One Shots

Thursday, Bloody Thursday

I've been having some health issues lately and needed some blood taken yesterday. Anyone who knows me in real life knows this is going to be fun. I have fainted a few times after blood was taken (even pinpricks) and I even fainted in a college history of science class on Harvey's Circulation of the Blood . Well, I told my doctor and nurse this, so they had me lie down and then the nurse suggested I breathe and recite some sort of mantra to myself as the blood was being taken. Thanks to *Christopher's endorsement, I went for the Jesus Prayer. No fainting. Yes!

According to Hatchett (may be a several part series)

According to Hatchett, the Prayer of St. John Chrysostom may not be of John Chrysostom, being found in later manuscripts of his eponymous Divine Liturgy but not earlier ones. I've always thought it ended abruptly and I was right. The traditional close would translate in Prayer Book language (it's used in a Eucharistic Prayer) to: "For you are gracious, O Lover of souls and to you, we give glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

the Pope and One Big Book

On the Pope's Latest Works

I'm quite glad that the 1962 Missal will have freer use in the future. The replacement of the Missale Romanum and the early insanity associated with the Novus Ordo somewhat alienated one of my grandfathers from the Roman Catholic Church. I'm can't exactly justify his reasons, which I suspect had something to do with his own affection for the Latin tongue and a profound hatred for the folk mass, but I think many of my Roman Catholic friends will appreciate the opportunity to arrange a regular Tridentine mass wherever they can find a priest to say it. The especial benefit lies in a rich hymnody and an integrated seasonal rhythm within the old rite that is simply lacking in the new. The problems mainly lie in worries about anti-Semitism, cultural elitism, and fears of division in the faithful of the Roman rite. I've heard complaints about how this motu proprio is just going to embolden the fundamentalist RCs. I think there's a much wider set of Roman Catholics who would appreciate the old Mass than such a statement would imply.

On the latter document released by the Pope, I echo the common sentiment of lack of surprise. My reply would have to be, "If our Orders were invalid, so would yours be." Not only do I feel supremely confident in this statement on independent grounds, I am merely paraphrasing Saepius Officio .

Indeed, I was thinking of this little phrase especially, "Finally, we would have our revered brother in Christ beware lest in expressing this judgment he do injustice not only to us but to other Christians also, and among them to his own predecessors, who surely enjoyed in an equal measure with himself the gift of the Holy Spirit."

Saepius officio also contains a lovely little summary of Anglican eucharistic theology, though I'm sure it would not go down well with certain Zwinglians in our midst.

One Big Book

That's what I have to say about M.J. Hatchett's, Commentary on the American Prayer Book , which is nearly as large as my Bible and came today. It is helpfully organized to be a companion text to the 1979 BCP. Everything is in order. Indeed, there's even commentary on the Certificate. I may read a few pages before bed each night.

Conference Madness

Many academics read this blog, so let's ask a few rhetorical questions:

Does one day of your conference wrap up with a discussion of advising the government about how to execute a multibillion dollar project? Note that the government is legally obligated to listen to your advice and yet present government officials believe that it is illegal for them to consider the advice as the primary influence on decisionmaking (and keep hinting at that at every conceivable opportunity).

Do presentations involve standing in the hot sun for two and a half hours, wondering why you didn't bring sunscreen or water?

Do you find vocabulary from your ecclesial life appearing occasionally in presentations but meaning completely different things?

Yes, so that's my life at present.

Today, I also made my first operational weather forecast for another planet. On that note.

Collect for Astronomy

O Lord, who is adorned with light and whose glory the heavens declare, prevent us in all our humble inquiries into Thy works. But we especially beseech Thee to favor our probings into the waters of the Deep and to give us a clear vision of thy sublime creature [ target name ]. May the instrument be tuned to its proper settings, the target be tracked precisely, and the computers read, write, and analyze without pause or error. Bless, keep, and prosper the handiwork especially of the operator, for if we be incompetents, Lord, thou and she alone may preserve our observations unto utility. This we ask, Father, through the Word and Wisdom of all the worlds, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

Reconciliation And Free Stuff

Free Stuff

Today, I was notified that I had won $100 of Amazon.com credit out of a random drawing from a group of Cambridge University lab monkeys. Future purchases likely will include Hatchett's commentary on the Book of Common Prayer, Modern Talking's magisterial eighth album, America , and the last Harry Potter book. Sadly, this made my day. It was a very boring day of making posters for a conference next week, documenting new model features, and monitoring terrestrial and martian weather. I really can't wait for the conference next week.

Reconciliation

Lately, the local courts have been ruling that the property of certain parishes who have forcibly sought alternative episcopal oversight actually belong to the Diocese of Los Angeles. For some in this neck of the woods (such as everyone's favorite former Orange County soccer mom, Rev. Ms. Susan Russell), this turn of events has led to a bit of gloating. Observers in the wider church wonder what the consequences of these decisions shall be in the vicinity in Fresno, though these issues will require settlement in the Supreme Court of Ionia, I mean, California.

Our bishop, Jon Bruno, Anglo-Jesuit former police officer and football player, is on record as saying that he wants to reconcile with the four parishes who are squatting on diocesan property. Kristy Harding today asks a fair question: "Yes, because a lawsuit is just the way to make them want to rejoin TEC. Is this real?" Kristy doesn't doubt +Bruno's desire to reconcile. She wonders whether it will work.

It's a good point, because reconciliation usually requires at least one side (and preferably both sides) to admit their sin against the other. I really don't see this happening in these four cases.

Lately, I've been reading the harsher parts of the Rule in which St. Benedict faces the reality of living in community, not just a godly community but one with an understanding of authority and the rule in law in the midst of disordering civilization and organizing barbarism. He has to distinguish between the venially vicious, those who because of human frailty breach the requirements of the community's life and those who actually intend harm to the community's life, to the community's being. For the former, Benedict seems inclined to the Wisdom literature and depends on deprivation and corporal punishment. For the latter, the New Testament church discipline is more of an inspiration. Warning, reproof, chastisement, and finally cautery.

It's hard to extend this model. The tyranny of bishops is something that repulses the American mind, and tyranny soon becomes anything that we consider intolerable. When does the teaching authority of a bishop rise to the level of disrespect to a parish that theologically begs to differ? No one can answer this. No Episcopal bishop therefore is an abbot. No one allows a bishop the formation privileges of an abbot, for fear they will some day seriously disagree with their bishop. O Lord, bless and keep the bishop...far away from us .

I remember the example of the aftermath of the Council of Whitby in which Saint Colman resigned the see of Lindisfarne and founded a new monastery in the west of Ireland. But I think this was Colman's admission that the Celtic party no longer could minister effectively within the Province of York. And this is the generality at the root of these situations. If the Diocese of Los Angeles takes over these properties, will they be genuine centers of life and mission or will they be bulldozed and sold (as Stand Firm commenters claim)? The ball, as far as I am concerned, is in Bishop Bruno's court.

I know what I'd do. I'd go myself quietly or send trusted friends to visit the church a few times, walk about the neighborhood, read the annual reports, and think and pray carefully about whether the Kingdom of God as a whole would be better served by this parish or a new Episcopal congregation built in the ashes of this one. If the former, I would remember that those who gave in the past gave for the work and spread of the Kingdom of God. I would go to the Rector and Vestry of the parish and draw up an agreement in which the parish admitted they had no right to do what they did and the Bishop admitted that the trust of former generations was upheld in the work of the parish. The latter case would be harder but necessary. I would give the parish a year from legal finality to vacate the property, a year for both parties to plan to start again.

It's a tricky balance between avoiding handing our disputes outside the circle of those who will judge angels and dulling the effect of the temporal sword that restrains evildoers. The balance comes when we let the courts settle the issues of civil righteousness ( meum et tuum ) but let God's concerns direct how matters will play out in the end.

More Replies to the Scotist

Two Exegetical Notes

I really couldn't help but notice the priority dispute in Luke was this evening's Gospel:

“You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."

This passage immediately follows the institution narrative in Luke, paralleling what I was arguing from John a couple of weeks ago. Through baptism, Paul tells us in Romans 6, we stand with Christ in his trials retroactively. Thus, we are in fellowship with the apostles who dine with Christ in the upper room in our brokenness and even in our covert treason (but the example of Judas warns us against the latter state). I just want to make it clear. Jesus dines in two different ways. There are connections between his dining practices as countless exegetes of the multiple feeding episodes have pointed out. (Oh, how do I love Bede...the loaves represent the Law and the fishes the Psalms and the Prophets, so the multiple feeding episodes are within the Old Covenant but pre-figure the Eucharistic feast.)

In yet another era of overwrought and dehumanizing imperial power issuing under the cover of republican ideals at home, it seems foul to look for militarism at the heart of the Eucharist. But it is there. The Eucharistic feast is first prefigured in the victory feast in the Valley of Kidron in Genesis 14, where Melchizedek, the King of Salem (lit. the King of Peace) brings food and wine and blesses Abraham, whose enemies God Most High had delivered into his hands. This is a spoils dividing party. But when the real loot divvying comes up, we note an odd power dynamic. The King of Sodom takes everything. Abraham only demands a share for his colleagues and compensation for his expenses. It's hard to say why exactly Abraham does this, but our best guess comes from the beginning of Genesis 15, in which the Lord assures Abraham that the Lord will reward him, that is, the Lord, not the King of Sodom, will make Abraham rich.

And thus the Eucharist has this character of a spoil-dividing party. One thing to remember is what the Disciples probably think about the Kingdom on Maundy Thursday. Most likely think Jesus will lead some supernaturally-backed institution of a righteous kingdom in Israel that will smash the Gentiles. The many priority disputes therefore aren't about who gets to head the receiving line in Heaven. Instead, they are more about who will become Governor of the Transjordan. They are dealing with Him who is both the Lord and Melchizedek, and they are acting as if Jesus is the King of Sodom about to make them rich. But He shall lead captivity captive and ascend with captives in his train. The Lord gave the word, great were the company of the preachers, and the women divided the spoils. The Kingdom turned out somewhat different than expected. The Eucharist thus is both wedding banquet and a peculiar kind of victory party.

The analogy of baptism with the military induction of a Roman soldier is a Patristic trope if I remember correctly, and it's one to remenber.

I Want To Evangelize Aliens. Of Course, I Read Ephesians.

Let me point out that Augustine in City of God obsessively hoped to the time when Christ would be all in all. And yet he also writes in the very same volumes one of the most disturbing refutations of annihiliationism ever written. I find nothing in Ephesians that unambiguously implies any Pauline belief in universal salvation, nor the good premises of a bad argument, nor the good framework under bad premises that would allow me to argue for universal salvation.

I'm All For the Cognitive Content of the Creeds, Though I Follow C.S. Lewis When It Comes to Quicunque Vult

Not really much content here. I just want to be on the record that I believe God is omnipotent etc.

Jesus Offered Himself For the Hoi Polloi Amidst A Select Company

Let us suppose that Jesus offered Himself for the hoi polloi as the Scriptures do say in anticipation of universal salvation. Then why did He not share the first Eucharistic meal with a very large crowd as an example to the Church?

If Anyone Genuinely Believes They Have Received the Holy Spirit, Let Them Be Baptized

Acts 10:44 ff. Actually, it says that if the community recognizes this fact, they should be baptized. But I really do not trust discernment of spirits among Episcopalians these days. I've heard about too many parish search committee meetings...

On Exclusion

But let's be serious here. My Rector says that in order to talk across a divide, one must understand something about the motivation of one's opponent and understand that their views usually stem from good faith and genuine concern. I don't want to psychologize Scotist personally, but his arguments have provided a very fair look at the concerns of CWOB proponents. Deirdre Good's recent writings on hospitality may come from the same place.

I recall the personally disconcerting experiences of going to Mass at a Roman Catholic church and not partaking the Body and Blood of our Lord. I spend much of the Eucharistic Prayer in a mix of adoration and righteous indignation. But I also understand that if I were to commune, I would be doing something they regard as sacrilegious. The sacrilege may be entirely imaginary, but I just imagine how I would feel if my priest just had consecrated the Host and some Roman Catholic came and did something disrespectful to it, not recognizing it as the Body of Our Lord due to their erroneous blindness to the validity of Anglican orders. But... "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself..." (I've once been rejected at the rail in an Anglican church in Ireland, where the Eucharist is limited to the confirmed. I actually had been confirmed, but I was a bit younger than a typical confirmand.)

Yet exclusion is still painful. Rejection is painful. Americans spend much of their lives being evaluated, judged, scrutinized, quantified, and put within groups and put outside them. I can understand a desire that the Church be a place of greater inclusion. And so the CWOB proponents think there is a problem when most churches say, "If you're part of the club, you can come up for some food and wine." And those not in the club feel excluded, rejected, or possibly even damned. This latter idea seems to be at the root of Scotist's arguments. If we do not admit all to Communion, we say that God rejects all we do not admit. And he argues (correctly in part), we would be wrong to say so.

But rather than seeing the Church as one more place of isolation, we would be better off seeing it as a genuine community. So much community is fictionally created by where we eat, what we buy, and where we shop. Have enough money and you can be a part of something. One interesting part of my qualifying exam was when my committee said that they enjoyed seeing my enthusiasm for what I was doing. In very few arenas of life is your desire for an end considered independently from the means with which you can achieve them. But the Church is not like that. Theoretically, we take anyone willing to stand and die with Christ (with God's help).

When we commune together in the Eucharist, we say to one another, you are not just my neighbor, you are not just my brother, you are not just a random fellow human, not just another warm body. No, we say that we are all members of the same Body. We are little bits of the same organs and the same tissue with the same awe and the same goal, whose shield and reward is the Lord's. But when we give the Eucharist to the unbaptized by open invitation, we say the same thing. We presume an intimacy we have no reason to expect. It's a bit like soliciting from a stranger some fetishized action. The stranger has no idea what they're doing, but we're receiving some sort of intimate gratification.

And the understanding of which I speak is not necessarily nor optimally an intellectual one. It is easily reduced to an understanding of a need to change clothes or to change course or to have a revolution within oneself through Jesus Christ: a way of life always understood to begin with Baptism but to continue in hope through actions summarized in the Holy Eucharist. Sure, this gradual conversion doesn't work for everyone. Sure, some likely walk this path outside the Sacraments. But we always must legislate for the general cases as Ulpian says and let God work grace anyway where we have failed to shine Christ's light.

Another Busy Day

Trying to find data about the dust storm...and watching the model start up and start up and start up until it crashes.

But first a few news items:

I learned this morning that I was now part of something called the Canon Bell Society. Well, all right. But who was Canon Bell?

This old article in Time gave me some idea. Here's some more from Andrew Cusack.

I think Canon Bell might have some words to say about the Canon Bell Society, which basically consists of all who have donated between X and 2X bucks to a particular Episcopal organization. He also might laugh very loudly at the idea of the great Low Church parish of one of his Dioceses being a member of his Society. They, after all, still do Morning Prayer as their principal Sunday service.

On a possibly related note, I found this cri du coeur interesting.

I seem to hear this very often. What is to be done?

I also see that Scotist has been posting more on CWOB, including a post titled "Dear Caelius." I probably should wade through that.

What I'm Doing These Days

Did you see this item ? Well, I've been quite excited and have been spending an hour or so per day squinting at amateur telescopic images of Mars. "That's the dust cloud? Well, that or this thing over here." Tomorrow, one of my colleagues promises me we'll try to find it from observations taken a little closer to the planet. Nor is this idle curiosity. For the first time in my life, the development of a significant weather system is not a distraction from my real work but relevant to my real work. My officemate and I are trying to develop something that might be described as [ redacted ], and the first test is scheduled late in the week.

If I'm not cruising Martian weather sites (very few exist at this point), I'm usually writing. My goal is to submit three papers this summer. I still have a way to go to being a clear scientific writer, no matter what one of my advisors might say. So every once in a while, one of my senior colleagues comes by and says, "I really didn't understand this..." and I turn into a blithering idiot. Sweat more in local peer review, bleed less in actual peer review. Well, that's what Sun Tzu would say if he were a scholar.

And if I'm not writing, I am trying to get a climate model to do my fiendish bidding. It just blew up again. Oh well. Back to work.

Thinking Bloggers and Sacerdotal Apostasy

Thinking Bloggers

*Christopher of Betwixt and Between has done me the considerable honor of naming me as a “Thinking Blogger.” Here is some information about the award.

Most people I know have been nominated for this award, so I needed to be careful to find some people I read who have not been nominated:

BLS of the Topmost Apple : bls writes on a very large variety of subjects: music, nature, the dangers of gay and lesbian life abroad, and the usual range of matters Episcopal. Unlike many blogs I read, she always provides a consistent dose of beauty among the news and commentary, bringing balance to the soul in Plato’s accounting.

Fr. Tony Clavier : the West Virginia Parson. There’s much to object to in the writings of this West Virginia parson and former Continuing Anglican bishop. He tends to overreach. His grasp of history is not as good as he would claim, and he really would do well getting to know a few working class and lower middle class gays and lesbians so that his rhetoric about the Episcopal Church and its particularity with the chattering classes would become more nuanced. With that said, he has his mind in the right place and some days, that is all I’m searching for.

Kristy Harding She was blogging at Border Episcopalian . Now she’s at Purl and Java mixed with Housewifery. There are just some times when I'm just amazed at what comes out of her head like drawing to draw a connection between the Satyricon of Petronius and the Letter to the Romans or having dreams involving critiques of the Christian bookstore industry. Her husband Leander is fairly good as well. (If the name sounds familiar, it may be because Leander’s father is a professor at TESM etc. etc.). She and I share an earnest desire to make it work with the Episcopal Church despite occasional bouts of utter bewilderment. Although there is some thinking on matters Episcopal, this blog is really an occasional core dump by fellow Millennial humanists. They consume the kinds of media I do. Amazing.

Brian McKinlay says his blog is “not so much a blog as a scrapbook.” Well, it’s pretty as a scrapbook, but it is filled with very efficient commentary on a wide variety of subjects from art to Australian church politics to environmental policy. It’s my favorite look Down Under.

Jared Cramer of Scribere est Orare . Speaking of fun Millennials… What happens when an ordained minister of the Churches of Christ decides to transplant to the Episcopal Church and enter the ordination process? Well, God has given Jared Cramer the chance to do it, and Jared has given us the chance to find out about it. I always enjoy the results.

Sacerdotal Apostasy

When I was 14, I went through a very brief phrase of reciting the Shahada (the Muslim profession of faith) while making the sign of the Cross. I vaguely recall that I was aiming for an ideally syncretic act. (I think this was the phase in which I admitted the possibility of all religions possessing some truth but Christianity commemorating the most awesome acts of God.) About the same time, I considered writing a Eucharistic Prayer with the Al-Fatihah (the opening to the Quran) following the Sursum Corda. I’m horrified to think of it, and frankly I apologize to the entire Dar al-Islam for doing it. There are better ways to do Christian liturgy than to take something Muslims say seventeen times day and use it to open an action whose underlying form and matter they openly dispute.

When I was older and in college, I read a delightful English translation of the Quran with extensive commentary by two Pakistani imams. Among my favorite tidbits were claims that the Prophet Muhammad was the promised Paraclete and that Paul had written the contested portion of the Gospel of John (the woman taken in adultery) to license Greco-Roman sexual immorality. Read enough on the Internet and you will find extensive polemic of Christians against Muslims and vice versa . And I’ll never forget reading the Muslim version of the Crucifixion, in which Jesus is whisked magically from the Cross and Judas is substituted in his place (but he looks like Jesus). I love and respect Muslims. I believe that their prayers are heard in the same place mine are heard. But I never forget that I have deep theological disagreements with them that cut to the kerygmae of both faiths. If imams want to show up for Easter (they do in these parts), I am obligated by our father Abraham’s example to give them welcome as friends, but please excuse me if I wonder why they are showing up for that particular holiday.

So I am not sure what dismays me more: that a priest in the Diocese of Olympia thinks she can be an Episcopal priest and a practicing Muslim at the same time or that her bishop thinks it’s wonderful and is imagining the interfaith possibilities. But it doesn’t matter. A moment clearly has passed. Fr. AKMA and Fr. Clavier often speak wistfully of the long era of latitudiniarianistic Anglican comprehensiveness (say that three times fast) when those who had odd thoughts and odd behaviors kept it to themselves, whether astral travel (in AKMA’s case) or homosexuality (in Fr. Clavier’s case). In the latter case, the disingenuousness of the ecclesiastical closet has harmed the Church greatly. In the former case, I doubt it’s helped. On one hand, I remember the English bishops’ anxieties about the proposed Book of Common Prayer (1786) with its crypto-Deist and crypto-Unitarian leanings that were likely not inconsistent with the beliefs of the early American episcopate. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those English bishops had similar leanings, but they recognized that there were boundaries to their judgment that stopped at a core of belief at the heart of the earnestness of the laity. Admit their disbelief and the jig was up. The social order depended on the upper classes paying at least lip service to lower class belief. Despite the deeply disturbing roots of their motivation, the English bishops’ objections mirrored the earnest catholic objections of Seabury, whose work in the once and future Diocese of Connecticut laid the foundations for the happy homecoming of many very confused Congregationalists amid the disputes of the early 19th century. On the other hand, there is no excuse for belief being a matter of class and of education. That kind of thinking injured an Empire and will do little good for the Body. It’s a form of Gnosticism pure and simple.

But if you are to be public about disbelief and cross the boundaries of the Faith, there should be consequences. First, easier measures and then sterner measures. At some point, someone really ought to have asked careful questions to this priest in Olympia, suggested she explore Christian tradition in search of spiritual practices that fit her gifts and pointed out strong theological incompatibilities between Christianity and Islam, helped her examine her own problems with basic Christian doctrines about Jesus’ divinity. Only if she were stubborn should canonical discipline be considered. But this would require there to be some suitable authority in the Diocese of Olympia willing to give such counsel, who does not feel like a hypocrite defending creedal orthodoxy, and who is prepared for the last resort of presentment and trial. In past times, we often called this person a bishop, possessing formation privileges over his clergy. But as long as we fail to set boundaries and honor the breach of sacerdotal apostasy, we taint all of our theological development over the last half-century with a prima facie taint of heresy. We say that there’s no difference between recognizing same-sex unions, ordaining women, and any other potentially godly innovation and denying the divinity of Christ.

Many other bloggers in the neighborhood (Postulant, Bls, *Christopher) have said similar things. But I think it’s worth repeating.

Replying to the Scotist on CWOB

Scotist graciously has provided a fairly good clarification of his comments to my recent piece on CWOB. I think he still is accusing me of heresy but at least he’s doing so in a relatively straightforward fashion by which he might readily accuse most of Christendom.

If there is anything clear from Scotist’s argument to this hard-nosed and newly minted Magister Scientiae, it is that the idea of universal salvation has gone too far. While I appreciate the deep compassion of Origen, certain 19th century New England controversialists, and our dear Scotist, I cannot be swayed by appeals to God’s irresistibility or that Christian ethics and Christian hope requires us to believe in the salvation of every ktisis . While this certainly would be a mark of success, we are unprofitable servants and creation has a few warps in the old woof. And as the Article on Predestination and Election reminds us, “Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth in us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.”

This particular Article (XVII, if you’re keeping score at home) is a most salutary one in that it admits predestination and election as both a blessing and a curse. And the best way to remove this particular curse is to treat all comers as if they were potentially the elect. For Scotist, this means that he would share the Eucharist with all comers in good order. For me, it means that we do not let the past unduly bear on font or table. We are not the authors of the Apostolic Tradition , who would bar unsavory persons from the waters of regeneration, despite the acts of our Lord, who admitted prostitutes and tax collectors to his service. We do not permanently excommunicate anyone and I know of no priest in this Church who would deny the unrepentant but honestly earnest for the Lord from the Sacrament at the last. Even the strictest penitentials of the ancient Church allow for this.

What I cannot admit from the Scotist’s argument is that we are mandated to hope for something that is contrary to the promises of the Holy Scriptures, which bars in sundry places for sundry reasons certain offenders from the New Jerusalem and speaks of actual non-specific people being damned. The Gospels speak of crops burning, outer darkness, and all of the other horrors which Chrysostom relishes in his sermons. Moreover, since most of us fall into the ranks of these offenders, we are clearly offered regeneration in baptism. These offenders we are but no more. We have been washed. We have been sanctified. We have been saved through Jesus Christ. The most universal salvation for which I have evidence is those who have excuse according to the light of nature as Paul says in Romans. I, like the apostles and the Articulators, know of no other name under heaven but Jesus by which we have salvation. But I have faith that the name of Jesus is written throughout the cosmos in every blade of grass and every pulsar.

And despite my vexation with a universe in which some are not brought into the fullness of the light of Christ at the end of things, I have enough confidence in God’s justice and our freedom to realize that this may just be the way things are. Why the Fall, if God is always irresistible? Why the Destruction of the Temple, if God is always irresistible? Why every horror of human being to human being, if God is always irresistible? Why does God limit his irresistibility?

When we offer communion to the baptized, we say nothing about the verity of their election, which is between them and God. Instead, we recognize their potential for election, that these persons have made a choice to subsume their identity to that of Jesus Christ, casting their crowns in the sea and prostrating themselves before the Lamb. We already have recognized the immanence of the eschaton in that by admitting them on account of their potential for election. We have no way of judging the potential of any other class of persons, though we have no grounds to assume any particular person’s state of grace.

Scotist says, “But do we know universalism--say, the doctrine that all are saved at the end of all things--is true? I do not think so. Nevertheless, Scripture leaves room for us to hope that all might be saved.” I claim that we have no such grounds for hope and indeed quite the opposite, nor is such hope incumbent on us. We have been allowed the freedom to choose damnation and to reject God’s Grace, probably because God is equivalently free. So great is God’s love for us. Nor does denial of universal salvation need have any deleterious impact on Christian ethics. We have no justification for conversion by the sword or any analogous tactic of discrimination. We are obligated to allow all the same freedom all sentient beings have received from their Creator.

Shuffle Meme from Anastasia

Why are you taking yet another shuffle quiz?
Song: Oh! Il signore vi manda—Cavalleria Rusticana
Composer: Pietro Mascagni
Comment: In this case, a signora is involved… I like Anastasia’s shuffle memes.

What's currently in your fridge?
Song: El Condor Pasa
Artist: DJ Sammy
Comment: Not sure what this song is about. I wish there was something in my fridge that tasted as good as this sounds.

Your biggest nightmare?
Song: This Thing Called Love
Artist: Queen
Comment: It has kept me up at night, but I wouldn’t call it a nightmare.

What place would you like to visit?
Song: Grievous and the Droids –Star Wars Episode III
Composer: John Williams
Comment: I have the soundtrack and yet have not seen the movie. I’m not sure Grievous and Droids sound like fun folks to visit.

A reason to commit suicide?
Song: Cry Ophelia
Artist: Adam Cohen
Comment: Well, that’s a funny coincidence, “You say you want to live your life without tears, but we’ve been trying to do that for thousands of years.”

Why are we here?
Song: Ein Madchen oder Weibchen
Composer: W.A. Mozart
Comment: To drink wine and marry. My shuffle is a hedonist.

Something you never dared to say to anyone...?
Song: Cautioners
Artist: Jimmy Eat World
Comment: I’ve never broken up with anyone…

One thing the world really doesn't need?
Song: Vouchsafe, O Lord, To Keep Us This Day Without Sin: Dettinger Te Deum
Composer: G.F. Handel
Comment: Sin. Too late.

What's your biggest unfulfilled wish?
Song: If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
Artist: Sting
Comment: Why do I keep getting depressing love songs?

If you could invent something, what would it be?
Song: All That See Him Laugh Him to Scorn
Composer: G.F. Handel
Comment: A monitor of the attitude of other people toward me.

The last thing you say before you die?
Song: Come Holy Ghost, Our Souls Inspire
Artist: Edward Higginbottom
Comment: I really would like to go out this way, though the Gloria In Excelsis is easier to remember.

What's your destiny?
Song: Take On Me
Artist: A-ha
Comment: To race motorcycles competitively. That’s a joke.

What do you do when you're alone in an elevator?
Song: Leto Atreides II—Children of Dune
Composer: Brian Tyler
Comment: I spawn children with lucid connections to their ancestral memories and other barely natural abilities.

Why do people go fishing?
Song: Who Wants to Live Forever
Artist: Queen
Comment: Fishing is exceptionally dangerous, especially in the Grand Banks and such.

What would you do with your slaves?
Song: Fecit potentiam
Composer: John Rutter
Comment: The Lord would free any slaves I had. “He hath shown strength with his arm” is an allusion to the Exodus most of all, for the Lord “hath brought you out with a mighty hand from Egypt.”

Is there a man on the moon?
Song: Drive In, Drive Out
Artist: Dave Matthews Band
Comment: Only if you’re high.

What does hell look like?
Song: Pavane, Op. 50
Artist: Gabriel Faure
Comment: Hell is a so-so add-on to a good Requiem.

About what would you like to write a book?
Song: Grace (Anxiety)
Artist: Louderbach
Comment: Martin Luther always will surpass me on that subject…

The best thing ever is...?
Song: Hammer To Fall
Artist: Queen
Comment: I think this song is about the end of the world or just death or living in expectation of death. So the best thing ever is death. This is sounding like Anastasia’s blog.

Why did the chicken cross the road?
Song: Saltwater
Artist: Chicane
Comment: To swim in the Atlantic Ocean off Ireland. It’s cold but the scenery is beautiful.

Why do you listen to music?
Song: English Pavan
Composer: Philip and Alan Crumpler
Comment: Because I like slow dances…or Hell…

What do you do when you're alone and nobody's watching?
Song: Psalm 150
Artist: John Rutter
Comment: True.

Why are other people so stupid?
Song: Have you seen me lately?
Artist: Counting Crows
Comment: Because your girlfriend thought you were cheating on tour, so she dumped you, and you keep singing about her or to her.

Last thing you ate?
Song: My apologies.
Artist: J-Tron
Comment: J-Tron is a veggie burrito. (It’s a very good veggie burrito).

Why is grass green?
Song: Et misericordia
Artist: John Rutter
Comment: By the mercies of God expressed through evolution by natural selection.

Your phone is ringing, but who's on the other end?
Song: He That Dwelleth in Heaven
Composer: G.F. Handel
Comment: God, and He’s laughing.

What should you stop doing?
Song: Battle of Little Round Top
Composer: Randy Edelman
Comment: Stop fighting the Civil War. That’s good advice for everyone in this country.

A word of advice to the readers of this quiz?
Song: Love comes again
Artist: Tiesto featuring BT
Comment: So don’t give up.

Communion Without Baptism (CWOB)

Rev. Dr. Mom asked in the comments to my last entry what my thoughts on CWOB were. Well, as devoted readers of the blog probably know, I am agin’ it. I vaguely remember some conflict with the Scotist on the question, but I suspect I said little at the time that a diocesan committee will not hear provided that it is listening. But let’s take another look for the sake of completeness.

Rev. Dr. Mom says,

I would love to hear more of what you think of CWOB. I'm on a diocesan committee now that is studying (or trying to) the effects of the practice. Most of those on the committee believe it "essential for growth". I, however, am concerned not only with undermining the Eucharist but also with making our teaching about baptism irrelevant. Thoughts?

Every Sunday, I hear in the little break for announcements between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Table these words (or some variant), “Whoever you are and wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome to receive the bread and wine made holy. We’re very glad you’re here.” This invitation is part and parcel of the charism of my present parish. Indeed, it might be said to be our creedal statement, since it and no other creed is said between the Sermon and the Sursum Corda. I can say with confidence that it has resulted in congregational growth. ILEOS c. 1975 was a sleepy suburban church in a small city with three other Episcopal churches. It had one principal Sunday service and an ASA you would expect. Today, it stands on the threshold of joining the very small club of Episcopal megachurches with active programs of education and social action, serving an ASA of 1400 and an active membership that drives from other states to be there. It has two principal Sunday services and two reasonably attended auxiliary services on Sunday and one on Saturday evenings. It has Daily Eucharist. Several times of the year, there are baptisms and welcoming of new members, never two or three at a time but several to a couple of dozen baptisms at once and dozens of new already baptized members. I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but from any quantitative standpoint, I belong to a healthy and growing parish. We even have a surprisingly large number of members in the 20-40 age range. There are still three other Episcopal churches in town. All remain, though I only have any knowledge about one of them.

But is CWOB necessary for growth? Well, talk to Christ Church, Plano or St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Ft. Worth, who have managed to compete quite well in the very competitive ecclesial environment of North Texas by bringing grounding and tradition to the conservative theology of their neighbors. Growth always has been a matter of the market. What plays well in Hollywoodland might not play so well elsewhere. I think it’s far more important to ask how growth and one’s values can be mutually inclusive. It very much reminds me of the old Sunday School question of whether to celebrate the Eucharist with pizza and strawberry shakes or some other food and beverage pairing. Well, all right, if the church’s purpose is to draw hordes of hungry nine year olds. But isn’t it more important to celebrate with some of the basic of most healthy foods of human civilization, the very same food and drink over which Jesus chose to give thanksgiving? Isn’t the basicness of bread and wine most representative of Body and Blood? These aren’t questions always easily answered. Imagine answering them in 14th century Greenland, where wine needed to be shipped from long distances through dangerous seas. Jared Diamon in his recent book, Collapse suggests that the Greenlanders should have been more flexible about many aspects of their medieval Christian lifestyle, which he argues doomed them to failure. How flexible must our values be if we are to grow and survive?

Looking at the Justifications
One very helpful approach to looking at CWOB is to look at its theological justification. There has been much talk on the blogs about theological justification lately. I think *Christopher is right to say that much of what we call theology traditionally is a formalization of what has arisen organically (if that’s a fair statement of his view.) But while certain things arise organically, they develop their theology simultaneously.

At the risk of making a false etiology, I’ll tell you where I think CWOB starts theologically. I’m sure part of it lies in the liturgical reforms in the era of Vatican II when there was a great deal of interest in the Eucharist’s origins as a more substantial and communal meal. Much was read again in the Gospels about Jesus’ table practices and Jesus’ feeding moments. Wait, some said. Jesus dined with sinners and outcasts. Jesus fed thousands indiscriminately. Jesus welcomed everyone to his table. Why shouldn’t we do likewise?

Others found inspiration in the prophetic tradition. The 1979 BCP marked the re-introduction of Easter Vigil to our little corner of Anglicanism. One of the suggested readings is Isaiah 55:1-11 (1-2 follows):

“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.”

For these thinkers, the Eucharist is the eschatological feast freely offered to all without distinction.
Today, I heard a new argument. It focuses on the story of the Prodigal Son, in which the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a father’s unconditional forgiveness of a wayward son. The argument then justified offering the Eucharist (presumably like the fatted calf) as the birthright of all who breathe.

Challenging the Justifications
It’s not hard to get into a Scriptural battle with the proponents of CWOB. But it is hard to agree on a set of rules. Argue too strenuously that eschatological feeding practices belong to the eschaton and you will be accused of denying God’s reign in the here and now or even worse be condemned as a Neo-Platonic despiser of the body and creation. Start asking about the business of the wedding garment of Matthew 22 and you will be told that all the best scholars think Matthew added the last bit. Jesus never said anything so cruel. Mention Paul’s concerns in 1 Corinthians 11 about discerning the Body and you might hear an earful of how Paul made up Christianity, distorted everything, really didn’t get Jesus etc. Or they might say that they don’t believe in Original Sin, because it makes God too vengeful and cruel. I think of Ezekiel, “O House of Israel, why do you say I am unjust? Are you not the ones who are unjust?”

My alternative response is to look at why the first Eucharist was so exclusive (as far as we know from the Gospels). In John 6, Jesus teaches his disciples that they will have to eat and drink Him in order to have eternal life. He says this in the synagogue at Capernaum (his home base as it were) and many of his disciples say, “This is more than we can stand? How can anyone listen to such talk?” And they stop going around with Him, but the Twelve stick around. John says nothing about the institution of the Eucharist in his Passover narrative. He doesn’t have to. In John’s narrative, this moment at Capernaum is the institution of the Eucharist without breaking out the bread and wine for emphasis. Jesus even at this moment reveals that one of the Twelve will betray Him. Everything is in fast forward. But this incident sets forth an important principle: Eating with Jesus is controversial because it is open to everyone, but eating Jesus is a much different matter than eating with Jesus. In every generation, eating Jesus requires a deep sacrifice. In the generation of the apostles, it required one to go along with the idea that Jesus was in union with God, that He would die a humiliating death (and they might, too), that cannibalism was lawful in a limited and metaphorical sense.

The idea of CWOB challenges us to think about how we eat with those outside the Body. Jesus’ table practices are lessons to us about how to engage with the world. I wonder what people would think if I started going out to the Sunset Strip at 3 AM with hot meals. But as in the Prodigal Son, eating Jesus or eating the fatted calf requires us to embrace difficult things, to recognize some infirmity in our nature, to recognize that as much as God loves us, He still waits for us to embrace that love in its fullness. Like the Prodigal Son, we, too, must go and say, “Father, I have sinner before God and you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” Is it any wonder that in some traditions, the newly baptized is clothed in white, washed with water, anointed with oil, and given a lighted candle. We might as well put a ring on their finger, for each baptized person is a Prodigal Son (or Daughter) and a well-beloved dinner guest, extended the unmerited and utterly inexplicable Grace of God. So Rev. Dr. Mom, I think you’re right to worry how the meaning of Baptism and the Eucharist is undermined by CWOB. And if I were on your committee, I would ask those enthusiastic about CWOB whether they think there is any difference between eating with Jesus and eating Jesus.

De Iuventute in Ecclesia

Recently, my fellow parishioner, Hugo Schwyzer, provided a review of Youth Sunday at ILEOS.

This passage particularly struck me:

“She spoke of how she’d gone through our Seekers confirmation program (which I co-led from 2001 until this year) as an agnostic who flirted with atheism. As she put it, she got confirmed at the end of her frosh year in order to honor the eight-month process of Seekers, not out of any newfound certainty in her faith. Interestingly, she reported from the pulpit on Sunday that she has — at last — begun to experience a sudden openness to God. After years and years of living by the [ILEOS] creed of the “gospel of social justice”, the creed that suggests that “Jesus was a heckuva nice guy and an important advocate for change”, she’s begun to find a more evangelical faith. She found it through her school’s gospel choir, and in the rhythm and emotion of gospel, she’s opened herself up to the possibility that Jesus was and is more than a human role model.”

Hugo goes on to say that this was a daring thing to say at the pulpit of ILEOS. In retrospect, I guess it was. At the time, I was thinking: “This parish puts more resources into children and youth work than any parish I’ve ever seen, but there is clearly something deeply lacking with our catechesis.” Hugo is the nice stolid ILEOS Low Churchman, and I am the nice stolid ILEOS High Churchman, but Hugo knows the facts on the ground better than I.

But to be fair, this is a general problem. I saw it in my much more moderate parish back East. In my third confirmation class (don’t ask), Providence had thrown together a variety of upper middle class teenagers with one thing in common: they didn’t want to be there. It’s a common rite of passage in the Episcopal Church. Confirmation becomes a get out of church free card, unless there are special circumstances (clergy children). So, of course, you are going to have a few atheists. One of my classmates was quite open about it. I was horrified.

It wasn’t until about two years later when I was put in charge of preparing the parents of infants and young children for their children’s baptisms that I understood why it was difficult to instill solid Christian belief of some kind in Episcopal youth. It wasn’t MTV, materialism, or simple adolescent rebellion, because the upper middle class children of the Baby Boomers aren’t rebellious. Most of us buy into the idea that if we get into the right college, we’ll sign the same social contract that brought our parents prosperity and never worry again. Thus, we spend a tremendous amount of effort and anxiety on the process of getting into a good college. Past generations spent some of this time hoping for conversion experiences, looking for signs of election, agonizing over their salvation, considering religious vocations, or becoming involved in pietistic practices.

And it wasn’t just so much of our existential angst did not turn to the things of God. Looking at the new parents of our congregation, it was fairly clear that most of them wanted their children baptized for perfunctory reasons or else to give them a values system of some sort. I shocked these sorts deeply without even intending it. I’ll never forget one poor woman who was undoubtedly shocked when I suggested that Satan could be something more than a metaphor. The look she gave me is what I expect to receive at an accidental first contact with an alien species, “You’re not from this planet, are you? Have I even heard of your planet?” There were exceptions. I still remember one couple in particular who I think were quite happy that someone was taking baptism seriously. A couple of years later, I was sorting a batch of clothes at a local thrift store when I kept coming across fine designer labels. Those were appreciated, since they could be sold at a premium and the fashionably thrifty ladies of the neighborhood still would consider them a bargain. They were hand-me-downs but in good shape. A couple of stray nametags in the clothes revealed that I knew the donors quite well.

We very much follow the faith of our fathers and mothers. I trace my affinity with gay and lesbian Christians to my parents taking me to have dinner with one of our fellow parishioners and his partner back in the mid 1980s. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that the partner was the first person I knew to die of AIDS. Of course, it’s not foolproof, my mother will give me the accidental first contact look every once in a while for a variety of reasons. But this is the same mother who read me The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and hinted at the allegory. My father likes to think himself as a weaker brother, but I sometimes am amazed at some of the things his faith has led him to do (and my mother has supported him despite her complete vexation with the facere of the Church.). But if you see your parents not taking these things seriously, living hypocritically, clearly ridiculing deep faith, expressing constant doubts at the Creeds of the Church, constantly embracing the latest liberal program for doctrinal reform, or just going to church for some sort of social reason, you’re not likely to see anything worthwhile about the Christian faith or long for relationship with God.

Clergy and other important adults at church also can be a liability in this regard. I wonder seriously if we are not presently undermining the meaning of the Eucharist for many, not by our CWOB practices, but with some of the clergy’s constant and somewhat vague attacks on “substitutionary atonement,” by which they seem to cover almost every explication of the Cross as a means of Grace. We speak of the bread and wine made holy and use the ancient words of Institution but yet shy away from singing ever again in English, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain and hath redeemed us to God, to God by his blood, to receive honor and riches and wisdom and strength and glory and blessing…” How does the Eucharist have meaning outside the saving work of the Cross? I’m not even talking about ILEOS’ stripped down baptismal liturgy, where I think we stumble at the threshold by not shocking the adults’ systems enough with the commitment they are undertaking.

I don’t know about some of these things. But I do know that the catechesis we give children is not just what we tell them in formal settings. Even in a less doctrinally innovative church than ILEOS, our best hope of raising youth to a mature faith is showing forth with our lives what we profess with our lips on Sunday mornings. I don’t need to tell this to the parents who read this blog. From what I hear of your parenting, you will be inspirations for my own. But I think it’s something some of you might need to consider as clergy or prominent adults in the congregation. How do the youth in the parish see you? How do they see their parents? Don’t always ask what you are doing for youth. Ask instead what the youth see you doing.

A Few Rather Scattered Notes

The Heresy of ERD

It is never a good sign when a Sunday forum begins with the statement: “Now what I’m saying is somewhat heretical…” For the first time in recent memory, I encountered an exception to this rule, because “the doctrine” in question was the Millennium Development Goals and the heretic was the President of Episcopal Relief, Bob Radtke. While Radtke appreciates the MDGs as a useful classification of the efforts necessary to reduce global poverty, Radtke argues that the MDGs are based on a “planner” approach to development, in which first world governments and non-governmental organizations tell third world governments and people how poverty is to be alleviated. Radtke prefers the “searcher” approach in which first world organizations provide the economic resources so that third world people can bring themselves out of poverty on their own.

Anyone familiar with Habitat for Humanity will be familiar with the distinction between planners and searchers. Habitat for Humanity is an alternative to traditional “planner” public and private approaches to low income housing, in which governments and private companies build large housing complexes in depressed neighborhoods and rent them to economically distressed people who are given little incentive to maintain the property.

Habitat for Humanity is based on a searcher model. Habitat for Humanity goes into the community and identifies lots and buildings suitable for new construction or renovation. They then find people in the neighborhood who lack homes of their own and allow them to purchase a home for cost and sweat equity. Because those helped now own their own homes, they have an incentive to maintain their property and can build equity to give them leverage in the credit market.

Radtke told stories about various ERD projects, including a village improvement project in Honduras and Nets for Life, which brings mosquito nets and education about malaria to sub-Saharan Africa.

In the midst of current struggles to maintain some sense of affection between the Provinces of the Anglican Communion, it was good to remember that ERD uses Anglican churches throughout the Global South as bases of operations and sources of local expertise or as the Rector wryly put it, “The Anglican Communion does more than spread bigotry.” Although there have been attempts by the present bands of separatists to create parallel organizations to ERD such as Anglican Relief and Development Fund (a creation of the CAN), the model for these organizations is clearly ERD. The main advantage of these new organizations is their stronger relations to Provinces such as Uganda and Nigeria.

Moving

Due to space limitations, I no longer can be housed in the Mansura Sanctae Caterinae Alexandrensis at my present institution. So I have just moved into a little room not too far away. I am “borrowing” Internet connectivity (AKMA style) at the moment and will be working on obtaining some of my own.
J.K. Rowling vs. Phillip Pullman

Fr. Nick linked to BabyBlue’s defense of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. I do intend to read the whole thing, but I can’t say that I am going to be particularly enthusiastic if there’s a lot of bashing of Phillip Pullman as an author rather than as a man. I share with the Archbishop of Canterbury the sentiment that there is something deeply important about His Dark Materials that transcends Pullman’s attempt to write some sort of novelistic screed against God and Christianity. Despite Pullman’s attempts, his works are a fine illustration of Kyle Potter’s blog motto, “Because Gods who cannot raise the dead must die.” Pullman’s God is a fraud, who did not incarnate Himself as Jesus of Nazareth, making Pullman’s caricaturistic churchmen as evil as you would expect in such a world. Reading Pullman’s works leads me to appreciate greatly the God I worship.
What I suspect needles Christians about Pullman’s works is how good he is in identifying oppressive structures that we often conflate with divine authority. Patriarchy or traditional family structure do nit get much of a pass in Pullman’s world, in which the protagonist’s father and mother, despite their elite backgrounds, turn out to be the worst parents imaginable and she finds family among aliens and the marginalized of her society (and the academics…). The literary theologian might say that Lyra is Pullman’s deep desire for Jesus Christ. That Pullman’s works are one more chapter in man’s critique of God, one of the great themes of the Holy Scriptures.

I Believe This Is Serious

Seamus MacManus would be proud...or frightened

There's A Book, Too .

Most of what I know about the Travellers is from personal experience. The Irish (especially in the West) are some of the most hospitable people on earth, but they can be xenophobic if the occasion strikes. And in the West, there is one group that bears the brunt of it. Those are the Travellers. The funny thing is that the Travellers are as native to Ireland as anyone can be in Ireland. I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be the Fir Bolg or the Tuatha de Danaan.

Hidden Palms

I just took a look at the pilot of "Hidden Palms," a new TV show on the CW. My first thought was: "This is the OC all over again, just in Palm Springs." But while there are definite similarities between any show centered around overly beautiful teenagers in a milieu of vain bourgeois opulence, it had a couple of interesting twists to my mind.

1. The main character seems extremely well-adjusted but just came out of rehab. There will be an Alcoholics Anonymous component of this show (meetings are held at the very real St. Paul in the Desert Episcopal Church [you can read the sign]). Sadly, like all television shows in these kinds of settings, teenagers have far too easy access to alcohol.

Even better, I suspect the main character's sponsor will be a rather adorable Southern drag queen (think a shorter version of L. Crew), played by the brilliant and dimunitive Leslie Jordan.

2. Very early in the show, we see a pretty teenage girl dressed in full lab gear in her garage heat some sort of ammonium nitrate mixture on her Bunsen burner, stick in a thermistor, and then looks briefly panicked as the thermistor records the heat evolution of a reaction very much out of control, causing a small explosion. If I were 16 and knew someone like that, I would be very much in love. Of course, she instantly develops a crush on the main character, who is barely conscious of her existence. I want to know what she's working on.

The writer is Kevin Williamson of Dawson's Creek fame, and episodes will appear all summer. So if you're looking for something dramedic this summer, this might not rot your brain.

Praying Amid A Series of Tubes

I think if you had told me back when I was confirmed in the primitive days of 1990 that I someday would rise every morning, link to a computer at some distance away from where I lived, and would say Morning Prayer by loading computer files onto my laptop, I imagine I would have been incredulous. In 1990, laptops were at least $2000 ($3000 in modern dollars), connection speeds in my parents' house was 1200 baud, and Morning Prayer was something used once a month for Sunday services, though our liberal catholic Rector was trying to get rid of it. Let's just say I fell in love with Evening Prayer long before Morning Prayer.

Fast forward to 2007, my mid-range laptop was ~$1000, connection speeds at my place run ~5820 kilobaud , and my Daily Office needs are filled nicely by Mission St. Clare and Oremus. Yes, I have a Book of Common Prayer in actual print. Yes, I even have a Hymnal. But these sites (or similar ones like dailyoffice.org [can't forget them]) provide invaluable service. Like any economy of scale, a few people alone have to compile the liturgy, check the Lectionary etc. Yes, I do use my BCP on occasion without the computer or as a supplement (just in case I need certain Collects), but I appreciate my mornings of Rite II with Orthodox hagiography (or occasional Monophysites...) and my evenings are filled with Church of England liberal catholic goodness. Online Office sites are not just a peculiarly Anglican phenomenon. The latest reform of the Roman Liturgy of the Hours is online at Universalis.

Praying the Office online is not the limit of "common prayer" on the Internet. I occasionally will listen to Sunday Worship and Choral Evensong on the Beeb Online (the BBC, that is). And conscious of Adorno's critique of the Radio Symphony, I initially tried to pray the service at a temporal disconnect with the congregation. I don't listen as much anymore. Liturgy requires presence. It requires incarnation. The medieval canons prescribed that the Office had to be recited while at least moving one's lips. I find it very difficult to put myself into the prayerful mode that separates the radio liturgy from a concert, especially when the music is so very beautiful... (yes, I know, there's something wrong with me).

So significant is the impact of the radio liturgy brought to the Internet on the world that BBC Sunday Worship can put entire sections of the Internet into consternation. Conservative Roman Catholics in the UK did not enjoy hearing from a gay friendly parish community in San Francisco and James Alison's preaching. But for all that, I have to appreciate the radio liturgy for its ability to teach us a little about parts of the Church we wouldn't ordinarily know. Hearing Evening Prayer from Capetown reminds us of the South African's church's creation of a sort of Modus Ngunensis. Or we could hear from Rochester Cathedral prayers for gays and lesbians to come out of the closet in peace, and think happily that bishops and cathedral deans don't always see eye to eye (glory to God!). Or we could hear the Archbishop of York using some aimless brevity as a baptismal creed and feel that at least one of the abuses of one's own parish is firmly in the Anglican mainstream. The radio liturgy brought to the Internet is no longer "the mass for shut-ins" as my father refers to certain programs on RTE in Ireland, it has become a concrete way to present the wealthier corners of the church to the other wealthy corners of the church, though they may be separated by oceans.

But what of the world of 2024? What will these very recent changes in common prayer mean for the Church as she wanders the pilgrim way further along the non-linear advance of human culture? It's difficult to say. On one hand, I think we are going to see a little bit of backlash against the digitization of our presence to one another. The worshipper of 1980 and before was quite content to sit in a pew, mumble along, throw out some pleasantries at Coffee Hour, and drop some cash in the plate. In a world filled with many possibilities for society, Christian society came with lower expectations. We can't expect this in the future. We drive more. We live further away from our neighbors. Schools draw from vast tracts of land. Workplaces as well. Technology has allowed us to put a little more distance between us. And our geographic mobility continues apace. (I probably will not be living on the Moon in 2024, but I probably will know someone who does...). Nevertheless, most people have a smaller number of good friends than their parents but claim greater intimacy with those they have.

In 2024, our preferences will be to maintain Christian society with small numbers of other individuals with a peculiar and particular prayer life. This situation soon may destroy the paradigm that has maintained common prayer since whenever we want to claim its source. It may be impossible to establish common prayer by Authority. It's nearly impossible in the Episcopal Church now. Common prayer will have to be chosen by the grassroots.

And thus I propose that common prayer should be seen in the future primarily in terms of continuity rather than unity or uniformity. For me, both my Morning and Evening Prayer represent Anglican common prayer, despite some significant differences between them. They share a grounding in the Psalms and other poetry of Holy Scripture, for instance. As long as I say the Creed and Confession once per day, their absence in a liturgy does not dismay me. The test for our future will be how we maintain continuity with tradition and a regularity of liturgical habit in a way that feeds those very desirous of society but who do not know how to be social, who do not understand how to subsume their will to a common leading, who treat their manner of life as things to be bought and sold. I do not claim it will be easy. What will be required is what I already am seeing, the creation of new ways of bringing liturgical information and information liturgically to the Internet.

The Week Ahead

"We've got problems, we don't know how to solve them, everywhere we go, we've got some skeletons that follow, we've got baggage, you know we're going to drag it where we go for everyone to see"--Good Charlotte, "Broken Hearts Parade"

You must not think I am as gregarious in person as I might appear in electronic print. Then again, I'm not particularly gregarious in this medium either. Someone asked me today about my week. The highlight of my week was a significant improvement to my novel method of processing tree ring width records from individual trees. But I couldn't think of this (and am unsure whether this was a worth a mention), I'm too consumed with quantifying our general ignorance about Martian dust devils. Whenever I'm too frustrated with this particular problem, I go read a novel. Well, at least on the weekends, when I can afford the time. This afternoon, I read The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard, a sweetly romantic tale written in prose so evanescently descriptive that you can't imagine understanding the characters or perceiving the locales even if you knew them in the flesh. The thrust of the novel was something about the maintenance of humanity in an inhumane world or else how jolly interesting it is to be a misfit in a world very soon to eviscerate the very standards by which your oddity was judged, only to find yourself still an oddity. But if you're odd, you might as well have company. Also, the Antipodes are dull and depressing. I'll say this for the last half-century. Whatever the Antipodes were fifty years ago, they are likely anything but boring now. But the novel was a happy relief from the usual space operas for which my local library has good taste. So I guess I just had a pleasant afternoon.

Two events wait in the wings this week in the Anglican Communion (particularly in the United States). The first is more sure. Next Saturday, God willing and the people consenting, Peter Jasper Akinola, Primate of All Nigeria, will install Martyn Minns as Bishop of CANA. The second is entirely the stuff of which dreams are made of and yet maybe not. Fr. Martins has suggested that this just might be the week when some new sheepfold might be erected to gather the reasserters of five Dioceses. One almost feels compelled to switch into Latin when contemplating a nearby future of denuntiantibus titterulibus ex Cantauria or nova Papa Alexandrina .

Whatever this week brings, I point you to Fr. Knisely's words :

But my concern is less that we behaving badly, it’s more about what our behavior is doing to our souls. The long and protracted arguments, the claims of righteousness and charges of unrighteousness, the glee that is felt when one’s opponents misstep is slowly creating a family system that is addicted to this conflict. And this conflict seems to me to fast becoming an idol that we’re focussing our attention on rather than on serving Christ.

And as you well know, I can be as guilty as this as anyone.

The Other Process

One of those enchanting perquisites of having a doorknob exposed to all comers is its ability to act as yet another locus for advertising. No public space can be immune from advertising, after all, lest the economy implode. Of course, the form of doorknob advertising must be a Thai food menu. Someday, I hope to find the form of doorknob advertisements on my doorknob, because I'm betting they serve the form of pad see ew. I believe and trust that the Triune God makes great Thai food and the doorknobs of Paradise shall have menus for this food. Amen.

My door is fortunate or otherwise to possess an additional fixture for advertising. Technically, I believe it is reserved for notices from the authorities of the Imperial University of Science and Technology, Laodicea, but today I found a small green sheet from MTV with the four most ominous words in the English language as presently spoken, "Casting New Reality Series."

I had seen notices like this before on campus. MTV is presently looking to produce the most explicit form of pornography viewable by teens and 18-35 year olds alike. It's a show about guys losing their virginity. I suppose it would be more pornographic if it involved women, but they may be producing that show for all I know.

Now, I don't mean pornographic in the sense that I expect there to be explicit sex scenes (though anything is possible). I mean pornographic in the sense that virginity is associated with the oldest and deepest of the fetishes. Note that fetish in the OED has many definitions, including: (1), "An inanimate object worshipped by primitive peoples on account of its supposed inherent magical powers, or as being animated by a spirit." and (2) "An object, a non-sexual part of the body, or a particular action which abnormally serves as the stimulus to, or the end in itself of, sexual desire." Virginity has been very much a fetish in both of these senses. One of the possible origins for temple prostitution is that the hymen is a boundary and boundaries often gain sanctity, especially if they are associated with fertility. Thus, many cultures had a belief that proper rites were required to cross the boundary (the medievalists still fight about whether the ius primae noctis ever existed, but its proponents argue it was a late survival.) Thus, the virgin would be required copulate with a priest or otherwise ritually chosen male. Eventually, this became a revenue source for temples with permanent staffs etc., but the root idea is virginity has sacral significance.

God commanded the Israelites otherwise, but the Old Testament thereby connected idolatry with loss of virginity outside of one's father's auspices. At present, many commentators are creeped out by the recent rise of "purity balls." I suspect their awkward feelings stem from the sense that certain subcultures can create a weirdly incestuous dynamic by putting the father in charge of a token of his daughter's virginity.

God revealed in Christ Jesus, however, seems to have very strange ideas about virginity. On one hand, the fetishism of virginity depends on it being lost. In patriarchal societies, it can be traded for land, for familial relationships, and other useful goods. But it must be lost at some point under the control of the contracting parties. An aged virgin in Israelite society has a far more uncertain life than a married woman. Note that God repeatedly commands charity to the widows and orphans. "Old maids" were in precarious economic straits, too. But God doesn't mention them specifically, because they were rare. Indeed, polygamous societies, such as non-mainstream Mormons and certain Muslims (Osama Bin Laden being an excellent example, though the theology is older), often develop an ethic where marrying an older virgin (whose marriage prospects are weak) is considered a charitable or even salvific act. Thus, the Lord Jesus lays down a real bombshell in Matthew, when he proclaims, "There are some who are eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom." Virginity not being used for sacral magic or to knit society together? What? I suspect the Lord's message wasn't that sex is overrated (as some present novice Roman Catholic nuns I know were wont to say). I suspect what he meant was that not losing one's virginity was the kind of deeply subversive act that could proclaim the values of the Kingdom, placing the disciple outside of sexual politics and its social relationships, allowing one to take a wider look at human society and cultivate a deeper love for God.

On the other hand, we have to remember that there is one event of Jesus' life that summons up deep imagery of virginity loss. I am talking about John 19:34, "But one of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side, and at once there was a flow of blood and water." No other Gospel speaks of this incident, and John is very insistent about its authenticity. In all the other Gospels, the analogous episode is the tearing of the veil or curtain of the Temple in two. I suspect John's point is that Jesus Himself has become the Temple (common theme of this Gospel after all..."But He was speaking of the temple of His Body." or "You will not worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem..., but the true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth"). And thus as Ezekiel says at 47:1, "I saw water coming out the threshold of the Temple towards the east." And indeed, the drain of the Temple must have contained both water and blood from the sacrifices (and been rather foul). But the spear and the analogy of the veil tearing suggests this is marriage imagery. Christ's Body (i.e., his side) is the spotless virgin Church and both the tearing of the veil and the side piercing are promises of the Consummation. You can see why I have a lot of trouble with Jesus being exclusively and essentially male. It doesn't make sense in the light of the Scriptures.

But back to MTV... This green sheet is a casting call after all. And it's asking such questions as, "Do you get nervous around women?," "Do the girls you meet think of you more like a brother...?", and "Do you find it difficult to pull yourself away from your busy schedule...?" "Everyone has their own unique reasons why they are still a virgin..."

The reasons MTV would prefer to avoid are the religious or patriarchal ones. That would get in the way of their telos after all. The loss of virginity under their control is a means to power for them, particularly in the form of ratings/advertising revenue etc.

There's been some talk scattered around about in the last few years the vocation of singlehood or singleness. I really don't think it's helpful to think about singleness as a vocation. Very few of us are meant to be single. These are solitary hermits. Instead, the singles problematized by the Church at present might be said to be in the other Process, not discernment about ordination but discernment about the relational community in whose midst we best will offer our members to God (including our sexual ones). Indeed, it's like any vocational discernment in that way. Many of my members are strongly devoted to planetary science in service to God. My members are also devoted to regular Office. Prayer, too, is a vocation. For some, it is their main one, though some like to brew alcoholic beverages on the side. But the discernment process about the use of sexuality isn't just about sex. Potential monastics probably focus very little on "Is celibacy a good idea?" but more on "Is the community good for me? Am I good for the community?" And I very much doubt any stable matrimonial/fratrimonial/sororimonial union can be based exclusively or even primarily on the question of "Do I want to have sex with this person for the rest of my life?" I think my father once said, "Look for a good sense of humor. It's the last to go."

And so my virginity chiefly stems from my continued discernment. While I'm leaning toward the married state, being a monastic has its temptations, though I wonder if the climate is right for a monk whose labor is science funded by NASA and the NSF (I'd garden, too, or wash dishes to fulfill the Rule). I happily will admit that I am sizing up almost every eligible single woman I meet, not as a sexual partner, but as a friend and every likewise eligible good friend as a potential wife. And while I have a wishlist in my mind, I'm fairly sure that God will help me find someone for whom I will be good and who will be good for me. And if I don't ever find the right relational community (look how long it took Bishop Wolf of Rhode Island), I shall find my true union in the Body in the end. Let's see MTV make a reality show about that.

Creator and Redeemer of All the Worlds

He is the Creator and Sustainer of all the worlds, whether those worlds are known or unknown to mankind. -sample that serves as an antiphon to J-Tron, "Via Media", My Apologies , Celtic Cross Productions, 2006.

Some interesting conversation started on Dean Knisely's blog . I have my own take on this question, because while I am not an astrobiologist per se , I do have very close interactions with them. In fact, I was accepted to a graduate program in astrobiology not too long ago. So I've had to reflect for some time on the implications of our continually growing knowledge about the conditions under which life evolved in this stellar system and on this planet and the increasing possibility that we are not so very unique in the scheme of things. What follows here is an exercise in the long view of affairs. Unless I am much mistaken, we will not confront the problem of extrasolar evangelism for a few centuries yet.

And in those centuries, the Church faces a crisis of affairs more potent than even the destruction of the western Roman Empire. I'm not sure what form it will take. On one hand, it could be an event of near human extinction in which our manipulations of the climate and planetary biogeochemistry finally reduce much of the planet to marginal human habitability for an extended period without the prospect of quick recovery. In that case, the Church may have to return to its role after the failure of Pax Romana victoriis Romanis to twist Augustus' odd phrase in the Res Gestae . But we must remember that the Church in that period was not just a caretaker of knowledge, but it was also a caretaker of values. Respect for innocent life and meum et tuum may not be upheld by law in future ages. Nor might there be much concern for the guilty. This is why it is so important for Christendom to maintain a modicum of its social teaching in the midst of regional disorders such as Zimbabwe and the military adventures of our own government. To where shall we look if it fails globally?

Alternately, our problems may be technologically soluble. Just this week, I was talking with a gentleman who raises funds for and otherwise promotes private experiments in nuclear fusion for power generation. While he admits the low likelihood of success of what he is doing, we might just get lucky. A new source of abundant energy, if properly distributed and used, would go a long way to mitigate the effects of the toxic mix of economic inequality and environmental degradation that is the wind in our door. But if technology pushes the limits of plasticity once more, we likely face another and epistemologically stranger outcome by the end of the century. Advances in biotechnology and computer science may present us with options for modifying ourselves and our children or just push us further into electronic intimacy, in which our presence to one another becomes more and more mediated by machine. C.S. Lewis envisioned that the Moon is constantly embroiled in civil war between the barren side that faces us and the fertile garden that he imagined on the other side. Of course, the "dark side" of the Moon is nothing like this. But his veiled talk of "cold marriages," where lovers construct robots with artificial gonads rather than accept in their own bodies physical intimacy and reproduction, may not be a lunatic fantasy in the world of 2090 (see the movie Demolition Man for another example). In the era which the futurists call the Singularity, I see the Church's witness to the Incarnation could be crucial. A God with us is a God who encourages us to be present and engaged with one another and with the raw physicality of the created order, even when we do not want to face them.

But in a few hundred years time, provided we are equipped for it, it will be quite easy for us to put a large transmitter array in orbit of Mercury or elsewhere and listen and look very carefully for the signs of other civilizations. Even within my lifetime, I will not be surprised to have seen evidence for the existence of a planet like our own. Three months or so of the Iraq war would pay for such a search (as it would pay for other, more fungible things). What should the Church's witness be to another sentient species? With what should we evangelize the stars?

In the words of Get Religion, astrobiology has a very strong religion ghost attached to it. Many trace the beginnings of the scientific investigation of life beyond the Earth to Giordano Bruno, who was condemned for heresy and burned at the stake in the Campo de Fiori in Rome on that account. Bruno speculated on limited evidence that the fixed stars were like the Sun and that there were an infinity of worlds orbiting their own stars. Descartes comes very close to admitting this, too, in his slightly later Treatise on Light , which remained unpublished until his death on that account. It's not clear what the nature of Bruno's heresy was, since the official record of the trial likely was suppressed and lost. A contemporary (Luigi Firpo) claimed the charges were:

"Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation.
Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
Dealing in magics and divination.
Denying the Virginity of Mary.

The charge of interest to this work is "claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity." Considering the nature of Bruno's other theological opinions, this was a penny compared to the pound. The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests his heresies veered toward Gnostic fantasies of various sorts including various beliefs anathematized by the Fifth Ecumenical Council concerning the Holy Spirit as anima mundi . But Bruno's celebrity is not the creature of anyone who cares about these matters, so I long had the impression that it was the plurality of worlds that so dismayed the Inquisition. After all, if there were intelligent life, would it be necessary for Christ to be incarnate on all of those worlds and die over and over again? C.S. Lewis may have had Bruno at the back of his mind when he orders the universe in his Space Trilogy to be ruled by Archons, angels of God that do act like animae mundorum . However, most planets including all of those outside the Solar System do not have life, regarding it as a burden or a humiliation. Venus has human life, thanks to the Incarnation, but they do not fall thanks to the assistance of a Christian Earthman. Martians apparently don't quite have free will. And if the Venusians had fallen, God would have had to come up with some new plan. They could not be justified by faith in God in Christ. Fortunately, we do not live in Lewis' modified Neoplatonic fantasy world or Tolkien's passingly similar Arda (Old Solar and Valinorean are practically the same language, after all. If you like the Lord of the Rings , you really should read The Space Trilogy).

To this soteriological puzzle, I propose an alternate solution to Lewis'. My first inspiration for this idea is that great hymn of Athenagoras many of us sing in the evening, "O gracious light...you are worthy at all times to be praised, o Son of God, o Giver of Life, and to be glorified throughout all the worlds." The 1979 BCP translates the Greek kosmos as "all the worlds." What is interesting about this translation is that it is perhaps the most accurate of all the translations I can read. The Latin has saecula , which is ridiculous, suggesting an extent of time usually signified by the Greek aion , though "aion" in the sense of "world to come" or "age to come" is a known use. Everyone else generally translates it as "world." The New Testament speaks of three kinds of worlds, oikoumene , which I take to mean the world of the secular powers, for this is the world of "and the decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." This is the world of our limited imagination and the world of our conceits about power. There is ge , the word for soil expanded to all the inhabited land. It's very important. John, who generally does not use it as much as the other Evangelists, uses it in places such as 12:24 and 12:32, where it has soteriological relevance, connecting Christ's death to curse of the ground and evil power of the air. But otherwise, John uses kosmos , famously at the words of John the Baptist, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." Τῇ ἐπαύριον βλέπει τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐρχόμενον πρὸς αὐτόν, καὶ λέγει, Ἴδε ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τοῦ κόσμου. . The world of John's Gospel is primarily the cosmos, a word best understood in English as "order" in the sense of the "created order." Thus, if we take John 3:16 literally, for instance, we must admit that salvation is through Christ's Incarnation on earth.

Moreover, the linguistics of the Great Commissions can be read to suggest the importance of humans to the economy of salvation generally. Matthew's version commands us to evangelize every ethnos . Mark's version tells us to go through the kosmos and preach the gospel to every ktisis or created being, which is a wide commission that only St. Francis and a few others have taken seriously. In the Song of the Three Young Men, the authors encourage the whole created order to praise the Lord, matching the scope of the Markan commission. The Acts commission speaks of the ge , but an alternate translation of eschatos ge might be "end of the world" as opposed to "furthermost part of the world." For God, time and space must be quite interchangeable, so it is quite interesting how terms about space and time are quite interchangeable in the Scriptures.

But these linguistic arguments matter very little if the Evangelists operated under a limited worldview and vision of the cosmos . If in their view, we were alone, their use of cosmos really might be restricted to the Earth. Although, as we will see later, I believe in the power of prophecy to put into words visions beyond the prophetic imagination, the argument from usage has been warned against since at least Augustine's treatment of the linguistic arguments about love in City of God that still stimulate the theological imagination (see Pope Benedict's Deus Caritas est . However, in the same way that love is one, I argue that salvation is one, through Jesus Christ, and chiefly but not exclusively mediated through the missionary efforts of His Church.

For indeed, the Evangelists likely did not have a limited vision of the created order and the importance of Christ's saving work to it. Their contemporary, the Apostle Paul, stretched the limits of the Hellenistic worldview when he wrote:

The created universe is waiting with eager expectation for God's sons to be revealed. It was made subject to frustration, not of its own choice but by the will of him who subjected it, yet with the hope that the universe itself is to be freed from the shackles of mortality and is to enter upon the glorious liberty of the children of God. Up to the present, as we know, the whole created universe in all its parts groans as if in the pangs of childbirth." (Romans 8:19-22).

And so there is to be no doubt about Paul's meaning (he isn't just talking about the natural environment on Earth), you can read Ephesians 1 or this famous line closing the book:

"Our struggle is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark age, against the superhuman forces of evil in the celestial spheres."

Yes, I realize there is nothing particularly obvious in these passages. But put into a more modern context, I suggest that we take them more seriously as encouragement to think about how Church can fulfill its commission to bring the fullness of Christ to all things in anticipation of the eschaton when we all shall be free.

Why Now?

One key mythos of science is that it constantly leads us to consider how small and insignificant we are before the infinity of the cosmos. While I admit the utility of this mythos for inculcating in us humility, I think there is a strong possibility that there is a happy medium between our insignificance and our centrality to the universe. I would argue that the human species arose at an opportune moment in the history of the universe. The primary evidence for this is chemical. The observations over the last decade of extrasolar planets have demonstrated something quite important about planets, they very much tend to form around stars with high amounts of heavy elements observed in their atmosphere, things like iron and magnesium (or carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen for that matter), which are essential for our enzymatic systems. Stellar evolution models suggest that the heavy element concentration of the stars (their metallicity) has increased over time, as the nuclear fusion processes that power the stars and their fiery destruction in supernovas gradually produce more and more heavy elements from the primal hydrogen and helium of the early Universe. These heavy elements also form the nuclei of the cores of the giant planets in our Solar System.

The Sun is a later generation star. Its initial heavy element reservoir, which condensed out to form the planets and similar bodies we know today, is a legacy of at least 500 stars by last count. Evidence for this inheritance comes from relics of these stars in the form of silicon carbide and diamond grains that formed from these stars and were blown out into the nebula out of which the Sun formed with different chemical properties than the meteorites in which they are typically found. It's possible that the Sun may be among the first generation of stars with enough heavy elements to form terrestrial planets, though that particular idea is controversial. But what if it is true? At this point, our planet had a variety of advantages:

It orbits a G-type star, which produces a significant flux of photons with energies between those necessary for electronic and vibrational transitions (tending toward low atmospheric absorption of incoming radiation). A planet orbiting a G type star at a distance at which it is generally warm enough to have water probably will not become tidally locked to its star (as Mercury and Venus in some sense have). Moreover, G-type stars have an early phase of strong UV flux followed by a period of gradual brightening, which may have been necessary for early organic synthesis and the development of photosynthesis. Although I would not go as far as James Lovelock in arguing for biological regulation of the Earth's climate, the possibility that the rate of evolution is optimized by a slowly changing radiation budget is intriguing. Moreover, if Lovelock is right, timing is crucial. Carbon dioxide (despite our hiccups) has been declining over the history of the Earth as the Sun has brightened. However, if carbon dioxide falls below 150 ppm, photosynthesis is greatly reduced. Thus in a few hundred million years, the Earth either will be too warm or too carbon-deficient for plant life.

In a few centuries, I suspect we will have a far better idea of how special we are and how early we are in the general scheme of intelligent life. One possibility is that we are among the first fruits of a brief flowering of intelligent life. In that case, the Scriptures give us hope of an eschaton in which Christ will recreate the universe and bring us into union with him. As the universe expands and we wonder if the rate of stellar enrichment in heavy elements will outpace the reduction in density, this is hope indeed. The era of the terrestial planets may be quite brief. To any civilization with our sophistication, the news we bring may be good indeed if we still hold it in sincerity.

Why Us?

The challenge of extrasolar evangelism, no doubt, will vex future theologians. After all, it's far easier for Jesus to be an "astral traveler" from the practical perspective. It would absolve us of responsibility if Jesus became incarnate for each fallen intelligent species. But my heart cries against this on several grounds. First, the universality of Christ and his sacrifice is limited by his "dying over and over again." The preacher of the Hebrews was insistent on one death alone to cleanse our conscience.

Second, the idea that Christ would have to become incarnate for each species presents problems for the principle of our equality before God. The kingdom of our God is one for every language, tribe, people, and nation. While the Creed we say today speaks of Christ becoming a human being, our future Creed may speak of the Creator becoming a creature. We have founded our principles of equality on us all being created in the image of God. Is the image of God to be found in our particular form? Or does it lie in our creative powers, truly iconic of the Creator? I won't pretend that this presents an evangelical challenge. But it will be best for our future relations with our extraterrestrial brothers and sisters if we are insistent that we are like them in the most fundamental way, that God created them in His image, and died for their sins in our common vulnerability. To argue otherwise will raise questions of superior and inferior and the spectre of exploitation. This is not to say that I am certain of this, and I think we will have to listen carefully to their stories and be prepared to have our minds changed. But I think our default assumption should be that we share the Kingdom with them through Jesus Christ, first revealed in the flesh in Bethlehem Ephrata.

Third, I fear there may be additional objections on the grounds that it will take a long time to evangelize the universe. What will happen to those who never hear the Word? In the first place, every other species will have the same opportunity as we do to know God through the order of his creation, which is evidence of the Son and therefore the Father. Those who live in this light have excuse on the day of judgment as Paul suggests. The larger problem lies in the harrowing of Hell, when Jesus supposedly preached to the "souls in prison." I still don't know how this is supposed to work with aliens.

Some also might wonder why should we be the only evangelists? If the acts of God were seen by all, it would be more efficient. But if we are among the first intelligent species, this makes some sense. We should realize these issues have arisen before. For the LORD made distinction between Israel and the nations, while proclaiming that the nations should have salvation in the seed of Abraham. At Morning Prayer lately, I have been reading the Story of the Three Young Men and the Fiery Furnace from Daniel. In this story, King Nebuchadnezzar learns of the power of the one true God through the faith in the face of death and deliverance of three of his court officials, who are Jewish. In this sense, humanity may be special, but it is an obligation. The maintenance of our habits and our faith in the darker corners of space will be a proclamation of Christ.

FutureScripture/LoveSounds

Let us conclude this fanciful set of speculations by considering a key question: if we are meant to evangelize space, how will the Scriptures speak to us if they are written from a worldview in which our present limits are very much the limits of the important universe. I would suggest that the Scriptures were revealed in such a way that this problem could be evaded by creating an analogy between outer space and the sea. Best of all, this analogy is at the very beginning of the Old Testament, where the Spirit hovers over the face of the waters. Other creation accounts suggest that God created the universe by killing the primal sea monster. Thus in the Scriptures, I think many references to the sea also could refer to outer space in the same way that many of the events of the history of Israel and Judah and the rituals of the Law also refer to life of Christ. The other planets then become islands and coastline. Think of what the Psalmist says, "The LORD is king. Let the earth rejoice and the multitude of the isles be glad!" (Psalm 97). It seems a tad redundant, but it might signify to us a wider view of creation. Or think on the words of Isaiah, "A bruised read he shall not break and a smoldering wick he shall not quench until he establishes justice on Earth and the coastlands wait for his teaching...Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the end of the earth: Let the sea and what fills it resound, the coastlands, and those who dwell in them" (Isaiah 42:3-4,10). Indeed, Isaiah is clearly referring to Earth as he knows it with Kedar and Sela giving glory. But as the Church has made a practice of Christological reading, She may in future have to practice cosmological reading. The coastlands indeed may be waiting for His teaching, groaning aloud for the revelation of the children of God. Amen.