Has Anyone Seen This?

J-Tron over at the Propaganda Box cites "Frankly Unfriendly Catholics." Brian McKinlay of Not Too Much asks why the FUC Wit's robes are being held up. You can tell that I was not raised by Anglo-Catholics (or at least ones who could be so to their heart's desire) by the fact that I do not know what the whole business of the Subdeacon and Deacon holding the Celebrant's cope is about. I have seen it at places like St. Clement's in Philly or Ascension in Chicago. The likely purpose as far as I can tell is to leave the Celebrant's hands free...but I'm not quite sure why his hands need to be free. Catholic web sites seem to emphasize the need to hold back the cope when the Celebrant's hands bear a monstrance.

In my search for the answer to this question, I found this interesting site , apparently illustrating a Directory of Ceremonial. Has anyone seen this before? Do they know anything about the Alcuin Society? I note that one of the more interesting features of these pictures is that the Sursum Corda is said to the people. In Anglo-Catholic parishes that generally face east I am not used to seeing that. This piece from the same site is also interesting as well , though I think the author of the piece would faint at the private lives of a typical acolyte pool in ECUSA these days.

You will not believe the wacky things I found in Google looking for an explanation of this. My favorite is this Theosophistic neo-alchemical Cartesian physical (?) approach to Eucharistic theology . I think works like this result from an overly enthusiastic anthropology. But I mainly cite it for sake of wackiness.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may render all thanksgiving to God for all of his benefits to you and all mankind.

+M. Thomas Shaw's Attitude Toward Economy

Kendall Harmon+ says read it carefully . You should. Beware of electing monks to the episcopate. They just might be faithful shepherds of the sheep.

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

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

Why Am I Here?

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

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

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

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

The Board Is Set, the Pieces are Moving

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

Choose This Day

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

Itisthelesbigays

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

A Reiteration of the Literary Theology

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

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

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

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

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

Fratrimony and the Work of God

The Apostle tells us in Ephesians (KJV)

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

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

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

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

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

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

5:7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.

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

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

5:10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Table in the Wilderness

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

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

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

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

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

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

YAAA (Yet Another Anglican Acronym)

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

Choose This Day

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

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

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

Extract from the Proceedings of the Synod of Farquahar, 3072

Having read *Christopher's recent post at Bending the Rule, the Archivist of the Monastery immersed himself in the Library and pulled this file. Here is the relevant excerpt. Oh, enjoy the theological science fiction, folks, come on. I figure this might be more enjoyable than me saying anything...

(Translatus anglice Ex Actis Synodis Omnium Mundorum Sub Tenura CCLXIII ad Farquaharem)

...Some among the presbyters, deacons, and laity of Diocese of Nova California under the English jurisdiction came before the Holy Synod and petitioned for relief under ancient canons regarding the conflict of the customs of the Fathers. Specifically, they asked, "It is not permitted by the canons of our provinces nor the civil law to perform the Rite of Adelphopoesis that is lawful for you according to the most ancient canons. But we would not contemn the authority of the Fathers, though divided, nor contemn the mystery of the rite. Moreover, we would not contemn the dignity of those called to the unity among two spiritual brothers or sisters. Therefore, we implore and supplicate thee, Thou All-Holiness and Ye Holy Synod, to grant us all relief, to wit, how shall the rite be performed when it is canonically and civilly invalid in a jurisdiction? His All-Holiness accepted the supplication and stated he would consult with Synod and answer the supplication on the morrow.

[...]

Finally, His All-Holiness, the Patriarch of All Space, asked the Holy Synod for the authority to sit in the chair of his office, though physically translated, so that he might give a reply to the supplication from the Diocese of Nova California under the English jurisdiction and that it might have further authority according to the ancient canons. The Holy Synod gave their assent in the usual form. His All-Holiness sat in his chair and said,

"We thank the delegation from Nova California for their courage in this matter, since it is canonically forbidden for them to supplicate this See. The question is very difficult, but we are guided by ancient authorities. On one hand, we have the view of Vicarius Salarius in the era of the Translation of our See, who cites ancient tradition of the English jurisdiction that the church may give benediction to any covenant under the civil law similar to matrimony. On the other hand, we read in the same era that the Bishop of Massachusetts forbade the rite, though the civil law permitted the covenant, for the sake of economy.

"Yet it is clear that the rite was performed in the Undivided and even the Half-Divided Church, though neither civil nor canon law gave it any explicit status. In some places, the rite was inferred to be canonically and civilly forbidden as it is presently in the English jurisdiction. But we read that where it was canonically lawful, it was performed in the presence of a priest, who gave benediction as in the case of matrimony."

"Thus, we must reason and answer from first principles. Adelphopoesis is like matrimony and the consecratory vows in that the role of the Church in administration is unusual. Normally, the sacramental officiant in Holy Orders administers the sacrament in the name and person of Christ, acknowledging the work of God that is done through his voice and the contact of his hands. Moreover, all sacraments must be seen as simultaneously instantaneous and perpetual, since they are acts in small periods of time pointing to the perpetual intercession of Christ for us before the mercy seat. But in Holy Communion and Holy Baptism, we usually emphasize instantaneity. The sacramentality is related to the conditions of the instant. No one can marginalize Holy Baptism or Holy Eucharist validly received. There is some controversy among the Fathers whether this extends to other sacraments. But that is not important. What is important is that the ministers of matrimony, adelphopoesis, and monastic vows (normally called fratrimony in this jurisdiction and hereafter) are the ones yoked.
In the first case, we have the authority of the Angelic Doctor. In the third case, we have the authority of Hippolytus Romanus, who states that 'no one lays hands on a consecrated [person], he or she is consecrated by the vow.' "

"But what of the second case? Spinator argues that matrimony and fratrimony are both primal actions. The terminology of primal action is a bit obscure, but it refers to verities of the natural law confirmed by the Divine Word. Spinator cites the example of the rite in the Ash Wednesday Liturgy in which ashes are imposed and it is said, 'Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.' He claims that this is a primal action, since it is true according to the natural law that our flesh comes from the elements and will return to them at death. And since it is primal, he claims it is prior to the priestly office. Thus, he says that the Church only has the power to declare a primal action in the name of God, and though declaration generally is done by priests, it may be done by anyone else, being not a direct result of the Incarnate work of Christ. But he says that the consensus of the Church is that primal actions be recognized among two or three. Thus, he opines that primal and unitive actions be performed by two and witnessed by a third and preferably a fourth. For as it is written, 'That is why a man leaves his father and mother and attaches himself to his wife, and the two become one.' For since father and mother witness the departure, he reasons there are two witnesses.

"It is then asked whence cometh the benediction? He argues that the union is primal but the sacrament is not, since the union is prior to the Incarnation but the mystery is only possible after the Incarnation. The declaration recognizes the union and the benediction recognizes its potential sacramentality. Thus, he says of the sacrament that is begun in the instant of benediction but it is completed in Scholastic formula of fidelity and offspring in imitation of the mystery."

"But Spinator says of fratrimony that it, too, is primal. First, he argues that it is of the natural law, for the Angelic Doctor cites Ulpian on the validity of matrimony under the natural law, and Spinator claims fratrimony 'descends' from the relations between the lower creatures just as matrimony does and thus adheres to the principle of Ulpian, if not his words. Then Spinator asserts fratrimony is a primal action by analogy according to the Holy Scriptures. For it is said of Saul that he kept David from the house of Jesse in favor of his own, for he "saw that Jonathan had given his heart to David and had grown to love David as himself' and further that they "made a solemn compact" and gave gifts. He states this is sufficient grounds to call primal action by analogy, since in both matrimony and fratrimony, there is a change of house and unitive act and covenant. And if fratrimony is according to the natural law, if it is analogous, it must be primal. He mentions that the opinion of many are against this, but he maintains this true, citing tradition concerning fratrimony that does not concern us here."

"It is asked again whence cometh the benediction. And Spinator answers that it is like matrimony except that the mystery differs. He states that the mystery of fratrimony lies in the union of believers under Christ as Head, which is not possible according to the flesh alone (for it is impossible biologically for us all to be intimately related) but only is possible through water and the Holy Spirit and through bread and wine made Body and Blood. For indeed the Holy Scriptures say that the Lord on the night before he died prayed, 'May they be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, so also may they be us, that the world may believe that you sent me." And yet no one is sure what is the source of the union among the Trinity, though there are many opinions, but fratrimony likewise points to this mystery so greatly beyond our knowing. But we assert, as the ancient canons assert, that, "We proclaim in the fear of God, our awful Judge, that fratrimony should not be held to contradict matrimony, nor the sex of the officiant be held to contradict any sacrament, for the unity between Christ and the Church only perfects the unity of the Body, the joy of the Trinity all in all is most perfect in the Church Triumphant, and that in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.'

"But this is but bare answer to your supplication. So we proclaim to you that you are in the desert. Remember that our ancestors were slaves in Egypt and they were brought to freedom through the waters of the Red Sea, while Pharaoh and his army died in the waters. Remember that you all were enslaved to sin and were brought to freedom through the waters of Baptism, while your old nature died in those waters. But also recall that your ancestors tested the Lord at Meribah and reviled God in the Wilderness of Zin, dissenting among themselves and angering their Liberator. So it is with our individual natures, but so it is also with the Church. Therefore, we say to you, you are in the wilderness. You cannot expect the approbation of Church or State for fratrimony. In our view, Moses has brought commandments and found the Church adoring a Golden Calf. And throughout history, the action has been repeated again and again. The Church has offered many things to Azazel and to Moloch, sending it outside the camp to a place of uncleanness away from the Sanctuary.

"But we proclaim to you that Jesus Christ, Our Great High Priest, was sent outside the camp and offered to Azazel by the powers and principalities of the worlds to which we once were enthralled. And though he lay outside the camp, he made transferred the Temple to the temple of His body and lifted up, he drew all to Himself before the horns of the altar not made by human hands, that is in Heaven. He transformed Himself from the offering to Azazel to the offering to God Most High. Therefore, those sent outside the camp should not despair but trust in Christ. And thus we answer your supplication in this way,

"If fratrimony be canonically invalid in any place, those who seek that state should ask friends who share their Baptism to accompany them to a place outside the city, a place of stones and desolation, like Golgotha or Meribah, away from trees or springs, so that their rites not be confused with those of the Canaanites. The liturgy should be the traditional fratrimonial liturgy of authority in this jurisdiction or in the Undivided Church. At the proper moment, the witnesses shall declare the union of the two yoked according to the spirit in the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity according to the usual formula. As for the benediction, it should happen in this way: The yoked persons shall say the words of blessing together, substituting 'us' for 'you' or 'them.' For in the wilderness, they act in the person of Christ. It cannot be otherwise. But it is suitable that some person known to the couple, who has put himself or herself to the test in contemplation, say to this, 'May the Lord grant all your requests' and make the sign of the Holy and Lifegiving Cross."

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that the stones the builders rejected become living stones of a holy temple by the power and merits of the chief cornerstone, Jesus Christ. Amen

Angloblography

Well, it's been an week both vexing and hopeful for me. I can't remember which blogger (Derek perhaps?) called a few of these past days, "The Goth Triduum"

I remember expressing similar thoughts last year in a sermon,

...the French bishops of long ago did not see the fears and traditions of their flock as a problem. They saw them as an opportunity. What they constructed out of Samhain was a new Triduum, a three day festival analogous to that of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter in which victory over death through Christ would be proclaimed near the close of the Christian year, not by recalling Christ’s glorious death and resurrection but by explaining the consequences of the Paschal mystery for the whole Body of Christ. Indeed, these next three days are a Triduum for the rest of us.

.

Celebration in these parts were subdued. Choral Evensong this week was an Anglican Requiem Mass. Your humble correspondent quietly chanted the Burial Office on All Souls. But, "the fun don't stop." Tomorrow, my present parish celebrates her patronal feast (transferred, of course, ironically as all Episcopal churches do). The headline preacher is ++Desmond Tutu, and the Choir promises the Faure Requiem.

Item the First: Feminarian recently wrote:

I will tell you a secret, the real dream, the ultimate prize: if I could write anything, I would help to write the next revision of the prayer book. Oh! What a treat that would be!! And I could help inclusivise all the language, and write new prayers for hurricanes and clinical depression. And I could write the same-gender marriage ceremony, and a service at the loss of a pet (despite the giggles in Grief class about counseling people on such a topic). And I could find some way to incorporate the new way we see things...the new way we think in windows and icons (computer not byzantine) and blogs. We see the world differently now in my generation, you know.

Anyway, like if I won the lottery, I'd buy my way onto that committee. If I actually stuck out a PhD or the ordination process, I'd do it for that goal. Even right now, when I'm reading Duck and Wilson-Kastner and Ramshaw, I'm seeing how important this all is. It would just be so cool to be part of writing the great play of the liturgy, the drama of dramas.

Well now that is out of the bag, so I will forever question its propriety. As will you.

Does "buy[ing] your way onto that committee" count as simony? I think so. So *Christopher and Derek may have competition... I really don't think one writes liturgy, by the way (at least in the way we use "write" today) I've grown to consider it to be a form of adaptation.

Item the Second: Recently, it was posted on Titusonenine that +Jon Angelor. (or +Jon Los Angeles or even +Jon Bruno) will preach at a Week of Christian Unity event in these scrubby woods. The flogging then began in earnest... One commenter, I think it was Irenaeus (appropriately enough), noted that "Diocese of LA" could be an anagram for Laodicea. Yes, Irenaeus, get on the wagon. Hugo Schwyzer has been saying this since early 2004 . And I am starting to agree...

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may be find some way to heat up to a great temperature so that the Lord does not spit you out of His mouth.

For Your Consideration

Here is the latest report of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music is the organ of General Convention usually charged to evaluate and recommend changes in the liturgy of The Episcopal Church. In other words, any proposed new Book of Common Prayer or Enriching Our Worship etc. goes through them. Those with a good memory for GC2003 also will recall that proposals for rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. Students of liturgy will be interested in the various rites associated with church planting. On p. 214, there is a mention of an International Anglican Liturgical Consultation. Has this been lost in the unpleasantness? But the key page to my mind is p. 211, which summarizes the result of a Congregational Survey.

Here are some tidbits:

1. Episcopalians are now a more Eucharistic people than ever before. When I was little, even our fairly High Church Rector put up with Morning Prayer as the principal Sunday service, once a month. St. John Chrysostom in Chicago celebrates the Eucharist on Sunday fortnightly (I'm not quite sure what the patron would think.) Now, the Holy Eucharist tends to be the principal act of Divine Service on Sunday.

2. There is a strong bimodal distribution in the size frequency of Episcopal congregations. In other words, there are a large number of small parishes in the church and a moderate number of much larger ones, but there aren't that many in the middle. Thus, the typical Episcopal church is small (e.g., St. George's in Bolton in the Diocese of Connecticut), but the typical Episcopalian worships in a large congregation (e.g., St. Mary the Virgin in the Diocese of California.)

3. There are 2-3 services per Sunday.

4. The later in the day, the less traditional the liturgy.

5. Music is very important for the principal Sunday morning services.

6. There is some suggestion that praise and worship bands may appear at Episcopal churches on Saturday and Sunday nights. (But I may be reading too much into things...)

7. The Hymnal is big but so is LEVAS (Lift Every Voice and Sing [good Gospel hymns]) and WLP (Worship, Love, and Praise [no idea]).

8. Service music still is sung by the congregation.

9. Worshippers use prayer books, hymnals, and a leaflet. (So Episcopal juggling is alive and well).

10. People typically stand for the Introit, kneel for most of the Eucharist, and stand for the Dismissal.

11. BCP Lectionary still dominates RCL. [Yes, that RCL really snuck up on me. It's not a bad idea... as long as you read the lessons...]

12. Most Congregations use BCP Prayers of the People. (At my second parish, the intercessions usually were free-floating riffs of one sort or another. The first time I was an intercessor, I weaved the readings of the day (especially the Psalm) into Form VI [I think]. People, especially the more senior intercessors, liked that. I prefer straight Form VI myself (or the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ's Church, Militant and Triumphant (that's the original name, right?) We tended to be more Prayer Book-oriented generally in college. If you have to put on much of the service yourself, you don't waste brainpower on florid prose.

13. "Few Episcopal churches involve volunteers in their liturgy planning team." Well, in some places... Liturgists' meetings were my antidrug!

14. Lay volunteers may not do the planning, but they do the execution. Where else but the church and Cub Scouts do you let 8 year-olds use fire? And who can forget the Altar Guild?

15. Less than 25% of congregational membership attend services on Holy Days that fall on weekdays. (This was easier in college than before, though I often joined the Lutherans on Ash Wednesday.)

The comments, we note, are all over the place.

It is asked how one reaches Generation X, Y, or Z. It is very simple: You reach Generation Y by not marketing to us or anyone else. My Roman Catholic friends tend toward the Tridentine Mass but wish they had been instructed to understand it better. I know a few converts to Eastern Orthodoxy. I know evangelicals attracted to a mix of traditional and praise and worship music anchored by solid Bible preaching. I know a girl who basically is attracted to the types of services her grandmother dragged her to when she was little but also appreciates an active community of people her own age. The threads that draw "seekers" my age together is that many of us (Deo gratia not me) are children of divorce. And if we are not children of divorce, we generally have weaker relationships to our extended family and local community than past generations. We are attracted to people and ideas that are anchored in something and long to be as anchored as they are. Thus, we may be sorely disappointed by certain present threads in progressive Christianity. There are a variety of possible anchors, but I think the future of Anglican liturgy and Anglicanism in general lies in being anchored to what has been communicated to us by our spiritual progenitors, not in all things and not at all times but generally.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that thy prayers be set forth in the sight of the Lord Our God as the incense and the lifting up of thy hands be thy evening sacrifice.

++Rowan Cantaur's Lecture on Richard Hooker

Can be found here . I have one quibble with it very early in the lecture, when he suggests that the eternity of the moral law is an issue of absolute debate in the current unpleasantness, but otherwise he gives an excellent preface to Laws .

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may know that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.

Some Short Thoughts on Liturgy

Both Derek of Haligweorc and *Christopher of Bending the Rule have been discussing liturgy lately. They have important perspectives, since they are both academics in communion with the church that have expertise in the history and philosophy of these matters. I look forward to what they have to say. I also recommend a recent piece by Michael Spencer of Internet Monk that looks at similar phenomena from a Low Church perspective (Spencer is a Southern Baptist with Calvinist leanings, so I think it's fair to call him in Low Church if he were transferred into an Anglican context. For instance, much of what he says would be relevant to a Lutheran church I attended last summer.)

But they also have asked for the perspective of intelligent folks of both the lay persuasion in the church sense and the academic sense. Since the closest I get academically to liturgy involves the buoyancy budget of the Red Sea boundary layer (which tells you nothing about proper occasions to sing the Song of Moses), I'll give you a few notes, based on fifteen years as a lector, fourteen years as an usher, fourteen years as an acolyte, nine years as an intercessor, eight years as a chalice bearer, six years as a subdeacon, and five years as a preacher (all of them somewhat discontinuous). (Note: I am 22, and I have reasonably conservative views on liturgy. One way to obstruct the phenomenon discussed in Spencer's article is to prepare older children and teenagers to do "adult" jobs in the liturgy when they're ready and there has been some discernment of their gifts in this area. It makes them part of the tradition. (Frankly, my favorite job relating to liturgy is to cook dinner for folks after Sunday Eucharist. It made me feel like a servant.)

****In English, we go to church services. I occasionally say something called the Office. Lately, I've found it helpful to restore the usage that connects these ideas. What we do at church is Divine Service. This is a usage to amuse Australians, but it has been lost from the mindset of most. So often I hear language that suggests what we do at church is merely done for us. The Eucharist has become "strength for the journey" instead of "Oh, you know, Body and Blood of Christ and all that, participation in the Eschaton, sacrament of the Church. Bagels afterward" (as one of my Orthodox friends puts church). Perhaps, I'm wrong, but there is some important difference there. Now, I could riff on the very word "liturgy" for a while, but let's just say that Aristotle often uses an important form of liturgy as an example, i.e., the arrangement of a big communal and potentially sacrificial banquet. So, yes, there is some suggestion in this that liturgy helps us, but the liturgy of this type is still for the larger community. Liturgy is pro Deo , and to some extent it is pro nobis , but it isn't propter me .

****At first, it's hard to see traditional liturgy in the Bible. Jesus, for instance, did not say (to our knowledge), "Verily, I say unto thee that those who cense the altar shall enter the Kingdom of God before thee." But there a few things I notice Jesus did do that has relevance to liturgy. He read the Scriptures in the synagogue and he preached on the text of the Scriptures. Jesus did not read, "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound" and then discuss for fifteen minutes that great play he saw at Herod's Theater on Thursday night. Now, I cannot say I have been perfectly faithful to completely Biblical preaching in my time. But I do try to make the Lectionary readings central to what I say. Moreover, I look for the harmony in the readings, in whatever way that can be justified. Hence, the Liturgy of the Word is important. Jesus knew His Bible like the back of his hand (and He didn't even own the latest translation by Vandervan). He almost certainly memorized the Law before the age of 12 based on the readings he had heard in the synagogue. We should aim so high. He also instituted Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist. No one has tinkered with the Words of Institution in my hearing, but cave glorificator !

“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who has made a distinction between the sacred and the profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the Shabbat and six days of work..”

(from the Havdalah ).

These words are prayed at the end of the evening prayer service that closes Shabbat. (I once went to Havdalah. Very cool, the Messiah could come any time...) Now from what we can tell from the Gospels, Jesus acted very much against the viewpoint of this prayer. He associated with profane people. He healed on the Sabbath. He suggested that God actually could stand the Gentiles. For Jesus, it seems, there was no distinction between the sacred and the profane. But think carefully here. Jesus was God. If God is willing to do these things, it seems to mean that the profane ought to be sanctified by the holy. And that's one way of seeing Jesus, the Man-God made his entire life into Divine Service. He made life into liturgy. And He did it so well that the author of Hebrews can say,

But now Christ has come, high priest of good things already in being. The tent of his priesthood is a greater and more perfect one, not made by human hands, that is, not belonging to this created world, the blood of his sacrifice is to be his own blood; not the blood of goats and calves; and thus he has entered the sanctuary once for all and secured an eternal liberation. If sprinkling the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer consecrates those who have been defiled and restores their ritual purity, how much greater is the power of the blood of Christ; through the eternal Spirit he offered himself without blemish to God. His blood will cleanse our conscience from the deadness of our former ways to serve the living God

(Hebrews 9:11-14).

Hebrews says also of the sacrificial tradition established by the Law, "All this is symbolic, pointing to the present time." Christ did not abolish the sacrifices of the Law, He merely fulfilled them by incorporating their symbolic content into the Verity of His Being. And He, having passed through the heavens, continues in such Verity as He did from Eternity. Thus, the Temple worship really is the model for Christian worship. I mean, the present traditions of Judaism, did not receive Christ as we did, but they still structure their synagogue worship around the Temple worship, transferring animal sacrifices to good works, just dealings, and effluent praise to the Most High, for the Old Testament says that's all God really wanted in the first place. Derek has suggested that monastic liturgy really should be our exemplar. He's exactly right in my opinion. The monastics certainly took Temple worship as their model, problematizing themselves simultaneously as the Levitical choirs of the Temple (under Asaph's direction) and as fellows with the angelic choirs. Thus, Christian liturgy seeks to participate in a Temple worship translated to Heaven in which Christ is once and eternally Our Intercessor and our atoning Sacrifice. As Morning Prayer I quotes Hebrews, "Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us."

So bring on the incense! Well, not quite. I am an Anglican and so believe that a diversity of rites can speak to the same verities. Low Church Anglicans have a strong tradition of Psalm singing that must be holy vengeance for the monastic lands their ancestors stole ;) . One does not need lots of glitter to give God the service due to His Name. Now, Texanglican and I disagree strenuously about this, but worshipping in a whitewashed basement chapel does not suggest lack of reverence (though since his critiques, I aided with certain holy and decorative touches to a chapel where the ciborium-looking thing is a utiility box and there was a sewer pipe in the sacristy), but we said our Psalms antiphonally by half-verses. In other words, the Church is the people not the building (and so with worship).

OK, that's the big stuff. Here's some small stuff.

1. The Book of Common Prayer is an awesome book that is useful every day, not just Sundays. Even Baptists use it (Internet Monk, for instance). But its use must be learned and so it must be taught. There's a great Lenten Adult Education series here... If you are printing your liturgy for good wholesome evangelical reasons, please keep as much of the BCP"s formatting as possible for good wholesome formational reasons.

2. Care about the small stuff but don't sweat it. I still may remember how to light triple candlesticks (though it's against Holy Tradition in some places for me to do so). I also remember being taught by one of my Rectors, "The Gospel candle never burns alone." It's a great system. It has interesting symbolic meaning. And I've seen many people do it the "wrong way." I really think God is served not by our principles itself (which by this time are mostly man-made) but by the fact we believe there should be one. I love American representative democracy, but I enjoy reverencing a High Altar and walking backwards down steps as before an Oriental potentate, because Jesus is my King and so I shall not be slave to any mere man.

3. If you're going to be High Church, watch your ventilation. It's great to introduce people to incense, but if you're in a church not designed for it, you will win yourselves few friends by choking the Low Church senior citizens.

4. Responsory prayers can be great. I love Eucharistic Prayer C of Rite II, because it really involves me in the great power of God and my utter incompetence. But saying the closing portion of the Eucharistic Prayer is a little too much. I am not concelebrating. I cannot do fun hand motions. I am not acting in the person of Christ. I also dislike tag team Eucharistic Prayers for the same reason.

5. Finally, because my pet peeves could go on forever, let me remind everyone of a certain rubric from the BCP (also printed in the front of the Hymnal with the relevant citation from Canon 24), "Hymns referred to in the rubrics of this Book are to be understood as those authorized by this Church. The words of anthems are to be from Holy Scripture, or from this Book [BCP], or from texts congruent with them...[From the Canon] [The minister and persons skilled in music he consults] shall see that music is appropriate to the context in which it is used." As much as I love "Love Alone" by Caedmon's Call, I really don't see where it fits in the liturgy though there is some congruency between the lyrics of the song and the Holy Scriptures. I mean even "Loud, Boiling Test Tubes" (I mean "Earth and All Stars") is an homage to Benedicite Omnia Opera (and thus fits well).

OK, those are my seventy-five dollars.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that thy lips be opened so wide and reverently that they might give such praise to God on earth that the worlds be suffused with them, even to the horns of the altar of the holy city, Jerusalem.

A Commentary on St. John Chrysostom's On the Priesthood (Part I)

Editor's Note: This piece is rather long, so I am going to introduce the less controversial piece today, given that *Christopher recently has written on some of the same subjects. The controversy will have to wait until I can do a good job on it.

I am spurred to this post by Father John Heidt, Canon Theologian of Fort Worth, who writes in a recent post,

"For whatever reason, a Christian man or woman who is unable, or does not feel called, to enter the married state as the bible and the church understand it, must attempt to develop an inward discipline of chastity which most heterosexual people never even consider, and do their best to withstand the external social pressure of conforming to the life style of the homosexual community. This is not an easy calling, but there is no substitute, and today, as in past ages, those who have responded faithfully to that call have often been the great heroes of the Faith. In their pilgrimage they need all the sympathy, encouragement and support that the church can muster, while reminding them that their particular troubles and temptations may differ in kind but not in power from the troubles and temptations of married men and women."

Among other things, Heidt says in this post that we should beware of the label "homosexual," since it was invented by the atheist Havelock Ellis. What I hate to have to tell the Reverend Father in God is homosexuality is prior to Havelock Ellis. And in some sense, Father Heidt does admit this by mentioning "the great heroes of the Faith." But was it is this simple? Did these heroes theologize their homosexuality as something that really doesn't exist? Did they theologize homosexuality as something Christ could take away or did they theologize it as something capable of sanctification as a primary characteristic of the individual nature? Did they theologize same-sex unitive relationships or did they regard such unions as impossibilities in the divine economy? We know what Heidt would answer. I remain quite unconvinced of his position. And I was less unconvinced before reading the ancient sources than afterwards.

*Christopher of Bending the Rule often refers to the family of his conjugal union as a "community of ascesis." In the sense I suspect he means it, he sees his family structure in terms of creatures training for the competition alluded to in 1 Corinthians 9 or obliquely in 1 Timothy 4. Thus, a community of ascesis is in constant training for the present struggle against the principalities and powers in hope for the amazing blessedness of the world to come. This is a common problematization of the monastics. Why are the monastics so popular among Christian gay couples? Why do I see so many icons of Benedict near rainbow flags? Why are relationships that seem the height of profligacy and indulgence in one view so strongly invested in the theology of self-denial for the sake of the "work of God." This is not a modern problem, I believe. I believe these elements are so strongly juxtaposed because monasticism was strongly influenced by a solution to very peculiar problems of the early Christian Era.

The First Problem: You are attracted to a person of the same sex in the 3rd century AD Roman world. You are an adult male citizen. Your beloved is an adult male citizen. In a world with supposedly more liberal sexual mores, your situation is impossible. At best, any relationship between you would be seen as immature, the kind of thing teenage boys would do. It would lower your status in the community. Moreover, it would complicate your property relations. Philosophically, such a relationship would be seen as poor discipline of the soul. At worst, your relationship could be considered a criminal offense.

The Second Problem: You are Christian. From what you read in the Scriptures, you cannot have sexual relations with your beloved without incurring divine sanction. Moreover, you are on the d.l., since in some dioceses, anyone with any homosexual experiences is regarded as incapable of redemption. Such persons are not permitted to be instructed in the Faith, let alone baptized. What are you to do? Surely, God has some good news for you.

To be honest, there seem to have been a variety of solutions to these problems. In some cases, gay men found liberty in solitary or communal living dedicated to prayer and works of mercy. And because being a straight man often wasn't easy in those times, such communities were mixed in sexual orientation. The idea of these communities was very simple. They were all "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven" who had given up everything to take up the cross and follow Jesus. The liberation of all of this was tremendous, because in the ideal world, there was no longer gay or straight living in Greco-Roman society with its worries about taxes, agricultural failure, commercial disaster, and the marriage market. The obligations of earthly citizenship could pass away. In this ideal case, persons were consecrated by their decision to abandon the world and by this consecration, they sought relationship with God and the entire created order. They sought the most final state of holy and eschatological being, in which God would be "all in all." In practice, the Institutes of Cassian suggest there were certain concessions to human nature. A couple of monks might share the same cell, if the abbot had determined their close living would further the work of the community. Were these particular same-sex relationships that actually had romantic dimensions? Probably. But there was no sex. Sex, of course, did not mesh with the theology. And it still doesn't. But I still claim that monasticism originates from a rejection of the heterosexual world for one not just "genderfucked" but completely rearranged. This is the power of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ!

We also can see cases in which particular same-sex romantic relationships became what I like to call "fratrimony." I think the martyrs Sergius and Bacchus came from or were exemplars to a rare community in which there really was a theology of same-sex marriage. And the theology was this: just as matrimony is a potential icon of the relationship between Christ and the Church, fratrimony is a potential icon of the relationship among the members of the Church and the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity. Thus, by natural relationships, the symmetry between koinonia and perichoresis that ultimately will be hyperthesis (by which I mean the transposition of the fullness of God for the fullness of the human being) can be displayed to the world entire. For indeed one of the ancient liturgies of fratrimony ends with this hymn of the priest, "By the union of love the apostles join in the praying to the Master of all; themselves committed to Christ, they extended their beautiful feet, announcing the good news of peace to everyone." When I read this I was amazed, for the Scriptures were opened to me, i.e. John 17.

However, fratimony had a strong pressure on it, the Greek emphasis on body/spirit duality and certain legal issues made it very difficult to theologize its sexual elements. Fratrimony, from the few sources that testify it, emphasized union according to the spirit rather than the flesh. This is a distinction one can make in a Johannine framework, because John could live with both monist and dualist understandings of human nature, but it is very hard to reconcile with the Old Testament. The body without the spirit is mere potential and vice versa . And indeed, the Old Testament lauds the potential of spirit, being "the breath of God" and views "bones" as the potential of the flesh.

But we need not worry. Heterosexual sex still was rather dubious in the Patristic books. It was allowed for sake of procreation. The Schoolmen were able to put it on better footing, until we have reached its ultimate theological celebration in American Protestantism. If it were up to me, I would adapt the formula of the Schoolmen and say, "faith, offspring, and sacrament" for matrimony and say, "faith, direction (cultivation?), and sacrament." In other words, I believe that homosexual unions possess as part of their charism not the fecundity of matrimony but the ability to look beyond the reproductive necessity to the fullness of the human person. In the ideal view, a homosexual union provides to the sensible world benefits in the form of a more objective economic and emotional safety net. They should be able to dedicate more of their time to cultivating the good and healing the harms. They have the ability to make more people their brothers and sisters than their immediate family. In the future of properly theologized relationships I see in the future, fratrimony and matrimony will be a spectrum not about sex per se but about how the couple gives of themselves to the world. The heterosexual couples will give their children to the world, both in terms of genetic potential and the habits they instill in them. Childless, homosexual couples, and celibates will give of themselves in other ways. What will matter is how the nature of God and the Christian community is published to the world by these relationships. By their fruits, we will know them.

[To be continued]

The Integrity of Our Witness

Yesterday, I took a break from the old problem sets to go promote Episcopal Relief and Development at an event at a Baptist church here. There was another detour involved, but that's another story. Actually, I really had no idea I was going to promote Episcopal Relief and Development, but I don't think I did too bad a job on short notice. But one man said to me, "It's really about integrity, isn't it?" I had been doing too much radiative transfer that day and was rather confused. "Integrity, what do you mean?" "The integrity of our witness." I muttered agreement then. But it occurs to me now that he's absolutely right. In literature, there is a strong prejudice against telling as opposed to showing. But the fullness of Christ is proclaimed to the world in both showing and telling a unified Christ. There is no aesthetic prejudice in this. And since I tend to live in communities of showing, I tend to forget how essential to telling showing can seem. Now, if only I could get the telling down.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may proclaim Christ boldly in word and deed.

It's Always A Good Time for Fasting and Prayer

This question was posed to Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef, "We see that the followers of Rabbi Yohannam and the sages are fasting. But your disciples are eating and drinking. Why do they not fast?" And he replied, "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast."

(From the Synoptic Gospels in poor homage to the Talmud).

It's funny. On one hand, my parish church has been promoting the idea of God's October Surprise: an unusual conjunction of Yom Kippur in Ramadan, thus allowing Jews and Muslims to share their fast times. Of course, it's no fair if everyone can't get into the act. So this highly irregular event includes a Hindu festival commemorating spiritual struggle and victory, a Buddhist festival, and the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, whose work to make peace between Islam and Christianity is not as well-known as it should be and gives the lie to all of the critiques of Kingdom of Heaven about the anachronistic religious tolerance of some of the characters. In every age, there are a few saints who can recognize genuine religious differences without considering it an excuse for bloodshed or the impossibility of friendship. The Kingdom of Jerusalem probably had a higher concentration of such people. But anyhow... The Rector encouraged us all to use the conjunction of the Islamic and Jewish festivals to use Yom Kippur as an opportunity to fast and pray for peace and justice. I am presently taking him up on it, though I am not doing it wholesale. For one thing, I am tempted to rub a little olive oil on my head tomorrow to give a Christian character to what I am doing. I also am working. Thus, let not my fast be confused for other fasts going on tomorrow. I merely wish to share some of the sanctity of the day and incline my heart toward the providence of God, bewail my sins and the systems of oppression I uphold, and thank God for the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ.

It is also tomorrow the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor, King of England and founder of St Peter's Abbey, the original West Minster of the See of London. It is also roughly the millenium of his birth. St. Edward the Confessor is quite a proper patron for this fast. In a time of much fighting for the throne of England, Edward came to power not by his sword but by his relationships. He was connected somehow to each of his four most recent predecessors, giving him a superior claim to all rival claimants, who were less connected. Yet Edward never intended to become king. He had taken a vow of chastity and probably would have ended up under the Rule of St. Benedict if he were not needed to bring civil peace to England. He ruled well and mercifully, though. He even married but made it clear to his wife that they would be living as "brother and sister" as the Apostle saith. Although in the long run, this probably was not the most responsible thing to do. Edward also tried to secure the succession for his Norman relatives, which was another ambiguously responsible act. But Edward also was said to have visions from God. Perhaps, he saw that the Normans and Saxons had a common destiny and tried to avoid future bloodshed. His life reminds us that self-denial, mercy, and peace are worthy virtues for even the most powerful of us to cultivate.

And now I hear of this :

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Fasting, almsgiving, and prayer have a long foundation in the Christian tradition stemming from our Jewish matrix. This triple counsel calls us to share signs of tangible grace with one another, reminding each of us to live in such a way that our very lives declare “God is gracious and bountiful, generous and merciful.”

Our holiness is found in loving our neighbor as ourselves. Many saints past knew this. Fasting was not simply a matter of individual piety, but a matter of personal responsibility to sisters and brothers with whom we are intertwined. And so we find St. Catherine of Sienna fasting and giving her meals away to the hungry. We find Desert Elders selling their woven wares to purchase food not for themselves, but for those without sustenance.

In the last few weeks, a series of natural disasters have ravaged the earth, striking brothers and sisters far and near. Some leaders within the Christian community have taken this as a sign of God’s wrath, singling out one or another sort and condition of human being for blame. Others are speaking up about taking care of our own first.

Rather than seeking to lay blame, to raise dividing walls for deciding who is our neighbor, or to get caught up in speculation about the end of days, we choose to discern in the signs of the times, that now is always the time for solidarity with those who are suffering. The signs of the times call us to live graciously as our Heavenly Father is gracious toward us.

To this end, we pledge to be signs of God’s generosity through fasting, prayer, and almsgiving in solidarity in a particular way with our brothers and sisters: To begin each day with the Lord’s Prayer, remembering that the Bread of Heaven at Holy Eucharist is intricately tied to striving so that all shall have daily bread; to abstain from a meal or simplify our eating habits each day; and to give the cost of this meal or savings from simplified eating to Episcopal Relief and Development or equivalent relief organizations for the work of disaster relief amongst our sisters and brothers both far and near.

At a time when our Communion is impaired by conflict and many search far and wide for signs of God’s tangible grace, we invite you to join us in the work of Christ, living into our Baptismal Covenant as we seek to serve Christ in all peoples, loving our neighbor as ourselves.


lux Christi vobis,
*Christopher and Annie

It really weaves all of our troubles into a common whole and a common solution. I've been reading poor Anglican Scotist. Our pangs of schism hit very close to home for him. Rev. Mr. Wilkins has yielded to anger and repented of it. And it's best not to talk about what I've seen at Titusonenine and Virtuosity. While our Bridegroom already has been taken from us and passed through the heavens, having needed no purificatory sacrifice but offering Himself for us, He returns to us in the Bread and Wine of the Holy Eucharist. He also returns to us in all of those acts of two or three or more of us by which we demonstrate our visible unity and the stirring of His Kingdom into this world. Though our unity with Christ is not exclusively dependent on our visible unity with one another, it is only strengthened by our communal obedience to his commandments by which God is reconciled to the world not only by the dispersal of the lifegiving Gospel as it regards salvation but also by works of mercy. Thus, the threat of the diminution of the visible unity of the Church is very much like something of the Bridegroom being taken away from us, it feels very much like an excuse to postpone a wedding (even if the divine economy doesn't work that way.) Thus, *Christopher and Annie are quite right to see natural disasters and schism as two very good reasons to fast, to pray, and to do works of mercy. I'll try to do a little more of all three.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers remind you that the sacrifice of God is a well-threshed spirit, a contrite heart He will not despise.

On the Names of the Persons of the Trinity

Well, not quite... I couldn't possibly give this issue its proper treatment. But I was spurred by this post to do a quick Anglicanocentric look at the issue. Besides, who would jump into this fray? I've already been cyberanathematized once this week. But the commenter who connected this issue to human sexuality issues is quite correct. It's not that sexuality is simply sublimated desire for God or that desire for God is sublimated sexual desire. The same faculties that mediate our part of our relationship with God also mediate our part of our relationship with other people, especially our most intimate ones. The tendency of the liberal moderns is to be sickened by the more ancient sexual responses to theophany. The tendency of the reactionary moderns is to purify the theophanic ecstasy of its sexual aspects.

But this wasn't my point. The Sewanee professor in question is in some sense supported by Athanasius, "And in this Trinity none is afore, or after another; none is greater, or less than another." Quicunque Vult founds the Sonship of the Son not on His inferiority to the Father, for they are indeed co-equal and co-eternal. He is Son because he is Begotten of the Father. Begetting implies no power relations nor any loss of equality or co-eternity. Thus, the Sewanee Professor questions whether Father is an appropriate title, since it implies power relations: the paterfamilias , who of old, had power of life and death over his household. Do we imply poor Christology or soteriology in this way?

But I think the commenters who found themselves on the antiquity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not far off, except they imply this is the only Scriptural formula. The problem is not the names themselves but the exclusionary and erroneous conclusions we draw from them. For instance, if we infer something about the role of women from the name, we certainly may err, "For God created a human being in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female He created him." I have to use "him," because we have no common gender pronoun in English. But why don't we change to something gender-neutral in that case? Well, as a hypothetical, why don't we change the name of Jesus? Well, I hope you don't go any further, because this is ridiculous. Changing the name of Jesus would introduce a number of dangerous errors.

But more importantly, Jesus is a name of power, for its referent is powerful. The name itself means "God saves." When we say it, we are naming its referent to the entire cosmos that may be feeling rebellious and enslaved. By saying that name, we say so much. As for the Names of the Persons, we are baptized into Christ's death, but we are baptized in the name of Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now I have thought about the locative aspects of this. Being baptized in the name of God is a usage that could suggest a variety of reified and substantial meanings for the name of God, particularly in its association with a continuation of the Temple worship in the Church. However, I suspect strongest sense of the usage is legal. It is the language of agency. The priest (or indeed layperson) baptizes by delegation from Christ. You also can find similar usage of doing things "in name of" (nomine + gen.) in contemporary Roman legal sources.

Let us also think of Moses, "Whom shall I say sent me?" And then God gives a fairly long title. These "legal names" clearly do not comprehend God. They are mere shorthand like the name of Fangorn in The Two Towers , but surely we have no authority to change them in "legal" contexts.

Thus, I would insist, if I were in charge, that the "legal" name of the Trinity be said at least once in every liturgy, so that we clearly direct our prayers to the rightful party. (We technically even do this at my own liberal Episcopal megachurch...) But I am not so limited as to deny that certain extralegal appositives may have a place in the liturgy. To give you examples, I have compiled a table of appositives used for God in the Litany of the Books of Common Prayer.

Edition	God the Father	God the Son	God the Holy Ghost (Spirit)
1544*	…of heaven	redemer of the world	procedyng from the father and the sonne
1549			proceding from the father and the sonne
1552	"	"	"
1662	,…of heaven	Redeemer of the world	proceeding from the Father and the Son
1689*	Creator of heaven and earth	Redeemer of the world	our Sanctifier and Comforter
1928E*	Father of heaven	Redeemer of the world	proceeding from the Father and the Son
ASB	N/A	N/A	N/A
1789	Father of heaven	Redeemer of the world	proceeding from the Father and the Son
1892	"	"	"
1928	Creator of heaven and earth	Redeemer of the world	Sanctifier of the faithful
1979	"	"	"
2004-Ireland-2	Creator of heaven and earth	Redeemer of the world	Giver of life
1962-Canada	Creator of heaven and earth	Redeemer of the world	Sanctifier of the faithful
Melanesian	…in heaven	the Saviour of the world	coming from the Father and the Son
Portuguese	criador	redentor	defensor e guia
Spanish	y Padre celestial	Redentor del mundo	procedente del Padre y del Hijo
*	Not official Book of Common Prayer

I apologize for the formatting. But from what I can tell, there is some tension in these appositives. All of these have Scriptural or creedal precedent, though. What we should be wary of is not any departure from Father, Son, and Holy Sprit but what precedent these departures have. But there's one more thing we should be wary of. But I need to tell a story to illustrate it.

This winter, some folks in "815" sent a survey around directed at churchgoers under 30. One set of questions asked our opinions on various formulations intended to name God. I can't reproduce them verbatim, but there were several that sent us into fits of laughter. There was ones that revealed a fellow student's leanings toward Mormon theology on the issue. But none of them seemed right. To some extent, I understand concerns that poor language or good language poorly interpreted and comprehended leads us into bad habits and into vice. But "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" has been good language for a very long time and is the strongest candidate for God's "legal" name. We have no power to change it by fiat. By delegation from that God I was baptized and I seek the unity of that same God in the Eucharistic feast. I am very wary of a trend to deny that this ancient formula is not God's proper name or that there is something wrong about using it to refer to God. Again I say that the problem is not the name of God but how we use it and think it. Who told us to use God's name to diminish our neighbor? No one did. So I can understand the push for inclusive language, yet I think it is becoming an increasingly misguided discourse. We should strive to expand our comprehension of God not diminish it.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit that the whole world may not merely know the names of the Trinity but know the Verity of their Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. And indeed, O gracious Lord, please spare all of your children from the motions of the earth and the ragings of the waters and keep them in life, health, and safety.

XIV. Of Works of Supererogation

XIV. Of Works of Supererogation

Voluntary Works besides, over and above God's Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety...

First, let's examine the very word supererogation, since we do not normally use it in conversation outside of the context of the theology of justification. Its earliest OED citation is 1526. From what I can tell, it originates from the Vulgate translation of Luke 10:35 in which the Good Samaritan leaves the man he has helped with an innkeeper while he takes care of some business. The Good Samaritan leaves a sum for the innkeeper but says that if the innkeeper needs to do anything more than the usual services for a guest (the verb for "if you should perform additional services" is supererogaveris in the Vulgate and prosdapaneses in the original. Considering the concept of which it is the origin, this suggests that the Roman Catholic doctrine of supererogation herein critiqued might originate from an exegesis of this passage in which Christ is the Good Samaritan, the man on the road is the ordinary man, and the innkeeper is the man seeking "perfection." [Though the source of the concept of "perfection" is Matthew 19:21]. Hence, the perfect man aids the cure of souls by following the commandments of Jesus, but if some additional things need to be done, it shall be for the perfect man as for the innkeeper. He shall be repaid by Jesus.

Well, this is a very strange exegesis and completely unlike any reading of this story I have ever heard, but it is the likely origin of the name (at least) of supererogation.

The doctrine itself (and Schaff is my primary authority on this) seems to be the idea of an Englishman, Alexander of Hales. If it was not his original idea, he certainly gave it its most traditional form. Alexander was a man whose influence on the Scholastics was so great that he might as well be called Doctor Doctorum , though honestly I barely have heard anything about him before now. From what I can tell, Hales was a great professor of Paris and a Franciscan of influence and papal patronage. His tendency as a theologian was to justify extant practice, no matter how innovative, and he especially emphasized the superiority of the clerical status.

The idea of the doctrine is this: God reveals in the Scriptures that certain acts (or their omission) either deserve reward or deserve punishment in whatever sense is appropriate. These acts that are either commanded or forbidden are commanded or forbidden in the form of laws, rules, acts, statutes etc. Generally, we call them by the general name of commandments. But Hales and his followers divided the commandments of the New Law (I would presume) into precepts which are obligatory on everyone and counsels (sometimes called evangelical counsels, either from their placement in the Gospels or because they often are connected with evangelism). It is not obligatory on anyone to obey counsels, but their obedience contributes to a gigantic treasury of merit on which the Church may draw to forgive the guilt of those who fail in obedience to precepts, do not have power in themselves to do the necessary penance for their failure, but are willing to do some penance to show their contrition to provide justification for the church to forgive their guilt. And, of course, Purgatory gets involved somewhere. All of this guilt forgiveness is an attempt to avoid Purgatory in which the souls are purified from remanent but not damnable guilt.

The Articulators, like the other Reformers, were highly disdainful of this doctrine. Their chief objection lay in the regula incurvata of their theology. As the Nicene Fathers sought doctrine in which Christ was just enough God and just enough man, the Reformers would not admit anything that spoke against free grace through Jesus Christ. We have argued before against Purgatory and for the impossibly high price of salvation. Although I have suggested one normally does not buy adoption or inheritance, I have not given any Scriptural basis for free grace. I find myself most convinced by the Old Testament in Isaiah 55, a possible reading at Easter Vigil, though I do not know how long it has been part of this Lectionary, since Easter Vigil is an ancient practice of recent restoration among Episcopalians at least. Hear the Word of the Lord through Isaiah, "Come for water, all who are thirsty; though you have no money, come, buy grain, and eat, come, buy wine and milk, not for money, not for a price. Why spend your money for what is not food, your earnings on what fails to satisfy? Listen to me and you will fare well, you will enjoy the fat of the land."

As in much of Isaiah, we see the life and teachings of Jesus in these verses. Water is freely offered, suggesting both the Sacrament of Holy Baptism and the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit (living water welling up such as in the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well). Bread and wine is freely offered, suggesting both the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist and the mass feeding stories that are forerunners of the Eucharist. Enjoying the produce of the land follows listening to the Word of God, for "man does not live by bread alone but every word out of the mouth of God." Since we often see the Sacraments as the foundation of the life salvifying, i.e., in the midst of salvification, we see symbols of them being freely offered without money and price and thus we also see grace and salvation likewise freely offered. Moreover, salvation through Jesus Christ was a free offering of himself on the cross, for we say of Him that He was as a Lamb led gently to the slaughter. We did not pay Him for taking the fall for us. He gave Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God. It is thus dangerous and potentially erroneous to introduce anything that looks like a payment scheme into the economy of salvation. The amounts of guilt involved are too large to be accounted except in the books of God.

Great was the obedience of the martyrs and they have the full measure of blessedness in the company of the Triune God, but they have no salvific grace to provide to anyone. To which it is objected that the bishops of the Church considered libelli and the reified merit of the martyrs in determining the penance of the lapsi [Note carefully the source of the objection.] And I reply thus: the bishops possess two very confusing powers by delegation to their predecessors the Apostles. First, they possess the power to "bind and to loosen," which could be midrashic or judicial powers. The bishops are the settled judges of the Church, as Hooker might put it, and thus have the authority to decide who belongs inside and outside the carnal communion of the Church. This power, no doubt, is misused, but it is theirs. I have no idea what the extent of their spiritual authority is, though I suspect it is as efficacious as their temporal authority if in full faith and knowledge. But they possess in addition the ability to forgive and retain sins, probably on the same conditions as "binding and loosening," since these powers are introduced analogously in the Gospels. They indeed may be one and the same. But since these powers derive from delegation from Christ and the communication of the Holy Spirit, it is highly likely that if anyone's merits are related to their exercise, it would be the merits of Christ.

Thus when the bishops reconciled the lapsi , they were exercising their proper powers gained for them through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and no other act. The libelli of the martyrs thus are analogously effectual to the prayers of the saints, they only can help, being patronage and co-endorsement of our prayers, if the saints indeed do patronize us and endorse them. But to say the witness of the martyrs has any power compared to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross would be contrary to that same witness. Did the bishops really think they were doing otherwise. As far as I can tell, they were extending Christ's mercy. Indeed, any other reading of the libelli suggests that an error of the lapsi has propagated.

For indeed the first form of libelli in the context of martyrdom originates from a decree of the Emperor Decius in the middle of the 3rd century AD. Decius commanded that all of the citizens of the cities of the Empire perform sacrifices to their local gods for the safety of the Empire. Those who sacrificed received a certificate ( libellus ), saying that they had performed the sacrifice. People who did not possess this document and refused to make sacrifice were subject to capital punishment. Christians had a variety of responses to the decree of Decius and similar decrees issued in later persecutions. Some forged libellos or obtained them from the local magistrates by bribery. Others obtained them by actually sacrificing. All of these, no doubt, had theological arguments of better or worse sorts justifying themselves. But in all cases, it was the general consensus of the Church that all who possessed libellos were apostates of greater or lesser sorts. Thus, by obtaining libellos from martyrs in prison they had aided, the lapsi were trying to get right with both God and the Emperor.

As a sign of contrition, the acts of the lapsi were admirable. They risked martyrdom by helping the martyrs. But the libelli of the martyrs had poor precedent. For in the logic of the precedent, the lapsi were making sacrifice to the martyrs in order to keep their place in the Christian commonwealth. The lapsi were better off helping the martyrs out of charity, asking for no documentation, and doing whatever additional penance the bishops mandated. Imitating the institutional logic of the present persecution was iniquitous.

Of course, I see another problem with supererogation that does not involve free grace. I am much disturbed by the division between precepts and counsels. The counsels generally seem to fall under the heading of what we often call, "the hard sayings of Jesus." For instance, see Matthew 19:10-12

"The disciples said to him, 'If that is how things stand for a man with a wife, it is better not to marry.' To this he replied, 'That is a course not everyone can accept, but only those for whom God has appointed it. For while some are incapable of marriage because they are born so, or were made so by men, there are others who have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Let those accept who can."

And compare it to Matthew 19:16 ff. which follows an interlude about children...

This passage begins very strangely. The disciples speculate that it is better not to marry. Why do they do this? Has Jesus said marriage leads to damnation? No. Has Jesus said marriage leads to painful boils? No. Has Jesus said women are evil? No! Jesus has said that marriage is permanent. Why is this so troubling?

I was about to put a insufficient exegesis of Deuteronomy 22 here, but I think the disciples are troubled by permanent marriage because Jesus essentially closes off the flexibility of the institution in mediating social relations and property transmission. You can't divorce because your marriage is fruitless. You can't divorce because your wife's family has insufficient standing in the community relative to your ambitions for social ascendancy. In other words, marriage is not a socioeconomic power game but something more fundamental and mystical. Close on the heels of this is Jesus' famous discourse on the eunuchs, especially those who are "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven." Now until the time of Jesus, halakhic teaching on marriage generally held it to be obligatory. One was obligated to be fruitful and multiply in lawful matrimony. These acts were mitzvot . So Jesus' counsel seems hard and superogatory, but it is also tremendously liberating. Jesus wants us to be free from the socioeconomic games that direct our minds too much on the present things and not enough on the constantly arriving kingdom of God. By making chastity a permitted form of life acceptable to God, he allows us to be free from all of the burdens of matrimony on our hearts if we choose to accept this liberty. But because these counsels liberate us in Christ Jesus and this liberation is not only permitted but made possible by God (as is suggested in Matthew), there is nothing meritorious in itself obeying the counsels.

Moreover, dividing matters into precepts and counsels makes us less inclined to the liberation of the counsels. The first son of the medieval aristocracy would feel obligated to take up arms, inherit his father's property, and marry to continue his line. His younger brother would feel obligated not to marry and enter a religious order so that there would be less of a drain on the family property from his potential children. Yet I argue that the counsels in support of celibacy and poverty are liberating. They are meant to free one from such temporal concerns. The older son should feel more liberated by the counsels as his younger brother. But because the counsels are so liberating, they obligate one to pursue the kingdom all to the stronger.
But as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7, the key to all of this is that the kingdom be furthered in the state to which God calls you, "Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God" (1 Cor. 7:24).

The medieval theologians so strongly associated perfection, obedience to counsels, and superogation with the clerical state that they passed over the work of the spirit of Christ in the ordinary man or woman in ordinary life. Moreover, they also sometimes ignored the possibility of the counsels applying well to non-clerics. But sometimes they didn't. The Third Order of the Franciscans etc. are good examples of "the work of God" flowing from the monastery into the world. I guess what I'm saying is that all Christians need an orientation toward poverty, chastity, obedience, and the liberation of the Kingdom of God. It does us no good to say that such things belong to the holy people over there who can give us some of their holiness because we need it. Holiness is the general vocation of the Christian, "be ye holy as the Lord thy God is holy."

Rev. Mr. Richard Kew of Kew Continuum has a post dated 1 October on the general need for a new call to holiness of life. I enjoy reading Rev. Mr. Kew, though I disagree with him most of the time. But I think he's right that there's a general hunger for holiness these days that has to be answered with something. Of course, as someone who recites Psalm 51 several times a day, I may be projecting my own lack of holiness on the world...

...for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required...

To these people whom the Articulators discuss here I say, "You do realize that the rich young ruler in Matthew didn't really obey all of the commandments in their fullness..." In other words, I am skeptical that anyone can love God and their neighbor with every fiber of their being, so I doubt that anyone can do more than that. And yet it is our bounden duty to love God to the uttermost and our neighbor as ourselves. Here at least, you really can't give 110%. Martyrdom, for instance, is not a gratuitous service to God, just a more fundamental expression of your love for Him.

whereas Christ saith plainly, When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants.

See Luke 17:7-10. This follows Jesus telling the disciples that they essentially have no faith, since if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could do amazing things. The evangelicals sometimes say, "The Cross is very big." Their point is that even with the spirit of Christ working within us, we are still pale and pitiful creatures compared to the weight of our sins and the glory of God. The merits of Christ alone bridge the gap. We always can do more.

Question

What is a novena? Is there any good objection to an Anglican praying one? Let's just say that I have come to a fuller realization that some close connexions of mine are in deep need of prayer.

Angloblography of the Day

Titusonenine is filled with much debate about Robin Eames' lectures at VTS and the changes to the Constitution of the Church of Nigeria. I said my piece here and like all reassessors was promptly ignored. They can smell them on T1:9, you know. Am I obvious? I did like elfgirl's comment about the sudden importance of the 39 Articles, though.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may experience the stirring of the mountains and the fecundity of the sea possible through the faith and merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ and may find in Him whatever liberty is necessary to pursue the good of His Kingdom with every iota of your being.