Monday, May 9, 2022

John 10:30 and current Anglican currents

So, in yesterday's Gospel reading, the last words were:

The Father and I are one (John 10:30).

The unity of the Father and the Son is one of the great themes of John's Gospel, if not the greatest theme of them all.

The mission of the Son in Johannine thought is the unification of humanity with God.

The church sort of understands that (e.g. when Paul in Ephesians writes about God's universal plan, "to gather up all things in [Christ]", 1:10) and sort of doesn't (e.g. when it has lots of factions such as Paul tackles in chapter after chapter of 1 Corinthians).

Division among churches at best is a handbrake on our participation in God's mission (we get distracted by issues internal to Christian life) and at worst it is a barrier to hearing the Good News  (non-Christians are turned off the purse gospel by the confusion of versions of Christianity). (

Aside: I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry yesterday driving down a street in one of our towns in which the Baptist Church is next door to the Catholic Church and Catholic School which is next door to the Union Church!

A special interest of this blog through its zillions of posts is unity among Anglicans. Putting the Union back into Anglican Communion!

On the good news front, I hear that more bishops than expected are planning to go to the Lambeth Conference in July this year. Cool!

On the what's going to happen front is the question of this week's Australian Anglican church's General Synod (here and here), where That Topic will be discussed.

This is my best understanding of what could happen - happy to be corrected by any Australian readers.

1. No particular change to the current situation which is somewhat unsettled (and looking forward to this GS settling one way or another).

2. An affirmation that various moves in a few dioceses in favour of blessing of same sex marriages are good to continue (but this may lead to disaffiliations from dioceses by some parishes; and even to some kind of separation by some dioceses from the national Anglican church).

3. An affirmation that any moves anywhere to bless any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman is wrong (unconstitutional, heretical, and the like) - unlikely to lead to disaffiliations by those who disagree; would there by rebellion against such an affirmation?

I have no particular insight or information which leads to a prediction.

But I do want to say a few things about the framing of the differences and divisions in Anglicanlands about That Topic. 

Reading around the traps I see some conservative commentary which sees these matters as binary: light versus darkness, holiness versus sinfulness and consequently as matters over which people should leave the church to reform around what they believe. (Some talk, for instance, that the progressives should have the courage of their convictions and leave to form a church better suited to their view of Anglicanism).

My own preference is to see these matters as matters on which Anglicans have reasonable grounds for reasonable difference. 

At the heart of debates over homosexuality in 21st century life are two (or more views) on homosexuality as a phenomenon of human life. 

Some Anglicans view homosexuality as a result of the Fall and thus all strictures against blessing same sex marriages are logical extensions of a view that only sexual commitment in line with creation's intention itself can be blessed. 

Some Anglicans view homosexuality as a longstanding variation within human sexuality, likely present since the emergence of humanity (homo sapiens) from the evolutionary process and thus a state of life which is within nature rather than against nature, with a consequential hesitancy to interpret Scripture as constraining two homosexuals from committing to each other in lifelong, faithful love.

Given that no definitive statement of Anglicanism found in the BCP or the 39A determines that it is unreasonable for Anglicans to hold to either view of homosexuality, is it not within the bounds of Anglicanism for there to be differences of view on how our church might respond to two homosexuals seeking ecclesiastical blessing for a legal state of life? (We might note that there are statements within Anglicanism about the respected role of the magistrate in civil life ...!).

If such debate is framed in this way, then isn't it incumbent within Anglicanlands to find ways to accommodate our differences on such matters rather than to divide over such matters?

53 comments:

Father Ron said...

Thank you, Bishop Peter, for opening up the question of what may (or may not) happen at the current General Synod of the Australian Anglican Church. I note your comment on two of the categories of opinion on the subject of homosexuality which, as you know, I am obviously of the second opinion:

"Some Anglicans view homosexuality as a result of the Fall and thus all strictures against blessing same sex marriages are logical extensions of a view that only sexual commitment in line with creation's intention itself can be blessed.

Some Anglicans view homosexuality as a longstanding variation within human sexuality, likely present since the emergence of humanity (homo sapiens) from the evolutionary process and thus a state of life which is within nature rather than against nature, with a consequential hesitancy to interpret Scripture as constraining two homosexuals from committing to each other in lifelong, faithful love."

The first of the opinions you quote (above) is dependent on the supposition that God only intended to create human beings with a binary - either Male (understood by many people who hold this opinion as 'superior) or Female (understood by the same people as being, primarily, the help-meet of the Mal) gender/sexuality. It might be noted, also that one of the prominent defenders of the first opinion, former U.S. President Donald Trump, was well-known for his sexual promiscuity within his own category of sex/gender relationships.

While I am prepared for people to think differently from myself; whose personal experience is that some of us, created in the divine Image and Likeness, happen to be intrinsically gay; I do not believe that the spiritual dedication of faithful same-sex relationships is, in any way, against the will and purpose of God in Creation. I do think that for the Church to perpetuate the former belief in its preaching and praxis may well amount to blasphemy - in contravention of God's will that we are not to "Call anything unclean that I (God) have created".

Sexuality is a precious gift from God. not to be squandered by anyone, but to be celebrated in selfless and committed relationship to the one person to whom one wishes to be fully committed. We all fail to reach the mark (the definition of sin), but Christ has redeemed us from the due consequence of our sins - a fact to which the Church needs constantly to bear humble and devoted witness. Christ is risen Alleluia! To free us from our sins Alleluia, Alleluia!

I do believe that "It is good Brethren/Sistren to live together in Unity" but not without the expectation of justice for everyone! Not many will be expected to use the services of the Anglican Church in Australia to perform the Blessing of a Same-Sex Civil Marriage, but perhaps we should be grateful that some people trust in God enough to go ahead with it. At least, this would prove that the Church is not holier than Jesus, who spent a lot of time with prostitutes and sinners; whom Jesus said he 'came to save' - not the 'righteous', who may not feel the need of salvation for themselves.

Mark Murphy said...

Yes!

It is such a deeply Anglican and deeply sensible path to take: to allow for two integrities on this issue. Perhaps this is fruit, and not the bitter fruit, of the often acrimonious debate on This Topic in recent years?

...that this is not a war of light versus darkness; that there are good men and women (straight and otherwise) on both sides, endeavouring to follow their conscience, scripture, and the guidance of the spirit.

Unknown said...

Walton's Conjecture

It's true in every case that has been carefully examined. But it's costly to examine cases, and a very long winning streak, though it raises our bayesian priors, is still not proof.

What is it? The secret of all successful doctrinal revision. Nothing in the Body has moved, does move, or can move unless it satisfies the Conjecture. Which explains, in fact, why there is no such thing as Progress in the Body, yet why, in the fullness of time, kaleidoscopic transformations will have glorified the genius of the Creator of all.

Is the Conjecture a revealed dogma? No, although even the creeds seem to be consistent with the Conjecture.

Is it the gospel? Surely not. But it distinguishes breakthrough preaching from the merely trendy.

Suppose that we do not like this Conjecture. Who or what enforces it on us? The order of the creation. About the babies who will be born tonight, not much is known, but their differences of temperament and experiences along their myriad paths will sum to the Conjecture.

Which is? Any novelty in the Body dies unless it retrieves something deep and usually forgotten in its past. To take steps north you must take a few more steps south, although the Spirit may lead you west or east.

The kaleidoscope of God's restless creativity breaks conservative hearts every day. To his great glory, the sun does not rise on the same world twice.

But meanwhile the Conjecture will not be cheated: innovation must pay with retrieval or drift with desert sand in the wind.

Why is That Topic so boring? Because happy warriors are speaking sandcastles to the mighty ebbtide.

When voices show-- and some likely will-- that SSM deepens the archetypal truth of MWM, then we will hear that *really* the Body has known the meaning of queerness all along. And, in a sense, that will be true.

BW

Peter Carrell said...

Thanks Ron, Bowman and Mark

I think I understand your profound point, Bowman!

In part, what I am saying is that we should be a church which can allow for the truth of things to become clear over the long term, rather than make hasty, schismatic decisions.

Unknown said...

Yes, Peter. We come to about the same conclusion, but may emphasize different things because we observe the psychology of polarised choice differently.

BW

Father Ron said...

Dear Bishop Peter, it would seem from today's stats on the reduced frequency of people getting married that the question of whom the Church marries may soon no longer be a problem anyway:

https://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=ETof7&m=gltjaRFpADdhgmk&b=vSyxxV24vncHr7On7A.GXA

Mark Murphy said...

"For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it." (Ephesians 2: 14-16).

Could schism be a heresy?

Mark Murphy said...

Today I read an article in Progressive Christianity advocating for all progressive churches to take one unified stance on a particular social-political issue.

This Particular Issue "is integral to our faith".

An "attack" on This Particular Issue is "an attack on our religion."

"Timidity by progressive Christian lay people, clergy, and churches is hereby declared OVER."

I am shocked at how polarised and polarising this is. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am. I really am.

We're so quick (particularly in America?) to make This Particular Issue or That Topic a complete deal breaker, a matter of core doctrine, and to the other side Anathema.

I see this in myself. When I started going to a new Anglican church, I was enjoying many aspects of it, and then thought: but is the minister anti-gay? I couldn't keep going if he was. That's a deal breaker for me. Then I saw this and thought: what am I doing?

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Mark
There might be personal lines in the sand which are different to other lines in the sand.
For instance, I get it that in the Protestant/Anglican world there is a certain amount of "anti-ordination" of women and I can live with the diversity of views on that (e.g. within the Anglican Communion which I am not about to leave), but I would personally find it impossible to be a parishioner of a parish whose vicar was openly/publicly against the ordination of women.

Mark Murphy said...

Sure. I'd be out the door if the leadership of my parish was anti-ordination of women, as I suspect I would be too if they were militantly anti-SSM.

But my pause is: what are my expectations here? That everyone should agree with me, or agree with the version of Christianity I sign up to? Can I tolerate so little difference...in church church members, in *church leaders*?

Would I give up all that is good in this parish for this issue? Maybe. And maybe that would also depend on how much power the minister had, or that I was giving them.

Anonymous said...

In a sense, Mark, but it's easier to be a schismatic than to be a heretic.

Heresy is usually defined today as an intentional denial of defined dogma. What defined dogmas do schismatics intentionally deny?

The third article of the creeds affirms a Body that is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. So it is heresy to assert that there can be more than one Body.

(On the difficulty of using the category *heresy* in even the modern world, try looking up Karl Rahner's proposed new category of *crypto-heresy* in his Theological Investigations. He was thinking of mindsets and ways of life that, although incompatible with revelation, are nonetheless common and commonly enabled in some part of the church.)

The schismatics we know believe that (1) the one Church comprises denominations, (2) dividing mere denominations is not dividing the Church, and (3) the polity most true to its denominational type is anyway not dividing anything. To them, it's drift from received denominational norms that constitutes division and should be denounced as schism.

Very tidy, but a long way from Ephesians 2. More dogmatically, a loveless congeries of churchly pressure groups does not visibly do what the Body should do under the rule of the Son. In the scriptures, making the peace of the Lord real among believers and visible to non-believers is very much the point of Israel and the Body.

Yet to the cold eye of social research, denominations are not affiliates of any single entity, and dissertations explain many of them as the institutions of modern social classes. In places, denominations of Buddhists, who do not believe so credally or cosmically in unity, show much more of it.

Orthodoxy defined *ethnophyletism*, denominationalism based on nationality, as a heresy in 1872. That is the canonical basis on which some Orthodox have recently attempted to charge Kirill of Moscow with heresy. Yet Orthodox churches also approve proper patriotism as a love that is worthy of the Christian life.

https://orthodoxwiki.org/Phyletism

On the ground, love is the scriptural criterion. A group that organises worship in antipathy to another ironically manifests the sin of Cain as the power that owns them even as they pray to the reconciling Son. If a fiery universalist reading of the scriptures is approximately right, they are taking a terrible but avoidable risk.

What is true of schismatics in anti-churches is still more true of happy warriors polarising the Body from within. Neither obey the Lord's several precepts of peace, but while the former merely dishonour his kingdom, the latter distract and disrupt the substance of it.

How has this come to pass? Well, of course, the creation groans (Romans viii). But the proximate cause seems to be a nescience common to churches like ours. Broadly speaking, all have heard of Jesus, the personal redeemer, but are more or less unaware of the Son, the cosmic reconciler. Likewise, all know churches as their local distributors of *sin management*, but would never expect them to be exemplars and signposts of the new creation at peace. From that starting point, one far from Galilee in Roman Palestine, earnest souls sometimes try to do "good" that, in the perspective of Jesus's Way, is crazy.

BW

Father Ron said...

Dear Peter, and Readers opf ADU, here, again, is a bit of wisdom from 'You Know Who', who seems to know more about the common human condition than the leaders of the Diocese of Sydney:

"WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2022

“According to a proverb from the Far East, “a wise person, looking at the egg can see an eagle; looking at the seed he glimpses a great tree; looking at the sinner he glimpses a saint”. That is how God looks at us: in each of us, he sees a certain potential, at times unbeknownst to ourselves, and throughout our lives he works tirelessly so that we can place this potential at the service of the common good.”
Pope Francis

Christ is Risen, Alleluia! He is Risen, Indeed, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Father Ron said...

'Heresy is usually defined today as an intentional denial of defined dogma. What defined dogmas do schismatics intentionally deny?

The third article of the creeds affirms a Body that is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. So it is heresy to assert that there can be more than one Body." - BW

In the light of your Statement here, Bowman, would you consider the '39 Articles' to be a 'dogma'? Or are they, in the light of the passage of time and the radical change of situation, mere 'Artifacts'? The trouble with the 39As is that some of them seem no longer relevant to perhaps most Anglicans. If they really are 'dogma' and not just artifacts, would I be committing heresy by holding only lightly to them?

Another question: In the light of the FACT that we are told in Scripture that there will be 'no marriage in heaven', is the institution of marriage itself a 'Salvation Issue" so that the civil marriage of a Same-Sex Couple (or its Blessing in Church) might become an Issue of Salvation, wherein its participants might be condemned to 'eternal death'? If so, I have a problem relating to such a love-defying religious view.

Mark Murphy said...

I like where you went to with that reply, Bowman. I am more thinking of....

"For us and our salvation
he came down from heaven....
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate..."

("For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us..." etc Ephesians 2)...

Anonymous said...

I am both amused and horrified that the local church is seen in terms of ‘sin management’ but sadly have to admit the truth of it. Jesus is Lord of all creation but is diminished by our differences and we are not seen as purveyors of the new creation of peace as you so rightly say, Bowman. How long, O Lord? Turn us and we shall be turned...

Mark Murphy said...

And yet, what do we do with our one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church when it puts up human barriers (altar-rails) where Christ has dismantled them: say, in certain Roman Catholic patterns to put up a barrier between the people/laity and clergy/God, or the imposition of barriers between those who have suffered divorce and the Eucharist/God (not to mention women and church leadership)?

Getting back to the original post, the idea of ‘two integrities’ within Anglicanlands (around the issue of whether to bless certain same-sex relationships or not) is a beautiful path through the Not Yet, avoiding the chasm of schism and the blasphemy of altar-rail building, hopefully.

Anonymous said...

Father Ron, I am looking forward to reading about Pentecost at SMAA.

Ecumenical councils of the whole Body (Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon...) have defined the recognised dogmas. National churches cannot do this.

A few of the 39A do incorporate the ecumenical dogmas, but no article defines a new ones. Therefore, so long as one affirms the old ecumenical ones-- as you often do-- quibbles with the 39A cannot make one a heretic.

The 39A define a sturdy *mere christianity* for churches. They anchor Anglican identity less by what they say than by what they decline to require. Privately, many Anglicans admire various exotic ideas of other churches (even expressly excluded ones like transubstantiation or sacramental marriage) but churches are Anglican in not requiring more than the 39A. Thus do the Articles conserve a generous margin for private judgment. Using that private judgment to rail against them without getting into trouble for doing so is a perennial way of demonstrating that they are alive and well.

The Orthodox teach that a first marriage is eternal. The unions formed by "marrying and giving in marriage" in this aeon do perdure into the next one. But no new marriages will begin in the age to come.

The only "salvation issue" that there can be is idolatry that so binds the soul to evil that character is too corrupt to survive the fire. The question is: what is the holiness that lives free of that bondage?

BW

Anonymous said...

Some say that there is a peculiarly Anglican temper of scepticism. Is that true?

Weddings were civil or family ceremonies from long before the birth of Jesus until almost the second millennium.

Again, long before the birth of Jesus, states recognised marriages formed according to the exotic laws of faraway lands and under the aegis of strange gods.

Jesus's prohibition of divorce is utterly mundane, requiring no belief or ritual.

Authorities of beliefs and rituals very exotic to us likewise discourage or ban divorce.

St Paul's great mystery seems to be a natural metaphor for a supernatural reality.

The 39A class marriage, not as a sacrament, but as a condition of life. It is, not salvific or magical, but civil and practical.

No Anglican church recognises marriage that is not first recognised by the local civil authority.

In every place, there is one marriage registry but perhaps several theologies of marriage.

Those who define marriage in a Christian way then have to explain how it is that say Atheists or Hindus can also marry.

But if we grant that marriage is possible for non-believers, then we grant that it is not a religious reality.

There are tropes that frame common experiences of marriage in ways that resonate with Christian faith. But other tropes also do this for other faiths.

Some believe that marriage is so important that it must somehow be a part of religion. But many things are important without belonging to churches.

And some fervently affirm a theology of marriage that they like. But fervent people often know more than can be true.

BW

Mark Murphy said...

Bowman, I wouldn't have thought that transubstantiation or sacramental marriage was an exotic idea to a fifteenth century member of the Church of England.

More and more, I feel sympathetic to the idea that, for the average English man or woman, the Protestant Reformation did much more harm than good.

Mark Murphy said...

Anglicanism is so tragic, messy, and bittersweet.

Our Book(s) of Common Prayer transmit the ancient, monastic Daily Round, the Divine Office (condensed, for busy fathers and householders like me). It is a beautiful taonga. And yet the shadow is a cultural genocide....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monasteries_dissolved_by_Henry_VIII_of_England

Mark Murphy said...

Marriage is one of the richest symbols we have for the relationship between Christ and the Church, affirming the long-standing bride and bridegroom imagery of the relationship between the human and the divine throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Like all true sacraments, it is a window into God's nature; as Jim Cotter so beautifully invoked (with words A New Zealand Prayer couldn't quite fully say), "Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Love-maker".

I have no idea what it is like to be married in a Hindu or Islamic service. I hope it is as joyous and loving as my wedding day.

It is quite something for God, and my church family, to be involved in the vows we make to one another for life.

For all these reasons, Christian marriage - and not just sex - is so passionately important to both sides of That Topic.

Mark Murphy said...

Sorry, Jim's lines were "Life-giver, Pain-heater, Love-maker"

https://liturgy.co.nz/god-our-love-maker

Anonymous said...

Sacramental Marriage

By this I mean: the medieval and scholastic project of defining a genus *sacrament* by the common characteristics of baptism and the eucharist and then usefully understanding pairbonding as a species of that genus.

St Thomas Aquinas, for example, tried to discern an aristotelian form and matter for each sacrament.

With respect to marriage, the project failed for four reasons. First, efforts to read "great mystery" as "great sacrament" ran aground on the text itself. Second, pairbonding is not necessary to salvation. Third, the matter of the thing is sex, which is on one hand universal, and on the other hand not very ecclesiastical. Fourth, wedding ceremonies among Christians have few or no common elements. If marriage is a sacrament, so is a can opener.

BW

Mark Murphy said...

Cant recall where Christ and the Church was compared to a can and can opener. Was Thomas of Aquinas married? These dry as dust categories suggest not

Anonymous said...

"For all these reasons, Christian marriage - and not just sex - is so passionately important to both sides of That Topic."

Yes, solemnisations of holy matrimony are important to people. Now is the month of maying; like most people, I will be attend a few over the summer.

https://youtu.be/9NPFUz-kIu4

However, those who believe that they are committed to a tradition do well to cool down and learn about it before fighting over it. What I saw in the squabbles over That Topic was that, on both sides, the happy warriors throwing punches were flailing in quicksand mapped centuries ago, and pulling their churches into it after them. They were also motivated by opposing positions in political theology that were never brought to the surface for discernment.

That conversation should have been led away from gawking at the irreconcilable extremes and toward calmly piecing together a more empathic body of centrist truth that pastors can use wherever they happen to minister. Where Anglicans and Roman Catholics did find ways of doing that, they reduced their vulnerability to polarisation. Just how episcopally ordered churches can navigate the rough seas of future *culture wars* bears creative investigation and thoughtful preparation.

To be clear, my own position on SSM is what it was in the 1970s. Democratic republics should register same sex marriages. When they do, churches have a duty to explain and affirm the civil equity of so doing, even if they advise their own members against sodomy. Because solemnisation-- even MWM-- is not a sacrament, and is a civil ordinance and a private matter-- until the M2 a family ceremony-- whole churches (ie representative synods) have nothing further to decide about SSM per se.

SSM only comes into the purview of churches through pastors with the power of the keys-- the Lord requires that the marriages of members be equitable and permanent, and bishops more or less regulate the conduct of clergy in churches, ceremonies, and acts of state. If a church has members who can register SSMs with the state, then the clergy will deal with SSM.

The involvement of clergy in a civil ordinance such as SSM represents their church's commitment to justice, but does not commit them to particular exegeses of the scriptures or moral evaluations of homosexuality. One can-- many do!-- wish that a member would either not marry or marry someone else, and yet still register the marriage for the state. And the Body's intimate relationship with the canonical scriptures entails that the ordained are especially free to follow the text-- including the Six Texts-- wherever the Spirit leads them

BW

Anonymous said...

Hi Mark

Do you find my comments irritating? That is not my intention.

St Thomas was a Dominican friar usually in Paris. He had parents, but was not married.

His passion was bringing all knowledge into the framework for Christian revelation that he found in the Epistle to the Romans. To do so, he used the cutting edge philosophy of his day, the works of the pagan Aristotle as reinterpreted by Jewish and Muslim philosophers of northern Africa. That is, to be faithful to Christian revelation, he was first an interfaith and polyglot thinker. Unsurprisingly for such an imaginative genius, he was also known in his day as a poet and mystic. The pope commissioned him to compose the office hymns for Corpus Christi, a few of which are found in Anglican hymnals today.

"Cant recall where Christ and the Church was compared to a can and can opener."

It hasn't been. I deny that either solemnisations or can openers are the same kind of thing that baptism and eucharist are. So, of course, does Article XXV.
Personally, I go to solemnisations and I use can openers, but I do not need to believe that either is a *sacrament* to like what they do.

"dry as dust categories"

Scholastic categories. Apart from whatever it contributes to a synoptic view of all knowable reality, the category *sacrament* is the supposed anchor of the concept of *sacramental validity*.

When a pope mistakenly decided that Anglican orders were invalid, it was because (a) he could not find the transmission of the chalice and paten in the Anglican Ordinal, and (b) such transmission is the traditional *matter* of the *sacrament* of ordination. Awkwardly, several popes were not themselves ordained this way. Moreover, the French historian on whom he relied for (b) was mistaken. As everyone now sees, all ecumenical churches ordain by *cheirotonia*, the laying on of hands. Anglicans can have reasonable confidence that the popes have been properly ordained.

*Scholastic categories*

When not talking to popes or papists, Anglicans encounter these categories in the works of reformers like Richard Hooker and in the idiom of the 39A which updated the 42A expanded from the 10A that are nearly from the hand of Luther himself. (Luther? He sent articles to Wurtemburg where they were shown, along with an attractive lady, to Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer took both back to England, but kept the lady a secret.)

The point is: the major reformers were more or less competent in the scholastic method, which is to say that Protestant and even Anglican identity is grounded in words used in ways that post-moderns do not intuitively understand, whichever side of the usual divide they wake up on. If persons trying to cohabit an identity do not know when they are abusing its idiom, then we might expect rather heated misunderstanding surrounded by a conceptual fog. And that is just what we saw in some of the most consequential discussions of That Topic.

BW

Mark Murphy said...

Gosh. What is a sacrament? Is marriage a sacrament? What is marriage?

Following on from your above points, Bowman:

1. I have no idea why we would constrain our theology to "medieval and scholastic" categories, especially for something as initimate as marriage.

2. The Orthodox prefer 'mystery' to sacrament: that's much closer to our tradition than 'genus' (which sounds more like botany).

3. Are all sacraments by definition salvific, purely salvific? I'm sure that for many people "pairbonding" has been salvific, has been the most real way that God's love is incarnate and transforming for them. However, Augustine's definition of a sacrament as "an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace" is much broader and better, surely.

4. According to extensive research, sex is 5% of marriage (and 0.5% when one has young kids!). Rainbow Christians often point out that their desire for marriage is much more about lifelong companionship than orgasm; someone to cuddle up with and watch Netflix, someone to care for and to care for you throughout life, to paraphrase Justin Lee.

5. I don't think we would have any difficulty in walking into several, divergent Christian services and realizing, in all cases, oh a marriage is taking place here.

Mark Murphy said...

Reminding us of the human face of That Topic, and (for me) where fallen creation truly manifests, here are Jim Cotter's words on his prayers and books:

"My hope is that the work will help those who are younger than I am both to renew their faith and to integrate it with their sexuality without getting depressed and without the stress which may well contribute to a cancer becoming symptomatic sooner than need be."

(Enough posts from me).

Mark Murphy said...

Thanks for checking that out, Bowman. It can be hard to read tone on the web. No, I'm not irritated - I'm astonished!

I've said so much on this post, I should probably leave it there, but I'm curious: you were downplaying the theological authority of the 39A with Father Ron, now you seem to be holding to them in terms of sacraments?

I don't understand why 39A only includes baptism and eucharist as real sacraments, which seems so out of step with Catholic, Orthodox, Early Church, and widespread 15thC English understandings.

I also don't get why the 39A are given that much weight: they were rewritten numerous times, and represent a snapshot of ecclesial power and priorities during a pretty specific, fracturous moment in time.

Peter Carrell said...

Anglicanism emphasises sacraments instituted by our Lord himself, so baptism and eucharist are dominical sacraments, and the 39A on that score bear witness to a simple reality.

Other so-called sacraments took longer to bed into the life of the church, with marriage the last, and only from around the turn from the first into the second millennium. (IN NZPB these other five are "sacramental actions"; and in practice, marriage is accorded a special significance because only priests and bishops can conduct weddings.

In my view - others may wish to give other views - the 39A are accorded the weight they are given because (1) they became the settled articles of religion for the C of E (2) in their settled state they have shaped Anglicanism during its expansion out from the CofE and around the globe (3) they represent an English fusion of Lutheran and Reformed streams within Continental Reformation churches (4) they give Anglicanism its distinctive character, distinguishing it from Romanism, Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, Presbyterianism, Calvinisn etc!

Mark Murphy said...

Why should Rome (or Constantinople) have all the best tunes?

One of the impressive qualities of the Catholic faith is its willingness to saturate (or incorporate) human culture, to reach out from Sunday worship and embrace, hold, and become incarnate in the everyday lives of its members.

Could shrinking, private Anglicanism learn something from this?

More provocation (bombastically stated): To limit the sacraments to baptism and Eucharist (because these are the only ones directly/historically ‘instituted’ by Jesus) is to become fixated on Jesus the personal redeemer and less aware of ‘the Son, the cosmic reconciler’ (to borrow the arresting words of Bowman).

It took a while for the Church to work out the Not Yet would be more than a few generations. This, in part, may explain why it took the Church a while to work out that marriage is indeed a sacrament. But it got there.

It got to a generous vision of Seven Sacraments or Mysteries covering the lifespan from cradle to grave, offering conformation to Christ and incorporation into Christ in bodied, dramatic, and encultured ways.

“In taking marriage into its sacramental structure, the Church breaks down the barrier between the sacred and the profane, declares its concern with our worldly, embodied existence, and provides for the impact of the divine grace upon our everyday activities.” (John Macquarrie).

“…in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall…” (Ephesians 2, again).

Unknown said...

Hi Mark

Thanks for persevering :-)

My reply to Father Ron is a reasonable answer to much of what you ask. I have in mind the distinction drawn there between the mere christianity that Anglicans hold in common in the 39A and the personal and private understandings that we form in more or less creative response to all the influences on our various lives in Christ.

For a while, I knew a devoted Anglican who was fascinated by the cultus of a goddess worshipped chiefly in Kashmir. Although I do know a little about that, we could not have talked in a mature way about Christianity if we had not had the 39A as at least an implicit common referent.

So to my mind, the value of the 39A is, not that the Tudors were unsurpassed theologians, but that quite varied minds have been able to meet in Christ on the common ground of the "Artifacts" and their tributaries. It's hard to see how else a diverse church can function.

BW

Anonymous said...

A comment on the 39A has not posted from my phone. Here, a precis of it--

Here up yonder, and I suspect much more widely, the 39A are useful for common reference. When we want to talk about *mere christianity*, the 39A are available as a reasonably precise formulation of that.

As individuals, we can love them, hate them, quibble with them, throw them across the room, but what matters to CHURCHES is that they all have the same set, so that they can start any ecclesiastical conversation on common ground. If a bishop from Iowa wants to talk to + Peter and a third bishop from Wales, or if Anglican university students from several countries want to talk about whatever, it is helpful to be able to assume familiarity with the Articles.

The Son is unifying humanity; churches are the visibility of that unity; the 39A are a fairly useful tool for clear communication in churches. If one does not believe in the Son, wants churches to be less united, or cares little about mutual understanding, then one has no use for common ground. In those cases, the utility of the 39A will understandably be hard to see. Lord have mercy.

There are other such tools-- the upstream Summa and Lutheran articles, the Scots Confession, the Westminster expansion, the Irish articles, Wesley's 20A. But in the English-speaking world, the 39A are central to the whole set. And they have bridges to the worlds of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and even other religions like Islam through their incorporation into interfaith dialogues. The wider our conversations become, the more useful landmark documents like the 39A are.

From the foregoing, it should be clear that it is not meaningful to most of us to evaluate the 39A as a statement of PRIVATE theology. Some have tried and found that they could do this; others cannot and love to hate them. But this is like judging highway signs as art to put over your sofa.

BW

Mark Murphy said...

The 39A seems especially important to neo-Calvinist varieties of Anglicanism today, and probably for the good reason that they were written when Calvinist theological influence on the Anglican Church was at its high-tide mark? But they hardly represent anymore (did they ever?) the breadth of the Anglican Church. To me, they don’t look like a useful common ground for the low church/evangelical, *and* broad church/liberal *and* high church/catholic streams.

They give us a snapshot of a church in protestant, differentiation mode, separating from Rome while attempting to hold together the many voices of Reform within it. I imagine they were critical, pivotal in the days of Elizabethan Settlement. But is this appropriate anymore? Don’t they leave us in perennial schismatic mode with their explicit, anti-Catholic sentiment (sacraments growing “partly from the corrupt following of the Apostles”? Do we really need to keep emphasizing this aspect of our history and tradition? Why not just the creeds?

And their language!

Article XXIX:
“The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ; yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing.”

Unknown said...

A Jesuit who shall remain nameless here once told me a salient joke.

Hugo Rahner SJ attended a private audience with the pope. After it, he mentioned to the holy father that he was the elder brother of the greatest and most influential Catholic theologian of the past century. The pope's eyes widened with wonder. "You are the brother of Karl Barth?"

BW

Unknown said...

Two old men drink together in a pub. When they were 17 and 27 they threw punches at each other over women. But neither man got either woman in the end. What they have today are memories of the fights, tales they tell over and over, laughing.

BW

Unknown said...

A woman I know and like is sadly.experienced in divorce. But, she told me with an impish gleam in her eye, she's such a Photoshop ninja that she has no trouble deleting past husbands from her photos.

BW

Unknown said...

C16 Western Europe saw temporal power, including the control of churches, redistributed from the pope to local princes. This was in a way parallel to the replication of imperial Byzantine courts in the rising Slavic kingdoms of the East.

Churchmen incidentally empowered by this geopolitical shift had little choice but to repurpose the diverse medieval tradition to meet pastoral needs they found on the ground. In general, those in the north of the West faced their emergencies and opportunities first, and their situated choices were diverse.

Trent reformed the south in reaction to those northern choices that most disturbed especially Italian bishops. These could not and did not distinguish say earlier Hussites from militants in Muenster from Lutherish preachers from biblicist reforms in Swiss cities.

BW

Unknown said...

Where royal power was relatively central and secure-- England, Sweden, Denmark-- a Lutheran model for church governance was most attractive. But where it was not-- Poland, France, Spain, Italy-- a papacy revived from its medieval disarray was a tool monarchs used to get what their Protestant brethren already had.

In those places, theology not subversive in Uppsala or Copenhagen strengthened the hand of lower princes and urban bourgeoisie. who resisted centralisation. Hence the slaughter of Protestant princes in Poland and France, the innovative royal inquisition in Spain, and the papist war on Waldensians in the Piedmont.

BW

Mark Murphy said...


Out of my distress I called on the Lord;
the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place. (Psalm 118)

For while the Anglican church is vindicated by its place in history, with a strikingly balanced witness to Gospel and Church and sound learning, its greater vindication lies in its pointing through its own history to something of which it is a fragment. Its credentials are its incompleteness, with the tension and the travail in its soul. It is clumsy and untidy, it baffles neatness and logic. For it is sent not to commend itself as “the best type of Christianity,” but by its very brokenness to point to the universal Church wherein all have died.

Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church.

Mark Murphy said...



"This schism runs deep"

https://theconversation.com/what-will-happen-when-the-pope-meets-the-patriarch-54356

Anonymous said...

Connecting the dots, Mark, yes, we really must be more centred in the creeds. Trimming away early M2 distractions was the method of the sort of reforming that the C16 English did, and so of the articles themselves (eg XXV). They serve a useful function, but that function is not that of the baptismal creed or say the Catechism of the Catholic Church or Wikipedia.

On the the bygone animosities, "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner." We should explain the general history of the period rather than telling tendentious just so stories about where all the Western churches came from.

A taxonomy of faith and practice among Anglicans that describes the postmodern Communion is probably not the one you mention.

BW

Mark Murphy said...

"A taxonomy of faith and practice among Anglicans that describes the postmodern Communion is probably not the one you mention."

Great. Please suggest a better one, and, if possible, show me how the 39A are a common reference holding together these different Anglican streams.

Mark Murphy said...

For some reason your comments, Bowman, came up in my email (I have notify me on) but not on the webpage, so I'm repeating it here, with my response below.....Cheers, Mark


Hi Mark

Thanks for persevering :-)

My reply to Father Ron is a reasonable answer to much of what you ask. I have in mind the distinction drawn there between the mere christianity that Anglicans hold in common in the 39A and the personal and private understandings that we form in more or less creative response to all the influences on our various lives in Christ.

For a while, I knew a devoted Anglican who was fascinated by the cultus of a goddess worshipped chiefly in Kashmir. Although I do know a little about that, we could not have talked in a mature way about Christianity if we had not had the 39A as at least an implicit common referent.

So to my mind, the value of the 39A is, not that the Tudors were unsurpassed theologians, but that quite varied minds have been able to meet in Christ on the common ground of the "Artifacts" and their tributaries. It's hard to see how else a diverse church can function.

BW


Hey Bowman

Thanks for staying with this too, as I am genuinely interested/baffled.

I don’t really get how the 39A are a mere christianity – they sound more Calvinist and anti-Catholic than comprehensivist to me. What did CS Lewis make of them, I wonder?

I don’t know how talking in terms of the 39A helped you and your friend hold together in a way that the creeds don’t. And the creeds just sound better! …God from God, Light from Light…

I have been turning over this question: what do the 39A contribute that the creeds don’t? Episcopacy? But that’s implied by ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’, surely? A position on sacraments? Well, that’s such a 39A muddle. A clear first principles of Anglican ecclesiology, vis a vis the Bishop of Rome? That’s hardly there either, certainly not in the way that now exists in terms of the Anglican Communion etc (maybe that’s why Rowan Williams attempted his Covenant)?

Yeah, so my perception is still they get in the way of a mere christianity, rather than enhance one, and maybe they get in the way of us turning to the creeds more?

Mark

Anonymous said...

LOL Mark

I sent all that from my phone several days ago. What else is banging around in cyberspace?

I'm swiftly editing a fat document into clearer prose tonight, so my comments here and now will be brief. Not for lack of interest.

On the deep substance of all this we seem to be agreed. Yes, creeds. Hooray for creeds. Creeds, creeds, creeds. Of course.

I approach most topics in a *paleoorthodox* or *neopatristic* or *ecumenical conciliarist* or *cheerfully dogmatic* way that gives the most weight to the M1, and usually brackets non-ecumenical innovations of the M2 for scrutiny. Of the six major Western traditions, I prefer the Anglican one because it is the one least uprooted, burdened, distorted, obsessed, or reactive to those later eccentricities.

On some shallower level, you and I differ in tone without quite disagreeing on any proposition. I think well of the 39A when I think of them at all, but you and Father Ron write as though they tower over your horizon as some dread Barad-dûr. Sounds awful, but not strictly reasonable.

https://tinyurl.com/392a8cyt

If you do not need your hammer today, leave it in your toolbox. You might use it tomorrow.

BW

Anonymous said...

"I don’t really get how the 39A are a mere christianity"

In your opinion, is another Western formulary of the C16 closer?

"...they sound more Calvinist and anti-Catholic than *comprehensivist* to me."

True. Faced with a chaotic mess on the ground, the English thought was that a more *primitive* Christianity-- one upstream of the later innovations and corruptions-- would be less decadent. This was not an unreasonable strategy, and much of that aim was achieved. But nobody on any side of the C16 West had the historical knowledge to execute it flawlessly.

"maybe they get in the way of us turning to the creeds more?"

Not that I can see. But locally you may be seeing some polarity in which persons very focused on justification pay more attention to the 39A, and those not so concerned about it are drawn to the ancient faith.

BW

Mark Murphy said...

What is M1 and M2?

The 39A as Barad-dur? Maybe they're more like Boromir's attempt to grab the ring for himself, rather than work out an approach that serves the the whole fellowship.

Though it's a part of my family line, the Anglican Church appeared as a grace for me when I was marching back West from East in my thirties. I say it's allowed me to keep practicing as a Catholic when I couldn't do the Roman patriarchy anymore. But I actually like the connection with non-Catholic elements too (many of my favourite ancestors were warm, hearty evangelicals); we really shouldn't separate over the number of sacraments or what is going on in the great thanksgiving. That's bananas.

The Christian contemplative tradition is probably my deepest home base. It has its own, surprising ecumenism. I once wrote a letter to Father Thomas Keating asking for guidance with my centering prayer practice. He wrote back and signed off: We are One in Christ.

I recently realized that the Early Church Fathers are a complete black hole for me, but exciting given their proximity to the apostles and their non-schismatized faith. So I'm working on grazing in some of those meadows. Your comments often help.

Quite often you sound rather despairing about postmodernity, like it's The Dead Marshes.

Anonymous said...

M1 = 1-1000.

M2 = 1001-2000.

The planet's orbit did not change in 1054. And several centuries before, the monolingual Latin writers had been notably different from the Greek and polyglot fathers of the East. But distinctly Western institutions (papacy, universities, monastic federations), doctrines (filioque, double predestination, justification, original sin, atonement, sacraments), systems (juridical, sacramental, scholastic, penitential), and practices (pallium, penance, indulgences, inquisitions, antisacramentalism, perhaps humanism) without close Eastern analogues mostly crystalise from about the C11 on.

In the C16, shifting geopolitics exposed all of those recent innovations to the fresh air of scrutiny, reform, pruning, and application. As humans will do, those most polarised by their power struggles went too far.

Italians at Trent insisted that all traditions are revealed, but would not specify precisely which traditions they meant. The Swiss Reformed protested that no, none of that was revealed, but the vowel points of the Masoretic text came straight from the heart of God. Erasmus, certain cardinals, those around Luther, and the English bishops tended to be more judicious. That prudence is everywhere in the 39A.

In general, chronological snobbery is an immaturity. But whether one makes Roman picks or Protestant ones from the same high medieval innovations, a belief castle entirely constructed of stones from that stratum seems to hang lifelessly in midair. It is not close to the resurrection; it is not close to us.

This is what Orthodox have meant when they insist that under the most magical Catholicism and the most textual Protestantism sits a single, not very edifying system. This is also what the young Thomas Merton found when his superiors thought of monasticism as a mainly penitential exercise to which contemplation was a dangerous temptation. And, of course, this is what Tom Wright is talking about today when he distinguishes so sharply between abusing the Bible to defend even good answers to C16 questions and using it to think in an apostolic way about C21 questions.

Ed Feser on the margin would protest that this is missing everything that made the thought of that period so fruitful in the life of the West. He would be right about that. If one cares to take it up seriously, one may still be hanging in the air, but one will at least not be lifeless. Luther read the Rhineland mystics; Calvin is soaked in St Bernard of Clairvaux. The challenge is to read documents from the end of the middle ages, not for their real or imagined fixity, but as wine that is alive even in the bottle.

BW

Anonymous said...

"Quite often you sound rather despairing about postmodernity, like it's The Dead Marshes."

Good. I have worried that I sound too gleeful about the passing of classic modernity.

It has been an interesting experience to expect much of this in my twenties and then live to see it become undeniably real.

BW

Mark Murphy said...

Another response, from Moya, to Bowman that made my inbox but not the webpage curiously...


I am both amused and horrified that the local church is seen in terms of ‘sin management’ but sadly have to admit the truth of it. Jesus is Lord of all creation but is diminished by our differences and we are not seen as purveyors of the new creation of peace as you so rightly say, Bowman. How long, O Lord? Turn us and we shall be turned...

Moya

Mark Murphy said...

I would have liked it if the English bishops had asked Erasmus to write the 39A, and the Rhinelands mystics the 95 theses.

According to your M calculations we are now in M3. I shudder to think how you got view the formularies of this age (just quietly, I think we are spiritually evolving).

This is the 51st comment on this thread for anyone still reading. Peter, immense credit to you for hosting such an interactive theological forum. I've sometimes felt it's a shame that sermons are not followed by more interaction and questions.

Moya said...

The comments on the 39A are interesting but I was received into the Anglican communion in 1992, with no mention of them and I haven’t even read them, I am sorry to say. But I was asked if I believed the creeds of the Church and was happy to say yes. They are still alive and active in the liturgy at least in the church I currently attend.
Moya

Mark Murphy said...

The Orthodox Church emphasizes the unity and co-dependence of prayer and theology, so that one arises with and enriches the other. Such wisdom in this...

so that our thinking and speaking of God is fed by a deeper stream, the peace - or silence - 'that is not of this world'...

Without that peace there is no personal or corporate unity. We speak out of the many small minds but not from One Mind. Forgive me if some of my posts on ADU has been from the small mind.

Moya, your church, mine too, speaks the creeds each week, each day (and not the 39A). The creeds are part of our 'habitus'. We know them, and they form us.