Does Romans 14-15 help us much when we have a dispute in the church?
We all agree that Romans 14-15 is primarily concerned with a question of eating which is dividing the Roman church. (Secondarily, there seems to have been an issue about observing festival days (14:5-6) and drinking wine may also have been a problem (14.21)
In my experience, perhaps in yours also, we do not seem much agreed about applying R 14-15 by analogy to other issues troubling us these days.
Perhaps we can, perhaps we should not. You may have thoughts on that in comments below.
We might usefully observe, however, verse 3, which reminds us that our unity is in the God who welcomes us: "... for God has welcomed them" where "them" equals "that lot over there with whom you disagree so strongly."
Yet it would be odd, would it not, if we read Romans today for its universal theology of salvation (i.e. its timeless, applies everywhere and to everyone message of the gospel of the saving power of Jesus Christ) yet not for its applicability to the church of today in respect of our disputations?
Having said that, I wonder how you find Romans 14-15 as a "dispute settling" method? Even in respect of eating in Rome, is it clear by 15:6 how that dispute was settled? (And, if it looks like Paul was pushing for the dispute to be settled in favour of "the weak", in the long run, as Christianity parted ways from Judaism, "the strong" won and not "the weak.")
Sure, Paul generally sets out an excellent case for "going along to get along" in Christian fellowship (e.g. 14:19: "Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding."). Also, sure, Paul is very clear about not causing a brother or sister to stumble (14:20-21). And, very surely, Paul clearly warns against being "the ruin of one for whom Christ died" (14:15).
But much less surely can we say that Paul is simply saying that the "weak" on an issue always have things work out their way because the "strong" on the issue should always make life easy for them. For example, Paul challenges "the weak": "and those who abstain must not pass judgement on those who eat" (14:3; see also verse 10) and generally urges all sides of issues to recognise the other side as they honour the Lord (14:5-6).
Further, Paul is focused on these matters at a simple level: two groups, one should give way to the other (even as both groups should love, accept and honour the other). He does not get into the complexity of (say) one group holding the other group to emotional ransom; or of one group playing cute political games with the other.
There is also the complexity of determining who on issues outside of food, drink and festival days in ancient Rome are "the strong" and "the weak". Do these neatly map onto "conservatives" and "liberals" in 21st century Anglicanism? Probably not! Do these neatly map in synodical contexts onto "the majority" and "the minority"? Possibly so. (What if the majority in (say) the Synod of the Diocese of Christchurch is part of a minority within the General Synod?)
But complexity should not dissuade us from applying Romans 14-15. There is much in these chapters which steers us to Christ, which reminds us of Christ's teaching (e.g. not judging one another), and which challenges us to be like Christ:
"Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." (15:7)
Thank you, Peter, for soldiering on in this anabasis back through Romans.
ReplyDeleteGroup studies that get this far upland usually get stuck on leaderly evocations of the diet of a well-fed idol in the ancient world. It's not a bad exercise to try to make sense of each POV mentioned in the letter, but I thank you for nudging us on to the question: how did St Paul expect the unified Body to emerge from disagreeing factions?
Romans has a grand answer nearer the sea. But putting the map back in the case, and sticking to what is just ahead, St Paul denied that unity is in the sort of uniformity that old Israel had, and affirmed that it is in the love that each has for the others.
Study groups at length discover that, each member bragging about some idiosyncratic thing that another does that he, for love, tolerates. But then before breaking up, they fix a special day for the next meeting, decide who will bring the snacks, and hear the leader bid them be punctual. They understand, but they do not get it.
St Paul was addressing a question with a history among those who read prophets and prayed Psalms that promised that the nations would learn from Zion. Before Christ, there were two ways of envisioning this, both unlikely. The Gentiles could convert to Judaism. How else could they learn torah? Or Israel would conquer the world. How else could Gentiles experience a spiritual commonwealth led by YHWH?
St Paul's startling discovery in Galatia that the Holy Spirit was bringing Gentiles into the wisdom of the new Zion without prior conversion answered the first question with facts on the ground. In principle, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was also a mighty fact on the wind answering the second question. Several chapters downslope from here, the apostle explains how the Holy Spirit makes the new assemblies, so your questions could be paraphrased as questions about how the Holy Spirit enables persons and factions starting from different perspectives to find unity in the will of God.
We might stop for the moment with the rather johannine thought that disunity in the Body is caused, not by mere difference of opinion and experience, but by an overconfidence that the truth will be found by anything less than the whole Body. Conversely, unity is found by those who are, following something like St Ignatius Loyola's famous rules for it, "thinking with the Church."
BW
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for this attitude to filter through the posts on this thread, embracing GAFCON and the new Bishop.
Glen, I myself am waiting for comments from more voices about *Romans back to front*. If you, your new leader, or any other Gafconian wish to discuss God's word written at ADU just as Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and other ecumenical partners have done in the past, I imagine that + Peter would warmly welcome them.
ReplyDeleteBW
Dear Glen (and thank you Bowman),
ReplyDeleteI will try to be objective:
1. When our church offered a way for (so to speak) Romans 14 and 15 to be worked out within one church structure, that way was rejected (acknowledging that various reasonings and narrative can be given for why, whether things could have been different, etc).
2. Whether or not there is a future for ACANZP and CCAANZ to (again, so to speak) work out Romans 14 and 15 within one “Anglicanism” within these islands of ours, will depend on a variety of factors (yes, including attitude), and within those factors will be the question of whether Anglicans are prepared to acknowledge and affirm the presence of blessed partnered same sex partnerships within the ranks of Anglicans. (To not do so would be to fall outside of Romans 14 and 15 stated desire for Christians to respect and acknowledge one another within the one body of Christ.)
3. I can assure you that while there is formal separation or, if you prefer, structural distinction between ACANZP and CCAANZ, that does not mean that informal relationships and conversations have ceased.
In one way, the unhappy division on the blessed isles seems to be unique and even paradoxical: those who found their old church to be discredited, and left it to start it a new one, nevertheless want that old church to recognise the new one, accept it, and maybe bless it. If the new church truly believes that the old church is "apostate," then why does it want this?
ReplyDeleteBW
ReplyDeleteHi Peter and Bowman,
I should like to state that the new Bishop is not my leader.I feel that this whole debacle has not covered anyone in glory.From the start, I have always had an immense interest in the Word of God Written; but have lost a lot of enthusiasm for debating it on this site, because of my foundational stance.
Life is confusing enough, without the one place where my faith should be edified, confuses it even more.
My profuound :-) and untidy thoughts on the topic of vegetarianism (and yes, that's not the point of the OP) is that it was presumably standard practise not only pre-fall, but up to the flood. So even if meat is nice and permissible I don't see that it is necessarily a helpful addition to my diet (possibly neither did Daniel). My own descent or ascent into semi-vegetarianism comes less from ethical concerns however, and more from avoidance of greasy pans and the cheaper meats that are affordable being stuffed with goodness-knows-what. I do recommend it!
ReplyDeleteDear Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteEvery so often (perhaps prompted by yet another "convert") I think about vegetarianism and then find myself thinking of objections to vegetarianism which go something like this (notwithstanding your fine point about actual composition of one or more items below):
- crispy bacon
- lamb chops
- perfectly cooked steak
- beef sausages
- ham off the bone
- curried mince
- mince in spaghetti bolognaise
- mince in lasagne
- roast chicken
- roast lamb
- most seafood (though I do find some vegetarians make Exceptions for this form of meat!!).
Bowman, I found your comment at 7.37 am today, clear and to the point. For instance: 'If the new church truly believes that the old church is "apostate," then why does it want this?'.
ReplyDeleteTo believe anything different would be contributing to hypocrisy - or, at the very least, a distinctive naivety.
Why on earth (or even in the terrestrial realm) would any sane person want to commit to schismatic severance from one's founding organisation and then want to be recognised by Mummy? This is overt double-mindedness at its most reprehensible.
If ACANZP were 'apostate' why would any self-righteous person want to be recognised as a spiritual partner with us?
Thank you, Glen, both for clarifying your position-- with which I mostly sympathise-- and for an interesting implied question: is the meaning of scripture debatable?
ReplyDeleteA week or so ago, I distinguished two sorts of biblical interpretation-- the spiritual reading of the scriptures in light of the Resurrection, and the hermeneutical reading of them that situates our own reading in relation to others from elsewhere and elsewhen in the Body.
Spiritual reading nourishes faith, as of course you know. Reflecting on martyrdom through a close reading of the Song of Songs may stand as an example of that. But if you have spent any amount of time reading rabbinical, patristic, or medieval commentaries on portions of scripture, then you know that they have no expectation that any single reading exhausts the text. To the contrary, many of them delighted in viewing the same text in as many different ways as they could. And until the onset of modernity, the Christians at least tended not to engage in debates about which single reading was the correct one.
Hermeneutical reading stretches faith toward plausible implications of the text that are strange to our own religious world. Reflecting on the OT through the cultural traditions of a C1 apostle (eg St Paul), a C17 Old Believer in Russia (eg Avvakum Petrov) or a C20-21 Anglican from Kenya (eg John Mbiti) may deeply engage one's spiritual sense in transformative ways-- that is why we do it-- but this is hermeneutical because it reads back and forth between the two horizons-- *local knowledge* of the other that is foreign to us and suppositions of our own of which we are only partially aware-- and because imagination discovers the common ground where both are at home in the text. Here again, when one's reading is motivated by empathy and enabled by imagination, how can one be a log-ey'd mote-picker quarreling with other readers?
Although much in scripture is clear enough to inform, guide, and constrain, one can debate many ancillary facts about the plain sense of it. The mere text is debatable in myriad places, and even where that is uncontested there are debates about words (eg aionion), syntactic construction (eg St John i 9, Romans v 12), and context (eg how do Romans 1-3 relate to 5-8?) that have far-reaching consequences. But insofar as the arguments in these debates depend on interpretation, they rely on what may not convince all *motivated reasoners* in this aeon.
BW
Yes, Father Ron, there is double-mindedness. Is it hypocritical, naive, or reprehensible? Without better understanding the mindset of the departing faithful, I cannot know.
ReplyDeleteBW
Glen, you may like this-- https://tinyurl.com/wf5yvu4
ReplyDeleteEdsall's article is smarter than his editor's headline.
BW
Dear Peter and Jonathan:
ReplyDeleteOn the eve of my country's Thanksgiving Day, please accept a carnivorous recipe for a medieval English dish not unknown to the clergy and people of the colonial Church of Virginia.
GAME PIE
Adapted from the recipe of the King's Arms Tavern, Williamsburg.
Cook time: 2 Hr 30 Min Prep time: 35 Min Serves: 12-15
Ingredients
One 4-5 lb duck
2 lb rabbit
2 1/2 lb venison
1/2 c vegetable oil
2 c port wine
1 1/2 qt basic brown sauce
1 Tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1 c currant jelly
1 1/2 lb mushrooms, quartered
1/2 c butter
1 lb slab bacon, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 can(s) pearl onions
puff pastry crust mix
1 egg
2 Tbsp milk
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Salt the cavity of the duck and place it on a rack in a shallow roasting pan, breast side up. Bake for 30 minutes at 400, reduce the heat to 325 F, and bake until the duck tests done.
2. Simmer the rabbit in a small amount of water for 60 minutes or until tender.
3. Cut the venison into large cubes and saute in the vegetable oil in a large skillet until well browned, stirring and turning as necessary. Remove the venison and drain the oil from the skillet.
4. Add the port to the skillet and boil for 2-3 minutes, scraping up any brown particles. Return the venison to the skillet and add the Brown Sauce. Simmer for 45-60 minutes, or until the venison is tender.
5. Cut the duck and rabbit meat in medium-sized pieces, and place in the skillet with the venison to keep warm. Season with the Worcestershire sauce, garlic, pepper, and currant jelly.
6. Saute the mushrooms in the butter until lightly browned. Fry the bacon until crisp, and drain. Heat the onions and drain.
7. Divide the game mixture into individual greased casserole dishes and garnish the top of each with mushrooms, bacon, and onions. Cover each dish with the puff pastry crust, trim the edges, and prick the tops to allow the steam to escape.
8. Beat the egg lightly with the milk to make an egg wash and brush the tops of the pastry with the mixture. Bake in a 350-degree oven for 20-25 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Serve piping hot.
Notes
The King's Arms recipe has more than 30 ingredients, and also includes goose, pheasant and quail. But not ortolan.
The venison used there is imported from New Zealand.
The cooks reserve most of the currant jelly to a dollop at the centre of each puff crust.
The temperatures prescribed above are in degrees Fahrenheit.
C18 Virginians paired Game Pie with a claret, or if that was not available, their own scuppernong wine.
BW
ReplyDeleteHi Ron and Bowman,
I can not speak for the new ? Church, as I am not a member of it: but as a member of the old ? Church, it strikes me that much of the leadership of it, has taken the Church in a direction which is only relevant to those of a liberal persuasion.The rest just carry on in their good old Anglican ? way.
Whether you view it as "back to front", "Front to back" or "up side down";
"real unity" is dead. I am just one of the many doing it "my way".If we are worshiping different Gods, how can our unity be in God?
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." Proverbs ix 10
ReplyDelete"The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight." + Phillips Brooks *
"If we are worshiping different Gods, how can our unity be in God?"
Glen, the body that is the Body is not what man organises but what the Holy Spirit is doing. Her conserving is not conservative and her liberality is not liberal. Her constitution was not and could not have been made by human hands. She has no leaders; she needs no direction.
All who worship the Trinity worship the only Creator. But none of us adores each of the Three perfectly, and no two of us do so in the same way.
So far as a man may know, he trusts the goodness of the Father's will for all things, but he knows the Son mainly as a sacrifice for his sins, and he fears the Holy Spirit as the highest mountain fears weather, the ages, and the river below. Likewise a woman, say, may find that she is allured to the Holy Spirit opening the future; she respects the wise teachings and loving healings of Jesus, but she fears his Father as the inscrutable villain of all her nightmares. For either of these souls, as for all souls, to recite the whole creed with a whole heart is no small thing; it is to expose their and our terrors to unknown love, grace, and change from God.
In "the strong Name of the Trinity," the Body gathers hearts with all the hopes and fears that myriad idols have signified throughout the world and time. In Christ, these temptations to adore lesser godlings are referred like puzzle-pieces to the whole that He makes with his Father and Spirit.
This follows: insofar as we let the Trinity mend our hearts, the Body thrives on our inclination to different idols.
* A quintessentially Episcopalian saint to whom I have diverse connections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Brooks
BW
Dear Glen, I appreciate your honesty in this conversation. My only response is that true unity has a great component of humility in its ecclesial make-up; a humility that does not accuse its sisters and brother of apostasy - simply because of their more sweetly liberal understanding of the message of Jesus' attitude towards sinners (not forgetting that we are all 'sinners' needing redemption) in the Gospel accounts of his life and ministry.
ReplyDelete'Pointing the bone' has never been part of Christian teaching. To set ourselves up as distinctively 'righteous' compared with the unrighteousness of other people is not only divisive, it is totally contrary to the message of Jesus in the Gospel. The frequency of our recitation of the 'Kyries' at the Eucharist reminds us of this.
I am convinced that the message of the Gospel consists in "One poor sinner showing another poor sinner where to find bread"
ReplyDeleteDear Ron,
Can you produce one posting, which I have made on this site, where I have accused either of the sides of this debacle, of "apostasy". I have alleged that General Synod's actions were inconsistent with the ACANZP's Constitution 1857.That is a legal question, albeit, also involving the legally defined Doctrine.I do not wish to re-hash this issue but consider the ACANZP, not being a Church of two of two integrates, but a Church of no integrity
Seventy five years ago, I was baptized into the Church of England, due to the influence of my Grand father, [a wonderful old Scot who could read or write English], who had married a well bred South of England lady [in every sense]. It was a Church whose Doctrine, traditions and rituals I grew to love and admire. Peter,you and I probably share much common ground with regards to the "unity of the Church"; and this debacle saddens me greatly.
You are quite correct to say that "unity requires humility"; but sadly I do not see either side reflecting that characteristic. "Pointing the bone" has also been characteristic of both sides.General Synod must have been blind to think that it could do what it did and not occasion the result which has followed.
Though I still love Christ dearly,the ACANZP has become something that is not for me. I will always remain an Anglican in memory but not in practice.
Bless you, Glen.
"Though I still love Christ dearly,the ACANZP has become something that is not for me. I will always remain an Anglican in memory but not in practice."
ReplyDeleteGlen, to each his own.
As I sense that my replies do not interest you, I shall not leave another. But I would be remiss if I did not mention that I, and many others like us, have stood where you now do, and with the insights acquired in that exile, have reconnected with fellow communicants, etc on more godly terms than before. They do make mistakes, of course, but in the Lord one can cease to be a churchly perfectionist.
Blessings
B
Bless you, too, Glen. I guess 'en Christo' might describe our common home and situation. Agape!
ReplyDeletePostscript to 7:58-- Glen, "churchly perfectionist" was a wooden choice of words for what my sleepy head meant, and I hope that you did not find it as annoying as I might have.
ReplyDeleteFather Ron's simple pauline comment better expresses what I meant to say about being so securely in Christ that the foibles and faith-gaps of one's fellow parishioners, monks, clergy etc are no longer distressing. One is simply thankful that God is saving the world, in souls and in large, rather than frustrated that this great work has not yet been perfected in the personalities and organisations most tangible to us.
Of course, we usually have some human affection for the red doors behind which we and our families have worshiped, but in principle the worship itself "with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven" enlarges our sympathy far beyond them and communion with the Thrice-Holy nudges us from our personal desires to gratitude for God's different yet wise provision for them. One steps out the red door with a heart that is lighter and more open to the will of God.
As a Protestant, you yourself know all of this with especial clarity, and said some of it just above. All that I wanted to sound here is a note of encouragement. God uses the episodes that disturb or break our attachments to *transitional objects* to further the great transition itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_object
In the flesh, we all feel some frustration that this church or that one is not quite as we dream that it should be, and occasionally we meet something darker there-- recklessness, cruelty, injustice, prejudice, neglect, hate. The dark deeds are real-- as is God's judgment on them-- but for us they are blessings as unexpected as they are unintended.
As Jesus explained to the woman in Samaria (St John iv 19-26 within 4-44), our early attachments to this red door or to that one can only be way-stations in our eternal journey to Him. The uncomfortable end of the sharpened bones prods us to board the ship that was all along waiting to take us to our next port of call. The eyes of faith see that salvation happens in the itinerary that God has appointed for us. It is not something that anyone would plan to do; it is being kidnapped over and over again by angels sent to bring us home from the far country.
So of course I agree with you that there have been irregularities on both sides of the late disappointments. My list of them is longer than yours is. But when I recall your great-hearted comments here about so many things, I cannot doubt that you will profit by this disruption. Godspeed!
B
A Parable after St Paul
ReplyDeleteAbout two centuries ago, when the revisionists in The Episcopal Church were Evangelicals, the burning issue in dioceses along the Atlantic coast was pew-rent. Parish vestries then covered their costs by renting box-pews with locks and keys to the patriarchs of member families. Although it is now hard to recall this, in most places, generations of dynastic ambition and rivalry were bound up with the size, rent, heat, and location of those box-pews.
Not least in antebellum Virginia, where this story unfolds, the nave was a literal box chart of the town's, and still to a degree the young nation's, social hierarchy. In the Old Dominion, as in the ancestral south of England, this did not trouble those whose theology was Latitudinarian.
But across the Potomac River from the new city of Washington-- then a village with grandiose avenues of mud cut through forests and the dome of a hilltop capitol rising above the trees-- in the older port city of Alexandria, it did trouble a minority of Evangelicals in Christ Church, the ancient city church of such first families as the Washingtons and the Lees. Why should one have to pay to go to church? How was a charismatic young preacher to attract townsfolk when everyone knew that they were locked out of all the best seats, even if those were empty? Which, truthfully, they very often were.
Scriptural references to box-pews were sought (in vain); arguments from Reason were made (circular ones); the canons of the Church of England were, very discreetly, consulted (after Revolution and Disestablishment). Also, the godly frugality of the practice was noted-- having one's servants bring in hot stones to heat one's private box spared the parish the expense of heating the whole nave. To no great surprise, the Vestry of Christ Church, comprising the patriarchs themselves or their heirs, found no reasonable objection to the ancestral arrangement. The bishop was duly notified.
With his tacit blessing, the defeated yet defiant minority left Christ Church to found a new one on a hilltop with the polemical name of Grace, which of course is free. Having no landed gentry, they had no box pews either. Instead, the young vestry of merchants and professionals raised their funds by a subscription of the members. With that, they could pay a properly evangelistic preacher, build a church, and eventually heat it. (Thereafter, Christ Church quietly began to do likewise.)
Meanwhile the busy bishop had been founding a rather low church seminary for the Southern dioceses on yet another hilltop nearby. (Why so many? Washington and Alexandria sit near the falls of the Potomac, which mark the transition from the hilly rock of Pangaea, Earth's most recent central continent, to the sediment eroded from the once sky-piercing Appalachians. Like a puzzle piece, that local pangaean rock fits a no less hilly locale in Morocco that seceded with the rest of Africa millions of years ago.) So this new parish of what might today be called thinking Anglicans had for neighbours and sometime parishioners not only tradespeople, but professors and seminarians from throughout the South, and some with business in the capital. But this is not the end of the parable.
The really interesting thing about Grace happened over the next century. These feisty, egalitarian Evangelicals began to light candles on the holy table. Then a crucifer began to lead a procession of clergy and choir into the Sunday service. That much a Latitudinarian bishop might allow without many qualms. But in what had become by the late C19 a rather Evangelical diocese, it was startling to hear that Grace-- of all places-- was giving communion weekly.
ReplyDeleteBy the 1920s, the parish had outgrown its old building, and the vestry were petitioning their bishop-- vestries by then understood what bishops do-- to approve their plan for a new stone church in C11 Norman style with a deep chancel, crucifix, rood-screen, presence lamp, aumbry, and several stained windows. (The beloved pulpit there with carved figures of Aslan and others from the Chronicles of Narnia is, of course, more recent.) He stipulated that there could never be benedictions of the blessed sacrament, trimmed the screen to a rood-loft, and objected to the lamp and aumbry, but accepted a compromise relegating the latter two to a small lady-chapel off the nave.
The fissure that breaks in a moment also makes over time. A crack in Pangaea became Africa. Jews who followed Jesus became a Body that incorporates Gentiles. Christ Church parishioners too Evangelical for pew-rent began a journey that ended in an Anglo-Catholic lady-chapel. The Eighth Continent they say is mostly under the sea.
BW
Well Peter; I have to confess one may only admire the doggedness with which you try to pursue your vocation as a Bishop in the Church of the Triune God. By that I (of course!) mean to invoke: the Traditional identity of any and every duly consecrated bishop (licit and illicit) as embodying (I’ll leave the nature of that to the theologians ...!) notably two things, which is, I suggest, but the expression of one thing (I quote from LDL rev ed).
ReplyDelete“We might pursue two elements of the final mark of the church here—but from within a single stance, for, essentially, the church's apostolicity is a participation in the Missio Dei itself. Thereafter, on the one hand, adherence to the apostolic witness to this mission gives us the first element, while on the other hand faithfulness to the divine community (communio Dei), which the apostles founded offers the second. Yet there is always a tendency by the church to foreclose prematurely on what might constitute "faithful adherence" as it seeks her "apostolicity"; and this is due mostly to the sense that it is located historically in the past, as a function of that past. This is not exactly true however—once we relocate the apostolic source of the church firmly in God's own eschatological promise which is the premise for God's own mission. In its turn, this promise ensures a richer openness towards the future by the church, since it is only in that future that God himself will bear the fruit of his own mission through the Son and in the Spirit. Consequently, this fourth mark of the church finds its authentic fulfilment in a humble and respectful "reserve" on the part of the church, as she both actively works towards that fulfilment and passively awaits its completion under God. Institutionally speaking, therefore, a certain caution—a penitential attitude even—is better warranted by forms of church government that would seek to formalise the People of God's "essential characteristics or marks" in this world too soon, ahead of her appropriate time. All of which has awesome relevance among a divided Body, whose vocation after 2000 years seems more driven by the need for fellowship with Christ's crucifixion and conformation with his death, before we may ever witness renewal of forms of church that may better embody and therefore convey his resurrected Life.”
Yes; that’s a long quote; and it’s a quote that has its setting within a treatment of the other three marks, of “one, holy, & catholic” Church, all of which properly coinhere, as befits each and all within the Creed, which itself extols the Triune God. And notably therefore, such a view of mere apostolicity, and therefore of your own dear self, seeks its own form and function within our current resurgence of that very doctrine these past decades. And I’d say therefore, that balancing the past and the future dimensions of that definition above requires it be placed within the VERY RECIPROCAL RELATIONS OF THE TRINITY ITSELF/HIMSELF (ala say Robert Jenson’s oeuvre - and dare I say it, my own). So; Peter; dwell richly therein, to become that ‘locus’ of unity etc you/we seek ... via such means now as this very post on ADU.
Cont 1
ReplyDeletePhew! And all that just to get us going. But we are now off ...!
First Part
I need to give a summary of a wonderful address given by Michael Green (RIP, earlier this year; thank you Heavenly Father so much for his life and for our friendship) some decades ago. His point was quickly made. It was as if the four main parties in the Judaism of Jesus’ day were all asking the most basic question: What is Holiness? But then they were answering it rather differently from one another.
The Sadducees: This party within Judaism seems to have emerged around the last third of the second century BC. They were also linked (virtually inextricably) with Jerusalem itself. In which case, Holiness here is to be viewed as a function of the Temple and all it stood for. Holiness = Cultic purity. The priest and the Levite, both of whom “pass by on the other side” in Jesus’ famous parable of the Good Samaritan, just may not run the risk of ritual impurity should the man be dead; for, touching a corpse, they become impure, and so may not serve in the temple’s rites (for a time). Their “love of God” is at serious risk - even as their actions/inactions seemingly deny any love of neighbour.
The Pharisees: Perhaps the easiest description of this group within the Judaism of Jesus’ day (although the literature continues to debate the issue) is to call them Reformist. As a group who sought reforms in Jewish society, they were forever pushing for influence and even political power of some kind, to foster their ideas. Their agenda was broadly covenantal, to revive the teachings of Torah, yet to apply them in the new circumstances of life for contemporary Jewry. This meant both a strong adherence to tradition, yet with some creative adaptation all at the same time. Their avenue of transmission for their ideas and agenda was broadly the synagogues and the schools associated with them. All in all, Holiness is a Code, with its authority seemingly going all the way back to Moses, but now indeed as another “Deuteronomy”.
The Essenes of Qumran: In a nutshell, the scrolls describe the “wicked priest(s) of Jerusalem” as having usurped a false authority, polluting the People of God, who must perforce distance themselves from all such unholiness. The solution was to establish a community far away from such falsehood and impurity, down by the shores of the Dead Sea. Their life was a rigorous one, with multiple washings, both before leaving their sanctuary enclave and upon returning from the fields or work. Their study of Tanakh was fastidious, employing notably various pesher techniques. These Pesharim commentaries upon Holy Writ, vigorously copied in their scriptoriums, embodied the sayings of “the Teacher of Righteousness”, who “unveiled all the mysteries of God’s servants in the prophets and the Psalms.” Holiness was a complex fruit of such exacting practices combined with a profound study of Scripture.
The Zealots: The Sicarii were an extreme form of zealotry, and were so called on account of the daggers they carried to strike both Romans and Jewish sympathizers alike; they just wanted all such invaders and turn-coats OUT! God’s Land was to be populated by God’s People, pure and simple. Well; that was one form. For at heart, we are talking about a number of expressions of such religious piety or zeal. The archetype perhaps was Phineas, Aaron’s grandson (Numbers 25, 31, Ps 106); his zeal “won atonement for the people”; little wonder he was venerated. But there were also Levi and Simeon, who took revenge for the rape of their sister Dinah, Gen 34. Second Temple Judaism extolled all these figures of old as expressions of “a righteous zeal”, especially their hatred of idolatry. Yet at root, any and all offences against Torah were the stimulus for their zealotry, for their close adherence to the traditions of their forefathers. In short, their idea of Holiness was embodied in one Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of Christians (Gal 1:13-14, Phil 3:6), before his encounter with the Risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.
Cont.2
ReplyDeleteSecond Part
Sure; I suspect true scholars of Second Temple Judaism will quickly demur at such a simplistic analysis! Yet it does contain sufficient truth to make the point, which is this. At its most basic, Jesus’ own answer to the question and quest of holiness is both fascinating yet trixy (Gollum Hobbit speak). It’s as if he says, “Yes, but ...”, to each and every party, where the “but” is of course modified four times over in relation to the specifics of each group. And curiously, certain Christian traditions, down the centuries, have echoed one or other of these Jewish groups nonetheless ...
For the Christian answer is Jesus Himself. He is the Servant of Yahweh, singularly before God as his Father—revealing, declaring, demonstrating the righteous covenant rule of the Father, via all he hears his Father saying and doing all his Father’s works. Yet the climactic fulfilment of such a faithful obedient life (cf. John Calvin on this) is to supremely drink that cup which none other may drink, and to be baptized with a baptism none other may undergo (Lk 12:49-50, Mk 14:35-6). Such is the Way of Righteousness (Matt 21:32, 3:13-17), the only Way of holiness and the only Way to holiness. And the Resurrection utterly confirms such an obedience, such an awesomely mysterious Way; just so, Phil 2:6-11, et al. Thereafter of course his followers are extolled to take up their cross and to be baptized unto his baptism, to crucify the old adam, and bury it, so that they too may “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6 for example in its entirety, or 8:1-16, or Eph 4:17-6:20), thus “being transformed from one degree of glory to another by the Lord who is Spirit” (2 Cor 3:2-18)—the Holy Spirit being the “down-payment” (ἀρραβών/arrabōn) of the future kingdom which is to come in its fulness, “guaranteeing” it meanwhile in fruits and gifts and signs (2 Cor 1:22, Eph 1:13-14).
Moreover, as the Church pondered these things, she was driven by the sheer weight of their experience and their ‘reading’ of that experience via the Scriptures - of the OT NB, first off! - that the doctrine, no the dogma, of the Holy Trinity emerges. That is, not only was Jesus the Servant of Yahweh before God, but also strangely, ‘somehow’ Yahweh-in-the-flesh before the People of God. The building blocks for the later doctrine of the Trinity were already in place within the NT and even OT material. That is again, Holiness, both its nature and its means, gets profoundly reworked. Yet NB, this reworking is both in continuity with the OT and also discontinuous with it—an expression of Jesus’ very own “yes, but ...” to each of the four groups within the Judaism of his day. Or rather, THE expression of all his “yes, buts”.
Cont.3
ReplyDeleteThird Part
And what might all this have to do with Romans 14-15, one may very well be thinking by now? Well; everything! It matters little from which direction we approach these two chapters, from the end, backwards, or from the beginning, flowing forwards. E.g. ch.13 echoes explicitly the NT Catechism with its vv.11-14, that is, with baptism into Christ Jesus, as per Romans 6 explicitly, going forwards. On the other hand, one’s basic Christian identity, which is at its core baptismal anyway, should be the general premise reading backwards. And either way God’s gracious “Welcome!” (14:1, 15:7) is the expression of the Gospel itself.
Yet the very matters under debate echo fascinatingly those most familiar motifs of holiness already encountered among those four Jewish groups above. The traditional markers of who’s in and who’s out and why resound all too familiarly and are the very stuff generating the debates in both chs 14 and 15. Both “weak” and “strong” still operate to a large degree one way or another as if holiness were a function of such matters—either positively or negatively!! BUT Paul would undercut each and all sides. He gets his Master’s Way to and of Holiness. And while sympathetic perhaps here and there with now this side and now that, at root the core issue lies elsewhere—just so 14:7-9! “For the kingdom of God is not found in food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”, 14:17. And yet where are these grounded? What establishes these very three things?! See Part Two above ... And anyway, what was the primal goal of such righteousness and peace and joy? If Jesus himself is the premise, if Jesus’ work and words are the very foundation of such things, where’s it all going, what’s the real point of this very Gospel itself?
Well; lets parse again Part Two. God has begun his work of reclaiming for himself a humanity in Christ Jesus, who reflect again that divine image in which humans were made. Once soiled by sin and broken by the fragmented relationships originally designed as a harmonious whole, such that humanity would be ruling under God and on his behalf a creation rich with possibilities, now through the Gospel of Jesus with its “power to save” (Rom 1:16) we may see emerging the kind of righteousness and peace and joy envisaged by Paul. And of course all this embraces the Gentiles! The entire point of the call of Abram was to “bless all the nations” (Gen 12:1-3; and just so Rom 4). And if Christians are reverting back to the sorts of disharmonious criteria of false understandings and practices of ‘holiness’ as found in any of those four Jewish groups, then it’s back to basics folks! “Paul’s Gospel” has no truck with that in the end, even if matters might need some kind of negotiating/navigating (cp. Acts 15 after all!).
cont.4
ReplyDeletePart Four
Slight change of subsection title now, signalling the conclusion of this conversation. How might any of this impact our present Anglican horizon of brokenness and disunity? Can we gain some purchase on things via the essential rubric of Holiness, and Rom 14-15? Well; if Jesus has won us back—and that “us” means both groups or all groups, or however many groups—what has he won us back for? What is our identity as the People of God in union with Christ Jesus? And how does, or should that identity express itself both inwardly within the Body and outwardly from the Body towards Others? What practices might defile holiness? And what practices express it truthfully? And what else might be adiaphora? And let’s note the original meaning of that term: the alpha prefix indicates a negative; so what’s the ‘diaphora’? The Greeks generally saw this to mean “differentiable”—and we’re not in the world of maths and calculus here!
So; what kinds of behaviour, what actions, what inactions, and what practices, et cetera, are going to threaten division, bringing about division, differentiating A from B, or P from Q? And should they do so? Or are they properly “adiaphora”? I mean, is St Paul a schizophrenic?! Does he one minute explode as in Romans 6:1-2, only in the next wee while to go all mushy at the knees and soft in the centre? Or does the rubric of “HOLINESS” designate a profound sense of belonging, and a belonging across the board, in every and all situations? It surely does in 1 Cor 6:12-20. And interestingly re Rom 14-15, we’re not far away at all in 1 Cor 6 to 1 Cor 8, where we have an earlier attempt by Paul at sorting out this very issue between the “weak” and the “strong”. Yet the entire section, chs 5-9 of 1 Cor, seems to have within its ambit the kinds of premise adumbrated by Richard Hays:
Paul seems to have translated and transferred the basic disciplinary norms of Israel’s covenant community over onto the church at Corinth. ... Paul in effect addresses the Gentile Corinthians as Israel. God’s word to Israel has become God’s word directly to them. The scriptural command with which Paul closes the chapter culminates his treatment of the incest problem [ch.5] and discloses the fundamental theological basis for his directions to the Corinthians. Sinful behavior of this sort cannot be allowed to corrupt God’s elect covenant community. [Richard Hays, First Corinthians. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (WJKP, 1997), 88, emphasis original]
And then Tom Wright unpacks the significance of the Christianized Shema of ch. 8 in a similar way, as the very Preface to the discussion re the weak and the strong:
To pray the Shema was to embrace the yoke of God’s kingdom, to commit oneself to God’s purposes on earth as in heaven, whatever it might cost. It was to invoke, and declare one’s loyalty to, the One God who had revealed himself in action at the Exodus and was now giving his people their inheritance. Paul uses the Shema in this passage in exactly this way, not as a detached statement of dogma, not as a ‘spiritual’ aside, not simply in order to swat away the ‘many “gods” and many “lords”’ of the previous verse, but in order to be the foundation for the community which is living, or which Paul is teaching to live, as the kingdom–people in the midst of the pagan world. (1 Cor 8:4-6) [NT Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress, 2013), “The One God of Israel, Freshly Revealed”, 663 (emphasis added)]
cont.5
ReplyDeleteAll in all, there’s profound theology undergirding what counts as forms of behaviour which do matter, and matter assuredly a lot even, and what may indeed be just indifferent. Does any of this touch upon our present Anglican divisions?
We close with this observation. It would seem we have both a presenting issue, the blessing of same-sex relationships, and a much deeper concern. In effect, it’s not dissimilar to an iceberg, with some 90% below the waterline and only 10% visible. The deeper concerns depict the sorts of theological moves which castigate such a thing as same-sex erotic behaviour as being utterly against the grain, or those alternatively which seek to foster them and celebrate them, rejoicing in their just and essential goodness. Nor does this seemingly allow for much middle ground ... In which case why bring Romans 14-15 into play at all? Even if at first blush there is indeed some commonality in there being divisions between Christians in Rom 14-15 and now amongst Anglicans, what sorts of things are dividing them? And that question is especially pertinent when Paul is notably going out of his way in Rom 14-15 to bring them (back) together. The matters dividing them should not be viewed as ‘diaphora’, as differentiable! At least, not in the light of the Gospel of God, as revealed and declared and demonstrated through Jesus and now in the Holy Spirit, who welcomes all comers—even as the Gospel also seeks to transform us into the Image of Christ, lest we be conformed to this world/aeon (Rom 12:1-2).
So; are the matters that do divide Anglicans at present really worth going to the wall over? Do the ‘symptoms’ of which we speak betray an essential seismic division between schools of theological thinking such that the practices of these differentiating schools be mutually exclusive? And they should indeed be so—the one is “sin”; the other is “blessed”—given the nature of the Holy God who sends his Son to die and atone for the rebellious behaviour of a faithless race. For the rubric of Holiness parses quite brilliantly the central core of the Gospel, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who himself is raised “with power” “according to the spirit of holiness from the dead” (Rom 1:4). That is, this humble and humiliating act of the gracious God (Phil 2:6-8), who himself welcomes “weak” and wretched “sinners” in his “proven love” (Rom 5:6-8), now claims them as his own, as his saints, as those who are indeed baptized into Jesus’ death and are buried with him in baptism, to surrender now their “members” no more unto “impurity” but unto “righteousness for sanctification” (Rom 6:19), “the end/telos” of which is “eternal life” (6:20-23).
From all of which, I myself discern the issues being addressed by Paul in Rom 14-15 cannot be near the causes of our present, severe divisions among the Anglican Communion. Nice try, Peter—but pass ... The dynamics at play behind Rom 14-15, whatever they were, would seem to be such that Paul envisaged the real possibility of the different groups being reconciled - even as they held onto their respective positions, in some way. This is NOT what is at stake among the world-wide AC and also locally in provinces and dioceses and parishes. And how any bishop functions in this context I’m really not sure ... For what are the implications re “unity” when the theological foundations are just so incompatible, and the surface symptoms reflecting these foundations mutually exclusive?
There is of course a very important feature missing from the picture I’ve so far painted of the situation in ACANZ&P on the ground. For the actual situation is both a fluid one and an alloyed one.
ReplyDeleteWhile there are indeed those clearly defined opposing ‘camps’ described earlier, nationally, regionally, parochially, in the event, again nationally, regionally, parochially, there are various tipping points on the ground that would prompt folk to move from one alignment to another. Simply put, there are many Rubicons out there.
In another context I’ve dared to suggest the reality is one where the sword of Damocles hangs poised—for those with eyes to see. That is, Motion 7 etc requires of us, of each of us, in the end, a decision nevertheless. In fact, M7 forces a decision upon us, sifting us one way or the other, I would contend.
But in actual fact, for many folk the situation is far from being that clear, at the moment. A kind of indecisive fog hangs in the middle ground - and I would contend further, obscuring the true implications of the situation; yet nevertheless for many the ‘pause button’ is the reality. And so any Rubicon is some distance away.
For starters, at the most superficial level, the Province’s Formularies on Marriage have not changed. I contend this to be actually “superficial” in fact, for any decent theology of blessing has already moved the real goal posts. Be that as it may, for the moment ...
Then there’s the other simple point that for many folk in the pews there’s a lack of clarity, of confusion even. As Pauline Hanson across the Ditch so famously asked once: “Please explain!” Leading any public discussion of both the presenting issues and the deeper theological maelstrom underneath is a delicate task—even now, even after numerous attempts these past 15+ years ‘around the traps’. I should know, being one of the people directly involved early on when Bishop David Coles requested the Windsor Report be unpacked for people. And of course history has not stood still since then - far from it! Just mention GAFCON, or now CCAANZ, and watch the reaction(s). So; despite Lynda Paterson’s glorious attempts at introducing Hermeneutics 101 here in Chch to the masses, fog remains—as does WH Auden’s emphatic exclamation, “Thank you, Fog!”
Another important feature of the landscape is the canonical institution and now formal Convocation of the Christian Community idea - thanks in no small measure to AFFIRM via the Lloyds. Still unnamed (tho surely in via; and I’ve contended, for what it’s worth, tho’ now out of the formal loop, for “The Society of St Silas”), this entity could go any which way as history unfolds here in ACANZ&P. It may yet be one glorious distraction. It may yet be one glorious mustard seed of not just an idea, but of a Reformation in the making. God alone knows. So Rubicons have yet to be crossed here too ... surely; even as some have already occurred.
So messy church it is! Perhaps it is ever such. And purists are either a blighted breed or a rare one ...! But again, I would contend the amount of angst and the amount of blood on the carpet already spilt would/should seriously govern bishops’ behaviour, both their actions and their inactions. Such are in fact the seismic cultural forces at play - with their genealogies - that only ostriches might lose their tail feathers here! But just as there is such a thing as “compassion fatigue” even in the face of such grotesque tragedies as Syria or Afghanistan, so too muddlement will remain on the ground for a while yet here in these Fair Isles ... That is a truer picture.
There is of course a very important feature missing from the picture I’ve so far painted of the situation in ACANZ&P on the ground. For the actual situation is both a fluid one and an alloyed one.
ReplyDeleteWhile there are indeed those clearly defined opposing ‘camps’ described earlier, nationally, regionally, parochially, in the event, again nationally, regionally, parochially, there are various tipping points on the ground that would prompt folk to move from one alignment to another. Simply put, there are many Rubicons out there.
In another context I’ve dared to suggest the reality is one where the sword of Damocles hangs poised—for those with eyes to see. That is, Motion 7 etc requires of us, of each of us, in the end, a decision nevertheless. In fact, M7 forces a decision upon us, sifting us one way or the other, I would contend.
But in actual fact, for many folk the situation is far from being that clear, at the moment. A kind of indecisive fog hangs in the middle ground - and I would contend further, obscuring the true implications of the situation; yet nevertheless for many the ‘pause button’ is the reality. And so any Rubicon is some distance away.
For starters, at the most superficial level, the Province’s Formularies on Marriage have not changed. I contend this to be actually “superficial” in fact, for any decent theology of blessing has already moved the real goal posts. Be that as it may, for the moment ...
Then there’s the other simple point that for many folk in the pews there’s a lack of clarity, of confusion even. As Pauline Hanson across the Ditch so famously asked once: “Please explain!” Leading any public discussion of both the presenting issues and the deeper theological maelstrom underneath is a delicate task—even now, even after numerous attempts these past 15+ years ‘around the traps’. I should know, being one of the people directly involved early on when Bishop David Coles requested the Windsor Report be unpacked for people. And of course history has not stood still since then - far from it! Just mention GAFCON, or now CCAANZ, and watch the reaction(s). So; despite Lynda Paterson’s glorious attempts at introducing Hermeneutics 101 here in Chch to the masses, fog remains—as does WH Auden’s emphatic exclamation, “Thank you, Fog!”
Another important feature of the landscape is the canonical institution and now formal Convocation of the Christian Community idea - thanks in no small measure to AFFIRM via the Lloyds. Still unnamed (tho surely in via; and I’ve contended, for what it’s worth, tho’ now out of the formal loop, for “The Society of St Silas”), this entity could go any which way as history unfolds here in ACANZ&P. It may yet be one glorious distraction. It may yet be one glorious mustard seed of not just an idea, but of a Reformation in the making. God alone knows. So Rubicons have yet to be crossed here too ... surely; even as some have already occurred.
So messy church it is! Perhaps it is ever such. And purists are either a blighted breed or a rare one ...! But again, I would contend the amount of angst and the amount of blood on the carpet already spilt would/should seriously govern bishops’ behaviour, both their actions and their inactions. Such are in fact the seismic cultural forces at play - with their genealogies - that only ostriches might lose their tail feathers here! But just as there is such a thing as “compassion fatigue” even in the face of such grotesque tragedies as Syria or Afghanistan, so too muddlement will remain on the ground for a while yet here in these Fair Isles ... That is a truer picture.
Hi Bryden
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments above - a collected essay! - and a few remarks here with a few minutes to spare do not a full reply constitute!
(I hope I might be granted mercy for a proper reply, but likely it won’t be till next week).
1. You may be right (Rubicons, Fog, Ostriches, etc).
2. But “may” also means you may be wrong (!!).
3. There is another scenario in which ACANZP has crossed a Rubicon already but perhaps not the Rubicon (or plural) you surmise. One impression I form is this: that whatever the rights and wrongs and ins and outs of a true, genuine, faithful, orthodox approach to homosexuality (which necessarily for many people is an approach to “my son”, “our niece”, “our daughter, her partner and our grandchildren” ... that is, not just an “issue” but also “people”), many [but, true, by no means all] members of ACANZP are saying, “Look, Bryden/CCAANZ/etc, even if you are right, we are not leaving, we are definitely not leaving over this matter ... we are going to be a church which lives with its homosexual members rather than makes statements and symbolically significant actions like disaffiliations which - effectively, when all is said and done about “But we welcome ... we love ... - eschew homosexuals.”
4. That is, I wonder if you are reckoning with a church which says being family is important in the face of all claims about the significance of doctrinal matters?
At different times, Bryden, you have drawn two different maps of the tension that you see in ACANZP around That Topic. From afar, one makes easy sense; the other is much harder for me to imagine.
ReplyDeleteSometimes you have described this as a tug of war between persons trying to keep ethics rooted in some sound theological vision, and others who are either bypassing or warping received theology to do what makes very immediate albeit churchly emotional sense to them. The Way Forward report and some personal experience up here with theologiphobes makes that description entirely plausible. In it, your opponents "just KNOW" what they HAVE to do and fear that any deeper reflection will "just get in the way." Such battles between prudence and impulsiveness have usually been seen as a disciplinary challenge, which is not to say that this one is simple or unilateral.
More often, as just above, you have described this same tension as a Götterdämmerung of well-articulated and opposing theological systems. And with that, you lose me. I enjoy your quotations above, and your reflections generally. But in all the decades wasted on That minor Topic I have never seen anything of much theological weight from the other side, although they did make some scholarly arguments from scripture in the pre-Gagnon phase of the squabble. If there is not an unsung Anglican theologian on the blessed isles who has built a truly formidable system unknown here up yonder, then with whom are you actually arguing? If there is no rival, how can this be a contest of theologies?
In the refreshing world of facts, there is a big one that elicits little comment here but adequately explains both sides of That overheated Topic-- since postindustrial people enjoying mass prosperity are less interested in continuing families, they do not use sex mainly for procreation, and their birthrates are quite low. Natives of this economy face a choice, not between being good Israelites or bad Romans, but between rival contemporary secular ways of repurposing the biology and culture of reproduction. (Max Weber's prediction about secularization was wrong, but his other one about sex was obviously right.) So on one hand, the Body has some who are trying to hammer nails into this fluidity because a hammer is the tool that they have, and others who are trying to decide-- given that they must decide-- how to swim in it.
Neither is stupid or faithless. But each is avoiding some elephant in their respective rooms, and they quarrel more to reassure themselves and to fortify their respective avoidances than to persuade anyone. Can the theologically inclined speak more directly to the social texture in which Christians live now? Can theologiphobes discover that the Bible they distrust shows a good way, even the best way, of living with realities exposed by Charles Darwin whom they do trust? Those would be ways forward.
BW
For clarity, Peter, when I mention an ethos of procreation here, I have in mind the ideas in my comment to Bryden just above.
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say that I-- (a) am not at all influenced by Humanae Vitae, (b) do not agree with either its finding on birth control or the interpretation of Thomism that supported that, (c) do instead find the post-Darwinian understanding of sexuality heuristically helpful for understanding what the sacred authors of our canon were doing in what they wrote, and (d) further find the Weberian prediction about sexuality helpful for understanding what everyone-- conservatives as well as homosexuals or revisionists-- has actually been doing around us now. I see no competent or honest way for us to ignore Darwin and Weber, but of course we may make different uses of their relevant insights.
So no, not so many Catholics avoid contraception, but that is not relevant to what EYE am talking about when I mention an ethos of procreation here.
BW
Thank you, Bishop Peter, Pastor Pastorum! Advent Blessings to yu and yours.
ReplyDelete1. Time is granted for an overpressed bishop to reply more fully!
ReplyDelete2. Many an “issue”, within a Christian scheme of things, equates with Ms Jones and/or Tim B and/or Felicity Snoops, all of whom are loved of their whanau for the richness they bring around the family table. I’ve been exactly there twice in the last fortnight alone intriguingly ... So, despite the taunts from some over the years, ‘this’ has NEVER been merely an ‘academic issue’ for me. For anyway, as you suggest Peter: Kiwis are a hopelessly pragmatic lot! [Though I'd be VERY careful about that "family" tag: it could land you in all sorts of either cultural mire and/or theological soup - viz holiness again and Household of God!]
3. In fact, as one who has tried to ponder and probe things Trinitarian just a bit, I’ve often caught myself wondering what our Courteous Good Lord (to cite Julian) makes of it all, with His being the Richest of all Personhoods Imaginable. In human language, one might even be tempted to speak of “violation” ... Just a thought ... Which gives us all pause, perhaps ... Indeed NONE of these Christian things are ‘just “issues”’, hey?!
4. Enjoy the time left to both of us, then ...! And may thy shepherding echo Ezek 34 in its positivity, not its horrid negativity, as you engage with your own participation in the Missio Dei.
5. For NB meanwhile, the world has moved on, regarding our in-house stuff as “homophobic gibberish”, as it plies its trade elsewhere: climate change; human rights in Tibet; FGM; migration across North Africa/into Europe generally; Trump’s Wall; Trump’s Impeachment; N Korean missiles; Amazonian indigenous tribes; mining in the Arctic; the revival of Wicca; ... Curiously however, news editors do not seem to notice the amazing stats on genuine church growth in some non-western regions ... mmm.
ReplyDeleteDear Bryden,
Thanks for your most elucidating comments. Regarding no. 5 of your last post;
it is interesting to note that this growth is occurring in places where it so dangerous to take that stance. And yet the Western Church does not even comment on it.When our pastoral duties involve being shepherds to the four legged flock as well as the two legged, it brings your head out of the clouds and grounds your attention.
As an indication Bowman that I am neither shadowboxing some phantasmagorical elephant nor avoiding in some dysfunctional way my Jungian Shadow, perhaps you might like to check out this link: http://timeforlove.co.nz/ At least it's more coherent that the Doctrine Commission of 2014.
ReplyDeleteThereafter, I must declare my observation of many a westerner’s dualistic disregard of biology’s basic display of form-and-function—whether they be representatives of the Body or not. What they all do represent is the vain-glorious victory of ‘culture’ over ‘nature’. Even as they are now strenuously crying out for ever more accommodation by humans with a form of nature that seems to be biting back! Even though apparently it’s humans who’ve caused the fight-back ... So from Comte to Irigaray via a Darwin, a Marx or a Weber, just what is it that the entire complex of disciplines termed “social theory” has actually concocted?! If the atheist Bertrand Russell can correctly diagnose Marxism as a Christian heresy, then perhaps ...?! For what is it to ‘examine’ ‘social change’ anyway ...? That is, to help some readers both identify the dots and to better join them, one more time: one may not say “God” by shouting “man” in a loud voice. Neither can one adequately examine ‘human change’ apart from the deepest most human changes of all ... that ARE THEOLOGICAL.
Just asking ...
Thank you, Bryden, for the link. Even a campaign video can sometimes be pretty good television.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I saw some theological overlap in the positions of the talking heads, but not a single coherent position that could be the target of your comments.
Max Weber famously predicted that as the rationalisation of everyday life around industrial processes continued, sex would become a last bastion of unprogramed, self-expressive play. It happened.
There are westerners and there are westerners. As you say and as just noted, a few generations have indeed attempted an incremental repurposing of our reproductive capabilities. Among the strongest signs of that is the retreat of even "conservatives" from defense of pairbonding for procreation, nurture, and the succession of generations (cf Carolyn Kelly in the video) to advocacy for the dyad for its own transcendent sake.
Meanwhile, in the last generation, social and affective neuroscience has restored the interpersonal to emotion and emotion to human development. Social research with roots in philosophy has been and still is interesting. But data from say the BOLD signals of 7T fMRI scans ** are changing minds today.
** BOLD = Blood oxygen level dependent. 7T = 7 Tesla. fMRI = functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Characteristically, each distinct activity simultaneously uses several areas of the brain, and the areas being used receive more blood. The distribution of blood in the brain can be mapped by measuring the magnetic spin of its oxygen atoms. So the parts of the brain receiving blood while a subject sees images, listens to sounds, answers questions, reads texts, prays or meditates, etc can be scanned. If the strength of the scanner's magnetic field is at least 7 Tesla, the resulting images have higher resolution. At this higher resolution, it is easier to ask and answer questions about how the brain does social interaction and emotion, and how these in turn affect the brain.
BW
Thanks, Bowman and Bryden for the indication of your acceptance that esoteric arguments in theological learning may not attract the average worshipper in our Anglican congregations today - where most people are concerned about how we are going to cope with the more urgent matters of climate change, social connectivity, and human thriving in a diversely created environment.
ReplyDeleteI cannot overstate, I think, the reality of Jesus' prayer of thanks that his Father (in Trinitarian terms) has sought fit to 'hide these things (the secrets of the Kingdom) from the 'learned and the clever' (professional theologians?) and revealing them to 'mere children'. This should be a lesson to all of us - from bishops and archimandrites and learned professors - to the least intellectually gifted in our congregations (the majority); that the essence of faith is a gift, not a reward for diligent intellectual enterprise.
As an instance of this, my wife and I were, this last weekend, present at the graduation of our darling daughter as a 'Ph.D. in Public Health' at the University of Otago. This did not gift her with the complete knowledge of all the problems of our national health service, but it does help her to reason out what might be done to try to meet some of the criteria is sets out to manage.
It is - in simplistic terms, agreed - a fact that faith is a gift, more 'caught than taught'. However, the need for a heart and mind to 'catch onto' the gift of faith is elemental.
Ordinary people do struggle to understand a Church which has love and charity as its watchword, with a Redeemer who has already accounted for our human frailty, then insisting on its' adherents' resistance to ways of coexistence that contribute to the common well-being of society, rather than doing its best to encourage human acceptance of loving relationships that help to build up the common life. This seems contrary to the theme: "Where charity and love are - there is God!"
Congratulations, Father Ron, on your daughter's PhD!
ReplyDeleteAnd please give the benefit of the doubt to any archimandrite who may cross your path. If ruling a few or more monasteries does not drive one mad, it will make one very wise indeed. It's a bit like being a bishop only there is more shuttle and less good travel, the hours-- enthroned from vespers to matins and beyond-- are even longer, every skete is yet another integrity with its own customary, and any argument that you see here is down to earth compared to some that an archimandrite decides.
If the Annunciation falls on Pascha one year, how precisely will all the services in churches and chapels run? If a husband is a hermit and his wife is a nun, how often should she see him? How can a monastery with a flourishing endowment be induced to help another with a poor one? If there is no more room for skulls and bones in the ossuary, but also no money for a larger one, what is to be done in the meantime? What does one do if the traditionalists at one of one's monasteries decides that the patriarch is the Antichrist?
The life of the angels is a blessing; a life in the world is a blessing!
BW