwise it would be too easy. Next, The salvific sacrifice completes the ultimate humilation of God. God is not merely in the world in Christ, nor is God merely in a body. Instead, God experiences the fullness of corruptibility. Only human beings can experience the fullness of corruptibility and humiliation necessary. Thus, Christ must be man. The idea of hypostatic union that underlies "never to be divided" is simply a way to comprehend intellectually what is necessary, paradoxical, and true. So much of human thought has been consumed by the dialectical struggle of thesis and antithesis by a hundred names that such a concept is deeply challenging to the foundations of how we think. And yet Jesus' very nature seems to be contradiction and tension.

...who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried...

As I said before, it was necessary for Christ to suffer pain as we all do. The crucified, dead, and buried parts really speak to ancient (and modern) anti-Jesus rhetoric as much as they speak to deep soteriology. First, Jesus was nailed to a cross and stayed nailed to a cross. He was not whisked away magically by God and replaced with Judas, for instance. Second, he died. He wasn't taken off unconscious and then revived. He embraced corruptibility fully and he rose from the dead. Third, he was buried. His tomb was blocked with a stone. The apostles acted as if he were really dead. Joseph of Arimathea had him buried. The Resurrection was a surprise. In other words, there was no body-snatching.

...to reconcile his Father to us...

Hidden in this little infinitive phrase is the messy atonement theology that is so fashionable to disdain these days. The usual argument against this view is that Jesus didn't need to die if he was simply warding off God's wrath. God could just stop being mad at us. There are two good counterarguments to this view. First, a Being without passions only is angry insofar as He loves justice. He is justly wroth with us. It would not be in his nature to stop being mad at us, because it would require that he stop being just. Two, we are always going to sin, but through Christ we have a variety of means to do God's will and so not sin. Jesus' sacrifice reconciles with God the Father because the suffering which is spoken of is his kenosis and humiliation as much as the Cross itself. Jesus' entire life and ministry are aimed at liberating us from sin. The Church thus becomes the Body of Christ at which God cannot be justly mad since She tends to the right end. Thus, everything that Christ did reconciled us to the Father. After all, is it better to be constantly wroth with people who have no potential to improve or inconstantly wroth? God preferred to make us more just so that He could stop being mad at us.

The other objection to atonement theology is that it seems entirely too bloody and primitive. Why must God be appeased by blood sacrifice? Well, I answer that the very forces of wickedness and corruptibility that lead us into sin are most easily confronted through blood sacrifice, since it is thought to be a means to gain power through death. And there's the angle of fulfillment of the Temple Worship to be considered here. This whole idea refers back to the Garden of Eden. By eating the apple, Adam and Eve chose corruptibility, association with spiritual wickedness, and changes in the structure of the moral universe made possible by their choice. The effectiveness of blood sacrifice is the result of one of those changes. But the sacrifice of Christ, once for all, restores the universe to some semblance of its original state, where a pure and contrite heart is the greatest sacrifice, for we now live again in a world where death is far less powerful. There's reams to be written about this.

..and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.

Unfortunately, our nature is still transformed by original sin, so that we act as if death had power and participate in sin and death anyway. To some extent, by doing this, we give death power over us. We give our liberty over to that from which we have been freed. Sacrifice for the actual sins frees us from the ultimate consequences of that servitude. There is also an implication here that the Cross covered it. There is no need for other forms of atonement, whatever they might be. Does anyone know any heresy that involves atonement for Original Sin alone?

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that through God's Son, the Word, both very God and very Man, you too may become sons and daughters of the Most High though you fell like any human prince

Article I: Of Faith in the Holy Trinity

Frankly, I don't intend to give much context to this discussion. You can find many good discussions of the history of the Articles in a variety of places I imagine. I don't recommend any particular one. One important fact not usually mentioned about the Articles is that they are affirmative disputational objects. To be clear, the premises in the articles arise from the context of the medieval university. Examination for degrees in the Middle Ages required one to assert certain theses concerning the material of the curriculum which one agreed to defend against all contravertors. The Articles of Religion are made up of such theses. The Lutheran confessions arise from a similar disputational culture. Indeed, I would argue that the Reformed confessions do as well. In the case of the Articles of Religion, there is no need for me to appeal to implicit historical arguments based on narrative contextualization. For indeed, I once found theses for the Bachelor of Divinity degree from Cambridge from the late 16th and early 17th centuries in the database, Early English Books Online. I no longer have access to EEBO unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure I found them there. The theses, of course, were in Latin, but they translated to things like, "The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament contain all things necessary to salvation" etc. In other words, the B.D. candidates defended the Articles. And I'm sure the Puritan academics played devil's advocate. Hooker in the Preface to Laws actually challenges the Puritans to disputation and implies that the theology of the Church of England is ever open to disputation in the universities. I am sure he was referring to the very practice I found evidence for in the EEBO source.

The edition of the Articles used is the one in the back of my 1979 BCP.

I. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity

There is but one living and true God...

Whoever God is, He is unique. The Israelites came to understand that gods they had worshipped in nature under various incarnations were one and the same. They came to understand a deity whose Name resided in Jerusalem but not Godsself. They came to see the gods of the nations as creatures of God at best or creatures of man at worst. Wood and stone could not hear human supplications. And as Paul and Augustine both imply, whatever truth the pagans came to understand about God through exercise of their reason is true of the God of Israel. The true God is everywhere the same

...without body, parts...

The Bible doesn't quite agree here. There are various indications in the Law of God having a body or parts possibly. But the point of saying God is without body or parts is twofold. First, it allows God to be omnipresent. Second, it elevates God above the level of his visible creation. And, of course, kenosis isn't as daring if God already has a body. But we must be careful to recognize as C.S. Lewis reminds us in Perelandra that we do not worship God because he is a spirit but rather because he is good.

...or passions...

In Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son , a little boy named Alvin Smith challenges a Reformed clergyman by the name of Philadelphia Thrower with the words, "Isn't love a passion?" The incident actually is given some hidden significance because it is connected to some important aspects of Mormon theology which I will not get into here. But the question is a fair one. Looking at the usage of passion in the OED examples, however, I note that passion in the philosophical sense really refers to those excesses of the yearning of the flesh which in moderation are good but in excess lead to vice. To say God is without passions is only to say He is perfectly moderate. His love is not passionate but perfect.

...of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness...

Rather self-explanatory. I often question the assumption of infinite power but usually appeal to "love is patient." Yes, God has infinite power but exercises that power in the same moderation that is inherent in His Nature.

...the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible...

God is primarily unique in being the Creator of everything. The 104th Psalm (among other texts) suggests that God continually keeps creation going, "Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the Earth!" Before there were even Deists, God seem to have revealed something very important. Once the universe started, He couldn't leave. Maybe, this speaks to the nature of time. But I prefer the view of Dionysius Areopagites, who seems to see Creation as God's great love affair. Since He has yearned for Creation, He will not be happy until He has consummated that yearning in the union of Himself and the Church in the midst of a purified Creation.

The Nicene Creed speaks of the created order as both visible and invisible. I usually find it helpful to imagine the universe as a hypostatic union of Platonic and Aristotelian viewpoints. I am aided in this by the Gospel of John which talks of the Word unknown to the world made flesh in Christ Jesus. Christ again is the image of the universe in whose creation He is intimate. The Jews speak of Kaddish as a means whereby this world is united fleetingly with the world to come. And yet by our Memorial of the Commandments of Him who died and lived for us in the Sacraments he ordained, the end of the Kaddish is perfected. The Body of Christ stands perpetually at the interface between the invisible and visible creation of God.

And in the unity of this Godhead there be three Persons...

The Trinity is the chief mystery of the Faith. Barely understood by the Apostles, the Fathers were driven by their desire for salvation, the harmony of truth, and the repudiation of falsehood to pose and to adore the God Triune. Their relationality is so deeply intertwined with the nature of being and what was before being that it seems silly to dispute it. One theologian of our church once made a deeply blasphemous comment about the relationality of the Persons which completely missed the point. The relationality of the Persons does not exist because of peculiar affections among the Persons but so that we and all creation might be better loved. God is One because He was so before the beginning. His Unity is eternal as all of his other attributes. But God is Three because a Word was spoken and a Spirit hovered over the face of the Deep. And because that Word came to us and that Spirit is our Advocate and Guide.

...of one substance, power, and eternity...

I've tried to cover substance and power. Eternity is more difficult. The Persons are co-eternal because the activities whereby they have separate Personhoods are logically intimate. Athanasius tried to explain this logical intimacy by talking about the Trinity in highly redundant ways. This is one case where the rhetoric of one of the Fathers participates more substantially in the Truth that the content of what he says. If I were of a more mystical bent I would supplicate God as "The Holy Redundancy That Longs To Call Us Beloved."

...the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

This is the formula of the Great Commission. I know there is controversy about the reliability of that formula, but it is certainly the general consensus of the church catholic as to names. *Christopher of Bending the Rule recently critiqued, "God Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer" based on the fact this formula neglects the relationality of the Persons to a greater extent than the ancient formula. My Plotinian spider sense says "Yearner, Planner, and Actor," but this may be impure fire offered on the altar of gender-neutrality, if you get my drift.

One down, thirty-eight to go.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may requite the affection of that gracious Lover of souls to whom we all ought to give glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit unto ages of ages.

Derek asks a good question

Before we get to Article I, I would like to continue narrating my faith journey. Derek of haligweorc fame spurred me to this by noting in the comments to the last post (forgive me for paraphrasing) that it seems that younger people generally are the ones who are bringing the pagan philosophers and Holy Tradition to bear on theology these days. By younger people, I suppose he means members of Generation X and Generation Y. I suspect he falls closer to X and I fall closer to Y.

One possible aetiology for this observation is that there is a sort of Reassessing Catholic community scattered around the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican blogospheres. The Reassessing Catholics tend to be younger. First, because Reassessing Catholics either grew up in or came to Christ in reassessing churches or felt driven away from reassessing churches. But at the same time, while Reassessing Catholics recognized the justice or some other virtue inherent in reassessing churches, they also sensed a deep intellectual or spiritual vacuity within them that they found was best filled by Holy Tradition. Not all of the Reassessing Catholics are younger. AKMA and Father Haller are Reassessing Catholics. (Sorry, Professor Adam, you can't sit on the fence here. Your method is catholic, but your conclusions tend toward reassessment.) One mark of a Reassessing Anglo-Catholic is the willingness to brave the Titusonenine forums or to engage Al Kimel in debate. Well, it's an idea.

Note: There was a bit of spiritual autobiography here, but it doesn't seem quite germane.

One thing I will note is that I always have felt the odd one out among my peer group at church. That's not to say I haven't learned much about being a Christian from my peers. They've taught me a great deal. But I've always been tied more strongly into Tradition than anyone else in the community around me. There is, of course, one exception to that rule and his name is Randall Foster. But Randall is somewhat older than I am, and he's a reasserter. He is also a scholar of Patristics. Frankly, I couldn't beat him if I tried.

Let's close with a story. When I was junior in high school, I had a crush on a young woman in my Latin class. Sophomore year, we had read the Nicene Creed in Latin class. At the time, I pointed out discrepancies between the Greek and Latin versions of the text provided by the teacher. The Latin was the Niceno-Constantipolitan Creed with filioque , while the Greek was the original Nicene Creed. (I actually didn't know the difference until last year, I think.) One day, out of blue, my crush asked me, "That Nicene Creed thing we read last year, you actually believe that?" I answered in the affirmative. I always feel like I am a poor Christian, since I have sacrificed very little for the faith. The martyrs' faith led them into brutal torture and death. My faith just scares away girls.

The Holy Brothers Beg Your Leave For One Moment

I Fought the Articles and the Articles... (Oops, Rant).

If there's any meme I worry about in Broad Church Episcopalianism these days, it is, "We are not a confessional church." It worries me not because I think it is completely false and to be resisted unto death. No, I worry about it because I'm really concerned someone thinks we are a confessional church. Moreover, I want to know what they say the confession is.

This issue came to the fore of my mind for two reasons. First, recently, Father Haller gently reproved me on the point of marriage being a sure means of grace. He cited the relevant Article of Religion (One of the famous 39) on the Sacraments, which clarified his point and disturbed me as to the obedience of the Church of England to Historic Faith and Order, if even reaffirmer bishops thought this was OK. Second, Melancthon in the Lutheran blogosphere felt he could not join some sort of Lutheran group blogging effort because the blog superusers required that all bloggers make (and he felt could not make) a quia affirmation to the Lutheran confessions collected in the Book of Concord . Such an affirmation would mean in the words of everything I read that Melancthon believed the Book of Concord to be "true exposition of the Word of God." ( In toto , we would presume.)

A quatenus affirmation is usually opposed to a quia affirmation. This affirmation consists in believing, professing, and teaching the doctrine of the Book of Concord insofar as it properly expounds the Word of God. As you might guess, most Lutheran theologians regard quatenus affirmations as ridiculous and coverts for heresy, and I am forced to agree. There are alternatives. But most of these seem to fall into the category of "I think the Book of Concord has some bad points, so let's create loopholes in this affirmation business, so folks can fly under the radar."

Another alternative is the Melancthon affirmation, named after the professor at Wittenberg and protege of Luther who gives the aforementioned blogger his name. Melancthon attested to one of the Lutheran confessional documents with some additions of his own, explaining his reservations about complete rejection of papal authority. Now there is a good argument that The Book of Concord itself contradicts such affirmations by stating the belief that any departure from its doctrine could be responsible for civil and ecclesiastical confusion and strife. Thus, no one really can go around openly picking and choosing either. The Melancthon affirmation doesn't seem to be felicitous for concord.

So why shouldn't Anglicans be confessional? Well, let us inquire into the nature of the confessions of a confessional church. All of the Reformation-era confessions seem to be based on one idea. Everyone who calls themselves Christians but the confessors active (or confessors potential) are not really Christians and merely subsist bodily. In order to justify schism from the Church of Rome, which claimed to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, the confessors needed to assert the true doctrine of the church, which certainly wasn't the doctrine of the Church of Rome. The 39 Articles, at least, explicitly state the Church of Rome "has erred" not only in ceremony but also in faith. The confessions effectively and often expressly anathematize all who do not believe as they do. Provided that these churches profess the Apostles' Creed, there only can be one justification for these confessions. They are new conciliar documents. They hold the same authority (for those who confess them) as the doctrinal statements of councils. Moreover, by demanding a quia affirmation to them, the confessional churches give them the potentially dogmatic authority of ecumenical councils or even the Creeds, depending on the degree of infallibility that is assigned to them.

A confessional church then as far as it believes in its confession and the infallibility of that confession sees itself as the only legitimate successor of the Body of Christ at the Last Supper and the Pentecostal Theophany. It is alone the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

A confessional church is not the same as a creedal church. A creedal church merely professes certain creeds as "right expositions of the Word of God." Note the identity between Word of God and Christ is especially correct here, because the creeds are ultimately Christological in view. They provide the explanation of history and cosmic order necessary to comprehend the efficacy of salvation through Jesus Christ. If I can give a quia affirmation to the Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, I believe I am a member of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church along with all others who profess those creeds. I should have respect for Holy Tradition, but I think this is included in the Creeds. But here the Roman Catholics would exclude me by certain doctrines. The Eastern Orthodox would exclude me as well. The confessional churches, if they were honest, would exclude me from their body because I did not confess their confessions. The Roman Catholic Church is likewise a Reformed church in that view. Her post-Reformation doctrine (and some of her pre-Reformation doctrine) is filled with infallible pronouncements necessary for the concord of that body. Some call that a deposit of faith. The Orthodox claim a deposit of faith as well, but their doctrines at least seem more antique.

But are any of these objects really infallible? From what I understand of Roman Catholic and Orthodox dogma (these infallible [or nearly so] doctrines) and the confessions of the churches in the view of their most conservative adherents, they seem to be. They have become ahistorical artifacts. Since they act as a documentary yoke of the Church into one Body that never dies, the unity of the Body through the centuries requires that they be unaltered. Hence, when folks say the Church has taught such and such, I think that the ultimate merit of such and such is how it binds the communion of saints. And if it doesn't bind the communion of saints, it may be modified insofar as the modifications do not create division among the communion of saints. And by the communion of saints, I mean the invisible one in the Heavenly City more than the wheat and weeds of the worlds.

Pardon me. I write in outlines more than solid arguments. But my end is this. The Anglican Church should not be a confessional church but a creedal one, because we ought to recognize that we are part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, not the whole thing. Any church that makes doctrine that is infallible and immutable beyond the Creeds (and perhaps the doctrinal conclusions of the Ecumenical Councils) is saying that it is the One True Church. I know Catholic and Orthodox triumphalists. Perhaps I could find Lutheran and Presbyterian triumphalists, but I refuse to be an Anglican triumphalist.

Of course, many Anglicans these days would find it hard making a quia affirmation to the Creeds. At this point, I am willing to make only one compromise. Will you affirm that the Creeds are true/proper expositions of the Word of God/ worthy of earnest belief, profession, and teaching insofar as they as propositions surpass the limitations of human problematization. I.e., the Ascension as expressed works best in a three-tiered universe, but Jesus still ascended from a mountain in Galilee, disappeared from human perception, and "sits at the right hand" (whatever that means) of God the Father? However we interpret the Creeds, I am fairly sure we should not contradict the soteriological assumptions of the Nicene Fathers even if we need to suspend certain elements of their worldview. Frankly, I would prefer to profess the Creeds fairly literally and not be surprised if I need to invert the cosmic order through Nicene Father glasses to see what is going on when " tuba mirum spargens sonum per sepulchra regionum." So convinced I am at the subsistence of the universe through God, I have no problem making exceptions for the central dogma of physics, as long as I am not claiming miracles are happening in my laboratory.

All right. I took on far too many beefs in that last paragraph. I'm just not too happy with the Mission Statement business I've seen in a lot of churches. Yesterday, I seriously considered swimming the Tiber or the Bosporus if things get too bad. And then I would turn into some cross between Dorothy Day and the present Pope, because I couldn't do anything else.

What I really wanted to discuss was the Articles of Religion, a possible Anglican Confession...

The Articles of Religion

One of the resolutions of last General Convention asked that Episcopalians tell their faith stories (to one another and to the world preferably). Thinking back to the beginnings of my own faith journey, I remember bits and pieces, many of them quite embarassing. I really hope my children don't have a bout with Pelagianism in their preteens.

That aside, one of my earliest memories ever is of church. I think I can date it to about my fifth year. I am lying under the pew bench of an actual pew in a colonial church of great significance in the early history of (P)ECUSA. I'm not really interested in what is going on above me. It's summer. I have no Sunday School. It's probably the sermon. I'm bored. There are three types of books in the pew. One is the 1982 Hymnal . I like that book. It has songs in it that I love to sing. My father has this wonderful tenor voice which likes singing deep Welsh hymns. Hyfrodol... I also like the 1982 Hymnal, because it is as old as I am. Another book was the Bible. I liked the Bible. I especially liked Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. I must have been fascinated with leprosy and pollution in general. I was 4 years old and obsessed with the purity laws. Folks, I don't understand it either. The third book in the pew is the Book of Common Prayer. For years, I was convinced it came out in 1982 like the Hymnal . Perhaps at this age, I also had seen a 1928 BCP . I certainly would know one well (and the 1940 Hymnal ) by the age of 8 or so.

What I liked most about the BCP was the stuff at the back, especially the 39 Articles. People often ask me, "What kind of child were you?" I try not to answer that my favorite authors at the age of 4 or 5 were Beverly Cleary, C.S. Lewis, St. Athanasius, and Thomas Cranmer, but in some sense, this might have been true. Thus, when I think about the Articles of Religion, I do not think of them immediately as historical artifacts but as childhood friends. Thus, I often go back to them to see how much of them I still believe are worthy of being considered pure doctrine and which others are of a temporally local and spatially civil nature and ought to be discarded. My explication of them probably should be one by one. So while I still mull over this difficult theology project, I will discuss one Article per day and see whether the Articles would make a suitable confession for a confessional Anglican Church. Eventually, I may find myself getting to the issue of lay presidency in Sydney, which may light the blogosphere on fire over the next month.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers wish you and all of your relatives conviction of Original Sin and of the lusting of the flesh that always has the nature of sin.

De Haeriticorum Comburendo Is Still In Force Where It Counts

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

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

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

Grand Theological Project Numerum Primum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man Lives By Bread And Every Word Out of the Mouth of the Living God

This seems to be an odd first post, but I'm founding a new blog. I have a blog in which I will talk about my life, but I also want a blog to talk about deep (and not so deep) theology every once in a while in the context of happenings in the Anglican blogosphere (and my own life).

Today, I heard a sermon at church on the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Rhetorically, it was not the most spectacular sermon, but it measured up in a variety of other ways. In it, the preacher expressed the doubt that Jesus really turned five loaves into two fish into enough for five thousand or more to eat. Perhaps, she said, folks all had brought a little to eat, just for themselves. Then, Jesus' suggestion to the disciples that they find food and the spectacle act of blessing encouraged people to share what they had among themselves. She encouraged us to think about sharing what we had with the 850 million people worldwide in a variety of concerted efforts. Many people are in need of food. Through this story, Jesus calls us to feed them.

Then, after I came home from all of my church doings, I read Randall Foster's sermon for today. I definitely encourage you to read it. Randall is an old friend of mine, though we will stand on different sides of the Thames, the Diet of Worms, or whatever on that day that I hope shall never come. But I sincerely hope that on the Day of the Lord, we will be running through the gates of the New Jerusalem, singing Gloria (Glory!) and trying to beat one another to the sight of the ineffable glory of the Triune God.

Randall's message was that the American public is starving spiritually and being fed bad Jesus, a wandering Jewish holy man but not the Son of God capable of freeing us from sin and eternal death. In the stunning cadences ( I can hear his delivery, but you can't if you don't know him.) that I remember, he encouraged the community of St. Vincent, the cathedral church of the Diocese of Fort Worth, to share the Jesus that can feed and heal them deeply with some spiritually hungry person they know.

My immediate thought after reading this sermon was, "Randall preaches one great evangelical sermon." But then I thought. The preacher today likewise was evangelizing. Just because she suggested that Christ did not in some sense provide heavenly manna to the Five Thousand, she did not necessarily have to be taken completely seriously. Nor was she necessarily feeding us bad Jesus by suggesting that he didn't need to be a magician, a disturber of the natural order, to be the Son of God. Some might say that Christ tapped into the deep grammar of nature or sped up time as C.S. Lewis would have it. Whatever. Folks were fed because Jesus asked for food from both man and God. Wait...you may have missed that.

First, Jesus asked, and he received a little from man. Then he looked up to heaven. And all were fed.

There has been much talk on the Anglican blogosphere about the gospel of transformation vs. the gospel of social justice. Is one or the other authentic? The Anglican Scotist found himself in some trouble when he asked whether the emphasis on personal salvation through the transformation of the Gospel he saw in the more evangelical wing of the Church to the exclusion of social justice wasn't based on liberal individualism rather than the teaching of Jesus and the Fathers. Some of the flack the Scotist took was based on his Twigboy language. If you don't watch King of the Hill, please insert whatever person makes you think, "I don't understand this guy because he has had more formal education than I have. Too much in fact for his own good. Why can't he talk like a normal person?" So many did not understand him and called him a heretic. Poor Scotist.

The gist of what the Scotist is saying (I think) is found in the story of the Good Samaritan. Now honestly, I think we all might feel better about ourselves if the story was called the Good Jew. A Samaritan is taken by thieves on the road and left within an inch of his life. The Priest passes by and says, "Unclean, unclean." The Levite passes by and says, "This man is dead, I think. I'll come back later. There's a widow in need of food in Bethany." A Jew of Judah, perfectly ordinary in all ways, comes by. He does triage, takes him to an inn, pays for his stay etc. The point of the story, of course, would be that one helps someone in abject misery, even if they're Samaritan.

The Scotis made me see that the injured man being a Jew and the good guy being the Samaritan is the key point. The question Jesus is asked you recall is, "Who then is my neighbor?" What Jesus says is admirable is to see your neighbor as someone in another civic community, even if one who oppresses you. What makes this story palatable to the ancients and to the moderns is that the poor Jew is on the edge of life right in front of the Samaritan. Who wouldn't help such a one? Jesus' audience would have recognized an obstacle to the progress of righteousness in the Kingdom of God, an illusion of distance between Samaritan and Jew.

What the Scotist recognizes is that these illusions of distance permeate the liberal individualism that underlies American consumer culture. My salvation is personal. My car is personal. My house is personal, except when I renovate it to make it more sellable to another who will personalize it. I will be good in a personal sense. I will be decent to every human being I encounter personally. I will do nothing about institutional racism as long as I recognize the dignity of people of other races I know. I will feed the hungry in my town, but I refuse to change my buying habits to make sure folks in Guatemala eat. That would subvert free trade. How immoral! We go through much of our life limiting our moral universe to everyday experience in the most compartmentalized and simplified way. Jesus lived in a time when economic transactions were slightly more local and politics, too. He could tell a simpler story. Nowadays, our neighbor might seem like a village destroyed by a storm because a butterfly flapped its wings. Jesus then would tell us we are the butterflies.

This is what the progressive wing of the Church tells the Church and the world. Like the transformative Gospel of Jesus, not everyone wants to hear this Good News. We're all responsible for another that deeply. Randall Foster, in the context of the transformative gospel, thinks of himself as a middle-aged man in suburban Texas. How can he feed the world with the Son of God? I, sitting in reluctantly urban California, experienced the same discomfort. I'd love to bring people Jesus, but I'm not ready to change my shopping habits or consider how unworthy a child of privilege I am. I am ready to see myself as a horrible transgressor against God in very traditional ways, but I can't see how I am cultivating theological vices through the impersonal way I order my existence in civil society.

Yes, impersonal. Liberal individualism makes our personhood the only valid personhood. Everyone else is like the kings of the earth on the Day of the Lord (according to Bacon's New Atlantis , I think) "at a great distance."

OK. I was about to sum up. But I'll pause. What about homosexuality? It seems very liberal individualistic, perhaps? In the worst case, sexual orientation becomes so important that it wrecks all social institutions. We hear, "God made me that way, no matter what it says in the Bible." In Aramaic, there's a great word for fool, "Gabba." Jesus suggests anyone who says it is liable for homicide. He's speaking in the cosmic sense. On His Day, he'll be very displeased with those who do not repent of that word and the feelings that produce it. The LGBTQ community has a similar word they call straights, "breeders." Christopher of "Bending the Rule" recently talked about the sinfulness of that usage. Whatever God thinks about homosexuality, the essentials of being gay repudiate liberal individualism. Because liberal individualism may make everyone else impersonal, but it is strongly oriented to the reproduction of the person. In the discourse of western civilization, reproduction is so suffused with meaning that I often require smelling salts after saying it. Just kidding.

What I mean is this. We are all conscious of our own mortality. Nature drives us to reproduce. Liberal individualism says, "I'm great. I'm the best. My needs are paramount." The telos of that attitude in the face of death is clear. I must have children. They must be in my own image. And if their physical characteristics are acceptably like mine, I will order their lives to either reproduce mine or perfect mine.

But wait? Didn't this happen in feudal times? No. Otherwise, there would not have been so much fosterage. Moreover, the transition from aristocratic to bourgeois culture required allegiances to community standards and the reputation of a family to be converted into economic goods for personal use. Millionaire A's money can buy reputation. The aristocrat must suffer much to regain his, once lost.

But if you're gay, you have been thrown out of the gene pool by nature. Why else would you want to do "unnatural things" naturally? (I'm straight. Forgive my tone.) If you actually express your nature by not reproducing, either chastely or otherwise, you are not participating in the end of liberal individualism. You are free to do other things. Perhaps, you could work on improving adherence to mutually beneficial community standards? And then teach us how? In other words, LGTBQ folks have less of a stake in liberal individualism than straights. Both can experience the selfishness of decadent pleasures. But only one orientation is so vulnerable to the temptation toward secular and personal immortality.


But this aside now is ended. I will emphasize in this blog again and again that Christians look to the time when God is all in all. Augustine liked to end many parts of City of God with this. The great hope is that this universe, as wonderful as God as made it, will be perfected and we will experience the fullness of its perfection in God united with the communion of saints. Thus, the Church in looking to that end (which scared Nietzsche, who understood Christian hope better than any anti-Christian of human flesh) must not ignore or imitate the things of the world, the objects and institutions of man. Instead, we must seek to perfect it through Christ. Randall is right. Folks in America (and other places) need good Jesus. They need to join the cosmic battle against evil and corruptibility. They need to be cleansed of their manifold wickednesses. They also need to provide some loaves and fishes to some other folks.

When the Scotist talks about the dangers of personalizing salvation, I am greatly challenged. I still have this image of God waving me into a personal playground, where I might see some folks I know from time to time. But instead, the salvation I should seek is that one in which I am in a city at unity with itself. How can I gain admission to such a city without seeking good relationships with the citizens of that city? Any of the fellow inhabitants of this planet might be among them. How can I say that the Gospel is not about social justice when I challenge the unity of that city by being insufficiently reflective about the actions in the earthly city that impersonalize me but still incarnate me to hands, ears, noses, minds, and hearts that I want to meet once more at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb? My hope, of course, is in the Son of God. But I still need to bring him my loaves and my fish, so that all are satisfied.

Until further controversies in the Anglican blogosphere arise, the Holy Brothers wish you the peace and unity of the New Jerusalem, and ask that you will seek to do Her good.