One of the fascinating aspects of our debate over the cathedral at synod was what I will call here "debates within the debate."
I mention these not to relitigate the arguments made on the floor of synod but to make a point about the wide array of differences in our church. Not confined to You Know What!
Subsidiary Debate 1: church and state relationships. Should the church respect the state and its role in the life of the church (Romans 13, respect for God's appointed authorities)? Or, should the church be wary of the state since the latter can be an authority which seeks to suppress the authority of God (cf. Acts 4)?
Subsidiary Debate 2: church and community relationships. To what extent is the church for itself (as a worshipping community, as a group of people gathering regularly with shared commitments to ministry of Word and Sacrament) and for the community around it? May the latter shape the former? What role do buildings play in the life of the church and its reaching out to the community? Might the importance of a building for the wider community shape the building for the church within its walls? How does the active, believing, worshipping congregation connect with the vague spirituality of the unbaptised, little or no-belief community? These questions were touched on as we considered the past ministry and mission of the cathedral before the quakes, as we considered the possible future ministry and mission but did that prognosticating on the future state of church life, of spirituality in the community. They also arose in connection with the intangible notion of our relationship with the city and province, as well as with experiences of seeking to advance the gospel in our city with a broken cathedral.
Subsidiary Debate 3: appropriate Christian use of money. When is money spent on one desirable project "too much" money? As a diocese we have restored churches for smaller outlays of money than the cathedral will cost. The outlay on the cathedral is definitely "too much" for some members of Synod. We never actually asked the question, but what would be the point when "too much" was reached? Is spending money on aesthetics of church life (burial ointment for Jesus, stained glass windows, beautiful church buildings) compared to spending money on the poor (in our Chch city case, on mental health and on social housing) an either/or, or a both/and? The question "what would Jesus do?" was raised. An important question and one with some nuances to it ... since presumably Jesus wanted the cathedral in the 19th century!
Readers here who were at Synod might have other subsidiary debates to note in comments ...
But, nevertheless, a word about the You Know What discussion
We had an hour's discussion of the Motion 29 Working Group Interim report (same sex blessings). Afterwards I realise that the contributions to the discussion represented three levels of "difference" in our Diocese.
First, and most obviously, differences of views on the rightness of blessing.
Secondly, and fairly obviously, differences in starting point for those views - different underlying theologies and ways of doing theology. (Note yesterday's post here on ADU).
Thirdly, and not so obviously to me until a conversation sparked the thought, the difference between those who feel they can live with difference on this matter and those who feel they cannot. A difference about difference!
That is, when the proposal makes a way for us to be a church living with difference on the matter of blessing, one explanation of rejection of the proposal seems to be that it is not imaginable that such living with difference can take place.
50 comments:
"That is, when the proposal makes a way for us to be a church living with difference on the matter of blessing, one explanation of rejection of the proposal seems to be that it is not imaginable that such living with difference can take place." - Dr.Peter Carrell -
A very good description, Peter, of the difference between those of us who ARE willing to live with different theological viewpoints (perhaps contrasting the elements of God's Mercy with God's Judgement - the latter faculty belonging rightly to God and not us); and those who are not.
Other significant differences, which seem to have been accepted by both sets of believers are (1) Re-Marriage of Divorcees; (2) Marriage of people with no intention of procreation (incapable or too old for such a preoccupation);
(3) The Blessing of Armies and Vehicles of armed combat.
Each of these 3 involves a ceremony of 'Blessing' by the Church. And yet we balk at encouraging the Blessing of a monogamously faithful S/S couple whop have committed themselves to "live together in love and faithfulness to their lives' end" ?
Hi Peter,
Your third level of difference could be further refined, I think. For there are different ways of living with difference and motion 29 offers one option, and not a very helpful one in my view.
What concerns me is that the report looks to enshrine an element of sectarianism within the polity of our church. I don't think that is a good way of living with difference for it effectively sends each party to their corner and erects institutional structures to keep them apart. Far from enabling further conversation, I think it shuts it down. Have we really got to that point as a church?
Last night, our archdeaconry had a robust discussion of the report ahead of the up-coming Dunedin synod. As we exchanged our different viewpoints, I realised that such a meeting of difference would not be possible if the recommendations of the report were to be adopted.
Malcolm
So you are saying Malcolm - are you not - that you personally are unable (unwilling?) to live with those who might elect to live with same-sex blessings in ACANZP.
A straight answer would be preferred.
Hi Malcolm
The challenge then is to come up with a way forward which avoids that sectarianism and maintains conversation.
Do you (or your archdeaconry) have a view on whether alternative episcopal oversight could help?
Further to my first sentence: do you envisage a way forward which permits SSB to occur AND which avoids sectarianism?
So far the proposal is the best idea I have heard - our own synod heard many (fair, well made) criticisms of the proposal. Yet nothing was offered as an alternative way forward ...
That money one is difficult; I wonder if Jesus would see it in terms of money or in terms of value for the Kingdom of God or what is done for the Glory of God. Perhaps it is too hard enmeshed as we are in the empirical way of seeing the world for us to really know. Slowly making my way through Justin Welby's book on Mammon; makes for thought-provoking and counter-intuitive thinking, even if it hurts my brain.
Dear Peter; reflecting on this perennial justice issue - of the recognition(or not) of the diversity of human beings in their gender and sexuality identity - I was glad to see this comment appearing on today's 3-minute retreat on the Loyola (Roman Catholic) website:
"The journey of faith is not just a “me and God” experience. The Holy Spirit works through the Church to lead us to build a world of peace and justice. God made us for lives in community. The contemporary value of individualism, in which one is concerned only with his or her personal experience, can lead to a dead end. Seeking justice is a way of living that makes us vulnerable, because it means that we trust God and not simply our own desires. What we do, or refrain from doing, reveals who we are as followers of God."
The diversity of God's Creation leads us to the necessity of learning to live together with every aspect of it - and that means our human diversity.
Hi Peter,
I do have ideas about how we can proceed as a church, though I don't pretend to have an ultimate solution. Neither do I pretend that anyone is particularly interested in what I have to say (apart from your kind self). But if a report is asking for feedback then there is no point rejecting criticism simply because no alternative measure was supplied. And I do not accept the notion that the present recommendations are the best we can do, and that no other options are available.
When the path one take leads down a canyon to the foot of a cliff, the temptation is to believe the only option is to climb. But it is always possible to retrace your steps and look for an easier path up. It is a counsel of despair to refuse to turn around on the grounds that one has expended too much energy getting into the predicament in the first place.
No one at my archdeaconry meeting seemed particularly happy with the report as it stood. I found myself in sympathy with those with whom I differ on this issue, who lamented the way our church is looking to side-step the theological issue by giving the state the right to determine which unions we will bless.
People from across the spectrum were concerned about the implications of giving bishops too powerful a role in determining the policy of their particular dioceses. That fitted with my criticism that the report thinks it has avoided the constitutional issues involved but has instead undermined its very role in our church's polity by delegating it instead to the preference of a bishop.
A number expressed the view that, though it was a bad deal, it would do as a temporary measure and we should just take what we can get and move on. That sentiment then provoked one vicar to warn that over a third of his parish members had already signalled their intention of leaving the church over this issue, and so what might seem an trivial matter for some (why are we still talking about this?) would come at an enormous cost for others.
These are all signs to me that the General Synod has arrived at the foot of a sectarian cliff.
Malcolm
More briefly than I would like to do, Malcolm, as off to a several day event, yes, I can see that we may be needing to not resolve the matter at GS but take a further step in the dialectic. More work on theology? Episcopacy? Ecclesiology!
Incidentally, I am now a GS member for Chch ... along with Jay and Al as the clergy slate :)
Dear Ron,
This is what I have learnt. When one conflates argument with identity one ends up with cycles of self-justification (I'm a good person) and demonisation (they would say that!). That holds true with all manner of conflicts, from marriage to Synods.
Consequently, I try to engage with my debating partners with the assumption that they disagree with me for the best of reasons. That seems to me to be the best way to keep open the possibility of future compromise and reconciliation.
So, if you would like to assess my person ablility/inability to live with those who disagree with me on this issue, I would suggest you come down to Dunedin and look me up for a conversation.
Malcolm
Dear Malcolm,
I'm afraid that, at the age of 88 I am no longer disposed to travel around New Zealand to engage in theological debate. This is why I engage with the ADU thread on matters of Evangelical piety and praxis. I had not realised you had moved to Dunedin - to Saint Matthews, a doughty stronghold of Evangelicalism in that Southern Diocese of ACANZP. I remember you as a member of the local fraternity in Christchurch.
My question of you, Malcolm - in the light of your seeming reluctance to accept the tenor of Motion 29 - was merely to ascertain your bedrock feeli9ng about the Motion. Is it, in its present state, a possible cause of your opting out of ACANZP? Or would you be prepared to ever accept that our Church could accede to the provision of a rite for Same-Sex Blessings?
Agape, Fr.Ron
Dear Ron,
Again you are conflating difference and identity.
For your further information, I am actually the Priest in Charge at Taieri.
Malcolm
“That is, when the proposal makes a way for us to be a church living with difference on the matter of blessing, one explanation of rejection of the proposal seems to be that it is not imaginable that such living with difference can take place.” Peter C
As you will well know Peter, since I sent you a copy of my essay, “Whose Language? Which Grammar? ‘Inclusivity and diversity’, versus the crafted Christian concepts of catholicity and created differentiation”, when it was published by ATF Press in 2006, our culture has become pretty slack, let alone trendy, with its use of language around “difference”. But then, that very move is itself a calculated one, allowing for the fudging of basic category mistakes, and so permitting continuing obfuscation in those realms where Christians should delight in clarity of vision. That is, if we were to allow the sorts of vision granted by those hard won victories of the Early Church, when they engaged their own cultural confusions in the Light of the Gospel of Jesus, Word of the Father, and bestower of the Holy Spirit of Truth.
But alas! As you intimate on another thread: there’s a bit of pollution upstream historically! And we in the Western Church seem to have lost the will and/or ability to catechetize as they once also did in the Early Church.
The upshot of these opening remarks. Some differences are incumbent upon us, as expressions of the created order; some differences have surely been brought about by our fallen condition; some differences are but jolly expressions of human creativity (think only senses of humour between the US and UK, let alone Kiwi!); some differences are parasitic upon the good, being but vapidly evil.
The failure of imagination you bemoan might just be a function of our lazy inability to work far harder at sifting among these sorts of differences, succumbing to those foisted upon us by the weight of recent cultural history, while seemingly relishing those that foster in fact our own prejudices - whatever their aetiology.
I sense Malcolm’s image of a canyon with its cliff end has great merit. Further, his sectarian conclusion agrees rather well with my own: “In effect [as the various groups evolve], our Anglican episcopal structure and discipline, even as people defer formally to their bishop, will have become Presbyterian or even Congregationalist in practice.”
My own reservation about this Interim Report’s essential proposals stem from its unfortunate brief on the one hand, and then with its having nonetheless to smuggle in an operational theology, or rather ecclesiology, on the other. As with anything of this importance, it seeks legitimation. We Christians may only defer ultimately to the One Author of our faith and his own witness to his economy, when seeking such authority. Where ‘differences’ emerge, we’ve little choice but to evaluate (that key word!) the respective sources of their voices. This is the more necessary when, at first blush at least, we’ve two completely opposing voices in contention, not just ‘differing’ ones. This is not a recipe for harmony, but for radical discord, and eventual disintegration. And you are right: all mostly due to a lack of imagination ... Yet imagination applied to spheres and realms far richer than those hitherto entertained. Which is why I’ve written those two pieces to date in response, and which the WG will be receiving formally in due course.
Bryden's 'two opposing voices" were present in the issue of our Cathedral - each with their own particular eccleisiological justification. Look which one won out. Each side thought they had God on their side. The same could be true of this current argument. We may all be surprised by the outcome. The real question is: will we each remain as part of ACANZP whatever the outcome?
We must all bear in mind the fact that we each have our very own theological justification for our belief on this issue of gender and sexuality. And, as the majority in the Cathedral situation determined the outcome on that issue. It may well be the majority that determines the issue of same-sex blessings.
“That is, when the proposal makes a way for us to be a church living with difference on the matter of blessing, one explanation of rejection of the proposal seems to be that it is not imaginable that such living with difference can take place.” Peter C
Peter, most of us can live with others holding a variant in the views that we hold, if we can specify a likely state of affairs in which we might choose that variant ourselves. (For example, I believe that a Third World War is probable, but I would give it up if I could imagine an impoverished and embarrassed nuclear power not using arms to improve its condition.) Most toleration is of that easy kind. We do not see it much on That Topic because few can identify, even hypothetically, a contingency under which their minds would change.
Bowman Walton
Yes and no, Bowman and Bryden
To a degree you are simultaneously (A) drawing out the genuine challenge of living with certain kinds of difference while (B) over thinking things (IMHO).
For instance on "The Difference" I ask myself why some of those who seemingly cannot live with that difference nevertheless do live within a Diocese in which there are partnered same-sex couples involved in the ministry. On that level I am simply asking to have the imagination to extend that living on that difference. I also ask myself (as often noted here) why we can live with difference on remarriage after divorce (it's adultery versus no it's not) but not live with The Difference. I don't think lots of thinking is needed, just some frank acknowledgement of what is already being lived with.
On the other hand, I do "get it" that Anglicans do not always live well with difference: we won't accept Methodist presbyters into licensed priestly ministry without episcopal laying on of hands ... so, indeed, differences matter and the matter which matters has an underlying, reasonable theology to it. So, yes, that is also the case with those differing over The Difference.
Hi Ron
I am not aware of any doctrinal issues surrounding the cathedral decision.
You can scarcely be unaware of doctrinal issues in respect of blessings performed by priests and bishops, of rites authorised by bishops, etc.
Is it worth acknowledging matters which the Anglican church does not see as straightforward in terms of making decisions and which have nothing to do with "the issues"? And which, if a simple majority decision were passed in favour of change, could well lead to people leaving our church
- licensing presbyters of the Methodist or Presbyterian churches who have not otherwise been ordained by a bishop;
- admittance to communion of those not baptised into the Trinity (e.g. Mormons);
- accepting the Primacy of the Pope (a matter raised here and there in ARCIC discussions but not one agreed to by any Anglican province's synod/convention as far as I know);
- per saltum ordination (often raised by Bosco on his blog but, again, not agreed to anyAnglicanwhere that I know of);
- prohibiting the common cup at the eucharist (e.g. for hygienic reasons, or because exBaptists were now a majority in our synods);
- reversing our decision to admit women to the three orders of ordained ministry;
- reversing our decision to offer remarriage of divorcees without recourse to episcopal permission.
I think we could add to such a list of matters on which Anglicans do not agree, on which a goodly minority of Anglicans could be placed in a position of contemplating leaving the church if a simple majority agreed to make change.
In comparison the cathedral is a low level matter!
Once again Peter I sense you are succumbing to the temptation to elide different things. Notably; I am being asked not just to ‘tolerate’ certain things, but to actively condone them, by actively not condemning them. These are not Bowman’s “variants”; they are categoric opposites.
And please; let’s can those furffies once and for all. Divorce-and-remarriage is in principle NOT equivalent to SSB/SSM. The CoE’s Winchester Report (2002) addresses the matter well; nor could its approach be extrapolated. Or have we so soon forgotten Andrew Goddard on Fulcrum ...?!
True; so lax has our entire view of ‘marriage’ become that in all seriousness we have those two formal categories outlined by Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson & Robert George in What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (Encounter Books, 2012): conjugal marriage versus revisionist form of contract. And here our own often lax church discipline has surely aided and abetted this ‘revision’. For which I sense due repentance might be in order.
Far from “over-thinking” therefore, I venture we’re just victims of bricolage.
Hi Bryden
With remarriage after divorce it is possible to hold that remarriage can involvement repentance and therefore the sin of adultery is not incurred and it is possible to hold that no repentance is possible and thus adultery is involved and continues to be involved. Somehow the church lives with this difference over what is sin and what is not.
In what sense is difference over SSB different "in principle"? Is it possible that those fine documents you cite are wrong? (Or, at least wrong in misunderstanding the analogy?). With SSB we have Christians appealing to Scripture to say that certain marriage-like partnerships between two people of the same sex do not involve sin and may be blessed and we have Christians who appeal to Scripture to say that such partnerships necessarily involve sin and should not be blessed.
Now I happen, and you also, to not accept the strength of the argument for SSB from Scripture to be as strong and well-founded as Scriptural arguments for the possibility that divorce might be repented from (despite Jesus not offering a direct thought to support that!). But I do continue to find it a puzzle that you take two matters involving sexual sin and argue that "in principle" they differ from each other.
What is the principle? In Leviticus 18, for instance, there are no "in principle" differences between (e.g. from the list) bestiality, incest, adultery, child sacrifice. There is just a list of sins.
"If we allow X, then pretty soon they will want us to allow Y."
"Well, we already allow X, so why not allow Y too?"
Peter and Bryden, arguments that we are sliding down a slippery slope are irrational whether one is a conservative dreading the bottom or a liberal enjoying the ride. They are irrational in that they substitute contagion, catching the speaker's sentiment like a flu, for reason, making an inference that illumines the matter at hand for one who saw the matter differently before. Whatever we think of the slope, comments on the feelings about the slide are not valid arguments, and we ask hearers to be less rational that they should be when we make them.
But apart from considerations of reason and epistemic virtue, feelings about slopes are really feelings about the law, and Christians should think about those feelings with respect to their knowledge of the gospel/law dialectic. Here I will take as given James B Torrance's distinction between legal repentance and evangelical repentance. Everyone agrees that God promises forgiveness to the penitent, but the gospel of Jesus entails a certain priority that the Reformers knew well. Incredulity and misunderstanding about that priority generates disagreements about slippery slopes and indeed about That Topic.
Legal repentance (bad; do not say this): *Repent, and if you do, you will be forgiven.*
Evangelical repentance (good; do say this): *Because Christ has died for your sins, you are forgiven and reconciled; therefore, repent and walk in the way of Christ.*
Why is forgiveness prior to repentance? The Reformed Torrance explains: “Repentance is the work of the Spirit in bringing home to us the meaning of Calvary—a response to grace, not a condition of grace.” Or from the Lutheran side, we could recall Jenson:
“The gospel’s specific morality is a morality of freedom. We love, not because we ought to, not because we fear God will withdraw his love if we fail to love, but because in Christ we may love. This is the liberty of the sons and daughters of the Father. This is what it means to live in the divine society of the Holy Trinity. In the words of St Augustine of Hippo: “Love and do what you will” (Homily 7 on 1st John)." (Bryden, that's Story and Promise, p. 81).
Father Al Kimel once restated this in a way that approximates the cadences of Jenson's lectures and seminars at Gettysburg:
"Because Jesus has promised that your life is and will be fulfilled in his coming kingdom, you may give generously toward the feeding and sheltering of the poor.
"Because Jesus was faithful to you unto death and beyond death, you may be faithful to your marital vows.
"Because the cross of Jesus is the way of peace and life, you may stop abusing your spouse.
"Because Jesus will provide for both you and your baby, no matter what hardship you may have to endure, you may unequivocally renounce the killing of your unborn child.
"Because Christ is your food unto everlasting life, you may fast and embrace the ascetical disciplines.
When Christians discuss moral issues, what they say either reduces to statements like these or else they are confused about Galatians 3 and the gospel as Protestants try to understand it.
“But I do continue to find it a puzzle that you take two matters involving sexual sin and argue that "in principle" they differ from each other.
What is the principle? In Leviticus 18, for instance, there are no "in principle" differences between (e.g. from the list) bestiality, incest, adultery, child sacrifice. There is just a list of sins.” Peter C.
It’s all in the approach Peter, what we are seeking to achieve. As with anything, the very answer is largely part and parcel of the kind of question being asked - or not asked. Alter the basic question, and differing sorts of answers become possible/impossible.
From your point of view, it’s all about “accommodation”; and in addition, accommodation on account of unity, and then a perceived form of unity, finally. The brief of the WG is no different either: their form of question determines too the sorts of answers available.
My entire approach has always been and continues to be, as noted in my first response to the Interim Report, rather different. Not least, I strongly sense we need at least to make a stab at how on earth we ended up here, with two opposing stances. At root, I maintain my diagnosis of two alternative anthropologies, the one a bastard step-child of the other (as I term it). For the point is not exactly those sorts of so-called ‘easy proof texts’ we pull out of the Scriptures, and throw around (viz now your list even). As with that classic 4th C example of Arianism, so today, it’s a basic case of dianoia (the term comes from Athanasius) which is at stake, and from which we may establish those root paradigms we use and through which we evaluate any and all ‘readings’.
The upshot; SSB/SSM is a tragic irony, a counterfeit even. And its very simulacra nature allows it to thrive in our present social setting.
If you were really wanting some sort of OT parallel, while deferring to Ephraim Radner’s reading of Lev 18 in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible Series, I’d go to Hosea (and other parallels like 1 Kgs 18). It’s here that we are confronted with two opposing alternatives for how the community (NB this communal aspect; it’s the church which is being asked to go down a particular road) are to render their trust, via the very medium of the prophet and his prophecy. In the NT, we’ve the Book of Revelation, one with which you are most familiar. Again, the sexual element is but a profound symbol: Jerusalem versus Babylon = ?!?! And it’s because we are seemingly insistent on only addressing those individuals involved, on their desire for SSB/SSM, and avoiding the necessary concomitant communal aspect which both OT and NT always invoke as well, that you and I are mostly talking past each other, with your not getting the difference ... For why are those activities of Lev 18 prohibited? “I am YHWH!” Lev 18:2-5, Ex 20:2-3. An entire dianoia is required of God’s People, and of all those members who constitute her. The levels of reality run all the way, from top to bottom, from bottom to top, an integrated whole. We’ve today simply lost that entire imaginative sense ...
Agreed Bowman; many a contemporary Evangelical and/or conservative are simply afflicted with a sense of Positive Law, as if that were somehow a Gospel Imperative. Enough said!
The alternative, as I see it, is best found in my God’s Address - Living with the Triune God. You’ve also mentioned Richard Hays in the past. The Moral Vision of the NT: A Contemporary Introduction to NT Ethics (Harper, 1996) is a good place to go, I agree. Most fulsome perhaps now is Oliver O’Donovan’s recently completed trilogy, Ethics as Theology: Self, World and Time; Finding and Seeking; Entering into Rest, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. I fancy it’ll become a classic for years to come.
Transposing That Topic into the gospel of Christ better informs our understanding of it in several ways. I will mention just four.
(1) The gospel/law dialectic. If several chapters of unambiguous scripture answered every conceivable question about SSM, they would be chapters about law. Long exegetical discussions are stimulating, but on That Topic they are usually expeditions to discover the law. Now law is important, but it is not gospel addressed to a hearer. In decades of argument about That Topic, there are notoriously few instances in which a speaker defending a view of the law has persevered to a presentation of it as gospel. The few that tried produced something that sounded suspiciously like an attempt to make the law prior to the gospel after all. No reformation Protestant can believe that.
(2) The gospel, metaphysics, and the binary. Anglicans have an English problem: we avoid metaphysics as a cultural reflex even where we are staking our souls on some bet about non-empirical reality. Sometimes that appears to work-- I think that is a delusion-- sometimes that fails. In discussing That Topic, as earlier in discussing the ordination of women, many on both sides simply bracket the male/female binary and go on to either argue its importance in law or else to dismiss its importance for spirituality. Both evasions have been closer to our cultural project of materialism than to the scriptural use of binary as gospel.
(3) The gospel, metaphysics, and the body. Discussion recurs to two complexes of texts in the canon-- one on the Presence with Israel (eg Leviticus) and one on the Presence in the *totus Christus* of Jesus, word, cup, and assembly in the world (eg Pauline letters). Nobody disputes that the Presence is important; many try hard not to see that presence-- even the Presence-- entails embodiment. Neither the left nor the right will accept that it is close to apostasy when it refuses to work out its position with respect to some committed understanding of the body of a Christian as the new locus of the Presence.
(4) The gospel and nescience. The first, second, and third problems lead to a fourth. Many sound as though they posit a right-- prior to anything that the Church knows about God, Christ, etc-- to walk blindly amid spiritual realities mentioned in scripture and recognised in the tradition. That is, many imply, though few explicitly claim, that there is a right to be what the Psalmist calls a fool, and some do so on both the left and the right. The left is more or less intolerant of any thought that is not from the cutting edge of culture, while the right is adamant that authority without understanding is still obligatory. Both smash against two scriptural rocks: (a) in the Body, the wise preach the gospel to the fools and help them to repent, often; (b) alienation from that Body is life outside the Kingdom.
Recently in North America, we had a total eclipse of the sun. At midday, the fiery disk was darkened, but the corona around it still scattered light down through the atmosphere to the wings of passing jets, the windows of tall buildings, the tops of trees, and the streets and sidewalks where people move about. One could get used to getting around in this light, and in places near the poles there are some who do just that. But if the fiery disk suddenly emerged from shadow, it could hurt one's eyes.
When I was a much younger man, my quarrel with most Protestant churches was that they had become so good at navigating in the Enlightenment darkness that they had come to need that darkness to carry on. And the darkness that they needed was so dark that when I first read critical biblical scholarship, it sounded refreshingly believing by comparison. For all of its methodical scepticism, such scholarship was still telling a story about communities that believed more about God, the cosmos, and the soul than any church that I knew and was a far better community of human beings for it. If "superstitiously" believing that people rise from the dead once made people delight in God, share goods in common, and take care of the poor, then pragmatic reason that made people worry about their taxes and pension plans instead was not always a good thing. It certainly made clergy nervous.
In that dark, I reached out. One hand stretched to dogmatics and then systematics-- clear speech that there is a God, he is knowable, and he has made himself known, illuminating all of life. What real believer could object to that? The other stretched toward liturgics as the memory of how a believing people acts in the Presence to become that Presence for the life of the world. Again, the vast majority of all the Christians who have ever lived have been inspired in this way.
God hates nothing that he has made; but the Holy Spirit is dissolving all those churches that came to love the dark too much. St Augustine suggests that life is a voyage that takes one to many ports that are less than our destination, and that tarrying too long in any one of them is an easy sin that can only be avoided by keeping the destination in mind. For a few centuries it was hard for many to think the thoughts of the apostolic faith or to embody the doxological Presence. Were they right to evade battles to which they did not feel equal? Are those raised on their dilute religion truly faithless or just invincibly ignorant? We need not answer these questions to know that the sun has come out, and that our eyes must adjust to its light.
Bowman Walton
"it’s because we are seemingly insistent on only addressing those individuals involved, on their desire for SSB/SSM, and avoiding the necessary concomitant communal aspect which both OT and NT always invoke as well, that you [Peter] and I [Bryden] are mostly talking past each other, with your not getting the difference ...
Bryden, if the difference between your view and Peter's is "the necessary concomitant communal aspect which both OT and NT always invoke," could you say a bit more about what you mean by that?
What I heard you say-- what you may not have intended to say-- is a rather Hauerwasian thing: the *totus Christus* bears witness to the redeemed male/female binary, and the fidelity and clarity of that witness precludes any association with practises, whether of churches or of individuals, that blur its poles. If that is your view, then you will know better than I that it perplexes others at five points--
(1) Christians have covenantal obligations as a people and as members that other human beings do not have. Proponents of SSB/SSM have erred in thinking that the morality of the Church is a universal one with no responsibility to the Kingdom.
(2) Methodologically, one discovers the morality of the Church or of Christians by identifying that to which we bear particularly witness. Proponents of SSB/SSM have erred in positing a universal moral sense that even non-believers possess and then seeing what practises comport with that moral sense.
(3) If the gospel is true, then men and women will be reconciled as they are redeemed. (To me, this recalls St Maximus's famous statement in the Ambigua that in every soul in him Christ reconciles Creator and creation, heaven and earth, things invisible and things visible, paradise and the world, man and woman.) Proponents of SSB/SSM have erred in not seeing this as gospel.
(4) Same sex attraction is not outside these realities, nor are those who have it excused from the duties of Christian witness. Proponents of SSB/SSM have erred in valuing an abstract equality of all couples everywhere over the gospel responsibilities of homosexuals in the Church.
In short--
(5) Proponents of SSB/SSM have erred in asking that the Church be both itself and the world at large, which is absurd.
Is that your somewhat close to your view?
Bowman Walton
Nice parable Bowman! May be too the heifer's scarlet thread, tied to one's sunglasses to keep them from falling off one's neck, could be brought to bear ...?
Clarification: Bryden (8:15) is responding to an earlier comment of Bowman's than Bowman's 7:22 comment (which I had not posted by 8.15 pm)
Bryden and Bowman
I agree that if SSB is about blessing SSM as though SSM is what the Bible talks about when talking about marriage, then Bryden's "tragic irony" applies. Two men do not a husband and a wife make. Nor do two women.
But I see SSB as responding to another phenomenon, one which your talk of correct theology and incorrect anthropology does not readily touch (at least in the sense that it is complex, subtle and deep in a manner which is not easily conveyed to non-theological Anglicans). That is the simple phenomenon of (say) two men finding loving companionship in each other when they are incapable of finding that in a woman. In that loving companionship they impress upon family and friends, even congregation that theirs is a relationship of support, and a relationship which is bound in covenant of commitment and permanent partnership - drawing on precisely those characteristics of marriage which involve the demands of discipleship and, here is a point, raise the question of whether prayerful support will come from the body of Christ.
A whole bunch of Anglicans (and other Christians) are struggling to understand how this involves a faulty anthropology, a counterfeit of marriage and deserves less than careful considerateness from those who follow the compassionate Christ.
Now, if I understand you Bryden, your theologising on the matter needs to say, in much simpler terms, why this phenomenon of human sociality is wrong; and if I understand you Bowman, your theologising on the matter is in fact sympathetic.
Or, have I missed something?
"But I see SSB as responding ... whether prayerful support will come from the body of Christ."
From the limited stance of seeking some 'accommodation', your putting it like this Peter sounds so 'rational' and almost 'obvious'. For all that, what it fails to address is just this: "From the beginning ..." When Jesus was around he encountered similar 'sound' lines of argument. Yet he simply refused to entertain them. His approach sought to create an alternative imagination altogether, one far bolder, far more reaching, one that dared to see new life from the dead.
Thanks Bryden
Yes, I see that and I think I could explain that to non-theological Anglicans!
But I think I am still a bit concerned for lonely souls: it is not good for man to be alone.
That too belongs to "the beginning."
Can the church make no accommodating affirmation, no affirming comment on two people, otherwise not constituted to marry the opposite sex, who have found companionship?
Bowman at 7:22 pm; sorry to have caused confusion earlier.
True enough, Stanley Hauerwas is a good contemporary example of someone who seeks an explicit theological ethic derived from the particulars of the Story of Jesus, which very narrative runs mostly contrary to the natural grain of post Enlightenment westerners. In which light, your five theses are pretty well where I'd land. (Even though I'd establish it and express it slightly differently.) And so running with your particular baton ...
To elaborate somewhat on number 3. When I spoke of things running from bottom to top, and from top to bottom, I was intentionally envisaging a more richly imagined world than our individualistic, instrumentalist one. Instead, it seems to me a traditional Christian view (whether that of Maximus or even CS Lewis) figures a world so saturated with signs of God's love in Christ the Word that where we seek to formalize a couple's fidelity in blessing that relationship, then we might expect a far richer resemblance than ... sameness. And that runs all the way from hormones through physiological shapes to animus/anima (and obviously through procreation where appropriate), ebullient with the desire of The Beloved for his Bride, itself but an echo of that exquisite delight between Father and Son, eternally!! And They are surely NOT the Same!! (Poor Lossky; what would he be thinking ...?!)
Lastly, re #4. Perhaps together with Oliver O'Donovan, I am still waiting for a genuine conversation to begin regarding how members of the church who find themselves attracted to members of the same sex might duly witness to the kind of reality displayed in #3 above. Here's hoping! But perhaps Jana Marguerite Bennett's Singleness and the Churchor her earlier Water is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian theology of Marriage and Singleness both begin to point us in the right direction.
Peter @ 9:33. What was "From the beginning ..." and what was thrown into our world from Jesus' New Beginning display both continuities and elements of discontinuity. See now my two most recent posts for how these may be better teased out than in postmodern simulacra.
Bryden, quoting Andrew Goddard and Fulcrum in the same beath certainly does not impress anyone who is not a conservative on this issue. Try someone a little more authoritative on pastoral theology.
Bryden, we are eager to know what you think! My 7:22 was kindly meant, and if it did not clarify your thoughts, it does not matter. If it is not at all what you have in mind, just type "no" and we can move on. BW.
Peter, I still have the same view that I had a year ago.
The problem that you are describing is a civil problem and it has has been solved by your parliament in the only way that Caesar can, given that Caesar does not read the scriptures with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Full stop.
The question is: what, if anything, is there for a church as the Body of Christ to do in this slightly different circumstance?
There is an argument that is easy to reject: solemnisation by Caesar is not valid, not good enough for Christians, not traditional enough for Anglicans, not affirming enough for couples, etc. But Christ is not in competition with Caesar's registration of cars, boats, distilleries, relationships, protected habitats, qualified physicians, sanitary kitchens, etc. Social reification for the sake of good order is what Caesar does all the day long to maintain power. No couple has ever needed a church to couple, and it undermines the state, the civil community, and actual couples to say otherwise.
So liberated from that superstition, have we moved on to actually urgent questions? Suicide? Human trafficking? Injustices and dangers associated with neo-liberalism? Alienation from the environment on which all life depends? No? Well then, have we at least moved on to actual concerns of faith? The Bible and science? The no longer so New Perspective on Paul? The arguments of New Atheists? Radical retrievals of orthodoxy? No, not even those? Well, why not? Why have Anglicans missed more than a generation of the life of the Body of Christ to talk about gay sex instead?
Cont'd
For the same reason that Armenian priests still occasionally perform rooster sacrifices for students taking university entrance exams. Pre-Christian Armenia sacrificed roosters to solve some of life's problems-- sickness, infertility, drought. When Armenia became the first Christian state, the Church took over the rite to establish the local church as the place where God meets man. And so, from late in the third century to the present day, the most blessed Trinity have been invoked to do good for people earnest enough about their need to pay a priest to cut the throat of a rooster. Tellingly, the fathers did this, but not the rabbis who had no social ambitions in Armenia.
One would think that the rite would have faded from mind a millennium or so ago-- it is rarer insofar as Armenians less often have roosters at home-- but all that has changed is the rationale for the rite. Once it required a human calamity; now it requires an examination.
You see, sacrifices are social rituals. It is meaningful to have a priest brandish a blade against the throat of a bird. It is meaningful for a father to pay the priest on behalf of a son. It is meaningful to be the son whose father paid for the sacrifice. It is meaningful to be invited to the sacrifice, and there are ancient customs associated with that. (It is meaningless to mark the son's exam paper, but this is not part of the ancient rite.) Today's clergy grumble, but they still want a ritual tie to families that are not otherwise close to their churches.
Whatever the original pagan rationale for the rite's efficacy, it no longer matters; it no longer even matters whether the rite is believed to be effective. What matters is that human families and communities are held together by ritual processes and for some rural Armenians, rooster sacrifice still does this. And for that reason, there may even be-- I have not heard of this directly-- a movement for *rooster equality* among those who want priests to cut the throats of roosters for their daughters too!
SSB is rooster equality for ACANZP. Theologically, church weddings have been a solution in search of a problem since the High Middle Ages. Nobody could convincingly relate the sexual act to a proper sacrament. In Early Modernity, no reformer of the C16 numbered them among the sacraments. (Think about this: even Luther, who praised marriage and his wife the most, included penance of all things, but not weddings.) In Late Modernity, ordinary fornication, cohabitation, and divorce mean that solemnisation is no longer the rite of passage that it was. But we still have family members that we only see when their children marry or their parents die, and there are still priests who are bad at keeping a connection without a ritual. This is most true where, not to put too fine a point on it, the Anglicans of interest are "non-theological" because they are non-believing too. And so the show must go on. Anglicans are Armenians.
But a rite that seems to say false things about the orders of creation, marriage, the gospel, etc will never be acceptable to Christians who are *non-non-theological* because they believe. And a church cannot exist without them.
I say: substitute house-blessings for couple-blessings. It is a much better ritual process; it was established by the example of our Lord; it does not compete with the state rite; it is not burdened by association with sex; it does not discriminate unfairly against companionship not based on sex.
Bowman Walton
HI Bowman and Bryden
Once again, my apologies - between going to bed, downloading emails to more than one device, I have managed to publish replies from you to each other out of sequence.
My own response to both your eruditions will need to wait 12+ hours - I am about to host Sara Miles from San Francisco through today and into the early evening ...
Ciao
Bowman, just thinking out loud... surely Jesus' "Peace be to this house" means peace to the people, relationships, and physical place where they dwell? And that there may be all manner of goodness and brokenness in the lives who dwell there?
"I say: substitute house-blessings for couple-blessings. It is a much better ritual process; it was established by the example of our Lord; it does not compete with the state process; it is not burdened by association with sex; it does not discriminate unfairly against companionship not based on sex." BW
"...surely Jesus' "Peace be to this house" means peace to the people, relationships, and physical place where they dwell? And that there may be all manner of goodness and brokenness in the lives who dwell there?" J
Yes, Jonathan, keep thinking aloud! I shall do likewise.
Ironically, those of our friends who most promote inclusion mention Jesus's house visitations to show how very dashingly inclusive he was, but they never infer that the way to be that inclusive ourselves is to go and do likewise. Why ever not?
There are models for this sort of rite. The Orthodox have rites for blessing homes, and in America many priests use it. As you might guess, they begin, "Peace be to this house!"
If the ordo with the most advanced theology of church architecture is also the one that prays out of church the most, then there is no reason why every prayer of the Church should be said in a special building. Orthodox priests still go to lakes, rivers, and seas to bless all the waters of the earth (eg Theophany, Bright Monday), and to cemeteries to bless all the Orthodox dead (eg after Pascha). The typikon of the Great Church of Constantinople further provided for matins-like prayers where ever fire, earthquake, flood, domestic tragedy, etc required them. (Some of the most grievous of these events are still commemorated on Orthodox calendars.) Processions are known in the West as well, of course. And if prayers were said at Northern European weddings of the first millennium, they were said either at the bride's father's house or at the house of her new husband; there was no rite in a church. Compared to these Christians, even those who plant churches in pubs are prisoners.
For a few readers, the most important fact about house-blessings is this: unlike church weddings, from their inception in the High Middle Ages to the present, house-blessings have never been about the regulation of sex or the certification of sanctity. Rather, blessing a house in Jesus's name means what it meant when Jesus himself did it. You have captured that meaning quite well in your comment, and it is deeper and richer than that of mere solemnisation, which even the state can do.
House-blessing is far closer to what Anglicans can agree to do than SSB. It is far less weird than the WFWG's notion that-- contrary to nine centuries of Western sacramental theology-- blessing is necessary to coupling. A real church will act only with substantial unity. A wise church will bless the homes of Christians as Jesus did, leave That Topic to pastors actually helping parishioners with same sex attraction, and get on with the rest of the work of sharing God's love with the world.
Bowman Walton
" A wise church will bless the homes of Christians as Jesus did, leave That Topic to pastors actually helping parishioners with same-sex attraction, and get on with the rest of the work of sharing God's love with the world."
Bless you, Bowman for this reality therapy.
If indeed, Anglican Bishops had only decided to do that in the first place there may have been no pressure by Gay people in the Church to solemnise Same-Sex Marriage. That 'failure of nerve' had unfortunately brought us to the present crisis. The failure to accept Civil Partnerships has rebounded on the Church - to the extent that the outside world is now wondering what the fuss is all about.
Hi Bryden
Continuities and discontinuities?
Is that not precisely what our brave new world is raising for the church around marriage and sexuality?
SSM includes the continuity of marriage (against, let us remember, the post modern alternative of casual sex, promiscuity which are widely accepted as OK and not as sin) and the discontinuity of previously accepted gender differentiation as criterion for marriage.
SSB offers the continuity of the church praying for love to be strengthened AND the continuity of the church asserting that marriage itself, as taught in Scripture and tradition, may not be subject to discontinuity, amidst the discontinuity of changing social acceptance for diverse relationships.
We have a very good idea what Jesus said in his world, Paul too. But our world ... what would Jesus say to it today? Is it even slightly conceivable to you that in this sphere of the incarnation of Christ, Christ might offer support to same-sex couples intending to live in a marriage-like covenant, against the tide of social acceptance of casual sex, promiscuity, etc?
And, maybe, not least, because Christ would be uncomfortable with a church-laced conservative culture which presses in on troubled young people the possibility that the only way forward is suicide?
Hi Bowman
In the spirit of ML I feel a series of numbered theses coming on ...
(1) A couple of years ago I heard an eminent Catholic theologian in Cambridge UK voice the thought that the RCC needed to relook at marriage as a sacrament. It was the johnny come lately of sacraments, as you note.
(2) Practically speaking, focusing on my own church, it would be a long question for us to set SSB aside and take a look at the question of our ecclesial involvement in marriage, and I don't think we are in a mood to do that.
(3) Possibly more practical could be for us to simply withdraw our priestly involvement in marriages in respect of our being gazetted to oversee the legalising of marriage according to civil law. More than a few of my colleagues would give up that privilege if it meant some kind of amenable way forward on the blessing of relationships.
(4) Nevertheless I am not convinced that - despite no NT evidence of this being a practice of the earliest church - the church has no role in praying for marriages, in preaching God's Word at their beginning, and in making a place in the gathering of the church for the recognition that A and B are choosing to marry and wish to make that public to the body of Christ before they consummate their relationship.
(5) More crudely put, in a church teaching against fornication, why wouldn't the church be the appropriate social if not sacred space for a couple to declare that their sexual relationship should be recognised by the body as marriage and not as fornication?
(6) I like the idea that the church might (or, as Ron Smith points out, might have somewhat earlier than 2017) offer a house blessing for a same sex couple wishing to have their setting up a household together acknowledged. And, yes, there might be more common ground, though I suspect GAFCON is not about to agree! But ...
(7) Is this now an acceptable way forward for same sex couples?
(8) Your proposal, and (indeed) the currently drafted ACANZP proposal, leave open the question how, under what circumstances (SSM, SSB, house blessing ...) the church might accept for ordained ministry a person in a same-sex relationship.
"...house-blessings ... is not burdened by association with sex..." Bowman Walton
Clearly, Bowman is unfamiliar with NZ Anglicanism's formulary for house blessings. Our requirement is to bless each bedroom in turn with
"God of the night,
may this be a holy and blessed place
for N (and N) and all who sleep here..."
Blessings
Bosco
Postscript for Peter 8:44, 9:33--
"Now, if I understand you Bryden, your theologising on the matter needs to say, in much simpler terms, why this phenomenon of human sociality is wrong; and if I understand you Bowman, your theologising on the matter is in fact sympathetic. Or, have I missed something?" Peter
In parliamentary terms, I have divided the question, and think that churches everywhere should do likewise.
On one hand, yes, Genesis 1:28 may be thought to apply even to those who cannot imagine practising Genesis 2:18. But some individuals who run to companionship struggle with procreation for an array of ill-understood reasons. These cannot be reduced to any single, stable notion of involuntary homosexuality. And indeed some heterosexuals have a voluntary aversion to both procreation and celibacy that is even more problematic for traditional teaching than involuntary homosexuality.
On the other hand, no, crude transposition of *marriage equality* from the civil context, where it is mere justice, to the Church, where it disrespects the gospel, has already been decisively rejected by Primates and divided local synods. Even in worldly terms, the transposition would not fit every condition in the array. But for the Church, this transposition (a) sets a pattern with no room for the clear teaching of the whole canon on (a) celibacy and koinonia, and (b) sexual differentiation.
So there are two open and related problems.
One is relating Genesis 1:28 and 2:18 to each other, both as gospel and as law. On that, see my 2:49 and 4:47. Within that discussion, anthropological questions in both Bryden's theological mode and my own more empirical one have their places. We are nearer to the beginning than to the end of the discovery of this problem.
The other problem is the one you directly raise in your 8:44 and 9:33: how should churches support that part of their koinonia that happens in what our societies deem to be *private* life? Because sexual congress is not the essence of companionship in Christ, solemnisation, which always has sex in mind, has never been fit for that purpose. And as I have noted already, that solution is already dead.
Father Ron (above)-- and Justin Welby (in the House of Lords)-- have both said that, from the Church's perspective, civil union would be the best of the strictly civil options because it does not by implication redefine solemnisation. But the mass of people cannot tell the two apart, and that is why *marriage equality* superseded civil union in both England and New England. The latter too is dead. It seems that no socially constructed solution to this problem will do, because it will always be more fragile than created order.
Fortunately, there is a solution from God: house-blessings for all patterned on Jesus's own visitations. You probably already see the basic case on which Jonathan and I have speculated above. Bosco surely has a rite for it someplace. Father Ron may already be doing it. Malcolm may want to do it differently. Brendan sounds as though he should go first; he could host an inspiring house-blessing.
My congratulations to you on your exaltation to membership in the General Synod! To them, I will add only this: if proponents of SSB had brought the two problems to your church for an open-ended search for a solution, something like house-blessing might have emerged organically in the give and take of an open and inclusive discussion. For after all, solemnisation has always been about sex, and nobody has asked ACANZP to bless sex. Conversely, as you say, many want to support relationships in Christ, and evangelicals have wanted a reasonable scriptural ground for what they are being asked to do or tolerate. The understandable dissatisfaction that eg Malcolm aptly describes has arisen because proponents of SSM have been as open-minded about their marriage equality proposal as Mr Trump is about his Big Beautiful Wall, even knowing that other Christians had principled objections, and like Mexicans, were in no mood to pay for it. Now if synods as a social practise incentivise that sort of bullheaded crusading, as I believe is plain, then it might be prudent to fix that (eg as your local Presbyterians have tried to do).
Bowman Walton
Nice try Peter!
Continuity = marriage, as of old
Discontinuity = celibate men and women, as those betrothed to Christ
The con/dis is itself cross + resurrection: the Jesus who is raised is both the same person who died and yet is radically transformed.
Hi Peter,
(1) We were right; Rome was wrong. Yes, Rome should rethink marriage. But the East remembers a few things that the West forgot (or never knew), and we should pay attention to those.
(2) Yes, rooster sacrifice is popular! Especially the white dresses. Is it worth division?
(3) This would be very wise.
(4) Yes. Personally, I strongly suspect that (a) the earliest churches prayed for and preached to couples in the context of the Lord's Day liturgy, and that (b) the idea of a separate service solely for that purpose only arose when the Emperor (in the East) and the Pope (in the West) dumped a formerly (pagan) civil judicial practise on churches that could not be assimilated to the liturgy. Even today, Orthodox in America have counted as a wedding a couple's first reception of Sunday communion after civil licensure for marriage.
(5a) Because that is Caesar's role in behalf of the human community as established in civil law and recognised by modern international treaties. Caesar also is under Christ and has his proper sphere. If churches had that role, then persons of other faiths or no faith could not marry.
(5b) More deeply, my comment of September 19, 2017 at 2:49 PM.
(5c) In other words, #3 of my comment of September 19, 2017 at 7:22 PM.
(5d) Anglicans sometimes play church and state off against each other. St Paul did not.
(6) If GAFCON wants to criticise the example of Jesus, they cannot be helped.
(7a) It is the way forward for all households that can plausibly be seen as cells of the local Body of Christ-- single persons, couples, students, monastics, etc.
(7b) This is ecclesiocentric; the age of sociocentrism has passed, or there would be no problem to solve. If the goal is to support souls, then support souls. If the goal is to reify social status, call Caesar.
(7c) Lambeth I.10 laments, as every big statement on sexuality does, that no practise has emerged that opens room in churches for singles/celibates. Half of all American Christians live alone. How are things in New Zealand? This is the least that a church can do to escape that cruel hypocrisy.
(8) True. Not every question has a ritual answer, although every answer has a ritual implication. It would be odd for someone to seek to be a priest who had not had his house blessed, but it would also be odd for someone to seek a house blessing just to check a box on the way to ordination. I think the relevant questions for an ordinand are: (a) how have you grown in, and contributed spiritually to, a household close to the Church? (b) can you model such growth and contribution for others?
BW
"For a few readers, the most important fact about house-blessings is this: unlike church weddings, from their inception in the High Middle Ages to the present, house-blessings have never been about the regulation of sex or the certification of sanctity. Rather, blessing a house in Jesus's name means what it meant when Jesus himself did it. You have captured that meaning quite well in your comment, and it is deeper and richer than that of mere solemnisation, which even the state can do."
Bowman Walton on September 20, 2017 at 3:21 PM.
Hi Bowman (8.55am)
Thank you for the clarity of these two paragraphs:
"On one hand, yes, Genesis 1:28 may be thought to apply even to those who cannot imagine practising Genesis 2:18. But some individuals who run to companionship struggle with procreation for an array of ill-understood reasons. These cannot be reduced to any single, stable notion of involuntary homosexuality. And indeed some heterosexuals have a voluntary aversion to both procreation and celibacy that is even more problematic for traditional teaching than involuntary homosexuality.
On the other hand, no, crude transposition of *marriage equality* from the civil context, where it is mere justice, to the Church, where it disrespects the gospel, has already been decisively rejected by Primates and divided local synods. Even in worldly terms, the transposition would not fit every condition in the array. But for the Church, this transposition (a) sets a pattern with no room for the clear teaching of the whole canon on (a) celibacy and koinonia, and (b) sexual differentiation.
"
Well, Peter, just two clear paragraphs out of about fifty is disappointing, but perhaps the division of the question is useful to others.
BW
Hi Bowman
It is not that the other 48 are not useful, helpful and such but sometimes, in the midst of a busy life, and with a tired brain of pooh bear diminishing proportions, some points made stand out, and, in this case, help this small brained person get a sense of the overall direction of travel of the argument(s).
Incidentally, since I do not have time to acknowledge all points made by each commenter, mentioning two paras out of many is not a guide to the evaluation made of the remainder. Absence of comment is not absence of appreciation!
Generally I think I am gaining not only an appreciation of the direction of travel but also a sense of depth of appreciation. House blessings as an approach is somewhat new to me ... but I am growing in appreciation of the possibilities ...
Churches are hospitals for sinners not rest-homes for saints. Disciples of Jesus who do not procreate and who do struggle with chastity should be welcome in them. Following the example of Jesus, house blessings can extend this welcome with the same gospel that he brought: his present Spirit enables lives lost in him to be gained.
SSB and solemnisation are not acts of inclusion, but house-blessing is. Blessings modeled on solemnisations designed to prevent the procreative sins of incest, rape, bigamy, and abandonment do not enact this gospel-welcome for those who do not procreate. In contrast, house-blessings do enact this gospel-welcome, and so do important pastoral work not now done by any other rite. As baptism and eucharist draw believers into union with Christ, so house-blessings are a ministry of his presence to those who may believe that God has forgotten them or perhaps remembers them only with a hard heart.
Anyway, SSB would and solemnisations already do duplicate and discredit good state procedures that did not exist when the latter were invented in the medieval West. In many minds, they also misrepresent the unconditional covenantal love in scripture as the conditional contractual relation of ancient Roman law of marriage. They even ignore the scriptural hope that the women and men will be reconciled in the ultimate marriage of heaven to earth. As social instruments for the regulation of sex-- even SSB is this-- they ignore and marginalise faithful households not based on sex. Most deeply, the blessings and the weddings support justice in civil society, which already has the state as its agent, but they do not enact the koinonia of the Body of Christ as an alliance of households participating in him. In contrast, house-blessings bring the prayers of the Body into the private material and relationship lives of people.
House-blessings support a scriptural ethos of self-in-Christ, covenant, chastity, family, and inclusion. This ethos, which all Christians can recognise, is less polarised along factional lines than the imagined effects of SSB, whether desired or feared. Conservatives and liberals can unite in support of it. And they should do so by blessing homes as Jesus did.
Bowman Walton
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